The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 221: The Perfect Rock

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

Steven Rinella talks with Ryan Callaghan, Seth Morris, Brody Henderson, Phil Taylor, and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: how all of the stuff you add to braising liquid matters; Steve draws a MT mountain goat tag; explaining point creep; spike antlers; hot tips for hunting pressurized land; the bird that nightmares are made of; strutting and gobbling as an ok way to spend a day; Pleistocene re-wilding as a complete waste of time but a fun distraction; becoming a cattle apologist with old age; making the leap from gas station coffee; bleeding game out; each cheek on its own support; how to responsibly poop in the woods; the Latvian plug; a very strong "no" on the Pebble Mine project; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Presented by OnX Hunt, creators of the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters.

Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. I'll tell you what, I'm cooking right now. You want to know my new invention? Yes. You take the two legs off a turkey.

Thighs and drumsticks. You stick them in a big old pot. Like a La Crusade Dutch oven type pot. And then cap them with water, just cover them with water. You know where this is going. But then you put in a whole ton of garlic. Don't do anything to it, just peel it.

And you quarter an onion, put in a whole ton of hoisin sauce, bouillon, salt, pepper, and a whole ton of ginger oh then put in your oven at 275 all day long and oh you know the the fact that i used to uh kind of think that adding all kinds of junk to your braising liquid didn't matter was stupid. I mean, I used to like poop my pants when I was a little kid too. Like people change over time. But. Some people do.

Good example. That was an indefensible position. You cannot make up for it later. So how are you serving that stuff? Well, the problem is you pull it out and you think you're going to make something with it, but you just eat it all like that. That's all right. Yeah.

Just eat it all like that. The minute you can tear it apart with a fork. I think you're going like street tacos. Well, as was the intention, or you put it on Sandoz, make barbecue sandwiches and stuff like that, but God, it's just good like that. Tonight, I got it right now. I just pulled it out of my oven.

What I'm thinking about doing is just setting that whole thing down on the tabletop. Oh, yeah. Just be like digging, watch the bones. So good. I did the old street taco last night with turkey legs. Why street? Were you on a street? No. Kitchen taco last night with turkey legs. Why street? Were you on a street?

No. Kitchen taco. Kitchen taco. Yeah. Or backyard taco. Got it. But yeah. You cooked the legs.

Yep. Legs and thighs. Pulled it. You know what else I got in there with my thing? What? I haven't sampled it yet. I threw a hunk of bear scrap in there. Just a scrap of bear meat

Just to see Test kitchen When you made your tacos what did you put on them? As far as like fixings? Fixings yeah Some avocado Some A little bit of lime

Some onion Some taco sauce Sour cream nothing real fancy. If you really want to please your, uh, woman, Seth, what I would do is, uh, pick the meat. Yep. Okay. Lightly toss it with some oil and kind of fluff it up. So it looks like a little bird's nest.

Stick it under your broiler. Mm. Then put it on your taco. That's what I usually, I didn't do it last night because I was being lazy, but usually I pan fry it then. Oh, yeah. Um, the, uh, chupacabra seasoning. Yeah.

The green taco seasoning. Which Brody's kids thinks too spicy. That's right. Every kid, every kid on the planet thinks that's too spicy. Mine don't. Oh, really? My kids have no problem with it. Tough little kids.

You get that stuff into the air in the kitchen, it'll definitely put you down. But. Really? Oh, yeah, absolutely. You mean if you're just like inhaling it? Yeah. Free floating particles?

Yeah, I can picture that. I tossed an elk shank in that stuff, threw it on the grill, got it all looking nice. And then threw that in the sous vide for like a long time, 12 plus hours, and then pulled it out. Uh, once I, my, my test for a shank in the sous vide is to try to find where uh the tendon is coming out all clear and if you can poke that tendon and it just kind of splits apart and forms around your finger then the elk shank's done now do you always grill pre-sous vide well

you know i told you i had the antelope neck in there too and i didn't grill it prior to i just threw it in the bag and and i'm wondering if that's why it took that because when you char something it's supposed to create like the what is it myard process which is uh you know it's starting to break down not familiar with it um so i'm wondering if grilling the shank accelerated the shank breaking down that much faster than the antelope neck that had already been in there for 24 hours and the shank out, uh, pulled all that meat and dusted it real heavy with the chupacabra green taco. Mm-hmm.

And, um, I'm still working our way through our spice kit, by the way. And it's kind of like, oh. You're going alphabetical? Son of a gun. That's good. Um, and put some of that Wagyu beef fat in the Kind of like, oh. Going alphabetical. Son of a gun. That's good. And put some of that Wagyu beef fat in the skillet and crisped it up that way.

That makes a mean kitchen taco. That's good. Yeah. Actually, Maggie came over and filmed in the garage a gun setup video that we did. And so I got to feed her kitchen tacos. She enjoyed? She approved. Good.

Yeah. Nice. That's good stuff. So let's talk about my draw. I drew a mountain goat tag real quick. Not real quick. It took forever. Congratulations, Steve.

Yeah. Just got word today. I was unsuccessful. Just got word today. I was unsuccessful. Just got word today. How many years did you put in? Well, I was putting in before they even came out with bonus points. Approximately what year did you start? 95? 96, 97?

96, 97? More than half your life. No. Your math is bad. If I was better. 2020, 96. Brody's correct. 24 years.

Oh, he is. Jeez, Brody. I thought you were older. Not only was he good at math, but just has a real way of making it feel profound. You're right. Half my life. Yeah, drew it. Good job, Brody.

But check this out out my brother moved to this state granted he never moved away he just stayed put he moved to this state right when i did okay in that in that time he drew mountain goat moose there's like i should give you a little background there's three tags that are real hard to draw here i mean there's all kinds of special units but in the state of montana there's three moose sheep and goat are like real hard to draw as in most states yeah all over the west moose sheep go hard to draw uh and the time that i've been putting in so so he drew goat, moose, bighorn, goat again. Okay. And I drew finally goat.

And when you draw, when he drew mountain goat the first time, he had to go wait seven years to start all drawing again. And waited seven years to draw another damn goat tag. Yeah. I think he's quit applying now, right? He's taking himself out. He barely even, when he drew his last go tag, he barely even went. Yeah. He half-assed it.

But he's doing that not because he's kind of over it, but because I think he feels like he should take himself out of the running, right? No. No? Really? He told you that? I don't know. No.

So he's just bored of it. He's like, ah, whatever. He was like, I'm going to get an elk, then I'll go get him out. He wanted to get an elk. But I'm saying, I don't think he's participating bored of it He was like I'm going to get an elk Then I'll go get him out He wanted to get an elk But I'm saying I don't think he's participating anymore in the draw Is he still applying for sheep again? You'll have to ask I thought the story was he yanked himself out

Because he's Already done it So did he get the second goat? No He didn't really care. Wow. He got his once in a lifetime tags taken care of. If you don't care, I guess don't apply.

I'll text them right now in case people are wondering what happened to the host. But they're not once in a lifetime in Montana, obviously, right? Well, for most people they are. You can talk to that point. No, we were hanging. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm going to have to have a long life, a long, long, capable life.

So now, but the point being, you're all upset about how you've been putting in and never drew, but they didn't start doing bonus points until later. Well, yeah, and to the state of montana uh so what year did you really put were you really putting in before i was were you really putting in back in 1996 and you're wrong honest he did put in cal said 25 years yeah i mean i've been putting in since i was able to apply right unless my dad was just totally screwing with me. He's lying. Yeah.

He's like, son, I didn't give you any allowance because I put you in for a goatee. Right. But he's lying. Yep. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, the whole bonus point thing, I just hate that that's even a part of the conversation. We've already talked about that.

It's the worst thing Montana's ever done to people other than let non-residents apply. You know, they should be ashamed, the whole state. You weren't singing that tune when you were living in Idaho and still applying over here, were you? Yeah. I mean, honestly, here's where I screwed myself a little bit too. I was so disgusted and heartbroken and ashamed to call myself a Montanan due to the fact that we instituted a bonus point program that's not even really a bonus point that I refused to even purchase them a few years,

which, you know, only hurts myself. Why is it not a bonus point? Hold on, what? What? You were so upset, you quit drawing? No, I had to apply, but I wouldn't get the bonus point. Huh. Yeah, that makes zero sense.

Can you real quick explain to people what a bonus point is, in case they're curious? And then two, explain why you would do that to yourself. And then three, why it's not a bonus point, even when they call it that. And four, what system you prefer. So, Kev, you want me to give it to that order again? You're going to explain. No, I'm going to go from top to bottom.

What system I prefer? No, no, no. I think Idaho's got it. First, explain the system. That's the way to do it. Explain. What is it we're talking about? So a bonus point is basically something that instead of putting your name in the hat once,

you put your name in the hat twice if you have a bonus point. Can I take a stab at it real quick? Yeah, go for it. I hate it so much. I mean, it's just stupid. Let's say you have a, let's say the interest in a resource outweighs the resource. And you have, you've determined that you can kill 10 mountain goats out of a mountain range without damaging the population. But there's 100 people that are like, I'll go. Well, you got to pick 10 of them.

So they pick 10 of them by having a drawing. And now all hundred of those people send in an application. They send 10 of them a tag. What happens to the other 90 people? They say to them, but here's a consolation prize. You get a bonus point. So the next year we do the same thing all over again. If you pay an extra $2.

If you give us $2. Or $5 or $10 or $50 or whatever. Next year we do this all over again, you'll get an extra point, meaning your name will be in the hat two times next year because you're a loyal customer. Ten years goes by. This guy is like, I still haven't drawn any of these damn tags. You're like, well, guess what, buddy?

Your name goes in the hat now ten times because you've tried ten times, and that keeps some whippersnapper who hasn't been with the program and hasn't been participating from coming in and gobbling up the tag out from under a guy who should be getting some preferential treatment for the fact that he's a return customer. And doesn't Montana square them? Squares them! Not at first.

Now they square them. So when I send my stuff in, I'm in there like 400 times. Which I love the fact that you guys are like so excited about it, right? Because it's like, Oh gosh, free beer tomorrow. Okay.

So now what's, what's wrong with the system? You think it should be the young whippersnappers come in and have the same rights as, as a repeat diehard sticking to it. Long time supporter. Conservationist. Conservationist.

What I think is once you draw a tag, you should be done if you are successful. So it's more of a once in a lifetime thing. And then that just accomplishes. Okay, but that's not what we're talking about. That was question number four on this topic i believe um yeah and and i think this idea of like accruing points when everybody else is on the same point system and then everybody's points get squared at the same time, and it just adds a bunch of bureaucratic crap to the system. The system's bureaucratic.

Yeah. By definition. It's put up by a bureau. And then folks like me, who just like to think about hunting and the outside and enjoying life, have started thinking about math in regards to something they do they do the math for you you don't get to write down how many times you ought to be in there

um we were on a conversation today right sam lundgren okay uh drew moose tag right good for him and uh he's like yeah it's the first year that i really got in the nitty-gritty and i started comparing all the units and all the blah, blah, blah. Smart, smart. And I found out that this one gives me a 1.9% chance of drawing. And that's the unit where I drew the tag. Great. It's like, oh boy, that first you made me hate moose hunting.

