The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 198: Hunting with the Home Run King

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with New York Mets first baseman Pete Alonso, Cody Fahrion, Rick Smith, Seth Morris, and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: All those home runs; the value of a high ass; Steve and Jani’s disagreement over “natural”; shooting a duck on the ground and a turkey in the air; chocolate milk, squats, and yodel-sounding farts induced by chocolate milk; what it feels like to win a million dollars, meet Seinfeld, and then hunt with Steve; Pete's first buck; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. Yanni, I want to revisit an argument we had this morning. Can't wait. Before we get on. Oh, you know, first let's introduce a couple people because we have some people that everyone's used to. Rick Smith's here.

Cameraman extraordinaire. Seth Morris, the flip-flop flesher. Here in the flesh. And then, very special guest, cameraman extraordinaire, Seth Morris, the flip-flop flasher, here in the flesh, and then very special guest, Pete Alonzo. Happy to be here, Steve. Roll out some of the superlatives. This kind of stuff makes you uncomfortable.

Roll out the superlatives. I'll do it for you. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Your first Major League Baseball year, you're a rookie with new york mets and you hit more home runs than than any rookie in the history of the world yeah not only that he had so many damn home runs that he breaks the rookie record but then hits more home runs than anyone rookie

or not for the year yeah i mean and won the home run derby this is a this is a special year but what did the uh what did the uh thing on my rifle say it says you gotta have a high ass high ass that's right you gotta explain that yeah exactly no what did it say on your rifle home run king oh that's right home run king yeah you? Home run king. Oh, that's right, home run king. Yeah. You're comfortable with that? Absolutely. That's my thing.

So the home run king is here. And then Yanni's back from assignment. He still hasn't listened to the episode we made with Yanni highlights. Did you listen to it yet? I will maybe tomorrow on an airplane ride home. I'll try. It really surprises me that you wouldn't listen. I would feel that because you're like a co-host and everything,

that if you weren't there, you'd listen just out of a sense of obligation. Listen, I really want to, but my to-do list is long. Maybe it was just a nice break. And then our other very special guest uh houndsman uh cody you want to use your last name i know you like to be a little under the radar in life yeah just a little it'll be all right steve cody f there you go i like that good to be here yeah do me a favor cody and pull your mic a little closer to your mustache. There you go. I like that. Yeah.

Cool. I want to get to the fight me and Yanni had, but I think that real quick I want to say about Cody, probably the most interesting, if I was still a magazine writer, I would be after you hard about the fact that you one of your many revenue streams comes from uh retrieving wild catching wild cattle that's a fact with hound dogs yes sir can you explain real quick to folks what like a uh like what constitutes a wild wild cattle most of the ranches around here, they'll have some domesticated livestock gone feral, right? They've been tried to, been rounded up or gathered, but the resources they have are limited.

Meaning that they ride out and try to chase it with a quad runner? Exactly. Yeah. Everything we do, most everything we do is horseback and with dogs, catch to bay, bay to catch. So the rancher will call up and he'll be like, I rounded everything up, but there's 10 I can't catch. Exactly. Then dun-da-dun.

Put the hounds down, right? But how do the hounds know where to drive it? Like, I can picture that they would catch it and surround it. And that's what they do, ultimately. Like, the stuff that's really wild, you want the dogs to see it first. They don't. You shouldn't even be in the picture for quite some time. And you want to sneak in real easy.

Because what they're scared of, obviously, is a human being. You know, they haven't had bay is a human being yeah you know they they haven't had bay dogs on them but you bay them up ultimately you bay them up and then ease in and ease out easy in and then till you till you close the distance and then you start roping them and so that's what you're doing subduing the creature yeah right you're throwing a lariat around it. Exactly. I thought you somehow were driving them with the dogs. Well, you can do that.

Like the dogs would follow you and push the cow along. And they will. Like I have some dogs, like three or four, that'll bay. And then if you ride in, they'll opposite me and go to the other side of the cattle and then push cattle to the horse. And then the cattle get a sense of security and they come to the horseback you know the rider and then you can you can go in some pretty rough country and get some pretty pretty bad stuff out that way uh what would be a how many can you catch in a day oh gosh depends on how bad they are you know and how much they've been molested throughout their life and how many tricks they know. You know, if some stuff just been quadded around

and kind of, you know, messed with, they're pretty, pretty easy to change their mind. But if they've been through it a bunch. Have you ever met one you couldn't catch? Uh-uh. No. How many have you ever caught in a single day? Oh, gosh. uh just depends like uh

bay ups i would say on a good day with help of course you know usually have some cowboys helping me just to tie and or whatever rope once we get get them bait up with the dogs but man i'd say on a good day uh and really good pickings you know 20 head yeah you know and sometimes you'll strike a deal where the ranchers so fed up with them you'll strike a deal where you'll uh you'll get a cut of the sale price exactly for everything you can catch right they're ready to set the ranch is ready to sacrifice that to get you someone to catch them most definitely because what happens is like on a on a on the big outfits you'll have some pretty wild or feral cattle that'll teach your good cattle bad habits oh you know and so so that incentivizes them to get them off exactly you

know you might get you some really good angus or you know a good commercial herd and you want to interject it into a ranch that has some wild stuff on it. Well, you'll start losing pieces because they'll start ganging up together. You got to start with a clean slate. You'll go as far as, so you live in southern Colorado. Yes, sir. You'll stray as far as Utah, Nevadavada yeah we'll caught some cattle out in california even really yeah how long you stay how long do you stay when you go out to catch

cattle just kind of depends on the project and how many there is and you know and what condition your horses and dogs are in after a while sometimes it beats you up a little bit you know and you camp out while you're doing it most certainly yeah yes sir have you ever stayed somewhere for a month catching wild cattle oh yeah yeah i was out in the utah desert for about six months kind of taking care of a place that uh was pretty rugged and wild. Just catching cows. Yeah. That's a hell of a business. How do people find you? Do you have a name for your business?

Are you looking for more business? Not at the present time, but I think we're doing all right. So you don't need to put a plug in it? I don't imagine you have a website. No, sir. I don't even have electricity in my house. I take that back i did get solar about four months ago 265 watt panels so yeah how many dogs you got 13 how many horses you got just a couple do you bring that whole slew of dogs when you go to catch wild cattle? Oh, I got some dogs in particular that stay home.

Like I got just one or two, but for the most part, everybody goes. Even my lion dogs or hog dogs, they're multipurpose. So you got like hog dogs, lion dogs, and cattle dogs. And they're all the same dog, yes, sir. Oh, okay. They just got to wear different hats. Yeah. How do you keep your lion dogs from running lions when you're chasing cattle?

And that's the thing. And I wouldn't mind it if they did kind of go do their deal as long as they're staying straight on what I want. But usually if you set your dog down in cattle country, the likelihood of you catching a lion is you know slim to none and when you go hunt a hog you're you're in cattle country but there's usually not a lot of lions in hog country well how do you how does he know whether he's running hogs or cattle well you put them on you know you start the track and say it's what we're going to hunt today.

Man. And they're smart dogs, you know. I started out my, ultimately my, the first dogs that I had was mostly Catahoula, and then I injected a little bit of Red Tick, English Red Tick into them, and then now I went to some Argentine Dogo with the mix, but, you know, they're fast fast to catch and they'll still put their nose on the ground to trail and they're fun to hunt yeah you're saying you're telling me that

one of your lion hounds um will visually track the line like he'll see the track right and run along and just check it now and then but you said he can still grind it out if he needs to. Yeah. Yeah, he'll cheat a bit. Especially on fresh snow. And they'll get in the dirt too. And that's a whole other deal, controversy about dry tracks or dirt tracks versus snow tracks. How's that a controversy? Well, as far as most... Now, the guys

that do it on dry ground are badass yeah that's the controversy yeah i mean a snow track up here i've seen snow tracks that you would look at it and swear to be damned that you could that was the last night track but it might be a week old and you know the the scent is dissipated through it anyways it's and sometimes i'm so you don't like dry ground guys talking all about how they're badass and you're not i think there's uh yeah there's just certain places for certain dogs and you know so would your dogs be able to catch a lion down in arizona with no snow yeah we hunt south of here in new mexico quite a bit down the red dirt the bluffs and uh it's short cedar country and it's mostly dirt but even down there you know the freezing the thaw is what gets you ultimately like even with

it's snow or snow or dirt like it's it's a scent that's held in the track, and that freeze and that thaw just slowly dissipates it. And the dirt conditions. The right kind of dirt, I believe, will hold scent longer than a snow track. And there's different types of snow that'll hold a scent longer than just regular snow. Snow ain't just snow once it hits the ground. It could be wet or it could be fluffy. What's the best kind of snow for holding scent? And just a little bit of moisture in it, it seems.

Not the real fluffy stuff. You don't want that dry, dusty powder. Yeah, it kind of kicks back into itself. And you don't want a real wet track, it seems, because it leeches maybe. And I'm just saying, saying but yeah how many lions have you caught in your life oh gosh man i don't know i've only been doing it like 18 17 18 years like i was telling you my first year was pretty dry we chased them and that was before callers you know that even the telemetry i didn't have a settled

telemetry until two or three years later but mostly it was set your hounds down you know and go you just listen to them and try and follow them and that was usually a shit rack but yeah uh okay i want to get back to fight me and yanni hicks i thought about it yanni yanni took offense. I was saying. Yes. I got into his head. I win. No, Kesha, I'm going to explain everything,

and you tell me if I explain it wrong. Okay. I was saying that I don't understand when people send away their kids to boarding school because I want my kids around so i can snuggle them yeah and i uh was like man i would hate if they left earlier than is natural yanni took offense at this not because he thinks that it's great to send your kids off to boarding school and not snuggle them but because he took offense at the idea that one would describe something as natural when there's plenty of places in the world where you don't move away from home

at all and you stay in your tight in your family unit for the whole life and i thought about this morning if i said to you uh white-tailed deer have their breeding season in mid-November. It's natural for them to do that. Would you be like, uh-uh, because they rot in January in Mexico? So does that make it unnatural that they rut in mid-November elsewhere? That's what you were trying to do to me this morning. And now that I presented to you that way, you're left speechless. You had many hours to think about it. Okay. So now that you're coming back at me with a debate, I think you should give me at least more than three seconds before you say I'm speechless about

this. Okay. You want me to give you... You want to come back to it? No. I think I can give you a rebuttal right now. I think that it's... How do I put it? Oh, another thing. You left home.

