The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 459: Hind Titty

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

Steve Rinella talks with Zeb Hogan, Tommy Eidson aka The Blue Collar Scholar, Keith Anspatch, and Dom Cooper.  Topics include: What you'll see when you walk into the First Lite flagship store in Hailey, ID; an insane mullet; MeatEater sponsoring Tommy's Wild Cow Milking team; one good squirt; how handling baby animals doesn’t make their mothers abandon them; very long acronyms for United Nations agencies; the one thousand species of fish in the Mekong River; what’s the biggest freshwater fish?; North America’s largest minnow; the ginormous 661-pound freshwater stingray; how eating giant catfish tastes like regular catfish; how overfishing very rarely causes extinction; reverse colonialism; how a human probably won’t catch the biggest; get Zeb’s new book, Chasing Giants: In Search of the World’s Largest Freshwater Fish; 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 meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.

Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-t-l-i-t-e.com corinne you know how a lot of times we come up with what the show is going to be called but then we forget and it's called something different that doesn't really happen i feel like it does i feel like a lot of times i'll be like hey hey, let's call the show this, and it winds up not being called that. Arguable, but okay.

I'll give it to you. Pine titty. Should be this episode. No one's going to know why for now, but later they'll know. Okay. Tommy knows what I'm talking about. I know exactly what you're talking about. Tommy knows exactly what I'm talking about. We're recording today from the flagship First light store in Haley, Idaho.

What is that, you might ask? It's the flagship first light store in Haley, Idaho. If you want to find the best hunting gear on the planet, you come into this store and get it. And to give you a real virtual experience of what it's like, we have today Keith and Spa. Should be and Spatch. Yep.

But it's not. We all agree. It's and Spa and Dom Cooper. And between you guys, can you quickly calculate? Someone walks in the door. What's the likelihood they'll encounter one or both of you? I would say 70%. I live in here. So probably even more than that dom's in

here a lot though so so there's like a a likelihood that you would come in and they would find you guys so after this they'll be comfortable coming in knowing who they're looking for just give me a high five i'm here every day okay now you'll know because one of them has an insane mullet i've been working on it a while man and one of them's australian sure am so so you know we've had we had another australian on recently you guys been making a strong showing yep Yep. We're an interesting breed of people. Great. This other Australian is a PH in Africa, and you're here.

And so we're catching them as they kind of get spun off into the broader outside world. Yeah. Also joined by Tommy Edson, known as the blue collar scholar always bragging up how good he does on media trivia he came down lost then uh the uh pause gate scandal broke what was that blue collar posers my new nickname at work oh and then we caught when that yeah that he what the reason he performs well in private is he pauses the show i'm gonna let you finish go ahead oh you want me to yeah you pause the show i said think about it longer which is like no kidding you're gonna win. If I could pause it for a couple days.

A couple days. And be like, well, yeah. It was more like three or four days. You ever do a little research while it's paused? No. I work in a fast place environment. And I was like, but at the same time, I could pause the game, continue with my job

while I was communicating with somebody at work, and not miss like, I didn't know. There's times where I don't have time to stop even for the five seconds and write my answer down. So it's like, but then I got to thinking about it, and it gave me a little bit. I thought, does it give me a competitive advantage? And so then I said something to Joey, one of the guys on the rodeo team and i even texted you and you're like oh you cheater yep yep that's what he sounds like yeah so um tommy here's why we're gonna name here's why the show's gonna be called high and titty tomm recently, Doug, my buddy, bubbly Doug Duren,

sends me a screenshot of an exchange he has with Tommy. Tommy has this to say to Doug. Quick cow question. If you're milking a cow and it's a race, which udder or nipple are you going for? Is there something in particular I should be looking for in an udder? We're going to dive into all that.'s dive because in due time because i i've pointed out a couple times we talked about a lot you know we came out with the shirt we came out with the wild cow milk t-shirt correct because uh we dug

deep here we take our our you know we take our spending seriously. We dug deep and sponsored Tommy's Wild Cow Milk and Rodeo team for $300. And he sent me – I shouldn't say this because people are going to start pilfering my mailbox. I wouldn't say it. Well, you could say it. Tommy sent me the winnings in cash rolled up in a paper and an envelope. Shouldn't you do that? You shouldn't do that?

No, that's fine. Oh. So now they're just sitting on my desk like an envelope of cash that I need to go and find some way to integrate into. I'm going to hand it off to somebody. I figured that's what I did. Because I like to feel that, man. I like to feel that.

It's a good feeling. When that judge hands you that wad of cash, you're like, there's a picture somewhere of me. Yeah. How many tournaments have you guys done? That would be the third third one i think two this is our second year no no no i mean how many uh how many rodeos you participated in so far this year i think that's the third one okay oh this this year yeah that's all we only do two a year you do two a year when's the next one september oh that i knew there was more

to come all right so we got we recoup some of our money and the money's going into the land access initiative media land access initiative which we need to do we need to we're going to get heavy duty on raising some money for that yeah initiative coming up so we're going to get into what because we had a lot of questions a lot of questions came in about i don't understand how that's a thing what wild cow milking wild cow milking in rodeos. Oh. I mean, people kind of get it, like bull riding. They're like, yeah, I've been exposed to that.

That resonates with me. Team roping. People will be like, I've seen that around. Right. Wild cow milking. They don't know what you're talking about. Right. It's like most rodeo events, they have where they originated.

You have tie down roping, calf roping, where you tie down your calf, and you got to go back to your saddlebags and grab your whatever shots, go up, but you had to make sure he would stay tied. That's why the time is set for, I think it's five or six seconds. Your cow's got to stay tied while he's down. All these events have beginnings, like where they begin from. We'll get into the history. We're going to do that pretty soon.

And then we're also joining us here in the First Light store, Zeb Hogan. I have two ways to describe you, and they seem contradictory. One is host of Nat Geo's Monster Fish Show, or the United Nations Convention on Migratory species scientific counselor for fish just seems different i would lean into the latter one because it sounds like really the guy you'd want to talk to if you want to talk about fish fair enough and then you're also author of chasing

giants in search of the world's largestgest Freshwater Fish, which is available now, correct? Published last month, yep. Published last month. And in it, I watched some things Corinne sent me. And what really hooked me on talking to you is the question, how, why is the question big what is the biggest large oh sorry the question what is the world's largest freshwater fish why it takes a book to not quite answer that question it's a rich question and we're going to get in a little bit into the richness of that question, which is definitions stacked on top of definitions.

And also a kind of a, that a lot of these fish that might be contenders are in an alarming state population-wise. Yeah. It seems like the modern world is not friendly to huge freshwater fish um so we're gonna spend time on that but first off i want to jump back into uh what happens when you walk into the first light store so what happens when you walk into the first light store i come in and i say uh hi. Then what will happen? Man, the First Light store is such an experience. The first thing I usually want to let people do is just kind of take a grasp of what they're walking into.

It's really cool. You get the whole First Light product. Not anywhere in the world where you can see this. So when you walk in here, we've got a huge line. Even the First Light employees walk in. They're like, I didn't know we sold this much stuff oh boy yeah everybody i've been in here with is like god i didn't know that this was all here yeah it's unbelievable between the waterfowl the ladies line all our western big game huge amount of product we can point a customer towards so it's

really cool what i really like at the store is the ability to like see that customer, talk to the customer and like figure out what they're wanting to do in the world. Like we've got a ton of people that are just doing elk hunts in Idaho, but then we get, we've had people from every state in the country at this stage. Oh really? That's cool. So it's really cool. You know, we help out people that are doing their first Africa trips. We've got people going down to Mexico for mule deer. We've got all the sorts of waterfowl hunters, bear hunters this spring. We're all over in the store. So I just, it's really cool to live vicariously

through them and see what they're wanting to do and then to dial in what gear exactly they want. Super fun. Yeah. Where were you born? Where were you brought up? I was born in Colorado, but I've been an Idaho boy now for most of my life. So I grew up in Idaho Falls for the most part, went to school up at university, Idaho, up in Moscow. And I've been in the Wood River Valley now for about 18 years. Oh, long time. Yeah. I managed to store up in Ketchum, a backpacking store and outdoor store for a long time, just a block away from the old first light headquarters. So I was there from the beginning with friends with all of that crew and watched the brand grow. And then when they came up with the idea of this store, it was something I could not say no to. It's too cool not to work here.

