The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 270: Nature is Metal is Metal

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with meat scientist Dr. Chris Calkins, Rick "Nature is Metal," Spencer Neuharth, Seth Morris, Phil Taylor, Corinne Schneider, and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: An alternate explication of "Arkansasing"; Steve's opinion that the 1980s is too recent a decade from which to pluck pop culture references; cleaning up in your shrimp pot; what happens, physiologically, when an animal freezes to death and can you eat it?; and what about by electrocution?; when lighting strikes cattle; how Jani narrowly escaped death from a mountain lion; potential lead poisoning from getting shot; a porcupine atop a huge pile of bones; Steve's first date with his wife at the La Brea Tar Pits in LA; when deer eat folks; can animals really do "bad" things?; the birth of Nature is Metal; a woodpecker hammering away at a baby dove; when Joe Rogan and Justin Bieber repost from Nature is Metal; something being too much vs. educational; Steve as the first person ever to have drunk kombucha; 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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Presented by First Light. Go farther, stay longer. All right, Spencer, we got a lot to do, but how quick do you think you can do your Arkansas on update? Quick, I think. Arkansas update. But set up why it's an update. Like, why?

We talked in the past about the term Arkansasing something. How it means different things to different people. It means popping up and shooting a duck off the water. That's right. Or you could Arkansas a grouse. Shooting a pheasant out of the ditch. Shooting a dove off a power line. Did we mention when we... No, no, no. That is not

Arkansas. It's not? You can't Arkansas a dove off a power line. Why not? Why not? Just be shooting a dove off a power line. Arkansas is shooting it on the ground. Well, let's get in. If you shot a turkey out of a tree, God forbid, you wouldn't be saying you Arkansased the turkey.

Really? All right. When he's on the ground, you don't Arkansas him. I know, but that's what I'm saying. You're like Arkansasing means that you're sort of taking this like an advantage over your quarry. No. No? No, go ahead.

That's all I have to say my understanding is my old man told me that in arkansas there's like a boat an arkansas boat something you'd pull up on ducks and have all these 10 gauge shotguns lined out and you'd they're they're one at water level one slightly higher one slightly higher and as he explained to me the arkansas boat pulls up on a raft of ducks. Boom. Bottom. They start to take off. Boom.

The next gun, they start to take off. Boom. The next volley is a little higher on rigged boat, rigged guns on boats. And that's my, that's what he told me. And that name though, I thought you had said was inspired by like the warship. I definitely never said that. Oh. A warship?

Yeah, they were. The USS Arkansas. That's right. No. I was pulling. That's stupid. I was pulling for your explanation to be correct, Steve. When you brought that up, I'm like, okay, that's like a cute explanation that makes sense.

The warship, which I've never heard of. Oh, the, the duck boat thing. Oh, okay. That's cute. Yeah,

I think so. They're like fits. All right. Can't find anything about it. They've talked to my old man. I was even biased. My dad had written down here. Here's the,

how the internet works. If my old man had written down his theory and put it on an article you would have searched and you'd been like oh here's proof yes i was pulling for you i was even biased in my search hoping to confirm what you said because i like that explanation so much but i found that arkansasing as a term extends way beyond just like a method of take. It's a derogatory term used all over hunting lingo and beyond. So you have an Arkansas limit, which is if you're allowed like 15 crappies and you take

home 16. It's like a baker's dozen for limits. You got an Arkansas limit. If you're not allowed to shoot hen pheasants and you shoot a hen pheasant, then you got an Arkansas limit. Really? We should just start calling it a nukem.

Yeah. Clay nukem. Yeah, I don't know. Clay nukem. It gets worse. That's horrible because Clay's like a, yeah, I didn't mean that. It gets worse here. Listen, I just want to clarify something. I wasn't making a comment on Clay's adherence to game laws. I was more like him being

from Arkansas. Yeah. I found an article written by somebody from Arkansas talking about the Arkansasing of America in 1992, which was written in advance of Bill Clinton becoming president, talking about how Arkansas is a term you can find all over the South. That means a lot of different things. So that's where a lot of this info is coming from. Also, different forums where people talking about like, hey, what do you guys call it when you shoot something off a power line? Or what do you call it when you

shoot something off water? That's where this info is coming from. So that's where you hear folks. So it just means taking liberties with in our context of what we deal with here on this program. It's taking liberties with game

laws. Yes, and you'll like these other examples. Can you Arkansas your taxes? Probably. I'm sure. You have a, now this was probably my favorite one. And there's terms, different terms for it all over the United States that I found in these different forums.

If deer season opens on November 2nd, sunset on November 1st is referred to as the Arkansas. Or if you live in Minnesota, you might refer to it as the Wisconsin opener, or I found people in the North woods that would refer to it as the Finnish opener or the Polish opener. So basically whatever group of folks you'd like to put down, it's just insert here opener.

When I, you know, what's funny about that is when i was growing up you always hated like the real rednecks were always just north of you so if you were in twin lake you knew that the real hellbillies were in holton yeah if you ask from from holton who the real hellbillies were, they were from Hesperia. And it just marched up the state like that. And these places are not far apart. Yeah. You know, but it was like a very like other, that's where the real poachers are, you know. When I was a kid, I couldn't remember the difference between North Korea and South Korea.

I grew up in South Dakota. And our history teacher told us in middle school, he says, well, you remember it like this. South Dakota is good. And South Korea is good. North Korea is very bad. North Dakota is very bad. Do you, uh,

we're going to move on, but do you remember when South North, North Dakota did that play that North Dakota was going to change its name to Dakota and South Dakota got pissed. I mean, this is, uh, no, yeah, I don't, I don't remember. It was like a PR stunt, but they're, they're going to drop the North. They were going to do whatever it takes to drop North and become Dakota, like Virginia, West Virginia, right?

They wanted to do that same thing and they thought it would help tourism out. Cause if you said to someone like, Hey you want to go on uh on a vacation to dakota there you go you know it makes south seem like i don't know like whatever some forgotten other part it'd be like virginia holds more you know i guess holds that i'm not going to go with that. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Now, hold on though. I'm afraid you still think your Arkansas boat explanation is the correct one.

Yeah, of course. I have other examples here to show you how Arkansas just uses derogatory term all over. You have Arkansas asphalt, which is a crummy road with potholes. You can go on an Arkansas date, which is the same thing as going dutch you each pay for your own thing uh you can arkansas somebody out of something which is like swindling like that banker wants to arkansas somebody out of his farm you have an arkansas wedding cake do you want to take a guess as to what that is a pie cornbread you have an arkansas strawberry which is a hickey and then in the card game of euchre you can get arkansod which is if you are trying to get like five tricks in euchre and you come up with only three you came up short so now you're going to get arkansod

it's weird that that exists but then there's also a type of duck hunting boat called an Arkansas boat. Good try. I kind of believe you. I kind of believe you, but I almost have to have, I'd have to, I'd have to talk to Clay about it too. I feel bad for. Have you talked to Clay about it? A little bit in the past. And he, he said they don't refer it as, refer to it as that.

But is he aware of it? Oh yeah. Oh, when you're in Arkansas and you Arkansas dark, what do they say? Well, okay. So you come across examples of this in

forums where like somebody from Arkansas refers to it as Oklahoming or you have like somebody in Mississippi, uh, that refers to it as Louisiana or whatever. But Arkansas seems to be a fairly agreed upon term. We have people from like Wyoming,

Michigan, Illinois, like all over the country. Oh yeah. I was going to ask if we could send, if we could assign Spencer, like another task here for the next podcast and come back with like the origins of Kentucky windage,

which I have always heard. And, and Seth corroborated that it's basically like the long hunters not taking real precise shots and just being like, just hold four feet over its back. But I think it's basically like the long hunters not taking real precise shots and just being like just hold four feet over its back yeah but i think it's i think it's because i think it's i think it's a honorable thing i think it's like you're talking about these these very like the long kentucky long hunters with kentucky rifles these people who people who were very accurate, instinctive shooters. Or is it poking fun at the hunting culture in Kentucky?

