The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 330: Killing the King’s Deer

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Pete Alonso, Dave Willms, Rob Gearing, Ryan Callaghan, Brody Henderson, Chester Floyd, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Ambergris and makeup; getting hit in the teeth with a baseball going 98 miles per hour; a chew cocktail of tobacco wrapped in bubble gum; support TRCP and bid on a fishing trip with NY Mets first baseman, Pete Alonso; the Fourth Amendment, the Open Fields Doctrine, and what a game warden can and can't search; trying to get away with doing naughty, illegal things; "Outdoor Kids in an Inside World" is out now so go get a copy!; the aerospace background story of Spartan Precision Equipment and their awesome magnetic bipods; the elitism of hunting in the United Kingdom; getting a formal degree in deer stalking; how you can't keep the meat; so many airguns and plinking in the back garden; no bow hunting allowed; gutting from the diaphragm; red, roe, and fallow; deer hunting as deer management; Mrs. Miggins' roses; Cal and Steve argue about the "guard the gate" mentality; the plight of the Tasmanian devil; hot pot ptarmigan; and more.    Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Presented by First Light, creating proven, versatile hunting apparel from merino base layers to technical outerwear for every hunt. First Light. Go farther, stay longer. All right, everybody. We got a lot. We got a lot we gotta cover. First thing I gotta cover is the most important part. You know what I saw this morning that I haven't seen forever is I was driving my boy to school and I saw a woman doing

her makeup at the stoplight. Oh man. But listen, I always root for that woman. Why? Because she's got a lot of stuff she's got to do. She's trying to get somewhere. I don't know. If I see a person with a little white yappy dog on their lap, I root against them.

I just root against them. If I see a woman doing her makeup at the stoplight, I'm like, yeah! But isn't it the same kind of woman with the little yappy dog and the makeup at the stoplight? No. It's a woman that I just feel for. I'm like, man. But isn't it the same kind of woman with the little yappy dog and the makeup and stuff? No, no. It's a woman that just like, I just feel for her. I'm like, man, it's probably whatever. She's got to get somewhere. Didn't have time.

Living the American dream. I don't know. I just was like, kind of wanted to give her a, but she would have taken it the wrong way. If I would have given her a fist pump, she'd have been like, she would have given me the finger. Yeah, she was working on her makeup because she was out training her bird dogs earlier. Right, absolutely. No, no, I didn't say a bird dog. I said a little, one of those little white yappy dogs.

You missed it. Cal and I are on the same page. I think we might be anti-makeup slightly. Listen, I don't have strong feelings for makeup either way. I'm just saying, I just wind up rooting for them like, hey, I hope you get there in time. You know what's fascinating about the

products industry is that sperm whale snot that's the super valuable... What's that stuff called? Ambergris. Really? That's a thing now? Always has been. There's a whole what's that stuff called? Ambergris. Ambergris, yeah. Yeah. Really, that's a thing now? Oh, I like that. Always has been.

Ambergris Key. Big time. There's a whole book about that stuff. Ambergris Key in Belize. Yeah. I've been there. I've never found a wad of it. That's where they get.

Yeah. Well, you find a wad of it on the beach. It turns into like some kind of rock after a while. Mm-hmm. Am I right, Kevin? Big, big business. The stuff. Lamp oil, right?

No, the ambergris is the base. That's different. Yeah. This stuff is the base for all sorts of perfumes and scents and stuff like that. Yeah. Beavercaster goes into perfumes. Yeah.

We've covered that a thousand times. Yeah. The oil, the sperm oil, he had like his really valuable oil was up in his, up in his noggin. Yeah. And this stuff. I'd like to get in that business, man. The theory is, is like all the capsulated, uh, like, uh, squid beaks and stuff like that, that they, that they can't pass, but can't digest either.

That's what kind of forms around that stuff. The ambergris is. And then eventually they hock that thing up and it's this floating mat. Floating whale loogie. Floating whale loogie. I wonder what that sound effect is. Full of squid beaks.

I've seen it a few times. It sounds like this. Yeah, that sounds accurate. Grandpa? And then the sun. It actually sounds exactly like that. Ferments that stuff as it's floating in the salt water. And it's, and it's the, it's got to spend some time in the sun outside of the whale to really get the high quality product.

But. Seriously? Yeah. Can any kind of whale throw one up or is it. Any kind of whale can throw one up. It's a toothed whale. Because he's eating squid beaks. Because he's eating more squid beaks.

Yeah. Yeah, man. That's real interesting. Super interesting. I love it. And then ladies pay to put that on their faces. Bringing it all back to the lady in the car. Yep.

You think they test that in a rabbit's eyeballs first? Well, yeah, if they're out of dogs. Yeah. Yeah. Out of capuchin monkeys and dogs. That would have been a, being a whaler, man, it would have been an interesting business. They'd take off out of the East Coast,

you know, all those famous whaling towns. Yeah, the widow's walks on the rooftops. Drive, not drive, sail. Think about this. You sail down around the tip of South America. They'd come up. They'd leave in the fall. Do all that.

Whale in the winter in the South Pacific. Drop all the oil and baleen in Hawaii. Go whale the North Pacific. Get frozen, eat each other and everything, get a ride on another boat and you'd come back, you'd gone two years. Can you imagine what their range, their perspective on the word comfortable?

Oh. Was? Yeah. Like when you're on some three hour flight and you're like. Exactly. Oh, like my ass can't take it. this guy keeps putting his elbow on my armrest see won't go back far enough also we can stick some makeup on eh i wear my makeup in the weekend so i'm forgiven yes uh that ladies and gentlemen this is uh so here's the thing we have for years we have for years uh not dogged

on europe but uh we have for years uh taken a very naive cynical no what's the way to put it shallow ignorant sure american a very american perspective on what hunting in europe was like and we have just said like the european model right even though you're talking about rob how many countries you guys got over there oh crikey i couldn't tell you you don't even know so many countries you can't count them all but it's like it's like the states it's like i consider the states 50 different countries yeah it's just sure you share the same language we just don't but uh but we have we have 50 different sets of hunting rules yeah yeah way different methodologies and systems and it'll be exactly the same if you compared france with denmark or sweden or you know

they're all going to have different rules and regs and different etiquettes different ways of doing things for sure so we have uh and been called out on this a number of times for being like you guys sound like a bunch of idiots when you talk about Europe. So we have committed ourselves. Corinne's been working her ass off. I'm not going to help on that one. Sorry, guys. We've committed ourselves that we're going to give our listeners an extended, like this is just the first installment.

This is just to kick things off. We're going to start a thing called the Euro Report where we explore quickly and efficiently and give you a crash course on hunting in European countries. And they'll probably take it around the world. We're going to start a thing called the Euro Report, where we explore quickly and efficiently and give you a crash course on hunting in European countries. And they'll probably take it around the world. We're going to start with Europe. And we're just starting out, Rob. So we don't need actual facts out of you. We just need somebody with the accent. That helps.

Because just that in and of itself lends legitimacy, man. Yeah. If you want an expert, find somebody else. No, I can give you a flavor for sure. Yeah, that's what we're looking for. Just right now, flavor. This is a little starter pack. Pete, I can give you a flavor for sure. Yeah, that's what we're looking for. Just right now, flavor. This is a little starter pack. Pete, you're here, right? Pete Alonzo.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. You still playing first base, Pete? Yes, I am. Okay, first baseman from the New York Mets is joining us, and he comes on. He's our resident sports analyst. Most recently, Pete came on to explain his feelings about when Pete has suggested

they stop calling the bullpen the bullpen. And Pete analyzed that for us. Yeah, I mean, again, that's a head-scratcher to me. Okay, now, real quick, you got hit in the face real bad the other day. How was that? Yeah, so, been playing well. I mean, honestly, it was like a really strong cup of coffee. I was super alert and awake right after.

But it was – I mean, it was – it sucked, not going to lie. Yeah, my lip is split open. Cool. Yeah, yeah, it's split, no stitches, but it's kind of, it's healing decently. Well, uh, it's makes it kind of difficult to kiss my wife, but that's okay. I, but other than that, that's, that's all good. Lay off the spicy foods for a while.

Was that with the ball? No salt. Yeah. The pitcher hit him. Oh, so how do you decide how does not you you but how does a batter decide whether he when he gets hit how does he make the call whether he's going to run out and beat the pitcher or not so i wanted i wanted to so bad um and there's a lot of there's a lot of circumstances when it comes to go out there so the next night okay so the next night our um our shortstop got hit in the mouth we had two guys get hit in the mouth in two days and we and he had

a couple teeth cracked and and we and we cleared benches no no punches were thrown but you gotta I mean sometimes like you have to let the other team or let the the other pitcher know that hey what you like you're throwing up I mean I'm not saying it's like a a deadly weapon but you could seriously hurt some people like guys are throwing 98 99 miles an hour and if you catch someone in the wrong place in the head that's that's that's a broken jaw that's a broken nose like it's i'm not saying it's like hockey by any means but guys can get pretty seriously hurt and boy you just won over a lot of hockey fans right there pete if you got some bullshit that happens you gotta you gotta stand up for your teammates and yourself and how sure

are we like these guys have really good aim and accuracy so you kind of determine it's like on purpose i mean you can just tell because no one just misses that bad yeah okay that's not that was gonna be my next question so you like he's he's, like, trying to spook you a little bit and then maybe spooked you a little too much. Well, I mean, it's not more of, like, a spook thing. It's more, it's kind of like an ego game play mind game thing. It's like you're going to back off the dish. This is my zone.

This is my plate. And pretty much there's a lot of subtleties to the game of baseball where it's lost it inside he's like saying he's pretty much telling you it's like listen this is my zone this is my part of the dish you are not going to get your hands extended and take and and do anything the worst you're going to do if you make contact you're going to break your bat and look like an idiot so i mean that's if a pitcher's thrown inside that's that's the what he's trying to convey to the hitter but also if you get a guy hitting people that's just lack of care that's just like that's honestly just disrespect not just to you as a hitter but you're um to the entire

team especially if you're hitting multiple guys in multiple days. And then when this happens, this isn't what we called you about, Pete, but I'm just curious. When that happens, you probably know the guy, though, right? You probably, maybe not friends with him, but you definitely know who he is. I mean, people think that it's funny in sports. People think think that like we're a bunch of strangers that like hate each other off the field. Like it's a rivalry. But in reality, if it's a highly contested game, whoever wins or loses, that's great. But we've played against each other pretty much our entire lives, whether it be high school and college in the minor leagues and and in various years in professional baseball.

And even in the big leagues, it's like I've gotten to know some guys I've played against. I've become really, really close friends with certain guys I play against and played with. So more of a community. And you would like to think that through those experiences together, you just kind of learn to appreciate what each other does. And, and you respect each other as an opponent, as opposed to like, have anything malicious or like any, like, fuck you to it. If you acted like the bat slipped out of your hands and flew off there, Adam, that doesn't probably go over real well. Does it?

Oh no. I'm, I'm probably, I'm probably the catcher's probably getting getting right in my face and we're probably gonna clear because no no one throws the bat got it okay here's what i will call you ask about most it seems like most of our listeners are uh uh they chew they dip and i was astonished the other day so we like to cover dip a little bit it's kind of the only area where we stray outside of our home territory. Someone told me the other day that you guys aren't allowed to dip. You can't pack a dip playing baseball anymore. You can. Who the hell told me that?

Someone told me you're not supposed to be out there spitting. Corinne got my kids a couple bags of Big big league chew, which went over real well. And someone told me that in the major leagues now they mix that there actually is. I was wondering why they still even make big league chew. And someone told me that, that you guys mix your dip with big league chew and chew it. Okay. So,

okay. So they're, they're, they're half right and half wrong. So, so there's different right and half wrong. Okay. So there's different rules in place. There are dip police, not just in the big leagues, but in the minor leagues as well.

In the minor leagues, if you get caught with dip in your locker, you get fined. So you have to put it away. But in the big leagues. Hold on one second. Our guest, he's from Europe, so he knows nothing about baseball. Go ahead, Robert. What the bloody hell's

dip? I've no idea. It's chewing tobacco. Chewing tobacco. That's for you, European. They do that in Europe? Is dip a big thing in Europe? No, never heard of it. No, but you guys... Tobacco, they chew tobacco. Yeah, and and you guys over where you live everybody snorts it up their nose we smoke fags cigarettes yeah yeah yeah we share

the same language we just use in a different way yeah the same words just apply different areas yeah okay pete sorry but also you have different types of you have different types of tobacco. You have the dip, which is like the super fine that you get in like a round tin can. And then also you have the chew. Typical chew, it's like Redman. It's like the whole leaf. I used to, but I quit. In college, what I would do, I would throw in a lip or throw in a wad and have an extra large dunk in coffee and then knock out my papers. That's what I would do. Got you. I'm trying.

But I mean, it's a nasty habit. I don't do it. I quit. I quit chewing tobacco because I've seen a ton of people have a ton of different health issues. Like I know some kids, like some kids like my age that have had like gum grafts and stuff like that. It's not, it's not pretty stuff. I'm very against it, but the rules in the big leagues are a lot different than in minor leagues. It's a lot more strict.

