00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first light, Go farther, stay longer, all right. First off, right before we do anything YouTube, Right now, you can go watch The B Side of Fishing with our very own beloved Joseph Melli. So Joseph Melli used to be in the old days, it was hook Shots with Joe Sph Melli. But now Joseph Melli works with us. It's got a brand new fishing series that we're launching on YouTube called The B Side of Fishing with Joel Sph Melli. You can go right now and watch. And we're doing it like how they used to do in the old days, in the old days when you had to uh when there would be a day. So on Tuesdays, we're gonna keep putting out B Side of Fishing with Joel Sph Mellie's tune in every Tuesday. While you're there. Subscribe, so you go to the met Eater YouTube channels subscribe, you know, to get all our stuff because you're a subscriber. So check it out now. Joseph Melli is great also you should go follow Joe's Hey, what's Joe Simmelli's Instagram handle? And look, if you want to keep track of all of our fishing stuff and Joe Surmelli in particular, and all of our fishing stuff, Seth will tell you it's Joe dot Surmelli one three eight. What the one three eight's all about? I don't know j O E dot c E r m E l E one. Yeah, go because Joe, Like, that's a long story. Hook shots Joe, He's now b side of Fish and Joe. And then also the Bent Podcast. If you if you love Joe and I do, you can also listen to Joe on on the on the Bent Podcast. We got a lot more stuff. I'm gonna be fishing with Joe in New Jersey coming up here real soon. What are you fishing for stripers? You didn't know about that? Heck, yeah that's cool. I'm not gonna tell people why, but yeah, fishing stripers. And Joel sah Mellie sweet the bite uh speaking on Instagram Unbelievable engagement a podcast list that wrote in that he had the greatest trail camp video I ever taken, and I was like, can't be true, send it to me. It's the kind of trail camp video where he needed to explain it before it because he felt it was irresponsible to send it without first explaining what it was. It is a trail cam that they had set up on a field edge and they caught a farmer driving by an attractor and the farmer, without stopping the tractor, opens the door and hangs out of the tractor to defecate, not even stopping the tractor. Doug during I ran us by Doug durn and Doug during acts surprised that there's any other way to go, as though, you know, he has his coffee in the morning and then goes and gets in a tractor like very common practice. A guy. Half million people watched this farmer. There's some great comments I had will blur out the farmer's face, but I also left it open that I was so impressed with the farmer's work ethic that if he wants to come work with us, he's hired right now. Any man that that bleeds in his job that much, that doesn't even stop to you know, him and the Amazon workers have a lot in common, Yeah, but the differences they complain he didn't. Yeah, he looks he might make a plaining. He looked fine to me. You don't know. You you got to talk to talk, you know what. You're right, Rick, he could be he could be uh real upset about that he has to keep He's like, I'm on such a tight schedule. He's Doug also pointed out that he's pulling him anwer spreader, so it could be in his mind he's like, listen, they're paying me the spread manure. Why would I right not contribute? Why would I go off in the bushes when my whole thing is I'm out here spreading ner don't long haul truckers engage in something similar. Yeah, yeah, when you're driving down the road and you see a yeah, have you repeated the jug? Yeah? I did it the other day. I was stuck on the freeway in l A. And I had to do it. Man, I did analogy. I swear to God, you know that. Yeah, I was thinking about it. Trap. The angle can be tricky because if it's tilted to tilted it was. It was nerve racking, terrifying. It's hard moving along. Um I gotta do uh okay, a few episodes to go. I was complaining about my new tooth, my molar complaining bad. And it was thinking about how my dentist listened to the show. I like, I wasn't listen. I'm the one that is my tooth problem, and I should have alerted him. I shouldn't have chosen that way to let him know that I wasn't happy with my tooth. But boy did he make it right. Uh, he heard me talking about it had me down. It went for me my least favorite tooth and my most favorite tooth. You put a little gap in there so stuff doesn't took the gap out. Oh it's tight. Here's what happened. Remember how I was telling you that you should get your molar replaced because your teeth migrate. Okay, Well he put the tooth in and then the other tooth like moved away from the tooth, and that's what made that food trap. Didn't like it, no, but now it's my best tooth. I asked my dentist if he needs an endorsement. He said he's been around long enough that it doesn't that he doesn't need to go out and look for clients. But he's a hunting dentist. Kevin, I'm gonna tell you his name, Kevin Pierce. I'm gonna be I'm gonna be a client of his BDS. You should go to him. He is the reason I bringing this up. He is very concerned about how you won't replace your molar. I know. That's why I want to go down there and talk to him about that. He previewed for me how he's gonna convince you of the need to get a new molar. And it has to do with a doll sheep he shot one time. Well, I hope he's I think that. Hope he's bringing his a game. My dentist. Ah, this is funny because it's gonna tie into a thing we're gonna talk about a little bit, uh about where krim and who's unfortunately not with us right now. It's curious why we always have to turn everything into a competition who did most of what, to the point where there seems to be a bragging about who's been shot most um. But uh, he's gotten double digit mountain goats because he grew up in Alaska. WHOA, yeah, he grew up where like you get out of school and go hunt mountain goats for a couple of hours. That's like the casual. Yeah, he's telling me a great story about his old man got mauled by a grizzly mauled by a brown bear, and then his old man killed the brown bear, and then the other brown bears came and ate that brown bear, and the whole thing was so vicious and heavy and everything that he said, it stripped all the blueberry bushes were all broken off and gone. And he and his brother were back there recently and he said, you can still tell that area because the blueberry bushes that grew back as high as the blueberry bushes around it. You said, there's still a big like death circle around where he's like they're walking along and said, that's the tree where dad got mauled. That's crazy. Yeah. Cool dentists, man, Yeah, great dentists. Yeah, totally cool. Like man did not just you know publicly. Uh, it's my favorite tooth now. Um. Another thing I want to touch on real quick. I had my kids got this new game. It's called on a scale of one to t Rex. And in this game, it's kind of hard to explaining, but we're playing the game a lot and you have to it's like there's a shade component to it. In one of the shrades as you need to act like you're driving a car and someone's pursuing you. And we were playing the game, and that night I had a dream that uh needs to be turned into art, and I had to dream of a fox riding a horse with the rabbits in his a rabbit in his mouth, looking over his shoulder as though being pursued. I bring that up. You should have him with a chicken in its mouth, like the fox in the henhouse. He's being pursued with a chicken. I'll bring that up for any artists out there. Uh inspiration. Oh yeah, amazing. It'd be an amazing painting. A fox riding a horse would wrap in his mouth, looking over his shoulder, as though very alarmed about who's pursuing him. Kelsey fan art. Um, he's too busy, Robert abernathey's here with us. We're gonna get to you. We gotta take care of a few things up top. Hang tight, you're actually gonna come into this in a minute here. Uh. Tons of listener responses that we've had to deal with about because we like to talk about flashing and how South's super good at flashing stuff. Um. The whole thing of like pressure water. Like it was like, oh you should pressure water. You've met this Robert pressure water like flushing raccoons and a pressure washer. Flushing beavers with a pressure washing. It's not a really granted like some people do it. It is. It is not a thing worth recommending to people. Um, I agree. Now, a friend of mine who is a professional hide handler, and I asked him what his take on it is, and he said, here's his sentence. Just imagining beaver fat and meat spread over an acre after being sprayed in every direction has limited my interest. And it's and he says also that it only works when it's they do it in the winter and it's frozen outside, that you can't do it. But yeah, it's like you take a pressure washer and you take a hide that you want to get tanned or tan yourself and strip it of fat and meat, clean down the leather with a pressure washer. This dude, Stu. I was watching this because like it has a horrible I mean blows the stuff everywhere. So there's a professional fur handler named stew and he's got this thing. If you want to learn like great fur handling techniques. This dude stuff coon Creek Outdoors. He does a big explanation of like why it is complete horseshit. He's a video on his channel about it. Right, He's like, here, let's set it up. Let's do everything just right and set it up. It's just not the same thing. He's a guy that throws him in the washing machine too, right. He does wash all of his hides in the washing machine after fleshing or before. He's adamant that it's pre flashing. Whoa why is that it's easier to dry with fat and stuff on it? So when he everything he does. When he skins a fox, he skins the fox, no detergent, just cold water, washes it in the classic washing machine. He's got washing machine in his first chet with no lid on I noticed. Puts it down in there and washes it, pulls it out, hangs it the dry. But the dude is very very attention to detail, very attention to detail. If you want to learn, nothing gets you said, no, No, I I go to him all the time. Yeah, I go to his channel, you know, to learn stuff. What's his last name is, Steve Miller? I don't remember. Has he been on