The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 168: Satan's Decoy

Episode Date: May 13, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with Ryan Callaghan, Ben O’Brien, and Janis Putelis.Subjects discussed: Making soap with wild game fat; turkey hunting in the Texas Hill Country; how to call shitloads of turkeys; how many showers is too many?; what’s the temperature in hell, and why is Steve headed there?; why turkey hunts never end up the way you imagine; a new hunting mantra; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less. We host 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. Yanni, your new haircut.

I'm sorry about a haircut? Your new haircut. Yes. Just like kind of, I love it. Yeah. Yanni's got a butch. I love it. Yanni's daughters helped to give him a butch.

You call this a butch? It's borderline butch. You feel like butch is an endearing term? But that's just one little, like a three on your wall hair care system? Do you use the wall clippers? Yeah, those are the jam. Dude, I'm so jealous of that haircut. Do you think I'm too thin

on top to run that haircut? I don't think we'll know until you try. Nice thing about it is it grows out pretty dang quick. But you know how you don't like when everyone has the same haircut? If I got that haircut. I think it's like military style, got that haircut i i think it like military style because that's what i call it more of just like a buzz yeah cut i don't i don't even know

what butch means butch to me has a a different negative uh connotation for for you know what i'm talking let's tackle that for a minute okay but um i do want to get into that i i know folks referred to that style of haircut as a butch cut. Dude, not growing up. That's off. Just butch cut. That's a butch cut. It's like there, there, and there.

You could have a word mean two different things. Oh, you definitely could. Yeah. I just never heard it called a butch cut. A butch? Or a butch. Yeah. That's a borderline butch. When I went on my first date with my wife, it was a fourch cut a butch not or a butch yeah that's a borderline buzz when i went on my first

date when i went on my first date with my wife it was a four-day date and i had just gotten one of those because i used to get those and she maybe she doesn't like them as much but i got one and i remember on our first date which spanned a number of days um three people asked if i was in the military yeah yeah you do get that especially if you walk around like vortex hoodie with a uh yeah because you got a usa flag you got a usa patch and a short haircut do you got like uh you got a map of fallujah tattooed on your chest america i don't are you at the point, Steve, Steve and Rinella, where you are getting sunburned on the top of your head?

No. No. And I felt like I was thinning out, but I feel like it thickened back up again. That's not possible. Tell us about what product you've been using. Nothing.

I use a medicated sham i use what i i have a skin condition on my scalp and next to on the sides of my nose so i use a medicated shampoo if it's bothering me if not i use whatever's in the shower you know i mean yeah are you a daily shampooer no i don't take a shower every day dude i take a shower like i take a shower every three days. Then do you shampoo? Oh, yeah. If I get in there, I'm shampooing.

Let's take a poll here. Cal, where are you at on showers? Two to three days right now. But typically when I'm up and running, not crashing at a buddy's house, I'm going to shower every day again. Yeah. Yeah, honey. Yeah, every day. But I do it more to wake up. That's how I'm at. Yeah, I used to be like that. Even if I'm clean. You every day again. Yeah. Yeah, honey. Yeah, every day. But I do it more to wake up.

That's how I'm at. Yeah, I used to be like that. Even if I'm clean. You don't feel grimy? You don't feel like, ah, I could take a shower to wake up? When I wake up in the morning, I typically, I don't change my clothes. I don't, unless I'm like coming down to the office and I feel like I should, I'll wear my same, i wake up and put my same

clothes back on change my undies put my same clothes back on i'll do that for a few days even t-shirt sometimes i don't like to generate a lot of laundry and i don't like to be getting in and out of the shower and having to dry off all the time would it be safe to say that you're just the general principle is low maintenance that That's why you like the haircut. That's why I don't like a lot of laundry. That's why I like that haircut. I don't like my kids leave. The amount of laundry they generate is staggering.

Oh yeah, buddy. Tell me about it. And it's frowned upon to throw your kids in the same clothes and send them back out to school. I do it whenever I can. Yeah. I had words in my mother-in-law not long

ago about that she was really upset that i did it and i said i've been doing that my entire life and look at me i'm fine um the only time you have to say look at me i'm fine it's a game changer is uh i've taught my girls to when they take their clothes off to turn them right side out and put them into the dirty laundry bin so you don't because i think when you're folding you spend more time turning the clothes right side out than you do actually folding them that's true that helps that's a good thing to teach your kids yeah because i think parents of young kids you can start to feel like all you do is laundry yeah some cooking if i don't have meaningful the reason I don't engage, I handle the cooking in the house and I handle a lot of the dishwashing and whatnot for the most part. But I don't engage in laundry outside of my own laundry because I don't have meaningful input.

Meaningful input to me looks like what constitutes a dirty towel? What constitutes dirty clothes? My definition is different than my wife's so i would have them get up and put the same clothes back on again for several days if need be and i don't believe in separating your colors heavens no no no so since since i'm like i will do family laundry if I can move the rules here a little bit in my direction. But since people are unwilling to move in my direction on a couple of key things, I don't engage. That sounds fair. It strikes me.

You want my involvement? It comes with full involvement. If you want this, you're getting the whole thing. Yeah, it's a package deal. Now, it strikes me that we all have, you have zero kids. I have one, Yanni has two, you have three. So we have all levels. We got it pretty much covered.

We got it all covered. So we have every level of child rearing. So Cal has no laundry to do. Yep, I've got. You have a small amount of laundry to do. i've got you have a small amount of small amount a larger amount for yanni and then yet even a larger amount infinite infinite laundry uh speaking all that look at this segue um we're talking about cleanliness right what do you put in when you're doing laundry what do you what do you put in there in a little receptacle up top

laundry detergent well yeah but you could also call it soap. Guy sent in bear fat. Yeah, a guy sent in a bunch of soap that he makes in wild game fat. I like this guy, which is cool. The dude, farm care soaps. Now, obviously, you run into a problem with selling wild game parts, which I don't know the rules when you're making soap. I don't know the rules on that.

You can't sell the meat, right? You can sell a bear hide. You can't sell bear meat. I don't know where you're at. If you're selling bear fat soap, but he plays it safe and doesn't sell the bear fat soap, but people will. He has friends, I gather, who will bring him deer fat and bear fat

and he'll make them up some soap. He sent his soap made out of, this is bear grease or bear oil. And then what's interesting is there's a way that soap dudes, there's a way that soap dudes score soap with a thing called, I haven't read this as carefully as I wish I had read it. And he's got this little breakdown here where he breaks down all the wild fat, like how salmon oil performs, how bear tallow. He's even got how rabbit tallow, so like rabbit fats attributes,

goose fat attributes, regular old pigs, mink oil attributes, and then the number, which is called an INS ins number which i'm going to have to look up the highest ranker the highest number is um deer tallow has the highest ins value whatever the hell that is iodine and sap i like this guy's uh he's covering all of his bases with this one. Speaking of deer tallow, he's from Elkton, Maryland. He's got a picture of a Sika deer, and the ingredient is deer tallow. Yeah.

He's got her all covered. I think he's making a nod toward Maryland there. Wallow soap. He also makes a soap, which I don't get, and it doesn't excite me at all is cabernet sauvignon because you don't i mean you're not a soap you're a soap every three day if you were a soap every day guy you would understand that's a look how it smell it give it a give it a smell this this honey and lemon is delicious this one has the vague outline of the word soap on it as if to say he's got a lot of other things laying around that look like that. Oh, yeah, look at that. It could either be soap.

It could be chalk. He scratched soap. Some companies will scratch the word dial into it, but he just scratched the word soap into it, because it could be in a chalk. It could be in a eraser. You don't know what that could be. This is a level of WoW game that I haven't touched on yet yet but i think it's pretty damn interesting i think it's very interesting i

and i think everybody here probably feels the same way to a degree when you turn a certain corner you are at a level of commitment where your life allows for nothing else, though. Yeah. Like, I feel like if all of a sudden I was in the soap-making game, in addition to canning, preserving, the general putting up of meat, then it's like you got to have somebody else with another form of income in the household. You become the soap guy, right?

You do it so much. Like, hey, Tim. Old Tim from Elkton? Oh, yeah. This guy makes soap. That's your identity at some point it's like yeah it's something you got to figure out all the way I'm jealous of it but I'm not gonna just to be in total honesty I'm not gonna start making my own soap for my wild game you know Yanni's wife wants to make some soap up that's the main

reason she wants me to kill a fall bear so it has a whole bunch of fat yeah but why not do it with the deer why not i guess yeah we could try you want to take she just already have i i took some of those out of the box have you been using it at home yeah now that your hair is so short you scrub your head with bar soap uh i haven't done that yet we've just been using it as a hand soap in our downstairs bathroom because you know it's so nice and fancy. I kind of want guests and everybody. I would say, is this artisan? As an overused word. This is artisan.

This is the real artisan shit, man. I think the honey and lemon is what we've been... That artisan bread you got at Panarin. Not artisan bread. I hate to tell you. Moving on. A dude... We're going to talk about turkeys.

Hunting turkeys. This is something we've... Have we talked about this before? A guy wrote in saying, man, you fellas got it all wrong saying killed. Shouldn't say you killed a turkey. He said you should say harvested it because you're just playing into the anti-hunters hands by saying you killed it i i understand i do but i feel like a big part of i feel like the game has been lost if we become so detached from the fact that meat in order to eat meat death is associated with it it doesn't have

to be meat mind you oh whatever you eat you're killing it very true but if a farmer told me i went out and harvested that field of corn i picture what he's talking about. If a farmer told me, you know what? I went out and killed all that corn in that field. What if he said I wound him? I would think that he

put Roundup on it. I spend a lot of time thinking about this. Why? I don't know. Because it annoys me. The harvest thing annoys me. It's like, why are you watering down

the thing you're doing? Just admit to what you're doing doing the need to have a word to cloak that we're killing a thing is an issue to me well no because it implies using now you kill the animal you harvest the meat yeah you harvesting like you're not the thing that harvest doesn't get to is that you didn't put the animal there. You put the corn there, but you didn't plant the animal and grow it there. That animal is there, happened to be where you were from our standpoint just by happenstance. Good point.

Harvest does imply. Yeah, but except that if it's a farm animal, you're not going to change the wording. You don't harvest some beef. Yeah, listen to this though slaughter sure or kill no but that's what i'm saying no farmers no rancher would say um i uh killed the we killed the pig slaughtered the pig which to me has a connotation of just like it means killing farm animals?

Slaughter? We're getting into some murky water because I do think like the lower the number, it's clear. The more you would hear kill. Like, hey, I went out and killed a lamb this morning. Slaughter implies mass. Yeah. But now listen to this.

I just thought of this because we talked about this in a different way, but reap what you sow. The term reap, right? That gets used all the time in kind of macabre ways of killing people, like the Grim Reaper. Yeah, or Ridge Reaper. Isn't there a thing called the Ridge Reaper? Under Armour has Ridge Reaper camo.

Is that what it is? Yeah. And when you technically, or not technically, when some people call going behind the fan of a turkey and approaching a turkey, they call that reaping. Reaping. Really? Yeah.

Because you're taking like a scythe and cutting it low. Cutting it low. Well, but that is like I went out and reaped the field today. Yeah. Right? You get where I'm going with this? No. Not at all?

That's the literal definition of reap. Yeah. And then the figurative would be. If you return to the world harvest, in the definition of the word harvest is crop, right? The definition of crop is something that you produced yourself you grew it you harvested your crop yeah you did not grow that deer you did not even if you set up a you know like our boy mark kenyon set up a environment

where the deer likes to live and then sneak in there and kill it you didn't grow it there you gave it a place to live you kind of grew it you kind of grew it but you didn't grow it then if you're a high fence situation where you're putting ear tags and things then you're if you're breeding if you're breeding a deer maybe we can start to get or having them breed yeah if you make them breed a deer comes out then you put it out in a little fence and kill it yeah you probably did harvest probably is a crop at that point. Our new babysitter just came off of working on a deer operation in New Zealand where they harvest the velvet. And she talks about harvesting the velvet.

Yeah. And they'll get a couple velvet harvests off it. Then they slaughter it for meat. I would agree with that if you went out and picked a morel would you ever say i harvested some morels i'd say i reaped it i've been what'd you do this weekend reaped some morels no you pick morels you slaughter beef you kill turkeys yeah man yeah that's i we should have a shirt just like that that says that exact thing yeah you know how everybody got all high on different words for

like a group of zebras is a what yanni that one i don't know oh damn it crash it's a crash of zebras or something like that a murder no it's a crash of rhinos or something like that it's a flamboyance of flamingos remember that that one? You can't predict that. It's a crash of rhinos, right? A dazzle. Oh, a dazzle. Everybody got all hip on that because someone came up with the thing

that showed it all. And then everybody got all into what words mean what. A murder of crows. A murder of crows is a big one. Yeah. It might be a sweet shirt. What do you call it?

