The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 933: Ask Me Anything with Steven Rinella

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

Steven Rinella answers questions from listeners, forums, and reviews including: does hunting need more recruitment; career regrets; the most maligned game animal; guided hunts; the best restaurant meals; invasive species; and more! 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.

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That's your house asking for better internet. Switch to Bell Pure Fiber, Canada's most reliable internet awarded by Open Signal from $75, a month. Price guaranteed for two years on a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for more details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Welcome to the news show, everybody, but this ain't your normal news show. What this is, this is a ask me and ask me anything thing. Because we get, so through the interview show, the Me Eater podcast, the interview show, and the news show, and through all the books we do and videos we make, we get all these questions from listeners like you or viewers like you

or readers like you. And we never have enough time to get to them all. So now and then in different ways, we will try to tackle the problem of just like answering questions. And so we've gone to all the normal places to get questions. I don't know, just questions that come in over email. questions in comment sections, questions in reviews,

just questions from all over the place. We even solicited questions and questions came in. Pulled questions from, like questions from online debates and forums and things. And we got a whole bunch. We're going to start with the questions. First question.

Here you're delivering these questions is our very own Nate Mason. First question. Okay. Do you still have that scat copy? coffee table if so what's your dream specimen to put in there I do not have I do not have and have not had for a long time my scat coffee table what the question refers to is some years ago I had this big coffee table and I put a lip around it and got a piece of glass cut for it and I painted it yellow like the National Geographic binder

yellow on the old magazines and I just filled it with every kind of animal scat I could find and I had great specimen I had like a coyote that shat out a deer hoof I had all just all kinds of stuff um the problem I found is even if you dried him and lacquered them they would still just corrode and just got hard to maintain um by like black bears eating grass black bears eating pine nuts grizzlies eating grass grizzlies eating pine nuts the one specimen that maybe would have had me keep it alive is I was reading years ago this this biologist I think his name is Michael Faye

and you did this thing called a mega transect where he did this big transect across the Congo. And for a while he had this journalist with him. And this journalist was talking about finding a leopard dropping where the leopard had shat out a chimp's finger. If I remember right. If I had that and found it, it can't be like given to me. If I found that, I would go make me.

me a whole new scat table and just put that in there got it be the only thing in there where did the scat table depart your life relative to your current wife meeting you long before it just became a logistics thing because i used to just roam around like when i was starting out as a young writer i didn't have a permanent place of residence for the most part and so it just became an issue of of the same reason I never have like shoulder taxidermy done is still from that era of just being worried about things that were hard to move and so it wasn't like it wasn't like i like burned it and had like a ceremony it was just that it became hard to move and i have no idea where it winded up i probably almost certainly it went to a goodwill but i don't even remember doing it i like i'm

sure i would have emptied it shop backed it out and brought it to a goodwill i have no idea what happened into it. I'd love to have. If anybody has it, I would buy, I'll, I'll buy it back for what you have into it. Matter of fact, I'll double what you have into it if I can get it back. You'll know it's yellow glass top. Got it. Next question. Any regrets turning your passion into your career. Did you have reservations when you started down this path? No. And I, and I'm, I'm, I'm getting into the asker's head a little bit when I guess. I'm guessing what they picture is that they picture that my passion

was outdoor stuff hunting, fishing, trapping, whatever. I'm guessing they're referring to that and not that my passion was writing. So a thing I would ask myself, and it's a reasonable question, is they'd be like, what industry are you in? You know, I'd be like, I don't know.

Am I in the outdoor industry? sure maybe. Am I in the media business? Sure maybe. Am I a writer? Sure maybe. You know what I mean? So what I'm guessing is they, no one would say like, were you ever nervous about turning your passion of writing into an occupation? Because in my mind, being a writer means you make your money from writing. They're probably meaning the outdoor stuff. No, not at all. I get that question. And I have people, my older half brother, Frank, he was a big hunter and he became, a big game guide and he became a game warden um it ruined hunting for him for many years when when he was a game warden what do you think he's doing on opening day you know and it was like he later realized i sort of thought i was like pursuing hunting as a thing and i got to where i wasn't so it's a thing that

happens i've never felt that way i don't know what else i do know what else i'd be doing and i'd rather do this well that's that's the next question if meat eater had never happened and writing didn't put food on the table what would you be doing for a living right now well that's two even that's two separate different things like had had i not built meat eater you know along with many other people had i not built me it or i'd be a writer if i if i hadn't become a writer i'd probably i'd probably have a tree i guess i'd probably wind up having my own tree service and i'd probably run tree service. If writing was out,

because that's what I was doing. As I was becoming a writer, and I had like a side gig, and my side gig became less and less vital, it was tree work. So, it's so hard to say, but I got into,

part of getting in the tree work was, it was a thing that you could move away from, you know, for a long time, I worked during the summer really hard and save money so that I could trap all fall, right? And getting into tree work, part of getting into tree work was the nature of the industry

allowed you to have big chunks of time to hunt or whatever. And then when I was ending being in tree work, the guy that owned the tree service that I worked for was a writer who was also writing. So for us to get done at noon or one was great because we'd go home, take a nap, wake up, have a cup of coffee, and do our writing deals in separate places. And in the morning we'd get up and do trees. It's also entangled, you know, but yeah, maybe tree work. I was interested in Millwright work for a while, but probably tree work.

Steve's tree service. Were you guys doing big, like, insurance jobs or? Man, we did it all. We did contracts, city contracts. One year we did 300 Boulevard Maples in the University District of Missoula. We'd also do big removals, insurance work, hazard stuff, down stuff. down stuff, pruning family shade trees.

We did everything. Our specialty was stuff he couldn't get a bucket to. You climbed? Yeah. I was a climber. And our specialty was like non-bucket work. So hard to get to stuff.

But we'd get a bucket if we needed it. Yeah. Yeah. We'll stop on the tree work stuff. But staying on the book writing and career advice, someone wrote in, given current and future AI

advances, would you consider a career in writing obsolete? If someone has written for magazines and a how-to book and wants to be a full-time writer after retiring in five to ten years, has that window closed? Depends. Huge depends. If you're the kind of writer who generates, this is an observation, this is a pre-AI observation from a writer friend of mine who would always laugh about that every year in July or whatever, you'd see these articles and magazines, these kind of listicles, we call them. And it would be how to beat the heat this summer. And every year it comes back, it's just a perpetual article, how to beat the heat this summer, or stuff like that. If that's what you're writing, your world is tough. If that's what you're writing, your world is

tough. But the thing that always keep mind about AI, I think is interesting. is that AI can only draw from what's in the internet. Right? Like, AI can't draw from things that aren't in the internet. The moment after President Trump was shot in the year in Butler, Pennsylvania, like, in that moment, AI didn't know. Who knew?

Witnesses, right? And then it gets fed in, and now there's an AI version. But in the moment, there's not. breaking news will always be that way last night here's something that's not here's something that there will be no AI overview of no AI I could not write this article last night yesterday in the middle of the day I had to run a bear out of my garage I'm in my house middle of the day and I hear something like crashing around in the garage and I go out and there's a bear in there and I run them out and all this little adventure happened and then later that day he's in my neighbor

garage and i'm kind of get involved involved myself in that um this is this doesn't exist this doesn't exist on the internet right so it depends what kind of writer you are it's bad for a lot of kind of writers it's not intimidating to me it's not intimidating to me because i i i deal largely in i deal a lot of things that haven't happened yet as they're happening. And I deal a lot in things where they've already happened, but I have a spin on it or I have a take on it that isn't going to be matched by something. As it currently exists, I can smell AI writing a mile away.

And not only that, it gets duped. We keep talking about just doing something for fun is just making fake legislation. And then watching, and it'll be 24 hours later, 36 hours later, fake legislation will be in the AI overview, right? I've seen it happen with fake wildlife news. It's in the AI overview. And you can be like, where did it come from? It came from this fake thing that was intentionally written to be fake.

So, no, not for me. Like, it doesn't intimidate me, but there's some people I think you should be very afraid, you know. Like, if you write Broadhead reviews, for instance, or sprinkler reviews, that's a worse situation. The folks I feel real bad for are food bloggers. I don't know about that. When I ask chat GPT, how many ads gives me exactly what I need. Oh, I understand. On the topic of AI, we at Meat Eater, and this is formed as a question,

we at Meat Eater criticized the way data centers are being rolled out and their impact on natural resources. Then we go and run an AI ad. How do you think about that conflict? It's even worse than this person thinks. Think about it like this. Not only is there an ad, think about we, we a couple of years ago went to Cornell to meet the people who built the bird app Merlin. And I use the bird at Merlin all the time. And I've promoted it as one of my favorite apps.

Buddy, that's AI. Okay. The other day, we were out camping and we're troubled. shooting a solar device, like an off-grid solar device. Oh, yeah. And there's a component. I'm like, can't figure out what the component does. How is it supposed to be configured?

