The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 308: The Crawfish Pond

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Ronnie Collins, Jean Paul Bourgeois, Bud Guidry, Seth Morris, and Chester Floyd.Topics discussed: A hand-built bayou cruise ship; when your first job was boiling crawfish and shrimp; Bud's personal crawfish pond; when you're the Frog Champion of the World; a roadkill-eating vegan; acknowledging probable cause vs. being chap-assed and anti-game warden in Pennsylvania; more on what's Chethical; harassment of hound hunters, hounds hurting humans, and domestic dogs hurting hounds; 26 inch bullfrogs; spillway crawfish as the real damn deal; boudin as Steve's favorite thing right now and his truck-mounted hot sauce invention; the soak, the purge, and the sucking of head fat; the duck cleaning technique; routeed; the third joint; the poudoux palooza; 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. All right, everybody, this is the special Louisiana edition. In fact, Ronnie Collins, explain what we're on right now. We're sitting on a 102 foot houseboat in the middle of Bayou Lafourche.

That's right, man. It's like a cruise ship. It is. How do you guys wind up with this thing? So my grandpa actually built it from scratch. Did he really? Yeah. He got a good deal on some steel. Took about a year.

He built the barge. He made it from the barge up? I'm talking from the barge up. So anytime we had like it was kind of slow at work, he would take our to keep our welders busy he would send them work on the houseboat so he built the barge first which took about a year and then he built the uh first story in the second story and then my mom lined up some carpenters to do the inside and you guys can move this thing around depending on where you want to

hang out correct we uh we have uh four or five tugboats, and whenever we want to move it, whenever one of them's not on a job, we'll move it. You better explain your family business. So my family business is oil field construction, marine construction. We actually build oil platforms out in the marsh and in the bayous. And we have a handful of tugs, probably another eight barges. And then we have our work crews. Do you guys pull this around to job sites too and stay on it?

No, this is strictly just the family houseboat. Dude, this houseboat, I want to set the scene. This houseboat has a Christmas tree in it. It has plates. A full kitchen. Decorations. Multiple bathrooms. Yeah, how many bathrooms? Three? Two? Two up here

and three upstairs, so five bathrooms. Five full bathrooms. This house would be a sweet house if it wasn't even on a boat. Yeah. Exactly, yeah. You put it on a boat. Next level house.

You can fish off the porch. Dude, I'm going to steal this thing some night. I'm going to hotwire one of them tugboats, and I'm going to drag this thing to southeast Alaska. They got one right there that can push it. Oh, it's two stories, right? Yeah, two stories. I'll probably leave the Christmas tree out on the deck there,

on the dock, because I don't want to really add insult to injury, but other than that, I'm taking the whole damn deal. And to top it all off, it'll kind of rock you to sleep at night when those shrimp boats or whatever boat passes. You get a little rocking motion, and it's nice, man. Oh, we have been immersed in the culture. Also, that's uh ronnie collins not a junior right not a junior okay and uh jean-paul give the proper uh bouge jean-paul bourgeois yeah sir good french name yep yep you're learning uh also from this

state correct give a little background yeah so i'm from Also from this state, correct? Give a little background. Yeah, so I'm from Thibodeau, Louisiana, which is a little north of where we're at right now in Galliano. And I grew up in Assumption and Lafourche Parish and was kind of raised cooking. My mom and dad were great cooks. I kind of followed suit by their hip the whole time. And when I had to decide what to do with my life, the only thing that I kind of kept thinking about, well, I'm pretty good at cooking. So I went to culinary school, did culinary school and been in it ever since. I've never had a job outside of the kitchen. Tell them what your first

job was. First job was boiling crawfish, crab and shrimp at Express Seafood in Tibeto, Louisiana. That was my first job. I was 15 years old. And the thing I remember the most, of course, we bought a whole bunch of seafood. But you go home after that shift and your pores would be on fire with just with some of that powdered seasoning. Because when you put that in the water, it steams up and that gets all on your skin. But it's a good memory. That's a good memory. It's like one of those things that only happens if you do that in the water it steams up and that gets all on your skin but it's a good memory that's a good memory it's like one of those things that only happens if you do that job and then you went

up and chef you went up to the big city and chefed in new york for a long time i did yeah i was in new york from 2009 to 2000 to 2021 actually was it kind of like if you can make it there you can make it anywhere kind of thing yeah i mean i think so i i was i'm i'm kind of a chameleon in the sense that i like i like the adaptability of being in new places and new york was one of those places i had never been i didn't have a job i didn't i didn't i i went without a job and um and in my head i was like well let me put myself in the most uncomfortable situation i can and that's how i know i'm going to learn them learn the most and evolve the most uncomfortable situation I can. And that's how I know I'm going to learn the most and evolve the most and just change.

Did you boil any crayfish up there? We did, yeah. I probably, oh man, I used to boil about 500 pounds a year for a certain event every year while I was up there. LSU actually has an alumni kind of gathering there that I've done a couple times. Even though I'm not an LSU alum, I'm a Louisianian and boiled crawfish for them. And different things. I mean, people love crawfish no matter where you're at in the country.

And especially love it if you have somebody authentically from Louisiana doing it for them. And then Bud, I don't even know your name, man. Guidry. Say it again? Guidry. Okay then Bud, I don't even know your name, man. Gedry. Say it again? Gedry. Bud Gedry. Gedry? Gedry. You know why you're here, Bud? Not really. We only just met Bud yesterday.

Because Bud's the man. That's why he's here. Probably my favorite person on the planet. He passed up Heffelfinger. He passed up Heffelfinger. He passed up Dern. Blew way past Seth and Chester. We met Bud yesterday because Bud's going to give a dispatch about this.

We met Bud yesterday because we went. I didn't know this existed until yesterday. We went to Bud's private, personal. Crawfish pond. Crawfish pond. You know how some people have a garden that they take care of and everything he has a crawfish pond that puts off how many pounds three thousand pounds a year two acre two acre pond okay puts off three thousand pounds of crawfish i went over there

thinking that he was in the commercial crawfish business no he just eats them and gives them to his friends yeah that's that's it like a zucchini gardener yeah which is like the greatest thing on the planet so we're gonna hear all about how to have how to have your own crawfish pond it's uh it's a hobby it's just uh we enjoy eating it and it's something for me to do. I was a commercial shrimp all my life. Oh, you were? Yeah. That's what I did all my life. A big trawler working the Gulf.

And when I got out of that, I had to find something to do. So you started carving ducks, tying flies. Carving decoys, tying Atlantic salmon flies, and raising crawfish. It's a renaissance man, if I've ever heard of him. Yeah, and you won some competitions for decoy carving and then just quit. Yeah, it got boring.

It just, I didn't, it wouldn't stimulate my mind enough. It was always the same routine, carving, painting, and I've been in art all my life. That, it didn't do it for me. I had to find a different form of art to keep my mind stimulated. What are you on to right now? The flies.

Still? Yeah. Tying Atlantic salmon flies. For display? Yes. Everything is for display that I tie. Every fly I tie is one of a kind. It's framed.

It's collectors that buy my work and i tie on hundred-year-old hooks the tinsels and silks i use date from around 1930. no yeah it's uh i'm gonna have to show you just uh pull up my name on google tell everybody how to because people at home can do it on their phone right now just go to google and type in bud giedry yeah but no one's gonna know how to spell giedry g-u-i-d-r-y g-u-d there it is bud giedry salmon flies fly fishing flies images if you get a sense of what he's getting for one of these, let me know. I don't want to make it feel awkward. $250 to $1,800 a fly. Really?

Wow. Yeah. So you're like an artist. It depends on. And a crawfish farmer. Like if I have a fly I've done and it's been published, the price is a lot higher. I have work on display at the Smithsonian Institute. No.

At our four national zoos. When you walk in front of the Cory Buster exhibit, that fly that's in that big acrylic disc, that's mine. Really? I did work for the Smithsonian, yeah. Now, who are you? Man, when I steal this boat, this guy's going to be tied up in it. I'm going to take this guy's gonna be tied up in it i'm gonna take this guy i'm gonna

take this guy with me yeah ransom him off i enjoy the fly tying um because every piece i do is unique yeah it's it's not the same routine so it stimulates my mind keeps me at it so i want to i want to cover off on this too because i feel this is very like uh this is kind of like a test of the culture here where we're at um ronnie talk about how you and bud like you've known bud your whole life yeah i've known bud my whole life i mean because everybody around here you guys are all sort of related or been here a long time. Family. Yeah, we're family. Unrelated.

So Bud's close cousins, Mr. Chris and his son, Cade, me and Cade were best friends growing up. So first thing I did when I got home from school was I had to hop in my four-wheeler, cut across the pasture to Cade's house, and then we'd go find Bud, and Bud would bring us to do all kinds of cool stuff. We'd go frogging. We'd go fishing, crawfishing. Depending on what was going on that time of year. Frog champion of the world right here. He's right here. You're sitting next to him.

You're the frog champion of the world. That's him. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Bud was the man spotting frogs. Bud would put me in. All right. Okay, we're going to get back to the crawfish. We got to do a couple things.

We're going to get back to the crawfish pond. We got to cover off on a little... You just got to hang tight. But comment if you feel like you need to comment. That's fine. We got a couple of news items we got to go through. Two little things. I don't like hacking on vegans, man, at all.

It's not my thing to hack on vegans. God bless them. Yep. But this guy wrote in with an on vegans. God bless them. Yep. But this guy wrote in with an interesting picture where he's in Honolulu, and he sees a restaurant called Vegan City. It's called Vegan City Plant-Based Comfort Food. But above the bar is a big TV, and they're all watching Meat Eater. So I thought it was cute. I'd love to just ask why.

Here's another one. This is good. This is like this guy's talking about the coolest vegan he knew. When this guy was in school, they were at the University of Iowa there's a class you can take at the University of Iowa I would have taken the shit out of this class called the history and culture of hunting in America

the instructor had a friend who was had been vegan but made it their thing that they ate roadkill because it's like it's dead it's dead by human cause would otherwise go to waste and they would eat opossum squirrel raccoon coyote deer didn't matter huh lived on roadkill back in college i've eaten a little bit of roadkill oh yeah but not a vegan oh you guys ate roadkill because that's you eat anything that moves yeah pretty much my favorite vegetable is boiled crabs what's that my favorite vegetable is boiled

crabs yeah i'm with you uh kind of a weird deal out of Pennsylvania right now. Seth's from Pennsylvania, so he's going to talk about this. Yeah. Do you want me to lay the groundwork or you want to lay the groundwork? Yeah, lay the groundwork. Ah, man. Okay, as people know, as people know, I don't know if you know this or not, but it's interesting to know.

Everybody's familiar with police have to do warrants. Yeah. Okay, like for instance, right now now if a policeman is driving by he can't just decide to come in here and see if we're in here doing illicit drugs right you can't be like yeah i don't know there's people in there maybe i'm gonna barge in and see what they're doing yeah and he can't sneak in here and hide behind the christmas tree over there to see if someone does something bad because they need probable cause and all this. private property and do investigations, do stakeouts, sneak around, go to your tree stand, check your license without probable cause, without any kind of warrant. Some fellas in Pennsylvania are bent out of shape.

They got a hunting club and they had some wardens come on to their hunting club and give them some citations. They're not challenging what the citations were about they're challenging that that person they got some libertarian attorney and they're challenging that it's unconstitutional for a warden to have the ability to go onto private property without, without do it to do warrantless search. Yeah. Lay out some of the cultural implications here, Seth.

