The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 283: Meat Glue

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Kevin Gillespie, Danielle Prewett, Spencer Neuharth, Phil Taylor, Corinne Schneider, and Janis Putelis. Topics discussed: a walnut expert in Walnut, Kansas; more on "macrofrutation" and macro fructification; when an Italian count dies from eating a fly agaric and sets off an amateur mycology boom; Steve's Grand Theft Cattle idea; trout on meth; killer wolves in the Middle East and global numbers on wolf-human attacks; tasting notes of dirt; eating 50,000 year old steppe bison meat; the grey area on defining a fossil; should you eat animals you trapped under water?; how Kevin got to Top Chef; the advantages of coming in second place; hunting with a pistol before school; what makes southern food southern?; is there a dead mule in it; Wild+Whole 2.0; dogs killing shitloads of chickens; you are what you eat eats; Danielle's contribution to the upcoming MeatEater House of Oddities auction; where to watch MeatEater Cooks; 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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First Light, go go farther stay longer uh you want to talk about severely bug bitten you know what that's a reference to the intro of the podcast very good um holy shit so uh i'm working i don't even know if you guys know about this thing i'm working on this thing with phelps where i've been saying to him how I wanted to do a turkey call project. Jason Phelps with Phelps Game Calls. I want to do a turkey call project where we walk people through the process of making turkey calls starting with a tree. So he's got a buddy where he hunts. He hunted there this spring on this guy's place in Kansas.

And this guy's got a ton of black walnuts, not far from Walnut, Kansas. So many black walnuts. And he's got a bunch of Osage orange on his place. So me and Phelps went there and we're with some walnut experts and cruised around. Why are you smirking? She'd never heard of a walnut expert. I mean a walnut expert. That's a pretty neat thing. Is that self-proclaimed walnut expert?

Dude, this guy's hat says, we buy walnut logs. I hinted very heavily about wanting that hat, but he did not take the bait. Does he have a PhD in walnuts? I was like, my goodness, that's a nice hat. I'd love to have a hat like that. Give me your hat. Yeah, we buy walnut logs.

Just didn't pick it up. Walnut, Kansas. We selected a big ass walnut. I felled it and learned a new felling technique. Like when you're cutting stove wood, you know how like the classic, and they do it out here. You know, you got your class where you cut the V notch, you know? I mean, they want that thing down to the dirt, man. Like, you could drive a lawnmower over the stumps they leave in the woods.

They don't. Because it's expensive lumber. Yeah. Like, when they're doing these, like, very, you know, I mean, you could be cutting down a $7,000, $8,000 tree, you know? Yeah, they don't. I mean, down to the dirt. And they core, I'll have to get into this some other time. Anyways, learned an interesting felling technique.

So we felled a big-ass walnut, and we fetishized it first. What was the diameter of where you made the cut? Not like big and what a walnut could be, but 30 inches. Yeah, a 28-inch bar wouldn't get through it. Fetishized it with a drone and stuff like that, so people can really get to know the tree well. What's his name?

Or her name? I didn't name her. And then Phelps, then we went and Phelps cut down Osage Orange. And our estimate is that we'll get a thousand pot calls out of that black walnut. What's the orange for? The strikers.

He thinks we'll get over a thousand strikers out of the Osage Orange. Cut it down, bucked it up, brought it to a mill, milled it, and we milled it six, it's kind of weird how they do it, six quarters.

So inch and a half pieces, but they don't say that. When you're running a mill, they say six quarters. I was like, you mean like an inch and a half? And they're like, six quarters.

That's why you didn't get that hat. Smart ass. Yeah. And then the striker pieces we milled smaller. And anyways, holy cow, man, did I get mauled by chiggers. The first day I did the permethrin all over the place. The second day we're like going to the mill. And I didn't know what the hell I pictured it.

I don't know. We're going to this guy's mill and um want to be in his mill is basically out in knee knee high grass and we were out there for five hours milling lumber and i didn't do any things i just had a pair of sneakers on and oh man they came up my legs dude i am in like suffering oh this is different you take a bleach bath yet? No, I haven't done any of those tricks. We learned in Missouri.

They're like, what'd you do? You see, you fill a bathtub full of diesel fuel. Yeah. Don't talk full bleach. I'm trying to imagine my wife where I'm like, no,

babe, I'm just going to fill this up with diesel fuel. No, everybody we talked to told us a falsehood in Missouri. Everybody told us a falsehood about what chiggers do. We were told many times that they lay eggs inside of you. And you need to kill the eggs with gas, bleach. Yeah, or by like gluing the wound shut.

This is diabolical. Eggs can't breathe. Dude, a lot of misinformation. That's not true. I go to the doctor. No, I had to go on steroids. I got it so bad the first time I got it. I was like running a fever.

From chiggers? Yeah. Yeah. I've been there. She's like, do they like lay an egg inside of you? I'm like, no, they don't lay an egg inside of you. The doctor asked you that? You're like, it's not a bot fly.

It's a chigger. Yeah, she had no idea. She gave me steroids, though. And then, so that, and then this like welt on my arms, I was camping with my kids on Saturday night. There was a huge welt on Steve's arm. And we got up Sunday morning, went for a

hike and it got pretty hot out and the kids wanted to strip down and jump in this little creek. And it just, the temperature came up and it was just, we were in a big burn area and there's crazy wildflowers and just pollinators everywhere. And man, it got to like, I don't know, at some magical temperature,

everything just turned crazy and the kids got stung up. I got this one. That's from a bee sting. That's from a bee sting. I thought that was the roids. No. Getting amped over there. Yeah, there's like a bicep size welt on Steve's arm below his elbow.

It looks hot. It looks like it's just radiating. I feel like you need to go to the doctor and have it drained. I'm going to wait and see. That's what doctors love, the wait and see method. Stay tuned, everyone, for the next Instagram post where Steve drains his own arm. It's just my arm. It's only getting bigger.

Will that work on Instagram? I might put that on there. So the thing we're going to do is we're going to have a thousand turkey calls. I'm going to call it, we're going to call it the line one call in reference to the line one Hereford. I just like that line one.

So we're going to number them. What's a line one Hereford? What does that mean? Because the next time we chop a tree down and do a whole thing, we're going to film the whole thing. So we cut it down, milled it. We're going to film kiln drying the lumber.

That'll be exciting. We're going to have, well, just the thing about it. Yeah. The video is eight weeks long. Slow TV. People will be like, man, that one part where it's like in that kiln for six hours holy shit for six weeks that got boring film the whole process and then we're gonna sell the calls and so you can get a call where you watch the whole process happen cut down the tree but here's

what we want to do we're gonna number them like fine art like print print runs. So whatever, if the tree yields 1,011 calls, we're going to sell 1,011, numbered 1 to 1,011. And it's off the tree that I cut, and the striker comes from the tree that Phelps cut, and we do the whole thing. What we want to do is then have a drawing, and we draw a number, 1 to 1,011, whoever holds the call gets to go hunt the place where the tree came from.

You mean whoever, whoever. Phelps killed a turkey 200 yards from the tree. You mean whoever pulls number one? No, you take numbers, take ping pong balls. Yeah. And have someone, I don't know who, Spencer or someone. Yeah.

We'll take those ping pong balls and label them 1 to 1011 and you put them into one of those ping pong ball blowers and eventually it spits a number out, spits a ping pong ball out. Whoever bought that turkey call gets to, so let's say it spits out like 997. Whoever holds that call gets a free turkey hunt where we cut the trees down. And I think we would call in and kill a turkey on the stump.

That's good content. Yeah, that's good. I feel like Spencer's going to want to use the online number generator. Johnny's doing that thing where he acts like he doesn't like my idea. No, I love it. Oh. Yeah. Joined by Kevin Gillespie.

What's up, guys? And our very own Danielle Pruitt is here as well. Don't make it up to the old office very much, do you? No, I was just telling them

my last time here was that Christmas party at your house. Holy mackerel. Really? That's probably a good time to be in the office. That's a nice job.

I should do that. It's a long time. Yeah. So you can probably just go weeks without doing nothing because no one will catch you. No one catches you. I wish. No. Just be like, oh, yeah, real busy.

No, I bother everybody on Slack and tell everybody we need a meeting. It's a true story. Yeah. So you've been hearing from them. Kevin Gillespie of many things, like Red Beard Restaurant Group. Well, for now, until it's starting to go gray, so we may be changing the name of the restaurant group. Would you really change it around to Gray Beard? Like a pirate theme park?

Yeah, speckled calico beard, something. I don't know. We got to work to Gray Beard. Did a couple stints over at Bravo's Top Chef. Yep. He's working with us now. Good stuff. Yeah, man.

Somebody at the Montana Aleworks had a freak out last night when they recognized me from Top Chef. Oh, really? Yeah, I ended up taking photos of like 10 people at the Aleworks last night. No kidding. Yeah, it just started a chain reaction. I don't think the 10th person knew who I was. They knew they wanted to get in on it, though. Yeah, they were like, well, something's happening over here.

Yeah, exactly. I think they thought I was Zach Brown, maybe. I don't really know who they thought I was. It'd be fun to do just a stage one of those and take a completely unknown person. Totally. But have a few people act blown away that they saw them and then see if it's contagious. It will 100% work. Guaranteed.

Yeah. When I was in school, I knew these two painters, and they did this little series they were doing where they were going to a restaurant did they just did this like a social experiment but they'd film it to make these funny videos about they'd go into a restaurant and they'd have someone leave all their stuff out and have their food and they'd have to go to the bathroom so they'd say to the person at the next table hey do you mind watching my stuff i could run to the bathroom and people are always like you know but then the other one of them would come in and start eating the food and they would watch to see the person who had like

agreed to watch the stuff how the person would respond to someone like very sneakily sitting down and trying to quickly like eat their food and most people wouldn't confront them really no they'd look and That's terrible. Yeah, they wouldn't do anything. So they had like agreed to do it but they bail. They would bail.

But some people would say something. Once they start eating it's too late so you're just kind of like, eh. They'd look like, you know,

just confused. I can imagine that there'd be people. People aren't that, you know, they don't observe things that well. They might even think

that was the person who went to the bathroom. Oh yeah, it's just like a thing you just say to people. Like in the airport, oh, you might watch my stuff. It's like, I don't observe things that well. They might even think that was the person who went to the bathroom. Oh, yeah. It's just like a thing you just say to people. Like in the airport, oh, you might watch my stuff. It's like, I don't know. I don't think you're supposed to do that in the airport anymore. Are you really watching their stuff?

I'm fairly certain that the security video now tells you to immediately tell someone if someone asks you to watch their bag. What you do is watch this bag and take it on the plane with you. Yeah. Would you just watch this briefcase of mine? And if it shakes, it's fine. I miss that genre of TV. The hidden camera.

I feel like in other countries, it's still like a thing, but for some reason, in our country, we just left it behind. No, I think it's thriving. Really? Like the whole punked thing and all that? No, maybe I just don't watch enough TV. Is punked still on TV? That was 20 years ago.

No, but now there's a whole thing. Who's the guy that's got the... Who's the nighttime guy that's got the cute little haircut? All of them? No. James Cordon. Oh, no. Jimmy Fallon. Jimmy Fallon.

Kimmel. No. Conan. Yeah. Conan? They're big into pranks. Yeah, but Conan hasn't done nighttime TV in 20 years. No, I thought he's got like a late late. They're big into pr pranks. Yeah, but Conan hasn't done nighttime TV in 20 years. No, I thought he's got like a late, late.

They're big into, I don't care. He's got like a middle of the night show. His show just ended. 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. Real quick, we'll get back to some of the stuff in that. We got to cover off on a couple things. So, a little bit of news about macro fructations. There it is.

So, I was using a word the other day that was so off, so not a word, that it yielded zero Google results. Spencer said you can bang your keyboard and get hits. Nearly, yeah. Like bang your keyboard and search that, it'll something. Macrofructationation zero hits well so many people went to look up macro fructation after the episode came out that now google will auto fill macro fructation to the real word no there is nothing but then some guy i said i wanted to get the domain name some guy went and got the damn domain name right out from under me by wednesday on wednesday the episode came out

on monday by wednesday someone had secured the domain that just goes to the episode yeah you're domain name right out from under me. By Wednesday. On Wednesday. The episode came out on Monday. By Wednesday, someone had secured the domain that just goes to the episode. Yeah, you're going to be stuck with the macro fructation. Yeah, exactly. How would we ever? Yeah, so now I got to get like themacrofructation.com. I think he's probably going to try to hold us ransom to get the damn URL. We got some shirts.

We got some macro fructation shirts coming out but i want to point out i did the rda i was like man we need to do a limited run of macro fructation shirts i was a syllable off yeah macro what's the actual word? Macro fructification. Syllable off. Ridiculed by my colleagues. I lost some faith in Google after this that they couldn't figure out that's what you were looking for. Fructification means the act of fructifying. Yep. The act of fructifying.

So this is it. Fructification means the act of fructifying or the fruiting of a plant, fungus, etc. A macro fructification is a large or macro fungi fruiting. But this is only for mushrooms. It's not like a fruit tree. I don't see why you wouldn't be able to call an apple a macro fructification. You just can't call it a macro fructication or whatever. Fructation.

Fructation. Yeah. I don't know how many people throw this word around. I can't. I don't think I can even say it. I could guess. Try it out. Macro. Macro fructification.

Exactly. That's a mushroom. So the underground body of a mushroom, the mycelium, something triggers it. Like burns. The weather. Like burns make morel mycelium go crazy. It somehow triggers it and it throws off what I call massive macro fructations.

Shortened from fruct... You know what I'm talking about. Fructifications. Well, I guess, Spencer, now we can just start adding that word into all of our Morell articles. I'm writing an article right now. So we are always the top hit. Perfect. Now, the moral of the story is...

The only hit. If I'm wrong... Oh, you missed that. Say it again, Phil. Well, that's going to be extra lame. The Morell of the story. That guy's good, man. That guy's good. Man, he's on it.

He came up with a character. Spencer, can we use that? Is that the title of the actual article now? It's the title of this episode I just decided The macro fructation God, Phil's good He's like a jingle guy I feel like you missed your calling as a jingle man

Well, I'm using this as a launch pad to that Cal to Action The morale of the story Does it just hit you all of a sudden? I can't help it, Steve. There's got to be a deodorant company out there that needs your help. He works at a sub-sentence level.

That's true. He doesn't have good sentences. He just has good partial sentences. Whatever you call them. Phrases? Micro snippets he's a jingle man

yeah that's perfect the moral of the story is even when I'm wrong I'm only a little wrong that's the that's the that's the

ongoing debate about whether or not naming your kid Hunter would backfire on you and that you know those people wrote in a while ago ongoing debate about whether or not naming your kid Hunter would backfire on you. Um, and that, you know, this people wrote in a while ago,

uh, on the episode called controlled rot with Brad Leone. We, some people wrote in where a guy wanted to name his guy. Dude's last name is Fisher. We talked about this. He wants to name his kid Hunter. So his kid's name is Hunter Fisher.

His wife's like, doesn't want to do it, but she said if me or Yanni said it was a good idea, that he could do it. Everybody said bad idea. I said good idea. What do you think about that, Yanni? Hunter Fisher. Bad. Thank you. Travis was almost named Hunter.

