The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 296: When Death Comes for You

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Pat Durkin, Tracy Crane, Clay Newcomb, Seth Morris, Chester Floyd, Phil Taylor, Corinne Schneider, and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: Being close to death; app-controlled hearing aids; Pat's tattoos; the story behind the Blair Witch snowman in Episode 4 of Season 10; the correlation between being tox pos and getting into car accidents; Steve testing a small core of his own meat for our internal trichinosis longitudinal study; more talk of Chester the Divestor's forthcoming Book of Chetiquette; do animals get PTSD?; "just so" stories; old, old footprints and spread apart toes; being in the autumn of life; Pat's articles about death, hunter obituaries, murders in the woods, and other fascinating stuff; otherwise, it was a successful trip; getting the best stories in the bathroom; the effort of a handwritten communication; Pat's obsession with the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald and Gordon Lightfoot; the Bullhead murders; 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. Alright, Pat, we're discussing Pat Durkin's here. And Pat writes a lot about death, so this is the death episode. It's like a Halloween special about death. And Pat, nearing death himself, was just

sharing with us an a old man secret laying on us yeah my old man secret that seems to be impressing people here is i got hearing aids the first time about two and a half years ago and one of the things that's cool about them is it's run they run off an app on my iphone and so if i'm in a crowd and the sound's a little bit too loud, I can just hit, turn on the app, sync my hearing aids, and then turn things down a little bit. And you can actually control it too

if there's certain pitches that are bothering you, like from, I have grandkids. Oh, you tune them out? You can kind of turn it down a little bit. Because, you know, grandkids have, they make noises that really irritate my left ear. Wow. That's really specific.

So I'm trying to get better at these things because when I walk into certain environments now, I'm learning before I go in there, it's kind of like, you know, when you have an allergy like I do for dogs and cats, I take a pill before I go into people's homes that have dogs and cats. So now when I walk in my grandkids' settings, I can adjust the hearing aid. Wow.

That's great, man. Are you like a brand evangelist for what kind of hearing aid? No, I didn't know what I have. One thing I found fascinating about those hearing aids was yesterday, Pat called me. And he was like calling me through his hearing aids. Yes, I have a friend who has the same thing. Pat's like the biotic man.

I want to get a set now. I was calling Seth so he let me in. And then he answers the door just as my phone starts telling me you can't connect to this guy, leave a message, that kind of thing. So Seth's talking to me face-to-face.

Meanwhile, I'm getting all this stuff on my iPhone about, you know, how you want to answer, leave a message, all this kind of stuff. So somewhere in my recordings is all this Seth background information on my phone. You left a 10-minute-long voicemail of our conversation. This is making me look forward to getting there i got the hearing loss you get from shooting guns that's what you have yeah which is the left ear it's the ear like when you put your cheek to the gun it's so my right ear because i'm left-handed right and they can tell what what frequency you lose right from being around yeah and also like duck hunting with some dude rings

one off next to your face. The worst was, was back in the nineties. Um, it was what common before people really understood them was, um, muzzle brakes. Mm-hmm. And they eventually got something you could turn them on and turn them off. So it wasn't so bad, but I, I blasted my left

ear twice with those muzzle brakes without really realizing what I was getting into. And it was like, um, I knew when the rifle went off, cause all of a sudden the fricking world has collapsed. Yeah. It's just no, nothing going on in my head. Just shock.

Yeah. I'm at, it's hard for me to decide what to do about it with, with my kids. Cause like we just had youth duck season. Right. So I took my boy out and my older boy and my little boy went out with us and, um um i put the big earphones on them but then they can't hear anything right so you're screaming and yelling at them to do something and they have no idea

you're screaming and yelling at them to do it you know you know what today was there callahan was about he's like i can't i can't handle it. I don't like being around them that much anyway, but when they can't hear... You know, with today's technology, they have ones that... No, I know. They don't like those. What? They don't like it. Somehow I put them on and they don't like it. You need to get into the world.

Will those... Are those like an ear protection, too? Like an ear pro? No. No, you need to put ear protection on too no but buddy i don't know if you ever met tony paul's kill he's from he's from farm family in wisconsin no he during the gulf war works over at vortex now no he was a marine sniper during the gulf war he uh in a bunker shooting in a bunker somehow like destroyed his ears yeah um he wears some souped up hearing aids but now what he does for hearing protection when he's shooting he was kind

of he's not supposed to do this but he just turns them down when he's shooting he's like i don't know if that's really the right approach gotta be making it worse hey let me say something if we're talking about hearing you know are talking about hearing. What? My right ear, I've lost a significant amount of hearing to the point that it affects my life. Oh, no, I know. You're deaf and I'll get it. I have to turn my ear. I can't hear the direction dogs or animals are coming from. That's devastating to a turkey hunter.

So that started happening when I was in the ninth grade. And it's unknown, probably triggered by shooting guns, but, but the hearing, when I went, when I was like 35 to, you know, just a few years ago, to the hearing specialist, they told me if I had come when I was a kid, younger, that a hearing aid would have helped. But basically she was like, man man you're that part of your brain is starting to shut down wow and you'll probably never get it back and so i actually have a hearing aid that i never wear because it doesn't help so point being if you have hearing trouble don't wait till you're like yeah too old well you got you got a legitimate handicap where you can't tell

where your dogs are barking yeah it affects affects my world. Yeah. Can't tell. All my other senses are extremely heightened, though. I'm sure. That's a good note. Super bionic eyes. They might be because people say that. Like, shit makes up for it. Sixth sense. You ever read about that gal, Helen Keller?

Yeah. Yeah. Hey, before we leave Pat and old man wisdom talk, I was chatting with him yesterday. I feel like I got to wedge with him. No, no, go ahead, man. Pat was saying that you can't, we were talking about running and arthritic knees and stuff like that

and me being 43 and how I was feeling a little bit in my knees. All this, I'm going to abridge this story a little bit. But in the end, he says, look, you can't stop aging, but you can fight it. And then he said, and I'm going to fight it to the bitter end. This guy's a bit. Yeah, and I took that home with me last night.

That's motivational. Yeah, exactly. Feeling super inspired. Yes. Well, you have no choice. Yeah, but you might be having like a. No, you do. Some people don't fight it at all.

Well, part of the fighting is having the... Like, I was joking with Pat before we started about it. I was like, man, that's some legit old man stuff to be able to control your hearing aids on your phone. That would be a major inhibitor for most people, just technology. I mean, that's fighting it to the bitter end, might be. And he keeps getting tattoos. Which I feel is like part of the deal, man. Is that true?

Oh, yeah, no, he's like, he looks like a chef from Nashville, man. Do you have one that says, Go, Pat, Go? No, no, that's silly. I wouldn't do that. He's wearing long pants right now. Those are Pat's tattoos. That's this guy right here. Pat, do you have plans for another one?

Right now, the only one I'd get would probably be my wedding ring. Because I've been wearing... No, then you look like you've been to jail, man. My wife and I are about to do that. That is the most jail-looking thing, man. I want to see teardrops for every fend-off you've killed. Teardrops look like you've been in jail. A wedding ring?

A wedding ring tattoo looks like you've been to jail bad. Really? Okay. So Steve's nattooed? Come on. A wedding ring tattoo looks like you've been in jail bad. Really? Okay. So Steve's nixing the idea. Okay. Tracy Crane's here. You haven't been on in a long time. No, a little while.

It's been a long time. Yeah. Wait, when was the last time when you were on the turkey episode? No, I think it was after my first deer hunt with you two fine fellas. Oh, yeah. Oh, is that it? I believe so. Yeah, because you even-

Kind of blocked it out. Yeah, Tracy got a sideline by having a baby, but you- Still sidelined. You still feeling it a little bit? Life never returns to the way it was before. At least I don't anticipate it returning to- I think that's not supposed to work. Is it?

Yeah, she was on the show. I wish I knew that beforehand. You can go watch Tracy on Netflix hunting turkeys. Crying. Crying on there. Ice fishing, like her first ice fishing expedition. Crying there too, probably. Did you cry for ice fishing?

No. We didn't cry that day. Tracy, yeah, like antelope hunting, your first antelope hunting trip. Totally. And then like vanished. Well, yeah. You're still down here. Totally. And then, like, vanished. Well, yeah. You're still down here. If I was you, I'd be down here all the time.

No, no, I still work here. No, no, but you're not. You haven't been out mixing it up lately. No, no, not with you guys. No. She has plans to, though. People wouldn't know this. I wouldn't know it.

I mean, maybe it's not something we want to talk about, but Tracy's like the heart and soul of Meat Eater. Oh, for sure. Oh, I don't know about that, Clay. That is true. That is not it. I mean, maybe it's not something we want to talk about, but Tracy's like the heart and soul of Meat Eater. Oh, for sure. Oh, I don't know about that, Clay. That is true. That is not true. I agree. Because, you know, like people might assume that like, well, she's been on the show.

I mean, like people talk to me about the Meat Eater shows and they're like, or I might say, hey, Tracy's my boss. And they'll be like, yeah, wouldn't she on the show? And they're trying to connect like where she fits because people only see like the faces of me to do that on the podcast. Yeah. They don't realize. That's what I,

but Tracy's the real deal. She's like a puppeteer. Thank you. I don't know if I put it that way. Thank you, Tracy. Can people find out, can people find out,

I don't want to say this, but can people find out where you live? Yeah. I mean, why would they give a shit where I live? Well, I was going to to say this, but can people find out where you live? Yeah. I mean, why would they give a shit where I live? Well, I was going to talk about what my boy did in your yard. Oh, certainly. Go right ahead.

I don't want to talk about that because I don't want to give people an idea. Well, I mean, go ahead. I have no problem with that. You don't need to give that address. My boy hunts Tracy's yard. And I told him he's got to try to lock. Did he lock up his permission for this year? Oh, sure did.

I think he arrived at my home maybe like two weeks ago and was like, hey, can I come back again? Have you given away that spot to anybody else? You trained him well. No, I know. I need to get it. What is he hunting? What's that? Whitetail.

He got a whitetail doe right in her yard. Wow. Oh, he was tickled. The only thing that will be more challenging for him this year is we took that little shack down. Where we hid? Yeah, where you guys were leaning up against. That'll make him a better hunter. Oh, no, listen, he did some hard hunts, man.

He did some hard hunts, and that was his easy hunt. He seemed to really enjoy that one the most. It was a good time. All right. Oh, here's an interesting thing, man. And this fits with the Halloween special. Is if you... Are you wearing this now, Seth?

Like our new episodes, like we just put five. We launched five new episodes. Like season 10 part A on Netflix. And there's one, we have a Flintlock episode. I can't even believe it made the show, but in the Flintlock episode, we find a bizarre little haunted snowman thing. I'm surprised it made the show too, but I'm glad it did. I kind of forgot about it. Then the editor found it. We're like, oh, that's funny.

We'll leave it in there. It's a little snowman wearing Hunter's orange. I thought it was like a little effigy. I don't know what it was. Like a warning. It was set in the middle of the trail. He had a blaze orange vest and a blaze orange hat and little sticks for arms.

He was maybe like, what, eight inches tall? Those look like arrows. No, they're like little pieces of grass or something yeah weird ass it was weird weird ass little thing and in and it made the show where we talked about how it looks like it's like blair witch projecty snowman out in the woods a dude yesterday writes in that was his snowman and he even has no way he was hunting elk he was hunting elk with his old man they stopped made a little snowman took a picture of it he sent us the picture and he says then they're watching the show and there's their snowman yeah wow he had a cow elk tag yeah pennsylvania

pennsylvania the snowman and here it is and i I went back this morning and looked at the episode, looked at the snowman in the episode, and then looked at this, because I was like, I'm double-checking this guy. You were questioning whether he was telling the truth. And yeah, I went back and looked, and it's identical. Well, you thought he went out and tried to make a snowman to match? Well, I don't know. Oh, come on.

I thought that. Yeah, I just checked. Did he explain why fact checked him Like why They decided to make A little snowman While they were hunting No No

You could write him back You could like do a Follow up interview with him Did he cut A piece of his Hunter's orange off his Vest I guess I mean

That's good Yeah I think Yanni needs to Open up a Open up a combo Why did he do this Uh So everybody knows The past Here we ever talked to him Sassier Phil the engineer That's good. Yeah, I think Yanni needs to open up a combo. Why did he do this? So everybody knows the Pats here. We already talked to him.

