00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is a meat eater podcast coming at you. Shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case underwear listening to podcast. You can't predict anything. Okay, I'll tell these guys about our little meat shop, our meat shop we had going last night. UM, pretty excited about this is? Um? Actually, are you journaling right now? Yes? I am tell them about our meat shop. It's new year, Steve, I've got some new resolutions I'm tackling. Um. So uh, very fortuitous that John Edwards is here because we went down and shot a pila honkers and some ducks, and uh, Steve and I were cleaning our pile of birds and decided to do some batch cooking or some putting up of wild game. If we were nice, we would invite it John, since he took us hunting. I was. I was waiting for the invite last night. We would invite him over for our meat project. Yeah, but we're didn't do that. Now here he is, and it's embarrassing you guys. SI almost did too. What makes a good hunting partner? I made? We made duck stock last or. I finally canned my duck stock last night, and I almost brought you a jar, almost I thought about doing it, and I haven't written it off yet. I just thought, you actually bring one of those to John. I was sitting there by myself by the fire, plucking birds. It had been nice to see you. The reality. We didn't come to the conclusion until well into the cleaning process. It was still like, I'm gonna clean my birds, you clean your birds. And at one point we had three kids crawling on the counter plucking individual feathers out of birds, help wanting to be the one that gets to cut something. Yes, give me the knife and uh but yeah, So we decided that we're gonna do a group kind of pickling of giblets uh cone fee uh of the thighs and legs, which I'm super excited about because I've never actually done the best thing on the planet. Go on and I'll talk about that for um. Yeah, we needed to find that one because I was still the definition for me still wasn't until you walked me through it and then, um, we are making pastrami out of the brass, curing the brass. So it is a charcuterie. It wasn't a meat shop. It was a charcouter shop because the calling fee falls under charcouter charcouter. It does. It has to because it's a pressuation. Let me. I don't know if this is true, but I've heard this as being true, that are you free with fare graw. It's a food that I'm kind of uncomfortable with because not because of the end product, but because of how the process of ros produced. Fare Ra is. Basically it really tasty diseased liver out of a duck. And what they do is they to produce it. Um, they will put a funnel into a duck's mouth and force feed it. Well, here's where it gets tricky. One might look and say, um, that their force feed the duck all this grain way more than whatever eat naturally, and upon force feeding it causes it develop to develop a very large, fatty liver, and that is fi raw. This practice is illegal in some places. Pro pro fui raw people will say, you know what bro those ducks line up for, Like when you pull that funnel out, it's like getting the dog, It's like filling the dog's bowl. They come a running, or so I've heard. Like, I'm not a subject matter expert on FOI raw production, but that's what it is. Someone like, so if you get a wild duck. Someone told me once and again. I don't know that this is true, but I like I like this because there's a tidiness to this that if you when you butcher fig raw duck, that duck has so much body fat that you can harvest the liver, and that one particular duck would have produced enough fat two confee its own thighs and legs. You've done, You've tortured. No, but I didn't even force feed him. We fed him a lot of chicks, I know, because they were they were eating all the chicken food, and so eventually these are the ducks that tried to also molest the chickens. Yeah, yeah, yeahs flog ra where you don't force feed him, but just feed him a lot, right, you know what. I didn't even think to look at the livers, but I can tell you that when I cooked them, why not just your thrifty dude. I don't know, but I might even have been the one that got it him. My wife might have got it him, and I thought about it. Anyways. My point is is that when I cooked him, we try to roast him. And I even read about this when I was gonna roast these ducks. A lot of people said farm raised ducks. Man, you gotta be careful. There's so much fat. You'll literally end up like you won't be able to roast it because it'll just kind of baste itself and boil itself in its own fat. And there's so much. Yeah, it sounds good, it's kind of what happened. But after we ate the duck, I realized that between what I had in the pan and it was still like a hatch to the skin, there was so much fat. Like, I gotta do something with this. So then I took all that and rendered it and I think out of two ducks, ended up with three pints. Yes, and it's some good ship. Let me tell you, that's very very yeah, little plenty. I mean that would be three three cops of fat I think would be. And this involved no funneling at all. Funnel. I'm against the funnel. I feel like this, listen, man, the funnel is the minute they start feeding something and involves a funnel, it's wrong. Any time you're jam in a funnel anything or anyone's orifice, this is you're the ice funnel to change your oil. Maybe, yeah, yeah, for sure, because I do have to get a whole lot of beer in your system very quickly. That's also that you again, that's that's the opposite of your livery sim larities between a a nipple. Can you hold that thought? Go ahead, go ahead? Okay, you're feeding calves, your bottle feeding calves, your bottle feeding lambs. They line up for the nipple. And there's how much of a difference is there between the funnel and a nipple implies funnelntary act I'm not talking about in your own experience. Yeah, I'm pro nipple, anti funnel. I think we start the anti anti funnel. Fuck raw dude, you're here's the thing man, You're gonna get in over your waiters. This is a complicated world, like they there's a thing like Hudson Valley. There's a place you know what. This is such a This is not a well managed conversation. I need to back it up. First off, Ben O'Brien Hunting Collective is here, the beautiful, lovely Ryan callahan um is here, and John Edwards and of course the lab being Eagle. Now, okay, can this is not a well managed conversation. And there's a lot of parts floating around right now, So give me a second. Confy is basically it's like you're you're you're simmering meat in fat. It's an old timey thing because what it does is you you simmer it for many You take meat and simmer it for many many hours in fat and render and rendered fat so it's clean fat. There's not water in it, and chunks of meat and whatnot in there, and not blood, just pure fat. You render it in it and then when you store it, you store it where it's the meat. The cooked meat is submerged under fat, and it's an anaerobic environment. People to even to make it extra anaerobic environment, will often store and then pour in a quarter inch of oil on top of it so that it's encased in fat. It's cured cooked meat, encased and fat. And the old time eat as you would take your pork confie or duct or whatever and you go down and put in the root seller where it's kind of cool. And it was. It was a non refrigeration storage technique. And like many of these techniques that came out of something practical, like smoking, right Like smoking was invented because it would you could put meat and put smoke on it and dry it out. The smoke keeps insects away while it's volatile. Right, Salting meat was the preservation technique. Over time, we don't need to do it anymore because we have fridges now and freezers and ship like that. But we do it. Affected our tastes and we now like smoke, so now you need by smoking a bottle, which some guys think is a real sin liquid smoke, But it's like smoking was a thing that came out of a practical consideration and entered into it became like a culinary tradition. Colin Fee still tastes great. U to make duct confeete. What you do is you you here, You're just you're basically crying the legs for a couple of days in just putting salt on him and good stuff to eat on there. You can do it with citrus peels, garlic, uh um bay leaves. Some people put some pink salt down there to help the color, to keep give it a nice color. You cure the meat for a couple of days, and then you simmer it. You're supposed to simmer it in duck fat, But duck fat to a guy to a wild game man, duck fat is a pain in the ass. Uh, that's why. And trying to now that I'm trying to like pick up the scraps here of our conversation. That's why we were bringing up the old thing like that, you that you have a big, fatty domestic duck will make enough fat too do his legs. When we've collected fat out of mallards and collected fat out of Canada geese, I feel like it takes ten or twenty of the things to get enough fat to do even a small batch of corn feat. So what we started doing earlier, I would collect my own ductor goose fat and rent to it, and then go online and buy duck fat for like astronomical amounts of money for little teeny tubs of duck fat. Quit doing that would supplement with large and now I just do it with large and any fat I happen to have laying around. How's that well done? We caught up? Is that kind of pulling it together? Yes? Yeah? But why not just farm raised some ducks and make your own duck fat. I'm not a farmer, come hunter. Okay, Well that's a that's a valid response. You read the old testament Jacob and Esau. I'm say I know that raising the ducks. Who gets to be Jesus? I'm not that easy there, so making the calling feet And what we'll do is I will absolutely share that with you. You store it in the fat, and then what you do is you just reach in there and dig out a little bit of that goodness. It's all in case and fat, and you can put it under a broiler and crisp it up. Or you can pick the meat because you cook it for so long in the fat, like a eighty degrees. You put a candy thermometer there and cook it for five or six hours degrees and it's but it's nothing like if you were boiling it in water. I mean you're boiling it in fat. You can pick it and it shreds, and you put it under a broiler and it turns beautifully crispy, and then you make a salad and put that in the middle of the salad. Telling you what's on. People that don't like geese, I think geese don't taste good. They haven't had this. So did you, guys? Uh, pluck all your geese? Plug some of them, plug some of them. Um, you ate. It's hard. Got a rosecose for Christmas? Right, Yeah? But that was my brother's shot that he brought that out. He gave me that goose for Christmas, which is like where it's like giving a guy it a coal mine or coal for Christmas, because like, you know, I got you for Christmas, this goose. You don't say I got a bunch of those that I was just