The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 586: BONUS - Cutting the Rough Cuts

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Steven Rinella talks with Hanzi Deschermeier, Tony Peterson, Janis Putelis, Seth Morris, Brent Reaves, and Corinne Schneider. Topics discussed: Watch MeatEater Rough Cuts coming in November on the Outdoor Channel and MyOutdoorTV; bears messing with trail cams; how you can’t use processed food as bear bait; the challenges of making video content of trapping; Coach Tony; the hero story; calling the moose to the airstrip; filming an entire hunting show in half a day; how Clay wants to open up a sweet corn stand when he retires; rattling in 22 bucks; awesome buck footage; bucks power-slapping the decoy; how Brent's This Country Life podcast is about relationships; the real fish heist; and more.  Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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

Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-t-l-i-t-e.com joined today joined this morning by brent reeves tony peterson yannis patel who's playing with his phone chris schneider's here big buck picks over here he's looking at big buck picks give us a quick report yannis yannis is. This is not what we're here to talk about. But Giannis is monitoring his Wisconsin family little place.

That's right. I've got 20 cameras set out. And it's interesting, man. These bucks, it's like they literally crawl into a hole for a while. And then all of a sudden there'll be a day or two period. And all three or four of the, what i'm calling mature bucks there pop out show themselves and then crawl into a hole again and i won't see them for two weeks but uh yeah i've got three to four that i'm very excited about they're not giants i think in the whitetail world but uh if any one of them walks underneath my stand in November, then I'll be trying to take a shot. 20 cameras.

Yeah. They're all the, uh, they're all the Moultrie edge, I believe that's the name of the model, right? All cellular. It's great when you live in Montana and you hunt a spot in Wisconsin. That's fun. Oh, the cellular. Yeah. I'm addicted by far way more to that than any other little thing on my telephone. More than Instagram.

More than... It's healthier too. Is it? Maybe it is. It's healthier. No, it's healthier than everything else. I'm not hacking on Instagram

saying it's healthier than anything else on your phone. Because like at least it's like a sort of interaction with some kind of unknown thing that's not man-made. I just hung two, and then I didn't bring my little security boxes. And one is so funny because I get a picture of a Martin. I hung it just right at our shack in Alaska. And I'm hanging it, and I'm talking to my buddy Jeremy Romero

and he's like man those bears you know and I've had it happen before they just tear them up but it's funny so I hang it up like right at Danny's cabin and get a Martin and then get a bear coming at the camera

and the next picture the camera is pointing up into the trees and the next picture the camera is pointing straight down into the slough bushes and that's where it sits now had you just had you just hung that camera no it was like within 24 hours i have a theory about bears and it was on a. There's like a trail we use and they use. And you're just like, what the hell is that? But, I mean, I hang a lot of cameras in bear country. And it's like if they don't knock that sucker down within like 72 hours, they'll leave it alone.

But if it's fresh, and so you always drop them off, then you leave. And, you know, it used to be you'd come back six weeks later and you're like, I have no pictures because my camera's laying on the ground but it seems like that fresh hand scent like fresh messing with it is really like the trigger that gets them to just chew them up and bat them around you think that's what he's queuing in on i don't know but i mean it's so consistent for me where if a bear's gonna mess with with a camera, it's right away, every time. But if I'd have hung a hatchet in that tree, I don't think you'd have bit that hatchet. I've always heard it was the petroleum and the plastic and stuff that attracted them to it. I don't know, man.

I just know that it has been so consistent for me. If I get one up and they leave it alone and a bear doesn't walk by and it's been out for a week or two, that camera's not going to get knocked down. But when I put them up, that first bear that walked, like you said, I have so many pictures of like the inside of a bear's mouth or those ears, like right up to it. And they always knock it sideways or down or tear it off and move on. But if it's been there a little while, and I used to, even when I used to bear hunt, I would try to be really meticulous about scent, like wear gloves because, if you mess with bait you touch a camera it's over a lot of times and even then doing everything right it was like if they came in right away and they messed with it that that was the window when they were going to mess with it uh i ended on i got a comment about

that i ended on seth seth morris that. I ended on Seth, Seth Morris, and then Hansi Dershmeyer is here. Have you been on the podcast before? Yeah, like five years ago. You've done trivia. You were on five years ago? Yeah, yeah. What'd you talk about five years ago?

It was like Ramsey Russell. And yeah, we were talking about duck hunting for a little bit. Yeah, she liked to hunt ducks. Yeah, yeah. Oh, he was the guy that boys called him? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, right hans he's on our hans he's on our production team and is the editor yeah at his video content for us we're gonna talk a bunch about video content in a minute

but i gotta return to something that i was shocked about you guys might know about this north carolina i was just down in north carolina um You can't use processed foods on bear baits. They're having too much tooth decay on bears. You're allowed to bait bears way outside of the season because they have a long dog running season, and you're allowed to bait bears to lure in to train dogs. And I was talking to a game warden he's showing me pictures of tooth decay bad tooth decay on bears skulls coming in huge cavities in their teeth from all of the like sugar products really candy donuts jo, donuts, Jolly Rancher

syrup, whatever the hell. Right. On their stuff. And he said in the spring, I spend most of my time not working illegal bait stations. He spends most of his time working illegal bait.

Wow. So what are they supposed to use? Natural foods. Corn. Peanuts they supposed to use? Natural foods. Corn, peanuts, soybean. No processed foods. It's like parents in America right now are like fighting processed foods in their children's diet and apparently

they've brought that fight to the bears of North Carolina of bears on processed food. and they've got bears like it's weird to be in an eastern deciduous forest where everything's real thick and there's just bears around oh there's a bear yep there's a bear in that guy's field there's a bear walking across the road big ones yeah so i i didn't know that that even was a thing. I mean, I knew there was a lot of bears, but I didn't know there's so many bears.

There's just like, there's one, there's one, there's one, there's a bear track. Well, it's become a thing. It wasn't always like that. And people got them all hopped up on donuts. I wonder what a bear on a lot of donut and Jolly Rancher syrup tastes like. Yeah. Now, probably pretty damn good. We're going to start pumping some fluoride into the swamp.

Kind of like the Alaskan blueberry bears, right? I just wonder if there's any. Makes sense. You open up his fat, his fat's the color of a green apple, Jolly Rancher. Like a starburst. Listen, and I bring this up. I have not heavily investigated this.

I interacted with one individual on this subject. I'm conveying to you information delivered to me in one conversation with one individual who was a wildlife professional. But I didn't go talk to like, there's probably someone out there who's like ready to rip like the speaker out of his car because he's like that's not true and if that's you you can write into the that's true you can write in about how that's not true but he was showing me multiple bears with like cavities that you could see on a cell phone photo who are who are getting a long-term a lot of their diet from processed food. So are they allowed to bait for a particularly long time? Because like in Arkansas, it's a month.

