The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 344: That Ringing In Your Ears That Drives You Nuts

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Grace Sturdivant, Janis Putelis, Sean Weaver, Garrett Long, Seth Morris, Chester Floyd, and Phil Taylor. Topics discussed: Being an Elvis fan; from radio DJ to audiologist to OtoPro founder; creating a new hearing test with various nature sounds, animal calls, and turkey gobbles; Yellowstone's floods; Seth and Chester kick ass on the amateur walleye tournament scene; Grace as a former Miss America pageant Top 15; ducks flying incredibly long distances during their lifetime; the snow goose that traveled 870 miles in 24 hours; Polar Bear Pete's high ass, his dinger-hitting talent, and his message to all of you; MeatEater’s article about hearing loss; what happens when a gun goes bang by your head?; sound pressure; how to pronounce "tinnitus"; the link between hearing loss and dementia; sticking a caulk gun way up into your ear where it has no business being; how to properly insert those little foamies; Jani and Garrett’s poor hearing; 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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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Alright everybody. Hey, greats, when I say grace, not this time but next time. But not this time. When I say grace, not this time but next time, you fill in your last name. Okay. Okay, we're joined by Grace. Sturdivant. An audiologist and the founder of AutoPro.

Here to talk about, among many other things um is it auto or odo it's odo odo but i didn't want to interrupt you right off the bat odo pro we're talking about souped up uh um souped up hearing protection and what happens to your ears when you a lifetime of gun shooting or a few weekends of being in a duck blind and then your body rips one across your ear and then for the next couple of days it's like and you're thinking man that probably did something but i don't know like what did it do you want that now no later okay i'm just teeing it up. I'll point out too that Grace was just telling us she's no stranger to

microphones because you used to do what now? I hosted the Midday Motown and 60s Classic show on Star 92.3 FM Grenada. Nice. Like Grenada down in? Mississippi. Oh, so not where Noriega? No. Okay. 90 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee.

Was that a paid gig? Oh, yeah. 90 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. Was that a paid gig? Oh, yeah. And it was awesome because I sold ads for the radio station. So I'd go around to all my friends' parents that had small businesses in Grenada, and we'd put together some cheesy, fun commercials for them. And then I got residuals off that checking the mail at college. Seriously? For like the next year.

Were you wanting to be a media professional? I've always been into music. And growing up, I was around old music. I'm an Elvis fan. So it was kind of when I heard about this gig at the radio station, I'm like, well, that sounds pretty cool. And I've just never been a stranger to the microphone. And now you're definitely no stranger to the headphones.

That's right. So you being an Elvis fan, was your, is there like a connection between your name being Grace and Graceland and all that? No. I was named after

a great grandmother. That's coincidence. And on the other side of my family, I was named after a woman on my dad's side of the family. On my mom's side of the family, my grandmother,

who's still living, is a huge Elvis fan and would take me to Graceland and she actually met Elvis once in his driveway. Is that right? Yeah. What was the moment?

So you're doing, you're like a radio DJ. And then you're like, no, I'm going to go to med school or whatever they call it. What do they call it? Audiology school. It's through the medical center at Vanderbilt. What was that? What was that decision? That aha moment?

Well, honestly. Was you like, you know, in fact, I do want to make some money. The radio gig was when I was in school at the College of Charleston, which my dad still calls my two-year beach vacation. I didn't know what I wanted to do. At one point, I was biology. At one point, I was communications. I did some music classes. And then as I got serious about my life, what I wanted to do, I thought I wanted to be a speech pathologist.

My mom is a speech language pathologist. And I've always liked just the way she's been able to balance her, you know, being a mom and working in different capacities. And I thought, well, I could do that. And then through those classes, I watched a documentary about a kid that received a cochlear implant who'd been born deaf. And this little girl, she was working with the audiologist after about two weeks after her surgery. You meet with the audiologist who programs and activates and turns on the implant for the first time. And this little girl who had never heard sound before, had never experienced sound, the audiologist got everything

all programmed. And then this little girl's mom was standing behind her and the audiologist goes, okay, everybody be really quiet. I'm going to turn it on. Mom, I want you to say her name. And even though the kid had no meaning associated with that sound, as a mother now, I think about that and like, it still gives me chills because the mom says the kid's name and the kid's head just like whips around. And the mom, of course, is like, oh, my baby. But I mean, can you imagine? And so then that just triggered it. And in my anatomy and physiology classes, like I'm still, I will nerd out about the neuroscience of how we hear and how you hear with your brain.

And this part that hangs off the edge of your head is just the transducer. You got to have it sent to the brain in a signal that has good integrity. And then your brain has to process it or else it's useless. As a teaser for what's to come, I'm going to lay out just to protect our IP, Grace. Grace is going to develop. We're just doing a hearing test. Yeah. And Grace is going to develop a thing called... I'm trying to think what we should call it. This is a working name.

The Gobletron. The Gobletron. Okay. I don't know. I think so. I think you're stealing that from Parker. Oh, no. I stole that, didn't I?

Either way, she's going to develop a hearing test thing where you have five, six people are all able to put on headphones. And then she's going to, instead of doing the normal hearing test, like bing, bing. Pure tones. She's going to put in like a pileated, you'll hear a pileated woodpecker. You'll hear a creek. You'll hear a bunch of peepers. You'll hear a greenated woodpecker. You'll hear a creek. You'll hear a bunch of peepers.

You'll hear a green frog ripping. Okay? And then ever so faintly, Right? And you'd be able to measure and test who's best at hearing gobbles. And make it into like a game show. And make it into a game show.

What do you win? That's a good question maybe some of those uh maybe a jar of uh chester's uh forest floor foods pickled uh baby corns there you go or maybe maybe the winner gets to go hunting with you to help you hear the birds oh yeah that'd be a great way for me to find good assets that's right my kid was we'll move on real quick but my kid was getting good. He can hear gobbles like a son of a bitch. Is this James? Yeah. I feel like I know him after your book. They can all hear gobbles.

But he got drunk on the accolade. Got drunk on the... What am I trying to say? Got drunk on the praise. So now he's off in the other direction of everything's a gobble because he likes to be the guy that heard the gobble so now he's a little

trigger happy so in our training test when you when you hit the buzzer like clearly a pileated woodpecker there's one there's one right i, no, man. Now you're like everybody else now. So now when we're doing our auditory training for the gobbler in noise test or whatever we're going to call it, if he's in the room and when you press the button and there wasn't really a gobbler there, you get like a shock. Oh, that's a great idea. Like a negative reinforcement. You put on a shock bracelet too. Yeah.

So if you say you heard one and you didn't really hear one. Oh, man. Put that in your next kid's book. You could train some you heard one and you didn't really hear one. Oh man. Put that in your next kids book. You could train some great kids with all this kind of equipment, man. That might have a negative impact though. Because if you really think you heard one. No, you shock them.

If you play a real one and he doesn't tag it, he gets shocked. He gets shocked for false alarms. Oh man. You'd have a great turkey hunter. This sounds like dog training. Yeah. I mean, it's what it is. Very similar, right false alarms. Oh, man. Yeah, you'd have a great turkey hunter. This sounds like dog training. Yeah.

I mean, it's what it is. Very similar, right? And then later when he gets older, you give him some therapy and he goes about his business. Okay. Corinne's not here, but she has a note that we should talk about the flooding. No, she asked. It was in there as a question and I answered yes. Oh, it is right now, but won't be when you're

listening to this flooding yeah it's the cfs on the yellowstone right now is the highest it's ever been recorded yeah is that right yep and last year was over 50 000 and last year was one of the lowest years on record yeah it's crazy i think last year the upper of the lowest years on record. Yeah. It's crazy. I think last year, the upper Missouri flows was like the low, I don't know. Remember we were driving over it and we were looking up the flows last year? Mm-hmm. Because it was like zero, the fishing went from like spring runoff to like no water. To drought.

To no water and rock snot everywhere. If you're in Gardner, Montana right now There's currently not a road that you can leave the town Speaking of that, my aunt But the water's starting to drop Like you either have to fly out of there in a helicopter or walk You cannot drive a car from Gardner Yeah, the road is toast It's gone

My aunt is in Gardner But it's crescent down and coming down, right? I think it fell afoot already, but Yeah, so I'm looking at it right now on the USGS site. In 1996, it was the max, probably 31,100. That was the year I moved to Montana. 31,100 cubic feet per second. And as of yesterday, I'm just looking at Livingston.

So it was a little higher upstream at Corwin, which doesn't really make any sense. But in Livingston right now, it's like right around 30,000 cubic feet per second. And yesterday in Livingston, it got up to 40,000 cubic feet per second, which is just hard for people to understand. No, I can explain it to understand. It's unreal. Here's what it is. I figured this out when I was working on a book one time, just how to express it. What is it again?

CFS? Right now, it's close to 30,000. Yesterday, when it peaked, it was around 40,000. Okay. That would be that in this amount of time between me going this and this, or this and this, 30,000 soccer balls rolled past. That is crazy. 30,000 soccer balls. It's like water's obviously heavier than a soccer ball. So it'd be like a soccer ball filled with.

You know. Filled with water. Rolling past. But it's down. Okay. So keep in mind that at this point, like this won't come out and then this will all be over.

But keep that in mind. When, when you, like if we got our, Phil didn't like it, but our interest dial, right? The collective audience interest dial is just plummeting. Um, because the flood's over. What was the highest? I have a vested interest here because I'm very worried about our little property being accessible. What was the highest this year in Livingston? No, it crested at what

in Livingston? In Livingston, it crested at around 40,000. At what time? It was yesterday evening. So probably right before it started to cool off at night, it was the highest. And it was due to all this water on the Yellowstone is due to we had a very cold spring, late spring, and a lot of snowpack late. So it snowed a lot this spring. But not just that, but raining like the Diggins. Yeah.

So it was like a combination of that cold spring and then all of a sudden warm weather and rain and runoff from the rain and snowpack all hit at one big shebang. And it's not good for Red Lodge and some certain areas, Yellowstone this summer, we very impacted with tourism. Um, the fishing on the Yellowstone could be really interesting because these boat ramps and Oh those boat ramps are gonna be gone. Are gonna be destroyed.

Uh, I always say, my father liked to say, don't curse the darkness, light a candle. So I'm going to point out, um. This is my note here. Yeah. I'm going to point out Yanni's note that, uh, you know how Spencer likes to go rock hounding? Yeah.

And how I like to find crazy bones eroding out of the riverbanks. Telling you what, sonny boy. Going to be some new shit showing up when the water drops. Yep. And currently, I'll probably find some of my stuff.

I'll probably find some of my stuff that I left up on my little property somewhere down river. Spencer will find it. I'll be like, like hey that's my shovel yeah and currently these reservoirs that are you know 20 plus feet low right now are starting to fill up yeah which is good yeah you gotta look i mean there's some positives for sure but also some big negatives they had to evacuate the hospital and living state yesterday

like half of red Lodge was underwater. You know, it's, people are getting hurt, so. Yeah. I didn't know they evacuated the hospital.

Yeah, we were getting stopped going up Trail Creek by the sheriff. They had it closed to any non-essential, like, if you didn't live

on Trail Creek, you couldn't go through because they were trying to just keep the traffic down in case they had to evacuate through Trail Creek because it's the only other way out

if 89 shuts down. Yeah. Yeah, hopefully folks are okay. Well, I haven't heard of any fatalities. I haven't heard of any fatalities. Casualties or... No. Speaking of water, that was a good transition.

You guys are kicking ass at the walleye tournament. You guys are like genuine pro walleye anglers. How much money did you win this time? I forget what the total was this time, but our total right now is at $1,900. Jeez Louise, you're not even going to need to work anymore. Well, we're not keeping these winnings. No, I know, yeah, but we're not keeping these winnings like we're done i know yeah but you're donating all your winnings you guys are like legit because on this show just to give

people a little background here uh saff and chester are aspiring amateur were aspiring amateur walleye tournament anglers. Fair? Yep. Mm-hmm. And they decided to start out their tournament career by participating in the Montana Leg of the Walleye Tour. So Montana has four summer tourneys, and they roll into one mega tourney. In the Montana wall.

How do you guys put that? Yeah. Yeah, it's the Montana circuit. Montana has more than just four tournaments throughout the year. Okay. But there's like a Fort Peck circuit where all four, I think it's four tournaments. Something like that. Are on just Fort Peck.

Okay. There's the Montana circuit, which is Fresno, Canyon Ferry, Fort Peck, and Tiber. So you guys are enrolled in the Montana circuit, but not any particular reservoir circuit. Correct. Yeah. We're in the Montana circuit.

We fished, uh, it's the crooked Creek tournament that was at Fort Peck this year because the water's too low to fish out of. And on that one. Well, I want to give more background. I was back where you were aspiring. Yeah. They were aspiring walleye tournament fishermen.

The problem was they didn't have a boat. Yep. We, can I take some, can I, can, not me, but can the show take some credit? Yeah. We lobbied quite heavily to get you guys backing in a boat. And Alumacraft hooked us up with an awesome competitor. 16 or 18 and a half footer with 150 Mercury on the back. So they got a sponsorship pack.

