The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 533: Wild Turkeys: Pluckin’ and Skinnin’ with Jesse Griffiths

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Steven Rinella talks with Jesse Griffiths, Ryan Callaghan, Brody Henderson, Seth Morris, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics discussed: Jesse Griffith’s brand new cookbook, The Turkey Book, is out so order it now on the MeatEater website; look out for our auction house of oddities for this DU sword; how Jeff Foxworthy trained himself to drink black coffee; listen to Luke Combs on our God’s Country podcast; the MeatEater 2024 Live Tour and Skootin’ Newton who used to live at The Wilma in Missoula, MT; when Steve’s “fresh set of eyes” saying was used by an attorney who was trying to sniff out hunters among the jury; get our limited edition “Fresh Set of Eyes” t-shirt at the MeatEater store now; how black phase squirrels are the offspring of gray and fox squirrels interbreeding; the Scythians who made quivers from human hide; explaining elk herds and the concept of depredation funds; 400 pages on how to cook a turkey; how to fry wild turkey; celery seeds as the secret special ingredient; breasts and lobes; the debate over cooking turkeys whole; the time when Jesse cooked dinner for Jacques Pépin; Gaston in the lap; harvesting an old banded turkey; getting shot at while turkey hunting; and more.  Outro song by ReedsPianoNews Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.

Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com. apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Joined today by chef extraordinaire Jesse Griffiths, but that's not what we're going to talk about first. What are we going to talk about first, Steve? Hi, Jesse.

Hi. Thanks for coming on the show. Jesse has a brand new book out. It's a follow-up to the hog book. Was the hog book called the hog book? That's correct. The hog book. I got it right. Yeah. Yeah. It's called the Turkey book, the Turkey book master of clever book names. No, well, it just comes right out and says it. Yeah. The hog book. If you don't, if you're not already aware, the hog book's phenomenal. Thank you. If you're a wild hog naysayer, get the hog book. The hog book tells you everything you need to know.

I'm talking to you, Southerners. It tells you everything you need to know about judging, processing, preparing, dealing with hogs, wild hogs. Correct. dealing with hogs wild hogs correct and uh i've before i've remarked that i i call jesse the hog apologist yeah yeah um i love that by the way yeah yeah but a turkey requires no apology they're just good to eat but the turkey book is thick it is it clocked in at almost as many pages as the hog book um i thought it was going to be a a daintier book and it didn't turn out that way yeah it's elegant it's thorough um it's beautifully put together the turkey book we're going to dig in with jesse and talk about the turkey book but we're going to cover some stuff first you people joining us on youtube i'm holding

a large i don't know what you call it. I think you're menacing. You're not holding. It's supposed to be a Bowie knife. I think it lays right in between a knife and a sword. Yeah. Which is what a Bowie knife was. Bowie knife.

Apparently Cal put this in Seth's office. I came in and I'm like, the hell is that? Seth said, that's what everybody says who comes in here. Since Cal put it in there. And Seth pointed out that it's going to go in the auction house of oddities. Yep. Perfect for cutting up teal. Now, you know, if you lie a lot, you get in trouble with the gambling commission, the FTC or whoever.

Who does, who regulates gambling? Like Barstool got in trouble because they had that, like, they had a sports bet called the can't lose. But you could lose real bad. But it was a joke. It was called the can't lose but you could lose real bad but it was a joke it was called the can't lose they got all that trouble well in the spirit of that this is real gold yep real gold this is like a fat bar is there grades of gold? This is the best gold. It's a genuine. This is Aztec gold. Bluegill fillet knife. This is from.

This is from King Tut's private stash. This gold. Handmade it. King Tut handmade this. And he even engraved the ducks unlimited yeah logo in there that that actually wasn't that was his personal duck hunting sign adopted by du in his will he wrote ducks unlimited can have this logo and daniel boone killed this stag daniel boone killed this stag.

And Jim Bowie, as he went down fighting at the Alamo, while Crockett quivered in the corner. We got to do this again? While Crockett quivered in the corner, Jim Bowie killed several Mexican generals with this blade. Seen some shit. The provenance is... Yeah, we got all the paperwork

proving all this. I just got to write it up. Available to you. For the price of your choosing. And this will be in the auction house of oddities. King Tut's gold, Daniel Boone's staghorn thing, and Jim Bowie's actual Mexican general

slaying steel. I'm thinking about pairing it with my black powder six shooter. That would sweeten the pot. Which was gifted to me by the California Rifle and Pistol Association.

What are those people that reenact stuff called? LARPs. Yeah. LARPers. Not to be confused with a LERP. With your pistol and that, that their blade they could really do some LARP and LARP their asses off. That reminds me of Clay's illustration. Maybe he could

you know. Oh, should we put that in the auction house? No, that might piss Clay off. No, no, no. We should hold on. What else is coming up in the auction? We haven't picked our dates yet, but we got like other good stuff.

Well, I know like Wyoming BHA is bringing together some folks to provide like a real Wyoming adventure experience. Yeah. For the Auction House of Oddities? For the Auction House of Oddities. We typically provide some experiences, which schedule-wise,

we got to come together on and figure that out sooner rather than later what we can do so we don't get crazy overextended. Some of your furs, maybe? We're going to put some of these furs behind me in it. We have a FHF chest rig that's...

Fur-lined. Fur-lined. The outer is muskrat, Furs, maybe. We're going to put some of these furs behind me in it. We have a FHF chest rig that's fur lined. The outer is muskrat, which I think we might have talked about that being in the last one, but just one thing led to another and it's in this one. Yep. Lots of good stuff coming up. Yep. Yep. Oh, Corinne, in your little deal has have we already released

Jeff Foxworthy? Is Jeff Foxworthy interview already gone up when these people are listening to this now? Indeed. You know what Jeff Foxworthy told me before we started recording? It's of interest. Well, a number of things that I don't want to share. But one thing he told me is I was making he made me a coffee. And I said, do you got any milk or anything?

And he doesn't. And he said, you know what? Because I like to hunt a lot, I forced myself to learn to like black coffee. Really? Because he says you always wind up somewhere and there's like some coffee, but of course there's no cream or milk. that's how he always drank it milk sugar trained himself yeah god almighty think of the time we would get back in our lives from meat eater shoots if we didn't have the the half and a half conversation the pressure that would come off whoever shopped

oh yeah to be like no no get what you think is a lot and then double it yeah especially if clay because clay just drinks it yeah like drinks glasses of it clay clay definitely does uh a glass of half and half in a splash of coffee yeah so he uh he flat out trained him which i'm thinking about doing As I sit here drinking my cream and coffee, I'm thinking about quitting. I mean, I quit alcohol. I can quit cream.

I tried doing it for a while. Cause, uh, Evan Hafer kind of shamed us that one time on that shoot. Yeah. But who cares? And I was like, well,

no, I don't care. But I was like, yeah, I'll try it. And I just like it better with cream, but it's, it's a vulnerability, dude.

When I think about the end of the world, the world ending, all humans dying, you're going to be able to find coffee. Yeah. You're going to run out of cream. I met a fella at the Western Hunt Expo, Cafe Mule. Super nice dude. He gives away coffee in the Boise foothills off the back of some rescue mules. Oh, I know this guy. Yeah.

Who does he give it to? Just other folks hiking around out there, but then he's got a coffee company by the same name. He's another retired. He's former military. Special forces dude, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I communicate with him. So you met him? Yeah. He's a nice guy? Yeah, really nice guy, but he's like, yeah,, dude. Yeah. So you met him? Yeah. He's a nice guy. Yeah. Really nice guy. But he's like, yeah,

do you want a cup of coffee? And I was like, yeah, that'd be great. And he's like half and half. I was like, no, I'll try it.

He didn't try to shame you. No, I asked too. I was like, like, cause he obviously had it sitting out for everybody. He's like, I don't care.

Like, oh, okay. Yeah. Uh, if you're a fan of God don't care. Like, oh, okay. Yeah. Uh, if you're a fan of God's country podcast, um, and you're listening,

if you're listening right now, you can go, uh, listen to the Luke Holmes episode of God's country podcast with Dan and read his bell. That's live right now. Go check that out. Uh,

dude, you, if you want to know like an ongoing fight I have with Krenn, it's this. Check that out. Tomorrow. Dude, if you want to know like an ongoing fight I have with Corinne, it's this. But I put it in the script. Oh, God. Good Lord.

Okay. Time is a flat circle, Corinne says. Never mind. Meaning tomorrow at the time of this, like, when people are listening to this

If they're listening to this right now Like if they're It's a lot of moving parts at this company Oh my god well no it's just This is the If you're listening to this within minutes of it dropping You can see why they ever came out with live news They're like we just can't handle minutes of it dropping. You can see why they ever came out with live news.

They're like, we just can't handle the delay. Steve really likes pointing that knife at people. Well, it's just that today, this is airing on a Monday and God's Country

airs on Tuesday. And when this is out, the Luke Combs episode on God's Country is slated to come out the day after Tuesday. That. And when this is out, the Luke Combs episode is on God's Country is slated to come out the day after Tuesday. That's all. Speaking of live tour,

we're going back out on the road for Meat Eater Live. Starting April 23rd. This is a soft announcement, right? Yeah, I don't know

if we're allowed to talk about it. No, we are. Yep. We're doing 10 shows coming up this spring and you know what i just did i just lined up turkey hunt for one of them mornings really and i said now there's gonna be other people wanting to get in on this turkey hunt i'll start actually talking to dave smith i'm like there's other people gonna be wanting getting in

on this turkey hunt he says i'm already shutting the door but i'm happy to help him i'm happy to get him in the right direction, but we're going to have to spread people out. Is this the first time? Because everybody on that bus is going to want to be hunting turkeys on the day off. So, listen, Dave, you better start working the phone and get more spots lined up.

April 23rd where? In Mesa, Arizona. Okay. That's the first spot then san diego okay then anaheim then anaheim which is kind of like it's like disneyland it's like five blocks away from disneyland steve trust me i already looked then sacramento like disneyland oh hell yeah man he's probably when you're hunting like he's's going to probably go to Disneyland. That was one of the, taking my kids there is one of the worst things I ever did.

Oh, it's awful. I love it. The funniest thing that came out of it is we went there and then we went to Legoland. And so my kid, like, he liked Legoland. And then one day I had a leg of lamb. Have I told this story? No. We're eating leg of lamb.