Seth's here. Phil, the engineer. Corinne. Chester. We're going to preview Chester's new project. She still hasn't got the green light on. I was going to say, did you get confirmation about previewing the project today? He hasn't gotten the green light? He hasn't gotten the green light?

I don't want to be annoying, so I don't keep asking him. But I got a lot of good ideas, Tracy. Clay Newcomb. Once again, the green light. He hasn't gotten the green light. I don't want to be annoying, so I don't keep asking him. But I got a lot of good ideas, Tracy. Clay Newcomb. Once again, the etiquette. And Giannis. A quick news item. This is pretty interesting. We did a whole episode on a guy that got toxoplasmosis from wild game.

And a lot of people get it from, not a lot. I mean, there's not a lot of it out there, but people get it from wild game. Toxoplasmosis, as we've covered extensively, is a disease you get from, if you're eating undercooked meat and it passes, it has to pass through cat shit, but a wide variety of felines, wild felines, domestic felines can carry it. They have to shat out on a piece of grass, let's say.

It makes contact with grass. An herbivore, an ungulate, whatever, can eat the grass, can eat the cheat, and become infected with toxoplasmosis. So we had a guy from Hawaii, Danny Bolton, came on the show and talked about his trials and tribulations with toxoplasmosis. So we had a guy from Hawaii, Danny Bolton came on the show and talked about his trials and tribulations with toxoplasmosis. Then we followed up and covered some interesting research. Cause this is weird ass deal with toxoplasmosis where it reduces your inhibitions. Okay.

So they were doing research in Africa. They're doing research on hyenas. And it was correct me if I'm wrong. Corinne, you remember this a hundred percent of hyenas who contracted toxoplasmosis were killed by lions. I don't remember if it was. They were, they got the toxoplasmosis from lions. They got it through feline.

It was hyena cubs that were positive for toxoplasmosis. And they all positive hyena cubs due to loss of inhibition fall prey to a feline. Because they got closer to lions and their normal behavior might otherwise dictate. Yeah. So it's like this weird parasitic result where, and it was brought up that like, that a cat by distributing toxoplasmosis around makes his own job easier because his prey base becomes less afraid.

Grooming them. Yeah. Like you're like creating creating easier prey base i guess there's no better way to put it then we had this thing where there's an article that someone sent us and we covered about heightened entrepreneurship entrepreneur i always say that word wrong entrepreneurship entrepreneurial behavior that's a good way to put it heightened entrepreneurial behavior on people who have had toxoplasmosis. Risk aversion.

How did they study this? I don't know. Can't remember. But here's the thing. There's a new article out. National Institute of Health. Oh, you guys know that movie Secret of Nimh? Nope. Yeah. I know there's something about a mouse, right? Oh, yeah.

Is NIMH the National Institute of Mental Health? It's about rats that get like experimented on and become super smart. And somehow they don't explain the movie

they wind up with a magic gemstone. You know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah. Love that movie. So this is National Institute of Health. Yeah.

This is the Secret of NIMH. NIMH is. National Institute. Love that movie. So this is National Institute of Health. Yeah. NIMH. This is the secret of NIMH. NIMH is the National Institute of Mental Health. Yep. That's a real thing. It's a real thing. Oh. Based in Bethesda, Maryland.

That's what my wife was telling my kids when we were watching Secret of NIMH last night. But just to be clear. Side note fact. The institution has nothing to do with the movie. It's like a fantasy movie that takes place in the woods. That's who's experimenting on the rats. Is it? Yeah, they inject the rats with a lime green serum.

Yep, you're right. And then one day the rats can read the instructions of how to unlock the cage. That's real deep. Okay. Real deep. But check this out. National Institute of Health. A report out by them that increased risk of traffic accidents in subjects with latent toxoplasmosis.

A retrospective case control study. Can you do that? Me and Pat are turning down our hearing aids. Worldwide, 30 to 60% of humans worldwide have latent toxoplasmosis. And they go into the methods and all that garbage. So Danny Bolton, but the weird deal about Danny Bolton, who got toxoplasmosis, is he already has no inhibitions. Because he teaches off-road driving to special forces soldiers so now that dude is gonna be a hazard he's gonna be a hazard to himself and others wear your seat belt danny uh on other parasite news uh we had a guy write in to remind us something about this. And I want, this is, I'm taking dead serious is when Yanni and I had

trichinosis, we're doing a lot of reading up on how long you, it's not very clearly understood how long you remain trich pos. Do you still have your trich pos t-shirt? I do. Yeah. We had these trich pos, we had Trick Paz t-shirts brought up, made up, but then someone pointed out that there's a venereal disease. What's it called?

Which one? I don't know. It starts with Trick. There's a Trick venereal disease. So when we got Trichinosis, we had Trick Paz shirts made, but then someone pointed out that it could be read the wrong way. I know. That's why that's second round. Oh.

That was the second round of the shirt because it looked like you were announcing to the world people didn't take it the right way. Maybe you should put

those Trick Paz t-shirts in the auction house of oddities. That's a great idea. I don't know. I might have made mine into the rag bin, man. No, we should resurrect it.

By the way, the sexually transmitted infection is called trichomoniasis. Yeah, so when you run around in a trick, you go down to the bar in a trick pos t-shirt, man. Sends the wrong message. So, someone pointed out, like, back then, that was six years ago, Giannis. And the literature at the time was unclear about how long. I even read in various government things that it was unclear how long a human

or how long a pig infected with trichinosis. It was like five to ten, right? Yeah. And I was saying that at the ten-year mark, I wanted to find someone who was curious about this, and I would happily submit samples. Why don't you do it now? Do you remember the epidemiologist that we had on,

that we talked with us about? I tell this story all the time because I think it's so funny when you sort of proudly sprouted up in your seat and said, yeah, you know, Giannis and I have trichinosis. And he's like, really? When did you get it? And we said, oh, 2012. And he goes, nah, it's gone by now.

And I just remember your shoulders kind of slumped and you got real pouty. He no longer had trichinosis. So what's your gut? You think you still would test positive for it? Well, a guy was reminding about how we ought to get serious about checking that out, and Corinne was reading up on it.

And you can actually call the infectious disease hotline at the cdc correct and you could submit a biopsy and they'll run your test so what i want to do is get however you do that and we could take them right here and mail them in to see what happens it's like a little hole punch. Oh, you got to take a chunk of meat? They're saying you can send, am I right? I'd like to see that.

That's what I understand. Oh, I would love to do it. The bear that gave us trichinosis when we went through the CDC, because it's a CDC reportable disease, and they took some of our bear meat. Five, I remember calculating it out to 500,000 cists per pound. Incredible. Because it was hundreds per gram. Yeah, it was like 800 per gram in that muscle tissue. So a pound of that bear meat would have 500,000 cists.

Has trichinosis not got a little bit of a bad rap? Because I think most people think it's worse than it is. That's right. They think that if you get it, you're, I mean, it's just going to, like, toast your whole life. But, I mean, it's like you said, you just kind of felt sick for a few days, and that was it. And then you would have got over it and never even known you had it in your natural, I mean just would have got over it what happens 90 of the time with trichinosis infections is it because you don't know nobody cuts two and two together if i didn't if i hadn't had if we hadn't been in communication because we worked together and four of us hadn't gotten it and we hadn't been together

in a month and we all got weirdly sick on the same day and my brother didn't drink beer with the state epidemiologist in alaska we wouldn't know that same day, and my brother didn't drink beer with the state epidemiologist in Alaska, we wouldn't know that it happened. And my brother's wife is a doctor. We need a shirt that says, Trick ain't that bad after all. We might attract it down that way. She had a little light bulb that went off in her head. Well, I think that inhibits.

No, I would love to send it in. I think that's an inhibitor for people psychologically for eating bear meat. It's the question I get all the time. What about trick? What about trick? And I'm just like, man, it's a non-issue. Number one, you'll probably never get it. You'll eat bear meat your whole life and never get it if you just practice general safe handling meat practices.

Trichinosis dies instantaneously in the low 140 degrees. Instantaneously. And so it's like it's not that big of a deal. No, it's not that big of a deal. No, it's not. When I bought one of those stupid $1,200 pills, but I was too late to take it. And the, what do you call them at a drugstore? The pharmacist, she was saying, I'm not telling you what to do here, but I sell, you know, that pill is $7 for a dog.

And then she says, but I don't know about the dosing and all that, but that's a $7 deworming pill. And, uh, and then she went on to tell me that when she was in the Peace Corps, they would, when they were working in equatorial Africa, they would go into a village and they would just deworm everybody. Like without even asking questions. Just knowing that everybody. They all had worms. Yeah.

They all had Trichinosis. Yeah. So she just cut, that was like part of the course. Check your teeth, give you a deworming pill. Yeah. Very widespread. Most people don't, like you get it, you don't know you had it.

So Trich isn't like Lyme that goes in a growl and comes backwards. It goes away pretty much. It goes away and then your meat stays infected for some period of time. You carry the cysts for some period of time. Yeah, unless something eats, you know, your flesh and then the process begins again.

Life cycle. Yeah, we need to get a little core thing that pulls out 0.2 to 0.5 grams of human skeletal muscle tissue. Maybe you should go to the hospital to have that done. Well, hey, I'll tell you, I know how to, like, I had a. I know you do your own surgery on your toe. No, but listen to this. I had a, I thought I had a wart on my hand one time and this dermat dermatologist kept freezing it and freezing it and freezing it and it wouldn't go away. And eventually she's like, I wonder if

that's maybe not a wart. I still have a little mark from it. And she took one of those little cores and cored it all out of there and sent it to a lab and it was a foreign substance that was stuck in my finger. But zero pain. So that inspired you to maybe do it on your own next time?

Yeah, I definitely want to do it. EMT wrote in. It's an interesting thing he was writing in. You know when you do a joke to your kids and you eat a bug or a little minnow or something like that? This guy, he's a paramedic, and they get a call down to a lake, and it's because the guy is choking on a whole live fish.

Gets down to a popular fishing area and he arrives on the scene. There's a man standing next to the roadway and you can visibly see a fish's tail sticking out of his mouth. Coughing up a red frothy blood. Tried to swallow a bluegill. His wife said he'd been drinking. Quite heavily. Tried to impress his kids by swallowing a five-inch bluegill and its dorsal spine has got stuck in his throat.

Wow. In the emergency room, he gets to coughing and finally hacks up the fish Lands on the cot Five inch bluegill Think about that Not very smart Wow

At least his kids Are super impressed though Yeah Yeah Now This is helpful That Tracy's here Because this is part of

The reason Tracy's here Is the book of Chetaket So Chester has been offering to the audience to produce a book of outdoor etiquette. He wanted to do a book of fishing etiquette. Yeah, but I think it could be just outdoor recreation, hunting would be even better. You need to specialize, man.

Outdoor media, you need to specialize. That's not even remotely true. That's not even remotely true. I mean, Meat Eater specializes in the greater outdoors. Listen, dude, when it comes to a book, like a book like that, you do not want to specialize. Well, okay. Hear me out.

Well, then, okay. Clay? clay then you gotta hear clay out no you go first tell me why you'd specialize hey i i have made i have made a living through niche niche however we want to say it through niche media but But the Bear Grease podcast. Bear Honey Magazine would be very specialized. So I just think for Chester, I know Chester. I've been around Chester. I feel like he's going to be a specialist more than just this broad market guy. It's just my thing. I agree with Clay. Interesting.

I would say you have potential to maybe be a broad market guy. Thank you, Tracy. You're not looking at it the right way. Here's why the book of Chattakit should be broad based. Because if you did Chester's book of fishing etiquette and marketed that book, okay? Like we self-published this book. We market the book of Chattakit. And it's fishing etiquette.

And then you're like, oh, then we'll do a whole bunch more books down the road. Where it's like Chester on this, Chester on that, Chester on trail hiking, whatever the hell. I feel like if we just did the book of outdoor cheticate and it covered all facets of outdoor etiquette, you would sell a shitload more than if it was

just Chester's book of fishing etiquette. Maybe not. I think that's inaccurate. I think that's true. Not everyone fishes. I guess I need to get dialed in on how serious we're actually being here. Is this like a joke or is this for real? Some might wish it was a joke,

but some might wish it was dead serious. Chester's idea is in the 2022 pipeline. Am I wrong? Absolutely. It's going to be considered. Am I wrong? Absolutely. It's going to be considered. I brought it to Tracy. Chester needs to advocate on his own idea.

