The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 589: MeatEater Radio Live! A Salmon Smokehouse, Killer Jerky, and the 6th Biggest Yukon Moose (08/22/04)

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Welcome to our brand new MeatEater Radio Live! podcast. Join Steve Rinella and the rest of the crew as they go LIVE from MeatEater HQ every Thursday at 11am MT! They’ll have segments, call-in guests, and real-time interaction with the audience. You can watch the stream on the MeatEater Podcast Network YouTube channel, or catch the audio version of the show on Fridays. Today's episode is hosted by Steve Rinella, Janis Putelis, and Randall Williams. Guests: Heather Douville of the Lingít tribe and John Hayes of Hayes Taxidermy in Libby, MT. Connect with The MeatEater Podcast Network 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 meat. Smell us now, lady. Welcome to Meat Eater Trivia. Meat Eater Podcast.

Welcome to Meat Eater Radio Live. It's just about 11 a.m. on August 22nd, and we're live from Meat Eater headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. Today I'm in the primary host seat, which will not always be the case. It's a revolving set of hosts, and I'm going to explain that in a minute. But today I'm joined here by Giannis and Dr. Randall. And if you have

any question about whether this is truly live or not, Randall, where could someone go right now to see a dead bear? Westbound 990, just down from the frontage road exit as you're going up the pass. There you have it. That bear is laying there dead right now. Drive over,

take a look, and confirm that you're watching a live show. On today's show, we'll call my friend Heather Duville a it's a very hard word to say. She schooled me on an upcoming podcast fling i just say cling it but it's fling it i i can't do it she'll do it uh a tlingit hunter and fisher gal from alaska in order to we're going to take you on a visit a live visit to her smoke house then we're going to discuss some wild game cooking projects that folks got coming up this

week here followed by the launch of a segment we're developing. That will be strictly for the live show, the radio show. Which will be hunting and fishing tattoos I regret. The inaugural one is going to feature our very own Chester the divestor. And then we're going to pitch you guys to start submitting and come on as a guest on Radio Live. To showcase hunting and fishing tattoos you regret. Then we're going to go and do a hot tip off. And finally, we're going to call my buddy John Hayes and pay a visit to his taxidermy studio live.

And we're going to see one of the world's biggest moose that is currently in said studio at the Hayes Taxidermy Studio. But first, let me tell you more about what this new show is. So every Thursday, 11 a.m. Mountain Time on the Meat Eater Podcast Network on the YouTube channel, you will join in for live. The audio version of this show will then drop on the Meat Eater Podcast feed on Friday morning. So tomorrow, you'll be able to just go listen to the show as a regular podcast on the feed. But if you want to watch live, this is where you go right now

to watch it live at the Meat Eater podcast network. It's a one-hour variety show. Segments, call-in guests, live visits to cool places, live audience engagement. Why would we do this? Well, since these shows have such a quick turn we'll be able to better discuss current events in the world of hunting fishing conservation the outdoors where you can watch fresh takes on fresh news instead of things being delayed which is the

case in the podcast world and we'll also be able to talk about what is happening right now like if there's a dead bear on the highway right now, you'll know it's there right now. First thing we're going to do today, though, as we jump into Radio Live, is we're going to throw it to Giannis to tell us where he came from right now. I had a checkup, one-week checkup after I had a surgery last week, and the surgery I had is called an ablation and a phlebectomy. Got it. It's kind of two in one.

It was basically to remove varicose veins from my leg. I've been looking at those veins since I've met you. Right. These little bulbs. Yeah. And I always just thought it was like a sign of strength that I must just be really fast and I work out plenty and run plenty. But it turns out you have a breakdown in the walls of the veins and they expand, your skin can't

keep them nice and tight. And so they actually quit working. Some doctors think, including our doctor, that it could be a cause of some of my cramping that I have in my left leg when I do long runs. So I tried compression stockings to try to fix it. It didn't seem to fix it. So we went to the route of removing them. Two things I want to say about it. One, when you get them removed, they offer you, you can take an anxiety pill, like a Prozac or something.

I think, is that what they give you? I think that would be what it is, but yeah. Okay. They probably give you something really quick acting, like Ativan or something. Well, I want to say it was Prozac. Is that not anti-anxiety? Anyways, about 50% It's not a thing you take for right now.

Okay. Maybe you take an hour. 50% of the people decide to take it. 50% don't. I didn't. They pumped me full of local anesthetic. About 300 milliliters of it. Which is a lot like so much you just feel it dripping all over your legs yeah when he starts cutting and pulling so

the ablation he just goes in there with a catheter and basically burns and kills the greater saponis vein then he goes in with little i didn't get to watch they wouldn't let me watch but he would cut and pull out the actual veins that were bulging out, the ones you've been looking at. Why couldn't you watch? They just recommend against it because it's just too intense, I guess. Yeah, they didn't let me watch my vasectomy.

Ooh, I didn't ask about that one. Yeah. Go on. But when he was pulling to get those veins to pop let me see your arm your tricep i need to pop them out more like you can feel that yeah and then all of a sudden go yeah and he did that about 30 times and you're gonna show us some gross pictures. Yeah. So that was interesting part number one. Here are the photos of what he took out of me. It's actually a little video.

Wow. See, people within our own organization advised us to not show these photos. So the main branch is up top here. Yep. And then it's like a broom. God, that was living in your leg, Yanni. Yeah. You can catch a big old perch on that, man. Oh, guaranteed.