Like guys play with like pretty much big fat rocks in their mouth like just huge wads of whatever and then it's and then it's it doesn't change the only thing that you're not that's different is you're not allowed to have like a can or pouch in your pocket while you're playing or you're not allowed to dip while you have an interview going on. Keeping it real. But really like nothing changed. So they don't want the can. They don't want you playing, showing that little tin. Correct.

Or the pouch. But if you mix chew, so chew and dip are different for people who aren't necessarily experts. So chew, it has like this like cinnamony, like honey type to bat leathery flavor. So if you were to mix that with gum, so a lot of people, what they do to kind of savor it and make it last longer. And also like for people that have been doing it a long time, they actually chew, chew like bubble gum. So it's some people do to hide it. They mix it with bubble gum so what some people do to hide it they mix it with bubble gum like they mix a big wad of chewing tobacco and then put it inside the bubble gum like they wrap it in

in the bubble yeah what do you guys call that you got a good name for it people that dip chew or whatever they always have great names for everything i don't know that's just how it's like a blunt it's like a blunt it's like a tobacco blunt this is a good reminder to everybody that there's a lot of people under the age of 20 in the major leagues correct like the youngsters pete not really i mean it's it's it's a well okay there's anybody around the age of 40 that's mixing bubble gum with chew? Yes. Really? Yes.

Man, Pete's putting Cal in his place. I'm not going to be naming names or pointing fingers, but, I mean, there are people that do that. If you want a big wad, like if you want to have like a pretty much like a rock size, like a nice skipping rock size wad of tobacco. You mix it with the gum and then you chew it pretty much all game. And if you're not getting any hits or if the team's not doing well, you get a new wad and then you start over. Change your luck. Maybe we should try that one. Do they use

big league chew though? I mean, we are a Hubba Bubba team, but other teams don't chew. That's great. I mean we are a hubba bubba team but other teams Pete this is we're gonna you got a game today's actually an off day I thought I had a game today but I'm I'm I'm here if you guys I'm here to if you got any more questions um if you got oh also there's this thing that the dominicans do it's called picaduro it's like they put like kalua cinnamon sugar baking like baking soda or baking power powder

and then rum and then what they do they mix it in the chewing tobacco and then they bury it they let it marinate and it's basically like like... Is that a ferment? Bury it where? Like out under the plate? No, I don't know where, but they bury it underground for a while. Like yellow stash at all the different stadiums? That sounds tasty. And then they gnaw on that.

And then that's honestly like going on a space shuttle, like if you were to have that. I wonder if Jared Outlaw has tried that before. Well, see, Pete's apparently he's anti-tobacco, so I was hoping Jared Outlaw's listening right now.

He'd have to retort. He'd come and tell you how healthy it is. Oh, I mean, some people say they don't get sick from it, but I mean, again, they don't get sick from it but i i mean again like i don't know like but it's it's for me it's not i'm not i'm just i'm just telling you guys what what people do you know i mean there's different names like that's why we're that's why we're professional analyst that's why we're coming for you man that's like a good analyst you're not you're

trying to advance the ball dude you're not trying to push an agenda man no exactly i mean i don't do it i again like it's it's it's a nasty habit and i've seen some guys like have some serious serious like health issues because of it and also like it's it's extremely sad because there's some incredible greats in our in our game of baseball that passed away from whether it be throat cancer gum cancer lung cancer due to chewing tobacco so um it's it's sad you know when you see guys like pass on like in their 40s and 50s from it so it's it's upsetting but and i hope that people quit it and just for the just for their family's sake you've been uh you've been getting out on the water pete fishing in the season no but i had a really good really good time like chasing after some redfish and and some snook so it was really good really really good time

and also i got my uh my fishing trip up on the TRCP website. Anybody can go bid on that for a trip to go out with me on the water. So, Steve, you can bid on it if you want to come down. I should bid on that. But that's coming right up. I think it's the fifth of – Oh, yeah. So you better haul ass if you're going to bid on that. I might go bid on it, Pete.

I'd like to go fishing with you. All right, we're going to let you go. Ladies and gentlemen, that's America's baseball player Pete Alonzo. Alright, thank you so much, guys. We're going to go talk to some stupid lawyer now, Pete. From baseball to NPR, to Pete Alonzo.

Sounds good. Thank you guys so much. Hit one real far, Pete. You got it. All right. All right. Bye. 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 a high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it,

be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more as a special offer you can get a free three months to try on x out if you visit on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all all right folks now we're going to turn it over to a conversation with our legal analyst, Dave Wilms. Dave Wilms, introduce yourself real quick and tell people what you do now, like what you do now for a living.

But talk about how you haven't been disbarred or anything. I have not been disbarred. Yeah, thanks, Steve, for putting that right out front. I just want people to know that our legal analyst, even though he's not being a lawyer at the moment, he's a lawyer. He's a legal analyst. Once you're a lawyer, you're always a lawyer. Oh, okay, good, good, good. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, now I work for the National Wildlife Federation, working on public lands issues and wildlife issues. But before, I was a practicing attorney for more than a decade and worked in wildlife law areas and represented

state agencies and in private practice as well. So is that enough background for you? Oh, no. That makes you seem extremely credentialed. And you've been on the show I don't know how many times, so people know who you are. Here's what we've got to talk to Dave about. I'm going to set it up on a very high level, and then David Williams will get into the details. But if the setup is flawed, Dave, just go ahead and correct me on this. But everybody knows that

um a police officer like a regular police officer can't just come snooping around your shed and walking around your property he needs to have probable cause and needs to get a um you know they need to go get a search warrant right or they're like actually chasing somebody or something but just to go do a search on a hunch or whatever they have to get a search warrant, right? Or they're like actually chasing somebody or something. But just to go do a search on a hunch or whatever, they have to get a search warrant to go on it. But everybody also knows that you could be sitting out in a deer stand on private property and a game warden can decide just to have a mosey over and see what's going on.

They have, what was it? Open field doctrine for wildlife law enforcement but tennessee just had the open they had a court case where the open field doctrine was declared unconstitutional which would mean that a game warden to go check a private property hunter would need to get a search warrant which i'm guessing and dave can clarify i'm guessing this was have this must have like huge ramifications for wildlife law enforcement uh is am i overstating that or is that correct well can I step you back just a minute? Because I don't actually think...

All the way back. All the way? Okay, perfect. Whatever you need to do. I don't think the case actually says that the open fields doctrine is unconstitutional. Okay. What this case was doing was there were a couple of landowners

that were challenging the constitutionality of a state statute. That state statute authorized law enforcement game wardens to enter property. And I think the exact words are go upon any property outside of buildings, posted or otherwise, in performance of the executive director's duties. And so the open fields doctrine, like you correctly noted, it is basically this concept that is built in U.S. Supreme Court law and affirmed by a bunch of state Supreme courts around the country as well, says if you are outside of the main home and the curtilage, the area around that home where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, that outside of there, it's open fields and you're not protected by the Fourth Amendment against illegal search and seizure. So this state statute that said, well, anywhere except buildings, you can search,

the idea was the plaintiffs in this case, the landowners were saying, well, that's an unconstitutional application of the open fields doctrine because there are going to be some places outside of these buildings where you cannot search. And so that was sort of the premise. I don't actually think the open fields doctrine was viewed as unconstitutional. But what it does here in Tennessee, at least at this level, there's still appeals that could occur. It appears to me anyway, that if you've posted your property and you've made reasonable expectations to put people on notice that you don't want anybody there and it's private property and you're exercising that and you're using that property, that yeah, you have to have permission or a

warrant to enter those places. But it also says there are certainly places that are wild or unoccupied. I think it's wild or wastelands, or there might have been some other language there that the court was citing to, that still fall outside of the purview of the Fourth Amendment, or in this instance, the Tennessee version of the Fourth Amendment against illegal search and seizure. That make sense? Yeah, but what makes people in tennessee up in arms about this you know i mean like put yourself in the war like put yourself in the warden's uh mind frame yeah sure so my i suspect right and this is this is a lot of uh i'm gonna use suspect i i would assume you, that sort of thing.

Because I don't know specifically. I haven't talked to a specific warden here about it. But before this, you had a statute that said they could basically go anywhere to enforce the state game laws. And now you have a case that greatly restricts the places that they might be able to go without a warrant or without landowner permission to enforce those state game laws. And so I think there's, I've seen the argument in other places. Tennessee is not unique. There are other states that have restricted, have more expansive views of the Fourth Amendment rights. It extends to more lands than other places, right? Then, so,

so you have the federal government that has, that has this U S Supreme court case dating back to the 1920s, right? A Hester case that set up the, the open fields doctrine, but then you have state constitutions that also have fourth amendment search and seizures. And so states are, are able to interpret that law, their own constitutions, and they can be more restrictive than the, the U S constitution. And so you have a number of states that have done this. Tennessee's not unique here, but I have seen the arguments pop up. There's, you know pop up. I've seen people, wardens are

afraid. What if they, for example, see an animal that's wounded and want to humanely dispatch that? Do they have to first get permission or can they enter this open field and dispatch a wounded animal? They might not be able to without permission, depending on how this open fields doctrine is defined. And then also I've heard the argument of wardens are charged with protecting and conserving a public trust resource being wildlife, and they need the ability to quickly access areas and to check hunters, and that wildlife don't respect private property boundaries, and the agency is charged with managing all wildlife and needs to be able to do that. And this would create a limitation of being able to do that.

And I've also heard there's concerns that it could incentivize bad actors, meaning if you know that a warden no longer can use what they thought the open field doctrine allowed. And it's now much more narrow, narrowly defined that there might be a lot of places now where the risk of poaching goes up. Oh, I would have to think that would be like a huge, that would have to enter people's mind. Oh yeah. Hey Dave,

this is Brody. I got a question for you about like how it used to be versus how it's going to be now. Like let's say a game warden's parked on a country road and there's a dude off on a tree stand um game warden here's a bunch of shooting and then sees a guy dragging what appears to be a doe during buck season, and it's private property. Now, can that warden go check that guy out? In Tennessee? Yeah. Yeah. And let me be clear, I'm not licensed in Tennessee, so I'm not trying to

interpret Tennessee law here. And this is just sort of one guy's opinion of the situation. But the facts that you described in a lot of places, if you see something from a public road, there's no expectation of privacy, first of all. So you witness a crime being committed on private land from a public road, that law enforcement officer can respond to that, uh, criminal activity as it's occurring. You know, you're, you, you see it happen. You can respond. Um, but if he just got, but if he just got a call from like one of the neighbors, he couldn't just go check it out. And so this is a, this is where it's one of those. it depends. It depends on what that land is. Would it qualify as this wild or wastelands under the Tennessee law?

I don't know. So the point being, this is going to be so circumstance specific. If this case holds, like right now it's at a circuit court. It can still go to an appellate court. It can still go to the state Supreme Court. If this decision holds, I think a lot of the hypotheticals are really going to be circumstance specific. So the facts are, if you're struggling with this, how does a guy on the ground cope with

it? Right. I mean, we're having an adult conversation here, aren't we, about these, and they're so gray. It sounds really alien to me. The bummer of this is all these cases where this has been challenged, the examples that come forward are all examples in which criminal activity was taking place. Oh, yes. People trying to get out of tickets they got.

Yes. And so there's not a lot of empathy for, uh, you know, being defensive of private property laws when there's a crime taking place. So I, I've got tons and tons of emails and messages and stuff regarding this. And, you know, it kind of puts you in that whole like have versus have not type of mindset of like, yeah, screw those guys. They were, they were poaching or baiting or whatever. And it's hard to see like the appropriate amount of, uh, defense of private property, I guess is what I'm saying. Mm-hmm. You know, Montana had changed its approach based off of a similar circumstance. Guy poached an elk, had it hanging up on private property.

The warden went past no trespassing signs, not specifically to investigate a crime, but was just going to talk to the landowner and happened to notice a bull elk hanging off the meat pole. So there was that expectation of privacy. There were no trespassing signs guy wasn't uh technically i think like in the act of investigating but there's the evidence right there and the workaround from everybody who's been emailing me is like well can't the county judge just get better and more efficient at issuing search warrants? Is that a possibility, Dave? You know, I don't, I'm not one to critique how judges issue search warrants. I've seen them, you know, search warrants can be issued pretty quickly. You do have to still have a probable cause that something occurred, right? And you have to be able to... We really, in this country, and I think rightfully so, protect personal liberties. And it's not necessarily just about private property, but it's about personal liberty and a right to not be subjected to an unlawful search or seizure of property. I mean,

it's the fourth amendment. It's a foundational amendment. It's in every single state constitution as well. And so it's a pretty, when it's something like that, it's a very high bar to violate that, or not violate that, but to show that there's a state interest to conduct that search or seizure. So I look at a judge, and they take their responsibility so seriously, and they're not going to just give a blanket warrant. There needs to be something there. So to say we need to speed up a process or something, I mean, I'm a little reluctant to go down that road just because I feel pretty strongly personally about some of the personal liberties spelled out in the Constitution and doing everything we can with the judicial system to protect those. And sometimes it creates these situations you describe where you have people that have probably committed a crime that wind up getting away with it because the evidence was collected in violation of their constitutional rights.