Through a Starlink connection, we are going to take a photo of it and through chat, GPT, find out not only what the component, but everything we need to know about the component out in the woods and fixed, okay? it's it's not stopable what i think the argument is is the argument is how are we going to do this how are we going to approach the infrastructure are we going to approach it thoughtfully and are the users the user base the communities the nation are we going to force these enterprises into doing things in a way that might not be the most expedient but might be the most sustainable and long-term most pragmatic approaches.

Meaning maybe it's easier to go by land, to go by grasslands. And there's a bunch of water being unused. Maybe that's easier. Maybe that's more politically expedient, whatever, in some region. Maybe the answer is to really focus heavily on decayed industrial sites. okay offline factories they're pulling out coal fire generator plants

have been pulling out like the one where I grew up the coal fire generator plant where I grew up is gone now maybe it should be sites like that well that's really expensive okay maybe that's the way it needs to go so like you're not

AI's not going away I'm not going to stop I'm going to use it but I think pressure needs to apply to get it to go the right way the same way i use oil but at times i've been critical of the oil industry and how they approach their business in terms of just like the ad thing a lot of that is exceedingly complicated and what is normally the case is when you use platforms

youtube wherever you distribute um you use platforms and you don't have a lot of say over you don't have a lot of say over what or virtual or no say like over what's done if I'm a big curb year enthusiasm fan if I'm watching curbinger enthusiasm highlights on YouTube and I see a YouTube ad pop

up I don't think to myself oh Larry David must love this company he doesn't have anything to do with it you have some say in what we call PE so like personally endorsed ads on podcasts you have a in it and and I try to exert a level of control and discipline about doing that then

you run into the question of doing the work I do doing making the products we make it's expensive it requires people it's like an occupation people have to be paid you can't run this doesn't run on goodwill so we need to be able to monetize the things or else they die right And so yeah, it's a constant debate. And at times, I will, not at times, every week, I turn down many ads that I don't feel comfortable with every week. And basically throw away, you know, big chunks of money because I'm like, I don't want to do that. I can't do that.

Yeah. That tension gets to a question someone asked of, what does it actually look like practice? a land ethic when you have the tension of those commercial interests and the commitment to conservation that you have. Is it something at meat eater scale today? Is it something concrete that you give up or is it just a way we think about doing business? Man, it's so hard to say. It's hard to answer because it occurs at so many levels. Just take like something like a very basic level would be that within the meat eater family of brands, there is first light. The technical hunting and fishing apparel company First Light sits within the meat eater family of brands. They make camo, okay? Camel clothes.

They, we make camel clothes. So 1% of all camo sales go to conservation organizations. So you'd be like, when they're saying like the cost, it's a cost just right off the top, right? but I don't know maybe some people see that maybe some people see that and they're like well I want to buy from them because they support these things I don't know how that balances out

other things is I build in I try to build in a conservation ethic and build in serious conversations into things to educate listeners and viewers about things that matter to them probably at a

at a at a at a at a at a at a at a at a at a at a at a at a at times a personal cost and at times a cost to the private performance of our materials. People hate when things like get political. But in my view, everything is political. Like it or not, fishing, hunting, national parks, national forests, they're political. When how many, when the minimum size of a largemouth bass that you can keep goes from 12 inches of 14 inches, as happened when I was growing up in Michigan, that is political because governors are political figures.

Governors get elected. Governors appoint people. Governors influence commissions. Like, there's no part of life that isn't political. Listeners, viewers generally hate it, but I'm like, you have to understand this kind of stuff. I try to bake in, like, my operating thesis on videos and stuff is out of it to go like 80% entertainment, 20% like conservation medicine.

I think a lot of people could do without it. But I insist on doing it. If you came and told me, if you were some kind of, if you were really good at metrics and audience assessment, and you came and said, listen, man, the whole conservation messaging thing boars people, your material to all do better if it wasn't in there, your material would do better if you never had political figures on

because they're too divisive. Your material will do better if you never pointed out. ways in which certain sections of the community might be behaving in a way that brings down everybody else or whatever like don't do any of that i'd say i still feel like i have to do that i still feel like i have to do that because i think it's important to do that so yeah it's like it's like money um another thing is i mean like i serve on boards of conservation organizations um which is a time thing. We donate huge amounts of money to things.

We raise money for things. We do like our auction house of oddities and all kinds of other fundraisers. Our punk gun project, always to donate and feed into conservation groups. It's just a lot. And then there's always the feeling that you didn't get enough done.

I suffer from that all the time. The feeling you didn't get enough done. And I think that is the difference from like dot com and dot org. Right? Like I serve in a sort of dot com space. you know and i think that some people maybe drift toward dot org or drift toward non-profit work to alleviate some of that tension but non-profit work wouldn't produce what i produce right

all the history works we do you know i mean like yeah it's a great question it's something i think about all the time like i feel generally really good about where we're at but i could feel better that raises a question on the political people that we highlight or that we talk about in positive or negative ways yeah and this is generated from the comment section i think from spotify and a listener called our interview with senator heinrich one of the best shows and says sportsman must back politician who value wild places and on the same show and the five star review on the same show you have a one star review and says uh this listener said the show has become about another elite lib and he's quit over it and you can't satisfy both who do you think you're making the show for like how do you think about the tension from both sides i'm definitely not making the show for like republicans and i'm definitely not making it for democrats no um if i have i'm mindful of those two terms and over time anytime we have a political a politician on at that, that single thing.

And they don't do it with any awareness about the broader work that we do or the long-term thing. And they'll fixate on that. So I have a Republican on who likes to hunt or works in conservation issues or works against conservation issues. And I feel like people should understand where this guy's coming from. People will see that and it's like,

oh, it's a Republican thing. They're not aware that over the long stretch of time, it's very even. It is very even across the Republican Democrat political divide over a long period of time. It will remain so. It will remain so. No one is interested in doing this, but if you really went and looked at the partisan thing over the history of the show, I pride on how even it is. So I'm aware. Who's it for? Who's the show? Who am I making it for?

I want to make it that people can make informed decisions, you know, that people can make informed decisions about what's going on. And so I'll bring on political figures. A thing I don't do generally, I don't endorse. I grew, during the Biden administration, I grew, in hindsight, no, not at all. I grew very disillusioned with the Biden administration. particularly around how something that was plainly in view for a long time, his,

him becoming senile, and I don't hold it against him. Buddy, if you don't die tragically and young, that's going to happen. Okay. So like, the degree to which it was so apparent that it was happening,

and it was unclear who was calling the shots. And then you had these people, hiding that fact, I grew very, very, very angry with the Biden administration and I would make, not even cracks. I would like point it out. I think that led a lot of people to think that I was in a certain place that I wasn't politically necessarily because that was to me like a like a fundamental sin of the political class was carrying that on. For him to hand off, for him to hand off, for him to to prolong to the point where they were handing off

a nomination instead of holding a primary how intentional was that like I was disillusioned with the Biden administration so then out of that came this narrative to like oh you know he's right wing of Vatilla of the hunt and he turned around

and like a day later you have a day later you have a guy like Heinrich on who I'm friends with and hunt with and I'm like and I'm left you know, I'm left of AOC. Because no one wants to look at the totality of anything. You just want to go off some little thing.

And the people bringing this up are often, haven't listened to the show. You typically look and you're like, you saw a social media promo, and you don't know anything that was said. I see Rogan go through this all the time. Like, people judge Joe Rogan on who he has on, not what is said.

and so I don't know like I'm like I stop doing what I do let's go to another very heated topic crossbows why does the crossbow draw so much ire inside the archery world

I've thought about this a great deal and I'll take a crack at the cross not a crack like well funny I said it because you're taking a crack of something in our vernacular would be that you shot something this is the honest guy truth

it's surprising of me because I haven't deliberately gone on to do it. I've never shot a crossbow, which kind of blows my mind. I've never fired a crossbow and not because I've been trying not to. I never watched the movie Titanic. And at a point, I didn't watch it because I didn't watch it. I wanted to be like someone that they could study later. Same thing of dirty dancing. Never watched it. And now I make a point not to watch it just to hold true on not watching it. Because I just want to present. a mind that hasn't, you know, taken in certain things.

Crossbows, dude, never. But here's the, here's where they get a rub. Here's why people don't like them. It's because it's so hard to learn to shoot a bow. It takes so much discipline to get good with a bow. It's gotten a lot easier through technology, but it's hard to shoot a bow. And so then there's a bow that's like bow like, bow like, but not really a bow. And anybody can pick it up and be very accurate.

it burns the ass of people who've done it. And then I think another thing that really burned them is when they started referring to bows as vertical bows, trying to like, be like, oh, no, no, no, no, it's just one's vertical and one's horizontal or something. I think that was a bad move. But if you're a crossbow person,

why do you need archers to be happy about it? If that's what you like, that's what you like. And people that point out, like in this state, We have in Montana, we have no crossbow season. Some people say we have no crossbow season. That's just not true. You can hunt with your crossbow for the six week general season. You can absolutely hunt with your crossbow, right?

