The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 673: Cooking Bear Ribs and Getting Boned by Politics

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Steven Rinella talks with chef Michael Hunter of Antler Kitchen Bar, Brody Henderson, Janis Putelis, Randall Williams, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics discussed: The current state of US-Canada relations; Michael’s new cookbook; fox hunting on horseback; lampreys on scrotums; being knowledgeable enough to know when something actually costs money vs. saves money; boned from the left and boned from the right; submit your pictures for our 2026 F*cked Up Old Trucks calendar; Clear Cut Jani; Crown Lands; fall vs. spring turkey; Steve's CWD+ burger; when wild hog ribs are actually too fatty; 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 American history buffs, hunting history buffs, listen up, we're back at it with another volume of our Meat Eaters American History series. In this edition titled The Mountain Men, 1806-1840, we tackle the Rocky Mountain beaver trade and dive into the lives and legends of fellows like Jim Bridger, Jed Smith, and John Coulter. This small but legendary fraternity of backwoodsmen helped define an era when the West represented not just unmapped territory, but untapped opportunity for those willing to endure some heinous and at times violent conditions. We explain what started the Mountain Man era and what ended it.

We tell you everything you'd ever want to know about what the mountain men ate, how they hunted and trapped, what gear they carried, what clothes they wore, how they interacted with Native Americans, how 10% of them died violent deaths, and even detailed descriptions of how they performed amputations on the fly. It's as dark and bloody and good as our previous volume about the white-tailed deer skin trade, which is titled The Long Hunters, 1761-1775. So again, you can buy this wherever audiobooks are sold. Meat Eaters American History, The Mountain Men, 1806 to 1840 by Stephen Rinella. 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. We have a Canadian here from the Great White North, repeat guest, Hunter Chef Michael Hunter in from Toronto.

How's it going, man? It's going well. Thank you. One word answer. Are you excited that we're going to maybe invade your country? Oh, that's such a hard one. I can't. I can't.

I'm going to piss off a whole lot of people. You can't do it in one word. Not one word. No, no. Any tips for a country wanting to invade Canada? Should we hit from the East end? I mean, our military is, how should we come in? Is non-existent compared to the American military. So it's not. You think a Marine landing up in the maritime provinces, just coming right up through the plains? I think a multi-faceted approach would probably military. So it's not a Marine landing up in the maritime provinces, just coming right up through the plane.

I think a multi-faceted approach would probably hit him or hit him all over. Overwhelm them. And, uh, I think in, uh, and red dawn, didn't the Ruskies hit us down through the planes coming down through you. Why did you guys stop them in red dawn? I never thought of that. I got to just let it slip right through. I love red dawn is the place to go to brush up on your history. You ever seen the movie red dawn? You know it's been so long and I don't I have this wonderful ability to forget movies. Well they just kind of say that

they came down through but there was no mention to like a heroic resistance. So I guess you have to keep mine as we prepared. As we prepare to hit you guys hard. You don't have like a little magical line or anything built along there? No, no. He's got a new book out. We're going to talk about his new book. We're going to talk about his background that I didn't know that he, he, this is the only person I've ever, this is the closest

I've ever been to someone that was on a, the closest I've ever been to someone that was on a Fox hunt. Yeah. Yeah. I grew up as a kid, you know, riding, riding a pony. My mom was on a horse and we would Fox hunt on horseback. Yeah. With little bugles and so yeah, the, the, the man that trained the hounds, the huntsman, you know, he was from England and,

uh, you know, he, he had a horn and would blow the horn and the hounds would, you know, go left or go right or come back. And yeah, it was, you know, he probably had like 30 hounds out. Um, and yeah, he was. How did those hunts end? Uh, most of the time by, you know, they would get

on a chase and run, run a scent for a while. And then, you know, I would say 30% of the time by, you know, they would get on a chase and run, run a scent for a while. And then, you know, I would say 30% of the time they'd actually kill a, kill a cow. Oh, the hounds would kill. Yeah. So you don't like walk in there and. No, like there's no, no one's got a firearm, you know, I don't think anyway, not that I ever saw. It's also been quite a few years since I've done it, but most of the hunts would, you know, wind up, we'd get on a chase right around for a few hours. They'd pack them back up into the, into the trailer and

then we'd go have a, they'd call it the hunt breakfast. And then it'd be at, you know, someone's farmhouse or back at the club. There was a farm kind of clubhouse. Um, and it'd be like a early, early late afternoon kind of dinner sort of thing. They'd call it a breakfast. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, no, I was just, I was saying it was just, sorry, go ahead. No, I was just saying it was just, they call it the hunt breakfast. Isn't it funny that that type of hunting has generated as much angst as it has? A lot of anger. I can tell you about some stuff. If you think that's bad, I can tell you about some stuff that will blow your mind.

Yeah, so, you know, in England they banned banned it and it's more like a cultural, sort of historical, bit about hunting, but in England it's actually banned, which is kind of sad, and it still does happen in Canada. And there's clubs in the US as well, like I have a friend in Georgia. So the huntsman actually that I grew up with, he now lives in, I think it's Georgia, Bear Creek Hunt Club or something, something like that.

When was the last time you went? I would have been like 14 years old. I was a kid, yeah. God, God, it's old news. And then he was actually the guy that took me hunting for turkey, for like the very first, I'd never been hunting for food before.

So I was in high school, and I was working in restaurants as a teenager and I had just seen the documentary Food Inc and was interested in organic, you know, vegetable gardening at home and more organic food. And he took me hunting for turkey and I was just absolutely blown away by the flavor of wild turkey compared to, you know, the farm

stuff I'd been, you know, everyone grows up eating and, uh, and I just wanted to eat a more natural diet. by the flavor of wild turkey compared to the farm stuff I'd been, everyone grows up eating, and I just wanted to eat a more natural diet. So that's kinda how I started hunting. Great. Yeah. Anyone can check out the tattoo on his arm. Yeah, the turkey, wild turkey.

Let me see. Turkey wing. There you go. Yeah. Look at that. The tip of my, well. If I got a tattoo You know what I want to get a tattoo of is um

Their day I was making a comment that I was talking about I Don't want this tattoo, but someone should get it. I was making a comment about them cutting. This applies to both of us because we share the Great Lakes, our two great nations. Them cutting all kinds of positions that work on lamp ray control on our end. I saw that. Yeah.

And I was saying that the guys making those cuts wouldn't know a lamp ray if it was latched to their scrotum. That'd be a sweet tattoo. I don't want it. I don't want that tattoo, but it'd be a sweet tattoo. That'd be gnarly. Where should the person? On Chester.

Because Chester already has that little. But would the tattoo be? So Chester gets a scrotum? He already has a scrotum. The different versions of scrotum tattoo on Chester already has that little, but would the, would the Chester gets a scrow a sort of, he already has a scrotum. Different versions of scrow tattoo on Chester. Chester already has a scrotum. What does he think it is? A salmon fly? It's a like fishing hook, right? He's got a scrotum. He's got a scrotum.

I'm going to put some little, the little hair marks on it. And then I'm going put some little, the little hair marks on it. And then I'm gonna, we're gonna have to like put them under, I guess we're gonna give them a roofie. We're gonna have to roofie them. And then I'm gonna tattoo a lamprey latched onto it. Going all the way up. I thought you might tattoo the lamprey onto someone's.

Yeah, and then you could have the tail kind of hanging down below the shorts when they're out running But if you're at the beach in your shorts Coming out the hell I feel like that's sort of a trendy thing right now is having a tattoo that goes down your thigh and People think what's that? You know what's that hook to to? Yeah. Somebody who's listening may go get it and then email the meat eater or radio at the meat eater podcast and we can cover that off in tattoos I regret.

I don't know. Cause that dude that got Hugh Glass tattooed on him. Holy shit. Got tore up. But he had his little nipple. He had his little nipple become like a part of the bear. His little nipple was the bear's ear. I think. Oh, I missed that.

That's funny. It wasn't a great, the shading. Listen, people tore that guy a new one. I felt bad for the son of a gun. A little terrible for him. We got so many letters. So the last couple, here's the deal, man. Phil, I wish we had like a theme, like a rant theme song, but you used heavy metal on Cal's rant. I did. Yeah. I can do yeah. Maybe something more confessional. There are plenty of metal options. Can you do something like to Seeger, like something maybe like to Night Moves? Oh of course yeah I would love to. Because look

I mean the end of Night Moves when he gets like, have I explained Night Moves to you? I remember a Night Moves rant from years ago but you can do it again it's been a while. to you? I remember a night moose rant from years ago, but you can do it again. It's been a while. People think that night, here's what night moose is about. You've explained this to me. Oh yeah, we all know. We all know what it's about. I'm not gonna explain it again. Yeah, something like that, but the end, the end, like woke last night to the sound of thunder, that part of night moves. Yeah, a little more contemplative. Yeah, something like that. But the end the end like woke last night to the sound of thunder that part of night moves Yeah, a little more contemplative. Yeah, so but so we got boat look like I can't even keep track of all the letters we've gotten on the subject of Because the last few the last bunch

Two of the last three episodes we've gotten into like all the hot-headed like all the stuff going on and at the federal level We had like all the hotheaded, like all the stuff going on at the federal level. Um, we had, uh, the president and CEO of Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership on talking about the, we do an annual conservation state of the union thing. And he was talking about, um, what the next four years is going to look like in dealing with the new administration. After that, after we recorded that, before it aired, we had all these layoffs of the federal land management agencies, talked about that. It's been a quick moving thing. In fact, so quick moving that we keep changing the release cadence of our episodes because things are happening so fast

We got a I think partly maybe because of my comment about laying off about people making cuts to lamprey Lamprey control efforts if you're not aware like lamprey is our Noxious species there. They're an invasive exotic. They're in the Great Lakes. And when they came into the Great Lakes, they just decimated, I mean, decimated Great Lakes fisheries, including really wiping out native fish. I mean, they just brutalized lake trout.

And the Great Lakes fishery, there's a commercial component to the Great Lakes fishery. There's a huge, so food for people, right, through tribal fisheries, a huge recreational driver. I mean, it is, it is, it is of paramount, recreational fisheries are of paramount importance to economies in the Great Lakes. So by some city kid, tech kid, going to DC and sniffing around and feeling like he's being a hero by making all these cuts that he has no idea what he's talking about, meaning he wouldn't know a lamp

or if it was latched to his scrotum, isn't productive. Like it's not saving money, right? It's costing money. Because in the case of something like this, controlling lamp raises costs tons of money. Destroying the fisheries in the Great Lakes costs a ton of money.

So I was pointing out, I can't view this as, I can't view that as following into that as following into, into something like American, America first doctrine. Maybe they're doing it to bone Canada. Stretch. Maybe they're like, I know it's going to sink American fisheries, but this is really going to put the herd out of them in Canada too. I don't know. I don't know. We got so many letters in. Some guy, there's been a lot of this going on and people like with how much stuff is happening right now on conservation, how much stuff is happening right now on cutting conservation spending in the US.

There's this whole thing of like, well, that's what you, that's what you people should have expected. What'd you think was going to happen? And I had a guy being like, you voted for him and here's the thing. And I pointed this out to him. I have never ever said, I've never said who I voted for. In fact, I've not said who I voted for because when I vote, I'm voting for, I, like on this show, my, my, my promise to audience has always been on this show, that I try to, it's hard, as Brody brought up,

Brody's sitting right here. Brody recently brought up the point that we always talk about conservation stuff in a bubble, right? Like, you take conservation issues and you try to, you try to pull them out of their broader political context and that's what we have historically always done on the show because we try to talk about issues that impact hunter like primarily issues of

importance to impact hunters and anglers and so we leave off like stuff about you know how one might feel about supporting Israel or any number of other things. Like you always try to leave it off. If I'm voting, I'm voting with other factors in mind besides just what benefits hunters and anglers. So in my discussions about conservation issues, I never talk about, like I never on this show go and say who I voted for and I never endorse, I never explicitly endorse candidates. Because the same way, because people in their personal lives and in their daily lives and professional lives cannot trim their world down to just what impacts hunting and angling.

Even though the show might have the aspiration of just talking about what impacts hunters and anglers, all of our lives are more complicated. So for me to go into talking about who I voted for and endorsing certain candidates, which I always avoid doing, I avoid endorsing candidates. I do that because when you vote for a specific person, you're voting for a whole pile of policies. And I might have a personal feeling about Israel, for instance, and that might influence how I vote, but that is going above and beyond the brand promise here of just talking about hunting and angling issues.

So it's funny to have somebody like, well, you, he said, you voted for Trump for, because it's free speech issues. I said, hey, point out where I've ever said that. I said, I support straying away from the brand promise this is gonna be the last time I stray away from the brand promise I'd like I like what Trump has to say about freedom of speech I don't like social media platforms being becoming a political arm and needing to bow to political pressures about what they cover okay Okay, don't like it. I Also don't like them the the current White House kicking the AP out of

White House press briefings because they refused to say Gulf of America. That is also like a like a weird Contradiction because that is an attack on freedom of speech in a weird way. So all this stuff cuts both ways. I've never said who I voted for, but I'll tell you this, I'm gonna like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, this is as much as I'm gonna say about it. I have not voted for a major party presidential candidate in 16 years. Okay? I've, in 16 years, I have not voted for a Democrat or Republican presidential candidate. Why? The biggest reason why is no matter what you do, you get boned.

This is the point I was recently making on, I tried to make this point on an Instagram post where I was saying, hunters and angers, you always got to be paranoid because someone's going to come get you. You go look like, why do you always get boned by a major party? Okay. Go to Colorado where Colorado has like Democrats like firmly in control of Colorado. Colorado has become kind of like the hotspot

of attacks on hunters. Washington, Washington state. These are like Western states. There's other examples elsewhere. Washington state, big time Democrat, big time assault on hunters and anglers. All the time. This is the state that like banned fishing during COVID.

You could go into your yard during COVID and hit a golf ball into a pond and be legal, but this is, I'm not, I'm not, this is the truth. You couldn't go in your yard and cast a Rapala into a pond during the pandemic. Like that is the sort of, that is the sort of attitude that's just like a small issue, but it's like an attitude they have about it. They are reflexively low on tag allocations. They are reflexively. Um, you're talking about Washington. Yeah.

Like all the, like tons of opposition around any kind of predator management, right? Limiting people's access to natural resources. Colorado coming out, like you have a governor whose husband is an, like an active animal rights activist, and they're pushing a ban on Bobcat and lion hunting in Colorado. Now Colorado has this bill coming forward to change the language of what the fish and game agencies mandate is to say, like, um, instead of saying shall

use hunting and fishing, they want to change it to may use hunting and fishing, okay? A little minor switch to sort of tone, like to sort of de-emphasize the role of hunters and anglers in wildlife management. And it takes power away from Colorado parks and wildlife. Yeah, and they had a, they put it to a vote to do a wolf reintroduction on a timeline that was not in fitting with the state department of wildlife's timeline.

