The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 223: Shooting Trees to Death

Episode Date: June 1, 2020

Steven Rinella talks with Brody Henderson, Spencer Neuharth, Ryan Callaghan, Phil Taylor, and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: Regs; Covid-19 and drinking Tommy’s spit; how the new shooting-trees-over trend is an ugly thing; the mortal danger of growing a morel mushroom; Steve's fantastic analogy for mycelium, and his general strengths in that area; MeatEater's upcoming long ass book about wilderness skills; a lack of humility on the part of Brody and Steve; .410 expressed as a “gauge”; the futility of yelling at kids to be quiet at hunting camp; the Macushi code of silence; Steve's son's first turkey hunt; mistaking a turkey head for a flower; Jani's costly truck stall; the roughed grouse that drummed all night; a puffball the size of Cal's head; how about a coffee with legs?; drawing pictures of scissors and a severed scro; 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. Spencer, what was the point you were just making? A lot of books legally allow you to shoot a male turkey based on the appearance. What do you mean books? Children's books? No, no, no.

Like regulation books. Okay. Rigs. Yes. That's what we call them, Spencer. Allow you to fill a male turkey tag based on the presence of a beard or spurs. Either or. Yeah.

So what I'm saying is, can you imagine like being out in the woods and have a turkey come by and be like, no beard, no fan. Not that that's like an indication, but. Not a legal one. Right, right. So yeah, because there are toms with no spurs. And there's toms with no beards. Yeah. So I can't imagine a scenario where you'd be like.

Shooting them off the spurs. There it is, spurs. Legal bird. The reason I made you remake that point is we were just talking to this feller about hunting oscillated turkeys. So for, uh, you knuckleheads at home, all the, there are, we've covered this a bazillion times. The regular old American wild turkey,

there's five sort of like, you know, there's five, what some people like to call subspecies of the regular old American wild turkey. Rattle them off, Yanni. Starting down in the Southwest, the Gould's turkey. Moving over to the Southeast and most of the Eastern part of the country, you have the Eastern. But down in the Southeast tip or Southern, I guess, end of florida you have the osceola and in the central part and into the mountains we have the rio grand turkeys and the merriam's turkeys man that was great great job

i like that little thing where you uh skipped over a bunch of the country then doubled back you went like west to east then doubled back well i started but i went south and stayed in the south oh yeah and then came up the east yeah you started, but I went south and stayed in the south. Oh, yeah. And then came up the eastern seaboard. Yeah, you did. You were going like counter. You were starting in the south-south going counterclockwise. I like it.

Anyways, there's a thing. There's another whole other species of turkey, which is kind of like a turkey and a peacock had sex. The oscillated turkey, which lives in Yucatan, areas of Central America, Guatemala. I think they got them in, does Belize? Yeah, I think people hunt them in Belize,

oscillated turkeys. Anyways, dude was telling me, there's two ways, like the oscillated turkey lives out in the jungle, low jungle, not like high canopy monkey jungle, but low jungle. And a lot of times people go down and hunt them in the fields. They just like slash and burn egg, and people like to hunt oscillated turkeys in the fields.

The reason he was telling me they like to hunt oscillated turkeys in the fields is because you can see their footwear. Because these things have some obscene spurs. Footwear meaning you want to see how giant their spurs are. And if he's out in a field, you can actually judge him. Wow. You can trophy judge him. Real limb hangers. Yeah.

You can see if he's got limb hangers or not. Well, I think every single one of those buggers has limb hangers. Some of them just like wrap around the limb halfway. Limb hangers or not well i think every single one of those buggers has limb hangers some of them just like wrap around the limb halfway uh two so far there could be more so far two of the guests who've been on this show jim heffelfinger and tommy edson have uh overcome the dreaded COVID-19. That got me thinking, have been afflicted and persevered. Tommy Edson said it was the second sickest he's ever been, so I promptly called him to ask him about what the first was. But Heffelfinger, he barely knew he was sick, but got sick.

And that got me wondering, is it like, is being on this show, someone should do some math. Is there a higher likelihood, higher than national, higher, you know what I'm trying to say? Does being on this show mean that there's a higher likelihood

that you get COVID-19? You're in a high risk group if you're on the podcast. Yeah, or does it match the population in general? Like what percent of Americans? Do we have a representative sample? That's what I'm trying to get at.

I want it, man. I just want to get it over with. Well, I mean, you very well could already had it. That's what happened to him. He went down and took Jim Heffelfinger. Tommy Edson just got sick as shit, and he found out he had it because he got the test. Heffelfinger was just curious if he'd had it. got the thing, and realized he'd had it a long time ago. My wife got real mad when I said I'd volunteer to get it.

Yeah. I got a friend, I don't want to say who, one of the individuals that I'm talking about right here was saying that, in his view, if it wasn't for the risk of overwhelming the health care system he says i think we should all be licking doorknobs but he says he's been very protective of his mother because uh she's older and he wants her to hole up but he said she's got a bunch of coupons burning a hole in her pocket wants to get down to the store with her coupons before they expire oh my gosh i want it though. I mean, I don't want, I'm not trying to be

morbid. I just want to like, no, I want to get it and no. I was speaking with a friend of mine yesterday and, um, coworker of his, uh, has the antibodies had it, has been, uh, in, you know, in quarantine with her family, young children and nobody else in her family got it.

I bet they got it, but this didn't show. Same thing with Tommy. Oh, like no, but they didn't show antibodies or anything. Oh, I see what you're saying. Really? Yeah. And she's just like.

I thought it floats around in the air for like nine months. Man, I think. Gets on your point. Obviously we don't quite have this thing nailed down. You know, what if you were going to end up being one of those guys that we heard about in turkey camp last week that it does get his dick in the dirt? Well, not only that, but three months later, he's still, you know,

suffering and lungs aren't feeling too good. Sure. That's a risk. I'm just saying, okay, I'm going to try it. I want to like put some brackets around what I'm saying. I don't want to then become, I don't want to then infect people who don't want to be infected, all this. If I could go to my, here's the thing.

If I could go to my fish shack with a little vial of spit, Tommy Edson spit, and from then, right, I'd go to my fish shack by myself, drink Tommy Edson spit, and then wait till I have whatever, wait two weeks and go home. I would do it. I would too. Just to know. I even have even have like in my notes i have a thing like when i envision me and like it you know that saving private ryan where the real

bad kraut they're getting that um they're like in that knife fight oh and he's like i'm gonna stab it near your throat then the knife turns he's like i'm gonna stab it near throat and he gets the knife turns like i'm gonna stab it'm going to stab it in your throat. And he gets the knife turned, he's like, I'm going to stab it in your throat. Right? And they go back and forth like that. I imagine me and it in a battle like that. And I like to think eventually I would turn it and just into his throat. I have to know.

I have, it's like, I got to know. Man, I, yeah, I, I'm, I'm sure like everybody, I had this real weird sickness when, uh, I went down to California and it was just not feeling right. Um, for the, you know, three days I was down there. You're saying everybody's had this. right and yeah so i'm on like the part of me that's like boy i feel like i've already got it because that was a just a weird thing that i don't feel like december that'd be way too early not for cases in california you know i heard a rumor it's just a rumor so i don't want to say too much but i heard a rumor that you and i were at a place, at a gathering. Yeah, I bet.

Back in mid-February, and there have been cases traced to the gathering that you and I were at. I bet. I bet. A large gathering. Every wildlife-related gathering in the U.S. All happens February and March. Yeah. And every state agency person that I've been speaking with in the last couple months, which is a lot,

they're always like, oh, yeah, this conference that we had six biologists at that all flew back home had X amount of confirmed cases. We had six biologists at that all flew back home. Had X amount of confirmed cases. Yeah, I'm ready to move on. I'm ready to move on in more ways than one. I'm ready to move on. Let's talk about a new thing.

I want to finish it with, I hope that you don't get it because I don't think you're fully thinking it through. I know you want to have that knife battle with COVID-19, but hope that you don't get it because I don't think you're fully thinking it through. I know you want to have that knife battle with COVID-19, but I hope you don't get it. You have to live wondering what it would be like. I hope you don't get it.

Thanks. But I don't want to get it. I'm perfectly fine. No, I want to get it if I knew that it wasn't going to be that bad. Kind of like I want to get scratched by a grizzly bear.

Yeah. Like I want to get mildly, I want to get scratched by a grizzly bear. I want to get mildly scratched. That other bracket you were talking about. I want to get mildly scratched by a grizzly. There's a new trend, a new shooting sports trend. If you want to see what I'm talking about,

go on, I'm on Instagram, go on Instagram'm on instagram go on instagram at steven ranella s-t-e-v-e-n ranella um and you'll see a video i just put up of uh people have always gone out onto public land or, you know, areas and through garbage everywhere and dumped appliances and computer monitors and what have you and beer cans and shot them all to hell. That's always happened. It's always been horrible, but it's always happened. There's a new thing of that you go out to public land and do all the normal stuff.

You still dump all your garbage. You still dump all the normal stuff. You still dump all your garbage. You still dump all your beer cans. You shoot them all to hell. You don't pick them up. You strew paper everywhere. Don't pick any of that up. Shell casings everywhere. Don't pick that up.

Light junk on fire. All that. But the new thing is there's an added thing of shooting trees over. Have you seen this? I saw it on your video that you posted. And how many places have we seen trees shot over this spring? Two. No, two regions.

Multiple locations. Oh, sure. Multiple locations within those spots spot in those zones. Yeah. I probably in the one location, I probably saw a half dozen places. No, I think, honestly, I think it was more than a half dozen go out every time you get a couple dollars saved up you buy enough ammo to go and whittle away at the tree some more well yeah it saves you money on not having to buy the targets or beer having beer cans no i think that it's not because they're

putting targets on the trees it looked like they are deliberately no but what i'm saying is if you don't have a target you just use the tree as a target. And shoot trees over. Mm-hmm. But you'd have to be buying some serious bulk ammo. Oh, it's a long-term project engaged by groups of people is shooting trees over. It is the ugliest, ugliest thing. It gives such a black, like this garbage dumping public land. Now, I'm not opposed.

I shoot on public. Every time we go to shoot, we shoot on public land. Now, I'm not opposed. I shoot on public. Every time we go to shoot, we shoot on public land, typically. Clean your junk up, man. I told you that. It's just like humiliating. It's humiliating to see it and have to be like, that's a version of me. That's like a dude who likes to shoot. I bet he likes to hunt.

Maybe. But he also likes to just shit up the woods. The, uh, Spencer took us out to a chunk of state ground not too far from here. I've been out there

a couple of times to, uh, shoot. And there's typically always somebody shooting out there. But I always, you know, build my, uh, cardboard box target.

Uh. And go through all the hassle of wandering over there and picking it back up. always, you know, build my, uh, cardboard box target, uh. And go through all the hassle of wandering over there and picking it back up. Well, now the box is absolutely necessary because I have to go pick up everybody else's crap. Oh, you come home with your box full of everybody else's junk.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it was shocking. And the thing is, just like you were saying before I cut you off, is I'm just a person shooting, as is everybody else who's driving on that road. And it's right next to the road. I'm indistinguishable from the next person. And if they ever stop, they're going to be like, holy shit, these people are pigs. Yeah. You know, I i mean it's just yeah it's bad it's so bad the reason you gotta be extra careful with your garbage when you go shooting is because i i imagine okay let's say you you found the last 10 people who totally shitted up one of these trees shooting over areas okay and you you uh surveyed them somehow or interviewed them i bet you if they had gone to a pristine place that

wasn't shitted up they wouldn't have shitted it up they wouldn't have shat it up they're certainly less less likely to but the minute someone goes and leaves all their trash and their casings laying everywhere and tries to shoot a tree down, the next mug that goes there is like, oh, I guess this is just one of those spots. And what's the difference now? There's no other way. Like the video I put on Instagram doesn't even begin that went on for hundreds of yards

yeah it is that's an exaggeration that went on for 200 yards a lot of lead laying in the ground I didn't have enough film to film it all maybe we should inquire and see if there's maybe some old dumps that maybe portions of dumps aren't being used anymore for regular dumping.

