The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 287: Sea Cucumbers and People Meat

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Clay Newcomb, Spencer Neuharth, Chester Floyd, Phil Taylor, Corinne Schneider, and Janis Putelis. Topics discussed: Our new series, Pardon My Plate; Spencer's bumper pool table; watch How to Clean a Sea Cucumber with Steve; echinoderms; what Steve found beachcombing after Japan's tsunami, including his USS Jimmy Carter submarine hat; fucosylated glycosaminoglycan; a sea cucumber sting op; BBQ fetus tasting notes; human foot meat and huevos rancher-toes; hyenas snacking on bones in a lava tube in Saudi Arabia; how hyena cubs with The Tox get bold in front of lions; over $14 billion to wildlife conservation; an ell, the tanned neck hide of a deer as Bear Grease Podcast cryptocurrency; defining apocryphal; bye, bye bitcoin and the end of Chester the Investor; an 1871 magazine article that ends with bear grease saving the day; Doug Duren and Jim Heffelfinger bonding; how real men cry and Jani is more sensitive than Steve; Phil's love of trivia and karaoke; what's the name for a female fox?; MeatEater's Benchmade Steep Country Knife; the origin of a mean mouth bass; 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 farther, stay longer. Okay, Spencer, right off the top, give a plug to Pardon My Plate. What it is, how to find it. Pardon My Plate is our newest YouTube series. You can find it at YouTube.com. For free. For free. That's right.

Go to the MeDeeder page. Make sure you subscribe. And we have three episodes of this new series called Pardon My Plate. When this podcast drops, two will already be available. Episode one of me and Steve eating carp. Episode two of me and Clay, or excuse me, me and Cal eating coot. And then episode three that I don't know. Do we want to reveal what it is? Why not? It is me and Giannis eating coot. And then episode three that I don't know, do we want to reveal what it is? Why not?

It is me and Giannis eating coyote. And this series is dedicated to eating what like most folks would consider inedible. And for me, it's really born out of like these generalizations that hunters and anglers have that are like, oh, you can't eat that. Or those things taste like mud.

And I think a perfect example would be like episode two is the coot yeah i could find you 100 guys that would be like those things taste like swamp water but i could find you zero guys that have eaten one so that's what this series is is to like try to see i ate one yeah it's a continuation of like i think it's it's a big part of our ethos. For sure. We've kind of been battling that ever since Meat Eater has started is sort of battling these ideas about what something tastes like that nobody's actually tasted it. Their dad didn't even taste it, but yet their grandfather told their dad it didn't taste good, and it just gets passed on. What's interesting about the carp one is how revered, and the part in my plate about carp explores how revered the carp is around the world as a food item.

Yeah, and in each 20-minute episode, you get a history lesson about the critter that we're eating. You get an explanation of why Americans have this perception, and then at the end, we cook the damn thing. And we're very intentional about how we cook the food too, right? Like we could take a coyote and do 10 different things to it and put it in a chili and you wouldn't know you're eating coyote, right? But that's not the point.

We want to get like a good baseline. So like the coot is just right on the grill with one other ingredient. The carp goes right in the deep on the grill with one other ingredient. The coyote or the, the carp goes right in the deep fat fryer with one other ingredient. But it's cut in a very particular way. That's right. Cut in a very particular way. Yep.

And the, the coyote goes right in the slow cooker with two other ingredients. So we're getting like a. But can you tell me right now, uh, how much did you like that coyote meat? It was the worst of the three things. Yeah, I bet, man. When I ate it, I didn't like it.

Really? Yeah. Worst of the three. If you've watched the other two episodes by now, then you'll probably have gathered this already. But coot was the best. Then I'd go carp second, and then coyote third. Three Cs. then I'd go carp second and then coyote third three C's and I would I would put probably coyote as a distant third I think really I'm really surprised there's such a disparity between the

coot and the coyote yeah the the coot was genuinely good the coyote was just like fine for a couple bites and then I think as as you see in the video um i don't know if we really get to like bites three and four so coot now you would like when they're passing by you're like oh yeah i'm killing them and putting them right next to the mallards in the freezer yeah they're good did you get into when you're eating that coyote did you get into how it makes you feel all hot and sweaty did you have that problem there there's there's be a couple minutes, I'm sure it made the final cut of the episode, where Giannis is convinced he's having hot flashes. Yeah, because when I ate a regular dog and when I ate coyote, I got hot and sweaty from it.

Yeah. What's the kind of biological, scientific, what do they say is going on? It's either, well, in Vietnam, they say there's something in there that makes it that way, but I think it's what you're feeling is guilt. Oh, the guilt makes you all hot and bothered. The guilt makes you hot and sweaty when you're eating dogs. Here's the thing. We can say it's bullshit, but Giannis felt it.

I think two of our camera people felt it because they dabbled in the coyote. In Vietnam, they call it hot food. Yeah. I didn't feel it, but I didn't eat a ton of it yeah there were other folks that uh that were there with it now why are they all c words because that's gonna lead me to my next question because the next thing is gonna be c word too kukes because they were in our freezer when we decided to do this i already had coincidence yep i already had a coyote in my freezer. Cal already had a coot in his freezer. I also already had carp in my freezer.

Just worked out well. I noticed if you go into Google and just type in pardon my plate, it pulls you right up. Pulls you right up to where you got to go. Good. That'll be a good way for you to get there. Like we said, two episodes out now. Third one comes out tomorrow, Tuesday, August 24th.

And you get to see Spencer's little setup, his little house. Yeah. Yeah. Especially in episode. I'm not saying little like in a diminutive way. I mean, it's very orderly and tidy. Episode three, Giannis and I have to kill about six hours while the coyote is brazing. So you get to see other parts of the house.

Oh, get a little tour. That's right. Does your wife make a cameo in that one too? Yeah, we played a little game of, what's that called? Bumper pool? Bumper pool. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I love it.

It's like one of my greatest possessions that I have that thing. You know what it is? Yeah, my neighbors used to have it. Really? Yeah, when I was a kid. I was on an ice fishing trip in college in northeastern South Dakota. We went to this little bar called the Decoy Bar, and they had a bumper pool table. I'd never seen one before, but locals in there were playing it.

And so I'd asked someone to like show me how to play it. And I thought it was like the greatest thing ever. So I'm like, when I get a house, I'm going to get me one of these tables. So I put an ad on Craigslist. And by the next day, the like bookie for Southeastern South Dakota called me and he's like, hey, I got one of these in my basement that someone owed me money. And this is what they gave me instead. If you come and get it on my basement, you can have it. So drove over to him, got the bummer pool table.

I've had it with me ever since. It's from 1955. It was made in Bay City, Michigan. And it takes two dimes to play. Hmm. Yeah. And a very two dimes to play. Hmm. Yeah. And a very cool game room in Spencer's house. Thank you.

Sweet, sweet room. God, man, take relaxing pretty serious over there. That's right. I don't know how I feel about all that relaxing. No, that was my wife and I's commitment to not having kids for a while. Like if we put this game room together. A lot of people are like, kids are a dog.

You're like, bumper pool? They're kids. Exactly. So here's something I'm going to show. This is something I'm going to give to Crenn. She hasn't seen it yet. But this is going to be, I think you need to do this for season two. Okay.

And it keeps with C's because it's like carp, coots, coyotes, cucumbers. Yeah. That's the best. carp, coots, coyotes, cucumbers. Yeah. So we eat. That's the best. So we like to dive for sea cucumbers, which are located in many places. We dive for them in Southeast Alaska. And we usually keep the meat strips.

Kim, is it five strips in each? Steve's pulling stuff out of the Yeti. Yeah, I'm pulling stuff out of a little, one of those little zippered Yeti coolers, a little teeny hopper. Yeah, I was going to out of one of those little zippered Yeti coolers, a little teeny hopper. Yeah, I was going to say four maybe, but. I think it's five strips. In my hand right now is sea cucumber meat.

It's in a freezer bag. It's vac sealed. And this is a good stack. I don't know how many we picked. We didn't get serious. You can fill the boat with them. You know what I mean? How many you pick is how many you want to clean.

Okay, okay. So we picked a few dozen one day. I'm getting serious. You can fill the boat with them. You know what I mean? Like there's how many you pick is how many you want to clean. Okay. Okay. So we picked a few dozen one day. We're spearfishing, but picked a few dozen and I cleaned a bunch. So these are what we eat. It's like a, it's like a clam strip without all the springiness. If you guys want to see how to clean that, we've got a video on our website, how to clean a sea cucumber with Steve Ranilla. And then also how they're caught.

You can go watch that on Netflix's episode nine of season nine at the Fish Shack. And then Corinne was asking about bringing back some with the warty part. Yeah, the whole thing. Because that's what a lot of people eat. So that's what it looks like after you just pull it out of the water. Yeah, but here's a great shot. One of these ones. The ones that are whole.

No, no, no. I gutted them. So imagine it like it's a cylinder. Very much the size of a regular cucumber. Okay. Imagine you're holding a cucumber. Okay. And you cut off each end like you do when you're fixing to fix it.

Cut off each end. And then you cut it open, but not cut it in half. Like slit it open, splay it out. Then you get his intestines out of there. And then you hold it with a pair of catfish skin and pliers and take a three-inch putty knife and push the strips right out of it. That's genius. Here are the strips right here. If you look at this one, you can see that's the one, two, three, four strips.

That's his interior muscles. You did a great job of cleaning those because no offense against Patrick, who was up there with us. His kid was trying to clean some of those. Well, he had to clean a bunch of them. And they looked like just mush kind of when he got done with them. Patrick, your neighbor? No, no, but. My goodness, you guys had a lot of people up there.

He's 14 years old, man. Yeah, I know. But I'm just commenting like. Now you're dogging on him. No, it takes some practice. Apparently Chester doesn't like your boy. Chester, on a scale from 1 to 10, how would you grade his painting skills? Oh, great. Here we go again.

No, he didn't do a bad job, but I was complimenting him. Did you ever hear of a compliment sandwich? 10 for you. Did you ever hear of a compliment sandwich? Tan for you. Did you ever hear of a compliment sandwich? You could have gone like this, like, man, Patrick's boy sure got in there and cleaned those sea cucumbers. I mean, they look like mush, but good looking kid. Oh, he's a hard worker.

Yeah. Real hard worker. Hand that down to Corinne so she can investigate. So Corinne's going to cook the whole, Corinne said, quote, she wants the inner part and the gooey part. Really? Right. I actually thought

you were going to, I didn't even know you were going to partially clean this for me. I thought that there were going to be some you just like stuck right out of the water

into the freezer bag. No, they're a little, because when they get nervous, they expel. They expel their gut. Their gut, that's right.

