The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 242: Steep Dark Timber
Episode Date: October 12, 2020Steven Rinella talks with Taylor McCall, Brody Henderson, Seth Morris, Phil Taylor, and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: The time when Chester the Molester got credit for writing a Tyler Childers' song...; catch-and-release for stocker trout; Steve dropping Bible knowledge about the how the Bible condemns people who shit out in the woods without burying it; chewin' Grizz and spittin' in cups; python oil; a perfect compliment sandwich; getting suspended from school because you have a BB gun in your bedroom; the plot thickens on squirrels biting off nuts, but now it's about rabbits; mountain man Osborne Russel's journal as a must-read about the Wild West; a tarpon scale guitar pick; air dropping fish from planes into high country lakes; "hey, boom!" vs. wing shooting; instinctively not believing your child; Brody's super fast bear hunt; the full stadium/hog nut dip strategy; Jani's elk hunt with Jason Phelps; Steve accompanying with sad guitar; the premier of "Black Powder Soul"; 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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Okay, I'm going to do like a host of a
late night show. I'm going to say,
ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special
show for you tonight.
Joined by Taylor McCall, actual
musician. Yes, sir.
Actual? Actual.
Real musician, Taylor McCall. So they say. What state are you from? From South Carolina. Yeah, stay. Actual. Real musician. Taylor McCall.
What state are you from? From South Carolina.
Yeah, stay close to that mic.
Yeah, I'll get close to it. Tell people how you don't like to wear
your own hat. Oh, just because
you can't wear your own t-shirt, you can't wear your own hat.
Just, I don't know. You can't be caught
in TJ Maxx with your own hat on.
I just can't be a tool.
So,
that puts me in an awkward spot.
You wear a meat eater hat.
Yeah, and a t-shirt.
But you got to, I mean.
But it's not my name. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If I had a name that said Steve, I wouldn't wear a shirt that said like Steve.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
You know, unless it was like a different Steve.
Yep, yep.
What about a shirt that just said Dave?
No, because that'd be like people that wear garage shirts with someone else's name on it.
Ozzy used to do that.
He'd be in the tight spandex outfit, wild gut, hanging out, and it'd just say Ozzy and Bedazzles.
I was like, nobody's got the balls to be wearing that these days.
You're talking the Blizzard of Oz.
Oh, yeah.
You a fan?
Yeah, my dad.
That's what I grew up on.
He's a big Randy Rhoades fan.
Oh, is that right?
Yeah.
Dying to plane wreck.
Yep, yep.
That's how the best of them go.
You know, I used to work for a place called Quality Maintenance Contractors,
and they did industrial coatings and painting and all that.
And one time, me and this dude from high school named Craig Kemp had to go into a factory where they made auto parts.
They made, like, rearview mirrors and stuff for Honda or something like that.
But it was in Michigan.
And we had to clean the whole ceiling.
Like degrease.
From the car factory?
In an auto parts factory.
Degrease all of the steel girders and trusses because they were going to spray them.
And they had to put that fire retardant spray up there.
But it all had to be prepped.
And we were just doing one section, and they wanted it done.
We had to do it just in one spell.
And we came in.
First shift was in that factory when me and Craig showed up.
They left. Second shift came in that factory when me and Craig showed up. They left.
Second shift came in.
They left.
Third shift came in.
They left. The first shift people
came back. Oh, man.
And me and Craig were still there. And I entered like a
transcendent state.
What's the word I'm trying to say? Like a hallucinatory
state. Yeah. That flow state.
And we were listening to KLQ.
I'll always remember this.
We're up in a scissor lift.
And I entered such a state that I at one point said, I think they're going to play Crazy Train.
Oh, man.
That's what you needed.
And they played Crazy Train.
Did they?
That's usually the way it goes.
I never listen to the radio, but if I turn it on it on it's usually gotta be something where it goes right back off
yeah
when you get
that's when
like streaming services
are nice and all that
but you can't
there's a thing about radio
like why do
like good songs
sound better on radio
yeah
cause you don't have
the
you don't have the access
cause it's a surprise
yeah yeah
it's a surprise
you can't skip it
and it's like
all of a sudden like i could go right now and play crazy tramp i felt like yeah we got a guitar here
can you play that no i can't it's i can't play that no i mean that's uh kind of that's a good
talking point to maybe get in on my my guitar work is uh it's very uh very unorthodox even in
nashville i i showed up and it uh everybody in town really is kind of
plays in the same format and the way i grew up learning guitar is i never thought i could sing
just because i have a real deep voice and you know a guitar in a standard tuning set in which
majority songs are in um anything on the radio song that's in standard tuning it's usually like
a g and c and d you know what i mean i got no idea
yeah so i never grew up like that because i was like man i can't sing like that so i just detune
these strings all kinds of weird ways and not really like that's not calm i mean some tuning's
uncommon but what i was doing you know uh people in town still i'll work with some great people
and be like what do you even play you know what what I mean? I'm like, I don't know, you know?
Even in, that's what in standard is like,
I don't know what I'm doing even in standard tuning. And you take that into, you know, detuning the guitar,
you know, it's kind of one of those things
where it's like, if you don't know anything,
everything's, you know, at your access.
But you got to spend years, you know,
oh, that didn't sound good.
Where do I go next?
You know what I mean?
Not too many people want to do that.
You know the Lynyrd Skynyrd quote from one of the dudes in Lynyrd Skynyrd
was learn to play your guitar, then get sexy.
Yeah, yeah.
You just skipped right to the sexy.
I don't know about all that, but we try.
We try.
Oh, you know who can sing like a little bird?
It's Chester the Molester. Oh, you know who can sing like a little bird? It's Chester the Molester.
Oh, yeah.
I've seen him evolve over the past few months playing guitar and singing, and he's getting good.
His buddy of ours just got married.
Chester.
Chester.
Chester Floyd.
Yeah.
I save him in my phone as Chester the Molester because my kids, they don't know what a molester is, but they laugh when my truck says Chester the Molester when I tell them to call him.
But we were fishing the other night and he was explaining this whole story where he learned how to play a song, someone else's song, a Tyler Childers song to get up and serenade his wife at his wedding at a couple weeks ago.
It was a good performance.
Well, he ran.
The problem is everybody thinks that he wrote it.
He didn't clarify it.
They weren't listening.
So people are like, he was talking about how people are crying and like, I can't believe
you wrote that beautiful song for your wife.
So now he's running around.
And then even after the fact, my wife was talking to someone who's talking about this
beautiful song Chester wrote.
Oh, man.
So he needs to do a better job in the future.
So you moved out.
You lived here for a while.
Yeah, that's what I –
You came out here to be a fishing guy.
Yeah, yeah.
That's what – I kind of have two phases.
I kind of was telling Buddy last night you know around a couple beers just i feel like i've had two phases in my life of just uh out fishing and guitar you know and i feel like both
are uh very meditative uh activities or hobbies that i turn into disciplines in a sense maybe
i mean i don't know if you call it that but uh yeah i grew up with my dad just going camping and
fishing uh for stock trout up in north carolina on the davidson and mills river and I grew up with my dad just going camping and fishing for stock trout up in North Carolina on the Davidson and Mills River.
And just grew up catching those.
Stock trout, like, if you catch it, you know he was not born in the river.
You probably put it in.
You know, we'd go help the DNR people, you know, dump buckets of just hogs in the river.
And then, you know.
I think Seth didn't used to do something quite similar to that.
Yeah, I used to help the fish commission stock them,
and then I'd go back and fish the holes where we threw the big ones.
Yep.
And those fish last about a day back home.
Do you remember that, Brody?
I'm a catch and release guy, but nobody else is in South Carolina, it seems like.
So you'd go catch the stockers and let them go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then homie would come down the river and just take it back.
We'd have people, all kinds of people, cast netting the river.
You'd just walk up and be like, man, come on, man.
Cast netting for stock trout.
Yeah, even in a delayed harvest.
It's like, get out of here.
My dad pulled a gun on somebody one day because he was doing that.
Just worked him up.
Probably shouldn't have said that.
Worked him up like pistol whipped him?
No, no, no.
Just worked him up just because we always, I don't know.
So your dad's down there with a pistol.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Doing a little fishing.
Statute of limitations is good.
And this guy's just got a cast net.
Yeah, and then he's got this cooler full of fish.
And he's like, you know, what are you doing, man?
Kind of, you know, long story short, he took that cooler fish, dumped it back in the river.
He's like, I'm calling DNR right now.
Just because back home we have one good little place we can fish and everybody just messes it up it seems like so tell me the
pistol pulling story though so like okay so there you are yeah he's oh yeah because the guy thought
he was a police and you know he will obviously wasn't so um but hold on i'm trying to get like
i mean he didn't pull it on him like this but i mean he brandished it yeah yeah yeah yeah i guess
that's what you would call it.
And then the guy dumped the fish out.
Yeah, he took off.
Him and two other people, yeah.
And then it took about an hour for Game Warden to get there.
Then they found him on down the river.
So it's not legal to fish that way?
No.
With a cast net?
Not at all, not at all.
For stock or trout?
Yeah.
Well, yeah, I don't know.
No, a general rule. I don't know there. A general American rule of thumb is that this is a generalization.
You generally dastn't be cast netting in fresh water.
Yeah.
Especially in a stream about as big as this table.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
But, yeah, that's what I grew up fishing, kind of streams, you know, no bigger than this room.
And I thought that was, you know, you could, that was the big water.
And then I came out here and realized those are just little creeks back home.
But, yeah, I graduated high school in 2015.
And I was 17 at the time and just moved out here.
Didn't know anybody.
And first week I was here, you know, just started fishing.
Fished my way out of school pretty much two years.
So you enrolled
in school yeah but uh montana state flunked out yeah yeah oh i just couldn't pass math at all
so i was like man might as well be getting some enjoyment out of being here
so then you took off yeah yeah on the river yeah i was here for two years and got two years worth
of good fishing in and uh yeah man just loved it it's a good place
for a 17 year old to come figure it out and you know not get in trouble i feel like there's uh
i don't know there's like three cops in town compared to everywhere else back home so it's
a good place for a kid not to get in trouble in a sense you feel there's a low cop per criminal
ratio out here oh yeah i don't know about criminal ratio but definitely definitely i feel like oh
just low cops yeah yeah yeah you can be walking down the road but that's interesting
perspective i never like i'll tell you well i do kind of notice that a little bit because i think
that uh new mexico the the the depth and variety of law enforcement agencies that maintain a
presence in new mexico is staggering like in a you know they have a heavy presence just every lawn everything imaginable yeah yeah because they got a border patrol down there just like
every other car yeah you know I don't know if I can make it down there so you break a lot of laws
yeah I mean yeah a little bit do it elegantly but you're not a violator no no not a game violin no
not a no not at all just you know not a violator. No, no, no. You're not a game violator. No, not at all.