Yeah. And went away far away. Yeah. You left home. Yeah. And went away far away. Yeah. Never to return. It's sad to think about sometimes. Was that unnatural? I don't know. Perfectly natural.

I just felt like it was the wrong use of the word. That's all. What would be the right word? Well, I think you figured it out after we started talking about it. You said that it was like culturally not the norm. Oh. So I think for the deer... I took offense at you taking offense. It hurt my feelings. Can you tell everyone real quick, Yann, about your Colorado elk hunt? A real quick, Yanni, about your Colorado elk hunt?

A real quick hunting story? Whatever you need. Then we're going to narrow in on Pete Alonzo's big hunt. Yeah. Yeah, it was good. You know, I burned like 12 or 13 points. Maybe even 14. Yeah, you need to know which because I have a bet with Brody that it was in the teens.

Oh, it was definitely in the teens. Okay, good. I won my bet. Definitely in the teens. Even my buddy Ethan, who drew the tag with me, was in the teens as a resident. He was at 11, I think, and I had one or two more than he did. And I had known about the unit for a while

and been thinking about it for a while what was your exposure to it just people friends and people I met through the industry people that lived around it you know that had good things to say about it and unfortunately I'm setting the stage for sort of like a letdown if you can you can feel it coming because i didn't end up killing a big old giant that i was you know that you hope for when you burn 12 or 13 points on a unit um but we had a great hunt the best part about the hunt was i got to hang on my buddy ethan, who was like, who was the elk guide, right? Yeah. And definitely like my main mentor over all my elk hunting years. He's like the guy that definitely took me from just like a dude that kind of knew how to walk around in the woods and would bump into stuff every now and then to someone that could get it

done on a regular basis. Um, so that was rad to, you know, be able to share an elk camp with him and we had uh a photographer with us that uh captured the um the action for us and then another buddy of ours uh jim that came down from uh eagle county and uh helped us out on the hunt the hunting was rad like aside from not being never finding a giant bull, like anything over 300 inches. Was it just dudes everywhere? No, no dudes. It was super limited.

Super limited, yeah. There were some camps around, but you never felt like the elk were even pressured. Every day you could have just walked into the woods and shot a bull within an hour during prime time. Really? Oh, yeah. We had great bugling action.

And I was kind of torn between, because they were bugling in a zone where you couldn't glass as well as I would like to, just to be able to look over a lot of critters. So I was torn between jumping in and having great fun bugling and chasing the herd around and trying to look, look, pick over bulls that way versus trying to just look at a bunch of open country and try to find a big one. We had very similar weather to what we had this week,

meaning that it was like unseasonably warm, dry, no precipitation. Um, so they were definitely not hanging out long, not being you know like i felt like the big bulls had left the herds and they weren't being like forced to go out into the open and feed you know they were just tucked away in some hole and it was going to take a little bit of a miracle you know to catch one sticking his nose out five minutes before dark you know um so yeah sweet sweet hunt and um the last day how many do you think you looked at how many bulls i don't know

say average five a day how many could you take in a Polkat? I don't know. 20? No kidding. One evening, yeah, I saw... How many bulls did we see that night? Not counting spikes, I think seven branch antler bulls. Like in this one little drainage that we cruised around in. But just all youngsters. Let them all walk.

I wish I hadn't thrown all my Colorado out points into the garbage. Hadn't? Yeah. Oh, but you never would have caught up with the point creep that's going on in Colorado. You only had like five, and as I burned 13, you never would have made it in your whole life

if it keeps going like it's been going. Is that right? Yeah, because next year you'd have six, and it would take 14 to draw. Then you'd have seven, and it'd take 15. You'd always be behind by quite a few. It's a problem that they're trying to deal with here. Colorado's got a lot of problems, man. So anyways, yeah.

It all started when they legalized weed. You think so yeah super fun hunt just never found the big one oh quick thing but you had fun you left everybody like they don't know you got one yeah I got one on the last

day with 10 minutes left the morning we were hunting like a small teeny tiny drainage where I was hoping that like it was off the beaten path. There was no trail going to it. I had not seen many boot tracks in it. And we had gotten a hot tip to go and check this out from some locals. And so we went in there, and we were just looking at some pretty small, like, south-facing, steep, rocky slopes that, you know, don't look like great habitat, but could be a place

where one could be hiding. I didn't see any elk in there, but while we were in there, I could look up and see some alpine country. I saw two big herds move into this basin. Too far away, even with the spotting and scope to see if there was any. Like, I could see bulls, but I couldn't see what they were. And so we decided to go in there that afternoon. Ethan killed one that morning. Oh, he did? So we went and packed his bull out.

Was it a giant? Nope. He had, like, he was in the magic circle all morning and had let them all walk. By, like, 9, 9.30. It kind of died down. And so he was just kind of slowly cruising back to the truck. And all of a sudden, right below him, he just heard a little, and he just crept over to the edge. And there was one bed at like 50 yards.

And it was kind of like, yeah, this is the perfect opportunity. So he rolled him. In its bed. Yep, in its bed. What do you think of that, Cody? What's that? Shooting something in its bed. If you're sneaky enough to get up on it, I think it's all good.

Yeah, me too. People get pissed about that. Yeah, I don't know why. Because they're not good at sneaking. That's right. They get jealous. Got to get in there amongst them. I shot a buck in its bed this year.

He never flinched. Yeah. Dead and dead. It's controversial because people, it's controversial for two reasons. One reason is that people think it's unsportsmanlike. Like, it's sportsmanlike to shoot them when they're running away from you.

But not sportsmanlike to shoot them when you snuck up on them and they don't know you're there or something. Because somehow they feel like that you're there or something. Because somehow they feel like they're at the disadvantage because they're sleeping and their eyes are closed. And then it's controversial to shoot something in its bed for good reason in part because it's hard to – shot placement's difficult.

Sometimes it's hard to tell what's going on. Definitely. So that's the thing you've got to watch out for is can you tell what's going on? What about shooting a duck on water? Well, that's a really great point. Why is it bad to shoot a turkey in the air, good to shoot it on the ground, good

to shoot a duck in the air, bad to shoot it on the ground? It's confusing. It is. If I was duck hunting by myself and a duck landed in the decoys, dude, bam! Bang town.

But when you're with people, everybody looks at each other nervously. Oh, if you're with me and you look over at me, you're going to watch my gun go off. I'm not that good at shooting and flying, man. So if I can get a bonus going towards my limit like that, I'll take it. So in the afternoon, we decided, Joe and I decided to go after them. And it was a commitment. It was about three miles. We knew we had to go about three miles and had to climb close to 2000 feet to get to where they were, where we had last seen them. And I'd watched

until like nine, nine 30. So I knew that they had, they weren't going to go much farther. And as soon as we got the elevation to where we could see right into this little, it was like a, I don't want to say miniature, basically an avalanche chute, but kind of mellow. It didn't look like it slid a lot. It was more like just a real steep, grassy meadow, rocky above. And we first got eyes on them. We were maybe 1,500 plus yards away. And we saw this bull, and all I could see was like a really long main beam

and a giant fourth. And I thought, man, here it is. day. It's all going to come together. So I didn't even bust out the spotting scope. I just said, let's go. And we had to, they were sort of feeding on the opposite side of this. The, the, uh, shoot was bull-like and we were kind of on a knob looking into it and we had to roll all the way around this knob and then get on the face with them and we tried to go down off the knob and thought we'd get close enough to where we could kind of shoot across into them but once we got to within range like sub 500 uh i just couldn't get a shooting lane at all so we had to climb back out and got on the face with them and

just waited for the wind was good it was dropping down the face at that point and just started we got a great elk trail that went right through the timber right at this open avalanche you know meadow and just kept sneaking sneaking sneaking and it like I don't know when I was probably 60 yards from the edge of the meadow I could start to see you know elk moving in the meadow and got a little closer and I could see the bull. And that moment I glassed him up and I realized that he wasn't, you know, what I was after. Nice bull, you know, he's, he's cool, but not, not the big, not the big giant. Yeah. But the hunt was pretty much over. I had like, at that point I had 30 minutes left in my season and I'm like, Joee we could kill this bull but we're gonna be packing elk meat all day tomorrow he he was just like this dude's gotten into hunting at like probably the age of 50 maybe

50 plus he's about to turn 60 and it's so jazzed and stoked on it that when i turned around and kind of posed the question to like should should we kill or should we just happily roll off the mountain under the stars and be done with it? He was just like, get him, take him down, you know, like don't want this to end. And, you know, my buddy Jimmy, he wanted some elk meat. And so it wasn't a done deal, but I still had to sneak in there. By the time I got a little bit closer, I had to fight off, not fight off, but I was fighting all these calves that were feeding right where I was trying to get to. So they'd put their head down. I'd move a little bit.

