The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 253: Meat Slaps and Tallow

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

Steven Rinella talks with Jesse Griffiths, Clay Newcomb, Chris Gill, Rick Smith, and Seth Morris.Topics discussed: a requester of GPS collar data explains himself; axiographics; a trail cam enthusiast; meat sheets and meat slaps; the geographic differences of meat cookery; the boneless bear ham through a funnel mesher; what LeBron and bacon have in common; getting mauled by a variety of tick species; Seth's setup of the hog hunt story; the sound a javelina's lips make while eating turkey shit; that time when Clay shot the same hog twice; Jesse's skinning method; how to support a hog book by a hog apologist; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. I'll tell you something interesting. A couple times I've expressed outrage, which, you know, that's what Americans do nowadays. You just express outrage all day

long, right? I was expressing outrage about the fact that 24 individuals have contacted Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, so contacted their state game agency,

to get GPS tracking data on animals. And the state was saying we have but little option but to give it to them. Meaning you could go, like, they're like, I know a good hunting trick. You contact a biologist who's got collared, a collared bull and say, hey, I want all the waypoints. I want to know, I want the GPS tracking data because you're a state agency and so therefore

it has to be public information. It like publicly funded science so they want access to that yeah and i just outright condemn these people as being horrible people right and then following up on that uh jim heffelfinger who is a wildlife biologist in arizona was saying that in arizona just for that reason, we have some kind of state statute or something that makes it, that gives us the ability to not provide tracking data to people. A dude writes in, though, and he says, on last week's podcast, never mind

because I don't know when it was. It was recently, but I just got around to reading this now. Steve mentions the fact that there have been several requests for GPS collar data in Montana. I am one of those requesters. I thought I'd share a little of why I requested it and what I actually received. He then goes on to establish his credentials as a hunter, feeds his family off wild game, loves wildlife, and he's a photographer. And he requested data.

This is what he has to say. He requested data for a big bull elk. Somehow he knows about a big bull elk or another. He requested data for a big bull elk. Somehow he knows about a big bull elk or another. He requested data for a big bull elk in a mountain range that is very, it takes a lifetime to draw a tag in that range. So I'm guessing he's talking about the tobacco roots. That's my guess. Not tobacco roots. Elkhorns.

Elkhorns, yeah. Sorry. Correct. He says, he's into this thing. not tobacco roos elk horns he says he's into this thing he says it's a thing now I know where it got big Rick probably knows because Rick's into all this kind of stuff where you set a trail cam

in a sweet looking spot and the hope is that you'll get a trail cam image with some kind of stunning background. And these aren't just like Dick and Jane trail cams. No, it's like high-end systems, all custom. Lay it out for us, Rick. Well, I mean, getting close to animals and taking pictures of them,

unless they're habituated. Like that's Rick's, I should point out to people, that's Rick's specialty. Yeah, I mean, definitely. Unless they're roadside animals. I should point out to people, that's Rick's specialty. Yeah, I mean, definitely. Unless they're roadside animals that are really used to, or on a private ranch or something like that, where they don't run away from you. Taking pictures of animals that don't want their picture taken is really hard.

And it results in a like, a document, but not, like, something that's aesthetically pleasing. So these trail cams, you can rig up with, like, nice lenses and a big system. How do you keep it all waterproof? It's all, like, housed in, like, a little Pelican case. Like, the electronics are housed in there, and they have... But it's like a dude setting a legit camera out.

Yeah, like a $5,000 camera in a box. I wonder if people ever hork... It's one thing to hork a trail camera. If you're going to hork like a... Oh, it's definitely... I mean, yeah. Unless you... I mean, you could easily like, I don't know, tie it to something or lock it to something.

The boxes will have a mechanism that you can lock that box. But it consists of something to power that camera for a really long time, a motion sensor, both like a passive sensor that's just catching any sort of movement, like a motion sensor you might have in your house to turn on the lights. But then they also have these active sensors where it's like a beam, so the animal breaks the beam at a very specific point. You're wanting to get them dead nuts.

A very specific composition. There's some folks that I share an office with a fellow that's super good at it, Ronan Donovan. Who's the mug that got into that big time? He's the one that got the mountain lion with the Hollywood sign behind him? P32? Yeah, Steve Winters. Yeah, he spent like a year. You know, like in his head, he's like,

I know there's this lion that is in this area, and he wanted the Hollywood sign back there. So, I mean, I think he had that camera out there for over a year. That's what this dude's doing too, huh? That's what he says he's into. And he challenges me. He goes, you can go look it up online. It's a thing.

Anyhow, are you good on that, Rick, or do you want to get into this? No, no. I feel like I had some useful information to add. So, his point was that he's not going to hunt this animal. That's where we're getting to. Yeah, but we're not even to the good part, but that's his point. I'll tell you something about Rick that was good there, just for listeners at home.

Have we talked about this? I always feel like Rick's going to know things. Oftentimes, I go to him and I'll be like, Rick knows, and then he'll not know. That's very true yeah but he'll say like i have high expectations well i'm good at making up i'm good at making up stuff i don't know anything about but you nailed that one well he usually does but sometimes he don't like a world that's actually that's yeah i'll be like rick how do you pronounce that word

in my wheelhouse there yeah steve that one was that's specifically in your sweet the other ones i'll just pretend it's in my wheelhouse that one that's actually the uh let me ask you this about the photography world yeah what's wrong what chris was gonna say something well i was gonna say that uh rick often says things this is the voice of chris gill which me and garrett are sharing a mic and he's wearing the headset so that's why that's Yeah, that's why I was just going to say. It's a long headset. It's a six foot mic. I'm sorry, go ahead.

Rick says things with such confidence even if he doesn't know what he's talking about that you believe it. Which gets him into the situation where you always just defer. You're like, oh yeah, Rick knows because even if he doesn't know, he's like, oh, yeah, that's it. But what adds to it, too, is that what's good about it is that when he,

like, okay, if he half knows, he might act like he no-knows. Yes. But if he doesn't know at all, he just says he doesn't know. If I have just if i have just like 10 of the information you'll pass i'll bump it up to no i'll bump that up to like 80 all right let me ask you this rick this is a photography ethics question all right in the wild from wildlife i do i have an mfa and we we talked about that stuff. Axiographics. With... I'll preface it by saying this.

When... And I want to get back to this dude, but this is interesting. I was surprised. It... Let me back up. When we just published the Meteor Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival, which is available

now at Amazon, I, as part of the promotion for that did this little wall there was like a small profile of me in wall street journal yep which is great yeah fantastic great piece of great piece of ink uh i spent some time with a photographer who had to take a portrait yep so kylie and i went out with her to take a portrait and i was and she was very like it took a long time okay and she was telling me that in the journal even if it's just like a human interest piece, she cannot manipulate that image. Yeah. She said if there's a piece of hair

on her lens, she can't wipe that out. Yep. Why? Because they will not allow the journal. They regard themselves as a news agency. Journalists. And they're so strict about

not no doctoring of images that they can't even remove lint on the lens any imperfection like you they often deliver the final image and then the raw photo so that you can compare the two to make sure that that there wasn't any photoshop work done she can't adjust she can't post adjust light she can't even adjust the image quality of it that's what she was saying to me so she or like i might not have the vocabulary to fully explain but she can't do shit and she's taking the portrait like i've done portraits for magazines they do whatever the hell they want yeah yeah touch quick no it's a it's a whole different deal to be considered a photojournalist. Yeah, she's a photojournalist,

not a photographer. So you got to be real on top of your shit. You got to wipe your lens. I think there was some big scandals back in the day when Photoshop was first coming on. Sure. People would remove a post

or a sign pole that made the image aesthetically not as pleasing so that there was like i think there was a when the transition to digital happened there was kind of a yeah there's a bunch of protesters you put in with some guns yeah you can add stuff yeah yeah yeah whatever just knock yourself out yeah horrible uh no okay that that preface is my question in the wildlife world is it bad in the wildlife photography world is it bad to doctor i think for the folks that consider themselves journalists or like advancing like the science of either conservation or wildlife yeah they don't they're not messing with images so nat national

geographic where that where that mountain lion hollywood thing came not messing not messing with the images. So National Geographic, where that mountain lion Hollywood thing came from. Not messing with it. It wouldn't fly if he's like, well, I took a picture of a lion and then put the Hollywood sign on it. I think they would maybe call those photo illustrations or... Graphic designer. But I think the public

often kind of blurs the two and they're like, oh, look at this amazing picture of a lion and it's like super manipulated or it turns into, it's a form of art but it's not the same as capturing that animal you know in a less doctored way but i don't know i don't know if the public really cares that much for christmas i bought my my wife likes to do puzzles yeah i bought her a thousand piece puzzle of a woman in sort of like a metal swimsuit and a big axe riding on a dragon you can tell that shit's not real yeah um probably manipulated a little so um and i bought her a crazy puzzle does she know these gifts yeah no but it won't matter

because Christmas is coming out. Christmas is, we're fine. A couple days. I bought her a crazy puzzle. She likes hard puzzles and she has a problem where if she starts the puzzle,

she can't go to bed until she finishes the puzzle. Is that real? It's a real problem. She goes all night? One time, she started doing a puzzle and everybody went to bed

on New Year's Eve and I like to go to bed real early on New Year's puzzle, and everybody went to bed on New Year's Eve. I like to go to bed real early on New Year's Eve. But everyone went to bed on New Year's Eve, and she stayed up because she can't go to bed. She's got a puzzle thing. She doesn't try to find them, but if we go and stay at a friend's house, this happened to her once. We go to a friend's house, and they had a puzzle kind of started. She couldn't help herself but do it.

