The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 434: My Mule Deer Can Kick Your Whitetail’s Ass

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

Steven Rinella talks with Janis Putelis, Clay Newcomb, Brent Reaves, Tony Peterson, Jason Phelps, Jordan Budd, and Phil Taylor. Topics include: Phil's haircut; when the time comes for butt probes; trail cam bans and folks caught peeing; the new podcast on our network, “This Country Life with Brent Reaves"; bear meat vending machines in Japan; akern shortages; the story behind Steve's sighting of the hairy belly fanny pack; the punishment for mistaking a husky pup for a wolf; the time when Clay raised deer; the fish doorbell; beating the system; arguing over hunting mule deer vs. whitetail; dumpin' carrots as habitat improvement; Jani and Jordan’s "Gear Talk" podcast; raffle and sweepstakes law; Legoland; 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.

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

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. Oh, hey, if you're listening, you're going to have to just finish listening to the show later because there's something more important that you need to be doing. If you remember back a few episodes, we had on some anthropologists and archaeologists,

and we talked about a project in which me and some other folks from the Meat Eater crew went out and butchered a bison using stone tools. We used particularly Clovis points, Clovis projectile points, stone flakes, and we like gutted skin, butcheredered boned out an entire bison in collaboration with researchers from kent state university um smu southern methodist university and oregon state university as all part of this broader study about developing a toolkit so to, for how to interpret what happened at ice age kill sites where all you have left is bone and stone. So we were using stone tools to butcher an

animal. And then the researchers would be able to like look at what happened to these bones, what happened to these stones and use it as clues, right? To put together the puzzles of what was going on when hunters during the ice age were chopping up bison and woolly mammoths and whatnot. That is now an episode that we've put together for YouTube.

It is available right now on the MeatEater YouTube channel. This is the MeatEater podcast coming at you shirtless severely bug bitten and in my case underwearless meat eater podcast you can't predict anything presented by first light creating proven versatile hunting apparel from merino base layers to technical outerwear for every hunt first light light. Go farther, stay longer. Phil's got a new haircut. I do, yes. Very boyish. Oh, no, he looks like, yeah,

he looks like one of my kids. If I took a scissors and just clipped a little in the front, he'd have exactly my eight-year-old's haircut. It looked great. Does your wife like it or not like it? She likes it. Yeah.

Yeah, I was getting shaggy. I had a haircut scheduled when we went to NWTF, Giannis, and then we ended up leaving town, so I had to cancel it. Whenever I cancel an appointment, I don't know if anyone else is like this. If I have something set on my calendar and I have to get rid of it for some reason, I never have the motivation to reschedule it. I just forget about it until it catches up with me. That's what keeps happening with my thing where they're

supposed to put a probe in my butt because I'm of that age. I just can't. It's not that I don't want the experience. It's that I don't want the experience. It's that I don't want to know if there's a problem. Yes.

Yeah, I get that. So you want the experience? No. I'm indifferent to it. Man, if this wasn't a broad, like, listen, if we were just talking privately and I didn't have any work. Just for the record, we're probably not. And I didn't have any work. There may be a few people if we're talking privately and i didn't have any and there's not like i would tell you a story that'll curl your hair no they would explain why how i've come to be what what medical experience

i had that would that made me indifferent to the experience okay but it's like i i like i would be uh i just don't i don't want to find out that i know i have a problem can't they do that by blood work now though yeah that's what i thought too i thought that my doctor was telling me that uh there's at least for a while the next 10 years that we didn't have to go that well i know they changed it and then someone brought it back up not long ago. And for a while,

they bumped it. Like I got aged. I aged in and then I aged out. Am I the oldest person here? How old are you, Brent Reeves? 57. Just turned 57.

Oh, so you got a clear long time on me. I've got a lead. How's your colonoscopy situation? Pretty good? I don't want to talk about it. I'm all good. One more thing.

Clay, have you switched to all fire retardant clothing? Is there something we need to know about? Listen, I bought this shirt the other day because I just liked it. And you didn't realize it was fire retardant? And I paid quite a bit of money for it. And when I got out to the truck, I was like, this sucker's fire retardant, man. And I felt really good about it. And I've been wearing it all over.

I feel bulletproof. You know when the back in Oilfield was totally kicking ass and they had half the country living over there i went into a store there they have uh like fire retardant lingerie because you have to have fire retardant clothes so they supply all your needs not your personal needs wow there's another do you, do you? That's it. Joined today by Tony Peterson. You disagree with Kansas trail cam thing?

I think it's dumb. Yeah. I do. I mean, I know the reason why they said it, they're going to ban it because there's hunter conflicts, but I just, I

don't think that's the issue. What do you think the issue is? I think the issue is people are just really bitching a lot about too much pressure out there and they're finding ways to try to cut it down. I mean, what we're seeing in the whitetail space is Western hunting moving East. You know, people are really gatekeeping on the public land thing and that's moving, you know, we're seeing that, you know, South Dakota, Nebraska, and now Kansas, and it just keeps coming east. Explain that more.

What do you mean? I mean, it's the classic resident, non-resident fight, right? And, you know, residents have power over the non-residents and they will wield it. And I look at that and I go, you know, if you have, if you have a problem, like, oh, there's too much pressure on this Kansas public land, the first reaction we have is take something away and we take something away and we never give it back. And it's either an opportunity or something like that. And I just don't see, you know, I don't see Kansas whitetail hunters the same way you saw like Arizona waterholes or, you know, some of the Western, like really tight water

sources that, you know, 27 the western like really tight water sources that you know 27 cameras on one tree type of thing i just don't think it was that big of a deal i know 12 years ago you could buy leftover tags on your way to kansas's bow hunting opener you could stop in walmart and buy a leftover tag and now it's they go when they go out for the draw they're gone before midnight. That's it. People got wanderlust now, man. But are you saying the West coming East is more like the West problems are now also arising and showing up in the East?

Or the strategies are showing up. The strategies. The problem is actually moved from the East to the West. And now the strategies are coming back. You know, because we've been dealing with hunting pressure. You know, public land's been real busy in a lot of whitetail States for a long time. And now, you know, that kind of moved out West. Everybody wanted to go hunt elk and over the counter units. And we're just kind of watching that wave wash back. But I just, I look at that and I go,

one of the solutions that I think we should be looking at is more public land. Like how do we do more walk-in programs? How do we fund this better? Because when you look at these problems, it's always an access thing. We don't have enough space for people anymore. And I'm like, let's try to make some more space instead of always just defaulting to taking away something. So you think that there was a conversation in which someone said, I want to stick it to non-residents. The way I'd like to stick it to non-residents is make it that no one, resident or non-resident, can use a trail cam on

public land in Kansas, but let's act like it's hunter conflict. Did you see the meeting? No. That they had? Oh, I think partially. think partially, I think, you know, when you, when you do something like that, you're disproportionately affecting non-residents, right? I mean, what do you think? No, because they're not around to run their cameras. And they're the ones. How are they, how are they able to put cameras out? You don't think so? You don't run cameras in any other state? You've never done that? Well, how would I? I'm not there. Have you ever been to another state? Yeah. Because I run cameras in any other state? You've never done that? Well, how would I? I'm not there. Have you ever been to another state? Yeah.

Because I run cameras in other states all the time. I run a camera basically aimed into the woods from my fish shack. I know guys in Arkansas that have like 30 plus cameras in Kansas year round. Oh, so cams? Listen, I'm not like. Really? Yeah. 100%. in Arkansas that have like 30 plus cameras in Kansas. Year round. I'm not like... 100%. I mean, I can tell you that. I got 10 cameras in Wisconsin. But wait, you don't live in Wisconsin, do you? No. How'd you do it? That's a good question.

Listen, I'm not... Listen. Okay. I was wrong. About that detail. But I just think it's like, I think it's too, it feels to me like it's too sort of indirect. Maybe. It's too indirect. Maybe. Like it's an indirect way to stick it to them. Yeah. I mean, I don't think that's like, I don't think that's like the primary reason. I think it's just one thing that happens, but I, and listen, I'm super sensitive to this because, you know, Clay, you and I have talked about this where we look at like, when I was growing up, I started bow hunting in 1992,

right? When I turned 12 and the enemy was the anti-hunters. Like that was when animal rights activists and stuff like that was like the boogeyman and like they're taking away our opportunities. And now I look at it state to state to state and we will take away opportunities from each other all the time if it helps us. And I just think it's so bad. Like I think it's so dangerous. Do you think you should be able to, do you think you should be able to hunt moose with a drone? I don't really know. The answer is no.

No. So you're comfortable stripping that opportunity away from somebody. No, no, no, no. Listen, I'm not, I'm not like a, a super defender of trail cameras. Like I don't really care about that part of it. Like if they took it away, it wouldn't affect

my success hunting at all. Same thing. Like if they were like, oh, no more food plots, no more bait or whatever. Like I don't care personally. I just look at when these things go away, they just don't come back. And I don't think that's a resource issue. When you say no more trail cameras on public land, it's not, it's not like that was causing,

you know, the whitetail population to plummet because people were so effective at hunting. Yeah. You know, so, and I, you know, the drone thing, the technology thing, like I'm, I'm super sensitive to that. Like, I don't, I look at the, you know, the drone thing, the technology thing, like I'm, I'm super sensitive to that. Like, I don't, I look at the cell camera movement, the live stream movement with cameras and stuff. And I'm like, it doesn't make me feel good, but I also look at how quickly we'll give something up if it doesn't really like, it would be kind of like, I don't trap. I don't, I have no interest in trapping, but I will defend your right to do it. Well, you should, because I'll explain why.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I think that I'm trying to develop a principle. I might call it the, I think I need a name for it. The Rinella principle. No, because that sounds too self-serving. Guard the gate. No, either way, I'll workserving. Guard the gate. No. Either way, I'll work on the name of the principal later.

But what you do is, are you familiar with the way Alaska might bow to defer to traditional use practices? Yeah. Okay. practices yeah okay as we add new things in okay as new technologies emerge and we need to pick and choose which of these we're going to go with right so pretty clearly we decided early on we decided that drones would be too up would be would upset a system that we'd already created. Meaning that you could take a drone over a willow flat or over the top of a mountain and check the other side to see if there's elk using a certain meadow and get a live feed of what they're doing and then make your plan accordingly. We decided, well, no, cause that'll undo our, that'll impact our habits.

That'll impact the systems that we have in place about how we control efficacy and what we regard as, and I'm not even, I don't even want to get into ethics. It'll upset an ingrained, long in place system that we have about how we pursue game. Okay. And we decided not to do that because it would upset the norm too much so there were we're putting a um we're dismissing something new and preservation of an established norm okay if you go the more you go back i'll open up a criticism of my own argument in a minute, but if you go back and start undoing the norm, I think that that's equally upsetting. Meaning I wouldn't undo the norm in order to make room for the new. One would go like, okay, but how come? So you would prefer that we still could use punt guns at night for waterfowl, right?

There's a limit to the logic I'm applying, but I'm not applying it. I'm not applying it retroactively. I'm not saying that the norm should be extended back to 1850 or 1900. I'm saying if we establish a baseline norm right now. I'm very interested in defending the baseline norm, knowing that to defend the baseline norm, we're going to need to make hard decisions about things that emerge in the future in terms of efficacy. Right. that it in the way that it preserves opportunity you know meaning um things that allow it to be that if you know you can kill 100 elk off a mountain things that let 1 000 people take a shot at it rather than 100 so if the camera thing and don't know, is there evidence that it increased? Has it really helped efficacy?

