00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is Me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by on x Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store, nor where you stand with on x Okay, it's gotta start out with a correction, but it's a weird correction because the mistake hasn't been made yet. It's a preemptive correction kinda. Do you understand your eyes? I guess. But it's all messed up because we're all of that. We're dealing with all this happening in the future, which none of it has happened yet. Man, it's like back to It's like that Michael J. Fox movie Back to the Future had always said, never apologize in advance. Oh well, glad he is he alive over here? Uh, glad he's not. Here's what happened. I was talking about a new I was talking on a show that we haven't released yet about a gentleman. It was like a meth ring, a drug ring, um and a couple of these gentlemen within this meth and phetamine ring, turned on one of their associates and tied him to a tree and spread bacon all around him, um so the bears would come and eat him. And then the guy got his hands uh and rolled looped up with bacon and was able to pull free. Do you guys know about this story those years? That's the reason why many years ago the mistake happened. Where I was talking to a journalist, and I don't know how it can't how it happened, but I felt that the journalists I was talking about was telling me that he wrote the story, and he said that he likes to repost it. He likes the story so much that he reposted every year on Facebook. But it turns out it wasn't the feller I was talking to. He was talking about another writer by the name of John Craig, who covered this trio of gentlemen involved in UM this ring. And what happened was they like turn on their associate and drive him off out in the woods, and they got and they gotta, I don't get this pistol. They got a twenty two pistol they had to fix because the cylinder was loose out and so they put a drill bit in there to hold the cylinder in place, and they go out and go to shoot their associate with the twenty two and the two misfires. It's like out of a movie. They go to shoot him out in the woods and the two misfires, and then one of the guys starts arguing to it's must be divine intervention and so they shouldn't shoot him. So then he takes the pistol and points it off in the woods and pulls the trigger and the pistol goes off, And then they have a conversation and decide not to shoot their associate and uh. Instead they tie him between two trees and then hang bacon around on the limbs because they stopped at a convenience store which we used to call party stores. Uh uh, tie him up between two trees and hang bacon around like Christmas ornaments and give him a good pistol whipping with the twenty two and leaving there. But eventually he frees himself. I kind of like, how even these folks leave a little bit of space for God in their lives. Where was the can? We guess it's not that I'm telling you this is talking to us God's looking down upon them. They have a guess which state? Take a take a take a stab. Come on, you're a bunch of people with this. I think lick Skillet Wyoming, wasn't it. No, it's I'm going, Um, we're going to Mississippi. Just say, Michigan, what type of bears? Did you just give away the answer? I'm going to New Mexico. No, these fellas. It was reported in the Spokane paper. But I believe these fellers are Alaska doing these things to each other and in Idaho. Oh. They grew up in the woods. Peterson thirty nine said he grew up in the woods near Orient, Washington, sometimes living to tepee, so he was never afraid bacon would cause animals to eat him. That's a line of the story. Shoot. I knew I had it made when they brought the bacon out. But the headlines a great headline. Duo tried killing man with bacon, Helmett duo. That's a hard duo. I was gonna duo tried killing man with bacon. Suspects accused of using pork to lure animals after gun failed man I fought I'd find headline writer in a hurry. I think Johnny Knoxville wore a bacon suit on Jackass one time. There's another headline, bizarre case. Bizarre bacon case ends in a nine and a half year man. This guy is a horrible headline writer. I hope it's not John Craig doing these bizarre bacon case ends in nine and a half year rap no punctuation. Victim was tied to trees surrounded by bacon as lure for predators. But the real problem isn't that I've screwed up. The real problem is that we're talking about something that happened in n Why is that a problem? Just is a long time ago to be covered news from Well at this point is that it's just an old thing urban legend. Happened a few days after the anniversary of the battle a little big horn. Uh, let's move on to something new, something fresher. Yanni pick it up with the with the woman I'm in love with Lola. Oh that's what they called her. Well, it's interest. Think she's the site the archaeological site is in Uh, she's gonna take me a second to find it. Is this story pre this is brands Well, it's kind too. It's either depending on how you look at it, it's either brand spiketty new or it's thousands of years old. The site is on a Danish island. But you haven't said what the site is. I know, well it's okay, I can think. I can set the space first and then talk about what's going on. I said, And we're gonna find out how Loland got her name because the site is on the Danish island of I think you would pronounce it Lawlin because it's l O, l l A and D not Lowland. This okay, keep going, I'm waiting for This is not how I would lay it out. We'll go ahead. So at the site, they've had a they excavated a piece of chewing gum many years ago. It's a piece of it's not really chewing gum as we know it. It's birch pitch that folks used to use to uh like, make tools and they needed some sticky substance in there to hold something together right. And they also found that folks used to chew on it. They think that people are chewing on it to just soften it up prior to use. Now he's doing a good job. Well, um, so what's interesting, and I really like and this is why everybody should just leave arrowheads and ship in the woods when they find them that they pulled this out thirty years ago and it's just been sitting in a museum and the author assumes are a lot of people like museum. Uh not the curators themselves, but the people that uh, you know, handle the budget would say, why the hell are you spending money to store this piece of pitch? Just a black piece of junk. Right. Well, thirty years later, the dude extracts a whole human How do you how do you say? Genome out of it? And we put together this picture of a girl that was at this kill site, and um, look, Paul Harvey here, man, he's doing a great job. She was I like to start alone and then get better as I better and better. I'm on the edge of my seat and already know what happened. Um and uh yeah, So it turns out she was at a like a tool making hunting's type site. And uh, what's cool is that they can with this DNA coming out of her mouth, they can also see what she was recently eating five thousand, seven years ago, that's right, and uh, she was had recently eaten hazel nuts and the mallard duck. When I told Jesse about this, who's with us here today? Jesse? Yeah? When I told him about this, I told him dark skin, blue eyes had just eaten mallards and hazel nuts, and he said, I like her, my kind of cow. Yeah, you might have to make a new dish for the restaurant, you know, the Lola appetizer or something. It works some I bet it works. Mallards and hazel nuts be delicious in there somehow, not far from where my ancestors come from. This is like due north of Germany, kind of at the south western tip of the Baltics. See, yeah, it looks like a little there's a picture of the actual thing. It's like a two centimeter long gabba picture of those big league chew If big league choose black, I think I gotta no big league choose too big. It's definitely like a chew big it's big league choose however you want it. That's true. But well, look there it is. It's a scale. It's it's it's roughly two centimeters maybe two and a half centimeters. Why so, you're right, it is actually more like a like someone taking a big way to big league choose. It's like if you gave my kids. Yeah, black black Gabba just looks like a black guy a chewing gum. But they're able to pull all that information. Lactose in tolerant. Which what's interesting about the lactoleson tolerance portion of this is they're interested in it helps you put together animal husbandry because once people um started domesticating, started using domestic cows and getting milk, then you see lactoles those cultures that adopted milk, you see lactoles tolerance in those cultures. So Hunter, and there's a painting of her, a beautiful painting. I'd hang it out my damn wall. Uh, dark hair, blue eyes, got a lot of animal hides on. She's got a little fish trap basket, she's got her fish spear, she's got a couple of drake mallards. But you haven't even shown me the profile. Pick there is right there. You need to get that picture and have it say on the bottom wanted nice yea some mallards. You know how she down in those birds? I wonder, Yeah, I'd love to know. Man, she just snuck out to him and got probably got on with that spear. Okay, another news story. We've covered us a fair bit. And if you were looking down, like if you were looking down from outer space and you were watching what's happening on Aisle Royal in Lake Superior, you would have a sad had laugh. So as we reported, you know what, I honest gonna assume that everyone listens to every episode. And so they've been following the saga of Ile Royal, but the wolf. They brought new wolves out to supplement the last two wolves that are on Isle Royal, which Ile roy It used to be Caribou and Lynx. Even in you know, even in the somewhat modern era, like even there, I think it was in the early it was like a Lynx Cariboo island. Then through unknown things happened. The thing froze, things walk out, leave, It became a moose wolf island. Uh, there's wolves there for like a relatively short period of time. The wolves started not doing well from inbreeding because it's on an island and they can only get out there when rarely when the thing freezes. So then the moose started building up real good. I propose you just have a hunting season and people go out and get some moose. But they thought, well, let's bring more wolves out, so they only have two of the original wolves left at crossed out on the ice, and they go catch a bunch of new wolves and put them on the island. And guess what happens right away? They kill the old They kill you Rich, the new wolves kill the original two. That's in the news. Anything else, Johnny Seth, got any uh, any thoughts on any of that? Nope, that's it. That's it. Ok. Thanks killing wolves great? Um oh, I think that's it. Any more news. I want to talk about the Gator band in California, but I'm not quite there yet. You good n oh, good man. Let's talk about Texas. Okay, let's do our introductions. Go ahead. JT. Hey, JT. Van's aunt fishing guy here in Rockport, Texas. It's about it. Yeah, how many dates? But you don't live here. I live here, umslat Yeah, I kind of. I kind of my great a little bit um Texas born and raised, seventh generation found fly fishing back in the early nineties. This is one of the first spots I came to to chase redfish with my new fly rod. It was just kind of blown away by the habitat and freedom to explore these marshes. And I've got a wife and kids I'm not totally sure I want to raise here. So I spend a couple of hundred days in a row sometimes down here, and my family comes to visit me. So you're down here working your ass off, and yeah, moving back and forth. Yeah, my wife held down a job for about eighteen years with Apple, and uh recently convinced her to quit to be with our boys full time. So she's homeschooling, taking on a whole new life. And yeah, so we've got a lot of freedom. You know, there's some things in the works down here that I'm just letting play out before really build