They'd lift their head up, and they'd be chewing. And kind of they'd look at me, stare a little bit, but then look away, put their head down. I'd take another step or two. You can get away a lot with calves. You know, they just don don't they haven't put two and two together yet they're only what at that point they're six months old right right and uh anyways he ends up being bedded so i get into like 50 60 yards of the bull yeah the bull's bedded out in the meadow i'm like maybe now 10 15 yards from the edge of the meadow and i'm trying to get

a shooting lane but i got some branches still in front of me and he's bedded and he's kind of quartering away. And there's a cow behind him and it's getting dark. And finally I stand up and I kind of move to my left and get next to this tree. And I just leaning against the tree, I still couldn't get the angle I needed. But then I just propped my gun up on this little branch

and I kind of had to almost get on my tippy toes. And from there I got, had a clear sight path. Coincidentally, at the same time, the one calf finally saw me going through all those motions and she sort of, you know, bounced out a little bit and it got everybody on their feet. And once he got on his feet, I had a, you know, just a nice, easy shooting lane. Yeah, you know, I shot him. And hard to tell because it was late in the day, and so I didn't get to do a great necropsy. Necropsy. Necropsy because it was dark out later, you know,

so it's hard to tell what happened. But the first shot didn't bring him down. It stunned him. He was dead on his feet, so I ran out after him, and he had gone maybe 50 yards, and he was just facing away, standing there,

kind of wobbling, just ears pinned back, sick, but not falling over, and I almost actually just ran at him a little bit more to try to change positions so I could get one in broadside, and eventually,

he turned enough broadside that shot again, and that tipped him over. So, yeah, it was sweet. Yeah, it was a big adventure. Yeah, it was good. And the bull, like, tell them how to go find you, because they'll be able to find a picture of it on Instagram. Yeah, I actually haven't.

I need to post it, do a little post about that hunt. But I'll have it up there by the time you guys listen to this but it's uh my handle's yannis underscore putellis um but uh he's got a cool main beam that at his force it almost does a hard 90 both main beams and they almost come back together the tips are probably only i don't know what do you think 10 12 inches apart yeah if that so yeah uh quick thing remember we oh you weren't there and you haven't listened the we had a emergency room doctor talking about all kinds of things that bad things that happen to hunters and anglers and he suggested that when you bust your tooth off and the nerve's hanging out and it hurts real bad,

you can put super glue on there to seal it up so the air isn't touching it. My dentist, Kevin, said, man, don't do that. Quick piece of feedback. But he didn't have an alternative? He said, you're going to wind up gluing your lip to your tooth or your lips to your lip. He just thought it sounded like not smart. Those things can hurt.

Oh, dude, they hurt. I would let you administer that because, especially if it was a top tooth and you're just trying to squirt super glue up in there, you would end up. No, I do it very delicately. I'd lay it in there just perfect. To yourself. To you.

That's what I'm saying. I wouldn't want to do it to myself because it'd be tricky. Oh, because you can't see, yeah. And I would end up not being able to eat and talking like this for a day. So Pete Alonzo, tell everybody where you're from. I'm from Tampa, Florida. Still live there today.

Yep. But you play. Play for the New York Mets. Live in Manhattan. And for the summer, I live in New York City. Just 24 years old. 24. Played in high school.

Yep. Played in college. Yes, sir. Left college to play in the minors. Mm-hmm. Pete was trying to say, he couldn't tell, you were saying, I don't know if I should say I'm a dropout. What were you asking? I didn't know if I wanted to tell people that I got my degree from college in baseball

or that I was a college dropout to play baseball. And I said that what you should say is you left college to play professional baseball. Yeah. I think that one sounds the best out of all the options. I think that one sounds good. You told me you were a dropout. Yeah. I think it's kind of funny.

It's true. My old man dropped out of high school to go fight in World War II. I mean, that's badass. I don't think it's like, yeah. I wouldn't say he's a dropout. Right. It's different. It's kind of like a bigger life calling. Yeah.

Or your journey of life that you, I guess you kind of go on. So you knew you were going to, like, at what point did you know you were going to be a professional ball player? Steve, I had no plan B at all. Like, from, like, believe it or not, my first word as, like, a baby was believe it or not my first word as like a baby was ball that was my first word and yeah you know i don't want to pop your bubble but that's a lot of kids do that that was my first word my first word but for me it's kind of fitting um yeah and i'm only joking with you i like that yeah yeah i mean for me it fits and i mean when i was younger um

from preschool all the way throughout high school like every single level of my life i i've always wanted to be a professional baseball player and i dedicated all my energy my time um to uh to be a big league ball player that's were your parents were your parents like oh enough already with the baseball no I mean I played I played like five sports one year I mean in middle school I played lacrosse football soccer basketball and baseball I mean I feel like in the sports world like I grew up playing a bunch of different sports. I mean, tried a lot of them. I love sports. I love outdoor activities.

But for me, it's like my true passion and love is baseball. And I'm just really fortunate that I get paid to play a game. When you started in college, I'm not really familiar how this goes. You're in college. It's better to be, and also when someone says like, you can come be in the minor leagues.

And that's preferable to playing in college. That's like a step closer. Well, it kind of depends. You can get drafted out of high school at 18 years old. But the downside of that, if you're not given or offered like money you can't refuse, like if you're offered a million dollars to turn down the college experience to go play professional baseball. I mean, at the end of the day, you want to be in the big leagues. Like you can dream of playing for the college you grew up for, but at the end of the

day, you want to end up in the, in the show, you end up in the big leagues. Um, but for me, it's like, I wasn't drafted out of high school. I didn't really have that option to go play professional baseball at 18 years old. So for me, I kind of, I mean, if I, if someone says I'm not good enough at something, I, I take it personally and I work harder and I, I try and show as much as the results as possible to, um, to put myself in that position to, to get that chance, if that would make sense. So when I went into college, I just wanted to make the most of my time so I could have a chance at the big leagues. And I didn't care how, like, if I had to go through the minors or not.

And, I mean, whatever the path I had to take, I had to take to get there. And I'm willing to put in whatever work and whatever time is needed to succeed or to accomplish the goal. You're getting married coming up, right? Yeah. Next year. Yep. Oh, you're getting married a year from now. Yes. When you met your girlfriend, you were doing what? So I was in, so I was in college at the time. I was playing in the Cape Cod League, and we met at P-Town. It was kind of funny. I mean, it's not really a place where some people go to meet ladies, and it's kind of serendipity.

You know, it's like after we met, it's like I just couldn't get enough of her. And we hung out every single day for the rest of that summer. We did long distance our last years of school, just couldn't get enough of her and we hung out every single day for the rest of that summer we did long distance um our last years of school and um as soon as um as soon as she graduated it's cape cod sorry to interrupt it's cape cod it's not known as a place to well it's like a place it's a place where guys would go to meet guys oh that specific beach that specific beach yeah so the reason why we figure out why he was getting cat called so the reason why we were at that beach uh i i mean it's uh long story short

i didn't being from florida it's like i don't i don't like rocks and wearing shoes on the beach you know what i mean i like white fluffy sandy beaches and reminiscent of home yeah reminiscent i mean who likes wearing shoes on the beach i don't think anyway it's just rocks on a shoreline you won't like the beaches at steve's cabin dude yeah the barnacles man you got rocks with barnacles you don't have to wear shoes you have to wear waders and uh and rubber boots the whole time because i got you you want to have a beach experience yeah and then are you able to concentrate while i eat maraschino cherries out of my glass absolutely okay absolutely but um yeah it's like she's uh she's just so unbelievable like and did she believe you?

Like, you're like, oh, I'm going to be a professional baseball player. Was she like, whatever? I don't think she said, like, whatever. I think, I mean, I think that she would have, that didn't matter what I did. I mean, she told me, I mean, she told her dad, uh, that, uh, she would have dated me if I pumped gas for a living. So like, I don't think it was necessarily the, what I did. Um, I think it's just the chemistry and the relationship. I mean, she's, she's awesome. She's my soulmate. I mean, I can't picture going through life without her.

I mean, she's my rock. Like, she keeps – I mean, she's a sports psychologist. Like, she's everything and more. I mean, and for how much, like, we travel and, like, I mean, we don't really live anywhere for more than seven days at a time during the baseball season. And it's like you go through the apartment you go to the hotel like there's no sense of home and sometimes like i get uh i'm not gonna say jealous but i kind of wish i knew what it was like to have like a like a home for like

an extended period of time yeah because like packing and traveling a lot it gets gets kind of exhausting you know and you're going home with a bunch of deer meat now i'm excited and are you don't have any concerns that she's gonna she's gonna eat the deer meat oh she's she's gonna love it i i think i'm uh i think i'm i'm a pretty good cook um i learned learned a lot of stuff from my grandpa um well the one from the one from spain he can he could he could whip up anything and just kind of watching him navigate the kitchen utilize all the different spices um in different creative ways like to bring out the best of the food i think that um i can do that i can do this deer meat justice is he the one that taught you the cinnamon trick? No, actually. So

a buddy of mine, his name is Vince. He's one of my best buddies. He went out to Houston to visit one of our really good friends. He plays for the Houston Astros. His name's Lance McCullers. And Dallas Keuchel was his teammate. And Dallas Keuchel is like just an absolute hardcore Texan, like lives, breathes Texas. And he uses like cinnamon on like red meat. And Vince brought it back. And we went over, me and my fiance and him and his wife are really good friends. We went over to dinner for their

house one night he was grilling steaks he was putting cinnamon i'm like dude what the hell are you doing he's like shut up just try it just wait till i'm done and try it and i'm like oh my god this is unbelievable and so i i kind of adopted it and um brought it to you guys yeah we did we liked it so much we had it twice this week. Yeah. 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 onxmaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Tell everybody what high-assed means.

So in the baseball world. That's my new favorite term. That's why Pete likes mule deer. He got a mule deer buck that he felt had a high ass. So a high ass means just a big, powerful, muscular butt. And in the baseball world, if you have a high ass, that means that you're probably a strong guy, like strong athletic and you could probably hit a ball far pretty far you're i mean so you gotta have a lot of ass to hit the ball oh damn right man when i hit a ball it doesn't really go anywhere man

well it's always kind of embarrassing well you gotta i have to act like i'm not interested i'm playing you don't have to figure for baseball ste Steve you gotta put your ass into it that's the thing that's why you gotta have a high ass not enough of an ass Yanni what did I tell you earlier about oh chocolate milk and squats damn right

you need to get on that training program Steve yeah you know what happened one time man um the last real heavy duty bit of chocolate milk I got, I had a lot of gastrointestinal upset. This is many years ago. But it turned me off on it. Okay.

Turned me off on chocolate milk. And now I look at chocolate milk and I get leery. Well, I mean, there's other... I was with a girl I had just started dating. And there I was. Having to I had just started dating. And there I was. Having to sneak off every couple minutes. Trying to figure out what was going on. Were you farting in her bathroom towels?