And that's the system we operate under. And I think it mostly works. So yeah, you pose that question, but I would personally be, I think our judges do and county prosecutors do a pretty darn good job of turning around warrant requests. There probably are exceptions to that where it could be improved, but they're usually pretty good about it. So Dave, in a nutshell here, you don't see this and you're not thinking, oh, there goes the country. Well, I mean, it's... How bad are things in Montana since it happened,

since that case happened? And the open fields doctrine was, there were limitations put on it there. I think New York has limitations. I think Mississippi might have some limitations. You know, there are half a dozen states or more that have gone a slightly different direction from the U.S. Supreme Court. They've interpreted their own state constitution differently.

I haven't, I don't know. I haven't seen the substantive evidence saying that this is, you know, that we're seeing increases in poaching or it's making it

harder for law enforcement to do their jobs. We wouldn't know now, would we, Dave? Because they can't

go look anymore. Right. No, that's true. There could be an illegal deer hanging from every tree back there, Dave. That's the thing, too, is game warns often uncover a violation on the spot. It's not like something that they would need a search warrant for.

They need to be able to react right then. Or they're just out shooting the shit with people, and they're like, eh, something's fishy here well what if it is the case of something small like fish yeah right so it's like pretty sure that guy's taking more than his limit yep got to go get a search warrant you finally show up there's the the scent of uh beer batter and fry oil. That's what the evidence has done. No fish to be found. When he goes in front of the judge for his search warrant, he's like, your honor, I can smell that fry.

I can smell that fish fry. I know what they're doing in there. Right, yeah. You know, there's one other thing. I think it's important. Things like migratory birds, so doves, ducks, geese, that sort of thing. I think it's important that there are things like migratory birds. So, you know, doves, ducks, geese, you know, that sort of thing in places where there's migratory birds, an interpretation of the state constitution for the open fields doctrine isn't going to impact

like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement officer's ability to investigate offenses and they would be operating under the open fields doctrine established by the United States Constitution. So now that doesn't get to your deer hanging in a tree thing in every tree example, but for things where there's some concurrent jurisdiction over species management like migratory birds, which are obviously covered by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, federal authority would... This is where it gets confusing for me and where I think it adds another layer of complexity is because now you have a state that may be making a different interpretation of the open fields doctrine pursuant to their

state constitution than the U.S. constitution. And you have different law enforcement agencies operating under different jurisdictions that are responding to different case law. So you could have an instance where a Tennessee game warden might not be able to walk into a field under this new interpretation, but a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officer could still do so. Potentially. Which makes it more confusing. Yeah, I'm like reflexively a status quo guy when it comes to stuff like this. I have spent my whole life under the knowledge that

like some dude from the atf can't just show up and want to dig through your gun cabinet to make sure you haven't cut your 12 gauge shotgun barrel too short right you just get used to that reality but you know when i was growing up we were always breaking rules all the time uh we spent a lot of time on private land really hoping a game warden didn't show up because we'd found ourselves in a compromised position. Right? And I think that if from my perspective, man,

if I'd have known that that just wasn't going to happen, I just feel like things would have gone even a little more off the rails now and then. And that's the question that you kind of come down to is we know there's not that many game wardens. Yeah.

We know there's a lot of big chunks of private property. We know there's a lot of hunters and anglers out there during the seasons. Yeah. They need to be able to be efficient with their time. And the idea is effective.

Like the idea of the game warden showing up is effective for people who give a crap about that sort of thing. And if you remove that, what. Good analogy. Is it effective against the people that were breaking laws to begin with? No. Remember we were hunting in South Dakota? About scared the shit out of me all of a sudden. Oh, God.

We're out in a farmer's cornfield. All of a sudden, he's like standing there. Yeah, like tapping you on the shoulder. How's the hunting? And the probable cause would have been nothing. Like I heard a gunshot. Right. He could have seen some birds falling out of the sky or something.

Yeah, that bird looked like it fell illegally. Right. He could have seen some birds falling out of the sky or something. Yeah, that bird looked like it fell illegally. Right. Who knows? You know what's funny about all of this is you have the case that started this all back in 1920. U.S. Supreme Oliver Wendell Holmes. Great Oliver Wendell Holmes. Really? Yeah.

Who's the same judge that decided Missouri v. Holland, the Migratory Bird Treaty, upholding that. He wrote the opinion. It's two paragraphs. The entire open fields doctrine, and it was really based on prohibition. I mean, that case was based on moonshining, illegally selling moonshine. Everything we know about the old open fields doctrine was born out of a case that is two paragraphs long, an opinion. I've never seen a U.S. Supreme Court opinion two paragraphs long. But I just find that fascinating.

Times were simpler then, Dave. Maybe so. But two paragraphs, and we have this whole debate over it. And all of the, you know, but two paragraphs and we have this, this whole debate over it and all of the expansion, most of the, at the federal level, most of the talk about open fields doctrine and, and how it's been reinterpreted and, and, or refined the, how it operates. It's really been around illegal drug use, marijuana fields, things like that. And we're talking about it in this game context. And it almost feels like in some instances, because I'm just thinking about what you all were talking about there just a second ago. In some ways, it feels like trying to fit a square

peg in a round hole. We're talking about in our world, the open fields doctrine applying to a public trust resource. How do you manage something that's owned by everybody but doesn't know any boundaries? And we're trying to apply the rules that were established for controlling illegal drug trade and alcohol trade during prohibition. I just find that fascinating too. We've worked it into that system, but the open fields doctrine wasn't born out of this idea of game wardens being able to walk into fields and check and enforce game laws. It was about stopping illegal alcohol and drug trade. Hmm. Well, I think in Tennessee, one of the cases that they had brought up was, this was years ago, was not fish and game related. It was a guy growing pot out behind his house. And,

uh, they tried to, to fight the, uh, whatever tickets and jail time or whatever that, that fellow received based off the open fields doctrine. It's like, it wasn't visible from an open field or,

you know, it was, it was tucked away. I was like, I'm not a dumb guy growing weed. Wasn't visible from the County road. I'm just gonna make noises like that. Yeah. Yeah. But it's like, uh, our own Maggie Hudlow's writing an article on this right now too

and and she and i were chatting about it yesterday and and she's like do you think there needs to be another law that can like take the space of this if it goes away oh i got and and it's like that idea of like the need for law is so hard to pin down. Like my gut reaction is no. I think what we need is people to give a shit in the first place and buy into the North American model of wildlife management, understand what biologists are saying. And then we don't need a bunch of extra laws. Yeah. Yeah, but some people always like to be naughty. Yeah, but they're breaking laws anyway.

They don't care about the laws. Right. Doesn't matter what law is out there. Right, right, right. Yeah. Right. From a European standpoint, this is the only country where I've ever been asked to show a ticket. Is that right?

Yeah. Never anywhere else. So something's working guys you know that's pretty incredible because i've been pretty lucky i've traveled all over the world but uh appellations i was fishing for trout in those little mountain streams and this guy just appeared i shat myself right and he said oh have you got and i said yeah yeah i've done everything right and then he started feeding the fish with some like fish pellets and I thought well No wonder I'm not catching anything here and they were huge fish and then another time I was hunting for dove

That wasn't so sexy because I didn't have a license and I've been out with some people so confession I fess up But I was with a guy and he said I will get it sorted in the morning We didn't and this warden came up and said, I'm really lucky I found you. It's like I cover thousands of square miles kind of thing. I've got you. And I was hammered. Yeah. He gave you a citation?

No, no. He was really good. He saw that we were honest. He clearly didn't know who I was. But he said, no, go and get your ticket and just treat this and put it down to experience. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Cause that's, doves would be federal, right? No. They're migratory. Yeah. But I don't think they have federal. Damn it. They're, they're a migratory bird. But they do have federal oversight.

Yep. Okay. Did he chalk it up to you being a knowing European? Well, no, I was with a very knowing American. So that's no excuse. We can get away with that. It was a pretty entertaining trip, actually. And yeah, because we shot a lot of doves

and we sat down and we were tucking into them with all the young kids that evening and all the grown-ups weren't really eating them. And I thought, this is a bit odd. And then they got out big, fat, juicy steaks. Learned a lesson here. But it was good. It's good that you've got a system there that

actually works. Alright, Dave, we're going to let you go, man. Alright. Hey, I appreciate it. Yeah, appreciate you coming on and providing some clarity there. I like it better when you just really oversimplify things and make it seem super alarming. That's not

what I do, though, you know. No, I didn't mean you. I like it better when one. You guys are the ones that are supposed to... I'm just supposed to provide the factual legal information, and you guys are supposed to make it hyperbolic, right? That's the way that's what I was trying to do. I was trying to make it hyperbolic.

I got shot down. You're trying to get me to make it hyperbolic. Yeah? No, that's what I was trying to do. I was trying to make it hyperbolic and I got shot down. You were trying to get me to make it hyperbolic. Yeah, why don't you back me up, man? I wanted you to have my back on the hyperbole. Alright, thanks a lot, Dave. Good luck with you. We'll talk to you soon, I'm sure. Sounds good. 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 a high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery,

24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team.

Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Okay, one more thing before we get into all things Rob here.

So it's May 2nd. Drop. This right now is May 2nd. So, okay. Our new book, Outdoor Kids in an Inside World, releases May 3rd. Ships on May 3rd. So we have a special thing right now you can do. But you've got to hustle.

You've got to do it right now. If you buy the book right now, if you're listening on May 2nd, Monday, if you buy the book right now, you can scoot on over to themeateater.com. So you buy the book on May 2nd, scoot on over to themeateater.com and you'll find an announcement there. We'll take you to a page where you can enter your purchase information. Doesn't matter where you bought the damn book from. You'll enter that purchase information and you will get a free 50-page resource guide emailed to you. So we built, when we're working on the book,

Brody and I built what was going to be like a 50-page appendix of resource guides about everything you need to know about the nitty-gritty stuff. The nitty-gritty on Outdoor Kids. So the book itself, Outdoor Kids in an Inside World, covers introductory materials um it covers hunting fishing gardening foraging um like bringing the outdoors inside at home what's that camping camping okay covers all this stuff about like questions parents have, anxieties parents have, suggestions, stories from my own experiences raising three outdoor kids, right?

Everything's in there. But we also built this 50-page appendix, which was like gear recommendations, resources, like the nitty-gritty tips and details about stuff to go, how to help yourself on this journey of getting your kids outside, which is a pain in the ass. Yep. It's hard. This'll, this'll speed things up for people that are like asking questions about how to do anything outside with kids. Um, it's like a whole damn extra book.

Yeah. It's an extra book. And what we're doing is I, yeah, what we're doing is we're giving it away but you got a pre-order to get it it's formatted it's nice to get the thing order the book today take your it doesn't matter where you bought it barnes noble amazon local bookstore whatever you'll go in enter your information and you get the feet the 50 resource guide. Smoking deal. Yeah. And the book's phenomenal, if I don't say so myself.

You did pretty good on this one. Yeah. I mean, I just think it's timely. And it's informed by so many. The other thing is it's informed by so many questions that come in here from parents of young kids all the time. Yeah. And discussions we have all the time.

A lot. Just kids all the time yeah discussions we have all the time a lot just like all the stuff you know uh it what happens you know like what are your thoughts on if you for a kid to like see an animal die when they're really young like how do you handle that what about when kids don't want to eat wild game at what age should you let them start shooting firearms when should they be able to shoot firearms without parental guidance? How to get them rigged up for fishing? Why are they such a pain in the ass to go camping with?

Yeah, what kind of gear to buy them? What to take them hunting for when they're first getting into it? What to fish for when they're first getting into it? When they come back without their mittens, what probably happened to their mittens you're gonna go buy a new pair that's what you're gonna do why oh the other day my boy matthew we're checking some beaver traps and he on the day we're setting walks in over the top of his rubber boots on the day we're checking

walks in over the top of his rubber boots and i asked him not thinking i'd get an answer why do you keep walking in over your boots and he said i don't like to look down he had a good reason meaning he's not monitoring where the water is because he doesn't he likes to apparently look more forward yeah but basically you got a plan on that happening every time the same kid also laid this on me uh i was blaming something on him and he said it's not my fault i forgot and i was like no forgetting counts as your fault it's like that's bucketed under fault. It's not like a defense. You forgetting is your fault. My kid says it's not my fault.

I got distracted. Somebody needs to make like a chart. It says like fault. And then it's like a family tree. But then under fault is forgot, distracted, didn't give a shit. Like all the reasons that you don't do what you're supposed to do. You know what I'd do if I had a pile of kids that needed to learn how to fish? Please. You should have written a chapter.

I'd buy that TRCP fishing trip with Pete Alonzo and be like, Uncle Pete's got you covered. That's a good idea. Put that in a book. That's a short book. So check that out. Outdoor Kids in an Inside World. Available everywhere.

Books are sold right now. Go and get it. You got kids, Rob? Look at that transition. Yeah, I've got four. Dude, really? How old? 28, 25, 21, 14.

Three girls and a boy. One of them still live with you? No, 25, 21, 14. Three girls and a boy. Yeah. One of them still live with you? No, they're all, well, one, yeah. The others are all doing their own thing now. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The oldest ones was seriously into her hunting.

