The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 156: Battle Scars

Episode Date: February 18, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with Ryan Callaghan, Ben O'Brien, and Janis Putelis at The MeatEater Podcast LIVE from Sacramento.Subjects discussed: poaching a great white shark with a .22; the peculiarities of California; trading “smokies” for taxidermy, selling walleye fillets, and other details of an Ohio's wild game racketeering case; Lazarus species; step ladder diplomacy and fishing for monsters; naming one's rifle; shooting turkeys off the roost; the morality of stealing from a bird; kids are a pain!; 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. The Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Oh, this is it, right?

This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless. Here we go, boys. It's on! It's on. It's on. Yanni's fired up tonight. I feel the energy. Sacramento. What's up, guys?

I got a couple people I want to ask about. Is Larry Castano here? Right here. Yeah, what's your wife's name? Emily. Yeah, we'll get to that. And Greg Fonts. You guys know the free dive shop, West Sacramento?

All right. Okay, we're going to do a bunch of things tonight. We're going to do our normal show. Then we're going to do a thing that we're doing at our live shows, which is called two lies and a truth. A.K.A. seeing through the bullshit. Seeing through the bullshit. And we already picked a seat number before any. You have to trust us that we just randomly selected a seat number.

Do you remember what it is, Steve? Yeah. You're looking at me like you don't. Do you remember what it is, Steve? Yeah. You're looking at me like you don't. I do remember what it is. And that person will get to play the game. Yep. So we're going to do that. Get a lot of interesting emails from California all the time.

One I think about is... What was that? I'm not sure why there was a laugh there it's like uh it's like a lovable kind of nut house around here uh the the uber driver i was with the uber driver this morning and he got kind of circumspect for a minute i wrote it down what he said to me he says you, you know, the problem with California is we got too many fucking crazy people. We not long ago, we get an email from a guy not long ago who was complaining about

they had to go get a mountain lion depredation permit because a mountain lion is wiping out his ostriches. And I always see in the news too like you guys just have your own special set of things there was uh i was reading an article do you guys now have there's an article in national geographic talking about how you guys now have like the world's only population of blue-eyed coyotes which feels so intensely

californian like there's no there's like no way that nebraska right is gonna have blue-eyed skinny jeans and chuck taylor's and it of course uh national geographic manages to spin the fact that California has blue-eyed coyotes into an anti-hunting article. It's like, if they did an article about my mom's cookies, in the end they'd be like, you know, people shouldn't really be able to hunt. I was reading not long ago, a lot of people wrote in, this guy, I want to get this place right, Rio Del Mar. Oh yeah. Yeah. What's the beach? You were laughing about the name of the beach.

Beer Can Beach. Beer Can Beach. That's California crazy right there. Beer Can Beach. Beer Can Beach. And a dude recently shot, this is the only time I've ever heard of this, a man, he was fined for this, shot and killed a great white shark with a.22 rifle beer can beach over 500 pounds over nine feet tall nine feet long the guy only get so this is a international like it's international conservation

status of the great white is vulnerable the guy gets a only a five thousand dollar fine yeah hold on are we playing that game right now no this is no dead truth man dead truth and it was it washes up on the beach people are like laying down with it and taking pictures of it and it looks totally fine but they did a necropsy on it and it had a and a guy had had shot it three times with a 22 he was fishing he's a commercial fisherman doesn't even lose his license uh shoots it three times with 22 one of the shots separates the backbone. Hit it through the spine. Kills it. Washes it up on a beach.

They do an e-cropsy and find three.22 rounds in it. Someone's like, oh, yeah, there was a guy there. Like, some squid fishermen were out. They go and find him. They find the exact rifle behind his seat. Destroy the rifle. And only a $5,000 fine. Two years probation.

Two years probation. Oh, he did get probation. He did. Two years. From fishing. Yeah. Oh, I didn. From fishing. Yeah. Oh, I didn't see that. Yeah.

Because we were reading an article recently in Ohio. They're harder in Ohio for catching yellow perch than they are here for great white sharks. There's been no yellow perch movies I've ever seen. Just great white sharks. Instead of jaws, it's called little lips. Dun-dun. Dun-dun. Instead of jaws, it's called little lips. Did it. Did it. I want to talk about this case, this Ohio case, because it was, it's like this big poaching case that came out.

It's called, why is it called the North Shore? North Coast. North Coast, but it's the south coast of Lake Erie where this occurred. Undercover, maybe? Yeah, and it's like a case where poaching gets so bad that it actually earns the term racketeering. The largest poaching case ever for Ohio Department of Natural Resources. They wind up, it's racketeering, so they wind up confiscating 96 deer and turkey mounts, 35 sets of antlers, 200 pounds of flayed sport fish, 400 pounds of deboned venison and processed deer meat.

And here's where this gets interesting. The racketeering ring is a whole bunch, there's like 40 some people involved in this. They shoot hundreds of deer, bone the meat out, and take it to, what's the guy? Smoking Tees. Smoking Tees Smoke Shop. And have, over the course of the investigation, they take 2,000 pounds of deer meat down and turn it all into what they call smokies. So like smoke sticks. The processor then sells the smoky sticks, and they use the money to buy to get their own shit stuffed it's like this ring and so they're they're which earn them a money laundering citation in there as well yeah and communications fraud because they would shoot deer but then have

like their old lady call the deer in and act like she got it which makes it communications fraud because they would shoot deer but then have like their old lady call the deer in and act like she got it which makes it communications fraud and racketeering money yeah the smoke and teas he gets it for money laundering because he's converting poached deer into smokies which i didn't even know that term they use smokies in the article in quotes? One of these guys, he gets 22 months in prison. He can't hunt fish or trap until 2035. I can't even do that much math. Another guy who in the same like racketeering ring, he goes out and catches a bunch of walleye in Lake Erie, takes them in a live well, enters a walleye fishing contest on the river, wins. And then he gets fraud. He gets theft by deception and has to pay the bait and tackle shop back their money. Another dude, he sells to undercover agents 100 pounds of perch and walleye and bass fillets

to investigators. In all, it's 46 defendants charged with 91 felonies, 73 misdemeanors, 46 individuals assessed to combine 131,763 in fines and restitution, 8.6 years jail time, 79 years of hunting revocation, and $18,000 in court costs.

These sound like the dudes I grew up with, though, but nothing ever happened to us. It was like kind of, like the dudes, my dad fished with dudes that would, but John Gary, I can say his name cause he's dead. One day he was like flaying perch and he was telling me how he, he was telling me about where he sells his perch flays. And he said, he was telling me that whenever you sell them flays,

he's always got his thumb on the scale. And he says the more you're buying something from him, he's got this finger under the scale. And he says, the more you're buying something from him, he's got this finger under the scale. But yeah, these guys, it's like, I remember this John Gary, he used to write down, he had a notepad, and he'd write down every book he read, and he'd write down what happened every day he fished. And this guy would fish,

and everybody likes to say they fish 200 days a year, but this guy would legitimately fish 200 days a year. But he lived by himself. There's no way to account for all the panfish he caught, and he was just like a racketeer. Turns out. We had to look up what racketeer meant. We want to make sure that that applied in this case.

Yeah, it's like a... Basically an unlicensed business with the intent to kind of deceive, I guess. You have a crime business. Seems like we got it really figured out.

Nailed it right down. It's still going to be one of those words where you're like, yeah, racketeering. Oh, yeah. It's bad. I don't want to... Yeah, I don't. I just like, I'm like, oh, man, yeah racketeering oh yeah it's bad i don't i don't want to i don't yeah i don't i just like i'm like whoo man that racketeering um so we also got an email from a guy it's like like poaching takes different form these guys are obviously professional like a-holes right but we got an email from a guy recently that got it like he got in trouble or he thought he's gonna be in trouble so he's in the area we can only shoot a buck and he accidentally shoots an antlerless deer so it calls up and

self-reports so the game warden's like i'll come over so he's he thinks real fast he's like how can i make this look as good as possible so he said he like dresses the deer skins it scrubs it down real good so when the game warden walks and it's like ready to present and the game warden comes in he's so pleased with the thing the guys didn't get a fine nice yeah he like played it right self-reporting we're always like advocating on self-reporting we get cool stories about people that do self-report and wind up not getting in any kind of trouble um cal can you break down uh can you talk about the lazarus species that you just fished for yeah uh haunting uh cutthroat trout over on pyramid lake anybody ever been over there yeah earlier four four people brought this up to me earlier like asking if i knew about it there's

a couple of dudes in this room that are doing way better than than we were doing. How many people have fished this what's the lake? Pyramid. Pyramid? Yeah. Oh everybody. Yeah. Everybody fishes. It's very well known but this I did see like as far as like the Lazarus effect. So Lazarus rose from the dead. Jesus resurrected Lazarus after four days. This is in the good book. The book of John, I believe. And now it gets lumped into a scientific term. It's called Lazarus taxon. When something disappears from the archaeological record?