Nothing looks better. Nothing looks better. Nothing looks better than a sea cucumber picked up off the ocean floor. Because the first thing he does when he gets nervous is he kind of puckers up. Oh, so it's plump. So when you grab him, it's like flaccid. Then he plumps up. And then the more nervous he gets, he eventually deflates and expunges his intestines. Sounds like something else.

So I wanted to, yeah, the sequencing is off slightly. But what I wanted to do is bring you nice cleaned sea cucumbers. Thank you. I'm very excited. What do you do with them? But take these two. Okay. Yeah, sure. I'll make some stuff

and bring it in for everyone to try. Just fry those. They are just like a clam strip. They're so good. I will do that with that and then the other stuff with the gooey parts on, I'll try to do. I mean, the reason why

I knew Steve was in alaska i messaged him because i had thought about uh season nine episode nine and the sea cucumber is prized as a delicacy in the cuisine of many asian countries and i've only seen them walking through a Chinatown in these large glass jars. And it's, and I think that they have just been taken whole out of the sea and then kind of. Got it. Yeah. Still alive.

Drying in the sun. Okay. Dry out. Because the whole thing is just like a desiccated sea cucumber. Just whole. Oh, you know what you were saying? You see them in chinese stores yeah one day someone one of my buddies i can't remember who sent me a thing from costco no kidding they

had sea he said uh-oh or something like that and it was sea cucumbers in costco whoa i can't even remember what costco they were in oh my god that sea cucumbers and Costco. No kidding. We bought some. That's so bizarre. Chester, would something like that activate your fish allergy or not? Good question. No, I don't think so. I wasn't able to eat them when we were in Alaska just because they fried them in the same oil as they did the fish. Everyone convinced me not to try them. I wanted to. Have you tried a sea urchin? Because apparently sea cucumbers are a type of marine invertebrate related to sea cucumbers and sea stars, collectively known as echinoderms. No.

Never had sea urchin? No. Once I thought of that, because I used to think of them, once I thought of that relationship, they kind of made more sense to me. The relationship between sea stars and urchins. Right. Then you're like, oh, yeah, I can see that. Like one arm, one arm of a sea star resembles

a sea cucumber. Right, right. There's a huge commercial harvest up there where you're at. Oh, yeah, man. And when those guys come through, it can be a little bit hard. You gotta look around to find some spots. They come through and hit it hard. I mean, tons and tons.

We're beachcombing this year and found one of the nets they use underwater to fill them up. It seems like it's a pretty good renewable resource, though. Oh, yeah. Because there's a lot of them. What else do you find beachcombing? Two years after the tsunami, we found a lot of stuff from japan i started cutting out japanese letters off stuff and hanging it on the shack wow um we find a lot of rope um boom logs cable ties for boom logs what's a boom log logs they use in their

rafting lumber rafting timber for marine logging operations we find a lot of commercial fishing gear shrimp baskets um fish baskets i found a uss jimmy carter submarine hat which i wear no kidding you Found, yeah, just a lot of usable stuff. Like if we check three beaches, we'll bring two, three things home. Yeah. Yeah. There's good places to go look.

I like it. Oh, I found a huge, I think it was from the tsunami, but I found a huge jug of like a four-gallon jug of what smelled like Simple Green, but it had Japanese lettering on it. And you haven't identified what it is? I use it for detergent.

I use it like Simple Green. You're just guessing, though. No, you put your nose in there, and you put some water in there, and scrub it with a scrub brush, it bubbles up. Yeah, trust me. I like it.

It's a detergent. I was there when I was driving the boat when he jumped off and went to go get it. It's a big thing, a detergent. Is that the same detergent is still in there? Well, no, because I started topping. Once I got down low, I started topping it off. So now, in fact, I just refilled it this year. I put one gallon of Simple Green and then topped it off with water.

Good hearty blend. I'm a big Simple Green guy, man. I like the lemon flavor stuff. Go on. Yeah. Just to actually comment back to what you said, Chester, the demand for sea cucumber has gone up really quite a bit over the past couple of decades. Oh, they're going to say the last couple of years, last couple of decades. Decades.

So from what I saw with kind of a growing middle class in China and more people in China being able to afford sea cucumber, which was previously, I mean, it's still a delicacy. But with more people being able to afford it in the 80s is when the demand really skyrocketed. And apparently over the past number of years, a chemical in the skin of the sea cucumber called fucosylated glycosaminoglycan, which is used to treat joint problems. That's been used by scientists in Europe to create all kinds of, I guess, treatments and medicines for people suffering from blood clots and cancers. So over the course of the past couple of decades, the demand has really skyrocketed. And out of the 70 species that are sought and used, seven of them, seven out of the 70 are actually classified as endangered. God, man.

No wonder that market spilled over to Alaska so much. Yeah. I mean, I'd imagine. It's the happy hunting grounds. I would imagine that that's why. Yep. And I was mistaken. I actually didn't know that they were until episode nine, season nine.

I didn't even realize that they were found in oceanic bodies all over the world. I really thought that they were maybe more in a certain region of the world, but they are all over. But yeah, seven out of 70 are endangered. We caught three jig and ling cod this year. They're down deep too, you know, not just shallow.

You'll drop jig down and snag a sea cucumber. You know, so yeah, that seems to be part of the danger of fishing it. You're just going to as deep as the seafloor goes. And they take two to six years to grow to marketable size. So I don't really know what the situation of the sea cucumbers are in Alaska. And actually what species you even grabbed. I've known and I could find out again. Is it red?

I'll have to look. Okay. I mean, there's so many. Do those things have predators besides Steve or is that it? I don't know what natural things eat them. I don't know. But like when you, if you, when you clean a bunch and then throw the skins and guts out, crabs and stuff, don't work it over.

Really? No. I'd imagine those black bears would pick them up when at low tide you think i don't think so i've never seen him do it i saw a black bear dragging a big sea star one time i don't know what he's gonna do with it probably ate it yeah but yeah i don't know what eats. Man, they're an unsightly little bugger. Unsightly. Apparently in Asia, the spikier and crazier they look, the more sought after they are.

And the Japanese sea cucumber is supposed to be the most prized and can fetch up to $3,500 a kilo. That's a bit over two pounds, which is insane. Damn, man. Right? So you just gave me a lot of money's worth of sea cucumber, Steve. Yeah, we might have to renegotiate that transaction. Just for the inside strips or just the whole thing? I think the whole thing. I wonder if that's dried or not.

That's a good question. But then, so speaking of the value, like the black market, this is just a few weeks ago. Yeah. Japan's Coast Guard busted 11 poachers off the coast of, how do you say that? Hokkaido? That's the Japanese, that's one of the islands. It's in northern Japan. Okay.

They were trying to make off with 1,500 pounds of sea cucumbers, street value 20,000 bucks that got busted by the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard had received a tip-off that they seized 13 crates in a daring nighttime raid, rounded up suspected poachers. These guys had divers, lookouts, getaway cars. They're facing three years in prison, $270,000 in fines. Like a that sting operation. Sea

cucumbers. Yeah, they got it all, they got them laid out like drugs. Cow. So this dude, a dude rode in, and this is one of the, this like is even mildly upsetting to me. This might be a good part of the plate. So these guys had some depredation elk tags in South Dakota. This guy sends us in. So it's a little bit upsetting, but it's like, listen, man, I'm in.

I'm in. I love the guy. I love the guy. For sure. Him and his buddy drew some elk depredation tags in South Dakota. They both shot cows. And as happens to anyone who does these late season cow hunts. Well, here's something to look at. Here's a way to think about this.

Elk are bred in September. They breed in September. Okay? They breed in September, early October. If you kill a cow elk in November, you shot a pregnant cow. Now, this starts to get upsetting to people as the season goes on, because then once there's like a visible fetus, then people get, right? But keep that in mind. Most cow elk that get shot are pregnant.

They just are. But when you get into hunting, like what they call the shoulder seasons, you know, you get these like January seasons for elk, oftentimes you'll gut them and be greeted with a greeted by an elk fetus. A lot of caribou hunts are the same way.

This guy barbecued it. These pictures are really... Really something. Barbecued them. What's upsetting to you about these pictures, Corinne? It's just a couple elk fetuses. Yeah, I mean, it's just... All cooked up.

It's not exactly that it's upsetting per se. It's just I don't, on the average, kind of get to see. A fetus. Yeah, a fetus. And like you can kind of see the thing, can see its little feet and the outline of its body. I think it gives a human pause to think about life. Yeah, that's right. That's right. My question is, is the second picture just seasoned before it went into the oven or it's

actually cooked? I can't tell. That's supposed to be cooked, I think. That's cooked. I'd like to give his tasting notes. These are good. Yeah, his tasting notes are good. So he got to reading and he found

a mention of a German noble who used to be fond of eating red stag fetuses. This feller says he's of German ancestry. So why not? He lubed them up with some butter and spices, including some Chinese five spice with some fresh ginger

and some sweet baby raised barbecue sauce. Well, he did two of them, and one was the Chinese five spice blend, and the other one was just standard American barbecue sauce. Sorry, that was a good, careful read. Set them in the oven like a brisket. They took on very little color after they had baked for three and a half hours,

and I got them to 160 degrees internal. Got some friends together. The meat was not like anything I have ever tried. The skin was pink like an uncooked chicken, even after some serious time in the broiler. The flesh was the color and texture of a raw oyster or white fish, and the meat flaked almost like a cross between a cooked brisket and cooked trout. The taste was devoid of any flavor at all.

Aside from the spices and the physical presence of the material, the meat could not be differentiated from that of the air in your mouth as you chewed wow wants to know if i've ever eaten a fetus nope not you know not that i'm opposed to it i would i'd give it a wing but man hats off that's great i think there's if you really boil it down there's a lot of different layers here. We have a psychological or ethical conundrum because we value gestation as this not just symbolic but real part of birth and renewal of life. So the fact that a human interrupted this process and is then going to go eat this fetus, that's like has the potential to disturb somebody. But I'm all for it, just like you, Steve, because we have a late season bow hunt here in Arkansas that goes through our season goes through February 28th. So if you kill a doe anytime during that period, you potentially would see a fetus in a gutted doe.