So I don't know. I don't think you need people. Like I don't know why they want everyone to like them so much. I like to do a little trap and I don't need people to celebrate. Bona bears, you know, I don't need them to love them. I like them. They're very effective. I don't need you to love them. So stop worrying about it. The long loading times. The glitchy video calls. That's your house asking for better internet. Switch to Bell Pure Fiber, Canada's most reliable internet awarded by Open Signal from $75 a month.

Price guaranteed for two years on a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for more and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Hey, everyone, big huge announcement. Meat Eater Live, the Christmas tour is kicking off again this year for the Christmas season of 2026. This time we're hitting the Midwest. Meat Eater Live, the Christmas tour kicks off in December across six Midwestern cities. We've got Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Madison, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and Fargo. join myself Janice Putellus, Clay Nook, and Brent Reeves, and Randall Williams for a night of laughs, trivia, free prizes, news, and opinions from across the worlds of hunting, fishing, wildlife conservation, and wild foods.

Also, we're already stacking up some great special guests. I got my buddy Bubbly Doug making the appearance in Madison. Go to the meat eater.com slash tour and sign up to get early access to pre-sale tickets right now and secure your spot. Tickets will be available to the public on Friday, so don't wait. Go to themeatheater.com slash tour to get your

pre-sale tickets now. Another tool that drives a lot of controversy is a live scope. Another listener wrote in and asked which tool is more effective in its respective role. A spotting scope or live scope.

Not even comparable. I mean, absolutely the live scope. a live scope effectively seals the deal on fish right i was out not too long ago out in a boat i've been fishing for three days without live scope and then i went out fishing with live scope for a day and to be able to fish big northerns and pull up to a spot determine if there's one there or not so now you just know that he's there and then when you present baits to figure out what he's responding to or not responding to and knowing when to stop because he's approaching it and knowing when he loses interest and to agitate it um it is catching the fish the angler is is important to

catching the fish like live scope is catching the fish this that would piss a lot of live scope guys off including very dear friends mine who love live scope a spotting scope is like supplementary information. I rarely even find something with a spotting scope. I just scrutinize what I found with my binos with a spotting scope. I don't view it as like if I left on a trip and I forgot my binos, I'm going back. I don't care how far I got to drive back. If I forget a spotting scope, I'd probably be like, eh, ah, ah, all right, let's keep going. That sucks, but we're not turning back. So the live scopes more akin to your binos than a spotter.

Not even then. Wouldn't be close to binos. Wouldn't be close to binos? It's just like, I've done it. I've been on boats. It's, it is fishing. The machine is doing the fishing. You are a,

you're like a ride-along. Well, let's ask a question about where you draw a line on hunting. This comes from a guy who lives on 10 rural acres, full of hickories, walnuts, oaks, and hundreds of squirrels. I shoot squirrels off my back deck and my squirrel hunting. Yes. Now that apply that to deer over a pile of corn in my backyard.

Where's the line for you? For me? It's never come up for me. I don't see it's not a line. I don't know. The dude, he's got 10 acres. He's got all these squirrels. running around and he gets him off his back deck good for him he's not he's not like breaking the law

you know um and if you if you live in a state where you can run bait and you run bait and you get deer um great you're not you're not you're not breaking a law if that's legal where you're legal and you have like good game management system and your game management system determines that's okay or like you're bait and bears to bring bears and um i don't feel that it makes it that they have no avenue of escape the same time if someone raises livestock and they go out to harvest, you know, they go out to kill a hog, they've been fattening. Do I think it's unethical because the hog couldn't get away? No, but it's just different. Like they wouldn't think of it as hunting. I don't think of it as hunting.

So I don't view it. Well, when it comes to your own line, there's just things I could point out that I haven't done and they're not appealing to me. I haven't hunted high fence. I've never done high fence hunting. It's not appealing to me. And that's, That pisses people off. Like if you don't do something, it piss people off. But what oftentimes happens is it pisses off people who are kind of feeling sensitive about it. Or they feel marginalized. Or they want like a broader level of acceptance for something.

So it would irritate people. But I've often heard people go out of their way. Someone sent me something recently where, like for instance, like Nugent was on a podcast being somehow like broadcasting a message to me about. that hunting in high fences is just as hard as anything whatever I don't know I don't know why it's upsetting that that's not appealing to me

and I know people say like well some of these areas are so big you can still get away it just it's just not fun it's not it's not like an enjoyable thing to me I like things I like things that are challenging but I also oftentimes do hunts that aren't that challenging

you know like going out on September 15th hunting squirrels in the beach woods I know I'm getting squirrels. Any given squirrel out there has an excellent chance of not getting killed, of me not detecting it, of it getting away, but I'm going to get something probably.

And you just kind of go through life like that and pick like what you want to go out of your way to do or not. But the biggest thing I tell people on this question is people can pick this apart or just kind of accept it at face value what I'm trying to say is following the regulations as laid out by your state, as a hunter, as an angler, following the regulations is 98.5% will get you 98.5% there on the pathway to, like, ethical or higher. My recommendation, like, don't break the rules. And if your state has

rules that don't make sense take up the issue. But like, stay true to the rules. Most of the rules, there are exceptions. Most of the rules are coming from a well-intentioned place. You want to be an ethical hunter? You want to be an ethical fisherman? Start by, just try to follow the rules. So we talked about things that you're not interested in. Now let's talk about... What am I not interested in? Like, you're not interested in hunting high-fen stuff? Personally, no, it doesn't interest me. What are your top five bucket list species that you are very interested in man years ago i was with some amory indians and we were in guy on and we got a couple of arrows into a tape here

i don't want to i don't want to get a tape here i don't need to like get a tape here but i want to be with some dudes that get a tape here um i would like to yeah that's a big one for me be with some dudes to get a tape here i'd like to uh what else my real keen on oh a leopard I was in Africa a couple summers ago, and we were hunting all kinds of super cool stuff. We spent a lot of time talking about leopards, and I saw a leopard. And right now, in my mind, I'm very hip on doing leopards, which I'll point out is a baited, is a baited hunt. You hang carcasses up in trees or portions of carcasses up in trees and try to get a leopard going.

Real excited about that. Real hip on that. So watching some dudes get a tape here and butcher it, just a touch of tape here for a minute and a leopard. Three more. And I wouldn't mind trying to Capybara with some dudes to hunt Capybara's. Very situational.

You mentioned Capricali the other day? Oh, I forgot about that. That's a big one. For years, oh, there's two. For years we've been trying to line out a good Capricali hunt in Northern Europe. And then the oscillated turkey has been, it's been difficult i'm working a new lead now it's been difficult to find a a reputable

place to go hunt oscillated turkeys not on ag but to hunt in the in the forest so not ones that are working ag fields but like to go out in the raw forest you know i don't want to call jungle but to go on to the jungle like stuff and hunt oscillated turkeys out on native habitat has been hard to find. Hopefully we're getting close. What about fish species? What to catch? Yeah, like what's on your bucket list for fish?

Big old she fish. Big old she fish. Yeah. Here's a good question that came in. Other than Africa, Mexico, and Canada... Oh, I want to shoot a dog-toothed tuna with a spear gun. Got it. Other than Africa, Mexico, and Canada, which country outside North America

would you most like to hunt? countries yeah um i've spent time in and i remain very very interested in spending time in the hunting in fishing in south america in the particularly in the jungles so the amazon basin surrounding areas like that that kind of like rainforest stuff but then only do like i'm just interested in doing that with native peoples who do that like that's what I'm interested in outside of those places or in the far north like in the arctic hunting with hunting marine mammals whatever with native hunters who have an ancestral link to the pursuit like i don't need to be the guy that pulls the trigger at all but i just

i like i like to accompany and be there yeah a question from the email inbox what's the most maligned animal in north america that's actually good eating the one i see people most routinely surprised by just squirrels far and away and then it's kind of maligned by it's not so much maligned by hunters but it's maligned by just kind of the public you know it's like people express like squirrels you know but just everyone you know what i've never served like well prepared, you know, like well-prepared squirrel

to anyone that is, I'm not kidding you, to anyone that has ever had a negative reaction to it. It is universally always, God, I can't believe what good that is. Always.

Always. And so, yeah, that's definitely it. Someone wrote in, did a lot of you guys grew up hunting squirrels with slingshots? Can we get a slingshot

squirrel hunting episode? No. Yes and no. I don't picture making a squirrel hunting. I don't picture making a squirrel hunting episode about slingshots because I'm not that interested in, like, method of take stuff, like, focusing for me, other guys I work with are into it, but for me, focusing on method of take isn't a big thing for me.

it wouldn't be that like if you if i love to film stuff about turkeys and someone found some novel way to kill a turkey i wouldn't sort of be like oh no no no this is about killing a turkey with this novel contraption i just don't view things that way i bow hunt during bow season right but i don't view it like i don't view it as weapon centric weapon centric viewing i've met guys who have a sort of check hunting check was like, I'd like to get a deer with a pistol. I'd like to get a deer with a longbow. I'd like to get a deer or the crossbow. And they just, in their mind, they're just like,

like how many different ways can I get a deer? I'm not down on it. I just don't care. When we were kids, one of our buddies down the road, his dad worked at a ball bearing factory. What was that place called? Sealed power.