It was just horrible, man. It was horrible. As the writer Ian Frazier put it once, he talked about, sounded like he was yodeling. Like he was yodeling in the bathroom. Oh, fuck. So now that's the chocolate milk, man. I look at it with great suspicion.

Is it a dairy thing? No, it was just a fluke. I was real sick. I got real sick overseas. Gotcha. And I was just not right for quite a long time seth had that yeah seth was sick for uh at least a year he couldn't even date no he had the shit so bad he'd take a year off dating chocolate milk no i don't know what it's

from still to this day i have no clue what is it? Really? Did you go to Costa Rica or something? No. No. They had him. IBS. No, they had him pegged for a real serious affliction. Yeah, Crohn's disease. Yeah. But it just went away. One day, I woke up and it was gone. He woke up, had a nice solid, and it was gone.

Were you stressed? You had it for a year. Couldn't date. Couldn't even date. Were you stressed you had it for a year couldn't even date were you stressed out i mean before do you think stress was did you look stressed out no i don't think i was stressed i haven't seen what time of life what else was going on in your life at the time oh come on hey that's right he's trying to talk me through this yeah he had the shit it was in college yeah it's the worst time ever to have a year leave alone

jeez so high ass the powerful ass strong powerful ass yes yeah typically when you have a strong powerful ass you have strong legs and and like athletic ability and that they'll look for that absolutely athletic ability. And that, they'll look for that. Absolutely. So, when you started playing baseball, how did it come to be? Because what I'm trying to get around to is how you won the home run derby and that's how I found, and then you took

the opportunity to express interest in going hunting, which is pretty funny. Well, so the home run derby, do you mind telling people what you get when you win the home run derby? No, telling people what you get when you win the home run derby no no that's two questions you're asking three questions at once okay which one time so first question how did i start playing baseball oh no i know we're told how you started playing baseball okay so what what was the what was the second question oh i just kind of like

the all of a sudden you made it. You're in the major league. Here you are. Yeah. You're in the major leagues, and then the home run derby comes up. Yeah, so I got the official invite. I got the call from one of the people from the major league baseball office asking if I was going to do it. He was like, would you like to participate? No shit I'd like to participate.

This is like a – that's like the one night a summer my parents let me stay up late at night to watch. Like I have – like I grew up watching the Home Run Derby. Like I never watched the All-Star Game. I watched the Home Run Derby. That was like my thing because I was just in awe of like just how far these guys would just punish these baseballs like you just just absolutely disintegrate these uh like these baseballs in the end of the

night and it's just like it's majestic almost it's it was really cool and um and to be honest I didn't even know what I was saying like after the the Homer and Derby, I just like black, like it was all like, just this blur. Like I had, like, I remember like my cousin, my cousin was the guy that thrown me BP or batting practice. He was the one throwing me the pitches. And after I hit it, I remember just chucking my bat as far as I could in the air.

And my cousin just jumped on me. And then after that, I was just Daddy Yankee put a chain on me. Do you guys know who Daddy Yankee is? No. He's like a famous Latin rapper. He put the Homer and Derby championship chain on me. I got handed the trophy

and then it's like, holy shit, what do I do now? Hold on. Sorry. the fact that your cousin was pitching to you seems a little suspicious or did you get to choose that I chose that yeah oh so everybody gets to choose their pitcher yeah yeah so they're throwing you

pitches meant to be hit yes exactly and my cousin grew up playing baseball he played D1 college baseball St. Bonaventure. I'm not sure if you guys know where that is. Upstate New York. But, yeah, we both kind of grew up around the game.

And it was in Cleveland. And he's from the Cleveland area. And I was just like, you know what? And both my parents are from Ohio. So it was kind of like a whole like homecoming family reunion type thing. And I was just like, what, how crazy would this be just to like have this moment with, I mean, there's, there's a ton of family members there. And to have my cousin Derek like throw to me was just, yeah, you couldn't dream, you

couldn't dream it up better i mean and you win a million dollars yeah um yeah wait how many homers did you hit in the in the derby so i hit 14 uh to knock off santana i hit 20 to knock off acuna and i hit 23 to knock off uh Vladdy Jr. so were any of those guys rookies um Vladdy was and Santana is a seasoned vet and Acuna was a rookie last year signed he was rookie of the year last year so all those guys are very well respected um in the game of baseball and yeah I came out on top it was I mean and then when I got the uh got the interview or when the interview thing it was just like all this everything happened so fast like my family's coming on the field um like I I was like holding back tears like the entire time I was just so just like wow like because coming into spring training

i didn't know if i was going to be playing in the big leagues and then here i am two and a half three months later like winning the home run derby it's like this shit doesn't even make sense to me it's like i was living a dream like it happened so fast and then the interview came up and i was just like uh i mean i'm a big fan of meat eater like i watched yeah what question then the interview came up, and I was just like, I mean, I'm a big fan of Meat Eater. Like, I watched. Yeah, what question did the interviewer ask you? Yeah, why did you?

How did, yeah. So this is how. Two things happened. So he's like, so you made the big leagues out of spring training. You're an all-star as a rookie. Like, you just won the home run derby. You get a million dollars. You get the trophy.

You get the chain. Andy said you got to meet Jerry Seinfeld, which is weird. Is that something you asked for? No. Jerry Seinfeld is just a big New York Mets fan. He was at one of the games and me and him talked for a while. He's a hilarious dude.

What did you guys talk about? It was kind of funny because my dad was a huge Seinfeld fan. And I was like, dude, like, my dad – I remember my dad sitting me down and making me watch shows of you. Like, it's crazy that he's like, I'm such a huge fan. I'm like, how are you a fan of me? Like, that dude is like a legit mogul in New York.

And it's like, like, I don't, I couldn't understand that. He, Jerry Seinfeld, like the Jerry Seinfeld was a fan of me. I,

I just like, there's a lot of things that happened this year that I couldn't comprehend. And he's like, what? And then the guy said, or the ESPN guy, he's like, what could possibly make this year better?

And I'm like, Oh, to go hunting with Steve Rinella. It just, it just like came out. I didn't plan it this wasn't it no offense steve but all that other stuff is like dude it was so amazing it was so fun no it is it is it was so funny so many people sent that to me man like this people kept texting me and be like what the fuck no because i mean i just uh like when I watch your shows,

it's like I love the way that you kind of put things in perspective. And you have kind of like this certain way, I mean, you being a writer and you just have a certain way with words and describing things. It puts a lot of things in perspective. And the way that you kind of treat, not just, not just the animals, but the way you prepare. Cause I love what you do, like especially with the cooking and the preparation of the food. I mean, me, I'm a huge foodie.

I love awesome food and the way that you do try and do the best justice you possibly can for the animal. Like I have the utmost respect for that. And I mean, I kind of wanted like this trip was just so special because I could be able to just kind of watch and learn and, um, be, I mean, kind of pick your brain a little bit. Um, I mean, there's kind of like, I mean, after baseball and like, I'd love to do kind of something that you're doing. Baseball is of the utmost priority, but outdoors and food is a huge passion of mine,

and I know it is for you too. Quite honestly, I felt like we'd get along. Yeah, it was fun. Yeah. So what we did, just to bring people up to speed is uh a friend of mine has a ranch in colorado and he uses the ranch um he's been on he's been matt he's been on the show a couple times um he uses the ranch like he hosts wounded veterans to hunt on his ranch he takes business clients friends uses it for fun like I first came out here to do a TRCP fundraiser like TRCP Theodore Roosevelt conservation partnership will auction off like last year they auctioned

off a deal where four people could come out two could hunt elk and two could fish and so i hunted with um one of the guys yannis hunting with another guy and then cody is a what do you call yourself you're like a ranch manager yeah that hunt man i don't know that works yeah yeah in addition to catching cattle and lions and whatnot. Jack of all trades. There you go. So we did this fundraiser hunt, and it came out here. And Matt has, if you own properties in Colorado, you get these tag vouchers that you're able to use.

So we were able to very much, on the spur of the moment, plan a hunt without needing to do the applications to get a permit. So we got the vouchers. So we came out to hunt deer and then you were able to buy an over-the-counter elk tag. What all, like when we came out to do this, what all were your expectations? And like apprehensions and expectations. I mean, I was, I felt like whatever was going to, I mean, I was just happy to be here. I just wanted to tag along and just kind of learn.

And I just feel really blessed to be here. I mean, all you guys, this whole Meteor team, this whole Meteor experience was just – I mean, I'm going to remember this for the rest of my life. I mean, this was absolutely fantastic. The boys are awesome. Like, you got a hell of a team, Steve. And, like, you guys are fucking awesome. Thanks, Pete.

No, thank you. Thanks, Pete. Thanks to all you guys. When you were imagining it, so now you play baseball and everything you do is filmed. You're filming the game. It's being put on as a spectator sport. Right.

And in a way, you're there to produce a thing that's watched. Whatever it means to you personally, that's watched you know whatever it means to you personally like that's what justifies the whole thing is it's an audience participation thing right um to know that you were going to come and we were going to hunt and we were going to film it for a television show did that make it seem more uh does that make it seem more in line with how your life goes anyways? Yeah. Or did it feel like, oh, I wish we weren't doing that. I wish we were just going out for fun.

No, I mean, because for me, it's like in the world of baseball, it's a game of failure and a game of disappointment. Like if you fail 70% of the time throughout your entire career you're more than likely to end up in the hall of fame 70 of the time you fail and there's a lot of cases where you need 70 of the time like you get up to bat and you're out yeah that's what was funny when i asked you like what happened the first time you got up to bat in the major leagues. You said, I struck out. Yeah, I struck out. Did you strike out swinging or looking at it?

