The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 901: Trump’s Turkey Ammo, Venison at Wimbledon, Death Threats in Alabama, Texas Turns Soft

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Steven Rinella and the MeatEater crew discuss: Spencer’s rare bird sighting; goose removals lead to death threats; venison is on the menu at Wimbledon; Texas developers are shutting down shooting ranges; coyotes are eating iguanas; and the Trump family buys a tungsten mine. Steven Rinella and the MeatEater crew discuss:  Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome to the news show, everybody. Today we've got the Auction House of Oddities Redux. A local goose population gets eradicated and death threats ensue. Spencer ties up loose ends. Wimbledon. The tennis thing is serving venison.

Florida coyotes are living off iguanas, seriously. Dope and weed are sort of like synonyms. Politicians are wetting their beaks. That's a Godfather reference on tungsten medals and more. But first, our news. I'll talk about our news. Auction House of Oddities. Fired away the biggest auction house of oddities ever.

Now, just what the auction house of oddities is, it's a fundraiser we do for our own land access initiative. All the money that comes in from the auction house of oddities goes to the Land Access Initiative. Our Land Access Initiative is used to fund access, access enhancement projects around the country. We help fund a project in Maine.

We help fund a project in Montana. We're working on one down in North Carolina. Wyoming, right? That's what we use the money for. I think it's important to mention that like we help just because like the magnitude of these projects and then why we asked for help because like we couldn't do it ourselves.

Oh, no, these are big, bigger, you know? And so there's like, Like, there's other other organizations and maybe, you know, government agencies that are adding in way more money than we're bringing to the table. But we're helping, you know? So when I say add in, like some of these things are many millions of dollars of deals. Like the Tuckertown thing. It's, it's, it's,

Tucker town is there's a big piece of public access land that was going to get sold off and made not public. So we were working with on X. Um, and who, we, there's other partners involved in raising money to start buying all these parcels. Okay. So that's what the land access initiative is all about. We do the fundraiser, the auction house of oddities, which is live.

Is it live? It's live. When does it go live the morning of July 8th? Yes, it's live. It's live. Okay, here's what's in the auction house of a lot. This is by far the biggest auction house of oddities ever because this is 32 items. These are keepers.

If you're a fan of the show DOS boat, our old show DOS boat, We have a 150 horsepower outdoor, sorry, a Honda 150 outboard. Scoots. Barely, barely. The only hours on that motor are the hours that were spent fishing that show. So you could just go count the hours. That's how many hours are on that motor. Nothing.

Our new studio with all the barn board, the leftover barn board from that project. Brand new old town fishing kayak all decked out for fishing. my weatherby left-handed weatherby marked five chambered in 257 weatherby it's a rifle I used and we're hunting pronghorn with luke homes in Wyoming i used it on a montana mountain goat hunt that rifle it's got an md t chassis stock on it but it's also got the original stock that we're throwing in we got uh my whole 20 years worth of writing in books all signed we have a football helmet that we don't know where it came from but it's been here a long time Did anybody offer any kind of a hypothesis? I don't know. It's a meat eater football helmet. I thought somebody would have reached out to Carl.

I'll do it right now. Our punt gun, we're auctioning off punt gun shell casings. We also have, it's not an auction, but the hats we have that say this hat was shot by a punt gun, it's hats that were shot by a punt gun. You can just go buy those hats. There's a bunch of them. $73 of them, $75 a piece, you are buying one of the random hats. Some of them are absolutely covered in pellets. and pellet holes.

Some of them, you even shake them. You'll hear the pellets inside. Other ones, you know, just got grazed by one or two pellets. You're just getting one of those random hats. But they're all wounded. All wounded. And it says, this hat was shot by a punt gun. This all goes to fun access initiatives.

Okay. We got a couple spitters, spittoons, that I believe were gifted to us by the dip enthusiast Jared Outlaw. We got one of our old Phelps line one, limited edition turkey calls, a walnut tree and Osage orange tree that me and Phelps chainsawed down had calls made from them.

We did a rough cuts episode recently where I killed a mule deer in Montana that mule deer skull. My, a prime archery left-handed bow of mine used on me eater episodes. My dad's shitty old truck,

1997 Ford F-150 extended cab. Shitty old truck. I expected older and shittier. Oh. Yeah, it doesn't look that. I mean, listen, I sold it. When my dad died, I drove it. Then I sold it to my buddy.

He sold it back to me for $1,000. Oh. How many miles? Good mileage, 160,000 miles on it. So my dad's old truck, which I lived out of that truck for a while, working on a book. But here's the deal. It's full of new hunting gear. You can bid on that.

And Mark Canyon will personally deliver my dad's shitty old truck full of new hunting gear to you. It's got a $500 first light gift card, $200 meat eater store gift card, a whole bunch of other stuff. We got decoys, stuff from FHF. It's loaded with gear. A self-bow made by Baranukam.

It's Tucker Town theme, so in keeping with the land access initiative. It's a real piece of art. Signed meat eater trivia board game. Signed meat eater trivia expansion packs. Signed me eater trivia collector's edition. handmade dinosaur bone earrings out of Spencer Newhart's personal collection

handmade mammoth bone necklace Spencer Newhart's personal collection made by my wife handmade tallow products made by me and my wife box of rocks literal box of rocks fossils gemstones out of Spencer Newhart's personal collection dinosaur bones petrified wood fish fossils leaf fossils leaf all kinds of seed life in there. Spencer came through hard on this.

Mm-hmm. You just imagine how much stuff he still has at his house? Yeah, I feel like my house is an auction house of oddities adjacent. Like you're not even scratching the surface over there. No, no, I'm just giving you like C tier things. Um, oh, the crew library. Here's a good one. No, for an RC car signed by NASCAR driver Chase Elliott for NASCAR enthusiasts out there.

So it's a functioning working RC car signed by chase elliot we have the meat eater crew library everyone in the crew went and picked a favorite book out of their own personal library and you'll get all the favorite books we'll sign them over to you these are not new books either you can tell they've been read yeah these are old classics mm-hmm I was real torn about what I was gonna throw into there okay for me real torn what did you choose can't remember I was still torn about it the big sky oh that's right A. B. Guthrie's the big sky that's right mountain man novel A. B. gothrie's the big sky and

I was going to throw in a vicaro of the brush country. I was going to throw in a vicaro of the brush country. You did. Oh, that's why I was torn. That's on the list of not torn. I put it both in there. Okay. A vicaro of the brush country.

And we did an episode of Steve Reed's books that you ain't got to about Vicaro of the brush country. The meat eater crew pantry where everyone brought in items from their own homemade items from their own pantry, stocks, chutneys. Smoke salmon. Smoke salmon. Apple butter. Pickled pike. Bear grease? No bear grease.

An OG, oh, a really old camera that we filmed a bunch of meat eater episodes with. It's called the OG meat eater cinema camera. First light Cody gloves with custom artwork on them. Mark Kenyon's tethered saddle hunting kit signed. And here's, okay, Brent Reeves bow. some Matthews. We have a thing that was donated to us in order to put in the auctioned all savotides,

which is a model 94 lever action rifle chambered in 30-30. And then here's one that I feel guilty having because we shouldn't have it. A box of fly-fishing memorabilia from the personal collection of Lefty Kray. Lefty-Kray's personal correspondence, ties that Lefty-Kray tied,

Ties that got flies that he tied Flies that his friends tied and gave to him People are annoyed that we wound up with this. Yeah, I'll bet well if they're annoyed they should buy it did there did there did his estate Yes yes gifted to us his estate gifted it to us a museum should be buying it. Yeah if I could pick one thing from our auction house to have I had picked this Harvard has a history of fishing exhibit exhibit this should be there this shouldn't be in our office and it should The collection should be called if it ain't chart truce. If any chartreuse, it ain't no use. There you have.

Auctional savotidities live now. Goes for two weeks. It's going to be big. Get your bids in now. Some of the stuff you get, there's a couple items you got to pick up, but most of the stuff we just mail to you. You can read all about it. If that ain't enough fun raising, Yanni.

Is it too early to start thinking about turkey, honey? No, because it's time to start. planning planning yeah we've got plans um probably in i'm guessing middle of april again we're going to go back to the same farm that you and i and a couple of the t rc p hunt winners from last year we're at uh in mid-april we're going to be back there in 2027 with this year's winners and the sweepstakes is going on right now so you can buy tickets there's some pictures up here on if you're watching oh there's our boys uh day one John Clowner. So the winner actually didn't come.

He had was, his wife was about to give birth. And so he sent his two brothers-in-law. And, uh, you know, we had, we later had him for dinner. Oh, yeah. How was he? It's great. Me and Spencer hosted them for dinner. Oh, cool.

Uh, so there's one of his brothers and law on myself on day one. And then same day, actually, Steve, you killed with Stephen, right? We killed three, I think, the first day. There's Stephen helping, uh, the boys, butcher. their birds. What else? The next one. Oh, there's some awesome fishing there.

