The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 157: Bottle to Throttle

Episode Date: February 25, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with Remi Warren, Gray Thornton of the Wild Sheep Foundation, along with Ryan Callaghan, Ben O'Brien, and Janis Putelis.Subjects discussed: getting a gun (kind of) pulled on you; presentism and Jack O'Connor; the 12-hour rule; the severe consequences of fingering your rifle; re-squeaking cheese curds; tamales and the mystery tooth; can you have another man's taxidermy in your home?; Steve's school of wild game freezer management; hot-buttered buck nuts; ewe hunts and controlling disease spread in sheep; are hunters failing to take on the hard subject of chafing?; Remi Warren’s tips on talking someone in; literature that brings out the essence of hunting; seeing through the bullshit; 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.

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Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. How's it going, guys? All right. Everybody enjoying Reno? We ate at the Purple Parrot. Has anybody been to the Purple Parrot? Ben O'Brien, he thought the smoked ribs, they got a guy back there with a pack of Camel Lights.

Smoked ribs, babe. It had a taste of nicotine to it, which I enjoyed. Let's hit some introductions real quick. Start down there with the Eagle. Giannis, producer of Meat Eater. Thank you. Remy Warren, just the guy they picked up off Virginia Street this morning. I like it. Ben O'Brien, the host of the Hunting Collective podcast. Gray Thornton, president and CEO of the Wild Sheep Foundation on a work release program from Soldad Prison. Ryan Callahan, I'm the director of conservation at Meat Eater. All right.

You know, a long time ago on the show, I talked about getting a gun pulled on me in Nevada. And I meant to tell the story, but never told the story. And then I just started saving it because I thought I'd tell it here. I had a gun kind of pulled on me, but never really pulled on me until the very first time I came to your state. I was doing a magazine article about a guy who goes by the name, he's a denim detective. This guy goes down into old mine shafts and mining towns and looks for old clothing. And he sells vintage clothing, like, you know,

like jeans that have the buckle back, like the old style from There Will Be Blood, the movie and stuff. He sells these to film designers and clothing designers. And I was doing this profile piece on this guy. And shortly before I went out with him, someone had been to a mining town here in Nevada and found a pair of Levi's that he sold to Levi Strauss for, what was it? 46,532 bucks. Because Levi's, when San Francisco burnt down, Levi's lost their library. So Levi's has clothes they know they made, but they have no examples of it. And when someone can find an example of a missing thing from their library, they'll pay a lot of money for it. So we're out doing this, looking for all these clothes.

And we wind up where some guys were working these small claims. And we get to this guy's place. He's got like a trailer he's living in. He's got some dogs and there's a truck parked there. And it's just a little dinky trailer. I mean, the trailer's not for me to be honest long. So I go up and bang on the door because we're going to ask him if we could have a gander around and no one answers the door. So like a couple of idiots, we're just standing around in his yard. And pretty soon, this door comes open like hard. And in my piece, I talked about this guy had a voice like John Wayne shit his pants.

It's like, bam! It comes out and just levels a shotgun at us. And it turns out he's yelling at us. And I can tell when he's yelling that he's deaf. So the whole time we're banging on his door, he didn't know. And all of a sudden, he looks out the window window and there's a couple of hosers standing out in his yard and like detains us at gunpoint. And we're just trying to scream real loud, like, whatever, come back. We eventually get in the car and drive. And we drove two hours. I can't

remember what town we went into. Drove two hours. And I remember ordering a vodka tonic, man. And two hours later, I reached out, my hand was still shaking so much I could barely grab that, barely grab that drink. So whenever I think about this place, I think about getting a gun pulled. Yeah. My uncle tells that story a lot different, Steve. He's like, there's these two guys trying to steal my pants from my trailer. Just to return to that, I don't want to dwell on it, but the coolest clothing item I found with this guy, it was in this old cabin and someone had, they had moved a wood stove because there's like two chimneys in this old cabin. And someone had to plug up one of the stove pipes, had shoved a pair of blue jeans wadded up into a stove pipe. And these were JC Penney, old JC Penney blue jeans. And you picture like with a cylinder, how much sun

actually makes it down. Like in the course of day, how often sun like shoots down a cylinder. The part of those pants that was up was bleached, pure white. The rest of the pants were still dark. And when you opened the pants up, it was like a tie-dye shirt with that one bleached part. And it was a really old pair of JCPenney stuffed into a stovepipe. Greg, can you bear with us? Are you comfortable? Very.

Okay. We've got to run through a little, like, it's a thing we like to do where I've got to run through some listener notes and feedback and whatnot. And then we're going to have you set the scene for Sheep Show. Sheep Show 2019. Okay. We talk not long. A guy wrote in, he had an interesting word that I wanted to share, where oftentimes we're talking about ethical issues. Who all in here is familiar with Jack O'Connor, the outdoor writer Jack O'Connor?

Yeah. We call Yanni, Yanni's 13th nickname is Yanni O'Connor, because Yanni likes the writings of Jack O'Connor. And if you read Jack O'Connor's sheep hunting stories, they tend to just kind of get up on a group of sheep and everybody just starts shooting. And they'll be like, lo and behold, we got six, you know, after a hundred rounds were fired. And when we're talking about this, I'm always trying to like present that at the time, right, I'm always like, well, you know, at the time, what was normal in Jack O'Connor was actually probably like sort of a progressive minded person for his time. And we spent a lot of time explaining like what things that used to happen and how we look at it now. And it seems like not a great idea, but at the time maybe was. And this guy wrote in to propose that we start using the word presentism, meaning

applying today's moral standards to bygone times. So from now on, when someone does that, I'm going to accuse them of presentism. We had a big talk recently on a past episode about party hunting. In some states, you're allowed to party hunt. One dude has a tag, but other dudes can hunt the tag. And that led to a talk about partying. And a pilot wrote in to say, I appreciate you guys take so much time to talk about gun safety. In the aviation world, in my circle, we have a rule of thumb called 12-hour bottle-to-throttle rule, meaning you do not touch the throttle if you had touched the bottle in the last 12 hours. This would make it impossible for Ronnie Bame to hunt.

But it's an interesting thing. I also shared a story not long ago. We were talking about, on the subject of gun safety, that when you check a rifle you know see if it's empty or full you kind of like gander up in there or i'll say i like i was fingering my rifle right i'll put my pinky in there so we got a lot of guys writing in about fingering your rifle and the guy was writes it this happens to his buddy his buddy gets himself a Marlin lever action and he's watching TV

fingering his rifle gets his pinky stuck in the loading ramp where he cannot get it out he's trying with one hand to see if he can somehow disassemble the rifle and eventually realizes that he's going to have to go to the emergency room

to extract his pinky but now he needs to walk into the emergency room with a rifle. So this dude calls the sheriff's department to say, I'm about to call the hospital, but I'd like you to know that I'm coming in armed. So he gets down there and they send an off, they send a sheriff's officer to meet the guy at the thing. And the nurse is prying him about is he suicidal. And another person is asking him if his gun is loaded. And they eventually get some lube poured down, they get some lube poured down the muzzle, and he gets his finger free, and this guy remarks that it was odd that his friend then went and traded that rifle in.

Quick thing I've got to touch on, too. We talked about tamales not long ago, and people were really dismayed by our lack of understanding of tamales and tamale making process. Is tamales like, are you enough where like, is it regional? Yeah, I make tamales all the time. You grew up eating tamales? Yeah. See, like being Northern tier dudes, how can we be expected to know about, is there a tamale line? Like where the tamales start and stop the tradition? Because I was above it wherever it was. I think your corn comes down here for the tamales, but the tamales start and stop the tradition because i was above it wherever it was i think your corn

comes down here for the tamales but the tamales never go back yeah it's a one-way trade yeah you guys don't send you guys don't send tamales exactly uh yeah a lot of people were like dismayed how little we knew about tamales and a guy wrote in to say there's a process nix do you know this word nixta malization i'm pronouncing it wrong, I'm sure. Nixtamal the, what's the word I'm looking for here? You don't know this, Remy? No. Big tamale guy? I don't make my own mesa, though.

Masa, right? Masa. Okay, so that's what, because we didn't know this, and everybody wrote in to correct, so I want to share the correction. It's the process, and then you get homily. And you grind that, and that gives you the masa or corn flour. And a lot of guys wrote in about the best, everybody has their own best way to reheat a tamale. One guy said he was an oil guy in Texas, wrote in that he started working on a crew that was all guys from Mexico, and they taught him to heat up bacon grease and char that tamale in a pan until the husk is blackened.