Three branches off of one main one. If you look close, I felt like the closest thing that I said that they reminded me of was hot casing. Like if you want to make some really, really small sausages,

you could with my little varicose veins. And how are you feeling now? All that's out of your leg? Yeah, I'm severely bruised right now. The inside of my leg is yellow to purple. But otherwise, I'm cleared. I'm going backpacking tomorrow afternoon. Good for you.

Ready to rip. Power of Western medicine. Really quick, we've got some people. All right. Power of Western medicine. Really quick, we've got some people debating whether or not this is truly live. So, let's see, Tom. Go look at the damn dead bear.

Well, some people don't live in the greater Bozeman metropolitan area. I'm touching this skunk. Tom from MySpace, I guess, will believe it's live if Randall pats his head and rubs his belly.

Tom, he's a skeptic. All right, we're going now. Gotta give the he's a skeptic all right we're going now people they want okay we're going now to heather deville we're gonna we're gonna visit heather deville smokehouse which is the coolest damn smokehouse on the planet if you father had if you follow heather on instagram it's at ak moosey so a k m o o s i e when theyE. When she says smokehouse, it's a smokehouse. It's not some little smoker. Heather, what's up? Good morning. Hope I have good enough service out

here and also we're going to be talking about food following the varicose vein. Our segment placement wasn't ideal. Yeah. Smoke those veins. Okay, so walk us through what you got, Heather. Yeah. You had to smoke those veins. Okay, so walk us through what you got, Heather.

I want to see the smokehouse. Okay. So I'm joining you from my smokehouse. It sits on Tlingit, Aani. Good job, Steve. Tlingit actually means people of the tides. That's the name of my tribe. And Aani means land. So I'm here on our ancestral homelands.

And it's only fitting that I'm going to show you my step-towel. Heather, where about is that on a map? Tlingit ani spans a distance of all of southeast Alaska, so all of southeast is our traditional homelands, but I'm located what is now called Prince of Wales of Southeast Alaska. So all of Southeast is our traditional homelands, but I'm located what is now called Prince of Wales Island in Craig. This is the outside of my smokehouse. I had cedar for the roof and you could hopefully you can see there's a copper ridge cap which leeches out and keeps any moss from growing on the roof so hopefully it'll last a really long time

uh steve you'd appreciate this i have my fish draining basket which which I beach combed. A lot of these things float over from overseas. I feel like you stole my beach combed fish basket. That's my basket. At the fish shack. And, yeah, here's the outside. We actually have some fish that I'm going to be smoking soon. And you can see the spruce stick set up here. We hang the fish strips over spruce sticks because they're strong they can hold a lot of weight and they don't affect the taste of your

fish like cedar stick would and i'm going to show you the inside oh yeah explain it all man this is fascinating what what's this heather what's the most common fish that you're going to smoke in this thing? It depends on the season. We do smoke. We start the season with king salmon and then sockeye, and right now it's coho season. Then in the fall, we smoke deer, seal meat. This is a cold smoking method, so it's different from what some people might be familiar with, which is mostly hot smoking.

So I have a fire pit in the ground. It's actually a truck rim that my cousin gave me. It's covered with a tin, and the tin is perfectly bent here. It took about three tries to get the perfect bend in that tin, so just the smoke will come out, and it won't heat up the smokehouse and cook the fish because we don't want it to be cooked. And I have a shelf here with a fan that oscillates so that'll rotate

the smoke and a cat track here because some salmon types are softer so they're more prone to fall off the stick like coho is pretty soft but sockeye is a little firmer and then you could see the belly pieces here I cut in doubles and typically the firmer fish like sockeye we'd cut all the strips in doubles so you can fit twice as many fish in your smokehouse but since this is coho I cut the rest in singles make them a little bit stronger so they don't fall. And then I have the backbone here and also the heads. So I split the heads and after these are cold smoked they can be baked or boiled and this cartilage here in the nose it'll get soft. It's really good to eat baked or make boiled fish head soup topped with seaweed. So we kind of follow three golden rules, which is only take what you need, use as much of what you take as possible, and then share more than what you keep. So I'll be sharing this with elders and

friends and family. You can see I have a bunch of alder stacked up here dried and i'm getting ready to light the fire soon but i didn't want to do that and smoke you guys out heather man sorry well it looks like we just lost heather out now she accidentally oh oh she's back there she is oh heather you cut out for a minute but man i i really appreciate the the tour um it was awesome people that are watching now we we recorded a podcast a regular podcast that'll be coming out with heather um where we spent a lot of time talking about her culture and i and and i'll tell you um that experience of meeting Heather and talking to Heather really has caused me to rethink so many things. Heather's view informed by her culture on just resource extraction, resource utilization,

has caused me to do a bunch of soul searching and face up to the reality that uh her culture is just cooler than ours um it's just it's like she's explained this when this podcast comes out with heather she's explained this thing of when when when setting halibut hooks they set hooks in pairs and you invite the hooks to compete and you send the hook down saying your friend is coming to fight you. It's just like, man, it just invited me to consider this whole way of just viewing the people around you, viewing the material goods around you, inviting life and vibrancy into the things you do in the outdoors. Just very impactful. And Heather, thanks so much.