So usurping the state's management agency, right? Their management protocols. That's how you get boned, like by Democrats. And they'll always bone you. They'll bone you on gun issues. Republicans are gonna, usually as we're seeing right now, Republicans are gonna bone you on conservation issues. Generally, not always, but generally.

We had an economist write in. He's like, first he lays out all his bona fides. Randall, your man of letters. Do you say bona fides or bona fides? You start to be very pretentious. Bona fides. I've tried bona fides a couple of times. No.

It just feels, doesn't roll off the tongue right. I think you have to tilt your head back. So you're talking about your nose. No, but isn't bona fides just not correct? Seems like a French film director. Now I'm thinking of Bonaparte. Bonafide. No, I think it is right.

Bonafides. Oh, I've heard it both ways, but it's not very common. What? Here's what threw me off. Roark, Denver. He's a Navy seal. Officer lacrosse player, man of letters lacrosse players. Well, he said bona fides.

So then I thought maybe I've been doing it wrong my whole life. Isn't there like, uh, where the, how pronunciation works. I'm going back to, I don't know how that I can't read that. What's, what's, you know what I mean? When you have like the, the little hats on top of the vowels, the diacritical indicate how to diacritical marks. Thank you. I don't even know if that's the right term.

So, okay. There's probably a right way. Brody's got it pulled up. He's gonna play with the internet pronounce. Yeah, good luck, dude. I think they put this stupid Bonafides. It is. It is. Yeah, but I'm gonna say Bonafides. What did you Michael? I've never heard Bonafides, so I would think it was bonafides. I'm sticking with it. He lays out all of his economic, he lays out all of his economic bonafides. Credentials. Credentials.

Yeah, just skip the whole thing altogether. Or maybe, do you roll the R, credentials? I think it's some circles. That's the back of the throat. Lays out his credentials. With the planet fitness. As the back of the throat lays out his credentials. Uh, yeah, just note. Yeah, we're good. Message from our sponsor.

No free ads. Phelps has a new thing this spring. They're coming out with what they call the prime cuts, Turkey diaphragm calls. And one of them is called the Clay Neukom PrimeCut, and I'm not just gonna talk about it, I'm gonna blow on it here. I'm a simple turkey hunter who likes a simple system. I'm a simple turkey hunter who likes the simple system. I usually carry one, maybe two diaphragm calls in a single pot call every year.

Don't even carry a box call. I wanted a versatile diaphragm call that was the best of two worlds. I wanted loud and raspy, a call that I could cut on, but also one that was soft and subtle that I could purr and kiki run on. I love to make those raspy cuts and the soft, subtle purrs on the same call. And I find many of them, I can't do both. And this call that I worked with Jason Phelps to build

simplifies my turkey kit. These prime cuts come in a three pack. There's the Clay Newcomb call, but also Steve Rinella and Jason Phelps favorite turkey diaphragm cuts. You can check all these out along with all the other meat eater and Phelps turkey calls at store.themeateater.com. Here's the problem in talking about, Here's the problem in talking about,

here's the problem in talking about the cuts. There's a ton of problems in talking about the cuts. The way they're kind of framing it, they're kind of framing, if you talk about the sort of ham-handed conservation cuts that are gonna wind up costing us money in a long time, the pro-cut crowd, of which I'm kind of a part of in some of these areas, the pro-cut crowd will then act

like what you're saying is you want to spend money on, you want to spend money on, you know, funding certain plays for children in Panama. It's like, oh, if you want to point out some really stupid things Doge is doing, that must mean that you support spending taxpayer dollars on putting on plays in Panama. I'm like, no, no, I don't equate putting on plays in Panama

or whatever the hell it was. I don't equate that with letting the lamprey get reestablished and destroying Great Lakes fisheries. It's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. So you're like, they try to bucket you in like yet another person unhappy with what's going on in general.

It's like, no, I'm not unhappy in general. I'm unhappy with some of these things that are happening that are really stupid. And I think that if you let, like, if you need to make cuts to conservation spending, that's painful, but at least that you'd bring in new agency heads, let them fill out their agencies,

and then give them 90 days, 120 days, whatever the hell it is. And trust me, 90 days is not gonna make a big difference here, 120 days, whatever. And say, come to me with the 10% reduction and at least let someone who would know a lamprey was latched onto their scrotum, decide what things ought to go. It's just the way they're doing it, it like, the way they're doing it is reckless.

And I'm talking about issues that are in America that impact Americans, like public lands and public land, like public lands are definitionally American because any American can go on them, right? It's like you can't take these kinds of cuts and act like this is part of this America first doctrine. It's just not. And I refuse to act like that by saying that you don't want to gut conservation funding

and public lands management is somehow like an implicit approval of us wasting our money on foreign escapades. It's totally different. This economist writes in, the entire federal workforce only makes up 4.4% of the federal budget. Their incomes are also spent in the economy, which has a positive ripple effect

known as the money multiplier. Trying to achieve a federal budget surplus by cutting workforce jobs is like trying to dig a 10 acre farm pond with a hand trowel. So what is the real objective with Doge if it's not to achieve a federal budget surplus? I don't know. Did I say I was reading a letter? Yes. I'm reading a letter. A while ago. Back to reading a letter. The letter goes on. So what's the real objective with DOJ if it's not to achieve a federal budget surplus? I don't know. This is the letter. What I do know for certain is that a lot of necessary federal employees in many of our public lands are going to get punished for something that shouldn't involve them. I also know that even if Doge gets everything they want, they still won't even come close

to making up for the additional expenses that Trump's economic policies promise to add to the national debt. And we've gotten a million of these letters. I was the other day talking to a federal researcher who works on salmon projects in Alaska. So here you have in Alaska, like salmon is a huge part of the economy. Remember earlier I was talking about with wildlife, like fisheries in the Great Lakes. Fisheries in the Great Lakes have a small commercial

component and a huge, small commercial, keep saying commercial, small commercial component, huge recreational component. In Alaska, like if you take the commercial impact of salmon, it's enormous. And then there's recreational, Like if you take the commercial impact of salmon, it's enormous. And then there's recreational. And then they have a third category of management strategy. Like Alaska Fish and Game looks at sort of three things

when they look at allocation of a resource. Top of the pile, first consideration for Alaska's subsistence. Meaning if you look, they break out people that are going to extract wildlife resources and put them into three buckets. Subsistence sits on top. Subsistence takes priority. Meaning people in remote Alaska who rely on fish and game resources as their protein source, subsistence is top. Then comes commercial recreational. They're tiered out, right?

And there's always like a little bit of fighting between them. But here salmon drive all three layers of the stack. Salmon drive subsistence, lifeways for many, many people along river systems and along the coast. It's like the primary protein source. Huge in terms of commercial fishery. Huge in terms of recreational fishery.

Of paramount importance. So these geniuses that are gutting conservation spending have gone in and you keep staff in place, but you freeze their credit cards. That's like the move right now. You put a dollar limit on credit cards. So you have people that are gearing up right now during the salmon runs to begin all their work,

monitoring salmon runs, describing salmon runs, habitat improvements, right? And you say, oh no, we're still gonna pay you. Your credit cards are frozen, so you can't do any of your work. That seems like a great way to save money. They'd be like, if at this company I came in and said, no, no, no, everybody, I'm freezing your credit cards.

But you're like, but today, because I'm already getting paid a salary, I was gonna spend a few bucks to drive down the road to do my work. No, no, don't do that. Just sit tight. We're saving money. Really?

You're not. It's like, you're not. It's like, you're not. Oh, I was getting back into like not voting for major, oh yeah, I said not voting for major party candidates because they always bone you. They always bone you. And I've never voted for like talking about voting. I've never voted for a third party that I actually liked.

I just vote for third parties in order to embolden third party prospects. See how far that's how good that's gone in the last 16 years. I think Ross Perot, no one's topped Ross Perot right? He's the prime example I think. So you can see how effective my campaign is. Yeah, clearly. We got third party candidates coming through the roof. It's not working. My plan to embolden, my one man's plan to, my one man's plan to embolden and prop up third party options in America is failing. Is this leading the news cycle in Canada too,

or is it, where does it land? I definitely, we definitely hear a lot about American politics and especially now with the, you know, the tariff, you know, stuff that's going on, uh, it's definitely more, more prevalent. Um, you know, politically Canada has been more of a boring place and you know, since COVID, I

think they're, they're taking a page from, from, I don't know if it's American politics or who's really fueling the, the divide, but there's definitely more of a divide now between left and right in Canada than I remember, you know, in the last 10 years. Yeah. Um, and we do, yeah, we do get a lot of American news. So yeah, the lamp thing in the doge.

They can do whatever they want with the tariffs. I'm staying out of it. It's stupid. It's stupid. I'm staying out of it. It's stupid. It's stupid. I'm staying out of it. Yeah. It's not worth even talking about me and Yanni ran for

president one time and we ran under better hunting and fishing, better hunting and fishing for America. You ran in a bubble. Yeah. We tried to bubble. We ran in a bubble. But my God, the only thing I can hope, I put a thing on Instagram where I was like, I don't even, I never met the kid, some kid that works in North Carolina for the Forest Service,

who's like the only biologist in some you know hundreds or thousands of square miles of national forest, got brought back on. I don't know if there's gonna be, if this is all like gonna start making more sense and we're going to start like reprioritizing public lands and wildlife resources. But this again I think is coming from people that just don't care. They don't know. I don't think these kind of kids, these kind of kids that are doing this, like they just don't seem to me like real hunting and fishing kids. And they're dabbling in this, like they just don't seem to me like real hunting and fishing kids. And they're dabbling in a world that they just don't understand the implications of it.

They don't understand what's going on in the last hundred years in this country around wildlife conservation and what it means economically. And to come in and be like that there's that there own in the libs by gutting wildlife habitat and wildlife habitat protections in this country. It's like it just doesn't make any sense, man. What else? We're doing a next year's calendar on old trucks. A certain kind of old truck. Good pivot.

Yeah, so we've done, this is a, I'm soliciting, well, Corinne even had a little note in our, we had like, we have new stuff in a document and Corinne has a little joke, make some, make a joke about tariffs. What did you have in mind Corinne? No, that's how you kind of open things. No, no, I talked about us in Bait in Canada. That was my joke. Too much to cover. What did you have in mind Corinne? It's all these friends here. I don't have tariff jokes. I thought you'd be, if I put it up top, you'd have a thing off the top of your head. We talked about this at dinner last night. We were like, are we gonna... Well, his book's gonna be more expensive.

Oh, there we go, bro. I don't know, because... You know, tariffs. Three tariffs. Where's it getting printed? We have the same publisher. There's Canadian and American Penguin Random House. So hopefully they'll figure out... I think that it's gonna be American Penguin Random House. So hopefully they'll figure out. I think that it's gonna be equal across the world. But I hate to say this,

but your book is beautiful and full of photographs. And I got a feeling it ain't printed in either of our countries. No, it's not. Cause that's hard to get done. It is not. It's one of those things. It's one of those things.

We don't do anymore. It's one of those things that, it's funny when you get exposed to different industries. It's one of those things that, um, yeah, it's funny when you get exposed to different industries, it's one of those things that just, um, that, that America, Canada too, not too old up for in a weird way. Like if a book, a book that goes into a book that winds up being like a bunch of photographs colored in it, it's just like, we got out of the bits. Yeah. We got out of the bits. Yeah. It got out of the bits. Yeah, it's so weird it's like certain things like like sewing certain kinds of clothes and stuff and

Waterproof laminates and stuff like us like got out of the business Yeah, it's kind of a shame. Yeah, what kind of trucks you gonna feature in this? Well, tell you Yanni when you ask I hope they're gonna be trucks that can still start and be driven. Mmm. Mmm Yeah, what are they? No, what are the parameters? Let me lay it out. Yeah in the past we've done we did a calendar the first one was fucked up old deer stands and We had some of our own fucked up old deer stand photos and then we got we crowd sourced fucked up old deer stand photos fucked up old deerstand photos. And then we got, we crowdsourced fucked up old deerstand photos. Then we did fucked up old taxidermy again, some of our own.

We got some from people. And then we did. Took a break from that series for one year. Yeah. And then did fucked up old shitters had some of our own and had other people's old shitters this year. We're doing fucked up old trucks. Hunting trucks, but we want to put hunt in the title.

Yeah, but I don't want to call it that. It's just too many words for the calendar. But you know what I'm saying. Rigs. But I think, Yannis- Fucked up old huntin' rigs. What about- I think Yannis has a point.

I agree with Yannis. I'm not done laying it all out. All right. Just give me a second. Go ahead. Hold your point, Yannis. I'm just trying to lay the base here because there's certain things that are different. I'm right here. What's the email address? fuckedupoldtrucksatthemeteater.com.

The calendar is fucked up old trucks. It's the 2026 calendar. If you send it, so here's the deal. We're partnering on this year's calendar with back country hunters and anglers. The reason we're partnering with BHA on this year's calendar is because I think they're, no, I think it's kind of like, there are a lot of public lands fights, just a brewing right now. And as we talked about on our conservation,

state of the union conservation piece, one of the things I liked about, again, one of the things, one of the things I liked about Trump 1.0, Trump's first administration, is they didn't, he campaigned on not wanting to sell off public lands and stay true to it. There's a tenor shift right now. There are a bunch of public lands fights brewing, state level, federal level. It's gonna get hot. So we're gonna partner with BHA on the calendar.

If one of your photos gets selected for, if one of your photos gets selected for, if one of your photos gets selected for the calendar, we're going to send you, what do you get? A $500 gift card. I think we're doing 250 gift card. You'll get a free BHA membership. In a swag bag. Yeah, in a swag bag. So we'll send you a gift card. It's good for first light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, DSD decoys.

Anything at the store. You'll get a year long BHA membership and BHA is putting together swag bags of other kinds of goods. Yeah, and I think it's also important to note that a portion of the sale of every calendar will be donated to BHA. Yeah, so we gotta do it all,

but for every calendar we sell, two or three bucks will go directly to BHA. Yeah. So we gotta do it all, but for every calendar we sell, two or three bucks will go directly to BHA. Yep. We're gonna peel like our end, we're gonna kick in a couple, and then we're gonna maybe raise the calendar another buck. Is that kind of where we're at? I don't know, the price is gonna stay the same.

You think the price is gonna stay the same? Yeah, I think it'll stay the same. Okay, so for every calendar sold, we gotta talk to the eggheads, the guys with the sharp pencils. But for every calendar sold, we'll figure, I just got, we gotta talk to the eggheads, the guys with the sharp pencils. But for every calendar sold, it'll be like a literal, like calendar sold, it'll be whatever, like two or $3,

goes directly over, okay? Just like direct transfer over to BHA when you get the calendar. It's fucked up old trucks, but what we mean is fucked up old huntin' rigs. Now, Yanni, go ahead. I sure hope these fucked up old hunting rigs will still start and be able to be driven. Yeah, I don't think we should.

