The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 256: When They Come To Burn Your House Down

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Brandon Butler, Jim Heffelfinger, Brody Henderson, Ryan Callaghan, and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: Steve's fourth quarantine and how his kids turned against their mother; when a poacher burns you down; how to support our buddy Brandon; Mingus the dog's first mountain lion and Jani's deep-felt pride; can Mingus excel as a coon hound?; when your scrotum retains its natural abilities to retract and firm up, and implications for horsemanship; caught on camera: a jaguar killing an ocelot; all the krinkles in possession limit details and when your girlfriend stores her birds in your freezer; birthing a baby at home into your kiddie pool with sous vide-warmed water; when you burn "The MeatEater Guide to Wilderness Skills" and save the day; how to submit your photos for our Fucked Up Old Deer Stands fine art coffee table book; Jim's article and what science says about lead vs. non lead bullets; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with Onyx. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, you're bearing witness to a feat of COVID-induced technology where we're all over the damn place. Not in our studio. Well, that's not true. Cal's in the studio. Hello, Cal. Hello, Steven.

Brody is in the studio. Hello, Brody. And Giannis is in the studio. Hello, Giannis. Love the end, Steve. Joined there by, I think Corinne's in there, Phil's in there. I'm quarantined at home. This is my fourth quarantine.

This time I'm so quarantined that i'm out in my own guest house like i'm not allowed anywhere near even my own family so i have to look out the window into my home to see my family going about their business which is the saddest thing on the planet but my kids are treating me like an underdog, and they're watching out for my interests and have gotten very mad at my wife for talking rudely to me. So I'm manipulating them. They feel very bad for me. And joined by Jim Heffelfinger from Arizona.

Jim. Howdy. And our friend Brandon Butler, who's joining from Missouri. Correct, Brandon? That's right. Now, Brandon, this is like a short notice, Brandon, coming on here. Because the weirdest thing happened that I just found out about. Someone sent me a link to a GoFundMe that's being put on by brandon's friend and brandon he'll tell you what happened

but his uh someone burned his damn hunting camp down in this hunt camp uh we recorded podcasts out of so that kind of like is the relevancy. I don't know if people remember. Years ago, Yanni and I were out spring turkey hunting in Missouri, and it was a time, if you really stretch your memory back and were paying attention to our show back then, Yanni had gotten a turkey, and I actually found an old crippled turkey and got that. Like I jumped up a crippled up turkey and got it and tagged it, and we were staying at Brandon's house.

I was quite alarmed this morning to see that someone had burnt the damn camp down. Like full on arson? Listen, Brandon. Yanni, you don't even know about this yet. Brandon, tell what happened. That was 2018 when you and Yannis came down and joined me and Parker Hall and Steve Jones. We had a great time. And you guys hadn't, you'd been there right when the cabin kind of started coming together.

Called this place Driftwood Acres. It's down in Shannon County, Missouri. It's a rough part of the world, a very almost lawless part of the world, a very, uh, almost lawless part of the world. So I knew what I was getting into going down there as a, uh, professional conservationist and, uh, yeah, it didn't play out so well. Back in 2017, a friend of mine was hunting a field just off my property when a little seven pointer, uh, white tail, we call them seven pointers back here in Missouri was out in this field. A road hunter shot it off the road, wounded it. It ran over onto my property. They drove out across my property, jumped it up. It ran for my buddy

who's wearing blaze orange, stands up in a tree stand is waving at these people they continue to fire at this deer wounding it more it goes into a creek and finally they confront my friend and tell him it was his fault for not putting orange at the the entrance of this field at the road so they would know not to shoot from the road. At that time, I went up and confronted these people. I was told to know my place. I talked to the law enforcement and he suggested just kind of letting this one ride. And man, that is just ate at me for years. Like the fact that I didn't press charges. I just kind of took it, moved on, tried to survive down there.

This year on Sunday of opening day of rifle season at 830 at night, me and three of my friends, Nathan Shaggs McLeod, Paddle Don Cranfeld, and my cousin Derek Butler were sitting around a campfire and the creek had flooded. And if you guys remember. But Claire, this is just a couple nights ago. Well, no, I'm talking about deer season. So this would have been like November 15th. Oh, I'm sorry. Burned a couple of nights ago. Oh, I gotcha.

I gotcha. So if you guys remember, I had to bring you in through the forest because the creek had flooded. That happens a lot. And we're on the backside of it. So the creek is flooded and we're thinking nobody's coming in for deer season. Well, this truck comes across the creek anyways. They stop at the end of my driveway, maybe 150 yards down from us. It's a long driveway. Look up at us having a fire,

go about 200 yards further, pull into this field, throw on the light bars. I mean, it would be like turning on the lights at a professional baseball stadium. Just lit this thing up like crazy, jump out and start unloading. So close that we're watching the muzzle flashes as they poach these deer. So without even thinking, I jumped in my side-by-side and took off after them. My cousin and friends start charging down the hill on foot to follow me up thinking I'm going after poachers unarmed. They're obviously armed. They take off. I get the license plate number. I call the license plate number in. This time I'm pressing charges. There's no way I'm ever going to live with that guilt again.

Had no idea who it was. Turned out to be some locals. The threat started coming. I started being told I don't belong down there. All that, uh, starts coming through email, social media, stuff like that. Telling me that snitches end up in ditches. Um, good luck, good luck hanging out down here. And, and then Monday night at 12, 12 o'clock at night, my wife wakes me up. The neighbor called and said, uh, the cabin's burning down right now. So I jumped up, grab a few guns, take off. It's a three and a half hour drive, get down there about sunrise, just as the final flames are still

flickering. So, you know, it was, it was just a building. Uh, but the possessions that I had in there were probably 30 taxidermy mounts of mine and families. My, my, my grandfather's folds of honor flag from world war II after he passed away, my, my handmade great grandfather's bed. I mean, just the endless amount of like personal possessions that are just irreplaceable. And thankfully the, I had cameras all over, uh, the person has not been apprehended yet, but they will be. And yeah, so that's it. Took a stand for conservation, stood up to these poachers, and they burned my house down. God, man.

The pictures are really upsetting too, man. Yeah. It's still hard to look at the pictures because every time I look at them, I notice something else that's there. If you look hard, you'll see my friend Kevin Orthman bought me an antique book press. And in that book press was the Meat Eater Cookbook, Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the Tips and Tactics book. So even lost that stuff the if if you go back to the episodes we did from there uh i did the we i told a story about the steam breathing turkey and steve you said that man that that was such a beautiful description if i was a painter i would paint that

and some dude did and you guys used it as a tour poster on your your first go-around yeah you were you were kind enough to make me 20 copies of the driftwood acres version of that poster and you and janice signed it and sent it to me and it was in a frame next to the actual fan from the steam breathing turkey that was centered between two bucks that i killed down there and two bucks that shag's killed down there that were mounted all that's gone. Every turkey fan that I ever had is gone. Every European mount that I've ever had is gone. Is the GoFundMe still up?

Yeah, the GoFundMe just came up today. Yeah, your buddy put that up, huh? Yeah, and I had insurance. I'm gainfully employed. I am not in horrible need of money money so i'm i'm humbled by the outpouring of support and and the friendship and and i all i can say is like whatever comes from the gofundme will not be used selfishly i'll i'll find a way to use this money to uh to further conservation and hunting and fishing and you know i had a full-blown raft you know

like a west i used to live in montana and fish the all the rivers you guys fish and i had a 1400 like a pack raft an outcast pack 1400 that burned up on the trailer the water skeeter i had when i lived out there burned up four kayaks my kids kayaks and man that's the hardest part like you know my girls are teenagers they're 14 and 15 years old so sometimes dragging them down to this wilderness retreat was a pain in the ass like i had to get the internet for them to even want to go down there so i had like satellite internet but they're crying they're scared like they're they're worried these people might like actually come to our home so So like, I'm leaving the house at 1230 in the morning with an AR 15 in one hand, hugging my 15 year old crying daughter with the other hand.

And it took about an hour and a lot of Metallica songs to realize like what I had done, you know, like I'm walking out of my house armed with like a military grade weapon, hugging a 15 year old child that's crying. And I'm like the position that I've not only been put in myself, but then to react that way, like I'm, I had to like sit her down and talk to her and, but you know, it's a scary situation. It's a scary place. And so why, like, why are the law, why is the law enforcement so reluctant to

deal with it? I don't, I don't, I don't even get this man. It's hard to explain, man. I don't have the answers for that. I'm, I'm friends with the game wardens down there. They're under resourced. Of course they're underpaid.

Uh, I'm, I'm counting on a sheriff's deputy who probably makes, you know, in the thirties as far as money. And this guy's got to put his life on the line to go after you know hardened criminals because my cabin burned down like that's a lot to ask of somebody to like go into this holler where there's no phones no service no internet and try to apprehend

somebody willing and able to do such a heinous crime for 30 grand a year so then you know there's also a huge national park there called the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, and they have law enforcement and they have a hard time with getting the prosecutions to go through. There's just a real clannish culture down there and trying to get people prosecuted and through the judicial system is hard as well. So it's, you know, it's just a very strange part of the world, very Appalachia-like. It's the poorest county in Missouri. But something has to change.

