The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 237: A Face No Longer Attached

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

Steven Rinella talks with Ben O'Brien, Spencer Neuharth, Ryan Callaghan, and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: how Cal's got turned down for a Victoria Secret's pink credit card; Steve's very special method of making sucker cakes out of the fish that his kid keeps bringing home; Spencer's Bar Room Banter series and the Zone of Death; the remotest place in the lower-48; the most Instagrammed outdoor places on earth; Ben's coverage of an insane bear attack story and a face no longer attached to the skull; saving your dad with a pistol; when you kill a charging grizzly; choking on your own flesh but remaining very with it; loving the gore of plastic surgery; that time when Steve's brother talked to a guy in the woods who got mauled by a grizzly later that day; the jaw-spread eye-zap trick; 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 Onyx. So Cal, I know people have been anxiously awaiting any sort of news on your theft. Yep. You were covering all your things that were stolen from your house when you very judiciously

or the opposite of that. Didn't shoot the people as, as they stole your stuff, but you recovered some of it. It turned up. Yes. Some of Cal's stolen goods. Yeah. And, and folks out there, if you've been anxiously waiting for news of this, you were doing a

lot better than I was. Uh, I'd just fully given up on anything but i got a couple of things happen i got a uh letter from the credit bureau letting me know that i'd been turned down for a victoria secret pink credit card uh due to um my credit being frozen which is something i did, to prevent any sort of theft because I got a bunch of my personal information. I'm not understanding what you're talking about. So a bunch of my personal information was stolen, right?

Yeah. So I was trying to refinance my place and, uh, get all my taxes done. And I was just laying out and they just scooped that whole package up, took off with it. Oh, and then they masquerading as you tried to get a Victoria's secret pink credit card. Correct. I didn't know there was such a thing. Neither did I.

Oh, the benefits are great. Um, and, uh, so that was one thing that happened. And then, and so I called Bozeman PD and said,

Hey, what's going on? And then, uh, a little while later or several months later, this all happened back in March, July 4th weekend, or I guess the Monday after July 4th weekend, I get a phone call from a bank in Billings, Montana, saying, hey, we have your passport here. Did you try to cash your check on friday i was like nope and they're like yeah we thought it was a little suspicious and when we said it was suspicious the folks trying to cash the check

through the drive-thru just took off i was like okay and like left it left your passport laying there they had one of your checks no they had so so they had forged a check from a local gas station to me, like a pay stub check, payment check, with my name on it, and then attempted to cash that using my passport as a valid ID. Um, so I was like, well, that's good information and had them call the police and gave them the case number. Then I called the police and, and then, um, all of a sudden they became pretty interested

in it. Cause I think it like elevated the crime a little bit. And, uh, cause now they're out forging checks. Yeah. And, uh, they ultimately did make an arrest and, uh, it was just really, and I just learned of this today because I finally got my passport

back. Yeah. Are you going to get to confront them? I doubt it, but it was so funny cause the detective was like, yeah, uh, I would really watch your, uh, credit. Cause, uh, this guy told me that he's been doing this five days a week, eight hours a day.

He puts in a full week. He puts in a full week. He's like, just like you or I clocking in at the office. He's like, he has been forging checks eight hours a day five days a week huh yeah how local is he uh local is he the dude that actually stole your shit or did they give your stuff to this dude i'm telling you from what i saw happen in my garage they would have had to have uh found a new in life, still in the criminal line of things,

to elevate to check forgery from what I saw in the garage. The folks who robbed the garage, I don't think are capable of the forgery game. The 40-hour week forgery game. The 40-hour week forgery game. So you might get to meet someone involved in this criminal enterprise. Yeah, it's possible if for some reason they want me to testify or something like that. Now, have you heard this story?

The Flip-Flop Flesher's granddad had a hunting cabin and some criminals, some crooks robbed his hunting cabin. Later, the cops caught the guys. And this is an interesting move. The cops then bring the guy over, just drive him over. No. To visit with the grandfather. So Seth said his grandfather gets, a cop comes to the door and says, hey, we got the guy that robbed your place.

He's handcuffed in the back of my car. So Seth's grandfather just gets to go out to lay his eyes on him. Poke him with a stick? Yeah. And Seth said that his grandfather said to the guy, you know I would have killed you if I caught you. And that was how they left it. Wow. It's great. Yeah great it's oddly appealing you'll be always tell that to him too and be like boy you just don't know how close you were yeah i'd be

like boy about to shoot i didn't have it in me to shoot you man yeah what if just a funky deal but anyway passport's back so is it fine if I was a detective I would dust that passport They did I like to picture myself dusting it for fingerprints And it did have a fingerprint on it Oh it did I assume not mine So

Is it cool at the state department Do you get to keep on using your passport That is my passport number Okay So no matter what kind of shenanigans they were trying to pull with your passport, it's not like a credit card where they'd like issue you a new one all of a sudden.

Correct. You just get to keep running. I mean, you can go through, jump through a bunch of hoops and get like a new social security number, new passport number, but it, it takes some, some effort and, uh, from what, like I called the social, social security administration and actually just phenomenal customer service.

Um, but the, the fellow I talked to, he's like, you know, he's like, this is what we've done for you. Like it's flagged in the system. Um, the way this works is a little funky is like, it's still gonna be very frustrating to you but what we see is somebody's going to hold down a job for a year and not pay their taxes with your social security number and then we'll call you and be like why aren't you paying your taxes? And then you'll say, well, actually I have, but here's,

and then we'll look back in your record, we'll see the thing, and you'll be fine. He's like, it's not going to be fun, you're not going to like it, but he's like, you'll be fine. You're really taking all this quite well, Cal, I think. It's just so far out of my hands. You know, it's like I got other things to worry about. And this is like five months in the making. It was March.

Yeah. Yeah. Huh? Spencer, you don't have C one niner. I don't know. Fresh from the testing ground. I have the cleanest bill of health in this room for COVID. I would imagine.

Whoa. When they come in and tell you don't have it. I love it. Do you have a, did you have a scare? So my wife and I had cold symptoms over the weekend. But the issue with COVID, right, is if you look up symptoms, it's like everything except stubbing your toe is on the list. So body ache, headache, cough.

And if there wasn't a global pandemic, you would just be like, oh, this is a head cold. And fine enough to like even go into work. But we have a wedding coming up in three days. We wanted to do the responsible thing, get tested. So we did. And you're right, Steve, like I didn't have any anxiety leading up to it. We're pretty confident, but then like that 15 minute wait between like getting swabbed and then like them coming in, then it like starts to build and build and build. Oh, yeah. And you get afraid they're going to throw a false positive at you. Wait a minute, 15-minute wait?

You can get rapid testing, right? There's standard testing that's like five to ten days. Yeah, I had three days. Yeah. Well, yeah, the state of Alaska now won't accept rapid tests. They did say it is less accurate than the other ones. It throws a lot of false. I've heard.

I heard. I heard. That's not going to be good. It throws a lot of false. I've heard. I heard. I heard. That's not going to be good. That it throws a lot of false positives. Well. That's got a reputation. I don't know if this is true or not, and that wouldn't come to me for your COVID information.

So I was telling Cal this. Two nights ago, was it two nights ago? We went down to where my kid fishes suckers and took a spear gun down there and got into the water with a spear gun. And like you could see about 12 inches. So the spear gun's like two feet long. So all the suckers are zipping in front of your face, like sort of between.

You'd have had to hold the spear gun back behind your head and reach back and pull the trigger in order to shoot the suckers that you can see scooting across your face mask as you dive through the holes. Somewhere in the manual it recommends against that. And my buddy Greg Fons is supposed to be sending me a new Hawaiian, a real stubby. I want a short nose Hawaiian sling. I got an eight footer in the garage. No, I need a snub nose Hawaiian sling for close work. Yeah. So we gave up on that.

That water's so cold. It was hot. It was 90 some degrees. My kid didn't think it was cold. Like kids, I don't know what their problem is. They get in the cold water. They don't know it's cold. I was so cold.

I couldn't breathe through my snorkel. What? Because we were where one creek where a small mountain stream flows into a bigger stream. And the bigger stream is much warmer. Wow. And that small mountain stream is flowing in all silty and cold. And the suckers are all laying in the hole created by the inlet. So when you dive down in that hole, yeah, I

got an air, I had to like force myself to be able to breathe through a snorkel. It was that cold. Now the follow-up question is going to be, what are you doing with suckers? Sucker cakes. Yeah. So I think you should explain sucker cakes

because I've, I've had some of the, your amalgamous dip between your, uh, um, multi-species bag that you get sometimes. Well, I'll get to the sucker cake thing in a minute. Yeah. But I'll walk through that. So when you dive down and follow the bottom contour of the hole, like I said, it's just suckers, like kind of like banging into your face mask, but you can't do anything about it. And I was telling my kid, if you misidentify and hit a whitefish, you and me don't fish again for the rest of our lives or whatever, because we'd be in a serious

violation, because it's a game fish. Anyhow, we bailed on that, much to his disappointment. And came back the next night with rods and reels. And after micro-scouting, like, we knew that this hole had suckers but our

understanding of that hole improved to where like like let's say i like i'm looking at my laptop right now i used to know there were suckers like on the laptop but now i know that the suckers are at the letter g and we went back last night and bam, bam. He went back with his neighborhood buddy this morning. Bam, bam, bam. We got a mountain of suckers in our fridge now. When we always talk about in the big game world, of like if for a second you could just suck all the trees off the mountain

just real quick. Yeah. Because you know there's something there, but it'd just be nice to know exactly where. I have a different version of that, and it's that if all the animals, you could do it by species. So like all black bears had to shoot a flare up in there.

A pink one. And the deer would shoot a green one. And I would just be like, oh. Colorblind people, Ollani. Yeah I would just be like, colorblind people, Ollani. Yeah. It'd be tough. So yeah,

some kind of whatever, some kind of thing that's new, that's support. So even like Mark Canyon could participate. Yeah, that's right. As a colorblind individual. You'd probably get a better data set.

Confusing deer and bear. When we talked about it back in the days of pack country, we would just imagine just, if you were a giant and you could just pick up the mountain that we hunted a lot and turn it upside down and shake it and just see what fell off of it. As little kids, our lake, I'll get back to my soccer story,

but the lake we grew up on, our dream was that it was complicated because it required that everybody had to go away. Everybody that lived on the lake had to leave because we didn't want other people seeing what we were about to see. Everyone would leave and our lake would drain. And we would have an hour or so to run out and see what all is there.

Just to take stock. Not even to pick anything up, but to take stock of what's there. And we talked about this a lot. And my kid doesn't know that we used to talk about this. And we were up at our fish shack and he was saying, wouldn't it be amazing if we could drain all the water out of the cove and see what's in there. I think about that too.

Cause you're always like, you know, you fish a little bit harder when you're like, I know if I just try a little something different or whatever, like I'm going to find like that big one. Wouldn't it just be disheartening if you're like, oh, turns out the perch in this lake do only get six inches long. That's what you want to know. Because there was a guy named Mr. Plang who lived, he had a cabin across from our house. It was mostly summer cottages at the time.

Mr. Plang had developed, pioneered a technology he called speed trolling. He liked to stroll real fast for northerns. And he had one of those old fish finders that took a pencil. Whoa. You ever see those? We used to have one too. My dad had one when I was a little kid. It's like a pencil.

And at the end of fishing, you can take the whole damn scroll of paper and walk around showing people the scroll it spits out a never-ending six inch wide scroll of paper with the the pencil oh yeah mr playing used to run around with a hunk of this scroll showing that he's like there's a five foot northern in that lake and everybody believed him because like technology doesn't lie there's a big pencil mark i missed your playing scroll so if you drain you'd be able to be like is it or is it not that guy used to catch a shitload of pike i'll tell you what speed trolling we we had a version of that that's not quite as

satisfying as just like draining the entire water body but whenever for the u.s fish and wildlife service we had a lake in southeastern south dakota that i got too overrun with trash fish uh like like what every type of carp grass carp common carp silver carp big head carp um and then they just like cleaned out all the vegetation it was an incredibly popular body of water for people in that area. So they decided to kill off the entire lake. So we went out there with rotenone, which is like takes, I think it takes the oxygen out of the water and it kills all the fish.

