The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 837: This Episode is Called "It's the Third-to-Last Episode" | MeatEater Radio Live!

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Hosts Randall Williams, Janis Putelis, and Seth Morris, talk about their recent travels to conventions and hunts, interview Scott Heidebrink of American Prairie about the BLM's recent decision to revoke the organization's bison grazing permits, impress the class with their super cool stuff in Show & Tell, and catch up with the Newcomb family to learn about the new Bear Grease YouTube channel. 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. Hey, if you're in or around Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and you live for hunting season, you need to swing by the meat eater store in Milwaukee. We're stocked wall to wall with the gear we actually use in the field. First Light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, and more. You'll find us at the corners of Brookfield.

Whether you're gearing up for the season, dialing in a setup, or just want to talk shop with people who loved hunt, this is your place. That's the Meat Eater store, Milwaukee, at the corners of Brookfield. Stop in, get dialed, and get after it.

Smell us now, lady. Welcome to Meat Eater Trivians. Meat Eater podcast. Sorry about that, folks. Phil started the time relate, so now it's 1101, so my entire script is off, beginning with the very first sentence. Welcome to Meat Eater Radio Live. It's

11.01 a.m. Mountain time. Sorry, Phil. Had to throw somebody on the bus. It's fine. It's my fault. On Thursday, 21926, we usually write that out. And we're live for Meteor HQ in Bozeman, Montana.

I'm your host, Randall Williams, joined today by my dear friends and trusted colleagues, Janus Patelis, and Sethri Morris. Good morning. Sethri, that's new. I've never heard that before. It just came out. We've got a great show

for you today. First, we're going to talk to Scott Heidebrink from American Prairie about the most high-profile Buffalo-related news story and recent headlines. We're going to have a little old-fashioned show-and-tell sesh. We're going to talk to Clay and Bear Newcomb about some exciting developments in the Bear Greece universe. We've got, I reuse the word excited, we've got some exciting announcements coming at the end of the show, but mostly we'll just enjoy time spent in the company of friends and savor our time with you, loyal radio live audience. welcome Seth Janice

How are you boys doing today Fantastic Yeah I'm doing great now that you Set us up for the next hour that way Just getting to hang out Yeah Our buddies I mean that's what it's all about

Shoot the bowl Right that's casting As we call them the biz Just podcasting Just podding Yeah cold here in Bozeman today Oh what a shock to the system This morning when I went out to start my truck

Yeah It was so cold My radio wouldn't work Glad it started. Oh, you having some electrical problems? Apparently. Geez. Yeah.

That thing really has been a lemon, huh? It has been. Yeah. I'm sorry for you. Well, thankfully Ford doesn't sponsor this program. Seth, how's your weekend? Where I got it, did. Weekend's great.

I did a lot of hiking around this weekend, which I don't usually do. Very nice. Which was nice just to get out. Yeah, it's kind of, it's like a weird, This winter's been weird, and I've said this a bunch of times before, but there's like bad ice everywhere, but not like really open water. So the fishing program has been, you know. So you're Jones and? Yeah, yeah, I'm Jones and, yeah.

Been consuming a lot of fishing content. You have? Yeah. I know you're just telling me this morning about some updates in the bass fishing world. Oh, yeah. Well, that's not an update. That's just like a fun little tidbit. For those of us who don't follow, it was quite an update.

Shock, really. I think you're going to have to give us some info now that you guys brought this up. I was showing Randall, Lucas Black, he's an actor. You know this guy, Phil? Never heard of him. He was on Fast and Furious. That's why I haven't heard of it. Yeah.

I'm looking him up right now. Anyway, he's like a- I could have sworn he was in the skulls. He's like a professional tournament. Really? Yeah. Good for him. He's fishing right now in a tournament.

Oh, he's on an NCIS show. Yeah, NCIS. Yeah, he was in Fast and Furious. Tokyo Drift. That's interesting. Yeah. I thought that was fascinating. Yeah.

Randall, we're not that interesting. What's going on with you? Tell us something interesting. Well, I thought you were going to tell us a little bit about your weekend last week, and you were with all the boys. Down at NWTF? Yeah, a little bit of FOMO. You had FOMO?

Yeah. Hmm. I had FOMO. Yeah. From the Turkey? convention? Yeah. It's one of my favorite things ever, is Turkey's turkey on. Yeah, it's just, it's a lot, man. It's a big place with a lot of people. It's great to see the enthusiasm, right, of all these turkey fans. We helped MC host the Grand Slam after party on Friday night

and help raise a bunch of money for NWTF, sell some raffle tickets. That went good. We told some stories, play some trivia, had a hoot owl contest, which you would think you're at NWTF like it would just be no problem to find just 20 of them that sound just like a damn owl. Really? Sad. I don't know if we're just somehow we're still looking in the wrong places or we're not getting the word out.

That or it's only Clay and I that actually appreciate someone that can actually do good voice owl call. Well, I also feel like in the past we've, we feel like we've heard good owl, you know, it's always the last place we were, we heard some good ones. Or last year, we heard some good ones. And maybe we're just... But you hear a couple, three good ones. And we had that at the convention, too. But again, we were thinking that like, oh, my God, it's going to be very tough to vet this crowd to get eight of them to get come on stage because we're going to have 50 good ones. Yeah. It wasn't the case. The next day, we hung out in the booth for about six hours.

And it actually wasn't too bad. And that's my favorite part because you just talk to fans coming through, and it's good to get the one-on-one feedback, you know, and hear what they appreciate about what we do. So, yeah, I got this fancy hat here. Looks good. Thanks. Oh, it's a NW, that's a turkey feather.

Mm-hmm. Fascinating. Turkey feather. First Light NWTF co-lab with, I can't remember how much of the proceeds go to NWTF, but a bunch. So if you want to support turkeys and you like the hat, there you go. Very cool. And Seth's wearing a custom-made hat. Yeah.

Show it to the camera. Would you please? You can't buy it anywhere. You can't wear that one turkey hunting. Unless you offer me money and I can sell it to you. It's got a, or not you can't buy it. Red Man Tournament Trail, Bass Fishing Tournament, Patch on it. Old school.

Yeah. There is no Red Man anymore. Nope. It's America's Best. But back in the day, Red Man used to sponsor. Oh, they, they changed. They changed the name. Yeah, they changed it to America.

Understandably. Yeah. Understandably. Well, Yonis, since you asked about my weekend, I'll tell you a little bit about my weekend. You did that before I asked you about your weekend. On Thursday, Steve and I went to Cody, and we went to the Cody Firearms Museum. Shout out to Danny and Emma there. Gave us a little tour.