And I've got, you know, I'm friends with the lieutenant governor of our state. I've got a call into his office. I've talked to a lot of law enforcement people. You know, if I have to be the martyr for this to finally raise awareness that there's almost a lawless society existing within our state and the fact that good people cannot go down there and build a home and enjoy the outdoors and increase the economy or anything that needs to be done to make this a more civilized society, then, you know, what's it going to take? So I'm really hopeful that this is a turning point in the history of this county, in the history of the Ozarks, because it's one of

the most naturally beautiful parts of the country. Man, I wish we could get into the parts of this that we can't quite get into yet, but it's just kind of a heartbreaking story, man. It's so maddening and disheartening, man. But I want to revisit it later on down the road. But one of the things about the GoFundMe, I know you were saying, oh, it doesn't really matter, and you had insurance. But I'll come out and say that you've been real good about sharing that place with people and being generous with it.

And instead of having a little chunk of ground that you lock up for yourself, trying to have like a place where you invite people in and encourage conversations and try to use it as like something that's positive and to get people to relate and interact around conservation issues. And I think it's a cool spot, and what you were doing there is cool, man. And I hope that people go and check out your GoFundMe because you did lose a ton of stuff, and it wasn't like a selfish project you had going on. It was something you were trying to do to be a good dude.

So I feel like you should tell people about the GoFundMe and people can come in and try to lend some support for someone that, for turning in some deer poachers, had all their memories and something that they care a great deal about burned to the ground. Well, thank you very much. The outpouring of support has been humbling, man. When I saw my phone go off today with your name popping up, I was like, man, this is getting around, you know? So I really appreciate you guys, all of you. And, you know, Clay Newcomb's been to the cabin a few times. Hal Herring's been there and Russell Graves out of Texas.

I was trying to make it something special that would hopefully bring some awareness to that area as well. I was trying to do good things for the people down there and show that this is an incredible natural resource area of our country. But, yeah, I don't know, man. The GoFundMe, whatever money comes comes from that i'm going to use it for good for conservation for figuring out how to get more people involved in the outdoors taking more people fishing and hunting um i lost my raft that i i rode a lot of people down the river in that raft um so it it's on the driftwood outdoors, Facebook page. Uh, I think the go fund me is called Brandon Butler's cabin burned by poachers. You can look it up, but the best way probably to find it is just to go to driftwood outdoors

on, on Facebook. But like I said, you know, like this money will be used in a way that, uh, will let these people know that they didn't win that, you know, we're going to continue to take a stand for conservation. You know, that I've been asked that too. Like, man, I bet you wish you wouldn't have turned them in. I'm like, absolutely not. I'd do it again tomorrow. Like, and I've had a bunch of people reach out and like, my favorite thing is like a few folks have been like dude this is like the pearl harbor of shannon county like they don't know what they just woke up like we're gonna get after it so yeah

yeah don't let some piece of shit with a pointless life uh drive you out man right that's the absolute truth so we're just gonna keep moving forward it's all you can do in life right like my family's safe and healthy thankfully nobody was there uh you know the important stuff is still intact yeah brandon i know it hurts to lose all those material possessions but it sounds like you've got the right attitude about it and And, uh, you know, thankfully no humans got hurt. And, uh, what that son of a bitch can't take away from us are those great memories, man. And I've got some incredible memories from that place. And I can attest to what you're saying about it's natural beauty. It's absolutely incredible. You wouldn't think that, uh, Southern Missouri would have water that flows of that color until you go and see see it and I urge everybody to do it,

it's absolutely stunning. But yeah, the memory we have, it's burned into my mind is that opening morning, a turkey season when I snuck in there and call that old gobbler over to me and I shot him. And in my head, I could just see you and Steve up there on the other side of the ridge

going was that yanni could that could have been yanni they can't take that away from us yeah the the feeling of knowing people are jealous of you no one could take that away yeah yeah i'm trying to i'm trying to hunt with Steve, you know, and I want to of course show you guys a good hunt and a good time. And, you know, it was like, we, we said it was like Rachel Carson,

silent spring, like Steve and I didn't hear anything. It was like wildlife had become the void. And then we show up and Giannis is like, oh yeah, so easy. Killed one in 30 minutes. So,

but me and Parker, we had a good hunt too. We got three turkeys out of four and we, we should had four so it was uh yeah man that steam breathing turkey will live on forever that's right that's right well we'll get you we'll get you to replay with the parts of it that we can help replace like the books and the steam breathing turkey poster we'll get that sorted out i appreciate you all right thanks for calling in on short notice or joining in on short notice, man. When I saw that, I knew I wanted to have you on to talk about it because that was pretty upsetting. Well, I really appreciate it. You guys are the best. Thank you very much and look forward to talking to you soon. Yeah. I hope some dudes

come in and kick down on that. Go fund me and help you out, man. Thanks a lot. All right. Take care of yourself. Well, when you want to come out when everything goes back to normal we'd love to have you out in the studio i'd love to do it thank you all right dude talk to you soon all right thanks oh yeah so yanni tell me now what's going on with your dog and a mountain lion and everything two mountain lions to be exact but uh mingus and i spent some time uh walking tracks and chasing lions this past week uh while you were in pencil tucking and uh we were with jake gribb who you know as well uh buddy of ours oh yeah were you were you there when he got that bobcat recently no i haven't been in on a bobcat uh kill yet but uh that guy is amazing man

i don't even know how much we should really be like talking about how much how good he is online because he's going to start he's going to be like that uh that other jake that we know from wisconsin who people stalk him because he knows where all the sturgeon are under the ice you know and uh i'm afraid we'll put too much attention on him but But anyways, I actually had a neighbor call me who had found a track. So it was a day old by the time we got to it, but we went and ran it anyways. Eventually got on the cat. This was, I think, Monday morning. How did he find the track?

How did he find the track? My neighbor? Just stumbled into it? Yeah. Was he looking forward to it? I knew that he lives just right across the drainage from me, and I had told him just to keep an eye out, and he was a couple hundred yards behind his house

just doing a little walkabout with some family members and stumbled into it. And so we put the cat up eventually. It's late in the day by then. It's like 1 or 2 p. 2pm and Mingus had gotten a smell we had eventually found the fresher track that was the day of and he had been on that track and smelled it a little bit and he took off

down the track but 5 minutes later he came back Jake's dogs stayed on it he came back like hey guys what's going on you know like he just he doesn't have it quite there to stay on it yet well we get to the tree jake's dogs are there treeing barking up a storm and mingus is like kind of joining in on the barking but more because he's like hey everybody else is barking i'll bark a few times too right but he just can't like the cat's kind of high like i don't know 20 feet maybe 25 and it's kind of a pretty thick dug

fur a lot of branches in there and you just can't get a good view like i'm only seeing like you know part of the tail like if you just get the right angle you can see its face um and you just like he just can't put two he at that point he couldn't put two and two together that what he was smelling on the track equal this cat up in this tree. Right. So no matter what I did, we're like, I'm trying to take his head and point it up into the tree. And Jake's looking at me like, dude, I've tried that a thousand times. It just doesn't work. And so we spent whatever half an hour there and, uh, we took off. So it was a little bit of a bummer. Cause it was like, man, we we had invested like, you know, I don't know. We started at five o'clock in the morning. We walk out of there at two,

you know, it's a long day. And I didn't really feel that my dog was any better for it. You know, it was just kind of like, well, I guess we had to go do it again. So two or three days later, we went to run another track and this one was very fresh, like you know hours prior to jake finding it it was late in there so we get on it and jake he's got a young dog that he's trying to train well too so mingus kind of gets second pick and i was telling my girls the best way to understand it is like mingus is probably a kindergartner as far as like his level of understanding of this game. Jake's eight month old is probably in like fourth, fifth grade. And then he's got like a two year old that's like, you know, towards the end of high school.

And he's got one more that's a full on professional. So when his eighth month old is running a fresh track, he wants her to only be seeing what the other dogs with more experience are doing. And he doesn't want a dog like mine, who's a kindergartner, just run around in circles half the time playing grab ass, you know, ruining a good thing. So his dogs go first. It's, uh, and, and I'm basically behind with Mingus on a leash and just making sure that

Mingus has literally taken every track, every footstep of that lion, putting his nose into it and just walking it. It was great to watch because you could actually see sometimes he'd get excited and he'd veer off where the dog tracks went, but it wouldn't take but five or six feet and he would jump back to the actual lion track. Well, I've been on a few long ones. You and I have been on a few long ones together. This one was, like, abnormally short. Like, from the time that we cut Jake's dogs loose, I don't think an actual three minutes went by until you heard the boo-boo-boo-boo,

the constant barking. Are you serious? Yeah, I mean, it was fast. So we come over the ridge, and I look back at Jake. I'm like, are they treed? He's like, oh, yeah, it's treed. So we walked down to the ridge and I look back at Jake. I'm like, are they treed? He's like, oh yeah, it's treed. So we walked down to Mingus and I follow the track all the way to maybe 50 feet of the tree. Then I let go of the leash and just let him run in there.

