The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 748: Campfire Nachos and Jonathan Taylor Thomas | MeatEater Radio Live!

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Hosts Randall Williams, Spencer Neuharth, and Cory Calkins chat with Kevin Hogan of Rock Island Auction, have a listener submitted Hot Tip-Off, dive into 1997's Wild America in the MeatEater Movie Club, and share some bespoke Top 3s. Watch the live stream on the MeatEater Podcast Network YouTube channel. Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. On-X hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in On-X are available for your hunts this season. Now, the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS. with hunting maps that include

public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K top-o maps, waypoints, and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out

on-X if you visit onexmaps.com slash meet. You've got the land, you've got the deer, but the season's closing in and your mind's racing with more questions than answers. I'm Jake Hofer, and this is Back 40, a limited series show on Wire to Hunt,

part of Meat Eat Eater's Podcast Network. Each episode, I'll be asking eight white-tail hunting pros, a focused, thought-provoking question about hunting and land management. How do I hunt the best part of the farm with less than ideal access? Should you, that's what the real question is. Stand without good access is not a good stand.

Search Wire to Hunt and hit that follow button to listen to Back 40 now. Smell us now, lady. Welcome to Meat Eater Trivia. Meat Eater podcast. Welcome to Meeker. Eater Radio Live. Today is Thursday, August 14th. It's 11 a.m. Mountain Time here in Bozeman, Montana. That's 9 a.m. in Tallahassee, Florida, the new Black Bear Hunting Capital of the country.

I'm your host, Randall Williams, and I'm joined today by Spencer Newhart and Corey Calkins. Hey! Today's show, we're going to hear about some fascinating firearms from our friends at Rock Island Auctions. We've got another hot tip-off for you. We're getting together the old Meat Eater Movie Club to discuss the film Wild America. And we will wrap everything up with a little segment we like to call top three. Corey, Spencer, how are you fine gentlemen doing today? Doing great.

Very good. Very excited to get to our top threes. Excellent. Well, you've got to wait because we've got three wonderful segments before that. I'm excited for the meat eater movie club because I know, obviously, a banger of a film, and I know you have some wonderful notes for us. It's a fan favorite, I think. A fan favorite.

How did this recommendation come to? Oh, no, I'm sorry. I'm talking about Meat Eat Your Movie Club. Got Phil. Got Phil. You always do. No, I actually, the film was recommended by a couple, it was in a couple of emails to us. And I remember watching it when I was little. And the only thing I could remember is the, you know, the climatic scene in the Bear Cave. So we'll get to all that.

We'll get to all that. Can I make requests for Movie Club? Sure. Would you rank all of the movies we've done, not right now, but like in some future episode, Maybe at the end of the year I think that's a tremendous idea Do a recap Here's the best and here's the worst

Maybe you've got some awards Like best cinematography goes to Wild America We could call it the Not the Razzies The Randis That's great There we go

We could just have a whole episode Where I just reread all of the All of the bits that I've done We need some shows over Christmas break We do Yeah that'll be some good filler Now before we get too far We have a couple of exciting

new things to announce here. Today, actually, Rich Fronings' In Pursuit podcast just took over what used to be the Cutting the Distance podcast. So you can join Rich every Thursday on the Meat Eater podcast YouTube channel or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And at this very moment, 11 a.m. Mountain Time. The Meteeter YouTube channel has launched a video recap of the Mountain Mentor that Steve and I did earlier this year.

We went around to a couple different universities in the West and talked about our Meteor's American History Mountain Men audiobook, and Steve and I also got to visit a museum, Museum of the Mountain Men in Pinedale, Wyoming. And we got to shoot some black powder guns. And, uh, the video shows that, shows you boys. It does. It does. It actually shows my first, my very first attempt at

shooting a, uh, uh, Flintlock rifle. You say attempt. It was, it went poorly. Oh, okay. There was, uh, I, I was, uh, I was, prepared for the delay between the flash and the pan and the hang fires that's what it's called it wasn't it wasn't a full on hang fire but uh by the time the rifle discharged i was pointing it elsewhere i was pointing it at the ground my flinch had already hit me so it's embarrassing

and i'd hope they cut that from the film but that is included and certainly steve had some choice words to say to you yes yes he was tickled he was tickled by my failure to hit the target See that now on the MediaDry YouTube channel. Indeed. Also, we have a note from Mark Kenyon in the chat. He would like everyone to know that there are brand new Wired to Hunt hats and T-shirts in the store. A shameless plug from Mark Kenyon.

I don't know if they're in the store at this moment or if they're coming. Mark, let us know, you know. It's Yanni's favorite hat. Yanni wears that hat every day. I see him at the office. You see him at the office every day? Every day that, I see him at the office.

Once a month. It's his favorite. It's his favorite. hat from our selection. Excellent. I could bud in here and say the hats and shirts are available. So make Mark Harry. Geez, another shameless plug.

Let's get away from the commercial nastiness of this whole enterprise and get into the good stuff here. Speaking of historical firearms to connect the thing I had just said a few minutes before we got into the T-shirt selling to the upcoming segment. For our first and only guest on today's show, we're talking to Kevin Hogan, the president of Rock Island Auction. Kevin, welcome to the show. What's up, boys? We got hats and t-shirts, too. Oh, really? Would you, yeah, where can we find those? Rock Islandauction.com?

No, you actually got to come here and buy them. We're not that advanced yet, but we're proud of them too. So could you tell us where you are, and I know you got a couple guns to show us, but you could tell us a little bit about where you are in the auction that these guns will be in? Yes, sir. So we're in Bedford, Texas. I'm Kevin Hogan, President of Rock Island auction company. We're located in Bedford, Texas. We've been in business for 30 years. We were kind of on the, well, we were in Illinois for up until 2023. And then we moved down here to the Lone Star State. And it's been great. So we're right in the middle of BFW. We're 30 minutes from Fort Worth, 30 minutes from Dallas, 10 minutes from DFW Airport. We got down here as soon as we could.

So it's been, it's been absolutely wonderful. We handle the finest guns in the world. We do it three times a year, and we've got a great sale this weekend. So we'll be selling Friday through Sunday. Excellent. Kevin, being in Texas seems like what I would imagine to be like the core of the demographic of your buyers. Is that case? Is that the case? Is it very Texas? Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, like country is countrywide, right? And I mean, we have 34 countries that will participate in our sales. But, you know, Texas has, it's not the best gun culture in the United States is the best gun culture in the world. And, you know, you draw that line from Dallas to San Antonio, San Antonio to Houston. You've got the golden triangle there.

I mean, there's nine million people here in TFW. And, you know, more and more, there's more, there's more business on the deer blind here and there is on the golf course. And it's been a great place for us to be. But if you break it down, you know, by population densities, I mean, we're from the formerly great state of Illinois. And I mean, Illinois is a great state, but you just have, you know, 30 miles surrounded by reality, which is Chicago, but it's population densities that buy guns. So Texas is number one, but California is number two, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, all right up there. It's population densities. Interesting. Can you tell us about the first firearm you have to show us here? Sure, man. We got some fun stuff. So everything I'm going to

show you we're going to start selling tomorrow. This is lot number 44. We'll sell it within the first 30 minutes tomorrow morning. We start selling at 9 a.m. central time. This is Steve McQueen's Maresley. I don't know how much introduction it does or does it need to the viewers. For me, I'm 37 years old. You know, what does Steve McQueen mean generationally to my generation?

What does it mean to that baby boomer generation? but this gun for so many, we've had it on display for three weeks. I mean, we've had people come from around the country to kind of pay homage to it. The imagination that it inspired them, right? When they were a youth, kind of how they whatever formulated their lives, it's meaningful to a lot of people. Steve McQueen, the King of Cool. This was the mayor's leg from his show,

Blonde Dead or Alive. And it's a, we sold some really cool, like, pop culture items. I'm looking forward to this. this one. Most notably, we had Han Solo's original blaster from the original Star Wars movie, New Hope. We actually made the Guinness Book of

World Records with that gun. That gun brought just over a million dollars. We had John Wayne's single action, his favorite kind of screen used gun that he used in Rio Bravo, True Grit, Rooster Cockburn. But Steve McQueen strikes different boards with people, obviously again, the King of

Cool. And I think, you know, this gun kind of involves that it's because at the end of the day it is it is cool can you can you can you I've always been curious can you tell us about the origin of the term mayor's leg I mean it typically refers to a lever action that's been shortened and then the stock has been cut off just below the the sort of wrist of the stock but do you know about the history of that term yeah I mean like I think just from the from the visual you could say it's there but um what we were reading is I can't He did a, I think it's in his autobiography, and he's talking about the development of this gun with Kenneth von Dutch, which is just another cool piece of American pop culture, the famous fabricator.

