The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 634: MeatEater Radio Live! Bluefin Tuna, Bear Chaps, and Phil Trivia

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

Welcome to MeatEater Radio Live! 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 Randall Williams, Brody Henderson, and Phil Taylor.  Guests: Our very own Clay Newcomb and Chloe Mikles of Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University. Connect with The MeatEater Podcast Network MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mead Eater Radio Live is the newest addition to the Mead Eater Podcast feed. Every Thursday at 11am Mountain Time, we'll be going live from Mead Eater HQ on the Mead Eater Podcast Network YouTube channel. This one-hour variety show will feature call-in guests, segments and live feedback from the Mead Eater audience. Then on Friday morning, the episode will be available in audio form on the meat eater podcast feed So come hang with 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 Well, almost anything. Oh, that's not the right view. We're off to a great start. Oh, no. There he is. Oh, there I am. Welcome to MeatEater Radio Live.

It's 11 a.m. Mountain Time on Thursday, December 5th, and we are live from MeatEater HQ in Bozeman, Montana. I'm your host, Randall Williams, and I'm joined today by Brody Henderson. On today's show, we're interviewing a researcher studying bluefin tuna and marlin. Got those backwards in the script here. We've got a few regrettable tattoos to share with you. We've got another hot tip-off. We're going to play a bit of Phil trivia. We're going to play a bit of Phil trivia. We're going to have a strange bear hunting fool from Arkansas in the studio. And at the very end, I have a very special announcement that you'll be hearing first here exclusively on MeatEater Radio

Live. Brody, how are you today, sir? Excellent. It's only two of us in here today. It's a little weird. We should have got a cut out of Steve and he could be here and then people could have Steve here and he wouldn't interrupt anyone. I think we could have a cutout of Steve for most office activities. He's just a busy guy. He could use a body double. Yep. Or at least just a stand-in cardboard cutout. Yeah. We just wrapped up our general season here, and I was not fortunate enough to get an elk to my great disappointment, and it'll be another long 10 months

before we can give it another shot, but I understand you had a pretty special hunt recently. Yeah, my son drew a pretty sweet cow tag. It's a youth only cow tag after, I think it's like November 17th, that unit goes from general tag to youth only for cow, no bull hunting. So it was a good draw.

And I had lined up some private access on a ranch in that unit, which would have been like kind of a slam dunk. Give me. So I thought my kid be all excited about that. Right. And like in the days leading up to it, he just didn't seem too jazzed about it. And I was like, what's going on, man? He's like, man, I don't want my first elk to be like jumping out of a truck and shoot one in a hay field. And I get it. Like it's nice to have an easy hunt now and then, but he just didn't want that to be his

first elk. So I was like, all right, dude, let's go climb a mountain. Cause that's what elk hunting is all about. Yeah, let's go get kicked in the teeth by elk. And we drove over to that unit. We didn't like do the early morning thing. It's kind of a drive. And so we got over there, like, I don't know, 10 o'clock,

and drove into this big chunk of public. I just started glassing for bedded herds. And right away, we find a herd of like 30. And it's like totally doable, but a lot of up and down, a lot of up the mountain, down the mountain to get to them. It was very windy and cold that day. So I was like, let's keep them in our hip pocket. They're not, you know, once a herd's bedded down, they're not going anywhere unless someone else spooks them. We kept driving into this public and went another mile, mile and a half down the road and

threw the binos up. And there's this long bench below the top of the timbered ridge. And there's 150 elk just laying down on that thing. A lot of eyeballs. And it was steep to get up to them. But like basically once you got out of the truck and walked in a little ways, you were below their line of sight. So it was going to be one of those things where you climb right up, get to the

lip and the herd's going to be right, you're going to be in range, you know. So it was a good, it was a better deal than the first herd, but a lot of eyes, like you said. And man, the wind was just howling that day, which I think ended up working in our favor because they weren't gonna hear us, they weren't gonna smell us. So we made the climb, which was like first third of it is pretty mild and then it's just straight up a thousand feet and we get to where I'm expecting to like be able

to see them, but it's one of those, like it wasn't like you stick your head up and you're there. It's just one of those slow rolling things where you gotta like belly crawl 10 feet, can't see them yet. Belly crawl 10 feet, can't see them. We did that for like at least 50 yards and we could hear cows and calves like just chirping and talking to each other like very close.

And I'm like, God, we're to end up right on top of these things and we screw it up. And we got to this one rock and we're laying down, and I can see a lone cow bedded up in the timber. And I'm like, man, it's like 250, the wind's blowing, but the wind was in our face, so I wasn't worried about wind drift too much. I'm like whispering to Hayden, you want to, you want to try and shoot that one.

You want to try and get closer to this herd. And we ended up, we opted to like just get him on the bipod, get steady. And that cow was just bedded in the perfect, at the perfect angle, slight uphill broadside, like a good, like I don't shoot a lot of bedded animals, but this was a good opportunity to shoot her in the shoulder. And he got comfortable and took the shot and she rolled over in her bed, slid down the hill 10 yards in the snow and was dead. Like it was perfect. Never knew, knew we were there. Um,

but that, you know, you've killed plenty of elk. That's just like the start of it, right? My kids like, holy crap, these things. How old is he again? He's 13. Yeah. Um, he was, he was shocked by it was a big old cow and he was shocked by the size of this thing. And it was setting in like, how are we going to deal with with this because by this point it's like he shot her at 130 so like you know it gets dark at like 4 30 now um so we had a limited amount of time and so i'm trying to figure out what we're going to do like like how we're going to get because we're in grizzly country like heavy duty grizzly country and the bears that arezzly country. And the bears that are out this time of year are the ones that are looking for elk carcasses.

So I'm a little freaked out. Not bad, but it's like definitely in the back of my mind. And I'm looking down that slope and I'm like, man, I bet you we could gut her and just slide her down the mountain. Oh, yeah. Which is like like, if it works great, but you could also just mangle that cow and just destroy it. Or you can put yourself in a bad spot where all of a sudden you're trying to quarter up a cow on something you can't really stand up straight. But in the end, I decided to give it a go and there wasn't a lot of snow on that. That was a west facing slope.

So the snow was kind of patchy and melted off. There's only like an inch or two of coverage the whole way down that steep slope. So it actually worked very well. Like she'd slide like 50 yards and then slow down and stop. And we just did that the whole way down. Yeah. Then we got her to that bench and above the truck another half mile like gradual slope down to the truck.