That's the only guy we took pictures of, but there are some like three foot plus musky that I'm going to be prepared to catch when we go back next year. This is private pond fishing. Yeah. There are reclaimed. So they're a little gravel quarry. Reclaimed quarries. Yeah.

Anyways, great farm, great turkey hunting. And for a great cause, you know, what's TRCP does is. ensuring Guaranteeing Americans quality places to hunting fish There you go So we cover all the expenses

We cover your airfare Transportation tags Lodging We bring in a cook Yeah Which is probably going to be Andy again I hope so

Yeah Which is amazing And let's not Let's not forget Guy Grunwald Is hosting us Yeah We've had on

You've had on the interview show Very entertaining host I mean If you're interested In all about the fur business in the United States of America, the guy has answers and more. And he'll host us for tacos. Oh, it's awesome.

It's a great, great time. And like I said, it's for a great cause. So go buy some raffle tickets. I think you can get 10 for 25. And then there's more options if you want to spend more money. Thanks. Oh, I have another piece of R news. I just got some input on this.

too. On TRCP? No, on what you're going to talk about right now. Oh, great. You're doing a little little research? Okay. A duck's unlimited. The guy I know in life that knows the most about ducks. Uh-huh. Next to Max Barter. Yep. He responded to you?

He says, only the hens quack in the air. Ducks make a noise, but they don't quack. Drake's making noise. I'm sorry. Yonnie's saying that he watched some Drake's going, just the other day maybe two three weeks ago i was fishing with tony peterson uh doing a little fishing show on his uh local lake catching uh smallies and large mouth and there were not a lot but quite a few ducks here here and there and you'd see him sitting on people's docks or you know

up against the shore and multiple times we had drakes fly by us quacking when you say quack Do you mean? Wham! Does it quite sound like a hands quack? Maybe not exactly. Was it? It was not that sound. It was not the Drake whistle.

Complements to you, Steve. You're good at that. Yeah, you got that one down. That's the same noise I make for a turkey spitting and strut. Spitting parts of the best. I just don't know how those turkeys do it with that funny little tongue of theirs. And they spit. Ding.

All right. You make the noise you heard. It was a quack. It was just. And Max Bart, it was like a duck maniac. Duck maniac. He was saying that you must be hearing a hen somewhere else. Yes.

But the Drake was lip syncing. It wasn't just me versus Max. There was another angler in the boat. Tony Peterson who was seeing and hearing the exact same thing. We're watching a Drake literally fly by us, his mouth opens, and you hear a quack, not a whistle, and then he does it again. And then we see another Drake the next day,

and he does it again. Nate, pull up, pull up Drake, Mallard, quacking. We should have Phil pull it up, and then Phil can put it on the screen. That's a whole ton of ducks. That's no good. That's a dumb video. Never mind.

Bad choice. Yeah, you'd have to be like, never mind. That'd take a little more time. Anyways, okay. So I did. Make the noise again? my my my my my theory is that it's one of those things like uh yeah all while a game tastes bad

it's it's like someone told max and my brother-in-law who's a huge duck hunter and every other dude that's just a hardcore duck hunter that only the hens quack that's what i've always been like an alope don't go over fences except the ones that do exactly yeah nate expect some emails about this one i think and so that even though he's He's literally seeing a Drake flying by quacking, he still is just like, nope, there's a hen over on the bank somewhere that's quacking, and it just happens to be coinciding with that Drake opening his mouth. Okay. I got hit it. I got a Cornell Ornithology Lab open.

Oh. Here we go. This is under mail calls. That's a lot like a quack. Now do a hen. Now do a hen quack. It's more like a quack than a whack. Yeah.

It's more like a quack than a whist. More like a quack than She's gonna get it Yeah I see your point Now just so that the The viewers and listeners Also can hear

Play the Drake whistle Is that also right there In the list of mail calls? Here it is No Well you can hear it You can hear in the background Well they do a longer one

The Cornell Love also says definitively the male does not quack Instead he gives a quieter rasping one or two noted call. That's right. It's like a quack with a capital Q and a quack with a little Q. There you go.

The answer is somewhere in the middle. This is the last bit of our news. Over to Spencer. I was just on the Oregon Coast for a week. And I got two highlights. Were you with Mrs. Newhart? I was. Okay.

Yes. For most of the trip, we split up for here and there. Oh, yeah, we were on the Oregon Coast together. You ever split up for a whole night? No, the closest was like seven hours where I went fishing and she went shopping. Really? man my wife just not approached vacations that way well if you plan it then you can be like here's

here's what we're doing during this seven hour stretch there's no way your wife doesn't have a little alone time during your vacation if i went away if i went like just her and i went away on a trip and i said hey i got an idea for today that's not no no if i was like i'm taking all the kids and we're going to go fishing then it'd be like knock yourselves out yeah no but if there's just the two of you And you're like, hey, didn't you want to go to the spa? Which I know that she loves hitting the spa.

Yeah, but that's not going to be like seven out. No. I mean, we go away, the two of us, like once every decade. Yeah, you want to hang out. Yeah, you want to hang out. Like for me to be like- Spencer doesn't have kids, different. All right.

What were the highlights? Two highlights. First highlight we were together for. Primarily why we went there was to see the puffins. There's a few million. Yeah, there's a few million. tuffed puffins on on the earth but if you want to see him you like need to get on a boat to go somewhere far away or go to Alaska but in the lower 48 if you want to be standing on

shore and see a puffin there's like one place you go and it's called haystack rock it's in this is haystack rock that's a famous rock it gets his picture taken a lot it does yes it's not a cannon beach organ covered in birds but there's only about a hundred tufted puffins that live here now is the best time to go see them like literally right now because the parents will get out of their den. They'll go fish out at sea and then they'll come back with a mouth full of fish and then they'll feed their young. So they're just like extra visible, especially in the morning.

So we go to see the puffed puffed or the tufted puffins and, you know, only a hundred of them up there. My wife spots went right away. And so we pull up the binos and we got a spotting scope and we're looking at this, this is not, this is a different one we saw later. In total, no, you're good Phil. In total, we saw nine of the tufted puffins. of the 100, we saw them.

And the first one we see, there's like one that looks like this. It's got the white face mask. And we saw another one that had the black face mask. So all the birds in that picture are not puffins. Only the one in the middle of the screen with the big orange beak. That's your tufted puffing. There's one that quacks there up high.

A lot of birds out there. So the first two we see, you know, one with the white face mask, one with the black face mask. Every other one we saw had a white face mask, just like this one. And so we go up to a volunteer who, volunteer there. What are they volunteering about?

Right now is the Great Puffin Watch. There's a three-day period in July where you go during the Great Puffin Watch and they'll be like, you know, they come back every year and the monogamous and they feed their babies. So they're volunteering about Puffin View. To give you information and also be like, don't touch that Starfish and like, you know, step back, things like that. Are you a birder and throughout life? No.

No, just something. This is just a thing. I'll dabble in here and there. But we want to see the Tufton. Was there a bunch of hard? hardcore birders with their giant cameras there? Yeah, but if you were a hardcore birder, you wouldn't be there during the Great Puffin Watch.

Because that's just lame. Yeah, I mean, it's just like too many people, too much going on. Yeah. So we go up to one of these volunteers, who's there to answer all your questions. They were like, why did the one have a black face mask? We didn't see any other ones like then. They're like, you saw that one?

We're like, yeah, it was like on this side of the rock. They're like, well, two weeks ago, during a different puffin count at this rock, one of the volunteers there, also spotted one with a black face mask. And that's not normal. In my head, it was like, oh, that's the female. Yeah, yeah. The white face mask is the male.

And she's like, I can't remember what they called it, but it's a thing where they're like all black. And I was like, melanistic. And she's like, yes, melanistic. Um, so we saw. Sounds like they need a new, uh, volunteer. Yeah. So we saw the rare tufted puffin that was melanistic on haystack rock and just real tickled

down. Congratulations. It's now like one of the rarest animals that I feel like we've collected, uh, is the, the melanistic puffin. When you Google melanistic tufted puffin, there's no results either. So this is not like a thing that is happening often in this population. Did you get a picture of this one? I did not because we didn't know it was special at the time.

So I didn't take a picture until later up. It was the first two we saw was a regular puffin and the melanistic one. So we're thrilled about that. I'm going to contact them again and be like, what new information you got? Do we know anything about this, this melanistic tufted puffin or not? So that is going to make me a burden now. I'm like, well, I've collected this one. So, like, therefore, I should be a burger.

Yeah, but if you're like a space alien and you show up in America or the world, and the first guy you're running and he was like Hulk Hogan. Yeah. Or you like, oh. You catch ante right off the rib. That's right. Yeah. So we collected rare tufted puffin.

That was highlight number one. Highlight number two was I got to catch North America's biggest freshwater fish, which is the white sturgeon. And this is while my wife was shopping. I went fishing with a guy I met out there and caught two of the white sturgeon. Did you get the great big jump that they do? Yes. So this is also the best time of year to be doing that because they'll be up in shallows. We caught three white sturgeon that day and we caught them in four feet of water and 20 feet of water.

