The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 617: Poppin' Corks

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

Steven Rinella talks with Janis Putelis, Ryan Callaghan, Clay Newcomb, Brent Reaves, Randall Williams, Corinne Schneider, and Phil Taylor. Topics discussed: The hardest working states; reciprocity; benefits of in-state residents; hypocritical arguments about fair chase; presidential hopefuls trying to establish their hunting and fishing bona fides; squirting milt; how bull redfish are actually females; Randall catching a huge bull redfish; Cal catching an alligator gar on accident; shrimp bait as just feeding fish; alligator gar as living fossils; cooking stingray; low yield creatures; "on the half shell'; 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

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This one-hour variety show will feature call-in guests, We'll see you next time. me, Steve, Yanni, Cal, and the rest of the Meat Eater crew every Thursday at 11 a.m. Mountain Time on the Meat Eater Podcast Network YouTube channel. And remember, it's live, so anything can happen. Well, almost anything. this is the meat eater podcast coming at you shirtless severely bug bitten and in my case underwearless the meat eater podcast you can't predict anything the meat eater podcast is brought to you by first light whether you're checking trail cams hanging deer stands or scouting for elk first light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com. Phil's already a little annoyed.

Tell everybody about what you're annoyed about, Phil. Come on in, Phil. I'll tell you. Phil's annoyed. Go ahead, Phil. Oh, nothing. You know, I just like to set a schedule throughout the day.

I understand you have to prep for the show, but we just got done recording trivia, which was a lot of fun. Thanks, Phil. We started that right on time. I just didn't want a repeat of a few days ago when it took us like six hours to record you know why i wanted to talk about this phil why we're in louisiana yeah this is the most overworked this is how this is my lead-in it just came out this is masterful that this is surprise this is the most overworked state

in the union oh so you're sympathizing with me. That's what you're getting at here? Here we are in Louisiana, and most of us are just fishing and messing around, and you're under incredible stress and strain, and it just is surprising to me that here we are in the most overworked state in the union. What does that mean?

I'll tell you what it means. It's not surprising that this is happening here for phil yeah you know how your phone spies on you right okay well here i am in louisiana it's proven that it doesn't but go ahead well i can prove it too with this because here we are in louisiana and i get an email telling you to move to wyoming because it's one of the least worked states which prompts me to be well who's's who's the worst or the best in my view the best it'd be like if wyoming is among the top 10 of least working people who is holding this country up that's where my so i get i scroll and scroll and scroll to find whose shoulders is the nation riding upon.

Louisiana, hardest working state in the union. And I wanted Phil to talk about his work stress. Experience in Louisiana. His work stress. I'm currently an honorary Louisiana employee right now, I would say. And I've been working hard. Yes. As measured by hours worked.

This is how we're defining. That true and so yeah this has phil's phil's scheduling anxiety actually is directly relevant there yeah it's because he's feeling that wyoming that louisiana workiness and uh this has i think this has implications for the reason that you're hearing about this on a show that focuses on hunting, fishing, outdoor pursuits is because if you like to hunt and fish, there might be some little part of you in the back of your head that wishes you weren't working as much. So you'd hunt and fish more. I am the only person here that has not gone fishing on this fishing trip. So that's another thing I just want to throw out there. But I'm in a much better mood now that we've started rolling so i want to say thank you yeah but yeah phil and i phil and i and corinne are we're headed to a tiki bar in a bit

and that's contingent on the clock's ticking you probably only have like 84 minutes left and he's just gonna shut it down louisiana ranks ranks as the most overworked state in the nation with each person working an average of 1914 hours annually what's that come out to time divide that by 52 someone ready for this so I'm thinking in my head was the oil fields yep, not quite. Oh, no, no, okay. I'm thinking in my head. It's the oil fields. And hear me out. Texas, North Dakota. So, yeah, but it's hard. So 36 hours a week, but you're not getting like Christmas

and your vacation hours. Texas and North Dakota placed second and third, working an average of 1,867 and 1,856 hours annually, respectively. So, Corinne, can you help me out? That was third. So if you just take Louisiana, hardest working state in the union, they're coming in at 36 hours a week. But, of course, you have your holidays. So I'm already thinking that that suggests to me that Americans aren't working hard anymore.

And when we talk about a nation in decline, this could be an area to pursue. Texas and North Dakota, second and third. So North Dakota, what's 1856 divided by 52? 35.9. So let's say 36, but 37 was like 37 point something. Okay. Off by like an hour or two. And again, oil fields right uh the study it's by a personal injury law firm

are they honest they're the ones that have the billboards yeah put the mohawk on them like you don't hear like any big city and you get to the edge of the big city or out by the airport they have all those signs it's like there'll be like a lawyer on a harley yeah need someone tough in uh dial 888 in phoenix in phoenix it's a guy named raffy put raffy on call raffy there's a there's a sign outside of little rock ark Arkansas on the interstate, and it's like, Bill Crockett, attorney at law, and he's wearing a coonskin hat. Yeah, that's my lawyer. Have you seen that?

Let's hear what these people had to say. Okay, which people? The ones that did this study. Yeah, so that's who put it together. But, you know, they're going by, okay, sure, they sent the thing out. But I received the thing saying, hey, move to Wyoming, because they don't work much, which surprised me. Because then I started looking at this.

I'm thinking oil fields, oil fields, oil fields. But then Wyoming comes in at top 10 of not working that much. Well, I wonder how they account for farm and ranch labor. Okay. Looking at weekly hours worked for every state to determine which states worked the most throughout the year. Researchers also compared figure to the average hours worked in 2014 to see which states are experiencing the greatest changes in working patterns.

You want to know who else works hard? Arkansas. Michigan. Texans. No. Michigan is going to be not a working hard state. Texans. North Dakotans. West Virginians. Energy. Kentucky.

Mississippi. They work hard. Oklahoma works hard. Arkansas works hard. Arizona works hard. Oh, no, no. We're not working much now. What's going on?

No, no. That's the top ten. no no that's the top no that's the top 10 but why is wyoming in a the whole thing was that they don't work hard in wyoming no they are number 10 for hardest working right why would i get a solicitation to move to wyoming if i didn't want to work that much they got it backwards your phone's not as smart as you think it is steve hey you are a hard-working dude i'm lost you have an hourly uh assumption in your contract that's how you get paid i don't know i haven't seen that in my contract you work well well beyond the 50 hours a week or whatever you are uh supposed to be working i guarantee it but none of that is trackable steve's phone's tracking you you apply this to anybody yeah how

this is going to be true right so like if someone's laying in bed thinking about something how do you how do you count that up and when like randall brought up uh agriculture right it's like yeah are they talking about when they go to check cows in the middle that's a great point like have you did you go out to ranchers and be like well did you count when you had to run back out and drive way the hell out to check if the pump was working at the irrigation thing yeah and i mean it's an hour each way right right and so this is based off like taxes at the end of the year. It's capturing a lot of energy work because a lot of it's hourly. You're clocking and clocking out.

