The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 403: Rattling Bucks with Joe Rogan

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

Steve Rinella talks with Joe Rogan, Jesse Griffiths, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics include: The pink pig; Corinne's first wild hog; rattling in a crazy number of whitetail; how basically no one hunts nilgai with a bow, but Joe; the nilgai bark; a bow hunt fraught with peril; Steve’s take on how flies conceive of time; discussing draw weight and Joe's 90-pound bow; a more athletic giraffe; tracking and gridding; no blood; Joe’s take on how hunting with a rifle is the most ethical method; how critter injury and running affects the taste of their flesh; listening to squealing hogs; why can we go buy wild hog and nilgai?; cooking over real wood; the door you open up in your brain; Joe loving elk bone marrow; that time when Steve sent his kid to school with a muskox sandwich; how chewing tough meat helps your jaw; jawzercise and ball gags; black going out of sight; when unknowledgeable voters interfere with science-based wildlife management practices; how Steve thinks he can cook tongue better than Jesse can; and more.  Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. All right, everybody. We are excited to announce that we have identified our next opportunity to ensure more access to hunting and fishing. This year, we are partnering with the Trust for Public Lands to support the Montana Great Outdoors Project. If you remember last time, we did something all the way across the country, over in Maine, this time we're doing it in Montana. The Montana Great Outdoors Project. This project consists of a series of permanent easements across 114,000 acres of timber company land. These easements will prevent development and ensure continued access to hunting and fishing in perpetuity. Getting these easements in place not only provides direct access to 114,000 acres of private property,

but increased access to the existing public lands that surround the area. So there you have it. That's what the 2022 Meat Eater Land Access Initiative funds are going to. Corinna, to start off, how was getting your first wild hog? It was fantastic. It was fast. It was fantastic. It was fast. It was fast. It was unexpected. Because we headed out with the intent of Joe hunting Neil guy.

And you guys getting some whitetail. And the first thing that we saw were a couple of pigs. And you're like, grab grab the rifle let's go so how far were we was from the road to the pigs couple hundred i don't know yards and you took off and i just followed you and we're trying to get close enough to them and out of downwind downwind. And then you said we probably got to about 100 yards. You set up that stick tripod for me, and you're making sure that I saw the largest one in my sights, which was a black one.

I think there was like a pink, two pinks. I think there were three altogether. I don't remember anything being pink, Grin. White, tan. Red. I didn't see a red pink. Tan. The pink pink.

That's kind of a bet. I mean, a neutral color. I don't know. I thought lighter. Pink. Yeah. It wasn't the pink one that we were scoping out. So there's this larger black one.

And it looked from that distance huge because everything seems to look really, really large when you're far away from it. But I think you maybe thought I was going to take a little bit more time to set up because you were still talking to me. And I'm like, no, no, no, like I'm going to shoot. And you're still talking to me and i'm like no no no like i'm gonna shoot and you're still talking to me i'm like i'm gonna shoot and then it was quartered away from me and uh i was a little shaky on the on the tripod but i just i shot and you know when

you hear that like so i knew i hit it my father described it as hitting a pumpkin with a bat. That was his noise for whenever he was telling you how good he hit something. Yeah. How good he hit something with his bow. That's what the sound was. But I made a mistake in that I didn't continue to look through the scope. I raised my head and I didn't automatically rack another one so for the future i mean that's just always something that i should remember when you shoot once you know just you know because it might not be dead and in this case that pig wasn't dead

and he ran off i panicked a little bit couldn't get off another shot because I had made some little mistakes right after. And we took off trying to find him. And you were preparing me for the fact that we really might not find him. Because he ran off. I knew that he was hit, but I didn't know how injured he really was. And then we kind of got to the end. We got to the start of the tree line, and like 10 yards in, there he was. Yeah.

And that was it. But he wasn't, yeah. You were all tore up about it, but let me point this out to you. Had you shot, and I had said, okay, we're just going to wait 10 minutes, and then we'll go check, right? You'd over and been laying there dead right it's just that you got over there quick enough to see what was you witnessed what you have to which is always going to happen anyway like a process of you just happen to witness it happen and then he felt bad about it but you would never you wouldn't have known if you hadn't been there right that's right

like it was mortally wounded and it died right and it was maybe like a short of hitting through the brain you know that's that that's the process yeah it was just hard to see my little zodiac Chinese zodiac spirit animal like that but you're gonna do a bunch of chinese stuff with it i i would love to do some uh because you're not gonna do jewish stuff with it an old jewish hog recipe that that's that's right um here's how the rabbi is talking to cook wild hog no i would love to try to do a little bit of uh charshew which is like the roast roast pork um unfortunately it oftentimes when you see it in restaurants uh it's got that like horrible red food coloring dye around it which i

will not not do um but it's just salt just salt peter is that what they're putting in there no it's red food yeah it's just like no shit just dye red yeah yeah i hadn't thought about that too much yeah um i actually i'll probably maybe i'll ask you jesse or ask uh one of my chinese chef friends the best way to do that because i've ever i've never made something like that when you're cooking at home let's say you make 10 meals how many of them are sort of like somewhat informed by chinese cooking um probably a fair amount um i wouldn't call me myself like great in the kitchen but I grew up on just real simple stir fries that my mom made so it'd always be steamed rice um there would always be some kind

of vegetable typically a Chinese vegetable stir fry you know onions garlic and either like a bok choy or like napa cabbage um any kind of chinese leafy green or or um like sauteed string beans and then a protein often pork or beef sometimes chicken but um my mom and it's just like really that standard marinade of like soy chinese cooking, a little bit of cornstarch, uh, maybe a little bit of oyster sauce. Um, what am I forgetting? Sometimes maybe like a five spice powder in that, some sesame oil, and you just leave that for a short amount of time to a longer amount of time to overnight, you know, know um and then just kind of like high heat in a walk and that's what i ate almost all the time is that right yeah so the

chinese don't call chinese five spice powder chinese five spice powder i don't think so yeah right they probably just call it five spice powder. But yeah, so a fair amount of stuff that I cook at home is just like a, is a stir fry. So the wild game that I have in the frid, in the freezers is not really ground. Like last year with my deer and this year with my deer, I didn't grind a bit of it. Cause I'll just do all the different cuts

kind of in a stir fry, in a braise. I've got nothing against sausage and burger. I love it, but I just don't really grind. And it's not that Asian cooking doesn't incorporate like ground meat, but I just haven't gone in that direction. Yeah. Got it. Yeah.

Also joined by Jesse Griffiths and Mr. Joe Rogan hi what uh what are your impressions of what are your impressions of hanging out down here Joe this is my first time doing like a real Texas hunting ranch experience everybody tells you it's like i've been here i've been living here for two years and everyone's like have you hunted in texas yet have you so now i can finally say i have and uh it's very interesting it's like seeing all these exotic animals and this enormous ranch it's it's really cool it's really cool and uh the coolest by far was the rattling in of the whitetails.

That's the coolest thing ever. That is the coolest thing ever. The way it works so well, it's bonkers. I've never seen a thing work so well. Everything kind of works. Don't you wish all game calling worked like that all the time? There wouldn't be any game. Right.

Especially if you had a rifle. I mean, imagine if elk calling was that effective yeah just be like watch we're just gonna sit here i saw an elk we're just gonna sit here i'm gonna make a noise and they're gonna come running they come running for the folks who've never done this before steve was rattling and within 15 seconds sometimes deer are coming in full clip and the one deer the biggest deer that we saw was uh at the end of the day uh on Tuesday this guy comes running in in a full sprint and he was a big sucker he saw you and he's like not today and he came running out so I had him at 16 yards and i had no shot

i couldn't get him to slow down i was going it's like no no just like youtube yeah just like every white till they get shot on youtube you go well every white till they get shot on youtube that you know it's usually understand and they're walking and someone says and they what is that yeah he's already like half paranoid shit you know and you're just trying to slow him down uh for um the first time i came down to this place was jesse introduced jesse's friends with the guy that owns the place or actually it's not fair to say he owns it jesse's friends with a guy who's part of the family that owns the place. And we came down to, we were doing some other Texas shit and came and wanted to hunt Nilgai.

And there's an outfitter that works here. So we went out with one of the outfitters to hunt Nilgai and had a great time. And there was a lot of Nilgai back then. But we were dicking around on it. And like Giannis had picked up a set of sheds or something or another and had on a couple occasions just rattled off next to the truck and got some interest and

one time we were laughing because he was rattling he rattled in a buck that already knew we were there like the buck's like oh there's some dudes in the truck and yeah he rattled and he just starts coming a little ways and then i got the idea man we gotta come back here and try to rattle deer and eventually uh we're allowed to come back kind of you know do our own thing a little bit and came back and did it but it wasn't like it is like i i feel like it was the like i feel like there's no way it could be better. Like there's, if there's a day in the year or two days in the year that are going to be good,

like how could it get better than it was? Right. We made a pact to come back last night. Like this time, this time next year, this is the time. It's like, you know,

you got that September, what is probably like September 16th for like the elk rut. There's like this time where everything just goes haywire. And if you are lucky and you're in the woods during that time, it gets nuts. And I felt like December 14, like whatever that day was, it was just lined up perfectly. We were setting up and having two three of them

come yeah once we did had no idea we're in the area we're just storming in full balls running when I got that one buck the the first buck and then that was the third buck that came in inside of five minutes. Like we decided to try again because the two bucks came in and one was real close and another big one came just running right past us. And we were like, well, I guess we blew these guys out of here. And we were like, well, let's just give it another couple of minutes. And then before you know it, another guy shows up. It kept not working because it was working too good.