And then we could steer these people to go to the dump. Well, at Tok, you go to the dump to shoot. If you leave your... There you go. Well, you go to a gravel pit. It's kind of hard to mess up a gravel pit. A gravel pit's already messed up. I like what you're saying, though, Giannis,

because then you'd be like, if you can't bear to part with your trash without shooting it, here's a lane for you at the county dump, at the county landfill. Yeah, when you pull in, they weigh your truck. They're like, if you're shooting, go shoot over there. Or they could charge you for a busted TV.

Like, they make a little extra money. They'll be like, here, you want a TV? Take this one. $5. Ooh. Now you're thinking. Yeah, you can go to the dump and buy garbage from the dump to shoot up. Pick up glass, whatever you want.

And every week, they just bulldoze it back into a dumpster, and everybody gets to shoot garbage. Yep. And they can put old dead trees up, and people can shoot them over. I think that we, you know what I want to do? into a dumpster and everybody gets to shoot garbage. And they can put old dead trees up and people can shoot them over. I think that we, you know what I want to do? There's a local little river access site that I wanted to do a cleanup on. I would rather because I feel more like

complicit as a person that goes and shoots that uses public lands to shoot. I don't want shooting on public lands to become illegal. That would be a real pain in to shoot. I don't want shooting on public lands to become illegal. That'd be a real pain in the ass. I think that we should start a thing and now and then go to an area that's been totally

shitted up. I got so many ideas of where to do this. Go to, and also some of it's, uh, Weyerhaeuser land. We just found some Weyerhaeuser land that had been like basically just like, like completely desecrated by recreational shooters.

And it's a lot easier for a place like Weyerhaeuser to be like, you know what, man, we're done. No more. For those not, uh, aware Weyerhaeuser is, is one of the largest landowners in the U S. And they're pretty good about access. It's a private entity.

It's a, um, timber company. And yeah, historically very good about access. If I was the CEO of Weyerhaeuser and I hadn't be driving down the road where I'm talking about,

I'd be like, you know what? I don't care, man. Block that. That's it. Yeah. That's it.

Very good about access to the point that a lot of people who recreate on Weyerhaeuser land just think that it's U.S. Forest Service land. Yeah, I recently confronted some guys. We were just recently walking down a road on Weyerhaeuser land. And it's a sign very clearly expressing no motorized anything. So it's like they got a sign up. It's like it's got a quad runner with a slash through, it's got a quad runner with a slash through it. It's got a truck with a slash through it.

It's got a motorcycle with a slash through it. It's got a snowmobile with a slash through it. A couple of days after you were there, I parked in front of that gate. It had recently rained. I didn't see any fresh tracks cutting in there. Oh no, and a grader had gone down the main road and I didn't see any tracks. It was pretty early in the morning. I didn't see any tracks cutting the edge of the

grader, you know? And, uh, someone was like, Oh, just park in front of the gate. And that'll keep anybody's thinking about driving up there. They'll, they can't go. And I'll be up there by myself. Well, sure enough, I'm up there. I've been hiking already for probably close to two hours and here comes a little side by side really yeah so they were cool they drove me down i moved the truck they drove me back up so i could continue hunting but they worked for a wirehouser no they were out just that's breaking the law just like what you're describing well this gate that had been left open but there was no like mistaking what was supposed to happen here we hiked up it and I come to an old forest service truck.

I was like, that's weird. Like an old, like a, you know, 80s forest service truck. And I thought like, I don't know, maybe they have maybe wire house. I don't know. Maybe they bought bolt forest service trucks and their guys use them. I don't know. So eventually here comes a couple of guys ripping down the road on motorbikes. And then I realized that they drove their motorbikes in, in the truck.

So they load their motorbikes up and then I'm walking all the hell way back down the road and they pull up and ask if I want to ride. And I said, you guys work here? And he looks at me like, what in the world are you talking about? And I said, cause you're not, I'm not going to get in because you're not supposed to drive here. They're like, they're super like, why are you guys not supposed to drive here? And I was like, why are you guys not supposed to drive here. They're like, they're super, like, Weyerhaeuser's super clear about that. And they looked at me like I was like a Martian. They're like, who is this Weyerhaeuser?

The gate's open, bro. Didn't you see? Yeah. It just kills me. Anyways, I think it was a good project. And this would be something you should spearhead, Cal. We should develop a thing where now and then we take a day off

of work. I'm tracking so far. Go on. Take a day off work and go to places where people have shot the hell out of the area. Yep. And clean up everything. The trees that have been shot over, cut them down at the area. Yep. And clean up everything.

The trees that have been shot over, cut them down off at the ground, cut the rest of it up into stove wood and totally spit shine that place. Then we can have a little leave behind sign or something. It says this place spit shined for your benefit that way yeah keep it spit shined yeah i like that i would love to do we talked about this on the last podcast though right we talked about cleaning up uh

after we've been to missoula and seen that didn't we talk about shooting trees over yeah we did yeah a little bit that's all right that's a message worth pounding twice. No. I'm going to make it my thing, man. It was just interesting up there because it's obviously been going on long enough and they're seeing enough of it that there already was a Forest Service sign that said, no shooting of trees. Like an actual sign, like a commissioned sign. As if you need to have

a effing sign to know you're not supposed to shoot trees. They shoot them over at about chest height. Chest neck height. Because they're standing. Now, every young man, when he gets his first ax and he's kind of cut loose, what do you go do? Chop trees down.

You go and chop trees down, right? And then you get reprimanded for chopping green trees down. Most people, I think, learn their lesson. That's around when you're seven or eight years old. Exactly. I don't think seven and eight-year-olds are driving up. No, that's the point I'm getting to, buddy. They missed that lesson.

We had a game as kids. There used to be a show. None of you guys remember this. There was a show called Name That Tune. I don't remember how it went, but somehow there was a thing where you'd go like, the host, I don't know know the name's bill or whatever you'd be like bill i can name that tune in five notes and then they must like play i don't know what it is they play five notes then you'd say what it is wish i could remember the details better anyways we had a version we'd call chop that tree and you would uh you would have an axe or what have you and you'd look at a sassafras tree or something you'd say uh matt i think i can chop that tree in five swings

and then you see if you could do it i like and we do it sort of to the rhythm and cadence of name that tune shooting over a tree like never uh never ever crossed my mind and i was talking to cal in december i asked if I could borrow his steel chainsaw to go harvest a Christmas tree. And he said, well, you don't want to use your 12 gauge? You don't have a gun? Uh, yeah, we used to do Christmas tree hunting

every year. And, uh, we would, uh, take my 10 gauge shotgun andauge shotgun and select a nice Christmas tree. What diameter would the trunk be when you were going to tee off on it? You know, just like Charlie Brown cherries. What's the best load shot size for that project? Whatever you got. But like three inches? Yeah.

No more than that. Yeah, right. One shot would do it? A lot of times you could get it in one shot. Yeah. From how far? What range? Yeah.

Oh, real close. Like 10 feet and under. When we did our Christmas special, we had a lot of emails. I think there was three from people whose tradition is to shoot trees down and bring them home. That's different because at least you're shooting it down for a purpose. It's different than shooting down 18 inch diameter ponderosas.

Yeah. And how clean of a cut would that be when you were done Cal? Oh, I mean, there's a little trim work involved in it for sure. It looked like someone shot it with a shotgun. Oh yeah, absolutely. I had, you know, one of those real tight

strangler choke tubes on the 10 gauge. And yeah, that, I mean, it'll drop a tree. Oh, Brody, weren't you supposed to be calculating out what gauge a 410 is? Well, we talked about it. I never did the calculation. You haven't calculated it out yet. Let's figure it out.

Yeah, work on that. Get back to me. Tree shooting down. Talk about that. Being a total asshole. Shoot trees down. Talk about that. Oh, okay.

Next thing I want to jump into. Spencer, can you review for us what happened when you called the man, the Morel man? Yes, the last podcast. Are you buying it? The last podcast I was on. Please review. Right. We talked about Ronald or the San Francisco State

University student that figured out how to grow Morales, but then was murdered. Under mysterious circumstances. Or not. Or not.

Right. He cracked the code of Morales, was murdered before his patent was granted. Yeah. My theory was that it was a hit job by Little

Caesars. Right. Right. Because he had a lucrative contract with Domino's. My theory was that it was a hit job by Little Caesars. Right, right. Because he had a lucrative contract with Domino's. So it was Jimmy Johns or Dave Thomas or somebody was after him. Nobody had been able to crack the code. Am I going to get sued now by Little Caesars? Nah. I don't want to be like Alex Jones.

I'll be getting sued by people for. So for 40 years, no one has cracked this code on how to grow morales like Ronald Ower did. O-R-R? O-E-R, I think. O-E-R. Oh, excuse me.

O-W-E-R. Ower. All right. Ronald Ower. But recently, some articles out of Iowa and some news stations have covered this.

Some newspapers have covered this. A mushroom farmer there claims to have figured out how to grow morale mushrooms. And this spring, he harvested about 100 pounds, he said. And this is after a decade's worth of efforts. And so I was going to try to track him down and talk to him about what his process is, if he's scared for his life, those sorts of things. But you did track him down. I did track him down. Okay.

Yep. And your question, Steve, you said, when you talk to him, ask him this, why are they so hard to grow? Yep. So I asked him that. He didn't have a great answer. So then I went to the internet. The internet doesn't have a great answer either. But basically what he said and what the rest of the internet agrees with is that it just takes very, very,

very specific conditions. It takes the perfect soil moisture. I don't believe that. The perfect humidity, the perfect like air temperature, all those things to make this happen. And then. Same with growing carrots.

Well, so then like the specifics of this are amplified when you have to also have a tree involved so then you're like you're like working with two things you're trying to make things perfect for the mushroom as well as uh you know because of symbiosis work with this yeah symbiotic relationship that it has with the tree so those two things just kind of compound the difficulties of growing a morale mushroom. I'll buy that part about the tree part for sure. Yeah.

So I asked him, I said, what is your process like? Can we skip ahead to, is he scared for his life? He's not. Okay. He was aware, he's aware of Ronald Ower. He has looked at the patent, nothing in his process is inspired by the patent um so there's no relationship here between ronald ower's like growing strategy and his yeah but the the man

i mean the powerful pizza lobby or the underground underworld i mean they might still get them this is also something I asked him. I said, do their business interests at this point? He said, yes, but nothing that he is acting on at this point. His name is Josh Osborne. Oh, you're allowed to say his name. Yeah, sure. I mean, the newspapers covered this.

Yeah. It is a blues, blues, best mushrooms out of Iowa. He said his process is actually not like that unique to growing mushrooms. It's very similar to what you do with other mushrooms that you cultivate. It starts with spores in a Petri dish from there. Is that right? Yeah.

Once he, once he, in this lab environment, the spores in the Petri dish, the mycelium starts to grow. The mycelium starts to grow. The mycelium is what the little white fibers that live in trees. Yeah. So under, like, if you imagine, uh, this isn't a great, just a little bit helpful.

