The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 249: Begging and Pleading Redux

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

Steven Rinella talks with Ben Friedman (youngpageviews), Spencer Neuharth, Sam Lungren, Brody Henderson, and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: Spencer's long day spent rescuing an owl and then getting his buck because of karma; transporting a doomed owl in a plastic tote; Steve's kids' mouse; the Federal Duck Stamp having racked up a billion dollars so far; how Darien, CT folks are upset about the new Federal Duck Stamp incorporating an image of hunting; Janice’s box of airfreighted shrimp tails; the tragedy of Dirty Myth; the surprising dangers of s’mores; how to build all the levels of survival kit; why not to drink your pee; cowboy cauterization; Steve's better than Brody at squealing like a pig; thoughts on cannibalism; all the things that can bite and make you sick; the best material ever written on pooping in the woods; how Ep. 192 of The MeatEater Podcast saved a life; Steve begging and pleading with you to go buy MeatEater's Wilderness Skills book; 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.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

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

Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. Oh, I got a COVID hot tip for you. It's like a hot tip off about COVID. I had... You know when you get your haircut and your t-shirt gets all full of the hair

and it just drives you insane? I feel like you have a bad barber. Because when I go, man, they keep it nice and tidy and keep it all off me. They have this thing they put around you. Yeah, that little tissue. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, but you know about, I'm not saying that it happens to me every time, but

you've had that experience. My wife cuts my kid's hair and she doesn't put anything on them. And then they don't even, they'll never wear those shirts again. They complain about them every time. Oh, yeah. You can't get it out. Because she buzz cuts them. At home haircut, when I do buzz cut.

You're exactly right. Well, I wore my mask through my haircut. My mask. Okay. Holy shit, is that uncomfortable. Oh, yeah. Every time I put it on, I'm like, spitting all that hair out that got stuck in that thing. Joined today by YP from Barstool Sports.

How you doing? I'm doing good. How are you? I know your name's Ben. What's your preferred thing? I don't know. I'm sure I'd like to get your guys to take that. That's got to be a weird thing to meet a guy named Young Page Views.

What the hell is going on? It was an accident. I actually was never meant to be. I don't know. I made a music video, believe it or not, when actually was never meant to be. I don't know. I made a music video, believe it or not, when I was trying to get a job at Barstool. And Dave calls himself Davey Pageviews because he came up as a blogger. And that's like the metric.

Yeah, they like pageviews. Yeah, so that's like a cool thing. I don't know. To get a lot of pageviews. Yeah, he was like the king of the pageviews. So when I made, I was trying to get his attention. And I was like, weirdly, to like do fishing attention and I was like, weirdly to like do fishing content. I was like, I made a music video.

Don't ask me how or why, but. Get the attention of Dave Portnoy. Yeah. One of the funniest dudes. Ever. Yeah. I don't know. I think ever.

He does a good rant. Oh my God. When he's annoyed about something. It's crazy. As long as it's not you. I always feel like annoying him about something so that I could watch him express annoyance. I would love, I told us when we talked the first time and I was, you know. Yeah, we were going to have an argument about hunting.

Yes. I would love to see you guys to talk about it because I've never seen him lose an argument. He's slippery. Do you think he'd come on this show and argue with me about hunting? Here's the thing. He's smart enough to know when, I think he, no, no, he's smart enough to know when like, I think he doesn't want to hunt, but he knows the ethics where he's not going to get into an argument about, like, it's totally bad because he eats meat. And, like, he's smart enough to know that that's hypocritical.

He eats meat, yeah. Oh, yeah. So, like, I think he just doesn't want to hunt. Do you know what I mean? But I don't think he, like, hates hunting. The best kind of person on the planet. Yeah. The best, like, I wish the whole planet didn't hunt but really supported it so then

you should like me that's me right now i have i'm not a big hunter guy but i eat a lot of meat but now actually you won't like me because now i'm coming into the i'm trying to start you know what i mean yeah so i'll stop liking you soon i know soon but i'm still bad enough shot that you still like me for a little bit you You want to hear a crazy hunting story? I would love to. Spencer will tell you one. Tell them about the owl, Spencer. Yanni, before I tell the story, what is the Latvian mantra when it comes to karma?

Like, karma is a big part of Latvian stuff, right? Steve nailed it. Just ask him. Hold on. Karma is a big part of Latvian stuff? I feel like. Steve nailed it. You don't get it. Just ask him. Hold on. Karma's a big part of Latvian stuff? I feel like I've heard you talk about karma a lot. Yeah. You got to keep in mind, Spencer, that our whole lens in the Latvian culture is Janus.

So Janus has attributes that aren't necessarily Latvian that we ascribe as Latvian. So maybe this isn't a Latvian thing. It's a Janus thing. Yeah, totally. Just my upbringing. All right. Well, I thought a lot about you when this was happening. Okay.

I was eating Eastern Montana this last weekend. I was on my second day of the haunt. There was moving spots from my morning spot to my afternoon spot. On my drive, I came across an owl caught in a barbed wire fence. What kind of owl? Great horned owl. Caught in a fence? Ca caught in a barbed wire fence. What kind of owl? Great horned owl. Caught in a fence? Caught in a barbed wire fence. So I pulled over to take pictures

and I snapped a photo and then, yeah, it was big. My brother hit one one time, busted out the front grill and the headlight on his car. Owl. After being up close, I can understand why. Pulled over to take some pictures because I was like, oh, this is kind of a cool

poetic scene or something. I don't know why. Like two foot tall animal. Way bigger than that. How tall are they standing up? Probably three. I wish Doug Dern was here. He'd know already. He'd looked it up on his phone. Two feet's not a bad guess. Caught in

the fence. So I take a few pictures. And you thought there was poetry in watching this owl suffer. At the time, I didn't know that it was still alive. Oh. The whole scene from my pickup on the side of the road to the barbed wire fence looked like this was death. Yeah, you're like, there's got to be a metaphor in here somewhere. There were feathers in the ditch. It had evacuated its bowels in the snow.

I couldn't see its head. I thought maybe it was decapitated. Oh, jeez. So I get sort of close. I take a few pictures and then it moves. I'm like, oh, this thing is still alive. How tall is a great hornet? 25 inches.

Okay. Oh, good job, Spencer. Yanni said too much. Thank you. Latvians always know that. I want to know more details about how it was caught. Bottom strand between the two? It looked like, no, it was in the top strand.

It looked as though it had been crucified. Like both wings were on the top barbed wire fence. Oh, that is kind of poetic. Yeah. And then the rest of his body was just hanging down. I have photos I can show you after this. Are you going to put them on Instagram? I think so.

All right, so everybody can go to Instagram. Do you want me to do it or are you going to do it? We'll figure it out later. Everybody go to, tell them your handle. At Spencer Newhart, N-E-U-H-A-R-T-H. At Spencer Newhart, and you will find photos of Spencer's poetry. All of his poetry is written in feathers. What's your guess?

Was it swooping down to get something? So I have a pretty good answer on this part. I'll get to it in a second. So I find this owl, realize it's still alive, get to work on getting it out of the fence. The one wing comes out pretty easy. The next wing, though, was like in there, in there.

Is he just biting at you bad nope it was it was very docile um and when you're up that close the talons are like ridiculous on it but the good news was i had my first light mitts with me which were like the biggest heaviest wool winter gloves that they have and i was able to handle it pretty confidently with those so i kind of opened up its talons which had a wing in one of its talons, and I pulled that out. It was like. I'm sorry. I don't understand that.

Its talons. Its own wing? Yeah. Its talons were just kind of grasping at stuff. Oh, at whatever it could get its hand on. Yeah. It had sort of grasped its own wing. Huh.

So. Man. The next wing, though, would not come out. I tried as hard as I could. Could not get it out. But I had a pliers in my pickup. Wrapped up in the barb. Wrapped up in the barb. Badrapped up in the barb, badly.

So I went to my pickup, got a pliers, and cut the fence on both sides of the wing. And then the owl was then free, but it had like three inches of fence hanging out of its wing. I also, I haul my camping gear in four totes. I keep it in four totes that are, I don't know how big,

maybe like 30 gallons or something. And I had one of the totes that are, I don't know how big, maybe like 30 gallons or something. And I had one of the totes that were empty, so I put the owl in the tote in the back of my pickup. Did not have service where I was at. Drove out about 20 miles to where I could get service. Called the game warden. After, like, calling five of them, one finally answered. And he said, well, I would just leave it.

Whatever happens, happens, he he said and that wasn't advice well no you know what why it's not maybe not any disrespect to him because like i wouldn't regard a fence like if you had found it tangled up in a oh like a coyote had got it or something yeah then i could see that you would have that perspective. But here it is, it's in a man-made thing. And so now humanity is involved. Yes. There was like some responsibility involved.

Sure. It wasn't my fence. I can see that. The game warden said just whatever happens, happens. Let it be. But I wasn't real satisfied. And at this point, I had a live owl in the back of my pickup. So it was also like beyond the whatever happens, happens.

You probably get attached a little bit, right? Yeah. What's his name? Well, I already had some names picked out for it actually. We'll get to that. I was going to call it, I had two names picked out, either Peck because of where it was at. You can figure that part out on your own. Fort Peck Reservoir.

Sneaky. Yeah. Or Meat Eater because I'm sure it eats a lot of meat. Yeah. I'd like those two. So I got a phone in the game ward and wasn't real satisfied. I called the billing zoo. The billing zoo said, we do not do any owl rehabilitation,

but you should call the Montana Raptor Conservation Society, whatever they're called. Is that down the Bitterroot? They are in Bozeman. Oh, okay. Right out of Bo they're called. Is that down the Bitterroot? They are in Bozeman. Oh, okay. Right out of Bozeman. There's one down the Bitterroot. So I called them on a Saturday afternoon at noon.

They answered. And they said, well, here are the options. You can drive it to us in Bozeman, or we have some contacts spread out throughout the state where we'll do a a little relay race where you will deliver to this person they will deliver it to us we could do that so the the woman on the phone she also told me this on the front end she says birds and fences have very low survival rate and an even lower rehabilitation rate that like this thing is going to function well enough to be like they just get too banged up yeah it's just like a bad situation. Not many of them come out of there in a good deal.

So they found somebody who was a volunteer 90 miles away that I could then drive the owl to, and that person would deliver it the rest of the way to the Raptor center. So I agreed to do that. And basically took myself out of hunting for the rest of the day because it was just going so far out of the way where I was going the opposite direction of where I wanted to go. And I wouldn't be able to hunt that evening because there's going to be too much time on the road. Hmm. So I take this owl to the woman who's then going to take it to Bozeman and on my way home from there.