And then I made her undo some of it because it's like they obviously were trying to do the puzzle. She sees a puzzle. She can't not do it. That's like you in like a dirty garage. Dirty garage. I bought her a puzzle of a dude in a giant weed garden trimming weed.

So it's all just weed. Where do you get all the puzzles? Oh, my friend Savannah sent me a link because she knows. My wife's old roommate sent me a link being like, your wife's got a puzzle problem. If you're really going to mess with her, give her this weed

puzzle because she won't look at the picture either. This is going to take her a million years. She's going to die puzzle because she won't look at the picture either she doesn't let herself look this is gonna take her a million years she's gonna be like dying she's gonna die of sleep deprivation by the time she finishes the weed puzzle but the same outfit work i think it was workman publishing the same outfit had the woman riding the dragon so i kind of threw that into the basket warm up warmer up her puzzle um okay back to this guy we're Oh, you're still going. Oh, dude, I haven't got to the good part.

All right, the preamble. So he goes on to explain his wintertime hobby, sort of like me and Seth Tratt-Martins. His wintertime hobby is setting trail cams. He sets them in areas, intentionally sets them in areas with spectacular landscapes. Okay. And wants to get the animal in the perfect pose. So he requested the data because he wanted to find pinch points with a view to get some really cool shots of some of the most sought out bulls in the state.

Here's what I got from FWP. Okay. in the state here's what i got from fwp okay so what i heard is fwp had little recourse other than to hand over the data yeah which i was like that's what's the world it's nothing secret more on christmas right so um first i had to file a formal written request along with an explanation of what i was going to do with the data. I'm sure no one believed me. The request went to someone's boss's boss. It took seven months of back and forth to get approval.

They did their due diligence. Second, when I received the data, it was in map form, not coordinates. The map was at the scale as to show the whole range, and the dots that signified the location data were large enough to cover several hundred yards. And just for reference, there's one dot per day for every collared animal over a five-year study. That's a whole lot of dots, most of which are on top of each other. Third, the maps are broken into three-month periods. FWP must have forgotten to give the

data from september through november because i only received three sets of maps lastly they threaten me with jail time if i share the data or use it to harass wildlife in any way i'm assuming i'm on some sort of watch list now and oh the most recent data i received is two years old yeah so fwp was like okay we're gonna give you the data but we're gonna make it as hard as we can yeah it goes on to say if i was looking to kill some elk it's not not that helpful not that helpful yeah i mean he was looking for some nice little tracks of like he's just trying to find patterns of movement or yeah but isn't i mean you could just do that i think he probably in a woodsman yeah he just has to go go out there hit the ground yeah sure probably it probably helps

just giving you like a general like oh he spends a lot of time here if he's doing it other elk are doing it you know oh it's like he was looking for an individual like some monster i recently um didn't request it but i got some i got some information from a biologist that uh was very helpful and it, I got a map showing the... It's a big map. And it shows... It's color-coded for habitat quality. So the darker red it is, the better they regard habitat quality to be

for this particular species. Overlaid on the map are dots showing where kills had been registered. But there's only dot, there's a dot for every section where a kill has been registered. And it doesn't matter if one or a hundred things were killed on that section. The section still only gets one dot yep so it could be a freak outlier or it could be like the hottest honey hole of all right but it's not good for anything specific but when you look at it you get a sense of i looked at and i got a sense of okay where's the good habitat for the species?

And the most interesting thing to me about it was that it showed particularly how people were accessing the area because there are mass areas that were the deepest, darkest red that had no dots in them. And all the dots were along, all the dots were concentrated along road systems. And so you could look at it and get a very general sense of like where one might go that's good habitat, but likely not getting exploited. Like the resource is likely not getting exploited in those perfectly red areas that don't have any dots. So it's super helpful. Super helpful. I mean, I feel like the science... But not like, oh, I got them now!

You know... Can you share what species it was? Uh-uh. Got it. I got a question that's very simple. That coincides with all this so on Onyx they have the harvested buck and elk reports

right? bull elk, mule deer buck or white tail buck from 2018 when you click on the unit to see the regs and I was like man if you're trying to learn they have the distribution of where those animals were killed not within the game unit but they have what that game unit yeah so that's kind

of a similar thing where you kind of know it's just the numbers yeah just the numbers not like dots on a map no but you can see which unit has like maybe a higher percentage of harvest success and i was like if you're trying to figure out if you're just going in blind to an area like i was trying to learn a new area in montana and i that would be part of what i walked your dad to death yeah but that that's just one part of figuring out is it worth going in in here there's like you know three bucks harvested you're like oh and it's a huge you know wma or something yeah yeah but there's a lot of ways to look at that too like how many tags they give out. Yeah. It was just another little piece to use though.

I think that success rates. Oh, percentage of hunters. Is extremely helpful. Yeah. If you're looking at certain limited draw things. And you see the success rates are like 80 some percent. And you factor that some people probably never even show up you're like this is great yeah it's gravy um if you're looking at success rates that are in single digits you kind of like know you better carve out a little

chunk of time and well all the units i was looking at were just general over-the-counter units and it did like it did somewhat guide me on maybe the difference between this unit or that unit to go explore on foot. That's kosher, right? Oh, that was the question? I forgot you were asking a question. Yeah. Oh, of course, man.

I want to say one more thing about the photographer. Oh, let's go back to him. That's good for him like trying to he's trying to take a a great photo and everybody takes photos these days so the only way to separate yourself from the masses is like do something different and you know you can debate like should he have that information or shouldn't he but he's at least trying to do something different which is commendable. Yeah, I'm a big fan of people that have a vision in their mind of a photo that they want, and they go and get that photo. Really?

Yeah. Give me an example. Yeah, what's a photo you want, Seth? Well, here's an example. What's that fellow's name you guys guys know we're talking about him. Oh, Donovan. No, that that ever. Donovan the musician? No, Ronan.

Ronan Donovan. Oh, yeah. So there's this dude. He wanted he wanted a shot of a dude walking like free solo across one of those just like a wire. Slack line.

From like two, you know, a slack line spread between two points. Oh, dude, did you ever see that documentary about that guy? Man on a Wire? Oh, my God. Oh, fantastic. That's a good-ass movie, man. You know what's weird about that? Hold that thought.

Okay. I got to counter this, Seth. In Soderbergh's, it was Man on a Wire. movie man you know what's weird about that hold that thought okay i gotta i gotta i gotta count in soderbergh's it was man on wire you know that steven soderbergh film he made with the porn star sasha gray yeah what was that movie girlfriend something like that experience yeah oh yeah you watch that movie real careful the dude gets the dude gets the prostitute and they're on like they're like fake date they're talking about that documentary oh yeah it's interesting good um anyway he wants he wanted he wanted a shot of a dude walking on a line with the moon full moon coming up behind him and he's like silhouetted in front of this giant moon like et yes kind of when they're riding their bikes yeah yeah it's like a very specific shot that

someone yeah i disagree with you why it's not like it's being that being like cool or respectable i mean come on now you're getting into now you're getting into subjective bs man no man okay you you might agree with it because like all the i don't know nah maybe i shouldn't go i don't want to sound like i'm trashy i want to hear you insult seth i'll knock that headset right off your head no i don't want but i don't want it to sound like i'm insulting anybody's work because like you know i don't know let's hear it let's hear it let's i just like it's a safe space i just find more value in like spontaneous well that's the photo work that's why you do what you do you're like a yeah but but documentarian street photographer but like narrative films the cinematography i'm

like okay that's fucking rad but if somebody sets up a photo i'm like that's not that cool but if somebody sets up you know what I'm saying? Go ahead, Seth. I know what you mean. No, I know. It's like there's so many amazing photographers that don't have an idea. Like they just have an idea of what they want. And they go and, you know, they have like a place and an idea that they're pursuing. And then they have to represent that idea in the photo.

