The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 169: Gut You Like A Fish

Episode Date: May 20, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with Ryan Callaghan, Ben O’Brien, and Janis Putelis.Subjects discussed: Gashed nipples and the saga of Scarface; Texas and it’s love for exotic wildlife; more doggin' on Texas; Texas game wardens and drunk folks; the #metoo movement and waffles; a flying squirrel fetish; sandbaggin’; pedicures before hunts; 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 are the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. What's up, guys?

How's everybody doing tonight? Austin, Texas. Is Ryan from Yeti out there? Ryan Cedars? Yeah. How's everybody doing tonight? Austin, Texas. Is Ryan from Yeti out there? Ryan Cedars? Yeah. There he is. He's quiet.

Watch how slickly I do this. I hope he's enjoying those Schnee's boots. Oh, sponsor alert. Man, this is our third of our live tour. This is the third show we've done in Texas. Yet, yet, yet. That must mean we really love Texas. Must mean, you'd think. Yet, people always write in, like,

there was a question I had that I was going to look at tonight, and it begins like, I know y'all hate Texas. We'll get to the question. Just to show how we love texas we'll get to it but texas like i feel as though texas is as proud as uh y'all are with the you know not messing with texas and um davy crockett and everything there's there's there's like uh texans have a persecution complex. I was always a big Pee Wee Herman fan. Oh, my God. There's a persecution complex here.

Giannis, how much have we filmed here? I feel like we practically live in Texas. Practically, yeah. Well, we released on a pig trapping episode here. You were down here hunting out at and have Lena once. Yep, twice. What else have we done? Cranes.

Cranes came down. Hunted quail, not filming. Hunted came down. Hunted quail, not filming. Hunted jackrabbits while hunting quail, not filming. We're hunting turkeys tomorrow, not filming. One time, my wife was offered a job in Texas. We went to do our little checkout to take a look at it. The people who were trying to hire her had us to dinner. I was going to stand up and say, like, she'll take it.

Because we've been driving over bridges, every bridge i looked off it looked like a good place to fish i started calling my kid started calling my kid jimmy catfish just in anticipation of moving here my wife didn't take the job so i almost was a damn texan i think that for people in texas to stop thinking that we don't like texas I'd have to show up down here with elephant skin boots and shelled corn coming out of my pockets. Then it'd be like, there's a Texan. Do you know, do you guys know that your state has no regulations on owning a tiger?

Cal was just telling me that there are estimates out there that Texas has the second largest tiger population next to India. So many cats that you guys can't even keep track of them. All you can find are estimates on the tiger population in Texas. The estimates were like two to five thousand they know with greater certainty how many grizzly bears live in montana than they do how many tigers texans how many tigers texans have his pets and the numbers are comparable uh people down here like yeah that's normal move on the question from the dude that this those we all hate texas is uh he was saying any tips for keeping his binos from fogging up

in the cold he says he's been in the teens lately in north texas could that possibly be true it's true yeah yeah well it's true i mean he thinks teens, he's thinking it's like 45 degrees. Like, boy, it's been in the teens. When I first moved to Austin, I was driving down the highway and it was like 30 degrees and there was no cars. I was like, oh, I thought there was traffic. I got to work and they were like, hey man, how'd you get here? I was like, well, I just, I drove on the road. They're like, well, it's really cold. There could have been ice. I was like, well it's really cold there could have been ice i was like well well uh turns out there wasn't any and they're like i was like so what's up i was like well it's a two-hour delay the kids can't go to school they don't have jackets they can't sit in the bus stops like come on man come on texas uh in the case that it does get cold down here keeping you from binos from fogging up tell me honey because the camera guys are good at

this yeah well you don't want to usually our cameras always fog up when we go from um cold to warm so you just don't want to like i don't know don't put your vinyl so close to your body maybe and don't breathe into them probably keep them warm close to your body cold to warm mo used to take a cigarette lighter and heat up his lenses. Which I've seen gone terribly wrong. Yeah, that's right. Remember in British Columbia? Yeah, heating like $10,000 lenses with a pocket rocket.

Yeah, for you aspiring filmmakers, don't go to British Columbia. It's going to ding your budget. Quick note. Who's doing anything on Friday? On Friday, if you don't have plans, we're doing a screening of our documentary Stars in the Sky. The money, it's at the Yeti flagship store. The money goes to benefit Texas Parks and Wildlife. Now, specifically desert bighorn sheep. Specifically, Desert Bighorn Sheep. Specifically, Desert Bighorns.

So, there's still some, there's still some tickets left. So, while we're sitting here, I don't really, normally, if I saw you messing

with your phone under normal circumstances, I would hate you. But, if you're messing with your phone, I'll just assume that feller

is buying a ticket. It's 100 bucks. It's 8 p.m. on Friday, right here in Austin, Texas. You get an exclusive event-only Tumb ticket. It's a hundred bucks. It's 8 PM on Friday, right here in Austin, Texas. You get an exclusive event only Tumblr. You get a copy of the meat eater fishing game cookbook, which is available everywhere. Books are sold. There's a, you're already making money by going to this thing. Go to the meat eater Facebook page under events and get yourself

a ticket. A hundred bucks goes to a good cause. Now, this is going to sound like I'm dogging on Texas. I am not messing with Texas. I have read the bumper stickers, but this state has a great website where you can go and read about all the things Texas game wardens are up to, and it's become my favorite way to kill time. Some people go on Facebook when they're just trying to have a brain-dead moment. I go and read about Texas game wardens. Anybody here from Matagorda County? Am I saying it right? Okay, game warden gets a call

about a deer lying on the side of the road with a crossbow bolt sticking out of it. He goes over there to have a look-see. 50 yards down the road, he finds a guy asleep in a truck. He's got his seatbelt on, his windows open, sound asleep. He's got a loaded crossbow with the safety off on the driver's seat and a loaded crossbow with the safety on on the backseat. A quick glance confirms that his bolts next to his sleeping body match those

in the deer that he shot and then took a nap down the road. In Henderson County, game warden gets called by the guy out jackalighting deer. Again, this fella has a loaded crossbow and multiple flashlights in his truck, but he's like the opposite of asleep because he's also got a stash of meth. In Houston County, a warden gets a call about some people doing some illegal hunting. He goes over to the house where it's supposed to take a place, and he sees a woman book into a house and she's messing around with an ice chest upon what i'm assuming this is not a yeti you'll understand why

sitting upon said ice chest is a six point box head but she's already run off into the house he cuts around in the backyard there's another box head in the backyard, there's another buck's head in the backyard. Lying not far from the buck's head is her prison ID card. He's able to look her up. She's got two felony arrest warrants. They bring in a tracking dog and find her under a pile of her own dirty laundry, which is, quote, wedged between the washer and dryer. When your laundry has become, quote, wedged somewhere, it's different than like in a basket. Because I don't want to dog on Texas, I want to dog on my home state for a minute because I know I'm reading like bad, like the sensitivities here run high. So a dude in Michigan, this just, this just happened. A dude in Michigan goes into a pet store called I Love My Pets and asks some questions about the snakes that are for sale. They leave him to be.

He then on a security camera puts a four foot ball python down his pants. Spends four minutes in the store with the snake in his pants. There are so many jokes you can make so easily that I'm not going to make them. It's harder to not make the jokes than it is to make the jokes. Walks around, buys a rat for six bucks. There's some things I just don't put down my pants he uh buys a rat for six bucks walks out they still haven't found the guy in texas he'd be dead by now or it's like texas wardens are either good or michigan criminals are good but the texas game warden articles always end with the suspect apprehended and this guy was not apprehended unrelated to all

this uh i'm walking down the road there dan i passed there's a waffle shop in downtown bozeman what's this like a famous breakfast place there and they got a sign out that says we love hashtags like social media hashtags says we love hashtags because they look like waffles and they got me to thinking have they thought the me too movement was people who are just also hungry for breakfast i was sure this is where the podcast was gonna go off the rails and it's terrible um i was right we we recently lay out the tuna situation you're honest if you don't mind. Tuna?

How we've been talking about the tuna, the expensive tuna, and how you misled everyone and had to do a correction. Oh, right, right, right. I told everybody that recently a tuna was bought for, like, was it a million plus or two million plus? That happened every year. And it was sort of, it was bad because it put a price on this fish that is gonna be over fish

if people are getting $2 million for these fish all the time. But it turns out that that first fish always just gets that kind of money in a ceremonial buying. And as it's been put numerous times now, it's a dick swinging contest in Japan for the dudes that roll in

and spend the most money on the first tuna that comes to market of the season so the next one after that i don't i forget what the numbers are normal prices yeah i wrote pecker swinging in my notes oh because i'd heard from several people who are bringing youngsters are we bringing this back to waffles bringing youngsters tonight reason I bring the tuna thing up is someone pointed out that there's a similar thing that happens at youth livestock auctions where there are ceremonial purchases. And just recently in Houston,

right here in the great state of Texas, they had a youth livestock auction where they shattered every single junior livestock auction world record in 10 days. every single junior livestock auction world record. In 10 days, some kid gets $183,000 for a damn goat. A turkey goes for $190,000. Must have been a high fence.