Oh, okay. So you say like, here's an owl in a box what's her take on it yeah so my wife take a look uh no this this person was just a regular citizen and my wife handed them a box with an owl in a tote a tote that had holes cut in it with my bench made edc uh so it could breathe i handed them the tote and then they took it the rest of the way. And they didn't even take a peek. So the person on the phone from the Raptor Center said that they cannot handle the owl at all. Oh, okay. They're not allowed to.

Gotcha. But that lady told me that this was the third bird in the week that she had taken to them. And she had hit the trifecta now in a week because she had done an eagle, a hawk, and then this was her owl. Man. A lot of birds get messed up out there, apparently. I've heard that barbed wire fences are one of

the biggest detriments to sage grouse populations. And in that area, you'll see a lot of fences that have flagging on them just to make it more visible so the sage grouse don't fly into them. And they put those little metallic reflectors on there to blow in the breeze. Because it's like certain people, when you string, I don't know, whatever height inches, I've heard that, that that's kind of like a cruising height for them? Yep, exactly. Huh. So to this point, you haven't gotten any updates or any reason to think that the owl is going to make it, not make it?

You're saying like right now or the day that I was delivering the owl? No, right now. I'll get to that at the end. I have an update on the owl. Oh, geez. Okay. Yeah. One quick question.

You're really constructing narrative. Was he able to stand up in the tote? Or was he laying down like in a little coffin? Yeah, he was mostly laying down. When I would mess with him, he was conscious. He would look at me. Mess with him.

So then you're harassing him. What's that? You were harassing him and stuff? Well, harassing in a way of trimming the barbed wire around so it didn't have 10 inches of barbed wire instead of three inches. You're still getting up to the Latvian karma thing, right?

Yeah. Did you hunt down a mouse or a vole or anything and try to feed it? No, no, not enough time. Oh, can I tell you something real quick though? My kid, we were out hunting for the youth season. He found a baby mouse and carried it around in his bino pouch. And it was like, I'm not kidding you. We got a deer later and that mouse was licking his hand and stuff.

Like he, this mouse was like a full on pet mouse. And he, your son told you about this? No, I was with him. He's like, look. And I looked in his bino pouch. I was like, where's, you know. Anyways, he's carrying his mouse around in there all day long.

Then him and his sister, they name it, everything. Then they have a change of heart and let it go. And then the next day, just were like catatonic about having let that mouse go. They wanted to go find another baby mouse.

And I was like, I've been wandering around this planet for 46 years. That's the first baby mouse I've ever seen anyone find. So I don't think you're going to go out right now and get one. I can point them in the right direction though.

Down at our chicken coop, I'm sure there's a couple running around. They forgot about it, but I was going to rig them up a bucket trap and just put nesting material in there. So instead of them drowning in antifreeze, they'd have like a little collection of mice they could. Come on, come all, Steve's Great Mouse Zoo. Anyways, this is a great story.

I love it. All right. So I've now relayed the owl to the other person. That person is en route to Bozeman. I'm en route back to camp. But I'm not going to make it back to camp in time that evening to hunt. Just not, not enough daylight left. On my way there though, about 30 miles from where I just dropped off this owl, I see some deer filtering into a field, um, a couple hundred yards off the highway. It's private land, but I had on X and I

had the maps downloaded despite there not being any service. Found out where the landowner lived because I thought, well, this is my one chance. Like this is my only opportunity to hunt for this evening. Went and knocked on the rancher's door and they told me that I could go hunt. Now, mind you, to this point, I had decided this summer that I was like, I'm going to try to find a whitetail property to hunt this year in Eastern Montana. And I went 0 for 15 on getting permission. No shit. Yeah.

No kidding. 0 for 15. But it just ain't happening. Just not happening. Did you butter him up with the owl story? No. It did not come up. I was prepared, though.

I was trying to rescue an owl. And he'd probably be like, bring me the owl because I'm going to strangle it if he's like an old rancher. Anyways, I was trying to rescue an owl and I couldn't help but notice. I was prepared to explain how I wound up in their driveway to talk to them, but it didn't get to that point. He disagreed on the front. He was like, oh, that's no problem. Yep.

So I go back to where I saw the deer. I walk into the pasture and an hour later I had killed a buck. A buck that I was really stoked on. Like that I would shoot any state, anywhere, private or public 4x4 So I would have never been in that area had it not been for

rescuing the owl though because I was 80 miles in the wrong direction from where I wanted to be hunting that evening. Did you then go sleep in your camp that night? Nope. I went and broke down camp and drove home. Okay. But the whole time this happened, I was thinking of Yanni and Karma.

I was telling that to my wife. Yeah. Then she said. You need to tell that story to Yanni's dad if you really want to get the dope. Okay. Yeah. He'll just be like, of course, that's how the universe works. I don't believe, but I'm closer now.

Closer. I got an update on the owl on Monday. It's dead. Oh! So that was a bummer. They said it could not be rehabilitated. Both wings were in too bad of shape. There'd be too much stitching to be done.

They just said it wouldn't happen. So did they euthanize it? They put it down. Yeah. Yep. Yep. You know that joke about the guy that goes out of town and his cat gets on the roof? That reminds me of that joke.

I wanted a happy ending real bad. I was stoked. I was like, I'm going to volunteer for them. I'm going to go feed this thing. I'm going to go and take pictures of this owl named Meat Eater. I'm going to be there when they release it. You had like a little mind movie. Oh, I was all in.

It's called a mind movie when that happens. I was all in on it. We have four real writers in this room. Do you consider yourself a writer too, Ben? I would not say so. No, okay. So four. Like 140 characters. for it. Is there a name for a story that has

simultaneously like that a good and bad ending? You could do a choose your own ending book and you'd be like if the owl dies don't get the deer. Go to page 7.

It's kind of like the ending of a Tarantino movie, really. I was telling my wife about this, like, karma that I built up and stuff, right? And then I killed this deer. And she's like, well, if karma works, like, I don't know that they would reward you with killing another animal. That's a great point. I'm glad your wife brought that up. That's a really good point.

You're saying that, like, I saved an animal. Yep. And so I was rewarded by the universe. Yes. With being able to kill one. Yep. But then the one I saved died too. And that's just how the universe functions.

So now two dead animals instead. That owl got a raw deal, man. He's like, it's in the story. Well, it didn't die in vain, I guess. It helped me get a buck. If that owl had lived, he'd sue you for, like, stealing his shit, man. That's right. And now I know how to handle the situation next time.

If you come upon someone, just call the Montana Raptor Center. They'll get you hooked up. They are, like, a very energetic. Are you going to become a donor now? I'm not going to be a donor, no. But I looked on their website for volunteer opportunities. The only volunteer opportunity they have right now is if you live in Billings, Montana, you can be part of this relay

race from taking owls from there to Bozeman. You know, those places often take trim meat from hunters and stuff. Yep. Remember Yvonne Chouinard had that story. He used to bring roadkill deer. He used to bring roadkill deer

to a raptor center, but he said they'd usually show up minus the back straps, but no one ever brought it up. Would you volunteer there at the expense of being able to rock hound? Why couldn't I do both? I'm just saying, so let's say a Saturday comes up, you're like rock hounding in one hand, fixing up rafters in the other hand. Sure. I felt like pretty rewarded throughout the situation up until I found out that it died.

So I enjoyed that. I think I would do that again. Yeah. I got to ask though, I've eaten some pretty weird shit with you. Did it ever cross your mind once they said it was dead? Did you ask them if you could breast it out? No, because I imagine their euthanizing situation is just like

a cocktail. I figured. That'd be some thin-ass breasts on that bird, man. Owls not going to have... My dad was from the era when people just shot things for no reason. He always told a story about sitting in his tree stand one day and seeing an owl

at eye level with him, way off, and shooting. And he said his arrow goes, he's talking about how fluffy they are. And he says his arrow goes right through the owl, but the owl doesn't even flinch. And he realized it just passed through the feathers of the owl. Now I would say, why in the world are you shooting at the owl? But at the time, you're just like, huh. Yeah. The old days he used to blow into this he

used to blow into chicago bowman and they had a little patch with every like everything that was on noah's ark they had a patch for and all you had to do is go in and be like i shot a uh toad with my bow and you get the toad patch i'm not kidding and he had like a sash i'm like he had like a sash with dozens of patches of just everything on the planet because this is back when people were super excited about bows like the fred bear era who's that dude who went to africa to prove you could kill an elephant with a bow and shot it like 90 times howard or something like that it was like everybody was geeked up on bows it's like people hadn't hunted with bows and they were getting back into hunting with bows. And so everybody was just trying to show like how great bows were so you could get bow seasons and shit like that.

He like worked really hard to get states to get bow seasons. And then later in his life fought against states having crossbow seasons. Okay. One more little report. Hold on The interaction I was dreading most Throughout this whole thing Was then talking to the rancher About me cutting his fence

Which was not ideal for him, certainly But I found his phone number Called him, told him the situation And he was very understanding He was really pleasant I offered to go back and fix it for him And he's like, no, just tell me where it's at I'll deal with it

So very positive on that front as well. So was he like, yeah, I would have done the same thing? Or was he kind of like, you did what? It was, it was pretty brief. So that didn't come up. When you cut the wire, did it go twang and like undo six posts? No. Oh, okay.

No. It would have been an easy fix for somebody. So you called him up? Called him up. Well, I felt bad. No, I, you did the right thing, man. Sure. I was actually wondering about that the whole time, but I was trying to only interrupt you like 30 times.

When you called to tell him about his fence, did you try to sneak in and permission ask? While I was cutting your fence, I couldn't help but notice what a beautiful property you have. Yeah. Deer was dead by that point, so I didn't need any more permissions. Well, I got you for 2021. That's right. I didn't want to push karma too much there. Okay, Yanni.

We've got to cut in Taylor McCall's intro. Yanni's book report okay yeah and uh sam's gonna help yanni sam lungren is gonna help yanni with his book report brody henderson's here too but he hasn't really said shit i'm here today to talk about how um i don't have a proper intro yeah not as strong for this setup there yp did you were you were probably flying high off the owl story right i was i mean until it got killed i don't know and then and then like when yanni kicked in there did you feel like a just a real like just the energy drained out of the room didn't it i'll just die it again when he started i remembered that it got euthanized we're gonna go from predatory birds to prey birds here talking about ducks slick Slick segue. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced, I think over the summertime, that for their contest that takes in artwork entries that are then used for the federal duck stamp has a new rule.