They got backed, backing from Alumacraft. Hummingbird Electronics. Backing from Hummingbird Minn Kota. Got their boat fitted out. Yep. Went to their first tournament at Fort Peck and finished day one at eight, number eight? Yep, number eight, day one.

Out of how many boats? 73? 73. 74, something like that. Yeah, just a little bit over 70. And then finished the tournament overall at 17. You were hoping to come in. I think you were hoping, you were saying it'd be great if we could land in the top 20.

Yep. Did the second tourney at Fresno. Yep. Finished day one at? Can I start with, back up a little bit with Fresno? Oh, yeah, I don't care. Are you going to go all the way back to when it wasn't there? No.

Like to the Pleistocene? No, just when we, just Seth and I is thinking and how this tournament typically is. The woolly mammoth. Yeah, and anyways, no, I won't go that far. Back up as far as you want. I see you guys are all decked out in your Fort Peck arena hoodies. We didn't plan that.

We didn't plan this out. You got a little uniform. No, we didn't plan that. We just have the same clothes all the time. Anyways. I like the people that work here that you could tell dress off the free table, which includes me. I mean, yeah.

Everybody I know wears free clothes. Oh, yeah. It's great. Did you guys buy those shirts? Yeah, we bought these. Oh, good for you. We bought them. They're nice.

The new guy at Chili, he hasn't been here that long. Dude's like totally decked out from the free table. Love it. Like full lifetime supply of t-shirts. So we had an amazing tournament. I'm going to start out with that. And we were just everything aligned. But backing up to this Fresno tournament, looking at weights prior, as far as the total weight of fish people are catching for this tournament

was around 20 pounds would be right up there in the top five and that is but explain that to me because that's like because you're bound by the bag limit right right okay so every day in these tournaments you can weigh in on your weigh card five fish. So two anglers, this is what confused me early on that I didn't realize. Two anglers are only fishing for one state limit. Right. Five fish. Between Seth and I, we can only weigh in five fish for the day.

Why is it not? Why is it? Because they don't give a shit about the bag limit. It's just like it's a five fish tournament and has nothing to do with like the legal bag limit set by the state. Kind of standard for tournament fishing. Okay. So they don't like, if you were allowed 20 walleyes on some lake, it'd be five for the tournament. Right.

Five per boat. I got it. Okay. And there's two days. So you can, at the end of those two days, there's 10 fish. And usually the top five in this tournament that we just got done with will win it with 20, around 20 pounds. So, so they're submitting 10, they're, they're submitting fish at a two pound average. Yep. Roughly.

That's like, that strikes me as not impressive. Yeah. Well, it's, it's not a, it's not a lake where there is a ton of big fish. Yeah, the Fort Peck tournament, I think last, well, I forget what this year was, 96? Pounds? For the overall, yeah, what was the overall at Fort Peck? Not 96, was it?

It was a lot. I thought it was, 90-some pounds. Some dude came in with 10 9-plus pounders? Yeah. I thought it was 80 pounds. Anyway, last year was 90-some pounds

won it. At Packer. Yeah. This year was... I don't remember what this year was. Yeah. I thought it was up there in the 90s too. Anyhow, go on, Chester. So, yeah, we were going into this tournament up at Fresno being like,

if we can get double digits each day, we're going to be real happy. But the problem with this year is the water is so low. Up there, they're still in a drought, and it's not a very big lake. So we were going up there expecting there to be over 50 boats in a small body of water, and it was going to be bumper boats. So it was going to be meaning there's going to be boats close to you the whole tournament. And historically, first day people catch fish, second day of the tournament it gets a little tougher.

Because the fish are burned out. Fish are a little burned out from people practicing before the derby, and then that first tournament day they really hammer them. 74 pounds won it this year. Which is at Fort Peck At Fort Peck You guys I'm sitting here

And I'm getting confused Okay Fort Peck was 74 pounds Fort Peck was 74 pounds Yeah Okay So I'm talking about Fresno

Here So we're Going up there Thinking it's gonna be Bumper boats We're thinking We gotta catch Just in the double digits

And we're gonna be happy We show up and we pre-fish or practice for two days and we realize that there's a lot of fish in the lake. We found some spots. We didn't really catch any big ones, but what we did find was a unique bite, meaning we headed north farther than anybody, we were fishing in the mud, meaning you drop your leech down and it disappears after about two inches. So there was about two inches of visibility in this little spot that we found and which is great. We were catching some fish in there and there's no one around us. And now can hand it off how many how many boats uh there's 56 boats okay come tournament day now i'll hand it off to seth and he can over to you

seth um yeah so tournament day our we draw number 13 and they started um they like randomly pick a number tell me what that means where they so you get assigned a boat number. Okay. And it's like one through however many boats there are. So one through 56. We happen to draw 13. And then out of those numbers, they randomly draw a number to start. It's not a shotgun start. No, it's like a single file line start. I see.

So boat number 14 got drawn to start first. So it goes 14, 15, 16, 17. Oh, so you got last boat. So we got our first day, we were the last boat out. And you don't get to stay longer then? No, you do on this one. Half an hour longer. Half an hour longer, yeah.

Half the field checked in at four on the first day and the other half checked in at 430. Okay. Um, when you're waiting in that line, when you're at the end of a 56 boat lineup, how long does it take for everybody to like, like from, if it's a 7am start, when are you actually throttling up? Maybe 15 minutes. Yeah. If that. Okay. Gotcha.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, we're last boat to go out and we were like, well, all of it's, you know, small, small lake, all of our spots that were like mid lake in the, in the clear water, we were like, there's definitely going to be boats on them. Um, and there was this sweet point right next

to the boat ramp. Right there. That was throwing a mud line when the wind would pick up and mud lines and walleye fishing are like, like when you see mud, um, it's like a good place to start fishing. Cause those fish. It's like Seth and Kelsey. They utilize that mud line to like, you know, hunt and whatnot. But, um. You obviously just see it. Yeah.

You can see it with your, with your, you know, with your eye, you can see it in the water. And so everyone takes off, all the boats start heading up like mid lake. And we just kind of go up, loop around and go right to the boat ramp. And we're, there was people, there was like kids right to the boat ramp and we're there was people there was like kids right at the boat ramp the day before like catching nice walleye off the off the dock basically really yeah so we're like well we're just gonna hit that since all of our spots up like further north we're we're gonna be taken um what's the etiquette on that with spots being taken like how on a

tournament like that if it's you know it to be bumper boats. Everybody's expecting bumper boats. How close can you get in until the dude's going to give you the scarecrow? Basically casting distance, I would say. People get pretty close. But it's bad. That's a good... I hadn't thought about it that way,

but yeah, you can't block someone's ability to work the water around them is how you guys go about it. Yeah, and it's kind of like... Dependent on how you guys go by. Yeah. It's kind of like. Dependent on the lake. Depending on the lake. It's kind of like a, I would say it's like an unspoken type rule, but it's just like Fresno was pretty, like boats were close. Now, let me ask you another ethics question.

You were talking about kids fishing the dock. You can't crowd bank fishermen, right? Would you keep that in mind even though you're in a big money tournament? Yeah. Yeah, I would treat bank fishermen just like they're in a boat, you know? Got it. Okay. Um, but anyway, we, we, um, as soon as we pass the start boat, we loop around and just head right back to the ramp and fish that for a little bit.

And there wasn't, at that time of the day, the wind wasn't picked up and there wasn't a mud line right there. We fished it, Chet caught one fish that. Barely measured. Barely measured. It was like 0.8 pounds. Caught that fish, ran to a different spot. Did we, I think we might've caught a fish there. I don't know.

I don't remember. Anyway, it wasn't good. So finally we were like, you know what? Let's just head up North to that muddy spot and try that out. We could see on side imaging, there was a bunch of fish there. As soon as you dropped the mega live, there was fish all over the place. It was just. Bait.

Yeah. You could see bait. It was just tough because you had to get that leech. We were fishing drop shot and leech and slip bobber and leech. You just had to get that bait within two inches of that walleye's face for the walleye to see the bait and eat it, um,

which was tough. And the only way you could do that basically was with using mega live or live imaging. Um, cause you can, when you're using live imaging, you can see the fish you can see your bait go down to the fish and like if i make a cast to a fish and don't see my bait go right down and land like literally inches from that fish i would reel in and cast again because

there's no point in letting it sit out there yeah yeah and you're not spooking the shit out of it doing that no in that mud they're not that spooky yeah so um we decide to head up north to that muddy spot and we just start fishing we can see fish and seth starts hammering and i just kind of got it came on fire i just got it a little dialed where like like i just said i would cast to these fish and if i didn't see my bait land right in front of them, I would just reel and cast again. And I just kind of got this technique dialed in and yeah, just started hammering on fish. Um, and we, we got our five fish pretty early

and then spent the rest of the day calling. Um, and. And I want to go back to one thing with that in the mud, putting that bait two inches from the fish's face. Like it takes a tremendous amount of focus to be able to do that all day long. And one of the things that I think helped us is we got two guys in the boat making those perfect casts. And if it's not perfect, we're reeling in and we're staying on it all day cast after cast after cast. So being able to have Seth doing that and myself doing

that, like it's hard to do, it was hard to do and stay focused, but that's one of the things that helped us. Yeah. And the way we were kind of doing it was like, uh, like the first day I was on the mega live and that, that mega lives mounted to a pole that's hanging over the side of our boat. And it comes up to, uh, like an arm that's at a 90 degree angle from the pole. And like, wherever that arm is pointed, that's where the transducer is pointing. Um, so like I would, it was basically like flipping docks for bass fishing, just like underhand cast, um, to these fish. And then Chester would like basically mimic, he would like try to land his bait right where I landed mine. Cause he knew I was casting to like a fish right there.

And we would communicate like, Oh, that was too far. I'd like, if I saw the bait go over the fish, I'd be like, Oh, too far reel in, try it, like try it like try it again um and yeah we can't if you're too far you can't just drag it in front of his face you can you can and we did that but we found that you were more successful if you just immediately landed that bait right on the fish so those fish are moving a little yeah um so we did that the first day and the nice thing was there was not a single boat anywhere close to us. Cause I think those guys, like the guys that don't have that live imaging, they would have

never been able to fish those to those fish like we were and catch them. They would have just been like kind of blind casting to areas where they knew there were fish and you just had to get it so close to them that if you didn't have that live imaging you couldn't really fish to them successfully like jt van zamp puts it you got to put a mustache on them you do yeah had to put a mustache on them so um we were we were at the end of day one we went

into weigh-ins with 10.06 pounds and in our minds, we were like, shit, we hit double digits. We're going to be sitting real good for, for day two. Go to weigh-ins, find out that we're sitting in 17th place. And we start seeing weights come in. It's like 14 pounds, 16 pounds. One guy caught 20 pounds the first day. Yeah. So we're like, shit, you know, like we have some, like we got to make up some, some spots

tomorrow. Um, but we're pretty excited because everyone was saying that with Fresno being so packed with boats on day one, those fish get pretty sore lipped and they're, it's a tougher bite the next day. And we're thinking in our minds, there wasn't a single boat around us.

There was all these fish around us that never even saw a hook that day. And we're thinking in our minds, there wasn't a single boat around us. There was all these fish around us that never even saw a hook that day. So our fish up north weren't going to be sore-lipped. Like day two is time for us to make up some ground and get a little bit ahead of these guys that are going to be fishing to more finicky fish.

So day two. First boat. First boat to go out. First boat, first boat to go out. We're the first boat to go out. Um, seven o'clock hits. We haul ass up to our spot. Again, not a single boat there. I think throughout the day, there was a couple dudes that would like troll past us with planer

boards, but other than that, there was no one. What depth of water was that you were fishing up there in the mud? Anywhere from like four to eight feet. Hmm. And the wind played, the wind was huge because it would pick up the, the wind would pick up, the bite would pick up.

The wind would lay down, the bite would lay down. So like it, it got pretty hot and heavy when the wind would, and then like the wind would lay down and it'd be like several hours where we'd like maybe not catch a fish and it was also a morning bite so we knew we had a better morning bite for bigger fish we knew we had to show up and take full advantage of that morning bite yep so we show up on the second day and have our five fish limit by eight o'clock within an within an hour and decent decent fish too and we just start

from there we just start catching fish hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in on x 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 you were always talking about uh 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. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Did you talk about being catch, capture, release? Nope. So this tournament is, all these tournaments are catch, capture, and release, which means you catch the fish, you lay it on a bump board, take a

picture of it, and then release that fish. Oh, so you're not hauling them back for the big weigh-in? No. Oh, shit. No. And when you turn your card in, your SD card, you have to have only five fish on there. But throughout the day,

we might catch 30 fish. So you have to like constantly keep going through and deleting those fish which is the most stressful thing i've ever done in my life because if you by accident delete one of your big fish you're screwed it's like you slipped out of your hand yeah you gotta be making a copy or something no it's just snap a picture and they don't accept it like that. Yeah. Do they give you the camera? No, we it's our camera. They issue you an SD card

though. No, our SD card too. Huh. Well, I'm assuming they got all kinds of way to rule out any kind of They give you a bump board and you don't know what number you're going to get. The bump board has a number on it. Let's say it's number 10. Yeah. So next day you might get number 15're going to get. The bump board has a number on it. Let's say it's number 10. Yeah. So it's next day you might get number 15

bump board. Yeah. Um, but yeah, we start calling at one point I throw out a slip bob rig and the slip bob, we just had to slip bobbers out there just cause fish would just happen to run into them. You know, we weren't like specifically casting these slip bobbers to like certain fish.