A turkey goes for $190,000. Some kid gets a broiler chicken. She gets $220,000 for her broiler chicken. The grand champion steer, $625,000. The guy that wrote in about this says, and this is why Texas is the greatest state. I looked through the photos from the event where you can look at all the animals and the people behind it. And if you think that there were not a lot of people wearing Stetson hats and black sport coats, you'd be wrong. You'd be wrong for thinking that.

We had an interesting note come in. She doesn't identify a state and I can't identify her. In fact, she begins to note by, she says, before you read this email, I'm quoting, she even put an asterisk next to it, which I think is for emphasis. She says, before you read this email, note that if anyone reads this to the public in any form or fashion and mentions my name, I will hunt you down and gut you like a fish. Go on. She's a mother of two. What's that?

Go on. She's a mother of two. We were recently talking about battle scars, like what's the worst outdoor scar you had, and she said that was pitiful. We had pitiful scars. She was big into sports, and she was big into hunting and she's 16 years old. She gets back from volleyball practice, which ran late and she grabs her 20

gauge shotgun and runs out into the family's milo field to hunt doves. It doesn't change her clothes. So she's got her volleyball clothes on and she has to run a half mile, then jump a fence. And she usually kind of like climbs over the fence, but she's in such a hurry, she tries to half climb and half jump and gets on the barb or gets up on the wire and the post tips and she falls on it and lands on the ground and feels blood running all over her stomach and looks up and she's gashed her nipple horribly and passes out. So she wakes up a while later. She's 16 years old. Looks, and she realizes that the barb is cut through her shirt, through her sports bra, opened her nipple up.

She lives in a town of 2,000 people. She's real nervous about word spreading. Goes down. Her best friend's dad's the doctor. He puts eight stitches in it. She goes on to say that her husband called that one Scarface, which she signs it. She signs it secretively. But, um,

I liked the story, but then I got to the part where my husband called past tense. And then now I spent all my time worrying about what happened to the husband. He never got caught that snake in his pants. Oh, it could mean three things. It would mean they split up, he passed, or he called that one scar face, but then never called it that again. Gutted like a fish. Gutted like the fish. I like that gal.

Yeah. If I was on a first date and got that story thrown at me, I'd be like, buddy, I'm in. Oh, yeah. I would not hold that as a negative. No. I do got to tell you that I had several people be like, oh, boy, your guys' scar stories are kind of sissy. Oh, we didn't have any good ones. You know, who is better to follow into the woods, like an old wise person with no scars or an old wise person with lots of scars? Yeah.

Right? Probably the person with no scars. Yeah, if you said, so I followed this horribly scarred man into the woods. Should have seen his nipples. Let me tell you about the other nipple. Said, trust me, I know the way. Back to Michigan, just to put an issue to bed.

I talked a lot about, so I grew up in Twin Lake, Michigan, and down the road from us, you had to take, I'm trying to think what road, down Duff Road, Duff turned dirt, and you go down the dirt, and there's Twin Lake Gun Club. And I was talking about how, if I'm not mistaken, you know when you get into the foggy recesses of your memory like the things you kind of feel like you remember but you can't tell if you just heard it or remembered it and i was saying i feel as though when i was a youngster they would stake like tie up a turkey behind a pile of dirt and contestants, this sounds horrible,

contestants would shoot at the turkey and whoever hit the turkey brought it home and ate it. But then I was like, that can't be true. I must be misremembering. My buddy, Craig Christensen, wrote in. He goes, nope, you are not mistaken. He says, my dad took one of those turkeys home that he shot. And he remembers his dad had a 2506 and he used it for all these tournaments that were at the gun club down the road from my house. He says, not only did they have a thing where they would stake a turkey out and shoot at it,

they would hang dynamite from string and shoot at that. And that was called a dynamite shoot. Not to be confused with a turkey shoot. Then had a burger shoot he was saying in a burger shoot you didn't shoot burger but you shot a target in one burger this is like the end of nature would be that you shoot a target and win ground beef um he goes on to say that his old man swapped that 2506 for a, quote, dinky wooden boat and that he's still pissed at him. Last bit of Michigan news, you know, the Michigan hello, which someone, the middle finger, which someone, who was it that describes it as the finger of fellowship?

In his area, it gets thrown so much as a hello that it's now regarded as the finger of fellowship. And that dude was from North Dakota or Nebraska, not even close to Michigan. Yeah, but he felt as though... I just realized I gave 300 people from Texas a finger just now, and they're probably really pissed at me. And not one... everybody's like,

oh, that nice bearded young gentleman just said hello. That's fine. That hipster on the end said hello. No, I don't want it. I don't want it. Nope. A Michigan woman just tested her constitutional right to throw the Michigan hello, which is way off topic for us because we tend to focus on wildlife and fishing and whatnot,

but it becomes interesting to me because it's interesting to me. She gets pulled over by a policeman for speeding, and he writes her up for a lesser violation. Okay, so whatever that is. Less than speeding. And you're sure it was for speeding? She got pulled over for speeding. She did. So he was being a nice guy.

He's being nice. He's like, I'm going to let you off for whatever. What do they call it? I don't know. Let's just say kind of speeding. She gets cited for kind of speeding. I think sighted and kind of speeding. I think it said a non-moving violation is what the article said. That's what it said, a non-moving violation. That doesn't really help explain anything.

We should get a traffic cop here. There you go. All right, we'll go with that. There you go. They hang you for that in Texas. But in Michigan... But you do get a bumper sticker. And a t-shirt.

And a button. In Michigan, he writes her the thing. And then they finish. And so she's got a lesser thing. And she decides to, as she dries off, give him a Michigan hello. Or perhaps a Michigan goodbye. So he then re-pulls her over, re-pulls her over,

and then gives her this feeding ticket. She appeals this to a federal appeals court, and they rule that she has a constitutional right to give an officer a Michigan hello if she feels like it. I don't know how I feel about this i feel real good about it you feel good about it my demeanor when i get pulled over my demeanor is be like i start out by being i am so sorry i am so sorry i'm not saying i'm giving any cops the finger i just want

the right to do that if ever i feel the need yeah Yeah, like, it's like, it's not one of those things that gives me patriotic stirrings, but it's one of those things where I recognize, I can recognize, I reckon it's nice to live in a place, I get to be like, it's nice to live in a place where if you so desire, despite your upbringing, to say hello in that fashion to an officer of the peace, you would theoretically be allowed to do so. So you're kind of celebrating this lady on one hand, and then on the other, you're like, oh, my gosh, officer, I'm so sorry. You're correct. Oh, if I saw her, I would give her the Michigan hello. But it would be I would put my thumb out or whatever you need to do to make it different. To make it more stinging.

Okay, here's a good question. If you're fishing somewhere, okay, and you're doing good, and someone comes up and they say, hey, man, are you catching anything? Yeah. See? Is that immoral? No. If I'm not mistaken, there's a book called The Good Book.

And I think they give you ten rules. Yeah. They got it narrowed down to 10 things one month doesn't do. And when only 10, like of all the bad things you can do in the whole world, they come up with 10. And that manages to make the list. I changed the subject real fast. You answer a question with a question.

I was like, my God, is that a nice sunset? What kind of shades are those nice hat every day is a good day of fishing yeah that's a good way to put it yeah yeah i don't i call it sandbagging i don't like it what do you do then yanni you don't say you're saying you do not lie no spread the love man i mean come mean, come on. Catching a bunch of fish? It just happened to me once where we killed a cow elk and she was, I don't know, a couple, three miles back from the road. We packed out half and as we're getting ready to go in for the second half, I remember this part of it too was my buddy Dan was like man should we have those beers now i was like no bro

like we definitely need to go and get the second load and then we'll have that beer because it's gonna be terrible now because we might be too tired later to drink them yeah right and uh this fellow pulls up in an at on atv with his i think it was his nephew on the back or whatever and he starts asking us about uh the uh how the hunt went where we got where we got the cow and whatnot and uh dan wanted to just just be like telling him that it was farther than it was or or and just kind of not give any details about it and i'm like why lie about it man like i was you know because what i didn't like about it either is the guy on the atvs saying like oh well he actually was like, oh, well, good thing. Two,

three miles back. I don't want to put this poor kid through something like that. I want him to like elk hunting, you know? So we're looking for one that we can just pop off the ATV. I'm thinking, like, ah, what's wrong with the world, you know? No, like, I wanted to just bring the kid along and have him truck up there and maybe run into another one. So anywho, yeah, I don't know. From that moment on, I've always just been pretty freewheeling with my hunting and fishing information in the woods. I might have mentioned this before. We were spring bear hunting one time, and there was an avalanche shoot

that you could see from the road, and we killed a bear on the avalanche shoot and skinned it and everything and then later i'm standing there with this dude that my brother used to hang out with and a guy comes up and says hey you guys seen anything and he says no and that made me feel bad but then the guy looks at his pants which he's like got blood from the knee down on his pants and he says well looks like someone got something and he looks him straight in the face and goes that's just some old rabbit blood and i remember being like this has gone too far i uh on the fishing thing i say things like yeah it's okay or yeah we're, you know, decent, getting a few.