And his dad was like, well, what if he really likes hunting? Then he's... Yeah, but he doesn't... So what's his last name? His middle name now is Hunter, but Pruitt. Oh, so, okay, so you took his name. I did. That's a nice gesture. That's a nice gesture. Yeah. Just talk to my wife.

Tell her how nice it was. Tell her how good it felt. I'm not going to do that. Yeah, she kind of screwed me on that whole deal. She said she'd do it when her passport expired, but she didn't want to get a new deal. She said she'd do it when her passport expired, but she didn't want to get a new passport. She didn't want to get all the paperwork. So she's like, well... It is a pain.

It is really annoying. Yeah, so she's like, oh, if my passport or my driver's license expires, I'll just change it then, but why do it now? My subway card, I still, you know, I can't. I don't want to change it before I get that free sandwich. So now it's just, she just never did it. Today's our 13th anniversary. You're going to want to edit that.

It's a shorter amount of time. It still hasn't changed her damn name. Anyways, there's a guy. We heard about this guy before. There's a game warden. Where is he located? Indiana. He's the District 1 Indiana Conservation Office. No, he won.

He was just recently honored with the District 1 Indiana Conservation Officer of the Year Award, which puts him in running for the Pitzer Award, which is presented to the top overall conservation officer in Indiana and is selected from among the 10 district award winners.

This guy is in the big leagues. His name, Hunter law, Hunter law. I used to work for a guy whose last name was Mick cook, chef, Mick cook. I mean.

Did you think McDonald's would have hunted that dude down and brought him on board, man? They'd have been like, what's it going to cost? Yeah, Hunter Law. I thought, so you don't think he should name it Joe or, no, my idea, someone's idea was to name him Joe. Middle name Hunter. Oh. Last name Fisher. I like that. Because like, that dude is Joe. Middle name Hunter. Oh. Last name Fisher. I like that.

Because like, that dude is Joe Hunter Fisher. Yeah. Yeah. Giannis, how often do you bring it up that your wife didn't change her last name? Never. Never. Interesting. How many years have you been married?

Almost 20. No sign of turning the tide on that one. 20 years in, she's like, watch Yanni dies and she changes it. No, it never came up. Did your gal take your name? No. Really?

What? My wife didn't either. Oh my God. That's the only one? My wife did, but I specifically told her she didn't have to. She still, I don't know. I don't know why.

I didn't know I even had the option not to. You told her she didn't have to? Well, I mean don't know. I don't know why. I didn't know I even had the option not to. You told her she didn't have to? Well, I mean, it's her choice anyway, but I was like, I'm not going to be offended if you don't take my last name. Yeah. My wife's got a solid last name.

It's a great last name. It's dying off. I shouldn't say that. Like her, never mind. It's not dying off. There's plenty of people with that last name,

but her sort of. Her line. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Her end of the deal. The hell were we? Well,

we talked, we had a guest on who'd gotten toxoplasmosis from eating raw goat meat, feral goats. So they bow hunt goats in Hawaii, ate the raw goat meat, got toxoplasmosis from eating raw goat meat, feral goats. So they bow hunt goats in Hawaii, ate the raw goat meat, got toxoplasmosis.

And that prompted a bunch of people to write in who got the tox from raw whitetail meat. Meaning that that deer was grazing around and ate some cat shit in its wanderings. Awesome. Like the house feral cat? Yeah.

A feline. I'm assuming bobcats, cats. So bobcat, whatever. House cat. Yeah. Multiple people. And a commonality they talk about is an early symptom being spots in your vision. Do you go blind?

Haven't heard anybody that went blind. It's treatable. There was somebody in the Instagram comments of the episode saying that they got it and can no longer see out of one eye. And they had to relearn to shoot their rifle from their other eye because of it. They still hunt deer, obviously. I think so. But they're cooking it. It's no more rare.

My dad called me about this like a couple of years ago. Cause it was our tradition as a kid is that anytime you would, when you killed a deer, like we would cut the heart out and eat it raw in the field. Like that was my family's sort of like honor the animal kind of tradition. Did it for years. Did it my whole life sort of like honor the animal kind of tradition. Did it for years. Did it my whole life. The whole thing?

Yeah. My dad talked about that too. They eat it like an apple. Yeah, exactly. Or you just take your pocket knife and slice pieces of it off and eat it in the field while you're...

No rinsing, nothing. Just still covered in blood. Like hot. Still hot. My old man went hunting with a guy and my dad described this that he'd eat it like he was eating an apple.

Yeah. So I've done it, I don't know, a hundred times in my life. And my dad described this he'd eat like he's eating an apple yeah so i've done it i don't know a hundred times in my life and my dad called me out of the blue he left a message by the way my dad still likes to tell me who he is on the messages and he's like kevin it's your daddy and i'm like yeah i know who it is like um but he was like and told me about this and he's like you gotta start you gotta stop eating them hearts like that because you're gonna get this so i haven't yet by the way I also haven't stopped doing that. So maybe I should.

I don't know. I eat like a smidge of raw deer meat, and I can't picture quitting. But yee. Yee. I'll let you guys know if it gets spotty soon. Quick note on docks. We talked about mean old Mrs. Angelo on the lake where I grew up and how she wouldn't let you go out on her dock and holler at you every time you went near her place. We got a couple notes from people having weird stuff happen to them near docks.

So a kayaker came out. What lake was this on? Oh, Vancouver Island. His friend lives in a small town on the island and has a dock. So this dude writes in. This dude's friend has a dock on an island and this guy has a problem with otters getting up on his dock which i don't view it's hard for me to view that as a problem yeah it's like an instagram moment like waiting for you right there you know

yeah if someone said to me like you could have a dock yeah and otters use it right or not i would go like uh i'll take the dock with the otters. Yeah, exactly. I think it's the mess that comes along with the otters. Who cares? They're otters. You've been on our float in Southeast Alaska. It's covered with fish carcasses from otters.

Oh, that's what it is? And otter poop. Otter poop. But still, I don't know. Yeah, but then you trade that for the fact that you have otters on your dock and you get to be like, look at those otters. I would probably feed, well, that's probably wrong, isn't it? To be out there feeding them. They got a poop that's like, their poop is scales.

It's like a pack of, it's like compacted scales and bones. What? I don't know. Either way, he rigged it up so it shocks the otters. He rigged it up so. Bad idea. Yeah, it gives the otters an electrical shock when they climb on there. Anyhow, a kayaker...

Remember how the other day you were saying how there aren't that many people you'll find that are actually like, you know what? I hate nature. This might be one of those people. Could be. A kayaker comes along,

grabs hold of the dock, gets shocked, the cops get involved. Another guy was talking about pulling up to fish fishing and pulling up to dock and got sprayed by water matt elliott wrote he goes that's a very common thing now people that don't like ducks and geese on their docks so when the ducks or geese pull up it sprays you with water this guy took it to be an anti-fishing thing but it's not an anti-fishing thing. But it's not an anti-fishing thing. It's like a duck goose prevention system.

I would see if I was going to electrocute my doc or at least put up a little sign that said warning. If I was Phil, I'd say like a hot dog. No, I'd never say that.

Yeah, that's terrifying, dude. My wife, her best friend drowned because of that. Like she was, they were like just laying out, I think, you know, like tanning on a dock. Got super hot, hopped in the water, went to climb back up on the dock. Didn't know that that person had done that to their, it was like a rental house. Touched the dock from the water, electrocuted them. for sure like two people died it was in i think it was lake russell in alabama a few years back oh like a big deal so now the state of alabama has like banned it like you cannot you can't even if you want to run power to your dock like for your boat it has to

there's you know laws about what you can't do yeah do. Yeah, exactly. Because people just do it themselves. I want to back up a minute and talk about Hunter. Did you know that our new I was going to say that I'm redoing my whole perspective on Hunter because our new resident artist Oh yeah, that's Hunter. Well listen, the

effed up old deer stands project, unbelievable job that guy did on that. the effed up old deer stands project. Unbelievable job that guy did on that. This is going to be the number one calendar of all time. It was supposed to be a fine art coffee table book. Listen, I'm waging an internal war in this company. Uh,

I have battled with the detractors. I've battled the naysayers. I'm coming into it injured but alive. The fucked up old deer stands calendar. Yeah. How is that? Hunter Spencer. Yeah, please tell me. What's his job called?

Like, what would he say he is? Graphic designer? No, because we have a graphic design opening at Meat Eater. He's better than that. Yeah. Probably like lead of art or something like that. Art lead. Director.

Lead of art. Director of art. Art director. There you go. Sounds nice. No, that has a bad connotation, too. That's a marketing term. Oh, shit.

All right. Whatever the hell he is. You got to come up with a new term for that. Something zingy. Yeah, Phil, get on it, man. Noy I'm starting to realize what Phil's all about Bad puns? No When it's useful

Like we actually need a thing now He's not zinging Come on hit us with a useful zinger Instead of just throw away zingers This is so much pressure so I'm gonna change the subject And say I'm on your side Steve With this internal battle. I think it should still be a book.

We haven't ruled it out and I'm going to go to Tracy and I'm going to have it be a whole billboard campaign around the country along highways. I think that's where this is headed. Apparently, one of my buddies from high school,

since he knows now that I'm working with you guys, he texted me out of the blue one for submission the other day and I was like, I don't think you send them he texted me out of the blue one for submission the other day. And I was like, I don't think you send them to me to send them to, but he, he apparently saw somebody pulling an old food truck down the road the other

day that they had camo painted. And like, you know, the door that you would serve hot dogs out of was like their flip up door like to you. So yeah. Hey, what is the email where you're supposed to send your submissions?

Do you know? It's not my text message, Jane. That's not how you send them in. It's literally fucked up old deer stands at TheMeatEater.com. We'll share that. Over, I don't know where we're at now. We've gotten 1,400 submissions. Wow.

We picked our favorites. It's a good blend. And you know what? Here's another thing about this calendar that people are going to really appreciate. We got so many that only at the last minute did it occur to us that it could be seasonal. Like, let's say you get like an elk calendar. So February, right, it's going to be some elk standing there in the freezing ass cold. You know what I mean?

And like May is going to be an elk licking her little baby. You know, we got so many submissions that the pictures look like the time of year it's supposed to be. And when can folks buy this? I don't know. Telling you what though, that dude Hunter, I think you should name your kids Hunter.

That guy, Hunter Spencer. You haven't told us yet his contribution to the account. The layout and design. So is it going to be one stand per month, or is it going to be kind of like a collage of stands every month? One stand per month. Maybe the verticals. See, when you get into calendar production.

Here we go. I want to spare you details. It is the best calendar. I think a lot of people are going to buy it, and then every year they're going to go in and, like, tape new things on it and stuff. I mean, you have enough to do multiple years of calendars at this point, it sounds like, without many submissions.

We got one, a blind, like, someone's combine broke down and then rotted away for a century, and then they, like, converted it into this, like, oh, that that's cover image but this is a 2022 calendar we're not talking 2023 right no man you'll buy it starting very soon okay to run it all through the next year all right i want to ask a practical question do people still buy physical calendars yes they better man they do okay other than daniel do people still buy physical calendars? Yes. They better, man. They do? Okay. Other than Danielle, do people still buy physical calendars?

I have multiple calendars. If they don't, I'm going to be out of job. Yeah, right. Okay. Listen, when this thing comes out, I need,

I don't care if you burn it. I need people to come out very, very strong because I have battled the naysayers. I've battled the Debbie Downers. This is the perfect thing to put in your office when you don't know what to hang in your office. That's the calendar.

Keep going. We're recording this for SalesPitch. Sell it. I asked the same question, Kevin. I said, aren't calendars maybe kind of a little bit antiquated? No. A little bit antiquated. And then Brody Henderson says

hell no. If you got kids you sure as hell. I buy my kids a calendar every Christmas. I don't have kids so maybe that's the issue. If I can sell this calendar like hotcakes. I don't know. We're back now to another

question about the volume of hotcakes sold. If I can sell this calendar like the Dickens, then that paves the way for the fine art coffee table book. People really need to help me out. It's a lot of exciting. Will the fine art coffee book be more than just deer stands? No, no. It'll be just deer stands. A whole coffee table.

Come on, Daniel. People buy a calendar with nothing but pictures of deer. Why not the deer stands? I just think you could branch out the book and make it a little bit more comprehensive. Uh-uh. Well, that was quick. Maybe the next one. Okay.

I think the other valuable information that will be included in there other than dates such as interesting fun dates that will give you entertainment and joy will be worth it maybe some some poetry maybe i don't look at every few pages but we wrote all the captions oh okay like we got this one it's a deer stand that honestly, it's an elevated blind. And below it, there's a toilet rigged up below the blind. That sounds excellent.

Yeah, but you'd have to like... You got to precision. Oh, I see. The captions, whatever, it's something like... Like sharpshooting it. The only thing you need to aim out of this blind. Whatever. I remember what it was. I'm like, you know. Like sharpshooting it. I got you. You know, your gun ain't the only thing you need to aim out of this blind. Whatever. Yeah.

It's a great blind. I remember what it was. Or do you not want to reveal it? Can't give away all the secrets. What if someone doesn't buy it because they already know? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, you could be costing me sales and tell people.

All right. Then I'll do a spoiler. It's the guy who tries to get every author to reveal the ending of their book on the podcast. So what happens in the end? All right, Spencer. Talk about the fly garrett oh then we gotta get into binding the muscle meat and all that kind of stuff yeah yeah um well like like a month ago you texted me on like a saturday afternoon like hey has anyone ever died from eating a fly, Garrick? Why did you want to know that? Because I was... Because we're writing this book about kids in the outdoors.

Okay. Is this the first time you're revealing this? No, I've talked about it a couple times. Outdoor kids inside world. It's about engaging kids with nature. And we have a big thing in there about... there's quite a bit of information there about uh like things i've done with my kids around picking mushrooms and uh we one time found i mean growing 100 yards from our house found a fly agaric.

And they wanted to bring it home and mess with it and all that. And I was just looking at like, well, how bad is a fly agaric? And I was surprised to see that despite people thinking it's like the most dangerous mushroom in the world, it's not that dangerous. Right.

I was reading that my ecologists can actually find one case when someone got killed From a fly agaric Most people just trip real bad Not in a pleasant way And if you don't know what a fly agaric is If we walked over to the coffee shop And we asked somebody standing in line

Hey draw a mushroom They would draw a fly agaric Especially if they watched the Smurfs Or anything like Alice in Wonderland It looks like your generic stereotypical Fantasy gnome forest mushroom Especially if they watch the Smurfs. Or anything. Is that the red with white dots? Yeah, it looks like your generic, stereotypical fantasy gnome forest mushroom. Yeah, if you picture a gnome

coming out of the woods with a mushroom, it's a fly gart. Ooh, I smell a t-shirt. Yeah, exactly. That's the gnome on the range spice blend. That's the mushroom. It has a poisonous mushroom on the front of blend. That's the mushroom. It has a poisonous mushroom on the front of it.

Excellent. That'd be a good t-shirt. Macro fructification. It just has a big fly garrick on it. I'd wear that. I think you'd shorten the word down from... Save on printing costs, man. You want to talk about making money. There you go.

If you played Mario and Mario eats a mushroom and gets special powers, that's a fly, Garrick. So they're all over. Everyone knows what a fly, Garrick. That's right. Looks like. The Mario brother one. Nope.

