The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 280: Cat Scratch Fever

Episode Date: July 5, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Dr. Alan Lazzara, Danny Bolton, Brody Henderson, Spencer Neuharth, Seth Morris, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider,Topics discussed: Spencer the Cat Lady; F'd Up Old Deer Stands fine art coffee table book as a calendar; AZ's new trail cam ban; the story of York encapsulating the evil of slavery; how Steve isn't into getting a Lewis and Clark expert on the podcast; finding morels in interesting places; "macrofructation," a word made up by Steve; how to pack out a dead human on a mule; the Tox; being trich pos; feral goat sashimi that gives you toxoplasmosis; ER docs who use Google; the definition of obligate; Mars Attacks; cat-shit-itis; tinnitis and ringing in your ears; our audiobook project, MeatEater Campfire Stories; doing toenail surgery while on a Zoom call; Duncan's death; walleye tournaments; fantasy bass fishing; 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. All right, everybody. Joined today by none other than the cat lady, Spencer Newhart. The other cat lady. His cat lady buddy, Seth. Seth, the flip-flop flasher morse. Got it. That's great.

Two cat ladies. Bill the Engineer, Corinne, and Brody's got no cat. Never will. You don't even, yeah. These guys don't look like a cat lady, but you don't,

especially, you don't even act like a cat lady. No. Brody's always in a not cat snuggling mood. I used to scrape barn cats off the highway

now and then back when I was a kid. That's about as close. What'd you do with them? Toss them in the ditch. Oh, okay. Was that like a professional vocation? No, we just, we had horses and there was a kid. That's about as close. What would you do with them? Toss them in the ditch. Oh, okay. Was that like a professional vocation? No, we had horses,

and there was a lot of barn cats. Oh, your own barn cats. Yeah. I could tell you some cat stories if you curl your hair, man. I could, too. Yeah, I wouldn't want to do that. I'd wind up, I don't know,

it wouldn't be good. Oh, first, okay. We're going to plead to, there's a thing I got to plead, because I'm in a professional predicament. We have been talking since last December about, we were going to do a fine art coffee table book. It was a joke. It wasn't a fine art coffee table book.

F'd up old deer stands. Okay. Fucked up old deer stands is the name of the book. It was going to be a fine art coffee tale book for meat eater. And so we were going to go and get like our own camera guys, our own photographers had, we just encountered crazy tree stands. You know, kind of like rotten, dangerous, whatever, like crazy tree stands. So we started talking about how we're going to do this book.

And we opened up a thing for submissions. And how many do we have so far? 1,300. 1,370. Holy shit. book and we opened up a thing for submissions and how many do we have so far 1300 1370 holy 1370 people have sent in submissions i have been getting a ton of pushback and snide commentary from the people that work at this company about this project really oh big time there is a name people are very very very incredulous i'm gonna cancel them about this project no just everything about it okay everything about it how's it tied to what we're doing oh listen man telling you what dude when this thing it's gonna be a calendar it's not When this thing, it's going to be a calendar. It's not going to be a 250-page book.

It's going to be a calendar. It could be a 250-page book. Yeah. If your kids are, plug your kids' ears. It's called Fucked Up Old Deer Stands. We have some of the, we just got. It's amazing what's out there. Oh, we got a great one recently of an ATM machine. An ATM.

I'm not kidding. An ATM cash machine on a stand. But like. Where you can sit in the ATM machine. Yeah. And shoot off gun rests off like where you like the screen hole. Literally on the top of it says cash machine. Yeah. We're talking like original era you know those like plastic stackable chairs like if you're like in

mexico and you go to like a eat a taco like this like the coca-cola or whatever yep one of those lashed up to a tree limb way up in a tree with a plank that you like apparently walk out the plank and then get in the plastic chair lashed up in the tree i hope he's uh near alan lazara's hospital just to be safe have you backed up there's a big trampoline underneath it so no it's it's a great project it's gonna be a calendar there'll be a cover it i need people when it's time i need you to be ready to buy this thing so that I can be proven to be right but then we're only going to use 12 out of

you know so many there's plenty more to do if people can get my back on this and buy this calendar whether they want it or not as a Christmas present then the book will come but I need people to get on board with it's the greatest collection ever of fucked up old deer stands in existence.

And then we'll do fucked up old duck hunting blinds after that. And boats. Yeah. Fubs. So in production, like in production, there's a thing where like meat eater, the show, the TV show meat eater, if you look at all our stuff, it's always S-R-M-E. So it's like

Steve Rinella Meteor. And if you're like packing a Pelican case full of cameras, you'd put like S-R-M-E blank number and that's sort of our thing. This project is FUDS.

F-O-U-D-S. So internally, we call it FUDS. What I was laughing about is a FUD is a guy, a FUD, I always get accused of being a FUD. A FUD is an Elmer FUD. Why him?

I don't know. But a FUD is if you, if your like relationship to firearms is around hunting weapons and you sort of make the mistake of thinking that like the second amendment, like it's like meant to protect people with hunting guns or whatever, that like your view on it you become a fud and that's a that's a per that's a pejorative you don't want to be a fud but now i'm not a fud you're taking it back well no i'm not a fud because someone just sent me i haven't picked it up yet but now i have ar so now i'm just like a right wing now gotcha now people call me a right wing i'll be now I have an AR, so now I'm just like a right-wing nutjob. Oh, gotcha. Now, people call me a right-wing, I'll be no longer

a FUD, now I'm a right-wing nutjob. You can now call people FUDs. Yeah, I just start calling. See, Seth was already a right-wing nutjob. He's had AR the whole time I'd known him. Now I'd be like, yeah, and Seth, he's always like, I don't want to hang out with Steve, he's a FUD.

But now, me and Seth aren't going to hang out with other people. Because they're FUDs, and don't want to hang out with Steve. He's a fud. He's a fud now. Me and Seth aren't going to hang out with other people. Because they're fuds and we're right-wing nutjobs. Brody, lay out the Arizona trail cam ban. This is interesting. Yeah. First date to ban the use of trail cameras for the purpose of taking or aiding in the take of wildlife. Basically, it's saying

banned year round yes like full-on ban starting private and public yes yes no january 1st 2022 that is like a way way i didn't know that till right now that is a very extreme version of this yeah other states have banned drones and trail cameras at certain times of the year on public land and stuff like that. But this is the full, the full on. No kidding. It's like you can't ever have them out even months before the season to look at movement. What about for like surveillance? Like personal security and stuff.

I don't even know if they've like figured that part of it out. Like, you know. What about for like surveillance? Like personal security and stuff? Because like – I don't even know if they've like figured that part of it out. Like, you know. But they're saying year round – because states do public land up until the season starts. Or they do – you can have the kind that you have to pull a card, but you can't leave the kind out that transmits a message. Yep. Right? Or private land only, but that is really, because that's like the most trail cam in

state in the union, man. Right. I mean, they're following those big Kaibab bucks around all year long. Yeah. I got friends that talk about that. They're sitting there hunting one time in Arizona and they watched a mule deer come

into a watering hole at dusk. And they said it must've been 20 cameras went off. At a water hole. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you come in and like people, you just all, everybody's got, everybody keeps their cameras

around the water holes. In addition to the unfair advantage there, they did mention that these things have caused some like conflict between people because everyone's trying to get a picture of the same buck, right? You know, if, if, if someone knows about it or what, you know, a big bull, whatever.

But the public. Public comments, but the public opposed the ban by roughly a two to one margin, but the five person commission, five to nothing. Really? Voted against, yeah. What the, I wonder what they're looking at that made them so sure.

Says trail cameras violate fair chase, which, you know, there's an argument to be made there. Like I can see the argument. Yeah, you do. And I know from talking to, you know, and well, I'll tell you right now, I have sitting on the desk in garage, ready to go, which I'm going to place this weekend, a trail camera. Yeah. Which I'm fixing to put out in the woods. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about it before.

You're sitting at home. You get a little notification on your phone. Big Larry just walked by your stand. You drive out there and jump in the stand, you know. Or just knowing what's going on when you're not there. There's, there's an argument to be made that. I use mine for just general animal looking though. Yeah.

Yeah. Like I, I saw something on, it's probably Instagram or something the other day where a guy left a trail camera out in the mountains for an entire year and had like 30,000 images that he was sifting through. And yeah, it'd just be cool to see what's walking around out there. I put one behind my fish shack one time and like right behind it, there's a little game trailer and there's always deer and bear on it. And, uh, my buddy's wife went back there and peed and he pulled the card, never gave me the card back. Then, uh, I gotta have him just wipe that card

and give it to me. Then, I left it there for a year and it was cool because it'd be like bear, deer, bear, deer, but there's like this

doe that was just there all the time and you see all of a sudden she's got her fawn. It's real little. You get multiple pictures of her every day.

You know, it's kind of sad, man. I can't remember what month it was, but later in the summer, just back to being by herself. Got eaten. Something happened. Something happened to her.

The thing that's cool, too, is a lot of discoveries are made via these trail cameras by people who aren't necessarily trying to find a wolverine where a wolverine never was. Oh, yeah. There's a book. I've plugged this book a couple times it's called candid creatures or something like that and it's a book about how trail cams they call them camera like camera biologists call them camera traps hunters call them trail cams the way that trail cams have rewritten a lot of our understanding of animal distribution yeah there's an amazing

picture in there and i think it may I think it was captured in Arizona, is the only known picture of a jaguar standing in the snow. That's awesome. And it came off a trail cam. But imagine if this happened in Wisconsin or Iowa. I think it would turn the whitetail hunting industry like upside down or something like that happen. Oh, if that spreads, it's going to cause a real reckoning.

Like if that sentiment, but it's surprising that it came out of Arizona because I know that in the whitetail dominated states, it's so big, but I feel like trail cam, maybe trail cam use is like very prevalent and maybe it's because it's just gotten, you know. And the other thing about Arizona is like just it being dry. Is it Arizona or Colorado? It's Arizona.

Oh, I thought someone said Colorado. One thing that Arizona doesn't have is it doesn't have, um, like the enormous herds that you have in the North. It's just like, there's kind of like, you know, like you just look at the tag allocation process. There's like, Arizona doesn't have a lot. There's not a lot of like over thethe-counter big game hunting opportunities. There's a somewhat competitive atmosphere to getting permits.

There's a competitive atmosphere in these certain hunt units. Yeah, competitive atmosphere for outfitters to get the hunter that drew the tag. Because they don't have massive elk herds like you'd find in the tag, you know? Because they don't have, they don't have like massive elk herds like you'd find in the north, you know, but they have massive elk and they have some massive mule deer. Like something, you know, they got just some giants, man.