a house. I had. I had set up pretty um permanent in a canal house on Copano Bay, and then Hurricane Harvey kind of wipe that out. So now you guys have seen my little rental, which is pretty sweet, kind of small to raise a family of foreign but super convenient, all bills paid right on the water. Um, So I want to try to hold onto that place and kind of figure out the next move. Yeah, we caused some crabs basically in your yard. Yeah, my front yard. It's pretty neat sunrise every morning, a bunch of redhead ducks. Um. Yeah, so you know, and ship, I'm getting older, so I gotta make up my mind. And uh, I like meeting dudes that are like a little older meets That helps me picture healthy picture because you're pretty surprised still standing up on that doormat in the air, pulling around all day. Right. Um, I think if I if I was more sedentary, I'd be in bad shape at this point. That keeps young and healthy. Then the tequila knocks me back down a little bit. You get a little better, and then did you take the top off? And then Jesse Griffiths, Hey, you've been on the show before. Yeah, a couple of times. Yeah, man, a few words tell remind everybody. Yeah, Jesse Griffiths, I'm the chef or die do a butcher's shop at supper Club in Austin. We also have a little takarea and we run a hunting and fishing school called the New School of Traditional Cookery and go around state actually everywhere and uh kind of show people how to cook butcher and enjoy their game more thoroughly. And you were on an episode I think it was called you want to talk about shooting hogs or something like that, people can learn about more about your thing there. Um, this kind of came what we're doing right now down here kind of came out of that experience, right because we decided we were down here and went to your restaurant and we covered that meal pretty extensively. Right. I think I was, you know, talking up talking up nil guy, talking up flounder, and so we came down. That's what we just did is went um nil guy hunting. Yeah, it was a good time lay that out for people, like what the basic groove of nil guy is. Oh, they're brought over here, I believe the nineteen twenties um and to the to the coastal big coastal ranches in Texas, notably the King and they've become very native down there there. I'm out and I'm sorry that's improper just callumn native. But I think they've native ized a bit. It was assimilated. I was scolded by a friend of mine who's a biologist, uh, Mike Rule, who I had put a thing on Instagram or had a picture of a nil guy and I had mentioned your I used your phrase where they've been accepted as honorary natives among locals, and he took offense. But let's call it a cultural native native ezed or I mean, I mean, I think to to the point that there's a there's a Spanish word for an Indian antelope now and that's the valentine, and that's what they're called. So I mean, I think that speaks a lot to Uh, they're kind of their acceptance into the vernacular down there. So what's there's a I think there's a bunch of things that whether he likes the word or not, I think there's a bunch of things. There's a bunch of introduced species in this country that were introduced. They're not delaterious, they're not trouble causing, you mean like Europeans. Yeah, while I wasn't going, there's a good point. Yeah, we're definitely like a delaterious We're a delaterious species, uh, not trouble causing and great local acceptance meaning no one's looking to get rid of them. When I say that, meaning like wild turkeys in California, Idaho, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, pheasants in all over seek a deer around Chespeake Bay, Nil Guy down here. It's not native. But people can't point to like a damage, Like they can't point to some huge problem they're causing, and people dig them and want to eat them. Yeah, I think there's I mean, there's a lot of value to them. They they're almost a currency down there. They're eating extensively, even if people don't have the access to to hunt them, which is a bit controlled and it's it's it's its own issue because of the big ranches that they habitate. But uh, everyone down there eats nilgai and it's like a preferred protein for for everybody that's lives in like south to Kingsville all the way to the borders. It's because there's such a giving animal. They're huge. I mean there's six hundred pounds and so it's something that is fairly available as a game meat. When you look at them, it's like you're looking it doesn't even make sense for a minute. The shape of them, yeah, or the color. Yeah, blue buck they're like people call him what blue bulls. Yeah, they're very They got a low ass. They have a real like angular upward pitch towards the shoulders. The head seems too small. The next seems too long. They run kind of like a giraffe. No, that's a good way to put their gate. Big sons of bitches, big um. You know when I put a picture of Anil guy up on Instagram at Steve right now, Uh, there was a there was a little bit of a there was a little bit of most people are like, oh, that's cool, love to do it someday. But there's a little grumbling, a little grumbling about almost be nice, must be nice. Oh well, I can tell you it doesn't take helicopters and uh, having a big fat, you know, your own TV show kind of budget to go hunt a Neil guy. Because we actually hunted with a dude that helped us out that runs No Guy Hunts down there, same ranch that we were on, and he has other ranches that you can it in on his No Guy hunt is less than three thousand dollars. Yeah, you can't get a hunt anywhere out west for that kind of money. That's what they charged for one. Yeah, I think he said it was like fifty something right around there. You know, so who knows what You could get a cow and it'll go I mean, and that's one thing that I think about a lot is not. I wonder how that affects the population because almost no one is shooting the cows um, which is exactly what I would want to go after. I mean they're not as big, but I mean I mean, judging from the meat quality of a giant bowl, uh, a cow that's that size and you know, having the qualities of the typically pertained to the female of the species, I think there'ld be incredible meat and you probably find a better, more budget hunt that way. And there is one UM drawn hunt that the Parks and Wildlife offers on the Laguna Atascosa that's right down but I've heard it's uh, it's it can be a bit crowded because I think it's such a desirable thing. I mean, it's a freezer filler right there, so everybody's putting in for that hunt. But I mean it is limited. But I mean that's gonna You're gonna go back to um a hundred and fifty years of the historic land distribution down there, and that it's it's divided amongst a handful of huge ranches, some of the biggest in the world. And that's where those nil guy stay because they have relative safety there. Uh. And that there's controlled hunts for them, and then that's where those populations have set up. And it's just it is what it is, and so it is. It's not a limited resource because people built fences around them. It's just it's a limited resource because they've settled in this very unique part of the world that's historically controlled by just a handful of families. I just typed up. I just typed up a thing. I just went did like a general little Google search, So for how would this be. It's costs more to hunt a high fence nil guy than it does the hunt a free range nil guy. It was guaranteed. So you can go shoot one, you can go shoot depend up. You can go shoot depend up one for thirty bucks. You can shoot a real one wild wandering around for fifty nil Ghai cows price on a request. Yeah, so it's presumably less expensive. Absolutely, And then you're gonna get and then you gotta figure coming home with. Uh, let's say you did the bull hunt. You're coming home with the two pounds of meat. Yeah. Yeah, they got a good they got a high yield. The high yield animals that like it's called the labban. No, it's not like the laban smirk is different, Like it's like if you were like this of proof, Yeah, if you were the vocaliz Yeah, the face he made that's like a cow call. Yeah, a lot? There was how many lot? How many are there in the wild? Just you know, uh, I don't know. I think that the surveys on the ranch that we were at or around two thousand just on that property, which is a relatively small property. We did a fair amount of research. Just it's looking like Texas Harbor is around between thirty and forty thousand. I mean we I mean how long from less than twenty animals that rut we're brought from a zoo in San Diego onto the King Ranch, I believe. Well, but they that did happen, But there's also been more that were bought from India. What's interesting too, is that they don't they can't really spread north there at like, at least on our continent. They're at their most northern range in Texas. So much so that on the ranch that we were on, they said when they had a really bad cold winter a while ago, all the old guy actually migrated to the southern end of the ranch, where, unfortunately for them, there was there's a high fence on the neighboring ranch, and so they got stuck there and we just drove down that fence line and you could, like if you just looked into the bush's ten twenty yards, it was like nilghai skull after nil guy skull. And without even looking, we found what three four very literal running away from a north wind ran south. They ran south to escape it. How how wildly like terrifying that cold must have been to them, an animal that just doesn't recognize cold, and and their their base instinct was just to run away from it. They had someone the powder horn, but they didn't do well up there too far north. Yet. You know what's funny, man, I'm in a live chat right now with someone at a place that this is classic. This is like I want to get into this little bit like how Texas is the lowest of the low and now also they of the high in terms of just like goodness. Here, I'm I'm I'm trying to live chat. I'm live chatting with Samantha at a place that has a hunting blind. You can hog hunt from our hunting blind that holds ten people. This blind has a TV that receives live game camera footage. A poker table air conditioning in a fully stocked bar sounds like a house. This is in Texas. It has to be the only the only mistake in that is the word hunt. If you call it what it is, then it's pretty luxurious situation. Um still wait for my reply. Uh so layout for like like layout how one can hunt? Can I tell you this though? You know the poop piles, like the poop and piles you showed me this the circular latrines. Yeah, they make a pile. Llamas do that. They mark their territory by making poop piles. They're all over. Let's do a really good job of describing the poop problem. Okay, you describe some live chatting with the I'm live chatting with the poker table. Oh yeah. Asked her how she described no guy that trees? She doesn't have No, she doesn't have no guy doll a like a party in this blind or they got all kinds. It's like one of those places where they have everything in the world chained up on a mark. Or is this high fenced? I can hunt anything I want. It's probably like a luxurious a bongo action video on a wildebeast. I can hunt an Arabian orcs. Is there a tiger on the left? Let me check. I can hunt an impala? What about a draft order one for you. I can hunt Texas doll sheep like hunted Thompson's gazelle, water buffalo. Will the beast zebra? Should? I ask her? I don't want to mess with the lady. It's a phenomenal No lions. I only put in a question. I ask you any lions. Okay, let's get back to me. Yeah. So no, I was because guiding got quite a few people from Texas. They would come to Colorado a lot, and uh we you know, somehow always gets not always, but over the course of the years, numerous times I heard about these animals Nil guy and everybody. If they tell you about nil Guy, they're gonna tell you about their poop pile. They know they don't well that's that was my experience. They tell you about they'll take you can't bring