The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 200: ‘Faced on ‘Nog: The Holiday Special

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with Anthony Licata, Ryan Callaghan, Phil Taylor, Mark Kenyon, Samantha Bates, Corinne Schneider, Ben O'Brien, and Janis Putelis. Topics discussed: Trippin' on nutmeg; cutting corn with Doug Duren; Cal as the ultimate elf; how MeatEater's Whiskey makes the best eggnog in the world; Christmas hunting and fishing traditions; why you should buy Kenyon’s new book, "That Wild Country"; Santa reads a hunting poem; Latvian lead throwing as a way to predict your future; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. Merry Christmas, everyone. We've got a different kind of podcast experience for you today. Today is our Christmas extravaganza variety show. We'll sip some eggnog, talk holiday hunting traditions, Christmas dishes, worst gifts ever, and Santa Claus may even pay us a little visit.

Plus, we've got our very own meat-eater caroling choir singing tunes. So hang around us for grand old time. All right, everyone. It's the Some Bitchin' Christmas episode. Now, we're going to do drinks. We're going to do eggnog drinks. We're going to predict futures. Yanni's going to guide us through predicting

our futures by the Latvian tradition of melting down lead and then throwing it into a bucket. That's right. Then you take the lead out once it's cooled and you hold it up to a light and it casts a hand puppet.

Yeah, the bucket's got some cold water in it if anybody's wondering how it cools down. And then you hold it up and make a hand puppet with it. That's right. And then the shape tells you what's going to happen to you. Well, not necessarily shape,

but everybody else in the room that's looking at the shape will then tell you what they see in that shape and tell you what's going to happen to you next. Nah, I'll do my own. Thanks. Okay. And we're also filling in with our special song.

We got a whole big thing to do. Most importantly, though, we got to run through our introductions. I'm Anthony Licata. When someone says happy holidays, what comes to your mind? Christmas. Really? People say that. Christmas comes to mind, but I'm a 4th of July man myself. That is the perfect holiday for me.

Fireworks, summer, bonfires, doesn't get any better than that. Cal? I'm Ryan Callahan. And, yeah, I enjoy holidays, but I like them for the time off. So you like the ones that include some time off. Yeah, where I can go, you know, hunting and fishing. Okay. Maybe do some cooking and laundry and whatnot.

I also wish that everyone who heard this right now could see Cal. Oh, Cal's got an elf get-up on with big ears. And I was just having a CWD. I was having a chronic wasting disease conversation with Cal and there's two things tripped me up.

One, it's hard to like argue with someone dressed up as an elf. And two, I was imagining that Cal had all these reindeer friends

and that his community was being annihilated by CWD and the ways in which that would impact him emotionally. Yeah, not in your backyard, but over in mine. Yeah, so I do think that I like the ideas of, like, you don't necessarily need to hear Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever when somebody says, hey, happy...

It's more like, I give enough of a shit about you to say, I hope you have a good time doing whatever. Yeah, well, what you could start doing is saying, if you're having some time off, hope you enjoy it.

Instead of happy holidays. Go outside, get some laundry done enjoy enjoy whatever time off you might be getting from work yeah shout that after him Phil hey yeah I I think of Christmas I grew up with Christmas love the the smells the food the lights Janice hi Steve my favorite holiday when someone says happy holidays The lights. Yanis. Hi, Steve. My favorite holiday, when someone says happy holidays, or what am I thinking of? I already told you, winter solstice. You like that one.

Yeah. Mark Kenyon. Yep. You stole my thunder there, Mark Kenyon. Oh, you wanted to say it? Go ahead. Next. Next.

Mark Kenyon here. Yeah, I'm a fan of Christmas and being merry for whatever you want to celebrate, but I'll say that about Christmas, what I think it's got over a lot of other 4th of July type holidays is the music. I'm a Christmas music man. Yeah, but you're a Billy Joel man.

I got pigeonholed into that unfairly. Dude, when someone tells me they're a Billy Joel man, you want to know the rest of their life. When they're talking about music, do you want to know what I hear? Mm-hmm. The piano man. That's the noise that enters my head when you talk about music,

now that I know you're a Billy Joel man. Here's the thing, though. To the point where we said, Mark, what do you like? And Mark said, I like Billy Joel. But that is not true. That's not how it happened. If I do recall, though, you listed off a whole bunch of Billy Joel songs,

just as many as I could produce during that conversation. Yeah, but I could also list my enemies. Fair enough. I could list the Axis powers during World War II and I'd like them. Christmas music, though. You like Christmas music?

I like Christmas music. Yeah. I'm with you Mark. Thank you. Sam. Wait who's your favorite Christmas artist? Billy Joel's Christmas album.

I know. Frank Sinatra. Ooh. That's a good pick. I like that. Or Bing. Or Bing Crosby. My old man love.

Let's play down in Steve's world some more Mark. My old man love because my old man is Italian. I remember you told me My old man love Sinatra. Yeah. Or bright eyes or My old man loved, because my old man's Italian. I remember you told me. My old man loved Sinatra.

Yeah. Old Bright Eyes or Blue Eyes, whatever the hell they call them. Not Bright Eyes. That's not a bad band. But yeah, Old Blue Eyes. He never wrote a thing. He never wrote a thing. He just like would interpret people's songs, whatever that means.

He did it his way, Steve. He did. That's very true. All right, Sam. Hi, my name's Sam. First time on the show. First time on the show. First time on the show for right now. But my favorite.

Well, yeah, I mean, that's true with anything that's the first time. Yeah, it is. When I think of holidays, I think of Christmas. We were a typical Catholic family and went to church every Christmas. Good for you. Oh, thank you. Now I don't get gifts for anyone for Christmas. You wanted to strip the commercialism right out

of it. Yeah, and I'm not really a good gift giver, so I don't really want to give a gift that everyone's just going to hate anyways. Yeah, that's a good point. But this year, I'm going to make... You should just give them money. I should just give them money. I'm going to make jerky for my deer this year.

You know what my brother made for everybody for Christmas this year. He bought a thing to make, I think he makes 50 tubes at a time and he makes deer fat chapstick. Ooh, that's a good idea. With all natural 70% deer fat. It's got beeswax and various oils, like essential oils. He doesn't believe in essential oils, but said he uses it for his chapstick and it's a wonderful product. And he's able to make 50 at a time in this special little tube holder he's got. Dude, this stuff is really.

Are these for sale anywhere? Yeah. He's not selling them, and he didn't put glycerin in it. So I'm worrying about the shelf stability. I think it's glycerin or glycol or something. It's like a food-safe preservative. We used to use it making trapping bait. You could take some meat, cat meat, whatever, and rot it down

and then put glycerin in it to stop the rot. And I remember it was like a food-safe deal. He's not using it. So, I don't know about the shelf stability of deer tallow chapstick, but dude, you put this on your lips, it is good stuff, man. Because he had to render it. No, he rendered it out. Yeah, so I wonder.

He rendered it out, put the beeswax in there, put some aromatics in there, all natural. You think that like, oh yeah, it's like the Tom and Jerry's chapstick, man. How is that not in the meat eater store right now? That seems like something we absolutely need to have. Well, I think there's probably some kind of FDA component to it. What does Tom and Jerry's of chapstick mean? Oh, how they brag up how they got real simple ingredients. Oh, Ben and Jerry's. It's Ben and Jerry's of Chapstick mean? Oh, how they brag up, how they got real simple ingredients. Oh, Ben and Jerry's.

I'm confusing Ben and Jerry's with their Uncle Tom's deodorant. What's that deodorant? Tom's of Maine, not Uncle Tom's. My kids are confusing Tom's of Maine with the famous book Uncle Tom's Cabin. My kids have been recently really me. This is confusing. Tom's of Maine with the famous book Uncle Tom's Cabin. My kids have been recently really into Tom and Jerry, so I didn't know that those guys had a chapstick. You know what I'm talking about. Maybe it's even Breyers.

Who is it that has, like, they make a big deal out of how nothing's in the ice cream? You're right. It's probably Ben and Jerry. All right, let's start out. We're going to make some drinks. Corinne, what are we going to have? What's our holiday drink for our special holiday special? Our holiday drink is eggnog.

We're going to use our meat eater straight bourbon whiskey. And I'm going to basically dump all the ingredients into our Westin blender, and it's going to be like a five-minute nog. It's from scratch. From scratch. Raw eggs. Raw eggs. Raw eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, half and half, heavy cream, milk, sugar, and our bourbon.

We were having a conversation before we got started, and Kareem was going to make this drink. Is it, I know from reading Tom Robbins, what book is the one that has the Tarzan's in Tom Robbins novel? Where he's going, it's like Tarzan is tripping on nutmeg and he encounters Jesus in the desert. Oh, sounds great. See, I know the drug reference from Malcolm X because when Malcolm gets thrown in the desert. Oh. Sounds great. See, I know the drug reference from Malcolm X. Because when Malcolm gets thrown in the clink, like his kind of mentor in there gets him level-headed on nutmeg and warns him. It's the only, don't ask him for it again.

Oh, okay. Yeah. It trips you out. It's like drinking Robitussin, right? I don't know. But Phil's going to read up on it. Phil, how much nutmeg do you got to eat to trip? This Christmas.

This holiday season. The thing is, not actually a lot, but a little bit of nutmeg goes a long way if you've had it. And so people, there's a, I looked it had it and so people there's a i looked it up people of there's um history of people tripping on on nutmeg at least since like the 1500s is the first documented kind of a woman ate 10 nutmegs nuts nutmeg nuts and felt so people were already tripping on it when the pilgrims came to america yeah um And so the reason is, is that there's a compound in it called myristicin, which gets turned into a drug called MMDA, which if that sounds familiar. Oh, yeah. It's got a very close relative called MDMA, which is ecstasy.

So when your body's processing it, it changes the myristicin into this hallucinogenic drug. Okay, so you're making some nutmeg. It's holiday season. You're making some nutmeg and you've got a jar of the little nuts. The megs. How many of those do you need to eat before your aunt has a snake coming out of her nostril or something like that? It looks like probably about two or three to really kind of feel it. Is that right?

Yeah. That's a lot of nutmeg, dude. It is a lot of nutmeg, yeah. You'd be so plastered drunk by that point in time. So maybe you had 10 nutmegs? I mean, that's dedicated. She must have had a cow that put eggnog off. Do you eat them or do you snort them or do you smoke them?

I'm asking for a friend. It's just eating. I feel like you just grind it up, put it on the table. So there are documented cases of kids just downing jars of ground nutmeg to try to get a high. I got one right now. I'm going to take a no on it. Okay. We'll update throughout the podcast. See how you're doing.

That's got to be rough. Very difficult meal to eat. Yeah, I'd have to snort it. So yeah, you will feel a little bit. That's why everybody's not wasted on Christmas. You're going to eat...

That's gross. So you will feel a little bit, but you will also get sick. I can't get a hundredth of one. Vomiting comes with the high. But it's mostly, they think it's non-toxic. There's only been one documented death from eating too much nutmeg, and it was from an eight-year-old

kid who ate, I think, three, just three non-toxic. There's only been one documented death from eating too much nutmeg, and it was from an eight-year-old kid who ate, I think, three, just three nutmegs and died, but that sounds like it might have been something else going on as well. Was it the holiday season when that happened to him? I don't know. The other question we had is, what's up with eating all kinds of raw eggs?

Because remember chips? And I know you don't remember chips. I'm aware there are motorcycles yeah chips and chips there was a part of most episodes where either ponch or john i can't remember would drink it was like a shtick that's yiddish i think krill is that yiddish shtick yep that's yiddish trying Trying to keep multicultural here. Shtick was to drink a glass of eggs. You guys remember this?

You do? How did he avoid being sick all the time? So, eating raw eggs, the main... There's a blender going on back there. Making some eggnog. Speaking of raw eggs. So, people think that the egg whites can block absorption of raw eggs. So there, people think that it can, the egg whites can block absorption of vitamin B7.