Because they have the dog training. Okay. So they have a big training season. You're allowed to bait for dog training. I don't remember if there's no on-off switch or if it's just a very generous period of time that you're allowed to do it. But, um,

he works illegal bait. It looks to me like if you had that many bears, you wouldn't have to get them centralized. Train your dogs. Freaking thicken there, man. It's so, did you do that on like property when you're training?

Oh, like you can still train dogs without the bait. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, I can't comment on it. You know what that might be? So in Wisconsin where they run bears where we, or they run dogs on bears where we hunt, they will start at a bait site because they can bait the bears in and they can check a camera

and be like, there was a big boar here. Well, that's what these guys doing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why they're doing that. But so they're even in the off season when you would think they wouldn't need to you could just go find a bear track to run them they're probably running through the real like dress rehearsal for

the hunt you know then you give them little bear's toothbrushes fluoride in their water source that'd be like the that's probably like what their proposal would be like. Okay, how about we just add fluoride to the swamps? Four out of five

bear hunters approved. There's always that one. Okay, Hans, are you ready? Yeah. Okay, Hans is here

because he's working on, Hans is working on six episodes for us that are called Meat Eater Rough Cuts. Six hunting trips. Six hunts. Some of the people on some of these hunts.

Let me think. How many of these? Clay's not here. Tony's here. Seth's here. Yanni's here. Those guys aren't. And Seth's here. You're working on a project about hunting Alaska moose. Yep. With me and Clay Newcomb. You're working on a project about hunting Alaska moose. Yep.

With me and Clay Newcomb. You're working on a project about hunting Oklahoma whitetails of me and Tony. You're working on a project about, uh, trapping in Montana, me and Seth. You're working on a project about hunting coos deer in Mexico, me and Yanni.

You're working on a project about hunting muleys in Montana with me and Garrett, my friend, Ronnie Collins, a spear fisherman. Yeah. And then you're working on Texas whitet hunting muleys in Montana with me and Garrett, my friend, Ronnie Collins, a spear fisherman. Yeah. And then you're working on Texas whitetail, me and Seth. Yeah. And, uh, Dave Smith with, uh, DSD. Oh, and Dave Smith.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So tell me the challenges, um, tell me the challenges of, of making something about trapping. Okay. Where'd we. All the action. As my wife points out, she doesn't like it because all the action happens out of sight.

Yeah. She's like, you're not even there. It's true. She thinks it's cheating because you're not there. No, it's true. It creates a challenge in that it's not all in one day, right? There's no through-line arc, natural progression of like, wow, we climbed the mountain and then we shot a bull and then we packed it down it's it's like well no we had to set the

traps first and then we had to like give the traps a chance to work and so you come you're coming back days later and you're going to a whole bunch of different locations right um and and there's like there's there's multiple species involved here too right, right? So, I mean, you've got an entirely different selection of information for each trap, different amounts of time. And now it creates kind of a cool possibility, I think, from a from a story perspective on like going to different places and and and learning new things and sign reading. And it's going to be a heavily graphic treated episode because of that. So it's going to be something that we've not done before in that regard.

No, you know, another interesting thing about trying to film something about trapping or in your position, edit something about trapping is not only is the action occurring when you're not there. In this case, the action's occurring underneath the ice. Yeah. Or, like, sort of underground.

And when you make the set, it's obscured by dirt. Yeah. So there's nothing clear about anything. No. No, that's where the graphics come in. You wouldn't know it, but that's the set. Yeah. It just looks like dirt.

Yeah. And then now we're going to set. Yeah. It just looks like dirt. Yeah. And then now we're going to leave. Yeah. And see what happens. You know, there's, there's a section in here where they're, you know,

Seth and, and Steve are talking about, uh, bubble lines in the ice. And it's like, it's all this intricate detail, but we can't see any of it. It's all like, well,

in theory that's under there. Like they're, they're there. Um, you know, and, and, um, I won't say whether or not, I guess you guys are vindicated uh on your information but but yeah it's in that case we were vindicated yeah yeah i want to tell you in that case that's one of those

things where um uh the the the bubbles don't lie yeah that amount of bubbles don't lie most things that are made about trapping and i i consume like a good deal of this stuff most things that are made about trapping are instructional yeah right it's an instructional intensive uh it's an instructional intensive genre yeah and you're trying to make something that's sort of less instructional with sort of like entertainment. Yeah. Yeah. And in our case, like we have you and Seth who have a long history of trapping.

And so over time, we're showing some inserts of like photographs of you, like kind of set a Wes Anderson kind of feel. That's a good point. Yeah. And it, I mean, so there's some stylized elements in here that just give just a new and different treatment to this. And yeah, it'll still be instructional. I think as it should be. I mean, it's, it's,

there's a lot to learn about it. Do you feel that that's the first one of these that we'll release? Oh boy. We're kind of in like different stages of production right now so like um alaska moose uh with with clay is like very i think very far along um and then oklahoma whitetail with tony is pretty far along too and um and as far as like as far as which one's going to come out first i i just i just don't know um i think i think probably the the one that we're um we're still in the most production on is And as far as like, as far as which one's going to come out first, I just don't know.

I think probably the one that we're still in the most production on is the Texas Bucks with you and Seth. I mean, that's got the farthest to go. Yeah, yeah. That's got the farthest to go. Really? But we have some really. Dude, we like delivered gold. I know you did.

How many. Hansi, is that your assessment? How many buck attacks on the decoys did we see? Well, it's also called Stephen Seth Rattle in 22 Bucks. Yeah. I mean, that's the alter ego of the episode. Oh, they're like drooling. Oh, it's really cool footage. It's amazing footage.

Bristled up. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is. And Chris. Well, let's. I don't want to move into that one yet. Okay.

Copy. I want to move into working on, from an editor's perspective, and this is, listen, because I'm going to ask you something very specific. Yeah, yeah. So you're cutting Oklahoma Whitetail Hunt with me and Tony Peterson. I want you to just, this is going to be awkward. Okay. I want you to look Tony Peterson in the eye and tell him about what it's like to interact with his hosting as an editor.

Tony's already like, he's already like on edge because when we were filming this, he was like, Hansi's got like, he's got like really intense eyes. I keep looking at him in the camera. And so, okay. So how is it to interact with tony as a host as an editor as an editor are you like god this guy brings it pregnant balls uh no it's it's uh okay where do i start with this where do i start okay what it's like yeah yeah i've told i've told the story a lot of times what it's like to hunt with Tony.

Tony's a very intense person to hunt with. Do you really believe that? Oh, yeah. I do. You do? Yeah. In a good way. He ain't there to not get nothing.

Yeah. Well, that's true. Yeah. I don't like unfilled tags. No, I think on that particular episode, like we've got, it's kind of a cool piece because we have, we have two different stories, which is not the only place that that's happening in Rough Cuts. But we have, we have you guys on the hunt itself, which is a cool story. There's like some, some drama moments and things like that. It doesn't like all go to plan, which always makes for great TV. But on top of that, we're coming back to Tony in a gym environment, talking about the logistics and the tactics of the hunt.