That's when you get photos that are like, you look at him, you're like, how the fuck did that guy get that? Yeah. It's because he was at right place right time didn't probably didn't have he didn't have like that specific photo in mind yeah he just happened to you know like i said right place right time yeah i like that a lot because there's just i like that too this is great um i feel like i'm back in college this is a different podcast called yeah man i appreciate what you're saying uh-huh you like spontaneity you like yeah yeah okay seth likes uh planning are we gonna have to fight to the death no no but go on so i wouldn't say

that i like planning more than i just respect it like someone has a vision it's really hard to get that photo it's not easy yeah and they go and make it happen that's a good point i thought you were going to say you respected the guy because all the work he did to get the information no he does i mean a lot of work i respect that too that took some took some just work oh seven months right in the government here's my question to you steve do. Do you now want to recant what you said, or do you want to stand by it? I'd have to revisit what I said. About the people that did this. Well, just like a blanket outrage.

I mean, that guy seemed to be doing it the right way. I'll say this. You can make a declaration that it's not black and white. Listen, no, I'll say this. I love this guy. I can make a declaration that it's not black and white. Listen, no, I'll say this. I love this guy. I like that he wrote in. I like the thoroughness of his explanation. I like things where people think things are one way

and it winds up being another way. I like the whole story. All that being said, if I was king of the world, king of the universe, one of the things I would do in my first hundred days in office is I would say that

states do not need to release do not need to release for whatever. They don't need to release that kind of information in that way. Well, isn't there all kind of other stuff that the government does that we would have no possible way of getting information? Yeah, like if I wrote in and said,

I would like to meet these aliens that you have down there in Nevada, they're not going to let me meet those aliens. Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of stuff that's held super tight and we're all okay with that. Freedom of Information Act, super useful, powerful. It's like, where's plenty of stuff that's held super tight and we're all okay with that. Freedom of Information Act is super useful, powerful. It's like, where's SEAL Team 6

working right now? Mm-hmm. They're not going to tell you. No, but not present time, but at some period, they'll declassify. At some period. So, yeah.

So, I feel like we've been talking about this way too long. I like the Arizona thing. I like the Arizona thing. They don't have to give it away. The aliens thing in Arizona?

No, no, no, no, no. The fact that in Arizona, they don't need to issue GPS tracking data. Or the state has the ability, without it being too onerous, to issue a version that it wouldn't be like some super reliable thing.

I'm like a slippery slope kind of guy. I believe in slippery slopes. You could imagine some situation where someone would go and get very specific data about a specific animal and they give it over to them and it gives hunters a black eye.

Some famous animal and they give it over to him and it gives hunters a black eye. Right? Some famous moose and he's on National Geographic and whatever then all of a sudden some oil tycoon shoots the thing. The data gets out. That's all.

Alright. All right. raffle and sweepstakes law. It 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 OnX out if you visit

onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Jesse, tell people well, Seth, tell people well Seth tell people I just got skipped no man Jesse would you

tell no no I want to hear Seth's perspective on it first maybe I'll pass it to Jesse what's the question Jesse to tell people about his his special thing he's cooking like literally right now with the what i got cooking or metaphorically what's cooking no no no but i want to first have yeah okay explain the the dish you're making where you take the the you know basically the leather you take the leather. You take the leather off the outside of a rib cage of a deer's rib cage. Yeah, basically everything

south of the loin, the backstrap from the ribs all the way down to the belly, the sternum. Take that off in one big rectangular piece. You can either stuff it. No, no, no. You're not getting to nearly the level of detail I'm looking for

oh okay tell us where it starts where it ends east and west got a skinned out deer it's hanging hind legs up let's put it on the table it's horizontal we're going to take the

front legs off right at the shoulder blade and that's basically exposing that whole side and when you say that you mean because i i got scolded for doing this wrong oh yeah that when you don't don't cut through the cartilage of the shoulder blades yeah like like when you strip it when you take the front leg off yeah when you're doing your butchering you take the front leg off you're cutting clean to the bone on the inside of the leg. Yeah. Anything on the outside of the leg stays with the shoulder.

The inside of the leg is clean. Right. Clean to the bone. So all that meat that lies under his armpit, right? You want to leave that on. Stays on the carcass. Okay. Yeah. And then about probably four five six ribs back you know you don't have to get too scientific about it kind of draw a big rectangle go all the way down to the the hams where the the kind of that flat meat is

past the ribs you take that all off in one piece by running your knife real clean against those ribs and try not to get any holes if there's holes it doesn't really yeah you're like come out laying you're like flaying it flaying the meat off yeah you know smaller dough or something that could get real tricky because you're not going to have a lot of meat to work with it could be half an inch thick there but you just take your time and you get that whole piece off. It's a rough rectangle, maybe a parallelogram. You say a half inch, that's just

not a quarter inch thick in places. It can be thin, but on a bigger buck, like say the one that Clay shot, it's a little bit easier. It's a good throw to Clay. For listeners at home, they just almost fist bumped. But I think both of our collective wing stands are just short of three feet.

I wasn't going to commit fully to it. I didn't want to distract you. Yeah. So, yeah, and then you take that and you roll it up from top to bottom, bottom to top, and you got the grain running horizontally through there. So you can stuff it, you know, like the recipe in my first book where we stuff it with sausage and breadcrumbs and egg, make a little stuffing out of that and roll it, and then you cook the hell out of that. Oh, I'm going to back up, back up. Sure.

You got a meat sheet. A meat sheet that's like cardboard thick at the thinnest. Yeah. And yay, what dimensions? 18 inches? 18 by 12. 18 by 12 meat sheet. Yeah.

Of stuff that people would normally feed to the coyotes. Sure. Not normally. Many would feed it to the coyotes sure not normally many would feed it to the coyotes yeah but you got a meat sheet 12 by 18 you then lay that out flat and get specific with what i watched you do yeah well you're going to make your i mean what we did but we got cooking right now uh we we put some bacon down put some mustard down we put some pickled jalapenos and some onions so basically that's a kind of a take off of german rouladen where they would be the same thing but instead of pickled jalapenos it would just be like a gherkin or a cornichon yeah or dill pickle that's a good idea man yeah they put some sauerkraut in there

you can do that i mean don't i mean this is just you gotta thank germany for that one it was not me but it's it's delicious and it works with you know as i'm sure you know many different animals and then you just roll that up like a little piece of firewood yeah into a into a log and then tie it off you know use some kitchen twine go in and just tie it every two or three inches. Yeah. It wants to be in a roll the size of a nice walleye. It looks like a backstrap.

Yep. Yeah. Let's roll it up. It looks like a backstrap. Yeah, it looks like a backstrap. Yeah, the nice walleye metaphor is probably lost on us. Nice backstrap. Nice backstrap.

With little chunks of jalapenos falling out of it. Now, this may be too difficult to explain, difficult to explain just with audio, but he spaced out his ingredients in a specific way so that when it rolled, the ingredients fell in the right place. I noticed that. Yeah, they're kind of in like a mound. Like you didn't spread it across like a pizza. It wasn't like a pizza topping that was spread all the way across. You had two rows that were separated.

Remember how he did it wrong and then changed his mind and did it right? Yeah. And he rolls, the longest part is where you roll it. Well, you roll it from the 12-inch part. Help me here. Yeah, you roll it from top to bottom.

The 18-inch, so the thing ends up being 18 inches long yeah yep so at this point folks jesse has taken a knife and he has flayed away all of the meat that sits outside of the ribs plus flank and plus up into the shoulder a little bit and made a meat sheet then Then he rubbed mustard. No, he put salt. He laid it out flat. Put salt.

He put pepper. He put on a glove and rubbed mustard all over some bitch. He put down bacon strips. He put down pickled jalapenos. He put down onions. Raw onions. Raw onions. Then rolled it up into a little backstrap shape like a giant twinkie. Would that be

a jelly roll? A giant jelly roll. And then tied it using that special little tie-off, rose tie-off knot. And then there it is. And we held it up, commented on how it seemed like a fish. You held it a lot. I picked it up four times.

Multiple times. I would set it down and go back and pick it up again. I liked it so much. Has a nice weight. Threatened to slap Clay with it. Talked about slapping Clay with it. Meat slap. Give him a meat slap.

Yeah. Okay, and then you're going to do what? We took a big Dutch oven and got it hot and we browned it off on all sides and then just threw some onions in there. You threw that really good talon in there too.

Yeah, it's just some beef fat. Yeah, you could definitely use bear fat for that. And browned it off real well, then threw some onions Yeah, it's just some beef fat, yeah. You could definitely use bear fat for that. Yes. And browned it off real well, then threw some onions in there, and then I just covered it with stock. And I put a little can of tomato in there too. And that's just sitting out there simmering on the fire.

Probably needs to cook for about six hours. That's key. You don't want to undercook that thing because it'll get nice and tender. And the beauty of the grain runs horizontally on it so that when you come in and you cut the string off of it and just cut it like you would logically, you're cutting it against the grain. And so it should be super tender. Does it stay together and look like a little cinnamon roll? It'll stay together a little bit. Now, if you follow the recipe that I have in my book where you make the stuffing out of sausage and breadcrumbs and eggs, it stays together real well because that egg and the protein and the sausage really binds it, and you get this kind of roll situation.

