The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 277: Driving Squirrels With the Hmong

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Ya Yang, Brody Henderson, Seth Morris, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.Topics discussed: pin bones and bet losing; is that a morel or a beehive?; Americans wanting Australia to ban their kangaroo hunting; wolves, hunters, and deer-vehicle collisions; eagles wiping out lambs; America's new New Gorge National Park; a "massive" fish poaching operation in Michigan; who are the Hmong?; hunting for sustenance; cooking up homemade ammo; recognizing your fellow Hmong in public, and what to do when that happens; a history lesson on Hmong involvement in the Vietnam war and the CIA's covert action; displaced indigenous peoples; losing your siblings and crossing the Mekong; getting guns from the CIA; a pot of stew and why Ya can't eat heart; stereotypes about Hmong hunters; reacclimating to hunting in the US; contributing to the gun and ammo shortage; the turkey hunting itch; what can change in a year; Steve's strategy to get kids managing recoil; 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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Go farther, stay longer. Okay, we're joined today by Ya Yang. Ya. Yes, sir. Love that name, man. Thank you. Did kids goof on your name a lot when you were a kid? Ya Yang?

A little bit, a little bit. I just tell them it's pretty Minnesotan, so I got that. My joke is that when we came to the country through immigration, they couldn't pronounce my name. My name in Hmong is actually Ja. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, they couldn't pronounce it. So whoever was there was just like,

all right, let's just do Ja, Y-A, and be done with it. Well, at least that's my story. I don't know if that's true or not. I'm not striving for equivalency here, but I'll point out that there was, in my family name, did I talk about this recently? There was a split in how they spelled it. The A and the I. Yeah, the

A and the number of N's and everything and the I. I have an article where I think I was talking about this, where my dad's uncle hit a cop, hit a cop car. He was Italian. And in little Italy, like in the south side of Chicago,

Italians and Irish guys didn't like each other. My dad said, you simply could not go to the Irish neighbor. They'd kill you. His uncle hits an Irish cop named Philip Toomey who's off duty. Toomey goes home and gets a gun and comes back and kills my dad's uncle. I still have the newspaper clipping. Wow. And my dad would show me the article.

His point being how the Ronellas spelled their – so the Ronellas who are family members in the articles have different spelled names. Oh, but he's like – But it's the same. They're like brothers. You know what I mean? It's funny. So Ja. Yes, but he's like... But it's the same. They're like brothers. You know what I mean? It's funny. So, Ja. Yes, sir. Yeah, you said it perfectly

there. Ja. But when you... But you don't do that. Does your fam... What does your dad call you? Or your mom or dad? My family calls me Ja. I see. But you just make it easy on everybody else. Yes, yes, sir. I do that. It's like Janice and Giannis. Yeah, there you go.

Corinne, of course. Phil's got a haircut scheduled tonight. That's right. It's getting down in his eyes. He had to do a little head flick. Yeah, yeah. I was telling you before the podcast that I judge when I get my haircut, like the timing of it, based on when you start making fun of me. I know that that's about the right time.

Yeah, I like to keep the hair high and tight here in the studio. It's really strict. Seth's here. Howdy. You don't need to tell where you went, but tell everybody about your big fishing trip, Seth. I wouldn't call it a big fishing trip. This will interest, yeah, because these will be fish species he's familiar with

as a Minnesotan. Yeah, I was fishing a body of water, um, in Montana this weekend that I fished before and you typically. An impoundment on a large river. Yes. You typically do well in the spring with, with small mouth in there, but, uh, I hit it a little too late. They

moved off their beds and deeper. I just haven't figured them out this time of year yet. But you hit it the same time last year? No, earlier last year. Oh, you did? Yeah. Oh, okay. But the suckers were spawning. The water was clear and I could see them. I'm not talking about that fishing trip. I'm talking about the other big fishing trip. Oh, that one. Yeah, Fort Peck. Not afraid to tell about that one. Where's that? She saw the size of Indiana.

Everyone knows. No, yeah. Memorial Day weekend. It's hundreds of miles long. 130 or something like that. More shoreline than California. And I think. No, seriously.

Look it up. You want to hear a good little fact like that? Prince of Wales Island has half the landmass of the big island in Hawaii, but something like four times or as much shoreline. Really? Because all those fjords and coves and jagged as much shoreline. Really? Cause all those fjords and coves and jaggedy ass shorelines.

Um, yeah. Four pack, amazing fishery. Walleye fishing was tough at first. Um, it's like we pick up one or two during the day, but, uh, we kind of figured out in the evenings they were sliding up on those hard breaks. Sliding up there?

Yeah, just sliding right up there to feed in the evenings. They were going up shallower. We would catch them pretty good. And when you guys are doing that, so you're camping out fishing. What are you guys doing with your fillets? That's what they say in England. We just put them in the cooler, keep them cool. Just gutted whole fish or you're flying fish? No, we're flying fish. And just put them in the cooler. Keep them cool. Just gutted whole fish or you're flaying fish?

No, we're flaying fish. And then putting them in a cooler. Yep. And then just come home and then deal with them all. Come home. You guys frying fish while you're there? No, we didn't while we were there. What other kind of species did you catch?

Drum, catfish. You caught freshwater drum? Yep. They're in there? Yeah. Caught one. That's a rubbery fish. I caught one last year.

You ever fillet one of those? Yeah, I did. I didn't this year. I did last year. You fillet them and you think you're in for a treat. They're beautiful. My dad used to cook them, but they're like gorgeous fillets. Yeah.

They look like they taste good. Man, I fried one. They're like a My dad used to cook them, but they're like gorgeous fillets. Yeah. They look like they taste good. Man, I fried one. And they're like a little springy. It's like they make that noise when you're chewing them. They make the noise that a cheese curd makes. Yeah. Like you generally don't want your fish to go reek, reek, reek when you're chewing it. Yeah.

And it squeaks on your teeth, man. Yeah. Where I grew up, people were way more interested in the rock in their head than uh than eating them yeah they have a blow they have a large version what's it called it's that ear not the old yeah oh yeah what the hell's that word otolith it's just a souped up version of otolith right you make little earrings out of it for your wife and stuff oh i didn't know that corinne that'd be a good little thing for you to get into man hell yeah because you like making animal park jewelry.

You need to catch yourself a big drum. I think I do. Are these like those kind of like little parts that mimic like orachete pasta? Like that, like a little thumbprint like curve thing? You find them washed up on the beach sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My brother had some, because yellow-eyed rockfish have some biggins. And my brother had some kind of jewelry made for his woman, his wife, Juanita.

Yeah. Nice. One of the many fish called sheephead. Did you flay it out? No, I put that one back. Hmm. We caught some pike. What'd you do with those?

Flayed them. Threw some back, but I mean, we caught a lot of pike. What'd you guys do with all the Y bones on your pike? Um, I, I actually didn't take any pike filets. Do you like pickled? I had to ask Rick Hutton.

He, Rick caught a, I think his biggest was 35 and a quarter. Oh, big old fat gut on that thing. Yeah, it was big. Does he, does he make pickled pike? Um, he typically doesn't but he i think he's gonna try to this year he took back a bunch yeah you ever hear a pickled pike yes i've had that because it dissolves the bones out that was one of the greatest discoveries i

ever made man i did not that i made i mean you know i'm saying ever learned about yeah uh when i was a kid my old man would buy pickled um you know for christmas i don't know why like i don't know where this is a thing pickled herring or whatever yeah yeah creamed herring or something for christmas right eastern european yep i don't know how he got onto that but then he learned how to make uh he learned how to make it out of pike with the sour cream and shit or not and he would make huge jars of that now and then but you got to get on it you can't let it linger in your fridge for a long time as soon as it starts getting cloudy in there how do you fillet a pike well you ever see miles

maché do it no okay do you do like the five no like the five fillet method? No. I have. I don't like it. So all through growing up, we would just flam like you flay it. Take the flay off. Rip it out. Like a normal fish. And then you cut it into like a three. Then you cut the, if it's a big pike, you cut it laterally. And then they got two big long strips.

Yeah. And then we would take a fillet knife and cut about every cut through it almost all the way through it every the same way like the the cart way the cart preparation yep so you take a piece it's like let's say the size of like three of your fingers put together in your hand like if you peel your pinky and your thumb away i got big like banana fingers but if you kill your pink and your thumb away that the three fingers yep and then every quarter or third of an inch or so you cut almost through it the tail piece is bone free so always like yeah, yeah. And then you fry that in the, in the little bones kind of cook out, you know,

now what I do, that's what we used to do. Now what I do is I take the fly off and I take the tail piece off and I'll freeze the tail piece is just regular fish. And then I'll take the bone in pieces and make fish cakes or pickled pike. Gotcha. Um, Miles Maché,

he can very quickly, um, pickled pike gotcha um miles machay he can very quickly um if it's chilled nice and easy to work with he just debones that son of a bitch yeah i got to where i could get that strip out pretty good yeah it's like it's like as john mcphee when john mcphee was writing about uh cleaning american shad he just he uh equated it to fixing someone's watch it's like um it's like that kind of work to to get that bone line but that's my brother does yeah it's not bad i was big ones yeah i was like watching videos on the the five like they call five finger exploding heart pike trick i don't know they call it that but no the they say it's

like the five you get the five boneless fillets off of a pike and just. Oh yeah. You cut into the back. Yeah. Come along the back. I did that and it just did not work. Like skinny strips.

No. No. It's like you cut, you like lay it on its belly and like go in behind its head and come out. I already don't like it. You take the tailpiece off, the boneless tailpiece off. Yeah. This, I just lost a dollar bet to spencer new

hearth because we have the tail piece of a common carp and i said the tail piece doesn't have y bones he says that's not true they go all the way and i was like no they don't and we took a tail piece and cut into it six pin six bones like he's got y bones to the bitter end but on a pike they peter out yeah at the dorsal fin. Yeah. Anyhow, we went morel hunting last night and me and all my kids and Brody and his kids. And we're stomping around for a while and we finally find some. And my little six-year-old looks at us. He finds a morel. We find a morel and he goes, I saw one of those earlier.

Yeah. And what did he say after that? He said, I thought it was a beehive. I was like, I got to see this morel if it's as big as a beehive. No, I'm not kidding. And earlier he had got tangled up in a little briar patch and he was whining and moaning about being stuck in a briar patch. And I said, was it before or after you got stuck in that briar patch

and he says it was before that i go back to that briar patch and start kind of backtracking where he came from and there's a morel city i saw one of those earlier that's hilarious i was impressed you found it so so good yeah but we ended up uh really good yeah a couple dozen i'd say we had you know um well my wife just came up with a new hashtag for me which is keep tinkering but um we uh which is uh but we got back to the truck and there's like a place where if you parked and went looking you wouldn't look because too obvious i'm not giving too much away to say it's right by the dumpsters like by the dumpsters yeah it's like it's just too obvious like you would never look

there like you park and you never be it's just like a weird little pocket. And we got done and then just kind of got checking around the dumpsters. Doubled our take in about 10 minutes. Oh, wow. Nice. The old dumpster spot. What, you know, what is there like? They grow in tight association. Yeah.

What's that? Like what's, what kind of matter is found right by the dumpster? No, it had all the attributes. They did, these morels weren't keying in on dumpsters it had all the attributes it was like like we're after the i don't know i think this is more rigid than it is but uh do you hunt morels yeah no i don't do you hunt any kind of wild mushrooms no really um uh we used to think it was like, you know, there's different species. So there's Morcella esculenta, which translates to delicious morella. And then there's like Morcella conicus.

And I used to think the world was very clean. And it's like, oh, that's a this and that's a that. I might be wrong, but my understanding now is that it's like you you can't just run around declaring this morale that and that morale that. I was going to ask you if, like the ones we're finding, kind of a light tan. My understanding. If they're darker, like in burn areas, do they look? Yeah. And then you go to the burns.

Sometimes. Sometimes you do get those round topped, big yellow bastards and burns. But my understanding, I could be wrong it's just like it's like morcella escalenta maybe is that big ass yellow river bottom morel that associates with dead dying damaged whacked out cottonwoods um and there's like you so kind of wet ground, kind of right around now for here. It depends on your elevation and everything. My buddy in San Juan Islands, he's picking morels in March, you know? So, and Robert Abernathy in South Carolina gets them in March.