And that is the only way to reheat a tamale, in his estimation. You feeling it? Other guys were like, I put them in my microwave. Yeah, that's it. Once the tamale is hot, it's a hot tamale. Like, that's the goal. You get a hot tamale, and you eat the tamale. It doesn it's a hot tamale. That's the goal. You get a hot tamale and you eat the tamale. It doesn't matter how it got hot.

You could use that little hot pocket sleeve, put it in there and put it in the microwave. But you don't want a crispy tamale. You want a hot, non-soggy tamale. A hot tamale. We had a conversation not long ago about cheese curds, which you guys don't eat down here. Not very often. In the north, a lot of fellows eat cheese curds, and what people call cheese curds is squeaky cheese. And it's like when it's good, a discerning Wisconsinite will bite a cheese curd and get a good squeak.

It squeaks on your teeth. If it doesn't squeak, that's a sign that that cheese curd has been sitting too long. And a buddy of mine was saying that to re-squeak a cheese curd, he likes to put it on his dashboard to soak up the sun, and somehow this will re-squeak a cheese curd. Another buddy of mine from Wisconsin was very incredulous of this. And he's like, I don't think that was a guy from Wisconsin because no guy from Wisconsin would let a cheese curd sit so long as it lost its squeak in the first place. The last quick list of feedbacks, we had a conversation about what is it about when you're eating an apple in the woods that you want to huck the apple core?

Even though you're leaving, you're not going to stay there. You don't eat an apple and go like this. No matter where you are, it's better if the apple core was somewhere else. And I was wondering why that's the case, because we're all sitting there, we all eat apples, then we go, and if you were over there, you'd throw it so that it was here when you left. And there's a guy rode in, he's got a spot where he hunts, this is another guy in Wisconsin, and he's got a shooting lane that's his favorite shooting lane. And he's got his second favorite shooting lane. And he points out that he likes to throw his core into his second favorite shooting lane because he's not sure if

the smell of human would impact anything. So he says, maybe it'll help the second lane. And I know that it won't ruin the first lane. So he's like a targeted core thrower. With all that said, Greg, can you tell us about Sheep Show? Like how many people? You know, I was going to, I think a better segue would have been a tamale story. Oh, please. You got one? Of course.

Okay. So November, I'm down in Sonora, Mexico. We're going to do a sheep release. We're going to release 21 desert bighorn sheep from a high fence area into complete free range, 100,000 acres of free range. So, you know, Remy, you'd know this. I mean, are tamales usually something that you would find something that could crack a tooth in? No, you should not. So here I am minding my own business

in the back of a truck, up to two Mexican friends up front. We're driving along. They said, would you like a desert bighorn sheep tamale? I mean, that's pretty special. Yeah. So I get this desert bighorn sheep tamale and I'm munching away on the tamale

and pretty soon... That must be a little bit of bone. It's an olive pit. An olive pit. An olive pit in my tamale. Long and short of it, I thought, okay, well, that's fine. I put the pit away. Pretty soon I realized I just cracked my molar and I've swallowed it.

So I'm messing around with this and finally my poor head goes back and goes, something wrong. I go, yeah yeah I cracked my molar on this tamale oh green olive pit you're telling me okay so now I've got a I've got three or four days in in Sonora with a cracked tooth but you know the hospitalities of of the Mexican is just kind of second to none yeah so we have a nice dinner that night. We eat steaks, go to sleep, get up the next morning. And at breakfast, they had brought me a crown that they had found out underneath the table.

Somebody's tooth. They said, Gray, we found your tooth. I said, no, no, no, I swallowed my tooth. No, no, this is your tooth. Anyway, that's my tamale story. But it wasn't your tooth. It wasn't my tooth. No, no, this is your tooth. Anyway, that's my tamale story. But it wasn't your tooth. It wasn't my tooth. Okay, good.

There's ways. There's ways of coincidence. There are ways a fellow could go recover. They followed you off into the bushes. Now you've got to segue off the tooth back into the sheep show. Well, it's all about the desert big horn sheep. Oh, I see. Which is one of the four North American sheep is what we concentrate here with the Wild Sheep Foundation,

at least in North America, but we do work all over the world. But we're here at the Sheep Show. It is our 42nd Sheep Foundation Convention. We call Reno our second home. We've been here 36 some odd times. We'll have about 10,000 people coming through the door over the next three days. You all are a part of it. What this is is our celebration of the hunt, our celebration of conservation,

our celebration of the restoration of wild sheep, certainly in North America but now worldwide. Bighorn sheep back in the 1960s, 1970s were at their all-time low, about 25,000 bighorn sheep, and that included desert in North America. Through the efforts of people that are out there in this audience, the Sheep Foundation, our partners in the agencies, and then our chapters and affiliates, we've increased those numbers threefold to 85,000 bighorn sheep in North America. So it's a fantastic conservation success. The Wild Sheep Foundation's purpose is to put and keep wild sheep on the mountain.

So that's what we do. We do it by raising money and having a damn good time. I mean, what other show can you come and listen to Steve Rinella podcast and then go right outside and get a tattoo of either a skull or we've got some petroglyph art or even a youth. So it's just a great time. And you can win a sheep hunt. You can win a sheep hunt right here tomorrow. We'll have the Less Than One Club reception.

Didn't Joe Callahan won the Less Than One Club? Yeah, he sure did. He won the Less Than One Eye reception. Did you know Callahan won the Less Than One Club? Yeah, he sure did. He won the Less Than One I Club. I for international. There's two people sitting up here that have won sheep hunts from this organization. Really? Oh, yeah. Who's the other one?

Me. Well, actually, I'm going for my third win this year, so watch out. Yeah, Ben said you could win a sheep show that's going into the bathroom to take a leak here, a sheep hunt. You can win a sheep hunt just about anywhere in this building, I'm telling you right now. There was a guy two years ago that had gone to his room to take a leak, and he's watching the live stream, and we drew his name. And you have to be present to win. No. Sucks to be that guy.

Really? Oh, yeah, bad news. So he ran down, but it was too late. He came down and he goes, we drew again. I said, does anyone know this guy? We drew again. And he goes, man, that was a bad move. I go, oof, that was a bad move. So why'd he go to his room? Take a leak? He's got like shy bladder. I think so. Um, fun, a quick fact for everybody. Big guy, uh, running around here, Ryan Thompson. Uh, he and I met, uh, on one of my first guiding gigs, uh, guiding, uh, whitewater and fly fishing outside Glacier National Park. And he just welcomed a new baby into the world. And maybe thanks to everybody here tonight,

that baby will live in a world that has more sheep than us. Than conception. Than we have. Anything else you want to throw in? Anything else people need to know to get going? Banquets that we kicked off last night, Wednesday night, grand opening. We've got a conservation night banquet tonight over at the Pepper Mill. Ram Awards tomorrow morning at the Pepper Mill and a ladies' lunch. Is it Grammy Awards? Ram Awards. Ram Awards.

Ram Awards. Then we have a ladies' lunch that will be here in the Mount Rose Ballroom. Our legacy night. Ben, you're going to go to that. Yeah, I'll be there. You'll be a server. We've got a Legacy Night banquet, Steve, and then our grand finale Saturday night after a life member breakfast on Saturday morning. So last year we directed $5.6 million into wild sheep restoration, conservation, and advocacy. And we do it from what we raise here. So pretty impressive deal.

Can you guys real quick, like, less than one is less than obvious. Can you explain what that means? You have less than one sheep. You've hunted, you've killed less than one. You've got zero sheep. So it was kind of funny. I have a guy named Justin Phillips who was sitting there with some friends, and I think they had a few cocktails in them.

And we had just finished up one of our banquets. It was late night, and they're lamenting on the fact, they're young guys and gals. And they thought, you know, we've got all these programs, one more for four because you needed just one more sheep to get your four. And he goes, what about folks like us that have less than one sheep? That makes sense. You know, you haven't hunted a sheep yet or hadn't at least taken a sheep. So he came to me and he goes, hey, what about a less than one club? I said, I like

it. Great graphic designer. So he came up with a real cool logo. Steve, that was our greatest ever membership program because the idea was you join that less than one club for 25 bucks. You need to be a member of the Wild Sheep Foundation and we'll put you in a drawing for some free sheep hunts and get you kicked out of the club. So some of us then, when we got our first ram, we'd put red tape over our Less Than One Club shirt, and the big deal was you got to get kicked out. So now we celebrate the only club that you join and want to be kicked out of. Yeah. So that's the Less Than One Club. We will be in here tomorrow in the afternoon. We'll have probably about 1,500 people in here. You see the beer trucks on the side. Last year, 25 kegs in two hours.