Okay. So that's a fly, Garrick. Anyway, I found the instance where somebody died from one and it was like a very big deal when it happened. It was in 1897. It was in Washington, DC. It was in 1897. It was in Washington, D.C. Oh, 1897. When you emailed me about this, you switched the numbers around. I did.

I had it in my head backwards. Oh, you had 1987? I had 1987. I had 1987 that like an Italian diplomat died. Yes. I was like, I feel like I would have heard about that, but I wasn't that old. 1897. Washington, D.C. Count Achilles. 1897. Yes. I was like, I feel like I would have heard about that, but I wasn't that old. 1897. Washington, D.C.

Count Achilles. 1897. Yes. Count Achilles Day. Because that's the other thing. I was like, in 1987, I was like, I can't picture like an Italian diplomat walking down the whatever the hell sidewalk and being like, hmm. Yep. This story will make a little bit more sense then.

Yeah, no, I'm back in a place in time. Yep. Washington, D.C., 1897. Count Achilles Day, I don't know how to say his last name. Go for it. Vichige. Nailed it. You liking it, Kevin?

Yeah, I think that's it. We're just going to call him the Count. There you go. He was an Italian diplomat, and he was a fairly famous Washington DC resident. He was sort of in like Abe Lincoln's camp when he came over. So he was. Yeah, well, that was three years prior to his death. Okay.

Yeah. He considered himself a mushroom expert. You know, he died. Lincoln. Oh, yeah. Not the mushrooms. Tidbit. Count Achilles.

He considered himself a mushroom expert, bought some wild mushrooms from the K Street Market in Washington, D.C. No. And identified them as the Caesar's mushroom, which is a choice edible in Europe. Hmm. But it's in the Amanita family. If you know anything about mushrooms, you know that there is a lot of bad stuff or non-edible mushrooms in the Amanita family. And if you know anything about mushrooms, you know that there is a lot of bad stuff or non-edible mushrooms in the Amanita family. So what he thought was a Caesar's mushroom was actually a fly,

Garrick, the mushroom. But a guy was peddling it. So that guy misidentified it. Yes. But. Oh, unless he was selling it to kill flies.

No, people would use it to kill flies. Yeah. So the count bought this mushroom, took it home, and cooked it for him and a buddy,

Dr. Kelly, is who ate the mushrooms with him. He made them for breakfast and they remarked afterwards that they were the finest mushrooms they had ever eaten.

They were that good. Hmm. Now, I couldn't find how they cooked them because I was really curious if he just threw them with some eggs or what happened.

Well, he must have gotten to his notebook pretty quick. Yeah. yeah well there's a surviving member of this story oh oh he remembered okay okay yeah so he must have eaten it wrote down how good it was then died so the count and the doctor both ate these fly agaric mushrooms for breakfast by the afternoon dr kelly was incoherent and stupefied. He was at work and the people that worked with him said he was like totally off.

He was in and out of consciousness. They took him to the hospital. He recovered by the next day. It was like sort of your typical fly agaric experience. If you ate too much of one and you, you went beyond the psychedelic trip, you would end up like Dr. Kelly, right? No, but the other person the count uh fell violently ill he lost his vision he went into a

coma at the hospital he had such bad convulsions that he broke the bed that he was laying in geez yeah and he died the next day and that that is like the fly Garrick death. Now here's why, like beyond him being an Italian diplomat and being like one of the only deaths, why this was a big deal. This inspired like a huge amateur mycology boom. Up until that point, mushroom hunting was sort of like for a substance, like very rural folks did it or sustenance sustenance. Look that up and put that into Google. Okay. Or it was like for the educated elite.

It wasn't really a hobby, but, uh, according to like folks from that time that the middle class was growing and so was like sort of recreation, like baseball and cycling was taking off in the country as well as gathering mushrooms. And when this happened, when you had a famous person die from a fly agaric, the USDA stepped in. A lot of like vendors changed the mushrooms they were selling. This particular vendor, the K Street Market, afterwards they went went to only selling Shaggy Mains and Puffballs because they didn't want this to happen again. Those are part of the foolproof. Some people list those in the foolproof for, right?

That's right. Yeah. So this had a huge mycology boom afterwards. And the educated folks that were really into mycology started creating all these pamphlets and very visual aids to help you be

a better consumer of mushrooms. Huh. Look at that, Yanni. Silver lining. That's right. They distributed better materials. Like I said, it changed the mushrooms that were sold. And oddly, the Fly Garrick

sort of gave me a personal renaissance with mushrooms. When we were at the Christmas party, or before the Christmas party that we were at, Danielle, What Christmas party are you talking about? The one at my house? That's the last time you came to the office.

We went to Cal's favorite dive bar in town. I need to know what that is. I think it was the Hideaway. Is that right? Yeah. We were at the Hideaway bar, and I think it was the hideaway. Is that right? Yeah. We were at the hideaway bar and I went up to the bar and ordered a drink and there was this like mid twenties guy who was on his computer typing away and his background was a fly

Garrick. Okay. And I was like, I got to know more. Cause like, you're just not casually walking around with a fly Garrick is like the background of your phone or something. Right. Yeah.

I mean, maybe he likes the Smurfs and Mario Brothers. Maybe, but I'd have been interested in that too. So I was like, Hey, what's up with the fly garrick is like the background of your phone or something right yeah i mean maybe he likes the smurfs and mario brothers maybe but i'd been interested in that too so i was like hey what's up with the fly garrick and he's like oh i'm actually uh studying uh the amanita family oh really in the rocky mountains uh and then we we talked for like 20 minutes about mushrooms he's like you should join the southwest montana mycological association so i did so the fly garrick gave me like a little personal renaissance. Are you good friends with that guy now? No.

You know you made his day, by the way. Like he never else has he been in a bar working away on his computer and somebody was like, tell me about the mushroom screensaver. That was like his dream come true. Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah.

That was it. Like he was the high point of life right there. Me too. That was fun. But you are in Montana. It's not like a lot of people pick mushrooms around here, right? I don't know that it's more of a thing here than other places.

I believe that it is. You think so? Yeah. It's like people are kind of more in tune. There's places where people just aren't. There's a lot of people that are like tuned into the outdoors, right? And there's a lot of places where people don't feel a real strong connection to the natural world.

Like Houston. You see that on someone's computer, you're immediately going to think that they're selling psychedelics. There you go. You know, talking about that, like those moments that trigger stuff, I was listening to this thing that was talking about the, it was this historian who looks at people's attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccine.

And he was looking at historically other things that there was like a, I didn't realize this, smallpox. There was an anti-vax crowd on smallpox you know what had a huge anti-movement was um when they tried to roll out pasteurized milk like a lot of resistance to that a lot of resistance to smallpox treatments um and he was it was kind of interesting to hear it put into perspective of how people have generally replied or generally responded to things that people now don't even know. I think there's like a – No one questions. I don't know why.

Are people not wanting a smallpox today? There's a lot of anti-vaxxers. And there's a – I know there's like a whole group in like sort of that like wellness world with like pasteurization exactly that's what i was gonna say i was like that's starting to come back like big time like you're seeing a lot of folks that are back in that camp of like they don't want pasteurized anything got it i worked with a i was profiling a livestock detective one time who uh investigated livestock theft you know, cattle rustling. And he was in California and people were getting around pasteurized milk in California by you'd buy a share of a cow.

Right. Because you can drink your own unpasteurized milk. You just can't sell it. Right. So the way they figured it out in California is they had this little system where I would have a cow, let's say, and I would sell ownership of the cow to 20, 30 people. And then they're all drinking their own milk because they own a share of the cow. He started working this case.

And one of the things he described being pretty funny is he goes around, he gets a list of everybody that owns this cow and goes to their home and says, I'd like to see your brand inspection paperwork on the cow you own. So this was like modern cattle rustling. Yeah, yeah. I wrote about it. So he was working, when I was profiling him, he was working a big Ponzi scheme, a big cattle rustling Ponzi scheme that involved Kiefer Sutherland. What? Not that Kiefer Sutherland stole cattle.

This guy comes. So when Kiefer Sutherland was working on the Young Guns movies, I was hoping it was the Cowboy Way, but okay. He got real interested in team roping. And he eventually got, became, he had a team roping partner the team roping partner knew a guy that had a plan to import corrientes steers now i think there's just too many corrientes around like the market's flooded but at this whatever this moment was there weren't a lot of corrientes steers that's what they use in like yeah and rodeo roping The prices got very high in these things. So this guy comes and says,

this guy comes forward and says, hey, I got a plan. We can all make a bunch of money. I'm going to go into Mexico and buy a bunch of Corrientes steers, bring them into the U.S. and we'll lease them out to all these rodeo circuits. So he gets an initial investment. And Kiefer Sutherland was part of the initial investment. Dude never even goes to Mexico, but just comes and hands him the money plus his

returns. Okay. So whatever it was, like he gets like 300 grand or something. And then a couple days later comes and hands him back whatever the hell, $400. Very quick turnaround, very quick return on investment. He'd gotten the extra money by just stealing cattle and selling them. So he rustled some steers, sold them, goes, if you want to get serious and make some real money, let's do it again. Then he cuts a big check, and then he absconds with the money.

What a ski boat. If I remember right. I didn't know about, bought a boat. I didn't know catarussling was still like a career choice. I thought that. Yeah. Way.

It's usually like most at the time that I wrote my article about, uh, um, I've optioned that thing so many times but no one's ever done anything yeah i thought you meant optioned the career path oh no no no my article is called grand theft cattle and people always option it from me but no one's ever made anything out of it everybody thinks they're gonna make like a thing about cattle rustling yeah like for sure dairy calves um a lot, a lot of rustling.

It's usually like a couple of kids. If you saying like, if you want to look at a profile of a cattle rustler, generally it's like a couple of high school kids. Um, have a rodeo background. They got an uncle with a gooseneck trailer and that's most rustling. It's like small scale, but there are some like small scale but there are some big um there are some big large-scale operations and it typically works is like you're you're doing it to get slicks like unbranded animals you're stealing animals that have a easily manipulated brand so you can over brand it like let's say this isn't the case,

but let's say your brand was O and you register Q. So you steal O-branded cattle. Let's say you own Q and your neighbor owns O. You steal a bunch of his O-branded cattle, burn in the little mark that turns it into a Q and sell.

Or you steal cattle and get them into a no brand state where there's no brand inspection process so you then move them over into that interesting world that's why when you register a new brand now it's very complicated like now when you register a new brand in some states they make you do this uh you have to do like three letters, but guys don't like it because you can't burn it with a single iron. It takes like repeated burning to get it in there. I was walking down the road with my old neighbor in Miles City one

time and they had a, you know, when you have a tree planted and they have like a grate around the tree for water to come through. In Miles City, the grates are all local cattle brands. And he showed me a brand in there. And he said he just sold that brand for $4,000. Because people would prefer to buy an old brand rather than register a new one. Because you can buy an old simple brand. I got this brand book from California that's bigger than the Bible. And it's all the brands in the state. And each brand can be registered in like

six places, like front shoulder, like, uh, right shoulder, right rump, flank, left shoulder, left rump, left flank, like 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, 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. Where was I? Wolf human attacks. Oh. Then we're going to get we're gonna get like werewolves no oh i haven't read it i i read enough to know i was titillated um try to get corinne to read it she didn't read it spencer read it it's a report on what is known about...

Is it a new report? Yeah, it's from 2021. What do we know about wolves killing people from 2002 to 2020? So the last 18 years of wolves killing folks. It identified... Fact from fiction. Spencer will do a report.

You know what we should maybe put in, even though it's your little book report? Maybe we should put in our Taylor McCall report intro. I'll just replace it with Spencer's book report. Can you do that? Yeah, sure. Yeah, like Alexa's voice. Yeah.

Yeah. Spencer's Book Report. He's got a new album coming out. He's the one that tipped us off. Oh, we haven't covered yet on Trout getting high on drugs. We'll have to cover that story at some point. If not, I bet Bench. So many people do drugs now that it's in the water and Trout get addicted to drugs.

It's truth. I would guarantee that Bench podcast that at some point, too. You think so? I would imagine that's right up their alley. Trout on meth? Mm-hmm. That's my new band name, actually. They've done hippos on cocaine.

I don't know about trout on meth yet, though. So we'll see. Okay. So wolves, like how many people are really getting killed by wolves? Last 20 years, 18 years. It identified 489 human attacks from around the world. It included reports from places that I didn't even know had wolves, like Saudi Arabia or Israel. Saudi Arabia has wolves?

And like fatal or killer wolves too. So. Really? Yeah. Huh. Of the 489. Do you know that, Corinne? Corinne's our Middle East expert. No.

Our Middle East expert didn't even know that. Go on. Are they? What kind of wolf are they? Killer wolves. That's right. Of the 489 attacks from around the world in the last 18 years, 26 were fatal. Now, only 12 of these 489 took place in North America or Europe.

Okay, hold on. Very rare. Back up. Globally, in the last 18 years, there have been how many fatalities? 26. Okay. So 1.2 people globally every year get killed by wolves. Globally.

Yeah. And you said only 12 of the attacks, not 12 of the fatalities took place. 12 of the attacks. North America. In the last 18 years, there have been 12 in our continent.

Where are most of these happening, Spencer? If it's not North America, it's not Europe. Where are these people? U.S. and Canada. I don't think Mexico has enough wolves anymore. I didn't see any attacks there.

So the U.S. and Canada, in 18 years, 12 people got attacked by a wolf. How many fatalities? I think four of those were fatal. One was kind of harrowing. You're going to get into the harrowing one and the jogger? No. I didn't even read it, and I found that. They took some of the reports, and there's, nobody reports on wolf attacks like North America does.

They love them. Yeah. If you look at a wolf attack from like Banff National Park, like, you know what color shirt the person was wearing and what they ate for breakfast and like exactly how many stitches they got. Americans love a wolf attack. That's our next calendar actually, right behind the deer blinds. Wolf attacks in North America. Yeah, it's perfect. Because there's 12 of them.

There you go. Bingo. Every month, you're like, here's January's attack from the last 20 years. It's only going to take us 18 years to put this calendar together. That's right. So North America heavily documents this. But then you get to Yemen or something like that, and it's like, oh, the shepherd grabbed the wolf by its tail.

And then the wolf bit it on its hand and ran away. That makes the report. Yes. Now here's, here's something else to note that 489 were confirmed attacks, but they said they had about double that, that they didn't feel like they had enough information on to be like, yes,

this happened. And it was most certainly a wolf. Could have been a big-ass dog. Yeah, exactly. Yep. Hmm. So you didn't find the one, the jogger from Alaska? Well, I pulled aside some of my favorites.

Oh, please. One of them was from Port Edward, B.C., Canada, May 2020. Just to get this straight, this is your favorite wolf attack? My favorite wolf attacks from, from this summary of like, uh, yeah, of a couple hundred.

That does sound like a book report. Like when you're in like middle school, my favorite wolf attacks. My favorite wolf attacks. Yeah. I'm sure the ones, uh, in like Eastern Europe,

in the Middle East and like South Asia were much better, uh, wolf attacks, much better wolf attacks. But like I said, it's like, oh, it bit him on the ankle and then they killed the wolf later that day or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. They just don't.