And then everything comes up to the surface. Well, what is it? It's derived from a South American plant. Oh. And it inhibits the fish's ability to remove oxygen from the water. So it's like, it's like messing with their gills. Yeah.

Like a paralyzer. You know, me and Yanni have fished like that. Yeah. I've seen the video. Yeah. Yeah. But we did that in this like entire. Last of the old poisoners.

We did that in this entire lake and you're like, oh, 27 inch walleye in here. Like, oh man, there are way more perch than you'd think and like whoa like this so it painted a rosier picture than what you expected um with the exception everything being dead yeah that's right that's right uh and they don't they don't come back to life like when you're shocking them when uh well that may or may not be because where we witnessed it, the effects wear off. They would go to a side slough and they would rock off the tributary leading into the side slough, poison the side slough. And they were saying that if you open it back up and let water come in, the fish will pull out and be fine.

Yeah. And that was part of this, this lake had some like natural springs that we had to constantly keep roten on, like right there where that fresh water was coming in. Gotcha. To keep it lethal. Yes.

Have you ever shocked fish when you were in that old job? Oh yeah. Plenty. Yeah. That's interesting too, that you can, you can shock fish and not kill them, but you get your settings a certain way and a beaver might come

by and you'll like waylay a beaver might combine you'll like waylay that beaver yeah because the voltage is set where it'd be lethal for a beaver but not lethal for a fish one of the the really uh like surprising parts of that is we shot for flatheads specifically one day and they take like a much lower voltage than most fish yeah which was bigger really surprising you would think that like, uh, like, okay, we're going to go find panfish. Right. So let's just like crank this thing down,

but now we're going to go seek out flatheads. So we got to crank it way up and just make sure we're like shocking everything in the area, but that's not the case. No, because it's bigger at once lower. Like if you jumped in there,

you'd be screwed if you guys were shocking small fish. Yeah. I'll get back to the sucker situation too. Come on. Uh, shocked the South Fork of the snake uh like extremely extremely popular uh stretcher river um on the south fork of the snake in idaho and uh shocked

with idaho fishing game and was with the head of fisheries and uh brent high or brett high and uh he's he's like a local blackfoot idaho guy and i'm just amazed at how many fish come up to the surface in this very small side channel that we went and shocked and he's like oh yeah he's like everybody talks about how there's 4 000 trout per mile he's like but there's also 7,000 white fish per mile. Oh. He's like, eh. And then he just kind of like went on and on and on. It was just an insane amount of life.

But it is, um, yeah, unless you get to witness shocking, it's like, you just can't fathom how much life is in some of this stuff. I was in the Philippines and we were doing, I was doing a magazine story where I was with this crew and they were doing like a first descent, you know, down a river, which is cool. It was fun.

And in central Highlands, Luzon Island. And one day we're just camped down the riverbank and we were with this, it's this area that's like the Kalinga tribe lives there. So you had to kind of get permission from the Kalinga. And then the Kalinga would make you take other, like take Kalinga dudes. So we had these two dudes,

these two Kalinga dudes with us on this trip. And some guy they know, we were camped on a beach and some guy along, and they knew who the guy was. And this guy comes along, he's got a giant, he's got a backpack made out of a giant thing of a giant detergent bottle. Like, if you bought a huge square thing of laundry detergent, kind of container, right? And he had it made into a backpack with ropes and in it he had car batteries

coming off the car batteries he had two handheld wands and he's got a dude with him that has like a beat packing two batteries he's got two batteries two car batteries that's a heavy jammed no and a backpack and two metal wands and he's got a dude with him who's got a mini beach seine hooked on two sticks and these guys come down the river and he would get up on a rock and his buddy'd get up on a rock And then his buddy would stick that beach seine down below the rock. And then he would wave those wands all around under that rock. And a couple minutes later, that dude would lift that beach seine up and shit loads of shrimp and crabs in there.

Like electro-shocking them out of there. Oh, wow. And they got a big... It's a long story. we wound up with a bunch of this stuff the shrimp and crabs i would imagine yeah and the guys got they get a big log burning and they roll the log over so it's ember side up and then just lay all that shit down that log on the glowing embers and just lay there for a while then that's a great move no yeah and i had all my fishing equipment with me because i was like oh i'm gonna catch so many fish like first descent

of a river like listen man there's not a thing in those rivers everything is dead you'd go to a fish market there it's like their fish market is stuff the size of your pinky like oh and a whale shark but like there's no sort of like all the things, because they fish with poison, fish with explosives. It's like the myth that developing nations would somehow have pristine resource pools. It's a myth. People are hungry, man. Yeah. And they just kill everything any way you can

get your hands on it. A buddy of mine was fishing the Andaman Island, which is like kind of a border series of islands owned by India. And, uh, the guy was explaining to him the fishery, like why that spot is so good. He's like, yeah, no arsenic fishing here. And, you know, a Michigan kid buddy of mine is like, arsenic fishing? And he's like, yeah, no arsenic.

Like, it's a big deal. He's like, yeah, I would imagine it's better. Back to my suckers real quick. I think about making a video tonight with my kid on how we make sucker cakes. So, hear me out.

You flay the sucker. You get a sucker flay. Then you remove the rib from the sucker. Just like take the rib bone off. Then you skin the sucker. Now you have a sucker flay that's still riddled with the insane number of bones that live in sucker flays. Then we cube it up in like half inch pieces. Put that raw packet into a food processor raw.

And you put a bunch of trout in there too. Pack it if you want. Pack it in a food processor and turn the food processor on and leave it in there until that raw fish has turned into a batter. It's like a batter of raw fish. Why are you making that face? It doesn't sound very appetizing. You've never heard of a moose? Okay, let me put it this way.

And then you make a moose. M-O-U-S-S-E. Yeah, but still moose. M-O-U-S-S-E. Out of raw fish, moose still doesn't sound appetizing. But I'm following you. There's no version where raw fish batter doesn't sound good, man. I'm sure it's going to get good.

This is the best recipe, perhaps the best recipe ever invented. But I'm just telling you, there's nobody that right now is now listening in their car. And when you described food processing, sucker meat and trout meat raw, they're like, ooh. Then I take my raw fish and I pull it out and I put it into a mixing bowl. To which I add breadcrumb, eggs, prepared horseradish, mayo, herbs, and all kinds of other good shit to eat. A little sour cream if you feel like it. Whatever. Hot sauce. How does the fish batter smell?

It smells very clean. Clean. Okay fish batter smell it smells very clean clean okay yeah smells very clean um they are wonderful the the problems with sucker i should start by saying this the problems with suckers are that the texture people don't people are not crazy about the texture and people are definitely not crazy about the bones. So it's a mushy piece of fish that's bony. But by going through this process that I'm here talking about, those things become not an issue. So I got my breadcrumb egg, good stuff to eat, horseradish and all that. Then I make little teeny flattened patties. So I make about what you, a meatball.

I make a meatball with this batter. I flatten the meatball into something that resembles the sort of dimensions, the relative dimensions of a pancake, but it's much smaller. Fits in the palm of your hand. I then roll this and coat that in Panko. Then I cook it in a pan until the Panko is golden brown. Then you now have something that's like if the people at Long John Silver's

actually knew how to cook, it's that. Crispy, right? Crispy outside, beautiful, like fluffy inside. You've taken us. You've transported us. Dude, it is one of the best recipes to ever be invented. And I'm thinking about filming it tonight. So what fish can't you do this with?

I don't know. You can do it with anything. You can do it with anything. We call them sucker cakes for a reason. You know what I screwed up? I screwed up a big chunk of halibut that you gave me the other day. By the way, you're, I mean, I'd do it the same way because you just get sick of bagging fish. But my God, that's a huge, those are giant portions of halibut.

Well, those are family packs, man. They're not meant for a single man. Oh, so I take, you know, I'm like, I wanted to take on the challenge of cooking this whole huge chunk of halibut, um, you know, perfectly. And I had a thermometer in there and was doing it on the Traeger, um, which I believe gives you even more leeway. And, uh, consequently pulled it before the thing even got to temp according to the temperature. Cause I just knew something wasn't right. And sure enough, it was super dry, but I turned that into, uh, you know, basically like a fish sandwich.

Fish salad. Yeah. Yeah. And absolutely phenomenal. into basically like a fish sandwich type of stuff. Fish salad. Yeah. Yeah. And absolutely phenomenal. Very, very good. To the point where I'm like, this is what halibut should be. Good.

Yeah. I feel like with those big chunks, you got to slice them in half. Sideways. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Spencer, explain. I can't figure which of these things i want you to explain first oh bad news for the um the squirrels eating nuts off other squirrels you shouldn't even reveal this

oh no i think it's for another time spencer has not i don't like i don't like that you even brought it up okay spencer has not found a researcher yet who knows what he's talking about you need to keep you need to do what you do in science when you get an answer you don't want you go to the next researcher eventually you wind up you need what you'll do what corporations do is you'll need to go hire a researcher and tell them i need you to demonstrate to me that x is true got it and they're like got it so we'll leave that one hanging our article forthcoming on if if squirrels bite the nuts off of other squirrels and just say that yes knowing that they do

it'll be an exploration of the truth of that. Yes. The truth of that. And you better keep working until you find the right person to talk to who satisfies my curiosity. But in the meantime,

explain the zone of death situation. The zone of death is part of our Barroom Banter series. And I'm biased, but our Barroom Banter stuff is my favorite stuff on the Meteor website. Actually, I'll make it number two. Pat Durkin, anything Pat Durkin writes is number one. That's my favorite. And then Barroom Banter stuff is my second favorite.

And Barroom Banter is meant to be wisdom that'll make you seem smart and interesting from a bar stool when you're shooting the shit with your buddies and you're like well did you know this do you know squirrels yep will actually bite like that stuff like that yep exactly yeah who's playing with my toes? Oh, yeah. Sorry. So the zone of death. First, when you talk about Yellowstone National Park and its mapping. Okay. If you're not familiar, you don't live in Bozeman like us. You might not know this, but Yellowstone extends into three states.

96% of it is in Wyoming. 2% is in Montana. And 1% is in Idaho. And this is bad. I've never heard the percentages before. This is because, but like, but it predates the States. Yes. Okay.

1872 Yellowstone national park was created. It wasn't until 20 years later that those three States gained statehood. So does unless I've never understood as well well either but are you going to explain how like where how like what the state's role actually is in these states the the states don't have much of a role at all it turns out and that's that's all sort of part of yeah what creates this zone of death okay so i i would argue i would argue that the most interesting part of yellowstone is that one percent in idaho despite it not having a road it has one road that sort of like goes through the very corner of it and that's it other than that it has some trails

it doesn't have any campgrounds um it has like one notable lake it butts up to some other like notable things like denada falls it's a very popular hiking destination in that part of yellowstone but it's not technically in idaho or the zone of death. So I'm following. Okay. When Wyoming was created, the U S court system decided to give all of Yellowstone to Wyoming's district court. So the entire national park, including the sections that are in Montana and in Idaho are part of the Wyoming court district.

Okay. Got it. Got it. Should I save my questions? I think so. Okay. I think so. All right.

So, all of Yellowstone is in the Wyoming court district. Cal looks utterly baffled. Well, I'm waiting patiently. Okay. Okay. All of Yellowstone is in Wyoming's court district, despite the park being in three different states. Now, here's what would happen in this zone of death if you murdered somebody. Okay.

Say you were in the Idaho portion of Yellowstone and you murdered somebody. How'd we get there? To murder. This will explain. You lure them there. Yeah. This will explain. You lure them there. Yeah. This, this will explain.

Like I say to Yanni, I'm like, Hey, you know, a good, uh, Huckleberry spot. Yup.

Yup. You might want to go there at Monday at 10. I'm more meant like explaining district courts to murder. Yeah. Okay. So this, this, this hypothetical.

I like, especially like, well, you can drive. Yeah, yeah. This hypothetical where Steve and Yanni are. You thought that was a leap is what you're saying, Ben. A logical, well, you know about the states, the percentages, and then the killing of another human being.