And then you got a moose tag. Isn't that great? Dude, to be honest with you, Cal, this is like, I mean, it's in the best possible way. But the criticism you're giving is like, it just sounds like, what's the word I'm looking for? Old curmudgeon? Pointless whining? Oh, listen, I'm not going to stand up there and say I'm the smart guy in the room for not buying into the system like everybody else who'd fucking walk off a bridge if they saw somebody else walk off a bridge. Hey, there's a lot of states that don't do it.

Yeah, there's states that don't do it. Like they don't do it in Alaska, which is a great state to, you know, do the permits. Idaho, New Mexico. Wyoming for goats. Huh. And Buffalo still,

I think. Yeah, Montana for bison. My approach on it, they don't do bonus points for bison? No, it's, as far as I know, it's all,

everyone has the same chance. Which is a lottery, which is what, pure lottery, which is what you prefer. Yeah. Everyone's got the same chance. And you think the minute, let's say it is pure lottery. It's pure lottery, no bonus points. You think the minute someone goes in and reads the provided pamphlet, and the provided pamphlet gives you the percentage chances you'd have of drawing a tag

that not only ruins the draw but it ruins the hunting for that species no doesn't i just don't like having that stuff forced upon me and i've run into so many people in the hunting industry where it's like that's their brain and it's like statistics and then the inches and then the meh and the and uh it just you just want to go hunting man i just want to go hunting like me too that's why i pay attention to the drawings that's a great way to get a lot of extra opportunity is looking at that little chart that shows you if you're on the mark or not. You know, it's a, it's a in good faith sense of entitlement too. It's like, well, I'm, I'm good guy and I help lots of people learn how to hunt and, and I faithfully apply every time, even though I think the system is God awful and terrible and Montana ruined it for

no good reason halfway through my life. Um, I should just get one of those tags here. One of these days. That's you. And it's just not working out. What, uh, what is the, why do they, why do they do it? Like, what is the, what, what, what, what's to

gain from doing the system? Uh. Do they make more revenue somehow? Yeah, we're making more revenue, yeah. I bet one thing it does is it creates dudes like me who are damn sure not going to miss a year because you got to get them points. Yeah.

It's like frequent flyer mentality. Yeah. You start being like, good thing I'm flying somewhere. I'll get more frequent flyer status. The true point system, you know, so we have a bonus point, but, you know, there's lots of units that you want. That was one of the 18 questions Kyle was supposed to be tackling. Colorado, right, where it's like, no, if you get X amount of points, you will draw this tag? Not necessarily if you get an X amount, but that

you have more than anybody else. It's true preference. If I have 10 and you have 9, I will draw before you do. The max point holders are guaranteed. And that stuff always bummed me out too.

Because I was like... So you're just telling me do not apply to all of these opportunities. Explain point creep, Yanni. I wouldn't say it. Then we got to get to going. Here's what, let me do this. Let me say this. Ladies and gentlemen, you asked and we answered.

It's a special question episode. First, we're going to spend three hours having people air their grievances about the fact that I put in the time and effort and money and drew a goat tag. I'd be lying if I wasn't thinking. I'm like, man, I hope... Remember that song, Gene Loves Jezebel? Who was that? Jealous. An avalanche sweeps Steve off right about when he's about ready

to touch that round off. And then his kids are going to be so bummed about hunting, they'll never put in for a special draw tag. That'll increase my odds. That's his long play. At least I won't have to be competing with him or Nella kids. Explain point creep, Yanni, just because. Just because we've explained it a thousand times in the past.

Well, like I was saying, in Colorado, and I don't know what other states have true preference. Wyoming. Wyoming. Maybe Arizona. True preference being? No, Wyoming. Yeah, I'll explain it. Oh.

Yeah, Arizona, I think, is more of a bonus system because I think you always have an actual chance. But in Colorado, it's true preference. Surprisingly, only for deer and elk, not for the trophy species. For the other ones. Yeah. There it's more like a bonus point. But the preference point basically means that if there are 10 applicants that all have the max points, which means they've been applying every year since the program started.

And it might be, I think these days, it's getting up near 30, isn't it? Yeah. Close to 30 years they've been doing it. So those people that have max points will draw first before the people that have one point less than them. And so on down the line it goes. And so in point creep, there's so few tags in some of these units that these people with all these points want, that every year it takes one more point to draw it,

meaning that the max point holder pool never gets used up. Oh, it doesn't get satisfied. Yeah. So the guys are 25 points this year. There was 20 of them. And they're not cleared off to dock it. That's right. So the next year it takes 26.

All the times you've explained this, I never really understood it. Yeah, the minimum just keeps going up every year. Yeah. It used to be. Because you're not like, oh, now you're sitting on 19 points. You're like, oh, now all the 20-point guys are gone because they got their shit. They're not gone. And it's going to come down to how big that pool of people is

because if it is what I'm explaining, like 10 tags and 20 people in the max bonus point pool, sure, it'll only take two years to pull them out, and it would drop down to the next one, right? So every other year, you'd kind of reset a little bit. But I think some of those, there's people that have, there's hundreds of people that have max bonus points. So it depends on where.

Preference points. Yeah, max preference points. So it depends on where they're putting their energy in, you know, where they're applying. I'd like folks to know, folks out there sitting who are thinking like Cal, who are like, geez, Luis, really? That there's a couple

states dry desert states dry desert states that just have low populations low wildlife populations and high populations of people so you go like arizona and you have like the phoenix area right salt lake city or in utah so you got like big population centers, dry climate, not tons of egg necessarily. That's not tons of farming that supports high wildlife numbers. Anyhow, there's some states out there where a lot of hunting opportunities are tied to drawing permits. Like that you could, you could feasibly be a resident of one of these states and and not really draw and have a year where you don't get a good opportunity to hunt big game that can happen for the most part though we're talking about is like elite group of hard player type stuff meaning um most states have there's all kinds of stuff you can hunt you go down to the gas station you buy your permits we're typically

talking about uh states that allocate either like a certain species, which are not abundant species. And they'll allocate hunts that way, or certain areas where a state will carve off a little chunk of, of itself and be like, this is going to be an area where we're going to really limit how many people can hunt there and, and try to like grow extra big specimens of animals in this area and create this really amazing experience.

And so we're going to do a permit draw allocation here. But this is not what it takes to do all this. And there are plenty of people that hunt their asses off every year that don't do these permit draws. But once you get into them, I find it's fun just for its own sake. I view it as something even more than a means to an end. Just like Cal hates. Like I actually kind of like,

I take enjoyment in it. It feels like gambling, but I don't like to gamble. Yeah. So I made a lot of bets. If Trump wins, I win 400 bucks. 40 people,

$100 bets. Hard player. When Steve says hard player, this is a group of hard players. Elite group of hard players. Think of it like a craps table. I didn't say this is a group of elite. Well, there may be one or two at the craps

table that you'd call an athlete. Whereas the rest are just sitting there smoking and they like rolling dice. Yeah. Yeah. It's a system yeah you can become a guy that counts cards to not that you count cards and crap what's it what's a crap what's a crap's version what i'm trying to say you know the odds yeah you could be like a

real man elite hard player and and get a lot of value out of the system. Or he could be a guy that just sits down and wants to have a free drink and lose some money and wind up coming away feeling a little burned. Hoping Steve slides down a mountain.

But I'll point out, this is the, after all these years, okay, this is the first I've been applying since 1990, let's say say 1997 let's be extra safe 1997 because i didn't do it as not i didn't apply as a non-resident or you know uh 1997

this is the first time i drew one of these things in all these years okay it's not like i'm not like the guy cleaning up in the the the pit boss is like calling up to the floor to have him watch me through the camera. Like I'm just a dude, man. I'm a dude grinding it out. And I would think that you'd be happy. Do. Oh, one last quick thing. Tell, uh, Seth, tell, uh, tell everyone what Rick Smith's observation was the other day.

My favorite sentence of all time. Oh, he says, how can it be cold outside when my balls are still clammy? Yes, great question. I modified it to be like sweaty, but that's what he was getting at and it's like it's like i was like you know rick that is a really good question i don't understand it either yeah cal i'm sure it was a little um sarcastic too but in your little in the email you sent back when you're when you're all pissy about not drawing anything, you're also telling all of us out-of-staters to pack our bags and go home to increase your odds.

I should amend that and say you guys don't have to apply. It should be a birthright. Yeah. I've never seen anyone say that on a social media post before. During this quarantine thing, I was laughing. I was like, go. You need to build a wall around the state. Yeah.

Put people back to work. Mr. Trump. Build that wall. I'm pro-wall, just not down there. Yeah. Wasting all that walling material. Got a way shorter border. Okay.

Question. Do spike by spikes, he's saying spikes. Did you know that there was an ice fishing bait called spikes in Michigan? You know when you get a, raise your hand if you know what a spike is, ice fishing. Yeah. A waxy, a waxworm is like a little larva. Where the hell are they from? I knew it once upon a time.

A waxworm, a spike is one of those that has a tail on it or mousies. Yeah, we call them mousies. Mousies and spikes. They look like a maggot with a long, thin tail. It's like with a little mouse. Yeah, it's a maggot with a tail and you'd call it a spike or a mousy. But this guy, when he says, do spikes always stay spikes? He's talking to spike bucks.

So a buck that throws two pencil antlers. Do they always stay spikes? Is it beneficial to kill them over a big buck because of poor genes? No and no. No, they do not always stay spikes. And the next year they'll grow a different antler. And two, it's been proven conclusively that if a buck that's a spike, that does not indicate his destiny as a buck. That's right.

He will not always be like a little dinky buck. He's got just as much chance, just like a little small second grade kid. You can't say, oh, you'll always be, you know, a little small kid. Yeah. I found a spike elk antler on the ground

here yesterday. Did you really? Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's a nice one too. Oh, those are really cool. Yeah, they are cool. How long is it? Oh, probably 14 inches-hmm. Yeah. It's a nice one too. Oh, freshies. Those are really cool. Yeah, they are cool. How long is it?

Oh, probably 14 inches. Really? Yeah. Um, the, uh, the reason that some units have spike, like spike specific tags is, uh, they find that it increases the, uh, health of the herd herd over time but it's based off of the fact that you're taking an animal out of the group that's kind of voted nature's voted it most likely to die anyway it's in that age class of not making it out of the the learning curve yet yeah and allows you a way to kill it gives you a way to kill younger bulls without killing too

many younger bulls. Cause it's like, you'd be that, you know, that you might only have X percentage out of the population are going to be that way anyway. Yeah. They're even going to be eligible to be hunted. Yeah. If you ever get the opportunity to look over a

big elk herd, try to pick out all the spikes. Yeah. I've talked to a lot of guys that have drawn spike tags and they're thinking they're just going to be wading around through spikes. Yeah, I've talked to a lot of guys that have drawn spike tags and they're thinking they're just going to be wading around through spikes. But you're reviewing your mind, man. It's like you can go a long time without having a spike in front of you. You know, it's not like they're just everywhere.

