The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 299: Poppin' Heads with Evan Hafer

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Evan Hafer, Dirt Myth, Seth Morris, Chester Floyd, and Samantha Bates. Topics discussed: Steve and Seth doing a bed-in; eating tranquilized bear meat vs. being tranq-ed yourself; skunk tail lift regulating skunk spray dispersion; the novelty trade driving skunk pelt prices; a hot tip on containing funky critter essence odors; the amazing scientific finding that California condors can procreate through parthenogenesis, when an egg develops into an embryo without fertilization; how every-damn-thing is a Pleistocene relic; more on the copper/lead argument; a 1,200-year-old canoe discovered in a Wisconsin lake; when a moose charges through a school window in Canada; how you shouldn't put your duck blind up on public land if you're gonna complain when someone uses it; it ain't etiquette, it's Chetiquette; defining an IPO and Black Rifle Coffee Company getting a ticker; blacktail breakdown; wandering around in the coastal rainforest; a certain kind of mental discipline; the physical tightening of a man who just saw a deer; a hot tip on making your own coffee rub; robusta vs. arabica; 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.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

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First Light. Go go farther stay longer okay we're recording and catch can alaska me and seth are doing this one like uh you know who john lennon is right yeah got shot beetles and everything yeah um you know his wife yoko ono i don't know you're not aware that there was a dude named John Lennon with a wife named Yoko Ono? No, I am that. You asked if I knew her. That's fair. No, of her. Anyways, me and Seth are doing a, what was that, Evan, do you remember what that was called?

Where they wouldn't get out of bed? Where they wouldn't get out of bed? Yeah, they did like a bed in. Remember they wouldn't leave the bed? Yeah, you're right. Yeah, yeah. It's me and Seth right now in this hotel bed. Yeah, they did like a bed in. Remember they wouldn't leave the bed? Oh, yeah, you're right. Yeah, yeah. It's me and Seth right now in this hotel bed. Yeah, exactly.

It's exactly the same. John Lennon and Yoko. Yeah, and they wouldn't get out of bed, and they did everything in bed. It's like me and Seth. Yeah. Joined today by Evan Hafer. Now, you don't know this probably.

When the pandemic hit, you were our first remote, the first ever remote person. That's right. I did because you told me that when we were on the show. You said, I hate this. I don't like doing them like this. And I can't wait to get back to doing them in person. And here you are.

And here I am. How did you like the title of that show? Roasting Coffee and the CIA. That was a good title, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. Yeah. I'm sure it did really well. I'm sure it didn't really well or not well it was because i was technically in the cia and roasting coffee so i don't know if that's the the entirety of the show but it was no but i liked it

i thought the title was good it was really good but i had questions about whether that you might come to me and be like well actually i didn't do that then no no i did excellent yeah um in catch canal ass coming after office some wet ass days and we'll talk more about that hunting hunting blacktail deer um on prince wales island and we'll return to that we got a couple uh as as per usual as usual we got some stuff we got to cover off on i'm gonna i'm gonna mess with my order because, Dirt, can you explain what happened to your friend, man? The bear guy. Oh, he. This is a great story.

This is a real, you know. Happening. Makes its own gravy. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Well, I think we're on the same page. The tranquilizer guy. So my buddy, Kevin Wiederman.

How do you know it's not that good of friends, huh? It's a hard last name. Anyways. Which one is it? Or don't you know? Wiederman. Yeah. He was hunting up at the family cabin I was telling you about.

Well, don't give away his spot, dude. No, no. Oh, okay. We'll stay at that. And shot a bear. And at the check station, FWP said it had been, it was collared. And they realized it had been tranquilized 20 days prior and told him not to eat the meat. Okay, but hold on.

I wish you would have. Oh. You got to the point real quick. But I want to back up a little bit. Did he know it was collared? No, he couldn't tell. And he told me that when I talked to him. He's like, couldn't tell.

Why not? What color was the collar? I don't know. Couldn't tell it was collared. Or tagged. Maybe it was an ear tag. I don't know. Okay.

And then was it tranquilized and moved or tranquilized? It was a trouble. He shot a lost bear. It was relocated. Oh. Yeah. And this was all, initially when I texted you, it was a text with what I asked you. And then I called him before our flight out here to get the gist real quick. And that's all I got was, yeah, man, couldn't tell it was whatever.

And they said, we tranquilized this bear 20 days ago. You shouldn't eat it because that tranquilizer drug is in there. Yeah, they recommended 30 days to wait 30 days. And before that, not to consume the meat. So in 10 days, it would have been okay to eat the tranquilized bear. And his intuition was to eat the tranquilized bear. And he called, his intuition was to eat the meat, but he knew, I ran with some folks that knew a lot

about that type of stuff. And he said, ask your buddies what they think. And I asked you and Cal, and both of you guys were like, eat it. Dr. Steve. Yeah.

You know, I don't want someone coming after me. I don't want to meet. Well, now you might be. I don't want to meet the't want someone coming after me i don't want to now you might i don't want to meet the shit and then coming after me later held accountable then you feel sleepy or something no what if he eats it and feels sleepy i don't know do you ever listen to this show the show you're on right now yeah you do yeah so maybe you caught the episode where we talked about a guy that was shot by a tranquilizer i didn't listen they were doing they were doing mountain lion research stuff and they wanted to tranq a mountain lion but they didn't want to fall out of the tree and get hurt so the guy was up in the tree with it

like they'll put out nets and stuff they no joke about putting out nets to catch the mountain lion. Somehow the lion, they hit it and the lion gets tangled up, falls asleep on the branch. He's got to go up there and try to finagle it down and get it to the ground. Gets up there and it's not asleep.

He is hooting and hollering about getting the gun back up there because he wants to place the shot because it's in a place where they can't get at it either way they come up with an idea to he's gonna lower a rope down and the guy's gonna tie the tranquilizer gun to the rope i don't understand this but in the process he gets shot of him tying it through the trigger guard tranks the guy in the tree i need to listen to this one they had to haul him out of the mountains on a mule but he didn't die didn't die interesting so yeah point being this is for your friend with the bear. Here's a man that took the full load of the trank and was in himself, and he's lived to tell about it.

Yeah. So now you got a bear that has some amount of it for how many days? 20 days? Yeah. Metabolizing it. It's distributed throughout its carcass. He's going to presumably eat it in a piecemeal fashion. Yeah.

Not like he's going to sit down and eat 100 pounds in a sitting. Yeah. He's going to eat a half pound here, a quarter pound there. He's a big eater. He's not going to eat it all. But you see my point, man. In times like this, I always ask myself this. I'm like, will this be the thing that ends up killing me?

Yeah. Negative on that. And I'm always like, probably not, man. It'll probably be like the normal shit that kills everybody. And there may not be an answer, but why the 30 days, do you think? Don't know. Why'd they come up with that number? Don't know.

Yeah. That's probably how long it takes to get out of the system. Check out the brain on Seth over there. Well, I'll follow up. Crafty little feller. See if Kev's laying up in that bed. All comfy. He hangs out with Yoko Ono, you know that?

Yeah, so that's a good one. Maybe a tranquilizer expert will write in. Also, Auction House of Oddities. We're on auction group number four. So we're going to keep running the auction house for a while here. Got a lot of items still. So right now, auction group number four, we have a signed copy of Ridgeline by a two-time podcast guest, Michael Punk.