No, have you ever watched the Alamo? No. Where Billy Bob Thornton plays Boone. Doesn't he play Boone in the Alamo? Yeah, Billy Bob Thornton plays Boone and he goes to shoot a Mexican officer at the Alamo and he licks his finger and holds it up in the air and then takes this crazy shot and kills the guy. I think that he's like, it was an homage to Kentucky Windage. I like it.

I can get behind that. And I will be cheering for that explanation when I do some sleuthing. I want to move on to Yanni's mountain lion story, but I have one more thing to say. And this is a thing that I'd like to spend some time on at some point. As we recognize, like as we as a culture recognize that, you know shouldn't tell don't tell zvin and ollie jokes right don't tell polish jokes like these are jokes that are insulting to people and they're prejudicial um at what point this i'm not the guy that invented this thought but at what point why is it still okay it'll always be okay the one thing everyone can agree on that like one despicable

thing is a poor southern white person do you know i mean it's like it's like it winds up being that it's like you can always dog on that in a movie if you got a movie and you want a bad person to come out the bad person will come out and it'll be like let me guess right let me guess do you have examples it still goes on yeah we were i was watching a movie with my kids where it's like these these wolf it's a stupid movie where they got to move these it's a it's one of those movies where like the animals are the good guys and all the people are bad guys and there's these guys that are doing like wolf removal in Canada. But sure enough, they come out and it sounds like American Southerners.

It's a, it's a stereotype that I don't, I think it's going to be the last, the last standing stereotype would be that, that, uh, you know, an American Southerner with a drawl is, it'll be like the last, that'll be the last one to go away. What do you think about that, Corinne? I think you're right. Oh, really? Yeah. That's, that's, I thought you're going to have a, I thought that you would, um. No, I think.

Feel that I was being, that I was like, that I didn't put that right. No, I think unfortunately, that's right. I think that we have a stereotype kind of deeply seated that people who sound a certain way with a Southern drawl,

like that, that and like intelligence don't go together. Yeah. And that's just not, that's just ridiculous. Yeah, because I could still run around if i went and said to some people um if i went to some enlightened folks and i said oh yeah he

arkansas out of duck they're not gonna say like dude come on they're not no do you know what i mean they're gonna be oh yeah those people there was a show on netflix called the 100 humans where they took 50 people and put them in auditorium they had a presentation done by someone with a british accent and then that exact same person gave a presentation to another group of 50 people the exact same presentation word for word minute for minute but in a southern accent and then they had the the audience like give them a score for what did you think of this person and give us some commentary on them. And the person with the British accent got

far better remarks, despite it being the exact same information. That is interesting and not surprising. Yeah. Okay, we gotta do an update on sous vide. Are you guys more like sous vide? I never know what the hell to say. I used to say sous vide, then I heard people that seemed like they know more than me say sous vide.

I think the E at the end makes it a hard D. There you go. Sous vide. Two years of French in high school. Oh, yeah. That makes you pretty qualified. Yeah, I think so, too. Well, that would make me qualified on Spanish, and that's not true.

Yeah, me too. While we're on sous vide, since my dad brought this up, and this is why we're continuing on this topic, I'm going to also go ahead and introduce this morning Steven Rinella, Seth Morris, Spencer Newhart, Phil the Engineer, and Corinne Schneider. Schneider. I always mess it up.

Schneider's from that. Schneider was the mechanic in that show Alice, wasn't he? Which one is it? Smack me on my head and tell me. Snyder. Snyder. What year is that reference from, Steve? I think they were reruns

when I was a little boy. I told Seth the other day he looked like Gomer Pyle. He didn't know what I was talking about. I didn't either and then I looked it up, and it's hilarious. I got, because, see, I think that we only watched old shows when I was little, and I don't watch

much anymore, so all my watching was already stuff that was already old. Somebody made the observation yesterday that the only pop culture references you like are from the 80s. 80s is the modern. I almost don't like it because it's too new.

Like if I see someone who's like pretty ripped, I'll say that, you know, it looks like Lou Frigno. And I'm like, what the hell? So,

sous vide. We're going to have to put this one to rest because I got to explain now. This is an update about an update. A long time ago, I hate to even review this for people. A long time ago, I'm trying to do as quick as possible.

Guy wrote in saying, hey, man, my wife, we were doing a home birth. And some people that do a home birth find it's more comfortable to do it in a heated tub. They were heating the tub for the new baby to emerge into the world by dipping a sous vide apparatus in there, which is like a thing you plug into your wall janice's father being a building inspector and generally hip to human safety writes then he says when you're in a tub full of water don't put plugged in things into it with you and then we felt this probably useful to bring that up because you know how many movies you see where someone gets in a tub and then drops like a whatever in there and it's electrocuted. So he thought it's not made for that.

Definitely don't suggest that. And then we talked about how does it work? Like, like how does liability work? Yeah. And he was doing it cause he didn't want to, uh, uh,

he didn't want his conscience. He didn't want dead infants on his conscience and, uh, newborns. And I didn't want dead infants on his conscience and newborns. And I didn't want liability. I think there's some crossover between us on those issues. So this lawyer writes in about how liability works in these kind of situations. And he was explaining there's a certain breed of lawyer who this is their bread and butter.

Where a dumb person does something dumb and then wants to blame others when they get hurt. And this plaintiff's litigation becomes like a sort of legal extortion. So he says it plays out like this. Like a person listens to your podcast, right? They decide that, oh, I'm going to heat my tub up with a sous vide apparatus. They get shocked in the tub. They go to the hospital. They're sitting in the hospital, and they've seen one of those attorney commercials while they're recuperating.

And it's one of those commercials that's like, car wreck, slip and fall, get the justice you deserve. They call that 1-800 number to get tough. They describe the circumstances and extent of their injuries. The plaintiff's attorney then does a little mental math and compare the severity, usually quantified in hospital bills, to who are we going to sue? And as you trail this down, you're looking for a well-insured, well-funded, well-known person entity that could be liable. At that point, it's game on. It says in this sous vide scenario that we're explaining here, like someone hears it on this show, gets hurt. They call this like get tough attorney. He's going to start out. He's going to be curious about the sous vide manufacturer

for a defective product design. He's going to be curious about the seller of the sous vide apparatus for selling a poorly designed product. He's going to be curious about the seller of the sous vide apparatus for selling a poorly designed product. He's going to be curious about the home unit building contractor, potentially for faulty construction or wiring. He's going to be curious about the home unit building electrician for the same reasons. He's going to get curious about the landlord for renting a potentially dangerous apartment. He's going to get curious about Meteor Inc. for negligence in promoting and encouraging dangerous apartment. He's going to get curious about Meat Eater Inc. for negligence in promoting and encouraging dangerous practices. He's going to get curious about the particular people who

are on the podcast and their personal capacity for negligence in promoting and encouraging dangerous practices and anyone else that he can think of. Then, it's a classic situation where though no single individual is responsible, each one of these people has to participate in the litigation. And therefore they carry inherent risk of exposure.

What happens then is you go to each of these people and you lay out how you're thinking about this whole thing. The pitch is something like this. Look, you're going to have to defend this lawsuit no matter what, like no matter what we're coming after. You're going to have to get lawyers and defend yourself. The way I'm going to pull this off, it's going to cost you 10,000 bucks to defend yourself. What you can do is just give me that 10,000 now and I'll dismiss it. No embarrassments, no court, but that's how this is going to go down. You get a bunch of these people, they all agree to it, then you end up with a pretty decent total settlement.

No one ever goes in to see a judge. There's no jury. Everybody just gets extorted out of their money. So don't put the damn sous vide deal in your tub. Or if you're thinking of suing me neither we're on to you yeah i'll be like you know what bro bring it on that's what i'm gonna say i'm gonna be like bring it on bring it on uh that's where you get into that whole world you hear about counter suing counter suing for dan you know i mean yeah uh so here's a good segue so uh elizzer did write in to say this he heard

here's where you learn that this does happen because a guy says he was listening to the podcast and heard about the sous vide birthing bath it gave him an idea during the big texas deep freeze the 20 2021 deep freeze when all of his power and gas was out he did use a generator and his sous vide apparatus to heat water to then he set it and use his generator heated his water to 113 degrees filled a large shrimp pot and then use that water to bathe but not with the device in it he said i would never have thought of this hadn't you boys mentioned it. So he just used it to warm up the water. Right.

