The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 444: When the Turtles Come For You

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

Steve Rinella talks with Kimi Werner, Cameron Kirkconnell, Errol “T” Thurston, Dirt Myth, and Justin Turkowski. Topics include: Debating what makes a good freeze dried meal; T's fear of snakes; pre-order our latest book, "Catch a Crayfish, Count the Stars"; a scientific paper on the high rate of flit knapping injuries; how Florida may Constitutionalize the right to hunt and fish; how soap can make humans more attractive to mosquitos; how burning coals inside an old, dry coconut is the best skeeter repellent; when Kimi rejected a job offer to be a mermaid; a Moulin Rouge outfit in Paris and claiming that snakes can't swim, when they can; corrections on the fastest wind speeds; ciguatera, the toxin found in large reef fish that makes you sick; when Kimi called Seth a liar; country fried turtle steak; is conch harvesting unsustainable in the Bahamas?; mushy meat; bonefish being too much work; flashlights in the hole; the elusive cubera; and more.  Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 meat. Hey guys, it's Brody Henderson. You probably know me from kicking Steve's butt on Meat Eater's trivia show. When I'm not doing that, I'm part of the Meat Eater publishing team

and I'm stoked to announce that our new book, Catch a Crayfish, Count the Stars, Fun Project Skills and Adventures for Outdoor Kids is coming out June 13th. It's Mediator's first book for kids and it's chock full of activities and adventures that will help build serious outdoor skills. Start them young by teaching them how to build a wildlife viewing blind, gig a bullfrog, and navigate through the wilderness. They'll also learn how to forage and grow their own food, build emergency shelters, hunt for fossils, gut fish, track animals, and much more. To celebrate the release of the book, Steve will be heading out on a little book tour from June 16th to June 25th and he'll be signing copies of the books at SHIELD stores in Billings, Montana, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Omaha, Nebraska, Kansas City, Missouri, Dallas, Texas, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Johnstown, Colorado, and Sandy, Utah. Catch a Crayfish Count the Stars is a must-have book for any parent or caregiver who wants to get their kids off the couch and off their screens

over those long summer days. It also includes activities for all different kinds of weather that'll keep them busy throughout the year. Visit TheMeatEater.com for tickets and we'll see you at Shields. this is the meat eater podcast coming at you shirtless severely bug bitten and in my case underwearless we hunt the 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 go farther stay longer all right recording from the bahamas elbow k can we say that you can say that i was just

reading that when we uh whooped the british the first time a lot of the um i don't mean no disrespect t when we whooped the british first time a lot of the british came down and hit out here yes we think about that a lot we've been calling you t and i know your name's Errol. Yes. What's T come from? Thurston. Thurston's my last name. Oh, Errol Thurston. That's right. That's right. And give people a very quick snapshot of your life.

Oh, I was born and raised here in the Bahamas. Went away, went away to college, came back home and I was an EMT for a while. And then after that, you know, I started fishing and island hopping and taking folks around for a little while to make a little extra money and it just took my life over. And now I do it full time, 100%.

And what's your social media handle? Pay it to play all day. It's fitting. It's accurate. That is 100% accurate. Joined also by Dirt Myth. Howdy. Who's going to taste something in a minute.

Oh, that's coming up, huh? It's coming right up. Get ready. Pop this chew out. And joined today by Dreamcatcher. Oh, my gosh. That's so funny. Some folks know her as Hog Dog.

Kimmy Werner. Hi. Justin. Good afternoon. Who's Werner. Hi. Justin. Good afternoon. Who's just somehow just Justin. Justin. Straight Justin. Cinematowski.

Oh, yeah. Cinematowski. You stay behind the scenes in the Justin Kimmy operation largely. Yeah, it seems a bit less controversial. Keep my mouth shut. my god everyone's just picking on me he just has the true soul of a cameraman that's how i would put it i don't know when i get tuckered out and i don't want to make a dive he's usually right handy to go i'm pretty excited to that one when steve will hand me the poster i'm like shoots yeah i'll go that's good and then um cameron is here dig in a little bit people know you from the uh

um spear chef spears no no no no well that i mean how i met how i became aware of you is from the campfire story story oh yeah that's right you know you find him at cam Kirk Connell was it cam Kirk Connell yep to follow his exploits so cameras been on the show before well home it everybody's been on the show before except T yeah cameras been on the show before and then was introduced to folks on this podcast long gooks I think we yeah we played your campfire story at the end of a podcast i still haven't heard that one i need to listen to that really yeah yeah i don't yeah i could picture not listening it's tough but i mean thank you guys

for doing that because i never have to tell that story again yeah you can just refer people yeah like if you want to hear it man go listen to it i'll wait we almost got one of you uh yesterday or today we had some tough dives here last couple days i was woke man i was woke all right dirt you ready to try it yep okay dirt myth is gonna dig in we're working on a i don't know how much i want to say about this we're working on a signature freeze dry meal a... I don't know how much I want to say about this. We're working on a signature freeze-dry meal. And I want it to be all bison meat. I want a bison meat signature freeze-dry

meal. Because if you're going to eat a farm-raised animal, that's the farm-raised animal that's just the one that that's the farm-raised animal that I think is most interesting not to hack on pigs and cows I'm saying like everyone thinks something's most interesting I think bison are most interesting big fan of the story and dirt's gonna dig in because dirt can't lie it's it's like it's a shot call a shot gobble I don't think about my dirt can't lie and Kimmy's a very good either teasing of the bison that smells pretty good now listen yeah but here you got me out though you understand this is freeze-dried food hey it still smells good I know but but I mean

there's like food and then there's freeze-dried food and years ago i wrote an article in outside magazine about freeze-dried food like the history of it all going back to the vietnam war and the lerps and got all into the space program how they never how it would sometimes space ice cream went up but no one none of that no one ever ate uh space ice cream in outer space was never there i went to a big freeze dry facility and we were in the lab and he said man we freeze dried everything to see how it works and he says name something and i said i don't know capers right here oh really they had freeze dried everything but the the what i came up to it by the end of the article is i'm like you can't confuse like certain things are meant to be freeze-dried you can't make a

freeze-dried hamburger because think about the rehydration process the bun to get you know i mean yeah everything needs to rehydrate at the same rate so what they do with that stuff is you when you make a truly freeze-dried meal you make a meal that's ready to eat so it's table ready then they put it on these sheets and they put it and they freeze it to a very specific temperature and that's actually proprietary the the the speed like it's proprietary the the humidity level and the chill because you want a certain type of ice crystal to form in the food then it goes into a sublimation chamber and they pull a vacuum on it and then the water sublimates meaning the water inside the food goes from a frozen to gaseous state it quits it

skips the liquid state like you remember those kids that they killed well they killed one of the girls and no man the the the incans oh took these kids up to the top i went to see one of their bodies and in salta in argentina but they so they took three kids up and i was crazy ass story so it's way out no it's on subject because they were they were freeze-dried the kids were the inkens this is like in 14 i mean not really but this is like in 1491 so pre-contact yep they had these three kids and they were able to do like stable isotope stuff off their bodies and these three kids had basically eaten root vegetables their whole lives and then they had this period of months where they were eating like meats and all kinds of other foods and the Incans toured these three kids throughout the Incan Empire and the kids collected up all these gifts and eventually

took them up to the top of some Peak I can can't remember how high, but way high up. Made a rock shelter for them. There was a 13-year-old girl, and someone hit her on the head with a tomahawk. Like, she changed her mind at the last minute. But the other ones had no visible damage to them. They still had coca leaves dried to their lips because it helps you tolerate the high elevation. And they did, like, a sacrifice with them. Yep. lips because it helps you tolerate the high elevation and they did like a sacrifice with them yep but at that high i went to see the they'll they can only show one body at a time

and when i went there it was the child i think it was the child that had been one of them had struck by lightning at some point in time but at that high elevation they they sublimated. Just slowly asphyxiated, basically. They froze solid, and then gradually the moisture in them went to a gaseous state. Yep. And so it looks like they could stand, like this child we went to see, it looks like it could stand up and walk away. Wow. Freeze-dried.

500 years or more. All right. Which brings me around to that meal. So they put it in this chamber. Listen now. I was hungry. They pull a vacuum on it, okay? Yeah.

And then when I went to this freeze-dry plant, they pull a vacuum on it, and then you can take that food, lift it out of that tray, and bust it like a sheet of glass. Really? No. No moisture in it?

No. No. And that is, so point being, if you put a bunch of burgers in there, and then poured water onto a burger, what are you going to have? Goulash. No, you're going to have a soggy burger bun. Oh, yeah. So when you see, when you go into the freeze-dry food place and they're selling like four wild mushroom Peruvian risotto, you're like, come on, dude, it's freeze-dry.

Yeah, it's not going to work. It's like it's not the same thing. And so to make a good freeze-dry meal, you have to be aware of the limitations of freeze-drying. Like everything isn't good freeze-dried. Ceviche, I don't know. Probably. Maybe, but probably not.

Shrimp cocktail, not bad. I had it. But, so, Dirk, dig in. Can we say what? No. Okay. I do like that it's got high-calorie content for our trips. Yeah, buddy.

I like that. All right. It's an old lie. No, like T said. If you don't like it, it's easy. We just come back and tell them we. I like that. It's an old lie. If you don't like it, it's easy. You just come back and tell me you don't like it. I've been eating amazing food so this is going to be accurate. Oh, yum. That is good. It is good?

That's genuine. Part of why I don't believe it is because oh yeah well see the reason i genuinely know i got a little part of why i don't believe it is because he doesn't articulate words yeah but you guys got me so keyed up that's good man no when he likes something normally he just does like this is clearly the truth that's a good mouthful i could keep smiling i want i wanted can i grab some other spoons see honestly oh no i would like a spoon. Yeah. I would like a spoon.

Pause this for a sec. I can grab them dirt if you want to keep going. Yeah, because that is good, man. Holy shit. The barbecue. While we get those spoons, I got to cover off on some stuff. Yep. T, you're going to like one of these because one of these, you have a snake phobia.

Yes. Tell folks about that, which makes no sense to me. You're not as scared of sharks. No, not at all. Not as scared of anything. Not at all. Scared of snakes. Yes, I don't know snakes at all.

You're in the right line of work because there's no snakes in the water. I'm telling you, bro, anything that moves that fast with no legs, it's not for me. It is not for me. I think I told you, Steve, the other day, I get a picture. He calls me. He's like, hey hey there's a snake in the yard i was like okay what do you want me to do about it he's like i need to know what kind it is i was like well send me a picture of it he doesn't even roll down the window to take a picture it's like man that's a black snake it's gonna be fine frequent cause of death when they come in through the window yeah okay you're right at the driver's seat don't let your guard down yeah

i got birdshot for him a few more weeks so a few more weeks of pre-order yet for um our children's activity book catch crayfish count stars you can get a couple of the we've you guys a lot of you guys have ordered one already and i really appreciate that and if you pre-order here's why it helps me out if you're interested let's say you just want to help feller out let's say you know you're going to eventually get it okay you know you're going to eventually get our kids activity book just do it now because it's super helpful because this way it'll all count like pre-order this is like the little snippet little look in the book land pre-orders count for a bestseller new york times bestseller list every book bestseller list every book you sell during the pre-order period

actually counts the first week okay so if if if you're gonna get one just get one now and then it'll count the first week and it'll launch it on the bestseller list which is great for me it doesn't do anything for you but it's great for me but what it does for you the listeners adds some certainty about when you get it because it'll ship on pub date so if you're gonna get it anyway or you think you might be pregnant or you're thinking about trying to get pregnant get it now if it doesn't work out you can give it to someone else your sister i don't know and uh this way you'll you'll you'll you'll raise a a who has a great opportunity to learn early on outdoor competency, issues around wildlife identification, how to sneak up on stuff, basics in navigation from the sun, the stars, how to grow stuff to eat,

how to make their own frog gig, how to make their own blow gun, how to make their own bow and arrow, a lot of stuff from a hardware store. Just the kind of kids you need to have around when times get hard so i could use that book yeah dirt you should get that book it'd be great yeah you'd be you'd be even uh even more competent um matt and aaron he's been on the show a bunch of times he's the anthropologist if you went on youtube and why he's the experimental archaeologist and if you went on youtube many of you did to watch our our video about where we teamed up with some archaeologists to butcher a bison using stone tools which is out right now on youtube, you'll meet Metten. And he's from Kent State University and runs the Experimental Archaeology Lab.