So obviously you're thinking of Yellowstone. Okay, so yeah, forge that connection. Forge that connection. There's this place. There's this place in Idaho. It just so happens. Steve and Yanni are looking for huckleberries over there. Illegally, I imagine you can't go pick huckleberries in Yellowstone.

No. Yellowstone is a place where you go to not be able to do things. But I believe that you can. I would be real doubtful. I think that you can pick a berry. You can't pick up a deer antler I was just there with a park biologist And we found several arrowheads Bunch of shed antlers

Can't touch that stuff Can't touch shed antlers Can't touch skulls I believe you can Same way that you can catch fish in certain areas and keep them Like in fact if you catch a lake trout in Yellowstone Lake You can't not keep it. The fish is a good comparison.

You can eat a berry in that park. I'm not sticking up for the park. I wish it would just become National Forest. I'm opposed to it. On ideological grounds. So murder. Okay. On ideological grounds. So you guys are legally or illegally looking for huckleberries in Idaho's portion of Yellowstone National Park. Let's keep the story going and just say that you don't know what we're doing with them, but we are looking for huckleberries. Okay.

Not necessarily picking and eating them. We're identifying huckleberries. Right. And Idaho's portion of Yellowstone National Park is 50 square miles. It's really small. It's just a little sliver you barely even see on the map. You guys are over there looking for huckleberries. Steve kills Yanni.

Why? Just like you. I don't know. Disagreement over whether or not you guys can eat huckleberries. Okay. Jealous of how good I was at picking those berries. It's more entertaining with years of angst. Steve kills Yanni? and eat huckleberries. Okay. I can see it. Jealous of how good I was at picking those berries. I can see it. It's more entertaining with like years of angst.

Who's killed, Steve Kilsiani? Steve Kilsiani, I think. Years of angst. Like I, I, like how do I do it? Hands, hands.

I just strangle, flat out strangle them in the huckleberry bush. And then I bury them as they do in the woods in a, as Norm MacDonald points points out it's always a shallow grave that's a great one so i put him in a shallow grave and throw some sticks over him

yeah put a patrol cam to catch the grizz it's gonna come dig me up that's right and steve fest is up to it immediately he says i did it uh this is how i did it this is where he's at i i did it everything that you're hearing is true. Steve tells that to some sort of law enforcement. They take you to Cheyenne. Okay. Cheyenne is the- Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Cheyenne, Wyoming. That's the state capital. That is the hub of the district of Wyoming's court system. Okay. Why is it not a federal crime? Because all of Yellowstone National Park is in the Wyoming court district. Oh, it's not federal. Yeah, okay.

Entire thing. So they take you 470 miles southeast to Cheyenne, Wyoming. And then Steve says, well, the Sixth Amendment allows me to have a speedy and fair trial, right? So then they're like, okay, well, here we go. We're going to get this trial set up. Now, there is also the vicinage clause, which means that you have the right to a jury that comes from the district and the state

where you committed your crime. So what we now have is this incredibly tight Venn diagram of the state where you committed the crime is Idaho and the court district where you committed the crime is Wyoming. So now the prosecutors have to find a jury from within that 50 square mile stretch of Idaho. I'll wind up being on the jury. That's Yellowstone. Now, here's the issue. Because I'm the only guy that was probably in there.

Nobody lives there. There's not a single person that lives there. Oh. allowed to go free because they cannot give you a fair trial made up of your peers that came from the court, or excuse me, that came from the court district and the state because they could only exist in that 50 square mile area. You know, you run the fact checker series. You run the Byron Banner series. I think that there needs to be sort of a postmodern sort of mashup where fact checker fact checks Byron Bancher. So this, this.

Because I just don't, I don't believe it. This legal loophole was brought up by a Michigan state law professor in 2005 in an article that he published. I called him yesterday. Okay. To talk about this. And I had asked him, like, if there's been any movement. Where did he publish it? In the Georgetown, let me find. Georgetown Law Review or something? Georgetown Law Journal.

Okay. 2005. Brian Colt is his name. And he's like, he wrote a piece being like, hey, you know what? Yeah, initially. We're in a real pickle if someone murders someone in here. Initially, he was looking at how if you commit a crime within a certain distance of like a county line in a lot of states, you can actually be tried in the example he was looking at was a crime that happened in detroit that was like kind of in the suburbs but sort of in an urban area and it had a

lot of racial tension in that area and so depending on where this crime uh was prosecuted at would like totally change what the outcome could be you know that's what he was starting to look at and then he came across uh this whole thing with Yellowstone and this issue. Now, this would not happen. Say you guys had the same scenario, but this happened in the Montana portion of Yellowstone, that 2% of the Yellowstone National Park that's in Montana. Yeah, we'd have it be all people from Gardner. There's actually 41 people, 41 adults that live in that zone. So they could hypothetically call for a trial.

You're telling me you'd have to go and that's your jury pool? Yes. Yep. Really? They would have to find and this was actually in 2000. Cal still looks like he's got a lot to say. You know what I just thought is funny is if this ever happened, it could only be

it could only be tried a finite amount of times because the first thing they ask you during your juror interview is, have you ever served on a murder trial? Yeah, you could do it three times. Assuming that all 40 of those people are eligible jurors. And nobody new moves into the area. That's right. Yeah.

As well. So Brian Colt brought up this issue in his 2005 article, and it was actually used in the court of law. I think it was in 2007 or 2008. Somebody killed an elk in Montana's portion of Yellowstone National Park. Okay. now deceased, had brought up this Brian Calt paper about the zone of death and how his trial should have to take place in the Yellowstone portion of Montana, because that's where the crime happened at and how they would have to get a jury from that area. The prosecutors had acknowledged that like, this is an issue we this is going to be like a lot of work for us to make this happen and like bring charges on this person who shot this elk and so

they offered this guy a plea deal basically saying that like you can't fight this any further um and you know if you take this then it's over Right. But he had said that like this issue came up then and it was a big problem. And it was left unresolved. It was left unresolved. And the lawyer. So I said in me killing Yanni, I could do like, I'll do aggravated assault, but I'm not doing murder. Maybe like, okay, bro. It, it would be, it would, it would like certainly drag out much longer than that and this guy who shot this

elk chose that option he chose not to drag it out and just took the plea deal but this brian believes that he could have uh forced their hand and made them have the trial in this portion of montana where he killed the elk now i asked brian if he would feel responsible for something or like what what his feelings would be if ste Steve did go kill Yanni while they were searching for huckleberries. And he said, it's been 15 years. He would be really, really pissed off if this happened because the government has not acted on it. And Congress, he said, if they decide tomorrow they want to change this, they could change this. It would take like three lines. His example, he said it would take five minutes. It wouldn't literally take five minutes, but he said it would take five minutes.

That's how quick this would be to fix this issue. Who dubbed it the zone of death? He did because he discovered it. And his discovery of this has like – it inspired a best-selling novel, a New York Times bestselling novel called Free Fire. An author from Wyoming wrote a book where an attorney goes and he kills four campers in a zone of Yellowstone that has no jurisdiction. Over Huckleberry's. I don't know. It also inspired a movie. I can't remember what it's called, like One Provision or something like that.

And now people are telling me, are you guys familiar with the TV series Yellowstone? Yes. Yeah. That this was actually his way into that show. It came up in the Sunday episode, like three days ago, they talked about, they refer to it as the train station,

I believe. So it's not for a lack of awareness that the government hasn't changed. He said, they just like drag their feet. They don't think it's a big deal. They think that if something did happen, they could still like manipulate wording and understandings to still get a prosecution. And he just basically said that's no way to treat the Constitution. And so he would be really pissed off if something happened.

But basically he said the blood would be on the government's hands, not his own. Hmm. It's dark. Yeah. Hmm. This is dark. Yeah. Very. Work on your hypotheticals though because you could have

just had Steve kill an elk and it would have been fine. Sure. Let's work on that. This is more exciting though. The murder hypothetical. It's not the zone of elk death.

Not the zone of elk death. Right. And they're like, okay, the cost to the county or the state of Wyoming in order to prosecute this the way it should be is going to far exceed, uh, what we, what we can afford basically.

So I asked Brian if like their lack of changing, this is just pure laziness or what it is. And he said, it's, it's a lot laziness, but there is a point to be made where someone didn't feel inspired to change this a few years after Brian brought everyone like national attention to it in 2005. And he said when they looked into changing it, that what would then happen is Yellowstone would have some portions that are now in the ninth court circuit and not the 10th. Wyoming is in the 10th. Montana and Idaho are in the ninth. And when it comes to like environmental issues, that could like cause a lot of problems and open up like some potentially big things that

could happen because now Yellowstone things can like. But that already happens. They already bring it to the ninth. They bring those lawsuits to the ninth because they know they'll, the they know the anti-hunting crowd brings lawsuits to the – is it the ninth that's in Missoula? Yeah. Like if you're suing against a grizzly bear delisting or suing against wolf delisting, you always want to make sure it lands in Missoula because then you'll get a judge who's like, oh, I don't want anybody to hurt those poor things.

And if you sue and it lands in Wyoming, they'll be like, well, we're going to go with states' rights, mountain wildlife management. Yeah. So that was never the intention of this to like, oh, we're going to manipulate this so it gets in the 10th court district or anything like that. That's just like now a product of it and a reason that they likely will never change it. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps

that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership,

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out if you visit onxMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Okay. Two more geographical ones for you. Yep. Walk me through McFarthest. McFarthest.

Have you guys heard of this before? Only from you, buddy. Okay. Oh, you didn't coin that term? No. No. A statistician did in 2009. He coined McFarthest.

Statistician. Statistician. Yeah. Good correction. He coined that term In 2009 when he was looking for What he thought might be the most remote place In the lower 48

How would you guys measure remoteness? Oh I've been to the most remote place on the continent No we're talking lower 48 Well I can tell you There was a lot of factors that went into it It was like proximity to human population Proximity to road Proxim proximity to road, proximity to fuel. And they came out with this thing that it was, you know, in the, if you go up the Kobuk River to the head of the Kobuk River and then over top of the Brooks Range and get to the other side, I think you wind up in this little area that they call like the remotest place in the continent. But no, I don't know. He goes by how far it is from a

McDonald's. That's what he wanted to say. There's a number of different ways you can measure this, right? Like if you wanted to defer this, you can get from a road. Now, a segue here, that would actually land in Yellowstone in the other corner of the park. Is that right? Yeah. Yep. In the southeast corner where the zone of death is in the southwest corner. Gotcha. So that's one way you can measure it. Surprisingly- Like you'd wind up in the thoroughfare. Mm-hmm.

Sure. That's what that zone's called. Yeah. Other ways you can measure it- That's farthest from a road. Yeah, it's the furthest from a road in the lower 48. Okay. It's in the southeast corner of Yellowstone.

If you want to look for the least populous county, this really surprised me. It landed in Texas. Love County has 134 people. That's.167 residents per square mile. No shit. Yeah, that sounds like a callous kind of place. Is that in the panhandle of Texas? Or in the, you know, the staked plains there?

Couldn't tell you. The Ayano Estacado? Loving County, Texas, Yanni, if know, the staked plains there. Couldn't tell you. The Ayano Estacado. Loving County, Texas, Yanni, if you want to find it. No kidding. Yeah. Because Alaska doesn't have counties. They have boroughs.

That's a couple ways you can measure remoteness, but this person decided it's the furthest you can get from a McDonald's. Okay. And the cool thing about- Makes his job really, really easy. The cool thing about makes his job really really easy the cool thing about measuring remoteness that way is that it can move around then and whatever that spot would be is then mcfurthest so in his first version of the map in 2009 he found that mcfurthest

landed in northwestern south dakota which is basically the same area when we talked about Three Toes of the Wolf or where Hugh Glass got mauled. Right there. On the Grand. Right there. Yep. That's where the first inclination of McFarless landed. But then he looked back at the data about a decade later and realized that there was a McDonald's closure in Nevada that then moved this. Why would they close a McDonald's?