Anyhow, big messed up cottonwoods. And then it kind of gets where the grass is what? Like, you know, it just starts to look Morelli, man. Yeah. Dappled sunlight, 12-inch high grass. Which made it, you could have been walking right by them without seeing them. And the last little dumpster cluster was at a stone-dead cottonwood. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Stone-dead. dumpster cluster was at a stone dead cottonwood okay okay okay stone dead um got a black bear there tonight been a while since you shot a bear hasn't it man been a while i've seen something get seen something get shot since then but i haven't shot a bear in a long time uh i i saw post clay had hardly any fat on that bear well we could yeah like in the way you'd find it it didn't have that much but then i gave uh when we cut it up yesterday morning and package it all i'm gonna bring you some i got it all packaged thank you uh i cut off enough for but no i cut off enough off of the off the high end quarters i cut off enough to render a cup of oil but no not fatty but like really nice hide on it very stout well muscled just not a lot of fat on it what do you do with the feet?

Keep it. I'm going to get it tanned and rugged out. Oh, so you. Oh, you mean eating the feet? Well, no. I've had that. Okay. No, no, no.

Just if you're. Right. If you're going to do a whole rug with. No, I'm going to get him with his claws and everything on him. Yeah. I got a couple. I don't know. That's one of the problems. Not a problem.

But like one of the things about bears is how many bear hides do you need? Right. And you're not going to waste it. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's And you're not going to waste it. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's just like, but I'm back into it now. I mean, we used to hunt bears so heavily. Like really would devote a lot of time to it.

And then I just kind of, for a while, just got sick of those Southeast bears that taste like fish. Southeast Alaska. Southeast Alaska bears that taste like fish. Yeah. But no, we had a great time. Why don't you make like a coat cape kind of situation? I don't know why I don't do that.

It's hard to pull that off. You know Ronnie Bames ruled to never wear a hat that has more personality than you do? I don't know what you think about having a cape that has more personality than you do. Imagine Steve Rowland here with a bear cape and his workout pants. I actually see him starting the trend, potentially.

It was 90 degrees and higher. Oh, that would be brutal. It felt berry until 8.30 in the morning. And then the day we got one, so we went up, hiked in this area a couple miles in. Hotter than hell. Got there, got cool, and then we're in a big burn that had like a mosaic burn from a long time ago. And there's still nice little timber patches, just kind of glass in those timber patches. First night, boom, there's a bear.

Put the moves on, and he gave us the slip uh in the morning we were like set up to glass as this west facing exposure so that we were looking east and there's so much haze in the air that like we kind of the morning was shot couldn't just like i was like looking into a blue smoke almost sat there for 12 hours in the blazing hot sun with these aggro ants that were fired up about the heat, I think. Yep. Oh, you try to take a nap and just feel ants all over you. It's misery.

That's a long day this time of year. Set up a shade tent. Gets to be about 830, starts feeling berry, and there's another damn bear. And we got that one. Sweet. No, it's good. It was good. You hanging in there yeah i'm i'm here don't go anywhere yeah we're gonna get into some we're gonna get into some hardcore history in a minute

here man uh oh the other day i sent corinne a note i sent her a text i was reading an article about prince harry that prince harry and oprah are launching a TV show about mental health. And I said to Corinne, if I had something to the effect of, if I had to list every program ever made in the history of the planet in order in which I would watch it, I would start with that on the bottom. And then I would fill everything else in. It was like the weekend and I get a text from Steve.

And he's like, remind me to talk about how this is the thing I would be least likely to ever watch. And I'm like, okay. This came on the heels. It's very un-American to like the royal family. It's like here I'm breaking my own rule by talking about them. But it's super un-American to like the royal family it's it's like here i'm breaking my own rule about talking about them but it's super un-american we had a whole war to get out from under the monarchy but people still act like it's cool i read an article in the times where some guys like um hold on a minute what when is when his uh his uh his his wife is like oh they're mean right the royal family.

I read this article at the Times being like, hold on a minute. You're surprised that there's a problem with a monarchy? This is a shock to everybody? Like globally, the whole world has moved away from monarchies because of the abuse, nepotism, anti-democratic, everything. Like you get to lead because your dad, like you're born into a certain family and you get to be in charge because of who your dad was or your mom. And then someone points out like,

Oh, they're mean. It's like, no shit. I mean, isn't that the whole point? It's not like the world's going to monarchies. I don't,

I don't know if we've been drifting from that for hundreds of years. They're mean. Oh, I thought they were all super nice. Really nice kings and queens. Off with his head. Remember all that stuff? God.

So I'd be like. But look, Steve, they're much nicer now because they don't exactly do off with their heads. So, you know. No, now they ride. I was telling my kids, they ride around in little carriages. They're like, no, they don't. I'm like their heads so you know we know now they ride i

was telling my kids they ride around little carriages like no they don't i'm like listen so i had to pull up pictures i got my kids hating them now too yeah you gotta teach your kids love and everything but i like i try to be very precise and teach them certain hate i try to teach them to really despise the royal family. I'm getting somewhere with it. Yeah, I was just like, holy cow, man. Holy cow. I usually try to not burden listeners with opinions of mine that have nothing to do with our set of things.

Like, with our world, right? Like, the world, the brand promise of what it is we talk about, right? Every now and then. Walleye, flays, kangaroos. That's all like in,

that's all in. And Prince Harry is out. So I need to apologize for having brought up something that's out. I'm not going to like, yeah. Apologies. Apologies. Just a quick weekend text to corinne i think most would agree here's something kind of interesting where there's a um this was reported in a handful of

places there's a bill there's there's some folks pushing to ban like they got a gripe with kangaroo hunting in australia which is like a very tightly regulated industry in Australia where they want to ban the import of any and all kangaroo products into the U.S. And it has a kind of a weird history. So I didn't realize this, but back in the 70s, kangaroo numbers were kangaroos were down and hurting i know they go like wildly you know they're wildly cyclical and in 71 california banned the import of kangaroo parts so just into that state right um and they have a there's a commercial kangaroo industry in australia so they have all kinds of there's all kinds of non-native wildlife there. That's,

that's less regulated there right now. They're trying to exterminate what, how many cats they trying to exterminate feral cats? All of them. Yeah. They got a goal to shoot off 2 million cats or something in Australia. Anyways, there's a lot of non-native stuff that's more liberal and unregulated

hunting, but they have a tightly regulated kangaroo industry where it's basically, they harvest it like you would imagine harvesting livestock, but it's a wild animal. So there's market set and people come in and establish, you got to get these commercial licenses. You have to pass tests to become a sharpshooter. And a long time ago, California banned parts. And then the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service followed suit and banned the import of three commercially shot kangaroo species because they were worried about declining roo populations,

even though many Australians felt that that was not a concern. Eventually, they were removed from the U.S. list of endangered and threatened wildlife in 1995, so apparently deemed recovered in 95. But the California ban lingered until the mid-2000s. And people didn't pay much attention to it. And then a vegetarian activist group sued Adidas for selling soccer shoes that were using imported kangaroo skins. This got me thinking about when I was a little kid, I wanted a pair of shoes called Roos.

I was wondering if they were made out of kangaroo hide, but they just had like a little zippered pocket. Oh. Yeah, but my mom wouldn't. I thought it was because we were poor, but my mom just wasn't dumb. My mom not being dumb made me think we were poor because she wouldn't let us have any name brand stuff. We couldn't get like, you'd want like real Doritos, but you had to eat like store brand

potato chips, you know, and you wanted it in a bag. So you go to school and it'd be like a bag that said Doritos, but it'd be like a little sandwich baggie full of store brand ones. Yeah, and she never let us have anything cool. We wanted Nike sneakers. You bring up Adidas. I'm a huge soccer fan, played soccer growing up. Oh, you did?

I think Adidas' most popular shoe is kangaroo leather. Still today? Yeah. I wonder if it was the Sambas. Remember that black and white ones? I think Adidas' most popular shoe is kangaroo leather. Still today? Yeah. Is it? Oh. I wonder if it was the Sambas. Remember that black and white ones? It's not the Sambas, but it's the, they call it the Copa Mundials.

I had a pair. I played in them, you know, most of it growing up. So you kicked some goals in kangaroo? Yeah, I did. Does that ball bounce off that kangaroo leather nice? The leather is super soft. So, I mean, you know, it was more, I would say, I played in the midfield. So it was one of those like more like passing type of shoes, I would say.

So, yeah, very popular Adidas shoe. Did it have like psychological ramifications where you felt real springy when you put those suckers on? I just knew that i need to to leather it up like you you had to buy this oil with it like it was like to keep it uh like weather um waterproof oh it's good we got a subject matter expert here yeah so they sued adidas yeah this vegetarian activist group sued adidas for selling soccer shoes using imported kangaroo skins now they're trying to revive this whole thing.

A bunch of international activist groups and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and an Australian politician who is the lone elected representative of the Animal Justice Party. So if you want to get yourself some kangaroo chops,

stock up on them sneakers. A smart thing to do, dude, right now, if you're a big Adidas man, buy a bunch of those shoes. Yeah. And then sell them on eBay. And then take that money and buy a walleye boat and then send pictures of that walleye

boat to Chester and say, suck it, Chester. Like say I was able to do with kangaroo shoes but you were never able to do with bitcoin uh here's a great here's a great thing now that a news story comes out in a million people a million people texted to me and a million people texted me this one that there's an article in the atlantic um which is like oftentimes a reasonable publication, I feel. And it's not their fault, but someone just published this piece

arguing that in the great saga of wolves being magical. Magical creatures. And again, I'm not hacking. I'm old. I like wolves. I like seeing them,

hearing them, looking at them, everything. Uh, but it's like, if you want to stop highway vehicle collisions, you need to get yourself a bunch of wolves. And it was pointing out that,

uh, pointing out that in, and I got to look into this more. And it's like there's like whole issues of causation and what's that thing, Corinne? Causation is not. Causation, yeah. No, but there's a saying. Correlation. Correlation is not equal causation. Okay.

Arguing that in counties in Wisconsin. Yep. Wisconsin. In counties in Wisconsin that had wolves come in, there is a reduction in highway vehicle collisions. With deer. Saying that wolves are saving us so much more money in

avoiding car crashes than they're costing people in livestock death. Saying, oh yeah, you get wolves, then all of a sudden... But see, wolves have been around for quite a long time in Wisconsin. So it's not like all of a sudden there's none

and then you put some there and then that's where the causation thing comes up. Because there's been a reduction in deer car collisions in certain counties that have wolves. And I pointed out to Corinne, I was saying, hey, if you're good at math, we should figure out how many deer car collisions that hunters prevent. Which is imperfect, but it brings up a point. So you have, just for sake of just set this whole thing up,

this is an incredible number. 19,757 Wisconsinites collide with deer every year. That's unbelievable. That's crazy. That's so insane. Many a night. So let's say 20,000 deer car collisions in Wisconsin every year equals, this will surprise me too, how few deaths.

That leads to 477 human injuries and only eight deaths. And I think six of those are motorcyclists. So you imagine like the percentage of vehicles on the road compared to like, you know what I'm saying? Like what percentage of highway passengers are in a vehicle versus on a motorcycle, which is like overwhelmingly vehicle car. Yep.

Um, that makes it seem like, uh, I didn't, we could pull those numbers too, but the fact that eight, that six of eight fatalities are dudes hitting them on motorcycles is pretty crazy.

That is crazy. It makes you think that that's another thing in your head when you're riding a motorcycle. So if a wolf kills 20 deer per year, wolves in Wisconsin are probably killing about 24,200 deer a year. Hunters, and they're saying that these wolves can lead to a 24% reduction in deer car collisions. And I brought up the criminal, how many deer car collisions do hunters prevent? Because wolves kill in Wisconsin about 24,000 deer. Hunters kill 188,000, basically round up. Hunters kill 189,000 deer in Wisconsin last year.

That's a ton of deer. Wisconsinites killed 189,000 deer in Wisconsin last year. That's a ton of deer. Yep. Wisconsinites killed 189,000 deer. So that would be the real article I was pointing out. The real article would be, holy cow, do hunters prevent a lot of death? Yep. And then when you go hunting, people be like, why do you hunt? I'd be like, well, I mean. Saving lives.