It's capturing probably a lot of service industry work. You know who's got it graviest? Surprise me. The graviest state is Delaware. Oh, yeah. It's so small yeah they can't possibly be doing much work there if you work too hard you blow the sides out of the state hey okay i've been trying to say this what i saw when i saw that list aside from texas which is kind of an anomaly is poverty like i bet if you put that list up beside the income you would have those those numbers would be you know you would have

many of those states on the same that's why top 10 poverty so yeah it'd be like a good paradox it'd be how do you have some of the lowest how do you have some of the lowest how like how often do low gdps overlap with not working much yeah then they go on to talk about how we work more we work less than we used to which is sad but we work more this is saying like we americans work more than canadians americans work more than brits americans work more than spaniards americans work more than krauts but we could beat all them in a war again so i just feel like this should be celebrated and not treated like a bad thing hard working semi you know we don't america said the man with his feet on a cooler in louisiana fishing hey we do get that labor day we do get that labor day holiday

and i just feel that while i'm here fishing in louisiana and you know hanging out i feel like it needs to be recognized how hard we're working down here in louisiana but i do worry about the future of america if we're laying off but some of our traditional enemies the british and the germans i don't know very traditional well the late norm mcdonald late norm mcdonald had this bit where he was talking about what countries you talk about the axis of evil remember with george w bush yeah it was i it was iran iraq north korea and at that time norm mcdonald was talking about what countries americans most fear and he says to the audience, no, I don't know if there's any history buffs here tonight. It gets into Germany.

So there's that. Cal, can you explain? I've been wanting to talk about this. And what's funny, it lines up. I have a little thing in my notes function on my phone called Podcast Fodder. And I will put things that I would like to someday discuss on the podcast. And I had written in my podcast notes the concept of reciprocity when it comes to wildlife management. And it was on my head.

And I just wrote it i'll tell why in a little bit and cal comes up talking about a reciprocity concern and i feel that we should explore this and i'll i'll i'll let cal run with it once i explain that my only familiarity with the concept of reciprocity in terms of hunting rights came from the fur trapping regulations. And at times when fur prices get really high, as a way for a state to protect the economic interests of its own people, they would put in a reciprocity clause

because people, when fur prices get high, you have this thing called state hopping where trappers will bounce around the country going to a bunch of different states. And you'd have friction where you'd have a state like traditionally Montana. It just changed. Traditionally Montana would not allow non-residents to trap fur-bearing animals. So states would get back at them. And they would say, a state like,

let's say, I might be wrong, let's say Wyoming does sell non-resident licenses. Wyoming would say, but since our residents aren't able to trap fur-bearing animals in Montana, Wyoming is open to any state that would extend the same rights to our residents, but will block them for reciprocity. And I started thinking about if the vote in Colorado,

which we're going to talk about in a minute. What's the Prop 127? If Prop 127 passes in Colorado, would we explore the idea of the reciprocity clause, meaning Coloradans should not be able to come to Montana to hunt mountain lions because a Montanan cannot go to Colorado to hunt mountain lions? Take it away, Cal. Yeah, and then we had another kind of famous amongst us case

of fishing game regulations in the state of North Dakota when we were out ice fishing, and we had our friend Jay Siemens down from Canada and where he's from in Canada they can't legally or non sorry non-residents can't legally spear through the ice um in North Dakota there's a reciprocity law that pertains to ice fishing. Which blew my mind. I was there, and I somehow didn't pick this up. That's why Jay wasn't spearing through the ice when you smashed that pike,

and I was dying of COVID. So, anyway. That was the most just generally uncomfortable experience I've ever had. And then to have to do it where you're almost dead from COVID would be even worse because I was fine and I was uncomfortable. In North Dakota, if you want to spear through the ice as a non-resident, you have got to allow North Dakotans to spear fish through the ice wherever it is you come from. So us Montanans could spear through the ice in North Dakota. Jay could not spear through the ice in North Dakota. That's reciprocity in fishing game law.

And I had, and this really woke me up because I was already wondering if we should go down a path, and this is a slippery slope, and it would be very tricky for me in some ways too because I like to bounce around a fair bit. But I was thinking in my head, would it be an interesting concept

to introduce this reciprocity issue in other areas outside of trapping? And then I get to talking to Cal about it. Cal's reminding me. Cal's proposing a reciprocity piece, which you should get to. And then reminded me of the fishing one. And I was surprised to realize that the reciprocity idea has already been applied elsewhere outside of trapping. Point being, the reciprocity piece of spear been applied elsewhere outside of trapping point being the reciprocity

piece of spearfishing in north dakota and cal brought up a great reciprocity one which is in the state of wyoming and i've unfortunately bitched and moaned screamed like a mashed cat over this uh in wyoming raccoon yeah like raccoon held in a gator's teeth. That as a non-resident hunter in the state of Wyoming, you cannot hunt in a federally designated wilderness area without a Wyoming guide. And that guide can be another Wyoming resident that signs a paper and says, I'm guiding this, you know, I'm their host in the wilderness area. Because that doesn't have to be a paid thing um and uh i came up with the idea that i'm like oh this should be a reciprocity issue where wyoming residents shouldn't be able to come to montana

and hunt in our wilderness areas without you going with them yeah why is that not why is that not being why is that not a reciprocity issue why would you be able to live in Wyoming and then be able to go hunt wilderness areas in Idaho and Montana and everywhere else in the country right and um so I floated this out there on on my podcast of the Cal's Week in Review podcast and this is just the subject line in Russ Grisbeck's email to me leave Wyoming and don't come back asshole I really sick of you pissing and moaning on my awesome state and advocating for more rules and regulations I don't like it you're advocating more rules and regulations. Oh, plummet. You're advocating for rules and regulations?

They're the ones that have the rules and regulations. I don't like the wilderness ban either, but advocating to put restrictions on Wyoming residents because of our game and fish having dumbass rules. F off, Cal. Stop being so entitled. I think he's mixing some things up things up well but it also kind of validates my point if all Russ here is so fired up about just the thought of not being able to

hunt a wilderness area because of as he puts it their own dumb ass rules yeah then maybe we got something maybe he doesn't think they're as bad as he leads on. Yeah. Maybe he should get involved in the process and talk to his game and fish and say, hey, you know what? I don't believe it's game and fish. It's not game and fish. It's Wyoming Outfitter and Guides Association.

Well, yeah. So I can't say. I'd love to be able to say who told me this, but he would be very pissed if I said. I have it on good authority that that rule is a legal house of cards. Oh, yeah. And that if a Rosa Parks type individual, I don't mean to in any way equate being able to hunt wilderness areas with suffrage and civil rights movement. So let me walk that back. Civil disobedience. Okay, if a civil

disobedience person I kind of want to go back and reuse my analogy because I do kind of like it, but I don't. Were to go and say, here I am, I'm hunting in a wilderness area in Wyoming without a guide. Come give me a ticket. And then they gave themselves

even a half-assed bit of legal representation, the house of cards would collapse. Yeah. Part of the problem is this. I got a bunch of points to's here's like one of the wrinkles here's where it becomes a little bit arbitrary and capricious a wolf okay take a wolf in wyoming in the northwest corner of the state a wolf wyoming is a big game animal okay outside of that area this this little marked

off area a wolf whelming is not a big game animal it's the same as a coyote it's a non-game animal meaning you could uh hunt wolves on wilderness area unguided outside of this line but you couldn't hunt wolves unguided inside of the line and there are some other little bits about how it came to be and um he feels that it's completely un uh it's his review of it is that the rule is completely indefensible and would be arbitrary and capricious. People like to say why the rule went into place, and they say that it was meant to protect the interests of guides and outfitters, but that they build it as a safety issue.

When he looked into it, he found that um as is usually the case the reasoning behind a law is not codified meaning when you pass a law which has been around for a long time no one says hey let's also record the primary arguments for and against so it's not it was never really marked what the actual primary reason for but it was seems to be have been promoted by guides and outfitters and build as a safety issue but you can go into a wilderness area and and do free solo climbing yeah Yeah. So is it safety? You can hike in there. Well, I mean, that's the fun part, right? Is like you can go camp with a gun during hunting season. And you're totally legal to do that.