We will talk to you very soon. Thank you. And thanks for a tour to Smokehouse. All right, bye-bye. You're going to be a regular on live. 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 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. This sets us up for a much better segue. Than the medical waste to smoking fish? Yes.

Okay. Yanni, we're going to go into meat eater menu, and we're going to talk about what's cooking right now. You ready? Bacon tastes good. Pork chops taste good. Hey, sewer rat meat tastes like pumpkin pie, but I never know because I wouldn't eat the filthy mother. Mamma mia.

That's right, meat eater menu. We're going to talk about what we've been cooking lately, what we're planning to cook, what's in the freezer, what we pulled out of the freezer, et cetera. I brought two things. It's kind of like a show and tell. I did, or I have been, I did a, it was actually during our super hot spell that we had. This is when this project started like two weeks ago. And we had one of those, you know, week long spells of nearly a hundred degrees.

I missed the whole thing. I was freezing ass in Alaska. Well, I thought, what better thing to do than do a freezer clean out? Yep. Right? So I pulled my freezers out of the garage, got them out into the sun. You mean because you knew everything was just going to get clean? Oh, yeah, exactly.

Once I pulled the meat and just put it in coolers and left it in the cold spot in the garage, and the freezers came out into 100 degree heat, I mean, you could just watch the ice melt. Yeah, exactly. Plus, it was comfortable to stand in front of the freezer. That led me to going, holy shit, do I have a bunch of meat still that needs to get processed and eaten? And I thought, man, let's do a giant batch of jerky.

Called Henderson for a recipe. He told me a new one he's been doing is just marinating his meat strips in sweet chili Thai sauce. Comes out good. I didn't go that route. Just that? Just that. Brody's a little charcuterie fellow, man.

I know. Someone yesterday asked me, why would you call Brody about jerky? And I go, man, look at his Instagram. There's nobody that posts about more jerky than Brody. Bald or in hell, but really good on charcuterie. Yeah. So I went to the new Meter Outdoor Cookbook and went to Cola Ancho Jerky. Now, this holds true for both of the things I'm going to talk about,

is that this is like an outdoor smoker jerky recipe, but I don't have a smoker. Yeah. So I just did the recipe and just put it into my dehydrator. It worked just fine. I also didn't have any ancho chili powder kicking around. Yeah. But what I did have was Kashmiri chili powder.

So followed the recipe as is otherwise, but just used the Kashmiri chili instead of it. And do you want to try a chunk? Please. Randall? Yeah, I didn't get any yesterday. We were talking about jerky the other day, and I was reminiscing to how we used to make it when I was young. No one trimmed it good?

Oh, yeah, sure. And you'd work up a... Nice. First off, we wouldn't trim it good. And then my dad took the dryer motor out of a dryer, a dishwasher, and made a big plywood box, and it was powered by that. That thing's still sitting in my mom's house. A big, huge thing, seven, eight racks, and it powered by a dishwasher.

With a heating element. Yeah, with a heating element from a dryer in there. And we would not trim it right. And I associate jerky with you eat the jerky and then you have a cut and you can chew that cud for hours it's that little gob of all the connective tissue and eventually you can take it apart and floss your teeth with the little cud or just spit the cut out i like and i used to use view it as a negative but i missed that cud i like the teeth flossing part.

Guaranteed, if any meat I eat anymore, afterwards I'm going, man, wish I had some floss or a nice toothpick or something. It was good, to be honest. Well, what's cool about this recipe I'd like to mention is that the ancho chili dust or whatever chili dust you decide to put on happens after the marinating process. So you lay out all the meat and then you dust it with a garlic and chili dust thing. So my kids were like, uh, we don't want any of that spicy shit. So I just did half of it with just marinated. And it's basically like a souped up Coca-Cola that you're marinating it in. And without the dust, it's just like a sweet, basic jerky that the kids love.

And then I have half of it that's more like this, which is not extremely spicy, but just a little sweet heat. It's nice. Yeah, you know it's there. Yeah. in these stuff. I have gone to only using my nice whole cut muscles chunks for this. Top rounds, bottom rounds, sirloins, all that kind of stuff for my jerky. Because anymore, anytime I do stew,

I'm a neck and shank guy for the stew meat. You know where you're a little bit wrong? You like to grind it. You're a little bit wrong. You know what the cl clod is yeah like if you folks at home are picturing a shoulder blade i wish i had a scapula how you think we'd have one in here one thing not in here the clod like you know the scapula has that little ridge that runs on the outside the clod lays in there it's like

if if god didn't want you to make jerky he wouldn't have put that little Claude on there. That is a good jerky cut. Yeah, but it's also an excellent cut if you take out that there's literally a whole thick flap of silver skin that runs through the middle of it. If you fillet it like a fish and get that out of there and just grill that, it's an extremely good cut of meat. Yeah, I got you. Well, we had a discussion about nepotism a few weeks ago

on trivia. Speaking of, Spencer Newharth is asking, I thought we'd pull him up, Steven Randall, rate the jerky on a scale from 1 to 10. Oh, 6. Okay. A little chewy. A little chewy. Is 10 good? I mean, really? 10's good. Okay.