Just, you know, not anything in the hunting and fishing world breaking laws at all.
No, that's good.
That's good.
What the hell was I going to ask you about?
Then you left because you had a girlfriend somewhere?
Yeah, so I had like a girlfriend back home and pretty much.
Like you left her to come here. Yeah, I left her to come here, and then things got kind of tough.
Did she think of it that way?
Yeah, but even before we met, it was one of those things.
It was always my dream to come out here.
And so when I left, it was kind of like eating my dream in my face coming back.
And I got back, and I was like, what did I just do?
You know what I mean?
And so I enrolled.
After I was here at Montana State, I pretty much sold my clacker craft and went back home.
And the clacker craft got those seven songs right there.
Oh, you wrote these songs on this in that clacker?
Yeah, sold the clacker craft and that paid for that.
So my parents didn't even know I sang until I got back after college.
And pretty much spiraled
into this, this project, Jericho Rose, that tune is, uh, it's about Montana and my experience
leaving. Uh, I was in, it's kind of all, it all works out in a sense. Uh, I enrolled at a community
college back home after I came back and had to take, I mean, this tells you how far along I was
in school, how to take art 101 my third year, you know what I mean?
Yep.
Most people ain't be doing that.
You're running behind.
Yeah, running behind.
And it was all for a reason, though,
because I learned about this thing one day called the Rose of Jericho.
And I was like, man, that kind of perked my ears.
I don't know what that is.
It's got all these superstitions.
It's like the road to Jericho, right?
Yeah, yeah, but this is like a –
Isn't that where – was Saul – who was on their way to Jericho, right? Yeah, yeah. But this is like a- Isn't that where- Was Saul-
Who was on their way to Jericho when he got blinded?
I'm not sure.
In the Bible.
I'm not sure.
Is that Jericho?
Someone type that up.
I can't because I'm talking.
Room full of pagans.
Listen.
There's a guy in the Bible who is not cool.
And they blind him.
Changes his ways.
Wasn't he heading to Jericho?
Come on, Seth.
Really? You don't know, Seth?
No. I should know.
My grandmother would be upset with me.
I'm going to lay some Bible learning on you guys.
Yeah.
Can you stop talking about this for a minute while I lay some Bible learning on you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Check this out.
We've been talking a lot about this thing called the ass movement.
Anti-surface shitting movement.
Getting people to stop going.
Relieving themselves out in the barriot out in the woods and along trails and at trailheads and whatnot, just to generally reduce the.
Now that the whole world has a dog, it's bad enough with dogs.
Then you add all the people stuff in there, all the people excrement.
This guy sends a thing in from Deuteronomy 23, 12 to 14.
This is in the Bible.
Yeah.
You shall have a place outside the camp and you shall go out to it and you shall have a trowel with you.
Sit down outside.
You shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement.
For the Lord, your God moves around your camp by night
I like it dude I was like there's no way that's true there's no way that's true and so then I did
some searching and it is true and I'll tell you here's another I was like is that really true so
I looked up and here's another translation same thing Deuteronomy. This is from the New International Version.
Deuteronomy 23, 12 to 14. Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment, have something to dig with. And when you relieve yourself,
dig a hole and cover up your excrement. For the Lord your God moves about in your camp to protect you
and to deliver your enemies to you.
Your camp must be holy
so that he not
see among you anything
indecent and turn away from you.
That's a fact.
Dude, I bet the dude
from the founder of the ass movement doesn't even know about that.
I never heard about that.
Was he headed to Jericho?
Saul?
And he changed,
after this happened,
he changed his name to Paul.
You guys don't know this?
I haven't gotten that far.
I feel like it is him.
The road to Jericho,
I looked it up.
Right here it says Jesus,
when he was passing through Jericho,
he cured two blind men.
No.
Yeah, and the road to Jericho was like this very dangerous road that was beset by robbers.
Is that your own word, beset?
Yep, it is.
Yeah, it was just like a dangerous road.
It had something to do with the Samaritans and the Jews.
I didn't see anything about Saul or Paul.
Yeah, I'm not seeing Saul.
No, never mind.
But yeah.
Anyways, you found out about the roles of Jericho.
What does that mean?
It's pretty much this desert plant.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
I thought you meant like why the word Jericho in there, but the desert plant.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's got all these superstitions.
And for me, my writing process really started.
I don't do it.
I always grew up, I could barely read in front of the class,
always a real shy guy, you know.
And pretty much the way I came into music was natural.
It's therapy and, you know, hard times kind of, that's what comes out.
And that perked my ears up when I hear anything interesting like that.
And that was the first kind of, you know, real phrase or, you know, just that play on just language, you know, that perks the hair in your ears up, you know what I mean?
And so I started reading into it.
And, you know, if you put water on this plant, it comes back to life and it's got all these like superstitions.
And I was like, that's kind of like my uh experience you know out in montana oak
if you read the lyrics it's uh it's pretty much a poetry about you know having a second chance
in a way and uh it's good stuff um are you gonna sing that one later a different one i i'm gonna
sing y'all some new stuff uh yeah you're still singing some brand new song anything that the
world's ever heard has literally been the first songs.
Anything that's out is the first songs I wrote.
And since then, you know, I've got over 80 songs I've written in the last two years.
You still fish?
Oh, yeah.
That's what the dream is, to do this to where we can fish, you know, all the time.
Are you regarded as like a song factory?
That sounds like a lot of music in two years.
At this point, I can't pick up a guitar and just play it.
It's always, you know, because I hear things and words just come out in a way.
And especially it's like building a muscle.
I don't know if I become obsessed with it.
It keeps me up at night.
But that's how you get going.
Do you have peers that are cranking out 80 songs or 40 a year?
No, most people. What are you spitting into that cup there? Just a little bit of Grizzly. get going i mean do you have peers that are cranking out 80 songs or 40 a year no most
people what are you spitting into that cup there uh just a little bit of grizzly if that's that's
out if that's all that's fine you chew grizzly yeah yeah our friend dirt myth uh he doesn't chew
gris eat it he says no he says uh no i got a good job he chews uh what's he chewed copenhagen
because i was a long cut guy
for a long time.
The Copenhagen was my favorite,
but they don't make good pouches,
you know,
and I can sound check
what a pouch is.
So you got a pouch in there
right now.
Let me see it.
Right here.
Right there.
Huh.
But nobody ever knows.
It's tucked in there.
Well,
I know.
You got a cup
and you're spitting into it.
Yeah.
You don't swallow it.
Occasionally.
We had a guy right in,
he works with,
he's a deer researcher.
I think he's in Pennsylvania.
And he said when he goes
into that deer pen,
you can't bring your dip in.
What was that?
He said they'll tear the pocket
right off your jeans
to get that dip out.
They need to put that
on a commercial.
Why not?
He said if you put Levi Garrett
in your back pocket,
he said they'll rip your pants.
No kidding.
It's the molasses.
He starts hanging that under your tree stand. He. It's the molasses. Starts hanging that
under your tree stand.
You make some like
Primos product
or something out of that.
They'll be like
little pellets
ground up in dip.
Is it kind of frowned upon
to be, you know,
in a stand with that?
You know,
does that repel anything?
I don't know.
What do you think, Johnny?
I mean,
when I used to chew it,
I had no problem
being in the stand or in the field with it.
I don't know.
I don't think it's laying down that much scent.
Yeah, yeah.
You think you'll end up catching lip cancer?
No.
I'm going to quit here soon.
Oh, is that right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You should get with dirt.
You guys could just hang out and chew.
Yeah, man.
We should have called them up and had them come over.
That's what I mean. These people got the e-cig bars. I thought it should get with dirt. You guys could just hang out and chew. Yeah, man. We should have called them up and had them come over. That's what I mean.
These people got the e-cig bars.
I thought it was a weird idea.
What if people just went somewhere and dipped?
Kind of like a dip bar.
I was like, that's the way my mind works.
Yeah, you could have a little spittoon out front with water flowing through it.
3 a.m., most people getting some good sleep.
Yeah, like a cigar.
I remember through a work thing, one of the worst things that ever happened to me was
I had to go to a cigar bar.
Oh, my God.
I hate cigars.
That grizzly reminds me of that ransacked cabin in Alaska because the only thing that
wasn't tore apart was a couple cans of grizzly.
And Buck was thrilled to see that grizzly sitting there.
I'll tell you another interesting thing about that ranch.
We slept in a cabin that had been a bear and moved into it.
And oh, my God.
Oh, if you want to go to Instagram, you'll see a video of this cabin.
At Steven Rinella.
You'll scroll back.
I mean, this cabin got destroyed by a bear.
And this bear would bite everything open.
But what's funny is he didn't figure out.
There's all these glass jars of salmon and he bit all the canned i don't know what it is he bit like if it was a can of green beans he
he'd chew it open the salmon glass jars of salmon never touched him didn't figure out
like it it blows my mind.
And he put everything open.
And the other thing laying on the ground amongst all this junk is a can of bear spray that he never sunk a tooth into.
Like, the fact that he's smelling through a can, it doesn't make sense, man.
I don't understand how that bear did what he did.
Yeah, I don't know.
Ate coffee.
I've had an experience real close with a couple back home,
three, a mom bear and two cubs, and it was real close to us.
They got in.
They sure do love some sugar cookies.
Oh, I bet you like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This bear was so good.
He got into a bag of Halloween candy, like fun-sized candy bars.
You think he'd just eat the candy bar?
I don't know. He must have taken his little claw he would eat the candy bars and leave the empty wrappers oh man however
he managed to do that like little it looked like a human being opened up all these candy bars and
the wrappers are gone some stuff he got burned out on like he got into a bunch of dry pasta
but left some dry pasta but after a while he's like i can't handle the dry pasta anymore yeah there's a couple little packets of folgers uh single like tea bags yeah
and uh steve steve used those well i chickened out in the end everybody's like i can't believe
you're gonna drink that because i mean i thought you did use it no because here's what happened
when i opened it up they had been corrupted and they had been soaked inside oh and then i was like
ah who cares and i was like, ah, who cares?
And I was like, it was probably bear piss.
I don't know.
I didn't eat them.
Oh, I thought that's-
No, because Buck had some of that.
He had some of that black rifle coffee, black powder.
He had two of those in his pocket.
Oh.
I didn't tell anybody about that.
I didn't know.
I thought you were drinking that folder stuff.