Saving lives. Saving American lives on the highway. Hunters should get a discount on their car insurance. Yeah. But then Corinne was looking into this more and pointed out to me that they were saying the effects of wolves on saving human lives on the highway is beyond the deer they actually kill. But it says that wolves, unlike people, this one I don't get, wolves create like a landscape of fear, which we had a podcast episode named Landscape of Fear.

Wolves create a landscape of fear and move deer away from heavily trafficked areas. But if you look at a map of where deer car collisions occur, they occur along the interstate system. So they're sort of saying that wolves like to hunt the interstate. Wolves are out on the interstate hunting deer and push them away from the interstate into the remote areas where the wolves don't want to go. Kind of?

Am I getting this right? Maybe. I mean, I think it gets complicated. I went down a research hole, so I think we'll have to come back to this. But Steve, your thought was that most of the deer car collisions happen in urban areas. Yeah, most of them are occurring. Right. And that is absolutely true.

Like the leaders, Dane County and South. Yep, yep. And the top three are, I mean, Dane is half a million people. Waukesha, if that's the right way to pronounce, about 400,000. And then Washington County is 136,000. And this is all data from 2019. So those are all urban counties, and they have about 700 to 800 deer crashes per year from 2019. But then number four, and there are among the top 10 counties, there are three, there are four rural counties.

But number four, with a population of about 41,000 people, Shawano County had 725 deer car collisions. So there are a couple of data points in here that kind of poke holes, or not poke holes, but it gets a little complicated here because there are some really low population

rural areas. They have a lot of car crashes. Yeah, with a lot of car crashes. But here's the other thing, is you got to look at, you could look at population, but that doesn't attest to highway traffic. Sure. On interstate system. There's a lot to it.

Yeah, there's a lot to it. And I want to do it, but I thought it'd be like, when I first saw it, I thought it was the dumbest thing in the world. But then I looked at it, I was like, oh, there's more to it. It can't be like easily, it's not easily torn apart but there's some suggestions there like the idea that wolves push deer from the areas that they hunt into areas they don't hunt and would mean like they hunt highway systems which i don't think that's yeah accurate but the primary point and we should i'd look if they want to come on i'd love to have mine the primary point is i feel that they it's one of those kind of things you read, and you get the sense that

they knew what they wanted to show before they showed it. Oh, definitely. There is a point. Someone from what's that school? Wellesleyan? Isn't that where Hillary Clinton went? Wesleyan? Wesleyan? That's Hillary Clinton's school? I don't think so. Maybe.

This list of counties also doesn't say if there's wolves there or not, which seems like inappropriate. Here's a direct quote. No, she went to Wellesley, the all-women's college. Oh, okay. Here's a direct quote from the person. Most of their influence arises through dread, not death.

Their very presence creates a landscape of fear um it's weird that people want deer to be so afraid their very presence creates a landscape it's like people like want deer to be afraid creates a landscape of fear which pushes deer away from roads and other heavily prowled areas. This makes tremendous sense, Zanette said. Actually, Zanette is a, I think she's a biologist who was commenting

in this article, but wasn't actually the person who conducted the study. I mean, I think there was a fair amount of doubt or just wanting to see causation, wanting to see this study replicated because right now the conclusions are

you know hazy yeah but uh when karen and i talked about this morning we're talking about it's more about um it's more about sociology than ecology because it's more about like what we want to see yeah and if you have a heavily pro-wolf bias you'll be like all of a sudden acting like you care about highway vehicle collisions do you know what i mean if this was coming from if this article and i don't know enough about the person if the article is coming from someone like let's say the the the government like tasked someone to be like what can we do about highway uh you know vehicle deer collisions right and this person's like well we could advance headlight technology right which we've done a lot of headlight technology is very important um better signage in high trafficked areas we could do wildlife crossings improved uh

you know collision sensors all of that. Collision sensors. And increasing the, when you cut brush away and cut trees away, so motors can see more, so you have a bigger window to see on the sides of the road when we come in. Little tricks and stuff like that. Some things that really make sense.

So if this person had looked at everything and they said, you know what, man? The one thing you're missing. After examining, after really getting into this, man, after really getting into this, I think here's the answer. We bring a bunch of wolves to Madison and turn them loose. We'll put an end to deer car crashes. Then I'd be like, tell me more.

But that's not where it's coming from. We'll return to this. You should ask someone. I don't know, man. Maybe someone should come on and explain it. Okay. Can you do that, Corinne? I'll see if I can find the lead researcher.

Okay. I want to talk about one last thing. Then we're going to get hardcore. Oh, no. Two quick last things. There's three. There's four. We can skip some of the things.

Man. Okay. This is interesting, though. So a California park ranger, he's out doing his patrols in the California's East Bay Municipal Utility District. He's in the Sierra Nevada foothills. He starts noticing all kind of petrified trees. No one knew about it. Finds a bunch of petrified

trees, finds a bunch more petrified trees and eventually realizes it's like this giant debris pile of stuff from what year? Eight million years. Eight million year old debris pile of trees. And in here they find, once they get to digging around,

an 8 million year old mastodon skull with both tusks intact. Six foot skulls on this thing. A rhino skeleton from back when we had rhinoceroses. It was a giant tortoise. It was a horse. There's a tape here. Here It was a horse. It was a tapir. Here's the good one. Yeah.

The remains of an ancestral 400 pound salmon. With? With sharp teeth. Yeah. Don't leave that out. A sharp tooth salmon. That weighs 400 pounds. 400 pound salmon running out of the rivers. Running out of the oceans.

A gomphothere, which I didn't know about. It was an ancient elephant that had four tusks. Plus 600 petrified trees. That is so neat. One of the most significant fossil

discoveries in California history. They suspect floods and volcanic debris flows One of the most significant fossil discoveries in California history. They suspect floods and volcanic debris flows carried all this junk to this spot. That is cool. Yep. They won't tell anybody where it is because some guy like me. It'd be so hard if someone's like, oh, yeah, right up there, man. Keep finding all this crazy shit.

That you wouldn't go, eh, have a look. That's Steve, all right. Steve, all a look i have a quick look up there do we know if this was like one event or is it layers of i didn't read that much yeah i think everything they found there um it's supposed to be a uh from the mayo scene uh which is 20 million to 5.3 million years ago. So there, I think there were kind of layers and stuff scattered across an entire area. And it's funny, like the, the ranger found one petrified tree and then kept walking around and found some others. And then over, I think it was a couple of weeks, like kept going back to the site. He kept sniffing around up there.

Yeah. And then he's like, you know, I think I need to call someone. Yeah, it would have been like, if I was that ranger, they'd be like, what did you see up there? Nothing. And then your next Instagram post would have... Why were you up there with a wheelbarrow? Your next Instagram post might have some tusk in the back.

Nothing, why? No, that's great, man. You wouldn't do that. That's a cool find. When you think about all the cool animals that were here a long time ago, I like to imagine we're not going to be around forever. Just whatever.

When you get into geologic time, a disease event, whatever the hell, we'll destroy ourselves. Like no species gets to be here forever. Except the cockroach. Cockroaches. If you could come here, like fast, instead of going back in time, like I'm like, oh, I want to go back in time to see all that crazy stuff. If you could go in time and go like, I i'm gonna come back to the earth in a billion years

there'd be a bunch of crazy shit running around oh yeah yeah and what do you think we'd look like like dudes with four tusks i don't know oh it'd be interesting oh this guy and um this guy in idaho we got to talking about uh ravens killing livestock and deer and stuff. This was reported. I was surprised when this was reported. It was reported in The Hill. Yeah, right.

Of all publications. An Idaho farmer. He's always had bald eagles nest on his property. Says this year something weird happened. He thinks that because it was such a cool spring that these bald eagles came to nest, but the fishery wasn't kicking ass yet. I don't know. He's got a lake, and he said it took a while to warm up,

and he's wondering if their normal food source in the lake wasn't available when they showed up to nest. Anyways, they killed 54 lambs, 12 to 80-pound lambs. He watched one eagle kill seven lambs. In one day. Yeah, reported in the Hill. Last little note here. Hunters in West Virginia are mourning the loss of one of their hunting spots.

They rolled, what's this place called? New River Gorge National Park. Used to be New River gorge uh whatever preserve was preserved national yeah they horked 7 000 acres of land out of the core of this thing to make a national park so 7 000 acres in in the heart of the gorge which is very rough terrain local sales some of the area's best hunting grounds um they rolled that out there's still 65 000 acres that you can hunt they removed 7 000 and then gave a little bonus where they added about 370 acres of newly opened hunting lands. But yeah, stole 7th Park Service. I don't want to say stole.

That's strong language. I just hate to see that kind of thing happen. I mean, if it's already good and protected, as scenic river, wilderness area, whatever, I hate to see it be that they lay in this like you can't hunt it. Like I like to see ground protected from industrial exploitation and development, but it's a bummer to see that, to get it pulled. Has anyone ever been to that area? I've been there.

Yeah. Have you? Yeah, New Rivers got great smallmouth fishing. Really? Yeah, and it's fairly close to a lot of pretty big metro metropolitan areas so you know i'm sure visits at this place will be you know there'll be a lot of people going but uh yeah it's a bummer that land got because because i believe they're promised that they could always yeah under that was part of the deal. Under the previous designation.

And then they changed their tune. Our newest national park. How open arms are people about it? Are like locals that hunted it? Well, I'm not, I mean, I can't, I mean, I didn't live near there enough to know how upset people are. But you got to imagine that, you you get your hunt your quote your hunting spot taken away you're not going to be too pleased you know um we when i was living in new york we used to float the upper delaware near calicoon and that had gone under wild and scenic river

designation man you saw a lot of signs up and down the river people pissed about it because the regulation like use regulations changed people were pissed about it um and this thing became under as a national river under park protection in 78 and people were assured you could hunt the entire property but then it uh then they just lost 10 prohibited prohibited. Yeah. I mean, I'd imagine some hunters are really kind of pissed about it. Um, based on just some of the articles I've read, but you know, I guess some of the other locals are, are,

uh, you know, excited about potential, uh, economic prosperity you might bring to the area. I mean, it's, I guess it'll put West Virginia on the map a bit more.

So I guess it depends on what your priority is. Oh yeah. If you're like a run in a canoe livery. Yep. You're probably excited as all get out. Yep. All those non-outdoors out, you know, all those non-true outdoors folks. Hikers and bikers, hikers and bikers are all fired up.

Last little thing here we'll touch off on. I want to touch off and it's just because it's from my home state of Michigan. Hikers and bikers. Hikers and bikers are all fired up. Last little thing here we'll touch off on. I want to touch off, and it's just because it's from my home state of Michigan. Like, there's got to be, I need to know more to the story. So, what is written here is, come on, Corinne, a massive fish poaching? Well, I don't know. Look at all those laid out. 85, you know, bags. 85 bags, freezer size. I know.

I need to hear more. There's got to be more of the story. If you want to find a good guest, get this guy on. I'm guessing he doesn't feel like talking about it. But Corinne's massive fish poaching operation. I don't know what happened. Huron County, two guys fined $8,500 combined for, quote, poaching hundreds of walleye, panfish, and perch. By panfish, I mean bluegills?

Because perch are like a panfish. I don't know. Either way, a bunch of fish. This guy's freezer got raided. And then a game warden, this is a weird thing. There's a lot of too does i don't understand they thought out all the guy's fish and then they laid it out and laid it out on tarps he had as if it were like bricks of cocaine and like automatic

right yeah laid out after a bust as though like in classic drug raid fashion. Laid out hundreds of perch fillets. Yeah. Like a cocaine. Like when you line up with a bunch of AKs and bags of dope and stuff from some like cartel raid. Perch fillets. Hundreds of perch fillets laid out on giant tarps. And in all of his empty Ziploc baggies.

So his freezer got raided. And a conservation officer found 85 bags of frozen walleye, quote panfish, I'm not happy with that term, and perch fill. In his house. The guy was ordered to pay $7,930 worth of fines. And his friend was fined $600 for taking over the limit of perch. Taking over the limit of perch is one thing. But the reason I need to know more is like, was this dude, I don't know. Maybe that they were on to him for something else and that led to this. But there are a lot of people I know in Michigan that if at the end of a good fishing spell, you went to their house and started thawing all their shit out,

you'd find they had over their possession limit. What, what is including my old man back when he was alive. And even with following possession limit rules, if you've got say four or five people in your household, you can have a lot of damn perch in your freezer. Okay, let's say you're in, because it varies, because the big lakes are different. Let's say you're in an area, just for argument's sake here. Let's say where he's at, he's allowed 50 perch per day.