But I can't be like, no. My boy, we're fishing perch, and the guy comes up and yells us how we're doing and asks if we're getting any. And my boy said, a boatload. Then you got to be like, you know, he's prone to hyperbole. I stopped a couple on the road this year during mule deer season in Idaho. And, you know, truck's coming this way. I'm driving down this way. And I just stopped and looked at a, you know, little three by three mule deer buck on the side of the road, like 150 yards from the road and kind of waved him down it's the last day of the season it's a

couple husband wife I assume and like hey all you guys out looking for mule deer and the guy's like stone face and the lady's kind of like and I'm like well there's a buck you know right over here if you guys still have a tag and and he's just like staring like sizing me up and she's like yeah where is it i'm like oh just like park in that unimproved campsite over there and then just look up and the deer's right on the on the hillside and you'll have to cross the creek but the deer's right there and he was just having none of it. He was like, nope. And she's kind of wanting to get this whole thing over with. Yeah, and she's like, great.

Deer off the side of the road, here we go. Do you think he didn't believe you? Yeah, I truly think he was like, nope. Like, something's not right here. Yeah, dude's just messing with me. Yeah, like we're going to miss something because we're tracking down the... But I tried to pay it forward, I guess is what I'm saying. It was the mustache cow.

He saw that mustache. He's like, mm-mm. Yeah, that guy's up to no good. He's like, I need to, before I go up there, I'm going to need to see this boy's nipple. Ben, you don't fish much, but what do you do? What do I do? If you're catching much, if you were catching much fish.

If I was conceptually as a hipster, I'd take a long pull of my vape pen. Tuck it into your leather-trimmed apron. Tighten my ass cap down. Your laborer's apron. Zip up my vest. And then I would say, no. When people say no,

is your idea that it's such a finite amount of available things there that you're already doing good, you're doing good enough that you have something to lie about, and your thing is like, I'm doing good, I don't know who this person is, there's such a finite amount of the resource that I would just rather that they didn't do good so I could continue to do a little doing good. I don't know who this person is. There's such a finite amount of the resource that I would just rather that they didn't do good

so I could continue to do a little bit good. I'll be clear. I'm playing devil's advocate here. But yeah, I would be thinking to other things that I did that were nice. I'd be like, oh, I remember that time I helped that lady cross the street. Therefore, no. Therefore, no. Because I'm a good person.

I'm just choosing to be selfish right now. All right. Or you size them up and you're like, have you earned this? Then you give them a good once over and you're like, nope. What if it's little children in bonnets? Like old-fashioned prairie children. I'd be like, what are you wearing that for? Take that off.

I would look at them and be like you folks are gonna take every fish out of here put it on a mile-long stringer take a picture next to it and then sell them to market yeah you're weird that is not what i want all right moving on um guy wanted to know uh if you had remember we did a thing not long ago this is the problem not long ago we had fielded a question that was, if you could be one animal, what would you be? And I picked a flying squirrel because I liked how soft their bellies are.

So you would just be like rubbing your belly all the time? I would just lay there and rub my tummy. The problem is then a question comes in like this, which screws me because I'm stuck in a situation where I'd be tempted to have the same answer for two questions. Where he says, if you had to pick one fur to make all of your underwear, what fur would it be? Now, had that question come in first, I would have said flying squirrel. But now it's going to look like I have a flying squirrel fetish.

What's wrong with that? So I'm stuck with saying there's a term, there's a fur term, which could be read two ways. Can't wait for this. I'm not going to tell you the other way to read it. There's a fur term called sheared beaver. What this is, what this is. What it is. What it is is.

Do tell. What it is is this. A beaver. Aquatic mammal. An aquatic rodent. Largest rodent that we enjoy the presence of here in the U.S. Builds dams.

You pluck. There's plucked beaver and sheared beaver. You can pluck the guard hairs. You pluck the guard hairs from the pelt. So like a nice prime pelt, muskrat, whatever we'll have. A lot of them will have fine, like a fine underwool. And they'll have a guard hair hair which is a glossy and long and nice and they pluck all those guard hairs off there and then shear it down and it makes a real i don't have underwear made out of it but man you like the feeling that sheared beaver against your skin i i wanted to what i have threatened that i have threatened at times to get my wife i wanted to... What? I have threatened at times to get my wife... I wanted to make, for ice fishing and stuff,

I wanted to make my wife a bra lined with it. Which you can get, and there are people that make it. Like, I'm not making this up. I'm not throwing this out there. It's like a thing that can be done. So that's my answer. Yanni is going with porcupines. No, but I was thinking sheep, man.

Because I mean, how could we end up with pretty much a pair of merino boxer shorts? Oh no, they don't mean processed. You'd have to have sheep hide. Just sheep hide? Yeah, one skin for underwear. underwear yeah and then i just probably run

a flap in the front flap in the back and really not be wearing any underwear hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada and boy my goodness do we hear from the canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land,

hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your

membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months

to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Cal, anything? dot com slash meet. Welcome to the to the on X club, y'all. Yeah, anything. I think you got to go seal or musk ox.

Musk ox. Go on. Yeah, I mean, like we're going to talk cold. Let's get cold, you know. Oh, no. Was this only for cold? He doesn't say town. What if you live down here in Lano, Texas?

Moles. Yeah. Moles. Lano. Lano. Yeah. We can't get it right. Jeez.

No. We're headed there, Turkey on. We've been calling it. I was calling it in my head, even though everybody kept telling me how it was said. I was like, you people. Yano. Don't know what you're talking about. It's Yano.

But I've been told by 10 guys that it's in fact. I think Giannis would remember Yano pretty easily. I'm going to start calling you Yano. Cal, any idea? It's a frivolous question. You don't need to have an answer. Oh, for hot weather? I don't know.

Like one of those marsupial rats that they have down here? Marsupial. Yeah. That's a good idea, man. The skinny, the rat with no hide on, no hair on him. Yeah. Hairless mole rat. Yeah. There you go. What's the construction of these underwear? Am I feeling the fur on my other regions? I honestly have to get back to the guy. The same way that we were accused of dissing on texas the guy accused of his dissing on on tarps t-a-r-p-s tarps i have tremendous love for the tarp he's fixing to go on on a you know back country hunt and was wondering like why is it not okay did he say how we dissed on him no that we ignore him i didn't know there was like big time

tarp advocates out there the tarp sent tarp sensitive people i shouldn't say this time but he's like why do you guys not talk about or address um i've read everything listen to everything i'm going on a hunt why can't i just have a tart you can't they were great until they were tarps. This is going to annoy some people. Tarps make great tents up until the moment that you need a tent. A lot of times sleeping under a tarp and you're like, man, this is great. You would have been just as good with no tarp. It's true. A little drizzle and then you're like, you think, you know, little drizzle is fine. I've slept under tarps. It's true. A little drizzle, and then you're like, you think, you know,

a little drizzle's fine. I've slept under tarps. We pitch them, we string them, sleep under them. But they do have their limits. My last night under a tarp of 2018 was Thanksgiving Eve in Montana and had a sweet setup. It's on this real steep ridge and there's some deadfall. Got my tarp strung out. It was going real light. I actually took that tarp from you and got a fire going in the mouth of it. And yeah, had the wind kind of like sucked all the smoke through the top of that tarp.

Had a real nice heating effect for a good couple hours. It was sweet. You were feeling good. It was great. Woke up, and there was a bull 350 yards away. Did you take a poke at it? No, I was up there packing out a bull. Oh, okay.

Yeah, but there was a bigger bowl right next to me which was cool so he was drawn to the tarp i don't i don't know what pitch did you use for your tarp um it would be like uh like diamond formation right so you take opposite corners one corner down yeah one corner up on the tree. That's a good one. Yeah. I like tarp so much. Yeah.

I'm into like my tarp craft. It's fun. Explain. Explain the diamond pitch. This is the least interesting thing that ever happened. Corner on the ground. Corner up on the tree. And you stake that out.

And then you bring the other two corners sort of like this. Like bat wings. Yeah. Like bat wings. And stake those in. and you stake that out and then you bring the other two corners sort of like this. Like bat wings. Yeah, like bat wings and stake those in. So you just sort of have one open mouth facing the tree that you've got. And when you're camping by yourself, like this is a point of pride that you can look around to nobody and be like, yep, see that? You can picture there being a guy in the audience who took his wife down here, and right now he's kind of like, it'll get better.