messing with my freezing. You hit this on the highway and drive over it. No so here. But I saved that fat because that goose I roasted in a pellet grill, a Christmas goose, you know, Christmas Carol. Yeah, Charles, biggest goose in all of London. Bob Cratchett, he's trying to he want he buys a Christmas goose. We rollsted that goose in a pellet grill. But I was worried about all that fat. Caused me all kinds of trouble, so I put it on a rack over roasting pan. That thing had a ton of fat, and I poured that fat off and saved that fat in my fridge. And then we were also a pellet grilled two whole mallard skin on which put off more fat than the goose even and saved all that and I got that in my fridge right now. So where we're at on the con fee process, we're basically we did the prep and step one so uh, I had never done this. I thought we were immediately going to start simmer and stuff and fat. But you do a salt cure, a dry dry brian um a couple of days, a couple of days, and then do you rinse that, rint all that off and then uh, then it goes into the fat. Then rinse that all off, dry it, pad it dry, then put in the fat, and then five or six hours degrees and then you uh pick the meat out because you'll have some settling in the bottom. There'll be some function in the bottom of the pot. Pick the meat out, put it all nicely, nice into your container. In the olden times, one would store it in a croc uh, which I've kind of fallen out of favorite crocks. You'd store to seram a croc. I put mine in a glass jar with the fat, or just pick it out because there's the funcation in the bottom that you don't want. But in old time, in old times, you kept in the fat. Right, I'm not done yet. Pick the meat out and lay the meat all nicey NICs in your receptacle. Then you take the still liquid fat and pour it over while keeping one eye. Do you strain it? Just put a strain around there? No, you could, no, because all the funcation goes to the bottom, all right, the function is at the bottom. So you get your again, get your meat, all it all nicey nice, and then you pour the nice, pure clean fat on it. Watching to not get when you get down to the water and whatnot that came out of the meat is in the bottom, and make sure not that to get that in your container. If you strain it, that that any liquid it's in there is going to go that way. Anyways. Does oil float or sink? Oil must float? Oil does float because that's how they they've spray that crap that that makes oil settle when there's the oil spill, when there's an oil spilling. So that's how you make it. Then you let it sit in your fridge for a couple of weeks, it said your recipe card said a month, three months in the freezer. I've kept it in yeah, and the freezer thing three months. That's my body, who's a chef, so he's always careful about that kind of stuff when I put them in the freezer, unless it's fish. I think of it as being like good in perpetuity, sometimes in the next two years. But no, he's real because he's he's got a he's a professional chef. Matt Winegard I just read on Food Republic website six months fridge. I've left it in a long time. But again, like you'll tend to have chef guys being you know, they're always like throwing out their spices after three months because they don't have quite the nice smell they want to. It's just different being a home cook and being a professional chef. Can you do goose comfy? Yes, that's what we're making is goose confy, which is better ducker goose duck. I like the size of a better. Nothing wrong with the goose, but the size of it's nice because then you can put in a wide mouth mason jar. It's hard to fish gooses leg I have a wide mouth mason jar. But we're doing with Canada's what about the pastronomy? Being ready to tackle that one? Talk about that, cal how'd you wind up with your special pastronomy here? Oh, buddy of mine that I met, uh you know that conference, said you and I went two down to Jackson Hole. Yeah, hard to forget. Yeah, alost some fists almost punches throwing at shift. Uh well, a great uh connection um that I made down there was Um, there was a guy who had a bunch of he I think he had like buffalo Ruben sandwiches or something at the at the the dinner night the night that you spoke, um in his place called Sweet Cheeks Meats. It's a butcher shop down there in Jackson. And Um, this guy's name is Nick, and it's him and his wife and they you know, he's like, yeah, man, I got nothing wrong with hunting. He's like, but why would I ever hunt? Everybody just brings me meat? And uh so I swung into a shot, give a get a job. Every just brings me money. Yeah, yeah, I'd totally understand that. And uh and so I went in there and picked his brain the next morning on my way out of town. And and we've just been kind of standing in touch and and it became email buddies, is what you're trying to say? Yeah, pretty much yep. Um, But you know, it's great having a butcher as a resource and chatting about different cuts and and things, and they eat. They're like a whole animal butcher shop. So they're putting up tons of bone stock and they're they're using everything and whatever. They're not selling uh two people. They're selling to people as dog food. Ye uh and it's a cool operation. But anyway, Um, he gave me some duck pastrami one day and I thought that that cure that he used was really good. And the last time I went through, he's like, hey, some of this tailored the waterfowl. It is, but it's domestic waterfowl, right. I was aiming to use the goose pastrami recipe that can be found in the Mediator Fishing Game cookbook, available now every where books are sold. Um, but we diverted from that plan to use your body stuff. Yeah, and uh, we're probably short a couple of key items in there in the recipe. But to judging from what we ran into last night, I too so in the Ronella family spice cabinet. So we're making it Slap your mama. No, I know that's a hot I mentioned that last night, though, did you it's hot sauce? It is it's good first headed on steelhead. I think it's a good spice for steelhead. Oh it's a dry spice. Yeah, slap your mama. I think it started out as a hot sauce, right, I don't. I don't know about that. The way I've had it was a dry rub and you liked it. Yeah, it was really good. Um, are you do you like us less? Because we had this meat party and you weren't there. I'm a little disappointed. Yeah, when we share some of it with you, you'll feel better. You know, when a guy stays up all night and drives all the way to Dylan, you know it's no love. Dude. I'm still really guilty about it. Watch this transition. Um, you know all that STROMI what state was that made in? Again? That mix? Ye? Wyoming? Did you guys you're about the guy in Wyoming that uh in September hunting the wind River Range, hunting Elk. I feel like you guys really know about this. We talked about this. You might not know about this. He's hunting Elk. I just read about this yesterday and finds a bull pinned under two trees that fell over no way, pinned by his right his right beam is under two, he said, roughly ten inches in diameter, five ft long, pinned down, been kicking all night. It looks like he's dug out a trough where his feet lay. He said. There's dirt scattered up to like twenty yards away, and he's like, at this point so tired, he's not really reacting to the dude standing there. He gets out the twenty yards when he realized that it was it two bulls fighting and got wedged or did it? He postulated a theory in there that perhaps they were mixing it up. A couple of bulls. Scrap happen. What are the odds You're just cruising through the forest and you have people get killed by but think about people get killed by fallen limbs. Man, dude, I know you like, we'll ride into clear trail in you know, August or July, and it's unreal how many trees are freaking on the trail. I mean they come down. Yeah, I've been I can't even tell you how many times I've been out in the woods. Right and you here, you know where you by yourself? Did it really happen if a tree falls in the forest, if you're by yourself in a tree. Falls didn't really happen, I think so. I think it made a loud racket too. So if there's an elk under the tree, yeah, it's just like, it's just it's one of those weird things that has to happen. But to be out elk hunting and the guy passed up a bull that day, yeah, it's just bizarre. Man to go down and find a bowl alive pinned under your tree. Crazy, He says. His initial feeling was to cut it loose, but he end up sticking arrow into it. But he wasn't able to cut it loose. He tried to move the tree, it said. He tried, like didn't have a chainsaw, of course. Yeah, you know the problem is, and the problem is you never right because because one might be I could picture a scenario in which one later and I'm not accusing anyone of this at all, I could picture a scenario in which one might later Um Taylor the story, I don't know, I don't know you're you're saying it would be okay, I don't know that it would be that I tried my damnedest, you know, and and unable to find a way. I was at my wits end. I was resorted with my only last resort would be to shoot shot humane thing, to do the only thing. I Oh, I don't know the feller. I don't know. I'm just picturing me. Um. Let's say I was stumbling through the woods and there's a live bull laying under a couple of trees. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like I might. I probably. I feel like I would have tagged it. Yeah. Yeah, it depends on a lot of things. Yeah, I would have tagged it. I would have taken some pictures. I probably would have gone live on Instagram. Hey, guys like yeah, and uh, I feel like people there's probably a lot of people. Brody said this to me, and he's like, I bet you people would be a little bit up in arms about this. I don't know that they will. I got a lot of Me and Yanni did a podcast where we talked about we would take a tree stand if it was left in the woods, and and people were like, I thought you had morals. I'm like, if it was left in it was in public ground where it wasn't supposed to be there. It's trash picking up trash. This is kind of the similar thing. It's like, on its face, it seems like something you may not want to do, but when you look at it from a practical level, you should do it. Here's one for you. What do to do if you come across in bow season a dead bull and that's recently expired, that just had my buddy Greg Blaskovic, And let's say it's a really nice bull that's happened to him. How nice just happened. Let's say we survey that bow hunting public. What what did guys do in that situation? Because I gotta story happened two years ago and a traditional archer came across. Oh yeah, you told me the story that the meat wasn't the meat was gone. The meat was gone, but it's a really nice bull. Real quick. I know a fella that just found a fresh dead bull. And he did, Yeah, he had just been shot. He did his damnedest to find the hunter. First, he sat there and waited and waited and waited, expecting some guy to come down along the blood trail. No one shows up. He went going and asking all around the people camped skinned it, butchered it. Still kept looking for the owner. Yeah, he wanted with the bull which you would hope most everybody would do. But how many guys would really do that, donal you know? You know, it it would definitely depend, unfortunately on the size of the aislers. Well, that's what's so interesting about the story. I told Steve is this was a turned out to be a you know, three ninety bull on public land and yeah for you, for you gentle listeners out there, that's a giant elk Yeah, bull of a lifetime. And so so it was very cool. What the guy did. He uh, he went online and made a post that didn't reveal where it was, just sort of in Montana. Hey, if you've shot a bull failed to recover it in Montana, you know, if you contact me and let me know where it was and what the fletching on your arrow was, I might have found your bull. Might have if I like you enough, if you seem like a nice enough feller on Like, there's a version of events in which I found that there's a possibility. So sure sure enough that the that the archer contacted him and and he gave him a pin and he recovered his head and horns. Comic cool story. That's amazing that it's amazing that's the right thing to do. But he did not pack the head and horns out. Correct, he didn't. He didn't touch it. He just pinned it and where it was. And the guy came back from out of state long way and uh, it had snowed two feet in the intervening weeks and hiked in their long wise and recovered it. Here's what I feel like I would have done. I feel like I would have found that and and probably would not have done all that, and the perfect me would have but I don't even know that it would have really occurred to me like that. I would have been huh and cool find yeah, And I would have taken the head and hung it up in a tree somewhere. So something didn't, you know, drag it off and busted skull all up trying to get the brain out of it. Um hung it up in a tree somewhere with a with a thinking that at some point in time I'd go back in there, once they had a little time to clean up from birds and whatnot. I'd go up there and bring it home and throw it out in the yard. Because what are the chances that you post online wherever you post, and the person that actually shot this thing's gonna see it. It was actually a buddy of his untilso his serendipity that way. But yeah, it's like you got the angel and the devil, you know, and it's like, what do you do? And is it? Don't even then it would have been like an in there. It wouldn't have been an angel devil. It would have been like it was just like I'm just talking about what what would have gone in my head? It wouldn't have been the push and pull it's been like I would have just I would have never even it would never even occur to me to try to find the person, you know what I'm saying. And it's obvious from the find that was a fairly recent It was that season. You know, there's a carcass and you know the meat was but it was it was obviously it wasn't last year's. No. I like it noble of him to do it. And here's another one for you. Is it or is it not significant that the guy who did it was a traditional archer versus a non traditional arch Come you know what give you that? I'll give you that. Okay, I'm gonna give me that one. That's a bold statement, and the question is it struck me as a real arrogant? Are you traditional larger? I'm just learning, actually, you know. Initially, yes, okay, yes, okay, can yes. I think that this is a bold ass statement and I'm not a traditional larger by any stretch. I did win a long bowl contest when I was a kid, but it was only one of the kids in it. I'm into it now, Like Buddy Franklin, he was, yeah, it's it's cool. I picked one up at the at an archery challenge up in Big Sky last year. It felt great. Talked to guys about it, and Buddy frank Brokowski who introduced me a guy named Dan Tolki who's a fantastic bowyer. I guess is what you would say about of the flathead. Anybody know this guy, Dan Tolki, fantastic guy. And so yeah, I just I just got along goo on it. It's it's fun. Do you feel more responsible with a long I'm morally sound now. If I pick up a quarter on the street, I'll stand there and he's like, normally I wouldn't even call my wife. I just go out drinking all night. But you know now that I got that long bow her some flowers. Um, no, it's a bold statement, but yes, do like if you took a hundred if you took a hundred traditional archers and a hundred compound archers and then did a sort of ethics and moral survey, I do feel I just I just have a feeling that they would score higher. You know. I sticking there, Dave. I was thinking about what it is. Why why do I like and hang out with hunters? Okay, I'll say about stair day, Like like if I go to a wedding reception and you're like, oh my god, I don't want to go to this thing. I'll typically by the end of the night I'm talking to some dude likes the hunting fish. I just sniff them out, you know. And I was like, if you were in some situation where your house is on fire, okay, and you're somehow incapacitated and your children need to be rescued, and the fireman says, listen, because of the circumstances, I can't explain right now, only one person can go in and do the rescue. We have a guy that hunts all the time and a vegan. Who do you want to attempt the rescue. I mean, come on, come on. So it's like there's a ship of blasphemy and anyone, anyone's gonna be like, well, clearly, dude, in there to go. You've never seen like the weightlifting vegans, you know. I just think that that's gonna be the guy that's gonna go in there. He's gonna go in there with a lot of girl and just get the kids and come out quick. Let me get my long bow. And other side, whether I want to go in so and that, I just want the record to be clear that it was a question and I'm not siding with the traditional archers over the compound archers or anything like that. One could also point out that a traditional archer might like to do what's that word moral signaling. He might like to he might be a virtue signaler. And what greater way to virtue signal than to go on to a forum and be like, boy, did I find the bowl of a lifetime laying out in the woods but not gonna touch it? Exactly? Signed Pope and young lifetime member, And he like, dude, I just saw a post of a traditional archer with a grip and grand photo he shot a vole like like a mouse with traditional archery gere, so he would score low and he would lower the mean, he would lower the mean ethics score of his compatriots. It was a trophy vole for a traditional archer. He didn't he might have been fixing to do a point. He might be so hardcore he's gonna do his shelf liner instead of doing it and vull hair because he's so good at stalking that when he gets up close he finds that the noise of his wooden shaft on felt is too loud. I'm a little uncomfortable because I feel like we're starting to rip the traditional because cows of traditional archer. Yi's a traditional archer. Is a traditional archer, Not really, He's not a traditional both. He's not a traditional hunter. He's a traditional archer. My brother Danny is a traditional hunter. Cal is a traditional So when Danny goes out the only bow he hunts with, how often does he hunt archery? With archery? He does what he likes to bring his long bow because he lives in the land of the Long Winter, Yeah, in Alaska, so he likes to sit around, drink a beer, shooting recurves, staying stand around drink a beer shooting recurves in the winter, so at times he has taken said recurve out and shot it at things. Yeah, that is one uh note for you there, John Um. If you're just getting into the traditional side of things, recurve is night and day of difference, easier than long bow. So I screwed up already. Easier the long bow is what you're saying. It just is man like the consistency out of my re curve. I need another year of like real shooting that in act. When I moved up here to Bozeman with only things that I could put in my track, I brought my long ball so I could can figure out how to start shooting as fast as possible. Yeah, but the long but just feels like more traditional. Yeah, well that's a lattle, dudes. The kind of dude that hunts of the add a laddle is a different kind of dude than hunts of the recurve. Yeah, for sure, I hope. So. But there was a guy, I meant a guy, and he was like trying to convince me to pick up a recurve, and I said, I've tried before and it just never stuck with me. And so I said, where'd you learn? He said, I learned it on YouTube. I said, don't you think that's a little bit oxymoronic? How don't you feel like that's a little bit ironic that you learn your traditional archer from fucking the internet. That's that's pretty funny. I like that. Um, where do you go? You know, where do you go traditional archer hunting? Well, let me check my GPS. I'll tell you. Yeah. Well, here's the thing about my brother, like the ethics of my brother. You want to talk about having high ethical standards as a traditional archer, check this out. Every traditional archer gets arrows that are painted to be Yeah, well, I know because my brother is an exception. He was unethically uncomfortable having the carbon arrows that everyone gets that have a wood wrap. Yeah, that's what I got. It's kind of weird. He went out. He's like, I can't do that. I can't delive a why. And so he went out and had to struggle to find uh arrows for his recurve. No that we're carbon and looked carbon where they weren't masquerading as would What is with that with you? Guys? Well, I don't think that you people is one night you really want to go down. But it's just a fact. It's just it's a it's better you know you're you're not breaking as many arrows. You don't have to deal with why to look like a problem is not shooting carbon. My problem is why do you guys make it look why who are you trying to trick? Oh nobody. I'm like, there is an inexpensive arrow. No you're not listening. No, No, I am for me personally part of like, oh, here's this selection of arrows. I have to have the one that looks like would because now I'm shooting a traditional bill. It just so happens that arrow manufacturers such as like Eastern and Beamon, they have pre fletched with real turkey veins. Only the arrows with this fake wood sheath over the top of it is the exact same arrow as I think in access arrow, which is a very common arrow, but it's one grain per inch heavier because it has this additional faux wood uh lamin it on on top of it lambin. It's probably not even right detail all tho. I don't even think it's the archers themselves that this problem spawns from it's some marketing dudes and they started it, and so it's just like been they like produced the first ten thousand arrows because they thought that, well, of course