The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 502: Hunting with Barstool’s Sydnie Wells

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

Steven Rinella talks Sydnie Wells, Brady Davis, Seth Morris, Chester Floyd, Max Barta,  Austin “Chilly” Chleborad, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics discussed: Greasy traps and American elbow grease; blowing your middle three toes off; not being complacent about safety; hunter and dog safety; remove your duck tongues and submit them for science with DU's and The Lavretsky Lab's collab project, Duck DNA; gray areas in waterfowl regulations; Pat Durkin’s wolf-rational perspective and his article on a WI trail cam survey on deer and wolves; the new noodling: urbanites hunting rat with dogs; how nothing sounds better than your own jet boat and nothing sounds worse than someone else’s jet boat; never scoring your deer; would a blank kill a blank?; getting poison ivy from handling squirrels; Sydnie’s origin story; getting studio-shamed; critters on Sydnie’s hunt wish list; accidentally getting a big one; a horrific spearing accident; 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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without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.

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Tell that again, Chester, real quick. The other day I went- Because I'm going to use this to, I'm going to use this to, I'm going to piggyback my story on your story. The other day I went into a gas station in North Dakota and I needed to buy some Zinfandel, which is Zin, Chu. We call it Zinfandel. That's fine. What else do you call it? But the kid wouldn't let me buy it because my Montana ID did not scan.

And I was like, I was jonesing for some because we were on the way back from wisconsin and i had long car ride danielle my wife's in there crying baby it was just like i really needed it she wasn't crying baby no there was a crying baby a crying baby she said my wife danielle in there crying baby i. Like she's in there going, baby! I think I said, and the. Baby! I think that's a song. Maroon 5?

I know. Is it? Maroon 5. Go on, Chester. Anyways, I got. You had a hankering. I kind of got mad, and I never do that. That's what happens to addicts.

I was like. This is a well-known thing with addicts. I was like, dude, here's three credit cards. Here's my work ID. It says photographer on it. I know you don't care. Call the cops. No, I didn't go that far, but I convinced them to get me the Zins.

It was either that or you're going to tear that place apart. I made it through the drive. Don't make me go out and get my chainsaw. Made it through the drive. I'm going to tear that place apart. I made it through the drive. Don't make me go out and get my chainsaw. Made it through the drive. I'm going to piggyback my thing on now. Sure. Okay, so I was in Duluth, Minnesota a long time ago. I was driving across the country.

I took a little side detour up into Duluth. And I'm in a bar in Duluth. And I get carded. I was a youngster back then. And 26, 27 years old. to Duluth and I'm in a bar in Duluth and I get carded. I was a youngster back then and, uh, 26, 27 years old.

And I have a Montana driver's license. And the guy at the bar says, I'm not kidding you. He says, Hey, can you bring a grease trap to my buddy's Pete's joint? And you didn't know the guy? No.

What did you know? I'll give you 40 bucks. What's And you didn't know the guy? No. What? Did you know the guy in Four Corners? He goes, I'll give you 40 bucks. What's that? Did you know the guy in Four Corners? No idea. Really? I hand my bar to my, I hand my ID to a bartender. He goes, you live in Montana?

And I'm like, yeah. And he goes, he knew Montana well. And he's like, he knew where, however we got to talk about where I was going. And he wants me to detour and drop a grease trap off at a bar in uh uh in four corners near here like the corner club i can't remember what the name of the place was it's so long probably probably be there it's the kind of place he says i'll give you 40 i'll give you 40 bucks. All you got to do is bring it there and set it out back. Did you do it? Yeah.

Well, he gives me a box. And it's just a big, heavy box. All sealed up. And I get down the road and I start getting paranoid. It's a big box of drugs. I start getting paranoid. I get down the road a ways. And I get so paranoid that I pull over.

Cut that box open, and open up. It is legitimately a greasy-ass grease trap. Oh, that's funny. Honest man. And I made my delivery, got paid ahead of time. Perfect. So that's called American Elbow Grease. How does this relate to the tobacco thing?

You said you got a store. Because he got ID'd. Getting ID'd on a store. It he got ID'd. Getting ID'd. All right. There's a loose, there's a tenuous piggyback. Oh, okay. Join today by Sidney Wells from Outdoor Sports. What am I saying?

Barstool, not outdoor. Barstool Outdoors. Yes. Which is part, I mixed it. I combined outdoor. Barstool Sports, yeah. Yeah. I meant to say Barstool Sports, but it's barstool outdoors.

Yeah. Correct? It's been a long day. Yeah. Yeah. And tell us why it's been a long day. Because we've been duck hunting all morning. Under the tutelage of our other guest, Brady Davis.

Give us the setup. How would you say, give us what we were doing. So we'd been watching this field For a handful of days You know it's a cut spring wheat field It's been loading up with ducks Loading up with geese Loading up with swans

We actually had three swans decoy today And land Yeah you don't see that very often That's pretty cool That's cool Circled That is not normal Yeah circled around

Came back They're pushing through right now Nobody had a tag? No and even if you did You you can't hunt them here. Yeah, not in the Pacific. In this flyway, if I'm not mistaken, I think the only place you can hunt them is up at Freeze Out Lake. Gotcha. Up north.

So, yeah, we had a good game plan, good setup. Man, I thought we had a heck of a morning. I mean, good time. It was a great morning. You did good at playing clean up, too. Yeah. You're right. It was a good morning.

It was really good. Yeah, we had fun And talked some crap And shot some birds He shoots a He shoots a Old ass 10 gauge It's a 870

It's a Browning BPS Oh is it Okay Yeah You can't tell Because it's painted Like an American flag Yep

I know what you mean Seriously Yeah it's a And it's a 10 gauge It's Cerakoted It's a 10 gauge pump With a 32 inch barrel He calls it the Lord's gauge With an American flag Yeah it's a sarah coated it's a 10 gauge pump with a 32 inch barrel lord's gauge and you hunt with that thing all the time i i hunt with it as much as i can yeah what i'll

tell you is it's a strike killer well every time he hits he's like well that's the 10 gauge i'm like well you still have to aim it yeah it's like there's a little more going on like you could give that gun to a lot of people nothing's gonna happen yeah yeah yeah there's a bit of skill involved for sure that's a 10 gauge for you yeah every time what that is called is that's called leading proper yeah we did have one goose that was it was a heck of a poke with the 10 bore yeah that one high goose that was good. But no, I had a great time. It was fun hunting with you guys.

We got them. It was fun hunting out of the A-frame too. Because when I was told there was going to be a dry field, I thought it was going to be in layout blinds. So the A-frame was great to hear that we were hunting out of. It's so comfortable. Yeah. We had a guy on the show.

Chester, you were there. Chester's here and was there. bard is here was not there chili's here was not there seth's here was there following yeah we got it losing a lot of listeners do you know i'm gonna tell chester about layout blinds? Yes. We had a guy on the podcast who was in a layout blind and someone said like, get him! And he blew three of his toes. He blew the, what's interesting is he blew three of them out

of the middle. Like when you picture blowing your toes off, don't you picture blowing the edges? No. You don't? I picture you right in the middle of your foot, yeah. Oh, I always picture you would shoot off

one of the sides. You'd shoot off your pinky toe. Like, I could picture shooting off my big toe. I can't picture plucking the three middle toes.

It's called a field goal. Plucking the three middle toes out of the spread. I just picture blowing the whole damn thing off. Yeah, all of your toes.

You have a picture of that somewhere way down on your Instagram feed. Way down. You were there? No, no, I wasn't there when he did it, but I was there when he told the story. Oh, he told the story. Now, my old man was shot in the foot, rabbit hunting, and carried those pellets for a long, long time in his foot. No toes removed.

And then he didn't want to tell anybody. They tried to keep it secret. So he act like he, uh, act like he had had some kind of other injury and they kept it secret from people that someone had blown him in the foot. There was a guy, uh, last year here in Montana,

a young buck that blew his foot off and had to get life flighted out of the field. Lay up on the whole foot. Uh, pretty, yeah, pretty much like the bottom half of his, like, or top half of his foot. See, that ceases

to be funny. Yeah. What? That's not funny. That's not funny. No. I was telling a funny story. I'm sorry. Way to go, Matt. Good job. It's funny, but it was a little damn thing. I was going back to the, like, shooting yourself in the foot. No, he wasn't using a blind at all.

Do you want to know the crazy thing about this guy? He still shot the geese. He still... The delay. So he's getting out of his layout blind. Boom. Max knows this guy. Oh, you do?

That's the first time we met Max was on that. Oh, because Max stopped in on that shoot. Max stopped in, that shoot. Huh. Max stopped in, filleted a bunch of walleyes, and then said hi and dipped out. Packing a big old dip there, Chester. You can't even talk. Yeah.

No, sorry. No. Hey, Paul. I'm good. You know him? Yeah, Danny. Yeah. Yeah, I know Danny.

Well, boom! There goes his toes. And he's still... Like the delay, the realization is so... He still shoots. But here's where it falls apart. If you ask him if he hit,

he doesn't know. So somewhere between... Somewhere... you following me? Yeah. Somewhere between shooting his toes and registering whether or not he had a hit, it struck him what had happened. Yeah, he probably started shooting and realized something bad just happened. I usually black out when I shoot into a flock of geese.

Yeah. And I still got all my toes still. This is precisely why we had that long safety speech this morning. Oh, I really appreciated that safety speech. Did you? Yeah. Good. Yeah, we do it every time. No, that's great. Like a really

thorough motivational safety speech. Dude, I love that. Yeah. There's so many people, like there's so many times people don't do that and then like stuff happens you know it was in my it was it was helpful because it uh the way you handle it and the story you tell uh it's effective because it made it it burned in my head. Yeah.