Imagine that, uh, you have an apple tree. The mycelium is the apple tree living underground. And then the morels are the apples, which has happened to form at the earth's surface. That's a great analogy. You like that? Yeah.

I like it. Yep. That's, that's very helpful when you're thinking about morels. I often get criticized for my analogies. I like that one. Yeah. So.

My wife doesn't like them. Well, this one's appropriate. Yes. That's the difference. My wife doesn't like them. Spores in a Petri dish, which then turn into the mycelium. The mycelium is transferred to an 8 by 8 inch plastic bag.

From there, once the mycelium has grown a bit more. I got distracted thinking about analogies that have annoyed my wife. Can you back up one step? So it starts with the morale mushroom spores. I got that. In a Petri dish. The mycelium develops. Those spores turn I got that. In a Petri dish. The mycelium develops.

Those spores turn into mycelium. He then takes and transfers the mycelium from the Petri dish to a plastic bag. So you now have the mycelium in a plastic bag. Once it develops a bit more in this plastic bag, he then takes it out to his field where he's going to grow these morales. And there are three things that he's done and three things that have success. You can dump the contents of the bag onto the ground.

You could dig a hole and dump the contents of the bag into that hole. Or you could dig a hole and put the entire bag in the ground. He said all three have worked for him. Well, how do they get out of the bag? Well, I assume the bag is open or ventilated or something. You gotta let they get out of the bag? Well, I assume the bag is open or ventilated or something. Yeah, let the cat out of the bag. He does this process in the fall.

And there's got to be some stuff that he's not telling you. Certainly. And why would he? Like that it's like that he's soaking it in beer or that he's got like a little gopher or something.

Yep. I'm a stranger calling him to ask him for his greatest elk hunting spot in the world. That's what this is. So how exactly are you? Yep. Yep. Yeah. I'm a stranger calling him to ask him for his greatest alchonic spot in the world. That's, that's what this is. So how exactly are you? Yep. Yep.

So that's the process. No, I don't really like morels myself. I'm just wondering. Yeah. There's certainly some suspicion. What is he doing about, what is he doing about the symbiosis that needs to occur between this mysterious mushroom and the trees that it likes

to grow near? No tree necessary for his process. That's what he's saying. Yes. That's also. So the trees maybe. The tree. It's like the Petri dish.

Maybe helps. It's the Petri dish. Yeah. So he does this in the fall and he said it's not so much about the process leading up to it for him. It's that he has cracked the code for the perfect timing to do this and having the perfect amount of shade, uh, the proper amount of blocking the wind, um, the, the proper temperature to maintain with how much sun is on it during the day, all those

things he's saying that is where others are failing. He's figured it out. Man. We had some big old fatties here tonight. Didn't we? Yanni? Those were tasty.

Wild ones. You like to put a lot of butter in that pan, though. Oh, yeah, man. A little more butter than I like to use. Yeah, but I like butter. I like so much butter in there. I do, too. When you cook a morel, it's like a butter sponge.

I like to put enough butter in there that the morel can't get it all. That the morel's thirst for butter is quenched. And there's still butter left. Saturation has been reached. We could have used more butter on those puff balls we ate last weekend. Now, Josh had said in a newspaper interview that he'd like to harvest 1,000 pounds next spring. He thinks that's doable. And I asked him how confident he is.

And what kind of acreage are we talking about? Well, currently he's doing a half acre plot. When I asked him about like how practical, like how likely do you think that's going to happen, this thousand pound goal that you have? He said it's all dependent on the amount of time that he has

and the amount of funding that he has because he said it's very expensive to do this on like a half acre plot and grow a hundred pounds. Now you got to take that times 10. And he said, he's not sure like that. Those are the limiting factors at this point, his time and his money to pull this off. Is he a mycologist?

I don't, he's a mushroom farmer and. Oh, okay. So, so he's got a, just a general background in mushroom farming. Right, right. Yep. I he's got a, just a general background in mushroom farming. Right, right. Yep. I guess I caught that earlier. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know.

You know, we'll see what happens next spring with this. If he has a thousand pounds, I'm a believer. But at this point, I'm still skeptical that he has solved it because it would be like if, if Brody went out to some pond and dumped in like a bag of small bass fingerling i'm following and then came back in a year and caught some adult bass you said i grew bass that's right it's not necessarily that simple and like i have created life yes yep and uh we just did an article on the meat eater.com the 10 biggest morel mushrooms ever found. And a majority of that list comes from this stretch from like Iowa to Illinois to Indiana. Enormous.

Like the size of Yanni's quart jar here and bigger. Really big. Yeah. For scale, they always have a little cable. You know the back of mushrooms demystified? Or is the front of mushrooms demystified? Is the back or front of mushrooms demystified? You want to talk about morel.

Yeah, I can't remember. Yeah. Yeah, they probably weigh a pound or more. Oh, yeah. Some of these were weighing a pound, 13, 14 inches tall with a diameter of equal that. Did you guys see that big fatty I found with Maggie last spring? One giant morel i mean like a giant look like a piece of firewood laying there so my point with that is that like iowa is an amazing

place to go find morels and find big morels same thing with the bass analogy if you dumped bass you know like in southern california and then a bass, you wouldn't be like, well, I grew bass. So we'll see. Suspenseful, man. Love it. I'm going to say the jury's still out. Suspenseful. I'm dying to know.

I'm dying for that guy to go, Spencer, I can grow a morel out of that beard you got growing there. I hope so. Well, you'll believe me then? I want to do an early plug. I'm so proud of the book we're working on that I want to start plugging it now, even though it's months and months away. We haven't even turned it in yet. Nope. Still finishing it up.

I think, I predict, I hate to say this kind of stuff. I think that it will do well. Oh, I think a lot of people will be interested in what we've got going on. We've already gotten several emails that you could basically use as blurbs and advertisements for it. Have they seen it? They haven't seen it, but they have people that have helped you guys on parts of the book. Oh. And been able to read through those parts, and they are professionals in that arena of, you know, we can talk about what the book's about, right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you the damn name of the book. Of emergency, you know, or just of wilderness survival. It's Meat Eater's Guide. Let's just tell them the title. Tell me. Meat Eater's Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival. It's taken. Don't use it it is long when we did the guidebooks all those years ago man we worked on those guidebooks a long time

we did the guidebooks all years ago we got done and it was 700 pages long and i went down to the my publisher we had a meeting and she's like, you know, short of like the Bible, there aren't 700 page long books. And she was like, you either got to get rid of half of it or it's two. And I was like, hey, we'll just make two 350 page books. And that's what the guidebooks became.

Yeah, I don't know what, I couldn't even estimate what our page count would be. I asked Savannah to take a stab at it. She thinks that we're probably going to be coming in at around 150,000 words. So twice as long, for instance, as American Buffalo. Okay. Because I came in at about 75,000 words.

A big. Tomb. Is that how you say it? No, tomb. Tomb. Tomb. Tomb. Tomb's where you put dead folks.

Well, I feel like I'm ready for a tomb. It's fitting for either. Yeah. That's the versatility of this book. No, right now we're in the navigation chapter. I just wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning section. I don't mind saying this myself. I just wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning section on walking on the ice.

Read nice. Frozen lakes, rivers, ponds. Read nice. Be nice if they could pull sections of books for Pulitzer Prizes. Yeah. I feel like I'd go up against you with the river thing. The river?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, being on rivers. Being on the ice, man. Reading it, the noises it makes, what those noises mean. Watching out for beaver runs. Always a little freaky out. Yeah, watching out for beaver runs,

but you can fall. I've fallen. The most times I've fallen through the ice has been related to falling into beaver runs. People don't see that. You go get 100 books about this subject and you won't find any of them talking about beaver runs.

Spencer, you know what I really love about Brody and Steve is how humble they are. Well, no, because Spencer's taken a few licks in this book. Yeah, the only person that hasn't contributed is you, Cal. Cal didn't contribute.

The stove stuff. Yeah, you got like a quote or two in there. Spencer's contributions to the book have been um spencer's been doing like his infamous bullshit alerts but spencer like takes down um like it's very instructive informative it just is like it just mounds mountains and mountains and mountains of information. So chapters are like things that bite, sting, maul, and kill. Man, you're giving everything away.

Anyways, Spencer, you think I'm laying too much out? I think you got to have some thirst for what's coming. This is generating that thirst. You watch a trailer for a movie, they don't give everything away. How many words did you say Savannah said it is? I said, last night, well, she said something like 150K metric fuck tons. So I Googled how many words per page in a book, and this says per 100 pages, you're looking at about 25,000 words. Yeah.

So then you're looking at like a 600 page. That's off. Well, I'm just giving you a rough estimate of what Google says. You typed in the truth about book length? Yes. Yep. Yep. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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onxmaps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all i did the same little bit of research for a deal for the week in review because i when i hit 50 episodes and there's a, you know, how they put books together these days has changed quite a bit and what type of font and what's acceptable. And there's, there's a lot of changes in there. Um, I think good lead ins for the chapters

though would be, you sure you want to get into this? Because people are going to be overwhelmed with the amount of knowledge per chapter but it's what but in the book we take the opposite of the bear grills approach bear grills this thing is like watch out don't want to be caught outside if you get caught outside uh hustle home right and make a show about how quick you can hustle home from being outside this is more like um about embracing it right it's not like that it's oh it's so fearful

it's like hey here's some things but spencer his contribution has been um are you really supposed to snuck suck out snake venom um is bear grills always drinking piss is that helpful uh Are you supposed to pull the bullet out of your buddy after he gets a bullet in him? People are going to look all this stuff up now. Good thing there's 599 more pages

to read. And illustrations. Brody, I didn't know you were going to be so cagey, man. I like to keep a wrap on things. When it comes out, we're going to do a wrap on things. Well, you know what? When we do a, when it comes out, we're going to do like a walkthrough. I'm actually turning it, it's getting close enough now

where I'm actually developing a little sense of enthusiasm and pride about the project. Yeah, can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah, you've been on a real emotional rollercoaster in regards to this project. Yeah, I hate doing stuff. Plus pictures in this book, right? Illustrations, bro.

Illustrations. Great. Very good illustrations. Is Pete doing the illustrations? Yes. Oh, good. Same illustrator we worked with in the past. Yeah, I won a million dollars from Savannah when she asked me if I would possibly have

his contact information and possibly like the contract and the amount of, with stating the amount of money that we paid him per illustration from the last projects. And boy, just had it all tucked away in a file, you know, under guidebooks.

Did you? Yeah. Old file. I'll see if she'll pay up, but. That's great. That was Yanni, his contribution,

finding the, helping us find the illustrator's email address. I do, I do think that is a much healthier approach though. It's kind of like, listen, if at some point in your outdoor career, you don't find yourself in this position, you've probably not been doing things right.

So embrace it. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I'll tell you about more chapters, but I don't want Brody to get nervous. Well, we do mention 410s as a survival gun. You want to take a stab at what gauge you think a.410 is?

Oh, yeah, just so people understand. Brody, that was quality. That was a segway and bringing it back in. The pivot. Yeah, you get a little, if they gave out Pulitzer Prizes. For pivots. Yeah. I'm always.

And this year's prize for pivots. Brody Anderson. For pivots. Yeah. I'm always. And this year's prize for pivots. Brody Anderson. Go ahead, Steve. Take a crack at what gauge? 410. Well, first I want to give a couple points here. One time. Well, so a gauge.

