The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 222: Morels in the Time of Covid

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

Steven Rinella talks with Spencer Neuharth, Ryan Callaghan, Joe Ferronato, and Phil Taylor.Topics discussed: Too many Twin Lakes; practicing civil disobedience in order to get married; a strong prejudice against yoga studios; the obvious upsides of an open bar; the mystique of morels; cracking the code on lab grown mushrooms; how Cal found a morel in a gravel patch by a manhole cover in downtown Boise; the disgruntled hunter; a nasty rabbit disease hits American shores; Spencer as a newly formed rock-hunting enthusiast; how Yellowstone agates came to be; Spencer being way-assed wrong about folks' interest in red squirrels biting the nuts off fox squirrels; the tale of a wolf named Three Toes; how Steve has really enjoyed waking up at home for a change; what the hell is a Polish rose?; the forgotten size of sugar cubes; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. All right. Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. Alright, we're going to start out with a segment called Love in the Time of COVID. Joe Frigno Farinato. That's Joe's middle name. No one knows Joe Farinato's middle name is Frigno.

It's a secret that I would like to keep, but you ruined that for me. Your big wedding. The wedding has been a real problem for me because I wanted to go. I wanted to go to a wedding. I leave very early. I leave weddings real early, but I wanted to go

anyway. Then we had a live show which conflicted with your wedding. The live show got canceled conflicted with your wedding. And the live show got canceled because the global pandemic. Um, if we had the live show, I was going to have a part of the live show be that Joe streams in from his wedding. We're going to have, we has a screen arranged. What was the, what night, what venue was there going to coincide with? Uh, I think it was Pittsburgh. Is that what it was it going to coincide with uh i think it was pittsburgh is that what it was i think so whatever the hell we were getting we even had it timed out

we're gonna catch joe around the middle of our show he's he'd probably be faced one could only hope because it's like nine or ten at night and he's gonna call in we're gonna we're gonna zap him onto the screen and see how it was going. See if he had any regrets from earlier in the day when he got married. Hopefully that wouldn't have happened. If he had come on and been like, dude, I don't know what I was thinking. Things have changed. Is it too late?

Is it too late now? But you still have your tux on, Joe. So what are you going to do now? Like, what happens? You go down to the courthouse? Like, are you going to have a wedding? Well, as of right now, we're still going forward with the plans because, I mean, we're getting married up in Lakeside,

or we want to get married in Lakeside. Tell people a little bit more because I don't know how many Lakesides there are in this country. Lakeside, Montana, up on Flathead Lake. I got a feeling there's more than one. Yep. Probably quite a few. Real quick, this ties into my wedding and how there's a lot of lakesides.

When I got married in Michigan, I grew up in a town called Twin Lake. And one of my buddies from New York is coming to the wedding. And we're having the pre-party, whatever you call the pre-party. And he never shows up for the pre-party. And they're having, like, the pre-party, whatever you call the pre-party. And he never shows up for the pre-party. And, like, probably should be here, you know. He never showed up. And eventually he calls. He's like, well, I'm in Twin Lakes.

I'm like, what do you see? He goes, I'm by the water tower. I'm like, dude, there's no water tower anywhere around here. And he was in the wrong Twin Lake. Like, how wrong? How far away? I think he's, like, three or four hours. Oh, man. But, see, How far away? I think he's like three or four hours.

Oh, man. But see, he went to, I think that's what it was because I didn't even know this place existed. I was from Twin Lake. He went to Twin Lakes.

I was like, there's such a thing called Twin Lakes? So anyways, clarify that before you send out your wedding invitations because you're at Lakeside, people are going to be scattered

all around the country. Yeah. Lakeside, Montana. Okay. Up on Flathead Lake in the Flathead Valley. But yeah, so that's where we're planning on getting married. And as of right now, we haven't canceled anything. Because, you know, as everyone knows, it's all changing daily.

And Montana seems like it's in a fairly decent spot and things are starting to open back up. Well, kind of. Yeah, well, kind of. I like how they opened gyms but didn't open yoga. That kills me, man. It's like so like prejudice against yoga people. You could go lift weights, but you can't stretch. But don't be stretchy.

Yeah, don't be stretchy. Yeah. Don't be stretchy. But yeah, so we're waiting until June 2nd, I believe, is the date where we have to tell all our vendors if we're rescheduling. Oh, yeah. Sorry, are the vendors cool? Yep. Are they? Yep. They're very cool about it.

We found some good Montana folks that are very helpful. A date in mind, if this does get canceled, like, is there a backup plan already in place? Nothing during hunting season so we're heavily debating on when probably would be now do you want to be married or do you want to have a wedding i want to be married yeah listen well we would you're married i'm married phil you're married i am uh steve you're married i I am, yeah. Steve, you're married. I'm married. Oh, so I'm getting out.

So you got to, okay. Raise your hand and tap your mic so people at home can follow along. If you think having a wedding is stupid. Cal, you have never. I've been to a lot of weddings, bro. Stay out of this Cal I'm tapping mine Phil tapped his

Spencer Not tapping Oh you like that Like Listen Being married lasts a long time Like Why kick it off

In such an expensive way Well it doesn't have to be expensive And we had a wedding I just like, after I didn't, like it passed, I didn't even realize it happened and it was over. Well,

the idea is you only do it once. So then it's like, not that expensive. If you're just going to do it one time. Oh, cause you're like, I'm going to amortize this across. Yeah.

58 years. That's right. That's right. Like, you know, some people thought my wedding was expensive, but then I only got married twice and there's people that get married five times. That's a different story.

If this was like a once a decade thing, no, thank you. But I'm good with it just like one time. I enjoy weddings. I enjoyed my own wedding. I'm looking forward to Joe's wedding. See, when I get, I hesitate to say this because when I get i hesitate to say this because i uh when i get a wedding invitation um joe's notwithstanding i'm serious joe's notwithstanding

because i have zero obligations at joe's wedding if i was to go to it right i'd like i have to talk to no one but when it's someone that you're going to wind up having to talk to a lot of people when i get the invitation i'm not like excited to get it. In my mind, I just picture like, oh, there's an evening of small, aimless, small talk. But that's what the open bar is for. I don't drink as much

as I used to. But it's just one more night on the calendar. You're like, ow. Dry wedding, I wouldn't look forward to. As much. I got married in the courthouse. But I love look forward to you as much. I got, I got married in the, uh, in the courthouse, but I love going to other people's weddings. Why'd you tap your mic? You didn't even get married.

You didn't have a wedding. Well, that's because he thought it was stupid. I thought it was stupid early on. I mean, I'm glad I did not have a big wedding, but I love it when other, other people have big weddings. Had you, uh, had you gotten your, uh, woman, um, was she pregnant? Oh yeah. So you guys ran down to the courthouse. Yeah. I love it. Really?

Yeah. Good for you. Hey, thanks. That's a theme in my family. That's why Cal doesn't get to go to a lot of weddings. They just kind of come and go real quick. So there you are. You're still going to try to do it. We were laughing earlier about civil

disobedience and Joe was like trying to figure out if he was gonna do civil disobedience, um, that's what I'm like, like, uh, let's say they say, you know, no gatherings of blank, or would you cut your list back? Would you be like, you know, they could have my wedding when they pry it from my cold, dead hands. Like what would be your attitude toward it? Um, I'd probably cut the list back. Cause I invited a lot of people that I didn't want there anyway. you be like, you know, they could have my wedding when they pry it from my cold dead hands? Like, what would be your attitude toward it? I'd probably cut the list back because I invited a lot of people

that I didn't want there anyway. So, sorry for the folks that are listening to this. Well, they're not going to know. It's them. They might have a suspicion.

Yeah. Well, if I have to cut the list back, they might know. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. But no,

we'll probably cancel it or postpone it and then go to the courthouse and then maybe just have a party later. Yeah. That's a good way to do it too. I just dig the party part of it. Like I like the open bar. Yeah.

But nobody really cares about the ceremony, right? Yeah, yeah. They go to the ceremony and everybody's like, okay, cool. Get this over with and now let's go party. So Spencer, if you just got invited to an open bar, would that be great? Yeah. That sounds ideal. I like that.

It's just an invitation. It's an open bar. Wedding and open bar. This location. Yeah. But you have to dress up. That's okay. It's worth it.

Okay. Yeah. Some people really like the dressing up. How long you been dating? Three years. Oh, okay. It's worth it. Okay. Yeah. Some people really like the dressing up. How long you been dating? Three years. Oh, okay. Four years. Four years.

People should know that when they write in an email, it might not immediately pass through Joe's hands, but when they write in an email asking a question or sending a crazy photo or something, it enters Joe's sphere. It enters Joe's sphere of influence. It does. And when they. He's the gatekeeper. When they send terrible photos, they should put a warning before they open those. Oh, yeah.

You're going to have PTSD from some of our finger removal photos that come your way. See, those aren't that bad. I just hated the chafing conversation. What kind of photos are you getting? I got a picture of a dude's gooch, like, hand covering the balls like, look at this chafing.

You didn't forward that to me. No, I didn't. I almost fell out of my chair right there next to Cal. I wish you the best, man. Well, thanks. Not the best man, but the best. Man. Man. I like that.

I hope it works out. Speaking of the writing in stuff, how many people do you think are going to invite Spencer to their wedding? Or their open bar party. I'll be there. If it's not like September through December, I'll make it happen. Yeah, if you're a little light,

my exposure to people getting married has been that they're trying to find ways to get out of inviting people. But if you're in a situation where you're trying to look for people to invite, Spencer is your man. There you go. But don't have it.

It can't be like a BYOB. Yes. It can't be. Are you coolB. Yes. It can't be. Are you cool about a tip jar or is that just too much? No, no, no. That's fine. That just really ruins your time. No, I'm good with a tip bar.