It's, you know, it's managed in that way. It's managed like pretty conservatively. But, huh. I got to think about that for a day or two to draw, to get an opinion about it. I assumed it meant that you had to pull it once hunting season started. Fool on. Well, but couldn't you argue if it's out in June that you're not using it for the taking of game?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think they've... Sure, you could be going, putting it out to take pictures of birds, right? Hmm. We'll talk about that a little bit more gonna be joined later by uh got two people coming on danny bolton who's a dude that we just filmed in hawaii with we uh if again referring to instagram i put some pictures on instagram from uh when Cal and I were out spearfishing and hunting in Hawaii. While I was out there, he had had this, he was sick while we were there and went through all the normal things like, oh, he must have COVID. No, it doesn't sound like COVID.

Anyways, by the time we got home, back to Montana here, he had found out that he had contracted a from eating raw game meat, he had contracted toxoplasmosis, right? Is that the right word?

Yeah. We're going to talk to him. Then we're also going to be joined by our resident doctor, Dr. Alan Lazar, who's going to lay out what up with toxoplasmosis. Recent episode called Hunting in Chains, we had on the author and professor Scott Giltner, who authored a book, Hunting and Fishing. We had on the author and professor Scott Giltner who authored a book Hunting and Fishing in the New South.

And in it we were talking about a lot about slavery. The hunting practices of slaves. And I had pointed out in that conversation about how at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition they had what like a hundred people roughly?

They had a slave with them named York. One slave that they brought along. One guy not on payroll. And he had had interesting experiences along the way, no doubt. And I was pointing out that afterward, Clark liberated him, emancipated him, granted him his own freedom. One of our contributors, Ben Long, wrote into those a bit more complicated than that. So Clark had received York as a present as a child. So you might nowadays give your kid, I don't know, a Fitbit.

Back then, you'd be like, here's a human being. He's yours to do with as you please. And he kept this human being as his, as his possession and eventually brought him with him, brought York, his, his property on the expedition and had upon returning from the West had said to York that he was going to free him, give him his freedom. But he repeatedly reneged. York one time pressed him on the deal being like, Hey,

remember how you were going to give me my freedom. And Clark punished him by separating him from his wife and threatening to literally sell him down the river to a hostile slave in New Orleans. So when you hear the expression, he sold me down the river, what that means is, I don't know how accurate it is, but when you hear that expression, what it means is that it would be that the further down the Mississippi you got, the further into the deep south you got, the treatment of slaves would worsen. So if you were like in Missouri,

I think Twain talks about this a fair bit. Like if you were in Missouri, to get sold down the river is that you'd be sold to a new owner deeper into the south where it was worse. So he threatened to sell him down to a hostile slave in New Orleans.

Clark beat York severely for being sullen and insolent in 1809. So five years after. I think Spencer was saying it was 10 years he got his freedom. 10 years later.

Yep. Stephen Ambrose, who kind of wrote one of the, I guess, the modern day's definitive history of the Lewis and Clark expedition, said, quote, much of the evil of slavery is encapsulated by this little story. This guy's talking. Spencer, tell people what your idea is. I would love for us to have a Lewis and Clark expert on the podcast,

but Steve has pushed back every time I bring it up. Mm-hmm. Why is that? A couple things. What I was saying earlier, I think it's like big government. Okay. You got little government. Okay. You got little crews.

Okay. John Coulter was with the Lewis and Clark expedition. Okay. As they're coming back down the river, they almost get to, they almost get to St. Louis. This harrowing years long trip.

And everybody's like, oh, I can't wait to get home. John Coulter runs into some trappers going back up the river and turns around, doesn't even go to St. Louis, turns around and goes back up the river. That's the kind of guy I'm interested in. But I'm interested in the little bands of mountain men in that era, but like the, not to hack on government at all,

but like a hundred guys, edicts from the president. It's just, it's like, to me, it's not the kind of a swashbuckling rugged individual entrepreneurialism that inspires me. But those sorts of fellows that you like, you've covered dozens of times over by now and still haven't given even a 30

minute segment of a podcast, Lewis and Clark. Okay. They, uh, Steve's going to sum it up right here. Let me tell you the interesting things about it. Okay.

That on their to-do list was to see if there's woolly mammoths. I don't know. Did you know that's true? Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. Um, the only tribe they got into a shootout with was, are you asking me? that's true? Yeah. That's interesting.

The only tribe they got into a shootout with was Are you asking me? Sue? They got into a shootout with the Blackfeet. Killed a Blackfeet. Warrior. They had an air rifle on that expedition.

That's not interesting to me. My kid. my 11-year-old would perk right up right now at the mention of air rifles. Yeah, they would get it out to impress people. Yeah. Yeah, because they had a repeating air rifle with like a compressor. There's various parts about that are

interesting. Have you been to Pompeii's Pillar? No. It's on my list though. I've been there. You can see Clark's name carved into the rock. For the longest time, they said it was the only physical evidence of the expedition. Yeah, and that's another plus for doing a Lewis and Clark episode.

Those guys touch 15 to 20 states. So there's a lot of school children that have some connection to Lewis and Clark. My favorite part about the story is Clark's suicide, which is only way later. Why is that your favorite part? Because just how crazy he went. Yeah. He was kind of a wild card. And that night was a crazy night.

Yeah. The night he killed himself. Yeah. You should save it for when we have the expert on the show. What if he doesn't know about that part? Oh, they will. You think so?

Yeah. That's widely known? We can play a little good cop, bad cop when you have this expert on, and you can be like, ah, mountain men. And I'll be like, ah, yeah, but this thing. I'll tell you another part I like about Lewis and Clark Expedition

is they found they were at a jump site, like a Buffalo jump site, and the wolves were so gorged on meat from under the jump site that one of those two lewis or clark uh killed one with some kind of trekking pole like yanni sounds like you're talking yourself into it here guy wrote in, we were talking about finding morels by a dumpster,

the dumpster patch. There was a guy saying he was living in his camper for a few months and he was parked at his friend's large shop that had RV hookups and sewage and whatnot.

Says one day he walked out to empty the black tank and lo and behold, five morels grown in a cluster of decaying leaves that had collected under the sewer line.

Think about that. Would you eat those? No. No, morels are like ecosystem sponges. Okay. That's why like, or like any mushroom in general. Like, there's a lot of good mushroom picking to be had in highway ditches, but those highway ditches are also sprayed with chemicals. So I wouldn't recommend that you like, uh, take home a bag of shaggy Maine mushrooms that you found at some intersection out in the country.

Why? Cause they probably got doused with some chemicals. That's not gonna be what kills you. Uh, I don't know. You're not going to find so many shaggy mane mushrooms over the course of such a long period of time that you get enough toxins from herbicides to kill you.

This is also kind of specific to shaggy manes because they grow in disturbed areas. Like a soccer field. There's images of them, of shaggy manes pushing up through asphalt. Wow. You know where the asphalt kind of peters out and it shaggy manes pushing up through asphalt. Whoa. Wow. Yeah. You know where the asphalt kind of peters out and the sediment's been a sloppy job pushing up?

That's a great mushroom. Way cool. Tastes like asparagus. I just probably wouldn't take one home from like a soccer field or a dog park. That's all. Or a sewage line. Or that. What do you have eaten the morels found near the dumpster? Listen, the dumpster morels weren't like a, they just happened to be by the dumpster. They were delicious. It wasn't like a le the dumpster. Listen, the dumpster morels weren't like a they just happened to be by the dumpster.

They were delicious. It wasn't like a leaky dumpster. Yeah, you don't think they were like feeding off of whatever had like you know, leaked into the ground. How many yards were there for that dumpster? 10? 20? It was just coincidental. Would you eat the sewage morels? Not that we've

talked about it, yes. Are you honestly, like a sewage morel, are you honestly, is there shit like in those morels not that we've talked about it yes are you honestly like a sewage morale you all like are you honestly is there shit like in those morels oh i don't know it'd be hard to hard to eat now think about what's there not pooping yeah but like i don't i don't know i don't know how like our brails do they work like a plant in other words where they're sucking stuff up in? Like are they using nutrients from the shit? Like if you're spreading manure on a field or are they actually

like. Well. There's gonna be shit particles in it. No. Like it doesn't uptake. Does it uptake? It uptakes it would uptake a plant would uptake nutrients. Yes. From the dookie. Yes. Not a problem. Yeah but it's like that's everything. It's uptaking nutrients from the dookie. Yes. Not a problem.

Yeah, but it's like that's everything. It's uptaking nutrients from dead stuff. I know, but the way Spencer made it sound, how they're like ecosystem sponges. He's being squeamish. Makes it sound like if I was to squeeze a morel out, it'd be like a bunch of shit. Spencer's confusing clams and morels. No. Morels also, they like to grow where they're stressed out at.

So maybe there's something in that sewage line that really stressed them out that wouldn't be good for us. Oh, like how they come up after a burn? Yeah. I never heard it described that way. That's interesting. Yeah. Or like a tree dying, right? We'll trigger it.

Yeah, because it's like, we better get out of here. Stump sprouts or apicormics. Maybe there was something in that sewage line that stressed him out to get him to grow. Have you ever heard the word macrofructation? No. That's a mushroom. It's like, I might be pronouncing it wrong, but like, you know, the underground structure is the mycelium. When it throws a, like it's fruiting body, I believe is a macro fructation.

So it's like, I'm about to die. I better reproduce. Better get out of here. I don't think it's that simple. Which I could see happening. If someone told me you're going to die tomorrow. You're going to go repopulate. You might, dude.

I don't know. I'd go walleye fishing. Macro what? With might, dude. I don't know. I'd go walleye fishing. Macro what? With Kelsey, of course. Seth would be like, I think I'm going to take off early from work today. Just got some terrible news. I'm going to head up to the lake. He'd be like, by God, I'm going to join that walleye tournament.

Are you finding my word, macrofructation? No. Dude. We'll just have to trust you. Macro. Fructation turns to frustration. Yeah, I'm getting microfracture. No, why bones?

You know, as I'm looking at it here, the word I'm saying, I don't even think is a word. You can't be wrong, man. If we can't find anything, we can't prove you wrong. How would I make up a word like that? You can't even get it to like, you can't get where someone like misspelled something online. Cow, man. I would not listen to me.

That's really embarrassing. Yeah. It's like one of the few things you can type into your computer and get zero hits. You're not kidding. I got zero hits when I typed in mushroom. That's a hard thing to do. Yeah. I must be thinking of something different.