No, so this is kind of funny because we're rafting down a river and buck's got a friend
that's got a cabin and uh we're gonna go up there so we don't bring any bucks like well instead of
carrying stuff up there we're gonna hike up to this cabin instead of carrying stuff up there
i'll replace there's food there and then i'll make sure to replace anything that's there
and then i remember seth being like man i don't know i feel like we should bring some food
and i remember shooting him down being like no man yeah I don't know. I feel like we should bring some food. And I remember shooting him down.
Being like, no, man.
Yeah.
We got a whole plan, you know.
And we get up there and it's like, dah!
Yeah.
Like nothing.
Nothing.
No coffee.
Yeah, no dinner, no breakfast.
Nothing.
This place was ransacked.
That's the worst mindset, though, thinking you're going to replace.
That's like, I don't know, you don't replace stuff when you hung over.
Hey, what do you think of this right here?
That's what I saw this morning.
So we had a guest on, Bob Reed, who's a Burmese Python expert,
and got talking about snake oil.
And we were talking about how, you know, people say a snake oil salesman.
Well, it's longer than that. I was talking about how these guys know, people say a snake oil salesman. Well, it's longer than that.
I was talking about how these guys we met in South America were saying that you can take the oil from, what was that snake down there?
The anacondas, right?
Green anaconda.
I don't know.
Is this a trip that I was on?
I don't remember this.
This wasn't your first time down there with Mo, maybe?
It was.
The Anaconda.
Like 13, 16, 18-foot snakes.
Jeez.
And the dude told me two interesting things.
He said, we walked up to one, and he was explaining to me what I would call a superstition, what he would call just the truth.
He was saying, if I touch that snake with my bow, just touch it.
You can touch it with a regular stick.
But if I were to touch that snake with my bow, it would die a very painful death.
And I said, how long?
And he said, 45 minutes, just from contacting it with a human bow.
And I said, what do you, why would you do that?
What do you use it for?
And he said that we use it to the fat, the oil rendered from the snake to treat arthritis.
I then explained this to this Burmese Python expert.
And he made me realize something I hadn't put together is that when you say like someone's a snake oil salesman
because he said people used to
attribute snake grease
snake fat
with all these as
having great like naturopathic or
homeopathic
qualities. That essential oil salesman.
So then he just brought us
a quart.
He didn't have the lid on tight which is weird because i don't view this stuff as appetizing i had to
tighten the lid down it was like some new kombucha or something till you turn it around it says
court jar of burmese python oil i have a label maker and i made that label for display yeah
i like the no shit part my label says snake oil no shit this is oil from a
python that's what i was watching a episode on on netflix the other night of when you was down with
these guys that were they're using their hand to cast in the river i was like he's definitely
seeing some snakes in that area do you see any any on that trip? That's a snaky-ass area, yeah. That's that area where I saw these.
Really?
Not these, the anacondas.
Yeah.
Would any of you guys eat that?
I find that oil almost repulsive.
Is that right?
I don't like snakes.
I mean, not that I don't like snakes.
I'm just not a big snake guy.
That's rendered fat, though, right?
It's rendered fat. I'll pass it around do you smell
he also brought me did he use it well did he do this just for you does he like often make he
already had it he already had it just brought me some of his stash did you see that did i put on
your desk some yeah prick, prickly pear syrup.
Same guy.
Oh.
I like that.
I put that on my oatmeal this morning.
Did I bring you some choke cherry...
Yeah.
Jam.
Same guy.
Did I bring you some of that honey?
No.
It's on your desk.
Thank you.
Different guy.
Thought it was some moonshine.
I was like, man, that's a little early for some moonshine.
No, but what I was saying is it's so unappetizing to me that I wouldn't be able to fry up an egg in that oil.
Yeah, that's unappetizing to me, too.
I definitely would give it a go.
Yeah, I'd do a little teaspoon of that.
Did you guys?
Just to say, next time you're on the podcast, guess what?
I had a couple over mediums in Python oil this morning.
It looks like you could have filtered it a little better.
There's some solids down on the bottom.
Yeah, I don't know.
I got to talk to him about it.
I don't want to call him or criticize him.
Be like, hey, man, thanks a lot, but, you know, next time.
Next time you make me some snake oil that I'll not use.
Put the lid on, Todd.
Yeah, put the lid on, and Brody's got some tips for you.
Yeah, that's funny.
Brody's got some tips for you as well.
I recently got some oil from a good buddy of mine,
and I had some criticism about it.
I was like, you know what?
I'm not going to say anything.
It's hard to.
Yeah.
It's hard to.
Got a nice big batch of it.
Which buddy?
Might be a buddy sitting next to me.
If you do do it, what you do is,
you know about a compliment sandwich.
Have we covered this?
We have, but give it to me again.
A compliment, when you just need to give someone some feedback that they're not going to be receptive to, you compliment them.
Yeah, start positive.
So you'd say, my God, bro, you look good today, right?
Thank you. Have you been working working out as a matter of fact can you tell me what the basic so i can do it can you tell me the basic problem
well the oil uh instead of being snow white bear grease it's got just a little touch of color to it
and it has a little touch of flavor to it. Like it might have, like, the cracklings might have been cooked a little bit too long in it, you know?
Gotcha.
It's not off-putting, but it's not like that super clean.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
So you'd say, my God, Brody, do you look good today?
I feel like you kind of screwed that barrel up by overcooking the cracklings.
Well, thanks for the compliment.
Then you say, my God, your kids are nice.
That's a compliment sandwich.
I like it.
Three completely unrelated topics.
I'm willing to take the constructive criticism.
It's not like I've got a lifetime of experience rendering bear fat.
Quick news item i saw that like i hesitate to
do this to mention this news story in the news because it's the type of news that i generally
hate and it's like you know news agencies that that do news the point of the news being that
the the reader will be annoyed and have the response of like, what's the world coming to?
Right?
I know that news.
Yeah, like just how, like this has gone too far.
A war on Christmas.
You know what I mean?
Like that kind of news.
You know what I mean?
This is one of those news stories.
A boy.
But like now that kids are at home, like so many kids are at home for school, right?
And you're doing zoom so a little boy in louisiana is at home in his bedroom and
there's a picture of the cutest kid in the world he's got his shirt but he's got like a dress shirt
buttoned up to the top button like cutest kid on the planet um nine years old but in his room is his BB gun. And he gets suspended.
I saw that.
What?
Suspended from Zoom?
Suspended from school because in his room is a BB gun.
And he can't have guns at school.
So.
Dude.
Wait.
Seriously?
He's not actually, he's going to class through Zoom. He's in his bedroom.
The story is like, I gather that this is not a problem.
I think this problem is going to go away for this boy very quickly,
but that was the initial repercussion.
They suspended him.
They won't allow him to attend a Zoom call.
He got kicked out of school for having his BB gun in his bedroom
during his online learning.
What is this world coming to?
This will not stand.
No Red Riders in class.
Next, it'll be a war on Christmas.
Another thing is, this is the last, I swear, this is the last time I'm going to bring this up.
But the plot does thicken around squirrels biting nuts off other squirrels.
We got a thing.
Listen, a vet in Australia
wrote in to say
that he...
This is not squirrels.
It's not America.
But he does find that male rabbits
will get in fights
and it can result in testicular injuries from biting to the other rabbit.
The plot thickens.
So Spencer's going to have to do some more research.
Dig into that one.
Now, here's the other thing.
This is not news, but I just thought this was fascinating.
I was reading about it the other day.
I've been reading.
I don't know why I haven't read it.
It's like Osborne Russellsell's journal have you guys read
osborne russell's journal it's kind of like the most one of the most important historical texts
about like the mountain men and the beaver trappers you read it no dude i've been reading
reference i don't i can't like i feel like such an idiot for having not like actually read his
journal it is unbelievable one the amount of shootouts those guys get into,
and two, the back and forth and up and down.
Hiking, you mean?
No, riding.
Traveling.
Just, they're in Salt Lake.
They're in the headwaters of the snake.
They're on the lower Yellowstone.
Before we go too far.
Up on the Missouri. It's like, give a quick synopsis.
Who's Osborne Russell?
Osborne Russell's just a dude
who signs on with a fur company,
doesn't know shit,
heads out west
to trap beavers, and keeps a
meticulous journal of where they go
and what they do.
I think you've talked about him.
He's the guy that just details everything that happens every day for no that's a different dude 30 years
later on the muscle shell that was called life and death of the mouth muscle shell osborne russell's
journal is like it's just his journal did he hang out with uh some of the big names oh yeah yeah he
travels with bridger yeah so he's he's in Jim Bridger's camp.
Writes about that all the time.
He didn't realize,
he didn't like have a way
to think that Jim Bridger
was whatever.
Right.
But he's traveling with Bridger.
So you got like a big crew
of trappers
and this main camp moves
and as the main camp moves,
they kind of pick like,
okay, we're going to work
this river
and then go over the pass
and work that river.
And the main camp moves
and in there are camp tenders
and fur dressers, guys that skin and flesh and whatnot and they just and then you got
these little bands of trappers and so the bands of trappers go off and do a loop and come down
and find the main camp and check in and then do a loop and find the main camp and check in
always getting in skirmishes shooting tons of bighorn sheep like they eat more bighorns the
places they run into bighorns you know talk about seeing a thousand bighorn sheep. That's lit. They eat more bighorns. The places they run into bighorns,
talk about seeing 1,000 bighorns on the hill,
just eating bighorns.
So many bighorns that they're in one valley,
and it's hard to get through the winters,
not enough food.
So they decided to move camp
where the whole camp can just live on bighorns.
Wow.
Not, yeah.
There was a tribe named the Sheep Eaters, wasn't there?
He talks about those guys too.
He meets some in what's now Yellowstone.
And he describes how they had no horse.
They had had a horse once that they got from some other trappers and the horse died.
They had a bunch of panther hides, which he found interesting.
They made most of their clothes out of sheep.
They didn't use flint and steel.
They used bow drills to start fire.
They had trapped all, they said they killed all the beavers in the area,
but didn't realize that the furs were valuable and just ate the meat
and wished they had saved them so they could sell the fur.
And their bows were made out of elk horn and sheep horn,
and they were three feet long.
And he took, like, Osborne Russell, like, really likes these dudes.
And he said they would travel in small family groups
and not, like, relate to other.
Does he go into detail about how the horn and the antlers were laid?
No, he doesn't describe it. But he but he's like very impressed with these guys so were they would it be fair to say they were like not quite as advanced as some of the other tribes that were or they
were just kind of living in a you know what i'm saying he likes them better he likes them a lot
like i shouldn't say likes him better was just very impressed with the ingenuity.