I'll do a 7. Thanks, Randall. You can say 6, too. No, it's good. The flavor is... I'm not here to fluff this guy up. Spencer tried it yesterday and said he liked the dryness because he thinks that he gets a lot of jerky that is not dry enough,

which, sure, it might chew better, but it has shit for preservation. Like, this jerky, it can ride in your pack probably all fall not going to be a problem that's what i like a real jerky a real jerky if you want to talk about a 10 you gotta get jesse griffith's jerky that's 10 everything else falls in i'm gonna call him next time everything else falls in underneath. I'm going to call him next time for my next recipe. Okay, Randall, what do you got? I've got last night's dinner, which was a— Are we going to see it? I believe so.

Phil. Oh, yeah. So this is a— You poached that out last night? No, I wish. This was last Fall's Bowl, or I guess this past fall's bowl. So in October, we're just finishing them up and, uh, had some steaks in the sous vide, did a little butter and, uh, oh, there's a nice plating. We did a little butter and some herbs and, uh, some of that savory seasoning from Momofuku.

Oh, that stuff's good. And then, uh, patted it dry, added a little more, uh, of that seasoning seasoning from Momofuku. Oh, that stuff's good, isn't it? And then patted it dry, added a little more of that seasoning, threw it on the grill at like 500 just for like a minute or two, and then sliced it up. Got some broccolini there, local, I think, and sauteed. Tell me what cut it was again. I think it was just like a top round. Okay.

Yeah. How long was this in the sous vide? It's like the last two packages labeled steak. When you say we, you mean you and Mrs. Dr. Randall? Yes. Yes. She set up the sous vide before she left for work, and then I did the rest when I got home. You know what made me feel so kind of put in my place?

Mm-hmm. Is we had yia. Not ya yang, but yia yang. Mm v-a-n-g oh vong okay not ya yang yeah vong i'm pissing every mung dude off on the planet right now apologies of the mung community but y'all's names sound the same. So much apology. He ate dinner at my house. We were having dinner at my house. And I was talking about sous vide, and he's like, hello, the year 2000 wants its technique back.

I had no idea. Yeah. It's dated. It's officially dated. Chefs have moved on. It's so convenient, though. Chefs have moved on. It's so convenient, though. Chefs have moved on. Now here, are you good on that?

I am. So you and the missus ate a whole elk in a year. That's great. Well, we still have a bit of sausage left. Your dogs ate a little bit. Yeah, they ate a little bit. And you shared some with people. We run through the steaks really quick.

No, we didn't share any, really. Really? You didn't follow Heather's thing? Share. I know. I think I could benefit from including more worldviews in my approach to life. Well, I hope you listen. Well, but listen, that is like a tricky thing, I think, for sort of the American hunter,

because, you know, you could say you share it when you do Hunters for the Hungry programs. I'm not talking about that kind of sharing i'm talking hand delivering recipe ready hand delivering recipe ready finished stuff for people's enjoyment not talking about trying to get something off my get it off my hands i know it's two different things but there's obviously a gray area in there and uh i just think that it's great i was also very happy to hear her talk about that. And I like to give it all a lot away myself. And I do it more for the reasons that you would give it away. But sometimes I do feel a little bad because I'm like,

man, maybe just me and my family should be eating everything we harvested. I gift out recipe-ready premium cuts to people I care about and love and my neighbors. Not that I don't care about and love them, but I just like to generate neighborly good. Yeah. As do my neighbors. There's reciprocity. Knowing the love that you

include, I feel a lot different about the red snapper that you gave me. I gave him recipe- Did I give you some old rotten red snapper or did I give you a filet? You gave me a couple of filets. Speaking of people we love... Go ahead. I haven't done my thing.

Phil's going to do the thing. It was my job to do the thing. No, I haven't done... Phil hasn't showed my picture. As further evidence that we're live, that's my deep fryer right now. And flip, if you went to my house and dug in my fridge, that's my deep fryer right now and flip if you went to my house and

dug in my fridge that's my fridge right now that's my daughter's turkey breast and a little light brine on the left for tonight's dinner that's a big tub of of my garden potatoes which i'm giving a soak right now to get someone to starch out because we're going to fry them tonight when my buddy Tony and his family come over for dinner. My kids the other night, we were digging potatoes, and my kids the other night tried to invent this dish they said is a thing from McDonald's. They took the potatoes,

boiled Yukon Gold potatoes, made mashed potatoes with them, rolled those mashed potatoes into a ball. I don't think this is at McDonald's, but they think it is. Rolled those potatoes into a ball, then rolled that ball of mashed potatoes in Panko, and then dropped them. Can you go back to the deep fryer?

Oh, sure. Dropped them in that bad mother liquor right there. What they think they're making is a breakfast hash brown at McDonald's. I know. I tried to explain it. It's different than that. Not in a ball. But I haven't gotten to the punchline yet.

Yeah, yeah. First off, that table that that deep fryer's sitting on, me and my old man cut those trees down and had that lumber all milled, and after he died, I made that table out of it. Now, thing is, they put this thing they made in there, and it was so funny they went out and lifted the basket up guess what was in the basket a mouse nothing oh all that potato dissolved they lift the basket out and it was like it took them a minute to register they

thought someone had come and taken their stuff. It just dissolved. The basket came out empty, and we had to go strain all the oil, and it was just like, yeah. They ate some of the junk they found in the bottom later when we strained the oil. That sounds more like McDonald's. It evaporated. Couldn't take the heat. No.

Okay, moving on. Tattoos I regret. Is Chester joining us or not? Yeah, he is. Chester, can we... Chester? There he is. How do I get it up there?