So I touched on this in the Barroom Banter. I went to their Yelp page, which still existed despite them being closed for a number of years. And it had like, let me see here. It had 15 Yelp reviews averaging 1.5 stars. Goo. I'm going to read you some of the quotes here from the reviews. Spencer, great job on this one he really brings it man thank you so Wendy said

she said quite possibly the worst McDonald's on the planet Paul said atmosphere 3 stars food 1 star service 2 stars the whole brand promise of McDonald's is 3 stars no it's like But the whole brand promise of McDonald's is the same.

It's three stars. No, it's the same no matter where you go. How do you mess it up? We give you the giant bag of fries. You take the fries and put it in our proprietary oil blend, in our proprietary fryer. It's meant to rule rule out human error this seems as though it's like a culture thing like it just didn't didn't work there so jason in his review said my worst mcdonald's experience ever and then what's interesting about those the reviews

is they're coming from people who like mcdonald they're coming from mcdonald's fans they know the baseline of mcdonald's is shitty these aren't people like like McDonald's. They're coming from McDonald's fans. They know the baseline of McDonald's is shitty. These aren't people like, I had never heard of this place, but my God. These are people who are let down. Let down by the McDonald's experience at that particular McDonald's. Go on. My favorite review, though, came from Allison, who was one of the last reviews left of this McDonald's.

She said, the cashier Cody was more stoned than a boulder. He had hickeys all over his neck. Well done, Cody's girlfriend. So that was one of the final reviews and likely why this McDonald's got shut down. So McFarthis, because this McDonald's closed, moved 1,100 miles southwest from northwestern South Dakota to halfway between Las Vegas and Reno. And at this new locale, you can now get 13 miles further from a Big Mac. And what's that exact locale look like? The exact locale, it is now on BLM land, and it's actually right on the edge of Area 51.

So you can go reach this place if you wanted. Sounds like a wild horse and a Martian. That's right. Staying in there right now. This is what the person wrote in 2018 when they updated the McFarless location. They said, at its center, by my calculations, 40 minutes of washboard south from the extraterrestrial highway and a few clicks to the civilian side of the greater Area 51 perimeter fence, you'll find Lower 48's current McFarthist spot. A sandy swatch of Silvergate sagebrush just over 120 miles as the crow flies

from the nearest McDonald's. What's the distance? 120 miles. No shit. It was actually pretty surprising. You would think that you can get further than 120 miles from a McDonald's. Yeah. But that's it. Do you remember now? I don't know because the reach of McDonald's really struck me when we were, one of the, I can't remember. I think Obama took steps to normalize relations know normalize relations with cuba um which i think

will eventually happen because i think people are most people in america have forgot they've forgotten why we're real mad at cuba but anyways they were gonna um like the the the hatred the hatred wanes but i remember hearing and that's not a big island and i remember reading this article i was talking about uh western you know or like american corporate world's plans for normalized relations with cuba and i remember reading that mcdonald's was planning on going into cuba lightly with 24 stores or like some plan and i was like that's light so then i thought there must be just a lot of mcdonald's is around man if you want to go visit McFarthest, I put a pin for it in the article on our website. It's barroombanter.com, McFarthest, the furthest you can get from a McDonald's. The closest town, the McDonald's that close, it's Tonopah, Nevada. So if you do go there, you're still in good shape because there is a Burger King and a Subway in that town.

Oh. They have a two-star. This guy now I'm down on. It's a little cutesy. It's a little cutesy. I think he needs to find another way to figure out the remotest spot. I like this one. I really like this one.

It's a little far. It's a little outside of our wheelhouse uh here at meat eater but i think that a good fact checker spencer when you finish up the squirrels yep how they bite how they do bite the balls off squirrels would be how they do would be are there really 24 ingredients or whatever the hell it is in McDonald's French fries. I don't know if I've heard that claim. Is that like some old marketing that I wouldn't be familiar? I don't think that's a thing that they're proud of.

It's damn sure not a potato and some salt and oil. It's they make a slurry. They make a slurry and then form that slurry back into the shape of a French fry. That gets frozen and fried. 19 ingredients. 19. Is that true? That'd be a good one for you.

And Loving County was in the panhandle. Good job. The Llano Estacado. Staked plains for you people that don't speak that whatever language yano escato is uh okay one more for you spencer one more uh one more thing i'd like you to explain okay the most instagrammed places outdoor places in america this is another article that i wrote as part of our barroom banter series and uh this this isn't something that's like new coverage. Okay.

The USA Today has looked at a similar thing before. Other websites have looked at this. They've always looked at like the most Instagram places in the world, the most Instagram places in the United States, things like that. But nobody has looked at the most Instagrammed outdoor places in each state. So that's why this list was unique. And I gathered this by looking at what the USA Today had already done, some other websites, and then also using data available from Instagram

with hashtags and tags and things like that. And looked at the most Instagram places in every single state. And here's another segue. Wyoming's was, of course, Yellowstone National Park. So it all connects. Gotcha. Gotcha. Did you guys look at this list at all of the most Instagram places?

I've been waiting to talk about it. I'm looking at it right now. Okay. Okay. Is there anything that stands out to you? Like what do you think of Michigan's? Michigan's is Silver Lake Sand Dune State Park. No.

That doesn't check out? No, that doesn't surprise me. It doesn't shock me. Yeah. So from the 50 that I gathered here, there were 15 state parks, 10 national parks, eight beaches, six lakes, three city parks, three national forests or monuments, and then five miscellaneous locations. And the miscellaneous ones were examples like, I think Hawaii had a volcano. What was another one? Somebody had, there was just some oddballs like that. But my favorite miscellaneous ones were in Nebraska and Iowa. And as a South Dakotan, I'd like to rag on those states any chance I get.

And this list made it real, real easy. Because Nebraska's most Instagrammed outdoor place is Valos Pumpkin Patch, which I thought was really great. I really enjoyed that. Why is that, I wonder? I don't know. Especially when you look at the states next door, right? Like South Dakota is Badlands National Park, which is an incredible area. And then you just go a little bit south and you have Vala's Pumpkin Patch in Nebraska.

Iowa's. Well, Vala's Pumpkin Patch might be one hell of a place. Maybe. I'm so intrigued by finding that out. I want to go next time I'm driving through Colorado. Iowa's is the bridges of Madison County. Yeah. And there's a picture of these in the article.

Did you look at the picture? No. It's six of these rural bridges that are apparently very popular to go take pictures in front of and tag. It's certainly probably the most unique place. Well, you know there's that old love movie, The Bridges of Madison County. I did come across that looking this up.

You haven't seen that? No. I don't know if that's what inspired this. That's why this is. Or if this is just like. That's totally why. That's totally why. It's because of the old love movie, The Bridges of Madison County.

How old is it though? And is it, would it like. From my lifetime. Yeah, it does seem weird because it does. Would like 30 and 20 somethings appreciate that? I think this is like sorority girls in nearby colleges that think it's a cool place. I don't think some old movie. It's a good point because the people that love that movie probably aren't Instagramming too much.

Now, White Sands National Monument in New Mexico surprises me a little bit because there's so little. It's a hard place to get to, and there's so little it's a hard place to get to and there's so little traffic going through there it's stunning you can see it on like you know you can see it from outer space you can see it from real high satellite imagery like this like weird ass patch of white in the state but it surprises me that people that it's that it's difficulty to get to didn't change, that didn't make it a lower score. That's probably one of like, there's not very many examples on this list where like we would actually want to go to and hang out.

These are like very popular areas, obviously, as you can see on the list. The lakes, the lakes were like a cool example though, because pretty much every lake on this list has like really quality fishing, like Martin and Alabama, like Norman and North Carolina, Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri, Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, Kentucky Lake in Kentucky. Those are all like regular spots for bass fishing tournaments. They all have, uh, like some of them have good walleye fishing. So like, as far as places we would actually want to visit i think the lakes are a few of the a few of the examples on this

list did uh when you pulled this list together did you feel um proud of your fellow man or did you feel disappointed by your fellow man in his predictability? That's a good question. Um, part of the list though, is like also manipulated by me. Like I could have left out beaches and city parks if I wanted, but there was just like an overwhelming, like what you would count as an outdoor place. There's just like an overwhelming amount of States where those were like head and shoulders above something like a state park or a national park or something like that so when you see all the city parks on the list and the beaches it's a little bit disappointing that like those are you know some of the most popular instagram places meaning like for new york's to be central park is the central park

count as an outdoor place right right i think to the people who go to Central Park, they would argue that it very much does. That's what I'm saying. For some people, like the beach or a city park is the outdoors. So I felt like that's why those were worth including. If you want to see the full list, all 50 of these, again, this is on our website. Barroom Banter, the most Instagrammed outdoor places in each state. Thank you very much. I really like the graphics that someone did for Barroom Banter.

That's a whole big conspiracy. That looks great. Okay. What's the conspiracy? That it's based off that bar in Mile City? It is. It is. It is that.

He told me that it is. We used to spend a great deal of time in that bar. What is that bar? Who did it? The Montana Bar. It's just called the Montana that it is. We used to spend a great deal of time in that bar. What is that bar? Who did it? The Montana Bar. It's just called the Montana Bar. Yeah. Okay.

It's down the road from the Bison Bar. Okay. I used to practically live there. In the window, they have an Audubon. They have a full-size mount of what's regarded as an extinct bighorn sheep species, the Audubon. The Audubonahn sheep which now they also got a lot of stuffed uh heads of trail steers that used to do that they used to run on the trail runs from texas up to montana for the double winter they got some lead steers in there there's a bullet hole

in there still from when someone uh there's some kind of shooting in there there's that's the thing you could do too is famous bullet holes and bars because you know here's the deal is uh you frequent in many of them listen the slippery noodle independent indianapolis there's a bullet hole oh yeah john dillinger lake independence or independence lake up by Marquette in Michigan. You know the Robert Traver, the writer and he wrote Anatomy of a Murder? You know the story Anatomy of a Murder? Nope. Anatomy of a Murder is based off an actual murder.

It's like in Jimmy Stewart, they did a film and Jimmy Stewart played the prosecutor in Anatomy of a Murder. And it was written by a novelist who The prosecutor. In anatomy of murder. And it was written by a novelist. Who he was an avid fisherman. And wrote a lot about fishing.

But he actually not. He wrote a novelization. Of something that actually happened to him in his life. And there was a guy. And a woman living at a campground. And the guy was stationed there to work. Like on a some kind of military installation and his wife and he's off working a very jealous husband he's off working and supposedly he gets

concerned that his wife is running around with some other dude who's living at the campground on the night of the murder she like sees a bear in the campground gets a little scared by the bear i could be getting certain parts that's wrong but i've been to all these places i slept in the campground went to the bar he she gets nervous about a black bear hanging around the campground and that's why she explains she had to head down to the bar that's her story okay the bears in the campground therefore i went to the bar other folk believe that she was down in the bar because she had taken to, she had established an amorous, is that the right word? Yeah.

Amorous. An amorous relationship with some local heavy. The irritated husband goes down there and kills the guy. And the bullet hole, supposedly, is still in the bar. When I went in there and I said, I want to see the bullet hole, the guy said, well, problem is, you know, this is the hole everybody says is the bullet hole behind the bar. But back then, the bar was over on that wall.

So he's like, I don't know. But he goes, you're not the first guy to come in here asking about the bullet hole in the bar. But yeah, the great movie, Anatomy of a Murder. Jimmy Stewart's in it. He's always fishing brook trout, wrapping them up in newspaper. You ever seen this?

Never seen it. I'm in, though. I'm in. He hasn't seen Bridges of Madison County. I don't think this. Robert Traver, he's written some of the most beautiful stuff about fishing. Why are you looking at me like that? I'm in.

Type him up. Okay. That's his pen name. What's his real damn name? Hold on. I'm going to pull this up. People need to know about this. I'm going to answer Yanni's question about the graphic for Barmer Man.