You rethink things. No matter how many times you are out there hunting or holding a gun, it's always good to have that fresh reminder. I was telling them we do it even when it's just us. Like the same guys we hunt with day in and day out, we could have hunted 12 days in a row. And at the start of the hunt before shooting light, I'm going to stand in front of the A-frame blind and give a little bit of a soapbox speech about safety. Yeah, that constant reminder is good because some people get overconfident. Well, and sometimes the more you do it, right, when you're doing it every day, you just get complacent. You get like a version of, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

And so we go through it every day. Luckily, everybody that we hunt with that's kind of on our team takes it serious. But especially when we're with guests and new people, right? I'm like, hey, we're going to harp on you if we see anything that shouldn't be happening. Yeah, any red flags. Let's just do it right from the start and it's way more fun. And we don't have to be paranoid. Because we've all hunted with people that like 30 minutes in you're like we should have a safety

speech we know what else is effective about oh sorry go ahead even just the reminder of the gun on the a-frame like just talking about not getting it caught safety all that stuff that's just good a reminder yeah another thing that you said that actually changed my behaviors is if i'm sitting there and i'm like two hands on the two hands on the shotgun and i know a bird's gonna commit i'll put it on fire right and in your safety talk you said your gun goes on fire when you're up when it clears the blind it's pointing out yeah so i kept being like same thing you can't do that because i'll get yelled at I was like same way and in that moment a couple times

I clicked it I was like I clicked it I'm like oh shit and I clicked it back I don't want to get in trouble I did the same thing I was like oh shit

did anybody hear that well in that moment it's like that final moment everybody's dead quiet everybody's holding still your senses are heightened and sure as hell you'll sit there

and you'll hear click I'm like who just clicked off safety yeah I clicked mine and i was like so i click a bag loud right so he hears it click back is he counting clicks yeah yeah three clicks and you're out of the field yeah well with that do you do you kick like have you ever had an instance like where you had to like stop a hunt because someone's not following the rules we've had to reprimand

before for sure what does that like look like for you guys usually just when you see it happening like the second it happens you know and try not to be an ass about it but like hey man like if we're going to keep hunting i was serious about what we talked about right like i'm not the fun police but we do all want to get out of here alive and say like this is supposed to be the most fun thing ever yeah so let's keep it that way um but there has been times when we've had to stop and remind people and you just see things right again and and honestly it's usually the people that waterfowl hunt a lot it's not actually the newbies or the people that don't do it often it's it's usually this is my point it's usually the guy

who's hunting day in and day out and you just get complacent i mean i can do it we can all do it yeah yeah we were on a hunt there's a guy that we know who's very you know accomplished and does it a lot and you know seth had to say twice nothing personal against the guy but just be like barrel you know oh my, that's my biggest pet peeve. It was pointed at our heads multiple times. I unload on my kids about it and I always try to weigh how much to freak out on them where you don't want to turn them totally off

but you're trying to scare the daylights out of them. It's a fine balance. If anyone's figured that out, send me an email. I personally know two people the daylights out of them. It's a fine balance. If someone, if everyone's figured that out, send me an email. I, I personally know two people who got killed duck hunting. Seriously? Yes. Yeah.

Personally know two people. My, my father's cousin. And then a kid that my brothers went to high school with. And it's like, it's like it's it is bad and both of them happened in a very similar way they were in a boat and one guy was sitting down they were long story short they were taking turns shooting so not everyone was supposed you know shooting because in one instance one kid had a hurt leg so when it was his time to shoot everyone would stay seating because he couldn't stand so it was only

him shooting well he thought it was his turn the other guy stood up he shouldn't be swinging that way anyways but swung his gun right into the face of can we move on but but i just want to say that i just want to say that because it's a reality and i'm personally connected with two people and i don't think this gets talked about actually enough yeah is gun safety and it happens all the time this is why we harp on it yeah another another brady davis rules uh he don't let dogs in the a-frame too tight too tight and they just knock over crap too tight knock over guns yeah you know their tails are always wagging you know and i it makes me so paranoid when i see people with a dog in an a-frame and they'll always tell

you like well my dog's good he don't go he don't freak out he doesn't everyone has a good dog everybody's got a good my dog always watches where his tail is man so we we have a hard and fast rule no dogs in the a-frame ever and they're always in a dog hide by themselves and i appreciate it like when guys like max comes and hunts with us and brings his dog which is a phenomenal dog they're just totally cool with it like i tell them when you're coming like bring a dog blind even if we have a big a-frame and there's only four of us hunting and there's tons of room well it's not for just the hunter safety it's for the dog safety too 100 yeah yeah yeah we do a we do a series um uh meat eaters camp stories, which these audio originals and as people telling, you know, so far the two we've done have been close calls.

Mm-hmm. So like shit that almost happened real bad. And one of them, a guy tells a story about getting shot by his dog. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It happens. I mean, you read about it, so.

You know, what's crazy about some full circle stuff on that we one time had a uh we had an emergency room doctor on uh adam was it alan or adam i screwed it up every time alan lazara came on and he's actually published about tree stand incidents. So he's an emergency room doctor and a hunter. And he came on and just implored people to learn how to apply tourniquets and carry tourniquets. This dude, he's hunting with his dad. He gets shot by his own dog and had heard that podcast and did the, what the guy was talking about. And it saved him. Yeah.

And like credits having like, listen to that doctor explain that on the episode. That's cool. That's bad to the bone. Cause like how tight you put that thing. Oh yeah. I mean, you tight, thing. Oh, yeah. I mean, tight, tight. Okay, Cindy,

give me your impressions of the hunt. Then we're going to pull that tongue out. My impressions of the hunt? The duck's tongue. Well, we should go ahead and start doing that,

but I think that it was a great hunt. I went to Canada and I shot zero birds. How'd that go down? In Canada? Yeah. That's hard to do.

How'd that, I want to know the same thing. How'd that go? When was this? Yeah. That's hard to do. How'd that? Yeah. I want to know the same thing. How'd that go? When was this? How many days did you hunt? Three. Give me some more. Okay.

I lied. Okay. We saw zero ducks. The first day we shot some specks, which was actually pretty cool because in Illinois, they're super smart, but they were tornadoing down. We shot, I think like 30 birds, snow geese and specks. The first day wasn't that bad, but that was- So by ducks ducks you're being

very specific but that was in between like 12 people um and then we didn't shoot anything the rest of the trip um we hunted so you had two more hunt days yeah we shot the evening because i think we were trying to shoot ducks that in the evening didn't get anything in the next two days we didn't shoot anything which i get it like that's hunting it's not always gonna go that way we did kill a mule deer so i wasn't that upset but uh yeah the weather did get really warm and the wind i don't know i don't know we just didn't kill them i don't i don't want to hate on anybody or anything because it is how it goes typically but but you're a little bit hating on them i'm just a little salty it just sucks my first time up in canada you're not hating on them you're hating on the you didn't get ducks yes was it pre that big cold front that

just came through or no so it was okay so it was mid-october we left um i hunted i think like the 15th around there um so they had a cold front come through and they were shooting hundreds of ducks it was awesome but i was mule deer hunting, so I was focusing over there. I came back, weather warmed up, cold fronts gone, and there was like no ducks flying. Like I said, the first day we shot some specks and some snow geese, so it was a horrible, but it wasn't like a lights out Canada trip,

which everybody goes to Canada to do. Like I've never been up there. You were a victim of the old, you should have been here yesterday. Yeah, big time. I actually was, yes, yes. And it sucked victim of the old, you should have been here yesterday. Yeah. Big time. I actually was. Yes. Yes.

And it sucked bad. It hurt, but it is what it is. I'm just going to have to go back up there. Yeah. When things go real good, I'll tell people you were here yesterday. Yeah. That's how good today was. Yeah.

This is like one of those days that if it was tomorrow, we'd be talking about it. Yeah. Like, but you were here. Yeah. Yesterday. Today was. You were here yesterday, today. Yeah. Like, but you were here. Yeah. Yesterday. Today was, you were here yesterday, today. Yeah.

Today was a good day though. So that's why I'm just like. Tomorrow if it sucked, you would refer back to today. Yes. And say, you should have been here yesterday. Absolutely.

That was great. Yeah, absolutely. We recently had a guest on, uh, Corinne, do you mind? Teeing this up?

Okay. From Duck, like, but it, just come, come tee it up, Corinne. Okay you mind teeing this up? From Duck, like, but just come tee it up, Corinne. Here you go. Teeing it up. We recently had Phil Levretsky on from the University of Texas at El Paso and he, his lab

is teamed up with Ducks Unlimited for a project called Duck DNA. You can visit that at duck dna.com and you can listen to the whole damn and you can also listen to our entire podcast or watch it on youtube um what do we call it what do we call that one our wild ducks really wild yeah exactly so our wild ducks really wild he came in to talk about the way that you have game farm mallards and the way game farm mallards are breeding their weakness and habits into wild mallards in the United States. Exactly. And one way to help contribute data to their growing research is by participating yourself as a citizen scientist. So we've got a

bunch of test tube vials with an agent in them and a reagent. I actually don't know the right word. Some sauce. I'm probably screwing that up. Yeah, sauce. And the instruction is to cut the mallard tongue out or part of it out. And we've got kind of this little box of tubes for meat eater colleague harvested ducks. So Seth is going to, with his lab coat on, do a little demonstration as we increase the reach of meat eater laboratories as well. Ladies and gentlemen, Corinne Schneider. Woo!

Dude! Good job, Corinne. Unbelievable job. Unbelievable job. Very well. All right. Science time. And Corinne Morris now.

Yeah. Seth has Corinne's lab. Don't be fooled. I'm not. If you're not watching on video, Seth has Corinne's lab coat on, so don't think he's got his own sweet lab coat that says Corinne. Not that cool yet. Okay, you ready? Yeah, let's do it. I'm going to tell you what's happening.

Seth is holding the Seth is prying the duck's mouth open and he's revealing its tongue, which is a Chinese delicacy. Yep. Save your tongues if you have time. Have you cooked them up yet, Crenn?

Nope. Yeah, Seth, I would say a quarter of an inch right there. So just a quarter of an inch on the tip. From the top. Get this joke. It's on the tip of his tongue. It's like right there at the little indent. You get it?

They kind of naturally have a spot that shows you where to cut. Really? It's like God wanted you to send the tip of his tongue in. There he goes. Oh, that noise was it. Oh. Sharp knife.

Seth has cut the tip of his tongue off. Probably mararing Phil's special studio table. Oh, yeah. Brady, did he cut into the table? I don't think he cut into the table, but... I used the table as a cutting board.

It makes a fine cutting board. Maring Phil's special table. Can I touch this with my hands or is that going to mess anything up? I think you're fine with your hands. I don't know. They might have sex. This duck had sex with Seth.

Oh, goodness. All right. And there it is. Specimen number one. There's number one? Yeah. Okay. Now you have to write down on your, fill out your sheet.

I don't have anything to write okay we can do that later so yeah we just that's all it takes we just participated in citizen science and at the current so now this will get submitted with a lat lawn um court is will get submitted with court and it's one of the kind of what other kind of biometric detail they want off that do they they don't need to ask a lot because they can just figure it out themselves, right? They want to know male, female? Yeah, they want species, sex, location, latitude, longitude, date, comments.

Got it. I'll send you an onyx. Probably ought to put this in the fridge, right? And then they will be able to take that mallard and so far, what that should, based on the conversation we had with them, that should come back wild mallard. Purebred. That's your remembrance? Based on the conversation we had with them, that should come back. Wild mallard, purebred.

That's your remembrance? Yeah. That duck should come back purebred, but they're watching the very slow westward creep of pen-raised mallards originating from Europe, brought in as game farm birds, breeding into wild mallards, and perhaps creating some troubled behaviors. Mm-hmm. turns well poor nesting uh success poor site selection um lower ability to navigate foul weather uh not that foul oh can i give you a little feedback brady i would love some naming your dog lead creates a lot of confusion oh this that was a good story good story because he's like lead no what now who's shooting lead what happened lead like is it what happened like there's multiple times i'm like oh he's talking about his dog yeah he was doing the safety protocol and he said lead and i'm like

well you should probably keep your tone down here we're shooting lead i'm gonna name my next dog take him brady what's the punchline? Well, we named him Lead because it's the only lead we can legally use in the field. Yep, there it is. And I love single syllable names for a dog. So Lead, we can use Lead because he's good in the field.

So yeah, he did great today. It was a good day. Saved us a lot of walking. That Lead works. Great dog. No, he does. He brings a lot of gusto. Yeah, oh yeah.