But I've told people for years exactly what you said, is that if you kill that doe on November the 10th, she was just as pregnant then. There's also the thing that just of using the whole resource. I mean, when you look at the macro picture, there's an elk, a female cow elk hunt because they're trying to manage these elk. And if it's happening in 2021, it's a thing that's valuable for conservation. And so if you kill a pregnant elk, use the whole thing. So I don't have any problem with it. Have you ever tried it?

Have you ever tried fetus? No, I have not. Okay, I think that if any of us get later season critters, we should... Sure, man. Cook one up. Yeah, put the... Oh, I'd love to try it. I've read about people, a couple things that not...

We've discussed this, read accounts where Plains tribes would, if they killed a calf, a buffalo calf, they made a dish with the curdled mother's milk from inside the calf's stomach. Which I don't know why, I feel like it's in the same same spirit. Yeah. Here's a crazy story. These guys there's a story here. The word has come from Vice originally.

Yeah. A dude had to have his lower leg and foot amputated. Cook at home made foot tacos for his friends. There's pictures of the foot tacos.

How do you do that whistle? Like where you're like, oh, wow. I think we're all... Yeah, I don't know. That's the final frontier, man. That's the final frontier. No. I'm out on this one out

I'm out Garrett Long said really putting his foot really putting his foot in his mouth there quality one of the guys we work with said huevos

ranchertos so Steve if you were invited to this party, you in or out? I'd have to know the guy. I'd eat your foot meat. You would? Oh yeah. But I'm not going to eat foot meat from a guy I don't know. To me, it's more like an expression of the individual, man.

And like, if I saw in the store, like foot meat, I'm not going to, you know, it's just not human foot meat. What if it was human forearm? Just doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Human meat. If it was like, if you said, hey man, this thing happened to me, I'm going to eat my foot, my leg, whatever.

Then I'd be like, oh, you know, for you, Yanni. And I'd go over there and eat it. Oh man. But I wouldn't eat just, if someone said like, I don't know, I just got whatever. That's funny. I think some people might have the opposite approach they'd want to not know like you've you've looked yanni in the eye and you know you've bared your souls to each other had many great moments together maybe you wouldn't want to eat his foot but if some guy that you haven't met before i think some people might be like oh yeah

i'll eat that guy's foot no because if let's say i had to get a kidney transplant and i could get yanni's or strangers i would take yanni's kidney because then i would have less sort of like questions sure yeah about who i was walking around with the body with a part of in me i get that that's a little bit more dependent on like your well-being than just eating no no no nothing means like how do i know why would i think that his kidney is better than some other kidney? He might have a, I don't know, man. I guess. It's just like the knowingness.

Sure. I would just want to know. And if I ate a guy, I'd be real curious about who it was. Would you eat your own foot? Let's say like your foot with your like ingrown toenail. Okay. Not at all. Let's say like the ingrown toenail caused some real problems for your foot down the line.

And then for some reason, God forbid, you had to have it amputated. Oh, absolutely. You need your own foot. Absolutely. Everybody's done this in the past, in their lifetimes, where you get a cut on your hand or your finger, and you don't have a way to stop the bleeding immensely. Drink your own blood. What do you do? You stick to stop the bleeding immensely, right there, what do you do?

You stick your finger in your mouth, right? Yeah, you're drinking your own blood at that point. What's the difference? There's a little difference. But blood feels really different than the toe flesh tacos. If I said, I'm going to nick your finger and you can put that in your mouth or I can serve you your toe. I feel like they're going to be like.

The blood thing's like circulating, I feel like. The toe thing is like. But it's not circulating. You don't have blood in your digestive system. No, but yeah. I know, but it's just in your head is my point. It's very true. Chris or Corinne went to our meat specialist, Dr. Chris.

I don't think it rhymes with chalk. It does. It is caulkins. Caulk and chalk. It comes up every time. Caulk. Caulk. Caulk.

Like I'm going to caulk the tub. Yeah, like chalk. I lived in a house one time when I was living in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and we had the bathtub leak like bad. And it was that we rent from a slumlord. And anytime someone took a shower, it would just like, I mean, honestly, it would just flow through to the living room below.

And we kept saying, hey, something's wrong, something's wrong. He wouldn't do anything, wouldn't take it seriously. So I went and got a gallon of roofing tar. And I'm not kidding you, man. I caulked that thing in that roofing tar. It took forever to dry. So everywhere, like anytime someone set like a bottle of shampoo or something down, it would get roofing tar on it.

And then that roofing tar would move around. And you have to be real careful like what you rubbed up against in the tub. It took months. But eventually that roofing tar set up. And the dude we rented from, like when we moved out and stuff, never mentioned it. Because he knew he had, part of the house was falling away from the house so bad that we wanted to run an extension cord out one time. We were able to pass the extension cord through where the house had fallen away from itself. Holy cow.

Yeah. My rent was 110 bucks. It sounds like too much for that place. What were we talking about? Oh, caulkins. Chris caulkins. Yeah, caulkins.

I was just thinking about the bathtub caulkins. Okay, Corinne, tell me what he's got to say about eating people. it was because it was like one of our

colleagues made a joke, but also, you know, on a serious note about cooking the foot flesh to a temperature that would be safe. So even though this was a joke, I also

emailed Chris and just wanted to know what he thought about the entire situation. And these are some quotes from him. There are so many things wrong with this. Presumably the muscle starts out safely edible, getting past the ick factor, then yes, the same rules of thumb would apply for safety as other flesh. But if I understand the story correctly, I'd be concerned that the limbs spend about a week dying before it was amputated.

So that's all kinds of bacteria and maybe toxins that accumulate. And freezing wouldn't necessarily resolve either of those problems. If it's loaded with bacteria, you have to cook it thoroughly to kill it. That means well done through and through. I'd also be worried about the accumulation of medicines cooking doesn't do anything to resolve this issue it's not about the temperature at which it's cooked to as much as it is the temperature it reaches but even then no one should do this yeah i wonder if he's reached uh tenure like will he get well uh dr caulkins Tenure. Will Dr. Calkins eventually get censured for weighing in on,

or is this viewed as in his professional purview? I'm sure this is safe. Oh, that tub? Not a leak out of that thing after that. Well done. With the roof and tar? Yeah. Handy Steve.

Heads up. Yeah, that's tire. Just a little heads up. That's some Bob Villa stuff there, man. We used to always pronounce it Villa. I used to hate watching that show. Undaunted forces. I'd rather be watching anything. Cartoons, Saturday morning fish.

That's what I used to have, Saturday morning fishing and hunting shows. And instead, this old house would be on. That's why I'm not in the trades now, I think. I like this old house. That's what did it? Bob Villa drove you out of it? No, not that I never really worked in it, but

not even at home I'm always like, eh, I think I should call Brady up. You're pretty handy though. Yeah, but not like my dad handy. Clay, are you going to say something? No. Oh, okay.

Sorry. Here's a fascinating story, and a bunch of people sent this to me. This is good stuff. In Saudi Arabia, there's a lava tube. So imagine it's like a cave, right? Spencer, you're becoming our resident geologist. Explain the lava tube. I don't know what a, you're becoming our resident geologist. Explain a lava tube. I don't know what a lava tube is.

It's a cave. In this cave, there's a stockpile of bones that were stockpiled there by hyenas over a course of 7,000 years. So, an ever-going population of hyenas utilizing this cave to bring bones in to snack on. Wow. Did they just find this? Yeah. No. Okay, they found it in 2007.

That's right. They've been researching it since 2007. Well, okay, just in what terms? If we're talking about something that happened over 7,000 years, I feel like 2007 is the recent end of that. No, no, no. They've been investigating the site, but it was only a few months ago that they went even further in to this area and found the bone pile. So the bone pile discovery is only a couple months old.

A lava tube system, which is a sprawling network of tunnels formed by volcanic activity. Striped hyenas. You can make like a scene here in a movie because you got to tell them about how they didn't go farther in there. They're in this cave exploring it, doing archaeologist work

and then they hear snarls of hyenas possibly farther down in there and so they turn around. That's it. Come on! Yes! Listen man, I had to take my kid to the doctor this morning farther down in there and so they turn around. That's it. Come on. Yes. It says the... Listen, man, I had to take my kid to the doctor this morning

to get a wart frozen off his foot. I didn't review everything as carefully as I might normally have. The doctor comes in, how's them warts doing? Planners, warts on the bottom. Yeah, this doctor's hilarious, man. He's like, how's them warts doing? It says the most modern bones are 439 years old, though. So I didn't realize this was still an active site

if they're hearing hyenas in there. I didn't realize the hyenas were in there. At one point they were, which is why they hadn't gone to the depths. Yanni's like a subject matter expert on this cave. No, I'm just like, I've been in a few caves that have gotten small and tight, man What's that fear called?

Claustrophobia When it gets like that I do not, like immediately man, the blood pressure rises, I do not like it So to be in that kind of situation and then to hear a down in there I'm really getting out of that one.

It looks like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean. So you're right. It does. A bunch of bones. Oh, like a classroom size mountain of bones. Including, Yanni's probably has some correction about this. Hundreds of thousands of bones, 14 kinds of animals, cattle, caprids, horses, camels, rodents, and even folks. Gnawed up.

It's wild. Gnawed up by hyena teeth. Hundreds of thousands. They feel like maybe, maybe Yanni knows why this is. They feel like maybe the hyenas have been ransacking human burial sites and dragging those bones home.

Think about that. It's wild to me that we're still finding stuff like this. Yeah. You know, you get this sense that the earth is discovered, you know, that, like, we found everything, and then we find stuff like this, and it's kind of cool because the earth is not discovered, you know. There's all kind of wild stuff out there.

Oh, I'd love to go digging through that pile, man. Yeah. Chester perfectly described the scene. It's like bones on bones on bones, and you'd expect to see like a big treasure chest on top of the whole thing. One gold necklace or something. Yeah, one beam of light hitting it. That's very expensive.

With booby traps. Oh, that's great. I'd like to dig through that pile and bring some of that stuff home. Johnny Depp drinking some rum. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. 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 MeatEater 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. Speaking of hyenas, you like that transition? That's good. Speaking of hyenas.

How'd you come up with that? Just like, I don't know, man. Just these little things come to me. He's been hanging out with me yeah a little fat quick draw quick draw phil yeah quick draw taylor uh we had an episode not long ago called cat scratch fever where a guy from hawaii uh who who is bow hunting for wild goats feral goats um on a whim decided to eat a hunk of feral goat and contracted toxoplasmosis, which has the flow through cat poop, cat shit.