Cash bars, it's still okay. But like an open bar. No tip jar. Not even a tip jar up there. Like a no tips sign, please. Oh, that's part of like the open bar is there's usually a tip jar. So you don't mind? No.

What are your thoughts on like the, oh, no, there was just an hour complimentary happy hour. You get your money's worth. Get your money's worth. This was in college. There was a place that every Wednesday night had twofers. And like if we were ever, if like me and my group of friends were ever on the fence about going and be like, well, you're losing money if you don't go. Uh, and that always worked. And so that's, that's like, that'd be my attitude towards a one hour deal. Like you, you really get your money's worth, go hard. And then you grab like one or two drinks right at the buzzer

of like the last year. But you know, you gotta, you're like, I need a round for me and my six friends. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. That's the way to do it. So what about, are you okay with like free beer and wine and then you have to pay for your own? Oh yeah. That's, that's all cool too. That's okay.

Yep. He just drinks a lot of beer and wine. He comes out of there with red teeth. That's right. If, if I don't, if I don't like what's on the menu, then I like it that night. That's fine. I like it. I one time had to go to a wedding

and my wife couldn't go and so i went with my wife's friend instead and this wedding it was an early wedding and they were serving drinks before the service i was this is back when i used to like to pull a cork i was like we're gonna do that i was like i was full on i was drunk before the wedding started. That's playing with fire. Yeah. I don't remember how we calculated this, but I remember thinking that it reviewed in my mind the next day. I thought that I had had 18 mixed drinks that day. Ew.

Yeah. Ouch. Yeah. It went on a long time. In fact, someone caught their hair on fire at that wedding. You? No. They had a lot of hairspray or something to

lean into a candle. Wow. No harm done though. Moving on. I fear I'm coming off real cheap here. No, not at all. Not at all. I really enjoy celebrations and parties.

And saving money. That's right. That's right. Yep. And free booze. No, I don't think that, that isn't, that's not off-putting to me. It's like. That's how you celebrateputting to me. It's like.

That's how you celebrate somebody's love and union. We get it. Okay, Spencer's going to tell us about a morale breakthrough, which we're following. It was on this show that we talked about the man who died under mysterious circumstances. No, it wasn't on this show. Beers and Bull.

Oh, shoot. See how I caught myself shoot shoot um yeah we need to review that do you know about this yeah i was on that what i too was like yeah that was a podcast but no it was our we did a live event zoom event on uh youtube the internet yeah i want to cover cal's uh i don't know what it is yet but i know there's something to do with cal and some mushroom shavings but before we get into that uh cal's my note here is cal's mushroom shavings um tell about we're talking about why morels like why morels are cool and we're saying you know they taste good but beyond that they're just cool because they're they're unowned they're wild yeah you're not gonna like go down to uh elbertsons or hy-vee or wherever you get your groceries and

just like pick them up next to the potatoes get a fresh morel that's right. Yep. That's part of the mystique and what makes morale such an enigma. Mm-hmm. And so part of what we talked about on that beers and bull, which you can go find on our YouTube channel, you prompted me, Stephen, to tell me something I don't know about morales. And so this is what I told you. Oh, yeah, and I didn't know it. About Ronald. Well, don't do it again because now I know it. Ronald Ower, he was a grad student at San Francisco State University in 1982,

and he cracked the code on morels. He figured out how to grow them when no one else had been able to. The world's greatest minds have been at this. There's like interest. The world's greatest minds. Mycology minds. Okay. Put it that way.

Which I'm sure are some of the world's. He's like, you know everybody from the Manhattan Project? Well, after they got the atomic bomb, they all moved over to Morel's. I would still bet that mycology people are some of the world's greatest minds. Okay. So I'm going to stick with that. They'd been working on this. There's been business interest from places to solve this issue.

Universities have started programs, and they crumbled because they couldn't do it. Michigan State was the most recent one. They gave it a shot, and I think after a few years, they stopped their efforts because it wasn't happening. Well, like, okay, do you have a – you don't need to know this. It's still interesting. But why? Why is it hard to get a morale to take? Or does it –

If people do not know why it's hard. If I could answer that, then I would grow them. Well, no, because you could say to me like, why is it hard to split an atom? And I would say, I think it has something to do with how small they are. That I don't have the answer to. Because you can't hit it with an ax. That's right. So all these people have tried and failed to grow morels, except for Ronald Ower, this grad student, 1982, San Francisco University.

He figured it out. And he was the first person to successfully harvest lab-grown morel mushrooms. And this is true. This is true. This is true. But three months before his patent was granted, he was murdered. Yeah. I love it. And he left murdered. Yeah. Love it.

And he left behind. By the wild Morel lovers societies. I've dug into this story and I wish there were more to it. Murdered. I wish I could generate some kind of conspiracy theory that it was like Papa John and Jimmy John and Dave Thomas were after him, but they couldn't do it. But it was, it goes that it was teenagers in a park and it was a botched mugging. And that's what killed Ronald Ower.

Yeah. You know what, Jeffrey? I've seen Hung himself. Yeah. There you go. Yeah, I don't buy that. That's the perfect start to a conspiracy. Yeah.

So with the grave, Ower took- Because a good conspiracy theory... What a good conspiracy theory needs is it needs the story that there's just always a little part missing. There's a little something that's not right. And that is the fertilizer of a conspiracy theory. Like, why did Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald? You can't explain it. It's like, you can't explain it. So therein lies the thing.

Yeah. And there's other parts of it, too. But therein lies the, like, until you explain that to me, I will believe everything anyone tells me. And part of what is like generated more interest around this than it maybe warrants is that he had a lucrative contract with Domino's Pizza to like grow morales and give them their formula. And like any good patent, he left out some... So Little Caesars? It was the Little Caesars? That's what I'm saying.

They thought it was kids because he's so short, the Little Caesars guy. Must have been it. Got a total spear. He had that little spear and that little robe. And his patent language

was vague enough that anybody can go find it, but they haven't been able to replicate it. So this is what we talked about last time. And he took it to the grave. Took it to the grave. Yep.

Took it to the pyre. Now, within the last few days, a story out of, I think, the Des Moines Register, maybe, has talked about a mushroom farmer in, I think, Vinter, Iowa is what it was called, who is on track to harvest hundreds of pounds of morels this year or 100 pounds of morels of ones that he has grown. Oh, I just thought he's out at Doug Duren's farm. Maybe. He's growing them at his farm. And he said, he told the reporter that he wants to harvest 1,000 pounds next spring and he thinks he can do it.

And after we get done with the podcast and I have a phone call with him. Oh. To hear about like what, if, if Ronald Doerr's patent had any inspiration, if he can tell me any details about what he's doing, um, how long he's been working on it, things like that. He did say on his Facebook page that he will start selling morale mushroom grow kits this fall.

What? Whoa. Which, which. Well, there's plenty. There's plenty also. But you said that there's morel mushroom grow kits this fall. What? Whoa. Which, well, there's plenty also. But you said that there's a bunch of grow kits on the internet right now, right? For $29.99, you could go buy a number of different morel mushroom grow kits. You know, Doug seeds morels. Doug Dern. No, I'm only saying not morels.

Doug seeds mushrooms. Yes. You can inoculate. Into stumps. Cal was saying that you can take a seeds mushrooms. Yes. You can, you can inoculate. Cal was saying that you can take a chainsaw. Tell this Cal. Yeah. I had folks write in and a couple of folks that I've known for a while that they'll take all their little mushroom trimmings and stuff and put it in, blend it up, put it in their bar and chain oil. No, I thought you're saying they put it in canola oil.

Well, that's what they're using for. That's for the organic people. Yeah, but that's what they're using for bar and chain. I see. Yeah. And then when they're cutting stumps, they feel like they're seeding spores everywhere. It's getting it right in there.

Getting it right in there. Yeah. Yeah. But there's like a, there's a big difference between what you're going to talk about cow and just like taking the water that you wash morels with and tossing that across your lawn and then maybe having a morel, a few morels

grow. Like there's a big difference between that and commercial farming them. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's what. Cow's like a morel magnet. I don't know if you know about this cow.

Yeah. But this guy. He finds them where they don't exist. This guy in Iowa claims to have done it. And until I talk to him, even then, and like he does this year over year, I'll be skeptical

because Cal could go light the Bridger Mountains on fire and then go harvest thousands of pounds of morale mushrooms next year. But that doesn't mean that he farmed them or grew them. This guy just must like, could be in, uh, in advantageous place. In his light and fires.

Not necessarily fires, but like, uh, just something stressed out in the morales grew this year. And he thinks, oh, uh, you know, I did this thing. So this is the result. I can replicate it again next year and the year after that.

Um. At the time people hear this, you'll have spoke to this gentleman. That's right. Which would be great. I have some suggestions of questions I would ask him. Tell me. I called him on my way here because I've been trying to track down his phone number. And he was actively picking morale mushrooms, but it was raining.

He's like, I can't talk. That's exactly what he said. So that's why the phone calls are so good. That is awesome. Got 100 pounds. Here's a couple things I would be curious to ask him. One, you can take care of my question about like, in a couple sentences, explain to me like, why is it hard?

You don't need to give me trade secrets, but just why is it hard? My next question would be do you fear for your life oh i love it good job i mean there's a chance he's never even like he's not even familiar with this story so i could be introducing his fate right yeah better beef up that security like stay out of parks yep oh late at night um i, one time I was at a party, found out that there is a professor of mycology at the same party. I immediately corner that poor individual. Open bar? It was a very open bar.