I would say he assaults the geese. His black tackles. Not in a bad way. It doesn't maul. But if it's running away, he's on it. He goes after the football player. He had one today. It was like 1,000 yards.

Really? It was a sailor, and then he ran way out to it right when he got to it. That joker got up and flew another 300 yards and went back down freaking all the way there came back he was he was catching his breath on that one yeah yeah it was awesome love that uh listener listener question here uh the topic is fuzzy waterfowl regulations this is something we discussed a great bit we'll discuss it right now again. This feller says, there's a gray area, this is the listener

email, there's a gray area in waterfowl hunting regulations. I have to edit. This is verbatim, Corinne? I had to edit it a little bit. Okay.

Apologies to the listener. There's a gray area in waterfowl hunting regulations, which is a rule, I'm trying to edit it on the fly, which is a rule that's broken in 99% of grip and grin waterfowl picks. There's also a discrepancy in party shooting. Okay. This is like answering a question, but you don't know what the question. Not his fault.

What he's talking about is this. I believe, Corinne, is this correct? He's talking about how you're supposed to have your own ducks separate. Mm-hmm. Yep. Okay. So when you're hunting ducks, you're supposed to keep track of who know who got what because you're not supposed to party hunt meaning if three guys are in a blind and you're each

allowed five ducks let's say and one guy's got the hot gun theoretically that guy is not supposed to shoot 15 ducks and then he's like hey I got everybody's limit. Time to go home. Like every hunter's supposed to get their own stuff. This guy brings up, well, okay. But when you take a duck grip and grin, you lay your ducks out. The ducks aren't separate.

And when you're shooting and a duck comes in and three people stand up and who's dark. So he says, that's the gray area. And I think you're correct. i think that's why you don't see um i think there's there's like laws that are on the book but in all of the time that i've been alive i've never met someone who had a warden come in and had it be that he wants to understand out of three shooters who shot the duck people that get in trouble for this are it's like you get in trouble for this

later on your way home there's confusion i never have heard of or seen of anyone jump out and be like all right boys i got you because i feel like more than one of you hit that duck but now what are you going to do? I think it's like, what we'd normally do in this situation is we'd look and be like, felt like Jimmy's duck. Sure seemed like he was aiming right. Someone's just got to claim that duck.

Hey, claim the duck. Yeah. And that goes against or goes towards their limit. Yeah. And so this isn't negating uh it's not negating the listeners thing but it is fuzzy and i think the way you cope with the fuzziness is you kind of look at over the course of time where do you see people get infractions they get infractions about shipping ducks transporting ducks after the hunt i've just never heard of somebody, um,

getting in trouble over like a, like a, like a dispute like that. Mm-hmm. Meaning a bunch of people shoot and someone claims the duck. I mean, of course, I mean,

what do you, what do you, there's no possible way to do it. Yeah. And I've never heard that it's illegal for two people. It's not like illegal for two people to shoot at one duck.

No. No, I agree. I think somebody has got to claim it to Max's point. The other thing we do is if we have a lot of people in the blind and we're like really getting them, we will lay the birds out behind the blind in separate piles. So it's like, okay, Brady, Steve, Sydney, Dane, whatever field and we're about to go and and this boggles my mind that people don't do this but we tag them yeah you guys do what you yeah you this morning did like what you're supposed to do yeah i mean it's a federal law that you have to tag birds for transport and so we tag them and it's got the hunter's name you know the county that it was killed

the species the number the signature everything on that tag um that one is a fascinating rule because so many times people have been waterfowl hunting with us and i'm sure max has experienced this and you're like all right we're gonna tag birds and people look at you like you're speaking japanese man they're like what are you talking about no like we gotta tag them i tag them if um if i clean them and leave like a wing attack and i'm flying somewhere and i'm flying them home, I would tag them. But I would never, I never in my life tagged a bird to drive 10, 20 miles down the road. As long as they're with you, you're fine. Okay. Um, but yeah, to Brady's point for like any kind of transportation, if like you leave your birds with someone else, they gotta be tagged

for sure. So the way the rule is written is I think it's actually like if you're going from the field to your abode, then you're, you're good. But like today. Made a pit stop. We went from the field to lunch to the office here for the podcast and then home and you start doing, then they need to be tagged. Yeah.

Um. Now you're in a building that's not your home and there's birds in your truck that are not tagged. Completely. Yep. Yeah. You're not, you're not with them. Right. Cause they're on the parking lot. Right. right so and it takes two seconds to tag the birds like it's just a simple rule to keep and you just make sure you're

always above board all the time you know another another rule um that you always hear about being a rule and you don't hear of anybody getting in trouble with the rule is uh you know you're not supposed to have like eagle feathers hawk feathers unless you're like a native american or something we had a warden on and he said he's written two citations for that and he said one time he is at a red light and there's a guy next to him that his his rearview mirror is draped in raor talons. Oh my goodness. Pulls him over. Another time, he's

leaving his grocery store, pushing a shopping cart, and looks in the back of the truck, and there's a dead owl in the back. Oh my gosh. So he waits to talk to the guy, and he said, what's funny is both people, their immediate thing was to tell me they were Native American.

Oh, my gosh. Neither was. They look very Scandinavian. Because that was like, that's like the little thing everybody has in their head is, I think it's okay if you're Native American. Right. It's like, I'm Native American. Here's another interesting thing.

Now, Sydney, you feel free to weigh in on any of the stuff you want. Okay. Is there anything you'd like to add right now? No, I actually didn't know about the feathers, though. Is your rear-view mirror draped? You're going to want to get rid of feathers. No, I don't have any feathers. What I'm saying is, does that mean I didn't know?

It means that you're not allowed to have. That's what I'm saying. If I find it in the cornfield and I see a feather. Yes. Like if you took that feather and like, if you took that feather and put it in your backpack, again, it's one of those rules that it's a rule, but you just don't meet. There's many more people that have picked up a eagle feather than there are that got in trouble for picking up

Eagle feathers it was just one of those interesting Rules that you sort of have the feeling in the back Of your head that there's something about how You're not supposed to do it I didn't know that I'm not picking up feathers So nobody come for me But this guy's point was He presented he was presented with

Two things that he couldn't ignore In those Situations he would He was presented with two things that he couldn't ignore. In no situations he stepped in because the one was just like this sort of chandelier of raptor talons caught his eye, and the other one was like the actual dead owl. But on that, it's the thing. It's just like maybe they dyed the damn feather, and it looks like an eagle feather. I don't know.

Yeah, like if Oscar was out in the field, and he picks up an eagle feather. I don't know. Yeah, like if Oscar is out in the field and he picks up an eagle feather, you know. They're not going to lock him up. They're probably not going to lock him up. They're not going to compliment stuff him. I don't think so. We were on a hunt last year and we shot a goose and it sailed like the next field over. And the boys kind of all marked it like, I think he went that direction. And so I got out of the blind and I like went on a hike with lead.

I'm like, we're going to go find this goose. Again, his dog, my dog. It's an effective method. I'm going to go get that goose of lead better not. That hasn't been illegal since 1986. Right. But we hiked our butts over there and I'm like,

all right, he's in this direction. So with dogs, you can send them on a blind retrieve, right? Like they didn't see it go down. You just send them out and they'll work the area. And so I send him out and he's kind of working and i'm giving him some some commands and all of a sudden he gets real birdie i'm like yeah got it i mean it's happened

a thousand times grabs a bird comes back and i'm like that's not a goose that's not a goose and brings back a dead hawk and i was like violation oh crap i'm like what do i do so i like he brought it no doubt he brought it to heel sat handed it to me like he's supposed to and i like took it and instantly walked right back to where he had picked it up from and it's straight underneath the power line so all i can assume is like this hawk got zapped on the power line and i literally like left it there and turned and we were like walking out and i'm like crap that's not good and it's right by a road so i'm like geez like i'm glad like i didn't want to look like my dog's retrieving hawks and right then this goose like pokes its head up over the grass and i'm like that one go and gets out we went back to the blind uh upstairs in my office i have a

photo of my dad's like i have a photo i pilfered from my dead father's old photos and he has an old photo where it's him and some other guys and they got cottontail rabbits hanging from strings and then on the end of one of the strings they got their owl. Which was just like how, it was a matter of course. Oh yeah. It'd be like if you were a small game hunter, get the hawks and owls. And conservation. Yeah it was. Yeah. It was hunting and conservation you know yeah it was yeah it was hunting conservation hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada and boy my goodness do we hear

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

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

As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Here's a good one. Pat, friend of the show multiple times, been on the show many times, does some articles

for TheMeatEater.com. He wrote in and he sent in a piece that he was recently working on. Pat Durkin being from Wisconsin. Pat covers wildlife politics uh pat has one of my favorite quotes which is big bucks make people stupid um sent us an article he's working on about speaking to citizen science seth over here our resident citizen scientist today he'll he'll perk right up when he hears this. Yep. About a citizen science program in Wisconsin where they monitor people's trail cams. Ooh.

So there are about 2,000 citizen scientists enrolled in Snapshot, Wisconsin. And they give you some guidelines and all that. And then, so these 2,000 trail cams are out there and they're watching, like, what are they getting? What are they getting on the trail cams? You want to talk about a stay with a lot of trail cams. I am. Wisconsin.

That's what I am talking about. I know. It's a lot. It's a lot there. Yeah, dude. Everywhere. There's no regulations on trail cams. You got to be careful where you pee.

My, did you see the picture I recently got with my beaver cam? Does that sound to you? Oh, it's fantastic. Yeah. It's like, you think that I'd be getting like an award from National Geographic. What was it? I got a beaver cam set up where it's on a little crossover between a pond and a creek. And I just like to watch beavers go by.

So when I wake up in the morning, let's look on there and see what all and everything and its brother comes through here like everything it's not i don't want to say where it is it'd be illegal to hunt it's in an urban environment city limits yeah urban environment but it's just like this little kind of like hot spot and i keep a camera there and i've gotten everything that's brother on this camera um mallards walking by mink weasels magpies one of them poor wills what's the kind of whippoorwill is around here whippoorwill looking bird keep wanting to send it to the cornell people fault don't they call them like false will or something? Mice, rats. Otters, rats, pack rats, mice, otters, scrats.

Mountain lion? Deer, a pet dog, house cat. What about a mountain lion? Dude fishing. No mountain lions. No mountain lions. Give me time. Okay.

Anyways, I get on it. The other day, an otter standing there with a really nice trout holding it by the head. Wow. And you can tell the trout's still alive alive he's all like curled up yeah and then that otter sat there like perfectly sat there and devoured that fish in front of the camera that's cool that was great so in wisconsin they have this uh snapshot wisconsin and what durkin was writing about was he was writing about this i mean is Durkin like a, I don't know if Durkin, uh,

I feel like Durkin rather than being a wolf hater or a wolf lover, which comprises 90% of Americans, dirt falls in that sweet spot of like sort of wolf rational dirt or Durkin is wolf rational. But he hears people saying in Wisconsin, like you can't get a picture of a deer anymore. You're like, I get more pictures of wolves than I get of deer. And so he looked at this year when they came out with the new Snapshot Wisconsin statistics.