How many people come in and they don't really know what they're walking into and how many people come in knowing what they're up to? I'd say a majority of the people come to check out the store. This is a destination store. People do trips around the store. Yeah. But then we definitely have people that walk in here, and they do like two or three steps, and it's a lot of camo in here,

and you can see them just do a reverse and walk out. It's just not the right store for them. Yeah, it wasn't what they were looking for. Yeah. But the majority of people are so stoked to come check out the store yeah and uh dom walk me through how did you come to what's the like the the australia to haley path to typical australia to haley path yeah see i was always an outdoors bloke uh but i came over to america when i was 14 and uh you know kid reading a lot of rock

and Hemingway. I thought, you know, I grew up fishing and hunting was the next step as it often so is. And I came over when I was 14 and I went on a pheasant hunt and a coyote hunt. And it was probably the most miserable experience ever. Like you came over as a visitor. Came over as a visitor at the time, yes. I had an old model 21 16 gauge that someone lent me and I went on this pheasant hunt and there was no dog or anything and it was on BLM land in southern Idaho and I think we got one bird up all day and I didn't have the gear, didn't have the gear at all and I actually had frost nip on my hands and the one bird that flew up, I didn't even pull the trigger on because I didn't have the gear didn't have the gear at all and I actually had frost nip on my hands and the one bird that flew up I didn't even pull the trigger on because I couldn't work the safety on that little model 21 yeah uh and at the end of the day I was like man that's a

miserable experience but uh you know going back to the guys like you know Teddy Roosevelt talking about uh this strenuous life I was like man this this really sucked but I had a lot of fun what is it in me that really enjoyed this? And ever since then, I was just absolutely obsessed with Western hunting. So every chance I got, every holiday, I'd come over to Idaho and hunt. I nearly got kicked out of college twice

because I was trying to do that. Were you hunting in Australia too? A little bit. So I'm from Queensland, and as a lot of Queenslanders and Australians listening to this know that Queensland does not define any game species of our game. So we have quite a robust population of red deer and fallow deer and chittle deer and pigs, but they're not defined as game by the state. They're defined as pests. so it's a lot of control rather so than managing them as a as an actual uh asset to the people uh so i did a bunch of that over there a lot of bow hunting but

it just never did it to me in the way that that idaho manages game and the relationship with public lands here so i knew it as soon as i finished finished my education there and and finished my time i wanted to move over were you in some kind of ranching type, rodeo type activities over there? Yeah. So I always had a bit of a quest for adventure. So my mate and I basically worked out what weeks we needed to be at college and which we didn't so that we could just scrape by and pass because we wanted to cowboy and hunt. That was basically our life over there.

And mom and dad weren't too fond of it at the time, but they understand it now. And I was very lucky. My old man and my sister actually came out last year and came on a hunt with me for the first time. And we were lucky enough to harvest an elk together and work our butts off for it and pack it out. It was a very, that's great. It's a very, very special experience. Are you guys married? No. At least this guy is.

We've been married for a long time. You're not married? You've been married a long time? 15, 16. His wife's actually a hairdresser and one of the most highly acclaimed hairdressers in the valley. I would never guess. So you got like a revolt going against your wife.

She talks a big game how she doesn't like it, is in the valley. I would never guess. So you got like a revolt going against your wife. She, you know, she talks a big game how she doesn't like it, but she gets a glass of wine in here and starts putting her hair in there. She wants to run her fingers through the back of your hair. It's got the Kevorka, man.

You can't fight that. It doesn't steal life. All right, so there you have it. So if you come, if you wind up anywhere in the vicinity, come down to our flagship First Light store.

Only place on the planet right now where you can walk in and touch stuff. It's a pretty neat experience. A couple of weird looking dudes get some great product in your hands. Now they know. A couple of alarming looking fellas. But deep down, a couple of hearts of gold. I wouldn't go that far.

We like to hunt, man. That's the most important part. If you can speak to the equipment, that great man yep absolutely all right well thank you man thanks for letting us be down here too because we had to lock the doors oh absolutely now this is a really cool experience that's awesome having you guys here i'll point out that there was a person out there that wanted to come in who had a pretty very set she knew exactly what she wanted absolutely Absolutely. That was an educated customer coming in. We get a lot of those.

Okay. Definitely a lot of people, they know exactly what they want to put their hands on. They just want to try it on, see what they need. A lot of times

we can close that sale right here. Yeah, she wasn't here to run her fingers through your hair. She was here to make a purchase. Well, you never know, man.

No. All right, Tommy. Thanks for coming down. Yeah. Now yeah now help enlighten enlighten people about the rodeo event called what tell me what it's called just i want to make sure i got it right technically our turn our our event is called shoot cow milking oh shoot cows basically you and you want me to just start like the rules i want to know the history i want soup to nuts as i understand that the history is like basically you're loading cows like with manpower instead of with horsepower and you know basically the way that's kind of the crux or the beginning of how

where that rodeo event started what as i understand it how it works is your basic rodeo arena your basic oval one side is almost always grandstands the other side is your bucking shoots and you're where all your rough stock is you know bulls horses bucking horses whatever you have in most standard rodeo arenas you have six bucking shoots three and three with a gap in the middle may or may not be a gap in the middle wild cow milking what they do is it's a three-man team you have three positions on that team you have a milker a mugger and an anchor anchor is kind of self-explanatory. Usually it's your biggest guy on the team. And he's a guy that usually is in charge of not letting go of that rope

in case there's catastrophe. Like two guys go down or one guy goes down, the big guy can usually just sit down, bend his knees and squat down and stop a cow or ski around or get drug around. But basically, the mugger's job is to stop that cow at some point. We'll get to that in a second. The milker's job is pretty self-explanatory. His job is to milk it.

They run six cows, wild heifers into into the buck and shoots usually there's an event of some kind going on a drill team or a clown show going on about that time so that each team draws a number out of a hat one through six if you whatever number you draw you draw number three that's your cow and that's your shoot shoot three you inside you take a rope halter everybody every team has issued a rope halter and a clear beer bottle like a corona bottle yeah yeah they're not making it easy on you you take somebody's got to get in the shoot with the cow put the rope halter on it and usually you wait for the event to end.

They'll go through and announce everybody's sponsors. Presumably they've checked to see if the cow's lactating. Oh, yeah. But that's something, too, as usual. Sometimes you do get one that's not nearly as moist as the rest of them. You know, you get a little dry one once in a while. Hence my question to Bubbly Doug. You know, I want every upper hand I can get.

So he went straight to a milkman. So I went straight to the man. But then the buzzer goes off and all six guys open their chutes and six cows come bulldozing out of there and it's your job to stop them and not get run over. And there's 18 people in the arena. Correct. The rules of the event are you cannot touch that cow with your hands until she crosses a chalk line about 25 feet out in the arena. You can hold on to that rope, but you cannot physically touch that cow.

Put your hands on that cow as soon as she crosses the plane of that chalk line boy she's fair game and usually the go-to move is just wrap her up in a headlock and just hang on man just don't let go okay but there's a lot going on there too because your anchor is usually once somebody gets a hold of her an anchor will usually try to either stabilize her back end so she's not pivoting around in a circle because a milker is not going to be able to get her but a good milker can milk her if she's moving but not at a dead run yeah so yeah so you do you try to snake that teat right down into that beer bottle no you try to squirt it into there squirt it in there you need one good squirt the last rule of it is good squirt you need one good squirt yeah you don't got to fill the bottle no the rule is is that you go out once you get that defined we just had it

we i'll point out we just had a where we did a deep dive on competition regulations i was about a fish thing yeah yeah one good squirt isn't going to cut it for me no it's not going to cut it for you how who defines a good squirt the judges because once once you get once the milker yells the word milk it's the muggers position to pull the halter because the milker has to run across back up back up okay it runs out a guy's holding the rope correct crosses the plane somebody stops her. Okay, someone grabs it, and someone tries to stabilize it. The milker goes in with the bottle.

Yep. Okay. You get some milk. The rules are that you need one drop to come out of that bottle in five seconds of it being upside down, but you've got to have the halter with you. That's what I was looking for. And sprint all the way across the arena in front of the grandstands

where there's a judge standing there with a flag and a rope. That's all you was looking for. And sprint all the way across the arena in front of the grandstands where there's a judge standing there with a flag and a rope. That's all you got to get. When you step into that ring, she'll throw a flag and say time. You got to turn that bottle upside down and you got five seconds from that moment for one drop to run out.

To produce a drip. One drop. Here's the thing I struggle with. How, if you put mutton busting, okay, picture a dial. Yeah. And mutton busting is here. Okay. And bull riding is here.

Okay. Where does this fit? About dead center. About dead center. dead center due north yeah okay yeah it's like it's just like a thing where like dudes that like like me you know i'm getting on and into my mid-40s okay and my only good excuse is that man i just missed some good old grr conflict got it you know you you can't get away with ragged on dudes in public anymore you gotta get into a rodeo get some aggression out man yeah yeah you got a boss at work you know when i was a boy he just went up and just beat somebody up me too he felt like it guys now everybody's all

touchy you got a boss at work that's real he likes to give you his business you know what i mean and the guy at the gas station you know i'm right zeb the guy at the gas station that gave you a ration of it last week and you let it go but you can let all that grr out in the rodeo arena what are you laughing at cream it's true it's so true man so that's all you're looking for i just and a go and a buckle i want first place of course i'm a competitive dude i want to win yeah oh and you want there to be cold hard cash at the end right and a sweet t-shirt and a sweet t-shirt how did you first become aware of it a good friend of mine from high school and uh they run and we compete against them in that rodeo twice a season and they run in other ones And we've been buddies since you know high school

Then I've seen him do it at the rodeo and I ran into him at out to dinner one night at a little kind of local pub water and whole place and I'm like You ever get down a man. I'll jump in there. You need a man on the team He's in I was like as you get down to i might need i might know somebody else that's interested he's like y'all just start your own team you only need one more like you know what josh good point yeah now you know i'm gonna beat him for a buckle i beat him this week this last one you did oh yeah you know that joke uh where you say that you're milking a cow my dad did this to me and you say hey did you know there's always a star on're milking a cow. My dad did this to me.