these guys that are shooting these old timey wooden balls, they're gonna want these old timy wooden looking arrows. And it was never like a group of traditional archers being like, hey, Eastern God, we love shooting your aluminum or your your carbon arrows. But you know, if you guys could paint them up to them make it look like would, we'd be so much happier. And what is really funny is I have gone, you know, some spots around catch them where I have like good north facing slopes that have like good loamy soil, soft soil because it's real rocky country. Um, go out and dip out of town, go stump shoot right, shooting old rotten stumps with them. I'm following with three curve and I have found other arrows out there where I'm like, oh, there's my arrow that I lost the last time. And it's not my arrow, but it is like the wooden shaft arrow heard the fake would get many things I want to bring up right now. I need to write them down. I can't get what I can't get, like the marketing of traditional archery equipment, like did they bring it in your house and a horse and buggy? What the hell does it matter? What? According to the folks in the in the archery equipment industry, it is such a ridiculously small group of people out there that um there whoever made the marketing decision? And be honest, I think you are spot on. That was a long time ago and nobody's thought about it. Since I don't buy it, I don't buy it for a second. Would you wear Let me what kind of rat you smell on there? And you wear? Okay, let's say first Light makes some bitch and synthetic clothes. But like, you know what, we're gonna, uh, instead of having to be camel, it's gonna look like it's buckskins and we're gonna put we're gonna paint fringe on it, and so that way, when you're on the woods, it looks at a passing glimpse, you'd be like, oh, I have fellas wearing buckskins. But he's not. It's synthetic, of course not. No, is that a real coon skin hat? Nope, No, it's not it's polly pro I just painted it to look like I'm out in the woods. Was it's not important. It doesn't it's not important enough to converse about. No, I mean, it's the thing I haven't noticed. I grew up hunting with guys that would go out in buckskins with passion, round ball, fifty Calholigan and hunt that they had no optics, no nothing. I was interested in the buckskin in the world as a young d exacted you guys that were buck skinners and that that you know. I said, I had some things I wanted to bring up that I had to write them down, write them down. Here's one of the things I just wrote. When I was a little kid. You know, what are you talking about? Going stump shooting and find other arrows? When I was a little kid, I remember vividly, and I could tell you where I was standing when I heard it. In the parking lot of the Moskegan Bowman's Bowl Club, A guy telling me, if you really want to find Indian arrowheads, here's how you do it. He was saying that he goes out in the woods and we'll sort of imagine shooting lanes of yr Okay, so like a opening through the trees where he could picture someone have him taken a shot thousand years ago, and he would then go over there and look around to see if he could find the lost Indian arrowhead. Boy, time on our heads. This is the dumbest person. But viewing it in my mind like you were put an old growth for ut the entire time we have taken a pause to review this. In my mind, I wonder if he wasn't just yanking the kids chain. Well now out here in the Great Plains, right, that does stand up as far as like okay, Pishkin buffalo jump site, um, old water holes are places that you know, cave sites, things like that, and that does take that theory right at that imagination of days of yore being like, Okay, this is a natural pass. I've been here for thousands of years through this pass. There's a high point, there's a water, there's an old dried up uh pond area underneath it. Boy, I bet that would have been a good place to camp and wait for animals to come into that pond and work on my heads, work on my heads. And then at that pond you could probably spend some time and find bird points or small game points. I agree with that because I've successfully found um arrowheads old stuff with anthropologists whose approach was to go to likely observation points and likely campsites on the Arctic slope where there hasn't been anyone wanting around picking it all up, and you'd be like, man, I could picture hanging out up there waiting for waiting for wild horses to roll through and during the pleisto scene peninsula with like giant old growth timber, and that would be pretty dawning. Tax real quick question before we move on. You good, Ben? Well, yeah, I'm good. Okay. Uh. If you remember the house on fire scenario, yes, okay, picture that you're in that situation and knowing that you have no children. Imagine that's your your mother and grandmother say, and imagine you're a vegan. No, and it's that you're there incapacitated, and they can let the one person to run in, and they have a compound shooter and a trad guy. That's all you know about the potential rescuers. What way are you leaning? I got my answer. I'll wait for calm, but I'm going trade guy. I'm going to compound guy. There's a lot of passive compound guy is a lot of passive. If they's a hardcore compound guy, the trade guy is old, he can't get up the ladder. There's methodical he's gonna be thinking about listen, all right, what the compound guys just gonna run stupid lead forward. But then he's gonna stop a hundred yards away. So what's your answer your mother and grandmother had for some reason, my first instinct was to say, compound guy. So I'm just gonna go go with compound guy. Yeah, that's the obvious answer. I feel like you were patronizing Cow a little bit with your answer, Steve, is that true or no? No, that wasn't standing to I know. I just I think of guys that I know, uh in uh, A couple of firehouses, a couple of fire city fire guys. I know they're all compound guys. Oh so you're thinking you might actually wind up with a fireman by making that selection, Okay, I bet you. An we hear from a fireman who's a trad archer will be watching moving on a real quick This is interesting. They found there's a species of snake a before Okay, cheapas Mexico forty two years ago. They don't explain how this happened. Forty two years ago, some cane, some palm harvesters working in the Mexican state of Cheopae. Am I saying that, right, Yeah, I'll go with that. They find a snake. They find a coral snake, and in its gut um so whatever, they decided to cut it open. And if yeah, if you're a palm caughter and you run into a coral snake, imagine you're killing that coral snake because you'll get your snap. So they killed a coral snake and they disembowel it for whatever reason, and find a snake in it that they did not recognize. I hadn't seen it before. Someone preserves the specimen forty two years goes by. It's a ten inch long male snake with two peckers, a double peckered snake. Uh. Forty two years later, they do the genetics work on it, and not only is it a new species, it's its own genus, completely undescribed. Watch this segue. Oh, go ahead. The defining UH attribute, I guess would be the two pecker versus one pecker. No, I guess it's not that. I just like that part of the story. But um, who wouldn't they have like snakes will have like thorns, like little birds on the on there, like ducks, tally whacker, if you will, Um, this one is a double double, it'd be it'd be fun to just know, like how they got that. Yeah, it's not a new species, right, kingdom filing class order, genus species, Right, you have to dig deeper into it. So yeah, I'm sorry that I'm not able to answer that. But yeah, it's like they think that perhaps it's a ground dwelling insect eating snake, and you might be like, well, maybe it's now extinct because they have no one had ever found one, and then forty two years ago a snake eight one and no one's found one since then. But it's probably just it kind of opens up, like there's just a lot of mystery out there. People are describing new species all the time, but oftentimes it winds up being that you're taking something you kind of already know. Like there's some stone fly, right, and the stone fly has six bands on its abdomen or whatever, and you realize the next drainage over there's a stone fly has got seven bands, Like, oh, I got some new species, but you look and it's he's like very closely related to a known one. It's interesting that we could still be out there discovering something as significant as a ten inch snake that isn't like super close to it's not just like a little slightly different than the one found in Guatemala, but it's like an entirely new genus of snake that we didn't know about. Yeah, you would think there'd be plenty of them, given the two packer situation, twice as many, twice as many they'd propagate. Well, but maybe it doesn't work. Maybe every man's actually is actually a detriment. Uh and and and I'll pivot off that point to talk about that. Perhaps I think that this would enlighten and embolden all of those people who wrote in about our Bigfoot show, because the Bigfoot responses were one half the people that wrote in about the big Foot show we did with with a person who had had explored the world of bigfoot people. Um, half the people that wrote in were like, I can't believe you would even honor that subject with a conversation. The other half for like bro, I didn't believe either. And then I met one, or ran into one, or had one throw a rock at me. And the thing that really surprised you out of this was the people we had joked at length of out people who who bigfoot, people who say that, like you have an obligation to shoot one if you see it, because that's a step towards that's a step towards saving them. That if you kill a bigfoot, then it'd be that you we'd have to recognize it as a species. We almost certainly have to recognize it as an endangered species, and it can't get a line in name. It will always be a mythical creature until someone kills one. But that conversation brought the fact that there are people out there shooting, like really in real life, shooting at stuff that they think is bigfoots, which is a dangerous practice. I had a guy right happened here in Montana, just happened. That story is a little fishy Yanni, go ahead. Yanni is a subject matter expert on this story. Well, I try to be. I try to research it, but it seems that the story has fallen dead and I didn't have time to call the police department of Helena or Missoula, that it happened nearby. I'm gonna talk about one from Texas, but you go ahead and talk about this one. Helena. Helena, Yeah, Helena. Yeah. A fellow was shot at and then the dude that was doing the shooting claimed that he was shooting at him because he thought he was big Foot, and last we knew, they had not apprehended the shooter. Nobody was hit. That's what the story seems weird. John. What's the bar on