The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 834: Dr. Crayfish, Fox Collars, and Blue Tarps | MeatEater Radio Live!

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Hosts Spencer Neuharth, Maggie Hudlow, and Seth Morris talk with ecologist Dr. Zack Graham about some of the world's rarest crayfish, mull over some piping Hot Tips, learn about collaring foxes in the Grand Tetons with Emily Davis, and host another exciting round of MeatEater Price is Right. 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. Meat Eater podcast. Welcome to Meadeter Radio live. It's 11 a.m. Mountain Time. That's 7 p.m. for our Olympians listening in Italy on Thursday, February 12, and we're live from Meadeter H.Q. in Bozeman. I'm your host, Spencer.

Join today by Seth and Maggie. On today's show, we'll interview Dr. Zach Graham about some of the world's rarest crayfish. Then we'll have a hot tip off about wall tents and duck breasts, followed by an interview with Emily Davis about collaring predators and the Grand Teton's, and finally, Seth and Maggie will compete in meat eater's prices right. But first, Maggie Huddlow, our director of web content, has a few important updates for us out of Minnesota and Florida. Maggie, the floor is yours. Where are we starting? Minnesota or Florida? Let's kick it off with Florida. Okay. So anglers, health advocates, and First Amendment advocates are all fighting against a provision that's in Senate Bill 290 and House Bill 433.

And what this provision does is it expands on existing food liberal laws, which basically were set in place to protect perishable goods from being, you know, spoken poorly against to. it was a protection for agriculture. Okay. And so now what's happening is that this is being expanded to cover non-perishable goods, agricultural practices, and it throws on one-way attorney fees. So sort of what could happen with this is if you are like an influencer and you make a post about how you don't like glyphosphate on your food. Okay.

You could be sued by whatever ag company for making a claim about this if you don't have like scientific studies that you're citing. So it sets this tone of like not wanting public critique and conversation. It's sort of this like muzzling of public input. And how does this affect hunters and anglers though in Florida? So the organization, Captain for Clean Waters, has been sort of battling against Big Sugar. It's, you know, it's ag, but it's an industry. And there's been studies that were released, I believe, in 2022 that directly correlated Big Sugar with Lake Okeechobee, the red algae blooms that were coming from that. And, you know, these Florida captains were seeing this.

The algae bloom started in 2018. But they were, you know, they were raising the alarm for this in 2018. But if they didn't have that study, they could have been sued. They would have had to pay all of the attorney fees for the defendant and the plaintiff. So it's just like it would remove the ability to have those conversations to bring up that kind of stuff because people would be so afraid of the legal fees and just, you know, the hassle of being taken to court for using your First Amendment right. Already a challenging thing to do, even when there's not the threat of legal action like that. And so this just makes it even more crippling for hunters and anglers and conservationists in Florida.

Maggie has covered this story very well on the meat eater.com. She recently had an article Florida bill threatens public advocacy for land, water, and wildlife. Where does this bill stand right now? So, yeah, read that because that's a better overview than what I just gave you right now. But currently, the Senate stripped the provision, but it still exists in the House bill. So orgs like Captains for Clean Water are keeping the hammer down, keeping the pressure on, hoping to get that provision removed from the House version of the bill as well. So it's good progress, but the fight's not over on that yet. Okay. You'll see more updates, you know, on our website, the meat eater.com. You'll hear them on this podcast.

Then we also have a new social channel called Me Deeter News that is meant to cover things just like this. So hunters and anglers are just more informed in general. All right, let's talk about Minnesota. What's going on there? Yeah, the vote on the Boundary Waters, HJR 140, has been delayed in the Senate until February 23rd. I think everybody here is probably pretty well versed on what's happening in the boundary waters. You know, no one here wants to see the mining happen there. But the reason that was delayed is because people are raising their voices. They're being heard. That's why this was paused.

You know, if you don't live in Minnesota, if you don't live in Florida, like these issues impact everyone because they set a tone. You know, if this bill gets passed in Florida, it could easily be copycatted for passing, you know, the same thing in like a mining setting, where it's like, okay, we're doing this and you can't speak out against it. If this, oh my gosh, I'm blinking on what it is,

the congressional, sorry of having a brain fart. There are two, you were making the observation before we turn on the mics. there are two unrelated bills that are very related. Yes. Especially right now in this time and moment. Yes. And it impacts conservationists across the country.

And the more that we can have this unified voice, the better chance we have at protecting these wild places, even if it's not your home, even if you don't recreate there often. Like, raise your voice because it could be in your backyard next time. Yeah. A lot of ways to stay updated on this. One of the best that I've found is BHA emails. It seems like the minute something happens or is about to happen,

if there are rumors circulating that seem to have some legs, they will send out an email and tell you what's going on and how you can act on behalf of yourself and fellow hunters and anglers and conservationists. So BHA newsletter is a great thing to watch, again, as well as the meat eater news, the meat eater.com, and our future news podcast that's coming in about a month from now. All right, joining us on the line first is ecologist Dr. Zach Graham.

He's here to talk to us about his new book called Crayfish, Crawfish, Crodad, the biology and conservation of North America's favorite crustaceans. Dr. Graham, welcome to the show. How you doing? Yeah, thank you all for having me. Very excited to be here, talk about these animals. Thanks for joining us. Our first question, what do you call them? Crayfish, crawfish, crawfish, crawdads, or something else?

Yeah, I call them crayfish, generally. it's kind of like a regional dialect. So I'm from the northeast. I'm from Pennsylvania. And so most people around Pennsylvania are calling them crayfish. Okay. We've talked about on the show in the past how when you hear coyote versus coyote, hunters tend to call them coyotes.

Non-hunters tend to call them coyotes. Is there anything like that when it comes a crayfish? What does that tell you about a person when you hear them call it a crayfish versus crawfish versus crawfish versus crawdad? Yeah, it tells you a little bit about where they're from because it's kind of like a regional dialect, whether you call them crayfish, crawfish, or crawdad. The other thing, you know, there's kind of like a saying among crayfish biologists where we say if you're studying them, you call them crayfish. So like the scientists call them crayfish.

If you are eating them, you call them crawfish. And if you're fishing with them, you call them crawdads. So sometimes people are calling them different names based on that. interaction with them. But most scientists will call them crayfish. And we are looking at a heat map here of what parts of the country call them different things. The hottest spots on that map look like deep south Louisiana calls them crawfish. And then like the Minnesota, Wisconsin border, crayfish, part of Pennsylvania is hot for crayfish. And then the PNW looks like they prefer crawdad. A very interesting visual you can see on the

the meat eater podcast YouTube channel during this interview. Dr. Graham, about 70% of the world's 600-ish crayfish species are found in the United States. What is it about these animals that make them so uniquely American? Yeah, so this is something that's really cool is that crayfish are kind of like an American group of animals. There's crayfish around the world, but most of them are in the eastern United States. And so the reason that primarily is we think is that the eastern United States is that the eastern United States has amazing freshwater biodiversity, primarily because of the Appalachian Mountains,

which are very, very old, hundreds of millions of years old, even compared to the Rocky Mountains, which are surprisingly relatively new, even though they're much higher. So it all has to do with the development of the Appalachian Mountains over hundreds of millions of years that's split up waterways and led to a lot of really unique freshwater biodiversity. Love that. All right. Let's talk about some of the more unique species of crayfish. Tell us about some of the varieties that spend most of their life on land. Yeah, these are some of my favorite, because when we think about these animals, the crayfish or the crawfish, you think about them living in water, like a lake or a creek or something like that.