So we get two different slices of Tony, a little bit. In the gym environment, did you debate between going with the suit like a retired athlete? Dude. Or did you think, do I want to go suit like want to know how much... Do I want to go suit like an old retired quarterback or do I want to go like active? I voted like a sweater vest, like an old checked

sweater vest kind of thing, but... So you want to know how much information I got before filming that? Sam Bates sent me an email and she said, hey, we need you

to come out to Montana and shoot one scene for your Oklahoma show. Yeah. And we need you to look like a PE coach from the 1980s. Chuck Taylors and all. Right.

And I really didn't know until right before the shoot kind of what the idea was behind this. And then when I showed up, you know, we went out to the YMCA and set up. And Hansi had a whole idea in his head. And let me tell you something. They ran me through the ringer because I had to do chin-ups and talk. Like, talk. I had to think on my feet and talk while actively doing chin-ups or curling dumbbells and doing stuff. And after that shoot, because I went into that that shoot, I like I go to the gym all

the time. I'm fine. Like after that shoot, I was so sore. Because you never did it talking. Well, it was like 50 reps in a row because they're like, well, we need another take. And you're like, well, this take is another six chin ups or, you know, like imagine if you were like, imagine if we just handed you, like, a 25-pound dumbbell. You could curl that.

No problem, right? But if you had to talk for, like, 45 seconds or a minute while curling nonstop, like, and kind of exaggerating it, you'd be like, well, I just did, you know, 53 reps in a very short amount of time. And so Hansi put me through the ringer and I think Hillary was loving it too she said let's have him do more stuff like that that's great so it was a it was the I've never done a shoot like that some of it but it's got to be good that we got a bunch of stuff oh yeah definitely definitely um like how many deer do you need I know so I mean some of the some of Too much of a good thing, Steve? We killed everyone that walked by us.

This is a thing that we used to struggle with, is the too much of a good thing problem. Yeah, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. And that's what happened with, we won't go into it yet, but Texas bucks. But yeah, I mean... No, Steve's ready to go into too many bucks no i'm

not ready i'm still i'm on okay yeah oh no i think i think from like a from a story element absolutely it's like too much of a good thing and we're just trying to do something that's different i think one of the elements of the whole series um was that you know we had we had some limitations as far as like uh cameras as far as how many cameras were on these shoots. And with with not having as many as like a meat eater episode of the past, we didn't have some like long lens footage. So we so we didn't have those those those same moments captured in great detail quite to the extent that, you know, we'd love. But it also offered another opportunity to create something different entirely. And that's and that's

where we came up with these you know intercutting these scenes like with with tony and uh and on this one is kind of like it's it's predicated on like there's a scene in lock stock and two smoking barrels guy ritchie film where they like open up a a boiling pot of water and you see the cameras underneath this bottle of this uh pot of water and he chucks in a bunch of vegetables but he's talking and you can hear the talking and you see this site and that's kind of similar to how we pitched some of these scenes with Tony like on a pull-up bar coming into frame which was you know probably hard but like fun to be like I know do that again you know a little more exercise but but I think it I think it, I think it worked. I think it was cool.

And he's a good actor. Yeah. Yeah. He worked. Yeah. We put him, we put him to work either way, whether you know where I find my like source of inspiration for that. I just always think I just got to do a better job than Kenyon.

Oh, I got to imagine Kenyon in this situation. And how would I just do a little better job well he's thinned up so much cause all the running he hasn't I asked him about that he looks it but he hasn't I think he's lost it in his face a little bit is that just cause he's shaving his mustache off

that throws me off man I've been avoiding my neighbor cause I heard he cut his mustache off there should be more to that been avoiding my neighbor so I heard he cut his mustache off and I guess I'll there should be more to that no I'm avoiding him cuz I'm like oh he's gonna look so different I gotta forget his name no no and gave himself Mohawk no there's a whole story about his Mohawk he was on like his he's a high school teacher and an artist um but that's it we don't need any more well no no it was this thing it was this thing for the high school he was doing

this thing with the high school kids like this dodgeball tournament so one thing led to another and he had to get like a mohawk and um i was like that's an interesting choice because this is a whole story behind this mohawk And then I heard now his mustache. He's always, since the day I met him, he's my, like, one of my best buddies. Since the day I met him, he's always had various, like, configurations of crazy-ass mustaches. My wife's like, they're all gone.

All the mustaches. You don't even recognize them. So you want to know how iconic Mark's mustache was in my life? Yeah. Even my kids. Last night, my's mustache was in my life? Yeah. Even my kids. Last night, my kids are out in Yellowstone right now. I'm going to meet up with them a little bit. And I talked to them last night, and they wanted to tell me about the bear they saw and all this stuff.

And I was in our room, and I'm rooming with Mark. And I made a joke so Mark could hear it, kind of like when I was talking to one of my daughters. And she goes, are you rooming with mustache? There's multiple people in it. This is like how deer get derivative names, right? You talk about this buck, and you're like, I saw that 10-pointer that had the dropper. And then over time, he just becomes dropper. You know what I mean?

So people will be like, is that the guy with the mustache? And eventually, he just becomes mustache. Mustache man. 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 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 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 uh we're always talking about on x here on the meat eater podcast now you um you guys in the great white north can can be part of it be part of the excitement you can even use offline maps to see where you are

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OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. All right, what do you want to talk about next? Which episode?

Yeah. Oh, man. Let's do Moose. You got it. What do you want to talk about? I love the moose episode personally it's gonna be cool i think it's really cool you like that one yeah i do you know why i like it i have an idea yeah that's right was your moose bigger than clay's moose yeah yes

oh that was easy to guess yeah it's it's a great story and it's like more of a day by day approach, um, versus some of these others. So we have like day markers spread throughout and, uh, there's been some like back and forth on, um, voiceover narration or not. And I, I like, I'm leaning toward nor, nor narration right now. Whatsoever. Whatsoever. Cause the story really speaks for itself. I think we it like allowing yeah allowing it to breathe you do yeah cool if if um if someone out there is an aspiring outdoor filmmaker and or uh aspiring outdoor tv show maker the uh what the way you want to set everything up is that you try you go do something you try hard, and it doesn't work, and then all of a sudden it works. The hero story. I mean, yeah. Not that you rattle in.

Not that it works every time. Not that the first time you set up, here comes a buck, and then a buck comes every time. That's great. That's a great lived experience. It's better if you just can't get anything to come in. And you do it for days.

And then finally one comes in and you get it. That's the payoff. That's what you're after. Build up that payoff. Editors don't want you to have a good hunt. They want you to have a nail-biting. An editor wants you to have a nail-biting horrible time. Yep.