And the possession limit is two daily limits. So he can have, in his his home freezer 200 perch fillets. But let's say you like... No one thinks about it. If you're tearing it up and you're like, oh, I'm going to have a big fish fry. I don't know. And you catch five, six limits of perch because you're saving up for a big church fundraiser.

Fish fry. There's got to be more to the story. He hadn't gotten on their radar somehow. No one's thinking about it after they go in the freezer. No. Like, he's probably, you know. I think about it with ducks. He's probably, yeah.

Because that's federal, like, crazy. Someone must turn him in. Not crazy, but. Maybe not, but I imagine he's, like, following, like, the daily limit. Well, they're saying this one guy got not. But here's the other thing. What are they going to do with all those perch flies now they got them thawed out? Feed them to the bald eagles.

Holy cow. I know. 85 bags of perch flies. And they're nice, scaled, skin on, well put up flies. It's not like they just caught them and didn't take care of them. They took care of this fish. This dude was, I don't know if he's selling them. What we found in the past in talking to conservation guys, game wardens,

and I'm not hacking on this game warden. I don't know the story. But a lot of times that stuff comes out of that they're on to you about something. You've done something. They're on to you about it, and that leads. It's not like they're just going and banging on doors and digging through freezers. It's got to be something because yeah i'm sure they weren't like hey we should stop stop and see what this guy has in his freezer like something happened

maybe so here's another article and i it it it doesn't point out kind of like the backstory but the main guy with you know those 85 bags, Ziploc freezer bags. Okay. I just want to get a barrel of cornmeal and just start putting a fertilizer spreader and just drive that over that big sheet of... Some Tony C's. 55-gallon drum of hot oil.

Here, this guy had... Go ahead, Grin. He had 35 walleye. The daily limit is eight. In what? In his freezer? Yeah. Okay.

Among the, you know, within the 85 taken that day, 85 bags taken that day, 35 walleye. The daily limit is eight, and anglers may possess an additional two days limit of walleye as long as they're processed with a total possession limit of 24. That's a lot of walleye, the daily limit is 8, and anglers may possess an additional two days limit of walleye as long as they're processed, with a total possession limit of 24. That's a lot of walleye. You're allowed to have a lot of walleye in your freezer. 245 panfish, the daily limit is 25. You're talking about bluegills there. Okay, bluegills.

It'd be like bluegill, pumpkin seed, you know. Yep. With a total possession limit of 75. And he was over by 393 additional perch. The daily limit is 25. And you can possess an additional two days limit as long as they're processed with a total possession limit of 75. We're talking about a lot of things here that we don't really know about. But my, here's, I just want to explain this.

My instinct when I see all those purge plays is like, I've known this guy all my life. Do you know what I mean? Maybe it's part of a sting operation to uncover dozens of your extended friends and family. It's like my old man and the old man he hung out with. I feel like I'm staring into their freezer. These folks are 68 and 53. I got to scroll. I got to scroll.

I can't handle it. They might have had a side hustle going on selling these things. Well, do you remember that big sting we reported on? It was like, we reported on this a long time ago. Y'all hang tight, dude. Okay. We reported on this a long time ago. It was a big sting operation. It even had a name like North Star.

And you read this. It was a poaching ring and you read the the the all the charges on these guys like racketeering wire fraud but it was and i'm not excuse it but it had these names where you look and you think like oh it's the mafia like they broke up a mafia organization because racketeering and wire fraud but But the wire fraud was like, you had to do a call in to register your deer. So a dude shoots two deer, has his girlfriend claim one on her tag. So she calls in to report,

to report the deer to the deer harvest hotline. That's wire fraud. Right. Racketeering would be a guy goes to he brings a buck down to his taxidermist to get it stuffed and pays the taxidermist and smokies smoke like snack sticks i'm not joking pays the taxidermist and snack sticks and then they had a deal worked out where they got like reduced taxidermy to then get extra snack sticks. And then they had some guy who had a gift shop, and he's selling snack sticks that made off their deer smokies.

And then another guy, here's another thing in this big roll-up. There's another fraud. There's a walleye derby. A guy goes ahead of the derby and goes and catches a walleye in a different state. Puts them in his live well and drives over and signs up for the derby at a gas station. Like the gas

station is holding a walleye derby. And wins the prize with walleye he caught in another state and had them in his live well. And it winds up being like this interstate fraud thing. So on paper it's like, holy shit, what were these guys doing and you look there's doing a bunch of like hillbilly bullshit like a bunch of things you would probably wouldn't like a lot of guys wouldn't think about

you know you're like oh yeah i owe you 100 bucks let me bring you some smokies it's just yeah You know? Yep. You're like, oh, yeah, I owe you $100. Let me bring you some Smokies. It's just, yeah. Yeah. 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

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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. Alright, y'all. how do you want to start mung you're mung yes sir h m o n g let's start from the beginning okay who are who are the mung so the where are you from first? Where did you establish that? I'm in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis area. Okay. I live in Blaine, which is a city right outside of Minneapolis. And you're a hunter? Newly hunter, yeah. New hunter. Yeah.

And you're Hmong? Yes. And you were born in? I was born in Laos. Okay. Yep. Walk us through who the Hmong were and how. So the Hmong are an ethnic minority group originally from the southern parts of China.

And they, at some point, were fighting with the Chinese because the Chinese wanted them to basically become Chinese. And a lot of the Hmong were like, no, they're a nomadic tribe. They have their own language. They have their own religion. We did not want to be Chinese. And so they were driven south into the Southeast Asian area, so Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. And that's where if you, as a person here in the U.S., if you meet a Hmong person, they're from Southeast Asia, essentially. And a lot of us have the same story is we were

here because of our involvement in the Vietnam War, more specifically, the secret war in Laos. What, uh, I have probably the same level of exposure, um, to Hmong culture is, is a lot of people that hunt where I, it's like, I just know, have always known very loosely that there's a lot of Hmong in the U S kind of had something to do with the Vietnam war and they like to hunt a lot.

And that's about it. That's accurate. But break down how the Hmong got tangled up with the U.S., how they became on the U.S. radar. Yeah, so back

in the 50s and 60s when it was around the spread of communism in that area. So the idea was we had to stop the spread of communism in that region. So you had North Vietnam, which was then trying to take over the country. You have the communist forces. So I'm not trying to talk about one particular group, but it was, it was around the essentially stopping communism.

And so the reason why it was called the secret war in Laos is like the, you know, the U S were not supposed to be, be there. And they were, uh, there to be advisors, um, in that region to use and advise the local governments there to fight against the spread of communism. Yeah, because didn't – like portions of the Ho Chi Minh Trail came through Laos, right? Yeah, basically most of it did. That was essentially what it was. It was a supply line and it occupied the eastern parts of laos my uh former neighbor at our fish shack in alaska was a door gunner

on a helicopter in vietnam and he now talks about it freely but for a long time did not he spent he spent his entire tour based in Vietnam, but he said all their stuff was in Laos. Dropping people off, picking them up, at that time, JFK, who said, yes, look into working with some of the ethnic minority group in that area to help with, like, stopping the spread. And really where Hmong people came in were, they knew the terrain. Hmong people throughout history have, they were actually fighting even before the Vietnam War.

They, they actually, oddly enough, they were fighting with the French because you'd been Vietnam and I don't know if you remember the kind of like the French colonization. Oh yeah. The influence, the influence there. And oddly enough, they'd always been fighting for their freedom.

If, if, if you look at some of the publications, they've always wanted to kind of be left alone. We want to be our own people and we were fighting against evil forces is kind of like what they would say. In their mind, the outside communist influence was more of a threat to them than anything else. Correct. To their autonomy. Correct. Right. So that's how they got involved.

And they were essentially used to, because they could just get places quicker. Right. You know, the only thing that they didn't have were, they didn't have firearms, you know, which eventually came from working with the CIA. Yeah. What did the Hmong traditionally hunt with? They have like these crossbows. eventually came from working with the CIA. Yeah. What did the Hmong traditionally hunt with? They have like these crossbows. So it's like a wooden stock. And then like the cross would be like a, it could be wood or it was like, it could be bamboo.

And then they use for the strings, they, for the strings, they use like a material called hemp. I don't know if you guys have heard that, but but it's like a fabric, um, and they use hemp and, uh, like hemp they use for like clothing as well. And so, you know, that thing doesn't shoot really far. Right. And so, um, it was like mostly for small game

birds. Um, my, my dad, so my grandfather owned one. If you had a blacksmith, um, in the village who could like forge parts, um, you built your own flint stock. I know you guys had an episode about flint stock up a while ago. Flint lock. Oh, flint lock.

Right. Um, you know, you, it would be made out of wood and then you had, you had, had different parts and then they cooked up their own ammunition. And I, and I learned this recently too, is they went and got bat dung from the caves and use that to like reduce it to some liquid and then cooked it up with hemp as well.

And my dad said he doesn't know the exact process. They were able to make gunpowder. Yeah, they were able to make gunpowder. Yeah, we've talked about, on here we've talked about the process about which boon and other frontiersmen would make. And they would say anything, they'd go to caves for the guano. Oh, okay, okay, yeah. And then somehow they would use, you had to have,

yeah, they'd get saltpeter, yeah. And then somehow they would use, you had to have, yeah, they'd get saltpeter, ash, it took willow ash, your own piss. They'd wet the thing down with piss, and then they used saltpeter, bat guano. I can't remember. Anyways, seems like a way to wind up with a product that wasn't entirely consistent. And I knew that because we had a very prominent member in our clan who recently passed away. And I learned that he had been badly burned because he was cooking up his own ammo. We recently covered a story or discussed a story in Taiwan where the Taiwanese government is passing anti-hunting regulations that are impacting indigenous Taiwanese. Talk about the indigenous Taiwanese still there hunting with homemade guns. And they want to switch to modern guns and people don't want them to switch to modern guns.

And they're pointing out the danger danger the danger to them of hunting with homemade firearms they want to have something safer yeah but they don't want they're they're afraid of the efficacy that would come from and so there's a desire to keep them hunting with with homemade weapons yeah but then the americans give them like yeah um my dad said his first his first gun was an m1 carbine. So 30 is like a 30 cal. Uh-huh. Um, um, you know, I, I recently, I just kind of really gotten into hunting. And so, you know, again, I'm going back and kind of just learning about the first guns that they came, they came across.

What year was your dad born? Uh, 52. Yep. So was he, did he, does he have recollection like of the mung getting tangled up with the americans yeah yeah and actually fast forward a little bit the kind of like montana connection in all this there was a there was a smoke jumper uh by the name of jerry daniels uh right out of here out of missoula i think he was born in california but lived in Missoula. That's why there's Hmong people in Missoula farming and there's a community there.

Fast forward that a little bit. And my dad was telling me the story that to come to America, this Jerry Daniels guy was worked really closely with the Hmong and he was the guy that validated my dad's picture. Oh really? And said, hey, yes, you are, in fact, a soldier. And, you know, because it was.

Because he was a special forces soldier. Well, yeah. So my, well, everybody was. No, I mean the guy that was instrumental in bringing Hmong to the. Yes. You know, when I lived in Missoula for, I lived there for quite a few years. The farmer's market there is just dominated by Hmong truck farmers. The other day I was with my buddy,

I was with my buddy Clay and I was showing him around there. And they still have like out in certain areas in Missoula, irrigation diversions and stuff for these sort of like semi-urban, suburban farms. And wear the traditional hats. My neighbor, turns out, Bee and Sheng are from Missoula.

What's his name? B. B? B. Mua and Shang Mua. They lived in Missoula pretty much most of their lives. And they just moved into our neighborhood. We moved into the neighborhood at the same time. We live in kind of a newer development.

And we saw them at, like, our kids' schools. And, you know, you can just kind of tell they're Hmong, right? So you just say, hey, how's it going? So if you're a Hmong dude and you see a Hmong dude you don't know at a non-Hmong function, you just go, hi. Or do you like talk? Do you like plan dinner or do you just talk? Do you just wave? Or nod? It's cool to go up there and say, hey, it's, it's, it's cool to,

it's cool to go up there and say, Hey, you know, you know, you're, I'm, I'm mung. How are you doing? You know,

like you're just curious. That's how you do it. Yeah. Okay. So let, let me just, I'll get this straight. Let's say you come in and let's say Phil's mung.