I struck out swinging. It was against a three-time Cy Young winner. What's that? That's like the MVP for pitchers. He's a three-time MVP for the pitching aspect of the game. So the guy's name is Max Scherzer to all you listeners. If you're from the baseball world, you know exactly who he is. But to the guys and gals out there that

aren't familiar with the baseball, this guy is tough. I mean, this guy's probably going to end up being in Cooperstown, which is the Baseball Hall of Fame. And I respect the hell out of him. And, I mean, this guy's just an absolute master of the art of pitching. Are you looking forward to facing him again? Oh, yeah. I love competing.

Have you gotten a homer off him yet? Not a homer, but I got a couple of hits. Got a couple of hits. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. I guess so. Where did I leave off? I can't remember because I got distracted by... Expectations. Oh, yeah.

Was it weird to come out and make a show to be filmed are you just so used to being filmed though i mean i this year i get i mean just in real like going through like real life it's like i don't realize i'm being filmed like during uh during the game because i got to be locked in on what I'm doing. I mean, the cameras are just kind of exterior stuff. I mean, for me, it's like if I'm – I'm just going to be myself because at the end of the day, that's – like I take pride in knowing who I am.

Like I told you, what did I tell you about knowing something? Oh, yeah. I don't want to say it. But, yeah. Is that too – for the podcast? don't want to say it is that but yeah is that too uh yeah maybe make you out to say it what do you want me to say i don't want well maybe you weren't there i'll tell you later okay if it's not podcast friendly i won't say it it's a it's a it's an expression saying you need to know your um know your panga yeah your panga know your so know what you're working with know what you're working with yeah what you're working

limitation what your strengths are what your limitations are no know who you are yeah that's that's the that's the g-rated know who you are um and for me it doesn't pack the punch that right know your panga you know um and for me like i i feel like i'm really comfortable with who i am and if uh someone else wants to have a an opinion then let them have it you know and i mean that's whatever whatever happens and whatever the people think of opinions, like great. But, uh, are you kind of like the added pressures? It's like, for me, it's like, I try and live in the moment and whatever I can do to accomplish, whether it be like putting a good shot on a deer or hitting a baseball,'s um it's honestly pretty similar pretty similar uh

type of uh type of pressures what was your favorite thing about um what was your favorite thing about hunting mule deer i know you liked the moments when we were looking at them yeah i mean i just think they're they're just incredible creatures also it's like i think the mesmerizing thing like they're really cool to look at but also that they could disappear at the blink of an eye like if you're glass and you see them and then let's say you like let's say you kind of just move around to adjust or whatever and then you look back in that same spot they could be gone in a split second i mean these creatures are just um i mean i have a just this utmost respect for them i mean they're almost perfect they're almost perfect this trip

and they're camouflaged really well they're really just super aware of their environment and um i mean they're i mean it's a great challenge i I mean, we hunted really hard these five days. Am I right? I would say we did. We had some obstacles. Yeah. I think that – Cody, back me up on this.

It's like Colorado does the first season, so it's a week long. Then there's some days off. Then the second season is a week long, and there's days off. Then the third season is – I think you get sort of added up up it's a lot of pressure you're right you're exactly right and things get skittish and it's compounded you know throughout the season you know later this season you're right and we had the chance we'd come out we thought oh we'll come out and they'll be rutting and chasing each other around playing grab ass not even kind of none of that yeah uh and then two nights of weather which is wonderful

to be out in but just isn't like that's what you're really hoping for i think in colorado's third rifle season because that's why most people don't come and hunt it and come in second season instead it's because they like this weather they don't want to get their teeth kicked in by the way a lot of locals at least were when i was living in colorado locals all hunted third because they would expect the weather to come in and then put the animals out into the open and we did not have that yeah or a little migration we had a little pre-migration before you guys showed up but you know you you were still in a lot of deer there's still a lot of deer up high yeah it was tough man it was tough but worst case worst comes to worst we didn't shoot anything and got to watch a beautiful sunset or sunrise what would you have thought about that if you didn't

get one if i didn't get one um i know hunting there's no guarantee for success. Same thing with baseball. You're not going to get a hit every time. And I feel like even though our worlds are so different, but the expectation of success isn't just that snap of a finger. That can't be guaranteed. You've got to work for your success. You've got to put yourself in the right position to have that great opportunity. Is that fair to say?

Yeah. Just keep putting yourself in positions. That's the thing now that I'll think about is at a point, it's just a matter of like staying out yeah being out you know if you keep being out like tonight we sat that same we set the same matter night that we sat five nights in a row mm-hmm and still no bucks showed up out there but I'm thinking like how many nights could you actually sit here and not have just like not have one just like a lost one come through right yeah we saw

we saw does tonight that we had never seen yeah the whole time we sat there yeah and then not before tonight last night we saw didn't you see a couple does last last one one it's not like they weren't deer there it's just that opportunity like you we put ourselves in that position it's just that nature just didn't that wasn't in the cards but you know what's funny is we went up because when i was down here doing the the trcp fundraiser during second season brody who comes on the show a lot was down and he went up and scouted that area in all kinds of bucks. And then Matt Cook looked at it. All kinds of bucks. We go up there the first night we go there,

and here's four bucks. Yeah. And I kind of thought of them as money in the bank. I wasn't even kind of thinking about going. I wasn't like... Is that why we didn't go after Sapphire that first night? Well, it wasn't that. It was that.

No, if it had come in range, absolutely. Right. But I was like, no sense in spooking it. No sense in doing a hasty stalk. We'll set up better tomorrow and get them and not spook them. Not knowing that we would never lay eyes on that thing again. Very true. But that's the thing, though.

I mean, same thing with baseball. You could get an absolute meatball right down the middle and expect to see it later on in that at-bat or expect it to see later on in the game. But if the pitcher doesn't give it to you, I mean, then you're SOL. And, I mean, it's kind of the same thing for us. It's like we thought we were going to see at least one for the remainder of the trip. But, I mean, it's not like we didn't work hard for it, you know?

No, five days hunted every morning early, every night till the end mm-hmm and then had that one not quite opportunity and then scratched it out and got a opportunity yeah how did you feel that happen like how did you feel like all of a sudden like we're me going like oh my god get up get up get up get up go what's wrong you didn't care. What's the problem? Yeah, what's the problem? What's the problem? Yeah, so... You didn't crumple under the... You weren't even influenced by my pressure.

No, I hear that good saying earlier. Was it the Navy you said or the Marines that have that saying? Yeah, in the military, it's like slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And that's kind of my method to hitting and my approach to the game of baseball, whether it be offensively or defensively. Because you have to be under control of the situation in order to capitalize. And I mean, thank you, Seth, for spotting it first of all um and i'll spot bucks for you any day pete oh yeah and then uh steve is like helping me direct kind of where to where to

aim on the scope and and where to to um what was it the magnification and stuff like that i mean this wasn't just like yes i shot it but this was like like a team effort there was a lot of different people involved in in the in the sick in that success um yeah we got up there we had a little bit it was like we got up that morning we got up before yeah we got up a little early and i had a pop tart you had a pop tart and i keep blaming my pop tart but i had a pop tart for had a pop tart and i keep blaming my pop tart but i had a pop tart for breakfast and a coffee did you put too much or did you put not enough cream in your coffee so you had too much caffeine and too much sugar man like i'm pretty i'm not like a fragile

person you were that morning i know we had a little hike we got up before i had a pop tart had a little hike and we got into where we wanted to be. And I was shaking so bad I couldn't hold my binoculars up. So I had to take a timeout and lay on the ground and told Seth, who was there to film, I was like, you got to come up on glass, man. I can't even. And I laid down. I offered you the chair.

And you're just like, no, I need to lay down. I laid flat on my back, laid down. Rick got me a little water. Rick got me a little energy bar. Eventually, Rick got back to lay down. I laid down. Rick got me a little water. Rick got me a little energy bar. Eventually, Rick got back to my feet. You could tell I was still incapacitated. I thought you were going to throw up. Yeah, I thought I was going to puke.

I was still incapacitated because I was up full on feeling like I was glassed. Seth's back messing with his camera. All of a sudden, he's like, bawk, bawk. Yeah. Like, bawk. Yeah. Like below us. Yeah. When I'm looking, you're just like, look in that little patch right there. I'm like, where? I didn't realize

that it was that far down. It was a perfect spot. I thought it was maybe a little bit further out, but it was legit. 150 yards, wasn't it? When we ranged it? Yeah, 150 horizontal. I mean, it was right there. Could have jumped on him.

150-yard jump. Maybe if I had one of those flying squirrel suits or whatever to fly down the hillside. Hey, man, that's why I like mule deer, man. They'll hang out in people's yards like anything, right? But now and then when you see a mule deer just lurking through the, you know what I mean? Timberbuck.

They just got like a lurky kind of haunted kind of thing they do now and then, man. It's almost kind of like a swagger. Yeah. It's like they like they're strutting their stuff but then they know they can disappear at any second and him coming down that trail aspens on either side all that brush and that little fern trail he's coming down that was perfect window because like i was gonna kick you in the side of the head if you didn't shoot man no i was sick as i was i was i was planning on shooting but i wanted to be precise i didn't i didn't want to harm the animal in any way i wanted to make it as clean as po clean and humane as possible and

you know i was thinking about giving you kind of an elaborate description of where i wanted you to hit it but like like aim for the but I was just like front shoulder front shoulder and Pete shot the heart out of it yeah I told myself I was gonna I'm aiming for the heart I'm not hitting anything else but the heart um I mean to me I think that's probably the quickest and concise way to do it, and I wouldn't accept anything else. I had a nice, slow-controlled trigger press, and when I let the gun do its thing, I didn't try and stop it from recoiling.

I think the scope may have hit me in the mouth. Yeah. Something, but. Yeah, you look like a vampire a little bit. That's fine um i know when i because i know when i'm when i relax my body it's like my body was almost limp uh and i let the gun do its thing that's when i knew i i stuck it really well that's when i knew i put put the shot right where i wanted it you know and it took took a couple of bounds and bam, piled up.

Yeah. I don't even think it went 15, 20 yards. No, it didn't do nothing. I was pretty happy. Yeah. I felt like a little happy. Steve was real happy. I felt like a little bitch.