And you can see the cat playing his day this time. It's not quite as high. It's only 15 feet up or so. Same thing with his dogs, interestingly enough, two of them, the more experienced and the pro are all over the tree. They know what's in the tree. They're barking up a storm. The youngest one is sort of like going around the tree, doing a lot of barking. Like she knows that that's what she's supposed to do. And that's where the scent ends. And it was interesting to watch too. You could tell when the thermals would come down just right.

And that cat scent would come straight down to her nose. She'd, she'd light up, you know, Mingus again, two, three minutes into being at this tree, he's kind of like losing interest. He wants to run back on the track because that's where it was exciting, what he was smelling. And he just can't put two and two together still. And I know Jake that he had told me, like, you can't do it. I've tried it a thousand times. But this time the cat's, like, more wide in the open. It's not as high. And the hill's so steep that you only had to take, like, five, six,

seven steps back from the tree, and you're almost eye level this cat. So we're about in that spot. Hold on. One sec, because I got to understand. When he says you can't do it, he means you can't make a dog look into a tree and see a cat. Yes, exactly. Because that's what you want to do.

You're like, it's right there. Just like point his head in that direction. How could you miss it? Connect the dots. Yeah. And I think he's smelling it. He just doesn't know what he's smelling. Again, I was trying to explain it to my daughters.

I'm like, if you were smelling an apple pie, but had never seen one and never tasted one, you don't, you don't have an image for what you're smelling. You know, um, even though it might smell good and might be pleasurable, you don't know what it looks like. Well, I had to try it again. So I grabbed that dog's head and I pointed at that, at that lion. And I'm kind of like looking at him, looking at the lion and man, it was like, it was almost like that. His head kind of quivered and shook just for a second. And then it just locked. And then the next thing was,

I mean, just blew my eardrum out and just went berserker. He was just like, holy shit. That's what, that's what i've been smelling that i get it i got it and just he's like everybody look everybody look there's a lion in the tree exactly and uh you'll never believe what i found you want to talk about one track mind at that

point we were just you know we're just jake and i are milling around his youngest is is kind he doesn't know for sure but kind of a tree climber so he's keeping a real eye on her to make sure that she doesn't get too high up into this tree because it had some low pretty stout low branches so she was making it up six seven feet pretty quickly and of course he doesn't want her to do that but we're just milling around and talking and enjoying the situation is so funny because every time i'd get between Mingus and that tree, he'd get real annoyed and had to jump to the side to be like, no, man. I'm like, I got to see this thing and bark at it,

so don't get in my line of sight. But, yeah, it was just a very awesome feeling as a dog owner to see something like that click and to see it go down and to see see the dog get excited um that's great man that was sweet the cool thing is you got him from the pound didn't you yeah yeah he's a full-on uh livingston montana shelter dog yeah do you uh is there anything that you can't like, can that dog be a coon hound and a lion hound? Or has he got to like pick his, pick his path in life? No, I think that the, uh, the owner and the handler has to, uh, do that.

I think they're, they're, they're probably only limited by how much their owner trains them. I think is what I've been getting from most. I mean, I'm sure there's some people out there that tell you that it'll be better if they're just a one, one, oneick pony when it comes to that. But, I mean, certainly Jake's dogs do bobcats and lions, and I know they're both cats. But I think that if you just spend time with them, they can do it all.

They can figure out when they're supposed to be chasing one and supposed to be chasing another. Yeah, don't cowboy. Are you going to bring – oh, go ahead, Brody. you know supposed to be chasing one and supposed to be chasing another yeah are you gonna bring oh go ahead brody don't doesn't uh cowboy cody's dogs down in colorado they run everything like pigs and cattle and that's right yeah straight they run a lot yeah they run lions and cattle man yeah he said they'll run whatever he tells them to be interested in. Now, are you bringing that dog? When we go to Arkansas coon hunting with Clay,

are you bringing that dog down? Yes, sir. How are you getting it there? Airplane. You're going to drug it and fly it? Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what I was planning on. I don't know.

Maybe I should drive. I don't care how you get there. Fun road trip. I was looking for you to you drugging it and flying it in the bottom of the airplane but whatever you don't even have to drug them unless you know that you're into i guess i thought you need to drug them a little bit when they're kind of wild dogs like that there's some some folks that think that and a lot of other folks that i've talked to that are like, no, the dog,

as long as the dog's comfortable in a kennel, a plane is the same as the back of your truck. Like, they're just going somewhere. Yeah, but you haven't seen Giannis' dog. Have you seen Giannis' dog in the back of a truck? No. I don't know what you're getting at. Well, I've had him in the back of my truck, I guess.

It's a big, loud-ass dog that makes a lot of noise, man. He can't be... You'd hear him if you were in the plane sitting there trying to sleep. You're not going to sleep on the airplane if that dog's underneath there. That would be a fun airplane experience, because you've got to think of how few people understand what that is, the baying of a hound. Luckily, I think that he's not he doesn't

seem to have any sort of like uh separation anxiety or you know he doesn't seem to like howl ball bark whatever when we're not home um so i don't know i don't i don't expect that i wouldn't expect that to happen i've only only flown a dog once, and we didn't drug her. I'm looking forward to that trip, man. Oh, yeah. Me too. Me too. You know, we already got a title for the episode, right?

No, please tell me. Dog in the Fight. Oh. That's a good title. Now I'm looking forward to making that episode, man. The only reason I didn't want to make it is I didn't know what we'd call it. I don't know if I'm – Hey, a guy – Go ahead. Go ahead. I was just saying, I don't know if I'm looking forward to making that episode, man. The only reason I didn't want to make it is I didn't know what we'd call it. I don't know. Go ahead.

Go ahead. I was just saying, I don't know if I'm more excited about hunting the squirrels or the coons. That's good news. I'm glad. I like tracking the progress of Mingus the dog. Can we move down to this thing about how not to damage your scroll on a horse? Please. After that, I'm out of here.

Where are you going? I'm kidding. Oh. This dude wrote in. This is one of the more interesting guys that's ever written in. We had a podcast episode. It was during the COVID pandemic. I remember that. I think it was early pandemic. We had on our beloved friend, Kevin Murphy, world's greatest small game hunter, who had recently returned from Mongolia. And he had been doing some falconry in Mongolia. And we talked about that and we got to talk about riding horses.

And I got to talking about how hard it is to ride a horse without damaging up your scroll. And for me at least, and he wrote in and he's, this guy wrote in and he's the most interesting guy I've heard from in a while. He's a blacksmith and a horse trainer. Him and his wife teach people to ride, rope, and jump on horseback.

And he says that we're also naturists. And I feel like I've heard this term, because remember that guy that wrote in that was a naturist elk hunter? Yes. Yeah, he bow hunts elk naked and was saying how he can read the wind real good. Like he never wonders what way the wind's blowing. It's like you just feel it naked. So this guy has a lot of insight in riding and not hurting your, your scroll. And he goes on to say what a lot of other people wrote in to say about how,

if you're, if it's taken a beating, you're like, your seat is wrong. You got to sit the horse properly in a Western saddle. Your ass is tucked under you. You're pressed back into the seat. You're upright.

You're not leaning forward. Your knees are bent. Your heels down. He says that you can, if you're sitting right, you can ride comfortably with pants or no pants. But he says, this is where it gets interesting. He says, I still prefer a pair of bike shorts or something as underwear because when I am wearing clothes,

my scrotum just kind of relaxes and expects support then he goes on to say this is something that's never occurred to me before he spends enough time nude around the farm and around the woods that he claims that his testicles have retained the natural ability which i didn't know was like that you lose it, but he retains the natural ability to retract and firm up in times of physical activity, like when running or chopping wood or hunting. So he just adds that to the stretching routine.

It's like, hold on, on gotta limber and tighten up so he's saying that most fellows like us who run around like suckers wearing their clothes all the time that you're losing your ability to retract and firm up but that he has retained the ability to retract and firm up. Then that has nothing to do with the fact that his nuts are cold. He's like, I retain the ability to firm up in cold water. So my advice is, he says, dude, I'm not even half Joe. I like this guy a bunch. I don't want it to seem like in any way, in any way that I'm like, I would go hang out with this guy.

My advice is, unless you're going to spend a lot of time nude and exercising the muscles that retract your boys up into your pelvis like a samurai. Wear something for support and learn to sit properly in the saddle. So he's saying there's a binary decision to be made here. Go nude enough that the boys learn where to ride on their own or sit right. So I'm at a decision. I'm at a pivot point as a rider. This suggests that the overwhelming majority of people have learned to sit right and skip the nudity part. Yeah, I'd go with door number two, Steve.