You never seen him, never heard of him. You walk in this room and Phil's mung. Yeah. You say, are you mung? Yeah, I would,

I would. Okay. Because you can kind of just tell. You would just nod. But you like already could tell. It would be like a knowing nod. I mean, it's polite to just ask him, what if he's not?

Well, I actually saw a family on my flight here yesterday in Minneapolis, and they were sitting there. And you had a feeling. Yeah. Well, you knew because then they were, so I was just like, hey, how you guys doing? And they were like, they were sitting there and you had a feeling. Yeah. Well, you knew because then they were, you know, so I was just like, Hey, how you guys doing? And they were like, Hey, you know, why are you going to Montana?

I was like, Oh yeah, I'm just going to go meet some friends. You know? So, so yeah, I mean, they were just, so you felt obligated to go chat. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. All right. That's cool.

Yeah. Okay. I want to get back to Asia for a minute and your family history, but then I want to, we got to move into, um, stereotypes about Hmong hunters. Okay. I want to get back to Asia for a minute. Yeah. But then I want to, we got to move into stereotypes about Hmong hunters. Okay. Yep. And I'll tell you a whole bunch of them. Okay. Yeah.

In hunting land, in hunting world, there's two groups that everyone knows are just the worst on the planet. They're so everything. Everybody in bottoms it's uh the amish and the mung are you know they don't look like us yeah but they like to hunt which makes me not like them um you hear about so i want to fast forward a little bit through the vietnam war okay so americans start to pull out and you guys got a big old bullseye on your back. Yeah. Because we abandoned it and people were like, it's those, like they're after you now, right? Exactly. I mean, the communists come down hard.

Exactly. Yeah. And lay out kind of like with your own family history, what that wound up looking like for you guys when the Americans left. Yeah. So I was telling Corindus, you know, in the U.S S in some states, they are recognized like May 14th as Hmong American day. And that was like the last day that essentially all the key advisors and some of the key Hmong military personnel were evacuated out of Laos. What year? 1975. Okay. Yep. And so even, even before then in 1973, they had already signed a ceasefire in Paris.

So when they signed that ceasefire, it essentially turned Laos into a civil war country because you had the group or the military that I think supports the royal family, which Laos was a monarchy at some point. And then you had the group that is supported by the communists. So essentially, they're still fighting to take over the country at that point. And so 1975, everybody leaves. And essentially, to your point, Hmong people have a bullseye on their, you know, on them. And my family, between 1975 and 1979, were essentially in the jungles of Laos, hiding, trying to go places where you could find relatives, family, food, if you will. And there were still kind of groups that were hoping that those who were airlifted out would come back and take back the country is kind of what they say. Right. So for four years, my family were, we're basically just running around in the jungle, if you, if you will. Just like in hiding, living off the land, trying to avoid communists. Exactly.

Exactly. Um, I get credit for being the oldest in our family. Um, but actually like I lost two siblings in that time as well. Yeah. Tell how that happened. Uh, I had a, uh, six year old brother and the way that it was explained to me was, um, again, they're walking, you know, uh, in this particular instance, they're walking through the night and they had come under heavy fire and we, we had some relatives with us. My mom takes him, he's six, gives him to a relative, um, who is a gentleman

because he can actually carry them. Right. And then my mom had me and then my mom had grandma and so she gives him to our relative and they make a dash for for um the other side of this road from from my understanding well my mom and i make it across with other people. And as this relative and my brother are coming through, he says that he, he thinks my brother gets, gets shot. So when you, when you carry somebody on your back, like, like a child, they probably have some sort of tension. They have a grip on you sort of, right? Well, he says that, um, he claims that as they were running through and they, they came under heavy fire, um, at some point my brother let go. And so at that point he said that he made the decision

to essentially leave my brother where he was and, like, kept running. So they get to the other side and, you know, my mom's like, hey, you know, where's my brother? What was your brother's name? Tong. And so our relative goes, well, you know, he's been shot. I left him in that general area. So my mom gives herself up.

It's like, hey, you know, my mom's like, I'm a woman. They're not going to do anything to me. They don't care. I'm just going to give myself up. I'm going to go try to find, you know, my brother. She gives herself up. She's captured. She comes around and first she says she calls for him and no answer.

Right. And she's like, well, maybe he really is, is gone because he would have answered at that point. The other thing was she's like, I'm calling, I'm calling to ask if anybody knows if perhaps, he's next to somebody who's still alive. Yeah. If he would share like where you are. Well, people don't want to give himself up. Right. Because if you give yourself up, you know,

then. Got it. There's a chance you die as well. Right. So there's that. So that's how I lost my older brother. No resolution though. No resolution.

Yep. No idea where he's buried. No idea. Yep. Exactly. And then you lost a buried. No idea. Yep. Exactly. And then you lost a sister. I lost a sister. In the same time period.

In the same time period. And so my, my, my sister was lost in kind of this weird situation where they, again, they were, you know, and it's related to hunting, you know, they get to this village and, you know, they're like, they just, they're starving, right. I mean, you're, you're running around, um, you're hiding and you don't really have much to eat. And so, um, the story is my dad goes and traps this squirrel looking animal and he can't find the, like the English equivalent or the American equivalent of it I was able to find some YouTube so I'll send it to you guys if you guys are interested but he's he finds this this type of squirrel it like burrows itself into next to tree stumps into the ground you know um in when I was in Vietnam I was with a guy that had killed a... You wrote about that in your book.

He had killed a squirrel-like creature that was some kind of like, I think it was like an arboreal marsupial of some sort. But it looked a lot like a squirrel, and he killed it. He showed me the tree where he got it. He killed it with an air rifle. Yeah, maybe it's...

I had never seen one in my life. I didn't see it until he'd already burned the hair off it. But it was – the equivalent would be like a squirrel-sized critter. Yeah. So the story is that he goes and gets – traps one of those. They come back and they cook it, and she somehow got sick from that and like passed within like a half a day or something. Really?

So again, I get credit for being the oldest, but I lost two siblings. And then essentially they were- And you were alive at that point, but just very little. Yeah. I mean, you were young. I was like months, months old. Months old. Yeah.

How much, were the monk pissed at the Americans for leaving? I wouldn't say that, no. No. I mean, I think from everybody that I've talked to, if anything, I think Hmong people have more resentment against the Hmong who left, if anything. More resentment against the Hmong who left earlier or who left earlier? Who left the country in general, right? So they'd have resentment against your people? Yeah.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. For splitting. For splitting. Yeah. Like I'll be honest, Laos probably isn't the first place I'd travel to. No kidding.

So you, so Hmong and Laos would regard you guys as like traitors. Yeah. You can say that. Yeah. I would, I would agree with that statement. Yeah, exactly. Like as a young person, I don't know the Laotian language.

If I knew the language, I'd probably think about, hey, I might want to visit. It's pretty country. But like my wife and I, I don't think we have like Laos isn't our, you know, like the first place we'd visit. Simply because I think they would have more resentment against like me versus Americans. There are people who didn't make it to refugee camps who didn't make it out of the country eventually. Exactly.

And they kind of stayed behind and are still in the jungle all these years later, like living a hard life. And still being, you know, in a sense, like, like persecuted by, by sense, persecuted by people there. It's funny because you hear, I shouldn't say it's funny, but you so often hear in relation to China and recently in relation to Taiwan and other places where you hear about persecution of ethnic minorities. And I think it's hard for Americans to get that kind of geopolitical sense to understand that even in those places, you had indigenous peoples who had these distinct cultures. And so the same way you might have this sense of, in America, you have this Euro-American culture.

We all know it well. You have this Euro-American culture that collaborated with, warred with indigenous peoples, and there's still like indigenous autonomy in places. But this is something that happens all around the world. Like displaced indigenous individuals that in some way live oftentimes, especially there, live much closer to the land than in other places. Or that ethnic minorities did not attain their own nation states. Like the majority of China is Han Chinese. There are many, many ethnic groups that just didn't get their own country that they're in power.

And specific to the Hmong it was really because as an ethnic minority we occupied you know in in our case like Laos the hillsides of Laos you know I mean I think this happens everywhere too is like you just don't like you know ethnic minorities occupying that don't have a country occupying yeah yeah like your land you know so walk through how you what was the process by which you guys ended up in the U.S.? And why did you, why do so many Hmong go to Minnesota? Yeah, I get asked that all the time. You know, like, do you guys like the cold or something?

Well, I mean, if you think about it, if we occupied the hillsides, you know, the altitude was higher. So we're, you could say we're used to the cold. The reason why we ended up in Minnesota was purely by chance. So if you, again, if you meet a Hmong person here in the U.S., their story is fairly similar. You got a target on you when, you know, everybody pulls out, you essentially had to make your way to one of these refugee camps, the biggest one being in, in Thailand. So. Oh,

so you had to get out of the country. Oh, you had to, you had to get out of the country on foot through the jungles, you know, whatever it is that you took the men. Um, I,

I get told the story all the time. The men, you know, when people started pulling out, the men would like go and buy tubes for themselves, like, like, you know, inner tubes. Okay. You know what I mean? You know, and. For crossing rivers?

For crossing the river, for crossing the Mekong. Um, because they knew that at some point they would come to the river and they would need to cross it. Huh. And so, you know, my parents get like separated. They get back together, get separated through various reasons. Well, they make it to the river together, thankfully, you know, and some people didn't make it to the river together.

They were like separated the whole time, had to meet up back in Thailand. The Mekong Forge is the border between Laos and. Correct. Yes. Okay. And then it flows into Vietnam. Yeah.

So if you cross the river, you like, you make it to Thailand, essentially. They get to the river. My dad puts, you know, my dad can't swim, puts in the tube. And, but the way my mom explains it is like, she basically thought he was going to drown. Because. Can't swim. Can't swim. How's that possible?

Only has, only has a tube. Because they're up in the mountains. Yeah. Can't swim. Can't swim. How is that possible? Only has a tube. Because they're up in the mountains. Yeah, because they're up in the mountains. I mean, I think they fish, but I mean, there's really not, from my understanding, there's really not places for you to go like to swim or learn how to swim. Yeah.

I had a friend who grew up on a ranch at 9,000 feet in Wyoming and she says, none of us know how to swim. Yeah. There's nothing to swim in yeah yeah so there's nothing to swim and it's cold so um so yeah he tosses and turns I mean my my mom says that he's he's gone there I mean there's you know a lot of people died crossing that river for some reason he makes it across and you know the way he explains it but what about the kids well the kids stayed on the

other side I mean you you the idea was if he makes it across, he can maybe find Thai officials or something. I'm with you. That can then come and- So you can just send one person across and then- Yes, exactly. Come back with a boat or whatever. Yeah. Got it.

So he goes by himself. He goes by himself. Not with your mom. No, not with my mom, my grandma, and whoever else, my aunt. There's this whole slew of people there. And you guys are just like living off the land at this point. Yeah, exactly. I'll get to this.

But he tosses and turns, gets across, and he like sits down to rest. And the way he describes it is this thing comes out of the water. And he thinks it's like some you know among people believe in like like water dragons or something something like that right like mystic like some mystical animal right he's like this thing comes out of the water i'm like he's like i'm done for it's like it's it's probably some you know animal that's like coming to eat me right i guess i guess it creates a wave or something what turns out that it was a tie boat that saw him cross and came to get him and so they a boat yeah uh so he was kind of tripping from yeah yeah yeah he was in rough

shape yeah he was he didn't know what it was i mean from his, he thought it was some like dragon, right? He's like, oh boy, this is it. You know, this is it. I crossed the river and this is it. Turns out it was like two Thai officials with their boat. And so they go, they grab him, go to the other side and grab the rest of the family and and and ferry them across so that's how we make it to thailand so there has to be tension between thailand and laos well um at at that point because they're helping they're like taking in and assisting in the escape of of people

that they're trying to catch well at that point in kind of the history of this, you know, I think even the U.S. government coined it like the domino theory, you know, because they were like, basically if one of these countries fall, the rest in that region is going to fall. And so at that point, you know, Thailand wasn't at war or didn't have any. Hadn't gone calm.