Yeah, in a lot of places they're protected. You can't shoot them. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Who highlighted best advice for hunting public lands and pressured areas? Question mark. Not me. Did I do that?

Oh, I did. Seems like a very broad question. Well, I was going to narrow it down to a tip. I'll give a tip. I think everyone should offer a tip. It doesn't need to be broadly applicable, but just a tip that comes to mind. I got one. Go ahead.

Hunting public lands in pressured areas. My tip, and it's not applicable to all situations, but it's a way of thinking, is there are ways, though it's not ideal to be in a high-pressured area with a lot of other hunters competing with you, but my tip is ask yourself, think about, are there ways that I could make this pressure work for me um i've seen that happen like places where when all hell breaks loose on opening day i have

a feeling that these deer are gonna blank right and make it work for you and have, make it be part of your plan. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. The pressure. Yeah. Agree. We used to duck hunt

in a spot every year opening day of duck season, Muskegon Marsh. Your success relied on there being tons of people in the marsh. You got good shooting all day long.

If you hunted over to stream channels and stuff, because people just bump birds all day. And then 10 in the morning, everybody decides to go home and it really heats up. Cause everybody gets in their river boat and gets out in the main channel to drive the river boat back. And they put all the ducks back up in the air again.

And it was like, you needed it to be high pressure. Which leads me to my hot tip. Go ahead. Would be get up earlier or get up later. So you either beat everyone out there by getting up really early or you sleep in and you get out there about 10 a.m. And wait for them to get out of there. Wait for them to get out.

And you may catch some animals moving because they know the schedule of the bulk of the hunting population. Seth? Um, my tip would be to, there's a lot of surveys out there, like collar, like where, where they're collaring animals in high pressured areas to see what they're doing. And, uh, oftentimes those surveys reveal that

like say a big whitetail buck is hanging out 150 yards from the parking lot because everyone's walking right past it. You know? Yeah. We had the turkey master, Mike Chamberlain. Mm-hmm. Remember they had this turkey that couldn't be killed? He would even send people out and tell them because they were studying how this turkey couldn't be killed he'd send people out and say here's where the turkey is go try to get them they won't be able to get them eventually a guy

gets in a fight with his wife drives down the road parks at the parking area at the stake or that check station walks over a hill to pout and kills that turkey. Yep. Yep. There's overlooked areas. One overlooked spot. No one was hunting the parking lot. Yeah. Yeah. A guy that, uh, I hunted, uh, elk with when I was just starting out archery hunting, real goofy dude, really real fun guy.

Um, but that was his thing. Like you would drive up to the parking lot at the trailhead or whatever his spot was on the side of the road. You know, slam car doors, be talking. And then the second his boot went from gravel to dirt, his body went into creep mode and he had his cow call in his mouth. And it was, meow. And he'd wait and listen. And he hunted from, I mean, from basically the truck door on like the, the second he

pivoted from away from the truck door, he was hunting and, and that has definitely served me well. Like not just to blow past all the stuff that everybody else must be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. pass all the stuff that everybody else must be yeah yeah yeah my tip would be to uh know that country better than everybody else walk it a lot crisscross it know every little draw

at what every little ridge top looks like and just really commit the landscape to your memory not just in hunting season probably sure well yeah i mean that's probably not the time i'd be walking around it uh that's the time i'd be hunting it you know but uh i think man enough people don't like just know their landscape well enough so that they can be standing anywhere on their pressured land and just know exactly what it looks like on the other side of the ridge or two ridges over. Which leads to knowing places, like no matter how much pressure a unit is getting, there's still going to be places that aren't getting hunted. Just because of the way the landscape lays out or where the trails lead or the roads lead so look for spots to go into where you're bushwhacking you know don't use trails and and find places to

access country that's not getting accessed easily by a bunch of other hunters bunch of yahoos that's right, man, it just is hard. I think like staying optimistic, which is hard too. But sometimes it's just hard. It's hard. That's the reality. Absolutely. Okay.

Strategy for when turkeys are calling back but not coming in. Which I feel like that's called turkey hunting. That's most days. That's turkey hunting. That's what turkey hunting is. It's you hear a bird call and then low and then lo and behold, it does not come in. Um, we, we walked away from some birds this year and called. And then they, there were three of them. They turned and decided now was the time to come.

They like ran back, right back into our exact same spots that we had been calling from. Oh, you left a spot. Yep. So birds were across this draw. It was way too wide open. They were never going to come in. To do anything. So I was like, well, let's just set up and call.

We call and call and they're chatting and kind of shutting up for a while and look to call again. And then they're like, ah, this just is not going to happen. So get up, walk up on top of the ridge, which was only about 75 yards, probably call again. And then, you know, it was just, the response was like, well, now we're coming. Like they gobbled back and I look and I could see these three black dots just kind of like charging our way. Like they just, their mood changes. Yeah. Like they just, their mood changes. Yeah. And just, and ran right back up into our same previous butt divots in the grass.

And three minutes later that Tom was right there with him. Because they felt you were leaving. I guess. Yeah. Or maybe they could hear us better because we got up a little bit higher. I do not know, but it but that sure changed their tune. Tricks. Coincidence too, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. They just decide to come sometimes. I don't know. I like to change angles on them when they're doing that, if possible. After you left me around Missoula last week, I listened to some birds gobble for an hour over on private, and I wasn't going to suck them over, so I just walked away. At that point, you can't swing around on them.

But had they been doing the same thing, I was able to go over there. I would have just, you know, come at them from 180 degrees the other direction you know try to get in front of them if whatever way they're moving i think if you can if you did if you determined that bird is moving like he's just out cruising or still do man it was like late morning middle of the day they move one you think that you get all excited because he's traveling around gobbling so you're like well this bird's good as dead because he's obviously out looking for hens you know but it's like he's he is but he's doing something different to which i'll never fully understand but that does not necessarily mean he's going to come in but sometimes if you can get ahead of them it can change we called the one the one this year. This thing was just gobbling, gobbling, gobbling, gobbling.

We were behind it. And eventually it slowed down and started messing around long enough for us to pass them up. And then he came right in when it was kind of more not following them, chasing them, but came in. Man, I don't know. Different angles. Getting in their zone more. I think that there's – I've talked about this a bunch. I don't know if it's true or not, but it feels true to me.

Is that there's like a, there's a proximity where they sort of can't, they don't want to ignore you. You know, they're going to do something maybe. Maybe they're going to spook or not, but like you get into a certain ring around them. They just perceive their area differently. And I've had, I can think of a few times in my life where they're just gobbling and gobbling and you're calling, they're gobbling, gobbling and nothing.

And then you somehow creep into some where it just can't ignore you. And all of a sudden then they'll like pop over, right? Because you got so close they can't ignore you. Also, we this just the other day, we just came back the next day.

Yep. Had a bird that just seemed like unworkable and came back the next day and just kind of took what we learned from the day before, walked away from him, could have stayed out and harassed him, walked away from him with the plan like, let's come back in the morning. Came back in the morning and just was different. morning. Um, and it just was different. Well, I don't know, different mood. Something different happened the next day.

Like had them just totally in our area, hanging out, got them. And the day before he was like the impossible Turkey, you know? Yeah. Like the one, like nightmares are made. Right. It's just like, but then the next morning for whatever reason, he's like ready to roll. I like, uh, I like, uh, making noises that turkeys would make other than calling, like

scratching the duff, making it sound like there's turkeys there, you know? Cause like you hear turkeys in the woods walking around and doing shit without them making the sound. So like make it sound like a turkey. Yeah. They make a lot of scratching noise.

Yeah. And weird little sounds, vocal, weird little vocalizations. Yep. Yeah. So the, like the back and forth that can get pretty exhausting. Like I call, then you call, or you call, then I call. I had two birds this weekend where this was going on and on and on. And it was in the evening and I was getting pretty paranoid that they were

just going to turn and head for their roost, wherever that was. Cause I hadn't found it. Um, and this was taking a long time and eventually they gobbled again. And I just hit them like three times in a row with a yelp, yelp, yelp,

yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp. And all of a sudden they were right in the spot where I couldn't shoot them. But like three yards away, the toms totally strutted up. I'm like, oh, 90 degrees over my left shoulder. Yeah, try changing your calls up, your call sequence up. Give them something different hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada and boy my goodness do we hear

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onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. I'm also developing this theory about turkeys. I've been developing it for a while. It's not fully developed. I think there's something going on where if you imagine a turkey, you picture that all he's thinking about

is sowing his seed. Which he's thinking about. Andowing his seed, which he's thinking about, and that he views everything as being a prelude to him sowing his seed. But I don't know, however they're wired, I'm starting to feel that turkeys find some value. They get some satisfaction out of just strutting and gobbling. That is, to them, an okay way to spend a day. Do you know what I mean?

I don't think when you get a turkey and he comes in and he's 75 yards away and he's just gobbling and having a hell of a time and gobbling and strutting and he doesn't come in, you want to be like, oh, I messed it up. Oh, I spooked him. I just think sometimes he doesn't know what happened. He's just like. Just doing his thing. To him, that was a totally normal interaction.

He gobbled a bunch. He strutted all around. He, like, did his thing. The hen never came to him. Yeah, he walked off, and it was like. He walked off happy. And now I'm hungry. It's not like you blew it.

Because then you want to be like, oh, I blew it. I should have this. I should have that. But the turkey's probably like, that was great. That's my mental conversation every time. It's like, oh, I got too close. Oh, it was too far. Oh, I called too much.

I called too little. If I'd only called that one more. After I called and made him gobble like 85 times, if I'd only called that one more time, he would have come in. It's like, no. In his mind, it was a great morning. There's a hand over there by God. I buy it.

I just didn't go over there. I'd throw another tip out there that the purist won't like, the purist callers. You can always try sneaking in and bushwhacking them too. Oh. Did I tell you something happened to me the other day? No. But that, I mean,

that's how I killed my first couple turkeys. Oh, yeah. When I had no confidence in my collar. Raise your hand if you didn't kill your first turkey

by bushwhacking it. No hands are up. Oh, that was our strategy. Yeah. And it still works. Bushwhack them. Yeah. Especially out in- We'd spot and our strategy. Yeah. And it still works. Bushwhack them. Yeah. Especially out in-

We'd spot and stalk them. Yeah. We'd find them in binoculars. And be like, dude, the minute he goes down in that ditch, run. Totally, man. Yeah. And we've had a lot of success like that. It's not nearly as fun.

The other day, this is kind of a weird thing to happen, where the other day, I wound up, we got set up in the morning, and I wound up having a turkey. I'm not joking, because I range found it. Like, I wound up with a turkey closer to me in a tree than my decoy. Straight up above you, basically. Neck sticking out. And I was like, you, I didn't, I didn't. If I'd have been in there with my kid, I probably would have been able to talk me

into it, but I didn't shoot him down out of the tree. Is it legal to do it here? Yeah. Oh, it is. My understanding is, I don't know. My kid would have been putting an enormous amount of pressure on me.