Okay? Now, to tell you all about the federal duck stamp and exactly what it is and how that works, here's Sam Lundgren. That's great. And I promise I will pick it up right after he's done. Because I was like, that was a very eloquent just like getting in there and out of there, man. Well, thank you, guys. It's like I got the news over to you, Bob. Thanks, Yanni. like getting in there and out of there man well thanks i got the news over to you bob oh thanks yanni glad to have an opportunity to talk about one of my favorite well i i think uh many of our listeners are probably abundantly familiar with the federal

duck stamp program every american who wants to hunt waterfowl has to buy one every year. It's $25. The program was established in 1934. And you can read a piece I wrote about Ding Darling, J. Norwood Darling, who was a political cartoonist. Like a satirist. Yeah. How do you say that word? Satirist. Satirist. Satirist. Satirist. It doesn't sound right though, does it? Yeah, either way. Either way. He satired things. Yeah, he did. He did.

But yeah, he was a cartoonist for most of his career, but he became so prominent that Franklin Delano Roosevelt hired him to start the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It was called something different back then. But Congress passed the Federal Duck Stamp Act in 1934, and he was responsible for implementing that. And he drew the first one. It used to be a dollar, but it was meant to generate funding for wetlands conservation. It started out as a dollar? $1. Yeah. Do you know how much money totaled now?

Yeah, it's over a billion dollars now. Over a billion dollars. Yeah, you see different numbers in different places. I've seen 800 million in some places, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says 1 billion. And that they've conserved over 6 million acres of wetlands since 1934. A lot of freaking muskrats. Yeah, absolutely, of wetlands since 1934. And that's, yeah, absolutely, man. So it's, it's, it's enormously popular and successful program. Um, and it's become really popular for collection. And I actually just spoke to the, uh, well, the email to the chief of the federal duck stamp office

this morning. Um, and is that his dedicated job yearround, or he just kind of kicks in for a week or two every year? Her dedicated job, but I believe it's year-round. I've worked with her before to get permissions for us to use images of duck stamps in some of our media. But she said that they sell 1.5 million stamps every year. What are they again now? They're $25 now. They had been like 15 for an eternity. They were 15 until 2014. And everybody are they again now? They're $25 now. Because they had been like 15 for an eternity. They were 15 until 2014. And everybody had a shit fit. Yeah. Because it went

up from 15 to 25, but then people had to point out, we haven't raised it for a long time. Decades. Yeah. Decades. But we're also scheduled for another $10 increase sometime in the near future, I believe. And anyone that wants to hunt ducks has to buy that. And then for a weird reason, I guess maybe not weird. Cause no, they don't want you trading it between your friends. You got to write your name on it. Yeah. You got to like put it on your license and write your name across it.

So it's like not transfer. Yeah. I never really put that together. Yeah. So you can't be like, oh, just take my duck stamp. Yeah. And she, she said that there's about one, one million waterfowl hunters approximately every year who, who buy a waterfowl, um, waterfowl licenses and hunt waterfowl hunters approximately every year who buy a waterfowl um waterfowl licenses and hunt waterfowl but um she also knows that a large proportion of hunters buy two every year one

to put on their license and one for a collectible which my dad's done for my entire life he's always bought a couple because he likes the program yeah he likes the program um they have a series of like prints from back in i think the 80s with uh you know like the actual print of the painting plus the duck stamp oh yeah yeah my friend mark has a lot of those yeah he's got a lot of those you're right it's like a big painting and then in the corner is the actual stamp yeah yeah my father-in-law has a wall literally of that he was like a chapter chairman or president for a lot of years of a du um uh chapter and uh yeah i mean there's like i don't know 10 or 15 in each frame and just a whole wall you know he's been did it for 40 years or so have you ever asked did you when you're on the phone, what's the woman's name who runs that program? Suzanne Fellows.

Have you ever asked her why they won't do a cubist duck or an impressionistic duck? I've wanted to, but I haven't. Like a modern duck. Daffy Duck. This conversation was just on email. I'm going to ask her that. I would like to know because it's a certain style. It's a certain style.

It's very photographic. And who knows certain style. It's like very photographic. And who knows? Maybe there's never even been a submission. That's not the style that we're talking about. The context of that article I wrote was about our friend, Ed Anderson, who's done some paintings and some collaborations with us before. And his style is very kind of comic book. Like we did that shirt with him, that tarpon. Yeah. Well, they ever put one of his ducks on a stamp. So he's considered,

he's considered, uh, trying to submit something under his, under his style. And I don't know, but we did talk about that because he was doing an art. The reason I did that article is he was doing an artist in residency at the Ding Darling National wildlife refuge so i was kind of comparing him to to ding darling because ding was a you know a cartoonist first and kind of a fine artist second um so i i think that would be really cool um and shake it up a little bit but i think it would probably ruffle some feathers if you will what susan that's your name yep if i was susan i would go down and i would have the crazy asses looking abstract duck. Just see what happens.

Some Picasso shit. Yeah, who knows? That'd be awesome. Maybe it comes out so cool that you sell an extra half a million next year. All right, so let's get into, you ready to get into the, so now you throw back to Yanni. Go back to you, Yanni. Well, yeah. Well, here, let me set them up real quick.

Because they sell 1.5 million a year. They think about 1 million goes to hunters, but they think a lot of hunters buy a lot more or more than one. But other people do buy duck stamps, but it's certainly a smaller proportion. But at least two thirds of the sons of bitches are sold to hunters. At least two thirds. But you can get free access to National Wildlife Refuges if you have a duck stamp. So there is some incentive for bird watchers to do it. But that small percentage of people who buy duck stamps who are not hunters are now upset about a change of the rules. Back to you, Yanni.

Back to you, Yanni. Thanks, Sam. That was great information. It's good. This is titillating because this is a lot of shit I didn't know. I didn't know about the refuge access. Yeah, and I wouldn't have told you because I don't know what Sam just told you. All right.

So up until now, I think that they basically just said- But you're back in familiar waters now. We want just like submit us pictures of ducks, right? And for the duck stamp. Well, in May this year, the agency announced a new rule. The artwork submitted to the contest must include hunting imagery. And so I don't think it's like all the whole 30% of those people that are non-hunters that are now mad. But one, probably 10 of them. And their group is called. At least 10 called Friends of Animals, a Darien-based.

I don't know where this town is. Darien, Connecticut. Darien, Connecticut. It's like, dude, if there's a place where a place called Friends of Animals is going to be based and they're well-funded, that's the place. That's the place. I've never been. I want to say it in the evening. If you had 10 people with enough money to get all that going, that's Derry in Connecticut.

There you go. So yeah, they're saying that it's just going to alienate this third. So we're going to actually lose a bunch of duck stamp sales and it's going against what this whole thing is for.

And so basically we're going to lose money for Critical Habitat, lose money for the ducks themselves. Because those people aren't buying one. Yeah. And the, the, the leader, the president,

great name, Priscilla Farrell is her last name. She says, it's almost comical. The desperate lengths, the dwindling hunting industry is willing to go to make its clients feel relevant. Huh? I see both sides. desperate lengths the dwindling hunting industry is willing to go to make its clients feel relevant. Huh. I see both sides.

Why did they make a rule that it has, like, like I'm happy they did, you know? Like first, if I'm out in the parking lot or whatever, and a guy comes up and goes, hey, here's a thousand bucks, right? I'd be like, I'm happy you gave me the thousand bucks, but I just don't get why he gave me the thousand bucks. Yeah. I don't see, I don't see any hunters saying hunters saying, we want to be featured in this stand. They're like, why? Just to stick it to, like, why? Just to be rabble rousers?

Well, no, I think there's, because they want to say, hey, lest we forget the two-thirds of this billion dollars over the last six, 70 years. No, 90 years. Lest we forget that it's two-thirds of it has come from hunters. Let's make sure. And so I believe that this year's winner, there is a floating duck call. Floating? In the foreground.

Looks like it's supposed to be lost or something. Yeah, I mean, how do you drop it? A lost duck call is in the center of the picture? Keep it on a damn landing pad. Sam, Sam's going to protest and not buy one because he doesn't like it. It's like, the guy don't even have a lanyard. Well, it is a little bit wedged in there. I mean, I'm all about this.

I appreciate what they're trying to do, but I feel like artistically it's a little bit forced. You'd have preferred just like a flat-out dead duck. I don't know, maybe a blind in the background. A guy blasting away. do but it's just i i feel like artistically it's it's it's a little bit forced you'd prefer just like a flat out dead duck i don't know maybe a blind in the background or a guy or somebody out somebody out in a kayak with a string of uh sea duck decoys or something like that well until now it's always been those beautiful like wings cupped soaring coming in right at sunset probably after legal shooting light right so you can't shoot him anyways. But you could just change that from just that beautiful wing-stretched outlook

to that one where it's just when he gets hit and he kind of tucks his wings in and his head falls to the side and he sort of has that gravity is taking over moment. They probably considered that one strongly. You think? Wait, so a guy lost his call and it's kind of floating in the water.

There weren't a lot of details about this, the one that won. Oh, I got a picture of it right here. Oh, that is the winner. Hold on a minute. Is that supposed to be a decoy or a real duck? Supposed to be a real duck. Well, he did have a lanyard, Sam.

The lanyard got hung up on those cattails. Oh, dang it. I didn't mean to cast aspersions or anything. I do like it. I'm just saying. I'm a traditionalist. My kid could have incorporated hunting into a picture better. It would have been guns a-blazing.

Yeah. It's like his lanyard's kind of tangled up in some cattails. Maybe it was from Armistice Day. Oh, yep. It's like the day the duck hunters died. It is. Yeah, Spencer just wrote an awesome article about that.

Huh. What do you think about all that, YP? That is what they're mad about? They saw that and then got mad? Yep. No, they're getting mad about the rule. They're getting mad about the rule that all submissions now have to include hunting

in the imagery. Just for that year. Or every year. As far as I understand it, just from the little research that I did, it's going forward. I've got to imagine that that'll change back though. Why? Because these folks from Darien? No, because I've got to imagine that That'll change Back though

Why, because these folks from Darien? No, because the leadership of the Department of the Interior is about to change Oh, they're going to get a lot less hunting friendly Potentially TBD, that means to be determined Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, Waypoints, and Tracking.

That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you, you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services hand-picked by the OnX Hunt team.

Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash you visit OnXMaps.com

slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. I was going to talk about the drug ketamine. You ever go into a K-hole, YP? No, I have not. I was going to talk about the drug ketamine. You ever go into a K-hole, YP? No, I have not. I was going to talk about the drug.

Have you? No. But they use it on wildlife. And a guy wrote in a pretty good explanation of how ketamine is used in wildlife research and how ketamine is used recreationally and how ketamine is used as a medical drug. And he sent this chart about the more you take, how you move from an analgesia. Am I saying that right?