It says pick next to it. What do you call it? Corn harvest and a turkey kill. What do you call a group of gir next to it what do you call it corn harvest and a turkey kill what do you call a group of giraffes i don't know a tower no is that right uh just got back from the texas hill country yeah ben you're gonna have to suffice as how many years you spent in texas like three or four so you're a texas it's like three or four so you're a texas expert yeah thanks i'm like i'm like the wikipedia version of it

and texas dudes are so sensitive they're gonna be particularly yeah they're gonna be like listening to this uh pouring over it uh you were saying that we hunted on the Llano River, which can be Llano or Llano. I prefer Llano. I prefer Llano, but I was corrected many times. Yeah, it cannot be Llano. The Llano is in the panhandle, I was told. And I said, yeah, anyway, we're hunting near Burnett, Texas. And he said, it's Burnett.

You can't even say that right. It's get out. Yeah. Real quick, Llano Estacado, which is in Texas. Yes. And New Mexico, I believe. No? Oklahoma.

Isn't it because it's up in the panhandle? It's in Texas. The Llano Estacado isn't entirely in Texas? It is. It's a big landscape feature. It's a vast plateau that falls away on very steep edges around it and once upon a time the comanche used to go up and vanish on top of that thing where it's very hard and hard to exist and lack of water and sometimes they would hide out in

canyons where the llano estacado breaks away the llano estacado means staked plains so the llano river how in the hell is the llano same state same spelling same spelling i want to add the same and there's also the llano uplift which is a is a big granite dome that's in the hill country that people always talk about so is that the llano uplift is that the thing we were looking at that rock is amazing yeah i don't know if that's i don't think that was a rock that's not the rock no uh but but we were in full-on texas hill country yeah which is a term i've been hearing my whole life but i don't know what it meant well there's a lot of thing to me a lot of things it means to me like you think of the granite and limestone like those big you know on the lana river those

big cliff faces uh in the hill country and the sandstone that's out there um but really it stretches they say it's the border between the southeast and the southwest so it stretches almost all the way over to the border of mexico and up into east texas which is a big deal so it's a there's a lot of varying terrain but we were in where i used to live and just south where we were is the gateway to the hill country dripping springs dripping which is one of the more pleasant town town names yeah yeah well and there was like i'll move there there was many dripping springs it's only dripping there's a lot of natural move there. There was many. Dripping springs? It's only dripping? Oh, shit. There's a lot of natural springs.

There's a natural spring on one of the properties we were hunting on that Yanni and I got to look at. So we were in kind of the beginning of the hill country, which stretches across Texas, which is varied landscape. But I think of those limestone and sandstone cliffs and stuff that you see when you're driving west. Is the hill country more known for high fences and exotics running around than other parts of Texas? Just in your superficial understanding of Texas. Yeah, my superficial understanding.

I've seen it more there than I've seen in other places. Where we're hunting, we were hunting on a farm. Not a farm. A former ranch. A ranch, yeah. A ranch turned recreational property. That's right. 1,500 acres.

Not fenced. No. Not high fenced. There was fences pretty much all other properties are fenced all around. And driving out of there, we ran into two zebras just standing there like was that a dazzle a mini dazzle a mini dazzle uh two zebras are standing there which is like very disconcerting to see and there's a lot of that not a bad way but just like wow there's a lot of that the first time i was the first i think week that i was in

texas we were driving through the hill country to go hike at some state park, which is what you got to hike on down there. There's not public ground to do it. So we're driving out. We're driving down this highway with a buddy, and I look over, and there's a bongo, like, standing on the side of the road, just not behind a fence, just standing on the side of the road eating grass. And he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're around.

I'm like, what do you mean they're around that's an east african jungle antelope like it's not what are you talking about oh yeah yeah you see those around they must have got out of the high fence and that is always what you hear down there oh yeah there's a zebra there's an elk there's a we had a red deer run across the road google bongo yeah i mean it's typically hunted by driving them out of the jungle into less dense jungle with dogs. In buses? Guided by pygmies.

And you run dogs through the jungle. And you flush them into zones of 20-yard openings. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big critter. That's like the second largest African antelope, I think, behind the Eland. It's a big critter that's like the second largest african antelope i think behind the eland it's a big critter it's not a small i mean it's a like kind of a bronzy orange color so it's not something you see in this continent or this at least in the in the state yeah it's

it's we have coming up we're doing an episode with the head of texas parks it's parks and wildlife yes texas parks and wildlife parks and wildlife yes texas parks and wildlife and i have a million questions for them if you have questions if there's other northerners other yankees out there oh i want to return to the word butch for a minute um there's other yankees out there who have questions like we're just like how could that possibly be if you have a question for a Texan, you can email in and we'll collate the questions and then we can go ask the Texas Parks and Wildlife guy.

My question is going to be, is it legal? Are you really allowed to just take any animal from anywhere and cut it loose on your property? I feel like the answer is yes. From all my experience, the answer is yes. i would be interested to hear his take on it like if someone gave you a jaguar could you be like i'm turning the jaguar out on my property that can't be to be regular there's right there's surely as regulations but there's not for a zebra. So how, right? I'm dying to know.

I mean, I can tell you, like, when we were talking about where we were in the hill country, in Llano, or Llano, or Llano, whatever you please. We'll go Llano. We'll go Llano. The guys at the ranch we were hunting on were saying that there used to be, like, South Texas, big tracts of land. Big tracts. 20,000, 30,000 acre ranches. Like, you know, It's pretty common.

In that area of the hill country where it's kind of outside of Austin, they have basically taken these large ranches and parceled them up and sold them through history. Now, I don't know the history of all that, but now you have 1,000, 2,000, 500, 600 acre properties and with a wholly different land use ideas on each one. And so when we were down there, you see a fence, a fence, a fence, a fence, another fence, another fence, because there's, there is no 20,000 acre untouched habitat down there. Like I've seen in South Texas. So it's challenging. You'll see, I mean, we saw black buck, we saw red deer, we saw high fence, and then low five-strand, very un-wildlife-friendly fencing.

Yeah. Tough, but yeah. Yeah. You mean the regular fence, not the high fence, but just the regular cattle fence? Yeah. Yeah. We found a picture, not found a picture, ran into a deer that had gone to jump a fence. You see this often.

Just picture a barbed wire fence that's got a bunch of strands on it. And it got its leg between, so it shot a leg in between the two top strands and then rolled the wire. Am I saying this in a way that it's clear? Rolled the wire so then the wire began to braid, not braid, to twist, and caught the deer's hoof there, just on its ankle.

And it looked like it had been there quite a while before it expired. It was dead hanging there. And I, you can go look at the picture. I put it on Instagram um just like at steven ronella if you scroll back you'll find this deer i'm talking about and the comment thread's kind of interesting to see like people's perceptions of what they're looking at because the i didn't

want to just put it up in some kind of sensationalist way the image. So I explain on there like, man, you know, whitetails thrive around people. We plant crops, agricultural crops that they like to eat. We plant edible landscaping they like to eat. We create endless amounts of edge habitats where they thrive. We displace their predators, but it's like a double-edged sword because the number one whitetail death, I think, is getting hit by a car for human-caused, right? Not even hunting. I think people hit more with cars than hunters kill.

That might be right. That might be wrong. In certain states, it's 100%, right? It's funny. I've heard, I'm pretty sure this is true. I've heard that that's how kind of high fences came to be in Texas,

that the idea was these large ranches with lots and lots of white-tailed deer, put a fence up, you don't have to worry about hitting them with your truck. Oh, really? Yeah, and then I think later they discovered the fringe benefits of it being breeding and controlling genetics and things of that nature. I think it originally started, obviously, to keep people out of your property, but as far as wildlife is concerned keep them off the highway keep off highway uh and i've heard two of people only fencing one side i've been on two properties that have done

this fence one border of their property if they if they're doing like deer management and you have neighbors that are just just like you know i'm not saying this in a negative way you have neighbors just like to shoot bucks yep'm not saying this in a negative way, you have neighbors that just like to shoot bucks. Maybe they eat a lot of deer and they go out and don't care and they just shoot whatever buck they run into, which is totally fine. But I've been on two Texas properties where they ranch a border, a single border.

So they're not holding their deer captive. They just don't want to be having their big bucks so easily move on to a property of mugs that just shoot bucks yeah it's still possible but it it's a deterrent yeah it deters them from getting over and in both of these places that i was on that did this they mentioned how these guys would set their blinds They knew that this place was producing nice bucks, and they would set blinds and basically hunt the edge, which irritated the guys. That happens everywhere. Where you fence a border?

No, where you set your blind on the neighbor's property. It is. It's just like a human tendency. Totally. It doesn't matter if your place is 10 acres or 10,000. You're going to hunt the freaking border, because it's obviously better hunting on the other side. human tendency totally yeah it doesn't matter if your place is 10 acres or 10 000 you're gonna hunt the freaking border because it's obviously better hunting on the other side we had a guy write in recently proposing that it should be illegal he thinks that he's noticed in his area

that people will put corn feeders like i can't remember what state is and he's in a state where it's illegal to bait on public but you can bait on private yeah and he noticed how the private guys always set corn feeders right on the edge of the public and he was saying it should be illegal to do this which i understand his frustration perhaps but that's like some crazy lawmaking. Yeah. That's not going to go over real well. Yeah. To propose that in order to make it easier on this dude, he doesn't like that they're drawn off the public. Yeah. And if that, I mean, they find corn, they find high calorie food.

So if it's a hundred yards inside the private or 200 yards inside the private odds are that deer is going to find it just as easily as if it was 10 yards inside the private yeah yeah um i never finished my thing about the fence is uh the comment so i put the picture up in the comments oh the deer hung up fence yeah so there's a deer that died on a fence and i and i said it's a double-edged sword right because we like create we kind of like created the whitetail deer the whitetail deer is in some ways not in every area like you get up in like maine big woods and but in some ways like the whitetail deer has become like a kind of synthetic animal yeah because it does so well around people uh much to its credit

right crows canada geese we talked about this a bunch of times um and i said but it's a double-edged sword because then you know like this deer is hung up in this fence that's all the point i was trying to make but you look at the comments a lot of the comments are cool a lot of the comments like that's nature's way of sorting out the week which struck me as really funny um but a lot of comments in there about animal friendly fencing yeah and feeling that that fence was a not animal friendly fence that i would totally agree and no uh agenda here but yeah there's a animal friendly fencing and all you got to do is look it up um and now a lot of state agencies, they have basically state employees that their sole job is to work with private landowners and help them, if they have interest to do so, manage for wildlife. Um, and one of the ways to do that is to, um, use animal friendly fencing, which

I think is if you have a four strand fence, the top strand is smooth wire. Um, and it dictates like the, the top strand and bottom strand are smooth wire. I I'm screwing this up, but, um, and then there's spacing between the wire too and then every so often you would have like a one that's missing a top strand or something like that yeah yeah you know antelope can jump like the minute you say they don't like to jump fences like where antelope are from the habitat they live in this is like jumping wasn't necessary yep they didn't need to jump stuff because they live out in flat open jumping wasn't necessary yep they didn't need to jump stuff because they live out in flat open country in a hundred years i bet evolution will make we'll

have a jump antelope that jump fences all the time i think that there's probably in the select there's definitely a selective advantage there are antelope that will jump a fence and those antelope are probably much more likely to live long and have lots of babies i've uh reaped and harvested a few antelope bucks as they're danced back and forth on a fence, trying to make up their mind on what to do with it. We've gotten them before by hunting them in good crossing areas. Yeah.

So they don't like to jump. They will jump, and when you say that antelope don't jump, you'll get three videos of antelope jumping fences. So they will, but typically they don't like to jump now they don't like to they don't know how they like to go under fences so i know that people that are trying to do wildly friendly fencing in some areas it's raising the bottom wire yeah make room for antelope to go under i know in some areas with sage grouse which collide with fences there's like a lowering of the wire to a certain height

because they tend to cruise at a height where they often collide with the high wire on a barbed wire fence and then some guys were mentioning other uses of paneling and things yeah and you can put some visual aids on barbed wire as well, like little pinwheels and stuff. That's what they do for sage grouse. I think that's what it was. Between every couple posts, you put these reflectors so they register the presence of the wire. I wonder if there's something, I don't know this,

but did you wonder if there's something with all the pigs we saw in this place with that kind of fencing, with wildlife-safe fencing and pigs? Yeah, well, I don't know because I've been, in years past, I've been to places that have an old high fence situation, and they're like, you can't even count pigs as high fence pigs or free-range pigs because that high fence means nothing to them.

Like, they'll go under it somehow some way which i don't i don't know that was what was interesting about a lot of the fence that we saw in texas was it wasn't just a four or five strand barbed wire that was it was like the normal four or five strand and then underneath that there was a you know just gapped by three or four inches there was another three or four strands yeah where a pig i mean a piglet could get through but uh you know anything over 40 pounds probably couldn't get through that yeah you have to hop through the next gap up do you remember hunting that crazy place in florida what they did oh yeah did they bury fence or what'd they do? They had, it's a cattle ranch. Okay. Working cattle ranch. Right?