So that's his new book, signed. Jason Phelps. Now get this one. So Phelps just hunted the 2020 elk season successfully. I watched him with my own two eyes. His bow. So he's got a PSE Evo NX T35 stripped of accessories. So you can go buy Phelps' actual elk hunting bow and the actual bugle tube

he used all throughout the 2020 season. A well-blooded bugle tube. The prototype. So we worked with, we have like skull mounts out, like desk mounts, wall mounts. We worked with my favorite fabricator, Travis Barton, Barton Fabrication, near our hometown there. We worked with him to make these things, and he came up with like a prototype.

We're auctioning off the prototype wall skull mount. One-of-a-kind shit here, folks. near our hometown there. We worked with him to make these things, and he came up with a prototype. We're auctioning off the prototype wall skull mount. One-of-a-kind shit here, folks. We also got a hand-forged carving knife by Kirkpatrick Forge and Sheridan, Oregon. This is one of a pair of knives we had. The other one's gone now. Designed for carving large hunks of meat. Riley Kirkpatrick made this for Callahan

to be used on special occasions. But Cal says they're too nice for how infrequently he has special occasions happen to him. So he wants someone that will be able to put this thing to good use. Also, our very own Maggie Smith, a beautiful photograph of a bull moose. The photograph is called Some Serious Side Eye. It's a bull moose in velvet from our own videographer and editor, Maggie Smith. She was doing a river trip, ran into a bunch of five moose. This one struck her.

She snapped hundreds of photos of it. This is her favorite one. And then Montana Moss Agate Hoop earrings. So Spencer the Rockhound New Harf, our very own, who runs our trivia program here. He found them. His wife turned them into beautiful pieces of jewelry. Those are on the auction house. And then continuing on the auction house, it's something you don't

got to buy. Go sign up for a chance to win a DOS boat. It's like DOS boat. So it's the boat from DOS boat season two. We already gave away the boat from DOS boat one. This is the boat from DOS boat two. It belonged to my childhood fishing mentor,

John Gary. When he passed away, it came to live at my house, lived in my mom's pole barn. I moved away. They lived in their pole barn for 20 years. We got it out, refurbished it, put a new Honda four-stroke on it, got it a beautiful, crazy-ass paint job. It's all tricked out with everything you could possibly want. DOS boat.

DOS boat. Up for grabs right now. Go sign up and get it. Speaking of the auction house, uh, we had skunk essence. We gave away a bottle of skunk essence that, uh,

that me and Seth and Chester pulled out of some skunks with a syringe. And then it's prompted a lot of people to write in skunk stories. Here's a skunk story. It's not a prank, but it's just a good skunk essence story. It has to do with skunk essence and freedom mounts and furnaces so this guy goes on to say he's in iowa hunting shotgun season and he finds a large white tail deadhead now you got deadheads that like the dead right evan yep and then you got dead heads that are dead things dead things this is

a dead thing dead head it's a dead white tail got it you didn't find just a dead a dead dead head just a dead dead head it's a just a dead head be easy to find very colorful tie-dyed yeah because if he was getting a skull mount of a dead dead head that he found illegal probably notified i'd have to notify the authorities because i don't want to be implicated but this is a dead whitetails head so here's what he does it doesn't make total sense. He takes the head of the antlers and puts it in a garbage bag. Sure, that makes sense. Then he places it in the window well of his uncle's house. Odd.

Keeping it safe? Why, yeah. No, no, no. You find a dead skull, put it in a bag, I'm with you. Any nine out of ten people are going to bag it. Puts it in his uncle's window well, where it resides for some time. Eventually, the uncle, who owns the window well, takes the bag with the dead head into the furnace room.

Unbeknownst to him, a skunk is in the bag. There was a something missed. Snacking on the rotten head. That got in there from the window well? And he grabs the bag. Okay. When the skunk gets in the house and starts cutting loose, it gives this furnace a direct hit.

Oh. Two years later, when you come in the house, there's still the faintest skunk smell. little whiff. That'd make you want to just replace your whole furnace. Sure. Or the whole house.

It makes me. It's getting a little extreme, but yeah. It makes me think that it might have been a deadhead that found the deadhead. Because that story is crazy. That's a crazy story. That might be a good show. Deadheads hunting for deadheads. It's like you have deadheads that walk around the woods.

Nothing's harmed. And then you follow what they do with the deadheads when they find them. Window sales. I have a skunk question. It might be a better time than now. Go ahead. No, that's a great time. No time like the present for that kind of stuff, Dirk.

My neighbor's dog, this was right before New Mexico, actually. I was going to bring it up, but I didn't get a chance. Bit off the attack to skunk, got sprayed, and when they went out to figure out what was going on this skunk's tail was with pintler is the dog's name now does that does the tail can you back up i'm confused go ahead dog attacked the skunk okay and at the crime scene they found the skunk's tail and a sprayed dog the dog ripped the skunk's tail off. Yeah. My question is,

does the tail regulate that action? Like, was it a loose cannon at that point? Just... Right. You know what I mean? Like, on his question. Like, cutting the nozzle off a hose? Yeah. Yeah.

Does the skunk just... I don't know. That's probably one for Heffelfinger. Yeah. But I'm going to say... Doesn't regulate. That's not how he regulates. Okay.

That tail is almost like... I want to think it's almost like a warning flag because it's so colorful. It's like... Yeah. When they raise that up, you know it's time to get the heck out of there. In fur trap and lore...'m seth you'll have your

own thing about this yep in fur when i was a kid in fur trap and lore when you have a skunk and they're generally like in the old days people would trap skunks for the commercial markets they still have value but now they have value on the how do you what do you call it novelty trade yeah skunk prices aren't tied to fur markets so they're not tied to sort of like all the international shit like oil prices and what the economy in south korea is like and what the russians are up to um like normal fur that goes into fur garments is sort of tied to all this you know political global economic uh so it's tied to like a company that could be making something specific like a jacket that ends up being really popular and all of a sudden the skunk prices might go no it's all novelty i

see the novel the skunk fur market is novelty trade so it's like your drunk uncle would think it's funny to have a skunk hat or people want a skunk wall hanging it's like it doesn't go it's like the novelty trade drives skunk prices so skunk prices stay pretty stable like i think like a like a put up skunk stays around like not much what was that six bucks oh okay i was curious uh what was i getting that oh but skunks are a very common bycatch fox and coyote trapping um we caught a bunch of them coyote in a bunch of coyote sets that Seth and I set this year. Hence, the bottle of skunk essence. Yep.

I was always taught that if you shot it in the heart with a.22, that's the best way to make it not spray. Nowadays, people have a syringe on a long stick.

Yep. Trank it? No. I don't even want to tell you what they put in there. Ooh. This is a family program. My imagination is running wild right now. Black rifle coffee.

That'd be dangerous. The skunk gets real energetic. That'd be dangerous. We're done on that, right? Skunks? Yeah, I guess so. I still didn't get an answer on the tail, but maybe someone will. No, I'm telling you, man.

I don't think that has anything to do with it. There's not a muscle? No, I'm sure that he's got like a sphincter type, prostate type thing or another. It's got a muscle. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Okay. Is that skunk essence like drawing over?