Yeah. Yeah. That's good. But she's an artist as well. So she does a lot of bronze art. So she shoots them, eats them, and then turns them into pieces of art. Well, that's wonderful. Yeah. So again, this is Rob Gearing. Talk about your business first, Spartan Precision. does a lot of bronze art so she shoots them eats them and then turns them into pieces of art well that's wonderful yeah so again this is uh rob gearing talk about your business first spartan

precision so i set up a i my background's climbing that was really my sort of big thing when i was younger because it's very difficult to get into hunting um in the uk and we can get into that later but i set up spartan precision because i'm a climbing background i wanted lightweight equipment that was modular because everything i carry was on my back so if i could make a tripod or a bipod that would do other jobs as well lightweight and make it well it sort of i thought had a big advantage and um, there was nothing genius about what we did. I was formerly in an aviation business.

We bought the nose of Concorde. Oh, that kind of explains all the slick, all the slick engineering. You built the nose of the Concorde. We bought serial number six, which never actually flew. Ah. It was a simulated, it was, it done twice the

hours of every other Concorde because they checked it for cracks or damage. And we turned it into a piece of art, which is still sitting in Oxford Aerodrome somewhere, spanked a load of cash on it. So that was a huge waste probably. But it made me see where I could go because we set the Concorde on an Olympus engine bearing,

the Olympus being the engine that powered Concorde. And the guy that covered it up used two clamshells and rare-earth magnets and these tiny little fucking things I mean dinky and they had like 16 kilo what 30 pounds of pull on him and I said shit man can you make me a bipod that sticks on my rifle with one of those and that was the end of my genius so I can't really take more credit than that but that thing but that thing, though, sticks. I love those things. It's kind of amazing.

Like, when you hold it up there to that little socket, it's like... I was anti-mypod on my rifle until I started using that thing. Well, yeah, because I used to use those in the old days. They were like the first ones out and had all the spritz.

Big metal things. Oh, yeah, you'd be going through some alder choke hell hole I used to use in the old days, but you do use those. Who's the kind that they're like the first ones out and had all the spritz. Big metal things. Oh, yeah. You'd be going through some alder choke hell hole and just like that thing's like dragging it through there. And it always comes out with leaves and stuff hanging off it. Adds a couple pounds to your rifle. Leaves hanging off it. Oh, exactly. And mentally, when you're like a gajillion miles into your walk, you're kind of thinking of the things that you could just leave on the trail.

Yeah. Yeah. So I used to take a lot of people hunting and i had one of those harris bipods on my rifle but i got it's a great tool you know i'm not knocking it but it's just once you set the shooting yeah once but the springs can make noise and all sorts of things i just didn't like the clutter underneath the real estate so i took a swedish client in to shoot a roebuck once i'd taken the bipod off and he wasn't comfortable making the shot and i'm not the type of people that the person that's pushing people comfortable making the shot and I'm not the type of person

that's pushing people to make a shot. And I said, look, if you're not comfortable, mate, skip it. Well, that's not my approach. I was going to say, Steve, have you ever said that? What I do is I say, what exactly is the problem? Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot now. Anyway, that was really the birthplace.

So it was a sort of mix of climbing and hunting and all of those things and a bit of aviation sort of behind it that really was the birthplace of Spartan. And I gave up a very lucrative business in aviation, sort of got divorced from my dear old business partner, which was far more ugly than getting divorced from my wife. But that's another story. And then got in a little boat and started paddling hard. And that was, we're in our ninth year now.

Yeah. Yeah. Nearly sunk a few times on the way, but we've just managed to keep our noses above water. And this is where it's at though, guys. You know, we're in the worst bloody country to be making shooting stuff by a country mile. You know, it's just crazy.

Explain that. Well, first tell people how to find, how to find, you guys are really active on social media. They can buy it's just crazy. Explain that. Cause that gets, well, first tell people how to find, how to find, uh, you guys are really active on social media. They can buy them from you guys. Spartan precision equipment. Spartan precision equipment. But I was a default to Javelin, which is the

original bipod. Yeah. And now there's a family of bipods and a family of tripods and they're all modular. It's a bit like Lego for the hunter. You know, you build what you need. We're not dictating. I mean, I'm not in love with tripods and they're all modular. It's a bit like Lego for the hunter. You know, you build what you need. We're not dictating. I mean, I'm not in love with tripods.

We make tripods, but you can run them as bipods, quad systems, pent systems. I'm not saying I'm going to go to the fucking woods with a pent system, but I'm going to go to the woods on probably two legs and 90% of the work I would do in the UK, I'd hunt on two legs all the time because short distances and it's quick and we're managing deer we're not as in standing up standing standing yeah and most of it 90 of what i'm going to be doing in the uk is going to be standing work anyway yeah it's woodland and we're after fallow and roe buck roe deer really and the whole ethos of what we're doing is to try and shoot as many as we possibly can because and we've lost the race already.

I mean, there's just too many of them. It's gone crazy over there. Hmm. Yeah. I'm going to set it up like the way that annoy, I'm going to set it up in a way that annoys people with exposure to Europe. Right?

It would be this. We talk about Daniel Boone all the time. Let's take Dan. We're going to talk about Robin Hood and Daniel Boone all the time. Let's take Dan. We're gonna talk about Robin hood and Daniel Boone. Okay. Daniel Boone's ancestors came from England. They almost certainly were not hunters. Okay.

Uh, when Daniel Boone got, when his family came to America, you know, they, they, they wound up in Pennsylvania and Boone started becoming a big time hunter. And what it was is he could just kind of roam around willy nilly out in the woods hunting

deer. Um, this is prior to how deer management in the U S was like codified in the law, but there was just this expectation that deer that were out on the open land out on the unclaimed lands were free for the taking. There's no regulatory structure in place, but you could own a firearm and go out and hunt deer on open, unclaimed lands on the frontier. Okay. This stood in stark composition to what many Americans refer to as the

European model in which deer are owned by the landowners. The King's deer. The King's deer. In which deer are owned by the landowners. The king's deer. The king's deer. Most of the deer live on large private estates. The landed gentry who controls and owns these estates sets the agenda for deer management. And you get into the, to understand this, you get into like the myth of Robin Hood, right? Where he would go out and hunt, okay?

And shoot the king's deer in order to feed the poor. And his, him doing this was a capital offense, meaning you used to be that, you know, you could, there's a rich history to stuff, and you just go look all over and find books about it and stuff that the land managers used to be able to actually set a type of leg hold trap meant to catch a man. Okay. And you would set these out to catch poachers. You could get the death penalty for poaching. You could have an eye gouged out, a hand cut off or shooting the king's rabbits

all right it was like wildlife was a was the property of the wealthy exactly right well okay yeah then why do here's the thing why does everybody get so pissed and it's not it's not europeans that get pissed it's americans who go in Europe, that spend a lot of time in Europe. They get all bent out of shape. And they're like, you don't know, you're all, what's the word? Pontbloviating? Oh, yeah, we do get that one here and there. Well, it's, I live on Ashdown Forest, right?

Ashdown Forest is the old private hunting ground of Henry VIII. And you can still see the perimeters in places. There's a 27-mile walled private hunting ground with a ditch dug all the way around and a pale fence shaped in so wildlife could run in and couldn't get out. And then there's little villages around it called hatches, which are the old entrances onto the forest. And what you said is exactly right. The people that lived on those forests couldn't hunt anything they weren't allowed to and if they got caught it was a pretty yeah wasn't going to be wasn't going to end well we don't have public land we have public land but no public land that you can hunt on so if you're little jimmy living in the middle of london there's no bloody chance in a million years, you're going to get the opportunity to play like we do. It just doesn't happen. So what you get is

you get people like me, lucky bastards, they're no landowners that won't have a deer problem. They go, Rob, come and help me manage a deer. Or you get stinking wealthy people, big landowners that manage it. So what's happened in essence in the uk is hunting is an elitist game you know it's it's absolute abstract elitism you're not going to get into it unless you're channeled through the directions i've said the only other way is if you become a professional hunter so we have colleges we've got three of them in the uk where you can become a gamekeeper deerstalker whatever and they're pretty intense courses and that's a formal degree a formal degree You've got three of them in the UK where you can become a gamekeeper, deer stalker, whatever. And they're pretty intense courses.

And that's a formal degree? A formal degree, college trained, formal. You come out with a qualification. I wouldn't say it's like going to university per se. You go to college and you spend three years doing it either in fisheries, deer management, bird management, whatever. So they come out pretty well qualified and they come out pretty knowledgeable in their subject matters for sure but most people in the uk they spend thousands of hours in their back garden shooting air guns 12 foot pound air guns and they don't progress beyond that right now they spank a lot of money on these air guns because they never get the opportunity to go out and hunt.

Now, these air guns, they're 12 foot pounds. You'd be lucky if you killed a bloody squirrel with one. So it's you've got over here from a European or UK perspective, a huge playground. Right. Which is absolutely awesome in every regard. I'm sure it's got its issues. I'm sure it's got its problems. But from a European perspective, it's pretty epic what you've got going on. I want to get into the gun law thing for a minute, but I want to ask another question prior to that. Another difference, and again, we're talking right now, like we're talking with someone from the UK. We're talking about the UK. So this is installment one of the Euro report.

Really? And in all honesty, the people that get riled up about our typification of Europe never cite the UK as an example of where we're wrong. They talk about other places. Yeah. But again, lumping them all together. Now, so try not to do that. So focusing on the UK, one thing though, I could walk into a butcher shop in the UK and see ducks with shotgun pellet holes in them. 100%.

Explain that. So it's completely different. So in the UK, you have professional hunters, right, managing deer, shooting a lot of deer, right? All of that venison, or whether it's birds or whatever, can go straight back into the food chain. So unlike you guys, we're allowed to sell it to game dealers, who then in turn will sell it to restaurants, pubs, et cetera. Because the landowner owns it. Yeah, yeah. And the restaurant, there's a restaurant in London called Rawls.

Look that one up. I think 1776, oldest restaurant in London. That's it. That's where they started it right when we started whooping you guys' ass. Probably. Like, well. Needed a place to commiserate. But no, game is frequently eaten in the UK and sold.

Is it pretty popular with people? I mean, presumably it has to be like wild shot ducks are popular with people who would never shoot a duck. Well, the problem is we're probably 20 years ahead of the game in a bad way from where you lads are. That's what I would say. So when I was growing up, if I took a rabbit or a duck round to my neighbours, she'd go, oh, thanks. Thanks very much. I'm going to have that. If you did it now, they'd go, what the fuck are you doing?

Oh, yeah. We've gone. We've lost it. And you could blame supermarkets. You could blame the British Broadcasting Corporation for that. We could talk, have a whole subject matter on the BBC. But tell me more. Well, it's a public corporation.

We pay for it as a taxpayer. My father was editor of Radio Times many years ago and BBC used to be a brilliant corporation. Now it's a tiny little minority sort of dictating rules and regs or trying to steer us in a certain direction that I frankly really disgust me. Oh, like it's over politicized. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Completely biased. I mean, I employ people that are openly biased and I said, I spend my life writing to them and saying, I pay for this as a public corporation, please guys, can we have some

unbiased information? It's some impartial information and it's, I'm pissing in the wind. Oh no, no. Those, you know, I'll tell you, man, I don't pay for it, but I hear those guys and sometimes they get me a little pissed off. Yeah, I mean, we get like anti-hunting articles in the media and things like that. There is an enormous anti-hunting. Yeah, over there, it's like mainstream media anti-hunting. It's enormous. And frankly, 90% of the population probably don't give a screw either way, right? They just don't care.

But the BBC and other entities have decided that hunting's not for us. And again, you know, I sort of get it because it's so many, it's easy to hate something you don't get a chance to play at. Oh. So I've taken vegans out. I've taken vegetarians out. I love it because I like to enter into a debate and say, well, come out hunting with me for a day and then go and spend a day on a fucking chicken farm and then you tell me what's what's worse right now we all know as hunters it doesn't always end well and mistakes happen we have to live with that but would i rather be a fallow deer on ashdown forest

or a chicken just about to be spanked out to KFC. I know what I'd rather take. What chance is that? All right. So guns, guns. What does it take? Let's say you had, let's say here you are. And somehow your neighbor says, here's the situation. You're you.

Yeah. Your neighbor says, Oh, Rob just so happens. I got a pretty sizable chunk of land. If you want to go out there and shoot a few deer, have at it. And he says,

thing is, I don't, I don't have any guns. I don't know. You have to figure that end out. What do you do? That bit's easy. That bit probably is easier for us than it is for you.

So I've got an open, what you call an open license. How is it easier than it is? We go down to the, we go down to the hardware store and buy a gun. Oh, no,. So I've got an open, what you call an open license. How is it easier than it is? We go down to the hardware store and buy a gun. Oh, no, no. I've got a gun. So you're telling me

they want me to... Right, misunderstood the question. You don't... I'm sorry. When I said you, it probably threw you off because you were thinking about you. Yeah.