Yeah. And they had, they boarded up to a nature, a wild bird sanctuary. And the wild bird sanctuary does some hog control work, but not nearly enough, I gather, according to some surrounding landowners so this guy had hog proof fencing between his cattle ranch and the bird the wild bird sanctuary the wild bird sanctuary is funny because you're like out in the cattle ranches like opens it like like what do they call it hammocks hammocks like savannah yeah well the hammocks are just what they call a chunk of palm trees yeah but the rest was like savanna-like grasslands. Yeah.

And then you would come up, it looked like you'd walked into Guatemala when you hit that fence. Freaking jungle. In the bird sanctuary. Because they weren't running cattle on it. Oh, yeah. The constant over-the-ears grazing. Yeah.

So he had hog-proof fencing. But what he would do is he went in and built in all these little doggy doors in the hog proof fencing. What? Wow. Yes. Okay. Propped open with a stick.

And he's got hog, he's got hog chasing dogs. So one night he cut, we're a turkey hunt and we get to shoot and shit. And he's like, if you boys want to go out hunting hogs tonight come along and we agree to do this the first step on his hog hunt before you start hunting hogs he goes down that fence and closes all the doggy doors

step one close all the doggy doors step two start hunting wild yes and guess where you catch pigs at the dog door that's where the dogs catch the pigs is the doggy doors wow and these guys do you ever hear of a thing called a bard like the bard no not shakespeare okay uh is that by using the right word borrowed i think it was just bar hog or castrated yeah oh bar hog yeah we caught two hogs that night one is we re-caught a hog that they had caught previously and when they catch a boar they castrate it because it does two things. One, stops them from reproducing and making more pigs. Two, as he put it to us,

it takes his mind off ass and puts it on grass. And they get fat. But it also limits the testosterone flow, right? Yeah. It makes them taste better. Isn't that line from Fast Times at Ridgemont Highmont he didn't say that he made it up he didn't say that anyways we caught two pigs one was castrated oh you know what remember how this morning i was telling you about making my own sausage casings yes that was from that pig oh so it was from the one we caught that had been either by them or other hog hunters had

been caught before and castrated okay we caught another pig that was intact a boar that pig they castrated and turned back out again yeah this is wild i've done this a couple of times uh ridley's rode along like you guys did and it is it's gnarly so you're you're catching them with dogs and going there and grabbing them by the hind legs yep and the not castrated hog um the not castrated hog gouged a dog pretty good. Ooh. And I can't, do you remember the, do you remember the, my observation about what does a vet think about you bringing in dogs all the time that are marred up? Was that, was that a lion hunter that said that line to us that I like so much?

Or was that a hog hunter that said that line to us that I like so much? I think we were talking with that dude as we were riding on top of his giant swamp buggy all right i said to him what's your vet think about you bringing in dogs all the time that are gouged up from wild pigs which one could argue is avoidable and he's then said that's why you got to find a vet who likes to hunt hogs. Give you a discount. Here's a good question for you. You go in there and you grab a critter by the hind legs.

Is that a harvest or a kill? Are you killing the pig or are you harvesting the pig? You're harvesting. It's nuts. Having seen that occur, I would not take a word, and I've seen it occur in a lot of places i would not apply such a delicate word as harvest to what happens when you catch a pig with dog yeah it is the most it's like a it's probably the most chaotic scene you can imagine it's kill with

a capital k it is i almost got chased up chased up a tree by a big old hog that just had his nuts removed. Post-castration. Yeah. My mom got chased up a tree by a wild pig. I heard about that. I hunted with my dad. Yeah. He didn't chase me up the tree, but I felt the need to get up the tree the way he was looking at me.

And he was coming towards me like, yeah, you better get up that tree or we're going to tussle, son. Took his mind off ass and put it on betty well steve where would because your folks were in michigan right yeah they were northern tier but so did they did your dad travel and hunt oh yeah oh really yeah he would go down south to hunt they'd go down there with their recurves and hunt pigs oh no way he would travel he'd go up in canada and they'd catch suckers. They'd hand-grab suckers and fill sacks full of suckers and hang the suckers on the edge of creeks.

Fresh bags of fresh suckers and gunny sacks hanging along creeks, and they'd hunt bears like that. For bears, yeah. He talked about the first bear he ever got. He was sitting so close to his sucker sack. He said when that bear reached his arm up to rip apart the sucker sack, it was in the spring. He said you could see his ribs spread apart, and he was five yards away sucker sack he said when that bear reached his arm up to rip our part the sucker sack i was in the spring he said you could see his ribs spread apart and he was five yards away

and he said he could put his arrow right between the spread out ribs he'd like to tell that story might be he got lucky does your mom like to tell the pig story no she doesn't shy away from it not a fond memory though she had gone off to get his arrow, his arrows, because they had a pig they had wounded and were chasing around, and he ran out of arrows, and she went to get an arrow. He sent her to fetch his arrows that he'd shot, and she got an arrow, and then a pig got onto her, and she climbed up in a tree and had to throw my dad an arrow to shoot the pig.

Oh, man. Yeah. But she wasn't a big hunter or anything, but she she had somehow gotten would your wife do that for you my wife would not do that for me well i think if you're up in the tree with the arrow and there's a pig she would never be near the tree oh yeah quick fence quick fence anecdote uh that happened this weekend and it was a good learning lesson andrew whitney and i had just parked and getting ready to hop a fence going to some private we had access to and go hunting and landowners right across the street and we're just like you know saying hey what's up you know how's it going he says uh you know there's a gate you know down at both corners you guys can drive down in the

gate and uh and he's like hey it's cool we can just you know your fence is so tightly strong we can just hop the fence and use it like a ladder no big's cool. We can just, you know, your fence is so tightly strung, we can just hop the fence and use it like a ladder, no big deal. Like kind of saying thank you for offering the gate, but, you know, we're young and able, and we'll just hop the fence. And the guy's like, and then it just clicked right at that moment. I'm like, ah, I'm like, sir, would you prefer that we use the gate? And he's like, yeah, that's like a brand new fence. It's nice and tight and

i don't want you guys to stretch it out so um i wonder about that yeah it was it was very you know i didn't had never put those two things together that like you're hopping fences all the time and you're just eventually stretching them out i'm sure a couple hunters aren't really gonna do that to a fence but in the eyes of a landowner you know it's a nice way to show us some respect so then the bottom strand was just like two feet off the ground so we're like oh we'll just duck under it and of course he goes in his house as we duck under the fence and he comes back out and he was getting groceries or something and we're both on the other side of the fence and he kind of looks at us he didn't say anything he just went back to doing his stuff and i'm sure he's like oh son sons of bitches. I just told them.

If you just got a new house, you're like, guys, just a new house thing. Just take your shoes off and there's footprints in there. That's the story where you're like, yeah, we used to have permission. We used to have permission on this guy's land. He went under his fence and he thought we climbed it. So what were we doing? Turkey hunting. Lionel, the Lionel River.

Yeah, I know. During a super bloom in the Texas Hill Country where, holy shit, the flowers. Oh, man. Oh, dude. The primary flower being the blue bonnet lupine, which people in Texas are real proud of. It is a lupine, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Kind of looks, it has a petal, not the flower petal, but it has a leaf. The body of the plant reminds me of columbine. Yeah. Very similar. If it wasn't in bloom, a fella could be excused for thinking he was looking at columbine. You don't agree with that? Your wife's a botanist. Oh, you do agree with that.

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to the on X club. Y'all uh, hunting the Texas hill country, kind of the tail end of what people were describing as the tail end of the Turkey rut. People don't say Turkey rut. Why don't they?

I like it. I like it. Tail end of the turkey rut. And got out there, and we were guests. Before you get away from that, do you guys agree that that was the case? Or is that just the assumption of a few of the locals that were hanging out? Well, from living there and hunting it, I think in the zone of Texas, I want to say we're in the north zones where we were.

The season had already been going for only a week. Not long at all. Maybe that's just what they were saying. I was telling Yanni before we went down there, I feel like in the south zone it's usually mid-March. It starts at the perfect time. You get birds fired up. They're coming off the roost fired up.

They're not henned up yet, usually, when you get there. When you get up into the northern zone where we were, it's just a week or so, 10 days too late. So you start – the opening day is kind of one that – I feel opening day is like the back half of the turkey rut. And so when we get there a week after that, we are – my feeling is we're on the tail end of it.

And that's what I felt going down there. The challenge would be that we would have to either find toms that were running solo or get real slick on the ones that weren't. I know. I know I said it, but I feel like it's just hard to understand with turkeys. There is a beginning, right? Turkeys spend their winter in large winter flocks okay if you go out hunting just talking to matt the other day some of his buddies were just out in a certain area and my brother was

telling me how his buddies went they got some birds but it was super tough because the birds were still grouped up in groups of 100 or more yeah so when i hear that that's like not that's not the rut. No. That's winter flock. Yeah. You're on one side of it. Yeah. So there's something that precedes the beginning,

and then you get into later where you have groups of males very casually hanging out, not fighting, not pursuing females. The females have poults. They're running around with their poults, and there's like the end. Within that, I don't think it's like this real – I don't know that everyone's on the same schedule and it's this real timeline. I think it's kind of this – Whitetails are similar.

I mean, you could be in a place where you're not seeing a whole lot of action, and then you turn around, there's a buck chasing a doe. It's similar with turkeys, in my mind. You could run into, you could be hunting all week and run into one bird that makes it seem easy. Yeah. However you run into them. Around Monday, it's unbelievable.

Yeah. Goblin. Then Tuesday, it's like nothing's happening. Wednesday, it's unbelievable again. We show up at the spot. We were down there because the guys, we worked closely with Yeti. And Ben used to work real close with Yeti. Yep.

We were guests to go hunting down there with those guys. And the thing that happens to me, turkey hunting all the time in new spots, and I cannot stand it, is when you get to a spot that you've never hunted before and it's dark so you arrive in the dark and you go out in the dark in the morning and you're hearing a bird gobble but you've never seen the place and you have no idea what anything looks like i can't tell if i like that or hate it i kind of hate that you know i kind of the turkeys is not bad just because they're on the roof on the first morning me and cow are standing there like they were hammering on the roost down by where you guys were out of the river at least or between the two where our zones were it's cool to just be in a place you're like i don't know

where that is but i know there's a turkey over there. Because you don't get that. You get that with elk in other places, but you don't get that with whitetails or anything else in Texas, that's for sure. You can't stand there and be like, turkey's over there. I don't know where that is. Just keep walking in the dark. I like it because it's novel. Because the next morning, it's not going to be like that.

Yeah. The next morning, like, you know that one spot? Which is why I like going to the New Cruiser Ranch every year you know because i like going to see some new country yeah but sitting there in the dark and there's a bird hammering and you're like like if you go to a spot you know well like doug doug can sit on his front porch here bird gobble and probably tell you what tree it's in you know just that familiarity or if you're in the woods and you hear a turkey gobbling on the ground when you know an area real well you're like i know what he's doing i bet he's on there you know that little lane how there's like the wide spot and they like

to strut in there he's probably there so we should sneak around right heard birds there a hundred times when you're in a new spot you hear it and you don't know what yeah you don't you don't know like how you should move or what you should do and how you should get over there. And the sun comes up and there's a big downed dead tree right there where no bird in the history of turkeys would ever jump over the top of that thing. Cal and I ended up doing that with a set of railroad tracks. We didn't know there were railroad tracks there,

but you end up in hunts like this where you don't know what you're doing really. You just kind of have the landscape in front of you. You're just kind of poking and prodding at it. When you know the landscape, you just charge over, get to a spot where you need to be, done. I spent two mornings listening to turkeys gobble that I only later realized weren't even on the property we were on. Yeah.

Cal and I, yeah, Cal and I crawled up five birds and hit them, and they were just strutting on another side of the fence. We had to then check, oh, Onyx maps, that is not where we can hunt. Yeah. It takes a lot of mental capacity, too, because we were like, okay, there's the birds. Get set up. Here we go.

And then it was like, wait a minute. If only they would come over this 18-strand fence. Yeah. Strong with dead deer. So, yeah, that first one we set up, we went out and set up. And it was funny because this is the first time this has ever happened to me. We were with a photographer. Nice kid.

Nice guy. And we. Old Tex. I hesitate to even say this. We set up in a spot. Texans have a great affinity for the blue bonnet flower apparently it's like a rite of passage that when you have a kid you take the kid out in the spring and have him dance around this is a texas thing you take your kid out in spring and make him like dance around in the blue bonnets or laying them all cute and take pictures of them

they love the damn flowers. So did they do that for you? I hesitate to say this. I hesitate to say this. This is deeply embarrassing. I'm just going to tell it, though. Things are picking up. Because this is a safe space. We set up in a spot because of the presence of blue bonnet flowers.