There he is. Chester, tell me where you're at. I'm sitting here in Wisconsin. I was actually just listening to all your food. Makes me pretty hungry. How's things going in Wisconsin, Chester? Tell us the story of the tattoo you regret. Because here's just a reminder to people.

What we want to do is this is going to be a recurring segment. We're going to be joined by people from around the country who have a hunting and fishing tattoo they regret. And we're going to start with Chester. Chester, tell us the story of how you thought it was a good idea and what you had in mind when you had a man's scrotum tattooed on your arm. Well, let me tell you. It wasn't supposed to be a man's scrotum. Danielle, my wife, and I were in Hawaii on a little honeymoon-type deal. And we ended up having a few too many mai tais or

pina coladas that's what i like to hear we uh decided we should go get some tattoos so we walk in this very tourist kind of trap tattoo uh establishment and i kind of pulled up a traditional spay fly. That's what this is supposed to be right here. And my wife got a wave and I got this. And it was incredibly expensive for what it is. They knew some suckers. How much?

They knew we were suckers when we walked in the door. I don't know. I can't remember, but for like a couple lines, I want to say it was like almost $400. Whew. Yeah. That's probably what I paid for a vasectomy. Jesse, you know what you need to do? I just added some little lines.

You need to go and get get little can you see it good i can see it that's bad get little little pube lines on there so do you think chester when when did you first realize that you'd you'd gotten a bad tattoo look i just want to clarify i don't think it's that bad no it's not it's just we're trying to launch the segment. So we need to act like it's worse than it is so people with really bad hunting and fishing tattoos come in. So it's like, I'm sorry, but we need to bill it as bad. Well, you know, at the right angle, it is bad. That's the first thing I need to say.

Do you regret it? Do I regret it? Do I regret it? I regret the price. You wish you had your $400 back. You could have put it into Bitcoin. Yeah, I think I wish I would have had that $400 back and I would like to think about

the next tattoo. I get a little bit more. So the moral of the story is think about it a little bit before you get moral of the story is think about it a little bit before you get something permanently on your body uh did you ever occurred to me did you hear the chris denny uh did you were you here for the chris denny episode of the podcast yeah i loved it yeah where chris denny explained he's got a he wears short sleeve shirts and so he got an ace of spades tattooed high on his arm because he always

wanted to have an ace up his sleeve he went with a homeless guy he met who at the last minute decided to get his ace on his face even though it was inspired by a discussion to get an ace up his sleeve yeah yeah so you gotta think about this kind of stuff you do you definitely do phil where do people send in hunting and fishing tattoos they regret? I got one I still haven't got, but I'm going to get it, and then in a couple years, I'm going to do how I regret it, which is my turkey super slam. Yeah. You've been talking about this super slam tattoo for years now.

Yep. I want it to happen, Steve. I'm going to get it. I think it has to happen. I'm going to do it live, and then I'm going to come on and talk about how I shouldn't have gotten it. We could do a tattoo you regret live in the studio. Corinne, do we have an email address yet?

We do. Oh, sorry. Let me put it right down here. If you have a hunting, fishing tattoo you regret and you want to come on the show and show us about it and have us help you try to problem solve it, send a message to us at radio at themeateater.com. So R-A-D-I-O at themeateater.com. Chester, thanks

for joining, man, and thanks for being the foil to help us launch our segment, buddy. Yeah, no problem. How's your family doing in Wisconsin? You guys good? Oh yeah, we're great. Taking a little break from work, sitting outside. We're actually going to be headed up north this weekend to taking a little break from work sitting outside we're actually going to be headed up north uh this weekend to do a little musky and walleye fishing excellent good luck buddy

miss you love you talk to you soon love you guys too see you later hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada and boy my goodness goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there,

OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery,

24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater 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.

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All right, from here we're going to move into we're going to move into Hot Tip-Off. So Hot Tip-Offs are where people give you their hottest hunting and fishing tip they can think of.

We got they're in competition with one another. Just like the Klingit might send two halibut hooks and the halibut hooks are supposed to compete with one another. Just like the Tlingit might send two halibut hooks, and the halibut hooks are supposed to compete with one another. Your friend's coming to fight you. These hot tips are fighting

each other. They're going to compete. We're going to go to the hot tip-offs. We're going to declare a winner. Phil? Steven Rinella. My name is Matt Johnson, Thorn Creek Taxidermy. And this is another hot tip-off.

No, no, no. No. Go like this. We'll keep going. Okay. You go, welcome to another hot tip-off. All right. Welcome to another hot tip-off.

Pretty good. Try it one more time. Welcome. Welcome to another hot tip-off. Now you got it. Okay. Tell us now. So I use this.