Go on. But that's not a really high concern. The main concern is actually just salmonella. That's the only thing that people are concerned about with raw eggs. Is that the higher chance of salmonella? The nutmeg in my mouth is ruining my Christmas special.

Oh, really? My special holiday special. Joe Rogan told us that he ate raw eggs for years. That's how Rocky did it. Isn't that how Rocky did it? That's exactly how Rocky did it. And that's how Chips does it. And I actually don't think that it does make you sick because my mom, when I was a little boy, made our own, that was one

of our traditions. Traditions! Tradition! Tradition! Was to eat raw eggs. No one ever got sick. What kind of tradition was that? Eating eggnog? Oh, eggnog. Oh, I'm sorry. No, she would make eggnog.

Yeah. It was like for Christmas Eve, she would make eggnog out of eggs. And then we didn't all just sit around puking and messing our pants. You go to a nice restaurant, you have steak tartare. There's a raw egg in that. Yeah. That's a good point. Sam, any thoughts about that?

Well, it's just the raw yolk. I thought it was the egg white that was the issue. Mm-mm. Oh. The egg white is the thing that might block absorption of vitamin B. That's an issue. Either way, quick correction while the drinks get made. Cal, this pertains to you too.

In keeping with the holiday theme here, we have a correction coming from our friend. He sent it as in form of a Christmas card where Doug Dern sent in a correction correction and i told him if he could to try to make it fit with our christmas episode that he could give it a christmas theme so he's he's including it as a gift and it has to do with his annoyance when people say particularly when i always say cut corn meaning i was hunting out in a cut corn field, or when are they going to cut that corn? So here's Doug's correction, which he sent to us as a nice little audio file. And Doug, I'll point out, in the entire history of this show, in the entire history of this program,

only one person, is that true, Yanni? Only one person has ever been given call-in credentials. I believe that to be true. Doug Dern. Yeah. Here he is. Hey, Steve, it's Doug Dern calling to wish you, your family, and the whole Meat Eater gang Merry Christmas, Happy New Year,

and a prosperous 2020. Look forward to the next time we're together. I also called to make a little correction. Cut corn. Don't like that expression. It's incorrect. It sounds foolish. Corn is either chopped, picked, or shelled when it's harvested.

What's left in the field is corn stubble, corn fodder, or even more correctly, corn stover. The stubble is the stuff that's left when they chop it off, and the fodder and the stover is the stuff that's left when they just take the ears of corn or the shelled corn. So please, in the future, can you make that correction? Got me pulling my hair out. Thanks, and happy holidays. Okay, Cal, when you heard that, I know he emailed that, initially emailed that complaint. I felt that you rolled over like a dog.

How so? Did you read my response? Yeah, you said never again in my life or something like that. No. No, I said, he said, please, in the future, like, make this correction. And I said, I will not. As in, I am going to stand by cut corn. That's not what you said.

Yeah, Cal said never in my life. I thought he meant, I thought he rolled over like a dog and meant never in my life will I use that phrase again. No, no. I meant I'm sticking by a cut corn. Oh, see, I capitulated. I capitulated and I was like, man, he's right. What do I know? I'm no farmer.

And I'm not. And then I called him to hear him out on it. And I happened to be driving around with someone who's got quite an ag background and they were listening in on my call with Doug and he says, well if it's not cunt corn I don't know what the hell it is because I've been calling it that my entire life and this guy knows his way around a cornfield and I noticed too

in Doug's thing he catches, if you listen carefully and Phil you can patch this in Doug is forming a sentence and he there's a slight pause he's like and when they get done chopping the corn

there's a slight pause because he almost the more I listen to the more I catch it he almost says cut the corn but corrects himself and swings it play it again Phil the stubble is the stuff that's left when they chop it off.

Oh, no! There's eggnog all over the damn place now. Now it's like Christmas. This place already smells. This place is going to smell like folks. For some reason, all I can picture is somebody missing a finger and you're like, hey, what happened to your finger? It's like, oh, got cut off.

Yeah. Oh, no, actually got chopped off. And the thing that's left is the stover instead of the chop. But you know, I think that... Yanni, give your theory about where Doug's coming from. And I love Doug more. I've told everybody I love Doug more than I love Yanni.

There's more of him below. I feel like there was a little pause in that sentence, too. I feel like maybe and this is just a random theory that I just thought of five minutes ago, is that maybe Doug's

thinking is because where Doug comes from, there's a little region there around Cazenovia, Wisconsin. It's a population of 385 people. Yeah, and half of them are Durants. And like you said earlier, there's cousins around that he doesn't even know that exist.

And he's got roads named after him. Yeah, maybe just there in that region, it's chopped corn. Because it'd be like, he could say this, in my family, we say chopped corn, because that would be synonymous with in my community. Yes. Jeez, Doug, you're a big guy. What do you mean? Everybody's built this way. Yeah, Doug, every time Doug goes out of town,

I'm like, these people are small. On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me A squirrel in a crock pot On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me A squirrel in a crock pot. On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me two smoked coot breasts and a squirrel in a crock pot. On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me three fried perch, two smoked coot breasts, and a squirrel in a crock pot. Damn, that boy can sing. Man, the enunciation is not good. I purge two smoke coot breasts and a squirrel in a crock pot.

Damn, that boy can sing. Man, the enunciation is not good. Do you know that they're saying coot breasts? I just tripped out about the one, the coot breasts, which is rough, but the rest are very clear. Hats off to the choir. That's good. Oh, no, it's really good singing. Yanni's in the choir.

Yeah. And he really regards himself pretty highly as a caroler. As maybe a lover of caroling, but not as a caroler. Oh, I never made that distinction. Yeah. Like earlier, I was on the phone with my mother talking about Latvian Christmas folk songs. So I'm going to have to sing one for you later. And we kind of settled on one because I wanted the one that had the right

what's it called? Is it called a refrain in English? Like the thing you sing over and over at the end of a segment? Chorus. Maybe it's the chorus. What's the refrain? Refrain would be that thing that comes at the tail end of the song that you insert. You know like in We Didn't Start the Fire.

Anyways, so she sang the melody, I sang the melody, she sang the melody, and finally she's like, yeah, I think you got it. But she says, you know what's going to be the most important for you? Is that maybe someone else sort of sets the tone where you're supposed to start, and then you go from there. I'm like, well go from there like well there's anybody in the room that's gonna know

the the tune for see that I bring a little tuning cord yeah so here I need something he's a caroling enthusiast rather than a good caroler Phil who else is in the choir oh man we? Yeah I did There was Hansi Seth Phil was like our conductor He's a music man The Flip Flop Flesher's in there Kylie

Did you find that his Did you find that you could Accentuate his part Or did you have to downplay it? You know listening back to the files I'm not even positive he was singing I think he was just there for show Really?

He was probably just mouthing He's like Milli Vanilli Ben O'Brien Dude all my things All my things are so old he was just there for show. Really? He was probably just mouthing a lot of words. He's like Milli Vanilli. Ben O'Brien. He loves that. Dude, all my things are so old. Do you know who Milli Vanilli is? I know the name.

I know the same old story. I need to tune in and get new references for culture. I had tickets to see Milli Vanilli. Oh, so you know what I'm talking about.

Right before they got buzzed. If you want a slightly more modern reference, you could say, like Ashley Simpson on SNL. No. Oh, thank you. Yeah. could say like Ashley Simpson on SNL. No. Oh, thank you. Yeah.

Yeah, like that. Yeah, okay. Old man Ronello hopped up on nutmeg, talking about the way things were. Are you guys feeling this nutmeg? No. You know, I feel like I am, man. I feel like I am. But see, I'm like that.

When people tell me about a disease, I feel like I got it. The other day, my buddy was telling me about his buddy whose capillaries in his fingers are dying. And so he has a real hard time keeping his fingers warm. And the whole time he's telling me, he's all talking about how sad he is for his buddy. Because this could be like a terminal thing. But I'm not even listening to anything. I'm not caring about the buddy. I'm just sitting there.

He's going, and I'm sitting there being like, God, do I have that? I got that too. I have such a hard time. So now that I ate that nutmeg, I feel like I'm tripping. Right. It's a creeper. It's kind of sneaking up on you. I feel like Yanni's eyes

are like turning like blood color and he's like sending me messages and talking, sending me messages through that Santa hat and stuff. Oh, well, you're finally getting it then. I've been doing that for years.

He's like, I worship the devil. That's what I'm hearing in the background. I was laughing slightly this morning when I was fussing around because we have an email. It's like, hey, remember to bring in your Christmas sweater. But

it's like anything can be a Christmas sweater if it's the thing that you're wearing to christmas yeah but i feel like you uh that is your christmas sweater this is my christmas sweater yeah and i did buy this specifically for christmas huh yeah is it your ugly christmas sweater no this thing's classy as hell man definitely the ugly christmas sweater sam yeah it's just for ladies and gentlemen at home cal's wearing a it's just a real bright red sweater. It's a V-neck. Oh, it's a V-neck.

He's got a dickie underneath. Why do you have a shirt underneath it? Well, because I didn't bring my dickie in. Oh, that's what you wear with that? You're what? We got on dickies. What is that? A dickie is when you get a, it's like a clip-on tie.

It's like the clip-on tie of the turtleneck world. Yes, well done. It's like a turtleneck sweater minus the sweater. Turtleneck sweater minus the shirt. No, minus the shirt underneath. It's just the neck. No, it's the turtleneck. We used to wear them ice fishing.

It's a turtleneck that you just pull over and it's got a little flap that hangs down front and back. Oh, meant to be worn under a sweater. Yeah, but hangs down front and back. Oh. Meant to be worn under a sweater. Yeah, but we wore them ice fishing. Yeah. Just to keep your neck warm. Yeah.

You put your dickie on. Not like what you're thinking. Oh, I love it. Anyway, I got this from the gold mine in Ketchmite, Idaho, which if you're ever looking for any kind of old man

type of stuff, that's a real good place to go. Steve, how's that? For me, Steve? That's a good one right there. Like Ma used to make? Oh, that's good.

That's better than Ma's. There you go. Okay, drink in hand. We're going to move on. Real quick, do you guys have holiday food traditions, culinary traditions? Yes. Go. They're not necessarily centered around wild game.

I haven't started that yet. My neighbor, on the other hand, though, has smoked deer ham. He's a new hunter. Only killed two deer and has smoked deer ham the last two years in a row. And the other night told me that's going to be his Thanksgiving tradition to smoke deer hams. I thought that was pretty cool. But no, for me, it's pipar kukas and pea dog. Pea dogs.

Pipar kukas are Latvian gingerbread cookies, but they don't look or taste like the gingerbread. There's ginger in there, which is why I use that comparison. But they're very thin wafers. There's a cookie out there called the Moravian Christmas cookie. That's not Latvian. If anybody's had those. And that's like the closest store-bought thing I've ever seen

to Latvian gingerbread cookies. What's the Latvian word for it? Pipakuv actually means pepper cookie. Pipakuv. Yeah. So they're very spicy with black pepper, lots of ginger, thin. My great uncle used to love all the burnt ones because every year you get a pan that's burnt in there. Anyway, so those, we make those.

We cut them in Christmas shapes with a little, you know. So what would pass as a Christmas shape among you folks? A tree. Gotcha. It looks like a fir tree, a star, a moon. Traditional. A moon. Yeah, moons.