But there's a lot, about 30% of crayfish species that they're called burrowing species. And what they do is they essentially live on land, but then they dig down deep into the mud until they hit the water. So they're kind of like terrestrial animals. They live on land, but they dig down to the water. And they make these little chimneys, we call them. They're called chimneys. Very common throughout the Midwest and the southeast. You're seeing these little piles of mud.

And that's what the crayfish are doing is that they're going down, getting a little pile of mud, and then putting it at the very top of their borough. And then they live down there pretty much their entire life. And most people never get to see one. but they're really unique. Are there any other animals that use those chimneys that they make? Or is it that's exclusively for those burrowing crayfish? Yeah, so they build it for themselves.

But it essentially is like a nice little climate-controlled environment. And so tons of animals love to kind of hijack the burrow or use it after the crayfish passes away. So snakes, frogs, salamanders, there's a lot of animals that like to use these burrows. Dr. Graham, I got a question for you. Are those crayfish that are making those burrows? Are they coming out to feed at like certain time, like at night or something? Or are they just like in there all the time? Yeah. So the kind of general consensus is that most of them are feeding down in the burrow, feeding on little bugs that are crawling into their burrow, feeding on the root matter of the plants. Some of them though, we have observed and studied how they sit at the very top of their burrow. borough and they'll wait for like a slug or a spider or a snail to crawl around and then they'll pounce on it. So they kind of do, they kind of sit at the top and wait as a predator, but then they also probably forage in the immediate area.

But they almost never are found like out in the open. Tell us about some of the species that live in caves. Yeah, so crayfish live in streams, creeks, these burrows that I'm talking about. And then they can also live in caves. And so cave adapted crayfish. They're completely translucent and white. They often have no eyes whatsoever. And they live in caves and adapted to these caves.

They can be found throughout Appalachia, primarily throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama has cave species. The one photographed here is called a spider cave crayfish from Florida. they're very small and they kind of look like spiders. They're about an inch long. So very unique adaptations and very unique kind of form that they come in. Yeah, I think when most folks picture a crayfish, they envision one that's red and like four inches long, but you know better than anybody that they come in all sizes and colors.

Tell us about some of the crayfish species that break the mold and might be really big or really small or very colorful. Yeah, so crayfish are very diverse. They're not just this boring, brown or red bug that many people think they are, they can be at adult size absolutely massive. So maybe you have all seen Jeremy Wade go to Tasmania and find the giant freshwater lobster. That's a crayfish. So that's a type of crayfish and they can get, you know, absolutely massive.

Whoa. Two three feet in length. Oh, my goodness. Wow. They're huge. They can also be really small. And so there's this group called the dwarf prey fishes where they kind of make. max out at about an inch. So, you know, they come in all shapes and sizes. And then you also asked

about the colors. They can be wildly colorful. They can be almost any color that you can imagine. Reds are very common. Blues are very common. Oranges, reds, kind of everything in between. They're very beautiful. Many of them aren't appreciated for their beauty, but, you know, this is what a lot of the work that I try to do is to teach people about how cool and unique they are. You mentioned the three footers in Tasmania. What are the biggest ones that we have in the United States? Yeah, I would say that the biggest species, they're called bottle brush crayfishes. It's one of the images that you showed a few slides back, but they're these really big ones

that are like the size of a big text. So, you know, maybe 10 inches or so long. And they can be found in only a few streams throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. A pretty rare but quite large species. They only live under massive rocks that are like the size of your car hood. Damn. Now, it's estimated that about one third of the world's crayfish species are at risk of extinction. What are their top threats in the United States?

Yeah, so many of these crayfish, they require a clean, nice environment to thrive. And so anytime that gets disturbed, you know, there's some issues for the crayfish, whether it be local extractive industries like mining, timber industries that can kind of clog up the streams nearby. There's also a lot of invasive crayfish. So I know you all probably talk and know about invasive fish, but are brought and travel around the world because humans put them there.

The exact same deal has happened for crayfish. So invasive crayfish actually hurt native crayfish populations in many cases. So there's a lot of threats that they face. Dr. Graham, somebody who's watching this live in the chat asked a question about heavy metals that are found in crayfish. We always talk about mercury levels in fish that we catch and eat. Is that something we need to worry about with crustaceans like the crayfish? Yeah, it's less well studied in crayfish. It is well studied in smaller other aquatic invertebrates like stone flies and may flies.

And so that's what people try to mimic flies for fly fishing. But presumably the exact same thing is happening with the crayfish, where they're kind of absorbing it through their environment and consuming it throughout their environment as well. Dr. Graham, I got another question. For the states up north and like, you know, eastern states that get snow and ice. once those lakes and rivers freeze, what are the crayfish doing that time of year? Yeah, so crayfish are kind of like most dominant in these types of temperate areas that have pretty serious winters. And what they do is they just burrow. So even the species that live in the stream, they'll dig down maybe six inches or one foot beneath the frost line.

And they will kind of do like a little hibernation more or less is one of the best ways to put it. as they'll sit there and just wait out until it's warmer and there's food available for them. And is it a water temperature thing that makes them do that? Or, you know, and if so, what is that water temperature generally? Yeah, it's probably a lot. It's probably a lot of factors. I wouldn't know the exact water temperature that they will start to do that. But I know, you know, in the northeast, for example, or really anywhere that's temperate,

once it starts hitting, you know, air temperatures of 40 degrees or so, the crayfish and the water, whatever the correlated water temperature would be, they start to be less active. Gotcha. Our listeners like to catch and cook crayfish. So give them some tips as a doctor who has studied crayfish behavior on how we can catch more of them. Yeah, I think some of the best tips that I would have are to put your traps. Most people are going to throw out of traps with, you know, really any type of bait works. The smellier, the better, though.

I've used chicken livers and bacon and have great success with that. You need to put those traps out, though, wherever there's habitat. And so the crayfish like to hide under rocks and in little crevices and under logs. So you need to put it where there's a lot of habitat. And also, if you get it during a specific time of year, look up when the crayfish around you are breeding. once you get the breeding males, those are the ones with the biggest hails that are, you know, the best eating essentially in many cases. Those ones, you know, you want to look at when those are coming out. So it depends on where you're at.