You just can't be hunting with that gun. Yeah. Right? You can fish. You can ski. So there's a hot tip. Hey, folks. Exciting news for You can fish. You can ski. So there's a hot tip. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those

who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

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Like I said, three new jackets with a whole bunch of interesting new features, including an improved kit link pass-through system, interchangeable hoods, new cuts with collars and wrist gaskets, all sorts of stuff. To learn more about the new First Light Whitetail system that's right for you, just go on over to firstlight.com i might have to save this for a uh the what's our little segment in the show where we make make up the laws indefensible that's a different show yeah i know i might have to save it for that but you could do a reciprocity you can do one throw one do the reciprocity for non-resident tag costs. Like if a deer tag costs $1,000 in this state,

and they want to come into your state. When I go to Arkansas, me as a Montana resident would have to pay $1,000 to hunt a deer in Arkansas. I don't want the reciprocity thing to get carried away. I don't want it to either, but that's kind of like, but I like it. Here's a different take on it i i think i see what you're saying i think states i ought to i ought to

receive incredible benefit as a hunter and sportsman in my state for living there you know yes paying taxes you probably do yeah so so you know if the people where i live were smart enough made it maybe we'd have had that law too 50 years ago i have never had a problem with i mean well let me start by saying i have never had a problem with and i totally support a state giving preference to its residents meaning that if you're fishing in your home state you should be able to fish for 20 bucks you know like of course and if you're going on a trip out of state it just makes sense to me that the state should capture more revenue and can have a tiered structure and have preferential treatment on bag limits

and preferential treatment on limited opportunities particularly limited opportunities tag draws and all that makes total total sense to me um even though i i go like when i'm fishing in alaska i'm always like god damn it these guys get to do everything. Bums me out, but I understand. I understand it. But I think the reciprocity issue should be pushed heavier. And there's almost like a symbolic reciprocity where, you remember when the guy, like a guy from California, fishing game, went to Utah to do a lion hunt?

Oh, yeah. After California banned lion hunting. And he sort of suffered a social reciprocity and lost his position because he went and did a hunt that you can't do in your own state, which I thought at the time was absurd. Yeah. I mean, think of all the people that go to Alaska, like we were talking, right? Yeah, you go to Alaska and do a brown bear hunt.

You can't hunt those in lower 48. You can't hunt grizzlies in lower 48. Should everybody lose their job who's done that? Of course not. But I think with the lion thing, if you're from a state that has deemed it unsportsmanlike, unethical to hunt lions, I don't know. Should you be able to go to other states to hunt lions? But who's that penalizing?

It's not like the people that are opposing or that are for Proposition 127 and want lions banned are going to be like, all right, now let's go to Montana and kill the airlines. You'd be penalizing all our people in Colorado. Yeah colorado understood i'm not looking at it like penalizing the proponents of 127 would love if we had a yeah they would love it that would be into their hand but let me think of a different example cal's example of the wilderness area thing how could you have a state say if you're not from here you can't hunt our wilderness area of which we have a ton

but our guys can freely go out and hunt your wilderness areas. I see that. But the impetus of that would be redemption of the law, which would spur Wyoming people to be like, you know what, this is kind of an antiquated old law. Ideally, right? That would be the point of it, is that it would make people have a taste of their own medicine. Well, I mean that would be the point of it. Yeah. Is that it would make people

have a taste of their own medicine. Well I'll point out the person the law dog that did the analysis is from that state. It's from the state of Wyoming.

Yeah. I don't understand. Say that again. He's from the ninth most hardworking state. The ninth most hardworking state. You know what Brent does on the render when we're doing something he doesn't like? He says, boring. I don't care if you think this is boring or not.

No, no, no, no, no. I think this is, no. That's what I think Brent was thinking. Arkansas, no, Arkansas this is the no you know i think brent was thinking arkansas no arkansas has implemented the same thing with out-of-state duck hunters reciprocity well they have limited them to specific dates and time periods they can come for like 10 days yeah south dakota does that as well but they have to choose and it's they're trying to control the overcrowding on the public areas for waterfowl and it's i mean they're good they absolutely sure sure they are but they're getting a lot of pushback from the folks that

historically have come and hunted you know the whole season yeah i should point out here that the rub is economic and it's economic in two ways the rub is so so why why can't a state why doesn't a state just go ahead and say it's in the interest of our state residents that there are no non-resident hunting and fishing opportunities so you'd be like, you can see that. That's justifiable. The reason that doesn't happen is economics on two fronts. The states need to fund their fishing game agencies, and the fishing game agencies are responsible for everything

from access enhancement, disease research, enforcement of those residents, non-residents who are hunting and fishing and i could go on all day counting animals biological assessments all kinds of things they have to pay for it um it's a lot more lucrative for them to sell non-resident opportunities than it is resident opportunities like when you go and you're fishing for 20 bucks and some other guys fishing for 200 bucks uh that guy kicked in 180 more dollars than you did into the states thing so the states need to be able to bring in people i remember a few years ago alaska flat out across the board doubled non-resident tags just across the board. Everything. Double. If it was $250, it was $500. I could do more math for you.

$350? $700. For financial. The other economic prong to it is bars, hotels, gas stations, fishing lodges. Right? Like, think of the economic collapse that was occurring rural Alaska if you all of a sudden said no more no more non-resident fishing no more non-resident hunting yeah well it's like killing it would kill an industry it was

historic it's historically monetarily beneficial to the area around Stuttgart in that area where the prime all of the the majority of the duck hunting is done there's like a million dollars a day so 60 million dollars of revenue over a duck season there yeah and then to start limiting the amount of people coming in when they sell more non-resident duck hunt stamps to non-residents and they do residents of Arkansas. That was the big calamity that a lot of the non-residents with the argument that they were bringing up,

and there was some validity to it. You know what I mean? As far as loss of revenue to the game and fish. We could just open up like a PayPal account where they could just donate the money. Yeah, just a big old billboard. Like a good restaurant. If we're closed, just slide your money under the door. Yeah, it a big old billboard. Like a good restaurant. If we're closed, just slide your money in.

It seems like I can't come down anymore. It seems like I can't come down anymore. I'm just going to send all the money I would have. Because we're so concerned about wildlife and duck habitat. We're just going to go ahead and give you the 60 mil. One of the biggest resident, non-resident rubs that just gets me is, and I understand it, but in Southeast Alaska, a resident is allowed one,

in our zone, it's many zones, but in our management zone, a resident angler is allowed one lingcod a day any size. I knew the lingcod was going to come up. It's a personal passion of mine. A non-resident angler is allowed one a year. Wow.

It's a slot. The slot is so narrow, I've taken to calling it a crack. Slot limits, it it a crack. You know slot limits? It's a crack limit. 30 to 35. A five-inch difference. You try hitting that window.

I mean, it can be done. It ain't easy. They're really hammered down. It's fun, but it ain't easy. A crack. Up there at the Alaska Game and of fish meetings behind closed doors they call it the steve and then meanwhile my brother and his little boy and they can all just get in a boat and just be like bing bing bing load the boat boys looks good to me throwing the cooler

well yeah the the shrimp regulation up there too, right? Is like, that's a pretty big. No, it's the crab. Shrimp's the same. No, no, no, no. You're right. Yeah. Shrimp is way bad.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah. That's like astronomical, right? Three non-resident, three quarts of, this is one of the more confusing pieces of regulation. Three quarts of shrimp headed or not so you can choose to have your limit be three quarts of head on shrimp or you can choose to have your limit be three quarts of tails some people guess how most people some people like to eat shrimp heads i know

but guess how most people measure them, especially one on a spot. It's like three quarters head. That's just an interesting little wrinkle. Not resident? No limit. Right. Unlimited. Dungeness crab?