So just a variety. Four feet of water. The four feet of water, that one was an aerial sturgeon. He came up right away, a whole body out of the water. And then just like the whole day, about every half hour, you'd see a sturgeon come out of the water. Don't know what they're doing. I don't think anybody has a good idea. She could stay off that bad boy.

They just free jump. Yeah, they do free jump. And it's like, you see a variety of moves that they do. Sometimes they'll come out like a whale where they like, you know, they fully breach and then they land on their side. Other times it'd be like a dolphin. Other times they just roll on the surface. Like you'd see a paddlefish or a carp do. So just like a lot of, a lot of sturgeon being seen.

Did the guide like you? Did he like me? Yeah, I think, I think he liked me. I met him last year at his food truck that he owned. It's called Pacific Root. And he's like, hey, I also. He serves a surgeon? No, he serves donuts.

So you're snacking on a donut and he says, hey, you know, apropos of nothing. Yeah. I'm a sturgeon guide. He's a steelhead and trout guide. This he sort of dabbles in on the side. But he's like, hey, if you ever want to come out, fish and let me know. And I'm like, well, don't offer that if you don't mean it. Yeah, because I will.

Yeah, I will do it. I would love to catch one of these bucket list fish. Well, how heavy would you say the biggest one was? Six and a half feet long. And I think Googling that was like, I don't know, 130 to 160 pounds somewhere in there. Caught my cut bait. On cut bait. Yeah, it's very familiar if you can't fish, right?

It's just like using like a seven inch frozen anchovy. Sometimes it would just be a smorgasbord of bait on there. You do an anchovy plus two earthworms plus a sand shrimp. And they were just trolling the bottom looking for dead stuff. And you're anchored up. Anchored up, yep. It's just soaking lead on the bottom. Yeah, just very familiar if you were going to go catch a catfish.

And then all of a sudden, that thing's just swimming away. It's not like you get like a nibble. You do get a nibble. Yeah, it's, it's that part, you know, it's kind of like watching a bobber go down. Do they a bobber, but it's just like small rod ticks. And then sometimes they about take it out of your rod hole. Do they circle hook them or Jay hook them? It is a barbless hook.

It's not a circle hook, but it's a barbless J hook, which I'm surprised you can, like, fight them as good as you do. It's a real thrashing, and it holds on the whole time. It seems like if you set the hook in one, they're just not coming off. How many times that fish been caught? I would bet often. Often. I would guess.

And I would ask the guy I was with, I was like, what's that boat doing? What's that boat doing? What's that boat doing? They love that kind of stuff. They do. Yeah, I like, well, I'm also interested. I'm like selfishly want to know, but I'm like, what's that fishing boat? doing. The answer was always catching sturgeon. So it's, I imagine it's quite common. There

is no salmon run going on at the time. Not yet. You'd have to be out in the ocean. As far as bycatch, I was like, what kind of bycatch do you get? And it shocked me because the answer's like, nothing, never have any bycatch besides the occasional channel catfish. Really? Yeah, like, well, what's he doing out there? Huh. Yeah. Being a channel catfish. Yeah. So I saw the melanistic puffing and got to catch the continent's biggest freshwater fish. Oh, man. Hell of a weekend for him. Good week. And my wife got to shop.

It's great. Everybody wins. Listen. And you're there. For heart-wrenching knockouts. The world's biggest stage. And breathtaking triumph. 2026 FIFA World Cup.

The knockout stage. Every match. Every moment. Listen on TSN Radio. Join the globe. On the road to the July 19th final. 2026. FFIFA World Cup.

Stream it all live on TSN Radio. Available on IHeard Radio. Well, it's here, folks. The 2026 Meat Eater Auction House of Oddities is back and open for bids now. This year's auction features eyebrow-raising outdoor gear donated by the Meat Eater crew,

employees, and friends of the brand, including Steve's dad's shitty old truck full of badass hunting gear, the Honda Outboard Motor from DOS Boat Season 3, Clay Newcomb's, Alaskan Wetsuit Bear Hyde, Fly Fishing Memorabilia from the personal collection of Lefty Cray and more. The auction house kicks off July 8th and runs for two weeks with 100% of proceeds going to our Land Access Initiative, which to date has helped fund new public land acquisitions,

such as the recent 200-acre Tuckertown acquisition in North Carolina, the 328-acre Wildcat bend acquisition in Montana, and the 215-acre Shiloh-Pond project, Maine. Visit the meat eater.com slash auction to place your bids now, get your hands on some meat eater history, and become a meaningful part of our next public land access campaign. On to your news, a lot of guys wrote in about last episode saying that dope, come on, a lot of guys saying that calling the dope is heroin. So if you say a dope smoker, you mean a heroin, that's not true.

It kind of is these days. It's not. I'm on the guy side. about these days. Okay. I don't care about these days. I don't care where you go and search up. I grew up knowing they were dope smokers. I don't care where you go search up. You're like dope and we're like it's synonymous. They're synonyms. That's all. I'll point out that smoking the stuff isn't even that common anymore. No, you're like a dope eater. Yeah. Dope eater. But guys that were acting like they didn't that dope smoking. One, it's like an old man joked to even call it dope smoke.

But back, you know, whatever time ago, whatever time ago, 20 years ago, or whatever, that's it. If you go look at the internet and go look at any definition, don't 100% a dope smoker is 100% can be a weed smoker. Now, it's not as accurate as saying a marijuana smoker, but it puts you in the right ballpark. You'll get pushback on the whole marijuana thing, too. I don't care. Listen, of all the groups to offend. It's one of your least worried about. Of all.

No, no, I'm not like that worried about many of them. You get like, oh, the, whatever. You know, the catch-release guys are mad. The high fence guys are mad. The dope smokers are mad. Like, okay. Let's get back to hunting. That's the thing about the dope smokers, though, is they don't get mad.

They do. Apparently, they came after you on this. Unless these weren't dope smokers. Yeah, these were the heroin. Another big correction. Huge correction that Nate Mason needs to make in our news, Your news. Talking about Michigan elk, a number of alert listeners or viewers, I should say, pointed out that there was no blue dots on that Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation map in the state of Michigan.

And many people confirmed that there are probably 700 elk in the state of Michigan. We applied every year. When I was a kid. Was it just a real old map? Are they screwed up? No, it's just, I couldn't figure it out. I can get a hold of anyone at RMF. But yeah, they've been there for a long time.

A long time, yeah. Long time. I didn't even look to notice, but that's a huge mistake on your part. Big time, big time. Current distribution. Michigan's got them. My old man used to bow hunt white tails up in that neck of the woods. And it's kind of like if you were to, if you make a Michigan mat with your hand and you go to your, it's, the elk are kind of between the first and second knuckle on your middle finger.

That might not be totally accurate. That's pretty good. They're around that ballpark. Yeah. he used to hunt white tails up there and do nothing but sit in his tree stand taking photos of elk oh it's like you're sitting around drowning an elk hoping a white tail comes by do you ever know anybody who killed one there nope never you know anybody who drew one no do not it's a slim draw yeah those elk are how i learned about the mud vein thing oh where i had a

client in colorado who had had a friend who had gotten a tag, killed an elk. And then when the guide was gutting it, said, hey, do you want the mud veins? And the guy was like, mud veins. Like off a crayfish. Yeah. Off a crayfish?

I don't know. The mud vein, like the little ship tube. Yeah, you're talking about a tenderloin. Yeah. I know, but he's using the terminology, yeah, yeah, yeah. As though it's like a poop tube. Yeah. And the guide cut out the tenderloins and said he was going to

feed the mud veins to his dog. Because they're stinky and gross. Oh, last night, man. I had some trim. I was like trimming a heart. You know, all that fat and junk. So I had that in a bowl to give my dog. And then like my dog was at your house.

So I put it in the freezer. Yeah. Then I got it back out and it sat a lot longer. And I pulled it out last night. It was pretty rotten. My wife's like, oh my God, don't give that to the dog. I'm like, that dog don't care. So I gave it to the dog, and that dog, I'm not kidding, man, that dog hadn't finished 10 seconds.

Right up on the carpet. And I'm like, there's no way it's related to the rot on that thing. There has to be coincidence. How'd you take that? Something to date yesterday. I was like, there's no way that did it. Poor tracker. Yeah, and I'm really surprised that she wouldn't take a few hours off,

just go hanging out of the spa all you've finished. All right, out of the news, the actual news, and Spencer's going to start out with a roundup of Spencer stories. Yeah, so I just want to, I think that's something I'll do in the future. You cover something, you reach out for quotes,

they don't come in in time, or development happens, like the day we put out the podcast. So I got three stories I want to circle back to. First one is the West Virginia Golden Trout update. If you don't remember, an angler set the new state record for Palomino Trout with a 28-inch. 12-pound fish. It was caught on the south bend of the Potomac River. Now, as I talked about that day,

it's likely the fish was stocked there a few days prior by the West Virginia DNR, but I wanted to hear them say it. So I reached out to them. Looks like a stocker, don't it, Roney? Yeah, we already had this discussion. Oh, you weren't here for this episode. So David Wellman, the assistant chief of fish management for the DNR, he got back to me. Keep going. Can you put? We can't leave Yanni's comment. Hang. I didn't know this. Brody said what you're seeing is wrong with its tail. Is it hanging in its tank? It's a brating his tail on its tank.