Someone gave me a leg of lamb. So the whole time we're eating dinner, like leg of lamb, leg of lamb, leg of lamb. Have I told this story? No. We're eating leg of lamb. Someone gave me a leg of lamb. So the whole time we're eating dinner, like leg of lamb, leg of lamb, leg of lamb. After a while, my little boy, he was quite a bit,

he's like three years younger than he is now. He's like five. And after a while, he's like, so what's going on with Lego land? We're going back to Lego land? No, leg of lamb,

not Lego land. Uh, then what happens, Phil? Sacramento? Then Salt Lake City? Sacramento? We gotta get Greg Fonce rolled into that. Keep going. It's after Salt Lake.

Boise? Boise. Missoula? Oh, that's gonna be fun. Because you know what? The Missoula show we're doing at the Wilma. And my old girlfriend, I used to almost like half live in the Wilma. My old girlfriend lived in the Wilma.

Back then, they didn't have an elevator. They didn't have an elevator. You had to wake up a guy named Scootin' Newton. The elevator wasn't, you couldn't operate the elevator. If you wanted to get to your apartment, it doesn't matter what time, you'd be coming home from the bar at two in the morning. Scootin' Newton would sleep on his couch. He lived in this little apartment for free on the term that he ran the elevator. And he'd always be in there with a pair of Chuck Taylors sleeping on the couch.

And you'd be like, Scootin' Newton. He'd jump up and then work the elevator. You couldn't operate the elevator. And what's funny is the hydraulics were bad in that elevator. So when you stopped it, it would sink. And Newton was so good. You could tell that no matter when he woke him up, he knew the drop. So he'd overshoot the room, throw the lever, and that sucker would settle back down.

You could tell that he liked to land it as flush as he could possibly land it. You'd be riding up, and he'd start really paying attention. All of a sudden, he'd drop down, and he'd level. Then they put in a regular elevator. That's going to be fun

because I'm very familiar with that building. What's that Bob Dylan tune tune tangled up in blue where he talks about inside this building the heat pipes just cough is that tangled up in blue i don't know you're asking i don't think it's infinity goes up on trial what's that song inside the music come on well look look on the internet look it up well it's so funny though because like dylan's thing from his critics is like oh he just throws out random non-connected strings of of lyrics that's what i like and that's what you're trying to get us to like which song was it for the random lyric you're like well, because you can't say it was about. Right.

Inside the museum, Infinity Goes Up on Trial is also in that song. And the heat pipes just cough. Anyways, you want to talk about some coffee heat pipes. The Wilma. It's fancy now. Then what happens, Phil?

Spokane, Washington. On the line up turkey hunt there i can tell you that then portland oregon and then tacoma i think tacoma's the last stop over in phil's neck of the woods that's right west coast best coast baby do you ever see it i think it's in the wilma somewhere now but um when they had their there's a real fancy hotel that like during our time was not really operating then they kind of got it back up and they got some fancy restaurants in there um that was like down the block one block from the the wilma um and then i think above the wilma, there were, um, hotel rooms for rent originally, but a big draw was fishing in the Clark Fork right there. Mm.

And there's pictures of people who, you know, stop on the railroad, come down to the Wilma and then fish in the Clark Fork and just these giant, giant trout. Probably bull trout back then too. Bull trout and huge cutthroat too, I would think. Dude, we used to go, oh man, I got so many Missoula stories. The Florence, maybe? Florence Hotel, yeah.

We used to go in and tube down that river, get out, like put in, tube down, get out on Higgins, go up and get an ice cream i remember one time laughing because we're coming back down you can still see our wet footprints coming up the sidewalk when we got out of the thing and me my buddy one time went and spotted a big old hole in the ice underneath the bridge on higgins and found all these comatose crayfish and as soon as they warmed up like instantly back to activity and we cooked them up but then took one crayfish and uh it's

gonna sound mean but they regenerate their claws and my roommate had a tank with one little crazy little frog in it some kind of african white frog or something like a little teeny weird little frog that he liked a lot so he dismembered well we took no we took the crayfish's claws off and let him go in the aquarium. And that son of a bitch eventually regenerates the teensiest little claw. And my buddy comes home one day and that crayfish is sitting on the bottom

holding that dead frog in his one claw, man. Oh, quick note on Bob Dylan. The Inside the Museum's Infinity Goes Up on Trial. That is from Visions of Joanna. That's the song. So is the Heatisions of Joanna. That's the song. So is the heat pipes then. It's a great tune. Anyway, we used to sit in that place listening to that on vinyl

while the heat pipes coughed, which always sticks in my mind. Shouldn't be talking about that because that wasn't my wife. Live tour is going to be great. Cal's going to be there for a bunch of them. He's got some stuff he can't do, but he's got some dates he can do. Yanni's going to be there for a bunch of them. Spencer's going to be there for a bunch of them.

We're going to have a trivia component. Or, even though it seems to be very unpopular, but people have to trust us, there's going to be the survey show us there's gonna be the survey show that people just generally hated the survey show right most people did not seem to like it but again the most vocal folks on the internet are the haters so and in my house in the morning like people aren't raising their voice to like talk about how much they liked breakfast survey what survey shows or or you're saying the survey shows we did a survey so so spencer tested out recently instead of trivia he tested out a survey show where you survey a bunch of

people then ask people like let's say you did like what percent of blank what percent of blank population believes in bigfoot you got to guess i told him the problem with the survey show was that you need to have a tight more tightly defined demographic that you're surveying so as the live shows we'll be able to do the survey game with audience involvement where we're going to survey, survey the audience and then quiz people about basically quiz people about themselves. What percentage of people in the room

tonight believe in Bigfoot? More importantly, the person sitting next to him, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's great. So that's funny. We're figuring that out.

It'll, it'll be a riot. Did you do the version where you got a bet? You got points and then you got to bet those points, wager those points on how certain you were of your answer? No, if you got an idea, you should talk to Spencer because I still don't understand how he scored it. And that seemed to be the main problem is. Yeah, it was an arbitrary number.

It was like if you're five below, you get four points. If you're four below, you get three points. It was just the further away from the correct answer, you would get less points. He needs to think through it. Of course, Corinne won. She's loving that system. Well, that was the weirdest thing about it

is it wound up being that the better you are at trivia, the worse you are at trivia, the worse you are at the survey show. Because what happens in the survey show is when you ask me a survey question, I'm just going to tell you what I like. I'm like, well, I don't. So I'm going to put that no one does. And Corinne was more like thinking about what people think and not thinking about not bringing her own baggage into it. Like you'd be like, have you, what percentage of people have inherited a gun?

Right. And you're like, I've inherited all kinds of guns. Oh. Everybody. My, my, my dad sent me the definite, remember we had a question about inherit. Yeah. Like, can you inherit someone, something if someone's still alive? Was that you?

Yeah. You can. You can. By definition. Yeah. He wanted you to know that. Thank you. Mr. Hendersonerson thanks for clearing that up this you're not gonna believe this this is this is dead true i had a guy come up to me in portland

we were at the portland live the sportsman show pacific what's it called pacific northwest yeah something like that show the dude comes up to me and he says, he explains he's a trial lawyer. You're going to think I'm lying. This is the truth. Oh, wait. Has Jesse heard the background of the bean saying? No, but there's a saying I made up that's really getting a lot of traction. It is.

The saying is this. A fresh set of eyes will always find more beans. It alludes to pick and pull beans. Okay. Right? You know what I'm saying. Sure. A trial lawyer comes up to me.

And now he didn't tell me what side of it he's on, but he said, I'm involved in a mountain lion poaching case. He didn't tell me. Presumably, I don't know. He's maybe tell me. Presumably, I don't know. He's maybe defending the mountain lion poacher. I don't know. It'd be hilarious if he was the poacher. I don't think so. But the way I did get out of the story that that wasn't the case.

Anyways, he's involved in a mountain lion poaching case. And he said during jury questioning, when he's talking to his jury pool, he did not want to, with the other attorney involved, he did not want to introduce the idea that he's interested in who in this room hunts and who in this room might be familiar with certain hunting discussions and conversations. He asked the jury pool, are you familiar with the saying, a fresh set of eyes finds more beans? Six people raised their hand. That's a sneaky way to do it. And he said, and then I had my hunters. Now what he didn't tell me is,

did he want them out of the room or in the room? He didn't give me any detail. Was he trying to get them out or keep them in? But he said he didn't want to introduce that. And he didn't want to introduce his thinking. Thanks to those six individuals for listening. A fresh set of eyes. Are you familiar with the saying,

a fresh set of eyes finds more beans? That's, that's sneaky. That is. It's also pretty interesting that this is going to trial. Yeah. Makes you really wonder what type of case this is. How egregious.

I feel like he was trying to get rid of people. Maybe, I don't know. Was he trying to get them in or get them out? I don't even know what side he was on. Here's one that Cal's going to like.

Oh no, and a radiologist said this. Here's what a radiologist said. He's been using it a lot in the medical field. Remember I said it would have implications for finance? Turns out it has implications for medicine. A radiologist writes in, the first time

I tried your proverb was on our breast imager. When I was in high school, I got a buddy that saw a sign for a breast imager and thought it was a breast imaginer. I'm not joking. I'm laughing. Not because of that, but because you think that your saying, your made up saying has implications in the field of medicine.

Oh, no, no. Implications could be applied in the field of medicine. Yeah, there you go. Implications could be applied in the field of medicine. Yeah, there you go. I didn't mean to say that. Yeah. Applications. Yeah. Applications and radiology.

Radiologist says, the first time I tried your proverb was on our breast imager. We were discussing an upcoming difficult breast ultrasound guided biopsy. You following? That we were having trouble with matching the MRI findings with what the ultrasound was showing us.