Yeah. So, and I guess through whatever political treaties that they had at that time, I suppose the Thai camp was the big refugee camp that everybody had to get to, right? So they go to the refugee camp and essentially he goes and meets up with his commanding officer by chance. Four days later – The guy he'd served with during the war. The guy that he served with, the commanding officer had heard that my dad was still in Laos, essentially running, right? Hiding, running. And four days after getting to the refugee camp, he goes into the room, the commanding

officer's there. And the gentleman I mentioned earlier from Missoula, Jerry Daniels, is in the room. He says that, well, I knew who Jerry was. And, you know, Jerry was one of those guys. He was like an advisor, but he was the guy who would like train everybody on guns or taught people, you know, like the type of guns. Like he would come and say, hey, do you know what this M1 is? Do you know what this M16 is?

You know, do you know what this m1 is do you know what this m16 is you know do you know these things um he goes into the room and by this time my dad was um the way he described he was so thin that neither of those guys recognized who my dad was and they say hey what are you guys doing in here and he you know my know, my dad goes, my dad's name is Dua. So my dad goes, you know, I'm Dua and I served under you. And like, basically they had this big group hug, right? And I think there was just like, hey, we, you know, we thought you were, you were gone or you were still running around. Um, and so I know I, I just arrived four days, four days earlier. So essentially the, the journey to here was, so they, they get there,

Jerry confirms, Hey, you are a soldier. And that's when the process starts to come to America. My dad wanted to go to California first because there had already been some people here in California, um, some relatives and they gave him two choices, California or Minnesota. And my dad said, I'm going to go to California. Well, they did the paperwork and it's like, well, the, the people in California that you say are your, they're only your clans people. It's not immediate, immediate family. I see. Yeah.

So there's like, we're looking for immediate family. Well, even though in the Hmong culture, your clansmen are actually much more important than say like your sister even, right? Okay. Your clansmen is really, you know, when you talk about Hmong families, it's all about the clan. So I'm a part of a clan.

Those guys aren't, they're your clan, but they're not like your first cousins or anything. They're not your brothers. So we can't send you to California. So they get stuck there for seven months. They're in the refugee camps for seven months. And then my mom had a brother and we also had other Klansmen end up in Minnesota.

Around that time, there's a couple Christian organizations in, um, groups and people in Rochester, Minnesota. This is actually, it's actually where we ended up was in Rochester, Minnesota. Uh, and I, we, we still keep in contact with those folks today and we hunt on their land. And I had a conversation with them a few weeks ago and the story from them was, you know, it was just two couples, James and Varee, and then Bill and Sandy, who they like, they were friends and they got together and they say, hey, we want to do something. We want to sponsor a family. And their reason was it was just the right thing to do. You know, they knew that Hmong people fought in the war alongside the U.S. and they just wanted to do something out of the kindness of their heart. So they talked to some folks, and they get together with their respective churches,

and they say, well, we want to sponsor a family. That family ended up being us. So we end up in Rochester, Minnesota, and we had an uncle, my mom's half brother as well as some other clansmen up in the twin cities and so we end up in Rochester for um two years and then we moved up to the twin cities basically uh what year so what year did you land here uh 1980 so you're what, six years old? Yeah. Well, I was one and a half. My brother. Oh, I was counting from, I'm sorry, I'm counting the wrong year. Yeah.

So 75 to 79, I was born in 79, where we make it to the refugee camp in 1979. I got you. Essentially a year passes and then we end up in Rochester. 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

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slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Tell everybody about the prohibition on eating animal hearts. Yeah. So, yeah, you're going to like this. So, among people, before the introduction to Christianity, so we talked a little bit earlier about French influence in Southeast Asia. Some of the very first non-Hmong people, non-Asians that Hmong people came in contact with were French mission missionaries, priests that introduced Hmong people to Christianity.

I grew up Catholic. I was telling Corinne this. And for the longest time, I didn't know why. But I grew up Catholic. So the traditional religion is, you know, they call it animist, shamanism, the belief in ancestral spirits, right? And so if you were sick, we didn't believe that it was like physically you were sick. You know, we believe that there was, your spirit was sick. There was some sort of spiritual imbalance. So you would employ the service of a shaman. He would come and he's somebody who can go into the spirit world and fix your spirit or battle the spirit or the evil spirits and ward it off, right? And that would make you better. Well, the story around the heart is there's a curse that's laid on a very specific clan group, and I'm a part of that group.

Okay. Yeah. So your group is under a curse. Yeah. And this is a legitimate curse. And the curse this is legitimate. This is a legitimate curse. So, um, and the, the, the curse goes as follows. Uh, so the religion, you know, animus shamanism, um, the story is that there was a long time ago, there was, there was a ceremony going on. And,

uh, so this was a traditional ceremony in that ceremony, they were cooking up the stew, right? And the stew in there, there's different versions of this depending on who tells it, but there was a young man or a boy that was nearby to wash the stew. Make sure no one messes with it. Yeah, make sure nobody messes with it. And the only significant detail that I remember from what this young man or young boy was that, um, he had a mental disability. So, so, you know, to be, not to be like politically incorrect, but he was, he was like, um, they, they, in the Hmong word, they, they said like, he's, he was slow.

Right. And so, um, he's, his task was to wash his stew. So these guys go off and do the thing, come back. And when they come back to grab the heart, it's nowhere to be found. Got it. And they can't find it in the stew at all. And so they talk it over. And the conclusion that they came up with was, well, we need to use his heart.

Sure. Yeah, go on. We need to use his heart. Sure. Yeah. Go on. Yeah. We, we need to use his because he can't like, in a way, I think he can't defend himself. Like, well, the slow boy.

Yeah. Yeah. So they're like, not only that, but if like, I think the idea was like, well, they were asking him like,

where was it? He like, he couldn't explain. Right. So they looked all over., can't find the heart. He must have eaten it. Yeah. So he must have eaten it.

And so at this point, if he's, he must have eaten it, then in order to, to make things right, well, we had to use his. And so what they ended up doing was they ended up killing the boy using his heart. So they do that. And as the story goes, they, they, they find the boy, you know, dead. And at the end of this ceremony and everybody's cleaning up, they come back and they're cleaning this pot. Well, hell the heart was stuck at the bottom of this, this pot. Right.

And so now a big, a big coverup ensues. Yeah. They jumped to some wild conclusions, man. It was in there all along. Yeah. So they're, you know, they're, they're, they're, um, conspiring amongst themselves. Like we got to cover this. Right.

And there's a, um, and I don't know this, I don't know the significance of the lady. She might've been like a relative of the boy, of the young man. Well, she overhears what they had done. So she lays the curse, which is a doozy, right? Basically the curse is from this day forth, none of the men in this clan. What is the name of your clan?

Well, my last name is Yang. So I'm a part of the Yang clan this clan. What is the name of your clan? Well, my last name is Yang. So I'm a part of the Yang clan. Okay. Right. So in, in Hmong culture, there's 18 clans. So if you, if you're Hmong, you belong in one of these 18, you recognize by the last names of the person. The curse is from this day forth, anybody in this clan, any of the men in this clan, if you eat heart, you will go blind. And you've never eaten heart.

And I'm never eating heart. Now, to be fair, you know, there's 18 clans. And then in those clans, there's subclans, right? So we're not all related because, you know, depending on where you're from in parts of the country, even though I'm a, I'm part of the Yang clan, this curse doesn't actually affect all the Yangs. It only affects like certain sub clans who observe it. Got it.

Yeah. So as a Hmong person, you grow up, well, one for sure, um, you can't marry or date somebody of the same last name. And that applies to the entire like clan. So you have to go out of your clan you have to go to your clan did you oh yeah oh yeah yes yes but your wife's mom my wife's mom yeah but out of clan out of clan she's a vang yeah and so and does she hang on to that name oh yeah she hangs on to it that's my wife did yeah are you sure you know not for any good reason she doesn't have a good

reason like that she said she didn't want to to have to like update all of her stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, mostly the Hmong women hold on to their maiden names. And that curse, yeah, was it another clan that placed the curse on your clan? Or like who? Yeah, that's a good question. I actually don't know. Again, I mentioned I don't know the significance of the woman. Yeah, like where who? The, yeah, that's a good question. I actually don't know. Again, I mentioned, I don't know the significance

of the woman. Yeah, like where it came from. So the woman lays the curse and it only affects the men of very specific sub clans, right? So going back to learning the things you grew up with, number one thing you learn as a Hmong person. Don't marry your clan. You can't marry it because they're considered your brother or your sister.

Got it. For me, number two is you can never eat heart. And you haven't. Really? And I haven't. Like any heart of any animal. No hearts. We have these beef heart pills.

Would you eat a beef heart pill? Right. It's like desiccated. Well, I'm hoping, you know, I've never tried, but I'm hoping I'm, you know, I'm hoping that, you know, like if I were to eat it by accident, you know, I'm hoping like the spirits are okay with that. They'd overlook that. I didn't mean to. Wow. So, you know, every time you eat heart on, you know, wherever on this series or whatever, I like dang I can't do that and my you know my buddies are

you know they're like yeah you know once we you know if we we ever shoot a deer or whatever it is we're just we're gonna eat a heart

in front of you and there's nothing you can do about it you know and I'm like yeah that's true and then you know at family gatherings

you know all the women would eat heart would your wife eat it she would yeah but um all the women like we go to gatherings and all the women be like heart. Would your wife eat it? She would, yeah. But we go to gatherings and all the women would be just making fun of the men

because they're just sitting there eating the heart and they're like, you guys can't touch it. Really? Yeah. Let me tell you a story I heard. Let me tell you a story

me and Yanni heard in Missouri. Okay? Okay. Guy's telling us there's no squirrels around right now. You know where this is going. Yeah. Okay.

We're having all the squirrels. right now. You know where this is going. Okay. We'll have no squirrels. The mung killed them all. Big roving bands of mung came down from Minnesota, conducted a massive squirrel drive, which I didn't know was a thing. I don't know if they got tree climbing gear or what, but they conducted a massive squirrel drive. Okay.

Killed off all the squirrels in order to sell them. And I said, well, who do they sell them to? The other Hmong. And I said, so hold on a minute. So a bunch of Hmong came down from Minnesota, drove to Missouri, conducted a massive squirrel drive, killed all the squirrels, drove back to Minnesota and sold them to of Hmong came down from Minnesota, drove to Missouri, conducted a massive squirrel drive, killed all the squirrels, drove back to Minnesota, and sold them to other Hmong. Correct.

Got it. Do you hear a lot of this kind of stuff? No. I certainly know of Hmong loving squirrels. I mean, squirrels king among the Hmong people, right? Even, even more so than deer. Is that right?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Uh, did you read that article? There's an article in Harper's magazine decades ago called squirrel hunting with the Hmong. I might've, I might've heard of it. Yes.

Yes. Um, but I, I'm not going to die. Hmong people love the squirrels and because they, you know, if you think about it, um, a small game was really what they were able to hunt back in Laos. Got it. And so, you know, call it, you know, just having the, the, the, the love for the taste of squirrel. And my dad today, you know, he would, he, him and I go squirrel hunting or the only hunting with him and I go together is squirrel hunting. And because that's just what they love to do.

I think they like to chase. I'll be honest and say from a lot of people that I've talked to, they're like just somehow really good at hunting squirrels. Okay. And I know there's like squirrel calls out there. I don't know if you guys have heard that they use lemongrass to call in the squirrels. Oh, no.

Yeah, yeah. You ever hear of rubbing two quarters together? I have not, but I've just been taught to like to blow on lemongrass. Early in the season, make a little distress call. I wish we had a piece of lemongrass right now. Yeah. Basically you're creating the stress call of,

of, of baby squirrels. Yeah. Like works when it works, when there's still young squirrels around like in September. Yeah. It brings them all out wondering what the hell's happening. Like a hawk's got one of them or whatever.

Now I will say, I don't know, like I don't see people selling squirrels. You've never gone down to Missouri for a big squirrel drive? I never know. Squirrel roundup. Yeah. The Great Missouri Squirrel Roundup. Yeah, they love squirrels.

