The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 165: Whole as Hell

Episode Date: April 22, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with Jimmy Doran, Sam Lungren, April Vokey, and Janis Putelis.Subjects discussed: Houdini, the Moore Theater, and a tragic death; Jimmy Doran as ageneralist Seattleite outdoorsman; an excise tax that sticks it to non-hunters and non-anglers; fishing for ducks; how to stay married; killing marine mammals to save marine mammals; preg checking cows and freezing whole salmon; what exactly is a “huntress”; another problem with King salmon; an ethics conundrum; is bowhunting really more ethical than rifle hunting?; which hunting skill do you wish you could master?; 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, underwearless. Welcome to 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. How's it going, guys?

You know, when we got up here, we were doing a thing called soundcheck and we found out that, well, Jimmy Doran was all excited about Eddie Vedder and him jumping around up here. Right there. He jumped right off of there. Oh, right there. But more important than that is Houdini. Houdini was on this stage. He was right about here. Two times. My brother always likes to talk about how Houdini died, where Houdini felt that, do you guys know this?

He felt that he could clench his stomach and withstand any blow. And some kid was like, well, I'll try it, and fucking killed him, man. Like hit him. He did. Well, we were discussing that. We thought you were part of the conversation, but you obviously weren't listening to us earlier. But the stage manager told us that, yes, that happened,

but that's not what killed him. Yeah, it did. It ruptured his appendix. He tried to do a trick after that in a water tank, right? Yeah. He was drowning. He drowned. He couldn't get through his act. He couldn't get through his act. He couldn't get through his act.

Went back, wouldn't go to the hospital or something like that, and died. It wasn't this stage. We should just act like he died here. They said they cut out a beam under the stage that's still cut from his act in 1905 or something. Pudini. More theater. Oh, my. Introductions.

The Lavigne Eagle. Introductions. The Labian Eagle. Giannis. Thank you. And Jimmy Dorn from Belltown Pizza. He's been on the show. So if you want to patronize Belltown Pizza under Jimmy Doran's command, your time, oh, no? Then you have a long time to patronize Jimmy Doran's Pizza Restaurant. Hopefully not that much longer.

How many years have you been at Belltown Pizza? 16. 16 years. Hopefully not that much longer. How many years have you been at Belltown Pizza? 16. I've been there 17, but yeah, been owning it for 15, and then, yeah, hopefully winding down. So I told him if he doesn't say anything tonight, that's all. I told him he doesn't have to say anything. We just want him to be represented by a generalist, Seattleite outdoorsman.

I fit that this guy he likes to he likes to catch salmon he likes to shoot at deer he likes to uh root and like and like every dude i know in seattle like every guy in seattle he's like well yeah but i liked the seahawks a long time ago. Oh, I did. I liked the Seahawks when they sucked, but we've been very fortunate. They don't suck anymore. My favorite story, I think, is the one you tell about Jimmy's turkey hunt, how like overnight he became an expert turkey hunter. Yeah, because you guys walked up on some turkeys one time. That's a good story. We were actually driving back from a set in the morning where we had sat out and froze our asses off and didn't see a thing. And we were two weeks into the turkey season. And I believe the guide took us to a place where

everything had been shot. And our guide was, we were just literally driving back. He's like, hey, I just want to check this little sliver of public. And we were just taking a meandering route through this one little sliver around the Colville area. And we came around a corner and there was literally eight Toms in the road. And we basically jumped out of the truck and shot him. And we got a taxi. He's like, what's so hard about this? Yeah. It always happens that way. I didn't really call it a hunt. I called it more of a shooting thing. A get.

A get's a good way. And then our very own Sam Lundgren. If you... Sam writes about all kinds of stuff for us. What's that? Your people are up top. I don't know. There's some Whidbey Island in the house?

Those guys don't matter. Oh, yeah. Tell where you're from. Yeah, I'd like to consider myself a generalist Seattleite hunter, although I'm not a court carry in Montana. You quit and moved. Yeah, I quit and moved. But I did grow up on Whidbey Island. I lived in Washington until I was 22.

And then April Volke, who's not only not, she's not even from the damn country. What's the town? I don't know. Like, tell where you're from and then how you always apologize about it. Yeah, but I always say don't tell anybody. Yeah, no, that's right. She's Suri. Suri what?

Don't tell anybody. That's right. Don't tell anybody. Yeah, it's Suri and don't tell anyone. So now you've told everyone and everyone knows. A couple people I want to say hi to. So happy anniversary. We have Ross and Megan Sharp.

You guys here? Megan! All right. A couple people I want to say hi to. So, happy anniversary. We have Ross and Megan Sharp. You guys here? I'm here. All right. There's a bunch of guests. There's a bunch of people you would know from the show. Tommy Edson's here. He's been on that show. Tony Calagrasi's been on the show.

Tony. Greg Blazkowicz has been on the show. Greg. I think my friend Bowman's here. I never let him come on. And then down from Joint Base, Lewis McCord. We have Seth Wheeler, who I met earlier. So him and his teammate are here.

Good dudes. Been in and out of war zones for a long time now, as we were just discussing. And then I used to kind of be, I was like a temporary Seattleite. And I got all nostalgic here because we rented a... It's like a... It's an Airbnb, but it's more like a hotel, I feel like. It's like an apartment building, I guess. Yeah, we rented like a high-rise apartment.

Which looks down on my main, most important squid-jigging spot. And I got super nostalgic about that. Man, I didn't realize how much I was going to miss it. I moved in August, and I got to thinking about razor clams, jigging squid. And the thing I like most, and this is why I don't trust anyone in this audience,

is because when I lived here, I discovered that you guys are sitting on the continent's greatest yellow perch fishery. Now, don't do that. Don't do that because I'm telling you, me and my little boy hit it hard, and we never once saw a serious perch fisherman on that lake. And you know the lake I'm talking about. It's a big-ass lake, and as you catch fish, cyclones of perch come up with the one you're reeling in. It's unbelievable.

Because you guys are steelhead and salmon snobs. I had to defend myself constantly as a perch fisherman from Michigan. We had to bring in a guy from Oregon with a boat so that we could get out there and fish together. Yeah, our buddy had to drive up with a boat from Portland to take us perch fishing one time. And that guy, he ate his first ever smallmouth bass out of Lake Washington. Oh, wait, you went out in that bass boat? The sparkly one? Oh, you remember the sparkly bass boat? Yeah, we fished perch out of that. That was Matt Elliott's special bass boat.

He came out to fish bass, but I filled his little live well up with perch. Well, they haven't opened the sockeye season for such a damn long time that maybe people should just get into perch instead. Yeah, when was the last time? 2006, I believe. So there's no sockeye fishery? No, they haven't

come back in the numbers. No open season since 2006. Yeah, the last time it was open, my dad and I ran our boat down from Whidbey through the locks, through Lake Union into Lake Washington, fish sockeye for a couple days, and then went all the way back. It's crazy when that, I hope it happens again someday because it's such a shit show. It's, it's amazing to watch. It looks like you'd walk all the way across the lake from boat to boat, like canoes next to yachts next to like drift boats. Are they bottom bouncing for him too? Uh, people are mostly trolling. Okay. Um, but I, I don't know. I imagine you could jig them too. Cause in the Fraser, we used to line up with like bouncing beddies and then 20 foot leaders

and then go through and floss them. Right, right. Well, like Washington, you know, people always talk about how sockeye don't eat, don't grab stuff that people always floss in them, but we'd troll a big flasher with a bear red hook behind it. Yeah, no, they'll bite, they'll bite.

Yeah, they'd hammer that. Bear red hook like a year ago. Bear red octopus hook like size two and that's legal in this hell you can do that here yeah you're not snagging they eat it yeah no we we weren't allowed because they would eat a bear hook but it was illegal in bc so we had to put like a little tuft of green you have a lot of dumb laws in bc did you have to pinch your barbs there's a lot of dumb laws in Washington, too, to play fair. Yeah, but they got some wicked laws that she was telling us about.

Explain about if you're not a resident, you can't. Yeah, this is recent, but if you're a non-resident of British Columbia, you can't fish on weekends in the Skeena system or on several classified rivers. Yeah, when I fished the Bulkley, I had to pay 40 bucks a day for thursday and friday and then they kicked me off and we had to keep on driving yeah the majority of the residents actually don't support it it's a long story and it's very political but it was the guide movement that pushed that not us the guy because if you're fishing with a guide you can fish weekends yeah and i don't guide anymore so don't don't point at me but isn't there aren't there some streams

that are completely closed to like yeah actually there actually there are rivers that are BC resident only. So it's not just Canadian. Yeah, like the Talcua. Yeah. But even someone from Alberta can't fish the Talcua. No, you've got to be a BC resident. Can you imagine trying to pass a law like that in the United States? No, man, because we believe in American rights.

Yeah. Yeah. Tell all these people they can't come fish the Madison. Sam, while you're... Can you break down the thing I told you to break down that's happening here in Washington? Which thing was that? You got three things you got to break down. This is the first one about the, how the bill that will never pass, but Washington's backpack tax. Okay, cool. And the proposed exemption.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is something I just read about this week, that there's legislation in the Washington State Legislature that they're proposing to have, what's broadly been talked about is the backpack tax in hunting and fishing world, which basically have people who enjoy the benefits of what we as hunters and anglers pay for with our excise taxes through the Pittman Robertson Act and the Dingell Johnson Act. So what they're proposing is to have a tax on outdoor

equipment over $200 in Washington State. No, no, no, no, no. Wait, wait, wait. Two tenths of 1%, but you would be exempted from said tax if you could display a hunting or fishing license. I think it's a damn good idea. Oh, yeah. I am completely supportive of this. Because they know that you've already paid 10% tax on a bunch of your equipment, and so now other people are going to pony up, and it goes into the wildlife fund. Yeah.

