The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 164: It Shall Be Delicious

Episode Date: April 15, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with Ryan Callaghan, Ben O'Brien, and Janis Putelis.Subjects discussed: all about Janis; in defense of not loving Shakespeare; getting rich for killing fish; corn starch vs. chapass; Indiana’s wimpy approach to poachers; the lowly Florida hunter; freezing crab; can you freeze then thaw then re-freeze meat?; carrying around another man's tooth; Oregon's new road kill law; Is there a difference between a crick and a creek; what the return of Washington’s wolves means for deer; go-to wild game dishes; 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. What's up, guys? How's it going?

Why do I feel like I'm not on? Am I on? You can hear me? Excellent. Good. How's Portland doing tonight? Earlier, I don't know why I was thinking of this. Earlier, I was thinking about how late-night talk show dudes come out, and they're like, ladies and gentlemen, we have a great show for you tonight. But I'm like, I don't know that. I'd be like, maybe, maybe. Got a couple people I want to say hi to out in the crowd. So Sarah, there's someone named Sarah here who, like, here's a weird deal though. Um, yeah. So, your husband, like,

didn't want to bring you and was going to bring your husband didn't want to bring you, was going to bring some other guy. That guy's wife has a baby and then he's like, ah, I guess I'll bring Sarah. So, so, that guy's wife has a baby and then he's like ah i guess i'll bring sarah so yes the baby the baby is tommy the dad is brian and they're presumably

being together right now forming a bond so that's great uh it's good timing on their part for having a baby, right? Not in hunting season. What is it? Good timing. Not in hunting season, baby. Well done. There's a dude out here, Ryan Kristen, who I suppose he looks exactly like me. Where is he?

Is it not true? Look at him. Does he look like me? All right. Our good buddy Matt Elliott from Benchmade is here. He's a bass angler extraordinaire, so hi to him. And then a guy I know a bit, Joe Feria are you here all right okay um a couple things got a couple things we gotta cover real quick did you guys listen to a recent episode where there's a

dude that well i want to do introductions because you'll see why go ahead cal well that's not you're if you're going to do introductions you introduce people i'm going to allow for introductions are we going to introduce each other are you no my name is ryan callahan thank you very much for coming feel real strong about that my name is Ben O'Brien my name is Giannis Patelis thank you out of way

about Giannis we had an episode recently where I want to find us to get it right nice there's a guy we had an episode called noxious stimuli and in it we were talking about a guy that wrote in he was saying how yannis doesn't get any credit and he wrote this poem about yannis that had the very awkward line, in action, how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a god, which I thought was the worst line in the world.

Hang on, we'll set. We got you back. Yeah, maybe. Are you sitting on that thing? Is it back on now? Oh, yeah. Is this your first time, Steve? No.

This is called building suspense so i thought it's the worst line ever and a listener wrote in to say that the man that wrote that poem plagiarized portions of it from shakespeare it's from hamlet and that says something about him like if you're gonna plag plagiarize, like generally you don't do it from the world's most famous writer ever because you're going to get caught. And it's going to say something about me that I sat through Shakespeare seminars in high school, college, and graduate school, but did not pick up that that was from Shakespeare's finest work. But I do, when I retire from my current job, I want to write a book called In Defense of Not Loving the Bard. And it'll be like a book-length essay about how it's okay to

dislike Shakespeare. He goes on to give a haiku. He writes a haiku for Giannis, which is a solid haiku. It's this. Latvian eagle. Keen of eye and swift of kill. Power ring. Onward. That's a haiku. Also, another quick correction from Noxious Stimuli.

There's a guy who wrote in, he describes himself as Noxious Stimulus because he was a person that wrote a piece of hate mail that was talking about how I suffer from narcissism and ADHD and that our underwear is very expensive, which that part, I can tell you, is not true, because my underwear is nine bucks. But he was adding into, so we have a thing where we've crowdsourced things that we know make turkeys gobble. And we have a new shirt coming out, which is all the best things that make turkeys gobble from sonic booms to what else is on there rumble strips corridors card i don't know if that made the shirt car horns probably made the shirt i don't know if that made the shirt thunder

did that make the shirt throwing throwing rocks at stop fucking rocks at stop signs kicking rusty old hunks of metal dry dude so the dude rode in and he this is an interesting story where he and his wife refurbished an old cuckoo clock you can see where this is going and he's got horses and turkeys come in in the winter to feed on the horse feed and then to pick grain out of the horse shit and one day he his new cuckoo clock gets done and he opens the door the cuckoo clock goes off and four gobblers all hit it yep so it was too late to make the shirt um on that i heard another one that's new that was i think it was dm'd to me i like using dm i feel like I'm young. I don't like that.

You don't? It sounds creepy, man. I thought it was only creepy if you said slide in on DMs. I thought that's where he gets creepy. I have been getting that myself. I'm sliding in on your DMs. I don't get it.

I like to say I'm creeping in on your DMs. I'm just sneaking in there. But it's DL, right? No don't get it. I like to say I'm creeping in on your DMs. I'm just sneaking in there. But it's DL, right? No, that's down low. Direct messages is what we're talking about. You're thinking down low. These are totally different DMs. I got lost because I left my cord,

so I'm really distracted by me not having my cord with me that I plugged this thing in with, so I missed. You're saying you like to say DMs, it makes you feel young. Yeah, and do you know what those are, DMs? Direct messages. There you go. I say a dude wrote in, or 10% of the time I get to say a woman wrote in. Anywho, this fellow was saying that he was having a slow morning in turkey hunting

and decided to pack himself a big chaw so he brought out his tin and got a gobble yeah that's good on the subject of turkeys I heard a a quote that I thought you'd like to be honest, and it was that when a deer sees a man, it thinks it's a stump. When a turkey sees a stump, it thinks it's a man. I like that. Yeah, it's good. I feel like a turkey's like a puffed-up Roomba that's just going around. They don't know what they're doing, man. They're idiots.

They're idiots. Yeah. I'm not going to defend turkeys right now i want to talk about does anybody in here make their living uh are any of you the people that all make their living catching northern pike minnows do you know about this that guy does no seriously has anyone in here redeemed has anyone in here collected a bounty you guys have collected your bounties on northern pike minnows do we got at least three four five six this is a fascinating business you guys got going on in the state who's gonna break this down for i know everybody in here is a bounty hunter, but someone needs to break this down.

Who wants to start? Get him, Cal. It's an odd thing, is what I would start with. You have a native fish species that has a bounty on its head. What did you do? Real quick. I'm a wolf! He's going to, well.

There's always one guy. We're going to get into this, and then we're going to get into this. There's a whole lot that needs to be covered here. But what was it? Did you grow up? Yeah, you grew up. So you grew up knowing the fish as a squaw fish. Yes, correct.

Yeah. Northern pike minnow, squaw fish, it has other names. Squawker. Squawker? Yeah. I thought you named another one. Yeah, it was the uh the columbia river dace oh okay yep it's a minnow it's in the minnow family i believe now set the

set the you know set the table set the table i know everybody's hip to this most folks were hip to this in this room but um basically you have uh this minnow. It's a predator, like very aggressive eater. And they collect in large groups behind the dams. And then they will put a serious hurt on the steelhead and salmon smolt as they stack up behind the dams. In large holes, too. But, yeah, so the Bonneville, right? Bonneville. Yep.

Yep. Yep, they. The power company. I want, because we're telling you guys, we're trying to put a little, if you didn't detect, we're trying to throw a local spin on this whole thing. Did my mic just cut out again? Yeah. Yeah.

Son of a. No, we got you again now, though. Trying to throw a local spin on this. You got to remember all those brothers in Ohio and whatnot that don't know about this, so go on. Yeah, so there is an incentive to catch and kill the northern pike minnow in an attempt to protect steelhead and salmon.

And they put a bony on them. Yep. So I think it's two bucks a fish. Eight. It's eight? What? Last time I looked at it. Eight bucks a fish.

Am I right? I'm right. It's a dollar amount though you catch one to five you get this one that's a six pack of fancy beer per fish so this year right so the the bounty program the bounty the annual bounty program opens May 1, runs through May 30. Then you have until November 15 to turn in your vouchers, which you get upon catching the fish for payment.

And this year, more than one dozen anglers earned over $20,000 fishing pike meals in the Snake and Columbia River. The program. Good job, guys. You did it. You guys are throwing a lot of hate. You guys are throwing a lot of hate at a little fish. And I'm going to get into this. Because there's more to it.

I'm not disparaging the program at all. I'm just giving props to those guys that went out, or gals, that went out there and did it. Got it done. Yeah, because what we were unable to find out today, who's the most reputable person out in the crowd? These two guys right here seem like they're reputable. Yeah, crowd these two guys right here he's saying he is you guys say you collected a bounty in high school okay do you have some exposure to contemporary pike minnow fishing can you in like in a sentence how, what is the tactic? What is the approach?