It's actually called a flushing cone. This is just styrofoam. It has a bolt. I have it bolted to my bench. These are great for the fine detail work. You know, I can stretch the nose over that. I can stretch the eyes over that. We've got the ear right here. And I use a skife. Some people use a razor. We're and i use a skype some people use a razor we're going to use a beaver knife here because it's the same thing and it gives me the opportunity to pull that tight so i can see what i'm doing and to remove all this material and make less mistakes look at that just clean hide who put that hole in that head i know some guy rookie i think thanks matt yep spencer new hearth hey i'm spencer new hearth coming at you with a hot tip now like

a lot of hunters i have two freezers in garage, and this one vertical freezer that I have is probably older than I am. Anyone who has messed with these old freezers knows that one of the first things to go is going to be the seal on that door. Those things are super delicate. Sometimes it feels like just a slight breeze could blow that door open, and even if you have it cracked like that much for a couple days you're going to lose a lot of your stuff in there it's happened to me and so that was why i was set on figuring out a cheap easy way to solve that without just replacing the whole sealer getting a different freezer here it is i have placed child locks on my freezer one at at the top, one at the bottom. They are easy on, easy off. As long as you got one of these things on here, never again are you going to have the case where you forget to close the

door all the way. Somebody bumps it when they're walking by, whatever. You get it cracked like that, you're going to lose a bunch of stuff. So I put these child locks on. They're like 10 bucks from Amazon. Such a simple solution. As you can see from this cruddy seal I have on here, it's happened to me before, but never again. Just get one of those. Another hot tip, hot tip number two, build your wife some shoe storage in the garage. Oh, my goodness. Good Lord.

She would love that. She'll get a lot more days in the field this fall. So there's my hot tip. What did he say? Organize your wife's shoes? He built shoe racks for his wife in his garage, and it made her so happy that he's saying he can duck out more often and she'll still be happy about the shoe rack.

I like both hot tips, but Spencer wins because it can be used by everybody. It's for everybody. I liked yours because you had two hot tips. One, how to introduce the segment. Yeah. And two, the fleshing. Listen, I've been doing hot tip-offs with Steve for a long time. The way Steve explains the hot tip-off to the person giving the hot tip

always culminates in the person starting the first one like that. You explain how to do it every time to somebody a second time. I know. They never do it. I'm saying, say this, welcome to another hot tip off. And they'll go, here's another hot tip off. So you've got to work on how you present it, I think. No, I do. I say it just right. Spencer wins. Now, listen. Okay how you present it, I think. No, I do. I say it just right.

Spencer wins. Now, listen. Sorry to interrupt, Randall. I'm just gonna do my vote, then you guys can do your vote. Randall, you do your vote. You know, I actually am also gonna vote for Spencer. I thought I know where it was going. I thought he was gonna have a ratchet strap.

I've done that myself in the garage with an old freezer. That's a little extreme, but yeah. Well, child locks would have never occurred to me, so I appreciated it. I thought I knew where it was going. Then he had a tip that really blew my mind. Spencer?

Yanni? Oh, yeah. I already said Spencer wins. Yeah, I'll tell you why Spencer wins, but I'm going to qualify it. I had never seen, when I was in Matt's taxidermy studio, I had never seen a fleshing cone. And if anyone, and the rare person that does any fleshing, it's a really good way to, it solves an annoyance,

which is when you're, see, I have to explain. It solves a problem for a very small amount of people. One, you have to be someone that does a lot of fleshing and two you have to be someone that hadn't heard of that and i don't were those two things me i don't think there's many more people than just me right there's a lot of freezers out there that are falling apart listen this year i had my my wife was sending my kids up to our Alaska shack. They had to fly unaccompanied minor. I got everything in the freezer.

I was like, they need to bring this stuff up. I love her to death. She didn't close the damn freezer. I lost some stuff in the door before she realized that the freezer hadn't been shut. She was blaming it on some stupid lock on there. That child lock he's talking about, she would have absolutely went. That's a hot tip off. I like it. Spencer wins.

Congrats, Spencer. I know you're watching. That's the consensus in the comments as well. Good job, Spencer. Alright, John Hayes. Going over to John Hayes in his taxidermy studio. What's up, John Hayes? Not much. How are you guys doing this morning? Good, man. Thanks for joining us, buddy. So tell us about the moose you're working on. Is it giant?

Yes, we're getting ready to cut the antlers off and do detachables on it here next week. Where'd it come out of? It came out of the Yukon Territory. Number six in the world. Yep. And the harvested number three in the world

this past hunting season. No. Yeah, he's definitely on a roll. When he sent it to me two seasons ago, I received it, and I was like, I was amazed. I mean, it's an impressive bull. And I was like, what do you want done with it?

And he said, I don't know. I'm not really too excited about it. I might just get rid of it. What? I was like, really? And so he tells me that he saw the moose of his dreams, and it walked behind a clump of brush, and he got in position. It stepped out.

He shot it, fell down, and then the bigger one came out. Oh. Fish stories. You know, I should have seen the one that got away kind of deal. Well, then he gets in position. He's like, I got it. I was like, wow. You've got to be kidding me. This guy's serious about his moose hunt can you give us some rough specs

tell us what an average moose kind of size is and then tell us the specs of this one like an average like a moose you would find in montana like a shiris no no no no comparable to like an alaskan comparable to this one but average antler size and then how much bigger is this well uh i have two of them here i have one that's probably a little better than average and you can see it right here got it five feet and then this is the other one wow yeah it's almost as tall as i am next to it oh my god and you're tall and it's got drop tines on the back massive wow how much does that thing weigh 94 pounds 94 pounds of antler and then and then it's got a what spread it's got a 73 inch spread i think 72 how do you get through the brush dude you don't you go through the brush yeah you just

you just bust brush now john i'm gonna ask you a thing and i don't and there's people listening so you got to be honest because i can picture what a dishonest person would say i'm gonna ask you if you get nervous working on a really trophy specimen and you're gonna tell me oh no i treat all mounts the same i always bring great detail and care to all mounts but i want to know the truth did you get nervous working on like a like a bull of a, a bull of many lifetimes? Honestly, on like a big moose, no. I wouldn't be nervous about that. Say it was like a record book life-size cat or a bear or something, a lot more complex of a piece. Yeah, you definitely really want to pay attention and don't rush through anything.