And it's bigger because you're putting way more bulk in there. But I kind of want to just play with it a little bit and just try some different stuff out with it. This is less stuffing, so it's going to be a lot meatier. you can cook this in a crock pot too i guess absolutely yeah huge fan don't get me started on crock pots i love them you know what we were into for a long time a long time ago meat sheets no uh we were into i was telling you about this thing i bought i have one of those funnels and then you get the mesh net oh Oh yeah. Like imagine the, I don't know if they still do this.

Like now I know when I was a kid, my mom would bring home like a pot roast from the grocery store. That would be in a net. It'd be like an inexpensive cut of meat in a elastic net. I bought a huge roll of that net on sausagemaker.com and I bought the funnel. The funnel, it's like it changes shape to accommodate whatever you shove through it. You stick the mesh net over the end of the funnel

and then you cram whatever meat you got. Let's say you make a pheasant. You Or let's say you make a pheasant. You want to brine and smoke a pheasant. You take the pheasant, legs and wings and shit sticking out every direction, right? And shove it down through that funnel. And then he pops into that stretchy net. And then he's just all trussed up really pretty. It's like when you wrap up a Christmas tree.

Exactly. It's exactly like bringing a Christmas tree home. Good job, Seth. I've never had a net on a Christmas tree. Claytus fist bump Seth. Giving him out. They didn't do that for Garrett, where Garrett lived growing up. They definitely didn't. It's a thing, no. It helps you

get the tree home. So, exactly like a christmas tree it's very nice i don't know why i got away from it i still keep i still have the thing in my meat closet uh what good does it do like it just freezes it like in this nice tight shape it's it's just it trusses everything but can you cook it in that net oh yeah okay so you cook it in the net what's the net made of i don't know. It's cotton, but there's something in it that gives it an elastic quality, too. Okay. It's food grade.

You don't know what I'm talking about, Jesse? I've not used it very much. How am I telling you about a thing you don't know about? Easily. Okay. So yeah, but I feel like with food stuff, based on your career, you're always like, oh, yeah. I feel like, I mean, we can't go too far into it but there's like this there's there's geographic differences in in in meat cookery like in the north there's like a

lot more you're really focused on the roasts uh and like like eye rounds how is it a roast when i say a smoked duck or a smoked pheasant? Well, you were saying that originally like you would get roasts. I haven't told you that story yet. So I'll tell you now. Okay.

We were into this. We would take a bear ham, okay, and cut the bear off, cut the ham off at the ball joint and cut the bear's ham off at the knee. Then open it up on the inside of the leg and cleanly remove the femur. Okay. Then brine it.

Okay. Then you want to put it back. Now it's like laid out like a big thick book right dry it off brine it rinse it dry it then this is what this is the part i'm asking about we would take gelatin just regular old gelatin powdered gelatin, and sprinkle powdered gelatin all over the inside of that ham. Meat glue. Then roll it up and shove it through the funnel into

the mesh. Okay. Then smoke it. Once you got done smoking it and it cooled, you could remove the mesh and you had a football that was a boneless smoked bear ham that you could slice

and it would mostly be glued together. Yeah. You know about that? I do know. I mean, that sounds effective. You like it? But also, you kind of made my geographic point.

I feel like he's asking for like applause after that story. Like, good job, man. Fist bump. Real innovative. That sounds really innovative. No, we didn't come up with this. No.

You buy all the parts at SausageMaker.com. That's a URL right there, man. Why wouldn't you use other foods like Jesse did in the meat slapper sheet with the bear roast? Why would you use that gel stuff? Gelatin? Yeah. That was only to... Okay, because here's the problem.

You'd open it up. What are you doing? Just fiddling with the photo. You'd open it up and... See, it threw me off. I'm like, I look over, he's not even remotely engaged. He's not even remotely engaged. What I'm talking about.

He's here. You should have said, you should have said, I'm looking up sausage, sausage, or whatever. He doesn't have a headset. It's like,

what's a fellow supposed to do? It's like, throws me off, man. If I can't even hold the attention of people that are sitting, friends of mine that are sitting in the same room, my so anyways he um flustered he opens it up yeah opens it up and

what normally when you do this if you make a boneless smoked if you want to make a boneless smoked wild game ham when you slice it it just falls back apart again and this was a way to try to get it to hold together what do you think when i tell you that that's it sounds great you don't judge it what would i what part would i judge it's effective and delicious and i mean you think it's cheating to use the gelatin? I'm asking you as a professional chef. You said I was cheating when I used bacon. No, I didn't say that. I asked you what your feeling was about, okay, as a professional chef and a wild game enthusiast.

And I'll point out, I've said this before. I think that you're my favorite wild game chef. thank you jesse griffin thank you uh i was surprised to see you put bacon on because um people went down like a wild game bacon black hole or maybe it's used as a crutch yeah yeah it's like wrap the tenderloin in bacon. Everything is like bacon this, bacon that. Bacon this, bacon that. But how much better would it be for Jesse Griffiths to make something with bacon?

Well, that made it that in my mind. That's like holding him to a super high standard. That made it cool again. Or you can think about it. How much has bacon allowed people to enjoy their game more? Hmm. I mean, even if it more. That's generous. It's baby steps. I think that collectively people have come a long way as far as eating

game. If they got started by wrapping it in bacon and they're graduating to be on bacon, then that's great. Maybe they had to start there. They need that bacon to kind of sand out that hard edge of of the gamey flavors or whatever it was that they found slightly distasteful about game or at least make it have a like a a flavor a recognizable flavor you know something they're comfortable with yeah i mean i think you know bacon bacon's an enabler, a gateway flavor. Yeah, I like that. I forgot to add

in your thing, did I talk about you put down bacon in the roulade? Yeah. We should tell people the name of this. It's a roulade. Yeah, rouladen. Rouladen? Yeah. Similar to it. Like binladen with roux. Yeah. It's like a south texas rule

okay then i asked you about that then i told you about the gelatin thing we weren't sure where you're going with the bear ham thing i just wanted his input okay if if this is like yeah like approval or like that's stupid or maybe it'd be like. No, it's not stupid. Or maybe it'd be like, here's a better way to do it or I'm going to do that tomorrow. I don't know. I love that idea because, I mean, a boneless ham too and just, yeah, and going in and being able to put it on a meat slicer and just get those beautiful slices that don't fall apart. There's a lot of merit to that.

Absolutely. You know, the bacon thing, I think what you said, I get what you said about it being kind of a crutch but i mean it's kind of like i didn't say that he said he said okay it's kind of like hating lebron james because he's so awesome i know you won't get that but everyone else will lebron james is the best basketball player like right now in the nba arguably one of the best ever and people don't like him just for that that is for being good that is the wild that is the bacon of wild game you know i heard about

lebron james i heard about you clay what's that someone told me that i don't know the layout of your house or yard or whatever but someone told me that between your house and something is archery targets and a basketball hoop and someone said if they ain't shooting arrows or shooting baskets that's right man that is right i've got one son that's got a tree stand set up like behind the basketball goal and i've got one son that is like eating up with bow hunting right now like he's probably bow hunting as we speak and my other son is uh a really elite basketball player for his age and he is he is methodical he is dedicated he is disciplined and he's a hooper shooting arrows or shooting baskets that's right that's right that's right uh okay seth tell everybody

about um tell everybody about your first pig um and our magical sit at the waterhole i didn't know that was his first pig yeah wherein i got mauled by a variety of tick species So it's pretty obvious the pigs like the water around here. Every water you go to is all rooted up. Should we tell people where we are? No one even knows where we are yet. Please. We are, I can say the ranch, can't I? They don't care.

Go for it. We're in South Texas, deep South Texas. Deep in the heart of Texas. We're in South Texas. Deep South Texas. Deep in the heart of Texas. Hard to go further south. 12 miles from the coast, right? Yeah, we are west of the Gulf of Mexico. We're so far south that

the Gulf of Mexico is east of here. Yeah. That's out in the heart of the south. Yeah. We're on the Yatora. Hacienda Yatora. I think it's more of a Yatoria. Yatoria.

Machete. Yatoria. Yeah, it's one of the greatest places ever, I think. It's awesome. But anyway. And there's a variety of Euterias. This is like a portion of it. It used to be one big ranch.

It just got split up over time. Founded in 1858. They registered their cattle brand in the 1850s. 300 years ago. 300 years ago. That's different. Seth's doing a great job.

I don't know if Chris is is gonna come in and chris is gonna come and try to say this but this i'm like setting up i like a story that has a like a like this is a great setup this is for people with with who aren't afflicted by a short attention span you give're giving a lot of praise, and he's not done yet. I'm going to start praising what he's done. I like the setup. I feel like I'm reading a Russian novelist right now. Go on, Seth. I'm riveted.