So David Wellman, the assistant chief of fish management for the DNR, he got back to me and here's what he said, quote, that fish was stocked this year as most West Virginia's dreams do not hold over trout due to the warm temps during the summer and fall. So confirmed the DNR stocked a state record that was caught just a few days later. So we, we already knew that But they didn't say it They wouldn't come out and directly say it And so now somebody did And now I'm just like extra amused by the whole thing They're like yeah, it's a state record

That was living in a raceway You know, 72 hours I wonder if the guy grabs that thing to stock it I bet he does Record baby Oh Yeah And I'm not trying to dog on it too much

Like I had a few times When I caught him not knowing That there had been a stocking recently One time it was on I was angling myself and just happened to be fishing at a put in by a bridge, and they literally dumped the fish off the bridge, and all of a sudden I yank in this, I don't know,

two foot plus rainbow. And I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, biggest fish I've seen all summer. And then another time, you know, our dear friend Lindsay Meyer, I mean, she caught the biggest shout I ever guided anyone to. How big?

I don't know. 30? Yeah, I mean, 30 inches. I mean, it's a giant. And you think that one just came off a truck? Oh, yeah. We know exactly where they came. can't fish for 10 years on the same river, like not know somebody that catches a fish like that.

And then all of a sudden one day there's like 10 of them in one pool. The funny thing is a few days after, Yonest and my client, she caught it. A few days later, Alvin, a Doe's client got the same damn fish on the same bridge. Huh. Oh, there you go. Anyway. All right. Update number two.

This is for the Iowa $44,000 walleye. There was a fishing contest held by the Iowa Great Lakes area. Chamber of Commerce. Anglers had two dated to catch a tagged walleye in Okaboji to win the $44,000 grand prize. Multiple anglers tried to claim the money, but both were rejected. First angler caught a fish that

was tagged in 2025, so that didn't count. The other angler, he brought in a fish that was tagged in 26, but it was dead. So that made it ineligible. We have an update. The contest carries on after Walleye weekend end. It goes for the rest of the summer, but the prize money is significantly

reduced. Two weeks after ended. Ken Williams caught himself one of those lucky Wai and he won $6,000 for it. So at least some money got handed out. Anglers have until August 31st to claim the last two cash prizes of the extended contest. Which of those guys is the guy? Who's cat? It is the dude with the second from the left. The guy on the far left, he's the one in the video we watched who had to break the news that the dead walleye came in. Also some more news from the same body of water, West Lake Okoboji just had their first paddlefish caught since 19. Nice.

It was captured in net by biologists just a couple weeks ago. The fish was once common in that area, but it disappeared after a bunch of dams were put in place. The Iowa DNR started a paddlefish stocking program a few years ago. This is the first one that they've recaptured. They weighed 12 pounds, measured 28 inches from the eye to the fork and the tail. And here's a look at one of the last paddlefish that was ever caught in that lake. weighed 185 pounds and it was speared by an ice angler.

Go! The guy put two spears in it. He couldn't get out of the hole himself. So he ran up to shore, got one of his buddies named Charlie, and then Charlie came to help him drag it out of the water. That's a serious-looking man right there, dude. I got beat Brody's ass. 185 pounds.

I'd take him, man. Came out of Okabogi, one of the final paddle fish to ever be caught there. That's a serious-looking man. I don't want a hat like that. That's a good hat. He looks like a dude who would spear a paddlefish. one of the only paddlefish. Yeah, that's been speared through the ice in North America, I'm sure.

All right, last update. Or if he was drunk on beer when that happened. You have to be. He was in 50 foot of water, and he speared at 15 feet below him, which is a heck of a shot. Wow. With a spear. That is. He was, yeah.

That's what the story said from 1919, that it was in 50 foot water. There's no way they got confused over time. No. No, not a chance. That's totally legit. All right. last update is the Ohio Bigfoot update. If you don't remember in a span, in a five-day span back in March, there were seven Bigfoot sightings around Portage County. Four of those happened in the exact same day.

I reached out to some Sasquatch experts for their take on this rash of sightings. Here's what they told me. First one was Jeremiah Byron via the Bigfoot Society. He said that the weather was unseasonably warm that week, which resulted in Bigfoot's being more active, plus people were being more active. So it just resulted in kicking them out, flushing them out. Yeah, they were encountering each other more often. Oh, I see. With good weather for humans was good weather for Bigfoot's. It was a warm week in March.

Yeah, I'm with you. So they were just bumping into each other out in the woods. They're both out. That's what Jeremiah said. How about that? Cliff Berrickman from the big, from the North American Bigfoot Center, I asked Cliff if there's a chance that the Bigfoots were migrating or they were rutting or responding to a certain moon phase.

And he said, quote, that is nonsense and pretty, sensationalized. So he did not like that theory of my that that sensationalized. Yeah. No, there's some good still. Cliff says he's not convinced that the reports were properly vetted. Oh, he noted that some of the witnesses weren't interviewed until days after the sightings. That's bad procedure from his perspective. He said the sightings were being gathered by bigfoot maps.com. However, the Bigfoot field researchers organization, which Cliff told me is the most reliable source for Bigfoot sightings did not have an uptick in sightings that week. So to recap, BigfootMaps.com had the report of increase in sightings, but Bigfoot Field

Researchers organization did not. So Bigfoot Maps is kind of like, they're like chumps. They are. So I reached out to the Bigfoot Field Researchers organization for their take. Yeah. So Matt Moneymakers, who I talked to, is. He's one of the founding members of the Bigfoot field researchers organization. B-FRO.

Matt said that they sent an investigator to interview the very first witness in this string of sightings. And he told me that this investigator is someone who tends to give the benefit of the doubt to people. And the investigator concluded that this was not a legitimate citing by that first witness. The witness he interviewed was a 15-year-old boy who was an aspiring cryptozoologist who just started his own local Bigfoot group. And so the investigator said, you know, he's maybe doing this to get himself some street. Yeah, that's like a fox garden henhouse. That's not the right thing. Uh-huh.

But that's a thing. What would it be? It's not the fox garden, the henhouse. Yeah, I mean, it's the Bigfoot person seeing a Bigfoot. Yeah, it's like that. It's just like that. Yeah, it's what it sound like. Now, Matt's team, Matt's team, he's tested Bigfootmap.com before.

He sent them obviously fake reports to see what would have. happen from their experience, those reports get published within a few hours with no follow-up questions. One time they even submitted like a joke name and the email address was Bigfoot Maps own email address. And it still got reported. Like it still went up as legit. So they're like totally like just phone and it. Yeah. So there's like there's a commercializing. There's a rivalry. There is. Yes. And Matt was very hot about this subject. Now Matt did tell me that Bigfoot do live in Northeast Ohio. It's actually one of the hot spots on the continent. Matt had his very first face-to-face encounter there back in 1994. He saw two big foots at once. One of them got to within

15 feet and it growled at him until he left the area. Man, Northeast Ohio is close to that. Yeah. So despite, despite Matt being a skeptic of the reports in Portage County, he's not a skeptic. Back in March, no. He did tell me that their organization has gotten some credible reports from around the Ohio River in Jefferson. County. So if you're in the area and want to find a Bigfoot, he recommends starting in Jefferson County, not Portage County, because the Portage County folks are just a hoax. Bigfoot's got that far. Now you know. That's great report. Thanks for that, Spencer. You're welcome. Moving from that area, down to Madison, Alabama, where one of our, you know the term citizen scientist. A citizen journalist surprises of this. But we got a tip.

We had a tip. They want to remain anonymous. Oh, they do? Yeah, because of the, uh, yeah, there's death threats flying. We're going to talk about a Canada goose issue that's got the FBI. FBI's involved on it now. So a citizen tipped us off for this story, but he wants to stay out of it because

all the death threats getting thrown around down here. Alabama. Basically, here's how it goes. You got two large communities in the Madison, Alabama area. Each of them is struggling with what they perceive to be a goose

problem. They, certain members of each of these communities, perceive to be suffering from overpopulated geese. Some say that the goose crisis is so

acute that pets are dying. Pets are dying. Now, pets always die. In any community there's a pet dying somewhere. You follow me? But these pet deaths are attributed

to these geese. To like fecal matter or something? Fecal matter. I thought it was a tax. I wish. They have swans. That'd be way more interesting. The geese, there's so many geese, people are saying that these geese are spreading avian influenza, and now 75% of the local swans are dead

from these geese. They say, In their pond, this is an HOA pond. It's a private HOA pond, one of these places. The one I'm going to focus on is a private HOA pond. They're even saying that there's a fish die-off in the pond related to all the nutrient loading from goose ship. Okay. So these HOAs are suffering from geese. But this is a tale of two HOAs.

One HOA takes a draconian approach. and they call in the feds who come in and round up and execute, euthanize, coal, what have you, 500 geese. Which I'll point out is not, that's something that happens with geese around the country. Sure, right? Sure. A lot of geese. Yeah.