He just published a paper that's interesting where it gets into the high rate of flint knapping injuries among flint knapping act the high rate of flint knapping injuries among flint nappers and he's it was this thing where they're looking at 173 contemporary flint nappers and what is the rate of injury in contemporary flint nappers and what might we learn about ancient flint nappers because as he points out in the article people have been shaping stone with for napping for 3 million years. Practiced by hominin societies large and small. So even hominins besides humans nap flint. I made this point in something I was writing recently where there was a time,

if you were at a time in Europe where if you saw a fire, people sitting around a campfire from a distance you wouldn't know you'd have to think to yourself uh well what kind of humans and you might not know what kind of human they're cooking um three million three million years of flintknapping 173 contemporary flintknappers one-fourth have had to seek professional medical attention for flintknapping injuries dang wow and he even postulates in this thing that you that that you know thousands of years ago, it's plausible that people would have died from foot napping injuries. Also contemporary nappers who completely lost the use of hands and arms from ligament nerve damage. Do you guys ever hear the story of Ishii?

You know, Ishii, the last, what was his tribe? I don't know much about him. Do you guys ever hear the story of Ishii? You know Ishii, the last Yahi? What was his tribe? I don't know much about him. In California, there was a... Pretty late here.

Who's got... Here, I'll type it in. You got Google? Well, I just can't remember what. So he was the subject of a 1993 film. But in the early 1900s, Ishii, the last of the yahi indian tribe his his whole tribe was wiped out okay in warfare with the whites his whole tribe's wiped out from disease and warfare

he hid out for 20 years in the mountains in the early 1900s after his whole tribe was thought to be gone, they found him. And he oddly, I saw this movie years ago, he oddly goes and lives at a museum to show his life ways. His museum's like, oh, we'll take care of him. He was asked how he dealt with flintknapping injuries. And someone said, what do you do when you get a napped flake in your eye?

This is at the University of California, Berkeley. Ishii indicated that he would pull down his lower eyelid with the left forefinger, being careful not to blink or rub the lid. Then he demonstrated. He bent his head over, looked at the ground, and gave himself a tremendous thump on the crown of the head. Go knock it right out of the eye. Popped it out.

Makes sense. Does it? Don't want to smash it against your eyeball and sear anything. Gave himself a tremendous knock on the head and somehow maybe lodged, put the thing against the lid. One guy they were talking to is a guy named Don Crabtree. Not a subject from this study, but just in the review of literature, described one of the injuries he received

while attempting to recreate the Folsom fluted point. He was trying to figure out how Folsom hunters removed the flute, and he tried a method called what he calls the short crutch method the unfluted preform collapsed and he drove the antler tip pressure tool right through the palm of his left hand more recently a napper John Whitaker um with a small piece of stone, managed to sever both his sublimous and profundus tendons with a single flake in one of his hands. So there you have it. Damn.

But you had to do it to make the tools. Yeah. No getting around that. So that's interesting. But i don't really know if you talk here's the thing about it i keep thinking about if you went and sent a survey to 173 chefs more than 25 percent cut themselves will have sought professional medical attention. There's no way. If you sent 173 chefs, more than a quarter are going to tell you that they sought professional medical care from knife injuries.

Have you, Kimmy? No, I haven't. Steve? I'm not a chef, I'm a cook. Well, what about guys cleaning fish? Because, I mean, in the years of cleaning fish, I mean, I've cut myself so bad multiple times that I've needed help. I've sought professional medical care over fish, fish in, but not fish cleaning.

Fish in, what do you mean fish in? Oh, when I was a little kid, I got a hook real bad in my thumb. I had to cut it out. Look at that scar still on there. I had to seek medical help over fish cleaning but not because i cut myself with a knife but because the fish spine got stuck so deep in my hand and broke off you had to dig it out yeah well you know we had to have our little boy lately i should have called you when we were trying to figure out about this he stepped on a black urchin got three of them in his foot and man that crippled him up pretty

good oh yeah and eventually they just came out like with puss in his shoe yeah yeah man my wife likes to like squeeze things any kind of things like that dude she wore all her welcome but that kid chased him around chased him around with a fat bag razor and a pair of tweezers for three weeks that kid got to be remain he saw his body coming he's out the other door bags he knew what she's gonna do trying to dig that stuff out of bottom his poor little foot uh florida right to hunt and fish t yes sir cameron you guys are florida residents and hunting buddies we hunt at home too you hunt you guys hunt together at home too get our two

knucklehead boys in the woods together and watch them it's hilarious great florida could become the 24th state to establish a constitutional right to hunt and fish uh the florida state legislature passed a resolution which refers the questions to voters um the resolution would add a 28th section to the declaration of rights in the florida constitution to say that hunting and fishing, this is how these things work. There's a couple things to say about these things. I'm supportive of them, but they have their limits. But first off, here's what they are. Hunting, okay.

It would be a constitutional amendment to say that hunting and fishing are the preferred means for responsibly managing and controlling fish and wildlife and shall be preserved forever as a public right. The amendment would not limit the powers of the fish and wildlife conservation commission to regulate hunting and fishing so this keep that in mind because therein lies the therein lies the rub um um vermont was the first state to constitutionalize such a right in 1777 to bring this back to this key here you guys call them k's or keys key to bring it back to this key here one year after those defeated brits headed this way oh, because it took us a while to whoop them. They might not have been here in 1777.

But Vermont, still in the height of the revolution, made a constitutional right to hunt and fish. Since then, 22 states have adopted constitutional amendments creating a right to hunt and fish. Alabama, after a couple hundred year hiatus on making the laws vermont being 1777 alabama following up uh 200 and man that's hard math 220 one years later One year's later, Alabama became a state with a right to hunt and fish. The most recent, and we covered this on the pod, shows you how long this show's been on the air.

The most recent amendment was on the 2020 ballot in Utah, which we covered. I think we even had the guy that wrote that bill come on the podcast. And it was approved by 75% of voters. Here's a weird one. Arizona rejected theirs in 2010. That is surprising. Yeah. Arizona rejected it.

It usually always passes. So the constitutional amendment was introduced in the Florida State Legislature as House Joint Resolution. No one ever cares about that in february the house approved the amendment by a vote of 116 to zero incredible yep the senate 38 to 1. i'd like to meet whoever but here's the deal it then has to go on and get so so it passes unanimously like it's it's unanimously agreed by the house to to put this forward as a vote one dissenter in the senate and now it has to go overcome the hurdle of 60% popular vote. Here's the good and the bad of these things. I think it's a great thing.

I think it's a great gesture. I think every state should do it. Should be 50 states do it. They should bring it back up in Arizona and do it. The problem is, I don't know at what point it would have teeth meaning i i could be wrong about this i don't think a state has ever sued a fish and game has ever successfully sued against a fish and game prohibition by being able to point to the constitutional right to hunt and fish and in knowing that like your rights to hunt and fish you lose them in a piecemeal fashion you lose them in like the

classic slippery slope fashion that if you have a state that has a constitutional right to hunt and fish and then they go to take away one of your rights they're going to the first thing they're going to do which they always do they're going to say okay you can't hunt mountain lions with a dog and then you can't hunt black bears with a dog and then it'll be you can't hunt black bears at all then you can't hunt mountain lions at all then you can't hunt any kind of cat at all then you can't hunt anything using a dog at all you know it goes like that and i can't think of and we spent some time talking with this before i can't think of anyone that's ever gone and said wait a minute you are at the point now where you're violating the constitutional right to hunt and fish because remember it doesn't supersede fish

and games rules so you could have a constitutional right to hunt and fish in washington state and then you could have a commission like what's emerging in Washington State where you're having a game commission full of anti-hunting people and anti-fishing people. Remember, Washington State, when the pandemic began, they made a rule that you can't fish. Even if you had a pond in your backyard, it was illegal in Washington State to go fish in the pond by yourself

in your yard during the pandemic not know that that didn't come from the game commission but they have they have washington state's attitude is under under governor inslee the attitude is that the game commission should represent all interests including the animal rights movement so you could have a you could have something written similarly in washington state but it's saying but it can't impact fish and game or they sit outside of the thing so at some point the two interests are going to diverge and at some point someone's going to need to cry foul that a state has run amok of its constitution by nitpicking hunters and anglers through fish and game rules or you

can screw hunters and anglers through ballot referendums. So at what point, if you do a ballot referendum that says no bear can be hunted, who wins? The constitutional right to hunt and fish? That ballot referendum? Or the ballot referendum that said you can't hunt bears?

I don't know. I could picture a future in which i don't want to say this is so far out i'm going to say i don't want anyone to think i'm actually saying this is true right now but if let's say in the future it became that i let's say in the future 50 years in the future it became that it actually became illegal to hunt and fish and you had given up all hope on fishery fishing game management and it just became illegal to hunt and fish divorced from any consideration of the health of wildlife like let's say there's a nuclear holocaust and it killed off all the fish in game and they said okay we're going to not hunt and fish for a long time because the nuclear holocaust off all the fish in game and they said okay we're gonna not hunt

and fish for a long time because the nuclear holocaust killed all the fish in game you'd probably say yeah that makes sense there's no fish in game because it all got nuked but let's say everything's pretty fine and you can't do it i think most people i hang out with would become vigilante hunters and anglers probably and then maybe they would be able to at that point point to uh those those of us who live in states with constitutional rights to hunt and fish we'd point to the thing and say we made a deal that we are allowed to do this does montana got that yeah you know one of the state what state was going to do it one state that recently did it was going to put trapping on there and backed out at the last minute.

So that's too far. They kept it to hunting and fishing. Yeah, they chickened out at the last minute. I think it might have been Utah chickened out. I'm just worried it caused too much. Yeah. They were careful of their bedfellows. They were careful.

They didn't want people who practiced the dark arts being in the room man so so for florida do you think that by doing this it's going to more so protect our right to hunt and fish in theory i think theoretically yes i'm just looking forward to and maybe there's already one that i'm not aware of and if there is i'm sure someone will write in and tell us if you know of one please write in and tell us I'm not aware of. And if there is, I'm sure someone will write in and tell us. And if you know of one, please write in and tell us. I'm not aware of a situation to date. It's anticipated. It'll happen.

I'm just not aware of a situation to date where a state where someone went to do something in a state. And, and then the state Supreme court said like, you can't because of the constitutional right to hunt and fish so it'll happen right it'll definitely happen at some point but to date it's like that that overarching constitutional protection i don't think it's ever been used like like meaning let's say i i say to you um you start a new you start a new spearfishing website an opinion website and the

government and the state says i'm going to cut yours off because i don't like what you're saying and they'd be like whoa whoa because he has his first amendment rights and then they'd be like oh damn it that's right um he gets to keep his spearfishing website i don't think that that's happened yet with state constitutions like where someone did something and then it was it was combated through the it'll happen i'm sure i can't wait till it happens so it's kind of a preemptive move on all these states part starting in 1777 you know just in case i would like to i would probably write it in such a way that it would not pass, but I would like to take a stab at writing one of those. So if you're one of the states that

hasn't done it and you want someone who has no idea, you want someone who has no idea how to write legislation, I would love to take a stab. 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. You're 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 Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services

handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Here's a great one. This will be applicable to you boys in Florida, too. Soap can make humans more attracted to mosquitoes check this out so this is just published in the journal science eye science okay

well you just ditched cam when steve said that i know because he hates mosquitoes i'm so afraid of him he hate he hates he like he hates mosquitoes more than ticks yeah because you spent a lot of time you spent a lot of time overseas where some mosquitoes where i was like legit worried about malaria yeah yeah um ptsd they had volunteers who submitted fabric samples that they had worn either unwashed or after washing with four different brands of soap. You following?