I don't know about the selling part. I mean, in Minnesota, if you told me where i go by scores i wouldn't i couldn't tell you yeah the i like i should be clear about uh the point i was trying like the point i was getting at is this idea that um that it's like and you'll hear this often you'll hear this frequently like i hear it frequently it's that um they're these kind of like we hope like in areas where euro-american hunters and they what they would view as competing not like not like they're all hunters together but like there's like you're like competing against this other entity this other group you're

competing against the monk and the monk are kind of um like these sort of supernaturally good hunters but also don't know what they're doing they get to be both things like they get to not know what they're doing but also they're super they have like supernatural prowess and they um zero regard for hunting rules kill everything eat it in weird ways eat weird things i mean you just hear it all the time man i heard it from a guy i don't want to say who was i heard it from a guy i don't want to say who was i heard it from a guy last year complaining about he doesn't hunt squirrels he's a deer hunter doesn't have squirrels complaining about, he doesn't hunt squirrels. He's a deer hunter, doesn't hunt squirrels, complaining about how the Hmong

kill all the squirrels, but you don't hunt squirrels. What do you mean they kill all the squirrels? Whining. If he was hearing about a dude that looked like him hunting squirrels,

he'd be like, that guy's a hell of a squirrel hunter. But if it's a Hmong deer, it's like he's killing all the squirrels. Do you know what I mean? It's just like a thing. Yeah, you mentioned

the Amish earlier, and I'm sure Seth heard it. I heard it in Pennsylvania. Well, Seth grew up with it. Oh, yeah. When we talk about this, we'll get flooded with emails starting like the second this drops. We'll get a flow of emails being like, yeah, but seriously, the Amish? What's

that pump Remington rifle? The 760. 760. Growing up, everyone called that the Amish machine gun. Yep, exactly. If it wasn't that, it was a lever action 30-30. Yeah. How much, do you have any insights into how, I mean, from your angle, do you have insights into how, like, where that stereotype,, like why that's appealing to people.

Are you, are you subject to that? Do people do like white dudes meet you out hunting and they know you've been up to no good. Do you know what I mean? Is this like a thing you live with or am I telling you things you've never heard before? No, no, no. I, I don't think that's, that's a new news. It's not new news before. No, no, no. I don't think that's new news. It's not new news to you?

No, no. And in fact, you know, a few weeks ago, I talked to a liaison from the DNR who, he was a Hmong liaison. Okay. Long time Hmong liaison, retired now. But I mean, he said those same things. And so.

Like he said those same things in what way? In that, you know, Hmong people would, I mean, they hunt in groups. We just go together. That's one, that's something that we brought over from Laos. And people don't like that. Well, I guess not, you know. Right, instead of like one buddy, you go with more people. But so having a hunting camp,, you go with more people.

So having a hunting camp, when you go to deer camp and there's 16 people at deer camp, that's cool. Or a pheasant drive with 30 guys in South Dakota. As long as it ain't Hmong dudes. Hmong dudes is trouble. Well, yeah, there's that, right? And then. So that one being like groups of people. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Groups. And then we were talking about this is like Hmong people go Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Groups. And then we were talking about this. It's like, Hmong people go early, man. We, okay. We were talking like, you know, it's that whole public-private land, you know, kind of conversation, right? On public land, we, I mean, the turkey season just wrapped up on the the 31st of May and my buddies and I went out at four in the morning. And so we were there and there was nobody around. Um, and to, to say, to answer your question around, you know, being subject to it. Well, I mean, I've heard, um, and I'm full aware of it.

And then I haven't been hunting long enough to like maybe experience that. Um, but in talking to this liaison, you know, he says that, uh, among relations with, you know, in this case, we'll just say, say, you know, uh, the whites in, in Minnesota, uh, over the years have just had become a lot better. Have become better. Have become better. Oh, that's good. It's like, he's like, it's, it's 10 times much better than, you know, he, he's for, he first started hunting in Minnesota in 1977. So he was, he was there very early, early on.

And he, he had, he, he's like, yeah, this WMA that we have up in the Twin Cities used to be full of squirrels. And now the squirrels are all gone because he shared it with people and then all the mungs went and killed all the squirrels. Oh, okay. So it's legit. Yeah, it's legit. I'm not going to deny that. I mean I'm not going to deny we love squirrels. You guys got onto it.

Yeah. You guys got onto it and hit it hard. Wake up early, get all the spots. Yeah. Okay. All right. We're getting somewhere now. How, so you knew, okay, did your old man come here and automatically hunt or did he not

hunt when he came? Well, not right away. Okay. And I talked about Bill and Sandy Sullivan who live in Rochester today. They have 80 acres. I think it's considered like the driftless area of Minnesota, southeastern Minnesota. And they actually introduced my dad to hunting in like 81, I think is what he said. So shortly after they arrived, because Hmong people were farmers as well.

And she was telling me, Sandy was telling me that we got your mom a plot of land so she could farm. And then that's kind of what they did for a little bit before they came up to the cities. And then I remember my dad hanging, um, a buck in, um, in our basement, uh,

after he shot it like early eighties. And so he didn't hunt right away until, um, you know, like Bill and Sandy and then some of the people that we were, um, that brought us over here and sponsored us, like took him hunting.

Yep. Uh, and that was probably hard to get used to. If you went from subsistence hunting in a lawless civil war region of a war-torn Southeast Asia, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, no, you go down and you buy this permit, and you follow these rules, and you can't do this, you can't do that, and you're a lot of this many a in your day is probably like, huh? Yeah. Yeah.

There's a lot of that. Right. And, and, and again, in talking to, you know, that the, uh, our, uh, the liaison, he said that there was a lot of that. There was, you know, Hmong people came here, didn't know the language. Right. Yeah. Had no concept of wildlife management.

Um, in Laos, there, there wasn't none. Like you hunted because you were hungry and, you know, you just, you hunted anything that you could see. Got it. Um, so coming here, you know, yeah, there's some, for some, for the, for people coming over here, it was something that they, you know, had to get used to. Um, you know, some of the issues he said early on were just language barrier, right. Um, you know, if, and, and, you know, you meet somebody on the woods,

if you don't understand language, sometimes there's issues. Um, but one thing he did tell me was early, I mentioned about it getting way better. He said the young hunters now understand the laws, understand public versus private, understand, um, shooting light, understand possession, limited, understand, um, all these, they know the rules and regulations as well. And so it's almost like now that, you know, we all understand each other.

It's like, it's, it's it's it's almost like again it's gotten yeah way better you're like a generation removed from the lawlessness right another thing that occurs another thing that occurs to me about the the situation you're describing that your family was in in all those years is um if you imagine just this concept of private and public if you were a nationless you're coming at you're a nationless, you're a nationless person, right? Moving across a landscape where you don't own property, you have no government, you know? You spent your whole life where you're not supposed to be, according to someone's definition. And I imagine it's probably also hard to show up and get like, oh, I see that fence there.

Right. Don't, you know, when your sort of whole existence has been going where you needed to go while people shot at you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And, you know, he also mentioned, you know, and this makes sense to me, early on, we didn't have anything.

And so, you know, you were too busy trying to acclimate to a new country you were too busy establishing um maybe a career or going to school or or um you know just making a living here and so we mostly hunted public lands right yeah and he said no more no money to buy land yeah no money to buy land um and he said as through the years among people started buying boats right started buying land and over the years you know at least what he's seen in minnesota is that we've kind of just become a part of the hunting community it's like yes like among people are just they're they're like us essentially so it's got it he says just

you know through the years it's just gotten way better especially the he credits the young hunters for again understanding the laws the rules and and and and abiding by those yeah uh you so you're interested like you got a gun you have you know you bought a gun for personal protection before you bought a hunting gun yes how did that go like how did that come like a yeah and you were brought up around guns or no uh i wasn't i was not and so you know going back to like my relationship with my dad i mean you know it's kind of like you know you want to call it like kind of like you want to call it kind of like the Asian relationship. It's respectable, right? And again, going back to growing up here, my dad spent a lot of his time just providing for us. He worked second shift.

So you didn't really have that interaction. So he never took us hunting. And so it was going back to the whole gun thing. Like my, my wife's actually a federal officer. She carries, I mean, she, she has, she had issued one, but she just chooses not to, to, to carry it with her. But, um, my, my, why I didn't get into hunting until like a year ago, right. Was ignorance of, I didn't, I didn't want to handle a firearm because I equated hunting with firearms, right. Got it.

Two, I, the other piece was, well, you need private land. At least the way I was thinking was you need private land in, in Minnesota to, to be able to hunt. So like, it was like those two barriers to, to entry almost. Right. Um, so a year ago this week, um, some, a buddy, some buddies, uh, uh, my cousin and a couple of buddies decided to go fishing in South Dakota. Um, you know, if you think about a year ago this week, there was a lot of unrest in Minnesota. You had the murder of George Floyd by four officers. You had a pandemic going on.

You had Asian hate going on. And so here the four of us were like, hey, let's go fishing in South Dakota and enjoy some time. And one of the very first questions that came out of that was, which one of us has a gun for, for personal protection? Not that we would ever, hopefully we would never use or need it, but like that, like that was something that came up. Yeah. For peace of mind. Yeah. For peace of mind. Yeah.

And so, you know, it was a seven hour drive from where we were, you know, we went fishing in South Dakota. So we kind of like just talked about it. And the one guy who did have a concealed carry, he, you know, he basically gave us the lowdown, right. You know, seven hour drive, you know, he of course talked about it. And he lived in an area where there was actually looting like in his backyard. Right. He's like, yeah, I, I, I have this because legitimately I, we should be protecting ourselves because everything is going on. So it was kind of like this perfect storm of things.

And so I came back and I was like, I was just like gung ho on, Hey, you know, I, I need to go get myself a nine minute leader. I'm a contributor to, you know, the, whatever millions of people that bought the gun. The ammo shortage. I bought ammo. Sorry, you know, the whatever millions of people that bought guns. The ammo shortage. I bought ammo. Sorry. Yeah. So I contributed to that.

Yeah. Yeah. So. And that was your first firearm purchase. That was my first firearm purchase. Did you go get a concealed carry permit? Yes, I did. So right away it came back, got a permit to go purchase and then, you know, took the class and got the license to carry.

All right. And so I got that. So, you know, if the class and got the license to carry. And so I got that. So, you know, if you, so I got it. So I'm like, and then my brother is actually a state trooper in the state of Minnesota. So he's been hunting for a long time. You guys are heavy law enforcement. Yeah. Is that unusual?

Did a lot of mong go into law enforcement? Or are you kind of an anomaly that your wife and brother are in law enforcement? I don't... There's not many... There's some. I have a first cousin who's in law enforcement. So I think there's some of that. But it's not like a known. It's not like an industry

all infiltrated or something. No. And there's people who are involved with the community. We had the first Hmong state senator a few years back. Oh, okay. So I think Hmong people are really into serving. I think serving is the right word, is that we like to serve. And so my brother started showing me how to use it.

And then shortly after I got my 9 millimeter i i buy an ar-15 right yeah and it was so you know two two three five five six and i'm like so so that was like my first deer rifle you know do you have you hunted deer i have yes okay yes so um when when you in in any case why i got into hunting um so I'm shooting this 9mm. I'm like, at one point I realized, you know what? I hope I never get to use this or have to use this, right? But shooting is fun.

Like, you know, the act of shooting and going to the range with my brother, him showing me how to, you know, take it apart. This is kind of fun, right? I'd like to shoot more. And so that's kind of like what spurred the whole hunting,

like, itch. Now, did you put a scope on your AR or like a red dot on it? Put a red dot on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So put a red dot.

And then I wrote this in the email to you guys too, is around the same time, my buddy bought 40 acres up north and he's like, you know, he, he was, he just bought it. Um, he said he bought it for hunting. So one got over the fear of firearms. Two, Hey, we have 40 acres we can hunt on. And that's really what kind of like pushed me over the edge.

Was it, was it something since your dad did hunt, were you interested in it as a kid or and you just never had the opportunity. Yeah, it was exactly that. It was, you know, my brother and my dad went all the time. I've just like never given it the time of day. But you were like, you were philosophically opposed to owning a firearm? Or just didn't? Not opposed to owning one.

I just like, I was just scared of like physically handling one. Right. Well, once I got over that and then, um, Hey, there's 40 acres of land we can hunt on. Right. And so. And these are Hmong dudes you're hunting with. Oh yeah. Yeah. My, uh, my best friends.