I had multiple people reach out to me saying we had a missed opportunity there, that instead of cat scratch fever, cat shat fever. Oh. Not even Phil came up with that. I know. That's good, though. That's got to make you you jealous don't it Phil Phil spaces out now and then

And like is messing with his computer And probably misses a lot of opportunities To make funny little things I should have fed that to him ahead of time I was reading about lava tubes So he's over there studying up on lava tubes And missed his chance to say something funny It's a cat shed fever

So these guys are studying This is a fascinating thing They're doing a research project in kenya where they're looking at when hyenas get tox and one of the things about getting toxoplasmosis is it like you know affects your behavior it has neurological effects and one of the things is when a hyena cub gets toxoplasmosis, it loses its fear of lions. And there's all this stuff about, like it flows through felines. Okay. Toxoplasmosis flows through felines.

And there's these sort of like conspiracy theory sounding. There's no conspiracy, but it's like wild thing. This idea that when they infect an animal so when an animal becomes infected by toxoplasmosis it then becomes easier for the cat to kill because it starts acting weird so it's this thing that's like uh it's this it it's a aid it's like high fence hunting it's like or something it's like you're, uh, passing along and making it easier to harvest.

Yeah. It sounds like, uh, when you hear a whitetail expert talk about CWD or something, the deer don't often die from CWD, but because they're so messed up, they're just easier prey for hunters or predators or vehicles or whatever. That's what, that's what it sounds like you're describing.

Yeah, but a lot of deer die from CWD. Yes. Related, but the whole related causes thing. Sure. In this study, this is interesting as hell. In this study, all hyena cubs that have toxoplasmosis, all of them are killed by lions before they're one year old. Of uninfected hyena cubs, only 17% get killed by lions.

So they keep their distance. They know. And when they have the tox, they fall easy prey to the feline. It's a good thing Danny didn't have any large cats in hawaii yeah saber yeah he'd come across big saber tooth he'd have walked right up to it that's not man he'd have been like what's up man yeah that's like a literal death sentence none of them make it it's really interesting man you're saying though that there's like a biological advantage to a cat passing it on so it's like the more that those cats have it the more they spread it through their area the more animals get crazy and they're easier to kill

so the the infected lions just keep getting stronger and stronger but more and more infected yeah and when i first heard that a while ago i thought that sounded like horseshit to me i was like i can't be true but this thing is interesting man and i think there's been some similar work yeah it's like chemical warfare like you see what i'm saying like sure yeah like sending out something to do your dirty work for you without having to go in yeah if you just wander over to a hyena den drop a deuce be like i'll be seeing you boys wow in my teeth

it's really something i'll have you guys know that uh i'm carving a very intricate mural into my desk oh yeah i saw the first part of it man it's grown i've got a man a bear a full strut what'd you say am i in it that's a good idea steve i'll put Am I in it? That's a good idea, Steve. I'll put your face in it. I've got a bear, a full strut gobbler turkey, and then there's a white oak tree that separates them, and then there's a raccoon. Aw.

I could put Steve Rinella right over just past the raccoon. That'll be like a tattoo that you regret later. Maybe creeping up on something. Give him toxoplasmosis. And there's a mountain lion creeping up on him. You know, we've talked on this show a million times or so about

what we call the... Not what we call. What everybody calls the Pittman-Robertson Fund. So when you go and buy, as we've explained, I'll explain it again. It's a good thing to know about. When you go and buy ammunition or firearms,

there's a excise tax on that, on those goods. And that excise tax goes to fund wildlife work, wildlife conservation. So when you, when you buy a gun, 11% of the wholesale price, 11% of the wholesale price, 10% of the wholesale price for handguns. So it's 11% of the wholesale price for long guns and ammunition,

10% of wholesale price for handguns. Manufacturers and importers pay the excise tax. And then you fund it back on the the purchase but when you do it so you don't see it itemized out it's already been done but 11 of that money goes to fund wildlife conservation this system has been around since 1937 hunters are you know hunters like me we always like to talk about oh yeah we're doing so much good but uh the vast vast majority of this was 90 some percent of this is not related to hunting it's just gun owners and shooting sports and everything like you know people that particularly people that but you know like a new jersey cat lady could go buy a pistol and it goes into pitman

robertson that the one he goes into pitman robertson fund but that that total tally since 1937 just tipped past 14 billion dollars into the wildlife restoration trust fund and that money is flowing right now because the firearm and ammunition industry has just exploded since covid and what would be like a literal example of this trust fund being spent on something matching dollars to state agencies would be the main thing it could it could be that uh you want to oh you want to do some like a arizona say wants to do some bighorn restoration and move bighorns into a new mountain range to try to to restore some of their range and you're going to do some habitat work ahead of that and remove some fencing right and a state agency is going to do that a state agency would apply for

that but it's also in like much more attainable things too that probably every person in this country has like done something that's been funded partially by pittman robertson not even known about it right oh yeah bolt launches all kinds of stuff, things you use. Another thing that it does is it helps states protect their own in-house funding because let's say you, whatever the hell, you live in Illinois, okay, and you buy a hunting license. And now the way that works is that hunting license money should stay in for the state wildlife agency. But a lot of times the state will be like short on money somewhere else.

And they'll go pilfer that money. Cause it'll look like, look at these guys are sitting over here on all this money. So we're going to do some restructuring and steal their money and use it to, you know, build a baseball stadium somewhere. If a state pilfers its state, if a state pilfers its own fish and wildlife agency, it becomes ineligible to receive the federal matching dollars

and how Pittman-Robertson is allocated. And it's allocated, one of the ways it's allocated is allocated relative to, there's like a licensed purchaser function in it too to how they divide it up among the states i like it is that satisfying yes i mean are you completely clear that like any pilfering at all makes it like null and void like you do any pilfering no pittman robertson money for. I'm not a subject matter expert on it, but I know the estate becomes ineligible for those matching dollars if they're pilfering their thing.

There's a great book that has a chapter in the book that's dedicated to this, and it's the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation book by Shane Mahoney and Valerius Geist. It's a, man, it ought to be like mandatory reading with a hunting license. And it's an incredible book. And a section of it is dedicated to that funding and kind of understanding it, but really, really good. The way it's officially worded is it's it's uh funding for states and territories to support wildlife restoration conservation and hunter education and safety programs they recently revamped and opened up that the funding can fund more things so and it was it's like there's like kind of a there's uh there's like a little rub there that has sort of two sides to it.

One thing you can do is they can pull Pittman Robertson money out, and I think they recently made it that you can use Pittman Robertson money to make shooting ranges. Okay? So then you go like, well, how in the hell is making a shooting range wildlife conservation? But then people point out, well, it's like an investment. You're making a shooting range. You're making shooting

sports more accessible to people. By making shooting sports more accessible to people, you're driving a ton more money into Pittman-Robertson Fund. So it's a little bit like, I don't want to call it a catch-22, but it's like a little bit of a, well, yeah, but...

It's like a lion having toxoplasmosis going by. I was just thinking that. That's exactly right. They can also use Pittman-Robertson money now. And this is another one that you're kind of like, eh, it feels like mission creep. I think you can use Pittman-Robertson money now to market hunting, to promote hunting.

Oh. And then someone still might look and say, but man, since 1937, it's been for wildlife restoration and wildlife research. How can you be taking that money out and doing non-mission stuff with it? Like, we shouldn't be doing it, but you also see it. They're like, well, yeah, but it'll lead to a higher level of safety for the fund to make sure that there's this continuous stream of people paying into the fund. Good businesses got to market somehow and, you know, to make it. So it's kind of like marketing, obviously. Yeah. I thought that was something that was fundamental to the fund

for a long time, Steve. You know, shooting ranges and hunter education. I was thinking that was from the very beginning. No, because there was recently a Pittman-Robertson Modernization Act that did some things. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Clay, have we talked on the show before about uh the cryptocurrency the bear grease cryptocurrency idea you just mentioned it once on a past episode i wasn't there you just mentioned it briefly but so no not really yeah so months Months ago, Chester and I took a call with a cryptocurrency and NFT expert. Non-fungible token. Yep. A non-fungible token NFT and cryptocurrency expert. Because we didn't want to miss out on the fun. You know what I mean? I don't want to be left in the dust and not be up to speed on cryptos and NFTs.

And I said, I don't know if our audience is quite ready for cryptos and NFTs, but I need to know about it. Like how to make an NFT and sell it or whatever. Give it away. I don't know. Then one day, Clay had the idea that when we do make a cryptocurrency, we'd call it Bear Grease. Genius. So good. And it bear grease. Genius. So good. And it would trade in ounces, tablespoons.

But the cryptocurrency is called bear grease. So when you go to one of those cryptocurrency things, you see Bitcoin, Doge, right? There would be bear grease there. And we have a way to manipulate the price. Like, we're way ahead on how to manipulate the price because here's how you manipulate the price of this cryptocurrency. Is it good to tell?

Hey, let me... I'm not going to bleep all of this out. Hey, the other thing was that the premise of the idea is that Bear Grease was once used as a currency. Yeah. So, like, different volumes of Bear Grease could have been traded. So, once used as a currency. Yeah. So different volumes of bear grease could have been traded, so it was like a currency.

Oh, you know what you need to fact check yourself on, Clay? What's that? Clay says there used to be, in olden times, there was a unit of measurement called an eel. How sure are you that that's true? Well, listen, so this week I went to the book that I felt like I read that in, and it wasn't there. And I actually emailed the author. No, no, no, no.

Did you remove a passage from my book, from his specific book even? No, no. So I emailed the guy and I said, man, I could have swore I read that in your book. I'm very certain I read that because I wrote about it myself.

I quoted someone in an article I wrote 12 years ago about the tanned neck height of a deer being a unit of measurement for bear grease and they called it and you know i was reading this so i'm just like phonetically pronouncing it as an eel and i don't even really remember how it was spelled so i contacted keith sutton who wrote this book i thought i read it in he said no clay i've never heard of that but i read it somewhere because

10 12 years ago i quoted it in an article that was at one time online but that article is no longer online we just had a Daniel Boone historian we just interviewed a Daniel Boone historian Ted Franklin Ballou ran the whole eel thing by him he didn't know what we were talking about yeah well you're in hot water buddy well i'm gonna i'm gonna keep searching for it because i i've read it i've read it somewhere i loved uh i love paul revere whether he wrote or not by which i love either way dude if it's not true we just need to make it true and tan a deer neck a cylinder stitch one end and fill it full of bear grease and put a purse string on the other end and draw it tight. I just don't think you could make that up, you know?