We have a lot of moons. Huh. You guys think of a moon as a Christmas shape? Mm-hmm. Because Santa flies over across it no i would say because the um moon is somehow helping along the sun to come back alive yeah i'll buy that our uh holiday we had two holiday things uh one was how's it going crin great it's taking a while one was not ours but every year a old woman you know how when you're a little kid you have grandparents day at school yeah

yeah our grandparents lived too far away and then they were dead. But we had fake grandparents that would show up for Grandparents' Day. Vivian, Kokoma, and what was her old man's name? And these folks were just on a retainer? Barney and Vivian Kokoma would always come to Grandparents' Day and pretend to be our grandparents. Nicest people on the planet. Vivian Kokoma would always have my dad give her a deer neck or two. She would take the deer necks, cook them down, and make mincemeat pie filling. And then she would jar the mincemeat pie filling in glass jars, and then she would wrap a ribbon around it.

And then on Christmas, she would bring it around and give it out as Christmas presents. And we would get a jar, because my old man gave her the neck. But that was one thing. But the main culinary tradition is my mom would make this thing called sticky buns. It's like you cook a bunch of, I don't know what they are, dough, and it's got all kinds of sugar in it.

Yeah, it's like a cinnamon roll kind of thing. Yeah, and there's so much sugar and caramel on the bottom. Then you flip it over and all the shitloads of caramel and all the shit loads of caramel and all the stuff that settled to the bottom is then on top and it dries and you wake up and eat that.

We do this thing where my parents boil a huge pot of Polish kielbasa Christmas morning. You guys boil? Are you a Pole? My mom's side of the family, Jeminski. My dad felt that the Poles drank too much. That could be true. That could be true.

Yeah. But it has a horrendous smell. If you don't like Polish kielbasa. Very, very strong smell. And my wife came into the family not having that Polish background. So she went there. What's her background? Maybe some German, some English.

Not important, I think. background uh maybe some german some english not important i'm pretty ready phil you might have to edit that out for mark's sake uh my wife i don't really know the english and germans they're mortal enemies once upon a time yeah but they were buddies at one point as well yeah but yeah so she came into this not prepared for that smell every morning on christmas and she almost vomited when she was pregnant the other year because from a little kielbasa But yeah, so she came into this not prepared for that smell every morning on Christmas. And she almost vomited when she was pregnant the other year. From a little kielbasa. Yeah, the smell fills the entire house. The stench of the kielbasa.

Yeah. So that's our thing. Polish. Hold on. Big sausages. So you get a pot full of boiled sausages, then what? Sounds delicious. You just eat boiled kielbasa for your breakfast. The best you guys could do.

Did you make them or buy them? Bought them at a traditional little Polish market. And then your mom just boils them up. Just boils them. She's got a pretty easy day, don't you? Then you dip it in cocktail sauce. What? That's what they did. I think you're confusing shrimp. No.

I think you're confusing boiled shrimp with kielbasa. Cocktail sauce. I can't. I can't. I got to consult. I can't defend it. I'd be sitting there eating. In the Polish Kenyan household, you guys go to the store, buy some kielbasa, boil it up,

dip it in cocktail sauce. Yeah, I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's good, but it's just what they do. And it's what we did. Sounds great to me. Anybody else got any good holiday ones? Holiday culinary? My grandma, Marion, my mom's side of the family, she always makes lots of cooks. You know, there's lots of good food, but there's always little chunks of beard in my mouth.

From your beard or the elf beard? Elf beard. Yeah, it's white. Yorkshire pudding. Are you familiar with that? Is that made out of hog's blood? No. No?

This was very confusing as a child because it's called Yorkshire pudding, but it comes out and... It's a muffin that's burned on top and then it has kind of like a custardy consistency when you pull the top off. And ours were always

a very savory thing. So you'd put... You'd use it to mop up meat juice. Because we were always making beef with whatever. That reminds me of a song. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat? You're like, I'm dipping my meat in my pudding.

Yes, but, like, as a kid, you're like, this is a muffin. Where's the pudding? Oh, yeah, you get all excited. The kids are like, oh, there's some pudding coming. Then all of a sudden you lay that out there. Right, right. Oh, dude, yeah. Savory muffin. So I eat like, oh, there's some pudding coming. Then all of a sudden they lay that out there. Right. Savory muffin. So I eat this and then the pudding comes.

But yeah, that's one of those like nostalgic Christmas-y type things. Sam? Not bad. Anything? I would say, unfortunately, my family wasn't the most traditional. I think the biggest tradition was we changed it up every single year. But the one thing that

we would always get is eggnog, but we never made it. We always bought the Southern Comfort eggnog. Have you guys had that? So it was pre-mixed. It was so good. When you guys were in high school, did you guys call it SoCo? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Definitely. And so this is

bringing me back. Thanks, Corinne. This is much better than the store-bought. Dude, this is unbelievably good. This is the best. Very good, Corinne. This is much better than the store-bought. This is unbelievably good. This is the best. Very good, Corinne. Thank you. This is the best. Keep walking through it again. It's the best eggnog drink I've ever had in my entire life.

It is very good. Unfortunately, some of you guys have minus vanilla. I forgot to put in vanilla the first round. What do I have? What do I have? You have minus vanilla, so we're going to need to top you off. It's super simple.

It's just eggs, heavy cream, milk. You can do half and half or not. Nutmeg, cinnamon. 16 nutmegs. Yep. All nutmegs. Can I have a little more nutmeg in mine, please? Yep.

Yep. We got plenty here. Yeah. nutmegs. Can I have a little more nutmeg in mine, please? Yep. Yep. We got plenty here. Yeah. Nutmeg, cinnamon, some sugar, good eggs, vanilla, and the meat eater bourbon, which makes it. It makes a hell of a drink. Yep. It tastes like if you just kept adding ice, this would just be ice cream. Yeah.

It's very good. Tastes like Santa himself mixed it up. I actually like to have ice cubes in mine and let it thin out a little bit more. I hear you. It's not quite so heavy, dude. It's a heavy drink, man. I'm telling you what. You can have two.

Nothing tastes better than the first eggnog cocktail you have every year. Nothing tastes worse than the last, man. I get burned out. Oh, yeah. Yeah than the last, man. I get burned out. Oh, yeah. Yeah. About a gallon is what I'm good for. I was thinking more of like a quart, but sure. Yeah, I think it's burned out after a gallon of eggnog.

Oh, Corinne, do you want to do a holiday food thing? Sure. What do you have? Because can you tell people a little bit holiday food thing? Sure. What do you have? Because can you tell people a little bit about your background? Sure. So my mom is Chinese, and she immigrated to the United States from Beijing way back when. And my dad is a Jewish kid from Brooklyn. So that's my background.

So what do you guys do around Christmas? It depends. Sorry, the holidays. Yeah, no. You know what I mean. You can say Christmas. It kind of depended on the year. Sometimes we would get together as a family, just the three of us. I don't have any siblings. The three of us would go out to a very Christmassy. Only child. Only child. Yeah. Yeah. I grew up in New York City, so there are plenty of very holiday, festive, Christmassy type traditional dinners if we're too lazy to cook. What the Jews normally do for Christmas is they go out and eat Chinese food because Chinese restaurants are open. I've actually participated in that one time. So sometimes that is a tradition and sometimes it's gotten together with the Jewish side of my family and celebrated Christmas slash Hanukkah. You don't really have like a specific day on which you celebrate Hanukkah.

It's an eight day thing. But yeah, so it kind of just depended upon the year. You know, one time, you don't know this but i'll tell you okay one time because of the international dateline and an airplane i missed christmas oh did you like you flew wait explain that like i was flying west i was flying west across the international dateline and they're like and it timed out where there essentially was no christmas day that year was that Was that the worst year of your life? Was that the worst Christmas?

No, I thought, I mean, it wanted to be one of the more memorable Christmases. Right. Okay. Its absence made it be memorable. You know? It was just in the, it was the tail end of the pre-9-11 era. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Oh, you know what I want to talk about? What? Oh, yeah, but tell about the different food things. You guys eat some Chinese food? Yeah. We would sometimes do Chinese food on Christmas. We would sometimes do very Christmassy, traditional, you know. But who was that coming from?

Because it wasn't coming from your mother. No, it wasn't coming from my mom either, although my mom's side of the family does celebrate Christmas. But was your mom from Beijing Christian? No, no, she wasn't. So her grandparents, my great grandparents were Buddhist.

Okay. Her mom and my grandmother was, I should say, a little bit more on the philosophical Confucian side. Got it. Do you feel that you have a Christmas sweater on right now? I have a Christmas sweater.

Or is that a holiday sweater? It is a Christmas sweater right now because Rudolph's on it. He's got a red nose and a white 3D poof ball that's coming off the edge of his hat. And this is so ugly, it's amazing. It lights up. Oh, how come you don't have it lit up? All right, because that would be really so distracting. I don't think anyone would...

Hold on. Corinne's sweater has a battery in it. Come on, let's go. Waiting. Oh, look at that. There we go. Huh. That's not distracting.

Would you prefer that I keep this up? Oh, the flashes. Yeah, I have lights on my sweater that change color and flash constantly. Yeah, so just below her collarbones, there's a line of lights. Right where her dickie would be. Yeah. Her dickie line. Right where her dickie would taper. Yeah. Right where her dickie would taper off.

The irrational dickie line. All right, I'm going to keep this going for the rest of the podcast, guys. Okay, Phil, roll some more of the Christmas song. On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me four mincemeat pies, three fried perch, two smoked coop rest, and a squirrel in a crock pot. On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me five big old back straps. Four mincemeat pies, three fried perch, two smoked coop rest, and a squirrel in a crock pot. On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me

six cheeks of grouper, five big old black chaps, four minced meat pies, three fried perch, two smoked coopress, and a squirrel in a crock pot. 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. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there. OnX is now in Canada.

The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing

on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com. onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Moving on to our Christmas special, Christmas holiday special. Yanni on Instagram. How do you do it?

It used to be Latvian Hunter, but now it's just at Yannis Putelis. That's right, with an underscore in there. Dude, Yanni is so unbelievably close to having 100K followers. Get that, man. By the time you're hearing this, I've reached the... Yeah, he doesn't realize how much life changes. Yeah. I haven't told you about all the things that happened at that point,

but it's going to blow your mind. It's like a whole secret world out there, Gianni. I can't wait. Yanni asked on Instagram for people to share with us the worst Christmas presents they've ever gotten in their entire life. You'll shoot your eye out, kid. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have a Christmas gift story that I like to tell every year.

It's like a true, this combines two things. It's a Christmas gift story and it's a tradition story. It's my tradition to tell the story of a year in the presence of my brother because it makes him so depressed. When I was a little kid, they had a thing called Secret Santa's Workshop. You guys familiar with this? at this what it was is it was a venue for children who didn't have access to a vehicle to go shopping for their family in such a way that their family wouldn't know what they got them because when you're a little kid how do you go shopping for your mom pre buying shit on the internet you picturing yeah how trouble how hard it'd be, right? Because your mom takes you to the store.

How do you ever get your mom something? They do that at my kid's elementary now. Secret Santa's Workshop. It's a fundraiser kind of a deal. And it's called Secret Santa's Workshop? I think they omit secret. Just Santa's Workshop. Yeah, maybe I added that.

So it still kind of cons your mom a little bit because you still got to get money from your parents, but you bring the money down and you get credit and you buy junk for your family and when I was little kid you could get like a gigantic eraser, all kinds of stuff. I kind of blew all my money

and I didn't get my brother Matt anything. So I got Matt a sheriff's a plastic sheriff's badge shaped like a star. I was real excited about it. That night at dinner, my mom asked, how was Santa's workshop? To which Matt replies, it was so stupid. In fact, it was so stupid that they sold little plastic sheriff's badges. I was so upset I ran into the living room and wept.

Wept. He felt so bad that to try to make me feel better, he promised me and actually went through with this where he and I would start a pin collection based off his new sheriff's badge pin. Wow. I like to tell that story every year just to make him depressed all over again. But did he follow through? Did you guys have a little collection? No, I think that we did actually start a short-lived little pin collection as part of him being like, I was wrong.