I would like to. Absolutely. I can see the cover of the book. Okay. In the town I'm from originally in Arkansas, there's an insurance agent that's real well-known. He's an old guy, real just inviting-looking guy. And there's huge billboards of him all over the town

holding his hands out like this. Like he just holds his hands out and he's kind of got an awkward smile. Like he's got insurance settlements. And it says, welcome to the town. And then it tells his insurance agency, I see a cover with Chester

with his hands out like, Chetakut. You see what I'm saying? Big fish in his hands or just empty handed? Listen, everybody. Everyone thinks this is a joke, but I think there is a lot of people out there

that can benefit from it. You go to every trailhead, every boat ramp, every hiking trail, people don't know what's going on and they need something like a little Bible that tells them what's going on. And I think it could really be awesome. You know what I put on the first page? When you're walking your dog, and you're going up the hill, and your dog goes to the bathroom, and you bag it, and you set it alongside the trail.

I agree. I know you're thinking that you're going to grab it on the way down, but you won't. You won't. A lot of people don't. It'll live there in a bag on the side of the trail. That's the most infuriating thing. It is.

Put that in that damn book. I will. Another great example. That's the dog chapter. Let me just paint a picture for this area really quick. So imagine you're floating down one of the popular rivers in Montana. It's July 30th. It's 85 degrees, beautiful day, and it's a Saturday.

We got tubers floating down the river. We have recreational rafters. We have fishing guides. And for people that don't know, you put in at a fishing boat ramp, you'll float downstream and you'll take out at another boat ramp. That could be five miles. That could be 10 miles. Doesn't matter. So you're floating down the river, having a great time and you pull up to the boat ramp and there is a line of about six angry fishing guides waiting at the boat ramp and a bunch of tubers with their coolers sitting out and beer cans and whatnot and everyone's upset what do you think the problem is steve people are blocking the ramp yes so and people are

pulling up to the ramp not prepared to do what they need to do they're getting they're pulling up and then preparing yeah so people don't even really know what that means they're like what well there's a loading and offloading area at these fishing access points. So you should be way away. I think you should just call them they're not necessarily fishing access points, right? They're just boat ramps. They're just public access. Yes. Right? Boat ramps. He's trying to get like an editor gig

on this book, I think. Anyways, you load your boat up, you take your boat straps off. Well, no, it's important because it's not like anybody has more right to be there than anybody else. I agree. The fishing guides don't have any more right to be there because it's not like a fishing boat ramp and the tubers

are like encroaching. That's a point we'll take. But if you look on Onyx, it says fishing access site. That's who pays for it. Fishermen pay for it. Not that it's just for fishermen. The book can't be hierarchical yes it can't be like if you're on a horse you're more important than a person on foot or whatever yeah but let me

finish really quick i'll sum it up so you you load your boat up and there's a line of people waiting you pull in behind that line get your life jackets ready get your kids in the boat get your cooler all set get your plugs in and then you wait in line and everyone takes their turn unloading and offloading. And, you know, people just don't know that. So little bit, little bit. And as we discussed, lots of little things. When there's a horse coming down the trail, what is proper etiquette?

Exactly. When you have a backpack on, when you have a dog, all the etiquette stuff. You go down the trail, get off the trail, but go downhill instead of uphill so you don't spook the horses. Wait for them to go by. Yeah, or like when you walk into your duck hunting spot in the morning and someone's there. What do you do? I like the idea. Shoot off over in their direction.

I like the idea. I think it would sell. But six years from now, 10 years from now, you still have six angry guides at that boat landing. Of course. Oh, you mean like you're bringing existential stuff into this? Like, does it really matter? Yeah. I don't know.

I don't think he's going to start a revolution. Chester the Divestor's Book of Outdoor Chetiket. That might be a little long. We'll figure it out. Pat, it might drop it down to just four or five. Okay. What do you think, Trace? Are you going to green light this thing or not?

Absolutely, Chester. Dude, you don't need to wait. You don't need to go through the normal process. You absolutely need to go through the normal process. We make no exceptions here. I'm compiling some stuff. Great news. But I think you just did a lot for yourself, buddy.

Are you going to have guest writers? I'd like to write a... Definitely. I'd like to be the author for the raccoon hunting. Definitely. I don't want to give away all my ideas here because I've got some good ones, but definitely some help. You could do the horse or mule on a trail.

Absolutely. Get out of the way. And don't forget me because I'm sure I'll have some ideas. Perfect. Ice fishing etiquette. You got just a regular employment agreement? You got a contract over here? I mean,

I'm assuming just regular employment agreement. You really end up talking about employment agreements on the show. Well, I don't want people having good ideas and running off and doing them on their own. Steve, I'm not going to screw you over. I got nowhere else to go. I don't like the idea there. This is Jester's home.

Okay, Yanni's good. It's time for Yanni's book report. Play the tune. Play Yanni's book report promo. Yanni's book report. He's going to do a book report on an article, which is the best kind of book report. And it is an exploration of animals and PTSD.

Yeah. But what this book report is going to turn into is there's going to be discussion about how some journalists and reporters treat wildlife topics and how their anti-hunting bias shows through. But the, the basic gist of this article, which you can find on, uh, Knowable magazine, it's a knowablemagazine.org. Yeah, but they're, they're, they're covering a, here, go on.

Um, everybody knows the classic snowshoe hare and, and, hare and lynx cycle that we talk about, right? Lynx populations go up, snowshoe hare populations go down, and they sort of follow each other. And for a long time, everybody just thought that it was just based upon more predators, eat more rabbits, hares, then they go down. And because there's not enough food for the lynx to eat, then their population crashes, less predators, the hare population goes back up. Well, now they're doing some research and figuring out that it's not quite that simple, that there's this basically PTSD in these animals that is causing like just a more nuanced version of this cycle

where because, and when there's a high predator population, the prey, not only are they getting eaten a bunch, but they're so stressed out and they're like living in hiding so much that the females are producing fewer and lesser young. So that in itself is sort of increasing, you know, right, the lack of the prey population and causing it to go down. And so they're studying all this. Let me know when there's a good minute for me to interject something. Anytime. A researcher in Fairbanks did some work on snowshoe hare lynx cycles.

Mm-hmm. And they pointed to, you know, plant toxicity. Mm-hmm. So willows being a primary food source, plants respond to grazing by increasing their toxicity. Mm-hmm. So they had done a bunch of research about you have low hair numbers and plants aren't putting as much, willow doesn't put as much energy. You ever bite a willow limb that like.

Sure. That taste. They don't put as much energy into producing that because it's not being heavily grazed and they put more energy into growth. The low toxicity allows snowshoe hares to start consuming more willow. They consume more, they have bigger broods, they become numerous.

Willow starts cranking out shitloads of plant toxicity. It becomes a toxic food source. That's what Heath says. That's part of why I felt this was inexpertly reported. Well, I think it just points to that. It's like, it's a, there's a, it's more nuanced than they thought it was, right? Which is the great thing about science. We're constantly learning more and more about it.

But here's where it gets a little tricky and what I didn't like so much about the article is that they started talking about some elephants. And they said that elephants were decreasing in numbers in certain parts of Africa and that it was basically due to culling, habitat loss, and poaching. Then the next sentence, the writer said that a lot of the young elephants had watched their family members being slaughtered, right? Well, that word is, you can use it in a butchering sense. You slaughter animals at like a butcher house, or it's like to slay or a massacre or to demolish completely, right? Those three things, sure, poaching is a pretty bad deal, but legal culling is not that, you know, it is what it is, right? And habitat loss is certainly not slaughtering. So that got my blood pressure up a little bit.

The other thing I didn't like so much is that they have a, are you looking at the article now, Steve? Yeah, I'm skimming through it and I'm looking at the. Illustrations? The peer reviewed. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The lasting effect of trauma. Clay, you can see this too.

It shows basically what's going on in the brain, right? As there's some trauma and then how much you forget, like kind of correlates to how bad the trauma was. Right. And it sort of shows down that like, the more there is trauma, the more animals remember this. And then, you know, the less they're feeding and the less healthy they are. And in the end, there's less offspring, right? Well, their versions of trauma are a startling sudden sound like thunder. And then the next two versions are a hunter in a kneeling position. He's not really quite doing it right.

Yeah, he doesn't have his elbow on his knee. He's a super predator. Yeah, another thing, right? When did we become super predators? Is that a thing? Are we like no longer the equivalent of lions and alligators and great white sharks? Now we're

super predators? Him missing the deer is him missing the deer is 75% more trauma than the lightning. But then when he hits the deer in the ass, which again, you just like portray hunters just like it's terrible, right? That is their version of like the fear plus physical trauma where, I mean, they could have chosen to have a lion or a mountain lion jumping on this, uh, what looks to be a mule deer does back. Uh, but instead they chose to use a super predator shooting and hitting her in the rear end. Um, that, that caused a whole bunch of trauma and a little bit of offspring,

but just like we talked about the hairs and like your willows, what is cool is at the end, they're showing that like fewer offspring produces also not only less prey, but more abundant vegetation, thus allowing the population to eventually rebound significantly. Do they get into in here, do humans who suffer PTSD have lower reproductive rates? Well, that's another thing they didn't get into. This article is a tough one to do a book report on. Because they start comparing this PTSD in animals to human

PTSD, and sort of the question is, is PTSD just a human thing or can it be for animals too? Because you can't really ask the deer, hey, how you, how you feeling, you know, since Steve shot you in the butt and you ran up. And some people say, look, it's just,

it's totally a human thing because, you know, we can talk about it and it's in your head and it's not in animals, but whatever. People are going to continue researching and go on. But yeah, there's a lot of things that they say are the outcome in animals from this PTSD, but they never relate that to the human. What you'd see likewise in a human.

Yeah. Huh. I was kind of lying when I said I read it. I skimmed it. Did they get- Oh, go ahead, Pat. Did they get into dread? You know, like one of the arguments I've heard

from World War II- Say that again. Dread. The word D-R- heard from World War II. Say that again. Dread. The word D-R-E-A-D. They did not. In World War II, after the battles at Anzio, this guy did some, I think he's a doctor, did some really cool research into the

wounded men. And he found that a lot of things they thought were pain, why they were writhing around so much and screaming and hollering a lot of things they thought were pain, why they were writhing around so much and screaming and hollering a lot, they thought was physical pain they were expressing. And they found in some cases, many cases, that just by administering a sleeping drug to make them sleep, they'd quiet down and they'd get better.

You know, they'd start relaxing a little bit. And they started to realize a lot of the stuff that we think is pain is actually dread. These guys knew what was happening that with their leg gone, with any number of body parts missing, part of their head missing, what they had to look forward to the rest of their life. And it was just driving them nuts. That was agonizing. And that was agonizing. And that was agonizing. Yeah. And yet, and then, then this doctor was saying, of course, some people would argue today, you know, 80 years later that, that maybe animals had that capacity to some degree that to look forward with dread.

And that's the thing I I've often wondered myself, but I think I have a hard time believing a white tail deer with life expectancy in the wild of, you know, even an unhunted population of 10 years, that they could possibly have developed the kind of emotions and forward-looking things that humans are capable of. So that's what I, when I hear about PTSD, I think, yeah, geez, I don't know. I can see it because, you know, because there are things like in the breeding world with the deer breeding world, the deer farms. They do find that by putting a fence up with black backing so they can't see in the outside world. So a coyote coming along the edge of the fence line won't bother them on the inside. That they can generate bigger antlers when they reduce that stress from the outside world yeah that researcher from university of wyoming uh kevin monteith

remember that episode we had landscape of fear but he kind of like he debunked that a little bit it was the idea that by bringing wolves into the yellowstone ecosystem that you were creating a landscape of fear kind of similar what they're talking about that you were like a landscape of fear, kind of similar to what they're talking about, that you were inducing PTSD on this whole population of elk and behavioral changes. And did he, was he into that? I can't remember what the hell he said about that. We even named the episode after it, The Landscape of Fear.