You know, you shoot squirrels out of trees. To get that bird out of that tree. I didn't do it. Someone else grab one. Are Birkenstocks considered better or worse than the traditional flip-flop? So funny. I'm not recommending Birkenstocks, but it would be better than a traditional flip-flop. For sure.

Yeah. It shakes your foot. In like a hunting sort of application. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, if I had to hunt my regular flippies or I could wear Berks, which I don't own, I'd go Berks. Oh, yeah, for sure.

Like the hippie kind with the corks. Flip-flops aren't very quiet because of the flip and the flop. And Berks are not going to expect the gun. Right. They see you coming through the woods in Berks are going to be like, what the hell is he going to do? They're probably dead.

Yeah. What the hell is he going to do? I don't recommend hunting either of them, but. No, but he's saying if. If you have to. Go with the Berks. Why do red rock crab get such a bad rap compared to Dungeness crab? You know, I don't know.

I don't know. Our kids were picking them up left and right last summer, remember? Yeah. I don't know. The yield is less. The shells are harder to crack and pick. But they're perfectly great. Yeah.

I was at that Willow's restaurant, which is like this world-famous restaurant on Lummi Island in Puget Sound. And they get all their stuff from around there, you know, and they make just crazy stuff. It's really good. You kind of got to go there and spend the night and you eat there and it takes all damn night to eat there. He does a lot of stuff with rock crab. Yeah, I loved them when we were grabbing them last year. And Jesse Griffiths sure likes them.

Remember that? Was those stones or rocks? Stones. That's a way different crab. Remember that? Was it stones or rocks? Stones. That's a way different crowd. Or did we get some rocks with Jesse? Are you talking about Jesse or are you talking about Josh Gaines? Jesse Griffiths. We were trying to get stones.

Josh Gaines. No. Oh. He did Red Rock. Yeah. But with Jesse, we were, we got stone. We were after stones, but no, we were after blues. Yeah, we got stones. Yeah, we got blues. Stones is the one you can just keep the claw off. Yeah, we got stone. We were after stones, but no, we were after blues. Yeah, we got stones.

Yeah, we got blues. Stones are the ones you can just keep the claw off. Yeah, I'm messed up. I'm all messed up. I think they're great. I think that there's also a thing that happens where people have notions that they picked up from people that had notions. And they picked up those notions from people that had notions and none of the notions matter. It's sort of like how antelope don't taste good.

How mule deer are not as good as whitetail. Just dumb stuff people say. Like trafficking and dumb stuff. I like stuff you don't, I mean, you don't even have to trap those things. You just wait around and grab them. You can grab them. There is something to be said for an easy-to-pick crab, though. Here's a great question.

What are your thoughts on the notion of Pleistocene rewilding? I think it is a complete waste of time. It is so fun to think about. I'm not interested. Pleistocene rewilding, for you folks at home, is that you would either re...

You would either, through genetic wizardry, bring back, right, like clone from whatever, shit melting out of the permafrost, that you would clone extinct ice age mammals from the pleistocene um fauna and and cut them back loose and some people are like oh the hell with that what you do is you just go get the closest approximation that's still running around and cut

that loose so with that thinking you'd say like mamm are gone, but let's go get some African elephants and cut those loose on the Great Plains. And they used to have horses here during the Pleistocene, so we'll go get horses from Siberia or Mongolia and cut those loose. And on down the line. And you put all the junk back to make it look like it looked a long time ago. I think it's a distraction. You know, a fun distraction distraction It's a fun distraction I think that we should spend our efforts

If you're gonna Make the goal It comes down to like If you're gonna make the goal The goal is to look like X I just don't think you need to go back 13,000 years And have that be the goal. Yeah.

I mean, so a huge argument for this rewilding, right, is to limit the amount of greenhouse gases that are being released out of the permafrost. And that's, uh, because you're in a lot of these areas, you have this encroachment of trees, willows, brush that was not there when all this Pleistocene fauna was out there because they actively deforested the area uh so like bison uh woolly mammoth the horses uh the different bovine species they would be hell on trees just like you see if you have any of those animals in your area or the current approximations of them they'd rub up on trees and they kill trees like elephants

and giraffes and whatnot or you know elk and elk are hell on small trees too and they kill trees. Like elephants and giraffes and whatnot. Or elk, you know, elk and elk are hell on small trees too. And they do it to a certain degree. Um, anyway, you expose that ground and it gets a deeper frost and that's what's keeping the, the permafrost. Yeah. I've read that.

I've read that argument for, for rewilding the tundra. For rewilding the tundra. But there was a movement to rewild the Great Plains. And that's just for funsies? Just people have, yeah, probably. No, they had like little summits about it, little conventions. Oh.

And it was that you'd bring in like, well, the American lion is gone, so we'll get an African lion. The woolly rhino is gone, we'll just get a regular rhino. Oh. Maybe a zebra, a regular rhino. Oh. Maybe a zebra. I don't know. No, no. And just start cutting stuff loose so it looked like it did a long time ago.

It's beyond fancy. Like, there's people that write whole damn books about this. Oh. Rewilding. Yeah, but I guess the- I'm all into rewilding. I just don't know that you need to rewild

to a time we didn't understand. No. I think you just- In my mind, if we're going to be like, what's the benchmark't understand. No. I think you just, like in my mind, like if we're going to be like, what's the benchmark? I'd be like, the benchmark would be in my mind, um, I don't know, the time of European contact. Yeah.

I guess if there was a purpose though, like it, a contemporary example, right, is, uh, Anthony Licata and I are hiking on this ridge in Sonora. And as you guys know, and for those who don't, like there's cactus and big things with needles and nettles and really thick brush everywhere. But it's pretty darn open on this ridge and there's cow crap everywhere,

like domestic cattle crap everywhere. And Lakata says, he's like, man, I'd love to see this place without the cattle and see what it'd be like. So you'd be back to 1400s, late 1400s? But I was like, man, looking at this place, I would almost guarantee you there's no possible way we could walk on this ridge line if there

were no cattle. Oh. Because those cattle are the reason that this area is opening up, opened up enough for us to cruise through here. Yeah. And it's probably to a degree, you know, letting in enough sunlight to grow grass and stuff like

that. And if you went back to the mid 1500s or whatever, to be as far back as you'd have to go to get pre-cattle, because, you know, the cattle have been running there since, since the 1500s. Um, there was probably a hell of a lot more large herbivores on the ground. Yeah, I would think. I'm kind of becoming like the older I get, the more I'm becoming kind of like a cattle apologist, man.

I found myself being a cattle apologist the other day. Where I was driving down the road and a friend of mine was talking about, man, they sure destroyed the riverbanks. And I was thinking, yeah, but I mean, we keep talking about, I mean, I know they had like more of a rotational and migrated and all that, but like Buffalo around the riverbanks, they'd pound it and then they'd be gone for a year or whatever. But I just like, I don't know that the whole, I don't know that the whole, I don't know that the whole answer to solving all of our problems, if it was

just, we just got rid of the cabin. Yeah. So I think that we just have a whole bunch more houses. Yeah. I mean, yeah, good, uh, well-grazed ground, you know, is great for a ton of different bird species.

You got to have those different, uh, heights of grass for, um, invertebrate life which is important for the poults then you know we just like to think of things so but in such a binary way yeah exactly well it's with cattle or without are you with guy or without guy yeah because you go to places that are just new too too. Yeah. You go places that are way overgrazed. Yeah, and it can be like, there's like people who make mistakes or bad actors. Yeah. But there's also people who, you know, run cattle like very responsibly and it's not,

some people wouldn't let you believe that it's just like, if it was only, we can only get rid of cattle, it would be like the earth would blossom. Yes. You know, I think it's a little bit too simplistic. I agree. I remember being out with a guy one time who used to do, he used to do, he used to run lease programs for BLM. And we were up in a elk meadow. And he was saying, if I got called up here and cattle had done what these elk had done, he goes, if I got called up here and cattle had done this, I'd had to have a talk with this guy.

It was like that bombed out by elk. Jeez, must have been a good spot. Yeah. It was just a spot where they're going and calve, you know, and it's hundreds of them hanging out in there. Just,

yeah, pawed up. And, you know, he was, I mean, he was making a joke, but you get the point of the joke.

Yeah. Where, where I think it, where it is extremely bad he was, I mean, he was making a joke, but you get the point of the joke. Yeah. Where, where I think it, where it is extremely bad is like right now it's going on in South America where they're just chopping. Yeah. Large chunks of the rainforest to make land for cattle to graze on. Yeah. That's problematic on a whole bunch of levels. But yeah, I mean, that's the thing though, right? It's like, do you want cattle or do you not want cattle?

Well, I want well-managed cattle. Is that an option? Nope, it's not an option. It's all or none. It's kind of a moot point because there's no world in which we're not going to have cattle, right? So. Oh yeah.

It's like, well, let's go back. Can you imagine this place before man? It's like, nope. And nobody else can. Yeah. Like didn't exist for our. Okay. Who's going to grab the next question?

I want to hear your guys' thoughts on the how safe is it to eat raccoons? I highlighted that one and not because I know how safe it is to eat raccoons, but I was talking a little bit with Clay Newcomb about it, and he was explaining to me that there are, like, if you're worried about, I think a lot of people are scared of raccoons and eating raccoons because they associate them with dumpster diving, where a raccoon in the wild is not really the dumpster diver that say, he's not a scavenger for

the most part. No, who cares if he is? Well, I think that, uh, scavengers tend to taste worse because they're eating rotten meat, you know?

Yeah. Well, like, uh, for instance, for you, a buddy of mine on his wall has this huge pig skull and he's a California guy. He's like that.

And I'm like, wow, that's a big pig skull. Where'd you get that? Thinking it'd be like Texas or something. It's got big tusks. He's like, that's a California pig. He's like, that's the biggest California pig I've, I've ever, ever gotten. And, uh, I was like, oh yeah. What's the story on that? He's like, well, uh, ever gotten. And, uh, I was like, oh yeah, what's the story on that?

He's like, well, uh, not much. I came around the corner. It was a head down feeding, jumped out, shot it, went up there. And it was face down in a pile of dirty diapers. And he did not eat that pig. Yeah. Like that. Okay. that kind of dumpster diving shirt. Yeah, I bet raccoon. It's just like we just cooked it every which way imaginable.

Yeah. I think the only legitimate health concern would be, I think, not thing. They'd be trichinosis carriers. What about rabies? They are known carrier rabies. You're not going to get rabies from eating the meat. If you cook it. Yeah.

I think that's a lot of people's worry though. I think a lot of people will associate raccoons with rabies. You want to know? Let me tell you something. Just wear latex gloves. Check this out. In our book we're doing, our Wilderness Skills and Survival book that we're doing, me and Browdy, writer's cramp. Do I have writer's cramp?

Dude, hammering. Hammering. Anyways, check this out. This is in our book. 70% of the rabies cases in this country come from what critter? Domestic cats. Skunks. Rats.