Okay, good notes. Now, our listeners also like to imitate crayfish when they're fishing for bass and trout. Give us some tips on how we can make those presentations look super lifelike. Yeah, well, the crayfish, they're typically on the bottom of whatever body of water you're fishing. and obviously they're living on the stream bed or the riverbed. And so it's hard to kind of present a lure that stays down there where the crayfish normally reside. But what I often would suggest people to do is what crayfish will do is they'll also do something called a tail flip escape response. If you've ever tried to catch a crayfish with your hand in a creek, you know that they dart backwards.

And it's like one very quick movement. And so you can try to mimic that by doing, you know, specific types of. of jigging where you just yank on your bait a little bit or your lore to try to mimic that and that can sometimes trigger the fish to go after them do you find that um let's say a small mouth when he's feeding if he sees a crayfish with one claw is he happy or is it or is it not matter to them it does not matter that much i've seen but they will i have seen bass when i'm snorkeling, for example, and I catch a crayfish, they'll come up and take the claws off and just eat those. Oh, really? And then, yeah, I've seen that a few times. Like, they'll follow you

around. If you're catching crayfish, the bass will follow you around because I often snorkel. So I'm underwater with them. And it's really amazing. But yeah, I think they would probably prefer to not have the claws, but I don't think it bothers. Yeah, there's been times when I've been using baits that mimic crayfish that I'll, like, cut one of the claws off just to make it seem. It's different. Yeah, it's just safer. Yeah, a little safer to eat. Yeah, I don't think they mind too much, but, you know, that'd be something really interesting to look into.

Our listeners have one more question that I want to call out. They want to know if Dr. Crafish eats crayfish. So, funnily enough, I am deathly allergic. Whoa. I cannot have a plot twist. Yeah, it is a plot twist. I spend my entire life and day thinking about them. But if they get in my mouth, my throat swells.

and I will go to the hospital. Okay. So I do not eat them, but I condone eating them. I cook them from my friends when you go camping and whatnot. So it's a great way to kind of learn about them for sure. That's a good threat. I like that they have that power over you that they could kill you if they just make it in your mouth. It's very ironic.

I think it's kind of meant to be. All right, Dr. Graham's crayfish, crawfish, crawfish, crawdad dropped last month, and it's available wherever books are sold. Dr. Graham, thanks for joining us. Yep. Thank you all. Appreciate it. Thanks, Dr. Graham. Thanks. Before the show, Seth was telling me about a theory he has on a certain body of water where he thinks the crayfish are making the walleye fishery much better at that time of year. Tell us about it.

You don't have to tell us the body of water. Yeah, no, I just found certain times a year when the water hits a certain temp, these fish were staging on rock. And I got to thinking and I got to doing some research and found out that like around heat. that same water temp that I'm finding where these fish are staging is like potentially the same water temp where crayfish are coming out

of hibernation. Okay. So that made me think that maybe that's why these bigger walleye are staging on this rock to target crayfish coming out. So I don't know if that's accurate or not, but I'd feel like it is.

I bought my first crayfish fly last summer. Did not catch a trout on it, but I sure tried. A lot of trout looked at it. And they thought now that that guy's an idiot. He has no idea. Cut a claw off of it.

I will next time. I want to know why bottom feeders are so delicious. Craveish, crabs, lobsters. Carp. Burbett. This is something. I was doing some research. I wasn't satisfied.

Research by tasting them. Tasting and actual Googling. Sure. But I want to know why. All of our listeners now, we're going to be better at catching crayfish and catching fish that eat crayfish. This month, IHeart Radio is celebrating the stars of the 2026 Winter Games. Representing Vienna, Ilya Malinin is redefining what is possible on the ice.

Known as the Quad God, the reigning world champion arrives in Milano Cortina as the only skater in history to land a quadruple axle in competition. He isn't just performing a routine. He's pushing the laws of physics. Malin steps onto the Olympic ice looking to turn his technical revolution into pure gold. For more winter games gold, search Olympics on the IHeart Radio app. I'm Dylan

Playfair. And I'm Tyler Smith. We're putting loneliness in the penalty box by talking to some of our favorite athletes about the importance of friendship. This is Bromance. Bromance is brought to you by Charm Diamond Centers, proudly Canadian owned and operator. Charm has been part of your love stories and bromances

for over 50 years. And you can find bromance on the IHeart Radio Network or wherever you get your podcast. All right, our next segment is Hot Tip-Off. Hot Tip-Off is where two listeners go head-to-head-up. And after we hear each tip, we'll declare which one is hotter. If you have a hot tip, take a one-minute video on your phone and email it to radio at the meat eater.com with the subject line hot tip-off. This week, it's Austin Rines versus Mark

de Groot, and they are competing for a $100 meat eater store gift card. Take it away, Phil. Mark Degrute. Hey, meat eater coming at you today with a hot tip-off. My hot tip is to use a carport instead of a wall tent. I picked up a carport on clearance for $150. And we brought it into the shop here, and we did some retrofits to it. We permanently connected some of the joints. We labeled and made quick attach fasteners for the other joints, just using bolts and wing nuts and some of the pieces of pipe, we eliminated them all together and replaced them with some PVC conduit to make it a lot lighter.

So now we take a carport up to Bear Camp with us every year. And in about 15 minutes we've got the whole thing thrown up and installed. It's rigid, strong. It's a good place to keep our gear nice and dry. And sometimes it's just a good place to get away from the mosquitoes. So that's my hot tip is to use a carport instead of a wall tent. That's pretty sweet. Austin Rines.

Hey, media crew, this is Austin from Arkansas, and I got a hot tip for y'all. I'm preparing some goose for this weekend that we killed this season. I got some cubed up right here that we're going to put on some kebabs, and then I got some whole breasts that I'm going to panseer and roast in the oven with some potatoes and some carrots and stuff. And, man, I just love to lead the skin on, my goose, my duck. It just makes it more flavorful, more moist. You get a little crisp on there.

I just think it's altogether better. The only problem you run into is you get all these pin feathers on here. I mean, and they are just a half. headache to take off. And there's all sorts of methods. I see people that burn them off. I see people that pluck them by hand and all that just takes time. Burning them stinks and it just gets meticulous. So what I thought of, I went down to the dollar store, buy a old cheap razor, just the cheapest one you can find and you just take this, take this goose right here, you just give him a little shave. Shaped goose. A little shade, just all over. He don't need no shaving cream. He don't care anymore.

shave them don't worry I have to worry about necking them and then I mean this thing gets clogged up you just rinse it off I mean look at that I mean they're just coming off and it is just this one's already done I mean not a pin hair on that thing look at that so that's my tip for y'all hope you all like it y'all have a good one okay the live chat is going to decide who wins the $100 media store gift card Phil is going to put up a poll between Mark, the carport wall tent man, and Austin, the duck breast razor. Pull is live. I'll give you a minute or two here.