Someone win it? Yeah. Garrett's getting ready to ship it out. I wonder. Oh, you want to know what. I'd be curious what they're going to do with it. I don't know. You want to know what

Joe Beaver there in Minnesota. What he does with it? How they store it. It's a hot tip. They probably don't store it like you stuck to the outside of your house.'t store it like you, stuck to the outside of your house. No, they don't staple it to the outside of their house. He said what you do is you get a coffee can filled full of sand.

Oh. Now, there's a thing that's going obsolete. It's coffee cans. Evan can probably tell you all about that. That might be a cool retro product. Funny you say that. I do cans. Oh, you do? The old type of can that you'd put worms in when you got yeah yeah you do or bolts we do a uh aluminum can on some of our limited offerings yeah so then you put your worms in there bolts or yeah spent casings

whatever people put in coffee cans well that was part of the genesis because I was out cleaning out my grandfather's shop. And he had all these cans, coffee cans, like everywhere, right? Nuts and bolts. And I was like, once you, and they were all the Folgers cans. They're all red. And I was like, this guy drank the same coffee for probably 30 years. Because he liked to have his garage organized. That's one of the reasons like man I think this business might be kind of sticky he

reinvented the wheel oh anyways to store skunk essence and other very potent odors like fox urine or whatever. Take a can like that and fill it full of sand. And then you put the bottle in the middle of the sand and then pack the sand on. Protects it from breaking and the odor. He said the odor doesn't get out of that. It's just packed in sand. It is a good tip. Yeah.

Here's an interesting deal. Corinne, I can tell, thinks this is super. Corinne's not with us right now, but I can tell she thinks it's super interesting because of how much she really liked a lot. If Corinne finds an interesting thing and she'll highlight the part she likes, holy smokes, she likes a lot of this article. It's about that California condors, and I need to know if other birds can do this too you guys ever heard of parthenogenesis no nope okay bear with me

at a time that we were down like very like california condors due to you know poisoning and shooting and habitat destruction, they're very famous for how low their population got to be, where they were saved through captive breeding programs. So in 82, there were only 22 California condors in existence. Apparently, it's hard to look at a condor and tell if you're looking at a boy or a girl, which is true with a lot of birds. You've got to kind of open their cloaca up

and you'll find this little wormy thing in there. Anyhow, they developed a test to determine the sex of the condors and they split these birds up into two captive breeding facilities as this captive breeding thing went on over the years they also began doing dna testing on these birds because they wanted to avoid breeding closely related individuals. Recently now, scientists decided to undertake a complete genetic analysis of the population, which is now some 900 birds. So from 22 to 900.

And they have all these samples from condors, right? They have blood, they have eggshell membranes, they have tissue from deceased birds, they have feathers from birds so they're doing this analysis all these birds and they find two birds out of the 900 there's two birds that are missing genetic material from the male who shared the enclosure with the female that laid the eggs. You tracking, Samantha? Mm-hmm.

This is cool. You seriously think that? Yeah. This is awesome. They did multiple samples off these birds because they felt they were making a mistake. They were confident it wasn't a mistake. What they realized is that condors, at least this couple times can reproduce through parthenogenesis a form of reproduction in which an egg can develop into an embryo

without being fertilized by a sperm it seems like there was an error somewhere. No. I don't believe so. Check this out. Condors can live into their 50s, but both of the male chicks born of asexual reproduction were relatively small

and died before becoming sexually mature at 1.9 and 7.9 years old. Then the article goes on to be annoying. Wait. How does a female have a male baby without any fertilization?

You'll have to write these people and ask them. Okay. Does any other bird do that? I'm sure to write these people and ask them. Okay. Does any other bird do that? I'm sure it does. Look up that word. Here's where the article gets annoying. And this is the thing that everybody does that's super annoying. Goes on to say,

he adds, speaking of one of the scientists, that the condor is a remarkable species that has survived from the Pleistocene era. Everything has survived from the Pleistocene era everything has survived from the pleistocene era people are like the muskox a pleistocene relic why don't they say like humans a pleistocene relic or rats a pleistocene relic or chickadees a pleistocene relic literally special no there's not like you can't name a creature that's not a pleistocene relic yeah you can't name me one

name a crit like from from from the from the pleistocene holocene transition what brand new things are there got me but why why is it always the musk ox the pleistocene relic no one's ever like the white- ox? The Pleistocene relic. No one's ever like the white-tailed deer. Pleistocene relic. The Pleistocene relic. It's like everything is. That should be the next t-shirt. You'd have just like a bunch of pictures of...

Dude, it'd be like a dude. It's a shirt with a dude. Pleistocene relic. It looks like just a dude like me. And it says Pleistocene relic. That's what you should have a t-shirt of Steve's face on a t-shirt that says Pleistocene relic yeah that's what you should have a t-shirt and sell that like hotcakes steve's face on a t-shirt that says pleistocene relic i don't know if i want to be the person on it but it could be a great shirt with the glasses down it's a glasses down

pleistocene relic like when i'm like when i put my when i pull my spectacles from the tip of my nose you can see near and far. You can do a special fish shack edition where they're all fogged up. Are condors special other than being Pleistocene relics? Well, they're special,

but there's only 22 of them left. Now, the condors also sit at the... And this sort of ties into a thing I'm not going to spend too much time on. It's a little bit ugly, right yeah it's a little bit ugly right it gets a little bit ugly so if you were to go and ask like see i'm i'm getting into the deep end of the pool here this is where like biology meets politics oh i don't like that. Lead.

Lead. Yep. Hunters are often blamed for continuing condor deaths. Other people point up other causes of lead, but condors have a lot of problems with lead poisoning. Some people point to that they're getting the lead from scavenging carcasses left over by hunters and they're ingesting lead and they live to be 50 years and over the course of 50 years they find enough deer carcasses and get lead um now like for it was in the 80s when the lead ban came for waterfowl. Everybody got pissed.

People eventually got used to it, but you used to be able to shoot lead at ducks and geese. There were people that quit hunting ducks and geese because they had to switch to steel. Non-toxic shot. California had the Condor Recovery Zone and you couldn't use lead ammunition in the Condor Recovery Zone. Even like.22s and stuff.

Yeah. Copper. This article, a lot of articles like this they always have they always take like a little pot shot at hunters and so the article goes on and take a little pot shot at hunters about um this thing and it's like i'm not going to get into right now there's people we should we should have we'll have someone on to talk about it there is some healthy debate about this okay where the lead comes from and all this and then and then uh and some people would some some people view that uh the con that that that's not entirely to blame for the demise of the condor and all this kind of stuff but it's it splits

politically in some ways yeah buddy so uh pat durkin on our website recently wrote a thing about increased use of copper ammo right and and what's going on in california where it like they can't use lead anymore and like and certain ammo is hard to find right now as you know and like exacerbates the problem people People are very frustrated, all this kind of stuff. Durgan's thing gets into that a little bit. But it got me thinking, when you say like when you're watching a Western, they fill them full of lead. Garrett Long, our colleague,

has a quote, when there's lead in the air, there's hope in the heart. Ooh, that's a good one. In the future, will you be like, I've filled them full of copper. Yeah. When there's copper in the air,

there's hope in the heart. Do you know what I mean? It's going to be a hard transition, man. Yeah. And what's copper going to do to, you know? Well, this one feller, Corinne thought it was interesting, but I don't think it's that interesting.