And then removed the device and then cleaned up in his shrimp pot. So he also goes on. Here's where the great segue comes in. He also goes on to explain that he works for an HVAC company, interestingly. If he works for an HVAC company, how did he never think of this? That's a good point.

I used to be on LinkedIn. I used to be on LinkedIn. I just recently got off it again. But all my associates would always be like some HVAC guy in Florida. I'm like, I don't know. How are we going to help each other in networking? But sure, we can be partners. He works for an HVAC company.

Anyways, so they have a supplier. This gets so convoluted. They have a supplier who has a big ranch, and they allow the employees to hunt the big ranch because they're all in a business relationship. Anyways, 2,500 Axis deer died on this ranch, froze to death the big ranch because they're all in a business relationship. Anyways, 2,500 Axis deer died on this ranch. Throws to death on this ranch.

Their entire population of black buck antelope died. Killed in that deep freeze. They were loading them up in bucket loaders and burning the carcasses. He's like, I wish I would have been there. Would have gotten me a lot of free meat.

And man, do we get a lot of feedback from people after seeing the big deep freeze of just mountains of dead animals. And a lot of them like very highly esteemed, um, wild game species, right? Like Neil guy, you know, as our friend, Jesse Griffiths explained, like Neil guy in South Texas is a stand in for beef. He's like ranchers sell cows. They eat Neil guy. Um, they lost 80 some on their place and it spurred this conversation. Like, why can't you, after the big deep freeze,

why can you, or can you not go out there and just send it, like give it to food banks or go out and cut all the back straps out and live off it. So we're taking our questions to Dr. Professor Chris Calkins, meat scientist at university of Nebraska. And you might know Dr. Calkins, meat scientist at University of Nebraska. And you might know Dr. Calkins

because he was on the show before. Our greatest episode ever. I can't remember what it was called. You can't remember. The Red Cutter. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Red Cutter. Great episode. You want to learn a bunch of stuff about butchering and whatnot and

safety protocol, slaughter practices, all that stuff. 227. 227. I listened to it twice. It was so good. Red Cutter. Chris Calkins.

Well, thanks for the question. After that lead up introduction, I'm not sure I should say anything with all this litigation in the air. Yeah, you didn't realize how liable you were. That's it. We talked last time about the fact that when you harvest an animal, that there is the risk that bacteria will migrate from the gut into the meat and create a food safety problem. That's regardless of the quality of the meat, there is that health risk. And so if we have an animal that dies because of a cold spell, we have that same concern about duration between when death occurs and when you're able to remove the guts and remove that

source of health risk from the animal. And so it's real easy to think about, gosh, if we're just freezing meat, then frozen meat is okay to eat, which certainly frozen meat is safe. But I would start by saying we need to remember that animals and people can freeze to death at freezing temperatures. It doesn't have to be so many degrees below zero. And the body doesn't instantly freeze stiff. It takes a long time to remove the heat to be able to freeze something solid. And so that time duration between death and freezing of the meat is the time at which the health risk occurs.

So that's a long way for me to say that if I come upon an animal that's frozen, I'm not interested in eating the meat because of a health concern, a health consideration. Chris, can you explain the process of death, the physiological processes of death? You know, in freezing temperatures, these animals in dying go through what? Well, you know, it's, there's some similarities here between

what the animal experiences and what humans experience in a hypothermia case, right? So, the body does two things. First of all, it tries to retain heat, right? Prevent heat loss. So we do that by closing down the blood vessels on our extremities, and we try and centralize the blood more toward the center of the animal. And of course, there's a whole lot of physiological stress that goes on. So we're going to dump adrenaline and cortisol and everything else into the bloodstream. And that's going to trigger a whole set of reactions. So the first thing happens, the body tries to retain heat. And then secondly, it says, I'm getting cold, I need to produce heat. And so that production of heat, we start increasing metabolic rates that causes in humans, we get muscle shivering. In animals, we're going to move to glycogen and fats as

sources of energy because we have this energy deficit. And the metabolic consequences of that, ultimately we change blood chemistry. We start to produce cold-induced production of urine. All of that disrupts the electrolytes and eventually the animal will die through cardiac arrest. Oh, that's what winds up happening? Chris, I understand what winds up happening? Chris, I understand what you're saying about the mystery of time of death. And I can also understand how someone would think, well, an animal froze to death, so it must have been preserved because we associate coldness with preservation. So I get that you'd have that logical mistake of not realizing

that it then still retains body heat for potentially hours and maybe never freezes. But let's say there was a situation where, and I know this is macabre, but let's say there's a situation where you see the animal expire. Okay. So you know that it froze to death. I was there at the moment of death. What would you think at that point about the quality of flesh of something that went through that kind of death? When you compare it to in a controlled commercial atmosphere, they're looking for low stress, very quick death. Well, you're right. Commercially, that's exactly what the goal is, is low stress and quick death.

But if you happen upon an animal and you happen to see its last breath, it expires because it's cold outside, that animal is still going to be warm. That body will not be in rigor mortis. It will be very similar to what you see if you were to go shoot a deer. And it might be cold outside, but, you know, the temperature of the body itself is still going to be quite high. And so at that instant, from a temperature standpoint, you could say, okay, I found it quick enough. Now I have the possibility of maybe considering whether I want to save the meat or not. But think about all of those things that happened that caused that animal to expire. The blood

chemistry is messed up. You have metabolic acidosis. The acid in the body has been produced. We start to see damage to the internal lining of the gut, which potentially could make it easier for bacteria to go. The blood is full of extra dose of stress hormones. All of those things, even if you might be able to eat it and might think it's going to be okay, those are not ideal conditions for how you would harvest meat from a game animal. And so you're really dealing with an animal that, remember, all of those conditions got so bad that the animal died as a result of the change to biochemistry inside that muscle. I wouldn't be anxious to bite into that kind of physiological situation in animals as a result of the animal having frozen to death.

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 handpicked by the on X hunt team.

Some of our favorites are first light Schnee's vortex federal and more as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try on X out. If you visit on X maps.com slash meet on X maps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the onx club, y'all. Okay, let me hit you with one more. This is great. So,

I already know the answer to this, but this is more of a, less of a professional question, more of a personal question. I think I know the answer to this, but this is more of a, less of a professional question, more of a personal question. I think I know the answer to it. When you look, if you see footage like this, or some of these images that came out of that deep freeze of just these

massive mounds of dead animals in your head, are you thinking, oh, there's some things that could be done or that we could do to salvage that or use that? Or are you just, you look and you're like, burn it, bury it. I mean, there's nothing to be done here. I mean, like everybody else, I hate to see a product wasted. And so I understand the tendency to want to say it ought to be okay to go ahead and eat this. But if a commercial animal died that way,

our federal inspection system would not allow that product to be sold. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. There truly is concerns and considerations about the aesthetics of how that animal died, in addition to all the chemistry changes that are taking place, that would really give you cause to pause. Now, you know, you can always build a scenario that maybe we're freezing to death too. And if we don't eat, we die. And so in a situation like that, would I be willing to eat the product? Well, you know, given the alternatives, perhaps so. But every step along the way, you're increasing risk to your health. And again, I emphasize that it got

so bad for that animal that that animal's health was risked to the point where the animal died. And now you want to eat it? You know, if you want to eat it when it starts getting cold, that's one thing. But to take something that already died from a cold situation like this, that animal has already had a whole lot of metabolic changes taking place inside the body trying to fight off that ultimate death. And when you take that product, when you take that meat, then it has the consequence of all of those metabolic changes that have occurred that tried to keep that animal alive. And those are, that would be an unnatural amount of biological changes that you'd normally find when you shoot an animal or when an animal's commercially harvested for meat.