It was made by Hunter Spencer, who is a listener, a reader, a watcher of Meat Eater, and he is awesome at what he does. Can I interrupt? Good job, Hunter. His name was John D. Volker. His pen name was Robert Traver. Go on. I'm proud of the bartender

for actually telling you what's what instead of just being like Oh yeah here's the bullet hole Getting you all happy about it Waiting for that $5 tip That'll be $20 You want to hear one of Robert Travers Famous quotes about fishing

He says I fish because I love to Because I love the environs where trout are found Which are invariably beautiful And hate the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful, and hate the environs where crowds of people are found, which are invariably ugly. Eh? I like it. Eh?

Eh? So tell Yanni what you're telling him. I already told him everything. What's the scandal about the sign? Well, it's just the way that Spencer told me. He's like, I found this guy, and he's really good at design and art, and his name is Hunter Spencer. I just thought, really?

His name's Hunter Spencer. Right. Yeah, I wouldn't buy that. Yeah, we should pay him to do this art for my stuff. I was like, oh, yeah? And it turns out I was wrong. You did get a hold of the guy. We got a hold of the guy. Well, we had a mystery like that. I wish I was like, oh yeah. And it turns out, turns out I was wrong. You did get a hold of the guy. We got a hold of the guy.

Well, we had a mystery like that. I wish I was that tall. For a while, we identified one of our internet trolls. We started to think it was the flip-flop flasher. Yeah. Whoa. Because the internet troll would know things. I'm like, how would he know that?

And then I was like, Seth knows that. And everything started to add up. Seth started to add up for like everything that he would say we'd be like guess what we're announcing next week and he'd be like it's up there you know and i'm like a son of a bitch i'm like who would possibly know this i think seth would know that because he was in the car one day when i was talking about it he's got a mustache did you confront him oh yeah you did he'd get real hot yeah He'd get real hot when we'd bring it up. Like the kind of hot that only made me more suspicious.

Have you disproved it yet? No. Because we were able to disprove Hunter Spencer's a real guy. Big fan of Meteater. Shout out to him. Wonderful job. Yeah. Spencer's like, Hunter Spencer would prefer that you just hand the check to me.

Yes. I'll get it to him. There's a chance that it's a long con, and Spencer has created this Instagram account and been doing it for years. He probably bought some of Cal's paperwork. Here's his social security number. That's right.

I wish I was that talented. He does an awesome job, and you're going to be seeing more of his stuff on our website. Oh, he's come up with some good shit, man. And Barroom Bantered is also powered by Element. Powered by Element. We have a new title sponsor. I'm drinking that right now.

Nice. I'm drinking it, too. So am I. Yeah. Just like Onyx is a title sponsor of this year's podcast, Element is a title sponsor of Barroom Bantered. They make it all possible. Steve, I know you like their stuff.

Ben really likes their stuff, maybe too much. Yeah, snort it right off the table. It keeps you real hydrated is what I'm telling you. All right, Ben, now that you're well hydrated, you're in the hot seat now. Walk us through the Brent Bone bear attack story. Brett Bond. Brett Bond. Now.

That's what you get from reading stuff and not hearing it. Yeah, not knowing. Yeah, we've had a few guys on our team that have helped me work on this. Sam Lungard helped me work on this. He was calling him Brett Bone for about six months before I corrected it. Bon. Bon. Brett Bon.

Insane story. This, yeah. I'm not, you know, I'm impressed with, you have a computer in front of you there, Spencer? I don't want to go too far behind the scenes. I do. I don't, so I'm just going to recall this from memory. So it may not sound quite as slick as Spencer's stories, but... Do you want to borrow his computer?

Nope. Okay. Nope. I think I can get it. You guys have all seen what we'll just call... It's hard to describe, although we try to describe it in a podcast and then everybody's seen the picture everybody's seen the picture my

it's like the Kennedy assassination everybody knows they were when they saw the picture yeah I can tell you where I was yeah Matt Cook sent it to me and I said bullshit

yes that's the best part about this that every I when I first saw it Miles Nolte I'm sure all you guys all the guys on our crew

saw this photo because I walked around showing it to people, as I'm sure you invariably do, to get their reaction. Most people's reaction when they see the photo, it's not of Brett Bond, it's of his father, Glenn Bond. He was attacked by a bear on Denali Highway in Alaska. The bear ripped through with its jaws and its claws, ripped through the, kind of took a chunk out of the center of his face. You know how I'd put it? How would you put it? Yeah. I thought about it a great deal.

Imagine that you're, imagine that you're, I don't, see, I don't want to do this in any way that would be disrespectful. It'd be like opening up a person's face like a pair of butt cheeks. Yeah. I'll leave. I can stick with that. Yanni, you got any comment on that? Stripped away.

Stripped away. Peeled away. Like a pair of butt cheeks. It's not anything like that the more I think about it. No. Yeah. Let's restart.

Let's restart and say that. We described it as it. No, it's not too hard to describe and you can do it without being disrespectful I just tried and look what I came up with it's I mean

it's like basic anatomy and I think there's been enough sort of like gore in media like done that's so that's similar it's like

someone's face has been taken off and it's sort of like it you can still tell that there is life. It's almost like a skull with still muscle attached to it. And there's eyeballs that you can tell have life in them. And there are teeth there that you can still tell are attached to jaws that work.

But there is no skin. And it is more like a skull with flesh on it as opposed to like a human face with skin yeah can i take another stab please i just i only want to take another stab because the the opening up the butt cheeks one dude that's not right it's not even i don't know where i came from well it'd be like this i was trying to support you this is my next stab okay it'd be like if you took your skin a knife and made an opening cut up the center of someone's face so you start below their chin and make your opening incision like you're gutting a deer up up up up up and then skin down each side a little ways how's that big ways yeah skin down

a ways i think if you combine yanni's and yours you have and a butt cheek and remove the butt cheeks you got what it is. And I think that there's a couple of things. And I said no. I said that's like a, I don't know what that is, but that's like a fake thing.

I think there's a few, you got to kind of start with the emotionality of seeing the photos. Now there's videos as well. Brett tells me there's a minute plus video that,

because this is where this all began. There's a minute plus video of his dad talking. And if you've seen the photo, you've invariably seen the clip that Brett shared on his Instagram of his dad talking. Shards of flesh hanging down over

what would be his lips. Can you back up to what exactly is the pre-attack? Are you going to get there? Yeah, I'll get there. People need to know. Because you said on the highway, and I think that might lead know. Yeah, I think we need to address where this began. Because you said on the highway, and I think that might lead people. Yeah, yeah. This, it's so, I think where this all starts is the imagery.

Because this is the thing that brought me to this. That's true, yeah. That brought most people to this. It certainly brought me to it. It was a strategic omission. Yes. And we'll get there. I've seen it, Spencer.

Spencer showed it. I want to show Steve how wrong he was. He's showing me how little it resembles anything to do with butt cheeks. If your butt cheeks look like that, you've got a bigger problem than listening to this podcast. I think it looks like when you have a rifle and you shoulder shoot a deer and then you skin away the hide, like what you have left there. Yeah, that's good. Just like that kind of carnage. That's good.

So the video that Brett Bond, so we'll just start here. Brett Bond, earlier this year, March, mid-March 2020, Brett Bond shares a series of images and videos on his Instagram. It's at BBB Alaskan. You can go there and look. And at this time, the guy's got a couple hundred followers, eight, 900 followers. He shares this video and this photo, and there's another, there's a series of, I believe, seven

images. One of the images is his dad sitting on a snow machine with this big eight foot grizzly bear laying in front of him. Kind of dead. Real dead. The neck, that's the leading photo. But then you scroll past that, you get to see the photo of his dad without a face. Scroll even further, you get to see his dad talking, speaking rather normally, muffled because of the shards of flesh that are hanging down over what would be his lips,

which are peeled away. The shards of flesh that are hanging from what what would be his lips, which are peeled away. The shards of flesh that are hanging from what would have been his nose, which is peeled away. One of his eyes is, I mean, it's gone. His face just isn't attached to his skull anymore. That's a good way of putting it. It's more like a curtain. Yeah.

It's just, it looks, it's the most surgical, it almost looks surgical. As you said, you could take your skin and knife, slide down the middle and peel that thing away. It has this like weird violence to it, but also it looks surgical. And this is important for later on

because how he recovered is it's important that we know that this was not, this bear didn't really harm any of the bones in his face and cartilage. It's just kind of skin and flesh peeled away. So now it looks like a horror movie where through the shards of flesh and blood,

you can see his teeth moving. You can almost see the bone above his teeth. His gums are kind of peeled away. And he's explaining that this bear came. He said, it came fast, came at me fast. There's other clips I've seen where he's explaining that this bear came, he said, it came fast. It came at me fast. There's other clips I've seen where he's explaining where the bear was. And so this is the first time

officially anyone has ever seen this. Officially. Ever seen this shared by the person who actually took the video. One is revealed by this dude's kid. Yes. So this is earlier this year. I got sent this to me, I'm sure everyone here did, a hundred times. Yeah, on the DMs.

Yeah, in the DMs. And I think it's important to note that the first emotion is bullshit. No way. Not true. I still haven't called my buddy Matt Koch to tell him that I'm – That you know. Because he was coming to me for like – Could this be? The expert insight to which I was like, that's you know. Because he was coming to me for like... Could this be?

The expert insight to which I was like, that's a lie. That's what I said. It's what makes this thing so... There's so many elements to this, but it's one of the things that makes it so amazing. So one of the other photos in this seven photo run on Instagram

is a photo taken in a place in Wasilla called Diamond D Custom Leather. And it's the owner of Diamond D, Glenn and Brett. And it is roughly, I think, nine days after the attack. And if you look at it, okay, Glenn Bond, 77-year-old father of Brett Bond, looks like he got attacked years ago. When you see the nine days after his face looks like it's completely gone and there's no way

that it could be reconstructed or that he could survive. Nine days later he's looking pretty good. What? Nine days later he's shopping. He's going back. He's visiting a leather store. He's going back. That's visiting a leather store. He's going back. That's where I wind up having a, that's where I, and I didn't even know this, but that still is puzzling to me.

There is a cascade of puzzling events that you, each time you're like, no way. And I've talked to, and other people on our team have talked to Joe Farnato and Sam Lundgren, the plastic surgeon. They had three surgeons. We've talked to all three of them. Have you? Yep. We've talked to the rescue pilot who rescued him, and we'll get to that. We've talked to other hunting guides that were on the scene.

We talked to a retired sheriff from Wyoming who was on the scene when they arrived back at the lodge. We've talked to Brett, Glenn, their mother, Lorraine. I mean, so we've covered anything that you think might not be true because a lot of this will sound like it's not true we've covered off on it and there's and there's people involved that are credible have no reason to lie and can confirm basically every insane detail of this and we had to do it because yeah you've like quadruple checked it because you had to because every time you hear it you're like thereruple checked it. Because you had to. Because every time you hear it, you're like, there's no way. It's impossible. So anyway, that's what's...

Isn't that funny? Like a funny thing as a journalist to be that someone tells you something. And you have to be, you have to say, you know, with all due respect. Yeah. I'm going to call some people to make sure you're telling me the truth. It's awkward. Yeah. Well, there's an element here...

Is there someone that can corroborate this? It's kind of like, well, what are you saying? Well, that brings up an important element of this story of the many things we got to go through to get through it. This, so, the photos weren't taken this year. They weren't taken last year. They weren't taken the year before. The photos were taken in 2016.

Four years. He sat on them for four years. Four years. He sat on them as he describes, and you'll learn even more about this. This is informed by another thing that happened to Brett Bond. He sat on them because they're a private family. They did not want any fame from this. And you guys will know, we cover bear attacks all the time. Bear attacks are a chance to get seen, to tell your story.

People want to know, especially something as insane as the photos and videos that Brett Bond had on his phone. So for four years, these things were sequestered basically on his phone. He may have texted them to a few people. He may have shown them to a few people. But to his admission, that's where they stayed. Unfortunately, at the Diamond D Custom Leather, which was, well, let's say four years before where they took that photo nine days after the attack. Brett's mom, Lorraine Phillips, who's there with them at the shop,

asks if Brett doesn't mind sending some of these images to some of the family members that are there of the owner of Custom D Leather. He makes holsters. Yeah, he makes holsters. And Brett was using, we haven't even got here and we'll get it. He was using one of these holsters. Brett was when he saved his dad Glenn's life from the bear. And so they're there.