Yep. They tear the sleeve off. So you wear the, so you wash with the kind of soap, wear it. Hold on, let me get this straight. Recruited four volunteers who submitted fabric samples that they had worn as a sleeve while either unwashed or after washing with four different

brands of soap dial heard of it dove heard of it native anyone yeah native soap yeah my son that's what he uses simple truth you never heard of it now that's a good name for soap it's a simple truth it doesn't work it's a simple truth i'd make one called objective reality simple truth just a simple truth you ever heard of that soap no one okay so we all know that female mosquitoes are the only ones that bite they're the only ones that feed that that need blood they need blood when they're developing their eggs however they cannot get blood and still successfully hatch but they have a much higher likelihood of hatching if they can get blood to fertilize. Not to fertilize like from the male, but to feed their egg.

So even if she doesn't bite a caribou or ewe or whatever, she could still be successful. She has a much higher likelihood of being successful if she gets blood. Then they take these sleeves, they put them in this tank full of skeeters. Remember remember that song there's a skeeter on my peter knuckle my kids all know that that must be a michigan song my kids all know that song there's another on my brother then it goes there's a dozen on my cousin and i think they're really buzzing um you're making cam sweat the fabric was used okay so they don't even want the person present they just want to put their sleeve in the tank because one thing that's known is the exhaled carbon dioxide is attractive to mosquitoes um warm air they detect warm air coming out of your body they're attracted to it so they don't want people they just want to know like what is the the fabric soap thing

what okay here's the meat of it washing with dove dial and simple truth increased the attractiveness of some but not all volunteers. Now, this is a great plug, and I have no relationship with this soap company, Native. I've never even heard of them. Well, you Southern boys did, both of you. Repels mosquitoes. Here's why.

They think it could be linked to its coconut scent as there is some evidence that coconut oils are a natural deterrent for skeeters that's a fact cool that's interesting that but that is a hundred percent fact you know that's true i know it's true oh coconut because here in the island one of the biggest ways to get rid of mosquito is you take a old dried coconut bust it in half and you put coals in it and it's one of the best bug repellent elbow oh just really burning it yeah just you just put coals and just put a couple coals inside a coconut shell so it heats those oils up yeah and it just slowly smolders into smoke and it works there's some other tree that grows here and in the islands, Cayman Islands as well, that they used to burn at night.

Well, in Tahiti, they make manoi, which is roasted coconut oil. And I was told that, I mean, the Tahitians just use it on their skin because it smells so good. It makes your skin nice and you put it in your hair. But I was told there that it also deters mosquitoes and you put in your hair but i was told there that it also um deters mosquitoes i'm in i'll try it yeah yeah native soap buy stock and native

i doubt it's publicly traded but maybe you can figure out or just get coconut oil there you go uh t you're gonna like this one this is the snake one remember I told you I wanted you to come on the show just because I don't mean to overplay the snake phobia that's alright I'm game okay we did some background research on this one too

you know Moulin how do you say it Moulin Rouge Moulin Rouge they have been in Paris the Moulin Rouge cabaret club in paris has been forced to drop a long-running snake act and they've been there apparently there's a thing they do there you know um there's a bar in montana the sip and dip what's that bar oh yeah yeah in great falls the mermaid bar yeah where you drink. And the hole behind the bar is the aquarium.

And ladies in mermaid suits swimming down there. I got offered a job to be one of those mermaid people. I can't believe you didn't do it. I didn't. Such a different wonderful job. You'd have to move to Vegas, though, wasn't it? You're like, they're going to turn the fish in Great Falls. She wasn't down with that.

They just turned the fish loose there and let her go get the fish. She, too, can spear your dinner. You got offered a gig there? A long time ago, yeah. Not at the Montana one, no. No, at a different one. You'd have done it if it was the Montana one. No, man, of course.

No, not Great Falls. I was born there, right? No, I wasn't interested. They had a great, we used to go there back when I patronized bars. The sip and dip? Yeah, they had the gals swimming in the mermaid suits, and then they had a piano player. That's awesome.

Anyways, in this one, this Moulin Rouge outfit there in Paris, they have a thing where they put snakes in a tank, and then the swimmers get in and swim with and sort of like frolic with the snakes. Oh, so water snakes? Well, here's the thing. The animal rights folks got all up in arms. All other problems on earth having been taken care of they have they have decided that this is taking it too far this is taking it too far um so after men they they They caved. The Moulin Rouge Cabaret Club caved and said that as of today,

they permanently ended the snake number. Now, the whole meat of it here with the animal rights movement was that these were terrestrial snakes that didn't want to be in the water. Southeast Asian reticulated snake and the indian python they live on land so you're torturing them by putting them in the water um corinne took this to uh a snake expert that's been on the show bob reed um who has spent his entire career dealing with snakes around the globe is currently involved in doing work with the usgs around the burmese python invasion and does

behavior population modeling and everything bob reed when asked what he thought about the argument that these snakes don't like water, he said, in short, these two python species spend lots of time in the water and to call them terrestrial as if that means they have trouble swimming is effing silly. I believe that remember Justin when we were in Malaysia and the python thing climbed into my lap yeah and then I freaked out

and whacked it off and then it was like supposedly a land python but it swam really well in the water

so I'm right up to another boat climbed in weird and the reticulated python cheese out

in in singapore indonesia malaysia and borneo um the reticulated python is frequently found in sewers it's an excellent swimmer um they actually use water as an escape route uh an escape place and the indian pythons um nocturnal mainly terrestrial um are excellent swimmers quite at home in the water they can wholly submerge for many minutes but often linger near the bank either way i there ain't been i don't know what i'm complaining about i was uh if i had a trip lined up to go watch some ladies sling those snakes though i'd be bummed out i don't know saving up i would argue i i'd love to hear from your herpetologist guy but every snake's got to be able to swim oh i see that like rattlesnake it's hard to picture a snake that just can't florida every snake in florida can swim i promise you that yeah because it floods like the whole place

floods but i mean even the snakes in the desert i bet you if you chucked them in water they'd figure it out i you the only one i can't think of and i'm sure but no because you have all kinds of rattlesnakes in florida and they probably i mean they're fine in the water if they can't swim then what are they gonna do oh they can swim i's not really good yeah i've seen it really montana yeah yeah a couple corrections where we had stuff wrong while i applaud y'all's recognition of the hero epic is universal and older than the dirt not older and dirt myth but just the actual dirt 39 there's one major miss that i hope would have coming up i'm fumbling this whole thing we had a guest on jack car

novelist and he was jack car was pondering the universality of the hero epic and certain stories that seem to be in every mythology of human civilization that have no clear connection to one another great flood garden of eden um and jack was talking about the the idea of a hero going into a cave going into hiding like like uh jesus has his time in the desert all these different cultures um in in great plains and native american tribes in the great plains you would go on a vision quest you go out you might build a shelter you might go into a rock shelter and you you go without food and water to you're in a hallucinatory state you come back perhaps in some cultures you then take a name right you then decide what kind of person you're going to be so this idea of this this this idea of um this human story in which you go into a cave and you're transformed

and you find these all around the world and we're pointing to the fact that that they're all around the world so how is it that that so many people um independently came up with this idea. This gentleman, Mr. Hernandez that wrote in, points out that we missed discussion of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which goes all the way back to ancient Sumatra, to the very beginning of human civilization in Mesopotamia. Originally an oral epic that was later compiled and written down centuries before any modern religious text in ancient Acadia. It's a hero's epic. It has the great flood. It has the Garden of Eden. It has an ark. It also has a Homer

type journey at the hands of the gods so in summation all human civilization did have a common link which would explain why so many disparate cultures have common themes in their backstory um i don't mean to like uh i don't mean i told you so to mr hernandez and i really appreciate the note but that would not account for native american groups that would not account for anything out of um that would not account for anything out of the Western Hemisphere. Good idea, though. Another correction. Fastest wind speed recorded on Earth.

I said it was recorded on Mount Washington in New Hampshire. That's what I thought. Well, here's what he's pointing out. So in Oklahoma, May 3rd, 1999, they had an F5 tornado. Hit 302. But when everybody says the highest wind speed ever recorded, it usually goes by non-typhoon. I thought it goes by non-typhoon.

Agreed. Yeah, that's what I was. Non-typhoon, like a natural wind, right? They differentiate between a sustained and then like a tornado or hurricane or something like that. Tornado, I mean, good Lord, they got to be crazy. Well, our taxi driver getting here said Dorian reached 300 miles per hour. Oh. Cameron made the cigarette smoke.

Blowing smoke. Call bullshit. So this hit 302, and apparently that's the highest. Recorded. That's fast. T, you should talk about losing your home to a hurricane.

Ain't nothing much to say. It's gone. Right down to the gun safe everything gone just flat flat foundation done all your stuff everything everything i uh came back and even when i flew over flew like five days later and the only thing that was really recognizable was my boat from the air it wasn't where it was but my boat had i painted the floor my boat blue like a sky blue i flew over and i was like oh there's my boat damn nothing else yeah and that was the only thing like i had a starting point you know and after getting on the ground and they four or five days later after that they got on the ground and it's like all right let's start looking yeah

so where do you think your stuff is only god knows i know in my in my room it was a box, but like old high school pictures and prom pictures and stuff. It was found not, it was found probably, it was found in an area called Leisurely. Leisurely is about 25 miles north. Some kids were just cleaning up one day and found pictures and stuff scattered and a bag and stuff. And they sent me a picture of it. And I said, holy holy crap that's me and there's pictures of me 20 years ago like prom pictures and stuff 25 miles away from my house but this probably isn't you probably can't answer this but with whole islands where

everything was carried away how come when we're diving how come it's not just like furniture and off the door where like where does it go okay so after dorian i've got great gopro footage of me on a jet ski and there was mattresses as far as you could see here in the sea of abaco oh they got waterlogged they end up sinking it was i mean tons of them everywhere the only thing that was left in the sea of abaco basically was trees that was it all of the all of the material like doors and roofs and stuff all the stuff got sucked out everything got sucked out an hour before the storm touched down the how the harbor of marshall was empty it's like the all the water receded and when it came back, it came over for us. I would have picked up so many fish, man.

It wiped out the whole town of Marshall Harbor. All the way to Container Port was in the south. Everything just got washed on in. And when the eye came over and it switched direction, everything blew on out. Yep. Yeah. We came here. We had two helicopters with us.

We had a caravan of like 30, 35 boats. We had two helicopters with us we had a caravan of like 30 35 boats we had two helicopters with us on a little plane and we had them putting in gps points on stuff they see and they were quiet it's like guys there's nothing you guys could just run there's nothing in front of you just keep running yeah and it was nothing and they were 100 right i think we found like one one minivan maybe that was kind of floating but other than that all the way from stewart florida to here it was nothing it was nothing absolutely nothing when we've been diving we've been seeing stuff like there's parts of houses parts of like roofs um i mean we've been constantly i've seen some of that i thought some of that was

lobster condos some of it is but the the smaller chunks especially especially when we were in those channels, there was a bunch. Yeah, you're right. For some reason, I registered all that as lobster condo stuff that people set out. And it has gotten better, obviously, because a big storm will come through here with 10-foot seas and move all that stuff around again. But up here in the Sea of Abaco, a lot of these trees and stuff,

like when I'm running up in the tower, you can see all the trees still, which is wild to see a tree out randomly. So I've got the info on Hurricane Dorian. It tied for the strongest landfall in the Atlantic Basin. It's regarded as the worst natural disaster in Bahamas recorded history. One of the most powerful hurricanes recording the Atlantic with 185 mile per hour sustained winds. Dang.