Analgesia. Analgesia. I was like, whoa. How it goes from being an analgesia. I've never, ever liked that word. No, it's not a good word. I've never liked that word. It goes from a pain reliever.

Analgesia. It goes from that. Yeah, but those things, dude, you can't trust those things. You can't trust them. No, it's like an automated robot. It's like, ask a, oh, I got a great Yanni story for you. So, you know, everybody thinks Yannis, his name is Janice. This is hilarious.

So, Yannis got this big shipment of shrimp tails from our buddy, Greg. Oh, I haven't even heard this one. Yeah. Yeah. So, but Greg's like, somehow Giannis' big shipment of shrimp tails is showing up at the airport. Freight. And Giannis is supposed to go down and pick up his frozen shrimp tails. But he's out of town.

So, I'm like, shit. I better go get the shrimp tails. But I can't. I can't remember why I couldn't. I had some reason I couldn't get the shrimp tails. So Kylie, I'm like, Kylie, can you go pick up Giannis' shrimp tails? He's out of town. So Kylie goes down there and walks in to get the shrimp tails. Guess the first thing out of the woman's mouth.

You must be Giannis. She smiled, nodded, and took the box home. What a boss. I love it. Much smaller spot prawns than we're used to catching and eating. Yeah, and darker colored. Like they weren't cleaned properly. Did you notice that when you thaw them?

Have you eaten any yet? They have an iodine color to them that I don't see on the big dogs. You don't think that's because they're very eggy? I feel like that year that we caught all the egg-laden ones, they were more like this. That yellow. Those tails didn't have any eggs on them. Oh, no. Like, more than

50% of the ones I had are covered in eggs. Really? Yeah. I've only eaten one bag of yours. We ate two bags. They're not mine. They sent them to both of us. No, I handed a couple out to some coworkers, too. Yeah, as you up this ketamine dose, you go into a dissociated state. But I'm not going to cover that because we're going to get into something else. Okay.

This is a YP that I want you to know as you're sitting in here. So far, it's been pretty typical. Covered the kind of stuff we normally cover. Oh, yeah. Here, you're going to see a wild deviation. In what way? We're going to talk about a thing we wouldn't normally talk about. We've only done this once before.

No, I'm scared. No, that's not true. We've done a book-dedicated podcast before? Mm-hmm. Twice. Twice. Yeah, because you and I have actually maybe done, this might be our fourth, because I believe we did one each for the guidebooks,

and we definitely did one for the cookbook. Guidebooks are way back. I don't think that we had a, I don't think the show existed back then. You and I, I think I flew to Seattle, and it was in your first house in Seattle, and we were in some crazy little high-up office. You had some office on the third floor of this old house, and we were tucked in there. It had a slanted ceiling, and we were tucked in there.

Yeah, we probably barely knew each other, but we went through the first guidebook. No shit. True story. All right, so it's a little more typical than I thought. A little more typical than I thought. So never mind all that. So a very typical episode for us here where we talk about a new book release that we have out. I want to start out with a quick story.

The last time we did this, we had an episode a couple of years ago, which was called Begging and Pleading. This might, we might call this episode Begging and Pleading Redux, part two. One or the other. Begging and Pleading was an episode dedicated to our cookbook that we did. That was what you guys, you listeners out there, came out in such full-fledged support of us after Begging and Pleading

that all of the cookbooks that existed sold before the book was released. Now, here's an interesting story. It has been, I'm just going to come out and tell you this. You can dislike me or whatever, but I'm going to tell you. I would like to have a book that was on the New York Times bestseller list. Real, real bad. Total vanity bullshit, but that's just my dream and hope. You guys bought so many copies of the cookbook after begging and pleading that all the cookbooks that were in existence were sold before

publication date. You all went and bought them on amazon.com because Amazon had made a sizable order. Now I know as a a point like the New York Times bestseller list looks at how many books were sold in a certain week. However, all of your pre-orders count during your first week. So you might have a book be for sale for three months before its release date. The release date on our new book, which is called The Mediator Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival, has a December 1 release date. You can already go order it right now. On December 1, all the pre-orders hit.

And then you have the seven days after, and that all counts for your New York Times bestseller list thing. What happened with the cookbook is all the copies existence, all sold through Amazon. And Amazon is historically been in like a pissing match with the New York Times, where the New York Times won't accept Amazon's sales figures independently. They need to see it verified because they don't want someone like a single company being able to bullshit them or have their numbers wrong and report a number. And then that goes on the list and they can't independently verify it through some formula where you look at how it's sold in other markets. Because all of our books sold and they had to wait for a reprint.

No books sold in other markets. I know as a point of fact, because my publisher had the number six book on the New York Times in our category, our same publisher had the number six book on the new york times in our category our same publisher had the number six book that week and they told us that we sold thousands more copies than the number six book on the new york times bestseller list but they didn't count us because it all sold to amazon that's some bullshit It's just how it is. I have been mad about it 10 times already. So have they resolved it though? Is Amazon like counted now or no?

They won't count it. They can't. What they're trying to prevent too is someone buying their own book onto the bestseller list, which people have actually successfully done. Like certain categories. I don't want to spend too much time on this shit there are certain categories of books where like a surprisingly low number will land you on the list there have been people that are just you know well-funded individuals who can go on and do these big bulk orders or have like a bunch of their friends do a maximum you can you can game the

system so they they have this way to try to build in where that kind of thing isn't happening. And so they want to see that the book is doing well in a variety of marketplaces to the point where, this is like kind of some weird dirtiness about the list, to the point where there are certain independent bookstores, say, where on the New York Times list will value their sales 2x. It's some weird ass.

It is not like what book sold the most. Right. It doesn't account for the way book buying has changed either. That's what I'm saying. But you imagine you got a place like, you know, like there's like a hostility toward the big man. Yeah. Big man being Amazon. Yep.

So all that is meant to say, as we sell you on this book over the next little bit here, we're going to spend 30 minutes selling you on this book. As we sell you on this book, I don't really, I don't care where you buy the damn thing. I want you to have the most frictionless interaction possible. But if a little part of you, a little teensy part of you, says, you know what, I'm going to call up Billy's Books down on Main Street and order my copy through Billy, I won't be upset. Neither will Billy. Oh. Always good to support small businesses.

Yeah. You need to call that old Bill. if you're on a first name basis. Like I said, I think people should have a frictionless buying experience. There is indisputably a lack of friction in an Amazon sale. And by God, if that's how you want to buy the book buy the book that way the main thing is you buy the damn book just as a favor to me secondarily if you can make some purchases through other you know buy that one then go buy some more through other places just in order to it's just simply this.

It's simply just to make me have the happiest day of my damn life outside of my kids being born. By having one of our books go on that damn list. Think about it. Nice hunting friendly company represented on that list.

What category do we fall under? Do you remember the name? Nope. I should know that. You mean the book category? I don't know which nonfiction category. I don't know if we'd be on general.

On Amazon. How to. Yeah, it falls under a couple different categories. Well, yeah, we made every other, like our cookbook made every other bestseller list on the freaking planet. But not the one that anyone pays attention. No, I shouldn't say that. I don't want to diss other bestsellers list on the freaking planet, but not the one that anyone pays attention. No, I shouldn't say that. I don't want to diss other bestsellers. This one shows-

There's sort of like a certain cachet, an undeniable cachet. Yeah, that's the one that everybody cares about. Oh my God, I could just taste it. We might make a t-shirt that has a big red stamp on it that says New York Times bestseller. That's a great idea. Just one.

Right now I'm wearing our newest t-shirt with a big old-fashioned double long spring on it. Trapping shirt. Were you inspired to make that shirt after our visit down to Gene, the Antler Man? Kind of.

Jim. Jim? I think it was Jim Phillips. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I don't know. I'm just trying to help. Let me tell you. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I don't know. I'm just trying to help you on it with the name. No, thank you. Okay. A little bit about the book.

We're going to try to do this in a painless fashion for you all, but it would be after working on the book for years, and a lot of people in the room, a lot of the primary folks were in the room, excluding YP. He didn't do shit for the book. I didn't do anything. No. Sadly. Like nothing.

Didn't even contribute like a nothing. But maybe he will with a blurb here later. It's too late. Oh, it's too late for blurbs? Didn't do shit for the book. Damn. So, oh, you'll notice in the dedication. I don't want to point out the typo on the dedication.

Someone changed Dirt Myth's name to Dirty Myth, which I'll never. You can't change it. It's got to stay that way forever now. That's what it is now. That's just what it is now. It's so sad. Dirty Myth, man. Dirty Myth.

It's the only mistake I've found. So the book is called, again, the book is called The Meat Eater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival. It is how many pages long? Counting the index is 435 pages long. Let me tell you about why this book exists. I feel as though

the you'll notice that in the name Wilderness Skills precedes survival, right? So like The Meat Eater Guide to Wilderness skills and survival I feel as though the survival the the survival genre has been kind of tainted in recent decades maybe by sort of like fantastical television portrayals of survival situations that create this idea that nature that wilderness are these like horribly dangerous places um

you best get out of there in a hurry before something bad happens to you uh and you know just always remember to drink your pee um and everything's gonna kill you uh i view this book as being a you know an antidote to that and resetting wilderness skills and survival to a position where it is very well thought, moderate, highly skilled information sets that are passed along to you in order that you will feel more functional, capable, comfortable in the outdoors. Whether you're a professional who works in the outdoors, whether you're someone who's taking their kids out camping, whether you're just getting into hiking and you're going to go visit a string of national parks, whatever.

That you will go into the woods with competency and you will understand the equipment and skill sets and mindsets involved in all forms of wilderness travel from like basic recreational to advanced stuff. It is not a book that's like meant to be full of a crazy cockamamie bullshit. In fact, the original title, working title. Yeah. Was the no bullshit guide to wilderness skills and survival working title. Yeah. Was the no bullshit guide to wilderness skills and survival. Yeah.

That's the book. And we worked on it. The folks in this room, Brody, Sam, Spencer did work on it. Yanni did work on it. A bunch of other people did work on it. We collaborated with emergency room,

doctors, river guides, all kinds of, you know mountaineers consulted with and put together a collection of um information that i am very proud of to see bound together in a book and what we're going to do here is kind of walk through what you'll find in here in order to give people a better sense of what's going on so i'll start off by talking about the introduction real quick which is called the surprising dangers of s'mores and one of the things we get in this book and try to like a theme throughout is that a big part of wilderness travel and

wilderness skill and even even like a survival mentality is being realistic about risk and threats i think that it's easy to have it's easy to get um preoccupied with the idea that you're going to get mauled up by a mountain lion. And you lose sight of what actually happens to people. And one of the things we found in our research that was really surprising is that depending on who you go to, so like groups that keep track, like wilderness groups that field people out in the wilderness, and they keep track of what things, like over the course of decades, what things are leading causes of wilderness evacuations.