That's embarrassing. That was the site selection for our setup to try to call birds off the roost. Okay, got it. I thought you were going to go like... There was also a shitload of gobblers nearby. It wasn't a bad spot, but I feel like it's necessary for me to say that the photographer was like, since there's a number of spots that one could set up,

I think it would be really cool if we could set up with all these blue bonnets because imagine to get a big gobbler, to get photos of a big gobbler like a small, cute child strolling through the blue bonnets. As long as you didn't have to be the small, cute child in the scenario, that's, that's fine. And that is how we set up.

And I think that it was a good thinking cosmic. It was cosmic retribution that we did not call a rooster in off the tree. The gobbler. I think that the Lord, the Lord, not a rooster, a gobbler. I like the rooster in off the tree the gobbler i think that the lord the lord term not a rooster a gobbler i like the rooster the turkey that's roasted the lord of the hunt the goddess of the hunt diana is her name yep the goddess of the hunt said uh i will punt i will now punish these men for having the presence of blue bonnet flowers uh inform or dictate to them where they should set up to best kill this turkey and i will not let that turkey go in their direction

and they didn't and we then hunted around it was like like every i feel like every time you like i need to start writing down what happens when people turkey hunt because you somehow carry with in your head you carry the best days of turkey hunting in your head as normal and i need to make like a sticker or something that i keep or a little note card that i keep my turkey vest that says like in the morning before it gets out, you will hear many gobbles. And then the next line will be, after when it gets sunny out or the daylight comes, the birds will not gobble as much. It's normal.

And then. This is normal. And then be like, as the morning progresses, if you're lucky, you'll hear scattered gobbles. Because that's like how every time you're in the dark, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble. And then they stop gobbling. You're like, what happened? Dude, they shut down. They just hit the ground.

They hit the ground and never made another peep. And I resurfer that realization every single time I go turkey hunting. As though I'm experiencing something not like, what happened? They hit the ground and shut right up. How many times have I said that in my life? That never happens. Why? That is normal.

Yep. So they hit the ground and didn't gobble a lot. And I started entering, oh, it's post rut. It's like something weird happened. And then you just start hunting. And then it plays out like how it plays out. And the other thing is, the other turkey mistake is we start hunting around and we encounter the Llano River. We're hunting on the Llano River.

And I guess a few years ago this was like a very lush river bottom a lot of vegetation but they had this historic flood like a hundred year flood or you know people are always throwing around a hundred year flood a ripping national news flood and it not only did it scour the river channel of vegetation but it deposited like full-on beach sand where this thing looks like the mojave desert from bank to bank it looks like the most inhospitable yeah turkey thing in the world and we start talking about turkeys like that live on the like we're like there's turkeys on the other side of the river as though they're in another realm that they they exist in another dimension as our app the river seems so severe and wide

and on turkey friendly you know i'm saying yeah and so you start dividing the world up and there's like the turkeys that live over here and there's the turkeys that live over there the turkeys that live over there are we can hear those turkeys and see them but they're not our but they weren't in our they weren't in our world yeah cal and i did not have that experience you didn't feel that well that one not being the yeah well i'm not being the reality but that was my like perception of it to see turkeys over there and like ha you know right it's like the other side of the grand canyon yeah too bad that they're over there and we're over here because what turkey in his right mind would ever walk across that? And we hunt around all morning and have some here scattered gobbles.

And all of a sudden we look, and here's two toms that had, in the middle of the day, flown across the river. And everybody knows turkeys don't fly. They don't like to fly. And they don't cross water. They don't fly across rivers. They flew across the river just for whatever, because we're over there.

I'd like to think it was because we were calling near the bank of the river. Flew across the river, and then we're walking across the Mojave in such a way that we had all the time in the world to go set up where they were going to hit our bank. Because the river is the property line. The other thing messing with my head is there's the dead deer hanging there.

We're like right by the dead deer in the impenetrable fence. And then I got like, oh, sure, they'd cross the river, but they'll definitely hang up. But did that fence have the lower tight strands? It had low, yeah. You couldn't crawl under this fence was that you had to look that you were on later the next day with daniel that daniel same fence uh yeah yeah i was that was had a low wire you couldn't get under it yep you had to scour around for a way to get to get to get under the fence and we always had to go over that fence. It had a low wire.

And then it's in my head that like, somehow the turkeys will not like that fence. But we get set up, me and the photographer, we get set up to call. And I've already got my gutting knife out because like two times, no hens coming across that thing. And like I said, I feel as though i like to think

it was related to the fact that we were working this little road down there calling i like to feel as though they're like oh there's a lot of action over there we're gonna go check it out so we get set up and um i'm in my and and i put out a decoy in the road not knowing the road ended right next to me because Because I'm thinking as the turkeys come and if they can get over the fence, they'll look down the road, see the decoy and come down the road. So I get all set up, I'm aiming that direction. And then instead of the fence somehow stopping the turkeys, the next time they gobble, they're like already on the other side of the fence. Like they didn't even register the presence of the fence jumped it i don't know what they did didn't care about the river didn't care about the fence didn't see the decoy and

they wind up right next to us out of view uh drumming god i love that sound do you feel though that those birds were responding to you? They were just kind of doing it? Oh, you could turn them. It was like throwing a light switch. You just make them gobble. At this point, they're hotter and hot. But they were just like. It's like, yep, yep, yep.

Every time. Out of reach, though. Out of sight. When you hear. It's not really true. When you can hear them drumming,'re close yes but i just but like last weekend we heard some drumming that was not close really heard him drumming from well out of shotgun range oh yeah i'd say sub 100 if you know what the sound is and what you're

listening for you can hear them at sub 100 you always always need to say, I feel like I hear one drumming. Are they just like expanding their diaphragms? They're vibrating their feathers and holding them tight. When you kill a bird, when you kill a turkey, harvest them. You ever notice how his feathers are all worn, his primaries are worn down?

Yeah, yep. Because they also walk around and leave those little scratch marks yeah that's a great way to tell if you're in a good area the strut marks yeah but when he's drumming he's just going it's similar to a rough grouse turkeys and roads man like they love a road 90 so many times probably just put that on your list of turkey reassurances it's like you know you may not want to leave the road turkeys they can't help themselves no they like to see what's going on around them they like to get out in the road they like to walk roads they like to strut

roads i mean he's not going to strut in a briar patch right he likes to get out and display but he's drumming yanni do your drum noise see i go like this spitting a little tobacco spit yep and it's like the most that that is if i could have just one part of turkey hunting, a lot of people would be like the gobble, spring thunder. It's a powerful noise. It's a powerful noise. If I could have one part of turkey hunting in pill form,

that I could just take the pill and get the feeling, it would be the feeling of when he's gobbling and gobbling and then he stops gobbling and you wonder what happened. And you're like, he spooked something. And then all of a sudden, if you could get that in a pill, I would be addicted to that pill. Dude, you should sneak up behind me in the office. I just go, ah, yes, he did it.

God, I love that sound. That's the best. That's the best. The spring thunder, I told you about that ranch. It's actually here in montana the first time uh i went out there there were so many turkeys like i just got up early got up on this little ridge you know and it's like a series of small hills and ridges eastern montana and hit diaphragm call. Just bop, bop, bop. And then it was like, and then that would cue the next ridge,

and the next ridge, and the next ridge, and that was the way it was in my mind. That's called rolling thunder. Rolling thunder. That's my other favorite turkey thing. When you hit a crow call or something, and you get a shock obel,

and the other turkey's like, what the fuck? I'm like, me too, me too. Me too too i'm here too i'm the man i'm the man uh so they're drumming right next to us and i got this photographer with me so nice guy real excited like he likes to hunt that's i knew i was gonna like him right away because he was like out there to hunt turkeys he was like you could tell if you said to him you could have hunting or taking pictures he'd probably go hunt he'd go with hunting it's my feeling um the turkeys circle around drumming drumming drumming and all of a sudden they're in the photographer's lap

and i have to change my position and i'm not able like i'm real nervous about what kind of shot i'm gonna have until these turkeys because they're circling the calling trying to figure out where's the hen where's the hen and they're in his lap and all of a sudden you hear the noise that no turkey hunter likes to hear and that's his way of saying something is not right. That's like, huh? Yeah. What? Yeah.

Huh? What? What? What? Huh? He starts doing that business. And then he gets faster. When he gets faster, they go, oh, God.

And if his head was blue or white, like he's excited, all of a sudden it's red. He's got his head up erect. Yanni, his snood changes. The color change is an amazing thing to witness. One of the craziest things in the outdoors, in my opinion. Yeah. It's the greatest thing in the world. Turkey's head changes color.

Yeah. Goes red, it's trouble. He goes... I got to interrupt and just follow up because i've just been doing a little bit i gotta return to the word drum and spit yeah i was gonna say i've been thinking about that word drumming and spitting everything i'm reading is saying that it the the spit which comes first is actually from his mouth oh yeah um and then the drum is actually him forcing air up through from his diaphragm.

No. It's not him doing his wings? No. Really? And a lot of people say that that, you know, obviously it's attracting hands. What are you looking at? The truth about turkeys or is this a legit website? I've been everywhere from NWTF to a state agency website.

Run that article through Snopes. Hold on. His is air that he's forcing. No. Yeah. Is he not doing that with his wings? You mean when he's dragging him? He's not doing like a rough grouse?

When he's dragging him? No, he's not. The rough grouse, though, I got to point out, is the same way, man. They're built. They have the little waddle up there, a little pocket of fat. When a rough grouse drums, he's drumming. He's beating his wings. And it sounds like someone trying to get a lawnmower started.

Yeah, yeah. But there's got to be some air involved in that, too, right? Yeah, he puffs up. Yeah. And he's expelling some air, I'd be willing to wager. Because when you find him, they have that throat sack is puffs up yeah and he's expellent smear i'd be willing to wager because when you find them they have that throat sack is puffed up too yeah so it's a combination when you hear way off in the distance someone trying to get a lawnmower started honda generator is what it always was to me it's like who is doing he's on his log he's on his drumming log do you know that

uh they they feel that's a limiting factor in rough grouse populations suitable drumming logs oh open space he's got to have a drumming log a lack of whatever he's got to have it like to have a rough grouse set up a spot to have a male set up shop he needs to have a drumming log at a specific height and he needs to have a specific diameter a perimeter of visible ground around it and absent that like you can you can manipulate rough grouse numbers in an area by creating suitable drumming logs that's awesome he needs to find where he can get the right height and see around him and make sure it's safe around them to then get up there and start going yes i used to i feel like i should do an album of all the animal noises that i know how to do yo you could sell it as like a sleep aid

yeah like a white noise generator and me going i remember now you would just be a gentle. And now a rough grass. And now a monkey. And now a dazzle of zebras. So, oh, I'm trying to tell my hunting story. Oh, tell your hunting story. And I want to get around to the word that we need to revisit.

Yeah. And I want to hear your hunting stories. So he's like. And I think a lot of turkey hunters, if you were a super moral turkey hunter, I feel that you would not shoot the turkey. Like, do you think Parker Hall would shoot a turkey that had started to putt? Oh my gosh, yes.

If he was in range? Oh, you do? Oh yeah. He thinks it's immoral to shoot a turkey using a decoy. Yeah. But you think he thinks it's moral to shoot a turkey that's putting? Just because he's busted you? Yeah.

Wait a minute. Parker Hall thinks it's immoral to shoot a turkey? He thinks there's a special place in hell for people who use turkey decoys. Oh. Well, we're all... It's hot in here. He's from Georgia. We asked him about turkey decoys and his

answer was i don't want to go to hell now he's from a state with a rich deep turkey hunting history yeah i've not hunted a lot of states i've never heard that uh like he puts it man does he call to him oh oh like couldn't it be the same? No, he wouldn't bushwhack a turkey. He's a seducer. No, man, it's not anywhere near the same because like he puts it too. It's like when there were no decoys, you had to be a damn fine turkey hunter and a damn fine caller to kill turkeys. Decoys came out and every Joe Schmo out there was starting to kill birds.

Yeah. And I'm sorry. I agree with him. I use decoys. I'm trying a bunch of different kinds of decoys this season so I can speak to it from experience. Do they give me an incredible advantage? Yes.

You know what? I got two so far. No, they've seen. What? The ones I'm talking about. Never saw the decoy. You're Texas, huh? You're the one that was all sweet talking. All sweet talking is is using is using a fan like the next level, like a real like the one that you made.

That's like a next level. If you're if hell has solitary confinement, that's where you're at. What happens in hell's just they're able to calculate the temperature extra hell. That's like a next level. If hell has solitary confinement. That's where you're at. What happens in hells? Do you know that they're able to calculate the temperature of hell? Because the description of hell talks about a brimstone in a certain state. Yep. And so I think you can tell very precisely how hot hell is. That's good.