the west side of Rogers Pass? Um? The little town there, it's starting to get kind of repopulated now because folks are spreading out from Helena. Yeah, because you know, if if you're gonna do that, go ahead, has big like a big remember the Great drink. Why would you assume I would know that a cocktail? They're called the Bigfoot because you've been in Montana long time. I mean, it's not tricksies nothing, no, no, no, this is this is right on the west side of Rogers Pass and there's a bar right there. Um and they have I think it's a weekend long like big foot hunt party that goes on on private property off off side of the bar. And then they come back to the bar and it's and there's busses and all sorts and they're hunting. So that could stand the reason why maybe this guy didn't pick up on the fact that it's a good excuse for a party. Maybe he was like, Okay, this is an epicenter of big foot activity, right, we should have done a good job of finding the would be victim and talking to him. But but my interesting in the story, he was sighting, he was sighting in he wouldn't be victim, was sighting his rifle, and all of a sudden, bow bow and there's bullets hitting all around him, and he winds up having a conversation. According to his story, he has a conversation with the shooter shooters like, bro, you should wear hunter's orange. I thought you was a big foot and opened up on you. And he drives off in a black Ford. And then the guy that would be victim isn't interested in pursuing this or pressing charges and doesn't even notify the police to a day later. Apparently he's got no beef with the guy took him. Think he's got no truck. He's got no truck with the man who almost killed him. That's crazy. So I just like, I don't know. A lot of times, you know, when someone tells you a story and at the end of the story, you're like, man, there's got to be more to that story. Mitch Hedberg used to talk about taking drugs for attention deficit disorder even though he doesn't have attention deficit disorder, and anytime someone told him something, at the end of it, he'd be like, man, there's gonna be more to that story. I hate to say, but I think I sighed with the half of the people who rode in, like, why are you talking about bigfoot? I'm sorry because it doesn't surprise me that a guy gets shot at sighting in his rifle. That doesn't surprise me, I'm sad to say, accidentally, But when that when, when the defense to the crime is I thought I thought he was bigfoot. That that's what Here's where it becomes, Here's where the rubber meets the road. John is a guy rode in, And this is a guy I had talked with before, email with before, and he he belongs to this North American would ape conservancy and they feel as though they have wait a minute, he feels as though they have identified a valley in Texas near the town I think it's near the Texas Oklahoma border. They have identified a valley that is inhabited by a small population of big feet that they feel is endangered by habitat loss. And they've had add I think like forty His group of guys that are researching this this imperiled population, they feel like they've had forty two run ins, and they have a document they put out and in this document, it details members of his group shooting at bipedal organisms with buckshot and winging them and blood trailing them and sending the blood off to the lab and seeing stuff off in the dark and trying to get shots at it and saying that we need to move away from buckshot and switch to slugs. And they're out in the dark with flashlars. Here Again, Man Peter's shooting at bipedal organisms does not surprise me. It's troubling. This troubling to me. It is troubling to me as well, and it makes me not want to hunt that not necessarily out hunting there and you're out late and you're you're like, oh my god, I forgot my ashlight and you're cutting off through the bushes at night. And furthermore, it doesn't there's a national bipedal would ape conservation group out there that doesn't surprise me either. This goes back to our model of conservation. I don't have any problem. I don't have any problem with going out in the woods looking for stuff. It's like, great, go out in the woods, look for something. I have a real problem with going out firing away, firing away at things, walking through the woods. Isn't there something we learned in Hunter's education called no your target and beyond? Or are we just now whanging away at bipedal organism? No we are not. Officially, we are not just whanging away at anything. Don't know your target and beyond anything. I think every twelve year old would say that. But the whole Bigfoot thing, to me again, it's like, this is postmodern America. And if if you don't know what postmodernism is, look it up, because to me, bigfoot is a postmodern phenomenon. But there's guys like legitimate, guys like less Stroud. I don't know if we all think less strate of legitimate the survivor problem. The survivor man went all in on Bigfoot. I think it's but a lot of people do. This guy says, the guy that roared in. This guy even says that they were they They believe they were able to self tag a wood ape with a nanotag radio transponder transponder and tracted for ten months, attempted to close in with the animal, came very near at times. UM got a lot of geographical data on it, and they feel as though they were able to calculate a potential home range for the species. Excuse me, no, it's it's just just reply. Let me know when you get one, like, let me know when you can you have nets? You ever like net one, Well, put some sticks over it. We can start a rhinoceros dart one. Here's why you can't trail Camum. I'm not gonna say anymore about again. I am like I do not for the second. Everyone knows my opinions. I'm just talking. It's like an interesting like you dip your toe into the world. It was interesting to watch, like I had. We We had a guest on a couple of episodes ago who did a podcast series where she explores the world of bigfoot enthusiasts, and I thought, oh, that's interesting and had a conversation with it, and it's just funny to look at. It was funny to see the right the feedback that came in. I remain like, if you want to hear my opinions on they're unchanged, listen to the episode. But it was fascinating to see the mental gymnastics that people go through in order to keep this notion alive. For instance, that um, you can't get a trail cam image of them because they see somehow infrared and they can tell when there's and there's there's sounds that like a trail cam amidst feelings that they detect. It admits electro magnetic radiation. It's like hunting with hes and I was just gonna and they even say a guy was saying, in fact, a bigfoot's aversion to trail cams is so strong that if you have a big foot messing with your house all the time, just put trail cams up and he won't come around anymore. He'll stop messing with your house, firing rocks at your house all the time. It's a helpful safety. Yeah, it's just like dudes, they have ghost hunting TV shows on like some channel. Nobody watches. If that was happening, happened on like the news. Yeah, if somebody found if somebody find a big foot, it will happen on like you'll see it on the no. But here it is. You don't need to follow it. Yeah, it's not even worth it. What do you got? I like, I feel bad for having brought it up. And at times I've vowed to stop talking about stuff and then broke my vow. Yeah that's that old Joe crad It's it's uh. There's no such thing as a short cut. If it was the shortest, fastest route, it would just be called the way. All right, man, But you know I broke my vowel. But I'm gonna make a vow. I made a vow to stop dogging on people who like super crafty beers. And what about your mug vow? Last time I was on your vow. I break vowels all the time. But I'm vowing right now for real, for keeps. I'm vowing to stop talking about damn bigfoot's thank God? But what about what about what apes them? To them? Too? Lump those put them together? By petle? What do you got? I'm sick of hearing myself. Come up, you're ready to leave big foot? Yeah, okay, speaking of tough animal to find in the woods, you guys haven't caught on yet. We have a thing here on the Mediator podcast where we just try to out segue each other. You guys can all join in at anytime and uh when then someone else should do the rating. I tried, but you guys, I don't know if you guys gave me the thumbs up for actually pulling it off. Anyways, in this case, you could say, speaking Mark asks h what is the toughest combination of animal and environment to spot while hunting? So you mean I think he's asking, like, out of all the stuff that we hunt and all the different places that we hunt, what's like, what's the toughest animal to spot in its environment? His example is a white tailed deer, standing white tail deer in a standing cornfield, which I would say that it's impossible to spot that at the top of the corn It's hard to spot a deer behind a brick wall too. Yes, you can't see him. Yeah, that's okay, because that that's are you talking about, Like, it's it's in wide open you could see it, but it's camouflaged by its environments, like that's what. Yeah, because if it's it was behind standing corn, you probably can't see it anyway. Yeah, and we should narrow it down to like it would be possible to see it. Yeah, land land mammals, because's no reason to spot hell of it. Well yeah, and even like water I was gonna take out waterfowl. Yeah, yeah, yeah, animals, animals, land mammals. I say, the gray ghost, Yeah, I mean, that's definitely the first one that comes to mind. Or the couster. I've never hunted coust here. That's the great ghosts, the cus. They're famous for being hard to spot. I think that a mule deer because when when the snow, when you get snow and the snow starts to melt off and it's splotchy, patchy, that makes spot mules. You're very difficult because is it easy to do, but to eliminate the things that are easy to spot always like a moose. A moose in the snow, it's pretty easy to spot, but they can still vanish in a will thick But yeah, I think that when because when you look at for mule deer, you're looking for the bodies of the butts. The bodies on the snow are really easy, and the butts out in the sagebrush are easy. But when you get splotchy snow, your eye doesn't trigger on the butts or the bodies. Yeah, so you've got natural camo and and it would make sense that coustier's a smaller bodied creature, so it's going to be more difficult to spot. I think you could make an argument for a black tail deer. Yeah, coastal coastal blacktail deer can be veryfficult to spot in all the dark shadows. That's hard to spot. I think easy to spot. Um. One of the easiest things to spot that I found is when you have black bears in the alpine holy smokes, like iridescent black blobs you can spot from a couple of miles away with the naked eye like green background and then this iridescent