And you say, hey, did you know there's always a star on the end of a cow's teat? And you go to look and then you, whoosh, right in the face. No, I never got that. That's a good joke. Keep in mind. That is a good joke. My old man, he had a buddy. So he had a buddy that ran a dairy place.

And my old man would go down there. And the way I remember it, man, he'd always be coming back with that milk, the non-pasteurized milk. Sure. And in my head, I'm sure it wasn't true, but in my head I remember that there was grass floating in there. Oh, and sawdust. It was like moss in there.

There was all kinds of stuff in there. Dude, we hated it, man. And we would call it cow's milk. And he'd be like, the hell you think all the other milk is? We're like, no there. There's all kinds of stuff in there. Dude, we hated it, man. And we would call it cow's milk. And he'd be like, the hell you think all the other milk is? You know, we're like, no, not cow's milk. And it'd be all layered out in the fridge.

Like I said, I remember it with like chunks of grass in there. And oh, we did not like that milk. But I had some of it recently at my buddy's dairy place where it's super chilled. It goes into that like, oh, it's like 33 or 32.1 degrees or whatever

man it is good dude yeah when i was a little kid i was deathly afraid of that milk yeah you ever take a big swig after you that competition no no it's usually reserved for in front of the judges but you know i'd be game yep yeah you know when someone asks a question question and they're sort of acting like they're asking a hypothetical question, but you realize they're actually asking a question? Yeah. It'd be like one of those questions that's like, let's just say, okay, this guy writes in this big long letter about recovering a,

correct me if I get some of this wrong. It's a long letter. Basically a doe gets killed and they wind up with a fawn. And say also that his wife is producing someone in the family is producing way more milk than their kid can drink. Like I remember my wife, she'd have

so much, she'd be feeding the baby and filling the freezer with frozen bags of milk. He's like, let's just say, would that be good milk for that baby fawn? Am I getting this more or less correct? Indeed.

You lost me. His wife's milk? Oh, okay. Now you got me back. I don't know what to write to him. Cholestrumrum we haven't replied scroll down because we have an answer or not a real answer

oh Heffelfinger weighed in on it oh he's the man for the questioning you know this just came up and I'm going to bring it up again Heffelfinger brought up a great point and I feel like raising it twice because how throughout your entire life you have been told if you touch a fawn its mother will abandon it like how many times have you heard that growing up

including birds too you were always told to never touch birds either half a finger brings up a great point where he's heffelfinger's like all the collaring research that is done on fawns right they net them tranquilize and whatever handle them draw blood weigh them um if what you've been told your whole life was true all of that would be in vain because those fawns would all be dead but they're not that's a good point when you go to a bear den and they work up bears in a bear den what are they doing handling all of them everything they got them inside their coat yeah i've seen where they got them in their coat to warm them up. But then on the same hand, you're told your whole life, the minute you touch it, it will be abandoned.

Um, half a finger's first point. The doe wasn't dead. Half a finger's first point. The fawn is not abandoned. 100% 100% sure of that does spend almost zero time within sight of the fawn only to nurse and then they leave them for many more hours

my son had a newborn fawn in his yard last week against the backyard fence in Texas and my brother did the week before in Wisconsin it happens all the time and they are not abandoned stepping away from heffelfinger to remind bear hunters of something in Wisconsin. It happens all the time and they are not abandoned.

Stepping away from Heffelfinger for a minute to remind bear hunters of something. I have watched almost anywhere you go, anywhere you go in the lower 48, anywhere you go on 80s, I don't know, 90% of Alaska, during black bear season, you're not allowed to kill a sow with cubs. Most people, and granted, you don't get a lot of opportunities,

most people sight check it. They're like, has it got a cub? Nope. But likewise, in the early spring, on their first, so those babies are born, right? They're born in February, January, and they come out. And that early spring when they come out, she probably has that thing hidden. I have watched sows have on an avalanche slide,

I've watched sows put their cubs in the brush and go out and feed in that avalanche slide for 30 minutes and go back in and check on that cub and go back out into the avalanche slide and you would if you were just watching her you would be like oh she doesn't have a cub really well there's your argument for babe biting right there there you go look at that look how he's leveraging this for political purposes don't get me started we we want to protect that in this state so yeah is it at risk i think it's at risk everywhere sure it is oh yeah well you get clay newcomb started on that subject oh yeah last year to

yeah big time i was talking to clay this week about bear hunting we shot a bear on wednesday and couldn't find it uh i heard a death moan right before dark and I could not find it and message tell me so go yeah that bears dead somewhere right in the timber and got in there that morning with the dog and found it right away oh great yeah it's cool still good it's good yeah back to heffelfinger the notion that human scent will cause the mother to abandon it is an old wives tale perpetuated by biologists to keep people from touching newborn fawns researchers handle fawns all the time and although they use gloves

to minimize scent transfer the mother does not abandon the fawns the farmer anecdote is more proof of that maternal instinct is strong number three ready tommy i'm ready human breast milk is better than whole milk from a cow but again see number one above don't touch the fawn i'm sure a fawn would gain weight nicely on human breast milk but a better use for all that breast milk is to soak dove breasts in it before wrapping and baking and grilling he says that's why they call it breast milk is to soak dove breasts in it before wrapping and baking and grilling he says that's why they call it breast milk i like jim oh dude he's the funniest guy in the world man he's the funniest guy in the world hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high-end titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery,

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

hand-picked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit

onxmaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. So, anything more you'd like to add about your competition? Because I got another question I want to pursue with you.

We're coming for buckles in September. Are you? Oh, yeah, me and the rest of the team. Joe Wee, Steve Mabry, we're coming. And what's the buckle say on it? Usually, I think they say shoot cow milker or champion. Champion.

Yeah, but you rest your arm on that one. Oh, yeah. And then here's my other question for you while I got here. Can you give me a layman, like a Joe Blow Washington perspective on what's going on with your guys' game commission in Washington? Funny you ask. Can I give you further endorsements please tommy is the kind of hunter and fisherman who instead of just sitting around complaining follows and is

involved in his follows and isn't involved in his state's wildlife management yeah you keep yourself educated as most as best i can um you said it best when you said layman's because like i don't there's a lot i'm very trusting and that's probably a problem given the current state of our commission our commission has been a lot of guys that use the word compromised and a lot of guys use the words infiltrated but there's definitely some red flags going up about what's going on in our commission you guys have a governor appointed game commission of how many folk nine folks okay i have nine folk that way there can never be a split you know typically it's x amount or it's so many from the eastern side of the state and typically

and so many from the western side of the state i think that is that way because the western side of the state tends to be stand in a different place than the eastern side of the state as far as politics yeah and it makes it in in the past it Here's a good way to remember it. If you looked at it on a map and you imagine it split apart and the parts fell, the side that would fall to the right leans to the right. That's right. That's a great way to remember it. I'm never going to forget that.

That is a good way to remember it. The side that falls to the left. Right. Okay. There's some serious red flags and question marks being raised in Washington's game commission as far as decision making, totally ignoring the biologists that are paid to do the studies they do, to find out, to come to the facts we do.

We lost our spring bear season you know yeah but like we don't and it's because interest groups people that love animals don't want other people that love animals killing animals yeah it's basically what it's coming down to the approach they've taken is historically those game commissions have been populated by people with skin in the game i don't mean that i don't even know if that's a point i think i know what you mean yeah well people from fisheries outfitters right right it's been people who have generally like who generally have it's been people who come from varying perspectives that would be in support of the general idea of the north american model of wildlife conservation meaning that we have a renewable resource that's like that wildlife is a

citizen-owned renewable resource held in trust by um an agency that assesses and allocates the resource in a democratic fashion with an eye toward people utilizing it but not damaging it in the long term right and the new trend there is to be like well there should be people on the game commission who are opposed to hunting there should be animal rights people on the game commission there should be zookeepers on the game commission correct correct and where we're at now is that there's a new draft policy and i think there's some litigation that's been done or taken action against them for the for in as a rebuttal to this to completely like basically rewrite the goal for Department of Fish and Wildlife's commission in and of itself. It's unfortunate.

And look, I'm not the best at when it comes to complaining about things. I'm just not. I'll just find a way to do what I want to do in a manner. So maybe I'm not the best spokesman it's unfortunate that now we don't have the luxury of sportsmen in washington to sit around on our laurels and just complain about it because i as soon as i hear it from somebody that i know for a fact has never sent an email to the commission has never you know done the homework or cited a study that it adds to the fact that we're trying to work under the north american medal of wildlife management why are

we going away from this yeah because that's what we're doing i shut down and we're done we don't have the luxury of it anymore we have to be involved in washington we all have to yeah and there's no more finger pointing all the tribes took them all or all the fly fishermen are getting the best water. We all have to get enough of that shit. We all got to come together. That's enough of it. You know, well, I've talked a bunch, like I'm a believer in slip.