It was just like a bonus thing. And we were catching a few fish on them. Real quick explanation of a slip bobber rig. A slip bobber rig is, so I'll start from the hook. You have a hook that goes up to a swivel right above that swivel is a weight to, to drop the line down fast. And we were using bare hooks. We, we found out that we were running the slip

bobber rig with a little light jig, jig head and a, and a leech. We found out that those fish would not eat it unless it was a bare hook. Um. They like when that leech free floats, man. Yup. And those leeches were real lively.

They looked like little snakes in the water. So hook, there's like a, depends on what you want to run. I'll say a 12 inch leader up to a swivel. Above the swivels, a weight. And then above that weight is a bobber that your line runs through. Like your line runs from the top to the bottom of the bobber. And that bobber can slide on your line. It's an inline bobber.

Yeah, an inline bobber that can slide freely on your line. It's an inline bobber. Yeah, an inline bobber that can slide freely on your line. Above the bobber is a little bead, and then above that is a bobber stop. This is a knot, a nylon knot. It's a nylon knot, and you can adjust the depth of that. And that knot will reel up into your reel.

Yep. So you can have a bobber set at 20 feet, but that doesn't leave you trying to cast with 20 feet of shit hanging off the end of your bobber. Yeah, exactly. Real fun way to fish. I only found out about slip bobbers at like the ripe age of like 41 or something,

and boy, game changer. That bite you guys are on. That doesn't play into the fly fishing scene. Slip bobber. No. That sounds like a South Dakota bite. I mean, that's textbook, like glacial lakes, four to eight foot of water, slip bobber and leeches.

That brings back some memories. Oh, it was fun. But yeah, at one point in time, I throw out a slip bobber and I set that down on the edge of the boat and I pick up my drop shot rig and I'm putting a leech on it. And I start to hear the rod sliding against the gunwale of the boat. And I look over to see that rod just going over the boat into the water and it's gone. Like to the bottom.

Fish pulled it in. Yeah. And you didn't have the drag set light enough that it could just pull it no i didn't have like this i didn't have the bail open or anything where it's just it just i that we're like rarely catching fish on slip bobbers so i just like you know threw it out there and every once in a while we look over just to make sure the bobber wasn't down or whatever um so i'm like trying to like take the rod that i have in my hand and like hook it just you know try to doing whatever i can to like try to get this rod before it hits the bottom and i didn't see it happen so i'm like what the heck is going on i didn't see it happen everyone didn't see it happen so they're like what in the hell is this guy doing? Like sticking his rod down in the water, trying to.

Musky fishing. Yeah. Yeah. He's doing his figure eights for musky. So I tell them what happened and we're like going over the whole scenario. And I look over and that's. 15 yards away. It's 15 yards away. That slip bobber pops up to the surface and it's moving.

So we like get, get rods reeled in. It's a shit show and all of this is on camera for you guys to watch. Yeah. We got to. What are you guys going to call your walleye show? I don't know. Musky in the mustache, somebody thought. Oh, that's good.

Yeah. Anyway, we get. I'll start thinking on that. Yeah, think about that. We get rods reeled in we get on the trolling motor and start uh hustling over to the where the bobber is and by the time we get over there it goes back down so i'm like marking waypoints on the last on a on the hummingbird where like the last spot we saw the bobber go down scanning all over with my eyes just looking

shortly after it pops back up like another 15 yards away. And I take the rod that I have in my hand. I'm like casting over, trying to like snag the line and whatnot. We're trying to get over to it. Sure enough, we get close to it. It goes back down again. Finally, it pops up and we get over to it and Chet's able to get the bobber with the net. And I reach down, grab a hold of the bobber,

and I can feel a fish on the end of the line, and I start hand-lining in this fish, and it ends up being a 20-and-a-half-inch walleye. Oh, my goodness. Which is our biggest fish yet. Did you violate tournament rules by hand-lining it? No. Okay.

No. I mean, we caught the fish. Yeah. With the rod and reel it just wasn't conventional was that the biggest fish of the tournament at the at the at that point time it was our biggest fish so chet nets it we get it in i pulled the rest of the rod up off the bottom yeah and he had been dragging that rod around on the bottom so it was just like cake full of mud and stuff. Were you there when I harpooned that halibut and it stole my harpoon buoy?

Oh yeah. Never to be seen again. Yeah. So we get that fishing. It was crazy. The way we had cameras set up on the boat, that rod slipped right past the GoPro that was rolling. So it's going to be like the best footage.

Yeah, it was crazy. Do you mind if I tell? Yeah, yeah. So here, I'll tee it up just a little bit. That bite slows down because of the wind dies. It gets pretty flat calm. I say, Chet, let's run across the reservoir here and try.

Still in the mud. Still in the mud. Let's run across where we had fished a little bit the day before and caught some fish. I was like, let's just go over there and try it. Cause right, like at that point we weren't catching fish where we were. So we roll over there and this spot is a little

different. There's a few more weeds. There's still bait moving around. We're still seeing fish, so it's perfect, actually more so than the day before. We start fishing, and we immediately start culling some more fish, meaning replacing smaller ones on our card with bigger ones, and we're happy.

We're probably sitting a little over 11 pounds, and it was our goal to just be consistent in keeping those double digits and we knew we probably weren't going to place top 10 but we would probably upgrade from 17th we're happy with how we executed it at this point so we keep fishing and seth me i just want to say something. Seth was on it. He was catching fish to the point where sometimes I'm like, I don't quite have it figured out like Seth does, so I'm just letting him do his thing.

This is a team, you know, doesn't matter who's catching the fish. I mean, you're not being like, hey, Seth, can you make me a sandwich? Right. Can you help me untangle my line? This is like a very much a team effort and it was actually really cool. And I was catching fish, but he had it dialed. So, you know, I'm happy. I also want to contribute to like this as well. Right? So we roll over there, we start calling those fish and we had to be back by 3 p.m.

You want to stay as partner for next year too, right? Because like if we have five tournaments like this in a row, next year Seth's going to be like, well, Yanni? Oh, I never thought about that. Seth might find,

he might become friends and find like a new partner. No, I caught some big ones on Fort Peck, too. It'll be like a TV show and they replace one of the actors. Oh, yeah, dude. In between seasons. It's like, where's Chester? This season, Chester will be played by Giannis.

No, I mean, communication is very key. It just goes a long way in the boat. So anyways, Seth, the two days, he's loading the bases in a baseball analogy. Seth is just loading the bases. Can you give me a different kind of analogy? This will work out. No, that's fine, because it's good, because we've got to talk about Yeah We got to talk about Polar Bear Pete Yeah Pete

He bats in the middle Of the lineup When the job The guys ahead of him At the top of the inning Is just to get on the bases So when Pete shows up He drives them all in

It's called batting cleanup Yep Seth is hitting singles And doubles Yeah that's good Because we got to talk About baseball in a minute So Seth loaded the bases

And it was the bottom of the ninth inning, so the last inning of the game. We had to be in at three, and we were happy with our weight, and we said our last cast is going to be at 2.35 p.m. And Seth was jokingly saying to camera, we are going to just quick catch a bigger fish here to call out our 17 incher and this is at 2 35 p.m and then we're going to head right in and race to the weigh-ins and i see a fish in the weeds on mega live and i flip it out there and not seconds after Seth said that, wham, rod goes down.

And it happened to be the biggest fish that anyone caught out of any boat the whole tournament. Hot damn, man. 25 and three quarter inches, which is a big one, upgraded us five pounds. No shit. Yeah, put us up to like Over 16 pounds for the day Gave us another $875 Towards our little Fund going towards something At the end of the year So what did you finish

I know it goes by how you finish for the tournament You finish 7 for the tournament Which is fantastic But what did you finish for the day 5th for the day We ended up with 16 some pounds And I kid you not I haven't been more excited about a fish. I was like, so like, this is all on camera.

Chris Gill is filming this and he's trying to hold back his excitement behind the camera. And he said. Yeah, cause Ridge Pounder likes fishing. Yeah. He said it was one of the most fun things he's ever filmed. And. Those tournament walleyes hit different too man they really do they just do that walleye wakes up he's like it's tournament day today boys when i hit a leech i'm gonna do it you know how i like to do it on tournament days when you're just having fun when you're just having fun fishing and catch a 20 inch walleye

like that's a real nice walleye like i love that walleye you catch even a 20 incher when you're just having fun when you're just having fun fishing and catch a 20 inch walleye like that's a real nice walleye like i love that walleye you catch even a 20 incher when you're fishing a tournament and you are just shaking in your boots oh yeah yeah i would i would see a fish on mega live and i would make a cast to it and my hand would be shaken because i was like waiting like the anticipation oh yeah you get exhausted from it too all day because you're just amped the whole time. Yeah. What does a 26-inch walleye weigh? That was like 6 point something pounds. You know, the 26 might be closer to 7.

Time of year is a big deal on that. Yeah, exactly. But they have on these bump boards boards they have a scale that is like relatively close after they spawn so it's like it's a length to weight ratio a 13 inch to 14 inch fish is going to be around 0.8 pounds to a pound right um So that's how they measure these weights during these tournaments. But anyways, I was unbelievably happy. It was incredible. It was a fun tournament.

I'm proud of you guys, man. You guys are making everybody proud. Yeah, you guys got 17th, right, in the first tournament, and now 7th. The competition has got to know uh that there's a up and coming team yeah are people are people mean you guys because you guys are like newcomers and you're filming and everything no everyone's great and um that tournament was run really smooth um it is a lot so i appreciate people letting us do this. It's a lot. I mean, we've got a chase boat. We got cameras around. Some people probably don't love it, you know, but I appreciate the Montana walleye circuit

letting us do this because I think it's going to be something really cool at the end of it when we get this four part series out. I'll say this about that though, man, is if walleye fishing has ever had like a negative about it from the tournament standpoint is it's never had the cool videos and publicity that the bass side has had yeah and walleye guys like the old pnw series and all those that even the nwt it's like that's the thing they've always missed is the actual ability to watch yeah and so it's you know i as a walleye guy myself i like that well going into it one of the primary concerns these two had is that they would get caught

cheating but they've been able to keep it under wraps oh you put that bug in everyone's head poking the bear all right i know we got to move on, but one real quick question. How many of those 56 boats had all the technology that you guys have in the boat? It's hard to say. Probably a quarter, 25% of them had it all. Maybe more. Maybe 50. Oh, I would say it's more.

Yeah. I mean, being conservative, for sure 25. Probably 50. Yeah. The guys that won it, they were running live imaging, and they found a cool spot that had weeds and bait, and the fish were in the weeds. Did they have longer hair than you did, Seth? Nope.

No. They did not. Sean, you jacked up? Yeah. Well, I used to fish while I turned men. No, I'm talking about being jacked up yeah well i used to fish while i turned men no i'm not talking about i'm talking about being jacked up for sean's duck report oh yeah i'm pumped about that he's jacked for both yeah we're gonna move ahead to sean's duck report okay oh i want i want to go back again and say you guys doing a great job man thanks when you came on like when you came on and said

you wanted to land top 20 i didn't have a reason to think you wouldn't. But, uh, I was like, oh, it seems like a reasonable thing, but, um, that you're executing on it. Hard work. I mean, like, yeah, it's just like two guys really trying to break it down and understand why. Why are these fish doing this? How do we catch them? And going, I'll say, I say quickly, growing into Fresno, we had never fished it before.

I'd never even laid eyes on it. So we had to completely spend two days breaking it down, figuring it out. Yeah. Trust your electronics. That's all I can say. Because that's what helped us. That's great, man.

Got one more to go. Can't do the fourth. I should point out, can't do the fourth because Seth's getting married and won't won't not go Spencer Newhart was putting a bug in my ear he's like can mean you go okay you guys fishing good I could but I don't know if that's you want to go to his his wedding yeah I gotta go to the guy's wedding. After putting on a performance like that at Fresno, heck. Best luck, man. I can't wait to get on that sweet boat.

Now that all the rivers are going to be so messy for a while, I'm going to have to go fishing with you guys on the boat. I cannot wait. All you guys, let's go fishing. All right, Sean's Dark Report. Hey, Phil, did you ever make an intro for Sean's Dark Report? What's that, huh? Got anything else to say? All right, Sean's Dark Report. Hey, Phil, did you ever make an intro for Sean's Dark Report? Shut up. Got anything else to say?

I say it's duck season, and I say fire. All right, Sean, let it rip. Oh, you been dating much? Been on the Rutt app? No. You've been on the rut app No You've been on the rut He takes PTO to go on dates Like they're high stakes dates

I did That was the first time I've ever taken PTO in my life For a date I don't understand I don't either please My first date with my wife Was three days long

Cause we were living I was living in Alaska She was in New York We met and went to La Brea Tar Pits. So why don't you understand? Grace, why do you think a fellow would have to take PTO to go on a date? Why would he have to take PTO? Well, I mean, it is personal time, right?