blob well and and spring black bear in general, just even locally around here. It's that's a that's a good good job finding. I mean, now you look at a lot of stumps before you see one, stand up and walk around. You know, here's one kind of off the continent, um hmil and tar and the tussic flats of New Zealand. When they get up like below the alpine and they're hanging out, it's tough like a tussock. Like the tussock, it's just a grass looks exactly like the hair off of tar hunting white tilles in Michigan is here. It was pretty fun where being out one day and there's no snow, and being out the next day and there's snow, and man, you just because it's a lot of tall brush and a lot of thorn, you know, like multi floor rose thickets, But that snow hits and all of a sudden, you're like, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear. Then you would not have caught without Oh yeah, I mean it makes vulnerable by telling the rut. Depending on the you know, what's on the ground and what conditions. I mean, it can be really hard to find, you know. You can you can know there's a buck right a hundred yards in front of you, and you might see an ear, you might see an antler, you know, but they can freaking get on their hands and knees and crawl with the best of them. A guy rode in and he swears this is true. He says, you're sitting on a power line in Texas. Thank he's in Texas. He says he saw a buck coming along. He says, I would never believe if someone told me this, but I saw my own two eyes. He's that he saw a buck coming along, got to a power line cut and got down on its knees, I don't know, down on his knees and crossed the power line cut on its knees and stood back up and walked off into the woods. I have a difficult time with that. You I don't know. I have a difficult time with that, But not with the bipedal mountain ape scenario. Very different I have. That's I mean, you see you see I can't even see if he would break your sworn earth. I'm oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, I don't know that's you heard anything like that? But getting down on his knees around what you've seen. You've seen a white tail get on his knees. I've seen deer. I've seen deer slunch slumped down and try to keep a low pro I've seen a white tail buck on his knee front knees getting through underbrush and stuff. Really not, but he was saying. Here he was keeping a low pro to go across the cut line. That's a different thing. Now, we did We talked about this ten times on this UH program. We one time come around the corner in the canyon and walked in on a wild turkey. And this wild turkey laid down and laid his head and neck out flat ass on the ground. He jumped for cover, laid down. Yeah, i've seen access to here. Do that? I mean you well from here to that wall. No, they're there with a bone and be trying to get a shot at them, and they're just up under a bush. Put their head up under the bush and like their neck where you can't you can just see there's hiding. He's hiding from you. And then when you get in whatever zone he knows he can bulk, he bolts and it's so fast you're nothing you can do. What'd you take, Joannie? You can't throw it out and then not have any feedback. I gave my my answer to the hardest animal to find. But now you guys are talking about deer on their knees. I didn't throw that out, but I do have that was a that was a tangent. I do have a anecdote. Okay, I wasn't there. I was there in camp when this happened. But two fellas, two brothers um came back into camp and one brother was on stand watching. Where we hunt in Wisconsin, it's like these big oak woods and there's a lot of ridges and bowls and pretty much you kind of when you post up to sit for a day, you're gonna watch a whole bowl and maybe a ridge or two in the ridge behind you. He watched a buck come into this bowl snow on the ground. Washed a buck come into the bowl and go into the thicket down in the bottom and disappear beted down. So he and he could see all the ridges of this bowl and could if the buck left, he would see it. Well, his brother shows up midday and he's like, hey, walk the bowl for me. There's a buck down there and kick him up. So he goes down there, walks the whole ball. No buck comes out, so they go back in there and he's like, I know what that thing went in. So the go in there and find the tracks. Then they from the they follow the tracks from the bed and they find a log that is laid down from the thicket up towards the ridge and they can see tracks and then a belly scraping alongside the backside of this log as it goes to the top of the ridge and then the tracks pick up and he and he left. I like it. Walk the log, walk the log, No, no, behind the log, belly scraping on the ground behind the bed, out of sight of the hunter. So the buck left the ball and that's how he got out of there, with the hunter not being on to see him. I like it. There's gotta be I haven't explored YouTube, but if it's something that happens, it's probably there bucks walking on their knees to avoid detection. Yeah, that's a good one. Oh, speaking of bucks like that, there's a news story of the couple of people sent me of an Amish feller who shot a poach point buck. Like he shot one buck and then like tagged the buck and then shot another buck and moved the tag from one buck to the next buck. And we're talking about like fines, like whether or not you get a good find or a bad fine. This guy picked up eight thousand dollar. Where was this in Ohio? Millersburg, Ohio. They make a big point in the article of pointing out that, um, he's an Amish man. He put like he put a game check number on ad He used a game check number that had originally been used by another hunter. He'd also then also took more than one antler deer in a license year, which led it to be that he had a posession of Like all these things add up, right, you wind up with all these counts, right, you're like something, commit a crime with thirteen counts or whatever, but you want to. Then he's also got possession of deer parts that are in property tag, which is another thing and also adds a lot of scrutiny in the past seasons typically, so maybe they picked up he had like and it turns out like the game check number he used was originally used on the dough. But anyways, it all adds up. Dude winds up with eight thousands, seven hundred and some dollars and fines. Sure that hurts, and then he can't hunt for two years. That's how do you How do you get to go hunting again in two years? Those things don't equate? And fines and a two year penel. Well, this guy doesn't sound like he may follow that rule either. Yeah, maybe not my favorite part of it. As it says, and I had to think about this for a minute. It says that they tried to reach him for comment, but he was unavailable for comment. He's not hunting, no, because he doesn't have a phone. He's amish. What are you gonna do? Send someone over there, knock on the door. What do you think about those poachings? That's a that's like I would put that in the pretty stiff fine category. I mean, well, yeah, there's a clear trail of total disregard for the rules. Right as a hunter, would you rather see the penalty be longer and the time out of the woods or money? Because I would much rather him be You gave him ten years and five bucks. When I look at that, my thinking is, wow, that's a lot of money for a buck, because I think sometimes you see someone poaches a buck and they get a light that you mud up seeing these fines a thousand bucks. But I think it also kind of like plays into um, you know, I you might be treated differently. You know, you're down on your luck and you shoot a forky buck for some meat, Like a judge would consider that in a game ward and we're talking about sentences a day, and we're expressing some frustration with why do some guys get such big fines like the guy what was the guy that killed the three moose and Alaska hit a hundred thousand dollar fine and in a game ward and our our friend Eric from Idaho Road and he goes, you know, you gotta understand a game ward and doesn't you don't. You don't get to dole out the punishment, right. Look, it typically goes in front of a judge, and you've got judges that that take you know that, you have certain judges that are known as real hanging judges on wildlife crimes, and you've got some judges who wildlife crimes don't really register with them and they can't picture, Oh, it's just a deer, right. Their attitude would be like, oh, yeah, who cares. They don't understand, like they don't understand the value. They maybe don't understand and prioritize the value of the resource. They might have had a who knows what cases they heard that day of what kind of horrible crimes they've been dealing with that day, And then you come in it's like, Okay, some guys shot a deer, I don't care and and and not treat them. But then some judges are like really hardcore, and so it kind of depends on who winds up doing the punishments. And he says, you can try to influence them by telling them like the severity of the crime, but it's not you know, it's often not up to you. But you would you would think that you'd have more you're saying, a better chance of running into a judge that would be more strict and Alaska than you wouldn't where it's recognized a very valuable that your citizens and your economy rely on that, and it's more prevalent you're gonna see more wildlife related crimes in a place where people are interacting with wildlife more awten and might yeah, and you could be that you know, you get one, but it's a hefty crime. But in looking at him, like guy has a lot of money. Not that I feel bad for the dude for the fine, because it is like, you know, he really was going out of his way to to pull off some right, he was going way out of his way to pull it wasn't like he made a mistake and then tried to cover it up. He was like actively being deceptive. I look, I'm like, that's a lot of cash, but that look, I'm like that seems like a uh, pretty weak on the revocation of hunting privileges. I think that to your question, Ben too, like, I think the money, it is a lot of money, but I think it's it's a greater deterrent to the bet to the behavior because you can say five years or uh, and the and the culprit in this particular case, because it's difficult to enforce is he out there hunting two or three years? It's easy to enforce pay the fine. Have you paid or have you not? And then that that financial burden is a is a deterrent to others and to prevent RECIPIVI yeah, and it affects your family, it affects those around you, that's right. Yeah, yeah, I agree. You can see you've given the guy and a chance to be good. Where if you take aways hung your rights next twenty years, well you just created a dude that's going to poach for the next twenty exactly. You know that turn, It's a good perspective on it. This guy took like so the first Bucky shot was the eight point and then you wanted to swap heads