Yeah. Like you kind of think that his ass is going to come and like stop 30, 40 yards out, but they don't stop until they're in you. You almost have to be at full draw when you're done rattling. You almost have to like rattle for like 30 seconds and then go go ahead and then just hold full draw you know like with like a modern bow you can kind of hold full draw for a couple minutes i think if you're really gonna get serious about it it'd be like 870 with buckshot yes yes yeah because there were so many times they were coming in behind us to the side of us

and we kept trying to game it we'll be like okay well that one clearly wanted to be downwind yeah so you go downwind and then he'd go downwind and i'd rattle and people like in my face and then the next one is whatever well the one that we rattled in that was over near the lake that was pretty wild because he was on the whole other side of that pond and he heard us and you just see him running from hundreds of yards away and he did a full circle to get downwind of us and it was pretty quick and then he's like i don't like it yeah and it's like uh the place gets hunted for sure because there's an outfitter that has exclude like an exclusive for outfitted stuff and then the family has friends and people that hunt it but no one hunts it like that because it's kind of like a

safari style hunting no blinds no feeders well when we went out right joe so joe was talking to one of the guides and we'd the question was basically how many times have guys bow hunted and he says never joe's like no i mean like ever never they never had he'd never had the guy the guides had never had a archery client so i think that like a way it's so it's it's not that it doesn't get hunted because it gets hunted but it doesn't get hunted like that so i don't think they're here and like here i don't think they're hearing that yeah and also i think probably when the deer don't hear gunshots maybe they stay a little more calm because like no one's getting killed because they probably associate boom with danger and death yeah but there's never a boom while we're here so maybe they're like a little bit more relaxed yeah uh

the there's a guy there's a cowboy out here that runs cattle i don't know if you call him a cowboy i guess you wouldn't call him a cowboy the guy that runs cattle i think so he said uh he had a good way of expressing it he said um they're coming to horns which i thought was a good way of putting it with Rattling, they're coming to horns. It works. It's the most fun way to hunt ever, I think. It is. Because it's so exciting. Like, where are they coming from?

Like, they're running in. Yeah. I've never, you know, I have never, ever, ever seen anything like that. I wonder if it's particular to this area. I think that that's, that's a, yeah, I think it is. I got a friend in South Carolina. I shouldn't even say it.

That's what state he lives in. Cause he does it. He does it on public ground. Uh, South Carolina is big place. I got a friend in South Carolina. They, that's how they hunt,

man. Um, that's how they hunt deer. They climb up in a tree stand and they rattle. They really consistently kill bucks on public land rattling hard to hunt because in his view up until this very moment in his view people aren't doing it in this area he goes okay he's like in he's in public swamp land he's like people aren't doing it they probably just don't know so deer are edgy they're jumpy but they're not hearing that and when they hear that

it means one thing to them but i've no because you know i've rattled in a couple deer like in montana i've rattled in the couple deer after a lot of attempts where i know they're hearing it and it could be that for whatever reason it could be that they don't want to get killed and they're thinking that that they're always on their mind is like that which I wonder about that like associate that sound with danger or they don't give a shit and that used to be a thing I think with elk calling like anytime you couldn't call in the elk I was like he thinks it's people you know and Phelps he's like i don't think he

thinks i think he's not interested he's not interested it's not that he's like there's a lot of times sure there might be times when he thinks it's people but there's a lot of times he's not going to come anyway in this book uh there's this book the 10th legion by colonel tom kelly about turkeys and he talks about that same thing he always thought when you when a tom won't come it's because he's afraid of getting killed and thinks it's a person but then one day he describes watching a tom he's watching a bunch of hens he's watching a tom cruising along and the hens are doing all the shit that he would do to try to call in a tom they're doing the calling they're doing everything and he said the tom never gave a shit never lifted its head up and it's like it's real hens

a real tom and some things just don't give a shit so whatever it is with the age demographics i don't know pressure what's that pressure on deer here is minimal oh because people are hunting the exotics they're hunting no guy you know that's what i'm saying but you like you remove like whatever it is they're not thinking they're going to get killed but i'm saying even in the absence of the thought that you're going to get killed there's probably times when they don't hear two bucks fighting and think they need to come running over right because of whatever shit he's like like i don't really know what goes into i don't know why they're so like why these particular

deer in this particular spot are so fired up about two bucks fighting it's really interesting to see the difference in the behavior of the animals when you look at the animals that are hunted the most there's all these animals that are living together but the animals that are hunted the most there's all these animals that are living together but the animals that are hunted the most are clearly the ones that behave differently when they see people like the neil guy for sure the most spooky they're the most spooky the least spooky is probably the javelina they're the least spooky they're they're like basically not interested in you for the most part you're not going to pick them up yeah you're not going to pick them up but they're the least scared of you and neil guy just don't have nothing to do with you they see you they're like this is it we're out of here yeah and then the water buck

are like they're probably not hunted as much and they're a lot more relaxed. When I told our friend here that we wanted to come down and that Joe wanted to try to get a nil guy with a bow, he right away was nervous about that it's hard to do. And Yanni came down and just spent time on his own doing it and did it, but he had a bunch of days that he put into it and killed one with a bow. And we had a shorter period of time, and Brad had said, listen, if need be, I'll have one of the guides that does bring clients out to guide.

I'll have him come out and show you guys what's up. And after we even spent one day, no, we just had a couple of days to hunt. We spent one day, uh, I was kind of like, I don't know, man, like other than just sort of want other than just sort of wandering around waiting for some kind of like weird opportunity present itself. I was a little bit, for some kind of weird opportunity to present itself, I was kind of at a loss. I could be like, yeah, I could see, man, if you had a week and you were just out for a week,

something's going to happen. But I couldn't think of how to deliberately make it happen. Being like with the deer, I'll deliberately make it happen by rattling. But with the n's like i don't know i don't know enough about him to know how you deliberately be like we're gonna go out and try to get a shot other than we're just gonna kind of stumble around and see if a crazy opportunity presents itself so we had the guy come um what did you what was your take on his his attitude about it his approach about it well first of all he said he was wearing a black shirt and he was wearing a black shirt on purpose

he was like the reason why I dress like this is because when they see me with a black cowboy hat and a black shirt like they might think that I'm a Neil guy and if I wolf at him like they might come towards me and it was so interesting because you at one point said to me what noises do they make and i said i don't know about any i'm not saying there aren't any i don't know about any noises they woof yeah i didn't know that so that like that's what he was doing and one i didn't i had no idea stopped and it there was one bull and maybe about eight or nine cows. And we crawled about 130, 140 yards to get to this area that was like before the clearing. So we got into this one area that was like sparsely treed. And then we crawled through that area where we were kind of out in the open, but not really, to get to this field

that's completely open it was a dry like a dried-up lake yes grass and the closest we could get was about a hundred and ten yards and so we were hoping that they would come around and the closest one of the cows came around was probably like 90 yards somewhere around then and so then we were trying to debate how to handle this and so he said you know what this is not going to work because the cow the cows and the bull seemed to be moving in a general direction of away from us they weren't aware we were there it took a long time to crawl there so he says let's just get up we'll go back and then they'll know that we're there and then i'm going to woof at him through the trees so i'm going to

follow him through the tree line and woof at him and he followed him through the tree line and this one lone bull hit me with the noise he makes again that's what he was doing it was like he was like woofing almost like a dog before he starts you know the dogs in your house like his warm warm-up, his warm-up mark. Preamble. Like your dog woke up in your bedroom and he kind of hears something different. Yeah. My dogs used to do that when they would hear a coyote in the distance.

But hey, man, shut the fuck up. So when he woofed, they started, he he was paying attention he was moving towards he goes man he goes give this guy another week or two and he would come charged out it's like what's up yeah when he said that man i didn't know that that was a i had no idea it's a thing it's a thing so we uh we we settled with uh stalking and ambushing it's like the the whole thing was just like get like finding them, that they didn't know you were there, and then slowly creeping around edges

without them noticing you and get to a place where... And eventually, the way I got the deal guy was he spotted this group of bulls, and they were with these turkeys, and they were around the edge of this corner but only about like a hundred yards around the edge and I was like that's so close we could just get to that corner I think I could sneak up close enough to get a shot and so we did that and we got about 90 yards away and

then we went into the woods and then we got i got to about maybe like 70 or 80 and then i i creeped real slowly the rest of the way but it was just very fortunate because the bull had his butt to me completely had no idea i was there. The turkeys knew. They started like, what's happening? What's going on? They were moving around a little bit and I was like, these bitches better not give me up. I was slowly creeping up

to them. Look at the turkeys. It was real exciting. The spot and stalk moments are so exciting because when the animal turns and goes broadside and you're like, whoa, now's the time. It's like this is like, ooh, ooh. It's like your heart starts beating

and your adrenaline starts kicking and you're like, okay, keep it together. Keep it together. I should point out real quick that when I brought up the bow hunting for Nilgaard, and you're like okay keep it together keep it together i should point out real quick uh that when i brought up the bow hunting for nil guy there's like a second complication is uh we'll get into this but there's the the first complication that our friend was is that it's hard to get close to him you know it's just hard the second thing is is there uh i don't want

to say it's regarded as a no-no to try to get one of the bowl but like anyone that is a familiar with nil guy when you talk about with a bowl they're kind of like yeah i don't know because you know they can really take a hit and they want to run yeah they don't want to bleed and then what the hell is the word they use for the brush patches here man it? It's not like. Mott? What's the word? Mott? No, it's not what Brad says.

Oh, monte. Yeah. What the hell is that? Like a brush patch? Kind of. Maybe a little elevation. And he calls it the monte, like the brushy areas. Yeah.

Yeah. You got your senderos. Senderos and montes, yeah. The roads. And if it's not a sendero it might be a what's the giant opening an opening oh the oh the oh the plan grande yeah what the hell's that that means the great plane okay and then everything else is the the brush the monte yeah the fear is you're gonna hit the nil guy and his ass is gonna run into this brush which is just serious brush and that's exactly what happened when i was explaining how thick that brush is my kid chased a

turkey into that brush and the turkey got snagged up at the brush and couldn't fly away it got a turkey got tangled up in the brush that's crazy some thick ass brush so you're trying to hit one and there's a lot of like it's not like uh it like you're going to wing it and assume you'll find it. No. No, it was fraught with peril. When it wound up working out well, I said to you at the end of the night when I was very relieved that we got the Neil guy, I was like,

I think I may be one and done with bow hunting Neil guy. Too stressful. I think you want to hit these suckers with a rifle. Because Jason was telling me that when he hits one, if he has a client, this is our guide. This is the guide, yeah. Jason, great guy. I love him.

So Jason was saying that when he has a client, he'll have one in the chamber. And then the client hits it, and he'll hit him after the client hits it gun hunt gun hunt that's super common i've watched it i've actually watched it in this pasture he didn't tell me that until we were trying to find blood and there was no he's like oh by the way even with rifles we yes yeah and i when I hit the, I've, you know, I've seen animals run when you hit them before. I have never seen an animal run like this. Joe said it was like a cheetah. Like a cheetah.