So Steve and I set out yesterday afternoon to go look for a pig. And we stopped this spot. It's like a flooded, I don't know if you can call it a pond. It's like a flooded... I don't know if you can call it a pond. There's grass growing in it. It's kind of like a pond. It's just like a flooded area. Three dozen teal in it.

Yeah, a bunch of teal. Killdeer running around. Javelina. Anyway, so we go in there and check this spot. Tell everybody about the Menagerie of wildlife that showed up. I was going to work that in as I tell the story. Threw them off. You can't micromanage that story.

No, dude, I'm sorry. I was going to shut up. So, while we set out for a pig, Clay set out for a cow kneel guy. Tried to kill him with the bow. No sooner did we get to our little pond and we see a cow kneel guy.

So, we told Clay about that. They came and checked that out. Ended up not working. Not working out, but as soon as they left we we had been sitting at the pond for a little bit just glass and seeing what's coming in um are you are i don't want to i know you're doing a great job and you're going to get to all this but you are going to get to my uh my six cents that a pig would show up.

I think I said something to the effect of, let's just sit here and wait. Got a good feeling about it. Yeah, Steve had a great feeling about this spot. Clay and Dirt left, and we just get up to move locations around this pond, because Steve had such a good feeling about it.

We were going to stay there. Almost like a premonition. We stand up to move our location, and I don't know, we made it 50 yards. And I look up, and there's a pig standing out in the water. And. Like Yanni's dad conjured him. Yeah. And this is early afternoon.

It's not even like evening. It's early afternoon. Early afternoon. We are staring at this pigless pond. We turn away from the pond, look back at the pond. And there's a pig. In it. In it. In it.

He got in there quick. Yeah. And... Evaded Steve's master radar. Seth spotted it. Yeah. And just, yeah, just set up on it.

Made a poor shot and then made a good shot. Pig died. Mm-hmm. And we took it back to the can-am got it and then sat there the remainder of the evening because steve still at that point felt it was a great spot to sit so y'all sat there the whole rest of the night till it got dark yeah hey i know steve

thinks you're doing a great job in this story well he's not because there's two there's a the whole rest of the night. Until it got dark. Yeah. Hey, I know Steve thinks you're doing a great job in this story. Well, he's not. I do too. There's a number of things he didn't tell. Well, there's a bigger thing.

Well, I didn't get to the rest of the evening. Oh, okay. I want to know how you feel about this. Were you happy that you killed this pig? I could tell he was happy.

I couldn't tell from the story, though. No, he's not an effusive man. I was very happy. Not an effusive man. Not an effusive man. I feel sorry for his girlfriend. Not an affectionate, effusive man. I was very happy. Not an effusive man. Not an effusive man. I feel sorry for his girlfriend. Not an affectionate effusive man.

So you were pumped. This is your first talk. Oh, yeah. This is Seth being fired up. I was stoked. I was great. Did it die in the water? It was a nice boar, too.

No, it made it out. It was out of the water. Had nice color. It was a nice boar. You know what? It's big. I'll tell you. I know he's not done,

but I'm going to tell you an interesting detail about Seth and checking out the scene. I don't know why, but for some reason along half of this pond, there's like an old bit

of hog wire fence. Like maybe at some point they want, I don't get it. It just, it's got like a dead end run down hunk of fence.

Didn't really make sense to me. With like, what? Six inch square? Yeah, it's like, it's woven wire. But like, at some point it serves some purpose. It's like sheep fence. Yeah, like I think maybe to keep, I don't know. We'd call it hog wire fence. Yeah.

You're probably going to want to clarify how tall that fence was though, since you're in texas yeah it was just a cattle fence it was it was like a neil guy four foot tall damn near step over well we want everything was coming over but but point being my as i was wondering what this was i think it's a remnant of my guess is a remnant of someone uh when this water hole is super dry, maybe someone at one point in time wanted to keep stuff out of it.

I don't know. I have no idea. Anyhow, Seth goes over there and finds where there's a big hole in it. And you can come from one direction, but you can't, like there's a fence blocking, not too good job explaining this. There's a fence sort of like cutting across

like a third of this pond for some reason that isn't there anymore. And Seth found a hole in it and he's like all that bore came through this hole but when he hit the bore and it ran he forgot about his hole yeah oh and just he tried he tried getting through the fence but not where the hole not where the hole was off from the hole yeah and now i think about that we couldn't see that hole from where we were first set up no because i remember glassing that fence i never saw a hole and that pig was probably while we were staying there watching the pond he was probably making his way through that hole but there was just enough you know

stuff to where we couldn't see him all overgrowngrown with brush and whatnot. But it was weird when he got hit, he just bam into that fence and then died right there. So we get the pig gutted and then... We haven't even gotten to the good part. Continue our... Oh, this is the good part? Oh, this is the coolest.

Yeah, this is the cool part. We go back to the pond and set up for the evening and we're sitting there and all sorts of birds, ducks, a nice whitetail buck comes out. And then some javelinas show up. And they're, I don't know when we first see them, they're probably 70 yards away or so. Slowly feeding towards us.

And just slowly making their way towards us. And this one decides that he wants to feed basically right where we are. And at one point it was, I don't know, four feet, five feet from the end of my boot. So you could hear him going. Yeah. Wow. I took a video of him and you can hear him doing that on the video.

Hey, will you put that thing on your Instagram? Yeah. Okay, so at what is it again? Sines? Sines underscore West. You should just do something more simple. I've looked into it. There's just like not too many simple options available. Don't let him bully you about your Instagram handle.

Yeah, Sack-a-late. He's been there. At signs underscore west, you will find the javelina we're talking about going. I'll put it on one of my highlights. All the Texas highlights. The best thing is

Seth gets back last night and he just starts talking about the javelina and how much he loves them. The best thing is what he's smacking his lips about. As he's feeding towards us, he eats something, walks a few steps, eats something, walks a few steps,

and we observed him eating turkey shits. He is. In the video, you'll see. You can see a big white turkey shit. And I'm like, what is he doing? I was like, what is he eating? Because he's just luxuriating.

Num, num, num, num, num. Cleaning it up, man. And eventually, Seth, in his video, you'll see his white, clear his day, like a white turkey shit. He just walks over and he's like... We watched him eat probably five or six piles of turkey shit

right in front of us. That's the good stuff. I told Steve, if you're a turkey hunter looking for sign in an area where there's javelina, you might have trouble. Seth said he's ruining all the turkey sign.

That was fun. I was going to say to you at one point when he was right off the toe of your boot, because he didn't... I don't know. We weren't moving, so he didn't... But even when it got downwind from us, I would say, whatever. These ja moving, so he didn't. But even when he got downwind from us, he's whatever. These javelinas, you say, aren't that normal. I've seen them be like that.

They're usually really wary, but these aren't as much. I mean, I've never seen a javelina that you couldn't put a little effort into creeping up on somewhere or another because their vision's not great. But these were especially just nonchalant. Oh, yeah. Jesse's, when you got yours that was 27 275 yards oh yeah at a run never mind run not related at all very different very different javelina well we're holding tight we're holding like dead nuts still yeah but no i mean i really i shot that javelina and then realized pretty quickly that I could have gotten a lot closer. Oh, I got you.

They were pretty ambivalent to our presence, even after one had been removed. Got you. Yeah. Interesting thing here, too, that I found is interesting is that the javelina, which are a native species, and the pigs don't, they intermingle. Yeah, and honestly, I'd never seen that until yesterday when we were, you know, you had just shot a pig and a couple more started running

and I'm glad that we were able to identify because one of those was a javelina. Yeah. A javelina and two piglets. So yeah, they were cruising together. Yeah, when I shot my pig, there was javelina and two piglets so yeah they were they were cruising together yeah when i shot my pig there was javelina there too yeah but i mean that might have been just happenstance because i mean that's a big boar i mean i don't know why they'd kind of no he just happened to show up

but was they're not adversarial to each other yeah yeah much i mean like pigs and deer don't really congregate together that pigs usually run the the deer off if there's a food source there. But I imagine the javelins and the pigs maybe tolerate each other. Pigs run whitetails off? They will, yes. Yeah, usually. There was three deer with a pig I saw yesterday afternoon. And when the pig came in, the deer became alert and then just moseyed away.

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if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the, to the on X club y'all. Clay. The next thing I'd like to cover is, could you tell people the story of when you were a kid? It's a great story.

Yeah. Yeah, I can please. I was, uh, man, I always get nervous when i get on the spot for telling a story that i was with my cousin we were hunting on public land in arkansas and we uh we found an acorn tree that had a bunch of hogs on and i told my cousin i said let's put up let's put up two tree stands and let's put up two tree stands. Let's try to kill two hogs at the same time.