I mean, like. No, you might have dreamt it in some sort of hallucinatory state or something. And that's possible. That is possible. So. What's interesting is there's another old measurement called an L, E-L-L. Ooh, what's that? It's Northwestern European unit of

measurement originally understood as a cubit. The combined length of the forearm and extended hand. That's it, dude. What? It's gotta be. E-L-L. But no, it has nothing to do with bear grease and a hand deer's neck.

No, no, no, no. Listen, I bet money that the volume of a white-tailed deer neck sewed together would be equivalent to about... Oh. Yeah, so they used the deer neck, but the unit of measurement was an E-L-L. Giannis, you're like Sherlock Holmes, man. No, he's like a guy with Google.

Yeah, Wikipedia. I'm not making the connection. I am. You are? Yeah. Explain it to me. Say I said to you, let's say I said to you I had a – let's say I had to you i had a uh uh my kid let's say i take my kid's palm okay and i

pour some liquid in my kid's palm and it just so happens that an ounce of water fits in my kid's palm and i were to say oh i'll show i could tell you what an ounce is my kid's palm when he holds water in his palm that's exactly an ounce yeah but So it could be that he was reading where some guy said that we know there's a unit of measurement. And some guy says, some guy realizes that he can equate or get an equivalent of that unit of measurement when he fills a deer neck. That that winds up being that. If I said a deer neck, it holds a liter, roughly a liter. I know, but the L that I just described has nothing to do with volume. It's a linear.

18 inches. Oh, I should listen more carefully. But picture that it did. I bet that's the connection. I bet just somehow that measurement, maybe the deer neck was 18 inches, but the storage of the bear grease was in the tan neck height of a deer, and they used that unit of measurement to describe the quantity. You better go find it.

Yeah. Let me tell you something, Clay. This is an apocryphal story. Tell me what that means. Second time we've used it on the podcast. Yeah. It means that it's... I can't

explain it. It sort of captures the essence of a thing. Dubious authenticity. Something widely circulated as being true. This is the second time I got this wrong. Oh, no, no, no. No, I got it right. I got it right. There was an apocryphal story.

Right. That General Sherman, listen to what I'm telling you, Clay, about this deer neck deal. People used to say that General Sherman- He might not give you the same undivided attention, but listen to his. No, I caught everything. No, listen, man. I listened to him so carefully that I realized there was a problem. No one else here realized there was a problem.

Go ahead. There's a story that General Sherman went to the Texas Assembly and said, we need to kill all the buffalo in order to defeat the Native Americans. That once we kill the buffalo, they'll have nothing to eat and we'll be able to subjugate them to reservation confinement. That he said, articulated this perspective. Mm-hmm. Later, a graduate student working under the historian Dan Flores, who'd been reading that his whole life.

I've read that. Was like, well, where did that come from? Where, like, when did he give the speech? He goes down to Austin to do his research. General Sherman never even spoke, never addressed the texas assembly huh but it is a widely trafficked it somehow entered under like it it it entered the sort of uh canon of understanding in a way that no one ever went and looked and it just became like a repeated thing and a repeated thing and repeated thing the same way i run around telling people about this deer neck business and then someone someday was like home it really what exactly when

did that happen and then they're like you know what it didn't. We've been all spouting off the same thing from the same place. You know that Boone used to shoot, Boone would bark squirrels. You know this? Well, I've heard this. Boone would bark squirrels. Turns out the guy that says he saw Boone bark squirrels some year in Kentucky, Boone wasn't in Kentucky that year. He was in Missouri.

But that's in every damn book. So now everyone knows what apocryphal means. Even Yanni. Even me. Are we sure linking was ever even in Gettysburg? We should follow up on this. Turns out, yeah. But either way, this cryptocurrency called Bear Grease,

I'm into it. And a guy wrote in that he thinks that it could be possible. And we know how to like wildly inflate. This is the part you can't tell people. How to wildly inflate Clay's Bear Grease cryptocurrency. Just a shortage of it, right?

No, no, no, no. Okay. Clay, should we tell or not tell? Well, I mean, I guess if we're going to do it, we shouldn't tell. If we're not going to do it, we should tell them just to show people how much we think about these things.

But a guy wrote in to say that he thinks that... He's a programmer. A programmer wrote in. He says that he could work up something that could, quote, work to both our benefits. Oh, man. So shady. He sounds like a bare-eel salesman voice. I'm in.

I am way in. And it's going to trade when we produce it. Instead of buying a Bitcoin, you'll buy a tablespoon up to, you know, and it'll be measured up to an eel. You can buy an eel of bear grease. And there'll be a finite amount of it. That listener email feels like it could be part of a deposition someday.

Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was just thinking. Sounds like some crooked dudes I've been hanging around with. Is it true that you said it could work to both of your ventures? Clay's going to break down a cool story about bear grease. And he'll also give us an update on Bear Grease podcast but first

it's the end of Chester the Investor like the end? Chester sold out bought a walleye boat tell everybody the story Chester well I'm super happy with my decisions Bitcoin was going Bitcoin was tanking And I'm super happy with my decisions.

Bitcoin was going. Bitcoin was tanking. Well, Chester was telling me how Bitcoin was going to be worth $100,000 per coin by the end of the year. Because his brother told him. Still, there's a chance. Anyways, Bitcoin, I was sick of staring at it. I sold it. And it happened to be right before it tanked. Was it addictive

to you like Instagram? Like an app that you check? Yes. Everybody else is nodding their head yes. He had a little bit of a checking problem. No. You said you were sick of staring at it so I guess I'm just trying to get to the bottom of that. What does that mean?

I'm kind of sick of staring at it, so I guess I'm just trying to get to the bottom of that. What does that mean? I'm kind of sick of staring at Instagram, but I still have it sometimes. But I don't know. I just got rid of it because, one, I needed a walleye boat, and I feel like I wasn't too addicted to it. No, you must not have been that addicted because you haven't bought any more, have you? What does it mean to be sick of staring at it? We're like 80 bucks in Bitcoin. We're still right now.

Just 80 bucks. You're still in. Oh, just. Did you make much money on when you sold? I made only a few hundred bucks. All that? Yeah. But I was way up.

But I mean, I got out before I lost. So, um, but I had been looking for a boat for a long time and I was sick of getting chased off the lake by weather in Seth's boat. Seth and I fish a lot. This is Seth's fault. And, uh, we had to get off the lake a lot because weather had come in and I bought a boat found a boat in Wisconsin Oshkosh Wisconsin for the Lake Winnebago there which is like a excellent little walleye lake so I figured the boat had some good juju and stuff it's called a Sylvan it's a 16 and a half foot boat super deep v really wide beam um it's a tiller and it's just like the perfect little fishing boat so my parents grabbed it checked it out my dad consulted with his buddy

who is a walleye fisherman and he said the boat was good they drove it out to south dakota met me i fished with my parents a little bit caught South Dakota. Caught a bunch of walleye. The boat's probably caught, been in it like six times, probably pushing 100 walleye already. Wow. Good for you. Damn, Chester. Yeah.

We got to get out. Anybody here, we got to get out. He's running my fish finder on it right now. I'll point out. Well, yeah. I need a better fish finder. The one that was on there is supposedly good, but it's not working. So can you handle some bigger waves now in this rig? Yeah, I was actually out there the other day with Matt, one of our producers,

and it was real choppy. You wouldn't want to be out there if it were any choppier and we didn't take on water so it's it's sweet like and i'm you know glad i'm not doing the bitcoin but bitcoin is coming back so chester divested in bitcoin. Yeah. What I want to see, what I want to do, the bear, what I want to do with the bear agrees. Cryptocurrency is it's you.

It's usable for all of our internal stuff. Yep. And then we can keep wanting to tell people about it, but I don't, I shouldn't mention it. How to manipulate the currency. Okay. Clay,

give us a book report. So, this came from where everything comes from. Jim Heffelfinger. Yeah, Jim Heffelfinger. He sent Steve and I an article. It was actually an article in a magazine from 1871. And I'll go ahead and tell you the punchline. Jim's just getting caught up on his reading and got into his 1871 article.'ll go ahead and tell you the punch line he's just jim's just getting caught up on

his reading and uh got into his 1871 article yeah yeah so so the punch line of this guys ends up in bear grease okay but it was a pretty fascinating article and it wasn't a light read i think there's like 17 printed pages fine print so it was uh it was uh it was a good read but it was published in scribner's monthly which was a magazine november 1871 and it's the title of the article is 37 days of peril well hold on a second what kind of magazine was scribner's it was a big magazine at the time like a big lifestyle magazine and a lot of the they would have you know they would send like correspondence out to the American West and do big stories but it was like uh so have you like you know this because you've referenced it in

your writing in the past yeah you see a lot of old Scribner's things I mean it was a it was a long it was like a long it was a very highly subscribed long form journalism travelogue magazine of its day kind of equivalent to like what you might imagine i mean it's gone now do you remember like when you were a little kid like life magazine yeah you would have consumed scribblers in the way that people would have consumed Life Magazine. Like a general interest publication. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, this article would fit right in with what you're saying, Steve. So the title of it is 37 Days of Peril.

And it basically starts out with a guy in Helena, Montana. And he and a group of people are going to go into the Upper Yellowstone, which in that time period was a super wild, uninhabited, or uncivilized place. And he said they were expecting 30 days on horseback, and he never really told why they were going. They weren't necessarily hunting, why they were going they weren't necessarily hunting but they were going down into the upper yellowstone and somehow he gets separated from the people that he's with and he they're all on horseback and he's separated from his people and he doesn't think much about it because he knows where they're going. He talks about camping by himself the first night and how he'll find them the next day and it's no big deal.

Well, the next day, he tries to track them and has trouble tracking them. It comes the second day and he still hasn't found them. On the third day, he's kind of like, dang, I'm all by myself, but he still got his horse and his rifle and all his gear. And he gets off of his horse in the wilderness to go look for sign to track his buddies. And on his horse, he has his scabbard. He has all his gear, every ounce of gear except for the clothes on his back. And the horse spooks. He just drops the reins and just gets off this good Western horse. He wasn't worried about the horse running off. The horse spooks and takes off over the hill. And he spends a day looking for the horse and the horse is gone and he never sees the horse again. And so he is, I don't know how far, but so far away from civilization that he's in real peril without

anything but the clothes on his back. And basically that's the beginning point of 37 days of peril. And he does an incredible job of describing all the scenarios that go through someone's mind who is alone in solitude in the wilderness, being starved, having to deal with the elements. It didn't say exactly when it happened, but clearly it wasn't in the winter. But it feels like it was sometime in the fall because there were times when there was a foot of snow on the ground that the snow would melt. But basically, he lived off thistle roots. He would dig thistle roots. And there was a period of time when he was by the hot geysers in the Yellowstone region, and he would cook thistle roots in geysers. He would sleep by the geysers for the geothermal warmth,

and he described being sopping wet from the vapor of the geyser, but also being warm while the air temperature was super cold. So like really wild stuff. He one time made a shelter out of the limbs of an evergreen tree, made like a makeshift shelter. And he said that a hummingbird flew into the shelter and he caught it with his hand and he plucked the hummingbird and ate it raw.