Seth sounds, thinks they sound whiny. Well, I, I almost like, I don't know. There's, there's a whole,

there's like one, very much one side of the story here. Um, the side of the people who are not happy because they got tickets yeah yeah like it doesn't right it doesn't say what they got tickets for it does you're wrong on what goes down it goes they got it there's two citations hunting without a license or having a loaded gun in your vehicle. Oh, okay. I missed that part.

The hunting without a license is a big issue, though. Yeah. So they're saying that dude had no right to come on our land anyway. Well, I guess, well, he did because it's law. Well, no, okay.

They're challenging his right to do this. I don't know. Growing up in Pennsylvania, there's so many people that were anti-game commission, right? Oh, buddy. And typically, I won't say everyone, but I'd say 95% of those people were anti-game commissioned because they were doing illegal shit. Hmm. Hmm.

Hmm. Yeah. Strong word, Seth. Most of the time a word doesn't... The only anti-game commissioned person I know in Pennsylvania is related to you closely. Oddly enough, when you just... Oddly enough, when you just said most people that don't like warrants here it's because they were caught either doing something illegal or are they breaking the law yeah well that might be the

same reason people sometimes afraid of police that may be the same all over yeah i think i think yeah yeah when we were kids driving around if you saw a policeman you turned the radio down and everything and everybody sat up real straight and stuff you just felt like you were doing something bad yeah but let me let me give a couple more details what it's called is open fields doctrine um a game warden's ability to like like for instance if a game warden we were talking to a game warden one time and he was uh i'll bring this this is an interesting story he was explaining why he was leery about suppressors because he was saying i rely on the sound of gunshots yeah then he went on to say it's hard for him to finish a night of bow hunting on a day off he said every time i'm in my tree stand i'm sitting there and around dark i hear

and he's like since depending on the timing and everything i'm down out of my tree and i'm heading that way yep now a gunshot would not like you shoot a gun off for all manner of reasons. But he would hear that and head off onto the neighbor's place, right? Open fields doctrine. But high courts in New York, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, Washington State appeals courts have begun to strip wildlife agencies of these special powers. Arguing that the state constitutions grant greater protections to citizens. We got an email from a guy, a civil engineer in Pennsylvania, who just unrelated to this, a long like a big long very well articulated email about what he

feels has become a very aggressive in his take in his mind a very aggressive approach to um game wardening in his state but again he had some violations yeah yeah it's just his side of the story yeah well the the officer i'm hesitant to read the letter because i'd have to go and get a letter from the officer about what happened i know so it's it's it's kind of like a moot point but he points to that there's a lot of tension. He feels there's an increasing amount of tension in Pennsylvania around enforcement approach and tactics. Yeah. And he went on to say on how he feels that hunting is going to go away in the

state because of that. I don't think that that's probably true. I don't think that's true either. I think that's a far stretch. But if a game warden wants to come on my property, if he's suspicious that something's going on,

for me, I'd be like, by all means, go do what you have to do. I mean, you're not going to find anything. All I'm going to do is prove to you that there's nothing for you to worry about here. Yeah. And

the game warden that they're talking about, there's like nothing for you to worry about here. Yeah. Yeah. You know? And the game warden that they're talking about, I don't know if we want to mention his name, but that guy's checked me two different times in turkey season, had great encounters with him. Oh, you did? Oh, yeah. That we had someone poaching turkeys on our property,

called the game commission. He showed up. That guy? He sat in our camp at the table that we'd all sat around wow um tell the big elk story yeah this guy speaking of gunshots this same guy there's a bull elk he ended up scoring like 460 right around 460 something that doesn't even make sense i know pennsylvania grows massive elk, this guy, we had trail cam pictures of that bull on our property. He, one

night, I think he was suspicious of some elk poaching going on. Anyway, one night he went up close to our property, just at night, in September, and just sat up there in the dark listening listening had a listening post and all of a sudden just heard a gunshot and went over there and found that it's actually a kid that went to my high school graduated i think a year or two ahead of me um had killed

this bull and was cutting the antlers off of it when he showed up no yeah wow yeah on private property uh i yeah most likely because all it's all private around there. Caught him red-handed. Yeah. Yeah. So you've had a lot of adjacency and interactions to this individual, and it has not been your finding that he's coming around, busting your balls unnecessarily. No. He's been nothing but help to us. Hmm.

Plot thickens. So. Plot thickens. I feel like, and I know, like, I don't know this guy real well. I just, I've talked to him, you know, a handful of times, and all my interactions with him have been great. I feel like he's not going around harassing people for no reason. I feel like if he has probable cause or, you know,

whatever, he thinks something's going on, he's going to do something about it. Yep. So, I don't know. I think – Your take is these guys got a little chap ass because they got some tickets. Yeah. Yeah.

They're obviously doing illegal shit, and they got caught doing it, so they're bitter about the game commission. Sounds like it. Thanks for the report, Seth. I don't think – Yeah, I don't have a problem with a game warden coming on my on our like our family's property you know i always that's one of the things i always vacillate on man is remember when uh when they had those uh they had some domestic terrorists

and they wanted to get into their phone real bad yeah and uh they couldn't get it took them forever apple wouldn't let them into the guy's phone, the guy's wife's phone. Part of my mind's like, I don't know, man, if someone wanted to take a look at my phone, I'd just be like, here, I don't know. You're going to be bored as shit. Yeah, I just, I don't, I don't, I don't know, I guess I'm just

playing devil's advocate a little bit. I have no problem. No, I'm with you. I see, like, I see the civil, I guess I'm just playing devil's advocate a little bit. I have no problem with you. I see, but like I, you know, I see the civil, yeah, I definitely see the civil, sorry, the civil liberties end of it.

Yeah. But I also see that, uh, that, um, I don't know, man, I guess I'm comfortable with,

uh, the distinction between, between of someone's like a warden's right to roam across the landscape i don't think they're coming into houses and busting down doors like their right to roam across the landscape um doing that sort of work feels different to me than then saying okay so then if that's true police can just enter your home when they want for no reason. Yeah. I don't feel that there's the probability of a ton of confusion there.

I'm curious about what the optics would be if they didn't have any citations drawn on them. Like, they did have a license. They didn't have the gun. Would they still have the same opinion about the game warden coming on their property? Yeah. They probably forgot about it very quickly.

I could see if a game warden had a strong feeling that, for instance, I'll put myself in this situation. If a game warden thought I was doing something wrong on my property, and he was constantly harassing me, but constantly not finding anything, but still constantly harassing me. First day not like not finding anything but still like constantly harassing me like first day opening day of deer season he's like at first light he shows up my tree stand like i could see getting pretty irritated about that yeah that's a good

point nothing's turning up but they're just making your life hell because of some unfounded suspicion yeah i could see that being very frustrating. But I've never experienced anything like that. I have a hard time believing that a lot of that goes on. If they're not finding anything, I feel like they're just going to move on to other shit. Yeah. Try to go write some tickets somewhere. Yeah.

Yeah. I feel like if that would go through and they would not allow game wardens to go without a warrant, I feel like that'd be a huge loss for wildlife because I feel like a lot of people with private land would just take advantage. Figure that, oh, I can make my own rules now. Yeah. Game warden ain't coming over unless I guess they get reported. Or dudes that hunt public land and start getting a hell of a lot more tickets.

Be like, dude, all the pressure's on us now. Okay, we've got a couple. Chattakit. Can you quickly tackle all three of these, Chester? Yes. I was actually coming up with a plan how to tackle them real quick. Okay. So Chattakit, let me tee him up.

Okay. So this is the chatticate section, and we find out whether things are chathical or not. You like that new one? I don't know who came up with that. Yeah, chathics. Yeah. The first one, there's three of them here.

First one's about your honey holes holes or your hunting fishing spots one guy um was hunting with his ex-wife and his father-in-law um or he was hunting with his wife at the time wife his then wife and his then father and then father-in-law um took him out to his spot and his wife shot a buck of a lifetime and uh he must not have liked his ex-father-in-law because he had to throw in there my ex-father-in-law wounded um i noticed that yeah and that was a um i learned a new word for my wife the other day i think that that's called a microaggression yeah just a little he's like what what what he one. I'm just telling you he wounded one. It's like

a little jab. A little tiny jab. So the ex-father-in-law wounded one, but it must have been a pretty good spot because four years later, a guy goes in this spot and there he sees his ex-father-in-law. Well, you left out that they

had a divorce. Yes. Ex-father-in-law. Well, you left out that they had a divorce. Yes. Well. Ex-father-in-law. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess that's implied there. That paints a picture.

This guy's in there hunting his spot. And I know we've covered this before, spots. And my take on this is real simple. If some dude shows you a spot. And then you divorce his daughter especially a like a smaller spot well just in regards to anything in like any spot situation like it's always good to ask if you're gonna go in there that's like a very simple way yeah here's the thing go on don't go on to number two but i got something to say about number one all of these things have a

bunch of gray area there, too. I don't know how big this spot is. It could be a giant public land spot. I got two. Go for it. You're right. I agree with you in general. Yep.

If you have a spot and you take your father-in-law out and then you get a divorce and he stops being your father-in-law, I feel the father-in-law needs to move on and find a new spot because the divorce ended that relationship. Sure. But I don't know the details of the divorce. Yeah. in was a flanderer yep and that behavior led to the divorce and there was some other ugly factors involved in the divorce this father-in-law might not even like hunting yeah he's just doing anything he can you ever see that movie in the bedroom uh-uh he's just doing every it's about lobster fishermen huh but i wouldn't have guessed that by the title well it's a part of a lobster trap gotcha in the bedroom part lobster anyways this father-in-law kills his wife's ex-husband

i kind of ruined the movie it's in the end but uh spoiler so it might be that he was sticking it to the guy sticking it to him yeah that's. Over something that we don't know about. Yeah. But here's the thing. In your position as the Chetiket man, you can't be bogged down by all the unknowns. Yes. And here's another lesson on that for this guy

who took the father-in-law out. It sounds like he didn't quite really like him if you're gonna take someone out to your good hunting spot make sure you really like them make sure they're like good buddy you know which can you know again things can change things can change down the road but just do your do your best to you know have a good good buddy yeah i don't you're a married man, Chester. Yeah.

I've been married a little hell about longer than you. Uh, in that situation, it might not be that he could, it might not be that he could, uh, you know, you gotta be like, uh,

there's a, there's some politics involved in being married, man. Yeah. She's like, well, how come you don't take my dad hunting? I don't like him.

I mean, come on. Oh, I know what you're saying big time. Yeah, it might be like, you know, your wife asks you to do something, you just do it. Yeah. That's why you have B and C spots. Yeah. There you go.

I got just the spot for you. It's not where I hunt. Put him in the gar hole. Put him in the gar hole. Put him in the gar hole. Bring him to the muck. Okay. Another one here. Next Chatticot question.

So this is a property thing. This guy bought 40 acres of land, wanted to have his own little chunk to hunt. Oh, no, 30 acres of land. The back 30. the back 30 the back 30 um and he is got a little confrontation maybe or not confrontation but his neighbors have a deer stand set up right on the property line and a old ground blind set up right on the property line he even mentions that it's potentially on their property just a little bit but he's not quite sure and anyways uh and he's like should i

confront these guys is that wrong am i being wrong since they were there first what should i do we grew up on a property in wisconsin that is pretty good hunting um a lot of deer especially during the box too big box um running all over the place anyways our neighbors definitely know that and they set up right around the outside of our property and it's not on our property but it definitely is kind of like i don't know it's a little annoying you know because it's like if that guy saw that big buck walking on our property line just inside would that guy be able to hold out and not shoot that deer? You know, it just depends on the person, but there's really nothing you can do there. They're, if they're on their property, you know, they have every right to set that blind up. I would recommend if you have that situation,

we don't have any, any tree stands set up right on our property lines just to avoid that conflict you know potentially so but help this guy out uh with this question i know that he does he probably knows that he doesn't have any authority to make them move but he's trying to figure out how should i feel about them sure yeah um i mean that that's like depends on what kind of people they are too like if he gets to know his neighbors and on what kind of people they are, too. Like, if he gets to know his neighbors and they're kind of shysty, like, if they could shoot a deer, then I would feel a little worried and, you know. Yeah, I think you should go talk to him. Does it, like, say that he knows them?