Saw some super cool stuff. They run the joint? Danny is the curator of the firearms collection and then Emma is from their marketing team and we got to hold guns one of which was owned by Lever Eaton Johnson the inspiration for Jeremiah Johnson and then the other one the provenance is a little more cloudy but allegedly belonged to one Jed Smith so some real mountain man heavy hitters there. That place is so impressive. I was there last winter. Oh, I think they've, it's cool. I think you said they had 6,000 firearms in the collection or on display, one of the two. Wow. And at the

downstairs, honestly, I would have thought they'd add more. They have drawers. You can just pull out drawers full of guns. Yeah. And my favorite part was they have, when you walk in, they have, because it's, it's made, the museum is geared both towards weirdos like myself and towards just general tourists who don't have experience with guns. So it explains like bolt action, pump action, whatever else. And there's a bolt action that is the most, probably one of the most cycled bolt actions in the world. It's literally falling apart because it's probably got a million cycles on it from every kid

that walks in there and does it 30 times as fast as they can. Yeah. It's pretty weird to see what happens when you just wear one of those things out. That's cool. Afterwards, Steve and I gave a talk. about the mountain men at the cody culture club invited us down and one jim zumbo was in attendance local local jim zumbo lovely man it's nice to meet a living legend and then i went to the hunt expo in salt lake again got to see a lot of the a lot of the the the folks there that tune in and uh

it's always nice to meet people that appreciate uh the weird stuff that i do and that we do together uh shout out to kade loyal media to radio live live listener with whom I shared a malted beverage. I wonder if he's listening. Oh, I think he is. I'm guessing he is. Good guy, good guy. Competitive rim fire shooter.

Oh. Which interests me to no end. I've been doing some competitive shooting lately. I meant to talk about this. I think last week. Excuse me. Shooting what? Boas and arrows.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm shooting my first ever league. And I encourage everybody. Like, the worst part of the world. about it is realizing how much fun it is and then realizing that I haven't done it for the last 40 years like I should have been. Maybe or maybe not I'd be a better shooter. I don't know, but I definitely feel that way about video games. I've definitely missed out on a lot of fun. Yeah. You know? And, but no, it's also fun to shoot well. And I didn't know how well I was shooting. But my buddy,

Jeremy, you know, I love Jeremy. But we've been, there was a little. little bit of a gentleman's scoring going on a little bit. And so where the eight ring and the insert outline are oftentimes can be kind of blurry. Sometimes if it's a really big insert, it's very clear. But other times it's close. And sometimes if it's just in the insert, we were like, oh yeah, that's an eight. Outside of the insert, it's a five. Well, no, you got to be within the eight ring or touching the eight ring to get an eight so i felt like i didn't really care because i'm just like i'm there to have fun stretch the string keep my my bow muscles active well as soon as you see your name on the leaderboard and you're like top 10 yeah then there's going to be scrutiny right and so you can't

be like oh yeah we have this gentleman scoring and i you know what i mean so i i called the shop and i said look you guys got to knock off 15 points off my score because I think on average, we've probably at least been doing that once around. Now, with pure, honest scoring, last night, I still shot my best round ever. Nicely done. So I'm stoked.

And like I said, I encourage everybody to do an archery league, man. It's just super fun. Stretching the string is what, is that like burning some powder in the archery world? I guess. I don't know where I came up with that. I like it. Yeah.

But, uh, I've never heard that. before. You should make a t-shirt. This is stretched the string. I'm going to think about that for a day or two, but yeah. I love it. You love it? Okay. Very marketable. You done?

We're done? I mean, I can talk about archery club forever. No, let's talk to my friend Scott here. Yeah, I'm interested to hear about what Scott has to say about the American Prairie. Our first guest today is Scott Heidebrink, director of landscape stewardship at American Prairie.

Scott, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Scott, some of our listeners may have seen a story about a recent federal land management decision involving American Prairie. Can you give us the basics, who American Prairie is, what you're trying to do, and why you've been in the news lately? Sure. Yeah, we're a nonprofit organization. we, with the goal of seeing a fully functioning ecosystem,

a prairie ecosystem here in Montana. So that's kind of three pillars for us, land, wildlife, and people. And so focusing on habitat, the animals that use that habitat, and the people that come to see or utilize those animals on the landscape. And, yeah, like you said, why we've been in the news is that the Bureau of Land Management and the secretary of the interior have changed or made a proposed decision to cancel our bison grazing leases, which have been in place for some of them for up for 20 years, and to convert them back to cattle leases. So that's the short story there.

Gotcha. So for those who are unfamiliar with how this stuff works, can you explain what it means to have a BLM grazing lease and how these leases factor into your Bison program? Because that's what you guys are really known for in a lot of ways, I think when people think American Prairie, they think bison. Yeah, sure. So with the BLM here in the West where you have these public lands, they're often interspersed with private lands. And how the grazing system was set up is that when you,

purchase a piece of deeded property, you have the opportunity to have grazing privileges on neighboring allotments or on these federal lands. And so when you purchase these properties, you have the first shot at leasing those lands. And so when we buy property at American Prairie, we also retain those leases that go with them. And that's integral into our bison program, about two-thirds of our acres that we have bison on our BLM acres. And so that's how we've been able to grow our herds over the past 20 years from 16 animals in 2005 to the 940 that we have right now. Gotcha. And just so you've got 940 now. I'm kind of skipping ahead a little bit. But you guys also have cattle grazing on American prairie lands. Can you give folks, because you hear a lot of times like they want to replace all the cattle

with Buffalo, that's sort of what some of the critics would say about your organization. Can you give us some of the statistics about cattle versus Buffalo on your property or on your leases as well? Yeah, we have, so yeah, in addition to the two properties that have Bison on, we have 36 lessee's across the other over 500,000 acres that we manage that we have about 8,200,200 cattle right that are grazing on these other allotments that we don't have bison on. Gotcha. So bison are just a fraction of the overall grazing that happens on American Prairie.

Right, yeah, we can figure roughly like 10% of the land base and 10% of the animals. Gotcha. Now, the BLM's justification for revoking these leases centers on the argument that bison aren't livestock because they're not managed for production. and those are the words that they are using. How do you explain that legal interpretation, and does it accurately reflect how you guys think of that bison herd? No, it does not accurately reflect that.

So, yeah, we have always been classified as livestock in Montana. That's the only classification we have for bison. And so over the past 20 years that we've owned bison, we've been operating under the Taylor Grazing Act at no point. Has anyone told us we were not in compliance with the act? And so, you know, when I look at our herd, we do manage differently. We manage, you know, for even our natural sex ratios and natural herd demographics and things like that, where we are a little different. But at the end of the day, we are still running an operation where we are producing animals on the landscape.

We've produced about 20. We've grown 2,100 bison at American Prairie over our first 20 years. And 48% of those animals were either field harvested or shipped to other herds for genetics or to grow or supplement other herds. So although we do it a little differently and our management is a little different, you know, we are producing. We are shipping out animals. We are harvesting those animals. Yeah. And I would like to point out just as sort of. of a, for my own sake. It's a bit of a brag. I have one of those animals in my freezer, thanks to my wife's opportunity a couple years ago. And, uh, yep, it's, we killed that on BLM land on one

of your leases. So that's to give folks a picture of what this looks like in the field. Like, we were on BLM ground on on X when we, when we shot that buffalo. Um, Scott, there, there are other, there are other people grazing bison on BLM lands across the west the BLM is acknowledged in 2022 that Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, they all have federally administered leases where bison graze. How can you reconcile that or how can they reconcile that with its current position regarding American Prairie? Yeah, so I think there's a couple things there. We're looking you know, the facts that are being used to make this proposed decision are not based on what's actually happening on the ground. They're based on a few very vague or old quotes or documents that are being used to define our management.