I'm not even telling you what I think about the whole thing. How'd they do it? Don't know. It's not been released. They trapped them. some people are saying they gassed them that makes sense to me I don't know what they did to them and I don't know if they went to a food bank

the other HOA they didn't use a punk gun they did not punt gun them the other HOA is exploring other options the HOA that did the death dealing those HOA members are now being subject to death threats bad death threats you got the Madison subdivision

you got the heritage plantation subdivision just based off those names who do you think did the dude I when you used to breath this I thought you were going to say Madison Wisconsin and then you said Alabama I wonder if these two

subdivisions have partisan partisan voting differences oh Heritage Plantation chose to euthanize Madison Alabama chose to seek other alternatives.

The Facebook comments page is a great representation just of American sentiment. I think this strikes me about going through the Facebook comments on this news source are how little people will do to find out if what they're saying makes sense before they put it down.

So here you have people saying they're federally protected. Here you have people saying they're a non-native invasive. You have all manner of opinions, most of which could be solved with a very quick internet search. One guy had an interesting

observation where he said, Canadian geese are the cud zoo of birds. Another guy named Glennie says, without geese on a pond. Now follow this. Without geese, on a pond. Cotton mouth snake population infestation increase

on the way. Snakes will be hanging in the shrubs even. Snakes love sunning on concrete walks. They serve as hot rocks to all snakes. Crawling up in the cars, garage, even inside those

HOA houses before it's over without no geese. That's why farms have geese on their ponds. Yep. He says. Venomous snake infestation prevention. Another guy, just one of the

only people that was truly trying to be helpful was a guy that rode in and said, why hasn't anyone tried putting an Egyptian duck in there? He will run off any other bird trying to stay there by himself. Wow, I didn't know that.

He'll chase people and dogs too, but you'll have no geese. and he proves that it works because he says that they did that at Magnolia Springs and no geese I can't believe it came down to execute and a lot of other people had dumb stuff to say like while they move them to a sanctuary

it's like what what sanctuary or people are like why don't they go put them on the river but well the problem is they have wings and they just kind of go like they just kind of go back where they want to be but I really can't I mean how would it be that a couple dogs.

Well, they have those dogs that are trained to haze them. That's what I'm saying. Golf courses use them. If one thing geese hunters know how to do, the one thing goose hunters know how to do is make it, the geese don't come back to a spot. It's like, you can say a lot of bad things about hunting, about, I'll tell you one thing.

If there's geese in a spot and you hunt them real heavy, those geese don't come back. It turns them off to a spot. To be fair, I think this is a problem that's happening. in suburban and urban areas all over the country with Canada geese. It just seems, I don't know, I'm not there. If I was living in that

HOA, I would have said, come on. Are we honestly going to have the government come out and trap and gas 500 geese? We can't figure out a way to see ourselves through this or wait until they move on

or get someone's dog that likes to chase geese or have some dudes shoot them. Are we really going to call in the federal government. Dude, people were getting ill, too. You missed that in the email. People were getting ill. I don't know.

I don't know. I got a cold the other day. I don't know. Am I blaming a goose on it? Well, I mean, I don't know. This whole thing that we're reporting on is coming off from this one email, isn't it? I don't know, but I'm trying to apply some healthy skepticism to the whole thing.

That's it. Just did a quick Google search about the Egyptian geese. Is he a bad? bad mofos yeah they are bad mofos oh i would mess with him yeah very very fierce and they will run off all other birds or if they tried that i know they didn't try that no mad magnolia springs they did and it worked it just seems in all seriousness in all seriousness it just feels to me it's very dramatic it feels very dramatic to call in the federal government to trap and euthanize geese because you have a goose problem on a pond.

It just feels extreme. I'm trying to find ways to justify it. Maybe maybe there was like an avian flu concern that they It just feels extreme. When a bear shows up in my

neighborhood, I always like to tell people, just don't tattletail on the bear. Don't tattletail on the bear. It'll be fine. He'll do something different tomorrow. What if there's like 40 bears in your neighborhood? Don't tattletail on them either. Okay.

Just let just walk through that bear. Just let it be. We interviewed a town on me, Deter radio, who was dealing with a goose problem at their local parks. And they started using a goosinator, it's called. And it's like, is that a shotgun? No, no, it should be. It's like a big orange floating RC car that's got teeth and eyes painted on it. And they drive that thing like through the flock of geese.

And they just do it enough to the point where they don't want to come back. Sure. There's a hundred ways to make geese not want to come back somewhere. Yeah, you could pay some little boys to haze them with the R's cars. If you were every day sent a guy down there and shot a handful of geese, those geese aren't coming back, dude. Ask any duck hunter. Yeah.

Listen. And you're there for heart-wrenching knockouts. The world's biggest stage. And breathtaking triumph. The 25th, FIFA World Cup. The knockout stage. Every match, every moment. Listen on TSN Radio.

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public land access campaign. Over to you, Yonis. You know, they might get threats for shooting the geese too. Let's go across the pond, speaking of ponds, big pond on the other side of the big pond.

According to an article in the Telegraph, which is a UK-based news service, Wimbledon is now serving venison to lower carbon emissions by not serving beef.

I know, it kind of takes the wind out of sales of that whole article, doesn't it? Because we're like, oh, right, we're going to get

to celebrate some wild game being eaten. But it's not, really about that. They could lower them even more by eating poultry, it turns out. Oh, is that right? I don't know, wild poultry. If that's their objective.

So in an effort to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2030, they've swapped beef for venison. How are they measuring the emissions and the ratings? They've got a rating system developed by a company called Food Steps. Food Steps helps food producers and food purveyors figure out what their carbon footprint is and how to reduce it. They have a scoring system that rates of foods impact.

A is low, F is high. On average, beef dish scores an F. Venison scores a C. The move is criticized by beef farmers. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. If it's wild venison, which there it could be, how is it, what are they talking about? This venison, though, came from behind a fence. What do you mean what are they talking about?

I thought they're saying wild venison isn't an A. Wild venison's an A. I think they're considering like, how would it not be? Because there's like, I'll tell you. I'll tell you in a minute. A couple of things that, you know, that thought worth mentioning. They're not, Wimbledon's not like the first sort of event space to do this over there. It's become popular.

So a bunch of England's premier soccer and rugby stadiums have also switched over to venison. the comments at the end of this article were interesting, most of the folks calling out Wendel Wimbledon for virtue signaling and not calling out the true source of carbon emissions associated with Wimbledon, which, as you can imagine, is like the airplane travel that has to occur for everybody to get there, to enjoy the sporting event, right? Like, if you really gave a shit, you just probably wouldn't do it. Or tell people to stay at home and watch it, right?

Watch on TV. But it's a money-making thing. So, speak of wild, deer, hardly wild. No. These particular ones, now all over England, Scotland, they have a lot of deer. There's a bunch of different species, but these, and they are coal, they are hunted all over these countries, and they, there with their system, they can be sold. Wild game can be sold, right? These particular ones that are being served at Wimbledon come from Richmond Park and Bushy Park,

which are suburban London parks. Big places, like 1,000 acres, I think one, and one was 2,000 acres. But they both have perimeter fencing or walls around them. So they do have like open passageways because they're open 24 hours a day and so, you know, cars can get in and out and people can get in and out. So these deer aren't completely enclosed. but it's like I said, hardly wild. So there's a number of deer in there.

Every year there's a coal. They take out whatever percentage it is. And then it's sold to a like a wholesaler that they can then, you know, sell it on to the caterer that's going to serve. And they sold to the tennis people. They sold this is, yeah. It's very, very manicured. Like even in these parks, there's more fencing and enclosures to basically keep those

deer from eating the shrubbery and the flowers and all the stuff that they have planted over there. What else did I have about that? Yeah, six deer species in England. Only two of them are native, which are the red and the road deer. Four non-natives, fallow, Sika, Munt Jack, and Chinese water deer. Yeah. So, I don't know. They're trying to do it to be cool. Do you know what dishes they're serving in? No, I looked up for a little menu. There was a picture of one. One was tartar, and I forget what the other one was. I can't remember.

Yeah, there was one that had like a piece of eggplant or a zucchini next to it with a little something on top. I mean, everybody's liking it. It's great. I don't know. I'm happy that they're doing it. I mean, why not? I just think it's like, I think the reasoning behind it is a little bit goofy.

Because if you really want to delve into the whole, like, what's better for you? or like what has not better for you what's better for what has less carbon emissions right like is the is the wild game actually better well turns out like if you basically hunt it very close or you call it very close to where you're going where you're where it's where the meat is going up and again they have like they are taking in all this data about like you know how much water it takes for one animal to drink and how much sunlight it's absorbed and how much methane each producing. Because wild game can't be zero either or an A, as you said, because it does produce methane, the same way that a cow does, right? So, wild game, like to really be the best that it can be, it has to be hunted efficiently and not far from where you live. So if you like to fly to Wisconsin and kill a couple of deer

and then fly it back to Montana and eat it, it's the same thing as buying beef from the store probably. It's a dude that shoots a deer out of his window of his house. Yeah. Yes. People might look down on them, but for carbon footprint, the guy that shoots it out of his window and then drags it back into his house and eats it. That's a low carbon dude. 100%.