She told me, this is his colleague, that she would repeat the ultrasound prior to biopsy, that perhaps she could find what I and the technologist couldn't find on the earlier study. I stated, oh yeah, that's a good idea. You know what they say, a fresh set of eyes always finds more pole beans. And she replied without pause, right? And go get one of our pole bean shirts.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high 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.

onxmaps.com slash meet onxmaps.com slash meet welcome to the onx club y'all now this next bit we're going to talk about is dedicated to Cal because we're going to return to Cal's favorite subject canceling canceling stellar yeah this is greatly abbreviated as we've reported widely they're trying to cancel our

our stellar who named who was one of those old-timey uh naturalists who had a tendency to name everything after himself so he's like hey there hey, there's a sea lion. I'm going to call that Stellar's Sea Lion. Oh, look at that cool looking J. I'm going to call that Stellar's J. And now the Ornithological Society is trying to take anyone

any old white dude who has a name attached, they're trying to scrub them out of the naming convention. And a guy wrote in to invite us to consider what an interesting fella stellar was in light of his impending elimination from the historic record. Stellar named a sea cow after himself, which is now extinct. In his The Beasts of the Sea

by George Wilhelm Stellar, he talks about a fun little joke they would play. If they're cutting up doing explorations on a if they're cutting up, doing explorations on a stellar sea cow, he says, if only a very slight aperture should be made with the point of a knife,

the liquid excrement, a ridiculous thing to behold, would squirt out violently, like blood from a ruptured vein, and not infrequently, the face of the spectator would be drenched by this springing fountain whenever someone opened a canal upon his neighbor opposite for a joke and describing the the the phallus and describing the penis of an animal. He says, the penis of the male is 32 inches long, and with its

sheath is bound firmly in front of the abdomen and reaches clear to the navel. In a word, it is very coarse. It is very coarse and obscene to look upon. Very much like that of a horse, and ends with the same sort of a gland, only larger. I'm just trying to bring him to life he seems like a very interesting individual german-born nationalist first european to alaska who took great interest in native peoples and native life waves and went out of his way to record those with respect and admiration. Brody, you ready to do your squirrel report?

Yeah. Don't lose hope, Jesse. We're going to get. I've been here before. This isn't actually new news, but it's new to us. I'm surprised that we didn't hear about this earlier. So there's a black phase of gray squirrels, Eastern gray squirrels, which most people have

seen, right? Like you guys have all seen them. And I think the conventional thinking for a long time was that those, those were just melanistic squirrels, you know, just a color phase, right? Yeah. Like, like did a, I have often told people,

I've always told people that a gray squirrel will throw a black squirrel offspring right and i have noticed that just growing up in our yard i've noticed that you'd like there'd be years when you had mostly grays mostly eastern grays and then it'd be predominantly black phase grays. And I've always watched that, you know, come and go. It's very anecdotal, but it felt like there was like this shift in and out, in and out. Yeah. And you'd see, I mean, we would have some areas where there was none.

And then some areas where there's like, it was common to see the black ones. Well, you might shoot a limit of five and it wouldn't be like, you wouldn't really think that much of it if you shot five black phase gray squirrels. Yep. Exactly. You guys had more black phase squirrels up north. Yeah. Than we had. Yeah.

But here's the thing. We also have more fox squirrels than you had down in the mountains. And we had always had a mix. Yeah. um and it turns out that the fox squirrel comes into play uh for why there are black phase eastern gray squirrels this is a study that came out like four years ago um and and and i'll just start reading here despite differences in coloring eastern gray squirrels and so-called black squirrels are actually members of the same species which kind of goes with what we were saying but um they owe their distinctive appearance

to interbreeding between gray and fox squirrels the fox squirrels carry a faulty pigment gene known to give some members of the predominantly reddish-brown species, which fox squirrels, gives them a darker fur. And this gene variant passed from fox squirrels to gray squirrels via mating. So that's kind of surprising. I don't think, you know. I've never heard that. Yeah.

This came up because we're working on a sportsman's atlas. Yeah. Which would be like a hundred places around the country that every hunter and angler should know about yep and it's all just kind of maps and like specific weird spots and maps and like every mammoth mass every known mammoth mastodon kill site world record bass the weird story of oneida traps yeah this weird kind of crazy sex colony used to make traps um and then we're doing a thing about distribution of a g-style distribution yeah um like this what this art this article is not saying that these these are like hybrid squirrels though

it's just a gene that gets passed into the gray squirrel population which then pops up now and then um something i don't agree with in this article is i don't know if i agree with any of this according to mental floss is i don't know what mental agree with any of this. According to Mental Flosses, I don't know what Mental Flosses must be some. Probably like a publication. Yeah. It's a publication. It's a good name. Like flosses your brain out.

Black squirrels are black, eastern black gray squirrels are relatively rare, constituting just one in 10,000. Oh, bullshit. That's not true. They're talking about something different. I don't believe any of this anymore. I wish you wouldn't have done that report. No, because they have like... Don't bleep out that entire report.

No. Part of it is this like DNA study that they did. And they identified this gene that's like it's real. You better do a little more work on that, Brody. I'm just repeating the science, Steve. Just repeating the science.

I remember when I was in high school, we went up to Salamanca, New York. That was New York. It's right there on the border, I think. Turkey hunt. And every squirrel we saw up there was black. Right. Right. More than 10,000.

Well, I mean, that's the problem with science, the inconvenience of science. If they're not looking for the visible trait, they're trying to find the genetic trait. Mm. It's not gonna necessarily jive with what you have. I was just, I'd learned a bunch about, uh, stone sheep and fanon sheep.

What a bunch of bullshit that is. Oh, really? Yeah. They're like, well, how dark is the sheep? Right. It's like trying to find a black hair on a white sheep and then calling it a fanon sheep. I got you.

I mean, boy, glad we got that taken care of, science team. I got you. Yeah. Cal's going to talk about something that I only found out about yesterday, but first I want to talk about this. You know, I don't know how many people out there actually listened like actually listened in the audience raise your hand no in this room raise your hand if you actually listened to tucker carlson's vladimir putin interview okay if you haven't you're not allowed to comment on anything i listen to the whole thing to the bitter end me too the way it's

been reported on in the news is so insanely inaccurate yes but one thing putin left off was this in ukraine there's this article that uh heffelfinger just sent us these archaeologists working in ukraine there was this nomadic group called the Scythians. They were like nomadic hunter-gatherers. And there's reference like their enemies would reference, like watch out for the Scythians.

They will make stuff out of your skin. And these archaeologists were doing, they recovered in these different sites Scythian leather. And it's a lot of like stuff you'd expect game animals and whatnot. They found a number of quivers made from human hide. Hmm.

Wow. Now they would take their enemy, make a quiver out of human hot. I'd take that leg skin. Yeah. Like a big long pouch. Make a circle cut. Right. hot. I'd take that leg skin. Yeah. Make a big long pouch out of it. Make a circle cut right, right at the groin. Tube skin that leg.

I'd make a circle cut right below the knee. Take that bugger off. Just one run seam down the side, one seam along the bottom. Look cool if you still have the quiver. On the bottom. Auction house of oddities. The scythians were not people

you'd want to mess with, man. Oh, man, no. How long ago was these guys running around? They were finding this stuff in their burials. Southern Ukraine, the Scythians. 900 BC to 200 BC. Oh, so a while back. Okay, Cal.

Explain this deal with grazing. Oh, Wyoming right now? Yeah, with hunters needing to be on the hook for the fact that elk eat grass. Explain this to me. Yeah, so most western states have some sort of a system to reimburse landowners for agricultural losses related to wildlife. Like crop damage. Crop damage.

Yep. Exactly. So there's, there's two new things that came out of HB 60 in Wyoming, which is currently still in the house right now. So it's gone through committee. It's, it's in the house. Next step would be the Senate.

Um, those two new things are adding, uh, pasturage, the loss of, of grass, um, either on private land or state land, state grazing leases, um, into the list of, of crop damage into the list of agricultural damage that can be reimbursed. Okay. Tell me when I can go like, that is so stupid. Then the other part of this that is new would be raising the maximum allowable reimbursement

from 100% of fair market value to 150% of fair market value. And the reason being that when you, if you totally destroy a pasture, it's not going to magically come all the way back next year. So it's got more repercussions than just the year that it's been assessed. Um, the, this is really coming out of the Southeast Colorado where. Wyoming, right? Oh, sorry. Yes. Wyoming, but it's where all the Colorado

people hunt. Uh, so Southeast Wyoming, lots of private land, but it's a's a public wildlife, right? It's, it's elk and, um, limited access to these elk. And this is, yeah, a big move saying that we want the, uh, Wyoming game and fish to immediately start knocking down these herds so um which wyoming game and fish has been on top of this situation they're two years into uh you know like an emergency five-year management plan when you say knock down the herd do you mean like

sharpshooters coming in what do you mean like damage hunts where they yeah they don't nobody likes to talk about sharpshooters right it's got a negative public perception but they've had they've killed real bad shooters yeah uh they've they've had uh two culls i think that have knocked uh killed like 148 cows um that, that, you know, are, are paid people who are going out there to eliminate elk. So non, non hunters. And across the road, some guys paying $3,000 for a cow elk hunt. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, yeah. So the, in, in most Western states, like the way to, you can only apply for, uh, cash from damaged agriculture. If you're allowing some sort of access in Wyoming, it's defined as, as reasonable hunting access, but what is reasonable, right? And I think one of your, uh, quotes that I really enjoy is like, what is an objective herd size? Yeah. Like it's not my objective as an elk hunter. Um, but these herds are over objective by the, the elk management plan in Wyoming.

Sure. Um, which kind of, you know, is a, a ball that gets bad and back and forth between all these interest groups, primarily like the Wyoming, uh, stock growers association would be one of the main, main players here. If you're a hunter, I would generally be very suspicious when someone tells you that something's

over objective as though you're supposed to accept that as your reality, or you're supposed to accept that as your objective. Yeah. But this is also a place where like wolves aren't knocking them down hunters have very little access correct so i'll tell you one way to get rid of one way to scatter smell is hunting after them right that's what i'm saying they learned that very quickly yeah they learned that very quickly um dude but you know

i'm like i'm like on everything i'm a slippery slope guy and i just don't like where this is going like okay i get it on crops i've never even questioned it on crop damage and i've never questioned it on depredation of livestock yep okay in fact when i'm buying my licenses in my home state i always click the box to add like to round up and add money to depredation to the to the depredation pool. But as a slippery slope guy, to all of a sudden be that wildlife eating grass that's not been planted.

Like, you know when you're buying and selling houses, there's like preexisting condition stuff. It's like, dude, I'm sorry. That's just a preexisting condition. The good Lord's creatures are out there eating grass. Yeah. Like to have it be that, to have it be that you can now, that you would be that you're going to have a state grazing lease and then come back to the state and be like, oh, by the way, your deer keep eating the grass. So pay me some money.