And so with that, I think, you know, I've been grazing bison for 10 years now. we have never been told that we were not in compliance with this. And so it's kind of out of left field for us. And we feel like we're being targeted here for our specific management, even though we are producing something on the landscape here, which is all those bison. And so I think the BLM is making an effort to not impact others, but at the end of the day,

it is targeting us for our different kind of management. Yeah, and I think we would be remiss if we didn't acknowledge that there is controversy that bubbles up whenever American Prairies mentioned. Your organization has critics that argue that it's a threat to the livelihood of ranching and ranching communities. We already heard that your operation is mostly grazing cattle on lands and leases, but I'm wondering how you, you guys respond to those critics in terms of your relationship to the communities around American Prairie? Yeah, so I'm from a rural community. I totally get the fear of, you know, somebody new coming in, a big landowner changes, things like that. And I'm really empathetic to that. I understand all of that. And, you know, I would ask people, you know, to look at the facts and actually

what's happening on the ground out there. You know, with the 8,800 cattle, with the 30-some lesssees, we have a wild-life-friendly land management program for private landowners with 21 participants in it. And so, you know, at the end of the day, I think there is that fear component. But in practice, we're working with a lot of people on the landscape that have lived there for a really long time. And I think there are a lot of other factors outside of American Prairie that are really impacting the ranching community like the demographics of the region or policy changes at the

federal level, things like that that are really hurting the ranching economy and the ranching community. Yeah, Scott, at this point, I think we can assume you've mentioned this is a proposed decision. Can you tell us a little bit about the next steps? I assume that there's going to be a challenge to this in the courts, and I've seen that some other groups have spoken up on American Prairie's behalf. Can you tell us a little bit about what the road looks like ahead of you? Yeah, so we're in this protest period right now. Well, the protest period has ended. All the protests have been turned over, and essentially what that means is that interested parties are making arguments as to why this is a valid decision or a not a not valid decision.

And so, yeah, like you said, American Prairie, we submitted our own protests because this directly impacts us. But then groups like Western Watersheds projects, Tonka Fund, the Coalition of Large Tribes, Defenders of Wildlife have all submitted protests against this proposed decision. And so at the end of the day, the BLM will analyze all these protests and they will make a final decision, whether that's to keep the current proposed decision. or something else, or to go back to the old permit with the bison, there's a wide range of options there. At the end of the day, this is likely, there's two paths after the protest period, which are either federal court or administrative court, and we don't know what route it's going to take yet. And so either way, it will likely head one of those routes, though. Gotcha. And I mentioned earlier when I was lucky enough to go on my wife's

Buffalo hunt, we ended up harvesting that animal on BLM ground. Would your inability to graze Buffalo on BLM impact public hunting opportunities? Because you guys offer 20-some harvest opportunities for the public each year? Is that going to be affected at all if this goes through? Yeah, it likely will be affected. As of right now, we're moving forward as normal operations until, we know what the BLM's decision is. Once that is made, you know, the bison, two-thirds of the acres that the bison are on

our federal land. And so if we have to remove those bison, we have to move them to other properties or ship them to other herds, things like that. And so that will likely impact the harvest program. So like you said, 20 to 30 opportunities a year right now, that would likely be reduced or eliminated for a period of time until we're through all the steps we need to take with the courts. Gotcha. Well, Scott, we're going to keep a close eye on this. Thanks for coming on the show. And hopefully I'll see you soon at a fence pole or something like that, somewhere out on the prairie.

Yeah, sounds good. Thanks for having me, guys. All right. Take care. Thanks, Scott. That's a good dude right there. I need to remember to put in for that tag. I always forget. The coolest, one of the coolest things I've ever done in terms of just being on a wild landscape. Only people hunting it. Just wild animals. They're, you know, they don't, they might technically be livestock, but they don't act like it. They're spooky. Oh, yeah.

It's like, it's like antelope hunting the week after season opener. Hmm. That's spooky. Super cool. That's interesting. Super cool. This month, IHeart Radio is celebrating the story. of the 2026 Winter Games. Training out of Carlsbad, California, Kaylee Humphreys is the definition of a track legend.

Already one of the most successful Bob Sledders in history, she returns to the driver's seat for Team USA with her eyes locked on the podium. Navigating the twisting ice at 80 miles per hour requires nerves of steel and perfect precision. As the reigning mono Bob champion, Humphreys is back to show the world that she still owns the fast lane. 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 IHartRadio Network Or wherever you get your podcast Hey if you're in or around

Milwaukee, Wisconsin and you live for hunting season and you need to swing by the meat eater store in Milwaukee. We're stocked wall to wall with the gear we actually use in the field. First Light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, and more. You'll find us at the corners of Brookfield. Whether you're gearing up for the season, dialing in a setup, or just want to talk shop with people who love to hunt,

this is your place. That's the Meat Eater Store, Milwaukee, at the corners of Brookfield. Stop in, get dialed, and get after it. Our next segment is show and tell. Good, good dance moves. Have you Randall? Got anything? Spencer brought a rock.

What else did you expect? Oh, that's fun. Our next segment is show and tell. Seth, let's start with you. What did you bring to show the classroom today? I brought a white tail buck. And this buck, the story behind it goes, it was Thanksgiving Day.

And, no, it wasn't Thanksgiving Day. It was a day before Thanksgiving. I hadn't killed a deer yet. And this is 2022? 21. Oh. 2021. I have it written right on the back. I was driving, I planned to go to a deer hunting spot and just stay there through Thanksgiving for like a, you know, until the end of the season, basically.

And on my way there, I left super early in the morning. It was just cracking daylight. I'm in my in my car heading to the spot. And I just happen to see this guy cross the road in front of me. and did the old pull up on X real quick to see if there's any public around sure enough he like dropped down in a drainage that led right to a piece of state ground so i drove up there parked my vehicle got down in that drainage where it crossed the state ground and sat there and waited for probably i don't know 30 40 minutes and here you come he popped out yeah and then i killed him nicely done what you shoot him with uh 6-5 creed more that'll do it it every time. 425 yards. Beautiful. Oh. It's a nice buck.

Yeah. I cut him up, threw him in the truck. Stop and got a case of bush light and then went to my friends for Thanksgiving. Beautiful. We celebrated this buck. I like that he's broken. Yeah. Fighter.

Oh, yeah. Got some gurg. Would have been a, you know, a big score if he still had those points. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, if he's grown, could you imagine if he's grown another year? Yeah, I got it.