This one feller wrote in about all the trouble with copper. Yeah. Yeah. Endless. You know why? Because I'm not totally prepared to talk about it. Because there's like studies, for instance, everybody points, there's a lot of stuff that people are like,

I don't want to use, like move away from birds for a minute now it's not even a debatable point waterfowl a lot of waterfowl got killed by lead shot it got killed by lead shot for this reason um you have areas where you have a lot of hunters in a concentrated fashion putting a lot of pellets in the air so you have marshlands wetlands crop fields where guys are shooting boxes of shells right all the time and those birds pick up grit for their gizzard and so you're in areas where there's like a lead pellet of a size very attractive to the bird as digestive grit yeah that makes sense and you have concentrations of it in areas where birds concentrate and so they would accumulate lead in their gizzard and their gizzard grinds that lead up and it was causing bird death yeah

but then a lot of things cause bird death cars kill birds house cats kill a billion birds a year in the country and people aren't like we should ban house cats oh i'd be right yeah wind turbines kill birds power lines skyscrapers kill birds glass windows kill birds and people aren't like we should ban glass windows. No more windows. Yeah. So some people look and be like, why of all the things that kill birds, why is it that we got to give our thing up?

You're not giving your house cat up. All this kind of stuff. It's complicated. It is. And then the other part, the other reason we should, like, we should almost have it be where we have, like, we should have a debate. That'd be a good idea. Get, like, one person from one side, the most informed person on one side of this, and the

most informed person on one side, and they go toe-to-toe. Friendly, though. With time allotment. Oh, yeah. We'll run, like, a debate, man. Yeah. That's a great idea. You can come, Dirt.

All right. I'll do the button pushing. Because there's things like, for instance, some people will cite wanting to, some people will cite like, I quit hunting with lead because I don't want my family exposed to lead. But then no one can find evidence of hunters having elevated lead. In fact, they found, they did this one study, I think it was in the Dakotas, hunters have less lead than average because they live in rural environments.

Yeah. Right. I got some. And when you're in an urban environment, like you can go in a second, you're in an urban environment where you can go in a second you're in an urban environment where you have huge concentrations of automobiles that were burning leaded fuel and it's like in the soil and in old housing areas that had lead paint that you can't point be like hunters are at risk of lead you'd be like brooklynites, Brooklynites are at risk of elevated levels of lead. So, you know, there's all these arguments like human health, wildlife health.

Yeah. It's a rich field of inquiry. And no matter what answer you come up with, someone's going to be pissed. Yeah. Hey, folks. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick're sick of you know sucking high and titty

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As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services hand-picked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can

get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onx maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all go ahead dirt as left-handers yeah i mean you i don't know evan are you left-handed no i'm normal where's this going so three of us in the room being left-handers. I don't know, Evan, are you left-handed? No, I'm normal. Where's this going? So three of us in the room being left-handed, normal.

Babe Ruth was left-handed. Do you remember when you used to write stuff on paper? That doesn't happen anymore in school. No, you don't know what you're talking about. Yeah? Oh, I actually don't. Left-handers drag. You don't have kids. No, but they're on iPads and laptops, aren't they?

Listen, man, I'm telling you, I have three of them. They write on paper. With pencils? Lead? Are any of them left-handed? It's not lead, it's graphite. Never mind. Was old pencil lead?

But the smudging. Yeah. Sure, it smudges, but it's not lead. It's graphite. Okay, never mind. Disregard. I was excited for you to get there. Yeah. Sure, it smudges, but it's not lead. It's graphite. Okay, never mind. Disregard. I was excited for you to get there. Yeah.

Oh, dude, I was rooting for him. When he starts talking, I'm always rooting for him. I'm always hoping he's going to pull something off, because a lot of times he does pull off something good, man. That is graphite. Dang it. Well, they didn't. They could have.

There was lead in pencils, right? Yeah, there was lead. It has to have been, right? Yeah. And think about, as a young child, writing them essays, getting the smudge on your hand, absorbing that. Maybe left-handers have a higher percentage of lead. Of graphite poisoning?

Of graphite poisoning. You ever end up licking it off to clean it? No, I just smudge. Anyways. Is that what you do, Chet? No. Lick it off? Explains a lot, does it?

Chester, here's a good one for you, buddy. wisconsin's you ready for something from scotty yeah hit it a diver this is great a diver is going to test out some scuba equipment okay picks a nondescript spot to test his scuba equipment. What does he find in 30 feet of water? A 1,200-year-old fishing canoe. Lake Mendota, Wisconsin Lakes. Wow, right near Madison, which is kind of, if you think about how popular that lake is, it's right in Madison, and they still are finding stuff like that. There's a picture here.

It had fishing weights on it and some other equipment. Really? Isn't that wild? That is crazy. 1,200, so from 800 A.D. What was it made out of? I may have missed that. Lead.

It's a wooden canoe. Wood, yeah. I wonder if they talked about their fishing canoes like we talk about our fishing boats these days. It looks like it's kind of lashed together with something. What's the beam on that? You see that? Yeah.

They might have done that. I think what you're looking at there, Cheddar, is they didn't want it to fall apart. Yeah, that makes sense. That is crazy. It is cool, though. 1,200-year-old canoe. Lake Mendota.

Some kids in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. There's pictures of this sitting in school. Speaking of little kids in school. Bam! A moose bust through the window. There's a bunch of pictures of the moose standing in the classroom what yeah right on into school anybody hurt maybe it's a messy ass classroom saskatoon oh geez yeah looks like a lot of blood on the ground unless that's i don't know water bottles sanitizer it looks like there's a hand

sanitizer bottle there there there was a bear that got into the bozeman high school a few years ago okay chester got some stuff on chattakit you ready for this oh sure a lot of people writing in with chattakit questions for chester. I love it, too. I kind of want to read this letter, but it's so laden. I'll read it, but I'm going to do effing. Oh, yep. All right, I'll read it. No, how do you want to read it?

So let me lay the groundwork. Burbank, Washington. This just happened, October 27th. Three youth hunters got up in the morning and beat what looked like an older gentleman to his duck blind.

So they were racing to get there. The guy that wanted to get there to the blind first but didn't get there goes and touches off four rounds near the kids, storms off. They got scared about what was going to happen, so then they packed up their decoys and went back to their truck. And what awaits them on their truck window chester there's a letter um who who wants to do the beep when i point at him oh you know what let's just do this man just read it and then um because there's it's it's

really something every line line has a... I mean, I imagine there must be a dozen of them in there. Some of them he doubles up. Okay. I'll read it. Phil will do it. Okay. Phil will make it more...

This is the letter left on the truck. This is from the old man. This is the old man's... He needs to have his mouth washed out with soap. With soapy water. This drives me nuts, but I'm reading it this is my spot asshole my grandpa built all the blinds on this shoreline next time i see this truck here the truck is mine you best watch yourself boy and stay the out ofbank. You are very lucky I don't slash these tires right f*** now.