We don't want 12 photos of just burning, like burned up hulks of metal. Yeah, rusting. You don't have to go far to find all those. Why do you have to pick all those burning? What are you talking about? I just think like- I'm reading about the Battle of Manila, right? We're looking for something with character not just that it's been really fucked up What if it's like in terms of like mold and rod and old blood and like fish?

Have you ever thumb through one of the calendars Yeah, okay. It's great breath. Yeah. And shitters, and shitters, we had a poorly built shitter that the wind had blown down into a gully. Okay. And then we had a shitter that someone had carved out of a giant, that was some kind of cedar, carved a gnome shitter out of a giant cedar with a chainsaw where you actually walked into a hollow tree. So you can have a, it's not like it's going to be, it's not like people are going to buy the calendar.

It's going to be 12 burned up trucks. I'm just saying like in the event, in the, in the event that a guy has like a, an old hunting rig that the doors have fallen off and the, the floors rusted out, But he also has a photo of a truck that he wrapped around a telephone pole. We're looking for the former rather than latter, right? Like we want character in the, in the fucked up in this. You're, you're, you're thinking that you're thinking that your average dude out there can go out and go left and find a burned out fucked up old hunting trick and then go right. It's like, how many do they have access to?

I would think... I'm just saying, we don't want... Just to... Watch your use of we. I am only suggesting that we're not looking for fucked up as a measure of, and how bad of shape it's in. It's gotta have some character to have some you can walk

down to the junkyard where the airport find 20 fucked up old trucks like yeah everybody knows what we mean no no no I don't I think you should just okay in your mind just paint me a picture yeah this is all a fucked up old hunting rig that you would be like that's a good one. I'm gonna put that one in February He's gonna post one the ytria, yeah the suburban cut off some sparring truck

I think he ain't fucked up You know what I told Brad last time I was down there? You tried to ride in it You know what I told Brad last time I was down there? I said to ride in it. It is, it is. You know, I told Brad last time I was down there, I said like, Brad, one of two things needs to happen. You need to fix the power steering box on this or widen the road. And he's like, funny you mentioned that. It's a thing about widening the road.

Yes, it is. That's what I'm talking about. But here's the thing, if you go look at fucked up old deer stands, it's like thumb through fucked up old deer stands, it's like thumb through fucked up old deer stands. Is it a 12 photos of crumpled up ladder stands? No, I've just been through house fires. I'm just I don't think it's a deviation from what we've done in the past. I'm just trying to give people a sense of if they're not familiar with the series. What kind of idiots do you

think are listening? I take back everything that I've said. Could be your truck. Did you hear what Philip said back there? Yeah. I did. It could be your truck. Could be your grandaddy's truck. Well, Steve, you've done an impression of many of your loyal listeners. I think it sounds something like, so they're out there. Just saying. No, that's the noise for people I don't agree with. We're looking for oddities. Yes. And I feel...

Okay, but that's not the calendar series. It's not odd old trucks. Yeah, I know. And so I think we have a little bit of... Odd old trucks. You know what I'm saying, calendar? You like to have, you know, friction at times. I think we have a little bit of friction

between the title and what we're actually looking for. I don't think so. We're gonna look at a thousand different photos and we're gonna pick the cool ones. Like I'd like a hunting ring. Why are you guys even talking about me and Brody's project? Yeah.

Brody took over this year's calendar. Where's your, give me your calendar, bona fides, man. I think I had a couple rather clever captions in the fucked up old shitters calendar. I think if you ask for- You know what, when we do captions, cool old huntin' trucks.

When we do captions for fucked up old trucks, guess who ain't comin'? I'm pointin' at him. Not invited. Ouch. But I love it so much. If you just ask for it- Not invited. Unless you apologize. I wasn so much. If you just ask for it. Unless you apologize.

I wasn't trying to correct anything you've said. I was just trying to add some guidelines. You know, if you have a truck that the driver's seat's ripped out and you have to sit on a milk crate or something. Because he appreciates. Right now I'm Trump. You're Zelensky. Oh, shit.

If you want to come to this calendar's fucked up old trucks meeting you apologize and thank me Thank me I will not Now now I do want Randall to come to the meeting you still come From just like vomiting into our email just like vomiting into our email. I know, but a bajillion hours. Let me, let me take this more. I can wrap it up here real quick. Sorry Michael. Can I put a finer point on it? No, we're going to switch to Michael. Can I put a finer point on it? I am fine with this. We want it to be, you want it to be fucked up in an interesting way. Just not, uh huh. Alright, I'll take it back. No, I understand. Go on. Then I'll retort. No, that's,

that's all, I was just, I was just trying to suggest that like, the more interesting it is as a fucked up thing, the more likely it is to end up in the calendar. Not just your average, like, I rest my case. Add that to the list of things that Steve feels very passionate about. His calendar project.

Okay, please. You're making, you're a solution looking for a problem. We have never had a problem with our audience understanding what we mean when we say fucked up old taxidermy. Like when we did fucked up old taxidermy, go look through the calendar. Is it burned up taxidermy? There was some charred taxidermy, I believe in that. You're right.

A little bit. And there was a shitter that had burned up. Yeah. So, gasoline in the matches and have at it. Um, but you're, you're acting like you're acting like people don't understand what we mean when we say a fucked up old truck. And you're like, you're, you're, you're infantilizing them and you're, um, what's that? What does another word like that?

You're patronizing them and infantilizing them as though they don't know a fucked up old truck when they see one. Well, trucks are a dime a dozen. There's so many trucks out there. Yeah. I have to be more specific. I'm with Randall I got here. I got a way to put numbers around it. Yeah, we'll put numbers around it I bet I bet you right now $100. Mm-hmm $100 as we sit right now where we're sitting right now last time you bet with me you didn't pay up Oh, what do I owe you money? Yeah for what for when we were talking about the Arizona thing and what episode we mentioned

the whole Arizona state big game raffle. And who was right? I was. Of course I was. How much did I bet you? It was like $5. Well, I'll pay you. I don't need it. Don't worry. I'm just saying. I won a thousand dollar bet against Yannis and forgave him. I won a thousand dollar bet against my sister-in-law, Karina, and forgave her. I bet her, at one point in time, I bet her that in 10 years, Pebble Mine, it was like, my bet was that Pebble Mine, and it was a 10 year window.

I was like, in a decade, Pebble Mine will not be developed. And I won. And forgave her the thousand dollars. I'm forgiving you. Let's wrap this calendar stuff up. I'm forgiving you the five dollars. Well, no, no, no, here's the bet. Here's the bet.

Me and Randall are betting 100 bucks, we got a witness. And here's the bet. And I don't know. We'll have to put it to Seth to figure out. I bet you that of all the submissions, 50% will demonstrate what I understand to be people's understanding of what is a fucked up old truck. A minimum of 50% will be like, well, look, it'll be like, it'll be, you put a picture up, it'll be like, gets it, doesn't get it. But what you're saying there is that my guidance and further clarification

would in fact have been needed for one out of every two listeners because 50% would not be in line with what you think of as a fuck double truck. Brody, what percent make the calendar? What percent of submissions make the calendar? Less than one probably. Way less than one. Yeah. So'm just trying to be helpful to these people. So, going back to my point, we'll get a lot of really cool photos. We'll pick the coolest ones, they'll end up in the calendar.

Period. Yeah. But we were talking about doing this too. As we're talking about building a voting function. Yeah, we're gonna do that. We're gonna build a voting function where I don't know how it's gonna work. Well, say we get a thousand, it'll be more probably, but let's say we get a thousand

submissions. We'll have a website, we'll select a hundred of those, put them on the website and people will vote and the top say 10 will end up in the calendar. Yeah, but we need to, here's the thing is like, you know, here's like a complication with democracy. Is we're like, what if we do the whole vote thing, but there's some that we just like too much and they don't make it, that's why we're gonna peel off. Yeah.

Checks and balances. Yeah, we're gonna peel off, then we're gonna buy executive order. By executive order, we're gonna have off, then we're gonna buy executive order. Yeah, by second of order, we're gonna have... You're gonna do your birthday months, like you'll have February. Our faves. And Brody. In the time that we've now discussed this, someone could have gone to a dealership, driven off the lot with a nice new truck, and turned it into a fucked up old hunting truck. Yeah I'm going to add one more thing.

This doesn't guarantee you're going to get in the calendar, but if you've got a sweet photo of your fucked up old hunting rig on public land, that's even better. Yeah. Or you could just say it was public land. Yeah. Well, so yeah, game on, Game on. F**ked up old trucks. Uh, whew. Not very far into our document. You know, I just suggested to Phil that when we edit this, we play the fast-forward sound effects. So it's like, you know, f**ked up old truck, f**ked up old trucks.

No, no, no. No edits. And there's still arguments so we can get through this, but no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I am researching it. It is harder to find that information that you would think, but so I'm partnering with a private lands biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and they're helping me put about five acres, actually we've turned it into seven now, seven acres of the property. We're going to turn it into an oak savanna. You familiar with that? Oh yeah, that's what you're aiming for. Actually, we've turned it into seven now seven acres of the property. We're gonna turn it into an oak savanna Familiar with that is that's what you're aiming for well In we have we have 40 acres that we're dealing with 50 really But this is just seven acres of it is doing that but I because I feel like they have access to this sort of information I was asking them and

Because we're gonna have a seed mixture, right, that goes in once we, after we deforest the place and then chemically burn the shit out of it, we're gonna come in with native grass seed and Forbes seed to bring in what's there. And I was saying, I was asking him, I said, well, are we gonna go and look at historical data to then inform what sort of stuff

we try to plant back in there? And he said, yes, we can do that, but because things are constantly changing in the environment, it's not all, it can inform you, but what has happened in the past might not necessarily be what you wanna do in the the future because a hundred years ago or two hundred years ago the climate was a lot different than it is now and so depending on what you want to see and the successes you want to have it could be different so yes yeah I have been

researching I think it's good whether or not you can achieve it or even want to achieve it I think that understanding what it is wouldn't would enhance your oh Great enhance your journey great your slash and burn deforestation journey You want to continue I can talk about It's gonna be the lab to cut a tree the Lover, my time as a deforestation agent. No, our buddy Kyle Weibarger, you know, I was listening to him recently talking about the state of Alabama.

He says, in probably since European contact, the state of Alabama has never had more trees than it has today. Yeah. And he would like to see a lot of trees cut down and restored into native grasslands and prairie habitats. Understood. I'm mostly joking.

I'm mostly teasing. Oh yeah. I know. He just gets a lot of- I love talking about it. No, well, okay, we'll get some time to dive in more deeply. There's another one that we're going to talk about today that we're going to have to punt on, but God, that's a great question.

Like I try to skirt free of like just major controversy on the show, but this guy's wondering like, he's wondering about, I don't know if I can, I don't know if I want to get into this. It's like really divisive is, uh, how much first shit is too much? Like you know like you saying like when you do a little like you put some bear Hat band or you like a bear claw necklace. Yeah, you got like a fur hat our body Dan Gates pushes the envelope You know yeah from Colorado's first Person to have on the debate yeah, yeah, because I don't he has a giant wardrobe

According to what I see on Instagram. You guys familiar? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean every time he's addressing a topic I mean, there's a new vest or you know some sort of new accoutrement to his wardrobe that is, you know, fur or like you said, there's a lot of claws, horns, antlers. It's a real, um, I think it's depends on the person too, man. I mean, we're not. Yeah, you're right. You go to the Bozeman airport. You're like that person shouldn't. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we're, we'll dive into it bad. We'll dive into a bad. What's too much? Any just quick thoughts Michael, yeah, you want to touch it cuz you won't be here when we actually dive into it, you know

I just from listening to your friend there. I think I need more, you know In your own personal I will put a feather in my hat when I'm turkey hunting or something or uh, you know, I like to collect the odd pheasant feather um, I too have a muskox hide that I'm uh, wondering what to do with You don't wear it though? No, I don't wear it, but that would make a cool... I would suggest harvesting the...

What was it? Kivi? Kivi? Kivit? The wool? The okay, I still might yeah Please I hope I'm still on the list of people that might receive a beanie out of it Phil Can you aim a camera at that musk oxide? No, no can I sure you want to tear this this should be fun No, don't even worry about losing. I just wanna see you figure it out.

That's the up and down one. Here we go. Is that it, Phil? No, there you go. You got it. Now Yanni, grab a little kivvy off that sucker. Well, now that Brody's got a camera on it. While we're doing this, you had mentioned earlier

in the show about animals people don't wanna eat but they shoot. When I was in the Arctic- I was before the show had mentioned earlier in the show about animals, people don't want to eat, but they shoot. When I was in the Arctic. I was before the show. Oh, it was before the show? Yeah. Sorry to the listeners for confusing people. But what I found interesting was when I shot mine

in the Arctic, the locals, it was, there's four guys, we shot four muskox. We couldn't possibly bring all of it home. We brought home about 800 pounds of meat, but a lot of the locals didn't want it. What? Their primary, and a lot of them really need food, they want caribou.

Like that is their main source of protein. That's weird, because on Nunavut Island, it's very popular. Yeah, so I was in Baker Lake. They actually brought it out there as a food source. So, where I was hunting in Baker Lake is the only inland community in Nunavut. All the other communities are coastal,

and Caribou is like their bread and butter. Oh, did I say, I said, I'm sorry, Nunavac. Oh, Nunavac. Yeah, Nunavac Island in the Bering Sea with the Chupac Eskimo muskox is very popular. Yeah, anyway, I just thought that was interesting because a lot of people are not necessarily starving, but they're in need of food, a lot of them.

But yeah, interesting. My kid wore that Muscox head for Halloween one time. You gave it to me. I remember that. That's cool. So we'll do a whole big thing on what's enough, what's too much, what's enough. Okay, clear cut Yanni.

What's enough? Okay, clear Koyani. So that wool, you just pulled the wool off the muskox hide. You can actually harvest wool and make stuff with it. Supposedly, it's the warmest, it beats out cashmere, merino, I bet. There's nothing else, think about where that animal lives. And, uh, yeah, it's, but it's hard to harvest if I remember correctly, like it, it takes

some, I forget, there was something that made it a little bit prohibitive, um, to do stuff with it. They don't have domestic. Do they have? There, there was an, no. I want to say a lot of times they harvested it just in the springtime By plucking it off of bushes where yeah Mountain goat, you know people yeah, no people would go out and just collect it. Mm-hmm. Oh, that's cool when they're shedding the spring. Um

Okay, one of the things Michael that we're gonna get into is uh, I was trying to challenge you on Something that Brody found out you were right. Okay. All right. I like this. Like did Canada have wild turkeys historically? Historically, we were told in our, our hunting course that yes, on, uh, we're released where I grew up and the, the hunting license are done by the province.