And they text a couple of these images, specifically the one that you'll see of them in Custom D and the leather shop, the three of them, and the photo that we were just describing of the non-butt cheek, fully removed face. So these two things essentially leak out onto the internet because the mother wants to be kind and share some of these images with some of the folks that are there in the shop that day,

particularly I think the owner's daughter. But it's not clear exactly what happened. We talked to the current guy who runs that shop and he confirmed that this happened. Lorraine Phillips confirmed that this happened. They share these images on a message board. We don't know what message board. We don't know exactly what they said. They shared the images at the time that they were taken. So 2016. So we're talking April, 2016. I believe it was like April 25th

when they were in the shop. So somewhere in that general timeframe. They share these images out onto a message board. And you guys all know how message boards are. And you know how the internet is. And we won't go through all the details

because we've also sussed this out pretty far. In the four years following that message board share, these images that Brett Bond shares himself for the first time four years later become an urban legend. They are trafficked on many websites. There's fake stories about them. They were assigned to a gentleman named Wes Perkins, who was attacked in very much the same way as Glenn Bond, I believe in 2011.

So Wes Perkins, somehow we were never able to like nail down the exact moment when someone said, Hey, that's Wes Perkins. The Bond family believes they know who it was and, and they're suing that person. But this is what kind of gets to the point where Brett Bond wants to share these images now because four years later this thing has been called a hoax it's been assigned to another man

it's been spread around the internet for clickbait it's been it's been mistreated in this way because the real story isn't out there. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew! Our northern brothers

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Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more as a special offer you can get a free three months to try on x out if you visit on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all can i uh i just want to make sure i'm getting this all correct you're gonna have to do this a lot i think and then anyone else who might just i just want to double check on a couple things the timeline yep the mauling happens he takes pictures the day of the mauling nine days later he takes pictures at the double d yeah diamond d diamond d right, the Diamond D people are like Hey, can we see those pictures? He shares the pictures Then the pictures spread out over the course of years

Years But is the kid that took the pictures Is he aware So he's aware That the photos he took are being He's aware Misconstrued Agitated by

Extremely aware of okay agitated by he knows that this is going on extremely aware of it agitated by families so it's not a surprise no they're not like oh we didn't know i got you so he's like what the hell that's not that's my dad to the point this guy this fellow west that the did he somehow take ownership and make some sort of monetary gain off these pictures no so how's he getting sued? This is something that we've not nailed down, so I don't want to bring up any names. It's common for people to get sued,

and then it turns out there's no standing. Wes isn't getting sued. The reporter that the Bond family believes fabricated the Wes Perkins story connected to the imagery is getting... possibly getting sued. Sure, I can see that.

I mean, I'm no lawyer. They believe he fabricated the story and then sold it to other outlets to make money. That's what they believe. So he, yeah, I got you. Using the West Perkins story and the Bond images. He profited. Which, I mean, you know, West Perkins, we won't go through West Perkins' entire story, but if you read his story, it is eerily similar to that of Glenn Bond.

But if this dude, not to get you too off track here, but if this dude, if this journalist, he was using pictures to which he didn't have permission. Yeah. And selling the articles. And I won't mention all the websites. Some of them you will know. They're in our industry. And we've talked to people at these websites journalistically. They sold these things as clickbait, right?

Wes Perkins, man with no face. Wes Perkins, man with no face. All the way up to, and I will mention this guy's name, Tom Miranda. You guys know Tom Miranda? Oh, yeah. I introduced myself to him one time. We are two months into this investigation, and it was a legitimate investigation, and shout out to Joe and Sam for helping with this.

Tom Miranda posts, this is months after Brett Bond has posted these images on his Instagram. Tom Miranda posts images on his Instagram and says, check out Wes Perkins. This is a month ago. Check out Wes Perkins. No, I used to buy Tom Miranda's, not DVDs, VHS tapes when I was a kid. I had like water trapping with Tom Miranda. Tom Miranda's DVDs, not DVDs, VHS tapes. Oh, he's the best. When I was a kid, I had like water trapping with Tom Miranda. Tom Miranda's the best. And just imagine for me, like it just highlights the fact that the internet, you just put this stuff in the blender that is the internet and it shoots out weird things at weird times.

And so we ended up just saying, hey, just buy the buy, Tom. No, you're using someone else's images you're attributing to them to something that's not true for to get some traffic on your Instagram

and what Tom think about that he said well I got it from this story from the American Shooting Journal it was passed on to me from

an outfitter in Africa I said well that American I was like okay that American Shooting Journal yes and that American Shooting Journal. Yes.

And that American Shooting Journal article, if you Google today, I think Brett Bond bear attack, it might come up. It comes up in the first page. Are we going to get to hear the actual bear attack story? Yes. That's where people complain when we did a podcast about this that it took too long to get to the bear attack story. But there's so much to unpack. Oh, no. I like all this stuff.

Yeah, this is great. I don't care. What happened? So, here we go. So now we're at the point where we have the first element of this where there is a conspiracy. There is this internet urban legend around these images. All this stuff has happened.

Brett, Glenn, their mother slash wife, Lorraine, they know about this. It's agitating to them. So this, among other things, leads to Brett sharing these images. And when he shares the images, does he share them as setting the record straight, man? No. Okay. He shares them as I want to highlight bear safety because he's trained.

He's taken very constructive very helpful tone he takes a very constructive and helpful tone saying like hey you're in bear country check this out he doesn't i mean i don't want to give a spoiler there but the dudes were hunting grizzlies yeah okay and they're and they're you're inviting a certain proximity which that's a whole nother there there are some you run into some oxymoronic stuff here but this there's this is so detailed and so deep that there's almost no way you're not going to run into some stuff that just doesn't really track. This story, you know, I stole this from someone down the road, but this is one of those stories that makes its own gravy. Yeah. It's full of gravy.

So if you want to, if we want to just go back to the actual attack, and we'll go through this briefly because it's got a lot of stuff that – It's lingering. It's lingering. You want to know what actually happened. So a guy has no face, and we know he gets his face ripped off. We also know that nine days later he's doing okay, generally okay, walking around, talking to people, taking photos. So those are the kind of facts, the structure of what we know. Well, if you want to get to know Brett and Glenn Bond, Glenn Bond's a retired teacher.

They're both natives of Wasilla, Alaska. Brett Bond is a 33-year-old hunting guide. He's been a hunting guide basically his whole life. You go to his Instagram, you look around, this dude is an Alaskan's Alaskan. He's hunting, fishing, that's what he does. He guides all year round. He guides bears, caribou, whatever, everything you know that to be available in Alaska. This guy's done it. Pretty hardcore

outdoorsman. His dad is a similarly hardcore outdoorsman, but he was a retired teacher and also a hunting guide in his free time. These guys have had scrapes with bears over the years. His dad was charged by a bear with a client one time. There's this whole story that you can read about or listen to in our podcast. So these guys know their way around this country. They're not rookies. There's no way to think that they don't know exactly what they have to do. In fact, Glenn Bond has killed a charging grizzly before. So he knows what to do. So these guys, they've been hunting together since Brett was seven. He's now 33. His dad's 77. And they decided that they want to go on a bear hunt. It's in April. I think I want to say April. Yeah. It's in early April. Bears are just coming

out of their dens or still in their dens. They're going to take a snow machine up the Denali Highway into the mountains. It's not on an actual highway. From a lodge, 25 miles, they went on snow machine. So I'll just try to speed this up because it'll take a while. 25 miles on a snow machine, they drive. He describes in detail that morning. He said it was a beautiful morning. It was just starting to get warm. So the snow was starting to melt. So they didn't want to get too far away because they didn't want to get into a situation on two snow machines where they couldn't turn back if the snow was to melt too much. And so Brett and Glenn come upon what they think is a den, hole inside of a hill. This hill has a pretty steep slope going down to where they have parked their snow machines. And they see,

Brett sees tracks going in and then possibly tracks going around the backside of this den, this hole in the side of a mountain. So they have this conversation. What are we going to do? They're looking for a bear. They're pretty sure

there might be one in there. Brett decides he's going to go back and check for these tracks, exiting tracks to see. He goes up this slope around the den. He's checking for tracks. He hears screaming. His father is, as he's described it to me, behind him, maybe 100 yards, maybe less, down a slope. Glenn Bond is sitting on a snow machine, like facing the den, basically.

This bear comes essentially charging out of the den. Brett remembers hearing Glenn saying, he's coming out, he's coming out, he's coming out. And before he can turn, he sees just a flash of fur, fur this eight foot grizzly comes out of the den and and basically as brett describes it takes his father like a rag doll and just throws him down the hill but his dad's lining up to try to get a crack at it yeah so his dad so his dad has had this happen before he's got a rifle in his hand he gets a crack at it as the bear's running he pulls his rifle up and again he's done this before blouch blouch well turns out the bear had just dipped down into a little depression in the space between Glen and the den and he shoots over the back of

this bear hmm and he's got you know seconds and it's on him and they're they're rolling down the hill together and so Brett turns around and sees this happening and the reports from the folks that investigated the scene state fit while the officials that investigated scene said his footprints look like an Olympic track athlete like he doesn't you know as he would describe he doesn't, as he would describe, he doesn't really remember what exactly he did. He pulls his.357 pistol from his diamond D holster. .357? I think it's.357. I might be wrong about that.

He pulls his pistol. This is where the internet trolls. Yeah, they're going to say. No, they're like, oh,.357. I think it was.357. I'm sorry, Brett, if I'm wrong. .44 mag means you don't have to shoot twice. I'm sorry if it wasn't a.357.

I'll amend this if I need to. We can look it up. But pulls his pistol and just sprints towards his dad. His dad, at this point, the bear's on top of his father. All that Brett can see is the bear and his dad and blood. And this is, there's a melee, they're screaming, as you would try to imagine what might be happening here. He runs to his dad, pulls up his pistol,

I think.357 or.375, something. And he dumps a couple of rounds into the vitals of the bear. And at this point, the bear kind of stumbles off his dad, stands up, he shoots it in the chest, it comes down a little bit, then he, at some point in all of this, shoots it between the eyes as it's coming at him. And he describes, he's like, I knew, I just knew I had to get between my dad and the bear. And at some point I knew if I didn't, if this shot didn't go exactly where it needed to, I was dead.

My dad was dead. And this is all, I mean, this is, you know, imagine this happens in a span of 30 seconds, 45 seconds, who knows? There's no way to time it out. So that all of this happens. And if you, you know, if you think about like it's it's here's a guy that's trained in survival he's he's he's trained in backcountry medicine he's a guide he kind of understands this so i think some of this for him if i was just judging his actions some of it him is just what he would do for anyone but there's an element of

he gets this done as he describes that he describes in a pretty calm way like hey man i ran down the hill and boom boom boom this bear's dead so bear's dead he describes thinking he's gonna seeing his dad in a pool of blood thinking he's gonna arrive to his father being dead or the last moments of his father's life. You know, one or the other, not thinking that. So he gets over there and he says that his dad is, while his face is torn apart, he's got some injuries in his wrist. His dad is complaining about his wrist injury. Not really understanding, I don't think, what's going on with the face.

And Brett tries to do a bunch of things. He checks his father for bleeding. He determines that there's no arterial bleeding. He's not going to bleed out in any way that the major damage is to the face. So he takes off his handkerchief, tries to tie it around his dad's face as you might try to repair the damage. His dad immediately begins to choke on his own flesh and so at this moment at this point his dad is talking fairly coherently doesn't seem like other than him complaining about his wrist seems like he can he can have a conversation with his son the physical act of though, looks like it would be really hard. Yeah.

And there's a whole bunch of other, as we get down the road in the story, there's a whole bunch of other things that happen that you don't think with an injury like that that he would be able to pull off being that cogent. Or the physical act of moving your mouth up and down and your tongue up and down and making the words come out. Yeah, not just the mental state, but like actually being able to form words. Physical part. So, you know, fast forward to how this video gets made. Glenn Bond never loses control. Once I think he realizes he's not going to die, Brett realizes he's not going to die in the moment.