I don't think so. I mean, I really, I actually think it hurts people. Yeah. I've never seen an argument that since cameras became prevalent, that public land efficacy is shot through the roof. I've never seen that. I hunt whitetails a lot. And I think that they're, I don't think they do us as many favors as people think. And I think people look at them as like, it's a shortcut to scouting and it's just not, you know, and listen, I get the argument in Kansas or I get the public land

argument of like claiming a spot because that sucks, right? Like you walk in, somebody's got a stand or somebody's got a camera. Like I get that. So I get that argument about it. I just don't think like, I don't think this was the answer to their problems. I don't. So, you know, I laid out like this, cause we kind of strayed into this idea of you would defend trapping. And I think you ought to, um, I don't know that, that the trail cam thing, like I've never seen any evidence or any argument, the trail cams were increasing efficacy to the point where they had to like cut back on how many people were allowed to hunt because everybody's killing deer because they got trail cameras i

haven't seen that um and i don't think that them doing the trail cam thing is going to alleviate pressure on public lands i mean do you think there's dudes that are gonna be like well screw it i'm not gonna hunt now no so i think that it really is that you feel like when you're on there's an assumption there is an assumption of privacy when you're in the woods and taken to an extreme you go on to public land with the assumption of privacy, but you've entered a surveillance state. That it's no different than walking into 7-Eleven,

the number of cameras aimed at you. And I think that that pisses people off and it's unnerving. Sure. I think it's really hard for me to think, okay, you could probably go walk through 7,000 miles of public land in Kansas and you might not have gotten your picture taken. I can tell you about a spot in Florida where you did. Yeah. And listen, I've seen it. 700 yards. But I look at it and I just go, I get why people are pissed at it. I get why they want it to go away. I understand that. I just don't think it's the solution to the problem. Is part of it not disturbance at

non-hunting times of the year? Because guys are just like year-round running trail cameras and they're going in and they're monkeying around with stuff. Was part of it not just disturbance, kind of like them putting limitations on shed hunting? You can't shed hunt until this time because we're trying to give these animals a break. That might have been part of the reasoning. Can we pause real quick so I can finish introductions because now you got this whole thing. You got this whole ball and there's a lot to say about that. Sure.

Let's do some introductions. Joined today for the first time ever by Brent Reeves. Glad to be here, man. If you haven't heard him before, you're going to hear about him all the time. True story. All the time. I heard a, you're going to hear about him all the time. True story. I heard a lot of people talking last night about Taylor Swift.

You think you hear about her a lot? Wait until Brent Reeves' new podcast starts up. That's pretty good. Brent Reeves' new podcast. Yeah, This Country Life. How to cheat the system. How to beat the system. How to beat the system. How to cheat. You gotta beat them.

Beat them at their own game. So Brent, people would know if they listen to Bear Grylls, people would know Brent from the Bear Grylls Surrender and just lots of Bear Grylls stuff that I've done. So Brent's a long time friend of mine. Clay has been an advocate. Tell the whole story, Clay.

About Brent's podcast about we'll come back to it join today by jordan bud what's up how's it going it's going good glad to be here um you got guiding coming up yeah had uh three archery guys for turkeys and oh really had a miss and a snow storm so yeah it's been a little rough. That was tough. Yeah, probably. Just because the season is, it's not like springy. It's really not springy. No.

And it's currently a snowstorm there right now too. So I think a future, I'm just going to hold off on the archery season till, you know, further into April. How many clients you got coming for regular turkey? Eight, I think. Are you filled up? Yeah. Yeah.

Filled up. Yeah. How many clients you got coming for regular turkey? Eight, I think. Are you filled up? Yeah, yeah, filled up. Yeah, so that's good. And people want to book out to 24, 25. Excellent, man. Crazy. You got eight turkeys running around? Yeah, there was eight shredders. My dad sent me a picture in the yard yesterday morning.

Yeah. And filled his new haircut. Jason Phelps is here. Thanks for having me. It's a pack of towels Clay Newcomb Hello And Janice Putilis Good morning

Okay Finish up what you're saying now? Well Just About Brent And his podcast No no no no no no We'll get to that

We gotta go Yeah you guys You were bringing up A whole other thing That I The effect on wildlife Effects on wildlife From guys being in the woods that we gotta go yeah you guys you're bringing up a whole other thing that i that i that that the effect on wildlife effects on wildlife because this is the thing you've been here i got i got a i have a go ahead well i i just i just said what i had heard i just asked somebody

that was i felt like in the know and i said did they do it? Why did they ban trail cameras in Kansas? And he said, the first thing he said was it was an issue of disturbance of wildlife. Yep. That was his interpretation. Sure. Of probably many, many things. Let me, okay. You know how when you're normally like a normal person who has a real ax to grind, and they, like we see with the media, right?

Like depending on where you get your media, you see that they omit a lot of information in order to accentuate the parts that they're interested in. Right? Right. So, um, people who are ideologues and in some ways I am would never say a thing that would damage their own argument. But in the spirit of not being that way, I'm going to point something out. and I've even jumped on them, where hunters have said, where hunters are looking at other land users or land use practices and saying it disturbs wildlife. So there's all this stuff around Colorado, and we've reported on a bunch of it, where hikers, recreationalists are disturbing wildlife.

You want to know what disturbs wildlife? Killing them and dragging them out of the woods. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Well, they're saying in Colorado, there's too many hikers and it's scaring elk off there. No, I mean. It's like, holy shit. Like, really?

But no, don't you remember we did a whole podcast with Bill, the warden yeah in colorado and it was the fact that it was a 24 hour a day 365 pressure where he's like look yeah hunters apply a lot of pressure but it's for about two it's for about two months but the other recreation now that is year round in those mountains and it literally is like he's saying on top of a 14 or in January at midnight, it's not surprising to see a headlamp out there because there's some person going extreme and climbing a 14 or January 1st at, you know, at midnight in a snowstorm.

It's just a thing now. Right. And there's just pressure and just human activities all the time. And like you said, it just slowly, but surely, just little chips at those deer when they, every time they got to lift their head up just to see a passerby that takes them away

from taking that one bite of grass. And when that happens every single day, multiple times a day, it adds up to a lot of stress. Yeah, you're right. I forgot about that he did acknowledge the thing, but there are a few months out of the year where I'm talking public, private, whatever. There's a few months out of the year where most things need to adjust their behavior

in radical fashion. Um, because hunters are disturbing wildlife. So I'm just saying like people in glass glass houses don't throw stones in some respects. But there's a churn to the 365-day-a-year thing. But I always, like, a little bit when I hear that argument, I'm always, like, a little bit like, listen, let's be honest. No, I agree. Yeah.

Like, you look where ducks want to go, and then where they need to go. There's two different things. like an action point that an agency was able to take to kind of slap down just the encroachment of technology on to the traditional way of hunting. Whether that actually crossed somebody's mind or not, it feels like what it is because it is outrageous. Like if we could take, you know, somebody from 1984 that was a bow hunter or was a turkey hunter. Well, let's even say the nineties when things were a little bit more modern after television and some of the, you know, more modern things happen. And you put them in today's world and had them interview a guy and said, what are your number one priorities this year? I guarantee in the top three would be putting out trail cameras so that I can get

intel about wildlife without being there. And people would go, what? Are you serious? I mean, the trail cam thing is wild. And man, I play the game, so don't hate the player. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

One of those. You can fool me once, but you can't fool me. What I'm trying to those yeah yeah you can fool me you can fool me once but you can't fool me what i'm trying to say is you can't fool me again the this trail cams are crazy man and i mean i use them like i use them like crazy it is it is wild how dependent we are on technology for that and if you want to talk about fair chase, I say this privately to people, like people want to talk about using dogs or bait or something and say fair chase, Lord have mercy,

son, take the GPS on your phone and a trail camera. You, if, if we were on a different planet in front of an unbiased judge, and I had somebody that was telling me I wasn't fair chase for using dogs and bait, and you had satellite GPS mapping on your phone, and just a trail camera, not even a cell camera.

You went in front of a jury and you said, pick out which one of these guys is unfair. I mean, it's so wild. Hold on. I got to ask you this, though. If I said, Clay, in the next week, you got to kill a deer. I said, you can take this trail camera or you can take this bag of corn. You'd pick the trail camera? That's a great comment.

What would you pick? What's your answer? Oh, I would pick the corn. Me too. But, I'm just saying, in the broader, in the, no, that's a great argument. Can we change the question? That's a great argument. You have a year to kill a big smoker buck. Trail camera or corn?

Trail camera. Really? I mean, I'd have to think about it. All I'm saying... That's a great comment. I'm not saying what you're saying isn't true, but I'm just saying I kill a lot of stuff because of trail cameras. Sure.

In some situations. It encourages me beyond, like, I work harder because of trail cameras. I mean, like, there's intangible factors. Like, I got a picture of a, I got a picture of, I don't even want to say what kind of animal it was, on my trail camera yesterday on my cell phone. I'm sitting here in Montana, and I'm pumped, and I thinking about what i'm gonna do this fall i'm doing stuff i would not be doing it's a badger big old coon hey man i could have caught a i could have caught a raccoon off trail camera but chose not to caught one oh every night he crosses on this beaver dam. Easy pickings. But I let him walk.

That's fair. Hey, Tony, let me say this. In response to you, if you were out west, I would totally take, like if you're in the eastern deciduous forest where I live, yeah, a bag of corn is going to be. But if you were in a place where you weren't allowed to use corn. Well, I mean, if you're out west, like the GPS on your phone is taking people into places they would never have the courage to go or the guts to go or know was there. I mean, just the point is, is that there's a lot of stuff going on and it's not always apples to apples.

Dude, I totally agree with you. I honestly think one of the biggest advantages and one of the biggest problems we have now is it's so easy for you to pull up your phone and scout a spot. I mean, you can find public land anywhere, private landowners, and I love it, but it's just opened up this world to everyone that, you know, 20 years ago just wasn't there.

And I think that's at least as big of a game changer as the proliferation of trail cameras you know i it's possible to have both because even like i've always loved alcohol i used to drink too much alcohol me too and when i drank too much alcohol i was like you know what they should probably never have uh repealed prohibition even when i was having a drink i would think that i was like you know who you know like i love it but i mean really is it really doing anybody any favors yeah you're gonna see the same thing though i mean they outlawed alcohol people kept drinking it there's people gonna be putting game cameras in kansas well no because what i just heard you weren't hearing we

talked about this but i got a friend in arizona who I thought would have been livid about Arizona's trail cam ban because he is not only is he a guide, but he does a lot of scouting. Okay. And he'll, so he's got different guiding clients and he'll go find stuff. Yep. He'll find a, something that catches his interest and he can then go, you know, he can go to an outfitter and get a client and be like, listen, look what I got. Found this sweet, whatever. Um, I was like, and, and I said to him and I didn't try to tee it up.

I already discussed this once on the show, but I didn't try to tee it up too much. I said, Hey man, what'd you think about the trail cam thing? Uh, he was all for it. And he said, what's interesting now is you can't find a trail cam. He's talking about public opinion and where it really came from, where the public sort of sat on the trail cam issue. Right. He said, I haven't run into a trail cam since, and that wasn't that long ago. I haven't run into a trail cam still hanging in the woods

that doesn't have a bullet hole through it. Really? Yeah. I've heard that too. You said now you just shoot them when you see them. Because they're not supposed to be there. We'll just start hiding them better. Yeah, but I mean, if you hide it too good,

it's not going to get any pictures. Can't find it. You're not an undercover wildlife agent. Have you had, Tony, have you had, before we need to get off this topic, I know, but have you had an experience on public land that your experience has been negatively affected by seeing too many other people's trail cameras in the woods? No. In fact, and I don't run trail cameras on public land ever. It's just not part of my strategy.

And when I drew Iowa last time and I was down there, I was walking past trail cameras. I was dragging deer past trail cameras. They were all over. And I just look at it and I go, one of the things that trail cameras do is they convince people to not hunt. You put them out and you're like, oh, these bucks aren't consistent or they're only at night or whatever. So I actually, I'm like, whatever, like they're out there. And if you would have looked at the, the prevalence of trail cameras where I was hunting, you'd be like, this place is getting pounded. But I had so much of that public to myself, you know, part of it was October.