The most effective approach. For catching them? Yeah, yeah. Chicken liver or worms? Chicken liver and worms. So you're just classic bait fishing, bobber, no bobber? Very brief. On the bottom.

Okay. So it's like you're out fishing sunnies or bluegills or whatever, but it's white minnows. Different spots, different time of year during wherever the you know yeah they congregate right they're getting big big uh they pot up yes yeah okay so hold on real quick i just want to make sure that the expert in the fifth row back here concurs you guys everybody's throwing everybody's cool with the idea that people use liver and worms and basic bobber on the bottom a couple split shot kind of standard rig okay good now there's some weird parts of this that we'll get to so the program pays anglers five to eight bucks for pike minnows over nine inches long. As of October 17th, the top angler had made $71,049 this year. The next three spots, so he's number one, numbers two, three, and four. These

guys in that period made over 50,000 bucks fishing pike minnows. There are a bunch in the top 20, there are a bunch of guys who made anywhere from 16 to 36. Last year, the top angler in the Northern Pike Minnow Sport Reward Fishery pulled 84 grand for five months work. down from the previous year, in 2016, a mug fished up $119,341 worth of pike minnows. Five months of work. But here's where this gets weird, is to get people even more fired up, they released 1,000 tagged fish, which if you catch those, you get 500 bucks. But that's like a funny deal

because you're saying like to your kids, you'd be like, I want you kids to kill all the rats and I'm going to put a bunch more rats. Like, and they're all going to be be in there and if you catch those rats and then i'm gonna pay you eight bucks for every rat you catch and i just let a lot more in there but i'm hoping that that means that they are that the ones that are cut and loose i'm having to think are sterilized, maybe? No. No. They say no. Really? Oh.

I will tell you, pike minnow ceviche is very good. Especially those tagged ones. They're extra delicious. Yeah, because if you catch a tagged one, you get 500 bucks. You buy a shitload of lemons. Yeah.

Or limes. Shitload of beer, shitload of lemons. Yeah. Or limes. Shitload of beer, shitload of lemons. Go eat some sushi. They've caught like 5 million of these things since they started the program. We were reading. Since 1990. That's what it said. How many?

5 million. Oh, so the thousand is nothing. No. Since the beginning of the program. Yeah. I got you. I could see it. Real quick on chafing

well hold on i'm not good you got you got more to add i'm not ready to go to chafing i was just thinking about it that there's i know a lot of fly fishing guides myself being one of them that like you're not making anywhere near that kind of money busting your butt all summer long rowing people down river people that are you, the people that really have fish on their brain, Cal, you can speak to this. They might want to consider coming out here and making money for four or five months. Yeah, I think you get a system down, be good.

But I tell you, I mean, they are a fun fish on the fly rod. Like they, especially in the the spring when they're spawning like they destroy flies super fun there you go the caliber of dudes we're talking about here oh this is a whole different deal they're not at it for fun no well it might be enjoyable i'm saying these are like top shelf anglers. A lot of days. Before I get into chafing, I want to hit a point that I forgot. Because this is like, I was hitting up Matt Elliott about this.

Matt Elliott, who I mentioned earlier. He's got a real axe. I don't want to say he's got an axe to grind. He brings up an interesting point. Because Matt, he likes to be in bass fishing contests, bass tournaments. So they, he's expressing his concern that people are taking the same level,

they want to persecute smallmouth bass the same way they're persecuting the pike minnow. He takes offense to the idea, because a thing that theycuting the pike minnow he takes offense to the idea because a thing that they find with the pike minnows you know how they don't pay till the fish hits nine inches yeah a thing you run into there is that the the once the pike minnow hits a certain size he's more likely to have like he's more likely to become passivorous, which means the fish is more likely to become a fish eater. So when he hits a certain size threshold, his diet might switch to feeding on, like, salmon and fry. Oftentimes, when you're trying to, like, destroy a fish, or, like, to remove non-natives

through mechanical means. Steve, I've got to interrupt, man, because the expert in the row five, man, he is like. Wait, what? The expert in row five has raised his hand about 20 times. He just tore his shoulder. We're messing up. We must be messing up the pike minnow thing really bad because this dude's fixing to have a conniption. I would love to hear what it is because I just can't picture that what I'm saying is not correct.

Go ahead. Go ahead. Just clarify it quick. Quick and dirty, please. Pike minnow feed on the lamprey eel also. Not so much the salmon smolt, but the lamprey eel also. So much that the bottom walker worm rig harnessed for walleye. The state of Oregon and Washington.

Oh, you got to do it fast, though. Fast. Faster. Okay, so he's do it fast, though. Fast. Faster. Okay, so he's pointing out, he's pointing out, a gentleman in the audience is pointing out that they like to feed on lampreys. Cool? Yeah. Matt Elliott was telling me.

It's just a question, you know, the state of Oregon and Washington have released the limits on the smallmouth bass, the walleye, and the catfish. There's no limit. You can catch as many as you want. Now get to that. Oh, sorry. So, rub your shoulder, but I'm trying to lay out a little ixiology here. Now, I do want to add that part of the reason for that nine-inch rule is they are likely preyed upon below nine inches by other species, too. Great.

Right? Great. Thank you. Stay with me, if you will, for a moment. moment weren't you saying something yes now you guys are familiar with the infestation in the mississippi and ohio river rivers of the silver carp big head carp so they come in there and they they come in and they open up a commercial fishery to try to remove the fish. And they set a certain mesh size. So you can run a large square mesh and you'll pull out the largest of the carp. The thing that you find when you're doing mechanical

removal, so not poisoning, but doing mechanical removal of fish that you're trying to get rid of, is you don't, you wind up not affecting the biomass, but you affect the makeup of the population. So someone might look and say a certain system is going to support X pounds of some species of fish. As you remove all those larger pike minnows, you wind up with the same poundage of pike minnows living in the system. You're just affecting sort of the demographics of the population. Matt Elliott's grief with the persecution of smallmouth is that he was telling me how as a smallmouth gets bigger, his diet actually switches to crayfish. But by removing the largest smallmouth, you are selecting four smallmouth that are more likely to be eating salmonids. Tracking?

Yeah. That's all I'm trying to get across, man. Now, if the gentleman from row five wants to come up and explain the rest of it, fine but i'm still trying to get to this chasing are we good on this yeah i'm cool chafing chafing this this last i'm gonna say about chafing but we covered a lot of cures from a guy who took bologna we talked about this guy took a slice of bologna and put it in his gluteal crease in order to in order to he got chafed so bad his buttocks that he couldn't move and took his sandwich apart and stuck a bologna slice

for those that are just listening ste Steve is rubbing his hands together as to mimic the gluteal crease. Yes, to mimic the actions of your buttocks rubbing, and he put a slice of bologna in there and walked out, walked back to his truck. This guy writes in, he's a chef, and they use cornstarch, of course, in the commercial kitchen. But he also keeps a box of cornstarch in the bathroom. Apparently he's a healthy-sized fella. And while he's cooking, he cooks with such gusto that he gets chafed while cooking. And when it happens, he will go in and use his cornstarch, which he says is a great cure.

And he uses cornstarch to treat his nether regions and alleviate his chafing. And he tells a humorous story about a new feller coming into work. And he goes to thicken a sauce and knows that he's thickening with cornstarch and goes into the bathroom and can't find the cornstarch. And you can see where that whole thing goes from there. But he says that, he says in closing, he's a good writer. He's like, in closing, don't be afraid to bring a little cornstarch with you in the field. It's odorless, easy to carry, and in a pinch, you can make a quick tempura batter. Which is something we've never done.

Yeah, we've never done. That's a new one. Okay, we've got to talk about another thing, which we talked about before. This is the part where we just talk about stuff we already talked about, but we add a little tidbit. A little cornstarch. A little cornstarch. Takes away the moisture.

To the recipe. Yanni, can you lay the groundwork on the – I want to talk about the Florida Panther thing, because I feel like we talked about Florida Panthers, and I feel like we we talked about florida panthers i feel like we we we we created confusion well that well we just misrepresented the uh gladesman the hunters yeah but lay the first bit they had a study in florida and well we had a correction a guy that worked on the study wrote in and clarified all this for us. The problem is, is when we get this stuff, it's just so hard to go and then research the next like five levels that you need to.

You know, we don't have all these people on hand that are just, you know, waiting to write an email before they even know we're going to talk about it. They sure write in after we talk about it. They do. So, yeah, we use it for one of our, we did a game called Two Lies and a Truth, where we were telling stories on stage, and people had to choose which one was the truth. The truth that night was that there was a study in Florida where they had collared 263 deer, roughly something like that. It was in South Florida, and they were just going to check on like what was affecting the population there from habitat to predators um what else were they looking for yeah we can yeah various things but one of the main things was mortality so you you get a death signal yeah on your collar like it doesn't move for typically i think it's 48 hours or some amount

of time it doesn't move then you rush out to to try to ascertain what went down yeah figure out who done it and um so out of 263 how many were killed now like most of them right over four years it ended up being like 240 were killed or something like that um i'm gonna butcher the numbers now but but mostly the best predator was the panther, cougar. The Florida panther, I think they killed 150. Something like that, yeah. Bobcats got like five. Who else was there?