No shit, really. So as I said, I said this from the podium last night, I think the Wild Sheep Foundation, great conservation organization, but we're basically a drinking club with a sheep hunting problem. And so it was, Cal, it was last year that you and your buddy won hunts. Yes. Yeah. So I actually, right at, you know, kind of the 11th hour, I signed up everybody, uh, that I came down here with that first light and got everybody signed up, paid. We all came in here obviously not expecting to win anything but you get a T-shirt and you get a mug for unlimited refills and so it's a good time and it's kind of fun. It's really an amazing thing to win in this situation because everybody is ecstatic for you.

I wouldn't be. Oh, yeah. I'd be like sulking in the corner. Randy Newberg's like, Cal, when I win this thing, are you going to come help me pack this sheep out? I'm getting a little old. I was like, yeah, man, no problem. That's like Ryan Callahan.

Huh? So, and yeah, so I highly, highly encourage folks to come in. It's 25 bucks and it's a really fun crowd, if nothing else. Yeah, Ryan, and you can, at our membership booth right over there, you can sign up to Lesson One Club, get a cool t-shirt. That's another 20 bucks for the beer reception. You get a nice Yeti mug and a bottomless mug. So have a good time. Let's see if we can break that 25 kegs in two hour record with a crowd that we're expecting. I think we can. You can get there. I want to jump into taxidermy, freezers, and sheep nuts.

We'll start with taxidermy. This is a good question. It's something I hadn't thought of. A guy wrote it. I'm stuttering over myself. There's a thing that I think about when I'm at my mom's house, because my mom still has my late father's taxidermy hanging around the house. So I wonder, you know, bless my mother. She's still in the house I grew up in. But someday, I'm like, someday, right, this taxidermy, if things go the way they

seem to go with human beings, this taxidermy will need to go somewhere and find a home. And I've been thinking about this lately, and two guys have written in with different versions of the same thing. One was a guy that said, nearby me, they're doing an estate sale. And I went to the estate sale and there's a lot of taxidermy for sale. He's like, why do I feel like such a loser to buy another man's taxidermy. He's like, is it okay to have another man's taxidermy in your home? That's a good question for me because my wife talks about how mad I get even to have another man's meat in the home. Meaning like, like in my freezer, right? I can understand that. In my, like, I don't't like like if i come home and i realize that someone whatever my mother-in-law is in town and someone like bought a chicken

and i look and there's like stormy i get irritated so for me to be like like for me no if it was a buddy of mine or something but i couldn't yeah couldn't have another man's taxidermy hanging in my house and part two and i'd be curiousy hanging in my house. And part two, and I'd be curious to hear everybody's perspective on this. Part two is a guy wrote in about the dad question. And this guy has his dad's got all this taxidermy. He doesn't want the taxidermy. And he's like, how should I dispose of it? I don't want to sell it because then it's going to be some other guy with my old man's taxidermy. and he's thinking about making a funeral pyre and burning the old man's taxidermy rather than it falling into someone else's hands. Any guidance that you guys can share with these two individuals?

There's a thing in the art world, or in maybe the hipster art world, where you go to an antique shop and there's just an old taxidermy with the price tag on it would say like a thousand dollars yes two thousand dollars yes somebody's old buck mount that looks terrible and the worse the more terrible it is the more expensive it is and that's very much a reality i live in austin texas you can go downtown and get a two thousand dollar deer mount if you'd like to that's not yours because but with in that world, it's like there's a little bit of irony. So you want it to seem old. Yeah. You might put some glitter on it or something like that. Make it look real nice.

But what about the old man question? If your old man's taxidermy, old dad's taxidermy. I can see that. Burning it. Or like, you know. I can see burning it, yeah. Or like, you know. I can see burning it, yeah. Or, you know, I got, you know, all of us adventurers out there, you know, something bad happens to one of us and I end up with Yanni's old buck mount

and I get to be like, oh, yeah, you mean Giannis' buck? And that's a good way to like talk about Giannis, you know, years after his demise. I can see something like that. Like remember your buddy fondly, but it's just an odd thing because taxidermy is worth nothing, right? It's like, it is worth a great, great, great amount to the person who went on that trip and had that adventure and you get to say like when people say oh wow look at that they don't mean look at that thing and how much like did it score it's like oh wow please tell me about the adventure and the story that went along with this and that can really only be done well by the person who had that first-hand account,

went out and shook hands with him, as you like to say. Yeah, but some other guy's stuff, you don't even know if he was, you know, he might have been some asshole. I mean, who knows? But you could turn that into a good story. It's a tough one because, like, for me, taxidermy, you know, it means so much to the person, whereas if you're just someone else's taxidermy, it's just like buying some home goods, goods, crap that you put up on the wall. Um, you know, now like if it's your dad,

you would think there's probably at some point where you went on a hunt and like that, you know, just because you didn't kill it doesn't mean that doesn't mean something to you. But if he's just like, Oh, he shot all this stuff and I don't want it at all, then why does he even have a problem with somebody else having it? Yeah. See what I'm saying? Like he cares so little about the experience there that, but he cares if someone else has it, that doesn't make any sense. That's a good point. Why not just get rid of it in that way, sell it and then take that money and go on your own hunt and put something else on your wall. Yeah.

Yeah, as long as whoever buys it and then owns it can apply their own value to it, then who cares? And I think that I was just thinking about it from the perspective of the taxidermist. When they make it, they don't give a shit probably about your story. I mean, they use thousands of them a year, right? That's their life's work, and it's art. Taxidermy is art, right? And so he'd probably rather have it just sit on any wall as long as people can appreciate the job well done versus you throwing it in a pile and burning it just because you don't want it in someone else's hands.

Yeah, but there's a drama about burning it you know but my old man had such a peculiar taste like he has a he the first fawn he ever killed with his bow like a six month old deer he got that mounted he got a he got a wild pig's ass mounted and another pig's head mounted and he keeps them like, he kept them like separate so the wall is, you know, like on one side of the wall there's that and the other side of the wall there's the head. But yeah. Burn it. That's

a few little pyres. 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 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. I got a kind of funny story that is actually going to divulge something that I've been keeping a secret for a very long time that refers to taxidermy. And my brother's actually here, so he's going to hear it for the first time. But this just reminded me, right? So quite a few years ago, we're

sitting, like when I was his roommate, we're sitting in the kitchen and his now wife, who's his girlfriend at the time, we're talking about home decorations, right? And she, you know, like sometimes, like a lot of people in relationships have like a butting heads of when it comes to hanging some antlers or a mount or whatever. I'm sure some people understand what I'm talking about. Yeah. I have not had to live with that, but I know that it happens, right? So we are having this conversation and his now wife is like, no, that is, you know, a lot of these are going to go to the garage. And I was like, yeah, but they meet like that is a decoration in the house that means something that you can't go buy

at a store, like a shitty home good sign that means something that you can't go buy at a store, like a shitty HomeGoods sign that says something, that you read once and never read again. She was like, no, I read my signs, and I read them all the time. Live, eat, love. We drink wine in this house, and when the wine's gone, we drink more wine. Yeah, yeah, I know that.

So to prove a point, about four years ago, I got this great idea. I took a sign right by their front door that said, I'm a nurse, I'm here to save your ass, not kiss it. So that day, four years ago, I took that, I scanned it into my computer, I used Photoshop to rearrange the letters and say, I'm a nurse. I'm here to wipe your ass, not kiss it. Okay. Then I glued that over the front and stuck the sign back. Four years later, the sign is still there. But had somebody messed with the antlers, I would know immediately. Yeah. All of a sudden it was like a forky buck hanging where you had a nice big buck.

You'd know. You'd know. It's like it means something. You look at it every day, and every day you think of those memories. But every day you look at the stuff you got at the HomeGoods store, you don't have that same connection. And now, I mean, okay, I wanted to see how long it went, but I feel like four years is enough and I can finally admit it. You got to spring the trap at some point, man. Here's another good one. Here's another good one. It's like kind of taxidermy.

Dude in Pennsylvania, him and his brother-in-law are tracking a bear in the snow and they kick the bear up. The brother-in-law spots the bear running downhill. And they both take a crack at it. Bear falls over dead. They skin it. There's only one hole in that bear. They split the meat and shared the meat. And they're trying to solve out who's bear hiding. The brother-in-law. Like, it has to be without knowing the guy that spotted it would be my opinion.

Yeah, I get it. I mean, how else are they going to divide it up? And there's no bullet. One hole. Two shots. There's two guys. Someone's like, there's a bear. They both shoot.