That's what it's like. It was full clip. I mean, they live in Asia, right? So what part of Asia and what kills them? Lions. Indians. No, no, no. What am I saying?

Tigers. Tigers. Okay. what kills them lions india no no no what am i saying tigers tigers okay they're they're from the indian subcontinent and they're in their uh their historic predator is the the tiger that makes sense so they're like uh you've hunted axis deer they are preposterously fast i've never seen a thing move as fast as you know they're like they're used to dealing with 200 pound cat exactly i had an arrow i have a video of me bow hunting on lanai and i shot this this one axis deer this he was pretty big deer was uh feeding at 80 yards away and there was no wind and it was like perfect conditions and i really didn't think i'd get closer to him and I was feeling good about the shot. I was very relaxed. So I launched this arrow. This arrow is tracking perfectly towards the

vitals and John Dudley gets it on video. So he's filming this whole thing while it's happening and we're like this is going to be the greatest shot of all time because it's like a perfect shot and then 10 yards from this axis, the arrow is 10 yards away. He's like, not today. And ducks, and he's completely out of the frame by the time the arrow gets to him. And I'm not exaggerating. Can you imagine? So you're talking about an arrow.

He's thinking to himself in a couple seconds, I'm going to move because of this arrow. Yeah, he's like, oh, jeez, these assholes are shooting at me again so i mean it's 200 and you know whatever 270 280 feet a second this arrow's coming at him and from 10 yards away he's like see ya in that quick a time and that's all because they evolve around tigers do you ever hear that do you ever hear that deal about i want to get back to everything with the nil guy but you ever hear that explanation and i've talked about it before of like how how things experience time being that when you go to smack a fly in your mind you're like you're cocked back you know you're like a tiger right you're like

but in the fly in his mind he might be like oh what is this thing coming toward me right right right i'm probably gonna need to move out of the way oh yeah it's coming well he's only awake a fly is only alive for a week yeah so it might be that he might experience that week like you do your 80 years yeah yeah like there's that there's that there's that one day where that hand was coming down yes oh boy let me get out of the way he experienced he relished it like a roller coaster yeah enjoyed it he's like i sometimes like to wait till it's really close you know what always freaks me out about flies is how quickly they find a dead animal.

It is so fast. When an animal's down, especially when there's a gut pile, it is instantaneous. Like hundreds of flies out of nowhere. Like, where were you guys? Yeah. It wasn't like you were following me around. I didn't notice it was like a fly-infested area.'t seem like very flyy and then all of a sudden there's flies

everywhere so you're creeping up on your no guys so i'm creeping up on this neil guy and it wasn't the best situation because uh i've had a pro i have this uh this bow sight that i really like for a lot of good reasons it's a garmin uh and it's a it's a range finding bow sight and what's interesting about it is instead of having a range finder and a sight it's all built into one and uh you you at full draw there's a button on my riser i hit the button and a dot goes on to the animal and then it shows me a pin well you gotta be clear here the dot it doesn't project to me no no it doesn't project to me there's a lens so you're looking through a lens just like you would looking through like a traditional rangefinder yeah but it's it's like the size of a bow sight lens it's much larger you know like a like a

the best way to describe it like a small sunglass lens like if you had a sunglass and you're looking through that and when you press a button it gives you a dot just like a range finder gives you a dot where you know you're you're pointing it at the area you want to hit and then it gives you a number it's got a little screen above it it'll say like 53 in my this case it was 53 yards and then it shows you a pin well in this it's been fucking up lately and i i hit the button and it ranges it says 53 yards but no pin and i'm at full draw ranges so you know the moment when an animal turns broadside you're trying to stay calm you know because you know this whole process of creeping up on them takes like 20 minutes or so.

So during that time, you're trying to keep your heart rate down and breathing and just like slow and steady. And when I get the shot, I'm going to stay like this, nice and calm. And so then – Is it trying to give you – it's not trying to make a judgment. It's not giving me shit. It's like two times in a row your site's like no joe just wait joe this has happened before on it's not normal but it's happened before on targets where i press the button and nothing happens and i press the button and i so i had to press it three times and finally it gives me a pin

so i was like okay here we go so i'm at full draw for a few seconds and this is a very heavy bow it's a 90 pound bow so it's okay because there's a lot of let off but you know i'm i'm thinking now like geez how long can i hold this here like how long is this gonna let am i gonna have to let down all these thoughts are in my mind and then finally i get the pin i'm like okay here we go can you hold there for a second? Yes. Why, you shoot a 90-pound bow. Why, I think I've always wondered is skinny-ass guys like me, guys that could beat my ass in a fight, why do so many people, in your view, hover at around 70-pound draw weight?

Well, 70-pound draw weight is comfortable to pull, and if you don't lift weights and if you're not a physically strong person that's achievable it's like you you can get there i'm a skinny ass guy that lifts weights but i feel like i said like people that could beat my ass are also shooting a 70 pound bow it just it wasn't common like it was like through my whole life it wasn't common to hear someone pulling a 90 pound bow it's not common now 80 is more common i was just watching a video about this they were doing reviews on 80 pound bows and uh the reason why i switched to a 90 is just because cam did cam haynes switched to a 90 and he had hoyt made him a 90 and i'm like i'll it. Let me try that 90. And I had a PSC that was 95 last year

and it was just too much. It was John Dudley tried to make the most ridiculous bow for me, you know, because he works with PSC. So he made a PSC 95 pound bow with a very short brace height. And if you were accurate, it was ridiculous, but it was not forgiving at all

because the brace height was very short. And for people that don't know, the brace height is the distance between the riser and the string. And if you have a good brace height, like 7 inches, that's more forgiving than 5 inches. And this was more like 5 inches. But it would shoot a 530 grain arrow 300 feet a second, which is really crazy.

Oh, yes. It's really fast. And the impact, like the kinetic energy is incredible. And you saw yesterday with that Neil guy, I mean, total pass through from looking at the animal. It was quartering away. I hit it through the ribs, went through its entire body, and out the front shoulder.

Full, clean pass through, and then the arrow was like 30 yards away when we found it. So we found the arrow. When I found the arrow, I was pretty confident. I was like, that arrow is just soaked with blood. I was pretty confident in the hit, but I was not confident when I saw that sucker run. When I hit him, I was like, whack.

I'm like, that looks good. Whoa. And watching him run, I was like, oh, no. Like, he's going so fast. He was going so fast. It was crazy. Full clip. Like, I mean, I don't know how many miles an hour,

but it looked like it was going 100 it was just ridiculous and i was like then when they are running yeah it's so i don't want to say it's extraterrestrial yeah it's like you kept saying it's like some shit from avatar he didn't they're like a big yeah they're like a i don't know what the hell they're like a like a short neck draft, a more athletic giraffe. Yeah. Yeah, it didn't seem like he should be able to run that fast if he got hit good.

Because if you hit an elk good, like they get whap, like the arrow hits them, they'll buck up and then they'll run off. But you could tell they're hurt. I could not tell at all that he was hurt. It's like it made him healthier. It was like it supercharged him. Like their will to live is insane.

And it must be because they evolve around tigers. It has to be. So this sucker, full clip, runs off. And all I could do is just sort of watch where he was going. And I was hoping Del was going to see signs of stumble and then fall down because it was you know he ran uh would you say it's about 130 yards to where he died like i did a line distance on on x it was line distance 130 you know he didn't take a circuitous route to get there just kind of what you know a slight arc yeah so and when i saw the arc we saw the arc and

then we started gritting we started trying to figure out where he was me and corinne had that shit all wrong we were far off yeah but i was like man it'll be three in the morning but we're gonna cover this entire by the time we're done we'll have covered everything i turned the track function on and i was telling corinne okay now move over 20 yards or whatever the hell it was. We're going to come back. It would have been about 3 in the morning when we got over to where you guys were. Well, Jason, we had looked, and he had an application on his phone that showed a grid of like where – Yeah, just a track function.

I can't even remember what app he was using. I think he said Rambler. That's right, Rambler app. And so there was this one small area where he realized we didn't look earlier, and he went and looked there, and he was just lying right there. But you know about that dude? He's good. Because I don't know if you noticed, too.

I got the deer. I got a deer. And I was kind of a little nervous. I was like, there's no blood. But I mean, I saw the, it was coming on. I saw the broadhead and the arrow coming out of his back hip like it ran the entire length of him but there's no blood and i'm like questioning what i saw and i said to this guy this is the guide that guides out here i said to him i'm like man he kind

of went like and i showed like where he went and it was like he wasn't listening to me he swings way left and goes here it is yeah i was like what like what possibly were you going on you weren't even here he was asking you though did he already he was asking you he was asking you what side you hit it on he's like if you hit it on the right side it's gonna go towards the left that's the one thing he said and he was right i show him where it went in how it was like kind of like front okay kind of like strong Yeah. He's like, if you hit it on the right side, it's going to go towards the left. That's the one thing he said. And he was right. I showed him where it went in, how it was like kind of like front, kind of like strong quartering toward me in the front shoulder. And so he just strikes off that way and almost like,

like magnetically drawn to it. And he found it. We were wrong again. Yeah. I mean, he's, it's, guides are interesting because you spend that much time just constantly around these animals i think you get a sense of them that i just don't have yeah he's he does like he has a regular job yeah he finishes concrete he has a concrete business i think he goes oh this is my part-time

deal i'm like well how much 80 guys a year i'm like okay, well, that's a lot of hunting. He loves it, though. He loved sneaking in on them. He got all excited about it. It was fun. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in 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 MeatEater Podcast. Now you, 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 hand-picked by the OnX Hunt team.

Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. It was interesting that he, when he got here, and I was real curious to hang out with him. I'm like, I don't know the first thing about Nilga.

I've done it a couple times with a rifle, which is a totally different experience because you just basically go out and look for one and shoot it and that's how that goes uh so i was real curious to see like how could one consistently get up close on him but what's funny is he didn't jump out of his truck to be like here's why i have a black shirt and a black cowboy hat on right right i was just i don't look. He's a Man in Black, Johnny Cash fan. I don't know. And then only later does it come out. I was like, I would have been like, you might be wondering why.

Right. No, he was a cool guy. Fun guy to talk to. No, the minute I met him, I talked to him for a couple seconds, and I went and told Joe, I'm like, this guy's cool. It'll be fun. Yeah, it was real fun. You're always nervous.