It's just not satisfying. They don't fetishize it. Yeah. Yeah. The Port Edward, BC, there was a man in his 70s walking home from a party. Hmm. And he got to his front door and a wolf jumped out of the bushes and attacked him and it labeled this as a predatory attack which is one of the most rare of wolf attacks was he

faced was he faced no i didn't say that i was wondering i had the same question it didn't say that he was attacked he was grabbed by the leg uh he was drug off neighbors came over and helped him and like scared the wolf off but then as they did like first aid on him the wolf just hung out and just like circled him and just like wouldn't leave he was that hungry and that unbothered the man was in the hospital for three for three weeks and survived six wolves were killed in the area and d DNA tests confirmed that they got the one that attacked him. And five others. And five

others. Yeah. Where was that? If that had happened in my neighborhood, that wolf would have got hit early on. Right, yeah, exactly. Early on in the evening. Yeah. Port Edward, BC. It attacked him at his front door. Wow. Yeah. Then you had North. It attacked him at his front door. Wow.

Yeah. Then you had North. Now, why is that your favorite? Because it was one of the few that had satisfying enough details. Oh, well. Yeah. Then you had North Macedonia, January 2016. A 58-year-old farmer finds a wolf in his sheep barn.

The man enters the barn, grabs the wolf by its tail and tries to pull it out. The wolf then attacks him by biting his arms and face, but with the help of his wife, he gets an axe and kills the wolf. Good for him. Yeah. It's a great ending. With an axe.

With an axe. Now it doesn't like say like what assistance his wife offers or like who was. It's a great calendar. Yielding. The ex. Yeah. No, that's a good one.

And then there was Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, August 2019. We actually covered this. Yeah, this one. This one was heavily covered. We covered this on TheMeadEater.com. And the guy was cool about it. We didn't talk to him. No, but I mean, just other news stories I read about him.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a family that was camping in the middle of the night. A wolf bites its way into the tent while the family is sleeping. Father tries to fight back, but he's dragged out of the tent. And neighboring campers come over. They're kicking the wolf. They're throwing rocks at it.

And while the wolf is tangled up with the father they get it off and uh the the man lives and the wolf is killed the next day about a mile away middle of the night now the paper freak occurrence that happens now on them. I find myself now arguing with people nonstop, people that carry pepper spray needlessly. They haven't got pepper spray now because of black bears. They got pepper spray because of mountain lions. They got pepper spray because of wolves. It's like there's one thing that warrants pepper spray,

one animal that warrants pepper spray. You have more chance of winding up in the hospital from your pepper spray than have more chance of winding up in the hospital from your pepper spray than you do from a black bear or a wolf or something yeah in 18 years 12 people 300 and what now 300 and what 17 million americans plenty how many people in canada like another half dozen give or take roughly 37 million and yeah year oh it's common for a year to go by with no one even getting nipped by a wolf that number included uh europe as well. What?

Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Are we? No. Are we including? He said North America, 12. And Europe. Let me find the number here again.

And Lord knows how many hosers are in Europe. Yeah, the biggest takeaway is that wolves aren't a problem. That. No, no, no. Wolves aren't a human that not no wolves aren't a human risk sure the biggest takeaway though is that like uh wolves love garbage so many of these reports talked about how it happened near landfill it happened where an area where the the wolf was like raiding dumpsters and stuff like that that's like a commonality no matter the continent or no matter like who got attacked is that these things are like attracted to human waste.

And then some human winds up among the garbage and they're attacked. Yeah. The paper does not really take a stance on hunting. It brings up how to prevent wolf tags. And it's talking about like things we could potentially do as far as management goes. And it briefly brings up hunting, but they take like a very neutral stance. They're like, well, the pros would be that it reduces populations. It causes a learned behavior that makes wolves more shy.

It selects problematic wolves. But then at the same time, you have these other biologists saying that like whatever personality trait that is that a human is killing in a wolf is beneficial to the pack somehow and it's good to have diverse population or diverse population of personalities in a pack and you still have attacks happening where it's legal so it tries its best to not take a stance on hunting wolves meanwhile Meanwhile, 1,800 grizzlies in three states kill multiple people every year. That's a lot. Yeah. 1,800 grizzlies, most of them in Montana and Wyoming, kill several people every year.

What spurred this wolf thing? Did it, for some reason? Because the report just came out. Somebody got real freaked out about it. Or someone said, did Heffelfinger send us that report? Heffelfinger. Where does half the things we talk about come

from? Jim Heffelfinger send us that report? Heffelfinger. Where does half the things we talk about come from? Jim Heffelfinger. Thanks, Jim. He sent it over. I can't keep up with all the interesting stuff that guy sends over. Okay, on to a couple of meat questions. This is our segue. Ooh, that was smooth.

Oh, what was the other meat thing we wanted to talk about, Yanni? The glue and meat together. Tortas? What's a torta? That's sort of a meat question. We can make it one. A guy wrote in, after listening to Dr. Chris Calkins, he's our meat scientist that we go to with meat questions,

on a scientific meat question level. I would not put him as an adventurous eater because like you know just kind of goes against his training not an adventurous eater though he did say do you ever hear about that blue that uh bison priscus the the the step bison like the yeah 30 some thousand years old. They found it in the permafrost. Right. And I wrote about that one in my Buffalo book. But anyways, that guy, there's a Dale Guthrie, a researcher.

They had a fundraiser where they cooked that 30,000-year-old bison up. What did he say? It tastes a little muddy? I bet. But they made stew out of it. Earthy is the term that foodies use to describe things that taste like dirt. They're like, I get an earthy note. You're like, dirt?

You mean dirt? Mud. Yeah, mud. Yeah, you mean mud. Chris Kalkin says he would have eaten that just to say he did. He would. But most days he's like, normally, I love the guy to death, but normally he's like, not gonna eat it.

Like, if you go to him like, what if I found a, he's probably generally gonna, he wouldn't say, I'm not gonna eat it, but if you're like, what if I found a, you know, he'd be like, well, here's the things you might want to consider. Which leans not eating. He's cautionary.

Yeah. Like, I was gutting a snake and found a rat inside its stomach. Can I eat it? He would be, um, let me tell you a couple things to think about before you eat that rat. That's like every health inspector, by the way. If you ask them, like, what restaurants would you go to eat? They're like, I eat at my house. Like, that's their answer, like across the board.

Oh, so recent new research suggests that that bison, which they named Babe, they now think it was 50,000 years old. Still way different than 36 month prosciutto. Yeah. There's in this rock counting book, there's a short section on fossils and they cover in there like what's the youngest fossil? What could be? Oh, that's a great question. fossils and they cover in there like, what's the youngest fossil? What could be? Oh, that's a great question. Oh yeah. What'd you find? There's not a satisfying answer.

There's like no definition of what a fossil really is. And so this person had an example of where they were at a museum. Can you say that sentence again? No one knows what a fossil is? There's not really like, there's like a very gray area as to what can be a fossil versus what isn't. Because it's not really like, there's like a very gray area.

Oh, I see. As to what can be a fossil versus what isn't. Because it's a long transitional process. Right. Okay. And one of the examples was that this person was in a museum where they had like a mammoth leg that was found in ice that was from like 12,000 years ago or something. Okay. And they pull it out. And one part is fossilized and just like a, a very traditional fossilized bone.

And the other part still has rotting meat that you could smell that had like a terrible odor. That's fascinating. And that was their example of like. Cause what are the odds of that? Right. Yeah. That to be in the perfect place where

fossilization is occurring, but also preservation on the other end. Yeah. So that was like a glimpse into sort of the randomness and the gray area of fossils. Who's got that leg? It was in some museum. Hmm. I don't have that leg.

So what do they do when they have it? Do they like finish letting it rot? Oh, I'm sure it's on like dry ice somewhere and comes out for slaying. Oh, no, I don't want that leg to eat it. I just want that leg to have on display. Here's the rotting meat portion that smells, and here's the fossil. People come over. You show them your record collection, and then you move on to this.

See that thing? That's a fossilized half-rotten mammoth leg. A half-fossilized half-rotten mammoth leg. That's what that is. Still dry aging yeah um someone brought a great question when you eat animals eat cotton traps which i do so you got a beaver that is dead um and it's already because chris talks about like the importance of the rigor process and how long it's been there so let's say you set's say you make a beaver set and you check it 48 hours later.

And let's say the second you walk away, that beaver comes out of his den hole. And you check it 48 hours later. Here you're eating a thing that's been un-gutted for 48 hours. What does that do? And you pull them out. Sometimes they won't, they won't be rigored. Sometimes they will be rigored.

Um, that's an interesting question. I've never hesitated because I usually just go by the, that the water's damn cold. Yeah. Because it's the wintertime. Right.

I always thought that was, that was the preservation method. It was fine because it was that cold. Yeah, because you're not doing it in the summer. In the summertime, it'd stink. I had a cow elk once fall into a beaver pond after I shot her with an arrow. And we found her 24 hours after I shot her

and drug her out. She's like just right on the edge, maybe even a hoof or something hanging out of the water. And drug her out and gutted her and the guts were like ice cold. Really? Chris Calic has put that in his pipe

smoking. I always mispronounce his name though. Does he go by Kalkins or Kalkins? Kalkins. I'm trying to remember. I love that guy. I imagine it would chill faster because it's circulating water. Oh, the same way it makes you so damn cold. Yeah. because it's circulating water. Oh, the same way it makes you so damn cold.

Yeah. Like it's, yeah, it's like robs heat from things. But he's saying that the cold actually can speed up. Like, what is he saying? That it doesn't do what you think it would with regards to rigor mortis. That the cold can actually adjust the way this works. He says death is pretty quick, and the typically cold water could help with preservation. Here's where he hones in.

Okay. Dr. Chris Calkins. Calkins. Damn it. One or the other. University of Nebraska. C-A-L-K-I-N-S. He's been on the show a couple times.

Here's where his mind goes. Water in the lungs. Water being a carrier of bacteria. If it's stiff, it's in rigor. And there has been sufficient time for bacterial migration to occur. Cold water, by the way actually slows stiffening because it slows the metabolism metabolism metabolism yeah that's better i don't even recognize that word because it slows the metabolism not the metabolism

it slows the metabolism via temperature. People often think the cold should accelerate stiffening, but it doesn't work that way. If the carcass is soft and pliable, then the meat is not in rigor mortis and would be safer to eat. The risk is not zero, but then it seldom is. That sounds like a thumbs up from him. Yeah. Don't eat the lungs is what i'm hearing yeah yeah that's a great question though man yeah that is that's interesting uh usually when you use we used to call them snares but now everybody likes to call them cable restraint it's a cable

restraint because it sounds nicer it's like oh silencers are now suppressors. Right, yeah. Because they don't actually silence the thing, and so they kind of rebranded it as a suppressor. Which is actually more accurate. Yeah. Well, snare has been rebranded as a cable restraint to make it seem benign. I had a beaver one time. It was pretty warm weather in the spring,

and I had a beaver in a cable restraint, but he got hung up in a weird way. Usually they're alive. You could relocate them with snares. It doesn't damage them. But this guy got into a cable restraint, but he got hung up in a weird way. Usually they're alive. Like you could, you could relocate them with snares. Like it's so like doesn't damage them. But this guy got into a weird situation and was dead on the bank in warm weather. And I thought twice and didn't take any, didn't use any meat from that beaver. Cause it was laying out in the hot sun.

Yeah. Speaking of rebranding, I'm big in the rebranding of the snakehead fish camp. I feel like we need to start working on that because it's so good culinarily. You wind up liking it? Yeah, it's awesome. But I feel like it's not going to get any traction as long as we keep calling it snakehead. I know those guys we were hanging out with in the, what, it's the East Shore? The Delmarva Peninsula.

They got like snakehead stickers in their truck windows, man. Yeah, dude. Obsessed. It's delicious, but it's like the, you know, the Patagonian toothfish. Like we had to switch to Chilean sea bass to get any traction on that. A lot of good it did them. They went a little too far on that one. They over rebranded them.

Yeah. So we got to land somewhere in the middle here. Can you explain to me real quick what you're talking about when you guys were talking about – I told you to stop talking about it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Yanni, you need to set it up because we were talking. Well, yeah, this is a little pitch for probably next week's podcast, or it's upcoming.

Steve and I are interviewing Dr. Ed Ashby and some of his colleagues of the Ed Ashby Foundation. And these guys have been studying basically arrows and broadheads and arrow lethality for the last 30 years, probably more than anybody else on the planet that I know of. And I was just reading a thing that was talking about how much the actual super sharpness of your broadhead, you know, will help you kill an animal faster because the sharper it is when it makes the cut across blood vessels. If there is no rough edge, no serrated edge left behind by a less sharp or duller edge, that makes it easier for this. It's a lot of science in here, a lot of science-y terms. Basically, there's a chemical reaction

that happens that immediately starts to help coagulation. And the more sort of feathery, rough edges there are, the easier it is for that to happen to create this compound that then helps coagulation. Is that why certain cuts

just bleed like a son of a gun? Like when you cut yourself with a razor blade or something? Exactly. Yeah. Or like a paper cut, you know, like where you just bleed. Huh. So what I was saying is that culinarily there's this, this is kind of like modern gastronomy, but there's this, there's this chemical it's called transglutanimase, which is colloquially

called meat glue. And what it does is that it allows you to bond or bind rather protein to more protein. And so where it gets used is something like a lamb belly, which is really, really thin. And so it's really hard to cook because it's so thin and its texture isn't that great because it's so thin. So what you can do instead is stack a whole bunch of them on top of each other and make them make the protein literally reform and create a lamb belly that's three or four or five or six inches thick. This is why I told you to stop because I wanted to have you mix this in there. Right. So then you can go. Well, I want to say my thing.

Then you can go for it. Okay. Go for it okay go for it uh we would take a bear ham and cut the the femur out of it so then you can slice it easy right uh my buddy would take gelatin from the store and sprinkle gelatin all over the inside of it and then we'd put you know i got one of those funnels and the you know the the mesh yeah So you make like a rolled rolls like your grandma used to buy. He'd sprinkle gelatin in there before putting it back together, thinking that it would make it that when you slice the ham, it'd be less likely to just fall apart.

Right. Roll that into what you're talking about. Well, okay. So that's true or not. I didn't notice a huge difference. Well, I'll tell you why. So, okay. So with the transglutanimase to make, to effectively bind something, what you'll find is that if you take two smooth-sided pieces of meat where they've either been sliced with something really sharp, like a very sharp knife cutting fillets of fish or something like that, they won't really stick together.

It doesn't really matter how much of this stuff you put on there. They won't really stick together. And so what you quickly realize is that it's actually better to have more perforated or sort of coarsely cut pieces for them to bind together. So with like a lamb belly, for example, you'd be better off to take the skin off and kind of score it almost, and then take the next one, do that and invert it. So they're not even, and then smush them together, like compress them. And then they will stick. What we were effectively trying to do is silver skin to silver skin. Right, exactly. And so it's like the worst case scenario.