Virtually everyone that I see riding nowadays has taken the second choice. But when we go down to hunt coons with Clay, we're going to be riding around on mules. And Yanni, I just don't want you to be surprised if you see some things you maybe don't want to see. Oh, I'm fine with it. Yeah. Do what you got to do, man. I just think of all the like pasty, white, transparent, old rancher skin that has never seen the light of day. Really reinforces the fact that people just learned how to sit right. Yeah. Oh,

sure. 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. Cal, you know what I want to do? I want to move into

something that Cal's going to talk about, but I want to break up Jim Heffelfinger's responsibilities. Jim, do you mind telling everybody what you were telling me about the ocelot and the jaguar and all that? Yeah, I was just saying. And are you going to be able to share those images so people can go see them? Yeah, the images are actually embedded into scientific paper,

and I was just sent this morning, this paper, and it was just a short note. And it has a series of photos, nighttime photos from a trail cam. That's next to a water catchment in Northern Guatemala, where there's ocelots and Jaguars, both.

And they had images of a Jaguar coming into the water, taking a drink, and then going back off into the darkness. A little while later, a taper comes by and drinks out of the water and the jaguar leaves it alone. Taper leaves. And then a little ocelot comes in, starts drinking, and the jaguar pounces out of the darkness, kills the ocelot, and then drags the ocelot off. And the scientific paper has images embedded in the paper itself. But then

there's some note that I haven't followed yet that says that there's supplemental information which usually means there's more information somewhere online but a lot of times those scientific papers are are um you've got to subscribe to the journal to get into it it's not always open access so i haven't checked yet whether those images are are available i can send you the paper and we can see if that's available to the public why do you think he would kill um why would he not kill the tapir, but he would kill the ocelot? Yeah, tapirs are kind of big, but that's part of their diet down there in the jungle. Why he would kill an ocelot, that's what makes it so bizarre. That's what makes it so noteworthy to show up in a scientific paper as a note.

It's not really a competitor. So strange. Well, and I don't think that we know for sure just from those pictures if the thing disappeared into the darkness that it was necessarily just sitting there that whole time period. Maybe it was out for a walkabout while the tapir was there and just happened to be back when the ocelot showed up. Yeah, that's a good point.

Is there any evidence that they do the same thing that wolves do with coyotes and just kill them to kill them? I don't think there's a lot of evidence of cats doing that because they're more solitary animals just living in the jungle kind of doing their own thing so it's pretty strange hey do you think jim right now at this like very second do you think there are is a jaguar in the u.s right now do? Do they know? I don't know. We normally have had one. It's not always the same one. We've normally had one, but I haven't heard since before we talked last time.

It's been a year since I've heard any fresh information, so I don't really know. Yeah, so there might not be. Yeah, I don't know. That's too bad. I can't remember. Do you root for Jaguars or root against Jaguars? Yeah, we had that conversation. I root for the same thing you do, that they continue to be able to come up and visit and hang out in these mountain islands in southeastern Arizona.

There was some talk, and there still is, of putting them in crates and moving them to the Ponderosa Pine High Elevation Forest in central Arizona. That doesn't make any sense to me. Oh, yeah, I got you. I got you. Why not, Jim? Don't go anywhere. Why doesn't it make any sense to me. Oh, yeah, I got you. I got you. Why not, Jim? Don't go any... Why doesn't it make any sense?

Oh, that was really beyond the range of the core of jaguar habitat. So there's over 100,000 jaguars throughout the range in Central America, and the Amazon is the epicenter of jaguars. And they came up and they came up and visited Arizona and New Mexico. They came up even a little farther than that in prehistoric times, like the Pleistocene. But this Arizona and New Mexico is a northern fringe of their habitat. And they should be able to do what animals do at the northern fringe, come up and visit and colonize and stay. But this really isn't the core of their habitat.

And to take them from other populations like northern Mexico and then putting them up into what is really not good jaguar habitat, a real dry ponderosa pine forest is not ideal jaguar habitat. Even though 200 years ago, we have some evidence of them moving through there. re they would be trying to re-establish a population in a place where you feel it would be dubious at best to say that they were that they had a breeding population there yeah we know a lot about what kind of habitat jaguars do really well on and and they do the best in those more tropical habitats and then they do okay in in areas like northern mexico in the mountains and these sky islands in southeastern arizona and Arizona and central Arizona were just really areas where they moved through. And like we talked about last time,

if you look at the native American cultures in the Southwest and Arizona, New Mexico, the Jaguar wasn't part of their, their culture. They don't have motif. They didn't revere the Jaguar. And that's really the case in central America where they were really common and right in the center of their distribution

oh man i i mean you know we've talked about this before i love those things i think it would be you know it'd be pretty great to be walking through the woods and there's one standing there now i did send you that book borderland jaguars did you go yeah yeah yeah no i like that book i like that book that's got a good documentation of these jaguars in this northern end of their habitat yep all right cal uh we're gonna touch on this a little bit because this dude wrote in um it's kind of interesting a guy wrote in about possession limits and he's not the first person to write in about possession limits and just so people understand what we're talking about, we talk about possession limits. In hunting, you'll quite often see that you'll encounter a species where you have what's called a daily bag limit. And this goes for fishing.

This goes for hunting. For our case here, let's say that we're talking about fishing. Let's say you go somewhere and they have a daily bag limit of five walleye. That means in a day, in a given day, you're allowed to catch and retain five walleye. You'll often see tacked onto that. A possession limit would be typically, it's very common to see a possession limit be two daily bag limits what that would mean is let's say you're camping out okay and you're you got a fish camp set up you're at the river access you got your camper trailer there um you've been there for a couple days they're saying that you could have in your cooler or in your camp two bag limits that doesn't mean that out in your camp, two bag limits. That doesn't mean that out in your boat, in your live well,

you have two bag limits, but you went out and caught five on Saturday. You went out and caught five on Sunday. They're cool with you having Saturday and Sunday's daily bag limits in your possession. And this system starts to get really complicated for people because a lot of times it winds up being like, okay, does that mean that I can have it in my freezer at home? What if I have it where I've already turned it into jerky or sausage? Does that count as my limit? This guy that wrote in brought up a really interesting twist on this question of how possession limits work, where he says, this dude from Illinois writes in, he says, for example, Illinois has an early goose season in September, but there are two zones with different limits. The north zone has a five goose daily limit and a 15 goose possession limit. So there you can have three daily bag limits.

The south zone has a two goose daily limit and a six goose possession limit. He then goes on to ask, let's say I live in the south zone, but hunt for three days in the north zone and bring home eight geese. Am I breaking the law since I am two over the possession limit?

Or another scenario, I live in the north zone and have 12 geese in my freezer from the early season. Then in October, the regular water fall season starts and the possession limit changes to nine. Am I then violating the law? Cal, take this one away. This is a great great topic and um it it really doesn't get confusing as long as you keep in mind that hunting is a management tool and fishing is a management tool and your bag limits and possession limits change uh by state by zone, by region, and by fishery and flyway, such as the north-south zone that this fellow rode in with. And in Montana, right, we have a Pacific flyway and a Central flyway that you can hunt without leaving the state. And it gets really interesting when you

start looking at fisheries as well. A great example, right, is your bucket biology examples of taking, let's say, perch and dumping them in to new ponds. So there's an example here in the state of Montana where you can have two bodies of water on the same highway. One has a daily possession limit, or I'm sorry, a daily bag limit, your daily take of perch. The possession limit is three times the daily take. Possession in Montana is your possession of that species in total. So it means what you have on you, what you have at your camp, whatever that camp may be, and whatever you have at your home. Uh, it doesn't say, uh, the example that the, uh, dude wrote in with is hilarious because he threw in something that I hadn't even thought of when she was like, well,

what if I have a mounted bird on my wall? It's like, it's a bird. That's a great, it's a great question. It is a great question. I hadn't thought of it. Um, and in the state of Montana, it doesn't say anything about taxidermy. Um, it, it, it does in the fact that if you're going to transfer a bird to a taxidermist, the state that it needs to be in. But possession limit is anything canned, smoked. It implies whatever state that meat is in, if it is the species in question, it pertains to your possession limit. So to finish with this example, if you go further down the same highway into a new drainage where somebody has transplanted those perch illegally into this other fishery where they do not want the perch,

there is no daily limit on perch and there is no daily possession limit on perch so what the hell does a game warden do then especially if steve's fishing at the reservoir where there is a daily limit and a possession limit and i want to stop in and see steve on my way home which would make sense because it's on the same highway right but i have a cooler full of fish that are totally legal i just happen to be passing through a zone where had i been fishing and catching fish in that zone it would then be illegal um i i had to call a game warden on this and, you know, they, they laugh typically because the what ifs can really run rampant, but, um, you know, it, it always comes

down to a game warden's discretion. Um, and those possession limits, the definition of possession is different in every state. So I was looking at an example. This couple of guys in Texas got caught with, boy, I can't even remember now, like seven times the daily or seven times the possession limit, the legal possession limit for crappie, a ton of crappie. Very illegal. But if you read the law in Texas, the way the possession limit is written in Texas, if you have a permanent camp, as in a real deal cabin that you live at and can get mail at, your possession, anything that you store at that place does not count towards your possession limit. But if your buddy is right next to your cabin where you get your mail and they're in a camper trailer that they do not get their mail at,

the fish that they bring back to their camper trailer counts against their possession limit. So to me, that's almost like an odd sort of, you're kind of getting into the haves and have-nots there where it's like, well, if you can afford to have a house on the lake, a cabin, not a house two blocks from the lake, you're more than likely to be able to retain a hell on the lake, not a house two blocks from the lake, you're more than likely to be able to retain a hell of a lot more fish just because you don't have to spend time and travel to get the fish

to the place where they don't count against your possession limit. I don't think... Let me... Yes, go ahead. I want to throw another wrinkle into this. And I know we're like, maybe you have a final... Hopefully you have like an I know we're like that maybe you have a final, hopefully you have like an answer because we're like, it's like a question with a question because these are all things that