Probably what he was,
what he's,
what seems to impress him most is by the time he's out there,
there had already been a lot of trade going on.
So horses,
everybody had a horse,
like most of the tribes he's encountering and traveling,
you know,
they're like very friendly with the crow.
They travel with the crow.
Most of the tribes he's traveling with have horses,
have firearms, have flint and steel they have steel cookware and so if you look at like what he's saying about them
like the things he's like oh and they this and they this and they this it's mostly like he's
talking about the way everybody would have been right simply 50 years earlier yeah they hadn't
adopted all that stuff yet so he caught him it could even be like you could almost say that 30 years earlier
30 40 years earlier everyone he would have so he's just looking at some people that hadn't adopted
they were living like in the very high country not associating down in the lower valleys and
they were like still living like all primitive goods.
And he really dug it.
He's talking about,
he spends a lot of time with the crow.
And he says that when the,
again,
man,
this is not from a crow person.
This is from a white dude traveling with the crow,
capturing like his understanding of what's going on
so i'm not telling you that this is like the truth i'm saying this is like
crow culture as understood by a white trapper he said when the a crow village moves into a new
moves camp and there's buffalo in the vicinity you can't just go out and hunt
like you can't just charge off and spook everything out like it's part of a concerted effort
and you have to get like council permission to begin hunting if you break this rule the first
offense is your hunting equipment is destroyed if you do it again in your life,
your horses are killed,
your lodge is destroyed,
and you're beaten.
A third offense is death by shooting.
We should have more game laws like that.
Dude, don't mess around.
I saw it in Lewis and Clark.
I read some of their journals.
What's the relationship?
Is this guy earlier or after?
Well after. Well after.
Well after, okay.
Just if you fell asleep on guard, how many 50, 60 lashings?
I'd be like, man, I ain't going out with y'all boys.
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I know on this show I talked before about
when Stephenson, who spent a lot of time with,
he's got this book, My Life with the Eskimo,
and he spent a bunch of time with Inuit hunters
in the high Arctic of Canada.
And he describes how people,
like hunters will have hunting partners
and they'll even be like,
a hunter and his hunting partner
will be that they're a left side and right side,
that they're like the left side and right side of a unit.
And when they get something,
the left side of the thing goes to the left side.
The right side of the thing goes to the right side.
And that's how they distribute game
amongst persons, hunting partner.
And talking about the crow crow Osborne Russell explains,
um,
when they're doing like a collective style hunting,
like,
you know,
riding a herd down and shooting into it.
The first person who arrives at a dead Buffalo is entitled to one third of the
meat.
If the person who killed the Buffalo is the fourth one on the spot,
he only gets the hide and tongue.
There's no way that this person who killed it can get,
in any circumstance, can get any more than one third of the meat.
If a second and third person appears before it is placed on the horse for packing,
meaning like you get one, person appears before it is placed on the horse for packing. Meaning like
you get one
if you don't get
it on your horse by the time other people
show up then it's divided.
They get thirds.
So that's interesting.
You know what? My buddy one time
went to this thing where they were testing out how effective
beer commercials are.
And you get a dial.
And as you're interested, you turn the dial up.
And when you're not interested, you turn the dial down.
I wish we had those.
Like from... For you.
For us.
Because I can't tell if what I'm telling you is interesting or not.
That was very interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was interesting.
One last thing I want to talk about.
Dials up.
Daniani's got to do something uh
a guy uh in addition to that snake oil a guy sent me a turkey call made from a turtle shell
which is a famous old thing i've seen those it's got the resonance sound good dude it's so cool
it's a red ear slider shell and then it it's got slate glued to the bottom carapace.
I want to see that.
It's super cool, man.
What's the striker look like?
He made it.
It's got a bone top, and I don't know what kind.
He told me what kind of wood, but I can't remember what kind of wood he put on there.
But it sounds good?
It's so cool, yeah.
I was shocked.
It's so cool.
I got a guitar pick made out of, it's illegal to have now, but.
That's one of the laws?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Not me.
Yeah, yeah.
That wasn't me.
That's a pass down
because it's like a $100 guitar pick
and I lose guitar picks every day.
Made out of what?
Turtle shell, you know?
Oh.
Yeah.
Can you make a guitar pick
out of a tarpon scale?
I don't know, but that'd be cool.
That seems like a good guitar pick.
Guy from, Brian May from Queen, he uses quarters, or what's the equivalent?
These old something, I don't know, quarters for playing.
I found that out the other day, and I was like, man, that's wild.
So every time they're on tour, his guitar tech just goes and gets a sack of these old quarters he uses.
Quarters, 25 cent pieces. Yeah. Yeah.
So Yanni's got to do a book report about something.
Brody will probably be able to add to this as much time as he spent.
This is where, Ted, you got to,
because Yanni, this is his second report he's given us.
Can you make a ditty?
A ditty?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It goes, Yanni's book reports about videos and articles or something like that.
Yanni's book reports.
Oh, I don't know about that.
I can try.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What would you do?
It'd be like a jingle.
Yeah.
Yeah, what would you, like, imagine it's a show.
Yeah.
And there's a segment, you know, and there's a song to precede the segment.
So you're kicking off Yanni's book report, which is like a segment on the show.
I'm trying to think how I can do that.
Yanni's Book Report.
Man, I can't even sing happy birthday, man.
I'm just not good with little jingles like that.
You can't just do a quick jingle?
I mean, I can try.
Yeah, do it.
I'll grab that damn guitar and do it.
You got to put your dip down.
You got to get your chunk of turtle shell out.
Oh, the scale on a turtle shell.
Something like that.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't think that's illegal to have.
Maybe certain turtles.
They don't care if you catch a snapping turtle.
They don't care if you pick a guitar with the scale.
So Yanni's book report So Yanni's book report.
Yanni's book report.
I got to sing it or just play music?
No, it's like Yanni's book reports about articles and videos.
So say that or just play something?
However you want to do it.
I would sing it and play to it, and it would be like something to the effect of like,
it's time for, you know, what do you think, Yanni?
Like, it's time for Yanni's.
Yeah. Phil, you got anything? It you think, Yanni? Like, it's time for Yanni's. Yeah.
Phil, you got anything?
It's time for.
Kids, gather around.
Yeah, gather around.
It's time for Yanni's.
Yeah.
You remember book reports from school?
They were boring and sucked, but this is different.
Yanni's book report about a video.
I don't know if I can work with that.
I can try.
Wish Chester the Molester
was here.
He'd act like
he'd take someone else's idea
and act like he did it himself.
Let's see here.
Oh, you got to put
that thing on there?
I'm just going to try
to give it a little flavor.
You know what that's called?
It's called a capo.
That's correct.
I just don't know
how to make something jingly. That's kind of the way I play is like, I don't know how to make something jingly.
That's kind of the way I play is like, I don't know, real deep.
I'm trying to think of a way to make it.
Well, to make it deep.
Yanni's Book Report.
Oh, I like it.
That already sounds good.
Yeah, now let's put some lyrics into it
yeah the goal is yanni's book report
oh that's perfect now do a clean one all right ready okay so we're gonna
we're gonna do yanni's segment
one two three
yon's book report hit him with the soft spoken yeah this better be really good
i'll try man that's what i'm bad with this oh no that was perfect because i was trying to take it down a whole other avenue, man. It was a lot worse than that.
I get people all the time that's like, can you play Happy Birthday?
And it's like, man, I don't know.
I ain't good with that, you know what I mean?
You know that John Prine's live album?
Which I hadn't heard of.
He's got one.
He says, I learned those three chords when I was 14,
and I guess I just never decided to learn any more of them.
Yeah.
That's what they always say
is nobody knows what key
the happy birthday is in.
It's always different every time.
No matter who you get around.
Mm-hmm.
Because nobody knows
how to use the same.
You know that guy
who still collects royalties
off that song?
You can't like put that song
in a movie.
Really?
No.
Wow.
No.
It's a covered song, man.
That's wild.
It's a covered song.
You gotta license
that son of a bitch song.
Really?
Go ahead, Yanni.
That's interesting.
Yeah.
Might not be true.
I gotta say, this is an interesting little-
I'm pretty sure it's true.
I think it went like, what's the term for it when something loses its copyright?
That's it.
It happened like four or five years ago, but like up until then-
Told you it wasn't true.
Up until then, it was true.
I just said it might not be true.
Okay.
So you can now-
Public domain.
That's what I'm trying to figure say. Happy birthday is now public domain.
It's now public domain.
God, we can breathe easy.
You can play that at your next show and not have to worry.
You can put it on your next album even and not have to worry about it.
I might put that Lil Yanni segment in the album.
People are going to be waiting now every episode.
They're going to wait to hear those chords.
Oh, yeah.
Did you get a good recording of that so we can use it later?
I can get you a better one, too. Can we license that on me? Yeah, y that so we can use it later? I can get you a better one, too.
Can we license that on me?
Yeah, yeah, y'all can have it, man.
I'll get you a better one
when I have time.
I'm just not, I don't know.
I'm going to do you justice.
What was the last one that I did?
You did a book report on that.
Was it Lynx or Bobcat
that went a long ways away?
Oh, yeah, there was that one.
But I think you're incorrect
with saying it's only my second one
because I did one about that girl that they found the gum.
Remember there was the preserved chewing gum?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, with Jesse Griffiths.
And Jesse Griffiths was saying he wanted to marry that girl.
Yeah, they found the remains.
Oh, that's right.
That was in Texas we did that.
Yeah, they found, yeah.
And she had eaten hazelnuts and mallard duck.
Yeah.
From 9,000 years ago.
Those articles were a lot longer.
This article here.
It's a video.
Might be literally 300 words.
You watched the video, right?
Yeah.
Did you watch the video?
No, I sent it to you to watch.
Yeah, well, CPW, I like what you guys are doing.
This is all great.
But I'm sure a lot of uh
state wildlife agencies struggle with this but uh whoever put the media together for this they
were in love with this one gopro shot that they have of the underside of the plane is this gonna
turn into a compliment sandwich because if it is you didn't start you got it backward oh i'm gonna
i'm gonna knock them down first then, then I'll build them up.
But, yeah, it was like a nine-minute video,
and I think they could have gotten the point across in two or three.
Jeez, man, just comes out just swinging.
The producer.
That's what happens in this job, man.
You have a real hard time watching stuff and not looking at it with that
sort of eye.
Yeah, no. Hardcore producing.
You feel the same way. There's a lot of stuff you don't
watch. Oh, yeah, but I would have said, like, man, those guys
are handsome.
In that video. And their kids are
really nice. Kids are great.
Look, you know... But they really milked it.