It's great. It's great. And in Washington, there's a hell of a lot more people who are enjoying looking at wildlife and just that we're just enjoying the idea of wildlife. There's a hell of a lot more than them than there are of us. Now, I haven't seen any polling data, but I'm going to venture to guess that this will not pass. It's dead on arrival, but it's a good idea. You know, a thing I wanted to mention, I should have mentioned it. I should have pivoted when you guys were talking about, uh, bear hooks. I just wanted to throw this out because I was just, we just spent the weekend in San Martin down in the St. Martin in the, um, Caribbean for,

for a birthday party. And I flew down with like hooks and a-on bag, but down there, you cannot carry on to a plane a fish hook. Up until very recently in Canada, you couldn't carry on your line. Line. In Australia, still, you cannot carry a line on. Because you're going to garret someone. I've had to gut reels in airplanes. But shoestrings, neckties are fun.

This thing with the hook, because these are small hooks. I was like, the worst you could do is you could get it in someone's clothes and then they would be agitated trying to get it out. Until they crimp the barb. Yeah, and then they'd find a way to crimp the barb. But everybody

lost their Leatherman at TSA check-in so they wouldn't be able to crimp the barb. And you'd like take advantage of the confusion and fly the plane somewhere but i'm like i don't know if that's the case you shouldn't be able to bring gum on because that shit's annoying when it gets in your clothes too so it's like i couldn't figure out another thing i wanted to uh another thing i want to touch on is you know how everybody know like like i'm sure everyone knows the story of the guy in colorado not too long ago that strangled the mountain lion. Like, that story, and no fault of the guy that did it. Like, he didn't brag it up.

But that story has gotten less and less interesting. It's now that it was a three-month-old, emaciated, 24-pound orphan mountain lion kitten. That's, like, the media loved that story. We think the lion attacked the jogger, or the jogger attacked the lion instead of the other way around, like it's been reported. It was a kitten. And again, the dude didn't brag it up. I'm not saying he sold it as something it wasn't, but the story has just gotten less interesting. There's less reporting on it.

Yeah, I haven't heard a word about it. Pretty soon, it's going to be that he strangled a therapy dog rescue puppy. And it'll be in the airport. That's the only thing left. You know, there's a guy, and I had to coax this out of him. At first, this guy didn't want me to even say what state it happened in, but then he came. He warmed up to me saying what state it happened in.

But as you know, Washington did a very naughty thing years ago and made it that you're not allowed to use hounds to pursue mountain lions, but you can still hunt mountain lions. Let's check this out though. There's a dude in this state, I don't want to say where he is, but he's careful to say that he did not pioneer this technique where he's been going out. We exchanged some emails. He's been going out and cutting mountain lion tracks in the snow. So he does the same way like a houndsman does, waits till the right amount of snow covers on the ground and he goes out and cuts a track and he just follows that track and waits till things look

right and he sits down and uses a predator call. And then he follows the track and uses the predator call and he just got a nice big tom doing that 160 pounds that's awesome dude that's awesome that's some tricky hunting man yeah serious that's all working for it what's that working for it yeah man i like that guy yeah we're also working in the difficult system that you get placed in i remember that happening when they banned hunting with hunt lines with hounds so he uh life gave lemons, and he made a... Lemonade. Lemonade out of it.

A hot tip a guy wrote in about. I might be the only guy that's going to appreciate this. I previewed it with you guys. Maybe. How many people in here run a stand-up freezer instead of a chest? It's because it's a smart audience. This guy was writing in, you know how you get all your stuff in there

and then it all falls out when you open the door? He buys those spring-loaded curtain rods and crams everything in there and then puts a spring-loaded curtain rod in there to hold the shit in there so it don't come out. Prevent the meat avalanche. How does he do it? Does he hold the one arm in and then try to adjust it?

Maybe he has his wife help him out. I don't know what he does. You know what? He's probably smarter. But some people get all excited about the iPhone X. I hear shit like that, and I'm like, man, that's solid. That's a thinker. That's the real new tech. A quick thing I want to touch on too,

a guy I was chatting with recently was talking about ice fishing and he had the observation that ice fishing is just a place where people go to do whatever they already normally do well, even better. Where he's like, guys that like to talk, they just talk better and more. Guys that like to drink, they just drink more. People like to fish, fish more. And that concerns me because that means that my kids are only good at getting wet and cold because they do that even more out there. Another thing to touch on, Giannis, we've talked about this.

I'm going to put it to bed after this, but if you don't mind, for like the 19th time, breaking down your advice, your marriage advice thing, because there's two final thoughts I have about it, but I want you to tell everybody to get everybody up to speed. I just wish I remembered to use it as often as you asked me to tell everybody about the advice.

Because now I'm like, man, last week, that would have been really good to bring up the 1 to 10 scale game. So I actually stole it from Wayne Dyer, who my dad used to not really force us, but he used to make us listen to Wayne Dyer tapes. Mostly I would just fall asleep, but every now and then you'd pick up something. But he's got a thing where if you're in an argument, most arguments with spouses really aren't all that important about who's going to win it or who's going to be right. You really just want to get through it. So his way to way to do that is to stop and everybody assigns a value to how important they think the, the argument is and how important like having it go their way is on a scale of one to 10. And so you just stop the argument and everybody just throws a number out there. And so if it's a really not that important, it's a two, you throw your two. And for the other person, they might throw an eight or nine, and you just stop.

And they get to go on, and you go their direction, right? And it's just an easy way to quit arguing and move on. And you said a lot of times it's worked for you because you realize that there's a lot of shit. It's been improving our marriage, man. Yeah. I make you explain this every week. This is the last time you're going to explain it.

Okay. But there's two thoughts that came in because people have been writing in a lot about marriage, Giannis's, I don't know what you stole from someone,

but I'm just going to call it your thing, your marriage saver thing. And one guy is in a, he writes in where he's in a fight with his wife because she likes to put vinegar in the soap in the dishwasher. And he's in a fight with his wife because she likes to put vinegar in the soap

in the dishwasher. And he's arguing that if dish soap needed vinegar, they would just put it in there in the factory. So what's weird about it is he's like, but the trick worked because like, I actually didn't really care once I thought about it and and I threw a three, and she threw like a nine. So she wins, but then he sits down and writes me a diatribe like this, explaining how stupid it is to put vinegar in soap. Another guy wrote in about, he didn't even get into what his fight was, but he gets in a big fight, and he's like, he wants to do Giannis' trick to get out of the fight and he throws a two and then gets in trouble for how little he cares. So it's like, yes. That would absolutely be the biggest concern is underestimating somebody else's anger yes

right so if i think if it's a two and you think it's a nine i might just be digging my hole even deeper yeah because like why were you fighting about it at that point yeah it's like oh so you don't care right about clean dishes um what else you want to talk about oh uh irrational behaviors where does vinegar in the dishwasher count as that no because i don't really know about that that might be like a great idea i don't know here's a hot tip with vinegar is um i've been frying a lot in the house lately because i got my bitch a new hood over my stove you know and i'm I'm always blasting it, and I'm frying, and it's working, but it's still not, like, completely diffusing all, you know, grease smell in the house. I think it's impossible.

It is. But what we do afterwards, or I should say my wife Jennifer does, is, I don't know, maybe a cup or two of some vinegar with a splash of lavender oil just in a pan and throws that on the stove top and just lets it simmer and kind of disappear. And that just dials the house right back in. Oh, really? Yeah. Very nice. Take that home. That'll improve your marriage. Yeah. Cause I remember when we used to live in a, we used to live in a small apartment and being from Michigan, I fry a lot of fish and my wife would be like, how is it that even the bath towels smell like fried fish?

That's the one thing I wouldn't want it to smell like fried fish. Yeah, when you get out of the shower. Everything else is fair game, but. But the irrational behavior there, and I don't mean to be pittant. This is not like a guy versus wife deal, but there's a guy wrote in where he was complaining about just coping with irrational things where he kills a deer, guts it, and then rinses the chest cavity out with, I don't know if it was creek water or creek water. I didn't see the actual body of water, but rinses it out with creek water. I didn't see the actual body of water, but rinses it out with crick water. And now she

refuses to eat the deer for fear that it has been contaminated by crick water. And he wanted advice. I have no advice. But in that situation, you'd only point out other activities, like other things that seem irrational that you need to cope with. And I think that the reason this happens so much in outdoor pursuits is because you're just dealing with so many unknowns and untested things, right? It's just practices to get handed down over time and things that aren't really, you can't replicate it in the laboratory, like certain odors you might encounter that you could never make. So I think that it breeds uncertainty. So do you guys feel,

like have you encountered in your personal lives where you've had to just live with someone else's irrational belief system? Mm-hmm. Go ahead. My husband doesn't hunt, and I am obsessed with it. And so we are constantly, we don't see eye to eye on anything with hunting, but in particular, the range finder situation.