Well, I wonder what constitutes sustained. That is crazy. One minute. One minute sustained. That counts for sustained. You know, when the tsunami hit Japan, it took, I can't remember if it was 18 months or two years but that stuff started to beach up in southeast alaska and we started finding a lot of stuff

it was a long time later it might have been it might have been two i think it was two years later that we would start finding all kinds of stuff where's the worst is africa where that stuff would hit or does the the gulf take it somewhere else i think north carolina got a bunch of what do you mean like all the trash that ended up oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah once the trash came like like from where we're sitting right now these inlets that you see right here they had two main inlets one stuff get pulled out of there yeah the primary current run from south to north okay so a lot of that stuff like cam said will end up off of the carolina so what don't end up off the carolinas will actually end up off of bermuda oh and that's where they go

and then from bermuda over to portugal and wherever else yeah yeah but like cam said a lot of boats and stuff that was here what didn't get put in the pine forest ended up in the carolinas yeah a lot of it so some dude in the carolinas is cooking with your pans and stuff hey i hope you enjoy them i hope you enjoy them oh some guy wrote in about a really good thing that um i'm saying good because we struggled with the same thing this spring. It's a great question. He says, this past week I was turkey hunting on a large tract of state forest in northern Pennsylvania.

Around 11 a.m., he picks up a gobble, gets in position, sets up. Fifteen minutes later, here he comes. Big old strutter. The thing was was no beard when the bird got to 15 yards he could even see spurs the regulations in pennsylvania the same where i had this discussion in michigan this spring they identify a male as being a bearded bird so you can go like like if you go look at your deer regulations wherever you live your turkey regulations where you live they might say um and like they might say a a male you might get a tag that says good for a male deer or you

might get a tag that says good for an antler deer antlerless or antlerless right so they're so they're so they're not they're defining a buck not by um not by sexual organs they're defining it by the presence or absence of antlers turkeys in a lot of states they define it not by is it a male is it a female so this so in the spring essentially it's male only you can only kill what we it a female so this so in the spring essentially it's male only you can only kill what we call gobblers or males in the spring well what makes a male a male what the states say is a lot of states say it's the presence of a beard of a beard which cuts both way ways meaning it's legal if you live in a state where it says you can kill a bearded bird you can kill a bearded hen and depending on where you're at it could be five six seven eight percent of all hens have a

beard and those are all legal to kill but what do you do in a situation where you have like this guy it's a strutter it's gobbling it's fanned out but there's no beard we had this conversation because my buddy's farm has a beardless turkey on it and we talked and talked and talked and talked and talked about what someone would do if they're presented with a shot by the beardless turkey and i never i was like i think it would depend a lot on the mood of the game warden. Because I mean, like, you get checked and you're holding the turkey. And it's got inch long spurs, big old redhead, 25 pounds, but there's no beard. Like, does he sight you?

What are you doing, Cam? What are you doing? Cam? What are you doing? I play by the rules, but a lot of times if you see that fan, you see that redhead, he's going down. You're not even thinking about it. Yeah, Cam's smoking him. And when a turkey's strutting, his beard will sometimes lay in that little crease. Yeah, agreed.

Like, knowing that I've done a lot of turkey hunting, and when a strutter comes in, I do not think to verify the presence of the deer. But apparently you should. Could you claim you shot it off, maybe? Because I don't know. I'm sure a game warden, if you're a game warden out there and you've cited people for shooting beardless gobblers, I would love to hear about it.

This guy's like, I have to think a CO would be understanding. But it's a great thing because I like, I'll check for beards in some situations, but if he's like strutting and gobbling, how many times have you shot a turkey and the only thing you see is his head coming? Head and the tail like that. Head and the tail fan.

You're like, that's all I need to know about. Yeah, it's a great question. And as as far as i know at my buddy's farm no one even got a chance at the beardless gobbler um for a while my wife hated us for a while her nickname was the bearded hen she doesn't have a beard she doesn't have a beard. But my daughter shot a bearded hen, and we started calling their mom the bearded hen for some reason. All right, where do we start? I want to start with this. If it's fine with you guys.

Ciguatera. I know it changes around the world but walk me through um i'll put it this way how come in the gulf of mexico barracuda like there's a commercial market for barracudas people you go to you go to my buddy jesse's restaurant in texas and on the fish fry night he does a fish fry i think every week he does a fish fry he renders his own beef lard does a great fish fry sometimes they got barracuda on the menu and in other places they tell you if an ant if an ant won't eat a barracuda it's because it has ciguatera

like break down ciguatera ciguateratera grows, it starts from dead coral. So like a hurricane just came through here. So whatever coral is here is probably going to be dead because it got abused by rocks and everything in the rough weather. So this area especially is going to have a lot of challenges with cig because what happens is the dead coral dies. Then there's a type of algae that grows on that dead coral okay that has the whatever a toxin toxin in it little reef fish eat that it accumulates

in their body and then the big predator fish start eating that so the ones we're afraid of here are those big cuberas which are basically over 20 pounds barracudas all locals eat barracudas and they'll eat big ones too they do but we're t and i are knocking wood again have never been hit by it because we are uber safe with it so a small barracuda and a lot of times they'll say these ones that are inside on the grass are fine but you know those things go back as though he's like he's like committed himself to not going out there he's like i'm not going out there where everybody else is getting sick. The big groupers and the challenges, I mean, in this week, we've seen six different kinds of groupers.

So a tiger grouper that's 15 pounds, a black grouper that's 50 pounds, a Nassau grouper that's 20 pounds are all the same age. They're all pretty old fish. I got what you're i got it's just species specific so i'll eat a tiger grouper that's five six pounds i'm not gonna eat one bigger than that because you're the they get old and they get a long tail like real broom tailing man those are gonna knock you down and the groupers it's a tough one because there's certain parts of the bahamas where we dove last time you can shoot a a 50, 60 pounder. No problem.

You're not going to get it. But here, if you shoot a 50, 60 pounder, you're running a pretty good risk of getting hit. Cause there's more dead coral. You know, I think that it would be good to have experts write in on this because last I heard it, there's just still so much mystery to the science of cicatera and I've definitely heard stuff about dead coral and storms

and whatnot but I don't know if they really nailed it down I do know it starts from some sort of algae bloom that has a toxin and there are so many different theories on that some people think it's development some people think it's the chemicals used in golf courses you know um all different things or storms or whatnot they think cigar is from there's so many different theories that i've heard that scientists are trying to understand um but if it were just development things you know would it be found in all these little atolls that are all over french polynesia where we know it does exist probably not that's like saying i mean but red tide's always been around i mean but i don't but sigatera hasn't always been around i don't think

so i don't think so because there is no hawaiian word for sigatera which does say a lot being that that was the main food source right and it's fish and so being that there was no hawaiian word for cicatera we do and no no talk about it nothing like that we do think it's something that is relatively new but trying to figure out exactly how to pinpoint the source of it gets confusing all i mean i could be be wrong, but the last I heard, all we really know is that it comes from algae. There's some sort of toxin that bioaccumulates as it goes up the food chain.

And I even say some sort of toxin because the problem is that they've even made ciguatera test kits where you can catch a fish, test it for the ciguatera toxin, and then it can tell you whether it's good to eat or not. And those kind of failed because it only tests for that one toxin where apparently I think there ended up being numerous toxins that weren't exactly ciguatera, but had all the exact same results and symptoms. I feel bad for that company that did that

because I saw that coming too. When they came out with a ciguatera test kit, inevitably somebody's going to get sick and sue them and shut this company down that's actually trying to do something really good and help people. But it didn't last long. T, you said you got to mess with that kit.

Yeah. But you said everything you tried had it. Everything I tried. Seriously, everything I tried had it everything i tried seriously everything i tried had it and i mean jeez yeah they sent me a kit and i was like all right let me give this thing a shot and i i think i still have one or two kits left um for me here i'm not speaking for the rest of the world but for me here in this part of the world there's certain areas where I fish and I will harvest fish and I will not eat it. I just know like certain areas is more prevalent.

And if I go to those areas and I catch a fish that's a bottom feeder, I had to let it go. Or if it dies, I just give it away to somebody and let them know, hey, look, I caught this fish here. It's all on you. But your dad's had it a bunch of times. Yeah, my dad's had it a bunch of times yeah my dad's had it yeah every local all old guys back on the mainland they eat anything from the ocean but my feeling is they built up such a tolerance to us you know i feel as if they built up such a tolerance to it that you know they still get sick they still get really really sick but it does not it does not hit them as hard as

someone let's say friends from from montano because you know because some people that have like i see what you're saying i want to say no i mean because at first i felt the same way because i mean it's so interesting because wherever you go like people will have these things up no you did outside the lagoon it's fine inside you know and there's all these things and there's always the people were like, oh, just give it to that guy. He's immune, you know? And by science, I always thought that would be, that would contradict the science because if it bioaccumulates,

I always thought it bioaccumulated in us as well. So then you wouldn't think that you would get immune to it because you would just think the more fish you eat, the more prone you were to getting it. But i think what t's saying is that you get it so many times and then it's just you really start to just not even feel it after a while maybe that's it because i definitely do know that there's so many old timers that eat all the fish that are known to be the hottest in sig and are just absolutely fine how funny is it that all of us and from coming from different places always call it hot i never heard that before because you're hot and cold like you wouldn't be able to walk barefoot on this this floor without feeling like you're

burning up joints like it really affects you oh really oh yeah so talk about when you had it okay so i think i i'm i'm pretty positive i had ciguatera or something some strain close to it but i i had shot a 60 pound ulua a giant trevally i know it was pretty like amazing experience um and but that was the last big ulua i ever shot because i ate it and ate some of it and um and then a couple days later i just i just felt like all my muscles were just being pulled and stretched and it was like every part of me was so sore from the inside out and i felt fatigued but i just felt in pain and then the thing that i noticed is whenever I went to wash the dishes at night, the water that was warm just felt so extremely burning hot. And if I touched anything that was just semi-cool,

it felt so cold that I felt like frostbite or something. And from what I know about Cigatera is you get temperature reversal where hot things feel cold, cold things feel hot. I didn't get that, but I had temperature extremes where warm felt super hot, cool felt way too cold. And so whatever it was, it was close enough to count as Sig in my book. It only lasted though, like not even 48 hours. It lasted, like, a little over a day. And then I was fine. 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 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 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 on X here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can

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slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Do you know that she, Kimmy here, basically called Seth a bald-faced liar? Oh, I was there. What? Seth?

No, no, no. Kimmy? I would never call Seth. She said he was lying. Oh, yeah, he did not. She said he was lying. She thinks he's lying bald-facedly about. No, he's just confused.

He's not a liar. He just got it wrong. But Steve, to get back to your point, a lot of people... Thanks, Steve. A lot of people say you put ants, let ants eat on it, and you put mustard on it,

or you put a penny in it. Oh, no, back up. I don't know about these. I don't know about the ant. Or the village pig won't eat it. You mean the village pig? No, the cat won't eat it. i don't think any of that stuff works if if if it's got sick it's got sick bro it's you're gonna get hit well i know but but the

thing is that oh so you give it to your neighbor fly land on it like you take a barracuda and if a fly lands on it it's clean he's to line up no matter what. Bullshit. Go for it. Go for it. Oh, damn. Yours is froze. Speaking of... Freestyle.