It wasn't the right. They were getting pictures of Tony Peterson on there all the time. I just, they were like, we ain't going in there. I just walked by a wave. And so, no, but I don't, I'm just kind of used to it. You know, I mean, it's just like a part of the thing. And it, listen, does it piss me off a little bit? Kinda.

You know, like I'm getting old enough where that kind of stuff makes me a little grumpy. And it's the same thing when I walk in and there's a, you know, a ladder stand chained to a tree on land. You're not supposed to leave a stand up overnight. But it's just, when you hunt public land, it's just part of the game, man. Like it's just there. If's just when you hunt public land it's just part of the game man like it's just there if you have a trail camera picture become part of the game but it's been for a while you know if you have a trail camera picture of tony peterson on your phone and you'll send it somehow to me i will send you a bear grease hat oh that's a good little deal now i you know uh you remember earlier i mentioned i have a trail cam at my fish shack

There's like a really good game trailer behind my fish shack Well one of my friends went back there And she peed And then she saw that the camera Pulled my card She still hasn't given me my card back Wow So here's a person where

Here's a person that You know not on private land But here's a person that really didn't like that feeling. I extend it beyond trail cameras. I can remember being a young guide and thinking, hunting public land, guiding public land in Colorado and thinking, oh, there's just beautiful, serene places. And that's what I came to expect. And the first time you go into a meadow and you think, ah, ain't no one else has hunted in this meadow forever. And then you search around in some upper corner, a little farther than you've ever been. All of a sudden you find the leftover

milk crate or the metal folding chair or whatever, just some sign that somebody else was there before you once. And it just takes away from the experience you know i like the woods just looking like no one's been there you know maybe a boot track here and there can i tell you about my sweet trail cam setup that i have right now dude there's this biggest picture the biggest nastiest scree slide you ever seen in your life i mean from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain scree slide but then imagine that there's like a finger timber that noses out into that scree slide and a finger timber on the other side that noses out into that scree slide and a little band of brush that connects those fingers of timber.

And when you go up there, it looks like, it looks like someone that over the years, someone has actually come in and smoothed the rocks out. I got one hanging right there. What kind of animals are you getting? Whatever. I don't know.

Here's the deal. It's a, see now I'm retelling my story. Two years ago, I went up there and I'm not going to, it's like a place that I'm going to go. And I was like, I'm going to come in a year and get my camera. Two years ago, I went up there, and I'm not going to, it's like a place that I'm going to go, and I was like, I'm going to come in a year and get my camera.

So I went and hung it up there, talked all year to my wife about my camera, and fretting about it, and how I was going to get up there, and thwarting. I was going to make her come with me, and my plans got ruined. And eventually, I go up there, and I had forgotten to turn some bitch on. Oh, that hurts. That hurts bad. So I set it back, and it'll have been sitting there a year this June.

On this time, we think. And I don't know. I got probably Wolverines, Bulbs, Lynx. That's cool, man. Who knows what's waiting on that thing? So I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth here. Tony Peterson might be on there. Dragging a white tail. who knows what's waiting on that thing. So I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth here.

Tony Peterson might be on there dragging a whitetail. I think that's highly unlikely. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking-end titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

That's right. We're always talking about 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 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 meet.

onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Okay, moving on. This is the most amazing news story I've come across. Where was this reported? Oh, The Guardian. You know, The Guardian always has a lot of, we're always getting scooped by The Guardian,

which is a British rag, the Guardian always has a lot of, we're always getting scooped by the Guardian, which is a British rag. The Guardian is. So, here's the deal. In northern Japan, Japan has prefectures, which I'm not sure what that means. Let me just tell you what's going on there. They have a bear meat vending machine, which has proven to be a surprising success. The machine in the northern prefecture of Akita sells locally killed wild bear. Now, there's a hunt club there in this remote area.

Hey, what did you say it comes out to a pound? $115. $1 to a pound? 115 bucks. $115 per pound of bear meat. Not a bad deal. That puts a bear, that values a bear at about. Per pound? I killed a big bear one time and got the, I had the back straps. I had the back straps and 83 pounds of ground off it.

I'd say that's. $8,000 bear? Yeah. So what they're selling it by is... It's better than a day's balloon. They're selling it 2,200 yen for 250 grams of bear meat, which comes out to... Tell me again?

I think 115-ish. 115 a pound. There's a nearby railway station in the town of semboku okay this guy sets up a bear meat vending machine and now he's got people he's got requests for mail order deliveries into tokyo there's a there's a hunt club nearby and the hunt club got permitted in the mountains. The hunt club got permitted to kill a certain number of bears during the hunting season, and they set up a vending machine to sell it.

A customer said bear meat tastes, no, one of their spokesmen, bear meat tastes clean and doesn't get tough. This is not a total departure because in my reading here, vending machines are ubiquitous in Japan selling odd things. You can get like hot and cold drinks, edible insects, hamburgers. But they now have one selling bear meat. You can also, in Japan, buy whale meat in a vending machine. 100 locations around the country in the next five years will be selling whale meat in vending machines.

Incredible. It would happen in our country if it was legal. Yep. Yeah. I think so. So the number, here's the thing you don't really think about with Japan. The number of bear encounters has risen in recent years from an estimated 4,800 like human bear conflict encounters in 2009 to more than 20,000 in 2020. Wow.

Two people killed and 158 injured from bears in japan a shortage of acorns yeah they have acorns in japan shortage of acorns 40 of the encounters in 2020 occurred in residential and urban areas or on agricultural land. Experts say a shortage of acorns in their natural habitat

means that animals are more likely to come into contact with humans as they forage for food. Acorn in Japanese is donguri. In Japan... I wonder how the hill folks hill folks say i bet it ain't the same here's another thing you might not think of when you think of japan a 8.85 foot brown bear 300 kilograms what's that put him at 450 450 450 pound brown bear 300 kilograms. What's that put him at? 450?

450-pound brown bear. Killed. Good-sized bear. Listen to this. Oh, sorry. This is going back to 1915. But it still warrants discussion. It appears there's two species of bears in japan a brown bear and a and a asiatic black bear like they call it call that the sun they call it a japanese black bear ursus

the botanist japanicus we used to do a trivia question at our live shows where you had to name i can't remember how many of the world's bears you had to name some there's a lot of bears you know what used to stump the shit out of people at the trivia show the live show is um name five of the it was six of the seven or five of the six cats wild cats native to north america and um and uh people had a very hard time doing that or we'd say name name like six members of the weasel family which you think would be a slam dunk but that stumped people now that would get me the weasels because they don't know to put in like skunks and badgers and stuff so continuing on check this out in 1915 a brown bear killed seven people and injured three others on the northern main island of hokkaidu a hunter tracked it down and killed it can you imagine that would be quite a news story

here in the u.s today was it like over a period of time or does it say? It doesn't say. It doesn't. Think about that. I know a story, and I don't know it well, so I'm going to tell it very generically, but in the last 40 years, there was an American guy that took hounds to Japan and hunted for an extended period of time in Japan with, with American bear dogs.

Bear hunting. Yeah. Did he do good? I think so. I think it was a very specific reason that he was there. It was, they were having some trouble and like they recruited this guy to come and he went and took his, as I recall, he took his plot hounds

and went to Japan and hunted for a short period of time. I don't remember the context of the story, but interesting. Likely story a plot guy would tell, huh? He's treating them up bonsai trees. This is the one detail I do remember. This is interesting.

If you listen to the show, you heard recently me talking about a guy I ran into at the Cabo Airport who had a fanny pack. You know, Rogan wears fanny packs. I sent this to him as well. Has a fanny pack made to look like a human gut overhanging your belt so i see him in the airport slender feller and i'm like what is going on as i'm standing next to him and it takes me a while to realize that he has a fanny pack made to look like a large overhanging gut with the navel and the hair and everything hanging out of his t-shirt.

I talked about this on the podcast and we got this note. I was listening to Monday's podcast and double over laughing at Steve's description of his observation of me with my belly fanny pack at the Cabo airport. I'm a big fan and immediately recognize him at the airport. Airport. I'm a big fan and

immediately recognize him at the airport. I feel it's rude to approach famous people, especially with their families in public, so I didn't approach him, but I've been telling everyone that I saw Ronella at the Cabo Airport to hear that he has been telling people about the fella he saw with a ridiculous novelty pack to describe the other side

of the interaction that wasn't as hilarious. My wife bought me the fanny pack as a gag gift for christmas i've paid her back by wearing it anytime i pay her back by wearing it anytime i travel with her what are the chances that steve that this guy would have known Steve Fanny Pack? In the long-going debate about golf courses that we've had and this whole wrinkle has emerged about how golf courses make great. A golf course person pointed out, and I gave him a lot of credit for pointing this out.

He pointed out they live in a suburban area and they have a golf course. It's got woods. It's got, I don't know, how many hundreds of white oaks that he's counted up water holes all the wildlife that lives there and he's like tread lightly when you're hacking on golf courses because in a lot of places that is the area's wildlife habitat that's it and he was talking about his particular golf course they do a lot lot to foster, to create wildlife habitat, and even how some golf courses are registered with the Audubon Society, and they do things to improve bird nesting habitat on golf courses.

And I'm only mentioning this guy's note because he goes on to say, here's why, when he shops for, he's been shopping for land. And he said he's very interested in buying a golf course. Because he says, if I want to put in food plots, they already have clear areas with irrigation. They already have ponds. Since better, drier land is often put to higher use, there's often some wetland area the course is built around where you can duck hunt. They have a network of paved cart paths in place for easy transport of gear in your kill. There's a clubhouse, a kitchen facility, and a bar. But the reason I mentioned this whole thing is me and Yanni's friend did this.

He bought and undid a golf course. I mean, undid it. You couldn't tell now. How do you undo a golf course? Just take the flags out of the hole? No, dude. One, the clubhouse, he removed it. It's gone.

Oh, he didn't want a hunting camp. He took some of the fairways and planted them in oak. I mean, he undid the golf course. Dave,

if you drive by there now, there's no way you would ever know that it used to be a golf course. And it wasn't that long ago. The first time we went, you could tell

it was a golf course. Dude, he undid it as a wildlife property. That, he undid it as a wildlife property. That's pretty cool. The place that I grew up, so my dad always wanted us to play golf, and I never did.

And the old golf course that we used to play on when we were kids in my hometown in Arkansas is now no more, and it's like a, it looks like a cut over. It's like grown up. At least last time I saw it.

Refugia wildlife. Yeah. And it's true. We have a local golf course. It's plastered with wildlife. So I get it. It doesn't mean, you know,

I mean, like, listen, there's golfers, there's golf courses not not the same thing uh little update here a long time ago you know what's funny we were recording so we had the atlanta braves player austin riley on the podcast and we were recording the podcast in Atlanta. And as we were recording it,

the walleye cheating scandal in Ohio was erupting. That's how I can place that. On that episode, I did a very spirited defense of the Montana woman who mistook a husky puppy for a wolf and rugged it out and, and put it on social media. And you can imagine how that went over, uh, in my spirit of the defense of her, I, my defense was this. It's not as bad as it seems.

So it's a tepid, I call it spirit, a tepid defense being, it's not as bad as it seems. So it's a tepid, I call it spirit, a tepid defense being it's not as bad as it seems. Right? Not as bad as it seems. So she just got a six-month deferred sentence. I can't believe she's in this much trouble for this. Yeah, me neither. A six-month deferred sentence and banned from using a hunting rifle for six months on the Flathead National Forest. I like how specific that is. So for six months, no rifle on this particular national forest.

From April to October. rifle on this particular national forest from a little talk to so they can rest assured that no more husky puppies will be killed by her for at least six months that's the that's the punishment sounds like they had to give her a punishment yeah so this is what they came up with what they came up with. This is what they came up with. That's one heat cycle for huskies. Oh. So it's a conservation play. I get it. So she was charged.