Maggie, what do you think? Who would get your vote between Mark with the wall tent and Austin with the razor? Man, walltents are expensive. I've been looking into wall tents, and like, now I'm going to start looking at Facebook marketplace for carports. But also, I want to try shaving a duck. Tucker Goose now. I like them both. I think they're both good tips. You got to vote for one. I'm skeptical of the shaving. Okay. So I'm going carport.

All right. I'm skeptical until I try it. He showed us some evidence there on the cell phone video that certainly had some feathers that the razor caught. But we'll see. Seth, what do you think? Mark or Austin? Personally, I think this is the closest one. Like, these are hot tips. Yeah, typically, I'm like, I know. I know. I'm going with this one for sure. Yep. But this one I'm like, man, I had to think about both. But at the end of the day, I like being frugal. And the carport wall tent, I think, takes a W for me. Okay.

Just because it's simple. It's, uh, cheap. And, um, it seems like it would work. Two votes, uh, for the carport wall tent. I'm going to give it to the duck breast raiser. Um, that, that did look pretty effective to me. And, uh, that's a situation that would be nice to have. a very effective way to get those.

Are they pin feathers? What are they called? To get their small feathers out of the fat of a duck breast. Mark's carport wall tent, extremely well done. That looked to me like some buddies who wanted to get together for, you know, like six nights in a month and drink some bushlights. And have a little project to work on. And that's a lot of fun. I love that Mark did that.

And I trust that that gets some good use at Bear Camp. Both very hot tips, though. on that note, we are going to empty the clip on hot tips for our very last episode. We may have five or six or ten of these matchups. So you only have a couple weeks left to send us your hot tips at radio at themedeater.com. Again, it should be a one-minute video on your phone, shoot it vertically for us. And then if you have a good one that gets submitted, we're going to use it in that very last episode. So get those sent to us.

Phil, what does the chat think? I'm going to give them 30 more seconds because it's close enough. that the tide could turn in that amount of time. So if you have not voted in the live chat, get your votes in, you have a few more seconds left. Okay. Where does it currently stand? Currently still. Well, I'll tell you the split,

but I'm not going to tell you who's winning. Oh, okay. The first place contested is that only at 52%. Oh, that is close. A couple votes could swing it. You should see that carport wall tent. You can see that on the Meteor podcast YouTube channel. Mark was gracious enough to show it in action at Bear Camp.

I wonder how it does in the win. I was wondering that too You know it's it's not going to function Just like a wall tent But you know a good place to maybe cook in or store gear out of the rain And I guess if it just gets totally demolished by the wind You could just go buy another one for that's right 100 whatever dollars

Start another buddy project in your garage It is now tied Oh no oh boy As soon as I see someone jump up 1% Oh end in the poll All right what do we got It was meant to be because this person wasn't the lead for the entire thing With 51% of the vote

Just barely, I think by maybe one vote, the winner is Austin with the goose shaving. Okay. He is going to get the $100 media gift card. That is the closest hot tip off we've ever had. Seth identified it that way, and the chat agreed. Two very hot tips from Mark and Austin. All right, let's take a break for some listener feedback. Phil, what's the chat have to say?

Yeah, this is from Spencer. Question for the crew. I have an alligator euro mount skull, which is drying and splitting up the nose. Is there something I can put on this skull to keep it from drying or cracking up the snout? Thank you. Hmm. Maybe like some beeswax or something.

Beeswax would be good. I have no idea. You know, we were talking about earlier, there's this group of dudes that hunt or dig for fossils in Montana, dinosaur fossils, and they use that paleo glue, it's called. When they expose a bone, they hit it with that, like, right away. it doesn't like dry out and crack.

I wonder if something like that would work. Yeah. On a lot of like, there's some fossils I find that come out of the ground very moist. And then they take a lot of time to dry. And in that time, they will kind of, like get warped.

Like they'll, they'll, if they were straight before, now they're shaped like a you. I hit a lot of those with lacquer right at the beginning. I don't know if I'm doing it good. I've seen other paleontologists do a similar thing like Seth is talking about. So we don't have the perfect answer for.

for you there, Spencer. You're going to have to experiment and find out for yourself. But beeswax, lacquer, paleo glue. Those are the three recommendations from us. What else you got, Phil? Master Chief, John Halo himself asks, are y'all doing trivia at the NWTF after party again this year? We are. We will be there.

That after party is on Friday night. It will be me, Janice, Clay Newcomb, Brent Reeves. We will be hosting the after party, and there will be some trivia that is done. by the audience. That means you guys are answering questions about yourselves at the game we call Meatpole. So we will have trivia there. And if that's not enticing enough to get you out there, again, come shake Clay Newcomb's hand and tell them a bear hunting story. Tyn's lines, as a simple question, do you guys have some summer fishing trips planned that you're excited about? What do you got, Seth?

Well, just hitting local stuff here, of course. For some bass and walleye and then um heading out to uh saganal bay to do some fishing what time of year that'll be in june okay that'll be a little film thing too that'll be fun so you'll be you guys will be able to watch that at some point uh maggie fishing trips um taking my niece on her first backpack in back country fishing trip how old nice uh she'll be five five is she ready she's ready okay she doesn't know anything about fishing or backpacking but perfect she'll have a good time any other big trips this summer? Not planned. I'll get up in the mountains. We'll take the boat out. I'm bad at planning ahead, but there will be fishing. Okay. Cool. My two big fishing trips this summer,

I'm going to go to the Columbia River in Oregon and catch some white sturgeon. I've never done that before. Meta fella at a donut shop in Oregon a few years ago. And he said, if you ever want to come catch our big old white sturgeon, hit me up. And whenever someone offers me something like that, I say, Don't offer that unless you're willing for me to take you up on that offer because I'm going to do it. And I did. I'm going to go visit him in June. We're going to catch some bigal sturgeon. The other one is I'm going to go to the boundary waters this summer as well.

I spent a couple days there last year just passing through on my way to Isle Royal. And I loved it so much, I started planning my next trip right away. So I'm going to make a solo trip out there with my kayaks. I try to get into some bass and walleye and some panfish. Sounds fun. Cook them up while I'm there. Phil, let's do a couple more. Yeah, Free Crank asks. Can we still get Radio Live like once a month or once a season? Maybe special events? Maybe for deer season or huck season or spring turkey?

What do you think, Phil? Yeah, we can do that. We'll do it a few times a year. I don't see why not. We've flirted with the idea of maybe doing some prime time radio lives. You know, maybe like a 6 p.m. show a few times a year. We don't have anything set in stone yet. But radio live, we've talked about it as it's sunsetsing, not dying. So, you know, this is. sun rises again. That's what they say about people with Alzheimer's. I didn't know that one. Let's see. That's what's fun. Just found out, this is from Nate, just found out that unit two goose season in South Dakota goes till February 14th.

Do I take a trip to chase honkers on Valentine's Day or keep my marriage intact? What would you do? Take your sweetheart with you. Yeah, take your wife. Obvious answer. Duh. Unless she absolutely hates it. It's probably not how she wants to spend her Valentine's Day if she has other interests.