F*** off, b***h. Ooh, jeez. I don't think I've ever heard you say that word before, Chester. I was going to say b***h. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, obviously, in etiquette standards that's not downright rude that's just that's just plain old nasty and you're talking about the kids taking the blind right no

yeah ches is like these kids need to kids these days kids these days taking old guys blinds no i mean like there's a couple questions like i'm sure this is public land um you know if it's public land people have to just and you see this all over you know you i've gotten letters from people being like you know get the hell away from this spot and whatnot but if it's public land it's everyone's right to hunt it and um the other day speaking of just duck hunting because these guys were hunting seth and i drove to a spot near bozeman and we got to the spot and there was a dude who was parked there and he left a duck decoy under his tire and i think that guy left that duck decoy there so people would know he was duck hunting it's a small little spot and you just have a moment i'm sorry i was reading something what now

so seth and i drove to a duck hunting spot the other day. There was a guy parked in that spot. Oh, and he had the decoy out. That is a great idea. He left a duck decoy under his tire so people would know he was duck hunting. I think that's why he left it there. He could have just forgot it, but it is a good idea. So if Seth and I showed up at that spot in the morning,

it's public land. You see a guy parked there. You know, it's a small spot. Give him, just give him some space. Like go somewhere else in that particular area. It was like a one little pond,

you know, you can't hunt, you know. Did you guys slash his tires um we left a very similar note photocopy that note and then leave it blank where it says burbank and then i don't know what means does he feel did you think that that man the the kids were Hispanic? Is that what that is? That's a racial slur, for sure. Oh, is that what that is? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, he needed to twist the knife a little bit in the end there and get like. It sounds like. That's what that, I couldn't tell what the hell that meant, but that's what he means. Yeah, I mean. Or a barista. This book is definitely.

Jeez, man. Yeah. People just got to stop being such assholes, really. When you were reading that, I didn't even get that he had a little racial slur in there to finish her off. If you don't want someone hunting your duck blind, don't put it on public land. Yeah. And if you're going to get that bent out of shape from something like that, why are you even hunting? Is that enjoyable for you?

Well, I wouldn't trust him holding a gun. He's a little unstable, I think. Kick his ass. I know. I was going to say, they need to have a bunch of people waiting for that dude to come back. He's the most riled up I've seen him the entire trip. He takes Chetiket very seriously.

You can see the veins popping in his forehead. He's getting angry. You take it serious. It was clear, though, in that that it was public land. I wasn't. It's not clear, but I'm. If it was, yeah. It's got to be.

Of course it is. Yeah. I mean, and if it is, there could be this guy who wrote this note he could be doing something illegal by building blinds and leaving them there so we don't even know that but yeah well he is going to be in violation because all states have one he's in violation of his hunter harassment law yeah and to me that's not even like an etiquette thing it's just kind of like etiquette that's a good slogan for the book it ain't etiquette yeah anyways so are you gonna put like a blind etiquette session in there

section yeah um yep sean weaver is helping me out said he would like to help me out with the duck hunting stuff that's great and uh he could bring shed some light on that that's great in there i think you boys ought to put in there a little bit about uh skyblasting ducks that are working someone else's spread oh yeah that's got to go in there that's that's not very good etiquette chetetiquette. But there's a part of it, not that you're not a crafty little thinker. There's a part of it that's going to be, it's almost like there's a sort of magic to it that you're not going to be able to spell it out clearly. Oh, yeah.

Like, for instance, we used to always spend the opening day of duck season in the Muskegon Marsh. Okay. As did a lot of people. Big marsh. Similar to, like, the Horicon Marsh where we grew up. But all those people, it made the duck hunting good. Like, you got limits, right? Because they were pushing around.

Because the birds were just flying all day because people were coming and going whatever but you'd go out and you'd still have to find an appropriate spacing based on the idea of of the the density of people that were in the marsh yeah if you went later in the year and it was an opening day you would never and there weren't that many people out you would never hunt as close to another party as was acceptable on opening day because of how many people were out. It's hard to explain this stuff. Yeah, it's hard to articulate that. It's like a big part of this is like try and use some common sense and be respectable. And that's like one of the only. Very hard to explain.

Yeah. I'm sure it's probably regional too. Yeah, but I think, you know, what would be a good way to do that is talk to duck hunters that we know in different states and kind of get an average of kind of what they're all saying and how to say it. And I feel like you could get something in there. Yep. You know what I think you shouldn't put in the book what because it wouldn't be applicable to enough people

but there used to be a thing in muskrat trapping where if let's say you have a november one muskrat opener public land guys would go out ahead of season and start staking their sets as a way to claim. So you'd go to a feed bed, put your stake. Go to a house, put your stake. And they pre-stake it. And in their mind, they're claiming it. But there would be nothing preventing you from coming in

and wiring off to that stake sure tell your uh your specific story to that i remember you're saying where it caved in on on his trap that was there oh is that not i had to talk a guy out of beating my ass when i was in high school. I'll tell you right where this happened. I'm not going to say who it was, but I'll tell you where it happened. There's a highway called M120. If you look on a map, find Twin Lake, Michigan, and find Holton, Michigan. M120 between Twin Lake and Holton crosses a thing called Cedar Creek.

There was an undercut bank, which is like mink like to run undercut banks. They like to, they don't want, they want to protect themselves from raptors and stuff lives under there, frogs and crayfish and stuff lives under there. So they're always running undercut banks. Common mink set is to just bed your traps that are a half inch or an inch of water over the pan right up tight against the

wall of the undercut bank because he's going to be running along swimming running along there i go up to a nice looking undercut bank and i'm digging out a trap bed and find a trap not recently dyed and waxed no tag on it i think it's a it's a trap from years past. I put it in my pack basket, and I make my own set there thinking, I failed to mention this. It was sprung, and it was like down deep sprung. So I thought the bank had caved in, whatever,

it was an old trap. I placed my own tagged trap in the exact spot. So these two mink trappers thinking alike, I placed my own tagged trap right there. I can't remember if it was that day or the next day. I'm at a spot making a fox set.

And up roars like driving like he's in the Baja 1000. Up to me. Doesn't go to me though. Goes to my truck. I'm across the field and he's ripping through my truck.

Finds his trap untagged and then wants to beat my ass for having stole his trap and put mine there yeah this guy

is huge I say and I'd be you know and i'm like don't you think i appreciate life enough to where i wouldn't do that to you yeah but you didn't know it was with your and leaving your info there too yeah then i leave like my like business card there. Yeah. Oh, my God, man. Put that in that Chattakit book. Yeah. But that's another thing. You'd be like, tag your goddamn traps.

Because that's the way you should do it, and it's the legal way. That's coming straight from Chester. All right, Evan. To what degree do you feel like talking? All over the news, people are sending me you feel like you're all over the news? People are sending me news articles about Black Rifle Coffee Company. I'll talk about whatever you want. I mean, I don't know.

Do you feel like talking about it? Sure. You're all over the news. On what? I'm doing my hand gesture. Go on. Because... Like your recent news news.

Yeah, we're prepping an IPO. So we did a- Explain to people what the hell that means. Initial public offering or IPO is taking a company public. We're doing it through special purpose acquisition, which is a SPAC. So we- And there's a couple different ways you can do it. You can do a direct listing or you can do a SPAC.