She had a misdemeanor offense for animal cruelty. Hmm. Does anybody have anything wildly different than how i view it i mean i guess it's a mistake that could be made i mean if you're in wild country you could legally shoot a wolf you're 300 i don't and i don't know the details of the story it's reasonable that someone could shoot a husky and think that it was a wolf and if you and if you were not an experienced person in the woods, you'd never seen a wolf up close before, I could understand. It's reasonable to think that someone would think a husky puppy

or a husky was a young wolf. It seems reasonable to me. Even after skinning it out? I mean, that's as far as my argument goes. Maybe the collar. Kind of like the corn and trail camera thing. Didn't have a collar. And it was like a guy had dumped, a guy had, I don't know why this son of a bitch is in trouble. That's the guy.

The guy had taken a whole litter of dogs and dumped them up in the mountains. Who's that? Maybe he is in trouble. He must be. If he's been caught. They just had to leave a paper trail, it sounds like. I mean, they had to do something they just had to leave a paper trail it sounds like i mean they had to they had to do something they had to do something yeah uh that's what the game warden said to me the time that my legally caught and legally kept wild buck got loose and went and roughed up my

neighbor that's what the game warden said to me oh can you remind everybody about how that went he said you're gonna have to we're gonna have to leave a paper trail i i legally i had a deer a wild caught deer in a that we kept we raised several of them and one day my i had no idea you were a captive deer breeder i was for a time my My kids were young. I set out to raise deer and a long story short, a pit bulldog ended up in the pen with my forked horn buck. And they were going round and round. I mean, the deer was going to get killed. The dog got in there. It wasn't my dog. And so the only way to remedy the situation was to open the door they're running circles and when that buck came around he just went straight out the gate and and i shut the gate

and captured the dog you know called the called the dog owner and the the buck was gone for he was just gone okay and he had a collar on and what kind of collar like a dog collar you're a dog collar on a book with his name tag on it like bucky call it was a really dramatic scenario where i i hear a dog bark and i look out and there's just this like chaos and why do you have a collar on your deer uh just so somebody wouldn't sneak up in my yard and shoot it thinking that it was a deer just you when you when you have when you have deer steve you put collars on them and i want to again say this is no longer legal in arkansas yeah but for years you could you could keep up to six hand-caught deer from the wild and i wanted my kids how'd you hand catch them you hand-catch them? Catch them by hand.

I mean... Okay, but... Okay. If I gave you the rest of the day to bring me a deer, you're not going to get one. You had a trail camera or a bag of corn.

I don't care if you have all the corn and all the cameras you want. I'll tell you, I can tell you several stories about hand-catching deer in the wild. Would you catch it as a fawn? Yeah, catch them as... You got to catch them...

Man, there was a period of time when my kids were young, about four or five years that I became an expert at when fawns were born in the Ozarks. I would go hunting for them. Yeah. No, I've come across some hunting morels

because you're looking right. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't do that anymore. So you can, you know, it's not legal anymore, but so the deer gets anymore. So you can, you know, it's not legal anymore. But so the deer gets out. Okay, but I want the whole damn story, but I do want to catch, like, walk me through catching one.

Well, I'll tell you how I caught one. I was driving down the road. And boy, I want to say it was May 28th. I would have remembered the date 10 years ago. And there's a doe standing in the road with two little fawns. And the doe jumps off and the fawn beds down in the ditch. I literally got out of the truck, picked it up, put it in the backseat. We raised it, bottle fed up and it uh

the other one my father-in-law picked up for me i used to go out when when guys were cutting hay and walk hay fields um and when they're about four or five days old you can't hardly catch them but when they're young you can catch them and uh so yeah we raised three deer uh oh i mean i could bore you with stories and i've told some of them on the meteor podcast but uh these aren't boring to me well i mean i i'm afraid people have heard them no i i raised a doe that we called lulu that lived in our house like a our house like a pet dog for a long period of time. And again, you can't do this anymore. So this is not okay. But at the time it was. And we ended up kind of releasing her back into the wild. And she raised at least three pairs of fawns that she, she, she became wild. She raised three pairs of fawns

that she would bring back to our house during periods of stress. Really? When it got real hot in August, we'd be eating dinner and we'd look out the window and there'd be Lulu standing there about five feet from the window looking at us. Huh? Ultra wild. Like you'd go out and she'd run off, but then she'd stop and she was looking for a handout. So her kids are like, tell us again about your daddy. Yeah. One time I was bow hunting a mile from my house and Lulu walked underneath me with her fawn.

One time, another buck that I had. She tasted great. That we let, I've told this story before. Stop me, someone. I don't. I ain't never heard this time it's a great story I was raising I raised a buck

and I let him run wild or just let him run loose around my house the older he got he was a button buck inside the house no no no let him run just like

like loose out in the yard like a dog and and when he became a button buck or a deer when he became a button buck he would run he he just started to buck, he would run.

He just started to become more. He would just be gone for a little while and just disappear for like hours at a time. I go muzzleloader hunting across the road from my house. I'm sitting on the ground. The wind is hitting me in the back of the neck, blowing down into this little draw. I see two deer coming and it's a antlerless deer and a small buck. And they're coming and I go, here we go, there's a deer. And the wind's blowing straight down the hill. And I see that they're going to cross my wind. And when the antlerless deer crosses my wind, it's my deer. He's he's piled up.

He's piled up with another buck. And when he hits my wind, he turns directly towards me, starts grunting and walks up to me and starts licking my ear while I'm in a, I've got the gun up on my knee, and I don't move a lick. I don't move a lick, and the deer is licking my ear, and the wild buck, which is like a little forked horn, catches my wind and just flips out, and is just like, what are you doing, man? And the buck took about four or five steps towards me,

and then the buck spooks, and then me and, shoot, what did we call him? That was Roadrunner. Me and Roadrunner walked back to the house. That story happened just like that. I mean, I knew what it would do when it caught my wind. That's the best cover scent ever. The deer walked up and but i just never moved and oh i got we've got videos of these deer but i wonder what your buck would have thought about um what your deer would have thought if

you'd shot that deer oh probably thought nothing of it i mean it just doesn't have the frontal cortex to be able to process abstract thought like that dude just shot my buddy. Can you imagine some dude in a tree stand watching you walk back with that deer on your tail? This dude's a Jedi. What if I'd have been on a trail camera? What if I'd have been on your trail camera? So to finish the, stop me someone. No, we want to hear about how the buck roughed up your neighbor.

I said the game warden said to me, we got to have about how the buck roughed up your neighbor i said the game warden said to me we got to have a paper trail for this mr nukem uh was so my my my buck gets loose because he's been i saved his life by opening the door and shutting it on this pit bull the buck is gone for like a week i told this story on the media podcast one day i come home, Misty comes home and she'd seen blue lights up at the front of the road again. And, and she comes,

she comes home and the phone rings and it's our neighbor. And he goes, clay, they're after you, man. They're after you. He said, the game warden came by here and said,

does anybody on this road own a deer? And my neighbor goes, no. I've never heard of anybody having a deer around here. And he picks up the phone and he goes, Clay, they're after you. And he says, your buck is hurt. And he names the person, this elderly gentleman on the road. And I go, oh, no. I mean, I'm just like, think my life's over.

I get in the truck, drive down there to where the game warden's at. And I'm like, this is my deer. What's going on? And he didn't hurt the neighbor, but he walked up to my neighbor while he was doing chores outside and just started pushing around on him. Just messing with him. And the neighbor obviously is like, what is going on? They call the game and fish. The game and fish comes out. I go turn myself in.

I'm like, kids, it was great being your dad. I'll write you from prison. And I tell the game ward exactly what happens. This deer, I had it. I had to let it go, the dog. And he gave me a warning citation for releasing captive wildlife. No jail time. No jail time.

That's the story. You can't own a deer for six months on this and the flat tires. So the best photo of the nucums that we have is my son, Shepard, when he was three. And he's sitting on a rock wall, bawling his eyes out. It's like a cell phone photo. You can tell he's just like, ah! He's bawling his eyes out. And there's a half-eaten apple on the wall beside him with a deer eating it. And I came outside because Shepard was crying.

And I said, what's wrong, son? And he said, Roadrunner took my apple. That deer had walked up and stole his apple. It's the best picture in the world. It's Shepard. Yeah. A guy wrote in. This is an interesting deal.

First off, he says he's dusting off everything he knows about proper grammar so that his email doesn't wind up on a t-shirt of ours, which is the thing we've had happen for exemplary emails. He's gotten tuned down to a program in the Netherlands called Visderbel. Make that sound Dutch. Anybody here Dutch?

Visderbel. It means fish doorbell. So they have a river. they have anadromous fish in the netherlands and they have a river with a lock system on it and they found that anadromous fish are susceptible to predation when they get up to the lock system and they're stuck there waiting to get through so they have underwater cameras and volunteers who watch to see when fish show up. And basically they press a doorbell for the fish. They press a doorbell and then the guy that, and when a fish shows up and needs to get

through the volunteer hits a doorbell, ding, ding, the lock, the guy that controls the lock, then cracks it open so the fish can slip through. You can watch it all on live stream. That's cool. Here's a piece from the news from the Northern Ontario. What is this? From Northern Ontario. CTV News.

A Northern Ontario man has been banned from license hunting and fined $5,000. So whatever this is, it's much worse than shooting a husky. After pleading guilty to having more than six times the legal limit of grouse and obstructing

conservation officers. This guy had 91 grouse, which is 76 over the legal limit of 15. This is in Ontario. He didn't want to let the game wardens into his house. When they finally got in,

they found two large boxes of frozen grouse hidden in the shower. So there's a heavy duty find. Way worse than shooting puppies. This is one that blows your mind. Two guys from Colorado went to the Manistee River in Michigan. So they come all the way from Colorado to the Manistee River and they get caught

with 463 pounds of illegally caught salmon you know what their fine is? this is just like, it's just interesting how this stuff plays out so these guys have hundreds of illegally caught salmon

thousand bucks a piece dang So these guys have hundreds of illegally caught salmon. A thousand bucks a piece. Dang. Wow. Not per fish, per person. Yeah, a thousand bucks. No, not a thousand bucks per fish. Oh.

So this guy shoes too many grouse, 5,000. What else happened to him? He lost his hunting privileges for life. They don't mess around in Canada. These dudes kill, it's a big, there's a picture of the confiscated fish. Just a big pickup truck load of king salmon heads and bags of fillets.

Thousand bucks a piece. Great inconsistencies. I would have at least taken away their fishing privileges on the Manistee River for six months. At the minimum. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out

if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club,.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Clay, I like those deer stories. I think you should do a whole podcast about deer stories on Bear Grease. Yeah, that's a good thought. Pet deer stories.

Yeah. Because I bet you could interview some other fellas down there in Arkansas who also have crazy pet deer stories. Nobody has bad pet wild animal stories. Steve's coon stories are amazing. Was it the fact that it became illegal or did you

just grow out of it that made you quit? So basically my buck got dangerous you know the bucks get dangerous sure and so so that spooked me a little bit as the kids got older and when that dog got in like there was just complications with having a deer and there a lot of work. I mean, an incredible amount of work to to to bottle feed, you know, a very young deer. I mean, it's like having a newborn baby.

You're waking up for multiple weeks. You're waking up every four hours to go bottle feed that thing. So it's a legitimate tax on your life to raise one successfully. And I think we just kind of had our fill of it. And, you know. What were you hoping to get out of it? That you'd raise a giant buck and then pretend you got it? No, I remember, Steve, when I was a young kid, they took us on a field trip to the Walston Farm, way out in the Ouachita Mountains in Arkansas.