That's how happy I get. I felt like a little bitch. I love filming it. I see his face light up like that makes me happy. I felt like a little bitch for crying, but I was just so overcome with joy because I've wanted to go hunting for so long. I just never had the opportunity

because as soon as I entered the world of professional baseball, that work and that time being put in, the hunting stuff got put on a back burner. And having time this offseason and be able to capitalize on that, I mean, this is just a pure blessing. Like you have still no idea how appreciative I am of all you guys. So thank you for having me. I'm going to remember this for the rest of my life.

This was sick. We'll get out again. Hell yeah. When we're doing a show, as people who watch our show will know, we usually, if we're lucky in getting something, we kind of highlight a food preparation in the end. And for this one we're working on why why are you laughing seth because i just you know i know where this is going so

we wanted to do or we wanted to take a uh pete shoulder and and and do some grind so like talk about making good grind burger to do that you need to cut it with pork fat or beef tallow um beef suet sorry not yeah so like beef why do they call it beef suet but they don't know it says pork suet sorry not yeah so like beef why do they call it beef suet but they don't know it says pork suet do they i don't think so yeah so you cut it with beef fat or pork fat and it just so happens that cody has had see how i bring this full circle yeah yeah cody's had a pig that you bought for butchering purposes 27 yes He was a discounted hog. Yeah. Like a 400-pound pig for $27. He was 500-plus when we first picked him up.

Foreclosure pig. Right. Big old fella. Why did the guy want to sell a pig for $27? Why didn't he just slaughter it? I don't know what the situation was. He'd come out of a sale barn i had an order buyer buy him for me

so you got a pig and you fed it on expired produce stand produce through the summer yes sir an expired horse feed throughout the fall yep and uh when I was out here before the pig scared the shit out of me because I was walking along no one told me about the pig and I walked along and I thought I keep telling everybody this but it's funny I thought I was a dead black Angus and I was like what the hell that thing died from and I went up and got pretty close to it before the pig finally woke up turn right no grunt yeah scared the shit out of me then you're like oh yeah i was gonna tell you right failed to mention that but we uh this morning because you've been meaning to because you don't want to feed it through the winter to lose weight you're right and bought him for the intentions of

butchering yeah and it And it just so happened. So the meat eater crew was here. Yeah. And Cody wants us to start a domestic show. Right. Domastics. Domastics. So we had the deer. And then this morning we helped slaughter the pig

and cut some of the back fat off it. And I was a little worried about the fat. I don't know why. Because I just didn't know what that thing's been getting into. Right, right. I can see your situation, but yeah, it's super clean. We've been dealing with pigs a bunch lately too and having this question arise often

about what pigs have been getting into and we're going to eat them. Yeah, because me and Yanni, we just bought a pig ourselves, but it was dead. we bought a butchered pig from a guy that a friend of ours the guy we work with kevin harlander who's been on the show um he raised some pigs and we bought a pig from him he was feeding the pigs i don't know if it was solely but barley mash right what's left over from beer making and so we got that pig now but then we went to your pig and took some of the back fat off and then got back here and i don't and i was nervous about the fat wouldn't be good because i know the pig's like old yeah he was older losing

weight still had one of his nuts kind of kind. So we took a thin slice of that back fat. The back fat comes off like, what, half inch thick, Yanni? I'd say an inch. Yeah, I'd say probably an inch. No. Yes. Those pieces we had were not an inch thick. Well, why don't you cook them down?

Oh. Let's go three quarters. Let's meet halfway. There you go. I'm not going to meet halfway to wrongness. They're not an inch thick. That's an inch. Five-eighths.

Okay. Comes off a five-eighths inch sheet. Five-eighths. And we cut them into like, we cut all the back fat into like these sort of like 6x6 or 7x7 squares of 5-8 inch thick back fat. And put it in the freezer so it'll start to set up nice. Real clean white fat. Yep. Boned out the deer leg and cubed that in one inch cubes.

Put the squares of fat from Beans the Pig, that was his name, in the freezer until it got firm. Slice it in thin slice, and then put a thin slice in a pan to test it for goodness before we ground up all the deer meat. What did you think of that pig fat? I think that was the best little pork crackling I've ever had. That was tasty as hell, especially when you put a little salt on it. That was really good pork fat.

Plus, plus. And then we ground up. We were going to do 10%, but we did like a healthy grind. I think we didn't do all of it. How much did we do? We did like maybe like't do all of it how much do we do we did like whole like maybe like two like slabs of it i'd have to guess we did about 20 so we did one whole meal to your shoulder and then cut in 25 20 i would say of that weight in of beans as fat like a healthy 20 yeah

let me ask you this pete just give me yes or no answer did did did beans go down easy he died a hero that's all i'm gonna say um wonderful fat then ground up do we know how beans guys name yeah why is beans named beans well everybody called i named him but everybody calls their pig bacon you know let's go eat some bacon or whatever ham hambo their pig yeah you neck name them ham bone or that's old bacon or that's a pork chop or pork and beans exactly i didn't know that was a thing i know wilbur yeah and and uh charlotte oh yeah we saw a black widow no charlotte was a spider right yeah yeah yeah black widow my tent that you guys let live no no we killed oh i had to be we found a black

willow in your camp black widow in your camp rick argued to leave it there to kill you not very long you made a quick case of like, you're going to leave that around to bite somebody? And I was like. A displaced black widow in Cody's camp. Yeah, so he grounded up. And man, really good. The burgers we made. Burgers, I mean, that's probably the upper echelon of burgers,

if I said so myself. Those are awesome burgers. And what do you feel you're going to bring your whole deer home? Yes. Do you feel that you'll eat it really fast and be done with it? I remember when we took Joe Rogan deer hunting for the first time, he brought his deer home. Man, I feel as if it feels like two or three weeks later.

He was at a deer meet? His deer was gone. He just went home and ate it, man. Do you think he'll milk it out or do you think he'll just eat it? I don't know. I got some really close friends that I'm sure would appreciate some of it. I got some family members. I know I'm probably going to have some it. I got some family members. I know I'm probably going to have some backstrap for Thanksgiving.

Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, I think that, I mean, if we have it, I'd probably rather eat that than go to the grocery store because, A, I know where it came from. It's got packed with way more vitamins and nutrients than like a regular cow you get from the grocery store. It's superfood, man.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think that I'd probably rather cook a steak from the backstrap or do like an osso bucco than from the deer meat rather than go to the grocery store. I don't know if I'm going to buy red meat until the deer's gone. No, that's advisable. That's what I would do. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery,

24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you, 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 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 on x out if you visit on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all um do you uh you have our our wild game cookbook i do yes um you know i think you ought to make what for thanksgiving yeah is make the uh make the cauliflower puree okay in the backstrap dish hell yeah so it's a recipe from our buddy po Puder. Okay. Yeah, I mean. Very, very Thanksgiving-y. Perfect. Because I don't think that, I've talked about this before.

I don't think that on Thanksgiving, if you want to have a traditional Thanksgiving, eat deer meat. Absolutely. They know those sons of bitch and pilgrims ate deer meat. It's debated whether or not they ate turkeys i mean so if you want a real thanksgiving have yourselves to do i don't think they had cauliflower puree they wish they did yeah but i also don't think they had apple pie they wish they did as well yeah yes so i think you should make that because it's a very it's like you're gonna have

you're gonna have your wife's family over um your girlfriend's no so we family no we split uh we split holidays so we'll be up in um where her family is in in boston for uh for think for for christmas we'll be in in tampa for thanksgiving so you'll be cooking it for your family yeah yeah man do the backstrap with the cauliflower puree yeah absolutely very very thanks Very, very Thanksgiving-y. And also... And we're going to send you home with a sack of beans as fat. You going to make cracklins for everybody? I'm going to make cracklins.

If you send me home with a thing of cracklins, I'm probably going to make that as soon as I land for my fiance. I'm just going to tell her, just hold on, just taste it, and just tell me after you eat it. And then she's, I mean, I was kind of skeptical at first. I mean, I'll try anything.

I love cracklings, but that was like the best crackling I've ever had. What you can do too is render all that fat out, cube it up render it out and then you have a little bucket of special lard hell yeah cook your eggs in cook your eggs in make some biscuits whatever kind of stuff you can do make pie crust i made mincemeat i used to have bear lard from black bear and i made a really nice pie crust for mincemeat pie

nice with that with that bear lard nice yeah I mean there's a ton of stuff that you could use it's all about being creative that's why like I mean that cookbook is is helpful in a lot of ways because there's a lot of really creative ways to to dress up while game as as opposed to just doing the old old-timey old-fashioned recipes and that's a way to kind of I'm not saying like – kind of put like an elegant twist on something from the field. And that's why I wanted to get the book.

You know, yeah, it was a really fun time to have you out to go. Thank you. Because we didn't really know each yeah i didn't know not really didn't know you at all but like i just kind of like watch how you sort of handle yourself and i thought you were an intriguing person and um thank you rather than liking you last through the whole week i only well i liked you more every day thank you yeah i think everybody did man it was really fun to have you thank you um i mean i just try and be as positive as i possibly can be and regardless of every situation and um i guess that's kind of like my motto i mean i don't want to be any any negative because i i think that's i mean it's i don't think negativity is ever helpful if that makes sense you know it's funny you told me at one point not bragging but you told me

we're having a conversation about complaining you tell me matter of factly you're like i don't complain but not like you're bragging about you're just like stating a a point that you just don't complain just like make that part of your life yeah i i don't i don't like to because like this is a great this is a great way to go through life it's outstanding but hard to pull off man because like if like let's i mean there's a couple mornings where it's fucking cold yeah like if i were to say oh man it's fucking cool yeah no shit it's cold like that's stating the obvious like that's not going to make it any warmer you know what i mean so you just

you just grind through it and i mean when i got sick and laid down did you think less of me no absolutely not i did i was like oh steve-o's getting soft our fearless no he's weak no happens to everybody i mean pop-tart think about when was the last time you had a pop-tart the morning before yeah we've been hitting we got a whole i don't know how we wound up i didn't know i didn't know you're hitting the pop-tarts heavy well i was eating pop-Tarts and cream of wheat, and that was the only day. Somehow, getting up at 4.30, I wake up hungry. Somehow, getting up at 4, I wasn't hungry yet. I needed one more half hour to get hungry.