I spent a big decade
hunting and fishing in Colorado,
and I have a lot of respect and feel that the CPW does a great job
managing their wildlife resources over there.
They take it serious.
Yeah.
And, well, that's another can of worms.
We won't open that up.
I'm curious now.
So, video shows, you guys want to know what this GoPro shot is,
the camera's
mounted on the strut of the plane
pointed towards the tail end
and halfway between the strut
and the rear
wheel that's attached to the very
back end of the tail
of the plane there is what looks to be like
a, it's basically just a chute. And out coming from the chute is like, at this point, it looks
just like a ball of vapor, which used to be water before the chute was open. And inside of it, you
can see, it looks like little black specks, but what they are is inch and a half long trout.
They're falling out of an airplane. This, folks, is how
Colorado CPW stocks
their high country lakes.
It's by
airplane. Blows my mind.
It is wild. Oh, you had never heard this.
I'd heard of it, but you know
sometimes you hear stuff without really thinking about
You know what I mean? You're like,
whatever, I accept it.
But I hadn't actually thought, well, what am I accepting?
What goes into it?
Meaning that they would land and be like, oh, cool.
I'm alive in this lake.
Just watching that video, I'm like, how in the world are they not just dead or dead?
I know.
Yeah.
Well, they do a good job of explaining why they're not deader and dead, which is that they're only
an inch and a half long, so they don't
have a lot of mass to them.
They get down to, they'd like
to be at 100 feet. I think they said the
space is 100 to 150 feet
off the surface of the water when they drop them.
And because they're so little,
there's just a lot of, you know, air
resistance, and they're not like, they're not
plummeting like a, know an object with more mass oh yeah you could kill somebody with a five
pound trout yeah maybe not from 100 well and the five pound trout would also hit the water and
probably explode just like you would yeah yeah yeah but these suckers yeah they talk about how
they measure them out is that in your report uh you mean about how they measure them out. Is that in your report?
You mean about how they just, how it's like they know per milliliter?
Like a bucket, like a measuring cup.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
But they haven't figured out. They know by a volume measurement how many fish are in there.
So they know that whatever it is, there's 300 inch and a half trout in a quart of inch and a half trout mass.
Right.
So that I got, they're counting them.
Yeah.
But yeah, they go and get the roe from high country lakes.
So it's not like they're like putting in a non-native fish, right?
They go and get roe from fish that are natives to Colorado, bring that down to a hatchery, raise them up until they're an inch and a half long, and then basically transport those back up to these high country lakes.
But they're putting them in some lakes that never had trout.
I didn't catch that in this article or the video, but I'm sure-
I think they do.
I think they do stock some lakes that never had a trout population.
It's incredible.
It's a lot of effort.
Yeah.
And because they're saying,
they think too that because the head
has a little more mass,
is heavier than the rest of the body,
that they actually probably eventually
end up pointed straight down
and they enter the water that way
as opposed to landing flat on their sides.
Huh?
Did they get into what,
um,
Mitch Petrie sent us this.
Mm-hmm.
Did they get into what,
uh,
survival rate?
Did not,
did not catch that,
but they said it's very,
very efficient compared to what it would take otherwise to stock these high country lakes, which would basically be by having to pack either on horseback or human back.
Because a lot of this is wilderness, you know, so there's no roads going up there.
So you'd have to pack, you know, aerated containers of water, which just takes a lot.
Yeah, I've actually seen videos of them packing trout in on horseback.
Well, yeah, you remember Mike Rule?
But he was telling us something about, like, can they airdrop trout into a wilderness area?
I feel like you can't.
Because remember Mike Rule was talking about.
No, but that was a helicopter thing, and they couldn't land the helicopter.
They do the helicopter thing back home where I'm from on the Chituga where Deliverance
was actually filmed.
The helicopter man.
To stock trout.
Yep.
Yep.
Because Mike Rule's
talking about.
But that was the whole thing.
It was about the whole
helicopter deal.
Landing helicopters
in wilderness area.
You'd have a special permit.
So you think you can
airdrop a trout?
I think so.
I used to fish lakes,
alpine lakes in Colorado and wilderness areas that for sure got stocked this way.
Well, they, I just looked it up here.
They stock beavers in the Frank Church.
Yeah.
Cal's covered that and we've talked about it.
And that happened like a time.
In the fifties.
Yeah.
And one of those beavers.
None of this surprises me after learning about that.
One of those beavers being real
successful oh really yeah sired like a whole population of beavers they had the idaho uh
uh fishing game has a video of it on here yeah i'd heard cal talked about that i'd heard about that
and they brought some in to re-establish populations in the frank church after guys
like osborne rus Russell killed them all.
Yep.
But this trout thing is just a thing that's always going on.
How many lakes do they do?
330 lakes in Boulder, Grand, Jackson, and Larimer counties, which are all northern part of the state.
Yeah, the Boulder County ones.
I'm sure I've fished some of those
in the Indian Peaks wilderness probably.
Can you think of an outro?
Yeah, I'm going to be stealing on one.
Well, I would just probably do like a quicker ditty
and then say, that's all, folks.
That's all, folks.
What was interesting, and they did a nice way of getting out of their little article here is that they decided to add in that that from when they're
in an inch and a half long it takes them two years to become 10 inches long which is which
is the minimum size limit to keep a trout in the state of Colorado. So don't go rushing out there right now, folks.
It's not like back in Carolina that Taylor was just talking about.
There's not much to catch there right now.
But in two years.
Two years is an inch and a half to 10 inches.
I would never guess that.
I think it's because lakes are so, a lot of them are sterile.
And they have such a short growing season. They're ice. No, I
would say that it would take them five years.
Oh.
Up in those
sterile-ass, cold-ass lakes. Yeah, I do remember reading
something about that in the high, there's usually
I've seen some fly guys that get
these real remote, you know, alpine lakes, and
they're catching smaller trout
and it's like, you know, catching a
bonefish.
Some of those lakes are covered in ice nine months a year, you know.
Yeah.
I think they periodically winter kill, which is why they stock them this way.
Like every few years they'll restock a lake because they winter kill.
That's why they do it back home.
They summer kill back home.
It gets too hot.
We just had our – oh, you got the got the outro yeah can you hit it real quick man tell you are really playing ball i'm trying i'm trying i'm trying to do justice you know
what i would i would not go in a wildly different direction for the outro
i was like your manager.
Go in a wilder direction or don't?
Whatever comes to your mind.
Whatever you think.
My kids are having to do their first book report type style stuff,
but it's like PowerPoint now.
They have to do slides and pictures and it's all. A book report like that?
Yeah, it's not the same as we had to do.
But we were talking the other day how you have to have an N, you know?
And she's like, well, fine.
I'm just going to write VN.
There's that slide.
Yeah.
I think you can keep it simple.
Keep it simple.
All right.
Because what I'm hearing is like I'm going to either play something a little too, you know.
I'm hearing like when I'm hearing a little ditty
something funky
Oh no, that sounds like a great outro
You pull that a little closer
Thanks
Okay, so he does his book report
about a video
Really important really, really important.
Well, you got to say something.
Oh, I forgot about that.
What should I say?
Seth, say it.
Thank you, Yanni.
That was a great book report.
Thank you, Yanni.
It's kind of like that free Pluto TV like news segment you saw in high school.
That kind of, you know, that kind of. I don't remember that segment you saw in high school. That kind of...
I don't remember that, but...
All right, I got you.
Thank you, Yanni.
Thank you.
Oh, man, that puts a nice rap on it, man.
If y'all are happy with that, I'm happy.
No, that was great.
That was great.
We just had youth... It just had youth duck season.
I think a lot of states do this, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yes.
Youth, in my home state of Michigan,
youth deer season is such a thing
that I was texting with a buddy of mine, Tim, back home,
and he sent me trail cam pictures of bucks.
And he's not joking when he said this.
He says, I hope these two make it through youth season.
Yeah.
Like, I know there's a lot of people that do, you know, that like hunt through their kids.
Work it.
They work the system.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're like all but like, that one, that that one yeah that makes sense you could picture it parents are like that with everything dude if
you found a giant buck and you had youth deer season coming up of course you can be like now
listen junior see i'm playing this game i'm playing on setting low like i'd almost be like
no you can't shoot that buck oh just to get them started out right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we had a youth duck and I took my boy out to a friend of mine's property who has like a waterfowl property.
He is a duck fanatic and has like a sweet property for hunting ducks on.
Maybe one of the sweetest ones in the country.
I mean, probably like one of the coolest duck things.
It's a great spot.
And he didn't, and what was kind of funny is,
I remember him saying like now and then they have like a little youth opener event
or something.
So I was like inquiring because he had said something like,
oh, you know, when your kid gets old or whatever.
I thought he said we had a youth opener event.
I inquired with him about what that was a thing and he said
well I won't even be in town but if you want to take your boy out there so no one's around and
like the ducks haven't been shot at all year right they didn't even like regular season like no you
don't hear any shots anywhere on youth duck opener and we put decoys out in dark we got there 15 minutes early and it
was like legal light was 648 and he's just like like very interested in what time it was because
some ducks start landing out in front of us and at this point he's no different than you know most
folks we hunt with yeah very eager for it to turn the right time and i'm like just to kick them off i
allow them to uh we have one right out in front of us and i'm like okay you know you can go ahead
and arkansas you know and he are and he like snakes the barrel out of the blind and arkansas
this duck never moves you know and then i'm like okay that's that's that's that like you got one
now it's you're gonna learn how to hit them out of the air.
And this one duck's coming in, and I'm like, okay, go.
But the ducks aren't that wise yet.
They're not spooky yet.
So he like drags it out long enough for basically the duck is like landed by the time he shoots and gets that duck.
Then a while later, one just comes in from behind us.
And before he can get on, it lands in the thing. And I said, okay, listen, now,
here's what you're going to do. Get ready.
I want you to step out of this blind
and go jump it.
Yell, hey, or whatever, and jump it
and shoot it flying away, and practice that.
Only it doesn't want to jump?
No, he just sneaks out there, hey, boom!
But then I was getting a little irritated with him.
Why?
Because he's shooting sitting ducks?
Well, because I was saying, yeah, because it's like, you know,
you know our friend.
Like, he's, right?
Yeah.
He's like a, he likes all, he appreciates the sort of process.
He likes ducks done the duck way.
Like, you know.
But I think he gives,
for a youth waterfowl opener, he probably
gives everybody a pass. He was very excited.
But, I was also like. Every
first duck I've ever heard of has been shot on
the water. He shot his first duck on the water.
I thought it would be good for him
to take this opportunity of ample
shooting to learn how to do some wing shooting
because later in the year,
ducks aren't going to do this anymore.