Simple strains and sprains and cooking accidents. Like when you go out in the woods, you have a far greater chance of just burning the shit out of your hand on a camp stove. Did you hear Garrett Smith's story?

Not the one where he poked his eye out with a pine needle? Not that one. Yeah, that one required some skills that could be found in this book. But no, exactly that. Like a five, six day trip, I can't remember what river, in Montana. Garrett's a big

kayaker. He's got a full pot, full, uh, what's that new stove that we like so much now? The MSR reactor. Yeah. Boiling hot water and he goes to grab it and it kind of slips and half that water goes onto the top of his hand. And he just said for two months, it was just blistered and puffy. And they were only like, it was like their first or second night in. So he had, he had like three days ahead of him out in the sun, gripping a kayak paddle and having to paddle with that wound. I saw a bad, one of the worst backcountry injuries I saw was someone where he had an alcohol stove. And it's super bright out in the middle of the day.

And it's hard to see that flame. The flame's blue at night, middle of the day. And it's hard to see that flame. The flames blew at night, but in the daytime, it's very hard to see the flame. They thought the stove had run out because they couldn't see the flame and went to free pour alcohol into the stove. And that huge, nasty, blistery hand burn. Also on a river trip. And there's just no getting out. I mean, you're just there. I mean, you could have really, really pulled the cord on the whole thing.

No, because back then we didn't have sat phones and in-reach devices. Which we cover heavily in this book. Surprisingly dangerous s'mores. Then we get get into the next thing we get into and yanni's gonna do a second book report yanni's book you're book reporting on this one yeah yanni's book report uh yanni's gonna break down what to pack and where like how this chapter works and the the introduction steve that you just mentioned doesn't count towards the page count so you actually get like those six pages for free. You buy 435 and you get the six pages. What are the savings?

Why on earth do they do that? I don't know. Can I tell you one quick thing about- Tell me why an introduction doesn't start on page one. I don't really know. That's odd. I wonder if all books are like that. I'll tell you a little book thing I do know.

There's a title page. Like a lot of books have a title page. Like if you go to this book, you hit a page where it says the meat eater guide to wilderness skills and survival, but it's just that. And then you go to the next page and it has the author and publisher. They call this page the bastard page. And if you have like an antique book that's been signed by the author, it's preferable that it's been signed by the author not on the bastard page but on the page that shows its its lineage meaning the publisher there's a thing i want to mention about the introduction the introduction i tell i kind

of kick off the book by talking about yeah i think yanni was here we were up in the yukon charlie's rivers preserve one time and we flew over the wreckage of a plane that went down during world war two. And it was one of the guys on the plane was this dude, Leon crane. Everybody died in the, it was an experimental flight in the forties. Everybody died in the plane except Leon crane. And it talks about what Leon crane did did. It took him months, 90-some days. He was stranded in the middle of the winter, east of Fairbanks, negative 20. And what he did for those 90 days

and the kind of things that he tried and the calculations that he made. And I get into like, why did that dude, like, what was it about that guy that knew like he just didn't make any mistakes? And you remember flying over that wreckage? Yeah. Yeah. So I talk about, I kick off, I talk about my brother, Danny, who lives in Alaska and

works out of single engine aircraft. He, he's, he believes in like getting up and getting down like you don't fly around extra shit but what's kind of ironic is i remember we kind of flew out of our way a little bit to go look at that wreckage which violates the get up get down principle but i started by talking about that guy and then some other shit but then uh yanni lay out what people will find and what to pack and where. I will. First, I'd like to point out that before this book, I think, even really had its inception,

there was a time when we had maybe three, four, maybe even half a dozen ideas of what's the next book project going to be that we're going to work on. I remember sitting on a plane and chatting with a lady, and she's asking me about what I did, and I was telling her about whatever adventure we were going to be that we're going to work on. I remember sitting on a plane and chatting with a lady and she's asked me about what I did. I was telling her about whatever adventure we were going to be on or we had just finished. And she said, you know, that's really not like way, like not even kind of think something I would do.

She's like, I need like help just kind of just like going to like the nearest lake where there might be like a half a mile or a mile hike to it, maybe a little hike around the lake and then getting back to my car in a matter of like a couple hours. She's like, that intimidates me. And I think we had a conversation soon after about like, you know, it's important when we make projects like this that we really, because the vast majority of people out there don't have our skill set. Maybe not even half of it might be more like a small percentage of our skill set.

And they are looking for just the basics to know that, yes, I'm comfortable and confident to go to that Lake. It's a mile away. It's a big trail going to it. And you wouldn't like, you and I just don't think that that would be intimidating, scary

to just like be that far away from your car for a matter of hours and then come back. Yeah. We're used to weeks at a time. But I think that this book speaks to that person. So you don't have to be Joe Hunter, Joe Mountaineer. I'm looking into getting into backcountry skiing to get valuable

information here it can you can totally be a city dweller or the person you're buying it for it can be a city dollar that's looking to get out for the weekend for like a day hike and be like yep I read this there's a lot of stuff it's like beyond me but there's like I know exactly what's in my pack and if I happen to have some stupid accident out there at the lake I'm covered right that was great I feel like Yanni's trying to get a job at the QVC channel man that's phenomenal salesmanship I didn't make up after my poor book report showing just started out this started out is gonna I caught

you by surprise I saved it yeah no oh yeah he really saved it and then like now he's like back up at the top of the chapter one is uh what to pack and where and um you start off with uh the uh story of you and your brothers going to all sheep hunting and sort of trying to weigh you know what's too much and what's too little and trying to find that compromise where when you're in the middle, you're getting the experience of being out in the wild, but you're also safe. You don't want to go out there and just have so much stuff and be burdened by everything that you're carrying around and that you really have your experiences and that much different than if you were to have lunch at home in your backyard. But having enough that, again, rain shower comes along, you don't get soaked and get cold and have a miserable time. Yeah. Versus being like so minimalist that you're vulnerable. Like you're so minimalist that you're great as long as things go real well and the weather stays a certain way and one thing to the

next. Yeah. So, and what's cool is that you have a, just like we did in the guidebooks, we had a lot of outside experts weigh in. And I believe that in this chapter, I saw that Remy Warren weighs in and Brad Brooks. Anybody else, Brody? In that chapter, I think that's about it. Yeah. But they kind of talk about both ends of the spectrum there, like this ultralight guy and the guy that doesn't mind

carrying a little bit more gear to have it. I want to point out something real quick about kind of how it flows. So a part of it flows like this. Survival kits overview. A basic survival kit, which gets into your basic, like how to build a basic med survival kit. Then a big list of shit that's called extra shit for your basic kit. And then you get into the official oh shit jury rig kit, which is like more advanced.

And I want to point out that the book kind of flows like that in general, where things start out in every chapter starts out like everything's great. Like, for instance, water starts out like if your car came it, how much water do you bring per person per day? And what does that get you? Ends with how to source water in the absence of surface water. So every chapter flows like everything's perfect to, uh-oh. And that's the general path through. There's a lot of stuff, I think, in here that you'll find in probably a lot of other like-minded books. Like there's

just stuff that you can't not talk about. Like how to what's the system called where you use the tarp and the hole in the ground to get water? Solar sill. Solar still. Yeah. Like that's a legit thing to do, right? That's in an upcoming chapter. But

what I like here, like in this one instance is like the extra stuff that you guys want to think about to add, like we're in the what to pack and wear chapter, but you guys did like an extra part for like specifically kids, right? Like it's different. You gotta think about

it. Kids get wet somehow when it's like 90 degrees outside, you're in the desert and somehow sons of bitches are soaked to the bone you know uh we one time took our kids we were up in alaska and i was advocating not bringing a lot of clothes for the kids because i was like they'll just wear them dry like you know yeah it's like you and our kid right away wades out into the water he's two ways wades out into the water so he's now he's soaked up to his waist and i'm like well yeah but he'll just have to wear him dry and my wife's like well he also

shit his pants out there you can't wear that dry wearing Wearing anything dry in southeast Alaska is hard, but when you've got a dump in your pants. Yeah, I don't have too much else to say about the chapter. I think that you should buy the book and read it and see what all is in there. Yeah, Steve, I like that. There even includes, and we made sure to go in and have a female contributor tackle this one. But we got one called Mountaineering Tricks for Soggy Underthings. And it's information on sports bras.

There you go. Steve lays out a nice detailed packing and unpacking system in there, which I think is pretty valuable. Because a lot of people just kind of throw their shit and in a backpack and go there's a condemnation of uh metal wedding rings we cover packs knives tools shovels all that kind of stuff oh and we also have in every chapter like tip section and that's when you're writing a book a lot of times you wind up with a lot of extra stuff you want to talk about but you can't make it fit nice um and then in narrative uh in narrative non-fiction or in novels and stuff you just want to you can't do it like there's no way to do it but in a book like this you just have a thing called like extra stuff and then you

just pile in all the stuff that you couldn't make fit normally. Yeah, and it's a way to do it real efficiently too. Like just lay it out there quick. Really, YP? First chapter covered pretty well? I think it's good. And from somebody who didn't write this book, so I can be an outsider perspective, I think it's important too that like a lot of people could be disassociated when they think the only time you'd need this is like, oh, you're in a plane crash or something. But what Yanni's saying too, where it's like, it could be as simple as going the wrong way

on a trail. And then you need some of these skills where it's like very accessible. You know what I mean? Totally. For me, that's like huge. Cause it's like, I could, I could gain abilities that I might not have had just from reading. And it's, it doesn't have to be some crazy scenario. It could be like everyday stuff. You know? do we pay you anything to be here? No,

but I'm, I'm serious. Cause that's true though. A lot of times you're like, if I tried to tell my fiance, like, Hey, this guy was in, you know, the Sahara and his plane crash, she she's already tuned me out. If it's like, Hey, we're hiking. She tuned me out when I started talking, but it's like, if you're just hiking that happened happened to me like a couple months ago. We were on Mount Aeneas. I started, I'm like, yeah, this is the way. We ran into these bird watching guys that were like up on this survey who were like, what the hell are you guys doing out here?

I was taking us across this ridge that was headed into like nowhere. These are skills I could have used if I didn't run into those guys or else I would have been screwed. Oh, thank you for saying that. I'm serious. We didn't pay you, but it would be awkward if you said like this is stupid yeah you know what guys six out of ten i don't know buy it maybe that'd be weird no man day hikers get lost and injured all the time like my niece lives in the pacific northwest and she was out on a hike and busted

her leg and spent the night overnight until someone came by, you know, just this past year. Did you hear about that elk hunter in Colorado that just got super lost? They only found him because they decided on a whim to go to an area where he wasn't supposed to even have gone into. Oh, really? No, I didn't hear this story. All right, Sam. Sam's going to cover a couple forests that he worked very hard on.