And McQueen was a method actor, and so he took, he took, they made three of these. He took one of the original examples that didn't have the plug barrel, because this is a blank firing gun only. He took it to the range. And I think the one that he said he was shooting was like a 4570, and it kicked like a mare's leg was basically. Apart from the visual, yeah, they said even this gun on the blank load, it was so short and so powerful. They had to, like, shorten the blank load that they were doing to, like, a third of the power. That's great. That had never occurred to me, but certainly the experience would probably bring to mine getting kicked.

Absolutely. What have you got for your second gun here today? So, also we're selling this sucker tomorrow. Smith and Wesson, new model number three. letters to Annie Oakley. So if you take a look, like, just a few things are, you can see this, like, shotgun site on the front, and it's a smooth bore. So the gun was made in 1895, and it was shipped directly to Annie Oakley.

And so, like, we get a lot of, like, historical guns that get run past us, and provenance is everything. And, like, my story is not, like, great, but it's almost every time we get a historic gun. I mean, for every historic gun we sell, there's 50 or 75 that we don't, because they don't quite meet muster. But, like, you know, the great cinema classic, half-baked, and he's talking about how he bought Jerry Garthi in a pouch. And he says, how do you know that? Or who told you that? It's the guy that sold it to me.

And so, you know, there's so many stories about guns, but provenance is everything. Unfortunately, some of this stuff's real and it's lost to time space in history. but this one letters right from the factory to Annie Oakley as a smooth bore. And she's as relevant now as she was, you know, in 1895 when the gun was made. She would, if you think about it, she was really like one of the first real international female superstars. I mean, she was her shooting prowess. And she, I mean, she was, she was tough as nails too. She tried to raise a regiment of all female sharpshooters, both in the Spanish-American War and in World War.

one um she was tough i mean she started fishing hunting and trapping when she was seven years old and and did it for for the right reasons they're putting food on the table she was she was tough and so um it's pretty i mean you think about what this gun saw this is 1895 she's 35 years old she's five foot on paper uh a hundred pounds soaking wet and sitting sitting Sitting Bull is watching her, you know, shoot and shoot this gun, you know, and he's one that tagged your little mature shot.

That's incredible. That's incredible. Could you tell us what you expect that pistol to make it auction? And also, I forgot to ask you about the mayor's leg, too. Do you have an expected valuation of those? Yeah, the mayor's leg, I think we got in around like 50 to 75,000 as a low estimate.

It's really hard to come. Some of this start, right? So you have an intrinsic value exercise versus history. But our estimate on the mayor's legs 50 to 75. Annie Oakley, I believe, is 60 to 90,000. We have sold several Annie Oakley guns. I mean, that was her craft. Guns were her tools.

She had a lot of guns. Most of those have been lost in time space in history about they were actually hers. But we've sold them, we've sold the anti-Oakley guns for huge dollars. We've never sold a revolver. I mean, typically you think of Annie Oakley, you think of like a 22, 1890, Winchester, or a shotgun. But, yeah, I mean, I expect it to be spirited. I expect it to be spirited, but I don't have a crystal ball.

I'll tell you, I'll tell you tomorrow night when it's all shutting down. Excellent, excellent. And what, to wrap things up here, what's the third and final item you got? Yeah, this is, I mean, when we say we handle the finest guns in the world, that's what you're looking at here. This is the, I mean, this is the best Marlon that we've ever had. We've been in business for 30 years. we handle the best guns in the world, but this is as good as a guest for we do.

Fine and historic firearms collecting, we trademark the phrase, not all art is framed. I mean, this is for that very reason. It's a Conrad Frederick factory engrave, gold and platinum midlay. It's a marlin model of 1893, manufactured in 1896, and apart from it being, you know, jaw-droppingly beautiful and extremely rare and likewise, extremely expensive. It's kind of a neat story. It was maintained by the same family in Connecticut for well over 100 years.

He's been passed down as a family heirloom. You know, it's like the old thing. He would take it, the owner would take it to the gun shop once every two or three years to have him oil it. He didn't feel comfortable doing it. And, you know, naturally, people start showing up to the gun shop and offers start getting made. And I think it went from $5,000, $8,000 to $12,000 to $15,000.

And when we talk to these folks, do you think it could bring 30 grand? And I think that gun's going to set a world record for a 18-19-year. I think it's going to blow past $150,000 pretty quick. You had talked about the Annie Oakley gun and if it would pass the muster. What is the authentication process like when you get a gun that was supposedly owned by a famous person like that? So this one made it easy. You can contact like Smith and Weston. their factory archive and their factory, factory ledgers.

Now, what they were doing back then, if someone was having a bad day, what was being recorded, what wasn't being recorded, there wasn't a great standardization, but this gun lettered specifically adds shift to Annie Oakley, right from the factory to her. And that's, that's as good and solid as you can get. I think it's also worth mentioning, you know, this gun, I believe it was discovered at a gun show. You know, I think the gentleman purchased it for $2,000. It was unknown, and then he did the legwork on getting a letter from the factory and it going straight to her. But, you know, we see it in everything.

I mean, what human air and people, I mean, like Colt, very famously, the Colt records burned in 1861, 1862, the factory had a huge fire, and we lost all their records. Winchester has really good records. Unfortunately, Marlon has poor records, but luckily with this gun, Smith & Weston had the records. We, Steve and I have been working on an audio book about the Buffalo Hunters, and I think one of the more fascinating sources that you can come across, there's a whole archive from the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company that they have all these letters from Buffalo Hunters. And it's just amazing that those records are maintained by those companies and then all of the little tidbits you can pull out of it. Absolutely. It'll shock you both ways, like what we have and then what we don't have. I mean, I think we did, one of our guys did, did one of your shows previously, and we had that, it was a 70 caliber hawkin rifle that came out of Sagamore Hill, out of Roosevelt stuff.

And in Teddy's own writing, it said Kit Carson's rifle. But like, where the connection was or wasn't to Kit Carson was lost to time, history, and space. But in Teddy's own hand, it was Kit Carson's rifle. You know, it very well, it probably was, but we couldn't place it there. And that's kind of the frustration you get on chasing down historic guns and trying to, you know, you'd like it to be as simple and straightforward as if this gun shipped from Springfield Mass to Antiochly in 1895. Unfortunately, it's not always the case.

Fascinating. That Marlin you pulled up, that looked like an engraving of a deer on the side of it. Can you describe for our viewers sort of what the visuals are like on the receiver? yeah so we call it a it's a panel scene so on your on your loading gate side um yeah we have a running deer um then you can see like the oak leaf and acorn pattern then you can see the multi precious metals when i roll it you can see gold and platinum wow um and then the the large panel scene is a bull moose and a cow and i just when i roll it you can see the condition and condition what we do is like location real estate it's condition condition condition

And this is, I mean, this is a time capsule. And so, like, you can see the gold inlay on the hammer, the carving, the checkering on the wood. I mean, Marlin, you know, Colts and Winchesters are always what we consider the blue chip, but find an historic American firearms collecting. You always think of Colts and Winchester's. But, you know, Marlin is to lever actions like Smith & Weston is to the revolvers on the cult single actions. And Marlon doesn't get the credit that it deserves the artist. And I say that in every sense of the word who engraved that gun.

Rick Ulrich actually started at Winchester and then would move to Marlin and become their head engraver. And they gave him way more creative freedom on his guns. He'll sign a lot of his stuff. A lot of his great guns are signed. And a lot of them are hidden signatures. So it's, it's really neat. But you know, you think of that as like the ultimate, the ultimate artistry when you're chiseling steel. I mean, there's no such thing as a mistake. And you think back then it's this is pre-electricity you know you're doing stuff in modern i mean it's natural light and candlelight this isn't there's no technology it's very very basic and simple so i don't you know modern engravers don't have what it what they what these guys did that's incredible well

kevin um thank you so much for your time and for sharing those uh guns with us here and uh good luck this weekend we'll be curious to see uh what those end up selling for absolutely pleasure thanks for having thanks thank you thank you thank you boy my gun budget is lacking oh boy do you own any historic guns none at all is it like on your radar is it like an aspirational thing to come in possession of not really i mean i it's i i enjoy going to firearms museums and looking at guns and especially something like that where you can sort of marvel at the artistry but

yeah i don't know guns for me are very utilitarian or or they're just sheer novelty, but I still want to fire him, you know. I don't want anything that I have to lock up and keep pretty. Yeah, I don't know if you'd want to shoot that, Marlon. No, never. Yeah, I mean, value would go down, I imagine. Oh, I think so. I think so. It's too beautiful. All righty, sorry, my, uh, I got a phone call and moved my, my browser around. So let me just pull that back up and get back into the swing of things here. We're live. Our next segment is a hot tip off. H-O-T-I-P-R, let's all do a hot tip-off.