And everybody where I'm from will know who I'm talking about. They had this like, just a neat family and this neat farm. And I remember they had, they had deer there just walking around. And I was just a little kid that had, my dad was a hunter and I was intrigued by it. And I was just like, this is living. That's just kind of what I thought to have a pet deer. And so I always wanted that for my kids. And so I just set out to, we're going to, we're going to be people that have pet deer and so i always wanted that for my kids and so i just set out to we're gonna we're

gonna be people that have pet deer and raise our kids having pet deer you know during the american revolution there was a an american there was an american officer who had a pet buck and one day he leaned over to put on his pants and the pet buck charged him and ran a time through his artery really his femoral artery and the guy bled out right on the floor an officer in the an american officer in the revolution. Wow. It's not surprising. They're real dangerous during the rut, even when they're young. So if it's illegal to release captive wildlife, how did you get rid of the pet deer you had? Well, to be honest,

I don't really want to talk about that. No, it probably was illegal. I wouldn't have even, that wouldn't have even entered my mind at the time. But you did just release them. I did. Yeah. Well, no, I had to put down the buck.

The buck that roughed up Mr. Mitchell, I had to put it down. Did you eat him? I had it processed. Gave it away? Yeah. Because it's hard to eat your own buck. And, I mean, the story of it coming back was a week. So the game warden gives me the deal. And he says, I say, well, what do you want me to do? And he says, if you see the buck, put it down. And I said, yes, sir. And so

like a week later, I'm sitting in my office and it's like late October and I have a big window right by my computer. Britt's seen it. And I just look up and there's Roadrunner like three feet from me. Say, old buddy. And yeah, I could go into the details of how that transpired. Yeah, just go. I mean, if you want the whole thing, I'll tell you. This is not a therapy session.

I walk outside and he's been running wild now for like 10 days. And he was invigorated by his experience. Sure, he's fired up. And when I walked out, he immediately started roughing me up. I'm not going to say he was attacking me, but he straight up just came and started pushing me around, pushing on Jason Phelps there, just pushing me around. And I have a.22 Mark II ruger pistol in my hand so he was trying to rough you up with his antlers yeah oh yeah what kind of rack was he throwing at that

he had a little fork and horn rack i still got it uh and uh and he starts pushing me around and the house is here my office is here and i'm and no one's home and you got a pistol and i've got a pistol and i'm trying to figure out a way, a safe way to shoot this deer in the head to put it down. And I mean, it's pushing me and I'm like just dancing around,

dancing around. It's a mob here. And it's getting more intense. So if, I never had, I've never done this. When you think of his power, he's a year and a half old at this time.

Yep. Could you, is it, if you grabbed him by the antlers, when you think of his power he's a year and a half old at this time yep if you grabbed him by the antlers and you pushed him out and held him at arm's length is he able to overcome that? the more aggressive you get the more aggressive he gets and I would have said at a year and a half old

me weighing like 170 a man of average strength it would have been all i could do to if if he had full throttle come at me it would have been all i could have done to keep him off me but but picture that you picture like i'm saying you got you got his antlers one in each hand yeah and you stiff arm them right can he overcome that resistance he wouldn't overcome it by pushing your arms in but he would flop and flip and i see get spun around and be on your back before you know seriously really yeah they're a handful so

yeah so they're strong the more we tussled the more intense he gets and and he realizes i'm fighting him back he's just sparring me like at some point he's got to register the pistol well yeah and did he try to wrestle it away from you no we already went through that part about the frontal cortex yeah he's not able to process abstract thought yeah and so anyway the deer eventually gets distracted as deer do something happens and he i remember he just threw up his head and looked away from me. And there was a gap between my house and the office. And I just. Joe Pesci.

Thug nasty. Yeah. Put him right down. Yeah. Did you feel terrible? I mean, no, I didn't feel terrible. It was a shame that it had to end. I felt like I was doing my due duty

I mean it's like if you play in a dirty game You're going to have to do dirty stuff The game warden told me to put him down So I put him down It's interesting that I've been to the Newcomb farm You guys raise pigs Chickens, slaughter them, eat them But a deer you raised

Had to give them away It was a family deal All the kids knew this deer, and I told them exactly what happened. And it just was not an appealing idea to eat Roadrunner. But it was good meat, so I did salvage the meat. That's my story. Okay, how'd you meet brent reeves now um we were fighting no i've known brent for it's probably since 2010 or so

and uh brent actually first called me when i was doing i had a regional magazine in a regional hunting organization called arkansas black bear association Bear Association and Brent had reached out to me because Brent was a videographer he was doing a lot of filming and he was like hey it's a guy in Arkansas filming some bear hunts I'd like to he he he offered to help me he's like hey if you want if you want somebody to film a bear hunt I'd be willing to do it that's that's how we became friends and at first I brushed him off it was just like oh man thanks i appreciate it because i was pretty tight with my in my bear hunting world still am and uh but over you know brent can take over at any moment here but that's how we became friends yeah it was the next year

you called and said hey you still interested in doing that and because you were doing those fundraisers for the magazine. And then I went over to West Arkansas and filmed the first hunt over there. And then it was, after that, it was, I'd get a call, hey man, can you go here? Yep, I can do that. And I had a job where I could pretty well take off when I wanted to.

And what was that job? That's the one I'm doing now I work for the federal government but you used to be in law enforcement yeah I'm still in I'm still in law enforcement okay yeah I can't go into the details of but it's it's with the food and drug administration now and it's a commissioned position a law enforcement officer position got it so he still has a badge and a gun. Kids, listen up. You want to have a lot of free time, good paying job,

pretty flexible hours. There's a cryptic position. That's only been for the last eight years. And there's only five of us in the state. And we're mainly dealing with the tobacco laws. So that's our concentration there. And the federal, it has a lot to do with taxes. You don't have to tell them what you do.

Okay. But tell them what you did, a little bit about your law enforcement career. Yeah, I started out as a deputy sheriff and then I went into undercover work. I ran a drug task force in southeast Arkansas. We had six counties in that district and I was the agent in charge and had a number of undercover agents working as well. It was all undercover positions and

for that period of time our 100% focus was drug investigations. And this would have been during the height of the methamphetamine movement coming into that part of the world. And it was one meth lab after another. You know, Arkansas is an agriculturally driven state, that part of Arkansas. So a lot of the stuff that would have been hard to come by in urban places like Anahidra, Simonia, which is, you know, fertilized, it was held in humongous storage tanks on farms in remote places and easy to get to. Oh, I got it.

So that and you go to Walmart and get the rest of the ingredients you need to get to. Oh, I got it. So that, and you can go to Walmart and get the rest of the ingredients that you need to get. That was the reason that now when you go in to buy sinus medication, you have to sign for it. Yeah. That was the reason right there. Did, we're going to stray from the normal subject matter of the show here for a second, but to what degree, I don't mean to understand this,

to what degree did the opioid crisis eliminate meth from the landscape? I don't know that it's eliminated it, but meth was still number one when I got out of that. Opioids was just coming on. Now, by far, opioids are the most abused drug, you know, that you can get from the doctor's office, from the drugstore. It's more abused than anything.

And at that time, when I was in, everybody made their own methamphetamine. I mean, if we, this group of folks right here, five of us would be manufacturing and the rest of them would be using it. Out of who? How many people we got in here. I know, but I mean, like where? In that part of Arkansas.

It was that bad? Oh, yeah, it was that bad. And it was so easy to make. I mean, you could get the recipes for it right off the internet. There was no – everybody and their brother was cooking and selling meth. So they were making it for just personal use. Probably, no, no. A lot of them were. It's a real big, hard algorithm to get around.

Some folks manufactured it, and their deal, their high was making the best, having the best methamphetamine in this area. And other folks were making it just to get the next fix. But if they made enough and they were friends, me and Clay are friends, okay, man, we got to find something somewhere. Well, heck, let's just make something. Then we started making it.

Well, I've got a cousin that, you know, he likes it. His girlfriend does it occasionally. So, okay, well, we'll make them some if they'll go get pills so that that was people started catching on to it and then you you couldn't go to walmart and get everything you needed then you had to go to one walmart and get one thing then you had to go to another store and get another piece because people started putting it together you know why is this guy coming on all this by all this sinus medicine and you know and solvents charcoal lighter and all the so it's not clear why opal opioids now are better than that is it just is it i guess there's just trends inside of well there there

are trends and you know some of them may be contributed to the consistency of what you could get because obviously pharmaceutical grade narcotics are you get what you pay for every one of them's the same if you're getting meth from me this week and then meth from tony next week you know there's a big difference in what you're and what you're getting and now the there's hardly any manufactured here compared to what it was it all comes out of you know mexico and other places now do you think it was effective to go after it like did you meaningfully reduce what was available i know that yeah you yeah. You think so? I think so. I think, you know, we were working at that time anywhere from four out of the whole budget, we took $300 worth street value of drugs off the street. Wow.

It was a big deal. He's got wild stories about, and he may not want to share them. He probably doesn't. But of some of those busts and all the different stuff they had to do so would you just hand off when you found the locations would you guys hand it off and then someone to go in there and and tear the place apart talking about working on the meth labs no we it was me and three other guys from little south of little Rock that were certified in dismantling methamphetamine labs. We went to DEA put on a big class or a school in Quantico, Virginia.

So we had to go and get certified in all the different hazardous materials you had to deal with. And at that time, most big urban fire departments would have a hazardous material disposal team for like working accidents on the highway or train derailments, you know, masks, a whole ball of wax to go in and run these warrants on these raids. Make the lab safe if it was in operation because you're dealing with chemicals and things. They're all corrosive or explosive. Render it safe and then stand by with it until a hazmat team could get there to properly dispose of it. So you had to raid it in a hazmat team could get there to properly dispose of it so you had to raid it

in a hazmat suit yeah because you have no idea what you're interrupting or what's going on yeah you never know and you go in there and there'd be kids playing in the floor and oh it's yeah yeah pretty what was was if you had to generalize was resistance like compared to other illicit activities is resist was a resistance to arrest higher for meth folk than people engaged in other illegal activities because of the stereotype of them being like kind of crazed jacked up and you know just depending on the on the individual and what stage they were in some of them actually thought it was it was a relief and they they knew they had a problem

they could see you know they could look at themselves every day and think, you know, hey, I lost another tooth today at work. And then it became a release for them. Now, some of them, yeah, there was one guy, I remember the marshals had a warrant for a guy in the southern end of our county or one of the counties that was in my district. So they called us. We had an srt team and he said what's that stand for special response team like a swat team so i was the commander of that so we want to use you guys going there we're going after you know a suspect a he's he's located in your county a very rural place he said we're, our plan is to hit him. You know,

you guys come up with a plan and we'll go with you. Once we get him located and get him arrested, we'll take him from there. And, you know, thank you. So we go down there and we, we find the guy or find where he's,

where he's living during the daytime. And he's working in this garage out there and we get a positive ID on him with a spotting scope. Yeah, that's him. That's the guy we're looking for. So we say, okay, 3 o'clock in the morning we're going to hit this guy, get him arrested, and get out of there. We'll catch him in the bed while he's asleep. So we deploy the team, me and four other guys go creeping up to this property

and we get just like half a mile through the woods. We get up there, and we can see the lights on in the garage. And we think, so we'll sit there and listen a minute. And we can hear him beating and banging around, moving around in the garage. Like, God, this guy's still awake. He's just tinkering. So we go ahead and hit the garage. We hit the house and hit the garage at the same time.

And my team hit the garage. And that guy's in there. He's still in there. And he's painting a car with a paintbrush. One end or the other. We hit the door, kicked the door open. He never looked up. He just kept painting.

Knocked the paintbrush out of his hand and, know hooked him up and took him out and he never said a word i don't know that he even knew we were there wow but he had been there the whole day that there was 50 coats of paint on that car he would just dump open another can grab a paintbrush really yeah they interviewed marshall said that guy told him he'd been awake for like eight days. Ugh. That's the reason they call it Go Fast. God, man. Yeah.

I need to get some of that for the people that work here. You got to take some of the ketchup. Phil will be like, I'm done with all that podcast. What's next? How's our dental plan? I edited that one nine times. Yeah, your dental insurance is going to go up. No, that's incredible, man. What was strange?