And come on. There's a parallel story going on in Wyoming right now too, that, that ties into what you just said perfectly, right? There's a, there's an isolated mountain range that, um, Wild Sheep Foundation, to do this because we know that the reintroduction of wild sheep will affect our grazing leases if we were to want to put out domestic sheep out there. Mm-hmm. This is like a known thing, right? So like National Wildlife Federation, wild sheep will go in and either at fair market value exchange domestic sheep for cattle and write out an

agreement that when they do that exchange, uh, you can never run sheep out here again in order to prevent disease transmission from domestic sheep to wild sheep. Um, and I, I bring this up as a good example because here's a situation, isolated mountain range for the, the lives of these livestock producers. There's never been domestic or wild sheep there. The introduction of those wild sheep will change how they have to operate their, uh, operations. Right. And, uh, this other example though, is there's been elk there for a really long time, generations of people. Um, those elk have grown, those operations have been around those, those elk essentially forever. It's not the same as somebody trying to now

force something upon everyone and they have to change their whole economic. Exactly. System around that introduction. It's just been a constant. It's been a constant. And then what's funny too is if you go and look like the other puzzling part about it is if you're, if you're want to scroll through

real estate listings, real estate listings are mighty quick to celebrate the elk. Yes. Yeah. In the alfalfa, there'll be a picture of the yeah in the alfalfa there'll be a picture of the herd in the right and so this hunter's paradise to make this agricultural claim that oh we hate these elk we purchased this property specifically to raise cattle um you'd have to say like well why did you choose to do it in an area

where elk herds are 11,000 animals over objective? Mm-hmm. Um, that'd be pretty tough. Did your operation plan when you went to the bank include a shitload of high fence to keep these animals out? Right.

It's like, no, is, is the answer. Um, but the, the nuts and bolts of this thing and why everybody should be concerned, even if you're not an elk hunter or, uh, a rancher in this area, that's trying to graze cattle or grow any sort of cash crop um the way wyoming is built is this fund doesn't get tapped out meaning that the depredation fund wants the money's out of it and right now as i understand if there's only one funding mechanism for that depredation fund which of course comes out of resident and non-resident license fees. Like, so there's money that is earmarked from those purchases that goes into the depredation fund.

Once that's tapped out, it can eat into the next operational budget and the next operational budget. Within Fish and Game. Within Fish and Game. you know, enjoy like the public access on private ground programs that, that are all administered by Wyoming Fish and Game. So is it right for this like fight against elk in this specific area to inhibit the ability for the state to manage all other aspects of Fish and Game?

There's a, there's a interesting interesting i think maybe it's an irony feels like an irony and it'd be like um hey uh hunters and anglers you know those elk that no one will let you go uh get at well i need you to pay for what they're doing. Cause I don't want you going in there and chasing them off and hunting them. Yeah. Yeah. And the reasonable access thing, right. It's like,

well, how much, I haven't seen a scale of how they pay this out. It's like, Oh, if you're open to the public in like a type one block management system that we have here in Montana, then you're eligible for this amount of,

uh, damage cash. Got it. Um, I, I haven't seen that. I haven't seen the scale of how they're going to determine all these, uh, mixed grass ecosystems for this 15%. So if there's 15% damage, you get 150 percent of fair market value of the past year. Like how they're going to determine that across the board, there's just a lot of question marks. But I was talking to Hal Herring today and it was pretty funny. He goes, you know, it seems to me in

Wyoming, ever since the end of the Johnson County War war they've been trying to figure out how to get state money back to private landowners an editor a long time editor at outdoor life uh once said to me privately i asked him if his farm is enrolled in black man this is a hot tip for people that got elk problems. I asked him if his ranch was enrolled in block management. And he said, no, block management up here is a biological desert. Little hot tip. If you got an elk problem. Well, yeah, you'd be running some elk around. Unfortunately, I don't think.

Well, just, yeah, block management's a pretty awesome program. I'm not hacking it. I'm quoting someone. Right. You want to move some animals off your property. Is there something like this

that's happening in other states? Montana. Would Texans ever have this, Jesse? Texans got way ahead of it. They made elk, which is a native species, a non-native species. They made them an honorary. You've heard of things becoming honorary natives. They made elk an honorary non-native.

They stripped them of their native status. Yeah. There's a real surge in elk hunting out West, but it's all, it's all private. Yeah. Yeah. They wanted like Texans, God bless them. I mean, West Texas, but. Texans wanted to be like, they want to be like, hey man, I want to be able to like raise out and do whatever I want to them.

But I can't because it's like native wildlife and everything. So can you just make them that they're like, can we just say they're not native wildlife so we can do whatever we want? And they're like, sure. Yeah. To put a bow on the HP 60 thing in wyoming i think the best thing right because i am simple very sympathetic to some of these agricultural wines um and i want like the family ranch to stick around absolutely absolutely it's just like table this thing it is not well thought out it's not well structured The state mechanism for funding this is, is way behind, uh, the ability for this thing to function in, in everyone's best interest.

What, here's why. Okay. You're right. I'm pro farm. I'm pro ranch. I'm a cows, not condos kind of guy from a conservation perspective. I'd vote for you right now. If that was your stump, go ahead.

I'm a cows, not condos guy. But I said, I'm a slippery slope guy too. wildlife if if people that own land need to be compensated for publicly owned wildlife eating natural resources and organisms that have been there for thousands of years it's like do you say hey uh some squirrels or something ate a lot of my acorns i need some money or get these squirrels out of here it's just like it's like where how does this go yeah okay you remember a long time ago you're like a trout fisherman and you own a big stretch of river you know what those otters and mink have been eating my trout whose mink are these the states i need some money well the flip side of it too is like there's plenty of

cows eating the grass that elk eat on public land and so the elk should bill them well i mean they're paying for a lease but is it a fair compensation for the the the elk food that the cows are eating you know that's true that's what i'm saying it, it's so weird. Do you remember your example of like, if you wanted to start a prosciutto operation in Montana and you decided like the Rocky Mountain Slope would be the best place to hang a bunch of prosciutto out in the open air? Mm-hmm. Would the state then come in and compensate

you for grizzly bears? Someone's bears are eating all my prosciuttos. We haven't even dipped into hog damage. Like, I mean, $2 billion a year in Texas in hog damage agriculturally. I don't think we have the budget to compensate for that. No. No, but I think that they would be able to,

hopefully they'd be able to say that's not our animals, fish and game. Yeah. And elk, they'd be like, no, they got taken away from us too. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. All right, turkeys. turkeys turkeys yeah man how long uh how long you been working on the book i've been hearing about it for quite some time because i know how long books take well i mean oh that's interesting because um we we wrapped this um less than a year ago so uh it it actually start to finish was pretty quick. Was it? Yeah. No, I set out, I wanted to do another book,

post hog book. And, you know, I thought first off, I'd just replicate that with something that I was really interested in, that being turkeys. Yeah. Tell me why you didn't do the deer book. A lot of information out there about,

well, first off, shitty deer hunter. Uh. Okay. But a good deer cleaner. Yeah. Oh, well, thank you. You've criticized me lightly on my deer cleaning. You know, I'll leave the, remember I leave the, the hide on the Achilles tendon. Yeah.

I don't like the way that looks. Yeah. Yeah. I know. This is an aesthetic argument we had one day. No, you don't cut the tendon, do you? No no that makes me want to kill people no no i that the reason i leave the anyway i leave the hide on there so i don't cut the tendon like it's a failsafe that's like people when you're cleaning squirrels the people when they leave that little ring of hair around the

wrist and stuff i hate that oh yeah or on rabbits you know that little growth that has the long hairs that little mole? Mm-hmm. Squirrels have it too. Yeah. When you're cleaning squirrels in a sink after you clean rabbits or squirrels and someone leaves that little hairy mole. Ugh, I hate that.

Anyhow. Turkeys. So you're not a good deer cleaner. No, I'm a good, I am a good deer cleaner. I'm a very, I mean, I'm a very, uh, yeah. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm fast. I think I'm very thorough. Um, I'm very, yeah, you know, I'm fast. I think I'm very thorough. I love turkey hunting

and it's something I grew to love but it's something I'm not, I would say I'm very, very far from an expert in.

I spent, start to finish about 11 years on the hog book and then we, we completed this and yeah, I mean, there's some photos in there that were that were taken yeah but did you know okay i knew at the time we were taking those that my

next project would be about so for so for 11 years you're like someday i'm gonna do a book on hogs file this and that'll go in it in that fold okay yeah and then kind of rapidly decided that that i wanted to focus on turkeys and was like you know i, I'm just going to kind of use the hog book as a template. And then really quickly realized for a lot of reasons, most often, that there's a lot of really good literature out there. I mean, just good writing about turkeys, obviously. I mean, I can't really name a lot of, uh, books about fair hogs. I mean, no, there's no, like, there's no like, um, Tom Kelly or Jack O'Connor of hogs. Right.

Hemingway didn't hunt them. Right. And so then that became apparent to me that it's like, it's don't, don't try to do that. Um, and so the, the course I decided to take instead was more of a journal and just document start to finish in one season what you know just go on four hunts try to get the most geographically different spots lined up which was great for me too because i'm not much of a traveling hunter i spend almost all my time in Texas. Um, and then in between, I was just going to experiment and see what stuck as far as cooking and just cooked all these

different ways. And so it's not a definitive book on, on hunting turkeys. It's not a definitive cookbook on turkeys. It's just new ideas, new concepts and things that I came up with. I mean, there's some old classics, you know, there's fried turkey in there. You know, it's like the flagship recipe, but it's really just a slice of one season. When you say fried turkey, what do you mean? Slices of breast, brine and not like a deep fried turkey.

No. We were joking around yesterday and I said, man, like it's like 400 page book. That's a lot of pages to tell somebody how to fry a turkey. Jesse's like, it's the very first recipe. On purpose. I put that as the very first recipe.

I wanted to acknowledge that because I think a lot of people, you know, that's, that's their go-to and that's what they enjoy the most. And I always want to like honor that and make people feel comfortable about the way they cook. You don't want to fry shame people. No, no. We've talked about that for years, you know, fried fish, you know, objectively the best.

And so, yeah, so I kick it off with fried turkey. You know what I mean? It's my recipe for fried turkey, which I think is good. What makes your fried turkey recipe different than everybody else's fried turkey recipe? Not everybody else's, but what differentiates? How do you like, let me just put it this way. That's aggressive. How do you like fried turkey?

I like to, I like to brine it. Okay. I think that's pretty common. So there's a brine. There's, there's a couple of secrets in the, in the dredge and the flour that you're going to dust it in afterwards. Oh, you know what?

You want to annoy the hell out of him. You know what you should have asked him? You should have said wet, dry or dry brine dry brine. Wet brine or dry brine. That's his pet peeve. Is it? I just think it's a euphemism. Yeah, I mean a dry brine is a rub.

We've established that. Out of the low to the south of the vent. Dry brine? Yeah. It is a wet brine. Meaning a brine. A brine, otherwise known as brine. A. It is a wet brine. Meaning a brine. A brine. Otherwise known as brine.