That's a good point. By definition. By definition. I think that goes under. It's personal time. What a fit. Unless maybe. What a fit, you know.

But in your line of work, you know, just take, can you like take her duck hunting and then call it a. It was fishing. Well, I mean, I would think maybe that he could tie that into his work here. Do you know we offer unlimited PTO here? No, but that's awesome. Well, it's kind of a lie because like you can go away but then you come back you still have a bunch of shit to do it's not like someone else does

it just means yeah it's not like someone's like i'm gonna do while sean's on his date i'm gonna do the stuff he's supposed to do and he'll come back and be able to chill it's like you just come back you're like now i'm screwed yeah yeah re-entry is always hard anyhow there you are uh but uh i don't want to get too deep I am curious are you using a dating app or not using a dating app no

not at all just meeting them the old fashioned way wow which I would be a bar Instagram no

not a bar do you use social Garrett's this is not fair well just give me a call. Okay. Give me some qualities you're looking for. I'll find you a good Mississippi girl.

I think, no, I think I'm going to plead the fifth on this one. This is not how I expected this to go, by the way. I didn't expect this podcast to go this way either. Grace, you're married and got kids. How many kids do you have? Oh, yeah, three. How long have you been married? I got three girls.

We've been married 12 years. How'd you meet your husband? Blind date. It's actually a really funny story. I don't know if your listenership would be interested in how I met my husband, but it was a blind date. And a lot of friends joke

that it was an arranged marriage because our mothers set us up on a blind date. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty old school. Yeah, blind dates not something you hear about too often. No, and we had both had some really bad blind dates leading up to our blind date, which, you know, so we didn't have high expectations. So you were a blind date haver. I was a blind date. And it was, it's actually, I'll tell you, it is, I'll give you the short version. So this was while I was, it was a unique chapter of my life. I can't believe I'm about to say this was while I was, it was a unique chapter of my life.

I can't believe I'm about to say this on your podcast, but I was Miss Tennessee in the Miss America pageant. And so I took a year off of graduate school. You went all the way to Miss Tennessee? To Miss America, if you want to take it to the highest level I went. You went and competed at Miss America? I did.

I sure did. Do you want my autograph? Yeah. Absolutely. You were in the Miss America thing? I was. What was your deal? Top 15.

What was your specialty? Talent du jour. I sang, which is how I met my husband. I was singing the national anthem at a Memphis Grizzlies NBA game. Our mom set us up. They had talked, and they knew that I was going to be there singing. And neither one of us obviously were dating anyone. And in Mississippi, if you're not married by the time you're like 25, people get concerned. Especially if you're Miss Mississippi. Tennessee. Tennessee. I was in school at Vandy.

Miss Tennessee. Sitting right here in the studio. Yeah. As you live and breathe. So am I. So I was singing the anthem, and so I was not at all concerned about whoever this dude was. I was about to sit with him and watch the basketball game. And I had never sung in an arena that big before. So I had at the time, this is how long ago it was, I had my little iPod shuffle threaded underneath my dress, tucked in my tights, so that at center court, when I'm surrounded by all these seven-foot-tall

basketball players and the lights go down, spotlight on me, I was terrified that I was going to accidentally change keys in the middle of this acapella song, which it sounds bad when you do that, by the way. So I was going to hear the accompaniment music in my ear that no one else could hear, but it would keep me in tune. You see what I mean? But when I press that play button, it just so happens that Nora Jones is right after National Anthem on my iPod at this time. So I did not hear my accompaniment track. I heard, come away with me. And I was like, oh, whoa. So I jerk it out of my ear and just pick a note, sang it. It was pre-iPhone days, so there's no proof otherwise. So I jerk it out of my ear and just pick a note, sang it. It was pre-iPhone days, so there's no proof otherwise.

So I will say it was the best it's ever been sung. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. This is the same night that you met your new husband. Yes, and he almost missed it. He came rushing in. He thought, he knew I was singing the anthem, but he thought it was going to be as part of some big mission group ensemble that was then going to go work the concession stand. He really did not know that

it was just going to be me singing. And so he like rushes in and he's like, damn, that's my date. And so then I finished singing. And of course, I'm a little rattled from the whole like debacle that was my accompaniment track i know what you mean and i hate but i look down at my then blackberry because that's the time we were in and it's like i'm the guy in the blue sweater and i'm going i'm in the fedex forum like all right you're gonna have to give me a little bit more than that but uh but anyway we sat together watched the game he went he was living in jackson mississippi he had he had lived lived in Boston for school and then came back to Jackson. I was in Nashville. So we dated long distance, and now we're married with three kids.

Was he like Mr. Universe or anything like that? No. Did he have anything? No. No. He had nothing. No. I mean, he's a really great guy.

He had everything. I'm so sorry, honey. No. Honestly. No, he just warned you over the good old fashioned way. No, he impressed me so much because he's so humble. And he's really a pretty awesome person with a lot that he could brag about and he didn't. That's great.

And so we sat and had this great conversation. There was a lot that I learned about him after the fact that he didn't come right out with, like trying to impress me. He should have maybe told you if he was just trying to impress you. I guess. Yeah. But he held off on it. He held off. But then he, you know what? It's funny, tying into the whole Miss America thing.

So we met in November, Miss America, the finale, there was a reality show that year, but the finale was in January. And he showed up in Las Vegas and like hung out with my family. We'd been on three dates at this point. That's when it was like, okay, he's into me, I think. Wow. Yeah. It's pretty cool. That's when it was like, okay, he's into me, I think. Wow. Yeah. It's pretty cool.

That is pretty cool. Is this the first time for you to have a washed up former pageant queen in your studio? Yeah. It's gotta be, right? Unless there's something Chester hasn't been telling us.

I don't know. Listen, there's a statute of limitations on these things. I really can't use that anymore. But yeah. That's awesome. That's the backstory. So back. That's the back story. So back to Sean's date.

Yeah, segue. That's good. Okay. You're being like a little tight-lipped. You're being like a tournament walleye. Go on, do your thing. But it's new enough that I don't want to jinx it.

No, I'm with you. That's probably the walleye fisherman in me. We'll check back later. What I was leading towards is, what do you call it when you got one guy batting and there's another guy over-practicing? On deck. I was trying to get a couple more people on deck for you. Yeah, it didn't probably work very well, though, huh? Maybe.

No, if you'd had to play it harder. Yeah. Let's go with the duck report, Sean. Duck report. So, I'm trying to remember how long ago that was that we talked about the age demographics of ducks. It was a couple duck reports ago. But when we had talked about how long ducks live, you had said, we had talked about like how long ducks live, you had said, you know, we had talked about that they,

you have some that get to be high 20s, you know, Mallard that lives to be 27 years old, Blue Goose that lives to be 30 years old, and you had requested an odometer on how far they travel in their life. Well, so there's a few different conservation orgs all doing this now. Ducks Unlimited, Delta, and then in Arkansas you have the Osborne Lab and Five Oaks Ag Research Center doing GPS trackers on ducks.

And, man, it's crazy how good that tech has come along compared to, like, the radio telemetry stuff. Because they know every single, I mean, down to the cornfield these ducks are hanging out in all the way up and down the flyway. But anyway, so I had a guy named Ryan Askren from the Osborne Lab give me some data points. They've got 45 ducks with gps trackers right now and uh that that's a they're gluing that in the feathers correct it's on its back it's on their back it looks like a backpack oh it is okay remember some turkey guys talking about a little thing maybe they weren't maybe it wasn't as sophisticated but um they would just glue this little device up in their feathers. You wouldn't even see it.

No, you can see this. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, you can see it. It looks like they're flying around with a backpack on. So anyway, he sent me data points for the averages of all the 45 ducks, but then he also sent me just like a random Drake and hen mallard. Got it.

And the Drake mallard on average flies 8.7 miles a day for a total of 3,172 miles a year. And the Hen flies 11.6 miles a day for a total of 4,234 miles a year, which, you know, it's kind of crazy when you think about that most of that's in the spring and fall because they're pretty idle. That does include migration. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Because they're pretty idle. Yeah, because that's the annual average. Right. Yeah. Yep. So are you going to hit us with some extraordinary days? Yes. Okay.

Yep. So that's why Sean does such a good duck report. Well, and I did do a total of like, based on the average of all their 45 ducks that they have, they fly an average of 11.2 miles a day. Okay. And if you remember, the oldest Mallard ever shot with a band on it was 27 years, 7 months.

Applying the average to that duck, he would have flown 112,750 miles in his life. Which is pretty good for a duck. But, okay, anyway. And then what's really wild is the spring and fall migration of how far these ducks will go in one day. This spring in April, they had one mallard that flew 642 miles in a single day from Bismarck, North Dakota to Lloydminster, Alberta. No way. Yeah, in one day. How many times did he stop?

See, it only kicks the information back every 24 hours. Okay. So they don't know exactly. What he did. Yeah. But you'd have to think if he's covering that distance, he couldn't have been doing much except flying. And he was going north. I wonder if he had a tailwind.

What's crazy too is like you see these ducks migrate into the wind sometimes too. Snow geese will do it all the time where they migrate into the wind and you're like, why? You know? So they'll like wait for a north wind and make a big push or something or it just happens to be that. Just kind of like I've seen some of the hardest snow goose migration days going North into a North wind, which doesn't make sense. And then other times, you know, they have a great South wind and they're using it,

but they'll migrate more based on, and this is a different duck report. We'll do sometime about how much of the migration happens based on moon. And like, that'd be great. Moon port. Yeah. Like why you always hear snow geese flying in the middle

of the night yep yep because they're doing some work and research on like luminance too and how much duck movement is happening based on moonlight i think i think as much of it's based around that even more than wind is like that it's warm out that you know they've got the right moon stuff like that but that's incredible 642 miles that he did on one day and that's like you know when you're out and and ducks are kind of giving you the snub and also just some duck comes and just like boom bombs right in yeah that's him yeah yeah he just got done with a 300 mile trek you know and he's like dude next duck i see i'm landing yeah i'm ready for some food some chill but the you know the ones that are real crazy is the snow goose migration i mean the duck migration is impressive don't get me wrong

but it doesn't hold a candle to what the snow geese are doing. So there's a group called the Alberta Conservation Association doing GPS work on snow geese. And they have one tracker that, for whatever reason, has lasted longer than it was supposed to. It's lasted three years now. So they've been getting info on this one snow goose for three years. And over from January 2020 to January 2022, this snow goose has averaged 20.15 miles per day of flying,

which like, okay, so it's double a mallard's average. And it makes sense when you see how snow geese fly around and feed, they fly a long ways every day to feed. But then on top of that, this snow goose flew 870 miles in 24 hours. And landed on like this little mountain creek up in the Yukon. Yeah. And so this goose, this exact snow goose is wintering in California, then flying over to Boise and hanging out down in the Snake River bottoms. Yeah.

Then flying to Freezeout Lake, Montana. Yeah. Then over to Edmonton, Alberta, and then ending on the North Slope of Alaska. I missed my first snow goose at Freesal Lake. Really? Like the biggest chip shot you could ever have. Just decoyed or passing over? Like, you know, like, I don't know,

eight feet over my head, going about a mile an hour. I'm too close. Just whatever. I don't know. So just for the sake of doing it, I applied that 20-mile-a-day average to the oldest blue goose ever, which, you know, same thing as a snow goose. And that goose would have flown 225,539 miles in its life, which there's pickups dying well before that. You're not going to get that much out of your Toyota Tundra.

I mean, that's impressive. Yeah, that's great. So many miles. 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.

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if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club,.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Do you have any numbers on the low end? Like when they're just loafing around? Like a golf course duck? No, I don't have anything like that, but I was thinking about that.

These ducks are putting the gps units on in arkansas um you know they those ducks in arkansas are always kind of within easy feeding distance of like where they roost and where they feed is always pretty close maybe a mile two miles at most but then you get some of these Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas ducks that they have to fly a long way to get to a cornfield. In Western Nebraska one time, I followed a flock of ducks 45 miles to their feed and they were flying that every day. And so. Yeah, he's jamming 90 miles a day. I would think that this average of Arkansas ducks is actually, you know,

maybe compared to some of the Central Flyway ducks and Rocky Mountain ducks, maybe on the low side. Hit me again with how far that snow goose went in one day. 870 miles in one day, 24 hours. He's blown by a whole entire states. Yeah. But you're flying north to south, you're passing states. Yeah.

Like a bunch of them. He started in, he started in Alberta and ended like well into the Yukon that day. Yeah. And that, and where he was in,

it's, it's real, what's really cool to look at on this GPS and I'll, I can post the website for this too. You can look at the GPS GPS and I'll, uh, I can post the website for this too. You can look at the GPS and see that this bird

sat around Edmonton, Alberta for a solid month, just feeding and getting ready to cross the forest. Cause that's why, I mean, it's a, there's no food for them as they cross the boreal. You know, that's the largest, this would be a good question for Spencer's Trivial Pursuit show. The boreal forest is the largest biome on earth. Really?