Birds. Bats. Globally, guess what percent come from dogs globally? Globally, way over 90% of rabies cases are attributed to domestic dogs in the u.s because we treat the shit out of dogs 70 are bats wow raccoons foxes and stuff are high up the cdc is saying that um you can get it from non-bite exposures, like scratches, abrasions, or open wounds that are exposed to saliva or other potentially infectious material from a rabid animal.

Other types of contact, such as petting, coming in contact with blood, urine, or feces of a rabid animal are not associated with risk for infection. So I think that eating the meat would fall under the ladder well yeah because it's bacteria you're going to cook it virus but yeah i'm sorry you're going to cook it yeah um hold on let's back yeah so don't go messing around in the uh raccoon's mouth yeah so you got the chance trignosis you got the chance of got the chance To get rabies From handling raccoons

But once you cook them I think you're fine But when we cooked To make it good We did it every which way We had Bo Jackson On this show Like the athlete

Famous athlete He talks about He's got good raccoon recipes Clay Newcomb Spelled Newcomb But pronounced Newcomb Clay Newcomb How but pronounced Newcomb. Clay Newcomb. How's Clay Cookum?

You know, I don't think he's eaten too much. I think he was telling us that for the first time, another fella that he's been hanging with came over and made some, you know, like this, street tacos out of that raccoon. Yard tacos for him. And he said it was delicious. So I think some sort of a braising. Yeah.

You know. It's probably similar to black bear. Oh, I'm sure, man. Yeah. When we had it, we braised it. I think we braised it, then grilled it. Just braised it to get it tender. When I get my first coon, I'm definitely eating that thing.

Oh, yeah. In the old days, like in old books, people were always soaking it in vinegar and then cooking it. It's like in the old days. Yanni, you take your dog out for raccoons? Is that what you're fixing on? Maybe. I need to start getting them after something.

There are quite a few. I've been seeing a lot of raccoons on the streets dead around here lately. I've seen that too, I noticed. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. A street's dead around here lately. I've seen that too, I noticed. But no, I was going to go down and chase them with Clay Newcomb. Oh, cool. Arkansas.

Very cool. Next. Get ready for the next one. Best way to cook smallmouth bass. I think the best way to cook smallmouth bass is to make a sandwich out of it, a fish sandwich like how they make down in Florida everywhere. You take the fish. You fillet the fish.

Get the fillet off. Skin the fillet. And then you do John Gary's signature zipper pin bone removal technique, which I think we talk about in one of our books. I can't really explain it over there. Picture you got a small mouth flay laying there it's skinned but skin side up so what would be the skin side up and you feel in the middle of the flay running like laterally you'll feel that little line of pin bones running down there you get to the end of that little so you move from the front part of the flay

toward the tail, and you feel where that little line of pin bones ends. Then you cut a little V through the flay right at that point. And then you grab it like you're opening a zipper. And that little V tab is your zipper pull. And you grab that. You've seen me do this, Yanni,

because it works on rockfish too. You grab that and pull it like you're opening the zipper and all those pin bones come out connected. Then it's the perfect sandwich size. You get a hoagie roll that's like the exact same size as your small mouth and you bread and fry that filet and you put it on your hoagie roll with um pickles onion lettuce sriracha am i saying that right yeah yeah sriracha sounds great we used to not do that we used to put mayo and stuff on it but then i got into putting the sriracha on it

man that's a good sandwich we we had it we matt elliott who you know competitive uh bass fishermen uh what do you call it when you call it not quite pro amateur competitive bass angler like small mouth specialist and we went small mouth fishing that somebody should never eat a small mouth we made him a sandwich he enjoyed it He said he didn't want his wife to eat one of those sandwiches because she would wonder what he'd been doing all that time, letting all those small mouths go. Another term that you love, on the half shell.

No. I like it because all I'm doing is not, I'm just not descaling the filet. So you take, take your filet, throw that thing. I put a little salt on there and just put it on indirect heat on the barbecue. And in a, about six minutes, you can grab that thing and hook your thumbnail into the fillet, into the skin, sorry,

into the skin and give it a shake and that whole side of meat will just slide right off the skin. Right onto your plate. And it is beautiful and delicious. My childhood fishing mentor would cook largemouth bass fillets that way.

Grilled. I've eaten one large mouth. He would soak, he'd take the skin off, soak it in milk. Not, no, sorry. Leave the skin on, take the flay off, leave the skin on, soak it in a bath of milk, which is a big thing where I grew up, putting stuff in milk all the time. Then grill it. Yeah. What is, I know there's been articles and stuff written but i i've never dunked in i feel

i don't it's like it's hard to explain is this supposed to like pull blood out of i feel that it did it diminishes if you got a fish that has like a muddy weedy kind of taste i'd hate to go up in front of like a scientific committee on this or something or like testify to congress about it but i feel that it takes the muddy weediness away from stuff. There, I just said it. I feel as though that's true. And what I feel is all that matters. If I feel that it's true, it must be.

I'm sure it helps when you're like, well, I just committed a half gallon of milk to this. So something's going to happen. Okay, here's a great question. No one's going to know the answer to this, but we can speculate on it. Can you trap Burmese pythons with 330 kind of bears?

I'm out on this one. Yeah. I think that you'd run into a lot of problems of, to use, okay okay in setting 330 counter bears you are needing to um channel you're either needing to like read sign real good so you know right where that animal you're trying to catch is going the thing most commonly caught with 330s they use them for wolverines and whatnot but mostly people catch beavers with 330s. And beavers really tell you where they want to go

by the sign they leave. They dig canals, they have runs, they have entranceways into their lodges. All these ways in which you can look and be like, man, a beaver's going to go here

for sure. And you set the 330 there and lo and behold, he passes through there and you got him. I don't know how you would channel or funnel a python. Live bait.

Put a little rabbit or a mouse inside a cage. Or maybe get some pheromone. Because those males are hunting the females. You're not going to catch them behind the ears. The other thing is, you might get a mid-body. It might just not be effective.

I think it's got to be the right size python. I feel like a lot to be the right size python. I feel like a lot would go right through a 330. If you had – so when you're setting a 330, a lot of guys want to set – you set it so that the triggers are on the bottom facing up, not up facing down. But if there's any kind of current or whatever, now and then you've got to put the triggers facing down because the current will trip it.

But all things equal, people like to put the triggers on the bottom so that then it don't mess the hair up when the when the trigger components are against its back after it gets sprung i think with a python you'd want to do like you'd want to position the triggers like you're doing an otter proof set where the triggers are bent low. So anything can pass through triggers on the bottom. So he just crawls over and snacks it. Yeah. But I feel like, man, I don't know if you'd

hold onto him. I don't know. He might just sliver on out of there. Ah, I don't know. I think you'd hold onto him. It just, I don't know if he, I wonder if he, he'd probably still be alive when you got there. Yes, absolutely.

And the problem is you miss a set on a Python, that wily old bugger, you'll never catch him again. He'll get trap shy. He'll trap shy. He'll go trap shy on you. Besides boots and optics, what is the one thing not to cheap out on for a western hunt? Pack. Okay. Yep. to cheap out on for a western hunt pack okay yeah well i thought about that earlier when i read that read the question because i was thinking man if you do get something down you don't get something down if you're actually going and packing in if you're going to do like say you're going to carry

more than 30 40 pounds you're gonna pack in overnight boy an ill-fitting pack can really make shit out of your time out there. Yeah. You know what jumped at me when I saw it, what I got to thinking about? Sleeping bags. That too? That was my number two. A lot of people are always getting all cold, man. Sure.

Cold, and then they show up with a 10-pound bag, which, you, which out of your 40 pounds, boy, that's a quarter of your weight. Yep. Can't have that. People getting cold and people having enormous bags. What you get when you spend money on a good bag is you want a good, super puffy bag that's lightweight and scrunches up. And that takes money. I don't know enough about sleeping bag manufacturing to understand why, but that takes money.

That takes a lot of money. You can make a big giant bag that doesn't poof up when it's warm. You make a real cold little bag that does poof up when it's warm, but a warm bag that puckers up. Just blows up like a damn balloon. Costs a lot of money. Yeah. I can explain it to you if you want.

Please, I'd love to. You explained the other thing to me and it finally sunk in. Yeah, in another year or so, you'll understand high-end sleeping bags. bags um what makes them light and small and expensive is that the quality of the down the higher the quality it's going to cost more and what you get in the higher quality is that what actually keeps you warm and down is its loft which basically makes an insulating layer around your body right well the higher the quality of the down the less it takes to make that insulating layer around your body, right? Well, the higher the quality of the down, the less it takes to make that insulating layer. So you can weigh it and have a half a pound of bad down in one container, and then a half pound of good down in another container. And that good down will be, however much better it is, it'll be three, four times as fluffy.

So thus creating more loft and more of an insulating layer. Are you tracking? No, I'm tracking. Now, also, you need to have a lightweight outer material. Because if your material is too heavy on lightweight down, it could actually crush it and crush that insulating cocoon that you're trying to make around you. So you got to have some lightweight material that is also um tough it's lightweight not tough and you can have a big hole in your down bag and down it's going to be everywhere and that doesn't make for a good

insulating layer where uh that was a great explanation where how did you uh where did you get trained up on talking sleeping bags no tarm Ptarmigan Sports in Edwards, Colorado, when I worked retail. When you were a salesman? Sold some sleeping bags. That's a great description. Thanks. I feel that a nice down sleeping bag, too,

needs to be paired with a nice insulated pad, sleeping pad, because you compress that down on your back. You got to have a good pad. Yeah. You got to have a good R-value pad. But is that like absolute, I mean, this person wants a need. Like what is the next thing?

What is the, I don't know why he, why it has to be the one thing, but he's like, what is the one thing? And I don't want to hijack the whole conversation to have it be sleeping bags, but I want to point one more thing out about sleeping bags. Because I keep seeing people making this mistake. The ratings, like sleeping bags come i keep seeing people making this mistake the ratings

like sleeping bags come with a rating about uh temperature ratings and i'm not sure there's a competing rating systems but a lot of these rating systems are not comfort they give like a survival rating meaning if it's zero degrees you won't't die. But you're going to lay there all night freezing your ass. I think now on the tags, they've actually started doing three different settings. Explaining that to folks. Explaining it. Be like, you can survive down to this temp. Most people will be comfortable at this temp, and you'll be great at this temperature.

That's helpful. Yeah. I, man, I, I mean, we live in the far north. We're in a northern tier state, but travel all our damn place. If I was going to buy a bag and just have it be my bag, it'd be hard to talk me out of not getting a zero or like a 10 degree bag. Just versatile. Absolutely.

And if you buy a real good one and it pooches up anyways, puckers up, pooches up, what am I trying to say? It compresses well. It's just, you just kind of don't zip it or do zip it. But just like, if you're going to have one bag laying around, I would get a way, way colder bag than you think you need. I agree. I i agree full agreement okay other stuff you can't you gotta you gotta you gotta go full on about something you can't

you can't you can't what's the word that he uses here you can't cheap out one thing you can't cheap out on it's not counting what is shooting iron what does he not want to achieve boots and binos. Yeah. Boots and binos. Sleeping bag, boots, binos. The pack. Pack. Clothing. Yeah, define cheap out. Well, like when I first started hunting out west, I was wearing like Carhartt pants and shit like that.