No, not archaeological. What am I... Goes extinct. You think it went extinct, but it wasn't. And then all of a sudden it pops back up, like the coelacanth, right? Like armored fish. No. That one was rediscovered in a fish market in Africa, right?

That's where everything gets rediscovered. Yeah. Like that fit, that's an interesting fish because what they realized, everyone thought it was extinct or the scientific community thought that fish was extinct. How do you say it? Coelacanth.

Coelacanth. And it winds up that it was, that a guy discovers it in a fish market and they were using the scales. You know when you like get those shitty little tubes to patch tires in grocery stores? Yeah. And it's got the tin that comes off,

the lid that comes off, and it's got a scratchy on it? Yeah, the weird little perforated lid. To rough up your bike tube? They would use that fish's scale at tire shops to rough up the rubber for patching. And so they're using it for that,

and the rest of the world thinks that they don't exist anymore. Oh, the tire fish. Yeah. And then the black-footed ferret was a Lazarus species. Yeah. Everybody thought they were extirpated from the landscape, and then all of a sudden it's like oh yeah look what i ran over yeah yeah so what happened in pyramid lake okay so uh two strains of cutthroat

no um one was uh kind of the river cutthroat one was the lake cutthroat very much paraphrasing here um but there's this pilot point strain of cutthroat, which is like the big, big dogs. Okay. Pilot peak. And thank you. And that is, so they found like bone fragments where they estimated that these fish got up to like 80 pounds. Cutthroat. Largest cutthroat in the world. And they market fish those things, shipped them all over the country at one point, but fed, you know, the big California gold rush, giant cutthroat going from Pyramid Lake down to san francisco and um then in 1979 a biologist is out on a ranch so but they wipe them out or presumably wipe them out yep presumably wiped out and biologist is out on this uh private cattle ranch uh private ground and um he's like boy this fish looks odd this is a different looking

cutthroat. Were you just doing a little nod? You were doing a little nod toward private lands conservation? Yes. Yeah? I caught that. I caught that.

Thank you. That was slick. Thank you. I thought, yeah. And takes five of these fish, takes them in the lab. Holy cow, this is our extinct cutthroat trout. And they were able to resurrect, raise from the dead,

this Lahontan cutthroat trout. And now there they are today. Yeah, I caught one. How big? Like, show me with your hands how big. The one I caught was probably about somewhere in there. Seriously? Yeah. Well, you were with a dude that caught a toad.

Oh, yeah. And that thing was, like, hitting probably 28, 29 inches, probably. Really? Yeah. When we did weigh it, it was 18 pounds. And guys fish them off stepladders. Yes. That just doesn't like... It is...

I don't dislike it. I don't dislike it. I like it. But it's a hard... Dude, this is like a full Michigan thing. You would love it. These are like the race cars, like the souped up race cars

of step ladders our dudes drinking beer our dudes drinking beer there are beer caddies there's net caddies there's uh bass seats on top of step ladders so you go down to the to the ramp launch whatever what have you the access point and it's dudes walking down the beach with a ladder and a fish rod. Yep. Yep. Did you do this? Yeah. On a ladder?

Yes. Did you wear a life vest? I did not. I did get bucked off, though. You did? Yeah. Does anybody put a little diving board on the end? There was a little wave action.

You were wearing, like, little floaty arms? Yeah. Bahamut, you're sinking the legs into the mud yes yeah and you're trying to get up so you can spot fish or you're just trying to get up clear the water well a couple of things like getting clear the water saves you from like totally freezing your ass off and then um yeah you know if the water clarity's good i did see a couple of fish like cruise and eat some midges off the surface, which was awesome. It's like a seven-pound cutthroat eating a dry fly off the surface.

But you're just bobber fishing. Oh, full bobber fishing. Yeah. Couldn't be called anything else. What do you mean, a bobber? You could call it a strike indicator, I've heard it called. Well, it's only a strike indicator when there's a strike. Oh, okay. The rest of the time, it's just a bob. it's just like bobs and bobs there's a strike all right yeah

you know what i always struggle with that because we used to fish them all the time and we call them like bobber felt reductive yeah it does strike indicator felt pretentious so we turned to call them floats which felt like there's got to be some combination like bob indicator or something like that yeah it's like hey you're fishing a float you know it's like you're not dressing it up but then you're not acting it's not like your kid's zebco rod yeah not the dog on zebco gets people fishing uh and then talk about the dude you met oh yeah man it's a my new best friend is he aware of this no no um super cool old codger but he kind of he's got one of these souped up you know sports car type step ladders it's got easy he even got wheels on the bottom of his... Sorry. This is a six-foot step ladder.

What are the wheels doing? Well, he's an older dude, so the wheels make it easier for him to, like, drag his ladder down the beach. All right. And I was freezing, so I'd gone back to the beach to do some walking, and he kind of parked his ladder, you know, 20 feet to the left of my ladder.

What's like normal ladder zone? Yeah. Like when you put a ladder up, how much? The way it was explained to me is like you want, you know, 30 feet would be great, but a lot of guys just fish closer together for the bullshitting you know just ladder to ladder conversation i was going up there yeah and uh so i went out there to grab my ladder and drag it back in and i was actually gonna go like prospect some some new beach and uh joe's like

what are you doing he's like am i too close to you? You want me to move? I was like, no, I'm just going to take, he's like, I'll move. Like, no man, I'm going to just drag. I've been standing out here for like three hours. Well, you should get back on there and stand on there a little bit longer. He's like, and I'll tell you another thing. I have no idea why those people are cast

in as far as they are. The fish aren't out that far. The fish are right here. He's like, I've already missed two in the time it took you to walk out here. I'm like, can't argue with that. He's like, seriously, stand up there. Just wait it out a little bit. He's like, the big ones are going to start coming in.

And about six minutes later, he's got an 18 pound cut throat. Really? Yeah. And this guy was, I mean, he was just amazing, right? This is like his spot. I'm like, oh, you come out here often? Uh, every weekday for 20 years. I'm like, uh-huh. I'm like, I'm from Montana. I really dedicated myself to this for six hours. And yeah, I mean, he was just phenomenal. He's like, yeah. He's like, here's my flies, check them out. He's like, guarantee it's the same flies you're using. And he just had like this, I'll help you out as much as I can. And there's still no way you're going to be as good as I am at this.

So it was just, it was awesome. Like this guy is a good example. It's nice to meet guys like that, man. It's phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah. That go against the John Geerock maxim that I like to quote is that

when it comes to fishing, there's the people you're with and then the assholes oh man and i'd be just lying to myself and everybody in this room if i wasn't like when i heard this like step ladder with wheels on it coming down the rocky beach i wasn't kind of like oh this is jackass yeah but turns out uh super nice guy um did it i mean explained everything he's like nope those bugs don't exist here those bugs don't exist here this is what happens in this lake this is how cold the water is um this is exactly why i wasn't standing down here freezing my ass off all day

and why i came down right now yeah and just like went through the whole thing instead of like trailhead diplomacy is ladder diplomacy step ladders step ladder diplomacy yeah be like joe good dude uh what you guys take someone wrote in about this what you guys take on the habit of or the practice of naming your rifle this guy was observing that he thinks it's extremely childish oh really what really i think daniel boone i think daniel boone calm down if i'm not mistaken his was called tick lickericker. Tick Licker? That's, yeah. That's one letter away from offensive.

Maybe it just got spelled wrong. Child issues go way too far. Since then, historians have been baffled by what Tick Licker means. Oh, what's a tick? No, you can't lick a tick. They're too small. These things get out of hand quick. Who wants someone licking your tick?

I've never named one. But you know what? My halibut rod has a name, but it came with the name. The guy that, my halibut rod has a name, but it came with the name. The guy that made my halibut rod named it the Widowmaker. Which is weird because you don't think of when you catch a halibut

that you've now... There's another one down there all bummed that you caught that one. I was going to go up. Do you ever talk to it? I feel like that's where it gets weird. You're like talking to it using its name. No, and I do it like kind of ironically when I say I'm going to grab the Widowmaker.

Yeah, but I think if you start talking to it, that's where it gets jaded. I kind of caught bullshit on that because I've been fishing with you, and you're like, no, no, no, Widowmaker's mine. They're there, Widowmaker's mine. They're their Widowmaker. We'll get them. Well, you have a rod that you fish confidently, and that is the Widowmaker. Giannis, you have named a rifle.