I didn't see the potential. In fact, we could start a collection and this sheriff's badge could be the first step. That's great. That's a good story. Yeah. I think it's the most depressing thing in the world. Do you like it?

Yeah. It does. It's got a good ending. It's got a great ending. Oh, no. When I tell it, he just... I hope he's listening. The ruins is Christmas.

He hasn't had a good Christmas since he was... He hasn't had a good Christmas since he was eight. Yeah. Worst presents people have ever gotten. One guy got a dog-shaped hot dog cooker, bun steamer. It makes a barking sound when your hot dog's done. Guy, his aunt. Remember we were talking about the guy that thought his aunt was fairly attractive?

Yeah. Not that guy, but another guy. His aunt gave him a blow-up doll when he went away to college. You'll shoot your eye out, kid. That's a fun one to open up in front of the fam. Guy wrote in that got an engraved Christmas ornament. His name's Brian. But when he got it, they had

misspelled his name so it just says brain. Dude, someone made him a hand-knit mitten for, quote, my junk with flip-up urinating tip. He says it's real nice on cold days when you're ice fishing or glass and freezing your balls off another guy wrote in that his dad gave him a 410 with a bent barrel when he was a kid and told him

that it helped mountain the long run guy said from his grandmother-in-law three years in a row running now has received the same piggy bank that is in the shape of a butt and farts when you put coins in it. Guy wrote in and the guy gave him a beaver tail. Guy wrote in

that his former in-laws, he says, I feel like I get so many letters to people who allude to having gotten a divorce. Like he points out, my former in-laws, they didn't know anything about hunting or fishing, but they would always want to buy him presents that he thought he would like. And he says, looking back on it, it felt as though their shopping strategy was to ram shopping carts into the shelves at Cabela's and get him whatever happened to fall in the cart.

I feel like that was a good piece of writing. When I read that, I really liked that because immediately I was there picturing how he got his presents. They got him at one time a camo do-rag. He got a deer drag system. He got a wind-up lantern. He got a cough silencer. Those are the best. And he got an apple-scented deer lure that he was afraid to put anywhere that deer could actually eat it because it was poisonous. His aunt and uncle gave him socks with their pictures on them. So he says every time he opens his sock drawer, quote, they're there watching me. Dude's got some sweatpants that were designed to look like blue jeans. Dude said his wife, he told his wife he needed hunting pants.

She told her in-laws he needed hunting pants. And so they got him a pair of sweats that had pictures of deer on them. These are all great white elephant gift ideas. Yeah, it's true. My dad used to do this thing where he'd, like, give you a full-body goose decoy to, like, add to the spread. And you're like, yes, full-body goose decoy. This is great. Then he'd be like, yeah, you like that?

Like, yeah. Then he'd be like, so maybe you could do a little bit better on the grades this year. And it always left you kind of being like, God, I wish we didn't do presents. Well, did he mean that? Like, if you got straight A's, you might get a dozen? You know, I never read into it very much. Or got straight A's.

Nor got straight A's, so I never figured out. No, he just was holding it out there that things could get spectacular. What did you think was the best one, Yanni? My favorite out of all the worst Christmas presents that came in on the old Instagram was a guy got a, I believe this actually came in more than once, but a guy got a half of a bottle of whiskey with a bow on it. What happened to the other half? Come on.

That's the best part about this present, is that you think about it a second and you realize what happened the night before. Oh, yeah, I got you. They made eggnog. So, yeah, I guess it could be a sad story for some people, but I like to think about how someone was like, yeah, let's get Yanni a bottle of whiskey.

And then a little while later, wow, we ran out of whiskey. Let's drink a little bit of Yanni's whiskey. He'll be happy with half a bottle. You know what was very un-Yanni about that? Did you say half empty? I feel like you're a half full guy. I think you just said half bottle of whiskey. Oh, okay.

Yeah. You know what I'm getting you? Corinne, are you still running that thing over there? Yeah, last bit. That lid's coming off. It's moving up. Good eye, Phil. Last batch.

There we go. All right, that's it. Sam, what's the worst gift you ever got? I mean, I think it depends how you look at it, because it's not really the worst, but it's definitely the most random. Right before I moved to— You know what? That's a generational word. Random?

Yeah. How so? Because people my age, they know what random means. That is awesome. age don't don't they know what random means and then something happened and then something happened and people like 10 or more years younger than me have no idea what the word random means okay so what do you want me to describe it as an odd gift okay an odd gift um right before i moved to random would be i'm never gonna get out of this room. Go on. Okay.

So you got a, as you folks say, you got a random. A random odd gift. Meaning odd. Okay. Actually, my defense, it was random because she never sent gifts. And then just one random year. No, I think it would be odd. Okay, fine.

One unusual, an unusual odd year. She sent me a gift and it was a taser and a box of condoms that's great what was she getting at what's the order of operations here what goes first did she give you one

you know when you're giving someone a BB gun and BBs you'd be like don't open that open that one first so when she had the taser and the the condoms was she's like it'll ruin it open that one first well no she wasn't even present for the opening and the gift and she you know had them all together in one big package basically well not that big and and when you said later and you when you called her did you call her write her a note to thank her?

My mom, it's very important to my mom that we do that. We write notes. And you said, I really appreciated. The condoms. And not the taser. Did she get confused because your name's Samantha, but you go by Sam? Oh. That would actually be very possible.

Was she kind of distant? Very distant. Very distant. Yeah, she just thought you were some guy named Sam. Yeah. But why does a guy named Sam need a taser? Who's very weak. That makes it a weird.

A more random. A much more random. A weak, very virile. A weak, virile nephew. Yeah, where were you going with that, Cal? How did that make sense to you? That's just the logical conclusion I could come to. That you would give him a form of birth control appropriate to a gender appropriate birth control form.

And then a taser in case he was weak. I saw her in person. Unless things get random. Months later, she gave me a pack of glue. Things got random with this guy, and I had to tase him. Well, I haven't had to use a taser yet. Do you still have it? Oh, yeah.

You got it on you right now? On my bedside. You keep it on your nightstand. And she told me how to charge it properly in the car. She was just setting her off for best and worst case scenario. She's like, when you go to the bar, I shoot things you always like to bring with me. And I just lay them on the bar. Kind of sick.

I let the night run its course. Corinne, we're going to talk about Hanukkah for a minute. Just keep this in the spirit of the holidays. In Hanukkah, you get eight presents. Do you feel that they did that so they could kind of like best the Christians? Well. Who just get presents for like Christmas Eve and Christmas morning? Right.

So historically, Hanukkah does not really have a tradition of gift giving. I know. And then kids felt bummed. My guess is that kids were bummed and they're like, oh, you want to do presents? All right, we'll do eight days worth of presents. We'll best you. We'll best you. By a multiple of four.

Yeah. Yeah, which is quite significant. So a lot of Jewish children get many presents. Over the course of many days. Right. It's like eight Christmases. So then it used to be that the Christian kids were laughing at them, but now they laugh at the Christian kids. Yeah, look who's laughing now.

Yeah. Yep. How did it get started? So eight presents. Do you know? Like in what years? Well, what I've read is that when Christmas became a national holiday in the United States in the late 19th century, there was a shift to gift giving for Hanukkah.

Is that right? Yeah. So when you were a little girl, would you get them? Sometimes. Well, that builds a big expectation. Yeah. Then they'd fall off the next year. You know, my family was really inconsistent with things.

So sometimes my father might light a couple of candles during the eight days, but he might skip like a day or two. And sometimes I would get Hanukkah gelt, which is the chocolate coins. Wrapped up in foil. Yep. Those are pretty good. Yeah. Wrapped up in foil. Yep. Mm-hmm. And then sometimes it would be. Yeah. Sometimes kind of waxy chocolate.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like probably really corn syrupy. It's normally like milk chocolate doesn't really. I like dark chocolate. But yeah, so we were inconsistent with celebrating that. So sometimes I might get multiple presents. Sometimes, you know.

But they never rolled out for you all eight? No. No, not consistently. And that was fine with me. I wasn't like a huge, like, give me gifts. I would like to think that I was not a super spoiled child. Oh, I was like that big time, man. Spoiled rotten.

We're going to do a thing for people. We're going to do like a Hanukkah. Yeah. Do you spell with a C-H or the H? So there... So I don't speak Hebrew, but the transliteration, I think there's kind of still a

back and forth between spelling it H-A-N-U-K-K-A-H and then C-H-A-N-U-K-A-H. Do you want to hear me speak Hebrew? Go ahead. Baruch Adotai. No, Baruch Adotai Eloheinu. Baruch Adonai Eloheinu.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Were you pretty impressed? Yeah, that was pretty good. Do it again. No, I knew. I just know all that. Yeah, say chicharrones once. Chicharrones.

Yeah, see, that's not even remotely Hebrew. I just heard that the other day. So let's say for our Jewish listeners who like to do the Hanukkah tradition, you can go to the meat eater store, the meat eater merch store, and here's a great gift list. Okay, on day one, get your special loved one, our gnome packing out a unicorn t-shirt, which is a gnome with a severed unicorn's head strapped to his backpack,

and he's got his crazy gnome bow. Day two, you can get him our engraved meat-eater cutting board. Day three, you can get him the complete set of meat-eater spices, our charismatic mega-spices. Day four, you can get him our gnome reeling

in a mermaid shirt, which is emerged as a somewhat controversial shirt. We've talked about this. It's a gnome. It's the same gnome that killed the unicorn. He's out fishing, and he's reeling in a mermaid who's fighting hard. Some people have thought that

it's suggestive that people eat mermaid meat, and they felt that it's controversial. I don't know what's happening between the gnome and the mermaid. Almost as if it's a land of fantasy, one could say. My brother looked at it, and he thought that the mermaid was going to pull the gnome in and eat the gnome. I thought that it was an elaborate courtship ritual.

But either way, it's a gnome reeling in a mermaid. We also have, for the fifth day of Hanukkah, you get a Latvian eagle t-shirt, a genuine Giannis t-shirt. Explain the Latvian eagle logo. Hmm. I didn't prepare for this one. And it's an eagle, symbolizes the Latvian eagle. And then it's sort of like the – we use – there's a crest.

There's a Latvian crest that we use the three stars from, and the three stars represent the three regions of Latvia, so that's part of it. And then it says the Latvian Eagle and Meteor on it. It's pretty simple, really. On the sixth day, you can get them some – you know, me and Yanni, little-known fact, me and Yanni are running for president. Ronella...

See, I'm tripping so hard on nutmeg. Better hunting and fishing for America, folks. Ronella Patella's 2020. Our campaign slogan, of course, is Better Hunting and Fishing for America. You can follow along the campaign. We got a campaign release video we came out with.

I heard tell there's a negative ad about Mignani coming out soon. Biden and Trump put together a negative attack ad about Mignani. I told you they were going to come at us from both sides. And yeah, they teamed up to come after Mignani. Sons of bitches. Said a lot.

You can get bumper stickers. You can get Ronella Patello's 2020 Better Hunting and Fishing for America T-shirts. You get all that for that person. Then, on the seventh day, you get them a gnome Sasquatch shirt. And here, our same crazy gnome. It's modeled after the old picture of a grizzly bear who's kind of attacking a mountain man, but he's got his bowie knife out.

And he's, like, clearly going to best the grizzly. Well, this yeti sasquatch bigfoot has a grip on the gnome and the gnome is about to turn the tides with his bowie knife and then on the eighth day you can get any number of our bandana series our instructional bandana series we have how to flay a fish how to gut a deer and how to kill a turkey well like everything you need to know about turkeys all all in the bandana. At first, we were running a real scratchy sort of cotton, but now tell them what that is, Yanni.

We've got a new microfiber one. Yeah, it's the world's largest lens wipe in the world. That's right. Going to be some excited kids underneath that tree. That's for Hanukkah. Yeah. That's what I said. Maybe I missed all my words.