It was real fun. And, you know, when we're going around the corner when i was creeping up on the neil guy uh he laid back too he's like did he yeah i was like i slow it down i was like this is just better if it's just one of us because like you know the turkeys and all this shit i'm like so so he just hung back was he giving you a bunch of input on uh do this and don't do that when it comes time to shoot it nope no he told me where their organs are but i had already knew that i'd done a bunch of research online they're they are all their stuff is closer to the front than um than um like an elk or a deer which uh is interesting. They're built differently.

Yeah. Yeah, so he told me that, but I was already aware of that. But I really do think I'm one and done with bow hunting them. Watching the way he ran off. You can just picture not finding it. Yeah, well, I hit him perfect. It was a great shot. Oh, we didn't mention this.

Not a speck of blood nothing and and even when we got up to it you probably noticed this we got up to it the in hole there's an in hole and there's an out hole and there's no blood stain on its body yeah it wasn't till we were we rolled it up it wasn't till we rolled it up that and then by that point it had been dead for 45 minutes or an hour it wasn't till we rolled it up that and then by that point it had been dead for 45 minutes or an hour it wasn't until we rolled it up that some blood trickled out and there was a clean it looked like someone had washed it it's crazy it was just a little bit of dribble that was coming out of the hole but a little bubble but none of it was on the ground zero on the ground and you got to also

think about that arrow that we found so we find this arrow it blows through his body so he's quartering away it hits his ribs goes through the entire this large body cavity goes through the entire body cavity out the front shoulder goes 30 yards past his body nothing sprays out nothing zero no and the arrow is soaked with blood nothing comes out of his body i was like what a strange animal like this is so strange but the sheer panic that i had when i seen him run that way i was like oh no and i was it's almost like he's playing tricks on me like maybe i didn't hit him good like maybe i hit him bad maybe i hit his foot or maybe i his foot. Maybe I'm delusional. I thought it was, I had the pin right where I wanted to.

My arm was steady. The release was good. I hear swack when it hits his body. I'm like, I got, oh no. That was literally the thought process. I got him. I didn't even finish got him. I got, oh my God, look at that sucker go.

Pew! Just. Full clip. And then he just ran until he was gone. It was both of his lungs, so he just expired from a lack of air within 130 yards. So he probably covered that 130 yards in 10 seconds too yeah that's that's a funny thing about when you're when you do get into a bad situation you're trailing something you lose sight of um what it took to cover the distance right versus what it took you to cover the distance right so if you have a really bad blood trail and you find like a little speck and a little speck and a while later you know you're into it

45 minutes you haven't started circling yet because you don't want to mess up you don't want to stamp out any blood because you want to keep the trail intact and you know 45 minutes later you realize you're 100 yards away you're like i don't know it seems like you're on this journey but you think about your mind that was seconds seconds it was seconds yeah so it didn't bleed for seconds yeah but you're making all these you know all this wild ideas about what's going to happen on down the blood trail or whatever you know i remember like being a real little kid man and uh like my dad would go hunt or my brothers or when i got older i would go to when i once i turned 12 and could

bow hunt just going on many many many many blood trails and it'd be like someone had hit a deer everybody come home you'd eat dinner you'd get the coleman lanterns out and shit and spend an hour trying to get those things going get all the lanterns and walk out on the blood trail and it'd either be that everybody'd look and they couldn't find any blood and you get this sinking feeling like dude we're gonna be here till two in the morning i'm gonna fall asleep out in the woods this is miserable or it'd be like someone went through the woods with a spray can of red paint and it'd just be euphoria yeah and i still carry with me so much that like when there's when you can't find blood you're like it ran right through here and you can't find blood i still can never shake that just sinking feeling yeah that was how i felt but on the flip side when we got back to the house after

we found him we got back to the house it was the greatest feeling in the world i was like i'm so relaxed because i don't have that dread of like not being able to find this animal and the worst case scenario would be you find him like you ran four or five hundred yards but now the meat's no good yeah so now he's just dead for no reason it's hot as shit and so it's like don't have yeah you can't even joke like even in cold weather you're kind of like with the elk we'll go find him in the morning you're kind of yourself because a lot of it'll be good but you're you're gonna lose a lot you're gonna you know like even if it's 50 degrees you go find in the morning like it's some it's there's gonna be parts that are gonna be not there's parts that are probably gonna spoil yeah um but here you wouldn't even be able to kid

yourself yeah you wouldn't kid yourself plus it'd be like turkey buzzards coyotes and just whatever if we found them in the morning it would be a mess it'd be a bloated pile yeah it'd be horrible i mean it was like it's probably 80 degrees yesterday, right? Yeah. Hey, can you tell the story about the guy, are you allowed to tell that story about the guys that killed the javelinas for shits and giggles? Oh, yeah. It's a good story. Yeah.

So they're, in Texas, you can kill two javelinas a year. And there's no tags or anything. And they are a game animal. And so, because they're a game animal, there's a waste of meat, and they are a game animal. And so because they're a game animal, there's a waste of meat. They're native wildlife. Yeah. You have to retain the meat.

This is anecdotal, but I heard this story. I think I read it. Maybe it was on the Game Warden blotter or something like that. Maybe I dreamt it. Yeah, at this point, I'm completely mistrusting it. No, it's a great story. I like it. And if it's a great story. I like it. And if it's not true, I think a game warden should keep this one in his back pocket.

It's a fable. At least it's a cautionary tale about going out and shooting a bunch of javelinas and dragging them to the gut pile, which this game warden checked on some hunters and asked if they'd shot anything. And they're like, yeah, we just got some javelinas. I'm putting words in their mouths right now. And he's like well where's the meat and they're like oh we didn't we didn't take any we just drug them out to the gut pile and it was you know two or three days it transpired and he's like no they're that's game animal you have to harvest

the meat from them and he made them go after the fact out to the gut pile and quarter these uh rotten swollen javelinas i love it i i'd like it only thing that would make the story better is if you grabbed him by the ear took him by the ear and dragged him out to the pile i'm excited to try javelina i really want to know what it tastes like it's good yeah you can make it taste like uh meat by depending you know trees or whatever yeah i think that's what i'm gonna do get chorizo made with it so uh if you don't if you say you want it if you don't you wouldn't hunt nil guy again i wouldn't know guy with a rifle okay that's what i was gonna ask you how uh how um how not interested in gun hunting are you uh i mean you like the archery stuff so much i don't not like gun hunting i do like gun hunting yeah i i like both you do yeah yeah

well i mean one of the things that people don't want to admit people that are archery hunting enthusiasts is that it's not the best way to hunt it's like the most ethical way to hunt really is with a rifle like if you're counting lack if you're counting like greatest likelihood of the quickest death yes yeah like i had uh like I hunted to hone ranch last year, and I had a really lucky first day. I was with Evan Hafer, and Evan shot an elk on the first day, and I shot an elk on the first day. And I was supposed to be there for six days, so they had pig tags that were available. So it's like, all right, let's go do some pig hunting. And they're like, do you want to do rifle or bow?

And I said, you know what? Let's go rifle. Let's go for fun. And I shot a pig at 80 yards, and he died where he stood. Boom. It went through him. He just fell over, dead, smoke coming out of his mouth. And I thought to myself, I go, this is so much more effective like if i shot that that pig with a

with a bow he would have taken off and it would have probably been you know we have to go find him and you're going under because in uh a lot of these ranches you know the where the pigs will live is you have like heavy bush and they get into the bushes and so he probably would have went in there and i probably would have had to crawl in and drag him out and then i probably would have hoped that he was dead while i was doing this and like tunnels yeah like i don't mean to make a false equation but you know like in vietnam when you had to take a pistol and flashlight and go into those tunnels oh jesus not in any way saying the same thing but i've seen hog tunnels which you're like it seems like you're in there with peril with a knife and a flashlight oh god yeah and

you do not want to get one-on-one with a hog with a knife oh it was a good boar too i mean he had good tusks and he was a big sucker um i'm not opposed to rifle hunting as a matter of matter of fact like if uh if it got to a situation where i was so busy that i didn't have that's not true that it's never gonna happen it'll never be a situation where i never have enough time to go on like real long hunts i'll make sure at this point in my life because just because i enjoy it too much and it's it's such a break for me it's such a like a cleansing of uh all the other stuff on my mind. Say when you and I were there, you're rattling,

and I got an arrow knocked, and my head's on a swivel. I'm not thinking about jack shit. No, you're right. There's no room to think about other stuff. Anything other than what's going on. But I think rifle hunting is more effective. It's probably more humane. You know, it's just, there's a reason why they invented guns.

They're better than bows. But in terms of satisfaction, the animals that I've killed with my bow are the most, it's harder to do. It's just much harder to do. Like that 53-yard shot that I hit that kneel guy with, that's easy with a rifle. I could do that offhand with a rifle. No problem.

100% confident. But with a bow, it's like, you know, there's so much going on. I'm just gotta be steady. Breathe out. Don't rush the shot. Pull through it. Plop.

The shot breaks. Everything was perfect. But everything was perfect but everything was perfect because of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of practice if you gave me a rifle i haven't shot a rifle in a year if you gave me a rifle right now i'm 100 confident i could shoot a neil guy 53 yards offhand yeah i'd hope so yeah yeah it's like it's it's a better weapon but i think that people confuse when people talk about ethics they're oftentimes confusing two things there's there people be like well i like to hunt with a bow because it's more ethical it'll be like it's more challenging more challenging it's more challenging so that's great but that's not you assessing um that's not you assessing

in in weighing however one chooses the way animal like the welfare and well-being likelihood of injuring yeah meaning if you really want to get down to like like to take a commercial slaughter plant how do they when they're like okay we want quick death we're gonna be ethical what are they gonna do they're not gonna shoot with a bow right they're gonna take a pneumatic bolt and punch a what is three-quarter diameter stainless steel rod right all the way through its brain yeah and they'd be like that's humane yeah well i thought archery hunting was humane. Archery hunting's hard. Yeah, archery hunting's hard.

There's a restaurant in Austin, and they serve a lot of wild game meat and a lot of antelope and stuff like that. And this guy was telling me that one of the things that they do is they hire snipers, and that these snipers shoot these animals in the brain. They shoot them in the head. And they're like, and Jesse, you can tell me about this.