Mm-hmm. It's the largest expansive habitat type on the planet is the boreal forest. Because like all that shit across Eurasia. Circumpolar, right? Yeah. All that shit, like huge band across Eurasia, huge band across North America. That is a game poor environment. Yeah, and food poor.

Why a snow goose would eat wheat for a month and a half before he flies across it in two days. That was a hell of a duck report. It's a fun one. Are you done now? Yeah, I'm done. So I think that, just throw Sean a couple ideas, I think that about them moving at night would be very interesting. What do you guys, anything? Grace, what is the thing you wonder most about ducks?

Don't you have any burning? I don't wonder a lot about ducks, to be quite honest. I'm an ears girl. When you come back with that turkey tester, maybe by then you'll have worked up a question for Sean. A question for Sean. Yeah. I got a couple of requests.

Okay. I think there's an emerging understanding about the role of iridescence in birds. What they see when they see iridescence, right? That could be interesting. Yep. That's a good one. What else? Have you done like mortality stuff?

Like during the migration, I should say, to narrow it down. Like getting hit by cars? Is there like a spot on the map where it's like, holy shit, a bunch of ducks died right here. It's like the Bermuda Triangle for ducks, right? Yeah. That'd be interesting yeah how long did that that that goose live after the super long day

you know then does it just post up for a while is that the is that the last hurrah they did no they i mean they they do their migration real fast yeah and they take advantage of it and then they spend a lot of time resting and putting the fat stores back on. I got another one for you too. Predator swamping. You know what I'm talking about? There's like a reproductive strategy

where a vulnerable bird or any kind of thing, vulnerable species will synchronize birthing. Um, so that rather than staggering it out where predators can just like whittle away, whittle away, whittle away, whittle away. It just all happens at once.

Bam. Right. Yeah. And then you kind of overwhelm the predator base. And there's examples of with, with, I know with snow geese, the way they nest, that the Arctic foxes and whatnot will always whittle away at the edge. But it's just too much hits the ground all at once. And they can't, they'll never get them all.

But if you'd spread that same thing out over months, right? Predators would just be like keyed in on it constantly, constantly doing it. That could be interesting. Yeah, that would be. And then another thing that could be interesting is like why, what factors led to the great explosion in snow geese? That's a good one. Like what were the agricultural practices that changed that led to the snow goose explosion? And why did that become a thing of such concern to wildlife managers in the Arctic? I've actually been in touch with the guy that was waving the flag.

I did. I called him for an article I wrote on the website about snow geese that he was the guy waving the flag saying, hey, snow goose populations are about to explode. There's a lot of environmental differences. Get ready. And he said that 25 years before the conservation order actually got created. Yeah, that's a good one. Talking snow geese. I keep busy. Let us that's a good one. Talking to snow geese. I keep it busy.

Mm-hmm. Let us know how the dating goes. Okay. All right, Joyce, sing the national anthem. We should have kicked the show off with that, man. I didn't warm up. Okay. I'm a little rusty.

I'm out of practice. Did you want to talk about Pete really quick before we get on to... Oh! Yeah. Pete. For Pete's sake. Pete. Okay.

So our friend Pete Alonzo, speaking of baseball, our friend Pete Alonzo, Yeah. Yeah. Pete. For Pete's sake. Pete. Okay. Chester. So our friend Pete Alonzo, speaking of baseball, our friend Pete Alonzo. Go ahead, Chester. He hits dingers. He's a heck of a baseball player. Polar Bear Pete plays for the Mets. Yeah. He's the official baseball player of this podcast. Yeah. Do you know what position he plays for the Mets. Yeah. He's the official baseball player of this podcast. Yeah.

Do you know what position he plays for the Mets? Yeah, he plays first base. Nice! Thanks, Yanni. Steven Rinella! Ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding. Hey, man, I'm a loyal friend, man. First base.

I'll read, when I see an article pop up about Pete, I'll read it, and I'll send it to him. As though he didn't know about it. My grandmother sent... In case you didn't know, Pete, you had read it and I'll send it to him as though he didn't know about it. My grandmother sent- In case you didn't know, Pete, you had a good game last night. My grandmother sends me articles cut out in the newspaper about Pete. Pete. Just because we did that- That's funny.

Episode together. He's well known for a couple of home run derby wins. He can- He had a million bucks to pop, dude. That guy can hit the ball. When he gets where he wants it, he hits the ball. He tells me that to be a good hitter, you have to have a high ass. And if you look at him, he has a high ass.

Which means a strong buttocks. Yeah, his ass is positioned high on his body. And it's big. There's a lot of power in there. What I really like about watching him in the homeroom I've mentioned this before is like the zen space that you can see that he's

in. Just chilling and smiling and just swinging away as calm as can be. Everybody else looks like they're just going to smash the bat in their hands. They're holding it so tight and they've got beads of sweat coming down their face and they're just and pete's just that's a lot like yanni's way off bugle yeah and

he loves to hunt and fish maybe that has something to do with it maybe okay so what what is what's the the pete has an ask of everybody is it just about the all-star voting no yes okay yeah voting is open for the uh the all-star game hey guys what's up pete alonzo here i just want to say thank you so much for all the love that you guys have been giving us especially in the all-star voting. And as a thank you, yours truly, I'm going to be giving away jerseys, helmets, hats, tickets, and some BP passes. Take a picture of your vote

and timestamp it somehow. Make sure to just click the link in my bio. It'll take you right to the site, LFGM. What's LFGM mean, Phil? Uh, let's fucking go Mets. Is that what it is? Yeah.

It's naughty. Mets are having a hell of a season this year. Yeah, so do that because Pete's great. Steve, baby corn coming your way. Yeah, not bad. Did you eat your baby corn? I did. It's like a cousin of the pickled okra. Yeah, these come in the meat eater Bloody mary kit that

meat eater's selling on the website now i didn't know that i somehow never got i never got one either i got all the parts i just never got it packaged well you'll have to go to the meat eater store.com and get one you know what i basically now make i make a lot of, when I'm making, late I've been taking a lot of NA beer and adding not only Bloody Mary mix, but all the Bloody Mary fixings. I'm making a red beer with Bloody Mary fixings. What are your favorite fixings? I like how you said fixings.

Just like olives, pickled asparagus, whatever. It's like a crazy ass drink. It's like beer, Bloody Mary mix. Grilled cheese. And when you put all those, all that salty stuff in there, the fizz is bye-bye.

It's just gone. Are you putting cheese in? You gotta have a little bit of it. I haven't been grating any cheese there. I might start. All right, ready? I love Bloody Mary.

We're digging in now. Ready. What happens? We tried to have someone explain this before that didn't satisfy either of us. Oh, now the stakes are high. All right. I will do a better job. Here we go.

I'm going to paint a picture. You're in a duck blind. Okay. And someone shoots their shotgun six inches from your ear. What just happened to you? Well, a lot. Yeah. So gun bangs that loud.

Okay. If you think about, I talked about this a little bit in the Generous article that Sam put out on meateater.com here recently. I don't know if you've had a chance to peruse it. But we're just going to take it from scratch. Sure. Okay. So when you think about decibels, you hear decibel this, decibel that. Well, you think about it in terms of sound pressure level. And sound pressure is entering your ear at different intensities, right? So a gunshot like that. I honestly haven't

thought of that before. Well, there you go. So it really is, it is a sound pressure level. And so we'll take it from a physiology standpoint. So the acoustic wave at a sound, whatever sound pressure level enters your ear canal, hits your eardrum, vibrates your eardrum, which then vibrates the tiniest bones of your body, the ossicles, the smallest of which the stapes moves in and out of what we call the window into your cochlea, which is your hearing nerve, which is that little snail shell, two and a half turn that houses your hearing nerve where there's these delicate hearing fibers. Now, I think this is pretty cool. If you were to unroll that snail shell, it's like a piano keyboard. So the little hair cells that get hit first and the

hardest are coded for the highest pitches that you hear. And then as you move down toward the other end of the cochlea. Inside the coil. Inside the coil, then you start getting down to the bass tones. So it's a tonotopic organization like that. I want to ask a clarifying question about the pressure. Okay. Early weird joke about turkey gobbles way off that's creating a sound pressure it's moving through the atmosphere level moving through the atmosphere in the form of a sound

wave i guess i guess i never thought about what sound is but i never thought it makes total sense but i never thought about it being that way and you think about the sound waves like when we're at the lake and you can hear conversations that are being had at a campsite across the lake because the water there's nothing to impede the flow of those sound waves moving across the water as opposed to if you're in the woods and you've got all these different baffles from the trees and the vegetation that's going to interfere with how well that sound wave travels to your ear the last morning of my turkey hunting season i was on the edge of a lake and it about drove me nuts

because there were turkeys gobbling on all sides of that lake. And because the sound was traveling so well, I could not tell. Well, you can't tell. What side of the lake they were on?

Do you remember trying to pinpoint a blue grouse on a lake? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we walked to the other side of the lake. And he still sounded across the lake. Yeah, that's right.

He's back where we were. Well, and I'm also thinking from your hearing test we took, if one ear is better than the other, you're going to have even more trouble pinpointing where that sound's coming from. So that was also to your disadvantage. I'm sorry I just outed your hearing. No, that's all right. That's what we're here for. So it's cool to me that the hearing nerve is, that's all right. That's what we're here for. So it's cool to me that the hearing nerve is coded like that for pitch because then, you know, like I've said

before, we hear with our brains because it doesn't matter if those hair fibers, what has to happen is then that they then have to transduce the sound, send it all the way up to your brain where it's then processed by your auditory cortex, which is in each temporal lobe. And the auditory cortex is also organized tonotopically. So there's a surface area of your brain that is dedicated to processing and interpreting all these different pitches. So for that gunshot, it's coming in hard and fast, and it's blasting those really high pitches first. And depending on how loud it is, it's getting the hair cells farther and farther down the cochlea. But that's why we see

that high-pitch hearing loss happen first as a result of noise exposure, most typically. In hunters, we'll see what we... Because the pressure is damaging to the things. If you picture it like, almost like the little,

what is that right there I'm looking at? Turkey feathers. Turkey feathers. If you look at the, that's a very cool turkey feather photo. Thank you. I took that. But as you, if you think about these like.

Grace is referring to a very detailed look at the end of turkey feathers. It almost looks abstract. Looks like little hairs. Yeah. But so you have these cilia and stereocilia, these tiny hairs that are like this. And they're waiting on a sound to hit them so that then that activates an action potential with the synapse that sends the sound to your brain. Well...

You know what's interesting about all that? Yeah. All that wiring in your brain is... And then it's like... Then that is somehow lining up with learned experience. Yeah. Where you assign a... Right?

It's doing all this, and then instantly assigning memory where the minute someone talks your brains are like oh they're over there it's bob right he's irritated yeah i mean absolutely and so when you blast those hair cell fibers and they they kind of kill over a little bit and so you know how sometimes you'll leave a concert your ears are ringing or in this situation the pit blonde you might walk, your ears might be ringing. And if you're lucky, after a few days or a few hours, those hair cells will recover and your hair will come back. You'll think, oh, I'm great.

That's them standing back up again. Yes. It's called a temporary threshold shift. No way. And so those hair cells will kind of stand back up again, but you've undoubtedly weakened them. But when they're bent over, what is the ringing? That's a great question. So because our brains are programmed to be looking for this stimulation that's coming in through the auditory system.

So when you have a very discrete pitch, like from a gunshot that's been damaged, even temporarily, the brain is receiving great input from the hair cell fibers right next door to the ones that have been damaged. And so it's getting all this great stimulation, and it's searching for a signal that's not coming. And it manufactures this ringing. The best way I know to provide an analogy to this is like a phantom limb syndrome. Someone loses a limb and they perceive pain in a limb that's no longer there. Your brain is searching for sensory input that's not coming, which is why when I've written about, I've got a good article on tinnitus. I'm kind of proud of it. But in that article, it talks about how sometimes

in audiology, an audiologist will work to program into whatever ear level devices you're wearing, a background noise that's pitch matched and loudness matched to your ringing if it's a pervasive problem and that provides the stimulation that's missing right at that pitch tells your brain to calm down tinnitus is is is a fascinating topic and we could spend are you pretty committed to being tinnitus other than tinnitus tomato tomato and oh is it is it okay it is okay okay most of them i said tinnitus, tomato, tomato. Oh, is it okay? It is okay. Because I've always said tinnitus. My doctor said tinnitus. I said, like, I thought it was tinnitus.

He goes, I don't know what it is. The academic medical community, like if I'm at continuing ed lectures, that sort of thing, everybody talks about tinnitus. But for whatever reason in the public realm, you hear tinnitus a lot. I'm switching. You know, either way. Either way. But anyway, you know, the limbic system is very involved in regulating ringing. If you have it pervasively, you know, you'll notice that stress, caffeine, salt, lack of sleep.