Well, it's his neighbors. He says, should I confront them about it? Should I suck it up and avoid it or bring it up to them? And I think if they're your neighbors, you might as well go over there and have a chat with them because you're living right next to them regardless. I would go over there and be like, listen, I see you have a stand close to the property line. Does he have a stand close to there too? No, it sounds like he's staying off the property lines.

I was going to say, I'd go over there and be like, listen, if we communicate a little bit, you let me know when you're hunting that stand. I know it's close to the property line. Let me know when you're hunting that. I'll hunt a different spot or vice versa. Tell you what I think. Maybe.

I don't know. I'd have to know a little more about the neighbors. You could also go over there and propose a solution you could say you know what really i could put a stand up and we could sit back to back right yeah you're looking in your place me looking at my place no one really wants that would you want to agree to a little gentleman's agreement that uh we don't put stands within 100 yards of that border i'll honor that yeah you want that like a little co-op yeah i like now i know here's i don't want to tell you i don't want to say where this is because

i don't want to embarrass anybody but i know some folks with a, with a property in Texas, low fence. This is not a high fence property. And they have a very tightly managed deer program on their property. And they've had a lot of problems with these neighbors have a parcel that borders theirs and they don't have a tightly managed deer program. And they, all their stands were on the edge because they knew that they had big box. They eventually put a deer fence

on one edge of their property. Huh. How did Buddy do the same thing? Put a deer-proof fence just just on one it got so tense between them and the neighbors and i know and i know from just from hearing from the people i know's perspective that they did share with the neighbors here like here's what we're trying to accomplish here with like a deer management program um you know let's try to work together on it um but they just felt they're being a little bit taken advantage of and that was their solution

interesting i had a buddy and they have a ranch over in the king's ranch in texas and they had the same issue their neighbor uh on the bordering side was putting up stands and guiding hunts to shoot the bucks coming off of the bow-only ranch. So they were real strict on their management. You know, only 150 plus inch deer being shot with a bow. And that guy was putting a hunter a different hunter every day in that stand on the border and they did the same thing they put up a deer fence and cut them off with the gabosh on that just a high game fence on one side of the border just to keep those deer from going to that dude's or that guy him just killing them all yeah okay chetika number three chetika number three this guy lives in california's sacramento valley

between two mountain ranges he says it's let's just say it's not san francisco bear hunting was outlawed 10 years ago with dogs you can't run bears with dogs out there anymore um and this guy was out bear hunting one day and he ran across a couple pickup trucks with some guys with dogs and uh the guy said they made it clear that they weren't hunting they weren't after bears with these dogs but sounds like they were probably clearly houndsmen training dogs training dogs which i i would have to do some research on this. I don't know what the laws are for running dogs for training purposes during bear season in California. It sounds like there could be some illegal activity going on there already, but I'm not 100% sure on that. Anyways, these guys let their hounds out out and this other guy's trying to bear hunt

legally um and you know dog it's kind of obviously blowing his hunt because the dogs are barking through ridges over um he he just feels you know that it's not not right or not ethical to be doing that during bear season. He says he hates to report people, but laws are laws, and I don't buy BS. So it sounds like this guy thought these guys were running bears is what I gather from this, which obviously is illegal. So, I mean, I'd have to just research this one more because i don't know can you run do you think you could run dogs during bear season just for training purposes uh i don't know the answer to that yeah uh if it is that you can it brings up this question

that we've had people write in about before like remember when Kevin Murphy got harassed by archery deer hunters for hunting squirrels? Because they felt that their activity, they felt that archery hunting deer, that their archery hunting of deer was more important than his hunting of squirrels. He was actually in Michigan. So he got harassed by bow hunters who were mad that he had the audacity to be out hunting squirrels during the whitetail rut. Yeah. And he thought that was some bullshit. Yeah.

I mean, everybody has right to do legal things. To use the landscape. Like if they are following the law, do you not go do certain things because other people are doing certain things i'll point out that um just recently when i was home visiting my mom i was taking the kids out squirrel hunting and i was aware and cognizant of the fact that it was firearm deer and didn't want to like go into places where a truck was parked because some guy was hunting deer and i felt like me coming through with all my kids hunting squirrels would have been a little i don't know felt a little rude to me yeah

yeah so i would i kind of like stuck to stuff real close to the road and whatnot because i want to blow some dude's deer hunt was i allowed to do it sure yeah i think communication like if these guys are legal and able to run dogs during during bear season i think um communication would be huge there so these bear these you know houndsmen aren't ruining this guy's bear hunt. Try and send him another way and the actual bear hunter head the other way. Yeah. Gotta know a little more about what's going on. Hey folks, exciting news

for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there. OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery,

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As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com. onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the to the OnX Club, y'all. A couple more things on hound hunting because you know

the whole Vermont thing, right? Like we covered that dude in Vermont. Yep. I think he's going to come on the show. I think we're working on it. The Gold Shaw Farm dude.

Yep. And he made a very good YouTube video. I saw that, yeah. Like a re working on it. The Gold Shaw Farm dude. Yeah. And he made a very good YouTube video. I saw that, yeah. Like a rebuttal. We came after him pretty hard. Yeah. And he made a whole YouTube rebuttal.

The guy that's driving this petition to end hound hunting or change hound hunting. Someone wrote in there like a little bit of the story that I didn't know about is there was this very publicized case from 2019 in Vermont about the tension between hound hunters and the non-hunting public. This thing got a ton of attention, where a pack of hound hunters' dogs apparently attacked this couple out walking in the woods and attacked their dog pretty good. And it went on a long time.

The people got bit, their dog got bit. And that caused a lot of, uh, consternation about to what degree are these hounds under control? Because these people, it sounds like I don't fully understand it. It sounds like this attack on them and their dogs

went on for like 90 minutes wow geez in the end the hound hunter walked away with five points i don't know what how the point system works walked away with five points on his license and a couple hundred bucks in a fine and people are pointing out that if you were in a county park, if you were in a city park and your dog came up and bit some people and attacked a dog for 90 minutes, your dog be euthanized. But people felt that this dude walked with a slap on the wrist. Yeah.

And certainly did not have his dogs under any kind of control for them to be able to chase these people around for 90 minutes. That is bizarre. Yeah. Again, man, two sides of the story. I think,

man, I love hound hunting. Absolutely love it. I want hounds of my own someday. Um, there's always conflicts with hound hunters and the general public. I just need to be like very responsible about it. Yeah. i think it

would end a lot of problems here's another thing that just happened in vermont kind of the other side of the coin you know we always talk about the right to hunt laws yep and whatever happens well some hound hunters were out uh groton state forest okay they're they're tracking a black bear Groton State Forest. Okay. They're tracking a black bear and the bear goes on to private property. Okay. The hunters legally enter the woods from Buzzy's Road, it's called, and they retrieve their hounds.

So they're within law because they go to get their dogs, but don't kill a bear out of the tree leave the bear in the tree get their heart their dogs get back to their truck and there's two ladies there letting all the air out of their tires then one of these ladies releases a german shepherd her lets her german shepherd out which then gets into a fight with the bear hunter's hound and beats the hound dog up bad enough where it needed veterinarian care. The women got fined, found guilty in court. The bear hunters were acting lawfully.

She was acting unlawfully. That sounds legit to me. She shouldn't have turned those dogs loose, that Shepherd. She shouldn't have let the air out of tires well no i mean if if the hunters were following the law she had no right to do what she did yeah i could see where the courts i mean we're all sitting here and probably we'll all agree she was wrong i think so yeah i don't know about that state, but in some states, the houndsman probably could have legally killed her dog.

Hmm. Yeah. That's got to be some kind of form of animal cruelty too, to make your dog attack somebody else's dog. I mean, yeah. I don't know. I don't know.

I have my property in Mississippi where we deer hunt, we still hunt only. But we have neighbors that hound hunt. It's a constant problem. You guys get in a lot of disputes? I try to avoid it, but there are others around us that it's gotten serious. Really serious threats. I can be sitting at camp, and at midnight, you hear a bunch of hounds chasing the deer on my property.

They'll run their dogs in the evening, and the dogs will run off, and the hunters don't retrieve their hounds. Yeah. So the dogs just stay in the woods all night long chasing deer all around my property. Mm-hmm. It's a hard thing to swallow when, you know, you're dedicated to still hunting. You try to manage your property for still hunting, and look, it's hounds. We see them in the morning with their collars.

They come to the, we feed them. You can tell some of them are starving. They all have collars with the owner's names on them. Um, it's a constant, it doesn't stop. It's constant. If I was a hound hunter, I take a two-pronged approach man i would be fighting like like fighting like hell to protect my rights as a hound hunter and i would be fighting like hell to like to have a buttoned up program

and avoid conflict with other hunters you know you have to understand a dog he doesn't know what a fence line is he can't really keep outside yeah i mean it's in his nature to run he'll cross property lines and and i can understand a dog running 5, 10 miles. It's hard for a man on foot to keep up with a dog running through hilly territory. So I can deal with the occasional hound running around my place at night, but it's constant. It doesn't stop. there's a problem what's the benefit of of running hounds aside from actually like what what do they get out of it besides the exhilaration of actually

owning a hound and hearing that and chasing a lot of areas that's the only way to effectively hunt bears hater hounds lions mountain lions it's like a traditional use practice man you go i mean people were people were you know like this is a little known thing you go back like daniel boone okay that's how they hunted bears yeah there's if you go read even up up into the 1800s, like the Cherokee, Choctaw, I mean, they hunted bears with dogs. Going back, it's a traditional youth practice. Yeah, and I'm asking the question to somebody who has very little insight into hound hunting.

Like, this is all very new information to me, so it's been kind of really interesting to hear this conversation go on because we used to hunt rabbits with beagles. Sure. And it's always like it's always you know, so you got

people that do one thing. I feel like I've told this story a hundred times. I'm not going to tell it again. People tend to think that what they've always done is dead on balls right. And that what everybody else does is bad. So you got guys that hunt birds with dogs. And that's the kind of stuff you make paintings about and hang in your house. But the guy that hunts something else with a dog, that's the kind of stuff you make paintings about and hang in your house. But the guy that hunts something else with the dog,

that's the savage. You know, it's like, you shouldn't be able to trap because what if something happens to the dog that I use to kill stuff that I like to kill? It just, you know, people are,

there's a ton of tribalism. There's a ton of tribalism there's a ton of tribalism and before like before i had such a before i had the luxury of being around traveling around throughout the country so much and being exposed to all the different hunting cultures that exist in the country, I was guilty of the same stuff. I was like, what I do is very right. I, you know, I, we hunt deer the right way. And everyone else does it the wrong way. It's just this very like provincial attitude. I think it's got a lot to do with what you were raised into.