That'd be good to know. Because that's apparently where we're going. Yeah. I think that using a turkey fan even though i do it i feel that if this is true if parker hall is correct i feel that that's that's you go to hell and then into solitary confinement not allowed to be with the other people in hell like parker hall is kind of i would like listen man I drive a car. It's way easier to get to town nowadays in a car. Are you driving a horse and buggy? As time goes on, as humans, we take the advantages that we're given. What if I told you, hey, take this here corn, stir it up with this here sedative,

and sprinkle that out, and in the morning go out and pick up your turkeys? Would you be like, oh, yeah, it's like driving a car to work? Starting to sound like a guy who'd kill a turkey with a drone. Well, you're talking about stuff that I know you don't believe. Maybe you got me. I'll think about it more. I'll come back to you later.

Maybe a future episode. Let's say I said here, get a fence, right? And you hotwire it super high voltage so that every animal that hits the fence dies. You can just go out in the morning and pick them all up. Because if we just wanted the easiest version you would just bait the ditch bait the ditch wait till all however we could we had four tags each wait till four toms are in the ditch eating that bait and then sit well i'm talking about you know i'm talking about a subtle change

you guys are taking it to the extreme i'm talking about a subtle change in the approach to turkey hunting and or a subtle change the approach it's an efficacy question or or right excuse me what you're talking about you're talking about some old-timey business that people aren't going to know about oh yeah you can read about it in uh in uh 10th legion 10th legion uh tom kelly's book he talks about colonel tom kelly colonel tom kelly one of the ways that they shot out turkeys is when pot hunters meat hunters i think he calls them would bait they'd dig a ditch that was maybe a foot or 18 inches deep they'd bait it with corn for a while and then on the day they wanted to reap or harvest turkeys.

Not reaping. That's where you take a fan and walk up on them with a pistol. They would sit at the end of the ditch, maybe 5, 10 yards off it, looking down the ditch so that once all the turkeys were in there feeding and you could make one call, all of them would lift up their heads. And with one shot, you could rake across all of their heads and then fill a gunny sack full and walk home. Very efficient.

It's like driving to work. Very efficient. No, no, Rinella, you son of a bitch. Let's go. Let's go. So, well, I'm talking about a subtle, that's like using a decoy is a subtle change in turkey hunting tactics. Yes.

It's a move forward. So subtle you could do without, though. Yeah. It's a slight it's it's a it's a move forward so subtle you could do without though yeah it's a it's it's a a slight move forward in turkey hunting tactics it's not it's not filling a ditch with corn much in the same way i'm getting this fucking analogy much in the same way that using a horse and buggy to get to get to town is a whole lot different than using a car to get to town it's a subtle change in the way that it can advance. So there's my analogy. Now, here's what I was thinking the other day. Don't change the subject.

You're with me now? Totally with you. I'm going to come toward you on this. Okay. Not the turkey hunt I'm trying to talk about. And remember, that story is left where he's going, and there's a photographer standing next to him.

Yeah. Remember, that story is left where he's going, and there's a photographer standing next to him. Last weekend, I got a turkey using a fan. I couldn't move a turkey. He was with a whole horde of hens, and he was on the time of his life. He was in a situation the turkeys dream about being in. This Turkey was not going to move and they were moving away. And I took a Turkey fan from the Turkey that I'm trying to tell the story about,

which I took the fan off. And the photographer showed me a phenomenal trick of how to cut the fan off so that it becomes like an actual fan that you can fold up and spread out and fold up and spread out. Ooh, I want to see that. Dude, it was one of the hottest. Is it any different than how you would normally do it? Yeah.

It is. There's an other joint. Normally, when you cut it off, you cut it off at the Roman nose. Yep. Pope's nose. Yeah, not the Roman nose. You cut it off at the Pope's nose. He's like, no.

If you go above the Pope's nose, he's got 18 tail feathers. It looks like when you're separating the ribs on a deer, not sawing through them, but popping the joints. There's like 18 little teeny joints above the Pope's nose, and you cut there. And then when you mount your fan i use some i mounted my fan okay you know ronnie bame yeah had a tremendous impact on my life ronnie bame fixes old and on the miller brewing company yeah he, Ronnie Boehm affected me, and he affects the bottom line of Miller. So Ronnie Boehm gets frustrated by shitty coolers, like Coleman coolers.

Yep. Because what always fails on a Coleman cooler? Hinges and latches. Yeah. Ronnie Boehm is a millwright by trade, so he deals with a lot of conveyor material. Conveyor material, it turns out, is wonderful for repairing things. So Ronnie Bame always calls around hunks of conveyor. And when his cooler fails, he makes a hinge out of conveyor belt material. You just put the lid on how you want it, take the conveyor belt material, and screw or bolt it to the lid and to the body of the cooler.

And I don't care if World War III happens on top of that cooler, that hinge will still be there. The cooler might be melted, but the hinge will be there intact and fine. It's indestructible. I had a hunk of conveyor belt material laying around, but I switched away from shitty coolers. So now I just have conveyor belt material and around but i switched away from shitty coolers so now i just have conveyor belt material and yeti coolers so i took my fan and cut it the way the photographer austin showed me how what the hell is his name austin stapleton like that guy so i cut it the

way austin stapleton showed me and then drilled a hole and mounted it on a conveyor belt handle, which has a very natural flop to it, and it's very limber and looks super realistic when you twist it. And it's ultralight. It's an ultralight turkey fan. And collapsible. And it collapses. So I can take my fan and go fold it up, and then when I get ready, and I tighten it up just right with a screw, where when I get ready and I tighten it up just right with a screw,

where when I get ready, I open it like a lady in a Western, opening her fan up, a floozy in a Western, and open the fan up, and it stays open. Man, can I borrow that? Sure. Thank you. Where was I? How many did you make? here's the here's the thing

here's the thing and i'm gonna be done well i gotta tell my story real quick and i gotta talk about the thing i keep wanting to talk about the other day i'm sneaking up with this fan on a turkey that won't budge and i'm just using the fan to block my view and he's actually posturing toward my fan and i eventually snaked my shotgun barrel literally through the feathers of the fan and wait for the hens to get clear. I couldn't shoot because he had all those hens. Eventually the hens got clear and I shot the turkey. And I'm feeling guilty about it. But then I'm like,

you're using an actual, like what could be purer? You're using the feathers from a turkey to go after a turkey. It's not plastic. It's not rubber. you made it yourself you you devised your own you're using bio like you're using like biomimicry yeah how is that not pure but it's pure it's like purer to have some rubber factory produced turkey facsimile on a steel stake driven into the ground, but it's less pure to take the bird's own feathers

and use it and fashion a device by which you can go get another turkey. You're bringing into this whole purity scale. I haven't said anything about that. I'm more just talking about straight-up efficacy. Yeah, I'm just wrestling with the whole thing is all, Yanni. Okay. Well, I think, because there's some people that think any sort of blind hunting is unethical there's people but people have been doing that for thousands of years it's not i keep using ethics yeah ethic is as i say it's not quite personal how i like i would not want

to i have never and would not want to unless i was with my kids shoot a turkey out of a pop-up blind i've never done it yeah i would only do it with my kids but if we're being honest like hunting right now is just a lot of different forms of how we prefer to hunt yeah it's preference versus ethics like to me ethics when i think about turkey hunting ethics goes to am I using a bow or a shotgun? I'm using a shotgun every single time I possibly can because I feel like it's ethically a better way to get the job done. Yeah, wound loss with bows is severe. Severe on turkeys.

I've seen some of the best archers that we know in modern hunting times wound turkeys, three, four of them in one hunt. I know some really good bow hunters that did a lot of turkey bow hunting eventually were like it's just i switched back that's where i've i've two or three years straight just hunt with a bow and i'm like no no there's no unless it's a archery only season and the birds are fired up i'm staying home i just it's got to be a shotgun for me that's ethical but the preference so i'm like you hunting in a blind like being out in the springtime turkey hunting you want to like have your full senses, your full set of senses.

It's like the woods are alive for the first time in a long time. I want my full set of senses. I don't want to be sitting in a tent, sitting over a plastic thing. Yeah, that's what it feels like to me. Yeah. I like just sitting against a tree. I don't see, yeah. And there's, again, it's like there's where the preference and the ethics thing goes.

I prefer not to hunt with a bow because with a bow, you should probably be in a blind or it's better to be in a blind. Ethically, I don't hunt with a bow because it's a less effective killing tool. Both of those things are happening simultaneously for me when it comes to turkeys. Yeah, there's so much. I use a shotgun, which is easy. It's easy to kill a turkey with a shotgun. I like to sit in trees or i lean against the

tree because i don't like that feeling of being in a blind and then i move around a lot turkey hunting so i don't want to drag the blind around but if i saw a guy in a pop-up blind with a bow two things i don't do do i feel like oh he's not at i'll be like no he just has different personal preferences yeah it's nothing to do with like like i keep saying moral because of my own i'm only saying moral because like the own feeling i get if i call a turkey in like in turkey like purity the thing that turkey i'd be most proud of is that there's no decoy and you hear a gobble way off two in the afternoon or no it'd be this it's two in the afternoon, or no, it'd be this. It's two in the afternoon, there's no decoy, and you shock gobble up a turkey at two in the afternoon. And then you gradually coax him into shotgun range,

and he comes in and he's strutting. That is the pinnacle of turkey hunting. Sprinkled with a few gobbles. A few gobbles. You get them hot, you get them, like like that to me is like wow oh there's some perfect every version that's less than that it's not as it's it's not as exciting to me there's a perfect combination of the amount of time he's allowed to strut within your sight and then and shooting him like if he's if he comes rolling in behind a tree like a turkey boom shoot him it's

not the same level of purity as if he comes in, spits, drums, struts back and forth, is looking around, you stay still and give him one. Because you fooled him. The bird that Steve called in for me. Personal purity. I definitely had. Can you hold off? Because it's not your turn to tell your hunting story.

I want to hear the whole thing. Okay. But I just got to finish two quick things up yeah i'll start with the description of steven ranella and his prowess in the woods however you want to do it uh so the bird putts and i have to actually wait for the bird to move away from the photographer so the purity score is going down because who the hell hunts with a photographer well i do all the time but it's like i could imagine diana the goddess of honey being like you wanted to hit me with lightning so the bird's moving away he gets clear the photographer then i'm like man the kind of

dicey shot but i get a nice shooting gap like shoot the turkey and he did piled up yes yeah i mean yeah i don't know man those i've had a lot of flopping birds as my first instinct after pulling the trigger is like get to your feet as fast as humanly possible and sprint to that bird they will get up and leave yes that's like the turkey hunting that's like the thing you see the trope is like you kill it and you run over immediately drop your gun and run over there but i'll tell you man those turkey loads are dude for reekish we'll get to my story too but reekish i mean dropping turkeys and not even a twitch was your bird like that i mean he didn't even no he well i got injured by him oh when i say piled up me he wasn't going anywhere but i got i ran over there and I got by.

He was still. Scratched my eye on his wing when he was beating his wing. But yeah, it is good. I don't know, man. The one you guys are speaking of, I'm assuming, is the federal TSS. TSS. Tungsten. Tungsten Super Shot.

Super Shot. You guys were shooting the 7s, I believe. 7s. And it used to be, because the way it used to work is and i think some states still do you're still not allowed to use sevens in some states or is it you're not allowed to use nines no i think it was when we i think who were we talking to was it one of the guys at federal going to or the sportsman's alliance guys they both might have been working on that issue. The law was archaic. The rule was antiquated.

They had rules around shot pellet size for efficacy, but with the new super fast, high velocity, high density tungsten shot, you can just put a bunch more pellets so tss the tungsten's in the word right tungsten super shot tungsten super shot yeah so you can use sevens nines they even have tens which we haven't tried yet but i've definitely shot turkeys with the sevens and the nines and another thing that you get from you going smaller shot size is you just get so many more pellets down range it's a denser we opened up some a 20 gauge that was a mix of five six sevens and pour it out on some that was called third degree yeah and then right next to it opened up a nine with nines and i mean you can just see it it's just

i mean you're doubling maybe tripling the amount of pellets going down range well i used to all it takes is one pellet to kill a bird you know right i used to use third degree and liked it but not like that other stuff because you get really really dense patterns with that many pellets and those things are zipping yeah and there's they're spending you know a lot of people are going to say oh man that stuff's too expensive for me and look man if you're the guy that just rolls around his ranch and you know you're not going to say, oh, man, that stuff's too expensive for me. And look, man, if you're the guy that just rolls around his ranch and, you know, you're not going to actually be turkey hunting, but if you see a turkey, you're going to jump out and shoot him and then you can keep going about your work. You know, that's like the ranch, Montana rancher type of a hunt, right?

For sure. Where you're just as efficient as possible and spending money. But if you're going to travel, let's say more than an hour to go turkey hunting and you're like worrying about whether you want to spend a dollar or 50 cents on a turkey shell versus the five or six bucks um or even higher for the tss it ranges i'm looking online i think it's a moot point you could spend up to 45 bucks for a box for a box of uh five nine bucks, and you touch that trigger. Yeah. But how much is your turkey taking?