What's the limbic system? The limbic system is, you could kind of equate it to almost like a nervous system or an emotional regulating system. It's the system that like when your cortisol levels are amped and you're really stressed, there's an internal gating system that your brain is working to try to overcome those things. And when that system is taxed because of stress, because of lack of sleep, anxiety, too much caffeine, that's when you might notice that that ringing hits like a fever pitch. And some people are like, oh, that sounds like voodoo, whatever. I don't believe in meditation. But that's why some of the psychological side of tinnitus is the best management. Because

once you learn that there are these coping strategies and you kind of pay attention, stay in tune with what's happening with your body and kind of where you are in life. That sometimes if you are able to get a few really good nights sleep and just drink a bunch of water and maybe lay off the alcohol and caffeine, you'll get some relief in that ringing. You know, now that I've started to struggle with it, and it hasn't been bad for months for whatever reason. It's self-perpetuating in a way because it'll get real quiet like it might just be you're out hunting or whatever listening for gobbles right and then you're like oh wow there it is because we're in a quiet place and then that shit then your brain's like why is it there why is it there why is it there and then it becomes deafening yeah and you're like hold on it wasn't

deafening a minute ago it's only deafening now because i'm so like fixated on it and then i hear it for days. Yes. When you tune into it, I mean, truly, the focus and the attention. And so if you can mentally get yourself into a mental space where you can distract yourself from it with either a masking noise or play some soft music in the background, something to get your mind off of it, it truly does help. That's where I'm at. Scientifically helps. of it, it truly does help. That's where I'm at. I've come to the point where now I have like in my little memory bank, I have places and context I know where I can be

in and I know it won't be there. Oh really? Yeah, like you get in the car and go drive it's not there. Well you think about it, you've got road noise. There's just enough noise from the road and the truck. Is it bad enough that you'll go I can hear it right now. But will you ever go take a step to make it go away? No. So it's never as bad enough that you'll go I can hear it right now. But will you ever go take a step to make it go away? No. So it's never as bad

enough that you're like, I'm going to go for a drive. No. Okay. Can you pass the little pickled corns there? I've had some people that are so debilitated by it. I mean, they are they're not sleeping. I mean, it's really affecting their lives. So these fancy new earpieces

you got us though. Yeah. They got that little background noise. The background sounds. And that's because this particular product I've got you trying is, um, it may buy a hearing aid company. And so it's using a hearing aid chip. You notice we connected through the hearing aid settings,

not the Bluetooth settings. And so in the hearing aid world, we often use those settings to program in that background noise. So it might just help you with focus. If you don't have ringing, if you just want to go into a Zen space in your office and not only have the earplugs in but block out. But if you have ringing in the ears, it can be a tool. That's exactly what it's there for. It's on the hearing aid chip.

What does OdoPro mean, your company? Odo is the medical prefix for ear. An otologist is an ear doctor. And then pro is professional protection. Yeah, I was tracking that part. Yeah. It came to me when I was sitting in church, so I decided it was divinely inspired. That's good.

I get questions about it all the time. Or it could be that you weren't paying attention in church. Well, yeah. Don't tell my pastor. Hey, it's gone really well. I'm here with you now. So maybe it was a divine inspiration. Maybe it was.

So now that we... Is there more you want to say about what goes on? Because that was my number one dying question. I'm satisfied with the explanation now. But what is it when you get like the wham? Yeah. But that's part two. There's a part two then. Sure. A couple days later, you're like the wham yeah but that's part two there's a part two then sure

a couple days later you're like oh it went away um but but eventually it kind of creep up on you but eventually it kind of didn't right like you do that enough times throughout your life or you shoot a suppressor and you're not being careful or you're a little kid and you're not burning up you mean a break i'm sorry break or you're a little kid and you're burning up those. You mean a break? I'm sorry, a break. Or you're a little kid and your mom and dad give you those little milk cartons full of 22 shells. And it's just like incessant all day, 22 shooting until you run out. Man, we never wore hearing protection shooting 22s. It was like as unheard of as having a bike helmet. Why would you do it?

Yeah. But this is why I'm hopeful about the future of where we're going with hearing health. Because all of us sitting around this table did not grow up with hearing protection, but we're thinking about it. And we're sure as heck thinking about it for our kids. When we were going to the range today, this is how trained people are. When we were going to the range today, we got flooded out. Yeah.

My kid, I was going to bring him with. I had my older boy with me. I was going to bring the other ones, but they were still sleeping. He said, oh, do you have my headphones? I was like, man, that's not a sentence I would have ever said when I was 12 years old. Good for him. I mean, truly. Yeah, that's a good point.

Because noise damage is cumulative. I like to equate it to sun exposure. Like, I wish I could go back to my, I hate to even admit this now, but like my time I spent in the early nineties in a tanning bed, the amount of money I'm spending now to try to reverse that damage with all the potions and lotions and facials and all that stuff, you know? You've been getting stuff cut off yourself? No, I just mean like, you know, trying to smooth out the wrinkles and keep the skin clear and all that stuff because all the sunspots and sun damage from baking in the sun. But you know, at the time I might get a little sunburn, but then it goes away. And you think, oh, it's

fine. But it's damaging. And it's damage that might not show up until later. And your hearing is a lot the same. You know, our regulatory systems, you've got NIOSH and you've got OSHA. I don't know how much you want to get into that. But NIOSH does the research, makes the recommendations, and then OSHA is what enforces the workplace guidelines. OK. And so, you know, with both of those systems, there's a big problem because they're assuming that all of your noise exposure is during an eight-hour workday. So they give you these doses and, like, time allowances for certain noise levels. But they don't take into account that you may go home and mow the grass or go hear some live music or just blast the radio in your

car, you know, or sleep with a sound machine on blasting, like you're in like the rainforest cafe or something, you know? And so all of this is a lawnmower bad enough to do something. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, sure. It depends on the lawnmower. I mean, my dad was cutting grass with the big tractor, you know, and sit on the tractor idling and like nothing in your ears. Imagine a weed blower has got to be up there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And that's like that.

That noise is kind of like it gets to you. Right. And a chainsaw gets to you. Well, it'll get to you more and more as your hearing gets worse and worse because an interest of really interesting thing. One of us talked about this earlier. The more hearing loss you have, the less tolerance you have for loud sounds. Oh, really? So I used to be able to stand front center at my favorite shows in Nashville, and I was

just enjoying it. Nothing ever sounded distorted, or I didn't get that buzzy, rattly feeling, but I get that now. So I wear my little custom music plugs. That's so surprising that it makes you, because you think you'd just be zoned out, like you wouldn't even know it was there. That's why when you are ready to seek hearing aids or hearing technology, I don't even want to call them hearing aids anymore because they've come so far with what they can do. But that's why it's really important to not just walk into a

Costco or a Sam's. You need to find a qualified credentialed person to help you with this, not only as an ongoing relationship that requires some tuning and it's just not a one-size-fits-all, but it gets really tricky because your dynamic range, your tolerable range of hearing gets smaller and smaller. And we're trying to make things sound naturally while using a lot of compression to fit everything in that window. And that's tricky to do. We moved into a house, the first house my wife and I bought, it was like the whole ground floor was, there's no walls, no divisions. Like, like total open floor, all the way open.

Yeah. And man, my stress level with the kids. Echoing. Like you've been there trying to cook dinner and you got some music on and they're like fighting about something or banging around, throwing balls around. Yeah.

It would make me go mad. I bet. And the people around me weren't going mad. Do you know what I mean? But like, it was like, like a cacophony, you know? Well, I feel like for me personally, I've also lost some tolerance, not necessarily only of just really loud sounds, but of being able to focus in the midst of a lot of noisy chaos going on around me.

Like I used to be able to study, you know, with friends in the apartment, music and people doing this, and I could zone in and focus. And now my ability to focus in the midst of a lot of that chaos has really decreased, which is interesting. You got some frontal lobe executive function. But is that necessarily related to hearing loss or is that just related to your brain changes over time? I think it's both. It's like what gives you grumpy people,umpy people. Right. Grumpy old people. Grumpy old people.

Yeah. My dad jerks his hearing aids out. The grandkids come around. I've got three kids. My sister's got three kids. They're running around and he loves them. But oh man, I mean, he jerks those hearing aids out and puts them on the table. I'm like, dad, come on, come on.

So, because he feels like it's easier for him to deal without the aids. Because he just wants them to be quiet. And instead of asking them to be quiet, which he knows is not going to work, he just takes his hearing aids off or mutes them or starts streaming a ball game through them instead of listening to the children. You know, survival mechanisms. 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 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. What else do you want to know? I could talk about this stuff forever. Explain what the long-term damage looks like. I mean, if all these things are physical structures. Right, sure. You can, presumably, you could do a, what do you call it when someone dies?

An autopsy. You cut them apart. Yeah. You do an autopsy. Well, I don't know. I say presumably, I don't know the answer to this. Could you do an autopsy on a dead person who had just was exposed like outrageous levels of loud noise and had hearing damage? Could you do an autopsy and say like through a microscope or whatever?

Be like, oh, this person suffered damage from loud noise. Or is it that you can't because you can't see the inner workings of the brain? Well, I think there could be even a more interesting way to look at it. And that gives me a great segue. This kind of ties into how I, why I started OtoPro to begin with. So I was working clinically and my clinical niche had kind of evolved to become an area where I was working with a lot of people who had dementia and hearing loss. And I was looking at how there was this negative synergy between the two. There was a lot of good research coming out from Johns Hopkins, University of Colorado at the time, looking at what's happening in your brain with auditory deprivation and untreated hearing loss.

We're seeing this negative synergy. And I see that firsthand in clinic. I only heard about that just recently. Oh, yeah? The link between hearing loss and dementia. Yeah, hearing loss and dementia. So I started kind of writing and putting together some articles for other audiologists, taking basically a lit review of what we know right now in research and how you can apply this to your clinical practice. And so then when our University Medical Center in Mississippi was chosen as a data collection site for this study out of Johns Hopkins, looking at this topic, it was like I was the prime person to go work on this study. So did that. And so we're looking at, this particular study was looking at whether

hearing aid intervention could delay the onset or slow the rate of decline for dementia. And for example, I'll tell you like it's, both of those things were positively correlated with the degree of untreated hearing loss. So with a severe untreated hearing loss, we were seeing an onset of dementia that was 3.2 years earlier than it would have been otherwise. And five times faster rate of decline than compared to the normal control. Is it like maybe you're going to get to this, but is it just because your brain's not like that level of activity isn't occurring in your brain? Well, there's two things, two primary processes that really stuck out to me. One was called cross-modal plasticity. The other was cortical resource reallocation.

Well, I'll break that down quickly. So one thing is when you are struggling to hear because you're not getting that auditory signal. Think about yourself at Seth's upcoming wedding reception. So you're trying to talk to somebody, there's a band playing, there's music, you are focusing in so hard to try to understand what that person's saying in the moment that there's less cognitive reserve left over to recall that information later. So you're much more likely to remember my name if I am introduced to you during this quiet room podcast and it's easy listening environment than you are when you are focused in and just trying to know in that moment. So there's less room for later recall of information. So that's one thing that's

playing in when people are struggling to hear, they have a harder time remembering what they heard. Oh yeah, all their energy's going to like... All their energy's going to that. But to your point of how could we look at the physical aspect of what's happening, it was the University of Colorado that started looking at this, and this was the cross-modal plasticity thing. So we could put somebody in a functional MRI that had a bunch of hearing loss, or even with mild to moderate hearing loss, play an auditory signal, and then give some visual stimuli.

And we start to see that the areas of the brain coded- Be more specific. What is the audio and what is the visual? I'd have to look back at the study to tell you exactly what the audio was. I don't know if they were playing their favorite music or if they were playing clicks and beeps, but- And the visual would be, you're not watching a movie, you're just seeing something. You're just seeing something.

You're just seeing something. Like images of some sort. But the moral is, we're starting to see where if the area of the brain that's coded to process sound is not being used to process sound, it's going to get recruited by other sensory systems to process that input. So we would start to see your auditory cortex light up in response to a visual stimulus. Think about how people who have lost their vision have a higher alertness for their hearing, or people who are deaf might have a higher visual acuity. You think about the ability to read Braille. And it's because the brain is able to devote more surface area to those processes because it's not being used for what it was intended. So the neural connections start to reorganize. And so we could look at that and say, okay, how much has your

brain reorganized because of the sensory deprivation? And so anyway, I could go on forever. But hit me with why that might lead to why the hearing loss could- With dementia? Yeah. You explained it with the term that like you're working hard to hear everything you're not processing but what is the what is the other one what is how does that relate to hearing that reorganization relate to hearing like you're robbed like parts of your brain are robbing from other parts parts your brain are robbing from other parts and that's part of what they're still trying to distinguish is exactly how those changes in neural processes

are relating to that breakdown long term like other, something that you need might be like neglected or reallocated. That's right. That's right. And so those are just two of the main points that I find really cool about how your brain is responding to that lack of input. And then that's why when, if you have a really, a big hearing loss and you put on these amplified earplugs or hearing aids for the first time, it all just might sound like noise. And you have to give your brain time, almost like physical therapy for your brain. It's like auditory training, just like learning to blow a duck call. You got it. You got to give your brain time to readjust so that things can start to sound normal again. I'm going to tell how we met.