I can picture that we're going to have a great series of corrections. Oh, yeah. About the Sig conversation,IG with Tara conversation. This is just kicking. This is just the initial round. Well, there's people actively like our friends on Oahu just got it from a knife jaw and they had somebody reach out to them and like actually do an

interview, like come to their house and do an interview. So there's like people. From what I know, scientists are just begging for more information. So like they're still trying to figure what someone needs to do is they need to have an interactive world map that people can say definitively this spot i got it from this fish it was this size it would help so that'd be a

great thing to build into navionics yeah so it shows you like the depth probability you can send send if you want me to research it you can send me exactly where you got the fish what size it was if it was close to world record or not you know yeah how big but talking about you know the development areas that you know would think you would have it some of the most remote places that i've traveled are the absolute worst where there's there's no way it's development you know it's it's where hurricanes have hit multiple times over the years it's a place where the water doesn't move that much there's not an estuary

to like push water in and out you know but like alaska doesn't have it because the colder water temperatures i assume i've never heard any mention of it i've always heard it associated with coral yeah and that's why i was explaining to me why that's why like kudas barracudas in the gulf or you know particularly barracudas shot off the oil rigs like they're not on the kind of habitat that lends itself to getting ciguatera and that it's more of a for fish that are frequenting coral reefs so in the in the gulf mexico off florida black grouper commercially speared and caught there up to 120 pounds and they sell them commercially no problem but here in certain parts of the bahamas

you wouldn't touch a black over 50 pounds it's going to get you sick you know so amberjacks in the gulf mexico no problem here 20 30 40 50 pound amberjack you're gonna get i won't touch a one they will beat you down totally ignorant is it it's not a heat thing as far as cooking. You can't cook it. That's what I was curious about. Yeah, I agree with you, Kim, that it can't be development because you go to

teeny tiny little atolls and they say don't eat that fish. There's, in this one part of the Bahamas I'm talking about, it's the backside of Grand Bahama. the furthest i guess last third of the eastern end of the island there i've been coming back fishing before and seeing the guys you know lobstering and said hey i'll trade you some fish you know for lobsters and i show them what i have they're like no way oh is that right yeah like hog fish like six eight pound hog fish and they're like

nope no way because of that reason yeah that whole area over there is a total hot spot but it's weird like we've eaten plenty of fish over there and t and i've dove over there much a lot like the when you get further down towards the tip of abaco i've had no problems with it like we've eaten some big fish there but there's other people like T's dad and Brandon's dad. They're like, Nope, they'll never eat anything from there. Even a hog.

Cause they're afraid of it. Really? Yeah. So when, when all the corrections come flooding in from a know-it-alls out there and I'm looking forward to it, matter of fact, your subject line can just be like,

Oh, I'm a know-it-all. And I'm honestly want to hear it all. Has anyone ever, are there any fda or you who regulates uh whose responsibility it's not usda who regulates wild caught fish like who has who what regulatory agency in the u.s has oversight over wild caught fish noah it depends what are you talking about like meaning fisheries like like to get into usda usda inspection oh gosh so drugs it has to be certified by the fda the fda like certain dyes right all kinds of food additives fda

agricultural products is usda um like i know cultured mushrooms that that thing is like fda man i i don't honestly i think it skips that whole process it might because i kind of think it does i'm just wondering is there ever any has there ever when people are writing in about this is there any has there ever been any articulated prohibition anywhere from selling fish over a certain size the way that you frequently see? Because here's the thing. You see it all the time. Oh, okay. Dirt just pulled up something.

The EPA and the FDA. Collaborate. Work together on that. But that's recreational commercial contaminate that's recreational recreation oh no risks and commercial fishery okay so it'd be them so i used to live right near lake washington and uh they had a health advisory now this wasn't because of sig they had a health advisory. Now, this wasn't because of SIG. They had a health advisory because of heavy metals. Okay.

And they would say, like, not to eat, like, whatever it was, more than one meal, a meal being eight ounces per unit of time of perch over 12 inches. And they later dropped that one. But they'll get into like a high level specificity about about size size correlating to age and when and when not to eat i was wondering if there's ever been any case where in the u.s the u.s has said um we're not going to sell like 100 pound black grouper are not going to come out of the bahamas and find

themselves for sale um in baltimore say because people are going to get sick from cigar so this has happened a lot in florida but it's not in my arrow might correct me on this but guys that are commercial fishing in florida get greedy you know they're getting barracudas or getting groupers or whatever but they know hey we can zip across the bahamas illegally dive for a day or two get a ton of fish groupers snappers hogfish barracudas and bring them back and sell them in florida in the time that i've been alive multiple times i've heard of entire restaurants patrons getting super sick oh because of that and it's first off it's illegal to do because you can't go do that and then they're really putting people in danger knowing that those fish over there have the chance

of doing that sure but it's i've never heard it being a government intervention. And what they did in Florida was they basically shut down the barracuda industry. They said no more barracudas. Oh, really? Because these guys were going and they basically wiped the barracudas pretty clean off all the wrecks on the east coast of Florida. This is like four or five years ago. For the restaurant trade? Yeah.

Because it tastes like grouper like side by side with grouper like i think you know you see those write-ups on what percentage of restaurants served fish or actually what they're saying it is it's pretty low but they were getting tons and tons of barracudas because they're easy to get you don't have to dive deep whatever those numbers started running low in florida so they started going to the bahamas and getting them in the bahamas and i mean they're thick over here and they have a high chance of ceguatera and they started getting a lot of people sick and they traced it back to exactly that people doing it illegally bringing ones from over here back over there yeah you mentioned the the

we've covered this a few times when they go and check what fish actually is mm-hmm I can't remember what it was man overwhelmingly red snappers not red snapper there's no way and it makes sense cuz you got all this like like what we've been getting mutton snappers mangrove snappers this is I mean at some point it just the restaurant or whoever's just like it's they don't know that it's red snapper people have a good feeling about red snapper they equate it with quality and it's just whatever it's red snapper just because i don't want to put mutton snapper i don't want to write dog snapper so i'll write red snapper and they further reduced the quota this year for red snapper in the

gulf mexico which they have an ifq which is a individual fishery quota so say there's a million pounds that are available there's i believe it's like three companies that own like two-thirds of that quota so if you and i hey do we decide we want to go out and be commercial fishermen it's almost impossible to do now because it's so expensive and so difficult to get quota even if we had 10 000 pounds we might get seven eight ten bucks or whatever it is a pound for that snapper but we're only allowed that much and it costs that much for fuel and all that kind of stuff so the amount of red snapper that's available there's no way it could keep up with demand right now yeah you know and those big companies control it meanwhile it's like

you got all these 10 pound mangroves yeah which are being sold as red snapper probably another one that someone mentioned before was how much steelhead turns up in canned salmon because they're so close just catching them on the high seas yeah yeah you know and um and just whatever you can't since you can't they just it's just something different uh tell me about turtles around here that's that's interesting because they were very drawn. A handful of occasions were attracted to us. And they're big. They're real big. Way bigger than a person.

Stacked. We got big turtles. We got a lot of turtles. What's a big loggerhead weigh? Three, four? Easily. They're huge. Those ones we saw were giant.

Their heads were like a Yeti bucket. They were like that turtle was not quite as long as me but like almost like almost as long and like thick like two and a half two feet thick they're big i got a shot of it right next to you steve and you'll be able to see that comparison it was like making dwarf in you and they're they're coming up to check and see if you're not a breeding group yeah they want to be involved in whatever's going on there's not too many we've been on numerous occasions being cam diving for lobsters and how i'm coming up to us i have a video account just hon feeding one like a big one his head has the size of a basketball and canvas whole lobster you're just eating it that's like great you occupy your mark you kill a lobster here you can you can twist the tails of the lobsters.

So you'll look back and there'll be a turtle right there eating every head. And they hear it out. They hear it. They hear it. They hear you. And they start coming over. And they'll come eat. I mean, that one day I think we had that one turtle eat maybe 30 heads.

Just mowing them down. Just mowing them down. Yeah. They love them. A loggerhead eating them. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that one that came up from the bottom at first i was like oh beautiful and like welcoming the interaction and then it

got closer and it's like big and then you look at that like mouth on it and then its eyes look kind of like a monster ghost and then i wasn't into it anymore he looked like it was like one o'clock in the club the lights were about to come on yeah and he's like there's four four girls and one dude left why was he gunning towards me then you look the most helpless that's true he's out of the water you ain't paying attention so uh t it's been it's been you were saying 15 20 no no that was when the shark prohibition in the bahamas but turtles been just as long turtles probably been even longer than that turtles probably at least been 20 years do you remember when you could eat turtles oh yeah oh yeah 100

we loved it it was really good um easter is a really really big holiday in the bahamas easter is our version of thanksgiving for y'all and i can remember fondly as a kid eating lots of turtle and lots of shark how would you guys target the turtles back in those days most of the time you find whichever one you want you're already getting your mind made up how you which one you want because a grand turtle and loghead tastes completely different. Okay. And most of the time, we would get a grand turtle,

you'd chase it down and jump on it and put a knife to it. And then how would you guys prepare them? I like my turtle, I remember as a kid, I like having it as a pepper steak. Oh, wow. Like how you would cook pepper steak. I loved it having it that way. Another way you could do it is like a country as a pepper steak. Like how you would cook pepper steak. I loved it having it that way. Another way you could do it is like a country fried steak.

But pasta shell, there is really a lot of meat in there. In the turtle butt. I hear just rumors of them starting to open up a turtle season here and get into Bahamas. I don't know what true that is or what. I have no interest in killing them or whatever, but. Did you feel that was unsustainable when you were a kid? It was a hundred percent sustainable.

And today it still is. For those that want to get them, it's still sustainable. There's turtles everywhere, all through the Bahamas. So it wasn't like they were, you didn't feel that you guys were running out of turtles back then? No, no, no, not at all. Every little creek or canal you go in right now it's hundreds of turtles areas you go dive in conch and dive in lobster or anywhere there's turtles everywhere

turtles they um after they get so big they really have no natural predators once they get so big because you get a big turtle come up on a shark he could really bully that shark if he wants to the shark doesn't want to get hurt the shark just wants an easy meal i mean i've seen turtle crush conch shells like really thick conch shell grab it crush it eat the conch on the inside keep moving you know what the shark don't want to get on the other side of the beak they really don't you know we had a guy uh he's been on the podcast a couple times i think it was danny bolton that was observing this maybe you remember this um he's talking about the idea of like that sharks are reckless and he's like man they can't afford to get hurt no they can't it's like if he gets hurt he's dead yeah his parties are you know

like any little thing happens to him right they they can't just run around being stupid no you think about how many we saw this week they were perfectly clean you think about how hard their lives are and the crap that they go through when they're most of them are so beautiful they don't have a mark on them yeah it's the ones that i see with big bite mark on them are like that guy must be a dick we need to stay away from him yeah you know like those are the ones that are must be a dick we know we need to stay away from him yeah you know like those are the ones that are like or a real skinny one if you see a skinny one it's trouble the worst yeah yeah yeah I guess yeah the point on that being that you think well how would a turtle run him off was like why does he want why

would he risk it yeah a turtle getting a chunk taken out him by if you see a big turtle and you get a shark carb on, he'll never turn away from him. He always faces him, you know? So he's ready to bite. He's ready to snap back. You know what I mean? A turtle, I think they got well over 1,000 pounds of pressure in their beak.

You know what I mean? You see them crush a conch shell, I wouldn't take a chance at all. They can crush a conch shell? They sure look like it. I got a really close look at that turtle's face and I'm just saying like it's beak looked intense. You're thinking of the conchs that we're

like keeping to eat. We're talking more of the undeveloped ones that are still thin. Yeah, like junior conchs, little juvenile ones. Lasted three years. When I was a kid, this is back in the Cayman Islands when you were still able to catch turtles. They'd set nets. So say there's catch turtles um we they'd set nets so say there's

10 people on the island would set nets for turtles and basically there's a net that looks like a flag on the surface so you'd have a buoy a weight on the bottom line going up and there'd be a flag kind of a net on the surface and they'd have a fake turtle on the surface like a piece of wood round piece of wood with two flippers so it looked like a turtle and just like that turtle did to us today turtles come up there and look at it and get tangled up in it and because of the way the net was near the surface they could stay there for a day or two and still be able to go up and get get air so the running deal was if you found a turtle in somebody else's net you took it and we i can't remember if we talked about this no definitely not so i might have been seven or eight or at the time so there was a big turtle in that we got it out and we were running back to our island and on the way back we had an open boat

that turtle was was in the uh on the deck of the boat and my uncle was running the boat and that turtle just inched his way up and bit him like this on the back of the ankle and you have never heard a louder noise of course the whole way really yeah it chomped him i've never heard anyone yell like that in my life because totally unexpected. He probably yelled like me when you spooked me today, and I thought you were a shark. Yeah, you did. Yeah, you did. God, it scared the piss out of me.