I must be thinking of absolutely nothing. I feel like you could slam your fist on your keyboard and get results in Google. Then whatever you just tried. You guys, if anyone out there is mind reading and knows what Steve means, please write in. If you need to name a movie or a book and you don't want to have to do any legal, you don't want to do legal work into IP

and you're not stealing anything, call it macrofructation. You will dominate search. Anyone that types that word in will find your book. And you can make it meme whatever you want. Yeah, it's like that is a great thing for a whole media enterprise. You could probably get macrofructation.com

right now for like nothing. No one's squatting on that. No one's squatting on that URL. Why don't we slap that on a t-shirt and sell it? I learned about macrofructation from the Mayneater podcast. Yeah, I think that we should start it.

Get a shirt that says macrofructation. I'm gonna, man. I'm definitely gonna. And I like how when you were introducing that word, you're like, you ever heard of this? I don't know how to blow your mind. Get ready. When you said no, I'm like, what an idiot. Calls himself a mushroom.

Doesn't know about macro fructations. God, man, I must have been reading an old book. An old, wrong book. A friend of ours and a listener to the show, Josh Kuntz, wrote in something that I guess is interesting. So he used to work at a guest ranch in Montana, and he was the only hunter among the guest service staff folks. So any questions that people had about hunting, it'd always be directed to him. On one occasion, he meets a guy from Colorado,

a guest from Colorado, who had just completed hunting guide school. And Josh says, this guy told him something he'll never forget. He said that in hunting guide school, there was a portion of the curriculum

designed to teach guides how to pack dead human bodies out of the woods. Apparently, this is Josh talking, there was such a high rate of heart attacks amongst out-of-shape guided elk hunters that the guide school developed protocols on how to get the bodies out of the woods most efficiently. The technique he described is brilliantly simple. I'm curious if any of you have heard of this or something similar. Okay, while the guy's fresh dead.

You want to know? Should I stop now? I think that my interest meter is high. What is my interest meter? Please continue because the level of detail here is fascinating. It's key that you don't wait until rigor. is fascinating. Don't wait till Rigger. Fresh dead. Don't wait.

Fresh dead before Rigger sets in. You drape the recently dead body over a large downed log so that the dead person's belly is on the log, leaving the legs and arms hanging down approximately the same distance on both sides of the log. Like a picture you're watching a western. And a guy comes in to collect the bounty. How he's got him tied up there like that.

You then wait until the body goes into rigor. And you have a couple guys lift it up and set it on a horse saddle. With the belly in the saddle. Then you tie the wrists to the ankles underneath the horse's belly. Makes for easy packing he says i suppose this could be considered a hot tip that's like really like molding the body you know yeah bro did they train you up in that i i can't say that's anything i've ever heard of again, like the level of detail is so weird. It almost has to be true, right?

Like, but the concerning thing is how many bodies were they dealing with to like develop this system? Like a curriculum. Well, way back in a long ago episode that we recorded in Arizona. It was either in Arizona or Sonora. I can't remember. We had a guy that, a mountain lion biologist.

There was houndsmen that were working with a mountain lion biologist. And someone got a negligent gist chart, a negligent. It's like I'm having a fudgesicle. They got a negligent. Spencer, when I pause, you say negligent. Discharge. Of a tranquilizer gun. Got shot by his own tranquilizer gun. Killed him or just knocked him out?

He got up so bad. He was in bad shape. Do you know where? I think the story went. Where he got shot? I'm trying to remember. The story went that he had, they tranked a lion.

And you don't want the lion to fall out of the tree and get hurt. And the lion fell asleep up in the tree. So he's going up to fetch it and lower it down. And all of a sudden he realizes it's not tranked. So someone's going to send up a loaded tranquilizer gun on a rope.

But the way they tied the thing or whatever, as soon as he put pressure on it, the thing shot him. He gets down out of the tree and then he's just gone. Meanwhile, the mountain lion's up there just laughing his ass off. And they packed him out on a mule.

They didn't know what to do. Well, that makes sense. I mean, it's not that the packing out thing doesn't make sense. It's just all the little steps that they developed to, like, get the body in a certain position before rigor and pack it up a certain way and the other part about the story that could be is like it might be that it's not like he's looking at the curriculum okay you know it's like tuesday 8 a.m breakfast right and then like at noon you know how to truss up a person it might be, whatever, they're sitting there having sandos, having lunch, and some guy's like, I'll tell you what,

I had a guy die one time, and here's what I did. By God, that's the way to do it. By golly, if that ever happens to you. So it might be like that, not that, what's on the schedule today? Yeah, chapter three, section four. So it could be that it was

just conveyed like that. Corey Calkins, who works here at Meteor, he was a guide. How many former guides are around here? A lot. Many. Too many Minnesotans, too many former guides. A lot of guides. He was a big game guide and fishing guide.

He said, before I started, so this is Corey Calkins saying, before he worked for him the outfit he guided for in the bob marshall wilderness area they had to pack out a guy who died of a heart attack in his sleep they rolled him up like a banana in a man t tarp and top packed him for 10 miles said they did not wait for rigor to set in he said it's just like packing out a large wall tent or a 14 foot nrs raft talk about details yeah my friend ron um got on his marine radio picked up a mayday one time huh like an sos and went there in a commercial fishing vessel had sunk where at at the mouth of uh at the mouth of kassan bay out in clarence straight in alaska went out there and found the body of the fisherman and got him up on his landing craft and rolled

him up in a tarp and he had a guy with him that was very uneasy about didn't want to like was uneasy about being on the boat with that man later Later, Ron went and found that man's, you know, went through the work of trying to find and contact that man's widow and give her back some of this dude's possessions. Rolled him up in a tarp, took him to town. Jeez. Corey said he also had another fella die from dehydration. Oh.

No, no, no. No. Almost. Lost another fella from dehydration. Oh. No, no, no. No. Almost. Lost another fella from dehydration. Blacked out and fell off his horse. Barely able to revive him because they didn't have much water on hand. We draped him over the lap of another mounted guide

and they quickly trotted a quarter mile to the nearest stream. He came to, and they called life flight to get his ass out of the wilderness. They kept the show rolling, and the guy was released from the hospital the next day. Yanni, someone asked Yanni the question. He says, never heard of it.

The only heart attack we had, the guy survived, and we drove him out of the woods on an ATV. Ta-da! That old guy was like, no, no, no, no, no. No. Wait till he dies. Doing it all wrong. Then get a log. Hot tip.

Alright, now back to toxoplasmosis. The latest wild game eating disease that can happen to you. And to cover off on toxoplasmosis, we're going to talk about trichinosis for a minute just because they sound very similar. And then we're going to talk to Danny Bolton, our survivor, a toxo survivor. And then we're going to get some analysis from our resident physician, Dr. Alan Lazara, who you'll remember from our podcast episode, Bleeding Out. And by our count so far, this is just people calling in to admit it, that episode saved four human lives. Four people have said that they, after listening to that, were in a situation where they had to apply a tourniquet.

And in the back of their head was like, that's right, that guy was just talking about that. And they did the tourniquet in the right place, right pressure, saved lives. So he's a hero, an American hero. Coming right up. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated.

Well, if you're sick of, you know know sucking high and titty there on x is now in canada the great features that you love in on x are available for your hunts this season the hunt app is a fully functioning gps with hunting maps that include public and crown land hunting zones aerial imagery 24k topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service.

That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com OnXMaps.com OnXMaps.com Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all.

Hey, in a minute here, we're going to talk about the hottest new disease to get. The hottest new wild game disease all the cool kids got want to get toxoplasmosis i don't know how like i went a million years without ever hearing a toxoplasm it's like hip now toxoplasmosis the tox you got the tox yeah like uh

mike rule like someone in his family got tangled up with toxoplasmosis. I think it's just related to people eating more raw stuff all the time. I don't know. When I was a kid, no one got it. Is that or like Spencer having a million cats? You get it from cats? Yeah, I would say it's less cool if you get it from like a litter box. Oh, is it the same thing as cat scratch fever?

Isn't it? I think so. Dr. Lazara, is toxoplasmosis the same thing as cat scratch fever? It's not. You're going to embarrass me. I think it's pastorella, I believe. Cat scratch is pastorella. I've got to look that up, but not the same thing.

Cat scratch fever. It's also a Nugent song, right? Oh, yeah. I'm singing it right now. Cat Scratch is pastoral I gotta look that up but not the same thing Cat Scratch Bebop that's also a Nugent song right oh yeah I'm singing it right now ba na ba

ba ba ba dude that song is one of the greatest man why haven't we used that on the podcast yet it's not it's no it's no stranglehold

hold on but it's like the second best song I gotta get in here toxoplasmosis according to the Mayo Clinic don't tell us about toxoplasmosis we got a whole

bunch of experts here. Yeah, let's talk about it. If I wanted you to talk about it, they wouldn't be here. Hold on. Listen up. It's a Bartonella infection. Bordadella pertussis, that's whooping cough. Bartonella is cat scratch fever. It's a bacteria that you get from having your skin scratched or you can even be exposed to their um their dander in some ways too so but usually it's a scratch you get on your arm you get lymph nodes up your arm um and you get like a cellulitis spencer's not is spencer shaking his head like he doesn't buy it

okay no no steve steve is the one that threw this whole thing off i'm looking at the male clinic's website here why don't you just go to Nugent's website? Toxoplasmosis. That's good. Now listen up. Toxoplasmosis usually occurs by eating undercooked, contaminated meat, exposure from infected cat feces, or mother-to-child transmission during pregnancy.

So this is the cat litter disease. That's why my buddy, that's why toxoplasmosis was such a big deal to my buddy is because I think that his, his wife got it while pregnant and it caused a big scare. Yeah. They tell you no cats around pregnant women. Yeah. You guys didn't get that? The doctor didn't say, do you have a cat in the house? I can.

So it's not cat scratch fever. Stroke of my hand. Okay. Cat litter fever. Yeah. That's what this one is. So it's not so cool anymore. You like those cats, don't you?

Yeah, Spencer's definitely going to get it at some point. Seth's got a cat, but he doesn't like it. Seth is the cat guy. he's a closet cat not by choice someone was asking once you have tricking this is the old-fashioned thing you get once you have trichinosis can you now consume rare bear meat without side effects. They point out bears and lions do. Yeah. To recap, trichinosis is a, it's like a,

it's why your grandma always was worried about cooking pork till, you know, well done. Nothing's born with trichinosis. Like, trichinosis is passed

from animal to animal by eating infected meat. And there's these little cysts in the meat. And when you eat the meat, your stomach acids dissolve the shell of that cyst. And it liberates this little larva

that's living inside there. And that larva, multiple larvae. How do you say that? Yes. Larvae. Larvae. Larvae. They make love in your stomach and produce legions of themselves.