Yeah, exactly. And, um, so we were all just like kind of gotten to this, um, like, Hey, let's, let's, let's do this. Right. And this, this um like hey let's let's let's do this right and this this was like august-ish right so the the the rifle deer rifle season was november and so we like we started buying all the gear um and you know uh in in minnesota there's a north and the south region so in the south you can do shotgun only um there's So in the south, you can do shotgun only. There's the northern region where you can do like rifle. So I was going to go with my AR-15, 223,

and they were going to go with shotguns. And so we got all geared up. So you're in the rifle area or the shotgun area? We're in the rifle. We're in the rifle. So you can do whatever you want. So you were in an area where you could do it. You could choose. Yeah.

But they already had shotguns, so they were going to use their shotguns. And you were going to use your AR. Correct. Correct. And how'd it go? Didn't tag. Didn't, yeah. Did anybody get one?

No, nobody got one. Nobody got one. Did you guys see something? We saw, yes. Well, here's the story. We saw. one nobody got one you guys see something we saw yes well here's the story we saw and so you know we saw but they were so i mean two two three i think for me was i think 75 yards and under is kind of what you know through our research right shotguns is like the same thing 60 yards

and under you want to get nice and close well Well, you had to, otherwise, you know, again, we wouldn't shoot. Right. Well, we started seeing deer and they're like 150 yards away, 200 yards away. So after the first week of hunting and after the, after the week and a half, we saw deer that was way too far away. Right. And, um, we actually

went on a separate property, private property that backed up to, um, uh, state land. And so we were seeing deer like 150 yards, 200 yards away. Well, I'm sitting there like, I never, I don't have a shot. I don't, I'll never be able to shoot if I have, you know, this AR and I'm not knocking ARs, but the next day I go and I buy 6.5 Creedmoor because I'm like, I got to go. I mean, you need to go longer, right? Yeah. And so, again, I went from like no guns in June of last year. To having two semi-anemic cartridges. I knew you'd say that.

I would have been like, I got a.223, now I'm going to buy a big ball buster, man. I'm going to buy like a.300 or something. I know that you're going to choose. I know. How were you guys? Were you guys posted up in stands? Or how were you all hunting together?

You know, inexperienced, right? So we were... You guys tried to do a squirrel drive, didn't you? No, no, do a squirrel drive no no not a school drive uh we we we uh set up in blinds okay um and so uh and then we had the one buddy who who had a uh a stand uh a tree stand and we didn't really after the few hundred the couple that we saw were like a few hundred years away we didn't see anything and the few hundred, the couple that we saw were like a few hundred years away, we didn't see anything.

And then, and then the season ended. And then my brother and I did go down to Rochester cause they, they had some, um, heavy CWD, um, areas down there. So they were trying to get rid of all the deer. So him and I did go down to Rochester a couple of days to see if we can find some, but we, we didn't run across any. If anything, I, I, anything, I spooked probably more deer than I could count.

But this fall you're going out. Oh yeah. Don't blaze them. This fall is, I'm doing archery. So I've started, you know, shooting bow and arrow. And then, yeah, we're counting on the days of the rifle season. Yeah.

So did you end that first season just like an addict? Pretty much. You loved it? Yeah, yeah. And I was telling you guys the turkey season just ended, and I'm totally hooked. We are totally hooked on it. Did you get a turkey?

We didn't get a turkey, no. We came close. Come on, we came close. We got to have you back on. But here's the thing that's awesome, right? Like, he, you know, didn't do any of this. I mean, that's why I kind of love this story. Like, you weren't doing any of this.

And I know you've told me that, you know, you've gone back to reread Meat Eater articles on the website and gone back to rewatch seasons of the Netflix show and other shows. You've got to cut that out, Corinne, because people are going to be thinking if you didn't get anything. Oh, no, come on. Those guys don't know what the hell we're talking about. Come on. No, but I mean, like, it's not, you know, these are a bunch of guys. They have it in their blood, and it's probably a reawakening right now.

But you're just like, you keep on getting out there, and you're trying to, like, they're teaching themselves. No, it's phenomenal, man. Like like brody took me out last last season you know i've got everyone in this office to help show me the ropes and they're just going out on their own why i was telling you i you know the turkey season in minnesota is is um there's six seasons so if you archery, you can hunt the entire six weeks or basically middle of April to end of May. Got you. If you're doing shotgun, which is what I was doing, you had to pick one. So I picked season two, which is six days.

If you don't tag, you can actually come back the last week, which is actually 13 days, and you can use your tag there. So I hunted, um, six plus essentially, I think 10, 11 days. And the last in this, the last season just ended. I was going almost every day and I did like, um, you know, I get up at, you know, we were talking about getting there damn early. Oh yeah. Not on you guys so my buddy and us we'd get there at four because the the we we kind of got it down to the gobbles will start around 5 10 ish and five o'clock shooting light um at you know um five o'clock shooting light so

around 5 10 you knew that there was going to be gobbling. We stumbled onto this field by luck on this WMA, and you just knew that the gobbles were going to be coming out at like 5, 5.15. Did you guys run into any other hunters in there? No, we didn't. And I think the reason is because we were there first. Because we were there first. Well, we get there at, you know, I'd wake, I mean, you can ask my wife that I got up at 3.30, right?

Got ready, drove to the spot by four. So the spot, you know, the field, you had the field and you had the parking lot. And so, well, I already have a car and then my buddy shows up, there's two cars there. And, you know, one of my rules with our buddies for safety is that if you drive into somewhere and there's one or two cars, just go find a different place, right? So we kind of, like, monopolized that.

Yeah, you got to get a license plate. There's a mongol hunter on it, man. Personalized plate, vanity plate. Back off. Back off, Mung Hunter. So, yeah. Yeah, so I did. So I'd wake up at four, hunt, you know, try to catch a gobbler up until like eight, go to work, work all day, and then go to tennis.

And then after tennis, I'd go'd go you know if there was you know there was still light i'd you know i'd go yeah and i did that for like 10 days yeah my friend robert abernathy he likes to get out there i would sleep for an hour just waiting for the burza gobble yeah i have much just sitting out in the swamp but i don't know why we're out here we're out here basically last night is what it feels like. Yeah, I was telling Corinne, you know, I have so much more appreciation for wildlife, but like for crows, you know, because, you know, I had the crow call with me, but the crows like would just shot gobbler. They do it themselves. Yeah, and I'm like, man, this is so they, they work off of each other like that. Yeah. Do you, uh, Corinne mentioned this earlier, like a,

like an awakening or whatever. Do you, okay. As you learned to hunt in, in America, do you feel that you're joining an American tradition or do you feel like you're joining a Hmong tradition? Uh, I, I'd have to say it's, it's, um, uh, a little bit of both. I think hunting is in my blood. And, you know, when I wrote in, I was like, I, I felt like it's always been a part of me, but I love everything about the American, um, the American hunter and, and what we have here. I just needed something to kind of like,

like, like uncover that. I felt like, um, I think global pandemic. Yeah, exactly. Well,

yeah, well, yeah, I blame a lot of stuff on the pandemic. I mean, racial tensions in the global pandemic. Yeah. Nothing like that to get a guy out hunting.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, you know, a year ago this time I didn't own a truck. I didn't, I didn't own a boat a year ago this time, I didn't own a truck. I didn't own a boat. I didn't hunt.

And I didn't own a camper. And I have all those, you know, I do all those things now, you know. A lot. I mean, you're not alone. Like a lot of people kind of rediscovered the outdoors. What kind of boat? What kind of boat did you get? Oh, I got this.

It's a 17-foot, they call it like a bow rider. So it's not like a fishing boat or anything. It's really so I could pack a lot of people in there and we just go. Oh, nice. Oh, like a pleasure boat. Yeah, yeah. Did you find it on Craigslist? Facebook.

If it was on Craigslist, Seth already saw it. Yeah, I probably saw it. No, but they were being bought. They were being bought like crazy. I mean, I remember looking at this one. Like it came on and that minute I say, hey, I'll take it, but I want to see it first. And the guy just like sold. Yeah.

You know, but it's like they were gone, you know? You mentioned going on that fishing trip with your buddies. Had you always fished? Like from the time you were a kid? Yeah, off and on. Um, you know, we take the kids, you know, you know, I have three kids. Um. Oh, you do?

How old were they? Uh, 14, 10 and six. You nice to them? Oh, of course. Of course. My daughter, Michaela. Glad to hear that, man. My daughter, Michaela makes.

You like that one? Makes, wanted to make sure that I said to you that she says hi. Oh. Yeah. Tell her I said hi. Yeah. Because she's actually going to be probably be my hunting buddy.

Excellent. She's already got this. A month ago, I bought her a youth shotgun. And we went out once because the range where we live, we live close to a range and it's free youth Tuesdays. And so her and I went out. She shot it once, probably my fault, but she couldn't take the recoil.

Oh, dude, here's the trick. You probably know this. Like the first time my daughter ever shot a turkey load was when she was shooting at a turkey. Okay. I'd load. Okay, okay, yeah.

Target loads. You know, like clay loads. And they just are like, oh, it's not that bad, it's not that bad. And then when they're actually shooting at something, they don't know. I just had her shoot and we like fake, I put a red dot on a break open 410 for her to hunt turkeys with.

And we like, you know, sighted it in, the red dot, on a turkey silhouette. Then I was like, oh, let me shoot it a couple times. And I put turkey loads in there and made sure we were good on the pattern. And it never had her shoot one. And after she shot at a turkey, never brought it up.

Okay. The fact that it's like, the recoil's like five times. That was my fault, because I should have realized that. Get her some like low brass, get some low brass target loads. Well, she shot it once. She was like, Dad, I don't think I can do it this season. I don't think I can do it this season. I don't think I can do it this season.

So I'm like, okay, okay, well, you know. But, so yeah. Okay, people are going to want to get a hold of you. A lot of people are just going to want to get a hold of you. It's just a thing that happens when guests come on. You can choose to, like, I don't want to hear about it, or you can tell everybody how they might drop you a line or find you on social media and shoot you a dm or whatever you can ignore or not i have my a facebook page and i have an email people want to email me they can send it to us and we can send it to you but people

it'll go like this too people will be like people be like he can hunt my place i'm telling you man i'm telling you really because i never get that no you won't you won't get that But he'll get it Because his story is touching Brody's like I was born in a very opulent country And had a lot of hunting opportunities And grew up hunting People are like screw that guy Brody

Email us He's got boats coming out of his ears He's got But yeah people are going to want you to hunt. I'm telling you, they're going to let him, they're going to tell him to hunt his place. Email us. We'll forward the info.

I feel like you should come out and hunt turkeys with us next spring though. Yeah. I, you know, I'd, I'd love to. I think I'm, like I said, I think I'm hooked. You know, hearing that gobble every morning, you know, my buddy. It's in your blood.

Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's addicting. That explains why I went in like 10 days in a row, right? You know,

you know when you're fishing and you got your, and you got tension on your line and the wind blows and it makes that siren song. The other day I was telling him, like we could, we got, it was real windy and you hear it, you know, in the wind.

And I said, man, you hear that, you'll never be able to quit fishing. he said i hate that sound steve maybe we'll need you to do a squirrel drive with yeah oh yeah you teach us how to do a big big squirrel drive that's so effective we kill every squirrel missouri and i will teach you how to um I will teach you how to get turkeys. No, I'm serious, man. You should come out and hunt turkeys with us.

We'd have a good time. I'll take you up on that. I will. I will. Or you know what we could do, too, is because you're close anyways, we'll go hunt turkeys at Doug Dern's. How old's your kid? She's 10. Here's what we're going to do.

Here's the plan. Do not make plans for Wisconsin's youth turkey season. Okay. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yes. Yes.

Don't tell Doug that I invited you. We're going to hunt. Doug and I are neighbors, you know, neighboring states. We love each other. We're going to hunt.

My, so your daughter and my daughter and my boy are going to, because Doug's too damn old for the youth season. I'm too old for the youth season.

We got his place locked up for youth season. Locked up. He knows not to let anybody hunt for youth season, but your daughter and my two kids are going to hammer it for youth season. That sounds great. Yeah. We'll be there. It won't be squirrel season, but we'll do a squirrel drive.

Yeah. Thank you for coming on, man. I appreciate it. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah. It was a pleasure. Yeah, it was a good history lesson. Thanks a lot.

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