But yeah, they'll bite you. Oh, yeah. Especially when he knows he's screwed, he'll bite you. Oh. I would hate to get bit by that. In Bahamian culture, where did the whole like i get the eastern meal right um and then you know where i grew up like a common eastern meal would be that you'd have a honey baked ham right why sharks and turtles do you have any idea i think it's just

easier to come by that's that's that's just what I think. We eat turtle probably once a year, twice a year. But shark, I mean, shark was a common occurrence. We ate shark a lot, a lot of shark. Black tip, reef, almost any shark we got. Makos, every once in a while the old guys will go deep drop and they'll come across a thresher. Shark's delicious. If you treat it right, just like any other wild game, as you know mean you treat it right you bleed it immediately clean it immediately and it's really

good it is really good i think one of the biggest things here in the bahamas that we do that is not sustainable is conch i think 10 years ago maybe 15 years ago we should have shut down or at least put a season on conch in the bahamas because we explore quite a bit of conch quite a bit and i just don't think it's sustainable in your lifetime you've seen a degradation of the resource big time big time and it is not it's not due to nature it's not due to any other thing but overfishing you know and conch is such a smart social creature if you were to take an area the size of like a let's say an acre and you dive it's got a thousand calendar you dive ten you break

up the shells you drop it right back in the middle of this conch within two or three days every conch and area is gone every conch and area is gone because of that hazard yeah nobody wants to live in a graveyard. That's a fact. We didn't cover it, but a guy wrote in about the giant bucks that live in his graveyard by his house. But that's different because that's deer and people.

With the conch fishery, the reason I could just, I've thought about that often when I'm in areas that have conch is it's just they're highly visible and you just pick them up and i was like unless they're unless they're also out there in 300 feet of water like i and they're not no i just started saying like how it couldn't be you just pick them all up then that's what they're doing doing. It's hard to really think about...

All right, so if you got a lot of it being exported, and conch is a real big delicacy in the Bahamas, so you have a lot of locals and all eating it. So the amount of conch that we export and we provide to restaurants and just local street vendors and stuff, it's just not sustainable it is not at all i've seen conk populations go way down really quick really really quick but um hopefully we'll get it together you know and figure out you know we need to do something about it for our future but it's sad it really is um now so a group was the same way i want to say probably 10 15 years ago it's like the exact same way and then all of a sudden the government said you know

what we gotta do something about it they made a season on it and now nasa group are everywhere within three years four years we saw a huge difference in it made a huge difference which was great i know so there's no season on conk whatsoever now they're talking about it and i saw um department of natural resources which is our game warden system here they said they're going to start um june 1st of 2023 to put like a six month season on it or nine month season on it which i think is great it'll help a lot conch mostly spawn in cooler temperatures i think they should do it mostly in the winter months but um doing it in june is fine too because you have so many people in june

that'll that'll give them a reason not to go and get them and not to mess with them you know which is great i think i think it's long overd overdue. So you were saying that's one commercial activity you don't participate in. I do not participate in conker harvesting. I don't. Just like to me, I mean, ethically to me, it's not right. You know, so I'll see conker there. I'll take my boy.

We'll go and get two or three for dinner. We never take enough to freeze and carry back home at all. We just get what we can right there and then. We grab a for dinner and that's it we leave the rest you know i think that the kunk the kunk export or lack thereof is a good show of national pride too that if you want kunk you should come to the bahamas participate in the tourism and yes the local economy rather than i mean god knows what it goes for a pound and gets exported it's nothing yeah so and it doesn't so it doesn't do much for here but the attraction of people being able to come here of like this is

the place you get it i think that's way more valuable yeah i agree with you i agree i think that's a very good a thousand percent i was talking to another friend of mine from U of M and he was like, Hey, how about Kong farming now? Now it can be done, but Kong doesn't grow really fast, you know? And I feel as if,

if someone was to come in and do Kong farming every year, when they do their harvest, they should release a certain percentage back into the wild. Sure. You know, just try to help it to, for me and sustainable, but the way we're, the way but the way we're the way i'll

the way we're doing it now it's not right um i want to move to another fish species and i'm going to start out by asking kimmy this question uh and then we'll get to something you were telling me t is uh but in florida bonefisher can't can't touch them right it's like like the trifecta of flats fish bonefish permit tarpon you can't harvest those fish isn't it no kill in florida or just frowned upon you said you said bonefish permit tarpon yeah permit you can you can fish for you can fish for permit. It pisses people off like nothing else. The reason I bring this up, we saw a permit.

Mm-hmm. And I had no idea that the permit went into a hole. This is a big argument. I would love to come back on the podcast with one of these diehard permit fishermen. I have fantastic friends that are permit guys, and I love them to death. Permit do not belong in the flats. They occasionally, the flats, they're reef fish.

I see thousands and thousands and thousands of them on the reef in holes. I'll send you a video to add to this of three permit in a hole. I get what you're saying. It'd be like, if you were looking for people, you could find them in movie theaters. That's right. A lot of people never go into a movie theater.

And you've seen the videos of like swordfish on the flats or the reason for a tuna tower. Everybody's heard the term tuna tower. Talking about sport fish. You mean on a boat? Yeah. A lookout tower on a boat. Those were developed for Cat K and Bimini so the guys could be up super high to see bluefin tunas that are done spawning in the Gulf

or breeding or whatever the hell they're doing in the Gulf of Mexico coming across a Gulf Stream and occasionally coming over the bank in 20, 30 feet of water. Yeah. In shallow water. And they would see them back in Hemingway days

they developed these big towers so they could present baits to them in 10-30 foot of water but is that where bluefin live? no not up on the flats a Bahamian guy killed one the other day chased it down and shot it with a Hawaiian sling

are you serious? from the boat it was like 800 or something crazy it was huge yeah as it was moving like you're saying but bluefin tunes aren't flats fish permit look awesome up on the flats i love it but they're not always there i don't think they're always there i mean it might be two subspecies, but I don't know. I didn't see this fish, but Kimmy saw it. It was cool looking. It was a big one, too.

And you guys know, like, one thing I'll hand to you guys, like, your ability to know what the hell fish you're looking at in 60 feet of water. I was thinking that, too. Steve and I are lost. I'm always like, half the time I put my head up, Justin knows I'm going to go like, what was that? And a lot of times, Justin's like don't recognize that one he's he's far from home but yeah it's like oh that's like a roughly grouper-esque looking

i don't know where's cam i don't know but uh but the permit the fact that a permit went into a hole yeah so anyways that got we were talking about you know fella could go down there and get him and we opted not to get him and i pointed out and it wasn't it was it was a large a big part a big factor i mean i wanted to go down and get him is how riled up people get and sometimes i'd like to like poke the hornet's nest on a largemouth bass. I'd be almost more inclined to eat it just because of how largemouth bass guys get so bent out of shape. But I was like, it just gets people so riled up. The way I express this, what?

I just, I would have eaten it. You wouldn't have cared. And when Justin, I caught a large mouth bass in Minnesota. And you ate it for my parents and they loved it. And I ate it. Sure. And in Hawaii, we eat bonefish. That's what I'm trying to slowly get to.

And I just, you know, don't see the issue. Yeah. I don't either, but you have to trust me when i tell you it's an issue it's an issue for some people it's an issue and you ask why i'm like behind the scenes because i'm like the guy like shoot that permit let's eat it because i don't want to deal with that so the permit thing it's an issue and we passed on a permit. And I was going to bring up what you just brought up. Is that as much so, I remember the first time I went fishing bonefish, after a while of fishing bonefish, we ate a bonefish.

And it felt like you'd be like naughty to eat a bonefish. But then you learn that in Hawaii, if Hawaiians are going to name stuff to eat, like bonefish is way high on the list. And not only that, unaware that it's naughty to eat them. No, no, nobody will judge you in Hawaii for eating o'io. Like nobody thinks of it really. I mean, we know that people love to go fly fishing for them elsewhere and that they put up a good fight. But it's not like it's not the most popular thing to do in Hawaii.

But as far as eating them, like that's definitely something celebrated. It's a very special dish called lomi o i o, where you basically roll out all the meat so that you don't get any bones. And it's like this soft,hy meat which i know to most people doesn't sound appetizing but if you think of like no if you said to someone you want some mushy fish okay most people are gonna be like no i'll pass but if you think about like think about

like spicy tuna when it's not like in chunks but when it's like really kind of minced and made into spicy tuna and then put over rice and sushi and rolled up, wouldn't you call that a mushy meat? Yeah. Wouldn't you call that delicious? Yep. Okay. So lo mi o iu is a mushy meat that is very delicious. It is not spicy tuna.

It is, we just use Hawaiian salt, some limu, which is seaweed. And it's just something where you take two fingers and you just have your own serving bowl of your lomi o'il and you scoop it up with those two fingers. Oh, sounds good. Pop it in your mouth. Oh, really? Oh, my God. I'm craving it. It was simple.

Justin has eaten it. Do you love it or do you love it? There's like no other option. It's delicious. Do you guys spear gun them? I've shot, they're not the easiest to shoot. Like they're not something

you have to worry. I mean, I think the only thing you'd have to worry about is like if you were to like surround net a school that wouldn't be, you know,

if everyone did that, that wouldn't be sustainable. But as far as like fishing for them or shooting them, it's kind of rare to get one. Have you speared one yeah i have i would love to add that to my list of stuff i have and i was so happy oh people go

nuts they're really soft so it's hard to like really get them right no i mean they're a great fight but no way actually really firm yeah no if you if you shoot them you're gonna get them do you clean them the same way you clean like an ava like you pound them out and then you cut a slit at the back and like roll it out that's definitely a popular way to do it and everyone has their own explain that that's really unique i mean people have their own ways but some people will like throw it in a freezer overnight um just so that all the you know rigor mortis and coagulated proteins will relax. And then the next day, you'll take it out and you'll cut a slit in the tail.

And then you get a rolling pin. And then right behind the head is where you start. And you just put this pressure on it. And you just roll it out. And all the meat just comes on out. What? Yeah. Come on on we made a meet YouTube video similar to that right no no no one you're taking a fish you

freeze it and then thaw it so it's kind of soft yeah and you squeeze it out the tail make a slit and then you like roll you put all this pressure you roll it out and base of the tail look you're kind of no yeah where we'd usually be the back of this fillet and you just get all this this basically like ground meat out you know and it is man i would love to see that and everyone has their own way like not everyone likes that style and some people prefer to do it other ways and again um it's not like i'm an expert on it because i've i've only, you know, but I've eaten it. I've eaten it a lot. And it's something that's like served as a really special dish at Luau's and whatnot.

And I mean, these days I hear that like I went to I went to Foodland. I went to a grocery store and they actually were serving it at the poke counter because I guess now they're even importing them from the Philippines or something because it's such a desired dish in Hawaii. Oh, really?

Yeah. T, talk about how your dad and his buddies fish them. This cracks me up. Man, they hotline them. They do it at night and they hotline them. Use little hermit crabs

and they do really well. If it's a small one, they'll let it go. If it's really big, they'll let that one go too but the size they want is basically like 14 inches 16 inches somewhere there that's a perfect size for them and what they do is they they'll skill it gut it well first talk about how they catch it so you just use a hotline hotline with a hook and a hermit crab you crush the hermit crab out of the shell stick it on and they mostly do it at night um boom fish day and they're on the flats they're on the flats they're on the flats

they go to the flats in the night but aren't you fishing in a little bit deeper water at night no they come they come right along the shoreline come they come right along the shoreline oh okay they come right along the shoreline feeding on crabs or whatever else at night and at night they're not picky in the daytime if they use like really light fluorocarbon and stuff nighttime they don't care they just feed that's it and you have a couple hermit crabs you you'll do pretty well you know and they go then the way they do it they don't nab them at all so it's really sustainable as well they use a little little pin hook and a little hotline take a couple flashlights and some off for the bugs and they need some of that they need some of that native soap yeah there's your plug for native

soap again yeah there you go they go and they get them but the way how they do it here is they just they uh they gill and gut it and then they butterfly it all the way on they do it here is they just, they gill and gut it, and then they butterfly it all the way on down in the skin, and they lay it wide open as a butterfly, and they put it in the oven, and they'll saute onions, peppers, tomatoes, whatever salt and pepper they want, and they put it on it, put it in the oven. When it's already fully cooked, they pull it out, and then they take the bog bone from the tail end, and they pull straight up, and all the bog bone backbone comes out but it takes the ribs with it no a lot

of ribs stay behind but it i i don't like bone fish because it is too much work no a guy of my physique i gotta eat bro i don't wanna you can't be picking i can't be picking it but they love it but the flavors you need a gruber filet yeah you know what's up you know what's up yeah it's too much work to eat but it takes you like an hour to eat a meal oh no you're making me think of how many fish we got a pile of fish we got to clean man that's all right dude i love it it's getting nice and stiff Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

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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 on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all i want to talk about the fish we got i have you guys run through the fish we got, but I got one more question.