Did you want to get out of that pretty bad? Yeah, it was pretty rough. Were you married all through it? Uh-huh. Off and on. Uh-huh. Yeah. What's that mean? 16 years yeah i had a

starter wife i got it you know it's it's rough on the family it's it's rough it was rough on everybody i i i get it but explain it how like what is it well it was it was all-encompassing. I got a high off of the work. I couldn't rest thinking. And I'll take it back to the very beginning. The first time I saw a house full of children that were in a bad way because of it, it just lit a fire, and I couldn't rest. I thought every child should grow up like I did, and every child should be like my children

and have to worry about missing a cartoon or not getting their favorite Kool-Aid, be their only worry. Not if I'm going to step on a hypodermic needle in the yard or if Mama's going to wake up from whatever it is she just took or where my next meal's coming from and i and there was at one time i held the record for how many kids i've taken away from people like that and it was just horrible that the stuff that you see those kids are in and i could not rest and i neglected some of my kids for that you know when i should have been at home i was i was out working

and so it was you know it got it got tough it was tough um but that that was my, always my motivation. It was, I couldn't rest on the laurels of, you know, we got this guy that we've been after for six months. Okay. We got him who cares. Let's get the next one. And it didn't matter when it was, it was Christmas or whatever birthdays. That was the focus. Did you give up hunting and fishing during those years no uh we still did i still did it uh i didn't have a many hunting dogs during that length of time because i couldn't it was just it didn't work but uh no i i did i hunted and fished i did that with my family you know that was the time that i spent with them but. But you were in the waterfowl business for a long time. Yep.

My brother and I ran a guide service for about 26 years. And this is some of this overlap. Some of that time I was in patrol and in the uniform part. So, but yeah, there was a lot of time. Yeah, we did that on the Arkansas River. Like I said, for 26 years, we guided folks from all over the nation. Are you worried that Clay thinks that maybe you're an undercover game or an investigating Clay?

I have never heard that story. That is news to me. Of course He's always When I interviewed R.T. Stewart Oh it was amazing I was like R.T. and Brent have a lot in common An undercover agent is like the best friend in the world Always ready to go

Always got a little extra cash in the kitchen. And always missing. Always missing. Always wanting you to take the shot. Always wanting to video you. Yeah. That was my biggest thing. It's like, finally, I was like,

Brent wants to video me everywhere I go. Yeah. No. Yeah, that's our... I mean, he's in deep. That's your joke. If he's still in, he's in deep, which I'm pretty convinced he is. So tell me, now get to the part about you start, like, how did you guys...

I remember when Clay came to me and said, I think Brent Reeves should do a show. Can I segue from Brent's... That's some of the most I've ever heard Brent publicly talk about his law enforcement stuff. Is it? Yeah, absolutely. And so this segues into- I didn't think he went too deep. Well, I'm just telling you, Brent, we talked on the phone yesterday, and yeah, there's

a new podcast coming out called This Country Life with Brent Reeves. And if you're around Brent, he does not talk about law enforcement stuff. I'm like you, Steve, I'm constantly like, tell me about this or that. And he like usually wants to get around it. And what he said to me yesterday was he said, Clay, I spent 30 years of my life dealing with people on the worst day of their life at their worst self. and he said i want this podcast to be about the good days and so this country life with brit reeves is gonna be it's about the guys that got away on that no it's a it's it's uh it's gonna be well i don't want to steal Brent's thunder, but that segue into this is going to be a lighthearted, fun, short podcast.

And Brent, aside from having this law enforcement career, has lived a very robust rural American life. I mean, there's a boat ramp on the Saline River at Arkansas named after Brent's dad. They squirrel hunted and had lines of cur dogs and just anything, any kind of southern hunting credential that you want to get, Brent Reeves has it. And Brent, of all people, and here I am talking over Brent, Brent remembers stories like nobody talking over Brent. Brent remembers stories like nobody I've ever met.

Every time I'm with him, he tells a story or remembers something. And I go, did you just make that up? Did you? And it's like, so this Country Life with Brent Reeves

is a podcast that capitalizes on stuff that Brent's really good about. It's telling great stories, teaching country skills. Yep. To teach you how to beat the system. Yeah, that's a throw in just recent, but it works. And it's not like getting away with, it's going against like corporate thinking or doing things that give you an advantage. You get a better lesson out of it, you know, than going along with the system.

Give us an example of what he would like. Because Clay was saying he had something that he, that you had a thing about the first time you beat the system. Yeah, that was when I was in the sixth grade. That's kind of a long story. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if you want the whole story here. Because this is the opening podcast is him telling the extended version of the story. Well, I don't know.

You want to hear it? I'll tell it. Tell me a truncated version. Okay. When I was in the sixth grade, you know, I like't know. You want to hear it? I'll tell it. Tell me a truncated version. Okay. When I was in the sixth grade, I liked to do things. And everything that I liked to do had nothing to do with school. There was other things to do. All of it outside.

I grew up on a little farm. And I wanted to be in the woods. I wanted to be outside. When my chores were done, I had to go. TV was not a, I didn't care about watching television. So when I was in school, it wasn't that I was missing something on TV. I was missing something in the woods somewhere, whether it was to go fishing, do anything.

And I had a buddy that lived in town. I rode the bus to school. His mama brought him to school. And we would sit out in front. I was in the sixth grade. We'd sit out in front of the school every morning. All the kids would gather up there. The bell would ring.

All the kids would go in with the duty teacher. And there was a potlatch mill. There was two mills in Warren, Arkansas, where I grew up. This is the extended version, man. Well, you've got to have this context for the rest of it to make sense. And they were on each side of town, and they ran a little railroad that took lumber and wood chips from one side of the town to the other, back and forth between those mills. And it rolled right beside the elementary school, the fifth and sixth grade school right there, 40 yards from the front door.

And I'm thinking, it came by nine times out of ten when the bell would ring to go into school. And it came back by 15, 20 minutes before school, let out every day. And I'm thinking, dude, that's my ticket right there. I get somebody to go with me, and my friend would go with me, and he did. And we jumped that train, and we rode it to the middle of the town after all the kids went in. We hoboed from one end of the warren to the middle

and got out and knocked around all day, then got back on it when it was climbed back up on the depot. They cranked that train up, took it back across town, and we bailed off of it at the school 15 minutes before the bell rings. We hid in the bushes, and the bell rang, and all the kids come out, and we just jumped in there with them. And I walked up on that school bus like I had the title to it. He got in the car and I had to go home and we beat the system.

And we never got caught. We walked all over town. And nobody, I mean, we're seeing people, this is a town of... Buying Lucky Strike cigarettes out of a vending machine. 50 cents a pack.

I remember those with that. They always had that sudden clear handle. Yep. I mean, I was never a smoker, but you'd just be able to walk up and ka-toom. Yeah. Instead of getting bear meat, it spit out cigarettes. Cigarettes, yeah. Yeah, so we beat the system.

My mother and they never knew about it. I told them about it. My mama didn't believe me. She said, you did not do that. You tried to tell it? You tried to come clean. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm grown. She's like, mama didn't believe me. She said, you did not do that. You tried to tell her? Yeah. You tried to come clean. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I'm grown. She's like, you didn't do that. Yeah, I did. And so, and my buddy, I don't name him in the story, but he went there. We were both involved in what's coincidental about it. We both, we ran in separate crowds after that as we grew up. And we both became involved in law enforcement. Me on the badge toting him and him on the other end of it. Oh, he got involved in the other side.

Yeah, he got involved in the other side. So I've always thought about that. Up until the sixth grade, we were the same. Are you saying he got arrested? He became a criminal. Oh, yeah, he was a criminal, yeah. Yeah, I think he's squared away now. What kind of crime did he get into?

Oh, it was just drugs and drinking and all of the sort that you'll have. I think he's doing fine now. So I was going to ask what the takeaway or the skill is that we learn from jumping the train that's a prelude well we beat the system well let me explain this will answer your question so in the podcast you're going to hear the stories that you need to hear yeah brent's going to teach you the country skills that you need to know to beat the system so every episode you're going to hear some great funny story like a five or six minute story and then he's going to talk about a country skill for instance like there's

a one of the episodes is how to train a squirrel dog one of the episodes is how to run a trot line one of the episodes is what does a what does what do you need to carry in your pockets if you're a country man uh one of one of the episodes might be about how to buy a truck. And, and, or at what point, um, I don't know if you guys are doing this one or not. We talked about it is, um, how to know when it's okay to bring your own dog hunting. Yeah. And when you go duck hunting with other people and you're not sure your duck calling skills, how do you know when it's okay to blow your dot-com oh yeah so one of the episodes is camp etiquette so it's it's fun it's a it's a it's a very fun you know jerry clower-esque but also gonna teach you something fun podcast and

it's and it's gonna be i think i can say this it's gonna be on the bear grease feed no for sure so if if you if you subscribe to the bear grease podcast they're now gonna be two drops per week on the bear grease podcast yeah bear grease is gonna come out and the bear grease render which brent is on most of the time and then this country life with brent reeves so you find this country life with brent reeves by going find this country life with Brent Reeves by going to Bear Grease. The same way that the trivia show runs on the Meteor podcast feed. Yeah. So what would really be great is if picture that this country life starts

outperforming Bear Grease. Does it become the this country life feed? Hey, I believe this could happen man people are gonna love brent's podcast i think so i think they're gonna i think we need to be prepared for changing the name of that feed i'll be wearing a this country life hat this country patch now um it's it's kind of a perfect story too because i would say that if anybody i mean people might have a lot of criticisms of the Bear Grylls podcast, but one of them could be that it was just kind of like a heavy listen. Like you got to pay attention. It's not like easy listening.

Like it's, you know, we're usually telling some in-depth story and if you miss half of it, you don't know what's going on. Yeah, you'd be like, no, what? It's like a robust chunk. And it's longer. Bear Grylls podcast is. This Country Life with Brent Reeves is going to be like 20 minutes long. Yeah, 15, 20 minutes. And it's just going to be fun. So it's kind of the, but it's still going to be in the vein of rural American life.

Yeah. When does it launch? April 21st. 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 on x is now in canada the great features that you love and on x are available for your hunts this season the hunt

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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 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

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Tony can you tell me why i'm uh can you tell me why you think i'm wrong about how mule deer are cooler than whitetails uh sure i think and we you know we were talking about this before we started recording but i think you look at them in a certain way because where you live and where you hunt no no all Alright Why don't you tell me Why you think You will deer are better First No Tony go

Just ignore his Ignore him Well They're Oh he's gonna do it He's gonna go anyways No okay I won't go No I want you to

I can't even really I mean Tony you can knock this out of the park They're just more Go Tony They're like more mysterious Okay They I can't even really, I mean, Tony, you can knock this out of the park. They're just more, they're like more mysterious. Okay. They,

they drift around and show up places. They have a hot, greater tendency to be migratory. Um, they're, they're a lot of them are going to go and never be glimpsed, never owned by anybody. They're harder to lay a hand on, and they're harder to buy. Meaning, when I see a truly- I know what you mean. Meaning, when I see a truly giant whitetail rack, okay, hanging in, you know, wherever,

hanging in some guy's house that I don't know, well, I see a big old whitetail rack. In my head, I'm always thinking, don't even ask. Right? Okay. head i'm always thinking oh don't even ask right okay because it's like it came off some high fence deal whatever whatever so you assume the worst when you see a big buck this is usually the case yeah when i see a giant when i see like a freaking giant mule deer rack and you ask there's a really good chance there's a really good chance that it came off some crazy chunk of blm ground somewhere or something you know it's like it's just there's a greater chance that it was that it stayed free. Okay. I have I have I'm about done.

I have in my house on display well, I have in my house on display a number of what I regard to be like pretty nice mule deer. Every one of those came off public land. Okay.