H-O-T-T-I-P-R, let's all do a hot tip-off. Yes, let's... Speaking of artistry, wonderful, wonderful, Phil. Thank you. You're welcome. Hot Tip-off is where two listeners go head-to-head with competing pieces of advice. And after we hear each tip, we'll declare which one is hot. If you have a hot tip, take a minute, one minute video on your phone and email it to

Radio at the meat eater.com with the subject line hot tip off. This week, we have Austin Rines versus Joshua Ross, and they are competing for a $100 meat eater store gift card. You can get a pile of killer meat eater shirts, hats, and hoodies with $100. And a little birdie told me that select logo wear will be bogo next week or buy one, get one. Oh, M.G. That's huge news, gang.

Huge news. Phil, take it away. Joshua Ross. Hey, I'm Joshua Ross from upstate New York, and this is my hot tip. If you're just getting into waterfowl or you're stretched a little thin, you can maximize your floater spread, turn them into some land decoys, under 30 bucks, with some dollar-store paper towel holders, and a couple cans of rustolium. all you do is start with this bend it down into this shape spray paint to match your decoys maybe add some orange for some feet go ahead slide it on to the keel yes stick it in the gravel sand embankment and then boom you turn your uh floaters into some land decoys some field decoys and you can put some into water or leave some up on the shore this is what it should look like tan orange orange orange feet

That's my hot tip. Love it. My God. Austin Rines! Hey, meet you, your crew. This is Austin from Arkansas, and I've got a hot tip for y'all. I recently moved from Oklahoma back to Arkansas, and I had a little bit of an issue. I got my shoulder mounts and my deadheads and my European mounts,

and I didn't want them to get damaged in the moving process, so I came up with an idea. go down to your local Walmart and get you some of those $5 pool noodles real cheap. And I don't know about the size bucks that y'all are killing, but for me, the ones I'm killing are you can get about one pool noodle for every two deer. And I got a whole pile over here that I'm going to get started hanging up on the walls and decorating. That's my hot tip. Hope y'all like it. Y'all have a good one.

Oh, my God. I love that guy. I can feel the burn from both those hot tips. Two of the hottest tips we've ever gone. Strong. If you are listening or watching at home, those should be aspirational videos. Strong submissions. Strong submissions.

When you send us a hot tip. The poll is live, by the way. The poll is live. Get in the live chat. Hop in there, gang. Ask yourself, is my hot tip as hot as hot as Josh's or Austin's when you send a hot tip? Because those were perfect. Yeah.

Yeah. And just, it's so fortunate that they went head to head because this, I think, is a tough decision here, tough contest. Yeah, what do you guys think? Any initial thoughts? gentlemen um i i like austin's that is creative i've i've never seen that um but i love josh was the dollar store decoy legs uh to turn your floaters into field decoys super clever super cheap um it's it's like a problem solving thing i'm i'm all about josh's josh's would have my vote big fan yeah both very

thrifty which this day and age got to be thrifty use what you got uh you got it's tough yeah I think for me, what might tip it towards Joshua is that I wish Austin had included whatever he uses to protect the nose of these skulls. Because when I move, I'm not so much worried about the antler points. I'm worried about the nasal cavity. I just had one fall off the wall. Oh, oh, who hung it there? Yeah. I did.

Oh, no. I did. And it knocked another one off. That was fine. And, uh, but, but the one shattered the nose bone and I just feel like as a society, we need to come together and figure out a way to make those things bulletproof. That gave me shivers. I know. I know.

At, uh, two euro mounts. Wildest thing. We're sitting there watching television, you know, as we do every night for a few hours and, uh, and, uh, I just heard a noise in the other room said, my God, what is that? You just assume it's dogs. Yeah, as you're living situation, right? The dogs were all doing what they're supposed to do, which is just laying on their sides in front of us. Okay. And yeah, this one was hung at about six foot six on the wall, and it fell down and knocked one down that was at about five foot six.

Damn. And then they hit my computer monitor. Wow. And I don't know how the one survived, but yeah, it's a buck that I shot in 2016. Everybody wants to know how it fell off the wall. Drywall rip out. I think it's the drywall anchor seemed to be loose. Yes.

And so then I went and got, you know, the drywall anchor, I'm getting so far a feel. No, I'm in it. We need to know. I put, I put so much confidence into drywall anchors. Same. Well, the one, the one that I moved to is the drywall anchor that's more cone-shaped that has the threads, the threads. The threads on the outside, and not just one of those that splutes out and grabs the back.

I'm fully on the drywall anchor you're describing the threads. And I feel like those are like, I have 50-pound ones and 75-pound ones. Yeah. No, they make some hefty ones. Yeah, 500-pound ones. That's what's holding on to my elk. But I'm going to go double-check those screws. Yeah, yeah.

And it's a wall. I've got like nine different bucks all hanging on the same wall. And now it makes me want to take them all down and replace all the drywall anchors. All right. I'm voting, Josh, the dollar store, dollar store, decoy legs. Corey, you're voting. I like the pool noodles. Okay.

I like the decoy legs. And I just, I think like any time you can buy something real cheap. and it just adds to your experience in the field like that's pool noodles well with 61% of the vote the winner oh I forgot that we weren't important is Joshua Ross with the dollar store

decoy legs hundred dollars I will say if we're just going off vibes Austin would have had my vote I like that guy's I like that guy's energy Randall is encouraging you to send another hot tip off Austin because your oral alone might just get you to win one of this.

Yeah, and if that's, you know, I just wonder what else you got in the hopper, what else you got in the quiver there. You have a lot of people yelling at you, they just hit a stud when you're hanging and not use drywall anchors? Well, sometimes they're not. Well, not if you're doing a spread. That's right. This wall is incredible.

It's just, it's artistically, they're scattered across the wall. Perfect. So I just think you're wrong. He doesn't have enough studs in his house for all these. Yeah. You got too many studs. Not enough of the other kind. Josh, if you're watching, I'll email you that gift card.

Just be on the lookout for that. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. On-X hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available. for your hunts this season.

Now the hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K top-o maps, waypoints, and tracking. You can even use offline maps

to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out onX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. Hunting demands preparation, persistence, and gear that will not quit on you.

That is why I wear First Light. This isn't about hype. It's about no compromise gear. Built to perform, built to last, whether it's their industry leading merino wool, keeping me comfortable through the cold and the hot, or their durable outerwear shrugging off the elements. First Light is built to help you go farther and stay longer. designed by hunters for hunters with a deep commitment to conservation and land access,

no shortcuts, no excuses, just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com. Now it's time for some listener feedback, Phil. What do we got going on in the chat today? Well, please shoot some more questions my way in the live chat. And we'll do this again at the end of the. show. Nate says

asks if the meat eater crew were in the hunger games, who would win? Cal. I think I'm happy with you. Can you win by not I don't know how the rules work? Well, PETA famously just like camouflaged

himself and then laid next to a stump. That's what I picture. That's what I picture Cal just like, he was really good at camouflaging himself because he was a pastry chef and decorated cakes. That is true lore in the Hunger Games franchise. I didn't realize that.

Yeah, I was thinking if you had to score points by killing people, Cal might not be it. But I also thought Cal would be really good because he would just refuse to participate. Yeah. And he would just kind of sit on the sidelines. He could go to the edge of the map. But then the overlords would like send wasps at him and drop, like hit him with lightning or something. Philip Semer Hoffman would move the map around. I'd give Cal a vote.

He'd be very good at being uncomfortable in the Hunger Games. experience. And Steve, I think if you had to just go on who might kill the most people, it would probably be Steve. Yeah, he's just angry. Because he loves to flip knives around. He'd love an excuse. Yeah. Yeah, I think he's just waiting for that green light. I've had

the same conversation, but not Hunger Games, but the show alone. Yeah, I also think that's Cal. Because he just wouldn't want to come back. We're like, this is great. There's no phones. Whatever it takes to stay out here. No one's asking me to do anything. Yeah, no one's bugging me about But bringing a show and tell item to radio live.

Yeah, no, that would be good. What an experience. Leeland says, do y'all have any strong feelings on orange camo? Does it work, not work? Is it a bad compromise? Orange camo. I'm not passionate about this. If I was in a state where I was archery hunting during a gun season where it was required as an archery hunter that I had to wear camo, which I think is Illinois or Missouri, one of those states.

I would be like, okay, I will wear orange camel. Outside of that, if you are gun hunting, if you are killing an animal that is further than 20 yards away from you, I'm not sold on needing to wear orange camo. Good point. I like how it looks, though. It does look cool. It looks cool. It looks like, you know, you got that item from your dad who wore it in the 80s.

I also like the, I used to have an orange vest. I think when I moved out to Montana that had like sort of the black tree bark print on. That's what I think. That looked tough. But yeah, I'm more of just an orange mesh and function guy. Yeah. You know, in Montana here. You're so broken up anyway, at least backpack straps, binocular harness.