But also, didn't you say you didn't sleep that well that night? Sleep's everything. I had too much to drink the night before. Too much alcohol. Because we had the toasted thing the night before right yes yeah so I had too much fun doing that I loved it that was awesome hopefully I surprised a couple people oh we're gonna edit it down so you just have all wrong answers no we won't do that to you okay we'll do a fair representation okay uh yeah we filmed an episode

of our thing uh get toasted with pete so if you stay tuned on on youtube you'll find get toasted um yeah and you got to try the uh fancy whiskey that i haven't i haven't even gotten to try it yet what'd you think was it good i thought it was outstanding dude it's because you said right now yanni didn't you say it's like the the secret was uh the kentucky what is it the kentucky whiskey kentucky bourbon you bring it up to montana that's right and it's the montana uh snow melt water that's right that's that's hell of a touch like job well done on the on the mediator Special Edition Whiskey. That shit's awesome. No, it's high quality, man.

It's good. Top notch. I'm drinking right now. I drank it already. Now I'm just eating cherries out of the bottle. I make a special drink where I put bourbon in there on ice, and I put a bunch of cherries in there. So Manhattan?

I don't know. Yeah, that's what they call that it's good it is good we have a recipe on the website you should check it out absolutely you're going home with a bottle of it um it's called a meat hatton that our buddy that works for us morgan made up he's hunting chuckers right now you know what a chucker is what's a chucker i'm asking do you know what a chucker is i'm asking you i don't know what a chucker what's ch's a chucker? I'm asking. Do you know what a chucker is? I'm asking you. I don't know what a chucker is. What's a chucker? It's a bird from Eurasia called a red-legged partridge.

And they like cliff faces. They like the rockiest, driest, nastiest. It's like they eat rocks. And they've been introduced around, but they do well in places like Snake River Canyon. Nevada has some chukar spots, just like rugged sheep country. Utah. Okay, sheep country. That's it.

He likes to hunt chukars. Cool. But yeah, look up that recipe. Check it out, the meat hatton. I will. He infused bacon into it? Is that how he made the meat hatton? Yeah.

Put some beans cracklings in there. Ooh, now you're talking. There you go. Yeah, it's good, man. Cody, what's the status on the beans bacon? The beans baking? He's hanging. He's hanging right now?

Yeah, he's in chill mode for a bit. What else do we want? We had a couple things we want to touch on now before we wrapped up. Yep, for sure. Oh, me and Yanni are running for president. We're doing a write-in campaign. I'm voting for you guys.

Are you really? Yep. We're doing a write-in. It's Ronello patella's 2020 all the you know normal people when they run for president they take all the money that they get and they use it to keep running for president the money we get um all the money we get through our bumper stickers and yard signs and t-shirts we're using to start filling up our piggy bank for access projects absolutely hell yeah for hunting and fishing access I never gonna take our big piggy bank and we're gonna continue

to notify people about how this is gonna work we've got some other plans in the works on access projects to help help increase hunting and fishing access and so we need to but it's gonna take dollars so this is the step but this is one of the first steps and getting our dollars together is running for president um our buddy ronnie bame who's been on the show he's going to run the atf for us um because he he likes alcohol and tobacco and firearms and uh ryan callahan is going to be our interior secretary. Perfect. A lot of people wait to announce all the appointments

until after they win, but we're so positive to win that we're just announcing all of our appointments now. And that's awesome. I mean, I really appreciate you guys doing that because... Running for president? Not just running for president. I mean, that's a given uh but sacrifice right but also it's the uh kind of the thought of uh kind of making hunting of

hunting and fishing available to the general public um yeah that's our you know our campaign slogan yeah better hunting and fishing for america because um in in the state of florida a lot of fisheries available that's that's not the issue but the hunting stuff that's really the issue it's there's not there's pretty much barely any public land available to to go hunt i mean we hear a lot of complaints from from floridian hunters yeah who, like, they live in the fishing paradise. Yeah. I mean, I love to fish. Yeah. But they complain about hunting to us a lot. Yeah.

I mean, I'm a flats fishing enthusiast. I love trout, redfish, snook. I mean, it's an awesome, awesome type of fishing. And big fan of it, big fan of Florida fishing. Like, it's just so diverse. I think it's some of the best fishing in the entire world. But on the flip side of that coin, having readily accessible hunting opportunities

just isn't for the normal person. I mean, there's just not enough like public land to hunt and the public land that is available to hunt. It's crowded as hell. It's crowded as hell. It's almost to the point where it can be unsafe, especially, especially during gun season. So, um, the fact that you guys are doing that, um, especially if you're, that's gonna, that's going to impact my home state directly if you guys invest in properties there to make available to the public. So I think that'd be outstanding. Well, we'll keep at it.

To find out, yeah, to follow the campaign, just go to themeateater.com. Or, oh, you know what I wanted to mention? The buck you got was a pretty nice damn buck for a first buck. Yeah. It's dynamite. It was a real nice buck. I put a pretty nice damn buck for a first buck yeah it's dynamite real nice buck i put a picture up on instagram i not and people are like we're talking about a buck a guy shot

that got impaled on a stick and i was going to put it on instagram too long time ago and people were like dude it's not on there i just got to think it felt a little gratuitous to put it on there but the picture of your box already there right people can go there see it they'll find our campaign announcement video mm-hmm they'll find Ronnie Bame announcing that he's gonna run the ATF for us all there what other what else we were in top of any real quick oh no we let's plug the Back 40 giveaway. Oh, yep. So we bought a modest farm in Michigan. 64 acres. We call it the Back 40 because it's always important to undersell things,

not oversell. We bought a place called the Back 40. It's 64 acres in Michigan. And we're doing a bunch of habitat work on it. Mark Kenyon's running the project for us. We're doing a bunch of habitat work on this property. Eventually, we're going to give the property away. But in the meantime, we're going to give away a hunt

where people could come out and go out and hunt with me and Mark. And me and Mark will be more like your errand boys because the winner will get the cherry spot, and we'll just be there to facilitate and cook wild game at night and hang out. So we're doing this giveaway hunt. And you find that too at TheMeteor.com. A lot of announcements.

Yeah. You need to sign up for the newsletter. Yes, that's a good way to get yourself entered for that. And our new Whitetail Weekly newsletter. Quick question about that. What type of person are you looking for to win? Oh, it's randomized. Or is it completely random? Randomized.

Okay. Yeah, it's not like an essay contest. Gotcha. It's randomized. Gotcha. Some of them like to have a good time, you know, into hunting. Well, I don't know. Maybe they hate hunting. They haven't won yet.

I can't imagine someone entering the contest if they don't like hunting. It would seem weird. It would seem weird that one would do that. I'm expecting it to be a hunting enthusiast. But just picture this, like someone not just winning the contest just out of spite.

To save a deer. Just sitting there in the tree stand with their arms crossed and their mean eyebrows with me going, what's the problem? They did that with the grizzly bear. Oh, yeah. I would love to know how many people actually. Protest interest. Quite a few, I heard.

Yeah. Actually got notice that they were going to be drawn for a tag well one guy for sure uh oh yeah you know you're right you're right you're right he's a wilder photographer so magnuson yeah no that's probably some guy that hangs out in the park too much um one of the things like rick we're gonna yeah i'm gonna release it isn't that ironic when we uh when we win the presidency right even before then we're gonna release a detailed platform like all the things ways that which it's gonna be better hunting and fishing for america rick's gonna hate this one, but one of them is going to be that a national parks wildlife management is handed over to the state.

And the state will, in the same spirit and regulatory structure in which the surrounding lands are managed for hunting, the national parks will be managed for hunting and during hunting season only those licensed hunters will be allowed in the park it's gonna be wonderful very controversial very controversial position but it's gonna be it's gonna cut down on revenue to you for the park yeah unless you charge us but i'm like elizabeth warren man I got a plan for that. I'll tell everybody about it later. So would you put... Would the person that applying for those tags, would they have to pay more to hunt in the park?

I don't know. Think about doing something called the Yellowstone Super Tag. And it'd be like a handful of people would draw a Yellowstone Super Tag. And the Super Tag is good for you. It's good for one of everything and you can, you can transfer them to your buddies. So if you drew the Yellowstone super tag, it's like bison, elk, moose, goat, sheep,

black bear. They got a big backlog of maintenance. If you could help close that budget gap. Yeah, no, this is all going to make sense. It's going to be a wonderful country. Everything's going to be so much better. Pebble mine is done, dead. Michigan's getting a dove season.

We're going to be hunting the national parks. It's going to be a win for hunters in England. We'll be hunting on Sundays. Pennsylvanians will be hunting on Sundaysays wait that's a rule in pennsylvania yeah it counts they're fighting it they're fighting it the first thing that's gonna happen the first thing we're gonna sign into law me and oyanis we're gonna sign into law making it illegal um illegal to prohibit Sunday hunting. And if you discard a wild turkey's thighs, it's a capital, a federal capital, it's a death penalty offense to discard a wild turkey's thighs.

We're going to be efficient too. We're not going to even have to run for second term. We're going to get it all done in four. Perfect. Yeah. Be back to enjoying the fruits of our labor. I love sweet. A lot of habitat. So you're telling me

people get rid of the thigh meat? Not after four years of having them whittled away. It just boggles. Oh yeah, no, they'll throw the thigh meat away. We're going to have black-booted thugs that kick your door down and haul you off

if you throw out your thiamine. And, yeah, ANWR, I'm going to give it full wilderness protection. I like it. You're cutting across all the boundaries. Oh, dude. It's fantastic. The country is going to be so...