Okay, go on. Yes, Spencer, Spencer, he can picture it. I'm in. And I'm just peppering him with every morel question I have. And I love picking mushrooms. This sounds like a great party. Very open bar and a mycology person there. Oh, yeah.

Believe me. It's almost like someone designed it. Yes. There were foresters. There were mycologists. It was a great time for somebody who's not any of those things, but loves questions, loves asking questions. And I would ask him a question about morels. And he'd be like, well, it could be this, it could be that, but you know, nobody really knows.

And I'd have another question. Well, it could be this, could be that, but nobody really knows. And so eventually I got to the point where I was like, so let me get this straight. You teach a class and you get paid to do this, but you don't have any answers to any questions. And he's like, yep, it's a pretty good gig. Yeah. It's like multiple choice questions. Like, which of these things don't we know?

Stuff like that. But as far as like the commercial harvesting goes, I mean, there are, I have run into like these mega camps of folks that follow mushrooms around the country and. Like commercial pickers. Commercial pickers, yeah. A lot of people, a lot of people from Southeast Asia. Yeah. And, and man, just some real rednecks too. I mean, it's, it's a colorful landscape out there. Real American rednecks.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, but, uh, you know, I, I have spots that, um, are not marked by fire. Most of them would be like old logging operations that have, have, uh, you know, come back with some undergrowth and stuff, um, that I have consistently picked over and over and over again

for five, six, seven years. Um, some years are better than, than others, but you're constantly just paying attention to the weather. Yeah. Um, and you know, there's just all sorts of things that can kind of make that snap happen and mushrooms start shooting up. So, um, yeah, I'm, I'm dying to know.

Cause yeah, I've spread mushroom spores all over and like I, I, uh, put down in that article that you helped me with. Um, like I have, when I'm packing mushrooms around, I do my best to let those spores drop on the ground as I'm packing them around the woods before I head for home. I've heard that, and I don't know where this is at, cause this is something that I heard a long, long time ago when I first started to develop an interest in wild mushrooms.

But I remember seeing where someone was saying that like sowing spores, maybe not, I hesitate to say this because it's kind of been negated by the fact that you can seed mushrooms, but someone's saying that like you carrying your morels in a basket, say, so that the spores can fall out. That's like, it's laughable that that would be effective. And the argument and i don't i'm not weighing in on this i'm just telling you like an argument that was articulated to me

was that they're omnipresent yeah so you know they've done these studies i remember looking at this one time they went to a school okay and they like came in with a some mushroom or another in a sealed container and they opened it in a room of the school. And they waited periods of time and took air samples, right, around the school. And like how long it was till spores from that mushroom could be located no matter where you took an air sample in the school. I think I'm getting this right. And they were saying that it's like all the spores are everywhere. It's just, is it suitable?

Like the limiting factor is the suitability of the habitat. The limiting factor is not the presence of the seed. But then the fact that I personally know people who seed and yield and get wild mushrooms kind of like flies in the face of that. Yeah. Idea. Yeah. And, and, and this guy, this professor at this party was like. Except for the fact that you're making the habitat too.

Yeah. You're not just throwing seeds around, you're making habitat. And, and I, because the, the host of the party, um, is, was one of my mushroom picking buddies and he has like the big custom, uh, backpack basket. And part of the, the deal with the basket is not only breathability for your mushrooms. So to keep nice. Getting all funky.

Um, but also to let those spores drop. And he was just like, man, it's like there's spores on this kitchen counter right now. There's spores on the fricking lamppost outside. He's like, they're just, he's like, they are everywhere. Yeah. It's like coronavirus, man. Yeah.

It's just coating everything. And I have found on those days, you know, it's like good soaking rain and then all of a sudden it's kind of muggy in the morning and 80 degrees. And I have found mushrooms in crazy places because all of a sudden I'm like, ah, it's just kind of mushroom weather. And I, and I just look. Yeah.

You found one, uh, in a gravel patch next to a manhole cover in downtown Boise. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. When I was a tree man, uh, we would now and then find morels growing out of wood chips oh really yeah and it'd be like you just be in a yard or whatever or even in a place where like because you'd shred bark so when you're a tree man you just have a lot of exposure to wood chips and bark and whatnot and now and then you'd see where someone must have shredded

um you know an apple tree or cottonwood or somehow, and there was some mycelium there. I don't really know how it works. And then nowhere near a living specimen of the tree that it would associate with would be a morel sticking out of a wood chip pile. And I always just made the assumption that

that was a, you know, like an appropriate host tree that had been ground up and. Yeah. Carried like the requisite. Yeah. Whatever. And then it just found like. Carried the requisite, whatever.

And then here it is growing in some dudes. It makes a shade, sun, heat, cold. Yeah. Water, dryness. Yeah. And here it was growing like out of a wood chip pile on top of a guy's driveway or something, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I don't have a lot of faith that like carrying morales in a basket or like a mesh bag will help you propagate more morale mushrooms in the future um i think it's been shown that like they release most of their spores as soon as they emerge from the ground but it's like mark kenyon talks about with his super extensive scent control process that he does for whitetails to like, if it gives him a 1% chance, better odds of killing that deer or something like that, then he's going to do it. Yeah. And this is just like such a low effort thing.

It's a great way of looking at it. Just like such a low effort thing to do that if it helps, awesome. If it doesn't, you're not like giving up anything. It's like when people say like, do you really need, do you really need camo to kill an elk? I'm like, uh, prove to me that it hurts. Yeah. Yeah. Prove to me that it's a deficit, you know?

Yeah. And where's our definitions of needs right now? Um, but the big thing for me for air, those baskets and mesh bags and stuff like that is you will get like if you're not careful like if you leave a bunch of morels in a cooler uh or a plastic bag or you know something that lacks that breathability you will get within you know hours, a, a white mold forming on, on those shrooms, which, which I've eaten plenty of times cause I wasn't going to give up on the mushroom, but, um, it, it doesn't look good.

I was actively drying some rails when I got a call from my dad telling me he had six months to live. Oh, really? Yeah. That's interesting. He was dead on nuts too. Cause he died like just right after Christmas day. So you could go, yeah. Dead on balls. He was like on nuts too. Cause he died like just right after Christmas day. So you could go, yeah.

Dead on balls. He was like, Steve, how's this date work for you? I'll be there. You don't have any disdain for morels then? No, I just remember that. I remember like where I was staying and what I was doing. We'd taken the, like Kel, we were talking about,

we had taken the door off the, we'd taken the screen door off the house, put it over two sawhorses and we were trying morels on it. And the phone rang. Yeah. Oh, that's wild. Uh, oh no, but you didn't explain the mushroom shavings.

Oh yeah. So I picked a bunch of mushrooms, not a bunch, but my first ones of the year when I was out chasing turkeys around. Uh. And what were those mushrooms doing? So, uh, it was odd. So they're real dark, like the mushrooms that? So it was odd. So they're real dark, like the mushrooms that

you would associate with burn. Yeah, Morchella conicus or not. Morchella esculenta, I don't know. I don't know if this stuff's all lies or not. The big yellows, the big. These were, these were, you know, dark, more towards black, brown mushrooms. Morconi.

Yep. Morconi. Yep. Morconi, Morchella conicus. And, uh, they were, they were in a, I mean, old burn, but you know, it's coming back. That country burns all the time anyway. Um, it was like, oh, that's cool. And, and there's a pretty good pile of them. And you know, those, uh, are leafy tops.

Yep. Have that kind of annoying pocket on the inside of them are leafy, uh, you know, 3d tops, the first light ones. Yeah, but I don't know about an annoying pocket in there. Yeah. It's kind of hidden in there, but it's a big

mesh pocket. Turns out, I mean, that's pretty, and it's real soft, pretty ideal for packing mushrooms. That's what, that must be what I was built into that. Yeah. Uh, and then. Can you make this with a mushroom pocket?

And then, uh, and they're like, oh, you must be a turkey hunter. And then the next day, complete like, you know, that clay soil out in eastern Montana. This is on an old two track that hadn't even been driven on. And all the little, uh, like mole mounds coming up, there were some like bright yellow kind of golden morels. Two of them growing out of that. No. Yes.

I was just like, uh, okay, sure. You know, spent 10 minutes looking around and not a mushroom around there. Yeah. But so anyway, um, just enough to eat. Um, so I, I, uh, that chunk of halibut that you gave me, I had, um. Long time ago. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, last summer. Yep. Um, I'd cooked up the morels and threw them on top of that halibut and it was real tasty. And then all the little trimmings, including all the, you know, the gills on the outside that kind of fell off.

I just, you know, couldn't just throw those in the compost bucket. I just evenly distributed them amongst all the plants that I have in the, in the, in the house. Because you're trying to spread the love out or because you're like, who knows, maybe someday I'll come home and there'll be a morel sitting

here. If it gives me a 1% chance. Yeah. Tell me how it would make it less likely that a morel grew out of that flower pot. Yeah. Yeah. I don't care what time of day it is, I will be

calling you and be like, holy shit! You gotta get over here. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle

or a sweepstakes and our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join our northern brothers get irritated well if you're sick of you know sucking high and titty there on x is now in canada the great features that you love in on x are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast.

Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer,

you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnXx club y'all the ice fishing things that i've had in my list of stuff but we never got around to but i just want to hit on him real quick this guy was talking about his name is stew beard i like it he's talking about fishing one time and big wind gusts came along and flipped his ice shack off of him okay well another guy wrote in about his wife they get that they're moving spots and

they pull all the gear out and he unstakes the shanty and she decides to pee in the hole real quick before they pull the shanty down but then the wind he pulled the stakes out so then she's in the middle of peeing and the wind blows the shanty off this guy's saying that the wind blows the shanty off the shanty like grabs his rod his rod pulls up it's hooked the rods like in the shanty the shanty is blowing off across the lake but his hook on his teardrop comes out of the hole hooks the meat of his hand and he's like then attached to the shanty and rod blowing away across the lake. He said that hurt. It was Eskimo quick fish.