Around those candles. Yes. Around those candles. Burning all them candles in the window, sitting there with all that meat eater merch. You know,

I was going to mention that I think that it levels out because the Jewish kids that I knew growing up, they didn't get presents every evening. They got a present. And so at the end of it,

they got eight presents. Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah, you don't think your kids are getting eight presents apiece Christmas morning? Well, Sandy Claus brings some. Mom and Dad brings some. Grandma brings a pickup load. Now, the kids that really make out

are the ones that have a Christian mother or father and a Jewish mother or father like my buddy Saul from high school that you've met. Oh, yeah. He's a climber.

He's a big climber. So he'd roll right through eight days of Hanukkah and then be like, sweet, wonder what's going to be under the tree. And then he gets

like another truckload of presents. Yeah. Imagine the media merch that dude could rake in. As a child of divorce, I can say that was pretty lucrative as well.

Oh, because they're trying to out-dudo each other it was great i mean you know did you did you play it too were you like oh my you're uh pretty special i mean now dad i mean not like that but i mean you're pretty special i wasn't that bad no i spent so many years living out of my truck that i could never quite get across the fact that I couldn't. I enjoyed the thought behind presence, but I couldn't really accept the presence. Because I'd be like, this is a great framed picture. It's going to look awesome on your wall, and I'll appreciate it whenever I'm here. Oh, yeah. Because I. You had whenever I'm here. Oh, yeah.

Because I... You have nowhere to put anything. Yeah, am I supposed to, like, screw it to the roof of my truck? Okay, so when everybody gets their presents, this is true for people who celebrate Hanukkah or Christmas. Everybody's going to get their presents. And inevitably... Do you know many people who, for Hanukkah, get gift cards? Sure.

Yeah, I guess that's a thing. Like one of the days your parents are just like, they got no, they're just played out. Yeah, can't think about it. Stick a gift card in there. Exactly. Everybody gets gift cards, and then everybody gets returns. So, you know, you get an Amazon gift card, whatever, or you get something stupid and you return it and you get a cash credit.

So that leaves you in the awkward position. And also, you might be listening to this after Christmas, so none of this has any relevancy to you, but you're sitting there with a gift card. You got an Amazon gift card. So now you're wondering, oh, yeah, I don't know what to do with my gift card. So now Mark Kenyon, our very special and lovely Mark Kenyon, is going to have a suggestion for what one might do with their gift card this holiday season. Just a shameless plug?

Yeah. Sell me on it. Mark's much-anticipated book. You could pick up That Wild Country, an epic journey through the past, present, and future of America's public lands. Yeah, I wrote a book. The first time we tried to bring this book up, Mark got... He felt something bad would happen if he talked about it too early. Oh, yeah. The publishers were like, hold on. Like you would jinx it.

Or something. But it's out. It's out there. That wild country. Tell us all about it, Mark. Put a Christmas spin on it. Oh, boy. Now you're throwing me for a loop. I would try something like this. I would say everyone knows the joy of receiving a great gift.

Well, there's no greater gift than America's public lands. This is very true. Try something like that. But just to get a gift means one thing. But to understand the thought behind that gift, maybe let's call it the history behind that gift. That's good. It means that much more. And that's what I try to do with this book.

That was wonderful, Mark. I do my best. I mean, it's too complicated for people, but it's good. It's good. The cliff notes on the book was that I love public lands, but didn't understand how we got these places. You know, 2015, 2016, there's always controversy. Like they fell from outer space.

Yeah. You wondered, you know, how did we get to this point that it was such a contentious issue and that I had places I'd go hunt, fish, camp, et cetera. So I decided if I didn't know that story, if I didn't understand how we got to this point, there's probably a lot of other people out there who were in the same boat, especially if you didn't live in the middle of them, say here in Montana. So I started diving into that myself, trying to understand that story, that history and what was going on presently, and then went and spent as much time as I possibly could in those places to kind of have a physical context for that. How many states did you travel to?

At least eight or ten, between eight and ten, I think, for that. So yeah. Ranging from? Montana, pack rafting and fly fishing in the Bob Marshall Wilderness up to the UP of Michigan, backpacking in Pictured Rocks, down into Arizona and Utah, north, south, east, west, a little bit of everything. Everything from hunting and fishing to backpacking and camping and peak bagging. When you were doing the book, did you, as you're doing all your research, all along were you thinking like, oh, that makes sense.

Oh, that makes sense. Or did you hit some parts where you're like, what? There were definitely moments of, I didn't know that. That explains things. More of those types of moments where it's, huh, now I get it. Yeah. This is all kind of coming together. It's no surprise to me now that they are so contentious and controversial in certain ways, because one of the things that makes them so

special, which is that they're for all of us, they're co-owned by all of us. We can use them for so many different things. That's also what makes them so challenging to work with. So there's a whole lot of stakeholders with a whole lot of different ideas about how to use them and manage them. And that makes them tricky but special. Now, you, in the book, you obviously approached it with a bias, right? Like you didn't set out to be like, should we have public lands or not? It's like you came out, you're a lover of public lands,

and so you set out to write a book explaining them, right, and advocating for them. Did you come away from the whole project more sympathetic to the but understanding of some of the challenges and complaints around it. When you look at, there was a trend in public land policy that might have made things more difficult for some users of public lands. And I came to better understand that. I guess you could say sympathetic to some of those users who might now be viewed as anti-public land to a degree. But I'm not sympathetic with the most radical of those elements. You've got folks like the Bundys who take it so much further than I think it ever should.

But sure, I'm willing to listen to someone who wants to use these lands for some form of extraction or some form of grazing or whatever it might be. Those are good, honest Americans that have a perspective too. So you got to approach it with a little bit of open mind. We say, you know, you try to like put a spin on your adversaries. And oftentimes you'll put a spin on your adversaries that they're not comfortable with. Like we talk about people who are against public land. But the people who are against public land, but the people who are against public land don't say that.

Like they don't say like, I'm against public land. They say something different. Like tell me, like tell me how they would describe, like what is an anti-public lands person from his perspective? Well, it's typically going to be someone who is more so anti-federal government in a lot of ways, believing that there's an overreach of regulation, taking away freedoms or something like that. They might say that we are restricting their use or restricting their economic freedom.

The founding fathers never intended. Right. So they'll – Never intended common folk to be able to go outside. Right. So there'll be that kind of thing. They very rarely will come right out and say, oh, well, you're keeping me from making more money. Big business, at least. But yeah, I mean, everybody comes to this, though, looking at it from that and trying to as much as possible step outside of that a little bit and try to understand. But it's hard to do that given the passions and the things that we love to do.

But what I found is that what we're in now has been going on for decades and it will continue to. So there's never going to be a happy ending, I don't think. It's always going to be a push and pull. And I think that might have been my greatest takeaway was that we just better be prepared for that tug of war to continue. And it's incumbent on us to stand up and pull really hard. Did you, in doing the book, did you feel that the, mean in recent years, it's like a Republican thing, right? Like the Republican Party had a – like they need to give this up in my mind like wholeheartedly. But they had a thing where there is sort of a plank in the party platform.

Is this kind of like nascent opposition to federally managed public lands. And that doesn't embody every person in that party but the party in general. So when you're writing the book, did you ever feel like you're sort of like picking on one political party at the expense of another? I'm sorry, picking on certain political parties and praising certain political parties because right now it is sort of this partisan debate, unfortunately. Yeah, that was the most. That's me saying it's unfortunate. Right.

I think it's terribly unfortunate. No, I was going to say that was the most frustrating aspect of the whole thing was that A, I hate that it's become partisan. B, I don't understand how this could be because this is about as American of an idea as I can think of, that being democratized land and a resource like this that all Americans can use and benefit from. So, yeah, it's frustrating. It's also challenging to be able to have conversations around partisan issues without half of the group just shutting off. Yeah, when I was reading your book, that was the thing that stuck out to me.

I mean, it's funny because the father of the American public land system was Republican, but it was different at the time, right? The same way – I mean, the party – what it but it was different at the time. Right. The same way. I mean, you know, the, the, the, the party, you know, what it means Republican change radically three years ago. So you have that, but in reading the book, I kept being like, wow, it's kind of like, like when you look at like, who's behind what and who's doing what it was like, unfortunate, maybe you feel like, really, man, these guys got to pull it. These guys got to pull it together, dude. And that's the thing I tried to make clear though, in the book was that I don't think it should be a Republican or Democratic issue.

And I approached it from, hey, I'm right in the middle personally. I came from a conservative Republican background. I certainly still support some things on that side. I support some other ideas, too. I'm going to stand with anybody who's willing to stand up for these places. So I try to make it clear within the book, I'm not attacking the Republican Party. I'm attacking an idea

that right now the Republicans are supporting that I think is a big mistake on their part. Yeah, and that stuff changes all the time. Like I said, three years ago it was a party of free trade. Yeah. Right? And now magically it's not. So yeah, it could hopefully, we'll change around. Yeah. Ladies and Now, magically, it's not. So, yeah, it could hopefully will change around.

Yeah. All right, ladies and gentlemen, Mark Canyon. We're going to go pick up. You know what? Listen, don't even read the book. Just go buy it. Yeah, sure. If you don't buy Mark's book, none of us, we're going to kill Yanni if you don't buy Mark's book.

Wow. So think about that. That's not a very good winter solstice type attitude. It's going to be horrible. We're going to pull all his fingernails out. And then, oh, you know what a guy was just telling me about? This is what I'm going to do to Yanni. I was just talking to a journalist who used to work in Washington State,

and he was working on a story about this little meth group, this little meth production group, and they had a falling out with one of their associates. Kind of like a theater group. Yeah, very structured, very similar to a theater group where they were in the meth, rather than the production of drama, they were in the production of meth,

and they had a falling out with one of their associates, and they tied him up to a tree out in the woods and covered him in bacon, thinking that he would be tortured and killed by a bear. And he wrote a piece about this. But then it wound up being that the guy was able to get the bacon and kind of like wiggle it down in around the ropes and was able to grease his bacon and kind of like wiggle it down in around the ropes and was able to grease his wrists and grease his ropes

and slip out of the hold of the ropes thanks to the bacon grease. And it was his favorite story he ever wrote. He said that every year around that time he reshares it on Facebook. Why was I talking about that? Oh, yeah, because we'll kill Yanni like that if everybody doesn't buy Mark's book. So if you want to keep Yanni alive, send us a picture holding Mark's book, and then we're going to start probably in a day or two pulling the fingernails. We'll broadcast his cries of agony.

Sorry, Yanni. And I imagine sales will skyrocket. So take your gift certificate. How much is the book? $15. $15? Steal. Steal. Learn about public lands. And I imagine sales will skyrocket. So take your gift certificate. How much is the book? 15 bucks. 15 bucks? Steal.

Steal. Learn about public lands. That one when you're sitting around and you're talking to some yabots. That's Yiddish, I think, isn't it? I've never heard that word before. A yabots? My dad had three primary insults. He would call people a- Were they all in Yiddish?

No. One was Italian. Mingulamorta. And I've checked with Italians. And it's like a... They've never heard of it. A mingula morta would be someone who is dead below the waist. And that was a very certain type of person.

Thanks. Some people would be a horse's ass. And that was a very specific type of person. And some people would be a yabatz, which was a very specific type of person in his mind. My father's Italian and horse's ass is one of his go-tos as well. No joke. Horse's ass. A type of guy.

You horse's ass. Yeah, a very, like a type of guy was a horse's ass. You trying to look up yabats? Don't fact check me on this. Yeah, I know. I just want to know what it means. Yabat. It means like what you are if you don't buy Mark's book.

Why was I talking about... Yiddish probably has so many words. Why was I talking about yabbats? For 15 bucks by two. And that way you can share one. If they're like, I got some questions about this public land stuff. Just say, you know what? Read this.