Yeah, and he shot plenty of pigeons out of the air,
so he's got some wing shooting. Street pigeons, clay pigeons.
I'm like, there's birds flying.
Let's take the opportunity in a stress-free environment,
you being the only gun in the blind, to do some wing shooting.
Anyhow, eventually I i look and here comes
four canadas you know like just like they're flying so slow that that it looks like they
couldn't stay in the air and they're coming at us you know and like later in the season you'd be
like well surely they'll the decoys will flare them or they'll lift up high and they keep coming.
I'm looking and they're coming and coming.
I'm like, oh, my God, he's going to get the world's 25 yards off the deck
flying unbelievably slowly directly over our head.
He pulls up and boom, just drops one.
I said, hold it out in front of his bill, right, when you shoot.
And he boom, just drops one.
And I was stunned.
He wasn't even kind of stunned, but I was totally stunned.
And then he shoots again.
And he's like, I got that other one.
And I'm like, I never listen to anything he says.
So I didn't believe him that he got the other one.
And that's just in one ear and out the other.
And we got the goose and took pictures and had all kinds of good
times he keeps talking about getting the other one getting the other one and i'm like where is it you
know geese it's like the big pond out in front there's no goose laying on it and we get all done
hunting and we go over and he's still talking about it we go there and there's that goose
running away jumped it up in the bushes you're gonna have to start listening to him oh yeah because one day we were doing some we were catching some beavers for
a guy friend of ours and we walk out of our friend's place and my kid's like there's a coyote
and then looking i don't see any coyote i'm like jimmy come on cut that crap out then he turns
around he's like there's a weasel and i'm like james listen man with that look i was like oh
there is a weasel.
No, I instinctively don't believe him.
I don't know what it is.
He's seeing stuff you're not.
Maybe your visual acuity is fading.
Oh, it absolutely is, man. So, yeah, last night we took his waterfowl and we cut up one of the geese.
So we cut up two breasts and we're brining it
for, or marinating it for jerky.
We took the legs of all the geese and the legs
of all the duck and we're curing that for confit.
And then he wants to save the rest just for
regular dinner eating.
So he's kind of working all those projects.
He's measuring out all of his stuff.
Nice.
Yeah, acting very irritated.
Irritated about what?
Doesn't want to do the work part.
Oh, he doesn't?
No.
He's a trigger man.
Can I go now?
Can I go now?
No, no, he's a trigger man.
He's like a gun writer.
Yeah, total trigger man. He's like a gun writer. Yeah, total trigger man. What about
just general gutting
and field cleaning? Oh, he loves all that.
Measuring dry spices? Not his thing.
Yeah. Not his thing. Did you guys
pluck them? You know what?
We started to pluck them, but it's so
early in the year. You can't barely
tell. This early in the year, you can't barely tell
a greenhead.
Because they just molted. And we started to pluck them, early in the year, like you can't barely tell it, you know, this early in the year, you can't barely tell a greenhead. Yeah.
Um, because they, you know, they just molted.
Yeah.
And we started to pluck them.
One, just thin.
It's just skin, very little fat.
Yeah.
And then the geese were okay, but the ducks, very little fat and all that pin feather.
Yeah.
It wasn't happening.
We had to just pull, we just, we just pulled them.
Yep.
Skinned them.
I think you got to wait a little bit. Yeah. It's like in Alaska, they to just pull, we just pulled them. Yep. Skinned them. I think you got to wait a little bit.
It's like in Alaska, they hunt ducks so early, you know, up there.
The ducks are all just like brown ducks.
It's so hard to tell what the hell's going on.
Hmm.
Are these, you think these are just resident birds you guys are hunting?
For sure.
Yeah.
They're not migrating yet.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these birds, some of these birds hatched out of
the egg on the very, hatched out of an egg on the very place we were hunting.
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Welcome to the OnX club,
y'all
so brody issue a report about your bear hunting your bear hunting adventures it was good it was super short yeah i was like you sent me a picture of a bear and i'm like bahama he's he's still at
home uh yeah i drove i drove from uh i left bozeman at like i don't know 5 30 in the morning
so it's you know 12 11 12 hours to get to where i was hunting drove to colorado yep colorado
hauled a wolf down there turned it loose probably yep exactly a great big one and a green um super wolf but uh canadian them they're canadian super wolves
they're already there they're having pups in colorado anyway um yeah got to where i was
gonna camp set up camp it's about six in the evening by that point hiked up to a little
spring-fed water hole that was probably like got up there at like 7 7 15
yeah if you're only taking a nap by now i don't mind driving usually i don't mind it um and and
it's like it was good to get out and hike after being that truck you know um anyway sat down i was gonna try it filming it and before i could even get the the little dslr out um
a sow and three cubs rolled in they messed around for 10 minutes or so and then she started getting
real nervous and i had when you say mess around like what was the messing around the cubs were
like fighting and playing in the pond and she was drinking water. They're just like chilled out, you know, just, it was cool.
It was on a shady side of the mountain.
So I think they're just in no rush, you know, to enjoy themselves.
So that was fun watching them.
But then she got all nervous and started huffing at her cubs.
And one cub ran up, like took off.
That was, I guess, the smart one.
And the other two lingered and she pushed them up
into the timber and the wind was in my face so i was like man there might be a boar coming in
and sure enough like a minute later a big jet black boar came in and i shot him was that boar
uh upwind of her yes yeah the wind was, for me, it was quartering left to right.
So she was kind of, the pond is at the base of this hill.
So that wind was hitting the pond and then going up and he came from up above her.
But man, she did not want to mess around with that boar.
Because she had young cubs, like the little teeny puppy-sized cubs.
And yeah, that was my hunt.
And that's the three jars of barrel oil you
gave me?
Yep.
How many jars did you end up with?
How many quarts?
He gave me little teeny jars.
I ended up, yeah, half quart jars.
I ended up with like three and a half gallons
total.
Are you serious? Yeah. Three and a half gallons total are you serious yeah three
and a half gallons yeah it was like 14 quarts total i think shit does it make you happy or
sad that i gave one of those to my friend laura happy you know what i did i took beets out of the
garden and um and carrots out of the garden and and roasted them in that bear grease.
Same way you put olive oil on them? Yeah.
Put that bear grease on them and roasted them.
It's clean.
It's a good, all-purpose.
I've been doing everything like that.
Potatoes in the oven roasted, just put some bear grease on it.
I haven't done that.
Yanni wasn't real happy with that bear grease you made.
Apparently not.
I can redistribute that well.
No, I got plenty of it to share.
We couldn't, I couldn't go through all that stuff.
Has anybody done cookies yet?
That's what I was just going to say.
I've done, I've done puff pastry with it in the past.
Yeah.
I haven't done any baking.
I don't like to bake though.
I kind of quit.
It's kind of a long process, but it's easy.
I think what Giannis was talking about is if you get it too hot or if you, like you said, go too long on those cracklings.
Because you want to squeeze like every bit of fat out of those things.
And I think you've got to give up at some point.
Oh.
When you're rendering it.
Well, you know what people do?
What I wonder, I shouldn't say what people do.
I know that you put a candy thermometer in there.
Mm-hmm.
I know I've read processes for doing it where you actually do it in your oven.
So you have a better grip on the temp.
Yeah.
But you need to have an oven that's reliable at low temp.
Yep.
And I think it might-
But I've heard people say like, set the oven and put it in there, but with a candy thermometer.
Yep.
Because then you can go for hours and hours and hours and not spike and not have temperature spikes.
But I've tried that, but I don't know.
I haven't really calibrated it, but I don't know that ovens do a great job of holding 170.
Because they'll go up and then turn off.
I don't know if they do a great job of holding a low temp like 170, but I never mess with it.
I think probably if you ground it up, it might render out a little better because I just cubed it, you know.
That's a good idea.
Grind it and render it.
Yeah.
You'd have to do it when that stuff's real cold because it has like a low melting point.
Like when I was skinning that bear, it was probably, I don't know, it was in the seventies.
It was hot.
And like that stuff is melting.
Melting your hands.
Yeah.
Yeah. You know what would would be good idea man take that uh snake oil here do a taste test no put it in a little jar and write bear oil on it
then give it to someone and then later be like hey man how'd you like that bear oil
they'll send it to clay newcomb see what if're like, that was the best shit I've ever eaten in my entire life.
Then we'll know.
And my joints
don't hurt anymore.
Weirdly,
my rheumatism
cleared right up.
See,
Osborne Russell
suffers horrible
rheumatism.
Did he use snake oil?
No,
but they don't
have waders.
They're trapping
all that cold water into the winter, trapping in the spring. have waders. They're trapping all that cold water.
Fall into the winter, trapping in the spring, no waders.
So he would talk about in the cold weather,
just the horrible ache of spending all those years in the water with no.
Just getting used to being wet all the time.
It's amazing they had toes.
I bet you plenty of them didn't.
Jeez, tough, tough dudes. So what else about you? being wet all the time. It's amazing they had toes. I bet you plenty of them didn't. Jeez.
Tough.
Tough dudes.
So what else about you?
Is the bear meat good?
Yeah, man.
It's great.
You know, that.
He's probably eating those acorns down there.
He had, I think he had just switched to them.
The berries had, it was a drought down in Colorado.
So it was like right at the tail end of berry season
and they're all dried up most of them and you know
when oftentimes when not that i have a bunch of experience shooting bears but they'll often
let out a little turd when you shoot them and his was that pasty creamy kind of tan acorn poop
so i'm not familiar with it because i don't spend a lot of time in the acorn areas i think that's
why the bears get big in Colorado, man.
God, they're big.
Because they go berries and then they switch to those acorns.
And then if they're lucky, they find a carcass or two.
Gambles, oak, right?
Yeah, oak brush.
Yeah.
Huh.
I killed a deer in Tuskegee National Forest in Alabama one time.
My brother was going to grad school down in Auburn,
and he discovered the great deer hunting down there.
And one time, he was getting like five deer a year down there.
And we went down.
I took a Greyhound bus from Montana to Alabama to hunt deer.
And we all got a buck.
We were there for like, I don't know, maybe a week, Christmas break. And we all killed a buck we were there for like i don't know maybe a week christmas break
and we all killed a buck on tuskegee national forest i remember sitting up in a magnolia tree
hunting deer but anyways shot a buck and pulled his stomach out it was like a giant marble bag
it was just full of like undigested like he hadn't even chewed them. No, swallowed. Like I almost killed a dog on that trip on accident.
Not almost.
I got down and got ready.
We're like walking along.
I'm looking down a power cut.
And I'm like, there's a deer.