The bear got one. The bear got one. Humans only got one. And they were even told that they could shoot these collared bucks. And even like the website page that I was reading even had a picture of a nice buck with a collar on it. And they were like, please shoot these guys if you see them, because it needs to be part of the data set. Yeah. What they were trying to say to people was like, ignore the collar. So if you wouldn't shoot it, but it has a collar, don't. If you would shoot it, but it has a collar don't if you would shoot it

but it has a collar do you understand like forget the collars exactly which is tricky because I wouldn't want to shoot a deer the collar because it would seem not mysterious to me they'd be like someone else was it was like you know thank you yeah yeah you see I was gonna's inappropriate for a nine-year-old yeah it would be like if you were to and then found out someone else had um but we talked about this at length once and and someone also, just a side note, but someone brought up like, I'm not doing anything to that thing. No, you're not.

It's back on. Oh. Anyway, a Florida man. Oh, no, but real quick. Yeah, Florida man. A Florida man. But real quick. Shout out to Deere.

Why is it cool? Like, I wouldn't want to shoot someone with a collar, but why is it cool to shoot a duck with a band? It's just different. Then people get all excited and make necklaces out of it. You don't see a dude with a necklace of a giant radio collar. Like a Run-DMC necklace with a... I'm switching to handheld, man. Why did my mic go bad? Oh, we're getting to that.

So what happened? You didn't gather that we're going to take a meandering approach to this? We only got another two hours. So what we didn't know was that in the study area there was i think three different uh regions and units and one of them um had no hunting at all one of them was like a walk-in only area and then one i think you could access through atv so um that took a lot of hunters out of the equation then it was a bunch of the area was buck only and like two-thirds of the 263 deer were females were does that were collared so all of a sudden you bring the number of like possible deer to

shoot way down so really the there's a fraction and an antler restriction yeah so i just said okay so i had 263 deer it was a fraction you know they were available for hunters to actually shoot so and i called them the lowly Florida hunter. Cause we were just thinking, man, how did like the Panther just out hunt you that bad? But the writer was like kind of prefaced the whole, the guy that wrote in perhaps the whole thing being like kind of sticking up for his tribe. Yes. It's like, it's not Florida, Florida hunters are cold blooded killers. Don't you make no mistakes. Yeah, given the opportunity, they would have got it done.

That's right. What he finished with, though, that I thought was really interesting, is how he said that that zone, which none of us, I think, from where we live, consider that you'd have sort of contentious wildlife issues in Florida, right? I don't know. I just have an idea of Florida that's not that. But he just said, like, imagine if LA was in the middle of Idaho. He's like, there it's Naples and then what's like a big city, Miami on the other coast, right? And then you just got this crazy wildlife corridor in the middle. And so when you have like a management meeting and the

public's invited, you can just imagine, man man it's like every single character of the united states is you know different kinds of minds that are showing up there to give their opinions it's pretty wild yeah it's a for he calls it wolf country yeah it's a fighting state when it comes to wildlife because they had the they had their they won their bear season back and then lost their bear season people fight over critters in florida but what did our path of the puma guys say though like to out hunt a cat you better be doing some serious hunting i mean that's a deer every four days right yeah deer can be yourself yeah about a deer every week and you got 250 you got about 250 lines in florida it's a small population but people too just the way people work uh a lot of people i think over ascribe you know i mean like like people don't want to have any competition so i think that some people hear

some people know that there's mountain lions out there and they'll blame, they're not like damn cars kill all the deer, which kill a hell of a lot more deer in Florida than mountain lions, but you kind of like pick the thing that seems most like you to hate. So I think that people have a feeling

that they do more damage than perhaps they do, but then this study really kind of throws that off because this study, they're just steadily whittling away at these things. Someone brought up this idea, and they wrote in about another piece of work that got done, where there was, I don't know the details on it. I'm sure we'll hear about it. But someone and some biologists, I believe working in Africa, were looking at when you do a collaring study, that you're kind of throwing it off because they argue, this person who was writing in argues, that an animal that's wearing a collar is actually more likely to be killed by predators. More likely than his herd mates to be killed by predators.

Giannis has a feeling why this is. Yeah, I interpret it as, I think he put this in the email, is that one of the best defenses that herd animals have is when they're attacked, they're allowed to move as a mass and sort of distract the predator that's coming in there. It's harder for the predator to isolate one single animal because they all kind of look the same. They're moving the same. But when in his study that he was referencing,

I think that they had painted the horns pink or red. And he was saying that he thought that because they were losing animals very quickly in their study and he just felt like the predators were able to get in there and go, oh, if I just keep chasing that one with the pink horns, eventually that one's going to get tired. It's easy for me to stay on track. So you're saying if you were like a smart wildebeest, you might go and like put a sticker on your bro and run beside him during when the lion's coming around, put a little glitter on

him or something like that, line him out. My interpretation, not my interpretation, but I think an idea that I would like to add on that I can't tell you is right or wrong, but it feels right to me, would be that they might also see it and register it as not just that they can keep a track of it amid the confusion, register it as different, perhaps wounded. Pointing out that this guy took offense to the idea that when you put a collar on them, you make them more likely to get killed, even though he wasn't really able to totally back it up. A poaching thing I want to talk about real quick. This guy had the most genius idea of any poacher I ever heard. He poaches a buck out of season or gets an extra buck and then decides to freeze the whole damn thing to check it in next season yeah buddy but gets caught did it say how he got caught does it say i can't i can't find out how he got caught it was a 20 yes freezer burn it's a like a you know it's like this is like a real like a michigan style it's a 20 point 20 point buck what type of freezer are

we talking about i don't know i don't know i'm telling you like curl it up yeah does it just like bedded down in this freezer for a year how come no one's asking me how old he is how old the the buck is no the man is 56 you guys just asked me parts i don't know no one's saying no one's like uh what was his last name what street did he live on what county did he live in dubuque don't know the caliber freeze is the thing how many points was it well yeah but you got to understand in the midwest i'm just starting this this is indiana when when we were a little kid if if a tv host named fred trost could hang his wedding ring on a point that was a point that is

that's why in michigan you'd be like you hear billy shot a 13 pointer and you see the buckets like you know like your hand right the size of that but it'd be like any little protuberance it is it is a count so they're calling it but but it does it's a two it's a 200 inch whitetail whoa so here's a funny thing where it ties into something you've been talking about lately he's been talking about ways in which you get in trouble for killing stuff. So this guy gets $100 of community service, 540 days of probation, and a $741 in fine and court costs. And then he has a paltry replacement fee of 500 bucks which is where the state puts a value this is just the portion where the state says that deer is worth 500 bucks to the people of the state like what we have you know what we have invested in the animal its value is 500 bucks. Or 500 bucks.

One stayed over in Ohio. So that buck must have been an orphan. Like, there's no game manager watching over him, nothing. He was just kicked to the curb, that buck. Because they didn't have any money into him. Yeah, 500 bucks. A one-year-old 200-inch buck. No, he's saying something totally different. He was saying, like, why is it valued so low?

Right. Because in Ohio, the replacement fee on this buck would be, Giannis knows what it is. He did the math. $16,500. That's Ohio's replacement fee. Indiana's replacement fee is $500. Indiana's got a lot going on.

They're busy. They got a lot. They're churning out so many 200-inch bucks. They drove the value down. Oh, another guy froze a 200-inch buck? Ah, that's 500 bucks. We're fine. We'll be fine.

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 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 On X hunt team. Some of our favorites are first light Schnee's vortex, federal, and more as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try on X out.