Uh, and, and people could probably assume that that was the case. So I'm not saying anything bad about whitetails. I'm just saying that's why I like them more. It doesn't mean that, that I, that they're not good,

but I'm saying like you can love two things right one's a 99 and one's a hundred or whatever on a scale of one to a hundred that's why they're higher because they're wild and unknowable and little touchy i would say that you're you might might be like 20%, right? Okay. So I look at that and I go, and listen, I'll, I'll preface this by saying, if you were to say, Tony, if you're going to go have a week of fun hunting, what would you pick? I'd go spot and stalk mule deer with my bow. Oh, okay. Great.

I would. Huge fan. But I also look at this and I go, when you say mule deer are this, they're wild. And I go to my buddy's house in Aspen and I see giant mule deer feeding in his backyard. I go, well, not those. Okay. But listen, a turkey once beat up my dog in my yard. Yeah.

Does that change how I think about turkeys and turkey hunting? There's always a, there's always, there's always, there's always the mule deer laying in someone's yard. It's not like it's that, that uncommon. And it's also, I look at it and go, okay, you can say you've got a trophy room full of public land mule deer. I have a trophy line or I have a trophy room

full of public land, whitetails. Like, what does that matter? Like they're still asked, like the high fence thing exists in whitetails, but so does the other end of it. Dude. Okay. The mule deer.

Okay. Let me say it this way. The mule deer just generally say, and they're more wild. All right. But your hunt on BLM land somewhere, is that the same as a private ranch hunt somewhere else for mule deer?

I don't know. I don't know. I see the question. Are they, is it the same hunt? Is it as easy? Is it as hard? Cause what I think you're doing is you're lumping white tails sort of in a negative way,

but I'm like. I'm not talking, no, no, I was, I didn't talk about why I was talking about why I like mule deer. No, I know. Okay. The reasons you list. So if I talk about why I like my wife, are you like, man, why are you so hard on my

wife no i'm like no i don't know no i'm a while like my wife but if you're what's the original statement not that you're pretty hard about that giant white tail on the dude's wall yeah and yeah if you said it's coming down on his wife i was at a friend's house and there's like this freaking giant he's got a giant it's not even, it's like a giant whitetail mount. And you look at it, you're like, there's no way. There's no way. There's no way. And sure enough, it was bought from one of them places in Pennsylvania.

Well, what about the fact that there are exponentially more whitetails and more whitetail hunters than mule deer? So for sure, there's going to be some apples inside of that crate that are not the pristine, romantic, best way, best practice way we want to kill them. And it's not the whitetail's fault. It's just the fault that people have. Perception. Well, whitetail's range is so much bigger. They've been so much more biologically successful.

There's been so much culture built around them. I mean, the things that you hate about whitetails are because they're great. I mean, the reason guys have high fence operations and dedicate their lives to growing big deer is because of the wild deer that Tony hunts on public land, and when the guy killed one and they wrote about it in 1992

at North American Whitetail, the world went crazy. And we're living off of that vibe. And so people cheated the system. And so, I mean... Whitetails are easier to hack. Like, we know this. Yeah, that's a good way to say it. We know how to make big whitetails. And so, I mean, white tails are easier to hack. Like we know this, like we know how to make big white tails. And that's like an undeniable part of the hunting industry. But I just don't like the broad statement of being like that. I, and people do this to me all the time.

They're like, that's why you tell hunt, you go sit on a food plot, you name your box and I'm like, there's so many different ways to do this and you know, like somebody who's in Southern Iowa, they have a thousand acres and they know how to raise deer and they they've hacked it and they're, they're producing 200 inch deer every year. That's not the same whitetail you're hunting when you go to the UP and you try to bow hunt one up there with a low deer density, right? Yeah.

It's a different hunt. What I, what I, that's what I meant with the mule deer thing. I've hunted them, you know, not nearly as much as a lot of people here, but I've hunted them quite a bit and the it's varied hunted them, you know, not nearly as much as a lot of people here, but I've hunted them quite a bit and it's varied a lot. You know, like it's felt amazing. And like the breaky country, like that's one of my favorite things to do.

But there's different kind of mule deer hunts than that, you know, than like a do-it-yourself public land whitetail hunt, right? Oh, there's plenty of giant bucks that get shot underneath a pivot. Yeah, yeah. A lot of alfalfa field bucks. So I just don't like the generalization.

Jordan, let me blow your mind then. Please. I love muskrats. I like beavers better than muskrats. Okay? I like otters better than beavers. Now, some muskrat, it's just's just it's always like this like ducks i like big fat mallards better than uh some other duck but i like wood ducks most of all this isn't the hack

on other things i get that and your your your story about mule deer is compelling i mean like i get what you're saying. I love that. But, I mean, what we're arguing about is something that's silly to argue about. Like, the people that turn this into a big thing about, oh, Rinella said this about white tails. I mean, it's fun to debate it. But, I mean, really, you're just telling us what you love. And Tony's telling you what he loves. Yeah, let me distill it down more. When I see a big old huge mule deer mount, I feel like I just know.

I know I'm looking at a more interesting story. The odds are I'm looking at a more interesting story than when I see a big, huge white tail mount. I think it goes back to numbers, though. There are, let's say, there are a million whitetail mounts of giant 200-inch deer in this country. And there are, let's say... 100,000. 100,000 mule deer mounts.

And again, it goes back to the numbers thing. I see what you're saying, and you're right, but it's not... I'm talking about percentages, not total numbers. Well, but I think you're right. You see a big mule deer like it wasn't a high fence mule deer that's your point for me and that's good i mean i like them both i like jason phelps joining the conversation jason phelps jason phelps once told me he will jason phelps has vowed not to shoot a white tail i did kill one one last year and I absolutely love it,

but I'm with Steve on this one and not necessarily because of one's better than the other. I think when, like when we're out there doing it, like the boxes that you get to check, the adventure most likely is going to go to mule deer every time you're going to the places that you're going to go chase these things. I mean, yeah, we've hunted them in the breaks.

We've hunted them down in the BLM flats, but I can't go chase a white tail at the top of a mountain above tree line. You know, it's just most of the time I think mule deer just like checks those boxes for me for that adventure that you're looking for in a hunt. Now, I love sitting in a tree stand in Kansas just as much, you know, not just as much, but it's still fun. It's still something I like to do, but it's not the work that goes in. And this is where it really gets like a measuring stick. Like you're not trying to say this mule deer was way harder to kill and not everybody could do it because I had to hike six miles up the trail.

No, no, no, I'm not saying any of that. But I think some of that adds into it. Like you feel more accomplished when you can go into mule deer country sometimes and do this versus that's a physical exertion versus the scouting that it took. The trail cam pictures that you had to take to like put the plan together for this big white tail so i think growing up out west it's a lot of that like checking the box adventure difficulty it's all about mind frame and worldview because to me and tony sitting in a tree stand for four days daylight till dark and killing a big buck is the same boxes checked as going into some remote canyon and

it's just it's just different it's the same buzz it's the same that you know you'd say adventure and then this one you might say strategy and chess match and i mean it's just kind of your worldview and i have to throw in there's a personal experience component of this it's very important where i grew up only hunting whitet tails that was the only right we had one big game animal i mean you could go north of us and draw a bear tag we had one big game animal all through growing up all big game focus was on hunting white tails so to move away in your 20s and also here's this whole other thing. Then it's just completely different system.

Yeah. It was, you know, a mild act of, it was like a exotic, a mild act of rebellion. It was just different. But now I've spent more of my life,

you know, at this point, I spent more of my life focused more on mule deer than white tails and now i'm starting to get nostalgic and wanting to go and sit in a tree all the time yeah wait till you get yourself a little 20 acre chunk and you start thinking about making some habitat back there for those white tails buddy you're gonna get some nostalgia putting some cell cams out when i was a kid making habitat was dumping carrots that was habitat improvement

well yeah you're you're mule deer i love it i mean what you said about mule deer i've never killed a mule deer i've never never hunted a mule deer but yeah that's i love what you're saying there but i also love love what Tony's saying. I mean, it's just different. It's just not a legitimate argument. It's like, you know, there's no argument. I disagree. Plant your flag.

Jordan, Giannis, team mule deer. Definitely team mule deer, yeah. You're team mule deer? Oh, yeah. I think, honestly, I'm just team big buck, too, because they're hard to kill, man. Jordan's killed some giant mule deer. Haven't you? There's a couple big ones, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. What's your giant mule deer killing secret, Jordan? I don't know if there's a secret. I think it's just not quitting. Just like keep going. I don't know. Haven't you killed a 200- mule deer yeah that was in

nebraska yeah yep that was in nebraska and that was like uh i mean i've never seen one like that ever before then and i haven't seen one since so that was definitely kind of a wild card but we call that taking the cream off the top yeah taking advantage of a situation i guess yeah or uh yeah opportunity so yeah yeah do you ever talk about mule deer tactics in your new podcast jordan no because we're all about the gear talk just about the gear talk about your show jordan. You got some guy you partnered with on it. Yanni, yeah, Yanni and I are partnered up on the Gear Talk podcast and talking about gear, doing deep dives into laminates and, you know, breathable whatever, clothing. We talk about boots and a piece of gear. They have a place to go look at and listen to what they should look at when they're buying something.

And y'all talk about mule deer because I've heard your mule deer story told on there. Yeah, I mean, we definitely dive into stuff. That's right. She's fibbing because every week I ask Jordan what she's been up to and then she tells me she's been scouting for mule deer or doing whatever she's been doing. Yeah, it's true. Sell me on it, honey. I couldn't have said it any better but in the end yeah don't feel like you're getting sold something you need to look at it as though you're learning about when i had to make a uh sort of a psa yeah it wasn't quite a psa but it just had i had to get off my chest because i'd read i'd been

reading too many comments. Too many people thinking like I was selling them something or Jordan and I were selling them stuff. And I want everybody to know that it's more important to me that you get out there and go hunting versus going buy new gear. If it comes down to that, you spending money on gas and ammo so you can actually be in the field hunting versus buying a new jacket, do the former, not the latter, right? But when you are ready to go buy a new jacket, hopefully when Jordan and I do a nice review of five different soft shells, you can go, oh, I'll listen to that. And now I know what I'm looking for. And maybe you don't even buy one of those, but you'll know that you might be looking, when you pick up the jacket, you're going to be thinking about air permeability, whether or not it has pit zips, how well it fit, you know, if it runs large, runs small, price point, whatever it might be. But yeah, we hope to just educate everybody on their

gear or their future gear buying, and hopefully also educate you how you use the gear in the field. And what you towed along with you. Yeah, what you towed along as far as gear goes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, 100%. What to grab and not to grab. Yeah. Yeah, we've already done a couple pack dump episodes. Talk about what was in Jordan's bear pack when she's going bear hunting.

My turkey vest. Did a pack dump on that. You talk with people in the industry that are making boots and making jackets and kind of educating people on how stuff happens. That's right.

That's right. We recently did a podcast with Taylor Chamberlain who's shot, I think, more deer than anybody else I know. We talked all about all the different broadheads

he's tried and the results that he's seen with different broadheads. That's the downtown deer hunting guy or no? That's right. He's killed a lot of deer? To almost so many that he doesn't like to say the numbers because it kind of makes people a little sick

when they think about people killing that many animals. But he kills them all downtown like nuisance deer. Yeah, 100%. That's why he kills so many sometimes three and four to sit and i don't want to like applaud you know this sort of like mass killing but yeah i mean there a lot of these suburban areas have these deer problems and there are a lot of bow hunters that are in there trying to help it out you know and help out the people that don't want their fancy flowers eaten up and probably help the deer population in general, right? Because

they're eating themselves out of house and home. But yeah, I think you can say it's the number is in the thousands of the deer that he's taking with an arrow. And it's very interesting to hear his perspective. My big takeaway from our interview the other day with him was that a lot of us, well, me personally, if I shoot any animal with an arrow and it runs a hundred yards and then tips over, I am both arms up cheering. Yes, yes, yes. Best thing, best day of my life. I feel great. Well, for Taylor, he's hunting someone's backyard. He has to have that deer fall over in 10 yards or 15 yards. In the yard. If it goes 100 yards, his evening went from great to not so great

because now he's got to probably talk to two or three other homeowners. There might be a blood trail going across three driveways, blood trail on someone's car. He's very focused on making that deer drop right then and there and so they're very interesting insights on you know what different types of broadheads do and and how they perform in that in that specific situation that's a really good example man yeah it's a really good example i remember thinking something similar when uh it's not the same quite the same example when people argue about shot placement

right on different things and calibers on different things but remember back when all the bison migrating out of yelso national park used to just get shot by the department of livestock i do and not go to hunter tags so here you would however you agree about bison management at that time and whatever your opinions are about how that resource ought to be utilized is like, I could point you in the direction of a couple of people that really know a lot about how to put bison on the ground.