A brine and a rub. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's dredged in flour and I don't want to give it away. You know, there's a couple of things in there that I think. Okay. Well, don't, yeah, but just, you can still. I'll give it away.

Well, no, you don't need to like get into like the little measurements and stuff. Celery seeds. Yeah. And that's a, that is a yeah that's a that is a that's a secret taught to me about the colonel not not tom kelly colonel sanders the other colonel yeah that's a that's a key component in there uh you know when we were on live tour we had this bus driver named john i'm trying i hope we get lined up for our next live tour John the bus driver and like I don't really think about but he looks like Colonel Sanders Oh and he saying one time he comes down his boss and someone's just like you know like

there's all kinds of on a tour for musicians there's all these people coming going all the time one times he comes on the bus and there's someone laying there he doesn't recognize sleeping and they wake up and they go oh i love the chicken and he said those kids what the hell kind of they leave and he's like they bothered him for days eventually told his wife like the hell does that even mean she goes you look like colonel sanders i'm gonna i'm gonna help you out um, not feeling like you're giving away the book, giving people reasons not to buy. We're, uh, flipping through this thing. It's very similar to like the outdoor cookbook that we're coming out with.

Like the worst, worst part about like the marketing of this is like, it's going to live in just a cookbook category. Whereas like you could give this book to anybody. And there's a lot of really good reading in there. There's a lot of good photography. There's a lot of reasons to enjoy this thing. It was like a coffee table book. Yeah. Before you would ever get to cooking anything.

Yeah. Even if you knew all the damn recipes, just to look at. Yeah. But, okay, let me tell you something. No one's going to not buy your book because you told you how you like to fry turkeys. I know. But you like to brine it. I do.

So you cut it up or brine the whole big chunks? I cut it up into strips. I think there's a certain thickness about finger size. Like what your kids order in restaurants. Yeah, yeah that, that there's a certain thickness, you know, about, you know, like finger size. Like what your kids order in restaurants. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a, that's a good size. Um, I like to clean the silver out of the breast. I think you get a little bit less chew and it's pretty easy to clean that out. Yeah. Um, and then yeah, brine that, uh, maybe go in a little, uh, acidic, something like a buttermilk, yogurt, whatever you got. It also helps the dredge stick, and then you dredge it in flour, a little bit of celery seeds, and some other things. And fry it up.

What temp do you like to fry her at? 350, hot, and then you know, I'm always, I like to fry in beef fat a lot. Sure, man. Beef fat or lard, but definitely the preference would be beef fat. If you could only fry at one temperature for the rest of your life.

350. See, man, I was brought up with 375, man. What does that difference? I don't know. When I was a kid, my old man would make you go to the garage where he kept his fryer. And he'd make you turn it on, but you had to stay there until the light blinked out and then go down and notify him.

Yeah. So if he told you to go turn the fryer on, you're like minutes my life you know you turn it on and then click run down it's on you got me i don't know i'm gonna i'm gonna recant i'm gonna go 375 man and i'm gonna go back because i think about potatoes and things like that and you're right it is probably it's a high it's 375. what do you like to do a catfish at? Oh, 375. You do? Yeah. Oh yeah.

Well, I, I like catfish to be very thinly sliced. Fine cornmeal. We've established that. To cook the, to cook the mud out of it. We bleed our catfish and bleed them and throw them into a ice bath. And that, that makes worlds and worlds of difference. So immediately we mostly trot line in these days, pull them off, cut the gills, wring their tail,

throw them in a, in a cooler full of ice and water. They're dead in a couple minutes and the blood line disappears. And then we fillet them and then slice them on the bias against the grain and fry that. And that is phenomenal. My Alaska mentor, he used to, when he's bleeding hell,

but he'd always cut their tail. And we used to tease him like, he's got like vapor lock or something. Like there's like a vacuum in there that you're like releasing when you cut his tail. Like I've never understood. Nothing comes out of there. Oh, I've seen, I've seen like blood come out of a catfish tail.

Oh, right. What do you think? There's like a, like, it's like, it's like putting your finger over the end of a straw unless you cut the tail then it can finally like fall out you know uh when you're frying like that turkey or whatever um let's say turkey catfish anything are you do you have you gotten where you watch the bubbles like i the bubbles mean a lot to me. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Definitely.

When it stops making as much noise, you mean? No, like picture you put it in and you think for a minute how your fryer is going to overflow. Yeah. Now, if you left it in there an hour and come back, there ain't no bubbles coming off there. That's moisture coming out. Yeah. Yeah. It slowly dissipates.

So how, how do you like what in your book, for instance, when you're saying, how do you tell folks, do you tell them, let it fry for blank minutes? Or do you tell them, let them fry till the bubble seem to have slowed down? I don't give a bubble reference in the book. It's more of a time reference. And if you cut it to a certain size and then you give a frying temperature, it's, it's easier to, to, you know, assign a, a time to that. But also it's gonna start to float, you know, you know what I mean, fully floating is probably gonna be fairly dry.

Yeah. Uh, but you know, start to like float and kind of swim around and yeah, small bubbles, just like when you're, when you're rendering fats, you look, I always tell people it should look like a, like a, a light beer, you know, it should be like a pale straw color with tiny bubbles. And that's when you know, you got all the moisture cooked out. You don't have those big, uh, you know, the, the moisture coming out in those big, like kind of bulbous bubbles. Instead, you've got those little pinpoint bubbles and you got that pale straw color.

And that's when, you know, you've got it totally rendered. Yeah. Um, do you put that celery seed on there? Uh, sprinkled on and you don't mix it. You don't put that celery seed on there, uh, sprinkled on and you don't mix it. You don't mix it into your cornmeal. Good. Uh,

for turkeys. That's it goes into flour, not cornmeal. Oh yeah. No, all purpose. You don't put it on the meat. You put it in the flour,

in the flour. Yeah. So black pepper, celery goes on there fried, you know, and then you have your gravy, your mashed potatoes, your greens.

Yeah. Hot sauce. Uh, what, what near, there fried you know and then you have your gravy your mashed potatoes your greens yeah hot sauce uh what what in there how do you tell people in there how to cook a whole turkey oh man it's a can of worms right there so i tell people not to and that's my opinion you don't throw them a single bone you don't throw them a single one because there's certain let me tell you something you can't stop people from wanting to try it. So why not help them out? Right. I see right away you talk about how to part a turkey out. Yeah. And I, I mean, there's a, there's a whole section in there, how to piece a breast out

into three, three distinct parts, you know, an upper lobe, a bottom lobe, and then the tenderloin. And all of those, I think have really distinct uses too. You can, and each one feed, you know, two to four people. And so they, and they have very specific uses. You can and each one feed you know two to four people and so they and they have very specific uses you can also cook a breast whole my opinion one sec you need to it's too late to edit that book i think so you're into treacherous territory using that word lobe why is that well because we went into this deep one time if you get into the poultry business oh a breast is two two lobes right right a lobe if you tell a poultry man a chicken breast

that poultry man is he's got two lobes and you tell someone a chicken breast, that poultry man is, he's got two lobes. And you tell someone a human breast, they don't think there's two. They think of one. If you tell them a chicken breast, that's comprised of two lobes. So with you introducing upper lobe and lower lobe, you're going to get yourself in trouble with poultry men. A risk I can take, I think. Yeah.

Yeah. I agree. You're going to face them down? Yeah. All right. Yeah. Um, yeah. Bow pilgrim coming after my ass.

I don't know. I'm fine. Whatever. You know. Back to the whole turkey though i mean it really it really comes down to what i wanted to put in here as far as recipes and i i address that and and i and and i i've seen your recipe for a whole turkey and i have a dear friend who swears by cooking a whole turkey and he's so funny because he always makes this motion he's like no you got to put the stuffing in hot and then he it's like he's in he makes this insertion uh movement to show you people just listening yes it's just like into the cavity which i hope is the right

term um of the bird he's like no you got to put the stuffing in hot and i'm and i'm like, my, my job, I think is, is to tell people how to achieve the best results in the easiest way. And I think that, that you're, you're, you're playing with fire a bit and trying to cook turkeys whole. But you can't stop people from wanting to cook a whole turkey. I don't tell them not to. I give them alternatives. I have, there's a chapter in here on breasts. There's a chapter on necks, wings, offal, and skin. There's a chapter on leg quarters and there's a chapter called celebrations.

So the celebrations addresses that issue. So what it is, is I'm not trying to stop people from cooking the whole bird. Cause what they want to do is they want to celebrate that whole bird. They want, I mean, you're cooking a whole Turkey. Yeah. You're serving a bunch of people.

But it's, it's like one of the worst ways to introduce someone who's never eaten wild Turkey to wild Turkey. I view it like this. Let's say you have a teenager, let's say you have a teenager and you're like, chastity is the best. Chastity is the best.

I'm like, but like but let's what if though I don't you want to talk about it chastity is the best chastity safest yeah but what no chastity I'm not telling not a cook whole turkeys I that is wonderful this is not the only cookbook for turkeys right here. It is not. I think people get used to cooking domestic turkeys whole. And they want to go and do it to a wild turkey. It's a completely different beast.

Completely different. I present them options for cooking a whole bird parted out or in more impressive ways. You know, like a turkey, this turkey Wellington, where you have the tenderloin, the liver, and the shredded leg meat encased in puff pastry. Wow. And then, or you make a sundae gravy where you take the legs and you slow cook them. And then you take the breast and you make brajol out of those. You roll them with some Parmesan. I'm not familiar with that term.

It's a rolled, it's usually a pounded out piece of meat that's rolled. What was the word? Brajol. Oh, okay. I thought you said, okay. Yeah, I am. Not brajola. I didn't catch the B.

Not brajola. Yeah. Yeah, brajol. B-R-A-C-I-O-L-E. No, I'm with you. And then it's usually Yeah. Yeah, Bresla. B-R-A-C-I-O-L-E. No, I'm with you. And then it's usually stuff with parsley, Parmesan, garlic, things like that. And so, and then you can take some slices

off the breast and do that. So at this point you can take a wing, you can take a leg, you can take a little bit of the breast and you can cook it and you can present it in this, you know, impressive way. And you can be like, hey, look, I cooked the whole bird, but it's reducing their risk at Thanksgiving.

Of screwing their whole turkey up. Well, yeah, of overcooking the breast, undercooking the legs. I want to clarify a point here. I don't do it. I used to be very, I used to want to do it all the time. But not only that, at Thanksgiving, I don't make turkey. Yeah. You know?