Sure. Two generations, you know, the grandparents brought the kids out in a certain particular way. The grandkids learned how to hunt that way. And it's a mindset that this is the way to do it. I think the only, like, when weighing all these things out, I have found, and this is where I've arrived after spending many, many, many days and hours

sort of like looking at these controversies. I feel that there's two things that, there's like two sort of aspects of all the stuff that need to be considered. I put an enormous amount of weight on traditional use practices. And I put a lot of weight on resource allocation. Meaning, if you could come and say that a certain activity, like hound hunting for bears, is as conducted, is detrimental to black bear populations in the long term like you're on an unsustainable path uh then that's a conversation

that needs to be had how are you going to how are you going to rectify that so you have a traditional use practice like hound hunting with bears it's something that people have always done so we're going to honor that traditional use up to the point where someone can look and say you're on a bad path from sustainability yeah and the way that's usually the way that's usually handled is through resource allocations like what what what part of the pool of black bear tags are going to go to that user group um with emerging technologies i have a different attitude about it because emerging technologies haven't haven't yet entered traditional use practice so if someone's going to come and make the case that like like using

thermal night vision stuff um what are the implications for game management i think that that's a much more fair question to ask because it's an emerging technology without a culture built around it. It's not a traditional use practice. Let's weigh it on its merits as it emerges. Rather than going back and telling people that have been involved in some activity for 300 years

that we've now decided that what they've been doing for 300 years sustainably is no good anymore agreed you know i mean just it's like one approach of many but it's kind of how i tend to look at stuff i want to talk about this damn crayfish pond though i want to talk about it too because you said it was yours now okay layout like like uh layout for me um how one like the process of making a personal crawfish pond i'm gonna try to say crawfish out of deference uh bulldoze in an excavator in five days i was pumping water into it so you dug that hole was it knee deep uh what we did we brought in an excavator and dug a key set about six feet down.

What's that word? We dug about six feet down, a bucket wide, to create, to break the soil, to cut any avenues that the water could seep through. Because here we have a lot of the type of soil we have. You run into a lot of veins of water. I see. Running just a few feet deep. So we got to break that.

We have to cut that. So we cut a keyway six, eight feet deep, bucket wide, the dimensions of the pond you're going to build. Okay. Yeah, the perimeter. Keyway the whole perimeter. In yards, tell people what the dimensions of this crawfish pond are. It's two acres.

It's 500, 525 feet long, 150 foot wide. Okay. So we build a keyway. You're just digging and you're swinging the bucket around and dumping it right back. You're dumping the dirt right back into the keyway. You just want to break that. If there's any channels, that water's running. Okay.

Because you're going to lose water. Then a bulldozer comes in, removes about a foot of topsoil where all the grass is growing. Yep. You got to get that out of the way. Then you just keep pushing dirt to build your levees. You can't have any grass. That's why you remove that topsoil. You can't put that grass. That's why you remove that topsoil. You can't put that grass in your levee because then the grass decays and it'll form little channels that the water can start seeping through

and it'll lead away your levee. So you get rid of the grass and you start pushing dirt with the bulldozer, build your levee, and crank up your pump and fill it. And I built the pond in five days. I filled it. I waited a week, and then I dumped crawfish plant in it. One week after I filled it with water. But how'd you get the rice going in there?

I had to wait the following spring. So you put crawfish in before you started even growing rice? Yes. Because I had to get crawfish to drill into the ground. That was my crop for the next. Explain that. What we do around. Like how their life cycle works.

And me, I drain my pond in May. And I force them. I pull the plug. In 12 hours, I drain all the water out of the pond. Well, a crawfish's instinct to survive is to drill into the ground. So when they feel that water dropping, they start drilling, and they drill all on the inside of the levee, they

drill into the ground. And then I leave the pond dry all summer, I cut the grass. Uh, around mid September, I plant my rice seed. So the pond, see I'm confused now. Why do you, why do you need the crawfish to drill into the ground? Because they go into the ground and they've,

they've been bred. They have eggs in them. They go into the ground and they spend two, three months in the ground. Yeah. Then when the females come out, they're carrying babies under their tail. And when I fill the pond, they start coming out.

They feel that. Let's build a timeline. So like Ronnie's raising his hand. Go ahead, Ronnie. So the whole point of the crawfish pond, the flooding and the draining, is to simulate the river. So naturally occurring, the river would flood in the spring and the crawfish would come out

their holes. And then when the river would go back low again, the crawfish would drill. So you're imitating their life cycle and sort of life history is to deal with this flood, the flooding and rain. Yeah, dry periods and then then i got you we can artificially control so you're mimicking the natural cycle of the flood yeah in a way yeah

so so what what month do you drain i drain my pond in may in may so they breed prior to that they're breeding all summer i got crowfish that are drilling right now. And the reason they're drilling is because they came out of their holes two months ago, released their babies, they bred, and it's time to go back in the ground to go through that life cycle of having babies. So they're bred in the, all right. So you drain in May.

Yeah. They start to drill and they're bred in the... All right. So you drain in May. Yeah. They start to drill and they're bred already. They drill before I drain the pond. Okay. While the pond is full of water, you'll see... So they're drilling prior to May. Yeah. You start seeing chimneys all around.

And then you drain and it's all spring and... Like, when do you start to fill the pond again? September. September. So all summer. The pond's dry. The pond's dry. And they're just down in the mud.

They're down in the ground. Yeah. Okay. Hold on a minute now. Go on. And then in that time period, that's when you plant your rice. Yes. While it's dry.

While my pond's dry, I plant my rice. When the rice gets about 18 inches high, I start flirting. You said they breed all summer long. Yeah. While I'm fishing, the crawfish are breeding. Underground. Underground. No.

And the pond, they breed. You said the pond's got no water in it. Yeah, during the summer. And up until May. They're not breeding in the hole. In the hole, they're actually almost no water in it. Yeah, during the summer. And up until May. They're not breeding in the hole. In the hole, they're actually almost like hibernating. Yeah. But how are they breeding all summer if there's no water in the pond?

There's water up until May. What do you call the summer? March. I think Bud just had a tongue tied. Yeah. It's really the spring. They breed when there's water. and once you drain the pond, they're going to hibernate, and they're going to just incubate those eggs

and hibernate in the mud. And then when they fill the pond again, they come underground with the babies under their tail. Yeah, once the water table comes back up, the crawfish say, oh, it's time to get out. Time to get out. They come out, and then they release their eggs. So, yeah, they breed in the spring, and then once the water table drops,

they drill, incubate those babies, staying in their hole. Water comes back up. They come out, and they spill their eggs. In the dry time, the rice gets planted. Yeah. September, it starts to grow. Yeah. Right?

September, you flood again. When it gets about 18 inches high I start flooding and I follow the rice And then they Come out, release their eggs Correct And then that's when the life cycle Then 90 days From the time they come out

And they release the babies Biologists They figure about 90 days For baby crawfish to reach maturity to be able to harvest it. And then all winter long, they're in there feeding on the rice? Well, the babies actually feed on the microorganisms that grow the algae, that grow on the rice stalks, and they'll feed on that as long as possible. When that food source is depleted, then they'll start eating vegetation,

like rice and whatever other grass is growing in there. Gotcha. Vegetation is not a crawfish's main diet. They'll feed on tiny organisms or whatever. If you pull one of those rice stalks out, you'll see it's all full of algae, and that's what they're feeding on. Gotcha.

This time of the year. Yeah, and being that the ponds are so shallow, I mean, you theoretically could keep it flooded longer, but the water just gets so hot, you'll start killing your crop. You'll start losing your crop. Buddy can attest. One time we ran it in my pond. We had kept the water until, what, mid-June, late-June,

and when Buddy went to pull the plug, he said, that water's hot. Yeah. Listen, at this time of the year, I don't even, I don't really ever run my pump. You got to have a lot of oxygen. I test my oxygen levels. The water's cold, so it holds oxygen.

In the spring, when that water's going to start warming up, I got to pump every day to keep my oxygen levels above four or five, or your crawfish are going to die. Or you'll see them crawling out. Trying to split. You'll go at night, right after dark, and they'll be all along the water's edge crawling out.

Yeah, they'll be bailing out to the water source that you pump into the pond. We have these, there's a. So they know things are getting hard. Oh, yeah. There's a large drainage canal that runs in the back of our property we call it the 40 acre canal and then uh like bud and myself we on our properties you dig a large ditch going all the way to the front and then that's what you use to get your water into your pond got you yeah okay i got uh i got

more questions but two have to do with this whole drain cycle deal do you have to drain it to plant rice you can't plant so you can't sow rice in a in in 18 inches of water no but i have a friend across the bayou that has a pond he told me he throws his rice seed in three or four inches of water but it wouldn't work in 18 inches of water. No. Okay. So there's that. And then let's say you never drained your pond, but you kept it at a stable 18 inches year round. It'd go to hell, right?

Most likely. Like the crayfish production would go to hell. Yeah. Yeah. I used, so the pond, one of the ponds i had was a hundred acre one and it was actually more of a swampier style pond it was pond that was not well taken care of it was just left to to be full and flooded they did have crawfish in it but it was yeah it was not nearly as productive as let's say bud's pond because the the fish get in

it to it and once the fit the the small goggle eyes and the patasas, the perch, they eat all your little baby crawfish. They'll deplete your baby's crawfish stock. And in that case also, the bullfrogs took in. And the bullfrogs were eating all the crawfish. You could ask Bud, and that pond, no one had done anything to it in about five years when we took it over. And there were so many bullfrogs in there that we literally could not make crawfish.

And when I say bullfrogs, I'm talking 26-inch plus bullfrogs. No. Jeez. Monsters. The first time we decided to go frogging in this pond, Bud got there first. And he was texting me. He says, man, the frogs are so big in here. They're not going to fit in the cast of my truck.

75 frogs filled up a 70 quart ice chest. You couldn't catch them with your hand. You couldn't grab them. You couldn't wrap your hand around them to catch them. We'd have to whack them with a paddle. Yeah, you couldn't go and grab one of those frogs. And the cool thing about frogs, though, when you hit them with a paddle and knock them out, they have a mechanism that they inflate their lungs

or some kind of air bladder to make them look like badasses. Yeah, they roll over, and they're just floating there. So you just grab them, throw them over your shoulder. Watch this. My pond, I flood in September, and I drain it in May. That short amount of time when I drain that pond, you would not believe the stuff that's living and growing in there. Fish.

I'm talking about brim big enough to eat, bluegill, eels, gar garfish and i don't plant any of that in there just finds its way in there yeah it's always it's always exhilarating when you pick up a trap and they got a big kong in there which is which is what it's like it's like an eel but it's got little legs it's it's like actually i would say a giant salamander they're about oh like like old lasagna sides like a hellbender You know what a hellbender is? No, I'm not sure what a hellbender is. Yeah, it's sort of like a hellbender, yeah. We call them a pond.

So how does that stuff get in there? I have no idea. And every year when I drain that pond, you would not believe what's in there. The fish, I think, come in through the pumps. Like the brim and bullfrogs, we catch them in the trap. Really? Yeah, you pick up the traps, they in there. Oh, go ahead.

I want you to explain the harvest process now because you're talking about the trap, so it's a good segue into the harvest process. Well, we, real simple, we harvest them and eat them. No, but you just use, you trap them out of the pond yeah i got a pyramid traps that we use we use uh artificial bait pellets yeah uh for bait because we we're not big on that a lot of a lot of crawfish fishermen use fish uh Menhaden or pogues for bait. One of the reasons I built my pond, my wife wouldn't eat crawfish that, and you can smell

it. You can tell. Crawfish that's been fish used for bait. And we didn't like that. So one of the reasons I built my pond. We use a pellet form for bait. Crawfish are clean. Your crawfish or bass, we enjoy more about that first month. The meat has a sweetness to it. Later on, when the water starts warming up, the flesh changes.