What are they talking about? What I like to do is take, and my colleagues sometimes tease me about this, but I take bungee cords homemade bungee cords and every grommet or loop in my tarp i rig a eight inch loop of bungee because then i can speed set it when it's raining out where i can just grab any bush any rock that's the noise these bungees make on to stuff and speed pitch my tarp. Do you guys, has anybody got more things to say about this? We like tarps.

Love tarps. Do you guys get, a guy was wondering, this is such a strange question. Do you guys get pedicures ahead of hunts? I'm not even familiar with what exactly happens during a pedicure. I believe that it goes beyond getting your toenails clipped. My brother has extraordinarily thick, heavy toenails, he was telling me.

And he thinks it's from eating so much meat that it's made his toenails thick. Ben, what's the problem? I'm just laughing. You've never had a pedicure? I think people are looking at me because now I've got the hipster thing going. That's why I'm laughing because I feel the whole crowd is looking at what he's going to tell us what's up. Do hipsters get pedicures? So go on.

Well, yeah, of course. Yeah, when I'm dancing around, you know, like with my hipster clothes. I don't want my feet to be ugly in case i'm wearing my strappy shoes i mean i i do have a pair of hiking boots and a pair of ski boots that i make sure my toenails are trimmed back before every use to prevent any sort of real pain out there. That's what I was going to point out, is if you're like in mountain hiking, I am fastidious about my toenails because if you're descending hills, especially in rigid boots. Yeah, you get a little slip.

And there's an imperceptible slip in your foot. And if your toe, and then you take 1,000 steps downhill, your toenails fall out. They turn blue and and fall off which is disconcerting so imagine like if you're rubbing you know blisters and cuts and you know the shorter toenail going into the toe next to it yeah i've seen you i've seen both you guys hike around extra toughs like long distances that doesn't hurt that the toenail situation. You got to train up for it. Yeah.

Kyle wears extra toughs in the airport and then takes them off. I got to Austin and let me tell you, this is not the country for extra tough rubber boots. I made a very unsightly unpacking of my bag until I got down to my flip-flops and then shucked my boots and my socks there in the Austin airport and got into my flops and felt a wave of relief. And everyone else felt another wave. It was getting a little soupy. Yes.

Whole other waves. That kind of like half, oh, go ahead, Janice. That reminded me of something I wanted to talk about. I was just just gonna say i've always wanted one and a pedicure oh yeah well you get him a foot massage while you're getting it am i right you get a foot massage yes huh why don't they call it a massage you can probably just go get that too i mean there's other things that they do but we've we've tackled this question before or somehow it's come up where it's been thought of like a good idea to prep your feet for a big mountain hunt. Being in boots and hiking

would be a good idea to get a pedicure. So I'm going to try this. I'm going to try it next time. If you want to get into the details of it, I'll get into the details of it. Not only do I very carefully trim my toenails, but I have a recurring problem where every two months or so,

I need to carve out my ingrowns. And I've learned to do this myself after paying some hoser to do it. I get a fat backed straight razor. Wait, wait, wait. You paid a hoser to do it? A doctor. Oh, a doctor. Okay. So yeah, I like paid, I remember paying like 600 bucks, $600 to a guy to do what I now can do in seconds. I take a fat back razor and I get a bunch of rubbing alcohol and I sanitize my leather man and I sanitize a pair of needle nose pliers and I cut them out and I've done it so much they don't even bleed anymore. And I do that a week or two ahead of like a mountain hunting season. I do that a week or two ahead so that it has time to heal. That's a lot of toe care.

If you've added up the mental energy that I've put into my toes, I can hardly look down on a guy for getting a pedicure. And I don't think he's going to regret it. He's not going to be like, oh, I would have killed that bull had I not had a pedicure.

It takes me like a week, though, to break my feet in to like real hiking shape every year. It doesn't matter what I've been doing. But it takes me like the first week of archery season to like get back into boot shape, just get my feet toughened back up and I would be like, it would be mentally straining on me to think, oh my God, I just got a pedicure and now my feet are all soft. When is this going to come back to haunt me? Yeah. Or you might smell like the kind of guy that would get a pedicure. Probably not running that risk. Yeah are like now that guy him i can take yeah good yeah man i'm just imagining myself kicked back another guy wants to know this uh this is a weird one not terribly weird

one guy had a question i'm not even going to honor. I'm not even going to say it. But this guy's question was this. Him and his buddy have an ongoing argument that he feels, his buddy feels like you should brush your teeth

during hunting season. This guy feels you should not brush your teeth during hunting season. The whole season? He the whole season he feels that he feels that the toothpaste smell is unnatural i mean come on i feel like we're getting to like some living under the bridge situation here whereas like we got tarps our feet smell we don't brush our teeth we haven't brushed like what we don't need to get into that one right i'm cool you cool yeah how okay this is a broad question how do you find hunting spots but let's not let's not do that let's do it by let's do it by anecdote

uh talk about a great in a way that would be helpful to listeners. You could select a hunting spot or two that you got that you feel demonstrates an effective approach or something that one ought to keep in mind. I will tell you. Because access is a big issue for people.

Oh, access is a huge issue. The number one thing, when people cite reasons, I think it's state by state, but generally when people cite reasons that they quit hunting or want to but don't, it's access. Place to go. I will tell you that I have had seasons where I'm like, here's my A spot, B spot, C spot, and hit my spots and had success.

And then the very next season, I'm like, okay, I'm only going to spots that I've never been to before, which means I can't repeat either. That's good. And I've had the same level of success. Forcing yourself to go explore. Yep, exactly. Like I'm getting in a rut.

Need to go check out some new country. And I think that's what it is, is just being comfortable with the fact that you may not get something. But the reality is like my best spots, I'm still running that same risk. Yeah, that's a good point. Like, I have a very good chance of not getting something. I like the rule.

To make a rule, like, this year I cannot go to the same place. It's so much fun, too. So much fun. I have to go somewhere new. Yeah. Then you're like, holy shit, there's game everywhere. It's a very Western idea, though. When you live in Texas, there's game everywhere it's a very western idea though when you live in texas you didn't like there's not you can't well i'll just pick another spot

like there's not there isn't public land to go and pick unless you got a lot of access here unless you got a bunch of rancher buddies just not a reality to be have a b and c tell your spouse um i made a vow not to hunt same place place. That's why I bought another property. That's true. I've leased the fourth property to keep myself on my toes. When a man makes a vow. Briefly, the thing that I did when I lived in Illinois, and again, before I lived in Texas, I lived there,

and it's similar. The public land that is there is either overrun or you have to draw a spot and you can sit in a certain duck pit or a certain blind and it's just not the way that i like to hunt well you're gonna love my story because my story is not a my story is a private land story okay we'll get there just give you a preview um just trying to titillate you oh thank you uh i've i met a guide we were i don't know i was at a trade show or something I met a guide. We were, I don't know, I was at a trade show or something and met a guide. He's like, oh, I'm up in Pike County, Illinois. I said,

I'd love to come up and just check out your operation and learn about how you manage deer. And, you know, as a writer, maybe write an article. I went up there, we struck up a relationship. We got to drinking beer. He was a big, I remember him being a big Shania Twain fan. So I was forced to sit and drink wine with him and listen to Shania Twain. Drinking wine, listening to Shania Twain. I know it's playing right into the narrative. And you said forced, right? I'm open.

I'm wide open. We're in the trust tree. We're in the nest. I befriended this feller over Shania Twain and wine. And I said, hey, man, I'd love to come hunt. He was complaining that all his clients wanted to go and hunt his other properties that weren't around his house. But the best hunting and the biggest deer were literally right off his back porch in the kind

of his back 40 area. So we struck up a deal where I would help him guide whitetails, which is getting up early, driving a dude to a tree stand, making sure he didn't fall out and then driving back. And then I would go and hunt his back 40, where none of his clients wanted to hunt just for the work of driving dudes back and forth to their tree stand, because they needed an extra guy. So I think in this state, in Texas, you definitely have to understand that give and take with a landowner or a guide or an outfitter or whoever it is to get that access that you want. It's less of a, you know, there's not so much open ground, so you have to kind of pick and choose.

Doug Duren, in his place in Wisconsin, he started a thing where he, I don't want to say he formalized it, but he started a thing where people that, I don't want to get Doug in legal trouble, because I can't think, he'd probably be aware of this. Doug had this thing where people that want to hunt on Doug's place,

there's just like an understanding that they help him with some stuff. Yeah. And he's trying, he's got a riparian area. He's trying to replant it, reseed it in native vegetation. And it's like folks to hunt the farm happen to like to help me reseed native vegetation along the creek. And it's a very rewarding experience for all. He says, I told a story before. My favorite permission thing was I had a farm that I very gradually got a like February squirrel hunting permission to do a single squirrel hunt.