That's right. And what do they do? Instead of everybody arguing about, you know, the, the, the two times they did it and what worked out for them. You know, it's like, the two times they did it and what worked out for them. You know, it's like, where's the guys? He's done it hundreds of times.

Yeah. The guys that work for, uh, for APHIS, for wildlife services. Right. I mean, those people literally, they kill for a living. That's their job. Right.

And there's people that have killed thousands and thousands of hogs and, you know, whatever else has, is becoming a nuisance yeah you're like what i like to do the time i did it but i did it once for uh 12 out of 15 last year so i know yeah no that's a good point that's a good place to go for some information yeah can you can you give me a spoiler alert? What's his take on broadheads? Can we go around the room and take a guess? I mean, I will tell you what his goal is, and then you can guess as to what it is.

But as he puts it, he likes to take a large chunk out of the animal. Okay. Really? Mm-hmm. So he's using expandable? Nope. Oh, he doesn't? Fixed over expandable expandable? Nope. Oh, he doesn't.

Fixed over expandable. Really? Yeah. Oh, I thought you were going to tell me this. One of the freaking, you know, when I think of a chunk. I wasn't thinking fixed here. But it's not a standard fixed. It is wider.

It's got very wide bleeder blades. But yeah, he's putting a big hole through these animals to, to stop them quickly. Hmm. I'll be tuning in. Yeah. What do you think about all that Phelps? I don't know.

But see, you guys, you guys already like cut my legs off of my argument. Cause I've only shot 50, you know, or 30, 35, and then maybe seen a hundred get killed by an arrow. So it's like, all right, you guys have already like taken the wind out of my sails, but, uh, I don't know, like having something like designing a, the energy in a arrow isn't meant

to necessarily drop stuff. Yeah. We've dropped elk with a shot and we've dropped deer through the high shoulder, but it's like, it's, I don't know if like going that direction is better than shooting a millennium run a hundred yards off because I know that's going to die eventually where it's like it's, I don't know if like going that direction is better than shooting him and letting him run 100 yards off because I know that's going to die eventually, where it's like you can have a lot of more, you know,

just as many mistakes like high shoulder, neck, head, whatever. I don't know. Yanni didn't give me the answer to where he's shooting. Yeah, what's his average shot distance? Oh, no. I mean, again, this is a very specific situation. He will not shoot past 20 yards, right? Because he has to, you know,

he has to hit the 10 ring, but his 10 ring is definitely very far forward into that. He said he actually doesn't like to hit the heart itself because he feels like that deer is going to go a little ways, but basically a couple inches above the heart where it's going to cut that main, is it the aorta that goes right into the heart and basically take out the bottom of the lungs. And also he feels like there's a lot of ligaments that connect the shoulder to the body there. And if he can place it just so it gets that and maybe touches some of those where almost those front legs become immobilized. All right. Yeah. I'll agree with that shot placement with a big solid, uh, cut. That's probably the best location.

High shoulder with a big setup. I know I'm opening myself up for a whole lot of debate, but with a big setup, elevated stand, like high shoulder will work and the thing will become immobile, but there's always a chance for a mess up. So there's another wrinkle to this too. Um, you taught, you mentioned like aphos guys that

kill tons of urban deer they shoot them in the head but you know what they can so there's a fair amount of of you needing to be open about what your actual capabilities are and that might change your approach where some guys like at night how i do it and i've done it hundreds of times when i'm shooting deer out of people's yards i hit them all uh three-eighths of an inch down at a four o'clock pattern down from its ear canal and that's what i do all night long so does that mean that when you're uh you know sitting in wisconsin on opening day and some buck comes busting out and pauses in the brush 300 yards away that that's your best it's like well i'm gonna do like the aphids guys no yeah of course not no it's just different yeah you're like i going to hold center mass on the ribs and hope something good happens. So it's different, but still instructive.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. That's good. So Phelps, you recovered from getting attacked by a scorpion. I'm good, healthy. What else going on in your world? Turkey season's getting close. We're heading out to, me and you are heading to Kansas, what, in two weeks?

Yeah, it's going to be fun, man. Finish up the line one saga when we did our line one call i vowed to someday take the one of the people that got a line one call and i was said i'm gonna take them and we're gonna try to kill a turkey from that walnut stump yeah i don't know that we're actually gonna okay we've been i've been dealing with chester and sam a little bit and i'm like steve said something in passing i don't know like how dead set he is. Because if we just move forward 20 yards of the field edge, it's going to be a way better setup than sitting on that stump.

But we'll go visit. So we did calls where we went to a place and chopped down a big walnut and chopped down some Osage orange and made a line one, our line one call out of that wood. And then we wanted to, we couldn't like, I always tell people that are going into law to go into sweepstakes and raffle law to help you out.

No, just a general. Like if I was going to start my life over, I would spearfish instead of anything else. And job would be i'd be in raffle and sweepstakes law i would have gone to law school and specialize in raffle and sweepstakes law dude and i would tear a new one i would tear it a new one as a lawyer no lawyer knows anything about sweepstakes and raffle law to the point where people tell you like i guess i don't think you can do that you never get to get as clear answer on it anyways it turns out that you can't say for reasons i'll never understand you can't say when we sell the line one call we're gonna pick someone who bought a

line one call randomly because they got numbers on them we're gonna generate a random number and then take that person to hunt the place where we got the trees from. Weren't allowed to say it. So stupid because you got to open up a way for someone who doesn't have any jingle to participate. For instance, raffle and sweepstakes law. Every year, Yanni and I do a turkey hunt.

We give away an all expense paid turkey hunt to someone and their friend. And we cover airfare lodging we'll even get them a shotgun if they need one gear whatever a turkey hunt and if you donate 25 to trcp all the money like all the money goes to a non-profit theater conservation group theater roosevelt conservation partnership um but if you're a cheap steak a cheap skate you can actually sign up without even donating any money to trcp so we got thwarted on this whole line one deal but anyways how'd you end up getting the guy then

we just picked someone and did without ever telling anybody we picked and now we're taking this we're taking them hunting we're taking him hunting. We're taking him to hunt the place where we got the walnut from. Which number call did he have? I don't even remember how we did it. I don't even know if we even know what number he had because it was kind of random.

We just picked from the list. That was the original plan. The original list of purchasers. I wanted to get all them ping pong balls that got the number on them and that blowing machine. But we never were able to do any of that. Squirrel cage.

Squirrel cage. I called in and killed more than a couple gobblers last year with that call. Dude, that sounds good. My call. Anyways, we're going to take someone hunting at that spot. Yep. And I was saying that I wanted to go in there and hunt off that stump, but that's some thick briars in there, man. Now that you opened up the canopy. You'd be asking a lot of a turkey to come in there and hunt off that stump. That's some thick briars in there, man. Now that you opened up the canopy.

You'd be asking a lot of a turkey to come in there, man. Now that you opened up the canopy, it's probably thicker. But we're going to go in there and take a look. Yeah, it's going to be awesome. We'll go see the stump. Yeah, Randy's been sending us pictures of birds everywhere, every day, so it's looking good. Yeah, that's a thing people like to do, but man.

It's going to be good. Yeah, no, I think it'll be good. It'll be good. What else going on about it starting to plan fall hunts um disneyland got in the way of spring bear for me this year so i'm still recovering from that depression taking your kids to disney yeah we're gonna do disneyland which got right in this middle of my at some point or another it has it happens to everybody man there's nothing you can really do.

Yeah, and then it's like, man, the business. You're going to get out of it, Yanni? Yeah. I'm already out of it. My kids are 9 and 11. Oh, that's when you get too old for Disney. You don't have to go to Disneyland, man. Oh, Giannis.

When your wife tells you you're going. I tried very hard to get out of it. You did something wrong a long time before that. The good thing about it is we went and they didn't really care. It's never come back up again. You didn't go? No, we took them. They didn't really care.

It's never come back up again. But one thing that came funny out of it is they had a Legoland. It was like a Legoland by Disney. So we went to Disney and then we went to Legoland. And one day my buddy gave me a leg of lamb. And we're eating leg of lamb. And then we're at the family dinner table,

talking about leg of lamb and leg of lamb. And my little boy at one point goes, so what's going on with Legoland? That was the best thing to come out of that whole experience so that but how can that ruin a whole spring bear season because that was my one i had it planned thinking for some reason we were like going to these land a different time so planned my big hunt with lampers we were gonna go oh gonna go do all that and it just landed wrong and then um business kind of always gets in the way like we don't spell we don't sell a whole lot of, we do sell predator calls, but

turkeys definitely like the priority. And so the time I do have needs to be spent chasing turkeys around. Got it. Yeah. It's hard to justify. Yeah. Yeah.

So. Yeah. Got, got some new owl hooters. You know, we brought out this year, new small batch calls. So, um, kind of took a little bit of a dive back, um, and really wanted to like hone in on the designs um that we were working on make sure they were buttoned up so um brought some world champion

callers on james harris um james harrison and then steve morganstern kind of joined the design team with me and uh so i think we knocked it out of the park with some of our small batch uh tricky calls we we kicked out this year so i'm excited to get out and start testing those. When we hunt together in Kansas, what call are you going to be using? I think we got to use a line one, right? As much as I'd love to use those new small batch because they're dialed, that line one's real good.

Yeah. And when we do this, are you going to be able to hang out? Because we never hunt turkeys together. I think so. I think we, I mean, it's your show, but I imagine we all start together as a group and then we'll just break apart as people start harvesting turkeys.

We'll tell the dude that won, like, you're on your own, buddy. Yeah, yeah, you got it. See that stump over there? Sit there and call. We'll take it and show you where you're supposed to wait, and then me and Phelps are going to go. It's a sniper. Me and Phelps are going to run and gun. I'm excited.

We got a trail camera over by that stump. There's gobblers coming by every day. And I got coming right up. I got coming right up i got coming right up um youth the wisconsin youth turkey which is the highlight of my year one of the highlights of my year and i'm in that thing now of looking at like like looking at 10-day forecasts but then at trying to extrapolate out days from that 10 day forecast which is a nerve-wracking experience man um there's other things you should be spending your time on steve no i like i check

it every morning i do too i'm taking my little girls over there to wisconsin right now the last the farthest out date i can look at is a doozy it is is a turkey killing madman, but it's still four days short of the season. If I'm like, man, if that turkey season opened on that day, that'd be a good day of turkey hunting. We'll see. All right, I hope everybody out there gets out and gets after some birds this spring. Check your trail cams.

Unless they're on public land in Kansas. Pull those suckers before they get shot. If you see any trail cams on public land in Kansas, shoot them. All right, boy, thank you. Oh, ride on, ride on, let it run I wanna see your gray hair Shine like silver in the sun Ride on, ride on my love Sweetheart, we're done Beat this damn horse to death Ride on, ride on, my long-time sweetheart

We're done beat this damn horse to death So take your new one and ride on We're done beat this damn horse to death So take your new one and ride on. raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law. But here this on X hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips. You Canadians, the great features that you love and on X are available for your hunts this season.

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