It even tastes different, the texture. And as your crawfish get older, when the crawfish are real young, that's when they're the best. So I run the traps every day, and my wife and I eat what we can, and we give the rest away to family. So you give them away all bagged up. You don't make your neighbors and friends come and pull their own traps. A lot of them, some of them, like Ronnie, likes to bring his son.

Okay. So I'll tell Ronnie, yeah, y'all come. It's more of a, it's to have an outing with friends, you know. Jump in the boat, let's go, and we'll go run the traps, and whatever crawfish we pick up, I give it to them. Like the kids, to bring kids. Man, you wouldn't believe how many kids I've had in that pond. And they, I mean, you made their mind.

You know, you bring two, three, uh, four, five year olds in there and it's all new to them. And I mean, to see the smile on their faces and their eyes lit up watching, picking up all them crawfish. That's good fun. That's my thing. I mean, I love doing that. So Can I play a little, just a little bit of antagonist and kind of in this conversation? That's good fun. That's my thing. I mean, I love doing that.

Can I play just a little bit of antagonist in this conversation? No. Can I? Come on. You're going to say something bad about having a crawfish pond? So what Bud does in this small town community, and this is where we're at, this is a community gathering place that allows people to get this wonderful resource of Louisiana. And I love that about this pond. But what I want to actually ask Bud about and the crew here is about commercial rice field fishermen out west

who have hundreds and thousands of acres of crawfish ponds, right? You know that for a fact. They make a great living. And in fact, Ronnie said the other day is that maybe the main source of their income is off that commercial fishing and rice just pays the bills, right? Then you take the old school fishermen in the Chafalai Basin and the spillways that are fishing for crawfish, wild Chafalai Basin crawfish. Pillow trap fishing yeah they go through the natural life cycle of the swamp and its feet and has no pumps going in and out of it they're using bait and so their big gripe is that the rice field farming crawfish is killing their killing their business because the majority

of people buy from the rice fields now because of what a lot of what Bud just said. Because they taste damn good. Tastes different, the cleanliness from the thing. Now, a lot of people will say, what's the difference between farm and duck and wild duck? You get a different, cleaner, more mild, mellow taste out of farm-raised duck than wild duck. And then in the same sense sense so like what do we make its own gravy don't it yeah so well about that i didn't know about this because so what are we did you go walking in my pond yeah it's hard like yeah it's hard the floor so i guess i guess my

whole thing is is that his his pond is a different beast because it's it's something that he does a hobby it's not a commercial thing doesn't make money it's a community because it's something that he does as a hobby. It's not a commercial thing. It doesn't make money. It's a community thing. It's the difference between a garden and an industrialized farm landscape. I'm not condemning that. I'm just saying there's a big difference between a garden and an industrialized agricultural landscape.

You talk to these basin crawfishers, these spillway crawfishermen who are owned by the wild crawfish guys. Wild crawfish guys. They'refishermen who were blown by the wild the wild crawfish guys yeah you're good wild crawfish guys and they're saying what about us because these guys out west have thousands of acres of controlled farmland that they're pumping water in and out planting natural seed and then 90 of louisianians and all over the country now where you can get you can get crawfish express shipped to you the next day are all rice field crawfish.

And these spillway guys are like, well, shit, our commercial fisheries are going down the drain because we can't harvest near as much as the rice field. Yeah, you know what? It's all about this because... And by that, you made the little money symbol. When the rice fields start producing, because it's like it's going to surge for about a month. The price starts dropping, and the price drops.

Right now, every year, the crawfish start at about $6 a pound here. When it's going to crack up in the spring, it's going to drop to under a dollar. When the rice fields are going to start putting it out, but they're putting out so much volume that they can sell it for under a dollar. They're still bringing in. Bringing in a bunch of money. And then the Chafalaya guys are killing themselves working. Trying to catch the wild ones and not getting a good price point.

They're not getting any money for them. And you're going to hear people say, no doubt, is that there's a difference in flavor, size, shell consistency between. And there are trains of thoughts. I say wild crawfish, now to Bud's point, using that pellet, not using decaying fish matter and pokey, that's going to change the dynamic of what that crawfish tastes like. But I wouldn't say buying spillway crawfish is a bad thing and they're going to taste bad. You just have to do a little bit more work to purge them, to clean them, to make sure they're nice and rent so that they do taste good because there is something about that wildness.

Personally. That does make that crawfish its own thing. I'm not going to say more special or less. Yeah. It's a different, they have a different flavor. You didn't uniqueness. Yeah. Personally, where they come from.

I love fish from the chop. I'll tell you,ia tastes different than the crawfish I raise in my pond. I personally love spillway crawfish. I like the change up because a lot of times you're going to get your rice pond crawfish first because the river hasn't done its thing yet. These spillway crawfish aren't out there. So your rice crawfish pond is going to come out first. That's your $6 pound crawfish that you're getting right now in the wintertime. You're not going to get spillway crawfish in the wintertime.

And I find that when the spillway kicks up. What the hell is a spillway? It's where the Mississippi River. The Chafalaya spillway. Or the Chafalaya, when the river comes up, there's some overflow. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Well, listen, when you were hunting by your back, you weren't far from it.

Yeah. It floods the swamps. I mean, it floods the natural bog, you weren't far from it. Yeah. It floods the swamps. I mean, it's the natural. You're talking about swamp crawfish. Yeah. So when the spillway crawfish come out. When I think of a spillway, I think of in the middle of a beaver dam, they make a spillway.

No, as you know, strange. They don't make it. They leave it there. They leave it unbuilt. Go on. So I find, actually, when the spillway crawfish kick in, that actually does bring the price down, which kind of sucks for the spillway guys because, yeah,

they don't get that $6-a-pound crawfish to sell. They are selling at $3-a-pound. When the spillway comes in, that price is going to drop to about $3. Because then the original dudes are kicking in. There's so much crawfish coming out of rice farms, too. The rice farmers' crawfish, it's more and more. The warmer it gets, the more they catch it. People search out spillway crawfish.

Because they know they can always get rice field crawfish. They search out the spillway. Like, side of the road, they're like, spillway crawfish here. Dude, what a buzzkill, man. Listen, if you know a crawfish. He buzz a buzz buzz kill man listen if john paul if you know he buzz killed me yesterday and he buzz killed me with the same thing i'm just trying to drop a little drop a little knowledge here like you know it's great knowledge my favorite thing on the planet right now is boudin yeah ronnie turns me on to like gas station boudin where he going to the gas station boudin. Where you go into the gas station to get boudin wrapped up.

Boudin is like a rice... Here we go. This is all information. This is all next level cultural information people need. Give me an unbiased what boudin is.

Boudin is a rice sausage traditionally made with pork rice and pork livers okay period ronnie these guys are always walking around in the morning when i met ronnie last summer we're down here spearfishing and everyone's walking around in the morning where you might be eating a breakfast burrito or a bacon sausage and egg thing you Instead, you walk around with a sausage wrapped up in tinfoil. A soft sausage wrapped in tinfoil made out of meat and rice. That's what you eat in the morning.

It's delicious. You put some hot sauce on it. I'm going to rig up a thing when I move down here and start my restaurant called The Real Cajun. I'm going to have a thing that sits. I was explaining this yesterday. It's going to be a restaurant called The Real Cajun. And I'm going to have a thing that sits. I was explaining this yesterday. It's going to be a reservoir of hot sauce that bolts to the top of the truck with a drip line that comes down.

And it hangs right by your steering wheel. And it's got a little squeeze bulb on it. Like the thing you use to prime gas in your boat. And as you're eating your boudin driving around you can just because you only need each drop you only get a bite because so you gotta like see you can't season the whole damn thing you got to season each bite so with that hose coming down full of hot sauce take a bite with that reservoir and then you're set for life. Or you just have a syringe with a long needle, and you jam it in long ways.

Oh, and fill it up. And squeeze it as you're pulling out. That might be good. Everybody from Louisiana right now is saying, what the hell are these guys doing putting hot sauce on boudin? It's good. If you don't do it, it's good. Tell them about they actually make crawfish boudin.

Yeah. They had some. Oh, it's good. This is where the story gets good. So Ronnie, last summer, turns me on. He's like, what's that town? Golden Meadow. Go to Golden Meadow.

Go to T-Pops. When you walk in T-Pops, they sell basically three things. Gas, Red Bull, and boudin. And boudin. pops when you walk in teapops they sell like basically three things gas red bull so you go in there and they got two kinds they got pork crawfish now we me and seth patronized it last summer oh my god ate the dickens out of it and this trip all i've been talking about is wanting to go back to that damn place and get more of the boudin. So we go in to get the boudin. We got there ahead of Jean-Paul. We go in, get some, eat that, go back in to get more.

Some guy comes. And to get another bottle of hot sauce. Some guy comes in while we're in our second run and walks in there and goes, y'all seriously out of Red Bull right now? That's when I talked to you a couple of days ago and you told me we had teap Bull right now. That's when I talked to you a couple of days ago and you told me we had teapots right now. That's where y'all are? Yep.

So then. Y'all were at teapots buying boudin. Yep. So yesterday, we go in and buy it. We buy the boudin. Lauren had a bottle of hot sauce with him. Ate that one. I don't know what happened to his bottle of hot sauce.

Chester went back in to get more and to get a new bottle of hot sauce jean-paul pulls up he goes in and he's like going in there and he's shooting the shit with the people in there and he comes out and says i don't mean to be the antagonist like we just heard him say a second ago and he said that's not boudin is it my turn to comment here yep so take it away you can defend yourself now no i don't i don't need to defend myself i've eaten boudin all over this state i make it a point to go to eat boudin all over real quick he pointed out that he said and i bought two of them too yeah and i ate two of them too and i it is delicious that boudin quote air quotes is delicious uh but even the people working there would say it's more like they actually told me this the people there when you interrogated them i was that because i want to know where i was from which is from texas which explains a lot yeah it's from texas and they said it's more like a

rice dressing than a traditional boudin and i said oh it's all putting now it is a delicious link of sausage because that's what it is i mean boudin is a sausage. If you put the hot sauce on there, especially. So I have never, ever seen anybody put hot sauce on boudin. So a bunch of Yankees sitting in a rental Suburban with a bottle of hot sauce. Dousing it with hot sauce and a mic. The real Cajun over here. The real Cajun. With his reservoir idea of hot sauce. And I will promise you that any any louisianian that's

listening to this podcast right now is saying them some bitches just never been out west um and out southwest louisiana yeah and um you know there's all kind of different styles so i like look i like t-pops boudin and i'll call it boudin because that's what they call it and i'm just i'm just personally saying for the fat literally a thousands of different brands and types of boudin that i've eaten that is the most unlike of boudin that i've ever had it is because it doesn't when i go home and say when i go home and tell people that i've uh developed a real love for rice dressing that doesn't sound like anything even remotely interesting doesn't really pop off but when i go out and say that i'm that i'm now like a real boudin man and you are that's not stopping you

man so paul you say so if it doesn't have liver it's not boudin well what about crawfish boudin is it not boudin either i don't like crawfish boudin or shrimp boudin i don't like any of that i mean i like it but it's like but is it not boudin now at some point is this okay let me ask you this they make cauliflower boudin they replace the rice with cauliflower is that boudin no why why isn't that boudin i guess i call it boudin because it doesn't have rice in it, right? Do I look like a vegan? Well, they still put pork in it. They're doing it because they don't want the carbohydrates.

I do that sometimes. I replace. It's not a vegetarian thing. It's a keto thing now. You know what I mean? Cauliflower in there. Cauliflower rice, son. I think, like, listen, man.