them down. No, you don't want to. Actually hadn't heard that until we got ready for this trip. So people anyways, you know the way it was described to me, I was imagining something that used to it would be big enough to play King of the hill on like Steve would run up there and I run up at room and push him off the edge of the No guy, that train pile there's not quite that impressive, Okay, I was imagining ship pile. Yeah, well, with all due respect, piles have been reported to be as high as ten feet, but I don't know that India has a hundred thousands of these things. Maybe the average pile that we saw was i'd say three to five feet in diameter and you know, only a few inches above the They never got taller. It seemed like they just got wider, like the bigger ones were greater circumference. I had a hunt plan of spreading out laxatives and then sitting one of them poop piles. Yeah, that's what That's what I was thinking. But there's so many food piles that it doesn't it's not like, you know, it's not like like a water hole in the desert. You know, it's like welly every depending on on the area, but every like yards, there's a there's a good way to some spots, like every fifty yards depending on it's a good way of putting it. But the place we'round. We talked about the place we're on. Sure, go ahead and tell everybody about the place. So it's on the kind of just south of the King Ranch. It doesn't extend all the way to the Gulf, but it just occupies a good section of that rolling, super sandy, kind of dune influenced brush country. How do you become friends of those guys? Um, that's a long story. One of one of the friends of our host was sold artichokes the farmers market years ago, and so back then artichokes were a big deal for us and how unique they were. Well, there's there's more. There's a couple more options for artichow. But at the time he had background just you'll only sell stuff in his restaurant from Texas, right, so if they don't come from Texas, so when you see some, you don't have it exciting like an artichoke which has a very short season. We would we would jump all over that and even as olives and ship right yeah, yeah, yeah, name it. Uh So we we would buy a ton of artichokes and preserve them or you know, do whatever it is we could. Um to really kind of celebrate the artichokes. So this guy's like, why are you buying some many artichokes? And it turns out he was from Brownsville, UM. And then you know, we started talking hunting this stuff like that. And then his friend he's like, oh, by the way, I got his friends some land and like okay, And then I go there and they're like, oh, this is this is a very special place. Like they don't really hunt it. No they don't. I mean the deer were they don't bait it friendly, they don't bait it. No, there's no feeders, there's no blinds, there's there's the only high fence is the one that exists on the south side of the property, which is the neighbors. And so these are all very free ranging animals, but very but it's weird to be in Texas and not there's no blinds and no feeders. Yeah, it's it's pretty refreshing. I really enjoy still animals everywhere everywhere. Yeah, there's there's not a lot of hunting pressure me. So turkeys have alena lots of pigs um. And then the deer, which were just they don't get any pressure. And it was fascinating to see what happens with a deer population that doesn't get any hunting pressure. How how just uh familiar they become with with humans. And it was also the rut. I mean they were in the middle of it. So the males were acting dumb. Yeah. Uh, I was telling someone yesterday. It's like we didn't really we didn't really go out like hunt a Neil guy. It was kind of like a harvest harvest hunt. Yeah, well, meaning it was there were just so many of them. There were you have to pick them. I mean, you put that in a negative way. It was a good stock I thought. I mean, but it wasn't like I was after an hour. I wasn't like, man, I'm wonderful, we'll get one if I know. It's just like, oh I could see now. Yeah, they're they're thick, They're they're like a little wary, like you know, they're a little wary. Yeah, but you kind of get the sense. Yeah I don't want to see. It wasn't like it was like hunting, but no, they were Actually this guy were the most the spookiest animals out of everything that we ran across on that range. Yeah, for sure, they must get persecuted a little bit more. Yeah, Well, the pigs had they been down wind of us, way more sensitive. And you know the we saw you know, a pig, that one pig that ran across the road. I mean he wasn't having it. They know, I mean pigs are just naturally like that. But uh yeah, the no guy, they know that there's pressure on them for sure. So could a dude if he wanted to go to that ranch in like book A Hunt for Nil Guy. Yeah, there's outfitters that are allowed onto that ranch, but it's pretty it's pretty limited, I got you, But it could It is possible, Yes, absolutely, there's the there's hunting out there. We went out in the morning and what's the what's the word? I can't? I wish I could sin Darryl h like a road right, Yeah, there's like a two track sendaro. It's Spanish for two track, just a lot cooler than the road sendero. Yeah. So it's the ship out here is low, very thick, very flat. Everything's how highs everything you know, mesquite mesquite high ten. Yeah, but you can't see you can't see ship once you're in it. But there's it's open. There's big openings around here and there, and there's sindarios like roads that cut through it, and the roads through this place or when they used to do uh, seismic surveys for oil exploration. You see that ship in the Arctic too, where don't like grid out on these grid patterns, these road systems, and they lay them out so they could go and do um searching for fossil fuels. And these are now somebod these have been maintained as senderos. And you're ride out now and then every time you get to one there they're straight straight roads and you get some one to look down like, oh ship and you see one across the road. Um, we go out wander around, Uh, not so much, wanter, because we're headed to this big opening. What would you guys call that giant opening we're in. I mean, i'd call it a meadow. I'm sure they don't, but just them Nate they call there's the big one down there, they call the pland grande. That's the big plane. Um, and there's that that it's a couple of miles long and it kind of weaves through there, and there's that low spot that floods out some years, but it was very dry this time. But it's natural. It's not cut. Yeah, and we pull up an air and you can you can see forever, and you take your vernaculars and it's just like white tails and nilghai just scattered and there's bowls running around, the smattering of gazelles. There's one gazelle. One gazelle. Yeah, the one gazelle up near the house. Now we saw more really driving No not he's talking about the os. No, they're like those little guys with not the water bucks, not the water bus. I think that was the same one, the same Thompson's gazelle that lived in the pasture near the house. I think we saw more of those somewhere. Not many, anyways, Lots of credits run around and it's but the weird thing is, it's like I always saw all that ship was like fenced in in Texas, and it normally is, but except for here. That's why, I mean, it's just absolutely yeah, absolutely well, they got crazy Africa stuff running around everywhere. But there's hundreds of thousands of acres down there that are all the fence that all have a mix of these animals on them. So it's you know, I don't know what the proper term is, but there are you know there's orex and water buck and no guy running around out therefore for that matter, farrell hawks and no regulations on them like that. Dude, we were with that part of the family that owns the place. If he felt like he could go out in and shoot a big pile of works, yeah, all of them. You know, there's there's no limit and you're you know, the license, the out of state license, I believe fifty dollars, and now there's no you can hunt pigs with no license even a non residents nonresidents and residents can hunt ferreal hogs with no license. That's that's an absurd Yeah, that wasn't Parks of Wildlife call? You mean, because why not have the state pulls some revenue off it? Yeah, why not educate a hunter and and collect some money for conservation. I don't know why. Well, yeah, but it wasn't. It wasn't Parks on Wildlife's call. You know what I like about Texas when uh they made it. You can shoot pigs from the helicopters. You know, you can shoot him from a hot air balloon. I know, like they cleared up shooting him for helicopters recreationally. But then someone realized that there was like an oversight or a mistake was made and you weren't allowed to shoot him from hot air balloons. So the Texas State legislator legislature got back together, like cleared up that little that little bit of nonsense. So now you can so you can feel them from hot air balloons as well. Well you don't like ambiguity, yeah, uh yeah, but it was fun, man. And then we go out and uh crawled up on one and we're hunker down loan and they're they're running. Yeah, they're running, and they have a long rut, like a couple of months of rut. Right, I'm not I'm not sure about the rut how long it lasts, but they were What was noticeable to me was the color. They were almost black instead of the normal kind of grayish blue. But there they seem to be darker in their behavior. I mean, the way his behavior towards towards you was pretty interesting. Yeah, we were hunkered down and he just caught our movement. But see like caribou do that, in antelope do that. We're hunkered down and he caught our movement. And then so he's so cocky because they don't have there's no predators, right, He's like, it's gotta be a nil gu I'm gonna go beat its ass. And he started coming, trying to get our wind and coming to at us, and coming at us. He calls the distance. He was three hund yards away, and a sudden he's a hundred yards away. And then you have things like about a lot of people warned me about that they can take a hip. I think that's valid. It's absolutely valid. I mean I shot the top of his heart off and he took off like he had no plan of stopping, Like, no plan of stopping. Yeah, the guides are are ready on that second shot to back you up. And what was what was monda shooting? I don't know. It was a It was a big gun. I remember it's a two fifty grain bullet. But I mean they are ready to keep shooting until they don't get up anymore. It's an incredibly resilient, powerful, strong boned animal. Yeah, he was kind of quartered at me and I sort of he was close and just holding dead still, and I had my tripod out, but a shot kind of came on the inside of the show there blade shot top was hard out went through the lungs lodged against the hide, and he just took off. As Doug DRN had said, he was carrying the mail. I think that's something Dug says. Um. I don't understand the reference, but you don't either. Man. Maybe like Express or something on that shirt. I think it was could be Pony Express Haul and ass um and they're they're saying they don't believe they don't bleed much, so they're hard to track. Hide. Yeah, the hide and there's no there's no exit. The big um ran off. Uh. The shot a couple more times and then fell over. But yeah, stout. Yeah, it took three shots, but I mean, I mean he would have been dead with the first one. But I don't know what he was saying. It once it's very hard to find him. Yes, that's been my experience, he says. He goes you when you go a hundred yards. If they hit that brush and they go a hundred yards, it starts getting dicey. Yeah, yeah, like fanning out and looking at Yeah, because there's no blood, it becomes very difficult to locate them. Yeah, if you don't keep shooting at them. Right, And I'm glad we found it, I mean obviously and uh and he was in the field. Um, it was, you know, it was very interesting to watch. I got to watch that whole thing play out from about a hundred fifty yards away