And so we had never any amounts of what we called Steelies back then, ball bearings and steel marbles, you know, for shooting marble. And we were working on this technology where we were thinking you could take basically a bunch of like 25 caliber ball bearings and wrap it masking tape to make a little dense thing. And we were working on a technology by which you would hit a tree by a squirrel.

And there'd be such a violent eruption of ball bearings coming out of this masking tape case. that you would thereby kill the squirrel. Grape shot. And we never got anywhere with it. I think, I think, maybe I've gotten like a bluegrass with a wrist rocket now and him,

but no, I'm not a slingshot hunter. He should look up a guy named Eddie Corona. Eddie Corona. That's a snob to tell you anymore. Eddie Corona. We call him El Jaguar. look up that guy a couple listeners wrote in

asking for the best tasting deer and the list is Axis Columbia blacktail sick of blacktail coos cows mule deer or white tail I don't know it's like there's such a high level of subjectivity to this

I can say that let me tell you some some sort of universally celebrated critters The axis deer, if you talk to people that have access to a lot of cervids, ungulates, whatever, they tend to point out that the axis deer is exceptional. The sika deer, so not sitka, blacktail, but the sika deer, among people who've had a lot of kind of wild game is regarded as exceptional.

I agree. There aren't many, like the Sikh, is that on his list? Sika. No, he didn't. That's that little one that runs around Maryland. Yeah. Listen, there aren't many, there aren't many like servants that you can take the front leg off a mature male and put it in a pellet grill and leave it in there and have it be that

you can crumble it apart with your fingers. That don't happen. And that happens with one of them suckers. Yeah, they're good. all that stuff's good all that stuff's great another guy writes in speaking of ungulates when will meat eater do a northeast moose hunting episode Ontario Quebec New Brunswick Maine we want logging roads and clear cuts I understand man I understand there's a couple years I'd put in for moose and Maine but the thing is I kind of like I'm kind of nuts deep in the whole Alaska

hunting moose up there and and I like have where I like to go they're huge you know it's just like there's like the land of giants I love being up there and because it happens at the same time of year

it's hard to picture peeling off and going somewhere else because I dig that so much you know I mean I love it so I can't picture going over in another direction to hunt moose maybe I will someday

but I just like if I weigh in my head like go up and hunt like in the interior you know and how wild and beautiful that is the interior of alaska or go i'm just going to go that way for now it's not to hack on it it's just that's what i'd like to do that's right right now that's where i want to be a guy asked how beneficial has it been for meat eater and for you that your brother danny is an alaskan resident it's it's great in a handful of ways um

kind of the most obvious one is I can go and we've gone over the years four or five times I can go sheep hunting with them so we've gone long before long before me eater was ever a thing before it was a show that we made or before I ever came up with the name or anything he and I were would go on sheep hunts together or also never written about this is like

I can go with him. Let me back up. If you have what they call a second, if you have a second degree kindred, resident of Alaska relative, okay? So it's like cousin, husband, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, whatever. There's four animals.

The guiding restriction falls away. Mountain goat in Alaska. Mountain goats, doll sheep, Grizzlies. I mean, it's only three. It's three, sorry. There are three species.

Mountain goats, dull sheep, and grizzlies slash brown bear. If you're a non-resident of Alaska, you have a guide requirement. You have to get a guide to hunt those things, unless you have a relative there. So if you have a relative there,

they can serve sort of like, they fill the role as a guide and you're eligible hunting. There's complications. to it like over the years they've kind of made it that like if i go with him and i get something that actually scratches off his tag i got to have my own tag but it like scratches off his tag in some instances but over the years i've been able to go hunting goats and go hunting sheep with him and he has be like right there with me and i would have otherwise needed to hire a guide and i don't typically

hire guides typically i do on some times but typically don't i just have been able to go with him so hugely beneficial. Two questions that are, two questions from Google Auto Phil. Do you do guided hunts and does your wife hunt? I've never done, I've never been licensed to guide. I've never done any guiding.

I sometimes will, speaking to my wife, I'll sometimes be talking to my wife and I'll be saying something like, would I ever do that? You know, I don't know. I can't rule that out. That'd be way down the road.

It's hard to picture, but maybe, but no, I've never guided. I've never done any guiding. I feel like it's like a little bit of a, I was going to say it's like a hole in my resume or something because a lot of the guys I work with have been guides, you know? But no, I don't know if that's true. No, I haven't. My wife, no, my wife doesn't hunt, man.

She likes to, in the right circumstances, she likes to fish. I found this summer that she would rather, she has much more fun fishing in the boat with my buddies in it than being in my boat she thinks my boat puts off an anxious energy no she says it just has an energy to it that puts her off the other day that's shocking i was hiking with my wife and she wanted to go up to this peak and we're coming down and i'm trying to tell her like um you need to like the scree wants to flow you're trying to stop on screen. You need to learn just to let it go and you go with it.

And even this kind of thing from me is off putting to her. Any number of her friends could say it and she'd be like, oh, that's really interesting. It's just off putting to her. She doesn't want to hear about it from me. That's why we go hunt cat tails with Tony Peterson. Cam doesn't want to disappoint Tony. So that doesn't understand.

with honey but just like an interesting dynamic that she like would she loves to be she like like likes to go fishing at our fish shack but would prefer to not be in my boat on hunting no she's never she's when my daughter was going through hunter safety she thought about doing it was kind of thought it might be good was drawn the idea of doing it with our daughter she didn't do it but it's funny because when we found out we were having a girl she was adamant she's like you don't you dare treat her any differently and you better her hunting you know and it's important to her that she does it but it's just it's just not appealing to her you know not appealing to her it might sometime down the road and sometimes i'll get her she'll be in the right mood and she'll point out that she should she'd like to check it out

sometime but usually through the lens of with our kids that she wants to experience it with our kids um and and this will be coming up she's actually already planning on going uh bear hunting with me and our kids. Up in Alaska? Yeah, coming up. So that'll be different. I was surprised by that. The long loading times. The glitchy video calls. That's your house asking for better internet. Switch to Bell Pure Fiber, Canada's most reliable internet awarded by Open Signal from $75 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for more details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything.

Hey, everyone, big huge announcement. Meat Eater Live, the Christmas Tour is kicking off again this year for the Christmas season of 2026. This time we're hitting the Midwest. Meat Eater Live, the Christmas Tour kicks off in December across six Midwestern cities. We've got Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Madison, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and Fargo. Join myself, Janice Putellis, Clayne. from Brent Reeves and Randall Williams for a night of laughs, trivia, free prizes, news, and opinions from across the worlds of hunting, fishing, wildlife conservation, and wild foods.

Also, we're already stacking up some great special guests. I got my buddy Bubbly Doug making the appearance in Madison. Go to the meat eater.com slash tour and sign up to get early access to pre-sale tickets right now and secure your spot. tickets will be available to the public on Friday. So don't wait. Go to themeatater.com slash tour to get your pre-sale tickets now. There's another Alaska question.

The recent request for generator suggestions reminded a listener of episode 757 where you asked for help with an electrical problem on the GE freezer of the fish shack. Do you ever get a resolved? Yes. An engineer from GE reached out. We were able to troubleshoot it.

I was able to get the part I needed and the part fixed the problem. So yes. Excellent. Big thanks to GE for that help there. It was great to talk to an actual freezer guy, a pro freezer guy. Where do you land now on the argument that hunting doesn't need more recruits? That's a great question. It's something I struggle with all the time because I even struggle with like, what does the word recruiting mean?

You know, let me back up and start with an observation. And this, this has been, this is probably over-observed. If you go back to 1950, think about this like this. If you go back to 1950, in 1950, you had about 150 million people in the country, 150 million Americans. Guess what percentage haunted in 1950? 150 million Americans, 1950. Like, not percentage, but guess the total, sorry, the total number.

the total number was about 12 million about 12 million people hunted in 1950 with a population of 150 million we now have over twice the population and guess what how many people hunt now 15 so you like double the American of population and you barely creep up the number I haven't like got this totally sorted out in my head but I sort of feel like there's a like a carrying, I envision it that there's sort of a carrying capacity of the land. And it'll sort of be met. Always be met with some level of conflict, some level of resource constraint. To say that you're going to like go out and recruit a hunter would lead me to believe you're going to go out and try to like convince people, I guess, that you're going to convince people that wouldn't otherwise want to hunt that they should hunt. I just can't see that that's necessary.

I am doing right now, I am mentoring a young hunter. My older boy, one of his best friends, is very interested in hunting and comes from a not hunting family. Like a very not hunting family, and he's very interested in hunting.