Bam. Bear falls over dead. They go down, skin it. One shot, it hit it. Now, this guy that wrote in has got all these theories about why he thinks it was him. Yeah, of course. He feels that he's the guy that got it. The only solution is they've got to move in together and put the bear in the house the bear in the middle of the house

without like my with without knowing other things like what i'd be like whose spot was it who found the track perhaps but knowing what i know i would say the guy that saw it, it's his bear hide. He's saying he's putting this to the meat eater supreme court. Whoever punched their tag first. Because that guy is so confident. He's like, oh, dead bear. That was me. He's got it.

Because somebody had to tag that bear. How did they decide who tagged the bear? I didn't ask him that question. That's a good point. Because in the moment, if you're talking about it three years later, in that moment, you kind of knew, maybe it was the other day why don't you put your tag on it or he had the person who didn't put their tag on it had this theory like well i won't tag it because i get to go out bear hunting again and he's just pissed that he didn't get another one yeah award it's like it's like a game warden would want to know whose tag was on it. That might be better.

Yeah, I like that one. Better than who spotted it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, confidence. Yeah. Great, nothing? No, it just brought back memories of a moose hunt. And I was with a guy that I'd met elk hunting in Colorado. We were up in Alaska. We were moose hunting with a couple other buddies.

We had two guys with caribou tags, two guys with moose tag. I was one of them. And I was hunting with this guy from Arkansas and saw this incredible caribou bull. And I looked at him and I'm the one that spotted it. So it's kind of in that line of yours. I spotted it first. I said, you know what, Junior, his name, Arkansas. Junior, I think I'm going to shoot that caribou and put my moose tag on the caribou, which you can in Alaska, anything lesser than the price of your tag, as we know. And he's okay. And so I'm lining up on this caribou. We had kind of a downward shot. And I shot a little high. I hit it, but shot high. Now, where I come from, I mean, you shoot an

animal, you're going to want to put another one in it quickly. Well, this caribou kind of ran a little bit to the right, and unbeknownst to me, Junior's there with a.375 H&H just laying down lead. And I look, and pretty soon he's going, I got it, I got it, I got it. So here was the deal. I spotted it first. I shot it. He shot it. I still wanted to hunt moose.

So he tagged it. No. It all worked. Yeah. I didn't get a moose. So now you don't come around asking for your carefree antler, though? No. No. No.

Okay, freezers. I mean, this is a big reason why I do not, there's no, like my rifle very seldom comes off my shoulder until everybody else is long since out of the game. Now, our situation in Mexico this year was very different for me because, I mean, it's just so rare for me to ever, like, jump in there and be wanting to pull the trigger before everybody else is out of there. Our situation was a little bit different.

Yeah, you're like, leaders eat last, man. This is a great set of examples here to maybe just be like, oh, missed. That's all you missed. Let's go. Keep going. Keep things clearly defined. Yeah, you good? You feeling okay?

Yeah. Freezers. Guy wrote in. He says, I see how real, I don't know what this means, real hunters all seem to have a freezer. He wants to know if you're running, wants stand up for chest stand up yeah i've seen a lot of guys spend a lot of time chest freezers taking everything out finding some squirrel from a decade ago laying down in there somewhere putting everything back in that's my pro chest freezer argument that i might find something on there.

I'm like, oh, there's a squirrel. Didn't even know I had that. It's like a little grab bag. Guys with chest freezers always are eating the newest thing. Yeah. Is there something wrong with that? I'm a pro-chest freezer. My school of freezer management,

I derivate from this a little bit, but generally I feel that it's first in, what am I trying to say? Yeah, trying to say first in, last out. No, first in, first out. I'm a chest freezer guy. I'm very confused. Yeah, I want to put it in a cool way,

like first in, last out, but I don't know if that makes sense. Meaning, you eat the old stuff, right? And chest freezer dudes always are eating new stuff, right? Yeah. I'm living a good life. But see, here's the, here's my, my, like what I do. And yeah, the chest freezer does suck, but they're cheaper than the standup freezers. So you can buy two or three chest freezers for the price of an upright freezer. Really? And then you go old freezer, new freezer, newest freezer.

And you start eating from this freezer and work your way to the old. And then it just keeps rotating. You can even put them on toppies. And then you have a standard freezer right there. Once the old freezer is empty, that is now the new freezer. And you move on to middle freezer.

That's a good idea. Tell your wife, we're on freezer two. Freezer two. Go into freezer number two. Go to the left. Yeah, I run uh and i'm like really committed to stand up i just like to open it in there does stuff ever like slide out though like oh yeah bad bad you can hurt yourself it's like it's risky it's risky because your kids

a monkey with it the the doors can right gravity's not working for you Half the time you're trying to close it, you can't close it. I set it so gravity does work for me. You can open that door and move your hand and whack. Well, you know, there's another reason. Freezers fail. Yep. Well, if it fails and it's upright, a little easier to get the stuff out. I don't know if you all ever had a chest freezer fail, but I had one in Tucson, Arizona.

But when a chest freezer fails, there's so much ice in it. Yeah, there's so much ice already in it. It never goes bad. It was blood and guts and gore. No, it's not. Chest freezers don't fail. I just realized I got some meat in your house. Yeah, you got meat in my upright.

Yep. What I do on my upright that I haven't installed, I just had to get a new one, is I bought one of those little rinky-dink little alarms. You can get them to send a message to your phone. I haven't gone that far, but there's an alarm that raises holy hell when that temperature drops below a certain temp. So, or above, sorry, you know, but you'll know, well, you can actually set it when it drops below two, but I haven't gotten around to that. But above a certain temp, it starts beeping. And as long as you alert people in your house, if you hear that noise, check on it.

But yeah, man, I open it up. It's beautiful. And when I open a guy's chest freezer, it doesn't move me. There's mystery there. There's mystery in a chest freezer. You don't know what's at the bottom of that thing. I look, I'm like, there's some freezer burn stuff in the bottom of that freezer, man. I guarantee it.

I'm still eating it, though. Still eating it. I'm a chest freezer guy. You like chest? Yeah. And I got a bunch of reusable grocery bags. And I'll, like, you know, like half an antelope goes in like an old Lululemon bag that I have. And half a, you know,

and you can kind of, as long as nobody else is monkeying with it, you got a system in there. I stole this from Jim Harrison. He would keep a inventory. I quit doing it. And I should start

back up. He would keep a freezer inventory on there and you would check items out. You know, like you do like hash marks at one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five hash marks for burger or whatever. And you pull a pack of burger out, you account for it. And everything was accounted for on there but then it requires people in your household to be as ocd as you are because the whole system falls apart the minute you have a family but as a single guy it feels really good to have that list of what's going on in the freezer yeah i was gonna say that only works with no kids and run around yeah it's bad uh sheep nuts now there is in my mind there's no uh set as impressive

as a bighorn you think about that you think about yeah yeah well only because i've been i've had the good fortune of showing a lot of people, some of the first sheep they've looked at and you know, you just can wait for it. Like you just wait for it. And man, they're like, my goodness. I'm like, I know. I wasn't going to bring it up, but yeah, it's like really something. It's really something. But a guy wrote in about he got he killed a desert bighorn i didn't catch what state he's in but he's like wondering like what's up with rocky mountain oysters on sheet you know and i wanted to point out them that that we're at

a at the bha rendezvous and the team that won the wild game cook-off, their signature dish was a poached desert bighorn testicle. Do you guys, what have you been experimenting with wild game oysters? Yeah. You dig them? Oh, yeah. You know, elk and the rut, not great. It's got a little bit of Copenhagen type of taste to it. Really?

Yeah, really. But once you're... I'm also like I can't cook something and then throw it away ever. So it's a big lesson. Lingers, so to speak. Uh, cause once, yeah, once you're committed, you're committed. Um, and they don't seem that big in comparison to a bighorn sheep, but when they taste like hot Copenhagen there in your fry pan, they leave a big impression. Uh, when people are eating them off cattle, they're young.

Yes. But then you're eating some seven, eight-year-old testicle, potentially eating big game testicles. Yeah, that is like flowing testosterone at that time of year. It's the real deal, man. Yeah. Yeah. Can I return to something?

It's hard to use the word poached when you're talking about because when you said poached i thought maybe the sheep was poached not the nuts oh no it wasn't a poached it wasn't an illegally taken sheep i'm talking about like a cooking method a poaching cooking method the way like the way i've had them best and we started out doing this was antelope we'd call them hot buttered buck nuts and we would take them out and have a ton of butter and put them in a pan and like ladle. And so they're cooking in butter, but you're ladling hot butter over them. And in the end, dressed with some Frank's Red Hot in there, sliced it thin. And it tastes like octopus.