Okay. Little Jimmy. Little Jimmy. In London. Little Jimmy in London. Little Jimmy in London. He winds up that his second cousin's neighbor, whatever, says, if Little Jimmy in London. Little Jimmy in London. He winds up that his second cousin's neighbor, whatever, says,

if Little Jimmy is so interested in reading books about hunters and whatnot, he ought to come out and get a deer. So Little Jimmy is in for a tough ride, right? A long, tough ride if he really wants to do that. And let's say also that despite his name, Little Jimmy is 18. Right, and Little Jimmy's 18. Well, now he can legally fire a full bore. I think as a kid, you're not even legally allowed to unless it's under certain protocol.

It's absolutely driven to not provide you a firearm. Can you explain full bore real quick? Full bore like a.308,.223 or something. Not a rimfire. Got it. There's different. High-powered rifle. Yeah, high-powered powered rifle we'd call it

but little jimmy has got basically if he's in london he's i'm almost certainly not going to get a firearm certificate for deer hunting anyway because the london authorities hate firearms full stop it'll be a huge challenge he's got to have the land approved as you say if he's got a patch of land then they're going to want him to go and do a level one and level two deer stalking course. That's pretty major. You know, that's probably six months of hard study to get it done. Really? That's not like taking that online hunter safety course? Should you shoot someone? Right. No, it's pretty intense. And the thing is getting a firearms, like, look, there's 70 plus 70 million people in the UK of which I'm going to I might be slightly out, but I think it's one hundred and fifty five thousand firearms licensed holders.

Right. Of that hundred and fifty five thousand, I would imagine less than a third are actually out in the woods hunting. Most of them would be using a busily range in places like that. But you need to have a reason. You've got to have a reason. You've got to have a reason to own a firearm. It's really really really challenging you know i see you guys and i look at that with green-eyed envy and think it's so cool what you can do over here right but again i'm getting back to the fact it's why people hate hunting we're not allowing anybody to partake in what we're doing unless you've got a spankload of cash. So they all spend thousands of quid on a fucking air gun in their back garden, plinking tin cans that would hardly kill a squirrel.

And they spend a lot of money on it. There'd be hundreds of thousands of people in the UK with air guns, which in Scotland it's different, but in the UK you don't need a firearms license if it's under 12 foot pounds. What kind of air guns are you using oh um there's a low there's bsa there's um there's a swedish company that makes some pretty cool stuff but they spend a fortune they're not shooting gamos uh yeah they have some gamos as well but a lot of people will spend a lot of money on that because they can't get a firearms license and what like have you met i'm just this is a digression but at at with these

souped up air guns like at 50 uh meters what's a good group no no but they're not souped up we're not allowed to have a soup if you have a souped up air gun then you're going to go down the firearms channel so if your air gun is over 12 foot pounds which is going to give you let me guess him at 650 feet per second for a 2.2 and 750 for a 1.7. You are running out of steam pretty god damn quick. You're not going to get to 50. Yeah, my kid has a Gammo air gun now

that's 1300 muzzle velocity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean they're legal to use for a big game. You got to get geared up to cock that thing, man. He's got to like stand up. But I mean, it's powerful. Yeah.

Now we don't have, we do have those, but again, you fall into the full ball firearms thing. So it's, and me personally, I sort of couldn't be arsed with it. So I just moved into climbing instead and then later got into hunting because I knew channels I could get into. So do you have the permits now? I've got permits. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've done a lot of hunting in the UK, let's say deer management, but that's because I knew the right people and slid under the doorway, slipped in there and never exited. So you, do you have firearms in your possession at home? Yeah. Yeah, I do. I'm allowed to, but I'm a rarity, right? I'm not talking shotguns.

Shotguns, completely different thing because everybody's into clay pigeon shooting, so there'll be a lot of people with shotguns, but full-bore rifles. Go on,

then I got, remember this question when you get around. Go on. Can they shoot slugs out of the shotguns? No, not anymore. Banned.

We can't hunt with bows. We can't shoot slugs with a shotgun. Can't hunt with a bow. No, no, we're not allowed to hunt with bows. We can't shoot slugs with a shotgun. Can't hunt with a bow. No, no, we're not allowed to hunt with bows. Because they're deemed inefficient? There's something, this is a rabbit hole that I might not be educated to answer, but I think there was something in the 80s. There was an old law. Correct me if I'm wrong. What the hell did Robin Hood know?

No, no, hang on. This was a medieval law that somebody could shoot a drunken Scotsman in Wales or something with a U-bow made in a certain place. And I think somebody actually tried it, right? But they got him because his U-bow was made

in Spain. You'll have to look that up, but it's just... But anyway... Yeah, Bo's a band. I have to get that up, but it's just, yeah. But anyway, Bo's in the details. Yeah, Bo's a band. I'm going to have to get Dave Wilms on about that one. Ring him up, he might know. Let's just say.

But it's, yeah, we're very limited to what we have. I think at its best, it's very good in the UK. I will defend that when it's well run and well managed, I think it's extremely good. What is? The deer hunting and how we go about it. My challenge, my personal challenge is so many people don't get the opportunity to do it. And I think that's pretty rare. Are they even aware of the opportunity?

No, I don't because it's not promoted hard. And we don't have a single entity that's really promoting hunting to my mind in a very good way. There's lots of different entities all too busy taking chunks out of each other rather than thinking what's the common goal here. So I guess how often, this would be a good way to kind of sum it up, would be like how often have you spoken with people who are like, oh, I wanted to get into hunting, but I couldn't figure out how. That would happen quite a lot, but not as much as you might imagine because it's so off base. It's so, they don't live in Montana. They don't live in a place where there's a big land mass and they can see the opportunities.

So it's not really promoted well. I think there would be a lot of people that would want to get into it. Certainly deer management and deer hunting in the UK has grown a lot in the last few years. There's a lot more people getting into it. But it needs the dollar, you know, and that's the only way really. The history of bird shooting over there is unreal. I mean, the amount of pheasants raised in the UK. Hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands.

And again, that's a real rich man's sport you know that's it's yeah and that's that's going to change i think you'll see that die in the next 10 years because of what because governments and controls and anti-shooting anti-hunting entities well bring me back in 10 years i'd be amazed if they're still doing big bird days. You'll get away with the walked up days, I'm sure. But they're really hitting the grouse shooters in Scotland very hard. Like the driven shoots. Yeah, the driven shoots. Coming after them on what grounds?

You tell me. I don't know. Like it's immoral. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we ban fox hunting. They still drag a skin or whatever and things. It's just those that haven't got like to destroy what they're not able to do.

Do you like anything about the UK? Well, I'm here. I've been here since the 5th of bloody January. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Other than the short, quick escape down to Patagonia, which is like Montana 50 years ago. Yeah.

I'm not a great, I like people. Don't get me wrong. This is going to sound comical, but as I got older, I'm not a great, I like people, don't get me wrong. This is going to sound comical, but as I got older, I just want to be with the right people. And I'm very happy under my own skin. I think when I do spend time back in the UK, most of it's north of the border and I spend a lot of time up in Scotland because it's just quieter up there. Got it. Yeah. So in answer to your question, Steve, no, probably not.

There's better places. Yeah. Can we jump back to the meat for a second? Yeah. Am I reading this right? Where it says you don't get to, like you go out and shoot a deer. Yeah. You don't get to keep the meat for yourself. So if I shoot 50 deer a year, right, that carcass is not mine. That carcass goes straight back to the estate and that meat is sold and that's how they make their money. So there's no cutting off a backstrap and taking it home. I might get given a few testicles now and again.

Are you serious? No, I'm joking. They don't just like, if you go, if you go cold deer, I mean, they got to give you one just for doing it. Oh, they will give me one. If I want, if I want venison, I'm not going to starve out. But the rules are that venison goes in the larder, right? That's done. And that's off to the, off to theison goes in the larder, right? That's done.

And that's off to the game dealers. I mean, we get a lot of Swedes come over because the thing about the UK is you're going to shoot a lot of animals. You know, we had eight Swedes come over a couple of years back pre-COVID and there was four of us and I think we shot 120 deer in two days. That's a lot of work. They're not elk size. They're fallow size.

So they're sort of big labs kind of thing. But, and that's, that's worth a lot of, that's worth many thousands. So, and plus the crops, there's a lot of crops down in the South. And if you've got 140 deer in your crop, well, it's, it's gone, isn't it? Yeah.

What's that word you guys use for, when you got something from the diaphragm? Corallic. Corallic. Yeah. Corallic. So you, as the hunter, you're doing that, right? You gut them from the diaphragm back. So again, completely different to what you lads do. We'll leave everything in the skin. We take out all the green.

Take out the what? All the green, all the gut. Intestines. Diaphragm back. Yeah, yeah. We might leave the heart and the other organs in, depending on where you are, or we'll take them out. They get hung in the skin. They get put in the chiller in the skin. And then they go off to the game dealers that way. Yeah. Can we walk back to, let's say little Jimmy, who's not so little, wants to pursue obtaining a firearm.

Yeah. And he goes through that six-month course. Yeah. And he's obtained the firearm. Yeah. And he goes through that six-month course. Yeah. And he's obtained the firearm. It's his second cousin's neighbor, so we know that he has a purpose and he has a place. He's even more removed than that, let's just say. Yeah.

What does he have to do in order to end up actually hunting on a range? So basically he'll be apprenticed to somebody. Even after the deer, he's done the exams and things. How does he find an apprentice? That's the challenge. When there's only 155,000 firearms license holders and probably less than a third doing it, there's an infinite number of people that are queuing up

to get that opportunity that will never get that opportunity i find that pretty sad i remember you told me earlier though if you um so can you are there estates where you can you know there's a whole kind of package deal of staying there and hunting or can you can you find someone who's like a recent graduate from one of these deer management programs like what would this person actually do if they were just completely determined to end up being able to hunt a little bit of both right so if you show real determination and like when i i got out of hunting for a while and got into the climbing because of that frustration and then i managed i found I found a local estate, Cowdray estate down in the South.

And basically they were looking for some helpers. So I would help take punters out, clients out, you know, and we would cull the females, right? We wouldn't shoot the bucks or anything like that. But I spent years doing that kind of thing, sort of building up. But it's a challenge. It's a really difficult thing to get into because there isn't any public land. So you have to either go through that first channel you said, which is incredibly expensive. You could arrange to go hunting tomorrow in the UK if money's not an issue. But it's the same with our fly fishing.

You know, you're going to spank a lot of money and maybe it's gonna cost you a thousand bucks for a day you know that kind of figure you could get less but it's it's gonna be that and up really or you just scrub around find some game keepers help the game keepers for a year or two and then they might say well come and shoot a deer that's it and then what is the what is the regulatory structure like forget all the stuff about getting a firearm having access like what's the regulatory structure could give me an like give me the you guys i know you guys don't do acreage but express for me the land uh like a large estate or a medium estate, whatever. How much ground are we talking about?

So the estates don't tend to be big because there isn't a large landmass. A reasonable estate might be 3,000 acres, pretty big. But I mean, for my deer management, I might be shooting in somebody's back garden. They might have a deer issue, right? And you could be looking at less than an acre and mrs miggins roses are being eaten by the by the row so you've got to go and help mrs miggins that's where an open license comes in handy so an open license is you're determined whether it's safe to shoot so unlike i think over here you you have to be so far from a building before you can take a shot do you no it depends this state doesn't have that phone dave yeah no i this state doesn some cases. This state doesn't have that. Found dive.

Yeah. No. This state doesn't have a specific distance from buildings. Right. But you'd get into questions of what might be criminal negligence or something like that. are very specific with if you're going to shoot within 450 feet of an occupied dwelling you have to have written permission from um the owner of the structure right but this state doesn't this state in particular doesn't have that but there's sort of an understanding of what's okay and not okay got you so so in the uk it's very different you know because there's such a short amount of land you might have deer mucking around in a tiny area and you've got to manage that problem.

So that's probably one thing that we can do. But it's really challenging and it's not going to get any easier. And the whole thing, the reason I'm pleased to be here is you don't want to be following what's happening in the UK. It's just not sexy. I mean, we don't want to go on that path. No, no, it's not sexy at all and it's going to get worse. And I can see a day where, you know, they'll

have professional deer hunters managing deer and the public won't even be allowed to do it. In actual fact, in Scotland, you might want to look this up and I think somebody's just got a contract to manage 50,000 red deer, right, in the Highlands.lands now that's a native

species we got six species of deer arguably seven but six species of deer in the UK three of which are native or considered native and the others are non-native one name the native ones so the native ones are red fallow and row fallow aren't truly native. They were bought over by the Normans or the Romans. Nobody knows, but they've been long enough. So they've got the native flag now. Um, and then the others are Asian imports. Yeah. So I want to touch on the regulatory structure real quick. And just for this case, let's go to There's a 3,000 acre estate. Yeah. Do they, does the government set down like a season in which they can be hunted or like any kind of, any kind of rules about how far they can push the coal?

No, there's a, you're right. There are seasons for all the species other than muntjac because the muntjac are non-native and they're normally pregnant within three days of getting birth so they're considered a pest all the other deer have a strict um period of time in which you're allowed to shoot them if you have a real problem with numbers you can get extensions you say a muntjac gets bred within three days that's normally they're normally pregnant within three days of giving birth yeah cow man That wouldn't fly. That's disgusting. I don't think you're thinking about the muntjac, Steve. It's good for the muntjac.

