The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 813: Stolen Elk and the Best Fishing Lures of All Time | MeatEater Radio (Not) Live!

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

Hosts Spencer Neuharth, Cory Calkins, and Max Barta talk with Guns and Ammo's David Faubion about a wild confrontation in the field, share a round of Top 3s, chat with MeatEater's own Mark Kenyon about his favorite books for whitetail hunters, and answer listener questions.  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.

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Meat-eater podcast. Welcome to Me Deeder Radio Live. It's 1.30 p.m. Mountain time. That's 2.30 for our friends in Santa Claus, Indiana on Wednesday, December 17th. And we're live from Me, Deeter, H.Q. and Bozeman. We are currently at home with friends and family because it is Christmas Day. I'm your host, Spencer, joined today by Corey and Max. Yep.

On today's show, we'll interview David Fabian about having his elk skull stolen by a rancher while hunting public land in Wyoming. Then we'll have some top three lists, followed by an interview with Mark Kenyon about the best books for whitetail hunters. And finally, we'll answer some listeners

submitted questions. But first, Corey, my head hurts just looking at you because you have a black eye and a big bandage on your face. That's not normal. You had to cancel coming into trivia earlier this week because you said it you got a concussion and I said oh no

did it happen while you were skiing and you said no no it's much worse than that long story tell folks what happened better or worse uh pretty embarrassing but happy to share it with the world got up my dog's frisbee stuck into a tree and how high up in a tree not not high maybe 10 feet you know I could almost reach it with a stick that was plan A plan B naturally was to throw a rock into the tree, right? Just try and knock it down. I picked up a, I don't know, 9, 10 pound rock off the ground. How big? Show me with your hand.

Like, softball size. Yeah, bigger than softball. Okay. How much did it? Probably 10 pounds. Okay. You know, just easy enough to get some good velocity throwing it into the tree to knock the frisbee down. I hit the frisbee, but it was stuck in a weird little nest

and bounced off the tree, bounced off a limb, and then hit me in the face. Oh, gosh. It was headed right for like between my eyes and I turned my head last second. It got me just under my eye, obviously. Yeah, pretty brutal. Nothing happened at first, but about 20 minutes later, I passed out. So minor concussion. It's been a couple days, staying at home, relaxing. Yeah, I couldn't partake in trivia, which lucky for the other contestants, obviously. So yeah, no, feeling a lot better though. Thanks for asking. Yeah, well, we're making him host radio, despite him saying he's still a little

foggy. A little foggy. If I pass out, this will be one hell of an episode. Good content. Yeah. Does it still hurt? It's good. It's tight. Like everything in my right cheek is just tight. It's just healing, you know. So no, it doesn't hurt anymore. Yeah. Just my pride. Yeah. Well, good on you for telling the truth. I'd lied about that. I'd been like, yeah, I was skiing a quadruple black diamond. Took a ski pole in a blizzard or something, you know. Yeah, I don't want that karma to hit me even harder than that rock did, you know. So, well, it got you good. It did. It's stupid rock. But I still need to go back to that tree, get the frisbee. Oh, the frisbee's still out there. Yeah, and then I'll bring home the rock, too, and I don't know, put it on my mantle.

We have goss of, like, 80 miles per hour today. Yeah, that frisbee might be long gone. It was up there, man. Let me tell you, the rock didn't knock it down. And it was a hell of a throw, too. Oh, goodness. And now you get to answer this question all of Christmas hanging out with the family. Oh, I can't wait.

So you've got a version of the story. that's well told at this point. Yep. Nope. It's all good. You're in good spirits about it, so it's good. Try to be. Thanks for coming today. And this show is coming out. You're going to be on the live show that we record tomorrow. That is live. And so we're not even going to address it. We're just going to tell folks, if you want to know what happened at Corey's face, you've got to tune in next week.

There you go. That's funny. All right, joining us on the line first is David Fabian, the editor of Guns and Ammo Special Interest Publications. He had a run-in on public land in Wyoming with a ramp. earlier this fall that went viral on social media he's here to tell us that story david welcome to the show howdy david i'm sir hi guys uh first thing tell us about the area you were hunting and how you accessed it yeah we were hunting this this chunk of landlocked public public land that uh only way to get there if you don't have a family connection or or deep pockets is to is to take a helicopter So we parked our rig and we boarded a helicopter and flew about four minutes and set up camp

and we could look back in the distance and maybe four and a half miles. We could see our cars down there. But yeah, can't walk there. And it took a few years for you to find a pilot who was willing to fly you into these places. What was that process like? Oh, incredibly frustrating. I had this idea that, you know, I want to hunt land like public land because it's got to be the Shangri-La. of, of public land.

And so I finally got the plan together. And then I called air operator after air operator after air operator. And no one would do it. I think it was my 26th or 27th helicopter or plane pilot I spoke to that said, yeah, I'd love to do it. Okay, you found the right guy. I read that at one point you were talking to someone who could drop you in there with a hot air balloon, correct? No, no. I was so desperate to make a hunt happen that I called a hot air balloon manufacturer.

Oh. And I said, I said, guys, have you ever sold any hot air balloons for DIY hunters? And they go, uh, no, that's the first we've heard of this. And they say, they said to me, you do realize you can't steer them, right? And I did realize that. And I still do think that it could be done. So maybe, maybe next year we'll be talking about my hot air balloon hunt. Uh-huh.

Yeah, you were desperate. Max, our call host, has a. question yeah david uh what's wyomans rule about flying and hunting the same day you can do it no problem if you use it for if you use the aircraft for transportation purposes and not scouting you're good to go okay cool okay so you get the four minute helicopter ride into your spot tell us about the hunt itself which took place back in november uh so the the hunt itself was very special it uh my buddy had been scheming on getting on this land to hunt for like 20 some years and he said if you can get us a helicopter then we'll have a great elk hunt well we got the

helicopter and we had i mean we had a great elk hunt but uh but the hunt itself was was overshadowed by by two things one obviously we'll get to uh but we also happened to have that amazing uh northern lines display on oh that's awesome after we after we got a double on on nice mature bulls we went uh went back to camp and it was like a six hour show and the time lapse of the the videographer on it. It's just, it gives me goosebumps even telling the story thinking about it. Good stuff. So you were processing one of the bulls, when the thing happened, and you said, quote, the strangest hunting encounter of your life. That's how you described in your article on Peterson's hunting. What happened? Yeah, I mean, there's nothing that even comes close to this one.