And we went with a SPAC. It was a timing issue. So we, we've been preparing for this for about three years. Oh, no kidding. Really? Four years,

four years. So there's a lot of preparation that goes into this. So I started four years ago. Well, rewind seven years ago you started the company seven years ago i was like can you tell people how you met your wife yeah yeah i met her in a coffee shop so well no you spied her in a coffee shop spider in a coffee shop and then found her online stalker level 20 and recognized that she was buying an espresso machine and realized that's the coffee lady.

Yeah, realized it and then chatted her up. And said, I've been watching you. She's sporting some guns, trying to pull some shots on that espresso machine. Lady's got some vascularity in her arms she probably likes to run a bit and uh i was right and that was uh before i started the company but when i started it it was you know building a big big company was never necessarily something that i was i was goal driven for.

It's more of given the circumstance of the size, it'd be great to be able to share the success of the company with my customers. That's what I wanted to do from the very beginning. So I've always built it around what I call a self licking ice cream cone. So are you going to write a book? Follow me here with the subscription. ice cream cone so are you gonna write a book something called myself licking ice cream follow me here with the subscription it was always about delivering you know fresh the freshest roasted

coffee to people like straight out of the roaster as i talked about it earlier with you it was that a coffee has about 72 hours for it to do what's called off gas. So it's expanding through the roasting process, then it stops. And then you bag it and then you ship it out to your customer. And it has a couple of weeks in there that it really tastes good. And so I wanted people to have that. I wanted the customers to see what I saw in coffee, have this great experience, fresh roasted coffee. That was through the subscription. And I teamed up with companies early on to get discounts for their gear. And a lot of it was all built around the lifestyle.

So a lot of it was shooting and hunting and things like that with these other brands so if you join the subscription you could get a discount with these other companies it was like well shoot if if i you know federal was one of our early companies that we we did business with so if you took a discount from federal there's a lot of guys spend a lot of money on ammo could theoretically pay for your coffee through the entire year so with that subscription was my original intent and then the the second layer that was to be able to share the profits with the customers as well so if we grew your stock goes up theoretically speaking between your discounts and stock price you should be able to pay for your coffee so that's what i've always wanted i've always wanted to build it that way

i didn't understand how complex it was you know being naive well being dumb when you when you really start when you start to build these things like oh you have to go in and build basically these these financial institutions within the company that will audit your financials it's fairly complex and robust robust process is there a thing that uh is there a regulatory measure that that that a company has a hit a certain size in revenue to go public like could someone theoretically take a 100 company public or is that blocked i you know what that's a good question i don't know i know that what we when we were very early on they wanted us to be bigger uh because they didn't feel the stock price would perform well if it was not a bigger

size company so they wanted us to hit a gross revenue number before they would they would do a direct listing or even entertain the idea yeah but i don't know if there's a if there's a regulation that says that you have to meet x because there's a lot of companies that'll go public based on a future possibility of profit. So they don't necessarily even have any profit center. Yeah, yeah. So probably not,

but that's a good question. I don't know. So what happens to you now? Well, in the next couple months, we'll get a ticker. It's all based on the Fed and when they approve it and then release it back and then from that point you know people will be able to purchase it they can't right now it's

under a different ticker through the SPAC yeah but then uh then we'll get our own ticker probably February March depending I don't know it's all based on federal timing and when they're going to sign off on it. So when you're sitting there watching business news and all the stuff going across the bottom, you'll see BRCC run across the bottom? Yes, sir. Yeah. Yeah. I've watched it every day since we've announced it, but it's not every day, I guess. Every other day or whenever I was like, look at my my phone trying to figure it out. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes and our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join,

our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater podcast. Now, you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement.

You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal and more as a special offer you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet

OnXMaps.com slash meet welcome to the OnX club y'all we were deer hunting through a lot of this was that a a welcome distraction or were you were you kind of wishing you were like back at command central there were only maybe a couple seconds i was wishing i was back at command central this is a great distraction and it's not a distraction it's a focus right it's a it's a it was i was thinking a lot about that today where being quiet and then

moving through the woods after you know blacktail was something i was only focused on that. So not thinking about business, you know, every minute or talking about it or having meetings or something like that. It was a really good opportunity to make the announcement, uh, then come out here because it was out here that I think the day after, I think, um, it was a, it was really good to get away from all of it because you can be completely absorbed and uh quite literally a little bit useless uh to the the entire endeavor it takes you know months if not years for this stuff to mature and then move forward there's so much work you're never going to get it done so five days six days that's it's not going to mean anything oh again the grand scheme yeah yeah it's like grain it's like a grain of sand and a beach right it's just kind of all

absorbs it's not it feels like it's really important at the time and i knew that because there were guys were like well why do you want to go out there now? And I'm like, because I want to go out there and go hunting. No. Now. That's why. You don't start, you don't do this stuff so you chain to it all the time. And plus, you don't pass up an opportunity to come hunting with Steve Rinella and Meat Eater. You don't do that.

It doesn't really matter. I would have had to have had some significant family issues that would have had to have to trump that opportunity. You know, you think about there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people that would probably, you know, trim a limb to do that. Like an individual. You mean their arm yeah yeah so you can't squander an opportunity unless it's just absolutely something you know traumatic that's happening in your life because that's disrespectful to the opportunity ultimately oh man thank you that's kind let me lay a little groundwork people and we'll talk some like your impressions of the specifics. We, years ago, filmed a few blacktail hunts in southeast Alaska. So it's Sitka blacktail.

You have Columbia blacktails, which live in California, Oregon, Washington. You get up into B.C. and they switch them to Sitka blacktails. They're a different creature. They resemble one another, but they have some morphological differences, some behavioral differences. We filmed hunting them basically the summer, so August, early September. When they tend to be found up high, they kind of have a reddish coat. They're pretty easy to find. And then these things have a way of vanishing

down into the coastal rainforest. And we filmed a hunt years ago where we tried to hit the rut but went earlier just because of scheduling problems and had a really tough hunt. And I came away blaming it on timing oh man we were two weeks early right but turns out that wasn't as tough as what we had now and then i picked if you talk to

like really good black tail hunters um they're as adamant as our white tail deer hunters in the midwest say about like first week of november like deer hunters in the Midwest say about first week of November. If you're going to hunt any week, first week of November. It could vary because of whatever, but if you're going to go by calendar dates a year in advance, first week of November is when you want to be there. But it's substantiated. There's some lower deer numbers right now. Samantha, you were informed of this by the

uh tongas national forest right they warned you some low deer numbers um you get all kinds of opinions about it it seems that that one of the more popular opinions about it is uh wolves too many wolves not many deer around and even places like where i've just just in my knockings around over the years places where i know there to be trails that are generally like pretty beat down trails struck me as being mossy not beat down and it was just it seemed like just low amounts of sign. And then precipitation. But we had the great opportunity to wander around in virgin, old-growth, coastal rainforest, which is something. Oh, yeah.

What did you think of that whole kind of of dripping mossy scene there which isn't totally foreign to you because you grew up in in the northwest yeah i think we talked a little bit about it because i was stationed out of fort lewis and we did a lot of training in washington state so it reminded me of you know those years uh but it, it's, it's beautiful when you're looking at it, uh, and you're experiencing it. And I think there's a combination of things there, which, you know, to go out and experience the elements the way they are, uh, in this, this is, you know, it's cold and it's wet and it's green and everything's wet. But to become part of that environment where you get to just experience everything about it, you know, I truly love those opportunities.