How much does it affect the flavor if an animal is stressed out? Like if an animal gets hit and runs and has that adrenaline rush, how much of an impact does that have on the taste of the meat? It can be huge. I mean, I think for that reason, you know, a rifle shot has a more likelihood of bringing it down immediately you know in the case of a big boar or any animal like that you're the larger the animal the more likely it is it's going to run um you know even a debilitating shot from a rifle but i think stress is uh along with just some any kind of bacterial contamination,

stress is going to be one of the main contributing factors to having it taste stronger. You get different textures in the meat, that lactic acid buildup, stuff like that. And anecdotally, I've seen hogs shot versus caught in a snare, identical hogs. I might have even told this story on your podcast. I think so.

And how the one that was caught in the snare was inedible. There was two sows, probably about 80 pounds each. They could have come out of the same litter. One dropped with a spine shot, and one was so exhausted when we came up to her uh she was in a snare that she couldn't even stand up when we walked up there uh and and that one was one of the worst tasting pigs i've ever i've ever seen and so i mean i can i mean it's not a lot of data right there it's totally anecdotal well i'll point like i got a couple things i'd like to add and i don't want to in any way discredit your explanation.

You didn't say anything that's inaccurate, but we have twice... Who's that dude we had on from Purdue? Chris Kalkins? Was he Kalkins or Kalkins? I can never tell because we got one that works for us. It's the same damn name, but they're insistent that they... No, I'm screwed up on that. I think it's Kalkins. Whatever the hell. Kalkins.

Same spelling as the other guy we hang out with that likes it the other way. So Calcans or Calcans? Is it Chris? It is. He's a meat scientist. He's a meat scientist from Purdue University. He's come on the podcast twice to explain.

He did a great job of all that shit. Okay, what is, when something's stressed, what is it that we're talking about? All the shit with rigor mortis, like all the shit with temperature after death, all the shit with hang time, hang position. Like why do you hang it upside down? Why hang it by its neck versus by its hocks? What happens when you bone meat out what you're not

allowing to happen when you bone it out warm and it hasn't gone through rigor on the tendon and a lot of shit about stress age like what exactly chemically is happening to an animal that's stressed he does a great job explaining i mean it's his whole subject of research his whole career right and um all like slaughterhouse practices and all that kind of shit he does a great job on it the the snare and hogs i have a half dozen hog snares that i've had that i've owned for over a decade dying to use them um have never used them i had a guy that that is a wildlife control guy in hawaii that does pig removal he said the number one problem with using snares for hog removal is that people think they want the hogs gone until they got to listen to a hog and a snare all night then they'd lose their interest in having the hogs be gone so the few talking about stress

it'll have people be like never mind get the snares out of here I can't handle it Wow all night yeah I can imagine you know we get i mean at the restaurant we serve feral hog that's been inspected so that hog was caught in a big trap so they went in the trap it was having a treat and then then the gates drop and so that's it that's a big stressor right there sure you've ever seen the videos they go nuts they're trying to get out any which way okay they're stressed out okay now a trailer's gonna back up a monster's gonna pull up you know a diesel monster with the trailer's gonna back up and now all these hogs get escorted you know like on you know like prodded by little monsters that get out and make them get up there for their first car ride for their first car ride down the highway down the fucking highway oh man imagine that stress okay so we're you know

they're it's just like a world it's it's a it's a trip into outer space for them they're going down the highway and then they get to their destination and what does that smell like smells like death and they get put in this holding pen for however long it is before feral hog processing day which at our processor i believe is every it's either every week or every other week so they might be in there for for a while but the thing is is that these hogs never taste like with any of the attributes that you would assume that a large amount of stress would give them. They're fine at that point.

So maybe there's some sort of plateau that happens where they're acutely stressed and then they're generally stressed. Well, isn't it a different thing you're talking about? You're talking about not just stress with that snared hawk. You're talking about lactic acid. Struggle. Yeah, the physical struggle is probably very different

than just the psychological stress. But the adrenaline stress versus lactic acid, I would imagine when you're fatigued to death, like literally, like you can't move when you know that people are coming to get you. That's probably just an enormous amount of lactic acid through the system i got i got a question for you jesse we get a lot of uh people right in who are confused by what they censor these big big contradictions in wildlife management particularly around the sale of wildlife parts okay a couple

examples would be if you can't sell wild game which is generally true like you generally can't sell wild game why can you buy a taxidermied head why can you buy an antler okay and that would be like that's like byproduct not the meat in that explanation why can you sell beaver meat to sled dogs for sled dog food why can you sell a beaver's fur if you're not allowed to sell wild game be like well because that lives under different regulatory structure which is it's a fur bearer it's it's not technically a game animal why can you sell fish why can people go to the ocean sell fish if you can't sell wild game that's fisheries it's like historically been under totally different regulatory structure than wild game why can you sell bear grease as a hairdressing, but you can't sell bear grease as a food additive?

It would be because it's a game animal. You can sell byproduct for non-food. I'm speaking in very general terms. You can sell byproduct for non-food purposes the same way I could sell you a bear hide. My old taxidermy I didn't want anymore, but I couldn't have sold you an edible food item marketed to you as bear meat. So there's all these, it's complicated. It frustrates people that it doesn't make clean sense. There's too many things that sit outside of the rule.

It's hard to understand how the rules even came to place. But how in the hell hell if i go into your restaurant how can i go in and buy nil guy and they're not they're they're not fenced in they're they're not domestic or how can i go in and buy a wild pig like how does that how does that not fly in the face of this whole no wild game thing well texas has different laws with invasive species they have different laws with introduced species like species from asia and africa you could buy them they they sell them like they sell cattle but can they go livestock yeah but they can't go out of the state like like and you they're expected right they can okay like break

it down for me give me break give me the version of how you get a nil guy and what the rules are and how you get a pig and what the rules are and what can't you do like you can't right now like maybe you can could you go right now and shoot a nil guy gut it out and sell it in your restaurant no okay so that that's what i'm like i i'm not okay i know you're not breaking the law but you have to have a license but explain this shit how it goes. I have to have an inspector. So let's break the pigs and then everything else into two different categories. And we'll start with the no guy specifically. So these big ranches down here along the south Texas coast where the no guy are will often,

if they need to cull out a bunch of cows will hire an outfit and that that outfit is generally broken arrow cows as in female nil guy right correct sorry sorry uh broken arrow ranch out of ingram they'll come down here and they'll shoot no guy from helicopters and the whole process has to be done very correctly with an inspector there. Since they're going over state lines, they're going to be USDA. Okay. And so they'll come down. They'll take maybe 80 in a day.

And then they have these big refrigerated trailers and this crew that rolls down. What shots are they going for? Headshots. Shooting headshots with presumably like, from a helicopter, headshots with a rifle yes got it okay and then they will process everything under inspection and then we'll take it back to their facility in ingram which is in the hill country and from there they ship all over the

country they're probably the preeminent supplier of wild game and especially like high quality wild game uh and they do uh different species there's axis sometimes you can get things like i believe they sell fallow and maybe uh red deer but they can't do it with white tails though correct you can't do it because that's native game it's native and it's a protected game species now i i know there's whitetail farms uh i don't i don't know of any in texas i don't know the regulation around that but you i think they can be farmed but here you can plenty of other species that will fill that void and they're typically invasive and so it's it's best uh to to utilize that as a resource. So your Nilgai and your Axis. At the restaurant, we've had Nilgai, Axis, Red David, Pear David. I'm sorry, Red Deer, Pear David, even Audad that were culled off of ranches.

So when it's in your restaurant, it's been inspected on the ground. Correct. Yep. Yep. it's been inspected inspected on the ground correct yeah yeah so and that's since they're distributing beyond state lines that's usda now conversely you've got uh feral pigs which are trapped live like we just described that process and they're brought into a facility in fredericksburg where they're inspected by a state inspector because he's not going to distribute over state lines. Correct, an anti-mortem inspection. So before they're killed.

All pigs are done that way. All feral hogs, yes. And so they can be either state or USDA. If they're not going over state lines, they don't need to be USDA. And since most of his distribution is probably to us, and then a few other places he's not going to mess with the uh kind of the burdensome regulations that having a usda inspector in your facility

comes with you know so your hogs in your restaurant live trapped live trapped state inspected state inspected they have a blue texas stamp on them got it but there is a there is a way there is an avenue well federal inspector to then have the you'd have texas wild hogs federally inspected can go yes that's also common so i mean most most feral hog and feral hog products in the united states are probably coming from texas yeah and so they're they're're gonna be inspected under do you know when they inspect it what they're looking for obvious signs I know they're looking at the inside of the they're gonna be looking at the organs for indications you know of for what they would call condemnate they would condemn that animal and then I think just general health while it's on the hoof

you know just make sure it's not lame or showing obvious signs of being sick or anything and then there's some there's something on the inside of the ribs i remember hearing about and then the organ inspection and then it's good to go you know after that um in but broken arrow is usda and they also do feral hog got it so they're usda feral hog because their distribution is wider and so and they do it they do a phenomenal job like the the quality of the meat the aging process um they do that electro stimulation yeah um and then they age everything really appropriately at the at the facility and then it's it's overnighted it's it's an incredible company can you buy like if you as a restaurant guy uh can you buy is it just cheaper for you to buy domestic pigs by the time all that shit's done

uh it's about the same price yeah you think feral hogs would be dirt cheap but because of the the trap the trap the trapper the gas money the trailer the processing the distribution um it's not set up in the same you know structure and it's not as efficient uh so it does in you know incur a bit of cost and so at the end of the day a heritage pig, a large black red wattle, and a feral hog are going to be about the same price. I got a last question for you, Joe. cook and how has like game meat sort of changed your thing and and what's what's your family's attitude toward you know the all the all the game meat you guys eat they love it because we eat it so much um but um where i'm at is uh well one one thing I did is I started cooking everything. Not everything, but most of what I do, I cook very slowly on a smoker.

I usually use a Traeger, but I recently bought an actual Texas offset smoker, which I'm excited to do. You're saying someone made you one up that you're excited about? Yeah, yeah. And I also got one of those Argentine steak grills, which is great. So I really got into wood, cooking over wood. I mean, I've always loved cooking on a Traeger because I think it does impart a flavor of wood to the food, but actual wood, burning wood, is next level. Yeah, and there's a convenience factor.