And then go. But that's a metaphor for life, isn't it? They don't make movies about a sports team. Sports movies. They don't make it that the movie starts and they're champions. And they just

run really slow to dominate the over dog story. Everyone loves their riches to riches. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Texas white tail is like we were born millionaires. Yeah. So tell about your approach with the moose one it's quiet it is quiet yeah relatively

speaking it's not like it's not like a lot of chugging music like driving the whole thing um it's a lot of it's a lot of moments between you and clay um talking giving each other crap, um, and, and, and the logistics of it and, and, uh, little details and, and scenery. I mean, that's, and that's, that's it, but it's, it's, uh, it, I think it functions in that way because this is a story that's been like a long time in the making. You've been on how many, nine hunts for this or. How many times have I done that sort of thing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A bunch for just generally hunting moose in alaska a bunch hunting moose that way in alaska maybe four or five times okay no and it gives us a perspective on that that like the beginning we you talk about the

several different types of hunt that that can be in alaska and so we i think we really get like a very visceral experience of what that fly-in type of hunt is yeah and it can be in alaska and so we i think we really get like a very visceral experience of what that fly-in type of hunt is yeah and it can be grueling i mean i try to explain in it there's we've we've we've filmed all these kinds i think over the yeah we have over the years yeah i try to break up something that's kind of complicated into three buckets with moose hunting float hunts where you like hunt float down the river huntts where you like hunt float down the river hunt float down the river hunt float down the river it's very dynamic you're always in different spots you're seeing cool stuff you're like hey look there's a fish you know setting up

camp all damn time whatever it's just a lot happening the the that's the pro the con is you don't really settle in and you're not doing a long game calling strategy because you're always in new spots. Another style of moose hunting would be that you're cruising somehow. You're cruising by quad runner. You're cruising by bow. You're cruising on foot. You're cruising the horses and you're like looking for moose that you'll make a play on. And the third is that you're somewhere where you can't move.

You're stuck and you have to just try to call one to you um and that's the kind that's the most boring to do it's the most boring to watch but it's psychologically the most fulfilling yeah in my view yanni thinks it's stupid i don't know about stupid but not high on my list of things to repeat. He's not mature enough for it. That could be. It's more of a gentleman's game is what you're saying? No, no, no, no, no. Dude, no shit.

Gentleman's game? Just an old guy's game. It's not an old guy's game. Well, you said mature. Usually people mature with age. Not like that. That spot ain't... The old guy's game.

The old guy's not walking half a mile down the hill to get water. Pack that up. It's a mind... It's all mental. It's a patience thing, isn't it? That intrigues me about it for sure i've grown to really like that home at first i didn't like it because of what i'm talking about yeah let me tell you so i got a way to put it i got a metaphor for you years ago i was on an airplane i only had

two kids at the time they were real little and i was flying with the two little kids without my wife and i'm struggling everybody's shitting themselves pissing themselves crying you know i mean little kids and the guy behind me offers me a word of encouragement he says listen right now it's all physical later it'll all be mental and it's better when it's physical It's easier Now let's apply that to moose hunting But I think

I think by that By that metaphor You're agreeing with me You're saying it's better when it's physical Yeah, never mind that story. That's right. But I also... Phil, can you cut all that out?

Steve, aren't you also saying that we always view the physical stuff as the hard part, but the mental stuff is really the hard part? Yeah, that's right. Put that back in. You can put it back in, Phil. But there is some physical aspects of that hunt because you've got to pack that thing back to the strip.

But once you get good at that hunt, you shoot them on the strip. From what I understand. I'm not to that level of discipline. I'm not to that level of mental. It'd be tough. Well, you could do it there. There are guys that

I believe... I know this for a fact it'd be tough well you could do it there but there are guys there are guys that i believe there are i know this for a fact because i've just heard it from too many people who are trustworthy sources there are people who will that i've known um who will be like oh we could get that bull right now dead to rights but we're going to call it more toward the airstrip that is not a place i have arrived at nor will i ever arrive at that place mentally yeah but maybe physically i could see that you'd be placed there physically that's true you might be placed there physically but i will never arrive there we're like we could get it now and just have it be gotten or we could try to call it up to the airstrip there's a level of confidence there that's just there's a certain swagger yeah now that'd be a good episode calling

it to the airstrip you know well there's a lot to calling i mean you talked about it with with buck boden in the past and and uh we we talk about it a little bit in this episode and I mean, it's, it's all with your throat and your mouth. And it's, I mean, that's a pretty intriguing element to me. I'm nodding here like, oh yeah, yeah. Moose calling it to the landing strip. Like I know what I'm talking about, but I really, I've just like watched, you know, I've watched all this transpire. Watched enough of it. Yeah.

But. You know what we used to want to do? I want to ask you this, ask you this as an editor. This was kind of our white whale. I think, Yanni, you were working on me either when this was a thing we wanted to do. We wanted to make a show one day. 22 minutes. Okay.

People wonder why 22 minutes because a show is 30 minutes, but when you pull out the ad time, you've got 22 minutes to work with. Is that the point you were going to make, Yanni? No, I was just going to say you're talking about the one that we want. Our dream was to make one in real time. We wanted to somehow find a way to make an episode that was just hit record. A live stream no but hit record and then after 22 minutes hit stop and we used to think that you would like go out and sort of pick a thing like a stock find

a stock and be like okay go yeah i used to prep mean, there were a couple of hunts we went on and we were like, if we have the opportunity, I'll be like, Steve, this is it. We're going to try it right now. And I would prep you with talking points that you'd have to hit in those 22 minutes. And the goal would be that, like the beginning of the stalk was the beginning.

And then as we went through the stalk, you'd be like, you know, along doing your thing and then somewhere around the bang or soon after the bang you would hit stop and you'd have 22 minutes of like literally one shot and you'd have this episode it'd be like a robert altman scene we never did this hi Texas with the 22 bucks I got called in we could have made a 22-minuter one button that's you know what made us think of that idea we were in zealand one time and we were we did like kind of a little bonus thing one day this guy was going out to hunt pigs with his dogs in new zealand and he's like okay we'll meet at whatever place were you on this no but i've i've often referenced this episode because it's impressive what transpired we didn't even know we're going

and we're like okay we'll bring all of our stuff. And we go out in the sky. We get there right at daylight. His little dogs strike a track of a pig. We're in the mountains. And also, in a while later, the dogs, I'm not kidding you, the dogs cease existing on his GPS. It's because they've gone into a pig's hole.

Okay? So you just lose contact with, you know where they were, but you're not getting any feedback from them because they're down in a hole fighting a pig in a cave hole. Okay? Or like a hole in the ground. We eventually find the pig.

The dogs are blocking them up, we excavate straight down, and arrive at the pig's back, like dig a big hole down to the pig, find the pig, get the pig killed, drag the pig up out of the hole,

the New Zealand dude gets a big fire going, gets the pig all wet in the creek, burns all the hair off it. And by this point, it's like 10 in the morning. And we're like, oh, we just made like an episode of a TV show and like ran it. Yeah. It was great. Yeah.

All this stuff going somewhere seven days. It was like, I'm not kidding you. Besides us cooking some pig later, I mean, it was like 11 o'clock in the morning. And we're like, that was the most amazing morning of the most amazing morning I've ever been involved in. It's definitely besides maybe a cooking episode that's a totally different animal.