Glenn Bond is the toughest person I've ever heard of. He never loses control. He's instructing his son what to do. He instructs his son to take this video so his mom, so they can, in case he dies or something, that his mom will know what happened. And so there's somewhere out there's a minute long video of a man with no face just explaining these things, explaining what happened essentially. And so a bunch of other things happen. It takes them about an hour, I believe, if I'm recollecting that right, about an hour to get on the snow machine and head back to the lodge where they were staying.

It's about 24, a little bit over a 24-mile ride on a snow machine. So Brett loads his dad up behind him, and they ride. I think it takes another hour to get back to the lodge. All the while, his dad is back there with, he can't cover his face up. There's not a whole lot you can do other than just ride the snow machine. And to this point, again, you reiterate, this guy is with it. He is telling his son what to do. He's telling his son, like, we got to calm down.

We got to stay calm. This is what we got to do. Were got to stay calm we got to this is what we got to do were they able to radio for help ahead of time yes i believe that they did because well they they radioed for help but they're staying at a lodge that's pretty far out there in the story that we're working on we're continuing to work when we talk about exactly how far the lodge is from the nearest town and then the town from the nearest hospital. This all comes into play when they finally get back to the lodge. They meet a guy there named Dan Estes, who's a sheriff in Wyoming,

and he, I believe, is Brett's godfather. He's got a relationship to the family. He's there. He knows them. He's the first person who sees them come back. This is a guy who's been a sheriff. He's retired. He's been a sheriff for 40 years. He's seen some shit. He's seen first person who sees them come back. This is a guy who's been a sheriff. He's retired. He's been a sheriff for 40 years.

He's seen some shit. He's seen some people shot. He's seen some awful things. He says it's the worst thing he's ever seen in his life. By the time they do a 24-mile ride back to this lodge, the skin, the flesh that you can see in the video is now sloughed off of his face. As they described it to me, the chin is exposed like the chin. Imagine you're the bones underneath your chin is now exposed. So they now have to go to,

they go to the owners of the lodge. They start calling for medevac helicopters to come take him to hospital. They, so they do all of this while this is happening. They can't get anybody to commit to come. I think the owners of the lodge said they went through two or three phone calls before they could get somebody to commit via weather, timing, location, that they were safe to come and pick them up and ferry them to the hospital. While this is happening, Dan Estes is out there

trying to keep everybody calm. He describes this moment where he's trying to give, he's asking Glen Bond, hey, what can I do for you, man? Glen Bond says, I'd like to get a sip of water. He puts, to get some water, puts a straw in it, tries to give it to Glen. Glen can't get the straw in his mouth. Can't get the straw through the shards of flesh, through the gore and into his mouth, and it can't drink. So that's just a moment that i'll from that from hearing that conversation is a moment i remember because it's just like denotes how ridiculous all this really is so at this point they finally get a hold of a guy named brett westcott who's a medlife alaska pilot he's a u.s army pilot in iraq and a bunch of places.

Great dude, badass dude. He agrees that it's safe, that they can fly. They're going to go pick him up at the lodge and ferry him to Providence Hospital, the best hospital in Alaska. They're going to go there, pick him up, take him there. He lands. He describes he's got two flight medics on hand. They land there.

He describes similar. This guy's seen some shit as well on hand. They land there. He describes similar. This guy's seen some shit as well. He's been through war. He's ferried special operators into missions. He's seen some stuff. Same thing. Says, I've never seen anything like this in my life. I thought this person is going to die.

There's no way. At this point, you're really like, the pictures are true. Yeah. And this is where, that's where it's important too, because I'm, we're continuing to say like, there's no way. And we're not even to the most amazing point, I don't think, but there's no way. And then you get these people that have no reason to lie, that have no reason. Because we, I won't mention the names of the people along the investigation.

We ran into people that said this is bullshit people in high ranking spots in alaska fish and game other places they won't say this on the record we've had i had biologists they're saying the photo is bullshit yeah yep i just have another thing it looks like never mind he had your chance any so this brett westcott's another really good interview. He really talks about what happens when they come to pick him up. And you show him the picture, and he says, yep. Oh, yeah.

Yep. It's worse. The picture doesn't do it justice. That's what he says. He says, by the time, again, by the time, all this is hours later when he arrives, all this skin that was kind of newly ripped open, ripped off of the skull of Glenn Bond has kind of, through a snowmobile ride, through time laying around, trying to drink water, all these things, has kind of like peeled itself away, fallen away. The weight of the flesh has pulled it away from the face. And so he describes this as they're getting, I'm not even sure how to turn this over, but as they're getting Glenn onto the helicopter,

Brett Bond, who has been a hero to this point, is taking photos, has his cell phone out, he's taking photos of the badges of the flight medics and the pilot. There's a quick, I have to do a quick version of a story that would take a whole other podcast to tell at this point. So when Brett is taking photos of these people's name tags, the plan is to take Glenn to Providence Hospital, which again I said is the top hospital in Alaska. If your face is messed up, you're going to want to go there probably. Glenn and Brett both refuse to go there going to want to go there probably. Glenn and Brett both refuse to go there. They want to go somewhere else. They will not go to Providence.

And I have to go through this quickly. Apologies to anyone that was involved in this that really wants the true story out there. We'll get it out. Promise. What happened years before, Brett Bond is on a bear hunt years before, five, six years before this 2016 attack. He's on a bear hunt. He has incredible insomnia. Doesn't sleep for 10, 14, doesn't sleep for over 10 days. Comes back to Wasilla, goes to the hospital. They give him some steroids and prednisone. They think he just has a, who knows what they think he has, just terrible insomnia.

This keeps getting worse. His parents bring him back to Providence Medical, bring him back to the doctor. He eventually makes it to Providence Medical. he goes through a psychotic break psychotic episode that lasts months where i read a 500 page legal document of discovery from all of the all the doctors and nurses that treated brett bond he goes through a insane ordeal over six or so months where he is he doesn't know where he is he thinks all the doctors are fbi agents there. There's reports in these medical documents I read where he's in a shower with his clothes on, defecating in his own pants. He has a prolonged psychological battle where they are giving him heavy doses of steroids and other drugs. His mom, Lorraine Phillips, his dad, they're Jehovah's Witnesses.

And so they don't believe in medicine. They believe the medicine is the problem. So they have a battle with the Providence medical team over this. Eventually, the Providence medical team bans the parents from visiting their son. They only give them like a couple hours a week. They take medical custody. Yeah. So eventually this couple hours a week. They take medical custody. Yeah. So eventually

this goes into the courts. They take medical custody. I am skipping over so much. It's a good story. I have to say there's some serious foundation laid for them to not

want to deal with Providence Medical Center. Wait till you see their Yelp review of that. It's not great. So I'll just say that Deeply disappointed. Eventually Lorraine Phillips, Brett's mother, they go to a different hospital.

Lorraine is a nurse is after. I can't. This is going to be bad. After there's a legal battle, the state of Alaska gets medical custody of Brett Bond because they feel like his family is threatening to allow him to die rather than have him take medicine. This is a whole other thing. Eventually, this battle gets so intense. A nurse is wheeling Brett Bond into an elevator in a hospital. According to court documents, Lorraine Phillips comes in, pushes the nurse, takes Brett in the wheelchair, pushes him away, takes him to a rehab clinic.

Kidnaps him. Kidnaps him. Kidnaps her own kid. There is such a thing as stealing your own kid. This was in the national spotlight, international spotlight. If you Google free Brett Bond, you'll see it. This is all pre-Bear Attack. This is all way pre-Bear Attack.

So I say all that. Makes its own gravy. It makes its own gravy. It's a civil liberties that to say. Makes its own gravy. This is it. It makes its own gravy. It's a civil liberties case. Had been making its own gravy. The gravy is three layers of gravy. The gravy is already thick.

And I apologize to Brett, Glenn, and Lorraine. I just butchered that. But you guys get the idea that there was a national story. They're still lost. You're telling the abbreviated version under duress. Yeah, under duress. Because I'm asking for the abbreviated version. Yeah, because there's no way.

This would be just hours and hours. And then folks, they're going to be able to explore this whole thing. Yeah, yeah. I have a podcast where I talk to Glenn and we went through this, but we're going to do more because I think this needs these more. I've talked to Brett's lawyer, Mario Bird, up there, and he laid it on me pretty heavy that this is a civil liberties case. There's a term called psychological rights that's now involved. There's all these other things that we could get into at another time. Anyhow, this is why Brett and Glenn do not want to go to Providence.

Brett told me, he's like, the reason why I didn't want to go is because I spent seven, the way he puts it, I spent seven months behind the walls at Providence. He describes it like a prison, basically, in the quote that he gave me. So anyway, they get in the helicopter. They decide they're going to go to Matsu General, which is a hospital closer, probably less suited to take on this. Gets his name from the Matanuskans who sit in the rivers. That's why it's good to be on here. Here's another point.

They're in the helicopter. They're flying down some random valley on the way to Matsu General. Glenn Bond starts directing the pilots on what the quickest way is to get to the hospital. Here's a man with no face. It's hours now since he was brutally attacked by a grizzly bear. And he is cogent enough, can't drink water, but still cogent enough to be like, take a left here.

Head over this way. So there's another point now you got to get to in the urban legend during those four years where no one knew about this. There was a point in a message board post that I read where someone said, I heard Glenn Bond never took any painkillers or narcotics, any medicine during this ordeal. I believe it. You believe it. It's true. So I talked to Dr. Susan Dean, the surgeon who put his face back together. Now, the gravy is – you're aware of the gravy at this point.

This is even more gravy. It's bubbling. Yeah. This is even more gravy for you. It's a big pot. Dr. Susan Dean is awesome. People that work for her, I talk to people in her office. She's like a god to them.

They love her. She's a bubbly, effervescent person. When we first talked to her, she said, I love the gore of plastic surgery and I love bears. In her office hangs a sign on the front door that says bear feet welcome, B-E-A-R, feet welcome. It's got bear signs. The floor mats have grizzly bears on them. Her business card has a grizzly bear on it. The logo of her practice is a grizzly bear. There's grizzly bear pictures. There's cartoon grizzly bears everywhere in her office. And she describes herself as loving the gore of plastic surgery. So she happens to be at the hospital that day when Glenn lands and needs some help. So she's called upon to go take a look at

this guy. She goes in there. She's talking to him. He basically says, just do it here. Referencing the surgery. Just do it here. They're in like an ER area. This is, as you imagine, a pretty complicated surgery. He's like, just do some, do some local anesthetics and do it here. She has to explain to him, hey, we kind of, we have to clean this up. She makes the joke that the bear probably

didn't brush his teeth before he ripped your face off. Um, they have this conversation where she's trying to convince him to take some sort

of narcotics, some sort of painkiller, something to help dull the pain of what is going to be an incredibly invasive surgery because they must clean his face out. Been through this such a long, long time just trying to heal the pain. I'm going to take a break.

I'm going to take a break on this one, man. Yeah. So they have this, they develop this rapport, which remains today, years later. He's a hard man. She is. She is she like respects him. I was singing Guns N' Roses I wasn't commenting

I was commenting on healing the pain. Oh yeah. Not commenting on the length of the He got like a Guns N' Roses meat eater shirt on. That's why I'm singing that song.

Never seen that before. Is that on sale? I believe it is soon. We'll call it meat eater dot com. The meat eater dot com. No yeah I was making a pain management reference.

Good. They sent me the... So he does indeed refuse... He refuses. They sent me his... Even the local anesthetic? There's some local anesthetic involved. Because I think it's impossible.