I'd be curious to have Jim speak to this too. I feel like these are things that are well-meaning laws that are so confusing that it's like setting people up for failure because you can't figure out how to be compliant like you cal you brought up let's say you go get a bunch of geese and you make sausage yep i mean so now you have a bunch of goose sausage sticks uh how do you figure out like you save one bag of goose sausage sticks and then the next goose season starts up how do you go like okay i need to account for this being like what is this portions of five geese is this like a goose's worth and i feel like you're putting people into a situation where you're kind of like and it's probably why you don't read about people getting

busted for this stuff unless they're like big time poachers, because you can't roll into someone's house, dismantle their freezer and start trying to reconstruct their last year of activities. And that is the answer though, is documentation. And in this day and age, it's so easy to document. So, you know, you just got to label your stuff and you do need to be accountable for it. Um, but yeah, you're exactly right. Like a bag of jerky. I turned a lot of meat into jerky last year. Um, it was, it was big game, so it's easy to take, keep track of, but, um, yeah, if, if, uh, game wardens came into the house and grabbed that bag of jerky and decided to start doing, uh, DNA analysis on it, you know, they're going to have

a single bag that has an elk from Idaho, a mule deer from Idaho, a coos deer from Mexico, you know, and four coots and, and, and, and, and, you know, all that testing costs money. So what's, what's the end result going to be? Right. So, um, in waterfowl terms, you know, Canada geese in Montana right now are like a plague. I never seen so many birds in my entire life. It is unbelievable. Um, but you know, if, if, you know, big goose spreads, lots of decoys are big investment. And I just started kind of doing the math on if you really wanted to get involved in goose hunting and have all the decoys and be compliant with the law as it's written in order for you to just go and hunt saturday and sunday and shoot limits of geese you have to i mean every licensed hunter in your household has to eat six Canada geese per week during Monday through Friday.

You have to eat six Canada geese per week. If you want to keep at it, yeah. I'm sorry, 10. Right? So, yeah, 10 Canada geese per week per licensed hunter if you want to keep at it. And then you're going to have your five in reserve beyond that so we one time asked a uh state trooper in alaska you don't have game wardens or troopers but we asked a trooper we're trying to understand possession limits and how it works there

and let's say you have uh let's say you happen to have a fish shack, and at this fish shack you have a freezer. And you're curious, okay, if a halibut possession limit is two daily bag limits, that means you're allowed to have four halibut in your possession. We spoke to troopers who said that the minute it's processed for consumption, it no longer is in your possession limit. Meaning if you get two halibut and you take them home and you fillet those halibut and portion them and vac seal them and freeze them, they're no longer in your possession. Then it's just a matter of that your daily bag limits don't exceed how many days you've been at your cabin.

Meaning, if you're at your cabin five days, you could theoretically freeze 10 halibut. But you better not have 12 because you haven't been there that many days to have accumulated them. And when we talked about, okay, like what about something that you're not cleaning? Like, let's say you're talking about shrimp. Okay. You catch shrimp and you just freeze the tails and you can be on the water with just shrimp tails because you're allowed three quarts of shrimp tails. So I haven't it i haven't processed it all i did is freeze it and they said if that's how you process it if that's how you freeze it for later consumption we would

regard that as being processed so uh when i just throw my whole poached deer straight into that big old freezer i got i'm good to go that's what you're saying if that's how you like to eat it later yes i saved the guts that way um so if you're like this is how i cook this is how i cook them here's uh another wrinkle right um uh my girlfriend shot four geese and brought four geese home. She doesn't put the geese in her freezer. She puts them in my freezer. So those four geese are labeled with her information. Um, and, but they're, they're at my residence where I get my mail with my geese that because of the overlap, I have labeled with my information as well. Right?

And this is like paranoia, basically. Like very few people would do this. I feel like a warden would respect that system. They, I think they would, as long as they were, uh, you know, not looking to find something else, I guess. I think, you know, as most of these wardens that you talk with, right. It's like, um, we, uh, have no reason to doubt you until we do. And then if we're going to make a case, we're going to make sure that we make the whole case, essentially. Yeah. You know, a good way to look at... Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Yeah. Go ahead. I was going to point out a helpful way to look at this kind of stuff. We have a friend, Cal, and you're friendly with him too, who used to, he's a lawyer, and he used to represent the Wyoming, he used to represent Wyoming

as their head attorney, the Fish and Game Department. And we were talking about all these arcane, or these little-known rules and ways that it seems like you could get in trouble. And we got on the subject of bartering and selling wild game.

It's illegal to barter and trade with wild game. You can't use it like currency. So it would be illegal for you to go to the guy that changes your oil, and he's like, oh, yeah, don't worry about it, man. Happy to do it. Just make sure to drop me by a couple of walleye flays next weekend. You're technically breaking the law because you're bartering and trading with wild game. But this attorney invited me to go and look at, he goes, go look at where you actually

see that enforcement tool applied to people. He said you'll only find it get applied in places where you have someone who is in a real, real bad position. And you'll find that a warden will then add on every possible thing he can add on so that when you start pleading down you have a mountain of shit to plea through and he goes that's he goes that's the only situations where i see like this bartering and trading thing coming up when it's someone who's done like some really bad stuff and they're going through and they're being like okay three counts of this we're gonna add counts of this.

We're going to add counts of this. We're going to add counts of that. And it just winds up being a, um, it winds up being a way to just lay it on heavy when someone really has it coming. And, and they kind of need to, right?

Because a lot of these, man, you look at so many wildlife violations, uh, spread all over all the news sources and inevitably people who are in the know and people who are just being exposed to this stuff for the first time come to the same conclusion, right? It's like, that is a reprehensible crime. I can't believe they got away so easy. But the reality is, is a lot of times that, that is

exactly what the law provides for. It's like, well, that, if you look at it, that is a maximum allowable fine of, you know, $500, $1,000, $250. And it's like, so that's why, um, when it's time to nail somebody, it's like stack them up because if they get out of some of it, it's just, it's not almost not even worth our time type of thing. So it's, I called, I called the warden the other day because we were having a hard time. We were arguing a lot about a law that we couldn't figure out what it meant. And I got to the point where i decided it wasn't just me like like i felt that it didn't make sense and when i got him on the phone and i invited him to go read it he read it and it was kind of funny because he read it and he's kind of like huh yeah you know but then was able to solve it for me like he saw something that i didn't see but it was just it was an interesting interaction to have with someone to be confused about the law

call up they're really glad that you called they respect the fact that you're trying to sort it out. And then it wasn't like you dumbass. It was like, oh, I see where you're confused here. Let's look through it. Consider this. And that's a way better interaction to have than to wait till later and get in trouble and then be like, but it is confusing. Because at that point, it's like you probably should have cleared up the confusion. Great example, Red. I called the Region 3 Montana Fish and Game Office the other day talking about accessing some ground that would fall within this late CWD hunt that we have going on, chronic wasting disease mitigation deal.

And Warden was super helpful. And we were talking, he's like, now remember Montana stream access law does not provide for big game hunting. It provides for recreation and fishing. So if you want to access that spot, you better float to it or drag a canoe with you. So I could legally drag the canoe upstream, paddle the canoe upstream upstream and have this situation where I've got a boat with me. So I haven't exactly just walked the high watermark line in.

That would make it more legal. And I said, I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm familiar with this. I understand it. But, you know, this just is not right this like law is designed to make your life a living hell right and he said well how so and i said well uh because in the state of montana no matter what season it is hunting season or not it 100% legal to carry a firearm anywhere I want on public land under the high watermark. So how can it be legal to hike in under the high watermark with a rifle? I could be wearing orange or not and just say like, well, I don't have the intention to hunt game.

I know other people are out here. So I'm wearing orange to be safe. And I like having my rifle with me. And then I had a change of mind and decided to hunt. You know, I mean, it's just like. That works on the way in. It's just. That may work on the way in, but not on the way out with the deer.

Yeah, but you want to go to court for that? Don't like dragging in your boat. And what's recreation? Yeah, like it seems pretty obvious what you're trying to accomplish. So like the fact that you're like, oh, but I have a boat with me. I mean, I know the game warden saying that's the way to cover your ass, but it doesn't seem like. Right. You could have.