We saw sharks, but had no, you'd say that like, no, we didn't see anything, anything that you never said, get back in the boat, nothing like that. Just their kind of their behavior. And we were really efficient with not leaving stuff on the bottom. Like we got stuff out. Honestly, the worst setup we had was fish that we had never shot which was a big black that went in a hole big black grouper and while we were looking for that thing that big mutton came in and you shot that mutton

and as you shot it everybody was kind of looking at you and i spun kimmy around because there was two big reef sharks there and they were a little bit interested but they're afraid of the bigger groups like there's like six of us in the water if it'd been just one of us they would have been all over you yeah with that fish so knock on wood that's like that's like bears in a way like there's a point at which enough people there's just never a bear issue yeah that's how that's how it was most times most yeah normally i don't think he knew i don't think he knew we were all there that's true i don't think he knew we were there i think he thought it was just one or two yeah yeah i think he was more surprised than we were yeah but it was pretty chill this week with with sharks and i i

attribute it to how many people we had in the water got it because we chummed a lot like you said like the chumming is so much fun let's do it man i made it rain today and the sharks never showed that well that nurse shark that came kind of came and then really came up do they have those ever trouble in a weird way it's like i don't know how would you describe them like the nurse shark it's like it's like a goofy dude that just kind of ambles into the bar it's not really dangerous but he will bite you you know like if if you if you're if you ignore him enough to be like hey this guy's not gonna hurt you they'll bite you yeah he will like you hey, this guy's not going to hurt you, they'll bite you. Yeah, he will. And they don't let go. If they bite you, they like suck in, and they've got you basically in a vice.

And they won't let go. And that was a big one. Like that was a 150-pound animal. Oh, yeah. That would have not been fun. Now, Perrin, another guy we're with, you just described nurse sharks as like big goofy how are they are you gonna say the parents good goofy guy no no parent told me tiger sharks are like stoners

until they're not so today we all saw that same video today with the shark, the tiger shark attacking the kayak. Yeah. Holy cow. What he thought, he thought that was a basking. Turtle. Oh, he thought that kayak was a turtle. Yep. Because most of the time that I've seen really.

But yeah, that makes sense. It's just like, oh, a big ass turtle on the surface. Let's hit it before he gets a chance to turn. Yes. And the majority of really big tigers that i've seen have been right here beside me already like i hadn't seen him coming because they've come from behind you and they've determined that's not a turtle it's not something i'm gonna bite and he's like arms reach away and it's terrifying and they're just like this he went to make his arms

go around in a circle but but they didn't reach. But yeah, I think we talked about it yesterday or whatever. Like tiger sharks in the Bahamas, I'm honestly not overly afraid of because they are so cautious. It's not like Hawaii tiger sharks. Hawaii tiger sharks, they bite people. They're like, they mean business. Here, not as many spear fishermen get bit by tigers as reef sharks. Reef sharks are the big problem here.

Bulls, lemons, the ones that are in that kind of 30 to 10 foot of water is the most dangerous area. And it's mostly those reef sharks. And they hear someone shoot a fish, they just come rushing in and smash. That shallow water, like Cam just said said the shallow water is the worst if you see reef sharks out in the deep man you know you create you could create distance in deeper water but that shallow water stuff man when they're fired up they are fired up like they come in hot and uh it's a good chance i mean if you if you don't keep your head on the swivel or you don't have a good buddy that has

his head on the swivel someone's gonna get't have a good buddy that has his head on the swivel, someone's going to get bit. You know? And seeing it with, I mean, I totally agree with the nurse sharks. They're big, goofy animals. The only time I had one close encounter with one, I had just shot a trigger fish, and before I put it in the boat, I wanted to like bleed it and then, you know, gut and gill it. And my buddy, wow, he yells at me, hey shark! I turn around and look, and he was under my arm

coming into grab he's like i was like big dumb it just elbowed it like yeah he's like a drone kid at the bar just staggering in the way dude what are you thinking yeah you know i mean i didn't want to kill it didn't want to hurt it but at the same time i wanted my trigger fish you guys mentioned something to me um i'm curious if you could speak to it for for a moment that the popularity of shark viewing has led to like conflict between spear fishers because of the practice of of chumming up sharks for shark viewing and educating sharks about like what humans mean you know is this is this a thing yeah and i love that you know exactly how to push my buttons yeah tell us cam such a this is such a challenging discussion and by openly discussing this in years past i've had death threats by by shark by shark hookers to the point where i had to get lawyers involved oh to like help track down these people

to make sure they left us alone oh really and it ends up being some 22 year old girls that you know are out of college looking for something to do and they start some random bullshit lie about us doing stuff and it's it's crazy the power of the internet and the i don't even want to call those animal rights activists it's it's so contradictory to what i feel they think their purpose is, which is research. Everybody claims, hey, we're researching these sharks. But it's shark feeding operations for tourists. And I agree with getting everybody in the water and allowing them interactions with animals.

But this shark industry has totally upended the whole ecosystem in that they've trained these sharks to where when a boat pulls up, you take the boat out of gear. And a lot of these places, sharks are at the boat, which is very, very rare. They should not be doing that because they're feeding them. They're going out there and feeding them every day. And they might not be feeding them when the tourists are there, but you're damn right, they're feeding them in the morning so that they know when that boat comes back they need to be there and it gives people a chance to be in the water with these sharks or whatever but they've totally shut the fishing industry down for sharks yeah which sharks are beautiful animals we all love them like they're they're such cool animals but i don't think that groupers are unbeautiful and uncool exactly sharks

and people fish for groupers it's just i think the deer are really beautiful and really cool and people hunt deer and social media has totally changed the the lives of sharks in the last 10 years you know just because they're one of the big winners yeah they really are because popular teenage girls took a hit but sharks are doing sharks are doing great and people like i and personally i'll say this as well like i've i've had to kind of keep my mouth shut about it because it is such a strong majority of people that don't have any experience with sharks that are making up all this bullshit about you know i don't even know how to say it to you like it's so this is how i feel i feel if you are if you are a shark diving operation putting people in cages and this and that and everything i feel like all you're doing is extorting that animal for money. That's just my personal opinion.

And a lot of them get pissed off when they say it, but it is what it is. What me and Cam do, we are hunters. And the way how we hunt in the water is so sustainable. We don't train sharks. Even if a shark, even if Cam was to shoot a fish, he's coming with a shark, comes like Cam. I'm on his back.'m watching his six and cam will never take that fish off and just drop it you know because that's another way that you could

train a shark hey look i'm scared to use them we just drop this fish we don't do that we don't we don't but anytime you go down and we had a we had a running with a girl right she was already pissed off at us because we were there fish spearfishing right not even in the area but then yeah she still had the guts to come to us and ask us for our carcasses that's true and that's true every every time because she wanted to lure sharks yeah yeah the photos and stuff yeah after she already even she even went as far to call the police for us over a fish that we had and it was legal it was a legal harvest the cop came on over we gave him a bunch of fish he hung up with us swap on us what we swap numbers with me he's like hey when you come back tomorrow you

get more fish let me know you know and this girl she had the heart to come to us and access for carcasses so she could go feed sharks tomorrow. Yeah, it's crazy. All you're doing is extorting these animals for money. You know, the thing that I brought up this point. You're a horrible individual. I brought up the point where you have, it would be such bad form to bait grizzlies. I was just thinking. In order to have grizzly viewing.

That's our exact argument. And that's what we keep saying. You would be in gators. Coyotes. Everyone would be pissed about that. Lions. There's a reason you can't do it. Yeah.

Everyone. Except sharks. Like grizzly protectionists, hunters, homeowners, fishing game. No one would support you pulling up to grizzlies and throwing them stuff to eat so the tourists could take pictures of them. And I guarantee, and I hope to God this happens sooner than later in 10 years worldwide it's going to be illegal to feed sharks for tourism and people are going to be that look back that's a big chunk worldwide is a big chunk true what were we thinking yeah you know because it is it's grizzlies and

tigers lions like people are going to get bit yeah and it's changing the attitude of these animals and hey like all right we're where we are right now two miles down south of us a girl at a sandbar with 50 other people around got bit by a shark and took like a 15 pound chunk out of her leg i heard 14 sorry i was close i tend to exaggerate hold the drink hold the drink and way steep water. Never dropped her drink. Rumor has it she never dropped her drink. The proximity of all the local communities,

like where these people feed sharks, it's mind-blowing. Some of these people feed these sharks so close to local communities, it's crazy. We have one place named Tiger Beach, and Tiger Beach is a good stretch away from some of the local communities, but everywhere else, people don't care. They don't care. We have one place named Tiger Beach and Tiger Beach is a good stretch away from, you know, some of the local communities, but everywhere else, people don't care.

They don't care. And you have tour groups doing it. You have local charter companies that do it. Hey, you want to go see a shark? Let's go see a shark. And they feed them, which is crazy. Even the marinas. And another, like another argument from sustainable fishery side is when people think of people killing sharks, they think of finning.

Finning is not the only thing that happens with a shark. You think about how big that animal is and how many different uses there are for that animal. Like there's so much meat in a shark. The return on it is huge. Like what you actually yield. Teeth, fins, meat. in a shark the return on it is huge like what you actually yield teeth fins meat so much more that gets used than almost any other fish liver you know i agree people associate it with you know these malaysian fishing boats are um you know only 30 feet long and they only have so much space when they're gone for two months the only thing they're going to keep is going to be fins yeah i remember years ago um i remember when they did what was called

the finning ban in u.s waters and it wasn't that they banned finning they banned the percentage of your hold what percentage of the shark parts in your hold could be fins? Meaning, I don't know what it was, 13% or something like that. Meaning you couldn't go out and just fill your hold full of fins. If you were going to harvest sharks, you had to harvest. And I 110% agree with that. Sharks in their entirety. But what if we said, well, you can't serve beef tongue anymore. They're not just going to get in the tongues yeah you know

out of the beef it's the same like okay let's use the fins instead of wasting now like wouldn't it be better to utilize the entire animal yeah so you know 100 pound shark you're probably going to get somebody can tell me better than this but 60 of that is going to be meat that's a lot of meat i feel that people uh are in our well-intentioned way we sometimes overdo it on making big moves and management like if you go into the 1970s with the wild horse and burrow protection act no one could picture in the 1970s the situation we'd be in now where there are literally millions of wild mustangs there are millions of wild horses kept on that have been shipped to farms in kansas

because there's a prohibition on killing them or selling them for slaughter there's too many for their habitat and so they have to take them and truck them hire ranchers to stop running cattle and take care of wild horses and burrows at i don't know what the hell it is a few thousand bucks a piece per year because there's no outlet for them and at the time they were like okay no for the rest of eternity you can't do this this or this or this or this to a feral horse. And then you've got to live with that.