It was a great Dane.
Like what are the chances of that, man?
Wow.
Yeah.
Question I have is, did you carry a gun on the Greyhound with like.
Yeah.
And I was so paranoid
man i took it apart i did that twice super paranoid took it apart put it in a duffel bag
bet you couldn't get away with that these days a very paranoid very very paranoid
but it worked out you know what i'm telling a lie i took my shotgun on the greyhound to hunt ducks when we hunted deer i was lying i
didn't do that i didn't bring he i must have used danny i don't know what it was i took a shotgun
when we the first time we went down there to hunt or maybe it was the second time one time i went
down there to hunt ducks one time i went down there to hunt deer i took the shotgun it was
like two and a half day greyhound ride worst thing that ever happened to me yeah sounds like it taylor probably just write about four five six songs yeah i'm hearing some good
stuff yeah yeah you gotta dip in now i mean i guess we i guess you know you got one in there
now yeah yeah you ever sing songs about dipping no no no no, no. I'll leave that to everybody else.
You should write a song called Full Stadium.
Full Stadium?
Mm-hmm.
What's that mean?
It's when you put dip on your upper and bottom lip.
We call that a hog nut.
I like that better.
All right, Yanni.
Now, regale us with stories from the Phelps Woods.
Oh. Yeah, yeah.
Had a great hunt.
It was interesting.
We got invited to hunt a friend of ours' private ranch.
For me to get how many thousands of acres, but there's a couple thousand at least there to hunt.
And my goals since I was going to hunt with at least
yeah okay my goal since i was going to hunt with jason phelps who manufactures
game calls and started with elk calls is like you know like knows a lot about calling elk
was coolest guy on the planet yeah i like him like better than seth yeah and i tell you that's
saying a lot you'll you'll like him even more
after you spend a week in hunting camp with him.
Really?
Yeah, because I got to know him.
You know, it was nice.
He actually offered,
I told him that you and I
were holding on to some Wyoming elk points,
and he said,
well, I think you guys have plenty of points to draw
where I would like to take you
and call for you next fall.
Seriously?
Yeah.
Seriously?
He doesn't even want to tag himself.
He'll just come and call.
You're kidding me.
I'm not.
I got to ask, because you're usually on the other end of the calling thing.
Mm-hmm.
I got to know what he's like.
Because he's even better than Yanni.
Oh.
No, no, no.
I'm saying Yannis is usually the one doing the calling.
Yeah, because Yanni's better than everybody else.
Not better than Phelps.
I know.
So I'm saying Yanni's better than everybody else.
Phelps is better than Yanni.
So I want to know
what it was like.
It was wonderful.
Just out there
with my bow in my hand
and the arrow knocked.
And I was telling this
to someone else.
I think it was the first bull.
Well, he called in a spike
and, you know,
spikes come in.
You can't shoot spikes
in Colorado
in, I think,
the whole state.
I think there might be
a couple places
where you can.
Colorado, they got to have four points on one antler or a five-inch brow tie-in to be legal.
So usually when a spike comes in, you know, everybody kind of like,
it's like, yeah, whatever, we'll mess with them for a few minutes, whatever.
But the first branch antler bull that he called in was a six-point,
and we had kind of a hasty setup.
I didn't get hit as much as much as I would like.
You mean because all of a sudden it was just like real,
we were,
we got in tight and he was right there.
Cause you were hearing him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He was bugling and we,
we kind of ran in there.
He was bugling the bull responding to you or he was just bugling.
Cause he's a little bit of both,
but definitely responding to us.
You know,
we were locating him.
So you hustle in there.
We crossed kind of a draw, holler,
kind of a feature on the top of this big ridge
and crept up through some kind of not super dense,
but some dense, we were in open aspens
and we had to go through some semi-dense fir trees
and we popped up on a little bench,
nice, beautiful meadow. And you could tell
it's kind of like a spot where you'd see some elk, you know, feeding and doing their thing.
And he's bugling on the far side of it, maybe at a hundred yards, maybe. And we really quickly are
like, all right, which tree, that tree, that tree. And I should have gone with tree number one,
but it just didn't look big enough. And I went with tree number two, which had like four or five
trees around it.
I just would have been, you know, hindsight is 20-20,
but I would have been 10 yards closer
and I maybe would have had this other,
like alder type feature
that would have blocked his view from me
because he ended up picking me out.
But basically as soon as I set up-
And you set like in front of the tree.
Yeah.
And as soon as I set up,
I see some cows feeding off to my left, like within bow range.
And then I look up to the right, kind of up this meadow, up the ridge, and I see more cows popping out of the woods feeding.
And this bull's bugling.
So we're like in the circle, right?
Like it's going to happen.
But what's cool is that Jason's like, I don't know, 15 feet off to my right, just kind of off the edge of the terrain drops off,
and he's kind of tucked down at the base of a tree.
And he's sitting there calling, but then talking to me about what the bull's doing, what he's doing to manipulate the bull,
and sort of narrating the thing.
And the bull's doing exactly what Jason says he's going to do.
And I'm like, wow,
this dude really knows what's up.
Like,
he's not at all like shaken up by the situation.
He's just very much methodically like looking at it,
analyzing and making moves and making sounds and,
you know,
making,
he's able to predict.
So it's not all,
it's not like just explaining what happened as though,
you know what you're talking about.
Well,
he's like trying things and he's like, nope, that didn't seem to work,
or he didn't bugle back at that sound, or he did, or that one made him start walking
because pretty soon we could see the antlers coming from the far side.
Yeah.
And, yeah, I'm like, oh, this is going to work out pretty good for me.
But that one didn't because I wasn't covered up enough,
and at like 60 or 70 yards
the bull eyeballed me and didn't spook but just turned 90 degrees and kind of walked out of the
meadow and went back you know as soon as he was out of sight he started bugling again didn't like
he didn't like it so we kept chasing him um but yeah so we basically chased that herd there was
i don't know maybe three four bulls bugling. Chased until dark.
Never got on them again.
Found a sweet campsite,
just a really nice flat bench
on this big ridge we were on.
It was interesting.
One of the stillest nights
I've ever spent in the woods.
I mean, just like,
not once, you know how in the middle of the night
you always seem to wake up
and you feel that cold breeze
and it wakes you up and you got to roll over and cover it up.
I mean, just none of it.
There was no thermal even.
Just like still.
Like we were even like busting out our wind checkers and you just puff it and it would just sit there.
And the whole night was like that.
So, yeah.
So in the morning we get up and we figured we'd be hearing them from camp.
Never heard a bugle all night.
Started to get a little nervous.
And in the morning we walk maybe, I don't know, 200 or 300 yards
and start doing location bugles, and a bull answered us,
and then we pretty much immediately got right back into the herd.
Jason called one in, and he came behind, again, one of these sort of like alder type thickets.
They really love rubbing those alder thickets.
You know what I'm talking about?
You don't see a lot of them.
Are you sure it's alder?
Yeah.
I sent it to my wife and she texted back.
The resident botanist at the Putellas household.
That's right.
And they love rubbing them, but you don't see a lot of them.
But in like a moist little draw,
like a seep almost
where there's a little more moisture.
You always see these things.
Does it got a reddish inside to it?
Orange, reddish, maybe.
You mean like when he's rubbing it?
Like when you get to the cambium layer,
it's kind of,
it's like an ochre-y color.
Yeah.
So his first bull kind of comes in
on the far side of one of these like masses he was
close he's you know 10 yards or less but as he's coming around behind it you know he sees something
you know me at full draw sort of shaking probably and just never quite clears enough for me to let
loose an arrow had some stuff covering up his shoulder and so uh we knew where they were heading
to bed or we thought we did.
So we basically, at that point, we could hear bulls moving in that direction.
So we kind of backed out of there, did a loop behind them.
And we're kind of coming up a ridge.
We're on a big ridge and sort of where the ridge drops off into steep, dark timber where we thought they had bed.
We're running up that edge and trying to
cut them off before they get into the timber, you know? And, uh, we get in pretty tight. We actually
think that they probably heard us, you know, we have four people, you know, pushing it to get in
there. The bull that I shot probably heard us coming and probably thought, oh, that's, you know,
more elk joining this, you know, group that we're in. So we got in there again, under a hundred yards, Jason Buell a couple of times, and
you could just see this bull start walking down. And he might've been 10 yards off this edge that
I'm keep referencing. And he's, there was sort of like an alleyway through the woods that he was
coming down. And, uh, he stops at maybe like 40 and I can't see him. And Jason's like, he's at 40.
I'm like, yeah, I know he's somewhere in there, but I don't have a lane. And then a few seconds later, he's like,
okay, he's walking again. You know? So I drew then, and then I could see him pop out.
He's walking kind of slightly quartering too. And then it's amazing how those animals, like when
you call, they know what tree that call came from. Like they know where you're standing because he's walking, walking, and kind of looking down the alleyway.
And then right in this little gap that we're standing in, looking out into the alleyway.
It's like as soon as he's parallel with that, he turns to look right in there.
He's like, that's where that bull should be that I heard bugling.
Right.
So he turns right in there. And, you know, up until a couple of days prior to that,
I probably never would have taken a frontal shot on an elk,
meaning like shooting him straight in his chest.
You know, I was always going to wait for broadside or quartering away.
And Jason had told me that he killed last four out of five of his bulls
taking that shot.
And so this bull rolls in at like, we think it's 15 or 16 yards and right
at the end he pretty much turned so he's straight on with me at all there's no quartering anymore at
all and i'm thinking to myself well this would be a good opportunity to try this and so i let loose
jason even told me you know basically aim right where the color changes where that main ends
yeah and sort of that brisket starts. And that arrow disappeared inside of him.
And before he spun, you know, you could see the blood spurting out.
Oh, is that right?
Jason bugles once.
And then right when his bugle ends, you just hear this loud crash, which was him running
into an aspen and then kind of crashing across these fallen logs that were fallen aspen logs
that were on the ground.
And, uh, i'm guessing he
was dead in three to five seconds really yeah i mean just so so fast had we just stepped out into
that alleyway that i described that he walked down we could have seen him he went 70 yards from where
i shot him we could have seen him piled up but you know you never know and so we just said you know
what let's just plop down right here we'll give it 45 minutes and then we'll go look but yeah we could have just stopped out there and
walked right up to him i mean he was dead instantly nice yeah so um film the whole damn
thing oh yeah some great great footage yeah we got good footage so yeah we probably called in
i don't know jason i think called in including that spike four or five bulls for me and then
I called in
one for him
in the remaining
two days
that we had
got him close
but
16 yards
he just wouldn't step out
from behind his tree
he was at full draw
for a long time
two or three
to the point where
Jason had to let down
because he was at full draw
for so long
so he'll take us
he'll go
and if we use our Wyoming points, he'll go with us.