So he thinks that a range finder is unethical. Because it's more ethical to not know how far away it is. Yeah. So, it's a constant battle. Fling an arrow and guess. He needs to just come with me so he can see what it's all about. But yeah, so I feel like I'm just constantly bashing my head against the wall with

some of these theories and opinions. Yeah. No, I shouldn't say it's uninformed. But you know, we are going to later give away, we're going to play a game. We're going to give away a range finding binoculars. So that was a good, that was a good tip. Nice. That was a good, well, I, I segued off there. If you'll notice, um, Sam had like irrational. I didn't come up with anything for this. Cause you're not a highly rational person. Nope. I mean, you'd never, you're still, you're still available. Ladies. The segue. The segue. Not married. Not married.

Correct. Yeah. You never had a relationship that an argument came up? Okay. So what I, okay. So, so it's not that I didn't come up with anything for this. I didn't come up with anything that I could say publicly to our audience of hundreds of thousands of listeners. There's nothing. It's a weird gray. What we're talking about here is a weird gray area of cute irrational where there's crazy irrational that you just don't really want to air to the public.

Tell me what it is. You don't have to tell who it is. No. Do it. Can I, can I, all right, okay. Are you talking about like an ex-girlfriend? Yeah. Okay.

And of what like category, of what category, like what life category did the irrational thing fall into? I don't even know which ex-girlfriend we're talking about here. Let's divide the world into like... Rooms of the house. Probably do it that way. Yeah, what would be an area of one's existence that the irrational behavior would manifest? I had an ex-girlfriend who would deep clean her apartment every week.

And she would go as far as pulling everything out of her freezer to scrape out the freezer of ice every week. I would have hung on to her. That sounds like a dream. There's complicating circumstances. was that was not the reason it ended i'm gonna get her phone number oh he's like yes sunday let's organize baby but but i'm like you put stuff in the freezer to like you know to hang on to it to preserve it to hang on to it for a while and like i'd stacked it full of elk i'm like why are you pulling all that out of there it's defrosting in your fridge or in your in your

sink right now okay yeah so that's good i found that to be highly irrational that is jimmy uh i don't have a lot to add to this i'm i'm fortunate i'm fortunate hello oh come on he talked me into it you have to you have to play ball here you know struggle, though. I told him I didn't want to talk about this. I am fortunate enough. My significant other, who is sitting right over there, is very rational, grounded. I find very seldom do I find that. Good call, Jimmy.

Good call. You know, things that'll get me in a twist. I mean, she moves things around. I can't figure out why we're always looking for things that I know right where it's at. But in the grand scheme of things, that is a one on the argument scale as opposed to a 10. So, you know, I'm very fortunate.

No, no idiosyncrasies. You're boring me, man. It's not boring. It's not boring. It's rational. It's, you know, it's battle. It's not war. You just chose well. I did choose well. It's not boring. It's rational. It's, you know, it's battle. It's not war. You just chose well.

I did choose well. She chose, yeah. I'm extremely fortunate. Yeah. So let me guess, Giannis, nothing. No, come on. He's going to come up with something. Like fully irrational behavior by my wife?

That's what you're asking me. There's like little things that she does that might bug me, but I wouldn't call it like irrational behavior. Yeah. Well, I would like. If she did something like that where I had done something like rinse a deer out with creek water and then she was like, I'm not eating that because that water is so much different than stuff that comes out of the faucet.

You know, it's rolling down rocks or something and it's dirty. Yeah. I'd stop it at that point and say, we've got to have a conversation to see if this thing can keep going on. We're going to cook this meat. Like in my mind, what I'm talking about, in my mind, what I'm talking about would be that one day my wife caught me letting my kids cut up pumpkins with a machete. And she feels it. And she feels that when someone's holding a machete. And she feels that when someone's holding a machete or an ax or something, that it's going to inexplicably fly out of their hand, which I thought was right. But then one day, Callahan, who he's holding a cleaver, and she keeps being afraid that it's going to fly out of Callahan's hand. And so I feel like when she sees a large blade,

she feels that it will fly out of the user's hand. And it just strikes me as on par with this. That's all. I'm not sure if he's here or not. There's a guy, he's fishing up Narrows Park, not far from here, on the Gig Harbor side, Narrows Bridge. And he writes in about how he's, everyone around him is catching all kinds of fish. He's not catching one. This guy here has to do with a diving duck and an eagle.

Okay. So he finally hooks a fish, and he gets all excited for a couple seconds until up pops a diver duck that he has hooked and as he's reeling it in across the surface an eagle this i believe him because the level of detail an eagle comes down and grabs his diver duck off the surface we we used to have eagles steal our ducks when we were out duck hunting as kids. It starts zinging drag out. He tightens his drag, yanks it, and gets his duck back.

It gets it free from the eagle, is able to bring it in, and he's got it superficially hooked, unhooks it, and lets the duck go, and the duck's fine. That's a fishing story. That's a fishing story. That's a fishing story.

Another guy... That's one of those where the duck gets back to the cattails, and he's like, you guys are not going to fucking believe this. People are like, dude, what have you been doing? He's just like, don't even ask what I've been up to. That's funny, because a duck will go through his whole life and nothing really that exciting happens. I remember one time we were up in the mountains

and we had hung all of our food up in a tree so bears wouldn't get into it. And then somehow there was a block of cheese that didn't get hung up in the tree. And so my brother got up and kind of tucked the block of cheese on top of a game bag up in a tree. And we come back later, and there's a pine squirrel who's discovered the block of cheese.

Which, that's something a bitch has only ever eaten one thing his entire life. And then all of a sudden, he finds a block of cheese, which has to seem like really unusual. And then on top of that, two large bipedal creatures come after it and chase it through the woods.

It's like when it rains, it pours, man, you know? Yeah, right. Because I'm out here every day and nothing ever happens. Never seen that one before. Have you ever, this is super inappropriate

and I apologize to children in the audience, but have you ever seen a duck's penis? Oh, we were just talking about this yesterday. They have excitement every day. Yeah. That is, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to Google this.

Only 3% of bird species have one. A penis? Yeah, because they have cloacas. But a duck has, some ducks have one longer than they are. Do they all have spikes? Just talk about it. They have like spikes on, no, that's the vagina well yeah there's like a spiraled and spiked yeah so why why do they have the spikes just to I mean they don't want their partner

to get away biological reason it all right no no it's a startling it's a startling thing and it's so funny talked, we discussed this at length last night. Oh. Yeah. It's serious business. And keep it with a Pacific Northwest theme. Why are you talking to me? Pacific Northwest theme. A guy, I like the way this thing starts. He writes in that his brother pregnancy checks, so preg checks cows, arm up and you feel around and tell if it's pregnant or not, and he gets paid in salmon. But the salmon he gets have never been gutted. They're frozen gut in salmon,

and he wants to know if this is a normal thing or not. I think that is not normal. Was the guy a commercial fisherman or a recreational fisherman? Give them to him. Commercial. Yeah, then I'd say that's normal. No, it's not normal.

When I was commercial fishing, we never gutted a salmon. You just froze them whole and gave them away to people who preg checked your cows. Yeah, I mean, we didn't. Uh-huh. Really? No. I mean, I don't know anybody who preg checks cows, but, yeah, I mean,

every salmon we'd catch in the seine just gets spilled into the fish hole and frees to death in 34-degree refrigerated seawater. So the processor guts it. Yeah. So he just skips the processor yeah i mean if you're doing if you're seining correctly you never touch the fish and they freeze guts in yeah no one bleeds them well that's what i mean so like obviously there's a lot of types of of commercial fishing and like we are primarily targeting pinks

um so it's it's like in mass. And then we pull up alongside a tender, usually like Bering Sea crab boats. They take a big crane with a vacuum pump and swing it over, drop it in our hold and put in a return tube. And just over the course of an hour, just suck all those fish out of there.

We have to keep the water level just right. And at the end, I'd have to go down there and hit boots and went into shovel and get up in the corners of the fish hold and and move all the fish i often try to like scrape them when they'd get frozen up against like the refrigeration unit it was really gross it was my least favorite part of the job but but are you allowed to take fish home do you think he's being lazy or do you think he's sneaking them out without being allowed to take them well i mean i i wouldn't i wouldn't know but i imagine like in washington it's it's either seining or gill netting in which case you always deliver those fish whole to processors and and i mean and you're usually freezing them as soon as you as you catch them because you're just catching so many, I mean like, you know, biggest day I ever had, we caught 73 pound, 73,000 pounds of salmon,

pink salmon in about two hours in the morning. And then we were on limits. So it was pretty, it was pretty cool to be like, I just made three grand. It's not even 10 AM yet. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. So this dude will be happy to go. I got a question though. Is it, what's the, do you know what the common like end product is for those pinks that you're i think it's dog food and and and and yeah and a lot of like supplements um canned salmon is is a good a good part of it the high quality stuff but i mean they they also they also fillet some pinks i man i wish i know knew i have a lot of a lot of friends in that industry.

But yeah, I mean, it's not like showing up on fancy restaurants for pinks anyway. And where kings typically get caught in trolling situations or gill netting where they're treated with a different level of care and and there's there's also there's a big growth in in the kind of the it's not farm to table but it like you know boat to table i actually just had a guy hit us up to do that in bozeman now man yeah yeah i know i know a couple of those guys and and this guy just hit me up from

sitka who it's all about know your fishermen. And they do straight from the boat. And so those guys are catching their fish, processing their fish, flash freezing, mailing them off. It sounds like a giant pain in the ass to me. But it's cool to see that kind of thing happen. Yeah, it's higher returns too. Yeah, absolutely.