And so for Snapshot Wisconsin right now, they're running 426 deer photos to every wolf photo. But there's some interesting stuff in here. So Sawyer County, Wisconsin. Sawyer County, Wisconsin, 57 cameras. Where's that? Is that up north? It's got to be. Someone want to look?

Yeah. Sawyer County. I'm looking up exactly, but it's... Okay, not one northern county. So assuming not the southern ones because they don't have wolves. Not one northern county had wolves on every camera. That's up by Hayward.

Good musky country up there. St. Croix County. 2% of the cameras. So in St. Croix County, there's 47 cameras in St. Croix County, 47 enrolled cameras in St. Croix County. 2% of the enrolled cameras picked up pictures of wolves. Dunn County, 30 cameras, two picked up pictures of wolves. Dunn County. 30 cameras. Two picked up pictures of wolves. Then you get to this.

Douglas County. 61% of cameras set out will grab a picture of a wolf. Wow. Iron and Price Counties. 63% of cameras set out capture wolf. Marinette County is the top for deer photo prevalence, but there's some interesting stuff with bear prevalence.

Bear photos far outnumbered wolf photos in every county Except Shawano What is it? Shawano I'm looking at it right here Shawano Shawano They're just like shortcutting it

Yeah I guess that's probably just how we say it We had a cabin over by a mountain Which was not too far from there We did see wolves. Shawano. We saw deer too. 30 cameras. Check this one out.

This is interesting. So in that county, 30 cameras snapped 529 bear photos and 522 wolf photos. Wow. St. Croix County 47 cameras one wolf photo now I'm not reading all of Durkin's article but Dirk I guess the main point of Durkin's article

is that there aren't as many wolf photos as you'd think but I look and I'm like that seems like a lot seems like a lot especially on that point near Duluth right by the border of Canada that's a that's a lot that's not very good for your deer population okay ready now again things could get things here's the final synopsis for all the counties in Wisconsin and for sure oh sorry sorry oh this is

only northern this is the stats for only northern Wisconsin this is the final totals and keep in mind the same things can get photographed many times I had a camera one time that photographed you know photographed the same doe and fawn 500 times right so bear that in mind total cameras

1,119 enrolled cameras in northern Wisconsin in Snapshot Wisconsin deer photos 1,119 enrolled cameras in Northern Wisconsin, in Snapshot, Wisconsin. Dear Photos, 2,899,600. I don't have my spectacles on. 48. So we're going to round these by the fives.

We're going to round that up to 1,000 cameras, rounding down from 1,119 to 1,000. Rounding up. These are big roundings, rounding up to 2,900,000. 36,324 bears. So those 1,119 cameras captured 36,324 bear images. Those 1,119 cameras captured a total of 6,803 wolf photos. Bringing the final number crunch to one wolf photographed for every 426 deer. Now, if I was a statistician, I'd probably shoot all kinds of holes and how that's being looked at, but that's how that's being looked at.

I mean, wolves are so much more nomadic too. Which means they could show up on potentially more cameras or probably perhaps less because they're not camped out in some little spot. I think perhaps less because they're not camped out. I mean, i think perhaps less because they're not camped out yeah i mean think of how many times you have a deer camera out in wisconsin and you get you get the same deer coming through every night you know yeah same food food one of my favorite wolf stats um when beavers are dispersing in May and June in the Northern Great Lakes, I can't remember what it is,

98% of wolf scats contain beaver remains. And then by the end, like by the late summer when they're not dispersing anymore, it just drops off precipitously to next to nothing. Yeah, I read that in his article. Yeah, they hammer beavers

when the beavers are dispersing and then they just forget about them, go on to something else. So is the point of the article saying that the wolf problem isn't really a problem in Wisconsin? Let me tell you about, I want to say a couple of things about Durkin. Okay. I recently got a note from Durkin. I told a story recently about losing a friend of mine and I got a note from Durkin

about touching in with me about the story I told about losing a friend of mine I showed the note to my wife to which my wife said that is one of the good ones meaning Durkin if everybody on this planet behaved like Pat Durkin there wouldn't be any problems I think what Pat's trying to say here is i think pat's trying to say that there aren't that many wolves maybe is that your he's like you people saying that all you get is wolf photos let's look at the stats i think what he's saying is it's not as bad as everybody thinks it is Cause you go up to those counties and you talk to those people and

immediately they're like wolves, you know? Yeah. Everyone jumps to blame it on wolves. Maybe the bears are killing fawns in the spring. I think a lot of it has to do with logging up there in the Nicolet national forest and not having, there's, there's more and more old growth and not as much like new brows and things like that for deer that at least in the area where we were at i mean there will there are

wolves and there are more wolves and you think i mean when they open the season you know in wisconsin to shoot wolves it was staggering how quickly they got to quota which always makes me think there must be a lot of wolves but let me let me give it to der i'll give it now that we got into it and we're questioning durkin's uh you know journalistic integrity here's the headline northwood's deer outnumber bears wolves in trail cam survey that's the headline durkin goes on to say folks who scorn gray wolves often claim they see more of them than white-tailed deer when poking around wisconsin's north woods the past 20 years meanwhile trail cams are now as common as ravens and wood ticks in those forests providing round-the-clock surveillance of bait piles, food plots, and two-track trails. All that photographic evidence spawns countless claims and surplus exclamation points.

And he quotes someone, quote, We seldom see deer on our trail cams anymore, but we see plenty of wolves. Last fall before gun season, I didn't find five sets of deer tracks in the snow, but I found lots of wolf tracks. Wolf tracks in some spots on our logging road look like cow paths. That's why there's no deer left in northern Wisconsin. And this individual that Pat's quoting has already used four exclamation points and adds six on the end of that passage. He means it. All of which were quoted by Pat. Then he

goes on to say this is durkin as best i could tell hold on no dirt goes on to say hey every hunter throughout history wants more deer and deer sign that includes me while scouting my favorite sites in ashland county two weeks ago i found no deer tracks or buck sign in three days. And this is the former editor of Deer and Deer Hunting Magazine. Pat's a deer. He's got 30-some shoulder mounts of whitetail deer, which is excessive. Something like that. Successive.

Something to shoot for. That's awesome. Pat likes deer so much that you know when you put stickers on your truck? Pat's put stickers of famous deer on much that you know when you put stickers on your truck? Pat's put stickers of famous deer on his truck. Oh, he loves. Really likes deer. Is he like goes to like those auctions where they sell like the

antlers? Probably. Yeah. He loves deer in the Edmonds Fitzgerald. Knows a lot about the Edmonds Fitz. Knows a lot about the Navy. Okay. He was in the Navy. Knows a lot about that. I've never had that happen. The shittiness of the sign he's saying. i've never had that happen the the shittiness of the sign he's saying i've never had that happen in 20 years of hunting that part of the nicolet national forest well give me the first part chester uh the

chiquam chiquamaguan chiquamaguan chiquamagon chiquamagon chiquamagon chiquamagon nickel a national forest isn't nickel a the feller that showed up green bay like cross lake michigan and showed up green bay and put on a mandarin robe like he thought he's in china no idea this dude for real that real this dude for real i think nickel a when he crossed lake michigan he's like, ha! And he had been carrying a China-made robe of some sort and put it on to go and meet the people. He's like, wow, the musky fishing's good in China. And the beer and cheese curds are great. Suspiciously like the other side of the lake.

Nicolet Nash Forest. Durkin goes on. Then again, I saw no wolf sign either, which makes sense. Why would wolves waste their time and energy hunting such lousy deer habitat, especially after a scientifically

documented, quote, very severe killer winter for whitetails? Then there's a passage i'm not going to read then i'm going to try to end this whole thing we're doing here by getting to this to continue my quote of pat durkin but one man and here's this isn't the important part but one man's observations i'm pounding the table but one man's observations don't necessarily paint a picture. To learn what my fellow hunters and other folks are documenting in Ashland County, I looked up the Snapshot Wisconsin data dashboard.

Snapshot Wisconsin's current five-year data set the numbers however make you question some folks claims about wolves overrunning the north woods and then in ashton county for instance 30 trail cams in scientifically chosen sites took 23 299 deer photos from 2018 to 2022 those same cameras took 107 wolf photos and 713 bear photos now this deal about wolves and bears is something to really uh keep in mind because when they did mortalities like, after wolves came into Idaho, and wolves decimated elk populations in the Idaho Panhandle. But you know what had always been really hard on them is mountain lions. So more elk calves are killed by mountain lions in the Idaho Panhandle, but that's always been that way. So whatever the hell it was, it was like for every 100 calves that hit the ground 23

i don't know what the number is 20 23 something like that 23 or 20 or get killed by mountain lines but it's just always been that way you have very stable mountain lion populations over time everybody's used to it wolves come in and they don't trump that number but they add to that number and and that so it's like what when a wolf cat when a elk calf hits the ground what's probably going to kill it a mountain lion but wolves are the new players in town and there's the mountain lions have always been killing whatever the number was 13 20 i can't remember they've always been killing that but now you're adding on eight and that's the tipping point from normalcy so people on the ground are like man there was a

bunch of elk and then wolves came and now the elk are really down um if you could somehow remove it's almost like if you could remove mountain lions and almost do more for elk but the wolves just tipped it so wildly out of balance that whatever equilibrium was there gets shot. And then what's the regulation in Idaho for wolves? They're non, they're delisted. So we, like we, like I did something. Wolves were successfully delisted in the Northern Rockies. So they were successfully delisted in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. and it's been very whipsaw in the northern great lakes seesaw what's the term whipsaw i don't know back and forth back and forth yeah yeah you can like in montana right now they're listed you can you can go

and buy a wolf tank like you could be walking around with one in your pocket right now in fact i am great steve you were right about the uh neglect guy showing up in green bay wearing a chinese dress what do you think about that corinne more power that's totally out of focus I tried now here's the thing speaking of here's the thing Corinne's been hot on Corinne's hot on like urban urban rat hunting is the

new flathead noodling do you agree Sydney go to Chicago Flathead noodling. Do you agree, Sidney? When flathead noodling... Go to Chicago. Go to Chicago.

Do you remember the way flathead noodling just captured the collective imagination of American media? Yeah. 100%. It was like, there's always been some guys that noodle flatheads. Burkhard Bilger wrote the book

Noodling for Flatheads, which is about the way southern culture still exists in the u.s and exploration of southern culture and it became that every tv host anyone on the planet over the next decade went noodle to flathead ryan callahan anyone have you noodled flathead yep okay Ryan Callahan. Anyone. Have you noodled a flathead? Yep. Okay. I didn't, but I also never got a tattoo. I'm not going to lie. It was so much fun. It was so fun. No, no. I'm not down on it. I'm not down on it. I'm just observing that it became a media fascination.

It was. It was a trend. It was a trend. And right now, it is a major trend and Corinne is hot on it to go rat killing with dogs in cities. And while noodling was supposed to be like a city man's introduction into rural culture, this is a rural introduction into urban culture.