So there's different there's different i'm gonna go back home this is this is your boudin look here this is y'all's this is y'all's boudin and i'm sure you could went across the street and maybe have been the more traditional liver boudin but i mean to me in my in my opinion of of boudin is is so so to me sausage sausage is just no no cauliflower no no rice just meat in intestine you know encasing yeah uh boudin and then and then to me boudin is just meat and rice if if there's rice in in encasing that's boudin in my opinion yeah i was never told about the whole liver the rice is what makes the boudin rice my opinion. I was never told about the whole liver and all that stuff. The rice is what makes the boudin.

Rice or if you want to use cauliflower, it makes the boudin to me. It's what makes it boudin to me. I appreciate that. Okay, I'm ready to move on. All I know is I can go to T-Pops and get their boudin and sleep easy calling it boudin. Listen, I'm going to have a very hard time going home and saying that I was eating rice. That sounds like the stupidest thing in the world. This is what I'm going to have a very hard time going home and saying that I was eating rice. That sounds like the stupidest thing in the world. This is what I'm going to do.

You can go home and know you weren't being deceived. Yeah. All three of y'all, y'all going to send me your address right now. And I'm going to send you three different boudins from three different places in three different distinct sections of southwest Louisiana. And I don't want to hear if it's better or worse. just want you to try it you don't have to give me feedback i like teapots better i like this better i don't care about that what you like is what you like yep i don't give i don't give damn what you know like but i'm just saying listen man i'm interested

i'm i'm only i'm hacking on you send me i'm hacking on you but but I'm not. You're sending me addresses. I am very interested in knowing. I'm very interested in all this. Yeah. But from an outsider perspective, okay, you go down to, you know, this whole thing, because you're pretty familiar with like all the cuisines in the country, right? I am. They do all the same garbage about chili in the Southwest. Yeah. Not Southwest southwest southwestern u.s this whole like outrage if it's got this in it outrage if it's got that in it right so

when you live in an area uh you get you get like vested in that stuff but when you're not it seems a little it starts to feel a little academic like i would be like my mom used to make chili and she put kidney beans in it and then some guy wherever the hell what part of the country do you then go like if it's got beans in it it's not well you just said it about hunting it's where you grow up and some people think because where you grew up you think this is the right way yeah right but as you grow up, some people think because of where you grew up, you think this is the right way. Yeah. Right? But as you grow out and expand your world of hunting or boudin or of any other thing, it becomes to evolve and say, oh, wait, my way is not only the right way.

There's other right ways, and nobody is right or wrong in this conversation. It's all part of the culture from region to region. What was that boudin you brought over to Venice with us? Rabideaus. That was great boudin. That was very good. That was good boudin. See, wasn't my favorite.

Really? I think there's better boudins. Oh, I thought that stuff was key. I like rabideaus, but it's not my favorite. I want to move on from boudin because I want to get into cooking the crawfish because we left out the cooking. And I want you to tackle cooking, Jean-Paul. But just out of fairness, I'm endorsing teapops. What would you like to endorse?

If you want, let's say a listener out there wants to experience sort of like what you would regard as sort of like the baseline definition of Boudin, you would suggest that they buy some from who? If you are traveling I-10 West and you're going through Scott, Louisiana, or anywhere in those parishes out West on I-10, stop at Billy's or stop at Best Stop. Now Bud's at that's all mad no but agrees i knew what he was gonna say before his dad our best stop is great but there are literally that place was on yeah on a cooking program on tv yeah best known for its boudin there's literally hundreds of places

in i-10 once you get west of lafayette where you can pick up boudin in every gas station, in every little meat shop. And so Billy's is one of my favorites. Bestop is different but also good. Don's is good. Rabbit O's is good. Nunu's is good. Long Yon's is good. G&M Meat Market.

It goes on and on and on. But I would say this. I love your T-Pops endorsement, and I'll tell you why. Because if you were coming to southeast Louisiana and you're traveling down Bayou Lafourche and you're going fishing in Port Fourchon or Grand Isle, stop at T-Pops at that shell station and get you some boudin. Get you some rice dressing.

Get you some boudin. Okay. Like, because this is boudin here. Rice dressing and hot sauce. I wish I was gnawing on a T with that right now, man. Oh, that sounds so good. That sounds good. so good. That stuff's good. So good.

Right in the bottom right, they got a chest, like a thing. Door opens from the outside. You serve yourself. Bottom right corner. Yep. The top's stupid stuff. Bottom left is crayfish boudin. Which is good.

Bottom right is pork boudin. You tried the crayfish one? Yeah, I liked it. That one's made in Houma. Crossfish boudin's made in Houma. The pork boudin's made in Texas. Huh. Hey, folks.

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how to do a crawfish boil as we ate last night that's the one I'm interested in because that was the best I've ever had wow and I'm not saying there's not 80 ways of doing it, but I'm talking about like last night you did one. Yeah. So I took a little bit of how I grew up doing it and a little bit how Bud

and I spent 15 minutes talking about doing it outside the crawfish ponds yesterday. And so what I did is I basically filled up my pot with water and made a vegetable stock with a lot of onions celery garlic mushrooms and a lot of citrus and oranges like 24 lemons cut in half and like 10 oranges cut in half squeezing my hand and put them in the thing rolled that to a boil and um i added just a little bit of seasoning dried seasoning in the in the water and some liquid crab boil in the water. What's your preferred brand?

Man, there's a couple different ones that are really good. Loco makes a good crab boil. Chack Bay Seasoning makes a good crab boil. Slappy Mama makes a good one. Zatarain's is what I grew up with and is what we used last night because that's what we had. And I used a little bit of the powder a little bit of the liquid and i started rolling that to a boil adding my potatoes

and sausage and i like to get my potatoes about three quarters the way there before i add my crawfish and what was that sausage you put in there that was smoke richard smoked sausage okay yep and um then my crawfish go in now like these are early in the season the crawfish hadn't gotten to their full maturity so they're on the smaller side so you got to boil them for a little less time we did once you jump dump your crawfish in it knocks that water down to you know down the heating down down below the boiling point you put in 40 pounds of them yeah oh yeah into like a witch's cauldron and that in that pot will and that's why you got to have that high that high uh burning you know propane burner uh to really keep that that

recovery short because once that crawfish goes uh in it lowers the temperature it's got to come back up to a boil like i said we boil for three minutes after that three minutes i dump a little small bowl of ice in it and i just let it soak for i'll soak for 30 minutes and that three minutes i dump a little small bowl of ice in it and i just let it soak for i'll soak for 30 minutes and that's where this is like the part that this is the part that gets controversial yeah well the soak is a little controversial and also what i did once i put it in the cooler i took a and this is kind of where bud came in because i wanted sometimes those crawfish seasons can be overly salty a lot of times they can okay so I'll use less powdered seasoning more liquid boil than I usually use because liquid doesn't

have any salt and then once the crawfish went into the cooler or ice chest I sprinkled them with extra salt and a little bit of extra powdered crawfish seasoning and let them sit and steam and kind of do their own thing it's not enough to get all over your hands like a lot of places do in west louisiana you know but but it it lets that crawfish really speak for itself without overpowering it with a whole bunch of seasoning and spice yeah and when you talked about that yesterday. For people that love the flavor of crawfish, I just never understood why so much seasoning that it masks the flavor of your crawfish. You know, I can't see myself eating crawfish

and my eyes are crying. Yeah. Because it's just so spicy. Yeah. I mean, you understand what I'm saying 100 and maybe it's that maybe maybe we got used to adding so much seasoning because at some point we were used to maybe spillway crawfish a lot of fishiness on it where people didn't purge it really good because that's when you get in those wild crawfish you have have to purge. And so maybe people are like that. How do you purge wild crawfish?

Because we used to pull the mud veins on them in the north. You don't find that saltwater kills them. I like to just, so this is my purging method. I take an ice chest or a big bucket, and I'll put them in a champagne or a basket. Put the crawfish in a basket in the water, and I put a hose pipe in there running. And I just circulate that water until that water becomes clear. How many hours does that take? A few minutes. 10 minutes.

With rice, with those crawfish, it doesn't take 10 minutes. It takes probably one or two fill-ups. I'll fill it up the first time, let it overflow a little bit, pull the crawfish out, dump the water, and that water's going to be dirty. Dump it, put them back in, fill it back up.

At that point, the water's going to be a little bit clearer, starting to get clearer. And and then one more time and that water's crystal clear you can drink it it's and at that point that's when i feel my crawfish are ready to go in the pot and that's for the wild crawfish uh rice rice pine crawfish too don't get me wrong i've gotten fishy rice pine crawfish because like i said it's not a spillway crawfish aren't fishy because they're in the spillway they're fishy because they're in the spillway. They're fishy because they're using fish for bait. I know spillway guys, they use pellets for bait

and there's no fishiness to them. I mean, that's more about what you're using for bait. A lot of people use fish early in the year because those pellets in the cold water take a lot longer to dissolve. So fish brings those crawfish in fast. Like come Good Friday when i used to sell

crawfish i would use i'd use fish or or beef melt with the pellet to get that fast i could run my traps twice a day versus once a day you sell a lot of a lot of crawfish on good friday oh good friday is the like the pinnacle of crawfish yeah no Yeah, no one's eating, everybody's eating seafood. Everyone around here is Catholic, or for the most part are Catholic. It's a very predominant religion around here. So the thing is you don't eat meat on Fridays. But it's kind of like it's become part of a tradition to have it be that that's the seafood. Yeah, and then like Good Friday is like the day that everybody gets together with their families and boils seafood and eats seafood.

And at that time of year, crawfish are in the height of their season like that is like the the pinnacle of crawfish season they're not they're still that they're not fully mature where they're red hard and hard to eat and you know but they're not that little baby crawfish they're just right perfect in the middle just that perfect crawfish that's yeah and you got spillway you got rice and look spillway crawfish some i've seen dirty rice pound crawfish i've seen clean spillway crawfish that's yeah and you got spillway you got rice and look spillway crawfish some i've seen dirty rice pound crawfish i've seen clean spillway crawfish spillway crawfish tend to be a little more muddy or sometimes just because they've they've been in that swampy mud so you may have to give them one additional rinse down but i like the persian boat crawfish more for what it's what

they're eating because a crawfish has been eating fish when you go to suck the head fat out, you get that fishy oof. You'll smell it. Okay, Jean-Paul, quick hit, the soak. What's happening during the soak? So the soak, the crawfish are going to float when they boil. When they're done, they're going to be sitting at the top of the water. And the soak is when you add that ice and let them sit they start to absorb all that liquid and become you know they're not boiling anymore that water goes into the head cavity into the tail cavity and they

sink um and they kind of hit like an equilibrium with the brine and i like i like juicy crawfish when i suck the head i want to get all that interior fat and the juice from the broth which makes purging the crawfish that much more important because they're sitting in all the water they've been boiled in for 30 minutes just soaking all that in so if you don't purge it you're gonna be soaking in dirty nasty seasoned and salty water but not clean yeah i find you'll get a grittiness to them too like. If you don't purge them, sometimes they'll be gritty when you suck the head. The soak will make them juicier. It will also make them more seasoned because they're taking in that liquid from that soak. Got it.

And another thing, too, with the shock, I find the shock helps with the peeling. When you hit it with that, it makes the tail meat separate from the shell. Got it. And I think the separate from the shell. Got it. And I think the soak does the same thing as well. You put salt in the water that you boiled them in? I put a little bit. Yeah, you see, I don't put salt at all. Yeah.