Like what that, like inducing that amount of stress of elk just watching elk after elk after elk after elk get killed like after wolves i mean after wolves came to yeltsin you had elk herds declined by 75 percent it's enormous amount of death to behold wouldn't that though be a natural process of an animal adapting to predation that would actually make them stronger, more, more able to survive. So, so I mean, it just. No, but they're saying, that's what they're saying that PTSD is natural and then it makes

a hypervigilant animal and those that. So it's, it's a good thing. It allows the species to continue on. Because if you don't become hypervigilant, then you end up being hosed. I was going to say, growing up in Pennsylvania where they have like the highest hunter density per capita out of any other state, deer are getting shot at all the time. And they have super high fecundity.

And I, most years, does seem to have twins. I've seen does with up to five fawns and many times triplets. Like, I don't know. I would think those deer were, would have a high, high amount of stress with the amount of people out there shooting at them and stuff, but they're still pumping out fawns. Uh, Heffelfinger quoted Stephen Gould. I wasn't remembering.

He's like, there's a lot of stories that are just so stories where you think there's like a thing going on, but there's actually not. And it's just a, it's a just so story. 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

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OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. All right, Clay, hit us on the old foot. This is my favorite news article to come out in six months. Have you looked at this? Oh, yeah, man.

He skimmed it. No, no, no. I read this big time. There's certain things that will happen, and a lot of people all text it to me. Many people text me this shit. It's fascinating, man. Well, in the White Sands National Park in New Mexico, they found some new footprints. So White Sands has the largest number of fossilized human footprints in North America prior to this.

So it's known that there are places where you can go see all these human footprints, and they're on this ancient lake Otero, O-T-E-R-O. And basically in 2019, they decided to do some excavation over the top of, for whatever reason, they chose a site. And they excavated down deeper than they ever had. And they found this series of human footprints that are just beautiful human footprints. And they believe them to be teenagers and adolescent kids. And so to give a broad overview of the story, and then I'd like to dive in and kind of tell the significance of this find. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So we covered another white sandands foot they call them ghost prints right i hadn't heard that we covered another set of footprints that came out of white sands where a woman they believe was a woman based on the configuration the footprint was carrying a child her foot when she had the child on her hip her i think her like right foot would go in deeper now and then she'd set the child down. The child would walk away. She'd pick it back up. She came back later down the same path without the child.

And in the time between when she went and came back, a giant ground sloth had crossed her trail. Wow. Incredible. It's wild, man. So these footprints predate her prints. By a lot. Yeah. It's wild, man. So these footprints predate her prints. Yeah, by a lot. Yeah. And so basically, it was two years ago that they discovered these prints just in September. They released their studies of what they believed.

And so the way that they date these is they find these layers and inside these layers of sediment, and some of it's fossilized rock, but apparently there's some where they were able to take grass seeds from that same layer and carbon date those grass seeds. And basically, that's how they understand the age of these footprints. And so these footprints are believed to be 21 to 23 000 years old which now has become the oldest known evidence of humans in north america to date and there's a there's a bunch and this is like full academic consensus because you remember when they found that site in chile and they was verde monteverde and they're like this is the oldest known site of human habitation in the New World.

Okay. And everybody went down. Like David Meltzer went down there. All the anthropologists went down there. Highly skeptical. They went down. They did a site survey. And they came away and said, yes.

Okay. It just became like, it became as established of a fact as can happen. Man, that's what I'm learning with some of the study I'm doing right now for some Bear Grylls stuff is how these archaeological finds take sometimes decades before it becomes consensus. I actually emailed David Meltzer about footprints, and he said, if they are what they say they are, this is a very, very significant find. But there still is a question of if but there's

also in all the articles out of whack the idea that humans had to come down during these specific interglacial periods right yeah and so there's still some stuff to come but they it's pretty legit because there's other really legit archaeological people that are dead you know are saying they're putting their stamp on it saying this is for real um so two years two years ago they discovered these um they they started knowing they found footprints in white sands like 80 years ago uh there's there's a whole series of these footprints. There's footprints of a human stalk, what they presumed was stalking a ground sloth. Like there's a ground sloth footprints

with human footprints inside of them, or it was at least following the path of a ground sloth. So this is what helped me understand it. And Steve, tell me if you follow this line. But prior to 1927, they thought that humans arrived in North America like 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. This was prior to. So that was like in the 1920s, less than 100 years ago. They thought Native Americans, indigenous people had only been here for like 3,000 years. And there is talk that that was a mentality that was propagated to kind of justify manifest destiny.

It's not that bad. I mean, they've been here that long. They've been here that long, yeah. Okay, and then in 1927 is when the Folsom site in New Mexico became stamped by the archaeological world as legit. And that Folsom site in New Mexico became stamped by the archaeological world as legit. And that Folsom site in New Mexico, I mean, we could talk about that for forever, but basically- Well, they had a stone spear point stuck inside of an Ice Age species.

Right. You couldn't argue with it. And so they dated that back to 10,000 years. So all of us, in 1927, it was like, holy cow, humans were here when it was a bison antiquus skull or a bison antiquus kill site. They found these stone points. They now call them Folsom points. But that rewrote history.

They've been here 10,000 years. But what's interesting- That wasn't fair chase either, man. They corralled them into a box canyon and killed them all in the head of the canyon. Yeah, yeah. So what's wild, though, is that there were multiple other sites that had bison antiquus bones with human artifacts inside of it that were not legitimate because they mishandled them. There were two other sites during that time period. So that shows you the archaeological world. Like they found probably legitimate sites in Texas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska

during the same time period and were not legitimized by archaeology. Because some dude picks up the point and throws it in his pocket. He takes a picture of it on his phone.

And then he's later like, no, that's where I found it. Yep, exactly. Okay, and then in the 19... That's why we can take some advice from Taylor Keene, maybe. Yeah.

Yeah. Just leave it laying. So 1927, we believe we've been here 10,000 years. In the 1930s is when they found the Clovis site,

which is in Clovis, New Mexico. It was a similar situation. They found this, whatever they found. Blackwater Draw. You been to that type site? No, I hadn't been there. I hadn't been there.

And Clovis dated human arrival in the Americas back to around 13,000 years. That's what I read. Is that what you would have said? Yeah, it was a mammoth kill site. So 11,000 to 13,000 years.

Okay. Stepping it back. Monte Verde in Chile, which is wild because if, well, that site basically dated human arrival into this part of the new world quote unquote to 14.5 000 years ago so that's monte verde you know they make a sandwich down there it's like roast beef sandwich with french cut green beans on it holy shit is that good man they call it in chile or they call it the monte verde no i had it down there um i was thinking yesterday about making some of those sandwiches. In Monteverde, they ate ancient potatoes and seafood.

They found it in there. And they had rawhide made out of mastodon leather tied around a tent stake, didn't they? Wow. Yeah, I think that was. Okay, so I'm walking us back. So now we're back to 14.5 000 years so in 2017 they came out with this with the with a a a they released stuff on cooper's ferry on the salmon river in idaho which dated human arrival in the americas back to 16 000 years ago which that would have been a water and that you know you could have a whole podcast

on this steve but we're going back to the White Sands thing. Yeah. But the Cooper's Ferry site on the Salmon River in Idaho indicated a water travel arrival because they basically would have come from Kamchatka and Japan and all over there, come around the coast, and then basically took a left- Past my cabin. Past Steve's cabin, took a left on the Columbian River up the Columbian River up the Snake River so that's why look at that shitty A-frame

oh moldy and so so this these these footprints if they're they say they're

21 to 23,000 years old basically date back human arrival an additional 5,000 years. And here's the crazy thing about it. It's not the oldest place. What are the chances they found the footprints of the oldest?

That's like the first person? Right. There's all the junk you'll never find. Yeah. That's just the junk you'll never find. Yeah. I was at... That's just the oldest they've found. I was at the Folsom site, and I don't want to go into a tangent just this week in New Mexico. The Folsom dig site is probably 50 feet by 50 feet.

I'm sitting there with a guy, and I said said how do we not know that there's another bison kill in a whole village like right there and they go we don't know when I was in that was it Wild Horse Arroyo? yeah I was standing there and the arroyo moved a little bit and I'm standing there with the archaeologist

and there's a bone sticking out of that bank I wanted to pull that bone so bad, man. That dude was no way. He took a GPS cord on it and took photographs, and I was like, let's just yank it out of there, man. That dude was not going to pull that bone out of that bank. Oh, I would have ripped that thing out of there

if he had looked the other direction. It was just killing me that you couldn't, yeah. Steve, stop me if I'm going too long here. they're now so so that dates us back to 21 000 years or 23 000 years but a way now that they're and this is all news to me these are things i'm learning and you probably know more about well i didn't know about this till when you knew about it. Well, but a way now that they're trying to understand how long we've been here is based on genetics of indigenous people. So I've got a quote here.

Genetists now calculate based on mutation rates in human DNA that the ancestors of the Native Americans parted from their kin in their East Asian homeland sometime between 25,000 and 15,000 years ago.

So basically, so they're able to take the DNA data from indigenous people in North America today and say, well, they left their cousins back in Asia maybe 25,000 years ago and they had to go somewhere and they came this way so now they're more than just like finding stone points in the ground yeah they're able to understand and yeah they don't know where you know they don't know the journey they don't know what happened but just like they parted genetic tracks maybe as far as 25 000 years ago and when you start digging through all this stuff what's so confusing is that there is a ton of places that are not, are not stamped by archeology is legit. You know, there's a place in California that they claimed for a while was 130,000 years

old evidence. And you know, they're pretty much like, no. But there's these ancient sites down in South America. When we're trying to decide where people came from to get to the New World, you heard Taylor Keene on Bear Grylls Podcast saying that the Cherokee cosmology, I think they call it, just their stories of how their people got here

as they came from the South. You know? And, and, and so just, it's a convoluted world. And it's why, I absolutely love it

because in a day where we think we know so much, we really know so little. We just, humans get so hyped up about all the stuff they know. But really, man,

we know nothing. We know nothing. On nothing on that bear grease episode one of the more interesting things that you were talking about with the cumberland gap as we think of like coming from a euro-american perspective you think of that you went west east to west the cumberland, and that you went west on the Oregon Trail. But if you look how the Western Hemisphere was populated, the first people to do the Oregon Trail were probably headed the other way. Yeah. Yeah. They were headed east. Headed east.

They headed east through the Cumberland Gap. First humans through that gap most likely came from east to west. One of the biggest things about these tracks, fascinates me is they're barefoot. And maybe if you're not barefoot, it doesn't hold up well. But I spent some time in Arctic Alaska with some anthropologists, and they were talking about that one way to time – they felt that to time human migrations through Siberia and into the Western Hemisphere would be that they felt that it had to be –

it had to correlate to the invention of the eyed needle. That you had to have tailored clothing. Because these people were spending generations in an Arctic landscape. But then you find like barefooted individuals in these tracks. And it's like, do they wear, do they have boots in the winter?

Do you know what I mean? Do they prefer to be barefoot? Did they, like, insulate their feet? Yeah. That Otzi dude they found in the Italian Alps, he had some sweet boots made out of three kinds of hides. Like, uppers, lowers, and soles are made from three different kinds of animals. I bet they wore boots when they had to. And you had them packed full of grass.

Hey, can I tell the story about your daughter and her dream? You bet. Okay. So my daughter, she's now in her late teens. She's 18. When she was young, she did not wear shoes, Tracy. I'm looking at Tracy because Tracy's a mother now. Yes.

Uh-huh. She did. She just, we could hardly make her wear shoes, you know. And when you don't wear shoes. She's a total hillb shoes arkansas hillbilly well i guess i guess she's not at all she and when you don't wear shoes your toes spread out shoes make your feet narrow and so the track of a human that wears shoes all the time is your toes are like this like tight together white sands tracks, you can see air

between their toes. Giannis, so okay, I was at Giannis' house eating dinner with his family and his two little girls. I was telling them about my daughter

because they kind of reminded me of my girls just running around. And I said, my daughter, when she was little, she wouldn't wear shoes. And her feet

looked like an indigenous person. If River Nkem made a foot track on the ground you'd be able to see gaps in her toes and uh the girls just kind of listened to me and they didn't say a thing like they they didn't seem that impressed with my story of river's toes the next day yannis uh email or messages me and he says clay my daughter woke up this well you tell her you tell him what she said. I think you're going to remember better. I'm forgetting the details.