It's not going to work. Plus, there's the issue with the fact that gelatin doesn't bind at temp. And so gelatin is activated at a certain temperature, but then at a certain temperature, it also denatures. And so that would be fine if you want to eat your bare bare ham that you, you know, cure, cook and then cool it under compression. So still bound together and then slice it cold. It probably would stick together. It would look like a classic, like an old school French tureen. But where transglutanimase works is that it's not it's not creating a glue in the middle. It's literally forcing those proteins to re-bind to each other, as if they were growing new muscles. And so, you

could do that exact same thing. You could take that leg. In fact, we do this with lamb legs all the time. We'll bone them out. We'll go in. We'll sort of take out all the silver skin, open all the muscles up, intentionally kind of do it in a semi-sloppy manner, and then

sprinkle this transglutanimase powder, which just looks like gelatin. Who sells this stuff? Sausagemaker.com. I don't think they sell it, but we get it from we get it from a brand called Terra Spice that's based in Indiana, I think. And then you roll it back up. Same deal like that netting everything. And then we put it in a vacuum bag and vacuum it because what you need to do is like force it you know tight and then you let it

sit for a day and it regrows the muscle fiber and then you know um you know the it's weird wade from elevated wild yeah i was reading something he did about making bacon and he did the same thing but using pork fat back with some venison and then gluing them together to make bacon. Exactly. Remember, I said it to you when we were looking at that axis deer, when we were in Hawaii, we were saying like, oh, this is a really fatty deer. And you, we pulled off that belly and you asked me, could we, could this be turned into

bacon? And what I said was, if you get, if we take several of them and glue them together, we could make a slab of bacon out of that. Yeah. The deer I got in Hawaii had just gobs of fat all over it. It was beautiful. Some of it was really on the outer side

was very waxy, but the insides, it's much softer. So, but I think some of that belly. You mean like on the insides, like the kidney fat. But I think some of that belly... You mean like on the insides, like the kidney fat? Yeah. Yeah, but that belly, I think some of that fat needs to be trimmed.

Probably. A lot of it, but still going to do something with it. I've got to get my hands on some of this stuff. I'll get you some. I haven't had my little funnel stuffer. I haven't used my funnel stuffer in years. You can use it for anything, man. Like we use it to bind two different proteins

that don't go together. So like fish with ham, for example. Like things like that so you can like cook them together. Yeah. Give me that. So we would take like if there's like a super lean type of fish like halibut, for example, and we're trying to cook it in a method that we're worried is going to dry it out.

We'll use transglutanimase to effectively glue pure pork fat to the outside of it. So that when we roast it, it bastes itself as it cooks, basically. Really? Yeah. Dude, I'm in, man. Thinking something zippy for that, Phil. I think they already did. It's meat glue.

You got nothing. That sounds like the new fancy version of wrapping it in bacon. It is 100% the new fancy version of wrapping it in bacon. But bacon's just the tip of the iceberg here, Giannis. You gotta dream big. I like it because I like using that funnel

with the mesh and I still got a huge coil of that mesh. You know what it even works like? You take smoke or pheasant and cram it through that funnel. I think you're just... This sounds more like the function of the funnel that you're really interested in. Yeah, no.

I'm looking for ways to use my funnel, which sits in my... I have a closet full of meat processing equipment. We call it the meat closet. Yeah, that funnel's just sitting in there. Every time I look in there, I get depressed because I haven't used them lately. You know about my funnel. You've seen it, haven't you? Yeah, I funnel's just sitting in there Every time I look in there I get depressed Because I haven't used them lately You know about my funnel, you've seen it, haven't you?

Yeah, I've used it You can bolt this thing to a table, giant funnel Oh, I know what you're talking about This is like for industrial purposes I think I bought it at SausageMaker.com You know, I have a turkey breast Brining right now Maybe I'll bring it over and just run it through your funnel

Why don't you bring the funnel over there? Knock the dust off of it. Do you want me to see if I can shotgun you some transglutanimase over and get this turkey breast bound up into like one perfect Publix deli, you know, style turkey breast now? We got to make it happen. Yeah.

I can't stand that brining too long. That'd be a great experiment. Oh, you know what I didn't mention that I wanted to mention? We were talking lately about different things people use sous vide wands for. Doctor wrote in. He was over in the cadaver lab.

Check this out. Human cadavers. They got a big tank full of cow's blood. Heated to temp., heated to body temp with a sous vide that they're circulating through the cadavers to keep everything fresh and limber. That does not surprise me at all. Whoa. It doesn't surprise you? No, because in the early days, like I'm talking like late nineties, when we first started

using circulators, we had to buy all of them from labs. Like the only company that made them was polyscience and they were used for questionable things. And so the first thing you did when you got your circulator in, cause they were always used is that you basically like circulated a bath of bleach to get out whatever may have been inside it. Yeah, like you got the old cadaver lab one? Yeah, I'm sure we've gotten some blood bath circulators in my day. What do they need cow's blood for? They're running it through these dead humans to keep everything limbered up.

How's he put it? They couldn't get enough human blood to circulate. Well, it'd probably be a waste of human blood, man. Yeah. To simulate blood flow and keep them fresh. Weird. That makes me want to pull my skin off. That's weird.

If you do that, you're going to wind up in that lab. Yep. You're next up for the circulator bath. Kevin, where'd you grow up? In North Georgia, like the mountains of North Georgia. How did you wind up doing all the Top Chef stuff? Did you like sign up? No, like by accident really.

So they just started calling me one day at work. And I thought it was a buddy of mine playing a prank on me. And they kept, like, by the way, so all these guys are based in Los Angeles. And so they would call my restaurant at, you know, a normal time for them. But they'd call at like 8 o'clock on a Friday. We're packed. And, you know, someone, the host would come up and be like, chef, you got a call. And I'm like, and I don't think I'm allowed to repeat the things that I would say to, to them. Um, but I'd go, you know, pick up the phone, yell a few obscenities and hang it up. That probably made him even more interesting. Well, they called back like three

days in a row. And finally on the third day, I was like, I thought it was a friend of mine playing a prank, but I was like, your prank is stupid. And they were like, no, this is legitimately Top Chef. And I'm like, oh, yeah, you're that TV show. And I had never seen it before. I mean, I was working all the time. I didn't have time to watch a show on TV. And they asked me to come do this show, which I had never seen. And at first, I was 100% against it. But this is 2008. And so all of a sudden our restaurants tanked, you know, nobody

had any money, nobody went out. And so we were winning all these awards, like left and right. And yet we couldn't pay the bills because no one was coming to dinner. And so I was dwelling on this top chef thing and I had decided not to go. And then one night we did zero people for dinner. And my business partner at the time was like, I think we have a month. Like because of the housing market collapse. Yeah. Cause we were, you're in fine dining. Like that's what I was doing. So you're talking about meals that cost people hundreds of dollars apiece to eat. And so that dried up quick. And so he was like, look, I think we've got a month of business left.

That's probably all we can do. And so I called the Top Chef people back and said, does the offer still stand? And they're like, we film next week. And I was like, send me the ticket. I'll go. So it was like a last-ditch effort to save my restaurant. So that's how it happened. And it worked like literally the minute they announced that my participation in it, we went from nothing in the middle of the housing crisis to being

booked out a year in advance. Seriously? Yeah. Wow. So we were doing three or 400 people a night and it stayed that way for, I five years and then i sold that restaurant and went on to do others but yeah it was crazy that impactful it was insane before it even started before anybody had even seen an episode just the word that i had been that i was participating boom that was it light switch do you find uh most people do that are they good what do you mean the people who compete on most people that get cast are they like when you go in there are you like wow man hold on but real quick is it a competition just so i know more about it yeah so it is so the way it works is that there's usually well the amount of people per season has changed a little bit from the beginning so

i think they still make that show yeah it's on season 20 right now so i did it the first time was season six. And so I believe that if I remember correctly, we had 18 people when we started. And each week in TV time, somebody gets sent home. In real life, that happens every few days. And you whittle it down until last man standing kind of thing. And so what I will tell you,

having done it multiple times now and sort of worked on the back end of it is that when they cast the show they are actually not just trying to cast for

apparently it makes for boring TV if everybody legitimately can win it's more fun if you get three or four people who could probably win

and the rest of the people are just absolute lunatics and it's just like you know and so then it's just like you're having to deal with these people who might be psychologically unstable so that's kind of the way they make the show in truth so yeah and honestly like in the first day as a participant you can you can tell pretty quickly like who who's legitimate like who's going to be your competition. And it usually works out that way. You find the same three or four people win every single day throughout the whole time. And you just sort of trading blows. It's like Division I college football where you're like, everybody fields a team, but

there's like this handful of teams who could actually win. It kind of works that way. How much was it? I don't know how much you can actually talk about it. You probably got a contract, like a phone book. I don't know. My wife's an attorney. You want me to text her and find out what I can say?

Well, let me say this. No, I do. It's a 100-page contract. Did you feel that it was a legitimate meritocracy? No. So it had a lot to do with personality. A hundred percent. Yeah.

No, and I've been, honestly, I'm probably not supposed to say it, but I've been so vocal for so many years about it that I don't really give a shit, but yeah, it's an absolute point of fact. I mean, all you have to do is read the end credits where it says in very small print at the very end that the decision is made by the judges in consult with the

producers. So that tells you all you need to know, right? It says that. Why do they have to tell you that? Because otherwise you'd go, because people constantly go, why did that guy get sent home? Like, I don't understand.

Why did he lose? Yeah, because if you get like a really good personality, you're not going to send them home right away. No, but you will now because now the version of Top Chef is that people get kicked off and then have a chance to fight back to get back on the show. And so that makes for another wrinkle. So sometimes you kick off one of your best people on purpose so that you can watch them like demolish the other people in this sort of secondary competition and earn their way

back on. Like, you know, it's very TV driven. I mean, the problem is that what I like to tell people, because they always say like it's, but it's reality TV. It is a scripted show where the contestants have not been shown the script. It's basically the way that it works. Like everybody else knows what's going on. You just have no idea what's going on.

You remember when a few years ago, the people that write scripted reality were kind of suing for writer credits. Right. For sure. And that's why like, you know, both seasons I've been on have won an Emmy, but I don't get an Emmy because I don't count in why like you know both seasons i've been on have won an emmy but i don't get an

emmy because i don't count in that you know despite the fact that they don't win an emmy without the people who are actually like participating yeah after my first book um scavenger's guide to oak cuisine came out i entered into like the interview process to go on what was then a new show which was survivor yeah um they quickly in the interviews i didn't do it because it would have made it that like i basically couldn't have gone and done a book event without their permission right um i could have done a radio interview without their permission the interview comes down to like how much are you willing to play ball here yeah yeah exactly and they put it even like this they put it like uh let's say you liked someone would you be willing to not like them

you know and they narrow in on those scenarios pretty heavily. Yeah. It's the same. Like, I mean, and I'm notoriously not good at playing ball. And so it's like not a surprise that I've not won the show. I've been, I've been like, I mean, I've been a finalist every time. I've almost won every time, but I'm not ever going to win. And I know that going into it because I'm just completely unwilling to play ball. But I also am like a person who believes in like standing by your principles. Like on this last season, like I got myself kicked off because I refuse to allow my teammates when I was the captain of the team, allow one of them to go down because that's not the way it works. Like if you're the captain, like you go down with the ship, like that's how it should work. Like, because as I pointed out to them, like I have real people in real life who report to me and they need to know

that their leader is someone who is going to take like the fall. If something bad happens, like you don't throw the people who are your subordinates under the bus. You're still one of the fan favorites though. Yeah. Yeah. And I, so it's like it at the end of the day,

it doesn't really matter that I haven't won quote unquote because winning is really more a function of the people who watch the show being invested in the success of your career. It doesn't really matter whether Bravo gives you the whatever title thing. I, at least in my mind, it doesn't. So I may have told myself that since I didn't win, you get a bigger paycheck. If you win, you do accept it. Short-term money versus long-term money. Like I've done just fine off of it without having won the actual... And plus, if you win the prize,

it's actually kind of like what you're talking about, Steve. So if you win-win, you have a really unbearable contract with them for a very long time where, yeah, if you write a book, they get a big chunk of it. If you do another show,

they get a piece of that action. If you are a finalist and you win a book, they get a big chunk of it. If you, you know, you do another show, they get a piece of that action. Like if you are a finalist and you win second place, they got nothing over you. And by the way, you get the same book deals and the same TV show opportunities. So you'd be better off. I mean, it's kind of the joke amongst contestants is that the real strategy is to try to, is to be in every episode, make it to the end and not win because you end up with a better long-term situation. It's like how everybody

who's been the runner-up on American Idol has, like, thrived. But the people who win don't necessarily do great. Oh, really? Yeah, 100%. I was going to...

Never mind. No, please. It's like that show Bachelor or Bachelorette. You don't actually want to win because you want to be the bachelor on the next one. Right, yeah.

You want to be the one dating everybody. Yeah, I didn't know that the degree to which second place could pay off. Yeah, exactly. First loser is where you really want to be. So when you're doing Top Chef, if you come in second place, you have more freedom. So, like, beyond more.

And you still get famous. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, you can come in, like, fifth or sixth if people like you and you win fan favorite, which is a secondary sort of voting, like the public votes on a competition. That's better than winning the show because six months after the show is over, no one remembers who won.

They just remember who they liked. Yeah, that's true. So, yeah, that's how you end up taking 10 photos in the Montana Aleworks on a Sunday night with random people only of which maybe two knew who you were. By losing job show. Look, Steve,

my strategy has always been to lose by a narrow margin. Kevin Gillespie either wins or he quits because the competition is unfair. That is it. You grew up hunting and fishing. Yeah.

Because you guys used to eat raw hearts. Yeah. Like, so, the joke for years was that my dad and his brothers only had jobs because they had to. That, like, really all they ever really wanted to do was hunt and fish. And so when I was a kid, we ate a lot of game. And I didn't realize this at the time, but we ate it because we didn't have any money. And so it was like that was just like putting food on the table.

So it wasn't something that was – we didn't celebrate it in many respects. It was just, you did it. Like, I mean, I attribute the fact that I'm a super early riser to the fact that every single day from like middle school through high school, my dad woke me up to go hunting before going to school. So like we would go in the morning and then he would drop me off at school. Where was this? In Georgia.

Georgia. And what kind of stuff did you guys hunt and fish this? In Georgia. Georgia. Um, and what, what kind of stuff did you guys hunt and fish for? I mean, so tons of whitetail, obviously. Uh, my dad loves bluegill, loves them. He thinks they are literally to quote my dad, the finest fish there is. We've had this debate many times ever. I'm like, they're good, dad. I don't know if they're the finest fish there is, but, um, you know, catfish, bluegill, whitetail white tail some turkey a lot of upland birds there there were a lot more back then there were just a lot more quail um you could actually just you could walk a hedgerow and and you know flush covies and shoot them so nowadays that's really not super doable um and then one of his brothers

has always been even though he's from the same place, obviously, has been really enamored with Western hunting his whole life. And so I started hunting with him early on and going out West and hunting. And so we would travel every year to a different state and hunt a different species. With your dad's brother. With my dad, with my uncle Billy. Yeah. And so, and he's still kind of to this day, my hunting partner.

As a matter of fact, we were supposed to hunt doll sheep together in a little less than a month in Alaska, but now I can't go. So unfortunately he's going by himself, which is, I'm not super keen on the fact he's getting up there in age. So that's going to be, this might be his last hurrah. Letting Uncle Billy down. Yeah, I am totally. Yeah. I have this stupid hernia that I can't, can't go. Got it. Do you know, uh, I don't know if you heard, we did an interview with Kimmy Werner. Yeah. She's a pretty well-known spear, spearfish from Hawaii. And we were talking about her early formative years.