Because I find if I add salt to the water, they don't peel as good. I just put a little bit of the powdered boil, not any ice. Yeah, yeah. And I'll ball crawfish three minutes. That's what he did, three minutes. You don't do a soak. Yeah, but for about 30 seconds to a minute. And I just take off the basket, wait about a minute,

just that slight cool down. I'll take that basket and put it back in the same pot and they all sink there every one of them will sink that when they do that it's because they're sucked up they got they were shocked and they suck up the seasonings that are in your water I'll leave a man about that second dip, 30 seconds, a minute, and I pull them out and that's it. And we don't, we cook a lot with crawfish meat. So we don't over-salty or over-season them. Because when I make, an example, my wife makes a crawfish fricassee.

I don't want to sit there and eat, and it tastes like I'm eating Zatarain's crab bowl. That's a good point. I want to eat the crawfish and taste the flavor of those crawfish. Crawfish head touffé. And look, any fancy restaurant in the city, you can walk into and order crawfish head touffé. And look, any fancy restaurant in the city, you can walk into and order crabfish head touffé. You know that.

You're not going to walk in one of them and eat and it tastes Zatarain's crap all or whatever. When you walk into a grocery store and buy a pack, one pound pack of crabfish tails. Yeah. And you can buy Louisiana crawfish tails but you can also buy Chinese you buy Louisiana crawfish tails when you open it and taste them no salt there's no seasoning it's just a natural crawfish yeah and you use that to cook, to get that.

You understand? So when I cook crawfish, we're only cooking for me and my wife. You're cooking for a secondary use, not just the boil. Yeah, I'm eating them for me and my wife, but then I got 20 pounds. I got to peel, and I have a commercial vacuum packing machine. How long have you been married? 123 years next year. Reincarnated.

What's your opinion on freezing with the fat? I do. You're talking about with the tail fat? The fat though, the yellow fat. As much as I can, I'd keep it. I do. You gotta use it right away. Yeah, you can't leave it. You gotta use it. Yeah, I do. But people say- You don't find it gets kind of- You're going to use it right away.

Yeah, you can't leave it for long. You're going to use it within three or four months. Okay. I'm not going to leave crawfish in my freezer for a year. We eat it 12 months out of the year. We're cooking with crawfish. So it doesn't stay long enough in my freezer to get rancid. Okay.

So you know, you got to, if you're planning on keeping some longer, you pull the gut line out. Yeah, that's what we do a lot. Yeah, and rinse them. I don't know how long it'll be. Rinse them good with fresh water and then pack them. And you can keep them a while. Okay, Ronnie, you ready?

Yeah. What you got? We're going to move on. The last thing we're going to cover today is potentially my new favorite way to eat ducks. Walks through it. The routine duck. Yeah. Routine.

Routine duck. Do you like it or don't? Bud, are you down on it? That's the way we were raised on that. My grandmother, listen, this is going to blow your mind. No, listen. I'm listening. Recently, for Ida, the building got knocked down.

I can go show it to you. Hurricane Ida. For Ida. That was my grandmother's building. She would clean duck in. And up until I knocked it down, she died in 1976. She would walk through the door and there were still duck feathers and the spider webs in the ceiling.

That is awesome. That's cool. Now, a lot of people thought that, it's why we know so much about duck hunting in my family. A lot of people thought market hunting ended in the 30s. Yep. My grandmother was still cleaning ducks in the 70s. From market hunters.

Three, four, 500 ducks a day. No shit. Like black market, market hunting. In front of God, what I'm telling you. And all the game warriors knew about it and not once was she ever bothered. They never came and they could have came there and not once.

They let her, she did that all her life. She'd save all the breast feathers and in the summertime my grandfather would put it in some long tubes and dry it in the yard. And then in the fall, my grandma would make pillows. Down, I still got a down pillow from my grandmother. There's a spoonbill head in the pillow. I still have it.

You're kidding me. I guess a duck head fell in the pillow and they never found it. And you can feel it. It's a spoonbill. I've been sleeping on it since I'm six, seven years old. That's my go-to pillow. My grandmother's down pillow. with the spoon and she liked to cook the the routine what's that word again that's that's the way the height what's the dish called

routine it's a french word it's it's a french word for roasting okay is. It's just slow cooking. You brown it, add a little water. Comes back that it's just grease, add a little water. And you just cook for hours. Add a little water, bring it brown, add a little water, and a black pot. Correct. Yeah, mostly a black pot or a magnolite pot. Something that you can really scrape the bottom. We call that routine. Yeah, mostly a black pot or a magnolite pot. Something that you could really scrape the bottom of. We call that routine.

Yeah. We'll do that with duck, with our deer rolls, our beef rolls, with our pork rolls. Routine. You got anything real negative to say about this, Jean-Paul? Why am I being portrayed as the negative person? I'm just giving some perspective. I like it. Devil's advocate.

He's like, yeah, I don't mean to play the attack no no I love that routine so the routine duck traditionally like Bud said you're going to brown it you got to back up this is very important

for people to know I got a dead duck laying there alright you got to walk us through your three stage very important for people to know okay i got a dead duck laying there all right tell me you gotta you gotta walk us through the three your three stage plucking method just shot it yep it's okay it's still flopping all right nope just stop flopping just finish wringing his neck ring is sorry so i got your duck got a fresh killed duck get back to the to the camp what i'm gonna do first thing i'm gonna cut the wings off at the joint because i don't like you know if you don't first joint don't have the first joint

you're not cutting it off at the body but you get yeah the first the first yeah the first joint out you still got that his elbow yeah yeah at his elbow you cut him at the elbow i like to cut him at the joint because i can't stand when i got those sharp bones poking into there's enough of that from all the pellets you know you don't need to add to it so i cut him at the wing joints and i'm gonna give him a rough pluck you know i'm not gonna focus a lot on those wing feathers because poking into my back. There's enough of that from all the pellets. You don't need to add to it. So I cut them at the wing joints and I'm going to give them a rough pluck. I'm not going to focus a lot on those wing feathers

because they're really hard to get. I'm going to get all the breast feathers off, back feathers off, butt feathers off, most of the leg feathers off. And then once I... He's 95% plucked when you're done. Yeah, about 95, yeah.

90 to 95% plucked. And then I'm going to get my water to a rolling boil i'm gonna get a small small crawfish pot and i'm gonna boil the water once i got that water boiling i'm gonna take that duck and i'm gonna dip them for 10 to 15 seconds and once uh once i'm done dipping i pull them out and i'm gonna dry them with an old towel get them nice and dry and then i'm gonna then remove the rest of those big feathers yeah which come right off you can just that the brother with your hand and they'll come off yeah the boiling is gonna uh open

up those pores and allow those especially like in particular the wing feathers comes off real easy everything that would have been a pain in the ass you decide they're in a a pan of ice comes off like butter. Basically the same way they plug a chicken in a factory. Yeah. Hot water. Yeah. Just rub it off. So,

and then once we do that, I'm going to, so if I'm at my house and I don't have to keep the head on, I'm going to go straight to the deboning process. Before you burn it?

Oh, you got me on it. I was waiting for you to say that. And what's your guys Oh, you got me on it. I was really feeling the same. And what's your guys' word for that? Griller. So after the boiling process, once you got your ducks all nice and pretty, you're going to griller them.

I'm going to take the hot water off and I'm going to use that burner and I'm going to hold the bill and the leg and I'm going to pass that duck through the fire just for a few seconds each. Burn those little hairs off. Just to burn all those little hairs off any other rain, maybe feather I missed or something. i don't know what the hell those little hairs on a

duck are called i don't know but you have a i don't know i know like the guard hair so i know like so the pin feather the pin feather that's another thing that that's really good about boiling is the the pin feather comes out really easy and i like to take a knife in my thumb and yeah that's a good trick I learned from you. It's a great way to get pin feathers out. Pinch it between your knife blade and your thumb. We call the pin feather a poussin. A poussin.

Wasn't Cade's grandma, her nickname was Poussin because she used to pull all the poussins out? Pew? Okay. Pew, yeah. Cade's grandma's nickname was Pew. Because her job was to pull all the pin feathers out. Okay.

So, yeah. So, once you got the pin feathers out, you're going to grill that duck. And then once you grill him, you're just going to give him a little slap around, pat off that burnt hair off. Then, like I said, so. And at this point, it looks like a beautiful. Beautiful. You're not ever ever gonna see a more

beautiful duck that's been just been boiled and created i mean that's just yeah you put that shit on the front of better homes and gardens man one of them yeah so so if i said if i'm at my house i'm gonna go straight to the deboning process because that way i ain't gotta stick my hand up in the cavity to pull the guts out oh yeah so what. So what I do is I'm going to take the duck, like I showed you, and I'm going to split right down the breasts. I'm going to come around the wing joint, around the back of the duck, to the leg joint. And then you get those halves of ducks like we had. And then once I've got the two halves, you got that body core.

It's a boneless breast, full wing, full leg. Yeah. Correct. Every edible thing is off that duck. There is not a piece of meat left on that duck so now i haven't guttered them yet so what i'm gonna do now is i'm gonna make a slit under the breastplate and i'm gonna pull that breastplate up yep like you're opening the hatch okay opening a hatch the heart the liver and the gizzard is gonna be sitting right there

and you just pull them out put them to the side and i'm gonna do all my ducks like that and then i'm gonna come back to the to the side, and I'm going to do all my ducks like that, and then I'm going to come back to the gizzard, which we call the giget, and I'm going to cut on each side of that silt sack, and I'm going to have two pieces, two little gizzard nuggets. That's another trick I learned from you. Yeah. Because I used to go through all the hassle,

opening the son's bitches up. And scraping them. And scraping them, but then I wind up with exactly what you wind up with. Yeah, you just cut off on each side. It's like it's it's a stupid i had no idea i was wasting so much time same here man i was doing like i wind up with exactly the same thing yeah yeah i mean you lose no meat and then no so you wind up with with i don't know what i was doing yeah and then it makes so much sense i like i like to i like to reward my dog when after a hunt. She does more work than any of us out there, so I like to give her.

I'm not a big liver fan. I'll feed her the livers, and I give her the gizzard cores. And the? And the traps. And the traps. The traps. How many ducks have you and I cleaned together? So, Ronnie, we shot some galanoo.

Would you do the same thing with galanoo? What do you mean? I mean that same process, or is it? No, so the galanoo, I like to start by cutting the wings off, and then I'm going to slit their throat. There's where their crop's at. You got a lot of skin. I give it a little slit,

peel that skin a little bit off the breast, and I'm going to stick my finger down, I guess, where the wishbone is. I'm going to pull the head and pull the wishbone, and that breast is going to come out nice and pretty. And like I said, if I'm at my house, I don't need to leave a wing. So by cutting those wings off,

the skin just peels right off, and you get a perfect breast, no feathers, no cleanup. I'm going to toss that in a bucket of water, and skin just peels right off, and you get a perfect breast, no feathers, no cleanup. I'm going to toss that in a bucket of water, and then just like with the duck. And then you hand it to Chester the Debraster. Dude, I will say about those galanoo, holy cow. Yeah, it's a good bird. I'd rather eat a coot than a duck.