I like this guy's word choice because I just realized he describes these fish as whole as hell. But does it spoil the meat? Does it matter at the end game? Yeah, so that's the... I know you bleed them, and that makes a difference on the quality of the meat, but does it matter? Like, if you left the guts in it and freeze it

and then defrost it and gut it at home, does it matter? Well, that's what he's trying to figure out, because the dude gave him all these fish. I wouldn't think so. I wouldn't think the guts would be polluting the meat if it's all frozen. Yeah. I think it was frozen quick. I've got two whole lake trout frozen in my freezer right now.

Because they froze on the ice after you caught them. Because they were frozen the second we pulled them out of the lake. And then I got home and I had to run out here. And I'm like, I don't want to defrost these things so I can gut them, so I can freeze them again because that's going to be even worse on the flesh to freeze and thaw and freeze and thaw. So I did think about this for quite a while. And I was like, you know what, I'm just going to stick them in the freezer.

I don't have time. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. I've left guts in grouse and aged them for seven days and then ate them. Yeah, that's a big thing in Europe, man. Yeah, well, I tried both. I tried with the gutting, and then as long as it's not a gut shot, I've left the guts in, and I've aged both for seven days.

I mean, it tastes cleaner if the guts have been out, but it wasn't bad. And aged made all the difference in the world. It was like cutting sushi when I was cutting them up. I would have a harder time with that than fish. Well, for sure. That's what I'm saying. Those guts reek. Oh, I know. Yeah. It's a bad smell. And grouse are known for having especially weird smelling guts. i want to get into salmon numbers because that's like a real a thing that like dominates the conversation around here and it's confusing as hell and i'll kind of like lay out like i picture like someone from mars or some outer space planet with a just a superficial understanding of the world, was listening to the conversation, they would be confused. Because you have where king salmon numbers are really low.

And so people keep proposing different things that we might do, different things we might try to kill off or reduce in order to up salmon numbers. So it's like, oh, we're going to kill seagulls, sea lions, harbor seals. What else? Squawfish, cormorants, but also like name brand, name brand sea mammals. Caspian terns. Okay. Big list of things. Name brand sea mammals. That you reduce numbers to get salmon numbers up. But then there's another name brand sea mammal, killer whale or orca, which is a whole other conversation. Tonight I'm going with killer whale. Let's stick with it.

So killer whales are suffering from the lack of fish. And no one's proposing, and they eat nothing but kings and to my knowledge no one has proposed shooting them things not since not since the 70s but everything else is on the list meanwhile and people be like okay another problem with kings and i'm not a subject matter expert here. This is my observation. Another problem that kings have is they're getting too much competition from hatchery fish in the river. So that's a concern. And in the oceans. And in the oceans.

But because the one marine mammal is not getting enough fish, they're now talking about putting more hatchery fish in to make sure that that marine mammal the orca gets enough and then we'll get rid of the other ones like like is it is it as confusing as it seems yeah it is and it's like right as wdfw is kind of finally coming around the idea that that their intensive crazy hatchery program has not necessarily been the greatest boon to wild salmon and steelhead especially steelhead now the governor's coming in and telling them to start pumping out more hatchery chinook for the whales for the whales so it's it's it's just it's as complicated as all hell i mean i'm from mars and i don't even understand it's supposed to be a band-aid not

a long-term solution yeah well that's like it seems, I mean, this is kind of one of the areas where the conversation about salmon gets interesting, and salmon and steelhead, is because you have like, it's no secret what the main problem is. The main problem being like a system of dams that blocks fish migration. Like it used to take, I think, you know, a fish used to be able to go from its natal stream out to the ocean in three days, and now it takes 20-some days in certain river systems.

And so it's exposed to so much more predation. But they're doing badly in rivers that don't have dams, too. That's a good point. Yeah. So it's bad timber practices. It's over-harvest. It's changing ocean condition. There's a lot of damams being definitely a primary driver. Yeah, but I find that some people, like Callahan's this way,

or has argued this. Some people are like, if you have this large systemic problem, being like you have this large problem with dams, and they don't want to entertain the micro fixes. They're like, I don't want to condone micro fixes because I want to just focus on what the main problem is. Be like, if you lost your job and had no money, and then you found a dollar on the street, you'd pick it up. But Cal would be like, don't pick it up because you don't have a job. So it's like, I feel the frustration of people who are wanting to like,

we can't control that. Like that's like a huge long-term problem, but there are small adjustments we could make. And it's like, it makes people extremely upset that you'd entertain the idea of reducing harbor seal populations or reducing sea lion populations in order to try to keep this thing hobbling along while we get up the political and public will to like actually get around to addressing the main problem. Yeah, absolutely. And if you look at it historically, all these things are really closely tied together. In the territorial legislature of Washington, it was illegal to block an agrimus fish passage. That was passed in the late 1800s. When they built the dams on the Elwha that were recently removed,

they built the lowest dam, which is some three miles from Tidewater with no fish ladder, no nothing, just cut it off. One of the greatest Chinook runs ever known. But they made a deal that was later codified in law that they're like, oh, we'll just make a hatchery and solve the problem. We'll just pump out enough fish to make up for the ones we lost. And then that was taken forth into the rest of the Pacific Northwest,

that wherever we hose a salmon run, we do mitigation. I mean, that's still a word that's just thrown around left and right, but that's where it all derives from. Wherever we ruin a salmon run, we're just going to put in a hatchery and solve the problem. It's going to be all better. What were you guys saying? What's the typical percentage with steelhead?

What's the percentage of steelhead that are wild-born and hatchery-born? Man, I was pulling a number out of my ass before, but it's probably less than a quarter anymore that are native. Of all the steelhead that return to freshwater every year in Washington, I bet less than a quarter have an adipose fin. Here, not in the Skeena.

So the Skeena region has the healthiest population of salmon in the world. The Columbia used to have the best steelhead fishery. But yeah, we don't have any of that in the Skeena. So were you fished steelhead or wild? Yeah. Now, because you kind of like cut your teeth as a steelhead guide and built your career off being a steelhead guide.

If you had a picture of Chris the ball, how old's your daughter now? 16 months. 16 months. If you had to make a guess, like God's got a gun to your head, and you got to make a guess that when she's your age, and don't play like what you want to happen. I think about this every day, so hit me with it. When she's your age, will she be fishing steelhead? And you have to get it right or else you die. Like that kind of answer. So I'm 37. So in 36 years in the Skeena,

I think they'll be here. I don't think they'll be here in the numbers that they are now. I think they'll, I mean, they're the most. But you think they'll be less. Yeah, they're the most resilient. I think they're one of the most resilient animals that ever fish out there. But they'll definitely be here in less, less numbers.

It's really scary. Have you watched it decline in your own group? Yeah, yes. And the shifting baseline is really scary. And these people who are fishing, they've been fishing for 10 years, say, and they're like, oh, well, in my 10 years, there hasn't been a major difference.

But they don't know what the baseline was 100 years ago. And unfortunately, a lot of people in my 10 years, there hasn't been a major difference, but they don't know what the baseline was 100 years ago. And unfortunately, a lot of people in my age group, they don't want to learn the history, you know, or they don't want to learn about what happened before them. So, yeah, I'm pretty terrified. Yeah, we had a guy one time describe the shifting baseline thing, but he called it shifting baseline syndrome. Yeah.

But if you don't have that, you would lose your mind. Yeah, well, you know what we're talking called it shifting baseline syndrome. Yeah. Where, but, but if you don't have that, you would lose your mind. Yeah. Well, you know what we're talking about? Shifting baseline. Like your perception of the, like what our perception of like normal constantly, you have to, or else you wouldn't be able to continue being alive. You know? Yeah. I don't know what it's going to be like in, in 36 years. Honestly, Steve, I spoke to a lot of the government biologists and they pulled, they've come over. I don't live in Surrey anymore. You guys, I live on the Bulkley up in the Skeena country.

And the biologists will come to my place and we've had off-the-record chats about the fact that these fish are not going to be here unless we seriously put our foot down. But we have to make some major changes. And I don't think that the sports community or the angling community is ready to make the changes. What are the changes they don't want to make?

Fishing for them. You mean they like to fish for them? Yeah. Yeah. Have you quit? No. I mean, yes and no. Like, I don't, look, I don't want to look like I'm sitting on a throne and be like,

oh, yeah, I've stopped fishing for them. Because I think everyone makes this decision in their own time. I personally have cut back immensely. I probably catch two steelhead a week, maybe. And if I catch a steelhead a day, I go home. But I also understand I live on the river. I'm out there every single day. I don't expect people to make the same decisions I do.

So I'm really close to stopping, especially because the more that I hunt and the more that I spend outdoors killing animals, the more I start to question my own reasoning for catch and release. Yeah. And when you start to question why you catch and release, for me anyway, again, everyone makes this decision at their own time in their life. But for me, it was I catch and release because I'm selfish.

And I'm okay being selfish to a degree i'm a human i'm an animal i don't mind being a little selfish but i have to choose the number on the scale and ask myself you know how important it is to me and when i start feeling like i'm battling or like i'm compromising my integrity um i start to just take a step back and that's where i'm at now so um i feel like i'm really selfish out there these days. You know what I had the other day? We were fishing and we were messing around with some tarp and knowing that you're not going to do anything to it

if you catch it. When it came off, I couldn't make myself care. Yeah, because you weren't going to do anything with it anyway and you don't want a photo. I was like, oh, that was cool. Yeah, see you later. Yeah. But when I'm a photo. I was like, oh, that's cool. Yeah, see you later. Yeah. But when I'm out there.