If you visit on X maps.com slash meet on X maps.com slash meet. Welcome to the, to the on X club.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Do you remember talking about, I was really surprised and pleased about a particular snake that I heard had a barbed pecker? Remember this? This was one of the two peckers? Two of them, right? Yeah, well, no. He was a double peckers, not barbed pecker remember this this is one of the two of them right yeah well no he was a double peckers double not barb there was a snake and then a snake guy was explaining that virtually

all snakes have two peckers someone was explaining to me something interesting about ducks where he's saying most ducks only have a cloaca which is like a uni hole right like all comings and goings happen in and out of these male female holes that you line up three percent of birds have penises ducks have penises some of them are corkscrewed and may be barbed and a duck's can be longer than the duck itself. Eight to 17 inches. Now I'm not going to like add a lot to this. I got nothing to add to that there was a dirty limerick there was a dirty limerick i knew as a child that had to do with they had to do with an anatomy part that was threaded and it was and someone had to search high and low to find a compatible partner then they found one that they thought was compatible wouldn't want to be in a left-handed thread in the way of dirty it was just an old dirty limit again for the listeners who are you who can't see us steve is making a corkscrew motion with his finger corkscrew motion

to explain this fact of of duck anatomy yep um jumping into something I wanted to talk about. Freezing crab. You have experience with blue crabs, Giannis. I do. Can you walk through crab freezing for a fellow that rode in? Yeah, I can, but through my father-in-law, because I personally haven't frozen the crabs myself, but I know how he did it because I hooked him up with a New Weston back sealer. And so he, at first the crabs were punching through the bags. They have pointy little edges all over them. So he likes to clean them first. He likes to clean out the lungs and the guts and sprays them all out. So nice, pretty clean crabs. But it still looks like a crab, but he hasn't totally

no no yeah and so he just he started putting parchment paper i believe in there on on the top and bottom that gave it just enough it would flatten out the the spiny parts and the bumps to not break the seal sorry paper plates that's a good idea paper plates um and so we ate them over the holidays so they were frozen you know mid-summer probably and then we ate them over uh christmas and uh they were fine they tasted just like fresh grass does he you guys don't you guys don't boil them first no no they were not not not pre-boiled i wonder wonder why, like, because my trainings in crab have always been when you're going to freeze crab, you always boil it. Like, Dungeness, 10 minutes, very salty water, then freeze.

Only freeze the knuckles. And then, or we pick it and vac bag it. But then someone recently turned me on to picking it, and this is like like sportsmen sports women everyone's always trying to do stuff in milk soaking fillets and milk this and that milk but pick the dungeness crab meat put it in a jar in milk and freeze it and i did and i let that thing sit there for a calendar year i don't know why I threw in the word calendar. Picture a calendar.

You're like, not just any year, brother. This is a calendar year. Frozen for a whole year, and it was good. It wasn't like brand new crab, but it was good. Frozen that way. Buttermilk. Oh, row five's got his hand up again. Listen, row five.

Row five. He's like, half and half. You're going to pop your shoulder blade out, man. Just calm down. I feel bad. I've got to make an admission here. I'm from Maryland, the blue crab state. I never froze crab in my life.

You say crab training. My crab training was to pick them and eat them and get drunk. It was the only training I ever had. There's no need to get a freezer involved in it. It would have been shameful to get a freezer involved in that situation. Except for to make the beer cold quicker. But we have a service to reply to that. I can't tell the man. You can tell him that. He wants to freeze them. Listen, Ben, if you're an old man

and you're a grandfather and you want to spoil your grandchildren that love to eat crabs and they only come a couple times a year, you will catch them. They're not old enough

to drink beer. Yes. I like how there was zero division on the pick crab, drink beer. Not everybody's like, wait a minute, let me tell you how to freeze a crab. crab drink beer but everybody's like wait a minute you drink beer you're going to pick up the crabs at the place drink beer on the way back and while you're picking them it's all the same it's methodology so you're saying it's cool you're

saying it's like really bad if you're from Maryland to do this we freeze them I got no problem freezing them. I think it might have to be with how successful of a trapper you are. That's true. Because if you can only get like onesies, twosies, if you're like stacking them up. Another freeze question. And Giannis feels like we've answered this a bunch,

but it comes up. Maybe this will be the last time, but can you freeze, thaw, and then freeze meat? Yes. Yes, you can. I say yes, but you can't freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw, freeze, freeze, thaw. I'm kidding. Yeah, I think you can go to town with that whole business and you're not gonna i bet we could pepsi challenge the whole room nobody would tell us how many times can you what'd you just say i said we could pepsi challenge that's interesting that's interesting someone i forgot about this. I stole that from you.

Well, I know, but someone was like, he was saying when you're trying to test someone, let's say someone has a weird thing where they think that something's better than something else. Like the case I always use is my brother. He used to have a girlfriend. He thought it was gross to reheat coffee from the day before. Right.

And then he was like, you can't't tell and she thought she could tell and so he's he realized that what he thinks is she can detect the temperature differential between it coming off the coffee maker and it coming out of the microwave so he took day old coffee and new coffee and made them be at exactly the same temperature at which point she couldn't pick it up. And someone was telling me, I even wrote this down somewhere because I've been wanting to mention it. There's a thing called triangle testing. Like, let's say you're telling me that you can tell a certain kind of beer, and I think there's no way you can pick that beer out of a crowd. Triangle testing is when you do two of A and one of B, and then the person has to come in and this is how they just professionally

do this the person has to come in and pick out b so you put out three two are the same like tell me which one's different because that way you're eliminating it from being a 50 chance they're going to get it right right so pepsi challenge go ahead because that's what i usually think is the best way to do it so let's just say that we had uh two pieces of me that had been frozen thawed frozen thawed and then one piece of me that had been uh frozen thawed i just don't think anybody in the room could pick it out. Yeah, I think the word that the resistance to freeze-thaw-freeze comes from, which is inherently freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw, unless you're eating it frozen.

It comes from like food. It comes from restaurant people who are kind of like, you know, the word Nazi gets abused these days. But like restaurant people are like the the food safety nazis right yeah and so i think that they have all these like best practices and if you got health inspectors and on and on and on but i've been doing it my whole damn life yeah i'm still probably not following the rules of a restaurant. No, not at all.

But the reason where I use freeze, thaw, freeze with game meat, and I know you guys do, is you bone something out, and it's like you're in a hurry or wherever you're traveling or don't have time, and you bone something out and put it in gallon-sized Ziploc bags and kind of take them sharpie and sort of write on there what you think is in the bag. And then you later thaw that bag out, sort it out, wonder what idiot buddy of yours wrote what was written on the bag because it doesn't match up to what you feel has come out of the bag. Sort it all out, clean it all up get it in recipe ready pieces then i refreeze it

then i thaw it and eat it i do that all the time just for time's sake you don't want to if you come in you drop a deer off and you're going to do something else you're not just gonna let it sit if you're gonna dry age it or you're gonna age it somehow maybe but freeze it all the time and thaw it and freeze it again and thaw it and freeze it again not a big deal spend your whole life with people telling you you can't do that. Yeah, these people out here yelling, no! Now, because of the mislabeling thing, I just started keeping a hand grinder in the kitchen because I had so many instances being like, oh, yeah, I'm going to have steak.

I'm going to have, and I open it up and it finally thaws out. And I'm like, oh, boy boy, gonna have a burger tonight. I think in our case, I don't want to throw anybody under the bus because they're not our idiot friends, but they just have less experience looking at me and then writing down what it is. But it's the camera guys. For sure.

When I hit a mislabeled bag, I don't think it's you. I think it's other people. I got a question about that. Okay. They talk about the person eating the meat and the person that's cooking the meat, if they can tell the difference. Oh, do you understand? Yeah. Yeah. He's asking that, like, as the preparer, the cook, the chef, however you want to put it, like when you're working with that piece of meat, do you notice a difference? Or does the person that's just putting it in their mouth and chewing on it notice a difference? If it's been frozen and thawed or frozen and thawed multiple times? I know it because it lets off a lot more water.

But no. And you know what that would be that's double blind the the taste that the no double blind is when the person administering the test doesn't know either that's double blind that's nothing to do with what that guy's asking the answer is go ahead freeze th freeze, thaw, freeze. Freeze, thaw. You're totally fine. Yes. What about bear meat?

Bear meat is delicious. Oh, yeah. So bear meat, trichinosis. There are those who believe, there are those who believe that, and there's some evidence that supports this that freezing it sterilizes it the right amount of freeze sterilizes it and that now prolonged exposure at lower temps sterilize it we're going to do an article about this which we'll have at themediator.com when it's ready and it would be that you could take, so it's like it takes 165 to kill Trichonella spiralis or the various species of Trichonella larva.

165 kills it. But it might be that you could sous vide bear meat for eight hours or a day at 140 and get it. So it might be possible with new technologies for future generations to eat raw, not raw, to eat rare bear meat safely. But I hesitate to go and tell people to do stuff that I don't really know is right, having been afflicted. But yeah, there's some, it seems to be that. But then here's the deal too, is like, like trichinosis, we say trichinella spiralis is a very common form, but it seems that northern varieties might be more freezing, that might be more resistant to freezing. Northern varieties of the trichinella, what have you, can handle that more because I

believe there have been cases where people have contracted it for meat that had been frozen for a long time. And so southern varieties, it could kill them from freezing. There are northern varieties that can't, so it gets a little bit tricky. So I don't know if we're going to be eating rare bear meat anytime soon, but I think it's on the horizon. There's hope. There's hope. I want to revisit a thing we talked about a bunch, which is the saga of Steve Kendrott's busted deer antler.

Because I've told the story so many times, I would like someone else to tell the story, and then I'll tell why I've now changed my mind about it. Cal, you were there. Just tell the story and then i'll tell the why i've now changed my mind about it cal you were there just tell the story cal yeah so the the quick and dirty on the story is you have this two guys that uh are buddies one guy shoots a nice uh ck deer stag, it's got a broken tine. Right. His buddy that same season shoots a cichodier stag that upon caping the stag, he finds a tine embedded in the deer's neck i believe yes correct out of curiosity he takes that tine and is able to match it to steve kendrott's seek a deer stag and it is a perfect match yes that is the story that's the story and then we came into it and berated the man on this show. The man kept the tine.