What do you think? Two year old or three year old? Probably three. Five three year old. Yeah. That's a very typical Montana buck. That reminds me of my idea for a hunting program that I host called Could Have Been a Booner where I shoot two to three year old animals with a lot of potential.

That's how most of my falls work out. Yep. I'm familiar with that. No, no, no. I love it. I can't help myself. Um, Yanni,

do you want to go last? I don't care. It's up to you. Why don't you go? Why don't you go? You want me to go? Okay. I brought in two things.

One is this here skull? Mm, spooky. You guys are getting a good? Oh, yeah. It's the bear of skull. This is the second bear of skull. The first bear,

everybody asks, this is your first bear? It kind of really is because it's the first bear I hunted. We had a problem bear in my yard. I've probably, told this story a couple years ago and Mingus treat him he was eating our chickens mingus treat him and I was on the phone with the warden and he was like well you can either

shoot him right now out of the tree or I can come and either I'll shoot him out of the tree or I'd get him but once he's been eating chickens he's not going to quit eating chickens and that's just that's how it is since then we've gotten a super like grizzly bear proof fence that you I've touched it, and I'm telling you, you don't want to touch our electric fence. So we haven't had any chicken problems since then. So I shot a little baby bear out of a tree one time. But this is the first bird actually hunt. I went to Manitoba last spring and did my first ever baited black bear hunt with Craig and Mel McCarthy of North Mountain Adventures.

And I think on the third evening, classic hunt, it doesn't matter if it's like spot. cotton stock or baited, right? We hunt one spot. That day, we get pictures of like two or three good bears at another bait spot. And we decided to switch locations. So we go to another location. Sure enough, no big bears show up there. And at the first spot, this one shows up.

So the third night, we go back and he showed up right at last light again. What was cool, a couple of things. you're going to be able to see this. I think next Tuesday we drop my Manitoba bear episode. But a couple of cool things about this hunt. It's like, you're so close to these bears. We're like one afternoon sitting on a baited hunt.

Like you get to see more bear activity and observe more bears than you would in a decade of doing spot and stock hunting in Montana. You know what I mean? At least in my experience. So just all the interactions amongst the bears the crazy sounds that they make. And then, like, their ability to figure stuff out,

like, they love a beaver carcass for whatever reason. We don't actually know. Craig's got a theory that their mothers teach them that in the spring, that's your first way to get easy meat is sit on a little beaver run and snag a beaver. And you go, yeah, right, whatever. We had barrels full of oats and corn. soaked and used fire oil with a few pastries or birthday sheet cakes on top, whatever.

If there was a beaver carcass hanging there, the bears were like, we're going to get that thing before we mess around with whatever's in that barrel. And they can smell it all. You know, I mean, the bait is doped up with all kinds of fancy smelling stuff, but they love that beaver carcass. Yeah. And so, like, the first day, we hung it way too easy to grab. And they just, like, the first bear goes.

in there, takes it down out of the tree, and he goes off into the bush, and you can hear him chewing on it for the next hour, you know? Another bear might go over there and try to take it from them or whatever. So I'm like, well, we don't want that. We want to see it. So we started hanging it. We did like a high line and then hung it off the middle, but that one didn't work too good because it was almost just too difficult. Like they would like look and try to figure it out. And maybe it was just the bears, like the individual bears themselves. Because the third night we did it, we hung one, kind of like you'd hang a bag of food, you know, slung it over a branch and then tied it off.

This one bear comes in, and he's determined. And he spends an hour. He'd like climbed every single tree he could climb in the vicinity and just as like thinking, thinking, thinking, looking, going out on these little limbs, and I can't go out there, comes back. And he finally figures out that that yellow rope, when he touches it, the beaver moves, right? So then he starts putting the rope in his mouth and climbing. down the tree and the beaver's going up

and you get down to the bottom and he let it go. And again, I didn't know, I don't know if the bear knows that, oh, if I do this enough times, there's going to be enough sort of force that something's going to give and this beaver's going to drop out of the sky.

But, oh, K&M accident. That, eventually that happens. And the beaver just like our little knot or whatever, the news didn't hold, beaver hit the ground and he got his So it was just, like, cool to see bears doing bear things and how, like, Clay's got a new book coming out. I think it's about a year out about the American bear.

And they, according to the research Clay's done, bears are, like, the most sort of adaptable, curious animal out there. Like, they're the ones that will sort of see something and more human-like, right? Where you're like, hey, I need to know more. Them and dolphins. Figure that out. It likes dolphins. I like dolphins are pretty cool. They're very sexual.

Yeah, so this big old boy, the cool thing about this bear when he finally came in is that there's a lot of noises around a bait pile or bait, you know, a bait site, I guess, right?

There's just like, I mean, at times there was a half a dozen bears. And there, you know, there's a lot of interactions and anytime there's a sow with cubs, anytime another bear comes around the sow, makes the cubs run up the trees, right? So it's just like this constant grunting and stuff running through the brush chasing each other, cubs going up and down trees.

When this dude got to probably 75, 80 yards of the bait, it was like the woods went silent. Like, mom, the sow had moved these couple cubs off of the bait and they were like at the base of a tree. I don't know if they had climbed yet. Maybe they climbed a little ways. But it was almost like the birds quit chirping. and it's just like all you could hear was a little stream trickling down behind me that was behind us and he just walked in just slow and you know how those boars do when their you know

toes are kind of pointed in a little bit and started sniffing around but again limited experience for me I'm like is that the one like I think it's the one I can't I've been saying to myself that that sow was a really good size good looking bear and if she had been in there by herself and no cubs I've probably been like oh I would shoot that bear and this bear came in and he was, you know, another whatever, 30% bigger than her. So I'm like, okay, it's got to be the right bear. Should have brought it in a picture of him.

So anyways, yeah, I got my first real bear skull here. And then when I'm, I'm excited about the skull. I mean, skulls are always fun. But check this out. This, is that bear's hide. And I can't remember exactly. I think we squared

him, like, close to eight feet. Craig, I wish you were listening. You could, you can, you you could write in and save. But, I mean, it's just a giant. Huge bear. And I'm going to use this as an actual rug at my house. Go ahead and flip her back on there, Seth.

I'm not going to put it on the wall. I'm going to put it on the floor. Our fireplace is kind of in the wrong spot right now. So it's probably not going to be in the fireplace. Eventually, when I move my wood stove to a cozy little area, I'll do that. But now I'm going to have it, like, in front of the couch. So you put your feet on it. I'm going to let my dog lay on it.

because I want to use it, you know? Like, it's a comfortable thing to put your feet on and it'll be warm. It'll be cool. Yeah, I've reached that point with a lot of animal parts that I'm just like, I don't know, I'm going to hang on to this for 20 years in a box somewhere. Yeah, just to look at it. Yeah, like Sydney's bison robe sits on the couch. The dogs love it.