Excellent. This is great. I'll finally be able to sleep at night without the guilt of having not run down to Texas. There you go. You know, in Nebraska here a few weeks ago, we had minus 31 degrees as a cold temperature in February. Now, that's not a typical. In fact, that was a record low temperature. But we didn't have every wild animal or even every commercial animal in the state die. They're acclimated over the course of the winter to accommodate some of those temperatures. And so that cold situation that occurred in Texas,

and my wife's from Texas, so I've been there plenty and I, you know, it's a great state, but those animals were not acclimated to a sudden shift in temperature. So biologically, their response was greater than it would be for an animal, for example, in Nebraska that would experience a similar condition. Huh. Yeah, that's a good point. Let me hit you with another one. And I really appreciate that you're willing to entertain these kind of you know sort of strange out there questions but they're legitimate questions because these are questions we get from people

we had recently had I had recently put a photo on Instagram that a lineman working in New York had found where a I think it was a 4,800 volt overhead power line had collapsed and it had landed on a buck.

It must've been summertime. Like it was a whitetail and still in velvet. Landed on the buck and obviously, you know, killed the buck and seemed to kind of burn a big, deep line across it. And then we had a lot of people send in photos of, you know, black bears that had climbed power lines, just how they climb a tree, but climbed a power line and got electrocuted. All these things. I had no idea there was this much stuff out there being electrocuted.

And when you consider that in a commercial slaughter practice, as we discussed when you came on the show, you explained in great detail about during the slaughter process, how they do use electricity during the slot, like post post-mortem electricity during the slaughter process. If you were sitting there and you saw all of a sudden like a, a, a grade a steer, whatever the hell, like a, like the perfect specimen and it steps on a wire and bam gets killed by electricity. Then what's in your head? Like,

are you like, Ooh, I better get my knife sharpened up. Or are you like, damn, there goes my good cow. Because it doesn't go through that process of like the body starting to have a stress response.

It's fried. Yeah. like the body starting to have a stress response to anything. It's fried. Yeah. So in that case, you're dealing with instant death. And as we just talked about, you can use, but it's not done for cattle, but for other species, you can use electricity. It is a USDA approved method of dispatch for animals.

Oh, it is? And so if I'm standing there and that animal gets, you know, the bigger likelihood of what happens is a bolt of lightning. And every now and then there'll be a whole crowd of cattle crowded together. A bolt of lightning will come along and it'll take out 20 or 30 animals. So that's an instantaneous death. And you could certainly go harvest the product at that point. And just as if you shot your animal and you'd be good to go. So as long as you got to it immediately after the electrocution, then I would say that that's a legitimate cause of death for an animal. Happened quickly,

not time for a real metabolic response and all the rest of those things. You're probably good to go under that case. Now, if you wander on that same animal and you can see that it was killed by electricity, but it's already stiff, it's already in rigor, you know, it could have been there six, eight hours or more. And once again, the timeframe is way too long from death to harvest to want to run a risk of capturing product under those conditions. Excellent. Glad we called. All right. Dr. Chris Calkins, thank you very, very much. We need to get you here for real sometime. Yes, absolutely. I appreciate you joining us remotely. University of Nebraska, correct? That is correct. Yes. yes thank you sir all right thanks

all right yeah tell us your uh your uh tell us your how you narrowly escape death from a mountain lion buddy i'm still shaking after that one uh zach sandow and i zach from onyx we're hunting uh the uh opening weekend of montana's turkey season and uh i'll skip through the uh part where uh we didn't make the right moves in the morning to uh get on these birds that we had so located so well the evening before, man. Like we went to sleep going like, dead turkey in the morning. Sharpening your knives. But yeah, what's that? Someone's got a saying about that.

Roasted ain't roasted or something like that. Well, yeah, we were singing that song in the morning. Anyways. You also skipped the part where you killed one the day before. So you were already successful at this point. That's right. That's right. Different spot though. Nope, same spot no same spot yeah um he's modest i would have started

right out with that well you know if i was the reason being is because uh i shot the turkey slowed it down a little bit and then i did not have a window for a follow-up shot. Zach polished him off and that was his bird, obviously. Yeah, I'd have kept quiet about that. He was trying to. So a couple hours into the morning, we're like,

alright, this ain't working. Luckily, we can hear a distant gobbler way on this ridge above us. We strip our layers off. This might have been the coldest turkey morning I've ever had. 23 degrees when we got out of the truck. They don't want to get out of the tree too early when that's going on sometimes. Yeah.

I wore my puffy pants to the setup for that. That's incredible, man. So we strip off some layers. We figured we could have close to 1,000 feet of elevation gain. And we get up there, and one gobbler turns into two. And then as we get closer, we realize there's quite a few gobblers going. And we're working in there. It's just real thick, a lot of deadfall.

There's been a wind event in this area. and so just hard to kind of get through. A wind event? Yeah, a wind event that just like a big The trees all flattened in the same direction. Well, just like you could tell fresh trees have recently been blown over. I'm with you. And

it's just brushy and it's real hard to move anywhere slowly or sorry, quietly. It's real hard to move anywhere slowly. Or sorry, quietly. It was making me move slow. Anyways, we're getting close and trying to figure out how to get in on these turkeys when all of a sudden a hen sparks up too close for comfort to the point where we're like, we just have to sit down. We can't move around anymore because now we're at risk of busting the flock.

So we'll just sit down and kind of see what happens. And we're sitting on sort of one side of a gully kind of drainage feature that's on the side of this mountain. And opposite of us is a slope that's kind of facing up, and this drainage goes up to our left, and it actually kind of benches out, and that's where these turkeys are. We're sitting there for a while, and I call a little bit at them at the flock, and the flock's just hammering every time I call,

but I knew that it wasn't going to happen. They were just happy to be gobbling at me, but I wasn't really feeling real confident that one was going to break off and just come check me out. I could hear a bunch of hens in there going off. They had what they needed. So eventually I'm like, oh, I'm just going to break off and just come check me out like i could hear a bunch of hens in there going off they had what they needed so eventually i'm like i'm just going to shut up and hopefully they'll just fade away and then we can swoop around and you know go in for another setup and it'd been maybe 10 or 15 minutes and they're all still there the hen's still

clocking away and uh down to my right in this gully. And again, like four or five, sometimes even six feet of all kinds of thick understory type brush. Can you pause for a minute? Mm-hmm. Seth, can you do sound effects? Yeah. Okay. Go ahead, Johnny.

Sound effects. Well, he's got to fill in some gobbles right now. Okay. Okay. That was pretty good. Now, you'll get yourbbles right now. Okay. That was pretty good. Now you'll get your cues from him. All right. Yeah. There's a hen.

The hen that we've been listening to, she's doing like a, it's one of those where you think it's like between a clock and a putt, but very soft. Yeah. But like 50 times in a row. You better get busy. There's five. She's a yakking. Anyways, we're sitting there.

The turkeys are still kind of going, but we've been quiet for a while. And I'm leaning kind of in the shadow of a great big, I don't know if it was a spruce or a fir tree, something like that. It must've been two or three feet wide. And, uh, down in this gully kind of off to my right, I hear, and I wish I just could remember it better.

Cause it's like maybe the most exciting part of the whole story, but it's like, it's, it's maybe the most exciting part of the whole story, but in my mind, it registers as air coming out of an animal's mouth. Very well could have been just that. Might have been a touch more grr or growl to it. Yeah, something like that. Dude, yeah, that's the last thing I want to hear when I'm out. I feel like I'm there. I'll just start shooting off in that direction. And right after that, I can hear footsteps.

Like that? Well, they're soft pads. Yeah, but a little bit of crunchinging of pine needles and, you know, the detritus. I'm getting in the mood now. Yeah. You're doing all my work for me, Seth. Thank you. I tell Zach, I'm like, dude, get your camera ready.