So Steve's got the deer that once owned the tine, and the man keeps the tine that belongs to Steve's deer. Yeah, and they were happy. They were happy. They were friends. Yeah, they were going on through life, and then we had to come in and stir the pot and we i thought that was an offensive idea and i thought that steve should get his time back and we berated the man so much that he sends steve the time

but now i feel like i was wrong because, because this is all about guilt as well. This is all guilt. Like he caught wind that these people are talking about how bad he is, that he didn't, and then sends them the damn time. But then someone was like, it used to be that two people had a cool story and two people could have guests come to their home.

They could point at a shelf and say, see that? And then tell about it. But now only one guy has a cool story. Why only one? Because the other guy don't even have the damn time. Yeah, no conversation. No one's going to be like, hey, what's that all about?

And you go, oh, I'll tell you what that's all about. But now only one guy's got a good story. But a guy wrote in about something that was interesting. So he's at a party and a guy, he says, one of the guests at the party starts some and he uses quotes. He starts some quote shit at the party. And his cousin, who's the host of the party, goes to calm the situation down. And the man who started the problem punches him right in the face real hard. Knocks him out. He leaves. The next morning, the guy that got punched, he's hungover, but he wakes up and realizes he no longer has his tooth.

And they go and scour all around the yard and can't find the tooth. A week later, everyone gets word that the man who punched him is sick and in the hospital. They eventually find out that he's got some sort of infection and it turns out that this tooth is buried in this man's hand causing a nasty infection makes him sick and he pointed out that no one ever called him and gave him his tooth back so he thinks that if that's how it goes with humans, so it should go with deer and deer hunters. On a related note, a person had this experience. His brother-in-law gets a new bow.

You know this story. His brother-in-law gets a new bow, and they go out in the rain, and he's going to shoot the bow. And I'm going to get this this right how he does this the string slips out of his grip because it's a wet string and smacks his hand and he doesn't think anything of it but he has a lot of problems with his hand after that five years later he's sitting in a hot tub and out of his hand comes the knocking point. Which he carried around. Not the knock of the arrow, but the little knock point that's on like a traditional bow where you put the knock of the arrow onto the string

just underneath it that holds it there. Yeah, the little metal ferrule that you pinch onto a string, he unknowingly carried it in his hand for five years. And then it popped out. And he sent me a carried it in his hand for five years. And then it popped out. And he sent me a picture of both his hand and the thing. So I believe him. You guys. Do we believe about the hot tub? He might've been making that up for a fact. Yeah. He might've been doing something weird. So I was in a hot tub with like six chicks.

So yeah, I was in a hot tub with a bunch of ladies. Has anybody got a birthday tonight no one today nobody oh there you go good we'll get we'll get back to you you know i guided a dude um and his bow blew up on him he was letting down called this bull in. I told him, don't shoot it, because I felt very strongly that we're going to get on this real big bull. And as he was letting his bow down, it explodes. No idea why. The string smashes his left hand that he's supporting the bow with. And for at least a month, the guy would send me pictures of what looked like a perfect tattoo of the bowstring and the D-loop on the web of his left hand. So I could see how that knock point would get embedded. Have a little bit of energy

to get in there. Has anybody got a birthday tomorrow? How about the kids here tonight? We got lots of kids here. Are you here for my birthday? Yeah, they got a lot of life left, though. Yeah, but we don't... That'll be fine.

That'll be fine. I don't like to reward... I don't like to reward youth. I like to find people in the autumn of their existence and try to lavish the enjoyment on them. A couple of different questions. One, you guys have a new organ, finally has a new established roadkill law.

That's something I've really failed to understand at all is how some states would have it be that you. It seems like a God given right that if you were to run something over like you're driving your car and you run something over that there could be the possibility of an argument that you should not be able to eat that thing and the Lord said it shall be delicious it's just it's like it's like oh no no no no we know you'd like to go home and utilize it and eat it but it's very important to us that you let it bloat on the side of the road. And a track flies and smell bad. It's important to us that that's what happens to that deer. I have, as a conscientious objector, I have violated roadkill laws many times and almost did the other day. But it happened to be that the dead deer was in

my yard and i felt like i would be a suspect and he had been hit real good but so oregon has a new thing where you can go and if people can file and get a permit for roadkill and so since january they have i think since about a week ago um you guys state has issued 167 permits for deer and elk so that's pretty nice we had uh roadkill sandwiches the other day you were eating roadkill sandwiches yeah oh uh dirt meth dirt's dad, Pop Dirt, he smacked. You guys know him, right? Saw somebody else smack a deer right next to their house. And so he scooped it up. Apparently it was tougher than hell.

And they pressure cooked it. And that's what we ate when we were ice fishing the other day he's a he's a thrifty dude thrifty dude we would usually limit like we would usually limit picking up deer to that someone you saw someone hit it or you like are running somewhere real quick and then you run there real quick and there's no dead deer and then you're running back and there is and you do all the math in your head and you realize are you on foot at this point no no it'd be dry dry i mean like you like you're like i went to my buddies and then an hour later you know and you figure out that's

what went on we had we had interesting stories from two people were talking about like rules governing roadkill. And they're kind of related. I didn't catch one of these guys, the state one of these guys is from. But a motorist in front of a gentleman hits a deer. The deer is still alive in the road. That motorist gets out and drags the still living deer out of the road and departs. This guy happens to have a concealed carry permit.

He calls the police and says, I have a deer here that a guy in front of me hit. It's still alive. I have a pistol with me. I would like to keep the deer and I would like to be able to shoot the deer because it's still alive. And they say, you cannot shoot that deer. We will have an officer out in 30 minutes. So he goes out and strangles the deer. Because he doesn't want to break the law.

What about the next logical step is that if you can't shoot it strangle it but that's where it's funny so then an officer shows up and he says well here's what happened and the officer explains that he sure is glad that he strangled it because they sure as hell wouldn't want to shoot it a guy from tex Texas wrote in about this where he comes across an accident where a deer's been hit. And there's an officer there observing the wounded deer. He gets out and the officer explains that she does not feel right shooting the deer and would he? Hands him the service pistol yeah he wrote in about how strange he thought this was he shoots twice in the air

hands him the service pistol which he uses to dispatch the deer one thing leads to another and eventually he has it tucked into his pants. You can't yada yada that. As they're messing around, and it gets to a part of the interaction where he pulls the pistol out of his waistband and hands it back to the officer, and then goes about his business with his deer.

That's awful gangster, that guy. It's like very, very gangster. Yeah, I mean, you know my little sister's a cop, right? I do. I don't think that's part of the gig. I don't think they cover that in school. No, it's Texas, Cal. Well, what was, we talked recently on another show we talked about

uh what the most valuable thing you learned like what's the most valuable thing you learned from your father and i remember you were looking for a little clarity as we discussed this and you meant like in life in general or like hunting fishing outdoor yeah type things and there's a there's a miss there because we should have talked about as well like what would be the most valuable thing you learn from your mother but i think that guys get so like the whole father son thing really can kind of take a person over but what was the most valuable thing you learned from your mom? Hunting, fishing outdoors, cooking, you know. Yana, are you taking this one?

You had to throw the cooking in there. Is it helpful or not helpful? I just learned how to vacuum, really, from my mother. You know, that's all she did. I'm kidding. What did he say? Well, with dads, you're like, yeah, hunting, fishing. And then mom is like, hunting, fishing, cooking.

So I just went a step farther and said, vacuuming. Oh, yeah, but the deal is there's like a reality to it that all the guy like and you it's hard to unpack you can't unpack all the nurture nature things it just gets really complicated but just a reality that at a time you know all the all the guys in my family participated in some way in in our media area like all the guys participated to some extent in hunting and fishing and it just so happens that virtually none of the women in my family did not because i don't think it because of native proclivity but just because of you create like a cultural inertia yeah and your mom did most of the wild game cooking right other than If it wasn't deep fried, my mom cooked it.

Right. And my dad deep fried everything, but he kept the deep fryer in the garage. So like made it almost more like it was almost more like mechanicing. You know, you had to go to the garage to cook it. So he had made it his own, right? Let's be clear. My dad vacuumed the hell out of the rug. He was was a good vacuumer your dad back oh yeah do not back up every night man I don't know my mom would always tell me like you know wash your hands eat your vegetables

stuff like that so that was key but beyond that um same as you, my mom never hunted, never. Encouragement. She encouraged you to hunt. She encouraged me to hunt? Oh, I don't know. You never met my mom. Calm down. Oh, I feel like doing a you're my I joke, but I'm not going to.