And he said it was a quote, a delicious meal for a half starved man. He did a, man, these guys, I see so much similarity in the way these guys wrote from like during that time period, there's a lot of just literature, literary terms and different things they use, the way they describe that was so similar between this Gerstacker guy that I've talked about on my podcast. But here's the interesting part I think that you'll like, Steve, is that he started having hallucinations at some period during his trip. And he described it like this. This is a quote. And this is while he is starved, traveling in the wilderness,

very much so distressed by the elements. I mean, he talks about storms and snow, and he says, I was constantly traveling in a dreamland and indulging in strange reveries such as I had never before known. I seemed to possess a sort of duality of being while constantly reminding me of the necessities of my condition fed my imagination with the vagaries of the most extravagant character. Nevertheless, I was perfectly conscious of the tendency of these morbid influence and often tried to shake them off. But he was hallucinating, and he had a plan for how to get out of the wilderness. He thought, well, if I go over this mountain range, there's this town. And he gets way into his journey to get to this other town. And he has what he called a hallucination. I think some people might call it like a visitation.

He said he had a visitation by someone in his life that was a medical doctor that he perceived as really wise, who he said literally was there with him and told him, don't go that way. There's no food that direction. Go back the way you came. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated.

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Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. He does what this you know this hallucination says and he goes back and backtracks himself all the way i mean we're talking like a hundred miles and and uh it was just wild to hear because because he's evaluating it after the fact, and he credits this very vivid encounter with this person from his past that said, don't go that way. And he went back, and long story short, on his way back, there's a search party that's been sent out, and after 37 days, the search party finds him and takes him back to a cabin.

And here's where the real hero of the story comes in. So they get him back to the cabin and they start feeding him. And basically, he can't keep any food down. And he talks about how, you know, I've gone through all this, and now I'm gonna die that i'm back in civilization his body was rejecting all the food well the night after here's the quote here's the quote this is this is the climax punchline of the story be ready to you know get excited the night after my arrival the night after my arrival at the cabin while

suffering the most excruciating agony and thinking that i had only been saved to die among friends a loud knock was heard on the cabin door an old man in mountain costume entered a hunter whose life had been spent among the mountains that That's some beautiful, beautiful writing right there. Yeah, that was me and Yanni. His name was Yannis Boutelis, and he was on his way to find his brother. He listened to the stories of my sufferings, and tears rapidly coursed down his face, his rough-weathered, beaten face. This man was not only a rugged mountain man, but he was in touch with his feelings.

Hold on, can you tell us why he was crying again i kind of got confused there he he he was crying when this man told him about his 37 days of peril what this old mountain man wept in the cabin i don't think so well that's what he says that's what you feel like you're gonna cry No. We all didn't read the 17 small typed pages that I did. He's saying that it's all, like I'm set up for the punchline. This isn't the point of the story. I know, I know. Listen, man. I know.

No, I know. I know. And I know the point. And I like, the reason I wanted, I know about the punchline of the story and I want Clay to tell it, but I just got to real quick. I don't buy that the old man shows up and cries upon hearing what happened to him cries listen it's open i'm with you steve like it's kind of like what i think older men that are in solitude

are are very uh susceptible to emotional. Sure. Really. Remember Reagan developed that toward the end of his second term, developed that strange tendency to cry a lot. I think I'm there right now in my life. I'm finding myself. You're a little early. I've been there my whole life.

Do you feel like crying right now about hearing about this guy? No. But what was I telling you the other day that I was telling you to watch? Oh, yeah, that is kind of goofy. I don't want to diverge too much here. This is way a device diverger. I want to hear the end of the story. Okay, here's a quick way to do it.

Watching the Olympics. Did you cry at all? I didn't watch the Olympics. You didn't watch the Olympics at all? No, I was at quick way to do it. Watching the Olympics. Did you cry at all? I didn't watch the Olympics. You didn't watch the Olympics at all? No, I was at my fish shack. Oh. I missed the whole thing. Anybody else watch the Olympics?

What would I cry about from that? Huh? Some of it. About like, you know, achievements and losses and triumphs and disappointments and injuries. And then, I don't know, when people get their medals, like a lot of times I'm like, it just touches me. That's cute. Yeah.

I'll tell you what made me cry. So he might have just, that might have been his personality is what I'm getting at. I cried when my babies were born. No. Steve's going to list off all the times he's cried on one hand. No. No. I'll tell you. Maybe it's going to be six times. I he's cried on one hand. No. No. I'll tell you.

Maybe it's going to be six times. I cried at the end of my life without me. I cried at the end of the Ken Burns Vietnam thing when the guy that didn't want to go to the wall finally goes to the wall. That made me cry. I did not cry, but I was very close to with the Rogan episode of the North Korea defector. Oh. Have you listened to that? man that's powerful and like i could if i were in the room if i were in the room when she was like telling those stories i'm pretty sure i would have and like so i can see how this mountain man

like having a presence in front of you telling you of his hardship would do that yeah man i regret bringing it up clay i just think it says more about the mountain man than it does the story so here's the mountain man he's all yeah it's okay i'm i'm gonna continue reading from the quote okay and and we're we're we're drawing nigh to our conclusion go ahead and put the listen to the story and back in okay i'd only been had i only been saved to die among friends, a loud knock was heard on the cabin door. An old mountain man in costume entered, a hunter whose life had been spent among the mountains.

He was on his way to find a brother. He listened to the story of my sufferings and tears rapidly coursed each other down his rough weathered beaten face. But when he was told of my present necessity brightening in a moment, he exclaimed, why Lord bless you if that is all, I have the very remedy you need. In two hours time, all shall be well with you. He left the cabin returning in a moment with a sack filled with the fat of a bear, which he had killed a few

hours before. From this, he rendered out a pint measure of oil, and I drank the whole of it. It proved to be the needed remedy, and the next day, freed from the pain with appetite and digestion reestablished, I felt that good food and plenty of it were only necessary for an early recovery in a day or two let's see yada yada yada he was good to go and he went back to bozeman montana just like man barry barry said he was man barry saved the day he was the one who cried so that's why jim jim Heffelfinger had read that. And he's been listening to the Bear Grease podcast, and he wanted me to read that little section about the old mountain man.

Dude, that is great, man. Bear Grease podcast. There you have it. I love it. You think you could stomach two cups of rendered bear oil? No. No, no, no. I watched my brother drink a, no. I watched my brother

drink a coffee mug. I watched my brother drink a coffee mug full of it. Nothing happened to him. Huh. Nothing. Your brother's an outlier.

I said, man, you are going to be having some problems. Nothing happened to him. Wow. And Jim could not have anticipated that we'd also talk about

the Olympics and childbirth and North Korea in the story. Yanni crying all about everything. What's funny, what brings two worlds together is probably the two most mentioned people on this show are our buddy Doug Duren from the Driftless area of Wisconsin and Jim Heffelfinger. Oh, yeah. And they were together yesterday.

Whoa. So if there was like a cosmic disturbance there, a cosmic, like you felt something in the force, it was because those two were driving around Doug's place. Doug even took them to see the naval. Got Doug's hat on right now. It's a good hat. Oh, yeah. It's not ours.

It's just our turn. Yeah. Doug Dern Thank you Clay Tune into Clay's Bear Grease Podcast He's got a three parter coming up on Boone It's happening right now As this podcast airs

Clay's podcast is kicking ass man Is this when we get an answer Clay About Coonskin hats Oh yeah You get it for sure, man. I'm in. Haboon didn't like them? Well, that's not what it seems.

That's how Clay set it up. Yeah, it's been really fun, very fun building out this series. A little more challenging than I thought telling someone's whole life story. But, man got getting a lot of really great feedback on it i mean what's cool is that there's a lot of non-hunting people that are listening to the bear grease podcast and liking it you know it's great man um yeah it's it's been a lot of fun born a lot of fun are you not into... Hey, there was a guy that cried on the Bear Grease podcast. Say it again?

There was a guy that... An old man broke down on the Bear Grease podcast and cried. Mr. Roy. Yeah. Yeah. Talking about tears and old men. Dude, have you listened to... You might hear some crying campfire stories, bro.

Well, I was going to bring that up. Right. Tell me you could listen to all of those. Now, it's different for you because you worked on the project. Still chokes me up a little bit. Brody's story chokes me up a little bit. See? Okay.

About saving that boy whose dad had given up for dead. So you are. You're normal. He has some feelings. You're normal. Oh, I got beaucoup feelings, man. They just don't show themselves through viscous liquid.

Hold on a minute. You feel like I'm a dispassionate person? I feel like you declared yourself a dispassionate person. Alright, let's wrap her up. Clay Newton, Battery's Podcast. Tune in. More stuff about Boone. Thanks for joining us, Clay. See you guys next time. Wait, wait, wait.

What's going on? We just wrapped it up. We got like 30 minutes of the podcast left. That was like an 80-minute podcast you did. Oh, no, no, no. I forgot. Let's keep this in. This is staying in.

I forgot about that. I was scrapping macrofructation. You can do that. I was scrapping macrofructation. You can do that. I was scrapping macrofructation because the shirts aren't available. Right, right. Yeah, and now we're rolling into our main thing. I thought I saw some tears welling up in your eyes when you were running to the bathroom.

Spencer's like, son of a bitch. I forgot about that. Spencer, take it over. All right. Clay, you sticking around? You bet, man. Yeah. Clay's joining in.

We're going to close out with a Spencer. You got to think of a catchy title for the trivia segment. Where we test listeners' minds. Phil did that in the editing. He threw in like some wild mix of uh who wants to be a millionaire music with uh no country for old men scene i loved it oh can you play it for me real quick was that a phil original that was a phil original that's great i don't even know about this yeah you should listen to the podcast it's pretty good

i do sometimes listen just for quality control stuff. Okay. But I'm a hearer, so I kind of know what's in it. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. But no, I do quite often listen. Hit us, Phil. Look, I need to know

what I stand to win. Everything. How's that? You stand to win everything. Well done. Those things were meant to be together. Oh, that's great, man. Didn't even know it. That's so good.