Yeah, it's just, it's a odd, odd thing, but there's a lot of that out there. And it's like, do you want to take the Montana stream access law to court, uh, and try to get a specific provision put in for big game hunting where you could possibly risk uh you know screwing it up for everybody somehow some way they tried to make laws black and white but reality is there's just a whole bunch of gray in between oh yeah and that's the fun parts to pick at, man. I had another interaction. We'll move on after this. But I had another interaction with a warden where I was looking at a spot on a map, and I was like, it occurred to me that a fellow would be able to go do a certain activity there

that just seemed like he shouldn't be able to. And I said, man, I keep looking at this, and it just seems to me like you'd be able to and i said i said man i keep looking at this and it just seems to me like you'd be able to do x there and he was inviting me to he's like why does it seem not right to you like was asking wanted me to entertain this to myself and see if there was something there or not rather than being like aha i found a secret you know he was kind of like inviting to use some discretion and not try to view it like can i get away with something that uh maybe feels a little funny you know but it's not enforceable. 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 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 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. Yanni, here's the thing I wanted to mention to you And it's interesting to you too, Cal I think Yanni, you guys You guys have had babies at your house, right? Correct, too

You're talking about human babies Like birthing babies at the house Yeah, not just like baby parties did you use did you birth them into the water um i'm trying to think now both times we had uh we're looking at an image here of a the blow-up uh bathtub that babies are birthed into sometimes. Both times we had those setups, but I believe it, no, I want to say both of them were just on the bed. I think that my wife actually found it too relaxing and it took her out of that mode of get baby out and took her into more of a chill mode. And yeah, so it didn't happen in the water.

Yeah, well, that's interesting. This dude wrote in that his wife was having a baby at home, and they had a little kiddie pool they filled up with water. And he took his sous vide circulator out of his kitchen and set the sous vide circulator in there to keep it at the right temp. Very good thinking. Which is genius, man. Like a sous vide circulator in there to keep it at the right temp. Very good thinking. Which is genius, man. Like a sous vide baby. I might just, I mean, next time, I don't take baths often, but next time I do.

I mean, we have like a porcelain cloth footer, you know? And boy, you start off nice and cozy, and then you read a half a chapter, and it's kind of a tepid bath, and it's not so much fun anymore. So this might be a thing. A little mini whirlpool. Oh, yeah, man. You set that sous vide thing at like 102 and jump in there. It would be great, man.

This other guy, real quick, this other guy wrote in. He got the new survival book, wilderness skills of survival book and he went on this trip uh in the great smoky national park with his girlfriend five day backpacking trek and they ran in all these weather problems and the weather got all bad and everybody got all cold and it was it turned into kind of an unexpected survival situation and he wrote in to say that he used he actually burned the book and it worked great he but he said he thankfully he had already read all the pages it was all wet on the rim but he found dry in the middle and burned the book and saved the day

i like i feel like that dude deserves a new no No, he deserves a new book, I think, man. Oh, definitely. I like his little description, too, when he says, later that evening, after he's all wet, he said, it began to rain. It didn't stop raining for 30 hours. And not only was it raining, the air seemed to be so thick

with moisture, I could almost drink and breathe at the same time. That line caught my eye too, man. He's a wordsmith. He's like a little bit of a writer. He's pouring it on heavy. I'll admit I was getting skeptical after a while. Then I saw the picture of the book and I believe him.

Oh, no. That book's been through hell, man. But I feel like I gotta try to figure it out and remember to send this dude named Dylan out of Omaha, Nebraska to send this dude named Dylan out of Omaha, Nebraska, to send this dude a new book to replace the book he had to burn up. But it's nice knowing your books come in handy. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And this is exactly what that book was written for. Exactly what this guy ran into. Like just out for kind of a, I don't want to say mundane, but like just a little regular outing, not some crazy big adventure. Things went bad. Yeah. It was a three-hour tour.

All right. There's another thing I want to get into, and then we're going to have Jim Hathelfinger is going to swing back in for us. Chris Gill, Ridge Pounder, he comes on the show quite a bit. He's working on a fine art project. Oh. Where he's been taking pictures of fucked up old deer stands. And we've been talking about how we want to do a coffee table book,

a fine art coffee table book called Fucked Up Old Deer Stands. It's going to be, we created an email. It's like, he's only got like, he's got six or seven that are book worthy, but to really do a good book that we can sell next Christmas. To really do a good book, we need like 50 great photos. So we're going to start a crowdsource. Chris Gill, Rich Ponder is the photo editor. So he's going to do primary photography. He'll probably have more pictures than anybody else. But if you do a picture, and you the listener,

send your pictures in, your pictures might make the fine art coffee table book. So we made an email. It's fucked up old deer stands at themeateater.com. Send in your pictures. Chris will get them. We'll contact you for permissions and everything. And you got to find the oldest, jankiest, like we're talking about the kind of old stands that look real hazardous to get into. And a long, like 50 years ago, someone nailed a tarp up

and it's just blue fray blown in the wind. Like the worst old deer stand you know about. It could be a tree stand, ground blind, whatever. Send a picture in. Chris might need to advise you on how to get the right picture because remember, this isn't deer camp humor. This isn't like a hat that says, I didn't wake up grumpy this morning. I let her sleep. It's not like that kind of stuff. It's like fine art. It's fine art photos. No people, fine art photographs of fucked up old deer stands. So send your pictures. Yeah, if you're thinking about getting this done with your brand new iPhone 12 Pro, don't bother.

Okay? Oh, no, maybe you can. I don't know. Maybe they're that good. Maybe. Maybe. Best cameras the one you got with you. Yep. Maybe. Best cameras the one you got with you.

The email is set up. Fucked up old deer stands at the media.com. Send them in. Eventually, Chris will start digging around in there. We'll notify you, and we're going to make a book, and we're going to have it be for next Christmas where you'll be able to buy a fine art coffee table book under that title. That's the title of the book.

It's already been decided. So run out. Go ahead, Yanni. I was just going to ask, do you have, I feel like we are going to be inundated. Oh, it's going to be a thick book then. Yeah, I'm thinking there is going to be way more than 50 pictures. I mean,ris alone just on the little chunk of property that he and i hunted together this year in wisconsin i think

he got to take pictures of six different very fucked up old deer stands and well i think that's the six he's talking about and he got he got another one we might have to change it to very fucked up old deer stands to narrow it down and i I know of two that we didn't even walk by that I think that would be, you know, very, you know, high contenders for the book. We, he took, we found just a section of ladder in Pennsylvania, a section of a ladder stand where the stand was gone, but it had snowed a lot. And so it was just kind of like this low, it looked like a real metaphor, like half of a ladder standing out in the woods. And he took a picture of that. He says he wasn't really feeling it, but it could make the book.

I don't think it's the cover photo, but it could make the book. Could be the back cover. And we're going to caption, we're going to write captions for all the fine art photography. For me, there's an interesting thing that goes on with these old deer stands because when they're only kind of old, like someone just sat in them in the last five years, and you look at it, and you can tell that it's been retired.

You look at it, and you're like, ah, I wish someone would take that thing down. It's such an eyesore. But then like another 10 years, 15 years goes by. They become art. Yeah, you walk by and you have like a little nostalgia for days past. Yeah, man, the last time I was in Pennsylvania, looked at my old wood stand.

It was just like part of the earth. It was sad, you know. Hadn't been used for years there's a there's a genre of old man type hunting camp painting where it's like an old deer stand a fucked up old deer stand and there's a big buck standing by it that's like a genre of art and you're supposed to look at and be like, Oh man, you know, yeah, that old codgers probably dead now.

And here's a giant buck by his deer stand. So help out there if you can folks, and we'll keep you posted on how it goes. And, and Ridge Pounder will eventually get in there and reach out. And he might have advice about how to make it more fine art. If it's, if it's not, if it's not fine art and it's if it's not if it's not

fine art and it's more like kitsch he'll probably help you steer it into fine art so keep your eyes peeled that's one of those projects where you get the title and then you have to do it oh yeah well our original title was chris wanted to call it old fucked up old deer stands, but then we cut one of the old, we cut one of the olds out just to simplify the title a little bit. All right. Uh, okay. Jim, tell everybody about why we, what you sent in that I thought was so interesting that I wanted you to come on and tell us more about it. Yeah. I wrote an article for Deer Hunting Magazine last year on specifically human health and lead bullet fragments and shot pellets in game meat. And I started getting interested in that because I felt like there were a lot of peer-reviewed scientific papers, a lot of magazine articles, a lot of banter about the dangers of using lead bullets and lead shot to human health specifically. And the more I looked into it, the more into the science itself, the more confusing

it was. It doesn't look like the science was there to support some of the statements that I had seen. And so there's a lot of reasons why you might want to switch to, uh, non-lead bullets for sure. I mean, there's, there's impacts just to individuals. We're getting individual raptors and, and birds sick, um, populations. There could be some population effects. Certainly condor is absolutely a population level effect because they're an endangered species and, and lead is, is really a serious conservation issue with their recovery.