out on it like legos, you want to swop heads out on it. And they later recovered the eight point head of the ditch. Oh is always a ditch because you don't like the thrill stuff. Yeah, and it's interesting too because you know Amish uh communities are that they're a communal resource. Right, they just share their firm, the equipment, they share uh right, the responsibility, uh financial responsibility. So yeah, this guy did make a twenty eight thousand dollar ding on the community. But that being said, like you know, there are payment programs um that you can get into to pay these fines over the course of years, because they don't take somebody makes a hundred bucks a day or twenty five bucks a day and say, hey, you know what's twenty eight grand? Where is it? Typically? Yeah, I mean if you don't have it, you could build finance it, but you gotta pay it one way or another. Yeah, and there's no way around that. Yeah. So I was talking with an officer out of Lewistown, Montana, and he said he much prefers um uh seizure of uh. You know, you're hunting tools of the trade. In this case, you're poaching tools of the trade over anything, because he feels like that, in his experience, was always the greatest deterrent to future crime. It was like, we're gonna take your vehicle that you used to poach this if that is you know, a comparable amount of fine money, or we're gonna take you're super fancy rifle. Um, because he feels like that has a longer lasting staining to it than a fine that they can be like, oh well, yeah, I just turned into seventy five bucks a month for the next thirty five years or however it works. Yannis. Have we talked about um and we talked about the guy that the warden I met who had the theory about super poachers. Yes, we talked about it. Death from down in Kentucky. Oh I know what you're talking about. This is something different. Oh yeah, well I can't remember if we bought it up up again. Yeah, I'm gonna bring it up again. He has this idea that that in enforcing like and enforcing poaching, he feels that that you have ten percent of your poachers are doing your poaching, and he thinks that that's where you need to really put your resources, and he thinks that they're the same way. He thinks there's a there's a form of sociopath and like that, like sociopathic behavior can take a lot of forms, and there's a type of sociopath. And he has a personality type that he's built. Who these people are, what their motivations are, how they operate, where they live, what they do for living. All this, he understands them and studies them as a type of sociopathic behaviors to become a serial poacher, that's their outlet. And there's certain attributes of having like a trailer or a shed or a garage where you have all the heads and you are you have sociopathic anti authoritarian tendencies, You have a feeling that you've never really gotten what you deserve in life, that you seem to be somehow compelled along by this idea that you're going to deprive others of something. You've got it all figured out. They're idiots, you know, how to find these big bucks with a spotlight on somebody else. And and and it's like and and he has all these case examples of these guys who are doing like see real you know, serial poachers where when you find their cash, it's fifty or a hundred elk heads, you know, just squirrelled away in a basement. They'd be fascinating. Yeah, they think they're you know, they look at that big pile of poach and poached heads are like satisfied. Yeah, he had said that there's there's a lot of similarities with there's a lot of similarities with serial killers, like the methods, Like they really like strange methodical behavior and it's it's a sociopathy. Wow. So if you meet a guy that doesn't like the government, thinks the man's getting him down and has a big police Yeah, yeah, we're gonna to This might be the last one. Let's wrap it up. I got a busy day. Um, I don't know. I can't remember the guy who wrote in I don't have the email anymore. It's not gonna do this day. It's not in in front of me. But he wrote in asking why in the show we're always uh and we take always we always see this show. I think it's the editors must like to show us loading the cartridge into the chamber. Yeah, they like that nice metallic they love clanky sound. Um, this guy editors like crick crossings, gate openings, burners getting turned on, ignited. I just watched the chambers shell shellen chamber in The Untouchables with Kevin Costner, you know, and Sean Connery. Great flick, and they they must rack those pump shotguns dots and times, and it's like howtimes sometimes the bartender mo racked pumpho. That's funny. I just watched that Netflix bird box. Sandra Bullocks in there and when Yeah, to prove her character, she's in there. She's like, I grew up. She said something like, I grew up on a farm. What does that? Every time I go to a farm, I look around where I look at some guy? I grew up in a rural environment. You're like, what, Well, clearly somebody in Hollywood wrote that ship. My dad has a horse watching Hollywood writers be like, oh no, I know all about these rural folks, what they like to do. I eat a lot of canned vegetables. You're like, Uh, so he's wondering, uh, why we do that, why we show that, Why we're out hunting without um round in the chamber. He he is in the woods always. Once he starts hunting, he's got around chambered with the safety on, and that's how he goes about it. So I'll answer it with a song. There's no business, um larger what you're seen as a function show business because we have a chaot oftentimes, the chaotic situation with camera guys circling around, popping up in unexpected places on you now and then. And it's different than just being out by yourself or being out with your body when you have a good synergy and you kind of understand where everyone is, and it's really it's easy to have good muzzle control and just like if you're out home with your body, it's just once you know what you're doing and you guys kind of like know how to move. You just do not wind in situations where someone's sleeping their muzzle across your chest. It just doesn't happen. Um. It's easy to stay aware of who's around, You know what's going on when you when you throw in a filming and environment, UM, there's just two. There's there's too much that feels at times like a little bit out of control or surprising, and there's like extra people around who need to get and get good angles and they're out in front of you and they're behind you, and and it just wants it's a good added safety. It's a good added safety protocol to just not do it unless you get in the heat of the moment and you feel like you're in a situation where there could be a shot coming up, like in in tight quarters, um in in when we're filming in that situation, I would even say, hey, heads up, I'm chambering around, and then this moment passes and I would be like, heads up, clearing the round. And it's just it's something we just developed over time. That's a good thing. With that said, um, if I'm bombing up some trail in the dark, I don't like, I don't like pull my gun out of a case and automatically chamber around. Just kind of depends what's going on. Yeah, I think in most instances it rarely helps. It's like it's not really that much of an added benefit to have one around chamber. Yeah, John, I was saying earlier, if you're still if you oh, you're still hunting, right, it starts to rain, You're like, I'm just gonna get them walking around and see if I run into something. Then maybe if you're by yourself, then maybe, but otherwise, I mean, I'm curiously if anybody's table here had has been involved in any accidental discharges, I have you after three? I can think of three or four right off hand. Absolutely, Yeah, And you know, it's a I think it's a really good topic that hunter should talk more about. I kind of preach it to my kids in the nature of hunter education. I mean, we're it's a zero uh tolerance game. You know, you get you get no chance to make a mistake. Yeah, accidental discharges and all the rest. But I'm a strong advocate of not chambering around when you're rifle hunting in most situations. And I certainly have friends who have a different opinion of it, and they think, you know, they're they want to be ready in case they need to make a quick shot or something. To me, it's not worth it. And it's almost never a situation where you're you're even gonna miss a hunting opportunity if you have to take a minute and and rack a rifle around with a bolt action rifle or whatever. So my my, my uh opinion on it is it's it's better typically not to have a round chamber. Yeah, it's an easy one. I always you know, spot and saw hunting out west. You see a lot of that, you know on the show, and John you obviously that's mostly what you do. But like back east, and I grew up hunting deer and I was gonna sit in a stand. I'm definitely gonna have a round chambers once I get set in that stand. And even if I was hunting with somebody, I probably still getting the stand. And once you're ready, you're gonna chamber one because if white sailed deer and you know those kind of woods, your SHOT's gonna be less than a hundred yards and a lot of times they pop up and they're just right there in front of it it, and you could screw up the hunting opportunity if you had to chamber around. I get that, and it's reasonably safe. You're sitting there by yourself. You've got good muzzle control, all the all the rest of it, and you and you're right honest. Out here in the West, larger countries spotting stock hunting for the most part, that's talk and you're climbing over stuff and understuff, and it's like, uh, you know, recently, I was hunting with my little boy and we set up to rattle, you know, to call hunting white tails and set up I'll be like, okay, we're gonna chamber around and talked about how we're gonna do that, and then talked about how we're gonna undo it, you know, um to be ready. What I used to do. I now use a neoprene sock, you know, a neoprene cover for my scope, which I love not I can't picture ever using anything else. I used to use the kind that had like the elastic you know, the shock cord. We used to make our own. Just go down to hardware store making like indestructible shot cord scope covers with PBC. UM. What I would do is if I had a round in my chamber, I would always have that scope cover as a reminder. I would put that scope cover on like a bracelet, and that was my like, you have a round in your chamber, don't forget. Yeah, that's a that's a nice thing to do, a little you know, tool or a device to remind you that you're that you have a round chamber, because you know, stuff happens out there. It's it's chaos theory. Just when you think of I've got a round chamber. But I'm good. This is an easy hike and my safety is on. You know. That's when you cross over a log and you trip and follow me. Just stuff happens. I would never My oldest