But on a shoulder mount like this, it's pretty straightforward. Just take care of it. Use a good form. Always seems to come together. You know what I want to do with you in the future on the next time we call you for live? If you could have a way that... There's something I struggle with. When I look at a bad whitetail mount, I don't have the vocabulary to explain why it's bad right and so i

want you to think about a segment where you help people understand when you're looking at a whitetail that's not right like what's not right yeah it's usually an anatomical incorrectness and like you may not know the word or how to say it but anybody can spot one that looks like it's actually alive versus a poorly executed mount or look more cartoonish got it and then with that moose what do you what how's that moose going to go what are you going to what is it going to be doing roar is it going to be uh grunting nope just a semi sneak shoulder got it like i said pretty straightforward but trying to get it too complex like we have to have the antlers removable so he can even get it in and out of his house got it oh so the moose

will be it'll you have to make a big moose like that that you can disassemble it yeah yeah and so like uh like the one that we did for schnee's we were able to do just one side detachable because they had double doors uh but this one, the guy just has a standard door. So there's no way, even with just one antler on it, it'll never make it into his house. We have to be careful. So it's like getting a mount from Ikea. You got to put it back together when you get it. Hopefully it'll be more simple than that, though.

All right. How are things generally at Hayes Taxidermy Studio, man? Honestly, it's usually pretty good. Pretty chill crew here. Thank God. No drama. Everybody just comes in. We all are on the same enjoyment level.

We all love doing it. The ones that didn't are no longer with us, so that's always good. Every positive attitude. Everybody's excited to see stuff get completed, so that's always fun. Are you ready for the onslaught of the fall season? Oh, I know. Sorry, I didn't

mean to bring up a sore subject. One of my favorite questions, people are like, what do you do? And I'm like, oh, I'm a taxidermist. I'm like, well, what else do you do? I'm like, nothing. Much of anything, free time, hobby time, let alone the second job. Yeah, and the push is coming. It'll be here real soon.

Sooner than I even think, probably. Corinne's telling me. Can I see that again, what you just wrote, Corinne? He's got a monkey or a baboon. He's got a baboon. There's a baboon in there right now. I don't want to see that baboon. Let me see that baboon.

You want me to flip the camera around so it's more like a player witch project as we're going yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i want to see it i don't even know let me look can we take a look here we go that ain't no baboon so this is that big ass bull there's that mo moose. Oh yeah. Yeah. Keep your phone horizontal. There you go. Like that. No, you got it now.

God, look at that thing. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a dandy. Wow. Got a bunch of hyenas in the other day.

Bunch of different African stuff. We got some leopards that came in. Wow. This one, I love this one one this should be a really pretty mount that is amazing but now let's uh let's make our way through oh then actually one of the blondest black bears i've ever seen came in today showed up this morning i got one better next it's been sitting out in my uh it's been sitting out out in our it's been outside for a lot of years. It's more blonde than that now.

This is my big outdoor window. About the best way to get one. So this is the guy's working. Oh man. Beautiful.

This is Scott Brewer. He works for us. What's up, Scott? For those of you listening, we're looking all around the shop, and he's got a big mule deer set up on a pack mount. We'll eventually be... 190, I'm guessing. John, what do you think? Probably 180. You know, they always look bigger in pictures.

And this is Rachel. What's up, Rachel? Hi, Rachel. Oh, my God. Here's the baboon. Here's the baboon. He's dried out, and he's ready for a final paint job and get his hair done.

He looks ready to be interviewed. The next episode of Live we're just going to do a segment where we talk to that baboon. Yeah, he needs a little manicure. We've got to get the manicure on there. And what about the rear end you showed us? I'll try not to get too anatomically correct here but so there's that'll

all have to be refinished because it's pretty scaly dry right now so then we'll rebuild everything and then get it painted back up to that reddish pink hue hmm not so many right yeah no john i see a lot of these uh mounts that look like the hides rolled up underneath it. And I think they go on to like an old timey backpack and board, pack out board kind of a deal. Do you think that's just a trend or is that style of mount going to be around for a while? I think it'll be around for a while till we play it out. It's just something different, you know,

and like, uh, let's see if I can do this with one hand. So a lot of them, you can like pre buy all the pieces and then you just assemble it pretty like, you know, cookie cutter. Like on ours,

I was trying to make them look a little more realistic, like on your pack. So that's, it's real teeth. And we take a standard form and then alter the head put the teeth back in it and then just sculpt all the lip and inner palate out of epoxy and then i special order some eyes that look like they're cataracted out from being dead and then our roles our roles are all handmade actually i got one that i've been working on a lot of them looks like, I can see somewhere

they just fold the rest of the cape up underneath the head. That looks kind of like a folded up t-shirt. What I do on these is, this is one I was just working on yesterday. So this is the roll that'll be inside the mount. I'll cast the head into the foam and then that makes it look like

it's heavy when it's sitting on it. And there's like, there's the starts of all the mouth and the teeth and everything on this one but then the head will sit into it like it's pushed in and then we put these rink rolls in here and we'll put some clay in it so it looks like the ropes are sunk in so it actually looks like it's under pressure well i didn't think't think about that. That's a great detail. I can imagine if somebody did it on a regular form with regular eyes, it looked like you had a live deer on your backpack. That's the most common thing is it looks like it's alive. And I'm always like, it should look a little more dead than that.