And those go out of your digestive tract into your bloodstream, scoot through your bloodstream, and then burrow through the vascular walls and get into your muscle tissue and then set a trap for the next thing that eats it. We had that one time. That's not a lot of fun. When I say we, like a handful of us. No one in this room though, right?

No. No. Yeah, I this room though, right? No. No. Yeah, I even had a shirt made trick pause. It said. But then someone pointed out that there's a venereal disease that people call trick too, so I never wore that shirt. No, I noticed on Instagram you said you smoked your bear sausage to 150. Yeah.

But doesn't the FDA like champion 160? No, the FDA changed their own rules. And now if you do sous vide, now it has to do with length of time. Okay. You can do 135 in a sous vide if you hold it for X number of hours. So I did 150, but held it. My life's in your hands, Steve. I just ate like seven slices of your sausage.

It's germane because we're eating black bear summer sausage. Turned out good, though, didn't it? It's so good. Delicious. Oh, my gosh. Did 30 pounds of it. Good smoke flavor. Did 30 pounds.

Did it in two batches, and one of the batches, you could have had a batch that went to 160 because I got distracted on one of them and let it go to 160. But, yeah, that's all changed. Clay Newcomb will give you an earful about that. So we had an epidemiologist on quite a long time ago. Do you remember the name of that episode, Corinne? I highly advise people to go listen to it.

Oh, God. Let me scratch my memory. We covered the dickens out of foodborne pathogens. Covered the dickens. Sicker than hell. Episode 191. Sicker than hell episode. With Tim Sly.

Tim Sly. So can you get it again? He goes on to say some normal stuff that everybody knows. How now it's quite rare in commercially raised pork. Trichinosis. Very rare in commercially raised pork in the US. The condition is still encountered in North America through other meats, especially game, potentially from imported pork.

I remember reading that 90% of the trichinosis cases in this country are black bear. When I had it, I was registered with the CDC because it's a CDC reportable disease. So I had to have a CDC representative come to my house. They took a little chunk of my bear meat. 1,300 larva per gram or ounce or something like that. Jeez. Yeah. They took it to a lab in Atlanta.

And what was funny, I think I've told this, but I'm going to tell it again. My brother was getting married. And you know how you have the pre-dinner for the wedding party? We were doing an all wild game like what's that dinner called? Potluck?

No. At a wedding when the wedding party comes for the dinner rehearsal dinner rehearsal potluck. No. That's right.

So I smoked one of this bear's hams for the rehearsal dinner, but I smoked it plenty safe. And I told my brother, like, turns out the bear ham I made, that bear has 1,300 larvae per gram. I remember realizing whatever it was, it had a half million per pound. Which you could assume most bears have, right? Well, I saw a thing one time in two counties in Montana where they were doing a study. 100% of the bears over six years of age carry trichinosis.

He said, well, don't tell anybody that. And I said, well, I can't not tell them. And he said, then don't bring it. Because you're going to turn everybody off to the whole deal. This was a potluck, it sounds like. It was a wild game dinner. So it goes on to say, reinfection challenges are probably not done anywhere. The rationale being that anyone making the mistake of becoming infected with

trichinella parasites once would not be likely to make the same mistake a second time. So, vaccination is being investigated as a means to acquire immunity. Yeah, you could go get vaccinated and just start eating rare bear meat. You know, it makes you think about your potential exposure, watching all those, what's that Instagram page you like? Nature's Metal. When you see deer eating dead stuff, squirrels eating dead rabbits. Like your potential exposure is probably more than you think it is.

But it's got to eat something that ate meat. Right. Yeah. They had a case in Alaska where a guy's got it from walrus, which I thought was strange. Yeah. They had a case in Alaska where guys got it from walrus, which I thought was strange. But the best they can do with the vaccinations, it seems like it reduces the trichinella larval burden in muscle by about 35%. So kind of like it doesn't even matter. 35% is better protection than nothing, but it still means that the individual who has been previously infected will probably still be vulnerable to whole body infection following a second exposure to raw or undercooked meat from bear, boar, rat, etc. Cook the meat, sausages, etc. to at least 160 but yeah i talked that they

they that's old news they changed it you ever notice now yeah they just changed the rules as for other animals they too can't they can and do suffer from this type of parasite that needs only the single deterministic host each cycle Even horses have been found to be a source of trichinella. Having eaten dead rats minced up in their feed. My first job when I was 13 was washing dishes at kind of my first formal job. My first 40-hour-a-week job was washing dishes at a summer camp called Camp Pendulum. And we mixed the Kool-Aid in garbage tubs.

And all that food would go into big garbage cans, leftovers, and a hog farmer would come every night and get it. And there used to be commercial slop. Restaurant slop would make its way into the commercial pork production cycle. And then all those rats and mice eating that slop outside of Camp Pendulum would wind up getting fed to hogs. But now they have like this whole closed system is why they got it out of domestic pork. But a lot of stuff, like he says here, a lot of stuff ends up in horse hay when it's getting bailed. Like gets killed while it's getting mowed, then gets wrapped up in a bale. We used to find all kinds of stuff.

Snakes, mice, rabbits. We used to wrap up black snakes a lot. We had a guy send in a picture that was a fawn wrapped up in a bale. We used to find all kinds of stuff. Snakes, mice, rabbits. We used to wrap up black snakes a lot. We had a guy send in a picture that was a fawn wrapped up in a bale. Yeah, I've seen that before. Alright, Danny Bolton. We know Danny because we were filming in Hawaii. We hung out with Danny.

And he was telling us he was just still recovering from a harrowing encounter with toxoplasmosis. Yes, sir. Which he got off kind of off wild game. But first, Danny, tell everybody what you do for a living. This is the kind of job that makes me way ass jealous, and I bet it makes everybody jealous.

Yeah, so I do a lot of driving instructing, and it's turned into, I have an off-road driving background i used to race off-road and a couple of my friends they train a bunch of military special forces guys and they head out in the desert for a week and so i've been working with them do a bunch of air force uh pjs and navy seals and a bunch of other military and government programs. Teaching them how to Baja. Teach them how to drive off-road. Teach them how to not break stuff.

If they encounter certain obstacles, how to get over it and use a winch. It's four days, self-supported, bring all our own gas, all our own water. We camp out there. Teach them how to weld with car batteries. So in case we break something, need to weld something, we can do that out there. So yeah, it's a fun job for sure. It's good for the soul because you feel like you're passing on that knowledge

to people who actually are going to use it. Now, could a guy like me, I don't want to give people ideas, not like me, could I go on that trip with you sometime? Yeah, so. Really? Yeah, you got my number, Steve. Okay, when we were hanging out in Hawaii, you were still sick and you were wondering what the hell had happened to you.

And while we were there, you found out. Now, tell your little saga. Start with what you were, start with your hunting trip. Okay. So I didn't find out till like a week after you had left, which had been like three weeks after being sick. So basically what happened was, is that you guys were coming out and we were going to film that whole thing.

I knew we were going to hunt goats and then Camp Chef had sent out that pellet grill so i was like okay cool um maybe we could use this thing and i was thinking okay i'm just gonna try and make some jerky on that thing so i went and shot a goat about a week before you guys were gonna arrive explain what you mean by a goat like you mean like a goat yeah just a wild goat yeah like hawaii is like lots of like just feral goats he doesn't mean like a mountain goat or an antelope he means like a goat yeah like they call them spanish goats or or ibex um they're not really ibex but um yeah they're just feral feral goats that are all over the island it's it's kind of like whitetail i guess guess, in the east.

You see them pretty frequently. And you guys saw them just driving around on the roads. You see them on the side of the roads and like that. So I went hunting, got this goat. And I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to make some jerky on this pellet grill and see how that turns out. So I'm hanging out with my friend Bart. We're cutting this goat meat up into these like little nice, perfect,

basically like little sashimi slices. You know, I was trying to cut it as thin as possible so that it wasn't chewy. And as we're cutting it, it just looks so beautiful. And I know plenty of people who eat deer meat and I've eaten elk meat raw. And I know you're not supposed to eat pigs and bears raw, but I didn can't believe you ate that raw, you know? So anyway, cutting this stuff up into these little slices for jerky. And I was like, man, let's get the soy sauce and wasabi out. And we'll just eat a couple of these pieces just like you would, you know, ahi sashimi.

So that's really where it came from with eating it raw. And I really, we ate it. It was good. You know, with the soy sauce and the wasabi, it kind of masked some of the flavor because it's so strong. And it basically tasted like fish. It was a little bit more chewy, but it wasn't as chewy as you would think. So we ate it. I ate about four pieces, which is probably about a little more than a tablespoon. And then my friend Bart, same thing. He ate like four pieces.

So we're like, okay, cool. You know? And my wife was there and I almost wish she wasn't. So she couldn't say this, but she's like, man, you guys shouldn't eat that. She's like looking at us like, I don't know if I'd eat that. Oh, dude, that gives her a lifetime of material. Oh, yeah. She's like, I told you, you know. And then my brother-in-law comes up as well. You know, I feel horrible about this. I kind of peer pressured him.

I was like, hey, come have a piece. What, are you afraid? He's like no no yeah yeah he's all no no i'm allergic to wasabi and i was like oh no problem i got apple cider vinegar right here i'll just douse it with that so like i douse a piece with that and i give it to him so he eats piece. I'm talking like small little sashimi slice piece. It's okay. Ate it. Done. Next, I kind of had in my head like, who knows, like if I'm puking tonight, whatever, I'll get it out. Next day, I'm feeling fine. So I'm like, cool. You know, I made, I made it clear. And then about three days later, I got leg pains, kind of like as if I ran a couple miles the day before, you know, the next day I was, I actually talked to you, Steve, that day I talked to you on the phone

before you guys came out and I was headed out on the boat. That day, I was starting to feel a little weird. And then that evening, I got body aches real bad and I got chills. But the weird thing about that day is I had bought some plate lunch the day before and I brought it with me to take it with me fishing. And I threw it in the dashboard of the truck and we ended up working and not going fishing until later in the afternoon. And I didn't get to eat that like fried chicken until like two o'clock in the afternoon after I sat in the dash. So when I got sick that night, I was like, oh, that chicken was no good, you know? And it had like, you know, the mac salad with the tuna and like the mayonnaise threw you off that threw you off the trail man it threw me off the trail so that night when i got sick i was like that that

was no good i should definitely not have eaten that after sat in the dash i thought i got sick from that so that next day i was body aches and over that night to body aches and the chills, the chills are probably the worst. And my skin was kind of sensitive too. And, uh, just sensitive to temperature, you know, like if my arm would be sticking out of the blanket, I'd be like, Oh, that's cold out there. You know, I'd have to cover it up. And so knowing that we were going to be filming in two days, I was like, I'm going to just, I'm going to lay here and try to get better and just drink a bunch of liquids and try to heal up. So I spent two days in bed before you guys showed up just feeling horrible.