Your mom was not encouraging. Encouragement, that would be a good one. I'll give that to you. But my mom was accepting, not only accepting of the things that we did, but passionate about our passion, right? So there's a way to inject, you know, it'll be like this with my wife as well.

There's a way to inject energy into something that you aren't passionate about by accepting it, promoting it, and understanding that, you know, all our wives, all our moms understand that it's something that we are driven by, and they put no blockades in front of us, no barriers in front of us. They help us push them down, right? So that's what my mom did for me. Although she wasn't out there like my dad was, she was pushing down every barrier I had to go out and hunt. Everything she could do for me to make sure I was prepared to go,

everything she could do to make sure it was cooked when I got back, she was always pushing down those barriers to help us go outside. So I appreciate that. That's good. Yeah. My mom was pretty thrifty, and the early hunting clothes that we had, my mom would buy wool and sew us wool suits to wear out hunting. They had a garden, and she would can. So we had a canning room full of all the glass jars lined up.

She would can deer meat in the jars. When we had brought home squirrels, she would help us get all the squirrels parted out. And then she would cram them in a crock pot and pour in cream of mushroom soup and cook them for us. She would roast ducks for us. She would, on rainy, cold days, she would drive us around to check our muskrat traps in her car. And it was all of this kind of like, it wasn't glamorous, but it was all this like really supportive stuff where she recognized there was value in it. But to get a sense of, so I'm 45. My dad was 50 when he had me.

He was born in 1924. She was quite a bit younger than him. But there was like a different time. And to get a sense of how dudes interacted, like how men interacted with women, or my father interacted with my mother, would be that my mother would go and, like an anecdote that explains sort of that relationship and how it pertains.

My mother on Thanksgiving would, like, get a turkey, not shoot a turkey, but we would always cook a store-bought turkey on Thanksgiving. So they're frozen in this big damn plastic bag, you know, and she would thaw the thing out in a tub of water. She'd get the giblets out and boil the giblets and make all this stuff season the bird stuff the bird roast the bird do everything that's all the work guys all day would do nothing to help and then it would be done and my dad would make this big show of carving the bird and it'd be like now now little miss we all know where your talent's in

uh did you ever see me do this yeah i i will uh cut its leg off because that that's beyond you and like she would just allow this kind of stuff to happen that's a perfect analogy for like how we think about our dads and our moms when it comes to hunting or anything outside really you know and traditionally it's true that we don't give them credit you know we build our fathers up as these great figures and we talk about them all the time my dad all the time like taking you out then you think palm it your mom like my mom would buy and stitch us wool hunting clothes and she doesn't get to make it into a story sorry moms i know love you man rough road man i gotta tell you i uh i grew up a little different we know cal

hey tell counterfeits mike why does that sound past tense come on let me see your thing. Your thing's hanging. You get a hanging thing. Oh, look at this. Thanks, Jeff. Yeah. Friends help. I think you sound all right.

Yeah. This is still safe. Are you guys hearing Cal all right? Do you hear Cal? Here, here, here. Hello. I don't want to. Hello, my friends.

Hello. All right. So my mom would be out, like, crawling around on her hands and knees catching grasshoppers so we could go fish. And fanatical fisher woman. She super obsessive about fishing. Her mom, my grandma, is the exact same way. Grandma never threw a fish back in the river in her entire life. Encouragement from that lady.

You won't believe, I have a picture. She wanted to learn how to fly a fish at 89 years old. She called me up and was like, you need to drive up here and teach me how to fly a fish. And I said, yeah, no problem. I'll be up, you know, in July. She said, Ryan, I'm 89. You got to come up here this weekend. Which was an eight hour drive, but I did it. And she had an oxygen tank on her back and she had it turned off. This woman's got one lung. So she could preserve her oxygen so she could prolong her fishing. I was holding on to, I was like, well, you got to cast a little bit further. You got to cast a little bit further.

And she waded into the river, and I had to grab her by basically her pants and her underwear, which was not the most comfortable thing for the grandson, to prevent her from falling into the river. And I caught one big fish that day. And I have this great picture that I think my mom got as I released this big brown trout into the river. Her face was like torture and her hands were out like this and she's going, no! So those women were absolutely vital in my enjoyment of the outdoors. Lots of encouragement, and some of my absolute first outdoor memories

were because of those two gals. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, 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, 24 K topo maps, way points and tracking. That's right. You were always talking about, we're always talking about on X here on the meat eater podcast. Now you, you guys in the great white North can 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 on x 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. Yanni, you have to have a good one, Yanni, because you're least tolerant of your ma jokes. Oh, I got a lot to bring to the table for this one. And to be clear, I hope nobody takes that. Damn, I was making a joke on a bad joke about the vacuum, so please. Yeah, you were doing. I think you say you tell me that you know me better than the reaction I got there on that one.

So you were like you were parodying. Thank you. You were parodying. Tucker Carlson impression. I don't know who that is. Got to keep up on your current events go ahead what's tell us about your mom he's a he's he's a hunter and angler is he yeah well he's gotta have a lot more time to do that i want what's interesting because i once i went to an event i went to an event one time, a TRCP event, and the MCs, who are friends, surprisingly,

it was MC'd by Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow, who are friends and both like to fish. Nah, I'm not joking. Go ahead, Yanni. Segway right to Yanni's mom. Go down. This is a tough one, because you know how much I love my ma. I don't call her ma, though. If you do a Yermah joke to Yanni, I one time did a Yermah joke to Yanni,

and he told me the next time I did that, I was going to see a blinding flash of silver from his power ring, and that would be the last thing I ever saw. Not ever. Just for the, yeah, at that moment. It would go black after that. When it comes to, I'll make it brief. When it comes to hunting and fishing, I really can't remember anything that she specifically would have taught me that would relate to the outdoors. I mean, certainly she encouraged us and she took us to Boy Scouts and whatnot. But earlier when we were hanging out, before the big crowd got here, somebody asked us about

like what we learned from our dads. Was that what the question was? Yeah. Okay. And so I was saying about how my dad at times it felt like he worked as like little child slaves. But from that, I got a good work ethic out of the deal, right? Well, I think my mom was like definitely the ying to that yang where she didn't really like hammer on us at all. But she just like whatever we did, no matter how bad we were, and we were bad at times, like really, really bad. Like drove her batty and to tears often, I think. But she always accepted us and always loved us. And I think over the years, it just taught, the biggest thing that she taught me

is to always just like, to love. Like no matter how bad someone can be or do something wrong, it's just to always like, just be like, it's fine and just continue to love and try to, you know, keep your heart open, not get down

on people. What's that got to do with hunting and fishing? What does it have to do with hunting and fishing? Keep your heart open, Cal. Keep your heart open.

You'll find out if you keep your heart open. Giannis is, Giannis is headed down in two or three days. He's driving down for his mother's surprise birthday party in Denver, Colorado. Is she going to listen to this, you think?

You know, there's a thing I wanted to, like a long air we've made where, you know, we're couple times about this. He's saying that we do Patrick McManus a great disservice by not celebrating Patrick McManus. Another person wrote in where he was observing how we use, we meaning the people on this year's program, we use sometimes creak and sometimes crick. Now, I want to combine these two things because Patrick McManus has the best working definition of what the difference between a creak and a crick is. He observed that if you can find a spare tire in it somewhere, it's a crick. It's a crick. In the absence of tires, it becomes a creek, which I feel works well. So there we've taken care of the Patrick McManus problem,

and I've explained how you can tell a creek from a creek. There's a question that we've wrestled with before. I want to get to it once. How do you get rid of a hunting or fishing partner? And how do you do it? When do you do it? And have you done it and he points someone to the reason i bumped this question up in the list is because i was reading something from someone who got kind of screwed real bad where they had there's a group of guys and they got some little uh public land hidey holes for ducks

they like to hunt um that aren't really well known and they got some private land spots they like to hunt and they got they took a buddy of theirs out and not only did the buddy then wound up guiding on those spots but uses pictures from the day they took him to those spots on his website and he goes he still wants to hunt with us should we let him but have you yeah how do you like have you ever had to go through the awkward and awkward breakup an awkward hunting and fishing breakup no it's not you it's me kind of thing yeah however you want to do it you no i've never had to i've always had pretty you know pretty good relationships with hunting partners you never had to end one never one

i've had some people that i thought were dicks that i never would have partnered up with it's generally avoided like it from the get-go from the get-go yeah yeah you got to be a good judge of character i imagine i got nothing man i've solved this through a couple of long walks and then there's just no more asking they call that a disciplinary hike and uh yeah there's been a a couple of uh just real straightforward like listen it's just not gonna work out yeah yeah that i can think of i don't want to get into specifics because i don't want to because none of them are dead. But I've never done, like I've never had, I've never been in a situation where it had to be articulated. Meaning that if it wasn't a good match, if the compatibility was bad, it would just, you you could i think that both parties would feel it i've never had where i'm like man i will never go somewhere with this guy again

and then had him still want to go somewhere like i think that that i'm maybe i'm not transparent about it but i've had it and we would even talk but we would even have a word for it where me and my main crew we would say that someone had been otc'd meaning they were out of the club and it just people get otc but you would never like notify someone you just would stop inviting them i thought maybe you threw them over a counter or something. No, not over the counter. All college days though, right? It's like big mixing pot of folks and you're at a party and everybody's like,

oh, I like to hunt, I like to hunt. And I had a couple of ones there. It was like, well, hey, I didn't get the call. I'm like, yeah, it's interesting that you brought that up. You're always late. You never pay for gas. You have no spots. You are out of the club.