here? He should be uh? He hasn't Coon Creek Outdoors great stuff? I mean, like, if you just like seeing how to do stuff, he does an interesting job of explaining how to do stuff. Uh well, I was thinking about why that's the wrong way to do it. There's this book and I'm gonna do a major book report on this book. But Alaska's Wolfman, which I've been talking about a lot. In this book, he goes to his prospector's house and the prospect of houses that he talks about it is the kind of the grossest, grimiest place he's ever spent night. But the prospect or keeps his plates screwed to the table able top. I read. I read the book. Yeah, it's great book. Isn't read that book? Really? I remember? You know what you mean? My brother Daniel the only people that ever read that book. He has dogs, and the guy wonders like, why are the plates screwed to the table permanently? And it's because he just eats, and then the dogs and get up and lick the plates clean, and the plate doesn't move around so they can get an extra clean and then that's how he does. Is I like that idea, dude? And I'm just saying that that that's deud be like people if I if every time me and Seth talked about washing dishes, if someone's like, oh, non't no, you don't need to wash dishes. Just screwed the plate to a dog. Get a dog. That's like the pressure washing flasher. People, but steal plate. I don't know. Yeah, imagine you can't you can't drill hole? Yeah no, no, you could take specialized equipment. Uh, you're familiar with pressing Pittman. Robert has a big turn you man. He was on the show. We're still on our listener feedback section here. Robert. He was on the show and he was talking about how he got shot twice. And then Karin, our producer, was curious, why did we then get so many emails of people talking about that ain't nothing uh based on how many times I've been shot? And a guy writes in the guy named Zach. He writes in, I've been listening to episode two sixty four of the podcast The Guests was shot twice, and you all think that's crazy. My father has been a guiding outfitter for almost forty years. He's been shot thirteen times. Jeez, the question and it has had several dog shots. Just find you might all find that interesting. Karin asked, why do folks dare I say, mostly men in my own experience, seems so often to give into the tendency of making something a competition. I understand that some things might reasonably and legitimately be structured as competitive, but why is there an impulse in this case to one up Preston regarding the number of times he's been shot because it didn't kill him. My dad was shot one time he was hunting. What happened? Uh, As he likes to point out, made it all the way through World War Two without getting scratched by a bullet, got scratch brother stuff I've never scratched, but shot through his rain poncho during the war, shot through rain. Never I brought us up, never forgave the Germans. Um got home. It was hunting rabbits with his nephew and his nephew. They're walking along and his nephew put a load of bird shot right into the side of his foot, and they kept a secret. Was he aiming at a rabbit? Just walking? Just shot? They were walking side by. I saw it and shot it right into his foot, and they kept kept it secret, and he was at his and he went and laid on his couch. I came here. If he was a grammar, if he was at his grandma's or his mom's or something, was laid up on the couch, and every time about how lazy he was now and everything. But it's because he's been shot in the foot. Yeah, but how did he It must not have been a serious wind or did no? He would he would, he would back when he used to X ray your foot, see if you should fit right? Uh, this is before my time. He would go and show everybody all those shotgun pelts in his foot. Oh wow, Yeah, I've explained as much when I when we had I ran all of his ashes through a screen. Did you get the lead back? Yeah? But I think you know, melted, melted. Ye. I couldn't find it. Found all kinds of dental work, and I couldn't find the lead, says the guys and shot thirteen times? Just where have you been? Well? I know, but just bringing that up again and saying that, I feel it sounds like anybody that wants to brag about being shot thirteen times, it's probably their problem. Like they got to think about who they're hunting with and where they're hunting. He's a guy, he's he's hut with clients. Yeah, you know, but you should do a better job. There's something he's not doing something. But yeah, so to take on Charnce thing about it's not like I think, Krint, God bless you. It's not bragging. I don't think you're bragging. Like generally, like I I'm put in my note here at any given moment for creing to see everyone at any given moment, most people are trying not to get shot. Like generally, among all the other things you're doing, you're trying not to get shot. Yeah, and it's there. It's only the survivors that wrote in. So it's you're not you're not bragging. You're like observing about it. Because if you were said, like I go to the gym every day, look at my big muscles, that's bragging because you're trying to get them and then you got them and you alert people. But if you go through life trying not to get shot and then you get shot, it's not a bragging point. It's more of a you're right that people make stuff into competition. We had we had a bench press competition your day and a pull up competition. Right, there is a sense that if you get if you get shot and you survive it, that it's a madge of honor that you've avoided something that could be far worse. So once or twice is like I got struck by lightning. It's like, look and I made it like somehow miraculous. That man is that man bragging the man that says I've been struck by lightning. Well, if somebody then goes, but I've been struck, that's pretty cool. But I've been struck five times. What it's just called one upsmanship. Yeah, so it's related. It's related to attention seeking impulse, like this unique fact about me. We might all be similar looking, but guess what, guys, I've been shot three times. However, if we were sitting here, one guy got struck by lightning and then the other guy got struck five times, legitimately, it would be very hard for him to sit here and not saying I was the same. It's like when people go talking about their international travels. This one time I went to Papa, New Guinea, and then somebody else was like, oh, that's pretty cool, But I lived in I don't know. With the Bush people, you know, they it's one up and ship, so it is related to uh. I think it is gender related to us for sure. But we all know that I'm has your dad been shot Chester? My dad has not been shot, not that I'm aware, we all know. We all now know I'm cooler than Chester because my dad was shot. So that story was great. So like like that's better than Chester, Like that makes me better than Chester, clearly, And that impulse actually helped. I think it's like a storytelling them. S room girl, my dad's kind of been struck by lightning. Well yeah, but if somebody were to say I've been struck thirteen times by lightning, I would be very curious why they keep getting struck by lightning. Well, I got a question. Are they counting like if he's running, like if he's doing like bird hunting, are they counting incidents of him getting shot? Or they counting like the amount of babies in his Like, Oh, I'm sure it's instances because you can't count. We'll have to have we'll have we'll have to have currency. If you can get the guy to come on the show for a minute, we'll ask him how he keeps getting shot, maybe we can give him some insight by how to at least reduced the amount of shootings you're involved in because one of them is eventually going to get him. Wonder what he considers shot. Listen, it might be I've been shot if you count catching bird shot. Yeah, same like dove hunting and stuff. Just like oh, someone d away from me, I don't count smacks you. But the reason I bring out, the reason I bring Oh. Then krit also went on to say, then she also has asked, like, why do people like this competitive thing I think gets into like fishing contests, kyot hunting contests. It's different. Those are completely different. I don't know, talking about whether you've been shot or not. It is not the same thing as going to a fishing derby. No, But I also don't know if it's a gender thing, because like I'm very on competitive and I know women that are extremely competitive, like I have friends were very competitive. So I don't know if it's like because she's saying it is a gender thing, I think if you took she she's saying, in her experience, it seems to be waited that way, And I would think that if you took um a hundred men, hundred American man, randomly selected men, and a hundred randomly selected American women, and put a question to them like, um, raise your hand if you been in a competition in the last week. I feel I have a suspicion that more male, and it could there's it could it's social, you know, cultural social. I'm not saying it's like it's like like like a genetic thing, but but I just think you'd have more I think the hundred dudes that have more hands, shoot, yeah, but it could be like it could be like totally socially constructed. I do think when people are asked if they're competitive, it's sometimes in certain circles is a negative thing. Oh no, if you're competitive, you care too much about like little things. I could I could get real upset if we like we're trying to make baskets into a trash, can make it like throw So I would just be like, God, I lost, I didn't get my we played horse today. I mean, I really don't want to lose. Ever, I lose all the time, but I mean it upsets me. It doesn't matter how minor. But there's also thing that happen but there's like a bullshit thing that happens to women where it's more like if a dude is described as competitive, he's a competitive you know, it's like that's laudatory. But it can also be a thing that you'd say about a woman that would be like like not flattery. Right, Well, she's very competitive, and it's like it's bad, it's a bad double standard. We the reason go ahead, I would say, we amongst our friend group, we have a little shed hunting competition going a must be out of the friend group. Well, it's just like it's yeah, me