And then once we needed to start filming, and the first couple days of filming, I was just on the camera boat. So, I was taking Tylenol and Advil. Like, once I started taking Tylenol and Advil, it was actually pretty manageable. And honestly, I've never had Tylenol or Advil work so good. Like my body aches, not completely disappeared, but from what they were without the drugs, it took the body aches away big time. And then the chills too. Once the drugs started to wear off, like at night, I tried not use them because I didn't want to be overloading my system with them. And then the body aches and chills and stuff would all kick back in. Really at night was the worst. And I was taking hot showers like in the middle of the night, like cooking hot showers. After those

two days of filming, I got home one day super, I didn't take any Tylenol or stuff because I was going to try wean off it that night, you know. I started getting real hot feeling and almost like I was going to pass out. I got real bad cotton mouth. And I knew I had a temperature because I could feel my body just cooking. Check my temperature. And that baby went from, it just went 100, 101, 102, 103. And it started creeping up through like 103.4, 103.5. And I just pulled it out at that point.

It wouldn't beep. You know how you stick it in and it beeps? Dude, this thing was just going up and up. And it was in there for like five minutes. Started smoking. Yeah. And I'm like, just get it out of my mouth already like 3.5 103.5 i was like let's just go i need to go to the hospital because i got this fever now

so i need to figure out what the hell's wrong with me so we went to the hospital i was telling him hey okay the only thing out of my ordinary day was I ate this raw goat meat. At this point, it had been like over a week ago. So he's asking me questions about it. Okay, you know, did you throw up? Did you have diarrhea? You know, all these other questions. And since I didn't have, since I didn't, this is what I concluded was since I didn't have since I didn't this is what I concluded was since I didn't

throw up and have diarrhea he kind of like blew it off that's the way I took it and um didn't really test me for because I wanted to get tested for all kinds of stuff right there I was like I was thinking trigonosis and um whatever else you can get from raw goat meat, you know. Doesn't really check me too much. Gets me the two IVs. They took an x-ray of my chest. They said my lungs had some little bit of inflammation and stuff. But nothing major. So they gave me the two IVs.

I actually started feeling better from the IVs. And got my temperature down with some Tylenol they gave me through the IV. And then sent me home that night. The next day, I'm feeling better and just still tired, and my body's pretty much drained and muscles are sore. But other than that, I started feeling better. So we kept filming, and two days later, we were hunting goats. Remember, I got that text from my sister.

I had to take Ashkahn to the hospital last night at like three in the morning with chest pain. And cause he was, he was sick for at that point, like five days, but then it got worse and he had this chest pain. So she takes him to the hospital. And I also had like this chest pain when I was going through my body aches and especially I'd breathe in deep and my back would hurt. And then lungs would almost make me want to cough a little bit. I just equated it with like body aches all over. You know, I was just miserable all over. But since he went in with chest pain,

the hospital's like, oh, we got to check you out, you know. So, they do an x-ray and he's got heart inflammation, like the heart, the heart sac, you know, there's a name for it, but that's inflamed. They think it's a Brucella. That's what they, they thought it was. So that's what they started him on antibiotics. So I'm like, perfect. They're going to figure out what it is. And then I'm going to get the antibiotics for it. Since he was on those antibiotics, they kept him in the hospital for three days.

Same thing. He kind of naturally started feeling better after three days. And they did the blood culture. They found out it wasn't Brucella. And he kind of naturally started getting better. So he got out of the hospital. And then that's as much as far as the sickness went it kind of drug on for a while but after we stopped filming steve that after the day we

finished cooking at my house that next day i went in and got tested for everything because i i didn't know if it was going to last you know i was like man this thing's going to flare back. I got to know what the heck's going on with me. And I had told them like, hey, I want to get tested for everything that has to do with raw goat meat. So, I go in and they poke both my arms. They fill like 10 tubes up with blood. They give me a urine sample. I had to give them and then these three stool samples I had to do and so I was like perfect but I was kind of laughing because the day before we had eaten goat curry and raw fish that's all that's all I ate that day before so I was like oh man this thing's gonna be laced with all kinds of goodies so I do the stool sample and uh I don't know if you ever done those stool samples but

it's like the two of them it it's got liquid in it already. Yeah, and you get a little cowboy hat to go into. I've done that, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so they give you the plastic thing. You turn the plastic thing, but it's not very deep. So you kind of got to like lift off to make sure you don't like stack it up. And you got to like let it drop in there.

Get them all filled up. I go return them. And at that point, all kinds of filled up, I go return them. And at that point, all kinds of tests started coming back through my email. And I don't know, you know, I'm not a doctor, like all these, checking all these proteins and all this stuff. So I didn't really know. But then the toxoplasmosis one came up and it says, they didn't tell me yet, but I got the result.

What it says is it's got these ranges that you're supposed to be in. And it says anything under eight is negative. From eight to 10 is normal. And then anything above 10 is positive. And mine came back at 93.6. So I was like, yeah, that looks about right. I think that's what it is. You're like, that's got to be something. That's got to be it. So yeah, that's when I found out. And that wasn't until like a week after you guys had left, which has been like three weeks. And then telling people about it, my one friend's like, oh, Joe Rogan had somebody on and they talked about it for like 20 minutes

and listened to that. And there's some crazy stuff. That's when I found out about the whole friends like, oh, Joe Rogan had somebody on and they talked about it for like 20 minutes and listened to that. And there's some crazy stuff. You know, that's when I found out about the whole cats and how it breeds in cats or whatever. And that's where it comes from. And then they poop and the goat must have ate some grass that the cat poop was on or something, you know. But here's the crazy thing too, is that I was telling my uncle about it and he was talking about these fever dreams. And I remember I was like, oh man, when I was sick, because like I said, the nights were worse.

I was having these dreams that I had these leopard spots all over me and they were like illuminating on the muscles that were in pain, like my legs and stuff. And I'm tripping out. I'd wake up. I'd be like, oh, that was weird. I'd go pee or something. And when I'd go lay back down, I'd go right back into that same dream. And that happened for two nights.

Yeah, I went like in the peak of being sick. So I was tripping out. And then when i found out about this thing coming from cats oh and then having these leopard spot dreams i was i was tripping dude that's cat scratch fever right there i don't care what he says man that's cat scratch fever dude Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law

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

24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more.

As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Dr. Lazar, lay out the situation on toxoplasmosis. So just to preface this with, so I'm an ER doctor and definitely not a ID doctor. But one thing that ER doctors are really good at is that we know a little bit about a lot of things. And we're super good at looking things up really quickly to sound smart and confident. So that's kind of what I, I mean, this is like medical school stuff. You never go say like, Hey, I was just looking it up.

Oh, no way. You guys come in and act like you knew all along. You're like, Oh, I'll be, I'll be right back. And it's like, you know, he's going out to Google it. He's going to come back and act like he knew. I've had a minute to think about this. It's not just ER doctors. It's all doctors are doing that. All right. So Google is amazing, right? But the thing is, so here's the thing is that, so just so you don't think that all doctors are just using the internet, but it's like your peripheral brain. It's there.

You know what it is. And I can go through Wikipedia, which is a wonderful resource. You can go through it and you go like, oh, I remember that from medical school. Oh, I remember that part. So you're not just, you know, doing it it de novo you're just recharging your brain so but but i i gotta i gotta tell you i gotta tell you something alan yeah when i had trichinosis i had already spoken with the state epidemiologist in alaska i'd already gone down and told him how i was real sick and i think that i knew what i had they sent me home not believing me.

My brother was like, go beer drinking with the state epidemiologist in Alaska. He's like, well, call him. I called him, and they deal with a lot of it up there because they're eating a lot of bear meat. I call him. It was a month ago. Four of us all got it. We were eating rare bear meat. He's like, you have trichinosis.

Go back down to the doctor. Tell him to call me me i'm waiting for his call yeah i go down i said listen man i'm not here to like tell you a bunch of shit about what's going on me yep call this number he looked at me like i'm nuts yeah he goes well i'm here with you and he's way up there and i'm like just call the guy so he eventually agrees to call him but won't call him in my presence no leaves the room i know he went and called him comes back and goes seems you have trichinosis i'm like thanks buddy yeah yeah yeah that's a little bit of hubris to have to i learned that early on in my career if some a family member comes in and is like i need you to call so and so you call that person because otherwise you and if you're because if you're wrong then you're an ass you know I mean like you're in a big amount of trouble so it's always better to take all the input and just be like okay well you

know let's listen get all the points but yeah that's a that's a common thing so I'm glad he listened to you or your friend. So toxoplasmosis. It's an obligate intracellular protozoan organism. So it's a small single-celled microscopic animal, which includes things like amoebas and sporozoans and other different forms. It's a parasite. And they say the obligate end-of-the-line host is the cat. So the cat will get this in its gut, it will poop it out, and small animals like birds and rodents will somehow get the feces

from eating whatever's on the ground. When you say obligate, you mean it has to go through a cat? It has to be in the cat, ultimately. Yeah, to be able to replicate in its spreading form, it wants to get into the cat. To humanize it or to anthropomorphize the single-celled organism, it wants to be in the cat's gut and it wants to get pooped out to spread. Hey, Alan. It's a cat lady. Hey, Alan, are we talking just domestic cats or could we be talking about, you know, bobcats or mountain lions?

Do you know? Not sure, but if I had to make a guess, I'd probably say all felines. Cause it says, um, from the CDC website, it says from the family feel a day. So, uh, so domestic cats and their relatives. So I presume bobcats is probably, I mean, they're part of the feline family. Yeah, I read that leopards and stuff can have it and other cats. Yeah, and how things evolve. So, Danny, what you're talking about, that guy that you watch on Joe Rogan, he had a lot of really interesting things to say. He was like, I don't know if he's an epidemiologist or ID doc or what, but he went into a lot of detail about this parasitic relationship and how things evolved together.

It's so complicated over millennia, like how and why it shows the cat, not sure. But anyway, so it can also get into domestic animals like pigs and sheep. Ultimately, humans get it from either eating undercooked raw meat containing the cysts or drinking water or eating domestic animals that have been exposed to it. One of the, to you guys' point before, you can get it from handling a cat litter box. And like when we had kids, I love domestic animals, but we got rid of our cats. We, uh, adopted them out, whatever the term is, gave them away to somebody else because I didn't want to, I didn't want to expose my wife. And I also didn't want to do the litter box for the next like five years.