When someone says a 12 gauge shotgun, what that means is it would take 12 lead spheres of that diameter to make a pound. So a 20-gauge shotgun is, it would take 20 lead spheres of that size to make a pound. And then you got, you know, in the old days you had eight gauges, which aren't around anymore. Are there any around? I don't even know if they ever even laid eyes on an eight gauge. The biggest bore shotgun that's even like kind of common is a 10 gauge. 12 gauge

very common. And you have 16s, 20s. And some guys use 28s. Yeah, Ronnie Bames got a 28, I believe. And then you get down to, then there's one that breaks the system. And the 410 is a 0.410.

So the 410 uses the same system as rifle calibers. So like a, uh, you know, if you have a 3030, let's say, or let's say a 300 wind mag, a 300 wind mag is 0.308 of an inch. All your 30 calibers are 0.308. They just shortened it up by saying 30, but it's 0.308. A 410 is a, has a, you know, diameter of 0.410 of an inch. Years ago, I got a death threat from an animal rights person and they threatened to come get

me with a 50 gauge shotgun. And I realized that that was about, I think it was about the size of a BB gun. So I didn't, I slept well at night. Knowing that even though I might be shot, it would be by a very, very, very small shotgun. So a 410 is? Take a stab. What do you think?

Oh, a 410 is a 35 gauge. 67. Oh, it's a 35 gauge. 67. Oh, it's a 67 gauge? Oh, wow. Really? How'd you figure that out? I'm looking it up. You wrote the truth about 410s?

Buddy, you're not going to be sleeping tonight in case that person's still lurking out there with that 50 gauge. Oh, yeah. It'd be worse than that? Yeah, it'd be like whatever. It'd be worse than my kids shooting me with his 410 yeah well the fbi checked this dude out anyway anyway a dude a fbi agent did it on spec he just saw i put a post about it on social media and he um uh and he um later got a hold of me and said i wouldn't worry too much about that guy He's kind of a rant or a raver on a wide variety of subjects.

He told me ranging from like the Palestinian conflict on down. But apparently the 30, the gauge system. I think you're wrong. Ends at 36. So at some point they must've been making. The 36 gauge shotguns.

Yeah. Little teeny one. And what's a 410 again 67 according there's no way on earth according to have a pile of 67 lead balls that size to make according to american rifleman.org which i'll buy that that's what they say that's what they say it's not like they say. It's not like bobsgunblog.com? No. All right. Who am I? We'll have to get 67-410 slugs sometime. Weigh them out?

Yeah. Well, lead spheres. Well, pumpkin balls. Do they still make those? I don't know. Do you know the guy that shot the guy that shot Billyy the uh billy the kid um no not the guy who shot pat garrett in california no i'm wrong guy not billy the uh uh the guy who shot the guy who shot jesse james i believe that so robert ford shot jesse j, but then later a guy shot Robert Ford.

I believe the guy that shot Robert Ford, he had a, like a, he had a coach gun. I think it was like a 10, I can't remember if it was a, I think it was a 10 gauge coach gun. He apparently nearly cut him in half because he took a bunch of pipe and a chisel and made a bunch of fragments steel fragments no a lead pipe a bunch of lead fragments and took a funnel and filled the barrels up with pipe fragments and then give them both barrels oh that'll do it i guess yeah i think that this is true my understanding is that this is true i also just recently read i'm reading this really interesting book called the the um it's from the 60s the frontiersman of the yellowstone it's like a history of the yellowstone basin talks about two mountain men two beaver trappers that got in a dispute and they got real

mad at each other and kind of tore their friendship apart and later their friends had sort of encouraged them to patch it up and they had a kind of tradition where when two people made amends they would shoot a glass of whiskey off of each other's heads to sort of prove that to to prove that the the bad tidings were over. One of them puts the glass of whiskey on his head, and he tells everyone, I don't trust him. I think he's going to shoot me. And shoots him, and then the guy, lo and behold, shoots him between the eyes and kills him stone dead.

Says, whoops, I made a mistake. Didn't mean to. Nothing happens to him. Later, he gets a drink and opens up to the idea that maybe it wasn't a mistake. At which point, the dead man's friend pulls out a pistol and blows a hole through the guy's heart and kills him. What was the original disagreement? I don't think he gets into what the disagreement was. Another thing I didn't know until I read this book,

you know, Hugh Glass at the Revenant space, you know, Hugh Glass died. He, you know, I think this was, this is somewhere along the Yellowstone,

like between like here and Miles City. Hugh Glass, after all this shit he went through, like gets mauled by the bear, Jim Bridger leaves him behind He finds Bridger and a guy named Fitzpatrick And confronts them Because they left him for dead

Hugh Glass gets mauled by a grizzly bear And the rest of their crew of trappers Splits And they leave Jim Bridger who's like 19 And this Fitzpatrick dude They leave them and say don't leave until he dies. And when he dies, you can bury him. But they get sick of waiting and they just leave, take off his shit and leave.

And then he survives and crawls back. Years later, he gets, he's with a couple other trappers and they get into a skirmish. Maybe with, I think it was with the Blackfeet. They get into a skirmish with the Blackfeet and they get holed up in a spot and they can't shoot their way out of the spot. And eventually the Blackfeet light a grass fire and they know they're just going to get burned alive. And they dropped a spark into a powder keg and blew themselves up. That's how he died. And you and me think we got it bad, Brody.

Yeah. All we're doing is waiting for this. Who documented this to report back on that's how they went? That's why I'm afraid that it's not true. Because I'm telling you things that were written in the book in the 60s. It's a footnote. It's like a... I'm telling you, this is stuff that I'm reading in a book from the 60s.

When I finish the book, I'll take the parts that I'm wondering like, why in the hell have I not read that other places and go find out if since the 60s. When I finish the book, I'll take the parts that I'm wondering like, why in the hell have I not read that other places and go find out if since the 60s we've found that these are just tall tales. And much of the Hugh Glass story is that. That he was a pirate

and got cast ashore in the Gulf of Mexico. Well, just like more reputable historians will say that there's a lot of sensational details from Hugh Glass' story. That's what I'm afraid of. And that's why I'm trying to like asterisk this information for people so they understand that I'm in the middle of a book. I'm reading things that I hadn't encountered elsewhere. And I'm suspicious that these are tall tales that later historians have said like that's not true.

Brody, do you mind? They sure are good. It's normally Giannis' job. What? Type in, how did Hugh Glass die? And also type in, Fort Union shooting whiskey glasses off each other's heads. You take Hugh Glass, Brody. The truth about.

And see what happens. I love the whiskey glass thing. Didn't even have to finish typing it. Moving on. Brody had a note that he wanted to discuss something called the futility of yelling at kids to be quiet all day in camp. Oh, my God. You're doing your research right now, Brody. Well.

I'll pick up on it. Yeah, start out. I'll pick up on that thought because I'm going to pick up on the thing I want to talk about is I took my kid out. My kid turned 10 and became of the age that he could be legally, my older boy, became the age that he could be legally apprenticed. So I had to go and fill out a form online to become an apprentice. No, a mentor. I had to fill out a form online to become an apprentice. No, a mentor. I had to fill out a form online to become a mentor hunter.

There's no fee. What does that mean in the eyes of the state? So in this state, when you're 12, you can get a hunting licenses and you can hunt. You got to go to a hunter safety, you can hunt. When you're 10, you can hunt with a mentor the mentor has to be your legal guardian or a blood relative right or it doesn't either or someone of of or a licensed hunter of legal standing whom the guardian has given authority to, to take hunting.

So if you just ran, you ran, you know, encountered some little kid and you said, Hey, you want to go hunting? You couldn't take them hunting. You'd have to come get me to sign a form saying that I am bestowing upon you authority to take my 10 year old hunting. Any person can hunt two years as an apprentice hunter. And then they got to do hunter safety. But the way they got it set up was like at 10 years of age, you can become an apprentice

hunter. And then, so he can hunt this year and it's like you're within arm, they spell it out, but it's like basically within arm's reach of your mentor. Did Maggie and Tracy start out that way? No. They had.

They went, they did hunter safety. They could have though. Yeah. So, um, I wouldn't let someone really get away with that. Like I'm not going to let, you know, I might even have him take hunter safety next summer early, but either way I became a men, I became

a mentor and he became an apprentice and it's like five bucks. So you could, for five bucks, he becomes an apprentice hunter. And then unlike fishing, like, you know, in a lot of states, you don't need a fishing license until you're what, 15, 16 years old. They got to buy the full on license.

And they can't hunt stuff that has any kind of limited draw. They can't hunt bears. Basically you can hunt like deer in small game as an, as an apprenticed hunter. So he turned 10 just in time for the last weekend of turkey season. We went out, had a good time.

He got up at four in the morning, three mornings in a row, which was cool. Um, we knocked around and had a very close encounter with a turkey that was, I mean, you're gonna think I'm exaggerating. The turkey was for me to fill the engineer. But the catch is that this entire table was an impenetrable juniper bush. That if you looked really carefully, you could see movement through the bush,

but you couldn't make hide in your hair of it. And I had my kids sitting right between my legs because I wanted to be able to like look down at what he's looking at. And him trying to see, he's like leaning around and things got a little squirrely and our line of sight wasn't the same. Or I could see a turkey's fan as he moved

away from the juniper bush. I can see this a little farther away now, but I can see a turkey's fan playing his day. And I'm like, okay, if you see him, if you see him if you see you know eventually the turkey wanders off he doesn't get a shot and he just looks like he's very unhappy my kid is very unhappy very down on himself and he said uh he i'm quoting him he said i feel like such a loser and i got to ask him like what happened why do you feel like a loser and he said i thought i didn't recognize i now know that i saw the head but i he wasn't expecting this thing that's changing colors from blue to red and he said he saw it and thought it was a flower hey he did the right thing he wasn't sure right, right? That's right. He saw it through the tail fan, and he said,

it wasn't until after the turkey left, and I looked at our decoy, and then I realized, that was the head! Man, I feel his pain. Well, it's good that he was able to look at the decoy and then recognize that, that that clicked together. Yeah, that's sticking. He said, I thought it was a flower with a thick together. Yeah, that's sticking. Right. He said, he said, I thought, he said, I thought it was a flower with a thick stem.

Oh, wow. And then it occurred to him that he was looking through the fan very close with his little 410. But in any case, it was lucky we heard any turkeys with the amount of noise in camp. Yeah. I got, Brody got to camp. I got to the camp. I started yelling at all the kids to

be quiet brody's like i already gave up on that yeah but we got into them anyway what how far were you it was like eight eight hundred and fifty yards at one point i could hear him screaming and yelling, and I got out on X, and I had the camp marked, and I knew where I was, and I did the line distance function. It was 833 yards away. Loud. And my kid kept saying, my boy, my little boy, he's like, I can hear Rosie and Matt. I'm like, you can't hear Rosie and Matt, you know? Then by the way, I'm like, by God, you can hear Rosie and Matt. I pulled the 833 yards away.

Maybe that puts those turkeys at ease. Well, two years in a row, including this year, they shot gobbled turkeys by playing. But I don't think it's, I don't think it's like beneficial. I think you create an ever increasingly wide area of animal-less area around you. We're definitely thinking about relocating. We've been kind of pushing camp in closer and closer to the turkeys over the last five years. And I think next year we're going to be- Marching backward.

Retreating. Because my girls have gotten louder. I think that early on They would yell and whatever but they were smaller They didn't have lungs And now it's the same thing I remember being like basically in the next valley And being like

There's no way But then sure enough on one still night I'm sitting there and I got the dog with me And he keeps running like 50 yards And then sitting there and looking in that direction And finally i'm like oh yeah he can hear everybody back there at camp i mean we were like a 30 minute walk you know wow when we're out filming we try to and we got lack we get we lapse then we come back to it but we have this thing that this ideal that we have and we try to a little bit stick with it is what we call the makushi code of silence because

the makushi um an indigenous group in south america they don't yell they don't yell if someone's down at the boat down at the river and you're like at camp and you're like oh man he should grab hope he grabs the big pot right i would be like hey grab the big pot grabs the big pot, right? I would be like, hey, grab the big pot. What? The big pot. Right? And that's just how you go about your business. They would walk down until their faces were 12 inches apart.