Please do. Okay. So the reason Grace is sitting here is because I don't know who arranged this. I'll tell you. You came in to do a company-wide fitting. Yeah. And I don't know who told me. Someone was like, hey, if you want to get some custom earplugs,

go to the downstairs at like noon or whatever and it sounds interesting so i went down and you and i got to shooting the shit about hearing protection and then like two hours later hey you want to come on the podcast you should come on the podcast and tell everybody about what happens when this happens yeah so but back to how we met we met like how did it come to be that you came to do like forever like who invited you to come do be that you came to do, like, for, like, who invited you to come do that? This business has been so relational driven for me.

So because of all this research I was looking at, I wanted my own family to have good hearing protection. So I started going to people's houses after work and fitting them. You got paranoid?

Yeah. Well, I was like, I want my own dad to be wearing good hearing protection, but he would not come into the medical clinic to do it. So I said, well, I'll just go I want my own dad to be wearing good hearing protection, but he would not come into the medical clinic to do it. So I said, well, I'll just go to you. And then word started spreading.

And then this was never part of the business plan. I never set out to create this national network of audiologists and be on this crusade for hearing protection. But it's organically gotten to that point. And it has been wild and amazing to just be in this journey. But we met through Chef Jean-Paul, your guy that does Duck Camp Dinners, the show. It's a great show. And I was introduced to him through this guy, Josh Raggio, who lives down in my neck of the woods. Raggio Custom Calls is his duck call, like these couture duck calls. They're like art.

They're amazing. That's the first time anyone's ever used that word on this podcast. I've never even heard that word. Which word? Couture duck calls. They're like art. They're amazing. That's the first time anyone's ever used that word on this podcast. I've never even heard that word. Which word? Couture. It's like, you'd be like, what would be a couture brand? I don't know. Like a high-end designer?

Yeah, like who makes like really expensive- Does it mean like bougie kind of? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Beautiful, bougie, one of a kind, couture, made for you, custom couture. You have couture hearing protection. Yeah, like you bought a, I don't know. I think, in my mind, I feel it would be applied to like handbags. Yeah.

Right? Like very expensive hands. Isn't there a handbag company named Couture? And there's Juicy Couture, right? There's Juicy Couture. There's Juicy Couture, but I would not call that couture. No. How do you spell it?

What is C-O-U-T-U-R-E. Yeah, juicy couture being not couture. Right. That's being juicy trashy. You said it, not me. What's funny about you making the comparison to handbags is her and I were talking about Raggio custom calls earlier, and I said, they are like handbags for dudes. You did say that. He did say that. But so I met Raggio at a Ducks Unlimited banquet back when I

was first getting started. And I'm like, hey, I'll just throw up a table and go talk to people about hearing protection at this DU banquet. Oh, no, no, no, back up. Is this still how we met? Yeah. Okay. So that's how you got tied into the call? Yeah. So you're still laying out the flow. You're laying out the flow. I met the duck call guy at the DU banquet. And how'd you wind up at the DU banquet? Because I'd started this little Odo Pro business and people were interested.

And I was like, well, I'll just go set up a little table and talk to people that come to the Ducks Unlimited banquet about how they can protect their hearing. And did you bring your little squirt gun and everything for doing the... Absolutely. And I did it right there in the middle of the banquet. And so he came up... So what she does is she a caulk gun yeah sticks that thing where it has no business going it's like i'm on instagram i'm gonna put a picture up where someone took a video of it happening to me and i'm gonna make a screen grab of the point where it got to where she wants it

to be to start filling your ear full of cock to get an impression. I don't know if you're encouraging people to come to me for my services. That's how you know it works. Let me tell you something. A while ago, I don't want to name names, but a while ago, Yanni and I had the opportunity to get some custom. Go ahead and name a name.

No, I can name your name. Do you remember you were somewhere? They didn't do that. They didn't do the deep dive. On your ears? It's like getting a COVID test for your ear. Yeah, I was going to say, if you had one of the early COVID tests where it felt like they were tickling your brain through your nose.

That's Grace's clock gun. This is similar to that, but through your ear. Now, I'll say. She's taking a deep. She puts in a, what is that shit? What are you putting in there? It's like a two-part epoxy type. Goes in soft, wait a couple minutes, pulls out, and it makes an impression, makes a very

detailed impression. Right. But she likes to, the impression is. It's deep. Yeah, it's deep. And it needs to go past the second bend of your ear canal because I want to make sure we're not shooting the sound right into your ear canal wall. I want to point that sound

right to your eardrum. Yep. So it's not muffly. And it's actually more comfortable when it's fixed in. And if you go run around, it stays in. It stays in.

Explain that more. I think you just said something that made sense to me because we've been having this conversation. Yeah. But if someone's listening, it's like,

what are you saying when you're saying I want to shoot that sound not just at your... At your ear canal wall. So most human ears have two bends. There's a first bend where it curves around, and then there's a second bend, which is why you don't want to put Q-tips in there,

because you're pushing stuff around the second bend. That's where it builds up. And some people are more bendy. That's where I get the most wax. Q-tip needs to hire a better lobby. Q-tips. Dude, people beat up on Q-tips, but they're still Q-tips. They're still Q-tip needs to hire a better lobby. Q-tips. Dude, people beat up on Q-tips, but they're still Q-tips. They're still Q-tips.

I use them to put some makeup on. What about using hydrogen peroxide? In your ear? That's okay. That's good. As long as you don't have a hole in your eardrum or anything, because that could get kind of painful. No. But it works.

Have you ever done that? Yeah. Do what? You put hydrogen peroxide in your ear and it bubbles up and it just basically then you take a syringe and squirt some water in there and it flushes everything out. Oh man, I go down to the doctor to have that. Just be gentle. Be careful. I go down

periodically and have these chunks of shit that looks like the end of a pencil eraser. About that hard. Yep. Anyhow, what were you saying Justin? Yeah. Oh, wasn't it? But to Giannis' point. Yeah. So, you know, Justin? Oh, it wasn't. But to Giannis' point, so if I don't accommodate the bends of your ear canal by making a really deep impression and getting that full picture, then the sound is going to come through the earplug.

You mean the sound that you want to come in? Right. It's going to come through the earplug. And then if the earplug dead ends into your ear canal wall, that's going to sound very good that's like putting a speaker and facing it toward the wall we got a backup because i feel like people might be confused you were fitting us for hearing protection that is it's like it uh it's it's flush to your ear the ones that what are these called that i have those are the the Soundgear Phantom. Okay.

It made a mold, but they're like little headphones. Yep. But earplugs. But earplugs. So when you say the sound, you're talking about that you can turn it on and control it with your phone and turn the volume up so that you can converse and be like, hey, here comes some ducks at 10 o'clock. And there's lots of different products. I mean, one thing I definitely want your listenership to know is that I am by no means bound to one brand or manufacturer. The big backpack full of loot I brought for you guys, there were like four different companies represented in that bag.

So I'm not doing like a big push for one product specifically. In fact, you know, I want a bunch of you guys to try this product. And then if it's not doing everything you want it to do, let's swap it out and try something else. I mean, OdoPro is basically like an expert brokerage and customer service agency for your hearing long term. So like you have the SoundGear Phantom. If something breaks, you don't have to call that 800 number.

You shoot me a text or an email and myself or maybe Jennifer or somebody else on the team is going to reach out and be like, what's going on? I'll email you a prepaid UPS label. We'll get it turned around SAP. Really? So, OdoPro was built on a customer service basis where I am researching the globe for the coolest, best product. I brought a couple of things for you guys to try that aren't even rated in the U.S. system for noise reduction yet. But I think they're pretty promising and you might really like them.

How often do you go do like you did for us here? How often do you go to a place? Man, I've been to some cool places. And in reading your book, I kept thinking about this one really cool place where parents are raising their kids like ideally. But anyway, I've traveled to some of the coolest gun clubs, shooting clubs. Groups will call me. And, of course, I do some quick back of the napkin math. And I'm like, hey, do you have at least this many people interested?

I need a minimum sales amount to justify travel. Is it all gun people or is it other people too? No, it's guns, it's shooting, but it's also motorcycles, music. I work with a lot of musicians. Because of my training in Nashville, I've got a lot of experience with in-ear monitors. And I can build out different cool products. Like for one of your camera guys, I built out basically a dual driver in-ear monitor that can plug into his camera. But then also putting Matt Gagnon.

They're sweet. Yeah, y'all. I didn't say it right. No, you're fine. Also, because that's one thing you see drive camera guys nuts is going through the woods with the wires. Yeah. They're like hung up like three alder bushes back. But then like this other product I made for you

that has this specialty filter in it, I put that into his product as well so that he can hear what you're saying in real life. He can hear leaves rustling, but then he's also plugged into his camera. Dude, you got to make a product called the camera dude. Let's call it the camera dude. I mean, this is something that I'm just working with

with my manufacturer to just custom build cool things. And then I was complaining. Another thing that prompted us to have you come on and talk about your services is I was saying how I had just gone to order a good swim ear plug. And what I'm after in a swim, anyone that suffers from where you spend time in the water and then you have water in your ear and it dries you a little bonkers. Or I've had it, and I don't know if it's ever happened to people,

but someone like kicks a fin close to your head or does a fast movement close to your head and pushes a wall of water. It's painful. Well, and your ear canals are quite bendy, as we found out with your ear mold impression process. So water can get trapped back there. It's a little harder for it to run back out.

So I went online and bought some kind of like Joe Blow $19 thing, and it made a big difference. But every time I get out of the water, I'm missing one or both both of them and i would just tie them to the back of my mask and so i'd usually like recover them somehow but they were never where they were when i started yeah but i was having positive like i was um you call it body surfing with my kids right i had them in and um made a big difference because i'm normally scared to do that kind of stuff because that sort of thing gets water in my ears but you made me a souped up one of those. Yeah. And they're corded.

And now that I've got your ears molded in a digital file of that, if heaven forbid you lose them, you just shoot me a message and I'll get you another set made. I don't have to mold your ears again. So that's nice. It's good stuff. But you know, one thing, you know, these custom products, I'm a big believer in custom for hearing protection, not just for comfort, but to achieve that perfect acoustic seal. Because any air leakage, the sound waves can travel through.

So to really protect you, I want you in custom ideally. But I also recognize that an entry price point of a couple of hundred bucks is not accessible to a lot of people. So one thing that I really took into account after meeting with you guys back here in March, I started really thinking like, how do I create something that can be more accessible? You know, we said, my job is to give you the most realistic tools that you'll actually wear. I'm not going to convince you to not shoot or hunt, nor do I want to.

And you're not going to wear a full body armor to like have ideal hearing protection. So I started thinking and I decided I can put these filters that are in this product I made for you, where you can hear soft, medium sounds great, then it blocks the blast of the gun. But those are out the door, 330 some odd bucks. I'm going to take that exact filter. This is going to be available beginning of next month on my website.

And I'm putting those into multiple size triple flange sleeves to make a universal fit version that's just 50 bucks. And then their big plus, they are upgradable to custom later. So you could go to my website and you could order a custom fit sleeve later if you want to, if you want to save up some money to do it down the road. How do they get it? How do you get it? Molded. Yeah. You send that kit in the mail? No, no, because you can't do it yourself like I did it on you.

No, I wouldn't. So I've got this growing network. Right now we're up to about 160 providers across the country, and we're sourcing new clinics daily where I work with local audiologists to you down the street from wherever you live. And I talk with them, develop a relationship so that they know exactly how I want that molding process done. So we can communicate. You can check out on the website, and then I send you the UPS label and facilitate that whole appointment locally for you to get your ears molded. One of the biggest reasons I wanted to get

nice costumes, which I now I've owned for two hours. I'm extremely lazy. I've gotten to the point where I'll go to the range and bring headphones, but I just won't do it hunting.

Maybe duck hunting. If I know it's going to be a stellar day, I'll do it, but it still drives me nuts. And I'll put headphones on. I've never found something that inspires me to do it. And my buddy Cal got some and he said, once he had them and he's like, man, all that hassle, I'm definitely gonna wear them now. Some pragmatic side of him. Like a motivating factor.

Now, anytime you do anything with Cal, he's got those things hanging around his neck and he sticks them in. I just won't do it. Last year, Garrett there rang it. Did he ring your bell? He's got a little, what's it called?

You had a big bastard. Fat bastard break on there. Fat bastard break on. Shot three times. I kept thinking he was done shooting and he kept shooting. We were like right underneath a pine tree. I think it echoed off that pine tree. Oh, and I was sitting too close to you. And I didn't want to plug my ears because I was looking through my binoculars.

We both had our ear pro just sitting on our backpacks. But it was a typical thing. You're like, oh, we got to move now. We don't have time to put this in. Those days are over for me now. And you know, as I'm like, I now consider myself your personal hearing coach. So you're welcome.

Here we go. But as I'm talking to you guys, I'm really going to encourage you to try to wear these as much as you can just to get used to them so that when you put them on and you're in the moment and you're in the hunt and you need to focus, I don't want you to have to remember in that moment, oh, I got to put my ears in before I shoot. Because you're not going to remember. the person conducting the hearing test says, I'm a left-handed shooter, I'll point out, they say that in your right ear, which makes sense because that's the one tipped toward the muzzle, that I have hearing damage in my right ear that is the type of hearing damage associated with loud noises. So I know that I've whacked out my own ear. Yeah, absolutely.