How much is your travel on it? How many do you actually use? I've shot two shots and killed two turkeys this year. Yeah. They come in boxes of five. If you're using more than five in a year, you're having a good year. Once you shoot a couple to pattern your thing, a box would last years. That is where I would say it is expensive.

If you have a five-shot pattern, that's expensive. But I don't know, man but with the tungsten be listen the confidence that i have right now shooting my setup jamming them yeah yeah it's not i'm confident far farther than i should be i'm limiting myself because of like the new setup where it's like i don't need to shoot as far as i think i could with those loads and you think like tungsten is denser right denser than traditional lead or traditional heavy shot and so you're getting less like you pull the trigger they got those setback forces you're getting less you know deformed pellets and that's what causes flyers so you have less flyers a denser fucking pattern and we all poleaxe turkeys like drop them on like on the spot you know what's interesting is when i went over there after we got the bird tagged it up we're walking back and i realized there was a tree i didn't even register in my

mind they had about a two and a half inch diameter and that tree looks like it absorbed half that load but the other half went through and yeah now's my turkey hunt no now what did you want to say about my haircut oh the word butch just an interesting thing from childhood that i didn't pay much attention to there was i grew up down the beach from a gay woman who would fish with my father and his friends she was elderly and it's just the weirdest thing and it like troubles me and puzzles me now because i didn't even know what it meant at the time they would call her and she would call herself Butch. And my father and his friends were World War II guys. I do not think they would have, unfortunately,

I do not think they would have been as accepting of a gay man that they hunted with, that they fished with. Probably not. But they would walk with in the morning, walk dogs with with and fish with butch but call her butch which is a derogatory term for a gay woman so it's a it's like a derogatory lesbian term and i just i like i would love to go back if i could go back on my brain now to understand like what that dynamic was how she perceived the word how it came to be that she would go by that nickname and ask those guys like what because it was just so matter of fact it was like oh yeah

the gay woman well i would call butch i would imagine now that's still within the community and again imagining that with amongst, you still might call each other butch, yourself butch, but it's not something that someone outside of the community would call. She was like, yeah, like a buddy, like buddies with these guys. And so I don't know like what they're under. It's like, you know, how words are used change so much. Like, I don't know what their understanding of it was.

Did they, were they like, oh, I shouldn't, or are they just like, that's how words are used change so much like i don't know what their understanding of it was that they were they like oh i shouldn't or they just like that's just matter of fact i have no idea i would imagine no idea she was like accepted in that group and that's their that's their acceptance of her was to call her that right like hey butch oh you're probably one of us now but i i imagine with all these types of terms in 2019 as a less accepted oh i if i could be if i was probably if i could be saying that then yeah like now if i could go back in time i would go down and knock on the door and and be like you know uh i i'd like to discuss something with you because there's a thing that we all do that i want to understand better she might say well i feel like i feel like that's one of the ways I can get accepted.

And if that's what I got to go through to get accepted, that's fine. Maybe. We had a, I never retouched on this, but when we were down in Mexico, you guys are all there. No, I think you had to take off. Maybe. We talked, a woman wrote in and we were talking about finding hunting partners and a woman wrote in, she said, I'm a woman and I'm gay. And it makes it very hard for me to find people to hunt with.

And I talked about that letter. And we got, I don't know how, a dozen plus people writing in being like, I'll hunt with her anytime she wants. Give her my email address. And not one person wrote in to be like, screw that lady. Everybody's like, dude dude send her my way we'll hunt with her that's awesome yeah oh yeah you're saying about how good steve is in the woods oh i didn't say good phenomenal phenomenal one uh yeah voice of our generation turkey calling whatever that was good though yeah i like that would we want to talk to start this one with

a conversation about zones what zones mean and how your turkey became a conversation of zones well it just became a place that we all got to meet up at yeah really yeah it's kind of like i haven't seen you in a while yeah what are you doing over there um i think yeah we can we can get to that but uh ben and i had been hunting all morning steve been hunting all morning you guys stayed in your own zone yeah and eventually we heard a shot as we were walking back in and we kind of discussed not hunting for midday and um going to get some awesome barbecue um and eventually it kept hearing the bird gobble from kind of the little ranch compound there like all right this is yeah this

200 yards away from stupid sitting on a porch throw my gear back on start walking down the road into my zone into steve's zone and then here you caught you entering my zone then here comes steve and gung ho to to go hunt and it's helpful to have a collar and a shooter uh i would i would say most times turkey hunting and um so uh steve and i um So Steve and I headed back into the woods. And then there was some discussion as to, oh, wait, I just told Yanni and Danielle that I was leaving. And now we're coming back into this zone. So Yanni and Danielle made me working into what had previously just been steve's zone um and that took some some time to kind of figure that out and communicate

uh by a cell phone with some like spotty coverage phone is dropping and still led to hurt feelings i'm not sure how hurt the feelings really were. Yanni, listen. I've spent a tremendous amount of time with him. That was as upset as he gets. That's 10. No. Yes. You see me with my kids.

That is as upset as he gets. Were you feeling like you were with your kids at that point? No. I'm not upset. When Yanni sulks. Just disappointed. When he sulks, that's his upset. No, I've seen him actually flip out on people.

Because I've seen him flip out a couple times. But he was sulking. He was in the eight. He was in the eight sulk. Go ahead. So while that's getting figured out, we're waiting for this bird to call and we're doing some kind of aggressive calling. And then finally we hear a gobble and we set up, move a very short distance, set up, call a little bit. Steve's doing the calling i'm just hanging out the bird gobbles again and we get

a very clear impression that the bird is not going to move closer because of um just just the topography of the landscape so we get back on the road again don't leave the road dirty's like them and that will move 75 yards, and then the road cuts back and basically makes more or less, within a few degrees, a straight line to the turkey. And at that point, we set up again. I set up in a beautiful turkey-killing spot.

Which I didn't like. Which Steve did not like. So then he repositions the turkey, almost blocking the entire shooting lane. I was like, if you're not going to sit where I want, I can at least put the decoy where I want. Yes. And it was a nice little blind corner situation

and turned into about a 30-yard shot, probably. 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 know sucking high and titty there on x is now

in canada the great features that you love in on x 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 meet onxmaps.com meet. Welcome to the on X club, y'all. Can I tell you what my concern was?

Please do. There was a Texas fence. Not a high one, but a stiffy. Yep. And I couldn't tell what side of the fence he was on me neither and so i was worried that that i wanted you to be in a position where should he come up the fence line you had good a good view through the fence yep and you might have felt that you did but that's what that's what it's just hard to communicate that's

what i was getting at was like what if he i don't know but what if he that definitely the road was definitely plan a plan b i had um you know about a two and a half foot gap had he come up the other side of the fence and had things worked perfectly. Yeah. But, yeah, so one call. Ba-da-la! And, you know, it was one of the call gobbles back where you're like, oh, boy, this bird is very committed. You can feel it in your tonsils. And will more than likely not make it past this scenario.

And, yeah, I mean seconds seconds later his head comes around the blind corner and i really could have shot him right then and then part of my brain's like because there was a jake decoy. Yeah, he registered that decoy in a visceral way. Yes. And part of me was like, oh, well, hold off and let's see what this bird does with the Jake decoy. I really want to see that interaction just for future. And then the other part of my brain was like, you're an idiot, kill that bird right now.

So I did. But when he sees that thing he's got like a hold on a minute yeah it was great it was great um but yeah that that thing was just deader than a wedge man just yeah i'd like i have rarely seen turkeys flop over that thing did did not move after that meanwhile yannis is doing everything in its power to try to get a gobble out of that bird i was also we skipped over the fact that i was maybe but 300 yards away from you guys also in the zone also hearing that gobble trying to determine if i should go over there or not and knowing probably not so i just sat there

because i was going i was trying to get out of the zone on foot because i was very i was challenged by you're like i'm going hunting i'm like well if he's going hunting i'm going hunting so i was took off to go back to our earlier zone yep and on my way to the zone which was bird rich which is bird rich on my way over to that zone i heard a gobble so i sat down and called a few times, and I was like, it's probably not polite. So I just sat there. Then you heard us harvest it. Then I heard you harvest it.

The bird-rich zone that Ben was going off to and then got distracted from is important to note because that is the exact same zone that Giannis and I returned to later on. Yes, it is important to note because that is the exact same zone that janice and i returned to later on yes it is important to note but yeah i was the last hour of the last i felt i felt you didn't intentionally chide me but i felt chided into like am i gonna go sit here and wait for lunch or i'm gonna go like cal and vali trudge back into the forest to hunt the wild turkey so i i was like oh i'm off and i went off you had to skip your afternoon shower go hunting yeah yeah skip my i'd make sure ben has a very uh stringent uh showering

routine in the state of texas yeah it's a morning midday and evening shower i believe pretty much every yeah if i could do it every hour on the hour, I would. You were showering more than once a day? No. Oh, okay. No, this is a joke. Yeah, you were. No, I was doing twice a day while we were there. Yeah. Because I had lived there and I know.

All the shit that's crawling on me, I went off. Oh, you were doing like tick and chigger work and whatnot. Yeah, I got you. So I get in there. Rather than just like walking around in my underwear, picking, I figured getting in the shower is a nice way to. I was periodically checking my scroll. Yeah.

Because I started having like, you know when you start thinking about it you feel like there's one there there's a chigger that's a chigger that's got to be a chigger i did come up with one chigger bite right on my waistline but one which is just i felt yeah it was just like the weird curveball the state of texas threw me because it is that experience down there that week was so completely different than every other Texas Texas experiment or experience that I've had between chiggers and cactus and everything else my wife my wife said how was the trip I said well the turkey hunting was so so but I didn't get I didn't see a rattlesnake. I didn't get a chicken bite. I didn't get a tick on me, so I win.

I'm still working a cactus thorn in my knee. That's it. Yeah, I think I had a cactus thorn too in my behind, but other than that, I'm good. And going to Texas, if you get out safely without any kind of alpha-gal syndrome or any long-lasting effects, you're good. Oh, yeah.

Lyme disease, any other ailments, viruses. I just got a note that at the end of that trip when we did the fundraiser for Wild Sheep at the Yeti flagship store in Austin, they pulled

$6,500 that night. That's great. Because Cal was auctioning. Awkward auction. He wasn't doing that. He wasn't going, Hey, guys. Listen.

He's like, listen, man. I'm not here to bullshit you people. You got money. I got something to give you. I got stuff to sell. Bring it to me. Let's hear another quick turkey story. I can give you a quick one.

This is what, the next day, correct, Yanni? We had a couple of buddies who had a property, a lease property, close to, relatively close, similar area to also in the Llano River, downriver a ways. And Yanni and I decided to hunt hunt that virgin property at least to us with a with two buddies of ours that own archery country there in austin um tyler and brennan and i had hunted last the year before i'd hunted that property but yanni had never never hunted it but i felt like you can tell me if i'm wrong and it's

a pretty good turkey spot yeah as things go yeah nice ranch yep heads up heads up to the river so we headed over there in the morning got up early made the drives like 45 minutes headed over there and struck off in the morning i went with uh i went with tyler and and brendan and Tyler and Brendan and Yanni went off together. They had a bunch of fired up gobblers in one spot on this property the day before, so we struck off and headed over there after those birds

to see if we could strike them up. We struck up a couple of birds across the river, which I was dumb enough to think, ah, we'll find some other turkeys. Was it the Yanno? It was the Yanno. The Llano? Yeah. The Llano. Were you guys up or down river from us down okay and we were in a spot where you like you want to talk 100 year floods i mean there was full boats there was docks there was i mean it looked like the water was 50 feet above normal i mean it was unbelievable like the stuff deposited on the banks yeah yeah i mean just debris everywhere i mean it was it was unbelievable. Like stuff deposited on the banks. Yeah. I mean, just debris everywhere.

I mean, it was kind of a wasteland there at that stretch of the river. So we walked the river, called a little bit, struck up a couple birds across the river, but I was dumb enough to think, oh, we're going to hunt these birds that are on our side. I don't want to mess with these things. We should probably have, we struck up some birds that were fired up, probably should have stayed there and got them to fly across as you guys did at the other spot.

Anyhow, we went up the hill, set up where we knew these turkeys were at, started calling, and we had basically complete silence once birds hit the ground. And it was- It was like, how could this happen? How could this happen?

This never happens. What, this never, I've never experienced this in my life. So yes, we were basically screwed. Oh, Yanni did the Yanni turkey marathon. He walked from the other side of the entire property all the way to where we were. And I heard this thing.

Yanni said he had his track function on? Yeah. On OnX? Brandon did. Because I hunted with him from about 9 a.m. on. Was he using one of those stupid watches that always tells you the wrong distance he was running his on extract every with those watches dude i walked uh 98 miles today my watch told me so i often feel like they cannot be

dude we got to give brendan brendan hansen is a multiple time gold medal olympic swimmer for whatever that's worth. For whatever that's worth. Yeah, for whatever that's worth. So he's been there. He says you guys walked 17 miles looking for turkeys. Yeah, and that was after I did my little personal turkey tour. I don't accept any data from one of those iWatches. I don't know how far it was.