His daughter came in and said, Daddy, I had a dream and I was barefoot and you could see the ground between my toes. The story impactors so much that she's out there dreaming about having feet like this. So Giannis messages me the picture, and he says, look at the gaps between those toes. That's how I found out about this was through Giannis. That's good. Yeah, Mabel's quite the runner, so she was probably thinking subconsciously as she slept

if maybe a wider footprint would make her faster. A while ago we were talking about a yeah a doctor had written into us about removing a guy's leg or bones out of his leg and the guy wanting the bones to make stuff out of and i think he thought that he was fixing to make a truck like the shifter knob on his truck well that guy's kid a person wrote in thinking I'm pretty sure that my old man is the person you're talking about. And what he ended up doing is making a little robot thing out of his leg bones. It's a paperweight, Steve. What's that?

It's a paperweight. Yeah, it's like a robot paperweight out of his own leg bones. So it's always that mystery. All right, Pat. own leg bones. So it's always that mystery. Alright. Pat. I want to get into all the death articles you've been writing.

Okay. Do you feel that were you interested in that when you're young? Or do you feel like it's like being in the autumn of your life? Or what is it? Funny you should in that when you're young? Or do you feel like it's like being in the autumn of your life? Or what is it? Funny you should mention that. That's one thing I love about coming on your podcast. I never knew what the hell you were going to ask me.

No. First of all, I wanted to say that before I even touch on that, that I'm not a person who likes horror movies. I can't watch scary movies. Uh-huh. I don't, I can't watch scary movies. They just really do not agree with me. So that is not part of my makeup. You know, people ask me that quite a bit, but to get to your question, I think about that and I trace it back to, it does go back to the fact that I'm 65 years old now.

And I know, I'm, I know now I'm in the final season, you know, and. Pat, say it's not so man. And,

and what, what the connection I make where I realized this is something that's fascinated me all my life is that my, I've written about this, Meteor has published at least one of my articles about it that i grew up in the home i grew up in my grandmother my dad's mother lived with us and so when i was a kid when i became of an age where i could start interacting with her and having memories of her i was about now where she was then. And what always struck me about her is she was always aware of the fact she was on her final, final, um, in the final season.

And, but she was not morbid. She was not fatalistic. She was just matter of fact about it. And one of the things that, one of my memories of that time was we would, on Sundays after Mass, often, not often, but every now and then, she'd take us to her future grave site just to show us this is- Where she'd be. Where she'd be. And one of the things as a little kid I used to ponder was, she'd say, the view from up here is so spectacular. It's west of Madison, looks toward Madison,

Wisconsin. You see the state capital off in the distance. And of course, my little mind would think, but granny, you're in the ground. You know, how, you can't see, you know, you'll, you'll be able to appreciate this scene. That's a good point, man. But I remember having that little thought.

You feel like a little periscope. Out of the dirt. Maybe the view wasn't for her, it was for the visitors. That's true. And that's another thing. She was the kind of person who would think of things like that besides herself. But she had that awareness.

And I always liked the idea that, you know, with her, you never knew, yeah, it's the final season, but are you going to make it to Columbus Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, or New Year's Eve. She didn't know. She didn't care. She just, you know, went on with her life. It was just kind of a cool thing as a little kid to have that perspective that I've never forgotten. And one of the little tangible things that stick with me is she'd be out in this garden. She's a gardener until way late in life until she got physically where she could not move around in her gardens. And she would still, every time she got a new tool, always painted the handle red.

So when she'd lay it down, she'd always find it. Mm-hmm. Didn't have to look around. So to this day, I still have some of her tools out in my garage, those red handles. And I think, here's a woman, you know, 85 years old at some point, these little claw rake things that she used in these, these holes, the red handle. I thought, I still have that.

It's kind of cool. Yeah, yeah. And then, but the other thing from my youth that I remember was I was always, well, I was seven years old when Kennedy was killed, John Kennedy or President Kennedy. And. How old? Seven. I was in second grade when, when the teacher came in and told us President Kennedy. How old? Seven. I was in second grade when the teacher came in and told us.

I was down in art class, so I have a real vivid memory of John Kennedy's death. And one of the things that struck me going home was, you know, like they let us out of school, so it's kind of like, hey, cool, we get to go home. And you get home, and everyone's crying. My dad's crying. My dad's crying. My mom's crying. And it really hit me that, God, I've never seen my dad cry before. This is fascinating shit.

But I still couldn't quite understand what the big deal was. I mean, I knew it was a death, but I still didn't really comprehend it. And then as I got older, I started reading these. I used to love reading biographies. I still do. And I'd read reading biographies. I still do. And I'd read these biographies when I was like in middle school. They're still a little more adult now. Um, and I was reading about John Kennedy and one of the things he was haunted by was people dying in their prime and even before their prime.

He himself was haunted by that. He himself. Yeah. That he was really something that really lived in him, that he really worried about it and thought about it a lot. And now I think it's probably because he was in World War II. He fought in the PT boats up in the Pacific and had life and death experiences.

People died in his boat when they, Japanese destroyer cut it in half, which when I was a kid, one of these great war stories that you knew, every kid my age knew the John Kennedy and PT-109 story. So anyway, the thing that always struck me all these years later is that when he was in the White House, he became aware of this poet named Alan Seeger. He was a Harvard graduate like in 1910. And Alan Seeger wrote this poem. I should back up a little bit.

Alan Seeger, when he came out of college, he was, I said, 1910? Yeah. And when World War I started, he thought it was immoral that our country, the U S wasn't over helping France, and he was so taken by that and thought was so immoral that our country wasn't helping France that he joined the French foreign Legion and he wanted to join the regular French army, but he, but he couldn't cause he wasn't, wasn't from France. So he joined the French foreign Legion. Well, he, when he was at war then,

like in 1914, 15, and 16, he started writing war poems. And Kennedy so much loved this one poem called I Have a Rendezvous with Death. And he loved it so much that he made his, he didn't make, he asked his wife Jacqueline if she would memorize that entire poem.

And it's about as long as, well, I can show you real quick just so you entire poem, and it's about as long as, I mean, well, I can show you real quick just so you have an idea. It's like that long. He had her memorize it. And then every now and then he'd have that, get that mood come over him. And he'd ask his wife to recite it for him.

And she memorized it and she recited it for him. And, and just a real haunting poem that stuck with this guy. And the final four lines go something like, of a rendezvous with death at midnight in some flaming town. When spring trips north again next year to I, my pledge word

and true, I will not fail that rendezvous. So this guy knew, he had a real good feeling he was going to die in that war. And sure enough, when he was 28 years old, 1916, gets killed in this battle over in France. Really? Yeah. And, and then another fascinating thing about

Alan Seeger, if you know your music, 1950s, Peter Seeger, Pete Seeger wrote these famous songs that to this day we still sing like, If I Had a hammer, um, this land is your land. This land is my land. That was Peter Seeger was his nephew, Alan Seeger's nephew. And he's no Bob Seeger, but I know what you're talking about.

Right. Yeah. So, so that's, those, those two stories, I think always, um, resonated with me. And, and I always saw it later in life when I became a newspaper reporter in Oshkosh, Wisconsin back in the 1980s, I wanted to be an outdoor writer, and that's what I became. But looking back at times, I always thought, you know, I think I could probably have been a pretty good crime and police reporter. Because I was looking back on it, and I was an old guy, I think. I could picture myself being that reporter who the cops got to know and trust and say, hey, come over here. You got to work on this one.

Because I find it fascinating. Is it true that, I think it is, JFK's girlfriend died in her prime? Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. Tell everybody about how you almost weren't a person. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's another great story about my grandmother. Another brush with death.

Yeah, yeah. Before I was even a twinkle, yeah. I'm going to turn my hearing aid up on this one. Listen, listen to this. It's harrowing. How close we came to having no Pat Durkin. Nip and tuck. Oh, before you tell this one i want to remind you of uh we had a thing uh you used to write obituaries yeah and i remember you you wrote a collection pat wrote a piece about hunters obituaries like he collected you wrote a piece about this right

how the way hunters are remembered and you found an obituary of a hunter that said, like, the guy died at hunting camp. And then it ends with, but otherwise it was a successful trip. I think that was one of the first pieces we, like, shared of Pat's. We passed it around, that obituary piece. It was great. Thank you. So those kind of stories do stick with you. Yeah, a story about how I'm almost not here today.

In 1929, this had been like January 1929. So this is, keep in mind, this is right before the Depression. My grandmother, the one I just talked about, she was pregnant with what came to be my father. And 1929 was also the year of prohibition. And my dad's father wasn't too keen on the idea of having a fourth kid. You know, they were at the time a one-income family like everybody was back in 1929. And he was a firefighter in Madison, Wisconsin, my grandfather. And so he had this idea that they really couldn't have a fourth kid.

And this is a day before, this is an era before abortion clinics, all the modern medicine and stuff. So he took her downtown Madison, I think it was on East Washington Avenue or maybe West Washington Avenue. It's one of these roads that heads up to the Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. I think it was on East Washington Avenue or maybe West Washington Avenue. It's one of these roads that heads up to the Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. And one of the parts I like about the story is that the outside of the building, it said something like newsstand, some guy's newsstand. But then when you get inside, that was just kind of a front.

Inside was a speakeasy where they served drinks. And this is during the year of prohibition, so there's no drinking allowed. So my grandfather took my grandmother in there, and they had a few drinks. And then while he was trying to get her, basically get her not shit-faced drunk, but drunk. And then once he kind of had her in the right mood, he explained to her his thinking that they really shouldn't have this fourth kid. And maybe it's time, you know, just by a matter of coincidence here, you know, I'm making this part up, but he suggested to her that they take a little walk to the back end of this building. And the back corner of that building is basically a backdoor abortion clinic. And he wants her to abort what was my father. And of course, they had no idea it was my father,

but they wanted to abort the kid. You still can take it personally, though. Right. Of course. Damn right I do. And my grandmother, she's a good German Catholic. That was just not something that she would ever agree to. And she basically, I don't know, I doubt she would have told him to F off.

But she would have probably said something like that and just left and refused. And one of the parts of the story I've always. How did it get passed down to you though? Oh, I can tell you that. Let me finish my story and I can tell you the story. So then, so that was January and then my dad was born in July. My dad actually was born on July 4th.

You know, he always liked the fact he was born on the 4th of July. Um. That'd be a good name for a movie. Yeah. Sometime, sometime, I think it was like in August. So this is me, I'd like a month old or so.

Um, granny's house burned down. And she always told the story about how I always thought if I had aborted your father, I would have always thought it was God punishing me, bringing my house down. No. Yeah. And I didn't have enough sense at the time to ever ask her while she's alive, well, what did you tell yourself then? What was God punishing you for then to burn your house down?

It wasn't that. What was it? It wasn't that. Because to her kind of thinking, there was always retribution with her. And my maternal grandmother was the same way. I remember bonking my head on a door one time. I was like four or five years old. And she really smashed my head into a door that was standing open.

And as I'm standing there bawling my head off and her comforting me against her breast, she says, that's God punishing you. You must have done something wrong. And that's the way my other grandmother was too. You know, God's always punishing you for something. But the story, how it got passed down. My dad, my dad every now and then would make this joke in front of all of us that, yeah, if your

grandmother listened to my dad, you guys wouldn't be here. And then that, he never, my dad was never a storyteller though. And so I didn't really hear the whole story until later when a cousin of mine, Peggy, who you guys have met on her farm. Oh yeah, we hunted her place.

Yeah. She's kind of the family historian who, as Granny was getting older, she'd sit down with her and have her tell a lot of the stories and kind of fill in all the backgrounds from these stories. Yeah. One of my favorites.

That seems like such a thing that would be slapped under the rug, under the family rug, you know what I mean? Yeah, but it wasn't. It was pretty common knowledge. I didn't know a lot of details about it. I didn't know about this three-tier building where it went from a newsstand to drinking to a backdoor abortion clinic. Man, I wonder what the fourth section was.