So it wasn't like, come and go as you please. It was like, well, I suppose this February, if you want to come out for a day, you know, I don't know. And we go and get some squirrels. Me and my buddy, I think we got a half dozen squirrels on this guy's place. And I started texting him photos of all the stuff we were a half dozen squirrels on this guy's place. And I started texting him photos of all the stuff we were making with the squirrels. He then comes back with, I don't care what you guys want to hunt, have at it. Deer, turkey, whatever. He just was like a pragmatic man, being a guy in ag. He's a pragmatic man, liked to see, you know,

the fruits of the earth respected. Saw that and for whatever reason, it clicked with him. Not for whatever reason. It just like spoke to his sensibilities. Waste not, want not. Oh, and you guys demonstrated that you appreciated, you know, the fruits of the land the land so to speak and it was his land right so or he's like man these guys are a couple whack jobs those boys are starting i'd

like to talk to these guys some more yeah yeah it's just a simple vetting process really on his end yeah but we've done well getting permission in texas day of i don't want to say where no we can't do we talk about it mike nasty no all these thoughts already went through my head you already thought about not talking about his approach well i don't think his approach matters so much as to just that like we had good luck getting for i mean not only did we get hunting permissions but uh guys were signing uh location releases which means that you know they're saying that we can film on their property yeah like the day we met them you know within five minutes of meeting them shaking hands i feel comfortable saying this there is a guy we know not from this state, who goes to a school which is regionally popular.

And he does work at the school researching an animal that's regionally not popular. And he has great luck establishing his affiliation with the popular school and his animosity toward the not popular animal and enjoys enjoys i think he puts out about 90 success rate on permissions that is very good i'm put i got all these guesses it might not be the same for white tail deer you know but yeah for some birds that eat a lot of grain but there but there are different ways of getting around it. Anybody here have the Lone Star Tick deal where you become allergic to meat? Did you just raise your hand? I did, but my uncle just recently found out that he's got alpha-gal.

He lives in Brownsville, Texas. So your uncle recently found out that he's got the thing one gets where one becomes allergic to meat from eating, from getting bit by a tick. This guy, there's a crazy story a guy wrote him. It's a pretty long-winded, very interesting story that I'm going to have to distill down. His mom's a nurse. Buddy gets bit by a bunch of ticks. Eventually gets sick. They're drinking beer. They're eating deer meat, drinking beer. And they think that he has somehow had like a beer and was suffering from alcohol

poisoning. Like something happened where the beer, it turns out he'd established the meat allergy associated with the Lone Star Tick, right? Lone Star Tick virus. Not only that, cheese. And then he discovers, in a way that lands him in the emergency room, gummy bears. Meat, cheese, and gummy bears.

My kids would be bummed. It's a bad deal that it's called the Lone Star Tick because it's not just here in Texas. No, he wasn't in Texas. I didn't tell how he wasn't in Texas because I wanted people here to feel included. He's in a neighboring state. What would you do?

I mean, we've talked about it, but what would you do? How would it affect your relationship to hunting? Oh, man. Hunting deer. It would be hard to continue to do it. It would be hard to continue to do it. I don't know how you would. I thought that to be the biggest nightmare as a hunter. hunter you go out hunting you get bit by a tick and you're

allergic to the thing you were going after it's almost like the deer sent the damn tick yeah it'd be devastating i would start fishing i would find out all the things you could do someone once told me that monkey meat that you can have the lone star tick meat allergy and still eat monkey meat i don't know if that can't be true oh let's go with no but that's not gonna that that wouldn't be the direction i went i'll tell you i came down what direction you would be going monkey meat direction no i'm saying that would not oh okay i misunderstood okay i came down hunting with ben last june here in texas uh where were you hunting what what part i remember sonora out in sonora out of sonora access deer and uh first tick i had was a lone star tick and then proceeded

to have like 15 more of them throughout the week um got home to idaho at the time had a couple weeks later had like bullseye tick bite. I can't tell you how relieved I was to find out I had Lyme's disease. And not the meat. Yeah, and I was like, great, whatever. Yeah, as long as it's not the meat thing.

Pure horror. As long as it's not the gummy bear thing. I... It would be so so hard like the the food aspect is such a driving force behind you know seasons go on for a long time it gets like gets to be a lot but by the time waterfowl season comes around, I've spent a ton of time in the woods.

What gets me out is not the hunting. What gets me out is, like, it would be really great to have some big, fat mallard breasts in the freezer. And for that to be like, well, yeah, but you can't eat them. But now you could eat, because it's only red meat, right? I don't know how a duck falls into it. Yeah, it's pretty red. And it sounds like it's a little bit hit and miss,

like this brother here having the cheese and gummy bear thing makes you think it's throwing a bit of a wild card at you. Those ticks. What do you think about the guy that rolled in saying that they had the buddy that was allergic to everything else about a deer but not the meat? And thus, when they went out he got to pull the trigger but then he couldn't touch the deer I believe so he couldn't got it he couldn't get it out seriously you're allergic to hunting

that's what this guy this guy was saying my buddy always said that and i thought he's a liar and it turns out he's not lying it only took four trips to figure it out swelled up hospital a couple times it's like oh you can't from deer fur so the brother but you need to meet you're fine why you why you hunched up so much like that look if you keep doing that you're gonna sit like me when you get older man you gotta sit up before it's too late. I'm going to sit up right now just looking at you. All right, man. Yeah, I did take note of that email. You're a fine young man. No, I met these kids.

These kids are great kids. They're very poised, articulate, bright-eyed kids. I like those guys. Well done. What were we talking about? I forgot to praise those youngsters. It's a good were we talking about? I forgot the praise in those youngsters. It's a good excuse not to do any work in the woods. Being allergic.

Yes, the guy was saying that he can hunt, but he can't gut, drag, skin, nothing, and then he eats, which sounds like an African safari. It's like he probably developed that allergy shortly after his safari. It's like he probably developed that allergy shortly after his safari. Yes. Can I bring up because it wasn't in your notes earlier we were talking about, but can I bring up that email we just recently got about... Do you want to

violate my notes? About fooling people to eat elk meat? Oh, no, we talked about this, though. But not the follow-up. Oh, oh go ahead i don't know where you're going with this but i trust you well this guy in their camp the rule was when it was an elk camp when a bull got killed that you better show up at camp with the heart and the testicles and that was dinner okay well there's this one guy in camp that was like uh-uh

not participating in in the uh rocky mountainster part of this, you know. Everybody else was in camp was like, come on, really? But he wouldn't do it. So I don't know if it was a few days later or maybe another hunt later. But anyways, there's a couple grouse get shot. They also have some testicles in camp. So they have a big. Grouse testicles?

No, some bull testicles in camp. So they have a big... Grouse testicles? No, some bull testicles in camp. So they have a big grouse feed. Okay. They also happen to fry up some bull testicles. Everybody else eats grouse. This guy eats the bull testicles. And at the end of the meal, he says to his hunting companions, we should just quit hunting elk altogether because these grouse are where it's at. Do you believe that that's true? Yes. You think that a guy,

you think that there's a guy who's got the wherewithal in life to wind up in a situation where he's at least out in the woods with other people who would mistake a grouse? A of grouse meat chunk of grouse for a chunk of testicle of rocky mountain oyster true rocky no this would be the reverse you'd mistake the the oyster for the grouse sorry yeah yeah i mean if you had never had grouse meat, sure. Good. I like that story. Thanks for sharing.

You're welcome. But is it okay? I mean, that's where it all came from. What would you say in that case? Yeah, I only think, this is what we talked about, tricking people, because I've tricked people into eating things they didn't want to eat. I only think it's okay. It's only justifiable if you're not putting someone in a situation where you're tricking them into violating a religious prohibition or you're tricking them into violating like an ethics thing. Like you never serve someone.

They'd be like, ha, that's your, remember when your grandma died? You know, like. Now we're serving people grandma? Yeah. What? like it's like now we're serving people grandma yeah so what but if you're just tricking someone because they're squeamish or being annoying i think that's totally fine it would not be fine to trick someone into like i said a religious violation there's a there's a wide difference between an elk testicle and a quail breast is what you're telling me or not a quail breast what are we doing

a grouse breast well i'm talking about what we discussed before we discussed before where a guy was saying i have a roommate that won't eat wild it just won't eat wild game so what we do is we feed the roommate wild game but just don't tell them what it is because it's annoying and so we just feed them it and eventually we're going to be like you know what dude shut up because you've been eating deer meat every night in your pasta. I like that. Like that's all deer meat. So let's not hear about the wild game thing anymore. He was like, is that okay? Or is that bad? And I pointed out at the time that I only think it's bad to trick people. If you would be putting them in a situation where you're putting them in a thing where they're,

where you're violating, but you're tricking them into violating some kind of sacrament. Or it'd be like you have a person that they're committed, they're a committed vegan, and they decide they don't want to contribute in any way to animal suffering. And then you give them a thing and you're like, ha, I tricked you. Right? I don't think that's cool.