Yeah, several. Really? Sure, yeah. Like, what kind, like, you know, called is what it is? I do that as well. Like, you know, like, my it is uh i do that as well like you know like my one gun or whatever you know one the most recent one that had a name that sucked for a while i sold it but it was a uh 300 short mag the first one that i owned as soon after they came out i got caught

up in the hype of of 300 short mag and it's still as did i it's a great round. And it was all black, synthetic gun, and it had the steel on it was black. You're not going to say something real offensive, are you? No. Oh, okay. But it was the same time... Come on. It's me, Yanni.

It was the same time that Kill Bill, those movies were coming out. Very good movies. Do you remember the scene where I can't remember the actor's name. The snake. Daryl Hannah. Daryl Hannah, yeah.

From Splash. Yes. And the actor that opens up the briefcase full of money is Michael something. Michael Madsen? Yeah, thank you madison and uh some cinephiles out there tonight man he gets bit right and he gets bit again and and as he's getting bit and struggling on the floor and as the black mama's poison is getting to him daryl daryaryl Hannah proceeds to read like a little note that she has about like how

venomous the black mama is and how a strike anywhere to the upper torso will cause imminent death, I believe is how she says it. I thought, well, man, that's kind of like my 300 short matter so i i called it the black you were like 16 oh you're gonna say so my guy's name is daryl hannah give or take so i named it daryl dh dh um yeah so black mama was the name yeah black mamba yeah she stacked them up man worked for this outfitter uh and he had one named rifle it was a 300 entity and he'd always be like yeah old birdie and i were out and it's like and i turned to birdie was back home but birdie but i've never found like an approach you know impressionable kid working for your first outfitter i was like yeah i'm gonna name yeah yeah i just couldn't never never clicked for me

no i'd feel like such a phony man there's a lot of like delores's and louise you hear that there's like some common names for rifle lady names for rifles yeah like old betsy betsy that's a good one but you've never named one never named one no just since you guys can't really add to the conversation here let me tell you about another. But please, do. But don't think that me not having named one means that I don't have the authority to speak about this. I'm thinking just that. I'm thinking just that. Now, my good friend Scotty of Nebraska,

he's now giving away this. It's a shotgun. It's not a rifle. But he's now giving away this shotgun because it got to be too much for him because he got blown up in Afghanistan. And the concussion that he received there, he couldn't take shooting big guns anymore. Was he a contractor in Afghanistan?

That's right. Yeah. Drove big rigs and, yeah, got hit by an IED. But he wasn't a service member, right? No. Oh. But he had. And this is the guy from. service member right no um but he had this guy and now another friend of mine has this shotgun

and it's a single barrel 10 gauge oh yeah all right and um its name is thunder breath but don't tell the story without doing his voice. Scotty's from Maine, and you guys have heard a lot of pronunciations of Giannis over the years. And Scotty says, Giannis, that turkey was going to get away. That's why I had to shoot him for you. This is how my very first ever turkey that I got went. Scotty was nice enough to have me out, and I'd hunted for three or four days on my own. At that point, I couldn't tell a hen apart from a gobbler.

So the last morning, he takes me out, and he took me to some ground that we hadn't hunted, some private ground, a friend of his. And we're cruising in his pickup truck, and we kind of come over this roll. And just as we're coming over the roll, Scotty's looking over the dash, and just by the time I see him, he's got a stick shift pickup truck, and he goes into neutral, and that truck just comes back down over the roll. And I'm like, oh, man, it must have been been something i didn't even see the birds you know i'm like all right it's on now so he's like come on they didn't see us so we hop out do the accent don't look come on you want us

let's go and we go sneaking up this little up to this little knob and uh we get about 10 feet from where you could actually see over, and he's like, stay down. They're going to see you, and he goes on up there. I'm like, come on, man. I feel, I'm pretty slick in the woods, you know, and he's just like, stay back, stay back. So anyway, we peek over, and he comes back, and he's like, let's go, and we just do this like full-on army commando run around basically just circumnavigate this i don't know terrain feature and we get down into a canyon creek and circle around and pop up near a windmill and we go belly crawling next to the windmill to the water tank and they've gotten out to i don't know 40 yards or so and he's like i can't i can't remember what he said. He said, Yonis! Yonis? Shoot that bird.

Listen, man. You're the only dude worse at accents than me. I do everything as kind of like an Irish dude. I sure sound like maybe like a pilgrim or something. Pilgrim? Yonis? Yonis? Do you have a blunderbuss?

Yeah, my mother's like Americans, and everyone else speaks kind of like an Irishman. You're Australians. So I shoot the turkey. And instead of flopping over doing what a dead turkey should do, instead he just like puffs up and all his feathers just fly everywhere. I obviously body shot him, you know. And I'm still just like kind of calculating everything in my head, like what I should do next. And, you know, putting the safety off on the shotgun and the bird takes flight.

And he's now gone another 20 or 30 yards and he's in the air. And Scotty and Thunder Breath just jump out in front of me and pow. And I've never seen a turkey do this this day. But at like 70 yards, the turkey just did like a somersault through the air. And then he said, Jonas, go get your bud. So I walk over there, and the bird's still flapping, and I'm walking back, and it's spurring me and beating me, and I'm trying to stretch its neck,

and I'm getting beat up by the turkey. And, Jonas, give me that bud. And he grabs it and goes, whoo, whoo, whoo, and whoo, throws it, you know? And then it finally lays there, as can be and then again you want to get your bud that's how i got my first turkey you bring that up because the guy recently wrote in um like he wing shot the turkey but a guy's like why is it uh oh like why is it so bad to shoot a duck on the water or a pheasant on the ground but it's okay to shoot a turkey on the ground

and it's bad to shoot one flying like who came up with that? Good question, Steve. Well, the flying turkey, I think you have a way higher probability of a body shot. Could be. Whereas like the turkey on the ground, you know, you got a lot of neck there. Yeah, because this guy's main, he was mainly exploring like the morality or the ethics of, you know, like shooting ducks on the water. Yeah, but you're talking to a dude who'd shoot a duck on the water. I don't have a problem with it either. I've never had a problem with it. I mean, if you were to ask

the duck, right? Yeah. I mean, he's like, I don't really want to be shot in the air either, to be honest with you. You know what I mean? It's like, who are you? I had plans. Who are you? Ducks can't talk we know that but don't don't some waterfowlers say that because when they're on the water and their wings are folded and they sort of protects the water is protecting some of their you know breasts the wings are protecting some of their i'm a

waterfowler and i say that but i don't know if that's widely accepted but yeah yeah i think that it's. Well, how many shells have you wasted out of a duck on the water? When you say the saying, like shooting ducks on the water, you might say, like, you mean like they get up and fly away? Because, yeah, I think that's a part of it. Have you ever trained your shotgun on a turkey in the roost and thought about it? Yeah, oh, yeah.

I have. We thought about it hard oh yeah i have we thought about hard one time and we got me my brother in the dark crawled in under a roost tree one time and we're looking up very struggling with this very question and you could see him gobbling up there oh i've had turkeys fly over my head at dusk and as they're flying over i'm thinking hmm i know where he's going. I can probably get him, but just never do. I can't bring myself to shoot a turkey on the roost. We were just reading that study the other day. In Colorado, speaking of roosting, in Colorado they were doing this thing with Miriam's turkeys.

What was the percentage of time that a gobbler will roost in the same tree? Do you remember this? I do remember it, but the number escapes me. It was lower than we thought. Very low. But the biggest thing is they tend to, like, you think, oh, they go in that same tree every night. It was less than 20% of the time a gobbler will roost in the same tree,

and on average they roost 1,000 yards away from where they roosted the night before. No kidding. And that number increases during turkey season. That's wild. In Colorado, in this study area. In this study area on Miriam's in Colorado. 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 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 MeatEater 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. Best post-apocalyptic gun. Guy was saying that he... Transition. A guy was saying that... You got him.

This guy wrote it. Him and his buddy have this argument. The amount of energy that people put into imagining, like lusting for a post-apocalyptic world. Certain types. Certain types of people. Can we just say what we wouldn't use? Well, let me give you the two.

He's kind of laying it out. Like the two things. His buddy has this idea that you'd want to be a 22, so you'd have all this ammunition because you're going to be dealing with all these dogs that are attacking you all the time. And the other guy feels like there's going to be a lot more wolves. There'd be great white sharks swimming. No, the other guy's like, there's a lot more wolves and grizzlies.

There'd be a lot more wolves and grizzlies, and so you need a high cat, like a large rifle, to deal with the post-apocalyptic world. Is there zombies? Let's just say no. Let's say no. Let's say no. I'm just anti-Crossbow. I'm anti-Crossbow in the post-apocalyptic world.

There's a certain show where there's a fellow, a grungy fellow with a mullet, runs around shooting things in the head with a crossbow. I'm like, come on, man. You're not running crossbow. No. You'll be eaten alive while you're trying to cock it to get the next one. That's a fact.

In a lot of states, they're not even legal, so you'd have to cope with that. You'd have to cope with that. You'd be a poacher and you'd be dead because you'd be cocking your crossbow and you'd be eaten alive. I'm just going to sit back, see what happens in California, and then I'll make my decision. Do you got any input?

You know, I... Like, why is it so hard to entertain the idea for you? I mean, it just seems, like, so easy. Like, a post-apocalyptic world, yet I am still alive. Like, whatever. This coming from the guy. Red Ryder BB gun.

Oh, no, I have a ton of thoughts about this, and it's not about selection. I have a lot of thoughts, but I'd like to do it like the full boat. I just want to select my gun. I like my vehicle. I'm going to get a van for sure. I'm going to put like a,

you know, snowplow on the front. I got a lot of things I think about, but just not the gun. So I'd like to paint the entire picture if we could. Yeah.

Now, what are you doing, to be honest? You're sitting back and doing what? Just wait and see what happens here first. I figure this is going

to be ground zero. This is where it's going to be. Yeah, and we'll probably still be covering it on the news in Montana. I'll be like, like oh that didn't work that did you can you can email over and ask what's been working out for everybody my thing about it and we get like this question a lot not a lot somebody will be blogging right

somebody in california will be blogging about like i figured i knew it i told you so it was the x it's crazy you still have the internet in the post-apocalyptic world yeah it's still a blog that's where i wind up having problems with the thing because it is this it's so i think we're coming out of it now but it was really like cool for a while to like be ready for the apocalypse but then you're banking on you're like spending there's people that spend sort of their entire lives getting ready for something that by definition means most people are gone. And there's this assumption that you're not. But the other thing is you can find examples all around the world of collapsed societies.

And the first thing that goes into collapsed society is wildlife, right? Like you go to the Democratic Republic of Congo or go to Syria. I mean, wildlife vanishes. So we have this like fictitious idea that, that society will collapse. You'll be alive. Everyone will be dead and we'll have wildlife when in fact a stateless society, almost like it's almost like by definition, stateless societies lose their animals. Like the animal, the wildlife we have, we only have because we decided to have it. It's not here accidentally. And with the, with the, with all the regulatory structure and anything of that, that like that imposes restraint removed, that's gone too.

So the best. You really just buzz killed the apocalypse it was way cool until that until that monologue yeah is bigfoot gonna be there oh yeah speaking of oh we're not supposed to talk about that speaking of what like a big weird state you guys live in um has anybody here seen a Bigfoot? I'm not going to say a word. Yeah, I won't talk about it. I'm just curious.

Has anyone seen one? Because this is like, there's a lot of Bigfoot country north of here, I think. Yep, somebody said yep. Yeah, sure, there is. Yeah. You look on Onyx Maps, you can see that one area. That's where they are. I want to grab a subject that comes all the way from Norway.

A guy from Norway wrote in that him and his wife were out hunting black grouse, which we had to look up to verify was a bird. It's a bird, black grouse. It looks, it's got the red eye comb. What's that whiskey or scotch with the red grouse on it? Which is a ptarmigan, basically. Oh, famous grouse. Yeah.

Famous grouse, yeah. It's got a red eye comb like that grouse, but it's a black grouse. It's not that capper kelly. Not a capper kelly, which is the thing I most want to hunt. Yeah. Yeah. Someday in my life, I'd like to do that. I should contact this Norway fella.

So he's out with his wife, and they jump a black grouse and it heads off he's all whacked out because he says he went 100 meters by which he means 100 yards roughly he goes he's obviously high poor fella so he strikes off and him and his wife march in the direction it went to go catch it wherever it landed. And they get there, and before he can get there, a goshawk kills the grouse. It's just laying there warm dead. Bird takes off.

And he even said, he presented the email, the subject line is a moral question from Norway. Oh, and he pointed out to you, I want to tell you this, Janus. Blauch, where he's from, is paying. So in a hunting story in Norway, apparently, you're like, and I raise my rifle and bang. Bang? Like the idiot? It doesn't. That's not.

It's very a feat. Yeah. Yeah. So he never gets to Pang. To Pang. Is it immoral to take, to steal the bird from the bird? His wife stole the black grouse from the goshawk because she felt, well, I kicked it up. She gets an assist at the very least.

She should have just taken one lobe, I think. A lobe. Yeah. A wing. No, take it. You have hands and feet. The bird doesn't have those. Take. Now take it. You have hands and feet. The bird doesn't have those. Take them and eat it.

It's just, it's that you think you just like exploit the bird. Yeah, I'm exploiting the bird. I would not have touched. There's no way I would have touched that. No, no. You have some like big bird respect. I just feel like it's like, yeah, kind of. I feel like you'd lost fair and square, man.

Put it this way. You kick up a bird and then it flies and off in a distance you hear bang like where am i yeah what are you gonna go make the case are you gonna go make the case to that guy yeah but i could talk to that guy be like listen guys you good good for you if you were a bird i'd take it you're a small little yeah if you're a small little bird with a smaller brain than me i would just take it they can't fight me yeah yeah similar story no i don't know this is similar i can make this similar okay we just got in the just the last hunt so the the 2008 hunting season the guy who wrote us a letter drew a Utah, a Henry Mountain.

So there's a buffalo herd in the Henry Mountains in Utah. So he draws a cow bison Henry Mountains tag. They hunt their asses off and can't find one. Oh, we met some people last night. They got two? No. But they hunted 10 days before they found one. Yeah.

In this mountain range where they give these tags out, I've applied for these tags in the past. They got two? No. But they hunted 10 days before they found one. Yeah. In this mountain range where they give these tags out, I've applied for these tags in the past. He was saying that the density, it's such a low density. It's one per four square miles. So they put in 10 days and then they found, they put in 10 days before they found one. And it was a woman. She had the tag and she got one but this other mug writes in that they're hunting and they're not finding anything but then all of a sudden his buddy is like get over here get over here get

over here and he comes over and peers off this rock ledge and there is so he has a cow tag, a female tag. And there is what they suspect to be a bull bedded down. And they observe it for a long time. And they're going by the curvature of the horns. And they're thinking it's a bull, so he can't get it. And they watch it and watch it and watch it. And eventually they get to wanting to make a cell phone video of it walking away. Lord knows why. He doesn't explain why. But they want a cell phone video of it walking away. Lord knows why. He doesn't explain why. But they want

a cell phone video of it walking away. So they decide to try to spook it up. And they can't get it to spook. And he even throws a rock down there and it won't get up. And they pick their way down there and realize that it is stuck in a crack in the rocks. It's like got its leg wedged in the rocks and is laying there unable to move. It can stand up and struggle, but it's stuck. So they still think it's a bull. And they try prying and poking and digging and wrestling the thing out of there, but they don't want to get hurt by it. And they exhaust all the possibilities of trying to free this thing. And they're getting ready to walk away when one of them finally has the good idea to lift the tail up. And it's a cow.

So, bang! He tags himself with a field tag. So, if you extend the goshawk logic to an inanimate object such as a rock, he took that rock's catch. But I would have done nothing different. Like I would have absolutely done what he done. Yeah, I don't like it. You don't like it?

But you kind of have to what don't you like about it i just don't it's not ideal no it's not ideal yeah i mean that's not uh what uh yeah you know i i'm very particular on my hunting and i have like this idea of how a hunt should go and if it doesn't like go out kind of follow through on my big ideas yeah a lot of times i just don't pull the trigger but that'd be a hard one to if you were hungry it would be ideal oh yeah that'd be queen mother of all i don't think it'd be ideal it'd be like it'd be on it you couldn't anticipate it. No. You can't anticipate it. And if you leave, you know it's going to perish. And you didn't affect the situation.

I mean, not that, you know, I believe in nutrient recycling and all that. Like, nothing actually goes to waste, right? Yeah. Like, out in that environment, it'll be consumed and, right, circle of life, all that kind of stuff. But, yeah, I would have, absolutely. Yeah. But see, it was the first day but also like were you like man i wonder like how much struggling has this thing done and has there

been like is the meat going to be affected which kind of is kind of like prick thinking at that point it's like it's all about me how's this thing real selfish yeah what you done yanni yeah i was gonna say in both those instances that it would depend on how hungry you are right because if you're really hungry sure you're just gonna take the bird from the gossok and you're gonna kill the buffalo with its legs stuck but we don't ever have to face that question but what would you have done just knowing what i told you with the buffalo yeah no and it was a weekend of the hunt. It had been a tough hunt.

Probably would have killed it. You'd have tagged it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, then people come over. You've got the skull on the shelf. You're like, you see that? And you tell them what happened. That's right.

You're like, before I killed this bison, I lifted its tail up. I was just thinking the same thing like you've kind of i didn't even know what i was looking for that's a new that's a new analogy put your head up a bison's ass yeah yeah there's no going back after that what uh you're taking that bison home yeah what was uh what was larry's wife's name emily emily that's right emily was uh yeah she was wondering about this she wasn't what's that i'm just selling her out she wasn't wondering oh she's oh okay can i talk about it yes your question yeah i'm just joking it wasn't emily

wondering this. Okay. There's a fella. Let's just say. Let's just say there's a guy. He's in section JJ. There's a guy that was wondering. And this is a difficult thing to address. It's hard to bring up.

You process an animal. Okay. You gut an animal. And there's a smell to it. We're all familiar with. Has one ever noticed that after that, one might sense some of those same odors around their own flatulence or bowel movements?

And he's proposed this individual, has proposed this to family members, and some people think it's that sensation of when you put garlic between your toes and feel like you can later taste it. Or is it just that it's a familiar smell, and you tend to then find that smell, you know, you recognize it in other areas. I have no idea. This isn't something I've experienced, but I do like to take all, like, I like to take all things I get and

lay them out to be helpful to people. Yeah, helpful. Real helpful. I'm genuinely confused. Yeah, man. Can we go back to the garlic and toes? Oh, you don't know about that? Okay.

If you... You've never done this? What? No. Who the hell? What? Was garlic and toes... Yeah.

You take... Peel and crush a... Peel and crush a clove of garlic. And then jam it between your toes. And wait a while. How long? I've had some boring nights. Wait a while.

And you will get to where you can taste the garlic. Or you can't, but you think you can. And you've been smoking what? It works so well that the trick is this. You tell someone, we've done this at my house. You tell someone, I'm going to put something between your toes,

but don't look. And then after a while, they'll be able to tell what it is. You know what you're not buying? Dude, I wish you had some in your toes right now. Does anybody have garlic out there in the crowd? We could... Back to the...

Is this a guy? You got anything to add there? Should we hit the actual question? Yeah, I mean, if it's something that... Okay, Larry or whatever, was it Brad? You're not clear on the question? I'm not clear on what we're even talking about. A person observed.

He observed this phenomenon that he experiences. Where if when he... You know, I'm just going to move on. This is a psychosomatic. We really get it. Okay. So a 20 year old person wrote in and he's dating and using dating apps. This has nothing to do with the, this has nothing to do with the, the, the, the different person. It's nothing to do with, this has nothing to do with gutting an animal and then feeling that it has affected the odor of one's own flatulence. This is a completely separate subject. Where a guy is saying he's digging through the rubble of the modern dating world on dating apps.

And this guy is one of those closeted hunter types. And he won't tell women that he meets that he hunts yeah like i don't even have the luxury well i don't have luxury i'm married if i wasn't married i wouldn't have the luxury anyways but like that's some bullshit man yeah get it together man closeted get it together hunting is a virtue yeah

put it out there yeah I'd say not only do I hunt but I shoot ducks on the water let me tell you a story about this goshawk that I know I steal food from birds

I put garlic between my toes. I fish off a ladder. This is out of control. We're going to have to adjust your Tinder profile tonight, Cal. Have you been on there lately? No, I like how you put it out. I think it's appropriate. You're sifting through the rubble of...

How did you put it? That's how he put it. He says, I'm a mid to late... He doesn't even know how damn old he is. No wonder he's like, this guy is suffering from some personal problems. I'm a mid to late 20-year-old male sifting through the rubble that is the dating world.

Well done. You know what? If you were, if you would come out and just be upfront about what kind of feller you were, you might not be sifting through rubble. You might be like climbing the tower. We talked about this in the office about huntersonly.com, where it would be like a dating site where it's hunters only. Yeah. Because they got Christians only.

They got all kinds of farmersonly.com. Why not huntersonly.com? You have your grip and grin right on there. It'd be a good website. Because farmers only, I gather, I think there's a lot of non-farmers on farmers only. Cal being one of them, he's probably never been on farmers only. Cal, have you ever dated on the internet there? Because I think we all probably got married before it was prevalent.

I missed it. Yeah, I missed it. It's like I missed the good old days. You know, like the good old days of dating I totally missed. Back then you had to get shit-faced if you wanted to go on a date. You had to go down there and put in the time, man. I've never swiped a lady, really any direction, but never swiped anybody. No, you had to drink a bottle of boons in the shower, go down and have a Long Island iced tea, and then start talking. And then once you got to the garlic in your toes, the date was over.

My buddy Ronnie was just telling me about a guy that he knows who's in the dating game and he still does the old-fashioned way in bars. But he carries a thing of Tic Tacs in his pocket. And he reaches in his pocket and rattles it like a rattlesnake and says, there's a snake in my pants. And he says that this... He says that it works. I started doing it to my wife and I haven't gotten anywhere with her.

That's a good ad for Tic Tacs. But I was using those orange Tic Tacs that my kids had, and I was rattling to my wife, and she's just like, I'm having none of it. Another question, this is kind of like same vein as post-apocalyptic guns, is when it comes to backpacking, do you like spoons or forks?

Forks. No. That's like some middle-of-the-road centrist bullshit right there, man. That's like fence sitters. Those guys are the fence sitters, you know. Well, I'm pro-nuance. I feel like spoons are right where I'm at. That's the pro-nuance position. It's very nuanced.

It's got some curvature and some spiky things at the end it's very nuanced yeah i'm a long uh a fork i feel like the natural world is nothing but like fork things pokey sticks knife tips like i'm never out in the woods and be like, man, if I only had a fork. Yeah, I feel like the meals that we eat out there aren't sophisticated enough for a fork, right? And it's like, if there's a time when you need a fork, your knife will do the trick. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you don't, like, tuck in your napkin and shit like this, you know? Yeah, it's a blunt object i guess just that one hunt where we where the helicopter took us in and then with the hollywood

people yeah we had to use the small fork from first one from the where girls was there he was using a fork for yanni that's your salad fork no big like i uh we've taken to run an almost exclusive like big long handled spoons which are meant for digging into so you don't you don't soil your knuckles yep eating freeze dry in a moment of weakness around christmas time i bought myself a titanium spoon that's what i have like the long one yeah uh and it got suckered in because it also had like a table of measurement on there as well and i like everything to have more than one job and i was like well that's kind of sweet so now you did you were able to ditch the measuring cup and just run the spoon um it's got a toothbrush on the other hand it's but like the dirt cheap long plastic gsi spoons i think are better i like the metal i think it's a

better i know this one you're talking about it's kind of off white yeah yeah it flexes too much you can't get into the corners and you don't get a good stir. It actually weighs less than a titanium spoon. And the titanium gets wicked hot. What I find, because everyone now has the same, like most people I know have the same spoon. What is that spoon? Speaking of naming shit, what's your spoon's name?

Double V-notch. That's childish. Well, no, because here's the thing. People will, everyone that I know owns the same spoon. I know what it is. It's a titanium spoon. Yeah, Sea to Summit, I think. We usually just wipe out REI. It's like a keeper-sized trout.

It's that long. Sea to Summit summit titanium spoon and some like the camera guys will wrap gaff tape of various colors around their spoon but then that gets soiled so i take my uh the file on my multi-tool and i all my stuff i cut two v notches in all my shit all my stuff so i cut two v notches in my spoon and i call it the double v notch why two why not one seems like a little extra work i saw someone else maybe do that i just wanted to have two in there and i like cutting the thing and it's like a thing i like enjoy doing i do that with my i do my sleeping pad too i kind of come notches in there it keeps popping i don't know what that's that's yeah that's sleeping pad too. I cut a couple notches in there. It keeps popping. I don't know what happened.

Yeah, that sleeping pad with the two holes? Yeah. And I did it to my steep country knife. I cut two things in there. And then someone was like, oh, does that mean you've made two kills since you got that? And I was like, oh, no. You're like, well, this is ruined.

But yeah, the double V-not-nodge but no spoons all the way man spoons all the way everybody out there is into the spork sports dude there are sticks you have a knife fingers yeah i'm not saying i'm you know I did a lot of early season, no stove. I was packing the salmon packets. Mm, yeah. And there's a shop in Ketchum there that if you went in for lunch, they had like a Mondo bucket of the wooden chopsticks. What?

For whatever they were serving for lunch. I wasn't buying it, but I was grabbing a handful of the chopsticks and smashed up that salmon and rocked the chopsticks. It was great. Oh, and then just go like stoveless cold fish? Wait, wait, wait. You took sticks in the woods?

Yeah. Yes, I did. Did you bring handlers with you? I brought some grass to make a fire. Yeah. Yes, I did. Did you bring handlers with you? I brought some grass to make a fire. And a little bag. I see your point. Thank you. Yeah, okay.

I won't go any further. We talked about that with our boys. They were clean sticks. Do you know Kurt Roscoe? Yeah. Yeah. Do you hear what he does? Freeze dry food?

Because he doesn't like to carry a stove around. He, around noon, puts the water in the freeze dry pack. Cold. Cold. Because by dinner, it'll be edible. And just eats room, like cold ass freeze dry. And that has never like exploded all over his you know i didn't ask him about that but it's a great question packing that around

yeah you know someone wrote in that he's harder than woodpecker lips we've talked to multiple people that have tried the kurt roscoe method of the or the kurt roscoe backcountry menu and came come back and said i was miserable it can wreak havoc on your gut eating like imp like read like beans that aren't totally made back normal again yeah you want to talk about a gut pile uh guy wrote in about um it's like these weird little deer hunting things a guy wrote in that he's like do you think it's a good idea if i put a mannequin in my hunting blind all year so the deer get used to being someone in there yes that's the best that's great you should dress it like you put your clothes on it well in the same week a guy

wrote he's saying like why if why don't i just keep like i'll wear clothes and i'll put my clothes in a pile on my tree stand so that the deer in the area become accustomed to my smell and I like you're kind of like sure but I just don't I don't know I feel like you're tipping in some weird direction oh for sure but I think it's kind of beautiful too because like that's what so much like like, go away from tradition. Like, you got this whole wild world out there to mess with. Yeah. I like it.

Like it invites experimentation. Yeah, exactly. Rub a little Old Spice on there and... But there's moments you got to just realize when you're carrying a mannequin out through the field, that's like, what the fuck am I doing here? Like, am I really, am i really like really guy walks about a step ladder and a mannequin am i really that into this like is that really where i'm going um yeah i don't know i can't like i just feel what i don't know why i feel that it's bad to do that

i say get weird do it i like it you it. You can maybe even make like a little scene because you could just bring out your doe and buck decoys at the same time. Bring a couple mannequins. And then so when the buck comes out on the field, he just looks down. He's like, oh, everybody's just hanging out together. You know?

They got a little card table set up. A little outstretched owl. I feel like that's a slippery slope. Then you're going to be starting to put mannequins in different places they shouldn't be if that works okay uh another guy wants to know this um if you how's he want to put it he includes this it has to be that if you it's about if you're gonna die in a in an outdoor wilderness disaster accident. But he prefaces it by saying, if you knew you were going to die anyway,

which I feel like has implications, but I don't know what they are. So it's like, I guess it just makes it easier. Like God comes down and says, you now have to die um and you can pick how you'd like it to happen in a wilderness accident or whatever predator avalanche okay what do you like like what are you into yeah yeah oh i thought the question was gonna be like how are you gonna prepare for this but no no he's not a prepper this dude's a fatalist oh man living yeah that's the right answer no you have it it's just like in the outdoors yeah probably on a surfboard drinking a beer with some fireworks and 22 great white shark eats me i don't know something cool like that though

you want a jet ski your kids on the beach be like yeah dad yeah i'm on a jet ski probably it's on fire but it's the great white that eats and then the great that's finally what gets you probably so it's all that but it's like leading up to a shark yeah i want people to think oh that's how he's gonna get it no no he survived he's in the water great Great white guy. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you 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 hand picked 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. I fall two different directions on it. Which is one, that it be a grizzly because man you know

the experience of that but then i also think that wait back up what do you want well yeah but afterwards you're not going to get to hang out and enjoy like your past experience anymore so that well now you're like laying out you're now you're like laying out uh um you're you're laying out a a rather grim afterlife scenario yes so i suppose i am but okay okay uh i i vacillate between the two extremes one would be freezing to death, which you lose your sense. Like if anyone's ever been hypothermic,

you lose your, you lose like your wherewithal. And then you have that phenomenon called paradoxical undressing. Or it'd be like the struggle with a wild beast. Not some middle ground shit like a tree falling on you no tape cow man

yeah you ever see uh royal tenenbaums oh yeah right a couple times phenomenal movie but at you know at the end he's got this tombstone and like his dying request is, and the tombstone reads like, died saving his family from a destroyed sinking battleship. Yep. Right? It's total bullshit. This is Gene Hackman, right? Yes. Yeah. Little Bill from The Unforgiven. So like, apply that to Jeremiah Johnsoneremiah johnson right and he comes across uh the old trapper in the woods right delgue no that uh where he gets uh the dude buried up to his neck in the sand no hatch jacks uh oh yeah yeah hatch jack yeah and he gets he like leaves this little like hey you get the rifle that killed the bear that killed me type of deal. So I'd kind of combine the two where I would get myself into a situation where somebody would inevitably find me.

But maybe I would give my rifle barrel just an ever so slight little tweak to where they're not going to be able to hit shit with it. But lay out this amazing story. That's a great point. Hatchet Jack did the two... I wasn't even thinking about that. One of the greatest movies ever made. Hatchet Jack did the two things. He did both my extremes.

Yeah. He got mauled and then froze to death. Yep. That's what I want. That's what I want. That's a tough one though. What about last words? I'd want to have some kind of last words that were impactful.

I think you could die happy though with a well laid joke. Where you're like, eventually, somebody's going to find me, read this note, it's going to be great. Yeah, mine would be like, damn jet ski. A guy wrote into us once,

and we were talking about what we wanted to have into our bodies after we died, and a guy wrote in that he wanted to have his kind of dried out out in the woods, so he's kind of pointing. But have it be these point that just absolutely nothing just a mess with everyone that found him and he'd go over it just dying to know what it was over there what he's like which isn't bad i mean because what else do you do with your dead body

that's true people just burn them up nowadays. Doesn't do anybody any good. In the same vein, what's the best, does anybody, like, the best scar that you have from some kind of outdoor venture? I got a good scar. Show it. But it's not from, like, very weird life I have led, let me tell you. I've never been, like, thrown in jail despite, like, my best efforts. I've never, you know, I've been in some situations in the woods where I was like, well, that's it. And here I am. But I have this scar on my shoulder from leaning back

at my desk with a cup of coffee. And I have no clue to this day what happened, but I ended up flat on my back with that cup of coffee on my shoulder, and I have this wicked scar from the scalding cup of coffee. Oh. And it's just like a great reminder of like the humor in life, right?

Mm-hmm. That's my scar. Yeah. Well, you want to think you got some cool thing we just got from like being a dumbass at your desk. Yes. Someday you'll be like, see that, kids? That was hot coffee. Decaf.

What do you think that is? I'm a Riddles decaf. You got anything, Yanni? Yanni's got to have something something i've got a few scars um but the one that happened kind of outdoorsy hunting related scar don't talk about what i think you're gonna talk about it's not right here is it that's not the one i'm gonna talk about oh good um but i had uh let a buddy of mine who was coming up to hunt with me in Colorado after we had been done guiding.

He was going to come up and hunt, I think, I don't know, end of third season, maybe fourth season. We're going to hunt elk. And he didn't have a rifle. And I was going to borrow a rifle and let him borrow mine so that I didn't have to let him be borrowing my buddy's rifle. So I was the one responsible for my buddy's rifle. Yeah, I got you.

So you're both borrowing guns. I let Chris borrow the Black Mamba. And I took a.300 Weatherby. Did you say something like, careful, she might bite you? No. No. Uh-oh. No.

But I took a.300 Weatherby that I can't remember if she had a name. They're always females, aren't they? Yep. Why is that? Well, yeah, but that's like, that ship sailed now, man. They started naming storms after dudes now. Really? Yeah.

You know that? I didn't know that for a while. Because they would name all these storms women's names then the storm would come and kill everybody and women got pissed right so now they now they alternate now there's like storms like bob hurricane yeah like bob man bob it used to go by robert but yeah when bob blew through here you know so this 300 weatherby which black mamba no oh it's the one nameless um it was rigged out very ultra lightweight okay super lightweight stock and as you know that gun has a lot of kick um the 300 weatherby likes to balance well

the first elk that week this is back in the day in Colorado where like every year you could have two cow tags. So I was doubled up that week. And the first elk that I get into, for whatever reason, but I'm not hanging on to the rifle, and I touch off, and that thing comes back, and I've just got blood in my eyes. So I've got this nice cut right here. But I get back to camp, and I kind of clean it up. I look at my eyes. I've got this nice cut right here.

But I get back to camp and I kind of clean it up. I look at it. I'm like, it's not too bad. You know, it's just slight, you know, it's not going to scar. A few days go by, kind of starts, you know, closing up and there's really not like a great big scab or nothing forming. And I was sweet. But I'm still hunting with the rifle. And the last evening of the hunt

i get another shot at a cow and somehow forget that this gun's got a ton of recoil and the same thing i get into some awkward position and i'm not really hanging on to it and i touch off and wham so twice in one week and so now that's why i have that nice uh scope scar between my eyes i know a lot of people that have those. I remember I was hunting with my brother one time and he was real sick. He had like the flu. And I'm watching him and I can't figure out what's going on with him. Like we were hunting either side of this valley and I hear him and I hear him

shoot and I look over and I'm looking down through my binoculars trying to figure out what's in the grass he'd shot something and he's vomiting but also his face is covered in blood so he already had the flu and then he cut his face open and it was kind of a miserable sight

him dragging his deer back like that you know got nothing? I got nothing him dragging this deer back like that. You got nothing? I got nothing. I feel sad about this. I got to go out and cut something up, so I got a story. I got to get these beautiful

hands that are soft. Soft hands? It could be a testament to how skilled you are. It's definitely not that. That's not. Nope. It's definitely not that.

The only one, like my kind of main outdoor one, this would drive Mark Canyon crazy because, you know, all this like Super Joe Ninja Whitetail stuff, you know. But we're out like in Michigan, the opening day deer season's November 15th. So at around 11 p.m. on November 14th, throughout the woods, building ground blinds in the dark. And I waylaid my leg with a machete. And that was it. And I didn't even know I did it. I thought I hit it with the back. And a while later, my brother wondered why my Carhartt overalls were all red. But that was the only one. one. Lifetime of safe practices. These are terrible scar stories. No, I know. I want to be like, well, then I got

this! Grizzly bear. This isn't my real foot. Okay, one last one before we get into seeing through the bullshit. What did you learn? I mean, it's an infinite number. There's an infinite number of answers. I'll preface this before I even say it.

But pick one. What did you learn from your dad? You looking at me? Anyone. Everyone. Hunting outdoor later? Well, I'm guessing that's kind of like the business we're in i don't think he's talking about he's like you're like you know when you're balancing your checkbook you know yeah i would say i think that that's probably what he's getting

that's probably what he's driving at angling camping that wrestling, you know. Hmm. Hmm. Yanni sounds the most inquisitive. I'll let him go. Well, you met Yanni's dad. Oh, yeah.

That's badass. Yeah, well, I guess I can tee off. It probably is to stay positive out there. Yeah. In the woods. Always be thinking like you're just about to come up on something. Yanni's got a hashtag he's going to start using. What is it? Keep smiling.

Keep smiling. Keep smiling. Keep smiling. That's your hashtag? Not stay positive? There's no hammering, but only smiling. Just smile. But, yeah, I mean, and I don't think he actually, like out to teach me that like for, you know, to be successful hunting.

It was more of a, I think, a life lesson. My dad was definitely always pushing to be looking on the brighter side of things and to always know that we had a choice how we reacted to, you know. Most of the time, if it's something good, you react good. But even if it's something bad that happens to you, he taught us we had a choice how we wanted to react to it right you can react positively or negatively make the best out of a situation but you know just that constant positive good attitude you know and that's something we talked about this last night it's like an argument we have me and yannis which is I feel that, because I'm not into metaphysics too much. So I feel that what's in your brain ends at your skull. Okay?

So that you could have a negative mind frame, but if you're sharp enough to have it be that your physical execution doesn't betray your mind frame, you will have the same outcome than if you had a positive thought in your head. But Yanni believes that you push out a sort of energy wall of positivity or negativity which impacts animate objects kind of kind of i think that more so i believe that at least for me personally i might not be how did you put it um sharp enough to separate the two? That was poor. It was poor word choice. I didn't mean sharp enough. But you know what?

But no, it's fine. But yeah, I might not have the ability to separate those two. Don't make me live with the word choice. I don't care. But yeah, I can't separate the two. And so I know if I'm like having a bad attitude, negative attitude and being pessimistic and thinking, man, we're probably not gonna kill something

that I just feel like, yes, that's gonna affect what I'm doing and turn it into probably not killing something. But how are you able to control? Like people say, stay positive, think positive. How are you able to control? People say stay positive, think positive. How are you able to control what part of your brain controls the other part of your brain?

You only have one mind. So if that mind is feeling a certain way, what part of it is able to manipulate that part? It's not like there's two brains and one's telling one how to be. Like, if your brain feels negative,

what in it is telling it, convincing it to not feel that way? You don't ever sort of have a two-way conversation with yourself? Ever? No, I can't say, I can't be like, if I did, I'd just tell myself to be super happy all the time.

You know what my dad taught me? Good. Exactly. He said if a conversation goes on too long, I always step in. No, I... Oh, yeah, old man. What's your old man tell you?

Old man. Yanni's dad taught him to be positive. Be positive. Man, I feel like my dad's teachings were just, were so consistent that I couldn't just say, like, he taught me this one thing, be positive or whatever. But it was be present,

like, enjoy what you're doing, and be with people you love when you're doing it. When I was coming up hunting with my dad it was less about the deer less about the act of hunting but it was more just about being together you know being together with for me it was just following this larger than life figure around in the woods and so he didn't really say he never really said that to me he followed me son but he he walked and I followed so I learned that just being there with him and him appreciating that I'm there and me you know giving that back to

him was enough to to propel me to you know hunt the rest of my life so it wasn't one thing he said to me it was just his presence there and his willingness to take me wherever I wanted to go you know yeah that was pretty metaphysical Cal Cal you know yeah that was pretty metaphysical cal cal oh the old man um so yeah not the sharpest woodsman out there and he would tell anybody that himself but what he did do was spend the time, because I was infatuated with being outside. And as much as he really wanted me to be, like, into, you know, a fun Sunday watching ESPN and college sports and things like that. Oh, he tried to be a bad influence on you.

It was very, very palpable. Like, I knew this is what he wanted to do. But he was willing to, you know, take me out in the woods. Again, not his comfort zone but spent the time and i never really knew this yeah yeah so i mean that's that's a great lesson and something that uh i certainly uh keep in mind all the time. So he bent in your direction? Yep. Because he just knew. He was like, yeah, this is what this kid fell off way, apple rolled far from the tree, but I'm going to do what I can to.

Help him along. Help him along, yeah. That's sweet. Yeah. It's not a word I say very often. Sweet of him. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a word I say very often. Sweet of him. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, that was a good lesson for me. And then a lot of what I've done in life is helping folks in situations where, you know, sometimes I don't really want to be there at that time doing that thing, but I know it's for a good purpose in the end. Yeah. The thing, I didn't even, like, my old man was a real advice giver and had, like, a lot of life philosophies and whatnot. The lesson, the latest lesson that I've learned from him, I'm only now beginning to appreciate, is having, he had, you know,

well, he had multiple kids because, he had, you know, I, well, he had multiple kids, because he had been, you know, I had like half siblings, right, but I was raised with two brothers from day one, and now that I have three kids, just how difficult it is to take kids, like, take kids in the outdoors. It's a struggle, especially with that many of them it's like hard and i see a lot of there's a lot of people that i know that just kind of get like a man it's just too hard and they kind of ditch him but the fact that he i mean since we were little little would take us all out. And the pain in the ass that was.

But also to make it feel that you were very welcome. I mean, he'd freak out over anything. But, um... Which I get now. Which I get now. But you live a bunch of life, you kind of freewheeling and do what you want, and you stay out, and it gets cold, and you still stay out.

And then all of a sudden have it be that you're at the whim of all these little freaks you know and he did it for that long and it kind of leaves you like man i'm gonna have to do it too but man it's hard oh dude i saw my five-year-old how hard it was the other day and it hurt her feelings. This is hard being you. I was like, listen, I'm going to tell you something. Oh, it's hard. It's hard. Even finding all the mittens. There is no silence. There is no silence. Like running out with you and the kids and like.

No. Even when things are going perfect. It's like, what about this can i do that what about that well if i can't do that can i have a snack they're like it's hard it's a lot they wanted their own little face mask so i gave my two like neck gaiters the merino neck gaiters i give one to each of them then they gotta wear they're wearing them to school i'm like no take them to school because you'll lose no he won't lose them next day we're going outside can't get the things neither of them and one day they're both gone yeah like you can't find the mittens you can't find the hats and you just gotta like somehow just but you can't ditch them it's too wrong to ditch them ditch the kids what's that it's the kids yeah it's just you know it's fun it's fun but man is it hard and i think like and my dad i'm

like way more tolerant than my dad was and the fact that he managed to hack it out is inspiring to me well you said that your your dad was he was never like into being friends you know friends with no he'd even tell you though he wouldn't like secretly not want to be your friend he'd tell you he wasn't your friend he was like very upfront about it we're not friends you know in that moment when you're struggling with the kid thing that's when you just tell yourself man these are the days this is like awesome this great. Yeah. I do try to do that. And when they say...

You didn't talk to yourself. What's that? You were saying you didn't talk to yourself earlier. No, I said you were... I said I do try to remind myself. It's all coming back. I try to remind myself. And listen, my wife is very forceful about...

Which side of your brain is reminding which side of your brain? I'm trying to do it. No. There's a difference. There's a big difference. Because I do it, but it's not effective. But I try to remind myself. My wife makes a constant practice of verbally reminding me of how good...