So it was like time for the cats to go. Um, here it is, Spencer. There's a way out, buddy. Yeah. I gotta get rid of the cat. I hope Kelsey's listening to this. Yeah, for sure. It's not worth it.

So it's that a cat. So I want to make sure I'm getting this. It's in the cat. It has to go through the cat. It's in the cat's gut. It's in the cat's shit. But a goat has to eat something laying on cat shit. Or the cat poop is in the soil and the cysts are in the soil

so the when the cat poops these oocysts which are not um like sporulated or active infective cysts come out into the poop and then they mature in the ground and then they become infective over like a couple days and then the you know rodents or birds come by and consume whatever's on the ground and then they become infected and then the you know rodents or birds come by and consume whatever's on the ground and then they become infected and then the cat will eat those rodents and birds and then the cycle continues um and if a human steps in there somewhere eats the bird or you know drops their granola bar on the ground when they're hiking or something like that but you know we're exposed to all sorts of pathogens when we're walking around all day long i mean have you guys ever um that's a tangent but the war of the worlds you know i mean the like how the aliens ultimately

get defeated because of like the bacteria that they can't handle but we're exposed to it all the time you know we're exposed to bacteria viruses pathogens on the daily in our immune system orson wells that's what happens with aliens in the Orson Welles thing? They catch a cold. I'm pretty sure, right? You remember in, what was that, what was that, what was that alien invasion movie

where they realized that yodeling kills them? They would play Slim Whitman's, they'd play Slim Whitman's Indian love call to kill them. This can't be real.

No, it's not. No, Mars Attacks. Oh. Mars Attacks. Someone eventually realized that Slim Whitman music would kill them. In the ring, isn't it water that does the trick? That's Signs. Signs is water, yeah.

Oh, yeah, Signs. Yeah, it was, I'm calling you. That's a great movie. Yeah. So back to Trichinosis so somebody was saying earlier um i can't remember who said it but like what's the prevalence or like how many people have been infected by it they think that the zero prevalence in the united states is about 20 to 25 percent um but it varies throughout the world and And particularly, it varies in societies and countries that have less stringent food safety practices, less clean water, etc.

So in countries in South America, like in Brazil, they think about 70% of people have been exposed to toxoplasmosis to just have it in their muscles. No, really? Yeah. But it's still 25% in the United States. That's still pretty high. When I was going through the trichinosis thing, I had a call with someone who had been in the Peace Corps. She'd been a doctor with the Peace Corps.

And she told me that in a lot of villages, when they would go into the Congo, they would just come in, and without asking anyone about symptomology or anything, they would come in the Congo, they would just come in and without asking anyone about symptomology or anything, they would come in and deworm everybody. It was just understood that they were carriers and probably suffering. It was pervasive. I think that we as a society don't have as much of an understanding of how different things were like 100 years ago, or 200 years ago, when we didn't have indoor plumbing, and we didn't have water treatment

plants, etc. Like the biggest movements forward in increasing human lifespan have been in the structural implements in society, like indoor plumbing, clean water, the development of antibiotics, like all these things have increased our lifespans by 20, 30 years because infectious disease was the number one killer in humans up until the advent of antibiotics. And then I think trauma as well. But anyway, so yeah, I would, you know, people are pooping where they're eating pretty much in close proximity. So, and that's just an unfortunate thing. But, you know, I really appreciate my toilet. So, yeah.

Yeah. So, I did have the State Department had to call me and because they got reported that I had toxoplasmosis. So I had to do this whole report with the Department of Health. And they did the whole report. And then I asked her, I was like, hey, how common is this? And she didn't have numbers super recent, but she had 2018. There were seven cases on just our island. 2017, there was four cases. 2016, there was 11 cases on just our island of toxoplasmosis.

She didn't say how they got it. You know, it could have just been someone with dirty hands preparing food or something. But I was the first case this year. Congratulations. That's good. But yeah, but I was the first case this year. Just like, you know. Congratulations. That's good. One last thing about toxo. So it should be said most people who contracted have like 90% of people have no symptoms.

And Danny's unique because he has this, he probably would have had, they say it's an acute self-limited infection and like a healthy host. And the most common clinical presentation is people develop lymph nodes in their neck that are non-tender and they're large on both sides. And then people get these myalgias or body aches, fever, sweating, headaches, sometimes a rash. But most people have no symptoms and it passes without any problem. The people that you really worry about are pregnant women and immunocompromised people. So people who have HIV, people who are really unhealthy, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, etc. Those people, their most common presentation, aside from pregnant women, have central nervous system symptoms where the toxo is in their brain and they end up showing up with seizures

and focal neuro deficits and headaches and stuff. And it's really scary for them. They'll have to be on treatment for the rest of their life. If they survive the, the, um, the illness initially. So.

Danny, uh, I got one last question for you. Yeah, buddy. Do you, uh, you don't have a cat,

right? No cats, dude. So you weren't like screwing around the litter box or something. Dude, I was not touching the cat shit. I call it cat shit-itis, dude. that's what i've been calling this thing the goat the goat's disease or cat shit itis all right thanks a lot man appreciate you coming on when you come to next time you're in the u.s we'll have we'll

come down and talk spearfishing in the u.s sorry you know the mainland the mainland the mainland i don't know you guys. 49 state and all that garbage. Listen, man, my flag still has 48 state stars on it. Yeah, the mainland. Mainland. All right, Alan, while we got you, I want to ask you a question. This is for Yanni because Yanni has been wanting to have

some information about when you're shooting guns and your ears go bad over time. So, you're shooting guns and your ears go bad over time. So we were shooting, experimenting with different suppressors the other day, and it kind of led to this conversation about what exactly is going on in your ears when you shoot guns a lot. And can you explain what happens? Like I had someone, Clay Newcomb, recently gave this to me by shooting too close to my ear.

When someone shoots real close to your ear, like in a duck blind or whatever, and all of a sudden you get that, what has happened to your ear? So, it's a really interesting question and very relevant for everybody there and not listening to the podcast. So what happens is when a gun goes off, there is a sound wave or an explosion, a sound wave that slams into your tympanic membrane, which is in your middle ear. So the ear is broken into three pieces. There's the outer ear, the part you can touch on the side of your head called the pinna, your ear canal, bugs get stuck in there. The middle ear, which is your tympanic membrane, and then the ossicle chain of these tiny bones, which are the tiniest in your body, that then vibrate and touch the inner ear. In the inner ear, there's a structure called the cochlea and the semicircular canals.

The cochlea is what processes that sound wave and those vibrations into electrical signals going down the vestibular cochlear nerve into your brain, into like your temporal parietal lobe, and then you perceive sound or you hear. And so when you hear that ringing, that ringing is called tinnitus, or some people say tinnitus. Tinnitus isitus is, uh, the perception of, um, the perception of sound, uh, in the absence of external auditory stimulus. So you're hearing something that's not necessarily there. So the sound wave has gone away, but you're still hearing that ringing. Um, and so tinnitus can be temporary or permanent. Um, especially if people are exposed to a lot of like, you know, significant high end noise. But it can also, I was reading, can happen from like explosions and a single,

you know, experience where somebody gets a super high amount of decibels or they, you know, blow their eardrum. So that tinnitus is essentially the little hairs inside the cochlea that are vibrating back and forth and translating that vibration of the sound wave into electrical signals. It's those little hairs that are dying or being overly stimulated. So like I remember going to concerts when I was younger and I didn't wear any ear protection at all. And I'd walk out of the concert and all I had for two, three hours was that tinnitus or that ringing in my ears. Thankfully, it went away. But after, you know, learning in medical school, I realized that my inner ear was essentially dying after going to like a rock concert.

So I started wearing earplugs. So that's pretty much it well why is it that now and then you'd be laying in bed like this happens to me now laying in bed and all of a sudden there it is right and at first you look around the house do you think something in the house is going on like it's not related to someone blasting a gun off next to your head. Sure. So when you get exposed to loud noises, so noises are rated in decibels and the threshold of pain, the scale goes from zero to 140. 140 is like the threshold of pain for a human. A shotgun blast is around 120 to 140. But, you know, different kinds of guns with shorter barrels and bigger barrels

can be louder than that. When you get exposed to high decibel sounds, you can have permanent damage to those cochlear nerve cells. And why it all of a sudden ticks off in the middle of the night, I'm not really sure. But all of us, because of the way we live with our earbuds and the stuff we're exposed to in our jobs and your avocational things with shooting, we all probably have some degree of cochlear hair cell damage. And the cells that are taking the signal from the hairs also get damaged. And so they can get extra excited even without stimulation. And so they just fire off and that's the tinnitus that's happening. And they say, I was reading before that most tinnitus will self-resolve on its own. I think between like 25 and 50% resolves on its own. So it's hard to, you know,

it's not really a very well- well treatable thing. A lot of people struggle with depression from it or feel like they're going crazy. They've even associated tinnitus with suicides, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, because it's extremely disturbing. Like most people don't care as much about losing their hearing, but they care a lot about having tinnitus that's chronically happening because it's so disturbing. So. Once hair, inner ear hair cells have been killed, there's no regeneration of anything, right? So it's like 10 shotgun blasts near my head will produce X amount of damage and that's it. And then it'll just, it's kind of a downward spiral.

Yeah. Humans, so I read somewhere else that humans don't regenerate those cells as well as like other animals do, but most animals aren't exposed to super high noises like we are in the same way either. But humans are unique in the sense that we don't really regenerate those cells. Ironically, everybody ends up losing some of their hearing as they age. It's called presbycusis. And Steve, you guys will all appreciate this, but they say that men tend to lose the higher pitched sounds and women tend to lose the lower pitched sounds. So as we age, essentially, we are like drowning our partners out over time. What you say i got some of that already yeah i think we all do in some ways yeah so uh but yeah the the cells don't i sent corinne some pictures and it looked kind of looks like a um you know like somebody smushed a bunch of uh

little tiny fingers down and um like a bomb went off you know and there's electron microscope photographs so yeah and one other thing i read so one other thing i read so i i pulled up a couple studies and um and one of these studies was based in greece and they looked at uh like 100 military guys that had been exposed to gunfire anywhere from like one to a thousand rounds light versus heavy, heavy arms. And they, they had most of the patients in the study were right-handed. They were like 90% of them were right-handed. And they found that most of the, um, most of the tinnitus that people were experiencing was in their left ear. So if you're, you know, if you're a right-handed shooter, you've got your right ear down on your shoulder,

down on the butt of the gun. Your left ear is more exposed to that sound wave. So they're thinking that the right ear is protected. And I like the term, they call it an acoustic shadow next to your shoulder. So your right ear is more protected than your left. I thought that was an interesting fact. When I went to an audiologist

and he was looking at what ear, I can't remember what it was was because I'm left-handed. Anyways, he was puzzled by the fact that the ear that I had damaged was the one I had damaged until he realized that I was left-handed. He's like, oh, that makes sense. He's like, normally we see this in people's whatever the hell ear. Left ear, I guess. Yeah. Yet another unique thing so the degree of tinnitus doesn't always associate with the amount of like hearing

impairment so you can have like still pretty good hearing and still have still be uh you know a victim of this tinnitus and one of the thing i read one of the most common injuries or the most common injury in the iraq war was uh ear injuries because of the soldiers being exposed to gunfire and loud noises. And it's quite common in the general population as well. About 150 people per 100,000 people experience tinnitus. So it's fairly common. Got it. Last thing I found was I found an article from American Speech and Language Association on suppressors.