It's a street. But, yeah, it always thought that, you know, and it wasn't either that, um, abortion wasn't a topic that came up really a lot in our family discussions. I mean, I remember my mother, my, um, my mother and my grandmother, paternal grandmother discussing it, but never in heated terms, never real emotion. It's kind of a matter of fact that, you know, this is one of these things that would happen quite often in the old days. Oh.

Yeah. Okay. Walk everybody through, um, with Durkin on death, we're going to review a bunch of your articles. Okay. So walk everybody through the, uh, the one called the savage murder of Warden Neal. How's he pronounce his last name? Neal Lefebvre. Lefebvre.

Yeah. The savage murder of Warden Neil LaFave. This is, if I was going to tell, give advice to aspiring young journalists, writers, any kind of writer really. The importance of getting out of your damn office and going out and doing things and meeting people face to face.

And that's where your stories a lot of times come from is face to face discussions and phone calls and stuff. I was duck hunting two years ago, and I'd kind of forgotten about the Neil LaFave case because it happened in 1971 when I was maybe 15 years old. And I kind of had a vague recollection of it. But it happened up by Green Bay, Wisconsin. And I'm from Madison, Wisconsin, which is about 140 miles to the southwest. So I was just kind of vaguely aware of it

and I'd forgotten about it into my adult life. Then when I was duck hunting a couple of years ago, we were at this boat landing. After we got done hunting, I was reading one of these placards that you often see in parks because it's another piece of advice from the old guy. Stop and read those historical markers.

They're fascinating. The things that we just blow past all the time. So I was reading this, and it kind of came back to me that, God, I can't remember that. But I didn't know the gruesome, terrible details of it. But the story I did this two-part series on about Neil Lafayette's murder. And Neil Lafayette, in that And Neil Lafayette in that era, and it's kind of, it's all faded away now, but in that era,

it wasn't uncommon for biologists, wildlife biologists from the Wisconsin DNR to also carry warden credentials. They get a little extra training so they could be law enforcement people. And Neil Lafayette was one of these guys who was doing the double duty

as a wildlife biologist and a conservation warden. And apparently he had run into this guy a number of times over the years. And one night, one afternoon, they think he was out posting into this wildlife area and heard shooting back in the wildlife area of 22. And thought that was, he probably thought that was unusual to be hearing 22 Rollins going off back in a marshy area, which is duck hunting. And hunters would know that people don't shoot 22s at ducks. It's a shotgun activity. So he went to investigate and they think, they think this Neil LaFave was murdered

by a guy named Brian Hussong, who was, I think, 28 years old at the time. And he lived. How old are you, Seth? 30. Oh. Just barely. I was like, you just look at Seth, try to picture that. Yeah.

The guy looks nothing like him. No, he actually did not look like you. But apparently, they think this, Hussan was back there intentionally trying to lure Lefebvre in there. Really? He had such a grudge against him because he had cited him for shooting a pheasant off-season the year before and they had other

confrontations and they think he's just a sick son of a bitch and was laying for the guy. And they, when they, I'll get ahead of my story, but when, when, um, when Lefebvre went in there to investigate them, they think Hassan ambushed him. He was 22 and he shot him repeatedly in the face.

Just shot him, is a brutal close range, killed the guy and he didn't just, didn't just shoot him once in the face. He basically unloaded, you know, his, his 22 semi-automatic rifle into the guy's face. And you'd assume he probably shot him while he's laying, fell backward, you know, too. And then he goes back out of the marsh and his grandmother lived on the side of the marsh. And went back there, retrieved a.30-06, his.30-06.

Came back into the marsh with a.30-06 in the shovel. Proceeded to, this is gruesome stuff. six, says 30 out six, came back into the marsh with a 30 out six and a shovel, proceeded to, this is gruesome stuff, he proceeded to blast away at Lefebvre's neck area until the neck area is pretty much just meat, and then sliced off the head, carried the head about 60, I think it was only like 60 feet, 70 feet north of there, buried the head face up, then buried it. And then buried the body back where he'd fallen, or he dragged him off a little ways, I think, to the south and buried him. And one of the sad, poignant parts of that story is that meanwhile, after this had taken place that evening, this was Neil LaFave, the warden's 32nd birthday.

So back home at the ranch. How old is Chester? 29. Oh, he's more like the killer. Oh, yeah. Sass the killer. Yeah, Chester's the killer, Sass the victim. Cleanly shaven was the guy.

You don't look like him either though. And, um, so back at, back at Neil Lafayette's home, his wife and his two, I think he had two daughters, I think they're like four years old and two years old. Oh, yeah. Were, um, were setting the house up for a surprise party for him. So they had guests over and everything else

waiting for him to come home. Guy never comes home, of course. And when, when they all finally just figured, well, you know, he's not coming back, so he might as well, you know, break up the party. So, um, this Peggy Lefebvre thought, boy, he's missing. This isn't like him. I bet she ran, had a run in with this Brian

Hussong, cause it is, he, she knew about the guy and the confrontations they'd had. So she went back to the wildlife area, found this truck, started looking for him and finally about 10 o'clock gave up, summoned, um, you know, knew about the guy and the confrontations they'd had. So as you went back to the wildlife area, found this truck, started looking for him and finally about 10 o'clock gave up, summoned the sheriff's department and they started looking for him that night.

They got people together, law enforcement people started looking for him. Didn't find him. Some of the guys worked, searched all night to find him. Never did find him that night. Next day they reconvened at dawn, started, they basically set up a skirmish line.

People are a few feet apart and start combing the wildlife area, breaking it down, gritting it out, just like you would do when you're, you know, looking for a lost animal when you're hunting. And a bull hunter showed up just to shoot his bull and practice his bull and saw what was going on and said, you know, he'd help.

So he joined in and started helping. Well, he happened to be the guy that came across a freshly beat up area. And he likened it to finding a fresh scrape that a bucket made. It was kind of circular, kind of fresh dirt. Things had been moved around and thought, well, that's weird. And he started scooping with his hands. And it's this, you know, marshy soil, you know, sandy sand, sand based, um, muskeg type stuff.

And right away found, ran into the belt buckle of Leland, Leland Faye's belt buckle. Realized, oh heck, this, here it is. Here he is. And they, um, so they all gathered and they, then they got us and they got the serious people in there to start uncovering the body. Well, I'm, as they've worked their way up, they realized the head's not there. So then they stopped, and then they summoned the crime lab from Madison

to come up to forensics people. And then they didn't arrive until, like, in the dark, resumed all the work. And right away, the law enforcement people really went to work and interviewed every hunter that had ever been in that area that they could find and started giving out lie taking sending um assigning people to do lie detector tests and of course the only hunter they came across that refused to take the test was this

Brian Husson you know he lured it up right away and was not cooperating at all and they were pretty sure he did it and what I the way I led my article that I did for Meat Eater about this was, I thought it was fascinating that the lead prosecutor, I can't pronounce his name, Ziedmiller, Don Ziedmiller, I think his name is. He was a hunter himself and he realized right away, he says to me, and he's still he's still

around he's actually a circuit judge in in green bay wisconsin he's in his late 70s now probably close to 80 years old now um but he remembered it thinking that you know the key to this crime solving this crime and making a conviction here is finding that 30 at six he said that 22 it's a half-assed.22, and that's probably long gone. He probably threw it in Green Bay for all we know. We'll never find that gun, but no one's going to throw away a.30-06 to your rifle.

And so they went to work, and this is 1971, remember. And this wasn't an era before. This ended up being the first time Wisconsin got a wiretap. Up until that time, wiretaps pretty much had been a federal government, U.S. Attorney General type stuff where, you know, like FBI could use it. But Wisconsin passed a law just recently that they could, in real specific terms, you could use a wiretap. So they set this wiretap up then on Brian Hussong's girlfriend because he didn't really have a place that he lived of his own. He lived with his girlfriend. And they eventually put the pressure to him by getting this wiretap

and then starting to set up a series of visiting his grandmother, visiting his aunt, all these people I knew he was close to and doing search warrants to smoke them out, hoping he would call one of them and let them know that, hey, they're up to something. And they even put a DNR warden to follow him around and basically pop up everywhere he showed up, pop up, make his presence felt. And eventually Hussang made the mistake where he called his grandmother and said, you know, they're up to something.

Don't let them find that gun. Don't let them find that rifle. And they got her on tape saying, you know, they won't find your rifle. And so then when they had that and they took that to a voice identification expert and said, yeah, it's definitely his voice. And they, then basically, you know, when they went to the grandmother's, went back to the grandmother, played the tape for her, she said, yeah, his aunt was here this morning and she, she has it now. So they quick drove to her place. I think they even brought the grandmother along and said, enough's enough, you know, give us that rifle. And she went in the back and I think, I think, um, she hadn't reburied it yet. It was still like in this plastic case,

plastic bag, it was still dirty and stuff, but it was all taken apart, placed real carefully into this plastic bag. So then they did the ballistic test on that rifle. And it was definitely the rifle that blew, you know, Vorden Lefebvre's, you know, neck apart. So then they prosecuted him and got him. And then, so that was part one of my piece. Okay.

The crazy thing about the savage murder of warden, Neil. Lafave. Lafave. Did I say Lafave? Yeah, you said Lafave. Think of that football player guy. Neil Lafave.

It was a part two. It was a part two. In part two, you know, 10 years later, he escapes from prison, big chase, big shootout, you know, death's not over. There's more death to come. We're going to keep talking to Pat here, but to find that part two and to find everything Pat writes about. Pat writes about all kinds of stuff besides people dying.

He writes a lot of news items. You can just go find him and all of his work for us at TheMeatEater.com and search up Pat. You'll find him in there. He's floating around all over. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians

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way points, and tracking. That's right. You were always talking about, uh, we're always talking about on X here on the meat eater podcast. Now you, um,

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As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. When you're a journalist and you spent your whole life as a journalist or your professional life outside of being in the Navy, when you go to dig up and you're just reporting on these kind of forgotten stories of wilderness murders and mayhem and whatnot, do you feel there's not, do you have an obligation where you need to do, to contribute original work to it?

Rather than just like rehashing crazy shit that people, like you're rehashing crazy shit that happened, but not doing anything. Right. Yeah, definitely. I, I, I try not, I mean, I still do a lot of Google searches on everything I write, but I still think there's nothing as good as a face

to face or a telephone interview. It got, you know, like this Dale Morey warden that I'd talked about in the article. Um, stories like that, where a man sleeps with a pillow, a gun under his pillow for months and months and months, and then finally puts the gun away when he knows the guy's dead. Those are the kinds of stories you don't get from Google, you know.

Yeah. And I just, you know, again, you sound like the old fart talking about in the good old days and shit, but, you know, the idea of making phone calls and driving over and knocking on doors, that's so crucial to being a good reporter and being a good storyteller, good writer, you know, and I think, but the thing is, I've spent most of my career behind the desk doing freaking phone interviews. You know, I don't get out from behind my desk enough. And every time I do, you're walking,

you never, that's the fun thing about what I do for a living. And I'm not kidding around this. I've gotten some of my best stories over the years in the bathroom. You walk in the men's room, you've been covering a meeting, people are saying shit back and forth, and they see you standing at the urinal, they walk over next to you and say, Durkin, if

you want something on this, talk to so-and-so. No, really? Yeah. Well, you guys are standing there taking a leak. Yeah. I never talked to anybody when I'm doing that. Yeah.

I don't know what it is, but, you know, it's just, I don't think it's just because it's a men's room, but I think part of it is the fact it's off the beaten path. It won't be seen talking to you because, you know, a lot of your best sources over the years end up being people that don't want to be seen talking to you. Ah, yeah. You know, because I have just enough hatred among my fellow hunters in Wisconsin who don't like me for various things I've written over the years where they don't like, they'll say to me, I don't want to be seen with you in this public meeting. And so they'll call me later and then talk to me then. Yeah. So, but to get back to your question. Yeah, Durkin gets hate mail about covering wildlife politics in Wisconsin. People get fired up.

It's horrible stuff. But what's funny about though, is that I save all that. I don't read it over and over again, but I save all those kinds of things. Fueled by haters, Pat Duncan. But the thing is, I found one time, a guy, a farmer in South Dakota a couple of years ago left me a little windshield with Matt and me because where I parked, it was in December and they were harvesting the corn out there.