I mean, maybe I'd have a turkey dish, but I just make whatever I think is the best thing in my freezer. Yeah. Which I think is actually more in keeping with that tradition. Absolutely. They were like, you know, top of this a hundred times. Historians don't even think they were eating turkey. Yeah.

Talk about that. So like, I get it. I know anymore now not to do it but i respect the process like i said i'm not dogging on your book i'm not no no no i'm not gonna hold turkey shame anybody but like i said there's there's other ways to go about it and it's same thing with plucking and skinning you know it's like i know a lot of people want to skin their bird um they've always skinned a bird they don't want to take the time to pluck a bird and so i present both methods and then go

over what are the benefits and the and the and the drawbacks from doing either walk walk me through what you say in there okay well if you're gonna if you're gonna take the breasts and pound them out into cutlets pyards which is like, basically a very thinly sliced, uh, slice of breast that you grill very quickly. And it's wonderful. Like, and there's, and there's some, I think some very good methods for grilling turkey, thin sliced turkey breasts in there.

There's a real trick to it. Um, and, and, or, or breaded and fried turkey breast, uh, not, not like fried turkey strips, but like a thin cutlet, like schnitzel. Yep. If you're going to do that, and then you're going to maybe just slow cook and shred your legs, then I think that there is a case to be made for skinning your bird. You know, expedience, heat, things like that.

Yeah, if you're making schnitzel, that skin's not going to. No, no, not at all. And if that's the way you've always done it. Yeah, and so in the first chapter when we go over, you know, you got a dead bird on the ground. Are you skinning it? Are you plucking it? And then we actually came up with a Venn diagram

of everybody that I hunted with. And we tried to integrate whether they had beards because there was almost a connection there if they always skinned their turkeys and always plucked their turkeys and if they had a beard, if that makes any sense. A lot of pictures of cow walking out of the woods with a plucked turkey.

Yeah. You'd like to get them, get them done right away. There was, it was about. Oh yeah, man. Plus if for people who are intimidated, uh, plucking a bird of any kind, turkey's the easiest bird to pluck by far and away. I can pluck a turkey twice as fast as a mallard. If you got a few of them to pluck too, uh, do you get the,

do you get into this in your book? If you got a few of them to pluck, get that jug of hot water going. Oh, scalding. Oh my God. It's so nice, man. Yeah. They look so good when you do that. Does that affect the skin? No. Does it, no It's so nice, man. Yeah. They look so good when you do that. Does that affect the skin?

No. Does it? No. Okay. No, it just helps. It ever so slightly puckers the skin up, like tightens the skin up, but it has no, it's like, I would never do it for one because by the time you, you know, everything just, by the time you heat all the damn water up, you could have plucked a turkey.

But if you have like a couple of guys and you couple guys and you get a few birds and you get that jug of water going, one, cleanup is nice because a wet feather, they don't blow anywhere. All those feathers are going in the trash bin. And two, they just come out beautiful. Beautiful. Did you, since we're on the topic of skin, you and I were talking around 4th of July, I was making turkey wings, which is a thing I experiment with every other year, probably.

Where are you at right now on it? Still back to the drawing board. I'm like making like, because they're a giant, giant wing, they're super fun at outdoor barbecues and stuff to see people chewing on them and kids think they're super awesome and everything. But the.

Oh yeah, I had some. Yeah, I remember. Yeah. It's the, the skin. So that's my question is like, did you, did you nail turkey skin, wild turkey skin? On the wings or just by itself? Just by itself. Like being able to eat wild turkey skin in a

enjoyable way. I got one recipe in there for just taking it, cutting it into strips. And there's a, there's a Spanish dish called a papas bravas and it's basically French fries and served with a chili sauce and some mayonnaise. And then it's sprinkled in there with fried turkey skin and then coarse salt.

You're keeping that skin up. Uh, slicing it real thin. Yeah. Into little strips and little pieces. You ever done that with salmon skin? Yes. That's pretty damn good. Yes. Yeah. No, slicing it real thin. Yeah. Into little strips and little pieces. You ever done that with salmon skin? Yes. That's pretty damn good. Yes.

Yeah. No, I mean, it's kind of great. It's gotta be a fresh salmon. A little chewy. For sure. You know,

but I kind of enjoy it, especially in contrast with a, you know, a tender potato. What size strip? Oh, uh, let's say like a,

a thick matchstick. Okay. You know the chef Jack Pappin? Jacques Pappin. Well, here's a, here's a funny story so we go to connecticut for the last hunt in this book okay and um uh i killed a turkey on the first day uh and the next day, our hosts, Dan Miser,

he's a chef up there. His last name's Miser? Uh-huh. That's a tough one. He's, he's a wonderful human being. Is he Miser? They call him the mayor. Cause everybody, I mean, he just, you know,

he walks in anywhere and they're like, Hey, he's like, he owns a couple of, uh, he owns like five restaurants up there. Really cool guy. Um, and we're kind of winding down for our season. We're on, we're done. You know, I're kind of winding down for our season. We're on, we're done. You know, I've kind of, I've gotten a turkey in every one of the spots, Georgia, Texas,

Oregon, and now Connecticut. And it's time for kind of a wind down celebratory dinner. And he's like, yeah, some neighbors are coming over. And you're cooking. I'm cooking dinner. I'm a, I'm on deck for cooking dinner that night. And he's like, Jacques coming over. And by Jacques, he means.

Jacques Pepin. Jacques Pepin is coming over for dinner, which is horrifying. I cannot begin to tell you the amount of stress. That's the only people I'd be intimidated by. I mean, I don't know who, I mean, I don't know. You could probably think of someone else, but this is the man. This man was Charles de Gaulle's personal chef.

This man turned down being JFK's chef. This man's father was in the French resistance. He co-hosted a show with Julia Child for 20 something years. I mean, he is, I mean, one of the most impressive humans. I stole his turkey galantine recipe. Yeah. I cooked dinner for him uh and it was i mean it i think it came out well he was kind his his poodle guest stone sat in his lap the whole time you have to tell me oh no no no no it was it was i just it's not any

i got a plan there there's this gal i'm getting on. There's this gal in first class. She's got two first class seats and one of the first class seats, she's got a dog box buckled into the seat. Oh, just a case. This, this worked. This absolutely worked. He was the kindest, sweetest person. What was he doing?

You said he was. Oh, he would feed the, put a little bit. No. He fed the dog your food? What more would you expect from a world-class French? He's not going to be waving a machete around like you. I'm so mad now I'm going to pick it back up again. He fed your food to a dog in his lap?

Jack Pepin? This is going in a way different direction than it should it's it's there was also a little bit of like grilled boar that i brought up and he like a little scrap of that he's like he gave it to that he's sitting there eating with a dog in his lap it's jock band man he was like the galls personal chef you can do it it just surprised me because i would expect him to have better table manners this it worked i don't care i was cooking nobody cared jock i mean it was it was it was beautiful it was wonderful it was on brand and it was and i did the the wellington for him did he have anything

to say about your meal oh he was the dog seems like it jesse you open up a can of water sure did as he left my dog liked it he was he was very complimentary and kind and i sat there and i poured wine for him all night and sat right next and we talked about chicken because you know he's from bress in france and they're famous for their chickens and uh we we talked about every part of the chicken and killing chickens, the best way to kill a chicken. And, uh. What's the best way to kill a chicken?

Oh yeah. There was some, uh, oh gosh, I was, there was, I was deep into the wine. That little brainer? Yep. That was it. Duck hunters use them. Yeah.

Well, this was a knife, uh, and I think roof of the mouth, if I remember correctly. This thing right here. Yeah. That would have worked. It was, it was amazing. So, yeah. So, uh, an interesting, uh, uh, uh, way to, to

loop that back is that, you know, Jacques Papin actually, uh, was that the final meal, uh, that I present in the book. Why did I bring up Jacques Papin? I just think it's hilarious how it was just kind of like dropped in your lap, right? Like you weren't cooking for him. Or the dog.

He just showed up. Well, yeah, I mean, there's a little bit of notice. Enough to just instigate a lot of anxiety. Why did I bring up Jack Pippin? I don't know. We were talking about turkey skin. I want to know if there's other stuff. Maybe the gallantine.

He's the one that turned me on to cooking salmon skin. Okay. But, and this is something I was going to bring up with you earlier. One, salmon skin is good when it's fresh. Coming out of a freezer, like salmon skin does not like a freezer. Probably it rancidifies, gets fishy. Yeah, it hates a freezer. But nice fresh salmon, if you ever get, if you ever, for you listeners out there,

if you're fresh salmon, take the skin and cut it into little french fry strips and just do them in olive oil. Damn, it's good. Well, did you ever do that? Skanky salmon to spend in your freezer six months is not good. And that was the point I was going to bring up. If you're cooking skanky fish, remember we're talking about the bubble factor? The skankier the fish is, the longer you leave it in the fryer.

If you look like frying primo good fresh fish, you can leave it in longer. But when you fry it long, you're frying the skank out of it. You know what I'm talking about? Do you agree, Jesse? I'm sorry. I just got hung up on that last sentence. Did you ever try the halibut skin? Yeah, I did try halibut.

Fresh halibut skin. That is good. Yeah. Fresh halibut skin, but halibut skin. Sea lice all stuck to it. Yeah. So yeah, you take, take your filet knife, right? Like the backside of your filet knife and just

scrape that slime off of there. And then you fry that and put coarse salt on it and then put that on like a Caesar salad. Holy shit. That's good. No, that is good. Don't do that with, tell that it's been in the freezer.

Oh no, I don't, I quit freezing. I don't freeze any skin on fish anymore, man. Cause it just, it skanks. Salmon? It skanks? I skin them. If I'm going to freeze them. Oh really?

Well, no, that's not true. No, you're right. But I eat them. When I come home, when's not true. No, you're right. But I eat them. When I come home, when I come home from Alaska, I eat them and give them away. And I don't like, I don't. You don't want it in there for six months. Like in a month or two, salmon's gone. Yeah.

Salmon in a month or two, I've given it away or I've eaten it. Yep. I just found a couple of flays that I just threw freezer mismanagement and I smoked them. Yeah. Yeah. I smoked them. Yeah. Yeah. I smoked them. Skin on. Smoked them.

Skin on. But, but Cal, your thing about scraping, you look at a halibut and it looks so beautiful and shiny and everything. And you run the back of your knife over it and it comes off like the nastiest. Oh, it's like oil. Black slime. It's hard to get off stuff. Then you're like, damn, the fact that I've been freezing that junk.

Now we just scrape the dickens out of them. And they still look pretty. Yeah. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. 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 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 you were always talking about. 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. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. So, Danny, what about like skin on like a turkey thigh?