I have, we have, me and my boy have really taken him under our wing and have walked him through all the steps. like he borrows our gear we've taught him everything and we walked him through the permitting process and put him in for the apps like we've like mentored him but we mentored him as a person that we enjoy and love and here he wants to do this thing and we're uniquely suited to help him do it and here's

the biggest gift we gave him the biggest gift we could give and i i hate that works i don't like if he's listening knows who he was please understand i do not view this as a gift i'm giving you but a thing that we are able to provide because we love this kid to death, a thing we're able to provide is like places to go. We bring him to our spots and he comes with us. He has a standing invitation. If we're going somewhere, he can come with.

We're just hunting grouse with him. Like, he comes out with us. The problem with like formalized, I view like a problem with formalized hunting hunter recruitment is it runs into like, where are they supposed to go? You can go say to someone like, hey, I'll show you how to shoot a shotgun.

I'll teach you how to call a turkey and whatever. But in the end, like, where do they go? And that's why a lot of those programs aren't successful in the long term is people will go if you take them and you have a place and they have a good chance of success. But when you turn them back out, I think that there's like they drop out. Why do they drop out? Because it's not readily apparent where they go and going and finding spots is hard. And so they don't do it, right? Which leads this other question is like, or another component of this that I wonder about all the time, is I guess the objective, if you look at conservation organizations that have like a hunting recruitment component to them, I guess the objective is in their mind.

The objective would be that they want to produce hunter conservationists. So the pathway to do this would be to go find people that don't hunt, get them into hunting. And then they get into hunting and then from there they hopefully get into the conservation movement. It feels to me that it would be far more efficient to why not let's talk about the 15 million, 14 million, 15 million Americans that are hunting and aren't involved in conservation. Like that seems more practical and efficient of an approach. Like what about all these ones that aren't in the conservation movement? Like the young man I'm mentoring, it will come soon where I float this with him. I'm like, now that you're doing this and you're into it with this, it's time you look and say like, what do I owe to it?

Right. And we'll get there and we'll do that. But I didn't go offer to him to come along with us in the first place with some like long-term plan to build a conservationist. It just wasn't where I am. So I don't think it's that efficient. If I was like when we do cons like at our organization we do a lot of conservation spending for me the best conservation spending or one of the best ways to spend on conservation is around habitat acquisition saving habitat improving habitat and also not little tied to conservation but a little different is like access improvement creating places and space for people to enjoy their activity. for creating places in space for people to hunt.

Knowing that those niches will be filled. You can't really point to, in the country you can't really go like that there's all these elk tags that are available and no one got them. That there's big horn tags and no one's even there to get the big horn tag. Because the carrying capacity is like full.

So just setting out with the specific intention of like talking people into hunting that don't hunt for for some payoff down the road I don't know it's it's I just can't see it as an effective way to get anywhere like I like not and not to begrudge people that do it like they should come I'd have someone on the podcast to explain it to me but I it's not what keeps me up at night it's interesting because that's a critique of meat eater is that this organization brings in too many new hunters

like people see it and want to get into it sure man when I think about like my grandpa uh was a hunter well both my grandparents so I come from hunters on both sides of the family I'm speaking of my maternal grand grandpa Glenn

my maternal grandfather he always had he always subscribed to outdoor life sports a field and field and stream. And we didn't. We didn't have magazine subscriptions in my house for some reason. But I would go and he would give me

all of his magazines. And I would read these magazines and I would be like very inspired to do the things in those magazines. The first magazine I ever subscribed to was trapper and predator caller. And I would read trapper and predator caller. And I was like, man, I want to go have like a trap line in Alaska.

I want to trap this. I want to trap that. So I'm like taking it in media. I would go to learn how to do what I do, I would go and buy Tom Miranda's videos. I would buy, which of the other prominent trappers who, Mike Marziata,

I would buy all of his books, you know, because I wanted to study and learn. So there's like a little bit of a continuum of that people that make books about hunting or make videos about hunting, like people are going to use that resource to do the things they want to do.

want to do. Theodore Roosevelt wrote a hunting book. Was he a hunting influencer? I don't know, but undoubtedly people read Roosevelt stuff and got really into it. Aldo Leopold wrote Sand County Almanac. Undoubtedly, people read San County Almanac and got into it. I really can't think of the digital space as somehow being different where there's always been a draw of that you, that hunting media inspires and educates.

Fishing media inspires and educates. Always has. Always will. even guys I know that are like like I know a guy that is just like dead set against hunting media but it's so funny because I know his background and I know that he throughout his life moved to areas and would hunt and fish places that people were already hunting and fishing and how would he learn to do that through hunting media so you look at his bookshelf Dwight Shoe Cam Haynes the Eastman's right he's watching these videos he's reading this stuff, but then later in hindsight, it's not put together. It's like you learn to do what you did through media products and trial and error. And you were inspired about what's possible through these things. I remember when I was a little kid, my dad brought home this video.

He got it from Michigan, some guys at Muskegon Bowman's. And it was like this video about this dude named Art La Ha. And it was Art La Ha with a, like some old timey camera making all these like crazy videos out of Alaska. I watched that shit and got excited about hunting Alaska. It just still goes on now. I don't know. I can't picture that a writer or an artist or whatever they are would somehow be like, I'm not going to write about the things I'm interested in for fear that people would want to do it. Like look at what, take like sex in the city and girls, what that must have done to like, I don't know, did people want to move to Manhattan after watching sex and the city and girls? Did like

housing costs go up in Manhattan? yes probably could you would you like blame the person that wrote that stuff it's tricky to me another like on the same criticism is like that somehow if you go and write about things or show things to people that they want to then go there i think i don't know like ultimately in a demographic sense how effective it is because like the number one place we film in is alaska but alaska's lost population and their population has gotten older all through the time that I've written about and filmed it. So I feel like something more is going on.

We don't do a ton in Austin, but that's like one of the fastest growing zip codes. Florida is a really hot state. I think it's taxes, you know? I don't think it's that we made a thing about osteoal attorneys. So like it just gets, it gets like confusing to me. And I think that people tend to when they're looking at their woes, there's a tendency to look at the things you're most familiar with. Like for me, I'd be like, what, what,

when Montana had a spasm of explosion that's slowing down now, most sociologists point to COVID, you know, I would be like, it's that show Yellowstone, right? Like, you just look and you kind of like lash out at the things that you think are familiar, you know. We had a number of new or aspiring hunters ride in, and there's a two-part question that they generally posed. etiquette on someone giving you their spots and then a one to five list of how to start hunting

on the etiquette on what when someone shares with you a spot lay out the etiquette of you receiving that spot and then what you do with it that that's i'm going to make a very long question i'm going to make a very long answer short and i'm going to talk about a thing that that's become important to me or like a way I think that people could avoid these tensions. Talk about it explicitly. Set your expectations explicitly and proactively. If someone takes you to a spot, say, thank you for taking me here.

This has been great. And I don't want to be awkward. But like, how would you like me to handle this information? Right. I have friends. I have friends call me up and they'll be like, man, what would you think if I blank?

I'll be, yeah, go ahead. You know, but it's like, just be like, and I'd never had these before, but just be really open about it. If you take someone somewhere, you could even say to him like, dude, let me warn you. If I'm going to take you to this

and show you this specific fission hole that I found, it's really good like this time of year. And I like to hit it. with my kids and everything. If I'm going to take you, I'm going to ask you, I'm going to be like, hey, man, don't hit the spot without me. So maybe you shouldn't go with me because you might find it on your own. And when you find it on your own, it's going to be sweet for you.

And you can hit it all the time. But if I show you, then we're bound up in this weird deal. So maybe don't even go because you'll find it. And then it's yours because you found it. Like, I can't control that. And in other respect, like, yeah, yeah, I could go on about this area for a long time, but I think like being explicit with your expectations. Yeah.

I was hiking with a friend of mine who was just visiting from out of state. And we were hiking around and we saw something interesting. And I said, man, you never saw that. He goes, I don't know where I am anyway. The second part of that question is one to five. You don't hunt and you want to get into it. What are the steps? I see a lot of people get really hung up on

a lot of people get really hung up on a lot of people get really hung up on this overwhelming decision making paralysis they have they don't know where to start. I guess you just start because it is being not successful that bad if being not successful

means you don't want to go so you're not going because you might be unsuccessful. It probably is just not for you and like, I don't know, don't go. If you're comfortable being unsuccessful, go get on X, look at on X and look for bits of public land or access areas you can go into and just go and try. If you don't have public areas, work through your social network, work through your network at work, work through your network at church, work through your network whatever, write letters, knock on doors, all the things that we all do and get a place to go. And when you get a place to go, get out, and try.