too, man, it's a different it's a different friend group, but just like like the not the not good friends, not other good friends. It's better. But anyway, this is not the points still different. Um, the most competitive person in this little shed hunt competition is Kelsey, my girlfriend. Literally she's out there right now for the competition purpose and she loves to do it, but yeah, she wants to win, wants to win. There you have, it settles that the reason I bring this up, Robert, you were you were actually uh um, you expressed some opinions about bird shot that people use, and I noticed you actually factored in the experience of one being shot right in your bird shot selection. All right, I've been shot twice, not thirteen times, just twice. But I counted as peppering. I mean, if I get peppered and it penetrates clothing, you know it didn't. It didn't have to draw blood. But I got shot turkey hunting, and uh, the guy shot me with a duplex load back up. I gotta I gotta get a couple of things straight. You're saying that you count it being shot if it penetrates your clothes. Yea, if he aims a gun at me and pulls the trigger with the intent of causing bodily harm. That's what the turkey hunter did. He thought I was a turkey. Yeah, I got shot me and then a kid shot me pheasant hunting. The pheasant flush between us, and I saw the shotgun barrel. I looked down the shotgun barrel and hit the dirt and the gun went off as I was falling, and it went through my hat and luckily didn't didn't draw blood. One pellet hit me between the eyes, and if it had been a half an inch to either side, it was gone through an eye. But it hit me on the bridge of the nose, and uh, and two or three pellets in the shoulder or something, but they didn't penetrate the skin. But it wasn't getting rained on you. Yeah, that has all the time that it rains down on you. But the turkey hunt. And I've been working a bird and it quit goblin and just like one did this morning, quick goblin. And so I slipped down in this little bottom and I was looking, and there was a clear cut, and I said, well, maybe he went out in that clear cut. And I was glass and I was looking. I heard a clock up on the up on the hill and and one of gobble. It was clock was just one clock. And hunters never just make one cluck. They're they're like they're just calling calling, it's just one clock. But there was a firebreak running up the hill, and I just thought, you know, if there's somebody walking that firebreak, maybe he's but it's eighty yards the top of the hill. I'll see him if if it's a hunter. But I got behind a tree anyway, and thinking about getting shot. Yeah, I got behind a tree. But why were you thinking he was gonna shoot you? I'd been shot once and didn't want to get shot again. And I got shot that morning. I don't want to shot a third time. And uh but uh but I turned to look out into the clear cut and as I turned, I picked my leg up and set it on a stump, so you know, I was standing up straight and I kind of went like that to rest myself and he shot me, and uh two pellets hit me in the leg and one hit me on the side of the head. If I hadn't if I hadn't turned my head at that moment, it would hit me in the face. It was only one pellet and I yelled and he came running down the hill. He was when that when the game wardings investigated the incident, he said, oh, well, it looks like you're okay. Well, we'll see you later and he left and I called, you know, he's supposed to report an incidents. I reported. He was eighty five yards away when we found the shell. We found the shell. That that's how we knew it was a duplex shell. And then we went down to the tree I was standing behind. There were twenty five pellets in the tree that I was standing behind, and he was shooting a three and a half inch duplex shell. With two sports and sixes or two sixes seven a half, so I'm not sure. But the two it is what penetrated the seam on my pants. And it's the only one that really stung. The sixes, you know, they didn't staying it wasn't bad, but the number two penetrated the uh you know, my my camouflage, you know, not just the cloth, but the seam of the cloth and went in. And you know number two is number twos. Tell you up. Some states it's legal to shoot turkey's buckshot. Some of the states there's no left. I mean, he shouldn't be anything. Oh dude. And um, you know the same thing with rifles. You got people in you can that's a whole debate. But you got people in hunting full camo, no blaze, orange and other people using rifles. How does he how I just don't understand anybody, like, especially after this week where the turkeys come in. They came in within like twenty five yards, right, forty maybe? Yeah, how do you confuse that with a person? Well, he he came over this hill and and and I don't know, it was early in the morning, you know, it was first hour of daylight and he saw that movement of my leg and he he said, what he saw was a gobbler with a red head going to full strut. How God's name, and he shot at eighty five yards, I mean five yards, and uh, I saw a gobbler going into full strut for the first time in my life on this trip. Close close, and I would never think, like, oh, that dude's leg definitely looks exactly like that turkey. But that's so that's a question that comes up whenever people get shot, is in an offer to you know, deer hunters shoot people like so not only did you think that that man was a deer, you thought you were aiming like behind the shoulder. Yeah, that's a good point too. Yeah, and that you, uh like had seen what it has on its head and well, And it can happen to him more experienced hunner than a less experienced hunter, because the hunter is expecting something and his brain process is what he says faster, and he processes it wrong, and so he might say a bit of movement or he might be yeah, today, you gotta be careful, we gotta hunt defensively. Today. I saw a raccoon, yeah, and I thought it was a hen. Well, to your credit, though, there was a gobbler ripping right on the other side of the log. The raccoon was on, Yeah, and I thought it was a turkey like the back a fan or a hen slinking over a lot. But did you start firing shots over there? Absolutely no unload on the raccoon and be like, oh, I thought it must have been a turkey. Yes, sorry, guys, And and we we looked at a lot of hunting accident reports and one of the highest incidents, and they now call him incidents. They don't call him accidents anymore. You don't have hunting accidents. You have hunting incidents. And that's because it's not an accident until it's been investigated. Until then, it's an incident. And most of them are buddies shooting other buddies. The shooter knows the victim. In most instances, especially turkey hunting, where somebody might separate and say, hey, I'm going to hunt on this side the road. You hunt on that side the road, and the guy on this side of the road, here's the bird just tearing it up on the other side, and he's going, you know, there's there's no way you can hear that bird. He didn't hear that birth. I know he didn't hear that bird. And pretty soon he's crossing the road and he's hunting the same bird, but his buddies hunting, and that's where accidents, that's where accidents happened. You just that's why I like hunting remote areas, like like we were hunting. I like hunting as remote areas possible, or private land. But statistically, in the Southeast, more accidents occur on private land than public land because it's nineties some percent exactly, it's the most common type of land. I know dudes that were this is in Pennsylvania. They were working a bird and the bird kind of did the same thing the one did this morning, came close and then like drifted away. And there was there's three or four of them together hunting, and they got up and we're standing in a group together talking about what had just happened, and someone shot all of them. Yeah, what was he thinking? I have no clue, dude. I feel like there's some bad intent there. It's like god to be if you can't just remember he heard he had a bird. You know, you'd have asked the shooter, but he alread a bird gobbling and decided to slip up on it. And the chances that it's just so hard you can't You can do it, Sure you can do it, but the odds are you just can't do it. Just you you're supposed to set up and call the animal to eat. Yeah, I mean that's that's how it works. But he's just gotta be careful. He's just gotta be super careful, super careful. Do you know what type of hunting has the most incidents? Bird? Usually bird? Right swinging and I think it's swinging on the bird, swinging on game. Yeah, swinging on game. Most you're you're focused on you, and you also get trained doing it where you're shooting through brush and all the time you're focused on the bird, you're not focused on most between you and the bird. Yeah, that's how That's how Dick Cheney Yeah, yeah, shot his body. Yeah, everybody had a good time with that. And I don't I'm not trying to stick off for shooting your body, but uh definitely see how that would happen. Not forgiving it, but I mean just realistically, it's like, but you gotta look at the odds. You gotta look at the statistics. That's the it's much much safer. I mean, the most dangerous thing you do when you go deer hunting as you get in the car and you drive down the highway, and you know that's the most dangerous thing you're doing because the car w rex. Of course car accidents. And then the second most dangerous as you climb up on a tree stand, and the the accident rates with tree stand has gone down dramatically because people wear belts. Now, they wear safety harnesses. I mean when when I was coming along, we didn't wear it. We didn't wear any horses a lot of two tree stands and climb, climb back up and come on hunting. But I got buddies that that didn't climb back up, that crawled out of the woods, and um, it's it's But I had one buddy it fell out and broke broke a leg and crawled out of the woods and we got to the highway. It was a chain link fence. He's gonna get to the highway, except he had a leatherman and he sat there and he cut the chain link fence and crawled through the chain link fence and got on the edge of highway and started flashing his blaze orange vest. If he hadn't had it, if he hadn't had wirecutters. You know, is that guy still alive? Yeah, as far as I know, I haven't heard from him a long time, but yeah, far as I know. Had another guy fell out of a tree stand. He climbed all the way up there and and uh, it was one of those climbers and by the time he got to the top, the tree had gotten smaller as they do, as they all do. Not not as bad with a long leaf pine, that's right, they don't have taper. And he had gotten up there, and you know, he was kind of hanging down, so he turned around and he reached around the tree and he he opened it up and readjusted it on both sides. He missed, he missed the pens. So when he slid it around and put the pins in, they didn't they didn't go through the bar that went around and he sat back down and leaned back make sure it was sturdy, went straight over back, didn't have a safety built on, went over back, landed on his leg, broke his lower egg and they only kept him the only thing kept him from bleeding to death was he had high top snake boots and so his leg immediately swoll up and effectively acted like a tourniquet because it was a it was a compound fractor through the leg. And then he started screaming and he had a buddy of a couple of hare yards away. Tree stands are dangerous. I mean, you gotta be careful. We gotta be They got warnings, They got multiple warnings on everyone on them, and you know, so so you know, we're talking about shooting as an accident, but there's there's a lot more things out there that are a lot higher risk than going hunting. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful and you shouldn't be defensive and be aware and don't lean your shotgun against the side of a car, you know, go go laid on the ground, or go put it in the crotch of a tree or something. Just you gotta think about out All the time, I was looking at these statistics about injuries hunting related injury ease compared to other sports, Like if you call it a sport and other sports, I mean, you line up all like the sports that we talked about, and think about um hunting ranks and at pool and billiards. Oh for safety. Wow? Well yeah, I mean because you're when you compare it to like football. Yeah, you can start comparing to like skiing, climbing dude, you want to man? Yeah, skiing injuries, dude, everybody I know that skis is always breaking an arm, breaking a collar bone something. All right, we're gonna move on. Yeah not no, I'm good with that. Oh you know that guy. You know what what the guy finished for us, our electrical our engineer. What we got a guy that's we're getting We're taking possession of it soon. It's a master light in the middle of the table. And everyone has an interest dial. Oh, you're doing it. You're an engineer, made it for us. Every when he has an interest dial. Yeah. But it calculates all input. Oh, it comes up with an average for this. So if someone's talking about something that you don't think it's interesting, you don't need to hurt their feelings personally. You just very quietly, Oh, dude, that's gonna turn your dial. But I don't know, that's kind of psychologically you turn your dial down. No one knows, like it's it's like, you know, when they used to do the executions with the fire and squad, and they'd give some of the guys a blank, give some of the guys a blank. Right, it's like that, So you don't have ownership over the Yeah, but the someone will sitting there talking and they'll see that light just getting dimmer and dimmer and dimmer and later and be like, oh no, bro, I was cranked up. Yeah I was. I was fascinating. I cracked my thing all the way up. That MU must spend other people. That probably will happen. Must other people didn't like your story, But how are people going to transition out of that once they see that light turning color? Better day? Better wrap it up or get you a good part. Listen, I got some stories. I got some stories I'm gonna tell where I'm gonna be like, I know that sucker is gonna dim down. Oh, but you're just gonna test just playing it, yeah, because then I know that it's gonna start getting bright. Yeah, right right right now, it is dim. Interested, No, damn is not interested. Now you're like, oh, yeah, it's it's dim now, buddy, you wait a minute, it's right up. I wonder if you could do a thing where it gets to a point it's just like it's too bad. And if everybody has the problem is the guy that is making us. It turned into a lot more work than he reckoned with. So if I told him I also wanted to have the capability of shutting that person's mic off, I think I might need to send it back in a year and have work on that. Let's not do that to him. Feel is gonna play the um the Bitcoin Update song the Continuing Adventures of Chester the Investor. Come that's it? Come on? Can you sing your little song? Chester? What's on your favorite little m Hmmm? What I want to do? I want to revamp the Chester the Investor theme, so it has wh yeppoo ye boo some element of that in there. How's it going, Chester? I understand that bitcoin has really just stabilized, and you're not very close to the Walleye boat. Uh, it's stabilized. It went up to day to uh sixty one thousand dollars per bitcoin, and immediately some some gambling folks sold and oh some short term urs and it went down just a little bit. It's sitting at thousand, but it's kind of been that fifty five to six for quite some time, which is fine. Chester put he had a bunch of money in a drawer in his house. Was it a sock drawer? It was a nightstand. He was keeping all his money in his nightstand. And just to be clear, I don't it's not there anymore in my house. If anyone, he moved into a different drawer different that in his car, he moved the bitcoin. He took the money out of his nightstand and invested it in cryptocurrency because he knows that it's blown up and just saving for a Walleye boat. Okay, good, Um, I was it was funny today as Chester. Can we talk about your family planning? Yeah, well it's not okay, I can say this, could can still leave this in that I would that I could say that. Um, it's not inaccurate to say that Chester may someday desire to have a family. That is not that's true, okay, And I was observing to Chester, if that's the case, he might think about getting this walleye boat first, to which Robert said, he might think about getting his hooks first, because money can get tight. Yes, exactly. Hey, that's that's why I'm doing a little investing. You know. Uh, there's a guy though, um Alfred. Uh, he's an investor sort. He was saying, this is good news for you Chester. He's saying how a lot of asset managers are purchasing cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin to gain exposure in this new asset class. The theory is that bitcoin is the bell weather of an altogether new asset class to which they should have some exposure, for example, one percent of net asset value. And he goes on to say this if sovereign central banks by as well. He's saying there's going to be increased meaningful demand for a finite asset. I read that to say Walleye boats, Yes, for sure, but like we're talking about in the last segment, might keep that in there, sell my drift boat here real soon and uh, get a walleye boat with that, keep the bitcoin, keep the bitcoin rolling. But what's the opportunity costs of not having that walleye boat? Like, how much is it costing you? He fishes out of sets wallet boat. Well, then it's not costing me anything. Yeah, it is to hang out with my wife because she'd be had a fit in the boat right now. If if we have my boat and we can only fit three people in there. Yeah, but you guys only usually fish together. It's like one of you's going out. You want more people in the boat. What you're saying you can't bring you're Yeah, Like if if Chad a boat, I could bring my gal out and then we have two other people. You can come, Chris, Chris, you're out. But I only got my invitation. Uh, guy rode in. Oh, you good on that? Yeah, I'm good on it. Oh, I gotta proposal for you. We're gonna start a thing. We're gonna start a thing called the me Eater auction House of Oddities for Conservation, and we're gonna sell one of the kind of oddities and raise it for our Land Access Initiative. Love. Yeah, we got a lot of items are putting into auction house. I guess some things I regret doing other stuff with that. I wish how to putt in the auction house. But we got cool stuff that's going to the auction house. What if you knew what amount you needed out of your boat, and we've sold your boat at the auction house knowing that you could peel off. Yeah, every in there's a minimum bid and that's what you need. Yeah, every extra dollar we get goes into our Land Access initiative. Oh man, that's a good idea around Chester, kicking around. Uh. Guy wrote in about how they had a buck. You know, everybody names bucks. You guys name bucks, Robert, I don't know, I mean we you know, you look at the antlers and say, well that one, we got one with a broken antler. We got one with five on one side, four one of the other. But we don't. I don't name them. You don't. They don't become like Dave and Bob. Now that's a little too personal for something to eat, you know. Yeah. This guy listener named Marty wrote in they had a buck um in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, an eight point buck. He said it was he was so regular that he would enter their hayfield from the tree line of the neighbor's property every afternoon at the same time, within five minute, and he says they went he was so regular they named him Meta Musel. Then his brother shot at the buck and missed it, and they never saw it again. Man, I never saw it again. Got plugged right up. But butch your feedback on tularemia. Also, we found this out. Okay, a lot of feedback on tularemia, because we're talking about two laremia, and Brody mentioned how they they'll teach you all the time, and we even mentioned this in our Wilderness Skills. But when we talk about like the risk of tularemia UM, and we mentioned that it's a common practice. You probably noticed, Robert, what do you do with Steve Rabbit has to arema? You tell me, I don't now. It was like this thing he's supposed to look at the liver. I didn't know that. Maybe it's probably good that you didn't. If there's a thing like you can look at the liver and you're looking for spots on the liver, and