And I got by, but man, when you got wet, it sucked. Like just walking around sucked, you know? Yeah. It takes all the hair off your legs. Oh God, it's heavy, you know? And plenty of people still hunting jeans and, you know. Yeah.

Whatever jacket they can grab, but. It's great till you get soaked. Got it. Once you, once you start using good clothes, it's like, you could never go back. Yeah, it's hard to go back. Lightweight clothes. Yeah.

So much of this stuff, man, when you make the jump that you thought you would never make, I don't need that, and you finally do, you're like, I am an idiot. I'm not going to tell anybody, but I cannot believe I didn't do this 10 years ago. Yeah, I remember when I gave up on gas station coffee. Same thing, man.

After a while, I was like, man, I shouldn't have done that. Because now it's hard to go back to gas station coffee. Yes, sir. Like hot coffee flavored. It's like. Yeah, that's the only problem with it. It's probably not bad coffee. They just don't put enough grounds.

They don't put enough in there. So, uh, yeah, I'm, burns your lips and it's just tastes like hot water. I'm going to say, uh,

I'm going to go sleeping bag as well. Um, but know that you're just going down a path and this is not the last thing you need. Eventually he will cross, cross the Rubicon on yet another purchase that you didn't think you'd need. Yeah.

Cause good stuff's fun. People are always like, oh, so you're saying you need this and that and this and that and this and that to go do that? I'm like, no. It's nice. It helps. It makes me enjoy my time out there. Yeah.

Oh, and you spend more time hunting. I mean, there's plenty of dudes still plowing Alaska in blue jeans, but, man, they spend a lot more time drying out in front of a campfire too, where, you know, you don't have to do that if you've got the right gear. I got a little pour over coffee thing that's foldable and it clips on your cup and it's just a washout filter. You know why those are stupid? And man, I was like, this is stupid. And Garrett. You were right.

Smith has one. He's like, oh, you got to get one of these, Cal, got to get one of these. And I was like, rolling over in the truck, 4 a.m., fire up the stove, a little pour over coffee, reach in the cooler, grab some half and half. It's just a nice way to start a turkey hunt.

But here's the thing. Once it's cold out, when it's like sub freezing and you've taken all that coffee water and let it drip, let it fall drip by drip through the air. You just got yourself a cold ass cup of coffee. Yeah. We got onto some of those things and started messing around with them and it was bad weather to do it in, but it was like, it was like, there was no way to have a hot cup of coffee

unless you reheated it. With just a standard, like a pour over system? We had these little envelopes. Huh. It was these little envelopes of like camp drip and it came in a little like disposable dealie smack yeah and you'd pour it in or go like and you just watch those drips they just like yeah yeah they'd shed their heat we we uh like if i use the pour over and instant both but i'm like okay the weekend it's going to be like this temperature in the morning. Like I'm bringing instant.

This bag and drip over. It's like, oh, it's going to be warm. I'll go with the pour over. So when you go into your pantry and you're packing your coffee, you're going to have to check weather.com to find out what coffee to bring. Well, you're doing that anyway, right? Yeah, we checked the weather anyway. Yeah, we'll legit have been like, oh, well, you know, shit.

It's too cold for drip. It's going to be too cold for pour over. And it's just like the standard little black V

that sits on top of the cup with the filter in it and you put some grounds in it. That gets your coffee too cold

if it's sub-freezing? Oh, yeah. Because it's all falling through the air and being exposed. Kind of. I just have one

of those. But I'm telling you an objective reality, man. But I'm telling you an objective reality, man. I just feel like I've had different experiences. You were with me. Ours just drips a lot faster, I guess. Weren't you with me?

Well, maybe. But I don't know. Yours might be a different system. But we just have like a standard V. Yeah, I just have the standard V that sits right on top of the Yeti mug. You buy it on the end rack at Walmart. You pour boiling water through there and you don't have a cup of coffee that's drinkable.

This was made as a little... I know. Yours is something different. I understand. Yours sucks and doesn't work. I'm saying that mine might work still. Maybe not at zero, but I think it would work at 20. I guess it depends on what your tolerance is for coffee.

Into a nice insulated Yeti tumbler? Yeah. The lesson here is don't cheap out on how you make coffee, I guess. Or just quit drinking coffee. You don't have to worry about it. Cal just texted me a nice grip and grin of a turkey. Thanks, Cal. What?

What? What turkey is that? What are you talking about? It's got a Miriam's tail fan. Okay, so on one side of the road, I shot this bird this morning. White, white tail. Yeah, Miriam's have a lot of variation. Yeah, they give me tail.

And then on the other side of the road, it's like chocolate brown tail. Yeah. I don't think it's the road doing that. I don't think it's the road doing that either. I think especially in Montana where there's been a lot of bucket biology with turkeys going on, there's probably a lot of hybridization. I think that, sure, true Mer merriams are a little bit whiter you know snow white tipped but um i mean heck where we hunted in nebraska you never knew what

i've got all kinds of grips of guys with shooting out of the same flock calling in three four gobblers and everybody you know cracks one and there's four dudes lined up and every fan looks different really oh okay cal in this picture i noticed you're shooting at that Venom, that Vortex red dot. Yes. You like that thing? Yeah, I do. I do.

Once you start, you'll never go back. I haven't. I keep thinking about doing it, but I haven't done it. At first, I was like, it's going to slow me down a little bit, and maybe it has, but. I feel like it's speed, yeah. Yeah, that's how I. Man, I really, really liked it.

I got to tweak my mounts a little bit, but I picked you one up too, sitting in the garage. I keep thinking about making the jump. What I did is I took that 18i though though, and took a few inches off it. Oh, that's right, yeah. Took a few inches off it, put an iron sight on there. I know, I'm going to see that and be jealous. Ooh, a little customization.

Customized. Sawed it off nice and short. Yeah, man. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada.

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

That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services hand-picked 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.

Alright, here's a good one. How come you don't bleed your game out after a kill? Oh, that is a good one. Does a bad shot stress the animal out and make it taste bad? Tell me, Ani. That's two questions, correct? It is. How come you don't...

Let's start with how come you don't bleed your game out after a kill. Because the bullet bleeds it out, usually. Yeah, if all goes well, you're shot. If it's like a neck shot and it's still alive, I would go do it. You would. Yeah, because it hasn't bled and its heart's still pumping. But if you go up there and it's shot through the lungs, all the blood's out anyway, and its heart's not pumping anymore.

So if you made a high shoulder shot, which most likely didn't clip the lungs, just busted his spine and he's dead, but... Still pumping? Yeah, you'd go up there and slice his neck. I mean, if like remembered to do it I would do it for sure I've never done it Yeah I've never done the neck slice

I like that But when you long an animal to open it up I mean that's every drop of blood that thing's ever going to have Laying inside the chest cavity It's already bled Yeah I don't know Maybe this question is related to Shooting them in the head or something

Headshot guys bleed But you gotta hustle You gotta get there quick I don't know. Maybe this question is related to shooting them in the head or something. You hear a lot. Headshot guys bleed. Yeah. But you got to hustle. You got to get there quick. Yeah. You got to hustle. Like bleeding, like you catch a fish, throw it in a cooler, let it die and cut its gill.

There's nothing to push the blood out. Yeah. Ron Layton would say, remember that? You know, from the documentary, man. As soon as he touches that trigger, he's just like sprinting towards it. He's a head shooter. Right. Unrepentant head shooter.

Man, I'm reading a book right now about a game warden in Idaho. And he's undercover work, hanging out with a bunch of poachers and the way he describes it like it is an act of god that uh these poachers ever get caught like just they're just good at it and it's just so simple too it's just you know 22s and 243s and 223s small small caliber stuff, all headshots. And stuff just in its tracks, in the brush, 10 feet off a road, like paved roads, stuff like that. Just slick. Yeah, just fast. What was part two, Yanni?

Does a bad shot stress the animal out and make it taste bad? I think so. Can't bad? I think so. Can't help. I think so. And the reason I think so is because I feel I have a lot of like, what's it called? Like when your body tells you something. You know what I'm trying to say.

Secondhand info? Yeah. Anecdotal. Anecdotal. But I have a lot of anecdotal thoughts, anecdotal evidence. But it's also, it's a big thing in the meat cutting industry. It's like professional slaughters pay attention to this. Oh, yeah.

They pay a ton of attention to stress. They're not whistling Dixie. I mean, they're like, that's their business. And they're putting an enormous amount of energy into reducing stress. But you know what? My question is about that is that, and I know they are doing that, but aren't they, a lot of it just comes from like animal ethics there, doesn't it?

No, it comes from not wanting what you call a red cutter. I'm sure there's an ethics component to it too. But remember that famous animal behaviorist, Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin. They brought her into work on all that, like reducing stress and slaughterhouses. And a lot of, I mean, there was an ethics

component to it, but a lot of it had to do with quality product. A better product. Yeah. If it was just ethics, they wouldn't shock them after they bolted them in the head. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. They didn't want them stressed because of, I think it increases the chance of getting a red cutter, which is like a discarded or like greatly reduced piece of meat. But it's like a widely held thing that's always told, you're always told that it's true. And I have some cases where I think you could have a stressed out animal and have it be good just because there's always variability in everything. Yeah. But I've had enough situations where it be good just cause like, just, just cause there's always variability in everything. Yeah.

But I've had enough situations where you've had stuff be like extremely tough, off tasting and there's like, and you're like, man, you know what? Like there was some, you know, and you look and you'd be like, yeah, you can't rule out there was like a, a not clean kill for sure. What's the best position to poop in the woods? That's a great question. I'm a squatter. He says squat, lean against, it's multiple choice.

Squat, lean against a tree, sit across two logs, sit across two logs, et cetera. Yeah, that would be like basically making a you know the toilet seat latrine you know what i never thought to do is take two logs this is a good idea take two logs run them parallel but sit parallel with those logs so there's a gap between them so that the support wasn't running cross cheek. It was running with cheek. Each cheek on its own support. My experience, the more complicated you make this,

the more trouble you're going to have. Oh, I don't believe in doing that. It's just something I hadn't thought of before, and now I'm curious about it. I think a lot of it has to do with your agility and physical fitness and things like that. Yes, because the squat is not easy for a lot of people. I hang out with a lot of kind of wiry little mugs. Squat and go.

And I think that among wiry little mugs, I think that the squat is like, I don't even need to do a handhold. Right? No. No. I don't handhold. No, but I feel like when I was younger. My daughter, I have to handhold her. Yeah.