I've had issues with people like we all had on public land, but nothing like this. So my buddy and I, we left our camp and hiked to the kill site when we both killed we killed two bulls that were probably 150 yards apart so we uh we hiked back to my my bull and we got there at nine o'clock in the morning and we're gonna start packing meat and the other guys were going to come meet us as soon as they got done doing some filming so we sit down at my bowl and we look down below and there walking across his flat is as a rancher or another hunter he's got a you know elk anglers over his shoulder and so i think myself huh you know whatever we got we got two elk in this point place last night the uh the rancher obviously shot one in there as well yeah didn't even think anything of it and my buddy he said i wonder if that's our other elk and just then this light bulb goes off my head like holy cow could we really have could we really be witnessing an elk theft in the process from from a ranch who obviously came on private across private ground and so i just brought my binoculars he didn't bring him he left it back camp but uh but he said let me see your binoculars. And so he took my binoculars and looked down there, 200 yards,

and he recognized the back forks of the elk as being one that our buddy Ryan shot. And he said, I think that's our elk. And so I'm thinking, still, no way. Like what are the, it's not even in the realm of possibility. So he says, stay here, keep an eye on the brush line, because the guy walked into brush. So Ben looked at him for, I mean, he just had seconds to determine that could be our elk. He said, stay here. and keep looking down at the brush line so i stayed there and i expected this this rancher that'd be him i expected this rancher would come out and go get a quarter and take the quarter and walk into the brush never came out and so a few minutes later once once bannon made it up to the other

kill site all of a sudden i hear this voice come booming down and he said he stole our out go after him and it's like okay now that's where it became the weirdest moment of my hunting of my hunting career And, I mean, it's one thing to have interactions with people, but it's a whole different thing when you catch someone stealing your antlers, and they don't want you there to begin with. I mean, that's just, that's just a given. But they go to the degree of stealing, you're stealing from you, and then they're hiding in brushline, you just caught them. Like, approaching that brush line, I cannot even describe the pangs of fear that went through me. like i was terrified but but we had to do it so fam got there first oh go ahead no i was just going to recap you you've now you've got three bowls down um you you've you're working on the

meat you've watched this rancher from 200 yards away walk into the brush uh with your elkhead and then you guys march over there uh what's the conversation like with the rancher well my my buddy didn't bend in most of the talking at first and he was he was obviously really pissed he wanted the guy to come out the guy was hiding in there he wouldn't come out he finally he finally came out and it's a it's a 70 year old dude and i'm just like my mind is blown like i can't even say anything for the first for the first few minutes probably i was just recording with my with my phone because i knew this was evidence that we're going to have to use uh and so that is one thing that uh anyone in this situation like we've got amazing technology and just pulling out your phone and

and recording stuff will really cover your cover your basis but uh anyways the conversation was was was very simple like why did this happen what what what purpose did you steal this elk head for like like what's going on and the guy the guy didn't didn't answer he did a bunch of a bunch of misdirection wouldn't identify himself as the rancher denied even having the bowl we we called him out and all of stuff but but ultimately he said the reason was he didn't he didn't want us hunting on this outfit That's what he said, this outfit, meaning the public land that he's had sole access to for, I guess, probably 45 years that he's been there. And at some point in this process, when you guys are glassing him or walking over there, you heard a few gunshots, correct? Where do those play into the story?

I can't confirm where those gunshots came from or who did it even. But I believe that that rancher shot three times that morning. And I don't, I can't, I can't understand the, the logic behind that one. But anyways, when we saw him, he never had a rifle. So I can't, I can't confirm it was him nor what he did. But I'm guessing, I'm guessing he probably did it to, to signify like, hey, I got an animal. And then if, if someone sees him packing it out, like that's, that's what happened. But that's, that's just, that's just pure theory.

I don't, I don't think he did it to scare us or anything. Like, when you're, when you're on public land, people, people shoot. And, you know, you're not going to, you know, I can get out of there because another hunter's in there. All right. So at the beginning of the conversation, the rancher is, is denying the whole thing, right? But at some point, uh, you get him to show you where the skull is. How did that go down? No. He, uh, I think, I think he said to us the first, first time was, uh, and Ben said, the one you just saw, the one we just saw you pack into the brush. And so, uh, and so after, after a few minutes of conversation, uh, Ben goes, you want me? We'll get the bull. And he goes, have at it. So Ben walks in there and he

looks down bottom this little cut and there's and there's our buddy ryan's elk antlers so so not only did he did he take the bull and put it in the brushline but he tossed it down this this 10 foot 10 foot ditch and and climbed down it was it was it was not easy to get down there but he climbed down there and he placed it in a place where you could barely see it i know when i went to recover the antlers because i got him out when i jumped down there i uh i looked and sure enough there was there was fresh boot tracks in there like he'd actually gone to the effort of hiding them so you could you could barely find it. And then weirdly, he like offers to help you guys at that point, right? Well, that's, that's interesting how that worked out because I was, I was relieved that we, that we got the Elkhead

back. And I was relieved that we didn't get shot, truthfully. That was my biggest fear in the whole thing. But, uh, but after we, after we, after tensions cooled, I realized that, hey, you know, that guy packed this elk head down, you know, 300 vertical feet. So 300, maybe even, 400 vertical feet and at least 300 yards. So I said, how in the hell are we going to get it back up to the kill site? Like, we got to pack it up now. So what are you going to do? And I really, I thought, I thought he was going to say, look, guys, I messed up.

You know, instead of taking out there, you can just come out my ranch, go get your cars, take your stuff out that one. I was waiting for that because I was thinking, okay, cool. It saved some money on the helicopter ride, too. It would have saved us so much money if he would have done that. But he didn't. He never did. He did, he did however offered.

pack it up. So I thought that was a little bit of a redemption on his behalf. Yeah. So you guys get the elk then back to your camp, you and the rancher go your separate ways. At what point do you contact the authorities? And how did that conversation go? As soon as we had service. Yeah. As soon as we had service, we, well, we waited for our buddies to get back. And we said, you think the hunt was a, was a cool story. Like, just wait to you, wait to you see what we, what we just witnessed. And so, I mean, And our friends were just slack-jodd when we told them the story. Like they thought they were messing with them at first. And we're like, no, I promise you, we were not messing with you.

But, yeah, so we went back to camp that night. And there we had good service. So the phone calls made to the Game Warden and said, yep, this happened. We'll be out tomorrow. What do we do? And the game warden said, please meet me because that's a very odd story. And so the next day we flew out and met with the Game Warden and told them. And everyone in law enforcement, everyone,

period that here's a story. They all say the same thing. Like, I can't even, I cannot believe that happened. Yeah. Is that considered like hunting harassment then? Or what did the game warrants actually say? That's, that's a great, that's a great question. And I don't, I don't fully know what, what the long term legal outcome is going to be. But, uh, but yeah, we, we asked the word in the same thing. Like, like, like, what's going to happen here? And he goes, he goes, most I can do is hunter harassment. But he goes, after seeing the, after seeing the, after seeing the videos that we, that we made, he said, he said this goes way beyond that. So I'm going to, I'm going to go up in the local sheriff's office and they're going to do an investigation. And then we'll, we'll present our charges

to the prosecutor, you know, entirety. God, this, this has been about a month removed from when it happened. The legal process is still playing out at this point, right? Yeah. Yeah. But I am, I am optimistic because a few weeks ago, I did get a phone call from the, from the sheriff's office. And they actually said, like, hey, we're pursuing this. We're about to hand this to the prosecutor so he will he will be he will be uh punished for what he did and and that's good that's a good thing because the part that that scares me the most is it's not the not the brazen act that uh that that that the lot of these landowners go to uh to deter you from legally accessing it with aircraft but i worry if this guy gets off just a slap on the wrist that it's going to it's going to put

future flying hunters in danger i mean some ultimately something bad's going to happen like it's one thing to lose an elk head but it'd be just a tragedy for someone to lose their life Now, this was not your first fly-in hunt. Have you had problems in the past with neighboring landowners? Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, when I first started this, I thought to myself, like, yeah, they're going to be annoyed, but what are they going to do? It's not their land. You know, really, what are they going to do?

Well, what I found out now is, in their minds, it is their land. They don't have the deeded rights to it, but they genuinely do feel, and this is a blanket. statement. So I'm just, I'm just talking with the people we've interacted with. But every single landowner that we've had interactions with has been less than, less than, uh, welcoming. And, and, and, and some people, there's a, there's a, there's a couple that has a massive, a massive ranch that surrounds, I mean, I don't know, maybe 30,000 total acres of, of public landlock land. But, uh, but they, they're, they're so extreme that they, they pester us in the hunts. They find excuses to go in there looking for cows they they would this lady would take her kids uh like in

october we did a flying deer hunt and my dad and his his high school buddy two 75 year olds are in there hunting deer and cow elk and this lady shows up above their ridge middle of nowhere and she takes her kids for a for a loud walk right above their camp it's like it's so annoying but but she took it to she took it to a level that that uh it's still surprised me she told our helicopter pilot she said that if if i can't have sole access to that land and you guys keep coming in by helicopter then i'm going to go in there and ruin that land ruin that land so no one can take advantage of so no one can use it wow and you're just uh you're like pretty vulnerable back there in in those situations yeah yeah it i never i've never been in combat but it it is like

almost like you're getting dropped off on an island because because yeah you could leave if you wanted to but you really can't like you're going to be trespass in you got a dress fast to get out of there And the first time I went in, the helicopter landed and gave us a big group briefing. And so we're sitting around the helicopter. And finally, after 30 minutes of how to avoid getting your head chopped off, we boarded our flight for the first trip in. And this rancher came around us on this four-wheeler. And the helicopter wasn't running yet.

But he said, good luck. We'll be seeing you soon. And he said it in such a spooky villain kind of way. Almost like a threat. I assure you, that first night in there, I was ready for a posse of landowners to come there and try to lynch us from a tree. Yeah. Last question, David. You and I worked together about a decade ago when I was at Peterson's hunting in Illinois.

How much do you miss me? How much do I miss you or Peoria? Loaded question. Me. Well, you can answer both. Yeah, how much you miss me and then tell us how much you miss Peoria. On a scale 1 to 10, I miss you 9.8. All right.

Yes. I really do. On a scale 1 to 10 for Peoria. I just miss the people. I don't miss the place at all. Okay. Same. Yeah.

Good answer. Yeah. You can read David's full story about the hunt in his article called a landowner stole our trophy elk on Peterson's hunting.com. David, thanks for joining us and telling the story. Thanks, guys. Take care. See, David.

See you. Man, wild. Crazy stuff. Yeah. I don't even know what to do. And this crazy part is not only to landowners, not all of them, obviously, it's a few that get a little frustrated with this, but not only to, they believe that the land is theirs,

but the animals are theirs too. Yeah. There's a lot of that going on that just is mind-blowing to me. There's a dollar amount on each one of those trophy animals. And it's so crazy too, because a lot of times when I see,

like, there's different land for sale and listing, the realtors will advertise like, oh, so-and-so-much public land-locked. Yeah, right. You know, and I'm just like, that's not considered theirs, but. Yeah. And it's wild.

timing that they like saw it go down you know if they'd have been five minutes behind in the process and didn't see it happen uh who knows how that story would have been different right hunting big country isn't for the faint of heart you got steep ground long distances and miles of crown land that aren't always easy to navigate that's why onex hunt just got a serious upgrade for hunters in canada now you can get nationwide coverage for less than the cost of a box of shells with major updates to crown land layers and new parcel boundaries where available. Scout access boundaries and terrain with confidence before you even lace up your boots. Whether you're chasing elk in the mountains, spotting mule deer in the coolies, or looking for big woods white tails,

Anex gives you the tools to plan smarter and hunt harder. You'll still get fully functional offline maps, precise weather conditions, real-time GPS tracking, and customizable markups to share with your crew. Big country demands better intel. Download on X hunt and start your seven day trial to get dialed before your next trip. All right. Normally at this point in the show, we take a break for some listener feedback. But since we're not live, these are questions that were submitted ahead of time. We'll hit a few of them now and then a few at the end of the show. The first one is from Ryan Bowlinger. Favorite way to cook waterfowl. Max. If I could, every single time I would cook skin on duck for sure but that's now as an option especially like

early season when they don't they're not as fatty they still have pin feathers um so a lot of times like duck or goose uh just cook it like a steak trim it trim all the silver skin off um salt pepper garlic um turns out awesome especially like the snow geese the speckled bellies um even like some of your dabbler ducks um yeah it's great um but yeah i've done things like the crock pot uh barbecued uh shredded meat um tacos um options are really endless um i know steve favorite way is like uh duck comfy um which is also really good um but yeah duck or goose pastrami i just made some uh over thanksgiving phenomenal all these recipes on the medeater dot com i think my best waterfile i've had was uh when cal and i were filming part of my plate when we did the coot

episode we did a side by side comparison with a mallard uh that the skin was left on. We cooked it on a hot grill, just like you said, with a steak. And it was, it was phenomenal. You, you, you would struggle in a Pepsi challenge to identify that that was a mallard versus a piece of beef. It was, it was really great. Yeah, I think Steve is doing a comparison with a Morganser, GoldenEye, and a mallard here coming on. Okay. A dabbler and a couple divers. Yeah. So we'll see how that goes. Corey, favorite way to cook waterfowl. Well, I don't really have much of a duck in this fight. I don't do a lot of waterfowl hunting, but just

same exact, I would say the same exact way I cook any steak, which is in a hot cast iron pan. Yeah. All right, next question from Will Palakangas. How do you guys wash your marino wool base layers? I reached out of the folks at First Light to get an official answer

on this because I didn't want to lead anyone astray. Here's what they told me. Some companies make cleaners that are specifically for Marina wool products. One of them is Granger's, which First Light really likes. Some of the staff over there, me included, just uses dead downwind. And if you aren't buying a special detergent for your base layers, they say to look for labels that say gentle or mild on them.

As far as the washing goes, they say it's really important to wash on a gentle cycle with cold water. Try to separate different fabrics and colors. For example, you don't want to put a marino wool kiln hoodie in wash. It has a heavy coat with Velcro. It's going to get beat up for drying they say do a tumble dry or a low dry blasting the marina wool in a hot dryer might shrink it so simply put mild detergent or specialized detergent like granger's and then wash and dry at cool temps yeah i'm so horrible so horrible at this i just throw everything together and wash it the same dry it's the same but i do try if i know i'm doing some marina wool i'll like try to keep it on low for the drying aspect, for sure.

But yeah, I am so bad at it. Yeah, low and slow. Same with down products, too. So natural fibers, low, light wash, and then either a super light tumble or even just hang it outside. Sure. If you got nice weather, hanging in a pine tree.

Yep. Open air and sunlight can do a lot for your smelly clothes. Okay, Cameron J.07, best piece of hunting gear you use, that's under $50. I'll do even one better. I'll go under $1. hand warmers and toe warmers, anyone you know who hunts or fishes north of the Mason Dixon line,

they'll find a use for some hand warmers and some toe warmers. I think they're still like 98 cents. When I was hunting in Illinois, it was single digits. Having those hand warmers and toe warmers was like as important as my coat, you know, and it's like a $500 coat versus a $1 hand warmer. They'll really keep you out there longer. Do you find your feet, if you do the toe warmers, your feet get too sweaty or too warm and then they get sweaty and then they get cold um no but i'm also not like walking around

in them either right like it's like okay this is where i'm parking my butt for the next two hours um so i'm throwing a toe warmer in there uh favorite piece of gear under 50 max um for me it's got to be like uh neck gator or a buff um yeah i actually got one right here um this is the tundra cold weather neck gator 40 bucks it works as a face mask and it just works as just keeping the wind off the back of your neck yeah um i love it i like them if you know even i'm hunting in september obviously not that heavy of one but yeah just the sun and wind yeah i mean just like something to help conceal your face a little bit and then like if you can it kills two birds in one stone so yeah

Corey, tell Cameron a favorite piece of hunting gear under $50. A cheap pair of aftermarket insoles. Obviously, you could go big and get some custom orthotics that could run you $100 to $200 or more. What's your favorite? I really like super feet, just because I think they're maybe a little over $50 now, but just Google aftermarket insoles and you'll find some under $50 for sure. Anything's better than the junk that they give you in the boots. I mean, they'll last you a couple months, but do your feet of favor and get,

aftermarket insoles, make sure it matches your arch. So you might have to bump up a size to make sure it fits your arch. So if you can, go into a boot store or any sport and a good store and try and put your foot on the insul. Make sure it lines up with your arch and then you can cut it to fit into your boot. I'm going to put that on my Christmas list. The cutting is pouring. If you get slightly oversized and they start to roll in your boot, that's no good.

Next question is from Mo, uh, Hesgawa. What is Phil's favorite ever podcast episode of Meat Eater? Thanks, Mo. I don't know if I have a specific one that sticks out, but I love the authors that Steve brings in because, you know, I can, I don't connect as much to all the very specific hunting talk, but I love it when Steve specifically like a nautical disaster,

which Steve loves, and I also love, you know, from the Edmund Fitz to having David Grand talking about the wager because you can, those guys just know their stuff. so well and Steve the you can feel Steve's passion when he's asking questions I also love the awkward part of every conversation with an author when Steve tries to get them to talk about the end of the book and they don't want to and he's like oh come on yeah uh you know it never fails to to amuse me and then it's like I love the the ones that stick out in my mind are the ones that we had to travel for like

I loved going going to verner herdsog's house was a trip going to l.A. with spencer and randle and doing the the show with rob low at serious or david chang at the ringer was was fun um Yeah, so those are those are my favorites. I love the authors and the comedians. Like Brad, Brad Lione was a lot of fun. Dan Adduit was a lot of fun too. All right. Corey's going to answer this next one from Red Beard Fly Fishing.

If you were hunting in snow too deep for gators, what kind of pants do you like? I'd have to go with the first light Omen Storm Shelter pants. They got the built-in splash guard Velcro that goes around your boots plus the boot lace hook like most gators have that keep them down when you're trudging through the snow. And they're waterproof, obviously. They're light, full vents, knee pads. I mean, I think that's my favorite thing first light makes. And they're actually- What are they again?

The omen pant, olden storm shelter. So will you wear the gators with those or is that overkill? Man, if it was like melting snow and super sloppy, I've done it. Certainly gators, then those over the top. But dry snow, no, no need. They're great for whatever. I use them backcountry skiing too. All right.

Next question. We got two more left in this round This is from Willie Scoey Or Will is Cohe? I'm not sure What is Max's White Whale for Waterfowl? Ooh, that's a great question I don't even have a guess

Something from the Arctic Circle or like Not even that Okay, something banded, what is it? Yeah, no, it's, I mean, people might make fun of me because they probably have many of these, but I've never killed, we've never harvested a band of Drake Mallard.

Oh, really? So yeah, it's going to be a banning Drake Mallard retrieved by my dog. Okay. My dog has retrieved like three or four of them, but me personally, I've never shot one. Yeah, I've shot banded Canada geese, pintill, teal, gadwall, snow geese, but never abandoned Drake Mallard. Okay. I've only killed like five ducks in my life, and I've killed one. Really?

Really? Oh, my goodness. Not bragging. Oh, yeah. I've killed one band of bird It was a speckle belly goose Yeah Came in a pair in December

But yeah For the amount of mallards That I tend to harvest I'm just waiting on the day Where on the continent would you go to get that Because there's dudes who will like They know that this refuge bans This time of year

So if they go there they can You know have higher odds Where would you try to do it at? I mean I know there's a lot of banning down in Arkansas Like in the flooded timber But I necessarily don't want to go somewhere Where it's like

You want to be organic. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Like, where we are around Bozeman, we see a lot of birds from Alberta, some Saskatchewan birds. And they do a lot of banning up there, a lot of banning projects. And one of these days, Ruby's going to come back with something shiny on that orange leg. So hopefully it's this year, maybe. All right.

Last one, Wally Bloomer. He says, Phil, Destiny 2 Star Wars expansion, question mark. I don't know what that means. What's he asking? Bill. Destiny 2 is a video game that is a sequel to the game Destiny. If you can put that together. It's a multiplayer online shooter from the same team who made the first three Halo games,

so Bungy based out of Bellevue Washington. And so, you know, it feels a lot like Halo feels great. No one makes, like their art direction is unparalleled. I put over 1,500 hours into this game. But let's see, Wally Blumer, I haven't touched Destiny since the final shape, which for everyone else was the last big. expansion downloadable content expansion but uh i had i think i said it before i had to quit at cold turkey i was just wasting too much too much time um playing that game uh and i to be honest wally i didn't

even know that there was a star wars tinged expansion uh until i read this question that is how checked out i am from the destiny community which didn't used to be the case but okay uh yeah it's a so just a for 15 more seconds of detail the reason you waste so much time playing these games is because it's a massive multiplayer online game. So you play with like a bunch of people and it's like a looter shooter as well. So you're always trying to make your number go up. You get a gun and then that gun helps you fight stronger monsters

and then you get an even stronger gun and that gun helps you fight stronger monsters and you watch your number tick up and it's just that sort of serotonin hit. Just learning about the Star Wars make you more interested though where you still just know. Not at all. No, I'm done.

I'm done forever, Wally. Sorry. All right. Our next segment is top threes. Oh, I'm going to fire this up now. Oh, top three. Your top three. Top three.

Oh, I'm tone death of a different. A different top three list today out. Corey, start us out. What is your top three list? Oh, boy. Well, we're kind of wrapping up 2025, not officially yet, obviously, but it makes me always kind of reminisce the year. So I'm doing my, in no particular order, necessarily, my top three outdoor adventures from 2020. All right. Let's see what Phil brings up first. I can't wait to say this. Let me get rid of this banner. Okay, yeah. So in April, Corinne and I went down to West Texas to hunt Audad. And had a successful hunt, harvested a U and a ram, but that was like a blur just compared to the adventure down there, Montana boy. This is only the second time I've hunted in another state. First time I was just guiding, so I hadn't killed in Colorado, my first season guiding. So this just being invited was phenomenal and then being able to explore this super rugged, dry, arid country of West Texas. We were staring into Mexico the whole time.

It was only in the 70s, but it was. so dry that it felt so much hotter. Not a cloud in the sky, no shade to get under. No shade. The wind was like really nasty, especially in that shop there, up on the side of a mountain. Got to eat some odd ad fresh over the fire, which was pretty cool. Just the whole experience was awesome. Where's that skull at now?

Hanging in my house as soon as you walk on the stairs. Is that, is that a bowl, a buck? Ram. Ram. I was trying to think of another one. Yeah, they're more on the sheep side of thing. Cool. Yeah.

So that was good adventure. Yeah, pretty awesome adventure. Let's see. Number two would have been my wife and son and I did a lot of camp floating. We like to take the drift boat onto one of our Freestone rivers and camp on public land, either on an island or off a beach, just off the side of a river. Typically, we hit the Yellowstone River, which is a nice short drive here from Bozeman. But love to take the boat out for one or two days.

one or two nights, if possible, and figure out what sort of adventures we can go on. There's a shot of my kid jumping off the front of the boat. Super nonchalant. We either go by ourselves or with another family, but it's fun. Fish all day, pull into a beach wherever you want. I bet you find some agates and petrified wood. Yeah, lots of petrified wood. I still don't quite have the eye for it, but even though I have found one of the biggest

piece of the biggest egg I've ever seen. You're multitasking in that photo. Yeah, there I am rowing the boat with a boat full of gear. firewood, a dog, and two kids in the front that were kicking, splashing the water, churning up all the fish, but I didn't catch anything, but I had to try. Isn't that called the San Juan Shuffle?

Yeah, that's when they actually kick up the rocks, though. Yeah, yeah. So close, but, so just the family float trips in the summer. Looking forward to that again next year. What is the San Juan Shuffle? It's basically like you walk and you're kicking up all this dirt and I don't know. Yeah, like if you're fishing a hole.

It's a beneficial thing. Yeah, you're kicking up a lot of bugs higher up in the stream and they come down and they chum up the fish, if you will. It sometimes works. Other times I feel like any movement can put the fish down too. Spooks them. Yeah, so. I like that name.

There's a driving maneuver I refer to as the Chicago sweep. It's where you cross multiple lanes at once. Say you're like four lanes and you've got to get from lane one to lane three. Sure, yeah, it's the Chicago sweep. And I wondered one time, I was like, did I come up with that or did I hear someone say it? So I googled Chicago Sweep and I couldn't find it anywhere online. So maybe I made it up. Let's make it a thing, though.

That is good. I like it. That's a Chicago Suite move that you might see. But you remember, you might get pulled over doing it. Sure. Yeah, one lane. That's not in Chicago. That's like, you know, that's driving up there.

Pretty normal. Chicago sweep. Multiple lanes at once. Four or five lanes. All right, number one, Corey, adventure of 2025. Number one, took my wife and son to my favorite place in the world. I'm not going to tell anybody where it's at. It's right on the edge of a wilderness here in Montana.

But really cool spot took my son and my wife up there, went up this tiny little creek to go look for some fish, and lo and behold, we caught a giant West Slope cutthroat while. My boy caught that, which was really exciting. He was finally old enough where I could take him on the journey, which just getting there obviously is very difficult. And he caught it. Yeah.

Did you hook it and then hand him the rod or he did everything? No, he did everything. Hell yeah. Yeah, the dog. Dryfly? Yep. Catas. The dog got in the way.

We had to wrangle the dog and pull him out of the way. But, uh, yeah, super fun. Just super remote, hard to get to spot. And I've been waiting since the day he was born to take him back there. So a fish that big on a dry fly would spook me a little. It had to really spook Marshall. Yeah. He didn't want to touch him in the photo.

Yeah, he's hesitant. That's great. No, super fun. Uh, that won't be the last time up there. Good 2025. adventures for Corey. All right, Max, what's your top three? Oh, I got top three duck hunting accessories. For starters, I'll start with these decoys. I'm a big fan of a jerk rig. Okay. A jerk rig consists of a weight, a little bungee, and a line of decoys. So basically,

you can imagine I put this weight out. I have this line come all the way back to me. and it's exactly what it says you jerk it it produces water motion um water motion goes the long ways i would use this 10 times uh more than i would ever use a spinner um it's natural ducks do it um ducks produce so much water motion that people overlook um and especially if you're hunting like a pond or something it's super important to have some kind of water only on a calm day what what if they were like you know seven mile an hour wind and you had some small waves It helps for sure Because a lot of times too

And people will do this in the south too Hunting the timber They'll just rip on the jerk cord And the splashing sound Attracts docks too It helps So yeah That's my number one

I bring this with me Almost every time I go duck hunting For sure Number two I think I have a photo Which one is it gonna be Oh Game Tote

I've also brought this with me too A beautiful piece of gear. Yeah, it's a beautiful piece of gear. It helps you keep your ducks in a row. Ah, funny. Just easy. Hang the duck by the foot or the head. And a big reason why I like this is in waterfall hunting, you've got to keep your duck separate.

Like, you've got to claim your ducks, and it helps you keep you legal. So, like, Corey and I went out, oh, Corey would be this side. I would be this side. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, that's a thing I bring with me every single time. And it helps for a nice picture. Yeah, it helps with good photos, too. So yeah, that was a couple weeks ago, um, limited Mallard. So, um, yeah, just you don't need it, but I like it. Um, what does that one run, you think? Uh, this one's probably a hundred bucks. It's, it's, uh, it's custom. It's gonna have for the rest of your life. Yeah, it's custom. It has Ruby's name on it. Oh, very good. Yeah. Um, so yeah. Um, so yeah, uh, once, he goes, I'll retire this one and then get another one for the next dog. So, all right. Number three, waterfowl accessory.

Number three, I kind of touched on this earlier, a neck gator. This one's from first light, uh, 40 bucks, but like I was saying earlier, keeps you warm, keeps the wind off you and also helps conceal you a little bit. So, um, yeah, every time there's, it's cold out, I'm wearing this guy. So, um, get a little fleece in that side there. But, yeah, that's my top three. And you don't realize how warm it's keeping you until you might take it off. Oh, yeah.

I mean, just a little wind on the neck is, like, brutal. So that's my top three. All right, I'm going next. I've got my top three favorite fishing lures of all time. Phil has photos of them. Number three is the Johnson Beetlespin. Nice. This is my favorite lure in the world for catching panfish.

My best days of crappie fishing, bluegill fishing are thanks to a yellow beetle spin, just like that one there. Easy to cast, rarely get snagged. You can run them in any depth. One of the last remaining loavers you can buy that's under $3 a piece. Non-pan fish like them too. I've caught some good bass on beetle spins.

One day in college while I was fishing for my kayak, I hooked into a giant flathead fishing for Bluegill that ate a beetle spin. I think he was probably like 20 pounds. I fought him for like 15 minutes on my ultralight setup, got him to the edge of the kayak a handful of times. Eventually he broke me off on, like, my third attempt to grab him, and he broke my heart. It would have been one of my greatest catches of all time, a flathead on a beetle spin from the kayak.

That's cool. Anyway, I love the Johnson Beetle Spin. So does the freshwater fishing Hall of Fame. They named it their number 13 best lure of all time. But for me, it's number three, the Johnson Beetle spin. I'm excited to see what is two and one. Number two is the Rapala shad wrap. If I could only fish with one crankbait, the first.

rest of my life. It would be a number five shad rap in Fire Tiger just like that one there. It'll catch any game fish, bass, walleye pike. You can size it down for panfish and trout, size it up for musky and strippers. It's a real do-it-all lure. You can troll them. You can cast

and retrieve. Good for fishing five to 10 feet of water, which is where I find myself most times. Also love the shaddraps broken cousin, the jointed shaddrap. Those give even more wobble. They're not quite as easy to as the OG shad rap.

And I would bet that I own 40 or 50 of the jointed shad wraps and the shad wraps. Not all in Fire Tiger. Not all in Fire Tiger. Just wanted to make sure. I bet Fire Tiger is not even top five because that's what I use so often

and lose so often. So it's my favorite. But I think I have colors. I've recognized that just should be retired because I'm never going to grab that purple blue thing or whatever I have. All right. Number one is the Strike.

King KVD sexy frog. Nothing in fishing brings me greater joy than a top water bass bite. Although I love like the scum frog and the zoom horny toad, my absolute favorite is the KVD sexy frog. Kevin Van Damme, he's the greatest bass

angler ever. He's made my favorite lure ever. The sexy frog is totally weedless. You can cast that thing a mile. It has an internal rattle, which not all frogs do. So it has some added sound. Great action. You can twitch it. You do a fast retrieve. They have 17 colors.

Now, I like the classic leopard frog, which is what that pattern is, because most places I fish in the north, the most common frog is a leopard frog. And here's a hot tip. Take a scissors and cut off like a half inch of that hula skirt legs. And then also add a trailer hook. You'll get better hook sets that way. Throw it on a calm, cloudy day for best results. That's the Strike King, KVD, sexy frog.

My number one favorite lure of all time. I feel like I was editing a Tony Peterson episode one time. And I felt like he liked a calm sunny day Because it produces like a shadow Sure Up top I think you talk to 10 anglers To tell you 10 different things

I like cloud and calm Then I've got a few honorable mention The Eagle Claw Cropi rig Cropi rigs get a bad rap For being like the lure you associate With kids and beginner anglers But that's stupid Everyone should embrace the Cropi rig

They're cool You bait them with worms or minnows To catch any fish in North America Fish it under a bobber Fish it on the bottom Doesn't take any technique at all And they're the perfect lure for using While drinking in beer

So that's a croppy rig The Mr. Twister curly tail They make the OG curly tail grub You won't find anyone That'll tell you it's like The best soft plastic For bass or walleye or anything But just like as an all-around

lure you can't beat a Mr. Twister Good for Panfish and Game Fish paired with the VMC jighead That's my favorite jig head. They'll catch anything. And then the little stinker dip bait worms. If you love catching three pound channel cats in slow moving water, which I do, then you can't beat stink bait. My favorite vessel for Sonny's stink bait, that's my favorite stink bait, is the little stinker dip worm.

They make it real easy to set the hook with that impregnated treble hook. I've caught more catfish, I think, on that pairing of the little stinkers' worms and sunny stink bait than anything else. Those are my honorable mentions. Very cool. All right, Phil. What's your top three? Okay. Well, I ran into some technical difficulties this morning, editing a Meteeter podcast,

so I had to pull a Ryan Callahan and just look around my office. So we have my top three teakie mugs that were in my office. How many did you have in there? Well, I've got like 20, but I brought down five for some honorable mentions. The first one is this Coohiko mug that I got at Smugglers Cove in San Francisco. Wow. This is the mug that is pictured on the, um, the cover of the smugglers cove teaky book which is kind of like the modern day

bible of teaky stuff and it's it got a new mat glaze and it just it looks real real pretty it's a little little guys covered in like barnacles and old old nets and and some coral and stuff that is a big cheeky bug uh i i don't use these if i sometimes i'll take i'll take one home on the weekend if i'm if i feel like making a tiki drink that's it's few and far between right uh number two is this one i actually found at an antique store here in bozeman and so it does it's It's not that flashy, but I saw it and I was curious. It says Harvey's Lake Tahoe on it. So I looked it up, and it was an old Tiki restaurant,

Tiki bar that was at the top of a hotel in Tahoe that was very short-lived and apparently wasn't very good. But the hotel has a lot of history because some guy who was in debt over a million dollars at the casino put a bomb in a copier to try to extort the hotel. and the FBI caught wind and detonated the bomb. Nobody was hurt, but, I mean, it blew up, like, the first three stories of the hotel

caused, like, $20 million in damages. That's good Lord. And here's a relic from there. Good stuff. And then my favorite was one that I got at a bar called Wusong Road in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just right outside Harvard Square.

And this is, if you've seen the film spirited away, nope, this is the, the radish spirit who works in the bathhouse. And I just think it's a great, I mean, it's gorgeous, wonderful design. He's wearing a little kind of like cherry blossom, Japanese shirt, teaky shirt. His hat comes off. Like a cookie jar. And it's also just a really cool teaky bar as well.

It's got kind of like this pulp comic book theme. It's got a hard to describe. But it was a nice little find there in near Harvard. Have you drank anything out of that teaky mug? Once. Yeah. Most of these teaky mugs I've had one drink out of and then I bring them to my office. And then sometimes I'll bring him home for a special occasion.

Okay. I thought you had a couple honorable mentions. Oh, yeah. I get some honorable mentions here, too. This one is from, yeah, this one is from Galaxy's Edge, the Oga's Cantina in Disney World and Disneyland. Wow. This is sort of like, it tells the story of the Battle of Endor and kind of like a tribal artwork sort of thing, like like as if it were designed by Ewox. So, you know, you've got the ATST there, C3, P.O and R2D2 are somewhere around here. So it was the EWox. just absolutely you know doming some stormtroopers

uh that's a good one and then I've got this prize that didn't make top three oh I just so many to choose from more yeah and then I've got this one which looks like an arcade cabinet made out of like driftwood um that's that was from a fun house which is like an old like a video game comedy

site that I used to enjoy a lot very unique jealous of that collection that is fun if you're not watching this on YouTube you're missing out on a real visual treat there big tell there we are thank you hunting big country isn't for the faint of heart you got steep ground long distances and miles of crown land that aren't always easy to navigate that's why onex hunt just got a serious upgrade for hunters in canada now you can get nationwide coverage for less

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all right joining us on the line last is wired hunt host mark kenyon he's here with a top five list of his own mark welcome to the show hey guys i'm just kind of in in shock of phil's collection there quite the uh quite the thing to try to follow up yeah good luck mark makes phil phil uh real quick mark give us a deer movement update for where you're at uh for michigan these last 30 days of your dough season yeah well we're coming off of a really great cold and snowy spell for much of the country really the late season weather that you want

so we're all we're coming off of this hive unfortunately at the very end of the year we're actually getting the opposite which is a warm up which is not as encouraging we have warmer weather coming in here into the upper Midwest some rain we're going to miss out on the white Christmas that I thought we're going to have and all that's

probably going to lead to a little bit slower deer movement than we've had over the last couple weeks during this kind of Arctic spell so not exactly what you want, but with the warmer temperatures, you're probably going to see deer moving off of the grains like corn or soybeans and moving more towards greener forage, native brows, green food plots, winter wheat fields, that kind of stuff. So super fast update, but that's what's coming down the line. All right, good info. Now, it's almost the off season. And a great way to keep the fire

burning for deer in the off season is by reading. And I don't know anyone who has read more books about white tails than you. So today I want you to give us your top five list of best books for white tail hunters. Let's start with number five. What do you have for us, Mark? First off, I'd like to say that I plan on using that bio line that I just saw below, White Tail Enjoyer. That's going to be my new title, maybe. Not expert, but Enjoyer. Yeah, enjoyer. Pretty accurate. Number one, or because number five in your case will be mapping trophy bucks by Brad Herndon. If you're watching, here it is. This is a foundational text within the whitetail world from like a tactical

perspective. This is basically the first and I think kind of the that most established resource on understanding topography and terrain for deer hunting. So how hills and ridges and saddles and points and inside

corners of fields and all that kind of stuff can actually lead to deer moving in different kind of ways and how you can take advantage of that as a hunter and this uses maps and really teach is how to use maps and topography to predict deer movement. So really kind of foundational how to book in the whitetail world. It's got kind of a textbook look to it.

Yes, yes, it does. There's lots of illustrations. You can see like very helpful actual diagrams and stuff. So if you're trying to get better deer hunting, this is like a must have book. It's hard to find though, I think now is what I've heard. Okay. That looks like one. If you're not interested in a whole bunch of text and reading, you can just flip through

and enjoy the visual. and learn stuff that way. All right, number four, Mark. Number four, this is for those of you who do want to do a lot of reading. And this is not tactical or strategic or how to at all. This is a book called A Hunter's Heart, honest essays on Bloodsport. This is a collection of essays edited and collected by David Peterson. This is going to be getting to the why we hunt, not just deer, but anything, and how we go about it.

So there are just some amazing short essays in this collection that talk about white tails and a whole bunch of other stuff and really gets kind of into that deeper, you know, philosophical side of things. One of the best hunting essays of all time, in my opinion, is in here. It's called The Heart of the Game by Thomas McGuane. It's a legendary piece. Highly, highly recommend for all whitetail hunters and hunters of all kinds. All right. We are now to the top three. What do you have for us next?

next is white tail nation and this is by a guy named pete boto this is an under the radar book i don't think a lot of people know about it it came out i don't know maybe 15 20 years ago and it's a really interesting story about this guy's kind of exploration and journeys he went from kind of being a standard everyday deer hunter to finally trying to kill that first big buck kind of the thing that you read about over the whole course of your life is someday that big trophy buck well he decided to document that journey as he went from kind of where he was to going to that next level and all on the way travel across the country was in hunting in Pennsylvania New York Texas Montana and then through it all really ends up doing a really interesting

kind of I don't know if it's an analysis but he he documents the culture of deer hunting he documents the history of deer hunting and does it in a really compelling way this is like a real writer he wrote for gray sporting journal in the new york times and all that so it's it's a really well articulated interesting story uh that has that kind of narrative nonfiction uh set of lessons you can learn throughout too so really good one not a lot of people know about this one but i highly recommend it in a very pretty book uh mark you seem like a dust uh dust jacket guy do you always keep those on your books oh yeah absolutely i couldn't my my wife removes them i kind of feel like that sacrilege it's there's a lot of time and energy

that goes into designing these book covers and packaging them, right? So I would never take that off. I get rid of them right away. I feel like I'm reading a book from the library if it has the dust jacket on it. Interesting. All right. Number two, Marcus, what do you have? Number two, this is a tactics book.

This is a how to. This is my favorite how to book. It's called Whitetail Access. And it's a funny story. The title and the subtitle, which is how to hunt top white tail states cheaply and effectively, it's actually not really that kind of book. It's a story that I heard from the author that was kind of like the publishers want to try to make this seem

more like a very clear how to book. And so they packaged it with this title that they thought would get people to buy it. But really what it is is a story. It's the story of Chris Eber Hart's season in which he lived out of his minivan, traveling across the country, hunting deer DIY on the cheap,

from Michigan to North Dakota, Missouri, Ohio, maybe somewhere else. But the Iberhart, Chris Eberhart and John Eberhart, his dad, are kind of, you know, OG white tail hunters. They've really, unfortunately, Chris passed away, which is really sad. But his dad is still one of the legends in the white tail world that's taught me and thousands of others a lot about how to effectively hunt white tails

and heavily pressured states. And so this story is all about that season, but then throughout it, he's got very detailed notes about how he did what he did, his strategies, his perspectives, his plans. There's diagrams and maps in here again, too. So kind of similar to the other book, you can actually see where his stand setups were and follow along with all the hunts and the tactics. So a really good how to mixed with a story.

So that's why it's probably my favorite recommendation for people who want to learn, but also enjoy the story along the way. All right. Here's a recap so far. Number five was mapping white tail. bucks number four was a hunter's heart number three white tail nation number two white tail access what is number one it's kind of cliche the number one book that all white tail hunters and every hunter in the world should read is a sand county almanac by aldo leopold probably anyone listening

to mediator or media radio live knows this book but if not highly recommend it it is i think kind of like the, I don't know, like the equivalent of the Bible for people who are into hunting and fish and wildlife and conservation, anything. It's like a foundational text. It's the thing that kind of sums up how we can think about ourselves as stewards, as wildlife managers. There's great essays in here and thoughts on, you know, how to be a hunter and connect with wildlife wilderness, the importance of a land ethic.

You've heard it come up a thousand times from Steve and, Doug Dern and so many others, and it's for good a reason. The opening text here, the opening line here is, there are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot. And I think that sums it up really well. If you care about wildlife and wild things, this is a book that just has to be on your bookshelf.

Okay, good stuff, Mark. Thank you for the list. I'm going to pick up some of those this offseason. I wrote them all down. And good luck on the rest of your season there in Michigan. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, buddy. Merry Christmas, Mark.

Yeah, Merry Christmas. You guys too. Tell the family hi. Right back at you. All right. That brings this to the end of the show. We have some more Q&A to wrap this up. Here are some questions listeners submitted last week.

First one is from Field of Dreams 731. What types of wine do y'all pair with Wild Game? I don't have a great answer for this, but when I'm cooking like a big meal for Thanksgiving or Christmas and it's got courses in Wild Game and my wife is really trying to like put on the writs she will go ask chat GPT she'll tell it exactly what we're having

in what order and what the meat is and where it came from and then that spits out some recommendations so that's the best thing I can tell you do you guys have any thoughts on wine and wild game red wine that's it I I'm not a big red white white or just not a big wine guy

in general so I married a wino my wife loves wine whether it pairs or not. And she's got me hooked on Malbex, which is an Argentinian wine, real dark, bold, fruity flavors, which pairs very well with red meat especially. But I'm a big fan of the boxed wine.

There you go. You slap it a little. Phil, any input on wine and meat? Yeah, I'm not a big wine guy. I'm sorry. If you're interested in beer pairings, we have two articles on the meat eater.com for you. The first one is from chef, Justin Townsend.

How to Pair Beer with Wild Game. And then the other one is from Coobee Brown. How to pair beer with fish. We can help you out on that front. Again, for wine, I think ChatGPT does a really nice job. If you tell it exactly what you got going on. Yeah, we're not wine people here, I guess. The next question is C.J. Rope Key 21.

What is the best wild game Phil has eaten since working at meat eater? Great question. I think I've talked about this before, but the best, Bight of Wild Game I've ever had was at the old office, probably five, four years ago. Brody brought in some elk tenderloin and then Michael Hunter, who's the chef at Antler in Toronto, Canada, who's been on the podcast a couple times and done some stuff with us. He just had a little induction burner and just like seemingly without even thinking about it, just made it like a huckleberry demiglaze and cooked this eliz.

just perfectly and it just like it felt like it melted in my mouth it was the best tasting meat I've ever had in my we did not have much of a kitchen at the OG oh no it is non-existent yeah uh Jeremiah Donahue says if you could ask Santa for one piece of outdoor gear what would it be Corey

I man I've been on the hunt for a good wall tent I'd love a Montana canvas we're shooting for the stars here Hard to fit under the tree. It is, yeah. Well, wrapped up maybe. Sure. 12 by 12, Walton.

Okay. With or without a floor? Without. Without. Yeah, no floor. They're always without a floor from Montana. You can get them with floors. Yep.

All right. With frame, maybe a stove, too, since we're at it. Okay, yeah. Tell Santa to look at Facebook Marketplace. Yeah. I've seen a lot of good deals on there. Yep. Okay.

I was so close to pulling the trigger, but I didn't. I'll see Santa this weekend. He's listening. Max, what do you asking Santa for? Ooh, I got two ideas. More decoys? Yep, you never have enough. Or there's this duck plucker out there called a foul plucker.

Oh. Yeah, my thumbs are pretty strong, but they get tired a little bit. How many ducks do you think you have to kill a year to justify having one of those? They're pretty spendy, be honest with you. Put a number on it, like 50 ducks a year, 200 ducks a year? I don't know. I feel like in order to, like, For, like, guides and outfitters, it would be a no brain.

Yeah. For, like, a personal, if you got to hunt with a lot of friends, I would probably say, like, a couple hundred. Oh, wow. Yeah. Do they have any other purpose? Like, could they function with a pheasant? No. No. I mean, not in my experience.

Yeah, I don't know. But, yeah, those are two things that I would love is more decoys or a duck blocker. So, Santa, if you're listening. Oh, you know, he's listening. I'm good on gear, Santa. I just want permissions. Just give me land. Oh, yeah, that's another good one.

Just a lot of land, Santa. That's all I need. That's really hard to put under the tree. Deeds are pretty small. I don't know. That could fit. Yeah, true. Her phone call.

Next question is from Will Sanchez. He says, favorite state for fossil slash rock hunting. There are great rocks and fossils across the whole continent, but the main thing is being legal, Will. So BLM has the loosest restrictions when it comes to where you can collect, what you can collect, how you collect, as far as. is you know picking up a shovel and digging a hole um so any state that has a lot of BLM land which is

you know mostly in the west Idaho Utah Nevada Wyoming uh those are my favorite states for fossil and rock hunting just because you can do it legally yeah uh the next one is from dog uh chiesin are there any hunting video games fill likes uh the short answer is no and that's not because i i don't think they they exist i just haven't really tried a whole lot i've tried the Call of the Wild, which I think is probably the biggest one, maybe. People might yell at me for that, but they've been making, putting out expansion packs for that game for

years now. And I've played it for like about an hour and a half a year or two ago, and I just couldn't get into it. It seemed like there were a lot of systems that I just needed to get familiar with. So it was kind of like a steep learning curve, but there is a game coming out called Cast and Chill,

which came out on Steam, which is like a PC marketplace a few months ago. But as of the recording it's coming out on the Nintendo Switch 2 tomorrow and I put it on my wish list just a couple days ago and it looks fun it just seems like a very laid back kind of gorgeous looking like pixel art fishing game but it looks pretty dense like you can go to it there's a whole whole ton of fish to catch did different bait to do different seasons and stuff so I'm excited to try maybe I'll stream it maybe I'll stream it he's going to play that over Christmas break I will

someone in a future live chat needs to ask Phil for his review so we can all find out together And let me know if there are any hunting games that I should I should get into. I don't want anything too realistic. Like if it's kind of like an arcadey element to it, like that's more fun than than hardcore realism to me. Another video game question for Phil. This is from Fro Alex. Ask Phil if he ever played Runecape back in the day or he still plays.

I did play RuneScape. Speaking of MMOs that we talked about with Destiny, this is a massive multiplayer online. So it's like a big, you know, you get on a server and there's, thousands of people that are all in the same playing in the same area and you can you know squat up and take on dungeons and fight you know go on quests and stuff runescape was one of the was one of the ogs i played it a little bit that was my my brother was way more into it than me my big mmo was it's called ragnarok online which was a two-d pixel art one but then i also played world of warcraft a lot uh back i was i was playing wow from the ground floor uh like 2004

right when it launched. Do people still play RuneScape? Oh yeah. It's got a very active community. But again, that's like a blind spot for me. Because once you have kids in a job, MMOs aren't the healthiest thing for you or your family, which is why I stopped playing destiny. Last question today is from Casey Jacobson 23. What's your plan when out-of-state deer hunting in previously unexplored areas?

I'll answer that on behalf of deer. And then Max is going to answer about waterfowl and, Corey for elk. My plan when hunting in an unexplored place for deer, the first thing I'll look for is food. And that doesn't matter if I'm hunting in Idaho in October or Illinois in December, which is, you know, my spectrum this year. That was my first hunt, my last hunt. That's the easiest thing I can find on on X. And then when I'm there in person, I can work my way backwards. If this is where the deer are feeding, it's very easy to, you know, put together. where they're probably betting at and traveling to get from point A to point B.

So look for food. For me, a lot of times that is probably big agriculture. I spend most of my time hunting between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River. So I care about where the alfalfa is, where the corn fields are, what point in the harvest it is. And if there's no egg around, what acorn trees there might be. On X does a great job of allowing you to sort by the crop coverage that you can see, was this field last year? corn was it alfalfa was it hay was it sorghum so so starting there thinking about what deer would

like in that area that that'll give you a big piece of the puzzle that's great max uh answer for waterfowl well i'm gonna kind of go the opposite of you my first thing is water okay um not only the lakes river streams um but i have a big obsession with um um keeping up with current weather and rain forecast. So there's different areas that get a bunch of rain. And two months later, that rain is still going to almost be there as in forms of flooded fields, flooded agriculture, you name it. So there is this spot that I went up to Saskatchewan this last September where they got

eight inches of rain a month ago before I hunted. And I went there, put a pin on. on the map and I went there and there was just so many docks. And you can DIY waterfall in Saskatchewan. A sons of bitches need to let deer hunters do that. They make you have a guide or a buddy or whatever. Yeah. So I went up there and hunted flooded fields for three days and it was just incredible.

So yeah, look for water. And then another big thing too is like if I, if I'm going to a general area, I will go and make a list of landowners, names and phone numbers. in case there's ducks there. There you go. Or case there's waterfall there feeding in their fields or just using their water because it's going to be a lot easier to just already have their names and phone numbers

already on a list than spending the time looking it up. Oh, there's their house kind of thing. So I do all that stuff ahead of time. Yeah, I think to piggyback off that, going back to deer, I think it's really important to have a plan. A, B, C, D, E, F, G. A lot of times I go in, things,

that it's going to happen for me at plan A or B, and it ends up being like my fifth or six option where I actually, you know, find the deer that I, that I want to hunt. All right, Corey, previously unexplored areas when it comes to elk, what are you looking for? Yeah, for elk, I mean, time, like length of time of your hunt is everything. So if you can add any time to actually physically scouting, e-scouting is great, but you're never going to know exactly what the country's like, how long it takes you to get to a spot. unless you're physically on the ground. So if you can add a couple days, whether it's like opening day or you've got a weekend even

that you're just hunting a new area, if you can get out there in the summer, early fall, late summer, and get boots on the ground and physically see the country, you're going to just have a massive leg up when you discover elk in that part of the world. And elk are going to be everywhere, right?

Like they need the same things deer need and ducks. But then they're going to be everywhere on top. They're everywhere and they're nowhere at the same time. So you can either stick to one spot and hopefully they'll move in or keep roaming around. But adding just a day, if you can, or a couple days to your, you know, days that you're committed to hunting is massive just to see the country, get a feel for it. And then if it, you know, doesn't work out in your mind as to how good it's going to be, then you can go to plan B and move on to the next spot. So add some time. All right, that brings us to the end of this episode. We have another pre-recorded

episode of Radio Live next week, but then it's back to our regularly scheduled programming after that. Thank you for listening. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. We'll see you in 2026. Bye now. turn against you. First Light's Forge Waiters are built for the toughest days, flooded timber, icy cat tails, and bitter mornings. Designed to perform season after season was zero quit. Built for reliability when everything else is working against you. If your old waiters just gave out or you've been waiting to make the switch, now is the time. Forge waiters are in stock and ready to ship at Firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com.

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