But the fellow that rode in, I mean, he's very clear, just like, no way. Yeah, that feels egregious. but the fellow that wrote in, I mean, he is very clear. Just like, no way. Yeah. Yeah. That feels, that feels egregious. The times when I've, when I've broken up with someone, it would become,

it would be where there were, where there came to be a, like an incongruity or like, like a lack of consistency about how open I was being with where we're going. And then whether or not that would be like reciprocated where I would be like, I would go like, I'll take you to go check out this spot. And then you'd be like, hey, you know how you guys were getting into some, you know, whatever the other day, where were you guys exactly?

And they wouldn't want to divulge. And that always, I felt like, like the minute you open it up and offer someone, take someone or give someone a spot that there's like a thing. There's like a understanding for most people have that would be reciprocated. I'm starting to think now, did anybody ever break up with me and I didn't know it? I'm open to the idea that it's happened to me. We haven't hunted together lately, Ronella. No. I think I like to finish it off with the fact to say that it's like a very, as they call them, first world problems. It's like a luxury problem to have to be thinking about getting rid of hunting partners because i know a lot of people that

don't can't find a single good hunting partner at all you know so i think talking about like picking the best ones is very luxury to be thinking that way yeah that's a good point you know a lot of people just can't even find one to go out there. So you should just open your heart and keep loving the ones you have. That was good. That was good. That was good. I almost want to end the show on that, but there's two more things I want to talk about.

One thing that's interesting is there's an article that recently came out and it was about how wolves returning to oregon and washington like what that would mean for deer hunters and what that means for deer and an interesting study came out of university of washington where in the prep they found that in the this it gets kind of interesting about mule deer and white-tailed deer. It looks at mule deer and white-tails. They find that, they didn't put it this way, but this is the way I look at it, would be, no, no, that's not a loaded sentence, that in the presence of wolves, mule deer become more like mule deer.

And in the presence of wolves, white-tails become more like mule deer and in the presence of wolves white tails become more like white tails meaning that as mule deer face predation from wolves they will sometimes shift their areas where they hang out by miles intend to go into rockier steeper country than where they would like to be in the absence of wolves. Faced with predation by wolves, white-tailed deer, conversely, get more white-tailish and want to go out into flatter, more open country. One of the things they attribute this to is, you're familiar with, I'm going to hit you boys with some trivia.

What do you call the way a mule deer runs by his bounce? His bounce. Stot. Stot. They stot. And stotting gives them ability to jump and navigate through very broken, rough terrain. And it seems that for whatever reason, they find that they can evade wolves better up in the nasty stink. Whitetails want to get down where they can run long distances faster and see more and to put a little bit of a negative on it

they say that it mule deer in the presence of wolves move into areas where they're more likely to get preyed upon by mountain lions and deer move white tails move into areas where they're more likely to get smacked by a car and then shot by a driver borrowing the service pistol of a reluctant officer. They also gave some credence to a thing where, and they're looking at it, it's like hunters, as wolves move in and colonize more and more areas all the time, hunters oftentimes get a sense of that there's been a great decline in game numbers. And they open up the question in here that maybe as much as anything, people are realizing that where they go to traditionally find game isn't paying off. The assumption is that it's gone when in fact it might be radically redistributed.

And that they're not seeing... You know what? I got a thing for you. A friend of mine, former friend of mine, he didn't get OTC, we just lost touch. The writer Chris Offit wrote a book about family, to which his family took great offense. And he said, you know what? Write your own book. So I'm recapping. I'm recapping the work. I thought I was pretty clear.

I'm explaining something that someone worked on. He finds that. Where was I? The redistribution of game. Yeah. There's a redistribution of game, and they're finding more so than an overall decline but where it gets interesting is that it the the recap of it like it touches on the idea how ranchers have found that even though cattle are not getting killed necessarily in some cases they are not gaining weight as fast because

they're dealing with so much added stress and that so you might not see high mortality just from predation but the fact of being displaced and added stress could open animals up to higher mortality from other causes just a little something just just a short yeah short little something short brief uh before we get into the last thing i want to talk about what What is one, um, what is one thing you cook? Talk about one thing you cook that you feel like everybody should know about. Heart sandwiches. Go on. Yeah, man. Heart sandwiches. I stockpile my hearts and my tongues, but like a medium rare heart sandwich that you know the consistency of heart is perfect for a sandwich because you can cook an intact piece of meat you don't have to

like grind it up or slice it and it's got bite but no like pull to the bite you know it's not like a tough chunk of meat you know know, that's pretty good, man. That's a great T-shirt. It's got bite, but no pull to the bite. If you know what that means, I will listen to what you have to say. Because it's true. It's got bite, but there's no pull to the bite.

Yeah, hard sandals hard sandals how do you cook the heart i met a guy that was big into hard sandwiches one time i think it was in the state of new hampshire and he liked to cook his in tomato juice in a crock pot for whatever reason oh wow dudes with people with crock pots what are you gonna say now the whole cream of like the you know people with with crockpots. What are you going to say next? The whole cream of... People with crockpots. It comes with a can of soup. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So typically, like my preparation, right? Like I'll get my heart out, cut it open, lay it out, clean her all up. I was going to make an open heart sandwich joke. I thought that was too dad joke. Open heart sandwich? Yeah.

Your dad just had open heart sandwiches. It was a success. Olive oil, salt and pepper, let it sit, you know, mix her up in a bowl, salt and pepper. Let it sit. Mix her up in a bowl. Let it sit. And then caprese style, like basil, mozzarella, tomato, mayo, and garlic butter on the bun. Like focaccia bun. Yep. And then throw that heart on the grill.

Hot grill. Medium rare, on the sandow. Not sliced all thin. No. Because what's nice about the heart is you can literally, like, if you wanted to, you could put the heart on top of your bun and cut out the outline of the bun, make it like a perfect meat to bread ratio. You're going whole heart.

No, not a whole heart. No, and it's a laid open. Isn't that wasteful of the bread? Remember the open your heart joke? Yeah. Open heart sandwich? But not sliced thin. I'm just trying to track, make sure I'm...

Yeah, well, I'll make them. I got a pile of hearts. Go ahead. You guys ready? Because I can hit mine. No, hit yours. Hit yours. I'm still thinking.

My food thing that I wish everybody knew about. I don't want to follow you. Can I go? Because you'll have something great. Oh, no, mine's not great. No, it's not great? Okay, go ahead. I wish everybody knew about it.

No, if it's not great, go for it. They're going to have to wait. I've been doing a lot of dry aging lately. And because of that, the cuts in the hind leg that you might normally roast or you might normally put in a stew or something. I've been trying to smoke. We smoked in the office the other day, smoked a coos to your hind leg and just took the rounds and everything and just made steak.

Just smoked and sliced them thin. It was great. But I've discovered especially on the elk the eye of round is like this beautiful hidden tenderloin that just sits inside of that back leg so whether you age it or not you ought to be searing like probably reverse searing that eye of round just like it's a tenderloin man it's delicious don't forget about it a lot of people forget about doing that i love it the eye of round the eye of round someone was asking and i can't find a good answer they don't like when they age venison

and you cut the rind off they feel wasteful yeah discarding the rind and there's i don't i discard it it's also occurred to me i feel like someone to make a good contribution to wild game cuisine should notify the rest of us about a good use for the rind once it's trimmed off. Cow feels... Dog treats is one. That's good. That's a great one. Cow feels strongly that you shouldn't eat it, right?

I mean, you feel like it's... To go back to a point you made earlier, I mean, I ate some in the office the other day just try it that's me dealing with my own health i'm not gonna recommend yeah no i understand cal's got a lot of problems guys yeah he's working on him uh but you know white mold we white mold on salami and stuff like that all the time so um you know how i was dogging earlier on chefs and how persnickety they are about food safety? A chef buddy of mine, if it's not black and fuzzy,

he doesn't pay any attention to it. He doesn't like black fuzzy mold, but other than that. Did you notice hanging in my garage, I have that shade? Yeah, I did see that. Yeah, I'm waiting for that thing to become all rind. When it's rind all the way through, I'm going to cook it. Yeah!

As... As just a test. It has, like, hanging from a hook above his workbench, what is basically, at this point, a desiccated deer leg. No, it's all cleaned. Yeah, it's bone. It's been eaten leg. The shank. No, it's all cleaned. Yeah, it's bone.