And we did. And two hogs came in. And the deal was, is that he was going to shoot. I was going to shoot a big boar if one came in. That was my deal with him. I said, if one comes in, I'm shooting a big boar. Because he didn't have any skin in the game you know he was just the invited guest you found the oak tree well and i was trying to my goal was to kill a big hog and so we found this

white oak public land in arkansas found a white oak drop an acre and pig sign hang two tree stands in the dark set in the stand 30 minutes after daylight a very nice tusked boar comes in you can see his white tusks a sow and seven shoats about as you know let's just say they were of you know decent size can you dwell on uh choats for a minute shoats a shoat a shoat is just a young hog how have i never heard that word until now? Is it because I'm from the north? Probably. We don't have any wild pigs?

Yeah. I mean, yeah, you could say piglet, but a shoat. Spell it for me. S-H-O-U-T. Oh, A-T. No, no, no, no, I'm sorry. Shoat, yeah. S-H-O-A-T.

Shoat. S-H-O-A-T. Shoat. Shoat. So, a really nice boar. I'm going to use that word every day. Really nice boar, sow, and seven shoats come in. And we've done this a couple of times.

Was that coincidental? Yeah. Why would the boar be with the sow? That was, I don't see that real common. She's probably in heat. Yeah, those shoats were probably of size sized about to be weaned you know and so the boar comes in and what you do when you're trying to get a double on a bow kill it's real interesting because we needed both hogs to be turned just right at the same time so we both draw

and you know he would go my hog's good and i would go wait wait wait wait wait can i interrupt for a sec how how far apart are these two stands? Oh, we're side by side. Oh, okay. I thought you were in two Siamese stands. We're just like seven side by side. And so his pig would turn. Can I, the old double up,

the old double up often leads to no one getting nothing. Yeah. I'm funny. Am I found? Yeah, yeah. And so the pig, you know, we went back and forth

probably three or four times. And finally, both of them turned just right. And so, whack! We knew what we were going to do. We're going to shoot on three. You know,

one, two, shoot. You know, a guy wrote in, a military sniper wrote in, and they have like a thing they do. Like you're going like, like I say red.

No, if I'm good, I go green. Okay, I go green. You go red. If you're no good. And there's a cadence to it. So I go green. You're red. then you go green and then it's like i go green red and then somehow like i go green i say green you say green and then there's a thing and then it's shoot that or something to that effect i can't remember in

this situation he was suggesting that for these situations in this situation that is the weak link of the plan i mean you know you gotta have this dialed before this works but we had it pretty dialed and so finally they turned just right and i mean these pigs are like 10 yards from us and we're probably 18 feet in the air maybe look we're probably 15 feet we both shoot whack i hit the boar right behind the shoulder i was like 19 and i i can give some archery intel after this but i hit this pig right where i'm aiming right behind the shoulder my cousin misses okay he misses the sow and uh the you know my pig does just what you think he'd do he kind of squalled and just they take off well directly you know we're high-fiving i'm like oh man i'm sorry you missed he's like awesome shot you know directly and i i told the story

yesterday and said it was an hour it may have been 15 minutes some period of time extended and we hear pigs grunting and so make the noise seth yeah we hear pigs grunting. And so... Make the noise, Seth. Yeah, we hear pigs grunting. And I go, man, there's some pigs coming back in here. And we look up and it's the sow and the seven shoats coming right back in. Same ones. Exact same ones. And so we've already killed,

we've already got a big boar that we've got to go track. And my cousin, he wasn't too worried about it. And I said, why don't you just shoot one of those sho those shots and you can just take it home and be good eating shoot one of those shots so he rears back and shoots that shot and he hit he hits right in the butt. Okay. The pig starts squealing. I mean, just absolute. Tell them how, Seth. Squealing. This is an audio experience. A hog has a very.

Oh, that's better. That's good. Yeah. Pig starts squealing. I'm getting carried away now. Pig starts squealing. In all pigs, boar sows have a strong protective mechanism i mean like a fight response to protecting their young so the sow

just starts spinning circles around that pig trying to figure out what's hurting it you know and nothing happens the pig just keeps squealing well finally i mean we're you know this is just chaos you know and the pig's not going anywhere though directly we hear i i hear a noise that i had never heard in my life tell them so can't mimic that one that's it yeah it was a it wasn't a grunt i mean it was an aggressive just that's that's what i remember brakes going yes oh and i hear something truck coming down the mountain i hear something crashing up the mountain and i look up and there is another big hog big teeth big hair i mean just like holy cow here he here comes another one i grab another era i said i'm gonna shoot that sucker he He came in and gave one of the most awesome displays I've ever seen in the wild,

out in the wilderness of an animal. I mean, he came in to kill something. He came in to fight whatever was hurting that show. And he comes in bouncing around looking for whatever it is. And I rear back, and I just put it right where i did on the other one bam nails him and he doesn't even run off for a second like he thinks whatever's got that show it's now got me and he spins circles looking for what's hurting him and finally he realized something's bad wrong and he takes off down the mountain. By this time, the shoat is expired.

All the pigs cleared out. And me and my cousin are high-fiving. I was like, man, I just killed two big boars. Ten ringed them. And he's like, man, I got this shoat. I mean, we're excited. We get out of the tree. And I go, man, which one should we track first?

Obviously, we track the first one, the shot. So we start blood trailing, good blood from the start, man. Start blood trailing down the mountain and the blood trail starts to suspiciously make a hook and starts kind of going back towards the tree stand. And I go, huh, he didn't go where I thought he'd go. And then that blood trail comes right back up to the tree stand and I go huh he didn't go where I thought he'd go and then that blood trail comes right back up to the tree stand and I shot the same pig twice that was at 8 o'clock in the morning we go to blood trail in that

hog he made a second loop and almost went the the second part of the trail paralleled like that we jumped that hog alive at three o'clock in the afternoon in a pine thicket. I jumped him and he was probably four yards in front of me. Two. And there was a pool of blood about as big as a teaspoon in his bed. And here's the deal. Here's what you can learn from it. Okay, this was back when the sheep mechanical broadheads were just getting started. And me and dad were using wasp jackhammers.

And for whitetails, they were incredible. Incredible. So I was shooting a 65-pound high country with wasp mechanical broadheads, which is just a bad thing. Tell me why. Well, because these expandable heads are designed to give, in a situation where you're trying to kill an animal with a bow, an expandable broadhead opens when it hits the animal. The blades extend and it sucks up a lot of the momentum energy of the arrow.

So it's not, it doesn't penetrate as well. You know, two blade broadheads prioritize penetration. An expandable head prioritizes cutting diameter. And so basically I hit that boar right behind the shield, which Seth and I, we all saw the cartilage shields that these big boars have, which is the way they protect themselves when they're fighting another boar. Oh, and you hit him in the shield. Oh, just smacked him.

I mean, right behind the shoulder. I mean, it would have ten ringed a whitetail. And I got, I mean, a fair amount of penetration. I mean, he ran off with arrows sticking out of him, you know. But that shield sucked the wind right out of that broadhead. Yeah, it just didn't get any penetration. And this is a big hog. This is at least a 250-pound hog, this one.

Jeez. And I had the exact same thing happen on a much much bigger hog when i was 17 did you recover that hog no i learned real quick three i had three incidences with mechanical heads and then all of a sudden we're like oh you can't shoot those with hogs so well last night clay uh was sitting there waiting, and a pig came to a waterhole, and he went up and deliberately shot it back behind the shield. Yeah. And we went after dark and found that thing dead, I don't know, 50 yards? Yeah.

You know, somebody asked me today, and to be honest with you, I don't know the answer to it. Why did that pig die so quick? All I know is that, well, the story was it why did that pig die so quick all i know is that well the story was is that this pig came into a waterhole we were hunting some nilga we had nilga on the pond that we were hunting while the nilga were there they were out of range and the nilga are extremely spooky wary critters and a pig came walking down to the pond in between us and the nil guy we decided to do a soft spook on the nil guy because to try to go stalk this pig because i nil guy wasn't gonna kill i just didn't think we'd get to him we were losing so yeah i was

getting dark quick and so i took my hat off and just kind of waved it like this and those nilga you know saw us and then we just kind of started moving away from the nilga and they just kind of trotted off and then we turned and went just right to this pig and he was just in the perfect spot to be stalked i got to within probably 14 yards the pig his his butt was facing me. The wind is in my face. I mean, I pretty much just walked up to this thing. Got within 14 yards of it on the ground. It turns broadside, perfectly broadside. And I aimed back at least a foot from the shoulder and just put it right through. I mean, it it was i would have thought it got liver but i'm not even sure that it did but i mean how far did the pig run steve oh he went 50

yards was deader and dead yeah yeah so what killed that pig i'm not entirely sure i mean that it because it i mean the from the diaphragm forward with lungs, heart, wasn't even touched. But he went down quick, and he didn't bleed a drop. I mean, he didn't even have that much blood in his cavity when we gutted him. Kind of a mystery. Did you guys ever figure what killed your big buck so quick? Was there, like, a theory? Well, no, that one's easier.