Like you'd come from the sticks to go see how these city boy rat killer dogs. Like Jack Terriers probably right so corinne is corinne is corinne's really itching to have one of these rat hunters on the show bad interesting uh they're up in northern montana on the border of canada because jack you might uh we're talking about to our friend ty in calgary there's no rat population in alberta i think because they just completely wiped them out they got them yep with dogs maybe my understanding but that's like and they're right and it's on the border this hasn't come up in me either trivia but my

understanding is anchorage alaska is the large is something has some superlative. It's the world's largest port city with no rats. And when a rat shows up, they have a shit fit. They do. When a rat, if a boat comes in with a rat, it's like code red. Burn the boat. So, Corinne, what are you going to do? Are you going to get one of these people on or not? No.

I just want to clarify. I'm not quite sure I want to get one of these people on or not? No, I just want to clarify. I'm not quite sure I want to have one of these city folks on. You're definitely curious. No, I just find it hilarious that major mainstream news organizations and newspapers seem to have a fascination with hunting through the lens of uh you know city residents hunting rats with their like caught on dachshunds right yeah it's the new so it's like they're all it's like you can you can just google it and their articles in like uh new york magazine washington post the new york times because corinne sends them all to me. The Washington Post did a podcast about these rats.

I don't know. Me and Corinne text a lot and I have to sort through all her rat killing texts to find the ones that interest me. I might need your help to look up the facts, but when we were in New Zealand, we were watching the television. It was the news, okay?

Watching TV. News was on., okay? Television, TV. Watching TV. News was on. They were having a cat killing contest. Like house cat. Feral cats. Yes. And they got the school kids rolled into it. Yep, and it was a tournament.

Really? Wow. They had to literally cancel the tournament because some people's house cats were actually getting killed. With collars on? Didn't we cover this? We covered this. You covered it?

You covered it? Yeah. Well, we didn't cover that aspect of it. We covered the aspect of it that everyone was fine with it until they got the kids involved, and then people got like... They were fine with it until they were like, where's Mr. Peppers? He was here today, and he got out, and he got killed.

Well, you know what I'd say? I'd say, was Mr. Peppers maybe not in the house? But Mr. Peppers got out of the house, man. Yeah, that's on him then. That's on Mr. Peppers. It says the kid who killed the most cats between mid-April and the end of June won a total of $155.

What a time to be alive. That's some good old-fashioned fun right there. That was just last spring. It's the good old days right now. In New Zealand. Yesterday is today. Oh, man, if we had a gap going down... Yesterday is today.

That kid was here yesterday. Yesterday is today. That's nuts. Sydney, earlier we were talking about... We were talking about hunting as kids. Did you talk about growing up and falling asleep? Oh, yeah.

Under a blanket in the blind. Bring a blanket to the blind. So you got into it young. Yeah. It was more like how you told your kids, I don't care what you're doing. Cancer plans are coming with me. Yeah, be like, better tell Johnny you can't make it.

Yeah, that was how it was. But dad, it's cold. It's too early. Well, bring your blanket. You can sleep on the floor. Yeah, that was how it was. But dad, it's cold. It's too early. Well, bring your blanket. You can sleep on the floor. So that's what I would do. I would just, I'm like five years old, sleeping. I mean, wake me up.

That's how I killed my first turkey. He woke me up. Shoot him. I shot a Jake. He woke you up and let you know it was time? Yep. He's like, there's turkeys. You know, I'm like seven, I think.

And I shot him, yeah. I shot a Jake. I think it was a midday snooze. Did you ever think it was, was it close to backfiring? What do you mean? That's the whole argument people make. People say like,

well, I'm just easing my kids in because I don't want it to backfire. No, it didn't backfire. I mean, I was also- No, I'm saying what like, was that part of the calculus at all? Like what do you, dumb it down for me.

No, no, it's not. I need to not not it's not i need to i need to not dumb it down smart adults i'm asking a very confusing question um did your like did getting out that early did it either like come close to turning you off or did your dad worry about turning you off by just being like we're going i, I don't care what you want to do? No, because it made it like a natural thing. Like I, since I was little, I had a bow and arrow. And so I always knew that that was what we did. I had no idea.

I mean, for Easter, we would go to Texas every year for my Easter break. And we would, they would put out like the Mexican Easter eggs where you smash them and the confetti comes out in the woods. So we would be hunting hogs. We'd be walking around and there'd be Easter eggs and we'd the confetti comes out in the woods. So we would be hunting hogs. We'd be walking around and there'd be Easter eggs. We'd collect them and put them in the truck. It was so awesome. Easter Bunny was here.

Like a combo. Serious. And then like Thanksgiving, that's where we would go. We'd go back to Texas. It's like, I just, that was a normal for me. That's what we did. That was our hobby. So it wasn't like turning off.

I think if you start it later, like maybe when kids are in high school or maybe like late middle school when they already have that social connection and they already kind of grew up with different hobbies or sports that's when it can maybe turn them off if you force it too much because they already kind of grew into something else but i just right from the get-go i was hunting and fishing and that's all i knew and then i got into other sports but in high school i got a little bit more social, so it would have turned me off if it was a little bit more pressured. Did you ever take a year-long break?

I mean, when I was in high school, I was in softball and basketball. Slowed down. Slowed down, and I was like a little social butterfly, but I still hunted. And then I got to college, and then it was like back on the grind. Really? Yeah. Where'd you go to college? I went to Illinois Wesleyan University.

It's a private school near Illinois State. What's it called? Illinois Wesleyan. I've heard of, isn't it like Hillary Clinton go to Wesleyan? There's a lot of different

Wesleyans. There's like an Iowa and Indiana. Are they all like cousins? I don't know, probably. They're like, yeah,

I don't know. They're all similar. And what kind of hunting did you do there? So I was in nursing school there and so I didn didn't have a lot of time but i had a buddy that was my dad's friend that let me hunt his property about 15 minutes away so i would be in my scrubs and i would take him off and put my hunting clothes on really fast and get 15 minutes and climb up a tree and try to deer hunt that's cool did you finish the nursing deal up yeah i'm

a nurse really but i never practiced as a nurse. It's just a waste of money. Really? Yeah, I'm like, dang, I have these student loans. I don't even use it. Oh, yeah, they're going to cut everybody loose on those loans, man. That's not uncommon. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, but like a nurse, I could have done something different. I mean, I can always fall back on it. I'm very happy, but it sucked. Nursing still sucked. You still owe the money? Yeah. I remember it felt pretty good when I finally paid off my student loan. Oh yeah, I've been paying it off. And now when they talk about forgiving everybody, I'm like, dude,

a little late for that. I paid mine off. Is there going to forgive everybody? I want my money back. Why should I be penalized for having paid mine off? Then all of a sudden everybody else gets to walk? It's totally unfair. It's not going to happen. I'm just going to have to keep crying and paying it off and be like, I don't even use this. Dude, if you get yours paid off, you better send me some of that money.

I've paid my stuff, man. I've paid myself like an American. The old kind. Yeah, yeah. Old style. Pay their loans. How old were you when you got your first deer um i caught i shot a button buck and i think i was like eight or nine oh my bow i'll never forget yeah crossbow

compound bow wow are you serious really yeah with a vertical bow yeah i have a picture of it my what's the world come to that i have to say vertical bow yeah yeah i remember i was um hunting with an older are you serious yeah and you recovered it yeah i mean it's 15 yard shot i just remember he died in like a little field right in front of me i shot a button buck my first deer with the bow at 12 so you got me beat oh there we go no kidding yeah and this old man that was hunting with he's so nice and he's so excited got me beat. Oh, there we go. No kidding. Yeah, and this old man that I was hunting with, he was so nice and he was so excited for me. Who was the old man?

He was my grandpa's friend. I don't even know. He just took me. I think I just needed supervision. They're like, you take her. Good luck. I was so excited. He gave me a payday

and I was like, oh, you know, I'm little. I'm like, I hate paydays. Oh, peanuts. So I pretend to like drop it, you know, and I'm like, oh, I dropped it. And he's like, oh, it know, I'm little. I'm like, I hate paydays. Oh, peanuts. So I pretend to like drop it, you know? And then I'm like, oh, I dropped it. And he's like, oh, it's okay. I got another one.

I'll never forget that. Never forget that. Yeah. So young though, man. That's young. Yeah. Had you been shooting? Did you start shooting when you were real little?

Yeah. We still have the little compounds. It's like this big. Yeah. And now you probably shoot it and you're like, how in the hell did I kill a deer with that thing? That's, that's the way I look at that little tank. I think I got lucky. It was a button buck.

I didn't need too much oomph in the button buck, you know? Well, you still gotta hit it. I still gotta hit it perfectly. Yeah. Not perfect nowadays, but. Huh. Yeah. And that's like your passion today is whitetail hunting yeah

it's just kind of like what we were talking in the blinds like when you're really good at something that's something i'm confident about like i know what i'm doing there's other things that i like doing like waterfowl hunting i don't know everything i'm okay with saying like i don't know everything about waterfowl hunting but i like to go with my friends but like that stuff's my bread and butter so that's why i love it so much and how much time do you put into it every year i mean a lot i one year i hunted 90 days straight to kill my white tail i didn't kill him till january 90 days straight wow that was when i just graduated college and i was trying to like make video and get into this like content creation and i really wanted to kill a big white tail

and i did it finally like two days you started to lose to kill a big white tail and i did it finally like two days started to lose your mind a little bit yeah absolutely i was just destroyed i was the only one in the family who hadn't killed one and i was the one that hunted the most and i hadn't even fired an arrow so i was pretty distraught but i got it done were you trying to find a specific buck yes his name is mr perfect so a lot of people who followed along with my um instagram and my socials and everything they knew who mr perfect was and i got into 15 yards of him and he was quartered towards me and uh he just got spooked and ran off and was distraught never killed him oh you never got him nope where is he now well my dad got killed in the next year but

that's okay because he killed him and i killed his book so we just kind of flopped switch swap yeah what year was this going on then 2020 2020 got it yeah and that buck died in 2021 mr perfect mr perfect died in 2021 he was a nine-year-old deer do you guys name all your deer our big ones yeah this year we don't have any deer that we've named so we're just kind of like whatever stuff no one's like no one deserves getting talked about yeah well there's some but yeah not really i mean there's some big ones but there's there's a home farm of ours that we like are you know my great dad grew up my family grew up on and it's really special to us And we're really picky with what we harvest off of the property. We're not going to like overabundance harvest the deer.

Like if there's a nice four and a half year old, five year old, we'll probably leave them, you know. But the big bucks we killed last year were eight and nine. So they were old deer that we were after for multiple, multiple years. They kept tricking us. That's an old whitetail man. Yeah, that's when we named them. And then we killed our two big ones last year and then this year

it's just kind of up and comers. We call it the what did we say? My dad and I were hunting, we called it 100 acres and there's just like, that's where all the little spikes live. There's like 20 spikes running around and we're like, well, we just need to go to a different property. We're going to let this one grow for a couple years.

At that age, they walk around looking up, don up don't they yeah they're just walking around they're gonna stand five yards from me and just like i'm saying that eight or nine years old oh oh yeah buck like that knows to look he knows to check the trees before he goes absolutely i i was hunting this deer cult we called six pack and he was perfect he was perfect 12 pointer okay he was like seven years old this doe is in the middle of the rut. She came right under my stand five yards. I'm like, holy shit, he's coming. He came, stopped 15 yards, and was just looking up.