Because he had been, you know, running the camera a little bit since he wasn't carrying a shotgun since he was tagged out is that hen still talking or no she done yeah they're all they're all still up there yakking away and gobbled every now and your attention isn't focused entirely different direction yeah no at this point i'm looking down the hill and uh i says that get your phone out i think there's a bear coming up the uh coming up the draw and the only reason i said bear is because just like that's sort of what i'm expecting in like this landscape um and something that could hear footsteps so well i figured you know bear and a second later i'm like oh no it's tan i'm like ah it's just a deer zach but you know video it anyways you know it's gonna walk right by us and like nope that deer's got a tail it's a mountain lion and uh immediately you know zach's like holy shit you know and there's actually two mountain lions that we can see at first and they're smaller so this is all again

happening fast and as they take a few more steps spotted though full color yeah yeah yeah i'm guessing they're at least a year old you know and at like what distance 30 40 pounds um 15 yards ish 15 oh wow yeah yeah pretty close and they uh as soon as they sort of like we're kind of talking and maybe moving our heads a little bit and you know full cam we'll get our face max on and they immediately catch our movement and the one first just sort of snarls and growls at us the lead cat yeah then it's little then it's sibling turns and does 90 degrees so instead of going up this draw it turns 90 degrees and takes like three or four steps in like a low crouch slinking towards you, you know, shape. And then kind of then stops and does the same thing.

And it's like realizing that like, oh, I thought you were like the turkey I was about to, that I'm hunting that I might pounce on. But now I'm realizing you're not and I'm kind of pissed about it. This is what I was reading from its snarl. So it snarls too, and then at that point, I'm like, alright, that's enough of that, and you know, I then took my shotgun from my lap and I pointed it at it, and that movement was enough

to spook it, and then its sibling spooked, and then mama spooked off too. But yeah, pretty neat little wildlife encounter. That's good fun, pretty neat little wildlife encounter. That's good fun, man. That's cool. Get your heart pumping.

For the sake of the story, I was hoping you'd have like a tugboat go by or like Christopher Walken show up. So it'd really test Seth. Just challenge Seth more. Yes. I was walking the park for Seth, man. Yeah, it was easy. You know what did keep the gobblers gobbling, though, was the Canada geese that kept flying up and down the river. Oh, I can't.

What can I do? Good work, boys. Kind of like a seal. Good work. Unfortunately, they spooked in towards the flock of turkeys, and we did not hear another oh that shut them up pretty good oh there was no clucking no yelping no goblin and we hiked around that mountain for another 30 minutes and they were gone just disappeared that means

it's time to be quiet when a mountain lion runs by yep they're out you know you hear all those great stories about people getting um you know their hats taken off top of their head from bobcats and lions and stuff when they're hunting turkeys yeah yeah when they're when one's stalking at you you're not like ah this is a good opportunity to maybe get a real close even closer encounter with a mountain lion yeah i had a good segue earlier i don't know if you remember i took it from uh like really seamlessly from uh sous vide to meat scientist this guy there's a doctor that wrote us in wrote into us i don't know how he pronounces his name. Mark Slabaugh, M.D. Slabaugh, Slabaugh.

I don't know. Mark Slabaugh, M.D. Could be Slabo. Slabo. Very articulate man. He wrote in with a segue of his own. He said there's a, there's a, uh, recognizing it's a transition between disparate subjects, but he was tying together two things we were talking about that we didn't

make a link on one. We did an episode where we discussed in a, what he calls excellent detail, the implications of lead poisoning on both wildlife and humans was referring to as a discussion we had about, um, it is a well-known fact. What you do with this fact is up to you,

but it is a well-known fact. What you do with this fact is up to you, but it is a well-known fact that lead from bullet fragments in carcasses has the potential, can lead to raptor death, and that lead shot on the landscape used to lead to waterfowl death. Now, whether it's, you know, the debate is lots of things die all the time. We're not talking about population. We are not talking about population level impact. Cars kill wildlife. Windmills kill wildlife. Fences kill wildlife. The windows in your house kill wildlife.

And yes, bullets kill wildlife. What you do with that, like we kind of got into all that, right? And then we talked about how there just is not, in my view, and I've read more than most, there's no convincing evidence that hunters are, that a wild game diet is giving you elevated levels of lead. Like no one's proven this. In fact, I think, you know, when you look at it, people are going to have a fit when I say this, but, you know, you look at like urban, like people that live in very urban environments often have higher levels of lead than people who live in rural environments but eat nothing but wild game because you have lead from one, you have all the lead in soil from leaded fuel, lead paints. There's a lot of lead out there.

And so it's hard to say conclusively like, oh yeah, and people eat a lot of deer meat have more because there's other factors such as like where you live that are more profound than what you might. Is this making sense? Yep.

Totally. Corinne's nodding. Yeah. I mean, I grew up in a city. Who knows? Look at you. I mean, I grew up in a city. Who knows? Look at you. Who knows, right?

I can see the lead bleeding out of your eyeballs right now. Goes on to say this. He goes on to say that the connection he found, as we later were talking to our guest, Preston Pittman, who's been shot twice hunting turkeys and he points out say that like in the medical profession you despite all the westerns you watch in the medical profession they are not eager to dig pellets and bullets and stuff out of people you remove the pellet or bullet if its location is like of immediate concern it's safer to leave it in there than it is to drag it out of there. Jim Bridger, I'll point out, carried a, I think it was a steel broadhead. I can't remember if it was steel or flint, in his shoulder blade for

two years before a guy dug it out. And I think the guy that dug it out was the, he was like part of the Whitman massacre and dug it out was the he was like uh part of the whitman massacre and dug it out and some people say it was like the first official surgery like the first western style euro european style surgery to occur in the american west was when you know like performed by a doctor when bridger had this thing yanked cut out of his shoulder blade but you generally leave him in there, but he does say, folks who have retained bullet fragments should be aware

that lead toxicity can occur over a long period of time. And blood levels can be monitored if they are aware of the risk. It is not an immediate thing. You can have a bunch of shotgun pellets in you, and a long time could go by, and all of a sudden you start to develop lead issues from carrying not in your stomach not where it's in your digestive tract but where it's like slowly dissolving in your muscle can lead to trouble so if you're carrying around a bunch

of ammo consider that and plenty of people are man i was surprised by this. Gunshot wounds. An estimated 115,000 injuries in the United States per year. That's nuts. That's nuts. 70% are non-fatal. Bullet removal. He goes on to say, bullet removal is not

routinely indicated for victims of gunshot injuries with retained bullet fragments, which are called RBFs unless it can be caused immediate morbidity. Damn. So Robert Abernathy and, uh, Preston Pittman should both,

uh, get their blood levels. Yeah. Checked periodic lead checking. Are you not carrying around a BB from when you were a kid? No. Oh, I thought you were. Oh, Mark also says this.

He says, my personal experience with this comes as an ophthalmologist removing shotgun pellets from the face and orbits of trauma patients. I would say most commonly after being shotgunned during drug deals. He says that my hope is that the average outdoorsman is better at seeking good follow-up care than those individuals. So maybe this will be useful information. Think about that, Yanni. Very useful information. Here's another one.

This is really interesting. Guy wrote in that used to guide, he does remote, maybe does, did, does remote, uh, whitewater canoe trips, like extended whitewater canoe trips. And he says,

this isn't well known, but it's like known that on a, on a river in Canada's Northwest territory is called the South Nahanni River. There is a cave that holds the full skeleton, full skeletons of, of over 100 doll sheep that accumulated there from 2,000 years ago to about 200 years ago. And the cave entrance is downward sloping. All the sheep are at the bottom of the slope.

The plausible theory is that that slope would become icy and the sheep could make their way down in. They'd walk down into the cave, but then not be able to ascend the icy slope. And he said laying on top of those 100 doll sheep skeletons when he was there is a porcupine dead on top. He said it looked like he was up there feeding on them all. That reminds me, you know, that's such a long period of time, right? So you have 100 sheep that died over potentially, what, 1800 years?

When I was at the, I went to the, my first date with my wife, we went to the La Brea tar pits in LA and, um, we were kind of like, neither of us was from there, but we went there. Um,

and it's a whole long story. I was living in Anchorage, but she was living, she was there for work. And I went down, we went to the La Brea tar pits and, and there they have, you know, they had, they have a display, think, of 170 dire wolf skulls that came out of those pits.