And meanwhile, watch YouTube videos, read books, listen to bygast, all that kind of stuff. But just like, go and stop worrying about that you won't get something. Who cares? And you'll just land there. But if you can't enjoy the journey, like, screw it. It's a, it's for this, whoever's asking is, it is definitely a recreational pursuit because they don't do it yet. It's recreational. If you can't enjoy the journey, forget about it.

you know just enjoy the journey begin whether a new hunter or an old hunter what should someone read to learn how white tails move what they eat and their patterns man at this point i don't know that reading's the best bet um there's so many people out there that um talk about and make good videos about stuff like how white tails do what they do um if you're looking at from a hunting perspective, not from like a biological perspective, but from a hunting perspective, there's so much, there's so much stuff on YouTube and others where guys

explain stuff really well. I don't know that if the strategy, if you just love literature, then I don't know what to tell you. It's different than what I think he's asked. I think he wants to learn like from a pragmatic, like how to get White Tails as a pro, there's so much good stuff on YouTube. Find someone that talks the way you

talk and thinks the way you think and kind of study them. I work with you guys that do a lot of white-tale stuff. Mark Kenyon and Tony Peterson. And I appreciate their perspective on White-tails and the most vivid way to learn from them is to watch the stuff they do because you can see it all happening.

And it's very educational. And then you've got to spend time applying it. No two places are the same. Like you've got to take all the things you pick up and apply it. a listener wrote in if you could eat only one wild game recipe from now on what would it be it'd be that i would take uh it'd be that i'd take whole muscle chunks of meal deer and um rub them in salt and pepper and either sear them in a pan and then stick them into a 400 degree oven or i would just brush it with a little oil and put it into a pellet grill

and cook it until it's 135 degrees, and then take it out and let it sit there for 8, 10 minutes, and then slice it cross grain. And I could just live on that. I sometimes feel embarrassed about how much of that we eat at my house. Like, from my wife's perspective, but she doesn't complain because she likes it. And earlier you talking about my wife doesn't hunt

was one of the many things I like about my wife is she eats more wild game than this is going to sound audacious. My wife eats more wild game than 90s. 9% of the hunters in this country because she's ball game every day. Mm-hmm. You know. A number of folks are interested in

what the best restaurant meal of your life is. I've had some great ones and I tried to think about that and like just kind of cool things I've eaten over time here and there. But I think the best, this is going to come in any surprise to anybody that follows our stuff. I think the best

replicable restaurant experience to be had in America that I know about is going to Jesse Griffith's Diedouet. Meaning, repical meaning like, it's in a place people come through. It's in Austin, Texas. It's expensive, but it's not ridiculous. You can get in. It's not like you need to make a reservation years in advance.

Like you can kind of go down there and get in. And it's just, it's my favorite, it is in my mind, the best restaurant experience I can think of. What's your go-to round? you know this has become weirdly political because this is always like it's so funny maybe people have always had all these opinions

about people you know like like people get all riled up about your rounds and stuff um I shoot you know I like the hunt moose I like the on elk deer whatever I can just get a lot done

I can get a lot done very confidently with a 300 win mag and I also shot it enough that I understand part i understand you know i mean like like i understand the ballistics i understand it's trajectory

i just understand it so it becomes that it becomes you know you know guys like and guys in the worlds of hunting and fishing will will sometimes be like it just it works for me you know trappers too like a trap or like a certain thing a certain way and guys say why why do you use that i don't use it just works for me like it fits into my it fits into my repertoire.

300 win mag. It just works for me because I'm very familiar with it. I don't have problems with it. I don't care. Like recoil doesn't bother me. And it just works me. But that's not to say it's the best for somebody else.

It's just to me, I get it. And it's like it's a function of age too. There's all these new calibers come on all the time. Later I've been shooting a 6-5 PRC. I don't even, love it, love it. but um it just it just is very function it's just like a very uh with 180 grain bullet

a 300 one mag it's huge but if i shoot a coosier with it i don't feel that i have ruined more meat than guys shooting other things it just doesn't you know you punch it back back a few inches from the front shoulder it's got a hole like that kind of falls over it's just like it just works It works. The long loading times. The glitchy video calls. That's your house asking for better internet. Switch to Bell Pure Fiber, Canada's most reliable internet awarded by Open Signal from $75 a month.

Price guaranteed for two years on a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for more details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Hey, everyone, big huge announcement. Me Eater Live, the Christmas Tour is kicking off again this year for the Christmas season of 2026. This time we're hitting the Midwest.

Meat Eater Live, the Christmas tour kicks off in December across six Midwestern cities. We've got Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Madison, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and Fargo. Join myself, Janus, Putellus, Clayneuke, and Brent Reeves, and Randall Williams

for a night of laughs, trivia, free prizes, news, and opinions from across the worlds of hunting, fishing, wildlife conservation, and wild foods. Also, we're already stacking up some great special guests. I got my buddy Bubbly Doug making the appearance in Madison. Go to the meat eater.com slash tour and sign up to get early access to pre-sale tickets right now and secure your spot. Tickets will be available to the public on Friday. So don't wait.

Go to themeetor.com slash tour to get your pre-sale tickets. tickets now a number of lefties and cross-eye dominant folks wrote in and they wanted to know what your favorite lefty rifle is over the year and a guesstimate of how many animals you've shot with right-handed firearms i never i didn't this is the this is the god's honest truth i didn't own a left-handed firearm until i was in my 40s so everything up to then i shot with right-handed fire arms um when my dad figured out that i was left eye dominant when i was very little he had to go buy me left-handed bows because it just doesn't work you know other than that it was just hand me downs and i just shot right-handed when i finally did start getting left-handed bolt guns it took me years to

get comfortable throwing the bolt with my left hand i also used to throw in the bolt with my left hand i also used to to um taking my hand off the forearm to come back and throw the bolt to me a long time to get used to it uh then for a while i would get into like i would try to find shotguns i remember um you know i tried to find shotguns like like side by sides or like i think a browning bps had it where they had a thumb safety just like you see on side by sides and over and unders And I would look for that, a thumb safety. So it wasn't like it was left-handed. It still had a right-handed can't if it had a can't in stock.

But you can just get it with the thumb. And I still today don't care. Like, I shooting a semi-auto. Like, a lot of semi-autos, like, I shoot a brett. Like, I got an A-400 and A-300-Bretta. You can flip the safety. So the shell still spits out across my face to the right, but I don't even notice it. I don't care.

It's got an ambidexture safety. because I used to remember, like, when I had a safety guard safety, my poise, like, ready to shoot, like, you're going into the cattail marsh and you just saw a pheasant run in there, and you know he's going to explode. My position would be like this, so my finger could be on, like, I'd be, like, contorted, so my finger's on the safety. Now you can just switch that son of a bitch around and stand normal, and it's a right-handed gun, but just has a left-hand safe.

That's all I really care about. And on bolts now, um, I don't even think about it. I can, I shoot left hand of bolts, but if I'm shooting my kids right hand of bolts, I don't, I don't like, I'm not like all flabbergasted

about what to do. On the note of safety, a listener wrote in about what gets somebody cut from your camp for good from your hunting crew. And have you ever been cut from a camp? I don't know, man, maybe I have.

I never had someone tell me I was. Maybe I have been. I don't know. Like, I think that, getting cut from camp would be no different than getting cut from coming over for dinner or something I remember years ago I had a writer over my house and um

like a really good writer came over my house for dinner a guy a person I admired and when he left my wife said that guy's not welcome back in the house and um like if it was camp he wouldn't become but you know he wouldn't become back either so i don't i don't think it's i don't think it's different i got like just dickishness or being like you know being rude or being um just focus on one's own good not not not not teeming up you know like well i didn't catch any of those fish today so i'm not going to clean fish

which i don't know just like selfishness i don't know the same things would make it that you didn't want them over your house i don't i can't think of versions that are like hunting specific Unless someone would, I guess I could. Someone's unsafe with firearm handling and you address it with them. And that's another thing that just has to be out in the open talked about, which is uncomfortable. But I will say to people, I appreciate that you don't have a round chambered or whatever you got going on there.

But please, watch your muzzle, right? If someone's like, hey, I'm going to do with my muzzle what I will. I don't know. do people do that if some guys said that i'd be like i don't think we can camp together man but that just is it doesn't come up it's just the normal normal garden variety dickishness i guess would do it do you think hunters are actually winning the public lands fight i don't know that you win it i don't think it can be won um i think that it would be much much worse much much worse without hunters the reason I say that is that

when you go to do and again people are like oh I don't like politics well buddy public land is political national force are political public land is political most assaults on public land not most virtually all assaults on public land

meaning people that want to go sell off big blocks of public land or strip away protections on big blocks of public land. Like it or not, come from the Republican side of the aisle. Okay. Assaults on firearms, assaults on hunting culture in general,

come from the Democrat side of the aisle. It's just how it is. You can get pissed or you can just accept that that's the truth. Hunters generally tend, politically, tend centrist, intend right when republicans are going when not just republicans general when certain republicans and there are repeat players that just spend their careers trying to assault public lands when they're doing their little deeds they know they've already baked in they understand where the pressure from the left will come and they don't care and they already calculated it in what surprises them is when a

voting block that they view to be friendly, generally supportive, generally favorable impressions of, when that voting block goes, uh-uh, that makes them nervous. Because most politicians, when you look at,

like, when you look at exit polls, when you look at election results, politicians are all, all the politicians in America are sitting there on like, 5149 splits. 5248 splits, 49.5, 50.5 splits.