kid is eight. It will be that many more years into the future, probably more before I would ever entertain the idea of him having a chambered around unless he was preparing to shoot right. And it it as a parent, it really hits home with you, you know when when you're when your kids are are now hunting on their own with their buddies, and it's like, okay, you know, go get them guys. Uh. I personally still to this day say I don't want you chambering around, And I don't really want you hunting with someone who's got a round chamber. You know, assess the hunting competency of your buddies, because that's the one that's the bullets gonna get. And and I have had good friends, I've had experiences hunting with very good friends who did not maintain and control of their muzzle. And you see a muzzle pass in front of your body and and I hate to be kind of a jerk about it, but it's almost like a zero tolerance deal. It's like, I'm probably not gonna hunt with you again. Story this year, I can't remember what stated what it was in the Midwest. Uh. Guy was hunt with his dad and he went to pick up his dad, and his dad was getting down off his tree stand or somehow somehow decided to hand by the barrel, hand his rifle to his son. His son reaches up to grab the rifle. Mm hmm, dead dad, brutal. Yeah, because it's it's a game of worst case scenario. What's the worst case scenario if you don't have a round shaped budder gets the way? That's the thing I can't I and sitting here talking about it, I really can't think of it. I can't think of a case, a situation where you could really honestly say I would have had I would have had that whatever, had I had a round chambered. I really can't think of a case that that I could legitimately say. That's thing and people talk about the noise. But what I do is I keep I'll keep like when I'm doing that, I'll often keep one in my pocket or I'll keep around in my binal harness. And you don't need to go like it's not like you're like demonstrating your rural street creds. But you can just kind of open it up, place it in there and not work one out of the not working one out of the magazine, which is noisy, but open placed one in, put your finger on the round it's in the magazine, press it down and close the bowl. It's not that loud. Well, you can if you're sitting as you I don't even say, and you're sitting in the ground blind, or just sit up against a tree, you leave the bolt open. Yeah, in that same way. Yeah, I grew I grew up my dad. If he said watch watch your muzzle once every ten minutes, it wasn't a surprised even if you know, even if I was sure I had shoulders slain my rifle and there's no way I was gonna muzzle anybody, he would still say, watch your muzzle. Absolutely, And kids should start learning that with BB guns. And it's it's a lifelong thing. And now, you know, you get through teenage years and my kids and oldest son now is twenty two, and you know, we just hunted with him a few days ago, and uh, it's like, you know, when you're hunting with your friends, don't be afraid to say, my gun's clear, I'm empty, my gun safe, you know, all the little hunter ed things. Just keep doing it. Yeah, my buddy guys up. Man, he uh, when we're with him, he'll he'll say he's doing it, like he'll acknowledge it, but he doesn't take your word for it. Be like, oh, it's clear, I'm gonna check. Go ahead, bro, Like, don't don't apologize to me, man, totally don't like, don't apologize to me about check all you want. Don't be insecure about that stuff. And it's no skin off anybody's nose. And make sure you're gun safe. And it's just habits. And to hit the thing with the kids, I'll tell you, like this year, I was hunting cotton tails, my eight year old, and he shot a cotton tail. And then we're sitting there and he wanted to get his He wan him to keep the twenty two casing as a like just to putting his little bag as a little medicine box, you know. So he goes to get it out, and like it doesn't occur to him that when he goes, so he opens it up to retrieve one and closes it and I'm like, now, buddy, what just happened? Like it just it didn't occur to him, like oh, and getting the one that I wanted, I chambered one. Well, he doesn't do anything without me being right on top of him in handling, you know, But had I not been there, it wouldn't have occurred. He wouldn't have put that together. Well, I mean, we're talking about bolt action rifles really in this situation or spotting talking a deer or something. Think about in the upland field. You you can't if you're if you're running and over under, you can't walk around. Mean you you could walk around sometimes when it broke open. Most times you can't. It's hard. It's hard. You're like jump shooting. Yeah, it's like you're that's a real that's a real deficit. Say well, and how many people be sitting in a pit behind with a bunch of dudes where that you got the rack in front of you, Or you lean up your shotgun and it's loaded and it's wet or icey or something in the shotgun just falls over and if it's loaded, you never know what's gonna happen, and so those are to me like some of the more dangerous situations there are. Yeah, there's definitely there's definitely cases where it really has implications for like efficacy, right, Like it's it's not if you're sitting there in a duck blind. In order to be like in the game and to be like an active participant there, you're gonna you have to be ready to shoot. You gotta reay shoot. So that that comes down to where you increasingly like you're really a lot relying on judgment and attentiveness. Um, I think there are other cases where if you really look at it, like case by case going throughout your day, there's a lot of situations where you're really not at a deficit to have that extra. But it's the thing enough where like so many people have written and asking that question. Yeah, Yeah, I had an interesting thing go down when I was in North Carolina over the holidays through Kevin Murphy, I met another uh squirrel hunter that had a dog, and when he picked me up, he said, Oh, we're gonna go pick up this uh a friend of mine. He's seventies seven. He's trying dogs, but he doesn't walk the woods anymore. But he's just gonna come come along and you know, hang out with the truck. Great, you know, so go and pick this guy up. He gets in the truck, he doesn't even introduce himself. He's just like, hey, man, um, are you cool on gun safety? Because we only hunt with dudes that have a gun safety is a high priority. And I was kind of like, whoa, you know, like but you know, and he went on to tell me he had two, uh family members, some of them kind of distant, you know, a couple of cousins removed or whatever, but two family members that have been in gun accidents. You know, one had died. But uh yeah, that just struck me. And of course I was like, yeah, bro, I don't hunt with dudes that you know, don't exhibit you know, ex superior gun safety either. And you know, I won't even load my gun until there's a squirrel that up and a treat them looking at right on top of that, how's your personal hygiene? But only after that did he say so you're from what's your name? Was say, honest, he goes, yeah, it's an interesting name. Jan's Poodless. Uh quick update, it's hard because like there's like a delay and because of the holidays, we haven't been able to like monitor where things are at on ticket sales for the upcoming live tour. But we have upcoming events. I believe, Uh, it'll be way old news by the time it gets there. Are are Portland events totally sold out that real quick. We have upcoming events Houston, Dallas, Sacramento, Seattle, Kalamazoom Michigan, Kalamazoom Michigan. I'm not sure what's there. Cleveland, not sure what's there. I think that most every venue are v I P tickets are gone. There's still VI i P tickets and I don't know. I don't think there are there's still tickets for Ree know absolutely. Um, dude, go to our Reno show. Um is that sheep show? Yeah? You can go to sheep show at the same time. Yeah, and enter the Lesson One Club because most of you mugs listen and probably have not killed the sheep, And there's no better way to get an opportunity to go hunt to sheep, kill the sheep. There's somebody in this room who went to the Lesson one Club last year's right it happened to win. Did you go do that? No? I have not when that, well, yes I do want to go. It's like the only thing I've ever won, so yeah, that'd be great winner. No, I'm not a big winner winner. No, I'm just one of those greases the skids for everybody else. You're one hell of a goose caller, dude, I'll give you that. I had no idea it was a very talented sportsman. I knew that, but I had no idea that he was such an emphatic and effective caller. That Cott's wild, you know, like we hadn't been hunting together, something like feeling everybody out and Cal's hammer and the mallard call, you know, and I was this closely going, dude, come on, he's up on the mount. But then I was like, damn, this guy can call birds and he's turned to birds. Talking to animals, man, I've always always loved talking to animals. Coyle. There was a bunch of geese flying in a v high like I would have bet the ranch. They're packing the mail, you know, heading out of country, and dangs. Cal didn't turn them, broke them up and they came in and we got them there, like who's that sweet throated? It was cool toting around chambered. It was good that you guys saw that day because there's a lot of days when those geese just keep on and going. So that was fun. That was super fun. Alright, As I was mentioned live tour, go to the meat eater dot com. Fish around there and uh sign up for our newsletter while you're there, and fish around there for live events, and then go dig around and check out which venue you would like to go to. We'll add more venues, but right now we're focusing on these ones we got there, so go go check around. Um you folks, look forward to meeting you, and you have a chance to buy our live to our exclusive steam Breathing Wild Turkey T shirt and other cool stuff. Speaking of sheep show, good Okay, I was gonna end the show, but I like that. Sorry, And all the way back to what's the hardest game to find? You've got to kind of throw a knot in for for sheep. Oh, I tried to find a real quick story doll sheep in the snow. Not easy? Not easy. One time I was following us set of tracks in my spotting scope and then couldn't figure out what happened to the tracks. And it seems I gotta be able to continue seeing them until I realized that I was staring at his sheep at the terminus of the tracks, which it didn't even register me that that's why the tracks seemed to mysteriously end wild. Um, you guys gonna be set up at sheep show, Ye sneeze booth. You're gonna be there in person, I will be you. Come. Give John a hug and a kiss. That's right, free kisses. Buy some boots, free kisses. You can rub it in how he didn't get to go to Me and Cow's meat party. Thank you for listening.