You made some notes, too, about like, how in the States, if we're going to do it, it had to be farm-raised. Venison, right? Well, farm-raised venison requires more resources than beef. They have no moral high ground. Yep. They can't even claim that. The funny thing is, is this is coming from, like, British. newspapers which like are the most anti-hunting newspapers in the world like they have like

every day it's like those dudes are out of touch with nature man yeah yeah well it just goes to show you their nature i mean it's like what i described in this park right like that's their version of nature yeah they yeah they they haven't walked around in our they've had no nature for so long they can't they can't even talk about it without getting crazy yeah was there anything on that list that was an A that's like tasty? I saw one thing that said like the like the lowest carbon emission plate that you could eat was a it was like a it was like a it was P soup and I forget what else it had in it it might have been like broccoli

and pea soup or something was like the most you know I'll take a bowl that man grown in your own garden take a bowl yeah probably the Wimbledon chef also said it was a nutritional decision sure saying that the meat is leaner, more protein rich. Oh. So that was part of their calculus as well. Is that what Spencer says to blow you off? I think he, I don't.

Sure. No, no, no, no, it's not. I can't remember. What do you say to blow something? I'm not going to tell you guys. No, it's the way he says, sure. He's like, sure, it's a specific thing. And then he goes, sure, sure, sure.

It's like him going, whatever, whatever. Should we get, so? Should we come back to America? and go to Texas. Yeah, San Antonio. This boils my blood. Oh, God. This is not like,

this boils my blood. It's the kind of thing you don't. You thought I was worked up about those four geese. Just don't expect to hear this kind of stuff coming out of Texas. No, sometimes Texas will let you down. That's a country song. So developers,

developers in Texas are shutting down the historic San Antonio Target, hunting, and fishing club. It's one of Texas's oldest sporting clubs founded in, 1995 and they need to permanently end their outdoor shooting after settling a lawsuit with a neighboring landowner. That landowner happens to be a developer, a real estate developer. Given to fly. Given to fly. Livided Parkership. FIntyed with Mosaic Land Development. So next door to the shooting range, there's a 40-acre undeveloped tract. And the lawsuit, they filed a lawsuit in late 20-24. basically saying that the shooting range is causing all kinds of problems and it's causing

cows sales to collapse and they're saying stray bullets buckshot and birdshot regularly crossed onto their property specifically included claims that projectiles were being found on the neighboring property and well the projectiles also were trespassing that's right property but i don't what like look me in the eye and tell me the last time you found not a casing the last time you found a stray bullet i'll tell you where

at a shooting range like where well yeah like backstop oh sure you know not yeah you're not gonna like walk around be like oh there's a bullet laying on the ground Nate pointed out if you're on like an old civil war battlefield that can happen yeah but they generally like conical projectiles aren't just laying about Yeah. They go, like, so there's that. There's also, they're also saying the club operated like a drinking fraternity and failed to adequately, adequately control their shooting activities. So unsafe environment. It's like bad for home sales. The developer, one of the developers, Blake Yantis said, we had no problem with them being there doing what they did. But we had a real problem with them shooting bullets into our property.

it's like, and then the gun club, of course, denies all of the allegations. 70 years, there was no evidence, anyone, you know, was injured, no accidents. And they're saying that the allegations were greatly exaggerated. So it's, it's like a he said sheet that said thing kind of going on. So the courts take over. They issue a temporary restraining order in December of 24. All shooting activities get halted. And that continued, like as this thing was going to trial, trial was scheduled for May of 2026, just last month.

It was canceled because the settlement was reached. As this was going on, there was also a nearby school that briefly, school and daycare that briefly joined the lawsuit, they got out of this thing once the settlement, you know, came down. Um, the unusual thing about this settlement is that the club's going to pay $800,000. To who? To the developer. Um, they say it's not an admission of guilt. It's just like a business decision so that they could move on with life. Where are they getting that money?

I don't know. Don't know. Maybe club dues. I have no idea. Um, the, the, the more unusual thing is part of the settlement was a deed restriction. was placed on the club's property, which permanently prohibits outdoor firearm use, even if ownership changes.

So like, it's not, like, they're not gonna be able to ever shoot outdoors there again, unless this deed restriction, some style gets modified. So kind of a bummer. I mean, I can't say if the allegations are true of like the drinking fraternity and things like that, but it like, It's an example of like nationally, you know, develop development versus existing land use.

And it's something that's happening around the country with other shooting ranges kind of versus expanding residential development. And yeah, because this dude, he buys 40 acres. Yeah. And his intention is to put in hundreds of new homes. But he can't put in all those new homes if these guys are shooting at the shooting range. Right. Someone comes to look at a lot, boom, boom, boom, people are like, eh, you know. Yeah, you know like being like cows not condos? Yeah. It's almost like guns not condos. Yep, exactly. And so there's kind of this broader issue that that is described as the legalese is coming to nuisance, coming to the nuisance. So for example, a shooting range or a farmer, a racetracker, an airport does its thing for decades. Oh. Then a developer comes in once a to build a new neighborhood right next door to this place. And this is where the problems start.

Yeah. It's coming to a nuisance. Yeah, coming to the nuisance. So some states have range protection laws to shield established shooting facilities from these kind of things, but they don't apply if the plaintiff can demonstrate like a genuine public safety hazard. So that's what happened here. But like as an example, like elsewhere around the country, who thought that Madison, Alabama would be in the news twice and one day? I thought surely it was a different Madison. But Madison County shooting range in Alabama, similar situation going on. It's about projectiles leaving the property. Clear Creek Gun Club in California. This one's a little different. the people that are going after this gun club are using a different strategy, which is

permitting an environmental compliance rather than the shooting activity itself. But it demonstrates how local governments are like increasingly regulating ranges and however they can. Other places, Michigan, Colorado, there's litigation like this going on all over the country. So it's something to keep an eye on. God, this Madison County, Alabama, that place is hot. Yep.

Hot on news. It's like Washington, D.C. over there. Yep. Hot bed. I can't believe the settlement was 800,000, because how badly did they think they were going to get it handed to them in court if that was the number that they arrived at without even doing that? I guess that, you know, the developer must have demonstrated, this is my guess, must have

demonstrated, like, loss of sales of a certain dollar amount. Yeah, but they were already there shooting. I'm just telling you like what's going on. They're saying that it caused them to lose sales. So they demonstrated a financial loss is my guess. I thought the judge was said, you got to give the gun guys $800,000. No,

no, no, no, the club will pay. No, and I'm saying, I feel like I could picture that being true. Especially in Alabama.

In Texas. Well, Texas, yeah. I thought higher Texas. I'm sorry. Yeah. So there you go. Texas is going to hell in a handbasket.

So join a jump gun club like way out in a country. Yeah, I used to belong to a gun club that was in a Like a somewhat populated era area And man, that was the strictest gun club I've ever been in Yeah And they had those, you ever see those overhead things? You couldn't launch one if you wanted to Right

You were shooting through a tunnel Because they put these overhead archway Like these overhead barriers every whatever 10 yards Yep So bullets can't Yeah, it's like These like, picture like big rectangular concrete slab sitting on goalposts. And if you wanted to sit just, if you were just a freak and wanted to send one off into the,

into the Netherlands, you couldn't have done it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I, but I do feel like those big, like indoor ranges are also becoming more popular. Like my buddy in Denver, he shoots, you know, his deer rifle at an indoor range. I've been there a couple times, pretty sweet. Sounds loud.

And I think, yeah, it is kind of. We lost ours in Bozeman. I didn't know that. Yeah, there was one out on Jackrabbit that just became a law enforcement range instead. But that may be the way things, the direction things go because of things like this. You ever sling an arrow in a suburban environment? Many. Many.

My kid's buddy shot an arrow into the neighbor's place. I remember that. I ever tell you this story? I'll tell you the story. That was more of a social experiment than anything. No. Yeah. I put one over 185 in Georgia.

and just was a big highway and was just waiting for the news that night it's hard to tell what's going on the other side of a highway I was just some driver just whack yeah um

coyotes are eating iguanas in Florida oh buddy like crazy surprising yes um I you know Spencer you ate a coyote would you imagine it if that coyote was predating on

iguanas. How would it impact the taste? Fattened on iguanas. I bet somebody would tell me that iguana tastes like chicken. They're like pork adjacent. So I can't imagine it would be that much worse than whatever is, you know, usually in their diet. The guana finished coyote meat. Yeah.

Yeah. Probably be better than the coyote. A little fishy. Oh. So a study published in the Journal of Urban Ecology this year, discovering coyote diet in a Floridian urban area. Quick history on the coyotes in Florida. They weren't there at the time of European contact.

There's 12,000-year-old fossils and whatnot. But historically, in recent history, they haven't been there. A lot of this is because the Red Wolf population that occupied that niche. But as that population declined and was extirpated from regions of Florida, they moved back in, especially as suburban sprawl increase, they do really well in suburban areas. and their range has increased. Concurrently, iguanas have also spread.