And then just turned around and walked away. I never got a shot at him. He's like, there's a lady in that tree. And then I killed him the next year in the rut. So I was like, I love whitetail hunting. How do you come up with, who gets to have the name? I don't name them. Do the names come natural?

My dad names them. I'm like, all right, let's roll with it. Got you. Yeah. Do you get a lot of deer showing up in the rut that you don't see? Yes. That's why we love the rut. We have a couple pieces that we hunt that butt up next to neighbors

or some reserves. And that's when it's just like game on, like this time of the year. That's my favorite places to hunt too. Cause you just don't know. And I love places where there's no trail cameras. Yeah. Because you don't know what you're going in there for.

Yeah. I love. Yeah. I think trail cameras honestly ruin it for you. They ruin it. Like you, you're constantly looking at them. I mean, I'm constantly looking at them. I'm constantly looking at them. I'm like,

where are they popping up? So when it's an area where I can hang a new stand or get in a climber and I'm like, I have no

idea what's been coming in here. I can look at the tracks, look at the sign, and then who knows what's coming to me. I feel like it's

going to prevent you from going hunting too because if you don't have anything on your trail camera, are you going to go hunting and sit

in that stand? Yeah. Absolutely. I don't have anything on your trail camera are you gonna go hunting and sit in that stand yeah well you can miss a little but you can miss you can miss some like i got a but i almost got a like i i thought of this the other day i was on my and driving my jet boat down the river and i was like there's nothing sounds better than your own jet boat and nothing sounds worse than someone else's jet boat. And I feel like trail cameras, nothing better than your own trail camera, nothing worse than someone else's jet boat. Yes. You'd be like, you know what would be sweet? If I was the only guy that knew about these.

Yeah. Because I like, I love setting them out and looking at them. The only time I wind up with a problem with them is if you're in one of the states where you can use cellular and you're hunting and you got one and you're hunting with one of those people that's just constantly telling you what's going on. Like, look at what happened while you were right. Yes. The minute you left, you know, if you'd have gone left and not right.

Look what an afterworld. Just that's great. You can't tell me anymore because it's detracting. Yes. From my experience. Exactly. that's great i like you can't tell me anymore because it's it's detracting yes from my experience exactly you know and it's like it'd be like when we had babies i'd always want to know what they were going to be right like boy girl whatever because they know and i didn't want to i don't like anything like why would the doctor know but i don't know so people would want to be my wife like we should be surprised, but I can't be surprised

because that guy knows anyways. Now, if he didn't know, then I didn't know, that'd be fine. But if he knows, I need to know. Yeah.

And so the whole trail camp thing, even when you tell someone to stop telling you, you still know they know. And then you're like, okay, fine, just tell me.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the only problem I ever have with them. I mean, it's nice. It's just like, you talk about trapping

and putting them out. It's kind of fun to see what's coming by and what you get trapped well that's just that's just wildlife observation well i enjoy that yeah and then when it comes to oh where's all my big bucks it just it does ruin it a little bit nothing shows up like i'm not gonna go there maybe i don't know i love it's a love-hate relationship i I just got back from Wisconsin on my parents' property, and we don't have any giants walking around this year. And we have some nice ones, but it definitely was like, man.

Because you were trail camming and you never got them. Yeah, I mean, we were trail camming deer that were like shooters, but usually there's like on camera we have a one or two giants and we did not have that this year so i wasn't like as excited when i got out there sit in the tree stand because you know the only was there yeah and but the thing that kind of kept me going is like you never know it's the rut yeah and deer can show up but if we didn't have those trail cameras i probably would have hunted a little bit harder. Exactly.

Well, let's revisit something. It wasn't in our last studio, so I can't say it happened right in this room. But remember we had Dustin Huff on? Yeah. Who killed the Huff buck. So biggest whitetail killed in the U.S. Right? Is it second biggest in the world?

It's big. It's got some, what is it? Biggest, biggest whitetail? Typical, right? Biggest typical. Yeah. The biggest typical whitetail in the lower, in the U.S. He never got a picture of it.

But he had cameras out. But other guys got pictures of it, but didn't tell him. Oh. Gotcha. So once he killed it, he realized every Tom, Dick, and Harry around town had a picture of it, but weren't telling anybody. He's like, eh. And he didn't know about it. Yeah.

That's awesome. It's a power move. So it's like, you know what I mean? Nice power move. So you could be like, wow, there's no point in going out. But dude. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I still went out yeah i and i was like there is a chance to have something like that happen in the area we're at for sure but when you don't have that deer showing up like we have in the past like big it just you're not quite as yeah no honestly this year though i think not just year, but every year just during the rut, like we were talking, it's the best time because whenever I just see a bigger deer moving, I'm like, the big boys are moving. It's time. And that's when I took Jack out with me.

We didn't have any trail cameras. I had a neighbor call me and say, I seen a drop-time buck in one of those fields. I'm like, all right, we're just going to go over there and rattle. And we had two giants come in. I'm but that's the best time there's no why why didn't you shoot those because they weren't big enough or you didn't get a chance no i didn't get a chance oh the big one came in uh the wind was swirling he was in front of a bunch of tall corn stocks i was shooting mechanical so i didn't want to shoot through the the corn obviously because

you know one nick it's going the opposite direction. But he was a five on one side, big two on the other. He was funky, but he was very heavy. And he was probably like a five and a half year old deer, maybe six. Got my wind smart. He circled. You did? Yeah, I was so upset because he was 30 yards, but he was just in front of that corn. And I wasn't about to chance it on a mechanical broadhead and try to wound him or anything.

So if you'd had a fix, you'd have just shot right through that corn. If I had a better opening, I didn't want it, you know, with a mechanical, you can have like a little tiny sliver of something and just, you don't know. Yeah. No, I don't want to be crass, but when you, um, when you say like, like, are you like a numbers person? Like score numbers? No, we don't score a deer. Okay. I've never scored any of my deer. Huh.

So it just, it feels like a big one. Yeah. I think it's a big, I think it's a big deer. I'm like mass. He looks like a big body. Doesn't look young. Got it. I'm shooting him.

Errol's fine. Yeah. So you're not like, he looks like a 170. I'm going to hold out for a 175. That'd be pretty big for whitetails. The Midwest is nice. We got some big bucks. I'm happy with 150, 160.

I got two tags. Got it. Never put a tape to one. I don't even know how. I'm not kidding. I have a little pamphlet that shows you how. We scored my boy's antelope the other day, his pronghorn. But I go years without scoring something.

But whenever a friend of mine wants to score something, I get real happy. I just don't personally ever score anything. But antelope are super easy to score. I can see Jimmy getting way into that scoring. Way into it. Way into it. Did Jimmy score his buck from this year? no but he wants me to score it

he wants me to score it at that age I was telling these guys earlier today at that age they're real into like him and all the kids at school that hunt they're real into like who got what with what caliber rifle so it'd be like um i'd love that though that's like

caden got a buck with a six five creedmoor where i don't know how big was it i don't know it's just like the whole point the whole point is is what it was. Jimmy got one with a.300 wind mag, and it didn't have a muzzle break on it. Yeah, they're all like gun riders. Performed flawlessly. That's awesome. I remember a dude bragging to me one time. It was a dude in Canada bragging to me

that his kid killed an elk with a.243. I was like, wow, that's something. And then later, I met the kid was talking to him. He shot it nine times. Yeah. That's what the dad left out. Oh no. And the kids,

they're just like, yeah, this is what happened. He's like, I shot it nine times by the time I was old. I'm like, oh,

the old man just didn't tell me that little detail. That's the thing I have too with my kids. It's like, would a blank kill a blank? Always. Could you kill a bear with a.22? It's like, would a blank kill a blank? Always. Could you kill a bear with a.22?

I'm like, you'd kill a bear with a butter knife. I mean, if you've got enough time. It's holding still, you know. So, yes, but no. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know know sucking high and titty there on x is now in canada the great features that you love in on x are available for your hunts this season the hunt app is a fully functioning gps with hunting maps that include public and crown land hunting zones aerial imagery 24k topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement.

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

onX club, y'all. Now, you do a little duck hunting. But opportunistically. We share it. We're opportunistic duck hunters we are i think we're similar with a variety of though we harvest a variety of things you know some of opportunistically and some of it you put it like this he's like it's just not where i spend the

energy yeah you'll go but it's not where you put the energy exactly it's more of just i have a little bit of free time or I killed my whitetail and I can kind of hang out a little bit. My grandpa wants to go. Grandpa and I will go out. Or if it's snowing, it's like 10 degrees. Right. 10 mile an hour winds.

Snow's coming in. I'm going to go duck hunting with my family. And you'll go hunt what kind of stuff? And what kind of stuff? No. Yeah. Like what kind of, you guys field hunting? You guys got hunting slews?

Flooded timber or flooded corn. So a lot of flooded corn, yeah. So it can be pretty good. Yeah, it can be pretty good, yeah. Now, are you a squirrel hunter? Yes, yes. You grow up squirrel hunting? Yep.

I've taken Jack, who's sitting behind me, squirrel hunting like three times already this year. Yeah. You guys just creep through the hardwoods or what do you guys do when you're hunting squirrels? Creep through the hardwoods. Listen for them jumping tree to tree and shooting with my.22 or my air gun. That's the noise of them jumping tree to tree. They're jumping and they're barking and they're cutting. I sound redneck.

That noise. that noise like oh no i got to i hadn't done in a while but i got to spend a spend uh five nights and four mornings sitting in a tree stand recently hunting in oaks you know yeah deer feeding on acorns and yeah uh acorns acorns acorns and uh persimmons and um i kind of forgot about that you know that noise like when i was a kid, people would take two quarters. Well, no, and rub them. And it's supposed to be like a... The squirrel? Yeah, but you can sit in that tree stand.

You can hear them chewing a nut. Yeah, you hear them. Not only just them calling. You hear like... Like a black walnut or something. Yeah, you'll hear like off in the woods. You're like, what is that? And you realize, oh, it's a squirrel

like opening a pecan. Yeah. And you'd hear his teeth. It's so quiet. Or they're just so, you know, they're fired up because there's a deer running underneath them just barking their heads off. I'm like, perfect.

Yeah, it's, the number of squirrels you see deer hunting gives you a lesson about how you ought to hunt squirrels. Yeah. If you really want to hunt squirrels, you'd go and be as serious as a deer hunter. One thing that I do want to try, I don't know if you've ever done this or anybody else has, but with dogs. No, we've done a bunch of that. I've never done that. I don't have, I don't, when I say I've done a bunch of that, I've been the guy

that gets to tag along shooting all the squirrels. Is it fun? Oh, it's the best thing in the world. Is it cool how the dog works? Yes. Does he just tree him like a raccoon or something?