I just know that at 9 a.m 9 30 when i hooked up with you guys i was already like golly i heard this that was a freaking walkabout i just did what do those watches called that i'm talking about i there's a lot of fitbit fitbit you like whenever someone out of you know fitbit people like we got one for my kid he wanted one real bad he wakes up he's awake for five minutes or It already shows he's gone like 3,000 yards. 18 flights of stairs. Did you just come downstairs? 18 flights of stairs today.

Now, I remember hearing the faint crow call in the distance. And I thought, well, that's the direction that Yanni's in. But there's no way in this short amount of time that he's covered all this distance to get to where we are. Because we left him on the other side of the property almost i hear this faint crow call give it to me ellie in the distance what did it sound like do a way off a bull do a way off yeah the end part i don't like the end part that was just a little something extra for the lady we're just having fun so there he is was he in your zone did he violate your zone

uh kind of kind of but it's not that we didn't really establish zones at that point we just thought well yanni's so far away there's no way he'll trudge because he had to go through what eight gates to get what do you mean kind of i was in touch with the freaking lease holder and i was like can i come down there because where you guys sent me is obviously the first garl i've ever been put in you thought you were garl you thought you were garl it's called the latvian creep yep coming into your zone i was like that man has big strides made all the way over here but i heard a faint i heard a stretch stretching fences from one end of the range pushing gates over i heard this faint crow call and i thought that sounds like a yanni crow call not that it didn't sound good there's not a lot of crows there yeah there's not you don't hear there's some but there's not some you don't hear that three note crow call uh and then

i heard i heard a yelp and i'm like that's a yanni that's a yanni yelp, and I'm like, that's a Yanni. That's a Yanni yelp. And it has like two stages. It's got its two-stage, six notes, and it's two stages on those notes. So I knew that was Yanni. Well, Yanni came over and met up with us, and it was quiet. You hadn't heard a gobble to that point, had you? No. It was super quiet to the point where it

was getting a little bit depressing so we endeavored to to go and grab some sandwiches or we were gonna go reset got in the truck rolled down to this little creek bottom where i had heard birds gobbling before i'm like let's just get out and hammer them um we got out and almost as soon as we got out of the truck, right, Yanni? Yeah, we blew the crow call, and he answered. And he was, boom, answered. Now, this is – and what we didn't say about either of your two birds. Did you hit him with a Steve Reno? I was doing my best inversion of it, but I'm sure it wasn't quite –

Steve believes his crow calling is Olympic in nature. Yeah. Like it's gold medal. There's something like particularly shocking to a turkey when I crow call. Yeah. Piercing. Now, I got to say, the short time we did it. People I hunt with, when I pull that crow call out, I watch them.

They take two or three steps backward. Yeah. Oh. To get behind me. I'm the man. To get behind me before I do it so you you i didn't see that though in our short time together there was no shocks uh but i believe you uh but yanni shocked him up and they were just kind of what 500 yards away this bird was put down in this little ways

little creek bottoms beautiful little um dry bottom it was hot man so yeah we knew we we needed to find some shade it was hot that day my friends and um so there's four of us we're like yeah we'll all four go down there and see if we can call this bird in which is generally not uh prescribed just moving heavy yeah we went in heavy and it was it was decided that i would shoot this turkey yanni had his fan and we went down into the bottom. What do you call your fan, Yanni? Slim Shady. Yeah, or Slim Jim.

Slim Pickens. Slim Pickens, I think is what you're calling it in Texas. We got Slim Pickens out. We went down there and hit it. Not sooner did Yanni hit the— We say slim because it's only a fan with a turkey head. You might as well talk about it. Yeah.

Give people a little— He took a saw and cut his turkey decoy's head off. Yeah. It's a Primo's chicken on a stick, which is sweet decoy. What I like about it is the steak has a handle. It even has a little U where you can drop your shotgun into it, so you can be holding the fan and you're— Oh, that's what that's for?

No way. Yeah. That was like a coat hanger. No, no, no. That was for hanging a jacket. You can fan with it or you can just stick it into the ground and use it as a decoy. But I wanted it to be a little bit more portable,

a little bit more run and gun friendly. And so I basically whacked off three quarters of the decoy body so it was just the head left and did a little tweaking and basically attached that to the head left and you know did a little tweaking and basically attached that to the stake handle and the fan and so because he's so slim and two-dimensional slim shady some shady slim pickings well that's my favorite actor slim shady slim no no slim pickings i did like eight mile tell you what i never saw that but he's in that movie happy people yeah he's pretty good now pretty good he's no slim pickings yeah no he doesn't have the depth and body of work of dr strange love rancho deluxe there's two of the greatest movies ever made this

is why podcasts exist okay go on uh you just need one roll or you get a ride an a-bomb and that just kind of elevates that's your yeah that's your one shining moment yeah uh so we all four trudge down into this bottom this turkey he's pretty fired up for a midday bird and it's hot it was pretty hot um i didn't have a lot of confidence because he seemed a little – he seemed like he was in his strut zone. He didn't really want to break. Is that how you see it, Yanni? Yes, I would say so.

So we all – Yanni and I kind of got up against some trees, and we knew he had a – there was a fence in between us. It was one of those six-strand fences that we were talking about, and we're thinking, this dude's going to have to come across that unless we jump it, but if we jump it, we were talking about. And we're thinking, this dude's going to have to come across that unless we jump it. But if we jump it, we're too close. He comes. He starts gobbling.

We sit down. He's not really – he wasn't cutting any distance for five to ten minutes. Yanni was hitting him hard. I got the old box call out. Well, we decided to get closer and split up. And then both of us called. It sounded like a whole flock, a whole rafter. Got the old box call out. Well, we decided to get closer and split up. And then both of us called. It sounded like a whole flock.

Yeah. A whole rafter. He was fired up, and he was answering every time. And he was thundering. But he just wasn't. He was in his zone, and he didn't feel the need to come over there. Because I think that they enjoy that. Yeah. I think that you think that there's –

like when he's not – you're calling, and he's gobbling, and you feel that there's this thing that needs to happen now, I think that they sometimes revel in that. I think so too. And I think this is a perfect example of how it goes. So we're calling. It was 10 minutes of calling, I bet. And I get out the call.

Him and I are both going. We're hitting it together. At some point, you could just tell that he was committed. At some point, we were cutting him off both cutting him off he was getting a little more jacked up a little more excited he's like i'm gonna make love double and triple gobble he had a he had a triple gobble i will be making love soon and i'm i'm maybe 10 yards away from yanni and i turned to him at one point and he goes let's just stay quiet let's let's just shut up for a while and see what happens. We shut up and not –

It was coincidence that we shut up and then the next gobble was 50 yards closer. I thought – I knew he was coming for sure. When we shut up and quit gobbling, like 30 seconds later, he just hits one. And he's way closer than he was. And I turned to our other two companions. I'm like, he's coming. Like, get ready. So we've got me on the left

yanni on the right yanni's got old slim pickings just just giving her the sweet turn it's that sweet music where there's just he had to come he had to come investigate because the silence that little tail fan just just going across yeah we could see way up this uh shady creek bottom we couldn't see where the turkey was but he came across the thick stuff and popped out at least 100 yards. I caught him coming through the thick stuff. I'm like, oh, dude. He comes out into

the open creek bottom. There's four dudes. We're not covered up at all. This might not go well. It was a thing of beauty, though, because he came out of the shade and right into a sunny spot and then he just full came out full strut and just glowed and just oh and it was it was like one of those like avenues in the creek bottom it's like that avenue in the creek bottom where you got trees on both sides you got a bunch of brush and there's just this like

lane and he didn't get he wasn't like walking the edge of the lane he came right out in the open and walked in the middle of it it's like that painting you ever see that famous painting by that famous painter of daniel boone coming through the cumberland gap yep just it's like he just parted the sea and he was coming through and he's just like oh man he was he was strutting he was hit the strut and he would go back down and look around like yeah yeah yeah i'm coming in and it hit it up and he kits i did not like i wanted to i wanted him to come in and put on the show because once i saw him turn the corner i'm like unless he unless one of us does something stupid this is over but he took he took

his sweet old time coming up the lane and then got to the fence which was roughly 25 yards away and just hit it and just was he was going back and forth he was trying to find a way through the fence and he was spitting drumming like every noise a turkey can make he was making and so the other two guys were with tyler and brendan hadn't really turkey on very much or like almost never maybe one time in the woods so they got the show of shows i mean he spit drum and just you hear a lot of guys say that i want to see the show i want to get the show when i kill a turkey and that means that that means you get to watch him come strutting gobbling he was the show he would yeah he would he started and gobbles whole way in and once he got to shooting range he was just going back and forth on the fence

just hitting it because i mean just spitting the drum as loud as i've heard didn't gobble very much once he got in close but they don't do that so the show sounds kind of perverse you'd want to see that and then shoot the turkey yeah but everybody who sits around sits down to thanksgiving turkey what was the show they got it shows up in the back of a truck yeah shows up crammed into a truck a hundred dollar organic turkey with 30 000 other turkeys crammed into a truck and they drag it out by its feet and run it through a slaughter line i i'd much rather eat a crammed into a truck. $100 organic turkey. With 30,000 other turkeys crammed into a truck and they drag it out by its feet

and run it through a slaughter line. I'd much rather eat a turkey that showed up like that. Dude, I've been on, I just got back from full strut. I just got back from vacation

so I haven't eaten any part of this turkey yet. But when I do, I will be thinking of him coming down that lane. You'll be picturing one of those sad trailers full of white turkeys

going down the highway with feathers and shit flying off the back of it. A giant bin. Yeah. Big cryovac bin like yeah and i will admit to having made a bit of a mistake here when i killed the turkey he was looking trying to get through the fence and he was putting his head up trying to and he looked to get through the fence and figured out he couldn't get through it and i thought i'm gonna kill him now yeah he kind of he kind of came out of strut put his head close to the fence so he really wanted through that fence oh he wanted through it bad he wanted through it bad he was he was seeing another gobbler strutting 25 yards away man he wanted to like get up in the

yeah kick the nuts on it he was so he kind of he came out of a couple times where he'd be like showy showy showy and then he kind of going to three-quarters strut you could see his head looking at the fence he'd walk a little bit and then just go back. I was thinking if we let him keep putting on the show, he might have backed up and flown over the fence, which would have been – I'd have shot him as soon as he landed, just out of principle. But he came up, broke strut, and was like looking through the fence,

looking, and I thought I could shoot him right now. I'm going to blow his head off easy. And then he went back into strut and started walking towards yanni a bit away from me and i thought well it's time to go so i shot him when he was in full strut and just wrecked him i mean just i've never i mean that turkey didn't twitch did he i mean he just down folded and it turns out that i hit him pretty hard like both and you were saying you thought maybe it was a butchering mistake i'm oh i'm sure i'm sure it wasn't because i've done a lot of them but it could have been but when i pulled his his both his legs back to cut his thighs off and his both of

his i guess it would be his his femur bone. Yeah, his thigh bone. Or snapped in half. Like when that payload hit him, he just fell so fast that the force of it broke both his legs. I still don't understand. I mean, I understand. I'm not saying I understand either, but that's what I encountered when I broke him open. And he dropped so damn fast.

I remember carrying him out. You didn't like later throw him in the back of the truck and slam the tailgate on his thigh, did you? No. That would have been a good way to pull it off. But I think we would have seen bruising had he gone through some sort of trauma like that, right? Yeah.

No, there was no bruising to the legs. It was just literally both his legs were snapped. What do you think caused it? And half. I don't know. I mean, that's the best explanation. He convulsed in death so hard. That it broke his own thighs. Like he dropped. I mean, that's the best explanation. He convulsed in depth so hard. That it broke his own thighs.

Like he dropped. I mean, I've never seen a turkey. I've never seen a turkey drop faster than that and not move. Like did not. I've definitely seen him fold like that with a zero flopping. But not even. I mean, what else would cause that? He didn't walk in there with those two legs broken like that.

I can tell you that. He was cleaning air. That's what you were saying. I didn't make the same error. But I don't know how you clean it so hard as to break its thigh bones i'm telling well i got i have a lot you were using the truck skin invested on that i put a golf ball up its ass uh no i jt van zant was standing there and i flopped him open to pull his breasts off and his thighs and legs and he's like holy shit because when you just flop them open you can see it huh um so that's that's my big takeaway

that the payload from the old tss put a hurting on that turkey john if you if you um you get to tell one turkey story do you want to tell the story of danielle's first turkey it's certainly more interesting okay give it turkey stories you're right because i got to get in on a couple turkey kills yeah um cal and i cal helped me double up on the last day it was fourth quarter that's one of my favorite it was great that's one of my favorite hunting things that happens when a dude's like oh man i'm just gonna run out real quick before we leave because yanni never says die no i'm gonna run out quick before we leave man i was it was too close for me though i don't i didn't like the pressure of that hunt it was like you gotta you gotta push the envelope

repeatedly because you're like well normally i do this but it's not getting fun because you're just in the back of your head you're constantly like well i wonder if we can leave a little bit later i wonder if they're gonna be pissed off if we get there at 3 instead of 2. Because it was about 1 when we killed them. Anywho, yeah, I got to hunt with Danielle for her first, what she considered her first real, in air quotes, turkey hunt. Yeah, some wild game chef, Danielle Pruitt. Yeah, Danielle Pruitt, wild and whole.