And she explained that her dad spearfished because they were broke. Yeah. And she went with, because he didn't have anywhere to put her. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's. You try to like romanticize him. She's like, no, the minute he wound up doing well financially, never spearfished again.

Well, so I was talking to somebody a couple of days ago about pistol hunting and they have just gotten into it. And I said, oh, yeah, I grew up doing that a lot. And they were like, really? You grew up pistol hunting? And I was like, yeah, my dad hunted with a pistol, like almost exclusively for whitetail. And they were like, wow, that's so cool. And I was like, it was a function of the cost of ammunition. Like, uh, my dad hunted with a pistol because he had more expendable pistol ammunition than he could afford.

Never hunted. I don't think my dad has ever owned a rifle that wasn't a 30, 30, to be honest with you. And it was an inherited gun that I now have. So, uh, you know, it was like that cost function, like factored in really heavily. It wasn't a romantic thing. And my dad actually, at this point now, because my parents are retired and are better off financially, he almost never hunts. He'll go bird hunting with me on occasion. But you know, as he says,

he's like, I'm tired. Like I spent too many days cold. Like I'm good now. We have heat in the house now. I'm fine. Like I'll just stay here. So it's a very different approach. Whereas I'm still very much in love with it because I think I always connected to it on a different level. But that was probably because I didn't know we were out there trying to just have food. How did you wind up going from those experiences into commercial cooking? In a really weird path. Though my first job ever was at the only restaurant in my small town, which was called the Chicken Coop. So we made fried chicken and buffalo wings, which are still two of my favorite foods.

What town was that in? Locust Grove, Georgia. There's not a single locust tree available, by the way, in case you're curious. It's not like Walnut. Nope, nope. Not like Walnut, Kansas. This is a very theoretical idea. Like, I think they liked that name,

but I've yet to see a locust tree in that part of the country. So, yeah, we had this tiny little restaurant, and I applied for a job there, and I got a job as a cook, and then about, I don't know, three weeks later, I was made the manager, which is a terrible idea. Don't let a 15-year-old be the manager of anything. Like, I would just...

They're short-staffed. Yeah, this was... And so I just came up with a system where I would play punk rock as loud as possible and then leave a sheet of paper on the counter that said, I'm not listening. Write your order down. And so that's how I ran it for a while. I got fired shockingly from that job.

I've actually been fired for almost every job I've ever had. I think we discussed this with the not playing ball part. Yeah. Yeah. But I did that and loved it. And then I actually went to college. You loved like the kitchen atmosphere. Yeah. I just liked it. It was like pirate ship mentality, you know? So,

and then I went to college for something very different. And it just wasn't my cup of tea, you know, it was like a more academic path. That's what my parents wanted for me. Again, they really wanted me to sort of break this like cycle of poverty that my family has been in forever because they're all just mountain folk you know so that's just what what they do none of them have ever i don't i mean my parents didn't graduate high school so um yeah so when i was accepted to go make us proud yeah i mean i was accepted to mit for nuclear engineering and that was the path that i took and so it was like yeah still the only person from I think my county that I grew up in that has been accepted to that school.

So, but it just wasn't my thing. Did you have like a, I don't know, like a proclivity for nuclear engineering or? Well, so the way it came up was that I did a science fair project when I was in ninth grade where I was attempting to prove that you could contain nuclear fusion inside a magnetic field if you could alter the Doppler effect. So that's how that happened. That was your science project? That was my science fair project, my ninth grade science fair project. So I cooked in school. That's all I really wanted to do. I decided that that wasn't the right path. I told my parents I was going to go to culinary school. And I thought for sure I was like going to break their heart.

But my mom was actually, my mom was really cool. She said that she was glad that I realized what I was meant to do in my life before I had wasted a great deal of it doing something else. So, and that's what, and then I just moved into the food world and then that was it. Like, and it was like, honestly, the food I grew up with, like the super Southern cooking didn't really factor into my stuff in the early days. It was much more the like really meticulous, methodical, fine dining that I learned working. It wasn't actually until the first season of Top Chef that that kind of came

back because when you show up for Top Chef, you can't bring any recipes. Um, you have no access to books or magazines or the internet or anything. So you have to remember everything. And so you're all, you're just thrown to the wolves kind of, except the killer wolves. Um, and, uh, not Saudi, not, not, yeah, yeah. Not the soft wolves, like the bad ones. Um, and so you just have to cook from instinct. And all of a sudden, all this food that I started cooking on the show looked nothing like what I did professionally. And it was all this sort of modernized version of Southern, like home style Southern food. Oh, really? Yeah, for sure.

Like everyone thought that was my signature style of cooking, but I didn't know it was my signature style until I was there. It's just what came to mind. It's just what I thought of when they went, you have two minutes to come up with something. And it was like, okay, I'll make this. And then that's what happened. And so I came home from that and kind of completely remade my career.

And that's why now people think of me as that, like, you know, that Southern guy when really none of my, literally none of my professional training is in that at all. That's just the food I had as a kid. 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, 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.

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As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meat. onxmaps.com slash meat. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Are there culinary schools that teach Southern cooking? Well, there's nowadays, like Southern food kind of hit a renaissance in like the mid-2000, where it was like, people really got excited about it. And you started seeing, you know, fancy Southern places popping up in Manhattan and in Los Angeles and stuff. And so there were chefs who really sort of clung to that modern Southern as their style, as their kind of, like you would say, I do Italian

food. People would say, I do modern Southern. Like I've never said that. I don't, I, what do you say? I just American. Like, I don't know. Like it's because I don't really, that's not how I think of the way that I cook. Like I think everything is, uh, I get to, I like using the word American cuisine because in my mind, American cuisine, because of how diverse our country is means that you're inspired by a lot of different food. You know, you don't have to pigeonhole yourself into a singular sort of, you know, a particular vernacular. Whereas if you said I make Roman food, like it's got some pretty strong walls around that statement. That means something very particular. So I like the more nebulous idea of American cookery, but yeah, I guess I think I get labeled modern Southern and I don't mind that.

I mean, I consider what we do pretty modern and my restaurants are in the South. So I suppose that makes sense. What, uh, what, like I know it, but I don't know it. Like I know in my, I can imagine it, but I can't articulate it. What makes Southern food Southern? Oh man, this is a whole separate podcast here. Um, you know, you know, uh, we haven't talked about this in forever, but there's a really great, this guy wrote this piece about what makes Southern literature, Southern literature. Like when Southern literature became a thing and people would study Southern literature and how hard it was to define like who's a Southern writer or not. He came up with this thing that if you read it and you can find a dead mule,

it's Southern. Yeah. That seems fair. And he goes through the, it's Southern. Yeah, that seems fair. And he goes through the whole canon of Southern literature, of things that like all the scholars and academics would like, when you take Southern literature, you study Southern literature. He goes through the whole canyon. There's always a dead mule.

Like every Faulkner book has a dead mule in it. There's always a dead mule. Court McCarthy, because he was writing from the South for a while, like always a dead mule. Faulkner, always a dead mule. It must be why I like those guys. Yeah. And it you know, he was writing from the South while like always a dead mule. Faulkner, always a dead mule. Must be why I like those guys. Yeah. And it's amazing, man.

You go through, it's like a very good way to tell. But in Southern cooking, I don't know if there's a dead mule. No, and it's, and honestly. It's a dead pig. Yeah, exactly. There you go. Yeah. Southern cooking is interesting because it's a super micro regional like style of cooking.

So like, it's really hard to lump everything in the South as being the same because, you know, the food in Texas is completely different than the food where I'm from. The food in Louisiana is different. Also the food in Alabama. I don't even consider Texas Southern. Right, exactly. And most Texans don't, but people who don't live in that part of the country absolutely lump Texas in because they think of, yeah, they think of like everything that was in the Confederacy and that's the the south you know so that's kind of the way people define it but in reality even in my home state there's two distinctive styles of food there's the appalachian cookery and there's the low country cookery and they couldn't be any more different from each other and so yeah i got

you you know um so you guys are at the tail so you grew up near like the tail end of the appalachian trail kind of yeah yeah exactly like the tail end of the Appalachian Trail kind of. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like the tail end of the Appalachian Trail is like, God, I don't know, maybe 10 miles from like where my grandparents house was or something. So, yeah. And that cooking is different than coastal. For sure. Yeah, because like where I'm from, like that Appalachian style cookery. Clay Newcomb and I were talking about this the other day, like over Slack.

We were just chatting back and forth about it. And like understanding, it's like the only thing that made your day better for those people was the food they were eating. And so I think that the style of the food was always meant to be incredibly satisfying because it was kind of like, that was the high point of the day, but you had to spend a lot of work transforming really pedestrian ingredients into things that were really craveable and delicious. And so I think that's why the style is the way that it is. You know, you see the utilization of meat products in almost everything, but not a lot of meat. You don't actually eat a lot of meat in the South. That's another sort of misnomer. Yeah. That's interesting, man. Like, um, um, flavoring things with, or like having like pork belly and taking collards and having like a little

meatiness to the collards. Exactly. Exactly. Because you were working with largely what you could, it's subsistence, you know? So it's what could you grow or trade your neighbor for, for the most part. I don't think pork and beans is Southern, but it's, yeah. Well, pork and certain types of beans are. You're integrating it in in a satisfying way without needing volume. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so it's like, you know, when I grew up as a kid, like my grandmother, my granny, she cooked for the family, like the whole family. Like, so my dad and all of his brothers all live on like sort of the same piece of land that surrounds my grandparents' house. And so we ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner at my granny's house seven days a week.

And it's like 30, 35 of us, give or take, that ate there every single day. And she did all of the cooking. And so all the food either came from this big garden, which we, I mean, we called it a garden, but it was a hundred yard by 50 yard field. So it's really big. Everybody contributed to helping plant and harvest it and pick and do all that kind of stuff. And then she did all the cooking. And then like the meat that we got for the most part, we would either, it was either game and, you know, and fish that my dad and his brothers got. Or with a neighbor who had pigs and then somebody had cattle. I don't know who it was, but we would, I think we just trade and that's how we ended up with it.

And so, and so we had a lot more vegetables than meat, but meat was in like you, there's some sort of meat product in almost everything. And it's usually there just for flavor. Really. It's also there as my granny pointed out for calories, like, because they would, they were short on food a lot of the time. And so a really way to get the calorie count up really fast, you know, if all you have is, you know, turnips or rutabagas or something like that was to throw fat back into it when you cooked them so that the calorie count got up, you know, if someone went down to see sort of your signature dishes from the North, would they be like, oh, it's Southern food? Well, I think it depends on which restaurant they went to. So I have five of them in Atlanta. If they went to Gun Show, I don't know that they would recognize it as Southern because it's so, it's just a lot, like there's a lot going on there. But if you went to revival, it is Southern. It is like literally the, the, the handwritten cookbooks of my two grandmothers translated into a restaurant format. So absolutely you would recognize that as

Southern and you would have dishes that maybe you hadn't had before. You didn't think of like one that we're famous for in the spring. Um, dill grows wild all over that area. And so, you know, the first early spring peas with tons of dill in them, like tons and tons, and people eat that and they go like, oh, that doesn't, that's not Southern food. And you're like, it's very Southern. It's just not what you're thinking of. You think of fried chicken and macaroni and cheese, macaroni and cheese isn't Southern. It's probably Midwestern, I think they would argue, you know, food historians wise. Fried chicken, you could argue is Southern because it is originates in Scotland and came over with Scottish immigrants, much of whom were clearly that's when you look at me, that seasonality, hyper locality. And then, you know, recipes being ultra flexible because you would never, even if this thing says that it has

tomatoes in it, you're not putting tomatoes in it. If you don't have tomatoes in your garden, like you would just move on and do something different or you'd modify it. And that, that feels to me, having cooked all over the world, that feels a lot more like when you're cooking in Italy where they go, yeah, I know this says borlotti beans, but we don't have borlotti beans right now. So we're not going to go buy crappy ones to make it. We're going to do it with this thing instead. Yeah. Got you.

Do you apply your science project mind to your cooking? Totally. But in an almost unknown way. It happens all the time at work that someone will do something and they'll be like, I don't know why we got this result. And then I show up with like my invisible glasses and I'm like, here, here's what's going on. Like, and then I give them like the science diatribe on it without realizing that, that the thing is, I don't really like sciencey food. It's a weird dichotomy. I like to completely understand what's taking place from a scientific level, but I think that if you cook that way, you make really lousy food. What's the word for like

the, you know, what is the discipline of all the foams? Modern gastronomy. Modern gastronomy. Or molecular gastronomy. Yeah, molecular gastronomy. You're not into that? No. I mean, though, I just told you about transglutanimase, which comes directly from that. That's their world. You know, I think that some of those things, in my mind, they're all just another tool in the toolbox. You know, it's like, it's nice to have, you know, vacuum sealers these days and immersion circulators. They're useful for certain things. But my opinion is that if you conceptualize your food around the utilization of those things, you make some really cold and sterile things.

If you, on the other hand, cook... That's an interesting point. I like that. If you cook from a very soulful place where you feel a personal connection to everything that you make, but then can apply technique so that it's a better version of that, that usually produces pretty good results.

Hmm. Yeah, man. That's a good point. I mean, you can apply that across the board to so many disciplines in this world. I mean, it's like, it's the, it's the people who nerd out on the hunting forums about all the technicalities of this, that, and the other than the science behind things, but they've never bothered to like sit quietly in the woods and like try to sort of figure out what's going on around them, you know? And so they're still lousy at hunting. Yeah. It's like reading the poems of E.E.

Cummings, man. Right. He's like, he's not going to use any uppercases or any punctuation ever. Even if it would be useful. Right. Probably would be. He was like a modern sous vide guy, man.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I like that. So what, you're going to, you're working with us now a little bit. Yep. Why? I was that. So you're working with us now a little bit? Yep. Why? I was bored.

I basically begged him. That is semi-true. Yeah, talk about how you guys met. So Danielle, you kind of tracked him down. Yes, I'm working on a show for YouTube. It's a cooking show for Meat Eater. And it's a show that's basically wanting to explore different places in the U.S. and different chefs who have a very unique perspective.

Like pro chefs, right? Yeah. Not home chefs. Yeah. All of them are professional chefs and someone who has a unique perspective and a direct experience with what they're doing in the outdoors and with cooking and how that relates to each other. So I wanted to sort of tell the stories of who those chefs are, what it is that they're doing, hunting, fishing, and then sort of the culture around that, because I think that's another part of something that we haven't really tapped a lot into with Meat Eater is that there is definitely a culture surrounding the food.

And like Kevin's story, it's not just that he grew up in Georgia hunting quail, subsistence hunting, but it's a huge part of the identity of what Georgia is. There's a great conservation story there. I just think there was just a lot of it all wrapped up into one thing. So, yeah, I messaged Kevin

on Instagram, like, I want to do this cooking show and highlight you in Georgia and do some quail hunting. That's kind of

how it started. Yeah. So I followed Danielle. I think we followed each other on social media and that's how it came about. Yeah.