Oh, the Traeger's amazing. The fact that I can check my phone. I tell my kid, I'm like, listen, go turn the... Yeah, I check my phone and it tells you what temperature the meat is. That's incredible. But there's also these probes called uh meter probes yeah those are great they're incredible and you know you could use those and those also you could check on your phone how it gives you a projection of when you're gonna be done yeah it's a pretty

good projection too dude it'll be like it'll hit at in 22 minutes yeah it's a game changer i i really like there's something about cooking over wood actual wood wood, too, that gives you, there's this caveman thing inside of you. It's like, oh, fire, food. Like, I remember the first time we hunted in Montana. I'd never killed an animal, and I certainly never killed an animal and cooked it over a fire, like a campfire. I'm like, this is the greatest shit in the world. Like, this is like, whatever it is. Like, we were talking about this the other day, that there's like a door that you can open up in your brain like i didn't even know this door was

there like i didn't even know this was an area of my house like what's in here and it was like oh you just hunted and killed something and now you're gonna eat it door and uh and i was like this is my favorite room like this is my favorite room in the house. I didn't even know it existed before. And that's what it feels like when I cook. Well, I'm sitting there outside, and I've got these elk steaks, and I basted them in olive oil, and I've got some sea salt on them, and I'm just sitting them on this grill, and the fire's crackling, and the smoke is lifting up and i can

smell it i'm in my glory i'm having so much fun i'm so relaxed maybe i have a glass of wine i'm just chilling with my dog it's the greatest thing in the world and then the the taste of it is so fantastic and um it does impart impart that smoky flavor and my favorite way to finish them I like to do reverse sear with game meat I've tried a bunch of different methods but to me especially when it comes like with elk steaks the best result that I've ever found is a slow temperature like 225 degrees somewhere in that range until it hits about 110 120 internal and then a really hot cast iron pan with with beef tallow and then i sear it on the outside but uh what do you but you're not talking sous vide like what are you doing to get it up to that initial temp i just with the argentine grill i have it cranked oh so you're okay i got you 225 i got

you you know so you're indirect but monitoring the temperature and the thing that's what's very nice about the traeger uh because it's very uh very like you could set you set 225 it gives you 225 like it's going to keep it there it's really good at that um you could do that with the with an argentine grill or a smoker just a little bit more fiddling around with it um and then you know so that slow cook to get it up to like 110 120 and then searing it that's my favorite but i also like to you know cook things like stir fry things with eggs i like to do that that's what i'll do with like ground elk but i feed a lot of ground elk to my dog that's uh it's really like dog food is like what are you feeding your dog like what's in that like do you have any idea like it's like if you love your dog like would

you give your friend that like what's in there like so even if you buy expensive dog food i'm always like what's how i i never investigated i've never gone to a dog food, I'm always like, what's – I never investigate it. I've never gone to a dog food plant and see how they put it together. I'm sure I'd be horrified. But what I know is the difference between the way he reacts when I put dog food down and the way he reacts when I put ground elk down. He goes bonkers. I mean, it's not like you can't stop eating.

He just dives into the food so you know a thing a thing we do with uh i don't even want to call it my dog my wife and kids dog you don't like dogs i think that's so weird that you don't like dogs how could you how could you not like those two cute little dogs i can tell you real quickly it's not that i don't like them i just don't understand what they do all day like what what because a cow inefficient a coyote wakes up in the morning a coyote wakes up in the morning a fox wakes up in the morning a wolf wakes up in the morning some has on his agenda yeah because they have to because they're a dog i come home and i'm like yeah i come home the dog i was like what have you been doing all day you don't have to do things just just chilling it's just like the only thing in the house that doesn't have a oh you know if we take it to do stuff then

then i'm like okay like when we take the dog out you know i get it okay he's up to something have you tried leaving him a list no it's not that i don't like it my listen my kids love they my kids like the dog more than they like me. It brings endless joy to the world. All that. I told him, I said, listen, that dog isn't going to last that long. Oh, my God. Don't tell him that. Jesus Christ.

But anyways, here's why I'm actually nicer to the dog than anyone else is. Anytime I braise something or any kind of boiled stuff, I save just the jugs of the liquid and you i put and i put a couple slugs of that boiled meat water i already gotta call it that dog it turns that dog's attitude around about anything in its bowl and if i'm home and i'm every day dosing its food whatever like uh enhancing its food with that boiled meat liquor it'll uh if i'm not there it won't touch its food it'll it'll starve itself into eventually wanting to approach that food again wow but then like do your ass like you like liver a lot yeah i'll eat liver on young animals our old stuff uh i chop it boil it dog loves it and we had we had someone on the show recently they're explaining what they're talking about all their lungs all their kidneys what else

all the parts they make dog food they make their own dog food out of all this stuff. That's a great idea. Lungs and everything, man. My dog reacts to liver exponentially more than he reacts to even ground elk. Liver is the king with him. If I give him a piece of liver, just the desire in his eyes, he sits staring at me. And my dog is the furthest from a killer. He's a golden retrieverver he's just a big love sponge you know he's the best but like if he well he's a killer of squirrels i'll tell you that that's his number one job like he just goes out and tries to kill squirrels and he only gets one like every four or five months like every four or five months. Like every four or five months, he'll get a squirrel.

One time I came home from work. It was funny. I came home. I let him outside and I opened up the door and I took a leak. And in the time it took me to take a leak, I come out and he's standing there with a squirrel in his mouth. Like, look what I got. And it's just like recently dead squirrel. And I don't know.

I'm kind of conflicted. I'm like, I don't know. I don't want to cook it and eat it because it's his and i don't want him to eat it because i don't you know i'm like all right let's uh let's take that from you buddy you have to boil it up he wanted to he wanted me to know you know but other than that you know it's not like he's out there like taking down well he actually did chase a deer we had two deer in my yard and i've never seen him chase after anything like he chased after these deer the fact that he can differentiate between a deer and any other four-legged animal like a dog who's his friend like if he saw a dog he'd be like hello dog you're my friend yeah but

those deer he's like full clip chasing after me he actually uh chased him into the neighbor's yard and became a big hullabaloo our uh our dog chases deer but it got the shit kicked out of it by turkeys a couple times now like if that dog's doing something bad and i look at it it'll look the other way like it's like it thinks that if i'm if it doesn't make eye contact with me it'll be like better and when there's turkeys around in the yard that dog kind of like it tries to look at him and tries to act like it's not looking at him it looks at the turkeys it looks at the turkeys off the corner of its eyes he's like fuck them turkeys like a bully at the bus stop there's like something tells me i should chase him but jeez those things oh yeah do you uh do you do uh big bones big game bones for your dog um i did this

year this year um i i did uh i have a lot of elk bone marrow that i can't wait to that i actually just got back we chopped him up and uh you you met ryan that was uh at the uh when he was helped me hang up the skulls and stuff like that he delivered it to me so i'm i'm gonna give it to him but we made a mistake i didn't know that you're not supposed to give a dog a bone once that bone has been baked yeah well yeah i know because they they demolish it i got a bunch of swallow and it jams up their intestinal well yeah i got in a bunch of trouble about that shit so with my family because she'd like got, was vomiting up little bone shards and shit like that. Yeah, same with me.

So now if I hand that dog a bone, she immediately goes to the door. She's got her head like, I got to get away before someone takes it from me. She'll sit there a while and she'll eventually be like, fuck it. And she'll go under the table to eat the bone. So now when give her a bone i tell the kids like i'm gonna give the dog a bone it's your job to take it away from it before and it gets the good pieces off but before she starts just consuming bone fragments so you still give her bones that have been cooked only under supervised circumstances yeah i won't even mess with it anymore because I think even under supervised circumstances, if they break a piece off and swallow it, you're not going to be able to stop that from happening.

You should only give them raw bones. Yeah. I learned that out the hard way. But thankfully, he's okay. But yeah, I'm doing bone marrow this year, which I'm really excited about. For the dog or for you? For me. Oh, yeah.

Elk marrow is amazing. If you can put the bigger bones, put them in a vice and then take a saw down and then build up a big coal bed and then just drop them cut side up right in the coals and roast them in the bones and just salt on top of that. It's phenomenal. Yeah, that's great. up right in the coals like roast them in the bones and just salt on top of that it's been yeah that's great i like we'll even take a bandsaw or um you know i have a i have a milwaukee uh they call them a portaban like a portable bandsaw and i like to it's clean you might you might not like this idea it's clean but i freeze them yeah and then cut them frozen

because it's just so clean that way cut them frozen and then i put little i just lay them on a you can throw them in the oven on a cookie sheet or do like you're talking about and i let them i take do a cross cut or the cross no no cross cut not boats yeah little discs yeah and then if you're feeling real sexy i'll take a little sprig of a little sprig of time and make it like a little tree growing out of there little tweezers so it's got a little tree growing out of it and you put some salt on that that's good yeah so to answer your question I have some of the bones for him some of the bones for me the ones where it doesn't look like I'm gonna get much marrow out of them you You know, little skinny leg portions.

I'm going to give those to him. 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.

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You were always talking about, uh, we're always talking about on X here on the meat eater podcast. Now you, um, you guys in the great white North can, can be part of it. Be part of the excitement.

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Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Family school on game. They love it, yeah. But my kids have been eating wild game for, I mean, I started hunting with you 10 years ago. Oh, so they never had to go through the, like, just normal to them. Just normal to them. Yeah, I mean, my one daughter was four and my other one was two at the time so you know like it was never had to talk about it no she she used to love telling her friends that

her favorite thing to eat was bear because uh i i use your recipe of bear candy oh yeah yeah which was really good inspired off of uh pf chang's mongolian beef oh my god it was so delicious it was so delicious and we cooked it over rice you know i served it up rather over rice i haven't made that in a while i kind of forgot it was so good and it was their favorite thing ever they loved it but obviously it's very sweet you know the sugar involved in it but you know so when they told their friends at school like you should have seen my friend's face they're like what's your favorite thing to eat i like bear and they're like that kid's house i i love it i remember one time when uh we were living in seattle and i sent my kid down to school with a musk ox sandwich and i remember saying he was too young to like get him i'm like i i'll tell you one thing i guarantee

has never happened is no one's ever brought a muskock sandwich down to your school that you can bet on i mean all the things you can bet on that you can bet on but what a crazy animal that is i mean that's that's another animal that i feel like if you hunted that sucker with a bow you better keep an eye on it you're not gonna find any blood how's it even gonna drip any blood out of all that crazy fur? The upside is there's no vegetation. There's vegetation, but it's ankle high. And their impulse isn't to haul ass. It'd be more like, you know what we were talking about yesterday?