But as far as a hunting meteor episode, I think it's the only one that's ever been shot in one day. Yeah. Half a day. That got us thinking we should try to do one in 22 minutes. The hell are we talking about how are we um long moose yeah yeah yeah so the moose hunt yeah no one goes anywhere no you're in the same spot the whole time i mean it a- I think we shot maybe about 20 yards from where we spent eight, six days.

It's like a war of attrition. You guys just like waiting it out. What makes that one particularly tough and the patience is that there are many other hunts where the same level of patience is required. I mean, hunting eight days in the whitetail rut can be that way. Because you're like, oh, I'm going to see five bucks a day. Often you're like, I saw a flicker of a tail and I sat here for 10 hours. But I saw birds and squirrels and a bobcat walked by.

And there's other things happening in the eastern deciduous forest. Up there, the amount of wildlife, even though Alaska is often considered the place of a lot. Abundance. Abundance with critters. It's not. When the salmon are there that day in the river, it's amazing. There's tens of thousands swimming by your feet. But a month earlier, there was zero.

And a month later, there's zero. And when you're sitting on that knob waiting for that moose There is not an abundance of wildlife Which makes it particularly tough To entertain your mind I've tried to raise that point before caribou hunting You're sitting there watching 300 caribou walk by

And you're like my god like the land of plenty And be like let's talk about the other 11 months and 2 weeks And you can sit here and nothing walks by. Yeah. There's all these, there's all these moments that, you know, like for all of this together, all these episodes, I want to say there's probably like, like 140 hours of, of footage. Yeah. Um, so, and then, and all that comes down to like a little over two hours of final product. Is that really what you're dealing with? Yeah. So that's the gross amount.

But like even within this episode with like nine days or however long it was, like there's all these moments that I want to include that like evidence exactly what you guys are talking about. stimulus from your surroundings becomes so narrowed over time where you're so hyper attuned it seems like so hyper attuned to your surroundings and the environment and what you're seeing that like you've got that and then you've got like the mental stimulus between each other and then you end up creating these like and it all kind of killed me to cut this but there was like this one scene where you guys create this song about like a watermelon man on a corn stand and on a block on a some block in new york city i'll tell you what it is and it was we were singing uh and i cut it simple man yes yes that's a simple kind of man yeah because clay was saying when he retires he wants to open up a sweet corn stand yeah so we rewrote simple man as corn stand man i forgot about that it's such a good

when i was young um uh build, son, and they will come. Plant your seeds in the morning, son. We need some outtakes. Simple corn stand man. Part of his problem was he wants to be a corn stand man, but just not grow the corn. Which is not the kind of corn stand I want to go to. Yeah. Isn't that just a grocery store?

He wants to be like a retailer, a broker. Like the Cisco system? I'm just guessing here, but I don't think that on average the person running the corn stand is the farmer. That's the kind I like to go to. I would say that that's not true. Really?

Yeah, I mean, I grew up in... Don't they have to be out on the... Well, usually it's like the farmer's 15-year-old daughter has to sit there all day or somebody in the sphere. Maybe not the person planting the seed and running the combine. Yeah. When I go to a corn stand, man, I do not want to be buying no corn from some guy that bought that corn.

I will. I don't want to. That's the grocery store. Right. But that's the business Clay wants to retire into. Imagine that. He wants to be a simple corn stand man. He told me he wanted to be a simple corn stand man he told me you want to be a commercial catfish yeah but you can't do that a simple commercial catfisher man too many syllables even for us

uh so you cut that out yeah yeah sadly i wish it because that would have given you six minutes right there. I know, I know. Yeah, it was too long. We should make that a YouTube short. There are so many that come out of these. I mean, yeah, there's, and, you know. Well, we have a whole channel for that now.

Yeah, yeah. YouTube clips. There's some cool stuff happening on that. Yeah. For sure. But, yeah, that's future stuff, future projects. And, you know, we've talked about, like, director's director's cuts you know the equivalent with some of these episodes too um seems like a possibility um especially with a couple of them so we talked about uh rattling box but have we

talked about rattling box a rattling box episode i mean we've touched on it but have we tackled it no no no we touched on it over we played played over again. We played flag football. Yeah, we're skipping stones on it over the top of it. So go on. Uh, what's too many bucks, too many bucks is that twenty two buck episode. Um, and uh, it's just like if I were to compare it like a like a through line, like a story, you know, most of these stories have like a curve and it goes up and then there's a apex and it comes down very quickly. And then this one is just like a flat line of action, uh, for like 22 minutes. So in trying to like figure out what to do with that, um, we would, I mean, besides the footage is cool. I shouldn't say that. I went into that knowing, I went into it thinking this is about rattling a bunch of bucks. Yeah, you're like, I just wanted to be a montage of us rattling a bunch of bucks.

And by the end, I was like, I think we got that. Yeah, definitely. You definitely got that. You definitely got that. But on top of that, there's just like some other cool things that I think we were able to weave in, which was this, you have a posturing deer decoy, which I think is a pretty interesting concept just from like a, just bringing in bucks to a decoy is an interesting concept on its own, but then rattling it in on top of that

provides another element. But with this DSD decoy, I mean, getting a little bit of background and context for how that came about and your relationship with Dave and, and using it on this shoot was like a whole interesting through line that, that we're going to weave together with the, with the, with the action,

which is cool, obviously, but, but it gives you some, some context. Yeah. I don't mean this as any disrespect to anybody in this room, but I like Dave better than anybody I work with.

Oh, he's such a, he's a, he's a great person. I mean, you see that on the interview, and I hardly know him. Can I add to that? He can't hear a thing anybody says to him. No.

No. He spoke yesterday. We had a big company-wide meeting. He started off by saying he's very nervous to speak in front of people, but then landed like three very good jokes. I felt that aside, had he not done his little joke bit at all, when that man starts to talk about his craft, I mean,

you can just feel it from his heart. And like, I was scooching up in my seat being like, what else is he going to say? I mean, I find it very captivating when he speaks about his craft and, uh, yeah, he's great. Yeah, no, he's next level. It's hard.

It was hard to like isolate. Um, and Hillary, Hillary Byrne, our, um, post-production director has provided so much for this whole project, like idea wise. Um, and, but she was on the, uh, she was on that shoot. And when she brought the footage back and was pulling, yeah. And when she brought that stuff back, um, uh, she was pulling the selects, which is like the best moments of it. And it was like, I was asking her, how's it going? And she's like, there's, there's just so much that's good. Like so much, everything that he talks about, everything, his story, it's like so interesting.

And so, and then it was all of a sudden it was like, all right, well, we can't, we don't, this is not a DSD commercial. We don't want it to be like a marketing piece, like necessarily this is a story. It's a profile. It's a profile. It's a genius. But there's so much interesting stuff that he says.

It's like we could make a whole show on Dave, I think. I mean, he's just, seems like a cool cat uh i'll tell you a funny story about dave but i gotta give a little background on it to the listener here at our company we have this thing i don't know if anyone pays attention to it but it's on your calendar every day there's supposed to be like a time of day people are like oh i got you know i got too many emails i can't focus on what i want to focus on so there's like this time of day when it's supposed to be that you can't email. Company focus time. You can't have meetings during that time.