that would beative, that would be indicative of toulremia. So a guy wrote in UM he's a molecular microbiologist, studied toulremia and its pathology on human cells, wrote his master's thesis onto aremia. He went on to say this, as you know, and he goes on to plug our own Wilderness Skills book, as you know, and it may also be found a meter's Guide to Wilderness Skills and survival. Well sero glandular forms of the disease can be contracted by humans following interaction with small rodents and laga morphs lagomars. People like to say rabbits are rodents, rabs are not rodents, Rabbins are lagomorph's. Rabbits and hairs are lagomorphs as well as through mechanical and vector transmission by biting arthropods. So that's the thing, Like when you're carrying a rabbit around, I feel like we, I don't know what, weren't you guys here and we did this thing. It was about the guy that went to a dude who's selling He was a Tonka truck enthusiast and bought old Tonka truck from a guy on Craigslist, but also bought a rabbit and brought the rabbit home. The rabbit scratch his daughter about killed her. I heard about that, but yeah, this guy rolled in to clarify some points about that stuff. So if you kill a rabbit in the early season, in the fall, and you're carrying that rabbit around and all of a sudden you realize he's got little mites, little fleas biting your arm all the time. That's why, like in the old days, I think still now We were always tot you don't hunt rabbits until you've had a good bunch of freezes. But it's funny because that doesn't work in the south. So do you ever hear anything that you don't kill rabbits till some point in the winter. Hunters that would hang him in a tree. They'd shoot him and hanging that tree and swing around the field, come back two hours later, pick him up. Because as as the body temperature left, a rabbit flas or jump off, and we would and people would tell us, were kids like that's why you like, oh, you don't hunt right, you don't hunt rabbit stil January because as the cold weather comes, it kills off the parasite load and there's less. I'm jumping on your arm and biting you so you can get to laremia from cutting your hand and you just get the bacteria in your hand, or the little bug can jump and get you and bite you and that can give you to aremi. He also points out, in addition, inhalation of Francis Sella to the to Lorenus to Lawrensis, Francis Cella to Lawrensis. He's given us the Linnaean name for this species, it's very problematic. Only a few bacterium need to cause the pulmonary disease. And he mentions that this is what happened. Remember, I was talking about the person that hit a rabble of the lawnmower that was in Martha's vineyard. On Martha's vineyard, someone hit a dried out rabbit with a lawnmower inhaled and then got to lorimi that way inhaled the bacteria and how that was deadly for that person, right, the one I'm I don't know if the one they're talking about, but the one I'm thinking of, the person died from it. How deadly is it if you get a cut or bit by one of the treatable treatable you don't want your lungs. Goes on to say this, rabbits are famous for uh, not showing sickness, not demonstrating sickness. Then also, I'm just dying. And he was saying, if you are going around looking for tolremia by a cursory glance at the liver, it's not a great idea to loremi infected rabbits may this may um have necrotic tissue on the liver. Spleen or lymph nodes. But this would be in late stage disease and more than likely wouldn't be the indicator that a rabbit was sick and shouldn't be eaten or better yet, even handled, Meaning it's only at the last minute that that shows up. In this country. One point one percent of Laga morphs in the northern hemisphere have toularemia. It's pretty that's pretty high. I don't think so. Yeah, every hundred rabbit you clean, be careful, he suggests, Um the first nine, it's only gonna be the last YEA. What he recommends here, He's like, at a minimum, handling rabbits late light, latex or nitrile gloves. If you want to go the next layer up, get a face mask. Oh, wear a mask. Here's some of your equipment to take your leftover COVID mass and pop put it on your face. You're saying that, but he's saying, like, I, at a minimum, wear gloves and long sleeves and hang your rabbits in the tree. Did they care the plague do? I don't know, but everything does. Yeah, but I know rodents, I've never heard of rabbits. I know that a couple, a young couple in Mongolia Um contracted plague from mormots eating marmot liver. They were extracting marmot liver. I believe it's a popular dish. Should feel like the really, the guy wrote in the guy we had on the squirrel doctor. We had on a squirrel doctor um who researched the squirrels. And he's talking about the very impressive how squirrel nuts sacks swell and shrink. You know what this yea like. Some days you look at squirrels like, oh my gosh, he can't bring his legs together, and other times they don't and as it's breeding season comes, it swells. This guy rolled in tok about how that's not uncommon. There's a monkey, a vervet monkey that when it's ready to breed, not only do they swell, they turned a brilliant blue. Whoa, he was so impressed by the blue. He's going to his local hardware store and have him do a color match. He says he's gonna paint a wall in his house with it. So what is he doing and bringing in a picture of the like he wants to paint. He wants monkeyball blue, he says, just a brilliant I want to see the picture that he's bringing into the ace hardware wherever he's going, because if it's a tight shot, that's one thing. But if it's like a wide where you see the monkey and everything, like, give me that. Yeah, let me quiz you on something. Let's say you're gonna transition as I am about to between that story and albino porcupines, what would you go with? Are you gonna give me an option? All right? There? There you go, Oh, that is a beautiful blood be like, you know what, it's incredible. I'd be like, you know what doesn't have a blue scroll? It is a white porcupine? Yeah, something like that. Speaking of colors, that's what Krane thought would be good. M Krane went with speaking of colors and presenting the material that we've pulled together here uh albino porcupines. We talked about an albino porcupine on the show that a guy got a road found a road kill albino porcupine, and supposedly cabella Is offered him what sixty dollars sixty dollars for his albino porcupine. Apparently everybody every time Dick and Harry on the planet's got an albino porcupine. We heard from all kinds of them. Carl in Northern Minnesota shot one while hunting, and he hasn't mounted. He hasn't mounted, almost nibbling on moose antlers. Hilarious. He also has two real nice walle i mounted there. Yeah, so the albino porcupines are all over the damn place. Really, that's what holy? So that's that's a good percentage of them. That's incredible. Did the guy steted for sixty before they did all that research? What God is talking about? It was the fact that uh he I. I find that it's like a thing people say a lot, is that they were offered exorbitant amounts of money for things by places like Capella's. But I do know some cases where some people have done some great transactions. Um, and we got talking about is that really true? Because the first guy that had an elpino porcupine, his old man turned down an offer from Cabella's of sixty grand and then that let me believe, like really really for road kills porcupine. But he could be independent, independently wealthy. That's probably why they just got bought by bass Pro because they're spending that much money freaking it's like, good god man, Yeah, the diligence process. So I haven't all that money, but you should have seen the nuts on this squirrel. You just you dug deep too. Yeah, we've paid half a meal for that one. Uh worth it? Barwood is Robert. I'm learning all sorts of No, we're gonna get too things. We're gonna get something coming up soon that you'll be able to play on. So we uh oh oh, no, oh no, I want we want to talk about this one. First. I was saying on the show, I don't know why I had the idea, Robert, do you remember the Kiss song Beth, Beth, I hear you're calling. I don't remember. I went into heavy metal. Well, it's symphonic for starters if it's kiss. I never listened to Kiss, so I don't remember the song. Yeah, I wanted to do I wanted to do a rewrite. I don't have time to do. I wanted to do a rewrite that was instead of Beth, I hear you calling, it was Seth, I hear you calling, And it was gonna be a turkey hunting song and a lot of guys wrote in and wrote the song. So Hayden one of our audio guys, and and Cal and then uh Fill the engineer. They took the best lines from the versions that came in and they have done Seth. I hear you're calling, which will Phil. We'll share with you then. I think in the end what we'll do is, instead of the songs we normally use at the end of the show, if you want to hear the whole Seth, I hear you calling, then you want to hear a little bit of it. You're here here, let me hear you with it. You'll recognize it. Oh it's good, Setha, here you call it. But we can't hunt birds at night. The flip flop flesh shoes. Eager to use that turkey con just right. Just a few hours and we leave Rouse. I think I hear them call him, Seth. What can I do? What can I do? Ut? Cal normally only Um, not only Cal things a lot of Neil diamond. So I was excited to see that Cal has um expanded. Yeah, has expanded. A guy wrote in to say this. He says, Uh, we're always talking about pot calls and strikers getting gunked. Up, but we never talked about how to fix the problem. He's a chemist, that's what he says. As the credentials are and he says, as a chemist, here's my tip. Soaker, section of clean paper, toweling pure non dyed acetone. Rub it on the striker service or pot surface, making sure to wet it well with the acetone, use mild four worse. Then dry it with a fan or your cars a c so that it's dry. Air. Repeat two more times. This will remove the grime. Karin took this piece of feedback to Jason Phelps. Phelps Game Calls. He was not familiar with this hot tip. He tried it. He said it works, but I don't know how much better it works than just wiping it with a rag. Uh. Okay, here's not here's a rule thing. Do we