in the brush line, and it was it was pretty exciting because he hit he hit that wind line like right when he got down wind of view, his posture change and that's the moment you shot him. It was I don't know, for me, it was pretty exciting to watch. You know, you guys sell a lot of that new restaurant we do, so there's a there's a harvest is allowed of them, um, and they go down there with professional shooters that have state inspection come with them. And now those boys they're shooting bulls too. Yeah, I mean I think they're shooting anything. They're going down and they're getting both yea of pay in the ranch a per pound price and you know, I really like and they shoot it down then the inspector checks it as they got it. Yeah. Yeah, they have that electro tender rising. They hook it up to a car battery basically, um to initiate the bleed out of it. And really high quality meat. And also it's I like serving that it's uh, and and we can call it an invasive it's in one animal gives up so much protein and it's a it's renewable, I mean because you see how many of them there are. And so I think it's a very good meat to serve so in in both restaurants. That's what we use for our you know, basically like in the venison role, right, there's no guy almost predominantly. Yeah, I don't know, is that accurate. We can talk about this some more time. Can you call it venison? No? I mean it's an antelope so but it I mean, like I said, the venison role, you know, where of the lean um nicely flavored wild game meat, and it is truly wild. That's another thing is that we're able to give some people something that's wild and it's not even hitting corn feeders. I mean, this stuff is grazing. So from every aspect, I think it's a very superior meat. It's a it's grass fed, it's uh, it's not hitting any corn Like I said, um, just really helpful meat. I wonder if part of the thing about why they're not super um popular or not because they don't they don't throw a big dramatic horn. Right, you know sure, I mean when I say popular, I mean like it's not you know, with people that just want head for the wall, I don't know that it's on there. They're that excited about it's a little head. It was like a mountain fils a mountain, like basically like a thick mountain goat horn. Well, yeah, I mean an elk represents its size with its antlers and no, guy absolutely does not represent how big it is with those two horns so sharp sharp, Yeah, there's something to that. Uh, tell everybody about what we cooked with the well, how kind of like what we cooked with the nil guy when we're when we're doing it. Well, we did um, you know, we we had all the really good fresh cuts. First, you know, we did the heart. We did made a cevich with the heart. YEA better explained that, man, because people are gonna be real curious about that. Yeah, it wasn't. It's not like a true cevicha where we're gonna cure the protein in in citrus, but more of like a cevicha flavor where we're just tossing the We we cubed up the heart. We cleaned the heart real well took off the outside. We can never do, yeah, because I wanted to make it supertender for for a raw preparation like that, and uh tossed lime juice. No, I'm sorry, we used to. We use Valley limon for that because we bought a little roadside stand because we're in the middle of citrus season onion chilies to launch row radish avocado. I mean you can. You can really vary it at that point and put whatever you want in there, and you add tomatoes if you want it, or you know, fresh peppers and whatever, and then served it on chips um just a cevich but made with the heart. We made some boot in out of the liver, which is I think it was new to you guys, where you cook the liver and grind it and mix it with rice and it's pretty highly spiced. And then we bake that into a colachi and we bake that into some you know, dough, which is pretty traditional Central Texas check food. We poached off a tongue or the tongue. I thought that was pretty good and just simply pan fried that fried after We don't want to mention about the hearts of echa, which is weird is um. Yeah, super tender, and you eat it and you feel like you were eating fish, but you weren't. There's no fish. It's the flavor record like the temperature, the favor. It's on a chip and you'd be like, oh, yeah, it's fished. Yeah, but then you're like, but there's no fish, but it's just had the mouth feel. Yeah. And then we get here in the first thing j T makes for us, it's that Cevicha, which was very good with red fish. How long does the heart stay in lime like moments? Yeah, it is. It's just like it's just a Cevicha flavor. More than that, we had what else, um we delivered? We had the uh so the tongue poached it until it was tender. Yeah, I think about six hours with just bay leaf and salt and then peel slashed, paired. Yeah, uh, the skin off it, slice it in generous slices, bread and bread crumb, flour, eggwash, bread crumb, and then pan fried that and you could do butter, you know. We used large of course. Uh. And we had the tenderloin, which cop out to say it was fantastic, But I thought that tenderloin was just was truly an incredible and it was done over open fire. Yeah, cooking over mesquite. Um. You know, we made made some sausage to yeah lay up the sausage. Yeah. I made a little sausage that was bound with not a little actually was quite big in a large casing, bound with the ground corn, tortillas and charred onions, a bunch of different chilies, cinnamon, and then we smoked that over mesquite. I thought that turned out pretty good too, and a little bit tasted like a tortilla. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to have that nice little massa flavor in there and it acts as as terrific binder for a sausage. Um, amazing. Bone broth to Ginger, Yeah that's right. Oh yeah, explain that. That's good man. Yeah. Well yeah, we we took a shank. Uh. He was feeling a little down. Do he was feeling a little down. He's having a battle store throw. Yeah, yeah, that's true. You know why because the bone because of the bone broth. So yeah, Chase, who who's who's here working with me? He he was like, let me whip up some of that that bone broth, and he he took the shank and put some ginger in garlic in there and cooked it down and then we got we shredded the shank to make a little bond me sandwich for lunch because we needed boat snacks. And then took that broth and you know, add a little bit of honey to that and and oh some chili pekin so spicy, uh, you know down and you got that ginger in the bottom of ginger up. Yeah, we'll touch of cinnamon to I guess and what was Yeah, I was centamon little star annis in the in the broth, just to kind of give it some flavor. And it's just super nutrient dense, really good stuff. If that was the only liquid I consumed, I would be all right. Yeah, like you got a final way to make it like an alcoholic beverage out of that stuff. Though, Man, you could add in I think some so toll into that. Probably pretty good. Oh. We ate some various steaks the first day, you know, but they were you know, a little on the on the chewy side with the flavors. Were good, but you know, it didn't have a lot of aging time on it. We were incredibly lucky with the weather and it was so warm when we first got down there, and then the cold front blew through and we were able to hang the animal outside, which which I was pretty excited about being able to keep it cold like that rather than transferring to a to a cooler where I just don't think meat ages as well. That doesn't happen often in Texas. Doesn't know drastic temperature drops, do you just we just got lucky with it, especially that far south. I mean it got it went from eight five to the high thirties. You know that same time could have been pretty grueling even this time of year. Yeah, and it'll probably be back in the eighties sometime this week. And you yeah, you can hit ninety any any month of the year. So yeah, we talked a lot about that that you liked. When you're hanging the carcasses up, you know, like I'm not I'm not big on hosing them down, but I like to be able to. But it was still like cold, dry breeze. We're able to hose the carcass off a little bit, clean it up, just let it hang, and look, it's so nice man dry to the touch. The operative terms cold and dry. So much easier to butcher when it's like a handshake that you're touching, you know, pleasure. I'm gonna have to steal the handshake. That's perfect, you know, a really good way to put it. And I think there's such a noticeable difference when you're able to keep stuff dry like that, there was an effected the meat quality. And then Neil Guy is is one of my favorite game meets. I don't want to say because it's mild. I mean, it has as a pretty definitive flavor to it, but it is. It's fantastic. It's a really good meat. I would uh on the taste. Like the problem is, there's so many things are good, so I was talking about, oh, it's one of the best, that's good whatever. I think that that that, like like nil Guy would be Um, if you had a hundred people, okay, you have a hundred people that have uh, don't eat wild game, and you gave that hundred people uh antelope, mule, deer, nil Guy, and these are not wild game connoisseurs. I would bet that the bulk of them would pick nil Guy as their favorite because it's so like easily approachable. There's nothing that someone's gonna get where it's like they're not gonna have like, Oh, that's different kind of thing. It's just very good mild tender um meet with a lower case sim Yeah, I'm excited to have it down. You got a bunch, yeah, I know, I got to divide it all up. Damn right, there's so sad. Well you got fish too, yeah, but the no yeah, the Neil guy deal man. It's it's it's interesting because it's like you said, how many how many you are in the state, hundred thousands in India and thirty here. That's nothing that Texas likes to do, is uh Texas likes to I like this. It's a good it's a good rhetorical strategy. Texas likes to justify it's bizarre quantity of non natives by throwing out the Texas has more revitalized. We have more rhinos in Africa, more tiger. Wasn't there more tigers here at one point? That's somewhere in anywhere in the world. But just like captive I don't know, pet tigers or whatnot, a lot of tigers residing here as well, but not now, not pre ranging. What I've come to love about Texas is funny because uh oh he's hearing about like from being from the north and now he's hearing about Texas. All you hear like people just like talk. It's basically talk bad about wildlife management in Texas, and so you expect to come down here and have it be like a disaster. But then you come down to Texas and it's like, oh, and there are animals everywhere. So you kind of wind up wandering like what is the problem because it's like everywhere. You know, it's a really hard place to screw up, but it's not from the lack of trying. Yeah, I think that, Yeah, you have animals everywhere. I think that the main gripe, uh, this would be a good Watches transition. The main gripe with hunting in Texas is there's just like the animals are largely commodified, there's a there's a value attached to them. The land is private. A lot of the hunting land is owned as recreational hunting property. And so you people that don't have access to associates family with land, right like, you're just screwed. You're kind of screwed because there's very few people that have There's very few I gather there are very few properties where some guys like oh, I just let all the locals come on, right. It's like they that's not true that no one does that. I think the greatest luxury. You're saying, no one lets no one. Yeah, it's like it's come like wildlife here is like thoroughly commodified. It's like there's a value to it. If you want to add it largely, you're gonna pay me to come get it. And you're if you want to go on my land, you're gonna pay me to go on my land. And so the frustration that people have is you don't know anyone, and you don't want to jump into the commodity, the commodifying not the commodity. You don't want to like jump