Even in places they regard as safe, like you could be regarded as safe on a four or five point spread in this country politically. Congressmen, senators, governors. It's like no one is sitting out there like being like 80% of the vote right here in the back. It just doesn't happen anymore.

in American politics. So when a politician is looking at, they're looking at their 51-49 split, and within that split, they see that a bunch of that, those ones that hover on that edge, when they're like, man, those guys are pissed. That makes them nervous.

So without Hunter blowback about public land sell-offs, I think that they would have happened. Because they already know that like Patagonia not to discredit them they already know they'll be mad and they don't care right or certain

organizations they know it's like when the ones that they view are like friendlyish that makes them nervous so that little fraction of pushback which might seem numerically inconsequential winds of being very important when they view what they're working on

so it would be a lot worse if it wasn't for them i can't but it's not a thing you'll win it's not a thing you'll win long term um to win it long term it would be somehow that like there was some like con you're not going to win it i was going to lay out some wild ass scenario of american politics it isn't going to happen you'll never win it just it'd just be like the same fight over and over again yeah for this yeah yeah for the end till the end of time. A few folks wrote in with the comment that you're

one of the most influential people in conservation. Just the place that you sit. And what are your thoughts about that? Do you think about it often? Do you spend too much of your time thinking about broken generators? Where do you land? No, I don't think of...

I really don't think about that. I don't think about it because it's not fun to think about and I don't think about it because it's just not kind of, I don't know, it's just, it's just, it's not how I view the world.

A thing I remember, if you'd ask me, like when I was a kid, when I was in high school and stuff, we were all already like very, like we, my family, a lot of my friends,

like we were obsessed with hunting and fishing. That was kind of like the main thing we liked to go do. Our main recreational activity was hunting and fishing. And we would look at, look to people that celebrated that lifestyle and be excited about them. I remember we'd go to like Nugent's Whiplash Bash because Nugent was this like outspoken Hunter and advocated for Hunter's rights.

And so we were excited about him. And so if you'd say like who at that time, if you'd said who's the most influential person in that space, I would have perceived it being Nugent. Not that he was because he was a person that. guys like me looked up to and there was this whole Michigan component of it too because he's like the Motor City Madman

but you'd look up to it because here's this guy celebrating and standing up for a thing we do. You didn't get into it because Nugent got into it but once you were into it you recognize his enthusiasm so if I have like an enthusiasm for it that

people enjoy under a perspective of body that people like that's really great and it'd be it'd be obnoxious for me to say I don't care because if I was the only guy left on earth, I wouldn't write books, right? I make the things I make, just like a painter makes painting, a writer makes books, I got it makes videos, makes videos.

I make the things I make because I want them to be seen. I want to share my viewpoint. I would like to, I would like to influence opinion. I would love it if some, you know, if some political figure became accustomed to, you know, listen to the viewpoints I express and like change their mind about something. Or if a, I don't know, man, I could. Or if a kid like me who grows up hunting and fishing, like I did, who is under aware of the conservation movement like I was and then someone brought that to light for me or I'm sorry and I could bring that to light for them the way discovering Aldo Leopold brought it to light for me I mean that's absolutely phenomenal but it's not something as would spend time like actually think like pondering I think I am more distracted by broken generators

you know right now like to be absolutely honest with you one of the main things i'm thinking about is moving my raspberry patch like i positioned it poorly and like that takes up a ton of my ton of my mind what are the considerations for your raspberry patch man i built it against a wall of the house and it flourishes but you'd have to come through the wall to get at the backside of it it's caused a huge problem I got to move it out from the wall. But you know all raspberries are. They're tenacious.

I'm not running to go around, like, spraying around broad spectrum herbicides, but I got to kill off that son of a bitch. And the other problem with it is, is it's like always wet and dank back there. And even you can see on the wood is suffering from not getting any air exposure. I got canned the thistle like a bastard growing back there you can't get at. It's just a whole deal. I need to move it out. contain it trellis it

get at it from both sides that's what I'm thinking about right now got it I got a plan excited to see it play out I already talked to my fabricator body Travis the Barton fabrication he's on it too he's aware

um readers this is coming from comments on your books as well as podcasts but readers and listeners comment on your tangents both very positively and very negatively. Some love it, some hate it. Thoughts.

Man, there are a lot of things that I would hear and there are a lot of things I hear and they get to me. Not giving, accidentally making an environment where a guest isn't able to get their opinion out there because I've cut them off. Like, that hurts. like I don't want to do that.

At the same time, I want to make sure that stuff has a flow to it and that I can kind of get to a lot of places I want to get to. But like hearing that, I'm like, man, I don't want to be like that, do that. Like, I see that. I get that I do it. I don't want to do that. And I'd be like, man, I need to work on finding a way. Like, I don't, like, I hate that.

I want to get the show to where I want to get. I want to cover the subjects I want to do. I want to bring out what I know this guest has to say and not lose our two hours or 90 minutes or 60 minutes on something, but I need to, like, improve and be better. The tangent thing, like, dude, I'm sorry. It's just how I think.

Like, I wouldn't be me if I, like, if I can't draw, let me put this way. To me, they're not tangents. To me, it's like, to me, it feels like logical movement. to some people read it as tangents but I can't correct it it's just how I view the world things make me think of things

if they make me think of things it's to be it just is connected so no apologies if you don't like tangents then I would just go read someone else go go say go into your AI thing and say give me some shit with no tangents

and see what it comes up who's the most interesting person in American history that nobody's written a good book about. I can't tell you because I'm writing a book about them. Second most interesting person that you wouldn't write about. Let me tell you hot. I'm going to answer it without answering it.

There was, no, I'm not going to get into it. I was going to kind of like, there's a person I'm writing a book about, and I was going to talk about the type of person, that if you were going to, that there's a bucket that he was in. If you bucketed people, he was in a bucket. and I was going to talk about the bucket

but if you knew about the bucket you'd be like well who would be in that bucket and you'd so quickly hit on the thing that's in the bucket so let's not talk about the bucket let's talk about the second person that you'll never write a book about

or it falls out of your purview but you're really interested in I don't think I have one I don't know what you mean there's like not a Vietnam vet that you might not anything anything in American history or George Washington's

wife or something here's one I throw out to a lot of writers whenever I have a friend who's writing something and they finish a book and I say hey what are you going to do next and then um and then they're like I don't know I'm thinking about a lot of things I always go like you know you ought to write a book of my home

because I know I'm not going to get to it there's this botanist named John Bradbury and he comes out in the early 1800s to like explore the West and do botany and um collect all these examples and stuff and he has this uh like a protege with him and to the best of my recollection i haven't read much about bradbury lately and he wrote his own journals and stuff but bradbury collects all these botanical examples and then for whatever reason is protege i came remember the details is a protege goes back to europe but bradbury keeps having all this stuff happen that prevents him from getting home

like for a while he gets caught up but you know the new madrid earthquake like nope when the they talk about rivers flowing backwards and stuff oh yeah okay and it ties into that's the crazy thing about the story it ties into tecumsa where the the cacomsa the warrior had a prophet brother right and they had this prophecy that that they were going to to combs's mission was he was going to expel white people from north america you had this prophet brother and they're like there would be this big earthquake and the earthquake happened it was the new madger earthquake and not like that but it made rivers flow backwards the mississippi flowed backwards for a minute the new madrid fall all this crazy

shit so bradbury gets like delayed by this he gets delayed by the war of 1812 and by the time he gets back home his protege has gone in public his findings. And this is back when, now you think of going, like if you're a European and you go to America, like,

I'm going to go visit America. Okay, like what are you gone in two weeks? This is back when going to visit America was like years. That's an interesting dude. When you read a book that has foreign language in it

that you don't understand, Spanish in the border trilogy, do you translate it? No, and it's obnoxious when writers do that. And it tells us, And it tells a lot about who, like, if you read the New Yorker magazine, like New Yorkers magazine's got a lot of great stuff in it, always has.

They'll do like, the writers there will like, be like, oh, I'm going to put some sentences in French. It's so obnoxious. McCart, Coran McCarthy, a favorite writer of mine, has that whole Spanish thing. It's like, what do you, what is that all about? Like, come on. It's obnoxious.

It's obnoxious. If I really, it's obnoxious. The only way to handle it would be like, I think that, like, you look at like Brian Burrow in his book, The Gunfighters, he talks about the last words ever spoken to Billy the kid.

Okay. They were spoken in Spanish. But it's great to say, it's great for him to be like, here's the last words that ever entered the ear of Billy the kid. or whatever, right? But then you got to say what the hell they mean in English.

You can't just leave it. Like, no writer could be like, here's the last thing he ever heard, which I think is Keynes. Keynes. Don't leave people hanging, dude. Tell me what the hell he said. Who is it?