It was like damn cool to hook into it. Yeah, but when you're trying to take a fish home. That was like the accomplishment. And then when it came off, there was no disappointment. Have you landed a turpin though? No, I've hooked four in my life. I've hooked one. I really want to hold one.

The first two I hooked, they came out of the water and I wasn't even fishing at that point. I was just shocked. And this last one, I held it together for a couple minutes. But it's impressive. You've caught those probably. Yeah.

Huntresses. It just hit me. Hit me. So you reached out, April, because you want to write a piece about our use. What is a huntress? Because why are there no grandmas

that are huntresses? Well, there are, actually. No. Well, hang on. The grandmas don't have... I'm right in the middle of writing this article, so I'm still accumulating my data. Yeah.

But the word huntress has actually been around for a long, like since 1800s. Because by definition, a huntress is simply a female who hunts. But the grandma doesn't have social media and social media is bastardizing that shit. Like it's really bad. But hunter is gender neutral.

Yeah, like let go of your argument. Well, my argument. We're not going around being like, I'm a hunter man. I don't have an... Yeah, because like fisherman is more problematic. Well, hang on, hang on, hang man. I don't have an... Yeah, because like fisherman is more problematic. Well, hang on, hang on, hang on. I don't have an argument because we're on the same...

I know you don't have an argument, but I'm dying to get to the part of... Just go ahead. Well, you're putting me on the spot because I haven't actually written the article yet. So I haven't come up with a conclusion. You can't write it until you think it. And I think about it all the time.

I am by definition a huntress, I guess. i yeah but i don't call myself a huntress because i don't identify with the modern day use of the word today okay because temptress seduce stress like all these stresses are very sexualized and mistress and look a mistress i don't know it just it just sounds sexy and i think there was like a comic book series with like Huntress or something like that. And again, I haven't. I'm right in the middle. You just threw me under the bus, by the way.

But yeah, I think that Hunter is so gender neutral. And we were talking about this earlier. We're in this fucked up, excuse me, age where there's all of this, like I don't even know how to talk politically correct anymore because everybody is offended by something. No, I'm talking now, but like, I just mean, I mean, in, in, in general, in general, it's so hard to refer to different people about what they are because you don't even know what people's gender is. So my point is, is in today's age, in today's age, we do, we have this word that is so beautifully simple,

right? Like you hunt and you are a hunter. It's not a hunter man or a hunter woman. You are a hunter. Like we have the most perfect package of a word and and it's still not good enough. I just give up. Yeah, when one's working, it's no good. The reason I brought this up is someone actually wrote in, I don't know if you saw this, but someone wrote in, here's a question for April that they wanted to be answered tonight, but it's not this one. But it's one that made me think of this one, because this person was recently at, what did they put it?

They were at an orientation event at a college in Eastern Washington. And it was like the person addressing the crowd was trying to, it seemed to be, I'm paraphrasing, it seemed to be that their tendency was to say you guys, you guys, but they had switched to you all. And so the person was wondering, the person was asking you, do you take offense by me saying you guys to you? No. Because you all is y'all. It's very Southern.

And that shit is not politically correct. I mean, I don't think they came up with y'all. As like a gender neutral term. No, they didn't. Yeah, no, it's not I mean, I don't think they came up with y'all. As like a gender neutral term. No, they didn't. Yeah, no, it's not offensive. But I don't know. I honestly can't relate to a lot of the people who are offended by that stuff today. I just don't.

I don't understand the thought process. Have you guys read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck? No. Read it. Does it get into this? It's awesome, yeah. Do you, does fishermen, does fishermen bother you? No.

No, but I get it. I do get it. Like, I understand if someone wants to call me an angler and that makes everyone more comfortable, that's cool. But again, angler, I'm not going to be like an angler, angler, angstress. What is it? Like a fishstress?

If you call me a fishstress, if anyone calls me a fishstress. That's something different. But one of the things that I asked all these women, I reached out to 20 different women from spearfishing, hunting, and fishing, all age groups. I interviewed the woman who fish in bikinis, and the woman who don't even own a bikini. And I asked them, what is...

They just go naked. That's the new age. I asked them what the fish version is is and there is no fish version of a huntress i mean some angler angling woman will call themselves a huntress but um and then i actually i interviewed a 60 year old um female angler and she says she doesn't like being identified as a fisherman or a an angler because she said it made her feel like she didn't have a vagina. So she likes to be called, I know, but I can't relate. But she wants to be a fisher woman.

And as a 60-year-old woman who is my senior, I respect her opinion. But no, fisherman doesn't offend me or any of my girlfriends who are really into it. That's why, depending on the audience, I'll be writing and I'll catch myself to be inclusive. I'll catch myself using hunters and anglers, which is still really clear. Like we're not pioneering new words. We're using words that have an accepted meaning and it's not clunky. It's not like clunky to say hunters and anglers. And I was doing a story not long ago for Outside Magazine and they were saying, what's a way to say sportsman? And people have, it's clunky. It's sportsmen and women, which I get the sentiment, but it just,

like it doesn't reflect a natural way of talking. Sportsman sounds like sportsmen to me. I don't know. Men. But it's hard because like human, human, human. We're not going to introduce it as like human. Or mankind. Mankind. I don't know how they fix that.

It's funny. Sports people. No, I think the accepted one now is sports men and women. But a problem, and like everyone's favorite topic is to bitch about PC stuff, which like I understand. But like a problem with it, I think a problem that's coming in culturally with word choice is people are now measuring people. People are now measuring someone's morality, someone's worldview,

only on the words that, the use of historic words that come out of their mouth and not anything about the overall content. What they're trying to say doesn't matter. The sum package of what you're saying doesn't matter. It's just they're listening for the wrong little thing that comes out of your mouth to condemn that rather than like the gist

of what you're getting at. And I think that like, that's the thing that winds up making me uneasy about this. But I do do now, I just say hunters and anglers because like in my heart, there's like an inclusivity, but then at the same time, I don't like things that sound weird. Whoever said it had to be gender specific.

I mean, that was the, when I call somebody a fisherman, that means that guy's a fisherman. That guy knows what time it is. That woman's a hunter. Like she knows what she's doing. It's like a, it's a term of like, it's, sugar. I lost my train of thought. I hear you man and to me it's like unnecessarily divisive yeah it's like it's like it's like I'm stoked that that hunters are female hunters are the largest like grow like there's more the more growth in that than any other

demographic within hunting in the last recent decades. That's awesome. I'm glad to, I'm glad to see that. But why, why, why do you want to be doing something different? Like, why do you want to go out like huntressing? Why can't you just come hunting with the rest of us? It's like, it just, it just, it feels like it's drawing lines when they're like trying to become like, if women are trying to get in, trying to become a part of the community, like join the community, like be part, be part of the club, don't have your own thing. But the battle you'll get is the women, and then we'll drop it, but the battle you'll get is the women I'm hearing from who enjoy the word huntress

are badass, organic. You'd never know that they call themselves huntresses, but they've identified with that word for 40 years because the word has been around for a long time. So it's hard to strip that from them. I get it. And I know badass female hunters who love that word. I know this girl who hunts with a long bow

and kills deer and elk every year. And I heard her read a poem about her huntress heart and stuff. But every time she says it, I just cringe a little bit. I'm like, I just don't really, that word, I don't know, I could be convinced otherwise, and I'm excited to read this story. I'm excited to write the story, so I'll keep you guys posted.

She's got to write it before you read it, but I feel like now you've got a lot of material. I already had a lot of material before you threw me under the bus. I want to get into this thing that's come up in New York. It's the Assembly Bill, it's got an exciting name, A-O-O-7-2-2, which does this, that's come up in New York. It's the assembly bill. It's got an exciting name, A00722, which does this. It's interesting. Provides that it shall be unlawful. So this is in the state of New York, far away, but it's still our continent and everything.

It should be unlawful for any person to organize, sponsor, conduct, promote, or participate in any contest, competition, tournament, or derby where the objective of such contest or competition is to take wildlife. So it would be illegal to have a salmon, illegal to have a salmon derby. Illegal to have a squirrel hunting tournament. What about all these people competing for follows on Instagram? Is that technically illegal? Yeah. April brought up the point that it would kill social media, right?

Well, what I brought up is my dad and I always used to play a game, first, biggest, most, dollar a category. And I loved that when I was a kid. It made me work harder when we were out fishing. How many charitable fundraisers? Trading three bucks between a dad and his son? Yeah. But all the charitable fundraisers that are run is derbies.