You know, my daughters just finally grew out of that, man. No more handholding. They can just drop it and go anywhere. Nothing on their shoes anymore they keep their pants clear it's wonderful my wife makes our daughter when she's peeing she makes her get way back like handhold and you get way back like a deep deep far lean back yeah because otherwise you got to have four pairs of extra underwear and tights with you. But I saw somewhere, I wanna even say

it was maybe on one of your posts, Cal, recently, where Lantani commented about something about like a tree tether that's made for pooping. I know what you're talking about. Because I was gonna say, I feel like

when I first started pooping in the woods more, probably in my late teens, early 20s, for some reason in my head, I thought that it was always going to be better if I would always look for that perfect tree that I could hook around and lean away and get it. And now I guess they've made a product that makes that easier. I don't need it anymore. That's not a product you need to buy. No, Land has like a doubled up belt or something that he can whip around a tree and lean back into.

Is this like bearing down and getting some leverage or what? I think maybe a little stress reducer on the knees. I don't know. Some sort of comfort sounds complicated yeah i've done and when that strap breaks uh you're gonna be in a world of poop i've done the you know in situations i might do the limb grab tree grab limb grab but generally not to walk you through the whole process please well there's a couple things i think that i'm more interested in responsible responsible pooping right not just clean

clean woods pooping but responsible woods pooping yep and we just came out of an area west of here where it is the tree shooting this woods shitness service appliance dumping this oh man i don't think i'd ever had even seen tree shooting until this yeah in western montana it's become a thing where you you show up and try to blow and sometimes successfully gradually blow over ponderosa pines by just shooting them to the point where they had the forest service has signs up saying you can't shoot the trees i don't get it like decent sized trees too oh no we're talking trees that like we're talking talking. 18 inches in diameter. Yeah. And meanwhile, the same people are surface shitting. Surface shitters.

Well, yeah, I'd have a little talk with one of our, uh, crew members. Not going to mention any names, but I think that Steve likes, I don't know if you coined the term,

if it's been around forever. I had never used it, but. Shitting in the piss zone? Nope. I coined that. That's about Mexico. When you leave the group

to go off down the hill, or up the hill, wherever you're going to go, you say, I'm going to go flip a rock. That's just the first thing I'm going to do. Yeah. Well, I think that maybe some people have taken this to mean that that's all you have to do.

Is like, take a poop. Flip a rock,'ll walk over somewhere else and go? Well, take a poop right on the surface and then just flip a rock on top of it. Oh, make a little sand-o. That's like a last resort if you can't dig a hole, right? Because what I like to do is I like to find a rock that's buried

so far into the ground that when you lift it out, the perfect six-inch hole is there. Yes. And then you put the rock back on top. Dude, that's making my stomach. Just here, yeah. Just picturing that rock. Loosening things up.

The perfect rock is just making me want to go off in the woods. Basketball size. What I'm proud of is when I walk away, I'm like, if anybody else came through here, they would not know where I hid. I like the kind of rock where you go up. This is considering you got rocky ground. So we'll start with rocky ground. I like the kind of rock where you go up. This is considering you got rocky ground. So we'll start with rocky ground. I like the kind of rock where you go up and you think, no way I'm going to move that rock. But then you give it a pull and there's some give.

Yeah. And you pull and it pops out. And there's like some roly polies and centipedes and whatnot in there. A big ass ant nest. Yeah. You're like, shit. And then you do your thing in there and you're like an egyptian brick layer man and you put that block back down in that little slot

but it's such a deep hole and big rock that you don't even get like the like you don't even get like where you squish an Oreo right and the stuffing comes up out it's just like but it's just yeah then it's like entombed that's what I like Phil you don't even need to find a sound you don't even need to find a sound

Phil just recently took his first dump I heard somewhere somehow right is this true? yeah it came up on Ben's podcast that I had never crapped in the woods. Well, what did you do? Hold it the whole time? Well, I see. Did you get a Latvian plug? Well, I mean, I've never.

Do you know what that is? No, I don't. Please explain. It happens that Yanni will have to. Yeah, well, he is the Latvian. Oh, I don't know if it necessarily has anything to do with my heritage. It doesn't. So, I mean, as. Oh, sorry don't know if it necessarily has anything to do with my heritage. It doesn't. So I mean, oh, sorry.

No, I mean, when I travel. Yeah. Which is all the time. Yeah. I tend to get a little constipated, and sometimes it can take two, three, I don't know if I've ever made it four full days where you have a plug, so to speak. I tell you, you've never felt as good as those seconds and minutes following getting rid of that plug.

Is that Latvian plug exasperated by the mountain house? No. No. The house doesn't give you a plug. No. I think it's just, I don't know really what causes it, but it just, I don't know. I try to drink a lot of water and I'm guessing it's that something. Walking onto an airplane. I know. That really what causes it, but I don't know. I try to drink a lot of water, and I'm guessing it's that something. It's walking onto an airplane.

I know. Does it do it to you, too? Yeah. Seth, you get a little bit of it, don't you, from the airplane ride? You get a lavium plug? Yeah. You got to do 23 and me. See if you're lavium.

I don't get as bad as Johnny. Oh, okay. But I'll have a day go by, I'm like, eh, something's not right. What is your heritage? Morris? I'm kind of all over the board. I was going to say, that's not a whole lot of pizzazz

in the name Morris. No. Go ahead, Phil. You never put it in the woods. There you are. Yeah. So I told Ben, well, I'm going to go

for a long hike this weekend and if nature calls, I'll try it. I'll try it out. I'll sample it. And so, you know, I packed a bunch of stuff just in case.

Well, back up. Like what, a plaski? Like what'd you pack? A bunch of stuff. A couple gallon-sized Ziploc bags, a roll of toilet paper, some sanitizing wipes, you know. What were you going to do with the gallon-sized Ziplocs? For the wipes and the toilet paper so I can double zip it and so it doesn't you know bring it home take you know pack pack out keeping it dry yeah sure okay but that's it for your bunch of stuff

yes all right and so i'm you know i'm a few hours into this hike i don't really have to but i was like i tried i promised ben i'd try god damn it and so i i go way off and it's like i can just see where i was walking keep an eye on it. And I take care of business and I bury it. And then immediately I hear a dog collar. And a couple is walking on the trail. Well, they'll eat that, you know. Oh, you don't have to tell me because it happened.

And so the dog sniffs it out immediately, comes sprinting. The couple's like looking for their dog. What is he doing? And then I'm standing there just like pretending I'm on my phone like hunting for treasure or something you had buried or had i had i had but i just started walking back to the trail official berry yeah i mean i mean it was it was like i don't know like three or four inches i like it was it was really snowy too so i just tried to pack some snow on top and oh yeah that's not gonna do anything people like to walk away feeling like they did something.

Exactly. And that was me. People do crazy little things. They'll take a couple pine needles and put that on there and be like, yeah, that's good. Yeah. Well, anyway, so then I'm pretending I'm not noticing this dog just going to town on my shit. Oh, man.

I'll tell you a story. It was a bad first experience i'll tell you a story they'll curl your hair me and ronnie bame were hunting snow geese one time and we were on a little guided snow goose hunt this is a good one and the guide goes over to the tree line and flips a rock takes a growler however you want to put it. And then pretty soon his dog's over there eating it. But we're in layout blinds. So your face is down on the ground. And then the dog comes back over and wants to run around licking everybody's face.

Ugh. Ugh. Yeah. Uh-huh. I almost, like, had to get, yeah, did not had, had an impulse that I didn't act on to, to, to shoot the dog. Well,

I mean, we, so I was talking to Mark Kenyon about it and he was like, well, it might've been the, the nice thing to go back and explain to the couple what just happened in case their dog comes running back smelling like, like shit.

So I couldn't even imagine bringing myself to do that. Like, no, that's tough conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you're not going to take it back.

But I want to walk through people a little bit more. So you got the perfect rock, like the Egyptian brick layer scenario. The perfect rock comes out of the ground. If not, also, you carry a little shovel or your heel. But I think the key is prepping your area. Like, prep your area before you go find out how you're gonna deal with it before you go like hours before no no when you walk out when you go off down the hill or off the hill or whatever you do go over and don't like just go Oh without considering how what your plan is.

Oh, yeah. Because you want to drop it in a good disposal location. So if you need to dig a cat hole or whatever, do that, then go. Don't go and then start wandering around trying to use sticks and whatnot and making little tongs and stuff, trying to move it around to where you need to put it. So do that. Dig a hole. If you dig a hole, dig a deep hole.

Dig a head-sized hole. Another thing, and I learned this, this is my brother's trick. He keeps a lighter in with his camp money. So- Camp money being toilet paper. Yeah. He keeps a lighter in there. And as he's going, he doesn't let his, if it's raining out or whatever,

you don't let the teepee get wet as you're using it. So your used teepee, he'll lay over a little limb or what have you. And not let it get all balled up because he doesn't want to burn. Lay it nice, drape it nice over a limb so it's well oxygenated. Then when you're done, you pull your lighter out up in flames where that becomes tricky is wet wipes so wet wipes don't want to burn you got to come back the next day and burn them so i will carry in my kit i got camp money and this little disposable like not disposable this little single like this little camp money roll made for campers. Then I carry with me wet ones.

Single use wet ones. And if you feel like you need a touch up, you take the single use wet one, open it, do your touch up, put the wet one back in that thing and then put that in your Ziploc bag inside your kit. Because you can't burn it.

Then burn the sweep, eher and bury your cat hole. And I don't need to walk out and find the ground littered with all your toilet paper. This is an important topic, which is why we've hit it. It's an hugely important topic. Now, I just got to, I think you did a masterful job of describing that system and folks should take that, uh, into mind, but also on the, the burning, the teepee side of things.

Don't burn the woods down. Yeah. And so there was a road biker, uh, outside of, uh, Emmett, Idaho. And I was heading up to my buddy Jim's house to go, uh, cook with those guys and hang out. And I think it was just a hangout session. This is Jim the bird hunter that's always cooking stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. And I get this phone call that says, hey, Cal just got called out on a fire. The roads are closed, but just tell them you're staying at my house. And his wife, Nancy, was like getting the animals together in case they had to evacuate. And I come around the corner and the whole damn mountain's on fire. And so I go up and hang out with Nancy and we're kind of getting calls on fire. And have kind of an evacuation plan for all their bird dogs and great Danes and stuff.

And, uh, that fire was a road biker who, uh, attempted to burn the toilet paper and, uh, got away into the, uh, the dry grasses of the BLM there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So just keep that in mind. And like the ranch that, uh, I was on this weekend, uh, fires roll through there almost every year.

And, uh, the folks that live out there are hyper aware of fire. And I mean, they should be, it's just like that, that country. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The other day I had a situation where I went off and, uh, found a really interesting little spot. It was like,

you know, when a tree falls over and leads kind of like a half a stump. Oh my gosh. There must've been multiple in the local national forest. The stump had rotted out. So there was actually like the, the splinters of the stump had rotted out so there was actually like the the splinters of the stump all rot standing there all rotted the stump had rotted and left a cavity in the ground so you're able to actually back up to it right use that i prepped the hole a little bit

dug the excavated the hole out a little bit. But actually use that existing hole. Then walk back around and just boot the back end, the half of the stump that was up still, boot that over to entomb. No one's getting into there. That's perfect. Tipped it over

and entombed the area and then I got up and jumped on it a couple times. That is one clean dropping. The only way anything's going to get at is by coming up through the earth. That'll be fossilized someday. Someday someone's going to find it. Did you step back and throw your hands on your hips and kind of stare at them? Oh, yeah, I was glad.