But also you can think about what about hunter image when someone's showing this bald eagle that's getting sick from some bullet fragments that got in a gut pile. And some people talk about the threat of litigation. If hunters don't take charge of this issue of switching to non-lead bullets, there's going to be litigation that's going to force it and not on their terms. And so there's a lot of reasons why we can talk about the value of lead bullets and non-lead bullets. But one of those topics or subtopics is human health. And I think there's, this is a case where scientists always try to keep their advocacy out of science and just report their science and just do good solid research. But it's difficult in some cases.

It seemed to me like someone's advocacy for switching, having hunters switch from lead bullets to non-lead bullets, was really kind of driving some of their research results. And so there's nothing wrong with advocacy, but we should have science driving the advocacy. We should have good science, and then we should advocate for what's right. Isn't that refreshing, though, Jim? It would be.

When you read the biologist paper that is like, here are the facts, and there is no bias that you can perceive. There's no advocacy. It is so, so refreshing. Yeah. And this is a great subject. If you take that good science, then you can advocate for what's right. But a lot of times people have this end game and that advocacy taints their science.

So they'll write a scientific paper. They'll have the results of what the results found. And then the last part of the paper is generally like discussion or management implications. And there they have a little more latitude. And I was seeing papers where people would talk about lead being dangerous is it to take bullet fragments in and ingest bullet fragments once in a while or lead pellets. They're talking about paint chips and they're talking about lead gasoline and they're saying, you know, we got the lead out of paint, we got the lead out of gasoline, why wouldn't we get the lead out of

bullets? But what's really important, the distinction is really important is that there's different forms of lead and the metallic lead that we use for bullets is different than the lead that you find in paint and the lead that you find in gasoline and the lead you find in a lot of other things. The metallic lead actually is not very easily absorbed in your digestive system or through your skin, but there's a whole bunch of other lead, some soluble organic lead compounds that do absorb through your skin rapidly. They do absorb through your lung tissues if it's an aerosol. Or if you ingest it, they go into your bloodstream pretty quick. But those are different than lead bullets, metallic lead.

And those organic lead compounds are found in like dryers for varnish. They're used sometimes in plastic molds to kind of help set the mold. They're in clutch pads and brake pads. We, in 2009, there was 700,000 metric tons of lead mined in the U.S. alone. We use a lot of lead for a lot of things. Ammunition batteries are big things, but there's a whole bunch of also organic lead compounds, which are used in all kinds of different things as chemicals. And it's those organic compounds that are really easily absorbed in the skin. And so that's the lead that we need to make sure we reduce our exposure to. The metallic lead, it's really not that easy to get your blood levels elevated just from

adjusting metallic lead. And that's a really big difference. But why, okay. What is the difference between a condor who is getting it from metallic lead and a human? Like why is it affect him? But it doesn't affect us.

Yeah. That's a bird and mammal difference. So mammals, it's not really an issue. You don't see, you don't hear about lead poisoning so much in wildlife and mammals and our wild creatures. But birds have a gizzard. And so birds, and birds also will take little pieces of grit and sand and swallow it with their food, with their seeds. And then that muscular gizzard grinds and grinds and grinds. And so when they ingest lead pellets or lead fragments from a bullet, that grinding really agitates that and

kind of grinds some of that metallic out. So the bird digestive system is different than a mammal digestive system. And there's also differences in species too, because the condor is really susceptible to lead poisoning. The turkey vulture, they almost can't kill it with lead poisoning. They've taken captive turkey vultures and just fed it lead constantly. And after like six months, they killed them and did a necropsy and don't see any evidence of problems with lead poisoning. So there's also species differences within similar species. But the big difference is the bird digestive system and the mammal digestive system is way different. Humans will pass a meal through their whole digestive system in 24 to 72 hours. And it only spends four or five hours in the stomach, in the acidic stomach. So when you

think about ingesting a little piece of metallic lead, which is not very soluble and doesn't go into the bloodstream very easily, and it's sitting five hours in the stomach, and it's out of the digestive system in a day or two. That's not a lot of time for that waterfowl hunting made the switch? I believe in the late 70s, early 80s. Were they addressing a real problem in your view when they banned lead from waterfowl? And how were the ducks getting hurt by it? Yeah, lead poisoning showed up in waterfowl, and I wasn't involved in that at all. But from what I've read and talking to other people, there's some people I know that were involved in all of that.

The ducks were showing up with lead poisoning, and of course, it takes a couple of weeks to kill a bird. And so it's a long process where they suffer. But it's my understanding that it was litigation anchored to the Bald Eagle Act and protection of bald eagles that were on the endangered species list at the time. And there was litigation because these bald eagles were showing up after eating ducks, showing up with lead poisoning. So it wasn't a duck population issue. There was a small percentage of the duck population that was affected. It was, I think, this nexus with the Endangered Species Act and bald eagles.

That's why I understand it from those people that were involved in that. Yeah, you know, I have a couple times in my life, it was in Wyoming when it happened most recently, actually did find steel shot in a duck's gizzard where that duck, and picking up grit had managed to pick up and consume uh steel shot which is totally safe for the bird but in the old days that would have been you know lead can can you walk can you walk people through the difference when you're saying like that it leads to bird mortality and then population level, like talk about that distinction.

Yeah, versus individual. Right. And that's the big thing. People talk about the effects of lead on wildlife. And they tend to just put it all in this big cauldron and kind of talk about it. But it's a really complex issue. You need to talk separately about individual birds dying. And we know that eagles and hawks and condors will get lead bullet fragments,

and they will die from lead poisoning. So certainly we know the effects on individuals. But then people have said, well, is this really a population level effect? And I myself used to say, well, it's not a population level effect. So we're talking about individuals, but we don't really know if it was a population, if we were having population level effect on things like golden eagles. We don't do annual surveys. We don't really have a lot of good data to know how lead might be affecting golden eagles. I suspect there might be some valley where a lot of people rabbit hunt or a lot of people coil hunt and golden eagles might be picking up some lead and it might be a local issue in some places, but I've stopped saying it's not a population level effect simply because I don't think we have enough data to make a blanket statement like that. But I will

frequently say, is this such an issue with raptors and wild birds that every hunter needs to switch in short order to non-lead bullets? Is this a conservation issue that's serious enough that requires our intervention to right some wrong? And I think that's a good question. And a lot of people aren't talking specifically about that. But I like to separate the effects of the individual, which we know absolutely they die if they get too much lead. The effects of population, is this really a conservation level issue that people in our profession need to be fixing? Or is it more of a local thing that happens at a low level and it's just kind of absorbed into the natural mortality? I mean, owls get hit by cars all the time. Owls once in a while pick up some lead and die.

So is this of great importance that we need to actually act and get people to switch? And I'm not an advocate of not switching. I'm not an advocate of switching within the next couple of years. I, my family, we've switched about 10 years ago, and I shoot nothing, but all, all copper, um, all copper rifle bullets with all of our rifle hunting. And I do that because I like the clean wound channel. If you get off and you hit into a muscle group, you've got with a copper bullet, you've got a little hole through the muscle group. Um,

and, and I like the accuracy and I like the, um,. And it's really kind of a meat loss issue with me using copper bullets. But everybody really has to make up their own mind if they're concerned that their bullet might kill a raptor on their property or somewhere out there. They may choose a switch that may be enough for them. But I think the conversation has to center around impacts to individuals, impact to populations to the level that professionals need to take action and fix something that's broken. We can talk about human health separately, but we also need to talk about the impacts to hunter image. That's a real issue that we should talk about. And then some people claim that litigation is coming down the road if we don't do something. So it's such a multifaceted topic that when you throw it all in together,

it gets really confusing. Yeah, it's funny because it's – oh, sorry, Cal, go ahead. Well, I would like to see just more data. You know, the big game is an interesting one and and this is a topic that it's a really good topic it's so especially when you want to have that individual versus population effect and then you can kind of bring it together at the california condor where it's like well enough individual loss on such a small population is a population level effect and you could get to this point where an individual affects the population you know so it's a it's a great

topic um my myself like having not like seriously pursued upland birds for a long time this year. I mean, I saw more wounded animals than I have in the last 15 years this year, and they were all upland birds, you know, like wild roosters getting shot, and we just could not find the things. Hunting in South Dakota, we hunted, you know, probably a good three and a half, four hour walk on a big chunk of public access ground. And I found three dead roosters out there, you know, on different levels of decomposition. But just, you know, the range of Hungarian partridge with one little leg hanging as they fly a mile off into the distance and just not being able to recover those animals. That is where the, you know, and just like early in Montana,

you can hit like those raptor migrations through October. And there are so many raptors around and for me i just i knew there were other predators out there with their eyes on that crippled bird uh at some point you know and and sure and the mammals you don't need to worry about but those raptors especially when you get a migration coming through if there's a lot of wounded birds in an area they're certainly picking those up but they're they're going to get sick from that it's all all about the nuance. It's all about, well, really how many of those animals are out and available for raptors to see them and actually get consumed. How many raptors are in the area? What percent of the raptor population is being affected? They've just, in the course of

doing different research projects on hawks and eagles, they've drawn blood samples every time they capture an eagle and then analyze those for blood to see if they're picking it up. And they've documented that during the hunting season, that raptor blood levels, the lead levels in the blood go up during the hunting season, and then they drop off after the hunting season. Oh, you're kidding me. They've shown hunted areas and non-hunted areas and shown differences in lead exposure. And so there's no doubt that raptors are getting birds just exactly that way. And their blood lead levels are elevated. The conversation I think should center around, is that causing morbidity or mortality? Is that

impacting them in such a way that it's such a serious issue that, that something, you know, dramatic needs to be done when we talk about advocating all hunters switching to, to non-lead ammo. For me, it matters because I want to know what I'm killing. Um, and the, the population level, uh, argument kind of goes out the window because I just want to know what I killed. And so then I'm thinking like, okay, one lead bullet through an elk carcass, let's say you hit it a little bit back and there's a bunch of lead fragments in, in the paunch and that's what's left out there. What's the effect of that? Like how much are you killing with that versus a season of upland bird hunting? And you have, you know, these smaller meals out there that are probably more likely to contain lead than a well-placed shot, in my opinion, on a big game animal.