And we had a similar morning to what you guys described, but went back out. The only one thing I'll add to the little story, but we can't really go off on a tangent here, but bringing back up Cal's bird story, we were working that same bird. You guys were obviously much closer to that bird than we were. But, you know, it was late in the day it was noon 1 p.m something like that we've been out Danielle been on a turkey tour my onyx had said like six or six and a half miles at that point I could see it she was starting to drag a little bit but now we're like set up

got a pretty hot bird you know he's working and and we could hear your calls a little bit I think she even mentioned it. But anywho, man, that shot goes off, and you could just see her shoulders slump down. She said to me, I feel like someone burst my balloon. I was like, well. Deflated my tires a little bit. I know.

These boys got lost. Anywho, we got back out at maybe three. We weren't lost. We were in our zone. we got back out at maybe three. We weren't lost. We were in our zone. We got back at three or so. And, man, what was interesting about that country is that if you got on a high point at all, you could hear a gobble a long ways away. I'm talking like stuff you can measure in quarters and halves, maybe even three-quarters of a mile.

Because the one that we ended up eventually getting on, I'm thinking he's for sure on our side of the river. And as we get closer, I'm like, yep, on our side, but definitely down at the river. Well, we show up at the river, and that bugger's 300 yards on the other side of the river. And, yeah, they just, whatever it was, topography and the, and the floor there really let those gobbles travel far. Anywho, on the other side of the river, and I, although I

had no, I knew that Steve had some birds that came across the river. Um, I was thinking, man, this is a long shot. Danielle thought it was such a long shot that she was kind of in her head, thinks she didn't tell me, but in her head, she's thinking, how long are we going to sit here and just listen to this turkey gobble on the other side of the river that we can't even see? Like, this is a stupid idea. We're wasting our time.

We should be doing something else. But he was hot and he was, you know, pretty much gobbling almost every call. So I kept at him, kept at him. And eventually I could tell he moved down the bank a little bit and he popped out. I was like, oh, well, he at least moved out of his, if it was a strut zone.

And it was weird because he was like, it sounded like he was coming from between two sort of like what I would call like machine shed, not really barn, more like metal sided machine shed looking buildings. Like he was strutting like in the parking lot. Yeah, where you store like tractor and mower storage and stuff. Yeah, more of a garage than the barn anywho he pops out and uh it looks like he's sort of angling our way you know still doing the strutting and and you know zigzagging and eventually those zigzags get smaller and smaller and smaller and zigzag turns into a straight line going towards the riverbank and like molly we better get ready and take this situation seriously, you know.

And he actually goes up on one of those bluffs that you described and does a few circles up there. And I'm thinking, man, you know, if he pitches, it's on, you know. But there's also a really good chance that he's going to do a few circles and just sit there and gobble at us for the next hour and then go back up to that machine shop. And, you know be the end of the story well lucky for us he pitches and lands on the mojave desert sandy beach because turkeys don't like to fly two or three hundred yards away and uh goes into full strut for a second drops full strut and then just starts beelining it

towards us and uh yeah definitely one of the more incredible and more interesting wild call-ins I've been a part of to see one fly across a river and then walk across a sandy beach to me. You got all this on your phone video, right? That's right. That's right. I made a little Instagram instagram story as they call it and i saved it in my highlights which i learned about recently and uh oh so it's like up and

it's already happened you can go check it out oh yeah so proud of how to find you just at janice putilis that's right it's actually yeah janice underscore putilis i'm so proud of your Instagram. J underscore. No, J-A-N-I-S underscore P-U-T-E-L-I-S. Yeah, and under highlights. Wasn't it Latvian Hunter? It was. He switched it. Okay. I changed it.

He rebranded. Rebranded. Make it easier. He's like, I am a Latvian. I'm a hunter. But his name. Is that all I am? It's easier to find him by his name.

That's not all I am. If you go on Instagram and you want to see the deer hung up in the fence, go to at Stephen Rinella. And then when you're there, go to follow. I guess I got into a weird place of being the whole cute Instagram handle thing. You know what I mean? So anyways, I went plain and simple with my name. Benny OB and old cal over here so this bird comes right up to the grassy bank and i thought he's gonna come he sort of at some

point he went perpendicular to us a little bit to get on the bank which at first i was nervous about because i thought he was gonna we're gonna lose sight of him and then he was gonna get into the thick stuff and then actually maybe even circle us and come through the thick stuff and pop out at you know five or ten yards but instead he gets just he just wanted to get up on our level and uh he started coming right at us and the whole time we're you know just basically sitting there with this fan in front of us and uh turning it back and forth moving it up and down a little bit and uh yeah he gobbled and strutted all the way to 30 yards and then i made a couple calls and get him got him to stretch his neck out yeah danielle was all over him and then she turned to you and said holy shit

but yeah so yeah yeah nice thing about hunt with dan like a lot of times you hunt with people and they get something. And I have this thing where I start worrying about the meat. Yep. I'm like, you know, are they going to get worried about what's going to happen to it? Are they going to put it in their freezer and freezer burn it and forget about it and throw it out?

But nice thing about hunting with a wild game, like a real serious wild game cook, you never have to have that concern. Yeah. She tried to render the turkey fat out of its sponge. So did it work? She made a broth out of it, out of the damn sponge. How did it go?

Yeah, what'd she say? The broth was good, not much fat. Huh. But the rendering liquid was good. Huh. That's interesting. That's really interesting. Now that's next level wild game cooking.

That is next level. You know how most of us, as the big balk or the turkeys coming in, we have these visions of grandeur that I like to call them, which means in my head I'm like already – I'm not purposely thinking this, but my brain, my little subconscious ego does this, where somehow I drift off to the time when I'm going to be back at the tailgate with Cal and Ben and Steve, and we'll be looking at the spurs and high-fiving,

having a beer, or maybe like thinking about what the European mount is going to look like on the wall. You know, and it's so weird that the brain does that, but it does. Because it's not like, I don't, I'm not sitting there going, oh yeah, you know, I can, I drift away. But Danielle was, instead of, her visions of grandeur were more like, tacos out of the thighs, and then this is going to meet the breasts, and then I got this idea about the Pope's nose that I'm going to do.

And, like, she was, yeah. Point being that, yeah, she had a big plan for every single one. Yeah, you don't got to worry about it. I don't like that feeling of worrying about what someone's going to do with what they just got. No. Oh, gosh, no. And the minute they're like, do you want mine? I worry about it. I don't like that feeling of worrying about what someone's going to do with what they just got. No. Oh, gosh.

And the minute they're like, do you want mine? I just take it. Because I'm like, if that's where you're at, I'm going to take it because I'll make sure I'll get it in the right hands and I don't trust you anymore. Yeah, she made some incredible, what do you call them? Tequila lime, I believe. Lime tequila. Tacos out of the thigh.

Thighs and legs. Mostly just thighs, though. Awesome, awesome meat. I think turkey hunting, especially, I don't know if it's more than other, but most people you run into are talking about the breasts and the breasts only. Not this crew, but most people

in my experience you run into are talking about it that way. There's a slight expansion to legs this crew, but most people in my experience that you run into are talking about it that way. There's like a slight expansion to legs and thighs, but taking it a little further like Yanni does, gizzards, hearts, livers, things like that. Sponge. I think it's sponge. I think it's critical, man. Oh, you know what I'm doing this year,

and I'll be reporting back here in a while, but I've saved every single turkey foot, or I guess what's below the drumstick. You're going to make your own stock? I'm going to try making stock out of the – Turkey foot stock? Yeah. Because a lot of chefs make, they consider, the best stock out of chicken feet. Exactly.

Yeah. And I take the spurs and cut each side of the spur. You taught me that trick. So it's just a spur and a little bit of the leg bone yeah drill a hole in it and I got a thing that I use to pull the lights out of my garage and I string them on that string it's real nice someday someone's gonna come and steal that string from me and I'm gonna hunt them down and kill them I've adopted starting with this yeah I've adopted scenario uh way of um or yeah his system of keeping tally or keeping

you know mementos from turkey hunts which is one spur from each turkey and it goes onto a string

one just one you know what my other pull cord is do you write something on it so you know it's a Spanish mackerel's jaw that's cool

that's one pull cord and the other pull cord is turkey spurs I like turning the turkey spur light on both will cut your hand am I downgraded because I don't I kill a lot of turkeys but I don't save

I mean I have some fans and stuff in my freezer but I don't save anything no and I've mentioned it a thousand million times but I had the spur earrings made for my wife yeah it never struck me that I had to save them no it's good a thousand million times but i had the spur earrings made for my wife yeah i don't i yeah i just don't i never struck me that i had to save them that's good for any like yeah i don't look

down on you um good checking in on that so it's gonna be except fourth quarter hunt okay we have to go some folks have to go to the airport some folks go to, um, the stars in the sky, uh, dock viewing, uh, slash fundraiser at the Yeti store all the way back in Austin. So we have a couple hours to hunt. Uh, Giannis and I decided to hop in the little ranch rig, the side-by-side and, uh, try to hit this general zone that really hadn't been touched since opening, since our opening morning. And that's where the birds, Ben and I found the birds and they were strutting on the other side of the fence. And that was, we had stopped several times to try to locate and get a response. We finally get to this point and we get a far off gobble on the other side of

the property. Off of our property. Yeah. But it's like where you got to put all your eggs in one basket at some point in the ticking clock scenario. Yeah. It was worth a try. Right.

Yeah. So we went up there and set up on him twice just to kind of cut the distance. You never know exactly how far he is until he's pretty much within shotgun range. And the fence was a problem, but he started parallel on the fence. And then luckily for us, we get to a point where the fence takes a hard right so yeah there's a 90 degree turn on the fence and so you can imagine if two folks are paralleling a straight line and then there's a 90-degree turn, all of a sudden you're basically face-to-face, face-to-beak in this scenario. Man, fences play a big role in Texas turkey hunting.

I was just going to say the same thing. I'm like, it's a story of fences, man. The whole thing. A story of fences. I like that. So then, yeah, what happened? Yeah, wrap her up. We're running long.

We saw three gobblers. What we thought we were chasing was one. It ended up being three. And Cal put the – we had to creep around that little corner. Cal put the fan up. At some point I called. I don't know what I called for. I do remember, though, that all three of them simultaneously gobbled.

They saw the fan. You could see the wheels turn for a few seconds, and then they pretty much charged in. This was my first experience watching the fan in action, and you could just see everybody was strapped, and then they were like, first one gets her. Everybody relaxes and just starts straight lining.

Yeah, and so i shot one and then uh the other ones jumped on his dead buddy and it's pecking and spurring him and whatnot and then i realized that we i had four tags and i'm like couch i shoot another one he's like if you want the meat boom yeah the we'll have to touch on that next time we're talking about turkeys which probably won't be long is uh a turkey's proclivity to when his buddy is harvested to uh when his buddy gets killed to then spur to attack peck and spur his buddy this is next level kicking a man when he's down yeah they turn on each other real quick.

Assholes. And he's like, I've been watching you and now's my chance and I'm going to spur you. Or if they walk away feeling like they killed him. Yeah, maybe.

If he's later like, you know that one I was with? I killed him. Oh, he sure is. He tripped and fell and I killed him. He tripped and fell and I killed him.

Took advantage of that. That's what he tells people later on. To kill him. He tripped and fell, and I killed him. I took advantage of that. That's what he tells people later on. To kill him. That's a lot of thinking in that little brain. There was this loud noise. There was a loud noise. I don't know what it was. It caused him to trip and fall.

Boom! He tripped and fell, and then I killed him with my beacon spurs. Steve, should we preview the thing that we filmed down there, speaking of all this? Or are we going to keep that top secret? I think we should be – Oh, yeah. We filmed a thing that explains filmed down there speaking of all this or we want to keep that top top secret i think we should be oh yeah we filmed the thing that explains a lot about turkey is probably the best instructional turkey piece ever made the preeminent uh in the in the landscape of turkey instructional videos i've never read the book but you could say we basically just like

transcribed the book seventh legion. Tenth. Tenth Legion. Colonel Tom. This is more like Seventh Legion. Yes. Into a visual format that everybody can understand. Yes. Yeah. One of us is the poet laureate, the new poet laureate of turkey hunting,

which it's a big deal. What are you nodding at me for, Yanni? Because you look like you're about to wrap it up. I'm wrapping her up. I'm nodding at you like, do it. I'm wrapping her up. I'm nodding at you like, do it. I'm wrapping her up. Thanks for joining. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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