Yeah. And being able to bite through that skin. Yeah. It's going to require a decent amount of cooking. You know, a confit is a really good method where you're going to dry brine it first. Can you lay this one out for me? A confit is an excellent way to do that. So you're going to, you're going to season it real well with salt.

And I have a little seasoning mix in there. It's going to be salt and some kind of citrus zest, a little garlic, a pinch of sugar. You season it, kind of cure it a little bit, and then you cook it very slowly in fat. That could be. A whole drummy. A whole, I would say a whole leg quarter. So thigh, drummy.

Connected. And then you can, you cook that until it's tender. A very common method for doing all kinds of things, you know, you can confit rabbit, you can confit beef ribs, you can confit famously duck legs. Um, and then you would take that out and, and apply heat to it. Just like we did yesterday with the, with the pig leg, you know, you can throw it on the grill, you can put it in a hot oven, you can even deep fry it.

You know, I mean, if you want to just kind of go over the top, but basically you can render that skin out, but it's going to require a lot of low and slow gentle cooking on there. And you still might have a little bit of chew. Uh, when I was doing the testing, I had some good results. So the, the whole approach I took for the, what I call the holiday turkeys, I corn feed the

legs in that way. And it was a Jake, it was a young bird. Mm-hmm. Uh, skin on. And then, uh, cooked those slowly and then brought those back in the oven, got those, the skin browned on that, came out beautifully, and then roasted the breast separately. Got it.

And that came out. You got the best of the best. It came out great. And simultaneously making a sauce, a gravy, uh, with the, with liquid in the pot with the breast skin side up. So the skin's getting brown and then the liquid underneath is just getting all the flavor from the breast and then you just puree that instead of thicken it. So it's got the vegetables and it came out great.

And it was, it's just like another way to approach the whole turkey. I mean, it's a hyper Thanksgiving style meal right there. You've got, you know, all these flavors of celery and sage, uh, things like that, that you, that you associate with that. All the stuff the pilgrims like. Love them. They just loved rosemary in every garden.

And, and then you get the, the legs cooked nicely too, but the legs took way longer, you know, but, but yeah, I had some luck with it, you know, but, but yeah, I had some luck with it, but honestly, I am mostly skinning birds. The, for what I'm going to do, a lot of cutlets, a lot of the paillards, the grilled cutlets and a lot of fried. And then I like to generate broth and shredded meat off of legs a lot. So I will crock pot that, shred the meat, take

that broth, use that for whatever purposes I need that for and have that shredded meat set aside. I don't really need the skin at that point. Also, mostly hunting in Texas, it's hot, real easy to just get in there and zip that bird and just get it done. And I'll go in and I'll skin the wings out. And that is a pain in the ass.

It is. It's tough. And I came to the realization, it's like plucking and skinning, there's no easy route around those. I'm sorry, the wings. Did I say the wings? Yeah. Around the wings.

It's hard either way. Skinning the wings is like skinning a squirrel. Yeah. It's like tough. Yeah. And then plucking them is, you know, requires some, some force as well. Um, but go in and do that.

I even. Not when you give them a dunk. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a great idea. You want to talk about a nice, nice wing, man. It looks pretty, give it a dunk. You can pluck it out to the bitter end.

Yeah. Are you thinking about what you're going to do with the bird differently if you shoot a Jake versus a big old old sure limb hanger yeah um you you would you could orient more towards like whole uh leg quarters whole roasted breasts honestly the the best success i mean i kind of i want to finish out your question though but um yeah just it's more tender you know and so i think like the same thing with the hog the younger the animal the smaller the animal uh the bigger the cut yeah

you know and so you can do more roasts and things like that big old bird uh and i killed a 25 pound tom in a rio in texas no wow weighed it on digital scale. He was a monster. For Texas? Yeah. I bet I know what he was hanging out nearby. What's that? Corn feed. A pound of that weight was corn?

He wasn't near corn feed. I mean, like real close. He was a big old boy. Yeah. I shot a banded turkey one time. The biologist told me it was either five and a half or six and a big old boy. Yeah. I shot a banded turkey one time. The biologist told me it was either five and a half or six and a half years old. No kidding. That's crazy.

Yeah. It was. Bust out the old crock pot for that bugger. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was, not to go off on a tangent, whatever. I, it took me forever to call this bird in. I killed him. Actually, my gun misfired i had to load another shell killed the bird and it was just like ecstatic walked over there and saw a big old

metal leg band on him huh and was just like what and i a friend of mine was a game warden i called him up and i'm like guess what he's like that's cool i got to talk how far away was it tagged uh three quarters of a mile so in five and a half years he didn't make it far yeah no no he was in a county that doesn't have huge turkey population southeast austin gun misfired i'm sure it wasn't user error oh it's 100 user error yeah i didn't oh yeah yeah that turkey might have just said i've been around so long yeah it's like a lot of my yeah i've had a lot of misfires i've had a lot of misfires of what i'm being like that i didn't do something oh no no no that was all my fault yeah i didn't i didn't let the bolt just drive it home i didn't yeah you're trying to be quiet yeah yeah do you know how many turkeys have not been killed by people trying to be quiet? No. Because you're like, you ease that slide forward, you know, or you're like, you're hunting with a pump.

You kind of go. No, I'll never make that mistake again. You don't load the pin. He got me a second chance. I've had that happen so many times. You just don't take it. You just don't. When you're hunting with a semi, just whooshing.

Yeah. Or you'll try to do it quiet and then you like fidget with it trying to get it to do that final little, that final little. Now that, that, that scarred me. Yeah. And then I got to talk to two different biologists and they, they, they said that when he was tagged, he was either two and a half or three and a half and it was three years prior. Well, they tagged him as an adult. Yeah. That's cool. What were they, what were they working on i don't know it was in it yeah it's probably just population out there because it's one of texas only has a few one gobbler counties

it's like a april season only um and that was in one of those counties and so i would assume just you know just population status one to something interesting about tagging. Um, years ago, I butchered a soft shell out of the soft shell turtle out of the Yellowstone and had a tag on it, pinched into its shell. I could never find, showed it around, asked around, never found who the hell it was like a picture, like a, I can't even describe it, like a staple. Did you call the grade schools? No, but it's real official looking. It didn't look like someone just said, I'm going to hang this, whatever, on a turtle, you know.

It was like pinched into its shell and it just had like a couple numbers. And I don't know. Did you call? Who all of that thing came from? Fish and Wildlife Service? Yeah. Maybe it was federal. No, I showed people from the state,

trying to see, you ever seen a tag like that? That's weird. Yeah. You can never find it. You know, what's been kind of fun is, because I'm basing this off of observation and past, I'd say a partial criticism of yours regarding our guest Jesse here.

Uh, where, uh, cause we, he and I haven't hunted together. I criticized him in the past? Yes. Oh. He and I haven't hunted together. Uh, but you're, you're, like I said, like more observation, soft criticism is Jesse has no fun

hunting, right? Like on the hogs. It's like, Jesse's here to get the hog. Oh. And then like get to work. Right. Yeah. I'll take that.

Skin and hogs is fun. But like all of his turkey stories is very plain to see that he has a lot of fun hunting turkeys. Well, you enjoy the pursuit. I do. I do. And I think that's, I mean, a lot of the, you know, by the end of the book, I've tried to make that apparent you know it's like it's done it's taught me a lot about patience and

why and you know the motivation also i got to go to some beautiful places you know and i got to travel i'm like i like i'm i am typically stuck in texas not not for any reason beyond my own fault this is where you live i just don't travel to hunt a lot. And this, this got me out, you know, into very different locations. Eastern Oregon was three feet of snow on the ground. Uh, you know, the swamps of Georgia and then Connecticut, which was incredible because you're

hunting 12 acre property here, nine acre property there, and then you're rolling. 12 billion ticks. Oh, we were 20 miles from lime, which was just disturbing. Oh, like the actual lime. Yeah. You got the city. Yeah.

And, and, uh, or on, on just this vast amount of public land. Had this weird poacher running up there. I had a guy come and shoot a turkey that I was like 30 seconds away from. Just some weird, weird stuff. I mean, but. Go into that. What happened there? Like you were calling a bird and another guy shot it?

Yeah, it was, it was really weird. So we were, you have to have permission on a daily permission to hunt anywhere in Connecticut from the landowner on a different piece of paper. And it's very, very regulated. So if you're going to hunt three different properties, you got to have three different permission slips per day. Even if it's like you're, you're the guy. Like if a farmer says, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah. You got to fill out this little permission slip. Really? Even his nephew does. As far as I know, that's what we were doing. Yeah. We were, we were every morning paperwork time. And so we were.

Because he was enrolled in the public access program? No, no, no. Just regular old hunting. Even to be on, on, on private land. Yeah. Yeah. We were, our host. A lot of people are going to write in about this.

Oh, I'm sure. I call it, yeah, the comment section. I look forward to it. Well, there's, there's, you can post your property. This is, this is by I call it. Yeah. The comment section. I look forward to it. Uh, well, there's, there's, you can post your properties. This is by written permission only. Yeah. Okay.

And if you get caught on there without written permission, you're trespassing. Even our hosts asked, we were filling out permission slips daily to hunt with him. Okay. Um, we, we were that day we were rolling around and we were kind of alternating between public land. And we, we rolled to this big area of public land

and right off the trail, there's a bunch of feathers are like stuck into the ground, turkey feathers stuck into the ground, like arrayed. It was, it was like kind of witchy, like real weird. Or little kitty, little kitty. What do you mean? Little kids do stuff like that. And it seems like witches did it.

Somebody killed a turkey and was like, hey, I killed a turkey. That was on public. We get to the boundary of that and we have permission to hunt the orchard beyond that boundary. And immediately we start hearing gobblers. There's three monsters just in this field. Oh, just doing that. Not budging, not budging at all we i we split up and he was going to go around to the other side of this field in case yeah yeah or if they moved

off that way and i stayed on one side i had a big open area between me and that field. And you're trying to bushwhack them. Uh, I tried to bushwhack. There was a one pine tree. I belly crawled about 200 yards. Uh, you know, the whole time I'm like lying, lying 20 miles from here. And I belly crawled and I got up on them and those birds just, they had some hens on them and they just, they were not moving and they went quiet quiet and I would, I would yell every 20 minutes and they just totally went

quiet and they moved off into the brush. And then after about an hour or so, they fire back up and the three of them in unison are every time they're doing, that's it. Thank you. I'm going to point and you're going to make that sound. I'm going to try to do it. I'm going to do where it's three of them doing it. Thank you. I'm going to point and you're going to make that sound. I'm going to try to do it. I'm going to do where it's three of them doing it. Yeah.