So we went back to the truck, got the sled, quartered her and got her out with the sled the rest of the way. So it was great. He learned a lot about elk hunting, you know. It was a very great hunt. And the cool thing about like people that have been hunting a long time and killed a bunch of animals, like you're never getting that first, right? Like I got my first moose this fall, which was like an incredible feeling and experience. But like you get to relive a lot of firsts when you take a kid hunting.

And that was the coolest thing about it. He's a little tuckered there at the end. Yeah. Well, that's about how I feel. Yeah. Packing out elk. Yeah. It's funny. When my wife started hunting a couple of years ago, she, uh, she wanted to get a deer and we probably went out five or six times before she pulled the trigger. Yep. And it was like, that was perfect.

Yeah. She hunted. Yeah, exactly. And, and, uh, and then this year we went out and she shot one probably 10 minutes after we got to the spot and she was like, so tickled with that. But it was also, she'd, she'd killed enough deer that it, it like, that wouldn't have been a good first year. Right.

Right. So yeah, it's, it's funny how your perspective changes on those things. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not dogging like private land hunting or whatever, but you know, it would have just been a very different experience. And he'll remember that one for the rest of his life. Totally.

And also, next time he goes out for an elk, he has some appreciation for shooting one in a bad spot. Well, thanks for sharing that. Joining us on the line first is Chloe Michaels from Monterey, California at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station. Chloe is a PhD student in biology studying bluefin tuna and marlin.

Chloe, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It is great to be here. I'm pretty jealous of that elk story and California it's really difficult to draw those tags. Oh, sure. I see you got a nail out there behind you though Yeah, yeah, that was from New Mexico a year ago

One yeah, that was my fiance shot that one. Unfortunately, I'll be next for our next trip cool Very yeah, it was a fun trip. So Chloe your work Involves tracking some of the world's largest and most highly migratory species of fish. Can you tell us a little bit about how you study these animals? Yeah, so I feel really lucky because I mean the whole reason that I decided to do this is because I really love fishing and I love animals. I love being out in the water and I actually, so I grew up in North Carolina and spent every summer and winter basically on the coast of North Carolina and that's where I just absolutely fell in love with fishing. So the great thing about doing my PhD

studying bluefin tuna and blue marlin is that my fieldwork involves going out catching these fish, tagging them, releasing them. And then now I'm in my fifth year and it's a lot less of the fun fieldwork and tagging and more of, as you know, a lot more data analysis and writing in the last part of it. So unfortunately not doing as much of that anymore, but the fieldwork is a lot of fun. So you're catching them, when you're catching them to tag them, I assume you're tagging them, you're catching them to tag them, I assume you're tagging them, you're catching them on a rod and reel? Yeah, exactly.

So basically the methods are different for blue marlin, bluefin tuna, but for bluefin tuna, well for both, we go out usually on either recreational charter boats or commercial boats. So we're working directly with the fishermen on this. We're not like if you just send a bunch of scientists out there to try to catch fish by ourselves, we would have a bit of a hard time. Sure.

So we work directly with the local fleets and in North Carolina specifically there's a really rich commercial fishery for bluefin tuna that actually just opened up December 1. So usually this time of year we'll go out and it is cold, wintertime conditions. It's all rod and reel fishing and you know with bluefin tuna the fight can sometimes be hours long. You're trying really hard just to get a bite so you're using light leader. It's really difficult work but yeah we end up with the bluefin. We actually bring the fish on

board. And all of our work is electronic tagging. So we're deploying tags that act almost like a GPS tracker that you'd have on your dogs, or in your car, and allowing you to actually position the fish over time. So beyond just like where they are, what other sorts of data points are you getting from these tags? Yeah, so we use a couple of different types of tags. For Bluthentuna, we actually have the ability to put tags surgically inside the fish also. So I have a couple of different ones that I brought to show you. So this for the YouTube audience, you can see this is called an internal archival tag and

So we bring the bluefin tuna up on the boat. We actually stick a saltwater hose in its mouth Irrigate the gills these fish are sometimes up to a thousand pounds. So it is no small feet bringing them on board We irrigate their gills with a hose no small feet bringing them on board. We irrigate their gills with a hose, and then we actually will take a couple measurements, get some fin clips, and we surgically implant this tag in their belly, like in their abdomen.

And so this tag has on the end a light stalk. So the way that we get the position is from like light level geolocation. So it's actually like all of this complex math, figuring out what time of day it is based off of the day length and then we also get depth from a pressure sensor on this and then from this internal tag we get both internal body temperature and external body temp and What's really cool about the internal temperature is that you can actually see what the fish is doing. So You know when we release this fish,

the chances of getting this back are really slim. The fish has to be recaptured. So we deploy these tags, you know, it's like sending a message in the bottle. We hope you get it back. But when we do get them back, we can tell where the fish is going, where it's diving, the temperature that it's diving to,

and then also the internal temperature. So with bluefin, you can see them heating up inside when they're having a meal, or heating up when they're spawning, lots of really interesting stuff like that. So when you get them back, is that from recreational or commercial anglers giving you a call and saying,

I pulled one of your tags off a fish? Exactly, yeah. So a lot of our fish, especially the ones that we tag off the coast of North Carolina, end up getting recaptured in the Mediterranean Sea. Wow. So they're traveling across the entire ocean,

and then they mostly get caught in the trap fisheries there. Yeah. But we do occasionally get some up and down the East Coast, which is fun because it's close to home too. Sure. Is that like the furthest that these fish are traveling? I mean, do you have a,

I know at least in the case of like mule deer, especially antelope, there are these outliers where they'll find a mule deer doe that's traveled several hundred miles. Do you have like a particularly memorable example of a fish just going way out there? Yeah, I mean the cool thing about bluefin tuna is that they are highly migratory, so just by nature they're not residential. They're not staying in one spot. So the fish that we see like this time of year in the North Carolina fishery are, you know, have already

traveled up and down the east coast, maybe come from Nova Scotia. And then this is basically just like a little stop on their way somewhere. So a lot of our fish, they're either spawning in one of two areas. One is the Gulf of Mexico and then one's the Mediterranean Sea. So that's why we ended up getting a lot of fish from North Carolina in the Med. And what's pretty amazing about these internal archival tags. Granted, they're a lot harder to get back, um, because they're inside of the fish. But, oh, I should mention the other type of tag that we have is, um, a satellite tag that actually pops off of the animal. So it has a float attached to it. It's the same thing with the float.

And then it pops off of the animal and transmits all the data to satellites. So that you don't have to get back. But we have a lot of really cool stories. These archival tags can stay in fish for multiple years, which allows us to see them, like really see them grow up and see how their behavior changes.