Non-resident? What's wrong? Randall and I have a little inside joke going. It's not good for air. It's about seafood? Yeah. Something tells me it's not about seafood. Okay.

Moving on. We can share with you after the crab hits the button. No, I don't want to know ever. Crab? Non-resident crab? Three dungies? Resident crab?

20 dungies. Resident crab, 20 dungies. Resident, you can hand line an unlimited number of quillback rockfish. Resident, can't touch one. Or non-resident, can't even look at them. Did you look at that fish, son? So, yes i'm bad too i think i remember when uh i think it was george w bush he stated like how he didn't like broccoli and one of the comedians said he really appreciated the passion of it like the passion of his is you know this doctrine i appreciate alaska's the passion behind their doctrine.

Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. You know what I mean? It's like, we're going to award the residents. We will happily take your money. And then you will suffer because of watching residents fish.

What else do I want to talk about oh on a recent hey Corinne will the trivia show come out before this probably yeah on a recent if you listen to the trivia show you heard me make a is it a quip when you kind of bitch for a minute like a bitchy little statement

no no no no i didn't rant i quipped i quipped about um former head of u.s fish and wildlife service dan ash writing a bunch of or you know writing op-eds and whatnot coming out in support of Proposition 127 in Colorado, which would ban any kind of hunting or trapping for mountain lions, bobcats, and oddly, lynx, even though lynx enjoy Endangered Species Act protections in Colorado. Dan Ash making a sort of salad, a sort of mixed

salad of criticisms of lion hunting. One saying it disrupts their family dynamics. Okay. Like the Ash family dynamics? No. That by hunting mountain lions you disrupt their family structures okay we'll get to that um because i could think of that being applicable to to any

number of pursuits including when you catch a bluegill off of its bed. I feel like you've sort of stirred up its family dynamic. Him saying it's unethical and doesn't, you know, him saying it's unethical and doesn't follow the principles of fair chase. He was raised with him saying that, that lions are somehow going to help us in the battle with chronic wasting disease. Odd, in that there's zero evidence that that's true, and holding that in Colorado, Colorado is where CWD was first identified in the late 70s and has had a sizable stable population of mountain lions since then so the most obvious case in point would be we have a lot of lions in Colorado

and we don't have CWD but it's like we have a lot of lions in Colorado and we're the first state to have cwd but if we stop hunting them it'll somehow help hmm dan ash saying uh have i covered all of his little points well he's i didn't read you you mentioned that he was a pheasant hunter oh the reason everybody's getting all that the reason they're so the reason the animal rights community is so excited about they now love dan ash you know the animal rights community would have probably not liked dan ash historically because he identified as a hunter but now he's like uh everybody's favorite like with the left like if if someone walks away when someone would walk away from the trump administration so you could be like in the trump administration and the media hates you, despises you. Then you walk away from the Trump administration and criticize the Trump

administration. And that night you're on Colbert. Like they adore you now because you've joined, you haven't fundamentally changed. You just like start arguing a thing that they wanted to argue. So now the animal rights community is like oh dan ash is so wonderful he's a hunter and he and he doesn't like hunting lions his fair chasing is is absurd um i don't really know he knows i don't really know but i guarantee that that guy in the circles that guy run and has done pen raised pheasant hunting i guarantee it i guarantee it that he has hunted pen birds um i guarantee he's hunted he's done some big game hunting i bet you anything he's done some big game hunting around crop fields

in terms of it being not fair chase i would have have to be, he must be speaking to some aspect of its level of difficulty. Okay? My 10-year-olds can kill deer with rifles. If I told my 10-year-old to right now go catch a mountain lion with dogs and get it, they would probably come back to me

in 20 years and say they've that they're they're done they got it it would be I wouldn't hear for them for 20 years if I said to them you can't come home until you kill a deer. They would be back later that day. Right. It's like I don't understand what the guy is talking about. And his argument that it disrupts family dynamics is like, dude, what is happening when you hunt waterfowl? When you hunt Canada geese, Canada geese, you have Canada geese. They might not be monogamous, but they pair together and nest together. She's out doing it with other dudes. He's out doing it with other girls, but they're going to share the nest.

Nesting responsibilities. When you kill a goose, what do you think has happened? Anything. If you kill a whitetail deer past the first week in November, you've disrupted its family dynamics because it was probably pregnant. If you've killed a female deer after the first week of November, you just aborted its fetus. You've disrupted its family dynamics.

What is he even talking about? What does he think of the lion family dynamics when a male comes across a female with kittens and then the male attacks and eats the kittens and then stays on the female until she comes in to estrus again, which they will as soon as they aren't nursing anymore, and then rapes the female? Does that fall into proper lion family dynamics?

We're using some big political buzzwords here, boy. I know, but it's frustrating to me because here's a person that's dedicated their career and i mean he's in the zoo business now he runs like a zoo and aquarium group of zoos and aquariums sure um i mean here's an individual that served in a very here's an individual that served in it in like one of the highest level wildlife conservation things and devoted his career to the wildlife conservation thing and i just cannot picture how i just cannot picture like the level of betrayal that that represents and also the very mixed messaging that it represents

where you by by saying the things he's saying he's attacking all forms of hunting that he's declaring it he's declaring something not hard enough which he's completely wrong about and he has no idea the level of difficulty that goes into training dogs never been on a lion hunt no no idea um about the level of difficulty so he's like if it's not hard enough you shouldn't be able to do it. It's like, Dan, buddy, I want you to review some of your pheasant hunts and ask yourself, was it really,

was it always really that hard? So that's an attack on it altogether. The family dynamic thing is an attack on it altogether. It's just, I don't understand how someone could come out of this career and then make a big show and fall into the lap of this. It's very

frustrating. But he's not trying to convince you. They say everybody can be bought. I don't think he was bought. You think someone gave him money to say that? I don't think it's out of the realm of possibilities. But he don't have to convince us sitting here.

He's not trying to convince you of that. No, I'm not saying who he's trying to convince. I just don't understand how someone could... I agree. How someone could understand... Have that shallow of a philosophical understanding. How someone could be in the position they've been and represent the individuals they've represented and then come and arrive at this like this this like sort of woven fabric of complaints

about something that you could apply to virtually most pursuits that he engages in i don't get it well it also shows that you don't have to be an expert to be appointed to a higher position that might be it might be it money money money well in all fairness you don't think there's no chance that that high dollar campaign that has buku dollars a billion yeah they didn't they didn't trying to find they didn't pay damn money somebody. Trying to find. They didn't pay Dan. Somebody like this. They're just making a big donation to the Zoo and Aquarium Fund.

You think so? It's possible. It's possible. Hey, did you? Only two people know. Neither of them is going to say it. I'm just saying if I had to take a wild stab. It's just Dan and Carol Baskin. If I had to take a wild stab and i had to be like do i deep down do i deep deep down

think they bought that endorsement from him do i think the animal rights movement bought his endorsement um and i had to like get it right or else i had to die um i would say no yeah it's not not the path you'd take but i don't know hey this this came out just i think in the last two days but the the harris waltz campaign had a big hunter powwow yeah i got invited to go pheasant hunting over there did you really yeah okay now do you know much about it i know i didn't go was it pen wasith's pheasant? Minnesota? I don't know if their season's open yet. No, he's doing a little hunting thing. Yeah, I don't know anything about it.