United ready for the craziest moderate ever. The most extreme moderates ever. Get your bump. The most liberal conservatives. If you stand for hunting and fishing, get your bumper stickers now. This was probably, I was the worst deer hunter I've ever been this week. You didn't scout up a single thing. I found some deer. Matt

and I took a little trip down south to where the deer were possibly migrating to. We found some deer. Did he say they were elk? No. He didn't? No. He thought he saw some elk. We didn't see any elk. Okay.

We found some deer and we could have possibly gone and hunted there, and it could have panned out for us if we needed to. But, yeah, it was rough, rough hunting for me this week. Then you went back in the morning. That place had gotten Colorado'd. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. I thought – I knew in the back of my head, I'm like, there ain't no way that this little sneaky spot hasn't been there.

Is that sneaky? Yeah, and so I went there in the morning. I was the sixth truck to pull up. Yeah, so no, I don't have anything great to give you as a final thought other than I was just sad. I'm like itching. I need to to go home and I'm trying to right now plan my week out to figure out when's the first day I can play hooky and go hunting yeah and try to get my mojo back over the weekend we're gonna um me my

kids I don't want to see me my kids are taking Tracy deer hunting yeah that's cool but you guys I'm taking Tracy deer hunting and my kids are taking Tracy deer hunting. Oh, that's cool. But I'm taking Tracy deer hunting, and my kids are coming along to confuse the matter. Wow. Just you? You're going to be the only other adult? Yeah. And Tracy and three kids?

Yeah, my wife's out of town. That's going to be a lot on your plate. Seth might come with. Seth, you should go help Steve out. No, you help Tracy out and I'll yell at my kids. I'm in. Cody, any final thoughts? I think

my thought is the deer and elk seasons are going to get progressively better throughout the years if the structures changed. They're talking about changing the season structures in Colorado. A lot of pressure like we talked earlier on the show. To make it that everything isn't over the counter. Right.

It has to happen. It does. It has to happen. That's my thought. It's not sustainable. It's going to be unpopular, but it just... And after seeing what you guys went through this hunt, because it was kind of tough with the pressure

and the outside pressure and whatever from... Yeah, even if you don't... Yeah. Even if there's just a cutoff, there's going to have to be... Something's got to... Something. Something's going to give.

Something's got to give. They don't want to destroy the reputation that they've built uh rick uh what did i i enjoyed the fact that you guys have such a an amazing like ability to navigate the vernacular of like hunting like when you're talking hunting with it doesn't matter if it's like sport like fishermen from from Florida or like duck hunting or all these different forms of hunting and fishing. You like know the lingo. And you never know what we're talking about. And I sort of am.

Yeah. Like I'm like barely hanging on. Or I'll try to ask a question. I'll like the thought behind the question is right, but I like don't use any of the right words or whatnot. So I got to witness you do that with sports, with baseball, and it was just fantastic to ask questions that were good questions, but using... Just not know how to ask them.

Yeah, not even know the words to ask the question, and I just kind of enjoyed watching that. Who knew that there were two leagues in Major League Baseball, right? I didn't know that. NL, right? I didn't know that. Like NL and AL? You didn't know that? National League and American League. And they got different rules.

Yeah. Yeah, so all that stuff. Like, I mean, you know, I played Little League and learned about all that stuff and watched baseball. No, I liked it, man. I'm like, not only this. Listen, I'm like a big-time Mets fan now, man. Yeah.

I mean, you should be. I'm going to have my face painted and shit now when I'm at the Mets. No, to be able to pick the brain of somebody that's in the big leagues. Watching YouTube videos of Pete hitting homers. I get all excited now. I mean, it is like unreal. So, yeah, it was cool being able to. You look so much older and different when you're up there hitting them homers.

Because I know what I'm doing. Oh, and yeah, and the other thing is Steve's ability to kind of in those moments of high pressure, you know, he's mentoring. You know, I've watched him interact with many a hunter mentoring. You know, a buck shows up and he gets all excited using that word yeah it is a it's a mentor relationship and you're really good at it but in that moment of like i've heard that i'm not well i feel differently but in that moment in that moment of like it's go time your level of patience uh like you're projecting your own like i'm doing this now and it just you

know it takes somebody that's not used to doing it as much a little time to get comfortable or whatever but pete stayed true to his own like yeah and yeah my process and so i would almost call him uh resistant to my mentoring he in that. He was resistant to the frenetic nature of your mentoring strategy there. But he stayed calm. I mean, that moment is intense, right? There's like a two to three second window that you got to make the shot. And with somebody like barking in your ear like, go, go, go, go, go. It was not.

A whisper. Yeah. It wasn't a whisper. And he got it done. It was a pretty fantastic moment. Seth? Yeah, man. I'm going to start watching more baseball too.

Oh, let's watch it together, man. We should. We'll go over to Yanni's house. And the beautiful house. Yeah, because I'm onanni's house. There's no TV there, bud. We'll get your little computer out. You know what the beautiful thing is? I don't know if you can stream. You guys are two hours behind us.

So 7.05 Eastern time is when the game starts. So at 5.05 when business hours are done, you guys can chill, relax, hang out at the office for an extra hour or so. I got to go home and make dinner. Or you could watch it while making dinner. Yeah. It's a relaxing game to watch. Yeah.

It's fantastic. Swing and a miss. There's a lot of that, by the way. Yeah. A lot of failure. All right, man. Do you got any final thing you want to add? Yeah, just kind of not just learning from you, Steve,

but just kind of learning from everybody. I mean, everyone has just, I mean, Cody, I never knew dogs were used to hunt mountain lions. That's just a whole different world to hunting. That was, that's just nuts. Did you know they were used to round mountain lions. That's just a whole different world to hunting. That was, that's just nuts. Did you know they were used to round up stray cattle? I learned that just right now and that your dogs are just multi-talented. And I mean, to be able to manage that and I mean,

that sounds like an absolute rodeo. It's a cool feeling for sure. Yeah. That's nuts. Um, I mean, hell, I mean what you do like on that ranch.

I mean, I just kind of saw like this small little sample size of it, but damn man, you're a fucking Jack of all trades. And that's, that's awesome to see like a true outdoorsman, true, uh,

just true cowboy. Like it's in Southern Colorado. That Colorado, that's it, man. I mean, I feel like you're a part of a dying breed. I mean, Giannis, just you. I'm not a cowboy. You're not a cowboy, but you're an ex-fishing guide. Like, you're there when, I don't think we mentioned that we went fly fishing for an hour and a half for an hour and a half an hour and a

half um I mean it was uh that was awesome I mean I mean Seth you're there taking pictures and you spotting the buck and um I mean I think you're the uh closest one to to my age right Matt how old are you you're 35 so i'm the youngest so you're the youngest so i guess me and you are kind of the the young i mean i'm the youngest one yeah but i feel like me and you kind of connect on kind of like a similar wavelength uh from a similar lens and um i mean i mean rick i mean i i have a hell of a hell of respect from what you do because you have to get the right angles and being a part of the baseball world. I know kind of like all the camp. I don't know it, but I'm familiar with having to get the different takes at different angles, changing the lens, the light.

And I can't imagine how difficult that is, like moving around quietly, not being able to make a sound sort of quietly it's sort of no that's rick's extremely quiet while steve's yelling at you the whole time that's that's that's like one of the best parts is watching steve yell right it's more of a stare than a yell it's yells of love love. Lastly, Steve, I felt like, I don't know, it's like the way that you kind of, I mean, Rick put it in a really good way. Like you were mentoring me because I haven't hunted since my grandpa passed. When I was in, I haven't, and then after that, like I was in college and baseball kind of took over and I've always had this affinity for like outdoor activities and being able to come out here and do this and you being like one of the main mentors.

I feel like all of you guys were mentors in a way. But Steve, like the way that you – and the cool cool thing is is like even though it's like the first day like you weren't afraid to say shit like you're just like pete stop stomping around quit dragging your feet like i felt like you're the older brother like i never had like that went me into shape but did it in a way where it's like you you cared what i did like um like letting me take that first shot on the deer like like trying to work your ass off, putting me in that position to have a successful hunt. Like that's, like, I'm so appreciative of that.

I'm appreciative of all you guys. Matt, like this is your first shoot. Like you're a rookie on this thing. I know he's not on the pod, but like, I mean this whole crew and then Matt, the owner, I mean, hell, this is a team effort. And all you guys kind of teaching me different little things of the big world of outdoors and outdoor activities. I mean, I'm just so appreciative just to be a part of this.

So I can't thank you for having me for just all this. I'm going to remember this for the rest of my life. This is fucking electric. to be a part of this so i can't thank you having me for just all this this is i'm gonna remember this for the rest of my life this is this is fucking electric so thank you thank you i can't thank you enough thank you man yep yeah thank you ladies and gentlemen peter lonzo thank you very much home run king thank you fellas, fellas. The power platform. The power platform. So that's PS to the final note. Steve mentioned that we're on in the episode. It's going to be aired as just the platform.

But Cody's just like. It's a platform called the platform. The platform called. But Cody's just like, we don't got a name for it. Oh. And that's the platform. Yeah, it's only like two months old so because you guys christened it yeah cody cody cody built that thing right yeah i had help from a couple friends but yeah exactly and then he's just like we don't got a name for it so i was just like pete platform

like no that's that can't be that and i was like power the power platform platform is sweet though yeah yeah it's built there i think it's important to mention because matt does a whole bunch of haunts for wounded vets and so it's a way to get like is it full-on like uh chair accessible exactly yeah we're gonna put a ramp on it and it'll be wheelchair wheelchair accessible yeah super cool place for the veterans the wounded warriors to come and enjoy what we have for sure so it's the power platform boom got it all right pete thanks again thank you thank you everyone for having until next time man okay everyone if you like meat eater and our guest here that you just listened to, Pete Alonzo,

go to YouTube and check out our show, Get Toasted, which is our outdoor trivia show where we test people's outdoor knowledge. Pete did a pretty bang-up job. It's funny. We drank bourbon. We had some laughs. YouTube, Meat Eater, Get Toasted, Pete Alonzo. And also you can scroll back and check out episode one with the beautiful and lovely Brian Callen. 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.