Yeah, I know what I was going to say now. When you're talking to some yabbats and you're arguing with him about When you're talking to some yabots and you're arguing with him about, you're talking to some horse's ass and you're arguing with him about public lands and he's like, you'll be able to regale him with facts you learned

out of Mark's book. There you go. Yanni, you had your hand up. No, I did not. I don't think you're supposed to wear a Santa's hat that way. It's an elf hat. Oh.

That's how they wear it? Oh, because the ball's in the front? Yeah, that looks a lot better. Giannis is into that Christmas rap. You're showing me some stuff today. Yeah, I like that. Little John Kool-Aid man. Everything on my list, baby, hey! All that really, really, really was for Christmas. On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me seven hops and peppers, six cheeks of grouper,

five big old back straps, four mincemeat pies, three fried perch, two smoked blue breasts, and a squirrel in a crock pot. On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me acorn, beaver ham, seven, hoss, and pepper, six cheeks of grouper, five big old back straps, four mincemeat pies, three fried perch, two smoked croutons, and a squirrel in a crock pot. Phil, we're entering it. Hit us with, hit everyone, hit our

listeners with our tradition song from Fiddler on the Roof. It's not a Christmas movie. That's right. We reached out to people to give us their favorite, that's not even a holiday song. Did you grow up watching a lot of Fiddler on the Roof? Yes. Maybe you're Catholic. She did.

You know, in my lineage, you sit around watching the one where Jimmy Stewart wants to jump off the bridge. Yeah. Yeah. It's a wonderful life. It's a wonderful life. Yeah, a wonderful life. Did you guys watch Fiddler on the Roof at all?

Were you raised to watch Fiddler on the Roof? No, not really. I mean, my high school put on Fiddler on the Roof at all? Were you raised to watch Fiddler on the Roof? Not really. I mean, my high school put on Fiddler on the Roof as a play. Oh, so you know about it. I know about it. The high school put it on. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Every year. The senior class did a musical. Oh, because you were raised in New York. I was raised in New York. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. My brother loves that movie. We did an episode once where we sang it, but we sang it.

It was about how to get hunting permissions. And we did that song. We do permissions, permissions. Remember that, Mark? I do remember that. It's stuck in my head ever since. Hit it again, Phil. Permission, permission.

So we reached out to people on Instagram at Stephen Rinella and asked people to share with us their best. No, not best. Just their hunting and fishing traditions. Hunting and fishing holiday traditions. Our holiday traditions, personally. But like weird ones. Weird ones. Or like funny, something.

Well, that's the ones we picked. Yeah, that's true. We picked the ones. Our Christmas, like Christmas is probably the worst day of hunting on the planet. Every Christmas we would go out. Why is it the worst day? Where I lived, it was just horrible hunting. It was horrible hunting.

The conditions usually stunk. Oh, yeah. You'd be like, you'd be wading out in the crotch deep snow. At that point in time, all the dumb squirrels are dead. It's not like great for rabbits yet. Rabbits would get good later when you get compact and snow you can walk around on. You start getting sunny days. Days will start getting longer.

Rabbits want to be out. It's like a short-ass day. All the dumb squirrels are dead. It's just smart squirrels. All the leaves are down. So squirrels see you coming from a million miles away. Hunting that scrub oak, oak jack pine just horrible but we would open our stuff up and then we'd head out into the cold and snow and if and if we four or five of us pounded it hard and we

got a squirrel or two we'd be happy traditions that was our tradition. That's right, Bill. That was our... Did you guys have any good ones? A lot of our... Not around hunting. No hunting and fishing traditions? I had one, and this is one that a lot of our audience wrote in about. Guys from Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania has a traditional flintlock muzzleloader season. Flintlocks only. Patch round ball, buckhorn sights, and it opens the day after Christmas, right? So over Christmas break, same thing as you. Like a piece of flint strikes a piece of metal and shoots a spark down into a little hole. You could not use a cap lock. That was too modern for Pennsylvania. Had to be a flintlock.

So what was cool was, because it's the same thing as you said. It was always deep snow, shitty conditions. The deer had been kind of pounded, right? But a very traditional gift was a flintlock muzzleloader kit, right? So you couldn't use it that year. You could start sanding. You could start sanding that day, right? And so by the time next Christmas came, you could take last year's present out and do the flintlock hunt. Tradition! Tradition!

Tradition! I used to force the sisters out. I wouldn't force, but I would strongly encourage them to come out and just do a quick bird hunt with me out at Mom's place. Where is that?

In Shepherd, Montana, outside of Billings. It's where your Ma raised sheep in Shepherd. place. Where is that? In Shepherd, Montana, outside of Billings. Okay. It's where the Yerma raised sheep in Shepherd. Isn't that funny? Was that intentional? Was that a tradition? No. No, it was

the fact that those two are very fiscally conservative and they found the ugliest ranch that had already been sheep-fenced and dashed my dreams. By that, you don't mean fiscally conservative as much as frugal. Very frugal. Yeah. But you hunt geese on that place now.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a nice permission. It is, but I'd give all the girls a shotgun give all the girls a shotgun and we'd go walk the ditch for pheasants. Um, and they were the, my sisters were all, you know, very, very safe to the point where there was always at least one rooster on the ditch. Uh, my dogs would be working their butts off and the bird would get up, the girls would track the bird with the shotgun, never squeezing the trigger, and that was the entire

hunt. Because they were just not trigger happy. Right. They were just like, man, I don't know what's going to happen if I hit this trigger. Yeah. It was fun. Yanni? No, I don't think I have a hunting, fishing tradition.

Oh, you already told me that. Yeah. That's terrible. Tradition. No, hey. Tradition. I mean, I appreciate the sentiment, but you didn't have a tradition. That is a tradition.

Oh. Tradition. Tradition. Mark? Nothing here either. What are you guys doing? Are you just sitting around on your butts? Well, you know, my one hunting and fishing-related tradition, I guess on Christmas,

I always got a hunting or fishing magazine, and I would read that on my butt. But it's hunting season. Yeah, but it was Christmas, and Mom said stay in the house. Glad we asked these people. This guy, when he was seven, he got a pellet gun for Christmas, and he goes out and starts just harvesting birds. He calls it an opportunistic hunt. And pretty soon he's coming back with a sack containing some blue jays,

doves, pigeons, and a pileated woodpecker. And his ma comes out and freaks out on him and says, I'm going to make you eat every one of those. He says, I'm going to plan on eating them anyway. And his grandpa came out and said, me too. So him and his grandpa, who was born during the Depression, sat down and they ate up their birds. And then from then on every year they'd do what he calls, again, they would do an opportunistic hunt for Christmas. Another guy wrote in that Christmas Day, they'd always have their eyes on

some... I don't really understand this. He had some spots where there was a lot of doves that would congregate in parking lots of businesses, and since they knew that the businesses were closed on Christmas Day, they would hit those spots. Another guy wrote in that every year he makes plans with his buddy to go hunt, and every

year his buddy cancels the plans, and then every year he has a real good hunt, and he's come to believe there's some kind of higher juju at play here so now whenever his buddy calls and cancels he gets real excited he's gonna get something guy says they uh one guy says they always hang their unfilled game tags on the christmas tree oh that's cool. This guy's my old stepdad's family treated the first day of squirrel season as if it was a holy day

by always having, this is kind of like a playoff Christmas Eve, they'd have a squirrel's Eve family dinner and celebrate the night before. Then they'd get up and meet at Waffle House at 3 a.m. and then go get them. They used to also, like on the holidays, they would like to go shoot pigeons out of the barn. And he got to be of the age where they told him to go in and spook the pigeons.

He didn't really know what they meant, and he went in and blew a hole through the barn roof. A guy, he says they used to hang their quivers up instead of their stockings so Santa Claus can give them new arrows. Oh, I love that one. I'm stealing it. Guy says, quote, I take the old lady and the hound out and shoot down our Christmas tree with a 12 gauge. Wow. Guy says, we shoot our, no, the second guy, we shoot our tree down with a shotgun.

We call it Christmas tree hunting. Another guy says, we've been doing this for probably 12 or 15 years it started when my dad and I went lion hunting with the secondary objective of cutting down a Christmas tree while out we found a tree to harvest but realized we had forgot a saw our axe so we shot it down with dad's 3030 it's been a tradition ever since a guy wrote in they pickled tongue but the thing he brought up was Boxing Day you guys know Boxing Day is isn't that Canadian? Yeah, it's the day after Christmas in Canada.

They box all their shit up? I don't know what they do. I think they all fought. But someone told me that he thinks it's because you box all your stuff up and go home. It's a holiday. Sounds fun. Do we not have any Canadians in the office? No, not that I know about.

It's a tradition. His dad always saved his deer he shot in the fall so he could use them to make reindeer tracks outside. That's a good idea. That's cute. I had that happen to me when I was a kid. Woke up one morning and there was reindeer tracks all over and Santa wrote a message in the snow. You sure it wasn't whitetail tracks? Well, some kind of tracks.

Well, I feel like you should know. At the time, I didn't. I mean at the time I didn't I mean I know you didn't hunt on Christmas so you weren't that dedicated I was easily fooled you were naive

it was fun I enjoyed that can we jump back to the opportunity hunter yet oh the guy that hunts all the songbirds with his gramps

yeah yeah go on it's not poaching it's opportunity hunting that's what his grandpa from the depression would call it that's what his grandpa would call an opportunistic one.

I like to point out, I don't condone opportunity. I don't know. Do I need to take the time to point out that one shouldn't go out on Christmas Day and kill pileated woodpeckers and eat them with your gramps? Yeah. Phil, did you feel that way? Unfortunately. Okay.

Sorry. To back up, not that I'm supportive of it. This was a funny story. Not that I'm supportive of it. I just tell it like it is. He wrote in. I'm not speeding, officer. I'm taking advantage of the opportunity if there's nobody else on the road and going very fast.

Have a nice day. It's an opportunistic drive. It's a tradition. Tradition. Where are we? This guy is saying that every Christmas Eve. So his Ma and Dad had a deal where his Ma had to wrap up the presents. So his old man would take them out to fish snook under the bridge in Marco.

Where's Marco? Florida? Florida. Okay. So guy's Marco? Florida? Florida. Okay. So guy from Marco, Florida. Christmas Eve comes around. Ma needs to wrap up all the presents. Dad takes him to fish snook under the bridge.

One time they're out there on Christmas Eve and his old man, they get a stingray and get it in. And somehow his old man gets the barb through his thick leather work boot out the other side. So he cuts the stingray's barb off, even though it's stuck in his leg. So now he just shows up with a stingray barb in his leg. The nurse on duty, somehow she gets the idea to put hot

water on to neutralize the pain, but uses such scalding hot water that it thoroughly blisters the old man's foot. They eventually get the barb out. He shows up at home, and he's got the stingray barb,

which they extracted, tied around his neck as a necklace. Says, we'll always remember Christmas 2002. This guy says what they like to do on Christmas is they bond by going out hunting pack rats. The two kids take 22s and the mom and dad bust up the pack rat mound so everybody can shoot. Oh, that's good clean fun. Family fun.

Do you eat pack rats? He didn't say. My guess would be, yeah, I don't want to speak for him. This guy says, I ignore my family. I go fishing instead. This guy says that every year Gramps would get out, oh, I don't, I don't want to speak for him. Um, this guy says I ignore my family. I go fishing instead. This guy says that every year Gramps would get out. Oh, chef Cato. This guy's a good dude.

He says that, uh, every year Gramps would get out whiskey and pour a shot down the barrel of his single shot, 12 gauge. Oh, he was thanking it for all the game it brought. That's deep and touching. My grandfather would take my dad and I out quail hunting, and we couldn't quit until we all got our limit. If the hunting was tough, I'd end up eating some of his old Vienna sausages

that he'd put down by the pickup's floor heater to warm them up. He always had some stale saltines to go with them. This guy, they like to shoot, I'm not quite sure, they like to shoot bottle rockets to go with him. This guy, they like to shoot. I'm not quite sure. They like to shoot bottle rockets at the outhouse. This guy.