That's unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah, they are crazy little things. They're very odd. They're cool. And they have a roar or a bark or something? Yeah, they bark. They call them the barking deer.

You might think you've got a dog kicking off. They got little fangs. Little tusks. Little fangy things that slightly move about a bit. And they fight. They're pretty aggressive. So they've got very thick fat and fur around their necks. We grew up just considering them absolute pests because they eat all the flora and fauna.

But the continentals love coming over and hunting them. They're quite challenging to hunt because they never stop. They're always on the move. So you've got to be pretty quick on them. Taste bloody good, mind you. Is that right? Oh, yeah. They're small.

Tiny, tiny. Like 20 pounds? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but I mean, we've talked about it because it is, it's an intriguing animal because it's got so much character. Yeah. Who do you refer to as continentals? Like everybody that's not in the UK.

Okay, thank you. But what would we be? We're not continentals. No, no. You're Americans. Yanks. Yeah. So, all right, back to this regulatory structure thing.

This 3,000 acre estate. Yeah. It's got all three native species. Yeah. Let's just focus on the native species. So they'll say there is a season. Yeah. Not determined just focus on the native species. So they'll say there is a season. Yeah. Not determined by the landowner.

No, not determined, but that's a government controlled thing. And does the government have biologists that will do a survey and say like, you boys can shoot X deer on this property? To an extent, but nothing like you guys do. Yeah. extent but nothing like you guys do yeah there will be some professional biologists that will enter into debates on how we manage those populations but nothing even close to what you guys do i've never i've never in the uk been asked to show a firearms license i've never run into i mean you think of all the hunting right it's crazy it's crazy how different it is but you put a lot of money back in.

You've got those hunting licenses, those tags. A lot of it goes back into protecting what you've got. I think that's fantastic. With us, it's different because the private landowner can spend that money that he's made from the venison and selling the hunting on whatever he bloody well likes. It's his cash. Got it. What are the seasons like? Long?

Yeah, if you came over to the UK, there's always something you can hunt. Or you got the muntjac for a start, but the seasons are pretty long. Compared to what you guys have got, like you might have a few weeks, ours will be months. Would you be able to take us hunting there?

Oh, absolutely. If you wanted to have a crack at that, yeah. And the thing is, I could get you. This is the crazy thing you land at heathrow or gatwick you could be hunting within an hour of getting off you know once you're out that airport it's so and people that freaks people out you know i take people hunting on this land you can see the middle of london and then you know i think it's crazy but that's what you have to do with small land masses but yeah yeah it's easy are are you required to use a suppressor not required but um they're easier to get than they are over here i believe i mean we did it in a different channel because they're professional hunters we're all deaf because we're

shooting so much right so you're shooting like 50 100 right? So you're shooting like 50, a hundred deer a year. You're out in the woods a lot. So we go, I said, fuck this. We can we please get old and here a bit. So that's how we got the moderators, the suppressors, silencers, or whatever you want to call them. So very rarely. They're just, they're way more popular.

I can't think of a guy that I go hunting with that doesn't have a suppressor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine in those, uh, like when you're shooting on small properties. Yeah. Well, I grew up. You probably don't want the neighbors hearing great big booms going off here. Exactly.

And I grew up without suppressors. We all grew up not using them. And so the guys that like the next generation on for me, they'll come fucking here for fuck their death. So if you were a licensed, fully licensed, open firearms license, um,

and you lacked a place to go hunt, you just find that online and pay. Yeah. You could find it online. You could pay. There's normally people when you're at that level, there's normally people with deer problems and we're quite a rarity. So you'd normally find

people that want you to help out um yeah it's a tiny tiny sector in a huge population that's doing it so you'll get a call occasionally from someone who's got them attacking the rose bushes yeah exactly that's exactly what happens what's the steps you have to take i just need to deem the the area safe to shoot, and then I can go out and manage that problem, hopefully. I mean, just jumping back, Ashdown Forest is a perfect example. We're talking about this private hunting estate. It's only recently they allowed deer management on that forest.

The way they managed deer populations on Ashdown Forest, road traffic accidents, huge numbers of road traffic accidents. And because the conservators decided hunting was cruel or not right, they wouldn't allow anybody that 6,000 acres of deer just going out of control, spiralling out of control

that nobody can manage. In the last few years they've changed that and I think they've got like half a dozen professional deer stalkers and deer hunters in there now. Are you in there? I could be. I'm not. I know the lads that do it. I'm not there because I'm never fucking at home. I mean, the amount of time I'm behind a trigger these days, I'm almost retired from it because I'm too busy selling the virtues of Spartan. Choose a spot.

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Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. I want to go back to that call you get from someone. In that case, you have a small property owner yeah and they have a deer problem yeah uh you still have to go by the seasons like whatever the seasons are absolutely and what do you need to do do you need to does a biologist or someone need to confirm that there's a problem or are you able to determine there's a problem? No, we determine there's a problem, right? If Mrs. Miggins' roses are being eaten

and she's pissed off with the deer doing it, she can phone me and say, look, Gearing, get over here and help me out with these deer. Can you take a few out for me, please? And then she can eat them. She can eat them. She might not want to eat them. But you can sell them.

I can sell them. I can eat it myself. I can do anything I like with that. What's that stuff like uh ballpark street market yeah street value commercial value while venison's expensive hey and you sell it on the hook not on the hoof you sell it carcass weight carcass weight so you'll sell it at the moment the game dealers it's almost a bit of a cartel sorry guys probably not gonna hate me for that. But I think they all know each other. They set the price at the beginning of the season.

So red deer, you might get a pound a pound. So that's like $1.50 or $1.60 for a pound of meat. On the hoof. Or for a pound. No, that's on the hoof. That's carcass weight, right? A buck fifty per pound carcass weight, right? A buck 50 per pound carcass weight. But when it gets into the – in the supermarkets and restaurants, if it's wild venison, it'll be like 12 quid for a pound.

You guys always talk about that, but I don't know what that means. $20. Let's say $18. $20 a pound. Huge money. Which would be like pretty comparable to a finished beef right now perfect yeah good were you glad to get out of the eu or no um i actually voted to get out but for a different reason for many others and it wasn't it it was basically i was just fed up they never signed their tax returns off who the eu

they've never you know there's loads of money that's gone off into the ether a million bottles of champagne i go go, fuck you. We can't even manage our own government. You know, I think it's great that we're united. I just don't think we've grown up enough for it yet. Sorry, guys. Yeah. My missus hates me because Magalie, she's French.

And she's, you bastard. So she had to do a load of extra paperwork to stay in the country. So sorry, Magalie, about that one. That's your wife? Yeah. Okay. With those market prices, I bet you don't get invited places if you're a poor shot, if you're hitting a lot of meat. No, and we won't invite people that are poor shots.

So like those Scandinavians that come over and manage the deer with us, I'd say they're better shots than we are. Better? They don't screw up. Yeah, they're very, very – of course they screw up, but they're on it. You know, if you say the protocol is this or it's all headshots today, lads. Which is that pretty prevalent, headshots, I would think. Now it's mostly head shooting, which slows your numbers down. Sure.

I mean, but your accuracy has to go up. Where in the head? Just the back of the nut. Yeah. Around the neck. But I mean, historically, i'd comfortably shoot three or four deer in front of me i can't do it head shooting you know i'll get one and i'm sort of and the other thing is i want to make sure it's down and it stays down because i've knocked a few out in

the time where you think it's a funny it's a funny story i mean when i first made the bipod i was with an old scottish guy who was my really. He was like a second dad to me. And I popped a bipod down, shot this roebuck in the field. What noise do you guys make for shooting? Like Latvians go, blouch! This is, poong! Yeah. That's what you guys say?

Whatever. I don't know. That's what I do. But anyway, poong. You guys don't go, bang! I shot this roebuck, dropped like a sack of spuds, shot the other one, and then he said, get back up, and just got up and run off.

Over to Mrs. Miggins' place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And stayed at Mrs. Miggins' place. I love Mrs. Miggins. Probably still at Mrs. Miggins' place. Yeah, yeah. No, it's a crazy difference to what you guys have got. So anybody out there that thinks America isn't cool when it comes to hunting, just it could be a lot worse.

That's all right. Who thinks that? Well, I don't know. But I mean, people can say if they happen to be. I think it's such a great opportunity that you can get anybody and say, I can go out and I'm pointing a wonderful scenery in pictures with a rifle. To me, it's pretty epic. What's your advice to Americans? Hang on to what you got but guard the gate yeah guard the gate hang on to what you got i mean this is it's it's it's a

fantastic thing i think old uh mr roosevelt did a good job for you lads many years back and uh yeah i i think it's i admire admire what you have over here i think it's i I admire, admire what you have over here. I think it's, I've done three public land hunts. I mean, I'd never get this in the UK. I came in and your, what do you call it? The passport control officers, I guess they're police, aren't they? He said, he said, when you're coming in from another country. US customs. Yeah, US customs.

He said, what are you here for? And I said, I'm going to come and hunt elk and I'm going to spend some money hunting. And he shook my hand and he said, good on you. I really wish that would never happen in the UK. That would nobody go, what are you on about? Yeah. So I've had two of those sort of interesting discussions with the customs officers and I think it's brilliant.

Can I ask you another way off subject question? Yeah. Do you, I don't think the thing, when i look at you guys country the thing that just baffles me the most man is um are you into the royal family no you're not a member of the royal family no i'm not well we were probably blood relatives if you go back far enough they've done a bit of shagging in their time i'm sure but i i can't but you don't like pay attention to all the like who did what mad at who I've given up just listening to news. I listen to Al Jazeera, get my facts, and switch off again.

And I'm really not against them. I think they bring a lot of money into the system. Oh, I thought they cost money. Oh, they cost a fortune, but they also bring a lot. A lot of you guys want to come over and sit outside Buckingham Palace and spank some cash. Steve talks about it all the time. I've heard that before.

It's not like a total money loss. No, no, no. I think the queen, actually, I've got a lot of time for that. I think she's a good old bird. I think she's done her bit, but the rest of it. But you don't wake up in the morning dying to know which of those guys is mad at who. I don't even pay any attention. My life has been fly fishing, climbing in a big way, and hunting.

When you got into climbing, were you climbing internationally? Yeah, of course. I started rock climbing because I couldn't get into hunting in a way I wanted to. So it took me all over the world. I used to climb with a guy called Simon Yates a lot. They did a film on him called Touching the Void. That is not a porn film. That is a climbing film.

Yeah, I love that movie. Yeah, and he's famous because he pinged his mate off. But he's an interesting guy. Cut him loose. Yeah, yeah. He took his Swiss army knife and cut the fucking rope. Yeah. And then didn't go and check to see if his mate was alive.

And I'm completely with him on it. I mean, you've got to put yourself in that environment to judge it. If you're sitting on the sofa judging somebody in that kind of environment, I think it's wrong. But he's a pretty cool guy. So I've done a lot of climbing with him in the past. Greenland, Himalaya, Patagonia. Yeah.

And I've done a bit in the States and such like, but I'm too old for it now. And my missus says, stick with the fly fishing and the hunting. How old are you? 58. Yeah. That's great. I've got a few years left in me.

Well, here's the thing, dude. I'm real interested in how old people are now. Because if sitting where I'm at, did I could have another decade and still be doing what you're doing? That's inspiring. I'm loving it. I'm loving it. And I've got a wonderful team at Spartan. There's the queen of Spartan.

She she's an Olympic clay pigeon shot. Super cool. And I said, Hannah, the ship's fucking yours. Right. I'm just going to want to go and play and enjoy the journey. Cause I won't see the end game. I will be expensive to run. Right.

And that's what I said. And that's, and they've done a brilliant job. Yeah. How many, how many employees you guys got? They're tiny. We're 12 people. Yeah. Yeah. It's really small. And really we're in the wrong country. We need to be in the USA and we'll get there. Is that hard? It's, oh, we did a business plan about it. I sound too fucking old to tick all those boxes. Yeah. I would love a green card. Can you get me a green card? Oh, I'll try. It's just, it's no, I love what you've got.

I could see myself settling here in a tiny little cabin on some public land. I would really be happy about that. If an American company bought Spartan, does that give you a green card? Oh, yeah. I guess that would be part of the deal-making process. Yeah. No, it's good fun. And we get to shoot some muntjac. And then we get to shoot some muntjac.

Yeah. You got to shoot some muntjac. You need to get to Ireland as well. I know. Yeah. I know. Kelly's driving around with a book about Ireland. He's, he's Irish.

Yeah. I know that. And then he's got, we've got a really good mate over there that's probably in on that. Will O'Mara. Yeah. Uh, and I've spoken, it'd been a while since I've spoken with him, but he's got a sweet set of, he manages some, some hunting ground over there. And then he also hunts grouse, uh, on the, on the cliffs above the sea.

Oh, wow. Not the cliffs of Dover. No. He's a, he's a super cool athlete. I don't know where those, where are the cliffs of Dover? Oh, they're, they're south of me. Yeah. Okay.

People go and chuck themselves off them all the time. Cause they can't go hunting. Did you ever read that? There's a great essay called Legends of the Fall. Right. And it's a long piece of reporting about people who've jumped off the cliff to commit suicide. But it gets into this guy. You probably heard the story.