But I know what they're gunning for. It's a sloppily written law. What they're gunning for is the you know the current like the enemy du jour which is like coyote hunt yeah coyote contest and then there i think also like shark tournaments well there there's legislation in new mexico right now that's more narrowly tailored than that that's specifically going after coyote hunts i i believe but in new york they're just like all of it two dudes i bet you i catch a bigger perch no you don't no it's a bummer well that that whole uh that whole squirrel hunt debacle in new jersey did you do you see this oh yeah we talked about new hearth yeah you guys

already talked about that yeah that was wild like the just like seeing the news coverage of that and seeing all the signs that people had lining the road. Oh, I saw that. Because there was four times as many protesters as there were people. It was like a kid's family thing, like get everybody out hunting and stuff. And there was some vicious shit about hunters

that I got hard even to repeat. Years ago, like the first, the first assignment I did for, for outside. And I began writing for them years ago is the cover of shark tournament in New York called Mako madness. And I interviewed a proponent of Mako madness. And he was just saying that, or sorry, an opponent, he didn didn't didn't like the tournaments and his take was i don't like applying a carnival atmosphere to like the killing of game which was his perspective yeah but he wasn't a fisherman right he was a fisherman he was that's interesting yeah he actually served me some mako shark okay okay well that's interesting interesting then because I feel like there's a deeper conversation to be had there

because I've always been kind of uncomfortable with like Bassmaster Classic and that kind of thing because I think fishing is kind of a spiritual activity, at least to me, it's like where you go to find peace and calm and quiet and really work on your thoughts and

your life philosophy and deal with things and be with friends and commune with nature. And, and to see people putting a 200 horse outboard on the back of a 16 foot boat that's covered in glitter. And it, I mean, I mean, when I was a kid, when I was eight, if you'd asked me, what are you going to do with your life? I would have said professional bass fishermen. Yeah, but they're not hurting the resource. They're not hurting the resource and it's all catch and release. I mean, the way they hold the bass by the lip and crank their neck, like there's some science, new science out that's saying that's not the best handling practices. That's not my, that's not my issue. But the

carnival thing, like, I mean, that, that resonates on some level that that to to put like an unnecessary just competitive car yeah just it's just so it's just it's also it seems so loud yeah and loudness to it but i still oppose like i oppose the limits i oppose the restrictions because i'm always looking at when i think about something like this i'm always looking at like what is the end game what is the end game of the person pushing for it yeah and i think that i don't i think i don't agree with their end game and so there's no more fun yeah yeah well i i disagree with the unintended consequences perhaps more because i mean are they going to ban like the little cute trout derbies they do in Central Park? Yes.

Yeah, exactly. Like who's that hurting? You can't promote it, so you can't even staple the sign to a tree anymore about it. Here's a question for someone. Dan Curtis, he's here tonight. His wife, Grace, they got a question. It was a long question. I'm trimming it down to a line.

What is the level of etiquette that a hunter should expect upon gifting prime time meat to someone? Prime time? Like high quality. Mine is high. Like I expect, like when I give something, if I give someone the gift of fish and game, I have very, like for them to please me, I need to see a high level of care and I need to see prompt use. And that was one of the nicest things

when I was living here in Magnolia. I had my neighbor on that side, my neighbor on that side, and my neighbor across from me. And I gave them all a lot of fish and game. And they all cooked it real quick-like. And then would share with me, sometimes even with photographs, what they had done with it. That's good practice.

And then I would the next day bring them more stuff. I would constantly bring stuff over to these guys because I was seeing that return. If you give something and you find it in their freezer six months later, I've taken it back. I was just up at my parents' house. Hi, mom.

Hi, dad. And I want you to know that I've started to check your freezer. And I see that you still have some of my elk. And so I'm instituting a rule that I'm not giving any more until I find that it's depleted. You got it. And she sends me great photos of the,

and she's an amazing pastry chef and does really cool stuff with it and sends me Snapchats or whatever, the whole process. And I love that. I think that's a great feedback loop that I'd encourage people to implement. I scored a really good hunting permission one time where a guy let me on his place, his farm, and I just asked, can I hunt squirrels on your farm?

No one else was hunting squirrels. And I got some squirrels and went home and made dinner with the squirrels and texted him a picture of what I made with his squirrels. He texted me back that I could hunt deer and elk on his place, or deer and turkeys on his place. Oh, shit. Yeah. He was so impressed.

Wow. There you go. Wow. People like to see it. That's all it takes. How to score your next deer hunting permission. Right there. Steven Ronell.

Text someone a picture of a dead squirrel, and he'll let you hunt his place. Yeah. I was going to say, I gave some meat recently to some folks, and I haven't heard back from them, but it got me thinking because I was going to ask them next time I run into them, you know, what'd you do? How was it? Whatever. Because recently, I did that with some other folks that had given me to maybe six months ago. And I was like, Hey, what'd you do with the halibut? Some halibut that you'd given

me. And, uh, I got the answer like, yeah, we ate it. I was like, you just ate it. That's all you got for me. And I just kind of in my mind. I was like. Well, you know what? Not good enough. It's good that you tell the story that way because that better reflects what the question was. Because the question was about a gift. And there was no, you know, like, so how was it? There was no, you want the person to be like this. But wait a second. So you re-gifted his halibut though? Yeah, I know. We didn't dig into that. So how do you feel about his etiquette

on re-gifting your halibut? Well, no. Share the love. You know, if I gave someone... I've got good reason. That's fine. I only care about the end. If I gave someone something and then they gave it to someone and that person came and was like this to me, that's great. It's just knowing that, because in my mind, I'm doing people just a normal good turn, but I'm also doing like, I'm also trying to like publicly elevate the status of the resource. Yeah. So that people will look at the water and look at the mountain or whatever, and they'll be like, oh, there's that thing, this thing, this giant, beautiful thing

that produced this wonderful thing that I ate, and therefore I recognize the value of the producing habitat. I'm kind of getting at that, and I'm also kind of trying to be like a nice dude. But yeah, like bringing up, like elevating the resources, elevating the things that promote the resources.

And so I don't give a shit who in the end winds up having it. 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, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service.

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

And this is like a read. You and I talked, April, you and I talked about this one a long time ago. But this is a good, this is an ethics conundrum. Where someone, don't, what's that thing like, don't kill the messenger, be mad. I won't shoot the messenger. Don't shoot the messenger. I'm reading, I't shoot the messenger, don't shoot the messenger. I'm paraphrasing a thing a dude is saying. How the pursuit of whitetails with a bow is one of the only times an inferior implement is considered morally superior.

Using a spear would be further inferior and difficult, but there are very few advocating the moral purity of spear hunting. That's like a very legitimate point. It's like people feel great about using a bow, but not a gun, but then if you use a spear, you lose all your sponsorships.

Remember that dude? Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. People didn't celebrate him. People didn't celebrate him. He got cam. People didn't celebrate him. They got blackballed. It was immoral. So it's like, rifle, this kind of moral. Bow, this kind of moral.

Spear, it's confusing. Where's that ladle? That's always confused me. I've never understood that. Adeladdle? You can hunt with adeladdles in some states. In some states, you can hunt with adeladdles. But is that just, can you?

He's not done. He's not done. Likewise, a person could choose to commute in a Model T or hand saw lumber for a home construction project. Making those choices would certainly make the tasks more arduous, but I doubt anyone considers the Model T commuter stuck in the Lincoln Tunnel to be morally superior to those in air-conditioned cars. Choosing a weapon which increases the perceived personal reward level for the hunter at the expense of a quick and humane kill is a dreadful, selfish act. His words. Let the hunt be challenging. Let the terrain be difficult. The game reclusive and wary. The location perilous to access. Add difficulty to the hunt in places where the quick

dispatch of an animal doesn't hang in the balance. When it comes time to complete the most important task of hunting, choosing a weapon with the highest likelihood of an ethical and immediate kill is the highest moral ground. So what's the question? I like this guy. The question is, you had expressed this to me before. I had questioned you before.

You questioned about it. I'm just wondering where you're at on it because that like... Yeah, that's good. I've got a lot to say. Yeah, I put, I hold... Like I struggle with how to, I know that I can tear his argument down.

I just know that it's hard to do it. Look. I'm going to do it in a minute. Do you want to? I'm going to try. Go for it. Go for it. No, no, I want you to go first. Well, I had asked Steve, when I had Steve on my show, I had asked Steve if it was more ethical to kill with a bow or a gun.

Because I hear conflicting reports. And I've only been hunting for, I don't know, four years. So for me, I was hearing all sorts of different reports. And a lot of people were telling me that a bow was more humane. And the more I looked into it, the more I was finding that it's actually kind of a gray area. No, it's not a gray area. Do you think that they, like, look at capital punishment. Do you feel that, could you imagine a situation

where they administered capital punishment with archery equipment? Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Only if they used those guillotine broadheads. Yeah. It'd be like a big nine-inch cutting blade guillotine broadhead. So since leaving you and looking more into it, like this year I went out with a gun.

I was going to fully try to get one with a gun. I get stuck in limited situations. A, when I've got my baby on my back, I'm obviously stuck with a bow. I'm not going to take a shot with her on my back with a gun and um some of the properties that i hunt like in australia especially i can't have a gun so i'm limited to the bow and same with obviously different seasons but if i can take an edit for me i want it to be the most most ethical shot possible i know we had this conversation you said the the animal doesn't care. It's going to die. But I would like to get as close to the animal as possible so that I know I'm making

the most accurate shot as possible. I don't care if it's a gun or a bow, but I need to know it's the most humane shot that I can make given my situation, whether I've got the baby or whether I've got property access. When I think about the question, I think about why I see what he's getting at, is one thing I think about is I think that he's stripping this really complicated thing down to a simple thing. He's taking something that has many inputs and considerations and acting like the one consideration is how quickly is, is how quickly one can administer death to this thing you're trying to hunt for. And it's like, I guess you, I guess just to give a really honest answer about it is I have a lot of other factors that I'm considering

in. And you also have, you also have like resource level things where the lack of efficacy, if a bow is less effective than a gun, the lack of efficacy allows more people to participate in the activity. That's why in so many places, you can get an overt, everybody that wants can go archery hunting for something, but everybody that wants can't go rifle hunting for something. It's because the efficacy does it. So if we were really going to play the game to the end, it would probably be that you had to put out like a specific bait laced with a sleeping agent and a poison. If the only goal was to always like, if the only thing that hunters cared about was just like administering death as quickly as possible, you'd use grenade launchers. Well, I think about this all the time. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. So it's like, if, no, I'm saying if you're going to chase that, if that's going to be the only thing you care about and the only thing you chase, I don't know that we've really arrived at the right answer. I don't think we have. Because it's just more complicated. And I do think that think like if you factor in that that if you hit something with a bow and you get a shot and you double lung it it has enough time to go 20 yards and die or it falls over and dies much more quickly um i think that it hunting is like there's

a selfish act what you're like you're doing a thing for a bunch of personal reasons and in in the reward one gets for doing it in a way, like a difficult way, like a bow and the amount of discipline and skill that it takes, it's a cold calculation, but maybe that reward that one feels outweighs that three seconds of, right? Like that gain for you and your calculus outweighs the three seconds of stress that the thing has as it crosses the stage and dies over there.