I know you guys were talking about earlier and they were just talking about hearing protection and saying that, you know, even though you put a suppressor on your firearm, you should still be wearing ear protection because the suppressor only drops the noise level by like 20 to 30 decibels. And so, you know, if some of these firearms are producing sounds greater than 140, then you're still in a fairly loud sound range, like operating heavy machinery or at a nightclub, basically on the decibel scale. Yeah. A guy was telling us that most suppressors that you want to make sure a suppressor puts you down, they go by OSHA standards. You can get a suppressor that'll put you down below what OSHA would recommend for hearing protection. But I don't know why the hell you wouldn't just leave them on anyways. Yeah. So the OSHA standards, I looked those up too. The OSHA standards are based off of not only the amount of decibels, but also the amount of

time that you're exposed to those decibels. So like they would say a worker can be exposed to, uh, you know, 90 decibels, uh, for four hours. Um, or, uh, I don't know the exact amount, but you know, so it's, it's also time, time rated as well. So, but probably good for anybody using suppressor, I think it's probably still a good idea to put some amount of ear protection on if you shoot a lot. So let's talk about when you guys are going to get, you guys should get a t-shirt for number of lives meat eater saved with the tourniquets, right? Oh, we're up to, we got a new one. I think we're, how many, but his life wasn't, he was, it doesn't cause a life save. It's like an arm save. I mean, he could have bled out, but his life wasn't, he was, it doesn't count as a life save. It's like an arm save.

I mean, he could have bled out, but. Yeah. You guys could have like a ticker, like three and counting and one arm and counting. Yeah, for sure. And then, you know, we have this, as you know, and I'll point this out to people too. We have a audio, we have an audio original book coming out with Random House. I've heard about that. Yeah.

Well, yeah. Because in this project, we hear a very elaborate story. Listeners will hear a very elaborate story about a man who him and his father were hunting. His father got shot by a dog. And this guy was seriously at risk of dying. Recalled hearing a podcast in which someone explained how to put a tourniquet. And he remembers how I'm talking about the tightness. Saved his old man's life.

And then later when he had a minute to think about it, realized it was hearing Dr. Lazara on the Meteor podcast. And that was like the third life you'd save these people should all be sending you money man no no it's all it's all good samaritan i i think you know i think that um i was looking last night for a video on your instagram because corinna told me about something about a deer with a bunch of pus in its belly but i was looking and i stumbled across a video of you cutting your ingrown toenail out. And I saw that it had about 500,000 views. Oh yeah. That video killed. I said, what an amount of influence you have, if you can do self-grooming and people watch that to

such a degree, but also to comment on the fact that to use that influence in such a way to put out great messages about conservation or health or safety. I mean, it's a tremendous service, I think, to people. And it's also, you know, really entertaining. I'm obviously biased, but like, you know, it's a great thing. You know, it's good Samaritan stuff. It's amazing. So no money, just good Samaritan stuff it's amazing so no money just good samaritan stuff i appreciate you saying that man i did that toe surgery yesterday on a zoom call but i just kept my

foot down below the okay it was like uh what's his name who's the new yorker right yeah i was just gonna say that's uh what's that guy yeah it's like jeffrey tubing but with my toe doing my toe surgery but i kept my toe down low. That's good. Out of sight. That's good. Later people are like, he did a toe surgery during a Zoom call. What's he doing down there? What's he doing down there anyway? He must be working on his toe. You're probably the only person to do that

on a Zoom call. The latest news, it's going to break. And the wildest part is that the caption was like, do you want to see more of this content? And it was a resounding yes. I know, but I just got to think of more. I mean, I could just do the same surgery over and over again, but I can't think of more. Dr. Lazar, thanks for joining us, man.

Tell everybody where you work so if they get hurt, they can come to the right hospital. Absolutely. So I work at Henry Ford Allegiance in Jackson, Michigan. I work for a company, a small democratic group called IEP. And yeah, we love taking care of patients and, you know, we're, we're there always in the middle of the night, every holiday, every weekend. So that's what we signed up for. So you're, you're, so if someone is going to get hurt, they should get hurt at night. Cause they're going to find you down there at night.

Yeah. I mean, the ER is open. The ER is open 24 seven. I think it's like us, Walmart, and Taco Bell, I think, are like the 24-7 operations that we have in our society. All right, so there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. If you get hurt in Jackson, make sure to go to that place, Jackson, Michigan. Go to that place and you can shoot the breeze with Dr. Lazaro while he fixes you up. Thanks so much for having me, you guys.

Thanks, man. Thanks, Alan. All right, I want to hit on this audio project for a minute. It's available. It's coming out soon. It's available for pre-order. I'm going to tell people how I described it. I put a thing on Instagram about it.

Which sums it up pretty good. You did a great job. No, we worked our, yeah, we've been working our cojones off on this thing. Still are. Still wrapping up the finishing touches. So, okay, here's what I wrote on Instagram about it. Listeners of the Meat Eater podcast might remember our meat tree episodes where we told the story of a mightily close encounter with a brown bear

on Alaska's Fognac Island. This very podcast told that story. Ultimately, that experience inspired this immersive audio book with Random House. By immersive, we mean, I hesitate to say this because you might get the wrong idea. There's a soundscape. There's like supporting sound and there's music and stuff, but there's supporting sound to kind of like, it's immersive. I think everybody's shocked at how good it turned out.

I didn't know it was going to be this good. Yeah, it was a surprise. When we started in on it. Because we found the most craziest people with the craziest stories. Yeah, geez. It's six hours long. Includes 16 tales of harrowing close calls in the wild told by the people themselves. A game warden almost gunned down by an oozy wielding sociopathic elk poacher

a spear fisherman trapped in an underwater cave a pheasant hunter shot by a dog a peacock bass fisherman who inadvertently gets tangled up with a drug cartel a fishing guide who saves the life of a boy whose father had written him off for dead, that being none other than Brody Henderson! Brody Henderson walking around all the time, sitting on this very traumatic story about a boy he saved. We got Seth in there too. Seth's in there.

I get to him in a minute. A fishing guide who saves the life of a boy whose father had written him off for dead, and a wildland firefighter who's forced to reckon with the idea of his last day on Earth. Yep. Spoiler alert. Flip-flop flasher.

We're sitting among giants. Flip-flop flasher. What's the spoiler alert? It wasn't his last day on Earth since he's sitting here. Here I am. I said forced to reckon with. You trying to sell the book or not, dude? No, I'll be like,

that's how Seth died, long time ago. To go on, along the way I explore the unique aspects of human psychology and physiology that emerge

during these brushes with death and seek to answer the question of why close calls in the wild have a way of haunting us for the rest of our lives. I've always been a big fan of paradoxical undressing, which happens to you during hypothermia.

It's an unnerving idea. But in this one, in the hypothermia story in this book of a caribou guide, we explore terminal burrowing. It's kind of a nasty little description. Some people, when they're suffering hypothermia,

get the idea that they're going to dig a hole and climb into the hole to warm up, often digging their own grave. It's good. It's very good. I was playing, because we were going through

and just doing final listens, and I was driving down the road listening to edits with my wife. And there were four times, just the short time we were listening to things, four times, including doing Brody's story,

where she did one of these noises. She went, I can't quite do it. It'd be like a, huh? No. Do one, like a shock noise, Corinne. No, more than that. Way more.

It was like, huh? No, like a, it was like Tim Allen, whatever that is. No, she did a noise like this. I should get her to come down here and do it. She did a noise like, it was like this. It was conveyed this message. Oh my God. Oh my God.

Yeah. There you go. Do that again. Got it. Yeah. Basically just like my wife. Like, oh my God, without the words. It's good.

Listen, this is one of the proudest things. We don't celebrate a lot of stuff around here, but I'm setting up a dinner for the bazillion people involved in that project. It's one of the great, I think it's one of the coolest things we've ever made. Yeah, and it'll, I think, very much appeal to people. It's not just for hunters and fishermen. No, dude, there's skiers. There's a skier in it who rode an avalanche for 1,800 feet. Yep.

Mountaineer. Mountaineering. Just game wardening. Yeah. All kinds of stuff. Yeah. My wife really likes the show Hoarders. Are you familiar with that?

I know there's a show called Hoarders. Yeah, it's like where these people have an extreme hoarding problem. Are you going to bring this back to this audio? Yeah, yeah. No, it's coming there. I'm looking forward to this. I do know about this show. I haven't seen any episodes. If you're not familiar, these folks fill their house with just trash, literal trash

from floor to ceiling. Yeah. And then they bring in these experts to help them clean up their house. Yeah, there's hoarding experts to help them clean up their house. Is that there's hoarding experts to help them clean up their house. Is that as a dude with a dumpster? There's a dude with a dumpster. Okay. And then there's also the expert that helps them.

Oh, psychologically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm with you. I can't watch the show. There's too much dread and too much anxiety with that show. And there's just no payoff. And it's like, I need to walk out of the room if my wife is watching Hoarders. You get a little bit of that with these interviews.

Like it approaches that line of giving you some anxiety and some dread, but it's still like wildly entertaining and there's still a payoff. And it's, it's like one of the most fun things to listen to. Oh, there's also a story speaking, not all hunting and fishing. There's a story about going to the old hot springs. Yep. Oh yeah. Just a, just a nice day having a warm dip.

Yep. What could possibly go wrong? Having a warm dip at the hot spring. It's good. Okay. It's coming out, but you just get it now. Here's the thing. It's an audio book.

So you don't need to wait for it to come in the mail. But it's good for us if we just go pre-order the damn thing. Yep. You can go to Audible or Amazon. Yeah, you go to Amazon.com, you can go to Audible. I think Audible's owned by Amazon. Yep. And find it.