Jumps off and lands on a ledge. And then what he went through to stay alive and survive and survived. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Once he hit that ledge, he was like, change my mind. Sometimes we just, yeah, it was like Jimmy Stewart. Right. And, uh, it's a wonderful life, but without the angel letting him see that town, you know, Mr. Potter and all that. Let me another coat. Yeah. We got gotta jump back to this guard the gate thing. Go on. I would bet that you're gonna find yourself in a

situation where there's 150,000 people amongst 70 million with firearms licenses, if all you worry about is guarding the gate. I understand. I think it is just going to be increasingly so defensive and minoritized to think in the way of just guard what we have. I disagree.

Proactivity. You're talking about here, Cal. Yeah, absolutely. Dude, I'm using the language in a different way. Like literally losing their rights every day. And there's all kinds of examples of hunting in America, like leaning towards the European model. Absolutely, absolutely.

But what I'm saying is if all we care about is this idea of, fuck you, defend what we have? And I'm not saying we're not losing our things. Like, the picture that it paints for me is, like, nobody ever won anything by being behind the gate. I'm using the language in a different way, though. I mean, by guarding the gate. I used it.

You didn't use it. Well, guarding the gate, then the unit well guarding the gate then my meaning to that is open the doors guys and let everybody have an opportunity to hunt right make it popular do what you're doing right promote it people watch your program in the uk that aren't hunters right and they love it and they're going oh i'd like to have a crack at that so do what protectionism is what we're doing in the UK. It's not. It doesn't work.

I'm here to prove that. But opening the doorway and say anybody, Mrs. Miggins, little Jimmy can go hunting. That's brilliant. Keep it up. Yeah. And Mrs. Miggins is then going to be a proponent of the situation if you're out there being proactive and handle it well.

Take the Danish. of the situation if you're out there being proactive and handle it well right the danish so in denmark there's been a guy i know he said 10 years ago if he went into copenhagen with a camo jacket on he'd have almost got spat on now he goes into denmark he'll get five or six people wanting to buy him a beer and a beer in denmark is a lot of money guys um and half of them will want to come and learn how to hunt. Is he a hunter? He's a hunter. Will he do this show about Denmark? Yeah, yeah.

I could link you in with him. Pay attention, Corinne. Yeah. And it's women that want to eat good food. They don't want hormone. People are fed up with eating crap. So suddenly venison or wild game is becoming hugely. In Denmark. Yeah.

And the UK, less or so but there are more and more women getting in tunting in the uk as well you know i'm sort of a danish film expert sorry i'm a danish film expert oh yeah yeah big mads mickelson fan i like mads mickelson pusher one two like my favorite movies are pusher one two and three was that one he did surviving in the arctic That was a good movie. Just like last couple of years. He was in the new one where they'd stay drunk all the time. Yep.

Another round. Another round. That's very Viking. Yeah. No, man. I thought about quitting my job and going to get like a PhD in Danish cinema. There's another one he's in where there's like no words and he just walks around killing people with an ax. Valhalla Rising.

Yeah, that's a good one. Oh, wow. If you came to me right now, and if God came to me right now with a gun, and he's like, you gotta pick American films or Danish films. Oh no, I like that stuff. Without a doubt, I would pick

Danish films. Yep. Without a doubt. would pick danish films without a doubt uh cal i totally disagree with what you're saying i would like to hear why you never said why because every year uh people lose this isn't a reason why but go ahead in america in this 50 states, every year, there is a reduction in people's hunting rights in this country. We just saw it right now. The most recent glaring example is Washington losing their rights to hunt bears in the spring. Prior to that, they lost their rights to hunt mountain lions with dogs. They lost their trapping privileges. Okay.

You see it everywhere all the time. Arizona, they will not stop. Every couple of years, there's another thing to ban cat hunting. Maine, banning certain bear hunting practices. Okay, nobody's arguing this, but go ahead. So I feel that it is essential to fight for maintaining traditional use practices around hunting and fishing. A way to say that in shorthand would be, and I didn't come up with the term, I don't know who did, would be that it is necessary to guard the gate. Now that doesn't mean that that's the

only thing one should do with their time. You should be doing a half dozen different things. I would say you should be guarding the gate and guarding the habitat. I get where Cal's coming from because I think this comes back to kind of what we talked about with Nugent, with whack them and stack them. It's just that it's language. There's nothing new with whack them and stack them.

I know, but I'm saying it's language that sounds maybe more aggressive than what the main intent is, I guess. Like guarding the gate sounds like, fuck you, you're not getting in. We're going to fight for what we've always had which i think is definitely necessary this is a semantics thing yeah cal wasn't attacking the semantics okay i have a question yes sir right so does anybody around this table taken somebody hunting that has had a shitty time they might be emotionally i have's taking me on a couple.

Yeah. Listen to me, man. I want to tell you something. I have, I've taken plenty of people hunting who didn't go hunting again. Yeah. I have never, ever taken someone hunting who wished they hadn't gone.

Yeah. Ever. So we took a vegetarian that was on our boat cooking for us in Greenland who was a journalist and very open, but she was a vegan then became, now she's back to meat. And I said, and she'd never been hunting. And I said, come with us. So she did. And she had an epic time. And I love taking people out.

And it really enriches them, doesn't it? You know, it really. And I think we've got nothing to hide and we've got everything to promote. And if it's all done right, fucking brilliant. Bring it on. Just, that's gatekeeping. I get it.

I think if you sort of box yourself down. Nothing to hide. No, no. But nothing to hide and just say, open the doors. And that's what you guys, from my perspective, I don't know all the rules and regs over here. Far from it. I'm no expert. But that's what you do so my perspective i don't know all the rules and regs over here far from it i'm no expert but that's what you do so wonderfully well just keep on promoting it covid kids locked away for two fucking years you know what damage has that done get them out get

them with the rifles going under turkey i think it's brilliant because that's what we cannot do without jumping through huge numbers of hoops and as i say 20 years time if you don't promote it well you could be in the same place we are oh yeah which is pretty bloody garden the gate thing like like when i look at my son just started hunting you know he's 10 when i look 30 years out i could easily see there being way less opportunities for him to hunt if we don't guard the gate. I had a person. Guarding the gate is not enough. Listen.

Who said this? If I said it's very important that I protect my kids from being abducted, you'd be like, that is not parenting. That's only part of parenting. I'd be like, correct. No parenting. That's only part of parenting. I'd be like, correct. No idea what you're talking about right now. Among all the other things I do as a parent, I try to prevent them from being abducted. Let's talk about Washington's failure to maintain spring bear hunting. Let's.

Let's. Okay. So if you waved a pan and said, oh, okay, we got spring bear hunting. Okay. Is that going to somehow prevent the attack on spring bear hunting next year? No. No. You got to win it every time.

It's not winning it every time. Like that's not going to help. You know what Colorado- What we want to do is be proactive enough to where these people go, oh, holy shit, there's no point in attacking spring bear hunting. But that is- That's part of guarding the gate. That's guarding the gate. I think guarding the gate and saying, God, we just got to hold on to what's ours is just a short-sighted, too easy way of saying this.

It does not motivate me. The battle is short-sighted. The battle isn't, it's not a long game anymore. It's one battle at a time. It's a very short game. They just lost it right now. It's a very short game. They just lost it right now. It's a very short game. There's not time right now to go change the global perspective of hunting in order to save.

You're not going to like rosy up hunting enough. When we look at the amount. The people in Seattle are later going to be like, oh, I feel kind of bad about this whole thing. Somebody do this. Let's give them their spring bear hunting back. Somebody go look at the amount of anti-hunting legislation proposed every year and then look at the amount of pro-hunting legislation proposed every year.

Okay. And I think that is going to be a very important metric to what I'm talking about. Sitting back and letting other people dictate how we think and move because it's, we don't have any time. We got to be protective, protective, protective right now. Don't have any time. We got to be protective, protective, protective right now.

Don't have any time. We're going to let all these other people dictate how we think about our hunting and fishing because we're on the defense all the time is not going to win. Cal's like the Chinese. They play the really, really long, long game. Question.

They're doing well. My daddy's telling me that his favorite Chinese proverb, you have to tell me if this if he was right or wrong i'm not sure i'll know many hands from an old italian man many hands make light work question i think i've heard that before did you hear it from your chinese relatives or the Americans? Rob's got a question. Rob's got a question. So just from my, from the Brits' perspective, why have they banned the bear hunting? Basically, the argument was we don't know enough about bears.

The population studies aren't complete. And that was how the Washington Game Commission kind of like came to a null vote on the bear issue. Is there substance to that? No, that's not what they were talking about. That is not what they were talking about. That was what they used to get a thing that they had already determined they wanted. So this is BBC stuff, propaganda again then. You know what they're doing in California right now? Here's how they're trying to end bear hunting in California right now.

They're trying to say, we've seen increased forest fires. Until we better understand what these increased forest fires might mean for bear populations, we better stop hunting them. And you'll have some people be like, oh, that makes, yeah. Because you know what is in their head already? Why the hell are they killing bears? This is an emotional thing. This is people not liking the idea of people hunting bears.

We have this ongoing debate here. We have this ongoing debate in the Northern Rockies. Is like, what about, have grizzly bears recovered to the point where they could be state managed and potentially hunted? No one argues. No one argues, have grizzly bears been recovered. What they argue is, but have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? So originally it was like, have you thought about what would happen if cutthroat trout

collapsed? So don't do that until you can prove me that. Okay, here's what that would look like. And in fact, only like 9% of bears for a couple of weeks out of the year, access cutthroat trout things. Okay. Tell me this one. Tell me this one. What if whitebark pine blister rust was to be worse than it is now? Answer that for me. Then you go and be like, okay, well, we're looking at, you see like 10% survival rates. So over time, it'd be this and then this okay okay never mind that one then

tell me this right it's never they're never questioning the actual question so there's no science really this is emotion it's all science it's all it's all science but it's all it's it's like you take a thing you know you want to happen you don't want people in washington hunting bears in the spring how do i do that i can't just say I don't want them to do it. I have to go say, hmm, let me think. I got it. I don't like your science. Yeah. So the real issue in Washington is you have a governor that is not supportive.

Right. And they've appointed game commissioners that oppose each other. And basically it stalled out the process in a way that did not favor bear hunting in the state. So surely one string to the bow here would be to better educate people on the pros of bear hunting. Yeah. And we just went over one of the game commissioners. Yeah. And I think education is always going to be a huge part of this that's a great part of guarding the gate yeah and that's where i think we all come together what did we say earlier what was at the top of the umbrella earlier and under oh fault and under fault is like forgot distracted okay guard the gate

under guard the gate it Underguard the gate. It's a big umbrella. Legislation, education, PR. Okay. And you can pick one of those spots, but you're guarding the gate, Cal. Isn't that what you guys- You still like it because it sounds so pugnacious. Oh, I think it just sounds weak. I'm a small man behind a gate. Don't cross this gate.

You know, I want to be on the other side of the gate where people are and telling them this is why we do things okay this is how it's done if it's a branding issue let me ask you this if it's a branding issue because i know that you that you that i know that you're supportive of hunting rights if it's a branding issue but brand it better for me. Like what you would call, if you had to make a rallying cry, not around defending the environment, which I think is very important, not around defending habitat,

which I think is very important, okay? But this part of the issue, this portion of the issue, how would you brand it? I think it's branded under being a hunter. What about the health of a hunter? The health of hunting?

Is that offensive to you? The health of hunting? Why would that be offensive to me, Stephen? Because guarding the gate's offensive to you. You don't like the sound of it. Well, I think guarding, yeah. I don't know why you would like the sound of it. It's like a prepper mentality. You got to call it something.

I'm going to dig my hole over here. You got to call it something. Well, the health my hole over here. You got to call it something. What the hell? And it's what people call it. It does sound prepperish. Listen, man, I think clickbait is great. Like people are going to click on that, but I don't think it is the thing that's going to solve our issues.

Right? I disagree because it does though. It does though. When they tried to, when they tried to ban, when they tried to ban bear, like the last time they tried to ban all cat hunting in Arizona, they beat it.

The last time they tried to ban all bear hunting in Maine, they beat it. They beat it. They guarded the gate, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. You got to call it something. It's like all the things you do under that umbrella.

Listen, we're going to win. Look at Mago. We are going to win. Look at Mago. When people go, oh, a hunter. That means all of this other stuff. And oh, by the way, they kill stuff to eat it.

But they're the ones that are the ones that are pro clean water. They're pro wildlife. They're pro-wildlife. They're pro-habitat. So you're talking like more of a hunting is conservation thing. Cal is a high road, long road. I'm talking about being a well-rounded human being. I think most people would be pro-hunting if they better understood it. And that's that challenge.

That's 100% true. Well, I should say 100%. That's like 90%. It's just, it's easy to dislike something you don't know about. It's easy to have a little snippet of information, and I'm guilty of it. I listen a little bit on your podcast or something, I think, oh, I'm suddenly an expert. I haven't heard the whole story.