Maybe for some people, not for me. I would take any weapon that I feel I can get the job done with most efficiently, fastest. I just have, I started with a bow and just kind of stuck from there.

First gun I really shot was at your house. Is that right? Yeah. And I still shot that motherfucker in your backyard that's good i want to know when bow hunting became like morally better oh dude people act like it's way more okay you say people you say people but what people are they all i'm not gonna name names no name names. I'm not going to name names. No, no, no, no.

I know, but is there like a group? Or can you break it down at all? I feel like non-hunters are more likely to hold that perspective. There was just a piece in the Wall Street Journal. That's what I'm hearing. And Sam just hit it on the head. And same reason with why I started with the bow hunting is that everybody would be like, or people I'd meet be like,

oh, yeah, I hunt, but I'm a bow hunter. So as a non-hunter, someone looking to get into it, I kept hearing this and I thought, well, that's just, I mean, it's the rednecks who shoot guns. And I heard someone just say fly fishermen. And that is, for me, it was a lot of that. A lot of these fly fishermen were getting into, or into bow hunting. And they would say that there were parallels and that it was the equivalent to fly fishing. And they just made it sound like it was more ethical. And that's why I asked you, is it more ethical?

Because these bow hunters were saying to me, yeah, you don't interrupt the environment with the sound, which is ridiculous because I was bow hunting all fall and I could hear guns everywhere. Like it didn't make a difference where I was. But the more I think about just the I just I don't know I don't see how it is more ethical can you guys prove me it's not it's really not theoretically leveling the playing field somehow doing people that don't hunt or they're like oh you're giving them you know oh well I had to sneak up

instead of just you know you got guys now 800 yards away and the whole people, non-hunters, I live in Seattle, I'm surrounded by them. There's lots of ways to pass judgment, but it's an easier way to gain some sort of legitimacy to it. Being as like, well, it's hard. But I do like the stalking up. Seriously, it's hard but i don't know it's like like seriously it's hard the stocking is harder let's be straight it's not harder for me to hard worry about we hard isn't ethical hard is not ethical it's two different things but you're asking the question

as to why it's relevant yeah and and it is it is a lot of non-hunter i think this is bring that forward and i also think that like new hunters too like i've had a lot of non-hunters that bring that forward. And I also think that like new hunters too, like I've had a lot of my friends who have got into hunting in their late 20s, early 30s. And it's been fascinating to me to see the issues they have to wrestle with that have never bothered me. Like I grew up like shoulder deep in salmon guts and,

you know, bonking fish on the head and helping butcher deer and all that. So like the death part has never, you know, I think I kind of walked over that threshold before I had quite the mental capacity to really wrestle with it. So it's always felt very natural. But people who are coming into it later really have to surpass some of these difficult questions, like how they feel about taking a life just for the sake of sport and sustaining their own life. And I think some people, I think a lot of people feel better about that if it feels more fair to them. And what I always say is rifle hunting for elk is plenty fair. I think a lot of people feel better about that if it feels more fair to them. And what I always say is rifle hunting for elk is plenty fair.

Like, I mean, in Washington, it's going to be less than 10% of people who buy an elk tag. No matter where you go, 10% to 20% success rates. Yeah, absolutely. If you want to be hard, only walk backward. Like, only walk backward with a rifle is really challenging yeah or be a responsible rifle hunter like like you guys do like a rule you guys have that i've adopted of not taking shots past 400 i mean i haven't taken a shot past 300 in a long long time it's just the closing the gap that's all it was for me was closing the gap i still if i have a gun in my hand would rather get closer sure yeah i just for me it's all about was for me was closing the gap. I still, if I have a gun in my hand, would rather get closer. Sure. Yeah. I just, for me, it's all about closing the gap. That's the fun part. Okay.

If you could, uh, if you could snap your fingers and automatically be an absolute master of one hunting and fishing skill, what would the skill be?ing sneaking up on stuff totally okay yeah figuring out how to stay quiet stay keep my heart rate under control just like deep breath see what i'm doing get the wind right, not let the excitement of the moment, just taking that deep breath and figuring out, all right, the wind's this way, I need to go this way. Like once I can, because I have good nose,

like once I'm in it, all of a sudden my old game plan in every magazine or book or podcast or thing that I've read goes out the window. And it's like my heart rate's at like 140 and I'm like ah you know and then you're trying to do everything correctly yeah if i could just stay calm for a minute that would be mine are you hip to uh guys have been using beta blockers to do that well define beta blockers i've pretty much tried everything no it's like what the hell is it

it's like it's like a medication people take the medication for some reason and find that they don't get buck fever anymore. Really? Yeah. Yeah. And you're not like, it's a banned substance. Like people that shoot competitive pistol shooting and stuff, they can't use beta blockers. Okay. Calms you down too much.

Maybe I should look into beta blockers. Yeah, guys talk about getting... No, dudes say that their doctor would put them on a beta blocker and all of a sudden they realize that when a buck comes in they don't get panicky as panicky i don't get panicky i just get you know in the moment you're there i just wish i was better if yeah one skill quiet and just quiet as a generality mentally quiet mentally quiet and then also just to be able to read this circumstance. I think the one thing, like the thing that I missed out on and was lazy about is all forms of calling. Because I always was, for whatever reason, would be with someone who was better at it than me and then let them be the one that did it yeah

i got a buddy and that prepared and that like went on and on and on that went on and on and on and now here i'm in like my 40s and i've always like my early when i was a little kid my brother danny was a really good caller so we hunted dogs he just called i just shut up because danny was good at it and then like you know hunting elk with yannis yannis is a great caller so he just calls um and yeah missing out on like like that and it's never too late but that i didn't cultivate that skill and i'm only now just like a you know getting better at it well i kind of suck at it but i mean i make up for it in other ways a little bit but yeah that's been a real miss man i like i like, I'm sorry to interrupt,

but the process is fun. I mean, I get this game and I enjoy playing the game and just throwing out something that we could just like not have to learn and experience to get better. But like, if we're not sitting here saying that we don't enjoy like going through learning buck fever

and how to, you know, get over it and learning calls for, I mean, yeah, we've been at it for 20 years now of like this fricking latex and glue in our mouths. Just, you know, just over and over and over. And, but like, you got to enjoy that, that not being good and becoming good. I think that process, right? Yeah. I think the journey was, seemed hard for me, you know?

That's my regret. You didn't enjoy it. No, I didn't enjoy it. You got one? Yeah, if I could snap my fingers and become a master of something, then I'd improve my archery shot. I've been doing an archery league at that little shop down the street from the office. Yeah. And God, I've been a mess. Like I, cause I, I, archery practice has always been

like a solitary thing for me. I'd like shoot my backyard growing up or go out to the range in Missoula by myself, but shooting with the last week they had like a, they had like a steel barrel on a swivel that would like go around and both ends were cut off. And it would like, it wasn't, it wasn't like a slow spit. Oh my God. It threw me to, what the hell is that supposed to teach you how to do it? I don't, I don't know. Like as like an elk passes through the gap. Oh, like shooting fish in a barrel. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But I mean, having a bunch of people around and like, you know, coming into it cold, like the first day I rolled up and I was already late.

Everybody had started and I like pull out my bow and get ready. I'm like, oh, all broadheads, great. And one still has elk lung all over it. And so it's just, I just, yeah, I could do so much to be a better Bosch. I've been doing it for 15 years and still feel like I have a long ways to go to reach that 10,000 hours or reach mastery.

Yeah. One last thing I want to touch on, and then we're going to play our game. I don't get to go? Oh, you just did it, didn't you? No. What was my thing that I was going to become better at? The process of calling. I was just enjoying the process.

You can go three times. I don't care. Go ahead. He wants to master enjoying the process of learning things. No, yeah, please. All you want. If I could just snap my fingers and just like one thing I can just master in the whole hunting and fishing world, it would just be how to manifest and just conjure up animals.

Like when I look at that hill, I'd be like, there he is. Always know the manifestations. His dad knows how to manifest. Yeah. No, in all seriousness, it'd be tracking. Tracking. Oh, yeah. To have that skill just to like, without even like bending over from six foot too

well my eyes are probably at six feet just to look down and be able just to see you know which way way ahead just follow you know the best guy the best people i know at are people that refer trappers yes i agree because just like for hours every day hours every day yeah you being one of those people and little teeny clues man little teeny clues um okay we gotta do our deal oh how are we gonna you know we didn't do oh son of a i don't know what we didn't do. Giving stuff away. To do seeing through the bullshit. Oh, right. Yeah. Oh, but there's a thing I want to talk about real quick

because so many people have written in about it. This is one of those, you guys don't need to say anything, but we've had so many people write in about a border wall on our southern border. Like, what does a border wall mean for wildlife? And like, every day someone writes in about it because it's been in the news so much about whether we're going to build the border wall or not.