want to clarify. We talked about a recent thing you're in in in there are rules coming out again, like like laws saying that you can't do the turkey hunting strategy of fanning or reaping. And we were talking about, well, how do you explain like how what is the legal ease or what is the verbiage? Well, South Carolina, this was the first year where it was illegal to use a tail fan on public land. Yeah, and I was just curious, like, how do they describe what's legal? It's what I have right here. This this is one from South Carolina where we're sitting right now. Um. Fanning slash reaping. So fanning or reaping is defined as hunting or stalking wild turkeys while holding or using for hunter concealment any of the following items. A tail fan, a partial or full decoy with a tail fan, or a tail fan mounted to a firearm. Tail fans include those made of real or synthetic feathers, or an image or likeness of a tail fan applied to any material. This regulation does not prohibit the use of mail decoys or decoys with tail fans that are placed away from a hunter. So pretty clear they did a good job of explaining it. Yeah, I thought they did, because I mean, if you're hunting on public land, you don't. You don't have a tail fan with you, period, you just don't. But if you're not on private land, you're fine. Legally, you're fine. Yeah, what do you do you know? Is it more like they're heading off trouble or is there already been trouble. I'm not as up on that subject as I was ten years ago when I was with the National Wild Turkey Federation, But I have not hurt any incidents where the there was a problem with somebody being shot because they were hunting with a tail fan. There. We we've had some come in. I don't know, but I hadn't heard with this state. But yeah, there's been a number of cases. Yeah, So so that's that's the reasoning. I know when this started coming up eight years ago when I was with the Turkey Federation, there was debates, that was discussion among the biologists about this, and then I went to work for the long Leaf Alients and kind of got away from the hunter access, hunter incident, hunter accidents um on public land. I mean it, you know, it's another it's another way to get shot. We're talking about geting shop before. But the tail fans are um. I would I would never use it where there's rifles available. I mean, you ever see those ones where it's a hat. No, yeah, they make it that it's a tail fan mounted to your hat. Let's put some deer owlers up there for the fall. I mean, that's that's not smart. But you know, you gotta be careful. I don't know, but like I've viewed, I've used that for sure. I've crawled up on turkeys and start the shotgun barrel out between the feathers of the fan trigger. You gotta be careful where you're using it and how are you using it, Like anything else. I mean, there's been a lot of decoy shot that didn't have a tail fan. You just have to you gotta be careful. You gotta be careful. You gotta be careful. You gotta be careful. How you put your boot up on a stump you get shot, don't put it up. Don't put it up on a stump like a turkey fan and out. Uh, Robert, you know what I wanted to tell you? What I wanted you to tell me, Um, because I feel like I told this story before and messed it up. But can you share with me the story about the guy in Mexico? Yeah, that when they were arranging to get Gould's tell that story. Yeah, So we were trapping goold turkeys in Mexico when I was with the Turkey Federation. We were working with Arizona gamed Fish and US Fish and Wildlife Service APIs Animal Animal Plant Health Inspection Service because we were bringing poultry across an international border into Arizona, and we were down in the Sierramadre trapping turkeys, and we were working with a local um guide who knew all the landowners. And the deal we had worked out with him is for every landowner that lets us trap a turkey on their property, we'll give him a hundred bucks for that turkey, because the whole problem of getting the google s. While turkeys they're they're not very many in Arizona, New Mexico, which is where they were found down in the Sky Islands. And we were down there and one of the other one of the other biologist, Bobby madre Um I was down there the week before I was, and he was setting stuff up and then I was coming down. But we had one rancher that they had contracted with. Were you guys flying in and out? Both we were driving and we were flying out. How are you moving the turkeys? Both? Sometimes driving, sometimes flying? When I was down there work and we flew I can't remember it was thirty birds, but we flew about thirty birds across the border in small aircraft and we had a little bit of a challenge with that too. That's another story, but that one next. Okay, well, remind me about that small aircraft a crossing the international border from Mexico. And uh so, so this rancher every day for you know, a couple of months. Every so if he would walk up to his property six or seven miles out of the little the little town of Yaka, he'd walked up there with two five gallon buckets of corn and bait the turkeys where we were going to trap him. And we went up there and man, his place was wrapped up with turkeys. We caught thirty six turkeys. And so when Bobby started paying the guy thirty six hundred dollars in US one all bills, thirty six hundred bucks, he started crying. It was it was like no, no, no, it's too much, it's way too much. And of course he was speaking Spanish that we didn't understand. We were speaking English, and we had a translator, and something's getting lost in the translation. And finally we figured out that he had been working for us for two months debate those turkeys so that we could go trap him with the expectation of getting a hundred dollars for trapping on his property, and we were giving him a hundred dollars a bird, and we taught thirty six turkeys. He got thirty six when he realized that, he started crying, and we found out later that that was enough to go buy enough cattle to start his cattle herd on this high mountain ranch in this here Madres. That's pretty cool. That's a little bit of money for wildlife and and the poaching of turkeys during that time period in that town and in that surrounding mountain range when we were in there trapping ended nobody was selling turkeys in the market for three dollars but that but when we were flying them out. So we had another biologist in the US that was meeting the plane and we were we were, you know, talking on cell phones, saying, okay, the planes planes getting ready to come in, and and the border patrol is sitting there watching on their radar and said, we'll see a plane. We'll see a plane. And the guys saying, no, we're crossing the border right now, we're coming in. We're coming in. And and apparently the pilot we had hired to cross the border didn't know how to fly above a hundred feet and so when he crossed the border, he came in under radar and and then came in and landed, and the plane had to land in a little circle. They directed, okay, you gotta land over there. And then border patrol comes up with the with the sniffer dogs and everything, and they had a Labrador Treever that was a sniffer dog, and they tell us Bobby told the story that sniffer dog went berserk on that plane. Turkey says he was full of turkeys, not cocaine, not marijuana, not any kind of drugs. And when they opened the door, there was a breast feather that flew out of the door, because you know the turkeys. It flew out of the door, and that dog caught it on his nose and just sucked it right against it is the best smell he'd ever had. And then they let us go. Uh, there's are two things I want you explained. You've been explaining to me down here. Is um explain the dog hunt thing around here for deer on the whole thing about the Department Energy and all that stuff, real quick, however long you want to spend on it. Well, this is fascinating, man, I had no idea this went on. So dog hunting in south is traditional, it's been around that part. But we go on. So when um, the deer population start to start to increase on Savanna riversite, one of the things that they did is they had dog hunts and still hunts. But but you gotta explain what the site is. Oh, the Spanner Risites two thousand acre UM Federal facility Department of Energy that was administered by the U. S Stomic Energy Commission, and so since the nineteen fifties it was making radioactive material for the use on atomic weapons. And they moved, like this is a crazy story man, in the fifties, how to the Cold War, Like there's no debating whether this is important business or not. Moved declared this area that that's what this is for, and moved twenty thousand people. You're just like, your farm is not here anymore. It's now over there, your town, We're moving your town over to their right. New Ellington, Dunbarton, Patterson Mill, all these little towns in the nineteen fifties. I don't know, I don't remember if it was two years or three years to get out, but they were condemned and that was that was part of the deal. That's how they I mean, this is all this isn't. This isn't the West where you got a lot of national forests and you got you got BLM land, you got federal land. It's all private land. And they wanted two hundred thousand acres, you know, basically a circle so you could put the reactors in the middle of it. So you had a five mile buffer. And they condemned the property, took the property and paid the people. You know. But it's like, if you want your house moved, will move of it. If it's here, we're burning it, tearing it down, burning cemeteries. If they can find a descendant who's alive, will dig up the bodies and move it. If not, it stays. Yeah. Yeah, So there's a little out And then hired, then hired twenty five people had to come in and build the reactors Billy reactors at the time. And then they had and they had to plant all the agricultural fields. So the ventilation on the reactors was, as I understand it, it was forced air ventilation and you couldn't have dust, and so all these agricultural fields all the pine trees on Savannar River site. I don't right now, it's been too long. I don't remember how many tens of thousands of acres of agricultural fields on the site, and the U. S. Far Service was brought into plant