Right. And you get to interact with it every day. Right. You might as well use it. You can always go get it. Well, maybe not always, but for right now, you can go get another bear hide or another bison robe. You know, if you get lucky to draw that hunt.

And same thing with these. These are, like, fun to look at, the skulls. But honestly, I'm going to do more bear hunts. I'm going to do more spot-and-stock hunts. I'm going to do more baited bear hunts. The number one reason, I mean, besides the adventure and enjoying a hunt, but as far as something to take home, it's bear meat and bear grease. Yeah.

Like, I love eating bears. When you're just like the last 20 years, I feel like all I've been eating is super lean venison of different types and to have like a freezer full bear meat. It's awesome. Love it. So there you go. That's my show and tell. And before we later we'll explain a bit more about your film. Yes.

And we have some exciting announcements at the very end of this. So stay tuned. But it's coming out next week. Is that correct? Yeah, I believe on Tuesday, the 24th. Cool. Well, I brought in a... I brought in a lion hide.

Oh, it's been here the whole time. It's been sitting in my office. So actually, I didn't bring it in. You brought it down. I brought it down. Oh, yeah, let me feel the claws while you're talking about it. Yeah, I just think this is one of the cooler things I have. it's a tom i killed a number years ago when i was living in missoula and it's just a wild wild animal

to like yeah look at the claws look at the pads on its feet i had it hanging in my garage for a while while i was butchering it and just like messing with like it's just an animal that you're not going to get up close and personal with unless um it's sedated or unless it's it's moved on to the next world. Or unless it's mauling you. Unless it's mauling you. Yeah, but speaking of delicious things to eat, my God. Yeah.

Yeah. Great. If I could put a deer, if I had the option of putting a deer in the freezer or a lion in the freezer every year, it would probably be the lion. Really? Just for variety? Yeah, I'd still be hopefully killing elk and things like that. You'd have some kind of venison.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, the, the, um, I mean, I mean, we made like a lot of pulled, like, barbecue sandwiches. Our favorite thing was making Pissolet with it, like a Mexican stew. Yeah. Where you'd ordinarily get a big, like, pork shoulder and chop that up. But just a super cool animal. It was a cool hunt.

The only animal I've hunted with hounds. Mm-hmm. And that was. Did you do it with our buddy Pete? Yeah, Pete and then another, another his buddies. And, uh, yeah, we, you know, rode the sleds up and down. on Forest Service roads. So we cut a track and then went back, got all the dogs,

chased him downhill, Tried. They actually, the dogs split up, one of them got on another cat's track and treed that cat. We pulled those dogs off that cat. And by the time we did that, the other dogs had this one treed. And so then we hiked back up to the road, back up above the road and then shot him with a 12 gauge,

or sorry, 20 gauge slug. Hmm. which was, I figured the best thing I had for like a 30-yard shot. Yeah. And just super cool. But, yeah, like, again, the whole process and the meat in the freezer was really the highlight for me. Like, Sidney was kind of like, this is what you're doing. And then we got it in the freezer.

And she was like, I would like you to do that more. So that's good. That's all. I feel like that's the optimum outcome for any hunt. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very well-managed species. especially in our state of Montana.

And, I mean, there's not enough lions for everybody to have one in their freezer every year. But a lot of quotas are never met. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's a whole other thing. The quotas in our state are a little bit controversial right now. But, like, if you wanted to try it, there's opportunities out there, you know. And if you wanted to be a person like myself with a hound that wanted to put one in the freezer every single year, like, I don't see why not. Yeah.

And if for some reason, someone has. had an allergy to cat meat. I don't know if that exists or not. And they, they ended up getting one and said, hey, does anyone want this? I would be knocking down their door to get it. You'd be happy to take it. Yeah, for sure. I'm going tomorrow.

We got some snow finally. I'm going to go out and about. You better dress warm. Maybe I'll get my. Keep moving. Well, you don't want to be wearing is I'm going to be wearing this thermo grid merino top. What a shame. This plug.

Right against my skin underneath. my soft shell. That'll be my kit tomorrow. Great piece for active. Excellent. Excellent. Tomorrow's a weekday, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, some days I get to hunt for work, Randall. You knew that. Oh, yeah. Just, just, you know.

Just occasionally. Phil, what's the chat saying? What is the chat? How are they hanging in there? Oh, Grant Reeves is in the chat. He probably wants, he hasn't gotten enough for the Newcomb. Yeah, he heard, he heard playing bear robbing. He came in here to roast him, I'm sure. but before we get there, let's see, Valancour asks when radio live ends and it drops to the news segments

will those be recorded in a live setting with questions, comments from the YouTube chat. No, Valancor, it will not be a live show. No, but we recognize that this is a fun dynamic, so I don't, we don't have any concrete plans, but we will do occasional live streams. I don't think we will abandon this.

Randall and I are in the midst of planning a live tour. We don't know where it's going to happen yet in the United States. But, uh, so if you want more live, Randall, then, uh, just stay tuned and figure out where we're going to do the next live to do anything. Anything when you're doing it live. Yeah. Phil, what do you got? This is a part, two-part question from cranky's verf. Part one. Recently tanned some bear in elkides. The bear hides It's turned out fine. The elk hide is pretty stiff after tanning, brush on tanning, breaking and oiling part two.

When breaking it more after drying, the elk hide cracks on the first side. Any thoughts or tips on rehydration? Water salt bath, question mark. Would retanning be necessary after rehydrating? No clue. I know nothing about this. Oh, I thought you guys were pros in here. No, you need to call.

I'd call a taxidermis. Yeah, call our buddy John. Joan Hayes. John Hayes. Yeah, sorry, we can't help you. The image with this listener's profile is interesting. It looks like a wizard

some sort. Looks like a D&D NPC to me. Ad Rock. He's here. Tomorrow the Alaska Draw Hunt Lottery results come out for 27. If any of the gang applied for anything,

he's hoping to score a black bear tag from Prince of Wales. Oh, me too. You and me both, buddy. Me and Randall are trying to get Prince of Wales tags. I drew one. has one in his pocket.

Yeah, so I'm going to be hunting there this spring with our forthcoming guests, both Clay and Bear. So I didn't apply it. I don't know if there's, yeah, I haven't applied for anything in Alaska. I put in for that. I put in for a real, real low odds moose hunt, and then I put in for muscocks, because I figure. Why not?

Why not? Let the tag God smile upon my fate. On that note, our guy Leeland Hart just drew his very first elk tag. Shout out Leland. He's going out this year. Congrats, Leel. And I saw. Very first?

That's what he said in a follow-up comment. It's going to be his first Elk Hunt. I saw in the Meat Eater Radio Live inbox that McCullough, Leland's daughter, whom we wished good luck on her first hunt, was successful. Yes. In shooting a havelina out of a squadron of havelinas. Sweet. Which was the term he used, and I believe that if that's the technically appropriate term, I love it.