Feeling a little helpless, maybe. Another guy says, this one I don't know, man. I want to believe it. He says he's fishing 100 feet of water for whitefish. Pulls up a rod and reel combo, and gets it all the way up, and there's a dead lake whitefish still on the end of the line. I don't know. I don't know.

Why not? Yeah. I mean, stranger things have happened. And you know how augers are collapsible, where you put the shaft into the body, and there's like a little turnkey to tighten it? This guy says he didn't do that little turnkey. And he says that auger is good for one hole.

He says the minute it punched through. And to get that back out, that'd be like threading a needle to get it out the same hole. Oh, you'd have to get it just right, man, to ever get back out that same hole. Another thing I want to talk about, this guy wrote in for some advice. This is interesting. So speaking of civil discipline, speaking of Joe carrying through with his wedding, even if it's against the law. So Ohio, okay, so he's in Ohio. No, he's not in Ohio. He's in another state. But he has a hunting property in Ohio. Okay, so he's in Ohio. No, he's not in Ohio.

He's in another state. But he has a hunting property in Ohio. The state then says that they are not permitting the sale of non-resident fishing or hunting licenses. So, here he is. He's in Indiana, I think. He's got a hunting.'s in indiana i think he's got a hunting he signed this letter a disgruntled hunter uh he's in indiana has a hunting property in ohio ohio then turns around and says no non-resident hunting he feels that this is very very unfair because he's paying taxes on that land. And he says he's been calling the Ohio D.O.N.R. and everyone else who will listen to tell them just how irate he is.

How can someone tell him what he can and can't do on his own land? He even says, I don't have the vocabulary to articulate how mad i am what are your thoughts am i out of line yeah like i would say so because who cares if you own the land what about dudes that don't own land but they were going to go hunt on their uncle's farm or they were going to hunt on some public land or they were going to like, is it really that if you, is it like the, like the,

if you own land, you're more special. But if he's staying there and he's been there for a certain amount of time, I could see why I'd be mad because he doesn't say that. No, I'm just going off of a reference or anecdotal evidence because my grandparents had the same thing happen in Montana. Oh, really? He wants to bill the governor for his taxes.

He wants to send an invoice to the governor to get his taxes back. That's awesome. Okay, go on, Joe. What were we saying? So you think it's special if you own the land? I don't think it's necessarily special, but like if you're staying in the state, like especially when the lockdown happened and then they cancel hunting seasons for non-residents, but say you own this piece of property, you're staying on that piece of property over a certain

amount of time and they still won't let you hunt your piece of property. I could see that being frustrating. Well, say you rent it. I could still see that being frustrating. Let's say you rent it. I could still see that being frustrating. Like if you're taking up residency for a certain amount of time. I just don't see. I want to be clear about this.

I don't see I don't see that the state has an obligation to factor in whether or not you own it versus that your uncle owns it that you lease it that you have a friend who lets you blank like i don't know that the state needs to go no no no but if your name is on the title... No, I totally get that.

I'm not disagreeing. I can just see why he's upset. Oh, absolutely. That's where I was in, because my grandma was pissed. She was like, I don't want to shoot a turkey. This very thing happened to Brody. This very thing happened to Brody. But I don't think Brody went off sending people

invoices for his taxes. No, I think that's taking it a off sending people invoices for his taxes. No. I think that's taking it a step too far. He didn't take it personally. He just took it to be like, that sucks. Yeah, for sure. But it wasn't like, this is another way the man sticks it to me. Yeah, man. And I feel, and I feel, um, on the spectrum of

responses to COVID-19, I feel that the handling of the hunting fishing end of things has been botched by some states. Hard to see otherwise. Yeah. I feel that some states have done a real piss poor job i mean what a crappy situation to be in try to figure all that stuff out but my god i think it's people i picture people sitting in a room and they get presented with like yeah well what about yeah

well what about and they do that for a couple minutes and then they're like, all right, no one fishes. Yeah, exactly. And then they storm out, you know what I mean? Because you're like, well, you know, but let's say, right, maybe you shouldn't be able to fish in real crowded places, but what if it's, they're just like, ah, I got a lot to do. They probably had that conversation. Like, what about the people that own property here? They probably had that conversation. Yeah.

And some guy got frustrated and stormed out and just said, to hell with it. It's like with your kids. You go from that you can watch TV for like a half hour to like, never mind, no one's watching television. You throw the remote in a drawer and you're like, everybody get into the rooms. Yeah, I think a lot of that happened.

Yeah, you know, it's on the passion subjects right because that a lot of people write into me on the uh well i can't now i can't hunt public land what the hell good is it to me i'm gonna vote that we sell all this and then we can do that and i'm like um that'll fix that'll fix myself you you, you can't go into bars and restaurants right now either. Should we burn them all down? What do you want to do with those? It's like, ah.

Yeah. That was a good analogy when you brought this up. It's like, yeah. Are you proposing that they close permanently bars because you can't go there tonight? Damn it. I never can't go there tonight. Damn it. I never want to go there. What good is it to me now?

Or in Spencer's case, he'd be like, all these bars better be free when they open back up. Yeah, exactly. They owe me. Treat me to a night. Chislek and free booze. Who wants to tackle the alarming new rabbit disease? Dude, this disease. It's up Cal's alley.

I can live with COVID-19, but I cannot live with the rabbit. I thought the same thing when I read this. The rabbit hemorrhagic disease, to me, is alarming. Oh, man. They need to quarantine rabbits. So similar, too. And I think that's why this person who wrote in is so alarmed. So, you know, it's a relatively new disease on the scene.

It ripped through Europe, um, which I had intended to do a lot more research on this because I wanted to do some writing on it. You mean when I sent it to you a few minutes ago or you'd already been looking at this? Uh, I think I got it earlier in the week. Um, but I think there's a lot more cultivation of rabbits in Europe. Domestic rabbits in Europe. It's like more common to. Yeah.

Yeah. Have rabbit hutchings. You'd have it like for producing food and whatnot. Yes. Yeah. Meat rabbits. Also they were getting hit. Yes.

I wasn't even thinking about it from a, like a ag perspective. Yeah. I was just thinking about it as a rabbit hunter. And you gotta, you gotta think from the ag perspective, it's totally catastrophic. Oh, that's something that even occurred to me, man.

Yeah. People that raise rabbits, they gotta be sweating. Yeah. Um, so this new variant is RHDV2. I'm assuming that's for version two or variant two. Um, but it is now here in the, uh, in, in North America. It's in two Mexican states, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and most recently in southern Colorado. While apparently not a health concern for humans,

reports this gentleman has received are estimating deaths in the thousands to tens of thousands of animals. Ugh. And basically they want some citizen science help on this. And so if you're out anywhere and you see what appears to be an outwardly healthy looking rabbit dead, but maybe has a little bit of blood coming out of its eyes or nose or probably anywhere of us. So there's some places that you can call into. But basically, if you just call into your state wildlife, they're aware of this disease that's on the scene.

And interestingly enough, timing is everything. Because I was talking with Hansi here in the office, one of our editors and on, on the lack of white meat in the wild game diet. If you're a resident of the state of Montana. It's, they're just down. And. But not because of this.

One thing you can source is cottontail rabbits and man, all through high school, early parts of college for me, cottontails were on just, all through high school, early parts of college for me, cottontails were on just an epic population boom in this state. And I would just stack up cottontails before I'd leave Eastern Montana for the year. Yeah.

And that was, they're excellent eating. Um, but now, uh, I'm all gung ho to go source a bunch of rabbits and then, uh, what did I call it? RHD V2 comes on the scene. Well, this is what I've been thinking about, about this because, uh, my brother's an avid rabbit hunter as well.

And, uh, I love to hunt rabbits and he lives in great cottontail country. And he was saying that like the last, you know, they're, they're, they're cyclical, not as predictably as snowshoe hares, which run on like a seven year cycle. Uh, hold that thought. So I'll tell you, you know, the, the, the cycle

of snowshoe hares, some people attribute it even to sun flares and different explanations, but, but snowshoe hares has this really predictable up-down cycle. And these historians once went and looked at the relationship between lynx and snowshoe hares. Because lynx feel the effects of a collapsed resource very quickly we did a podcast episode the other day with a python expert and the burmese pythons in florida and he was pointing out that like a burmese python can go so long without eating like months and months without eating that when their prey species collapses like when they eat themselves out of house and home you don't

immediately be like oh and then they'll all die because there's nothing to eat he goes they can just go into this sort of state of just like languished suspension and not just fall over dead but lynx when rabbit numbers go down like lynx feel it like very quickly and i think that their ability to to bring to wean young drops off and you'll have links that like just are not there's zero recruitment like they're not able to take care of babies they're not able to effectively have babies so when snowshoe hair numbers collapse lynx numbers collapse these historians went into the hudson bay company records and they hudson bay company they kept pretty amazing records and they were able to show that there was a seven-year cycle of lynx hides yeah and tie it to the known seven-year

cycle of snowshoe hare populations but like my brother was an avid rabbit hunter was saying we haven't had a great cottontail year since 2008 in his neck of the woods it's been a long long time and i got thinking like about this disease i've been lamenting the sort of general lack of cottontails within hundreds of miles a year um they're not gone but they're not like no you know like walking through they're just like sometimes it's kind of you feel like something's wrong there's so many of them but uh then i was like maybe it's good because if if there maybe it will make the disease not spread well oh yeah like if there's a ton of them you'd be like well there's so much interconnectedness but maybe if this thing rolls through and i don't know i don't

know if it's i don't know anything about it i don't know if it stays if it just passes through if it's a permanent fixture i don't know let's just say it's the thing that passes through it have a pretty shitty time passing through right now this neck of the woods yeah yeah it can can carry it up from population to population i gotta find anybody but the states you're talking about they also have to have like a very dispersed cottontail population i would imagine like i think about some of the arid places in ne and South Dakota that I've gone, like in southwestern South Dakota. You could go like dozens of miles without seeing a cottontail. And then if some rancher has a green backyard, there'll be like five cottontails in this little area. And I imagine that's like a lot of what New Mexico and Arizona and southern Colorado have going as well.

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's got to be big holes in the habitat. It's not like, we used to hunt rabbits in Southern Illinois and it was just like a continuous. Right. It was like all rabbit country. Yeah. If there was a distribution map for cottontails in Illinois,

it would just be the whole state. Yeah. Yeah. Ma'am, the, in those heyday years, um, I would not pester a rabbit at all until literally the day I was leaving camp from either just hanging out and hunting there or guiding. Uh, there's a stock tank right next to a big hay yard and I'd drive up out of camp with all my stuff loaded up, park at the hay yard, pulled the 22 from behind the seat, walk around the hay yard, get a lot of rabbits, pile them up next to the stock tank, skin everybody, give everybody a good rinse, pitch them all in the back of the truck. And that was just like the last, it was just like a very tidy, efficient grocery run before I headed back to school.

Then you go home and make rabbit tempura or whatever it is you're doing. Yeah, just have a lot of good white meat that everybody thought was chicken. Final thought on rabbits. We, some of the biggest rabbit, some of the biggest rabbit killings I was ever engaged in were where ranchers had gone in and poisoned off prairie dog colonies. And then those prairie dog colonies would get colonized by cottontail rabbits. And you just look out with your binoculars across a prairie dog town and every little, those little hump holes, there'd be like a pair of ears sitting there, man. And just so many that they're like trying to find any place to get protection.

They would just sit down in the, they would kind of lower themselves down in the prairie dog colonies. We, one time, me and my two brothers got 35 of them out of prairie dog holes. My one brother, Danny, he went and laid, after a while, he went and laid down in the back of the truck.

He'd had enough. Had had enough. Moving on. Spencer, I was putting the heat to you a little bit earlier. We're going to talk about a handful of things Spencer's been working on, but explain to me again, like what's your problem with turkeys? I don't have a problem with turkeys. I just, as far as like hunting, my favorite thing in the world, and then like turkeys turkeys, I'm just kind of, like, lukewarm with them. Like, I could take it or leave it some years.

But I don't know. It's not a Midwestern whitetail. Well, not just whitetails. Like, I would pick elk hunting over here. I would pick whitetails. I'd pick mule deer, antelope, whatever. Rock picking. Rock picking.

That's been part of it this spring. That's been a new interest. Yeah, why the rock picking rock picking that's that's been part of it uh this spring that's that's been a new interest but uh yeah why why the rock picking or no first like so turkeys is because what because they're cool looking they gobble they walk around on the woods like what don't you like about them i like all the meat turkeys i i that that could be one crazy noise you don't like your crazy noise yeah no no that's's all cool. I dig all that stuff. Especially the meat. I wish there was like 10 times more of it, though. Yeah.

Like a deer's worth of turkey breast. That's right. Then I'd be real motivated. Yeah. Real motivated. Oh, man. You got like 40 pounds of turkey breast on there? That's right. I could dig that.

It's okay, Spencer. I'm with you on that. I'm about lukewarm with turkey still. You guys are wrong. My wife, Therian i told me uh just last night she told me that i didn't know you and i heard you talking i was talking to my neighbor about turkeys and she said if i didn't know you and i heard you talking to him the way you're talking to him right now i would think that you were just kind of a weird creepy dude who's got like a thing about turkeys.

But I know you and it's, she's like, but I know you and it's cute. It's like an appropriate. I'm glad you like it. She's like, but I know you and that's true. So I dig turkeys. I just like the, the, the COVID thing. And, uh, you know, I had multiple tags in South Dakota that I just never even went back and

hunted with. Hmm. Well, cause you couldn't. Right. Right. And so like, I you couldn't. Right, right. And so I was just like, well, this is maybe a good excuse to not hunt very much this spring. And pick up rock picking. Pick up rock picking.

That's been a newfound hobby. It's a good activity for the whole family. Yeah, but the thing about your new rock picking thing, and we haven't talked a whole lot about it is that i feel as though i'm always suspicious of people who start new things and i feel as though you kind of like sort of like very deliberately went out and started rock picking well i've always been like interested in rock sorry rock hounding. Yeah. That's a cool thing.

Uh, like any of you guys here, like if you're out hunting and you come across something cool on the ground, you're like, oh, this is, I'm gonna take this with me. I like this. Absolutely. Yeah. So like, I've always had that amount of interest in it. Uh, and then Corona happened. Um, and it's just like, i'm traveling less and things like that and and sort of the genesis of it is that um my wife who's not really interested in in turkey hunting or fishing or uh

things like that like we wanted a way to like do some more things outside and this is something that she was interested in as well so it was like a good lane for the both of us to go out and do something that she would like equally enjoy. Are those Yellowstone agates? So I brought three things because you said we were going to be talking about new things that we learned over, over Corona.

So I've got one thing here. It's a piece of petrified wood. It's kind of standard for the Yellowstone. That's beautiful. Yeah. And then I've got a Montana agate here, which is unique to the Yellowstone River. And then my prize.

This piece of wood looks almost, the piece of petrified wood looks almost milled. Isn't that crazy? My wife had it multiple times where like she thought it was just a standard piece of wood on the ground and pick it up and like, oh, this is petrified wood. That's how like distinct some of it is.

And that's your Yellowstone agate? That's a Yellowstone agate or Montana agate, as they're called. That's a nice agate. Are you going to cut it? I don't think we will because we haven't found enough. Do you have a rock tumbler yet? I have one running as we speak in my garage. Nice.

He's got serious. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. And then the prize thing. Can we slow up for a minute? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to hang out.

I used to socialize with a guy named Ray the Rockman. And he was an agate collector. He was a commercial agate picker out in Mile City. This guy had five-gallon buckets full of mammoth molars and had some bison antiqua skulls. Anyhow, he would get them and cut them to find if it was like gem quality or whatever and i bought a pair of beautiful agate earrings for my wife yeah and she still wears them do you have interest in like cutting this open and seeing if it's like a earring inside not not to that level like i said we've only found probably about a half dozen

agates right now. So I'd like to keep them whole for what we have. Well, I think that you're, if this is your definition of an agate, I think you're overlooking a lot of shitty agates. This is a beautiful agate. Certainly. On a scale of 1 to 10, like my knowledge of rockhounding is like a 3.

Well, there's a lot of agates that are lame. I mean, this is like a gorgeous agate. Yeah. Well, and it's even prettier if you're in like natural light and you held it up to the sun, it just glows. And that's, that's how some of the agates are. I've never, I've never found one like, like

that. Yeah. I'd be very eager to cut that open. Yeah. Well, what you need, like the, the, the prime, right, is like having a core in here that isn't fractured. That's what Ray the Rock Man was after,

is whether or not it's cracked inside. Yeah. You better tell folks how agate gets formed. So again, I just said I have a 3 out of 10 knowledge on this. But my understanding is that like the Yellowstone volcano, when that has gone off, I think during the Pleistocene era, that left ash and lava spread out all over the Rocky Mountain region. And then when it rained, that rain combined with volcanic ash and lava is what created these agates. That's not my understanding.

I could be wrong. I could be wrong. Go. I'm not saying this is what it is. I could be wrong. I could be wrong. Go. I'm not telling you this is what it is. I'm sure we'll hear about it. Joe, can you watch for the correct answer? Yeah. When it comes in via email?

Oh, definitely. We'll get it. What I've heard from Ray the Rockman Baker is that the lava flows would engulf chunks of wood. That wood would burn inside the lava and it would create cavities. Over time, rainwater would percolate down through the lava, collecting these cavities,

dry up and leave the precipitates in the cavity. And eventually the cavity would be full of the precipitants that came through that rainwater. The lava would erode away because it's soft and it would liberate these hunks of what he would call agatized wood.

Well, so we're, we're not disagreeing on what we said. I feel there's a pretty strong disagreement. You just went into more detail. It's like a combination of volcanic materials, lava and ash, and then water. And it's funny you talked about the tree thing because. Oh, ash. You did say ash.

Yeah. Oh yeah. This is like. So we're not totally in a fight. The most prized thing that we found. And this is a piece of agitized petrified wood. What? Yeah.

No. Yeah. You can't see it well in here because this isn't like the best lit place, but you go outside and you hold that up to the sun. It's kind of overcast today. And you'll see like the orange glow in there. So I have a piece of petrified wood. I have an agate and then I have a piece of agatized petrified wood.

Man, this is all just from one spring of being a rock hound. Yeah, yeah. This is probably from about eight times we've gone out. We probably have 25, 30 pieces of wood, a half dozen pieces of agates or the, I think the technical term, if they don't have banding, an agate is just chalcedony.

So you and Mrs. Newhart just head out in the. She didn't take my last name. Same thing as. I ran into that problem. Just kills me. When her mom, when my wife's mother sends her... It burns my wife's mother worse

than me. When my wife's mother sends my wife a package or an envelope, she messes with her because she'll put down Rinella. She'll put down Katie Rinella, even though it's not her name. My wife's mother likes to admonish her for not taking my name.

I was traveling with Steve and his wife and we were traveling in tight confines and his wife was making a dinner reservation and I noticed that she then chose to take Steve's last name. After the phone call, she sheepishly turned to me and said, I'm embarrassed, but that's the only time I take my husband's last name in the hopes of getting a dinner reservation. Oh, so you guys go off, you and not Mrs.

Newhart, you go off as a little, a cute little couple and go rock hounding. Yeah. Yep. Love it. We, I throw on my stone glacier. We look up like public access spots on the Yellowstone with Onyx. And then usually it's within an hour of Bozeman that we're finding these things.

The best find that we've had was two agates that we picked up on a gravel bar where we could see the McDonald's at Livingston. So I, I, I assumed that like, oh, you got to get way far away from stuff. Because it's picked over. Yeah, that certainly helps to like get far away. But we had good success, just like very local.

Have you been, I'm more of a bone picker than a rock picker. Yeah. Have you been checking eroded banks and stuff? Like you roll bone picking into rock picking. Yeah. I have some bones that I've brought home but that that's like another level of identification that i'm not down with yet so i don't know my neighbor um my kid told me about this and said i haven't talked to my neighbor directly but apparently he just found a fossilized

tooth under five feet five feet down using earth equipment i'm real eager to see that tooth yeah so and with with the rock picking like why we got into it, I think there, I imagine there's Rockhounding. Rockhounding with fatherhood that I haven't like ever experienced this emotion, but like you go hunting or fishing and you would rather your son or daughter catch the fish or like shoot the turkey than you. Right? Like you, that's something you experience.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I don't. Like I've never, like if I'm. I thought you were going to say you'd rather see your wife pick a rock than you. I'm getting there. Oh, okay.

So like, I, I don't, if I go hunting and fishing with buddies or like, if I take my 10 year old nephew. You're rooting for yourself. I'm still selfish enough to like, I want to catch the walleye or like, I want to be the one who. Dude, you got like, that's like, I want to catch the walleye. Or like, I want to be the one who's supposed to be. Dude, that's like something's wrong with your head.

So, and I've assumed that like there's a switch that flips when you become a father that like your interest changes and you're like genuinely happy for that person. Yeah, I think it's like a biological switch. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's just, I think it's like sort of wired in that has to happen and and this has been a new experience with me for rock counting that like i would rather my wife pick up every single cool thing we find and like it then me pick up any like i'd rather her find 20 pieces petrified wood than me find zero just because it makes her really excited yeah because what you're seeing is your path to rock picking that's what i was getting easier because you're like if she finds it and gets excited then i can

then i'll have more opportunity to go rock picking it'll be less like a favor it won't be like i'm asking her to go sure and that's a lot of the whole thing with kids you want to want to go because then you can go. Yeah. She makes requests like that we go rock hunting and stuff. And this last time we found an agate over by Big Timber and we were like halfway home past Livingston and stuff. And she was telling me this had been 90 minutes since we grabbed that agate. She's like, I still have adrenaline going from when I found that agate.

That's so awesome. She was so shaky she couldn't pick it up. Yeah. So I really, like I really dig, she couldn't pick it up. Yeah. So I, I really, like, I really dig that. We, uh. That's great, man. We took a first time hunter, uh, and it was really cool. It was a great, great trip. Um, but it was very lean on animals and potential for, like, it was just tough that way, but we found a lot of sheds.

And, uh, this was like a true first year hunter. His name was John. And he was like, man, love to he was like man love to find a shed love to find a shed and uh my buddy kyler and i threw a half dozen sheds in front of this kid he stepped over the area and he stepped over everyone. And it was, finally we got it to happen. And he found his shed. Once it hit him. Yes. But it was just like, it was so funny.

Because we were like, oh, we're doing a good thing here. And then he'd step right over the top of the thing. Is he going to listen to this and feel worse about that shed? No. Well, is the shed that he found one that you guys planted? Or was it his own? Well, he did find it. 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. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. You guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service.

That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet.

Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Spencer, explain to folks what, um, explain to folks, now that we covered your rockhounding and turkeys, explain to folks the difference between your very successful

franchise, the fact checker, and your franchises. Fact checker and barroom banters. Fact checker will take some commonly held belief among sportsmen and outdoorsmen and then sports people, sports people investigate whether or not it's true. We've covered this on the podcast multiple times. Examples being like, um, we're great. We're whale stocked in the great multiple times. Examples being like, we're great, we're whale stocked in the Great Salt Lake. Do you-

Do bucks really pay attention to the moon? Yeah, all that stuff. That's the fact checker series, investigating these long held beliefs. Things that we all know are true because we were told they were true. Daddy long legs

are incredibly poisonous, but they don't have the fangs capable of breaking skin things like that that's a fact checker series the barroom banter series is just like wisdom that you're eager to share with your buddies from a bar stool and so you may not be like book smart or something but you might be downright stupid. You could be downright stupid, but you could seem really educated from my bar stool. If you read this series, because you've got these all, you've got these great nuggets of information around the outdoors.

He keeps these all in his back pocket for the open bars at the weddings. Yeah, that's right. He bellies up, gets out 50 cents for the tip for the night, just starts telling stories. Yep, yep. Hey, buy you a drink? And the barroom banter is like a nod to meat eater fans

that would appreciate a deep cut because the first time I heard barroom banter was in one of your books. Guide books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Both the small game and the big game one. They always had this tidbit in there that'd be like one sentence about a cottontail rabbit or about an elk or whatever. That was like Barroom Banter. And then it was just like this quick hitter that did exactly this.

Yeah, so we did, what are you talking about? We have the books, our guide book series, which is a few, few books ago, the complete guide to hunting, butchering and cooking small game, or the complete guide to hunting, butchering and cooking, um, volume one, big game. And then volume two,

small game. And in these, we have these like species profiles all about how to like, you know, prepare it, how to find it, hunt for it, regulatory stuff.

And then like the kind of weird shit, you couldn't figure out where to put it. We would just put it in the barroom banter section. Yeah. Interesting stuff about stuff. Right. Of the tens of thousands of words in those books, those are like my favorite sentences are just the barroom banter parts.

And so that's what kind of the genesis is for the website here. It's a clearinghouse for all this off the wall knowledge that folks that folks like us have and it's a good place to share it with media readers no no i don't want to start negative um but i i want to understand your thinking i have now probably 10 times suggested to spencer that you need to do a fact checker or a barroom banter, I don't care, of something that I know to be true from growing up because people told me it was true, is that red squirrels or pine squirrels bite the nuts off of the more desirable gray and fox squirrel species. And that's just the truth.

Spencer says to me, me well not enough people think that it doesn't warrant it's not like a thing that people think but repeatedly the other day we were soliciting questions from our listeners top of the list why do pine squirrels bite the nuts off other squirrels yeah so you don't need to answer why do they, do do they, but walk me through why that is not a suitable fact checker. It is. It is now. I believe you. After the last time I was on the podcast, we talked about fact checkers, which was February, I think.

Ice fishing. Yep. We requested people to give us prompts for fact checkers. And that was the number one request that I got was what you just mentioned. Oh, so you now think that, okay. I'm on your side. Yeah. So you haven't written the piece yet though?

No. It just doesn't seem like an appropriate thing to write in, in May, this fall, this fall. Oh, so you think about it to that level. You need to. Yeah. We're not going to talk about, uh, running whitetails.

Yeah, but squirrels are alive right now. Sure. Sure. We'll, we'll get to it. But are they on the brain? We'll, we'll answer that question. Uh, have you done any preliminary research? No, no.

Besides like, uh. How, okay. Walk me through how you're going to approach it. Let's just say it was squirrel time. That's, that's one of the things that is kind of daunting about something like this. So I don't know. You have to go talk to a squirrel. That's right.

We know there's cannibalism in squirrels. We know they can have a varied diet. Do you like the barroom banter in the small game guidebook about how pine squirrels kill leverets, snowshoe hare babies? That's a good one. Yeah. I like that. They did a mortality study on snowshoe hares, on baby snowshoe hares.

The lead cause of mortality is pine squirrels. Whoa. One thing for these fact checkers, we always like to open up with the origin. Like where did this idea come from? Me? That's now like a shit. And that's my concern,

is that these people writing in, like, the origin is Steve Rinella. That's right. Because someone told me growing up. Right. Steve's got a Wikipedia page, doesn't he? That's all it takes. Yeah, that's like the most difficult part of these all the time, is tracking down the origin, trying to figure out, where did this start?

I will tag team this project with. Okay. Joe, good thing you're here joe can you please watch in the incoming emails uh things with subject lines such as um squirrels biting other squirrels balls yep i can watch or like uh i feel like that'll stand out yeah squirrel ball biting stuff like that'll stand out. Yeah, squirrel ball biting, stuff like that. When you see those, you take note and see if people can point to examples that originate. That'll lead us right to the origin. That'll originate somewhere not with me wondering if that's true. All right. That's covered to our set.

So we can look forward to that. It's going to be coming out, yes. Tell us a couple, give us some latest and greatest Barroom Banters. Barroom Banter, as of late, the theme of the ones that I've been writing about is kind of just been like Northwestern South Dakota. It's a really, really cool area. So not just South Dakota, but a quadrant of. Yes, because there's so much cool stuff that happened there. An example, and these aren't things we've written about, like that's where Hugh Glass got mauled. Oh, that's good to know.

Yeah. I damn sure knew it wasn't BC, which is where it happens in that horrible movie, The Revenant. Right, right. So that's an example of why northwestern south dakota is really cool um that is the people often when i say when i complain about the revenant then i point out how you couldn't have said it in bc and they're like where did it happen i'm like i don't know but it wasn't there so that's good no i'm gonna start telling them northwest it looks way different if you went to where hugh glasgow mauled you could probably throw a rock and hit an antelope.

Like that's what kind of country it is. I'm reading an astounding book right now. The history is called Plainsman of the Yellowstone. It's a history of all travel, early travel through the Yellowstone Basin. And the amount of white and yellow bears, the white and yellow kind that people see roaming around on the great plains is amazing, man. Yeah. Across the plain where many white and yellow bears or the ferocious kind, the white and yellow ones.

It's amazing. Yeah. So Northern and Northwestern South Dakota are so cool that I'm not even going to ever cover the Hugh Glass thing because there's just like stories that are way better than that even. Better than a guy getting mauled and crawling his way to safety. And not taking vengeance. That's right. That's right. You should probably cover that.

So people who hate the movie like Steve and go, it's not even based in BC. And then they go, I don't know. And it's not a vengeance tale. It's a tale of forgiveness. That's right. If that movie didn't exist, that would be a great barroom banter. But now it's just like two commonalities. I'd like to have that author on the, I'd like to have that author on,

I should stop talking about all this because it's going to be hard to get him on. I'd like to have that author on. He's actually a really interesting dude. I'd like to have him on the podcast. Yeah, that'd be awesome. I'd like to have that author on. He's actually a really interesting dude. I'd like to have him on the podcast. Yeah, that'd be awesome. I never read his book. I need to read his book.

Cause he might be like, dude, I know the movie's horrible. I don't know. I got to read his book. So one, one of the things about Northern, Northern South Dakota,

Northwestern South Dakota that we've recently covered is three toes. The wolf who, according to legend was the last gray wolf to roam the Great Plains. And he did most of his damage over about a decade span, from the early 1910s to the mid-1920s, where he caused all kinds of havoc for ranchers. He was just running roughshod on these sheep and cattle and things like that. Hold up.

Before we get too deep. I'm with you. And I saw the article. I'm just going to talk like we didn't. You will find that there's even historians who joke about this. That one guy was talking about

the legacy of like E-Frame, the last grizzly somewhere. Yep. And he calculated it out that this bear's reign of terror lasted 45 years. Yes. I think that was in Colorado. So this story, not this version, but it's been told many times over. There was a wolf in Minnesota.

I think his name was like Three Legs of Wolf, and he did the same thing, caused all kinds of damage. There was a grizzly in Colorado that had decades where he was just destroying stuff and wreaking havoc. But you get the point I'm making. Yes. Tell me what it is. I'm not accepting this for fact. There's like— The point.

The point? What I'm trying to say is just for folks at home uh the grizzlies don't live 45 years so his reign it'd be hard for his reign his reign of terror what was attributed to his to him in all likelihood looking back on it was that there was a a collection of animals over a long period of time and every time something bad happened, they'd be like, God damn it! It must be Ephraim. The record keeping is not very

great with something like Three Toes. I'm not going to mess with you anymore. But there is one solid and irrefutable fact. He had three toes. No, there's a statue. Yes. There's a statue. Yes. Oh, there's a statue.

There's a statue dedicated to three toes in Buffalo, South Dakota. Okay. I want to pull out, go on with the story. I just had to get that in there. Well, and to your point, I think wolves in captivity can live up to like 17 years. And in the wild, it's like a decade is super rare. Apparently three toes was like 15 or 16 years old long reign of terror long long reign yep uh so he he spent a decade just running roughshod

on sheep and cattle surplus killing yes yep he was notorious for killing even on a full stomach. And as the tail of three toes grew, so did like his athleticism and wits. Can you address the toes, the toe situation? I'm guessing it's- That's a good question. Yep. Three toes prior to starting his destruction and his vengeance on man, he escaped-

I like this wolf. He escaped a rancher's trap and he just left a tail behind. And then going forward, if- And that pissed him off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, and also, I didn't mention this in here, because it was a hard thing to find space for, but apparently the ranchers of Northwestern South Dakota had killed Three Toes' mate, and that just- Extra pissed him off. Extra.

It was like a lone wolf McQuaid when his dog dies. Sure. And John Wick. Yeah, I was thinking John Wick. He's got a constant reminder of traps. Oh, yeah. Like every time he forgets about it and chills, then he looks and there's his damn foot.

He's like, something's missing. Forgot about that. I'm going to go kill some sheep. Yep. And so whenever he would go and he would murder all these sheep in some dusty corral, he'd leave behind this three-toed paw print. And that's how they would know.

Oh, you know, he just dust off a little area and just make a perfect little print, man. Yep. But he was so athletic that he would jump like 12 foot gaps to avoid dogs. And he was so athletic that he would jump like 12 foot gaps to avoid dogs. And he was so smart that he would intentionally scatter livestock. So they would obliterate his trail so he could then escape. And part of the story goes.

Because they asked him? What's that? They asked him about it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They must have. It's like, you know, last question for you. Why do you scatter the livestock? And he was like, wow.

Let me tell you. Good getaway. Good getaway. Yep, yep. And he was so ruthless that once, while he was being pursued, he even stopped in a corral, slaughtered 15 sheep, and then just kept going. Didn't even have any interest in eating them, just to like prove a point. He did that.

He's a sociopath. Yeah. While he was sociopath. Yeah. While he was being pursued. Yep. Not a sociopath. There's probably a good Latin word for this. It'd be a faunopath, a sheepopath. So Threeto is-

You follow me? Yeah. I don't know Latin. You don't know Latin good enough to figure that one out? No. Threeto is over his 13 year reign, was credited with $50,000 in livestock damage, which if you count for inflation, that's $650,000 today.

Wow. It's a lot of damage. Yep. Local ranchers tried killing him. There was one case where the, I'm going to butcher the name, the Havala boys, maybe. They followed three toes for 200 miles. The Rinella boys?

No, no. They never got a shot. Followed toes for 200 miles. The Rinella boys? No, no. They never got a shot, followed them for 200 miles. There was someone else that followed them for 140 miles, but lost his tracks when he got to the Grand River, which I think the Grand River is the location of where Hugh Glass got mauled. Wow. That ties it all together. Yep.

So finally, the state got sick of not catching three toes, even after having a $5,000 bounty on him for years. Just didn't work. They called in their best wolf specialist from New Mexico. And this is where the story becomes absolutely true. Yes. There's no disputing this three-week period. The perception.

We're making some jokes about it, but the perception, like the depredation was real. The livestock loss was real. And it was a very real perception of this being attributable to this one ravenous beast. Yep. Yep. So Clyde Briggs. Whether or not it was actually two of them or not, who knows. But this was the understanding at the time.

Or many. Yeah. That is like some notorious bluff country out there where something could duck down. You'd, you'd never know, even though it's like, well, we've talked about where grizzlies and antelope are at. There was likely more wolves at work here, but Clyde Briggs comes in from New Mexico.

He is the USDA's wolf specialist, and he has a reputation for catching things that are uncatchable. And he does just that he spends three weeks there interviewing locals talking to ranchers uh kind of surveying the land he decides on one specific ranch where three toes had recently left a track behind and so i i knew you'd want more information on the actual trapping portion of this, but there's like so little available. The story gets pretty short after this.

Brig goes out, Briggs goes out and he just litters an area with traps. And he knows that this wolf is so wise and so evasive that he needs to lay traps that if it gets it one leg in, it has to get another leg in as well. One leg on this wolf isn't good enough. So the only details might be an old two legs that's right three toes that's right the only the only information really available is that he just litters like a pasture with the traps and he catches the wolf on july 25th and he gets out there uh and three toes is like emancipated at this point he's way past his from having been on a seat there we go emancipated would this point. He's way past his prime. Emanciated.

Emanciated. There we go. Emancipated would be that he let it go out of the trap. No, no. Good catch, Cal. Three Toes is now only 74 pounds, despite being six feet long. From just a life of having been on the run. Yes.

And not eating all the stuff you kill. Yep. And he's just past his prime. So Briggs has a lot of pride in like he caught this wolf, but he also wants to spare the wolf and drive it back to Buffalo, which is the county seat. But on the car ride there, which was only about 20 minutes to get there, the wolf dies. Is this credited with being the inspiration for The crossing by cormac mccarthy not aware the crossing cormac mccarthy part of the border trilogy there's a wolf raising hell with cattle in new mexico and a kid gets tasked by his father to catch the wolf that had come up from mexico that is earnest thompson

seaton story lobo from the book wild animals i have known huh what is i believe the inspiration for cormac mccarthy's the crossing no yeah that's the inspiration for that anyways kid catches the wolf can't bring himself to kill it, decides to bring it back into Mexico. One thing leads to another. Yeah. Briggs had intentions of killing this wolf. He just wanted to kill it in front of people. Yes.

Just like show them this live critter. But Three Toes died on the drive there. Instead of credding. Well, instead of credding it to like the July 25th midday heat and probably being in this trap that had like no shade available or anything like that. They don't say that's the reason. But this writer who was a sheep rancher in the area, he says, call it a broken heart or what you will. Something of this sort is what killed the old wolf. He was resting easily when found.

His wounds were superficial, but there was something in his grand old spirit that could not brook capture, and nature, more merciful than had been every before, granted him his release. Wow, pretty flowery language. Very flowery. I mean, that's just like Western romanticism. Yes.

Man, I love it. Love it. You know, it wasn't the trap that killed him. It was getting caught. Yeah. It wasn't the July 25th heat. It was, uh, his reign was over. Well.

Huh. So that's three toes. Is that quote from the outlaw Josie Wales, where he says something to the effect of, um, guys like you and me, it's not dying, it's hard. It's living. Mm. I tell that to Yanni all

the time how's the on the respond he just kind of rolls that yeah all right so you uh um that's great you know you have a standing invitation to come tell us about fact-checkers and bargain banters okay but I might revoke it until you get the squirrel nut thing wrapped up okay we'll put it at the top what a little party when you get that thing wrapped up. There you go. You can come on anytime you want, but we'll have an open bar. Can we arrange that, Cal?

Have an open free bar for Spencer? Yep. After he writes. Yes, sir. It'll just be like a bottle and a glass. We'll be laying there at your little spot. I like that. And you come in and tell us about the squirrel nut biting.

There we go. And all you got to do is wrap your knuckles on the table and I'll serve you. Close out a couple things. So Spencer, you realized during the quarantine that you're a rock hound. Yes. What's the thing you've learned about yourself, Cal?

What did the quarantine bring out in you? What did you learn about yourself? I have a thing that I learned about myself. Oh man. I learned that I need to start training myself to focus because when I'm trapped at home, I get so many projects going. I have like full blown adult onset ADD.

Hmm. I already knew that about myself. Yeah. The projects are seductive. Seductive. Yeah. They're just, you look out your window and it's like, son of a beehive.

Yeah. I'm going to hold off on putting the period on this last sentence. I'm going to. I can always get this period later. Yeah. I'm going to hold off on putting the period on this last sentence. I'm going to. I can always get this period later. Yeah. That flower pot. Yeah.

I got to go bust down four turkeys and make stock and learn how to can real quick. Well, what did you learn? I'll do mine. I was going to have Joe and Phil go. I'll do mine now. What I learned do mine. I was going to have Joe and Phil go. I'll do mine now. What I learned is this. In my, I don't know how old I was, maybe around 20 or so, I developed, I've always had like a real thing about needing to be going all the time, doing stuff all the time in my twenties or so it turned into a, a horrible, not horrible,

but a really like a really severe wanderlust to the point where I, I remember one point in time realizing that I had gone 18 months without sleeping in the same place seven days in a row. And then when I did sleep somewhere seven days in a row, I was out of town. I just had to be out of town at the same place eight days in a row. And I developed this feeling, like a deep uneasiness about not being on the move to where I felt like somehow if you weren't on the move,

you would die or something and i just very difficult for me but um i learned now that i like it waking up same place wake up put my wife at my house make some coffee you're like, this is why we have this place. My kids are there. You know what I mean? And like after doing that for a couple of weeks, and I recently had to go just eat like a little in-state trip. After doing that for a couple of weeks, I really not was like eager to go somewhere. I was dreading going somewhere.

That's amazing. I liked it. I liked waking up, making coffee. Everybody home loved it too much. Then I started thinking I was getting soft. But dude, it's nice to be at home with your family and not to be also packing. Dude, when I moved to Kip, you moved to live life on the road as a guide, doing all sorts of jobs, when I moved to catch them for a sit-down-on-the-desk job,

I was like, I never hung a thing on the walls. Not a picture, not anything. Because you never know when you've got to get out of there. Because I was like, I'm just going to be just gonna be leaving just gonna be moving and then like you know 10 years later i'm like yeah i better better hang this map on the wall i think i will hang a decoration up when you weren't staying anywhere for 18 months straight where did you have like a paycheck sent or oh i've always had an ad i've always used an address for a long time during that period i used a po box but i've also during those same periods would use my brother's addresses

as my port of call so where did you consider yourself a resident like did you have some place you were like paying i was a resident like yeah i was a resident somewhere but i mean i might be like it was mostly in montana but it might just be that period was in montana um and i think when i broke it it was i think it might have been i think i might have broke earlier i was talking about my dad getting sick i think i might have broke it when I went away from my, I might've broke my streak going home to be home with my family from home. Um, but yeah, just like, but you don't think about it now. Like on a weekend comes, I get a little, like, it's hard for me to picture.

If I look ahead and there's like a weekend when we don't have the family, even with the family, we don't have something on the books. I get a little antsy. You guys are very good at, at making stuff happen. Start planning something. Yeah, because I don't want to die. Joe, what did you learn about yourself? You know what? So here's the thing. You don't die if you just stay home.

Really? Write that down. I learned the exact opposite. I learned I am a very restless soul. Like, sitting around the house, it's been like, I need to go to that mountaintop. Like, just looking out the window, looking at the mountains. I'm like, I cannot sit here anymore. But.

You got that wanderlust. I do. Just got to go see something. So I did a lot of shed hunting. Just went and started wandering around the mountains looking for antlers. Oh, that worked out. Did you find a lot? Found a few.

I actually went to the breaks a couple of weeks ago and we found 21 antlers. Whoa. So that was. Really? Yeah. You did like an actual trip to go shed hunting? Yeah. Huh.

Kind of. And a scout for. When you find them, do you like, I'm going to put this into my big pile of antlers? Or are you like selling? You know, those were like, I'm going to put this in a big pile of antlers. So you're not like, you're not out there selling it for chew toys? No. And then none of them were good enough to really sell it.

Gotcha. But then I also learned that I really enjoy trail running. I think for that same reason of, you know, kind of that wanderlust. Yeah. Just go to a different trail and just start running. You and Maggie and Giannis got to go on a trail run. Those guys trail run. Yeah, I know.

Or they run out of each other. I did, I did one with them last year and ran a Baldy with them and it was miserable. But, uh, now I'm actually enjoying it. You're probably able to hold your own now. Yeah. Now I've been running a lot. Like I just picked up one day. I was like, yeah, I'm going to go for a trail run.

Ran 10 miles. If you do go running with Yanni, wait till you're good and far into the trip and then say, Yanni, for guys like you and me, it ain't dying, it's hard. Try that out on them. I will. Phil, learn anything good about yourself? Or bad?

I don't care. Yeah. Bad that I need a new hobby. I mean, I'm just... Rock picking. Exactly. I've been sitting here listening to Spencer. I'm getting all jealous of the stuff he's doing.

No, I've just been kind of just falling into old habits, like, you know, playing. I mean, I was about to say playing with my kids like it's a bad thing. But I mean, like, going through routine. Stupid stuff. Be with my kids. Just going through routines, like, after the kids go to bed, it's like, I'll just play some video games or, yeah. Oh, really?

No, yeah. I'm still into that, yeah. Yeah, but you're a brand new outside pooper. You got that going for you. Exactly. Yeah, I wouldn't say I learned how to do it because it went poorly. Instead, I tried. But no, I don't know if any of you guys at this hunting and fishing organization have any ideas for new hobbies.

Rock picking. I bought two rockhounding books, so you can borrow one. I would like it if you were out rockhounding and Spencer gets to a spot and sees there's someone already there rockhounding. And then he'll be one of those guys and be like, this place has gone to shit. When I started rock picking out here. I got a couple good mushroom books too. Oh, Phil. That's what you ought to do because it's the thing is right now, like morels coming on, oyster mushrooms.

My mom just picked a pound of asparagus. I mean, that sounds great. Yeah, no, I've been reading all of Spencer's articles. I mean, Spencer's been, he doesn't know this. We haven't talked about this, but I've been reading all of his stuff, and I just, I want to get out there. Yeah, he's getting me. Good.

Nice. Getting me outside. My friend Matt, who's been on this show before, not my brother Matt, my friend Matt, he was all holed up on his on a property he has a little farm uh quarantining on a farm and i suggested to him he's got a big ramp patch big patch of ramps um i suggested to him if you really want to inject a spark into the old love life. Take your wife out there with a shovel. Continue. Dig a deep hole.

Take your wife out with a shovel. Dig up some of those ramps. Wash those ramps. Roll the green part of the ramp around the white part of the ramp. So it's a little package. It looks like a Polish rose. Brush that with olive oil. Apply salt and pepper on it. Put it on the grill and cook it. a little package. It looks like a Polish rose. Brush that with olive oil. Apply salt and pepper on it.

Put it on the grill and cook it. And then give it to your wife. What is a Polish rose? You don't know what a Polish rose? No, you can't be like, it looks like this thing when nobody knows what this thing looks like. A Polish rose is what a person's mom

makes in the Midwest when they're having a party. If it's the wintertime. Okay. You take a green onion. No, you can do it in summer. Do you guys know this term? No, I've never heard of it.

You take a green onion. You get yourself some Carl Buddig ham or corned beef. Like the worst ham or corn, most processed, worst ham you can find, or corned beef, slices. You take a green onion. You smear that meat with cream cheese so that you have it's like a picture a piece of bread with cream cheese smeared on it but it's not it's a piece of ham with cream cheese smeared on it and then you wrap it around the white part of

the green onion and you lay a tray of those out. Now you're talking. I like that. Dude, they vanish. But you giving that comparison is like a calendar. Exactly. Exactly. Looks good. That's a Polish rose. Now I get it. Now, do the Poles love those roses?

I don't know. Is it like a joke? Is it that they can't get nothing right? I don't know. I would rather have that than a rose so let's think of it i'm thinking it's laudatory of the polls they've taken a thing that's stupid like a rose and turned it into a good thing to eat your your description of that was like cal and i were doing a video about how to make chislic and i was trying to describe the

size that you want to cut the pieces of meat. And Cal interjected, and he said, well, it's about the size of a sugar cube. But I don't think there's anybody under the age of 40 that can recognize what the size of a sugar cube is. I could recognize it. Yeah, I haven't seen one of those in a while. But when I was a little kid, we're going to wrap it up here. But we'll end on this thought. When I was a little kid we're going to wrap it up here but we'll end on this thought when I was a little kid and you went to church

and then you left church and went over to the annex for the little social period you would get yourself some coffee and then you'd put about 18 sugar cubes in there and try to break them up and then drink that sugar and I don't think I've laid eyes on a sugar cube since

alright good and I don't think I've laid eyes on a sugar cube since. All right. Good. Do they bite the balls off the squirrels? We'll find out. We're going to find out. Work in progress by Spencer Newford. All right.

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