Many short, like many short-faced bears, many mammoths, dozens and dozens of ancient bison forms, everything. Giant ground sloths. Everything just died in La Brea tar pits. And when you look at, when you read these numbers about all the stuff that accumulated in these tar pits, which is like in downtown Los Angeles, you think that you'd go there and just be like,

and like dead stuff everywhere. Like had you gone there a long time ago. But they're saying one occurrence, I think I might get this wrong, but it's something like this. One occurrence every 40 years

would have accounted for everything in there. Oh, wow. An occurrence being this. A baby mammoth gets stuck in the tar. Okay? A saber-toothed cat goes out to scavenge it. He gets stuck in the tar.

Some vultures go to eat on them, and they get stuck in the tar. And then nothing needs to happen for 40 years. And you let that go for like tens of thousands of years, and you wind up with where you dig down in the tar and then nothing needs to happen for 40 years and you let that go for like tens of thousands of years and you wind up with where you dig down in a tar pit and it's whatever 50 feet of packed bone that's so interesting but it's not like uh you know it's just like now and then now and then so yeah once every couple hundred years a doll sheep falls into this cave but then you go there and it looks like holy shit yeah i don't know if you guys remember a long time ago we had on a guest who he was an anthropologist um man what the hell is that guy's name real interesting he was an anthropologist who um

among other things like he would look for uh you, lithic remains from up in, up in high mountain passes and stuff. He'd look for lithic remains of ice age hunters and, and other things, not Meltzer, but another, another anthropologist. Anyhow, he was explaining to us that when you're trying to interpret ancient kill sites, people look at the bones and people make wild extrapolations about people make wild extrapolations like, Oh, the skull was upside down. It must've been ceremonial, you know? And he was saying,

man, you don't know. And one of the things he was explaining is we'll just take a deer and put it in order to say like how to interpret bone dispersal, bone decay, you know, in order to interpret ancient archaeological sites they'll just lay a deer out in the woods and then monitor it day to day to see like what what

what do we see happens you know how far do the bones go what happens all the bones why how does the skull get flipped over or whatever and just to kind of get a better sense so when you're deconstructing a ancient kill site you kind of can recognize what's normal what's not normal and there's this this thing happened back in 2017 that was that we're looking at and thinking about is they were doing it with human remains as a sort of uh what's the word i'm looking for like forensic yeah yeah forensic like forensic pathology or something he's like body farms for Yep. As a sort of, what's the word I'm looking for? Like forensic? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have like, yeah. Forensic pathology or something. He's like body farms for, you know, I don't know if you discover someone who's, you know, you uncover like a skeleton.

Yeah, rates of decay. Right, right. Like how long has it been there? What happened to this body? Like, yeah. And John McPhee once wrote a piece about forensic entomology, where how investigators can use the rate at which like larva and stuff develops on human remains to get a sense of like time of death on crime scene investigations. So anyways, they were doing this thing years ago and they had all these, they had human bones laid out in the woods to see what happens to a body farm and they had a camera on it and were surprised to see uh deer deer would come up and gnaw the bones but so there's there's this footage of a deer chewing up a human rib bone yeah it's just like hanging out of its mouth

like a cigar and it talks about how um according to study like ungulates often chew on bones now usually we see they chewed up bones you're always like oh it's porcupines it's mice whatever the hell ungulates chew on bones and they prefer dry bones with a rectangular cross cut but But this was the first instance ever of a deer chewing on a human bone. But it gets to this interesting thing of when you, like when they eat weird stuff. And Seth and I were just talking a minute ago about,

it was some years ago, but it was a really famous trail cam image. There's a white-tailed doe coming through the woods and stops and starts eating nestlings, eating birds. I think they're robins. Starts eating nestlings, eating birds. I think they're robins. Starts eating nestlings out of a nest,

plucks one out and eats it, which really makes you think differently about your deer meat. It does me, man. Like we had that turkey the other day with that giant slug in his crop. I thought different to that turkey after that. Really? Yeah. Thought different of them.

Yeah. And like Robert was saying about that turkey he killed with all those green anoles. 13 green anoles in it. Yeah. What's a green anole? A little lizard. Those lizards?

13 of them. Wasn't it 13? Yeah. Am I making that up? Nope. That's right. 13. He was having a feast.

Oh yeah. I'd have been like, yeah, I'd still eat them. I'd be a little bit like, yeah. But what do you eat? I'd rather it be like, like flowers. Grains. Acorns. Acorns. Yeah. But like you eat stuff. Like, would you eat like I'd rather it be like flowers. Grains. Acorns. Acorns.

Yeah, but like you eat stuff. Like, would you eat like a deep fried anole? I haven't, but listen, I'd eat it. I just would think differently of it. Okay. I'd think differently of it. If I opened up a bear, a black bear, and I found that he had a bunch of people meat in it, I would think differently of the bear meat.

Yeah. Okay. Anyhow. 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 on x is now in

canada the great features that you love in on x 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

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slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Go ahead, Seth. Tell them more about what we're talking about yeah there's a guy from Montana that wrote in said that he shot a starling with an air rifle was it my kid there's there's a few questions I have about

this I think this must have been my kid that wrote in he shot He shot a starling with an air rifle one winter under a crab apple tree in his neighbor's yard. Okay. So he's shooting over into his neighbor's yard. Sounds like your boy. This again. I think this is my boy. Whitetail deer came in to the yard to eat the crab apples and found the starling that he shot.

Deer picked it up in his mouth and appeared to be chewing on it. That night, he recovered the starling from his neighbor's yard. Like under the cover of darkness, presumably. Another question I have, yeah. So he went over there. I'm guessing at dark. He's like, I'm going to wait until it gets good and dark. Yeah.

Hopefully they're friends. And saw that the head of the starling was gone. Hmm. The deer had eaten it. Hmm. And I mean, you go on YouTube and Google deer eating birds. It's just, there's no shortage of videos of deer eating birds on there. God, it's unusual, man.

Yeah. It's like, well, maybe it isn't. Yeah. Right. That's what I was saying earlier. Unusual seeming. Unusual seeming. Because by what mechanism, like when you look

at their dental structure, it just, it's hard to, you know. Yeah. Maybe I was saying to Spencer earlier, maybe deer are a little more opportunistic eaters than what we think as far as like eating meat. Our next guest though, remember a long time ago I was saying that the only thing that should be allowed to be on Instagram is Wild Turkey Doc? Oh yeah.

Instagram should just be that you download the app and you open it up and it's wild Turkey doc. Yeah. And that's what Instagram is like. No one else should be allowed to be on there. If there was public outcry and people were like, there has to be one more Instagram page. I'll be like, okay, nature is metal. Um, we will allow nature's metal.

It'll either be that or it'll be wild Turkey doc. Yep. They can take turns, but nature's metals more is far more prol'll be wild turkey doc yep they can take turns but nature's medals more is far more prolific than wild turkey doc yeah it's my favorite favorite favorite instagram page and what what brings us full circle is that there was recently a video of a of a young elk eating a gosling for you, for you folks that I'm sure you, if you're sitting there with your phone right now, you should,

you gotta go like go to nature's metal. Um, it is sometimes like I have a strong, it's sometimes too much for me. It is predominantly, um, our next guest, Rick,

who, who started and runs nature's metal can explain, but it's predominantly, I would like like there's a human element now like once in a great while there's sort of like a human element like there's like humans enter the scene on nature's metal now and then

but generally it's wildlife it's like wildlife on wildlife of just some of the most like graphic reminders of I don't want to say brutality because that has a moral, that sounds like moral condemnation, graphic reminders of reality. Yeah.

Of predation, of what goes into being alive, of the just giving of uh zero f's about the well-being of your prey in the animal world just i'm doing a horrible job help me out truer documentation of the circle of life yeah more than oftentimes i was gonna say like i have a pretty strong stomach oftentimes it's more than i care to see more than i care to see and you'll see when you go on there that it has a very next to if like um like uh I don't know like a pornographic Instagram page it has more censored tabs than anything I follow not that I follow that didn't come out right I don't think I'm guessing there are no porn. I don't know.

There's no extent to the internet. There's no end to it. But I don't know about anything like that on Instagram. But if there was, you can imagine it would be highly censored is what I'm getting at. There's a lot of viewer discretion. Viewer discretion. But it's just animals.