South Dakota's for lovers, right? That's what they say. Is it Virginia? I heard Ohio. I don't know. I saw somebody ask on there about havelina hunting tips. Phil, I don't know if you saw that question. I can find it.

But if you want to summarize the question, I'll look for you. No, I just want to let them know to keep an eye out that we got an article about that from Jim Heffelfinger coming on the site. Okay. Should be live today or tomorrow, depending on how much work I get done after this. You can now get in the record books with a big old havelina. We'll do one more here. Well, let me see if, yeah, we've got our next guest waiting. So I'll do one more here.

This is for Seth from Garrison. Question for Seth. I'm studying forestry in college and I'm realizing that it's not really something I want to do for a living. Uh-oh. How did you go from your forestry degree to breaking into another industry? Well, what I'm doing now is just kind of a hobby. So, long-term hobby

you're getting paid for. What's your hobbies? Yeah. Yeah, no, I planned on doing forestry stuff for most of my life and then would pick up a camera and started shooting photos on the side and kind of one thing led to another

and here I am. So not really in your, I didn't experience what your experience. I kind of wanted to be a forester all through college. But I don't know. It's not too late to, change.

One thing I'd say to Garrison, we've talked about this before on trivia. We had a trivia question about this profession in the United States has the happiest people. This was a stat that pulled. I don't remember how many dozens of different careers. And the number one happiest profession was foresters. So, Garrison, maybe think about how happy that would make you versus doing something else. I will say on day one of forestry school, our professor said, how many?

Raise your hand if you guys would like to make a decent amount of money someday. And like everyone raised their hand. She goes, you've chose the wrong major. That's what they say to all the fun majors. But you're outside all the time, so it's great. There you go. All right, we're going to do our next interview now. All right.

We got Emily Davis. She's a Ph.D. student at the University of Wyoming, currently studying how wolves, coyotes, and red boxes coexist in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Emily, welcome to Radio Live. Hello. Thanks for having me. Glad you're here. Are you currently out and about in the field? Yeah, we're out digging out traps because it snowed afoot over the night. last night. Wow.

Wouldn't have allowed any foxes to get in, but those are all the people doing the real work over there. They just got dumped on by snow from a tree, too. So perfect for the camera. But yeah, we're out finally able to ski. They drug this trap in yesterday over dirt. So it's nice to have a foot of snow on the ground. Makes it a little easier, huh?

Well, tell us a little bit about your research and why you're trapping foxes. Yeah. So this project has kind of been coming into itself for a long time. The park has historically monitored foxes across the landscape because foxes are really cute. People have learned to feed them. That in turn has allowed foxes to become pretty habituated and learn how to sit for food in a lot of cases. And so actually my previous lab mate, Emily Burke Holder, also my best friend, actually studied the Red Fox population in Grand Teton and looked at how they used human air. areas. But this project specifically includes coyotes and wolves to kind of expand on this idea

of trophic interactions from the large predator to the smallest predator to see how they interact on the landscape, how they share space, time, and food. There's this historic understanding that, you know, wolves were reintroduced 30 years ago and this idea that when wolves come in, they decrease the meso-preditor population or coyotes through competition. And prior to that, anecdotally, there is a lot more coyotes on the landscape. But through wolf reintroduction, the coyote population has anecdotally been limited, which has allowed the red fox population to rebound. And so while that's a really beautiful story,

and I think it's awesome to think about, it's probably way more nuanced than that. So we are finally at this time where we have enough technology to get really fine-scale data on these animals. So we have collars on wolves, coyotes, and red foxes, hence the trapping, that are all synced up at the same time. so we can actually get where they are on the landscape. We also are doing backtracking to collect their scat to get DNA metabar coding done on their diet

to see how often they share resources or don't share resources across the park in the greater landscape. We're using anonymized cell phone data to get at human pressure on these animals because the park, although beautiful and seemingly serene, obviously has a lot of visitors and very heavy visitation in the summer. So I'm sure that makes an impact on how they share the landscape. And we're just incorporating a lot of cool technology that hasn't really been available before to ask these questions. And a lot of the questions have previously asked are very coarse and just like, where are wolves in this area, where are foxes in this area? But we're really diving deep into it.

That's awesome. And your research is pretty much conducted during the winter months, right? You guys aren't out here trapping in the warmer months of the year. Yeah, we trap foxes in the winter because bears are out in the summer and I think it would be, and we use really smelly lure, gusto, which is skunk lure, and red fox lure. But the bears would probably be keyed into that pretty heavily. And we don't want a little fox stuck in a trap while there's a bear around. That would be pretty horrible.

But yeah, it's also their breeding season right now. So we've caught six this year so far. We have 14 more callers to put out. We caught 15 last year for callers. And so we're hoping it picks up and we're hoping they're starting to seek their mates out. The snow was a bit of a change. So hopefully they'll come out tonight because the snow's a bit heavy. But yeah, most of the fun works in the winter.

And it's been pretty awesome to ski around out here. We do have some summer work checking cameras and stuff, but most of it's in the winter. Emily, in July, there was a lot of coverage of the park and a specific fox there. The New York Times, among other places, had a headline, Beware of Swiper, a fox at Grand Teton Park who steals shoes. Are you familiar with that fox, and can you tell us more about him or her? Yes, we are familiar with that fox. That was the second fox we trapped last year.

Our name for him is actually Leroy, or in joking terms, Leroy, because he was trapped up near Lizard Creek Campground. And actually, two of the people that are here right now went and found, I think, three shoes for him, but he's, he's collared and he's actually a pretty trap, happy fox. So we caught him this year, re-collared him. But yeah, I heard that, I heard a trivia question from you guys about him, and my boyfriend was like, call them up, tell him his real name. And I get Swipers like a pretty good name for him, but we call him Leroy, and he's, he's a pretty funny fox interact with. But people would ask me questions about like, what's it about? Like, do they cash and stuff? And we just

think he's got a fetish for shoes because they didn't find like a pile of shoes or anything. We think he's just messing with people and they're kind of, you know, funny in that way. We've seen some interesting behaviors of them. We actually had, he's not the only fox to steal something. Artek, Jess has, makes her own Kinkgo gloves with like pictures on them. And we usually set them on the ground to put our phone on to get awesome videos of their release. Yeah, this is the fox. And she, that fox got released. immediately went to Jess's phone, stole that Kinkgo glove, ran off. We have an awesome video of us all slow-moing, running off after this box.

Couldn't find the mitten. The project bought Jess Moore gloves. But I like to think, we like to think that she had it up in her den as, like, artwork. But yeah, they're weird little animals. I'm Dylan Playfair. And I'm Tyler Smith. We're putting loneliness in the penalty box by talking to some of our favorite athletes about the importance of friendship. This is bromance.