Well, thanks a lot, John Hayes. And you people out there listening, if you got something dead, like if you went and picked up the bear Randall was just talking about, can't do better than bringing it to Hayes Taxidermy Studio in Libby, Montana. The man is an artist. He's passionate about what he does, believes in good customer service. Thanks for joining, John. Thank you very much, Matt.

Pleasure. See you, John. All right. Finishing out, listener feedback hit us phil yeah i've got a few here i think first one is from sean the future of meat eater kids my kids absolutely love it they've listened to all five episodes over and over do we have any sort of update on anything happening i know we things are going to happen yeah we're going to continue so as i told people if if let us know how you feel about meat eater kids podcast we needed to wait to see if it was successful if people liked it if it was downloaded the meat eater kids podcast show um hit the threshold right the the the the sort of like somewhat poorly defined threshold of

popularity versus critical versus how annoying it not annoying how much work it takes to make it not annoying um how much of phil's time it would actually require to produce the show all that and yes it will continue to live on meat eater podcast. Uh, meat eater kids podcast will, will somehow emerge as something on its own feed. So there, we will build a kid's feed. Am I correct? Yep.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's the plan. We will build a kid's podcast feed. Yeah. Um, we did a podcast about this earlier,

but if you just want to spend some time on it, what can we expect from the new season? I'm guessing, uh, I'm, I'm thinking about rough cuts. Yeah. We got some about rough cuts. Yeah. We got some episodes coming out.

Very raw and different than projects we've done in the past. But we got a podcast. We got a whole thing coming out about it. Or did it already come out? It already came out. Go listen to. What the hell is it called? Bonus episode a couple weeks ago.

Or last week. Friday. Yeah. Cutting the rough cuts. Yeah. Go listen to cutting the rough cuts yeah and uh this one might be putting you guys on the spot but if you have any sort of uh people this man can connect with we've got christopher o'leary asking i'm a

physically challenged man who has finally gotten to the point where i can hunt locally in northeast florida my dream is to do some multi-week big game hunting any advice Multi-week. Hmm. I would just start calling outfitters and see who's going to take on the challenge. I mean, I have no idea what your challenges are, but there's an outfitter out there that I believe could take care of you, I'm sure, but you're just going to have to call. Yeah, I'd be calling your wife and your boss, too, and letting them know you're going to need a little chunk of time.

But, yeah, I would just call around, man. Yeah, I would call around and talk to some guides. And I know there's nonprofits as well that work with physically challenged people to get them out in the field. And even if you weren't to go on a trip with them, they can probably offer some recommendations on who out there from the guide world might be suited for that kind of a trip. Yeah, and I don't know. There are a lot of organizations that do trips for wounded veterans who can have any number of disabilities, amputees, all manner of disabilities. And they probably, those organizations have probably dealt with a lot of contacts

and dealt with a lot of challenges. And they could also, even if you're not a veteran, they could probably point you in the right direction of how they conduct those trips, how they facilitate those trips for people with physical challenges. Phil? Yeah, I'll do one more here. One more. From Kenny Anderson.

Best way to combat the urge to hunt hard when weather has shortened your Alaska caribou hunt. I don't understand what that means. Do you understand what that means? I'm guessing he's just saying that if bad weather has shortened your hunt, do you recommend hunting harder or combating that urge and finding something

to fulfill that need need i suppose if that means that it's just real foggy and there's nothing you can do but sit around sometimes maybe that's what that means if that's what that means um it might be good just to sit around because stumbling around in the fog you're just leaving a lot of scent you're not going to see anything anyways. And sometimes the best thing you can do is hold tight. I think that might be what he's getting at. I think so, yeah. Yeah, but I think he's asking, he's got the urge.

You know, he knows maybe he needs to sit tight. So how do you combat the urge? My answer would be, hopefully, if you're going on any trip to Alaska where being weathered in is a real thing often, is have some good reading materials. Yeah, or fish grayling. There you go. Because you can always see far enough to see a grayling hole.

Is that it for listener feedback? That'll be it for listener feedback. All right. Thanks, everybody. Don't forget to tell us why you got a movie. No, I got it. I got it. Randall?

I'd just like to plug next week we're going to have a segment called The Meat Eater Movie Club. And we're going to be discussing a movie. The first movie in The Meat Eater Movie Club is the 2011 classic thriller Liam Neeson's The Grey. Classic? I'm just trying to build it up. I think it's just thriller. Thriller. I mean, I'm trying to build it up. I think I made a decent amount of money.

Can we cut that out? Nope, not at all. All right. This is not a classic thriller. It's a celebrated... When you say classic thriller, I thought you were going to name a classic thriller. It's a celebrated film.

Okay. The Grey. You can stream it for free with an Amazon Prime subscription. So if you'd like to be in the know as we're discussing it next week, check it out on Prime. And go give it a watch before the next episode and on a future installment of the movie club what's it called meat eater movie club i'm gonna do a thing where i just deliver a lecture about why furiosa is relevant to hunters and anglers today can't wait

look forward to it all right everybody thanks for me. The radio live over and out.