the fields, plant all the trees, and for three years they planted trees. They planted slash lolli and long leaf pine to get something growing on that land so they wouldn't have dust storms and because there were no longer any crops on it, and it was the largest tree plant in operation in the United States at that time. It took all the trees from the Southeast for either two or three years and directed him to the Spinnery River site to plant I don't know, a hundred thousand acres. I can't remember. That's a nuts story, man, Yeah, it's it's it's an interesting site. And you were talking about the deer hunting, so you're like, it's like the weirdest sort of rewilding process and the and the deer um. I had read a wildlife survey from the from nine fifty two UM and there were not very many deer. I remember the turkeys. They estimated there were twelve turkeys on the property two acres. There weren't hardly any deer, but with this rewilding, the deer populations began to increase. Eventually had deer car collisions, and that it was the justification to start hunting the site. And they had still hunting and dog hunting, and then the still hunting was outlawed in I came was outlawed in the eighties, sometime in the nineteen eighties, and they went to just dog hunts, and you would get drawn for a dog hunt as a standard or you would be a dog man that would bring a helper and six dogs and then you would you would have a dog hunt. But they put the standards out a hundred standards a day, nine hundred feet apart and turn the dogs loose. Yeah, it's crazy because you told me my dial was red hot. But then you told me a lot more about this that you're not telling everybody. Now, I want to tell everybody all the parts. Which what am I leaving out? That they take the hunters like you apply to go hunt. Oh yeah, yeah, so so now ten person minivan used to be school buses right now. It used to be school buses or or you know big buses and now and now it's small buses. And you know, you ten person vans and you drop them out nine feet apart. And then you got a guy that runs around, picks up a dead deer and carries him over and designated skinner, got a designated gutter and I'm skinning he got them, puts him in a refrigerator truck so the meat dunge, boil and at the end of the day, and then you got dog men. Yeah, wait, but does anybody know each other? Like how does this work? Man? Because you're randomly you're randomly distributed. Now that now the look of the draw about where they make you get out of the van, so you could get paired with somebody everybody has Yeah, yeahs are illegal his buckshot only the dog men have generally been doing this for years and years and years because once once they know they have a highly qualified hunter with good dogs, as long as he wants the hunt, he comes. If somebody drops out with twenty five helpers, six dogs of peace, all turned loose, and and then you got all those dudes in the vans distributed around with buckshot to get everything stirred up. Dude, what was the thoughts, amazing hunt to get rid of the still hunting. Hunting. They just don't want it doesn't make a good story. It doesn't make a good story. The guy got killed, so yeah, he got killed. So they were they were, they had to still they had still hunting. And as I understand it, he went in before daylight and climbed up in the tree stand, had had a climber, had some country stand up. It was either I think it was in the eighties, I don't remember when it was in the eighties. And um, as he was sitting his stand before daylight, there were other hunters coming into the woods and he could see flashlights, he could see people climbing the tree stand and uh, but that's not a still hunt, that's an ambush. Well that's climbing. Yeah, hunting out of a tree. I mean down here they call it still hunt. Really, you don't know what still hunting is down here? Yeah, they call it still hunt. You know what still hunting is. Yeah, you're slipping through the woods, you're walking still huntings where he sits still, And you don't sit still when you're still hunting, right, when you're still hunting, you move right. You're sitting still, that's ambush hunt. Well, if you're still hunting in the south, then you move, you fall out of a trick. Then you gotta called Doug Durn. Then you gotta called Doug during and asked him what the mooch is. It's yeah, it's it's it's sort of a combo of still hunting and stand hunting. It's a move. They had to come over the Hall of their words to describe this method. But this guy, this guy decidurday, we don't want to get it. And they suspect this. I mean they don't know what for a fact, but they suspect it because right at sunrise he climbed out of his tree, started to walk out, and he got He got shot and he got He was carrying a stand on his back. He got shot in the back and he turned around the second shot, so I think it shot once. He got shot twice and he got killed. And that was the end of still hunting on on the Savaner side, and they went to dog hunting only after that. Let me tell you some more interesting stuff, Chris, that Robert shared with me earlier. Got my dial. You don't budge when they drop you off if you get a hit and gotta track it, they come track it for you, or a dog man will come. Yeah. Wait, so lay this out for me. They dropped the hunter, I don't know. They dropped the hunters off and it designated spot nine ft apart from each other. They do not move now, that don't move. They stay right there and so they're waiting for the dog to drive the deer to Is it like a deer drive. It's a deer drives. I mean, but that's traditional. That's that's not a different than all the southern States and Ontario, Canada. Also they hunt with dogs. So they just pushed the deer. One thing. But this is a whole. This is like the organization to this and I'm not dogging on it. I would do it right now if I couldn't. And it's extremely effective. And that was why they did it, because you know, a still hunter, the guy sitting in a tree stand the average success in a in a You put a hundred still hunters in the woods, tenem, we're gonna kill You put a hundred hunters in the woods with dogs on these hunts, you're gonna kill fifty deer. Now that was before Kayat so the is a crazy story. Now this is where this story starts to make its own gravy here. Yeah, so that was before the hunts in the eighties and the early nineties killed a bout a thousand deer on the Savanna River out of two acres, and then the numbers started dropping about I'm not sure when late nineties. John Kilgo would not and um, the late nineties, we're gonna get this guy on the show. But you can preview all this. Yeah, so the numbers started dropping and everybody says, you know, why why are we not killing the bucks. Well, on one of the one of the hunts, the scanner was talking to buy oologists and he's going, he said, you know, I'm killing six month old deer this year this fall. You know, dear born in spring fall, there's six months old. We have killed six month old deer this year or today. And they killed about a hundred deer a day. And he said, no, that's crazy about what you kill is younger the gear, it's the this is six month old deer. And uh. They went back and looked at the data and it's like we've killed two and then went back to the weekend before to see how many they killed, and it was two or three or four. There were no funds, No funds were being were no funds were entering the population. In the follow of the year, they were gone. They were gone by the fall of the year. And so that's when US four Service came along and started doing some radio telemetry work by putting intry uter and devices into the uterus of the does and which he gave birth. The fond would come out and the transmitter would come out and go into mortality mode. So when that transmitter quit moving with the movement of the dough, it would stop and after an hour of no movement or two hours of no movement, it would start ticking and they would go in. And you know, the fawns are just tiny at that time. You catch them, put a put a collar on. They dispatch out like grand students field or something to go scour the woods. I didn't know they could even do that. Oh yeah, we saw them. We find him hunting Morrel's No then, really like the no no, no, sorry fawns. Yeah, yeah, like brand brand new funds. Yeah, you can reach that and pick them up. I mean, that's why you're not supposed to because you can't. They they're just I mean, only this big. People think you're crazy when you say they're they're literally you know, the size of a ham there, smaller than my dad's buddy had a fish bowl, uh his body, Eugene Grots had this fish bowl. In this fish bowl he had was full of from alde hide and had two white tail fawns curled up in a fish bowl sitting on the counter as a decoration, had like a cap on it. Yeah, but in his house. It's amazing. Man. We just when we were kids that we stare at that thing NonStop. Wow, it's gorgeous, beautifully done. So the first year, the first year they put radio collars on, it was about ten years ago. So i'm I'm I don't have all the date on the tip of my tongue, but my memory tells me that they put radio collars on seventeen fawns and within two weeks, fifteen of them are dead. And well, back up, maybe I was thinking about that fish bowl. So I'll make sure everybody's the listeners are getting this. So you covered this right, that the sensor passes out, goes into more clicks. Then you go out and hunt around and find the fawn, put a radio collar on, like a full on collar, yeah, on the neck, put that collar on it, and then wait for that to have a mortality signal. Right, and then when that one has mortality, you go in determine why the fawn died. And within two weeks, and you know, John may come on and say, now he's got it all wrong. It was within three weeks, or I remember it being within two weeks, the fifteen of the seventeen fauns were dead, and fourteen do by Coats and one by Bob Kat, which we never had Coats here in the in the eighties. They didn't show up to the nineties. So this is a new predator in a new system, and all of a sudden this is happening to the fun production. Well, you couldn't you couldn't kill dose. If you had that kind of depredation on your on your dare population, there's there's you wouldn't have it. You