I was glad. Satisfactory. It was like someone knew I was glad. Yep. I was glad. Satisfactory. It was like someone knew I was coming. It was one of those moments that makes you confident in a higher being because it was like someone was looking out for me. I dropped one in the same kind of hole, but I just kicked it full of dirt. I didn't kick the stump hole. You didn't back kick the stump down in it?

Perfect. Man, I felt good about it. You got time for one more? Oh, yeah. I think we can end on this one. Is there anything else to add here? Because this is something that just like... Oh, you want to add to the Well, I'm only saying I was just really

nice national forest. Nice national forest. And it was cool. They're doing a lot of work in that area. Doing a lot of thinning. A lot of controlled burns. Putting money into it to make good habitat it's marked roads are marked like everybody doing all the stuff to make it like usable accessible signs being like we're in good condition national forest four miles like turn you know like

everything everything that you could ask for like all laid out right everyone's done their job and how what does that bring out in people i got it let's go shit all over and then shoot the trees till they fall over that like that sounds like a like that's how we should treat the national forest i don't know who's paying for all this well you are you are. It was so disgusting, man. Yeah. Yeah. Taking up a bunch of plastic and shit to

shoot at. We came across Legos. Someone brought those big, you know, those like child Legos that are like. Duplos they're called. Duplos.

Duplos. Yeah. Someone brought those up there and stuck them on a limb and were shooting holes in it. And then left them there. Only hit it once.

Just had a big Lego structure with one bullet hole through it. You didn't buy any Legos or toilet paper in your turkey's crop, did you? No. But everywhere you went, man, everywhere you went. Yeah. Culturally, I don't know what's going on in that little neck of the woods. Oh, I think it's a case of a few bad apples. Well, they get around.

I'm sure they do. Shooting trees down. I've topped a few Christmas trees in my day. The old 10 gauge, if I'm being honest. I almost

took some videos, but it was like... Oh, man. Anyways, last one, Yanni. On public land. The second to last one. I don't see why you couldn't do this on private land either. It might be just more fun because you'd probably be hunting there with your buddies. Have you ever thought about laying down false tracks slash signs to bamboozle other hunters?

The other day we talked about this. Yeah. It takes a lot of work to be packing around an elk hoof or a deer hoof to lay down that kind of a sign. I was just going to say, it seems like a lot of work. Without that, you can lay down a scrape. Wouldn't be too hard. A rub would take some serious. Yeah, well, then you're not bamboozling.

Yeah, you are. You're getting them to waste their time. Yeah. It's a great idea to go make little fake scrapes and put tracks on them. We were with a guy the other day that was saying back home what they would do. We're looking at turkey tracks in a row. And he says you would stomp out every one of these turkey tracks. That's right.

And so he said, when they're rolling around, they look for a bunch of stomping and hunt there. That's awesome. Now, we used to, on some public land that I used to hunt, there was kind of a major trail. It wasn't a heavily used trail by hikers, but it was a major trail. And there was a spot

where there was a known elk crossing and there was a lot of tracks there. And I just like one time brought up some peacord and basically made like a little broom out of some pine boughs or fir boughs more likely. And I would sweep those tracks for two reasons.

One, I wanted to see like how quickly they got freshened up, you know, because if I went through in the dark in the morning and came back out at 10 and there's fresh tracks, you know, I'd have a rough idea when they cross through there. But to also kick out, you know, to hide them from if anybody else was hiking that trail. Yeah. That was the thing I like about the lion hunters that lion hunters do is they like to brush out stuff all the time right um and then i noticed like down in south america some of those guys like to brush out the sandbars just to wipe the slate clean and it gives it like a nice little texture to pick up tracks but you

had a lion hunters like if you get like whatever sandy patches and trails or a dry wash crossing the road they like to get out and those bring a broom and broom it out so the next time they know like i was here i broomed it out on monday if there's a track on tuesday i know when that track got laid down but that's different than trying to bamboozle someone i know i mean real common one for uh Western trail heads, uh, cause I say Western trail heads cause that's where my experience is, is like, if you're hunting with four people, everybody drive your own vehicle. So then there's four vehicles parked at the

trail head. Make it look crowded. Make it look crowded. We used to do that in PA all the time. Yeah. As my brother in Alaska, he doesn't like camo tents. He doesn't get it. He likes the brightest tent he can find amen and he likes a lot of bright tents because when someone's flying over he wants to look like all hell broke loose down there

he's like if i could have set up five neon tents i don't want a camo tent. I want it to be like, I am here. We are all here. Although sometimes Cal's example can backfire because some people will be like, well, it must be good. Oh, for sure. It would be like ice fishing, man. When you get out to a lake and you're ice fishing, you just be like, oh, everybody's over there.

Good place to start. Last question, then we're going to wrap her up. Some guy was like, what's your thoughts on Pebble Mine? I know all, I understand all the arguments. I understand all the arguments. Everybody drives cars and we use metal. I get it. I get it all.

People need jobs. I want people to have jobs. I'm not anti-job. I'm not anti-mining. Um, I oppose that mind. It is the wrong project in the wrong place if if the headwaters of the biggest salmon runs on the face of the earth like if that isn't like a line in the sand i don't know what is i don't think we should mess around i do not i think that i would like i would love it if the president um would just all of a

sudden you know i know there's beyond presidential like it's a lot of other things but there'd be a great step as the president would just and he he has he's comfortable um he went against his party on divestiture of federal lands it was in the party platform and he was like not not gonna happen not interested in divest your public lands so he's like a federal managed lands so he will go against like what they got going on there i would breathe such a sigh of relief if you put some if you would come out and just be like you know what not not gonna happen there yeah don't do it man don't do it in a hundred years it'll be the the winning decision will have been to not do that don't do it. In a hundred years, it'll be the winning decision

will have been to not do that. Don't do it. If you have a sponge. What we're talking about is put a big, huge open pit mine, big impoundment full of toxic material in a seismically active. Is it true that there's never been an open pit mine that hasn't failed, like hasn't been breached or failed in some way? Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. But you know, there's some that. I don't know. That do that within the degree of what's acceptable too, right? Some amount of leakage is expected. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

But I mean, this thing, you're like, it's a, it's a sponge. You're, you're digging a hole that we know is going to fill with water because every other hole up there is full of water and there's no place to put the water. And a very seismically active. Yeah.

It's like leach mining. You're digging out ore out of the ground. Then you're putting, I don't know, is it cyanide leach up there? You're dissolving, you're dissolving precious metals out of ore with chemicals. And then you got to do something with all that stuff.

And so they build a big man-made lake and that big man-made lake, like you build a big dam, right? And that man-made lake will be full of all that toxic material. And then you just kind of let it sit there for eternity and hope that the dam doesn't burst. I'm grossly oversimplifying this just to get through it quick but I'm not anti-mining man I'm anti that

mine yeah absolutely I don't think it's the right thing to do I get all the stuff though I get the economy I get jobs don't do that one like don't do that one absolutely too much to risk.

If they do do it, no. If they don't do it, I win a $1,000 bet. You're biased. I thought you said you don't like gambling. I was going to say. I made a bet on this, or I made a bet three years ago that it wouldn't be,

that they wouldn't have initiated, that they wouldn't have started to extract ore in a decade. So I'm three years ago that it wouldn't be, that they wouldn't have initiated, that they wouldn't have started to extract ore in a decade. So I'm three years in, and seven more years that they have not extracted any ore, I win a thousand bucks. This has nothing to do with what I, you know, it's just, I was just in a betting mood.

I was back when I drank more. I made all these bets, all these bets about the next presidential election, all this stuff was when I drank a lot more. I used to get in a betting mood. Quarantines turned Steve into a gambler. Didn't you? No, I don't make really any bets.

I lose all my bets anyway. Didn't you also say you would engage in civil disobedience over this? Yeah, I would think that it might be a situation. I would think that it would be, if they were going to go and actually do it and i heard that there was people that were going to go out and do like like civil disobedience i would in the back of my mind i'd be like yes not that i condone civil discipline no in some cases why not it's what this country was built on right yeah like people in michigan going down to the state capital over like a confusing effort to quarantine people's like civil disobedience um it would be heartbreaking to me

because i would just i would be like okay if we can't if if that if we can't do that like what else can't we yeah where's the line like what is sort of like not you know what is like yellowstone is that now i mean i mean i'd rather they put i don't want to say that it's just so contrary to it's like you know especially like right now i think folks got like a little taste is a bad word but i'm using a little taste is a bad word, but I'm going to use it, a little taste of food insecurity. Mm-hmm. Um, and you know, man, I, I hope you come out of it quick if you're listening to this and you're, and you're, you're in that spot right now.

Tommy Edson, did I tell you that? Uh-uh. Yeah. Was that it? Yeah. Oh. Um, and, but. I might've spoke too much already.

This is. Sorry, Tommy. You know, this is America's salmon stocks. This is. Oh, I'm talking about something different. For the pebble mine. Like what's at risk. Oh, okay.

This, this is a giant security blanket of food. Yeah. That we're like, meh. That's a good argument. I'm going to steal that from you. Yeah, please do when you steal an argument you're not really stealing their argument you just influenced me

yeah um there you go that's what I think about that is there anything else we should tell folks about anything like uh that we're doing that they should be checking out I was just thinking if they haven't yet they ought to go check out the

six-pack of Meat Eater Hunts videos. Oh, excellent. You can see Brody doing a little pig hunting in Texas. Cal doing some goose. And what was the other one you did? I think that's it for Meat Eater Hunts.

Oh, you did a goose hunt. Because it's Cal's Week in Review. It's Cal in the Field. Cal's in Review. It's Cal in the Field. Yeah. Cal's got a separate series called Cal in the Field. Yanni chasing big old bulls. And spearfishing. Oh, and spearfishing.

Flip-flop Flesher catching some beave. Is our spearfishing one still caught up with and outperforming your elk one? Yes. Yep. It was neck and neck for a while.

We pulled ahead, man. The beaver hunting episode is crushing. Dude. There's a thirst for beaver videos, man. Yep. We tapped into the zeitgeist. And Seth's got to deliver. People like it.

Yeah. When Seth, he can't go out anymore. At night, people are like, oh my god, it's the guy from the Beaver video. Alright, everybody, thanks for joining. Ryan Callahan, Seth Morris, Flip Flop Flesher, Phil Taylor, down there on the end, dogs eating his

Giannis Petellus. And Brody Henderson. Good night. No nicknames, huh, Brody? I've never gotten one. I had to work on that a little bit. Oh, I thought of one, though, for his wife. The Brodster.

His wife the other day that I can't believe I hadn't heard more often is that his wife Carrie married into the Henderson name. And so I saw the other day, I said, oh, Carrie and the Hendersons. Oh, that's why I started calling Brody. I got a good laugh out of that. 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.

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