That'd be a good trivia. Phil hit me. You guys aren't very ducky people in here, are you? Not super, but what is it? Someone's just curious if you've ever shot a duck or goose with a Jack Minor band or known anyone who has. I don't know what that means. I don't know what Jack Minor band. I mean, I know what a band is, but I don't know what a Jack Minor band is.

I looked it up. It's a big thing. There's a sanctuary in Canada, apparently, that. Oh, like it was banded a Jack Minor. refuge or something. They're kind of unique in certain ways, but we can just move past this. Let's see.

Here we go. Mogore's asking about the new studio. How are things coming along? Well, Mogore, you'd listen closely. You could probably hear. I hate doing that. So I will not.

But there are a lot of progress is being made in the new studio. And in the last week, it's gone from being kind of a cavernous, dusty space to nearly complete. So I would, I would show pictures, but I kind of just want you guys to be surprised. It looks pretty good, and I'm excited about it.

So that's the update on the new studio. You'll probably see that in the next month or two on content. Next question from Will, when is Phil going to appear on roast? Will, go to the Meat Eater YouTube channel right now and hit that refresh button. Right now? Is that the Scotch Egg Showdown? It's the Scotch Egg Skirmish. Oh, my goodness gracious.

featuring Corey and Rick. They are the Cooks for that show. Today? 45 minutes ago. Hosted by Janice Patelis. Hosted by Janice and judged by Randall Williams and myself. I have not watched it yet, so I don't know how much they cut out, but I'm sure they cut out a lot. I'm sure they cut out at least a couple rounds of drinks.

We need some views, folks. Go check it out. Phil did a little pop-up tiki bar sesh unrelated to the dish of the day. I thought it worked really well. Yeah, there's a cool fusion of our passions. Yeah, you should watch it. Tell your friends about it. Like and subscribe.

Smash that like button. Smash that like button. Smash. Share it with everyone. Boy, I, Phil, I want to get more of these questions, but I am worried that we've kept Clay and Bear waiting too long. Oh, that's fine. Should we move to our second interview? They're patient, people.

I go back and I look at the question. So if you asked a question, I will go back and look for one. And if you haven't yet, ask a question. 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. Hey, if you're in or around, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and you live for hunting season, you need to swing by the meat eater store in Milwaukee. We're stocked wall-to-wall with the gear we actually use in the field. First Light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, and more. You'll find us at the corners of Brookfield. Whether you're gearing up for the season, dialing in a setup,

or just want to talk shop with people who love to hunt, this is your place. That's the Meat Eater Store, Milwaukee, at the corners of Brookfield. Stop in, get dialed, and get after it. Next up on the line, we've got Clay and Bear Newcomb, live from the great state of Arkansas. Hello. How are you fellows doing today?

It's good to see you. Clay, did you get a haircut? Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it's pretty sad for a grown man like me to have hair like this. No, it's very handsome. You look good. I was hoping we'd keep this rock and roll party going for a while,

but someone had to be an adult in the room and chop it off. Luckily we got Bear here. That's right, carrying on the family legacy. No, Bear also got too much hair cut off, I heard. Really? Yeah. What has gotten into you guys?

There's like some tough weather down there or something or something in the air? You know, I couldn't handle the, I couldn't handle the pressure. Everywhere I went. All people wanted to talk about was my hair. And I'm like, hey, my eyes are down here, guys. I know the feeling. I know the feeling, Clay. Well, we're having you guys on.

You have some exciting news to share with the meat eater audience here regarding development in the bear grease universe, as we like to call it. Can you tell us what's going on in your neck of the woods? Yeah, so Bear and I have. started a number one we've we've kick started a new bear grease YouTube channel and I'll let bear talk about it a little bit more in terms of content but I'll describe it for you if you've been following along with us for very long you would have known that I used to run and operate bear hunting magazine and we started a YouTube channel in 2014 back in like that was almost like

the pre-history era of the earth, you know, 24-Gene on YouTube. And we built that channel for eight years. There was a lot of bear hunting. There's about 70 or 80 videos on there. All kind of stuff. I mean, just all kind of stuff. And Bear Nukem is actually on there quite a bit as a little kid. But when I came to work for Meat Eater,

we quit posting to that Bear Honey magazine YouTube channel. It just lay there dormant. This year, just in the last two weeks, we've cranked it back up. We've changed the name to the Bear Greece YouTube channel. And we're lighting the fire again. And Bear Newcomb is going to be the primary host. And Bear, tell them kind of what we're going to be putting on there. Yeah, well, it's a different style content, a little more informal content.

Just capturing some of the adventures that I'm going on as well as some of the bow builds and other DIY stuff that I do a lot. So what you'll see is a little more informal content. It'll be weekly videos. And yeah, we've got we've got a lot of good videos coming out soon. And we've also started up a Bear Greece Instagram channel. So you're going to be, so we're posting. an almost daily on the bear grease Instagram channel. I think it's called real bear grease is what it's called.

And so yeah, it really is exciting. It's been a ton of fun so far. Are we going to see Brett Reeves? Is it the usual cast of characters on these platforms? That's a great question. Like I said, it's mainly at this point, you know, It's mainly bear. I want to get Brent on here.

He's just so busy down there with that coon dog of his. Well, next week, Brent and I are going on a coon hunt that has a little bit of a twist to it that will be on the Bear Grease YouTube channel. Yeah. Nice. No, that's the teaser. Is it just a twist? You can't give us anything else, Bear? It's on your typical coon hunt.

I'll put it like that. You got to stay tuned, Yanni. Hmm. That's the show. is, I guess so. Clay, are you able to share anything about your little writing project there? Yeah, man. I know you just had a big deadline, so I want to congratulate you.

Thank you so much. Yeah, two weeks ago, February 7th, about roughly two weeks ago, we turned in the manuscript for my Black Bear book. it's currently titled American Bear going to come out spring of 27 Randall you'll appreciate this it was 105,000 words the manuscript was that'll do it

and just never been more excited for anything that I've done in terms of career and everything I just feel like it's kind of a for me it's just a defining piece of work and regardless of if anybody ever even reads it

I will be excited that it's in existence. And so spring of 27, the timelines on these, you know, book projects are just ridiculous. But it is what it is. So I think you were trying to sell that book back when you and I were bear hunting on Prince of Wales three years ago,

maybe. Yeah, we got the contract two and a half years ago. be three years in August. Yeah. And so we've been working on it for two and a half years. And the last year was kind of a fever pace of work. And now it's been submitted to the publisher.

And there's more work to be done once they get their hands on it and look at it. But the bulk of the work is done. Yeah, you're done pouring your soul into it and bleeding for it. That's right. There's never, nobody's ever written a bare book like this. I mean, I'm not saying that it's, there's just, there's, there's academic people that understand the history of wildlife trade and all this. There's people that understand biology.