It would be impossible to do without. Because it's against his religious convictions to take heavy medication. I'm hesitant to say that, but that would be the assumption. Hesitant to say it because I've never talked to him. He's never spoken publicly on this. His wife has told me. But you've interviewed his kid. His kid, his wife, you know, talked about him a lot. So I'm hesitant to say that's what it is, but all intents and purposes, that's likely what led him to refuse that treatment. And they sent me the medical board in his hospital room that says, you know, no narcotics, no nothing, no blood transfusions, no nothing like that. And so he goes through,

I can't remember, it's like one surgery that lasts three or four hours. And if you go back to the time when you first saw that photo, if I told you that the dude's face was put back together in a couple of hours by one surgery, He had two other surgeries months later to fix his ear and I believe his eye or nose, but these are months later. So this is one surgery with no painkillers. He gets another piece of gravy. They had most of the rooms in the hospital were full, so they had to bring him to the children's section of the hospital.

Lucky kid. To recover. He goes into his recovery room. It's a children's room. It's full of cartoon bears. The wallpaper is cartoon bears. And so he recovers. He's like, enough with the bears already.

Come on, people. With the bears. So he recovers. And again, if you get into the relationship that Lorraine Phillips, his wife, had with the doctors of Providence during the Free Brett Bond incident, this is a very combative relationship. Yeah. you know, civil liberties. But then you have the relationship between Glenn Bond and this doctor, Susan Dean, which is all about respect, all about talking to each other,

listening to each other. And they get through this as clean as humanly possible. Nine days, he's walking around. Didn't take a... Visit the holster shop. Visit in the holster shop. And so she listens to him and all that.

So anyway, that's really not the end of the story even then, but that's the gist. Let's say it's a lie. Let's say it's a lie. Okay. What would be the motivation? Like I don't get like what – like I looked at it and I'm like, that's not true. It's a lie. But if you think about it, like people that still would want to say like oh it's not he didn't that didn't

happen it's fake yeah what what's the game i thought about this a lot because i thought about my own proclivities like ah bullshit when i first saw it now you'll remember spencer there was a a very fake situation it was only maybe six or eight months before we learned about this one. The mummy guy who was buried alive, the Russian guy who was buried alive by a bear and then discovered this. Was cached.

Cached by a bear. And there's this video, online video, of a guy that looks, I mean, it looks so real. Like a mummy. Like a mummy. And so that's what immediately came to my mind when I started to think. That generated a lot of clicks. Yes.

So you start to think of what is going on here. Some people are just pranksters. Some people want to get clicks. Some people like the macabre. Who knows? There's no way to really know. But that came into my mind as like that story because it was completely debunked. But it looked very real.

It was very compelling. We all, I remember when it happened, we were actually in the office. We were all walking around going, whoa, see this, see this, see this. And the origin of that video was like a motive you wouldn't even think of. It was for like the set of some low budget film that they were just like messing around trying to figure out the makeup. And then this just got out on the internet. So like when you ask about a motive right like there's motives you can't even comprehend yeah that doesn't that doesn't even necessarily right there's not like a motive but it's like just the way people want to put things out into the world yeah and so you know

maybe this is a real photo and it got distorted which was the actual truth maybe this is i had people read articles of full articles of people debunking this as Hollywood special effects, as people saying it was completely fake, obviously fake, you know, obviously a hoax. I got another question for you. Yep. Who was the guy that the photo was ascribed to? Wes Perkins. What's old Wes have to say about this? I have, I'm kind of close to getting a hold of Wes. But he's not active about being like, that's not me. I'm not positive if he even knows what's really going on here. Oh, so he might not give a big shit about all this.

And here's another thing. This, when this happened, most bear attacks like this especially like this one are reported on somewhere in detail you know they're not all national news they're not i mean it's we kind of oh you you've within 24 hours you usually know almost always and so if you hang out with the right sorts of folks you're like oh someone got scratched you know someone got scratched yesterday in in wyoming or whatever and so that's what know, all this stuff has kind of come back to me where a guy got attacked by, or a guy was riding his bike up in Big Sky and got, ran into a grizzly bear, it turns out.

This is earlier this year. Wasn't it a woman? Earlier this year? See? No. You're right. You're right. You're right.

You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. It was a guy. Yeah. It was a guy. I heard just around town about 13 different versions of that story before I actually read a version that he told.

Word gets out. Word gets out. And so that's what happened here. The Wes Perkins story, like I said, very similar to Brett and Glenn Bond. It was covered. It was written about. It was covered in multiple real actual news sources covered that story. But somehow this one didn't get picked up.

They made sure it didn't. When Brett Bond called it in, he didn't even name himself. He said a hunting partner. So if you go back and look, you'll see reports. This report got buried underneath another attack. I believe a teacher was attacked in the same area within a couple of days of Glenn's attack. So it gets buried in some of the more national stories.

Can I hit you with a quick bear attack? Yeah. Coverage story? Go. My brother is going up a river in Alaska hunting moose, and they stop and talk to a dude for a while, and they're dragging their canoes up a river,

and they bullshit with the guy for a while. They go about their business. They go out on the river and hunt moose. They get home, and everybody's talking about a guy that got mauled on the river they were hunting. And they're like, oh, that's interesting. And when they finally see the picture, it's the guy that they had just talked to who got mauled the day they talked to him. After, obviously.

They shot the shit with him, go up the river. He gets mauled. And then, like, 10 days later, they come home and hear about a guy that got mauled. And look, it was like the dude they had been rapping with. I was hoping you were going to say, he got mauled and forgot to mention it. No. Before it was after. It's like butterfly effect, though, right?

It's like, had we not taken up so much of his time, he would have missed the bear. This dude stumbled on a gut pile of another moose hunter that had been claimed by a bear, and the bear scratched him up. I can't remember if the dude lived or died, but he got scratched up pretty good. Anyhow, word gets out. There's so much that goes into this. If you try to really draw some conclusions from it, there's so many of them. But one of them is

Give me one. One of them is the way that we treat this. The way that we talk about bear attacks. The way that we want to cover them. Why are we so drawn to bear attacks? Sensationalism, man. Why, yeah. These are sensational. These are life and death sensational stories that we're drawn to bear attack sensationalism well yeah these are sensational these are life and death sensational stories that we're drawn to and that and because we're drawn to them in the way that we are we tend to embellish them or we tend to a guy told me and so that's one element of this i think also can i hit you with another one please i think that there's something to be said for

knowing that there is still like real danger from wild animals out there and that we harbor a little bit of nostalgia for that shit. Absolutely. Yeah. There's that quote about, you know, fighting against the wilderness until we could become civilized. And then once you're civilized. Fight against civilization. Yeah. Is that the quote?

And you yearn for the wilderness. You do. I talked to a neuroscientist on my show recently, a guy that works at Mount Sinai, and he did some studies on the predator's brain. They studied mice. And in the central amygdala, there's like a pocket of neurons that they can mess with. Don't ask me to really get technical. They can mess with, turn it up or turn it down and see what happens to mice and their predatory instincts. And he was telling me, he's like, based on psychology and based on our brain works, we have this, there's a duality of respect we have for predators.

And you can see this in our own culture where we both want to be them and their efficiency for killing, because that's part of what, how we got to be where we are. And we also respect their beauty and their place in the ecosystem. So we have this like dual respect for them that kind of leads to maybe at some level, what we see in our culture where protectionism and the hate and the vilification of predators that's happened through the decades, you know,

past the turn of the century and even before that. And so that's something that after this whole Brett Bond thing that I've been looking at hard, we've talked to Valerius Geist. We've talked to this guy, Ivan D. Harajo, who's a, who's that neuroscientist and just try to figure out what is this thing and why do we have these opinions about predators and somewhere deep down in there is why we're so drawn to this stuff and why we turn it around and make it something it's not. Remind, tell folks who of the people you just talked to

that they can go and hear the story straight from the old, straight from the, I don't want to say horse's mouth, straight from the mouth. Straight from the mouth. Well, I mean. From Hunting Collective. From the Hunting Collective. Right.

So I can pull it up and give you numbers, but you can hear Brett Bond tell his story. I think it's 126. Episode 126. 126. We then talked to that neuroscientist in episode 138. Just talked to Dr. Geist last week. And actually had Ask the Eagle debuted.

THC. We brought it, kind of resuscitated a little bit for Yanni. What'd you ask him? Did you ask him, does he think the picture's true? We should have. He's like, yeah. We should, yeah. I like it.

But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of stuff in there. We also went to Yellowstone to bring it all back, Spencer, and went out with a predator biologist, Dr. Dan Stahler, and tracked a mountain lion. Talked to him about his, you know, he spends his entire life studying these predators, wolves, grizzlies. Talked to him about that. Talked to him about what he thinks their place in the landscape are. Why we believe, why we kind of ascribe these, you know, personalities to them. Why we have

this immense respect for them on one side and this immense hatred on the other. So all of that is kind of wrapped up in, or was inspired in some way by this Brett Bond story. We were picking huckleberries on Saturday. Took our kids up to pick huckleberries. Yanni wasn't with you? No, I didn't bring him.

We weren't going to the zone of death. Okay. Did you go to my spot? No. But my goodness, did we get a lot of them. Oh, good. I heard it's a good year for them. It's insane, man. We picked twin berries. We picked thimble berries.

We picked huckleberries. We picked dwarf whortleberry. We picked gooseberry and cur in current which are hard to tell part anyhow shitload of huckleberries but i um couldn't not mention the bear situation to my kids yeah so i said but i wanted to spin it right. So I said, if you're lucky enough to encounter a bear, that's how I opened it up. Yeah.

And like, well, what if it, and then I was like, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. And just knowing that I now mentioned it,

at least let's go pick up a bear. It'd be negligent not to at least bring up the fact that you might be lucky enough to encounter one. It probably won't happen, but you could get so engrossed in staring at little tiny berries rustling through the brush on your own. Yeah. That. Making little squeals of joy.

Whee! Yeah, my son loves the orange bear spray canister. It's a thing that I'm not happy that he's so curious about. Oh, yeah. That's the funny thing about kids and bear spray. There's the sort of remote chance of needing to spray a bear with this bear spray. There's the very real chance of my kids spraying each other with this bear spray. Yeah, because it's this orange can.

You take it, buddy. Dude, that can is begging to be shot at your sibling. It looks like it's got that string stuff that they squirt out. That's what it looks like. So he's always like, what's that on your hip, dad? They're like, dude, if I could only squirt that at my sister. Yeah, I put him in that little pack

and we pack around, check trail cams or whatever, and I got the bear spray on my hip. He's always like, look, I feel that little hand going down. See if we can get a hold of that thing. All right, man. Good stuff. Yeah. Hell yeah. What's going on?

I got one last thing. Go ahead. You know the feeling you described, like why we're interested in bear attacks and like how it's just like that amount of danger is exciting. Right. When I was talking, when I was talking to Brian called the person who found this legal loophole in the zone of death, I was trying to verbalize that to him. And I was telling him, you know, from where we're sitting, we're 85 miles from that zone

of death. I was telling him, it's like kind of liberating knowing that exists. It's like strangely exciting knowing that's just like, I don't know, mountain away. Right. You just lure someone over there. Yeah. Yeah. And I was telling him that. You'd be there an hour and a half.

I was telling him that. And he did not feel the same way. His last words to me is that he said, I just stay the hell away. Hmm. Hmm. Just stay the hell away. Hmm. Hmm. Just stay the hell away. Not us. Like he feels like maybe there's somebody lurking out there wanting to try to capitalize.

He respects the zone of death so much that he would discourage anybody from going there. Really? There's just some people out there who hate a legal loophole. And I would count him among that class. And that's the feeling that you're describing with hunting among grizzly bears. Yeah. I don't feel nervous. I mean, I've heard, you've had other bear attack victims as of I on my show.

I feel more alert. I feel like there's a more visceral knowledge of what might happen if I get jumped, but I'm still out there. As my brother said, man, when the time comes and he's coming at you, you get him one hand on the bottom jaw, one hand on the top jaw. Oh, he just read that old

Latvian story about spread the jaws apart till you tire him out. Yeah. And then you three-stooge him right in the eyes with your two fingers. Do you make the three-stooge's noise? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

He lives in no fear knowing that he's got that trick up his sleeve. Which hand do you do the poking with? No, you wait until he's sufficiently tired. Then you pull your hand away from the lower jaw, zap him in the eyes, and then back down to the bottom jaw to continue the jaw spread. Bear safety. Perfect. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada.

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