And some of the sharking stuff is probably going to prove to be the same thing. We were hell on sharks in the worst possible way. But then you create a problem for yourself in the future by having it be that you've closed the door on any kind of anything, like any kind of harvest like any kind of harvest any kind of sustainable use you know and to be honest the the way of taking fish has changed as well so long line is the only thing that ever kept sharks in check like the way they reproduce the numbers that are there now we probably can't catch up unless they allowed long line again and there's only a handful of boats on the east coast of the us that are allowed to long line for

them and they do well like when they're ready to do it they'll go put out their long line they'll catch their sharks it's very efficient and the area that there can even bring them in is limited now because they were bringing them in in south florida but the animal rights people were so strong there and like the the shark dive companies were like just blowing them up on social media and harassing the out of them which is illegal you know um such that the fishmongers stopped coming and they wouldn't come anymore so basically shut down that the sharking in south florida so if those guys want to do it they got to do it pretty secretly and away from them because and they wouldn't come anymore. So it basically shut down the sharking in South Florida. So if those guys want to do it,

they got to do it pretty secretly and away from them because they were harassing them so much, death threats to the people's families. Like it was crazy. It was really sad. Okay, what all kind of fish did we get? Speaking of fish. You got a mackerel today. A cereal mackerel. Cereal mackerel. That was very cool. We got a mackerel today. A cereal mackerel.

A cereal mackerel. That was very cool. We got some hogfish. We got some yellow jacks. We got some mutton snappers. We got groupers. Three kinds. Black,

Nassau, yellowfin. We got... Nope. I caught a strawberry group around a fish pole. You also... Yeah. I caught a strawberry grouper on a fish pole. You also... Yeah.

We also caught some mahi on fishing poles. We got some yellowtail snapper on fishing poles. And what am I missing from the dive? Yelloweye snapper. Yelloweye snapper. A couple of those. A couple of another deep drop snapper. Button, which are blackfin snappers.

Button snappers. A few of those. And one other silky. White something. Silky sna Button, which are black fin snappers. Button snappers. A few of those. And one other silky. White something. Silky snapper, which is also called a squirrel sometimes. A black margate. You guys are at 14. White margate.

Yeah. Different. Margate. Margate. What they call Margaret fish here. The name is called a Margaret fish. Yep. And the one is regarded, well regarded as food and one's not really

sought after the black we don't touch speaking of which kimmy when you shot that i know it was mistaken identity we never did weigh it i think we cleaned it that was a world record i'm gonna eat it doesn't matter oh and there was another fish we ran into now we just fit so we just fish Now, we just fished for four days. Everywhere from trolling, deep dropping. Spinners. Little bits of cut bait. Yeah.

Jigging. And then a variety of spearing styles and a bunch of people. And some of these things we got like one or two of but you got that that uh fish that you think looks like the one you like with the molars in it oh yeah the oh yeah yeah yeah 15 oh yeah 15 yeah which is a um is that a grass porgy or for you that was a monster yeah yeah we got an albumamco. Alamco Jack. Then I got that big turtle and I got that great white shark. No, we didn't.

We only kept the fence up. And I got a four foot dorsal off a great white. Then Connor caught a big barracuda off the dock. You guys are going to say that. That's right. Right when me and Sam

caught a barracuda off the dock. And then a, no, you said yellow jack. Yeah. Yeah. Y'all going strong. when I wouldn't mean Sam called a barracuda off the dock and then a no you said yellow jack yeah yeah y'all going strong no it adds up yeah but efficient but predominantly we targeted snappers and snappers and groupers predominantly no hoggies that's why Kimmy became hog dog. Oh, man. She was grouper hog too there for a while. Grouper hog, hog dog, and dream, dream. Kimmy gets dialed in. Thanks, T.

You could see it on the surface. You see it on the surface like, oh, boy, here we go. Fish coming up. It's coming up. I was extremely selective. So if the person that stole my fish is listening. Oh, my gosh. We didn't catch nothing stole my fish is listening. Oh my gosh. We didn't catch nothing.

The fish heist. We didn't catch nothing. All right, guys. Anything you want to add? Any final thoughts? I wanted to ask you, because I've dove with you in a few different spots, like this type of diving compared to Hawaii diving or Louisiana.

How do you rate this type of diving with cam and how he kind of targets his species and kind of having kimmy over yeah you've already experienced so many different environments of spearfishing and styles of spearfishing so yeah this has been the so let me back up a second on this question because um mostly like trapping like i learned we just learned self-taught never you know i mean um hunting there was there wasn't any kind of hunting media just you just knew what the guys around you knew right and fishing you just kind of figured out things as you went. But with spearfishing, I've just been fortunate where I've been able to go to just the period of my life and being later in life and more access to resources and just meeting so many people traveling around.

I've been able to go to with like the the best people in the world to like some of the coolest spots so it's just been a different journey um and of the of of those things you're bringing up hawaii going there um i would say there, the strangest experience I had there was when we went way off the shelf. How deep was it? 1,500 feet. No, it was way more than that. It was like 5,000 or 6,000 feet.

Oh, that's right. It was over a mile. No, we were out at 1.6, yeah, I think it was 5,000 or 6,000 feet of water. That is just a surreal feeling to be there with the pelagic fish swimming around. It's just surreal. There's a three-dimensionality to it.

Right. That you're so many miles from shore, and it's miles deep, and it just… There's life still. Yeah. That was strange. and it just there's life still yeah that was that was um strange the the the oil rigs which i've dove a couple times in the gulf i've done i've dove a lot of other stuff like every year we go to baja and just fish off the shore off the rocks you know but uh the rigs um what's interesting to me about that the uh like this this this very vibrant man-made ecosystem um the amount of life that

is generated by those oil rigs thriving and the the the the sort of juxtaposition of ideas of this sort of like central theme right if there's a disney movie and there's a bad corporation what are they involved in right but then you go to those rigs and it's like dripping with life so that's really interesting to do and the other thing that's so different there is to be on the surface and you can't see your hand in front of you can't see the end of your spear gun you can't see your hand in front of your you can't see the end of your spear gun you can't see your hand in front of your face and you got to go down 15 feet to see what's going on and then it opens up is is bizarre then you shoot a fish and you go back into and you go back into the murk yes and it's like that is such a weird thing to lay there and not know what's down below you and then you dive down because all that stuff from the mississippi river coming out and that that dirty fresh water floats on top of the clean

water that's bizarre here um just it's like stunning water clarity i mean hawaii's got great water clarity but here the thing that's most on you that's most striking to me if you look at those those other each of these distinct areas and having the thing that's most striking here what's most unusual is that you can be cruising along in 40 feet of water and you'll pick up a grouper and he's like he knows you're there he does right that when they're doing that oh yeah but he's not in a terrible hurry but he he's gonna go and he probably knows where he's going and there's these cracks in the seafloor little sandy runs and canyons and you can just follow him follow him follow him follow him, follow him, follow him, follow him, follow him, and eventually he goes into a hole.

And he might not like that hole, and you go down and he's going to spook, but eventually he's going to go into like, like I was equating it to when they lost Bin Laden in Tora Bora in Afghanistan, that cave complex. Eventually they're going to go into like a cave complex. That's fun trying to go and root out the the feasibility of like finding him you know and that's one area where cameron you excel is like taking that flashlight down there yeah he like disappears in the one hole comes out disappears in the hole shines here shines there shines here and then you can tell by his body language or he founds it because that's way up

he gives you the thumbs up and i leave the light down there he leaves a light looking into the right hole you know yeah it's so funny like that i can't think of an equivalent anywhere yeah i think what i like the most about this about diving here is i've never been so assertive and that's what i like about it i think in hawaii like feels like all the fish there have these like phds to stay away from humans and so you really have to just lay down and it's just sometimes it just feels like it's all about how long you can hold your breath i agree you know and how still you can stay and it's a totally different thing of just like trying to stay so still and hold your breath and wait for that fish that is going away to like turn around and get curious enough to come back and then very, very slowly lift your hand up

and try not to spook it and take a shot. And that's like super cool ninja stuff. But to unleash the part of you that's just sending it from the surface and like dive bombing down after a fish is not just refreshing for me, but I also don't want it to be mistaken as oh it's so easy here because it's not and you still absolutely have to be

smooth you absolutely have to be patient because if not you're gonna blow that shot and and you have a pole spear. That's a major detail. I would say that 75% of our failed shots were because we rushed it and we took it when we were too far away. Because too far away can just be three inches too far away. Because with a pole spear, you really got to get close. And so it's a whole different challenge where I like bringing out the side of myself of just like going, because I don't get to do that a lot. But at the same time, you still have to apply,

go like a ninja, you know, and then still be patient. But the whole thing is action and energy. And it's energy because you're holding the pole spear. So your muscles are all working and all of it it's it's invigorating it's and the fish are big there's so much the challenge here too is there's so many different species and I mean every time you guys surface we talk about what happened and

there's times when you need to speed up there's times we need to slow down with the same fish more that you need to have laid down or gone faster and it's that's what makes it so cool is there's no one way to do it it's very situational so you have to draw from everything that's happened in the five days before to this moment to make it happen to be like okay this one that's gonna going to do this, I think. Yeah. I need to be there then. Yeah. The fish that eludes me is the, and I never even had one like in range really, is a kubera. Oh, yeah. They're tough.

I'd like to get a kubera someday, man. Different than the kubichopera. The kubichopera? That's a different fish. That was one of my favorite moments was when I watched that kubera scare off that shark. That was awesome. I was like, wow I watched that cubera scare off that shark. That was awesome. I was like, wow, never seen that.

I've never hunted something that's scaring off the sharks that are coming in. That was really cool. Yeah, that's good. They're aggressive. What was your favorite fish of the trip? That was my question for you too. Oh, I know what.

Just because I had the big mutton snapper I thought was pretty impressive today today just yeah just the ones we've gotten today we hit the ground running because yeah i hadn't seen that when i was i hadn't seen that when i was with you guys before not that i mean i like i love it all man but it was cool to get those big like really nice big mutton snapper what was what was your top moment you think you getting that fish out of that hole that i shot so you didn't have to do it the money on pools for us pretty cool yeah i dude i'd still be out there trying to get that fish out of there because i'd take an hour between dives you know to try to go down there

and sort that whole situation out and so different than hunting so like hunting if say you you wound a deer or whatever and then i shoot it and finish it it's kind of a letdown here it's everybody has got to work together because you got to get it done so it's it's a group effort it's so different than any other sport because it is such a team effort and i i'm appalled by the people that think this is an individual sport. It's such a group sport. That's what makes it so fun. That's why this week was so much fun.

Because it's really just a bunch of buddies hanging out, getting food, and having an awesome time doing it. One of the most – it worked out in the end, but a real sinking feeling is when I went down and shot a grouper and ran out of air and couldn't get him out and as i'm coming up i'm watching my spear the entire spear shank vanishes into the hole yesterday i was like that ain't good but he wound up coming out like a different route you know and like dragged the spear shack back out with him you know and then you went back down he's

like nope and he went right back in so we didn't i don't think we had any really good way no i i'm really proud of us for that like every fish that we ended up shooting in a hole even if it ripped off or even if it holed up immediately um somehow just like the teamwork we recovered every single fish and i love how everybody focused on that like no one was just like all right see you later you know like every single person was like hey we're all staying here until and so many comes out so many times when we were doing it too because it creates such a commotion stuff came from so far away oh sure a lot of stuff coming in and we had more shooters so they just got added to the yeti on that one i was expecting you just to start coming up one filet at a time but eventually he got that thing out there that was wild here's half a filet i'll go back down that was a process so that fish went you shot it in one hole and it went up into a

crack there was i mean it felt solid i put my feet on the reef oh yeah like it was like it was in a concrete anchor you're never coming out and i'd pretty much given up on it and i went and looked on the other side because i saw a little stirrup and i went in there i was like okay there he is so i went down i was like you know told you just cut it off and when i went down he was right there so it's like i'll just kill it and let steve do the next part so as i was killing it under my right elbow i felt what i thought was a shark's nose coming and it was you coming to grab it and it scared the piss out of me i was like i'm about to get eaten and nobody said anything i'll send you that shot because i was right there oh i heard it too but i thought he was trying to

tell me something that's what i thought no i didn't even know you didn't know i was i was with you but yeah no it was a great trip, man. Thanks, guys. It was. Thanks, Kim. Yeah, you guys did a great job of showing me what you want. All right. Kimmy, you good? I am so good. Just thinking of all the fish we're going to bring home and eat. All right. Thank you, everybody.

Thanks for joining. Thank you. 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, ride on, my long-time sweetheart. We're done beat this damn horse to death, so take your new one and ride on.

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