But I never get to do it because I always have meetings. Yeah. But it's like company focus time. So it always pops up. Does anybody pay attention to company focus time? No. Four to five every day. It's just built. It's like it's a joke. It's always been there. No one knows what it is,

whatever, but it's there. Yeah. I'm hunting turkeys with Dave during the week. Okay. Me and Dave were hunting turkeys and we're driving from one spot

to the next. Also, Dave's like looking at his phone. He looks at me. Oh shit. It's company focused time. So did he observe it? We focused on driving to our next turkey spot.

Nice. Okay, who's to hear with Giannis? What a schmuck that guy is. Well, you guys have some good ribbing back and forth. But, yeah, that one's like things get weird, right? We're, we took this episode that was. All right. All right.

Where's he going with this? Well, Yanni made us go to a new spot. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So. That's what started it getting weird. That's maybe the beginning.

That's maybe the beginning. No, I want to hear it from your perspective. Well, from what I saw, I was like, we had this tremendously beautiful hunt in Sonora. I mean, the scenery there is outstanding. It's incredible. I've never been, but again, I've just watched a lot of this footage. But it was like nothing happened for seven days. So we had all this footage of like you know driving around yanni

gets stuck in a in a can-am or a polaris or something and that's like kind of an interesting moment and um and uh which is evidence of the hard country um but like that's that's what we have for like seven days and then in like 20 minutes at the end of this like you guys both shoot deer at the end of this and uh it happens so fast and um we don't have any like long lens so like the the the very zoomed in picture of of the deer and and what they're doing and things like that so we we're just limited on what we have for this episode and um so in the process of trying to come up, we like, I cut an episode and it turned out to be, I wanna say it was like 14 minutes or something like that. And it was interesting to watch.

I thought like once we got it all together, it was like a, it was an interesting 14 minute episode, but like these have to be 22. And so the idea became like, all right, what if we have you guys like siskel and ebert like in a movie theater kind of like uh mystery science theater um the show where they watch like b movies and science fiction and we have these like little silhouetted guys in front of the movie and what if we have them sitting there talking about and narrating effectively this

episode and so we had you guys come on a to a little cinema in livingston and and uh and basically reshoot the thing so we had a what the cinema people would call like second unit so we had you know we had lighting and we had cameras again and then we we shot we shot you dr randall makes a cameo dr randall makes a cameo he's uh a theater goer he's. He's an annoyed theater goer, which is kind of fun. But no, I think we get a little bit of like extra, again, extra context, extra background. And it was a giant pain in the butt. I mean, like you're talking about a TV show in a TV show.

Like so that alone has like got a lot of technical constraints and, um, our, our team is awesome. And so like Zoe, um, our post-production supervisor has done some cool work and like compositing that all together. Um, so that it, it just, it's, it looks different. Like, I don't think anybody's ever done this in the hunting space. Like I don't think that exists. So that's, that's what makes me excited about this episode. 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 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 hand-picked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's,

Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all we still haven't tackled the uh too many bucks yeah why why why do you think people don't,

why do people not just want to watch awesome buck footage? What if they just called it awesome buck footage? I think we're going to get that too. Did you see that one that's drooling? I feel like he's drooling. I've seen, well, multiple of them have swollen necks and just like. He's drooling.

I think I, I think I know the shot you're talking about. He's coming straight at it. Yeah. Got a little bit more of a vertical set of antlers. Right. Drooling. Yeah. Now see the one I had to stomp at because I thought he was going to get me.

Yes, that's, that's pretty wild. Yeah. What else am I thinking? Did you see the one that, did you see how they what's going through their head when they want to attack the decoy oh i mean we have we have footage of them literally attacking the decoy i mean that's that's cool stuff too i always pictured when a buck was going to attack like because here picture this it's like you're given a buck the dream scenario as the assaulter because he's not going anywhere here's a buck he's

gonna fight but the buck is doing no defensive maneuvering so you're able to see like like let's say i said to you uh go punch that guy right and you're approaching thinking like okay i'm gonna have to dodge his punches you know but it winds up being like power slapping right you can just do what you want to do so here you're seeing box you're coming in being like oh i'm gonna need to fight this buck i hope i don't get hurt and after a couple minutes he's like hold on man this buck is not doing any of the things that would defend it yeah so he's like so what i'm gonna do i'm gonna come from behind i'm gonna get up to him right alongside of him i'm gonna stand there a long time and then i'm gonna bam yeah right in his ribs

that's what he wants to hit. And then he's like, that ain't a buck. The moment of curiosity was like, it's like it lasted so long. Yeah. Like curious, curious, curious. And then the moment of aggression was like four seconds or less. But you get to see what he would prefer to do is hit you so hard in your ribs. Yeah.

He doesn't want to hit your head. Yep. Yeah. He doesn't want to hit your antlers. That's where your weapons are, man. Yeah. He wants to punch your ribs hard. Just death.

Did you ever have any that, because like you said, they figure out once they make an impact that they're not a buck. Yeah. But did you ever have some that were so curious or aggressive that even though they're like, that's not a buck, but did you ever have some so some that were so curious or aggressive that even though they're like that's not a buck but i can't take it i'm gonna go back again they were definitely they definitely were like something is askew well we've got one where he came in

knocked the decoy over i ran out there set it back up and then he came back in again yeah he's got back up for more. I should say there's always, it's hard to know what's going on in a deer's head. I would say that the handful of times there was always like what I read as a bit of like, what? Yeah. Like a what?

You know. Not that he would hit and then kind of recover from the surprise. Well, like a gobbler right he just will sit there and keep flogging that thing you know there's no surprise it sounds like plastic it's on the ground it's rolling around still hasn't reacted to him but he's like whatever yeah i'm waving it to you yeah he's like oh yeah well now i'm gonna breathe you you make a really good point in that episode you say like i'd like to to the effect of like. You say like, I'd like to, to the effect of like, I'd like to interview, I'd like to interview a deer, but it's gotta be an honest one.