If an octopus had sex with bacon is what it winds up that's what i feel like the the slices that the testicle slices wind up tasting like that would be my recommendation to someone who's dealing with desert bighorn but i would say to slice it very thin because it's like a small oyster is great right right? And a gigantic oyster is not so great. I mean, oysters like the shellfish. And I think that when you're, when you're getting into testicle preparation, a little taste, a little experience is better than a big experience. I find. Okay. I usually judge my food of where it's been. And so I'm...

You haven't done it? I kind of leave the, you know, the bow and the stern alone. Yeah, right. So maybe not the brains, maybe not the testicles. Yeah, I can see that. That's reasonable. But you got to try, right? Curiosity is what gets me. The same testicle you taste this and uh if the bha thing it was the best dish made there but i have uh like in a version i've

never cooked them myself because my one of my brothers shot a desert bighorn i was like oh i'm gonna try to cook the nuts and then i put them in a little baggie and in my pack. And then I'm like, we unload all the meat, yada, yada. You had to make two trips to pack them all. And I'm hunting and I'm like, God, my pack just smells like shit, you know? And it was maybe three months later. And I'm like, what's in there? Oh, really? Forgot that they were in there, and that just ruined it for me.

Keep track of your nuts, folks. Don't let them out of your sight. On that same line, I used to, when I'd shoot teal, you know, sitting in the duck blind, get a teal, sit there and just pluck them out and dump them in my pocket. Well, next season comes around and I still got a teal on my pocket. Check your pockets, check your pack, watch your nuts and check your pockets. Um,

I had an argument with my brother about what I was trying to tell him that the tarsal gland on a deer, that if you get that, they'll urinate down their leg and it goes over and passes over that oil. It's like an oil that that gland produces, and that's what they like to put on the ground to leave their little calling card. And I was telling him that a lot of gaminess comes from people getting that oil all over the meat, which he was very resistant to this idea that that's what's doing it. And he's like, I think that tastes different. Like that tastes different than what people think they taste. And they say that like mule deer or whatever are gamey. So he started carrying one of those around in a Ziploc bag. He like cut that patch of hide off one and would carry it to Ziploc.

It would want people to have a piece of meat and taste it, and then he'd want them to dab it on this thing that he had in this bag in order to demonstrate his point about what causes gamey meat. Okay, moving on. Yews. Yew hunts. What's the Sheep Foundation's take on ewe hunts? You know, Steve, look at how few sheep there are out there, and there's certainly opportunities to move them, but frankly, in many jurisdictions, we're running out of safe places to put wild sheep. Either they'll come in contact with domestic sheep and goat and get dise disease and die. So there are certain management situations where harvesting a ewe just makes good sense. So you're pointing at that, you're pointing at the luxury's not there, the opportunity's not there to take whatever you've

determined to be an excess number and establish new herds. And so you're just left with what might be regarded as excess sheep. We've got a situation in Montana, and I think we're going to break the loggerhead, but we've had a situation in Montana that we just haven't been doing full-on trap and transplants because they're just not safe places to put them. We've been doing little, little transplants where in Madison Valley we'll take some sheep from one area and we'll bring them 30 miles or so away and try to keep them staying in that area. About a third of them go back. But in a case like Montana, it would make sense. If you've got a large population in a confined area,

take a few ewes out. Wyoming does the same thing. So it just depends on the jurisdiction. But we are supportive of youth hunt, or not youth hunts, ewe hunts, if the wildlife professionals feel that's the best management scheme for their state or their province. Yeah, because a guy, a listener had written in about it, and he was looking at it, that you could have like a really, in some places, there's pretty good odds, you can have pretty good odds. Very good odds. Of drawing a ewe tag, but he felt like he couldn't tell if he should feel funny about doing it he's like it just seems like a great way to go have the experience um but why he's like i just feel like there's so much emphasis on rams and he didn't know like morally

or ethically i mean the ethics question on that is like i feel like non-existent like of course it's fine which is i think that one of the arguments against it would be like, well, why don't you do it? I think in a lot of states, if you've been accumulating points to hopefully draw a tag for a ram, I think typically you'd lose your points. No. Oh, you don't need to. Typically not on the U-Hunts. Is that right?

And they want to incentivize you to get them. So it just, again, depends on the jurisdiction. But as an organization, you guys are totally fine. We support it if the wildlife professionals are saying that's the best management scheme for that state, province, or tribal area. Yeah. We all know that when people talk about too many elk, too many deer, we're typically talking about agricultural damage. What constitutes too many sheep? Like what is the measure of too many sheep? The habitat first and foremost. But as our vice president of conservation and operations,

Kevin Hurley, 30-year biologist with Wyoming Game and Fish, now with us, been with us eight years. You know, it's funny, you look at wild sheep, and they live in the toughest, most remote often, you know, God-loving but also God-awful places. But as Kevin says, in particular with bighorns, they're born looking for a place to die. For whatever reason, you know, this tough, tough animal that carves out a living on top of mountaintops often is so prone to respiratory disease. And so the fear can be if you get too densely populated.

Look at feedlots. You get too densely populated area. If you get a disease outbreak in that situation, you might wipe out the whole herd. So, again, the wildlife professionals out the whole herd. So again, the wildlife professionals know the carrying capacity of the area. I don't think there's a set answer of, you know, we want a population of 300 in this spot, 200 in that spot. But agencies do have population goals. And if they're too high, they'll authorize ewe hunts. Yeah. Ewe hunts.

Ewe hunts. Yeah. Now, I've heard a guy talk about, you know, I was reading a thing recently where a guy was talking about CWD, where there's this argument, there's this conversation around CWD where some people are pointing, I know this is not a sheep issue, but a wildlife issue, where some people are saying that to eliminate baiting, being able to is not a sheep issue, but a wildlife issue, where some people are saying that to eliminate baiting, being able to bait deer in certain places, because it brings deer into close proximity and they'll potentially come into close contact and rub noses and stuff and transmit. But then I was reading this rebuttal to the idea, someone arguing that it would just go

watch deer. If you just watch deer they're always up to each other touching noses they go up to licking branches and lick the same branch like you can't stop deer you can't stop this animal from coming up against each other so with when it comes to like when it comes to sort of like controlling disease spread in sheep, isn't it just regardless of density, isn't it just the fact that their natural gregarious behavior means that if there's two, they're going to find each other? Yeah, and we have that problem with they're gregarious to their cousins as well. So a bighorn sheep could be very interested in a little group of domestic sheep down the mountain. You know, there's some pretty cute domestic sheep out there.

Yeah. So, you know, in all seriousness, that is a problem. You've got a roaming bighorn, whether it's a ram or ewe, comes into contact with domestic sheep. It may pick up a pathogen and bring it back to the wild sheep. So there's a debate going on on connectivity. You know, connectivity sounds like it's a real good thing. You've got genetic diversity. But in some areas, connectivity is a bad thing, where you may have an isolated population over here

that's healthy. You may have another isolated population over here that's less healthy, has more bugs in it, and on and on. And in the past, we started figuring, well, we want connectivity, so we would connect the dots. And we would transplant sheep and fill in those holes. Well, now what have you just done? You've now taken a less healthy population and connected it to the healthiest population down the line. So it's a, there's benefit and burden to it. Yeah. I can picture it. Uh, you guys ever deal with chafing, chafing? Usually, uh, when it's real hot and you're talking about that chafing and the wolf. I wrote in criticizing that he just started hunting recently, and he's criticizing hunters for being too quiet about chafing.

Like they don't want to take on the hard subjects. Really? I don't feel like I'm being quiet about chafing. Baby wipes are God's gift to sheep hunting. Yeah. I think that, yeah. Who's all dealt with this? I feel some relief that I'm finally able to talk about it in an open forum. It's a real thing, man.

I deal with it at trade shows. I deal with walking around these trade shows. You get chased in a trade show? Every once in a while. That's a little too much information, Ben. Well, I thought we were in the nest, in the trust tree, are we not? Yeah. Have any of you ever cut off your underwear? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Chafing? I'm too open. Somebody else has to go. Not prone to it. I've never had it. I think if you have really skinny legs, I think you're like immune. It's like, it's a thing.

It's chafing. Yeah. No, I've had chafing. Really? Yeah. And was it really hot? Yep. I've had chafing. And I've found that I don't live in fear of chafing because it's... You know, I think you got to give a definition here. Well, okay. I'll talk a little bit about it. I think there's probably some folks out there that don't know what you're talking about.