We can talk about that if you want to see but i mean that was just a cavity shot i mean like if you're shooting an animal and your projectile point of whatever you're shooting is getting inside you know on the north side of the diaphragm yeah it's the diaphragm is like the muscle that is is behind the lungs and heart that separates it from the gut, if you're poking something inside of there... I think you cut the hoses coming out of the heart. Yeah, with the deer.

So we're talking about a different animal now. Yeah, you hit the lungs too. Yeah. On the deer. Yeah, I was looking at the lungs. He lost blood pressure pretty quick. Yes, he went down super quick tell people about the um the uh i think it's called the jesse griffiths two cut three strip boar hide skinning method

skinning yeah on those big boars where you get down you know behind the shoulder where you got that that shield and that hide when you're pulling it down will start to hang up and it kind of it'll just it'll stick up at an angle explain the shield uh it's a it's it's this kind of i don't want to call it fat it's not fat it's not cartilage it's this it's very rubbery dense um subcutaneous layer and i've seen it up to maybe four inches thick it's like freaking rawhide man it's like it's tough it's tough on everything it's tough on bullets it's tough on arrows i don't have knives i don't handle enough pigs where i i forget about it yeah like every whatever years and i go to skin and bore i'm like holy shit what is this stuff yeah it's kind of

always and then i always forget it's different, too. I mean, some are worse than others. You can see them real bad on some. And I mean, I think a lot of it, like Clay was saying, it's like they fight a lot and they go head to head, and so they're hitting each other's shoulders with their cutters. That's where those, when they go, when they bump

head to head, that's where they're hitting is right there in their shoulders. So they've developed, it's almost like a scar tissue. It's just very thick, dense. I mean, it's like if it was, I would liken it to like rubber, like a real thick sheet of rubber. It's just very hard. But when you're skinning it, it just, the hide, it makes it stand at an angle. And so if you're looking at the hog and say you got it hanging by its back legs with its back to you, not its belly, but its back to you, you separate that hide into three strips, three vertical strips.

And what that does is take some of that pressure off and then you're able to just skin those strips out individually from the hind legs all the way to the head. Yeah, like imagine that you made your gutting incision. Yeah. But then you turn them and do a gutting incision down either loin. Yeah, yeah. Down the outside of either loin. So now it's like he's slit crotch to throat,

but now he's slit like whatever the hell. Yeah, it's like three sections, the left side, the right side, and then just right down the back. A little bit wider than the back straps. But, I mean, it doesn't really matter. It's not a science tip. But what you're doing is just alleviating that pressure a little bit. And then you're able to push down,

apply downward pressure with your non-cutting hand while you're skinning and just get that knife and just do it strip by strip makes a world of difference yeah it's a lot easier it's a good trick you know for those that want to clean a big boar it's not not for everybody but i think all the boars that we got this uh this trip were they seem to be pretty good they smelled real good i think they're going to eat well they're gonna eat better probably than that sow. You think so? The skinniest pig I've ever seen in my life. Can you tell everybody about your book, your hog book?

Yeah. Yeah. Can I endorse it first? Or are you going to endorse it after you tell everybody? I mean, I don't know if you want to endorse it. Well, I'll say this. Yeah. That I feel like you probably, this is a bold but fair statement. There's probably no one that knows more about wild hog cooking, right?

There's probably no one that knows more about cooking wild hogs than you. I mean. On the face of the earth. I doubt that. Who? I don't know who that person is. cooking wild hogs than you. I mean, on the face of the earth. I doubt that. Who, who? I mean, I don't know who that person is.

Probably, you know, some, some old guy. No, because you deal with them. You deal with them as a hunter. It's true.

You deal with them as a professional chef. You buy the sons of bitches. You sell the sons of bitches. It's true. I enjoy them. Are you, I mean, I'm stealing it.

You called me the hog apologist. Yeah. I love that. I mean, I'm stealing it. You called me the hog apologist. I love that. I love that. Well, yeah, Jesse had criticized one of our pigs. And I'm like, if Jesse criticizes a pig, it's got real problems. Yeah. Yeah. Because he celebrates all pigs.

I try to make a case for him. I love him. I love those things. That sow, I felt a little bad for that sow. Like, you know, she was out at noon, and I just, I mean, I have a real soft spot for all animals. I mean, I really do. I still do.

I get sad. And I felt a little sad for that sow, even though I actively endorsed you killing her. But I just feel like, you know, it's such a tough life to be a female wild pig i mean she's down to two piglets who knows how many she started out with and i and i i i'm a i'm gonna project this i assume that you hate the personification of animals but i'm gonna do this anyway um but i imagine the anthropomorphism yes yes so i mean at some point yesterday those piglets were like, Mommy, we want to go get in the mud by the pond.

And she's like, it's noon. We can't go to the pond. And they're like, we want to go. And they finally annoyed her until she went to the pond. I don't think this actually happened. Wow. I don't think this actually happened this way. At high noon, she goes to the damn pond.

And, you know... Wow. It was, I mean... That was some strong pond. Wow. It was, I mean. This is heavy. It was some strong anthropomorphism. This is heavy. It was. I like it.

I think that that did happen. Yeah. And they went to the pond. They're like, Mommy, where's Daddy? Does Daddy not love us? Maybe he's at the pond. And so they went to the pond, and now those snotty little piglets, now they're orphans. Jeezty little piglets you know now

they're orphans anyway it's true though everything he's saying is true it's so true they had to go they just wanted some whatever that was in the mud well we tried to get them too true yeah i endorsed that i i endorsed that heavily you know uh in fact in our pasta last night, that was a six-pound pig that was in there. Is that right? Yeah, live weight. I endorse the taking of all hogs. I still have a little bit of a soft spot. Yeah, yeah.

But back to the notion, I appreciate that. I like celebrating pigs, and I appreciate what they are as far as a, as a resource. And I think that people, they underutilize them. And, and I mean, I, like I said, I,

I, I think we need to kill the vast majority of them. And I, and I support that, but at the same time, maintaining some respect for them as animals, that's super important. But I,

I, I love looking at each individual hog and doing the assessments. And all the boars look good. That sow, she was the most drawn down pig I have ever seen. She was just skin and bones. You know how we did the,

where you can go to signs underscore west and see the javelina eating turkey shit under Seth's boot? Yeah. If you go to at steven ranella i will post a episode of my new show called jesse griffiths judges your hog and it's jesse griffiths giving clay a walkthrough of his hog and what he could expect yeah from a culinary perspective yeah no i i like it i think i'm getting real good at it and i mean well that's that's okay well let's come full circle of the book that's what

the book is about is that you know people will come to me and they're like what's your favorite recipe for a feral hog and it's i mean i try not i'm not not trying to be angry or annoyed by that but it's like that's that's a that's a tough question right there it's like well how big is your pig did you just shoot a 325 pound boar or did you just shoot an 18 pound shoat there's a huge difference in how you're gonna show show or guilt uh uh and it's a big difference in how you're gonna treat those two animals and i think that a lot of the the problems that people have with with cooking a lot of the problems that people have with cooking, a lot of failures that they have is because they want to do a one-size-fits-all approach to all those hogs. Therefore, what's your recipe for feral hog?

What does the hog look like? And how can you frame that in a way so you're not getting overtly technical or just talking over people or just making it just a hassle to discern the qualities of a hog. So when we did the book, we broke it down into four categories. It's a small hog, it's a medium hog, it's a large sow and a large boar. That's interesting. Do different butchery diagrams, step-by-step for all four of those pigs, like how to break that down. And then each one of those is followed by a substantial amount of recipes

that are mostly going to work for that category of hog. Now, granted, you can make sausage out of any hog. But what we did, we tried to put the recipes with the appropriate size. And so it's kind of a field guide textbook. So now when people are like, what's your favorite recipe for a feral hog? And they could be like, well, I just shot a very fatty sow. Good. Best thing you can do, you know, food-wise.

And then you can open up the chapters, fatty sow. You know what I think a lot of guys that I do when you publish this, print it, is do color-coded tabs. We did. You did? Yes. I didn't know you had physical print. No, I mean, mean it's in the works oh it's no no like when you look at the book i can't the the end pages you'll see the different yeah what's the title of the book

the hog book pretty the hog apologist the hog book no it's not out yet we're still we just yeah you gotta tell everybody about this whole deal too. Yeah, we launched Kickstarter. We're self-publishing it. So we did a Kickstarter. We reached our goal. Took us 11 days. We got there. Oh. Yeah.

So what do people need to do now to support? I'll point out this. Jesse got torn. COVID has torn Jesse a new one. Yes, sir. I mean, I haven't got the COVID, but. No, but I'm saying that for your business. The situation has been rough.