Bromance is brought to you by Charm Diamond Centers, proudly Canadian-owned and operator. Charm has been part of your love stories and bromances for over 50 years. And you can find Bromance on the IHeart Radio Network or wherever you get your podcast. Great stories about Leroy. But before your PhD work, you did some really cool research with your master's degree as well with Bears. Yeah. Can you talk about some of the stuff you did with B. Bears for your master's? For sure. I've been really lucky to have two really awesome projects

and through the University of Wyoming with my advisor, Joe Holbrook. So my PhD works in collaboration with Game and Fish is mostly primarily with Grand Teton National Park. And then my master's work was collaborative with Wyoming Game and Fish. And so the reason that project came about, we collared black bears and we looked at their movements, but the reason that project came about was actually shockingly hunters came to the American Bear Foundation, founder Joe Condilis and Game and Fish, and we're like, you know, we can't get large males over bait sites. So it'd be awesome if you guys could figure that out for us. And of course, hunters know tons about bear behavior. So what we found when I talked to hunters, they're like, yeah, no crap, obviously. But that project

started in conjunction with American Bear Foundation to kind of understand male behavior around risk-taking and bait sites. But it also started because Wyoming wanted to understand, and population dynamics of black bears across the state because that hasn't been done. And so they started collaring females, I think, in 2015 to get their home range size to put hair snare work out, to do demographics on them. And then I got attached on to the project, mainly, primarily for the collar data. And so we have one chapter published, which is awesome. That chapter is pretty nerdy and not super fun to talk about with anyone besides people that like want to nerd about how cool bears are and how individually varied they are.

But our second chapter is currently in review and that chapter is looking at how bears take risk around bait sites. And it's a pretty cool way to ask this question because obviously bears are hunted. So there's risk, there's mortality risk on the landscape for this large carnivore, obviously. But bait creates this unique dynamic where there's this high reward area too. And so what we actually found was males did avoid baits more than females. And both sexes actually shifted to using bait sites more at night. Males also shifted more at night. So we kind of found that there is this difference in mortality risk across the black bear population.

And the bait site information was from the Big Horn Mountains and the Laramie Range, specifically. The other chapters on the whole state. But we found that males probably handle mortality risk a little differently than females and younger bears, probably because hunters don't want to shoot young females, even though they're hard to tell sometimes unless you have a really, really knowledgeable hunter that's over a bait with you. But yeah, so it's pretty interesting to see that young female bears are interacting with that high reward food source more than males. And we also found that obviously hunting pressure varies greatly from the spring to the fall, especially in the Big Horn Mountains, where people can't sometimes put out baits differently.

And Wyoming has a female quota system, so it kind of depends on how many females are getting shot at that time, if people are going to shoot the first bear they see. But we found that bears are actually more likely to engage with bates during fall, during hyperphasia, when they want more food, which we had originally hypothesized that you'd take less risk when you have more fat, more food, more resources. But bears are always doing things differently than we expect, which is why I love them. They're kind of a pain to study. But they actually engaged more with bait sites, which makes a lot of sense when you think

about a fat bear eating all the time, prepping for denning, which is what we got to do too. But yeah. Emily, back to the fox trapping. I'm a trapper myself, so I'm really interested in this. What kind of sets are you using? what kind of traps you're using? And I know you mentioned Gusto, which I'm real familiar with. What other stuff, like what other types of baits and lores are you using?

Yeah, we use Tomahawk traps. We trap in the park. So we're restricted to box traps. Okay. They're bobcat traps from Tomahawk, you know, the like real skinny ones because foxes are real skinny. Yep. We use gusto, which we think pulls them in pretty good.

And I just want to shout out to my field team here, Austin, Lindsay, and Jess, because they're the ones doing the real work. work, but, you know, they've, they've been out there sticking their hands in gusto and red fox lure, which is that disgusting, sweet-smelling lure. But, yeah, without snow, it's been harder, but we've been, you know, set the traps up, we put pine boughs around them to create a cozy little home for them. And we use ground-up roadkill and little bait balls to try to entice them, but we hope that the bait entices them to go in the back of the trap. And then really, the lure is what's pulling them in from afar. But so far, it's been.

pretty successful. They had a lot of success with it when Emily was first trapping here. Obviously, we've got a bigger crew and we have skis, so we're able to get a little bit further away from areas off the roads in the park. Oh, and one big thing for trapping is we've noticed that fox urine is really helpful. We actually just have a giant gallon of it that we refill in little sauce bottles that you buy at Target and we spray it around. And we're always talking to each other about like, oh, we need pee and the people that come out with us. Another question, are you catching bobcats at all in those sets? No.

Really? Actually, no. And we don't. We've never seen a bobcat on camera. We actually, this year, first time, we actually had two different outlines coming to do different traps and eat a little bit of food up front. So that's a, that's surprising. It's been a weird winner, though.

Usually we're not getting anything, but foxes and a ton of Martins. Martins are the problem children of the park. So we catch them a lot. But this, it's been a weird winner, so it's just been hard to predict. But no, we don't get, we don't even get Bobcats on cameras, really. What about Wolverines? Do they ever interact with your sets? No, I think all of us would be so excited if we saw a Wolverine on camera.

And actually our helicopter crew that flew for us last year, because they, they helicopter fly and capture for wolves and coyotes. They actually saw a Wolverine from above, but none of us have been lucky enough to get that on camera. camera. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us, Emily. I hope you guys catch some foxes tonight and look forward to seeing when those next few interesting chapters of your research get published. Awesome. Thanks. And Maggie, you got to come out with us. You got to work up a fox with us. They're pretty fun. We'll do. I would love to. Awesome. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, you guys. Thanks, Emily. Maggie, you got to take her up on that offer. I know. I want to.

That was a real offer. It was. That sounds like a fun job. Beautiful scene that she was in there today. Yeah. And stuff. Fresh snow on the mountains. Which is surprising because she's about an hour north of me and it's been mud season winter. It is

we have not had a foot of snow on the ground. Yeah. It's about like here. I wonder if those bears like out and about with this weather if they just go in and you know, even though it's warm. I should have asked for that. Next time.

That's time we talked to Emily. All right. Moving on, our next segment is Meat Eaters Price is Right. Here it comes from Bozeman, Montana. Meadeter Radio's most exciting 10 minutes. It's The Price is Right. All right. Seth Morris, come on down.

Maggie Hudlow, come on down. You're the next two contestants on Meatyter Radio's. The price is right. Now here's your host, Spencer Newhouse. Bill always brings it. All right, this game is really simple. Phil is going to tell you about a product from the meat eater universe, and you need to guess its price.