I don't think it's cool. But if someone's just annoying, like they're just annoying and dumb or whatever, I think it's okay to trick them. If they're just being squeamish. You follow what I'm saying? Yeah.

It's pro-nuance. It's pro-nuance. That's anti-bullshit. I prefer the hard way. My preference is the hard way, right? Be like, Stephen, this is the meat. I know you think you do not like it, but this is what the story is.

This is what I've done to it. Please try a bite. And I like that approach because I want people to face it head on. And then there's no second guessing. Just turn the lights down, a little Shania Twain. Woo! Be a lucky woman.

That's how to get access, boys. Yeah. Yes, sir. That'll be good. That'll be good. But I do, yeah, that there is a path of least resistance that can lead to a good result as well.

Yeah, I've done some trickery. Yeah. We were convinced that someone during the... What are you giving me the Latvian smirk for? I'm just loving it. You guys are all tricksters. You liked his Shania. He liked his joke.

He was really happy about it. During the pre-show reception, we tried to talk someone into getting excited about squirrel meat. We also had a guy say uh he says i i grew up so far out in the country we had to drive toward town to go hunting you know when we're talking about the lone star tick and all these other things or you know diseases and whatnot that you can get it's gotten a lot for me having kids i become like i can see how some parents have kids and get weird

about the risks because things that i never ever thought of i now think of with kids around and it's partly because i'm concerned for them and it's partly i'm concerned for me should something happen to them how it would be received by my wife. So we're just squirrel hunting last weekend and we got a squirrel that had, it had lost a lot of its hair down its sides. It was obviously rubbing because it was symmetrical and you could see, but your mind, like normally I wouldn't pay attention to it. And my kids, they run around and fond, they're like hugging, you know what I mean? They run over and it's just like the squirrels

everywhere and it's around their neck. It's like half in their shirt. They just like really get into, and I'm, and I become, you know, I get that psychosomatic where I'm itching and I'm starting where I'm itching and there's nothing there. And'm realizing that I'm having like the the things that you just are so worried about someone else getting something that it happens to you and it's it's not welcome to me like I've looked at the world as being slightly more hazardous now that I have kids and when I don't I never thought about getting the plague hunting squirrels. So this wasn't a flying squirrel then because you'd have been rubbing its belly. But now I like walk around like hyper aware of all these things.

Ticks, mice. Quick side note, I missed that hunt, which I always go on. I'm real bummed I missed it. But it's a good reason or bad reason. But I had to miss it. Some family obligations. But yeah, Yanni had to miss it. Some family obligations. Yeah, Yanni had his grandfather passed away.

Yeah. But were those squirrels just fat as could be? Just like... Everyone we shot, I thought we killed a house cat. Yeah. But like when you skin them, like lard... I thought someone messed up, shot a house cat. It almost looks like lard on their haunches when you skin them. Yeah.

Greasy. And you know when those house cats start to rub and they lose a little bit of hair? You know what? The coolest squirrel hunting thing that ever happened to me happened. Perhaps. Two interesting squirrel things happened to me. This area we're hunting is cottonwoods and there's an invasive plant called a Russian olive. And I think that the Russian olive, the invasive Russian olive, I believe makes areas habitable

for squirrels that previously weren't habitable. I think that if you looked, if you mapped the westward expansion of fox squirrels in large riparian areas, it would mirror, this is just a guess, it would mirror Russian olive invasion. Because they like the olives. I'm crawling through a bunch of Russian olive.

Hadn't seen anything in a little bit. And we see one way off, way the hell off in the tree. And my kid, my eight-year-old, is a very, I don't mean to toot my own horn here a little bit, but he's a very good squirrel spotter. He spots one way off, and we're crawling through a bunch of thick Russian olive, just getting ready to head over to the area with Brody. And I see, I thought I was hallucinating, because I see, there's like, the sun's real bright, kind of breaking through, and I see the perfect shadow of a squirrel,

a shadow, like a perfect shadow of a squirrel cross in front of me. And I think I'm hallucinating and dying or something, you know, like I've entered the afterlife. And I look and he's just right here going over and it cast his shadow to look like he was crossing the ground in front. The other very interesting thing I saw is we had two working up in a tree and one goes into a hole, turns around and comes out to defend his hole to not let his buddy in, which leaves his buddy in a situation

of being stuck in the tippy top of a cottonwood and torn between the vulnerability he's feeling with us lining up on him and fighting it out with the dude in the hole. Like, if I was a better man, I would tell you that we didn't get that squirrel, but we got them. And it's still, I still have a heavy heart. I have a heavy heart about what those two went up, went through up in that tree, but it really shows you where his squirrel's allegiance is. He's like, that squirrel is the dude who's fishing and he's doing good and says he's not. Squirrel's like, he's like, bro, I got it good. Why would I care how you have it?

It's a nice hole. It was a weird deal. And we're just talking to, I can't remember who, we're just talking to Merrill's complimenting your kids. It was you. It was saying that you were hunting with your kids and they saw a squirrel poking out of a hole and them learning to like having the very uh important realization is that there he is and you could get him but you can't get him because if you get him he's gonna fall back into the hole

and we had that problem with this one of trying to convince my eight-year-old who he's got like a kevin murphy ask uh desire to not let any squirrels get away and to to convince him of the idea that we would leave that squirrel for fear of not retrieving it was tough it was tough he was ready to we would get a chainsaw there was some there was some there was like you know we have three grown adults here there's surely there's a way to get that tree there was talk about ladders like we got ladders now yeah we learned yeah maybe like uh what's the whole system when you're climbing trees um as an arborist right you throw the sandbag over and then you run the rope.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. We didn't do that. You can use archery. Bow fishing arrows. Oh, yeah. You can set a line with a bow fishing arrow. That's a good idea. Yeah.

You shoot the bow fishing line over, then pull a smaller, like, paracord over that, then use that to hoist up. Right, right, right. And then you just need a Jumar device, right? That you climb with. Is that what it's called? The senders? Yeah. We never use the senders.

We use a suicide knot. Same thing though, right? Yeah, we're kind of where we were with the tarps. Sorry. When it comes to the conversation between two people and 300 people. I'm real serious because I'm with Jimmy. I don't want to let all these squirrels go when they get in a hole, right? A ladder seems a little cumbersome.

But if we were just packing like a harness and one length of rope. Yeah, but you got to do the equation of like how much squirrel meat are you going to get for how much time on one tree? Whereas you leave that tree, there are many other that's when you've you've crossed some line where the amount of squirrel meat is not as important as how many squirrels are left in the woods this is america this is texas we get the squirrels okay your ancestors to leave some squirrel up at the tree. America. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high-end titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning

GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement.

You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit visit on X maps.com slash me on X maps.com slash me. Welcome to the, to the on X club y'all. Uh, yeah, I, I, I struggle over it because I know that even some of the tricks that, that Kevin Murphy talks about for, for rustling the squirrel out of a hole in a tree

would be completely unacceptable for deer. If you met a guy and he's like, well, we're having a hard time finding deer, so we burned them out. It's like it doesn't go over well. Yet, people can write in to say to us, hey, you know what you do is you go to Mad Dave's fireworks and get a bunch of smoke bombs and then you don't have any problem with squirrels and trees anymore because you smoke them out. So you do, you just wind up with like a thing. In muskrat trapping, when I was a muskrat trapper, you know, you'd read muskrat articles and most muskrat trapping articles would include the need to leave behind some seed, right? Like the first pull, like you set up water body, the first pull, you know, you get 60, 70% of your traps are going to have a muskrat. Next day, it's 40.

And then instead of like sticking around for the 10, you just get out and leave some there. And then you come back next year and everything's great. So that's like a way to think about the ones that get in the holes. You know when you dig a hole and put a seed in it? Nature made that hole, and its seed is in the hole, and then you have to leave it in there. I haven't tried this on my boy yet, but I'm going to try it on him. Hey, is the guy named Les Mayo here? No?

He had an interesting story. That sounds like a fake name. I was going to say, are you sure that's real? That dude works at a sandwich shop and came up with that. I would think so. But the level of detail. What do you think? More Mayo or less Mayo?

Less Mayo. Less Mayo. Extra mustard also wrote it. Here's why I don't think it's a fake name. Here's why I don't think it's a fake name. The level of detail he gets into about his situation in life and whatnot led me to believe it's LES, Mayo Lake Mayo Clinic. Yeah.

Leads me to believe that it's a person. Because it would have been an elaborate, no possible gain scenario to write in under. He wasn't like, um, by the way, send me a thousand dollars. I'm a crown. I'm the crown prince of right. He just, the guy's throwing out an interesting thing, uh, on the subject dip. He used to hang out with an ex-convict. And he was saying to convicts, if you got a dip, they're concerned about sanitation. So this guy would carry plastic spoons in his pocket.