Yeah, how old are those fish getting? Oh man, so the ones that we're tagging in North Carolina, they're probably ranging anywhere from like five to ten. And we suspect that their like max age limit is around 40. But we really don't know unless it's recaptured. So you can tell how you can age the fish once they're recaptured. You can get an estimate based off of length, but they do like once they reach a certain size, they there's only they can only get so big. Sure. Hey Chloe, these bluefin they're getting hit by commercial fishermen like up and down the East Coast and over in Europe, because there's a huge market for them in Japan, obviously. How is their population doing? Because I know it seemed like a few years ago, maybe a little more than that. It was kind of like you're

hearing a lot that they weren't doing that great. Are they doing better now? Right. Yeah, they are. So I feel like when I first kind of came into this space and I didn't know much about bluefin tuna, all I knew was like, oh, they're this endangered fish. And, but then I saw like, oh, there are a bunch of people in my hometown catching them. So they were really heavily overfished, like between the seventies and the late and end of the nineties. Um, but that was was because we really like we didn't know much about them. We had no idea how many they were. There were where they were going, their highly migratory nature, just the data that we had on them was so so little, so limited. So over time we learned more and more about them and because of better

management practices being put into place and really international cooperation, their populations have rebounded a ton. And in like 2009, they were almost listed on like the CITES treaty as preventing international trade of them, but thankfully they weren't because of promise to do better with management. So what's great is because of all this international cooperation and management, So what's great is because of all this international cooperation and management, they've rebounded a lot. And I think people are seeing that in their backyards. Like people going out to fish are just seeing

a lot more bluefin than there used to be, which is really encouraging. But it is difficult because it takes a long time to see the changes of those management measures to actually take effect. So these fish don't start reproducing until they're eight to ten years old. So there's quite a bit of a delay. You put something in the place and you don't see an effect for maybe ten years, which is frustrating for sure. Yeah. Well, it's very cool that I assume your research will then someday inform continued improvement in the

management practices. Yeah, that's the goal. That's why I'm doing the PhD. So yeah, it's a lot of fun. I mean, what's great about what's cool about my work is I've been able to incorporate our electronic tagging data with population genomics. And I know you guys have had a lot of people on the show that have talked about population genetics of wolves and mule deer and everything and ducks. with population genomics. And I know you guys have had a lot of people on the show that have talked about population genetics

of wolves and mule deer and everything, ducks. So it's great that the general public is getting a great understanding of how that is important for management as well. Very cool. Well, good luck out there on the water. And we appreciate you joining us. I think you've sort of hacked the system here to pursue a PhD that just gets you out on fishing boats

for your field work so kudos to you on that and good luck with your all of your data analysis. I'm sure you've got a pile of work ahead of you. Yeah thank you so much and yeah we'll keep you posted on what we have coming up on the water Yeah, we'd love to talk to you again Thanks so much for having me. Yep Man that's pretty wild stuff. Yep Fish in the ocean blow my mind. I'm a simple Midwestern man and God the idea of something just cruising back and forth

from North Carolina to the Mediterranean. A thousand pounds. Yeah, a thousand pounds. MeatEater Radio Live is the newest addition to the MeatEater podcast feed. Every Thursday at 11 a.m. Mountain Time, we'll be going live from MeatEater HQ on the MeatEater Podcast Network YouTube channel. This one-hour variety show will feature call-in guests, segments, and live feedback from the you arrested the Mead Eater crew every Thursday at 11am Mountain Time on the Mead Eater Podcast Network YouTube channel.

And remember, it's live, so anything can happen. Well, almost anything. Our next segment is Tattoos I Regret. Hello darkness my old friend I've looked at my tattoo again It really seemed like such a good idea When I was drunk last summer in Ibiza The tattoo says a puss and a pot will always find more beans. What the f**k does that mean? It's a tattoo.

I regret. Just let that breathe for a little bit. Keep the hits coming. That's beautiful. Beautiful. Great. Today's first regrettable tattoo comes from Brady of Lakeville, Illinois. And if you have a hunting or fishing related tattoo that you regret, please email us at

radio at the meat eater.com. We'd love to take a look at that ink. Here's what Brady writes. This is a tattoo I regret not getting sooner.'" So a little bit of a twist on our program here. "'It always gets a lot of laughs when I'm out fishing. "'The lines are actually to scale "'and comes in handy when I don't have a ruler.

"'I work in construction and always throw new coworkers off "'when I lift my pant leg up to measure bolts and such. I can't think of a more versatile tattoo." And for those of you listening, as opposed to our YouTube audience, we have an image here and it is a ruler labeled Fisherman's ruler that extends from just below the kneecap down the side of the calf to about Brady's sock line. And he's holding up a bass next to the ruler. And I believe what makes it a fisherman's ruler is it jumps from about, you know, six or seven inches to the mid-twenties.

So you're always sure to impress any onlookers and they can't accuse you of lying as to how the your catch taped out Brody your thoughts here You know, I'm happy that he doesn't regret having this tattoo but I'm just not on I'm not on board with it. Oh Really I see I had the opposite reaction. I thought that you know we should all have tattoos with various units of measurement. You know our trivia episode earlier this week I wish it had some conversion tables from teaspoons to tablespoons on my arm. I mean this seems to me to be the

height of like this is future man if you say so I Don't have a lot to say about it. Like, you know, it's I would regret getting that Especially I think that the joke of the numbers just jumping. Oh, yeah, it's probably funny in the moment But I think that's the thing that makes this age poorly. Sure. Like jokey tattoos usually, I don't know, they don't hold up in my estimation. Boy, tough crowd today. I mean, I think Brody and I are kind of on the outside

because we've got a few that, like Josh Spielmaker says he's on board. Yeah, he's on board. We've got Orion saying it's badass, I don't know about that. FourKids says that's a sick tattoo. Yeah, yeah. You know, I don't know about that. This, FourKids says that's a sick tattoo. Yeah, yeah. You know, I don't know. I just love the functionality of it.

Oftentimes I find, I mean, several times a week, I run around my house looking for one of the eight tape measures that I- Sure, but like you've got to do a lot of like weird math to get like an actual measurement. Yeah, and you know, the thing that I'm also noticing is that the inches seem to get shorter. He said it was he said it was uh. Well yeah I guess he does use it yeah. But it's not like look man it's fun. But how many inches is it at like you ain't measuring a 30 inch

fish that way. It looks like it looks like it's a solid 11 inches. Right. right 12 inches so how useful is it because what like minimum size length for a lot of fish is gonna be 1215 well he's in he's in Illinois. Yeah, I guess 1215 I was thinking I mean he's not gonna be out there like measuring ling cod Checking sloth is gone all the way up to his groin with it That is a twist. I hadn't really thought of. Yeah. You could run into some complications there. Where he'd also never forget his, his insane length when he, you know, totally

Taylor. Yeah. I mean, this could be another, yeah. Taylor. I'm thinking of all the vocations in which this would be a little handy body mod. Yeah. Taylor and more tailors. Yeah, Taylor and more Taylors? Yeah.

Some other things. Well, Brady, I'm on board with it. My colleagues here might not agree with me, but I'm on board with it. And thanks for sharing. Looks like you got a nice little spot there. We've got another regrettable tattoo. And this one is a bit unconventional,

and it was submitted on behalf of Will by his friend Patrick Yee. That's a dirty trick. We're not sure if Will is consenting to this public shaming, but Patrick seemed to think that this was worthy of consideration. He says, Will got this tattoo over 20 years ago from a guy who just got out of jail and

was wanting to get into tattooing as a profession. Somehow he talked Will into letting him be his first unpaid customer. This all took place in Will's garage. It is supposed to be the American flag. I say supposed to be because no one actually knows how many stars there are. Over the years we try to count the stars and actually come up with a different answer. Somewhere between 48 and 53, but never 50. A new revelation to this story told during a dove hunt

in Argentina was that Will was able to hide this from his wife for over two years. And for those of you just listening to this, we have an image of a man holding a redfish and there's a fellow shirtless crouched down in front of him and on that man's back, extending between his shoulder blades is a sort of squarish American flag.

The bars, the stripes don't seem to be sort of connected. They're sort of connected. They're sort of floating. Kind of floating. There are 13 though, I did count. There are 13, okay, so we're good there. And yeah, the stars are, it looks like, it looks like he got hit with birdshot. The spacing is not really uniform with the stars.

There's some overlap. It looks like the guy just sort of penciled out a square and then just did his best to fill him in. I think you guys are being harsh on this one. Come on, it's the American flag. Like you're gonna pull a Steve like, oh, you're not patriotic because you don't like this shitty tattoo. Listen, you know, he was helping out a guy who just got out of jail, need a little money. Okay. Well, would you put it that way? Yeah, yeah, and these guys that say they like Somewhere between 48 and 53 like maybe they're just not good at counting and it is 50 I was gonna say it seems like you could get to the bottom of this with the sharpie and you just mark off the stars as

You count them or everyone one be one way, one method. I just don't think this is an insurmountable barrier here. I think that they should be able to figure out how many stars are on there. Listen, I think the most curious aspect of this whole tale is that he hid it from his wife for two years. Yeah, that leads to a lot of questions. That raises several questions, yeah.

He's got a lot of freckles on his back. So maybe she's just sort of used to variations in color and shading back there, but. Maybe, yeah, whenever he had his shirt off, would he would just always be facing her and kind of rotate around her? Did he always? Hold on, hold on, don't come in, don't come in.

Did he always have like a really dramatic exit out of the room when he walked backwards until he was out of sight? He turned it into a thing, like a part of his personality. Maybe he did some finger guns. Yeah, totally. Maybe it was a long distance marriage. Oh.

Oh, sure. Could have been, yeah. Maybe he was serving overseas. Right. Another reason we shouldn't disparage this tattoo. That's fair, that's fair. You can't be knocking the American flag. I don't care what it looks like. That's fair. That's fair. You can't be knocking the American flag. I don't care what it looks like.

That is fair. Well, Patrick, I should say Will, Patrick, I'm not sure who to thank here. Patrick, thanks for sending this in. Will, thanks for the tattoo. Hopefully you're aware that your friend was putting you on blast. And yeah, if you do take my advice

and mark those out with a Sharpie, just cross them out as you count them, right back in and let us know what you come up with. And Will, if you are listening, we want to hear from your wife real bad. Yeah, actually, yeah. Will, if you're out there, let us know how you managed to pull off

that two-year-long deception. Phil, why don't we take a break here for some listener feedback? Yeah, sure. Four Kids is asking. Oh, and we have a very special guest here. Holy cow, what's going on here? Oh, boy, look at this feller. Yep. Come on in. Hop chaps! Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Clay Newcomb has entered the studio. Stand up and show everyone your pants there, Clay. Where are the cameras at? You got one there. It's kind of hard to see. Yeah, go move over there. There you go. We'll have you hop up on the table here before we let you go.

Clay, welcome. Welcome. Great to see everybody. You're just in time for a couple. Hi, Corinne. Questions and comments from the chat here. You're doing a little first light product test in there? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah?

How's that come along? Literally just, like, not a joke came out of the first light design meeting. On that note, Huntman834 saw you in the thumbnail and says, what are you doing in these parts, Clay? Pops knuckles in some sort of aggressive stance? I don't know why he's popping his knuckles, like he wants to fight you. What are you doing in these parts, Clay? Pops knuckles in some sort of aggressive stance. I don't know why he's popping his knuckles,

like he wants to fight you. What are you doing in these parts, Clay? Well, you know, I'm in Montana for a first light design meeting, like for real, and for the Meteor Holiday Party. Yeah, we're looking forward to that. Yeah, it's big. So the theme for this year's holiday party is fur, and we were encouraged to wear our

best furs. So I assume that these chaps are perhaps related to that and not the product workshop? Well, these are, my buddy, I had these, now I learned this, the correct way to say it is shaps Not chaps Is it French shab? No, it's just it's just the way the Cowboys and mule skinners pronounce it and you'll be corrected All right, so the shaps and they're fur out shaps, which are actually pretty Functional I mean people like a lot of times they use wool,

like sheep wool, but to have fur out bear skin shaps is like top level, top shelf. Very nice. Yeah, I had my buddy make these from, this is actually an Oklahoma bear that I killed. I wear them occasionally. They've actually got cockle bears. Is that the one, you got that on the ground?

No, this was a different one. Oh, gotcha. This is a different one. What've actually got cockle burs. Is that the one you got that on the ground? No, this was a different one Oh gotcha. This is a different one. What else we got here Phil? Oh my god, I gotta go back to my my other tab here Okay, I think we all I think everyone here is gonna know the answer to this question But just a sec set the record straight for the for the listeners Jared is asking are we real Christmas tree or fake Christmas tree people tis the season I just read an article about how Actually Christmas tree farms are really good for the world

Mm-hmm, like they were talking about and I mean it was kind of like an environmental thing Basically, it takes ten years to grow a Christmas tree and these Christmas tree tree farms are actually Providing. Yeah, like habitat essentially, you know, at some level it's a monoculture. Yeah. But so live tree. There's a lot of worse things than a Christmas tree farm. We go and chop ours down in the forest.

Yep. We chop ours down as well. We got a nice one just the other day actually, 12 footer. Well, nice is. Yeah. There's some debate about whether or not... I saw a meme the other day that said, she was a 10 in the woods, but a 2 in the house. And it was talking about the Christmas tree. Actually, my daughter showed that to me. It was funny. It was like a real ugly Christmas tree.

I guess that could be slightly inappropriate. I hope that's not... You're okay. No, no. No, that's rich. Yeah, okay. Okay. Yeah, people look at you funny if you don't cut down your own Christmas tree in this office. Yeah, although man, the convenience of a fake tree, you know, I just think you don't have to water it I have to crawl around on the ground with a pitcher of water and Don't have to sweep up. I also saw a Comedian the other day that said all dads want to talk about at Christmas time is how much water that trees sucking up It's like every morning you want

I gotta put another Mason jar of water in that Christmas tree, man. Four Kids is asking, anyone from the crew doing Muzzle Loader season? Steve is. Steve is. I'm sure there's a couple other people down there going. Yep. Keith is asking, and I can answer this, but how do you sign up to be one of the 500 meat eater listeners that Spencer surveys for the Family Feud type game?

Lately, he's been going to the meat eater subreddit. So if you go to reddit.com slash r slash meat eater TV, there's a nice community of folks there having discussions about our operation here. And Spencer will often go up there and hit them up and ask him to fill out a Google Doc with all of the family food questions. So if you want to be a part of that,

head on over to the subreddit and subscribe. Do you guys have any, man, I feel like we're hitting all these Christmas questions early, but these are some of the only ones we've gotten in the show. But this is a big one. Wild game recipes for Christmas. You have go-tos.

I don't really have a go-to for Christmas itself, but typically when we are, if we're hosting family or for visiting folks, it's a good time to bring a cooler full of meat and pass it around and share with folks. And then typically if we're making a big dinner for the family a few nights in a row, one of those nights we'll do some elk steaks on the grill.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of it depends on what you piled up that year, you know? Like, we'll do some combo of fish and- Fish for Christmas? Oh yeah, like some salmon, king salmon or halibut. And then we'll also have some kind of red meat, like, you know, a moose backstrap elk tenderloin, whatever. This may not, I don't know how this opinion will hit the room considering

this is where we work for meat eater. And I had, I had, uh, somebody asked me the other day at a basketball game. They were like, Claire, you having bear for Thanksgiving? And I was like, no. I ate bear like literally three, four days a week a lot of times. On Thanksgiving we eat yard birds and pig, you know, ham, turkey. like this is the one time a year we actually don't cook a wild game. I think. Which is maybe. And I have done, um, you know, high and quarter hams off of like a white

tailed doe for Chris. They're great. They're great. But I do think it would perhaps be off brand, uh, maybe embarrassing to the company if folks out there knew how many I mean butter balls yeah yeah yeah I think it I think it proved the point to the guy because he was like oh man I bet clay and his family once a year they eat a bear ham for Thanksgiving and it's like no man well a lot of people around

here say they're you know I was asking some people if they're doing any wild turkey and they said, I eat all my wild turkey by the middle of the summer. Yeah, that stuff goes quick. You're not gonna shoot one in April and then keep it frozen all year, not try to touch it. A whole roasted wild turkey, they're just not,

this is nothing you're gonna do to make it even close to it. Butterball figured it out. Yeah. Butterball figured it out. So this is going to be something, Randall, you were going to talk about at the end of the show, but it, it surprised me so much. I have to bring it up for the Q and A. So Keith asks, what film should he do next? Referring to the meat eater movie club and your, your selection. Graham then suggests, Guy on a Buffalo. Keith says, yes, Guy on a Buffalo, forgot all about that. And then Keith pipes in, I think the movie was called Buffalo Writer.

Oh, how perceptive. Buffalo Writer, 1978. Randall, do you want to take it away? Keith, I hate to correct you, but I believe it's an hour and 28 minutes. I was going to announce this before we wrapped up here, but we are doing Meat Eater Movie Club next week and we will be discussing the 1978 film Buffalo Rider and you can stream that for free on Tubi, Roku and or Pluto TV. So if you'd

like to weigh in with your thoughts next week, you know, carve out an hour and a half of your time and we'll see you then to discuss this film. It's, it is the origin of the guy on a Buffalo meme, if you're familiar with that, and it looks to be a rich text. So we'll look forward to digging in. Cool. We'll call it there, but if you guys have any clay questions now that clay is here, we'll, you can hit those up at the end of the show. Yeah. With that, I think our next segment is a hot tip off. The hot tip off is where... We're just making them up as we go. The hot tip off is where members of the crew go head to head with competing pieces of advice. We're just making them up as we go.

The Hot Tip Off is where members of the crew go head to head with competing pieces of advice. After we hear each tip, we'll declare which one is hotter. This week our hot tips come from Yanis, Steve, and Cal. Take it away, Phil. Yanis Boo Jealous. Hey, welcome to another hot tip off just got this tip from a buddy Chris Gill who's behind the camera but if you ever in this situation where you have a trailer you don't have the proper size lug nut wrench for so you can't break it

free because they're on there so tight so you're just using your regular socket set that you have in your. You can't get enough leverage Just use another socket with the extension and stick it on the handle there It's probably gonna be just enough To give you that extra leverage Hmm Wow Vigorating What do to another hot tip off. Everyone knows that pulling the leg on a coyote is a pain in the butt.

Take a sharpening rod. Once you get it through, see here we'll kind of work that one through. See? Once you get it through, take a sharpened steel, put it in there. Just like as you please. Right here, sharpened steel. Boom. Hmm. Hmm.

Ryan Callahan! That's a good one. This is a public playstation. All sorts of awesome areas. Hmm. Ryan Callahan! That's a good one. This is a public fillet station. All sorts of awesome marinas and docks and stuff have these really awesome resources for the traveling angler. You can get it all done here. But it is a public station.

There's individual boaters, there's first timers. There's long timers. There's guides outfitters I eat folks who really know what they're doing and folks who don't so the best that you can do Regardless of your skill level is keep your stuff in your own zone Neat and tidy, great at the world for fish finds And when it's time to clean stuff up, you clean up your area, stick and span, get rid of all the scales and little chunks of junk so it doesn't stink and attract a bunch of bugs.

And most importantly, you're spraying your area now, not your neighbor's. Okay? Here, not here. That's my hot tip. I have, I have three thoughts. You should. There's three tip-offs. One,

Yannis has, I don't think that's a hot tip-off. Yannis is simply, was unaware that a tool exists called a breaker bar, which is used to add leverage to. He didn't wrenches. I had a breaker bar with him.

That was kind of the point of the tip. But I feel like was that not a breaker bar that just another socket. Oh, it was just another socket. He run. I also think it's like, if you don't know that trick, it's kind of like, eh. Yeah. You know? Hot tip leverage.

Two, Cal's tip seemed very specific and maybe sort of just a direct attack on his neighbor at that fish cleaning station at that very minute. It seemed oddly defensive of his space. It seemed like maybe he had been sprayed a few minutes before. Yeah, I don't view, like, it's all, it's great info. Like what he's telling people to do. I don't think it's a tip that like results in you,

like there's no like ultimate payoff. Like it's just like, yeah, being nice. Don't take up too much space. Keep your space clean. Yeah. It was kind of like just giving an excuse or having an excuse to like give someone a tip on their character. Yes.

That's what I thought of. Exactly. Exactly. It was more of a dig. Which I do a lot. Sure. Steve, as sort of the only real hot tip, I think Steve wins by default. Exactly. There's more of a dig, which I do a lot and sure Steve as Sort of the only real hot tip. I think Steve wins by default. Well also that little trick. He's showing you I think you could use skin and deer Skin and other like you could maybe and you don't need that particular tool to do it

But something like sticking something through and boom. Yeah breaker bar or if you don't have that, a socket wrench. But I feel like that's useful. You do a lot of skinning of triggers. I, you know, now that I hear the actual critique and I'm a little more familiar with how we were doing the hot tip off and we realized that the other two really weren't hot tips. And so Steve's really the only hot tip. So we kind of got to vote for Steve's but before that I was gonna say

I Don't think he really needed the bar like he could have just used his hands. I think he was kind of over dramatizing there and That bar was it like those coyotes had sat around for a little bit and Getting them when they're warm, like I was there and it made a huge difference. Well, okay. Yeah.

I trust you. You ought to try it. And if any listeners out there have hot tips for reducing ambient noise when recording short video segments in the field, those would be much appreciated by Steve and Cal. I would also appreciate it. Well our next segment today is Phil's Trivia.

Oh god it's happening. Oh I love this part. Welcome to Phil Trivia, the only game show where I always win. I am your host, Phil the Engineer, and today we're joined by Randall, Brody and Cal. And for some reason the- Clay. I said Cal, Clay! You know. Close.

I'm so sorry, Clay. It's okay. It's off to a great start. I feel bad, we've been working together for so long. God. Okay, get back into it. This is a three round quiz show with questions that have little to nothing to do

with Meteor's Four Verticals, and instead will be centered around pop culture and entertainment, and there's definitely not a prize, so suck it, conservation orgs. Also the auto white balance on this camera is making me look like a smurf. I thought you did that on purpose. That is not intentional. But that's, that's how it's working.

Hey, and for the stat of the week this week today for Phil's trivia, we will be mixing it up a bit instead of using the usual 10 point game that Spencer plays or the three point game that I played last time, there will be a possible 12 points My goodness. To earn today. How, you ask? Well, there will be three themed rounds with four quick hitter mini questions in each round. Still confused? You shouldn't be. And there's no housekeeping this week because I keep my shit clean by not asking nonsensical questions that involve Guy Fieri And with that Hold on, I gotta prep stuff, we're on to the game of trivia. Play the drop. Me?

Power resides where man believe it resides. It's a trick, a shadow on the wall. It's a trick. A shadow on the wall. What's about to happen? You're in the great game now. And the great game is terrifying. Oh, that's fantastic. Phil Dooney, whiteboards. Thank you. You know, we do, I didn't prep this at all. It's kind of a scramble to start this recording today, but yeah, if you can grab those clay, that would be lovely. We're doing it live, so.

We're doing it live. And could you pass one to me as well a couple markers there sure the audience doesn't mind watching all of this this is this is how the show is made this is the lives as I live people yeah oh yeah seamless I don't like this color clay get I want a different. I'll take that one clay Phil's trivia not sure I like purple either, but I'll go with it I'm good with green Purple means no trees. They're gonna be some Star Wars trivia in this. Oh clay No spoilers. All right, our first category is Classic Rock! Oh, this is great. If you think, and I

put it back in your pants Spencer, it's not what you think, I'm gonna be asking questions about Classic Rock music specifically. I would like you to tell me the chronological order of release of these classic rock albums. I will list them for you right now. Your options are The Beatles' White Album, Rumors from Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and Bridge Over Troubled Water from Simon and Garfunkel. Please list the albums in the order of their release. There is a possibility to get zero, one, two, or four points

based on where you slot in the albums. Yes, the white album from the Beals, Rumors by Fleetwood Mac, Ziggy Stardust from David Bowie, and Bridge Over Troubled Water from Simon and Garfunkel. Great question, Phil. Thank you. And so the way you can get one, two, or four points, you get them all right, you get four. But if you get them one in a correct slot, but some other ones are mixed up, you still get that one point. Great. So, are we ready to go here? I think we've got our answers.

No, not even close. Oh, my bad. Clay's writing. Brody's writing. I apologize for not having a tick tock clock. The last time I tried to do sound effects this game I ended up creating a loop for the YouTube stream and it ruined everything and I'm just not gonna take that chance okay just imagine it yeah you guys fans of any of these records you guys mmm I mean rumors is just yeah it would max great there's some good stuff on that Bowie album I'm a stones man not not a Beatles man.

That's why we can never get along. Gotta be one or the other, Phil. That's true. I'm not sure any of these albums have ever made it to Arkansas. How we doing, folks? I think we're good. We're good? All right, go ahead and reveal your answers. We have Randall saying The White Album, your answers. We have Randall saying The White Album, Simon and Garfunkel, David Bowie, and Fleetwood Mac. These aren't in all... I numbered them. You want me to... Yeah, sure. I went Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie. And Clay says, Beatles, Bowie, Simon and Garfunkel, and Fleetwood Mac.