It's been eaten except for the shank. But it looks as if like the dog snagged it off the highway and drug it into the house. I have a plan to what I'm going to do

with that thing. I just call it Sean Brock's name. He's a good dude. I'm like, I didn't like this guy at first, but I'm starting to like him more. My one? Because this comes into where my thing I wish everybody knew about is, are you good on yours? I'm pretty good.

Are you good? I'm good. Are we good together? Okay. Duck. It's like to take a puddle duck and pluck the duck and you cut off where you have the breast fillet is boneless and the back leg is bone in and the back leg is connected to the breast flay by the skin you can see how to do this in the Meat Eater Fishing Game cookbook,

which is available everywhere. Books are sold. And you take it and then you score the skin both ways so that you wind up with little centimeter squares of skin. Score it with a sharp knife. Then you turn your oven on 400 degrees. And once it's good and hot, you get a super hot skillet and lay the thing skin down on this lightly oiled, super hot skillet.

Lay it skin down on there until the skin puckers up and all the little squares are puckered and crispy brown. And then you flip it back, skin up and stick in your oven for six or eight minutes until it's very rare on the inside, cooked on the outside. Slice that son of a bitch thin. Serve it with chutney. And then let your children chew the drumstick. That is the way to eat duck. That's how you eat duck. And that's what I tell them.

I'm like, that's how you eat duck. In your face, kids. Kids? They love the bones. Why do they love the bones so much? My kids always say, I'm saying, what are they having tonight? Is it elk meat? Is it the kind with bones in it?

No, that's not elk meat. Like all they want is ribs these days or little duck legs too. I guess mine right now would be the one I wish everybody knew about would be, I'm going to start with turkey pot pie, which I use turkey drumsticks and thighs to make. This is seasonal. You're doing great. This is seasonal. Thank you. But just braising down thighs and legs off a turkey. I still hear so many people talking about, oh, just pop the breast and leave you know, leave the rest out there. And man, you like double your yield by taking out those, you know, legs and thighs. And then what we've

been doing now is pre-braising them on the weekend when I've got some time, I'll do just a whole crock pot full, cook them all day long, pick it all apart. My wife really likes it if I take all the tendons and the little extra stuff that didn't, the jello that didn't quite melt down and disappear. All that stuff needs to be gone. And then we package it in, you know, half pound back seal bags, super thin. And that way, anytime I want to make turkey pot pie or we do like carnitas with them, soft shell taco kind of deals. What else? We'll make a quick like chicken noodle or not chicken, turkey noodle soup. Just take some chicken stock, some noodles, some veggies, throw in a package of that, and you've got this awesome soup. You get that super great wild dark meat flavor out of it. That's what I want everybody to know about. That meat is awesome. You've just got to cook it right.

Then if you want to go next level is make that turkey pot pie because that's a real crowd pleaser where can they find that one just joking if they came up with are you guys hip to this whole thing with lab grown cultured meat oh yeah yeah people keep asking like dude if they come up with lab grown cultured meat will you stop hunting like what the hell like i didn't stop hunting i didn't stop hunting when they came up with people didn't stop hunting when they came up with farm meat nope why the hell would you quit for that no negative feel free to boo everybody about that idea it doesn't sound appetizing no i'm skittish of it man i'm skittish a lab grown meat and also it's like the whole

thing about it is it's what you're striving for in my mind is like that that visceral hands-on experience you know and that seems to me like running in the exact opposite direction i do like i don't care about i hope other people really dig it and really love it but no man i mean it doesn't have any bearing yeah oh you know what's funny about that my wife sent me an article. We're going to wrap it up in a second here. My wife sent me an article, and it was some magazine had done an article about how all hipsters look the same. And there's a picture, they use a picture of a hipster on it. And a guy writes in, he he says that's me in the picture

and i'm suing you guys and then they go and do research on the image and it turns out it's not him all right so we got rihanna you you're gonna do you're gonna do the thing yeah man i can do it um we've got some uh uh presents for our birthday guests oh yeah then we got a quick uh concluder concluders no i was thinking about like factory meats you know like meat cultured meats and i yeah anybody ever had like a steak them no like that let's take them or like a i feel like there's so much stuff worse already out there that you can get at McDonald's that's meat. Yeah, McRib.

Meat grown in a lab would be better for me than a McRib. I just want to put that out there. They paint the grill marks on it? Yeah. So, like, I don't have as much problem with that as I do. I feel like if you get McDonald's, you just have to eat it, like, in an alley so you feel bad about what you do. I feel strongly about that so i think man if they would be on the right track if you could literally like grow

you could get like a kit and grow the meat like in your garden. Right? I feel like then you grow your own meat, and then you at least have a sense of satisfaction of, like, how's that burger? You like that? I think you should be, like, Chia Pet style on your counter. Yeah. Sprout out, turn it into steak. But if it's just, like like another series of somebody buying anonymous stuff

that they have no connection to it's like what is this a step forward or a step back you know what are you growing in your greenhouse we have t-bones we have demons going in there yeah a couple fillets yeah i pulled that off the burger tree. You like that, do you? All right, Giannis. You got a concluder? Was that your guys' concluders? I mean, yeah. I feel comfortable.

Gianni? I have a concluding question. Oh, that's great. That doesn't make any sense. Can I try it? Please do. Then we'll see. Because we get versions of this, but not this one.

We always get asked what animal we'd love to hunt, what animal we'd hunt for the rest of our days, what animal have we not hunted yet. But what's the animal that you have not eaten yet that you would like to eat? Oh, that you're curious about? Yeah. We're working on a deal where we got a badger uh on the ground

sasquatch sasquatch sasquatch would have like nice back straps yeah probably nice eye round too yeah nice eye around dry age sasquatch we got a badger we're gonna do a thing where we're gonna try to eat a badger so i can't i'll say that all right all right promotional purposes uh well i guess all of it um i'm curious about it all uh but i just had uh was hanging out and ice fishing with a state trapper in Montana. And I had just been cooking up some mountain lion with a friend of mine. And he was like, well, yeah, what do you think about bobcat? I said, well, I've never eaten bobcat.

He's like, well, it tastes like piss. So now I'm very curious as to why a Bobcat could somehow taste different than a Mount Lion. Mount Lion's delicious and an absolute treat to have in the freezer. So now I kind of feel like I need to try some Bobcat and do the Pepsi challengepsi challenge do triangle test triangle test yeah yeah uh for me it would be a this is a little bit tricky because there's a fish i really like like black cod but it would be a i want to find out what a black cod that I caught tastes like. That is tricky. Which is tricky. Which is very tricky, but I'm striving for that,

and I'm hoping to hit that this summer. That's my concluder. Now, well, you got some chores you need to do. Yep. Two things. Two things. One, you got to help me out, though, with the merch table. What do we got left out there? Well, we have the live show only the live show only breathing turkey steam breathing

turkey that's right shirt how to go to deer bandana how to go to yanni's how to go to deer bandana very useful cows uh smell us now lady t-shirt smell us now lady i must comment that i for the first time saw a guy wearing, and it is a little bit creepy. But in, like, the best way possible. Yeah, because I think that someone might see that, and they might not think that that's something that someone shouted during a grizzly bear attack. Yeah, they might. It might have been something that they overheard in a dark alley somewhere. Something happened in Las Vegas late night.

It's a confusing shirt. The young lady that's running the merch table, probably not a hunter, the look she had when she was reading the text of that shirt, I wish I could record it. She was very impressed. Shock and awe. She was very impressed.

Yes. Yeah. And she said, man, whoever would wear a shirt like this would be a sexy, beautiful human being. With a big heart. The words I heard. Her sex. With a big open heart. Yes. We also have THC, the hunting collective.

It's concerning to me that we're calling it THC. Gosh, guys. As you don't know, this is the podcast that I have, and it's concerning that we're starting to call it THC. I love it. But if we're going to call it THC, I think we should start selling gummy bears. You know what I heard real quick?

What I heard from a guy is they were i don't understand this but you know we're talking about packing a full stadium of dip yeah big jaw he said there's a thing they do which means just so everybody's on board which means that you take enough to fill up your whole upper gum and your whole lower gum yeah because you can you can run like you can run an upper decker which is which is or a horseshoe you can run a horseshoe or upper decker you can run a horseshoe lower decker but when you run both horseshoe upper and lower decker it becomes a full stadium but apparently the youngsters these days are taken where they're running up, they're running the full stadium of gummy bears while doing tequila shots.

Oh, yeah. And a guy was talking about having this happen and then all of a sudden had to throw up and got so bogged up in his mouth that he threw up out his nose. So it's like... And he wrote into the Meteor website to tell us about this? For some reason, he wrote us about this. We're very trusting. We wouldn't tell anybody about that story.

Did it end with, do I have a problem? You know, I'd have to go revisit it. I don't think there was a broader point. He was like, I was torn over my onyx. Please don't tell anyone about this. All right, guys. Good night. We love all of you. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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