It's like, how is it sensitive? You think it's animals doing things to animals. Why is that? Why is that sensitive? That's like the $64,000 question. I think it begs that question. Why are we censoring? Yeah.

It's like, I didn't know animals could do bad things. Yep. Huh? So we're joined by Rick, who is the founder brains behind I'm guessing daily, the, the daily touch, the curator at nature's metal.

Thanks for joining us, Rick. Yeah. Thanks for having me. How do you, uh, why? Like why and how did this become a thing that that how did this become like your life's calling here

to find this stuff and put it out there for the public so when i was a kid i i couldn't get enough of those shows like uh all the nat geo stuff anything on pbs but they would always cut like it would show the chase And then it would never show What happens Did they become friends And you never see them again Or what happens You never see

What really There's nothing nice about what's happening Yeah they would cut to the feeding Like there's a chase And it's unresolved But then like later they're feeding to the feeding like there's a chase and it's unresolved but then like later they're feeding right they should like but what but there's like a chapter missing yeah totally right so that that was part of it that's definitely part of what we wanted to showcase the entire story i feel in my bones that it is disingenuous and a disservice to animals

and the animal kingdom in general that people don't show this stuff but we also like try and stay away from certain things like i i get a lot of submissions about like things that i cannot show on instagram that will get me kicked off and that's about like things that I cannot show on Instagram that will get me kicked off. And that's, those are things that we learned from the other accounts getting taken down and stuff. Are you allowed to give us an example of something?

Oh, there's one, there's one that I get sent every couple of weeks of a crocodile somewhere in Africa with human remains in its mouth, swimming down the, the, like a river or something, but like it's the guy's head and arms sticking out of the crocodile's mouth.

It's just something I can't, I can't show that man. The account is, has reached the point where I would like to keep it as long as I can. Yeah. How many followers do you currently have on your account? It's insane. It's around 3 million,

3.1, I think. It's above that. I see Corinne's notes that she has that you, so you have a long relationship with photography too, because I didn't know this about you. You were a metal band photographer? I was in metal bands for a long time, like for 12 years of my life.

While I was doing this account, it was like I would do my day job. I'd be at rehearsal for three hours and then I'd go home and try and figure out what I was going to post tomorrow or something. And at the same time as I was doing all that, I'd met all these other musicians and I would just show up to their shows and I'm taking pictures. Then I bought a camera. So I'd have something better than cell phone photos. And then it progressed from there. That's also where the name comes from too. The music that I like is metal.

It's always going to be that until I'm 90 years old, it'll be metal. I don't want to miss you. Usually when people say that something's ironic it's not so i'm trying to think this is actually ironic but i don't know someone listen listen to my sentence and tell me you think this is ironic or not sure you were inspired originally by what you felt were omissions in the sort of Nat Geo-ish, I'm using this as a sort of like a placeholder for high-end nature documentary, that Nat Geo was leaving out part of the story

and you were filling in those blanks, but now you get, this isn't ironic, now you get material from the people who are capturing that material and they're giving you the stuff that like, they won't let me use this. It's too graphic for my outlet. It's too graphic for the media place I work with. It has to be out there.

I'll send it to this guy. I don't know. Maybe it is ironic. You know what? That's a great point. There's not a lot of things that we won't show. But there are things that we won't show but it's there are things that we can't i understand why nagel kind of censors themselves not everybody's into that graphic stuff

my limits are not their limits my limits are like human humans being killed by some animal. That's my limit. I'm not showing that. Rick, what was the most impactful post that you've ever shared on Instagram? The first one Joe Rogan reposted. It was a woodpecker drilling its beak into these baby doves. Like just hammering right into them. Really? I saw that a very nice post you never saw that one still up on the page it's right at the bottom it was the first one that rogan went crazy he went he went nuts he he reposted on his instagram the account went crazy then right and i thought it was over i thought it was like that's really cool i'm really happy that happened but then he goes on his podcast a couple days later and starts The account went crazy then, right? And I thought it was over. I was like, that's really cool.

I'm really happy that happened. But then he goes on his podcast a couple days later and starts talking about it. And then it really went crazy. So from there, that's where we got all of our traction came from that one post. Elevated the account to where it is now, basically. While Steve is trying to find that. I'm watching it right now. It's too much for me.

That's brutal. Yeah, it's too much for me. Describe what you're seeing or what you can't stomach. What species is that? I mean, it's a woodpecker species. It's in a cactus. Yeah. So it's down south.

He's got a bird nest in a cactus and it's just just gradually like very aggressively woodpeckering a baby bird it's not dying quickly and it's also consuming head matter as it

just yeah it's a bit much. Not, not in a bad way. Not in a bad way. It's just, I wouldn't show my kids. Yeah. That's my barometer. I wouldn't expect anybody to.

I share some of your posts with my kids, but I don't let them do is then just start cruising around looking. I like share them like, here's a thing. And then this is over. Does understand like we're gonna look at this and that's it and we look and we go away you know it's understandable man who are some famous followers that you have like do you have a list celebrities that interact with the account the most famous i would say the one the person with the most followers that interacts with us well conor mcgregor has interacted with us more than one time like comments wise that we've had

like some comments back and forth whatever just like fun things it's just crazy to be talking to someone like that but the guy with the most followers that follows us has to be Bieber. It's gotta be Justin Bieber. The most surprising one of all of them is him. Huh? And he's actually reposted us before, which is like the craziest thing. Nature's metal was on Buzzfeed because of Justin Bieber, because he got in trouble for it.

Cause he posted something with a tiger with a monkey in its mouth and he shared it. What the fuck are you doing, Justin? It's that Canadian connection you guys have. What is your attitude toward fake images and have you ever been duped? Yeah, in the beginning we were. Now my eye has gotten a lot better but um it happened a couple times i'm not gonna say all of them were but one i remember for sure is um these wolves are trying to take down this bison and the bison hit the wolf sent it flying right i was like wow that's a really cool photo. Totally fake. I wanted it to be real.

I posted it like it was real. And it was a couple of years ago. It's not on our account anymore. But I have a couple of people that I message now to verify photos. Is this even possible? Because it damages our integrity by posting something that isn't true. And that's the last thing I want to do is post something that's fake i actually got called out a couple months ago because there's a photographer that's notorious for staging his photos like he'll send a he'll put a mouse on like

a branch of a tree and just like basically feed a wild snake and just start taking photos of it oh he's been caught doing this he's been caught doing this a lot, but sometimes they sneak through. Now I know the guy's name, so I just make sure I don't post anything by him because you can't, I don't know if they're true or not, but I just try and do my due diligence. You know, a thing I often think about

when someone's in the business of social or the business of video and their very existence relies strictly on like an outside streaming or an outside video platform that's user generated. So we always talk about YouTubers, right? Like if you're a YouTuber and strictly a YouTuber, you're one policy decision away at YouTube from going extinct. And when you've built, like when you've done the work it takes and built this massive audience to consume something, you're still operating on a platform where you don't even have a seat at the table, right? Like there's probably not even a courtesy call the day that you get shut down. But have you gotten to a point now where you have a dot that you're able to have a dialogue with the platform?

Are you just sitting back trying to like figure out what they think and what their requirements are? And you're operating in the dark as the, how to like walk this razor's edge of compelling, but not like too compelling. There is no communication with Facebook. Do you remember the monolith in 2001? Yeah. Space Odyssey.

It's like trying to talk to that thing. They just exist. They just exist on their own and you don't get, you don't get to speak to them. So to answer that question, it has gotten better, but you're still talking to the black wall. You're right. The policy decision could sink us tomorrow. And we would have no warning and no recourse. So we're just hoping that we can expand.

Like we're trying to expand to different platforms. I got you. If that ever happens, that could never, it could also never happen because there is, you said it earlier. It's animals. These aren't,

these aren't malicious acts. These are animals doing it to animals. And that's why we try and stay away from humanity at all costs. Oh, I always wondered about that, man. But I hadn't thought about that element of it. Yeah. It gives you like a, it provides a certain ground cover, man. Yeah.