The correct order is The White Album, 1968, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel, 1970, David Bowie. He starred us in 1972 1972 and that leaves rumors in 1977 I believe Randall got four points Brody got one I believe. I got two. It was Beatles then Simon and Garfunkel right? Yes. Okay sorry and then Clay I believe you got two with Beatles and Fleetwood Mac at number four, correct? Yeah right on Good job guys work Phil off to a great start here This next round is called

Posting on main. Oh and hey, are you talking about like posting gripping grins on Instagram for that digital affirmation? No, I'm going to be showing you small portions of iconic movie posters zoomed in. And I would like for you to tell me the movie that that image is from, the movie poster. It's great, Phil. This is clever. Your first image.

What movie poster contains this 10 cent little stamp for the audio listener? it's a round golden circle it says ten cents on it hmm let me know when you guys have an answer this is a movie this is a movie a movie poster just tell me the movie are we just gonna keep going? No, no, no. Yeah, when you guys have this one down, you guys have an answer? Everyone has an answer? Yep.

Yep. All right. Correct. We've got Randall saying Pulp Fiction, Brody saying Pulp Fiction, Clay saying Catcher in the Rye. The correct answer is Pulp Fiction. Way to go, Randall and Brody. I wasn't allowed to watch that film. Yeah, that makes sense. The next image. We have an animated drawing of a horse for the audio listeners. An animated drawing.

Is it an animated movie? Of a horse. There will be no hints. No hints. Oh man. Iconic movie posters. Do we have any ideas from the table? What are you guys thinking? Who framed Roger Rabbit? That is a movie. Robert Zemeckis. I might wave my white flag here. I don't even know where to go. Brody Clay. I've got nothing. I mean I could come up with an answer but. Yep. Alvin and the Chipmunks. That's not even a movie. That's too bad. The correct answer is National Lampoon's Animal House.

Oh yeah, sure. Animal House. I wasn't necessarily thinking that the horse would give it away, but maybe the animation style. Yeah, yeah. A lot of those like sex comedies from the 80s use this sort of style. I think this was probably the most famous one. Next image.

A foot in some sort of net or stocking. An outstretched foot in some netting or pantyhose how's everyone feeling got an answer you got an answer Brody yep don't worry play it's all it's on the up-and. It's... Yeah! The correct answer is the graduate. Oh, Phil. Hey, oh yeah, I didn't ask for answers. How do you guys know all that stuff? Randall Brody, great job.

I think that's a pretty famous image. Again, iconic. Last one for this round. We didn't get film in Arkansas till the 90s. Don't play coal with me, Clay. You were spilling some secrets on the live tour about some video games you dabbled in in Arkansas. For real? I'm going to put you on blast here. What did I say? I have no recollection of this.

Duck Hunt? Oregon Trail? Frogger? All right. For the audio listeners, we have a silhouetted portrait of a man standing. He's got a hat. He's carrying some sort of case. Some sort of suitcase? Randall I believe has an answer. Oh I do. Brody and Clay, how we feeling? Not feeling good because I should know it oh I think I'm gonna give you about 10 seconds here Up clay's writing something down. I still can't get over your blue Tin, I know it kind of it's adding the ambiance. You look like the child from Charlie

and the Chocolate Factory who's disobedient. Violet Beauregard? Yeah. Yeah, she chewed the gum. Yeah. You're turning violet, violet. You actually probably could like be her brother. All right, that's too good. Oh yeah, let's see the answers first.

I'll do it the correct way. Randall says the exorcist. Oh, that's it. Brody says vertigo. Good guess. Clay says Matlock. Just, I can see where you got that. And the correct answer is the Exorcist. Mmm.

Looks like we got a point for Randall there. Well, at the end of round two, we've got Clay with two points, Brody with four, and Randall with seven. Wow. Our last round is where I piss all of you off. This one's just for me This one's called sound bites It has nothing to do with food or Ben Affleck I just think these paparazzi images of Ben Affleck struggling to carry food into his house are very funny

In this round I will be playing sounds or music samples from famous video game franchises. All right. And I would like for you to tell me the video game franchise. Yes. Not a specific game.

Sure, sure. But all these sounds come up from story. It's not just one game. It's big, famous things that even people who don't play video games have probably heard of. Sure. So let's move on to the first sound. Here it is. Yep. Randall's got it. I answered before I heard it. Really? Okay.

I'm excited to see what it is, Clay. And the thing is, here's the thing. I picked these, all the answers are something that you could guess and you might get it. I didn't choose anything too obscure. Yep. So. All right, let's see those answers. Randall says Zelda.

Brody says Pac-Man. Clay says Zelda. If I got this right, I should get a lot of points because I Literally looked at the twinkle in your eye And made that I wrote that before the correct answer is the legend of Zelda From the ocarina of time however it plays in a lot of the game Chess that has like you know I don't know nicely done Ever done boy, it's I think it's getting tight here., you know, an important item in it. Nicely done Clay. Good job Clay.

Any trivia I've ever done. Boy, I think it's getting tight here. Did you know it or did you guess? I mean I didn't, no I did not recognize the noise. How can you be proud of your answer? Because I looked at the twinkle in Phil's eyes before I heard the sound clip and wrote Zelda. And that twinkle.

And I wouldn't have even known what Zelda sounded like. You took information from your surrounding environment to come up with it. Yeah. Gotcha. That's a method that works. All right, next sound. Okay. That's right, that same answer I had before. Would you like to hear it again no I'm good I'm gonna play it anyway all right good reveal your answers pac-man pac-man

clay says Mario the correct answer is indeed Pac-Man Brody clued me in yeah I don't know I don't know Brody clued me in. Yeah. Brody knew that one. I don't know. I don't know. Brody was the only one who looked certain.

I figured it was rather primitive. Yeah. All right. Next sound up. I Again Just the franchise just the franchise. Oh wait. What's this a later derivative of an earlier? Oh We'll get to that all right in the mini follow-up factoid I have for this one specific mini question. Yeah, yeah. Listen to it again one more time, and then I'll ask for your answers.

Oh, Clay's already showing me. Clay says Mario again, you know? That works too. Okay, Randall says Mario, Brody says Street Fighter, Clay says Mario. The correct answer is... Final Fantasy. Oh, that was my next guess.

Final Fantasy, so that is the victory theme whenever you win a battle it plays that song. It's been the same melody since the original Final Fantasy came out in the 80s and to show how it's evolved I've made a montage of three of them. This is the very first one. Oh yeah. Here's from Final Fantasy. And here's Final Fantasy 16. Oh, that's good. Oh, yeah, it's nice. Good stuff. Wow. All right. We are down to our last question. Just a whole world.

Randall has run away with this game, but let's go. Let's do what we're going to do it anyway. Yeah. The last sound. Unfortunately, I can't look at the comments guys because the room can see the comments and I don't want them getting the answer. I'm gonna open up the comments anyway, because Randall's already won the game. I'm seeing how you guys are doing out here. See if anyone can get that one. on the game and I'm seeing how you guys are doing out here. See if anyone can get that one. We can listen to it one more time. One more time.

I'm sure that'll definitely catch on. That'll help. All right. Go ahead and reveal your answers. Randall says Tecmo Bowl. That's a good one. Randall says, Tecmo Bowl. That's a good one. Brody says, Gallagher. Clay says, Mario.

I like Clay's method here. Unfortunately, the answer is Halo Combat Evolved. That's the sound it makes when your shield runs out and then it recharges. Now I remember. We had a bunch of people get it in the chat here. Holy cow. Good job gang anyway That wraps up Phil's trivia with nine points. Thanks. Dr. Randall Williams is our winner Brody had five clay had three clay

I'm proud of you for getting Zelda. Thanks for that Phil. I Worry that the segment might lead to you leaving us here because your talents are on full display and The world now has glimpsed your full capability. This is just what I do when I when I go home so I'll do this anytime anytime you'll have me back thanks thanks gents. Well Clay I know we need to send you on your way here you are in town for a first light product development meeting and you're gonna really gonna push the bear shaps. But can you tell us just a little bit about what you've been up to and what you've been

working on since hunting season slowed down? Well, I had a good season. I had a good deer season, went to Alaska, killed a mountain goat with my bow, which was cool. But I've been, the biggest thing on my radar for the next year is a book that I'm working on and I'm kind of talking about it for the first time. It's, it's been in, we've been working on it for a year already. And then I'll work on it basically for another year. And, and it's about the American Black Bear

It's gonna be really incredible Brody by the way. We've made quite a bit of headway since I last talked Yeah, I need to take a look jump in there. We really did I really feel like it's it's coming together, but super exciting. That's uh, do you have a release date or? You know, I'm afraid to definitely like in the I'm sure you don't have a date on the calendar. It's the 26th release. Yeah, 26th release is where we're at right now. So it kind of feels, it's weird to work on a project that has that long of a runway, never done that before.

So it's kind of uncomfortable to talk about something that's like a year and a half away. Yeah. But it really is. Super exciting though. A lot of what I'm doing. And it's the book you were born to write. Man, I hope so. I hope so.

It's a fascinating story, man, of the American black bear and whatever's happening ecologically on planet Earth has been beneficial to black bear and America's bear story is really just beginning. We're in the good old days. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for stopping by and thank you for entertaining us here for a half hour during a very busy day for you. Yeah, well, appreciate it

guys. Yeah, and tell them you got a couple supporters of the Shaps for First Lights 2027 line. Yeah, I'm gonna push these hard You see that I already picked up on the shaps. Yeah, that was good. All right, good good good. All right guys Phil Do we have any any final comments or questions we should address here? No, there weren't a lot. We had a couple for clay who just walked out the door We'll get him next time. Yeah, I mean there was a great one about about how he names a mule. You know I was really excited to hear that one.

Honestly, we didn't, I got a lot of questions lost in the trivia play along. People were too occupied with your game. Well, I do have a couple calls to action for our listeners. One we've already hit on today, and that is that we will be discussing Buffalo Rider next week on the Meteor Movie Club 1978 Buffalo Rider. You can stream it free on Tubi, Roku and Pluto TV. So take a look at that and be sure to look forward to that discussion next week. And we will also be pre-recording a pair of episodes of Radio Live to air during our holiday break at the end of the month.

And so we want to address as many listener questions as we can during those episodes, which we'll record again ahead of airing. So please write into radio at themeateater.com with any of your hunting and fishing related questions that you'd like the crew to discuss. Again, that's radio at themeateater.com with any of your hunting and fishing related questions that you'd like the crew to discuss. Again, that's radio at themeateater.com and yeah, please, if you got a burning question or if you can think of something that might be humorous for us to discuss, that would be

much appreciated. And then finally, I see it's 12.05, so before we go I have a very special announcement to make. Phil, would you please do the honors? Oh, crap. I didn't prep, I'll bring it up, Randall. It's not a big deal. No, it is a big deal, it's a very big deal. We're gonna pull up the page where you can now pre-order

volume two in our history audiobook series Which covers the Rocky Mountain Beaver trade that is right folks mediators American history the mountain men 1806 to 1840 is now officially available for pre-order wherever you get your audiobooks You can buy it now. Hey look at that and on February 11th, 2025, which is the official release date You'll be able to simply wake up download it and throw in your earbuds and listen to Steve tell you about one of his all-time favorite topics. And he will be getting into the Mountain Men story in all of the gritty and gory detail you could hope for.

So if you go to TheMeatEater.com, click on audiobooks under the podcast tab, you'll see the cover art right there done by the one and only Kelsey Morris. It's a sketch, an original sketch of a mountain man to Steve's demanding specifications. And if you go to that page, the one that fills on now, the publisher's page, you can see where you can pre-order at Apple Books, Audible, audiobooks.com,

audiobookstore.com, Burns and Noble, Chirp, Apple Books, Audible, Audiobooks.com, Audiobookstore.com, Burns & Noble, Chirp, Google Play, Kobo, and Libro FM. So go on there, order a couple, maybe a few holiday gifts for a history curious loved one or friend, and you can look forward to enjoying that in the new year. We're excited for this to get out in the world, and Steve and I are already hard at work on the very next one. So I know folks have been asking about that in the chat over the past few months and here it is. You can click that buy now button at this very moment. And with that we are going to sign off from MeatEater HQ on behalf of Brody, Clay, Phil, Corinne and

myself. Thank you for tuning in and we will see you next week. MeatEater Radio Live is the newest addition to the Mead Eater Podcast feed. Every Thursday at 11am Mountain Time, we'll be going live from Mead Eater HQ on the Mead Eater Podcast Network YouTube channel. This one-hour variety show will feature call-in guests, segments and live feedback from the Mead Eater audience. Then on Friday morning, the episode will be available in audio form on the MeadEater podcast

feed. So come hang with me, Steve, Yanni, Cal and the rest of the MeadEater crew every Thursday at 11am Mountain Time on the MeadEater Podcast Network YouTube channel. And remember, it's live, so anything can happen. Well, almost anything.