Well, I think there's different kinds of chafing. So our friend, Rourke, who we've had on the show, he used to run the BUDS program for the Navy SEALs. And he doesn't like to entertain anyone talking about chafing until you've experienced that chafing, which is that you're either running or rolling in beach sand. And he's like, that's chafing to a whole new level. But in my mind, there's frontal chafing, which can occur at the top of one's like, that's chafing to a whole new level. But in my mind, there's frontal chafing, which can occur at the top of one's thighs,

and there's like a rear chafing, which can occur around the areas of the gluteal crease. I've never experienced the former. I've experienced the latter a couple of times. And I solved it. But who else? Come on. Yanni. I've never heard you talk about getting chafed. Yeah. I carry around baby wipes, just like gray and you know, every few days freshen up and that seems to take care of it. Just keep them clean. The benefactor though,

of other people's chafing. Hear me out. We were in the breaks one time. Definition. Go on, Go on. I'm following. We were hunting bull elk and it was, the breaks can be hot in September. And we had done a big, giant, big tour and we got back and like I was in camp, like somehow just, you know, sometimes at the end of the day, you just, you don't want to talk. And so the faster person just moves out ahead. You get back to camp like 30 minutes later my bunny tony rolls in i'm like dude what happened funny yeah he's like oh bro i got the problems you know problems and then after he gets cleaned up and we found whatever he needed to help himself

out he's like i don't think i can go out tomorrow well the thing was we had gotten onto a big bull that day so i was like that's too bad i'm gonna have to go back out and and so yeah i got to go hunt this big bull by myself because tony was back in camp with a serious case of chafe like he was like such bad chaff as he stayed home no you gotta get some gold bond medicated powder. You're up on the mountain. I've used lip balm to cure, to give you that just little bit of buffer. You've got to throw it away after. Question, Steve, on that one. It's not a direct application.

Do you have a left pocket lip balm and a right pocket lip balm to make sure that you know you don't kind of get confused there it's a great question we were laughing about this the other day where um it's a way that if you don't like to share your chapstick you just talk about how that this is a thing one can do and you'll find that requests i figured they'd dry up no one ever comes around asking for your chapstick. Now, can you predict chafing? No, because I said, I want to be clear. I've had it like maybe three times, but it's a vicious feeling. All three have been hunting. All three have been hunting in hot weather, and it's all been the kind of chafing that would be called chap ass monkey butt yes yeah and it's like i just wanted to bring it up because the guy was trying to like people when people hunting is intimidating

to people who didn't grow up around it and you come in and it's like the tag and that's confusing and it's like what gun do you buy and that's confusing and your ass is chapped and that's confusing and so i wanted like, as a gesture toward emerging hunters, I want to just bring this up and have like a, like a form about it. Tell me he's not alone. My brother suffers from it horribly. My bigger brother suffers from it horribly. The smaller size brother does not. So I think it is. So it's not, it's not genetic. It's linked to girth to like big dudes seem to get chapped. Amen.

You feeling this? Yeah. We're here to share. Everybody good on that? It's relief. I feel relief. How does one dispatch a squirrel? So a guy is wondering about this.

You shoot a squirrel with a shotgun. The squirrel falls down, but it's not dead. This causes him a lot of distress. I'm not a big squirrel hunter, but I'd say I'd do the same to rabbits and fish. Knock on the head. Yeah. Knock on the head with another tool.

Or like grab it, hit it on the, either one. Wouldn't matter. Yeah, very quickly, very quickly against the tree, like a good swing.

Thwack! Or against the butt, butt of a shotgun or butt of your.22. Unloaded with the barrel pointed away. Safe muzzle control. But it's a nice, clean... I don't want to sound macabre. It's like a guy wanting to do the right thing.

I'm trying to help share the information with him. A nice, clean... For you folks listening from home, I'm taking my hand and going, whack, with it. I think that works well. I think stretching their neck you know just grabbing the head and maybe the hind legs or the shoulders and just stretch their neck you

know an inch or two that seems to work pretty good to separate the vertebrae yeah works good for rabbits 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 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. I was in a pool one time, and I'm with my wife, some of her friends, all of our kids are in the pool. And a rabid, I assume he's rabid, a crazy squirrel, an insane squirrel, comes up to the edge of the pool and starts running up and down

the edge of the pool, jumps into the pool with us and starts chasing people, swimming, chasing kids every which way around the pool. And I did a similar, the same kind of grab by the tail and did kind of a double and sailed him back out of the pool in such a way that it proved fatal for the squirrel like just a sharp gone he didn't come back no we found him he's dead yeah it was like that kind of speed. This is what I wanted to bring up for a while, and I think this is good for sheep hunters to learn about or to have a good open discussion about this. It's what we've come to call talking into, talking someone into. And a guy that wrote in, he calls it how to talk on to something. Meaning, you're sitting there hunting, and you see something very far away,

and it's hard to see, and your buddy's like, well, where is it? And then you get that sinking feeling of like, oh, no. What's the best way to talk someone? One, is it into or onto? We say into. How do you talk someone into or onto? What's your best method? I'm going to tell what his method is after I hear what you guys feel the best method.

I know what I believe and I know what he believes. Oh, okay. I do this a lot. This is part of the guide job like you see something and first off you if because like you can hunt with different people there's certain people that you go oh it's over there and they pick it up right away right those people you can tell them where you see other things some things you just have to like and then there's people that no matter how well you explain things they just never get it so you don't have to divulge everything you spot to them like i've found figured that out you know just the important stuff you just keep quiet until you're like you

want them to see something is specifically but what i do is i you always pick one defining landmark and start from there and then you like build a breadcrumb trail to what you're talking about. Something very defined like this table right in front of us. Now see the direction that the pen is pointing on that table. Alright, now three rows back from that and two to, you know what I mean? Like you build

off of, you build one thing that's impossible to miss but not saying that thing right there that you can't miss like you have to describe it exactly once they've got that then you can go off that and work your way toward anything yeah like a start with a like something that's in felt like everyone would agree on correct like the yellow school bus yes say but not like the green tree on the hillside 500 yards away you have to start something very not like the green tree on the hillside 500 yards away. You have to start something very, very specific.

The highest peak on the skyline where two ridges meet. Like things that cannot be changed. And then you work from there. That's the dead giveaway of someone that doesn't have their talking into program dialed in. As soon as I hear green tree, I'm like, okay, who's next? There's like, yeah, the green tree i'm like okay who's next there's like yeah the green tree the rocky area that bushy area then i'm like oh man this is gonna be i'm just gonna go look for something different but another thing is like i like when i'm going out with people i like to cue them in on what plants are what because it's's way easier to be like, it's the only

juniper on that hill. And if they understand what a juniper is, they're ahead of the game. But if every tree is the same tree to them, then a lot of times, so if you know the different plants and you can, you know, along the way you learn what plants are, what, then you can say, okay, it's next to that Mormon tree or a Federer bush to the right of that, like that other bush. Because there's a lot of different plants that might be a little more sparse or thick patches of different types of plants. So just knowing what you're looking at makes a huge difference. Yeah, a glossary of terms. Like, get that, like, that is a saddle.

You see that little place over there? That, you know, that's what I call a peak. My buddy there is a little bushy area my buddy john did a good job of that like the first time we went and hunted mexico we all just sat down i was like this is an ocotillo this is an agave this is a this this is a century plant because those are the plants that you're going to be using and it might not be something that you're familiar with once everybody knows what you're talking about makes it way easier to point something out that spiky thing over there when you're doing you're talking about, it makes it way easier to point something out. That spiky thing over there.

When you're doing your talking into, you always have to end every sentence with a question so you can get an answer too. Do you see that century bush over there? Because there's a century bush over there. You want to invoke a reaction. Yes, I do. Century plants and yuccas have a way of making their way into a lot of talking intos. I'm going to get to what this guy proposed, because I think it might be revolutionary.

But the way we've kind of developed this, we do a lot of this at work, because we're always trying to explain to camera guys where stuff is. And they have the extra hard job of trying to find things on a little screen, like a little LCD screen, which is really difficult to do. But we start with the undeniable thing. And it could be that you're looking at something over there. If the only obvious thing is over here, still, that's extreme. But start with the thing that you know. And then we do center of the clock. So the thing that we identify, we always make that as the center of the clock. And then you breadcrumb them in, but every breadcrumb becomes the new clock center.