It's precious. Tell everybody your Instagram handle, Danielle. Danielle. I think we followed each other on social media and that's how it came about. Yeah. It's precious. Tell everybody your Instagram handle, Danielle. Danielle. Pruitt. There you go. Woo. P-R-E-W-E-T-T.

That's how to find out. Not U-I-T-T. If you want to follow her and be on her cooking show. I went super creative with mine as well. Chef Kevin Gillespie. Yeah.

That's nice. So that I wasn't confused with whatever other Kevin Gillespie. Assuming there's probably one out there somewhere. Yeah. I think there actually is a really famous comic book artist who has that same name. Because people constantly ask me about my drawings. And I'm like, no, no.

You don't want to see my drawings. Yeah. So I reached out and we filmed an episode in Georgia. And I got to know him more and like them like I knew that we wanted I wanted to like do more with you in regards to meat eater but like you kept saying like you're ready for this next chapter and I'm like I know what that next chapter is gonna be I've seen it to the future yeah uh and then I went back talked to Katie and Tracy. It was like, we need to get this guy on board with me, Dieter. Well, yeah, the timing was definitely fortuitous because I definitely was ready to sort of take the next step.

Some people know this, some people don't, but I am a cancer survivor. And when I went through all of that, which was only three years ago, I had to basically completely overhaul my company because I was an extremely hands-on operator. But then I obviously couldn't be there. And so made a lot of promotions and sort of restructured the organization entirely. And when I came back, I found that, A, everything was great. Like people did an amazing job. And B, that they didn't need me there all the time.

Like they needed me there to, to coach and mentor and to lead in, in some aspects, but they didn't need me actually physically in the restaurant working on the line or, you know, washing dishes or talking to guests or whatever the case may be. Do you think it would have been bad form for you to come back anyway and be

like, I'm back. Oh, totally. Yeah. I mean, it also kind of go home. Yeah, those promotions never mind pay cuts um it was honestly it was terrifying that i had to do it in the first place but then it turned out to be like the best thing that i've

ever done like it was and it frankly it made me have this moment where I realized that in my career, people have done that for me. Like the guys I've worked for have taken a step back. You know, when you're 25, you think they just they want me to do all the work. It's like it's my turn. Like it's your turn. So it was my turn to let other people succeed and grow. And that's really all I care about at this point is trying to build these teams and watch people succeed. And so I knew that I had the ability, the time, frankly, to do something else. And it's like, some people said like, why Kevin, just like you have, you know, you don't

have to work that hard anymore. You can just stay at home and like, you know, you literally can just do whatever you want and, you know, collect, collect money when it comes in from the restaurants, but that's just not my, that's not my personality. So I wanted to do something else. I wanted to challenge and this seemed challenging. Now, so Danielle reached out and this conversation started and it was totally unexpected, but I'm very excited to be here doing it because it also allows me to, not just the creating of food around sort of wild game and fish and stuff like that. That is, that's something I'm uber passionate about because I think a lot of chefs are, I think actually most chefs are really passionate about that because we're all looking for the best

ingredient constantly. That's the secret. You know, how do you make great food? Well, you start with great stuff. Like you start with mediocre stuff, mediocre food. And so I don't think that part as much of a departure, but trying to find a way to bring more people into the fold who have never been a hunter, who have never fished, who have never stepped outside barely, how can we get them to buy in and believe in this world? Well, I think maybe through food. I think that path is probably something that is going to allow us to convert a lot more people. And so that's what Danielle and I are working on now is trying to find new opportunities where we can get these people over to sort of, to our side, to recognize that

the hunting has always been about the food, man. Like, and it's like, and it's special. And so that's, that's what we're going to do. So explain the, Danielle, when we met, you were doing, um, like you're sort of the world you created was wild and whole uh explain that to people like like how you came up with that and what you're doing with it now um you know it kind of came not by choice or people talked me into creating a blog but really i i didn't come into hunting. I married a hunter. We were talking about stories in Hawaii of how we met our spouses, and the first date I went on with Travis, he took me to a gun range to shoot.

He was standing in his rifle, and so the second date he cooked me his back straps. Oh, really? Yeah. He was being methodical, man. Yeah, yeah. It's funny because, I mean mean I didn't grow up hunting and so that was the first time I'd had well actually my dad was a hunter so I'd had venison before um so yeah I just remember like he was like this is really special like he made a big deal about like this is really special it's not just like I just bought a steak from the

store and I'm cooking it for you like I remember him making a big deal about it and I was just like I just didn't really get it but anyway like we kept dating and that evolved and we got married and he was bringing home food all the time and I was fascinated with it because I had started working at these cooking classes and I graduated with a degree in apparel design and I wanted to go to culinary school. And so I was like doing these cooking classes and I just thought Wild Game was fascinating purely

for the fact that it's... You were leading cooking classes. I was working. I started dishwashing by the end of it. I was teaching a little bit. I'm sorry. I didn't mean... You're not taking the cooking classes, but you're working. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was working.

Yeah. Yeah. I was working in them. Anyway, I thought it was fascinating. I wanted to go to culinary school, but I thought Wild Game was interesting because you kind of had this chance to work with something new every time. It's not like when you go to the grocery store, you know exactly what you were expecting something because it's so standardized.

Oh, yeah. It's like this one's got toxoplasmosis. This one's got a giant pus-filled injury on its front shoulder. It was just fascinating to me. And then we moved to North Dakota, and that was what really changed my life. And we realized that we could like hunt and fish all year round, all the time, so much public land access. And that's what we did. And so the more and more time I spent in the field, the more I got to sort of connect with the food and it became something way bigger. And I had this

aha moment that food is not just about calories or about like things that taste good. I finally realized that there was a meaning behind it. And I think everybody goes through that at some point in life, discovering that food carries a lot of meaning. And so I decided I was also like learning a lot about our food sustainability, reading Michael Pollan's stuff. And I was kind of had this moment of Travis I don't want to buy meat anymore at the grocery store so you're we're

either gonna like be vegetarians or we're already hunting like that's just the obvious route we're gonna take and so for him it was like full permission like hunt any any day you want like there's no no um obligations at home like if you want to go hunting one week and go hunting, I'm, like, making him go hunt. And I would go with him so that we could have enough meat to last us through the year. And so we started doing that about nine years ago of only eating meat that we've shot or fished for. And so my friends were like, that's crazy that you do that you should start a blog and so that's what uh wild and whole started as it was just sort of this creative outlet to sort of explore what it meant to eat consciously that's really what it was about

for me was was what does it mean what does it mean to like take responsibility for your food? What does it mean to like know that this animal that you're hunting, all the things that have like are required to make this habitat healthy. And, and I suddenly cared about conservation in a way that I'd never cared about before. Um, and so that's really what Wild and Whole started at. And it's sort of evolved over the years. But by the time this episode launches, we will be creating a new website for Wild and Whole. I'm sort of looking at hunting and fishing as one way that you can connect with your food or have a response responsibility but also all the other avenues that go into that yeah you've been gardening your ass off for a long time yeah so i've gotten the garden bug um as probably everybody has in the past year but um so so wild and whole is sort of like kind of being reinvigorated with a new life. We have a handful of contributors picked out that are going

to be writing for us. We've got like a regenerative rancher from Alberta, some foragers, Bree Van Scotter, and Wade from Elevated Wild. And then so we've got some gardening content, and then we'll be doing some stuff like raising animals, chickens for eggs, caring for honeybees, sort of that whole thing. So it's sort of expanding into a bigger picture of food and our relationship with food, the way that we see it, the way that we value it and the effects on the environment. So it's definitely more driven by food. And, of course, recipes. You should have Yanni do – you should commission a piece from Yanni called Shit That Will Kill Your Chickens.

We could just have Yanni's homesteading corner. Call him. And then you got your skunks. I can't raise chickens right now, but I've been wanting to get chickens really bad. I'm moving. I'm in Houston right now, and we're moving to a really small town

out in the country outside of San Antonio. And part of this move was like, we just want to get a few acres, have a little bit more space. And the whole point was I could finally have my chickens. And our subdivision has a – or HOA won't let me have chickens. I have three acres. Those rules are falling like flies, man. I'm just going to have to ask for permission.

People are revolting against it. I'm going to ask for forgiveness and not permission. I think you should. My HOA, not where I currently live, apparently had a rule about not being able to clean deer from a street sign, which I didn't know about. Say that again, not clean deer. Can't hang deer from street signs. Yeah, but it's like a perfect height. So I was like, how else am I supposed to clean clean this deer and they're like not not in the subdivision

my brother up in anchorage they i feel like he was there when they made it you could have chickens in your yard like right in the city you know downtown anchorage and he had all these chickens running around and and uh he had a fenced in, like a big high wooden fence around his whole yard. So his chickens just roamed around. And, um, one day one of his buddies is out walking his dog and this buddy runs into another buddy and they agree to go get a beer. And it comes,

brings up the question, like, what do we do with the dog? Oh my God. So they go to my brother's house and he's not, they, they just opened the gate and let the dog in without really thinking about it. Like they'll like detain the dog in his fence.

And he was out of town. He comes home and his chickens are all lined up dead on his porch. You know, like they laid them all out all nice because they didn't know what to do. But yeah, that dog got in there and just annihilated them. Yeah. So they kind of made them look nice and stacked them up. got in there and just annihilated them. Yeah. My dog does that. They kind of made them look nice and stacked them up like cordwood. We were at the disc golf course and it's like in the middle of the city and out of nowhere

our dog comes up to us with a chicken in its mouth and we're like, crap. And I'm like walking around like is this anybody's chicken like no and i'm like well i guess we'll eat it so i like opened up the crop and i could see it was full of mealworms so i'm like this thing is like just escaped its coop it was a silky chicken which oh my god if you've ever plucked a silky chicken, their meat is black and their skin is dark blue-ish black. Yeah. Huh. Is it good?

It's a delicacy. In China. Yeah. It's very expensive to buy in Houston. Yes, it is. So I have a nice plucked blue silky chicken in my freezer. It's going to be my farewell meal when i leave that's cool from the park um i never i've never done chickens uh when you go down and buy them right like can you pay

extra and get ones that you know are females is there some deal like this like you buy them and you know there's gonna be some roosters mixed in It's just a mixed bag You don't know I don't think they can be sexed No I thought there's these experts That can sex them Yeah but I don't think When you go down to the old Farm feed

So you really don't know If you buy chicks So what do you do You kill them off The same brother I didn't realize this He went and got a batch buy chicks? Uh-uh. So what do you do? You kill them off. Eat the roosters? Mm-hmm. Well, my brother, the same brother, I didn't realize this, he got a batch, he went and got a batch, and when it was all said and done, every one of them

was a rooster. He had me kill one of them. You just eat a bunch of capons? I served it to my kids. It was one his kids took a shine to, but it started, like, every day you wake up and here's some new one crowing. Crowing, yeah. So this one started crowing.

I took it home and cooked it for my kids. And then next day, here's another one crowing. And pretty soon they got done killing everybody that crowed. Zero chickens. Yeah, it's funny too. We went through it one time. I want to say it was when we had some bantams for a little while, which are basically just little miniature chickens.

And there was a procession like that because for whatever reason, their pecking order, I guess, you'd be like, oh, well, we just have one rooster left. You know, nobody else is crowing. Take him out. And the next morning you're like, hold on, what was that? And you go down there and sure enough, so-and-so is bowed up and no longer is a hen anymore, but has turned into a rooster

and is crowing his head off you know that's what abernathy was talking about with wild turkeys you know when you get a power jake like when jake starts strutting and gobbling he says it's usually because there's been a serious interruption in their social hierarchy right and they come into it docile like don't do that man you get your you know someone's gonna beat your ass if you do that but then you know as season goes on they're kind of like you know i haven't seen that, man. Someone's going to beat your ass if you do that. But then as season goes on, they're kind of like, I haven't seen that guy around

that usually beats me up when I do anything aggressive. And then they start getting full of themselves and start acting like the man. And will successfully breed. I had one more chicken question. Oh, I got an article for Wild and Whole that someone needs to do.

You get Chris Calkins involved. Calkins. Get him involved in it. Those guys. Because every time I'm talking to chicken people, it seems like there's a question about what do you do with the ones that, like, the ones that get killed by the this?

The roosters that you got to kill. It would be um chicken everything chicken egg people need to know about eating their chickens oh because they don't know how to like clean it well it's like can you do this and can you do that and how should you cook a little shit and chicken that just started crowing and you got to go kill them the dog killed one be like all because this is for for very entry-level people who don't have a lot of blood on their hands, right? Yeah.

So you'd lay out for them all the things they need to know about eating, how to make the best of all the death that goes on in egg raising. I could write that article. It's a bloody business. Like all the different life stages of a chicken, like what you do with them culinarily. Yeah, it's a bloody business. Yeah.

Every chicken person I talk to, most of the things they talk about I could write that article. It's a bloody business. Like all the different life stages of a chicken, like what you do with them culinarily. Yeah, it's a bloody business. Yeah. Yeah. Every chicken person I talk to, most of the things they talk about is things that happen to their chickens. It's true. Oh. Yeah, that's a good point. You know the guy I was talking about that had a tree fall on his, I don't want to get into his name, but the guy that had a tree crush his truck?

Yeah. He says, this guy lives downtown. He's like, fox got my chickens i'm like no it didn't like it's probably chupacabra so he puts out a trail cam and i mean this dude's downtown man it's a fox some fox downtown bozeman yeah some fox i don't feel like that's a stretch i thought it was there's like 140 inch bucks walking around downtown. I gave him some coyote lure and he put that out and he said that stuff could melt glass, you know, but he had pictures of it coming up to smell it and that's what he's got. Anyways, even like that. So now he's got dead chickens laying around.

I would eat them. Dead chickens going to waste. I think people throw them dead chickens laying around. I would eat them. Dead chickens going to waste. I think people throw them in the garbage can. That's really sad. I don't know, man. I took a chicken home from the park. There you go. That's what I'm talking about.

You should write the article. For whatever reason, we have an aversion at our house too for eating like when we had a fox, you know, slaughter a bunch of them. No, no, no. We don't mind eating them. Like if you just go and kill them. But like when you had a fox slaughter a bunch of them. No, no, no. We don't mind eating them.

Like if you just go and kill them. But like when you find them laying around and there was this like stress incident maybe or whatever and then the fox, you know, ravaged them. I don't know.

Because the fox has been nibbling on it? It becomes less appealing. Would you feed it to Mingus? I guess that's a good question is could you contract anything if like an animal, like a rodent, had been chewing or eating part of it? No, don't ask Chris Calkins about it.

Well, this sounds like a collaborative effort here. So we need Danielle to talk about raising chickens. We need Yanni to talk about what kills your chickens. We need Chris to weigh in on how dangerous it is to eat a chicken. When you do the article, you should interview Yanni about how he doesn't want to eat the fox-killed chickens. I would eat them in a second. And then I'll jump in and tell you what to do with the chicken based on how old it is. I was going to eat a tomato that a possum had chewed on.

This is going to be one of those. This is going to be like a New Yorker-length article. Exactly. We're shopping on this. It's going to be multimedia. I was saying I was going to eat a tomato that a possum had already eaten half of it. I was just going to eat the other half. My husband told me that was gross.