Yeah. Like, and that's, that was a fun one. So Mr. Buck, when you came running up here and you saw that deer stand there, what was the first thing you thought? You know? Like an exit interview? Yeah. Like, this won't affect you, but we've got to know yeah i just my advice as my advice to you is just let people like those bucks definitely definitely not going to

tell you how to do your job hansi but okay there's one last one we should talk about uh cutting cutting a mule deer episode yeah um so the the mule deer episode is you ronnie collins garrett um and uh it happens like it's kind of another one that happens quickly like it's like a day right too good um it's it's just too good and there's one and this is like a technical consideration that's just sometimes just a bummer is just it's windy and like it's just when and like there's no really great way To everything sounds like yeah, there's no really great way to like eliminate that or you know clean it up afterward And so is that right? There's not like there's there's an extent to right

There's no way I would think there's gotta be some little magic trick to make all that go away. It's, it still just sounds like you've, you've treated it heavily. And so it's like distracting. So I think it's, it's getting better like every year, but still, but I think another, another element of that is just that it's like when it's windy, people just talk less like on camera when it's windy. And I don't know what that is. Uh, but it's just an observation I've had is that it's something i don't know if it's a just a something very primordial or or whatnot but um like they just talk less and that's

and that's definitely what happened but uh it gave us a kind of a cool opportunity to like um i mean these hunts are across big expanses um and long they can be long shots. And so it kind of gave us an example, like an instance in which to talk about long distance shooting as it pertains to mule deer hunting. And so we have this episode that was, that we then shot again with Garrett and you at the range talking about long range shooting and talking about the evolution of

long range shooting as it applies to hunting and practice. And so the other cool thing about this is it is going to be like graphically treated. So we're going to have graphics in it that demonstrate and show some of the trajectory trajectories of bullets, um, over distance and, and how that, how that works and how practice like actually works, like how it, how it actually affects your hunt. And also a thing we'll get into is that people want to, um, I think this will be in the final product, an observation that no one questions gravity, but shooters want to act like the

wind that they can wish the wind away. Right. Yeah. They would never be like, I'm just going to act like gravity. Isn't going to pull that bullet down. But when it's windy, they're like,

I'm going to act like the wind isn't going to blow that bullet because I don't want to go into that hole. I don't want to go into that hole deal. You know? So it's going to be like, somehow it's not actually going to blow the bullet way over to the right or left, which is the thing we talked about on the range. Wind is as real as gravity. It's easy to understand one axis,

but when you add in the second one, it gets real complicated. Yeah, and my tendency is Ben to be like, I'm just going to wish that one away. Like, maybe it's only windy where I'm at. La, la, la, la, la. Yeah, and the wind isn't going to be blowing the bullet the whole time. Because how could it? Time on the range, not home on the range,

time on the range has demonstrated. One of the things about shooting extreme distances, not even extreme distances, because that means a whole new thing now shooting long distances shooting at distances greater than i would shoot in hunting um has taught me to accept the reality of wind when you're shooting at in the high wind you're shooting at stuff six seven hundred yards away and you're watching bullets hit the sand several targets to the left or right you're shooting at stuff six, 700 yards away, and you're watching bullets hit the sand, several targets to the left or right, you're like, okay, I now agree that this has to be paid attention to.

There's a moment in that where you're like, this is like post-hunt, where you're like, my practice has paid off. And it's not just, it's obvious. It's like obvious to the viewer, and it's not just, it's obvious. It's like obvious to the viewer and it's obvious to Garrett. And it's like, you don't hardly need to say it because we've seen it happen, but it just, it it's yeah. It's the real deal. Great. Yeah. What else you want to add there? Uh, Jordan, Jordan Martin's our editor working on that one right now. And he's doing a bang up job. Um, and, and uh i think they're the thing about these episodes

that kind of ties them all together is that we get a a little bit deeper context of you as a character um a human a hunter like we just we it's like we we layer down it's not a like a substitute for uh meat eater the show but it's just like we get some little snippets here and there of like seth of you of uh of dirt uh we get some like camera operator moments that are uh that are like just cool little little tidbits that i think add add some humor add some fun and um we're just psyched about it right now. Less governed. Yeah, yeah.

It's like, eh, we kind of threw the rules out the window to an extent. And so... And when does this series drop? I think early November, I think, is what we're looking at right now. You better get out of this place and get up to your little place.

I know. I was not at half of yesterday for that exact reason. Clock's ticking, Nazi. Believe me, I feel it. I feel it. Stay tuned everybody for Rough Cuts. Thanks.

It's going to be fun, man. Seth's got little moments in there. It's cute. Yanni's got some great one-liners. Yanni's in there. Tony's in there. Brent, had it said a hell of a lot you titillated i can't i can't hardly wait when's november gonna be here i want to hear the rest of the song yeah oh but not right now um you won a case pocket knife last night i did congratulations i did He gave it away because he already has one. Two. Yeah, or three.

I gave it to Reva Hansen who does all the editing on my podcast. He's a wonderful human being. All right. And real quick, how's this country life going? You appreciating it? Very much so. Yeah, it's very good. I get a lot of feedback you

know when i started that thing i really didn't really know the direction it was going to go i thought it would just be i didn't want to just be hunting and fishing stories or hauling hay stories and it because i didn't think there was enough meat there to do it because there's way more people who are a lot better at hunting and fishing than I am that are putting stuff out there to educate people. And about three episodes in, I got a letter or Instagram message from a guy in New York City. I've told this story several times, but it's just so meaningful to me that I always think about it. But he said, you know, I live in New York City,

and I have never hunted or fished. My dad never took me hunting or fishing when your dad was taking you. He said, but my dad was taking me to Yankee Stadium to watch the Yankees play. He said, and I relate to what you're doing because I was with my dad or my family members doing the same thing. And that's, he said, your show is really good

and I like it. And I thought, why in the world would this guy like that? But then I figured it out. Well, it's about the show that I'm doing is about relationships. And when I had that focus, everything became real easy for me to do. Then it could be a story about anything. You know, it's just the relationship with a place or a person or a thing, even, you know, a case pocket knife, which has been a tangible object in my family's legacy and history

that started with my great-grandfather that's carried on now. And it's something that everyone in my family is a fan of and appreciates because of the history of our family with it. Just a simple thing as a pocket knife. But it's just something that connects all of us, even to the folks that have gone before us. Like I never knew my great-grandfather, but I got a pretty good idea of when he needed a pocket knife,

where he was reaching for it and what he was breaking out. So that's been real meaningful for me. like that that you got it narrowed down and it's about relationships i remember at a point trying to think of all the stuff i've done and written about and all that like through a career i was like how would you define it and i thought well i guess i'll define it like like i've i explore and have explored human relationships to nature. Sure. Right. Yeah. From the perspective of a hunter perspective of biologists,

whatever, whatever. Right. It's always been like most of my stuff, there's people. This is why I hate Antarctica. Um, I'm opposed to that pole.

Uh, cause there's nobody there. Cause there was no people to ask myself, why do I hate that pole? The South pole. Cause it's got the nature Cause there was no people. Yeah. I asked myself, why do I hate that pole? The South pole. Cause it's got the nature, but not the people. Right.

Well, you know, my wife and little girl and I, we, we went out to Bradford, Pennsylvania to the case factory three weeks ago. And I thought I need to, since I've always carrying pocket knives,

I wanted to carry something out there that meant something to me and that might mean something to them. So I found a pocket knife that I had sitting up on the shelf that I had given the first pocket knife I ever bought with my own money. And I gave it to my dad as a present in 1979. And when he passed away, I got that back. So I thought, I want to take something with me that means something. And I always carry two pocket knives,

so I was trying to figure out what's the other pocket knife I would take. And last year, when someone arbitrarily sent the case folks my podcast of the things I carry in my pocket. And those guys appreciated it. That's a great episode, by the way. Those guys appreciated it, and they sent me, a guy sent me a pocket knife. And on a case knife, you know, it's got the Tang stamp on there, and you can tell what date it was manufactured.