I don't think that if you're not enjoying the environment because of the moisture you're not enjoying the the entire immersive experience for a lack of a better definition so it's hard to get into um you know lamenting about what you're doing when you're in such a wonderful beautiful place where everything about it is giving you this this experience that you should be you know soaking up for a lack of a better term like a sponge yeah and instead of wishing it were otherwise oh i didn't wish for a second it would be otherwise that's that that would be there are times i get guilty that a little bit now and then yeah we're just wishing it wasn't raining

oh I do I do but then I instantly catch myself I'm like well that would take away from the experience yeah because the

funny thing is about as I'm wishing it's not raining how do I always describe it to people it's coastal rainforest

right yeah it's like temperate rainforest it's beautiful it's beautiful and then you go there and it

rains I'm like damn what gives I was wishing it was otherwise you were yeah the rain i was wishing that you guys had seen more deer oh for sure yeah um yeah i don't know even that nope i still see more deer i think that made the story better. Yeah. Eventually, because we've got to do it. It was looking like, you know, we kept at it. I mean, well, I'll just tell people. I'll just tell, we hunted four full days, dark to dark.

Saw two does. And then. And that's moving nonstop. Yeah. Moving, calling. Yeah. Moving, calling. saw two does and then and that's moving non-stop yeah moving calling yeah moving calling like like hunting hunting yeah up high down low in between yeah it was tough man um you spent a bunch of time in the military uh and i and i always like maybe it's not true but i always imagine the military the people who excelled in the military have developed a level of discipline

that I don't have, mental discipline that I don't have. But I noticed that you, would it just be against your upbringing to have complained or brought up that we weren't seeing things yeah absolutely yeah just not something you're gonna do no never i started after a few days i'm like i don't think he's gonna do that nope no i'm glad he's not gonna do it no and i don't think he's gonna do that

no no it goes back to the whole thing like Like this is a, you know, this is an incredible opportunity. Right. And I was explaining this, I think it was yesterday or something like that. Like, you know, you're, you're part of American history at this point, right? You and the brand and the people that you bring in, you're part of American outdoorsman history. So for me just to sit out here and get the opportunity to go out and hunt with you i would be foolish if not like really remiss to to you know cherish this opportunity and say man i'm i get to hunt with steve like how many other people in america like going back to that same point is making want to do that if not not internationally. So, you know, I get to watch you in your environment as an American,

you know, outdoor icon, and then get to share several days with you in this, you know, incredible place where regardless of how much it rained or, you know, if you're cold or whatever it might be, like, that's part of it. Like I get to, you know, live those five days. Like what an incredible gift. And so if I would have been like, dude, we're not seeing a lot of deer. That's not why I'm here. I'm not here to do that. I'd have been like, you don't say.

Yeah. No shit. I was like, oh, you wish you were seeing more yeah yeah like master the obvious you've been like yeah no shit you're not seeing any deer so it's you know it is it's it's hunt it's it's the it's hunting and you know i've had a lot of really cool life experiences that, you know, and this, this will live up there with those, those experiences, you know? So for me, it was just like, yeah, hey, we're hunting. This is great. So dark to dark, great. Extend the daylight. Let's walk a little bit more. Let's have, you know, have a little bit more time in the field because

it, it wouldn't be the same if it wasn't really respected so you know that's one thing that is you know truly thankful for and i thank you guys for really inviting me because uh it was incredible time and i really can't thank you enough for for for allowing me that opportunity because it's incredible you know i i can sit here and say that the more i think about it i um if you don't count a dead one yeah i never did see a buck no yeah we were set up calling and dirt said he saw the flick of a tail yeah 300 yards away heart stopped yeah and I could tell by his like demeanor, I could tell by his demeanor that it was true.

And then attention was focused in a way that I couldn't see and I could, it's funny because all I could, I could just like see you, you Evan.

And I could read by your like whatever posture I could read you seeing it I could read you um knowing that there would soon potentially be a shot opportunity I could see through your posture the shot opportunity present itself.

And I never saw the deer until he walked up on it. But it was like I was watching it. Just by watching sort of like the muscle tension or something in like. I'm like, that is the sort of physical tightening of a man who just saw deer. I'll go back to something, which is like, you said there's like a level of discipline, right? Where you're talking about like the level of discipline that, you know, some guys in the military get if they're, you know, they're professional soldiers.

I think, you know, any person that comes to that, I would say fractions of a percentile within their profession. It takes a significant amount of discipline. It just does. And seeing you out there and then seeing you, I've been around a ton of guys

that are masters of their profession. And you can see it. You're part of that really small fraction of people that have a ton of guys that are masters of their profession and you can see it you're you're part of that like really small fraction of people that have a ton of discipline so i think that that's that was one thing i was i was um i was very um in awe of i was like just looking at how you're working the entire scenarios uh throughout those days of hunting and then looking at you and saying oh yeah like I thought about it multiple times it's like if Steve was in the army he would have been a delta force guy like if he was in the army he would have been delta force more derby like delta force yeah

Derek would have been with me just like dragging our knuckles he would have been a machine gunner just like dirty he'd have run the little dip booth in the commissary black market Copenhagen get so laser focused and the pursuit of what you're going

for it was really it's not it doesn't pay the the right respect to the term but it is not only interesting but man it gave me a whole new level of kind of what you do as a profession it does like it gives me an entirely entirely different perspective no thank you man touch on uh real quick before we wrap up touch on shrimping those things are delicious they're incredibly delicious um the the the experience of going out on the water because i i haven't been out on on the water a ton i've spent a little bit

of time in the ocean. But going out. Well, you spent a lot of time on rivers. A lot of time on rivers. A lot of time in the ocean. Going out and experiencing the ocean with you, understanding that you have much more confidence in the boat and your skills than I do. Confidence in your boat and your skills. It's a joke, fellas.

It's me saying i don't he has a lot more confidence than everybody else uh in that big water oh i'm with you now no i think it's uh it's work too i can imagine you know dumping those pots and then i kept thinking about the manual process of dragging those things up after you dumped them. Because you're talking about those guys, those old shrimpers pulling those pots up. Yeah. Without that assist. Yeah.

Man. We used to hand pull smaller ones and it was, you know, it's like recreational, but it gives you sort of a glimpse. It gives you a glimpse into the commercial life. Right. You get worn out trying to coil those things. That's what I was going to say. I was like, my arms got tired just trying to throw the rope into a perfect circle. You took it to that fast, though, Evan.

Just filming you guys, the shrimping, when you guys were in action together, it was like after the first pot pulling, it was like. We're like Bubba gump yeah all right well that's what I like about him because he's like oh that's how you do it he just explains it and then he expects you didn't know it like you've been doing it for ten years he goes around here through this and around that and then you just hit the switch you good okay we're going you know yeah what'd you say are we in the woods are we on the? I don't even know. Are we in the woods? Are we on the water? I don't even know where the hell we're at right now. And, uh, no, that, that entire process was

so, so cool. Um, you know, the, the, the shrimping itself and be able to rip those things apart. That's probably one of the most satisfying things outside of pushing in bubble wrap. Oh, yeah. Tearing shrimp heads apart. Yeah. It's almost as cool as bubble wrap for kids. Seth and I were talking about it. I was like, man, I could do this for a couple hours before I get sick of it.