They were introduced to Florida in the 1960s via exotic pet trade and cargo ships, kind of your typical introduction scheme. But in 1964, they got a major boost when a pet dealer purposely released 300 of them. That's a crazy number. Usually these non-natives start with like two, four.

When I was at 300, I had an iguana that escaped out of my house. for like two months during the summer and then one day I saw I'm hanging on the screen a lot Yeah hung out got him back What was a pet dealer doing with 300 Aguant dude? It's it's like a mystery That's a lot of inventory. That's what he was asking himself Yeah, seriously I got it I think there was a man I know I was filled optimistic I guess a guise I definitely think there was a time when it kind of became fashionable to have these things as pets

You know what I mean? I'll be frank with you man like That that's not a appetizing animal to me. No, they get mean when they get bit. Like, as a pet. I heard it. I'm not an appetite. I don't look at a, like, I look at a deer. Oh, you mean to go hunt him and eat? I don't just say, I look at a deer. It looks like a good thing to eat.

When I look at an iguana, I look at a chicken, for instance. I see a chicken. I'm like, man, someone should eat that chicken. But when I look at an iguanas is not the feeling I get. Hey, Phil, we pull up that picture of that coyote holding that iguana. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. That's cool. Imagine a, like, it just looks like a pheasant sitting in his mouth. Yeah, that's a big, that's a big chunk of food for a coyote.

Go! Yeah. He hasn't even bothered to try to kill that thing either, has he? They just shake them up. There's a couple videos on the internet you should go find of them grabbing one. Like a guan as big as he is. Yeah, I imagine that ends with them just like biting into their guts. No.

How else do you think he kills him? I don't know. Shake them and. Look at that. Eat the guts first. Then they eat. You know that's a fact? I'm just guessing.

If a coyote... When they eat other animals. Listen to Kyle, man, he don't want iguana guts. Like, what do you want? He's going for those hams. What do you think a coyote does, though, to, like, make its heart stop eating in an iguana? Shake it. I don't, I bet you just, like, break its back.

I bet he just starts eating. Yeah, he just starts eating in the guts. Yeah. And then dead. I'm just saying the iguana he's got there. I don't know. I just get a live vibe off that of iguana. Yeah, no, I agree.

That's why I think it ends with him, like, putting a paw on his, you know, front arm. Yeah, I mean, no. They use that tail like a whip, man. Yeah, I'm a little surprised they're iguana that size can't almost defend himself against just a little 20-pound coyote. Well, that's what's interesting. Back to the news story. Back to the news story, they'll freeze and just turn into little iguana pops.

They fall out of the trees. Fall right out of the trees and those coyotes. Nom-nom. It's vulnerable. Well, let's here, folks. The 2026 Meat Eater Auction House of Oddities is back and open for bids now. This year's auction features eyebrow-raising outdoor gear donated by the meat eater crew, employees, and friends of the brand, including Steve's dad's shitty old truck full of badass hunting gear, the Honda Outboard Motor from DOS Boat Season 3, Clay Newcomb's Alaskan Wet Suit Bear Hide, fly fishing memorabilia from the personal collection of Lefty Cray and more. The auction house kicks off July 8 and runs for two weeks with 100% of proceeds going to our land access initial.

which to date has helped fund new public land acquisitions, such as the recent 200-acre Tuckertown acquisition in North Carolina, the 328-acre Wildcat Bend acquisition in Montana, and the 215-acre Shilohpond project in Maine. Visit themeatheater.com slash auction to place your bids now, get your hands on some meat eater history, and become a meaningful part of our next public land access campaign. So going back, Phil, you'll pull up that picture of where the studies conducted, just south of Miami, the epicenter of the 300 iguana release. They basically did a SCAT pickup study near the Montgomery Botanical Center where twice weekly for a year, they followed a trail and picked up 120 SCAT samples. They then dissected those and put it into 231 different identifiable food items.

And then you can see this is broken down by month. And just to call out, this is occurrence, not volume. So if they found one occurrence of a seed, that is categorized the same as a giant chunk of iguana ham or whatever it may be. So there's a little bit of nuance that they could dive into more. But 74 instances of grass, 95 of various plants, which stretches the whole gambit of avocados, mangoes, or not palm seeds, but other fruits and vegetables. 26 instances of iguanas and then 23 instances of palm seeds and then onesie twosies of crabs,

snails, snails, eggshells. Extreme onesies twosies. Yes. It's like what they're not eating is bird feathers, gravel, snails and crabs. And mammals.

There were zero instances of mammal fur. And bird bones are only five. Yes. And so there's a... Oh, so the total zeros aren't even on the list. Yeah, exactly. There's things. that they literally did not find evidence

of mammal fur. Damn. And so my first thought is the iguana pops. They're just eating them in the winter. They freeze. They fall out of the tree and opportunistic coyote goes and eats them. And anecdotally, there's reports of that. But if you look in that June column,

there's six occurrences of iguana in the scat. That's one less than January, which is the peak at seven. And then it's pretty evenly distributed except in March and April, which points to when the fruiting trees are like when the plant mass is kind of at its best. Yeah. Palm seeds really palm seeds pick up when iguanas drop off. Yes. Yep. Um, and so like it's more

the same of a coyotes are awesome opportunity of state hunters. That's not true. Tell me, is that true. In March and April, there's zeros across the board. It's like they're not, it's like there's nothing. Oh, they moved out. They moved out. March and April, they only had, they had zero samples. Right. So they didn't find any scat on that track that they followed. Oh, I see. Yeah. There's a pre-determined. So we don't know. So if you take June, for instance, when they did their June scat walk, they picked up 14 samples. Okay. Of those samples, six of the samples had grass. Nine of the samples had just plants, whatever that means. Six of the samples had iguana meat. Three had palm seeds. one had gravel in it and one had snail in it.

And if you go up to January, every single piece of scat had aquana in it. Yeah, if this informed everything you knew about a coyote's diet, you'd be like, they primarily eat iguana. Yeah. They're iguanivores. Oh, I like that. It's like all they eat. I'd like to know if they're doing this because the ecosystem of South Florida is so screwed up

that there are no like mammals for them to eat. or it's just like eating what there is the most of available, you know? Yeah. The easiest path of, you know. It's definitely an element of the easiest. It's, there's an interesting discussion of like a non-native species that's all that is intersecting with potentially a neo-native or a naturalized species. I'd ask Jim, a Jim Heffelfinger, the deer preacher about his thoughts on the neo-native classification. He doesn't like it.

He thinks it's just a... shiny. Why not? It's just a shiny new word that doesn't really mean anything. What word does he like? Naturalized. Oh, sure. It's just what is. So, this is like a natural species. I'm just start saying that. Yeah, I think it's better. That is just, it does naturally expand in the range. It's not a human introduction.

And local biologists are all about the predation of these iguanas, but it's not going to solve the problem by any means if you imported like a thousand coyotes, maybe, but you're probably going to run into human conflicts before you run out of. of iguanas.

Who'd thought? Who'd have thought? But they got iguana bird dog, iguana dogs chasing down iguanas now down there. It's great, great fun. Dude,

where we, when we were in Key West, we found a flyer for an outfiter offering, uh, day hunts. It was like 800 bucks. $800. It's an air gun iguanas.

Yeah. I got, I, uh, I caught one on a fly once when I was down fishing with Nick. dragging that thing across the sand that would want to jump right on it that should get you like an A plus plus on that

environmental friendliness scale because you're eating a non-native local over to me tungsten well first I got to I want to give people a glimpse into the inner workings of what we cover and don't cover you see the first word I have there I do I do it's my favorite subject

grand platinum I want to have to talk about them for much longer. I've wanted, but okay, here's the, here's the thing. The news show has a certain promise where we deal with issues have to do with natural resources, hunting, fishing, conservation, outdoor stuff. What we talk about. Now, so we would never be able to talk about

a political candidate. Right? Can't do that. But this guy that was running in Maine was an oyster farmer. So then I kept thinking, are we allowed to talk about a Senate candidate who's an oyster farmer? And

kind of an oyster farmer. Yeah, he's got one client. To be clear, this goes back before what just happened with him. Oh, yeah. This has been vexing me for months. Because what happened is, in Maine, there's these progressive Democrat operatives who have made it,

their project is to travel around the country looking for what they deemed to be working class progressives. That they'll promote into being politicians. So they track down this grand platinum guy and they see some video he made about oyster farming.

And the one way to tell if someone has working class bona fides would be that you'd go ask working class people. But they don't know about that. They think because he's got an oyster farm, he's like a working class guy. But his oyster farm, his only client

is his mom. His dad is a little lawyer. He went to boarding school. He served in the Marines, says he bought a house on a VA loan. His dad bought finance the house. Hmm. Has a SS tattoo on his chest, a totencamp, a Nazi tattoo on his chest. The vetting on this guy was terrible. And I kept wanting to talk about it, but I can't because it's not part of our deal. And then I was like, well, he is an oyster farmer, but not really. And now he's dropping out of the race, so I miss my chance. Yeah, he was like a cosplay and oyster farmer.