I'm a believer in slippery slopes. A lot of people aren't, but I think there are like, I think, I think wildlife management that, that, that there is a slope there's a playbook that it goes by um you're generally going to go after like if you go and pull there's some recent polling stuff recently uh recently some polling data that if you phrase it a certain way um over 80 percent of americans support regulated depending on how you phrase it you can get over 80 percent of americans or maybe it's 78 right now support regulated hunting and fishing the minute you put specificity it goes down so i say you do you do you support scientific base regulated hunting

and fishing you'd be like well of course and i'd be like do you support someone using a dog to hunt oh well i don't know about that right do you support them using a gun you know i don't know about that right so it starts the specifics peel away right the playbook in attacking hunting and fishing is to peel out the, to peel out the easy parts, meaning you would never go, you would never start a group that you would never start a group that was out in front of whole foods, collecting signatures to ban hunting and fishing in Washington state. It'd be a fool's errand.

Instead you'd go and be like, okay, we're going to go after spring bear season because there's the issue of cubs we're gonna go after using dogs because there's a in my view completely like completely bogus argument of fair chase we're gonna go after um and then it'll be anything with dogs uh we're going to go after steel traps followed by conibears and snares. We're going to go, right?

And you slowly dismantle it. Sure, it's death by a thousand cuts. But if you understood, if you went and looked at what the people driving that's private conversations are, their private conversations aren't that they have a problem with the particulars. The private conversation is they have a problem with the particulars the private

conversation is they have a problem with the whole thing but this is the most productive way to go after it i think too many people um i think too many people that would that would articulate a support for hunters and anglers would think that they're never gonna get that as they whittle away they're never going to get to the stuff i like right what do you mean you're like an upland bird hunter you'd be saying yourself oh yeah but like they're never gonna like come around for me you know so i'm not going to get involved because they're never going to get to me that's exactly true yeah people think that way yeah but i think that if you look at i think that if you do a case study

of some issues in washington you do a case study of some issues in california i think that most anybody that does any extractive use of renewable natural resources like wildlife resources would at some point be like man i probably should start paying attention to this yeah yeah it's um you know monday mornings have become my mornings for what i call hate mail it's not because i'm sending off nasty messages it's because i hate the fact that i have to sit down and spend 20 minutes on my monday mornings sending off these emails to these wildlife commissions about this topic the only thing we can do man is just get involved we you have to send off the you have to do it we have to do it in washington anymore because they're going to come i mean predators are up next commissioner baker has talked about it i hate the name drop but it's true

has talked about wanting to do away with coyote hunting i mean back last spring when we were having the spring bear discussion they wanted to do away with any and all spring hunting yeah and then turkeys yeah like do you not and then when that was brought up that i'm not going to name who in question brought that up but they didn't even know turkeys were hunted in the spring that's how far out of a square we have trying to fit even know turkeys were hunted in the spring that's how far out of a square we have trying to fit a square through a round hole in the block box yeah these people i mean i'm sorry but it's just what's the what's your guys governor stance been on this he's pretty silent on it and he's the one to put yeah as best i can understand i think he's included

in the litigation i don't know it's uh you know like in the litigation. I don't know. You know, like in the Constitution, they say the rules to be president. Like you got to be whatever, 40. Sure. You got to be born here and all that. Born in America. It should be that you got to hunt and fish. I agree.

If you're going to make rules on it, you should have to do it. I agree. You don't have to worry about all this garbage. I agree. Thank you, Tommy Tommy You're welcome How much money could you win If you did the best

What's the possible winnings for the next rodeo Best? Yeah how much money was in that envelope you already sent me I'm not going to say More than 150 bucks Less than 300 bucks So when it's all said and done Will will we have made money or lost money? You'll make money.

You'll make a little money. I don't want any kind of pencil pushers. No, no, no. The very high end of it, I think we're looking at at least $600. Oh. It's a two-day thing. You're going to have people lining up to invest in you, man. Good.

If it's $300 to get in, you can double your money. You can't do that on the stock market. I gave you that offer. That offer doesn't stand for everybody else. Sponsorship changes, I might start keeping some of the money. We'll see. Tommy, stay tuned because you're going to have a lot to say about this

question. Zeb Hogan, host of Nat Geo's Monster Fish, author of Chasing Giants in Search of nat geo's monster fish author of chasing giants in search of the world's largest freshwater fish and united nations convention on migratory species scientific counselor for fish who came up with that title did you make that title up no they they did It's a hell of a title. You would be the U-N-C-O-M-S-S-C-F-F. Yeah. That's the only United Nations group I've ever been involved with, but there are a lot of names like that.

Yeah, got it. So what – I know you can't answer this. We can't answer this. But if I come to you and I say, hey, man, what is the world's biggest freshwater fish? Tell me all of the hemming and hawing that needs to go into that answer yeah so that's how this all started yeah i was working in thailand 2005 did my phd there on what on uh migratory fish migratory catfish of the mekong river yeah looking at the impact of dams on on migratory fish most fish are migratory fish. Migratory catfish of the Mekong River. Yeah, looking at the impact of dams on migratory fish.

Most fish are migratory in the Mekong, so they're migrating like salmon. They're moving for what purpose? For spawning. Okay. And also, so the Mekong, there's a huge flood pulse. So water comes up, increases tenfold in the rainy season from the

dry season. Oh, I got you. And the fish, they spawn, sturgeon will do the same thing but they'll spawn during the floods and all those fish get dispersed downstream they spawn up high yeah they spawn not not necessarily the headwaters but like in the upstream spawning areas got it and then the fish all go in the floodplain uh tributaries are in the mekong river in the mekong or there's like a thousand species of fish in the mekong so they are they really yeah so they do everything but like a couple hundred rivers got a thousand species of fish yeah so more more species in the mekong than there are in the united states what yeah it's the second most diverse amazon has over 4 000 species

huh that's unbelievable manical, big tropical rivers. They have a lot of different kinds of fish and a lot of big fish. Okay. So that's how I got involved. I was doing my PhD there working with local fishermen. The fishermen that I was working with caught a 646-pound catfish. And you saw it? I saw – this is how I first got involved. So when I was doing my

PhD in 1997, I saw a fisherman catch one of those fish for the first time. And I had no idea that fish got that big in freshwater. Like you see something that big, 400, 500 pounds. The one I saw was like 500 pounds. I've seen

many since then, but the first one I saw was big. And this is hook and line or a net? Net. Okay. And so that's... So that's just making a mess out of that net. It's a big net. Oh, it is?

It's just the mesh is like that. It's just... Oh, so they're after big fish. It's only designed for that fish. Oh, I see. Yeah. Okay. So it's a traditional,

they've been fishing that way forever. It's only during that few weeks, only using that kind of net god specifically look catching and they're after hogs they're after giants yeah and there's a ceremony associated with it uh really yeah and they're doing it for commercial purposes like they're selling fish they sell it no but they only catch i mean the whole time i've been working with them they probably caught 10 of them. So it's not like you're not going to make a lot of money.

Got it, got it. So the first time I saw it was in 1997. This is right up in the Golden Triangle area, right where Thailand, Laos, and Miramar meet. So way up in the northern part of Thailand. First time I saw the fish was 97. That's when I realized these things were out there, got interested, started doing my PhD. And then in 2005, the same club, like the same group of fishermen caught the 646 pound fish. And so that's when I just asked the question

that you've been asking, which is, is this the world's largest freshwater fish? And how impressed were they by that fish? They didn't realize it was the world's largest freshwater fish and how impressed were they by that fish they didn't they didn't realize it was the world's largest fish but i mean were they were they were they saying to themselves uh no this is the biggest one we've ever heard of or they're like oh that's kind of what they're like that's kind of no so the guys who caught it it's a team uh five guys and they were on their they were students uh on their summer break, like young guys.

And they borrowed their uncle's boat, went out. You take turns. So there's like one lane where you can drop the net. And the fishermen take turns. It's a floating net. So you drop it. It floats down for like a kilometer. If you don't catch anything, you pull it back in.

The next guy goes. Next group goes. Next group goes. So these guys were young kids on their summer break from school and they happened to catch this fish and so the club had been keeping records of how big the fish were that they caught all the way back to like 1980 okay and so i just went back and looked at those records i said this is the biggest one they've ever caught i got you they didn't to them i mean it was a big fish but you know they're

all four or five six hundred pounds yeah i'm with you and so they didn't realize and so i sort of said hey is this the world's largest freshwater fish like is that like you were asking is this specific fish the world's largest biggest freshwater fish that's ever been caught i got and so you mentioned earlier like the definitions there's only one for for all of this work there's only one definition or only one criteria which is the fish has to spend its whole life in freshwater yeah but but i don't know how fair that is that's kind of one of the main reasons i wanted to ask you about it so let me get cut throw you with it for instance sure okay when we were uh when we were doing our fishing game cookbook we had the fish broken out saltwater freshwater

and it came up with a question of salmon right and we debated back and forth uh is it freshwater saltwater my brother danny studies salmon the u.s fish and wildlife service i said hey man what do you think about a sam is it freshwater saltwater and he said you know it spends the bulk of its life in saltwater but it's born and it dies in freshwater. So if I had to put it somewhere, I would put it like those key, that like key moment. I would put the salmon in the freshwater section,

which is what we did by God. But why do you have to choose? Why do you have to pick? Because the cookbook is only, we didn't want to make a category that had like bull sharks, salmon, and striped bass, or I don't know, whatever the hell, you know, and American eels. Yeah.

So this, like the criteria is just, it's just for the, I'm a research professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. So I'm a- You guys like to obfuscate. No, but it's not. Split hairs for anybody in the world. It's not splitting hairs. It's a simple criteria.

That fish, that particular fish has had to spend its whole life in fresh water. That's the only criteria. How do you know one of them? I want to move on from this, but how do you know that one of them big ass cats didn't one day go down and get into brackish water?

That's what we study. And what happened? They don't. Oh, that's what we study. Okay, and what happened? They don't. Oh, all right, there you go. Corinne, I think the interview's over. They just don't. They don't like brackish water. Some fish do, but the point or the sort of the work that I do

and the point of asking the question was that if you just ask, okay, what's the biggest freshwater fish? Then you have white sturgeon, beluga, beluga sturgeon in Europe that can get like 3,000 pounds. So what's the great lake sturgeon? Lake sturgeon. They're just not contenders. They don't get big enough, but they only freshwater.

Yeah. Okay. So they would count for you. So Kootenai River in northern Idaho has a population of white sturgeon that does not go down to the ocean. So does the Snake River. Yeah, because of the dams.

Yeah, that's another... But there are some sturgeon that choose not to go to... It's just their ecology. Okay. And so one of those could be a contender or do you have to not because the species will go to saltwater no just the fit just the fish yeah you're interested in the individual fish but as a way to learn about all these fish like the the reason why this is an

interesting question like i didn't i didn't know what i was asking when i said hey is this the world's largest freshwater fish what makes it interesting is we don't know. And we don't know anything about these fish. So there are probably 40 species of fish that get over six feet long or weigh more than 200 pounds in freshwater in the world. And there are over 15,000 freshwater fish. So you're talking like just a small number of fish that get that big. Hit me in North America. Hit me with what we got. Alligator gar, white sturgeon. I'm sorry. Also, back up on the parameter.

Six feet in length and what was the weight? Or over 200 pounds. Or. Okay, I got you. So either six feet long or over 200 pounds. And we got. Go ahead. Alligator gar.

Alligator gar, Mississippi American paddlefish. Certain populations of white sturgeon lake sturgeon okay some people say colorado pike minnow used to get that big they don't really anymore but that's a did north america's largest minnow what about blue cats blue cat blue cats and flathead get up to about 100 what's the record these days i think the record is about 150 pounds. So they don't break the 200 mark. But you read like old, like Mark Twain or you read old accounts from the 1800s,

there are accounts of catfish that big. You don't know whether, you don't know what to believe. Yeah, like Hawk Finn looking at it there, laying there and he says it's 200 pounds. What about the old tales about guys in the 1800s dragging white sturgeon out of columbia with teams oh yeah yeah that's true as far as i know yeah really i mean surgeon white surgeon 15 feet i mean those are saltwater fish though they're fish that don't spend their whole lives with fresh water yeah they're they're they're an adrenous fish they move back and forth

there's a lot there are lots of fish like that but the. They move back and forth. There are lots of fish like that. But the ones that move back and forth, they can get bigger because they typically, when fish are out in the ocean, generally they have access to more food and stuff. Got it. They're able to utilize marine resources. Yeah.

Okay. So go on, on the numbers. Oh, so yeah. So it's just a small number. I think that's it. So, I mean, there's- I thought there was 15.

There are like 30 or 40 big fish all over the world. Okay. And we have in the US, we have five or six. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you meant we had 15 in the US. They get really big. Oh, so just a small little collection. Yeah.

Let me, there's the thing I can't move on from because I just want to understand it. You know when you hear a crazy story and you probably know this better didn't some bull shark go way the hell up the how far did a bull shark go up the Mississippi? I had a book when I was a kid that had them in the Great Lakes. I think they're I don't want to say something that's not true but

the book I had when I was little said that they made it all the way up to the grave. So they'll go way up. They will, but that's unusual. Yeah, no, very unusual, right? But it's a physiology question. Yeah. If you look at a shark that can go and spend, like at least an individual can go and spend presumably months in fresh water uh physiologically

like could two of them go what why can't two of them go up and reproduce in fresh water or is it or is it open that they maybe could or like like what what winds up happening to them bull sharks as far as i know don't breed in fresh water so it is physiological but i don't know why that is they're they're very adaptable they can live in salt water they can live in fresh water they don't breed in fresh water as far as i know well yeah there has to be some barrier because they're there's not reproducing populations of them up Up in the Great Lakes or whatever, yeah. Yeah, or wherever the hell, right? So there's some reason why it doesn't work,

but that's not well understood. No, but you have another, so three of the largest freshwater fish are freshwater stingrays, which are related to sharks. And the species that I study the most is a species in Southeast Asia, get over 600 pounds, freshwater stingray. And it breeds in freshwater.

So it's able to do that. Every fish is different. Yep. And the fact that you can take, this has always puzzled me as well, is that you can take striped bass, which are, right, it's an anadromous fish, spend a lot of time in brackish water can spawn in purely fresh water but then you can take them one day and throw them into some reservoir and they don't even change tune right yeah yeah i mean some fish have the ability to yeah it's just it just i don't know

it's hard to understand how that could be right yeah yeah we have in i live in nevada right now we have lahant cutthroat trout they can live in brackish water and so that's actually like they're they get really big in pyramid lake near right near reno and that's actually what's one of the things that's kept them in that lake is that like we invasive species haven't been able to get in the lake because it's brackish got it so they're like rainbows browns in the river that flows into the pyramid, but they can't survive in the brackish water. That's how they get it for themselves. Yeah. Oh, no kidding.

Okay. It works to some fish's advantage. All right. So pick it back up. I can't remember where I left you. The hell's the biggest fish? So the book, it starts with the catch of the world record fish and so what i've been working on for the last 20 years is just trying to travel all around the world gather as much information as possible

about these big fish because like you said like 70 of them are in danger with extinction so some of them are like all the the makong species are basically on the brink of extinction really yeah and so my where kind of where i my background is working in southeast asia mekong has like seven or eight really big species of freshwater fish and then mongolia which has the world's largest trout species yeah what's that fish called timon yeah yeah um is the arapaima arapaima is one yeah yeah that's one of them yeah so it's it's like a diverse assemblage of fish air air breathing arapaima you know in south america south america has short-tailed stingray which get up to like 500 pounds so what like you most people never heard of short-tailed river ray but that's like no i've seen that's one of the biggest fish i've

seen the the in south america i've seen a bunch of the big-ass freshwater stingrays. And then big catfish that can get up to like 400 or 500 pounds that migrate from the foothills of the Andes. And then they'll migrate all the way down to the Amazon estuary and all the way back, just like several thousand kilometers. Does the Tsurubi catfish get up to 200? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh-huh.

Yeah, like in Argentina. They're all over, actually. But yeah, they'll get up to 200? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. Like in Argentina or they're all over actually. Yeah. They'll get that big. Cool fish. And how many does the Mekong have to get that big? To hit the criteria? Like seven or eight. So giant freshwater stingray.

Smokes. Yeah. Yeah. Giant catfish, chow prairie catfish, seven striped barb, wallago catfish, a lot of them are catfish, big carp carp the world's largest carp species which can get up to 10 feet long no yeah what like what makes that river so productive like what makes it so special it's a big river we no one no one really knows because they should if it just went by numbers of fish then the amazon should have more but for whatever reason

the mekong has the most and it's like super productive there's a giant lake in the Mekong called the Tonle Sap Lake which is a huge like you know one of our great lakes but it's in the dry season like two meters deep so it's basically just a big flooded area that the fish all move into in the rainy season and feed and get big and then they move back out to the river in the dry season got it so no one knows for sure tropical big tropical rivers with lots of different kinds of fish you'd expect to have big fish too yeah yeah so does have have had you uncovered since that work have you uncovered one that top 646 that hits the definition? Yeah. Really? So the book ends with the catch in 2005. Or no, it starts with the catch in 2005

and then ends with the new record breaker. And what is that? Giant freshwater stingray. Oh. 661 pounds. Oh, barely. Yeah. And where did it come out of?

Out in Cambodia. Yeah. And the cool, my favorite part of that story is that in 2005 the catfish was that giant catfish was uh killed you know fair enough but critically endangered species so that catfish was killed and sold for meat uh we were working in thailand or in cambodia this last year and working with the fishermen and we made a deal with them that hey we want to tag this fish for research and so when they caught it they gave us a call we went out we're able to tag it and we like are following around right now so we know so we know where it

is so I want to I want to back up on that get that catfish uh in what form are they selling it they're butchering it and just selling by the pound i mean not the pound but you know what i mean like yeah yeah in thailand for whatever reason to back up a little bit like in thailand the meat is very prized and it's said to have certain qualities long life or i'm not exactly sure yeah um on those big catfish specifically yeah have you eaten them yeah are they good tastes like catfish i mean yeah they're good i mean most yeah but i he can't tell someone told me it was actually like a tourism thing like it wasn't actually like a real traditional belief that it was some part of a tourism campaign or something i don't know i can see that but in any

way in thailand it's very expensive so like we were working with fishermen up there we tagged we did tag a few fish up there one fish would sell for like 2 000 bucks which you know that's in like 1990s that's a lot of money it felt like a lot of money at the time the equivalent of 2 000 us dollars yeah wow it's like 20 30 bucks a kilo or something or yeah just as as fillets yeah yeah yeah yeah so it would be butchered and then sold a lot of times the restaurants or you know that even send it to restaurants like in bangkok or okay like not local restaurants and it but and and the people buying it are they care what it is yeah Yeah. That's why it's worth so much. I got it. It's not just like generic fish.

It's like the big ass crazy catfish. Yeah. But in Cambodia, so this is, I actually kind of shifted work to Cambodia because in Cambodia, it doesn't have any special significance. And in fact, people don't like it. So in Cambodia, it was 50 cents a kilo. Wow. And what I was doing is I was working with the fishermen.

I would compensate them for the fish, whatever they could get market rate, and then tag it and release it so we could follow it. Oh, really? You'd buy it off them? Yeah, yeah. But in Cambodia, I could do that. But in Thailand, it was too expensive. You'd burn your budget.

Yeah. And then how much are those fish moving? They migrate at least 600, 700 kilometers. I mean, they're making big big migrations they'll move out of that big lake down in the mekong and then way up into the mekong are they spawning way up in the mekong and buying our water yeah yeah yeah so they'll find like that it seems like they like rocky like they the toni sap and the lower mekong is all kind of silty and they seem like they go up in these deep pools.

The Mekong can be up to 250 feet deep. So really deep. And it seems like they like those deep pool areas. Say that again? 250 feet deep, yeah. The Mekong River? Yeah. So the Congo is over 700 feet deep.

So some of these rivers. That can't be true. Yeah. No, it's definitely true. Yeah. But the river is. I know. Yeah. But the cool thing about the Mekong, I didn't even appreciate this. We started doing some filming in these deep pools last year. So we'd send cameras down.

You get down like 10 feet or like 20 feet. It's completely dark because the water's silty. Yeah. So you get down like we tried scuba diving that was freaking shit yeah um but yeah it's just y'all i always you know i'm always seeing the fish at the surface and even when we're doing our research and stuff we're always seeing these fish like they live in a in the total darkness i don't know i just i just didn't know that didn't compute to me before we actually sent cameras down we're like oh man it's in the fisher down there like doing their

things smelling and feeling yeah yeah can't see squat you ever uh i'm guessing you never tried to noodle one of them big sons of bitches so we well we need a little you have a handful in dude have you ever done that no so i did it like not in the not in the mekong but in in the us uh and it's actually like i i it's like a real rodeo yeah like it's no so i i i didn't i just went out with people who knew how to do it yeah but like you dive down you do it's teams teams, three person teams a lot of times. There you go. And you dive down and the fish grunt. They make a noise when you get close to them.

So that's, and you can't see anything. And so the fish grunt and you know, like usually they're under a rock or something and the people, you get around it. And then one person agrees to stick their hand in the, in the fish's mouth and then you just pull it out but it's like a real i mean talking about wild cow milking like you know it's like noodling it's like a real sure it's a real thing it looks it looks funny but it but it's not but that's not practiced in uh there's no version of that that you found in in no no a. No, no. For most catfish, the easiest place to grab them is on the mouth.

So even in the Mekong, like when we handle the fish, we just grab it like its lip. The Mekong giant catfish doesn't have any teeth. The Wells catfish in Europe, that's Europe's largest freshwater fish, it does have kind of teeth

and we also grab it by the mouth, but you'll get your... You'll get your you'll get your shred yeah 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.

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OnX Club, y'all. Why do they want that big... Do they butcher those big stingrays? Or is that just by catch? In the Mekong... Amazon's a little bit different. In the Mekong, everything is eaten. Okay.

So it doesn't... There's nothing that they catch that they don't eat. So, yeah. So the stingray would be butchered. The crazy thing about the stingray is that like big, and this is just human. Part of it's like human nature. These big fish people seem to have a reverence for,

even if it's not like religious, you're around a fish that big and it's just, it's pretty special. And so even though it's not illegal to catch the stingray people will usually keep it pretty quiet you know and like uh everything like catch it at night it gets butchered and you see it in the market the next morning but you don't actually it's actually was really hard to get information about that fish like it's a sort of tacit and not acknowledgement that it's like you probably shouldn't have cut that one up.

Yeah. But, like, for my work, I mean, for my work, I get it. I work pretty much exclusively with fishermen who are fishing for food. So, I mean, that's one of the reasons we compensate the fishermen is because otherwise, why would they want to work with us? In Guyana, there was red-tailed catfish. Yeah, red-tailed, yeah. A couple times when I've been down there, they'll kill that one and cook it. Yeah.

The srubies they'll kill and cook. But there's one, you might know the name of it there's a big dark one they call toro it's like a yeah that's it i forgot the other name there's they thought maybe i would know it as toro which is like like a from spanish infusion um yeah joe uh they don't kill that one they're like these like they when we hooked one of those there it was just kind of yeah those are cool fish there they want that one. They're like these, like they, when we hooked one of those, it was just kind of, no, no, no, no. Yeah, those are cool fish.

They didn't want that one killed. Yeah. They're like more rare. So maybe there's, you know, there's. No, it was just kind of like, we had all kinds of other fish. They were just sort of like,

no, no, no, no. That's not one though. I mean, this thing was enormous. Yeah. I mean, maybe they don't taste good. I don't know. Well, I don't know. They just kind of had a different. A different. You know what I different you know like there's like a language barrier so you can't really establish

what it is but there was uh that was something yeah it was kind of like like the same way um i don't know i don't want to use the word taboo there's just things that would seem edible that they don't eat the same way if you were walking around here and someone's like why are you not eating that dog be like i don't know how do i even explain why we're not eating that dog you know but this big ass catfish that's just not yeah well that's and you bring it up like in cambodia there's the same feeling so people feel like if they kill a giant catfish and it's a make make home giant catfish it's one species there's a belief that if they kill it they'll um get bad And like, it kind of is self-fulfilling.

I've seen it a lot of times. Someone will catch one and then within like a week, they'll have a death in the family or something really bad will happen. And it's hard, you know, it doesn't seem like it would really be actual bad luck, but they always associate. If they actually do keep one of those fish sure they

always find something you're inviting trouble yeah and they like recognize that and so we've actually started to see the fishermen in cambodia just with that one species they'll release them on their own so what like what could you say is true is it always a different culprit or if globally we're imperiling or globally we're damaging and potentially losing giant freshwater fish, is it just like a different enemy in every ecosystem or are there general truths? It's mainly dams. Really? mainly dams really so yeah that because like overfishing overfishing very rarely causes extinctions so it'll you could get the population down really low but with fish at least it's very

rare that you could like catch the last ones it's just hard like these big systems so fishing is usually not the culprit in terms of extinction it's usually something that changes it can drive scarcity but it doesn't drive like the disappearance and so like with with dams there it's blocking spawning habitat changes water temperature messes up their spawning cues so you see like the Chinese paddlefish, which is a fish that could get up to like 20 feet long, just went extinct like two years ago. Oh, it did? Because of three gorgeous.

I mean, I didn't know about the damn fish, but really? Yeah. So tell me about that fish then. So Chinese paddlefish, one of two species of, have you ever seen an American paddlefish? Oh yeah. Yeah.

So they're cool, right? I mean, so Chinese paddlefish was a predator. American paddlefish are like filter feeders. Yeah. They, when when they open up their mouths it looks like a basking shark or something the chinese paddlefish was a predator more like a billfish and it would use it would have like a sharp paddle and it would use that paddle to hunt and it was actually going after catfish and whatever yeah yeah yeah probably yeah carp cat probably. And grew to 20 feet long. Yeah. No kidding.

Yeah. But the last one that was seen was like early 2000s. When they built that big ass dam. They built two big dams, Kazuba and Three Gorges. Three Gorges is the really big one. And those dams just made it impossible for the paddlefish to survive, to spawn. It must have blocked their their they couldn't access where they need to spawn anymore and did someone point out that this is a question i've had about the

dams we've done on the you know the dams we've done on the columbia system and others were was there someone that said uh you know if you do that that fish will be gone was that a known thing i don't know i wonder what people knew 100 years ago we know that now but i mean no no i'm talking in no in like three words no i've asked that question many times around salmon there was always a a way that that there's probably in people's back of the head there's always a way people felt they could explain away ways in which it wasn't the end of salmon. Yeah.

Because it was going to be ladder, you know, whatever it was. No one would, there was no one saying like, and yes, this will be the end of King salmon or in. Yes,

this will be the end of that run. They didn't put it like it, it wasn't laid out like that sort of arrangement, you know, maybe it never, maybe it never is. Yeah. we used to have king salmon in nevada believe it or not oh and i didn't know that yeah we used to have runs that came all the way up the snake yeah but with these newer dams in china um you know it's just like you would that they would blink this fish out the biologists know yeah but you know we tend not to listen to those guys yeah exactly when it comes to big construction projects they never get invited they never get invited to the

last meeting yeah no that's true i mean you could laugh about it but it's true like they're stronger interests at play um but on the maycon it's and you know this happened on the Columbia too it's like what you really want so you know we there's just I think salmon populations are like 10% of what they used to be on the Columbia or whatever but Mekong is the same way like two million tons of fish produced by the Mekong river every year so if you're going to build dams like think about that because there's it's like they're so important so that what you want is like not to be totally ignored but just like okay hey we'll take we won't build the worst ones we won't build the ones that are going to collapse the fishery or cause extinctions of all these fish whatever so that's i mean that's and my work that's basically what i do is just to try to

provide information about all these fish so like the worst dams aren't built. So you can go in and say, here's this species of fish. Here's what its life history is. Here's what its habitat needs are. If you do this, here's the price you'll pay. Yeah. Do with it what you will. Yeah.

And that's happening right now. So in Cambodia, this world's largest stingray is just swimming around it's actually in a a small area that's protected by the local community it's right between two of these big proposed dams where it lives just stuck there well no the dams aren't there so it's just swimming around happy i mean it doesn't know any difference but so and that's an area where hundreds of fish spawn it supports the whole fishery for the mekong river and they're right now there's a debate do we build these dams or oh i'm sorry yeah or protect the area so the decisions that you're talking about they're that's happening right now where are they leaning if you had to guess if you had a crystal ball The Cambodian government said no dams before 2030.

So that's good. It's good in the sense that they're always, you know, technology improves. Alternatives could come up. So as far as like that type of development decision, energy, it's always good if it happens in the future because things are always improving. Yeah. Isn't it a funny kind of reverse colonialism that we have a little bit where we've really effectively developed our country and created this economic powerhouse and all this infrastructure and dams and the ability to generate so much electricity and be global players and then you then go to the developing world and and uh and say man um i'm here to tell you to not to do the things we did yeah well because you're gonna lose your cat no yeah exactly no but it feels that way yeah but it's not don't do it it's like hey because i mean i'm trying to

think of an example in the u.s i mean we're starting to bring down some of our dams yeah in the u.s that are like the ones that don't generate very much electricity or that totally messed up the fishery. We're taking them down fast and we're putting them up. Yeah. But we had our 100 years of building a lot of good and, I don't know, good and bad dams, whatever. But I think what the goal is in places that are still developing

and building a lot of these dams is just don't like, you know, using the best information that's out there just try to make the best decision you know like maximize benefit minimize cost yeah i'm with you rather than like hey you can't do this um rather be that you can and if you do it this way you'll decrease the damage anyway like if or biologists you know some of it doesn't do much good to say you can't do this anyway. I mean, no one listens to say,

hey, you can't, you can't do this. You have to say why. You have to, I mean, fisheries are, everyone relies on fisheries there. So yeah. Oh yeah.

Fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Yeah. You know, I wanted, I forgot I was gonna tell you about a thing with fresh water salt water are you familiar with the susitna river system in alaska no so in south like the susitna flows out near anchorage so south central alaska there's this big river system and um very important like big salmon runs, like kings,

like just everything, right? I realize I don't know if that river gets sockeyes. I should know, but king runs, silver runs, pinks, all this stuff goes up this river system. And someone,

and I can't remember when, they know when it happened, someone moved northern pike into it. So of course northern pike are native to Alaska, and like the Yukon system has northern pike, but someone helped, at some point in time, someone helped pike into the Susitna. And there's the potential for it to be devastating

to salmon. And they've really spread out. And another thing with how in trouble kings are, kings spend extra time in fresh water. Kings spend an extra year in fresh water. So they have a greater vulnerability to this new predatory fish so there's a lot of interest in um how far could the northern spread right the the demographics on the population how much damage might they ultimately do to um the salmon stocks well these northerns these northern pike started showing up

in different adjacent river systems and the idea was that people were continuing to move them around but they can go to these other river systems and look at stable isotope compositions in the fish and those fish are going into salt water which no one thought they would do they're going into salt water being fine and actually entering new river systems from salt water northern pike northern pike are going out into salt yeah i think blue i think blue cat wandering around and then shooting up new river systems i mean blue catfish will do that too won't they i've oh i didn't know i feel like i've heard heard of that as well you and then you're left to be like well how in the hell did it get in here must be those

more of those rednecks doing bucket biology and it turns out that fish is like whatever he gets you know i was asking danny i was like so do they he goes i don't know what the fish is trying to do i don't know what it wants to do but it does it yeah they spread i mean they think wow things spread man when they i you remind me of the story in the ebro river in spain so a german fisherman uh took over like 30 baby wells catfish in his vw bug in the 70s and put them in the ebro river in spain where they're not native and we were there several years ago and that's it's now 90 of the biomass of fish in that river our wells catfish just enormous yeah that's one of the big ones isn't it well i mean yeah i mean you don't need to go that far because um the great lakes

yeah it's like yeah if you go back in time on the great lakes the like there was uh like a sturgeon fishery white fish right yeah dominant species man dominant all the way down in chicago like dominant species and it's just been that it's been rewritten and rewritten carp were put in there because they thought they'd catch on as food and then all the accidental all the intentional um it's an experimental aquarium yeah on the ebro too that so that they were introduced there and people, it's catch and release. It's not catch and release by law, but all the anglers practice catch and release. So no one's eating them either.

The Spanish people apparently don't like to eat them. The recreational anglers just like to catch and release. So that's why there's like 90% of them are whales. You get these weird situations. Yeah. Now and then they'll make it that it's, with certain invasives they'll make it that it's illegal to to keep it yeah to return it alive you know it's it's illegal to have it's illegal to put it back but i don't want to name his name but you know when they got lake trout they got lake trout in

lake yellowstone and they're very worried about the cutthroat snare so they're encouraging everybody to go and you know they wanted people to catch them and kill them it was illegal to turn one back alive i had a buddy that was always down there fishing and he's talking about letting them go i'm like well why you doesn't mean you're letting them go you're not supposed to let them go he says man i love fishing there i don't want to damage that fishery it's just like people just get whatever we had a selfish we had a thing a couple years ago or three years ago. Maybe it was a little longer than that. When all those Atlantic salmon got out of that net pen up in the San Juans.

Yeah. People had a shit fit about that. Oh, man. And people were up there just wailing on them things. Yeah. Yeah. And it was like, if you catch one, kill it sort of thing. Were they easy to catch?

From what I heard. I didn't go up there. I Were they easy to catch? From what I heard. I didn't go up there. I can't say firsthand, but from what I heard. No one's catching them anymore. They all died or got caught. Yeah, I haven't heard of one. They didn't take hold. Yeah, I haven't heard of one.

We have a similar thing going on in eastern Washington with Northern Pike in Lake Roosevelt. And I've heard in a couple other places too. It's Coppin, Australia. Where it's Carmel. Yeah, absolutely. It's Killamon site. a couple other places too it's cop in australia where it's carl yeah absolutely kill them all it's kill them on site northerly nor these and uh it's roosevelt and banks lake in eastern

washington that's what i was told uh arapaima that's a cool fish yeah and that's are they all right they weren't but it's sort of a success story because uh they're they don't move that much you know and so it used to be a traditional and still is but like a they have to come up for air so it's a traditional like spear fishing harpoon yep uh yeah the boys i was with um like their dads that was a market fish trade fish they'd kill them and salt them yeah for very small amounts of money and they just don't know yeah that's got to be a tough tough fish dude they make cowboy boots out of them things skins yeah they would get a dart and they would get a prong into it and then just basically handle it like a whale really with a line just yeah the goal is to get it tethered you know to

get a toggle in it and then you just whatever nantucket sleigh ride slowly yeah you just slowly yeah once you get a rope on it you just it's just it's just a drawn out procedure you were you were in ghana yeah but no i never did it but i'm just saying they were telling me about how they would do it they were basically that you'd come up or you'd find it basking and like the first order of business was to get a toggle in it with some rope and then and then it would begin the process yeah the species in guyana so i there are a couple like scientists recently figured out there's more than one species and the species in guyana is apparently a lot like fatter than the other species. And one guy, one biologist works down there says that he actually thinks that they'll get big, a bigger, like a 700 pound or something.

He thinks that he thinks that that's the biggest, it's going to take the record. Yeah. But that's a, that's a thing with, I mean, this whole project, I always assume like there are no rule, like you could fish fish the fish can be caught however like the only thing is like okay where you know where was it caught how big was it I always assumed that I would hear from people biologists and fishermen all over the world with stories of bigger fish like I I didn't think it was gonna be me going out and trying to gather information I'm walking the fish yeah I, I thought there would just be,

you know, fishermen like talking about catching big fish. I thought that it would be like reported, but they just don't get that big. Remind me again right now, the current freshwater record is? 661 pounds. You know what you ought to do, man? Why don't you just get like a little pot of money

and start like a global derby? Yeah. So with Stingray, we're like, I'm 99% sure that they get up to maybe 1,000 pounds. So,

it's just what we were able to record yeah and luckily able to like tag and now we're getting information about it but we're i'm pretty sure that they get a lot bigger um you know what are the chances the one that we found is that is the single biggest fish it's not so no no no there's no well no that's not that's not true yeah. Are most of the biggest fish females that you're seeing? Yeah, the stingrays. Apparently that's the same with marlin as well.

The biggest stingrays are females. Interesting. They typically anchor themselves to the bottom as well. When you're fishing for them, yeah. So you hook into one and it'll go down to the bottom and basically fishing for it is trying to get it off the bottom. Yep.

And then it also weighs 600 pounds. There have been many times where we nearly cut a snag and it turned out to be a stingray. Yeah, I've had both. Yeah. Where I thought it was a snag and it was a stingray. Yeah. It's always cool when you just have something that's,

you just cuss in and then it starts to move yeah dragging the boat yep you don't think there's a great big white sturgeon up there land locked up there i'm gonna go up in the stick somewhere i'm curious yeah the global big fish derby dude my money and i'm biased but my money's not a good old American white stirrer. Yeah, I feel it. Because I'm a good American. Well, the other thing is, too, is all these records and stuff. Like, if you start a derby, then you have to have rules. Yeah, why don't we talk to the IGF about that? Talk about that.

Lord hope a blood sucker doesn't latch on to your world record stirrer. Heaven forbid there's a lamp ray on it IGFA all of the records so they're much smaller than like the largest documented fish oh yeah the biggest white tail deer

he wasn't killed by a hunter yeah and so IGFA record for giant catfish stingray arapaima it's all much smaller than oh sure the largest fish because you have to follow all the rules oh yeah it's just way different yeah yeah like the biggest whatever it's like it wound up being that it just washed up on the beach one day yeah dead or whatever which from a like biology perspective is fascinating so like that's i you're okay yeah for my work i include that but

you know it wouldn't work for a derby so your book came out when book was published uh april 25th how's it been going it's been fun good yeah it's great book did you book events yeah still doing them yeah it's been great it took uh took over 10 years to write so really it wasn't a quote 10 years ago did you know you were writing it 10 years ago I knew I was interested yeah we know so we I worked with Stefan Lovegren who's writer with National Geographic and we've worked together forever and so we wrote the proposal in 2011 and then spent the last 10 years just traveling around and gathering information you know was where was the publisher ever kind of be like hey what happened to the book there were a couple publishers oh okay

i got it so but a lot of landing with university of nevada which is where i work yeah which is where you work yeah that's great so it all it all it all worked out in the end and we didn't know i mean started out look asking what question is you know what fish is the world's largest and yeah um it wasn't until this last year that we found a larger one so yeah but like i said there's a question mark that lingers over. Oh yeah. There always, there always will be.

And it's what I'm going to, you know, it's what I do. So I'm going to keep working on it. And, but if you, uh, let me ask you this. If you had,

uh, and you kind of answered it, but if you had to guess, um, it's, it's, if you had to guess, do you think the record will stay with that stingray species?

Or do you think that, or do you, do you got a feeling like the catfish is going to blow it away or what? I want the record to be broken. Like, cause that's, that means the fish are healthy. But are you betting on the stingrays? Or are you betting on some other thing? Like just from your hunch, right? Come on. Like, you know, Tommy's betting on white sturgeon.

I'm betting on white sturgeon. I'm going all in. Yeah. I mean, I think it's the stingray, but. You do? So they're like, yeah. There's these stories from way back when of much bigger fish. Dude.

Yeah. Divers from Bonneville Dam coming up with these stories of these dudes. These 20-foot sturgeon as big around as VW Bugs. I grew up with those stories, man. Well, and those big catfish eating people yeah yeah or lock like loch ness monster if it's come on don't be come on no but no but i'm saying if any like you hear so many stories yeah when those stories turn out to be true maybe not loch ness monster but whatever like that's good like that's interesting it never it very very

rarely turns out that those stories are true, but I hope, I mean, I hope someone catches a bigger fish next year. It's like, if you've been to the Mekong, millions of people fish in that river. You,

you would never believe in a million years that the largest fish could occur there because of the amount of fishing and other stuff that's going on there. So the fact that it's still there is great. I hope there's a bigger fish out there. I hope the arapaima in South America, I hope they catch 700-pounder next year. So I got one last question for you before plugging your book again.

If you go to the Mekong River and I take a crawler, leaf worm, put it on a hook, flick it out, am I probably going to get hit fast? No. Oh, I'm not?

No. I don't mean by the giant catfish. I mean just a hit in general. No, no. Really? Yeah. So you can draw on a worm and not get a hit. There's so many people fishing.

Yeah. So like I went on the river one day and I, for like five miles, I counted a thousand nets. Oh. Yeah. So that's what I'm saying about how it's incredible that these fish are still. They got a prana type species there?

No. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. South. I mean, South America, it's still, I mean, they have, I forget what that species, but the prana, like if you try fishing in South America, like piranha in a second has been my experience. Sure.

Yeah. You throw that bait out there, you're going to get a hit. Yeah. Yeah. Because in South America, in a lot of places, people are still selective about what fish they're eating. They want a big fish, certain kinds of fish. Yeah. In Mekong, it's like, I mean mean you catch a fish like that that's that's food

i was in the philippines one time and we were at a fish market and i was expressing to the person i was with that like how could all the fish in the fish market be so small meaning i mean there's it's all fish the size of your finger right and squid and he said yeah it's like this he goes then you'll come in here tomorrow and there'll be a 40 foot whale shark laying there he goes it's just what gets caught man he's like it's what gets caught well if it gets caught it's gonna be here in this fish market yeah selectivity is we work a lot with local people fishing and we monitor. For the last three years, we've recorded every single thing that they catch in their fish trap.

And these fish traps, so it's an arrow-shaped trap made out of bamboo that can be like a kilometer long. So it's like a fight net. Yep. So it's a big wall within like an arrow. So the fish get like, they hit the wall they swim along it's aimed downstream it's in the lake oh so yeah but the lake drains so yeah the fish have to move as the lake drains uh and they catch uh like 120 different kinds of fish and a ton each trap they're like 10 000 of these traps each trap catches a ton of fish a year so it's like just so productive yeah it's crazy but it's very much

you're just reminding me that because they like we some days they'll catch a thousand of one kind of fish and the next day it's something it's like we're trying to understand what's going on but yeah it is kind of trying to understand the system yeah like why yeah well if you're wondering why you'll find a lot out you see that tommy that's hosting you'll find a lot out in chasing giants in search of the world's largest freshwater fish by zeb hogan with stefan lovegren uh host of national geographographic's Monster Fish, which covers as well, the show, right? Covers a lot of the material in here. But like most things, if you really want to find out,

read the damn book. Biology, yeah. It's got a big photo section in the middle. Normally, I didn't get around to it. Normally, when we have people on, I read their book. I'm pretty good about it, but I didn't read your book yet. I just wanted to tell you so you didn't have to think. Now you have a copy.

I don't want you to talk to someone later and be like, that son of a bitch never even read the book i could tell i'm just telling i never read the book i'd like to it looks good it's a beautiful book color photography chasing giants in search of the world's largest freshwater fish anywhere books are sold buy it online yep good luck man i appreciate you coming out thank you yeah thank you thank, Tommy. You're welcome. Appreciate it. Head down to the First Light store. We'll take care of you. Haley, Idaho.

You'll know them when you see them. Dude, this place is crazy. I'm jealous of the mannequins. Plug it a little bit more, Matt. Plug it for us. What do you want me to talk about? This place really is a destination. It's incredible.

When you walk through the front door, there's a great big giant bull laying there with three years worth of sheds laying next to it. That's admirable, dude. That's my bull from 2020. There's also a rifle sitting right inside the door. There's a rifle there. It's a fake one.

Oh, it's fake. Steve Rinella sells father's backpacks over here on the wall. You could just come in here and be like, stick them up. I didn't know this was the women's section. That explains why none of them clothes look to fit me. Well, maybe one day. I think Tommy's pushing for a job down here. Hey, man, he's hired.

No, man, I might be politicking my way into something. Oh, my way in. All right, guys. Well, thank you very much for coming on, man. Appreciate it. Thanks for having us, man. Thank you. Yeah.

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