There's people that understand, um, Native American culture and ceremonialism around animals and then there's hunters that have like real life experience with bears and and there's there would be books and information in all of those sectors but this is kind of a combination of all these things are there any pictures in this book clay i hope so it's you know you know oh is that still up for debate yeah big time That's up to a higher power. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I would hope there's pictures, but if it is, it would be minimal. You know, that's just kind of the way books work. I don't, you know, it's like books are big into words I hear. Okay. Lots of words. Makes sense. I just, you know, for me, little pictures go a long way. You know, when I flip through and I see a couple pictures, you know, I get engaged.

I get it. Give us a little tidbit. I mean, you've shared a lot of little tidbit. with us about what you learned about black bears that you didn't know before starting on this project. What's something cool you learned about bears that you didn't know a year ago? That's a good question. It's so big.

I mean, you know, the bear grease oil trade, as Randall is just a national expert on the deer hide trade and the buffalo market hunting and all that stuff. You know, there's a whole giant story about bear grease and bear market hunting. And we tell that story, though that's not the entire book. And, you know, basically the Mississippi River in between the Appalachian Mountains and the Great Plains would have just been a bare grease highway, especially in the latter half of the 1700s and into the early 1800s, just a ton of bear grease coming down,

coming down that river. And Native Americans heavily involved in the bear grease oil trade. What were people doing with bear grease back then? Well, there was a period of time when animal fat oils were essential to human life. I mean, they were cooking with it. They were frying with it. They were using it as dressings for salads.

That's what a lot of first contact Europeans saw Native Americans doing in the East was using it on greens. You're kidding. No. They saw the first account of the word bear grease in the historical literature was July 5, 1540. Hernando de Soto's scribe named Elva. He said he was in what is now Eastern Tennessee. and they came upon a tribe and they said they noted that they stored large quantities of what they called bear grease in gourds.

And they said that the Native Americans anointed themselves with it daily. And they were like using like copious amounts of barrel oil on their skin. And that's what Native Americans were doing. The bear oil market trade, they were using it for food, but they were also using it for fuel. the first street lights ever in the world were in New Orleans. Okay. So just think of the world as being run by firelight, basically. No artificial lights, no electricity.

And New Orleans was such a rough town that these rich neighborhoods said, man, we got to have some lights at night on the street. So these criminals can't just run around. And so they put oil burning lamps hung out. out on a little post and they were using pelican oil bear grease and whale oil in in in those and it may not have been the first in the world the first in north America the first street lights in America burned some bear oil and that's cool you know they were using it for making soap candles you know candles were essential for for light I mean it's like a light bulb I mean like

Everybody had them. Everybody used them. Everybody ran through them and needed more. And, you know, you mix, you know, we make a candle today or soap by, you know, using oil, animal fat oil as the beginning of it, you know, or as the foundation of it. So those are the things that they were doing. That right there is the reason I'd come to, what I come to bear grease for. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Thank you, Clay. Yeah. That was great. Well, guys, lots of exciting stuff on your end of things. I think we've kept you a little too long. It's noon now where we are. Bear, can you hit them again with the YouTube channel and the Instagram and where they can find all your adventures?

Yeah, it's the Bear Grease YouTube channel and real Bear Grease on Instagram. And we've got weekly videos every Wednesday on the YouTube channel. Awesome, guys. Well, you guys are a couple of, we're lucky to know you guys because you have a lot of unique adventures and perspectives on things. Clay, excited for the book, Bear, excited for the YouTube action. I'll be particularly excited to figure out what's so wild about this raccoon hunt. Mr. Reeves.

And good to see you guys, as always. Twisty, boys. It's twisty. I'm assuming it's coon hunting naked. All right. We'll have to see. Tune in. Tune in.

Take care. Oh, I think just made Clay, what's left of Clay's hair stands straight up on end with that. All righty, before we get back to listener feedback, we do have a couple of exciting announcements. One is that Meat Eater Movie Club will be returning on next week's episode. And we'll be reviewing by popular demand, legacy of a white-tailed deer hunter. It's available on Netflix. and it's a movie I've held off on watching until we were able to tackle it on radio live.

Is that the one with Brolin? Yep. Okay, yeah. It's an interesting film. Yeah. That's a good way to describe it. Well, I hope I haven't steered us wrong. It was one of the most highly requested films in the radio live inbox.

Well, that is because everybody is awaiting how you will tackle it, how you will dissect it, And I'm very, I'll rewatch it just to hear what you have to say about it. Because yeah, you're going to have to think about it a little bit. I'm coming into it with a blank slate. Have you watched it yet? Nope. Nope. Nope.

Maybe this was a big mistake and we'll just pin it to deliverance. No, no, no, no, no. Unless I'm mistaken, it's the same crew that, that was behind eastbound and down. Yeah. And the righteous gemstones and foot fistway. Mm-hmm. So if you like Danny McBride and that sensibility. Which I do very much.

Yes. Another note on radio live here. The week after that, we will be doing the Meteeter Radio Live grand finale live extravaganza. It's going to be very, I don't want to give too much away. It's going to be very long. So just schedule your day accordingly. It's going to be a unique episode. If you have a doctor's appointment, say two or three hours after we start,

as long as it's not an urgent condition or life-dreatening condition. Even then still weigh the pros and cons. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just depends on how much you enjoy radio live. There will be another announcement for movie clubs.

So stay tuned on that because we will have one final movie club. And boy, it's, I'm salivating. I'm real excited for the old radio live grand finale live extravaganza. So we're looking forward to spending a whole bunch of time with you guys. You should post on the on the Instagram a picture of your whiteboard right now. That would be done did it all right. You already did that. Okay.

Yeah, right before the show this morning. See Randall's Instagram stories. Yeah, check it out for some teases of what to expect. Yeah, it's all censored. It's all censored. It's mostly redacted. Yeah. Which just like it's a popular thing these days.

Not to get political, but yeah. And then, uh, and then, uh, and then, uh, and then Janus, why don't you tell us a little bit more about what folks can expect, uh, with your bear. hunt and the future. Yeah. So on Meat Eater YouTube this year, 2026, we've got a, I don't know if you call it a project or just,

it's really just a different way of approaching our publishing of, of our sort of finest, more interesting adventures from the last year that were, um, planned to be and turned out to be good for a, longer form, uh,

adventure, longer form episodes. So they're going to be an hour long. And, uh, we basically picked 12 of the best from the last year and we're going to air them roughly, uh, one a month for the rest of the,

um, of the year of 2020. The first one that airs Tuesday is going to be my, uh, Manitoba bear hunt. Um, I think that, uh,

my Caribou Adventure in Manitoba was also going to be one of them. Uh, Mark's working on a wolf, documentary that's going to be one of these episodes Cal had a grizzly bear episode yeah if you've been following along with the crew over the past year you might be able to guess

sort of what turned into these long form pieces that are called 12 and 26 12 and 26 yeah that's that's the naming convention here yeah so I would show the slick little graphic I don't know if I'm allowed to yet oh do it do it do it well I don't even know where to find it no it might be in my email somewhere but yeah it's kick off next week. Everybody here is super excited. Yeah. A lot of work on our production

team and the editors and all that stuff to do these longer form pieces, but that's what... This is a great time to request this. I don't know if we'll do this for every episode, but we're going to try it for this upcoming Bear episode. And this these are the right people to ask because they're so good

at, you know, being part of the live audience here. But put in comments and ask questions about the episode in the comment section on the YouTube channel underneath the video. And then we're going to aggregate our favorites. And then a week after it releases, we're going to record.