I missed my chance. Did he officially drop out? No. Not yet. Everyone's called on him to drop out. Because here's the deal. Here's the deal they've like. By the time his heirs, he might be.

Yeah. It's gotten pretty loud. Yeah. Like, it is, in some circles, it is that. And I'm treading in very, very, very dangerous, delicate territory right now. But in some circles, on some crimes, an accusation is equivalent to guilt. And in his party affiliation would be an accusation as equivalent to guilt. He has been accused of sexual misconduct, which is equivalent to being guilty.

That's the rule they made. And he has to live by the rule. So we can't talk about him. But I'm going to talk about tungsten. And we've been in it, like, but to talk about tungsten, I want to talk about my kids in ammo cans. Okay. Everyone knows an ammo can, a green metal ammo can. 50 or 30 cal.

Just ammo cans. My kids only know ammo cans through the context of geocash, of a geocash. They have, just out of shit luck, they have stumbled into two geocashes, but not geocashing. Geocashing is like, you take an ammo can and put some fun stuff in it and hide it. And then guys use GPS. It's kind of like an early GPS thing. You can go use GPS and you'll see that there's a pin in some remote area. And you go to that pin and be like, lo and behold, here's a geocash.

And you take a little trinket out of it and you leave a trinket in it. We did it in my high school computer class to learn how to use a handheld GPS. Got it. I had a briefling with geocaching. And the best one I found was it was on a, you know, like a little electrical box. and I was standing on top of it could not find it and it was a magnetic bolt head on the side of the electrical

box and you just barely unscrew that. Oh, that's what you were after. And that's what the creative is great. So my kids just out of total shit luck have stumbled into two of these boxes. Did they pilfer it? I told them you take something to leave something. Oh, I got you.

So in their head, then we're at my buddies and there's an ammo can in his gun room. And they're like, He took the geo-cats. Because in their head, an ammo can isn't an ammo can. In their head, an ammo can is a geocash can. This is me and tungsten. Because I've only known, like, when I hear the word tungsten,

I have thought of, like, turkey bullets. TSS, tungsten super shot. And then all of a sudden, I started hearing about the tungsten this, tungsten that. And I've been forced to, like, come to terms with, the broader scale of tungsten outside of turkey ammo. Turkey ammo doesn't weigh real heavily on the... Nothing.

It's like if you looked at all the ammo cans on the planet and what they're doing, how many are geocaching? Yeah. None. Well, my view on tungsten was TSS Tungsten Super Shot, and now I'm like waking up to this whole world of tungsten. Yeah, if there was a pie chart for all the tungsten, that would just be like folded into other or something like that.

It's the other of the other. Yeah. 10 to 15% of tungsten goes to munitions, but that's military munitions. They use it in cluster bombs. They use it in, what else I have here? Warhead, missile warheads, tank ammunition, these penetrator bolts, tungsten penetrator bolts, which aren't as incendiary as depleted uranium. And also, you can use them in areas where if they're going to be littering the battlefield,

you don't have to worry about little kids playing with depleted uranium. in the future, use tungsten bolts. Military uses tons of the stuff. In World War II, there's a thing called the Wolfram Crisis. The Nazis were using anti-tank rounds made out of tungsten rods. The Spaniards were selling it to them. The Wolfram Crisis is when the U.S. had to go to the Spain and threatened roughing them up to stop selling the Nazis tungsten.

This is the whole world of Trump. tungsten. Now, tungsten prices, pull up that chart. Look at tungsten prices right now. Oh, look at that. They've since dropped off a bit. So you go, 2010, all these years, you can think of all these years

is us just shooting all kinds of turkeys. Oh man, the glory days. It was basically free. Shooting all kinds of turkeys, 2015, 2020, and tungsten is basically like they're giving it away. okay it's like what would that be like

250 bucks purse one dry metric ton unit of tungsten or equivalent to 7.93 kilograms

of tungsten you could get for about 250 bucks then it just right now with the at war in Iran and some other issues 3,000 bucks

for 17 pounds for 17 pounds of tungsten it goes crazy China is hoarding the turkey ammo like China has been very strategic about tungsten they're like those American turkey hunters

because they want to stick it to the turkey hunters the Chinese they're like when they think of what bugs them they're like Taiwan it's the T's Taiwan and Turkey Hunters so then it's like a strategic medal they call it a war

metal okay it's of that strategic significance. So now, me still thinking about tungsten, when I see the word tungsten, I'm thinking about Turkey Schnitzel. Now it's all over, reported all over the place about this new sort of like political scandal coming out of the tungsten world. There's a huge reserve of tungsten in Kazakhstan. I don't know about how many turkeys they got, but they got boatloads of tungsten in Kazakhstan. The Commerce Secretary, Trump's Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnik, earlier I was going to make a saucy Epstein tie-in to try to make the story seem more saucy.

It's tenuous. He was on Epstein's Island. He had lunch there. Yeah. All the debate about who was and wasn't, he took his family for lunch. He said. It could be the Howard Lutnik files, basically. Yeah, yeah.

He, of all the guys that were or were not or never did, but did, this gentleman had lunch there with his family. He meets with the president of Kazakhstan. about all this turkey ammo. No wild turkeys. Just looked it up. Well, they do have interactions with Turks, but it's from the country, not the burden. So when they think of Turks, yeah, they're thinking of their neighbors. So he meets with them about how we're going to go get all this TSS, all this tungsten.

Like, by God, I got to take care of those turkey. Out of Kazakhstan. Okay. They make, they agree. They get the president. of Kazakhstan to agree to let a little known U.S. mining, a little known mining organization get a contract to go do the thing, all right, to go do the mine. Then they vow, it hasn't been handed over yet, but the Trump administration vows 1.6 billion in federal financing

to invest in and get the tungsten mine up and running. So now you're picturing just, tungsten super shot flowing into ammo stores all around the world that that 1.6 billion was going to that small mining company yeah no they're under yeah they're like they're there they're yeah incentivizing lubricating making a vow for funding initial investment funding and also there's some other money where the u.s would actually take a stake in the mine but then this is the weird part and this is like this is even reported in the new york post which is like a very conservative publication like a very Trump-friendly publication. The New York Post is even saying

that this deal stinks. Because Trump's boys then turn around and take a 20% stake in a corporate entity tied to the mine. Lutnik's boys take on the banking function

of going out and finding the investors all around turkey ammo. Well, when this gets investigated, it will get investigated. Don Jr. just can be like, dude, I was hot on this for my turkey hunting exploits. It'll wind, but it'll wind up.

Who's going to investigate this? It's already getting investigated. It'll get investigated, but it won't happen because, like, remember with, it's like, it's like, it's exactly like the Hunter Biden situation. Just, they're not trying to hide it this time. It's Hunter Biden in Breezma in Ukraine. And it's, it's, it's this situation here. It's exactly the same, but it'll just all end in partons. It'll end in pardons.

Yeah. All this reporting about this tungsten deal, which is not like my whole tungsten epiphany, my whole tungsten education of like what what is up with this metal um part of this reporting comes out of um these financial disclosures right or like a lot of like a lot of investigation to financial disclosures where trump made 2.2 billion during his first year in office up from 622 million or a third as much the year before he returned to the white house so again even the new york Post is like, what is up with the tungsten deal? If tungsten prices come back down

and turkey hunters are once again flush with tungsten super shot, I'll look the other way. I'll look the other way. You'll pardon. I'll be like, in the end, you know, there's the right thing for the American turkey hunter. Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of a crazy.

It is a hot, it's weird to see a metal. Like gold, like gold drove world politics for centuries. I mean, gold drove world politics. It put governments in power. It took governments out of power. It led to the colonial enterprises around the globe. And then now, like in this moment, it is tungsten's like tungsten's time to shine. Yep.

From a lowly turkey ammo. to the front pages of the New York Post and the New York Times. Tungsten. That's it. Tungsten. If you want to look like a real know-it-all, start calling Tungsten Wolfram.

Why? Just another word for it. Oh, let me tell you this. Last thing about Tungsten. It doesn't come out of the ground looking like what you think. Like turkey pellets? Yeah, it comes out of the ground.

You know, just mine out number nine tungsten shot. No, it's a real elaborate process to get it, but I was watching a video of a bullet hitting a block of tungsten. The bullet vaporizes against the block of tungsten. It vaporizes against the tungsten. Thanks to join the news show, ladies and gentlemen. Max has got some good 410 tungsten. He bought a extreme discount from a poor guy that didn't know what he had.

dude you want to know how those uranium penetrators work hunting demands preparation persistence and gear that will not quit on you that is why i wear first light this isn't about hype it's about no compromise gear built to perform built to last whether it's their industry leading merino wool keeping me comfortable through the cold and the hot or their durable outerwear shrugging off the elements first light is built to help you go farther and stay longer designed by hunters, four hunters, with a deep commitment to conservation and land access, no shortcuts, no excuses, just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com. That's f-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com.

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