And I know that other people hear gobbles better than I do. A lot better. Well, I'll be curious to see, like, you know, I've thrown this really high-end technology at you guys to try as a starting point. Yeah. But you might find that if you don't want to have to remember to charge something, then that's something we're going to be talking about, like how these different features work for you, because I may need to swap it out for a simpler battery operated version. Or, you know, there's, it's not a one size fits, like, you know, I don't want these listeners to be like, oh, I want whatever Chester has, or I want whatever Steve has, because different people are going to have different adoption rates for different technologies. I got an apology I got to make to you.

Okay. I wanted mine red on the right. Do you remember this? And I said, because it'll be like I'm a boat, red right returning. Do you know I was wrong? It's red right from the person looking at it. Ah. It's not. Stage right versus. Yeah. Uh-huh.

So your boat, if I'm the boat, the red would be on my left. And then you're looking at me and you think, right? Yeah. That's one of those situations where ignorance is bliss, Steve. Just go with red-right. Red-right. One of mine's red, one's blue. I look, I'm like, red-right. I put that in my ear and I know where the other one goes.

I went with red-right, too. Oh, you did? I did, too. Yeah, a lot of you guys did red-blue. A lot of them did orange. I just did both of them the same color, I did too. Yeah, a lot of you guys did red-blue. A lot of them did orange. I just did both of them the same color, I think. You can't physically put the right one in the left ear. I mean, you're going to be trying for a while. Just you did the same color? Yeah.

That's so stupid. He did both red. I'll tell you why. This guy's never going to figure it out. I'll tell you why. I lose things a lot, and I just wanted two things that i could see i feel like the red sticks out a little more than the blue well you're gonna be fiddling around by the time you get those in the animal's gonna be gone you can just look and be like oh that one's

right that one's left that might be a product you want to work into your the 50 version because the one i used to use a lot as a guide is i had those Howard Light, the band that would just sit on my neck. And they're just those little foamies. And then in the moment, you can just pop them in real quick. Another buddy of mine has the little foamies that are on the cord and he ties them into his sunglasses

that he's always wearing them. Yeah, but Grace isn't big into the little foamies. No, I mean, if that's all you have, they can protect you really well. that he's always wearing them. Grace isn't big into the little foamies. No. I mean, if that's all you have, they can protect you really well, but it's just nobody wears them correctly. If I see someone wearing foamies correctly, it's like I want to go give them a high five.

Listen, I've been preaching and carrying on your message about foamies since we last hung out. I bet you I've taught at least a dozen people how to properly insert a foamy now. I love that. Because truly, at the end of the day, when people contact me through my website or social whatever, and if they're just not going to purchase anything else, then you know what?

I'll at least show you how to wear foam earplugs correctly. And then eventually, when you're ready, you're going to come back and we'll work something out. But my job is to help people protect their hearing. Give everybody a hot tip right now. Help them out. They're listening. You're going to roll up that foam earplug to be just as narrow and skinny as you can.

Got it. Tight. Tight. You're going to pull back on the back of your ear to straighten out your ear canal and then put it in just as far as you can stand it. You should like cough a little bit in the back of your throat. Like it's a Q-tip. Like, or not, because you would never do that with a Q-tip.

But so far you're wondering like, will I be able to grab the tip of it to pull it back out? You will. You will. I know, but in my head I'm always like, am I going to lose it in there? But the thing is, you got to be patient. You can't just let go real quick.

You got to hold it in that position to let it fully expand so that it'll stay put. Because with those foamies, as you move your jaw around, as you mount your gun, you're moving your head around, it's going to wiggle its way out. It's constantly kind of moving in there. It's amazing. The difference when you do it right versus how I used to do it. Yeah. Well, yeah, I always do it in a way that as soon as I take one step, it's gone. The only problem with that is you do not have enough time to put those in in most applications in hunting. Unless you're like duck hunting, you can like plan ahead.

But you don't want to blow a duck call in solid earplugs, right? I mean, Sean's like, no. You can't tell what's going on. Well, yeah, you want to be able to hear your duck call. And so even with these electronics where I get the best response from my duck hunters with these electronics. Because they can still hear. Because they can still hear, but you still have to practice.

Like some of my best duck calling clients have coached people to record themselves calling with and without the hearing protection in. Because we talked about this a little bit earlier. It's almost like a musical instrument. I can play my eighth grade piano recital piece from just muscle memory. But if I'm learning a new song, it's auditory. You know, you're really paying attention to how it sounds. And with a lot of duck callers, it's a mix of those two things. And so you're, you really need to get the muscle memory part down so that, I mean, while you're still going to hear it through the earplugs, it's not, it's never going to sound the same. And that's a, I mean, that's something that,

that was a way that I got to be not just like a tolerable or decent duck caller, but to get to be a real advanced duck caller is to record yourself and hear yourself from a different perspective because it's never the same as how it sounds right here. It's the same thing with playing music. Yeah. Yeah. You got to record yourself, listen to it back. And by the way, duck calls can get up to 120 decibels. So, and when you talk about the- You can damage your ears blowing a duck call?

Absolutely. I'm sure I have. I mean, I think duck hunters are some of the most at risk because you are, you're down in those, sometimes like a metal pit blind, you're blowing duck calls and then you're shooting a lot. And somebody's all of a sudden shooting over your head. Very close to somebody.

Yeah. Yeah. Shooting a gun. Yeah somebody's all of a sudden shooting over your head. Very close to somebody. Yeah. Yeah. Grace, tell us how bad my hearing is and how good Seth's hearing is. All right. Your hearing. We did a quick test before the podcast started. I'm not going to say I was surprised by your hearing test results, though.

Honestly. I mean, you've got... As a 44-year-old male that's done some shooting and some construction. All right. I'll show everyone. All right. This is Giannis' hearing test. Oh, that dips way low.

Wow. We're just going to assume that you've signed all the HIPAA releases and I can talk about your medical hearing on the podcast. But you want everything to be above that black horizontal line you see there. And this is an audiogram. It's arranged from left to right, bass to treble, like a piano keyboard. Top of the graph is really soft sounds. And then it gets louder and louder as you move down the graph. So these are your hearing thresholds, the softest sounds that you could detect were present. And so you can see in your left ear, which is blue, in some of these higher pitches.

Oh, his shooting ear is way down. His shooting ear is way down. And those are the higher pitches. Yeah, and we would call this a noise notch from shooting, where those are the hair cells that we talked about earlier that have been the most damaged. And you've got some That's so wrong.

You might have to edit that out. That was so wrong. You don't even try to be politically correct. It's interesting though that he goes back up. Like it drops down. That's the notch component.

So a lot of times with a blast or like if a musician has like a big feedback exposure, it'll present as a notch. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

And you'll see a little bit of recovery like this. Let's see Seth's little version of little ears there. So the left one is worse than the right. The left is worse than the right. The right just barely breaks the line. This should be a way where you can prove how much shooting you do. All right. This is Seth.

Ooh. Look at that. No wonder he hears those gobbles. Beautiful. Right there is where I hear the gobbles, where that one goes up. That middle point. Seth can hear a gobble like you wouldn't believe. I mean, he has excellent hearing.

And he's that jumpy, so he doesn't do false alarms. Is he younger than everybody? No, Chester. Not younger than Chester. Yeah, Chester's the youngest. Let me see Chester's ears. All right, let's see. Will you be able to send us those pictures, files? Sure, I can send them to you for sure. Chester, you're doing pretty good too. Let me see Chester's ears Will you be able to send us those pictures? Sure, I can send them to you for sure

Chester, you're doing pretty good too Let me see Everything's above the line, left and right ear are about the same Yeah, Chester can hear a wall Was I the closest to Seth? He hears a wall, I take a leech Let me look yours up, Sean Sean, you're good too

Yeah, look at that I guess he doesn't do that much hunting. I was really surprised by his. He's always acting like he hunts a lot of ducks, but figures don't lie. Did Giannis go lower than I did then? Yeah, Garrett's got a bad shooting dip. Let me see here. Hold on a sec.

Garrett. Oh, yours is pretty bad too. Let me see his. There's Garrett. Left ear. Left ear down. Oh, man. Look at that.

Body. Look at the look on his face. Giannis' was lower, though. He looks so sad. That's a three-gun shooter for you. Yeah, that's like an ad. Yeah, that's an ad for muzzle brakes, man. Your right ear still looks really good.

And you just want to make sure you protect what you've got. You can hold this steady if you can be really intentional. Yeah, but that shouldn't be only directed at Garrett and I just because we're already at a sad point in our hearing. Those that have great hearing should be even more careful. Yeah, Seth's little virtual ears

should stay clean. Absolutely. We're all about I want to prevent and delay the problems that I've spent so many years treating clinically because it is so preventable. So much of the medical community is like, oh, treat early with hearing aids, hearing aids earlier. Well, I mean, the hearing aid industry is what it is. I say move away, get out from under the dollar signs of the hearing aid industry. If we want to be the hearing healthcare experts, we got to go to where people are, get out in front of the problem, start the relationship with an audiologist and a hearing care professional before the problem starts. Okay. As I was saying. Where's your graph?

Here's the thing. Did you not finish the test? He did. I think he cheated the system. I think he cheated the system. Because I did better on that than I did on my other two hearing tests. With your other two hearing tests, it sounds like we're in the legit sound booth, the full diagnostic hearing test. And they were alarmed. They were just saying you have some. What I brought you guys is a hearing screening tool that's built into a headset. And while it does a very good job and I've seen some good consistent results, it's not as definitive as what's going to be in a sound booth.

Okay. As I was saying. Well, just like they say, you can't trust a skinny chef, I don't think you could trust someone in the hunting industry that doesn't have some hearing loss. Alright, I'll leave it at that.

Then you're very trustworthy. As I was saying. You're never going to invite me back because it's been so long. No, you come back the minute you make the turkey gobble thing. He's been great. He's just mad at me now. I'm just mad at Yanni.

You've been great. You're going to make the turkey gobble thing. I just wanted to clarify a point. Okay. I have like nothing in the game here. True. You came to provide a service to equip us with the hearing protection. Friend of a friend of a friend introduced.

Yeah. I learned so much and liked it i have concern for other shooters i know how frustrating is to not hear gobbles when other people can hear the gobbles or elk bugles what have you and uh i feel like people should um because you're uh you know you're fun to hang out with you know all the terminology you got the product line people should call up and get some freaking earplugs. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Odopro. Odoprotechnologies.com. Grace something or another. Grace Sturdivant. Sturdivant. Sturdivant. Sturdivant. Just call me Grace Gore.

My parents will appreciate it. Whose maiden name was Grace Gore? My maiden name was Grace Gore. Grace Sturdivant. You can call me Odo Prograce. Grace. I'll be like Cher. Dr. Grace.

Just call me Grace. Miss Tennessee, 1996. Hey, not that long ago. 2007. 2007. Oh, sorry. Someone said, I thought, weren't we talking in 2000? Your age, how old do you think I, don't answer that.

No, we're talking about 96. Don't answer that. Don't answer that. We're talking about 96 was 96. Don't answer that. Don't answer that. 96 was when the Yellowstone peaked. Oh, that's right. Apparently, I need to up my skincare regime. See, I told you. He's already got the, I don't want to say it, but it's already happened to him.

You called it. You called it. No, I really appreciate you guys having me. Never did I dream when I started this little business at my kitchen table in 2018 that I'd be sitting here with a national audience in this big network. And actually, I truly believe that I'm helping to change the conversation about hearing protection. So thank you. To close, Yanni, hit them with a far-off bugle. If you want to be able to hear that Get some earplugs You got a reply

Can I give you something To read on the air No I think it's a great closing Well how long is it Very short That's Phil At this point Phil

At this point That's too late Bill Alright This is Jennifer Who works with OdoPro She's our client coordinator Her son Nearly had a heart attack If she writes on one of those At this point, that's too late, Bill. All right. This is Jennifer, who works with OdoPro. She's our client coordinator. Her son nearly had a heart attack. If she writes on one of those kind of papers, you've got a problem.

Her son is such a huge fan of all of you guys. He knows all your names. He was so just, I mean, he couldn't believe that I was coming here. And he went by their house to pick up something. He handed me this to give to you. And I thought it was so well written. Okay, I'm reading from one of these pieces of paper

his little kids have. His name is Liam Stewart. The piece of paper kids get where it's got all the lines so you can make your penmanship perfect. Dear Mr. Steve, I like this guy already. I love your TV shows.

My favorite show is about bow fishing. I have never done that, but I hope I get to do that one day. I like to hunt and fish so I can be like my dad and grandfather. Listen to Miss Grace so you can keep teaching me a few things. Keep

teaching me new things. That's great. From Liam Stewart, age 7. And he included his address. Isn't that great? Just in case you want to send him a book or something. The line about, listen to Miss Grace so you can keep teaching me new things. Sure, that's the pinnacle right there. I think that's pretty sweet.

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