That might be. That's pushing it. I kind of disagree with your husband. I would have respected you more. Did you watch it eat the other half or were you just like? No. You weren't like, give me that tomato, jerk. No, it was the first.

It was a black creme. It was the first heirloom tomato that was coming in. Grinner got it. You guys call them grinners down there? Sometimes. Yeah, I got that from Doug Dern. We didn't call them grinners. I have some good possum stories.

We have a lot of possums in our backyard. You ever cook those possums up? No. Did you know in the old, old, old joy of cooking? Mm-hmm. You know, they were always revamping it. Mm-hmm. It all kind of went to shit when they started putting couscous recipes in there.

But in the old days, the joy of cooking had instructions about how to catch a possum, what to feed it in captivity, and then how to cook it. That was in the joy of cooking. I would like that book or that version. Yeah, that's the old joy of cooking. It'd be like, you're supposed to take, like, I don't know what the hell, you know, how to fatten it on oatmeal. That's weird. Is that the real example that they'd feed it oatmeal?

It was like, you feed it like a mash, like a grain or something. It was all in Joy Cooking, man. How to handle a possum, fatten it up. To this day, I haven't eaten one. A possum? Oh, I used to catch so many possums fox trapping. I just didn't like them. I remember one time we were out in the snow and my old man had shot a buck and never couldn't find it.

He shot it with his bow and didn't find it until way later and took the head off because he wanted to get it stuffed anyway. And me and my brother were out rabbit hunting. We went and took a look at that deer. This is in the wintertime. And there's like a hole kind of eaten through the deer. And I looked down in that hole and there's a grinner living in there. I remember hauling him out by his tail and taking a picture of him, you know. This is like probably December, I guess.

I have a thing of like you are what you eat, eat. So as much as I like, there's a wide array of wild game that I love to eat. But like if I don't know what all they're eating, if it's questionable what they're eating, I don't want to eat it. If you laid out in your garden long enough, a possum would eat you. Eat me? Oh, dude, they'll eat anything. That's why I don't want to eat a possum. I think my wife subscribes to that same plan because we had like a squirrel issue. And so I just was like, well, I'm going to deal with it the way that we did as a kid.

So I just started shooting all the squirrels in our yard. Tree squirrels. Yeah. And I was getting ready to cook them up for dinner. And she was like, Kevin, that squirrel ate the cover of our grill. And I was like, yeah, that's a good point. I didn't think about that. We've caught our squirrels digging in trash, eating trash.

So I won't eat squirrels inside the city limits. I had a mess of squirrels. I was excited. At a ranch, we do. Yeah. I don't know, man. I mean, you know bears i like i like bear meat bears who knows they yeah they eat other bears hogs are the same way i still like hog meat but they'll eat some weird stuff yeah everything everything uh one last question for you daniel um you're not gonna back out of donating that dog to the mediator auction house of oddities, are you?

I can't now. Tell people about that dog. It's a Gerschenstrimer. What is it called? Deutsch Strathair. Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, I've got a Deutsch Strathair. His name is Z, which these dogs, talking about how to name a kid,

you have to name it based on the number of litter. So litter one is an A. You have to lit with an A. If it's the second litter out of that kennel, it's got to have a name that starts with a B. And three is C and so on. And this is a rule for all dogs or that kind of dog? Deutsch Drathars. Really?

Mm-hmm. So it'd be like Abigail, Annie, Apple, Arthur? Yeah. Whose rule is it? The Drathar communities. Okay. Hmm. I mean, you can...

You don't want these people on your bad side. Yeah, exactly. I mean, maybe that's just required. It's definitely required on paper, but you don't have to stick with it. You can call it whatever you want. And this is the first litter. Now, is the first litter that comes from the bitch

or the first litter that comes from the stud? From the kennel. Oh, no. No, from the kennel. I think. I don't think it's... So even if you have

multiple breeding dogs, like it's... Yeah, if I have a kennel and I have two bitches, one is on her fourth litter and one is only on her second, I think it would still be six because it's the kennel's litter.

I got you. I think. Someone's probably going to write in about that. Yeah, we're going to get a lot of emails. The draw heart community is going to be like, no, I would never. The draw heart community is crazy. I would be like,

I'd call them like Zeke and Zebulon and stuff and act like you've been at it big time. Yeah, so we got Z from the Z litter. His real name is Zisu, but we just call him Z. Seriously, you have a Z litter dog? Uh-huh. Yeah. Where do they go from there?

Double A? Yeah, they go back to A. Yeah, you gotta start with... Aardvark? Only Aaron is available. Aaron, yeah. Aaron and Aardvark? Yeah, exactly. We have three dogs. Shit. Anyway, so we've got what I think is a special dog.

Part of the Drathar, in order to be registered as a German Deutsch Drathar, is that you have to go through these tests to be able to breed them. And so they have this puppy test. It's within a year old. It's based on natural ability alone. So they'll do pointing, tracking, like with rabbit tracks. We did a lot of drags. But the puppy test is just pure natural ability.

They just want to know what that puppy was like, just has innate inside of him. They don't even care, like, can your dog sit? They don't even care like can your dog sit. They don't care what you've trained them. They just want to know what that dog can do because then you could start trading around with breeding with other people with like specifically honing in on their nose or specifically on different characteristics of dogs. So the point is to better the breed and not water it down. So Z, we went through his puppy test he got uh like an 89 which to you guys but these numbers don't mean anything but he has a b plus no it was one of the best in the nations in fact that year he tied only one other dog got that score but but it's a very, or 79, whatever.

He kicked ass. Yeah, he kicked ass and we took him to an arm booster, which is like a national, it's a different VGP that it does have some training involved. And they do like a live, they'll put like a live duck in the water and they have to find, they don't see it in the water. And then the duck swims in like the reeds and they have to find, they don't see it in the water and then the duck swims in like the reeds and they have to find the duck. Got it. And then you do all these like drags. Have you had them duke it out with a raccoon in a barrel? Yeah, that's

part of the test is they have to dispatch either a fox or a raccoon and you have to have a witness. Dude, you are gonna get You know what? That's like the same way you get into the mob. You had just, you just did something you're gonna regret doing what you have opened up a can of worms man you're gonna get blown up by for what because there's people that know that that's true and there's people that want to hide that that's true. You're going to hear it from the people that want to hide that that's true.

Not if you're a Drotar owner. Oh, man. Drotar owners are very proud. Dude, we went down a rabbit hole on this whole thing. With Ron? Yeah. Oh, no. I mean, before Ron.

Before Ron. Ron was like stage five in the whole thing. They're going to come after you? Bad. I'm okay with that. Anyway, I'll just release the drotar on them. No. So anyway, he's a great dog.

So he's having his first pup. We just bred them like a week ago. And she's pregnant now. She should be. Okay's here's where i get really interested let's say all these dogs but one die all the puppies but one die are we still having the auction yes because as a really as a stud fee you get pick of the litter so i get the first puppy even if everybody's dead yeah so the other guys that um that'd be interesting to try that and to have that be tested in court i'm sure it

happens um no because i think everybody else it's like you get the second pick you get the third when you put your deposit in it's kind of a first come, first serve. So you get like, I think four puppies so far are spoken for outside of mine. So if she has a litter of five or six or seven, then we can sell more. And because you're providing the stud, it's sort of like understood that you come in and you get your pick first. Well, you either take money or you get the puppy. I can choose if I want to accept a stud fee and then somebody else gets the pick of the litter. But you chose pick of the litter. Yeah, I chose pick of the litter.

Now, do you have a right to want – So I can donate it to Auction. Do you have a right to be like, I want my pick of the litter as agreed upon and then I want like another one. Like I want to come out of this with two. Yeah, but I would pay for the second one. But also, you don't pick that second one early, right? I guess if she had put in her deposit first. Yeah, if I'm the first one to...

Yeah, you could. I got you. But it doesn't really work that way. But the one you're going to donate to the auction house, the oddities. Yeah. So you're not trying to come out of this with a dog? The auction house oddities. Yeah. How are you? So you're not trying to come out of this with a dog? No, I don't need a puppy right now.

Oh, okay. No, I understand. She's just doing this for you guys. Like, this is going to be big time. Pick of the litter. And I say pick of the litter. It really just means, like, whoever wants this dog, first of all, they need to, I would highly encourage them to, like to already be very well aware of what this breed of dog is. House cat killers.

Wait, I'll say the reason we fell in love with this breed is they are a versatile hunting dog. But unlike a GSP that's just sort of wired, he comes in the house and he turns it off. What's a GSP? Chill. German short hair pointer okay he's like very chill and very calm in the house just a lovable dog but when he is outside in the field it's like this like it's like a machine like it's he's a machine like something clicks and he's just like bloodthirsty not bloodthirsty you're making him clicks and he's just like... Bloodthirsty. Not bloodthirsty. You're making him sound like he's

this killer. Depends on whether or not it's a fox or a raccoon. And then you say that as if it's a bad thing. No, I don't think it's a bad thing. It's a natural instinct that these dogs have. No condemnation on my part. No condemnation on my part. I just hear stories. There's stories.

If they don't make the Drothaur test, they fail. Do they just then turn into a German Wire? Not everybody has to go through the test. You go through the test if you just want to go through it with your dog. If you are planning on

hunting the dog a lot, it helps the dog become a better hunting dog. But if you go through it and you fail or whatever, nothing happens. I mean, you can't breed the dog. You can't breed him? No. Well, could you breed him as a German Weirherr? No, because that's an AKC.

I see. So this is a German breed. Hmm. What would be the monetary value of this puppy? So nobody shortchanges. She's going to put in a minimum bid, man. There's a lot of red tape. I'm fixing to bid on this dog, maybe. Well, Danielle's throwing in a lot of red tape.

Tell me about all the red tape. It is a $1,500 minimum because that's how much all the other puppies are being sold for. And so if it went for less than auction, then there's somebody in line wanting that puppy for $1,500. So that's what we'll do. What other red tape? You got to come get it. Um, yeah. So right now, because of COVID, you can't fly the dog anywhere.

A lot of times with, with this, you can just ship the dog to where you're at, but because of COVID, you can't fly with the dog. So you probably have to come to get it. And that's in North Dakota, not in Texas, North Dakota. Minimum bid of $1,500. You got to pick it up. And it got all the paperwork. You in?

Does that person have to agree to do the testing? I like it. Spencer's in, man. What's your bid? We'd like them to, but they don't have to. Maybe we should just let Spencer just take it them to, but they don't have to. Maybe we should just let Spencer just take it off the table and I'll have to go through all this auction stuff. I'll set the minimum bid and see what happens.

And I think, I say pick of the litter. It's really what I think most reputable breeders will do is they watch these puppies as they start growing up. And they can start to tell differences in their qualities and if you're a guy that's looking for like this certain type of dog this is the dog for you if you're looking for something else this is the dog for you so it's it's not like i feel like the pick of the litter is kind of a cheesy term but yeah like you took it and showed it pictures of house cats and watch how it responded they're all they all going to have a scuffle with the house cat. So that's another red tape. You probably shouldn't have a house cat you deeply love.

Oh, Spencer, you're out. I'm out. I'm out. So eventually we lost our one bidder. This guy's like a big time cat lady. I think there are some dry hire owners that successfully live with cats. Okay. Because look, Bart George, you wouldn't believe it.

He's got at least two, I think, house cats. His lion hounds don't kill him? And there's a house full of hounds. And when Mingus has stayed over there recently a couple of times, it's just like we kind of talked to Mingus and he's like, yeah, don't let him because that cat will F up your dog. And I'm like, really? And so we kind of talked to Mingus.

And yeah, after a couple pass-bys, Mingus is like, I'm not messing with that thing. So Bart's lion hounds are like, but that cat. They live in the house. Yeah, they live in the house with it. What do you say to Mingus when you're like laying out what's going on? Just say no. Okay. Yeah.

My kid's dog was like, not like a genius dog, but I got it where. Your kid's dog. I got it where. You want him to take ownership of that poor thing? Yeah, it's like not his dog, not our dog. Like an animal skull? That dog knows not to touch an animal skull. It just knows.

Because from the day it came over, I'm like, no. And now it's like, yeah, I get it. I get it. Don't chew on skulls. You don't want it to chew on it? Yeah. I get it. Don't chew on skulls. You don't want to chew on it? Yeah. I don't want to chew skulls up. I actually had to give up an Axis Deer rug in my house to my dog because he was so obsessed with it.

It's like his rug now. Claimed it. Yeah, it's his. Like from puppyhood. He was like, that's mine. I am surprised that we've somehow, our dogs know the difference between, well, obviously taxidermy. They have no interest in any taxidermy. It smells like chemicals and stuff yeah and then we have like this shelf of just sheds that like we don't want them to

touch that but i've started picking up little sheds and i give that to them and they they know the difference somehow i don't know how yeah yeah my kid's dog does the same thing if it finds one antler out in the yard it'll chew it there's no way in hell to chew an antler inside the house yeah maybe my dogs aren't that smart i had a life-size have a life-size mountain goat mount does the same thing. If it finds an antler out in the yard, it'll chew it. There's no way in hell to chew an antler inside the house. Yeah. Maybe my dogs aren't that smart. I had a life-size, have a life-size

mountain goat mount and it was in the house for a little bit. Like I had to bring it inside before I transported it and my dog like lost his mind about this animal. Like he would just circle it

and be like, what is this thing? Like for hours on end, you'd be like, where's Jonah? And you're like, oh, he's in there like, like staring at the mountain goat.

He can't figure it out. Yeah. My dog right now is a 3D target. I took it out of the box. The dog is not relaxed. So I put that thing in the yard. It's like a little

mini elk one, you know? Since that thing's been in the yard, a dog just eyeballs it, walks around, sneaks up on it. It's just waiting for that thing to do something the yard, a dog is just like eyeballs it, walks around, sneaks up on it. It's just waiting for that thing to do something. At some point in time, that thing's going to beat my ass. All right, man. So finish my thought. The dog's coming.

Stay tuned. Should it be the first thing we auction off? Well, so I think the duration of the pregnancy is 60 days And then there's 8 weeks until you can take the puppy home So I don't know if you want to wait to put it on auction Until the puppy is born and we know how many there are Oh yeah, because you need a picture Oh yeah, dude, you want to drive some bids off

Spencer's going to want, he's going to see those cute puppies You really don't want like a newborn photo You want to drive some bids up Spencer's going to want He's going to see Those cute puppies And you really don't want Like a newborn photo You want like a Four week photo They're so cute Because they're born With little beards

It's like a little Benjamin Button Spencer you're going to Have to sell some furniture Buddy to afford this dog Well no Because here's the thing too Is the

He's like a cat lady But I think it's his wife's cat Am I wrong? That's right This might all be Part of his plan To get a divorce? No To get He'll be like I had no idea it's his wife's cats. Am I wrong? That's right. This might all be part of his plan. To get a divorce?

No. To get a divorce. He'll be like, I had no idea that that kind of dog was hard on cats. No one told me that. Yeah. And all of a sudden,

you're not a cat lady anymore. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining. Stay tuned for Meat Eater Cooks. Yep. Meat Eater Cooks. In hopefully October.

Stay tuned. And hopefully before then we'll get down to the, maybe not. Sometime around then we'll get down to auctioning this puppy off. Yeah, it'll be before that. Nope. Take care of all your cat problems. Okay. Thanks for joining me. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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