And this guy left me a really, we don't want your cheese heads out here hunting in South Dakota. You're blocking the roads while we're doing this harvesting and we're feeding the country. You're out here having fun hunting our deer. And it really touched the nerve. Yeah. And it really pissed me off. You didn't bring him some cheese curds and spotted cow afterwards? Well, I don't know who he was.

I mean, I saw this big combine out there and when they went, went out, I didn't know if they'd stopped at my truck, you know, but I don't know if he rode it, rode it in the, you know, while he's still in the field and then left it on the run as he went out or what, but, but, you know, it was kind of, I was referring to, what I found funny about myself was that I tore the letter up, this note of it. I was so pissed off. You asshole.

I chucked it into the wind. And then when I got home back to Wisconsin, I thought, God, I save all that stuff. That's kind of like my little, you know, mementos of my career is, you know, I have a big sign in my office at home where they put my name with a Ghostbuster cross across it, you know. Because of your opinions about deer management?

Well, that was from my sports writer days. I really caught them one time, pissed off some of the local sports people and they picketed me at one of the basketball games years ago. Isn't it funny that electronic communications don't have the weight that, like I still have files. I have files of like early correspondence. I became, I'm friends with you largely because I'm friends with Doug Dern. I became friends with Doug Dern because Doug Dern wrote me a letter.

He might've emailed, I can't remember how it was. They can, it kind of, that kind of like goes against my point, but I have, so skip that part. I have files at home of like physical correspondence. Yeah.

That someone would go through the hassle and I would say, and I still have it like all saved. Right. And I have like all the notes for my books and no, all my like kind of records. And then you enter the electronic age it just ends yeah i don't save any correspondence none of that stuff don't save hate mail if you wrote me a hate mail in the mail dude i would totally put that in my files yeah but a

hate mail email zero thing now that we work on books through drive google drive yeah i don't have any but i have all my old drafts of books all my notes of books and now it's like information is valueless yeah like that shit it just has no there's no there's no thing that feels like something to hold on to with it but at one time we had like a real we had like a death threat uh i had a threat against me and my kids and it was an email and man the fbi doesn't look at it that way right right that dude could have written it in blood and mailed it to me i mean they went through his garbage yeah they took the email like yeah real serious but i can't take them that seriously i feel like hey it was too easy for you to send me the note right anybody. Anybody could send that stupid ass note. Yeah.

Yeah. I, I, um, I've, I've gotten threatened. You know, I've had a couple of guys wave fists under my nose at public meetings,

but you know, but I think, what am I going to do? I'm five foot eight. Most of these guys put me like, you know, Giannis's size. I'm not going to.

You'd be outrun them sons of bitches. I can try outrun them. Yeah. Oh yeah. But if you can get out the door, I'd be gone. Um, here's,

here's another, I got another question for you about how you're going to handle this. Okay. You want to do a thing about the Edmund Fitzgerald. Yeah, yeah. What's there to say? Oh, God, there's so much to say if you're a geek. Really?

It's like if you're a Kennedy assassination buff like I used to be, I could write about that stuff all day. So there's like more shit has gone on with the Edmund Fitz Then is captured in Gordon Lightfoot's Edmund Fitzgerald. Oh, you talk about, you know, you like that expression, um, that expression, um, making its own gravy. Oh, yeah. Edmund Fitzgerald is just such a rich, rich story. It makes its own gravy.

Yeah. It's just, for some reason, you know, people, I, I was, I've always thought it'd be fun to interview Gordon Lightfoot about the whole thing, but, um. He's still kicking? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I saw him in concert just two years ago. Oh. I've seen him twice. He's still kicking? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I saw him in concert just two years ago. I've seen him twice. I've seen him at least 12 times. You've seen Gordon 12 times? At least 12 times. I went to see Gordon in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and everybody there just watched him do Edmund Fitz. Yeah.

Especially in that town. Oh, sure. It's like when you go to see like a Marshall Tucker band, you know, you're just like, everybody wants to hear him do Can't You See? Or if it's like Head East, they want to hear marshall tucker band you know you're just like everybody wants to hear him do can't you see yeah if it's like head east they want to hear say my life you know so everybody's sitting there waiting for him to do edmund fitzgerald right just like you know biding your time right you might get a little excited about sundown right but most of you're there for that and he knows it's coming man and he knows that's why people are there and he doesn't

do it right away because everybody's gonna leave but toward the end he says um something to the effect of uh he goes you know it was 21 years ago this november and people just stand up man right the whole place goes ballistic yeah yeah they're cheering before they heard the song sure they're just here to remember the edmund fitzgerald yeah because people from that town died yeah oh. Oh, definitely. It's, um, one of the things that I always give him credit for, and it kind of irritates me when people say, if it weren't for Gordon Lightfoot's Edmund Fitzgerald song, no one would know about the Edmund Fitzgerald.

I think that's true. That's true. I think, but give Gordon Lightfoot credit. That guy put down a masterpiece there. I mean, he, he, he tapped into something very much in the human psyche that humans are haunted by that kind of stuff.

Yeah, Lake Michigan steams like a young man's dreams. Oh, it's beautiful stuff. You know, wonderful images. And I think, you know, about 20 years before that, this ship called the Carl Bradley went down Lake Michigan.

And they even had, I think, two survivors in that one. They had like 33 guys die and two survived. Well, no one wrote a song about the Carl Bradley. And I never even heard of the damn thing. I'm from there. Yeah. And there's actually a Carl Bradley Park up in

Munising, Michigan, up on top of the lake. And then also like in 1966 on Lake Huron, a ship called the Daniel J. Morrill went down. I think one guy survived that. It was really a sad story because the guy went out there and realized the ship's breaking up. And there was a life raft and he jumped in with four other guys. And as the ship broke up, a big wave kind of washed over this thing.

I might be getting the story wrong, but I'm sure somebody will look up, look at them on Wikipedia and correct me on this, but ended up with only two guys left on the life raft. And the one guy that survived was out there for like over, over 36 hours, I think. They didn't, they didn't know a ship was down for the longest time.

How many guys died? It was like 33. And I never heard of that boat. Yeah. So the moral, the moral, the coolest, a cool story about the moral. Oh, I want to know the moral of the story. I'm probably pronouncing it wrong.

It's spelled, it could be pronounced morale for all I know. M-O-R-R-E-L-L. Oh, that was the boat. Yeah, that's a ship. Oh, they're going to tell me the moral of the story. No, no, no. Which is something about Gordon Lightfoot. No, that was the boat. Yeah, that's a ship. Oh, they're going to tell me the moral of the story. No, no, no.

Which is something about Gordon Lightfoot. No, I'll probably get back to that at some point. I'm rambling here. But the Daniel J. Morrell went down in 1966. No one wrote a song about that. But those are the three biggest ships to sink on the Great Lakes. But we don't even know about the Edmund Fitzgerald because, you know, it was a big song written about. It's a haunting song, man.

My kids like that song. Oh, I mean, I remember in the Navy, that song came out when I was in my first year in the Navy and it came out in the summer of 76. And I remember when that song came out, I listed on, because I was a light foot geek. I bought almost all his albums that he's ever put out. But when that song came out, that album came out

Summertime Dream in 1976, I was home on leave. I bought in downtown Madison, brought back, played it. That song came on. I was like, holy shit, I remember that. Because I was watching the news that night, and it was the next night, and they had a segment on the evening news about this ship going down in Lake Superior.

And so I thought, and I started reading the lyrics to it, because he had the lyrics inside the album. I thought, holy shit, he wrote a song about this. And then I started playing. It's like a masterpiece, man. It's a masterpiece. Does anyone know where the love of God goes? Oh, God, that's, those lines there.

When people say, I tell you. Man, I want to hear the song. You want to hear the song? I've heard it before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to like pause and like listen to the song. I got to say, I did not imagine the pod turning into a Gordon Lightfoot

well I admire I admire good writing and that that song is good yeah he was visited by an angel or something when he wrote that

because the rest of the stuff is good but it's not that good man a lot of it's kind of annoying that Don Quixote song of his I love it all I'm a real

I'm a real Gordon Lightfoot Sundown Sundown's a beautiful song yeah because it's all about unfaithful people and you know you know I'm a real I'm a real Gordon Lightfoot Sundown Sundown's a beautiful song Yeah Cause it's all about Unfaithful people And you know Having affairs

Going around The Danny Warhol's Covered Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald Yeah Shitty version Yeah It's not worth the time When I listen to other people

Do the song I think You need Gordon Lightfoot in his prime To sing that song right But But You know when people

Act like They'll read about The Fitzgerald, they'll read about the Fitzgerald and they'll hear about the Fitzgerald and say, yeah, it went down so fast they didn't have time to send an SOS. And so it happened real suddenly. So these guys probably didn't know what was going on. I thought, man, if you think that, you've never been on a ship. Because when you're on a ship, you feel every fricking little thing that's going on. And I mean, I remember laying in my rack in the

Navy and crossing the North Atlantic. You feel that big ship rise, riding up these big waves. And then when it start coming down on the other side and you just sit there in your rack, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it. Call boom. Yeah, I got it.

And they're just, you can just picture the spray coming off, you know. So when those guys in the Fitzgerald, you think those guys lived in that ship for months at time, back and forth across the lakes. And they're out there in the worst storm the captain's ever seen, you know. And, and they knew the ship had a history of

having a weird twist in heavy seas where it would have, its nose would, its bow would twist and creak. And it was common to- Well, that was a known thing about that bow. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently the captain knew about it and it scared him. And so I could go into a whole thing about why I think

if he'd been, if he'd survived, why, if they had a, if they have a court martial system for, for great legs captains, he should have been court martialed. 7 p.m. the old cook came on deck and said, fellas, it's too rough to feed you. Yeah, because this ship had enough things wrong if the guys knew about it. And yet that guy, that captain,

drove it into the freaking storm that he should have known better. Killed 29 sailors. Yeah, other captains knew better. A captain that left port two hours after him, who took his job seriously, knew how to do weather reports, analyze weather information coming in. He knew this was not a storm to fuck with. You know, this is a storm you go up and you hug that northwestern corner

of that, of that lake and, and even anchor if you have to, drop the hook and anchor. So why isn't there

a song about that guy? That's human nature right there. Yeah. Why don't we do a song about the guy that didn't go into the storm?

The, you know, in the song, he says like they would have made Whitefish Bay if they put 15 more miles behind her.

Yeah. We used to spear Whitefish in Whitefish Bay in the winter. Yeah. When it was frozen, you know, in the song he says like they would have made Whitefish Bay if they put 15 more miles behind her. Yeah. We used to spear Whitefish in Whitefish Bay in the winter. Yeah. When it was frozen, you know, a nice ice sit. You can see quite a ways when it's all iced over, you know. Yeah.

We sit out there and when I wasn't like busy doing whatever we're doing, fishing and stuff, I'd always kind of look out. Yeah. Thinking of that tune, you know, it's kind of like, it's haunting, man. Well, I can talk about that all day. One thing I want to make sure I tell you that I

came across when I was reading about the Fitzgerald, cause I'm, I'm working on a piece right now for Meat Eater about November gales. And that this, you know, last year Spencer wrote a neat piece about the Armistice Day storm. That killed all the duck hunters. That killed all the duck hunters. And that was November 11th.

Well, the Fitzgerald went down November 10th. The Carol Bradley went down November 18th. The Carroll Bradley went down November 18th. The Morell went down November 29th. There's Halloween storms. I mean, you can go through and find a storm or a storm that comes through that time of year. And they're real gales, and they generate forces of like 50-mile-an-hour winds

up to 90-mile-an-hour winds and waves up to 35 feet, 40 feet. And the Fitzgerald, one of the little-mile-an-hour winds up to 90-mile-an-hour winds and waves up to 35 feet, 40 feet. And the Fitzgerald, one of the little-known pieces, but what destroyed it was that it had been given permission to carry, I think, three extra feet of iron ore pellets in its cargo holds. And so that drove it down to where it was only about 11 feet of freeboard, you know, space above, space above the water level.

And so when this thing was crossing the lakes in the storm, it was, you know, sitting three feet lower in the water than what it was actually built for. And these ore carriers too, people should realize, they weren't built like Navy ships and passenger ships where there's all these water tight bulkheads inside the ship. It was basically huge cargo areas, three huge cargo areas filled with these, there's like 21 hatch covers on top. Yeah, it's like a wheelbarrow floating around full of shit. Exactly. A great description.