And whenever he took a dip, he would take a spoon out, his clean spoon out, and spoon out a dip to put in his mouth. And he was always curious about this, but if someone else asked him for a dip, he gets another clean spoon out, and you spoon out a dip and put it in. And that way there's no cross contamination. And in jail, you can sell dips to people without having people worry about where

your hands have been. You like it? You're selling single dips, single dips. You're selling spoonfuls of dip to people. Didn't do do you also on the subject to dip ben bailey writes us in a lot friend of ours writes in a lot about the comments he was reading a book distant summers which is there's this there's this explorer pj down pg downs and he has a travelogue about being in northern canada in the 1930s doing river trips. And he talks about the Chippewan Indians would make up names for white people based on visual attributes. So they'd throw a nickname, like the Latvian Eagle, whatever. They'd throw a nickname at people based on things.

So there was Tatutna, which was this guy, the little fellow. There was one guy he hung out with that chewed tobacco. He was a dipper. And the Indians called him the man with two assholes. Which I like tremendously. On the subject of, remember we were talking about someone in Texas? That wasn't over a line. No, no no i just didn't get it can you explain it

you see now yeah no um that was this was a special one for just the people that get it remember talking about that it's that we're talking about a guy in texas who had vowed to and he was someone who was influential in popularizing food plots. Is this ringing a bell? I can't remember his name. This gentleman who was very influential in conceiving of and popularizing and fine-tuning food plots. And his latest thing is he's getting into, he's trying to grow,

he's trying to grow a new world record bass. But it's like, I don't know if you're familiar, in fur, farm mink, like you can't farm, maybe they can now. When I was more familiar with the fur market, it was just a known thing that you could not, in domestication, capture the quality. With domestic mink, farm raised mink, you couldn't capture the quality. With domestic mink, farm-raised mink,

you couldn't capture the quality of a wild mink. There's something about his lifestyle and diet and vigor that would produce a far more luxurious pelt. And no matter what you did to make the conditions right with ranch mink, you couldn't make a ranch mink. A ranch mink was like as good as a muskrat. A ranch mink couldn't aspire to a mink. You couldn't make a ranch mink. A ranch mink was like as good as a muskrat. Could never, a ranch mink couldn't aspire to a mink. And this thing with raising bass is someone saying there's just something about large scale bodies of water that provide so many things that

a bass needs throughout the year. And he's got like the smorgasbord and different places to go and ways to find the right temperature and optimize the situation that it's actually because i was like bemoaning the state of the world that some guy would now produce a largemouth bass in like a cement you know swimming pool or something he's in some ichthyologists are pointing out that it's actually a very difficult thing to do it's like it's hard to beat mother nature uh it's not with bucks but in fish it's hard to beat mother nature but this guy uh one of my buddies who's a big waterfowl hunter he was writing about this reservoir in saskatchewan this is kind of screwed up lake you might have heard of this cal diphenbacher yeah oh yeah you know what it's like i got offered a bartending job up there one time is that right right? Yeah. Oddly enough, I had no idea you were going to bring that.

After I talk about this, can you remember to talk about your fishing trip yesterday? Yeah. So he's at Lake Diefenbacher. He's not at it, but what happened is... I believe it's Diefenbacher. Diefenbacher. Some group of folks has a genetically engineered triploid rainbow trout that they're commercially raising. Okay. They're sterile and they have them in growing pens. Somehow or another in a flooding event, 500,000 sterile genetically modified organism rainbows get into the lake. They have three sets of chromosomes instead of two. Their growth rate is much higher than a non-altered wild rainbow. Since they never breed, they just focus in size. So this happens. Then a guy shatters the world record in 2007. In 2009, his twin brother

crushes his world record by five pounds. So now the new world record, 48 pounds, is a GMO, sterile, farm pond escaped rainbow. Come on. Well, it's so weird because on the BC side, the old triploid rainbow thing is huge. Those fish are in a bunch of different bodies of water. And so I guess the difference here is these were reared

specifically just to eat out of a farm facility, runs, the cement run situation, but then they got into the big lake. I've seen the pictures. And I didn't fact check him on this. And I'm going to ring his neck if it's not accurate. No. Well,

I can, all I can say without looking at the internet right now is when I was up there, world record rainbow had come out of the lake and it's like the most slobbish, disgusting looking trout you've ever seen um but people were super fired up on it and it's a cool but at what point is it not a fish he calls it a frankenfish yeah it's a huge lake you know so i think like the hunting of that fish in that lake it's still going to take you some time to find find those fish but you agree there's a point

at which it ceases to be a fish if i made a robot that looked like a giant rainbow and it was 55 pounds would you allow me in the world record? I mean, you're not even comparing apples to oranges here. It's like pomegranate and apples, oranges. Yeah. But you know what I'm saying? There's a point at which. Yes, I do. And you don't think that he's found it.

Man, I... In hunting... Rainbow trout are like the most... In hunting, we have prevented the record books. Hunting has prevented the record books from being infiltrated by imposters. Yeah. Yeah, although they still try.

Sure. Sure. Boy, I don't recall anybody actually caring about this. You're saying the state of their stocks these fish, too? This is Saskatchewan. In BC, those triploid

rainbows are all over the place. As just stalkers. Yep, as just like a sport fishing opportunity. I mean, they're huge and they're pretty selective. You know, they're after like all the micey shrimp. So people use really elaborate bobber setups for them. But this is a big body of water and it's an incredible waterfowl area. When I had dogs, that's where we'd go up

and hunt them for quite a while every year. And if a farmer's duck got away? Man. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the answer, but I feel like it needs to be poked and prodded at and thought about.

Yes, there should be an asterisk next to the world record. Really? Yeah, that just says, hey, this is... It should be like, hey, you know, heads up. Right. Before one get too excited. Well, like in New Zealand, you know, and the... Oh, you know what? There is, in Indiana, that kid killed the escapee farm deer.

Like, somebody had a high fence operation. Yeah, I heard about this kid. As they do, some deer got out. The kid's sitting in his tree stand on his Indiana farm and shoots this, like, 200-and-some-inch monster buck. That was quite, with an ear tag in it, I think. They didn't call that a state record. some inch monster buck. That was quite, with an ear tag in it, I think. They didn't call that a state record.

If, if, because it's a kid, I'd let him have the state record. I'd be like, yeah, that's cool, kid. I wouldn't want to ruin it for him. He'd be the new state record holder. Yeah, but, okay, that's completely hypocritical. Mm-hmm. It's like this all the time. Because you have this thing, and

everybody here will see this firsthand, where Steve believes that, you know, our youth have an entire life in which they can aspire to anything they want, but our older folks in the room,

you're going to die, so we may as well help you out while we can. Yeah, help you enjoy it while we can, and the younger folk will figure it out, and they have time to have someone good to have them. And this, like, Diffenbacher thing, these are just, like, good old boy Saskatchewan farmers that are out hunting these giant, slobbish rainbows.

Yeah. So why not give them the world record? Does anybody have a birthday tonight? You do? Tonight? Anybody got a birthday tomorrow? The next day? We need four people who have birthdays in order.

We'll get to that. Your fishing trip. Can you do like a quick, because you did a little Texas. Yeah, real quick. Zipped down to Rockport. Incredibly awesome. I had a fantastic time.

Zipped out and fished out of a state park there. Goose Island. Yeah. Didn't catch anything. No, we caught anything no we caught a joke about earlier oh yeah yeah nothing to see uh but had a i mean just had a great great time did some uh pulling around uh you guys have hard bottom uh fishing out, so you can get out and wade. It's not like Louisiana where if you tried to wade, you'd sink up to your chin. They'd never see you again. Yeah.

And, yeah, I had a great time chasing redfish, and I got some pitch at some black drum and had some good shots shots at jacks and casting the fish you're looking at well trying to like conditions weren't perfect for that too choppy or too muddy uh just real intermittent sun oh okay and and some windage there too so it was hard spotting fish so you're hoping for like clear sun to make shadows on the bottom and whatnot yeah just yeah but fantastic time and in a really cool area and got to hang out with some local boys down there and one of which this dude bobby who's 87 and drives like 70 wherever he goes and uh he found out uh that ryan thompson and i had nothing to do on Sunday.

He's like, well, you sure you don't have anything to do? He's like, I'll come by. Just drive you around, show you some stuff. And so he swung in, picked us up, drove us all over for a couple hours, pointing out all sorts of local tidbits and facts and breaking the speed limit everywhere we went. Did amazingly well for 87. It was a great time.