Like a crosshair? Yeah, like a crosshair. You know, Steve, I think it's good also to practice before you're out. I love to mentor youth. I love to, you love to mentor new hunters. And before you're even out in the field and you've got to dial them in, do some practice rounds. Use whatever technique you have, but do that before it's game time. We could do it with audience members right now.

We could. See that guy? From him, go to 12 o'clock, there's another guy. I got another thing that I do that I just feel kind of like sometimes when you're guiding and you get a person that just does not understand, like you guide him in real well. I just now what I do is I'm like, OK, I know what I'm dealing with. I pull out my phone. I take a picture. I circle the area. I hand him the phone.

Dude, that's a great idea. He's like, click, circle, here. And then you get back to work. You just keep glassing. Yeah, that's solid, man. If you flip the screen, there's a game on there, too. The center of the clock deal, I was trying to explain it to my six-year-old the other day. I was trying to talk her into a deer up on the hill out our we're looking out our window eating uh getting ready to eat dinner and i'm telling her and she looks at me and she

says i don't know how to tell time i'm like that's a good point rosemary and then we'll go and find another way going about this the guy proposes this and i feel like this is really going to change stuff if he that you know like the trick of when the sun's going to set you're trying to figure out how much time you got for the sun hits the mountain there's like it's what a finger per 15 minutes is a rule of thumb yeah they do him and his buddies do okay like you're like okay well let's agree like you see that rocky outcrop okay now drop down from there stretched out arm bent fingers and they do finger counts lay your index finger on the rocky outcrop and then drop down three fingers and what's there

i feel like that would be really helpful. But it's only going to work when you're looking with the naked eye because as soon as you start doing it through binoculars, you can't. But it tells him where to look. Yeah, like I'm saying, with the naked eye in the early stages of talking one into something, it'll work. Can you imagine how many people think this is the stupidest conversation? It's like a really big deal, though, man.

I think we should go back to chafing. Oh, do we put chafing to rest? Yeah, chafing happens, man. I got him. Yeah. I want to jump into literature real quick. Every, like, every name, like, what's the best book like if you had to tell people like people that are like wanting to learn about hunting and they wanted to experiment hunting they can't do

the best but if you could be like man if you're going to read one book make it this book imagining from an audience of someone who's interested in or developing an interest, and think of it like in a big way where you're really giving them a sort of gift, a sort of framework to begin entering the world. I think I had a first. It better be a sheep one. Well, it's interesting. I was into Africa before I was into sheep.

And so, you know, I could pick, I had the hunter, you know, some of Robert Rourke's works. And it wasn't so much the species. It was just how he wrote about the landscape. And it just inspired me to be there. So, you know, I guess I would look at it from a standpoint of what's going to bring out the essence of hunting in you. It may not be the critters. It might just be the sights, the sounds, the smells, the whole nine yards. I think it just depends on where you want to go.

There's some unbelievable books on sheep hunting. We'll throw one out there. We want concrete, actionable stuff here, Greg. I would look at Bob Anderson's Great Rams series as one of them. That's a good book, man. They're inspiring. Great photography. And Bob's wit and his way to caption photographs is second to none.

And a gratuitous plug, he's going to be at the Sheep Show signing his latest book. It's interesting you use the word inspiring. It's a really inspiring book. I mean, it's like a coffee table book. It is, totally. But it makes you, dude, it makes you want to get out in the mountains so badly. It makes you want to hunt sheep. It doesn't turn you off. It turns you on. Some books do

the opposite. It's too hard of a reach and it doesn't. But that book's fun yeah everybody's got to go everybody gets chapped turkey season's coming up colonel tom kelly's tenth legion yeah he's like they call that man the poet laureate of turkey hunting and for good reason that book is the way he describes a turkey just you know this is a raptor just walking in he's calling it in, it's a very common hunting happenstance

that this happens to all turkey hunters all the time, but the way he describes that, all the intricate things that are happening through the lens of this man's eyes, it changed the way I look at turkey hunting. It's a great one. I don't know if it's fair to say, it sounds a little short to say it's the best turkey book, because there aren't any turkey books. Yeah, I mean it's really great one i don't know if it's fair to say like the it sells a little short to say it's the

best turkey book because there aren't any turkey books yeah i mean it's really the only it's really up there it's like i feel like it belongs kind of in the canon the hunting canon yeah yeah if you put it along with like just the description of talking to an animal calling an animal to you you know having that conversation his description of that conversation is, it could be a turkey an elk, whatever. It doesn't matter. The way that he describes it to me is the best out there. He's a considerate writer too because right away you're like

why in the hell would this book be called the 10th Legion? And then he explains it so quickly that you don't need to spend the whole time wondering why it's called the 10th Legion. So don't worry about that. It's called the 10th legion so don't worry about that it's called the 10th legion it has nothing you'll like it yeah cal me you ready for the first bunch of years i knew you you had a book about ireland in your truck yeah trinity but that's not your pick right yeah i mean that definitely teaches you a thing or two, but probably not.

About taters and whiskey. Oppression. Which is a good thing to know if you really want to get into hunting. There's some oppressive times for sure. So I think Jack London's short stories, he does a good job of stringing together like miserable, severe conditions with kind of this string of like, you know, humanity. know humanity uh also robert w service does the same thing in his poems where it's like things are terrible you're gonna lose some fingers and parts parts of you but um it's kind of like this is what life's about um so find a way to come through on the other side type of stuff. And then I really like, uh, Faulkner's the big woods because it, it's a little bit, it

was hard for me to get into, but I probably read the thing like 15 times at this point. Um, and it's, it kind of goes through this multi-generational hunting camp and it kind of hits the different characters that you will come in contact with through a life of hunting like the folks that never really leave camp they're more there to tend the fire and tell stories and and then there's the folks that kind of slip away and they're doing the real hunting pretty much for everybody in camp and kind of gives you an insight into a big group of kind of classic hunting characters. Yeah.

And I wouldn't consider any of these like real hunting books, but good educational books if you want to end up spending a lot of time outside. Yanis? Hmm. Does it say Yanis on here? You spelled it Yanis today. When you put a Y, it makes it Yanis? Oh, Yanis has gotten so broke down by people mispronouncing his name,

he actually spelled it phonetically today. I'm just saving everybody time so we can talk about sheep hunting instead. Johnny's. I got a bunch of recommendations. You gonna make me pick one? Yeah, man. One book.

Couple quick thoughts. One book and why? Obviously, there's a bunch that you've written that I think would be beneficial to any new hunter. My favorite is still The Scavenger's Guide. That's nice. Even though it's not like a real hunting book, but it's just like, again, it's like kind of what Gray said. It kind

of just gets you in the spirit of going and tracking down stuff and going on an adventure, you know? But, and again, to what Gray was saying, Robert Ruark, you mentioned him, right? The old man and the boy. Great book, some hunting in there, life stories, but you don't feel like you're reading a how-to on hunting, but you can learn a lot from reading that book about hunting, safety, generic stuff. And I'll leave it at that. What do you got, Remy? Okay, well, I guess is the question about just a book that would interest someone in hunting or like someone that wants to learn about hunting? Because I have, you know, I mean that's very different. Just, yeah. It could be like something that winds up being impactful.

Okay. Well, this one. So not a how-to manual right okay then then the term you used at the beginning like you can't apply today's standards to something of the past presentism presentism yeah no presentism allowed in my book recommendation um but as a kid i probably read this book more than any other book like every book report i did was on death in the long grass but you get where you bet you got good grades doing that was i um you know i got so good at using the same book that yes now it's like in today's standard it's not a politically correct book because he's hunting all kinds of dangerous game in africa and other things but the first

chapter in that book... Is it racist? It's not racist at all, but like killing lions, elephants, you know what I mean? Like things that, rhinos, hippos, everything. But the first portion of that book is possibly the best description of why people hunt that I've ever read.

It talks about being a part of our culture and how humans have evolved as hunters over thousands of years and how you go to these remote places and that's never changed, yet society sees things completely different, even though that's not how the world works. And I just think it's one of the best descriptions of being a hunter. Like he's just so good with words that I would always refer to that, like back before there was internet and other things of like a justification for hunting. He does a really good job at laying that out. And then he goes on to tell some amazing adventure stories of not only his own accounts, but accounts of like, you know, the man eaters of of, was it Tassavo?

And other stories in there that's just like massive amounts of adventure, man versus wild, beasts killing animals, and then, you know, being like a hunter. And then he also gives a lot of credit to like the native trackers and their skills and abilities. And I just think that that's really cool, tying all that in into into this cool adventure book. Death in the Longgrass. Death in the Longgrass.