And that stuff just was constantly going through my head this season. But if you walk a four-strand barbed wire fence long enough, you're going to see raptor deaths on that four-strand barbed wire fence wheel lines power lines um these birds are are are definitely dying from a lot of man-made stuff out there and we still have them around yeah this this is where it gets this is where the subject gets like hard for me to sort out is that on one hand, I see places where people within the industry get really uneasy when people start having the conversation that we're having right now,

because they would, they would prefer that no one talk about it because, uh, you know, it's sort of like a taboo subject because you're pointing out some kind of problem with how everybody does things. Better just shut up about it. We like this sort of idea that you need to censor real conversations about trying to find out information and put a plan together and have an open discussion about something. I think it's important to do that. On the other hand, lead works really well. Lead is inexpensive. Lead is widely available. A lot of non-lead ammunition is limited

in abundance. It can be very expensive. I don't want to see that kind of onerous regulations put in on people and have everybody need to spend more money, have ammunition be more limited. But I also realize that we're going to have to probably talk about this stuff and figure out things we can do in order to head off getting forced into a place where you're going to wind up in just that situation like you did in certain areas. Well, I think now pretty soon all of California where it's just like you're not allowed to use lead, man. All of California, July of 2019. From July of 2019, all of California is not lead. So we're going to have to, like, as a community, start talking about it and start thinking it

and hopefully land somewhere where we're in the driver's seat on how we're going to proceed less like you're saying um we lose our seat at the table and and land in a place where we could have done a lot better had we been a little more proactive about it yeah i don't know i don't know, man. My opinion about all these complex about this whole complex topic, my opinions are kind of all over the map. I'm because I see all of like you're just saying, I'd see all of the pros and the cons. And I'm not on one side or the other when it comes specifically to human health that I wrote the article about human health. I think there's people using human health as a hammer because that there, and I've heard people tell me that's very effective. One person told me at the wildlife society in Albuquerque had a symposium on wildlife and lead. And one guy at the break told me sometimes he says, what's most effective is we show up to the check stations, the deer check

stations. And especially if there's a wife or a girlfriend there, we start talking to her about how, do you know that your, or your boyfriend is poisoning you with lead? Do you know there's lead in his meat? And they were laughing, saying that that is really the most effective way because I guarantee you that guy is not using lead next year. So using the human health as an exaggeration for the true risk that it provides to humans, that's what I really have a problem with this other stuff about the individual versus population and pending litigation and the image of hunters. I just, I, I see all of that stuff and I haven't worked through it all myself and where I

stand on all that. Oh yeah. Jim, you know, I know exactly what you're talking about. And I know we drifted from it a little bit, but sure, man, I've seen that. I've seen people like I've seen Raptor people switch and want to talk about human health because they're driving at something with Raptors. I think one of the most weirdest versions I've seen of this is there's this group that's always been opposed to wildlife markets. They're having a heyday with COVID where they're acting like, we always knew they used to oppose wildlife markets because they're trading in endangered species. Now they've switched their whole tonality. Wildlife markets

are bad because of the disease issue. And it's like, well, you're using the disease issue to get where you wanted to land before. You're using this as a new tool to win your old war. I don't like to see that either, man. I don't like when people do that. It's like, be intellectually honest, you know? Right. And I've looked at it too, man. And I've, and I've always been a little suspicious of the human health thing. I first got interested in it when I had high lead levels in my garden. And that led me to reading about, you know, how did lead get there? How does it, how does it move? What, how, what impacts does it have on people? And I've often looked at that

and thought about that these chunks of bullet lead passing through your system, it's just not the same thing. It's some of these ways in which people are getting lead from inhalation and other issues. Yeah. And that's what the title of my article was, gray toxin or red herring. And that's what a red herring is, is when you're arguing one thing, but that's not really what you're interested in. You may be arguing about human health, but you're really interested in raptor mortality. I don't know if you've ever talked to your wife about something and you're disagreeing. And you suddenly realize that what you're arguing about isn't really what the problem is. It's really something else. And you end up arguing about something else. And so I think

people find what's the, what's going to be the most effective message. And they, they, they gravitate to that. And my message is just, let's be honest. Let's talk about all these different facets of this topic. And when we talk about human health, let's talk about lead fragments and, and, and shot and how that really can translate to problems with human health, let's talk about lead fragments and, and, um, and shot and how that really can translate to problems with human health. Cause that connection, the connection is not very strong. There's, there are some cases where people, there's a guy in, in that living in the bush in New Zealand, I think, and he was eating meat, bush meat that he was shooting with lead bullets and he was eating every day. So he basically had lead in his digestive system

every day of the year and they tested his blood and it was, it was skyrocketed with lead levels. And then there was a case of the Inuit community up in Greenland that was, that was eating a lot of sea ducks that were shot with, with lead pellets. And so they, they asked how often do you eat sea ducks? Cause they, they had a lot of lead pellets in them. And those that ate sea ducks once a week or less were below the Center for Disease Control limit for a danger zone. And those that ate, as they approached one sea duck, if they approached daily consumption of sea ducks, their lead levels were 10 to 17, above that CDC level of 10, 10 to 17.

And so there are cases where people basically are eating lead every day or pretty close to every day, and it's always in their system. You can definitely have your blood lead levels up to unhealthy levels for sure. The indiscriminate killing argument, right, is the one that kills me. I'm like, there's just nothing i guess you could argue that uh you just randomly decide that yeah i'm gonna shoot that buck but that's not the way i'd see it for sure it i'd do a lot of looking looking over animals before i pull the trigger and uh i'm just like a long way past sitting out and going through a brick of 22 ammo shooting ground squirrels. Just don't do that anymore. Haven't in a long, long time.

And so that's why I'm always like, oh, shit. That bird that's sailing off with one leg hanging down. Is that a dead raptor? Like, did I just kill something that I didn't intend to kill? Like, I'm okay with the little bit of wound loss over the course of a season. Like, I've mentally set myself up for that, for these birds. But I'm not quite mentally set up to say, yep, that is a prairie falcon or something else that is just badass that's out there.

So have you started shooting your upland birds with steel? I finally got a hold of some bismuth. It took me a long time to get a hold of bismuth. I mean, and that's exactly what you're talking about, Steve. That bismuth is expensive stuff. Makes you think about pulling the trigger. Dude, my God, does that stuff work though, man? It does work.

I bought some federal premium TSS for turkey hunting because it's so amazingly effective. I just spent $81 on five shotgun shells. That's that tungsten TSS. You got to line up their heads to make sure you're getting...

My son missed a turkey the first time, and so it cost me $38 for him to shoot a turkey when he shot it a second time. You know, it's nice, too. You'll see, Jim, with those TSS. I don't know if you already hunted with them last season. Yeah, we have. But, you know, they're so dense and so heavy

that even if your pattern's a little bit low and you hit that breast, they tend to just whistle through that whole bird and you don't end up having shots stuck in the breast. Yeah, yeah. I shot my ghouls last year with TSS about 40 yards, and the pattern was pretty dense. I actually messed up the tail fan because there was just so much. I was using 7s and 9s together and kind of messed up the tail fan but my son killed a miriam's last

year at 60 yards laser range finder 60 yards with a 12 gauge with tss it's amazing oh man now i'm getting all worked up for turkey hunting i've been trying to not think about turkey season all right uh jim dude thanks a lot for coming on. Sorry we couldn't be like normal where you come up in the studio, but we got to get through this pandemic. It's killing me. I mean, not literally killing me. It's literally killing some people.

Got to get those vaccines rolling out. Get everybody back together. Miss you, Jim. Thank you. Appreciate you coming on. Cal, Yanni. Miss you, Jim. Thank you. Appreciate you coming on. Cal, Yanni, Brody, Corinne, Phil, thanks a lot. Thank you. Take it easy.

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