And you would say, can you grab the big pot? They never make noise. They don't yell. They don't make noise. Maybe if a tree was falling on you, they'd yell, but they don't make noise. For what reason? Because they're hunters. They don't make noise.

It's just quiet. Just ingrained into the way. They speak to people only that are right there. They don't communicate to people that are far away. When I want my kids to come down to eat, I don't move. Five or six times, scream five or six times if you need to. I don't move anywhere.

I'm not going to walk over there. I'm just going to scream nine times with increasing intensity. So, so yeah they were loud another observation was just brody was one uh tell me you know how you mirror minute man oh god yeah man frustrating isn't it like it never seems like and maybe this is like people that just aren't dialed into a certain system or they don't feel the urgency that we feel. But, man, people take a long time to get ready. Adults, not your kids.

Yeah, adults. Yeah. Kids, like, I'll stick Hayden in the sleeping bag in his sleeping gloves, shake him, and say let's go. And he's pretty good about getting up early. Oh, that was your trick. Yeah. Just let him sleep in their clothes. Oh, so you get get them all ready i was wondering how he's ready so fast oh yeah and just yank him he's all like just drag him out of there he's already but yeah adults just like don't but you're talking about getting ready to go hunting

yeah or really whatever but sure, it's like getting light. You should have been sitting under the tree a half an hour ago, and you haven't even left camp yet, or whatever. Yeah, there was one afternoon when me and my wife were going to go out and listen for gobbles, and Brody's wife offered to let us leave our youngins there. And so I was like very, like, like I'm a Minuteman. I was like very ready to go.

I'm like ready for the American revolution. One by air, one by land. Two F by C. Who's that guy? Paul Revere. You know what historians later tried to say that Paul Revere wasn't real. I can't remember who the politician was, but

he said, I love Paul Revere, whether he wrote or not. Uh, anyhow, I would now then look at my wife because i was like why like what what what is that like why why haven't we left why is it now so much longer later and we haven't left and i would like try to look at her in like distinct moments and in every distinct moment it did in fact seem like something was happening like she wasn't sitting there right i'd be like like what is she doing and i would try to like look at her and be like oh she is looking for one of the kids shoes or you know then i would like then 20 minutes to go by and i'd look at her and be like oh she is

but so all the parts make sense but the sum of them doesn't make sense. Yeah. That how am I ready for an hour? Yep. And you get like a group of people who don't feel that urgency and it just makes it even worse. Oh, because they look around and she knows that I'm irritated because I'm just generally irritated about wanting to go. And she's like, well, I don't care if he's irritated. And since the other people that are doing something,

they're also wandering around, so it must be okay to keep wandering around. Yep. And then you wait an hour, and then she'll find me ready, and she'll be like, we should give the kids lunch. Yeah, I was going to say the other perspective could be that like, damn, Steve and Brodydy it'd be nice they just helped me find this other shoe and then we could get them out of here yeah or they had knocked out you know then we could all get out of here instead those two are just standing over

there with their hands in their pockets going going hurry up. Going, damn, damn. I know. No, we, for the first time, I think it's an age thing, is I've crossed some threshold now where I'm like, I don't even care about food, coffee, anything. I will just sleep. And I started doing the pants thing, too. Your harder woodpecker lips. I'll just sleep in the pants, put my boots on. I usually always take my socks off just because I don't sleep good

if I have my socks on in my sleeping bag. But that way, I'm just like, I wake up, I'm still blurry eyed. I'm just like, Jennifer, you kind of ready? She's like, oh yeah. And we just, no coffee, no food, nothing. Just start walking. Put the turkey vest on and just start walking down the road and you'll wake up. But you know, your body starts moving, you wake up and you're fine. And you start to realize that you don't really need to hang out at camp. And it's not, you're going to enjoy that cup of coffee. It's going to burn your lips and your tongue as you're trying to pound

boiling bean water. Yeah, you could just put like a bar in my pocket. Put some bars the night before. Put some bars in your turkey vest. Put an energy drink in your turkey vest. Go to sleep in your turkey clothes and just leave. And later in the season, man, holy shit, it

gets light early. Yeah. Oh, right now? Oh, brutal. Yeah. One guy last week in camp killed a bird at like 5.05 or 5.07, something like ridiculous like I killed mine at 5.15 last week.

Yeah. I got a text from Brody. I was laying in bed, petting my dog. And we get up, I get up as soon as I can see the glow in the window, man, I get up and, uh,

I was laying there. I just, it was just early enough where I let the dog get on the bed and I got a tax and Brody was like, what the hell? Yeah. Early.

Yeah. I always thought he shot it out of the tree. Nope. It was 15 minutes after he flew down. Turkey hunting. You can't really do it, but a system that I like during big game season is to roll out, get hiking, get out to where I'm in a glass, and then boil up a cup of coffee.

Yeah. And have my scene all set up. Mise en place. My mise en place. I got my butt pad out. I probably already pooped at this point i'm drinking a cup of coffee and i'm just just peeling that place apart and it and the sun's coming up you can take pictures of sunrise that you'll never ever see again but you got to do it

because it's so pretty it's a great situation stress-free man we've done a few little mountain tricks like that like another mountain trick that we kind of, we try, we do a bit more filming too, is to when it, when the times like this, we just, we did this. Yeah. Uh, when it's like, you gotta get up so damn early, you gotta get up at 3.34 in the morning

and you'd be up at first light. And then it doesn't get dark. You know, you're, you're, you're still hunting at 9.30. Um, is to bring your gear, to bring a stove, And then it doesn't get dark, you know, you're still hunting at 930. It's to bring your gear, to bring a stove and some freeze dry and just eat at five. Like just throw stuff in the backpack. So eat at five, glass, whatever, hunt through the prime time, evening, and then come home and you already ate.

Yes. Then you just slide in your bed instead of like getting in at 930, weighing out whether or not you want to eat or not in order to then get up at four in the morning. It's a lot nicer just to get it taken care of. Agreed. And another thing is sometimes we've gotten up in the morning and just brought our

sleeping bags and get up to a glass and spot and then get back in your sleeping bag and make some coffee up in your glass and spot. That's a big game. Yanni, can you share with everybody what happened with your little truck thing? This is an interesting story. Oh, yeah.

Well, it was my brother-in-law's truck. I think it's, well, I hate bad talk, the old Toyota Tundra, but it's a Toyota Tundra. And of course, when we talked to the mechanic, he's like, I swear to you, this is the first alternator I've ever changed on one of these

Tundras. Anyways, yeah, they had gone, him and his son had gone up to charge some devices and get some service. And they kind of left camp and drove up the hill, maybe not far. I don't know. It's like a quarter mile. Like charging external batteries and whatnot. Yeah, external batteries, telephones, Kindles, whatever else. And they're sitting there. And prior to that, we had seen a minor bit of smoke coming out of the engine, like on the trip in. And he had said he'd seen it the day before. But to me, I saw it.

It was so little. And I smelled it. There wasn't really like a bad smell. And I'm like, ah, you got some mud kicked up in there it got hot and it smoked you know and this was eastern montana yeah we're out in eastern montana anyways they're sitting up there charging away and he just happens to be looking down at the dash as all of the gauges flip from you know one end to the other end back and forth twice that's never that's never good sign. And then I think the engine's running, and basically the truck shutters,

and everything just... Windows are wide open, and there's nothing. He can't do anything. I think he could turn the key, but there was no lights, just absolutely nothing. He couldn't change gears in it. Yeah, I guess you have to have power to shift. But I learned a lot.

I learned that at least in those years of Toyota Tundras, there's a little square box, probably not even an inch by inch, right next to the gear shifter. And it's basically like a little lid. And you pop that out. Oh, that's what's in there? And you can take a pin and push it down, and then that allows you to change gears. That's what's in those boxes?

Yeah. It's not a box. I mean, like I said, it's just a little hole. But you can put a fingernail or a screw. No, I've seen those. I never pried one open. That's what's in there? Yeah.

So at least when we figured that out, we knew we could at least, I could pull him down the mountain. Because we were probably, I don't know five seven miles i had no idea that's what's in that little on an unimproved dirt road so at least i could pull him out and then a mechanic could or a tow truck can meet us um so but what we realized so i'm trying to think i don't know we were getting a lot of advice from a lot of people and a differing advice on on what to do but finally guy says, you know what you need to do is bypass the alternator. It sounds like you blew the alternator. If you unhook the alternator, charge up your battery, your battery should have enough juice in it to let you run the vehicle for

10 to 20 minutes until it dies again. And then you just pop the trunk and recharge your battery and keep driving until you get to where you need to get going and uh sure enough that worked so what did you do to bridge the gap once you pulled the alternator out we just unhooked the alternator that was it that was it you need to like then connect okay no we just really you know taped the ends of those uh wires so that you wouldn't ground out on anything. No kidding, that's it? If it touched, but that was it. And yeah, so we were able to drive out

and then we had a mechanic meet us. The mechanic drove two hours to get there and then installed the new alternator and a belt and a couple other things. And made himself a crisp. Oh yeah, he had a good pay things. And made himself a crisp. Oh, yeah. He had a good payday. Wow.

He had a good – but I think it was cheaper than having it towed. Are we allowed to say it? Sure, yeah. It was $2,500. Goo. Yeah. Wow. But I think getting towed –

But they had you by the short hairs. You know what I mean? It's like you don't have a whole lot of options, man. I mean, look, if you're a che a chief skate, you could probably limp your way home and method I just described by charging a battery, driving 30 minutes down the highway, when it shuts down, pull over, recharge the battery. It's safe too to do that. Yeah, right?

That system though, I mean, you had to have been feeling good for driving your truck out of that hole. Oh, yeah. A little MacGyver driving your truck out of that hole. Oh, yeah. A little MacGyver action. No. Love that feeling. No. We had some major wins.

And at the same time, we managed to kill a couple turkeys. So, yeah. We had an Australian once blow a hole through the floorboards of a pickup truck with a shotgun and severed the fuel line. And we had to tow it 20 miles down a riverbed. And that was a bouncy riverbed. was a real bouncy i wasn't there but i remember that the the episode it was bouncy was it in australia no no it was an australian abroad he was in new zealand new zealand but they're not allowed to play with guns that much in Australia. So he's real curious about a shotgun. He's trying to figure out how it worked.

He's wishing he had ear protection to touch one off inside of a vehicle. Horrible. That's bad. Oh, yeah, but Brody made the note that I didn't check back in with you guys. So we were starting to make plans on how we were going to get everybody out of there because we had two full families. Oh, yeah, like calling in the cavalry, but then not calling off the cavalry. Yeah, well, that place,

and I think you guys had it similarly after I talked to your wife, but it'd be like one minute, you can just make all the phone calls you want and be working texts. And then for the next 12 hours, it's like there's nothing. Not only that, but when people would call you, it it acted like you got a new phone number or something so it'd give you like the

knock it can't it wouldn't just be like busy or not answer it would be that it's like it tells you like hey man you know number can't be completed it's dialed right yeah and so it made like i was trying to call my brother at one point. I thought something, I was like, oh, what happened? We had a big debate. So I tried. I did try. Actually, you can look at my text history and see all the texts that didn't go through. I know. It was more about the debate that we had, whether we should just go home or wait to hear from you.