I don't know. All my fixings. Blood stains from last year. Nate says, Spencer, how long till the next wives and girlfriends trivia episode? My wife loves them and wants more. Definitely some of the best episodes. I was just checking with my wife this week about dates that would work with her. Now I have to reach out to the other.

wives, but I will try to do one this year. It's our most viewed trivia episode in the history of YouTube. So if we need to like juice the numbers, we'll just get all the wives and girlfriends in here because folks want to run over to YouTube and watch them play trivia. So we will do it again, Nate. Excellent. Our household looks forward to that. What else we got, Phil? Mogor says, hi, Steve hunted in Africa, Yanni in Lithuania. I would say, was he in Lithuania? Latvia? Latvia. Close.

Do you have similar dreams or plans outside of the United States for hunting in the future? I always wanted to kill a Siberian tiger. I don't know if that's legal, though. You're not taking this question very seriously. I want to hunt Canada real bad. I want to hunt Alberta or Saskatchewan

for a big old white-tail buck. There you go. Their laws make it hard to do that as a DIY hunter from the United States. You have to have a guy. their guide regulations are fairly um stinging about like what your relationship with the guide can be as far as like if they drop you off if they are within eyesight of you if they like pick the location where you're

sitting um so while i feel like i have some connections to go hunting Canada at some point it wouldn't be uh with a guide in a traditional sense and so i just don't want to even mess with it as a dude who prefers just like go do a DIY thing but if i could kill a big old white tail buck in Saskatchewan or Alberta. That would satisfy all my foreign hunting dreams. There you go. This is a dream, not a plan, because it won't happen. But I think if I had, if I were given the option of one international hunt,

it would probably be an IBEX in Central Asia. Ooh, there you go. Just in those giant, scary, big mountains. That just looks like a super cool experience. And obviously, like you do it with a network of local guides and get to eat weird stuff. and drink weird stuff and have a weird time. All those guys are expert falconry folks, it seems like. Yeah, no, it'd be cool.

Africa also would be very cool. We did, I got to go hunting Old Mexico. Oh, yeah. I am an international hunter. I guess I am an international hunter. Straighten the necktie on my t-shirt here. That does look like a lot of fun. Thank you, Moga, for a great question.

One more, I have, would I have deemed to be the White Tail Time Zone slam, just like the traditional time zones, but there's one way, way east, is it, is it Nova Scotia that has it, it's in its own time. Would it be maritime? I think it's maritime. So if I wanted to like, you know, there's like the grand slam of turkeys and then like the super slam or whatever the tiered system is there, if I want to go to the next tier of the white tail time zone slam, I need to get to Nova Scotia at some point or whatever is in that furthest eastern time zone. I love that for you. Someday. Let's do it someday.

Is that it for listener feedback, Phil? Should we move on? Yeah, let's go ahead and move on. We can hit some more at the end of the show. I'm sure there's some other good ones. Yeah, I got a couple of things. There was one that I'll just go ahead and bring it up now because you guys might plead the fifth on it.

But this was for Corey. This was also from Nate. He said, what's the coldest tip anyone's ever submitted? I don't know if one stands out to you. It's like, wow, this is rough. But also, if you don't want to hurt people's feelings, we're very positive show. No, you should name them.

Oh, man. Yeah, there's a few. that I certainly don't finish watching because it's like this is either way too, you know, out of reach, way too common, way to whatever. I don't think there's any cold ones because everybody brings the enthusiasm. If you have the time to film and send us an email, they're all warm enough. Everybody's got a trick or two up your sleeve. Keep them coming because it's kind of dry out there.

Yeah, get those hot tips in. I wish I had an answer for you, but nothing jumps out that's ice cold. Yeah, because otherwise we have to ask Giannis and then he sends something that's, I mean, pretty cold, to be honest. I've seen some of the hot tip submissions. I would say the coldest ones are ones that come in and I hear it. And I'm like, I know you heard that on the Meat Eater podcast. Oh, yeah.

That thing that you're saying is a hot tip. You heard from Steve or a guest. Yeah. So that was probably the coldest tips that we get. Another great question. Geez. Well, our next segment is Meat Eater Movie Club. This week we're...

Pause for sound. I put the pause for sound in the wrong place. We're live. This week we're reviewing the 1997 American Adventure comedy film directed by William Deere, written by David Michael Weeger and starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas Devin Sawa and Scott Birsto. See, I think the sound would go better there. Well, you also didn't name the movie.

yet. Wild America. Thanks for putting that together, Corey. All right. This is the film, uh, the cover of the film, the poster. So serious. This is take a ride on the wild side. And it has our young heroes. Child actors don't get more coyly camera wise than Jonathan Taylor Thomas. The 15 year old star and narrator of Wild America, a tepid family adventure film whose grizzly bears appear only slightly more threatening than giant stuffed animals. As Marshall Stouffer, the youngest of three brothers growing up in Fort Smith, Arkansas in 1967, Thomas looks like a baby Brad Pitt and acts as though he's been born and brought up on the MGM law in the 1930s, then whisked 60 years into the future with his Shirley Temple meets

Mickey Rooney mannerisms intact. All three lead actors in the film have the kind of delicate looks that make Tiger Beat readers go, humana, humana, and their cute foxiness will have to be enough to drum up interest in this movie. Those very words were published in the New York Times on July 2nd, 1997, except for the second sentence, the third

I should say, the one that mentions Tiger Beat. That's from a syndicated piece published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press the same day. I included those words here only because I thought they would be funny to pretend that they were my own. Fool me. That fell flat. Jesus.

I liked it. The premise of the film is fairly straightforward. Three brothers, whose father has spent a lifetime lying to one of them about his ability to fly an airplane, decide to drive across the country in search of a cave full of hibernating bears. They do this as best I can tell in the middle of the summer. The oldest, Marty, is a maniacal bully dead set on making wildlife films so he doesn't have to suffer the indignity of inheriting the family carburetor cleaning business.

The middle brother, whose name I do not recall, serves no real purpose. The youngest, played by Jonathan Taylor Thomas, I think, was named Marshall. Their misadventures along the journey, most of which I'll admit from this review, are partially explained by how bad their map is. We only get a glimpse of it once, but it's a bad map, although it's hard to explain why it's so bad without a visual aid. At some point, a strangely proportioned moose carries Marshall into a river. The brothers encounter Danny Glover,

who makes an uncredited appearance wearing antlers on his head. he tells them to go look for a disfigured woman whose dead fiancé was eaten in the bear cave after the mean brother breaks the boring brother's leg as they take a tumble in the snow and then that brother immediately forgives the other while still lying there in the snow with a broken leg they then see a woman in the graveyard

and the youngest brother impressively remembers the disfigured woman's name as well as that of her dead boyfriend Judd although she only refers to him curiously as my Judd and he also remembers the date of his death or was it his birthday, which also was the day they were going to get married, which stuck out to me as one of the stranger little details in this film. Anyway, they follow the tracks of the woman's horse to the bear cave,

which is oddly close to her home. They go in, the bears wake up, and there's a lot happening all at once. Then the brothers sing about Mountain Dew to put the bears back to sleep when bats start shitting on them. The resulting explosion of their flashlight stirs up the bats who seem to form part of the cave wall, so when they fly away, there is now a hole in the cave that lets in light that wakes up the bears. Why the boys don't try the mountain do jingle again

is not explained to the viewer because it worked so well the first time. Then there's actually another hole in the cave that the youngest brother climbs out of. It would seem that this cave would not be a very good place to hibernate due to all of the holes. Then someone else falls in the snow. Here my review gets scattered.

The younger brother drives home and begins pretending he was in an airplane. while pretending he was in an airplane he crashes the car there's still 30 minutes left in the film is the note I have here I had that same feeling then there's another broken leg

the grumpy old dad breaks his leg too but the kid's broken leg is healed now and then the dad who has a cigar in his mouth while bedridden in the hospital tells the family that a guy in Pittsburgh will give them six bits apiece for some auto parts that represent the family's emergency savings

Jonathan Taylor Thomas fires up the plane that the dad pretended he could fly. But the kid can actually fly it. And he imagines his dad in the backseat. When they make amends with one another at the hospital, the voice, the boy tells the viewer in a voiceover that he's never told anyone what happened between him and his dad that day, which is odd, because you'd think everyone could tell that they've forgiven one another. Describing this film made me like it less. Overall thoughts. I don't need to see this movie again. I don't need to recommend this to

Anybody. I don't think I watched this when I was a kid. Obviously not. I would have been five years old when it came out. I'm a little surprised that I wasn't more familiar with anything about the movie. And then I watched it. I was like, well, that's why I wasn't familiar. Nobody was like really parading this around as a great piece of cinema from when I was a kid. Yeah. Yeah, unless you watch this as a kid, it doesn't have the same, you know, vibe. It's, there's a lot of elements that are difficult to believe in the film. Can I tell you some things I liked? I'd love to. That's next in my prompt here. They had some real ass animals in the movie, sometimes, which was like that. Here and there. Yeah, it's like a hard thing to do is have, like the owl initially.

I was like, oh, that's a real owl. Leona, the owl. That's kind of fun. Yeah, landing on Jonathan Taylor Thomas's arm without a glove on. That's right. And then it shows up in Valley of the Gods of Arizona later on. Oddly. I liked that the boys were filming Jackass 30 years before Jackass was a thing.

I was like, that should be the movie. My thought at that moment was, God, it was so nice when, like, kids did this stuff and they couldn't put it on the internet, so it didn't become their entire personality. Yeah, like the M80s in the pool. Oh, yeah. Some good music. I liked, you know, they had Susie Q by CCR. They had a magic carpet ride. I just enjoyed the music.

They served me. And then I enjoyed the scene where the two older brothers are. peeing upstream and John and the Taylor Thomas is filling his canteen downstream. I enjoyed that. And then he gave it to them to drink. Yes. And it was unclear I thought

whether or not he was in on the prank. Yeah, I felt the same way. I don't think they played that up enough. No, it seemed like he was sort of cheeky about it. Yeah. He did know. Yeah. I liked that. That's the end of the list of the things I liked. Corey? This brought back some serious nostalgia.

You seen this? Yeah, it came out when in 97, so I would have been 9. Probably didn't watch it right away, but watched it, you know, fairly quickly. And I watched it with my 7-year-old boy last night. He loved it. And he loved it. There was scenes where I'm just like, are you kidding me? Like when JTT

gets picked up by the moose and it's very apparent that it's two dudes. Yeah. Was it a horse? No, no. It was a horse. There were two guys, there were two guys just sort of skipping wearing a moose suit. There's one shot in particular where it's very clearly just two guys in a brown bag.

With holding a moose head on front of them. Yeah. And I was watching him. I looked over and looked at my son, Marshall, which was fun too. Oh, yeah. He envisioned himself as the bullied younger brother. Yeah, he loved hearing his name yelled a lot. And he's loving it.

So, and I'm like rolling my eyes and he's just like in heaven watching this. And then when it came to the cave of a thousand bears or 10 bears or whatever ended up being, same thing. Super cheesy. I don't know why or who came up with the idea to bring in the fake bear costumes when they had, live bears. Yeah, it was a weird mixture of robots and people in costumes. Yeah, animatronics, real bears. It reminded me of this time.

CGI. I went to a Chuck E. Cheese as an adult. Yes. And it was horrifying. I was like, how's this even, how can a kid even withstand this overwhelming sensation of just being surrounded by robots popping out of the wall? But that's what it brought me back to. Yeah.

Well, but again, his imagination was able to follow. and track the whole thing and it was much more fun to watch as a kid, no doubt. Yeah, I think if I were to have to show a movie to a child, this is not a bad one to show. Like, there's nothing horrible about it. It's just like a series of sort of bizarre scenarios

involving wildlife caught on film. And there's nothing offensive. It's just very campy. It reminded me of the sandlot. Yes. in terms of the vibes but I think for me one of the things I like the best is

it just harkens back to the golden age of older brothers bullying younger brothers and no one seeming to have any like they're tying him to a chair and then hoisting him into a tree and then cutting the rope and throwing fireworks on him and it's just it goes it's unremarkable to everyone

where they're dragging him around behind the truck although the college girls college girls did like that yeah no they weren't impressed um and danny glover i think was probably my favorite part but like they shot a deer in the beginning of the movie i mean like with a crossbow i was in the summer yeah in the summer the college girls were home for a christmas or uh summer break right and then the the brothers declared they say you can't hunt with us dc if you're gonna do it the wrong way yeah yeah and and they're reading outdoor life like i think there were it was more true to like hunting and fishing nostalgia than I would have would have guessed you know like it was it

wouldn't be made today in that same way yeah like in the 90s it was still sort of like this is just traditional Americana sure um so I don't know I think uh I there's a lot of things I found wrong with it but ultimately like it's a harmless piece of cinema that if you have kids that like the outdoors who I think it would work yeah it's not for us yeah it's not it's not it's not for us to be like, well, they got every single wildlife scene wrong in this movie. Yeah. They were in Valley of the Gods of Arizona and they encountered like an Asiatic deer who's getting hunted by a big gray wolf.

Yeah. Yeah, row deer. And then F4 Phantoms. Oh. And it was so funny because when the planes came in, I write down on my notepad F4 Phantoms. And then Jonathan Taylor Thomas, like, two seconds later, F4 Phantoms. Wow. I bet you felt good there.

Oh, I mean, there was no doubt in my mind. It's such a distinctive, such a distinctive silhouette of an airplane. Phil, I had slacked you a picture. Could you pull that up? When we were talking about the scene of the bears, I had to stop it in this one. I had to stop it because of the clearly, like,

animatronic bear. But then also, you see a cameraman or, like, a boom mic. You see someone who's not supposed to be in the shot holding something off to the side. That was a real treat to watch. Wild. They could have done without that.

They were doing great. I mean, like the sandlot sort of stand by me. It's also an age when, like, child actors are just sort of, there's no real depth to their performance. Yeah. And the brothers are just, like, snapping at each other. And my favorite part was he goes, he goes, I'm sorry. I forgive you. I know it was an accident.

After he breaks the leg. He does a great job tromping through the snow with that broken leg. Yeah. Yeah, and then the cast is gone. Yeah. Also, the crutches were so small. Yes, the doctor gives him the crutches and they come up to his waist and he's like, have you used crutches before? I was like, have you given crutches to a patient before?

Because these are clearly the wrong size. Uh-huh. And the bear scene, that was like climax one of four. The movie had like four climaxes. The alligator chase, the planes bombing them, the horse stampede. And then the weird scene with the disfigured woman. where she pulls out like a portrait that was taken in the 90s at like a mall photo studio, even though this is taking place in 1967,

which also bothered me because Steppenwolf's born to be wild was not always until the fall in here. Oh, snap. I did also personally enjoy seeing D.C. in the movie, the Redhead character, because he was in two episodes of Deadwood as the hotel clerk, and he becomes a very pivotal part of the story because he craps his pants

because he was drunk and he goes down to the creek to wash the crap out of his pants and while he's there he finds another pair of his pants that he theorizes he left there from a past drunk incident

where he also crapped his pants and went to the creek to wash him out and in one of his soiled britches he finds the last letter that Wild Bill Hickok ever wrote which sort of like propels us into this new series of characters

and bad guys so that's a role that D.C. plays is my favorite show ever deadwood i i just like that there's sort of a trope thinking of the christmas a christmas story there's this trope of a bully who's who's actually just sort of incompetent but he's just a bully and it's a guy with red hair yes yeah that that that hits hard yeah i'm kind like god maybe i'm not a unique individual clearly i had a past life somewhere you were destined to be a bully. I know.

Yeah. I know, but like Scott Farkas and that guy, I feel like, came out of the same gene pool. I could feel after this, my son and I'll probably go down the Wild America, Marty Stouffer rabbit hole. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. During the credits, when they play actual footage from what I assume is Marty's documentary work, it's phenomenal.

It is. It was so charming. I loved that. And he's in the film somewhere, I think. I was watching for that, but I never saw him. And I was like, oh, there's Marty. So I deleted this line, or I shouldn't say I deleted, I just didn't read it, said if you like the sandlot, if you like Forrest Gump, if you like wild animals or Danny Glover, you'll enjoy this lighthearted romp. If you like Marty Stouffer, you probably won't like this film because it makes him seem like a really bad guy.

Yes. I've never like scene of story that's like the true story of this beloved figure. Yeah. And the guy who's playing him is just sort of like the asshole. This is the older brother. Gotta be tough one. Yeah, yeah, but he's not, I don't feel like he's really redeemed. Yeah.

Or if your name is Marshall and you're seven years old, you'll love this movie. It might become a little bit of your personality. You got to watch out for those late 90s PG movies because there's a few curse words in there, which he looked at me after every single one. That's good. But if you watch this show, you're used to that. Yeah, that's good. He needs exposure.

Oh, he gets plenty of it. He listens to Macklemore. Going into second grade, he's going to be using profanity, like a pirate. How are we doing, Phil? Do we move on to the next segment or do you need more information about Wild America? I think I'm satisfied.

Phil, can you tell me like something about Jonathan Taylor Thomas, just anything? Like what your memory is of him in the 90s? He would be in like a child actor tier of like Topanga, maybe Keenan. Oh, Jonathan Lipnicki.

He was big back then. I mean like JTT and not because unlike Lipnicki, he was a heartthrob too. No offense to Lipnicki. But he had that, I mean, that whole tiger bee walk a walkie.

whatever you said over there. Hamanah, homina, homina. The Waka is Fossey Bear. Haley, Joel Osmond, he'd be like in that tier, I feel like, of 90s child star. Well, I mean, yeah, JTT had trouble breaking out of TV, though. Yeah. Home improvement. Tom and Huck.

Oh, yeah. I liked Tom and Huck. I just think it's unconscionable that we've been talking about JTT this whole time without acknowledging the cultural masterpiece that is home improvement. And he's joined by another three-named child star Zachary Ty Bryan on that show Who's the Dufus with the blonde hair Let's not forget JTT was Simba

That's right, that's right, yeah And God, he does look like a legitimate child of Brad Pitt, doesn't he? That's not my thought, that's just... Because Devin Sawa also had big teen beat energy I think they, like this movie, the casting was definitely I think purposeful in trying to get those things 13-year-old girls to the theater

Phil, has everybody dropped out of the chat? We haven't lost anybody in our discussion of teen stars. I think our viewership is actually at its peak right now.

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That's good. Let's roll on into the top three. So wouldn't it be cool If we just had like a light show going on right now? This is why we need a new studio. Because people who are just listening to this, they're probably like, okay, I'll sit through this stupid song for 15 seconds. But people who are watching are just watching Randall Spencer and Corey stare at their computers. I used to do the dance thing.

You know, I used to dance along, and I feel like that bit has run its course. And I like to just enjoy the music. Okay. I get that. I don't have any text prepared to introduce this segment, but top three is where we rank our top three of things in a certain category. Although we're doing a new spin on that today, where we each got to choose our own category. In the past, we were all ranking from the same thing. And then Janice and I about went to Fistikovs over a topic.

And so we said, here's the solution. We're all just going to bring our own list from our own subject. That's right. Phil included. Phil is going to do one. That's right. And I asked him to really fill it up today. So I'm excited to hear whatever he has.

And I really struggled with this assignment. I like to have clear orders, marching orders. So, Phil, you can bring up my number one or my number three. Oh, wow. Oh, uh-oh. Hope this works for, oh, good. This is my number three. and I had a hard time going back.

What's your list? Yeah, what's the title? I'm getting to it. I was going to go with my favorite fishing hats of all time. And so I started going through my list, my photos of fishing. Then I thought I could sort of combine that with the three worst photos of me holding a fish. So this is a photo of me floating the Missouri River breaks in the summer of 2008. And I'm going to go with the why it's a bad.

picture. The shirt is terrible. It's a terrible fishing shirt. I got it at Bass Pro Shops. I think I wore it on that trip and, you know, it's filled with clay, gumbo, mud. My eyes are closed, which also makes it a bad picture. On the good side, I love that hat. It's a Bass Pro Shops camo hat in a mossy oak pattern of some sort.

Walking Billboard for Bass Pro. Yeah. Holding a bass. Cincinnati Kid. When that thing open, phew, oh, you couldn't get me off, I-275. But that hat I wore for a number of summer staining decks for a company called ProClean. And so it is covered.

I never liked to bring the rags when I started out. I get the roller and the brush, never bring a wet. So I started wiping my deck stain with that hat. So that hat ended up weighing like three pounds. Okay. It was solid. You could have taken a knife and it wouldn't go through the fabric. It was just coated with layer upon layer upon layer of dextane.

Really nice and breathable for a summer fishing. Oh, it was incredible. It was incredible. More of a helmet. And then the final note I have on why this picture's bad is I'm just really fat in it. And it's a bad angle for my cheeks and neck. I can't tell. It's the pocket in that shirt that makes it look.

And you obviously have a lot of sunflower seeds. There's probably a can of grizzly wintergreen in there. Oh, it could be. But yeah, the eyes closed. Stupid haircut. I couldn't grow a beard yet. I've been hiding. I've spent the rest of my life hiding from that version of me.

Nice smally, though. Yeah. Oh, that's a great trip. Every island we hit would pull the boat over and get to the tail of the island, just chuck, like, rattle traps and stuff, and hammered small mouth, and it was great trip. Randall's, um, his favorite person to bully is himself. Yeah. Well, I mean, what's life all about other than doubting your own worth?

Picture number two Yes This I couldn't get This isn't a bad picture at all I love this Well there's two things about it that make it bad One is that I'm making the same face As the fish

And then two my sweatshirt looks like the fish Okay So I don't think there's nearly enough contrast in there But this also that hat Is a Carhart Beanie Okay I still own it today I've probably owned it For almost 20 years

You're probably the reason Carhart hats are back in style now. Well, probably not. That thing is so stretched out. There's not an ounce of elastic to it. Just pulled it over this head so many times. But I do like that photo. We were catching Burbitt on jugs, on fixed lines, like limb lines and jugs.

Juggins and got back to the lodge and made ourselves a nice little burbett dinner. I think the day before I flew out that summer. I love that photo. That's a good one. A lot of synergy going on there with making the same face as a fish, wearing the same pattern as a fish. It works. Yeah, so I don't know. I just had to include it.

Then the last one, Phil, if you'll indulge me here. Yeah. This is a good one. Oh, wow. That's a real ugly fish. That's a spawned out male pink salmon. Big old dip in my lips so that my head, my face is crooked to the right side. And then the hat is offset to the left side there.

What year is this? Uh, that's probably 2010, 2009. Uh, we bought those Mountain Dew hats at the Walmart in, uh, Wasilla, Alaska. One time we're driving out to go to the lodge and, um, before we got on the boat, we stopped at Walmart and we all bought matching Mountain Dew hats and wore it for a summer. So that was also a hat. There you go. Part of my collection, but just, yeah, I mean, the face is weird.

The glasses are weird. It's sort of that old style of glasses that was more like a swim goggle. And then the hair poking out the sides of the hat It's just a bad look all around I like that So plus it's a gross Spondout Humpy That's a good picture

That's what I got You should post that on Instagram Randall I should That would do some numbies Oh I've got I showed Corey a little bit of the archive I've got some weird ones Yeah that was

Probably really tough to pick the top Yeah between Randall's drummies And Spencer's numbs I'm having a really hard time Hanging And Randall's awards the randies. The randies, yep.

Nice. Well, that concludes my top three. Top three fishing hats I've owned slash top three worst pictures I've taken with a fish. Very good. Who's next, Randall? Corey's next. Oh, okay. Well, this is not going to be nearly as fun, but I'm proud of these.

This is my top three favorite hunting camp meals that I enjoy making for a group of buddies. If I'm going hunting solo, I'll eat whatever freeze-dried meals. But if I got a group of buddies... Day four, day five, into a hunt. I like to make something big and scrumptious, you know. Let's see. So my number three, I hope I have this in the right order, would be Campfire nachos.

Oh. And this photo, if you're watching, is some polled bear meat. I believe it came off the rear shank of a black bear I killed a couple years ago. This cooked in a Dutch oven, you just throw everything in all your nacho toppings, throw the lid on, put some coals on top. of it. You could do it on the stove top too, but it works. It's a lot more fun over a fire. Let the cheese melt. Let the meat reheat. And then you can go on top with your pickled jalapenos, your salsas, your tomatoes, what have you. Very easy. It's usually a crowd pleaser.

You just stick that in between your chairs and just go. Oh, man, that is a good one. Pretty photo. Yeah, Martha Stewart would put that on her cover. That's why I took the picture. Okay, that was number three. Number two, I've copied Jean-Paul Bourgeois Duck and Andouy pasta laia Pasta laia

recipe which you can find on the Meteor website actually I've butchered the name so sorry Jean-Paul but I don't duck hunt so I use multiple different types of red meats in this one

I've made it years in the past if you're watching here's a photo of me whipping this up for Janus and another friend of our of ours Mike on an archery elk hunt couple years ago

it's very hearty extremely easy to make. I'm using the same Dutch oven, actually. It's a GSI aluminum Dutch oven. It's just with me anywhere I go. It's usually just in the back of my truck. But it's got noodles. It's got multiple types of meat and dewy sausage

and whatever pulled meat. His recipe calls for duck. But again, I've done bear. I think I've done mule deer. It's a pulled meat variety. You cook all that down with some mushrooms, some onions, some garlic, and then you add a little base of some sort.

Bullion cube and water, if you have to. How does this picture relate to it? Thank you for bringing that up, because after that meal, this is the next day. I called this bull in for Yanni, whether he wants to admit it or not, and he shot this thing at 45 yards. You fed him and you called in his bowl.

That's basically your elk, Corey. Ooh, yeah. I don't know about that, but this is, that was a memorable hunt, and we had some full bellies, That was probably at 7 p.m. And I bet we were still well-fed and comfortable at that point the next day. But, I mean, make that pasta laia.

I should have looked this up, how you say it. And look what can happen to you. Good vibes. Yeah. Good vibes from that stuff. That was number two. Number one is walking tacos. Ooh.

Did you take this photo? No, it is not my photo. Stole it off of Google images. Hopefully they're not watching. But I wish I would have taken the photo because last weekend, my wife and I, and our neighbor couple took out our families on a camp float on the Yellowstone. And this was our meal that we made. It's so easy.

We actually heated up some ground elk burger and threw it in with, we had a plethora of choice chips for the kids to choose from. And then we had all the toppings laid out. So if you have picky eaters, if you have, you know, folks who don't want lettuce, don't want a certain type of chips, whatever,

you can just make it on your own. And it's your own little bag of goodness. You just make sure you bring a fork with you Because it's very simple Takes up some space Do you use the nacho cheesers Or do you like to vary your base?

I like the cool ranch Yeah I mean that's the only civilized Dorito out there I believe the original would be Fritos But yeah You can go wild You gotta go to the gas stations To get the like medium size bag of chips Not the big bags, not the front size bags

That was I had a couple critiques of your list there And one of the ones was that the walking nachos wouldn't be good unless you had a giant bag. Yes, the medium bag. Yeah. From the gas station. Yeah. Nobody in a group would be disappointed to see Corey making walking tacos. Yep.

In camp. Pretty scrumptious. Good number one. Thank you. All right. It's my turn, I guess. Yeah, let's do it. All right.

This is a well-organized segment. I'm going to turn my computer off. It's good. So my top three are the top three video game characters that would taste good after a few hours on the smoke. Oh, right. Perfect. So. It's a beautiful, a beautiful...

Oh. So first off, we have the Rat King from The Last of Us Part 2. There are some pros and cons to these. I'm not going to say these would all be perfect. But the pros of the... For those who are listening and don't know, the Rat King is like a big, kind of squishy zombie monster made up of a bunch of different cordyceps monsters that were infected by this brain virus that turned them all

into crazy mushroom people. And then those came together to make this. This abomination. Pros would feed a whole family for months. You know, basically like harvesting a moose, but probably more meat. Yeah, look at all the shanks. It looks like there's a lot of bone in it, too, though, with all of the limbs. Yeah, I mean, we would be diving into uncharted territory here.

We'd be doing a lot of, you know, experimenting exploration. I'm not sure. You see these kind of like fat pockets, these postules there. Cut around that. You know, still, a lot of food. Another pro already has a nice char on. on it after dispatching it with a flamethrower. So you're already just kind of halfway

there. Sure. Con, you may contract a cortis aspirin infection. Which, you know, is not ideal. But, you know, there are risks with everything. So maybe just smoke it to what, 170? Yeah, I was going to say you just get that temp up, you're probably okay. You're probably fine. My familiarity with the rat

king is Dennis Duffy telling Liz Lemon on 30 Rock about the Rat King and how it's all the rats in the subway system that have fused together to create the Rat King. Ooh, spooky. This is kind of a deep cut. The next one is going to be the orphan of Koss from Bloodborn.

As we all know, let's say it together, the orphan of Koss is the stillborn child of an Eldridge God that was worshipped by fishermen. Sorry. Okay. Now, this one might be confusing you if you're watching at home because you can see that the actual humanoid figure here doesn't look too appetizing, mostly skin and bones. But he famously uses his placenta as his weapon. You can see him holding it right here.

Yes. I think I would want to put that placenta on the smoker. Okay. Yeah. Pros, so he is a stillborn child of an elder's god. Who knows what kind of sort of supernatural, cosmic eldritch powers you might inherit by consuming his placenta. But, you know, as we know from Janus, the placenta is filled with nutrients like iron and B12. And also is rumored, not rumored.

You know, it's, it's, there's, I mean, there's no evidence. We'll call it a rumor that it helps the mother recover after. after birth when you consume the placenta. Cons, you could be trapped in a nightmare plane of existence from consuming the blood of a god offspring. Totally different direction than I thought. That's number two. Number one is Yoshi.

I was about to make the joke. I was about to make this very joke, Phil. I'm glad you got us back here. Yoshi, of course, the dinosaur mount from the Super Mario franchise. Pros of eating Yoshi. He eats a clean diet of sweet apples. That's the only thing he eats.

Huh. I'm, you know, I don't know how that would affect the meat, you know, tenderness, flavor, mouthfeel, but how about, like, how about animals that are fed like a clean vegetarian diet, right? You know, that's, that's probably what you were. A bear hunter like Corey would tell you that a bear who's been eating berries is far superior to a bear that's been eating. Dirty diaper. That's right. I do wonder with all the gumbas and the cupa trupas that he eats and regurgitates, if that would mess with anything. Well, he's not actually processing. Right. You wonder if that would. He kind of spits him out, sometimes they spits him out into an egg. I don't know how that works. Yeah, Phil, I thought you were going to go with, like, Sonic the Hedgehog and...

Well, see, there's some, there's some cheats here because there are some, there are some Pokemon that just are food. Like, there's a, there's a Pokemon that's just an apple pie with legs. And I, you know, that's kind of cheating. I'm not going to do that. What's the name of the, the... Is it Blanca, the character from Street Fighter? Oh, yeah, the big dude.

That'd be a good one, too. Yeah. What are the cons, Phil, of eating Yoshi? There are no cons. No cons. No cons. He's listed. He's, you don't have to listen to him

Just, just jabber on Whatever the This has been a delightful mashup I do I do have some honorable Some honorable mentions here Of course, the Metroid from Super Metroid Banjo Cazooey Both Banjo and Cazooey

And the raccoon tongue note from Animal Crossing He's a piece of shit landlord He's always trying to squeeze you For everything you're working for And he's plump He'd have some good cuts of meat on Exactly and I think you know Raccoons

Clay would be excited. Very good. We could invite him to the cookout. Very good. Awesome. Good call. Oh, Phil. You're a real gem.

That was perfect, Phil. You filled it up as much as I was hoping you would. I'll cue you up, Spencer, here. You're last. I'm last. Apologies in advance. I'm going to take this very seriously. My list is the top three state game agency logos.

So once I pulled all 50, then I was like, why, I now have an obligation to myself to do this right and make a, critical judgment on who has done this the best. So please pull them up, Phil. All right. All right, number three here is Alabama. Alabama's logo is just so authentic. I'd say it's like

the most authentic game agency logo. It looks like it was designed in 1989 by a guy who hunts deer and owns a bass boat. It looks vintage like your dad would be part of a hunting club that had this exact logo on a hat that you would like fight your brother

for in the will. I would want own a hat with that patch on it. I want a nylon windbreaker. Green nylon windbreaker with that. Now, it's not, it's not even good design work. Like no professional would produce this logo today, but that's also what makes it so dang cool. I love it.

I see this logo and I'm like, yep, that's Alabama. That's what they're all about. White tails, large mouth bass, and a patriotic bald eagle. So Alabama is my number three, specifically the Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division. That's my number three. The eagle was well placed, too. It looks like he's just about to snag that bass out of the air. All right.

Number two. Number two is Alaska, the Alaska fishing game. Alaska's logo is really aesthetically pleasing. The color scheme of baby blue and turquoise, it's just super unique. It feels very Alaska to me. And it has a lot going on while still being balanced. You've got a salmon. You've got a caribou.

There's a large bird that looks like it's either a swan or a goose. So they've covered land, air, and water. But to me, the real star of the show are the actual stars. They have the Big Dipper and the North Star and the logo, both of which are correctly placed for how they appear in real life. And this is also a nice nod to their flag, which is just the Big Dipper and the North Star. It's not a coincidence that Alaska has one of the best state flags and one of the best game agency logos. I wish Montana State Flag was that cool instead of just being the seal. You know, it was created with a competition among school children to design the new state flag.

In Alaska? Yep. I did not know that. I love that little wrinkle. Good for Alaska. Their logo, it's just perfect. And their flag is awesome. If I lived in Alaska, I would fly that flag everywhere.

It would be a core part of my personality. It'd be on my house. It would be in my office. Good on Alaska. They crushed it. Nicely done. All right. Number one, if you've listened to trivia since the beginning.

This will be no surprise, but it is Missouri. I've made this declaration before, and I'll say it again. Missouri has the best game agency logo in the country. I like that it's the only state with a triangle logo. It's one of two logos that has a raccoon, the other being Tennessee. It's one of seven logos that has a bass. And I would say that looks specifically like a small mouth, in which case it would be one of two states that has a small mouth,

the other being Indiana. And it's also the only logo with an... oak leaf. I just really appreciate the Missouri is giving a nod to a raccoon and an oak tree. In fact, I think it'd be stronger if they just got rid of that bass in there. But I won't be too picky. And similar to what I liked about Alaska and Alabama, it just feels very authentic to Missouri. It works. It's the perfect logo for that state. I mean, but a triangle? A triangle, really? Well, if every state had a triangle, it would be different. But them being the state with

triangle logo, good on Missouri for having something unique. Gotcha. That's my number one. I won't. I won't. No complaint. I have some honorable mentions, though. That we'll get to here. Vermont, the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife. Vermont's logo, it feels like a family crest

that English royalty would have. It's the oldest looking logo of all the state game agency logos. It seems like it should be on a suit of armor that a knight is wearing. I really like what Vermont has going. on there. Then there's the Pennsylvania Game Commission. I love that it has what appears to be a muskrat hut in it. I love that it has their state flower, the mountain laurel that's represented. But what's really satisfying is that the white-tail buck there is a two-and-a-half-year-old eight-pointer. It's not an aspirational 180-inch booner made for the cover of magazines. It's just a standard buck that is barely graduated from being a basket rack. And this is the type of deer that I I just associate with the big woods of that part of the country that gets killed by a lot of folks. So I really like Pennsylvania's logo. And then the other honorable mention here is the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife.

Delaware's logo is famously weird. It's a Canada goose and what I believe is a weak fish and their position in such a way that it looks like the goose is carrying the weak fish. I just like how absurd that logo is and it's so bad that it's good. Now, sadly, that logo was replaced in 2021 by a new logo that's very sterile and forgettable. The new logo just looks like it'd be for a city parks department. It sucks. So Delaware went backwards with that logo change. It looks like an anti-pollution initiative.

It does. My first reaction to the original one is that it looks like they started with just the fish in there. And they're like, shit, there's a lot of empty space. Can we just chuck something in there? But don't change the placement or the size of the fish. For God's sake. It's crucial. Just make the second thing go over it.

So it has a Canada goose carrying a weak fish, which just tickles me. So those are the top game agency logos, Missouri, Alaska, Alabama. That was fun. Well done. Well done. We should probably do that again. Yeah, I like that. I think the come up with your own category is a real winner.

It's a real winning segment, if you will. well phil it's time we dive back into that strange strange world that is the chat let's see what folks we've come to that part of the show folks have had to say about this madness get get some more questions in we only have a couple right now and i will read one of them now jackson says randall if you could bring back a historical figure to life and go on a backwoods hunting trip with them who would it be what would you hunt for cool question this might take some thought here for a second. You can talk through it.

I'll answer a different version of this question, a person who's not dead that I'd like to fish with. Jeremy Wade. I love Jeremy Wade. I just respect everything about his show and how he fishes. I watched every episode when I was a kid all the way through college,

a big fan of Jeremy Wade. Man. But Randall's bringing someone back from the dead and hunting with them. I'm struggling here. I'm really struggling. Too many people. Yeah, well, I mean, like, the obvious one's TR, but then I'm like, I don't know, is he a nice guy? Like, what's it like sharing a camp with him?

He's a large man. Wouldn't share a tent. You need a lot of bags and chips. Boy, I mean, I feel like I've lost all my momentum with this question. Jackson, I'm going to think about this. Let's move on for one second. We can come back to it. You know, just to make the people upstairs happy.

Oh, God, it's embarrassing. We're live. One piece of first light gear. What would it be if you could only have one? Whoa. But we can have like the other clothes on and stuff that we'd wear. I think, yeah, I think that's kind of. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Insinuated. Favorite piece of first. I go, I know what it is. It's the, the Chamberlain jacket. It's like a sleeping bag. don't own another jacket

that's that warm and for hunting big game in the west and just glassing somewhere in the wind or sitting on a mountain top when it's early November Chamberlain jacket goes with me everywhere I'm still in summer mode

so I'm thinking about my favorite things from first light in summer number one I've worn it all spring and all summer is the flash storm jacket that is their lightweight raincoat it's 6.5 ounces. It performs really well in rain. It's also light enough that I'll throw it on

if the bugs are bad, if I need to keep mosquitoes off of me. I am a huge fan of that flash storm, and it's cheap as far as raincoats go. It's listed at 185 right now. If I had $185 to spend it first light, that's what I would spend it on. That's like going to be my go-to raincoat

for a long, long time. Big fan. Hmm. Gosh. I don't know if anybody's, in this room has tried our new socks. But they're a pretty bomber. Got to have a good pair of socks. Our midweight merino sock, over the calf.

So there's no slip. Good pair of socks is mission critical. Yep. We have great jackets, great pants. Great underwear. You're taking this too far. I'm wearing their underwear right now. Wash out. What do we got, Phil?

I don't remember, I'm just trying to avoid the dumb questions for me. I don't remember if you guys specifically have talked about this, but for the meteor to crew, what hunts do you have planned for the fall? Some of you might have shared. I've asked this before, but I think Brody was there. It might have been somebody else,

but. I've got standard Montana general tags. I've got a Montana pronghorn tag, and I've got, I'm going to do a mule deer hunt in Idaho. And that should keep me busy. It's going to be a busy little mid-October, November stretch there. Congrats on the pronghorn.

tag those are hard to come by these days well we we struck out last year so oh yeah the williams family uh i feel like we we weren't owed but i feel like it was i spent a lot of time thinking about the next pronghorn tag and now it's here you know it worked yeah i haven't drawn pronghorn three years in a row now they don't give them to montana natives anymore yeah it's like why would they i just have general deer and general elk oh and i do have an extra cow tag this year. So fall goes well. It'll be a overflow and freezer by Thanksgiving. That's exciting. Now, Spencer's got a lot. I have, I have deer tags in five states, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Illinois. Wow. So my first deer hunt will be early October in Idaho, and my last deer hunt will be

early to mid-December in Illinois with my other three states between there. Very excited. Mm-hmm. Phil? Without, you know, giving away any episodes of media or trivia that might have been filmed already, Lance says, as a random, I need to know what's up with the trivia slump. Lance Williams. Well, Lance, there's a short answer and there's a longer answer. The short answer would be everybody's got a bad day or two here or there,

and sometimes they string together five, six weeks in a row. Uh-huh. The longer answer is that the past like month and a half we've been working to finish up the next audio book. And my entire faculties, mental, physical, have all been depleted significantly. So rest assured, the old doctor's back on his horse. So stay tuned. Now that that project's wrapped up, I think we're going to get back in the swing of things. Okay.

You know what I mean. Randall was injured. Now he's at full health. Well, not quite full health. I'm 39 years old and sliding to the grave. Maybe head first, but, you know, we're doing what we were doing a couple months ago. He's back. Are you guys archery guys in here?

Nope, not at all. Corpore is. There's a question a while ago. It was pretty basically like single pin versus the... Multi-pins. Multi-pins. Sure, sure. If you have a preference, because they were saying that adjusting pins when you're...

maybe when you're drawn or trying not to distract or anything like that would that be a problem? Is that a problem for you? Well, I've used them both for sure and single pin just gets you into trouble more. I've taken that extra second to have to move your hand up to your site

to dial in to adjust that one single pin can be that half second that you need to be a little faster. So I have four pins that I don't adjust at all. Just aim and shoot. Beautiful. Got to be quick. There's also hybrid.

If you were torn, you could get a three pin where your top one is the floater that you would dial with, and your other two are fixed. And so you have fixed yardages out to, say, 20, 30, 40. And then if you have to go beyond that, then that's when you would dial. Yep, to each their own on that one. We can wrap it up there, but just, I didn't mean to say the dumb questions people ask me, like the questions are dumb. I just, it makes me uncomfortable to address them.

You don't want to talk about demon, demon stillbirth again? I would talk about that all day if I had the opportunity but I don't think I do but just to fire him off Leland I see you I hear you the Red Dead Redemption stream

is still TBD it is happening I don't know when am I gonna play Dungeons and Dragons with the people here I will force multiple people in this room

to play D&D with me soon I've been asking you to do that you're gonna have no choice yeah the tables have turned from Phil requesting us to play to us requesting him to host the game It's going to happen

Yeah, we will find Just as a sneak peek of something You May Never See We're going to find out once and for all What happened to Steve's fish I'll just I'll leave it at that Very good And that's pretty much it

If you guys I mean this is a good show It's a hefty show Man I feel like we could Sort of had a thin lineup But we really Squeezed all the juice Out of each segment

It was a rich text That I'm sure we'll go down In this Podcast history you know that was a great show well gang thanks for joining always a pleasure and Phil thank you Corey Spencer thank you and uh we'll see you next week bye now oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh come on why is this taking so long this thing is ancient

still using yesterday's tech upgrade to the thinkpad X1 Carbon, ultra-light, ultra-powerful, and built for serious productivity. With Intel Core Ultra processors, blazing speed, and AI-powered performance, it keeps up with your business, not the other way around. Whoa, this thing moves. Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search at Lenovo.com. Lenovo, Lenovo.

Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, powered by Intel Core Ultra processors, so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. You've got the land, you've got the deer, but the season's closing in and your mind's racing with more questions than answers. I'm Jake Hofer, and this is Back 40, a limited series show on Wire to Hunt, part of Meat Eat Eaters podcast network. Each episode, I'll be asking eight white-tail hunting pros, a focused, thought-provoking question about hunting and land management. How do I hunt the best part of the farm with less than ideal access? Should you, that's what the real question is. stand without good access is not a good stand.

Search Wire to Hunt and hit that follow button to listen to Back 40 now. This is an IHeart podcast.