But I find that people get mad. Like, people don't want to hear the answer. They don't want to hear about it because they don't want it to challenge however they feel about it. Because you could have, there's a very legitimate argument to be made that you want to build a border wall, and you should be able to think that while knowing everything that that would mean, right? Like if you're saying to, if you're talking

with your spouse about whether you're going to go on vacation, and you decide like, we're going to go on vacation, and then someone points out, well, if we go on vacation, we're going to have less money in our savings account. No one gets mad at you for pointing that out. So does the wall affect wildlife? Like, how could it? Like, absolutely it does. It cuts off.

Like, people keep writing it about like it's some kind of mystery. You're denying access to water to certain things, and you're preventing the movement of animals. And since the dawn of time, wildlife has moved freely back and forth across the border. And jaguars come in and out. Ocelots come in and out. Desert bighorns.

Pronghorns. Coos deer, mule deer, in some places even bison. And then historically you had species that would, like for instance, they think that at the end of the Pleistocene, we lost mountain lions in what's now the lower 48, and mountain lions only lived to the south and then recolonized back and forth. So there's always been this exchange going on. And if you are saying you want to, if one's going to build an impenetrable wall, you're going to impede the exchange.

But that's not like solving the question of whether it needs to happen in my mind, but it's just like a factor that one has to weigh but like people get pissed when you bring it up i think you could bring it up and realize that that's the truth and still think that's what you want to do but it's just the reality i know guys who hunt that border country live down there who are super worried about it think it's good yeah i think think it's gonna mess up their deer hunting yeah yeah I know people who are worried about people

coming across in that danger and worried about the danger of wildlife. It's just a big it's a messy issue. But people write in acting as though there's this sort of debatable answer but I feel like it's not debatable. It would be

it would have implications for wildlife. But now we're going to play sea. Could we just do doggy doors or something? That's what I keep wondering about, man. I haven't heard a guy making the case. Yeah, a special code that only animals would know. Yeah, you figure out how to make a doggy door for desert mule deer. Yeah, a code, a doggy door, a little thing.

I've even heard people talk about the implications for lo-fying birds and insects. But yeah, doggy doors... Those guys I'm talking about are hardcore quail hunters who hunt like right down by the border. And I mean, I can't imagine quail... Couldn't figure it out, but they don't tend to fly super high, so...

Yeah. Might be problematic. I don't know. How are we going to pick someone to play seeing through the bullshit? I got to figure it out. Do it. I'll combine it with our other thing that we're going to do. Oh, you like that? I love it. And I'm just going to go for the upper end of that. All right, so a couple things we're going to do tonight. Well, I'm just going to bring everybody down first. Okay, if it's your birthday today, not tomorrow, not yesterday, but today, come on down to the stage. Is there anybody in the house whose birthday is it today?

Oh, yeah. Today is it. I see one. Birthday? Two. That's it? We need the oldest person who's having a birthday. Come on down.

But then you're disqualified from the other thing you get for having a birthday. Oh, I was just going to be super nice to them and hook them up. Zora, come down. How many we got? Looks like, oh, I see more movement. How old are you? Does that change? 35.

35? Is anybody older than 35 today? Oh, there it is. They're coming down. It'll be about an hour and they'll be down here. Tell them the rules, Giannis. For seeing through the bullshit? Yep. Alright. We're going to play a game called Seeing Through the Bullshit.

You might also know it as a, I've never played the drinking version of two lies and a truth. Have you? Anybody here? Oh, how old are you?

He's 35. That's alright, hang out. We got more though, right? We got one coming down from the old timer coming from up high. So tell them the rules um so whoever we choose to pick we're going to tell you guys uh two lies and one truth and then if you can guess which one is the true story then you've seen through the bullshit seen through the bullshit which is brought to you by vortex get to take home this brand new pair of Fury laser range finding binoculars

that will laser range find reflective stuff at 5,000 yards. And deer at 1,000 plus. Steve was hitting some coos deer in January at like 1,100 with these suckers. Lifetime warranty. How old are you?

Ow. How old are you? Oh, get out of my face. out no one's gonna beat that no it's not all right coming up I'm getting okay oh you're giving up your spot I am okay so what happened our person? She's coming. Coming. She's coming. She's coming back, coming up the stairs.

There it is. Come on out. What's your name? I got a C for you right here. Hi. It's fun to meet her, isn't it? Nice to meet you. Hey there.

Take my C, take my hand. Happy birthday. Thank you. Happy birthday. Hello. So what's your name? Clary. Clary. Okay. Clary. We're going to tell you. I'm going to sit just so she knows. I'm going to sit close to her so that possibly they can pick up her voice on my microphone. Are you comfortable with that? Yes, of course. Okay. Where are you from? You're not American. England. England. Okay. Welcome. All these stories are distinctly American. How long have you been here? 16 years. Oh, okay. You're good. You're up to speed. All right.

Did you hear the rules for the game? No. Oh, okay. You were busy walking down. I was busy running down. So we're going to tell you, who's telling them? Sam? April? I'm going to tell a story. April's going to tell a story. Oh, no. I'm going to tell a story.

Sam's going to tell a story. Giannis is going to tell a story. One of them is true. You just need to identify the true one. We'll start with Giannis. Okay. Everybody knows that you can take goats and put them in a pen. Goats, yes.

And force them to eat knapweed and other types of weeds. And then you can let them, they'll sort of become accustomed to it, and that will become their diet. When you cut them loose out in the wild, they'll eat the weeds, and they don't eat the native. And that's a way that we, here in the States, we get rid of weeds out on wide open pastures in the forest. Are you tracking that? That sounds very clever.

It is. Well, it gets better. So there's a problem here in Washington where there's a pod of orcas. You may have heard of the southern pod? Southern resident. Southern resident pod that only eat Chinook salmon, right? Have you heard about this? Oh, well. Hold on a minute. You people just. You guys are going to be, you guys are going to be allowed to help later. We're

going to let you help later, but let us get through the stories before you start yelling. You all, you all. I wouldn't trust them quite yet because they have no idea. You mean you men and women and everything in between. Yes. Hunters and huntresses.

You all, hunters, huntresses. Make it go away. Okay, so. Even you irrational ones out there. Okay, so even you irrational ones out there. Okay, so the state of Washington, they've got a problem with these orcas because there's not enough salmon for them to eat. So they're getting skinny, and they're not doing well. So there's another pot of orcas out that go up and down the coast

that eat mammals like sea lions, seals, and whatnot. So what they're thinking about doing is making a net and capturing a few of these southern pod orcas and actually taking seals that they've caught and cutting off a fin or a chunk of the tail and putting it in the net with these orcas to sort of start getting the orcas to feed on these, the seals to then turn them into predators that work off the seals and not be just, you know, so, that's the word I'm looking for. Relying on the salmon. Okay.

They're just looking into that. Okay. That's fine. Now, you're familiar with the state of wyoming okay there's a big reservoir called flaming gorge in wyoming a dude is is fishing through the ice and catches a lake trout, opens its gut up, and finds a thumb in its gut. They connect the feller that lost his thumb with the feller that found the thumb. The guy comes and has a look,

and he says, I think that's my thumb. And he now keeps the thumb in a jar of formaldehyde on his mantelpiece. That's possible. Okay. Sam? So are you familiar with Catalina Island off of Southern California? Yes, I know where it is. So for a very long time, they've had problems with feral goats.

Eating, yes, big, big problems. They can't get rid of them. It's a big island, very rugged terrain. They've tried all sorts of different solutions for getting rid of them. Back in the 70s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed planting coyotes on the island, which would naturally kind of take care of the goats. But obviously they're worried about creating a new invasive species so what they proposed to do was plant a subcutaneous cyanide pill inside the coyotes digestive tract that would break down over the years so after they'd done their jobs they would Coyotes with cyanide?

No, I don't think so. Yeah, because somebody else would then eat them, and then they'd die. You may be unfamiliar with the goofy stuff wild game managers have done in this country. We're talking about the 70s. That's when animals were harmed in the making of movies. That's when they were capturing...

The man that got his thumb back from the belly of a lake trout or the orca project that they're going to start feeding them new cut up seals to turn them into better predators or the cyanide pill filled coyotes.

I'm going with the thumb. You got it! Yeah. Nice. But, here's, okay, here's the thing. They are,

someone in Australia is looking at how to do a time capsule death dingo. That's where we got it from. That's where we got it from. That's where we got it from. It won't happen, though. It won't happen. I guess Australia is bigger than gasoline, right? What are you going to do with those?

What? What is it? You win a prize. A really nice prize. It's a pair of binoculars that have a laser rangefinder built into them. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

That's my husband. Oh, great. Did you? I was just going to ask, are you sure you came to the right show tonight? I've been looking at my ticket thinking, when are they going to start singing? That's coming next. Where's the part where you're like, don't cry for me Argentina?

He's my husband. Oh, wonderful. Thank you everybody All right, guys. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. 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, On Axe Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips you canadians the great features that you love and on x 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 on x if you visit on x maps.com meet