It's funny that I thought it was forward, like fly fishing has inspired much of my chagrin. It's inspired so much more literature than conventional tackle. And Africa seems to inspire a lot of literature. Yeah. You know? Somebody like the old classic greats were like moved by africa to write about hunting it's like you know when these books are written it's essentially the largest wilderness in the world really i mean a

lot of these trips are going on foot or creating roads into these areas and very others i mean like a large amount of adventure because it's very untapped yeah and still there's parts of africa that are like that like semi-mysterious and it's so bizarre to me though too because it's like you could have done that here or in the yukon i mean had we just like knocked down the game numbers so dramatically at that point that it was like, well, let's just go to Africa instead. Yeah. In the heyday, it was like, that was the good old days there. It was the dark ages here.

Yeah. When that stuff was really coming on the scene, you know, from the literary perspective. The book that most changed my view on wildlife and kind of ecology and environmentalism, um, is a book by a guy that's very uneasy, almost antagonistic toward hunting, uh, named Barry Lopez. And this is book Arctic dreams. And the reason I think it's helpful, like if you like to hunt, the reason that's a helpful book to read is Lopez in his talk about Eskimo hunters and his talk about wildlife in the Arctic and what's happening in the Arctic. He makes such a compelling case about he doesn't condemn it and he doesn't take cheap shots, but he lays out in a really clear way why he's uneasy with hunting. To the point where I think that it actually winds up being helpful in understanding the mindset.

And I think that he offers, because he's so brilliant and articulate, I think he actually offers a psychological pathway to finding a way to end up being very comfortable with hunting but it's interesting to read the perspective of someone who uh has just arrived at a at arrived at a place where they just don't see it they don't see it and make them feel a little sick um because there's enough in there that you read and you're like, like I said, I feel like it helps you find a path forward and understanding wildlife and our role to it. And that was like a very, like when I read that book, it really shook me up, man. But like, not in some way that maybe questioned what I like to do, but it made me just understand what I like to do so much more.

Arctic dreams. Now, Yanni, you want to tell gray what he's got to do i do i want to we should i should intro what we're going to do and i'll tell jake gray what he has to do because i thought that you could do it while after he picks his no however you want to run the show yeah we are we have a uh game we're going to play called Seeing Through the Bullshit. Seeing Through the Bullshit. And it is brought to you by our friends at Vortex Optics. And they've been so kind to give us a Fury 5000 HD binocular, which is their new range-finding binocular.

There it is. Oh, right here. There we go. And we're going to pick a random person out of the crowd here right now to come and play the game. And I'll explain the game in just a second. But to pick that person out, I'm going to have Gray pick a number between 1 and 4, and then a number between 1 and 10, and then a number between 1 and 12. I'm going to have you do that first. And then I'll explain how we're going to get to the person that work one and four, go three, three,

okay. Seven, seven, 11, three, seven, 11. Okay. So section three, we went one, two, three. So in section three, seven rows back. What was the last one? 11? 11. If you're the seat from left to right, me looking at you, the 11th seat over in the seventh row. You got it? Somebody count?

Come on up. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Come on up there. Uh, you might have to come around the back, sneak through there. So what we're going to do, we're going to do like a drinking game without drinking. It's two lies. It's two lies and a truth. And again, the name of the game is seeing through the bullshit. We're going to tell two lies and one truth. What's your name, bud?

Caden. Caden, you good with this? Yeah. You excited about it? Yeah. Come around in front here, man. Take Ben C. I'll stand behind you ominously. Do we got a mic? Do we got a mic?

Oh yeah, we got... He doesn't really need a mic. I'm sure he can pick it up from the rest of us. Do you, to what degree do you feel like you're good at telling when someone's telling you a stretcher? Probably not good at all. Well, you stick with me, buddy. Do you have a good pair of binoculars? Sort of. How old are you? 17. 17? Yeah. These are nice binoculars.

Yeah. Do you have range-finding binoculars? No. These things do a good job of picking stuff off. I tried them over there. Yeah, we were picking off coos deer at 1,000 yards of these things. It's pretty handy. All right.

Do you know what? Have you ever played this game? 1,000 yards of these things. It's pretty handy. All right. Do you know what? Have you ever played this game? Yeah. You've done this. How old are you? 17. Where have you done it?

At school. At school. Good answer. Do you want to hear a lie or the truth first? Truth. That's a joke. That's a joke. I'm not going to tell you. I couldn't tell. You have a straight. I couldn't tell.

You have a straight face. Good poker face. Okay. Johnny's going to tell you a story. Short story here. Be sure to look him in the eyes now. Deep in those eyes. In 1990, they outlawed mountain lion hunting in the state of california may or may not be aware of this right um right did you know that no california banned mountain lion hunting

outright at that time there was a fella who was just getting into running hounds okay um for the next 20 years he got so good at running mountain lions oh sorry i gotta preface it with they um you couldn't do it legally anymore right but the state still needed problem lions and depredation lions taken out right so this guy got to working for the state he got to be a really good hound handler he ended up catching i think 379 in in the next 10 years, I think it was. And he became the state's top depredation mountain lion hunter. What makes it crazy, though, is that he wasn't running them with the regular walker treeing hounds. He was using a pack of beagles. All right. Late 1800s, early 1900s in the Himalaya, there is a tigress, lady tiger, who takes to killing people to the point where this tigress is credited with killing over 400 people. They had to bring in the army of Nepal to try to kill the tiger.

They couldn't get it done. Eventually, an American came and in a couple days shot it. It's called the Champawat Tigris. What do you think so far? Truth over here. All right. You want to hear the real story? Reno, Nevada. Biggest little city in the world, right? That's the slogan, that's a new slogan. It kind of had to reinvent itself, which it did. But there's this guy named Major Reno, and he was a player in the worst loss in U.S. military history, Battle of the Little Bighorn, Montana. Okay, and this man had a very checkered career in the military, including at that battle,

it was purported that he, in the face of possibly 26, 2700 charging Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, produced half a bottle of whiskey and told his second in command, Benteen, I've got half a bottle left. Now at the time you could name railroad depots after people in a commemorative sort of way and the survivors at the Little Bighorn named a new western railroad depot, Reno, as kind of an inside joke. Because of that man's, you know, probably not too good command there at Battle of the Little Bighorn. And that's where you're sitting right now, Sonny. Okay, so is it Cal's story on how Reno got its name by a drunk captain? Is it the Chompawatt killer? Is it the theme story about the Chompawatt tigress?

Or Yon's story about the unlikely mountain lion hunter that uses beagles? Can the audience help him? The audience can help. If you need audience help, you can do it. I can walk over and do one of these and you guys can cheer for what you think is... Do it, Bam. You're not sure? No, I'm not sure.

Bam? Just cheer for the truth. If you think Yanni was telling the truth, go ahead and give a cheer now. Now, if you think Ryan Callahan was telling the truth, give me a cheer. Oh my Lord. Steven Rinella. You like lions or tigers? Yeah. Giannis.

Giannis? Yeah. Oh, man. The Chompawatt killer. The Chompawatt tigress. Deadliest animal ever. Jim Corbett killed it. Tracked it to its lair and slew it. It had a busted canine. It had busted up in lower teeth. It had been shot by a bullet and it had damaged its teeth.

And they figured that that somehow either pissed it off or limited its ability to eat native prey. And it started to prey on people in broad daylight. But you know what, dude? We're going to give you the knocks, man. Because... Because... Because... So there you go. Some Vortex Furies, man.

Enjoy them. Thanks for playing along. Let's give them a hand. Thank you very much. What's your name again? Caden. Take care, man. All right, guys, you, everybody out there, we gave our stuff away.

Thank you very much for joining us, and stay tuned for future episodes, and enjoy Sheep Show 2019. Thank you. Thank you very much. Steve, birthdays. Birthdays. One last thing. Oh, what's the last thing?

Birthdays. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. Don't leave. Who's got a birthday today? Who's birthdays right now? How many people? Stand up if you got a birthday today.

You need an ID to prove it. What's that? No, no, no. Birthday right now. Who's got a birthday right now? Nobody's got it today. Really? No one?

Is anybody's birthday tomorrow? Oh, we got a lot of them. How many tomorrows? Okay. Okay. So tomorrow there's, we need the oldest people whose birthday is tomorrow. Cause you got less time to be alive. We want to make sure you, we want, you got less time to be alive.

So we want you to enjoy it more. So shout out your ages. Sit down. 23. And what was yours? Oh yeah're no good 43 38 and 43 no yeah uh you guys come take one of these uh take one of these yeti we need four of them but take one of these yeti chairs all right everybody have a good night thank you Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that

because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now, the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer.

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