What we made, me and Brody didn't want to be, me and Brody were trying to wash our hands of the matter. So I eventually said to Brody's wife, I was like, so you're saying that we should take off. Yep. And then Steve's wife backed her up. Because if this blows up in our faces, if this blows up in our faces, I don't want it to be that I thought we should take off.

I want it to be that I thought we should take off. I want it to be that I wanted to stay. And Carrie's like, sure, okay, I'm saying let's go. She's like, I'll live with it, whatever it is. Oh, buddy. Yeah, and then, so Yanni, you're now depressed. Yeah. It happens every year. No.

I feel like last year I got just enough turkey hunting in, and it went all the way to the end of May, and afterwards I just, you know, happily put everything up, put all those breasts into my freezer, and just went about, you know know looking towards fishing or whatever and uh but uh and i shouldn't complain too much because i still killed five birds and i got you know some hunting days in but i just had you know great big plans and old coven 19 shot holes in my yeah like you were supposed to be able to hunt turkeys will Will Primo. That's right. Who else?

I don't know. We were supposed to go to Michigan and maybe Wisconsin. I still have half a mind. It probably pissed some people off. But my wife's out next week. So I have the kids anyways. And I'm like, man, Wisconsin season's open through Tuesday. So if I leave tomorrow.

They're doing an extension? No. Oh, just normal. Yeah. Yeah. So if I left tomorrow, I'd have three days. Oh, I love it. And you can kill what?

One a day there? You can kill as many as you have tags for. But I don't know. There's a lot of other things that need my attention too. Man, had I not just solidified some fishing plans, I'd be fueling that fire.

Oh yeah? You'd drive it with me? Yeah. Nice, because then we wouldn't have to stop. Yeah. Because it's just a long enough drive where I'll probably have to take a nap somewhere in there.

Hey, have we talked about the rough grouse finding? No. Definitely not. I think that I have made a scientific discovery. Well, it was more like Giannis made a scientific discovery, but he told me about it. Well, I forget. Someone's tent was right next to my tent seth i think both of us got that discovered that i did not a rough grouse they do it all year round

like rough grouse drum and when a rough grouse is drumming it he takes he gets up on a log, gets up on a perch and beats his wings on his body. And it makes this noise. One might think this is straight from YouTube. The thumps are produced by the beating of the wings. Oh yeah. It was like a thing he's doing in his throat, but he's also beating his wings.

But in actuality, the thumps are little sonic booms created as air suddenly fills a vacuum made when the wings are thrust outward from the breast. I would amend that.

That's the same thing though. To say one might think the thumps are made by a little Honda generator. Yep. Or a lawn Honda generator. Yep. Or a lawnmower. Yes. I, when I, play it again, Phil.

I remember when my brother Matt turned 12 and he had to go sit in his own tree stand. He couldn't sit up in dad's tree stand anymore with him. I was then, I went and sat with Matt in his tree stand. So he was 12, I was nine or eight. And I remember sitting, I could take you and show you the exact damn tree we're sitting in. I remember sitting there and listening to a grouse, a rough grouse drumming. I was saying earlier, they'll drum all year.

I don't know all year, but they drum all year round, but they really like to drum in the spring because it's like a territorial thing. Anyways, I remember saying to my brother, Matt, oh, that guy finally got that lawnmower running

or that guy can't get that lawnmower running or something. And him saying, that's a rough grouse. Cause it's like a guy trying to get an old beater lawnmower going. Uh, there's a thing in, in rough grouse because it's like a guy trying to get an old beater lawnmower going uh there's a thing in in rough grouse biology where there's a drumming log and people will even when when assessing habitat or when um trying to get population estimates there's even a thing of

like using drumming logs as a way to assess habitat being that there could be suitable rough grouse habitat that is in fact not suitable due to a lack of drumming logs i never knew that they drummed at night but we the other night had a rough drop rough grouse drum all night by us not only that not only that but that son of a bitch is out walking around at night going from spot to spot to spot drumming. You want to talk about a vulnerable bird, man. Hold on there. They move from one spot to another. Yes.

That bird moved around at night. Yeah. We had the same thing happen a couple of weeks ago when we were camping. He would go from, he went from one spot to another. Oh. It woke me up at 2.30. I was like, oh shit, I'm late. I got to, you know, I thought it was morning.

He just kept going. No, I understand that, but I didn't know that. No, that he moved. Oh. Yeah. So he went from like our tents over to your tents? Yeah. Oh.

Is he hoping that it pays off that night? Like a female's going to come find him? Or is he just like planning for tomorrow morning a female's going to come find him? Well, it's like territorial too. He's like saying like, this is my spot. I just read on All About Birds, which comes out of- Truth About Rough Grouse. Cornell Ornithology. saying like this is my spot i'll i just read on all about birds which comes out of truth about rough grouse cornell ornithology and uh that's if you want to find out bird i'll just quick plug

you want to find out the dope on birds go to cornell absolutely yeah um although they didn't have that information that i just that i read to you about the the vacuum sonic boom but it's saying that it will also do this drumming on moon lit nights which it was yes when we were out there so it might not be an every night thing it might be just when there's visibility when someone can it was a it was a bright night it was a bright it was so bright you could see the moon like it was looked like someone's holding a flashlight outside your tent huh 46 years on this planet and i hadn't had a rough grouse drumming all night yeah well what else is interesting is that that little so it wasn't a scientific sequence only lasts eight seconds and how many times you think he

moves his wings in those eight seconds i'll tell you exactly 11 50 no not the one i heard oh yeah because that little end explosion oh yeah and you're like oh it died again man Oh, it died again. Man. Yeah, that bugger was, you would think that a noise, like someone else was saying, I think it was Garrett that was saying, he's like, yeah, at first it was like real calming and nice, like listening to the stream trickle by, you know, the rough grass drumming.

And then an hour later, he's ready to strangle that bird. He's ready to choke chicken. Yeah, didn't you guys say you could like hear it dragging its wings on the ground or something? Oh, right when we got into our tents. Yeah, no, you could hear him literally walking in the leaves. I mean, probably a foot or two from my head. Yeah. Yeah.

And there just happened to be from there kind of perpendicular going out a giant, you know, I don't know. At one end, it was probably 18 inches. You were in his zone. Perpendicular going out, a giant, you know, I don't know. At one end, it was probably 18 inches. At the far end, it was three feet diameter log that took days to shoot it over. Yeah. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

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The main thing we're supposed to talk about. Oh, yeah, we got the main thing. Yeah, and then I gotta get... It was so important I put it down at the bottom of my notes. I gotta get a closing thought, too. Oh, okay, great. But we'll get to that later.

So did it happen, Cal? Did it happen? Well, it damn sure better happen now. But did it happen last night? Because everybody's talking about it. No. Oh. So what happened last night.

Take it away. Take it away. Is the word has been spread that when, and there's all sorts of you know everybody likes to say political theater these days but it's all that's that's what they do back there so it's it's not nobody should be shocked um the word is out that when congress returns from its recess for the Memorial Day break, Memorial Day weekend break. Mitch McConnell is going to lead with the Great American Outdoors Act, which is something that we've talked about a bunch. And it had a bunch of steam and i for one was was very concerned on how this was going to fare with um you know all of a sudden getting slapped with this pandemic life and covid and uh bailouts uh around covid

and and we went from you know economy kicking ass and everybody's got jobs now we have some serious unemployment in the country for the first time in a long time. Priorities change. Yeah and. Got treated just like my turkey season. It did it did it went went from the number one priority to boy I hope I get around to that. Can you give the first give the cliff note version of what it is? Yeah so the Great American Outdoors Act is is how bills get passed these days. It's not an individual bill. It's a package. The major points of this package, Land and Water Conservation Fund, which has just been, man, if you've ever been interested in conservation, Land and Water Conservation Fund is something that's been talked about forever

and it's been a battle but uh that is a a fund that basically takes a tax off of offshore oil and gas revenues and earmarks that cash specifically for uh access programs, conservation programs. And then individual states and agencies and, you know, it's available for private land as well, can apply for LWCF matching grants for pro projects. Um, and some people dog on it with this like horrible argument of like, yeah, you know, that really nice bike path that, uh, is in my little

tiny small town. That's LWCF funds. What's that do for me? Um. Well, it gives people that you live around a really nice bike path. Yeah. What do they me? Well, it gives people that you live around a really nice bike path. Yeah. Or do they mean like really like Dracula, like

was it, like they should have divided up the money by everybody in the community and given everyone like a dollar? Yeah. It's just like questions like, well, how's that He doesn't ride a bike, this guy. Right. But lots of city parks, some boat ramps, all

sorts of different types of access. But- Cal, I once heard, I don't of different types of access, but, um. Cal, I once heard, I don't know if this is true or not. I once heard that every county in America has had an LWCF project. Ah, boy, I don't know if I would lay it on the line to say every county, but.

Keep in mind, Alaska doesn't do counties. It boroughs. Every, absolutely every state. state, no question whatsoever. So, but there's always been this battle to have both LWCF authorized in the great American outdoors act. Um, or sorry, funding full and permanent funding of LWCF is in the great American outdoors. That's where the LWCF thing gets super complicated. It does. It's like there's authorizing it.

Yep. So basically it'd be like, Cal's like, Hey man, I want to buy a pack of gum. And I'm like, uh, yes, you can buy a pack of gum. And then Cal's like, hey man, I want to buy a pack of gum. And I'm like, yes, you can buy a pack of gum. And then Cal's like, but I need the money to buy the gum. And then you would say, well, that's great. That's not my department. So Cal has been authorized to buy gum, but doesn't have the money to buy gum. So then I'd go to Giannis as the chair of the house appropriations committee.

And I'd say, Janice, Steve over here has told me that it's okay to buy a pack of gum. And the pack of gum is a really nice pack of gum, and it costs this much. That's what I've come to ask you for. And Janice would say, is it really that nice pack of gum? Do you really need it?

Oh no, we could, we could improve this. Cause I say, you say, um, I need to buy a pack of gum, uh, and my budget's a dollar. I'm allowed to spend a dollar on gum. And I'm like, yes, I authorize you to spend a dollar on gum. Then you go to Giannis and say, well, I need that dollar cause I've been authorized to spend

a dollar on gum. Giannis is like, I get 10 cents. Yeah. It's like a lot of I need that dollar because I've been authorized to spend a dollar on gum. You know, it's like, I get 10 cents. Yeah. It's like a lot of people need a dollar, kid. So yes, LWCF, full and permanent funding is in the Great American Outdoors Act. The other thing, and this is pretty interesting. Because it's capped, right?

It's like, when they say full. Full funding is 900 million a year. Hmm. Right. But that is for million a year. Hmm. Right. But that, that is for these specific projects. I wish it just gave me that money. To keep. That people have to apply for.

So it's not, yeah. I mean, it's, it's a cool thing. It has helped everyone, whether you're in a major city center or not, or a very rural town, but they, they do, there's a lot of checks and balances to make sure that that money gets spread around so that every county thing may very well be true. Uh, you know, there's just a lot of counties

out there, so. But a lot of other stuff's been rolled into the act, right? Yes. Uh, the major thing that I think is pretty darn neat is, uh, again again it's kind of a weird twist because of the way the economy's gone and the jobless rate in america has gone here since people were starting to be like oh boy great american outdoors act could have some steam

you know president trump was tweeting about lwcF, which is a part of the Great American Outdoors Act. Senator Daines here in Montana, Senator Cory Gardner in Colorado, you know, co-signed, you know, co-sponsored the green American outdoors act, all this like good stuff, 53 co-signers, uh, in addition to the first seven, you don't want to be confused, go on. Um, so there's 59 co-signers officially, um, which is, which is a big deal. Uh, a lot of Republicans and Democrats on there.