It's really weird you tell that story because it reminded me of a thing that happened where in Miles City, Montana, we used to live next to a guy named Wes Munsell, and he was 87. And one day my brother had to go somewhere, and he was telling us about a bunch of horse mushrooms he saw out in the field. And he just knew it was somewhere between Mile City and Baker, which is a good stretch. And Wes liked this kind of mushroom. So we drove and someone else must have saw him and picked him because we eventually make it all the way to Baker. On the way home, and this is not a big road, on the way home, Wes is driving 95 miles an hour. The car is floating over the hills. And I'm thinking about how old he is and how people at a certain point could just pass away at any moment. And he gets to telling me the reason we're driving

so fast is he's late i'm gonna bring this thing full circle this is a true story he's late for a doctor's appointment and then my mind's really wandering because i'm like well what sort of health issue is west having it's so important he gets home in such a high rate of speed and we're running late and we go and he's like i'm not he can't even drop me off he's like i'm gonna pull into the doctor and then you can just take my car back to your house and come pick me up at the end in a half hour or whatever so i come back and pick him up in this part i'm real curious and i'm like all concerned for west's health and i'm like so west what's going on and he explains explains that since his wife passed away, he realized that he's too old to lean over and clip his own toenails

and had a doctor's appointment to get his toenails cut. And that is why me and Wes were driving 95 miles an hour down a curvy road looking for mushrooms. What was I getting at where I was talking about the guy that wasn't here oh yeah we handled this thing here's another one we talked about a fair bit i don't think people in texas run flat brim hats i haven't noticed that no there's some flat brimmers around you get flat flat brimmers in te? Yeah. One guy was saying that they were having the flat brim, curved brim, baseball hat debate just on merits, where one guy was saying he runs a flat brim,

and he feels it's better because you have more room for your binoculars under there. Which has always been my point and my sunglasses. That's why you go slightly flat to fit your binos. But the other guy pointed out they're in a debate and they wrote in about it the other guy pointed out that with a curved brim you can pull a remy warren where you conform your brim this sounds complicated but it's not you make your the curl of your hat brim kind of conform to the curve of your binos.

And then you put your hat on to make sure it's on tight. And then when you hold your binos, you also hold your hat brim, and it's a stabilizer. And he can't imagine that anyone would ever look through binoculars without having his hands gripping his hat brim. You guys think about that? I like it. I used to think of it as a tripod.

Yeah, it's still hot too. I like the flat brim when I'm fishing because I have full coverage sunglasses. And then the flat brim I feel like gives me more coverage. Like it's more surface area. Casting a bigger shadow on your face yeah and then you know i just pitch that thing on the dash and grab my regular old kicking around town hat you tuck your ears up in it no no but i leave a sticker on the on the brim there i have a tiny tiny head so if i

do get a hold of a hat i have hat, I'm kind of stuck with that because apparently there's a great shortage of pea-head-sized hats out there. I'm usually wearing some kind of fedora or some ornate hat. So it's a moot point to me. You're kind of up and up on all these things. Why do some people put their ears inside the hat? How am I up on that? Does it function?

Is there a function? They got big ears. No. No? There's a functional reason to tuck your ears. It's not like preventing skin cancer

on the tops of your ears. Maybe it is. That would be a good point, though. Yeah, I got no answer for that. Big ears. Annoying when the wind flaps them around. You got to tuck them in there.

That would be logical. You don't have I actually hadn't thought of that that might be what it is you tuck your ear in there and you don't have to lose the top of your ear to skin cancer guy rode in from st louis looking for advice ethical advice um he lives out in the country and he just moved to a new neighborhood and it's a neighborhood pond. And the way it works is each person along the pond has one and a half acres joining up, right, you can picture what I'm talking about, joining up to the pond. The pond is seven acres.

He has a homeowner's association. There's nothing in the HOA about firearms or hunting or nothing. You see where this is going. They've got geese and mallards using the lake. Legally, he realizes that doing his homework legally and whatever you call HOA law, he feels as though he's A-OK in the clear to go out and hunt. And he's wondering, he says, I feel it's better to ask for forgiveness

rather than permission, but, quote, wanted your guy's opinion. I would suggest. Can I go first? Yes, please. As he lived in Texas, he's cutting the shit out of him every day. Man, the more I think about it, though, I'm thinking there's other ways about it. My initial thought was there's only one way that he's going to get one good hunt out of the deal. And that's by just going for it first

and getting after him. Because at the next HOA meeting, there's going to be some covenants written about hunting in that pond, right? So at least that way you get one good hunt in. Because if you go ask around, it depends on who your neighbors are. Yeah, is he a board member?

Maybe if you went, how many people are there? How many different one and a half acre lots were there? Just start like a bird watchers club. I bet someone who's really good at math could figure out how many neighbors there are if each neighbor owns one and a half acres and it's a seven acre pond. But you'd get into a lot of questions about the shape of these. Of the pond, sure. But I doubt the properties are pie-shaped.

You might start off by just going to all your neighbors and handing them each a nice goose pastrami breast, all done up. Then when he eats, be like, guess where that came from? Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of the direction I was leaning. Like, you better get your game, get your house in order, right? So know when your next

homeowners association meeting is, at which point these rules are definitely going to change. And you give yourself enough time to, like, cure up, smoke, cone fee, and, you know, get a good spread laid out for the meeting.

Everybody, I brought some hors d'oeuvres. And say it, do go on. Yeah, and after they eat it, you're like, guess what that was? My advice, like I could do a long version of advice. It might be that he could start talking about, he could spread pamphlets out that are like the enormous health risks associated with goose droppings. About propaganda. It's a public service.

Get a hold of whoever generates fake news articles and have them write things like the number one killer of American children is geese. Oh, it would be so easy to target because every HOA now has their own Facebook group. So it would be very easy to target the right people. But you could do that. But just to answer what he's asking, and I'm not just saying, I'm saying this as a homeowner. I'm saying this as a person who cares about the hunters and hunters' rights and our ongoing ability to have the lifestyle that we so much enjoy. I would say that I feel that he should do a little tour.

Yeah. He should do a little tour around the lake. Do it for the kids. And kind of lay out what his plan, how he's sort of thinking this is going to go down and what his plan is. And do the permission rather than forgiveness approach. Like about 5.30, I'm going to slip out there

and set a bunch of decoys. About 6.15, you're going to hear a... And you'll know it's me. I won't bore you with what happens after that, but you get the gist. Final thing quickly to talk

about. Oh, we got to do our birthdays. What else we got to do? Quickly to talk about oh we gotta do yeah gotta do our birthdays what else we gotta do quickly to talk about though first is um cal was just pointing out to me that on the same news day down here in dallas there was a story not down here in dallas down here in texas there's a story of all of a sudden a wallaby just happens to be walking down the road in Dallas. Unaccompanied, just by itself. An unaccompanied wallaby. The owner gets in no trouble.

Another guy in Dallas turns up with a little collection of Asian swamp eels. Charges are pending. When I read this, just to return to what I was talking about at the top of the episode, when I read this, I realized a thing I like about Texas and Texans is that, you know the E.O. Wilson term, biophilia? It's a term he popularized, which is this innate human desire to experience and be around other forms of life. And I feel for all the dogging on Texas that we were doing earlier, a thing I appreciate, whether it's tigers, wallabies, deer, turkeys, quail, that I feel that there's some beautiful thing about the Texas mindset

that just loves, and this can run good and bad, they love animals. They like to be around wildlife and enjoy it and marvel at it and just experience it. And for that, I do want, in all honesty, to congratulate and thank everyone here for so many kind letters that we get from Texas of people trying to understand this crazy thing, this crazy experiment that we have of wildlife in America. So thank you guys all for that. Yeah. Thank you very much. And with that, I want to say, what all the nonsense we got big good night and thank you we got our steam breathing power gobbler uh live tour only t-shirts you'll never see a guy anybody you see wearing them at the live show what other kind of stuff pro nuance thc thc shirts cal's mustache shirts we got uh

cookbooks uh meteor fishing game cookbooks available uh anywhere books are sold including out front bandanas band yanni's uh special how to go to deer bandana a couple of mugs all of that check out stars in the sky thank you much. We need the birthday people. Who's got a birthday tonight? Okay, come up. Can we get the house lights up, please? Just one birthday tonight? Two?

One guy? Is that a birthday? Tonight? Tonight? I'm asking for tonight. Tonight. Tonight? Come on up.

If it's tonight, come on down. Is it tonight? Who's got a birthday tomorrow? Oh, 6th Street. Any birthdays tomorrow? The next day. The next day. That can't be right.

Who's got yesterday? You got yesterday? Okay, come on up. That can't be right. Who's got yesterday? You got yesterday? Okay, come on up. That's good. Who else got yesterday? November. No. No.

No way. Who else got yesterday? How many we got now? One? We got three. Three. Day before yesterday. Wow, we usually get this taken care of in one day. How many we got now? One. We got three. Day before yesterday. Oh,

you should get this taken care of in one day. April what? Yeah. Six will work. That'll work. Come on up. We're desperate now. All right,

guys. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

Now, the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet.