The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 825: Snowflake Man and the Cadaver Otter | MeatEater Radio Live!

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

Hosts Spencer Neuharth, Janis Putelis, and Seth Morris speak with Sue Richardson about her great-great uncle, Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley, and his groundbreaking nature photography, talk some gear, share Top 3s, and chat with Peace River K9 Search and Rescue's Michael Hadsell about the world's only search-and-rescue otter, Splash. 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. Guaranteed human. Welcome to Meat Eater Trivia. Meatater podcast. Welcome to Meadeter Radio live. It's 11 a.m. Mountain Time. That's also 11 a.m. for our friends in Moab, Utah on Thursday, January 22nd. We're live from Me Deeder H.Q. in Bozeman.

I'm your host, Spencer, joined today by Janice and Seth. On today's show, we'll interview Sue Richardson about the historical figure Wilson, Snowfield. Flake Bentley, then we'll review some items for Gear Talk, followed by a batch of top threes, and finally we'll interview Michael Hadsell about the world's one and only search and rescue otter. First, Seth, Yanni, what do you boys have been up to? Cold January? Uh, cold?

Cold? This is like the first week of cold we've had. It feels notable. Have you seen the forecast for like east of us? Northern Minnesota, negative 70 wind chill tomorrow. Well, northern Montana, like up on the highline, Malta, they're getting real cold stuff. Everybody's getting real winter besides us.

It's weird. Pennsylvania's getting real cold stuff. A lot of snow right now. What you boys have been up to? I went and did a little. My wife and I went out to eastern Montana last weekend, did a little looking around for things, fossils and whatnot. You're the only one who goes rock counting in January.

Well, I usually don't, but, you know, it's been warm and everything's not covered up in snow. So, yeah, it was perfect. What did you find? Found some bacculites. Okay. How big? Show me. I found one that was probably four or five inches long.

Very good. And then we found like three of those. And then found the part of a bison vertebrae that has the thing sticking up real high on that. Oh, like the hump on their back? Yeah. Way cool. Show me how big that was. That was probably six, seven inches tall.

And then we found, I just, I can't like confirm how authentic this is, but we found some carvings in sandstone that one was on June 25th, 1911 Frenchy the Trapper. Oh. And you're suspicious that may not have been in 1911 from Frenchy the Trapper. Yeah, you just can't tell, you know? Sure. Like, I want to, it totally could be. I believe it. It's hard, it's hard to tell.

And then we found another carving that, you know, like the famous Western artist, Charlie Russell, like the CMR's named after him. We found a CM carved in sandstone that looks very similar to his signature. Okay. That's way cool. So. Kelsey's a big fan. Oh, yeah, a huge fan. Yeah.

Yeah, we have his work, prints of his work, hanging in our house. But, yeah, like I said, can't confirm if it's really authentic stuff, but... Are you going to bring these findings to someone else's attention that could maybe authenticate them? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we know a guy that's part of, like, the Charlie Russell historic society thing or whatever. Wouldn't that be something? Yeah, it would be cool. It'd be super cool.

Yeah. But yeah, that's what I've been doing. Yanni, Lion Man, you like the winter. Love it. You don't? I mean, if I were ranking the four seasons, it's an easy fourth place for me. No question about it. I've never thought about ranking the seasons.

Because I like seasons. I would not live in a place that doesn't have four seasons. Yeah, I agree. But I don't know. Yeah, that's one of those, like, Steve things of God's, pointing a gun at your head and you have to pick you know the great like they're all great

sure running is great in the winter running is great in the summer too but for different reasons right fall number one summer number two spring number three winter number four easy you go now gun to your head oh geez fall one

this is a good podcast two spring three winter four summer wow what an upset See, you love winter, you freak. A lot of good things to do in the winter. Okay, tell me what you've been doing then. Well, yeah, we haven't been doing the normal winter activities

because of our lack of snow here. But Mingus and I've been trying to catch lions, not doing real good at that, have not caught a single one yet, been getting not really messed up by the lack of snow so much, but I've had a lot of... One time we had too much snow happened while we were on a fresh track

that we knew was a fresh track. from the day before. I might have already talked about this, but the track literally filled in. That was like the only snowstorm that we've had this winter, and I just happened to be on a track that day. But I've had a bunch where they've gone into private. That's just the thing with Montana, man. There's like a, even though we have a lot of public, there's just always some private around. And then, you know, those cats take a left instead of a right, and they're going towards private, nothing you can do about it. Sure. And you can get access to that private, you know, especially if you're within an hour of

Bozeman here. Like, that private could be very skinny, and then he's already three private parcels away. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to call somebody to access 40 acres or even a couple hundred acres. Now, if it's like thousands, it makes sense, and I've been calling them. But we did catch our first Bobcat ever solo two weekends ago, which was a, you know, it's a real proud moment for me as a hound owner. Does Mingus know the difference when he's like on a track?

Like this is a bobcat? I don't think so. Okay. No. I don't know. There's no way that I could, I would know. But what was cool about it is that he'd already tracked one for a while. And he's so poor at catching bobcats.

A lot of times if I know it's a bobcat track and it's early in the day, I'll kind of let him do it. But I'm going to sort of start like keep meandering the way I'm going. because I want to see if we can find a lion track, right? And the reason being, I've talked about this before too, but just to explain to everybody, lions have small lungs. They cannot outrun a hound. So when they get pressured by dogs,

they immediately go up in a tree or they bay up or whatever. Sometimes there might be a quarter mile, you know, a little bit of a sprint or something, but they don't have the endurance to do things like bobcats do, which have much bigger lungs. And I guess that it's just because a bobcat is prey to more animals than a lion is. Lion just sits higher up the hierarchy. You know, the only thing that really chases a lion around might be a giant bear or a wolf.

And they're probably not really chasing them so much as they're just running them off of kills. Sure. And whatever. A bobcat, though, he's, you know, pack of coyotes can take them out. You know, who knows what else. So they can stay ahead. of hounds. And if they have a jump, then they start to do figure eights, backtrack, go up trees, jump from one tree to another tree, come down the other tree and do different things. So they're just harder to get close to you to put the pressure on. Because again, you got to put the pressure on and

make them go up into a tree. Well, while they're doing these loops and stuff, like if you're in the zone, there's a chance you can see a bobcat, right? And it's never happened to me, but Jennifer was with me, my wife, and we're standing there, and Mingus has been on the track now for, I don't know, half an hour. And I could hear it in his voice that something had changed. Like there was a little more intensity to it. The barking was becoming more rapid. I'm like, man, he might have jumped him, you know?

Like, he might be onto something. And I said to Jennifer, wouldn't it be cool? Like, if we just saw Bobcat come sneaking through here, you know, while Mingus is on his track. and two minutes later, five minutes later, I look up the hill and here comes a bobcat, not worried whatsoever that he's got a hundred-pound hound somewhere 100 yards behind him. He's just slinking through the woods, not looking over his shoulder. How far away was Mingus, you think?

100 plus, 100 to 150 yards. And yeah, his bobcat comes down the hill, comes by Jennifer and I at 10 yards. I should have gave this video to Phil he could have shared him. And it was cool. I got my camera out fast enough and got, you know, maybe three, four seconds of him walking through. Did you hear him coming or you just saw him? No, just happened to look up the hill and saw him. They just float across the earth, especially snow.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, just silent and deadly, you know. Not but deadly, but silent and deadly. You know, unfortunately, Jennifer's like digging in her backpack when I look over at her. So I'm like, trying to make noise, but not too much noise because she was, I don't know, 15 feet away. from me. Luckily, she heard me, looked up and saw it too. We were both sort of so astounded at what we had just seen.

We're just sitting there in awe being like, whoa, man, like, can you believe that? You know, that was so rad. And it takes me a couple minutes, and I'm like, oh, shit, I better call Mingus over here. That's a hot track right there. There hasn't been a hotter track ever. And Mingus comes, call them over. And it still took in probably 15, 20 minutes to put enough pressure. restaurant on him to get him into a tree.

Like, again, I wasn't thinking we were going to catch it. So we continued down the hill, went to the creek bottom, took off our pack, started snacking, and by the time we'd gotten a couple bites, and I'm like, oh, he's barking tree. So we packed up and walked up there, and sure

enough, he had him. Good for Mingus. Did he see the bobcat in the tree? Oh, yeah. Yeah, he knows. Oh, yeah. Good. He did not want to leave the tree. Because I didn't have my... I wish Steve was here so you can make more fun and move about this.

But in Montana, probably in a lot of places, you got to buy a fur bear license before the season starts. If you want to kill a bobcat, I had not done that this year. Just slipped my mind. So they're safe. And so, yeah, we had to walk away from one in the tree. But honestly, it's like,

I don't know, I'm trying to think how to put it, but if it's one or the other, like I'd rather just have my dog catching bobcats and looking at them and walking away, Like, that's way cooler than to say, I, like, I'd rather have three that Mingus had caught on his own and taking pictures of it than one he had caught, and I got to kill it. Yeah. Good for Mingus. Yeah.

More, more Mingus stories to come. So luckily, we have, you know, it's only the end of January. We still have February, March, half of April to keep hunting lions and cats. The winter pervert lovers like Janus, a lot of winter to go. Speaking of winter, let's go to our first guest of the day. Joining us on the line now is Sue Richardson, the VP of the Jericho Historical Society. Sue is here to talk to us about her great-great-uncle, Wilson Snowflake Bentley. Sue, welcome to the show.

Thanks. It's pretty to be here. First thing, Sue, please explain who your great-great-uncle was and how he got the nickname Snowflake. Well, if you grew up knowing that no two snowflakes are alike, it's because of Wilson Bentley. he was the first person to ever photograph an individual snow crystal he went on to photograph more than five thousand of him over the next 46 years and he not only photographed them but he studied each photograph had a corresponding entry in his journal which documented temperature humidity what part of the storm it came from all of this weather data and from that he developed many many theories on how these crystal storm and what factors impact how they change and grow. And in fact, most of what scientists today know about snow came from his research in the late 18 in early 1900. So the nickname was actually given to him by a reporter from the Boston Globe.

We did a story on him in the early 1900s and gave him the handle of the Snowflake Man, which kind of morphed into Snowflake Bentley. His images are beautiful. They're filled with so much detail that it takes. shocking that he pulled this off with technology from the 1800s. Tell us about the setup that he used to capture these pictures, which we're looking at right now. You can see these on our YouTube channel. He had a Bellows camera, and he replaced the lens with a microscope, figured out a way to attach it, and that's how he got the magnification. And of course, those cameras used

glass negatives. So it was very stable for the time frame. Photography was pretty much in its infancy. Only 20, 25 years that photographs

had been real easily taken, if you will. But he was a brilliant man. He was 17 years old when he started this process when his mother bought him that camera on microscope for his birthday and took three years of trial and error to figure out how to put it together, how to make it all work.

He had to experiment with different stops to control the amount of light coming in. And he worked in an unheated woodshed at the back of the house because it needed to be cold so the snow crystals wouldn't melt while he did the process. Can I ask, how did he capture the snowflakes? He had wooden tray they made with wire handles. He would step out of this woodshed into the storm, catch the falling snow on this tray. Then he would step back into the woodshed out of the wind and grab a magnifying glass to do a quick scan to see if there was anything worthy of photographing. And if they was, he initially used a straw from the old broom as a tool to touch it to the center of this little snow crush.

and transfer it to the microscope slide. In later years, he created a stylus out of wood with a sharp point and a larger end, so it was easier to manipulate. But he would transfer it to the microscope slide and put it under his microscope, his observation microscope to make sure it was, again, worthy of photographing. And then he had this weird process because the slide had to be vertical in the stage on the microscope slash lens. So he used a turkey feather because they're softened. We press the cold snow crystal to the cold glass,

slide it into the stage on the microscope, go to the back of the camera, go the black cloth over there. You've seen it in the old movies. That's legit how those work. And bring it as a focus and take the picture. Wow. That's cool. Snowflake was doing something that had never been done before,

and I imagine that this elicited some strong feelings from those around him. What did his friends and family think of his work? They thought he was crazy. These people are practical Vermont farmers, and messing with snow to them, they just could not fathom any purpose, any sense in doing this. And it doesn't add to your milk production for me dairy cows.

It doesn't make your crops go any better. They just thought it was a time and pure foolishness. Later years, they did come to, appreciated. After he became basically known all over the world, they did come to appreciate it, but they initially thought he was nuts.

What about the scientific community? What did they think of his work? Well, for the first dozen years or so that he was photographing these, he didn't write about it or talk about his own, but he studied these and he,

and he started developing all these theories. And when he was finally published in 1898 in a scientific magazine, he then worked prolifically over the next decade. And he was ignored by the scientific community for a decade. I think there was probably some arrogance there. You know, what does some farmer know that we don't know? And also, he was very eloquent in his style of writing. And of course, scientific writing is supposed to be purely objective, just factual.

And he would go off in these flowery prose because he was so enamored with the beauty he saw him. I mean, he couldn't help himself. So they ignored him until he couldn't. But in the meantime, colleges and universities from around the world, were buying copies of his negatives and his prints for teaching purposes. And he touched by a sense of peace for duplicate, which is exactly what it cost him to make a duplicate negative. And when he died in 1931, he was still charging five cents a piece. He never raised his price.

He spent more money than he ever made. Besides the 5,000 snowflakes, what else did Snowflake Bentley take pictures of? Well, he had another camera that he took pictures of clouds and snow rollers and different weather phenomena. In addition to family members and just life on the farm. He also photographed frost on window panes and on plants and dew on plants and spider webs and insects. He was fascinated with it with pretty much everything in the natural world. Sue, please tell folks how they can experience Snowflake Bentley's work in person and online. Here in Jericho, Vermont, in a historic building called the Old Redmail,

which is an 1800s gift mill. We house this enough of the exhibit, which is his cameras, his microscopes, all of the equipment that he worked with,

some of these original photographs and negatives. It's a neat exhibit. We literally have people that come from all over the world to see this exhibit and actually see the equipment he worked with.

There was a children's book that was published in 1998. It was still in print. They won the Caldecott Award. So we get teachers. from all over the world because it's published in multiple languages.

So it's really it's a fascinating exhibit. Definitely if you're anywhere in this part of the country is definitely worth the time to come by and see it. Yeah. Thank you for joining us, Sue,

and thanks for continuing the legacy of your great, great-uncle Snowflake Bentley. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Bye now. Thanks, Sue. Thanks, Sue.

I'm fixing to order me one of those pictures of Snowflakes, Snowflake. I'm going to hang that up at home. Oh, yeah. I love that they're from the 1800. Yeah, that'd be a great little print to have hanging on the wall.

All right, our next segment is Gear Talk. Talk about gear. His name is Yonis Fulatelis. It makes me wonder if he still wants to talk about gear. I guess he doesn't have a choice. How much money will he spend? It's Yanni talking gear again. Yanni talking gear again.

Yonnie you're up first. Great tune. What are you really? viewing for us today for gear talk well spencer i brought in my new favorite backpack okay loaded up with gear too that thing must be what 30 pounds yeah i'd say somewhere around there um did you pick it up no yeah it doesn't have any water in it right now so it gets about two pounds heavier when i go out the reason being is because my pistol and my rifle are in here and uh you know guns just they add a lot of weight.

But if I continue to not shoot bobcats out of trees, then I don't need to carry either of those. Let's walk around with your camera gear. All right, tell us about this backpack. Yeah, initial ascent. I found out about him. I think it was right about a year ago. I was at the Western Hunt Expo,

and my buddy, Duke Wassonie from First Light, came by our booth. Or we were maybe at the First Light booth, and he's like, hey, you need to go come check out these initial assent packs. And so I went over and I saw it. I'm like, yeah, whatever. It looks like a pack. Duke is the guy, the first light guys talk about as though he's a god in the mountains.

Yeah. Like Duke is the badass mountain hunter of the crew. Yeah. Okay. And he told you to check out. He told me to check it out. So yeah, when Duke tells me to check something out, I usually pay attention. They had it, man, I can't remember the exact numbers, but they had the pack itself loaded with like 80 pounds.

And I put it on. I'm like, all right, yeah, feels all right. Feels heavy. And they're like, okay, now we're going to add on, I forget what it was, 60 more or something. They basically hung these sand-filled dry bags off of these hooks right here on each side. And then they're like, now go walk around for 10 minutes and come back. And after that little tour, it was enough to be like, okay, I definitely need to try one of these. A lot of packs carry weight.

I feel like decently well. Does this one excel at it? You know, better than the other ones I've been using. Maybe it's 1% better. I don't know. Like, I know I can carry weight with it. It's like when you have 100 pounds on your back, it all starts to hurt after a while, no matter how good the pack is. What I really like, though, is because 95% of the time when I'm wearing this pack, it doesn't have 100 pounds of meat in it.

Instead, it's got 30 pounds of gear in it, or maybe even just 20. And I'm sneaking through the woods, trying to put an arrow through an elk or whatever it might be. And so how it rides in those cases and those scenarios is probably more important to me than how well it carries the weight, right? It's one of the things that stands out for this pack for me is that when it's on my back, I have to really try to get my elbows or my tricep to touch the pack behind me. And so it's not like it's a big bulky thing sticking out my sides. It's very slim profile. And looking at it, it doesn't necessarily look like that when you see it. But, yeah, wearing it, like, I can draw my bow freely.

It's just not in my way whatsoever. I'm a fan of simple packs, too. And as you can see here, it's basically got the one main compartment. The main compartment has, I think, another two zippers inside of it. And then it's got this one outside compartment. Very tidy. Very, yeah, super, super tidy. I'm not a fan of the packs with, you know, 50 pockets and 50 zippers.

It just adds weight and complicates things. that I don't need it. So yeah, the frame, carbon fiber frame, and... Who else does that? People have stays that are carbon fiber.

I don't know anybody else that has a full frame like this. That seems pretty unique. It catches your eye right away. Yeah, for sure. The top part of the frame here. Is that like a... Can you, like, hook your...

Your rifle sling. Oh, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, definitely. Very easy to take the bag off and put it back on. If you're going to take it off just to if you don't want to carry the bag itself while you're packing meat, it's got a load shelf in there. So yeah, just simple. I like simple things at work. And this pack definitely does that. So I put a few pictures up. The Phil's showing now where I think I've packed at least half dozen animals in it. That was my bull elk there. The picture.

your prior was my Idaho mule deer from this fall, and there's a caribou. That was a short pack job right there. It wasn't like it really tested the pack out. But anyways, been putting it through the paces, and yeah, I'm pumped on it. So is that going to be the backpack for the fall of 2026 as well? 100%.

Okay. You're convinced. Sweet. I'm going to go next for gear talk. I'm going to talk about my favorite glove. that I have ever owned. They are the first light Cody gloves.

Ever. I can't think of a pair I've liked more than these. Maybe my first pair of glommets. I had a pair of glommets from Cabellis back when I was in high school and I really loved those for ice fishing specifically.

Do you know what a glomit is? It's like the flip over mid. Yeah. Sure. So I loved those at the time. Now they wouldn't be as practical for me but for ice fishing specifically. Anyway, the Cody gloves from first light,

I love these things. They are, but durable. They're insulated, but you can still, like, use your fingers when you're wearing them. I've had these,

I think, for two falls. They're the gloves that I use the most for hunting and fishing and snow blowing. And you would think I just got these yesterday. Like, they do not show much sign of wear at all. And I'm not doing anything to take care of them. I'm not, like, oiling them or something like that or making sure that they don't get blood on them or water.

I think they are really special gloves. And they are first lights. They say they are their ranch-inspired hunting glove. I use these pretty much all fall when I was deer hunting in Illinois, when I'm deer hunting in Montana, when I'm deer hunting in Nebraska. And in Nebraska, I have a rancher there that I have deer hunting permission from. He's a cattle rancher. He also farms. I asked him one time, I says, are you considered a farmer or a rancher?

And he says, well, I farm so that I can ranch. So, you know, beef are his passion. Anyway, I gave him a pair of these gloves. that he's now used for two calving seasons. Caving season for much of the north is happening right now, like January to March. He texted me the other day. He said,

I love these gloves you gave me, best winter gloves I've ever had for calving. So if that's not an endorsement, I don't know what is. That's great. The first light Cody gloves. I bet his look a little bit more worn than yours. I would guess.

He's doing real work. He's got extra fluids. By the way that yours look, you're actually not doing that much work out there. I think so. love that glove too. I have burned through the very first pair I have finally now has quite a few holes in the fingers

but that's, I don't know, three four seasons and I wear them almost every single day, especially cat hunting. Those are your cat gloves. Yeah, snowmobiling. If I get that warm where I can't wear them because they're too warm, I just stick them in pockets and go gloveless.

But you need something that's you know, protecting you from the elements but keeping keeping you warm, not too hot. Mine will, if it's been wet, kind of snowy conditions, they'll start to wet out. And so I do nickwax them periodically, you know, I don't know, maybe three, four times a winter. And, yeah, just when they're wet,

I squirt, you know, a couple tablespoons of that stuff on there and just rub it all in and then stick them on a couple times of an antler in the house, let them dry for a day or two, and they're ready to rip again. But yeah, I'm a big fan of that kind of glove. I wear them skiing too. Oh, there you go. First light Cody glove, they're $70.

I'm looking right now. We have small through Excel available in both colors. Seth, what do you got for gear talk today? I got a little homemade piece of gear. Okay. So this is a... And it does not look homemade at all. It looks like you bought it like this,

which is a compliment. It's a mobile power station. Like, you know, like Jack. or Blue Eddie or Gold Zero makes. But those things are so expensive. What is the average price for something like that? I don't know. Look it up quick, Spencer.

Okay. Tell me what brand I should be looking up. Look at Jackery. And this is no shade on these companies. You keep telling us about this. But anyway, this is, so what I did here is I took just the Yeti, what are these things called? Like load out box or go box.

And I went on Amazon and bought a 100 amp hour lithium battery that was like 160 bucks. And I put it in this box and then hooked up two cigarette outlets. And then this one is two USBs and the USBC for charging. And it's all kept in this little box. Nice and neat. Waterproof. Very nice and neat. And I use this thing to run my Dometic refrigerator.

I use it to run my diesel heater and the lights in the back of my pickup truck bed. And yeah, I use it literally all season long. Every time I'm going to trip, this thing comes with me if I'm truck camping. And yeah, it's just like a cheap alternative to the mobile power stations that you see online that are very expensive. And altogether, I think this box, and you don't have to buy a Yeti box, I just happen to have this one. But it fits it real nice. Yeah, it fits it perfectly. I think this thing's like $125.

Batteries 160. And then, you know, another probably $30 or $40 for all the outlets here. So, you know, very cheap compared to the alternatives. Yeah, I'm looking at a Jackery-based model right now. It's on sale for $800. listed originally at 1500. Yeah, and if you look at that, it probably doesn't have a hundred amp hour lithium battery in it.

No. What does that mean? How many, like, can you go for a full weekend and not charge this thing and do all, do all those things? I bet he could go for a month. I went, I went a full week. Running a, running a refrigerator? I go a full week with the refrigerator for sure on this. And charging phones.

Yeah, charging phones and stuff too. Wow. It's a great little tool. And I bet you'll use that thing like 365. Yeah, totally. And like, you know, eventually the batteries do go bad in those things. And this one, I just go on Amazon buy another battery and pop it in there. Keep on trucking.

You got a nice little spot in the back of your pickup where that gets tethered down. Yep. Yeah, and then it's nice because I can just like pick it up and take it wherever I need it to. Bring it into the office. Yep. So, yeah. Check it out. Very good piece of gear.

Yeah. Seth. All right, let's take a break for some listener feedback. Phil, what's the chat have to say? Yes. First shout out here. It's from Catherine. Burgland Mama.

Hey, gang, I was wondering if you could wish my beautiful mountain girl, Isabella, happy birthday. She'll be eight tomorrow and she loves meat eater. Happy birthday, Isabella. Should we sing? Janice is going to sing for you. Yes, go ahead. Yeah, take it away.

I'll sing with you. Happy birthday, Isabella. Happy birthday, Mountain Girl, Isabella. Turning 8 tomorrow. Another question for Janice. Well, another. The first one, is there any thought of a meat eater roast tournament,

either a 1v1 playoff bracket style or some sort of competition format where there's an elimination thing happening? There has been thought of a playoff, bracket style cooking competition. Yes. You know what I think we should do before that? Sabiani compete.

Hmm. It should be like you and Steve or something. There you go. You versus. Steve. I get host, I'll volunteer to host, or whoever you want to host can host. But we should put Yanni on the spot every now and then. That would be a good idea.

What else you got, Phil? Melody asks for some tips on keeping toes and fingers warm during below freezing ice fishing trips. She has terrible circulation, she says. Hot hands. Yep. Every person who lives north of the Mason Dixon can use hot hands, and it will genuinely keep you warmer. What else you guys got? I went to a bunny boot this year.

Mm. And it's been phenomenal. Oh, they're amazing. Yeah. If you don't know what a bunny boot is, it's a, it's like an air filled old school military, all rubber boot. If you're, if you ever. Are they always white? No.

No. No. What color are yours? There's black ones that are, they call Mickey Mouse boot. Yeah. But the Alaska Gear Company is like, they're, like, doing a remake of the original bunny boot. Oh, right. like military surplus.

Yeah. And yeah, this Alaska Gear company is making bunny boots now and they make like a lighter version and like a heavy version that are rated to you know minus 70 or something crazy.

But keep you warm? Oh yeah. Yeah. Very warm. Yeah. And I struggle with my feet getting cold. I think the other thing you can do too is skiers have had heated footbeds forever.

And they're amazing. I don't use them. I don't need them that bad, but I don't know for a couple hundred bucks, you can get battery operated, you know, heated insoles, and you're not going to have cold feet or cold toes going that way. If you don't want to go that route, I think having boots that are a little bit bigger than

smaller is going to always help to keep a nice air layer in there, because that's what's actually doing the insulating. And keeping it dry in there. So once you get sweaty at all, you're getting cold, like take the time undress, put on some fresh, dry socks, get them back in there, and you'll be definitely

toastier than you were beforehand. Another, like, reasonably cheap piece of gear that I love for cold weather is a handmoth, especially for ice fishing. If you don't want to be rocking your biggest gloves and you want to be using your fingers, handmuff, you can find a real good one for pretty cheap, or you can spend a lot of money on one. It's something that, like, once it's below 40,

and I'm doing something active outside, I like having a hand muff. Yeah, and you can load those full of hand warmers too. You can. You can put whatever you load it full of cell phone snacks, hand warmers, all kinds of things. Good luck ice fishing, melody. Cale Flynn is in the market for a new spotting scope debating between compact or full size, which do you prefer, and have you ever had a compact out hunting and then wished you had a full size or vice versa?

Yonis, what do you got for kale? I always go full size because the reason I'm packing the spotting scope, is not to just see if it's an animal or if it's a deer versus an elk. It's going to be to see details, like how big the elk is or the deer, or you're looking so far out that you're going to need something big to tell the difference between elk or deer. Yeah, the compact ones, I've just always felt like if I put my binoculars on a stable platform, I'm getting the same performance and getting the same result doing it that way.

Um, yeah. So yes. And I have been out there with small, uh, spotters. And every time I'm like, oh, should have brought the big one. Because right now we could actually tell what's going on over there. Seth, what do you got for kale? Um, yeah, I would say, I guess it also, he doesn't say where he's, what he's hunting for, where he's at, right? No, I don't think so. No. So pipe in kale. If you've got to just kind of depends on what, what you're hunting for and where. But I would always. go full size because you can you can use kind of full size for everything yeah um that covers all the bases a compact is not gonna you're not gonna want to go coos deer hunting with a compact but my endorsement for full size is that um i have found it's like obviously annoying to carry around because they're they're so big and heavy um but if i'm trying to like get the details on a mule deer bucks antlers i have to now get like half a mile closer or something if i don't have a full size I would have saved myself that half mile of hiking and moving around if I just would have had the full size with me. So it's like bigger and more annoying to hump around, but it might save you some like hiking in the end as well.

Phil, let's do a few more. Yeah, sure. We got multiple people, Seth, asking for more specifics on your build. Oh. Someone was even like, you should make a social video kind of exactly how you put it together. Yeah, I do plan on doing that at some point. Cool. And then another one mostly for Seth, I would say, is the great adventures of mittenmen.

He asks for just kind of like getting started in beaver trapping for someone that doesn't have people to learn from. And it looks like he's in the Great Lakes. First steps. Based on that photo. Yeah, I guess if you don't have anyone to mentor you, just go on YouTube and, you know, try and find as much info there to, to, like, get you started. But then other than that, just get some, get some. get some traps that are legal in your state and go look for some beaver sign and and set them out. It's kind of the best way to learn without a mentor is just by doing it and

sometimes doing the wrong things. You know, there you go. Makes you learn a lot faster. But yeah, a lot of resources on YouTube about beaver trapping. Thanks to YouTube, the learning curve has never been smaller. I know. It comes to stuff like this. Let's do one more, Phil, before we move on. Sure, this one got a lot of chatter in the chat, but Will asked for go-toes of American Classic literature to read with your kids. I'm guessing

outdoor themed stuff. I'm going to pass on this because I'm going to cover it in our next segment, but Seth and I... You're going to cover it for reading with the kids? For top threes, I've got some book recommendations. I don't need to spend another minute beyond what I'm going to talking about books

on this podcast. So go for a Jan. I got it. What can you recommend? I'm trying to think that Tom Man, we read all the classics Which, which Where the Redfern grows Summer of Monkeys What about Hatchet? Hatchet. Hatchet for sure.

Hatchet, it's a great one. Gosh, what else? It's been a while now. Seth, soon to be father, what are you going to be reading? Well, Hatchet was the first thing that came to mind. There's a book called my side of the mountain and have you guys ever heard of that?

It's like this kid kind of leaves town and goes up in the mountains and lives in a hollowed out tree. A couple people on the chat were suggesting that one. Yeah. That's a good one. It's cool. It's kind of like tells the story

of a young, young boys like adventurous spirit and yeah, it's cool. Great book. Tom Soaring Hook, Finn. There you go. We'll have some more book recommendations for you in a second.

And Spencer actually, Can I suggest we call an Audible and switch segments since looks like our next guest has his next has his guest with him right now? We're going to do that. Joining us on the line next is Michael Hadsell, the founder of Peace River Canine Search and Rescue. He's here to talk to us about Splash, the world's one and only search and rescue otter. Michael, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me on. I appreciate that.

And you can see and here. Splash is with us right now. please tell us about Splash. How old is he? Where did he come from? What kind of otter is he? Splash is a two-year-old Asian small pot otter. And he came to us from the World Wildlife Zoo out of Phoenix, Arizona.

And so he was donated to the program. And we put him to work. So he's all trained up and out in the field right now working. What we call it's proof in year right now. So he's out working cases in the field. And those noise. as we're hearing, is he happy? Is he annoyed? Is he, is he snuggly?

What is Splash's current mood? He is. I think he's horny. I think that's what's probably. Oh, wow. I think he needs a woman. I think he needs a woman. That's his problem. But he's actually

just giving me a lot of sass at the moment. A lot of sass. What specifically is Splash trained to do? We use Splash. I'm going to put him down. real quick.

Oh, wow. My splash. Cute and morning. Wow. Just like said. Yeah. He's got enough. He's going to go pick on Dutch for a while.

That's my dog. What is Splash trained to do? Splash is a, what we call a recovery otter. He is trained to locate human remains underwater. So that's what he does. We use it for cold case work. His original concept is a lot of our case

murder cases and stuff in where the victims been disposed of in water in a water environment and water is very harsh on human remains and the bodies go away fairly quickly the tissue does and the bones sink down into the buck and that buck can be a foot two feet three feet deep and once the bones get down in there the dive teams and myself being a forensic diver we won't ever find them because we just no way to tell where they are the cadaver dogs working from the boat can alert and say yeah the odor from the bones are coming up it's there but we get down on the bottom we can't find it so what splash's job original concept was is to deploy from the boat go down find the area down in the muck where the bones have settled in and then identify that area tell us about it and we put a grid over the top of it and then we go in there with trolls and we start working our way down through until we finally get the bones and make the recovery recovery. That's what his original purpose was. It's expanded now because I've got other agencies, law enforcement agencies like fishing wildlife, and set their column. And we have a fisherman that's

falling off the boat and they can't find him. He's drowned. Their dive team's not having any to look finding him. They'll call him. He said splash out and splash he goes and makes the recovery. So his mission's kind of morphed. So he still does a lot of Cole case work that we do, but his job kind of changed over. It's expanding. And it's good. I mean, no one's ever done this before. We're the only ones that ever tried to do anything like this. And so we're learning as we go along. As need is needed. We go out and change the mission around whatever was required. Michael, I got a question. How does he notify you? How does he communicate with you that he's found something or hasn't? Well, if he hasn't found anything, he's not going to come back.

He's on what's called a refine. And a refind and search work means that he finds what it is that we're looking for. The target comes back and tells me about it and then takes me back to it afterwards. High Splashes, so you're down there and then he's on my foot. Okay, so he, if you launch him from the boat, he goes out, you'll swim around the surface. He finds the odor in the surface just like the dogs do, and then he'll zoom down. It goes down. We live in about 30 feet of water.

We don't want him to get him any deeper than that. And then he will come back up and start squeaking and making a lot of noise and letting us know that he's found something. And at that point, we tie a line onto him because he's free at that point. We don't have anything on him, just his harness. And we click a line on him. He goes back down to where the odor is present, lays there. The diver will follow the line down to him.

and then he waits for the diver to get there and then he can hold his breath. We let him five minutes is what we average is, but he's done eight, and we're scared the hell out of me, but he'll his breath longer if he needs to. And so that's, and he just waits for the diver to get there. Then he comes back. Once he's, the diver's on scene, we release him from the line, and then he comes back up to the boat and gets his fish. He's, we feed him his reward is salmon.

He likes farm-raised salmon. That's his thing. And so he gets his salmon for his reward. He goes back in his crate and his job's done for the day. And when he's not working, is he just cruising around your house? Yeah, he lives at the house. He was out earlier when we were talking. He's out swimming in the kitty pool and burning up some calories.

And now he's in the house screaming at me. I don't know what he wants. He's been fed. So I'm not sure what he's after. He may want to go play or something. I haven't done a lot of work. He worked last week for, we were working for Georgia Bureau, an investigation, GBI, last week.

And then this week, he's kind of not had a lot to do. So I think he's bored. I think he's got a bored. It's kind of like, we're kind of ignoring him, but I've had other stuff. We would train, this is our training season for the canines because it's cool right now in Florida. So we put a lot of time in and getting the dogs tuned up.

And the horses, we have a horse team. as well. And so Splash is kind of getting pushed off a little bit and he's not getting his training as much. So I think he's a little irritated that he's not getting attention. What is the training process been like with Splash? Is it just like training a dog? Very similar in a lot of ways. The biggest problem with the otter is that he's not a dog. Dogs are brought up to work with humans through breeding programs, you know, and genetics. And so the dog that you buy now is very packaged to work with humans and to do a specific job. Otters are wild creatures.

And even though this guy came from a zoo, he is very much a wild animal, they have a different set of priorities. And so the biggest thing I have to do is find out what motivates him, what reward system will he work for. And can I get the trust from him to work for me and really work with humans? And so that's the big deal that we had to work on with him. And we found out he's actually about the fifth otter that we've trained up for this work. And we had American River Otters before that, which are much bigger. They're very bitey. They're very aggressive.

Yeah, you got to wear thick gloves when you work with them because they can take your finger off in a heartbeat if they want to. So you've got to be careful with them. I've got a lot of scars. and they're stoic they're not as animated so one of the reasons that we went to Asian otters is that they're much more animated

they're very chatty they're very vocal and they get excited they let you know about it where the river otter doesn't do that so as much they're a little bit like that but I had one

that was named Squeakers she was very animated she was really good and did a great job but the boy ones like Honda and Excuse me. Splash, don't go back there and pick them on. Mike, I have a question for you.

How long, like how many years will you get out of splash? Like how many years will you be able to work with them? They say, from talking to the zoo people, that the lifespan of a captive otter can be 15 to 20 years. Oh, wow. His grandmother is 16 currently. And the longest otter that I know, oldest otter that I know of in captivity was at the Miami. Zoo was 26 years old and she just passed away recently. So we're hoping to get 10 years.

He's not, he is in a wonderful environment. He gets the best food, best medical care, lives in the house, sleeps with me at night. He's down to the bed over the blanket. You know, that's where he likes to be at night. And then so he gets exercise and stimulation. He's got a job. So he's got a pretty good life here.

But he works in a lot of different environments. me in a lot of different water environments, and sometimes the waters are not as best as we can like him to be. And so that could probably cause a problem for him down the road. We think we don't know. We had another otter squeakers who had longed out to another law enforcement agency that was using her over in Europe, and she got into some bad water and passed away about a month ago. So she got sick.

So it's one of those things that we're finding out about as we work with them. Otters are very susceptible to human diseases, so they get sick. It flus, colds, they pick them up from people. And then COVID wiped out a bunch of otters when COVID came to. I think we lost like a quarter of the otter population in the United States from COVID when they hit back in 2020. So I have to be really careful with him, making sure that he doesn't get handled by people that are sick. So he doesn't pick up anything. He's been really good so far.

He's got a little frostbite from last week. We were working in Virginia when that storm hit, and it got down to seven degrees. And he loves the cold. But he was walking on some concrete. I think his foot was sticking to the concrete. He got a little frostbite on his foot. So he's been nursing that back out. Michael, can you tell us about some of the successful missions that Splash has been on so far?

Yeah, he's got one evidence recovery. so far and one recent drowning and then three that are human remains related. And the evidence one was really kind of lucky. It was the first time out. We were working for a long enforcement agency out in the south, Mississippi area, and they wanted to check this lake area, which we did. And we had done it with the dogs, and Dama, who was my can at the time, She had been alerting like crazy that there was a cadaver odor in this lake.

And we couldn't locate it. And so the doctor I was with who was a forensic anthologist. He says, why don't you throw a splash in? I said, well, he's all the six months old. He's only had two months of training. And he said, well, go ahead and throw him in. Boy, where the hell? We're here.

We might as well do it. So we put him in. And he identified an area down at the bottom that he was real interested in. So we dug it up and found a brick of a clay at one of those. clay red bricks. It's very common in the area for construction. And we brought it up. And as as soon as you brought it up, the detective says, I want that. And we gave it to her and she backed it up. Took it in, matched it up to the big in-depth and the x-ray for the killed the guy that was the victim. And it turned out there was still DNA on the brick because the clay

and the clay soil had held it all together. So they were still able to get some DNA off of the brick and match it up. So that case, even though the suspect had passed away at this point, because it's 22 years old case and there was nobody to charge in the case but the case was finally cleared which made the sheriff very happy because he was one of the original detectives on the case so he was happy to get that off and that got him started after that things just started happening very quick so we weren't originally intending on him using them for what we call law enforcement searches so we use it for private work most of that was for a lot of the university like University of Tennessee,

Florida State, University of West Virginia, these places, they get calls out to do private co-case work that they do using their sciences, what they call fast team stuff, forensic applied science work.

And so Splash is going to be working in that category. But then once law enforcement realized they have them available, we get calls from the Department of Justice, DOJ, FBI, FDI, FDLE, GBI, TBI, all these groups, sell these three, We let her, you know, half the bed groups call us up and say, hey, can you bring Splash out for help? So we've been really busy.

I've been on the road consistently with him since he got discovered in this last year. So he's up to, he's got the one evidence recovery. He's got four body recoveries so far. And so it's a total of five recoveries, maybe six. We're waiting to hear on this other one that happened recently. So he's on his way. So this is a satellite program. We don't know when we started if it was going to work or not.

It appears to be working at this point. We do have some challenges, a few issues with him that began to try to resolve and we're working on it. But this is all new territory here. So we're blazing away here. He's the world's only cadaver otter. What gave you the idea to employ him? And do you think that this is something you'll try again in the future? Well, I had seen otters used in the Orient.

they use it for hunting and hunting fish and clams and oysters and all kinds of stuff. They train them up in the Orient to do this kind of work. And I was flying home from Los Angeles after working on a cold case. And I was reading like a Smithsonian-type magazine that had to think about otters and how they use scenting abilities underwater

to help locate prey and food and things underwater. Hey, splash, what's mad? Now you want to be held or what? What's your deal? He may be hungry. I might have to be. He's a noisy bugger. Yeah, he is today.

He's chatting today. So he's been quiet. That they use him for hunting. And I thought, and they could do scent work. I thought, well, I've been training scent dogs. I'm going into my 46th year doing this kind of stuff. And I said, maybe we could train an honor. Because I dive all the time.

There's nothing more frustrating than diving on a case and knowing that your victim is somewhere in this lake or wherever you're at, river, wherever you're at. And you've got visibility that's this bad. All right. see my hands in front of my face. And we're using guide ropes and we're down there. It's all tactile, running along,

trying to feel our way around down down there, trying to find something, can't find it. And you got to end up you try for a day, maybe two days at it, you can't get it anywhere near it, can't figure out what's going on, and you have to walk away from the case. And it's one of the most frustrating things that we do knowing that this family is trying to get resolution

and we can't get there because we just don't have the technology to do it. And hopefully with Splash, that we would be able to figure out if he can do this odor, if you can do that, maybe we can resolve more of these cases. And that was my thing. I came back from there and I started doing some research on it. We had an aquarium not far from me up here in Sarasota that I thought I would go up and talk to their people about it. And they said, yeah. And I said, if we would dry and do some testing, test work with them. And they said, sure. And so we went in and we started doing some testing and found out that they were very good at odor work on land and in the water.

But since we've been working with, and we found out that it's not just odor work and how they find things. They're very related to their first cousin to a wolverine, but also a platypus. And platypus has electromagnetic sensors. They use, they sense magnetic fields is how they find stuff underwater. And we found out that the whisker array on the front of these otters, which is massive, is high in lead. And so it gives them the ability to detect magnetic field. with their whiskers and we found out that they hunt the same way that the platypus does in using their whiskers to find what they're looking for so they basically learn the magnetic

signature of what a human being is and they're down there with their whiskers plowing along there until they run into that same resonance frequency and they're like hoop hey it's right here and then you'll see them pump these bubbles out and they start spitting bubbles out like crazy and they taste some of them they suck back in and they taste the and it has the odor confirmation because they have glands in her mouth that transfers this into a scent response. And so they say, oh, that's what I'm looking for, and then they confirm it that way. And that's how they do it. So there's a two-prong thing.

They use magnetic field, and they use the bubble scent technique in order to find what they're looking for. It's pretty amazing. We got a lot of video of it working. And because I used to see them find stuff in the video. but he wasn't blowing bubbles. And I kept looking at that going, how does this work? And if he's scent working, he can't pull the set through his nose because he drowned. Okay, you can't do that.

So if they're mammals like we are, they can't do that. So how is he, I see the bubble technique working. We figured out the bubble part. But then he would find stuff with his head and put it on there. And then all of a sudden he would start blowing bubbles at it afterwards. And I'm thinking, okay, what drew him to that to want to put the bubbles on that? And then we realized that they're working like those stuff. So we thought, okay.

All right. So now we kind of figured out how this is working. And it's amazing. I mean, they're really very accurate. So he's good at his job. He's learned it and seems to really like it. And he's gotten to where he's part of the family now. Part of the pack when I put this blue shirt on, which is my search shirt.

I'm going out working. He's right at the back door with the dog saying, all right, where are we going? So, you know, and we load up. and he jumps up in the front of the van and gets in his crate, and the dog's getting their crates in the back of the van, and then they're off and around. So he's become part of a pack, so to speak. Although otters don't have packs.

They have what they call romps. They're not called packs. They're called prompts. So he's very much a part of all that. What are you doing? Well, incredible stuff, Michael. Thank you for joining us, and thanks for having this nonprofit and training splash to do the work that you do.

You're welcome. Thanks for having us on, so it's fine. Bye now. Thanks, Michael. Thanks, Michael. Cool stuff. Yeah, that's awesome. I could see a little Disney movie being made about Splash.

Finding dead bodies? We have a lot of people in the chat torn on whether to be pro or anti-auder going between the women who were attacked. Oh, yeah. That was an American river otter. This one was Asian. As Michael said, they're not as fun. Yeah. Well, I think he was, wasn't he talking about a, what did you say, a sea otter or two?

Or no, was he just talking about river otters? I think just Just ripping his fingers. Yeah. Yeah. And this one was some Asian fella. That'll be fun for our audio audience. Maybe not.

They might get sick of that squeaking. But you should go watch it too because you just see the otter running around in the background the whole time. I think one time you went in the pantry and then someone closed the door and he had to come scurrying out of there. We are now going to do our top threes. Your top three. Such talent. That's a word for it.

What's a heck of a note there, Bill? All right, this week, we've all brought our own top three list. Seth, start us off. What are you ranking today? I'm going top three turkey hunts. Okay. Ever. Well, yeah.

Yeah. That I can, that I, one, had in my phone and two that I can recollect. Yeah. Ever. So this one, this was last year. Oh, a triple. Yeah, this was all in one morning. Night before we put these birds to bed, and the forecast was calling for like a nice calm morning.

Get up the next morning, and the wind is just cranking. And if you know anything about turkey hunting, it's not great, you know, very windy mornings aren't great for hearing gobbles. So we kind of get down in the area where these birds were, we couldn't, the night before we couldn't exactly, like, locate the tree that they were in, but we kind of had a general area where they were. So we get down there in the morning, can't hear them. So we just kind of start sneaking into where we think they are. And I eventually see one. Like I just glanced it up. So we moved into where we thought the birds could hear us, start calling,

do that for a while, nothing. Then we get up and move a little closer. And I called again and struck them up there. They were just like, they're pretty close. But there is, they're about 40, 50 yards from us. but there was like a deep ravine and turkeys don't like crossing that kind of stuff no um and we didn't really have any other play so we we sat down and started calling and eventually those birds went down in that ravine and came up the other side there was five of them all together

all gobblers all goblers yeah all long beards pretty country yeah we ended up getting three out of that pack how how far apart were the shots did you guys have a double and then later get a angle or what it was Kelsey shot first and then I I shot two after that yeah it's great

so just three trigger pulls three trigger pulls yeah and Seth has his little otter with him there oh yeah that's why she's always with it she's been on multiple turkey hunts what's her role during a turkey hunt

well so she's she's a very smart dog and and uh she knows now like once like once I start calling and she hears turkey's goblin it's funny she starts shaking like real real bad and uh she just

like lays, lays down the ground and hunkers down doesn't really move. Like a lab waiting for a cupping duck. Yeah. Yep. And then, as soon as you pull the trigger, she's up and like looking for whatever, whatever's dead. What does she weigh? I think she's like 14 to 16 depending.

Yeah, like a small gobbler. Less than those goblers. Yeah. And then this morning, we ended, so we took those birds back to the truck, got them all cleaned up and then ended up going about 10 minutes down the road to another spot and struck up like a late morning bird and Kelsey killed that one. So we killed four in one day. Pretty Mariams, snow white fans. All right, Seth's got another picture here. Yep, this is the opposite end of the country down in Florida last year. Kelsey and I went down there and got our first

Osceola's. This was a buddy's place. He invited us down to go hunt his little hunting club that he's a part of and this this hunt's actually um i think on the first light youtube channel it's called the art of turkey is kind of the story of kelsey and her artwork and and us turkey hunting together and stuff so um you can go watch it if you want but this one was you know your typical osceola turkey hunting they gobbled a bunch um in the morning on the tree and flew down and shut up and we got these guys midday um just sitting kind of calling every once in a while and just sitting in a spot where we knew they were traveling through. And those two gobblers came in and we doubled up.

And yeah, that was our first Osceola's. And man, it's like, osceolas are cool because, like, for me, at least, the country you're in. It's just like super cool to hunt turkeys down and that stuff. They're just not like your typical, you know, Eastern or Mariams where they're just like coming in, gobbling and hammering. were you swan mosquitoes that whole hunt? Oh yeah. That looks like the state bird would be a mosquito there. And then the next one.

Another triple. Another triple. This was another morning. So the bird I'm holding there, killed that one right off the roost, was trying to get Kelsey a bird. And that one ended up skirting around her and came into me. So I shot that one. And then about mid-morning, we struck up those two birds that she's holding there. and called those in

and she ended up shooting both of those with one shot. Ooh, that's great. Purposely? No, no, not purposely. But she had two tags, so it worked out. Nice bonus. There's some open country there.

Yeah. Difficult turkey hunting country. Unless that's just where you took the picture. Well, it was just where we took the picture. It wasn't that open where we killed them. How many turkeys are you going to kill this year? This year's going to look a lot different with a, Baby coming in March.

Still like five or six. We'll see. We'll see how much, so much time I get. Well, you just got to take the baby and Kelsey with you. Oh, that's the plan.

Yep. When they're that little, well, yeah, when they're that little, they're easy because they're, they don't require much. Yeah.

They're not moving. You don't have to, they're not going to get in trouble unless you put them in trouble. Easy. Yeah. I'm telling you. We're fully planning on it.

That's some good advice I got, man, from a doctor early on. They're like, man, before they start actually being able to grab and walk and move, take advantage of it and go do things. Because you won't have that time later. Because when they're two, it's not like you could have them out on a turkey hunt. Yeah. I mean, unless you can just plan it, like they're falling asleep, right, when they're going to come off the roost or something. All right, I'm going to go next. I'm ranking the top three books that I read in 2025.

I read 40 books last year, most of them about the outdoors or history or in some cases both. And so here are my three favorites. Number three, in the heart of the sea by Nathaniel Philbrick, this was written in the year 2000. It's about a routine whaling voyage that's flipped on its head when a sperm whale attacks and destroys the 240-ton. Essex ship. This happened in 1820. It's actually the inspiration for Moby Dick. The book explains the whaling industry and its global impact and its impact on New England at that time and how it just changed the economy and the culture. And then it also tells the story of the 20 men who were aboard the ship that day. They spend months floating across the open ocean just getting destroyed by the

sun and saltwater. And here's a spoiler. There is some cannibalism in the book. One of the most shocking things about this story, though, is just how young the crew is. Most of the men are in their 20s. Six of them were actually teenagers with the youngest crew member being 14. So it just makes like this whole awful adventure really hard to fathom. That is in the heart of the sea. I love this book. That was my third favorite book that I read last year.

Number two, The Art Thief by Michael Finkel. And this was written in 2023. This is about Stefan Brightweiser. He's a 20-something-year-old from France who steals $2 billion worth of paintings and artifacts in the 1990s. He does it over the span of six years. He lifts 239 items from 172 museums in Europe. Some of the things that he thieves include a medieval crossbow, ancient pottery, ivory statues, an antique pistol, Napoleon Snuffbox, a Rembrandt painting. And you're probably thinking he does all this with elaborate heise that resemble Ocean's 11, but it's actually nothing like that.

And I won't spoil how he does it. You'll just have to read the book for those details. This is a super fun read if you're into true crime or artifacts or museums. And the author of the book actually interviews the man. So you get all the details just as they happened. And there's a really tragic ending for the stuff that he stole. And it's a surprise ending for the actual thief himself that the author, you know, tells you about when he meets. this man. All right, the number one book that I read last year was Endurance by Alfred Lansing.

And that was written in 1959. This is about Sir Ernest Shackleton's attempt to reach the South Pole in 1914. He has a 28-man crew aboard the endurance ship and it gets crushed by ice. They then spend two years stranded at the bottom of the globe. They're fighting the cold and snow and starvation and depression and the ocean. and leopard seals and each other. It's a really incredible story, and it's so fantastical that you'd think that this is fiction.

But what makes Endurance extra special is that it was written in the 1950s, and the author, Alfred Lansing, got to interview a bunch of the people who were on the expedition. So you're getting firsthand details from the men who experienced this. The storytelling is just as good as the story itself.

That was my favorite book I read last year, Endurance by Alfred Lansing. And then I've got three honorable mentions here, other books that I really loved. Killers of the Flower Moon that was written by David Grant in 2017. It's a historical account of how Oklahoma's Osage tribe became the most wealthy and the most hunted people in the world. The story is probably well understood by people who live in that area, but I had never heard of this. And it's just like a really fascinating bit of American history that more folks should learn about. I have not seen the movie yet, but I hope it's as good.

as the book itself, Killers of the Flower Moon. And then God's Country by Percival Everett. This was written in 1994. This was the best fiction that I read last year. It's a clever spoof on the Western genre. The book follows a drunk gambler, Kurt, and the best tracker in the West Bubba

as they go on a big misadventure. It's got a lot of colorful dialogue, ridiculous characters, dark humor. And it's a really quick read. Just 200 pages long. God's country, Percival Everett. And then Squato by Andrew Lipman, in 2024. This is the best account of how Squato traveled from North America to Europe and then back to

North America. And then he changed the history of both continents. The story of Squanto has been very Disney-fied, I feel like. And this book does a great job of giving the truest possible Squanto account. And this would be an extra fun read if you're from the New England area, specifically Massachusetts, because it talks a lot about that part of the world, you know, before written history really existed in Squanto. Those were my six favorite books that I read last year. Cool. Have you guys seen Killers in the Flower Moon?

I haven't. I saw it, yeah. Phil, give me a review. Did you love it? I loved it. I know people complained about it being too long that it didn't feel long at all to me. I thought it managed different tones very well. There was some really striking imagery in it that I had never seen before in a movie.

You also loved Leo's most recent movie, right? One battle after another. Did you say it was the best thing you've seen, what, this year? It's my favorite movie. seen this year. Okay. Yeah, I thought it was... In 2026?

No, well, I mean, 2020. I said this year. 2025. Okay. I'm talking movies in terms of this year just because there's a lot of Oscar talk happening. The nominations are released this morning, so it just makes me think this year. Okay.

But, yeah. Big Leo fan. All right, Yanni. What's your top three today? We were going to watch that, but these days we have to do like a, uh, there's some kind of website where you can check to see exactly what the rating means. and then like if you're 12 year old Which movie?

Can watch it The one battle after another And it turns out that it's not for 12 year olds And so It might be a little bit Until I get to watch it What age is it for? Oh I don't know exactly

But just like reading like what's actually in there And you know The things that happen That yeah it's not for a 12 year old Yannis your top three What do you have? Top three I chose to tell you about my top three

filmed Hans for 2020 It's hard to pick these like favorite hunts for for 2026 because I get to go on a lot of them. If I could just have it my way, I would just go on hunts with my kids and my gal, not do any hunts with Spencer or Seth or Bren or anybody else. But for work, I'm going to go to an Alaskan bear hunt with the Newcoms. both bear and Clay and myself drew Prince of Wales Island bear tags and we're going to go up there and test the theory if hunting those bears with a wets in a wetsuit is the way to get close.

So all three of us are... That's the theory. Well, yeah, because they did it last year and in a couple of stocks, Clay gets to like 10 yards and kills a bear or maybe he's two years ago now. Yeah, like two years. You know, after that happened, they're like, wow, that worked. Okay.

Like, everybody should do this. And so now we're going to go and test to see if that's truly the case. Sweet. Yeah, it should be fun. I've got a Wyoming elk on my dad. He's got enough points to draw. How many points? Wyoming elk.

27 or 8. It's a good general tag. But we've got a, through a friend of mine, we've got a sweet ranch so we can get in on. It's very much a old guy hump. You know? Bow or rifle? We're going to go during archery season.

There you can use a crossbow. So my dad has graduated to crossbow use. Okay. And yeah, sounds like he's been getting in shape for that hunt, so that it'll be fun.

I don't know how many elk hunts, you know, he's got left in him. It's coming up on mid-70s. Chopin Mountains is not in his future, you know? He's in his crossbow prime, though. Crossbow prime. We'll see, as long as he can see down the scope, you know, and take good aim.

And then Kansas deer hunt with Mr. Brent Reeves. Oh. Yeah, super fun human that I've gotten to hang with a little bit, and I'm excited to hang with him more and get to know him some more. But he's also got a friend who runs an outfit in Kansas, who said that we can come and hunt his... An outfit like an outfitter? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. We're going to go hunt his spot. Sounds like this guy's quite the character, too. not going to spoil that because he's going to be a big part of the episode. But Brent and I are going to self-film the whole thing. So we're sort of going to film each other, self-film. We're not going to have videographers there.

And I think it's going to be a hoot, something different that we've never done that. What season are you going for? Like archery. Okay. Yeah. Like primer out you going. I don't know if we'll go primer or not. I'm going to let the outfitter, you know, point us in the right direction as long as that lines

up with schedules. Sure. We'll do that. Kansas has some unique seasons. They've got the October muzzleloader, I think, and then they've got a rifle season in December. And that October muzzleloader, a lot of people like that, especially for finding big bucks. It sounds like it's fun, spot and stock.

But, you know, Brent and I both like hunting with a bow. Okay. And so we're going to, yeah, go do that. So top three hunts I'm looking forward to. good stuff. Filming. Not jealous at all. Phil,

your top three. What do you got? Oh goodness. Okay, on a previous episode. She saw one of his slides. On a previous episode, I went over my top three video game characters that I would like to eat, consume. So this time I decided to go with 90s cartoon characters that I would like to eat.

Oh, wow. So first up, we've got cat dog. Oh, great. You know, I don't know if cats or dogs taste very good. I've had mountain lion before. It was, it was all right. But, you know, I just, it's an abomination and I want it off of the planet. Yeah.

Also, you know, long backstrap. Kind of lean, I don't know. That might be, not be a great thing, but I'm honestly, I'm just curious. That thing's like all backstrap. Yeah. So anyway, it could go either way. Next up, we've got Mr. Crabs from SpongeBob. I've always been a crab over lobster guy.

It's the Pacific Northwest in me. I think the bikini bottom is. technically, I think can't, canonically, it's like in the Marshall Islands, like between Hawaii and like Malaysia. Okay. Somewhere around there. I don't know what kind of crabs would be there, but I'd like to imagine that he's like a, like a human-sized dungeon nest that I could just dig into.

And that's what I choose to believe. He's got some real meaty claws on him, too. I think that would be tasty. Number one, we've got crumb from A, Real Monsters. Again, this could go either way. For those, for the audio listeners who haven't seen A. real monsters. Crumb is just kind of like a big blob of flesh who has arms for eyestocks and holds

eyeballs in his hands. Got some hairy armpits and really disturbing looking feet. Basically no leg. It's all just kind of canckel and foot. But, you know, I bet he tastes incredible. He's kind of humanoid. Little humanoid. I'm just going to look past that.

He also could be a scrotum. That could have been the artistic inspiration. inspiration yonis. You're not wrong. And I'm just going to move past that. Testicles do taste good. They do. Yeah. And then under honorable mentions, we have Reptar from Rugrats, who's a fictional dinosaur in a fictional cartoon. So I don't know if that really counts. We've got the Angry Beaver's. And then from season four, episode 11 of Doug, this isn't a character, but they just make a really cool looking lasagna. That's the episode where Judy has a date with her art school boyfriend and she wants her family to be cool.

So she makes them pretend to be different people. And there's a bomb, a fake bomb in the lasagna that Doug pretends to deactivate by diving into the lasagna. Is Reptar, is he the mascot for a chocolate bar? Or is that wrong? No, I don't think so. They might have

made like a tie-in candy after the cartoon. But no, he's his own thing. He's just kind of his own cartoon character within the show. Yeah. He's like the Mickey Mouse of that universe. I'm lost, buddy. on all those cartoons. I just, I don't, I don't even know what's going on anymore.

Are you following along? Yeah, you were. Okay. Here's where we're at, Yanni. That's the end of this week's show. Oh, okay. So we're going to get some final feedback from the chat. Phil, what do you got for us?

Oh, I haven't been reading it for a while, but we've got someone, and I've, I've heard this feedback before. Some people said they, people who read the book didn't like the killers of the Flower Moon movie adaptation because the book doesn't really reveal what's going on. It's more of like a mystery. I don't know if you can speak to this, Spencer. It's kind of like a mystery until the end, whereas the movie lays it all out in the beginning and you just kind of live in the horror and the rot that's like kind of consuming this community.

Yeah, you certainly are not told off the bat in the book as to what is happening. So if the movie does reveal the whole plot at the beginning, that would be a different. It basically does. Yeah. Just do you have both, have the movie and the book. Yeah. This is an update from Christy Holmes, who was part of the 36 women who went smelting and asked for good. luck from us on the show, they had a wicked good time and the smelts were running.

And they're inviting us next winter. Christy, that sounds like a blast. So, I'm glad you had a good time. Christy, I think last year joined us for one minute fishing while she was smelting. She had a baby on a hip and did not catch any smelt that day. So maybe we need to bring Christy back again to see if she can redeem herself for a $500 donation. Young Trow says, Yanni and Phil, which one of you two could grow a better mustache to

compete with Seth and Spencer? I've never seen Yanni with facial hair, but I can almost guarantee that he could grow a better mustache than I could. I would have said the same about you, Phil. Well, maybe we should make this happen. Next week, we'll can put up a picture because there's one time where I grew some facial hair. It was COVID. It took me the entire pandemic to come up with a beard and a mustache and it still looked like shit. You gave up.

You're not going to bring that back? No. No. No. Any recommendations from CSC Broncos fan on red dot sites for a turkey shotgun? Do you guys use red dots? I don't use red dots. No, I do.

I use the sig. I believe it's the Romeo X-L now. Nice and low. Whatever you get, make sure it's low profile because there's nothing worse than having a site that makes you have to get your cheek up off your shotgun. So yeah, get the mount. to be low profile and the red dot itself to be low profile.

Let's do two more, Phil. No, I don't even know if we have two more. Or at least ones that I have flagged. There was a geared talk question about the, about instead of doing a wall tent, he was going to save some money

and just like double up on ice shelters. What do you think about that, Seth? I feel like that's become very popular in the last like five years. years, guys will take their, like their Eskimo. That'd be a classic example, insulated ice shack and front country camp out of that. Well, there, a lot of those companies that are making ice shelters like that are building them for ice camping. And I'd imagine if you'd camp on the ice with them, you can camp on hard ground.

So, yeah, they're, they're, they're just putting in features that are more conducive to, like, camping. I have bodies that have done it. I've slept in a few of them. And most of them don't have floors. So they'll take and they'll lay down like the sort of mat that you would put in a workout room. Yep. Just put laying on that as a floor. All locks together.

Yep. That seems like a pretty important thing to have with you and not very expensive to make happen either. Yeah, it seems like it's become quite popular. Yep. Floors are for babies. Yeah, the only thing I would say about... Seth is going to have a baby soon. The only thing I would say about that is that the, uh, the, uh, the, the,

The wall tent, I think, is going to outlast, like, the ice fishing pop-ups. Sure. I feel like those have a little bit of a disposable feel to them. But maybe you're just like solo hunting, so you don't need a whole wall tent set up. Maybe you only got $300 instead of $1,500. Sure. Yeah. But I'm just saying, yeah, that if you, yeah, you only spend $300, it's not going to last you.

Your life is on. Your kids may not inherit it. No. Is this the gear talk thing you wanted to cover? Yeah, that's the thing he was talking about. Yeah, I just had it on the on the screen. You have any more, Phil? We'll do one more shout-out.

I don't really know the specifics because this question came in, or statement came in an hour ago, and I don't know if he can provide more details, but he just, he said he's, this is from Actually T. He says he's here in South Carolina. He just formed a state branch of the National Deer Association, consolidating local chapters into one statewide branch. Maybe send a shout-out to spread awareness. I don't know if it has a name or anything, but South Carolina people.

South Carolina branch of the National Deer Association. Maybe they could receive some trivia funds in the future from a winner like Janice or Seth. You keep that in mind for Actually Tea. All right. That's the end of this week's episode. We'll see you guys back here the same time and place next week. Bye now. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.