And then, uh, but like I said, this odd thing going from the steam, the momentum of like, okay, this could happen. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh my God,

we need like relief funding in this pandemic. And it just made me very nervous. Tax revenues are going to go down and then oil and then oil leases are going to go down. Yes. Um, well, there is a funding in the green American outdoors act for this huge national parks backlog. And a lot of folks, and I think you were kind of one of them. You're like, ah, national parks. I don't play that much in national parks.

Cause that's where all the people go. Um, well, there's a big push to then say, well, listen, we can put a lot of the funding towards national parks backlog, but we also have maintenance backlogs on BLM, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ground, uh, Bureau of Reclamation, um, Bureau of Indian Education. And so now there is dedicated funding to address National Park Service still gets the kind of lion's share. But then U.S. Forest Service, BLM, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Indian Education. So, um.

It was 70%, wasn't it, that the, uh, service gets and then the rest of it was split up, I think five to 15%. Yeah, 15 USFS 555. I think that's right. I think that's right. For maintenance. Yep. Specifically for maintenance.

But then the neat thing when I keep going back to the job side of this is, uh, you know, we have changed from like the US Forest Service having a crew to do everything to where they hire out contractors to do a lot of this maintenance. National Park Service, the exact same way. US Fish and Wildlife, same way. So. It's like infrastructure way. U.S. Fish and Wildlife, same way. It's like infrastructure spending. Yeah, and we have a bunch of dedicated funding in this

that will be paying contractors to do this work. So there's a lot of built-in jobs in this thing, which the timing of that with what's going on right now is a really cool thing. But we're still at this moment talking about something that really should probably happen on, uh, Tuesday.

So, or sorry, next month rather. Um, yeah. So Mitch McConnell, he has said he's bringing it out when, uh,

we come back in session after the break. Um, When we come back in session after the break, there is a little uncertainty because there's not this super majority that can carry the vote. Through a veto. Through a veto, right. You know, this has been controversial stuff because, you know, people are anti, you you know some people are anti spending on public lands but the other kind of interesting thing here is one of the things that has been very consistent for folks in this weird time of getting some of our freedoms like hey you really shouldn't do that in the time of covid for the general welfare everybody well one thing everybody

for the most part has been able to do is go outside and exercise outside and a lot of people have now found a renewed passion for being outside if you talk to our state agencies with which again I've been doing a lot participation across the board in fishing hunting camping outdoor recreation has been at an all-time high uh if you want to get back into it my favorite subject tag allocation uh i was talking to my friends in idaho and they're like oh man uh would have been real hard to draw a tag this year because we've had record-breaking submissions for, uh, draw tags. Yeah.

I heard the same thing happen in Colorado. I heard an interesting number yesterday. Um, Minnesota, year to date, their, uh, fishing license sales up 40%. No way. 40%. Wow. Wow. Man, that's scary. 40%. Wow. Wow. Man, that's scary.

So, logs are getting out. Again, the stage is set. That's really something. So, we need to do this thing, man,

because you got people want to get out. We got to be ready for them. Even the National Park people. Yep. And, like, this is something that has a bunch of jobs built in. It's got a bunch of needs that we need to take care of built in. If you think there's too many people out there recreating

with 40% more people out buying fishing licenses, LWCF, you know, it takes some time, but it can help spread out people by providing more access. There you go. There's a lot of really good stuff in here and it takes so much fricking work and time to get one of these packages that, you know, is not a defense contract or all these other things that seem to take precedence to the floor. You know how people are always saying, call your representatives. Call your representatives, yes. Don't call them.

Throw them into a stranglehold, man. Yeah, just explain to them what you do. Come on, come on, baby. Come on, come on. How. Come on, come on. How much time you spend out there, how much money you spend out there taking the family outside. It's a big deal. And the time's now. God made a stranglehold, baby.

If you want to sit on your duff and not talk about conservation stuff or or or uh pretend like you care uh just make make one phone call on this and then you can be like yeah that biggest thing that's ever come around in our lifetime i was a part of that i made a phone call and told him vote for it that would be a good time so it still would be help even though we're on the cusp it'd still be helpful just to give it the extra oomph yeah yep you can go go and check out the actual bill. It'll tell you who's already co-signed. Oh, is that right, really? Yep.

And if your guy's not on there, your guy or your woman's not on there, you can give them the heat. You can give them the heat, but also call those people that have co-signed and say thank you. They need to hear that stuff too. They never hear thank you enough, that's for sure. You know people in Michigan are showing up at the state capital armed because they want

to get some of the restrictions eased. Yep. How come people don't show up armed about the LWCF down there?

Man, I had too many acronyms, I guess. I don't know. Yeah. So yeah, this is a big one.

Call your representative. Tell them you want them to pass the Great American Outdoors Act. Do you feel,

Cal, you're a cynical man. Yep, it's true. You're a skeptical man and a cynical man. My favorite quote being skepticism is the chastity of the intellect. But you're a cynical man. Do you feel that calling your representatives, are you just twiddling your thumbs when you call your representatives, Cal? No, no, I don't think so. I don't think it has the impact that you want it to.

Like, I feel oftentimes if you have your ducks in a row and you tell this awesome story and you make that aide on the other end of the phone cry uh, cry over the, for the sympathy for your plight, uh, that aid's just gonna, uh, mark, uh, another notch in the for or against column and move on to the next regardless of, yeah. Yep. Like the intensity of the plea might not matter. Might not matter. That's what I heard.

I was asking sort of a hypothetical question or not a leading, I don't know what kind of question, but the question where you kind don't know what kind of question. The question where you kind of already know the answer to it. But I've talked to representatives who have said on some issues where it's not like a huge, on some issues where it's not, it doesn't become like a big party thing. Or it doesn't become like super partisan, polarizing in a partisan way and you have to like go with things and it just is, you know, just some issue that doesn't become overly politicized that they will literally calls and letters and they run a tally.

And it's like the, your constituents seem to be falling very cleanly in favor of this. It's like, got it. Yep. That's how I'll go. Yep. Um, yeah. That's still like good old stuff like that still happens

yeah i mean a written letter emails um you know form letters are super easy but it's not uh much harder at all to just write an individual letter that isn't attached to a form letter. I think that is more impactful. But man, a phone call is so fast, so efficient. That's what those folks do on the other end. Yeah, I feel like it's easier to make the phone call. Oh, for sure. They're always real polite. Oh, thanks for calling and glad to hear you're, you know, involved. Okay, bye.

Yep. Yep, they're going to ask you where you live, you know, because they want to know if you're in their uh zone or not you know but i mean it's it's it's something everybody's got to be a part of if not this issue something else if you're listening to this show this is damn sure your issue so get off your duff and call write an, and be a part of the process. I got strangleholds all stuck in my head right now. Before our live show in Detroit got canceled,

you know what we had planned for it? I'm sorry, postponed, not canceled. It's postponed. And we'll still do it anyway. But my buddy from high school, John Merchant, he likes to play guitar. And when we were little kids, not kids, like high schoolers, he always, like he could

play all the Nugent songs, you know? Mm-hmm. And we're going to have John come out with his guitar at the live show, and we're going to do Nugent songs, you know? Mm-hmm. And we're going to have John come out with his guitar at the live show and we're going to do Nugent, name that tune. And John was going to play opening licks to see who could name the song fastest. Wango tango.

And then we'll have a green tree and an axe sitting there. Are we doing concluders here? Oh yeah, let it rip, Cal. Okay. So I got a good one. Please. That's been bugging me Alright, so you guys got I'm gonna make this real quick

Just to help for everybody to judge here Hold on a minute, you're gonna say something that's been bugging you And I'm gonna judge it Yep, well I mean It's a scenario, right? So, Oklahoma Suburbs of Oklahoma city, these two kids are out fishing in their

neighborhood pond, uh, which is legal to do so. Legal or illegal? Legal. It is legal to fish the neighborhood pond. Got it. And they're,

uh, fishing for bass in the neighborhood pond. Uh, and they, I want to say they're somewhere in that 12 to 14 year old range. Horrible age. Yeah, full of mischief, right?

I sure was. A lot of trouble happens in there. I caught a lot of large mouth bass in them years. Vehicle shows up. An adult man steps out, walks to the water's edge with a cast net, uses the cast net to pull approximately three pound bass off a bed and then drops that bass in the bucket next to him. know that this is illegal, and they decide to go up and talk to the adult and just let him know that this is an illegal activity.

And he begins to cuss the kids out, you know, basically like mind your own business. And at that point, the kids call fish and game, fish and wildlife. Really? Uh-huh. I should have been talking bad about kids that age and game, fish and wildlife. Really? Uh-huh. I should have been talking bad about kids that age. Yeah, astute little buggers.

And then they say, hey, just so you know, you know, we called fish and wildlife. They even went as far to explain to the guy before they called fish and wildlife that you can keep a bass with a rod and reel so they they're like if you're really interested in keeping a bass you can keep one if you catch it with a rod and reel like gee mister yeah just fish for them yeah uh so then now this guy's real irate and he's still cussing at these at these kids um and then, uh, drives off, thinks better of it, jumps out, runs down to the water's edge, throws the bass back, continues

to cuss at the kids, uh, jumps in the vehicle and drives off. Uh, and then, uh, later on, uh, fishing game catches up with him, writes him a ticket, uh, which he, he, he pays in full. Um. We should send these kids something. What was the ticket for?

Uh, illegal means of take, I think. Illegal. Cast net and bass. Yeah. Um, so, uh, I notice in the, uh, the video footage, the kids wearing a First Light hat. Oh, really? Yeah.

Karum is his name, K-A-R-U-M. And his buddy Ryder were the two kids. And. Huh. We should send him something. So I reach out to the father, right? I don't want to reach out to the 14-year-old kid without talking to his folks first. Responsible.

And the guy's like, hey, thank you so much for reaching out. There are some folks on social media that are calling the kids a bunch of names. They're taking it pretty hard. Calling them names for what? For turning the guy in. Yeah, well, the guy, if the guy would have thrown the bass back in the lake, they wouldn't have turned him in. Yeah. Yeah.

The part of the conversation I had with the dad was fun, though, too, because he's like, yeah, they're taking it pretty hard. I mean, they're out fishing right now. So the kids like they're fishing and they're protecting their fishing hole. And I just wanted to throw that story out and see what the general sentiment was around this table as to just the whole thing as far as like. I think we should send those kids some stuff, man. But it's a job well done. I mean, they gave an adult... They're checking out,

they're looking out for the resource, man. The predator husband's is praying. And they're pretty educated on the whole system, which is impressive, you know? They're acting more responsible than a lot of adults would have acted. And if the story played out like you're talking about, if the dude had been like, oh, man, dude, sorry,

throw the bass back, we wouldn't be talking about it. Well, it seems like that guy had a system. You don't just run out of your car with a cast net and be like, huh, I wonder what'll happen. He's got it coming, man. Well, it sounds like he might have been doing some bucket biology. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

That's interesting. He's stalking his own pond somewhere else. Yeah, we should send something to those kids. He had a first light hat. Yeah, there's a video on that. I mean, I can't find any faults or any holes like with the story. Yeah, ratting the dude out, but like,

again, I wasn't there. So I could see like, oh, it's bad to rat somebody out. I could see someone making that argument. But if the dude's getting testy with them, what are they supposed to do? Fight them? Well, and that's the thing. It's like this is a full-blown adult, and you look at these kids, and I hope you guys don't get embarrassed on this one, but they're like, you know, little skinny, haven't quite, you know, beefed up yet.