Yeah, and the thing, too, about that. I guess that's what y'all talking about when you're saying gallin no it's like a rod poodle oh y'all were eating the rod poodles american cooters a poodle gallin is a rod poodle oh yeah very similar so and another thing back to like when i pull the breast out that way just like the duck it's like when you open that hatch there's the gizzard the heart and the liver just sitting right on top no having to dig through the thrips none of that flips yeah getting old i love that all nasty so yeah so then there you are you got your duck now go on keep keep making the dish oh so okay you got your halves now now i've got my two halves of my duck i'm gonna go and get a

magna light pot or black pot and i'm gonna put a little bit of olive oil a little bit of grease just enough to wet the bottom that way i don't get a hard stick when i throw it in and i'm gonna take those i'm gonna take those duck hives and i'm gonna lay them fat down on a medium heat and i'm gonna start to cook that skin down and get as much fat out of that skin to make my grease i hope people are listening to what you're saying right now so yeah i get that get that that duck fat like listen i don't want people to understand something you got like your 10 commandments okay get like the constitution you got like the declaration of independence and then you got this recipe yeah this shit is all sort of like you know what i mean so listen go on so i get those ducks

half down fat down and i'm gonna brown them down till the just the tops of them start to cook and the big thing is you do not want to over brown them because then those ducks are gonna get real knot and hard and they're not gonna get tender so as as they get to where i like them brown i'm gonna pull them out and put them in a metal a metal bowl and get them all out and once i've browned all my ducks, I'm going to take my trinity, my onions, my bell peppers, and my celery. Diced bell. Okay, so it's diced.

Diced bell peppers. And then Jean-Paul, give the official ratio. Yeah, I mean, I always use like a. Equal parts of each? No, that's not what he says. I go two to one two to one to one so more onion two two parts onion one part bell pepper one part celery and I don't eat celery yeah you don't put celery so I completely avoid this yeah I see a lot of yeah but can I ask you a quick question

yeah sure one word answer is fine two three word answer what ratio do you cook rice first joint first joint that is that's how i've done it yeah a lot of people i can cook you a pot of rice it's my dad working offshore i learned i can can cook anything. My dad, I saw my dad, what you doing? I'm cooking rice. Why are you sticking your finger? He said, doesn't matter how much rice you put in there, you measure the water up to that first joint where you're touching the rice. It's going to come out perfect every time. I've doing it for 60 from 55 years it comes out perfect every time there's your three-word answer the first joint all right so all right back to the back to the trinity, your onions, two-part onion, one-part bell pepper,

one-part celery diced up. And throw in the Pope's hat, which is a little bit of garlic, a little chopped garlic. So I'm going to throw that into my duck fat grease that I've just made by browning down those ducks. And also with my trinity, I'm going to throw in my gizzards and my hearts. And brown and strudels around them. I'm going to throw in my gizzards and my hearts. And brown and strudels around. I'm going to brown that down, get them onions sweating,

and I'm going to brown them down to the consistency I like, which with anything, you just get it browned down and thickened. And then once I'm to the browning process I like, I'm going to take those ducks and I'm going to dump them back in to the onions and give them a little more of a browning down in there. And I'm going to take that bowl that the ducks are just sitting in. A lot more grease and blood is going to have leaked out those ducks. And I'm going to put some water in there, swirl that around, dump it in.

And then I'm going to fill the pot up just above where everything is sitting in some chicken stock and some chicken broth with a little bit of water. And I'm going to bring it just to where it's above that um there and so i'm and then i'm gonna bring my get my get that boiling now this so most people would just continue to add as the water would drop or the stock would drop they'd add a little water add a little water out of the water i have three ways that i like to do it i do it that way where you just add water every time it drops down or I'll put it in the oven. On a burner. On a burner. You're adding when it's on the burner.

I'm adding water when it's on the burner or I'll put it in the oven for a couple hours. That's my second way I do it. And then my third way I do it, like if sometimes I'll just sit there, I'll throw it. If I don't really have a lot of time to cook it or if I want to eat it the next day, I'm those ducks and i'm gonna throw them in a slow cooker overnight and then then so the next step is once you either way you do it you're gonna so you can do the boil down process where you just boil it down add water boil it down to the ducks are tender and then it's ready so ronnie really yesterday when we made the recipe for this we had a we had an extra ingredient that we got from the bayous oh yeah so yeah we did but you don't always have that did but you don't always

have that you can you don't always have it a lot of times i'll add mushrooms whenever i don't have gizzards and hearts just just to kind of imitate that that feeling but we we actually went out and got those uh those oyster mushrooms champignons the wild mushrooms the wild the wild champignons and we we did add that in there too so uh that came out really good um yesterday i i used the oven method because we went out crawfishing so it was easy i just i got it i got the water hot took it off the stove stuck it in the oven for two hours while we were crawfishing came back so with the ball down process once you're done once you've got it, the duck's tender and the gravy to the consistency you like, it's done. It's ready to put it over some rice.

Now with the slow cooker and the oven method, once I've got the ducks to the tenderness I want, I'm going to put it back on the stove. And I'm going to finish off with the ball down method to ball down and get that gravy due just to the consistency and the darkness that i like so then you just let it rip and boil that water off yeah cook it down brown it a little bit get it you know get that if it's not because a lot of times when you use a slow cooker in the oven your gravy's gonna be a little lighter like last night the gravy was a little a little lighter than i so you just roll boil it off there yeah roll roll boil it off but you don't want to stir it too heavy, especially because then the ducks will fall apart.

So you just want to kind of, yeah, brown it, just make sure nothing's sticking to the bottom. And that was so good. I wish we had some leftovers. Routine, the word routine, we cook everything like that. Just a few days ago while we were at the pond, I mentioned to you we had a campsite where we go do two Trinadas and hunt coyotes at night. We cooked a rabbit the same way, but

without the Trinity. Just browned it, kept adding over a campfire in a black pot, add a little water, salt and pepper, and when the rabbit got tinned, we ate that over rice. Me and my friend Jason, that was there. We cooked that two, couple of times so far. We've done a rabbit. Swamp rabbits. No, raised. Raised rabbits. Farm rabbit.

Okay. Jason raises rabbits. Got you. Uh, California something and a New Zealand, a huge, huge rabbit. Got it. It's pretty good. That cleaning method I was telling you about,

both the Rapudos and the ducks actually came from Bud and their family. That was a trick that they showed me. My dad and I just used to just give them a real good pluck, and then we'd grill them, that boiling action. I like that boiling action. That's something I'm taking away from that. And the thing with the rapudo is that that process, a lot of times, we go do these coot shoots.

And when we go out there, we'll go out there with a whole bunch of us, and we'll shoot. Bud was the coot shoot man. He was the one who showed us the coot shoot too. And we used to go camp out there in high school in the blind. I got a t-shirt. I got them all. I don't know if I gave you one.

Yeah, I got one. You gave me one. Koo-choo. Poodo-palooza. Poodo-palooza. I got them all some t-shirts. Leg buff. Leg buff.

Koo-choo-palooza. But yeah, there was many times we had enough people. We came back with over 100 poodos. Because you're allowed 15 a day. You're allowed 15 per person per day. And we would go out there with a big group of us. Hence, when he told you how to pull the breast, the whole breast off, we'd sit there, three or four of us.

Yeah. 100 cool in 30 minutes. Yeah, we'd sit there. We'd make an assembly line. Like one guy was cutting wings. One or two guys pulling breasts. The next guy was pulling gizzards and hearts. Yeah. And it was an assembly line. Like one guy was cutting wings. Yeah. One or two guys pulling breasts. The next guy was pulling gizzards and hearts. Yeah.

And it was an assembly line. And like you said, we'd clean 100 pudos in 30 minutes. Strangely, every time we would hunt Lake Buff, we had to have some type of assembly line. Yeah. Frogs. Yeah. We had to have an assembly line to clean.

We'd go to Lawn Shed, Mr. Chris. Lawn Shed was the cleaning factory. Was the cleaning factory. Yeah, same thing with ducks. It was like an assembly line. We had some people plucking. We had a guy cutting wings, everybody plucking, someone boiling, someone rubbing,

and the process would be half the time. You remember the episode in Mississippi on the snow goose hunt? Yeah. That was an assembly line. Oh yeah. I mean there were feathers. When we got through it looked like it had snowed in that yard. Yeah we had what? It was windy.

We were cutting them feathers over the snow geese. We were skinning the snows and plucking the specks. Yeah it looked like it had snowed in that whole field behind the camp. It was all the feathers from the snow geese and the ducks. We had shot, what? I don't know.

I think we had 10 of us. Too many. We shot like 60 ducks and like 90 geese. We're going to close out, but I want to share with you guys a recipe that I think you'll be interested in. I already told Jean-Paul. I wrote it down. The reason you'll like it is because it involves ducks and involves rice.

This is from a northern. And a first joint of a fish? No, I didn't know about any of that, man. My rice sucks compared to your guys' rice. The back of my rice bag has been lying to me my whole life. What did they tell you on the back of the bag? What I told you, I'm not joking. Try it.

Oh, listen, man. I'm going to. When the tip of your finger touches the rice, if the water's What I told you, I'm not joking. Try it. Listen, man. When the tip of your finger touches the rice, if the water's at this first joint, it's going to come out perfect. You seen this man's paws, though? Every single time. That knuckle's high. It doesn't matter.

You got a high knuckle. Low, high knuckle. It doesn't matter. Every single one of us should do it. It's going to be perfect every time. I have been... I don't know if you've ever read the back of a rice bag. What they tell you to do is they tell you to do two to one. Yeah.

So you put the. A cup of rice, two cups of water. Yeah, you put the rice in there, you put the water in there, bring it to a boil. One. And then I cook it till the water's gone. I cook it till the water's gone. And it just kind of looks right. And I let it sit.

Then I fluff it. But my rice sucks compared to you guys' rice. You can't fluff it. I cook it in a pot too when we're camping and all. Our rice cooker or pot. The finger. And when the water's gone, don't fluff your rice. You just put the cover on and turn the fire just barely.

Like you try to mimic what the rice cooker's doing. He knows what I'm talking about. As low as it can go. Yeah, you just turn it down low, low, low, and leave it a few minutes. And when you open that rice pot, it's going to be perfect. Let me tell you real quick, though, what I made the other day that I thought was good. Like, phenomenally good. I cook my ducks in what you guys call a black pot, a cast iron skillet.

Cast iron. So I got my halves. I sear them skin side down. This is the way I eat 99% of the ducks I eat. I sear the half, just like Ryan described. I sear the half skin side down on a on the stovetop i flip it skin side up and put it in a 400 degree oven for a few minutes i eat them very rare when you pull them out you got all that duck fat that rendered out in that skillet

then i took old rice that i'd cooked the day before and make like a fried rice. Fried rice. Yeah. Duck fat fried rice. Yeah. That sounds good. I'm going to try it for sure. Oh, man.

Yeah, I'm going to try it. Duck fat fried rice is coming to a real Cajun restaurant near you. Yep. When I come down and get my restaurant at the real Cajun, I got that rice dressing and whatnot in there. So at your restaurant, we're going to have that fried rice, boudin,

and every table's going to have a tank with hot sauce coming down. There's not even going to be a sign. You'll know it's the right restaurant when you see a reservoir of hot sauce bolted to the roof. It's like the Galliano Water Tower. Yeah, the Water Tower full of hot sauce.ed to the roof. It's like the Galeano Water Tower. Yeah, the Water Tower full of hot sauce.

Tons of little hoses coming down. We're going to have to get our 18-wheeler coming from every island every week. Bringing a load of hot sauce. All right, guys. This has been a great trip, man. I learned so much about cooking down here. A lot about cooking. I really appreciate it.

And, Bud, I appreciate your generosity yesterday letting us go over and pull a harvest off your pond actually it was an honor for me to have you all here yeah very kind of smiles on your faces and y'all look like y'all had a good time so i mean that's all that matters that was a great time and ronnie collins thank you for everything showing us all around john paul all the great cooking stuff, all the hanging out, all the corrections. I was waiting for some sort of negativity. Listen, man. It made it.

Having all the context, the culinary context was very helpful. I'm only teasing about the, like, well, antagonizing. Yeah. Everything I learned about Boudin and what is and isn't, I appreciate all that stuff. Thank you. Stay tuned till next episode.

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