into sort of the transactional nature of Texas hunting where it's like do you want to hunt your pay? And that pisses people off. I get I get a lot of inquiries and people contact me and like, in the past week, I probably feel died three or four of them. Uh hey, I just moved here from blank and I don't understand where I go hunt? What what are my options? And it's like, you know, we always do. It's it's hard, you know, uh public, but you know, it's it's crowded and it's a process to get on there. And I always I always recommend, you know, start with hogs, you know, because your best chance of getting on a place for free or cheap as if you're helping with hog control and like you know, but even that we've talked, but even that's a fallacy because you go online and you'll see like help Texas is over with hogs, and it's an ad. It's an ad for you to come pay. So people like, if it's overrun with hogs, and hogs is such a problem, why can't I go hunt hogs without paying for it? But it baffles people. Man, It's like all they really no one you know up in Montana, Like there's a lot of guys in hunt kyles. No one in Montana. There's cattle ranchers, sheep ranchers that don't want coyotes. No one in Montana is paying or Wyoming or wherever is like paying to go hunt coyotes because people legitimately m or all the opinion that the Kyle some people are legit like have the opinion kyotes should go. It's not transactional. It's like, oh you wanna get kyotes, please go ahead. But here's like psych pyke, I don't really want to get rid of them. I'm just trying to sell you some ship more coyotes than people up there. Probably in Wyoming he counted it out. I mean, there's huge population here in big cities. Probably just don't even know. I don't have the first thing of of hunting culture in them. Yeah, it's from where I'm sitting. It's one of the best places to hunt. With a few relationships made and in the privilege to be able to access you've got. It didn't come from that because I was I was really the first person in my family to hunter fish. Um. But by being nice to people and making relationships, UM. I don't think it takes money or or status to find some people through relationships that you can go especially hunt pigs, but even get a deer um and and those tend to be pretty high quality experiences because a private owner of land takes good care of it. You're not running into trash on the river banks and stuff like that. It's it's definitely a double edged sword. Yeah, we've gotten a lot of you know, well, just through the work that we're in and but It's like everything with us is just it's different. Like I always kind of caution people UM like like doing what we do, it's just you're in an alter You're in a whole different alternate reality the business that we're in UM where people talk about like how do you scout, like what you're scouting? Like how do you scout for stuff? And I'm like, I can tell you how we use to scout. We scout like everybody else where, and I still know how to do it. But you'd scout by like traditional scouting things. You might make a trip out and go look and you know, you look online and get on on X and get on Google Earth and do all that. But after you build up such like after you build up such a network of individuals that you know that hunting fish a lot. To be absolutely honest, for us, scouting is a lot of being on the phone because we're always one phone call removed, if that would be the most would be like a phone call removed from someone who is a expert in that area. You know. Back to that point, I would say small town Texas, Rockport, all the way to the Panhandle, all the way to West Texas, and all the way down south where you guys are. If you if you're living in a town of only several thousand people, I guarantee every kid in that town, whether their landowners or not, has an opportunity to hunt. Small town Texas, there's just it's just such a tight knit community of people that everyone's gonna know somebody that you can go on to somebody's land and have access, maybe not on your own, like just the combination to the gate, but even that's super common. But if you start talking about Austin and you just came here, you took a tech job, and you don't know anybody yet, it's gonna be tough to figure out, but not super tough. And if you've got money, there's a ton of like lease opportunities where you don't have to own land. You can pay five grand a year and partner up with some other members and have access to you know, thousand five thousand acre place. Treat it like your own, put a trailer out there, put some blinds and feeders up. And I think that's also where that culture comes from, because I call it harvesting. There's very little stocking you can do in Texas unless you have access to a giant ranch. I've got three acres, and how it's filled not far from here. If I break one twig, my dear jumped the fence and going to other people's land, and they might not come back for a couple of days. So you have to set up a blind in a feeder to attract those animals onto your place. And and if you're a working man, you only get to hunt that saturday. You don't want to go out and waste that opportunity and chase your animals away by doing a bad stock on them, you know. So yeah, I balanced, Like I said, I was trying to get to the point where you look from a from a perspective of being in a place, it's like a like always have lived in public land, states like a lot of public land, a lot of acts. Is like you know, I've lived in Michigan, Montana, Washington, right, all these places that we're just like a ton of places to go. So you look down here and you get the sense that it's a disastrous in some way. But then every time you come down here, it's just like being here is different than viewing it because you come down here and you're like, oh man, just a lot of wildlife, a lot of space, a lot of wildlife. Yeah, and it doesn't feel uh, it feels like in so many ways it's enviable. Remember earlier I was promising a good segue. Holy sh it. You guys got a lot of public water, yes, and you can hunt up to the high water mark on a lot of those rivers. That's that's an untapped resource. A lot of people don't think about. You can, you know, take a canoe down a river and shoot a deer or a pig on the bank, and it's it's almost impossible to go five miles down any one of our public rivers and not see animals. You can hunt. Um, but I was talking about fishing. Yeah, if I if you lived here, like if you want if you move here and had that like tech job you're talking about, dude, just fish tons efficient like described kind of the area where you work. Um. So down here in Rockport, it's basically, um, the middle Texas coast. So I think we've got something like fo miles a shoreline. It's almost smack dab in the middle of the curvature of our coastline on the Gulf um very shallow estuary system. That's separated from the Gulf of Mexico by a protective barrier island, So the longest barrier island in the world. It's separated roughly every sixty miles by a pass to the ocean, and so there's nowhere you can get to the Gulf of Mexico except for these these pass. Ransas Pass is one of those. Yeah, and that's a jettied system where barges and barges and tankers come in. But it's also the main artery for the recruitment of larva. So most of our species sheep had drum, redfish, blue crab, all the minnow species, and shrimp of three variety pink, white, and brown. All you guys get you guys, get clever with name and shrimp down. Yeah. Yeah, the white shrimp is kind of gray. The brown is like a tan. But yeah, anyway, the all those fish and and and critters have to migrate out the passes to spawn, and then their eggs come in with current and filter back into all those grass shorelines where we were, and they hide out until they're big enough to swim freely on their own as adults. I want to make sure people, I want to make sure people are getting this right. So there's the mainland of just flat out the mainland of Texas, and then there's the mangrove sort of border in the marsh. And then how like if you're going to go, if you're going in a straight line, you leave the land and you want to head out to the Gulf of Mexico. How what does the distance you travel? Typically in most places, what's the distance you travel before you hit like what would be like waves on a beach, right, if you're a good swimmer, you can make it to the Barrier Island. I want to say probably five miles is the maximum distance from the mainland of Texas going due east until you encounter the Barrier Island. And I want to say the Barrier Island at most is probably three to four miles wide before you get to the dunes and then the Gulf of Mexico. So that Barrier Island gets that big. Yeah, but it's confusing, right, So when we went to the Barrier Island, um, from the outside shoreline, it looks like an impenetrable body of land, but small creeks lead into big, expansive, shallow back areas of marsh, just like on our mainland, so they're kind of mirror images of each other. It's almost like if you cross sectioned the Texas coast on the mainland side and flipped it over, you'd have the marsh on the other side as well. So UM, yeah, it's just this incredibly um resilient, muddy bottom um clean watered estuary system that we have that's very prolific, very abundant with life, like our biomass, Like you can't run your fingers through the sea grass without coming up with, you know, a handful of criters. So very productive estuary. And how far, um, how far do you roam? Like as a fishing guide, I know the coast, I would say every little creek and inlet and back area for for about forty miles to the north and about sixty miles to the south. Um it accumulates to at this point my life's work just exploring and navigating all those little channels. So from the Laguna Madre um that we have, we have um Teddy Roosevelt designated the National Seashore, So we have this National Seashore bird Island which starts in Corpus Christian goes down to Mansfield, Texas. UM pretty incredible beach. That's maybe one of the longest stretches of undeveloped beach in the country. And on the inside of that, like you can walk over the dunes and be in the bay, or you can fish on the ocean side. Um so yeah, just a ton of opportunities. I tend to focus within twenty or miles north or south of Rockport on a daily basis, maybe fifty mile round trip. Yesterday, I bet we put in about forty miles if you added it all up and followed our tracks. But I go that extra distance. It was duck hunting season where we are now, so the land just at the island, just adjacent to where we are sitting, was loaded up with air boats and duck hunters. So I took us a little farther north, hoping we would be undisturbed by other people, and I don't. Did we see a person yesterday other than ourselves? Yeah? Not. Once we got back in where we were fishing on a weekend, there's two bows parked at those us on the outside. Yeah, so we we did the We did the purtiest thing. People are pretty wide. Uh you give people a pretty well, you don't have that guide like attitude. I can be aggressive, yeah, and going back to it. Um, I I call Austin home. Um, but I would rather be in Rockport than Austin, and for all intensive purposes I live here. I spend you know, two d fifty days out of the year in Rockport and the other the other times a year. If I do go to Austin, it's the trade out gear, get a rifle and my camo and get straight to a buddy's ranch to hunt. Like I don't spend any time in Austin. It's a very busy place. Not my scene. I tend to love to be away from people, although it allows me to love people being distant from them, right. But um, I live on this. I live on this, h on this kind of motto that there there shouldn't be a needless behavior of my own that has a negative consequence on someone else's outdoor experience. And if somebody's courtesy, whether it's intentional or based on ignorance, affects my day, then I've become very upset to the point and probably even confrontation, because do you have to protect this out here? You have to