Oh, and I didn't know that. Yeah. I know what you're talking about, but I didn't know that told you that. Yeah, it'll tell you the year and what year it was manufactured. Decade and year. So I thought, well, I'm going to take that one, told you that yeah it'll tell you the year and and what year it was manufactured a decade in year uh so i thought well i'm gonna take that one the first one that they sent me for a token of their appreciation of you know my family's history with it so we go out there and we when they're taking my wife alexis and my daughter bailey and i on this tour of the factory and the first place we stopped the the plant

manager production manager said this guy over here is he's doing he's welding the first parts of the pocket knives together he said he's been doing this 51 years this job right here in this case factory and I'm doing math in my head and i go so i reached in my pocket and i pulled out this knife and i go over there in a medium and i said mr dave would would you have worked on this knife and i handed to him and he opened it up and looked at it and he said oh yeah i worked on it now and it's cool handed it back to me and i stuck it in my pocket and I started telling him the story of me buying it and giving it to my dad my dad passing away and and me getting it back and I got about halfway through that my wife said here let me help you tell the rest of this because it was just a pretty

emotional moment you know for that thing to have gone full circle yeah and beyond full circle really because I gave it to him I got it back when he passed away, and then I took it back to where it was built. So it was, that is the true representation, I think, of what my show is. Relationship. Mm-hmm, for sure. Collisions. Yep, yeah, just life collisions. I was telling Corinne about one the other day,

a collision that I'm looking forward to having. Yeah. If I could never catch this guy that is stealing my fish. Did you have some fish stolen? My brother and I have been putting. It's a real fish heist, Steve. We each got a commercial. This sounds like a Bear Grease episode now, Brent.

I'm sure this guy doesn't listen to anything, but my brother and I have commercial fishing licenses, and we fish nets on a big Arkansas river. I'm not going to say which one it is, it is a big arkansas river uh and when we put these nets out there's sometimes there's people around sometimes you can see if the water's up where we have them anchored to the bank uh you can't see the strings but as the the dams operate and they're the river's coming up and down. They're either generating power downstream and they need water. The river level will go up and down.

And then sometimes you can see the strings that hold our nets. Well, as locks keep honest people honest, if you're a fisherman and you hook one of these nets in your hook or you see one of these lines, you're supposed to just leave it alone. Some folks don't do that. So we had some guys stealing, they're running our nets, keeping our fish, but they leave our nets back out, I guess, so we can catch some more for them. So I was telling Corinne. Well, what would they do with the nets? They're too lazy to set them themselves

so i was telling karen about this the other day she said oh my gosh this is a here's a here's a moment right here we need to take advantage of so the good folks at moultrie and i are fixing to lay a trap for them you're advertising the trap right now oh yeah but they don't they don't listen it's gonna be good. I wish I could tell you the best quote I ever heard in my whole life, but I'll never tell you. Okay. Why not?

I'll never tell you. Okay. This pertains to fish. If we stop working together and 10 years goes by, you come ask me. Okay. Okay. 10 years. That's a statute of limitations.

Keep it up, man. I hope you catch those guys. Oh, I do too. Me too. You gonna do something bad to them? Oh, no, no. Nothing like that. You just gonna shame them? Absolutely. Shame on you. You're not gonna shoot at them or anything? No, that's pretty serious shoot at them or anything oh no

that's no that's that's pretty serious punch them or nothing no no none of that just want to catch them just want to let them know i know what you're doing sometimes that's the like the old farmer caught me and my partner stealing watermelons out of his watermelon patch when we were in high school. He called us dead to rights. I learned that night that my friend who was 6'2 could jump a five strand barbed wire fence in one leap and I could jump

four of them. We had to go. Do you know, there's a is there a melon called the Brad this is the last thing I'm going to say the Bradbury melon I gotta check for that right now I'm not familiar with it

yeah I'm not either there's a melon Bradford watermelon the Bradford melon oh yeah the heirloom Bradford watermelon listen there used to be watermelon wars. And melon theft was so bad in the American South that people were lacing watermelons with strychnine.

People were going out. They were so fed up with watermelon theft, they were rigging explosives on watermelon. What years was this? Type in the Bradford. It looks like an elongated

Bradford watermelon. I want listeners to know this is all bonus material right here. It looks like a foot and a half long. It's like long and skinny. It's almost like a zucchini. Listen for a second. This is the saga of the return of the legendary melon, the Bradford watermelon. There's a problem with watermelons.

A watermelon will cross with any gourd, cucumber, pumpkin, other melon, or squash in the vicinity. So you have to keep it a mile apart from any other vegetable or else it will form vegetable mongrels. Anyway, this goes on to tell the story of the Bradford melon. It's one of my favorite videos. Yeah, watermelon theft. But I never met a watermelon thief

talking about you. I thought it was all BS. I was unsuccessful. You're lucky he didn't rig a dynamite underneath oh yeah what he did was he we'd actually i'll take that back i was successful just the night before we went and got one and it was really good and we raised watermelons at home i could have gone out there and got them but there was just a little more excitement to it to be running around up town with your friends and like ah we'll go get you a watermelon and everybody y'all wait right here at the parking lot we'll be back so we go out there the second night and then under this nightlight in front of the barn this humongous watermelon i don't remember seeing the night

before but i mean it's a target of opportunity. So we're going. So we go and we pick it up. My buddy picks it up and we start walking back across the fence and I turn around and somebody whistles real loud and I turn around and look and you can see the glow of a cigarette in the hall of that barn. All you see is a big glow, red glow. Somebody smoking a cigarette. That was the owner of the watermelon.

Yeah, and the next thing we heard was a shotgun. Boom. What happened to the watermelon? I don't know. It could have been made out of plastic. I don't know. But when we headed to the fence, when I finally got through it, my buddy sounded like a typewriter going down that gravel road in front of me.

Out of sight. I grew up not terribly far from my wife and uh sometimes i'll tell her things and she's like you know and i was telling her about i said yeah if you get a watermelon you know you put it in the creek and cool it off and she's like i don't understand how like how was this all occurring like so close together but just like stuff I have no way my wife used to like oh I take that watermelon sink into Creek she asked me she said did you grow up on Little House on the Prairie all right thanks for coming on Hansi yeah thank you thanks for having me I think people are thoroughly titillated I hope they'll I hope so well yeah stay tuned for rough cuts coming out.

And that video I just played is from Mind of a Chef, but this is from the Mind of Hansi. Oh. You like that? Yeah, that's good. But it's a good team effort. It's been a pretty huge collaboration. No, I appreciate you doing that. Mind of Post Production.

Yeah. Mind of Steve slash Post Production. You're like someone receiving an Oscar. No. So much experience doing that. I'd like to thank all the people. Who pull out my list. All right.

Thanks for coming on, man. Hey, thanks. Appreciate it. Thank you.