Yeah, well, I did water and food, which sound very simple at the outset and got real complicated on me real quick. But, you know, we felt like water was, you know, first and foremost after, you know, what you bring, what you wear, because, you know, it's the elixir of life. And so, first of all, we talk about, you know, how much water you need. I mean, that's, that's one of the biggest problems that people run into is not bringing enough water or not knowing, uh, how to obtain water or, or, or, or how to, how to know what water you can trust. Uh, so we, we start off with, with how much, how much water you need basically, you know, for a day to, to, to live and sit in an office or your, your couch downstairs, but, um, you know, getting into how, how that ramps up exponentially once you're outside doing stuff. Um, and, and we, we go,

we go into the math of how, how, you know, how much you need, because, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of days hunting this time of year where it's cold and you're doing a lot of sitting and, you know, bringing Nalgene with youene with you is probably going to suffice for a day. But then earlier in the season when it's 75 degrees, you know, so you can bring four liters sometimes and be down to the bottom by the end of the day. We have information on how to trick yourself into drinking liquid, which is my problem. Yeah, yeah.

When it's cold. Absolutely, yeah. trick yourself into drinking liquid, which is my problem. Yeah. Yeah. When it's cold. Absolutely. Yeah. It's nice to have some tricks to, uh, just get more liquids in and spice it up a little bit. Cause it can be a little boring to drink

nothing but water for a week. If it's like below freezing, I'll go a day and look at my water bottle and just be like, no interest, man. I do that too. But then like the next day I'm all,

I'm all sore and cramping up and stuff. And it's because you don't drink enough water. Absolutely. One of my favorite pieces we wrote about this is the highly divisive subject of water bladders. I'm a camelback guy, always have been. But I know I'm among a minority here with my colleagues as a camelback dude. And I don't do it all year because you run into problems once it starts getting cold. But I love having it so available. I just drink so much more water when it's just like right there

and you don't have to dig it, dig that water bottle out of your pack when you're stopped and you can drink it on the run. But yeah, we discuss all the different ways to carry your water. But then we get into the fun stuff that Steve has a lot more experience with than I do.

But neat little words like giardiasis. Isis. Giardiasis. Giardiasis. Isn't it? I butchered that. Cryptosporidium. Nailed it.

Escherichia coli. E. coli to most people. But, you know, the shit you can get from drinking unfiltered water. And, uh, you know, many of us have, have just sipped out of a Creek before. I mean, I, I remember going on a three-day hiking trip and that's all I did. Cause I forgot my water filter, um, didn't die. Didn't feel great afterwards, but we go in, go real deep into water filters.

There's a lot of different ones on the market. A lot of different pros and cons on UV pens or SteriPens. Pros and cons on ceramic filters. Pros and cons on gravity-fed filters. Absolutely. Sunlight, boiling. Yeah, and we go all into where you, where you find water. Cause that can be a really tricky thing too, especially if you don't have a filter where you, where you can find

water that you might be able to trust. And I think that's where, you know, we differentiate a little bit here from some other similar books is that, you know, this is, this is like, you, you can, you can drink unfiltered water if you have to, you're not necessarily going to die. It's maybe not a good idea, but you know, the, the, these things are available to you and there, there, there are ways, there are other ways to, uh, to get clean water or make clean water. Um, if you don't have a filter, including, you know, like we said, solar still transpiration bag, you can, uh, you can even use UV. I didn't know this, but in Africa, they use UV to filter their water all the time. They just use plastic water bottles and leave it

out in the sun for a few days and it's clean. It's going to be hot, but you know, it's, it's going to be clean. Uh, so yeah, I mean, water's important as anything when you're out doing this kind of stuff. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew!

Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast.

Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more as a special offer you can get a free three months to try on x out if you visit on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all uh one of the things we get into too is like the science of how to ration water so like what when you have limited water how do you parse it out spencer we've covered this before on the

podcast but spencer covers in the book um why not to drink your pee oh and real quick tell us some other like we like like we try not to give a bunch of bullshit, but some things are some bullshitty things are so pervasive that we actually had to touch on them. So Spencer, do you mind hitting on a couple of things we had to touch on? Yeah. So we, we had like, I don't know, five or six sidebars in the book, maybe one for each chapter on sort of things that are really prevalent thinking that we basically said bullshit on, you know, like moss only grows on the north side of a looking at some really popular movie tropes, like cowboy cauterization, which I don't know if that's like the universal term, but that's what we've been referring to it as.

Like in Rambo 3, Rambo finds himself in a very familiar situation. He is injured, he's alone, and he's shirtless. And he's got a wicked wound in his abdomen. He pulls out a piece of shrapnel. He fell on a stick, didn't he? I don't know. Oh. I don't know.

That sounds lame for Rambo. Yeah, that cannot be it. He pulls out a piece of shrapnel that's the size of his pinky from his abdomen. He then fills it with gunpowder and lights it on fire. And there's this whoosh like he's in a cave of course and it's painful to him yeah and it lights up the whole cave and he passes out

and he staves off infection and he goes on in the movie I put this in our original draft he didn't make it in the book about how he finishes the movie because it's just so badass like how many people he killed well no like the series of events. Afterwards, he goes on to steal a helicopter,

crashes that helicopter. He then steals a tank, crashes the tank into a helicopter, and then saves the day. All because he was able to do this cowboy cauterization. Now, we talked to Dr. Alan Lazar, who said you absolutely should

not do that. An emergency room, who said you absolutely should not do that. An emergency room physician who we consulted with heavily in the book. Yep. Does not cauterize with gunpowder. Yeah. They said those are very, very fine instruments that are like going on exact spots on your skin. If you do this cowboy cauterization where you're lighting your stomach on fire, doing some self-arson. You're like taking one step forward by stopping the bleeding, but five steps back, you now have third degree burns. You're going to get infected even worse. You have dead tissue. It's just a really bad idea. And even aside from,

from adding gunpowder, I mean, I feel like there's John Wayne or, you know, old Westerns where they would like get a knife hot in a, in a fire and to the wound to cauterize it, seal up, stop the bleeding. And it's also a very, very bad idea. Just as bad as it could be. Yeah, I think the gist of it, Spencer's piece is don't do shit you see in movies. Yeah, exactly. The other one is sucking snake venom, right? This is a very common Western trope.

I think the first example I found was from 1947 in a novel called The Pearl. A mother sucks scorpion venom from a baby. All the way up till 2018 Red Dead Redemption 2, a video game. The main character sucks cottonmouth venom from a stranger. So this is very common.

This has been told of all the way. Is The Pearl by John Steinbeck? Yes. That's a good one. Hmm. Happens there. That was like the first example I could find of this. So what's the story there? Tell people the story. Typically, the heroine stumbles upon somebody who's been bitten by a snake.

They then get out their oversized knife, cut an X in it, wrap a tourniquet above the snake wound to i don't know why prevent it from spreading further in the body no maybe that's the idea and then they suck the venom out of the wound you gotta spit real forcefully really furiously spit that venom out right like like like dirt myth yep uh the reality is you absolutely should not do that the venom spreads so fast that there's no like getting the horse back in the barn. You're also like, say, this is a second party assisting you in this. You're just risking them then getting the venom in themselves as well. You shouldn't do it. And I've seen this sort of thing, like these sort of this stuff is so prevalent, like I said before, that it's just

like accepted. That's what you do. When I was in high school, I was working for a number of different farmers in the area. One guy did exclusively pigs and we, before shipping the pigs out, I think to prevent shipping fever, which is just pneumonia, we would vaccinate the pigs with penicillin. And it's this really, really chaotic scene when this is happening. It's a two-man job. One guy is in the stall that's probably the size of this room with dozens of pigs. The other guy is running a gate, letting the pigs in and out. And, like, if you imagine getting vaccinated like a toddler, it's a very delicate process, right, where they stick the needle in and whatever.

It's a very delicate thing. That's not the case with giving pigs penicillin. There's a lot of stabbing going on, and once you vaccinate one of the pigs in the hip, you spray paint them so you mark that you know this one's been done. It's just a lot of chaos. The pigs squeal, et cetera. The one guy I was with when we were doing this.

That's not how they squeal. Something like that, but times a thousand. Times a thousand. The pigs are running. They're in between your legs. The one guy I was with swung down. He missed a pig, and he stabbed himself in the thigh and injected all in one motion. Stuck himself, injected himself with the penicillin, whatever.

We go out, and the farmhand calls the the farmer and he explains to him what happened. On one hand, right, he stuck himself with penicillin, which is like, is that an antibiotic? Yep. So you stuck yourself with penicillin. On the other hand, this needle had been in hundreds of pigs and this was peak swine flu time. I was a junior in high school in 2009 so that was like top of mind as well he calls the farmer and he tells him what happens uh philip was the farmhand fred was the farmer philip tells fred what happened and there's a long pause and

fred thinks about it and he says well philip did you try to suck it out? As if that was the solution. So it's just prevalent stuff like that that makes it into the psyche of everybody and that's just like a solution to a problem. But it's not. And we don't just curse the darkness. We light a candle by telling you what you do

do when you get stung by a snake. Zapped, whatever you call it, by a snake. And what you do do when you have a chunk of a snake zapped whatever you call it by a snake and what you do do when you have uh a chunk of shrapnel or bullet in you so it's not all just negative nancy that's right when rambo had that wound he should have been lighting himself on fire he should have taken his headband out of his luscious locks and used it as a tourniquet that would have been much more simple and much more effective uh you were just saying something that made me want to say something. I don't know.

Talk about food, Sam. I'll talk about food, Steve. Well, you know, the way I've been pitching this to all my friends and just everybody out there is like this is a book that's not as much a survival guide. It's just like how to be an outdoorsman, outdoors person. So, you know, in in this food section we start with what do you bring because typically when you're going outside you just bring damn food with you uh and it's a lot more a lot more simple that way i mean obviously we're often going outside looking for food but um we still bring a lot of freeze-dried shit with us as we go so we we really

break down just like how to be comfortable, how to enjoy it. Including a section called 10 ways to master the freeze-dried experience. Absolutely. And I think that's one of the- Hot tips on freeze-dry. That's one of the most important, that's one of the most important tips out there, because if you can't enjoy freeze-dried meals, you can't spend a heck of a long time out outdoors. Yeah. Followed by the coffee conundrum. Giannis, what do you carry with you in your backpack for freeze-dry?