make sure people understand that to approach you is going to have consequences because if they were to if someone had come in there just to scout around and motored through the water, we were in. We worked really hard to be where we were, and the water so shallow we can't just kick up anywhere and go to a new spot. And so yeah, if I see a boat in a little creek that person had that he got there first, I'm going somewhere else, even if I want to be inside of where he is, super bad and there's other places to go. And your specialty is site fishing for redfish, that's right. Yeah, I think redfish are one of the friendly there the fisherman's front. So like you know, you could rack up twenty grand chasing a permit and might not get your first permit depending on your skill level or your luck that day and next co Belize, Florida, Keys, wherever. Redfish belong in the Gulf of Mexico, there, Texan Um. They stretch up the up the Atlantic coast quite a ways, but they're unique to this part of the world. You can go other to other countries and find bone fish and tarpan and gulf the Gulf coast and its culture um and be in the Texas Coast. There's no other place I could I could really feel the connection to my heritage and appreciate an animal that much. It's like, you get a view of the Texas Coast if you go to the beach in Galveston. It's kind of muddy, murky water. It's not a beautiful place as compared to the West Coast, you know. But when you get in there and you and you, and you become intimate with that abundance of life like in our marsh, Um, it's hard to shake that. It's hard to go somewhere else and be as happy as you are here. But but I do have a big problem with the way Texans perceive their entitlement to use that that as as they see fit and into in my in my opinion, abuse that that country. Um, I would be happy forever in Rockport if I felt like we appreciated what we have here. But I don't, really, I don't feel that way. I don't feel like as a culture, we put enough importance on stewardship and conservation. Um. You know, and people are pouring into this state and we're basically showing them, look, you can come down here and do whatever you want. It's a grocery store. Just keep your limit every day. Um yeah, I would love to see and I'm doing my part to try to educate and try to spread the news that this is super special and it could go away. You know, one hard freeze this year and all the fish we saw would be floating upside down. Right. So it's delicate, it's fragile, it's beautiful, and it deserves a lot of respect. Gig and flounder, this is not this is not your preferred subject, you know. Um, I love under You saw me last night on that on that fish tray. I mean I was glued to the flounder. I like to put a little more work in. I like to to uh. I don't like to be on noisy fan boats yea. Um, but I think everything when I when I think about the beauty of something, I usually picture a father and a son waiting together with you know, with with spears over their shoulder in a flashlight at night. Um yeah, the guide, the guide thing kind of takes me away from But I love flounder. Yea. So we went out flounder gigging, which I was like real curious about wanting to do uh. Part of it comes from in the like in the north. You know, there's not opportunities to for spearing in the in the north, and freshwater opportunities for spearing game fish or spearing like really good fish to eat or shooting them with your bow, like very very limited, no, just because of legal structures, regulatary structures, like there's like very like strict method to take stuff and generally any fish that people really want to eat, our game fish even down to where like bluegills and perch or game fish right crap ees all this stuff like listen to game fish and generally speaking, um like it's like native game fish and Jerry speaking, you don't jab him with anything, you know, there's somebody there's notable exceptions like you can spear pike through the ice and some various things like that, but Johnny like you can't. You don't do it. So to hear that you can go out and gig flounder, which everyone knows like flounder good eat is it's enticing, it's fun to go and so there's like I don't know if you'd called a fleet here, but there's a industry around flounder gigging and you're gigging for southern flounder. And we went out with a guide that uh, that's what he does. I don't know how many, a couple hundred nights a year, UM, and they rigs for it. Man. They got like these guys got big ass, wide welded aluminum boats UM with a big deck on the front. And they got light systems. They got one light system that goes underwater, like a submerged light system. Then they got other light systems that shine down in the water. And they got an outboard for traveling from spot spot but mounted on a like basically like it looks like a polling platform. Above the outboard, they got a small fan motor, no shroud on it, but just like it looks like a helicopter or like an airplane prop on a fan motor, and they can use that and drive over what like five six now no, ple, Yeah, you can cruise with that fan motor over let's just say, I don't know, exaggerate twelve inches of water, UM. And he got these bright ass lights and they can control that fan from up front. He's got a throttle in a in a steering switch and everybody's line up on the front and you got a big, gass, heavy weighted spirit. But it's only like a four time spear. Knew the whole thing's five inches side to side. And I don't know what it is in a flounder's head, but they don't spook. They get in the silt. They're incredibly hard to see, like some of them. I'm I consider myself like good at spotting fish. I was blown away by that guy's ability to spot fish. We would have passed man easily. Six of the fish that we did get, we got nine. I feel like I would have saw two or three of them. I saw the first one. I was like, oh, it's a piece of cake. But then I would not have saw. I would not We would just roll over, not have seen because they don't jump, They just let the boat go over. But your cruise along these bright ass lights and you see these very subtle uh indicators. It's of where a flounder would be laying under the mud. The easiest thing, well, yeah, the easiest thing to see is where he's not. Because when he leaves, it leaves a very it leaves a bed that is a depression. But when the flounder lays in there when he's actually present, he makes it level like he assumes like his body basically assumes assumes the level of the what's the word the Yeah, he his body assumes the level of the sea floor. So it's all just color and maybe like subtle lines around the edge. But then when he leaves, it leaves a flounder thick impression of a flounder in the bottom. You can always tell where he where he's not but holy ship, and then they change colors. So we found one over oysters. They had a way different pattern exposed pattern, and they can turn light, they can turn dark, and they get and they're good because when they're in there, they're flipping in and they actually get that silt to come back down on top of them. But when you do see him, so you're cruising along, it's only like air pushing his boat along. And whoever his giggin has got a gig, and then the dude opt the guy's got a gig, and he used his gig. He can like jab his gig into the bottom of the sea floor and use the handle to stop the boat because he can immediately like throttle back and there's not a lot of force and he can just like stop the boat and even back it up, and then the flounders laying there and other stuff is hard to gig. But the flounder you just you got all the time in the world, and you get above it and hit it in the gilt cover and then up into the boat. And there's other stuff. It's like much more difficult to hit the stuff that's not pinned to the ground. I mean, it's really the best way for flounder. And you can catch them on rotten real they are very difficult fish to grab. If you can imagine flipping on the on the like a red fishing and just get them behind the head, pinch them and lift them up. But the founders, like it goes ballistic out of the water. And so I mean, can you imagine how good the Indians had it here? They were like torchlights. Oh man, Yeah, I would like recommend I would definitely recommend um that people check it out. The noise might the noise might get to you. Like I like a lot of times I go somewhere and do something and I'd be like if I lived here, would I'd be way into this, you know? And I feel like I would if I lived here, I would strive to find a more peaceful way to hunt flounder. You're walking, you just have a I mean, they make flounder lights now that are really um they're light like l eds, and you just hold them and you rig them up to a twelve old battery and you put in your backpack and you go out with a really light gig and you're not gonna cover the water and you're as well as in a boat. So maybe you're gonna get one or two and night. But um, I mean for me, that's I mean, that's a pretty nice experience. You go out in the bay and it's just dead quiet and you're just walking around, and you know you have a successful night is when you gig a flounder. But you could probably use J. T. S U tactic too and go to places where those those air boats are. The giga boats are not small, and I'm sure that there they are limited to some extent, and there's probably water that holds flounder that they're not getting to you. That's a good thing that you could probably as a guy in a small rig that was gonna go wait, you could probably find some good stuff pulling around for red fish. During the day, you see a bunch of flounder, and what they'll do is that when you spook them. Um, you know, they pretty much hold their their ground under lights at night. But during the day, as the boat goes over them, they'll quickly get out of that spot. And then you see them kind of flutter their fins and get back into that and bed themselves in the soil twelve feet over and it creates a huge plume of silt. And I mean, you could just start, you'd find him right, you could give him during the day. Um yeah, I don't condemn that method. It's highly effective. So the only thing is, like you gotta watch regulations make sure the population is doing good. But it's a delicious fish and if you're going out and spearing it yourself, I'm all for it. If I didn't come on the water every day as an occupation, so if I get a day off, I'm not thinking, Man, I'm gonna flounder all night. Right. Yeah. The way and the way I would picture doing is I would picture getting my canoe, putting some shop lights on the edge of it, putting two or three car batteries in there, and putting my kid up front. You know, it works really good. Looks like two kids up front and one of them gets the right side and one of them gets left side. Yeah, do you remember those? Uh, they don't make him anymore. It was the best kickboat in the world. Hobie Cat made like a double pontooned like like, it's got a real comfortable seat on it, and it's got even a little rack on the back of it. And we had these things called the fishing pal down here, which we're basically like a giant styrofoam pontoon thing six ft tall three and half feet wide, and a platform you could sit on in a kind of a crossbar to put your feet on, and you can basically just sit on that thing and crawl around in shallow water with a powerful head lamp and a little spot and you could just do it from there. Then you're not walking. If you see something, there's an alligator in the weeds, you can pull your legs up and beyond this thing. Right. Um, you're not as exposed if as if you're waiting around. But what's cool about them is they tend to want to be on a pretty hard bottom of sand, and so that's easy weight fishing um flounder habitat because you guys saw there's some places down here in the back marsh where if you stepped out of the boat you'd be to mud up to your thigh and you're pretty much stuck. Um and flounder don't tend to hang out in those areas. So we think about all that seth. You know, it was cool, the