That's great. Okay, so tee it up, Spencer. We are back for the second installment of Meat Eater Trivia. Oh, that's what it's called? Yeah. Yeah, I like that. This is trivia you're not going to get from Jeopardy! They'll come up with that?

Yeah. Not going to get these questions from Jeopardy! or Trivial Pursuit or Bar Night Trivia, anything like that. These are born out of our four verticals. What are they, Steve? Hunting, fishing, wild foods, and conservation. That's right.

And there is a prize, just like last time. Meat Eater will donate $100 to the conservation organization of the winner's choice in the winner's name. We need to get Chester dressed up in a little speedo to turn the... When this turns into a real thing, to turn the things, you know?

To be like a Vanna White-type character. Yep. But it'll be Chester. In a Speedo? Yeah, because there's got to be, like, a sex appeal to it, man. Wow. Like, you know that old role they used to have,

like, on Price is Right? He had, like, 50 people running around in nightgowns. Deal or no deal. It's going to be, like, literally 50 women. That's right. It's going to be Chester in a Speedo. So it is 10 questions. So it's got sex appeal.

Oh, my. 10 questions. Last time, Brody and Cal tied with six. They went to the tiebreaker and Brody won. I think with this group of folks, though, we got some ringers in the room and joining us virtually. And this group of questions, I think it's going to take seven or eight. As we design this show, as we design this show, and listeners are here with us

in the design process, I think it should always be that the reigning champion, like Brody should be here. It's the reigning champion's birthday, so I think he can just do whatever he wants. He says he's dragging a crawler harness right now for walleyes.

I'll just text him with them. I like it. I like the sound of that, too. So we ready? He says it's pretty slow. I'm ready. Alright. Question one. The category is cooking, and last time, the first question was multiple choice. I've made a decision we're going to do that every time going forward, just to give you

guys some confidence, hopefully, for the next night. For every question. Every question is multiple choice. Every question won when we do trivia. So last time the question won was multiple choice. This time question won is multiple choice. The next nine will not be though. Oh.

The category is cooking. Which of these cooking oils has the highest smoke point? Peanut oil, extra virgin olive oil, canola oil, or coconut oil? Now, here's where the question is flawed. Are they all refined? Yes. They're refined. Sure.

Your choice is, again, which one has the highest smoke point? Peanut, extra virgin olive, canola, or coconut? And keep score just for fun, please. Phil can't take it. He's such a trivia guy. Have we talked about it on this podcast? Like, Phil's, like, serious trivia. Like, he, when COVID started, he would host meat-eater trivia nights over Zoom. Like, I don't know if it's weekly, but he'll just bring people to trivia nights at bars.

It's shifted into karaoke for the last few weeks. When you switch back from that, give me a shout. Really? Yeah. First time I hung out with Phil give me a shout. I'd love to. Really? Yeah. First time I hung out with Phil outside of work. It was supposed to be a trivia night, and then it was a karaoke night. Did you do up and do a song? Just don't ever invite me to do anything. Oh, man.

I do songs all the time. Really? Yeah. What's a song that you do? Most recently, I did Neon Moon by Brooks and Dunn. I did... Oh, Phil and I. I've seen him do Crocodile Rock.

By Elton John. Phil and I did a duet. We did. We did a video of this. We did Shallow from the latest Star is Born movie with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. Do you want to guess who was who? I don't know what you guys are talking about.

I was Bradley Cooper. He was Lady Gaga. Yeah. But, like always, he stole the show. Did great. Okay, let's keep going here. All right. All right.

Does everyone have an answer? Yep. Reveal your answers. We have extra virgin olive oil at 350 degrees, coconut oil at 350 degrees, canola oil at 400 degrees, And the correct answer, peanut oil, is 450. Oh, yeah. So, we had... Big win for Steve-O. I just put A, so peanut.

I saw him. He was right. Did Clay get it? Clay, what'd you get? No, I didn't get it right. So, everybody but Phil and Clay. It's good that Clay's an honest man because there's very few people, very few people, that I would trust to do it remotely. That's right. He could be playing Google

and we wouldn't even know. But Clay is like, I trust him. I'm not good at trivia. I thought I could trust him. I'm terrible at trivia too. Question two.

The topic is furs. Furs? Furs. What is the name for a female fox? Oh. What is the name for a female fox? I don't think that's a fur question, to be honest with you. I think it's like mammology.

Sure. Sure. It's hard to integrate. If you're looking for feedback. It's hard to integrate furs into the trivia, so this is a furs question. Oh, no. Do you ever give tips? I'll give you some pointers. I will not give a hint.

No. Can we do that game where, what's that game where you give the answer to a question? Jeopardy. Okay. For a future one, the answer to a question? Jeopardy. Okay. For a future one, the answer is Plu. Remember that, and you can craft

a question out of that. Okay. So, a reminder, the question is what is the name for a female fox? Steve was very confident and had an answer before I even finished the question, but the rest of the room does not look like they have it. Oh. I haven't written anything.

I'm on it. Don't, don't. Ooh. All right. Here we go. Reveal your answers. We have a lot of. Okay.

The correct answer, as Steve and Clay have, is Vixen. Oh. Nice. Here's another one., is vixen. Oh. Nice. Here's another one. What is in the round? Okay. I remember that. A male fox is called a dog fox or tod.

A baby fox is called a pup, kit, or cub. And a group of foxes is called a skulk or a leash. Oh. But a female is a vixen. Is a vixen. Can you hit me the group again? I never heard that. Is a skulk or a leash. But a female is a vixen. Is a vixen. Can you hit me the group again? I never heard that. Is a skulk or a leash.

Huh, really? I feel like skulk is used other places. Yeah, skulking around. I saw you out there skulking around. You skulked off. That would be good in fox tense. So we have Steve got the first two right so far. This is more like it, man.

Question three. You didn't do so well far. This is more like it, man. Question three. You didn't do so well last time I took it. No, dude. I got humiliated. Question three, and I would consider this probably the toughest question of the batch for today. This is a visual question, but I'm going to do such a damn good job describing what these guys are looking at that if you're listening to this, you're going to be able to play along and know what's happening. I'm holding in my hand a Benchmade Steep Country knife.

And I would wager to say this is like the most popular knife in the office. Anytime I'm in the field with one of you fellas, I feel like you guys have the Steep Country. Yeah, go to themeateater.com. You can see the knife and buy it. That's right. Yep. And you may not know it, but one of the reasons you like it so much is because of these notches in the back of the blade. So the question is, what do you call the small notches or file work cut into the back of a knife blade?

Yeah, that's a tough one, Spencer. Corinne, can you help me describe what it is we're looking at here in the room? You know, it's like if you, oh, wait, this part by the handle? No, on the blade. Right there. Okay. So if you're holding the knife and your thumb lines up with the non-sharp, obviously, part of the blade. Above the handle, you've got some ridges. Like, you could really

kind of coarsely maybe file your nail. That's right. So what do you call the small notches or file work cut into the back of a knife?

I don't. I haven't seen anyone come up with an answer yet. Well, I got one written down. Yeah, I don't think I have it, but I've got a description. Is everybody ready? Yes. Reveal your answers. Nobody got it right.

The correct answer is jimping. What? This is the jimping of a knife. J-I-M-P-I-N-G. Wow, that's great. That's good trivia right there, man. That's rock solid gold right there. Occasionally,

these repeating ridges are just for aesthetics. Like if you went into a gas station and they had like some big Rambo knives, right, that are like 12 inches long,

then it would just be like an aesthetics thing. But for a knife like the Steep Country, these have a real purpose, and that is to keep your index finger or thumb from sliding around. Yeah, sure. That's why I call them thumb grippers. What I'm more interested in is –

That's what I called it, too. Well, I called it scoring on my chart, on my little dealie. Knife makers call it file work. No, they call it jimping, Clay. I'm going to need this Boone expert to verify if that's a real term. Okay. I'm not sure. Spencer ain't everything, but I think he probably does these right.

I want to know how you came across jimping. I was actually reading the description of our steep country knife, and Benchmade talked about how this is one of the reasons why it's the perfect field knife is because the jimping is so good. If I type in jimping into Google, it auto fills jimping knife, jimping file, jimping definition, jimping patterns. Yep. I'll go to jimping knife. And lo and behold, it's little thumb grippers at the top side base of the blade.

That's right. So you didn't even know it, but when you're gutting out a deer or skinning a turkey or something, that thing is helping you out a lot. Here's a YouTube. So there's an outfit called Three River Blades back in 2012, posted a video. Knife making tutorial.

How do I add jimping to an already made knife? There you go. Throw that term around now. You sound like a real outdoorsman. Question four. And I'll remind the audience, nobody got question three right. So if you did get it right, you're a damn smart person. Question four.

Category is public lands. What state leads America in Bigfoot sightings? Ooh. Sad. Ooh. What state leads America in Bigfoot sightings? Ooh. Sad. Ooh. He's thinking you're going to put down Washington. What state leads America in Bigfoot sightings? Now, is this one of those like, oh, it's so obvious?

Or is this one of those, I didn't know that. I am a host that does not provide hints. So you can. I mean, this would be a tough one to verify, I would feel like. I mean, like there's not like a. I am a host that does not provide hints. I mean, this would be a tough one to verify, I would feel like. There's not like an Arkansas website where you put up...

There is actually. So when I reveal the answer, I will give you my source, Clay, and I think you'll be satisfied. Clay, just play along, would ya? Okay. Reminder, what state leads America in Bigfoot sightings? Does everybody have an answer? Yep.

Reveal your answer. The correct answer, which I see nobody has, is Washington. Damn it! I said it! I wrote it down really quickly because you were starting to say it. I said, is it like, oh, that's obvious, or is it I didn't know that? And then what did I say? Well, you didn't tell me, so I went with I didn't know that state.

Phil was the only one who got it right. This stat comes from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. That's where he lives. Who has been tracking Sasquatch sightings since 1995. In the last 25 years, Washington has had 676 Bigfoot sightings. Amazingly, Oregon, their neighbors to the south, has only had 254 Bigfoot sightings, which is less than states like Florida, Ohio, and Illinois. See, I think it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy thing for Washington.

Because people flock there because that's like the Bigfoot state, and then they supposedly see Bigfoot. This is absolutely a question about people, not about Bigfoot. God, I'm finding it's like this game, it's not so much what you know, it's how good you are at

your own psychology, man. There you go. Or gaming. Spencer's psychology. First thing that popped into my mind was Washington. You said that. I was like, I'm just saying Wisconsin. Poison the well. Yeah.