Right? And you'll cherish these days. And they grow up so fast and all that kind of stuff. And I try hard. I really do try hard. I'm committed to trying to do it. I'm committed to, like, raising them up. And when they complain, they're like, why do we have to do this? It's so cold or whatever.

I tell them, because you'll be able to hang out with cooler people if you learn how to hack your way through this kind of stuff. Which doesn't really sell them on it, but that's kind of what i'm picturing like you're like you'll you'll wind up you'll wind up with cooler friends here's the noreal yeah i found myself the other day trying to like define and explain grit and how that was going to help my girls later in life and yeah they just it was in one year and out you're trying to tell me you need to have grit. Yeah. Grr. Grr. Grr. Tony the Tiger.

All right. Seeing through the bullshit is a game we're going to play. With Vortex Optics. Yes, because they gave us, we needed to have a prize. So the guys at Vortex gave us the new, they got new fury 5000 i think what time i said six three five thousand range finding binos that's right you can ditch your range finder and just carry binos that have we've been playing around with these and uh yeah they will pick up reflective objects out to about 5,000 and deer-type animals. Steve was pinging coos deer, which is a real small critter, out at 1,000 or— A little over 1,000 yards, yeah.

Yeah. So we had to sweeten the deal and get these. So you get this, and we randomly selected a seat number. Yeah, I think the numbers are right here. It's right here, like on your seat. And that person will come up and play. And we selected my son's nickname is Jim Jams. Jim Jams.

And he's eight. JJ eight. So if you're in JJ eight, should we say come on down? Come on down. How did they get up here? I don't know how they get up here. There he is. Is somebody in that seat? Was it a full seat or empty?

I hear somebody coming. Make some noise. Okay, so now remember. It's, uh, what are you doing, Ben? I'm going to let him sit down here. Come on up. I'm going to let him sit in my seat.

That way he can look you guys in the eye. Oh yeah, because he needs to look us in the eye. We're going to tell, you good? What's your name? John. Take a seat. John. It's a hot seat.

Okay, we're going to tell. A lot of pressure, man. I know. It's a lot of pressure. You're going to get, you have to pick out, you need to see through the bullshit to see the true, the one of these that's true. All right. From all three, each tell a story?

We're each going to tell you a thing. You want me to go first? We're each going to tell you a fact. Remember want me to go first? We're each going to tell you a fact. Remember to maintain eye contact, especially with Yanni. Especially. I need to check my facts. And it is two lies and a truth. You've got to find the thing that's true.

You've got to find the truth. Do you have binoculars currently? I do. All right. Really? Jonas is messing around. Not that much. Okay.

That's good. Let's make it short. I worked real hard on this story, so I want to make sure I nail it. Mark. Yeah. I'm selling it. I'm selling it. Yeah.

See, he's seeing through it. Recently, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission finished a four-year study on whitetail deer in South Florida, one of the largest deer research projects ever conducted in the state. 263 deer were fitted with GPS collars. 180 camera traps were set. The goal of the project was to gain a better understanding of deer ecology in a unique South Florida environment, where there's pythons and panthers and all sorts of stuff that can get deer. Rednecks.

Rednecks. Okay, so they studied all different kind of stuff. The habitat, predation, hunting impact. What was interesting to me was the mortality results. 154 deer died within that four-year time frame. 102 were ruled as possible or probable by a panther. Bobcats. How many total died?

154. Wait, where did it start with? Panthers. No, no. it start with? Panthers. No, no. What was it? Oh, oh, oh, 263. 263 deer. Yeah.

So it says here. 102 were ruled as panther or probable panther. Bobcats killed three. Bears killed two. Alligators killed one. Disease got four. Poaching and probable poaching, two. And the lowly Florida hunter only killed one disease got four poaching and probable poaching two and the lowly florida hunter only killed one of those deer he's been listening okay all right this is the uh unlikely unlikely heritage, true story of

Jed Smith, right? Mountain Man? You know who Jed Smith is? I know the name. He was mauled by a grizzly. Were you going to clue that? That's how you want to go, right? No, he was mauled by a grizzly and his buddy sewed his head,

his scalp back on him. And you always wore his hair long. The stitching wasn't very tight. So he had to part his hair just so. So Jetsmith, famous mountain man, had an incredible life, but he ran into a bunch of trouble just about in this area.

He actually ran into the Spanish military. Got detained for an amount of time. Ended up having kind of a harrowing run through a bunch of cactus. Got all bloated up from his body reacting to a ton of cactus needles. During that kind of healing process, he is tended to by this very nice Spanish lady named Rosarita. They have 12 kids. That's him as Smith, right?

Yes. Yes. That's where all the Smiths in the world come from. Now here's where things get pretty deep, so stay with me here. As this family grows, the Spanish heritage takes over, and they produce a line of high-quality Mexican foods that you can find at your grocery store today. If you've ever eaten Rosarito refried beans, that is the unlikely true heritage of Jedediah Smith.

Jedediah Strong Smith. Okay, 1984. The Florida panther is reduced down to maybe 50 animals. And there's talk about supplementing the population with mountain lions from West Texas. The debate centers around what is the Florida panther? If we bring in a genetic line from another area, are we destroying this isolated habitat? They do a collaring study on mountain lions

to try to determine their range and distribution. And they have a collar on a mountain lion in the Everglades of Florida. And for some strange reason, one of these lions, whose name is G45, migrates south and swims and starts going out into the Florida Keys. And there's that diminutive white-tailed subspecies,

the Keys deer, which is an imperiled species. And this lion is preying very heavily on these very small populations of Keys deers. And a number of times, the Florida Department of Fish and Game thinks they're going to need to remove one of these lions but eventually it is hit by a tour bus in key west a little too detailed in a little too yeah it's a little very detailed you to figure this out you

can ask the audience if you'd like i can go and hold my hand over each person, and they can cheer for you. You can go to audience support if you really don't think you need it. I think I have an idea, but I'll go to the end. I mean, where are we going with this? All right, all right. Cheer when I hold my hand and do this motion over the person. You're looking for the truth. Yes.

If you think this was the truth, cheer for Yanni. His story. If you think Cal was telling the truth about Jedediah Smith, give me something now. If you believe that Steven Rinello was telling the truth about that swimming panther. It's close. I think I'm going to go with Mr. Rinello over here. I think it's his story. It's true. I think it's your story that's true.

He thinks Steve Rinello. No. They just put out the results, man. Panthers kill over 100 of the 263 that were collared. Yeah, and Florida Hunters only killed one. And they were even told, don't let the GPS collars and the ear tags bother you. Please kill those deer when you see them.

We had a bad year. Right. But listen, for playing, you still get the binoculars. You win them anyway. Woo! Yeah, thank you for playing. All right, guys.

Oh, yeah. Good, thank you. Thanks, man. Oh, excellent. That's great. All right, guys, don't go away because we're going to. First off, thank you very much for coming out.

But don't go away yet. We got to do a we got to do a birthday giveaway. But first, if you go out, we have our merch table set up. We have signed books. We have new our signed cookbook is out there. We have our meat eater mug, mugs. Sold out. Squirrel meat hoodies.

Squirrel meat hoodies. We have our Ice Age Hunter doing a grip and grin with a saber tooth cat t-shirts. And then our shirt that we only sell at live events, which is our famous steam breathing turkey shirts. Steam breathing power gobbler. And those are not available to anyone but you folks. So just that. Now, we've got to do our birthday giveaway. Yeah, can we bring up the lights out there just a little bit?

Teensy. This will help us see everybody. Is anybody celebrating their birthday? Oh, wow. All right. I've got to get a better idea. How many do we have? Stand up.

Holy shit. Really? This goes back in years. We're going to check your IDs. Are you really serious? We did this two nights ago. All right. Everybody who has a birthday, come down so we can get a look at you.

Come on down. If it's your birthday today. No, it's got to be a birthday, come down so we can get a look at you. Come on down. If it's your birthday today. No, it's got to be a birthday today, right now. Come on. But then, if you're real young, don't bother. Because we're going to go with older because you're closer to being dead. And I want you to enjoy your time. We got more people?

Oh, yeah. Really? Really? What was going on nine months ago tonight? Oh, it's Valentine's Day, kids. Oh, no, never mind. That makes no sense. No, it's cheesy. Like a negative four-day gestation period.

So, everybody, it is your birthday today. Oh, it's just four of you. Well, by golly, you guys are all the winners of a new chair. Happy birthday, man. Good job. Happy birthday. Chair it up. That's very heavy.

Watch yourself. Thank you. It's great, dude. All right, guys, share it up. That's very heavy. Watch yourself. Thank you. Sweet, dude. All right, guys, we love you all. 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.