It's the best thing in the world. Did it? It's different than a raccoon because normally you got, usually you got to look for them. Yeah. But they hear them, they smell them,

they see them, whatever, and they're on that tree. They're attacking the tree. And then sometimes you got to go in and here's my contribution to this discipline. I've talked two of these people into the importance of carrying binoculars because then you got to scrutinize the tree to find it laying up there yeah my friends will scrutinize it with their 22 scope but I would scrutinize it with binoculars and do better yeah but sometimes it's like oh shit there's a squirrel but sometimes

you look and look and look and look and look and look and look and determine that it went into a hole and then you yell in a hole let's go that's that's a southerner yelling in the hole um it's so much fun all right i'm gonna try it oh it's the it's like on a good day cesspit out oh yeah oh it's the greatest thing it's real fun clay newcomb's got squirrel dogs and my buddy kevin murphy has squirrel dogs and we'll go out those squirrel dogs and i even had him bring his squirrel dogs up to where i grew up because where i grew up people didn't hunt them with dogs and i thought that it would be the greatest thing in the world because the squirrels wouldn't be whatever they wouldn't have evolved with that level of pressure

over the last you know 100 years whatever made no. And then everybody got poison ivy on that trip from the squirrels. Because those sons of bitches were lining their nests with. With poison ivy. You know when, you know when it's glued, when poison ivy, where it sticks to the tree and it makes that hairy, that like hairy coating. Yeah.

They're harvesting that to line nests. We were hunting late season. They're harvesting that to line nests. We were hunting late season. They're harvesting that to line nests. And the first thing that happens, someone took a picture of a squirrel and they're holding the squirrel. You know, like picture that you're laying a squirrel on your arm and you're holding the squirrel and you got like his head coming up the inside of your wrist. Yeah, in your forearm. Yeah. And they did this for like a picture.

And a while later, it was like, was that Zucker? Yeah, it was lying. A while later, it was like a picture and a while later was that zucker yeah there's like a squirrel outline like a crime scene oh it got bad i mean i wound up going down and getting uh i want going out and getting on steroid treatment it's not bad everyone got it oh no well i don't want to do that part but definitely with the dogs and then you're looking at pictures and it looks like your base you like stuffing squirrels down your pants and stuff like once you knew what was going on you look at the pictures you're like oh that was dumb that was dumb the time i had the one around my

neck that was dumb they really think about that little detail no it's it's fun but the way we mostly hunt when we were young and so like in michigan september 15th was the opening day and when i was a kid it would end december 31st and september 15th we would i'd be allowed to skip half a day of school i could skip a full day october one which is archery opener i could skip a full day november one which is water trapping opener i could skip a full day november 15th which was rifle opener, but I can only skip half the day on the squirrel opener. And you'd go out.

And at that time, all the leaves were on and you just go into a good area and sit and listen for like what you're saying here in acorns raining when they're beach nuts and you'd get under them. They wouldn't even know you're there because they're the leaves, the foliage is blocking them. And then when the leaves fell, it just became hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard. But that's the beauty of the dogs

is when the leaves are down and the squirrels are paranoid and they're all dead from hawks, you can still clean house. It really makes your season run. In fact, doesn't Murphy, he doesn't even like to do it until the leaves are down. Because when the dogs bay up, you need to be able to find the damn squirrel.

Oh, yeah. And he's one of those guys that doesn't carry binoculars. Doesn't carry binos. He can't see them up there. If you have binos, you can see them. It is fun early season, though, when you're just slowly walking while they're cutting. So much fun.

I love swallowing. We used to go into the White River bottoms, and you could get a limit pretty quick. And they're so good to eat. Love them. Love them. How do you clean them? Do you cut them in the middle of the the body or do you go from the tail?

Yeah. We call it pants and shirt. Pants and shirt. Okay. Yeah. I know I can, I clean them from either pants and shirt or just from the tail when you lift them up. Tail skinning them.

Yeah. People that are good are good, but when you mess one up, it's no fun. Kevin Murphy doesn't. He tails, he tails skins. Did you grow up tailskinning, Seth? No, I was shirt and pants. Yeah. Shirt and pants.

Yeah. How did you get into Barstool? That's what I want to know. Your dad obviously had the media side of things going. Yeah. So you were involved with that. But how did that all go down? So it's really funny.

I was in Oklahoma. I just shot up my Oklahoma whitetail. And that night I was talking to my cousin and I was like, man, I really want to do something on my own. I don't want to be. I still had a following, but not. From your dad's stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And then I had, you know, I picked up some people throughout the way. And i was like i just don't want to be tim wells's daughter i want to be

sydney wells i want people to know me for me not because of my dad i was talking to my cousin about that the night before and i was just like i don't know what to do i gotta kind of figure it out i had no money i had a little bit of saved up through working throughout college um and it was so crazy because that next day, Dave Portnoy tweeted and was like, wanted to host a Barstool Outdoors. I didn't see it. I had a ton of people send it to me, and I was like, I don't want to get into

details, but we are woven into this story. We are. Okay. That's a weird-ass story. You going to tell me why? We can talk about it later. I'll tell you later. Not like no one Weird ass story. You gonna tell me why? We can talk about it later. I'll tell you later. Okay.

Actually, yeah. Let's talk it. Not like we, no one applied. We're just woven into the story. Because I have some questions after the cameras are off too. About this story that I'm trying to tell you? Yeah, probably. Uh-huh. You're not gonna say it on air?

No. Okay. We'll talk about it. Okay. So anyways. So then I just literally sent an email and just some like youtube videos and then um i met with gaz which is like dave's right hand man and i just told him what i do and like what i would want to do and then i met with dave and he was like a 10 minute conversation he was late because

he was in a jingo tournament but no and then and then he was just like, okay, cool. Yeah, if that's what you want to do, roll with it. That was it. He's kind of like an animal, he's like an HSUS animal rights guy though. Dude, he does not care what I do, which is the crazy thing.

I always wanted to have like a debate with him about, because I know he's into like HSUS and stuff. Not the kind of humane society where you take care of dogs, but the other kind of humane society. I feel like he is, isn't he? I thought he was like an animal rights guy. Is he not?

Not really. He just doesn't want to see it. He loves animals. So do I. He doesn't love them as much as I do. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Like Feidelberg, I don't know if you, John Feidelberg, he told me, he's one of the main guys who's been around for a long time.

He said he wrote a blog one time of an alligator eating a turtle and Dave was upset with it. It had him take it off a long time ago. He's like, you have to change Dave because, I mean, I post so much hunting. I mean, that's all I do. Yeah. And he doesn't. And they never mess with you. No, and nobody will ever say like, you can't do that.

So did anyone like have any like idea of will ever say, like, you can't do that. So did anyone, like, have any, like, idea of, like, your background, like, before you went? Like, they didn't know who your dad was? They didn't know any of this stuff? They didn't know anything about hunting and fishing. Actually, I had a couple of the Barstool people already following me. So one of them, his name is Brandon Walker. He followed me. But he's from West Point, Mississippi, which is where the Mossy Oak headquarters are.

So he's friends with the Mossy Oak guys. So I think he knew of me. He likes to fish. And maybe a couple of other people, but not really. No, nobody really knew. But now it's kind of fun because I have a series called Out of Office, which all my co-workers want to come and hunt and fish. I have no idea. But now, like, I just my one of my co- coworkers, his name's Dave, call him White Sox Dave.

He shot his first deer with me. And we like, you know, he brought all the meat home and it was just like really exciting. Yeah. So you're being a teacher too at the same time. And then I'm going on a ducks and limited hunt in January. They invited us to go and I'm going to bring two of my other coworkers who've never duck hunted. Cool. That's really cool.

Yeah. So, I mean, I feel like I don't put pressure on anybody either. Like, I'm not ever going to do that if you're not comfortable with it. Like, I'm not going to make you do anything. But if the door is open, I'll teach you. I'll help you. We won't do things crazy off the get-go. I want you to like it and not be freaked out.

Yeah. Just like going squirrel hunting. Like that kind of small thing. Just ease them into it. Yeah. And they're all interested. I haven't had anybody be like, what the heck? And you guys will film a lot of, like Jack will.

Yeah, we film it all. Come along, film it. Why don't you introduce Jack back here, poor guy. Okay, this is Jack. Jack Orlandi, come here and say hi. Hello, meat eater world. Yeah, so that's really fun. I think I've introduced the sport a lot to barstool and like the audience

and been able to show our co-workers who may have not maybe wanted to hunt or even thought about it or maybe even a disagreed to actually enjoy it which is really fun so yeah that's cool yeah how long have you been with them three years almost so three years in february what were the questions you said you wanted to ask us when I said I was going to tell you a story later? Well, I want to talk to you about it later. About what? I'm not going to say it.

You can ask me a question. Start to play warmer and colder. No. I don't want to do it. We've got a standoff starting who's gonna get first that's a question standoff now did your life change through all this stuff of like of barstool getting sold to a casino and then the casino giving it back did this change your life at all no uh at first i was scared because pin owned 100 of it of it for a second before they

gave it back to him for a dollar. That's when I got nervous. Dave bought it back for a dollar. So that's when I was nervous. Anybody can read it. I'll read after. It's not going to change your life. We were more of a corporation.

They were going to insurance and I was a bigger brand with sponsors. You didn't have insurance before that? We did. I don't know. Maybe. I'm insured. Probably, right? I would hope so. No, that stuff. I have health insurance.

I'm saying they were scared that somebody was going to get shot on a shoe. Oh, that kind of insurance. I thought you meant your company had an insurance plan. No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, I got it. Liability. Just like liability, yeah.

But it's hard. I told them, I hunt every day, so you can't have somebody on site with me every day. Also, you're going to have somebody in a tree stand with me. You want to get an insurance man excited. That's not important. No, so not the insurance. The insurance man excited that's not no the insurance man be like dude i've seen the numbers i'm not going to the actuary and just burning the pens out yeah

no pen pen is great but i think we're all pretty happy dave's we're all happy dave's has it 100 so do you find all stuff just by reading the news you're like oh that happened no we have like meetings okay but sometimes yeah i'm like whoa yeah it's like is this good or bad i don't know no we have we get it all figured out everybody talks to one another which is nice yeah how how connected are you with the the off the main office is in new york right no city move it's moved yeah so well there's like two main ones now so chic, Chicago and New York. Oh, okay. So, some people are there.

Dave's, I don't know what Dave's plan is. I think he's still in Miami. And then Big Cat and some of the other guys just moved to Chicago. So, we've got a big Chicago office. And I'm still connected, but this time of the year, I'm not really in the office because I'd rather be out hunting and filming. Yeah. I can't wait to film more. So, when you're in the office, you're in the Chicago office.

Yeah. Yeah. How many people work there? Oh, jeez. I think we have like 300 employees now. Whose studio is better? The studio space. Podcast studio.

Don't ask that. Oh, I mean the Chicago office is just like. It's way better than the studio. I haven't been in any of the studios yet because it just opened. Let's let Phil be the judge of this. But the Chicago office is badass. I mean, we've got a full court basketball court. No, I'm talking about the studio.

Probably, I bet part of my take is probably going to be the best. Well, listen, let me tell you something. I was recently in some really fancy. They don't got a muskox. I was recently in some really fancy studios. Yeah, they got a muskox? They got a buffalo? The buffalo's shot in the head?

Will the bull hold through his head? No. Black bear? A couple coyotes? They got a muskox? They got a buffalo? The buffalo's shot in the head? Will the bull hold through his head? No. Black bear? A couple coyotes? They got a squirrel bottle heater? What about the Leatherman? They need that, though. Do they got the actual Leatherman used?