Who is it? Whatever the hell it was. I can't remember. I think that was it. What's the best sentence in American literature? You know, it's hilarious the day our day. We were filming up and we were up and none of it. with some whale hunters and so dirt no someone yeah i think dirt our camera guy dirt brought along

he brought along moby dick you know and we're laughing about moby dick's the only book than anybody that everybody knows the first sentence because it's three words call me ishmael so we're like i was like i see the book i'm like dude i can tell you the first sentence in that book and we're laughing like if if there's one book in america that people know the first sentence of it's moby dick because it's call me ishmael. It's sort of famous for how simple it is. My favorite is when the dog barks or growls her warning in the night, I question whether it will be a stray cat, a skunk, a killer, or a ghost. That's a favor of mine. Don't you want to know where it came from? I was going to let the listeners find out. Okay. Feel free.

No, we'll find out. A listener wrote in wondering if you got his gift an original hard copy screenplay of Apocalypse Now. Yeah, I have it on my bookshelf in a very prominent location. I can't believe I didn't reach out about this. Yes. There you go.

Dude. Yes. Here, we're going to go into lightning round. I'm a favorite movie of all time. Oh, rank your top three Vietnam movies. I don't bucket Apocalypse now as a Vietnam movie. it transcends genre heart of darkness it transcends genre um besides how masterful it is it's just

master i mean it's like i'm not alone here if you go ask film critics for a list of the top 10 greatest movies of all time it's going to find its way onto everybody's list what it is it's about and it becomes more relevant all the time is it's about total war um why does america lose its con like why after world war two do we lose our conflicts and it's about total war the moral of total war and it's about a person who colonel kurtz um him realizing in vietnam here's what winning will look like and i'm going to do it right in the madness of total war and so just it just is like relevant and relevant and relevant and reveling our current conflict in iran you want to understand it go watch apocalypse now why are we losing

there it's outlandish how are we losing there well not comfortable with what it takes to really win and kurt's was you know kurt's was speaking of top threes you can get rid of one of the following and the other two will remain forever. Hogs. What, no? You can get rid of one of the following animals and the other two from this list will remain forever. Hogs, Asian carp, or cudzu.

Not hogs. I can't say. Here's the reason why it's so tricky. Introducing pathogens and shit into water, like fish that exists alongside other fish. are hard to target. We use rotanone to point when you've got an overwhelming problem, you use rotanone, but you're wiping the slate clean. If you get an evasive fish in a river system,

and it gets so bad, right, that you're like, well, total war, you got to get, you kill all the fish, and then you start over. and it's very hard to do. So I could see it, it's never going to be that we're going to develop like some fish pathogen or something. I shouldn't say never.

It's so hard to picture that we develop some pathogen, some virus that we're convinced will only target native carp. We're going to dump barrels of this shit into the river and like all the native carp, all the non-native carp, we're going to go belly up and float away and all the other species are going to be sitting there like, fine.

So hard to picture. So if I could take magic to remedy the problem, maybe I would use magic. On the other hand, we have a terrestrial, like a land-based biodiversity crisis brought on by non-native vegetation. But I view it a little bit like I can just picture a world where some genius comes up with a compound that can be spruce. spot applied on kudzu and start getting kudzu under control so maybe it wouldn't require matt it just pictures me like will science find a fix for kudzu or non-native carp quicker i guess i would just bet on kudzu but i don't know why i'm not an expert in this and so if i could bet on them that i'd have to use the magic somewhere else but it's just too i'd have to spend some time

talking to people about that well let's say you you you'd have to spend some time talking to people about that well let's say You can't, there's no scientific way to do it. And you have a wand that can remove all of the invasives from the water systems, like rivers, lakes, whatever, zebra mussels, catfish, or sorry, carp. I'd hit that one. Or all of the non-native plant species. I'd do the water. Why is that?

I love water and I love fish. And it's like, there's a looming biodiversity crisis in the water from non-natives. and also a risk of just everything becoming kind of the same. And, you know, and those Asian carp are going to, not that the Great Lakes aren't full of non-natives anyways. Yeah, I would just, I would, for me, with what I'm interested in and where I'm focused and where I feel like I have a level of expertise, I would just be like, I'm going to blow my wand shake on the water

and do non-natives out of the water. And that would mean when I do that, I will draw the ire of a great many Western fly fishermen who will no longer have their pet rainbows and brown trouts. They're, you know, like, I feel like half and them don't even know it. Not like non-natives. Rainbows, brown trouts, ain't natives in this area and in many areas, you know. So yeah, I'd take on a lot of enemies. I'd take on a ton of enemies.

But I would do it. for the greater good of america's waterways you look at what's going on right now in the susitna system in alaska with northern pike invading the susitna systems it could could potentially be catastrophic for salmon yeah you can go back in time or you can transport it here one extinct animal that you'd like to hunt including dinosaurs passenger pigeons i guess because it's so recent so recent and they should be here you know what I mean

they should be here when you get into stuff like mammoths or whatever mammoths are super cool woolly mammoths but the verdict is out you know people it's so hotly debated but we don't

we don't know for certain that it was a human caused extinction there's a there's a argument to be made that it was and there's like really good counter arguments that it was not that it was just a thing that would have happened even in the absence of humans passenger pigeons are like it's just it's just people people did it and people

did it recently people did it they did it recent um a thing that would be like a beloved game bird so yeah that we would have somehow hundable populations of passenger pigeons would be would be spectacular you know A few listeners want to know your take on Sasquatch Anatomy. Is it human style or more like a dog? What do you mean? It's reproductive parts. Oh, is Packer?

Yep. It's definitely like a dog, man. Yeah. That's a great question. It's definitely like a lipstick. Lipstick. Lipstick stick. 100%.

Yeah. Isn't that running around all the big old hangdown? dude it's like no one talks about that a couple people are wondering about it no about me and the people that run into them like if you see when you see a naked dude running around you know

it's like it's just it's loud and proud but it's just there would be a thing that observed by Sasquatch observers yeah it's a lipstick okay what have you changed your mind about in the last five years

what haven't I changed my mind about in five years yeah I don't mean that there's many things I haven't changed my mind about in last five years I don't know I changed my mind all the time and I don't think it changed your people have an idea that change your mind is kind of like bad you know like with politicians your eyes like he's a flip-flopper you know and when it's when it's just when you flip-flop for political expediency it's one thing but if you have like an evolving understanding of things one of the things I tip on all the time is I'm always like who's worse like are democrats worse for hunters and anglers or are republicans worse for hunters and anglers like that's the one

i bounce on all the time and it has a lot to do with what's going on in the moment you know i mean so if i look at areas where there's like a strong democrat control i look at like erosion of hunter rights the way they kind of buckle to animal rights extremists the way they buckle to gun control people you know i look at like i'm like oh sons of bitches and then the republicans are in and i look at the way they strip land protections away and want to sell public

lands off and i'm like ah you sons of bitches and i just i bounce and stuff like that um other we were talking about one day our day man it wasn't in the last five years but we were having a debate with young parents it'd be like uh

we're talking with some friends of ours who are have a baby a baby baby and they're like hey where did you guys land on like spanking you know and we talked about our sort of evolution as parents on that issue and where we ultimately landed on it and like that it involved a sort of changing perspective right something became kind of true that was other than we expected um yeah i don't know i guess life's just like that life's just like that and there are other bits like there's other just kind of fun things i used to be adamant that humans killed off we talked about this a minute ago i used to be adamant that humans killed off mammoths

i was adamant that the first americans arrived um via land okay through a gap in the glaciers then i was like adamant that they didn't kill off mammoths and they maybe arrived on a coastal route and then i like i like bounce on that so everything from like little fun things like that to um mechanical broadheads versus fixed i mean like like big things like politics and it's just it's always i'm constantly changing my mind about shit constantly changed my mind about stuff uh what are you most excited about in the next year if i think like when i think of excitement like big excitement stuff all that

that really for me is you know I was kind of joking early about raspberries you know um kind of joking because I'm fixated on my raspberry problem right now but for me like in all honesty like in all like like big heart areas

my big mind areas my stuff is with like I'm with my kids I'm with that journey of raising kids with my wife like that's that's like the one thing that I can't give on you know I mean like everything you can strip other aspect of my life away and I'd be sad to see it go but but that would be like unlivable right it would be literally unlivable

meaning if I didn't have them I would not want I wouldn't stick around to see the the other half of life so excitement is just seeing them come up you know seeing them come up it's the main thing so to give an honest answer it's it's just like about their milestones my boy is that he's dealing with a knee issue like how is that going to resolve like that's what I'm excited about all these things that's all we had that's it yep there you all thanks for writing in ask me anything so I tell my kids ask me anything if you got other questions maybe we'll do this again send them to the inbox Put it in the comments.

Yeah, please. Maybe a couple years we'll get to them. But seriously, thanks to everybody that did take time to write in a question. I appreciate it. Next week, news show back to normal. Yes, sir. All news, big and small next week. Thank you.

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