So we had to take a hunting course and we had to specifically take a Turkey hunting course where they gave us history about the wild turkey that Ontario in fact had a native population of turkeys. They were extinct due to market hunting in the 1800s and they were brought back, I believe in the 1980s, 70s, 80s.

1984, 274 wild turkeys from various us. And did we, we traded, uh, do we trade moose to a state for that? Otters, partridge, geese and moose. Yeah. That's good trade. Yeah.

I love it. It was a cool trade. And now the wild turkey population in Canada is like, in Ontario anyway, is absolutely flourishing. Like. Is it hard to get permissions? I would say yes and no.

It kind of depends. Like I grew up in a rural community, so I've got a lot of contacts and family friends and stuff that let me run around on their farms. Um, I think for like an average, you know, city person that's interested in hunting and wants to get their license, I think it's harder for them. Um, you know, I take, you know, when my son was smaller, I would just take my kids to farmer's doors and knock on the door and smaller, I would just take my kids to farmer's doors and knock on the door and say,

I want to take my kid hunting and... Oh, dude, yeah, it melts your heart, man. Totally melts their heart. Now my son is six foot three. That's the thing, when it comes to traditions, man, you gotta get yourself, yeah, I wouldn't be bringing him anymore. Yeah, now he's scary looking now.

Get yourself some kids, even if you gotta borrow them. Yeah, little nephews or something. Borrow them, yeah, okay, run up to the door, run up to the door. Be real friendly. Yeah. But yeah, no, it, and I don't know the laws, but there's some provinces where it's actually

illegal to lease your land for hunting. Whereas I know in the States it's really, you know, everybody's got a hunting lease somewhere. Like Saskatchewan, I know, I think it's illegal to lease your land specifically for hunting. You know, however one feels about that personally, how does, how do you, like, what is the, I know you're not like a policy expert on the issue, but how do you argue that? Like, what is the argument?

Like how do you even tell the landowner that? Like what the hell is, I have no idea. I mean, like how would you enforce that? Yeah, well I'm just saying like regardless of how, um, you might personally feel about You know, however, you might personally feel about leasing not leasing paying your own money lease Whatever wishing it was the good old days where you just hunted on everybody's place and never even asked However, you feel about all that. I just can't picture

Crafting legislation. Yeah, they would tell a landowner, you cannot lease hunting rights on your land. It's like, it kinda like, what's it to you? That's like saying you can't raise cattle or grow hay. You can't make money off your land. Yeah. You can't lease farming rights on your land. Be like, why? Yeah. Well, it's more government overreach. Well, I know it just seems like it'd be a hard one to sell people on.

Yeah. Because it's not, there's no sort of like, there's no impact on neighboring properties. You know, it's not like you dumping hog shit into the river and acting like it's not your problem anymore. Yeah. Right, it's just, it doesn't like bleed over

onto your neighbors. It doesn't impact anybody. Yeah. It just seems like it'd onto your neighbors. It doesn't have it doesn't impact anybody. Yeah. It just seems like it'd be your call. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure how it works, because in Ontario, I don't think it's the case. But other provinces, I've heard that it is. What's the public land situation up there? Public land.

We call it crown land. There's tons of it. And hunting is generally pretty, you know, pretty good, depending where you're going. And I think some of the by, like there's, I guess, it depends if you're close to, you know, provincial or federal parks, like there's certain parks that there's no hunting in the parks, but the, uh, the Crown lands, I think it's open. You're allowed to camp on them for, you know, you have to move your

structure every three weeks. Like if you're going for a big trip or something, but, um, it's, it's pretty well just free rein. Can you guys find Turks on public land where you're going for a big trip or something, but, um, it's, it's pretty well just free rain. Can you guys find Turks on public land where you're at? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And there's, there's, there's public land, but it's like municipal public land. So not far from where I live, you know, an hour and a half from Toronto, uh, you can hunt, I think they call them like their county forests and they're, they're municipal lands. And I don't know if they've been donated or what they are, but there's hiking trails, there's quad trails, snowmobile trails, whatever. I think they call them like their county forests and they're their municipal lands and I don't know if they've been donated or what

They are but there's hiking trails. There's quad trails snowmobile trails, whatever and then they'll say you like Yes to hunting or no to hunting and there's some Turks out on oh, yeah, they have shot turkeys on public land Yeah, how many turkeys can you kill in a season? We have two per spring to male bearded birds per spring. And they opened up a fall season, which I don't have time for. Can you guys shoot a, yeah, you know what? I don't.

And then fall, you can shoot hens. And again, it's like, I, you know, they're way either half the size of a tom and it's deer season. Like why, you know, if one happened to walk by my deer stand, but the season's super short. It's like two weeks or something. And the likelihood, anyway, it's a lot of that, I've never been able to get, I've never,

well, I'll tell you this, like I do a lot of Turkey on, um, I love Turkey. Yeah. I have never, because I missed, I have never killed a turkey in the fall. I shot one bullet. I shot one 30 ought six round at a turkeys head about 90 yards away and missed. And now this is close. So now I can sit back and say, I've never killed a fall turkey. I tried to draw, I tried to draw my bow on a pair that were walking by my tree

stand and the moment I even moved, like they took off. And I was like, how do you even do this in the fall? Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty, I had a similar experience. I wasn't going to draw on them, but I had a little flock coming to me and I was up in the tree. I thought I was pretty high up. I thought I was pretty well concealed.

I had the tree between me and the turkeys. And before I moved, I let them get to probably 20. And the moment, I was just going for my phone phone and whatever that was, just that little bit of elbow movement. I saw a hand go, give me one of those. And then the whole flock just turned and it didn't run, but it's there like, eh, don't know what that was. We're not messing around with it. Yeah. Keep walking. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just not into it. No. Mike kills my kid. He thinks we should be like big time fall turkey hunters.

And again, I've never done it. But I've heard that you need to find a flock, spook them so they disperse, and then you try and call the flock back. They make a dog for that. Yeah. I got bodies that use a dog. That's how we did it when I was a kid in the fall.

And it's different calls, right? It's not necessarily yelping. And a lot of times, you don't even have to call they're just gonna come back like there's like there's like a grouping call Kiki but the reason those boys use dogs for it Is you can't run fast enough to scatter? Yeah, cuz what you're trying to do is you're trying to throw the flock into such disarray That they lose track of one another gotcha So if you go running after after me, just run off

like a group and they're like, in a trail. Yeah. They're like, what's this annoying ass dude? But if you sent a dog to go slipping in there, raising hell, he might succeed and getting them to lose track of each other. Gotcha. I've never done this.

I would like to see if I've never done it. Yeah. But just my understanding of it. And then you be we, we be we, we, and they hopefully, you know, draw it back in. I know a guy that used to kill Huns like that. That was his hun strategy. He would, when he kicked a flock of Huns, he, cause they'll always scatter. He would kind of like watch him land and figure out what he thought was the

center. And I don't even know what call he did. He would do a mouth call. He would go to what he thought was the kind of center and sit there and call. Hmm. That's cool. Yeah. And shoot him coming back in. How far, uh, do you live an hour and a half out of Toronto? Or you know, I'm right in the city. So yeah, my restaurant is about, uh, 25 minutes from my house, but I live on like kind of the northern side of the city and I'm close to all the highways. So I'm pretty mobile for getting out of the city quick. How's your restaurant doing? It's doing great. We've been, uh, around for nine years now, Antler restaurant. Um, and yeah, we're just trying to figure out how to grow. You know, we've, we've been there coming

up on a decade and you know, we're thinking about either a big renovation, you know, possibly expanding the space. We're just trying to figure all that out. Yeah, the last time you were here, you were real worried about the COVID thing. Yeah, COVID really hurt us for a while and a lot of businesses and a lot of businesses closed. So, you know, we're very fortunate and lucky. We had a really good community around us that supported us and people like what we're doing.

And we've got really great team behind us as well, staff-wise, so yeah, it's good. How often are you there? I'm there during the week. I try not to work weekends anymore. I want to see my family, so I'm there during the week. And then we've got a really great general manager and a head chef now that kind of run it.

Tell me, tell me what's on the menu right now. We have deer, duck, bison, wild boar. Our fish is kind of generally rotating for like what's in season. So we'll do like halibut, you know, salmon when it's running. We get walleye from Lake Erie. Um, we get swordfish from the East coast. Sometimes it was really cool.

Scallops. Uh, we get little Canadian, uh, like kind of Northern shrimp. We do spot prawns and stuff in the, um, in the spring. So I'll be coming up. Where's the wild hog from? Uh, can you bring it in from Texas or no? I don't know. We, so there's a farm that's been doing, I think they actually just, uh, there's

some legislation that's closing down the wild hog farms. It was like a European hog they brought over. Oh, so it's like a, it's like a domestic hog, but a, but a Canadian super hogs. They're worried about coming in the Montana. So that actually, I think they've actually started closing these, uh, wild boar farms in Ontario, because there's been, there's been sightings now.

So it's wild boar, but it's domestic domesticated, like this sort of ancestral Sue Scroffa. Yeah. And I think they're, you know, they're black long hair type pigs with tusks, whereas, uh, you know, just the farm rate pigs are pink hairless things. You know, man, we, we long time ago had a dude on, APHIS guy, that's our, we have a federal agency that does, they do a lot of stuff with non-native species and whatnot, wildlife control services, APHIS, animal plant, it's a it's a division of like the animal plant and health, animal plant and health inspection service. But they run extra patient campaigns on invasive species as well.

We're talking to him about hogs and it was like, where could hogs be if you just take the US and I'm sure guarantee it's true with Canada where could they be um they would be fine everywhere right because you gotta go look like look at the habitat they're in in Siberia yeah they're waiting around and snow up to their brisket yeah no problem and it was like where they are and are not is more a factor of where can you find them and kill them. Right. And it's in like open country, like around here, it's just easier. It'd be easier to go find them and kill them. Yeah. And it's like where they survive is places where it's hard

to find them and kill them. Where they've become accepted. Yeah, yeah, become accepted as well. Yeah. or they've become accepted. Yeah, become accepted as well, yeah. Cause it's, you know, California is such a weird deal, right? Like. They treat them like a game animal. Yeah. But they just don't have this,

they don't have quite the hordes like they get down in Texas, you know, just different. Like hunting pigs in California, you must get a little excited when you see one. That can be hard. And you were saying last night, you do quite a bit of pig hunting. I've absolutely gone crazy. I'm addicted to that.

That night hunting with a thermal, you're sneaking around the woods with an AR-15 and thermal, it is like amazing. Yeah, but don't you just wind up with like, you just wind up with like a lot of hawks. You can, yeah, you definitely can. You just sort through them and pick the ones you like or what do you do? Yeah, sort of like the the gigantic ones that really stink, you know, those

will kind of go off to the side and you know nice kind of medium-sized sow or the smaller piglets, they're incredible eating. So how, when you're getting a bunch, how do you deal with them? You can't not, and also you're going down to Texas, right? I'm in Mississippi. You hunt in Mississippi. Yeah, and they've got a huge problem with them. And the guy that I go with, he donates a lot to some of the community. I know they can drop them off at the penitentiary, the federal prison or whatever,

or the state prison, they drop them off there. That'd be a good place to go to prison. Yeah. So yeah, the ones that we don't want, they do get put to use. But yeah, I love the meat. It's just a totally different style of hunting for me. The thermal thing is sort of like a video game almost.

So you- Are you able to fly home with that meat? Yeah. Yeah, I have to declare it at customs. You look on the, I think it's the CBSA website, Canadian Border Services or something, and it's got everything listed. You can carry more driving. There's really no weight restriction flying.

They put a weight restriction, which is odd, but I've never had to weigh anything. I just declare it and they usually say, where were you? What were you hunting? And you're okay. See you later. So, yeah. And I freeze it and just put it in a suitcase wrapped in a hunting jacket and it stays frozen, which is cool.

How often do you go do that? Um, I'm there putting in a suitcase wrapped in a hunting jacket and it stays frozen, which is cool. How often do you go do that? I'm there pretty much quarterly, doing it. Wow. Quarterly. I'm there quarterly. I try to get there every couple months, you know? I love it. I love it down there. Yeah, I like the south.

When you guys sell deer in your restaurant, you're buying it from New Zealand or something? No, we have, there's a lot of local farms. You can, it's actually cheaper from New Zealand, which bugs me. But yeah, we use a, there's a couple of local guys that farm in the red stag species. Yeah. And he's, he's, he's the cool thing about the game farms is there, there's like smaller family run type deals.

So you can kind of get to know the farmer and tour the farm and meet the family. It's neat. Talk about what they feed them and their habitat. That's cool. Yeah. I wonder if you see that. Do those guys sell product in America? That I don't know.

I think it's a lot harder for them. I know that the cattle goes across the border, but I don't know. I think it's a lot harder for them. You know, I know that the cattle goes across the border, but I don't know about the game species. So when you go buy it from, how do you buy it? Like, what's it show up to you like? We buy it quartered. Like we buy whole quartered. Do you pick what quarter you want?

No, we take the whole thing. We have to buy a whole animal at a time. Oh, you do? And then, yeah, we get it. We, you know, he just does a solid quarter. We used to get it whole. And then he asked me, what are you guys doing with us? And I said, I told him, we just break it down with a hacksaw.

And then he said, well, just get a sawzall. And I'm like, I'm an idiot. Why I've been doing this for like three years with a hacksaw. And then the sawzall just cut our time and, you know, by a fraction. And then he was like, well, I can just quarter it for you. Like after five years. Okay. Like, I didn't know that was an option, but.

So he goes out, like, is he able to go out? He just goes out and shoots the thing. No, he has to actually get it onto a trailer and take it to a slaughterhouse alive. So he saws the antlers off it? Um, I haven't actually asked him about that. He, I know he sells antler. If you want antler specific stuff, he'll sell you antler. Um, but yeah, I think he asked a picture that you could transport

them with the antlers on them. I have no idea how that works. I I'll ask him. I've never asked that question. It's red deer. Yeah. But there's like a legal governmental process. You're getting them.

He asked to get it onto a trailer alive to a slaughterhouse. Yeah. And there's been times where he's called me and said, hey, I gotta come, I can't come this week, I gotta come next week, because I couldn't catch him. He has to wait till they get into like, he's got like a thousand acres or something.

And when they're in the barnyard, he can kind of shut a gate and corral them onto a trailer. There's been times where he's like, I think during mating season in the early summer spring, he can't actually shut a gate and corral them onto a trailer. But there's been times where he's like, I think during mating season in the early summer, spring, he can't actually catch them or something. So there's been times like in July, he's like, yeah, they're mating or something. I can't get one for you this week.

So you order like one? We usually get two, yeah, one or two. And then the last couple of years, we've actually been buying like 30 at a time. There's a friend of mine that does a call with like another game farm. And he's been calling animals and they actually shoot them. They had a veterinarian on site that inspected the heart and liver. And then the brains were sent for CWD.

And then once everything was cleared, it went to a butcher shop and got stamped. So they check them for a CWD. Yeah. You know what a weird deal, I know this isn't with you guys, but someone sent me these, I was looking at these exchanges the other day. And the deer farmers here, the deer breeders here, not meat guys, but like antler guys. They're trying to use this political climate here

to try to get like the Doge boys to kill CWD research because they're sick of hearing about it. They don't want them researching it. Yeah, that's a bummer. That sucks. So they're trying to say that, Hey, while you're throwing out all kinds of conservation work, throw that out too. Yeah. That's unfortunate. Cause they don't even want to talk about it. Yeah. So you know what it's going to mean for them. There was a game farm in Quebec. Uh, one of the largest in the countries that got completely shut down and had to

kill all their, their entire herd because of CWD. Um, and they were just the risk of it getting out into the wild do people ever ask about it in the restaurant never no not one customers it's probably not on the radar at all that's the thing I wonder about man is like with there I'm pretty sure I heard this. There are some food banks that aren't accepting. Oh, gay meat. Yeah, and then also there's this. There was a processor that used to process for food banks.

I believe in Wisconsin. There was a guy in Wisconsin that processed for food banks. Or Michigan maybe. Yeah, you know what, you're right. From the email, yeah. It was Michigan. There's a processor that you could like, dudes that like to shoot deer, but they don't know, they don't know how to cook or they're squeamish and they won't eat

it. They would go and shoot deer, but then they don't know what to do with it. So they always want to donate it. Right. You know? So, you know, cause their kids are like, I want butter doodles. So, um, but this processor is like, I want butterdoodles. So, um, but this processor is like, I can't, he can't have it in there anymore.

He can't have it in his plant because of CWD. So I wonder if, if as we get more CWD spreading around more, I always wonder is that going to put an end to being able to supply food banks and charitable organizations with deer meat? I know they changed a bunch of laws where I am as well, where, you know, any butcher could take game from a hunter and butcher it for them, you know, in

charge for it. And that now a lot of them have shut down because of new rules and regulations. They've got to clear out all of their, you know, farmed meat, wash everything down, like walls, ceilings, floors, give everything a wash, then butcher the game, then wash everything again, and then they're allowed to bring in, you know,

farmer's products again, so a lot of the processors just say, no, they don't do it anymore. Yeah, I just get a little bit worried about, I get a little bit worried about what that, if places stop accepting it. Right. If people stop accepting it, I don't think, if people, if places stop accepting it, if people stop accepting it, I don't think, you know, we're not in a position where we're gonna,

we're not gonna be able to, we're not in a position to kill less deer, they're trying to get people to kill more deer in a lot of suburban areas. So it's like, if they stop accepting it, I just think it's just gonna be more shit winds up in the ditch. Yeah, cause people aren't, there's just a lot of people who will never process their own animal. They just won't do it.

No, they're not going to do it. And like everything they shoot goes in that. And then if people don't want to accept it, what's going to happen. And then here's another thing that's like, there's this new, this idea that never goes away is like that we should, we should begin, we should go back to the days of selling wild deer. Yeah. And with CWD every year being in more and more and more counties, I don't even know if that's like a great business plan because once you have, once you have, um, in these areas where they're wanting to, or pushing to sell deer, particularly like in the Eastern US, if there's CWD infection there, 5%, 10%,

it gets as high as 50% in some places. I don't know how much of that shit you're gonna be pushing down at the farmer's market. Yeah. Have they linked- People are gonna be like, what now? Have they linked CWD to humans yet? No, never.

Never. I hope they never will. Yeah. Like, no, no one's ever gotten it. have they linked to CWD to humans yet? Never, never. I hope they never will. Yeah. Like, no, no one's ever gotten it. I mean, hunters in America, not just hunters in America. I said this one time to a CWD researcher and they're like, no, that's not true. And I'm like, it is true, dude.

I was like, hundreds of thousands of Americans have eaten CWD infected meat. Probably. Definitely. I would think so. Once she said no, and I was like, maybe she's right. And I thought about it for a minute and I thought about it for a while longer. I'm like, dude, hundreds of thousands of people have eaten CWD infected meat. No one, no one, but there's this like, there's, there's,

there's risk meaning mad there's, there's, there's risk meaning mad cow, like, you know, mad cow hast-Jakob disease. Pre-on diseases have moved across the barrier. This one has not, okay? But there's also, but what I'm talking about is just a perception issue. Like picture that they, in the East or wherever, where you're at, whatever, they start saying, hey, we're gonna go back to the days of shooting whitetail deer and selling the meat in the East or wherever, where you're at, whatever, they start saying, Hey, we're going to go back to the days of shooting white tail deer and selling the

meat in the markets. And then you are a anti-hunting organization and you start saying, well, you know, there's like a prion disease that is in that herd at prevalence rates of five, 10, 15%. Um, how much that shit you can be selling. Yeah. So no, no one's gotten it. This is the thing we discussed all the time is, uh, there's two ways I look at it.

It'd be like, I believe a person that says CWD is not a problem. There's like a litmus test that I devised that I haven't done yet, but I need to. I'm gonna get a bunch of CWD meat from my friends in Wisconsin. I'm gonna be like, I want meat from all your positives. Okay, you give me, I want ten, I want meat from ten positives. My buddy Pat Durkin got a positive dough this year. I should've said, send me a pound. I'm gonna make, I'm gonna get all this CWD positive meat

and I'm gonna make burgers with it. So it's all known positives and I'm gonna make burgers. And then when I get someone who tells me CWD is nothing to worry about and they should cut research funding for CWD, I'm gonna make them up that patty. Lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, however you want it. And I'm going to be like, eat that burger.

Serve it to your kids. Yep. Eat that burger and then come tell me, eat that burger and come tell me about it. If you eat that burger, I'll believe everything you say. There will be some people that will gladly eat it. And I'll gladly talk to them. I'll gladly talk to them. I'll gladly talk to them. Meanwhile, we're all going to be like carrying bleach and frickin' blowtorches.

No, I don't think that's too... I don't want it in the podcast room. No, but you're doing the other thing. You're doing the other... like everything has its extreme. So on one extreme you got like, it doesn't matter. No one should pay attention to CWD. The other extreme is like, if a deer was CWD, so much as looks at your stainless steel counter,

your stainless steel counter will forever be infected with CWD. And it's like, can we remind everyone that no one's gotten it from eating this shit yet? And now we're talking about your stainless steel counter, giving you CWD. You can't even get it from eating the shit yet. And now we're talking about your stainless steel counter, giving you CWD. You can't even get it from eating the meat. Like in Ontario, where I live,

I don't even think there's a resource where I could send my animal to you. Oh, there's not like testing. I don't think so. Whereas like, and you know, I don't know if it's every state or, you know, half the states where you can send in your, like you said, your friend was going to test.

Yeah. Well, that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to like shut the whole conversation down. And I'm like, hey man, I don't know. No one's gotten it. I hope no one ever gets it. I don't want anyone to get it. I think we should be investing heavily in research

to understand everything there is about it. Because you're gonna kill, I think that if, heaven forbid dude, heaven forbid, if you somehow had some hunters, whatever, heaven forbid, it would destroy deer hunting. Yeah. Or a big- It would put a, not destroy, it would really hurt.

It would shake it up. Or a big cross over to cattle. Who knows what would happen? Yeah, that's the other part that like, the other point I always make is like, I always look like, man, those boys aren't sweating it. Maybe I shouldn't sweat it. Yeah, I don't know. Because they're not worried about their cattle and their cattle look a hell of a lot more like a deer than I do. But then other guys like cattle guys are sweating it. It's scary, man. Like just the unknown is scary, but the whole burger point is the, the,

the CWD burger I want to make is like, and I do, I am going to do this. Pre pre frozen patties in the freezer ready to go. Dude, I want, I want to hear from, I want to talk with and hang out with and converse with more people who don't care. Cause then maybe it'll make me not care. Cause it makes me nervous. And that's why who wants to be nervous? Like no one like chooses to be nervous. Ignorance is bliss. Yeah. When you see those drugs that are supposed to like, um,

make you more sexually desirous, right? I'm like, if you're not, if you have no appetite, do you wish you did? It's a weird thing. You know what I mean? Do you follow what I'm saying? Like, I wish I wanted something that I can't get, but like I don't want to be nervous about, um, I don't want to be nervous about CWD, but if I give my burger to some dude and he eats the burger, then I'm like, man, this is a true believer. Yeah.

He doesn't care anyway, you know, Yeah. Makes me nervous around like spinal cords. Like my, like my, before my deer tested negative, but it's like always to that point. There's no such thing as a negative test. It's non detected. Right, and so that's the other thing that makes me nervous. And I'm like, if I wait three more days or wait four more days, like what's the like pre-on load

that would push the little meter to? Detected and then I'm like getting all weird about the spinal cord and then one day I forgot and I kind of like Sectioned part of the back and cooked it in a soup and like slurped up the spinal cord and I was like Joe See I have no like personal anxiety about getting Cwd really would you eat my burger I? Mean I just Randall's the first guy that's gonna have the burger. Oh you get a good Yeah, I've gotten dear tested company man. No. No. I mean I just You don't lose sleep over it. I about a meatball. I think no I guess

It's one of those things where I see, I see, I see CWD is like this existential problem for deer in North America and deer hunting as we know it. Right. But I think like the odds of the, the piano falling out of the sky and hitting me and I'm the first human to get it. I see those odds is very low. Like me personally getting it. I'm the case number one.

Does that make sense? Yeah, I don't think I'm gonna be the case number one. I mean, it'd be like everybody, it'd be like thousands of people at the same time get it as case number one. No, because they would have already been getting it. Yeah. And that kind of disease,

you could carry it around forever. That's how they scare you Yeah, they tell you what you maybe you don't know yet, right? It's like the cordyceps like last of us show Mushroom fungus takes over your brain. Yeah. Oh, I've seen that. It's a good one. Yeah, like it's India, but you don't know it Oh, they know it they turn into like zombies or something. It's like a horror kind of TV show But there's that mushroom, the parasitic mushroom that'll take over like an ant's brain and it kills the ant.

And then the mushroom grows out of the ant. It's like that happened to dudes. Yeah. Would you eat the burger? I mean, I don't think so. I would think about it. No, no. Would you eat the burger?

I would think about it. I don't know that. I mean, it's not that I, I guess like, if I tested, it's it's not that I I guess like If I had if I tested his deer and it was positive Mm-hmm, I wouldn't eat it. Hmm. So you definitely right? My burger is made above all Right. It's made of a pole

Like the idea that the idea that a deer that's that's either an unknown or Has tested not detected the idea that I would be like personally anxious about Somehow I don't do that. Yeah, like like my own personal anxieties I mean plus if I did get CWD and I was case one when they did all the blood tests on me They'd find something else that's wrong with me, and then that would actually be the primary concern, I feel like. You know, I just think of all the things in the world

for me personally, that's gonna change my arc in the universe. It's kind of like eating fish from a lake that has like a high mercury. Yeah, like- I don't care about that. I mean, I guess for me, it's not just- I'd eat that fish burger.

Yeah. I'd eat some poke. I already have. A for me it's not just. I do that, but I'd eat that fish burger. Yeah. I've eaten a poke bowl full of high mercury fish. Oh yeah. I've eaten Lake Ontario salmon that I later kind of researched and was like, yeah, I probably shouldn't eat that. That's not going to do anything to you, dude. I mean, but you guys were eating like, you know, your mercury poisoning.

Yeah, but it's totally different. Yeah, but what if that has lasting effects? Getting a prion disease, getting like. Yeah, I know. It's just like health in general maintaining your Yeah, see yoits See you fell getting CJD is not having a little mercury spike No, I'm not saying that the same thing, but it's like if you can For me personally I try to avoid to the extent possible. Like I don't put

plastic in the microwave. Like it extends to I'm consistent across the board. You don't flirt with danger. I try not to. When you first brought up the CWD burger idea, I believe you're going to grind the spine into the burger. I know, but someone pointed out, but I, but then someone pointed this out. Someone pointed out, but I don't grind my spines into my burger. So it was like out of fairness. Okay. Yeah. I don't eat the deer brains anyways, so don't put it in. I don't want a deer brain burger out of any kind of, would you lose sleep if you found out after the fact that you ate? No. Yeah.

This is like, that's what I'm saying. No, cause I guarantee you. I have, I guarantee you. I think I have, I got buddies. I got buddies, like buddies of mine in Wisconsin, like they'll be like, send you some summer sausage or something. Right. And it sure.

Like I probably have, but here's the deal. One time. See, my wife doesn't listen to anything I say or write. So I can say this here, she doesn't want to get back to her. My daughter killed a deer in a high CWD area, or not a high area, she killed a deer in a CWD where they recommend testing. And this is a county where there's CWD cases.

So I submit my sample on the way home. You can just pull in and submit. I submit my sample on the way home. You can just pull in and submit. I submit my sample on the way home and we eat the heart right away. Cause I kind of forgot for a minute. Then I'm thinking to myself, that's some bitch comes back positive. I either got to live with the secret

or I got to tell my wife like, hey, you know, like, you know, like, uh, you know, and she's gonna be pissed. But it came back negative. Yeah. I think I had texted you last summer when I thought I infected myself an entire party with trichinosis. Yeah. And you were like, I think I just got the flu or something after like a week later.

And I text you because I was freaked out. And you said, no, I think it's like a month for symptoms. And it turned out being negative, and it was nothing. But I was pretty freaked out. Sure. I didn't care that I had it. I was freaked out that I had potentially given it to like 30 people at a barbecue.

For life. No, it doesn't matter. Would you serve them, Bear? Cougar. I did a cougar ham and we, I spit, this is funny, I spit roasted a beaver and I did a cougar ham and I remember like temping the beaver repeatedly and I know I had temped the cougar but I couldn't remember what the final temp was. Was it 130?

Yeah. Or 160? couldn't remember what the final temp was. Was it 130? Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, it was my birthday, so I had had a few drinks. And the next day I just was like, I don't really remember what that Cougar was. And then I got sick like, you know, four or five days after. And then it was like, yeah. Oh, it doesn't matter. Fahrenheit thing too is probably tricky for you.

You know, what we cook meat to in metric. How's that work? You know, I use, uh, Fahrenheit. I use Imperial. Yeah. It's like in, in culinary school, they still teach you the, the Imperial temperatures.

I think now maybe like, cause I'm, you know, old enough that maybe they weren't, but they kind of teach you both and just all the old school chefs I grew everything was always Fahrenheit and a lot of our ovens and equipment seriously come from the states, too So I think so they're all the dials and stuff are in I think it's like a car like you can see the Celsius or Fahrenheit But I think Fahrenheit's more predominant. That's so weird in the US everything that matters they do in metric Yeah, like I think like the military runs the military runs metric. Yeah. NASA, they're not like, ah, three eighths of an inch. Like my oven a couple of yards from the moon here.

My oven at home is in Fahrenheit. So it's just, is it really? Yeah. I saw cooking stuff at use Fahrenheit. Um, and you were taught that in culinary school. Yeah. I think they always showed you both. Okay.

Um, but like, like, like I said, our equipment is in Fahrenheit. When you wake up in the morning, what's the temperature? That's in Celsius, which is bizarre. Like I have to cross-reference stuff when I'm traveling. I know 80s, like warm, you know, 90s hot, you know. Yeah. 60s, 70s is like comfortable. Yeah, you got it. That's why you need to know.

32s freezing. I know the basics, but I don't know the conversions like exact. Hmm. Tell me about spit roast and a beaver. So I text a friend of mine that's a indigenous and I, someone had gifted me this beaver. They were trapping. They said they had too many.

Did I want a beaver? And I said, you know, yes. And this thing was gigantic. It was the biggest beaver I've ever seen. Don't give me vagaries, man. I didn't weigh it, but I've seen, like this thing was massive. Like it was like a large dog.

Give it to me in pounds. Tip to tail like a meteor. I'd show you a picture. So I called my buddy who's indigenous. Talking blank. And I said, what do you guys, what do you do with this? I don't know, like what would someone in your community do with beaver meat?

And they said they smoke it. So they always smoke. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna, I bought this rotisserie thing, and I did a huge open fire and just spit roasted it. And so he said they smoke it. So I wanted to smoke it over wood and charcoal. And then I was glazing it with birch syrup,

which I just kind of came up with that on my own. Because it's like kinda molasses-y, savory, sweet, kinda has a tanginess to it. And it came out awesome. Now I got a problem where I like, I missed some of the detail. You were putting the syrup on it while you... Yeah, so I had it on a rotisserie,

and it was like dripping it on there, dripping it on. Yeah, and I had like a brush, and I'd kinda brush it every so often. Do you make that birch syrup? I, you know what? I tried to make birch syrup one year and I got so many flies and moths in it. It was pretty gross. Birch, the birch trees run after the maple trees run. And by that time, um, all the snow has gone and it's actually quite warm. And you have to do it with the tube and line system where there's no oxygen and the flies can't get in, which I just did it with a bucket. Oh, no kidding.

Yeah, so if you just hang a bucket, like for maple season, you can hang, I do lines now. Oh, and they get in there. So I opened the lid of this bucket and there was like 300 moths in this one little bucket and I was like, that's gross. I'm pitching this.

This whole thing is such a knowledge gap with me. It's neat, it's fun. Yeah, when we were kids, we'd run around trying to tap stuff. We had no idea what we're doing. Yeah. And we just like tap in the summer. Yeah. Uh, yeah. No, no experience with it. My brother, Danny in Alaska, he makes the birch syrup. Cool. It takes twice. Like the racial is already terrible. Yeah. But it's twice as terrible. Yes. Yeah.

And then everything you put it on tastes like a buckwheat pancake. Yeah. It has like a molasses. Yeah. Tanginess. Yeah. Um, no, it's, uh, so yeah, maybe sort of fun. So like back home, it's the season is now, um, in the spring when the temperatures are, uh, above freezing during the day and then they freeze at night. It's sort of the optimal season. So how'd you serve? What'd you wind up doing with that beaver then?

We, uh, so we were shooting it for the cookbook, so it's in the second cookbook, which is out in September. Um, and, uh, we just did like a barbecue plate with it. We sliced it, um, sliced some of the tail, and, uh, just had it with that birch syrup glaze. But when you did that, were you able to get it, you didn't get where you could pull it? It was some parts you could pull, like I think I did it for about 10 hours or something. Yeah, I started it in the morning, yeah. So like some parts you could pull, some of the thicker like the hind quarter stuff

I could slice, like I could physically rip it, like it wasn't like falling apart pulling, but I could kind of pull it off the bone and then I sliced it. You didn't hide off, right? Yeah, oh yeah. falling apart pulling, but I could kind of pull it off the bone and then I sliced it. You didn't hide off, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, you know, there's a mountain man, Osborne Russell, left a very, very good journal.

And he describes that he describes the sheep eaters, the Shoshone group that was in like the Absarokas. Was that where it was when he ran into him? Was he in the absorba? I think it's down by the T town. Oh, was that where he ran into him? Yeah. They, when they're cooking them, they were doing it like how you would do a hog,

a roast hog, but they're burning the hair off instead of scalding it. So they're rolling it to burn all the hair off and then roasting it skin on like you would a pig, which I'm kind of dying to try. I want to de-hair one. Got it de-hair it so it's cavity back up, was good stuff to eat inside there. That'd be cool. And then roast it skin on. Yeah. I wonder if you'd get that crackling like you would with pig skin.

I'd have to think. They're kind of greasy. They're greasy and tough-eyed, yeah. I'm definitely wanting to do that. That'd be neat if you'd get that crackling like you would with pig skin. I don't have to think. They're kind of greasy. They're greasy. They're tough-eyed, yeah. I'm definitely wanting to do that. That'd be neat. That'd be really cool. No, it'd be cool.

And then what'd you do with your mountain lion? You got everybody not sick. Yeah. I did like a char siu kind of Chinese barbecue sauce that I marinated in and smoked it. And I smoked it not to the point of pulling, but where it was like really tender and I could slice it. You guys don't, where's that mountain lion from?

My friend shot that in British Columbia. Oh, okay. Yeah, so he gifted that kind quarter to those. What do they call them up there? They got, cause we call them all, yeah. Cats? Mountain lions. Oh, they do use them. Are they saw cat hunting or mountain lion not cougar not cat amount I've never heard cat amount not paying for me no no I have yet

to shoot one I've I'm trying to trying to get my hands on a tag but there uh unless you live in us you know province or state I think they're getting kind of expensive you gotta know somebody or get a deal but does Canada the same way that for for an American dude to go hunt or so like to go hunt big game for an American to go hunt big game in Canada there's all the guide there's guide requirements yeah but if you hunt out of province in Canada depends on the province okay for me to go to BC or Alberta Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, most of the provinces actually,

except for Ontario where I live, you have to go with a guide. I'm technically a non-resident even in my own country. See, that's a real difference. For all games? Most. Birds, I think it's big game. Small games off that list.

Big game, I don't know if it's like a safety thing, they don't want people climbing mountains that don't know what they're doing maybe, I don't know. You know what kind of thing it is? Yeah, money. For you people not watching, I'm doing the money sign. Shuffling some bills around. But yeah, maybe that's a good thing.

It's like local economy, but the price tag of things now is just getting out of control. Like I'm like, will I ever shoot a sheep? You know, the one cool thing though, about Alberta and BC and these big game, there is a slight kind of workaround. If you know someone that has, someone that lives there and is a resident, they can apply,

it's called the permission to a company. So I can go with a local that lives there and we have to apply for this permission to accompany three months before the season or something. And then I can put in for the draw and then potentially draw a tag. Spencer was just researching the old permission to accompany.

I've had people invite me on those permission to accompanies. But you know, it's so, I'd love to understand it better. But I mean, you got to have, it's hard to understand your own state. Yeah. You know, I'm always explaining what goes on here and it changes all the time. It's hard to get like a good grip. And then you're talking about like a huge place with all these, you know, how many, what seven, how many provinces are there? 13. There is 10 provinces, three territories. Non-provincial. See that, Randall?

Mm-hmm, pretty good. I corrected myself. Yeah. I'm gonna count, I'm gonna give myself trouble here. Tell us about the book though, man. Tell us about your new cookbook. Tell us about your last cookbook. Well, the first cookbook did really well,

and I think it surprised my publisher as a first-time Canadian author, thanks to guys like you. It did really well in the States, so I think they were really surprised. You know, it was in every Bass Pro across the country, which I thought was pretty amazing. That's awesome. It's an amazing book. Yeah, thank you. And that was a passion project for me for like 10 years I worked on that thing. I originally thought, oh, I mean, a self-publish and I did a lot of photography just because I

was like a 20-year-old kid taking interest in something and running around with a camera. I couldn't really afford a photographer. So I thought, I'll just take pictures myself. And then so the first book did really, really well. And then a lot of years went by, and my publisher said, hey, think about a second book. And I really love barbecue you know, I love barbecue, you know,

but I'm not really known as a barbecue guy. Maybe you did that before. Yeah. But, you know, cause at first I was like, oh, I'd like to do a barbecue book. And that's like, well, I'm not really a pit master. But then I started thinking about- You felt like you were like a interloper.

Yeah, you know, like, like that, what's that syndrome? The imposter syndrome, maybe. Is barbecue popular? It is, but Canada doesn't have its own barbecue culture. There's like the Carolina barbecue versus Texas. But then I wanted to really make it authentic. And then I thought, what do I love most? And it's like, I love cooking over a fire.

So the second book is all over the fire. Do you guys do that in your restaurant? We have a little live fire grill that we finish everything on. So we'll like pan sear a ribeye, we have a bison ribeye, we cast iron, pan sear it, and then we finish it on this little charcoal barbecue. That's, and it just imparts that little charcoal kiss

of smoke into it. Charcoal kiss. A lot of people comment, they're like, what's different about your meat? And it's like, oh, it's finished on charcoal. And then, but yeah, there's just something about cooking over a live fire. It's hard to explain, but it tastes better.

And I don't know why that is. It's whether you're just, cause you're standing around watching the flames being outside, you know, all those things that go along with it. You know, you and everyone in this room knows about, you know, what cooking like cooking at camp is like, like, why does it taste so good? And then when you go home, it's, it's good, but it's not the same, you know, and is it, is it the

experience outdoors? Is it that you're so hungry cause you've been hiking a mountain, you know, on your, on your sheep hunt or whatever it is, you know, and is it, is it the experience outdoors? Is it that you're so hungry because you've been hiking a mountain, you know, on your, on your sheep hunt or whatever it is, you know, why does that meal taste so good? It's over the fire, you know, and it's, uh, it's as a professional chef, like I can't figure it out, you know, and it's, um, so that's what I was passionate about. I thought, you know, this was, uh, this was going to be a fun project to do all over the fire. And, uh, and yet it proved to be a lot harder than the first one.

Cause everything had to be done outside over a fire. Yeah. Um, but there's a lot, a lot more seafood in this book. Um, and, uh, there's still some desserts and cocktails and stuff I work into it. That can be made over the fire or on a smoker.

Um, and, uh, and yeah, I'm really excited about it. You got photos from all over the place. Yeah. I did a lot of travel. Um, I've been really, really fortunate to, uh, to work with some, some cool hunting companies that kind of helped me on the travel stuff. Um, and, uh, yeah, Musk ox is in there.

Antelope is in there. Um, elk, uh, is in there. Um, and, uh, grease balls. Yeah. Lakers. There's some Lake is in there um and uh grease balls yeah lakers there's some lake trout in there i love those things but i was more joking about when i was a kid that's what people who called them they were they went through a period of being um that's weird man like in michigan they went through a period of being it was probably because of like the introduced salmon and people looked at them. They got all excited about it.

Yeah, I think that's. Like that fishery was built on Lakers, not built on, I mean, Lakers were a huge part of the fishery, you know? And then they kind of got decimated by lamp rays. Salmon came in and then when I was a little kid, people would talk about lake trout, like almost being like adjacent to a rough fish. Now they're celebrated again, you know, damn, they're good, man. They're so good.

I was actually fishing for lake trout last week with some buddies and I was actually getting frustrated. I didn't catch any good eating size when we were catching these monsters, which was like unreal. Through the ice? Through the ice. I'd never caught anything that big, any kind of fish through the ice before. So I was like freaking out. Um, and then I was like, we can't eat these in this big and they're like, no, like you

can't eat like way like mushy. And like, they're not good to eat when they're big, um, cause I've, I've caught lots of small ones, you know, uh, through the ice and different, different lakes. Um, and up North a couple summers ago, I caught like a 45 pound lake trout. Wow. Whoa. Really? through the ice in different lakes. And up north a couple summers ago, I caught like a 45 pound lake trout.

Wow. Whoa. Really? Yeah. There's a lodge, they're called Plumbers Arctic Lodges, and they're a great bearer lake in the Northwest territories. And they're one of the deepest lakes in the

world. A 45 pound lake trout. And that's not even like their record is 70. Yeah. I think the record record out of, I think wasn't Michigan, wasn't there a 90 pounder came out of Michigan? No, the world records out of great slave Lake, mate. What? How about a Canada? It's over a hundred. Yeah. I feel like the Michigan, there's one, there's like an account of a 90 something from

Michigan, but it was so long ago. You wonder what the hell they measured it on. Yeah. Like bags of sand. I want to have little deals, you know, the hell they measured it on. Yeah. Like bags of sand on one of the little deals, you know, the scales of justice. But, yeah, so that place was, but I'd never caught one that big through the ice. So this one was probably like 15, 20 pounds range. Okay. But, yeah, it was well, and I had gone,

I wasn't expecting to catch anything that big. So I used my little six inch auger, and my buddies had an eight inch auger, and I'm like yelling at them to come over and give me a hand. Cause I just- To widen the hole. Well, I was like, what are we going to do here?

You know, we got it through. It was pretty, pretty challenging, but we got it through. But yeah, it's a, so anyway, I've been on a big ice fishing kick lately. Did you guys put a gaff into it to drag it up through that small hole? No, no, we just stuck our hand in it. Cause that's the thing you want, like when the hole,

when you get real deep ice, that you can't get, you know, and when they come up and that hooks, I'm talking about Northies, but you know, northerns, but it'd be the same with Lake Trout, is the hooks come outside of their mouth. Okay. And when he comes up to the ice, he's like sideways in there.

Where the front of his face is on one side of the hole and his gill covers on the other side of the hole and no amount of, it's so hard to ever get him finagled. To get his head looking up. Because the ice is too thick to manipulate it by pulling the line around. So we would-

It turns into a drywall anchor. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we would take- That's a good analogy. Just take a big fishing hook. I have one that's just, it's a big treble hook on the end of a long graphite fishing rod.

Yeah. Neat. Then you can just put down there and just try to get something into them. Yeah. To finagle his head around. Yeah. We were on like 12 inches,

so we just stuck our hand down and pulled them up. Now that 45 pounder, that's cool. Yeah. And you got a cool way of cooking them in the book. The lake trout, we just did over a fire and then we... Yeah, we got that one, that picture where it's like, propped. Oh, that's a steelhead I nailed to a...

Oh, that was a steelhead, I remember that being a lake trout. That is the sexiest thing. Yeah, I nailed that to a cedar plank. I put some kelp behind it and put that over the fire. That was cool. Yeah, no, that's pretty. We did that in the city. There's really cool pictures. Thanks. cool. Yeah, that was pretty easy. We did that really cool pictures. Thanks.

Yeah. Thanks, yeah. So some of those, a lot of those I took, the ones in nature I take myself and then my business partner takes the indoor kind of play with stuff. Well that's a lot of your photography? Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. That's talented. I, you know what I can take, I'm not, you know, I use auto mode a lot. I can manipulate some stuff in manual mode, you know what I can take, I'm not, you know, I use auto mode a lot. I can, I can manipulate some stuff in manual mode, you know, but I'll take a picture in auto and then try and correct some stuff. But yeah, yeah. I just point and shoot.

How many recipes are in the book? I think it's about a hundred of this one as well. Yeah. Yeah. The seafood one, I got them down to 80 cause I'm like, I don't know if that's a lot, so the number three is going to be 80, but yeah, this one's a hundred. When you're doing that, how much, when you're putting a book together, how much do you think of it? Like, um, how do you imagine the balance between things that people wouldn't think to eat?

And so you're trying to convince people to try stuff, which I would put like, I mean, people have always eaten beavers, but I put beavers in that pile. Yeah. Mountain lions have always been eaten, but I put mountain lions in the pile. So like just general Joe Blow. Yeah. Like there's always subcultures that consume this stuff, but like, yeah, the general Joe Blow is going to be reluctant to try. So you want to encourage them. On the other hand, you want to have the stuff that's just easy and good, that everybody knows is good. Are you aware of this? The mix, the sales mix? Yeah, like, what is your mix? What's your personal mix? I think my publisher called them, or editor called them, like the aspirational recipes. I think there's about five to ten percent. You mean the kind of weird stuff.

Yeah, the weird stuff. So I think it's probably five or ten percent, you know, weird stuff. Aspirational. And then, yeah, I just, I cook what I probably 5% or 10% weird stuff. Aspirational. And then, yeah, I cook what I like. And I want, you know, and there's like a porchetta, which is like an Italian staple with pork. And so it's not like, that's not really anything new. But it's just stuff that I like to cook. And maybe somebody in, you know,

rural Mississippi's never done a porchetta, you know, so they can see that book. But it's, again, it's not like I'm reinventing the wheel, but it's just, I just want to share with people what I like to cook and you can use wild ingredients doing it. Yeah. I'm looking at, like, some of the, some of your barbecue recipes, for instance, and you have smoked cougar ham, bear ribs. Yeah, oh, the bear ribs are so good. So it's pretty cool that you got some odd, well, not odd, but species that- Aspirational.

Yeah, aspirational. But do you then, if you can't get a cougar, do it with this? I don't know if I gave alternative ingredients for cougar do it with this. I don't know if I gave, uh, you know, alternative ingredients for cougar. I, you know, for a lot of the game, my publisher did ask, like, if you can't use bison and use, you know, use a grass fed

beef or stuff like that. But yeah, the cougar, well, that's, it's pretty hard to, you know, switch that out. You know, squirrel, you could switch out rabbit or something, but, um, yeah, like for, for bear ribs, there's, you know, I guess the closest thing might be like bison ribs or something. That makes me want yeah, like for, for bear ribs, there's, you know, I guess the closest thing might be like bison ribs.

That makes me want to like, just think about bear ribs. They're so good. Why people do bear ribs. Use a sawzall that I learned from my dear farmer. Uh, and yeah, you can just cut like whatever size, you know, length of rib you want. These ones I did the probably like four or five

inch cuts down the rib cage. And you're not, you're leaving all the. All the fat, cage. And you're not, you're leaving all the. All the fat, everything. So you're not, you're just taking the hide off. Hide off. You're not trimming the outer layers. No. Hide off.

And then there's probably like. Fall bear, spring bear? That was a spring bear. Okay. Um, and, uh, and yeah, so then I, I put it on the smoker. I, you know, I had a dry rub on it, smoked it. I kind of treated it like a brisket where I wanted it to hit 160, 165 for the stall.

And then I wrapped it in tin foil just to keep that moisture in. And then what? And then just cook it till like 200, 205 Fahrenheit until you could actually like pull the bones apart. No braising at all, just all done in the foil. All done in the foil. The bear ribs were fatty enough that I didn't need to. Deer ribs, I'll put like a splash of beer in or something in the foil and,

and, uh, or I'll put it on a, uh, like I'll smoke them first to get the smoke flavor in there and then I'll put it on a baking sheet. I can add, you know, splash of beer or something, some stock and then cover it. Um, but it also, that's the thing about game meat, you know, if you shot a lean spring bear, maybe you do need to use some liquid in there. But for that one, it was, you can see by the picture, like it's pretty fatty. There's a good meaty, it almost looks like a beef short rib. It's kind of so meaty.

You know what I made Monday night that bummed me out? What? Was um, I had this, I had killed a pig in Texas, a wild pig. Yeah. That was fatty. Right. But there were so many pigs around, you could go sneak into the, you could sneak into the, what do they call it, a sounder? Whatever the hell. You could sneak into the little party. Yeah. And look for the fat ones. It was just like a freak thing where there was just things like you never imagined. You could pick fat ones out. And I had one that where I was like,

you so seldom get a wild hog was just like layered in fat. And I was so excited about these little ribs. I cut up the little wild hog riblets. I think I have the other half of that, which I haven't cooked yet. Okay. Well, they're good.

So I did a braise on them. And then threw them in the oven. It was like too much of a good thing. Oh no. My kids were not into it. Too fatty. Just the goopiest. Yeah. I never thought you could have it be there. There's like two, the opposite. Like it didn't render out or like, I should have put it. Like it didn't render out or? Is it like oily or like kind of like gelatinous?

What I needed to do is put it in an oven at low heat and let that shit drip out for a long time. Dry out a little bit. Or set your grill on fire. I was eating them. I was eating them. I'm taking a note from you. I ate them and enjoyed them.

My daughter's like, yeah. But they don't like, they don't eat a lot of, they don't like real fatty meat. They're just not used to it. And my kids don't either, like, kind of breaks my heart when I see people, like, cut the fat off a strip loin and they leave it on their plate. I'm like, oh, that's the best part.

That's what you fork out of their plate, if you're with them. See, I'm surprised to hear that, because my kids, you know, that's the reason they love the mallard duck, is because they're like, oh, wow, you're actually serving us something with some fat. And, you know, the skin's the best part, right? They get green all over their faces. My wife don't like it. She don't like domestic meat. She don't like beef steaks. She likes, she don't like any of that kind of fat. She likes it lean. I wonder if you had treated it more like you would treat a domestic rack of ribs, if it would have come out better.

Yeah, if you just smoked it. It just trimmed it.. I treated it just like I did just what I would do for like deer ribs and it was just the wrong move. I got left over, I'm gonna put them back and I'm gonna mess with them. I haven't given up. That's the secret of cooking when people are like, oh, how do it's like practice. You just gotta practice.

Yeah. To try new things and you tried braising it, you know, didn't get the same results. So it's like try straight smoking it. Well, I'm going back down and I'm going back down to that same place and I'm gonna hunt me down another little fatty. But you don't get a chance to practice with fat wild hogs because there aren't many of them out there. What's Jesse Griffiths?

Jesse Griffiths put a number on it one time. No it wasn't him. It was uh remember that dude Clayton Saunders who was really good? The obesity rate among wild hogs? Like how many are fat? No I said that was it Clayton Saunders who was really good. The obesity rate among wild hogs. Oh, like how many are fat? No, I said that was it Clayton Saunders down in Texas. I can't remember what we're talking about. I said like of all the of all wild, like all wild pigs, how many are suitable? Oh, remember he put us, he put a hog shoulder. Yeah.

He put a hog shoulder in a smoker, Texas style, had a mop. And I said, how many, like one out of what is suitable to do that with the front shoulder. And I feel like he says something like, man, one in a hundred. Oh really? Wow. I'll do that. But it wasn't that, it wasn't that bad.

It was bad, but it wasn't that bad. That he would do a, again, just to be clear, that he would take a whole front leg from a wild pig and do it the way he cooked it for us, which was phenomenal. He said it's like a one and whatever. Like treat it like a, exactly like you treat a domestic. And not need to bring any extra stuff to the show.

We did ribs this weekend, and I also learned a little trick for next time. What kind of ribs? Bison ribs. Oh. And I brought, I had just the whole side of ribs, and they're frozen. And I went to cut them up into those, like,

five-inch strips. Uh-huh. And they did it in the kitchen with the sawzall. Sure. And you got the bone fragments. And frozen, frozen little meat and bone dust all over the backsplash. You're wife get mad about stuff like that? Yeah, that was a good lesson learned.

You're so weird as mine, like, she just does it, man. Yeah, as long as I clean it up. Oh yeah, I cleaned it up too, but it was just like, this was a thing that didn't need to happen. It would have been much easier to do that. Oh do the sawzalling outside. If I didn't clean it up I'd hear about it. Yeah. But I could cut up a person on our counter and she's not even caring if I clean it up. You know what I'm saying? Yeah yeah no we have our program's a little different. She doesn't like that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's just like, well, I'll call her. She'll probably hear about it.

No, I think you're pushing it there with a person analogy. I think she would care. Depends on the person. If I cleaned up, I wouldn't need to hear about it. That's a secret. Okay. Not a person, but I'm saying, yeah, not a problem. I was joking. You can make it like, yeah, there's like a person who there's like legal implications. What I'm saying is like, if I clean up, I don't need to worry about

what I do in the kitchen. Yeah. And she's walking through your garage every day where there's like hides hanging and yeah she's like clean clean that shit up I don't know you're done that's it might be that it might be that my my cleanup is like a 97 out of a hundred you know there's always some residual. Do you think your wife would come on the show? Yeah. Happily. She's been on trivia.

Dude, that'd be a great episode, man. Just interview Randall's wife. Actually, that would be. Sydney is fantastic. She actually, she actually, uh, she was listening to the trivia, like the past couple trivia episodes, uh, the was listening to the trivia, like the past couple of trivia episodes, uh, the other day.

And she said what I, what my, her new favorite game to play is instead of trying to answer the questions, it's trying to guess which ones Seth gets right. That's cruel, man. Like even Seth would know that. Well she just sort of like, she doesn't know Seth that well, but she, like, is she listens along, she's sort of playing this meta game on top of it. It was like based on what Seth gets wrong and right. Does she root for you?

Do you feel? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She likes to see you win. My wife stopped caring about trivia a long time ago. Get all excited about winning. She doesn't care.

Just, just clean up your mess in the kitchen. Randall's still on the trip. Newlywed still with the whole trivia thing. Yeah. She's like, just clean your mess up, Brody. I hope you have fun at trivia. What's your, uh, so, so that's the mix, the blend. Yep.

10 to 15%. Something like that. Yeah. She just, yeah, made it a point to say, not too many of those aspirational recipes. And then what is, what do you feel is like the best, what's the star of the show? Like in the book, what is the one,

if someone said, hey, I'm gonna cook one thing out of this book, what should I cook? That's so hard, cause I love, I love a lot of the the content in there. The bare ribs I think is way up there like I was really surprised how good those were. We got off on this whole thing sorry. Keep going on the bare ribs. You just serve them like bone-on. Bone-on yeah. Smoked the whole time didn't really braise it. You know dry rub and yeah just phenomenal really really surprised how

good they came out. in lay on a plate Yeah, you serve him with some tangy Casey style sauce or I? I don't know Brody stills got that still got the page up on the computer there, but I forget I think I served it with that barbecue sauce the bear ribs. I know you had listed Maybe you're reading the table of contents the barbecue I think I placed it with something Maybe you're reading the table of contents. Where is the barbecue? I forget what I served. I think I glazed it with something. Hmm.

You know, that's cool. It's like I never, when I'm cutting up a bear, I never think to do the ribs. Like I never think to do the ribs on the bone. Yeah. Most of the time I will cut in between the meat out of them. But yeah, I just, I was on a barbecue kick and I had shot a bear and I'm going to do the ribs. Yeah.

I'm going to try that this spring. A lot of the bears we deal with are coastal bears though. Yeah. And I wonder, I wonder if that, because it's hard to trim the fat out. Yeah. And that fat can be pretty fishy. Yeah. I might try it. We're, we, I was serving some of that fishy bear meat to my buddy Dirt. Yeah. And I was like, problem with it. It's like, uh, it's like, it's kind of like, it's like meat, but it's kind of tastes like smoked fish. And they're like, I love smoke. He likes to, that's funny.

I'm not, I'm not, I want to ask you about your fried perch. Cause I know Steve's got opinions on fried perch. Look at that. I mean, no, I'm asking's not seasoning the fish directly, right? I think I use like a seasoned flour. If I remember. Flour? Yeah, like a. Wheat flour. Like fish crisp, you know, like. Not cornmeal.

I think I mix, I put some cornmeal in my seasoned flour. But would you say, like in all honesty, in all honesty, just level with me here. Brody, is this what you're going for? Oh yeah. I knew this would happen. I got a couple more questions. In all honesty, I'm no Canadian.

Yup. Uh, do you feel that you're from a fish fry culture? I would say no. No. Do you leave the skin on the filets? Not to fry them. If we're, if I was going to sear it without breading and stuff, I would, well, I do like fish skin.

Like walleye, I love crispy walleye skin. Same with trout. Like most fish, I scale it and I will leave the skin on. But fried, yeah, you got to. But you clarified that you're not a pit master. No, I wouldn't. But now you're saying you're a fry man. I love to fry. I like to fry stuff. I fried a lot of food.

I think I've fried more food in my life than, uh, than, than legit barbecue, but, um, okay. So tell me the perfect perch is, is wheat flour, not cornmeal. I use both. I mix. Yeah. I put, I do. I don't know if it's 25% corn, corn, you know, cornmeal, but I like the crispy texture. I like that approach. The cornmeal flour mix. Cause, cornmeal, but I like the crispy texture. I like that approach. The cornmeal flour mix, cause what it gives, it gives like,

like I like a real fine cornmeal, but if you can get a little, like a little bit of a medium ground, you don't get that universal coat. So if you do flour, flour sticks to like, it's just on there. And then, and then you got that cornmeal. So you got like a good even coat. Then you got like a little of that texture and stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way to go. What do you fry and what's your oil? Lately I've been using peanut oil. I kind of save fat and render everything. I love frying stuff and bare fat. I think it's like the best of the best. How hot do you get it? Around 350 and up around there.

Like, you know, we'll do French fries at 300 and then to finish it like 375. Do you ever make a French fry in bare fat? Yes, I've done that. No kidding. It's real good. I never did that. Bare fat, like, I don't know what it is.

It's like, it makes the flakiest pastry. I wanna talk to a food scientist about why bear fat makes flakier pastry than pig lard. Is that right? I don't know why it is the most incredible lard to make pastry. Huh, yeah. You couldn't legally, no you probably couldn't.

Like in your restaurant, you couldn't be just frying stuff and bear fat. No. No. No. Probably. You'd get a lot of bears to make that work. Hypothetically. Yeah, no, they'd frown upon that. So you like to fry in peanut oil?

At home I fry in peanut oil. At the restaurant we don't just because of the peanut allergy thing. Oh. Yeah. The restaurant- So what do you have to use in a commercial kitchen? It's not what we could use. But then you gotta tell your people about it. We gotta tell, we gotta be really careful.

We use like, most restaurants use canola. It's like just standard. It comes in a big box with a jug and it's, you know. Do you ever fry in beef tallow in your restaurant? I've never fried with it. I've used it in potatoes, like to roast potatoes and stuff. And like, brush base stuff with and whatever, but I've never actually filled a fryer with beef tallow.

Yeah. Have you ever hung out with Jesse Griffiths? So I was gonna tell you, cause last time I was on the show, I had never heard of him. And you told me to look him up and I'd, you know, been following him for the last four years. And then I just met him at a NWTF show.

Oh, okay. Yeah, he was there with his new turkey book. Dude, you guys, I feel like you guys, you guys be like nuts on you guys just be like, you guys be like nuts on a dog. I screwed the whole thing up because he was here the other week. I know we were joking. We're like, we're ships passing, but we're gonna make plans to hang out. If you guys went to, if you went to each other's restaurants and stuff, you guys would be like, you guys would be like best friends, man. Yeah, yeah. We kind of became best friends at the show.

So we're gonna, we're gonna try and do some stuff together. I feel like you guys would have a great time hanging out. His books are beautiful. They're really cool books. If you ask him about frying stuff and what grease he uses, he'll not say no opinion. Yeah, what will he say? He likes the beef fat, dude. Really? Cool.

When they do their Friday fish fries at Die Due, when they do their fish fries, they do their fish fries and beef fat. Hmm. That's funny. That's cool I thought I was like what it's not waxy, but it's so much thicker than like Lord. Yeah It you know what's funny about is I keep it in my fryer, but I keep my fryer outside But I keep it lower to be fat and in the winter like we just had like negative 20. Yeah, rock. Oh, yeah fat and in the winter, like we just had like negative 20. Yeah. Rock. Oh yeah. Yeah. And like you turn that thing on. You better turn it on in the morning, man. Really?

I think those, I think those heating elements get a little bit of that shit liquify, but it takes a while to bring that back to life. Yeah. When it's just frozen like a brick. Yeah. You know, I've never done a whole pot of beef tallow. I definitely will give that a shot. What else is in the book do you think of as a highlight? You like the bear ribs? The bear ribs, definitely the fishing part was fine. There's a lot of fish stuff.

And I started spearfishing recently, so there's some spearfishing stuff in there. Yeah, just the over the fire thing is prevalent through the whole book. So if you're interested in fire cooking, there's some how-to stuff, different types of fire setups. And you don't have to buy a $5,000 smoker. You can make one with cinder blocks. So if there's a, let's say this, there's a dude that fishes, what's the one hot tip you

could give a guy that fishes? You gotta leave, Brody? Yeah. We're gonna wrap up, but go ahead. There's a, let's say this, there's a dude that fishes. What's the one hot tip you could give a guy that fishes? You gotta leave, Brody? Yeah. We're gonna wrap up, but go ahead. I would say just, you know, try doing something different. You know, if you always take the skin off, you know, try leaving the skin on and frying it, you know,

and then in a cast iron pan, you know, just there's all kinds of stuff. I like to just, you know, just there's all kinds of stuff. I like to just teach people about how to get more out of their game, whether it's you know, bear ribs where a lot of guys leave that stuff, or you know, shanks. So many times I've cooked shanks for outfitters and they're like, we've been feeding these to our dogs for 20 years.

And one of them, their wife said, if you can make ruddy mule deer shanks taste good, like you're welcome anytime. And she couldn't believe it. I took the sawzall and cut two inch ossobuco cuts out of the mule deer I shot, and she was dumbfounded that they weren't stinky. You could cut up any part of that animal

and cooked it up, made it good. But, yeah, the fishing, to get back on the, what would I recommend the fishing guide? It's like, what's out of the realm of, what's out of their comfort zone and try and teach them something to do that's different? Try to do something new. Yeah.

Like if they fry everything all the time, then try grilling it or try pan searing it or just try something different. Have you found that odd, because you came to hunting a little bit later in life, right? Like when you first sort of became aware of this idea that there's a lot of hunters out there

that aren't using the whole animal or maybe even not using an entire animal because there's this idea that, oh, rotted mule deer butt can't taste good because it's been eaten sage, or the pronghorn's been eaten sage, and it's gonna be sagey. Or the thing now that I keep coming back to

that we experienced a bunch this winter is the ducks. That 100 years ago, we nearly extirpated the damn things across our country, and now we shoot them literally just for fun. And multiple outfitters have told me that 90 plus percent of their clients would just leave the ducks with them if they were legally allowed to do so. And they were wiped out to go into restaurants. Yeah, they were wiped out,

not because we enjoyed shooting them, but because we enjoyed eating them so much. So like when you encountered this, as an adult, what was your take on that? It just blew my mind. The family friend that took me turkey hunting for the first time, I saw the way he cleaned his bird. He skinned it, cut out the breast,

and chucked the rest into the woods. And I was like, no, no, no, can you show me how to pluck this? And he was annoyed, and he was like, okay. And he goes, oh no, don't eat the legs, you can't eat the legs. I was like, what do you, no, like, can you show me how to pluck this? And he like, was like annoyed and it was like, okay. And, uh, and he goes, Oh, no, don't eat the legs. You can't eat the legs. I was like, what do you mean you can't eat the legs? He's like, Oh, they're tough as nails.

Like I'll die. Yeah. Like he's like, yeah. And, but you know, he was like a 45 year old Englishman that as whole life, you know, he's not a chef. So, you know, telling him to braise it, he'd be like, what? Like how long? Like five hours?

No. telling him to braise it, he'd be like, what? Like, how long? Like, five hours? No, like, so, you know, I just get a kick out of, you know, teaching people how to do it, you know? And it's really not that hard, and it doesn't take that much extra time, and you just shot this turkey, and now you keep in these legs that are like three to four pounds of extra meat, and it's usually well received, you know?

People are generally surprised in a good way, and it's possible. But so if you had to surprised in a good way. It's positive. So if you had to point to a reason to why it's become this way, is it because for him, it's a lack of cooking skill? I definitely like, and just culture. Culture. You grew up hunting with your dad and your grandfather,

and you guys shoot bears as a nuisance, and you can't eat bear. That's what you're told. Right. I went the first time, not the first time, it's probably one of the third or fourth bears that I ever killed. I went to a friend's hunting camp in Alberta.

And every single person at that camp had never eaten bear before. But they were at a bear hunting camp. And they're just there to have fun and shoot a bear. And they keep, legally you have to keep the fur. Yeah. In Alberta, you don't have to eat the meat. And they just, yeah, they just grew up

thinking that you can't eat bear. So I did bear shanks. I put it in a, a crock pot by the fire. I think this one's actually in the book too. It served on a paper plate cause it was at the camp, it was pretty cool. Um, and I did like polenta, like kind of like grit style and, uh, it was like bear

shank, ragu and polenta, like cheap cream, or not cream, um, cheddar cheese polenta, I think cheat cream, or not, cheddar cheese polenta, I think. It's like, they couldn't believe it. They were just like, we've been hunting bear our whole life and never eaten it. That's Lord's work right there, man. Yeah. Actually, I had this conversation with Cal

when we were turkey hunting, you know, with Danielle a few years back, and he said as an outfitter, other guides would get pissed off when clients wanted to eat what? Because there's way more work now for the guides. Me and Cal cooked bear meat for a bear guide who was blown away.

That it was good. Yeah. Yeah. Was that in Jeff's camp? Yeah. Yeah, we made asabuco, right? Yeah. The other thing that's funny too is in Texas,

those old boys, like you shoot a pig that's over 150 pounds, like you can't eat that. Yeah, sure. You know, you can't eat that. Get that out of the skinning shed, it's gonna stink us up. Like they were adamant that I couldn't eat this hog I shot, and it wasn't that big, you know?

And they said, oh, that shoulder plate, you know, it's a, that's a, what do they call it? Like it's full of testosterone, like it's a mature male. You can't eat that. So am I, man. Yeah, yeah. And then so I put that thing in a smoke, I brined it over and I- So you're gonna call it? Like it's full of testosterone, like it's a mature male, you can't eat them. So am I, man. Yeah. Yeah. And then so I put that thing in a smoke, I brined it overnight. That's where I get it. I quartered it, I brined it overnight. Low tea.

Then I put a dry rub on it and I put it in a smoker all day and they loved it. And they were like, what is this? I was like, oh, that's that hog you told me I couldn't eat. Aww. I never thought that you could boost your tea with just eating hog. Yeah. He told me I couldn't eat. I never thought that you could boost your tea with just eating hogs. Yeah, well we learned when we trapped all those hogs, I forget who told us, the one fellow we were with was trapping them and selling them live,

just like your farmer guys do. And the big hogs like that, because of that plate and all, there's actually less yield. Right. And so the price is more expensive per pound, but over in Europe, they actually pay more for it because they prefer the high flavor,

I think is how they called it. There's a skinning trick on those son of a guns too. Oh really? Yeah, then we're gonna wrap up. Okay. Okay, picture you got him hanging by, let's say he's hanging by his hind hocks. Yeah. Okay. And you're pulling the hide down. Yep. When you get to the, when you get to the shield, the shield doesn't roll. It's like a

dead end street. It's also like the hides pulling over the ribs and it hits the shield and you can't budget. Like it won't roll over. So they take, again he's hanging from his hocks, you run a couple vertical cuts through the shield. So the shield is now basically running in parallel vertical strips, three or four inches wide. Yep. Those will roll. Interesting. But also right down that noise I made was speed. That noise I made was meant to denote speed. Skinning. It's good to know.

Speed skinning. Yeah. I was genius. That's cool. Genius. Cut. Don't you remember that? Yeah.

I don't even stand right there. I don't remember that. Do we cover that in that episode? I don't know. And he just did it from the top, like from through the fur kind of thing. Yep. He just got down to that shield and then just gashed, like cut the shield into slits and you can skin each slit down. Clayton did this? Just the whole thing won't roll. Yeah. Clayton or? It was those boys that were

showing us that. I feel like we made a mistake if we didn't include that in that episode. Maybe he was hanging out with some different Texas dudes, but I don't think so. episode. Maybe he was hanging out with some different Texas dudes, but I don't think so. Maybe Jesse showed me that. Maybe. No, either way, little tripped tip. Tip. Hot tips. Good one. All right, man, so they can find you at your restaurant. Go to Antlers in Toronto. Yep, Antlers restaurant in Toronto at thehunterchef.com. We'll post the pre-sale link for the book. There's like, you know, Indigo chapters, all those stores, but I'll put the main kind of pre-sale link on my website. You can buy the book in the store, I hope, in the restaurant. Yeah, the books are available in the restaurant.

We ship signed copies from the restaurant. You can buy them on Amazon. Amazon's been great. Buy them at bookstores. All bookstores. And yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, man. Good luck with it. Appreciate it. All bookstores. And yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, man. Good luck with it.

Next time we're in Michigan, maybe we ought to just bebop over the bridge. I think it's like three hours. We're not far. It's three hours. Yeah, it's not far. Do you guys ever do anything in the... Was it three hours from Detroit?

Yeah, Detroit. That's quick, yeah. Yeah. Would love to have you guys. It'd be great. That'd be fun. Yeah. If you come up anytime in a season,

we could shoot some ducks or turkeys or whatever. Yeah, I wonder how hard it'd be to get a turkey license over there in Ontario. It's easy. Yeah, we have some of the- For non-residents? The Joe Blow Americans can do it? It's like everything's over the counter.

Except for maybe moose is difficult as a non-resident. I have to look into that one, but turkeys, deer, ducks, everything's over the counter. Joe, oh, sorry. Non-resident. If have to look into that one, but turkeys deer docks everything's over the counter If we annex Canada, it's gonna change the whole chasing 50 Here's the thing they hadn't thought about when they go annex Canada I was reading this They're gonna we're gonna take it over and make it a new state, but it's gonna be a blue state No, it's a blue state. They hadn't thought about that. No. It's a blue state.

So here they are. Yeah, so here they're either gonna go take it over. Their extreme right lands left of our left. They're gonna be like son of a bitch I haven't thought of that. Yeah. Now they're all voting for Democrats. I wouldn't, if I'd have known that I wouldn't have invaded them. And you gotta take Quebec with it too. So it's a lot of electoral votes. I love Quebec, but I'm just saying. Yeah, they have thought of, there's a whole lot of French people there too. Yeah, it's like, careful what you wish for when you invade Canada, man. Yeah, I hope shit don't get tense between us if that happens.

No. Okay, we'll stay friendly. I love the States. Okay, so thanks for coming on. Tell everybody the name of your book. It's Hunter Chef in the Wild, so available at thehunterchef.com. I'm thehunterchef.com or at thehunterchef everywhere. And all the socials for the restaurant are Antler Kitchen Bar.

I want to go to that restaurant. We'll check it out. Sounds good. We're an hour and a half from Buffalo, if you guys ever do a show on Buffalo. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. Oh, closer to Buffalo. I tell people that their heads explode. They're like, what? I'm like, yeah. We're an hour and a half from Buffalo if you guys ever do a show on Buffalo. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. Oh, closer to Buffalo. I tell people that their heads explode.

Like what? I'm like yeah, we're an hour and a half from Buffalo. That's wild. We drive up there for dinner. Oh man. We do, we get folks from Buffalo. They just drive up. Listen, I'm not taking myself out of it,

but I think we as Americans, our geography ends in two places, North and South. But Ontario dips down. I can't remember whose quote it was, but there was a quote, is war is how Americans learn geography. So coming up, we will have Americans will have a very good sense

of Canadian geography. All right, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Thanks, Michael. Thanks, guys. Phelps has a new thing this spring. They're coming out with what they call the Prime Cuts turkey diaphragm calls. One of them is called the Clay Neukom Prime prime cut and I'm not just going to talk about it I'm gonna I'm gonna blow on it here I'm a simple turkey hunter who likes a simple system. I usually carry one, maybe two diaphragm calls in a single pot call every year.

Don't even carry a box call. I wanted a versatile diaphragm call that was the best of two worlds. I wanted loud and raspy, a call that I could cut on, but also one that was soft and subtle that I could purr and kiki run on. I love to make those raspy cuts and the soft subtle purrs on the same call and I find many of them I can't do both and this call that I worked with Jason Phelps to build simplifies my turkey kit. These prime cuts come in a three pack.

There's the Clay Newcomb call, but also Steve Rinella and Jason Phelps favorite turkey diaphragm cuts. You can check all these out along with all the other MeatEater and Phelps turkey calls at store.themeteater.com.