Damn, man. Phil, are you keeping track of score? I picked Oklahoma because Oklahoma, there was a senator that proposed a Bigfoot hunting season. Like, legitimately. That's right. Y'all heard about that. Question five, the category is fish. What do you call the hybrid fish that's created by a largemouth bass and a smallmouth bass?

Ooh. What do you call the hybrid fish that's created by a largemouth bass and a smallmouth bass? I should really pay more attention when I'm editing Bent. Everybody have an answer? Yes. Reveal your answers. The correct answer, which I see nobody has, is a mean mouth bass. Yeah, but look what I wrote. Yeah, Steve is close. Foul mouth bass. It's not-mouthed bass. Oh. There you go. Yeah, but look what I wrote.

Yeah, Steve is close. Foul-mouthed bass. No. It's not a foul-mouthed bass. If you said a foul-mouthed bass, I'm going to think you foul-hooked a bass. That's not how I spelled it. Yeah. A mean-mouthed bass. It got its name in the 1960s from biologists that watched a pond of them attack humans

and dogs that would wade into shallow water. The mean-mouthed world record was broken earlier this year with a 7-pound, 9-ounce bass from Texas. If you want to see the pictures of it, go to TheMedia.com and read Maggie Hudlow's June 11th article titled The Most Interesting World Record of the Year. That is an announcer right there. Dude, yeah.

You've really overestimated this group of players, Spencer. No, no, I like it like this, man. I like it hard, man. So we are halfway through. Can you give us a scoreboard update, Phil? In first place, we have Steve Rinella. Well, I thought I'm tied with Clay. With two.

I think Clay only has one. Clay has two. Clay's just got one. Oh, I'm sorry. No, yeah. I thought I heard you give him another one. And everyone else has one. Wow, I'm kicking ass, dude.

Tight game. Tight game. Tight game. Halftime. Man, I would have had two give him an extra. And everyone else has won. Wow, I'm kicking ass, dude. Tight game. Tight game. Halftime. Anybody can win. That's right. Question six. The category is Mountain Men. I have a lot of faith in this room to get this one right.

Jebediah Smith, Jim Beckworth, and Hugh Glass all have this cause of death in common. How specific? Just general? I will accept a general answer. Okay, I got it. Jebediah Smith, Beckwith and Hugh Glass three famous mountain men all have this cause of death in common I'm confident

I don't know but I'm confident in my guess I think Steve was confident Yanni was confident I'm sure Steve got this one alright everybody has an answer reveal your answer the correct answer All right. Everybody has an answer? Reveal your answer.

The correct answer, which only Steve has. No! That was my second guess. All three were killed by Native Americans. Jebediah Smith was shot by Comanches in Kansas. Hugh Glass was shot by a Rickeroth in Montana. No, no, no. That's not how you Jebediah Smith. Jebed Hugh Glass was shot by a Rickeroth in Montana. Oh, no, no, no. That's not having Jedediah Smith. Jedediah Smith was killed at a waterhole.

By Native Americans? But not in Kansas. Near modern day Kansas. Oh, it was? Yeah. Because his effects wound up in Santa Fe or Taos. Just read about this. It was Kansas.

Double check me while I explain the rest of the answer. Jedediah Smith shot by Comanches in Kansas. Jedediah. Jedediah. Hugh Glass, shot by... You know what his middle name was? Here's some trivia for you, Buster. What was his middle name? Bring him. Strong. Okay, I did not

know that. And while some historians believe Jim Beckwith died of natural causes, his personal friend and founder of the Rocky Mountain News, William Byers, claims he was poisoned to death by the crow in Montana. That's how those three fellers died. Man, I am pulling out a strong lead. So Steve three, everyone else one.

I got whooped by Tucker Carlson. Question seven. And again, I have faith in the room. Category is cooking. The culinary term al dente refers to the doneness of what food item? Come on, man. This isn't in the, this isn isn't I know it But this isn't in the

How does this have anything to do with anything we talk about We have plenty of recipes In your cookbook On our websites On your TV shows That I imagine use this food item The culinary term Aldente

Refers to the doneness of what food item? I think a better one would have been like, what does it mean? The definition of it. That would be harder. Everyone has... I'm already being hard enough

on you guys. All right. I feel like you need some help. This was a softball. This was a real gimme. I'm kind of disappointed. Reveal your answers. Everybody, It was real gimme here, man. Kind of disappointed. Reveal your answers. Ow.

Everybody except for Chester has the correct answer. Well, no, Clay doesn't because he put up two answers. He can't do that. Pasta or squirrel? The correct answer is pasta. Al dente pasta is supposed to be firm to the bite. According to chef Jesse Griffiths, who studied and worked in Italy, all pasta should be cooked to al dente,

with the only exceptions being baked dishes like lasagna. Doesn't it mean something like to the tooth? To the tooth. Correct. Yes. I also would have accepted rice. Some people use it for rice, but more commonly it would be pasta. When we come out with

the game, let's not put that one in there. Because it was too easy. I still feel like it fits. We're going to develop a board game. I'm in. Question eight. The category

is hunting, and this is an audio question I'm going to play for you A calling sequence And you need to identify what game bird It's from Everybody ready? Very excited Here we go What game bird is that noise from?

See, Steve came up with an answer fairly fast. I don't like my answer. The rest of the room, not so much. No idea. Okay, everybody reveal your answer. The correct answer is teal. Ah. Which nobody got correct.

Green-winged teal. Really? Although most hunters consider teal to be one of the fastest ducks, they're actually some of the slowest with flight speeds of 30 miles per hour. The fastest duck ever recorded was a red-breasted merganser traveling at 100 miles per hour while being pursued by an airplane. Wow. That's what the teal is like?

You know, I think why teals seem so fast is they fly low and erratically. The erratic thing is definitely it. But any duck hunter you'd ask, be like, what's the fastest bird? I'm convinced they would say teal. Yeah, because they, I mean, they kind of like, they're so low, they often come in unannounced. And so you don't see them until they're like going by your face and they're dodging and it just gives them sort of. I thought the ocean ducks too are known to be pretty fast. Fast flyers. The divers, no? answer 100 miles an hour 100 miles an hour and

that stat comes from ducks unlimited so if you got a problem clay take it up with them we are on to question nine phil can you give us a scoreboard update with two questions left yes in third place with one point we have Chester the Investor In tied for second place we have Corinne, Giannis and Clay with two and in first place it's Steve with four

You say last for third I think Right? Third is last Chester I was just trying to be nice You're winning a bronze Two questions left You're winning a bronze medal Two questions left? Two questions left. You're winning a bronze medal.

There's still a chance. It could go to a tiebreaker. Still on the podium. We need Steve to get them wrong and other folks to get them right. Question nine. The category is conservation. Is there going to be a Latvia category? What year did President Richard Nixon sign the Endangered Species Act?

Oh, Steve got it. And it is in the name of the act. Oftentimes, if someone was talking about this, they would say the Endangered Species Act of that year. I got it down to two years. I can't decide which I'm going to go with. If it helps you at all, it was President Richard Nixon. So if you can do some elimination math about when he may have been in office,

he signed it one of those years. Hmm. Dang. Is two digits okay? Because I do know what century. I will not confuse it with like 17 something.

I'm virtually certain. I'm seeing a lot of educated guesses in the room is what I'm guessing. All right, everybody reveal your answer. The correct answer that I can't. What is? 1964 is what I said. The correct answer, which nobody got, is 1973. Oh.

I had 74 and 75. That was close. Folks had it surrounded. This replaced the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966 and the Endangered Species Conservation Act of 1969. It passed in the House with a vote of 355 to 4 and unanimously passed in the Senate.

That's what I love about that story. And when the Wilderness Act got passed, how unanimous they were and how many people said that neither of them had enough teeth. They should have made it even tougher. When people talk about the fractious nature and the polarization of today,

and you're kind of like, oh, no, maybe it's probably like always. When you look back at some of these things that passed with such widespread support, you realize that there was a time when you didn't, when everything wasn't just like split margin, split margin, split margin. Yeah. And I tried last night, like the Dickens, to find the four people in the House that voted against it

just to like get their reasonings for it. I can't find it on the internet. So if you know something that I don't, I'd love to hear about what those four folks had in mind when they voted against it. Erased from history. Question 10, and Steve has wrapped it up at this point, but everyone else can play for silver medal.

The category is fish. In the 1995 movie Grumpy Old Men, what is the name of the legendary fish that Max and John try to catch which shares its name with a famous baseball pitcher from the 70s? In the 1995 movie grumpy year old men which i believe is the sequel to just grumpy old men what is the name of the legendary fish that max and John try to catch which shares its name with a famous baseball pitcher from the 70s. Never seen the movie.

Do you know any baseball pitchers from the 70s? Mm-mm. We don't do baseball down here. That's what I'm trying to think of. That's actually not true at all. Damn, man, these are good questions. You know what makes them good questions? A lot of them feel like you should know. That's when you know it's a good question.

Chester sure looks like he knows. All right, does everyone have an answer? Nope. Reveal your answer. The correct answer, which nobody has, is Catfish Hunter. Catfish Hunter, the real person, his real name was James Hunter, but the Oakland A's owner gave him the moniker Catfish

because he thought the picture needed a flashy nickname to get the media's attention. And in the movie Grumpy Old Man, they actually catch it on what I think is Max's son's wedding day, and it makes him late for the wedding. Huh. Catfish Hunter. And it makes him late for the wedding. Huh. Catfish Hunter.

And it's a ridiculous fun scene where the flathead catfish comes out of the water as if it's like a blue whale. Of course. Yep. Of course. Where did I get Walter from? Because that was one of the character's names.

No, one of the actors that plays one of the characters' names is Walter. Oh, yeah, Walter Matthau. Damn, man. I feel like we're in. Steve wins! No, we are in on a high note. Steve wins.

Everybody's happy. That's right. Steve, where are you going to donate the $100 from Meat Eater? Well, I am going to donate my $100 to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. They're on a 2-0 sweep for this game. That's where my money's going.

There you go. Thanks, Spencer. Work up some more. Thank you. Oh, real quick, too. If you have a good question you think we ought to include, you've got to send it over to Spencer at... So here's the address. You send your thing to trivia at themeateater.com.

And if it makes the cut, you'll hear us give it on this show. See you guys soon. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now, 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. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit

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