gigging, the noise of that motor got old quick. I think, Yeah, I definitely recommend anybody goes bring yourself bringing some of your plugs. Yeah, were you all not wearing headphones? No, it wasn't that bad. It's just a lot, man. You ever like bow fish out of a boat where you're the guys running the lights off a generator, just that same thing. Yeah, it's like it's already like your world's already shrunk down to what's lit, which is fine, like if it's quiet, you know, like I was talking about, like the rig on talking about you put a couple of car batteries. You got limited time. So you know, you've got a couple of car batteries, you're gonna get an hour light off each battery. So it's like we're not gonna be able to go for long. But you're out and you hear everything and hear birds, are your frogs, your things splashing in the water. It's like you just hear you hear raccoon walking through the mud, you know, and so your world shrunk down visually. But in an audio sense, it's it's like more it's like enhanced, the more expansive. But in these rigs like bow fishing with a generator, do net gigging on an airboat, your world shrunk down visually and audio is gone. That's crucial. I think that. Yeah, it's like if you're trying to torture me into telling something after a couple of hours, like all right, if I here's what happened, just let me off this boat. Silence, silence except for the sounds of nature, water bugs, critters, birds. I mean, silence is one of the most important elements for me doing what I do. Remember this musicologist reading this musicologist who was talking about, um, you can't use someone, you can't appreciate music or anything until you appreciate silence. Like you have to respect silence to like understand that there's an interruption in it. You know. It's just it's like it's fundamental to like have for a sound to be nice, you sort of have to recognize the absence of sound, or he did a better job of articulating it, but just yeah, it's not Jesse. Did you feel us sounding grateful because you took us out flounder gigging? No, not at all. I mean I think it was you know, you came down here. I think you know to to do some specific intangible things. But also I think that, um, in a way, I was kind of playing Texas host a little bit too, for sure. And I feel like, especially when we got down here to the bay, you know, we we got to experience kind of the big ranch historical and cultural heritage of South Texas, which is truly unique. But we get here and um, I mean, I'm not gonna say that I intended to do it beforehand, but what ended up happening is we experienced probably must drastic spectrum of of bay experiences between j T where it's stunningly quiet out there and you're pulling, you're moving through the water without making a sound, and and then you were looking for this fish and there's the the approach is extremely delicate. Um, the way that the fish has cared for after it comes to the boat. I mean, j T allowed us to kill some fish, which I'm really appreciative of, and I understand his perspective on it. And I'm I'm a I'm a bona fide fish killer and and I'm and I feel very respected by him letting me kill some of some of his fish. Oh man, it's your it's your total right. And I enjoyed the hell out of it. Yeah, but the way the way that I mean, I've never seen a guide gut our you know, probably apologized to the fish first, thank you. I'm not apologetic. I just and you know, there's a community of rednecks down here that when there was very few people here, they they they perfected ways to be most efficient in how to pursue these fish. Airboats, flounder boats, those things belong here, just like the oyster, the cactus, the rattlesnakes. This is a tough and hospitable place. And to survive down here in the past took a lot of grit. And for someone that they would label, um some hill country sort of liberal over romantic sized philosophical guy like myself, I get it. That would irritate me. Too. If someone like that showed up, and I love those guys. Some of my best friends down here operate airboats and they operate flounder gigging boats. I was attracted to that tough culture. Um. And the last thing I want to see happen, the very last thing I want to see happen is for a bunch of young fly fishing guides to start popping up who don't have that history with this place, who don't have, um, that real connection to this marsh. I would rather see airboats and my friendship with those guys allows both of us to understand and influence one another a lot more than if we had contention in and animosity towards each other. You know what people should go do? Um that was and me. We're on the first episode of doss Boat, right, so we did a fish and show. If you're going you, it's just on you. It's free on YouTube. UM, go look our look up our fishing show dos Boat. You can do that right now. You can go. What we're doing right now will be a show later, UM will be one of our like you know, Flagship met Eater episodes. But if you want to like write this second go look up dos boat and me and JT fish and have a couple of debates about killing not debates, conversations about fishing with bait, killing fish, site fish, and just like get a little bit of like a like a mini exploration and you see the areas JT fishes. Um, you're not a numbers guy at all. I lose count after three or four. But do you would it? Um? Do you think it's helpful or not helpful? If I was to say how many fish we caught? I don't think it matters. Yeah, I'm happy to share, like I can say that. Yeah for sure. I don't know if it's harmful to you as a guide because there's an expectation. No, not at all, not at all. It's all about ability and you guys, you guys came with ability to fish, and so we were very successful. We I mean we we site fished like like casting like specifically casting flies to fish we were looking at. We caught five yesterday like that, but then we just went to some spots with spinning tackle and artificials that the whole gang of us, I mean we caught inect well and excess of sixty fish probably more. Yeah, there's times that those That was a specific condition, Um, and that's where just got all the accumulation of failure and learning for me. Um. We had a condition where for the last couple of days of northern was blowing directly into that bank, and what happened was it pushed a lot of water into that back area. When we started actually in the morning, came in. There was current moving with us as we went up that system, and we saw active fish when we looped around and finally we're on our way out at the very end in that creek, the wind had slacked and so um current simply from an EBB so there was no more force of wind d wind. It's like a wind drive current, so it's relative whether it's it's produced by wind pumping water up into and when when the wind slacked. Did you notice at the end of the day was pretty calm, so all that water they pushed in there now was flushing out. So those fish came in that creek and we're facing that current without current that that creek is a ghost town. Yeah, And we were casting up I guess yeah, because the current wasn't outright the current current was going out, so we were we were casting down down current, retreating and retrieving up current because everything faces and moves into current. Even the shrimp are are looking for a little any zoe, plankton and stuff they eat that's coming out of those back areas. Yeah, you know, like people talk about getting one in every cast. There must have been ten eleven casts when I had one on every cast, but I actually had h if I took ten cast, I actually had eleven fish because at one point in time I took a fish off. It was fiddling around and had my uh jig hanging in the water, and one grabbed it. So I was positive, ten casts eleven fish. Yeah, that doesn't hand very often. We should have a little late to the party. But it was so quick and easy to get onto that, Like by my I don't know, fourth and fifth fish, I was like watch this, okay, this one on the drop and it's like a season hit the water as long as you had your line tired enough where you can feel it hit. As that thing's dropping through the current, it's like boot there he is. You know, you don't even have to like it's like, you know, the good fishing makes up for less than one percent of the actual area out there. Oh, this is giant, vastness, and so you have to learn conditions that attract fish. That's one thing I wanted to bring up. And then I want to talk about cooking fish a little bit. Is you um eat You guys has like I hopefully realize it. Each of you guys has like something. You're very very good at um. I'll start with you j T. Where if if I go fishing with you right people, if you didn't know better, you would make the mistake of just thinking that there are fish everywhere. But I've been fishing enough to know that if I just came down here and rented a boat, I would probably spend a lot of days being extremely frustrated. I realized this without having done it, I would be really frustrated. I'd be like, I don't get it. I thought I was supposed to be good down here. There ain't shit. It's all fished out right because you just be trying to figure it out. But you've been doing this for so many years, you just make you make this. It's like this optic this like this illusion that everything is just loaded with fish. But then we took the boat over a course of a bunch of miles and stopped in specific spots, and those specific spots were filled with fish. And one day, the second day, we went out and you went to a spot and it wasn't what you wanted, and some light bulb off in your head and you're like, based on that, I'm not seeing what I want here, it must be that I need to do something else. Yeah, And then we went to that something else, and so I saw you like not screw up, but I saw you go through your calibration process where you like, I want to check this, Nope, that means this, And then it was just game on the rest of the day. Man, it was really fun. It's fun to watch because, like like I said, you'd have to know if you just came down from somewhere and didn't hadn't done a lot of exploration, you'd come away with the real wrong impression. Anybody's gonna pound them. Yeah, saltwater, you know. Um. I love fishing in the mountains for trout, and for me, that's a lot more about just the surroundings, you know, being in the mountains, feeling the air, the beauty and the clarity of those rivers, the cold water, um, the entomology, how it all works. Um, I don't need to stick anymore trout. I do love trout, I appreciate trout. I'd rather see my my young boys. That's gonna be. We're gonna walk some creeks in Colorado and Montana and put on big dry flies and you know, um, but down here the learning never stops. It doesn't learn. The learning doesn't stop in the mountains either. But there's a complexity to this that I keyed in on early on, and I would go to spots and treat those spots like, why isn't something happening here? It looks perfect, everything's like all the the equation that didn't make sense to me. But a spot is the last place she saw fish. Right, Conditions are what you have to learn, and um, you know, I've got a system now that makes me feel really confident when I go out in the morning with someone different every day, I don't have butterflies and like, oh my god, I hope I find fish for these guys. Um, I just have to follow my my go through my little handbook and follow the equation and I'll end up on them. You know. You know, it's funny to talk about the conditions saying we had some guys on one time and we're talking about it very difficult, basically over the counter, big horn, cheap hunt and uh, they're talking about the trouble that happens when you're hunting last year's Like you can't hunt last year sheet. You know, you can't fish for yesterday's fish man yesterday and to it is it changes that fast, especially this time of year. Um, you can't be like they should be in here, they were here yesterday. And I've got a ton where every time I go to somewhere I think should have