And so many, it's human nature to judge on the knowledge you know. If we do a better job at selling the virtues of what we do, which is pretty cool. I think that's the way to win this. I don't think that that will make, it's like, here's the thing. I'm just going to say, I'm going to do that thing where I just say, my wife likes this when I do this. I'm going to keep saying the same thing over and over again, different ways. A hunter and outdoors and whatever.

There's a lot of things you need to be doing. There's a lot of things you need to be doing there's a lot of things you need to be doing one of them is you need to be active in defending your rights as a hunter you need to it's like that's a pillar or what do you call it like like that's a plank in the platform a plank in the platform i would say throw the word pro in there You need to be proactive Pro, oh Okay You can't wait for an email to show up And be like, oh god, I gotta fill it out And that's something, like, we didn't need to do When we were 14

That's not true We should have been doing it The first big sweep The first big sweep Of trapping bands hit in in around 91 and 92 right it was like the minute colorado had more people in denver and fort collins was like the tripping point yeah i'm saying like in the 80s this was not like we just weren't aware that it would need to be a thing.

No, it became a thing. It became a thing. And now it's like part of hunting. It's very much a part of hunting that you need to do these things. And if you want to be a hunter. Because every year there's a thing. Every year there's a thing. There's 10 things.

I get, I understand, like, I feel that Cal is making an aesthetic argument. I don't think he's making a substantive argument it's aesthetics well i don't think you can uh i don't think it means that you somehow dismiss the threats to hunting by saying i don't like guard the gate correct so but it sounds like it i i don't understand how it does. Because it just does. Because you've embraced it. That's why it does.

I get it. Cal's saying not just defense. Cal, I don't care about, I could live my whole life. I want to promote proactivity. I could live my whole life and be whatever level of effective I am right now, I could be as effective for my whole life and never use the three words guard the gate. I don't need those words. In fact, it was a bleep. Sounds like you really like

them. No, I don't. Because it didn't convince you. And you're one of the people I look to to frame my opinions. It didn't work on you. Now it's making me question the slogan. But in America, in the political world,

we find slogans. We know what a neocon is. We know what MAGA means. There's ways of capturing a pattern of thought. What a paleo con. Like I say, like that individual is a paleo con. You're like, okay, I kind of got it.

I could fill in the blanks about that person's belief system. Um, it, it, it is a, it's a term for a portion of our responsibility. I don't think, if you're an environmentalist or a conservationist, pro-habitat, whatever, I don't think that that then gives you cover to turn a blind eye to people losing hunting rights that are sustainable practices. I've had this conversation with multiple leaders of conservation groups, and they'll tell you, oh, we don't want to get involved in method of take arguments.

I'm like, then you're not serving your, you're not serving your constituent. You can't pick and choose. You have to be involved in method of take fights. You can't act like you're representing hunters and anglers, but you won't get involved in a method of take argument because you want to stay above the fray and not piss off some potential donor who thinks hunting's okay, but all forms of it are kind of mean, but I like the general idea of it.

Like you can't do that. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. All right. Thanks for joining Rob. Well, thank you. I mean, I think having Rob on is the perfect thing to have this conversation.

I would blame where we are today on two things. One, supermarkets. People buy meat in packets now and they don't even consider it's a living thing. I'm guilty of it. And the other thing is

too many bloody documentaries on nature showing the pretty side and not the ugly side. You know, show us an elephant starving out. Show us a lion getting killed by young lions we don't see that oh you gotta you gotta do you don't you don't go to nature is metal i haven't watched it i'm probably guilty in that fact i don't watch enough tv but i haven't been able to find those programs i'll

just go to nature's metal on instagram oh my my current like giant looming evil is fake meat. Yeah. Like I think fake meat is going to lead to exactly what you're talking about, right? Yeah. It's like meat comes from the supermarket. Well, now meat comes from a lab. I have a hard time getting riled up about fake meat. I wouldn't even.

This is why you should right here, right? Because I feel like I should, but I can't. You're taking the agriculture, which, okay, we have 640 million acres of what we consider to be public lands in the United States, right? We have over 950 million acres of land dedicated to agricultural use in the United States. What happens to that land that's dedicated to agricultural use for all the you know supposed evils of let's say like the beef industry if that's not where beef comes from anymore turns to a desert yeah or worse single crow a shitload of condos right yeah yeah right and and that is the thing like that is like the tipping point for me of where all these open spaces where whether you think they're in production or not, because they don't have a golf course or condo on them, are actually out there doing the best job they can in cleaning our water, cleaning our air, and providing some open space, for God's sake.

What's perverse about the fake meats thing is that they'll then say, a cow requires X amount of acres in the American West. Like, yeah, but that acreage isn't just hosting that cow. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's hosting all the mechanisms of life for our food production, right? Like open range. Sure. Yeah.

Pollinators. Well, in the end, we're just going to be boring amoebas that just live here and do nothing. I don't fancy that. I like to go out hunting. I like to go climbing. I like to go fishing. I like to see all these fantastic places. And do you know what?

I don't want to eat fake meat because 20 years down the line, do we know what it's going to do to us? We don't have a clue, do we? There's a lot of shit. Yeah, but I don't care. Here's the thing, man, about that. I don't dip, but it the thing man about that i don't dip but i don't it's not it doesn't bother me when people do you know like i don't i don't uh there's all kinds of things i don't engage in and i don't care if other people engage in it like i don't like a

dude eating a dude eating lab meat i like i said i just can't find it in me to be offended or nervous. I'm like, I don't care if the whole world ate lab meat. I'd eat deer meat. That's meat raised in a lab, cultured in a lab, not Labrador retriever meat.

That's probably what Brody eats. Everybody, my mouth was watering. Brody doesn't eat anything but Labrador meat. Send him a mean email. That joke's run its course. I'm over it.

Thanks for joining, Rob. No, pleasure. Really enjoyed it. Where to next for you? So I'm down to Australia in a couple of weeks, and then hopefully Tasmania for a few days. I've never been to Tasmania. I've got to try it.

Just picked up a new Scott rod. It's got to go. So it'd be rude not to, wouldn't it? It would. It would. You know, they've got to try it. Just picked up a new Scott rod. It's got to go. So be rude not to, wouldn't it? It would. It would. You know, they've got some islands out there where the Tasmanian devils have HIV. Yeah, yeah. They're not doing very well.

Is that right, Kev? No, they're really in a bad way. What? Yeah. It's a wild world out there. Real quick. First, you're serious. Yes.

How did the, what was the transition pathway? Oh, I have no idea. There's a really, they're trying to save the Tasmanian devil. At one point they put a colony of them on to some islands and some sexually transmitted diseases got into that population. And I, yeah, I want to say one of them was HIV. Yeah. They're not, they're not. Well, all the koalas got chlamydia, right?

Yeah. And chlamydia is a deal for, uh, for the Tasmanian devils too. That was Phil. It was a little Phil joke. What? Koalas and chlamydia? There's a thing. Koalas are riddled with chlamydia right now.

It's hard on them. And I was saying that was Phil. That was just a Phil joke. So Phil. Domestic sheep get chlamydia all the time. Yeah, it was just a bad joke. No following. It's too dumb the time. Yeah, it was just a bad joke. Yeah, not following. Oh, oh, oh.

It's too dark, Phil. Ignore it. Stupid. Phil, cut that. Are you saying that I was hanging out with koalas and things happened? Can you either cut it out or make... Can you make the joke,

think of a different joke and put it in there? I think that's good British humor. There's a lot of Brits that would really find that funny. That was one of the worst jokes, stupidest jokes I ever made. Yeah, I agree. I regret it. Okay. What can I say? Tell people how to go buy a, what's the best, like, tell, like, if you had to pick, like, one

asset, one thing that would be, like, this captures Spartan bipods, you'd be like, I would have them see my... I actually am more of, sort of of i really like a little tripod unit no no i mean i mean not that i mean like what would they go look at so so it's a weight issue so really stupidly light right very very strong you clip them on when you need them

and you take them off when you don't for me that's that bit of real estate under the rifle you use a bipod what so infrequently why do we keep it on the rifle, you use a bipod, what, so infrequently. Why do we keep it on the rifle? Yeah, I carry mine in my back pocket. But the little receiver, the receiver screws into the sling swivel stud. And becomes a sling swivel stud. And provides a sling swivel. You don't really know it's there.

And then you can just stick the thing on your waist belt or I sometimes just carry it around my back pocket. They're easy to use. They're really an excuse of why wouldn't you take a bipod? That's what we've done because as a mountain hunter or whatever, I probably wouldn't have taken one many years ago. But that now because it's so light and it's there, I can. The other thing that the bipod does that many don't do well is there's a lot of canton rotation so you can follow a target

and you can canton because the ground ain't fucking even, is it, up there? You know, it's very unstable and so to be able to lob your rifle on get a stable shot i mean we get shit loads of people come back and said i've just done this and done this it's brilliant yeah i think we're doing something right we can always do it better we're not perfect far from it but we try bloody hard and we're not arrogant we listen how long do you think i've had one of these well Well, you'd be one of the first. Long time. Yeah, it's got to be five years, isn't it? Five or six years, I would say.

And I will still, the magnet on that original bipod is so strong that even though I've had a lot of experience with them, I catch myself thinking like, oh, did they add like a lock into this thing? Oh, if it ever malfunctions, Johnny, it's because you picked up a metal burr from somewhere. Yeah, yeah. You do come to realize there's a lot of magnetism in the earth.

Exactly, exactly. And we do a military version with a locking system. I mean, they're coming out. There's lots of stuff we're doing, but that's not my bag, so. One more question for you. Go on. For our next Euro report,

like I don't, I want to go, uh, you know how you, when you tighten your lug nuts. Yeah. You don't just go around in a circle. Yeah. Right. You do. Yeah.

You go like up diagonal, whatever. So imagine we're doing Europe, like you're tightening lug nuts. Yeah. I don't want to go to the next lug nut. What, what country should we do? I'd probably pick an Eastern European country or go right in the middle and do France.

That'd be crazy. Yeah, but that's like your neighbor. Yeah. But are they real different? They are totally different to what we do. Yeah. Yeah.

That'd be great. But you got, every country will give you a different flavor. You know, it's, it's, they're so,

so different. I want to do Finland, man. Finland would be brilliant. We've got some good Finnish buddies. Do a lot of work with Sacco and Ticker and there's some good, there's serious lads over there. Yeah. And Spain, like the Ibex stuff. That'd be cool.

Yeah. And you can hunt with a bow in Spain. Oh, I can't wait to do Italy because that's my homeland. What country would be the closest thing to the U.S.? Or is that even a fair question? It's probably not a brilliant question. I would say, because there isn't.

No, I tell you this. Denmark has some public land, right? There are a few countries that have a little bit of public land. That's probably the only similarities there. Yeah. And there's clubs in places like Sweden. So you become a moose, you join your moose hunting club i mean i've seen old boys and they're like they must be knocking on the

door 90 and they don't want to give up their place so they're carrying these huge packs into the middle of nowhere for their their annual moose event you know so yeah it's i want to see moose get run with dogs yeah they do a lot of that over there. I believe so. Looks. Yeah. Looks awesome. Yeah. It's just, the Arctic is a great place.

Cape O'Cailey hunting, that would be a cool thing. Oh, that, me and Yanni are trying to work that out right now. We've got a real itch for that, man. There's a guy called Orflinthroth, I think, he's super cool. If I could do, that's the one, when people are like, what's the one big thing? Well, you hunt them. Like, out of the country? That's what I want to do. You hunt them out of trees using a barking bird dog and you're shooting a full bore rifle

into a tree. I mean, that's pretty freaky for me. I would do that in the UK because I'm likely to end up going into Tunbridge Wells. Hitting Mrs. What's her name? Yeah. Yeah. Mrs.

Wiggins won't be happy. But up there, there's nobody. And that's what they've been doing for years. And it's super exciting. It's like deer hunting for a bird. I am not above, you know, when in Rome, right? I am not above shooting a bird out of a tree with some people that shoot birds out of trees. No, no.

It's brilliant. You put a lot of miles in for very few shots, but it's a really epic place to go. Sounds great. And then with the old male birds they taste like shite when they're cooked so we just do tartar and they're lovely oh awesome yeah hold on yeah oh they're no good cook no they've that way some people might like them but they're really good raw yeah you know what i found out that kind of surprised me is um ptarmigan are so much better raw yeah i got i got all the grouse keepers in Scotland last year eating grouse raw.

And they said, fuck off. We're not fucking doing that. And then after a little while, I said, come on, just try it. And I did like 11 of them over a few weeks. They're lovely. They really are. I wouldn't cook grouse again. Awesome.

You know that dish? I haven't made it in a long while, but like Chinese hot pot. Yeah. Szechuan hot. What do you call it, Corinne? Where you like, you got the broth and the stuff in it and you just take raw meat and dip it. Yeah. It's like a hot pot.

Doing that for ptarmigan. Yeah. They're like cooked, but not really cooked. Oh, it's good. So much better than when you cook it. Mongolians do that, don't they? What's that? The Mongols do that, don't they?

Yeah, I think so. Whenever I have a question about anything over that neck of the woods, I just ask Corinne. Yeah. That's the way. Try to answer. Not always right. All right. Thanks for coming on, man.

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