I've had an article. Yeah, they wrote it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you want to go? No. Mark Canyon did. He went? No, he wanted to.

He didn't get invited? Nah. did he went no he wanted to he didn't get invited oh he did and mark got invited they didn't invite me and brent so when i said no mark got invited and mark wanted to go but didn't well i talked to him about it oh oh, are they hunting pen-raised birds? Is Dan Ash going to go criticize them? Is Dan Ash going to be there and be like, that didn't look like that hard of a shot. Yeah.

Oh, you know what else Dan Ash doesn't like? He doesn't like this. He doesn't like that a lot of the lion hunting is done with outfitters. So apparently, outfitting is bad. If applied to lion hunting. Dan, have you ever been on an outfitted trip fishing was it really that hard to catch that fish with that guide come on come on i would have been impressed if the if that campaign would have took those guys on like a like a bear hunt with dogs or something. Now, that would have been impressive.

Classically, right? I would have gone if they would have done that. I would have been like, I'll go. This is going to be interesting. Can you imagine walls walking in being like, man, that bear, he was up in that tree. He'd later tell you a hunting lie. Yeah, I feel like classically.

He was like, I was at the tree. The shotgun, right, is like the most neutral of hunting firearms when it comes to campaign season right doesn't that feel right like if you see a candidate or somebody yeah it's gonna be with a shotgun not a rifle i think that it would be a good article i don't know why we haven't done this at our website we should hurry up and do this because it'd be a good article to go through time and talk about the way candidates have historically tried to establish their hunting and fishing that's that's you're talking about the first 10 pages of my dissertation every governor

in the state of arkansas that i can remember over the last in my lifetime has had a duck hunting photo oh yeah both both parties that's part of the sound of the package randall do you say can you I can remember over the last, in my lifetime, has had a duck hunting photo. Oh, yeah. Both parties. That's part of the sign-up package. Randall, can you help me with this? Do you go highfalutin and say bona fides, or do you say you're bona fides? I can never decide. Oh, bona fides.

Okay. Yeah. They try to establish they're hunting and fishing bona fides. I remember some years ago, Hillary Clinton had to really stretch, and she established she had a uncle who'd like to hunt and john kerry who here's like a vietnam veteran you know he was like in the a navy seal in vietnam and john kerry did a water foul hunt during his presidential bid and took some advice from his advisors which was this very poor advice to not carry the shotgun yeah so to hunt geese with i believe they're goose hunting to hunt with it but not carry it so then the images that come out when they're near the press because

the press wasn't invited to the hunt so they're coming back from the hunt and someone says don't carry the gun so he then here he is he's walking along he's got like a gun bearer and so it backfired we've all been there it backfired on him yeah he wasn't a seal either and then mitt romney had got humiliated yeah mitt romney said oh i'm a hunter but he's from utah so it was carry a pilot i thought it was a pilot no he was a swift he was in the brown swift boat swift boat yeah there you go brown water navy yeah there yeah uh mitt romney has a humiliating thing where he so his family had long had a political history in michigan but mitt romney was from utah himself his mitt romney's father was the governor of michigan mitt romney claimed like, Oh yeah,

I'm a hunter. I'm a hunter. And someone digs through the state records. If I remember this correct, they went to every state. He never bought a hunting license. So then someone presents them in this kind of walls in scenario. He's presented with,

well, if you did hunt, you didn't have a license. And then he said, well, I did, but it was varmints. He said,

varmints. If you don't need well i did but it was varmints he said varmints if you don't need varmints it was varmints if you will and things like that of that nature just very embarrassing yeah and then and then uh i think that same yeah it was ryan was just running me right and then but he's a hardcore oh yeah but then he posed he posed for like men's fitness magazine like lifting because he did a bunch of, but then he posed for Men's Fitness Magazine, because he did a bunch of CrossFit, and he posed for Men's Fitness Magazine doing bicep curls in his office, and one of them is him in workout gear pulling his bow back,

like aiming at the camera. Paul Ryan. Yeah. His Secret Service code name during the campaign was Bowhunter. Not Deer Slayer? Mm-mm. I just want to put it out there to any politicians listening you don't have to be a hunter for me to be okay with you and vote for you

yeah hey thank you yeah that's sweet you can just be yourself do good things i do not feel that neither Trump nor Harris has ever sought, that I'm aware of, has ever sought to establish their hunting and fishing bona fides. But Kamala Harris, Kren's pulling up an article where she's talking about her Glock. That's very surprising. Yeah, I heard that.

Yeah, they say there's a quip from a New York Times article. A quip? I think in that 2004 election season, a columnist for the New York Times wrote that the worst time to be a bird in America is election season. Ah, that is a quip.

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

OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24 K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. You were 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 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 on x out if you visit on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all randall do you care to tell us about catching a 34 inch redfish 35 does i i can't i don't have

any good 34 inch redfish stories i got a 35 inch redfish story yeah tell me about it what's exceptional what stands out in your mind as being exceptional about that i find that to be um now randall i'm i was on the boat with you okay so just yeah you're honest there's nothing's gonna be the truth will not be bent here. This is going to be a straight telling. All right. I mean, we've had a great week, and we, the first day we fished, I was fishing with two guests, and the first day we fished with Mark Kenyon,

and we caught a pile of redfish, but we didn't really get any big ones. I don't think we had to release any, but we were catching them consistently all day. And then the next morning, we went out with a different guide and he took us to a spot where we were sort of nosed up to a little gap in the in the grass in the marsh and so we were

fishing you better explain the whole damn deal now have we even told people what we're doing this is the meat eater experiences yeah we're down here meat eater so he basically explained no I didn't mean that i meant how he's fishing yeah oh yeah so we're fishing so we're fishing we're walking all the way back be like you know when the earth's cross first solidified sure at some point there was life at some point there's land and water um sometime later we hosted meteor experience so we i mean so i've just fished three days the first day we you know we're dividing up into boat

groups and then there's kind of crew members rotating through the boat groups and uh so the first day i went out with one guide and we were pretty much everybody's popping shrimp under a float live shrimp um and we fished i mean we fished all different types of scenarios right like yesterday we were out next to an oil rig casting up against sort of a band of rock dude that was fun that was cool and there's a big you know flare behind us just on the on the rig i mean it was it was like very gulf coast those fish were so stacked yeah and you just i've never seen anything like that well except for the second place we went where you dropped it you dropped if you dropped it within six inches of the grass the bobber would go straight under before before the bobber could even stand up explain the rig yet

i mean it's a it's a it's a foam float a popping cork and you got i don't know 18 18 inch leader down we call them strike indicators it's not it's not no you don't it's within the bobber family it's within the bobber family and it's it's a styrofoam it's a styrofoam float about four inches tall and it's got a cup the top of it is cupped the side going up the line to the rod tip it has a cup on it there's a stripper going by below that though there's an 18 inch leader uh and some guys will run a jig head at the bottom some guys will run a weight sitting on a hook the jig head is lazy i've come to determine yeah i we we missed a lot of fish on

on jig heads although this big red i caught on the jig head um so you cast out against the grass i had to stop you because an important part of the whole system of the popping cork is the fact that the cork slides on a section of basically between two swivels that is longer than the cork so it can move back and forth and it has little beads that are set on the line above and below the cork so when the cork or the flow is on top of the water it's uh one end of that piece of slack. And then below that, you have what Raynal described, the leader down to your bait. So when you pull, the line actually goes through the cork

and then it hits the next beads and it causes the sound of this crack and this pop. And that sound is meant to imitate, some people say that imitates shrimp swimming and cracking as they swim some people say just imitates fish feeding but it's a it's a big time attractant yeah and those reds will come up and try to smoke the bob and when when the bobber is sitting static it's it's oriented vertically in the water like perpendicular it's a 45 personally it's vertical anyway as when you pop

it it tips forward towards you and that cup pops on the surface and it makes a big splash like a hula popper there you go precisely okay you're good you're getting there now um so should we go to the fish or it's attached to a fish pole yes a spinning rod. Which is attached to Randall. Dr. Randall. Most of the time, yes. You cast it out. You cast it out. And he says, the doctor is in. So anyway, there we were.

It was a wonderful morning. Giannis was on the boat. We had two of our guests there. And we were with the guide t-bone and we started catching some bigger reds janice caught two i mean this one spot there are basically two big points of grass coming together and so the boat was pointing towards this gap in the grass and we're catching we're casting up towards points on either side of the boat right so if you can imagine like an hourglass we're kind of

sitting right in the neck of the hourglass if and and we're casting up on these points we're catching some bigger fish and then i hook into one and it goes through the neck uh where the two grassy points come together and just goes straight. I mean, it's just running like it's trying to get out, trying to run down to Mexico. And it strips out 100 yards of line pretty quickly, and the drag was not – Are you buying that, Yanni? You were there.

Yeah. Oh, it was out. I haven't really had a fish that far out that then made it back to the boat especially when they're up on the surface like that because there's just so much line it's so easy for it to come slack and this thing just tore out and then went around the corner so all of a sudden my line is running through the grass as if i've hooked something up on shore and at at this point. And I'm trying to pull it out of the grass. Randall says, the doctor is on.

I said, hang on, boys. We might have to chase this one down. We're going to need a bigger boat. I actually, I was wondering if the guide, because that's what, when we hook a big king in the current, I mean, oftentimes you'll unclip your anchor and go follow that fish and chase it down to try to pick up line on it.

I almost wondered if we were going to do that because he got so far out. I was like, there's no way this fish is going to stay on. Sure enough, just a lot of hard work, you know, pumping and reeling. Hard work and just character. And I think that fish... Determination.

I think... Yeah, he's in the hardest working state you know i think after a few minutes that fish realized what he had on the other end of the line there and he he turned around uh we fought him up he knew it was like it's inevitable yeah i'm as good as beat said my god just look at that red-haired man he said this works on everybody else but this guy something's different about him i want to get a look at this fella so then he came to the boat and he went around the bow of the boat a couple times went under the boat and uh yeah we got him in the net and it was a big 35 pound male or sorry 35 inch male um i don't know it's probably 20 it wasn't a male how did you know

it was a male it wasn't a male it wasn't it's a female how do you know it's a female because males don't get that big well it's squirted but they call them bull bull red you know but it's females it squirted the white milk milk i have a i have a photo with about a i think those are all females i have a photo i could be way wrong I have a photo. I could be way wrong. I have a photo of it squirting about 24 inch string of milt down the front of my body and onto the boat. Wow. You could lift that. Man, now I got to do a bunch of internet work. Then Randall said, suction.

Yep. Pass that down to Steve there. My understanding is those are all females. I'm pretty sure that's a tapeworm.'s no internet it's like damn it wow come on wow okay yeah that that screams male to me man dude i know i think that i think it's a pair you used the word paradox earlier i got it i think it's a i think it's like a paradox calling them bulls. I think the bull is not referencing. That's true.

The bull is not referencing its maleness. Sure. It's referencing its size and strength. And my understanding is those are all females. Those are all breeding age females. Yeah. Who has enough connection? Everybody else has it.

We have the Leon Musk system running in here, and it's just not working well I'm surprised cuz I know his system at our house works great spaceship Mars and all that come on but yeah we had I don't know if my favorite thing in the world. I read, did I tell you this story? I already talked about this. Hold on, listen, Corinne's going to talk. This is another, did you find it? This is from LouisianaSportsman.com. Yeah, I'm not buying it. Half of all bull reds are in actuality females. Well.

So then what's the definition? Like the front half or the back half the inside so so i know but i had a guy tell me their name genuine hard work in louisiana and told me that once they that the males can't even get that size male redfish typically average under 36 inches and weigh 22 pounds while females average 36 inches and 22 pounds at age 15 so they females are generally larger male redfish can get big but females are generally larger that's what's wrong but am i right so you got a real unicorn real yeah so that makes it even more impressive it does you're judging by its ejaculate. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Which, which the guide,

a lot of big words today, which the guide, uh, don't Google any of them. Did he confirmed our impression that that was indeed Milt. Okay. So I was wrong. Um,

that's fine. Did that would be the equivalent when, when easy, but I was, I was missing. I was misled. I was misled. So there we were, and I had this big red fish in the boat. A large male.

And we obviously well over the slot. So we released it, and I ate a sandwich. And I savored that moment for a little bit. And then we caught some more fish. The sandwich or the fish? Sandwich. Roast beef. Not a fish sandwich.

Not a fish sandwich. Not a fish sandwich. The two were unrelated. Thank you for sharing. Yeah. And then we caught a couple big bull reds yesterday. Females. Doubled on. Those were females.

Big females. I felt like they were. I was misled. There was an absence of ejaculate yesterday. You know when you get a new piece of information, you get a new piece of information, and it hasn't really become woven into your personal fabric yet right but you might start telling everybody about it are you wrong or did you get misled i mean i heard the same thing

yeah do you need to see the photo again it hasn't i haven't like made it part of me yet yeah no i've been in i've been in that i've been in your shoes back in the day many a time uh cal we're gonna we're gonna talk about cal's alligator garb but first i need to share a quote i've said, I got a lot of favorite quotes. My actual favorite quote, I can't share on the podcast. My second favorite quote is skepticism, which I did not apply when I was told the falsehood. My favorite quote has always been skepticism is the chastity of the intellect. Now, here, someone wrote in. Was dirkin yeah dirk who uh is in trouble right now about his cwd reporting um pat wrote in here's a quote carl sagan at the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes,

an openness to new ideas, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. I'm going to get that tattooed on me. That's a good one. In Chinese lettering. Carl.

Yes. And certainly you'll verify that that's actually what it says. I was out with that guy when I turned on. Carl Sagan? Yeah, turned on PBS one time, and Nova was fixing to come on, and the first statement of his show was, Our cousins, the trees. And I thought, I'm not kin to a tree.

Oh, he's going a little deeper than you. He was playing Cosmos. Hey, I tell you, I think you fell into a trap that a lot of people fall in, probably like 80% of people, is that you're out with a louisiana fishing guy that catches redfish every day of his life you assume that he really is an expert i know i mean we all know that sometimes the people that are closest to a resource that have grown up with it come with all kind of preconceived biases stuff they've been told their whole life. Yeah.

And so, you know, sometimes the guys that you think should know are too, and they're not out, nothing against Louisiana red fishing guides. Well, yeah, I was raised by a squirrel hunter to be a squirrel hunter, and I was raised to know that pine squirrels bit the testicles

from other, from fox squirrels. And I knew that like, like i knew my own name yeah yeah and then you talk to a squirrel researcher and he says i i don't know what you're talking about and then he gets back to you a couple weeks later and says i've really looked and i just don't think that's true the house of cards comes crumbling down. Well, maybe not where you're from. I've no doubt spread that around. Cal did one of my life's goals, but he did it on accident. So does that count?

He's got the photo. It's pretty cool. He did it on accident, though. I did do it on accident. There will always be an asterisk next to Cal's. There will always be an asterisk. I heard you cast right at it. No, it wasn't an asterisk.

Cal, tell us the story. No, I did not. Let me see a picture. It caught a big, huge alligator gar. It was a small person. It was the first spot that we hit in the morning. We're being dadded by dr randall we just want to hear the we don't want to miss any of the story here you might need to trim down that side of the mustache to accommodate

the anyway the travel podcast the uh first first spot in the morning i have like a hang up with live bait when i'm just like donating bait right like there's something about just waste or something like you're using dozens of shrimp per hour yeah i'm like this i this is not sustainable i don't like it what else you got type of thing so we had one rod rigged up with a little paddle tail like exactly like you'd use for walleye and probably like a quarter ounce jig head and i said said to the guide i was like hey can i throw that thing for a while and he's like yeah you can see if you can get something on that so i put one rod away picked up that thing cast uh once worked the bottom cast again worked the bottom there's kind of bait popping on the surface a little bit so i went for a faster retrieve on you know a little bit like mid column and sure enough like get whacked like oh and it just starts dragging like pulling drag and um i'm like oh this has to be a big

black drum because it's not like going crazy it's just like pulling like a truck you know and uh not a heavy duty rod reel set up by any means and it's like really going and kind of have to work around the engine and then back over the other side of the boat and and finally it's like i'm gaining ground on it and i'm not i'm i'm horsing it pretty good how's the guide treating this uh scenario not with too much attention he's like oh yeah we'll see what you got there and somebody did say gar because there were gar rolling on the surface but i immediately was like no if i would have hooked a gar unless i foul hooked it which is hard to do because they're so hard so armor plated i'm like this thing would have popped off broke your line broke the line a long time ago

um but then probably less than a minute after that comment fish comes up to the surface and here's this you know giant alligator gar and then how long do you think it was over five foot probably right at five foot right in there yeah i had the red october yeah that was brad scommett this dude i fished with yesterday who's great like you know grew up out here uh used to be commercial fishermen super knowledgeable he was complaining to me so here you got all these redfish trout sheep's head offshore fish everything he's complaining to me that he had just set a jug for alligator gar and his jug was gone and i said well what and i'm thinking he said for whatever i don't know why he needs an alligator gar so i'm like what did you need

alligator gar for eat him that's awesome but then he tells me he don't and he's picky because he don't he don't eat speckled trout which a lot of people come down here specifically he's fishing all day for all these famous eating fish and then he's after work trying to go get an alligator gar because that's like what do you want on the first day that's what he wants on the first day that i fished with him with mark we went and looked for that jug we like on the way back on the way back to the marina he was like i gotta check this jug spot to see if it showed back up he's like i set it out two days ago jugs missing but he's got to be in here somewhere yeah i asked him if he thought someone horked it and he thinks he thinks something got i can tell you from where that thing

was where we looked for it no one came across it because we were just ripping through. We were ripping through channels that were narrower than the gunnels of the boat and all the way back in there. And I'd asked him earlier when we ran up a similar little channel, I said, I said, so if another boat's coming down here, would you guys just stick it up in the grass or how do you, how do you signal who's going to yield to who? And he goes, there's only two other people that drive these channels.

He's like, and I know both of them. But he didn't actually answer the question because he didn't clarify if he knew where they were at that moment. It'll be a friendly collision. At least we'll know somebody. I was like, the odds are good, but you haven't quite satisfied my anxiety about this.

Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew.

Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning

GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you, you guys in the great white north can be part of it. Be part of the excitement.

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

That dude told us a story that I'm would i'm just gonna tell it we're not we're not we did our last camp our last close calls thing but check this out so he used to have a buddy named nam who was from vietnam and he was a refugee that came to the u.s after the end of vietnam war and they lived in the same what he called he showed me the village which is not there anymore but where he was brought up and and Nam was in his village. And when Katrina came, they had gone and checked on Nam multiple times to make sure they're all on the same page, that Nam is, in fact, leaving. He's going to evacuate.

And everyone understood that Nam was evacuating, and they had a plan put together, but then he doesn't evacuate. As the water's coming up, he first thing is gets and sits on his kitchen table as the water's coming up. Then he goes into his attic. The water keeps coming up to the point where he swims. He gets a breath hold and goes back down and out his kitchen window. When he pops up, he realizes that his house

isn't even where it was before. He was unaware in all the turmoil that the house was drifting. So it's not that the water came up, it's that the house had left its foundation he eventually grabs on you know those glass balls on foam poles he eventually gets hold of one of those and there's so much junk coming by that he's afraid he's going to get picked up in the debris a tire comes by he grabs the tire holds on to the tire and three miles later hits a hits a fire station roof that's

dry and that's where he winds up and i think at one point he was ended up hanging on to the top of a phone pole yeah that's yeah that's holding that insulator ins Insulator, yeah. Yeah. And on that truck tire, eventually hit a roof and got out of the water. Wow. Wow. And he got played out on that and moved. Yeah.

And the guy told me, I don't want to divulge who he was because this is a personal story, but we're talking about, we're doing that whole, you got kids, all that, you married and all that. He's married.

But he's telling me about a past relationship which didn't work out. And says she was rough and then someone hooks a fish one of our guests hooks a fish so then i'm spending hours hoping he comes back around but i didn't want to prompt eventually he came back around with more of an explanation that was the most stressful period of my trip i would compare it to the stress that phil feels in the hardest working state in the union when people just aren't getting going on when he's the only one what he needs to have happen done yeah that guide when he drove past

he showed us the village and it's just two gravel like aprons and he's like that used to be that road that used to be that road we're like what did it look like when you get back and he's like just like this and it's just grass yeah i mean there's nothing there and we said did you ever find anything that you left there he said yeah my work truck we're like what's the story there he goes it's over there and points out to the water and he's like it's still there really and that was it he's like he's like my work truck ended up 200 yards out in the water there and and it's still on the bottom it was just he he was incredible he said uh he told me i said what was the name of the village he said it's just called the village and they were called the village people.

Like not joking. That's what all the people at the marinas called them. Yeah. And we get to this brushy corner and he says, that was a beach that used to be a beach. And he says, a big alligator would lay right there. And he points right across from the beach. He said,

that alligator would always be there. It lived at sun in that spot. And all the kids from the village swam in this spot and he goes i don't understand why they let us swim here and he even said it one day that alligator went up and ate one of the neighbor's dogs yeah and they still didn't stop the kids from swimming in that spot yeah oh i love it um we had nothing to land the alligator gar with oh right with the gar isn't that funny yeah no i mean those are worthwhile stories um write in if you disagree no those were great so that that was like honestly like the one of the more fun parts

about the whole thing because the whole time you're like there's no way this fish is coming on i was like just feel fortunate that we got to confirm what it was and watching it come out of the merc was so cool could you tell where you had it hooked yeah right in the corner of the jaw like no the only place that fish would have gotten to the boat yeah um so that that mono leader that we all just uh heard the description of was well outside of the the toothy area and the scales you know the scales are so hard that it'll cut cut mono too but um so we took the bow line from the boat right so it's got a loop in it kind of made a lariat uh the guide uh we put the loop over the end of the rod fed it all the way down the rod down the line to the gar well i got i got confused right because what's the objective is to lasso the gar because we

to land bring it in the boat right oh you're not getting it you got to get the jig back right he put the net out there oh i understand now i understand now right i understand now um so he passes the loop over the rod down the line and then lassoes it yeah so you do a little hand over hand to get the rope down there we're like okay we's it yeah so you do a little hand over hand to get the rope down there we're like okay we kind of did that that's good and he's like now lift his nose up and it's like well that we can't do that it's not the rod's not stiff enough to get this prehistoric fish out of the water but um so he kind of got his hand in there and got the loop over the gar's nose. And then the gar kicked. And I'm kind of like waiting for the rope to go top.