And all they had in between is basically amounts to a freaking screen like we have here in the room. You know, I mean, it's metal, but it's not going to stop water from coming in and out of its compartments. And then the other thing where I blame the captain for it was that they were not serious about keeping the hatch covers clamped down. When I was in the Navy, so like our old guy again, but there were certain hatches on a ship that are always dogged down, always dogged down, always dogged down, never opened, you know, for watertight integrity.

And this, this ship, they went out there, they had 16 clamps around each of those 21 openings, holding down a five 16th inch piece of metal. And these hatch, these hatches are about, I think they're 11 feet wide and 48 feet long. And they only had two clamps holding those down instead of all 16 all clamped down. And the investigations came out later that they said this McSorley, the captain, hadn't been good about maintaining the gaskets on those hatches or the combing on those, on those hatches. And then they'd come and go to sea with only two things clamped down, which is not just that ship. A lot of those ships didn't do that. So it was real, it was real lax stuff. I wonder why Gord, uh, why Gord didn't take any pot shots at the catch when he wrote that tune.

He, he actually did, you know, like later in, in his, this is really geeky stuff. Is it hiding in the song? No, no. There's a part of the song though he rewrote about the hatch covers. For 7 p.m., a main hatchway caved in and the hook says, fellas, it's been good to know you. Well, Lightfoot felt guilty later in life because that was never really some investigations. The initial Coast Guard investigation pretty much blamed the hatch covers that they caved in. And Lightfoot either knew about that or, but he wrote his song before all the investigations were final.

Oh, I got you. But he felt guilty about this was implying blame on the crew. And me, I look at it and say, that's not the crew. The crew might not have done their job of batting down the hatches, dogging down those hatches. No, that's on the crew. The crew might not have done their job of battening down the hatches, dogging down those hatches. No, that's on the captain. The first thing you learn in the Navy is that everything stops the captain. If they have a collision and the captain's in his rack in the middle of the night, they don't throw out the ensign that was on deck that night, they go out and get the captain, and he's done. Because they figure he did not put the discipline into his crew to do things right every time. And I think that's one thing.

If you get drilled in the idea that there's a right way, a wrong way, and a Navy way, you never forget that. These kind of jobs are tedious. Battening down 16 clamps on 21 hatch covers. It's probably going to take all day. It's probably tedious as hell, but damn it, it keeps the ship more stable, more

watertight, and it should have been done, and it wasn't done. So, plus the ship, too, the final geeky thing. These are ships, too, that were built before the days of modern computers where they could put a ship model on a computer subjected to waves computerized watch how the ship twists but you know to get back to your comment about the sioux locks they built the ships to fit the sioux locks not the other way around and so they built these ships but they're too long for the for the width of them and so they created this weakness built these ships, but they're too long for the width of them. And so they created this weakness in these ships.

And so like this, one of the Fitzgerald sister ships, I think they put it on a commission like later that year because they thought they had lengthened it more. Because the Fitzgerald was for a long time the biggest ship on the Great Lakes. It subsequently got, wasn't the biggest, but still the biggest ship to have sunk on the Great Lakes. Titillate me real quick. Hit me with some titillation on the, you're working on the 1940, I don't even know what they are, the bullhead murders? Bullhead murders.

Yeah. Like hit me with some quick titillation. Yeah. To close us out. A guy was a commercial bullhead fisherman. That's a thing? Back then it was. I go into that in the article that, that, um.

Like he fished bullheads for commercial meat markets. Yeah. They, they, they, they stained them. They did hook and line. He bought from commercial fishermen. Really? Not just commercial fishermen, but day, day, day and day out fishermen.

He'd buy bullheads from them. Then they had, he had like people that would come in and clean them. What state? And this is in Southern, Southern Minnesota. No shit, really? Southern Minnesota. I didn't know that.

Yeah. And so. So there was a market. There was a market. Bullhead fillets. Bullhead market. Well, I don't know if there was even fillets, just the meat.

And they'd gut them and take the heads off and skin them. What year is this? It's 1940. Okay. So on July 12th in 1940, they had been investigating this guy because Minnesota had a law, a bag limit on bullheads in that area because they were being hit so hard

by the commercial market they started kind of clamping down on this. And they had a possession limit of 50. Well, this guy was obviously going way past 50. But it was still – it was one of those things you could dodge because other lakes, they weren't subject to that same bag limit like up in the Canadian border. The lakes of Minnesota weren't subject to that. But down here they were, over here they weren't. So this guy was kind of playing with that, you know, this commercial fisherman.

Well, they finally cracked down on him. They had enough evidence to go in there and start putting the screws to them. One day, three wardens showed up. Two showed up earlier in the day, and they didn't have a search warrant, and he just basically told them to get lost. In that era, the game wardens did not have uniforms for the Minnesota Conservation Department. They did not carry state-issued firearms.

One of the guys had his own personal handgun, but he was not displaying it. He had it tucked away someplace. Well, so two guys go over there. He chased them out. They come back later with basically the lead warden, the lead investigator in this case, who had run into at times with this commercial fisherman.

And they started putting the screws to him, and one of them asked him, can we see your license, your commercial license? He said, yeah, I'll go get it. So he left this barn. He had a barn that he did all his fish processing in, walked across the yard to his house, went in his house, came back out with a 12-gauge, semi-automatic 12-gauge. And the one warden says to him, there's no need to get smart with that thing.

And he says, I'll show you who's smart. And he quickly shouldered his gun, shot the lead warden right in the chest at like 20 feet away, knocked him across into his garden, his flower garden, he fell dead. Swung instantly to the next guy who hadn't had time to turn yet,

shoots him, kills him on the spot. The third warden was now trying to turn and get out of there. And he just bang, shoots him in the back, kills him. Really? Yeah. God, I haven't even heard of this story.

Yeah. Well, I always say the power of meat eater, Steve, you write a good story in meat eater, people read it. And I got people writing to Spencer, you know, telling them about this 19th story. Reminding you of old murders. Yeah.

Yeah. So they sent the story to Spencer. Spencer contacted me and I started working on it. So you're going to find all the old principles and whatnot. Oh, that's a sad thing. All those guys are so long gone. That's where I ended up doing, I interviewed a fisheries guy about the bullhead angle and talked to him about the bullhead angle and how, why we don't have bullheads in that kind of quantity these days. And that's an interesting story in itself.

A good story. One of the guys who's like a descendant of this warden Whip, who I mentioned, talked about in the story, the first, the lead investigator, talked to him a little bit, but he was, he's probably like a great grandson or grandson or didn't really know anything unique to it. So I, but a guy in 19, a guy in 2012 though, wrote a hundred page book about it. And it's not a long book. He uses type that you see like in a elementary school type reading book. Yeah, for old blind people. Yeah. That's true too.

It might be for old guys like me to read that book. But, um, So when I set my document on 150%, so I can read it without my glasses on. That's exactly it. So that's, um, hope that was titillating enough, but that that's that story. But then, so the guy killed himself and,

and, um, they don't really ever know for sure why he did that and why he killed himself and why he, only thing they can speculate is that, um, he knew he was losing his, his empire basically.

He's no longer going to be the bullhead. Losing his bullhead. Yeah. Shoot a few people, your bullhead empire is going to suffer. Right. God, oh man,

death with Dirk. Dude. Thank you. I'm glad things went the way they did in that old speakeasy deal all them generations ago, man. You wouldn't be sitting here with us. Well, yeah, I wouldn't know it and you wouldn't know it, so.

That's a good point. We might be talking to someone more interesting. Could be. We might add a bit. Can I tell a New York Times, can I tell you a New York Times story real quick? You want to tell me a New York Times story? Yeah, real quick.

You close out with it. Because we're done. You talk about things that you save. Back around 1983, 84, my late father-in-law said he had good contact at the New York Times and get me a job there. All I had to do was put together a little packet of my material and my resume and send it out to New York Times and they'd get me a job. And I thought, I'll do that. Should I get a chance to work for the New York Times? Sure, you know.

So I did my package, sent it out there, and about a month later, I got this like a one or two-sentence letter and they got my name wrong. They said something like, dear Mr. Duncan, we have no jobs for you in Prospect. And the guy sent his name. I had a guy the other night, this is the last story. So, you know, McCormick McCarthy is a famous recluse. Doesn't like to talk to anybody, won't do interviews interviews I heard a story the other night when I was in

Chicago for I was doing a fundraiser event for Theodore Roosevelt conservation partnership like a meet-and-greet type thing yeah and a guy was telling me a story cuz he knew he knew I'm a great admirer of the work of corn McCarthy and he told me a story about some guy he knows that was going to santa fe where cornt mccarthy lives he's going to santa fe and wants to meet him but he knows he doesn't like to meet anybody so he writes in this letter saying like i know you don't like to talk to anybody um but you know if i could just talk to you for 10 minutes right no reply i don't know this is true this is the story the guy told me no reply he goes and does his trip to santa fe comes home time goes by and eventually he gets a postcard

from cormac mccarthy and the postcard says fuck you so he's got a sense of humor about it all oh that's great. I don't know if it's true or not. All right. Well, you're not going to retire, are you? Nope. No plans.

How old are you? 65. I'll be 66 in January. Social Security kicks in, though, huh? Well, it has, but I haven't claimed it yet. Really? Yeah. Good for you.

I'm waiting until I'm 70, so I can max out. You're going to dig in, though. Yeah. Like Janice says, I'm going to fight this to the end. You pay it in, man. Yeah. Yeah. My wife's 30-odd. You don't in, man. Yeah. My wife's already on it.

You don't get tattoos on Medicaid and all that, do you? They don't pay for that kind of stuff. No, I don't pay for that. You got to pay a cash out of it. We could talk all day about my ideas on tattoos. Oh, Spencer Newhart. I don't know if he's really going to do this or not, but is he doing this? I don't know this idea.

Spencer says that in our auction house of oddities to raise money for our land access initiative, Spencer says he's going to auction off the right to pick a one-inch tattoo on him. You can pick whatever you want it to be. Yeah, I told him I'd join him. I said, if you do that, we can do it side by side.

I'll do that. Oh, you'll get one too? Yeah. So we can auction that off? Yeah. That's great, Pat. That's tough. We got to go there.

So let's just say they're like 100,000 bucks. I want it, but we're going to put a little one inch by one inch penis and balls on you. You're going to have to take it. I was going to say an anus, but yeah, we'll go with that. Well, if I get to choose a spot... But you would do it. For conservation. Yeah, for conservation.

But I'd have to choose a spot. It wouldn't be someplace visible. Yeah. I have these pencil-sized arms. I wouldn't put them on my arm. Yeah. Did Spencer tell you... You could hide it in your butt cheeks.

Do you know what I'm saying? That'll feel real good. That'd be sensitive. Did Spencer tell you what his second tattoo was? I don't want to blow his spot up, but it's so good. He got the Ham's mascot carrying a giant morel mushroom. How old is he? I think he's 30.

Yeah, he's 29. Can we just start a whole nother one right now and start in with tattoos? No. If you got something to add, then we're closed. No. No, no, no. We'd have to start a whole nother podcast right now. No, I can't.

I can't. Next time. Next time. Pat, thanks for coming on, man. That's true. We'll have to have you back out. You came out probably a year ago. It's been two and a half years already.

Holy moly. Since we talked about that sonar enthusiast that found all the dead people. We never talked about him. What? No, no, no. I'm sorry. I'm confusing my sonar experts.

Yeah, that was, that was, I do that often. Cause that, well, I've written for Meteor about another guy that's found even more people like that, doing that.

Yeah. I have, that was two and a half years ago when we did that podcast about Rick Krieger down in Mass and finding the guys. That was a good one.

Yeah. Those guys in the bottom of Lake Wingra. Yeah. Lake Wabisa. Lake Wabisa for 46 years

in the bottom of that lake in that car. Wow. Yeah, that was two and a half years ago already. Ladies and gentlemen,

Pat Durkin. Thank you. Dirk on deaf. Yeah. Thanks, Pat. Thank you, Pat. Thanks for coming on and gentlemen, Pat Durkin. Thank you. Dirk on deaf. Yeah. Thanks, Pat. Thank you, Pat. Thanks for coming on, Pat, making the trip. All right, everybody.

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