I think it's going to be Corey Culkins and I. He's going to ask the questions. I'm going to answer them. And we're going to record a video of me answering all of your questions regarding the bear hunt. Love it. And then I post that on YouTube. Nice. Please do that.

It's a little blurry because they had to take a screenshot, but I think it's slick. Oh, man, that's tough. Fine work by Phil. Yeah, fine. Yeah, Phil, this is really good. I'm sure this is the way that the company would like everyone to see this. Yeah. What I was referring to is how quickly you brought this up.

Oh, yeah, that was pretty fast. Not the quality. Hunter Spencer is going, man, if you would have just asked me ahead of time. But it's not. No, no. It reminds me of when I'm really tired and everything just starts looking a little blurry. Yeah, is that because you're tired or over served or overserved? Or overserved, yeah.

By myself. Yep, 12 and 20. That's super exciting. I am, I'm pumped to see all these because it's been a lot of cool. You guys obviously did a lot of cool stuff last year. Yeah.

Everybody's always asking for longer. 20 minutes. Form stuff. Yeah, 20 minutes is hard to capture the ups and downs of a, like a real adventure hunt. Yeah, an hour you can really let it breathe. Mm.

Which is nice. I prefer that, that length. I do too. I do too. Phil, what about you? I agree, yeah. Joel doesn't consume hunting media. That's all I watch.

What are you talking about? Ever since I started working here. Yeah. Dropped all my other interests. He makes it. He makes it. He doesn't consume it. 12 and 26. Keep your eyes peeled next week for that bear video.

Again, legacy of a white-tailed deer hunter on Netflix, Meteor Movie Club next week. Meteor Radio Live grand finale live extravaganza. Two weeks from today. And Phil, what do we have for comments in the chat here? We've got a few more. People get some more questions in. My tummy's rumbling, so.

Oh, we can just stop the show. No, no, no, no, no. Chase Armstrong is wondering what the, uh, what the excitement level is for paddlefish fishing this spring. Hmm. You know, I forgot, I forgot to put in for the tag. So I don't have one this here. I didn't either. I forgot to put in for the tag.

I hear really good things. I would love to try it at some point. We should put it in next year and try to make a... I'm not going to go up and do snag and release. Oh, yeah, yeah. As much fun as that could be. I want a kill tag. Yeah.

Yeah, I've gotten the snag and release tag before and just didn't have the heart. I hope you have a paddlefish tag this spring. Chase Armstrong 5406. Good luck to you. Flip-flop Flesher, this is from Chase. He asks, where do you keep getting the headgear? The vintage Dawa hat was sweet, but I think the Camo Red Man hat is even better.

My buddy made me the Dioa hat, and I made the Red Man hat. So if you got, you know, if you want cool stuff, sometimes you've got to make it yourself. Seth is chomping at the bit. Sorry, go, go ahead, Yanni. Oh, I was just going to say now that patches on hats are cool, everybody kind of wishes they hadn't thrown out all those patches that came through their lives in the last 20 years. Yeah, some cool patches out there. Kevin Foodie asks about the Buck Hunter video.

Oh, great question, Kevin. I'm about halfway done. If I get it in time for the Meat Eater Radio Live grand finale live, live extravaganza live, we will air it there. If it's not quite done and not where I want it to be, because I don't want to put a little bit of time. We might have a teaser at least. Oh, we will definitely have, we can put a little teaser up,

but it will be in the month of March. I will make that very loose promise. It will be in the spring sometime. 100%. I showed a chunk of it to a friend last weekend and he said, I think this is the best thing that you've ever done. That's a, let's not set expectations that high, but it should be pretty good. No, no, but then I said it was Phil that did it. It's not me. I'm just Phil's vessel. It's a good way to put it. Let's go ahead. Okay, everyone's mad at me because I'm not choosing this

Pennsylvania questions. Everyone can't. Keeps, by everyone, I mean, mostly Seth Jones is asking, when are you guys coming to PA, preferably East Coast, PA? Or East PA. When I draw one of those elk tags, you know, come to PA. That won't be Eastern PA, but... Don't have any PA trips scheduled, but we see you, Seth Jones, 1410. I mean, I'll be back for, you know, Christmas or Thanksgiving or something.

See the fam, but not work-related. To introduce the fam to that... To Baby Verge. Baby Verge. Yeah. Fascinating. Nate's asking about media to radio live, uh,

extravaganza finale live merch, which we didn't even think about. Oh, we're fools. Yeah, we could probably crank something out real quick. Yeah, I'll grab some construction paper.

Yeah. Patch hat. We could, we could make old school looking patches. Yeah. We should have like an I was there t-shirt. Oh. I watched it.

I watched it live. I didn't miss a segment. They could just say I watched it live. Maybe when we have a final, when we have a final runtime for the whole thing, We'll just print that on a t-shirt. Yeah. And we have no way of knowing if you actually watched it live and we would still take your money.

So if you didn't watch it live and still want to buy the I watched it live merch, feel free. Stolen Valor, but that's fine by me. The money's in merchandising. That's right. Merchandising, merchandising, merchandising. Let's call it a day, boys. Are you serious? There's nothing else in there, huh?

It's got to do. Okay, Randall's just saying he's hungry. Hit me with one good one, Phil. Ha! Quick! Get it! Yeah, what happened to Brent Reeves? We never got to Brent.

He just came in and chatted up the audience and took off. Did we hear from Mogher at all today, Phil? Oh yeah, Mogher asked several questions. Yeah, but dude, I get to see them. Oh, no, we did. Yeah, that's right. I remember Romogar's question now. Gosh, maybe I am.

People want Patch. Maybe I'm dragging this on. Yeah. This is good content, right? It's you guys just watching the live chat feed and in silence. Yep. Thanks for doing this for us, Phil. Time to sign off, Randall.

Thanks for watching, folks. I tried to give you guys a clean out and you just butchered it. In the first time in Meat Eater Radio Lives history, one of the co-hosts has told the host to end it. So we'll leave you there. Thank you. Good luck. We love you. Good night.

I'm not going to forget the outro this time. Thank you. Hey, if you're in or around Milwaukee, Wisconsin and you live for hunting season, you need to swing by the meat eater store in Milwaukee. We're stocked wall to wall with the gear we add. actually use in the field. First Light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, and more. You'll find us at the corners of Brookfield. Whether you're gearing up for the season, dialing in a setup, or just want to talk shop with people who love to hunt, this is your place. That's the meat eater store, Milwaukee, at the corners of Brookfield. Stop in, get dialed, and get after it.

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