We got weights and fish. This is the best studio. That's right, yeah. Yeah, this is the best. But what happened? We recently had a wake-up call. I think I told you about this earlier. We went to some fancy studios.

Yeah. And Phil felt like he was getting studio shamed oh no remember that phil i mean i i wasn't mad it was a very comfortable experience yeah but then later confided me that some of those studios weren't all that oh well i mean the spaces themselves are spectacular but the microphones just... This is a great space. I love the coffin. I'll say, this isn't in Phil's words, but some of these studios

were all hat, no cattle. The cattle being the mic. Wouldn't you say, Phil? Yeah. It's a good way to put it. Is that exactly how Phil said it? These are some damn good mics. Seems like a key piece

for a podcast. And then he spit a big dip stream out. I think my seat's heated, though. Phil walked in and said, shit. So what's some of the stuff? We were talking about some of the stuff you'd like to do, that you'd like to do in the future, like trips you'd like to go on.

You mentioned how you kind of have a sort of an interest in South America. Yeah, well, I've been to South America, so I've already like. Because you went down. Oh, no, it was not that. You brought up fish and Dorado. Yep. Yep. That's interesting to me.

I'd like to do that. What else is interesting? Neal guy. Talked about shooting a Neal guy down in Texas. Do you guys know what Neal guy is? Yeah. Yeah. I think just the story about Neal guy is really interesting.

There's a skull right down here. Oh, there is? Hold it up. Grab that, Julie. So if you don't know, if you're listening, what a nail guy is, go Google it. It's really cool. Tell them none of that. Just go to YouTube

and look at what right now. It came like that. We skinned it and that was under there. Me neither. No kidding. That's a nice one. We're all surprised. That's a deadhead. Oh, it is? It's a nice one. Well, I shot a nice one we're all surprised did you shoot that that's a dead head oh it is it's a nice one well I shot a nice one

I did I accidentally got a nice one you know when you accidentally get a nice something yeah never happened to you

yeah and you're like oh this is good like you get it and everybody's like holy shit and I'm like oh great it's the only things

I really got I really got AHE but this is a story you know like Coosdeer I know I killed a Coos this is a story you know like Coos Deer I know I killed a Coos Deer would love to kill a Coos Deer my dad and his buddy

went to Mexico to shoot Coos Deer and his buddy shot his first Coos Deer it was like 120 inches so he got an accident 125 and he's like

my dad was you know like holy everybody was oh my gosh and he's like oh is this good yeah it's like a record

accidentally get the big one yeah I accidentally got a big deal that was an accidental so I got a nice one that's a nice one Oh my gosh. And he's like, oh, is this good? Yeah. It's like a record. Accidentally get the big one. Yeah. I accidentally got a big mule guy. That was an accidental. So I got a nice one. That's a nice one. That was found as a deadhead. That's a nice one.

Yeah. I have my other one. My other accidental nice one is at my house. But if you want to go hunting coos, you can come hunt coos deer with us. We go in January. You can't come this January, but next January. Next January. I'm coming.

Yes. Where at? We go to Sonora. Okay. I would love to. Really? I've never killed one. I really want to don't shoot a big one. I'll try not to don't ask. I probably won't even know you're gonna be like we just tell you like that is huge and if you don't measure it, you'll never know. Yeah, scenario just be, they told me it was giant. All right. They told me it was a giant.

No, God. Uh, what other, what other kind of dream things like cool trips you want to do? Um, a grizzly bear. Um,

I haven't killed an elk. I need to kill an elk. Um, I don't know. There's a lot. Probably. I don't know if I have a desire to kill a sheep or not. A caribou would be cool.

I think I just need to start out west though and do like the smaller things like the coos. And that's smaller, but the coos deer, the elk. Have you done anything in Alaska? I've never done anything in Alaska. Like a black tail. Oh, yeah. I like to do that. I just would love to kill a grizzly too.

I think I would be really nervous. I had a black bear climb a tree with me when I was younger scared me yeah because I think I'll be really nervous to see a grizzly up close but I really want to do that and with my bow didn't your dad spear grizzly yeah I took him like like 10 trips or something it was a lot it was hard you know you got to get right under you i can't imagine that yeah i would freak out yeah yeah that's an alpha dog move i was gonna ask you a bunch of stuff about a wolf he speared a wolf but he's no i would like to kill a wolf oh i don't know if he's never speared but your dad speared himself he speared himself yeah do you mind talking about that for a minute? Yeah, I can talk about that. So with the spear, he's always really good at making sure.

I mean, those things are, you know, this, this, like this, and it's super sharp. You know, it goes right through an animal, right when they're underneath you, die instantly. Super deadly. With him, when he keeps it in his tree, he always makes sure it's somewhere safe. If he gets out, it's not going to fall. Well, he wasn't thinking. He just climbed up this tree in africa he dropped the gopro well in africa they have really good sense and they're really smart so he didn't want to keep that on the ground so he jumped out of the tree when he did he shook the tree and it went right through

hit his ball cap went right through his leg you talked about the tourniquet earlier he took off his uh pants put his belt made a tourniquet and um he barely missed his femoral artery jeez lay there for six hours his water and his walkie talkie were up there but he made sure that he stayed um conscious he didn't want to go he felt his body going into shock so he didn't want to go into shock because if he went in shock could have could have been deadly, obviously. And then he's in Africa. He don't know what's going to come around. Just smell of blood. And he's just wounded.

Yeah, so he stayed there for six hours. And he ended up pulling the spear out of his leg. But they found him. He went and got stitched up. He didn't have surgery or anything. But they gave him these really, really potent antibiotics. It's illegal in the States. But in Africa, it was not. So they gave him this really really like potent antibiotics it's illegal in the states but in africa it was not so they gave him these antibiotics and when he got back to the states the doctor told him that it's he's lucky that he got those antibiotics because they pretty much

killed everything and saved his leg yeah because he could have got like infection i mean he killed a bunch of animals with it and the antibiotics in the States probably wouldn't have been as strong and he could have just lost his leg from infection. That's crazy. Yeah. I just thought of the thing. I was going to mention a thing. I was going to tell you an interesting thing.

And then I remember that the person that told me made me swear not to tell anybody. Doggone it. All right. Well, we can talk about that off camera. But no, the spear, like, I mean, yeah, he spears a lot of things and he's really good at making sure. I speared a black bear when I was younger in Canada too. So we're always making sure it's safe because those dang spears, I mean, they're deadly.

It goes in an animal instantly. That's the one thing that's great about them is it didn't. They kill quick. So when you killed one with great about them is it didn't they kill quick so when you killed one with a spear is it a weighted spear like what do you mean like uh is the shaft weighted is it shaft like uh lead or embedded in it or he would know he would know more but i i don't i don't know to be honest i don't know the whole diana dynamic of the spear there's a really i don't want to say it's a good there's a documentary, I don't want to say it's good. There's a documentary and I don't want to say

it's a great documentary because it just, it covers something interesting, but it doesn't cover it in a perfect way, but it covers these Indonesian harpooners that they still, they still fish dolphin. I don't mean like mahi-mahi, but like

porpoises. Manta rays rays sperm whales with harpoons and they don't use a harpoon gun and they don't use a weighted harpoon that harpooner goes overboard with that harpoon are you kidding me no he's up on the bow. I mean, there's a ton of, he's on the bow. And when they get on that whale, that dude drives, that dude lands with the spear to land and place the spear. Into the water? He's in on the whale. That's another power play. That's another power play and these guys like they're they are whalers and they they try

the the movie has this sort of like a little bit of a tenuous it has this sort of like tenuous environmental message that i wasn't totally i need to spend more time on because it was basically this culture hadn't practiced sustainable fishing practices and had like destroyed their fishery and that drove them to being marine mammal hunters and i a little bit uh question that because that's a tremendous amount of know-how yeah and i just couldn't picture that that's really that this wasn't more of an ancestral behavior. It was hard for me to pick up that in the modern era. Yeah. Someone like sort of crafted this harpooning culture.

That's definitely ancestors. Because the fishery, I was just like, I don't know that that's right or wrong. And I'm sure eight people will write in and set me straight on it. But he lays that out. And I remember a little bit thinking like, I need to spend more time on that. Well, we all have that in our, like our blood instinctually,

like hunting, whether you're a hunter or not. Dave, I don't know if you agree with that. Yeah. When I'm sitting there jigging halibut and a humpback comes by. Oh. No, no, I never do.

But I always comment on it it you think about doing it i'll say to my kids can you just imagine because we carry a harpoon for landing you know it's basically like a it's you're basically gaffing yeah you're gaffing a fish is on the hook but it's just you just deliver the gaff yeah with a harpoon shaft it's not like you're not like harpooning it you're like what do you call it just like a toggle head that comes off a harpoon shaft. It's not like, you're not like harpooning it. You're like, what do you call it? Just like a toggle head that comes off a harpoon shaft. So you just poke it. Yeah.

Anyhow, I'll always, always comment to my kids. Can you imagine sticking up? It's crazy. And then just going for a ride. Yeah, you need a bigger skiff. Oh. A little more rope. I would never do it but it always like something deep in me um something deep some evil deep thing in me wonders about what it'd be

like to just to yeah but you don't know it'd be awesome just to try to help you don't know i can't even finish the sentence you don't know if it's evil i can't even finish the sentence You don't know if it's evil though I can't even finish the sentence Oh then maybe it is evil You hear me? I keep going Just to Can you imagine

Just to one time Cindy Phil's throwing up a sign It says three minutes. You know, I was trying to keep that on the download. That's why I held up a sign without saying it. Yes, I held up a sign that said three minutes. Tell people how to find you. Okay, you can find me all over social media.

You can spell my name S-Y-D-N-I-E. Which is how you spell it. Which is how I spell it. Spell it right. Sydney Wells or anywhere on Barstool OutE. Which is how you spell it. Which is how I spell it. Spell it right. Sydney Wells or anywhere on Barstool Outdoors. So YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, all of the above. Thanks for coming on, man.

Thanks for having me today. It was a good day. No, we had fun out duck hunting. Yeah, and now we're going back to Illinois. Well, I'm not. You are. Well, I am, yeah. Hopefully you can see me with a big old buck. And we both owe a big thanks to Brady Davis from Flying V.

The best. We had a great time. Basically telling us where to point and shoot. Shoot over that way. And clean it up. Clean it up. Oh, and he's still going to go clean up. We need to pick our own decoys up.

I did kind of help set them out. I was talking about, I mean, you said that, but I was talking about our bird cleanup when we're missing, and he's just like, don't worry, guys, I got this 10 gauge. I thought you meant the fact that he now has to go and like pick up empty shells and decoys yeah sorry no we were on a bit of a time he's very time conscious dane and i are headed back to go pick up the spread all of his other attributes and he's time conscious yeah such a great guy get you where get you your ducks get you where you need to be at noon. You got to be on time in life. Yep. That's right.

Thanks, everybody. Oh, ride on. Ride on, let it run on. I want to see your gray hair shine like silver in the sun Ride on, ride on, ride on Sweetheart, we're done beat this damn horse to death Take it to one and ride on We're done beat this damn horse to death So take your new one and ride on