If you don't think we're rustlers, but we were musing about if you arrowed a cow. Right, right, right. Yeah. They would just lay down like it'd be a while but you don't gotta worry you're probably gonna find it yeah yeah yeah it'll be it'll go over and stand over there yeah and with the muskox you're dealing with a white surface too yeah it's just like they can go hundreds of yards and i'll just be standing here watching it uh yeah that was a good time and there's a when i hunted muskox um on i did it

one time where i drew a tag to hunt muskox on nunavak island uh with the chupac eskimo and i always like to point out that when they're butchering the muskox they will say this is a good part it's chewy huh and we're always like this is a good part it's tender yeah they like that they're like oh i like the neck because it's chewy have you ever seen where anthropologists break down and biologists break down the the problems that people are having with their jaws and their teeth and crowding of teeth and the diminishing of size of the lower jaw. No. Who is that? From not not to not.

Weston Price was the dentist in the early 20th century. Went around and documented Native peoples around the world. And the healthiest ones were the ones eating like high meat diets followed by high fish diets and then it just went down yeah but it's not just health it's actually the physical shape of the jaw right but it was attributed like general health started i mean his whole thing was

started with the jaw and your shape of the teeth oh so chewing tough meat was always a part of humans. And that's the reason why we look at a robust square jaw as being something that's attractive genetically. That's someone who's had good meat. You've been chewing. Now, if you look at people that live in areas where they eat a lot of porridge and a lot of mush, they develop fucked up teeth and they have like these little tiny

ass jaws and that's malnutrition and it's it's also uh attributed to this notion that your jaw develops in accordance to the amount of meat that you have to break down how many times have you heard he's got a good strong jaw yeah yeah isn't that funny but that's what that's never heard that i love it though yeah and there's a guy named mu um uh i forget his last name his first name rather but his last name is mu and he's a dentist and he was trying to figure out i believe he's a dentist but he's a doctor he's trying to figure out like what is causing this um grouping of teeth like to be smashed in together and all all fucked up and what is causing them grouping of teeth like to be smashed in together and all all fucked up and what is causing them and is there a way to mitigate that and so he developed

a method called mewing and this method is where you're like literally pressing your tongue down i don't know what the method is um exactly i've never tried it but uh this uh this there's a lot of people that have actually changed the shape of their jaw through mewing because it turns out your yeah your jaw is actually something that can be manipulated it's not like all the other bones like uh you you can by this method there's like before and afters where people can like make their teeth more spaced out his idea was like this thing of like just use braces and like why why is it happening i want to know why is it happening why are the teeth bunching up and his belief is that they're bunching up because people don't have access to like difficult things to chew where the the jaw gets like more robust and

one thing you'll notice with weight lifters too and and people who clamp down on mouthpieces a lot like over the course of time they will develop a thicker jaw like it's something that happens to you from like if you think about it like a lot of people lift weights with um mouthpieces um it's really good idea actually in order to build it so you're not wearing your teeth so bad you develop microfractures i had my i have microfractures almost all my almost all my teeth when i used it when i used to booze it up too much partying um that was one of the things is the microfractures in my teeth because i clenched my jaw at night that's such a weird thing when you're bruising i'll clench it so hard my it'll

hurt so um these weight lifters that do that that like bite down on mouthpieces it actually makes your jaw thicker and stronger to the point where there's a product that you can buy i actually have it's called jaws or size and it looks like uh like a golf ball maybe with like two divots in it where your teeth slide in and you put it in your mouth and it's weight lifting for your mouth so you put this thing in you go like this and you're crunching down on this rubber ball oh shit yeah yeah it's like you can go work your abs glutes and your. And it makes your jaw muscles stronger, which would be really good for a fighter. Because part of the problem is the jaw being dislocated and moved.

That's one of the ways you get knocked out. You get hit on the jaw. And if your jaw is more sturdy and there's more muscle there, it might prevent you from certain knockouts. Protect you, rather. and there's more muscle there, it might prevent you from certain knockouts. When you – Protect you, rather. So if a fellow's doing that, you put that in, and it's like you're going to spend 10 minutes or whatever just cranking up your jaw.

Yeah, you would do it like you do sit-ups in the morning, do your jaw. Do sit-ups, work your jaw muscles, do your chin-ups, do your push-ups, do your calisthenics, whatever you do, and also do your jaw. And there's befores and afters. What's that? Does a ball gag count? No, a ball gag is the opposite. That's why Jesse's got that big beard.

He's trying to hide how jacked his jaw is. Everybody's going to think he's been messing with that ball gag. It's a funny thing, the desire for a square jaw but it's it uh they believe it really has to do with people not eating tough meat anymore because you know primarily our diets at one point in time where when we're hunter and gatherers if you were successful your diet was meat if you were unsuccessful your diet was meat. If you were unsuccessful, your diet was bullshit. You know, like you just were surviving on, you know, whatever little berries and shit you could eat and you didn't have strong jaw muscles. Makes sense, right?

Totally, yeah. Makes you want to go chew on like a... Did you get one of those jaw-sercise things? No, no, I got a thing I want to mention. Get one of them jaw-serc or size things it's really cool here i forgot there's a thing i wanted to mention which is the the coolest word then we got to cut some deer up and we got a long drive right but uh joe you remember me telling you the other day when i was on your show i was telling you about the book i'm reading about the guy that traveled with the the guy that was assigned to the black feet yes by the hudson bay company yeah uh i'm probably gonna hit people with a million tidbits out of this book because

it's fascinating the word their word for a moose which is somewhat of a rarity in their area. Their word for a moose, six-see-so. Six-see-so. I'm not pronouncing it right, I'm sure. Six-see-so. Phonetic. Black going out of sight. That's so poetic.

Like a big black rump. Going out of into the willow black going out of sight shit is so good man i heard a word there's a there's a native word i don't even know what tribe there's a native american word they called the bitter root so they were west of the bitter root so they were in the Pacific drainage. The continental, the, the, the continental divide, the other side of that was the land or like the place beyond which there are no salmon. Oh.

Yeah. Wow. You have the place of salmon and you have the place of no salmon it's like it's all you need to know did you got me into i went on a kick a couple years back of like multiple books on native americans um because i read uh empire of the summer moon yeah and i told you about it you're like that, well, that's good. But have you read this? And then you turn me on to a son of the morning star. The morning star.

Ooh. Oh my God. Those books are so heavy. And when you read those books and, and then, um, uh, black elk speaks is another great one.

You read those books and you just imagine the hard scrabble life, the difficulty, those people face the horrors the hardships it's just it's amazing how that wasn't that long ago but how soft we are now yeah we are so different we're we're almost complete if you look at sam bankman freed and then imagine him surviving on the plains with the comanches that he's might like well you know he can't figure basically almeda was moving and he's on amphetamines and he weighs eight pounds and he's basically made out of the same texture of whatever his tissue is like a jelly donut it's like if you boil a moose joint if you boil a moose joint and then grab a handful of the stuff that comes off that's a perfect that's a perfect description he's mush um and his jaw is non-existent

i mean right like that's that's what a human is like of the most, until this Ponzi scheme fell apart, one of the most successful humans amongst us, right? Number two donor to the Democratic Party. Like that's a human, a 30-year-old, robust, in his prime, male human being of 2022. Such a good metaphor. There's a lot of candidates thinking like, we're not going to be getting that check again.

Yeah, that's a wrap. We're going to have to fund ourselves through honest living. But it's amazing how quickly the world has changed and how quickly life has changed. And that what we're doing with this, I mean, we're doing a modern version of hunter-gatherer, right? The modern version is so much easier.

Like what I was saying about bow hunting, that rifle hunting is more effective. It's probably more ethical in that there's less of a likelihood of injuring an animal particularly if you're in a closer distance and you're proficient it's easier to achieve proficiency i think uh although still very difficult make no mistake about it like and i think also let me just say this that rifle hunting on public land is probably more difficulty more difficult than

doing the kind of bow hunting that I enjoy. Because bow hunting on private land, you have more opportunities. These are more really wild animals in the sense that they're not pressured and they're not accustomed to being chased by human beings because there's much less of them. Oh, yeah. Much different. Public land, there's a thing. I mean, I admire the people that are very successful on public land,

and I admire that attitude that like, hey, you know, I got this done on public land. What bothers me is these animals are unnaturally pressured by swarms of people who go out there at a specific time of the year i'm like is that normal is that like they're not they they're wild right but they're wild in this very strange sense where they're just constantly being fucked with by people and they don't bugle anymore and they kind of they're like kind of hiding and it's just a totally different experience than if you were like lewis and clark and you were making your way across the country and you encountered uh like a herd of elk i what i would give to be around back then just to see

what it was like what was it like before there were cities, before there was any sort of wildlife management? Just what was it like? I mean, and again, not that long ago, just a few hundred years ago. There's a couple of great books to understand that. Osborne Russell's Journal, Journal of a Trapper, whatever the hell, Osborne Russell's journal Journal of a Trapper whatever where the

Osborne Russell's journal which is so a lot of times there's a lot to eat and a lot of times ring shitty oh yeah there's a book land of feast and famine no like in the 1930s living off land in Canada it's like sometimes you can't there's so much you can't even process it all right and. And a lot of times, you're screwed. Well, that's also why a lot of those Plains Indians, they would find these massive herds of buffaloes. It's like, look, guys, fuck staying put. Where they go, we go. Let's just keep moving and fall behind them.

Once you have the horse, you can do it. But what we're doing with this modern version of hunting and gathering is, again, what I said about it like, it opening up that door in your brain. It is beyond, it's the most satisfying way to acquire protein and to get meat and to feed your family. It's the best food that I've ever eaten, certainly in terms of nutrition, but even in terms of like taste i absolutely prefer it to everything else and you know you and you bringing me into that has completely changed my life and it's been 10 years now um since that first hunt that we went on you know that was uh

that was 10 years ago this year and it changed everything it was like 10 years ago two months ago well you and you uh introduced me to the idea of doing a podcast so we're even yeah well i'm glad you do because i like listening to it but um yeah again it's like i'm very well i'm very aware of even though uh compared to like a sam bankman bankman freed i'm like a completely different kind of man but compared to the the people that actually made their way across this country and people that like whether it's the plains indians or the settlers people that were trying to hunt and gather in a time where you didn't have ony maps, you didn't have, you know, you didn't have GPS tracking and both sites that ranged for you.