It's vital that we stick to animals. Cause if, as soon as we start showing humans getting hurt that gives them grounds to at least in my mind but because we're so big like because we've gotten to this point we really have to watch where we step to stay alive what in your mind is the most compelling criticism of what you do like what is the criticism that you think like oh yeah i can see that there's something there this actually wasn't a criticism directed at me it was directed at some it was directed a photographer that posted something that we ended up using okay he said you're doing the animals a disservice by showing them act in these primal uh ways because people would think that they were lesser me yeah i think that

was his point um i actually did read that comment and i thought about it for a while and i'm not i'm not 100 sure he's wrong and i i won't say he's wrong. But what I am sure of is not showing it kind of creates this like fantasy world where they don't do that. And that's the one thing I don't want to do. Too much for one person is educational to someone else. They need to know. Some people just need to know these things. Do you know that half of my audience did not, I wouldn't say half. A lot of them didn't know deer shed their antlers every year.

They had no idea. That's like so soft core compared to what we do. But it's very, people were riveted by it. They had no idea. So things like that, just extrapolate that to other things like you were talking about uh deer eating birds squirrels do that there's so many ground animals that eat other animals that just isn't shown people need to know that people need to know that dead bodies in the wild it's like it's like uh it's like dropping mcdonald's in like a schoolyard how long do

you think that's gonna last in the schoolyard not long that might be the worst analogy i've ever come up with no i'm tracking though man i like it what's the ideal predator for you to post to like guarantee engagement like a shark bear croc lion snake something else bears are up there definitely i feel like we we showcase lions a lot so they don't get the pop that they used to get tigers are big because there's not a lot of tiger footage it's hard to come by and it's hard to come by um through the proper channels too because you have we have to ask permission for everything we we post on our on our page now sharks for sure uh but the the highest one seems to be like bears or like rare stuff like um those uh those japanese hornets anytime we post anything about those japanese hornets it goes through the roof but they're very hard to come by the footage is

hard to come by so so footage is hard to come by. So, so your, your audience is, your audience is educated enough at this point to know when they're seeing something fresh. Oh yeah. There's people that have been following me from day one and I still get, I still get comments. It's like, oh, that's the first time you've ever showed that Wolverine footage is hard, very hard to come by, which I would love to, I'd love to show those animals, but there's not a lot of footage that exists of them.

They're very reclusive. 99% of the shit that you put on there, I would never see in real life. Like it gives me, like I can go there to see things that actually happened that I would never see. Like, I, I don't know some of that stuff I would see. And some of it I'm, I will see in the future, but like, uh,

like a crocodile, like killing an anaconda or something. Mm. Hmm. I just don't foresee myself ever vision, like visually seeing that in real life, but I can go to this page and see it. Yeah.

Well, I was thinking about it. It's like, everybody wants to be like, oh, it's too much for me. It's too much for me. But if you booked yourself a fancy-ass trip to Africa on a photo safari and you had two outcomes, you come home and be like, it was great.

Look at all these pictures of sunsets and these grazing antelope. And then I even got a picture of a copulating uh pair of lions uh it was wonderful or you can be like dude i was at this pond and the zebra was there and a croc was there and a buffalo and they all started eating each other and ripping each other apart and holy shit right like what what do you think the average person wants to come back from that trip saying that they experienced yeah 100 the latter yeah they want to see the crazy shit you know if you see some pigeons on a rock wall like on a cliff face and you see a right a rafter a peregrine flying overhead you're kind of rooting

for the peregrine to come down to get one because there's just something to there's something any that wants to witness it but one of the things that like there's a lot of reason a lot of the photography on nature is metal like the photography is wonderful like these are you know a lot of it i mean some of it's just like ad hoc joe blow right but a lot of it's like skilled professionals taking an amazing photo so just that which is great just good quality imagery and there's a bunch of other things i like about it but one of the things that might not be immediate like might not be readily um that might not readily come to mind to people is i'm also interested in the audience like i'm as interested in the audience in the comment section as i am in the image because

what i find so peculiar is how the audience of nature is metal is so comfortable even celebratory of suffering in the animal world depending on where the suffering is coming from it's like the most jovial back sla happy, making funny jokes about something that is an excruciating pain, which is okay because the pain is caused by an animal. And you can only imagine if they were witnessing something that had a human hand in it, that joviality and happiness and like, yeah, get them, tear them to pieces. Let's make funny captions. That melts, man. And I'm very curious in the human brain why one is so fun for people and the other one is so distressing. And that's not something you're ever going to answer. But I like to look at it and be like, why do, why does that make people happy?

They just like that suffering. If it's coming from the right place, that's funny. And I don't get it. There is an answer to that. I don't have it. But when you look at that happening to a human, you could put yourself in that situation and be like, I don't want that to happen to me.

But when it happens to an animal, it's like, well, if that thing didn't do that, it wouldn't be eating. It would starve to death. I don't know. That could be the answer. It is a hard question to answer, actually. Yeah, and I'm not posing this. I'm not posing this as any sort of condemnation of it because it's not where it's coming from.

Oh, no, I know. And I think, and I'll say this about Nature's Metal, is that if you look at the totality, like the totality of the page, not just any image, but you look at the totality, like the totality of the page, not, not just any image, but you look at the totality of the page, I would argue that far and away, it is a celebration of wildlife. It celebrates like tenacity.

It celebrates a survival instinct. It celebrates strength. It celebrates diversity, right? Like biodiversity. I think like in its whole, it is a, the animal kingdom is amazing. It is mind boggling. It is gorgeous. It is stunning. This is a celebration of the animal kingdom. I don't buy that you would be a real serious, like engage, have serious engagement with the page and come out somehow having a diminished. I mean, someone could do this, but generally I think not have a diminished view of nature or have a thing where you think less of animals would be more agreeable to animals going away because they do these bad things to one another.

Like, I don't think that that's what that's's i don't think that's what that's teaching people i think it's like it is a in my mind like a very clear celebration of when what coming from its creator it's like a clear celebration of like holy cow um we live on a stunning planet with staggeringly beautiful things happening on it. So I don't mean when I bring up that, yeah, when I bring up that idea about wondering about people, I'm really talking about audience. I'm not talking about the page. Yeah.

At the end of the day, at its core, that is what nature is metal is about. It's the respect for the wild and the animals that survive in it that they they figured out this way of making their way through the world the the only way they know how and we houses and air conditioning and all this stuff to protect us from the outside when they live in it and they they they have to have kids and protect their kids and it's just it's insane it is absolutely insane to me that anybody can look at that and how without technology

and without our big-ass brains, we would be screwed out there. Like absolutely screwed if we met the wrong animal anyway. What you got there, Bloody Mary? Oh, no. Grapefruit juice? Kombucha. Oh, there you go. Bloody Mary. Oh, no. Grapefruit juice. Kombucha.

Oh, there you go. Drink kombucha. I have. I'm probably the first person to ever drink kombucha. I drank it. I drank it in two person ever in 2004 in Portland. I had some kombucha made in a girl's kitchen named Abby. Second person.

She drank it first. No one even knew what that shit was back there in 2004, man. Rick from Nature's Metal. And how do you find Nature's Metal? You go to Instagram and type in Nature's Metal. Easy. Yeah, that's how you find it. One word.

Rick is metal. Rick, Nature's Metal. Thanks a lot, everybody, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks, Rick. Thanks, Rick. All right, everybody. Everybody, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks, Rick. Thanks, Rick. All right, everybody. Tune in next week. The Meteor Podcast.

Oh, you want to see some crazy stuff? Go check out my Instagram. Check out Seth's. Tell them what yours is, Seth. That's signs underscore west. Yeah. It's not crazy, but just pretty. I have some Nature's Metal stuff on there.

Oh, yeah. At least one. Hey, but what you don't have is a farmer defecating off a rolling tractor. But just pretty I have some Nature's metal stuff on there Oh yeah At least one Hey but you don't have Is a farmer defecating Off a rolling tractor No Which I have I have a

Neal guy hung up In the fence though Oh that's good Here Ladies and gentlemen Seth Morris Follow him on Instagram Alright

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