Dude, that'd be fun, man.
Very fun.
No, it's great.
Great hunting with him.
He's a real pro.
We had a blast.
What do you think about all that, Taylor McCall?
I heard one thing that perked my ears up.
Jericho Bush?
Steep, dark timber.
Oh, that's a good song. That's somewhere
in there. I don't know if it's a song, but it's
in there somewhere.
Alright, you gonna
rip out...
You got anything you gotta add? Then you're gonna rip out
your tune for us. Oh, yeah, yeah.
What are you gonna add? Do you hunt?
I've always
grew up more fishing, just because that's what
my dad and I did. I've been, I've always grew up more fishing just cause that's what my dad and I did.
I've been hunting twice, uh, and I'd love to do some more of it.
Just never had the opportunity to always, uh, just fishing, you know, um, always seemed to be, I never had any lessons in it.
You know what I mean?
But I've had two people take me out.
I seem to like the more moving around, like we did some rabbit hunting, you know?
That's fun, man.
Yeah.
Sitting in a stand before, I definitely, first time I went, fell asleep and knocked my head on the front thing.
And I was like, yeah, I like moving around a little bit.
Yeah.
You live in Nashville?
Yeah, I do.
Yeah.
Been there two years now.
So it's been a great two years.
Is that a good move for aspiring
musicians oh that's the wild thing man it's all i feel like uh what i'm doing with my music is very
organic because a lot of people they want to be you know the next this or that and they like oh
you got to move to nashville and make it it's like oh you always hear like you know that song the ride
yeah yeah it's a good tune man yeah david allen cole right yeah and uh it's about going to nashville it's like one of those things i never moved there until i had
my first publishing deal so i played and sang my first ever gig january 2018 and had a publishing
deal with a major company uh that september and still didn't even move there and uh you know it
funded me i stayed back in south car Carolina to get this bad boy right here.
I always wanted to.
I thought you had some guitar that was in a burning house or something like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Can I hold his guitar?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
That's what the wild story is, is when I was about six, I got drum set.
My dad, he's a carpenter, and he spent three years of his off-time building
this two-story log cabin we only got to live in for a few months.
Let me know when the sad part hits. oh yeah it's about to hit because i'm gonna do a little and uh mood setting and so uh one day i was at school and uh the house caught on fire and
it burned everything we had and the mail truck uh came up with my first guitar he's like almost
didn't bring this up but i figured somebody needed it and uh that's all i had and really
as they say the rest is history what'd you think of that. And that's all I had. Really? As they say, the rest is history.
What did you think of that accompaniment?
That's good.
It's like when you're watching one of those short films and it gets to a sad part.
And when I got the diagnosis, the music would be like.
In the arms of the angel.
When the doctor called with the diagnosis, our hearts just sank.
You like that shit?
That's Yanni's special right there.
Good job, Steve.
Okay, so you're going to play us a new tune?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, so do you sell music to other musicians?
Have you ever sold a song to another musician?
I know, but I have the market, too too with uh the publishing deal so a lot of people
in my field you know they uh i'm more of an artist side of things so i write all my own stuff and uh
which that's not something you look to do yeah just because um i don't know it's uh it's one
of those things that the way my mind works and how i write and how i play is so not setting me
apart and different it's just so different it me apart and different. It's just so different.
It's not necessarily what's selling.
But, yeah, so like somebody like myself, you know, they go in and they write,
you know, at least two times a week, if not more.
And, you know, they might pitch that to Jason Aldean and get something like that.
But, you know, I just love language too much, play on words for that to be,
you know, coming through the radio.
But, I mean, the peers I work with, Keith Urban Songs, my buddy Dave Panish,
he's the first person I ever co-wrote a song with,
and he's written American Ride, Toby Keith, all kinds of stuff, Keith Urban stuff.
It's wild because my mom grew up loving Keith Urban's early stuff,
and now to see, we'll play a gig at the Bluebird Cafe,
which is a pretty special place in Nashville.
And she gets to see the people, the stories behind and meet them.
And it's like, at least I'm making her a little bit proud.
You know what I mean?
That's good.
Yeah.
Now stay close to that mic.
Yeah, I will.
You'll dig this one.
So this one, this tune, brand new tune.
So y'all heard it first.
This one ain't even. It's going to be on the new record.
I know they probably don't like me playing stuff that ain't out,
but y'all get to hear this one first.
It's a good one.
It's called Black Powder Soul.
Black Powder Soul.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I like it.
Do women throw themselves at you when they see you in the airport?
I usually have a big Pelican case, because, from my, because it's a nice guitar,
you don't just be slinging this, you know, pretty easy.
So if people are like, what is that in that case?
And they're always asking, when I walk through,
people think it's like an AK-47 or something.
So once that gets through, when I get through,
they're like, what is that?
And I'm always like, it's my samurai sword, you know.
And it just throws people off.
I try to be dry humor, and sometimes I just don't connect.
But anyway, here's this uh it's a new tune called black powder soul I'm a warless soldier
I'm a lawless man
Don't play poker
Since I stint in Spokane.
Over some bootleg moonshine, over my bathtub gin.
That's why my over-under is my only friend.
Oh, yeah. Black powder, black powder soul
I got dark clouds above me
Oh, and the fire is below
My heart is burning
My blood runs cold
I got a black powder, black powder soul.
Oh, you can run them tables
You can outrun them
Cowboys and hustlers
Holding a steel wheel hand
The best blood money
Is what keeps you fit
When there ain't no running
East or west
Black powder, black powder soul
I got dark clouds above me, oh, and the fire is below
My heart is burning My blood runs cold
I got a black powder
Black powder soul
Black powder soul
Right here, man.
Appreciate it.
Right here in the ticker.
You like that one?
Loved it.
You have a great voice, man.
Sounds awesome.
Oh, no, it's great.
That's my favorite song, man.
Thank you.
I like the over-under touch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's my favorite song, man. Thank you. Yeah, y'all heard it. I like the over-under touch.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's like insider.
So that was the people don't.
Because most people would be like, double barrel.
People, people, this is kind of interesting point is people are always curious about the song, right?
You know, is it the words or the, you know, and it's just, it's a hard thing to explain.
Like that tune itself took three days to write.
And so like the first two verses, I give you a little insight on it.
This might help with that process because any time somebody like a songwriter tries to explain it, you know, it's this it's one of those things.
Like, how can you explain something that has, you know, infinity possibilities down to the letter?
You know, and, you know, the first I started with the line, I'm a warless soldier.
I'm a lawless man.
You know, what does that put in your head? You know, like this guy, he hadn't seen the the line, I'm a warless soldier. I'm a lawless man. You know, what does that put in your head?
You know, like this guy, he hadn't seen the war, but he's a lawless man.
He's like he's out here in Bozeman running around shooting something.
You know what I mean?
And, yeah, just kind of the course of that black powder soul, you know, kind of tied everything up with this.
I don't know.
I just love this kind of Western vibe of you. You get kind of like of like western you know oh for sure wheels you know something like that and uh yeah
so like um the uh over under stuff is uh i hadn't done a stint in spokane but damn that's a good
line you know what i mean yeah if you're writing a song and someone's got to do a stint somewhere
that's a good place to have to do a stint.
Yeah, over my bathtub gin.
You know what I mean?
That's cool.
Yeah.
Well, thanks, man.
Yeah, man.
Thank you all for having me.
Wish you the best of luck in your career.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I heard that you're going to become really famous.
Man, I hope we can make some money and get a little place over here in Paradise Valley.
Yeah, you have someone uh you have a a a music biz person who
you can't he really uh is enthusiastic about your talent man it's all worked out that's why i say
it's down to the t of like i'm i'm i'm made to do this i believe because i i would have never i
thought i was gonna be a fishing guy the rest of my life you know and uh the people i've met you
know only idiots do that right brody yes correct the the guy that you're talking about you know we uh
he met it like i was playing one of my first places in nashville and i that night i met my
manager who was to this day him and uh got my publishing deal that night the guy from the
publishing company he stayed in the green room with us till four o'clock in the morning listening
to songs and he was like you know tell me what he's gonna do and i was like yeah man i ain't gonna ever see
this guy again and uh so i went back to work in construction because that's what i did for i
moved up there and sure enough he called me and was like you know we're gonna get you up here and
it's like man you know what i mean how old are you 23 oh you got plenty of time oh yeah yeah
you said that's old enough to be your daddy. Man, everybody is.
Yeah, no.
Well, yeah, hopefully we'll get to come see you live
when live shows are a thing again.
Definitely.
I'll be like, I knew that, son of a bitch.
When he was singing intros and outros for Yanni's Book Report.
I know, man.
Y'all stumped me for a minute, but now I get what y'all talking about.
That's great, man.
Best of luck to you.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Thank y'all for having me.
Thank you very much.
Taylor McCall.
How people go find you?
Taylor McCall.
You can go on taylormccall.com.
We got the online store for if you want to get a t-shirt, a hat, something.
That's good.
You can find me on Instagram, tay McCall Music, and everywhere else.
But the tune you just read, the tune you just not, you didn't read it.
That's writer language.
The tune you just played is not available.
Only available here.
So if you like what you heard there, we're recording the album in November,
and it'll be out here soon.
And that song will be on that.
But this version's better than that.
Yeah, I was originally, there was this tune,
Quartermaster, that's coming out in October.
I like that.
It's a good name for it.
And I was like, man, they got to hear some
Black Powder Soul today.
Quartermaster is a great name for a song, though.
No, it is.
I wrote it as kind of this guy goes to war,
and it's how usually the husband dies.
Well, he comes back from war, and Quartermaster, he wasn't a chopper gunner, you know, he was handing out
sleeping bags and, um, he come back and his, his, his wife died. So I was kind of holed up in, uh,
on this lake, uh, in isolation. That's where I love to write. And this huge bookcase I was
writing that. And I picked up, picked up a book and the title of the book was gentlemen, swords
and pistols. And that, that spiraled into like this whole song about that and you know that's what writing songs is you
know what i mean to me it's like taking that one thing and turning it into you know like that story
and that just an imagination i got a crazy brain i guess that's great man keep it crazy thank you
all right thanks a lot take them a call check them out uh buy some stuff from them sweet hats listen to some music the new album's called what uh
nothing uh not sure yet yeah you haven't named it but it's coming out yeah it's coming out
and it includes black powder soul yeah we got so many songs just whittling down you know what i
mean black powder so yeah i might, like, backup on that shit.
Hell yeah.
All right, guys.
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