Stick of butter? Oh, sometimes, yeah. That's a hot tip. I like my butter. I bring a little bit of hot sauce with me, salt and pepper. All these hot tips are in here. All these hot tips. Including a section, should you be buying all those supplements?

Which we felt like we needed to address. And the answer is no. And, you know, some of our, you know, more kind of cozy homey stuff, like bringing jerky and smokies and pepperoni sticks and, you know, just how to have fun out there and not get so sick of the same old bars that you don't want to eat them and you're not putting in enough calories. And, you know, we also get into like how many calories you do need because, you know, everybody knows from the nutritional labels on the back of a, you know, can of beans or, you know,

bag of chips that everybody has a 2,000, needs a 2,000 calorie diet. But that's just really not true. That's just an that's just an average of, uh, American adults. But you know, when you're, when you're sitting around at home, you may need way less than that. But if you're climbing 4,000 feet up a mountain, you're going to need twice that much more than that even. And sometimes like you can't, cannot physically put enough calories in your body to replace what you've, what you burned through. And so we do, you know, some simple, simple math there about how to, how to consider what you bring

with you, um, based on, based on weight and caloric value. Um, and, uh, you know, I talked to Janice about, uh, about some of this stuff, uh, you know, sample overnight packing, packing list, sample five day packing list for, you know, day hike packing list, just kind of some ideas to get you started based on what we do and what we've had success with and what we enjoy eating. Um, you, when we, we, uh, we get into the different types of stoves, worked a lot with Ryan Callahan on that one. Um know, there's a lot of different options out there. And, you know, from your pot belly wall tent stove to the little bitty alcohol stoves you can make out of a beer can chopped in half and kind of some of the advantages and disadvantages. And then after that, we start, we kind of take a hard turn into food you can find. And so this is more in the survival section.

Like when shit hits the fan, what do you do? I mean, what can you eat out there? That's always really the captivating part of any survival story is like, what do they eat? and you find out that people have lived on lizards and eels and even certain types of berries for long periods of time. And this is where this chapter got away from me a little bit. I remember you asking me for about 8,000 words, and I think I turned in like 30,000 because we basically went through everything you can eat in the wild areas of North America. We had to condense that a little bit on the fruits and berries part. I worked with a friend of yours, Samuel Thayer, who's just the man when it comes to wild plants. He's a foraging author and instructor and wild foods expert based in Wisconsin.

And he was telling me when we were talking on the phone, he goes survival camping. It's just like for, for fun, he'll go out with nothing and just find shit to eat for a week. And I was like, that's pretty bad. Yeah. He knows, he knows his shit. He knows his shit real well. So he helped me narrow it down to about two dozen different plants. Like commonly, widely available, easily identified wild plants without dead ringer killers. Absolutely.

So it's like, well, it's got six lobes on the leaf that'll kill you. But if it's got five lobes, it's pretty tasty. We help you steer clear of the things that you're going to screw up. Yeah. And I mean, and this even helped me this, this spring, uh, a buddy and I were out looking for morels and he's like, Oh, this is a, this is wild onion. We pull it, popped out the bulbs. And, and I was like, man, this doesn't really look right. And, and I had just written this section and he ate it and he's like, Oh, that's a little sour, a little, little tart. Um, and I was like thinking, I was like, man, isn't it, there's something about flat.

I'm like, no, the wild onion, wild onions are supposed to be a round stem. And this is flat. This is wild iris. And we'd both eaten one at this point. And I'm like, oh, we shouldn't have done that. Should we maybe make ourselves throw up uh should have read the book should have read the book a huge section in here on like what's up with eating a all the common questions yeah what's up with eating a skunk what's up with eating a possum what's up with eating a coyote what's up with eating a lizard what's up with eating an alligator like all the like where's the meat what's up with it what to expect what's going to kill you and also a little bit about like how to, how to find it, how to get it. Yeah. Primitive.

Yeah. Like how to pack for it. Primitive methods, even a gripping section on how to free your dog from traps. Cause a lot of dog owners are tripped out often rightfully so about traps, what to do in those situations, what the timelines look like, how to get your dog out of a trap. Should you be out hiking and something bad happens. Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, we go, and we go from, you know, when, when we're talking about, when we get past the plants and talking about animals, we're, we started in with shellfish, you know, crayfish, mollusks, crabs, bivalves, stuff I grew up doing, you know, hopping tide pools and stuff.

But, you know, if you're in a, you're in a coastal area, that's probably the best way to feed yourself. Then we get into fish. Obviously I, uh, didn't, didn't leave any stone unturned there. Um, but you know, there's, there's a lot of cool, cool ways to, uh, to catch fish. I had just filmed a, a little video a couple of weeks ago with some of these tips that we have in here. I went and caught a brookie with a piece of line and a stick I chopped off. And a candy wrapper for a lure. And a candy wrapper for a lure. And then I made a little fire and spit it up and ate it. And the whole thing took about a half an hour. So it's, you know, obviously we drove there for that specific thing in mind, but you know, it's, some of these things are really doable. Um, fish traps, trot lines, set lines, fish spears. Um, got, we've got this, you know, little emergency survival

kit. I love this. We had Joe Cermeli. Um, we had Joe Cermeli write this one about, you know, about what, uh, world war two pilots, how they had a, they had a little survival kit in there, uh, uh, survival fishing kit in their survival kit. Um, and the stuff they would bring, uh, you know, they're not bringing Rapalas, they're not bringing anything fancy, but you know, a silver or gold spoon, it's pretty much all you need. But as I, as I showed the other day, a bear hook with a little chunk of candy wrapper works just fine on brook trout. And, you know, we kind of work our way through from the easier stuff to catch, kind of the less advanced animals, into trickier and bigger things. We've got amphibians.

We've got reptiles, lizards, turtles, crocodilians, birds. We spill a lot of ink on the fool hen concept in the bird section, which, you know, anywhere you go in the country, they've got something they call fool hen. It's not the same species everywhere, but, you know, different types of grouse can be very easy. Well, relatively easy to capture compared to other birds. The food chapter ends with my favorite section, which is called, and lastly, a few thoughts on cannibalism. And we lay that whole situation out. If you make it that far, will you do it?

What parts you might want to start eating on and a little bit of the psychology of cannibalism. That came around too. We kicked it around for a while and they were like, we have to talk about it. We just have to talk about it. Most people are going to have to have a cocktail before they get into that little chunk.

It sort of poses the question. What happens there? Chapter 4, Things that Bite, Mul, sting, or make you sick. It just covers the whole gamut. Starts out with everything about plants, thorny plants, cactuses. Gets into insects and arachnids. Goes through biting flies. So it's everything like treating it avoiding it worst case scenarios uh insect

born pathogens gets into bees wasps hornets chiggers fire ants on and on a big shit a big bunch of stuff about lyme disease lone star ticks which take away your tolerance for meat spiders tarantulas scorpions all kinds of stuff on identifying and avoiding, gets into fish and reptiles, like jellyfish, stingrays, lionfish, how to deal with them. We had a big section from spear fishermen on what's up with sharks, a little bit of a breakdown on the four big offenders when it comes to sharks, what the behaviors are like, what to do, how to tell when you might be in trouble with a shark, shark attack prevention, all kinds of stuff on snakes, gators, a lot of stuff on mammals, a particular focus on rodents and different kind of pathogens that are passed there, how to avoid them,

how to deal with porcupine quills, skunk bombs, rabbit fever, gets into hoof mammals, and then it gets into all the stuff we love to think about, grizzlies and mountain lions and all that stuff and wolves. And I'll tell you, there's a little bit of a buzzkill in there when you start looking at the numbers and is it really something you ought to be spending a bunch of time on. If you do feel compelled to spend some time on thinking about it and preparing for it, what you should do. And we get real heavily into the old debate, bear spray or pistols?

Stay tuned for that. Who wants to tackle shelter and warmth real quick? I can jump in. That's you, Brody? Yeah, sure. Exactly what it sounds like, you know, how you're going to stay, basically how you're going to stay dry and how you're going to stay warm because that, you know, if you screw those two up, that's what's going to kill you probably. So first of all, it's understanding

weather and using every resource you can to get a good, as good a handle on what the weather's going to be when you're out there as you can. With the understanding that if you're going on an extended trip a week or two weeks and you're going to be, you know, away from civilization for, for a while, a 10 day forecast is only so useful. Um, because they're in act, there's like inaccuracies built into a 10 day forecast to begin with. And in a lot of places, like the weather can be one way in one Valley and the next valley over, it's doing something completely different. So you just got to prepare for, you know, everything. Like out here in early September, Elk Hunting in Montana, it might be 75 degrees, but the next day it could be, you know, 25 and there's a foot of snow on the ground.

So getting a handle on the weather is the big thing um then you move into shelter and basically we go over uh different types of shelters focusing on tents and all the different kinds of tents and sizes of tents and how to pick the right tent for what you're doing. You know, with the knowledge in mind that a three season tent is probably the most versatile. And then just getting into different types of tents within that, like backpacking tents, family tents, you know, how to use a tarp to create a shelter. We, you know, oftentimes when we're out in the field, we're setting up a little sun or rain or wind shelter with just using a tarp.

It's a soup. Like, you can pack one of those things that's basically the size of your fist inside your backpack and always have some kind of shelter with you. Then we get into sleeping bags and choosing a sleeping bag, synthetic versus down versus this new treated down that they have and understanding temperature ratings and sleeping bags and giving yourself a buffer. It's a good idea to always give yourself a buffer going a little sleep with a sleeping bag that's rated a little colder than what you expect to run into. We got some more lists of tips and tricks like Steve was talking about for staying warm and dry and comfy in there. And then we get into like campsites and picking and choosing a campsite, preparing it. And after that, we kind of get into the old school survival book idea of building emergency shelters, starting out with stuff you can carry around like

contractors' bags and tarps and things like that, and moving on to just finding natural shelters, like tree wells or digging a snow cave or building a lean to or like all that kind of stuff. And then we, uh, get into building fires and that's a big section because, uh, a lot of times, uh, staying warm is going to mean you have the ability to light and maintain a fire. So we have a long section in there on finding fire building materials and what you should be carrying to build a fire. Like, you know, BIC lighters. Like we all carry probably multiple BIC lighters in our packs, but we also have backup systems like a fire stick, a magnesium fire sticks, all kinds of info on fires in there.

Great, good stuff in there. It's a good section. Um, more skills. Brody, I have a question about that. Do you,

uh, in there recommend that people practice? Yup. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Different ways, especially under shitty conditions,

you know? Yeah. Like, we've all been in Southeast Alaska at Steve's cabin where getting a fire started in his stove is hard, you know?