So I would yelp and, and they would, and they would hammer back and they're in this hollow and this noise is just reverberating through this little valley. I'm getting excited. And, but we're on private at this point and we're bordered on one side by a land trust. No hunting allowed there. Mm-hmm. They get far enough up into the woods that I am able to extricate where they can't see me.

And I, and I do a wide loop and I try to come up on the side of them. And so I do. And then I get about 150 yards and I start talking to them and they're every time they're, they're. Really? Every time.

And right about now. They're not moving, but they're in this little hollow and there's this rock wall. If you've ever been to Connecticut. Oh yeah, they all throw the rocks in the wall. There are rock walls everywhere. The poet laureate Robert Frost has a whole poem about that. It's like an old stone savage. So I eventually, I just, I get on the opposite side of this rock wall and start creeping up on them.

And I'm calling and they're calling back the whole time, but not budging. You're thinking you're just going to snake your barrel over the top of that rock or through there. Maybe through it. Yeah. Pull one rock out. And, you know, I'm, I've been, and I'm like, this is going to happen. And two of these guys are big. I mean, the third one is not a Jake.

I mean, they're, but they're, they're great looking birds. I, we, okay. Granted, I also, I was speaking to, you know, just like I'm by myself. I got a photographer with me, you know, Jody's with me. We're creeping up along this rock wall. We're probably not 40, 50 yards from the point where we're going to poke over and seal this deal. Just start shooting now.

And a shotgun fires up the hill and hits a tree about 30 yards in front of us. The pattern hits up. They, this, somebody shot up and I am like, what just happened? So the other guy that's hunting with us that had circled around, but I've been texting with him and he was, he had since left to chase another gobbler that he had heard, so he wasn't in the area, but I'm like, well, that's him. He just did that. I'm a little pissed that he didn't communicate where he was and also that he

shot at us. So I start calling his name. And I hear nothing. And I'm like, hey, hey, hey. And I hear, and I'm like, oh, well, it's turkey flapping. It wasn't a turkey. It was a person running. Away. Away.

No shit. What? And so I never saw the person. Did he kill the turkey? Honestly, I left. I just got out of there. I couldn't see. I like poked over and I looked down into that hall.

There was no dead bird that I could see. I couldn't hear my friend, the guy that was with us. I didn't know where he was. And I was like, and somebody that was with us, I didn't know where he was. And I was like, and somebody just shot at us basically. And I was like, I'm leaving, I'm out of here. And we left. And we went back and we, we met the guy, uh, at the boundary of the, of public and private that we were, we had the access to. And he, he, he was like, absolutely. That is a land trust. There's no hunting. Somebody was over there, heard these birds hammering. I mean, for an hour. And it was just more than they could stand.

It was more than they could stand. Did you ever hear that guy call at all? No, but I mean, if you ever heard me call, you know it's not a hen. There is no way. I'm saying the guy that shot. He called he never called no he was just he was slipping in he thought it was too good to be true but you're saying had he heard you he would have known there was another person he was either brazen or an idiot or both this story that'd be a brazen idiot i i want to just clarify every part of this story is 100 true like

this and i was hearing any part there's no that story's another kind of story where i'm like that's not true and then a friend of this guy my the guy that was hunting with the local calls him in a little while later and said that a couple that was walking in at the land trust saw a guy with a shotgun they called the cops and they came and arrested some dude for and he was in there and he had a bag but we don't know if he had his camo i never got any follow-up on it why don't you get some follow-up what's in the bag put that in the book you'd have an appendix i don't know what's in the bag it it was very mysterious very strange it ended It ended really weird. And you know, as those like midday and I was just like, I don't even know where to go from here, you know? And it was also,

I'm coming from Texas, you know, and it's just like, there's private land. I don't even, there's very little public land, Turkey hunting in Texas. I mean, it's minuscule. And then for these, these boundaries and all this stuff to exist and i'm i'm very out of my element and just like also just confounded by all all these things that have happened that there's like public land no hunting private land yes hunting with permission public land no hunting yes yes uh with with weird display of of turkey and then and then you know the this mysterious person that just dropped in and tried.

Did you write about this in your book? It's all in there. Oh, cool. Yeah. Nice. Did you include that he got arrested? Yeah. Oh.

Supposedly. I mean, that's, that's, you know, that's a third hand that, that that's what happened. You should hire, you should hire a researcher to find out what happened to that guy. Yeah. I would love to know. Yeah.

But I mean, it was, it was very interesting. And we also had somebody fair and square scooped us in Oregon, you know, like we were, you know, we moved off of a place that we thought that a bird would be where, you know, we had seen one the day before and we called and he never heard anything. And then we moved off and that bird was on his way the whole time. Some kid and his girlfriend, I mean like teens, like teens like i mean it's kids probably 16 he rolled in right after us started like calling to this bird slammed the car door yeah you got a really bad crow call i was like what is that you know if i'm if i am judging your calling it's bad yeah but

when you're trying to shot gobble it doesn't matter what it sounds like yeah and uh and then we're and so then we start like calling and he's answering both of us and then it's just boom and i was like oh man he got us he got us he he throws that bird on his back we when we just walked out and we had to walk out the same road him and his girlfriend he's got this bird on his back he doesn't even turn around just throws his hand up and waves at us just like yes sir yes sir and i'm pretty sure she shot it and i was just like you little son of a bitch like you're having a good day man very well done you know you should say i got some ideas how you can cook that bird yeah yeah yeah hey yeah um don't don't hold cook it yeah it it stung in the moment but it it it feels a lot better now i'm willing to let him have that that's great it was cool but you know just like

the the spectrum of of experiences between you know, we started off in private in Texas and then massive public stretches in Oregon. And then, um, you know, a weird mix of both in Connecticut and, and having these interactions that were, you know, fair to scary out there too. But I mean, it was, it was interesting, but I, yeah, I mean, to circle back in a, in a long fashion, I love it. You know, I just love it. It's, it's spring. It's beautiful. It's, it's fun.

And I, but I, I love eating them the most. I mean, that's really what drives it for me to your point, Cal. I just love, you know, my birthday's in May. I share a birthday with Colonel, Colonel Tom Kelly. Oh, you do? Yeah. And, uh, that's my uh fried turkey every every birthday fried turkey and dewberry cobbler that's my thing dang um that's cool what

do you got to get for a big old shiny book like this uh it's that's 50. 50 bucks yeah just like the hog book 115 recipes 370 odd pages. Compelling, exciting stories. It's like 33 cents a recipe. That's a good math, man. All right. You can get it at the Meat Eater website. Another interesting observation with our guest here is when you're asking him about

hogs, he's like real sheepish about the hogs that he prefers to shoot. He's like, he's like real sheepish about the hogs that he prefers to shoot. He's like, he's trying to select for pregnant sows. Yeah. And it's like, if that's just packaged meat and labeled as something in the grocery store, that's

just what people want. There's no other thought put into it. Right. Like Easter lamb. Oh yeah. Deal. You know, it's like, yeah. Yeah.

It's called the Turkey Book, a chef's journey of hunting and cooking America's bird. Jesse Griffiths photography by Jody Horton and Sam Everett. Yeah. We had two photographers on this one. It was pretty fun. And on the back, I see you got, it's cool. Cuz you got a little thing that's gonna puzzle most people. There's a gobbler working a decoy.

Yeah. And yeah, didn't shoot a single, turkey over decoy oh last spring it's got a cloth cover it's beautiful thank you it's like a gift it'd be a great gift book because it's so beautiful yeah it's very very well done thank you it's very tasteful it's very elegant just now we're talking sam averitt um who you know steve my good buddy, has some phenomenal stuff in there. Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of photos in there where he got, I mean, hunters and birds, which is so difficult. I have a lot of respect for, especially like the people in the video realm that are able to capture that. And then he was able to position himself just as being such a great hunter.

I mean, he grew up, you know, he's a big mule deer hunter and a really wonderful guy. And also just really killed it on the food photography that he did. He was with us in Georgia and, and Oregon. And then Jody, who was the photographer for my first two books, did Texas and also went to Connecticut and then all the the interim food

photography uh we did in his studio all the all the other recipes but a lot of tattoos in here it's heavy on photography yeah it's beautiful what's that call when people make noises and people listen to it asmr yeah listen to this listen to this that's really funny listen to it? ASMR? Yeah, listen to this cover. That's really funny. Listen to this cover, dude. You getting that, Phil? Oh, that's really good. A nice cloth cover. I'll turn it up a little bit

in the edit. Turn it up loud. Listen to that. Almost a Wes Anderson feel to the cloth cover. I love that. It's beautiful. I love that.

And the colors, yeah. No, it is I love that. I think it's good perspective. No, it is. You thumb through it and it's, um, it's gorgeous, man. It's a great celebration of, of, uh, uh, a great celebration of a great bird. All kinds of beautiful recipes. Very, very clear descriptions, how to do stuff, winning recipes, how to use all of your bird. Um, yeah, man, it's beautiful.

Congratulations. Thank you. The hog book, such a work of art. It's cool to do this one. I appreciate that. I challenge you to do a book this big on Woodcocks. Oh,

yeah. The Woodcock book. We've got a great, uh, we've got a bundle going with NWTF right now too. You can get a year membership and the book, uh, for at a 20 savings oh good so even if you have a membership it'll renew it automatically for a year and so they've been

really supportive which has been great and you know been able to try a little bit of membership to them and and help them out i mean or help them out they've been do so much and uh i mean we've really appreciated their wasn't for them you wouldn't be writing no books about turkeys. That's right. That's absolutely right. You'd be writing a book about a dodo if it wasn't for them. Yeah, and you can go buy the book at themeateater.com, correct? Yep. Beautiful book.

Such a nice gift. If you know someone who likes to hunt turkeys, I don't know, Father's Day, whatever, it's just a gorgeous, gorgeous work of art. So check out the turkey book day whatever it's just a gorgeous gorgeous uh work of art so check out the turkey book a chef's journey of hunting and cooking america's bird by jesse griffiths who is um just such a nice guy wonderful chef generous dude loves wildlife great guy to support the turkey buck get it now. You'll wind up like that ham gobble gobble. Marcus Stewart, what you gonna do now? I'm the king of these streets, and I'm running this town. Call me Turcules, cause I'm just too strong.

Try to throw me in the oven, I'm gonna go off. Turks, mount up, and let's ride. Turcules, throwing hands if you're looking for a fight. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

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