Yeah, like you had a restaurant. You had to shut a restaurant down from COVID lockdowns. You had to like greatly, like basically almost close your other restaurant except for some outside dining. It's just been a wreck. But you're plowing ahead with this book, which is good. Yeah, I think we're going to be okay. We're just fighting it out.

I'm just hopeful at this point. But yeah, the book's been in the works for literally a decade. We have been working on this. Ever since we published the first book, we had actually started work on this prior to that being published. And that came out in 2012. So the Kickstarter deals, people could kick down and presumably they get a book when it comes out?

Yeah, there's different packages. There's one book, two book, three books. We sold a butchery class. There's hats, some nice first light hats with the Hog Book logo on them. I like that hat. Where can they get that hat? I had a guy message me yesterday about your hat. Through Kickstarter.

No, I mean, just because we met our goal doesn't mean we can't keep going. Definitely would like to keep going. So can people at this, I don't know when we're going to release this, soon, presumably, people can still go support the book and get the book? Yeah, I think we've got maybe 15, 20 days left on the Kickstarter. So then what do they do? Can they pre-order? We probably won't have pre-orders ready until we physically print the book.

So there's nothing people can do right now to help? Kickstarter. They can go to Kickstarter. But you said you're going to shut it down. Well, Kickstarter shuts itself down. We have a 45-day campaign. And I think we're probably 25 to 30 days in, if I remember correctly. And then after that, we're going to get the book printed.

And so it should be available. And we're self-distributing everything and self the book printed. And so it should be available. And we're self-distributing everything and self-publishing. And so it should be available around March. Fingers crossed. And then they can do it then. There's websites and stuff. And so you can contact us.

The Hog Book. The Hog Book. Bam. Yeah. I like that damn book. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty cool.

I'm proud of it. 115 recipes. I hope there's a cool. I'm proud of it. 115 recipes. I hope there's a lot of good pictures, I guess. Well, so I'm partners in this book with the photographer who did a field. And so he, and one of the great things about self-publishing is that we get to do whatever content we want. Well, first off, self-publishing enables us to do any kind of gore that we want. Like, I mean, for lack of a better term. To show really what's happening in the butchering process. Absolutely.

I mean, without any kind of editorial issues. Like, if I want a picture of a skinned out pig's head in there, it's going in. Yeah. But also, speaking to that, we can put as many photos in there as we want. You know what picture I want to see? What's that? I want to see a full vertical... But also, speaking to that, we can put as many photos in there as we want. And it's got a massive amount of photos. What's that? I want to see a full vertical picture of you with an apron on, holding that big butcher knife you've got in your mallet,

standing beside a big half-skinned wild hog. Yeah. With like a cool background. We're bringing a full circle here like you open it up that's the vision of the photo right there there you go yeah i already took that photo yeah can you make this whole i'm getting stressed out about something oh no can you make this whole kickstarter thing like keep going or some other thing keep going no no because no one's gonna here's the thing we're wasting our breath because people aren't gonna remember to go buy the damn book in march well i mean there'll be more promotion we'll get

back in front of people they'll be able to pre-order no he's not doing pre-orders we're not not yet we're not set up for it yet but after kickstarter you'll do pre-orders we will get set up for that we we kind of want to have the book in physical. Can you do this? Can you, can, never mind. I mean, we're going to do some promotional stuff with First Light. No, I'm trying to think here. It's like, I feel like that people should hear this

and they'll want to go buy the book. Right. But they're going to get screwed because they're going to go to the Kickstarter thing. It's not going to be on. They're going to forget. March will come around. They won't buy the book

and it won't be good for anybody and it won't be helping you out well we just have to get in front of them again which it'll happen set a reminder on your phone listen if you're there at home set a reminder on your phone that says uh buy jesse's book come march there you go or just go right now to kickstarter if you've still got if this comes out in time that's what our schedule's like. It's not going to. How do you know? I just heard the one we did last week was coming out January 4th.

Yeah, but I already texted Corinne. Special powers. Just right now. I'm like, I don't care what we got going on. We got to get this out for the Kickstarter deal. I love it. Yeah. We'll see.

She might say you're hot. Yeah. The better we do on Kickstarter, the more we get printed in the Kickstarter deal. I love it. Yeah. We'll see. She might say you're hot. Yeah. Better we do on Kickstarter, the more we get printed in the first run. So that's a good deal. So we can probably get. Hog book. Maybe 10,000 copies printed in the first run. You can buy that hog book, Seth?

Yeah. I'm going to save all my hog meat for when the book comes out. There you go. The hipsters in LA do not have that hat yet. Oh, please tell me. So, I'm at my fancy wine shop

in LA, close to where I live, buying a couple bottles of natural wine, and I'm wearing a First Light hat, the one you're wearing right now on the shoot. I don't have a hat on. Well, the one you traded me with the Bear Grease hat. Oh, also, you're not getting this Bear Grease hat. That is a lie.

You can have his hat. No. He can. I'll forfeit this one. It looks good on you, Chris. It really does. Oh, that's great. I'm going to get me one of the Bear Grease hats.

But I do like the First Light version. Listen, my kid took to wearing, Clay sent me a camo Bear Gre me one of those Bear Grease hats. But I do like the First Light version. But I got a lot of those First Light kind of hats. Listen, my kid took to wearing, Clay sent me a camo Bear Grease hat and that Bear Grease hat. Yeah. My kid took to taking my camo Bear Grease hat. Yep. And my First Light Bear Grease hat. I like that one too.

That was one right there. It caught on so much at his school. He's 10. It caught on so much at his school that he got on my phone and texted Clay because he needed three. He needed two for his hunting buddies at school and another one for his teacher. Oh, he's putting orders in. Yeah.

So then I was like, you better. And the teacher wanted one. I was like, you better be off of play. I admired his forthrightness. He said, I can't remember how he addressed me i think he said hey this is and he said his name and he said steve's boy and then he wrote this pretty articulate description concise but articulate of why he needed three bergeri's hats which he got

so now a significant percentage of the kids at his elementary school are running around in barry's hat and the teacher cool the teacher has one he needed two for his buddies and one for his teacher wow isn't that right i don't i don't recall maybe i'm wrong either way anyhow so there you are in your fancy wine shop oh yeah yeah so i'm in my wine shop i'm wearing that first light hat and uh yeah this very one that very one okay and i asked him i was in there because he covered it got all shut down you can't go in it and you just tell him what you want yell into the window yeah you yell into a guy and i was like give me he like i was like you got any orange wines and he brings me two i was like which one's more blue collar and he thought that was funny and then he wrecked

i got a good wine i get that you like that right though the natural wine orange wine natural wine which one's more blue collar yeah it's solid it's a good i thought it was too right he's like uh neither no he was like we've strayed very far anyways he sees the first light hat and as he's like bagging up my wine he's like you don't often see a first light hat in la and i was like oh yeah are you a hunter like do you hunt stuff and he's like yeah a little bit of small game this and that i was like oh that's cool man yeah i sometimes work on the show mediator if you're familiar sometimes all the time he's like oh i fucking love mediator man i love it point of the story is you got fans everywhere oh thank you chris uh-huh sometimes even in la wine all the time whatever yeah i didn't want to i didn't want to sound were you trying to distance yourself from fans everywhere. Oh, thank you, Chris. Uh-huh. Sometimes. Even in L.A. wine shops. Oh, all the time. Whatever.

Oh, yeah. I didn't want to sound braggadocious. Were you trying to distance yourself from it? No, no, no. Oh, of course. Do I wear that hat all the time?

No. Give us some street cred with a cape. Yeah, you know, I just don't like sounding like braggadocious. Yeah, I don't want to be a blowhard.

You don't sound like a blowhard. No, I want to be... That was his first step to telling you that he's going back to the puppets. No, I wear two hats. I wear that hat or I wear my other, which is a Meteor logo on a First Light camo hat.

Oh. It was the only two hats I wear. And now it's going to be a third. Berger's hat. And then when I get Jesse's hat, dude, I'm getting a fucking hat collection here. This is good shit. You may have heard I've been doing well on hats. Not doing so good on the income,

but I got hats. All right, everybody. Go buy, well, I don't know, in March. Come March. Set the reminder on your phone. Go buy,

what's the book called? The Hog Book. The Hog Book by Jesse Griffiths. Yes, sir. The Hog Book by Jesse Griffiths. Photograph sir. The Hog Book by Jesse Griffiths. Photographs by Jody Horton. That's who did A Field. Did you win the Beard Award for A Field?

Did not. We got nominated. Some British guy wrote a book about fruit. He beat me in my category. That stung. Is he a farmer? What does he have to do with fruit? He just wrote a book about fruit.

Cookbook. Dude. I'm sure it was great. What's the book say? It says like, oh, there's a thing called Fruit, Girls on Trees. What more do I have to say? That's the book. I'll take a nomination.

It's a page. You like raspberries? That's a big deal. So does everybody else. Yeah, that's a real big deal. All right. Thank you, everybody. Shut her down.

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