The player with the closest answer without going over will be declared the winner. If both players go over, then you'll both be told to try again. And the chat should play along as well, because whoever has the closest answer to the correct answer will get a show. Shout out. All right, there are three products up for bid today. Phil, get to start it. Our first item up for bid today is a blue tarp from Harbor Freight. At 11 feet by 11 feet, this iconic cobalt colored tarp gives you 121 square feet of coverage. It's waterproof and weatherproof laughing in the face of rain, snow, and wind. Ha ha ha ha. What will you do with

yours? Cover a grill? Maybe keep firewood dry. Build an emergency shelter? Or let it blow into your neighbor's yard. The possibilities are tarpless. But they won't be tarpless any longer if your price is right. Seth and Maggie, what does that 11 foot by 11 foot blue tarp from Harbor Freight cost? Don't watch the chat too close because the chat likes to cheat. I can't hardly read that far. They're not good students. So Phil is going to keep an eye on the chat, though, and see who can get closest. Seth, when's the last time that you bought a blue tarp? Um,

I'm trying to think. Within the last year? Not within the last year. In the last two years. No, I wouldn't even say in the last two years. I have several, but I bought them several years ago. And they just keep right on. I have a couple that I need to replace, actually.

So maybe I'll be buying one in 2026. Maggie, I'm sure I will be. When's the last time you bought a blue tarp? A blue tarp? A blue tarp. They just exist in the garage. You don't. That's right.

Blue tarps. There's just, there is an endless pile of blue tarps that you grab from. That's right. Of all different sizes, and some of them have paint on them. Some are missing the little rivet, you know, where you tie things down. Yeah, everyone's garage just has a blue tarp portal that produces them. So we're going to see who knows the price.

It's 11 foot by 11 foot. Are you two ready? Ready. Go ahead and reveal your answer. Seth says 9.9. Maggie says $22. $11 plus $11. The correct answer is $999.

Seth, four pennies off. Well done, Seth. That is going to be hard to beat. How did the chat do, Phil? Oh, pretty well. We had several correct answers right on the money from Harrison, Mike, J.S. Co. Ryan, Daniel. Great job, everybody.

A lot of blue tart purchasers out there knowing that they cost, Exactly 999. That gives Seth Morris the first point in today's game of Price is Right. All right, Phil, what's next? I told you that's going to be bad at this game. Is your grand foyer feeling a little empty? Well, how about adding this one-of-a-kind piece to it? Our next item, but forbid, is an entire plesiosaur skeleton.

Wow. Jesus. This 70 million-year-old dinosaur was found in the Sahara Desert of Northern Africa. It measures 18 feet and weighs 500 pounds, which you. actually makes it a small specimen for a species that grows 50 feet long. It has an elegantly long neck, streamlined marine body, four dramatic paddle-like flippers, and a fierce tooth-lined jaw. This isn't just a conversation piece. It's a conservation centerpiece.

Oh, that was a typo. That's supposed to be conversation. Okay, let's take that again. That's my bad. This isn't just a conversation piece. It's a conversation centerpiece. That's right, Phil. and this Jurassic piece of sea life can be yours if the price is right.

Seth and Maggie, what do you think it costs to own an entire dinosaur? I was, I was, this is like a little hint, I guess, but I was the Hell Creek Hooligan Instagram page that we were talking about. I saw they sold T-Rex tooth the other day for like 35 grand. Oh, wow. Okay. I don't know if that helps you at all. Seth has a reference. No, it does not.

It's 18 feet long and weighs 500 pounds. And this was priced by the fine folks at the Fossil Shack in Utah. They do great work. If anyone in our listening audience is looking to purchase an entire dang dinosaur, they have multiple for sale. Good to know. Yeah. Maggie and Seth, do you have your answer? Yes.

Go ahead and reveal your answer. Seth says 4.2 million. Maggie says 3.1 million. The correct answer is lower than both of those. Really? Take another stab at it. So we know it's less than $3 million. They're coming up with their second batch of answers.

An entire pleasiosaur skeleton. Maggie, are you ready? Reveal your answers. Set says $1.8 million. Maggie says $1.7. The correct answer is lower than both of the... Take another swing at it. We have had three tries before in the prices, right?

We have never had four. We'll see if we can set a record with Seth and Maggie today. It is less than $1.7 million. Seth has his answer. Maggie, do you have yours? Those are all nines. Reveal your answer. Maggie says $1 less than a million.

And Seth says $1. I like a strategy. The correct answer. is $475,000 giving Seth and the victory. He was only $475,000 off. But that was good enough. We really went on opposite sides of that one.

God, that's cheaper. It's way cheaper, and I thought. That is cheaper. We had several people get pretty close, but the closest without going over, I believe, was Wonderwelds with 449. Well done. I'm going to go buy one of those tonight.

I mean, if we all pitched in, maybe. Yeah. Seth has two points. He's wrapped up to victory. We'll see if he can get the clean sweep and get this third one correct as well. All right, Phil, what do we have next? Are you struggling to find the perfect last-minute gift for your Valentine?

Yeah. Well, how about getting them 60 pounds of live crayfish, which everyone knows is the most romantic of the freshwater crustaceans? Of course. These live mudbugs would make our first guest today proud. They are rushed to your door with overnight shipping straight from Louisiana. This 60-pound batch has roughly 1,200 crayfish that will feed. 10 to 20 people. Order by 4 p.m. today to have them in time for Valentine's.

Here's the fine print. Due to DNR restrictions, we can't ship to Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Minnesota. Oregon law requires crayfish transport permit not included. That fine print reading was so impressive, Phil. If you don't know on TV, they always speed that up. They hit it like, you know, times 2.25 speed. Phil, he just did that all organic. How many pounds?

I was going to ask the same. 60 pounds of live crayfish. I got my calculator. getting shipped right to your door. And we're not kidding. We're not kidding. We're not kidding about them being the most sexy shellfish in Jamaican culture. Crawdads are considered an aphrodisiac with local lore saying that eating crayfish will help you get lucky.

Phil, can you deliver this next line with the Jamaican accent? Yeah, I'd love to. Here we go. Yeah, man. Gonna get my Valentine's some crawdatties. One love. Oh, man. Couldn't trip up Bill.

Bill did not want to do the Jamaican accent. He said that would get him canceled And Phil is uncannessable What if Phil? What if I was like singing along to Shaggy And I was very respectful And honorable and I'm pure of heart Can singing along to Shaggy be respectful and honor?

Of course if you're singing, you know, wasn't me Of course you could do that pure of heart It's a song about cheating We'll let you do that during the finale extravagance Oh, okay, all right So Phil says it's okay That's when it's fine Well we've blocked out three hours

for shaggy karaoke. Thank goodness. Now, you are bidding on an extra spicy batch, which is their hottest option. The shipping cost is calculated as though they're arriving at meat eater HQ. So it's 60 pounds of live crayfish, extra spicy, getting shipped overnight right here to our front door. How are they live and extra spicy? I imagine they send you a pack with it that you add to the boil afterwards. I don't think they're pre-seasoning the live crayfish.

Yeah. I don't know their methods. I'm going to call him out because he's a, I've seen his name in the chat a lot. He watches the show many weeks. His name's Garrett Springer. And I know that he cheated. So Garrett, shame on you. I'm calling you out.

Okay, you've been identified. 60 pounds. And this, Seth, you said you are looking for the perfect Valentine's gift. Live crayfish. Yeah. Yeah. That should work. It's not too late.