I haven't either. Yeah, you know. beefed up yet. I haven't either. Yeah. You know, Steve hasn't either. Um, but, and then the other cool thing, the cool part of this is there, a good Samaritan steps forward, uh, Grogas, I think is this guy's name. Um, and he recalls his own terrible experience with an adult fishing as a kid, uh, where some guy lost his temper and he,

uh, recalls not ever even wanting to go back to that whole lake. And so he got ahold of these two kids, bought them, uh, Oklahoma lifetime fishing license a piece. No way. Really?

Yeah. And, uh, a gift card to Cabela's or Bass Pro or something like that. Oh, that's great, man. Yes. Yeah.

And that's the way you should act. Huh. Not tormenting these kids because they did the right thing, especially if you like to fish. That's interesting. That's a lovely, heartwarming story. Isn't it? My only problem-

Dude, we should have started with that damn story. Is that I just don't think it was a concluder. It doesn't fit into usually what a concluder is. That would be like another talking point, Cal. Yeah, I know. I just wanted to hear what you guys would say. Now, watch.

I'll twist it into a concluder. Have you ever been like, oh. Here, watch this. I'll be like, man, I just want to say, Cal, that that stuff you were talking about earlier, that warms my heart, buddy. That's a concluder. Well, I don't have a concluder. I like the story, Cal.

I like that story. It's a good way to end the day. Oh, man. Yeah, I wish we had a great uplifting story like that to end every podcast. I wish those kids could come on the show, man. I'd just like to ask them a few questions. Yeah.

Yeah. I told them I wrote this up on the week in review podcast that cal's we can review gals we can review best thing on the internet i'm like just type that and you'll pull up cal's we can review those those uh yeah those boys can fish with me uh last quick thing let's say we also got any of that uh i i i've come to a thing on puff balls yeah i'm like it's hard to see something in the woods that's edible and not pick it i saw it i grabbed it man but you're not having good luck with them i'm almost gonna i have yet to eat in my life and i've ate a fair number of them i've yet to eat a puffball where I was.

The other night we were eating those morels, and you're like, damn, those are good. Ah, they're good. Hand of the woods. Man, that's good. It's so good. Bleats. So good. Yeah.

What are the orange ones? Chanterelles. Chanterelles. We found last year. Chanterelles. Sweet mother. It's just good. Chanterelle. We found last year. Chanterelle. Sweet mother. It's just good. You're patting yourself on the back.

Good job picking that up. Every time, every time I eat a puff ball, every time someone picks a puff ball, every time someone makes me a puff ball pizza, it doesn't matter what it is. I'm always like, eh,

eh. Yeah, for sure. It's edible and it's not bad, but... It's not bad. Yeah, you don't have to pick them up. A morel you're not going to walk away from. They're just very complimentary to whatever you're making.

Or not. On a burger, in a steak sauce, something like that. But you're not going to eat it on its own as an appetizer. We found two giant puff balls. Freshies. I'd say not the size of a normal head, but the size of Cal's head. Yeah. I got a PS.

Is that bigger or smaller than a normal head? Smaller. No, like a puffball the size of Spencer's head. Now that's a puffball. That's a big puffball. Get all this beer in there. But a puffball the size of Cal's head. Cal's head's about the size of a softball.

Built for speed. Yeah, a puffball like that. I can't remember what it was. It had like a, this one had. Met metallic kind of chemical. What was weird is Brody picked a nice one, but then we let it sit a couple days. Yeah, it got a little soft. Went south.

But it wasn't like, it's still white in the middle. It wasn't shot. But then me and my boy picked one that was like firm nice like any puffball is edible like technically any puffball is edible if you cut it open um and it's white inside it's fine eventually they turn darker darker darker black and then you can squeeze them and you know the spores shoot up in the air it looks like a smoke bomb at fourth of july but cut one open white cut into slices uh i can't remember what we did we wound up like i think we just put it on foil on a grill yep shitload of olive oil yep which makes anything be okay and in the end it was like

couldn't kids didn't like it it's kind of pasty in the middle it's like tofu yeah yeah kind of doney in the middle. It's like tofu-y. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of done with those sons of bitches. That's all folks. Oh, come on. I got, uh, all on puff balls.

No, I'm joking. Oh, no, go ahead. Give the counterpoint. This is like one of those shows, like point counterpoint. Oh,

no, I'm, I'm, I'm with you. I'm, I think, I think puff balls for burgers are where it's at. Because I just do like garlic butter and then I have the puff balls all sliced up in there.

And you just lay it on top of a burger. And I just lay it on top of a burger. And a lot of times I'll do bacon burgers and then when folks aren't looking, I'll be transferring that bacon grease into the butter dish also. Nobody's walking away from one of those puffball mushrooms, right? It's like.

And it winds up being good. But like, okay, let me ask you why though? Oh, I mean, because you've doctored it all up. But it winds up being like fun to eat the mushroom. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

I think their, their nickname is like the breakfast mushroom because what you should do with a puff ball is like toss in an omelet, toss it with eggs, put it in a burrito, something like that. How can you say that its nickname is the breakfast mushroom, but then say that it's not a widely held belief that pine squirrels bite

the nuts off other squirrels? You got me there. Maybe like one person called it the breakfast mushroom? I don't know. Put in the truth about breakfast mushrooms. Are you typing in breakfast mushroom, Yanni?

I'm going to type in puffball mushroom nickname. See what happens. That'll be Spencer's blog. It's going to type in Puffball Mushroom nickname. See what happens. That'll be Spencer's blog. It's going to be my article. All right, who else has got a concluder? I'm good. I like Cal's story.

Yeah. Can't, yeah. It's hard to top it. I want to make a defense in my breakfast mushroom thing here real quick. Yeah, that's a good concluder. I have another concluder yet, so this one doesn't count. I'll give you mine. This is a follow-up to the concluder.

Yes, yes, yes. From the book Wild About Mushrooms, the cookbook of the Mycological Society of San Francisco. They say some people refer to puff balls as breakfast mushrooms because they blend so well with eggs. Okay. That seems definitive enough to me. Sure.

I'll buy it. Okay. Okay. So. I was wrong. You were right. My concluder. I was wrong.

I'm convinced that a recent episode had the best, most unexpected thing ever said on it that I heard over quarantine. Recent episode of what? Of the Meat Eater podcast. This very show? Yes. Was it something you said? No, no, no, no.

Oh, please, please tell us. I've been catching up over here. Something I read on a blog by Spencer Newhart. That's right. That's right. The best, most unexpected thing I've ever heard on the Meat Eater podcast. I've been catching up over quarantine. And I've thought about this once a day, I swear to you, since I heard it.

But I haven't seen you guys because of social distancing to bring it up. But in episode 218, Kevin Murphy was talking to you guys. And if I were introducing one of you, if I were like introducing Brody to somebody who didn't know Brody, I'd be like, this is my buddy Brody. He just moved here from Colorado. Yeah, I'd be like, you know that little shit, Brody? Yeah.

Or like, this is my buddy Giannis. He used to guide elk hunters, something like that. Like that's just like a pretty normal introduction. Kevin Murphy blindsided you guys with something that I think you were so caught off guard, you didn't even address it. But Kevin Murphy blindsided you guys with something that I think you were so caught off guard. You didn't even address it. But Kevin Murphy said, uh, does he listen to this podcast? Oh, probably not. I wouldn't be surprised to hear he does not. Okay. Well, you're going to

need to reach out anyway to like put a bow on this. But he said something about, I was with my buddy Raymond and Raymond doesn't let me go into gentlemen's clubs in foreign countries. And then he just moved on from there. Never, never brought it back to that. It had nothing to do with the rest of the two hours that you guys talked, but that was his footnote on his buddy Raymond. Like if you want to know what kind of guy Raymond is. Yes. He does not let you go into gentlemen's clubs in foreign countries.

So yeah, you're like, okay, so he's, he's cool headed. He does not let you go into gentlemen's clubs in foreign countries. So, yeah, you're like, okay, so he's cool-headed. He thinks ahead. He doesn't get carried away in the moment. I was waiting for something to come back to that story or, like, how is this relevant? And it never happened. And it's bothered me because I'm telling you, I thought about it every single day. I can speak to that a little bit because I certainly caught that when he said it. And the thing that came to mind to me, I was like, well, Kevin, to me, that says that you were on your way to a gentleman's club in a foreign country.

And your buddy thought better of it. He stopped you. You know, so kind of kind of said a little bit about Kevin, which I don't know if he went. Maybe Raymond's got a service background, merchant marine or something like that. I just want to know what inspired that specific footnote. There has to be some sort of backstory. You'll have to email him and ask him. Yeah.

And he can report back to us. Do you even recall that being said, Steve? No, but I feel like I'm trying to – if I have someone on, sometimes I'll have someone on and I'll go back and listen because I'm trying to do a lot of things in my head. Hosting. And the thing with Kevin too, man, he has the gift of gab and it flows from one thought to the next and one idea to the next pretty quickly. Well, that's a thought that I want to pin down.

Yeah. Yeah, we can follow up on that. Okay. Keeping you up at night, huh? Speaking of, this is my concluder. You got one too? Oh, you still got a concluder though. No, no, no.

That was it. No, I gave Spencer mine. So you got one. But I'm going to do a story for a concluder about going to gentlemen's clubs in foreign countries. One time I was working on this magazine story and I had to go to Santiago in Chile. And I just started dating my wife wife and I brought her with me. And I needed to hire a translator and someone to help out with stuff. And so I said, man, I really want to get a cup of coffee.

And he said, well, how about a coffee with legs? And I thought he meant like a strong coffee so i'm like yeah what other kind is there right or whatever the hell i said i'm like i would like that's what i thought he meant but no what he means is he takes us to this like underground arcade in santiago and it's uh coffee shops that are staffed by naked women. So, and it's businessmen doing business meetings. It's black, there's black lights. It's full of like businessmen at 11 in the morning having meetings

and you're being waited on and served coffee by nude women. And so I'm with my wife. So I'm trying very hard to not look at anything. I'm just like not looking at anything. So all three of you went to get a coffee there. Me, the translator and my wife are sitting very awkwardly. And he's like, isn't it great? Isn't it great?

You know, and I'm sitting there like, I'm not looking, I'm not doing anything. And I had my notebook out cause I was taking some notes and eventually my wife took my notebook and she drew a picture in it and I looked and it was a woman. It was a picture of a woman holding a pair of scissors and a man's scrotum.

Gentleman's clubs in foreign countries, man. Go ahead, Yanni. I'll let it end on that. I didn't have one. I gave it to Spencer, I said. What was yours? Kevin Murphy. No, you said that was the thought.

No, no, no. The puffball thing was me doing a follow-up. The concluder was that Kevin Murphy had the greatest, most unexpected line in your podcast history. Okay, Phil, help us out here now. Now, Phil the Engineer, please provide a concluder so we can wrap her up. You got one minute. Well, I was actually going to try to cut you guys off

because I thought the picture your wife drew, into the laughter, bring the music up, that's the end of the podcast go ahead and do that phil i'll do it is it too late no can we talk about this and then have that happen and you could we can talk about this going to hear what we're talking about but let's say they did let's say you played this and then did what you would have done right and show that you were right okay let's do that that's how i would like to do that now back up and do that you were right. Okay. Let's do it. Do that, Phil.

That's how I would like it to end. Do that. Now back up and do what you would have done. Right? Okay, here we go. Here comes the end, folks. It was a picture of a woman holding a pair of scissors

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