Anyone? That's what the holidays are all about. That's what the holidays are all about. This guy, his old man's got a cannon he likes to pull out. It's a miniature cannon, and it perfectly fits a 20-gauge shell. So he pours the shot out, leaves the wad and the powder and the primer intact, and instead of where the fuse would go, he shoves this shell up in there and strikes it with a hammer. Guy reports it's louder than hell. On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me is louder than hell. Tradition! Tradition!

On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me nine buck-tongue tacos, eight corned beater hands, seven huss and pepper, six cheeks of grouper, five big old back straps, four mincemeat pies, three fried perch,

two smoked coop breast, and a squirrel in a crock pot. On theth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 10 gator sliders, 9 bucktongue tacos, 8 corn with beater hands, 7 hoss and peppers, 6 cheats of grouper, 5 big old back straps, 4 mixed meat pies, 3 fried perch, 2 smoked cupras, and a squirrel in a crock pot On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me Eleven panseared frog legs, ten gator sliders, nine buck-truck tacos, eight corn beaver hams, seven hoss and pfeffers, six cheeks of grouper, five big old backstrasks, four mincemeat pies, three fried perch, two small cupras, and a squirrel in a crockpot. 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 our northern brothers get irritated well if you're sick of you know sucking high and titty there on x is now in canada the great features that you love and on x are available for your hunts this season the hunt app is a fully functioning gps with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products

and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet.

Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. I got a little story I'll tell. Because it was kind of about what we were just talking about, about deer, using deer prints on the snow outside. When we were kids, my parents would get the neighbors, they had like a leather, it was like a half of a belt, it had a bunch of bells on it. I don't know what you call it, but you could like hang it off of a door, you know, so when you open the door, the bells jingle.

That thing was part of the Christmas kit. They'd whoop you guys with it. They would get the neighbors to give all the presents. We had no presents Christmas morning under the tree. There was zero. We'd open a bunch Christmas Eve that were from each other. Christmas morning, no

presents under the tree. Then you'd be sitting around and having some breakfast, and then all of a sudden you'd hear jingle, jingle, tree. Then you'd be sitting around and having some breakfast, and then all of a sudden you'd hear jingle, jingle, jingle, and we'd be like, what? Did you hear that? Go by that window. We'd run to the window, and then by some other window you'd hear jingle, jingle, jingle. Like there's daylight out. Yeah, daylight out.

And then all of a sudden at the front door there'd be like a really big jingle noise and whatever, and we'd run to the front door, and you'd open the door and there'd be a giant sack full of presents. That's a good one. That's cool. Who would drop them off? The neighbor.

Santa. Santa would drop them off. That was your guys' tradition? Hit the song, Phil. That's nice, man. Thanks for sharing. All right. Yeah.

That is a good one. Thank you. Do you do that in your family? No, we haven't. No, my kids are already like, there's no such thing. Oh, man. Dude, you got to tell them the truth. Yanni area has them paying taxes.

Yeah, what's really odd, though, at our house is that we have, like, they staunchly are non-believers of Santa Claus and karma. I tried to drop karma on them the other day and they're like, that's the craziest shit we've ever heard. Yeah. You're like, if some guy doesn't, you tell me some guy doesn't show up and drop off presents.

I should not believe it. They lose a tooth. And dude, they are all in on writing that letter to, we've named her pearly white or pearl white. I forget which one we use, but they're all into writing that letter, and they are very serious. There's no questioning whether or not the fairy comes and trades out dental work for cash.

But yeah, Santa Claus and karma, they're not into it. Yanni, speaking of that, did you hear that noise? What is that noise? It wasn't bells, was it? Oh! Ho! Ho! What?

It's a... Son of a bitch! It's a Christmas miracle! It's a big man himself! That's karma! Oh my, Steven! Oh, this is great! You gotta be kidding me!

Use the mic, Santa! The special holiday special, boys and girls, this is called the kids' corner of the special holiday special when we get a visit from big man himself. And you people who might not appreciate how special Santa is, let me hit you with this. This is something I'd like to revisit. This is some stats pulled by Spy Magazine many years ago. This establishes

how miraculous Santa Claus, just how special it is to have him here. This man, this man here in our presence, he every year services an estimated 378 million

Christian children. If you imagine that 15% of those Christian children are bad and don't get anything, so he doesn't need to do anything for them, and you give it that you have a whopping 3.5 Christian children per household, this man still is visiting, every year, 91.8 million homes. Even with the rotation of the earth, he's only got 31 hours of darkness to get it done. This man in our presence right here, visiting us here today, can pull off 822.6 home visits per second. It takes him a thousandth of a second to pull off a single home visit. Not counting trans-oceanic

legs of his trip. This man travels 72,522,000 miles every Christmas. He's going 650 miles per second. He's going 3,000 times the speed

of sound. If he were to only bring each kid a measly two pounds of presents, this man pulls 321,000 tons of toys behind him in his sleigh. His lead reindeer, his lead reindeer at these speeds is absorbing 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second. If these were normal reindeer, he would be sloughing off. If these were normal, first off, these are normal reindeer. He would need 214,200 reindeer to pull that load. In 4.26 thousandths of a second, 214 reindeer at this speed will be sloughed off into char.

At those speeds. Steven, I'm not a numbers guy, but that sounds wonderful. This man sitting here today is subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500 times greater than the Earth's gravitational force. He is pinned to the back of his sled with 4,375,015 tons of force at those speeds. Ladies and gentlemen, Santa Claus. Thank you. Thank you. If he can't do that, if he can't do that, then he damn sure wouldn't be able to write a good poem.

Damn right. Listen, Steven. I hear you have three children. Three children? That's correct. One girl and two boys? That's correct. Is that correct?

That's correct. I'm not familiar with your program. The elves were telling me all about it. Sounds lovely. They told me you have three children. One girl and two boys, is that correct? Yes, that's correct, Santa. Your first boy's name is Ryan. Incorrect.

Your girl's name is Janice. Incorrect. And your second boy's name is Mark, is that correct? Oh, no, you're right, that's correct. That's lovely. You have a television program. I've not seen it. Yes, I do.

Very busy, as you well know. I do, yes. It's on Netflix, Santa. Knitflex? That's wonderful. I'm very proud of all of you. Merry Christmas. And you're not welcome at the North Pole

because the elves tell me that you kill reindeer. On occasion, I have. We won't speak of it. What do you need now from me? Very busy. To round out Kids Corner and the first annual special holiday special,

we would like a poem. You would like a poem. And knowing the incredible feats you're capable of, I feel like it's a small thing to ask. I've just written it. Just now. Are you ready? I am ready. It's called Twas the Night Before Deer Season. I've just written it. In the last minute. Are you ready? I am ready. It's called Twas the Night Before Deer Season. I've just written it in the last minute. Are you ready, Anthony?

I'm ready, Santa. You're naughty. Twas the night before deer season, when all through the woods, the hunters were prepping all of their goods. Quiet. Quiet, Stephen. Santa's talking. Shush it.

The base layers were hung in the wall tent with care in hopes that first light soon would be there. Giannis, or Janis, was nestled all snug in his cot with visions of crosshairs and taking the shot. And Cal in his lip broom,

and Steve in his wool, they each had a bottle of whiskey to pour. When out of the darkness arose such a sound, Stephen sprang from his chair to see what was around. Away to the tent flap, taking immediate flight, he threw back the canvas and stepped into the night. With an LED lamp strapped to his head, he saw in the darkness a buck in its bed.

And what to his wondering eyes should he see? The buck's giant rack had rubbed every tree this frame was wide and taking one more look it was a buck moon and Crockett would put into their book his tines how they twinkled his muscles how tense his antlers like the pickets and the most wonderful fence. The big giant buck had a broad, saggy belly that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly. Calm down, Mark Kenyon. You seem to be excited.

You're sweating. Your brow is filled with... Santa doesn't sweat. I get very busy, but I do not sweat. You are sweaty right now. I'm liking this. Yeah, you should get a handkerchief. He was chubby and plump

with full of cold fighting fat. Though the meat eater man had ruined his nap. Steve dreamed to be shouldering and aiming his gun. Gripping and grinning sure would be fun. The buck pissed on his tarsals and with a twist of his head, let Stephen know there would be nothing to dread. He sprang down the trail looking just like a missile and the way he flew like the down of a thistle.

But the hunter exclaimed as the buck ran out of view, I hear does and spike bucks have tasty-backed straps too! Ho, ho, ho, meat-eaters! The end! I just wrote that now. It took me one minute and twelve seconds. That's valuable time. Well played.

Quiet, elf! Who let you out of the workshop? You bastard. Santa, thank you so much for dropping by. There ends the end of the kids corner of the special holiday special. Santa, if you'd like, we're going to step out

of this room and we're going to go do the Latvian holiday tradition of melting lead and then you breathe all those toxic fumes and then you throw the lead into a bucket. It's a bucket of water.

The lead solidifies into a crazy shape. You hold the shape up and make a finger puppet with it and then that predicts your future if you'd care to join us.

I have no idea what you're talking about. That sounds dangerous. I've never been to Latvia, but it sounds nice. Go on, Stephen. Go on. All right, everybody. Once again, give it up for Santa.

Busy man. Busy man. All right. He's got to go to the shopping mall. Goodbye. Goodbye. He's wanted right now at 4,000 shopping malls. Steven, listen to the hunting collective.

Okay, Yanni, what do we need to know, you know, setting out to do this? Well, what you need to know first is that all these traditions, like I said earlier, celebrating the winter solstice not necessarily christmas and the winter solstice is like the it's the new year basically on like a calendar that nature provides right so if you just throw out december and january and just looked at like what when the year sort of flips over for uh the sun yeah days get mighty short. Exactly. Everybody gets all depressed. Days start getting longer again. So all of this stuff sort of has like a finish up with one thing, start a new thing theme going

throughout the whole thing. Before we've talked about the Yule log, which I think now after doing some research on the Yule log, it's not exactly the same thing. But the log that we like to tow around the house with a rope while we're singing Latvian folk

songs. Yeah, I've been to this. You've been to it. That's right. Everybody, you chop? What happens now? I can't remember what I did. We drag the log around the house three times to rid the whole homestead of any sort of

bad juju, bad spirits, anything that might be negative surrounding the place itself. Then, so that the humans can participate, sort of getting rid of their own demons, mishaps, negativities, anything bad that you want to sort of forget

from the last year and put it behind you and be able to look forward with a clean slate, you can do, and I read recently that you can do this multiple ways into the log. You can chop it, which is what we do. Yeah, like I walked up and I'm like, Yannis, Yannis, Yannis, Yannis, and I chopped. And I'm still here. And I wept and chopped into the log. Yeah.

You could also just tie a little string around the log. Everybody could do that. And that's sort of symbolized. It's like a safer way. Symbolized that way. Yeah. Yeah. You could also just tie a little string around the log. Everybody could do that. It's like a safer way. Symbolize that way. Yeah. We were at a place where we didn't have room for the log or whatever, and so instead we all just wrote things down on a piece of paper on sort of like a scroll and rolled it up, and then everybody would just pitch them into the fire. So like urban parents who aren't comfortable with their children wielding an axe, you can have them go tie a...

Yeah, that's right. And so you've got a big bonfire going and so once everybody's done chopping or tying their thread or string onto the log, you pitch it into the bonfire.

Do they write a note on the string? No. Just a string? Yeah. Because you know what it means. That's right. And again,

it's just the tradition is just symbolic of leaving the bad stuff behind from the last year. Traditions. Tradition. Hit it, Phil. Tradition.