And, you know, it's what it's, it's just amazing how far things have changed and how much things have changed. And I don't know if it's for the better or for the worst, but I know that for my life, the more I can introduce of being embedded into actual wild nature, the better I feel. Yeah, I don't think, and I've never thought, that I'm approximating

a actual hunter-gatherer experience uh as lived by hunter-gatherers that were pre-market environment like like self like sure people that were in a self-contained economy however it's like i do an act i engage in an activity and i engage in a dietary practice that has overlap. And my understanding of what I'm doing is very heavily influenced by or enhanced by an understanding of how people did it. But I don't equate them. Right. but I don't I don't equate them I could read all day about ancestral hunter gathers and I'll learn things that make my experience better

but I'm not learning tips and tricks I'm learning that a way to think about a moose okay a way to think about a moose like our the word moose i don't know what that means m-o-o-s-e like i don't know to think about the experience of of a word that means black going out of sight i'm like that's good you know it's just it's it's just

it enhances like that bit of knowledge i'll never live as the person that had that language i'll never know what language meant to them i'll never know what they felt when they saw a moose but like that enhances my experience but one thing that you 100 are doing is you are letting more people become aware of the benefits of eating that kind of food and living that kind of life and experiencing hunting in a modern context and that that's it's it's fascinating to see that there has been a resurgence in hunting over the last few years it's it's quite a bit of a resurgence and i think there was also a resurgence during the pandemic that was uh a lot of people recognizing like hey uh this whole supply chain thing and this is not as robust as i thought

this is not as stable as i thought maybe it'd be a good idea to at least have some understanding of how to acquire food in in the wild uh but i'm i'm happy that there are so many people that are experiencing that but for the people that are doing it and they're doing it on public land they're also realizing well boy this is uh really ramped up the amount of people that are interested in doing this and it's made it this thing that you enjoy doing so much more popular and that means there's much more pressure that means so there's pros and cons to it yeah changing practices everything yeah but in my take on that is like i want more people to know about it is it going to cause problems yes but it's going to cause a lot less problems than if they take it away and if less people do it the more likely that it gets taken

away that the probability of that becomes higher and higher and that that scares the shit out of me because i've had conversations with educated intelligent people and they were like no one needs to hunt today and and i'm like you don't you really have no idea what you're saying and you have no idea where this this train of thought goes and you you have no idea why it would be satisfying to those people and i guarantee you if you went and you experienced it if you're a meat eater and you say this this is a foolish notion that no one needs to hunt today no one needs to hunt you're right you can go to the grocery store but to say no one needs to hunt like you should stop you don't know what you're

talking about yeah i'd even argue that man like needs i don't i guess needs is a weird word yeah it is hard because but they say it like you shouldn't do it it'll never happen in my lifetime i sure as shit hope it don't and i don't even know when i would hit the threshold but if i had to um if i lost faith in how the regulatory structure if i lost faith in how the regulatory structure is laid out, like right now in the United States of America, across all 50 state game and fish agencies, a couple of places like California,

I'm beginning to have questions about. Washington State, I'm beginning to have questions about. But when I look at Jerry, I'm like, I'm on board with wildlife management. I'm an advocate of it, the models we have um as long as you're like we want to have sustainable populations of wild game that can support limited harvest and we're gonna help and regulate our citizens who want to participate in that harvest like great great you do that and you say that there's no uh there's no elk tags this year elk tags are lower this year and i can see that

why that's the case and like numbers are down 20 and here's the factors i'm like okay cool totally on board as long as it's managed by wildlife biologists i can't picture letting people vote on this stuff yeah that's what gets crazy and that's what happened in vancouver when they got rid of the grizzly hunt you're letting people vote on it that have zero experience with grizzlies and they're not wildlife biologists. They don't know what they're voting on. They just don't want bears to die. So they're like, yeah, let's stop bears from dying. And so they vote on it. The idea that a person who's uninformed, who just happens to be of voting age, can change wildlife management practices, that's insane. And that should be separate. You should not be able to vote for that. You should be able to vote for, if you think that

the wildlife biologists are doing a bad job and the organization is doing a bad job, you should vote for politicians that want to hire better people and do a better job and fix it and make it more science-based. But there's a lot of places where they're acting entirely on the whim of the public that are loathsomely uninformed. Yeah, I hope it doesn't happen. I don't think it'll happen in my lifetime, but I could picture becoming like a, I could picture, rather than quit hunting,

I'd become a vigilante hunter. Like the Punisher? No, like... With an elk skull in your shirt no like the people that continued to drink during prohibition yeah right if i was like this is you know it's misguided it's a mistake it's not coming from the right place i guess i'm going to be the kind of person that that made wine in their own bathtub during the prohibition yeah that's when we vote in ted nugent for president that's when we go listen recruitment that's why recruitment is so important it's like right now well what you're doing is

fantastic well i mean hunters too right but what you're doing jesse's fantastic because you actually teach people no the best thing man the best thing is that is that you're not like it's never like you're not gonna if if we go by dema like sort of like a very rough understanding of democracy where it's like 50 50 right it's not that it's not that you need hunters to win legislative battles you need that because that's it's not going to be like all the hunters versus everybody else because even in the best case scenario you're going to lose 80 percent to 20 it's the people that don't hunt what do they think about it right well a lot of people that that might hunt especially in in this state in particular they might go hunt once but then you've they've opened the door and they've gone into the room that you were

talking about earlier and then now they see that and then they tell other people and it's like that's how they're less likely to bone you on the referendum it's like wait a minute you know what i used to think that hunting was unnecessary but then i know someone that went and did it had the opportunity they never would have had that opportunity before and then that's how you're going to change the minds i think it's just through i mean because it's just education yeah like i've served a lot of bear meat to a lot of people that never hunt a bear they'll never hunt anything i like to think i like to hope that they're sitting there and they go down to the vote or they're filling out their at their kitchen table and they get to some part about well it would

you know ban the ability to hunt bears and you're looking at some about whether or not you should vote for some judge you never heard of before and like how you feel about the millages increase even though you don't have any kids in school and you're like i feel like i should say yeah but i don't have any kids in school and you get down to the one about some shit about banning bear hunting i like to think they'd go like ah fuck i'm gonna put down no hunters are cool well i think it's interesting what's happening in new jersey you know they brought it back they brought it back that guy ran on the premise that's part of what he was running on i'm the band the bear hunt that was part of his platform yeah uh better education uh no bear hunting but the human human bear interactions went up 200 percent they just extended the season good i was gunning for that guy and he was more

like i was like if i could if i could get one if i could make one politician be voted out of office, I had those going to be that Murphy. That is one of the most foolish things a governor has ever done. Because are there more black bears per capita in New Jersey than anywhere else in the states? I'm not sure about that. I think that's true. They got a pile of them.

And they totally screwed with their bear hunters, and they'd make the bear hunters go and check their bears at public places. So that people would freak out. So that you could make a media spectacle. Like when you go to check a bear, like Montana, for instance, well, you check a sheep in Alaska, you check a bear in Montana. You go to Fish and Game, you go inside, you notify someone that you have a bear to check.

They have you drive around back. You go into a structure, a structure garage whatever the hell it is and you privately conduct the investigation in new jersey they're like hear ye hear ye all bear hunters will be bringing their bears down to s x rest area come on down and in the middle of the main street come on down oh yeah they made it like a nightmare. God. Those people are so dumb. It's like mandatory checking, but they turned it into like a media spectacle

and turned everybody into villains. Anyways, we got to end up because I know everybody's got to go, but I'll end on this. Murphy's yet another politician ran on that bear stuff. He's yet another top politician that got busted maskless with a bunch of people in a restaurant.

Yeah. Did you see that video? The woman's got a camera on him. She comes up to him. It's a great quote. Murphy, you're such a dick. That's funny. And he's like hanging out with everybody with no mask.

Meanwhile, everybody else is supposed to be. Mask up. Mask up and save the bear i do not condone going out to people and like cramming a camera in your face like it's bad like don't do it but i just thought that was a funny like opening line of that video and i thought she was talking about the i thought she's talking about the bear hunt but she was in fact talking about the uh she's talking about the masking. But they got it. Florida

had a bear hunt. It went way better than expected. It's like, it's crazy. They made a quota. They hit the quota really fast. I would be like, oh, if you hit the quota really fast, you must have a lot more bears than you thought. But then

it wound up being bad that they hit the quarter it's like we hit the quarter fast no more bear hunts ever because everybody's astounded that they hit the quarter so fast yeah i didn't understand they killed blank thousand bales a bear dying per second that's all the dummies moving from new york to florida yeah because they want to save on taxes well Well, it's that, and it's also the COVID regulations. There's a lot of people that were very upset when New York was running things.

That's a good point. I'm a big Florida fan, man. I would never hack on Florida. But I'd hack on how they handle that damn bear hunt. Yeah. Well, get DeSantis on the podcast. Bring that up to him. Funny? Oh, I told you.. Bring that up to him. Funny.

Oh, I told you. That's my life's goal. Funny. Interesting that you brought that up. That's my life's goal. All right, guys. We got to go. What time is it?

Yep. Yeah. Got to wrap. Got to cut a couple deer up. Thank you very much, Joe. Thanks for having me. And thank you, Jesse, for all the great cooking. Dude, you're such a good cook, man.

Oh, my God. That curry last night was insane. Man, you're such a good cook, man. Oh, my God. That curry last night was insane. You're a good cook. Thanks, man. I like that. That is a great compliment. I like that. Like a home cooking for your friends, man.

Yeah, that curry last night was insane. So good. The only thing I can do better than you is make a tongue. And the duck. We went off on the duck earlier. The duck was amazing. The duck was amazing. The duck was amazing. Thank you.

You cooked way better everything than me, and someday I'm going to show you how to handle a beef tongue. That's very kind. I appreciate it. All right, guys. Thanks. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this.

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