Yeah. How many of us have been on that trip where you're like, you know what? You do the fire. I'm going to go do X, Y, and Z, whatever it might be,

the other chores that need to get done. Like, I'll go get wet outside. And then 30 minutes later, X, Y, and Z, whatever it might be, the other chores that need to get done. I'll go get wet outside. And then 30 minutes later, you come back and you're like, hey, where's the fire, bro? So, yeah, definitely practice that shit. Yeah, like Remy Warren says when he's late season elk hunting, he makes a little fire every time he sits down to glass. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

It's just, you keep the keep the tool sharp so that's pretty much that that chapter how to stay dry and warm and uh navigation wilderness travel one thing you'll find like what did we do in this book that no other book like this has is we have a lot of very up-to-date technical information about devices. So how to use mapping apps, mapping software, how to use in-reach devices. So instead of getting – we do cover all some of the old basic tricks about celestial navigation and a lot of that stuff is interesting and good to know. But we also cover just how to avoid trouble by using technology. You can avoid a lot of that stuff is interesting and good to know. But we also covered just how to avoid trouble by using technology.

You can avoid a lot of trouble. I brought this up recently on a when I was talking to I was on Tim Ferriss's show talking about the book. And I said that McPhee's trilogy on geology, animals of the former world in it. He says, if I could sum up this book in one sentence, it would be that the top of Mount Everest is made from marine limestone. If I was going to sum up this book in one sentence, I'd probably say like on X and in reach. Or get on X

and in reach. It's like there's a lot of things you can do today for very small amounts of money that, if done properly, can eliminate the chance of risk. Oh, I shouldn't say that. Damn near. Damn near eliminate the chance of risk or i shouldn't say that damn near damn near eliminate the chance and even if something bad happens those two things are gonna make getting out of it alive way way easier they don't they don't solve all your problems but

holy smokes man a lot of times you read about people in trouble you're like that dude should have had of this uh we talk about spatial awareness in the navigation mindset, which is probably one of the best things you can give in talking about wilderness travel. It's just trying to develop spatial awareness strategies so you understand what's going on around you. Navigation tools, modern technology, old school woodsmanship, getting all that stuff, locator beacons that are used by mountaineers, two-way radios, the capabilities of your own phone used as a GPS unit. Then we have a big thing, navigating without electronics. So all that's not forgotten. Then we wind up going into different environments.

So navigation, wilderness travel, mountain section, swamp section, desert section, all kinds of stuff about moving on snow and ice, including how to tell frozen rivers and lakes, how to assess ice conditions, what you're going to expect when you're out on the ice. So this is one of those areas where it's just a lot of personal experience from people that worked on the book talking about like, Hey man, if you're in the mountains, traveling in the mountains, here's 10 things to keep in mind, like some things not to do some things to do. And we lay all that out, including, uh, you know, a lot of old school tricks. We get into whitewater safety, boating safety, ocean safety. Um, and, and again, get into some like old school strategies around how to build flotation devices, how to survive in the water, how to survive in cold water, how long you

have, water rescues, all that stuff. And then a lot of packing lists, a lot of packing lists about wilderness travel. Who's going to do medical and safety? It's the last one. I can do it. Brody, lay it out for me. One thing I'd also add before I start that is all these chapters um like contrary to a lot of of traditional survival books um that kind of go with the primitive skill route like building like making a fire with a bow drill

or like like knitting some buckskin pants or what, like we embrace like good gear, like in every part of this, this book, because good gear makes your life easier. And so you're going to find throughout the book that we're going to like call out shit that we use and stuff that we really like. Um, so I just wanted to throw that in there too. so moving on to medical and safety this is a big one um it's it's i think people tend to and this is goes back to steve's kind of reality tv survival stuff that where things are tend to be overblown um the shit that's going to get you is not it's probably not going to be the big shit it's going to be the little shit it's going to get you is not, it's probably not going to be the big shit. It's going to be the little shit. It's going to be a sprained ankle. It's going to be vomiting because

you've got some kind of gut problem, things like that. Like that's what's really going to screw you up in the outdoors. And if you're in a situation where you can't get out quickly, a sprained ankle can be really bad news and the flu can be really bad news. So that's how we kind of built this chapter is going off that kind of baseline. But this chapter starts out with hygiene, like poor hygiene. Just talk to Giannis, man. He's the hygiene sheriff in camp usually. What do you mean? I asked everybody if they're brushing their teeth?

And washing their hands. No. Because that's how you can get sick. Yeah, it's called basic hygiene for dirtbags. Yeah, exactly. Like knowing you're going to be dirty, but trying to maintain a level of cleanliness that isn't going to make you or other people that you're with sick.

Well, you know, you know, uh, your kids ever watched Bob the builder. Yep. The, his theme song is boots,

belt, hard hand work. Like I hear that song getting sung in my house. Well, here's the thing. Our 10 year old, I made him a song about how to shower. Um,

it goes pits, but nutsack wash like Bob the builder. Yeah. But nuts, Pitt's butt nutsack. Wash like Bob the Builder. Pitt's butt nutsack. Wash like Bob the Builder. Exactly. I don't know how he gets to be 10 years old. He'll go into the shower and he steps immediately out.

I'm like, what happened in there? Oh, I'm wet. Did you even use soap? He goes in just to confirm. It's like, how else would I be wet? Yep. I just walked in there like three seconds ago, dude.

But there's ways to stay clean even if you don't have access to a shower. And we go through all that. We go through pooping in the woods and how disgusting surface shitters are. Big section on that. Have a little hygiene essentials kit. And then we move into the big one, first aid kits. I gotta ask, how many different positions

did you cover for pooping in the woods? Well, I thought, didn't we talk about this at some point in the past? The stick grab and the free squat. Yeah, and just the freestyle. Chef's choice. No, yeah, we covered a little bit of that stuff.

Yeah. It's probably the best material ever written. I would say probably the best thing ever written on pooping in the woods. Granted, there's a whole book on it, but we'd pare that down to just the info you need. This is harder than pooping in the woods advice. This is the real deal.

Valuable. First aid kits and or medical kits. Probably the biggest thing we learned before, well, during the process of writing this book, the thing that we all weren't caring that we should have been caring is a tourniquet. And that goes back to our buddy, Dr. Alan Lazar. We had a whole podcast on that that you can

listen to if you haven't. Did you hear about the life we saved? Yes. I don't mean to brag. Yes. A dude listened to the podcast and then was in a hunting accident shortly after. Saved his dad's life. His dad got shot and he had just listened to the podcast and did all the

tourniquet shit and saved the guy's life. Yeah. He said that would not have been on his radar. Saving lives. we go through. Saving lives. We go through everything you should have in your first aid kit with, with the knowledge that like these things aren't like static. Like we're constantly adjusting what we're carrying in our survival kit and

what we're carrying in our first aid kits. But we go through the stuff that should always be in there. The stuff that you probably want to have in there and stuff that you can move in and out of there according to your needs um and uh you just have to like you got to make it a habit of carrying a first aid kit i was just hunting with some buddies in colorado like a month ago and i was making fun of one of my buddies because he didn't carry a first aid kit and sure shit the next day when he was skinning his buck he stabbed himself in the leg was like man I should have been carrying a first aid kit if you don't have it you're asking for trouble then we go into kind of just educating yourself on how to administer first aid.

We go through all kinds of diagnosis information on the things that you're going to run into out there, from sprained ankles and gut problems to bruises and strains to broken legs to illnesses to heart attacks to strokes like basically everything that could could get you out there we go through on everything on how to diagnose and and potentially treat it if you're able to uh it's pretty extensive all that stuff so we there's some real cool information on like accept assessing abdominal pain by quadrant and arterial pressure guides, like really good just first aid info throughout this thing. I think that's pretty much. Life-saving. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. If you're going to pay attention to one chapter in here, this is probably the one to pay attention to. How much is that there, Brody? I think it's $25 retail, right? Yeah, put $25 on there. It's $20, I think.

I want to go find out. It says right here $25. I want to see what it's actually for sale for. $19.95 on Amazon or something like that. Let me see. 1979. That's a steal. Dude, I was five years old.

Knight. Oh, it's already listed as a bestseller here. That's an Amazon bestseller. I know what the hell that means. That could be best. Listen, buy the damn book. I don't even care if you want it. Buy it and give it to someone.

I'm just begging you. I don't like begging and ple want it. Buy it and give it to someone. I'm just begging you. I don't, like, begging and pleading. It's got a kick-ass cover on it. It's a very durable, flex-a-bind cover. So you can take it outside if you need to. Do me a favor and just buy the book, please. That's all I'm asking. Please.

I'm begging and pleading. two thank you everybody oh no i have a closing statement i know we're sorry i know we're long over time no hit it yeah but i'm i'm a little surprised that none of you picked up on all this and want to add this because what what really to me sets this book apart and i'll admit i have not read the whole thing but i've heard this from people that have read the whole thing is that it doesn't read like just a bunch of dry information. Everybody here that contributed like is, is, is very like good, creative, flowy, um, like great stories in there that kind of back up all this information and, and personal anecdotes

of, you know, how they learned this stuff and how they could have known, you know, how they could have used the more information that's in this book now at that moment. And, yeah, so it's a good read. You're not going to be – it's not going to put you to bed at night. You're probably going to stay up wanting to read more. You'll lay there making this noise. You'll be like, you're reading?

You'll be like, to your husband, you'll be like, oh, my God. You'll be like, ha-ha, that's funny. And then you'll be like, to your husband, you'd be like, oh, my God. And you'd be like, ha, ha, ha, that's funny. And then you'd be like, holy cow, did you? And then you'd be like, oh, man, I had no. Like, you'd be doing it all night long. We have a lot of fun. Your husband would be like, my God, I got to get a copy of that book. We have a lot of fun with the survival guides of the past,

how they would have a diagram of a deer with a bullseye on its head. And like, this is where you stab a deer and that's how you survive. And so we're kind of like, yeah, forget all that. A squirrel might be a little bit better move for you right now. Okay, everybody, join in the fun. Oh, Leon Crane, the guy that got... I'll bring this full circle.

Leon Crane, the guy that got in that plane that wrecked. Spent days trying to kill a pine squirrel and couldn't do it. Tried everything. Started walking and found a trapper shack. That's what saved him. And he knew he did some very good decision making about what direction he ought to walk based on topography. But yeah, he's like, oh, I'll just kill some pine squirrels. He said he about went mad.

Started eating pine needles that's gotta make your guts do all sorts of stuff join the fun the meat eater guide to wilderness skills and survival buy a shitload now YP says

it's the best wilderness skulls in survival book he's ever seen ever by far and he said I bought 10 already

I bought 11 already oh he just bought another one alright thanks everybody Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps

that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet.