The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 494: Golfing with Brian "The Butcher" Harman

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

Steven Rinella talks with Brian Harman, Danny Bolton, Janis Putelis, Ryan Callaghan, Hunter Spencer, Randall Williams, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics discussed: Whisper-yelling at your kids; Jimmy dickin’ around with a fossilized clam, then fwap! right in the neck; how the Brits invented the game; why Steve hates golf; “take a breath, be a predator”; when you can tell who's a snorer; an old trophy that holds two and a half pints of Guinness; the Ciguatera tracking website; face-to-face with a goliath grouper; the cycle of mercury intake; how Brian's dad hates golf more than Steve hates golf; the golfer’s relationship with the caddy; the difference between being in good golf shape and being in good athletic shape; farming during the off season; what the land gets out of it; how every hunt becomes a hog hunt; golf ball accidents; Clay getting grind shamed; a heart-to-heart problem; fixed or mechanical blades?; piles of wood ducks; the movie about moving a boat; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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 is the machine on phil okay very quick hunting story before we introduce anybody because i was gonna tell it anyway so i'm sitting there with my daughter on we'd hunted the youth season what the hell i am going to introduce danny bolton's here because his daughter was there too we hunted the two days of the youth season and then on the actual opening day of general season

we're up hunting and i get to a spot and I'm like approaching where I want a glass from hidden Dawn off the other side of the Ridge. And I slip over the Ridge and nestle into the sagebrush and which I'm expecting my kids to do the same. But at the crest of the Ridge, they find a fossilized clam stuck into a rock. So I'm glass and glass and glass and they're like back and forth messing with this fossilized clam. And they get the leather man, they go back, they come back to get me

and I'm mad and I'm yelling at them, whisper yelling at them. Like, did you notice how I slipped over and nestled in the sagebrush? And you guys are like, actually at prime time in the morning, it's 830 AM. And you're not just crossing the ridge, but hanging on the ridge. I will mark the clam. Did you tell them they were lily dicking around? Something like that? I said a lot of stuff.

It sounds like so much fun. It's Jimmy-dicking. And I'm yelling at the both of them over my right shoulder. Whisper yelling. I'm like, well, come back. Do you want to be here? Like, I'm not up here for me. All that dad stuff.

And also my buddy goes, geez, there's a big buck. It's like coming up this draw 100 yards away. He's kind of got this look on his face like the buck's got a look on his face like, duh, this ain't good. And if I had not been yelling at him, I would have probably detected it. Yeah. But it splits and takes off running, and my daughter, she's not going to do a quick shot, you know. And we see it go over a hill.

We see it go over another hill way off. And this area we're in, you can, like, see the tracks real good. So we go over there. We eventually pick up the tracks. It was pretty exciting. And we go over another rise. And all of a sudden, this thing explodes out of, I mean, from me to Danny. Out of the, he was like laying under the sagebrush patch.

And my son is quick to shoot in any situation to a fault. I said, get him, Jimmy! Meaning like if the opportunity were to present itself. Do you know what I mean? Like whatever, it stops. You had that nuance in your delivery there. I was like, get him, Jimmy. And he started raining.

Oh, flop right in the neck. So it's like he, like, yeah. Nice buck. And dude, my daughter was upset. Because in her mind, that was her deal. So how'd you navigate that? She's still pissed. She's still, I'm navigating that by planning more.

I'm navigating that by planning more deer hunting trips. How did you initially determine who shoots first? Because I was toting my daughter's rifle. Okay. We had all kinds of junk. I'm like carrying the rifle. Yeah. She was like, you carry carry her gun you never carried my gun you know and i thought about whether that was true or not and i think he might have had a point but i'm just like i don't know i'm like i'm nicer to my

daughter than to my boy um i don't know why that's all danny's daughter got her first buck. Yeah, she did great. Like never shot anything with a rifle before and, uh, had her practicing and I had a little awesome stock on, uh, three bucks.

And then we ended up getting to a spot where they dipped into a nice little ravine and we couldn't see him anymore. So we kind of moved up on them and got to one 80, got her set up on a tripod, which is perfect from where I was standing. I't see him anymore. So we kind of moved up on them and got to 180, got her set up on a tripod, which is perfect. From where I was standing, I could see him, but I realized from where I set the tripod at her height, there's still a lot of brush. That's a good realization when you're taking kids out.

It's like, it's right there. What do you mean you can't see it? What exactly is the problem? So it was good though, because it gave me a time, like I could squat down and tell her like, hey, okay, the thing's right there standing broadside.

I'm going to move up 10 feet. Once I set the tripod down, it's all you, you know? And I really stressed with her to squeeze the trigger and don't rush it. And she, we moved up and she took her time

and took the shot, but then she would, the thing, she hit it and I didn't see exactly where she hit it. I was looking through the binos, but it only had like 10 feet to go for his out of sight. And it ran forward and she was really stressed that she made a good, you know, I don't know if I made a good shot. I think I really like yanked the trigger, which I don't think she did, but she just

like, we knew that was kind of our opportunity. We had been stocking it for like an hour and this thing was about to dip out of sight and then it would be a big stock to get back on them. So she did like, which is good. Cause you're like, Hey, you know, take your time, but hurry up. But this is the time if this thing moves, you know, you're not going to get a chance at it take your time relative to the amount of time we actually have yeah there's only i understand but even that but not really but she got it she's like you know i knew that thing was going to move so i like felt like i just had to shoot it right there and perfect shot calibers will be running

for these daughters i got a seven-year-old i'm trying to. Six-five creed. Perfect. Yeah. Can I give you a hot tip? Please. Okay, then I'm going to introduce you. If you keep winning these golf tournaments and you got the money, I would get a six-five creed more. Get the Sig Cross. Okay. It's just like a dream for kids. Perfect., get the Sig Cross. Okay.

It's just like a dream for kids. Perfect. And get a suppressor. I got cans. I got the cans. My kids can. Got to get one perfect built. She's good with like, got a suppress 22, shoots it without her.

I mean, she's great, but she's itty bitty. And so I don't want to, I know when we were coming up, it was like, all right, you're big enough enough now here's this 270 that weighs nothing and kicks like a mule and oh yeah i shaved the trigger down it's super scary right you're like but everybody else had to deal with this exactly of course it is it's like this fire baptism you know like it's entertainment for everybody else yeah i'll give you the pitch on it um sig cross yeah it's got a collapsible stock it's got a two-stage trigger first off they're small you can adjust you can you can the stock's adjustable very easily the cheek comb is adjustable and it's got a two-stage trigger which just makes sense to them yeah you're like pull through and it's gonna. And then when you go a little more, they can drive tacks.

Perfect. Yeah, they can drive tacks and those things, but with a suppressor. And then it's got that arc rail deal on the bottom, so you can put a hefty bipod on it. Nice. They can just shoot. There you go. They laugh after they shoot it.

That's cute. Because they're expecting it to be something it's not, but then there's no recoil, and they like giggle what you know they like they like shooting tell me your tip to steve about the earplugs and stuff oh even with the suppressor i'll double earplug them because they conflate they conflate recoil and noise and it just becomes this package do you know what i mean yeah for sure that they don't like and they think it's the kick but it's yeah but if you definitely like if you deafen them you put foam earplugs put a headset on them put a suppressor on it they'll say it doesn't kick

but it's like because there's just no noise you know i mean it's like they to them it's all this whole bundle of unpleasantness. Right. You know, and it really helps. Brian, you're listening to Brian Harmon. Happy to be here.

Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. The only other golfer I would entertain having on this show is Trump. Have you ever played golf with that guy? I have not. Really? No, no Trump,

no Trump yet. Really? No Trump. No Trump yet. Really? Professional golfer. I thought he kind of ran in those circles. He does. He does. He went full. So I don't know if you follow the politics of golfing.

No, I don't. Well, I know there's a lot of trouble right now. Right. So we had a big kind of split. You've got the live tour and the PGA tour. And Donald Trump aligned himself with the live tour. And that's the place that took some investment from Saudi Arabia?

Yeah, directly funded by the Saudis. And people are mad at the Saudis because of the... What was that guy's name? Not Pergosian. Khashoggi. Khashoggi, yeah. I mean, mad at them for a whole host of reasons, but yeah.

Yeah, it's very, very, very convoluted. Them being like a kingdom and all. Yep. Yeah. No personal freedoms type stuff. And then comprising an astonishing number of the 9-11 hijackers. There's a lot to it, Steve. I was going to say.

You probably want to weigh it all. Right into the. I was going to say like right into the middle. Right into the goal. Age. We're mad at the Saudis because how old are you? Then you would pick your topic. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, no, I think if you got back to the 1920s, no one would have been mad. No, then it's just a far-flung kingdom. It's just like it was oil and then people mad when the hell was that it doesn't matter we're talking about golf yeah yeah only golfer we'd ever have on what what county you from what what county yeah don't they call you the something killer from something oh the uh no that was the yeah so yeah i'm over there i'm doing doing interviews after the rounds and they ask about hunting. Why do they ask you about hunting?

So, tell about what you won, the British Open. Won the Open Championship. And you guys just call it the Open, Corinne was telling me. When I was a kid, it was the British Open. Now, it's the Open Championship. Because they just know. They just decided, I guess. Because there's no competition.

Yeah, it's open competition. No, no, no. When I say open, I'm sorry. If you say the open well yeah i grew up the open was the u.s open okay but the brits commandeered they just they took it they just took how do they do that something like that no they just oh they invented the game we'll start there or that's fair so anyway they they look up um they don't they don't like the they don't like hunters

over there at all i've gathered i didn't realize that um uh so they're asking me oh you know i'm like wow these guys are super interested about hunting this is great i could talk all day about this and so they just knew you won and they already are prepared with the fact before i'd won this was like okay second round they've already done their little opposition research. They did their dig. They're like, oh, this asshole's got pictures of animals on his Instagram. We're going to get him. And I'm just up there like, yeah, I farm all summer for the deer. We deer hunt.

Then we duck hunt. Then we turkey hunt. Then we fish all summer. And they're like, well, what do you do with all of the animals that you kill? I said, well, I butcher them. Like, what else would I do with them? And so the next day, the tabloid's like, Brian, the butcher of Hoylis. And so they think it's like this horrible Hoylis.

Oh, this is really going to throw him off. I'm like, I love this. This is so nice. All of my buddies are like, oh, my here's a golfer golfer you'll like oh yeah that's what happened and then we had the baseball player pete alonzo on because he won the home run derby and talked about right after the home run derby then people then i wind up getting like i have a big text message web around the you know just people that are interested in stuff and so anytime something were to happen like with you and then them making that big deal out of that i will like find out

about it from multiple people and if i hear about something from three or four people then i'll be like okay this needs to be paid attention to because i don't know if you know but we goof on golf and a lot yeah i've heard now i've heard i should say we i i'll point out Hunter Spencer's here he I thought this meant a lot um until Yanni pointed it out it doesn't until Yanni invited me to think about it more clearly it was described to me that Hunter almost played college which I realized meant that he played high school right but in head, I had it built up more than that. Like played golf in college. Almost. Yeah, I was like just good enough and then realized

maybe baseball's my thing. Yeah, Yanni pointed out that's called a high school golfer. That's great. But then you quickly realize there's a massive difference between being good enough to beat everybody

that you grew up with and then playing D1. Oh, like beating the dudes down the road. Yeah, exactly. Several larger populations. Oh, this population turns into this. It just keeps smaller and smaller until you get to the high school golfer. That's pretty far up the trickle down.

The food web. How many guys played high school football? I will tell you. I'm sure you're a fine golfer. Play whatever you want. My high school, the way they ran the golf team, this might be all high school golf teams, but it was basically like an open tournament during the week

to see who would make the team to then go travel and do the actual game is you know, the actual game is what I would call it. Uh, and I was like, well, shit, that sounds pretty fun. And so I showed up, um, borrowed my dad's golf clubs and was like, oh, I'll go try this out. Cause it was like, anybody can do it. And it was for me, it was either do that or do track, which I hated or go to work. So I was like, well, maybe I'll try this one. Track golf or work. Yeah.

Um, and, uh, yeah, quickly found out that I was like, oh, there's all these other people. And then me, it was, it was a, I, there's all these other people and then me. Yeah. It was, I was- You're just out for a walk. It was a bad situation. Yeah. Yeah. I thought about this yesterday driving home.

Here's the main reason I hate golf. When I was a kid, we grew up on a lake. Mm-hmm. And it was common to whap golf balls out in the lake and then you'd go dive for them. Right? So you- Sounds fun. Yeah yeah it's just real common do you guys use whap as a term often at your level of golf no i would uh no i think it's a northern now and then you'd set that ball on the tee and i'd get one of those you know the driver and you'd have in your head like i'm gonna cream this thing dude and you're picturing it like

sailing across the lake you know and you cock back and just give it the what for and just could never just rolls oh yeah it was just like so maddening man do you want you'd be like whoa you know and there's nothing so your your hatred of golf is born from your inability. Just wanting to sail it across the lake. General lack of skill is what led to your... But I'm sure he's the only one. You want to sail it across the lake, and it winds up halfway out, your neighbors die. The first time I shot a bow,

there's no way I was any good at it. Just throw the bow down. Ah, bow hunting's stupid. I've always hated painting and music for the same reasons. Tell me real quick, too. You got two hole-in-ones on a round. Yep. But on an official round.

Yeah, official round. So that was- How'd that work out? 2015. It was an expensive bar tab, I'll tell you that. We were playing just outside of New York City. So the tradition says you make a hole-in-one, you've got the bar tab for the night.

For the night? For the night. Ouch. Just for your group or the whole? No, the whole shebang. It's like a rite of passage. You make a hole-in-one, all the drinks are on you all night. I don't know if you guys have heard, but New York City,

the drinks are not. Oh, yeah. Hopefully you had some winnings to counterbalance the bar tab. They're not fantastic. Yeah. Oh, it's $20 beer night? Sweet. Thanks.

Normally you get free cars sometimes in tournaments when you get a whole. Nothing. Nope. Nope. How much was that bar tab, dude? $20,000. More than two grand, less than five probably. I would have confiscated everybody's cell phones

and been like, here's the deal. There's no inviting other people into this. You definitely play it smart. It's like, ah, take a long shower in the hotel room. Oh, that's where we get dinner before we show up there. So at least you get to weed out some of them. No one's ever done three. No.

And three people have done two. Three people have done two two It's just a freak Who are the other guys that did two I don't know So not like Greg Norman You like that Jack Nicklaus Oh look at you two

When you hit that ball Is there a point before the ball lands That you're like oh this thing's going in? That's a good question. I mean, I've had three on tour total. They've all been good golf shots.

Obviously, it went in the hole. I guess you can screw up. So it's not like it came off a tree or something. No, no, no. It came off the windmill a little luck i mean you let it go and it's it's going and you know it's good but you never you never know you never really know yeah like for me it's like you try to get in this place where you're just

you're in such like a mode of execution and so it's just like you're just like ticking off like hit one all right i executed that one and then you're just like ticking off, like hit one. All right, I executed that one. And then you're just like, all right, what's the next one going to be like? So it's not really anything specific. I don't remember. It's just like, oh shit, it went in.

Great. That makes the next execution easier. I can take a break. I can take a break. When you're in that mode of execution, do you allow yourself to celebrate in that moment, or do you have to quickly tamper that down and go, great, I got it done, move on? Try to stay as even keel as possible.

Anytime you try to execute something and you're too high or too low, it's bad. I've been starting to relate that a lot to bow hunting, because I often see comments about how, how come you're not, and it's not just to me, but other people, you're not more excited when you kill something, you know, or you make that great that great shot it's like well our my whole life as a hunter i've been trying to achieve this state where i don't not excitable like out of my mind when i

make that shot and all i do is execute and you then it's done properly and you know it happened properly and you know sure later you can you know party and and celebrate And, you know, sure, later you can, you know, party and celebrate. But in that moment, it's kind of like, oh, okay. I stayed cool. I did it. Yeah, in certain parts of your body, certain things in your brain, like, you know, I'm no neuroscientist, but I think that in your

brain is little vials of, no one's discovered them yet, but little vials of emotions. I'm sorry, you said you're not a neuroscientist? No. You're already far beyond. Well, this is my theory. I don't think anybody knows about it, but I think there's these little vials of emotion.

And as you get older, you drain that, the vial empties out. Like excitability, I think you just use it up over time. I think like fear of grizzly bears, you use up over time. And I've kind of drained out my vial of real excitability. Yeah, that's a thing though, your adrenaline glands. Yeah. Like they stop putting out if they're always overstimulated

unless i see a big buck of kids i still i steal a quote from you all the time i thought you said it oh please yeah take a breath be a predator oh there you go so good or wear out your little vial of uh i like take a breath for your predator hey i don't know if you're interested in Neanderthals or not. Took a 23 of me, and apparently I'm in the 96th percentile. You got heavy dose. As soon as you walked in, I felt it. You got that vibe. I felt it. He's got that vibe.

It's that beard, I think. Giant head. Long torso. Speaking of giant head, man, I got a physiology thing I found out there. I've always prided myself on being able to uh tell if someone's a snorer just looking at him yeah do you think do you think i'm a snorer yeah you might be like i look at like i think a guy like bob v or kenny rogers you know i'd be like this guy's got this giant nugget definitely a snorer well there are when i'm still dealing with this ear problem i got i got

a ear problem the bad part is like the older people get the more right you'll be well here's why like well just wait yeah you'll be i thought it was something to do with like a certain like um like if you got a beard down to your sternum uh-huh that like i felt that that leads to snoring But I was down at the ENT place And they're asking me all these questions about sleep apnea And snoring And they measured my neck You're down at the EMT place

ENT your nose throat I got this ear problem So They measured your neck Yeah we call that an emergency ring If you got a 16 inch neck That's a That's how they'll tell

You got a 16 inch neck you're probably a snorer And dude I never knew what I was looking at I just knew I could tell I was looking at the necks Is it only 16 or 16 and above? 16 and above I would think a skinny neck would be more I had no idea about this

It would be like less Less air passage Less Yeah but the bigger neck There's more moving around So you have a heavy duty load of Neanderthal? Yes I was reading this article

this morning um like i've really enjoyed uh over the years how they keep neanderthals keep getting smarter and smarter you know there used to be this perception that um you know that they couldn't hunt they were just like they dragged their knuckles everywhere but then but as these you know they more like did they find at some of these neanderthal sites like uh shells that have holes bored in them suggesting that they would adorn themselves with jewelry that they would etch you know which means they had free time which means they were doing enough things right to have free time. Nanotones are like an onion. Just keep peeling the layers off.

It's just been kind of interesting to watch because we had this idea that other hominids were just really dumb and then homo sapiens just ran over them and look how great we are. But you get into the fact that

these things were in these things were in europe hundreds of thousands of years you know i mean they were in europe longer than we've been in europe right so but these guys in germany have are looking at these uh they found remains of cave lions that had been uh they were found remains of cave lions that had been uh they found remains of cave lions that they deduced from cut marks had been hunted so mixing it up with cave lions projectile point wounds in the rib cages i thought you're gonna say they domesticated cave no that'd be badass wait till next year that's another layer. Wait till next year. That's another layer in the onion.

Next year they'll be like, we found an old bicycle. Yeah, we found cave lions with jewelry on them. It's the damnedest thing. No, what else they have that's cool is they have this cave remnants of a cave lion hide that had um stuff wrapped it had cave lion bones wrapped up in a cave lion hide like and they were you know you don't really who knows what was going on yeah but then they found another hide that had red paint all over it so it's the first animal rights uh or the these researchers those are the other hominids that's what these researchers have to get quit hunting it's always a little embarrassing i always feel embarrassed for the researchers when they lay out what they have right and you know and that winds up being it goes it's

peer-reviewed you're like well here's the height of the line and here's what's in it. And here's the marks on it. And it's very, you know, it's this very objective analysis of what's laying there. But then they always have to, then they start doing media and they have to get into where they're like, well, it could mean. Yeah. It could mean what's so funny is one of the things i'm reading the new york times they about these discoveries is this guy's like well maybe it was and he was maybe it was a show and tell item for when they had to explain to kids about cave lions like you know when you go to like when you

go to a museum when you're a kid they pull pull out a tote and they got a chunk of buffalo wool, a horn. What are three words to describe the way this hide feels? So it's like, now and then they're like, Grandpa, can you get all this stuff about the cave lion? He's like, here, let me get my hide. And I have my show and tell items in there. But the other thing is they just thought that even back then, they're suggesting that they thought it was badass to have a cave lion hide. You were tougher than hell. Hard to argue with that.

Yeah, you think that whatever you got there winning that British Open's cool. Ain't no cave lion. There's no cave lion hide. You know the tradition of the green jacket? What's the tradition at the British Open? They give you this thing called a claret jug. It's a 150-year-old trophy. It's got the names etched of everyone that

have ever won it. It's pretty neat. And you get it for one year? Get it for a year. Where's it at right now? In my house. And you drink out of it, right? Yeah, they built it to, it's supposed to hold

an entire bottle of wine, but it turns out it holds about two and a half Guinnesses. Oh, nice. Nice. Now, because didn't, there was one part of one of those articles that was, you know, trying to be like, this guy's could win the claret jug.

What will he fill it with based off of your hunting background, right? Yeah. Bushers. The butcher, butcher a Hoy Lake. Yeah, beer and bourbon are about the only things that have been in it. Really? That's funny. That's a lot of bourbon yeah yeah well not not a bunch at a time just enough to make someone uncomfortable i guess oh yeah yeah smart move going guinness yeah we recently

talked about i don't know if you were here y Yanni. We talked about hunting squirrels with Kevin Murphy and having a squirrel and a raccoon tree up in the same tree. Was not here for this conversation. Did I ever tell you this story? No. Is that the pinnacle of small game hunting? I thought that this had to have been a thing that has never happened in the history of the world, and Kevinphy assured me he's seen it before where the dog bays up a squirrel and we get there and 18 inches apart

is a squirrel and a raccoon in the same tree coincidence lots of ways to interpret it a guy sent in a guy that was listening sent in a picture he's got of a i mean playing his day there's a black baron of mountain lion hanging in the same ponderosa treed up in the same tree which he thinks is even cooler than what i'm talking about scale is bigger scale is bigger uh i don't even want to get into them all i came up uh my the old saying i had i'll talk about this later i'm trying to develop an old timey saying um and a lot of feedback on that but uh another thing danny i'm telling you this because you're here we're talking about sigwaterra brian this is part of the show where we do listener feedback and whatnot.

Let's do it. Just hang tight. I'm there, bud. By hang tight, it means you're welcome to participate at any time. So, there is a guy. So, this guy took since June when we talked about this. There is a guy that has established a website where you can track Sigweterra

outbreaks and fish. He wrote a little tool for report well he wrote a tool for reporting and finding ciguatera outbreaks around the world so you people that eat a lot of fish ciguatera.info spelled how it sounds c-i-g-u-a-t-e-r-a is that how it sounds that's what the barracuda get in them right yeah that's like the you know like the legend is uh and and uh the legend is and i was always taught this uh even though i grew up nowhere near the ocean you're you're a hell of a spear fisherman now though if you put a barracuda in a ant like you put an ant on a barracuda i won't eat it he won't eat it if it has ciguatera

and some bahamians tell me that that's ridiculous but then they had some other equally ridiculous sounding way to find out if something has ciguatera, but they also have fish that you just don't eat. But what I didn't realize is in some places, barracuda have ciguatera. In some places, they simply don't. In Louisiana, you'll see in Louisiana, Texas,

you'll see barracuda on the menu at the restaurant. So in the Gulf, all of the people eat amberjack that come off the reefs. But East Coast, Atlantic Ocean, like won't touch them. Full of worms. It looks like a mophead if you clean them up. Oh.

In the Gulf, the trout have worms. Right. Atlantic, nothing. Like we eat trout nonstop. Remember, I put a picture up of a whole bunch of trout, sea trout. And a guy's like, oh man, good luck with those worms. And I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Oh, you just don't see that parasite. And I do know, like when we used to king mackerel fish, if the sharks were bad, you'd have a king mackerel coming to the boat. A lot of times, tax man gets half of him, you know, but if you ever had a barracuda come to the boat, they wouldn't touch sharks. Really?

Nope. They didn't want it. They didn't want it. Yeah. A lot of the barracuda come to the boat, they wouldn't touch sharks. Really? Nope. They didn't want it. They didn't want it. Yeah. A lot of the barracuda, right? Like it's the little fish that get the ciguatera and then the barracuda eating those little fish and it just, it's a buildup in their system. Yeah.

And so that's why the predators have it real bad. I just, I've heard that, that it comes from those reef fish, but then you think about the Goliath grouper and I don't know that they have it. And all they do is, I mean, they eat everything on the reef. Yeah. Like down in the Keys now, we used to go down every, for two weeks at the end of every summer, we'd go lobstering and there were very few Goliath grouper. Now, when my parents go down, they go down and they say every time, every, all these

lobster holes that they've, they've saved over the years, there's a Goliath grouper there and there's nothing on the bottom. No lobsters. Oh, he's in there mopping up all the lobsters. Oh, everything. Everything's gone. I mean, they get to be four or 500 pounds. I mean, they eat everything. Can you eat?

Can you catch those and eat those? You can get tags for them now. Tags now, right? Yeah. We're on a dive in the rigs this year. We're in one that's only 30 feet of water. Like a lot of times they're just, you know, unbelievably deep. This one's in 30 feet of water.

And I went down and, and he's down there. Oh, like it looked like his head was like a five gallon bucket. Good God. And he's snapping his jaw at me. He's like coming out of this underneath this metal clacking at me. And my first thing is like, I was like, I wonder if you could kill this thing by hitting it in the brain. And then I was like, oh my God, that's a Goliath grouper.

Like, it's just like the first thought was how you would ever manage, like how you would ever manage a fish like this. Jonah wasn't swallowed by a whale he's swallowed by oh and i came up and i'm like there's a big they're like don't shoot it do not they're intimidating oh my god yeah because you could have put i mean you look like a school bus you could fit you could definitely fit your head in his mouth. No doubt. Yeah. Danny, does it make sense to you that it's an outbreak? Well, I only know about cicatridae just from Hawaii. I don't know like worldwide how,

because California and stuff, I don't think they deal with it. And, but I do know that when we catch barracuda like offshore, the pelagic ones, there's not as big of a concern versus the ones that are eating the reef fish. Yeah. I think that it is. Because it's a bioaccumulation. Yeah, the reef fish yeah i think that it is it's

a bioaccumulation yeah but i think it's like i think it's cyclical and it gets heightened it's like the way red tide but i'll close it by saying this not close i mean you say whatever you want but from my perspective i used to think of trichinosis as like kind of magical um and then i eventually got where i really understand trigonosis uh with siguitera i'm astonished how um in my social circle i'm astonished how little it's understood uh like i'd like to have a siguitera expert on the show for not a long time i've definitely had it and not even really paid attention to it right like you just have you got sick yeah i've gotten sick but like only looking back on it i just felt odd and like the whole hot cold water thing but i

just didn't pay much attention i was just like oh whatever it'll that's what the bahamians are telling me the hot becomes hot cold, cold becomes cold. Yeah. Yeah. My buddy, Mark Healy, has, I think, a lot of bioaccumulation.

Yeah. And so he's pretty sensitive to it, gets it. He can be like, if I eat this giant trevally, I will get this. Yeah. Some people want fish,

like the aloo we caught. Yeah. You know, did you eat some of that? Oh yeah. I ate the whole thing. Right. No problem. And some people and certain fish will have it in higher concentration than others.

And you know, I've had friends get sick over just one fish, one fillet that night they had and they got sick. Yeah. But as the group that we were fishing with, the, uh, kill candies, um, they, they're like, you can eat whatever you want because you

don't have the history of eating these fish that accumulate sequitera. Yeah. It's like the mercury too. Right. So why'd you just do that little sequa? Cause that's how it's spelled, right?

No. No? I don't know. If it little sequa? Because that's how it's spelled, right? No. No? I don't know. If it is, then the website's wrong. It reminds me, I think I've told this story before. I was in my doctor a long time ago. Where the EMTs hang out? But yeah, it was a regular doctor, but he said tinnitus.

Tinnitus? And I always call it tinnitus but he said tinnitus. Tinnitus? And I always call it tinnitus. He said tinnitus. And I said, is that how you say that? And he goes, I don't know. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

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

Welcome to the to the OnX Club, y'all. Yeah, man. Corinne may be a great Sig with Tara expert. Okay. For like 30 minutes. And maybe somebody

who's had it real bad too on the same podcast would be great. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Or a survivor or a member of someone, like,

like a really tragic story where someone didn't make it, but then we have their next of kin. Yeah, I was about to say, it'd be hard to get the one that didn't make it. I definitely like to talk to

a guy who's all about we could get a medium and just talk to someone. Yeah, the Mercury and the big game fish is, that's an odd thing. Well, I had a friend Talk to a. That's what AI is all about. We could get a medium and just. We're going to get him up there. Talk to someone. Yeah. Yeah. The mercury in the big game fish is, it's, that's an odd. Well,

I had a friend struggle with it for like three, four years and just sick. And then eventually couldn't get out of bed and like hurt to ache and all his, all his joints ached and didn't know what's wrong with him. Mercury poisoning. Had to go on some crazy diet,

get all the mercury, stop eating fish. And he was eating it like a couple of times a week. Right. And, uh, it was bad. Like he couldn't walk. He thought he was dying.

Yeah. Seth got mercury poisoning. Some people say he didn't, but he did. Do you believe that he did now? I do. Yeah. I believe that he got mercury poisoning. It all adds up.

How did he get it? When you reconstruct the couple months of his life of eating big halibut and pelagics five nights a week. And that him and his wife developed the same symptomology and had talked about it to other people before they talked about it to each other. Yeah. It's just too much. I love how they're. The sore knuckle, the sore hands and stiff joints and they

were in just like a cycle of eating fish where they always had some more and so they were like constant that was the most hilarious part to me it wasn't ever like we're gonna sit down and eat fish tonight it was just like this well there's some halibut out and then we had you know or whatever and so and so over and now that's left over and just like a cycle of uh cycle of mercury intake and then i read one time a dude that didn't even like fish i had to get rescued off a cruise ship because he bought a cruise ship package which gave him all you could eat sushi and they had to fly him off the cruise ship for

mercury poisoning crazy that's wild no because he was getting his money's worth does it just accumulate in some fish or is it all fish yeah so like especially the bigger fish like tuna and they started finding it in cobia yeah uh east coast which we all love it's fish that eat fish that eat fish that eat fish. And tuna, they'll say like anything under 20 pounds, like you're safer, especially for pregnant ladies and stuff. You're not really supposed to eat fish. But like if it's under 20 pounds, they say you're a little safer. Again, I don't know how that's like, could be an old wives tale, but they say the bigger the fish, the worse off you are.

Well, no, I think the reason it makes sense, right, is like they, they grow super fast and then they hit like a plateau point. So when your, your income to growth is in a certain range, right, that makes sense. Yeah. Like mahi-mahi, right? Like mahi don't. Yeah, but like an ahi stay at a hundred pounds

to 200 pounds for a couple of years or whatever. Yeah, exactly. But that first, you could go 100 pounds to 200 pounds for a couple of years or whatever. Yeah, exactly. But that first, you could go from zero to 60 pounds in one year, you know? Corinne, you can cancel that expert. Just wrap that up. This is the last thing, and then we're going to talk about the formative years of Brian Harmon.

I like to periodically revisit this because it's one of my favorite quotes of all time. I grew up, so my dad hunted and fished, well, fished with other World War II guys. And meaning, not that they were necessarily world war two guys guys of that age okay he was really good friends with this guy named ron spring ron spring had owned springs sporting goods and was a bait supplier so he was in the live bait business he did wigglers crawlers shiners right i one time went to profile ron spring and he wouldn't let him and i grew up around him i mean i grew up with this guy uh he wouldn't let me profile him because he was no way going to give away trade secrets about how he catches leeches how

he catches wigglers and carry that shit to the grave that's beautiful in his 80s i was like ron what's the difference now i love that not gonna do it would not let me go out with him catching bait for the bait store which i respect him for big time anyhow this dude had been raised on great lakes fish i mean not just the bait but that's what he fished and ate fish that's all this dude ate and university of michigan went and found all these old timers that had grown up eating great lakes fish and he would have to go down there every few months to do these tests and studies and shit because they're trying to check on these elevated heavy metals from people that consume diets of fish out of the great lakes and he'd go in there and they'd give him a list of shit they'd

be like okay ron you need to go to the grocery store and buy me a pound of butter two pounds of burger jar of peanut butter some asparagus some bubble gum some mouthwash right whatever the hell and they'd wait a minute and they'd be like okay what are you supposed to buy at the store and he said to me one day he goes steve i wouldn't have remembered that list if I never ate a piece of fish my whole life. So grew up in Georgia. Yep. Grew up in Savannah. What came first, golf or hunting?

Hunting and fishing for sure. First? Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. I didn't start golf until I was probably 11 years old. I played baseball, football, basketball, played all this stuff. Didn't find golf until like a little later in my childhood. But, but, uh, fish, you grow up fishing with my dad is, is how.

Was he a golfer? No, no, no golf in my family. He might, he might hate golf worse than you do. He has no time for it. How the how the hell did you get into it? So you didn't come from a family of golfers? No, no. My mom's a chemist. My dad is a dentist.

No golfing. So when you started taking off and golfing, was your dad like, great day to go fishing, Brian? He just, it was all that I cared about once I found it. And so I spent a good portion of i mean i pretty much spent all my time dedicated to trying to see how good i could get as all i wanted to do who got who like some neighbor gives you a golf club or like what happens i i'd accumulated like just through sports i had sort of like loose equipment for things like my dad owned a trash can in the garage.

Like I had, I had small like clubs just like, Oh, like maybe he'll, maybe he, cause we live really close to a golf course. Like maybe he'll like golf one day. And like,

just like I've accumulated all this nonsense for my kids, just like trying to throw whatever at them. Like, well, let's see what, see what you got a hockey stick, a baseball bat, a golf club.

Right. Got, got all the, got all the essentials. So, um, I, i was home sick from school anyway i'd skipped a thursday of school when i was home i forget what the circumstances were but i watched a golf tournament on television um and i was close enough to where i could ride my bike up to like where we could practice like hit balls and that's how it started really yep that's it it spoke to you watching a golf tournament on tv i found a conviction very early in my life and i'm i'm

very grateful for that i mean i loved it just right off the rip yeah i played baseball and i loved i pitched i loved to pitch played shortstop but and i loved being on a team but i didn't i didn't like i i didn't like how i could have a great game and not, I mean, I hate saying that, like not win the game. I liked having the, like the almost the vulnerability of the moment. On you. Right. Yeah. So give me the quick trajectory of how one goes from an 11-year-old who discovers it to pro.

Like what are the hurdles? So I fell in love with the game. I was practicing every day. I was playing with some older kids and playing from like tee boxes. So the golf course I was playing was too long for my ability. Like I wasn't big enough to hit the ball far enough to compete with the kids I was starting to play with, but I would get these golf magazines and I'd look at the scores of these local like nine hole golf tournaments. And I'm looking at the distance that they're playing from. And I'm

like, Oh, like if I moved up and played in these tournaments, I think I would do. Okay. So I had my mom signed me up for one. She drives me down to St. Simon's where I live now. Well, you're talking about playing at a place Where it's not as far from where you first hit As it is to the hole No no no Yeah yeah yeah So you got individual holes

You know how golf is like Yeah there's the Part 3, 4, 5 What do you call it the two You got two balls That's tee box Yeah and then you got The ladies one Right so you've got

Several sets of those Tee markers Right So you've got like I'm familiar with two sets Ladies tees You know senior tees Men's tees

Championship tees I didn't know that Oh yeah so it's Okay The whole gambit So I'm playing from A couple tee boxes back With older kids

And I'm shooting these scores. And I'm no good. Because that extra little bit of yardage is what's. Yeah, because I can't reach the holes in time to make a good score. No, I got you now. So I'm looking at the magazines, looking at the scores. Like, I think I can do this. So my mom drives me down.

I win my first tournament. And it was like, just gone. So that went into bigger. How old were you then? I was 12. What? Did you feel like you were cheating when you moved up to that first tournament, and it was like just gone. So that went into bigger. How old were you then? I was 12. Did you feel like you were cheating when you moved up to that first tournament? You were like, oh, my gosh. I did.

I was like, this is much easier from here. I should have been doing this this whole time. But you did this. I always picture that it's such a common story in athletics is the overbearing parent. Especially in golf and tennis. Trying to live their dreams through their children. I was super blessed. Totally opposite.

Even like now, we'll be at a big PGA Tour. We'll be at the Masters. My dad's there watching begrudgingly, of course. He's like, Brian, come over. I'd rather be fishing. Yeah, he's like, come here. It's always like, man, look at all these acorns right here. Man, look at this track.

Look at this deer track right here. So he's totally unengaged. But I'm glad that he wasn't super push that he like, wasn't like super pushy. Cause I don't know if I would have found the same love and conviction for you. You have that baggage with your relationship to the sport. Well, I don't know anyone. I mean, there's on tour now there's tons of, there's guys that had overbearing parents and guys who had not involved parents, but the ones who had overbearing dads, don't talk

to them. Like most of them have no, yeah, don't talk to them. Like they, most of them have no, no, yeah, they have no, I mean, how,

how could it stay together? Like it just, like if a parent is so selfish to try and achieve a dream through their kid, and eventually the kid is going to resent them in some form or fashion, in my opinion, I mean, I've got, I've got,

it sucks the joy right out of it right yeah i mean like look at you know like darth vader and lou skywalk perfect example yeah well we just talked to dave when you did that and won the tournament here's the part the here's the other part about the parent thing that's hard to understand is um you got to have someone driving you around and and getting the gear and all that yeah my sweet mother she took me everywhere even though she didn't care about it she i mean she cared she cared way more than my dad does but she never it was never she was always very supportive she was never like hey you know it's you know nine in the morning like you should be practicing like that never happened that did not happen but if you pointed out that you wanted to go to something she was gonna enable you she was there i don't there's no way i would

have made it and been successful without that support i would have had to have gotten really creative but you could have gotten into like you could have been an aquarium enthusiast and she would have driven you to the pet store correct Correct. Just whatever. She was just going to help you out. Yeah. I was, uh, she loved tennis. Um, she didn't play. She just loved tennis. And I played tennis early and played in a few tournaments and stuff like that.

And she really wanted me to be a tennis player. Uh, but when I decided that golf was what I wanted to do, it was just what, and she, she never brought it up. It wasn't like. Golf and tennis are like kissing cousins. Well, yeah, pretty close.

Pretty close. Individual. So, except one of their arms gets freakishly bigger than the other one. Oh, does it really?

Oh my gosh. I didn't know that. Rafi Nadal's left arm is three times the size of his right arm. Whoa. Really? Yeah.

Look it up. Kind of walks in circles. I had no idea. Seriously? Yeah. Huge. Hey, do you have a uh do you have like a really uh intimate relationship with a with a particular caddy yeah mine that's what i mean yeah that's the thing i did so so how many years like how many years have you had your caddy we've

been together 11 years probably the longest tenured guys out there it's a really interesting yeah when i learned about six hours a day together when i learned about that and golf that surprised me this is this is like a um it's a it becomes a partnership oh 100 yeah and those guys are they're really good at what they do i mean my guys got to know how to read me and know when i'm running hot and running cold and you know it's like not just being a caddy, it's like a psychologist. Oh, yeah. He probably knows me better than my wife does.

Yeah. And I probably know him better than anybody else on the planet. Is he just on a cut of winning? How do you guys sort that whole deal out? Yeah, he's on a salary every week and then he gets a percentage of all the on-course stuff.

Do you guys do monthly reviews and like who reviews smart goals usually just over a beer does he usually over a beer it's tough because when you're in the when you're in the moment and you've got these emotions running high it's really easy to be like well shut up like i don't care what you think right now um so it's usually better just get past it and and have a beer and just talk about it so is the caddy like uh did they want to be a professional golfer a lot of them did mine did not he played college golf but it was apparent to him very quickly that it wasn't his future so you when you're a caddy you could you settle into that like that's you that's what you want to be doing yeah i don't think there are any caddies i don't think there are any caddies.

I don't think there's any professional caddies now on tour that have aspirations of playing. It's just they're just good at that. That's their job. Huh. Yep. It's a real profession. It's hard work. I'll tell you something about my personal business.

Please do. A book agent, traditionally, a book agent is going to pull 15 okay okay now you share so first off thank you for sharing some intimate details of uh of how books work i got yeah i mean i got agent tatty they all get percentages that's i'm curious like just i don't i'm not asking about your relationship with your caddy what's a like if you win a what do you guys call it a purse a prize yeah the tournament yeah if we win win the trophy no yeah no what is the cash amount called the purse what do you guys use yeah so yeah just the i mean the purse the purse is usually considered the entire thing we're playing for.

So it'd just be like the winner's cut, winner's check. Okay. Winner's check. So you want to know how much does my caddy get for a winner's check? A caddy. What generally is a caddy? Oh. Industry standard.

Our high school golf professional. Industry standard. Hunter Spencer. Industry standard, 6% to 8% of the weekly take, and then 10% of a win. So they're pretty invested in this. Yeah, they make good money. They do good. They make good money.

But that's funny, too, because then it becomes real emotional. It's emotional for both you guys because when you're up there and you're close he's he's licking his lips too right well yeah well he's like hey if if my guy here can doesn't screw this up i get like a good chunk of cash well there's two ways to look at that okay do you do all this for the money uh no but it makes it possible right right the money so it's like it becomes very complicated the money it's and i can speak for my his name's scott twain he's one of the most fantastic people on this plane he's my caddy the money is always like oh oh wow that that too oh yeah you know what i mean so he he works he does he loves to do it and i love and i love to do what i do and it's

about us trying to beat the golf course beat all the other players beat the conditions and like that feeling that we get when we've done something successful like that's why we we do it that's why we do it together that's why we met each other like that is why we do it and so then like the money's like oh cool man like high five no i could picture that like if you're up there and it's down to the wire you're not like counting dollars you're chasing the wind well that's and it's like so i think it's a great exercise and i swear someone came up with it to mess with people but when you get done so in golf you have to keep your keep someone else's score like this is sort of the pageantry of the whole thing you have to keep the other person's

score and then you trade scorecards and you sign your own scorecard so it's like a little bit of a i don't know that yeah it's it's it's's, it's a little, it's a little antiquated, but so you get into this. Presumably someone else is also keeping score. Right, right. So say you've got, say there's two,

two people playing. I keep their score. They keep mine. It still goes on now. Oh yeah. Can you imagine like Tom Brady, how many passes did you complete? But if you get the,

but if you get it wrong, if you sign the wrong scorecard, you can get disqualified. Whole thing's kaput. Whole thing's gone. It's cheap. You're talking at a tournament. At a tournament.

I am still with pen and pencil, or pencil and paper. Writing down some other dude's. Writing down some other score. And then I signed that one. So every scorecard has to have all the scores and two signatures for it to be legal and official. I would have thought at this point they would have hired a guy to watch. Well, I'm sure there are those people. Yeah, there also are.

We could just be like, hey, bro, today, you can't do that. And you're doing it because he's telling you or because you're counting? No, I'm counting. Okay, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like an official. Yeah, I know. But anyway, so you go into this area where you trade your scorecard sign,

turn it into the guy who checks them, and then that's that. But in that room, they have the PGA Tour has this printout, and it's like first place this much, second place this much, third place, and it's got it all the way down. This much of the winning. And it's always fun to watch guys get in there and oh you know here i'm gonna finish 25th and eight way time would be right here and i just especially when it's a young guy and i look at that i'm like i ain't got it he ain't got it like if that's what

you're caring about right now like he finished 20 like when i finished 25th i'm like 24 people beat me like what's the best way to get up there because the biggest check's at that top one yeah so he's finding solace so he's you know going down the xy like oh okay okay i'm gonna be isn't he is he also just trying to make enough money so he can play next week i mean maybe but or are there not anybody in on the professional tour that's that starving there's nobody on the pj tour that's going to lose money for a year now. But jump back to the caddy conversation. Because of your guys' bond and your common goal of just getting better,

you don't have to worry about Scott throwing a little HGH in your iced tea. No. Treating you like a thoroughbred racehorse that maybe just needs an extra jump on the line. I wish. We get drug tested like every three weeks, every month. Really? Oh yeah. World anti-doping.

Wow. So what... First off, how old are you? 36. Okay. What's an old golfer? 37. No. There's guys in golfer? 37. No. There's guys in their 40s that are still doing it really, really well. Matt Kuchar, Zach Johnson, these guys, they're just kind of timeless.

But, I mean, so there's a senior tour. That starts at 50. There's a lot of guys in limbo, you know, 41 to 50 years old. Oh, where you're dragging ass before you can. Well, you just, you know, it 50 years old oh were you dragging ass before you can well you just you know it's a it's a physical game you um hit the ground as hard as you can with a stick for 30 years you know shit wears out what winds up so what's the thing that goes is it is it driving distance yeah and then i think it's the want to you know know, I've got three kids. We spend 30 some odd weeks on the road a year.

I do. They probably travel with me. I don't know. It used to be 60, 70% of the time. Now it's 20 or 30% of the time. Because of school and everything. Yeah. So you just end up, you know, you're by yourself in a hotel room for 30 weeks a year.

And at some point you get to an age where you're like, I don't want to do this anymore. Like this is. Oh. It's like, I'd just rather be home. You run out of grr. Yeah. You run out of, run out of heart. I don't want to do this anymore. Like this is, it's like, I'd just rather be home. You run out of grr. Yeah. You run out of, run out of heart. Run out of want to.

Does your caddy hunt fish? Yeah. He's come with me a couple of times. He loves to, his brother, his older brother is Bob Tway, famous golfer. And he just bought him a little place out in Colorado. So he's about to trailer his whole tractor and all his outfit up to Colorado to try to help him out what do you mean just doing shit cutting stuff down oh proving the land oh so he's doing he's helping do some wildlife management landscape work oh that's cool so

he loves the he loves to hunt he fly fishes a little bit um he's been down to the keys a few times fly fishing but he uh mostly just hangs out with his boys and comes to work what uh how do you rank your guys's uh performance in like the snappy dresser lineup and clothing and golf is such a nuts deal now i i I'm as simple as it could possibly get guy. I don't like to- You don't wear pink pants. No, sir. No white belts, no pink pants. I don't dress up like an Easter egg.

What colors do you golf in then? Oh, solids. Just drabs, earth tones. Graze, whites, blacks. So you don't have to tell me this with you specifically but just in a norm do you guys lift every day like like what's what's the expectation on physical training for what you guys do uh at home i train uh three days a week in the gym i do another day of like uh like body reassessment and then most of us have these pts that travel

and so we're getting constant work on the road i'm only one day a week training but uh when i'm on the road i'm at the course probably six days a week so you know there's a difference between like being in like really good athletic shape and really good golf shape okay like golf shapes more flexibility and repetition and you know we do most most of my gym stuff is to try and increase distance but most of all like um decrease injury like just trying to bulk up as much as i can to where i my body can take the impact because like me think about you go chop wood all day, hands hurt, shoulders hurt, back hurts. Like, that impact and that sudden deceleration, it just, like, it wears you out. What's the most common injury?

Backs. Backs, hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders. That's where it goes. And then, like, how does your hunting and fishing calendar, like, summer's out. Yes. is your hunting and fishing calendar like summer's out yes what's the hunting fishing calendar for uh well your program well we just we we switched the um the schedule around a little bit on the pga tour it's where if you have a nice year you can take most of the fall off what's a nice year you mean you want some money you've won some money you're finished in a certain echelon so that you

can afford to take because because last 11 years, our seasons, they've started in October and they've ended in mid September. And so it's a constant, like what? Yeah. It's a constant year round like schedule. So like the most time I would have had off any given period would have been

like three weeks of no golf, no tournament, nothing like important that I felt like I had to play in. It's like the way that you keep your job on the PGA tour is that it's a year long, like points list. And if you finish inside of the top one 25, you get your job for the next year. And so it's basically been like a constant revolving door the last 11 years. Like if you don't win a

tournament you win a tournament you've got a two-year exemption or whatever it is but you're almost constantly under stress of like oh i have to go play at least a little in order to get ahead enough to be able to play right but if you win a big tournament you get pulled out of that you you end up with different exemptions and different access. It's all about your access to these tournaments. You don't have to chase it year-round. Right. So if you win a tournament, you're thinking,

well, I'm going to go take some time off. Yeah. Is that what you do then? Yeah, I do. I've touched a club once since the Ryder Cup, and that was four weeks ago. What have you been doing? Farming.

Unsuccessfully. Butchering. Unsuccessfully. Tell me about your farm program. What have you been doing? Farming. Unsuccessfully. Glittering. Unsuccessfully. Tell me about your farm program. What do you got going on? I bought a place last year, a big piece of hunting ground about an hour south of where I live. And it's just, I've been just immersing myself and trying to manage it for the wildlife. What kind of ground is it?

Wet. It's very, very wet. A lot of upland pines. In Georgia, we do the whole pine tree farm, regenerating the land, stuff like that. So I've got- When you say pines, what, loblolly pines? Loblolly, slash, very few longleaf anymore but when they you

know they come and they clear cut and then they replant the pines and rows so we've got probably half of it of my farms in that and that's like a 40 year cycle or something yeah yeah 30 to 40 years um so lots of burning down a lot of burning yeah but it's tough because i'm right on the ocean and at every tide the wind switches. So you've got the time to burn up for it's like, oh, we want a perfect west wind. I'm like, yeah,

but it's high tide in two hours and the wind's switching. Yeah. And there's all these You got neighbors to worry about. everywhere, right?

So I mean. This is embarrassing if this is a widely known thing, but the wind switches with the tide swing? Yeah, because of the, well, I mean, the water that's in, you know,

the water temperature. Oh, because the water temperature differentials. The water temperature and the land temperature are different. And it's not like you'll have a 20 mile west wind. That warm water goes out and colder water comes in.

It'll flip it, you know, slack tide, you know, it'll change a little bit. So if you're planning on a west wind for a burn and all of a sudden you get an east one, well, now you're running a head fire through something that you couldn't and you might be in some trouble your your hunting land is on the coast it's it's within yeah it's within half a quarter mile of like not open ocean but like back river brackish ocean got it got it so we do i've got about 25 acres worth of food plots that we tried. And, um. What'd you try for that? We do this, uh, it's, it's oats, wheat, um, rape, radishes.

Uh, we tried to, I mean, a lot of years we'll top seed it with, uh, these iron clay peas. Try to stay away from like the rye grass. Why is that? It's not native and it, it'll seed out and just a nightmare. Oh, it spreads. I got you. It's like, it spreads like a radish don't. No one ever has a radish infestation.

No radish infestation. No, our turkey numbers are really good. We've tried to, like I said, burning, but the water's been the big problem. Too much of it. Too much. Too much water. You got beavers? Got so many beavers.

Is that right? Really? But those are southern beavers, man. Yeah, they're not the pretty ones they're not i'm not sure their fur is worth worth much of anything is your is your dad uh he likes his land deal probably loves it he loves it so he'll ride your ass about the farm he retired last year and he's he's my man he's my land manager right down he's down there he's doing great so what um what's you guys what's you guys goal to place well that's that's where i struggle because i've got you know some sorry so for example i've got i've got these trees that are

ready to be cut ready to be harvested and you cut these trees down and it's like well now now what do i do you know traditionally there you would replant it in rows you know with this mounded up with these pine trees and in 30 years we'd cut it down again and i just don't know if that's the way like i don't i don't know if that's so i'm tempted to make it to try to restore try to figure out what it was and maybe restore it that way can I help you with this

of course you can can I connect you with Robert Abernathy that'd be fantastic oh dude we got yeah I mean if you just realize

that uh trees didn't naturally grow like that no no no no no no and there could be a wildlife benefit? No, the reason

I struggle with it is that, so I bought this farm selfishly because I love to hunt and I love to, I love everything that goes involved.

I like it top to bottom. I like the farm. I like killing them. I like eating them. I like butchering. I like all of it. But I don't know what my kids

are going to be into. Yeah. And it's like, and part of that, it's like if I replant these trees, because it's a successful way to grow timber and to harvest it and it's sustainable so you're being torn is like do you want to pull it out of commercial right don't want to stop you know

taking any sort of income off the land because i care about the landscape or you know do i kick the can down a little future crop your kids right you know it was funny because uh we're going to return to this and i want cal to talk about this long leaf deal the robert abernathy who i'm friends with he used to be he was the ceo or president however they run it of the long leaf alliance he's retired cal tell you who's in there now. But I met people with Robert down in South Carolina who were showing us, and they were literally showing us, like, my parents planted this for us kids. Yeah. Because the turnaround.

Oh, for a longleaf is. No, no, the loblob, sorry. Oh, loblob, yeah. And it's for telephone poles. That's right. And the turnaround is you plan it um and they were talking about that 60 years ago whatever the hell it was whenever the hell you get a phone pole yeah this woman this elderly woman remembered as a kid out planting these things yeah and it was

sort of like they were planning it for her to have money you know well like like i said it's a very slow but predictable turn you know and that's the thing is that i i'd like to find out if there were actually because a long so like a loblolly pine tree and a slash pine tree they're mature 20 to 30 years old and then at 30 they're almost i mean i've got 30 year olds that are telephone pole stuff right now okay yeah i'm probably off on the years no no but so for a long leaf, which is what our traditionally our Southern forests were consisted of, it's a hundred years before it's a mature tree. Like it's a very slow growing.

So it's not. That's your grandkids. That's not a sustainable. Well, I mean, you think about all the things we use pine trees for, cardboard boxes, all the stuff that is just constantly going, like it's not feasible to plant long leaves if you have a tree farm. Understood. So, but it was traditionally what was there.

Yeah. And you get that like, I don't know what they call it, Savannah, but. Yeah. So it'd be very. There's big trees and all that shaded grass underneath it. And they used to have the quail and all that.

Oh yeah. And our, and our turkeys were, were way different. And i'm not so sure if our turkeys are if it's a because we've got a turkey problem i don't know what's i don't know what's causing it but declining numbers declining numbers and i i thought the other day that maybe i mean i've listened to a bunch of different stuff about it but i think it might be our, I'm not sure if it's the actual type of tree, like loblolly versus longleaf. Because I don't think there's much nutrition

for a turkey in a pine tree. But I think our forestry practices, like we used to have to keep the lanes maintained and then you would burn it so that we could access it, like so that we could walk through it. And you end up with all this great habitat for turkeys. Well, now these forestry machines, they'll go anywhere. Like, like the terrain means nothing.

And so we've stopped burning. We've stopped maintaining these lanes because when it's time to cut, you just go in there. They're going to cut it no matter what. Cut it no matter what. And when you burn these lob lollies and slash, you, you, you weaken them, you know, slightly, but enough. And we get these pine beetles and that'll be that.

And so a forester guy will tell you, don't burn anything. Whereas all the turkey guys are like, oh, we want to burn everything. But the guys that are just looking at it for timber. Oh, that's right. No burning. No burning. You got to go. It's very close to you, but, uh, Tall Timbers, have you heard of that?

I have not. Um, so they work with, but they're like a kind of fire ecology. They work with state, federal, tons of NGOs. So, uh, Quail Forever, uh, NWTF, they do a ton of work with Tall Timbers and vice versa, but it, it is, they have like a giant database probably like for the amount of precipitation you get your soil type everything

on what that what your options would be for prescribed burning and and what was historically there because a lot of what they do is they'll take these old historic trees, whether they're like pulled out of a swamp, um, just an old stump that's sitting on somebody's land and they'll go through there and they'll find what, uh, the pre heavy European management style, uh, fire cycle was in those areas. And then they can look at the seed bank as well and be like, oh yeah. And here's all the, all the plants that were here and kicking butt. Um, it's interesting though, the damn economics of the farm will always be in the way.

Um, well that's, that's sort of why it's, it's like, I didn't buy the farm to make money on it. I bought it to enjoy it. And like, I feel a responsibility to, to, to restore it back to the way that it was. Yeah. But it, you know, it's a long game. Yeah. It is.

I won't see it. Right. So, which is, which is fine. It's fine. It's totally fine. And I'm fine. It's fine guys. totally fine and i'm i'm fine it's fine guys it is it is but yeah you want to have it set up to where your kids aren't going to like feel the pinch

right away and but you know like using cattle as deforesters oh man um and and doing cool stuff like that could that supplement the the timber heart know, a relatively hands-off approach on the timber harvest? It's certainly what they used to do there. There's these old, they call them these lift stations where they, they drill down into the Florida aquifer. And I had, and one was leaking. So I have a well guy come out and he fixed it. He goes, man, they probably did this in the 19-teens. And then we've got these giant, these water chestnut trees.

They call them cow oaks. He's like, I bet what they used to do is that they probably used to graze their cattle underneath all these big cow oak trees and this is where they water them so they have a couple of these different water stations interesting hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated.

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Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Now that I had a chance to think about this, here's what you ought to do. Okay. Put this whole thing in some kind of conservation easement.

That way, even if your kids turn out to be lunatics, nothing they're going to do about it. They'll be a little tied up. You hamstring them. Get a forester in there and say, let's say I manage this for timber. What, during my kids, how old are your kids? Seven, five, and one.

Okay, so I got a seven, five, and one-year-old. Let's say I manage this for timber, and I know no one has a crystal ball to understand timber markets and futures and all that, but let's just say, reasonably, what could they expect to pull off this timber harvest? Take that dollar figure. Go out and win that much playing golf.

Put that into some kind of little fund for your kids. So now you don't got to worry about screwing them out of the timber money. There you go. Because you just left them the money. Game plan the next 80 years, just like that. Over coffee. Then you plant the whole thing in Longleaf. This is why you came here, right?

Yeah. Right? Everybody's a winner. Not everybody gets. Not the reason I came here. This is the reason that you're not going to get a meat eater mug, because you're getting all this information. Like everybody else gets the mug.

You get a whole life plan. Yeah. This is great. Yeah. Fantastic. My good friend, Doug Dern, he always, one of his thing about land management is he's always talks about, you know, there's what the farmer gets out of it. What's the hunter get out of it? He says, what's the land get out of it?

Yeah. I agree with that. Cause I just, I want it. When you look at that old, like pine forest, Savannah look with the, with the grass, it's just the most beautiful landscape. And I mean, I wish I could snap my fingers and make it happen tomorrow, but I just, I feel like we're missing an opportunity. We end up with these super dense, thick pine forest that you can't walk through.

Um, provides great cover for the deer, but for our, for our upland birds, turkeys, they're, they're struggling. How's your dad at trapping? Pretty good. Is he? Yeah. Yeah. My brother, my brother's the trapper.

He's a, he took over my dad's dentistry practice, but he's a very meticulous, very meticulous person and trapping really, really kind of lends himself into him being really good. He gets after the midsize predators. Yeah. The coyotes, he's hard on them, really hard on them. Raccoons. Raccoons. Really good at it.

Raccoons, skunks, possums. We could trap, we could trap raccoons. Um, I have a healthy, healthy population of them.

For the upland birds. Yep. They're, that's what you need to knock out. They're brutal. And we've got hogs. Our hogs, I think are almost as bad on our turkeys as anything else.

Do you hunt the hogs? Yes. Yeah. You like to cook those up? We do. We make, make sausage. We don't, uh, we don't fool with all of them, but, um. I mean, you'd kind of assess them.

Yeah. I mean, we, we, we've put up, we've put up some good numbers on the pigs. Uh, there's a bunch of them. It's a, it's, it's. Are you trapping them too then? Trapping them. Nighttime.

Yeah. Huh. By any means necessary. Yeah. It's a constant battle kind of a shoot on site yes on the farm like if you're if you're if you're hunting there and your deer hunt does not become a pig hunt then it's like like grounds for disinvitation nice yeah yeah so are you do you remember your tour card's been pulled exactly yeah like it's like man pog show up whatever we're doing it's a hog hunt

yeah do you remember and maybe i'm wrong about how georgia plays into this but um quail is just generally like way down yeah the quail population in georgia is almost non-existent you've got some some central georgia guys that have got these giant tracks of land that they've managed for, you know, released birds essentially. Okay. And they've ended up being able to cultivate some smaller populations. But I just don't think that we possess enough brooding habitat for it to be sustainable long-term. But do you remember, are you old enough to remember back to good quail hunting? I don't remember good quail hunting. So it was that long ago yeah yeah i don't remember it and i still haven't

heard of anyone you know in texas they've still got some the decent wild quail but in georgia it's got to be several couple generations at least so that when you're doing your when you're working on your land that's not a that's, that's just kind of a fool's errand. If it, if it comes to fruition, it'll be a result of us trying to manage it for turkeys. Because it's a lot of the same sort of activities. But I can't imagine with our coyotes and our birds of prey that, that a quail has got much of a chance. I don't know how they ever existed in Georgia in the first place. Like there are so many birds of prey that,

I mean, a quail is just not very good at staying alive. That's the truth. They're very poor. It's habitat. Yeah. Yeah, that change in the habitat regime, right? The, I know Georgia, it's DNR, Georgia DN regime, right? Um, the, I know, uh, Georgia, it's DNR, Georgia DNR, right?

Yeah. They, they have some really cool programs on, on some of the state WMAs where they have sustainable wild quail populations. It'd be like drawing a big game hunt where like you put in for a draw to go hunt. To go hunt it? Yeah.

Really? Yeah. And then if you get drawn, you get, um, you can bring people with you, but you're still held to like the one person limit of quail. No kidding. Yeah. I don't apply for this. Well, it's, I'd love to do it.

I didn't even care before and I want to apply. Just hearing there's something to apply for. I'd like this. But there are these like test cases there. And then there's a bunch of private places as well but there's these uh you know state managed places too where they're like this is what you need to have these populations and that's that's why they exist but yeah it's there's it always comes down to habitat yeah Yeah. I border, I have a WMA neighbors to my north and south. And our Georgia DNR, they need more funding and more help.

It's just, it's like overwhelming. That's where all the hogs are coming from? Overwhelming. It's like they have an overwhelming piece of ground and they don't have enough manpower to keep it. So yeah, there's the hogs. Because what happens on that ground? Well, so, you know, in Georgia, we've got these great initiatives. We've got the long leaf initiative where they'll basically come in and plant the trees for you and they did that all over this wma but the seed bank of slash and loblolly is so

heavy because that had been timbered before that it just shoots up and it's like well that's that i got you know and then you can it's like they try to do too much at once it's like okay we're going to take you know a thousand acres and put them in longleaf it's like well the burning conditions aren't good enough down here because like even when a longleaf is itty-bitty you set it i mean they need fire to force them like into tree form and so you can burn all that stuff but if you're not burning it every single year you know a loblolly or a slash pine tree will outgrow a longleaf 10 to 1. So they put them in the ground, but then they don't have the funding and manpower to execute. Or the weather, you know, if you don't get the, if the weather's not right and you don't get it.

I mean, there's years to where there are places that you just won't be able to burn because it's too wet. The weather's not right. Don't get a good day, whatever. And if you don't do that, a loblolly is going to be three times the size as a one-year-old than a longleaf will be as a three or four-year-old. You see what I'm saying? So if they ever don't burn it, then it's pretty much as that. What's your kids' interest? I mean, I know some of them are too young to really have much, but what's your kids'

interest in all this? I've taken my, so I have a daughter, two sons. My daughter's seven, son's five. I've taken them down to the farm. They love it. We ride around. They shoot that little.22. I'm just easing them into, I'm easing them into everything.

As much as I loved fishing with my dad and hunting with my dad, I mean, there were days where we're fishing and it's pouring down rain and we're still out there. And it's like, dad, I'm not having fun. This is not fun. And it's like, it almost took a period. Like it almost took a little while. I almost had to like re-find it as a young adult. Okay. If that makes sense.

Yeah. It's almost like we. You got a little burned out. A little burned out, but I wouldn't trade that experience for any, you know what I mean? Like, it's hard mean like it's hard to it's hard to like oh i wish my dad hadn't taken me that day like of course not but um i'm just trying to ease my kids into it because i want them to like it you know i want them to really like it i want them to want to go um because if you're having to drag them down there it's just

not it's not fun yeah can i ask I ask you more financial questions about golfing? Sure, man. Sure, man. So throughout the year, there's a huge massive variability what you could earn playing throughout the year. Like good years, bad years. Yep. What do guys do?

You have an expectation. Whatever you figure out, what your house costs, family, everything. And you have an expectation that you need to turn that. There's some dollar figure that you have to hit. And everything else is gravy. But what are these guys doing that go through that thing and they don't hit it it's a lot of stress i mean do you then spin out and have to go get a job and then that job pulls you out of trying again the next year that's happened a lot there's there's

a lot of guys that um i i just i've always operated to where i don't purchase things until until i feel like i did i wouldn't have to finance them like i just like i've always operated to where I don't purchase things until, until I feel like I did, I wouldn't have to finance them. Like I just, like I've got things that I want and those things haven't changed in size. Like I always wanted a farm and like, just cause I was successful doesn't mean that the acreage of that farm tripled. Right. So I've just never let myself get into trouble in, in that sense, but it's happened a lot. Like, like as I've gotten more successful,

like my house size doesn't need to get any bigger. Like I've got a 24 foot boat that I bought several years ago. And like, it's the biggest boat that I can own because it's the biggest one that I can take care of. If I had a bigger boat, it would be a complete pain in the ass. And I'd have to almost pay someone

to like take care of the boat for me. And I don't want to have to do stuff like that so do you always have to live where do you always have to live where you can where you have to anticipate that you might just have a shitty year yeah i mean that's that's real like there's no base salary for with your company your card nope zero how many americans make a living on like not not in the golf industry but how many americans make a living playing golf um probably not like you know golf pros and coaches yeah i'm touring touring pros that make a make i mean it depends on what probably 150 and then out of all that how much um out of your annual do you do you do all kind of you

probably do endorsement deals and sponsorships and all that yeah is that is that more important than the than the no the the win the winning money is more important it's about as pure of a meritocracy as you get is that right yep so make more money on the course than you do off the course uh for the most part but the better that you do on the course than you do off the course for the most part. But the better that you do on the course leads to more off the course stuff. So it's all about like how you perform. But you should love that. Why do you hate it so much?

I don't know. Because I was telling you, it's hard to hit the ball. You're just no good at it. It's hard to hit the ball as far as you wish. I'm just no good at it. I'm not good at fly fishing, but I don't hate it. I want to hit one of them. I want to hit one of them

i want to hit one of them ones that has that slow you want to get that slow curve to them draw or fade oh yeah learn about draws and fades wow and you can lean back and whistle as it goes yeah pull you know i met um bryant gomble one time okay and uh he killed a seagull with a golf ball yeah that happens almost killed a person that's even worse yeah we're playing uh up in the playoff event ridgewood country club's got this drivable par four so it's par four i'm hitting driver and i just i slice it over to the left and the guy's looking up one of the guys and the guy looking up hits him right and right on the side of the mouth splits him all the way almost up to his temple and so i walk up and blow his teeth out no it didn't blow his teeth out just just split him wide open somehow so i walk up there

and the first thing i see is the blood sure there's this puddle of blood and the first thing i think of like that's dead deer so i walk up this guy this guy was such a great sport but yeah man those that stuff happens a lot people get hit by golf balls and it is it's a dangerous i would never go i would never take my kids to go watch a golf tournament i mean because of getting pet oh man guys get hit all the time your caddy reaches into his bag and pulls out the latex gloves. Yeah. Yeah. Stitch him up. Do you ever. Stitch him up.

Do you ever strike relationships where you get to, where you get to fish on, or you do any fishing or hunting on golf courses? Oh man. As much as I would. I feel like you could leverage the shit out of that. Yeah, I could, but I have to like compartmentalize it because if all I thought about was hunting and fishing when I'm working, then i would be horrible at what i do so like when i'm on the road and i've i've gotten invited to go do some cool stuff like oh man you gotta go fish here you gotta do this and i'm like i i'm here i gotta work and it's oh really yeah it sucks but so you don't like run out for an evening you know evening we

go like when we play in honolulu we go to honolulu every year and there's this huge flat right behind where we stay and there's guys that are out there and they catch these giant bonefish and you just watch them out there all day long walk around like god damn that looks fun like man you won't let yourself do it nope nope because what would happen i would waste i would either waste time i would either waste time where i should be in the gym, resting or working, practicing. Like that time is budgeted. Like I get there, there's a plan, there's things that I have to do.

And if I made the choice to go out and go fish as much as I would love to like that. Yeah. So you're in Florida and you see that giant eight pound small mouth come out. Yeah. I've got giant. Right. And you're just, that's just compartmental out. Yeah, I've got giant. Right.

And you're just, that's just compartmentalized. That's just white noise off on the side. I mean, we will mess with the alligators. Does your dad have, does your dad have like a travel rod that he brings along to tournaments and he sneaks off? I have to beg him to come to golf tournaments. He's usually just drinking a Budweiser and waiting for it to be over. He doesn't like it at all.

No, not at all. Not at all. That's pretty surprising that you have to be, I guess, that's like just the discipline, man, right? Like just having discipline all the time. I mean, I feel like your success is a result of all the little bitty choices that you make. And I just try to make the right ones. Yeah. What's your diet like?

It's pretty good. A lot of meat, a lot of vegetables. Trying not to eat a bunch of stuff, but I have trouble eating. What do you avoid? Well, I got high cholesterol, so trying to avoid as much red meat as I was eating, but that's been a tough one.

That's been a real tough one. Well, not to be biased against where you're from, but how are you cooking the red meat? that's been a real tough one well not to be biased against where you're from but how are you cooking the red meat are you sure it's the meat yeah um yeah chicken fry cast iron most of the time uh tried to switch over to the olive oil from butter but that hasn't been there as fun yeah no i i mean just like medium rare salt pepper, throw it on the grill. Nice and easy. Yeah.

No, I don't eat hardly any fried food. Yeah. Try to stay away from a bunch of sugar. Yeah. Yeah. I just try to do the best I can. Still high cholesterol, huh? Yeah.

It's running your family. That's it. My dad's got it. Yeah. Good blood pressure. Yeah. Yeah. Good blood pressure of a swimmer, but cholesterol is a nightmare. We've gone through your diet. That's it. My dad's got it. Yeah. Good blood pressure. Yeah. Yeah. Blood pressure of a swimmer, but cholesterol is a nightmare.

We've gone through your diet. Yep. We've gone through your finances. Relationships. Relationships. Yeah. Happily married. Three kids.

How long have you been married? Coming up on nine years. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Nine years in December. And does she golf? No. Does she like to hunt? No. Yeah. Yeah. Nine years in December. And does she golf? No.

Does she like to hunt? No. Sure doesn't. Do your kids like to golf? Not yet. They've got little bitty clubs, just the odds and ends. My five-year-old, he started going to the golf course a little bit, but he doesn't care.

He just likes it because he gets candy when he goes home. Oh, they're not training like four hours a day? No, sir. What's your go-to venison preparations? How do you like to cook it? We do, I do the backstraps and tenderloins, pure style, the rest of it. We just started making our own burger. We'd usually take out the really nice parts, keep those,

send the rest of the processor and get the burger back. Um, Oh, so you do your own, you do your own whole muscle stuff, then just bring it down to get it ground. Right. I gotcha. Yeah. So most of the time we don't like, so it's so warm and humid where we're usually hunting that the meat's almost always coming right off the bone. If we don't have a walk-in. We don't have access to a walk-in freezer. So hang them, meats all the way off the bone, right into a cooler, pick out all the good parts that we don't need help with. And then the stuff that, you know,

the time consuming, the grinding. Because you got to hustle. You usually got to hustle. You can't just go hang in your garage for 10 days. No, we just can't. Like our environment, there's just no chance. No chance. So, um i mean i'm a tenderloin backstrap guy and then uh if i've got time i'm sure that you don't like when people make

stuff into jerky but i love making jerky what are you talking about man yeah it just seems like an anti-purist thing to do with a piece of meat i love it man i was walking around eating my own jerky yesterday so make a ton of jerky. There's nothing wrong with jerky. Clay Newcomb talks about how he's always getting burger shamed. Grind shamed. Yeah, grind shamed. Because he just grinds the whole deer up and then he has to get burger shamed.

He's got to make the big three or the big four. The big three tacos. Burgers, chili, and spaghetti. I need heart help. The heart has been a tough one. I get, sometimes the heart comes out and it's like the best piece. And then other times I'm

like, I don't want to eat this. How do you cook it? I've cooked it the same way every time. Just cast iron and butter. I mean, it's like it's more of a heart to heart problem. Heart to heart. Like the flavor?

Yeah. That was a show. Yeah. Just like some of them and like some it's just like, hmm, this is like a gamey, organ-y taste. Like a bad heart. Like a bad heart. Are you trimming it out?

Just a, yeah, trimming it out best I can. You can put it in salt water. Salt water. And that'll, you know, de-ironize it a little bit. Okay. I might cook you deer heart tonight. Okay. We're going to have deer meat.

Great. Damn sure going to have deer meat. Perfect. Perfect. What everybody wants to know, fixed blades or mechanical? Fixed blades. Fixed blades.

Tell me more. I knew we liked each other. Yes. Tell me more. And this is my testimonial to the Meat Eater podcast. You ready? Yeah. So I've been on four elk hunts.

The first three of which I hunted with Matthew's boat, and I'm using an arrow that's around 400 grains, and I'm using R hypodermics. Now a three for three, first three hunts. But it was very concerning because my arrow was not getting the penetration. It just wasn't. And I'm making shots from inside of 30 yards, made really, really good shots on some of these animals. And other than getting lucky a couple of times, like could have lost after really good shots. I listened to the Dr. Ashby, listen to the archers paradox and started,

started from the ground up, bought the heaviest arrows I could find, um, cut them down. Just steel rods. No, these Easton, you know,

whatever, 10 grains per inch, the heaviest ones i was because i've got a short draw i pull 70 pounds my draw is at 27 inches so i don't have the luxury of speed i've got no speed so i've got to be careful because if i'm shooting a 600 grain arrow like i can't shoot past 30 yards 40 yards it's just it's just not feasible so i wanted to end up with a high 400 finished grain arrow so i did that um built the arrows and then did the uh the not the paper paper tune no knot or no uh fletchings not tuned all the arrows and the last time i went i used a iron wheel 125 so i had 500 grain

finished arrows they were all all noctuned. And 40 yards, the longest shot I'd made on an elk. Slightly quartering to total pass through. Like, just extra 100 grains on the arrow, different broadhead. So I'm a fixed count, period. Yeah. I mean, this isn't exactly like a lab. Yeah, well.

I mean, there's things that it hits and doesn't hit. That's true. I mean, I shot an elk at 12 yards with an expandable, and my error goes in eight inches. I understand. Hit the shoulder? No, it was very dark.

Hits a little back, quartering away, kind of liver into the. Backside of one lung. Backside of one lung. I've been doing some broadhead soul searching. Okay. And I find that you are, not you, but us humans, we're heavily influenced by the last arrow we shot. Okay.

Lost a deer, lost a deer two years ago, which it was either because of the expandable or, y'all mess much with that third axis stuff, like with the sight? Well, I mean, I make sure I'm dialed. Right. Because you don't, and when you sit there in your backyard and shoot parallel to the ground you never notice it and then all of a sudden you start practicing level yeah yeah so i'm straight down on this deer i feel like i make a good

shot you know it it misses you know the deer's facing left to right i make a good what i feel like it's a good shot my deer's right up underneath me and i make a good shot and hits him in the top of the shoulder air goes in this far with the expandable. Don't find him. I feel like if I'd have made that same shot with a fixed blade. Deader than downhill. He's dead. 100%.

Yeah. Because when you're shooting. I lost deer the other day and I hit it too far back. And I kept thinking that if I had had something that. Now that's. And I had had something that opened up. Opened up more. Like a hell hole.

There is no perfect. There's no perfect answer you're probably right you i mean you're probably right yeah and we were in the south it was south-ish south-ish and man those deer when you get up to them you're like oh man that's not a very big deer not big at all like what you're normally thinking of that your aim where you're going to give yourself five inches yeah they're twitchy too it's like five inches puts, that your aim where you're going to give yourself five inches. Yeah. They're twitchy, too. It's like five inches puts you in the bad part of the deer, man. 100-pound doe, 30 yards. I mean, that's a twitchy, twitchy animal. And they're already tiny.

So when do you get what's on your fall schedule? When do things heat up for you guys? You're already getting after it probably now, aren't you? No, I'll start back up. I got one more tournament. No, you guys you're already getting after it probably now aren't you no we so i'll start back up i got one more tournament no i mean you're hunting playing hunting oh man i'm um we got to redo food plots we did them uh two weeks ago worked our hands the bone had this rain coming i it was dry like it's hard for me because i have to pick a dry spell to plant um because i can't get in there otherwise like where the where our plots are like i don't want to run it up too bad so the rain's coming it's dry i'm like let's try it so we go plant

work our hands and bone for two days and then we got five inches of rain supposed to get like half an inch get you want a nice dry planting weather then some nice sprinkles and right and then that's it uh so it didn't get that so i think we got to redo all that but when does hunting heat up for you guys man i'm just i'm so focused on trying to get this place like ditched and you're not even worried about it not really i mean i sat the other night and i was like damn this place is still wet i guess like i just want to go buy an excavator and just start moving water oh yeah you got that where you can't relax until you get unpacked kind of thing right Right. Right. What's your wood duck situation?

You got a bunch of- Piles of wood ducks. Do you really? Piles of wood ducks. See, that's so funny. When does that happen? Where we are, we're like, ah, wood duck. What? But someone kills a redhead somewhere like, oh my God.

Right. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. You guys got good wood ducks. Great wood ducks. See, that was our duck. Go kill your three wood ducks, be at Waffle House at 715, man. Yeah. That was our- Sounds very nice. Growing i see that was our duck go kill you three wood ducks be at waffle house at 7 15 man that was our growing up that was our duck you know that was like when in michigan the opener you get some mallards but you know we would focus we would hunt ducks heavily for a week

yep and it was wood ducks you know right when the season opened so like right now basically and then um now man i would just kill to go uh my buddy i'd mentioned earlier my buddy doug he gets wood ducks on his little pond i'm always like it'd be so fun to go in there yeah it's funny so there's a um there's a a wma duck hunting place in darien it's called retz allen but it's a they're old rice plant they're old rice fields. So it's diked up out of brackish water. So it's fresh-ish, fresher water inside the impoundment. Yeah. But in order to get into the impoundment, you've got to take, you know, we had a little duck boat and it's got a winch on the front.

And you got to winch up the wooden pullover and then basically ride the boat down into it. So we're getting out there. You ever see the movie Fitzcarraldo? I have not. Put that on your list. Okay. It's about moving a boat. So Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, we're hunting out there. You ever see the movie Fitzcarraldo? I have not. Put that on your list. Okay, got it. It's about moving a boat.

So Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, we're hunting rats every single time. So my point is like, we would go to this effort, leaving at two in the morning, getting there, decoys out, so that we could shoot like one buffalo head and like two ring necks,

as opposed to like going and sitting in any swamp and killing three wood ducks. Oh my, what? So we would literally move heaven and earth to kill anything but a wood duck. That's amazing. Because they just don't have like the cultural value. We don't have the, we just don't have the variety. But it's also just a very tasty duck.

I'm just sitting here. They are tasty. Looks good, tastes good. What more could you want? I got a question. From Brian's place. Like, can you imagine like i feel like my hunting would have been vastly slowed down like i wouldn't know as much as i know if

i was like well i can go to this spot kill three super tasty ducks and a pig every day right i don't know 100 i could i could almost guarantee that. Yeah, late December. That's when I got to come down? Three wood ducks in a pit. Is this an invite? I can't tell. Man, whenever. I'll come down whenever.

And it's three woodies a day? Three woodies per person, yes. And we'd be getting drakes. Yeah, you could probably pick out drakes. But it's hard because it's so dark because you're in a swamp. They fly early, and then it's done. There is no mid-morning fly and you guys don't do an evening sit you can't you already got you already do the morning yeah

pretty much impossible to do it legally because they're just coming in after dark yep and you've kind of ruined the spot right well they they yeah i mean you you've totally blown their roost up yeah uh when you when you roost on it's it's so what are you going out into in the morning like what are they coming into to feed in? Just cypress swamps. Really? Mm-hmm. That'd be gorgeous.

Dude, I want to come down there so bad, man. Come on, man. Come on. You shoot all the wood ducks you want. Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We can have that hemmed up.

Hunter's down that neck of the woods. Can he come with? We would. We had at least. You guys talk golf. We were part of this. Let me show you how I did it back in high school. I cocked back. with we would we had at least golf we had we were part of this let me show you how i did it back in high school we were part of a cool duck hunting place down in lake city florida where it was a phosphate mine and to mine the phosphate they were always having to move the water around so they

would end up with different giant holding places and then flooded timber so we'd go in the flooded timber and try and kill the gadwall and the theal. And then we'd hunt the big bodies of water for the canvasbacks and the redheads, ringnecks. So we had like, but all that being said, like we could have just been killing wood ducks the whole time. We literally drive like three hours. It's a really fun time in Montana right now. Like pre-storm, we're just like starting to get the central migrations just kind of starting um and i was did a lot of walking and came across all sorts of little odd bodies of water this weekend and um so funny like irrigation ditch sized chunk of water and uh six ring bells flying off of us

you're like oh he's just cool you guys be nuts when you play golf and we have a big tournament in Phoenix every year and then you got this giant holding pond in the middle and it's just thousands of ducks, wigeons.

I mean, I thought you had so much discipline that you don't notice that kind of stuff. I notice it. You don't go, nah,

I got the clubhouse to get permission. He has to make that choice. It would be perfect because they all get up and leave every night too. It's like you got a late practice round or something or you're finishing up late. They all just get up and go.

That was always my favorite part of duck hunting. It's like watching them all go to roost. The lift off. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. So tell people how to find you on what's the best way to track your doings. I don't.

I don't. You do have an Instagram page. I have an Instagram. I don't care if people find it. Is it public public harman brian on instagram do you want to see some why do you not adopt the butcher i haven't can you do that can you change them right you can let's change it we'll change it yeah we're having brian the butcher we'll get it all we'll get this all figured out yeah it's great butcher it's great um and then uh what's the next big uh what's the next tournament you're excited that's like people should be watching well we got i got the rsm

classic in my hometown st simon's and then i'm gonna go play tiger's event in the bahamas and then i'll be like a spearfish after with him maybe after he's pretty good at it yeah he's pretty good guys hang out a little bit i showed him some pictures uh when we used to spearfish a bunch and he was like do you do it with a tank i was like well yeah that time of day he goes well it doesn't count then yeah he's a purist yeah will you will you plug will you plug this show to him and say he should come out and talk about he probably watches it i wouldn't be surprised if he watches it no but will you ask him if he'll come on and talk about spearfishing that's gonna be a hard sell i ask him. You don't like to do that kind of stuff? I don't know if you know this or not,

but Tiger Woods is pretty high in demand. No, I know. That's why I'm leaning on you. That's why we're sending you. I don't want to over lean on you, but that's why you're supposed to bring it up.

Okay. Okay. And for the record. Just kind of wedge it in there. Yeah. Be like, hey man. Oh, nice, nice, nice pun there. Yeah, but it looks like

a great day for golf. Shoot, shoot, shoot. You know, you might want to think about doing and then, you know, something like that. I think, I love to spear fish. Love trying to get better at it. But there's still like, in order to properly talk shit about somebody who spear fishes with

a tank, you got to do it at least once. Right. Right. I would love to go down there and sit and just see, really see what the difference is. Find out just how bad it is. Right. Find out just how icky I feel.

It's kind of like the greatest thing about drinking black coffee is that you get to make fun of people who put shit in their coffee. That's like people who don't use tanks and they spearfish. It's like, yeah, I don't use a horse and cart to get around anymore either. Yeah. But the half and half budget on meat eater shoots does not get messed with. All right, so you got those coming up. Look for the guy with the pink and white striped pants.

Yeah, the one showing out. Look for the guy in the drabbish attire. No, I just go to work. I go to work and I try to beat everybody. That's it. All right, man. Well, thanks for coming on. I appreciate you making the trip out.

I appreciate it. Thank you. It was great. Thank you very much. Sweet. Oh, ride on. Ride on, little cardinal I wanna see your gray hair Shine like silver in the sun

Ride on, ride on, my love Ride on, sweetheart We're done done beat this damn horse to death so take your new one and ride on we're done beat this damn horse to death

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