fish and it doesn't. Oh man, that's just the perfect opportunity to go back to the books and figure out what what element I left out of that equation. And there's a lot of randomness to it too, Like they fish don't sit still, so those those fish move around. They might be over here, they might be over there. But if you, if you follow the rules of those conditions, you can limit of the spots on the first couple of steps being the tide, the wind direction, the water temperature, what bait is present, what the fish are primarily feeding on. When you when you isolate those factors, then it's gonna limit. It's gonna take the map out of the equation, right, um, And that's kind of what it's spent the last twenty years trying to figure out. I think the coolest thing I saw yesterday, um was we're watching a red fish and he's going to eat something, and he like charged up to eat something so shallow he almost had to like back out. Yeah, like he had to like flop his way. It was had to like flop his way back out and chase a big group of mudment was up onto the mud bank and had to wallow him. It wasn't like quite like he was like a ship, like he knew what he was doing, but he very much had sort of like how cool are they? So a red fish is just like super predacious, super aggressive. But as you approach that fish, if you drop a penny in the boat, it's over. So it's this very um difficult stock where everyone has to be totally no shuffling of feet, no like moving your stance, no vibrations in the boat. But if you get that fly or that soft plastic there and he he mistakes it for something, you know, for a piece of prey, they're just damn nail it. Yeah. That at one point he kept saying like talking about how the cast has to be very precise and saying it's all food. He doesn't care. It's like he's a lazy Southerner. It's just all food. And you said you need to make that thing lately on like a mustache, right, and when you did that, they were just without hesitation. Good fish are very enjoyable and if you get good at casting a fly rod. Um. You know, think about this, if we were looking for keeper fish's a lot of those, you know, forty or fifty fish we caught at the end of the day. Um. Not many of them were of keeper sids. So what's the what's the legal fish? Yeah, and there was a bunch of like sixteen nineteen and three quarter um. But with a fly rod, all the fish we saw, they're all foraging and even shallower water, we're all big fish. And there was sometimes I'm like, not that closer when get that one a little farther on the right. That's interesting point that up in that like twelve inches of water, it is big fatties. Yeah, because they know they're not gonna get hauled off by a bird. So yeah, bird predation um and Jesse back to the You know, they're there in a world with the right amount of human beings and the right resources for those human beings to survive. Keeping fish is a much more pure there's a perversion to what I do. I harass these fish. I stick them in the mouth and put them back with a with a slight wound in their face. Um. And and those fish are commodity to me, So I exploit those fish for a living. Um. The individual who wants to to feed his family by going fishing on their own and keeping fish, that's as beautiful and as pure of an outdoor pursuit as I can think of. Um. You know, I I protect those fish kind of for selfish purposes, you know, because I want to go catch those same fish again. Um. But but I'd just like to clarify that that I think it's a beautiful thing to harvest your own food. And what both of you guys are doing, um. And the way that you teach people is really awesome. And you specifically Jesse, like take Canna a working man's approach. You're not having fancy gear, fancy guns and just going out with your granddad's shotgun and learning how not to not to not to hunt and fish on your own, but how to cook on the level that you prepare those animals. That's the highest level of respect towards nature. Man. That's just like class act. Buddy, both of you guys cheers see on that. That's what I was gonna butter Jesse up about the minute I had one, I'm gonna transition. I'm gonna pivot with one thing. I forgot to mention. Now, Now, when you're in that flounder gigging boat, you're like up against you're tucked up against the mangroves, so you're up against the shoreline and there's all these mullets and schools of dolphins come in and they know and they come in and hunt with you. Where anytime you're on the shore of the dolphins show up and they just parallel the boat. They know those mullet got to make like a deal where the mullet want to get out and you'll see those bullet like getting out and they'll know those dolphins are there, and uh, and they'll kind of like veer a little out of the way of the boat, and damn with the dolphins, they'll come back and they'll come back. And now then when those dolphins just be like one of them make a slight mistake and going just deep enough water and then whamp that cool thing about that whole thing dolphins And they would they would come up and they would turn on their side to look to and then like you could see their heads like they'd follow a fish. They you'd like you'd watched them for like ten minutes, they'd follow fishing, and all of a sudden, for whatever reason, they're like, oh, that's the right one, and they take off after and they can't turn their heads like if you picture dolphin laying in the water belly down, he can't look right and left, but he can look up and down. So when they're parallel on the boat, they turn and pitch so their bellies facing the shore, and then they can bend their chin down at a right anle and staring at those mullet man and look at you often wonder what their level of understanding is. I mean, they're super smart at it was. We spent a long time. I don't know if it's new ones coming in, but a long time with those things. I mean you could have I could have gigged one for sure. Don't think that it crossed my mind. I was just being like, man, a fella, could I wonder if it always comes up that taste? Like I know that they harpooned him in Indonesia. Uh yeah, Okay, So now that I talked about the dolphins eating, here's a good transition. How about me eating your food? Because I was gonna say that, Um yeah, Like I like to cook, and I've cooked wild game for a long time. And if I have, like if I've added anything to sort of why if I've added anything to wild game conversation in America would be kind of like a celebration of it. And also I've I guess I've found out things you can do, like ways to take a lot of things and make them into other like dishes, you know, like, oh, you can make corned beef. Everybody knows corn beef. And I'll be like, oh, here's a really cool way to take a beaver and make to corn it, or like, oh, there's like pickled herring, but you can catch some little shitty fish out of your lake and make like something that's like really cool and it's like pickled herring, you know. I mean, like I guess I've done that a fair bit. But um, you're like whole it's almost like be hanging around with you almost like I'm not going to talk about uh it makes me almost not want to talk about cooking. Yeah, but I mean you've got all this you just got like you had like a way different level. Man. Well, I mean maybe maybe, I mean, I'll take that compliment. That's very kinds. It very much applies to down here. You know, like like what we've got available, and you've you've seen game all over the world and in different animals in Big Game. You know, I've never really handled elk or or a moose, or a beaver or or or a walleye things like that. I mean, so you're you've got those experiences too. But I mean, I think at the end of the day, but we're both trying to do is put um these wild foods that you can go out and attain into comprehensible and familiar forms, because I think that's what appeals to people the most, is you know, trying to get people away from thinking that dear is something that you only eat on a special occasion or it's sorts something different when it should be Tuesday night dinner, and and and if if you have that mentality when you go into it, that you're gonna you know that I'm gonna eat red fish for dinner tonight because I'm taking back a couple of plays and I'm really looking forward to that and it's making it a day to day thing. And at that point you tend to steward that that resource a little better, be more concerned about conservation efforts. I mean not I'm not trying to, like I take a jump to a big, big picture, but that that's what I like to do, is convey the eating of it is something that's not unattainable, um, and that if you do you can be creative and clever about it. But uh, I try to just take things that are familiar, just like what you were saying about. You know, corned beef, you can corn a goosebreast, same thing. Um. Just take those ideas and you know you're gonna have failures. But if we can convey that to the hunting and fishing public, then I think that we've we've done our jobs just to convince them to to celebrate it and not view it as as something strange or oh, my family doesn't eat that. I mean That's that's a big component of it too. It's just like, if you put into familiar forms, then you're gonna get the people that you're also not I mean you're you're the eater, but also the people that you're feeding. If you can put it into familiar and recognizable forms, that tastes really good, and then you can introduce that really nutritious and you know, well caught or or killed animal into their diets too. Does the New School of traditional cookery? Uh, should people come look you up? Or you got like you booked way into the future. We're booked out for the year, must say the year, the season. We're starting up with spring bookings. Um, you know, I would love to get if anybody just got you know, six buddies are going on a turkey hunt things like that. We're gonna start looking to book those. And then we're also going to look to start booking fishing, you know, and that will mostly be coastal trips. But we can come down here because honesty, fish cooking seafood is, if I had to say, is really my favorite. I mean game get you know, the big animals, they get all the play. That's the romantic side of it, But I mean I'd love cooking and eating fish probably the most. Yeah, we had a really really good meal last night. Of how many varieties, I think we had six, fish said, well, we had, let's rad them off for everybody. So last night we had a meal that was comprised of stone crab, blue crab, sheep said, drum, black drum, redfish, sea trout, flounder, flounder, southern flounder. And when we're out gigging flounder, we gigged up. We gigged up to Pompa No. Two, sheep said, in a few black drums. That's where that's where the spearing skills come in handy, Yes, yes, all right, man, So people can go find you, then do your class. They learn how to cook wild game in the way that everybody's gonna love it, new school traditional cookery. Go to your restaurant die do A D A I D U E and Austin. It's all on the same website. A lot of information there. But then he's on Instagram. He won't change it to what he should change it too. He's not at Jesse Griffith's, He's at Sack Them Sack a lot spell it s a C dot A dot L A I T mean sack of milk means milk bag. It's what they call crappy and East Texas and Louisiana they do ye. And then J T. Van how do people? Do you have a website or what? I know you on Instagram? You're active? Yep, website J T. Van Zant dot com and at j T van Zant on Insta you want to catch some fish? Yeah, buddy, the do the knows the landscape. Let's go side him up. Put a fly in front of painting mustache on him. Jt'll tell you what he's happy about. He'll tell you what he's saying about. You'll show you a bunch of fish. I'll share myself with you. I expect you to do the same, and we'll appreciate a resource together and uh, former friendship. I don't want to beat this in too much, but bring your own sandwich. I provide ice water, bring your own sandwich. Do not make that mistake. Okay, thanks guys,