Well, he never grabbed it and gave it a jerk. So the fish just swam straight through it. No. He's like, so long, suckers. So then it's like. And then we go to do it all over again this time he cinches up kicks a little bit we haul him in the boat um got a couple of pictures and yeah i mean it was it was just so laughable like that you know you're like look at this thing and and it was actually

pretty darn docile was it in the in the boat and uh i'm guessing he was fine when you turn him loose they don't seem like you faze him too bad no i gave him like the big shocking plunge you know and that thing just kicked like it was swimming all day yeah he's like all in a day dude yeah um but yeah super super cool fish and yet we were we were talking to uh about this study that came out just this year on um evolution right and it was like so a gar is a living fossil as is like a and this is on fish as is like a coelacanth as is uh i guess you could say a javelina is too sandhill crane sandhill crane but this study was on fish so it was like tarpon um a couple other things to kind of see how they

have changed and um they demonstrated that the long-nosed gar and the alligator gar um have changed the least hmm in and even so little they're so genetically different or not different rather that even though the long-nosed gar came along like a hundred million years after the alligator gar they can still have successful successful hybrid offspring really yeah so it's like is it perfect evolution right i just got to a place of ultimate survivability that is just like no changes needed yeah the little windows update circle is like still spinning or not spinning take your pick yeah whatever yeah yeah yeah so yeah no um that was that was super super cool all right man well thanks guys stingray we're wrapping her up

best for last. Corinne, share your stingray story, Corinne. She was looking for Mr. Right. It's not really my stingray story. It was just that we were on a boat with two guests, Mark and Joe, and Joe hooked on to something that you know just gave him a it was a tussle and he ended up pulling in a really huge stingray i don't in diameter i don't know how big okay steve is whispering it wasn't that big well i mean just in the way of

stingrays it was a pretty normal southern stingray i guess all day we had caught like a couple i'd like to know what do you know what the other what the more common stingray is here i don't know what this one is no it ain't a cow nose ray i know that it'd be easy to find out he caught a he caught a very normal southern stingray okay yeah so then the ones i'd caught were just tiny i. I haven't looked them up yet. Nope, they were different species. Oh, I see. Okay. But anyway, I guess a lot of people don't know you can eat them.

And Steve has definitely cleaned his fair share, as you were telling me, of stingrays. And you call them a low-yield critter um but i just really wanted to taste what they tasted like what'd you think i loved it it didn't get mopped up as quick as all the other fish that get served here oh no i mean we we yeah we we ate that so i guess you you cut them off uh how would you describe it it's like you cut into it's yeah you cut the side wings off yeah the wing each of the wings has two fillets on top of a cartilaginous collection of rays i guess one would say and then on the bottom you had like kind of thinner yeah low yield on top low yield on bottom better yield on top there was a lot of meat that came out of that fish.

Four people didn't even finish it. I will say the only reason it didn't get mopped up faster, I thought it was very good, but there was a liberal, would be the nice way of putting it, amount of blackened seasoning on top of it. That's what I was struggling with. quite liked it but it was he had just um our chef has been phenomenal and very hard working and has done just a non-stop array of amazing food but he got something got a

little i think that he wasn't enthusiastic he was he was very receptive to the first time he ever cooked yeah he was like sure i'll do anything But I think that he might have been like, oh, I'm going to put a little extra. He was skeptical, and I think he might have thought, well, I'm going to put a little extra seasoning out there. He did tell me last night, too, that that blackened seasoning that they had is not what he typically does

because when that stuff really charsars he thinks it gets even saltier so you know common classic chef's deal right it's like well that's not what i usually have yeah but yeah but there are certain and this is one of them there are certain things where the yield is so low i want to feel bad about like have you ever cleaned a shovel nose uh stirrups shovel nose sturgeon it's like you get this big old cool fish, and then you clean it, and you're like, geez, man, I feel like. Yeah, I got like, here's like 15% of the fish is in my hand. Yeah. Spoonbill or paddlefish, you know, like if you're getting rid of the red meat, man, you really feel bad about.

Yeah. And rays, you always, you feel like you you're done and it looks like there's still a ray laying there never bothered me but you're right frog legs yeah that hasn't bothered me but that's yeah it's a yeah frog is a low yield creature but it doesn't bother me but now maybe it will yeah it's just. Yeah, just guts. Just intestines. And are you guys going to fight over whether it tastes like scallop or not? I didn't think. Maybe it's just like slightly chewy consistency. I'm going to do a bunch of research when I get a minute,

and I'm going to do a presentation on scallops. I think I have an explanation of where it maybe came from. Because that fellow at the table that we're sitting with. His grandfather had a special tube that he had made 12 inches long. I'm just trusting a nice gentleman that spent a week with us or three days with us. Okay, that's fair. And it was sharpened on one end. And he would punch the little scallop shapes out of the wings.

But what I didn't know is that I would have thought they would have filleted it first and then done it, but they didn't. So maybe that's where that comes from is because as a way to more easily process, such a pain in the butt animal to process, they just punched little scallops out of it, and then they would just quickly cut the two pieces of skin off and then just cook them. So maybe that's where that came from. I know that little tool they're talking about because I had a biopsy

taken with one of those. That little... Stingray scallop maker? No, mine was a mini one, but yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. That's a good idea. Could be. Yeah, they call it... You know how everybody down here, like everybody in the whole but yeah i know exactly what you're talking about that's a good idea could be could be it's a yeah they call it you know how everybody down here like everybody in the whole world started some

years ago referring to a fish with its skin on is on the half shell yes which is coming from oyster like the whole world adopted that um maybe calling it a scallop was because you're just cutting a little circle out. And it looks like... It had nothing to do with scallops. Someone was like, they're trying to sell me fake scallops. And they really weren't. They were just trying to eat Ray's.

That could be. Thanks for listening, everybody. Thank you, Phil. Thanks, Phil. Phil, enjoy your afternoon in New Orleans. Big round of applause for Phil. Rum drink ever. Hardest working man in a hard working state. 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. We've got a new book coming out in the meat eater universe. And for the first time, it is not one of mine. Instead, it's my colleague, Danielle Pruitt. Yeah, Danielle, the founder of Wild and Whole. It's called Meat Eaters Wild and Whole, seasonal recipes for the conscious cook, and it's an ode to cooking seasonally with wild and foraged ingredients. Now, let's get to what you'll find in this book. This cookbook contains more than 80 recipes inspired by what you can hunt, fish, forage, or grow in your garden each season. Often, Danielle will pair her ingredients to reflect both the hunting season and the growing season. So her turkey cutlet is combined with springtime morels.

Her Gulf Coast redfish with summertime sweet corn. She cooks venison with pumpkin for a tasty fall stew. If that all sounds complicated, trust me, it is not complicated. Danielle has a knack for creating recipes worthy of a five-star kitchen, but accessible to two-star cooks. And you'll come away armed with techniques that will make you a better cook all around. This book is also beautiful to look at with gorgeous full color photographs that inspire you to take a real hard look at your kitchen's output. It's Meat Eaters Wild and Whole Seasonal Recipes for the Conscious Cook by Danielle Pruitt. It is out now and it's

available at themeateater.com or wherever books are sold.