Tradition. I want to give you guys a little hot trivia tip. You guys, this might come in very handy this holiday season. Is that such a thing? I think so. It is now. A hot. Right?

Wouldn't you like a little, You're a trivia player, Phil. Wouldn't you like like a... But it's trivia and a tip. Well, it's like a tip that might come in handy during trivia because I feel like this is one of those questions that could come up in trivia. I'm good. Does anybody know where and when the first Christmas tree was erected? Germany.

I thought they called it the old Tannenbaum. Yeah, they did it about a hundred years after they erected one in the capital city of Latvia, Riga. Oh, that is a lie.

That's a lie. You're telling me. You can do your own research. But I'm not here to debate it at this moment. I just wanted to give you guys a little tip. You're telling me that the Latvians came up with the Christmas tree. Men of the local merchant's guild decorated a tree with artificial roses,

danced around it in the marketplace, and then set fire to it. God, you guys are dramatic. The roses used for many years. It's like Latvians are so dramatic. Yep. I mean, burning, it's like just all the decorating and burning. Well, it sounds like all they have to play with is wood. And fire.

Yeah. What are you going to do? Chop it or burn it? Every holiday. Before bottle. On that holiday, you burn it, then decorate it. You have bonfires. I like it.

Why did that guy send us the thing about how Latvia is the most introverted country? What about it? He said that Latvia, he saw something at the Latvian embassy that said Latvia is the world's most introverted country. Yeah, and they're trying to get introverts to talk about their introvertness. But you guys have such flamboyant expressions around the holidays. It just doesn't strike me as introversion. Introversion. I think it just seems flamboyant because you've never heard of it.

If someone had never heard of your Christmas traditions and you told them about it for the first time. That's a good point. I'd be like, no, a huge dude comes down your chimney, dude. And then we take some raw eggs and mix them with milk and cream and whiskey and drink it. Yeah. Sounds weird, but OK, we'll try it. That's a good point. I never thought about it like that. I got a Latvian folk song here. Oh, let it rip.

A traditional. Oh, yeah. My mom said I needed somebody else to tell me what note to start on, but we don't have anybody here that can help me out with that. All right, is that helpful? No. Steve, you should have been part of the choir. No, I missed it.

You guys want to listen to my mom? No. I really want to hear you. No, no, no. Seriously. Do a duet with your ma this is yanni and his mom doing a duet it's not it's not hold on let me just listen to her let me just listen to her for just a That's Christmas for me right there. That's beautiful. I know. You should have gone, you know what?

A good showman would have gone, because now you've got to follow that up. I would have sung. You guys aren't happy with that? I would have sung and then played your mom. Because now you've got to, that was beautiful, and then you've got to now. Yeah, I know. All I wrote down was start low and go high.

That's wonderful. Give it a couple more licks, Yanni. I like it when your ma does it. I bet. I bet. There's a little more melody and harmony and all those things associated with what music is, what you like to hear in music. Let me hear it again, though. Phil's going to mix it into the dance remix version.

It's still cuter than hell to watch. It's still cuter than hell to watch Yanni sing. Oh, well, thanks. Wonderful. Wonderful. Couple more. No, there's only one more. Da bina lukdu, ruasi kaladu, kaladu. Wonderful. Wonderful. A couple more.

No, there's only one more. Anyways, you want to know what the words mean? Come they told me, pa rumpa pum pum. You got the rumpa pum pum. Oh, I did? Yeah. That's just the chorus. So kaladu is the same in English as it is in Latvian but it's sorry a silver rain was falling at winter solstice night all the teeny tiny

branches gave the silver a ride candors candles burned all night long in silver candle holders the moon shows the way to those bringing the sun's daughter. The sun gave her daughter from the land of the deceased to this land. Jeez. I'm not sure if it's the nutmeg, but that's tricky stuff. It's the nutmeg talking. Now listen, that's Yanni's translation of the song. So someone else might give you a different version, but there you go. So to look into the future, we have what's called Lymus Lieschana, which if you translate that literally, it means pouring luck or pouring happiness.

Lieschana being the verb pouring and lima being luck or happiness. Researching for today, I don't think I had ever personally defined what lima was to me, but come to find out, it's very hard to define, let alone translate, and that Latvian philosophers have sort of like battled and debated over this

for hundreds of years because it's not just like happiness, but it's more of like a state of being. There's like other emotions attached to it from simple satisfaction to great joy. Some theologians and philosophers describe it as living a successful and good life rather than a simple emotion.

So it's deep. So what you're about to do encompasses all that. You're not just like sort of forecasting like what might happen, but it's sort of like how you might feel and be for the next year. But you can see why I like it because basically if you've got Lyme and you just have like a general good positive attitude about life, I believe if you have that, you know, life should be pretty smooth for you.

Yeah, because you perceive it as such. That's right. So I think we can roll and pour some lead. So can you quick walk us through the process real quick? Yes. Okay, so this is how we've always done it. You basically just have a small pot

that you usually go to a thrift store and buy because once you melt lead in it, you're not going to use it again to cook noodles for your kids anymore. So you have to have – it's simple. You don't need a lot. So you guys never invested in one of those lead – like my old man had one of those lead melting –

looks like a bull's scrotum with a spout. No, I don't know. You guys need to get sophisticated about it. I don't know if you'd like to have a spout. No, I don't know. You guys need to get sophisticated about it. I don't know if you'd like to have a spout because that might trip up the actual throwing and pouring of it. Oh, it'd kind of dictate your future. That's right. Okay, go on. So yeah, some fishing sinkers is what we'd buy.

And you need a bucket. But then you can also just do it in your sink. Just fill it up with cold water. I think if you had a minimum of six inches, that's probably enough so that by the time it hit the bottom, it's not going to adhere to the steel. And so, yeah, a small pot and a way to heat it up and melt the lead. That's it. And so once you have a pot full, and I'm trying to think how much we're going to,

it's been a few years since I've done it, but I'm guessing like a two or three ounce fishing sinker or that amount is going to be enough to produce a nice pour of lead. Yeah, you don't want to predict too much of your future. No. I mean. Not the next 10 years. We're just trying to do one year. You get about a year per ounce.

Yeah. So, yeah, once you have it melted in the pot, you hover over the bucket of cold water and then quickly in one motion, spill it into there, throw it into there, pour it into there, and then it immediately makes kind of a loud popping noise

and it immediately solidifies and you pick it up out of there and the fun starts. And you guys like to throw the shadow with a candle or a flashlight? Candle, for sure. Because then you get the movement of the flame. Oh, it makes it dance.

It's like you're going to be dancing all year. Mm-hmm. I hope we throw marks and it's a giant white tail. I don't know. And it might be like Mark will think

he's going to get a big one but he doesn't realize he's just going to get stomped to death by one. Oh, he'll be like, any minute now. Chewing on gold finches while stomping on my head. It might be a whole herd of big giant bucks. Yeah, so Mark, when you see a big buck, don't get excited because you're not going to know

what it means, man. I'm steering clear of the back 40 next year. I know better than to go out there. I saw my lead. All right, let's go pour some lead on a piece of lead inside a little tin looking pot the The lead's melting and starting to run down to the bottom. It looks like that Schwarzenegger movie. Terminator 2? The guy that gets shot but then he looks like he gets back up again.

It does. It looks like the second Terminator's in there. How is it like all liquefied now and you're just gonna dunk it in? Okay, am I good now? Yep! Forward in. Whoa! That's a lot of fuchsias. Oh, that came out good.

Oh, no. Yeah, here, I'll get another one going. You pull yours out. This does not look like a festive holiday thing with Steve in his respirator. Oh wow! I'm looking out late to see what's going to happen to me. The seahorse! The picture doesn't come completely to the shadow.

It's too early to tell. No, you can do both. You can do both. No, I don't want anyone to throw it in the toilet. Who's doing the next one? It's a real satisfying noise when it goes into the pot. Bite me off. You want to do it in like one, you know?

Yeah. Who says it? Oh! Oh, that's absolutely a big buck. Is that Mark's future? That's my future. All right, so we are... Thank God to us. We have poured the lead.

And now, correct me if I'm wrong, Giannis, but we are examining the lead through... by looking at its shadow that it casts on the wall with a candle as the light and now we interpret what the lead shape means for Mark's future. I'd like to remind everybody

that, remember how I was saying how lime is the easiest way to translate it is happiness? So this is your future in a very fun and positive way. I see like an olive branch. Bonsai tree. An olive branch like peace?

Oh, they're a backpacker. A backpacker. Looking down the ground with a bill of hat on. That's it. A backpacker. Mark will go backpacking. Maybe he's got something. Maybe it's Mark in a backpack.

He's singing about public lands. I see something very dark. I see a very arthritic hand. With an arthritic hand with a growth. A man with a knife sticking out of his chest. So when you see cancer and knives and chest and whatnot, those thoughts, you just need to

throw out of your head. It's a wilted flower. Well, Yanni, with all due respect, man, these crazy-ass Labian lead shapes do not look positive. I think you just need

to have a better imagination, bud. See, there's that arthritic hand again. Ah, man. Steve Bringer's over here. I see an old lady, an old monk with arthritic arms. A unicorn seahorse.

Anthony Legata. Come on. Anthony's future is in disarray. See a lot of disorder. With a fire ant biting the guy in the back. An old arthritic worm. Lots to think about. Lots to think about, ladies and gentlemen.

Cal's problem is that his future is greatly segmented. Shattered, almost. A shattered future, some might say. Some might say it's, let's try to put a little more positive spin on it, Anthony. Maybe he doesn't have a shattered future. Maybe he has a very diverse and diversified

future. Maybe his future is shattered in many ways. Let's get Corinne up there. Corinne, what are you feeling? I don't know. It kind of looks like a dinosaur. Well, that was a long time ago. That's not future you look it's totally the wrong way she might find I wasn't look at the bright side old lady big head you're gonna be a long year. That just means you're getting smarter,

Corinne. It just means your brain is getting bigger. An arthritic old remember, as I was saying again, this will be the third time I'm going to remind you guys that Lima is happiness. And we're forecasting our happy future. Positive vibes.

Positive vibes. She's strangled a turtle Come here and Steve will tell your fortune You know, it's like you ever see a worm get squished and get all dried out on the sidewalk Like old dried out fish and bait I think it looks like a plant under the ground growing. No, no Hold excited. Hopefully it looks like someone figuring out the ventilation in this studio Yo. That's fixed. Okay, let's see here. That looks like an arthritic witch's finger. It does.

This is a good game. Oh, my gosh, you're growing your mustache back. Look at that. This is a bad future. It's like if Phil got a bad scar on his lip and it killed the hair growth, then he grew a mustache. Phil, do you have time for me to go, too? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah, the eagle's got to go. Of course. What the hell is his deal, man? Wouldn't it be funny if we didn't let Yanni go? It's a man carrying another body over his shoulder. Yeah, is that Steve? Are you carrying Steve? It's like kind of a dried out carcass. Am I carrying

Steve up a mountain or down a mountain? Or just carrying him metaphorically. That's the head. You'll carry Steve into the future. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, there concludes the special holiday special, first

annual of the Meat Eater Podcast. I want everyone out there to know gentlemen there concludes the special holiday special first annual the meat eater podcast i want everyone out there to know that we love them to death a old painful arthritic death notice we just love them to death thank you very much for joining us tune in next holiday season for the special Christmas special. Merry Christmas! Ho, ho, ho! Happy Hanukkah! Happy New Year! Happy Kwanzaa! Happy Halloween! On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me twelve

comfy goose thighs, eleven pants, two frog legs, ten gator sliders, nine buck-tongue tacos, eight corn beaver ham, seven hoss and peppers, six cheese soup grouper, five big old back straps, four mincemeatffer, six, jeans of grouper, five, big ol' backstrap, four, mincemeat pies, three, fried perch, two, smoked koopas, and a squirrel

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