It's called Meat Eaters Campfire Stories. Close calls. Close calls. It's all close calls. Should we point out that we're hoping there's going to be a volume two if everything goes well? Yeah. And then that'll give everybody that's listening a chance to let us know about their close calls. They'll get cast.

They'll get casted. Cast into it. Speaking of books, when we were, our recent episode just came out a couple weeks called, Well, you know what happened to me the other day speaking of doing uh the audiobook um someone tried to sabotage the project i think competitors competitors in the audio space because we were recording some final pickup lines okay and nick who works here hands me a fudgesicle which i take into the studio and i'm licking on this fudgesicle trying to do the lines sounds like this. His life flashed before his eyes.

Yeah, we had to finish the fudgesicle and come back in and redo the whole thing all over again because it was fudgesicle-ized. In the Hunting in Chains episode, we're talking about out-of-print books. And I was talking about there's this book I love by a writer, Duncan Gilchrist. He's a writer. He, Duncan Gilchrist was an outdoor writer who would publish his own books. And he accidentally wrote like Hemingway, like very,

very simple, clean lessons. He was sentences. He was a bush pilot. He was a guy in Alaska. He used to hunt New Zealand, hunt all over the place. Very like DIY, um DIY alpine hunting.

And he kind of put all of his thoughts and approaches and tips and tricks into a book called, wait for it, All About Bears, which is all about bears. And then he wrote Hunt High. Phenomenal books. But there aren't many around. He would self-publish these books. And I'm always yapping about them. And there's very few of them in there. And I was pointing out how I bought one from a guy that was like $100.

I bought it and he sent it to me with a note sticking on it. Because he sees my name when he has to ship it to me. He's like, you're the reason I bought this book. Well, right now, someone, after that episode came out, someone goes online to check on Hunt High. There's a copy on Amazon for $1,694.24. Or you can get a hardcover for less. Half as much.

50 off. Yeah. And there's some used ones for less. Half as much. 50 off. Yeah. And there's some used ones for $700, $800. You would think that someone would reprint that son of a bitch book. Wow. That's crazy. Unbelievable. Do you feel bad?

Spot burned a book? No, because I think he was so good and such an interesting guy. I like to see him, in death enjoy success a friend of mine was with him when he died was with duncan gilchrist when he died they were filming uh big horn sheep he would do these like videos he would go up and film bighorn sheep and just do videos about bighorn sheep love sheep how long ago did he die it was maybe a decade or so ago a buddy of mine's an outdoor writer and he was writing a piece about Duncan and about Duncan's

lifelong fascination with alpine hunting and mountain hunting. And they were out filming bighorns. And he said all of a sudden, he looked and he was just dead. And he said to my friend, said, in telling the story, my friend said,

Duncan, where did you story, my friend said, Duncan, where did you go? It was that, like... Jeez. Doesn't seem like such a bad way, especially for him. No, just had a heart attack, and there was no nothing. It's just all of a sudden,

he was just dead. Right where he wanted to be, probably. Wow. Yeah, Duncan... That was a weird sound. I thought you were doing the death mode there's a song I wonder if this there's a song I've always wondered what it's about

but it's a band called Death Cab for Cutie oh yeah they got a song about Duncan Gilchrist the lead singer did a solo album and he has a song called Duncan Where Have You Gone and I wonder if it's in reference to that I don't know dude he wow really no it was Where Did You Go in reference to that. I don't know. Dude. He. Wow.

Really? No, it was where did you go? Okay. Might be different, but that's a weird coincidence. Is he a big sheep hunter? Not at all. He's a vegan.

Wow. So that's the important, that's the expensive book desk. Now, last thing to close out is we got to talk about, a lot of times we talk about things people do do, but we're going to talk about things people

don't do. Seth has been toying with. It's not too late, Seth. It might be. Seth toyed with joining a walleye tournament this weekend and chickened out. But he's still fishing the same lake where the tournament is going on. He's just going

up there to fish. Anyway. Walk me through it, Seth, just so I can understand. Well, yeah, Chester and I were thinking about joining or signing up for the walleye tournament

that's on Canyon Ferry this weekend. It's part of the Montana walleye circuit. One reason why we didn't sign up was because the entrance fee is 320 bucks yeah i feel like this company could sponsor you and you just get a sticker on your boat well but then you damn sure better win it's just gonna be embarrassing man yeah um and one of the reasons that i was afraid of but what i'm i'm kind of

reading now that this might not be a problem because they're switching it up, but my live well doesn't always keep fish very lively. And I was afraid of just having fish in there and dying before weigh-ins. Like they'd pass away and you wouldn't be able to count them. Yeah. But I was just reading this right here that I think they might go away from that this year, or they have. You just bring in dead walleyes on ice. No, there's a way that you can record your fish size by.

Like digitally or something? How much would you win if you won the walleye tournament? It's estimated $10,000 for first place. And how many boats? It's got to be a lot. 152 person team max is what it says on here. Huh. I feel like that's probably.

I feel like I would have the smallest boat there. That doesn't mean you wouldn't win. Later it'd be like a movie about you guys, man. It'd be like when the Jamaicans won that bobsled tournament. Cool runnings. In the Olympics, and they later made a movie. That's true. You would be able to take that plot line,

it'd have like Chester's wife, he mad that he fishes all the time, right? And then it would be that you guys go out in this little boat, and the movie would be like a way worse boat. Yeah. There'd be a big storm, too. This is... Giant storm.

This is another problem. The weather... See, my boat on Canyon Ferry, like, you gotta have decent weather to be on the water. If, like, the wind blows both days this weekend,

we could throw 320 bucks in the pot and not even be able to fish. Hmm. But what... Okay, Chad and I would be out there on the bank. But, you know, like 320 for the potential of 10,000 is like a.

That's like buying Bitcoin, dude. That kind of investment. Yeah, exactly. Maybe the odds are better than. That's a lot of money towards Chester's new boat. Yeah, and it's not 10,000 or bust. You could lock into like 30th place and probably get your money back or something. Yeah, and it's not 10,000 or bust. You could luck into like 30th place and probably get your money back or something. Yeah, that's true.

Now, if you go up, you're going to go fish anyway. Yeah, we're going to do it anyway. So all these yahoos are going to be out there in their big souped up boats. You're going to be out there fishing anyways. The minute you catch a hog, you're going to be really regretting it. You'll be like, can I sign up? Can I still sign up? I just caught a

nice one. I'd like to enroll. We were up there last weekend. There was a bunch of dudes pre-fishing it for the tournament. A lot of dudes that have fancy boats. But we absolutely crushed them. You outfished them?

I don't know if we outfished them. We caught a lot of fish. I don't know if we caughtfished them we caught a lot of fish I don't know if we caught like it's a I think it's a five five fish bag we didn't catch any giants yeah you should tell everybody about me

catching that one there at night oh nevermind I don't want you to tell anybody about that you can tell us about it since you started I got one there at night I noticed after I caught it Seth

I noticed after I caught it Seth changed his approach. How big? I did. Joe Walling. 13. And then went on. 13 what?

Inches? Yeah. What we call eaters, Spencer. What we call eaters. Good old eater. Eaters. All right. So you're going?

We're going anyway. Not too late to enroll or too late to enroll? I think it's too late. But no, we're definitely Chet and I are definitely going to start fishing some tournaments. You're going to become a tournament walleye angler. Yep. Do you think you'll still work here? Do you think you'll quit to do that?

It all depends on how much time you let me. So you'd honestly quit this. You'd honestly quit this? You'd honestly quit? You wouldn't want to be colleagues with any of us anymore? No, I wouldn't. So you could be a walleye tournament guy? No, I wouldn't.

I freaking love walleye fishing, though. I know you do. I know you do. But no, I wouldn't. Your girlfriend likes eating walleyes? You like catching walleyes? Yep. No, I seriously't. Your girlfriend likes eating walleyes. You like catching walleyes. Yep. No, I seriously do want to enter tournaments.

I think it'd be fun, but. Is it going to pain you to let them go when you're tournament fishing though? Don't you got to release them? No, once you weigh in, what do they care what you do with them? Yeah, I'm not sure how that works if you have to release them or not.

Yeah, you probably can't high grade during the tournament though. That's what you're talking about. Explain high grade for people at home. Culling. Yeah, like you catch, you got four 16-inchers in the boat, and you can only keep four, and then you catch an 18-incher. You can't let one of the 16-inchers go and keep that 18-incher.

That's high grading. They do that all the time in bass tournaments, though, don't they? Depends on the regulations. Yeah, it depends on the state. Pretty common there. State and body of water. I remember there was a bass fishing scandal one time where there was a, I think it was a bass tournament in a stretch of the Mississippi

where you have states, right? So whatever the hell, one side of the river is one state, one side of the river is the other state. Yep. A guy crossed state line, like down, and I guess in this area, there's all these islands and it's confusing what state you're in crossed state lines

and high graded that was Brandon Paulnit big fan of him actually how do you be a fan of a bass fisherman? it was an auspice take he's got his poster on his wall there was a moment when bass fishing was on ESPN yeah

you had a bass fisherman you had a football team His poster on his wall. Yeah. There was a moment when bass fishing was on ESPN. Yeah. Yeah. Like you had a bass fisherman, like you had a football team. Did you put posters of these people on your bedroom wall? No. I still follow. Did you wear their jersey? No. I follow closely though the Elite Series.

Bass. Yeah. It's cool. I used to do fantasy bass fishing. Hmm. Do you know what that means? No. Do you know what fantasy football is?

Yes. Yeah. That, but with bass. So you like pick like five anglers for a specific tournament. And then you're like entered in this pool with these other guys that are like watching the tournament. Yeah. It's like. Why do you guys not start like a segment of our business dedicated to this stuff?

We should. It's pretty far outside our ethos. We're catching fish? No, no, no. This version of catching fish. Oh. With electronics. Like this tournament tomorrow, Seth,

these guys are going to have electronics more expensive than your entire setup. True. But I mean, I have electronics on my boat that's like more expensive than my boat. There you go. So I feel like they're not going to out-electronics me. Okay.

They might just out-fish you. They're definitely out-boating me big time. All right, Seth. Well, good luck out there. Thank you. I'm a little bit sad about this new career going down. I hope you don't do well. No, I'm not.

I'll tell you, I'm not going to leave Meat Eater to be a tournament walleye fisherman. That's good to hear. That's good to hear. That's good to hear. I do like fishing. Okay. Thank you, everybody. Wish Seth good luck. If you're fishing the walleye tournament and you see a guy in a little dinghy boat, the

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