Because you're playing game. I want to get all of it. And then you're thinking about how delicious those things are. I don't care how hard it is to lift that it's called yeah it's called popping heads yeah uh oh you know i want to tell people about a thing that that we did for cooking that i thought was cool and i hadn't ever said i'd honestly never seen it i didn't know that's how it worked but you had what do you call the beans green yeah they're green yeah so they're green beans green Green coffee beans. Yeah, from Ethiopia.

And over like a, we have a boiler we use outside to boil. You know, it's like people use them to deep fry turkeys. We use it to boil crabs. Big propane fired burner. On the river, blaster. The blaster. A blaster. Yeah, the blaster.

And took the beans which look like they're like khaki colored i don't know tan yeah tan yeah you wouldn't look at it you'd look at and think you're looking at it's like uh i don't know you look at you look at like a like a like a lentil yeah like a that's a good way of putting it you think you're looking at a lentil but it's a coffee bean yep and then in a cast iron pan over that outdoor burner slowly and methodically over how many minutes you think it takes that one took us a while it took us 25 minutes give or take uh which is your classic cast iron skillet turned them into like those glossy dark coffee beans man yeah not turned them into like those glossy, dark coffee beans, man.

Yeah. Not turned them into, but roasted them. Roasted them, yeah. Roasted them over fire. And then immediately, I know you said it, like ideally you'd let them sit a few days. We didn't do that. We didn't do it. Immediately ground them.

Yeah. And then made like a coffee rub that was just some brown sugar salt coffee pepper pepper yeah and uh i eat a lot of you know like every time dick and harry in the planet sell some kind of coffee rub right you run into it but man that tasted like coffee yeah that was a good coffee rub i would suggest people to do that get Get like really, like make it from scratch. Yeah. And not with your old ground up shit you got in the cupboard.

Well, you got to make it, if I have one suggestion for guys making coffee rubs out there, which I've made several, is you get a light whole bean coffee and you grind it. You got to use, the reason I say a light roasted coffee

is because whatever you're going to put it in, whether it's a pan or an oven or wherever you're to grind and then put in to your coffee rub that also continues to roast on the meat because you want it to have a little bit of time on the meat while it's roasting and not burning it into char does that make sense yeah and if you're already on the cusp of burnt yeah it just turns more burnt and that's why i think a lot of people don't use a lot of coffee in their coffee rubs because they haven't been able to put enough coffee in there where it doesn't turn into just really burnt, acidic char. It just doesn't taste very good. Most of the coffee rubs that use a lot of coffee, they don't appeal to me. But if I use a really lightly roasted coffee, freshly grind it before I put it in the rub,

that's when it always gets better because you can taste, to your point, you can taste the coffee in the rub. Yeah. It was nice. It tasted like coffee in a very nice way. On to your tenderloin. Oh, there's one last hot coffee tip I want you to give people. When someone asks if you want light, medium, or dark,

I always thought they were giving you escalating caffeine levels. Right. That's not true. Explain that. It's a myth. Hold on. Raise your hand in this room. Raise your hand if you thought like I did.

Until when? You knew? About caffeine levels that light medium dark was like increasing caffeineness no yeah no i thought it was all the same caffeine i just thought like a dark roast is like your real like bitter strong coffee you think had anything to do how much caffeine was in there no i didn't think it was a measurement of caffeine i just assumed that like the darker it got the more of it was in there no i didn't think it was a measurement of caffeine i just assumed that like the darker it got the more of it was in there the more of everything right and that's not it's not true so

your your lightest coffee and there's some um wait there's a there's a white coffee which is it's barely roasted and that has the most caffeine per gram. And then if you go light, medium, dark, it has the most caffeine if you're in a light coffee versus a dark coffee. Because as you roast the coffee, you're burning it. So you have less of the intact coffee bean. So you're deconstructing the caffeine as you're burning it. You're making smoke and carbon and yeah yeah yeah exactly so if you want more caffeine you need to have a lighter coffee

and it's interesting because a lot of people they think that they're like i want a dark roasted coffee with lots i want something really strong well it's a strong flavor but it doesn't have as much caffeine um i drink really light coffees not because i like the caffeine it's a strong flavor, but it doesn't have as much caffeine. I drink really light coffees. Not because I like the caffeine. It's because I like to taste the coffee itself and not just burnt. One thing that I have noticed is when I go to my normal coffee spot, I usually get a dark roast from that.

And then almost every little cafe that I go to, you know, some mom and pop's greasy spoon cafe, it always seems like a lighter roast coffee at these places because people don't like them super dark. And it seems like I always get way more jittery and feel more caffeinated at these mom and pop stores. It's probably because you're drinking more cups. Well, it could be two things. You're talking to a guy that owns a coffee company. There's two. Well, I'll tell you the reason why. If you talk about Chattakit, I'd be like,

who's he talking about drinking? I was just saying no because I don't know if I drink as many cups. I'll tell you the reason. So here's the reason why is less expensive coffee is a Robusta. It's a different strain. There's two main strains. I see that turnaround. Robusta and Arabica.

So if you look at the two main branches, Arabica has, we'll call it 30 to 40% less caffeine than the Robusta. But the Arabica is more expensive. So the Robusta. Hit me again. I want to make sure I memorized this. So you get two main strains of coffee, Arabica and Robusta, but the Arabica is more expensive. So the Robusta hit me again. I want to make sure I memorize this. So you get two main strains of coffee, Arabica and Robusta. Okay. Robusta is less expensive, but it has more caffeine. It's a smaller bean. It's less expensive and it has more caffeine. Arabica is typically more expensive and has less caffeine, but Arabica, you can get better tastes out of it.

So you can increase the profile. So your better coffee shops are typically going to serve an Arabica. Your diners are going to typically serve Arabica or Robusta. And so that's why you feel more jittery is because they're using a different caffeine or a different bean. What do you think of that? I think that's pretty cool because I always wonder why. That's the reason because you can buy it in bulk.

And a lot of the less expensive coffees that are out there, you're going to buy them in like five pound bags. And a lot of the diners are going to go for the less expensive option through a food vendor and you know that's what they're going to use and they're and they're not using proper water to coffee ratios either which is totally different conversation but sure we don't need it we just lost half your podcast after after chester does the chatticot book yeah which we still haven't okayed he's got to go through all the channels. He's got to get his project greenlit. We haven't greenlit it.

But let's say he gets it greenlit. He's going to do that. He's going to go on to have all his other adventures in life. And then he's going to open a place called Chester's Egg Factory. And it's going to be a breakfast coffee place. You're going to serve Black Rifle. He's going to serve Robusta. Of course, Black Rifle. He's going to serve Robusta. Of course, Black Rifle.

Then you guys will show up more because he gave you guys We got those free tokens. Don't be telling people about it because I don't want people breaking into my house to take my free token, man. That's a lifetime token. I see. It's a lifetime. I got to say, too, the rub you made was

when we had coffee this morning, wrapping up. There was an aha moment of how good that was. It's really good, right? Yeah, just because it was so freshly roasted. And one more thing. Yep. Something special about the blacktail deer. Please.

Pleistocene relic. Oh! And we saw it. With that, ladies and gentlemen, join us next time on the media podcast thanks everybody Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. On-axe hunt is now in Canada.

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