It's not. And when I said 4 p.m., that means 4 p.m. tomorrow for our podcast audience. They will literally get it to you. overnight. I don't understand how they pull that off. But the perfect Valentine's gift is awaiting you. Do you have your answers? Go ahead and reveal

your answers. Seth says $360. He got out his calculator to do his math. Maggie says $240. The correct answer is $648 twice the price that Seth thought it was, but good enough

to give him the point and the clean sweep. All Sorry about your luck. I saw that coming. That's wrong. $620 for the crayfish and $28 for the overnight shipping. That's right. See, Garrett included the price without the shipping and he got it right on the money.

So that's why I'm calling him out. Maybe he's just incredibly smart. He's a rain man over there. But I, let's see, two FS guest 625 and we had someone else guess 600. Robert did. Thanks for playing along, everybody. And remember, help control the pet population. your pets spayed and neutered.

All right, that brings us to the end of today's show. Phil, let's get some final feedback from the chat. Yeah, Jacob asks Spencer, how is your Ham Special Light stash? And when do we kick off the campaign to get it back? I have multiple cases left. Seth was just in my garage and saw them up where they are kept. The problem is they are starting to not taste like Ham Special Light. So I just had to start rifling through them.

I had this very romantic idea about, you know, maybe if I have kids someday, when my son is old enough to have his first beer, you know, like 16 years old. Give him a skunky ass ham special light. But I don't think they can make it. If we hatched that baby tomorrow, I'd have to wait 16 more years. That's too long. They're not going to make it. So in the next year, next two years, I need to get rid of it.

Maybe you could share some during the grand finale. Now, there is an idea, Seth. Well said. Phil, what else do you have from the chat? Yes. This is from Riden. He's asking when Blood Trails. Season two is coming out. The hit show from Jordan Sillers. And it's, we're hard at work on it. And by we, I mean, Jordan and Jake are the illustrious producer of this show as well. He is the editor of that show. And they're cranking out season two right now. So stay tuned. I don't know if there's an exact year, right? 2026. Yes. 100%. If Jake pipes in here. He says April 16th. I believe. So that's not a firm date. But I think, Around there is when you can expect it. This spring. Yes.

Has any of you fished Lake Havasu? Nope. No. Okay. We had a trivia question about it before where I think the world record shell cracker was caught there, though. Someone was asking about fishing Lake Havasu. Maybe try to catch the next world record shell cracker while you're there. Yeah.

There might be some more questions, but price is right. I'm not, you know, the check. It's kind of gets taken over. so I don't have many flagged right now. So if you guys want to get questions in here at the end of the show, I will say that we had a, we wished good luck to McCullough on her first Havelina Hunt during the show last week.

And she was successful. Oh, nice. And we were sent some pictures. And I'm going to pull those. We could share those next week, Phil. Okay. That's fine. Okay.

Oh, yes. We had some questions about all the, all the sportsman shows happening this season. Is anyone from the crew going to be in Harrisburg? Is Randall going to Harrisburg? I think Randall is going to the one in Utah, the Western Hunt Expo? He's going to Western. Brent Reeves was in Harrisburg.

I don't know if he's still there, but he was at the case booth. Okay. He was there. That's a tricky show because that one's like two whole weeks, isn't it? Ten days. Ten days. If you are there, though, and you want to check out some meat eater merch and some first light gear hit up center boot company booth. Say hi to my mom.

She's there. Did you go to that when you? you were a kid? Was that like an event on your calendar? Oh yeah. What did you do there? Were there some trout for you to catch in tanks? There was that.

I never did that. But we would just walk around and look at stuff and, you know, like, bone collector dudes would be there and Lee and Tiffany. And yeah, you just go look at boats and look at all. There's like a whole call section. Sure. Check out the new calls for the year. Just all, yeah.

It's a huge show. I think it's the biggest east. It's enormous. It might be. be the biggest in the country, definitely biggest east of the Mississippi. Yeah. If you have a trade show in your neck of the woods, you should go check it out. The turkey one that we're going to this week.

That one is like the biggest assault on all of your senses. Like just the sounds of all the calls, it's constant. Just the bright lights and all the, you know, the camouflage, everything happening there, the smells because, you know, there's a lot of cooking happening there. Go check one out. You'll have some tired feet after the day. You'll be happy you saw everything. Anything else, Phil? Oh, yeah.

I have to answer this one. I'm so sorry. It's video game related. Brandon is asking if I ever played guitar hero. Brandon, I was guitar hero. That is true. What was your favorite song? You might still be guitar hero.

That picture I showed during radio live, either a week or two ago, from the band room with a trombone in my hand and the long emo hair, what I didn't say was that after band, I would throw my trombone in the back of my 90s. Gio Metro, drive home and play guitar hero and, you know, just beat all my high scores that I set the night before.

I never stopped playing guitar hero. I played rock band. I got every single achievement in rock band, too. There's one called the endless set list where you have to play, like, 85 songs in a row without pausing the game. I did it. Oh, geez. How many hours is that?

It was a long time, but there are some that have instrumental breaks. So that's when I sprint to the bathroom and then come, or like, you know, like a drum solo or, you know, where the guitar is not, not happening. And I had to plan those. I had like a little, like a notepad. And I was like, take a break during this song. There's a long. Oh.

And just a few months ago, I bought an electric drum kit and a converter so I can play rock band with like a real. Family. With a real drum set. I tried to get my family and do it. They don't care. It's a very sad, you know, solo act. Yeah. He's the headliner and the opening act.

He's everything. Yeah. It's a fulfilling life. What was your favorite song, Phil? Well, I'm, that's, how do I choose that? I mean, I really liked, if we're going to go rock band, well, Guitar Hero 1, Hanger 18, from Megadeth. Was that one or two?

I don't know. This is tough. That might be two. I might be getting my lore mixed up. But any of the metal songs for Guitar Hero were the most fun because it was just purely guitar, so those, those are a lot of fun to play. Phil is so good that one time, I don't remember what establishment we were at, but there was a Guitar Hero arcade game.

Oh yeah, that was at the tap house on college there. Phil played it, didn't put up a great score, and he said that the machine was broke. Well, no, you're making me sound, you're making me sound like a sore loser. I can just say from literally, from two decades of playing rhythm games that I know when a machine is not calibrated correctly. And unfortunately, the greasy arcade cabinet in the back of the, the brewery wasn't calibrated correctly. I don't want to be one of those people that says the controller's broken. That meant when I lose, but guess what? The controller was broken.

You know, that's how good Phil is. I did believe him when he told me that. I had no doubt that he was right and the machine was wrong. Okay, well, I'm sorry I took that much time to talk about. That's okay. That is the end of this week's show. We're going to end right there. We'll see you back here.

Same time and place next week. By now. Later. Oh, no, I didn't play the outro. We're still here. Oh, no. Oh, no. This is an I-Heart podcast.

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