wouldn't have any deer. And so some of the hunt clubs started, you know, well, maybe we don't need to kill as many does, or maybe we don't need to do this and and or do win need to bring in a coyote, trapper or what do we what do we need to do? What do we need to do? And the research I haven't kept up with the research, but the research has continued. And it's not true all over the South. It's weird, it's in it's in some areas. Coyotes have become extremely effective predators on fonds, extremely effective, and that is new to the South because we did not have cotes in the South. The big predator in the South was red wolves. They got wiped out a long time ago, except for coastal Louisiana coastal Texas, and that was maybe in the seventies that red wolves were all captured and put into a captive breeding program to keep them from going extinct, and then re released on Bull's Island, South Carolina and on Alligator River National Wilife Refuge in eastern North Carolina. So the big mega predator in the East disappeared hundreds of years ago and they're back. I mean, we can my SunShot one ky weight forty four pounds. I don't know if that's a big cut or a little cute, but it seemed big to me. Um, they had big old choppers, but that was you know, that's that's what it was. It was just interesting. Here was this issue that came up because the skinner on a hunt said, hey, there's something going on here. The biology started talking with him and started looking at him. It raised a question. They went out and did research, came up with some preliminary answers. But as most of your viewers are gonna say, it was only seventeen deer. That's the stample size is too small. And that's true. But it raised a question, and then they started doing more research, more research and more research, and so it's been going on about ten years now. And the hunt began as a management tool because there was too many deer running around. Right, they're not killing a thousand deer now. But now everybody likes the process. Yeah, so they want they want. Yeah, it's it's it's not going away. I mean, it's it's a it's a public hunt. If you want to if you want to hunt, you put in. If you get drawn, you hunt. Is it still a nuclear facility now? Uh, it is still nuclear facility and it's pretty much in clean up mode. Got you yea? How do they determine? So do you get your own deer? Oh? Yeah, it's tag when comes in it is you're giving your you know, you gotta go get your back. Yeah, you get your dear back. You know how you guys call you know, still hunting. You know what I means, slipping through the woods. Real quiet. But you're saying sitting in the stand, why do you call it gutter? A skinner? I just did. I don't know, you can't. Yeah, he was a gutter. You can't defend that. No, I can't defend that he was a gutter. I mean he didn't skin the deer. Skinner sounds more noble. Yeah, my daddy was a skinner. I was mistaken. He was a gutter. Yeah, I like skinner. What do they managed that property for? Well, it's an ecological research park in addition to this, so they do a tremendous amount of ecological research on it. UM. A lot of the University's, University Georgia Clempson, University of South Carolina, UM, a lot of the A lot of universities do research on it because it's it's got gays, it's protected, your scientific equipment doesn't get disturbed. You can go out there and and it's done some ground, groundbreaking research for you. Know that you could run for twenty years and not have your you know, still go to the same spot and it's not turned into a subdivision. It's still still like that. That's cool. Anything else, seth, No, go ahead, man, That's all I had. And will it stay as its current designation? Is kind of like a wildlife Is there any plans to They talk about it all the time. What's what's gonna become the site? There's yeah. I went into public when I when I worked out there between ninety and nine. I go to public meetings and there'd be at least one old guy. Two old guys stand up at the public meetings and say, I want my lamb back. You're not generating you know, nuclear radio new clads anymore. You're not generating radioactive material. I want my farm back. So I would totally understand that if it was my arm. But I'm so happy. Like every time you had to drive, like yeah, I used to on that it would be terrible. But I think it's just if you can imagine just various places, it's just nice to have a chunk like that. It's a big chuckle land. It is, man, and I'm not And it's like the you know, I'm not putting the farmer has a broken egg, but like you know, breaking eggs, making omelets, all that kind of stuff. Like I understand, man, but it is just in two generations because because you're at the time, at the time is probably presented as your patriotic duty. Yeah, right, was right after right after the Second World War. And then that ends. You're like, okay, cool, I'm an American and I understand. We gotta eat the Rooskies and then that all ends, and he kind of gotta be like, okay, I know, so it's not the Russians anymore. In my mind, having intact ecological systems is also our patriotic duty, which I know I'm just getting into. I'm offering the as you as you said, the very understandable perspective of the individual who has removed from his property. I know what, dude head is farm taking by eminent domain for golf course. No way would I allow that to happen. I know, I would be the crazy guy hold up in the house, talk about a chap ass over that one man he has to go by and see like a bunch of people where and the domain over a golf course. I would make everyone you know what, I'd give that guy's place back and then make all those people that ever played golf on there be his farm hands for no compensation. Really. Oh it's terrible. Oh my god, it's a war on Christmas. Like my dad used to hunt geese there and all sorts of water founder all sort of in China, the holdouts they call him, they call him nail houses. I don't know, but like somebody that refuses in a big development, everybody else will sell, but they'll refuse, and they'll just be like they're little golf course. Yeah goodness. Yeah, that's a damn shame. I'd rather be a mini golf course. Yeah, I'd be like, at least tell me it's put putt golf. Oh that's a travesty. Okay, Robert, you ready to switch gears? We can. You gotta tell everybody all about long leaf pines. Okay. So in the South they dominant pine spaces. The dominant ecosystem in four was long leaf pine. Um. It's a tree that grows three fifty four hundred years. Most people that don't that aren't foresters or botanists, and they're looking at a pine. It's pine. It's pine tree. They can't tell the difference. I didn't know that. I want to school for it. So in the South we've got a bunch of different pines, but the two most common one three most common ones are slash, lab lolli and long leave. And oh, when you said slash slash pine, I thought you meant it was some kind of like a cultivar. No, No, it's a species, is thought. I think you meant like a hybrid, and you're seeing slash like like slash hyphen or something that's a species. Species. So we've got three that are we got more species in that we got white pines, and we've got spruce pines, but the slash, lob lollie and long leave for the three important commercial pines. So before settlement and and really up to nineteen hundred, the long leaf pine was one of the dominant species. In fact, we think that it probably covered about ninety two million acres in the South based on the habitat and the soils and where we think it grew. By nineteen fifty it was way below half and by nineteen let's see nine nine, it was down to three million acres. Because of what good question. The first thing was cutting it down, UM, make turpentine out of it. You would you would bark the trees draining of turpentine. And during the wooden ships industry, that's what you used to calk the ships was tar. Was rope or calking that had been soaked in tar and then hammered between those boards to keep it from leaking. Um. So when you're when you're getting that material out, so so the long leaf sap produces what rosin and well the sap comes out you you you bleed the tree and that's that's fatal to the tree eventually, eventually, eventually, but they would leave. Um, they might box the tree. Is called box on a tree. You might box the tree on both sides. Because a really big tree you might put three boxes on it. I've seen one stump that had four boxes and they would leave maybe a three inch strip of bark between the boxes. So the tree wouldn't die. So as long as it as long as it had something where the flow them and the xyleum would connect from the roots to the to the needles and needles to the roots that be in exchange and tree could survive. The tree could live. To see how he gestured towards Seth when he said flomansylum over your head and yeah, Chris don't know it at home. Robert didn't be very very sort of like a like a little gesture, now this is over everyone a little, that little moment there about the zooman them. So after you tapped the tree, uh, there would be a period of time where they would produce the crop and a crop of turpentine, crop of sap that you would then processed into turpentine. Okay, I want to I want to get this right. Um. That goes on for so long, but the tree dies. Yeah, eventually it dies. And if we get cut it get cut down. And generally you didn't turn that that face into lumber. And I say, generally they would cut the tree down, cut that face off, leaves the face in the woods. Oh you mean the part that was all the scarred from the boxed section. Uh, leave it in the woods, and cut the upper part into timber heart pine, timber red heart, timber um. But it's kind of interesting on if you own that land, you weren't gonna waste those trees. So you went ahead and sought out those butt logs. And we've we've located east four or two by four's in my grandmother's house that was built that actually has the cut marks on it from the now. So my grandfather when he cut the trees taken to the sawmill, he didn't leave that butt log laying in the woods. He hauled at the sawmill and he sawed it up into two by fours And there's only one you can see, but if you go up in the attic, there's two others of the ceiling choices that that has the cat face on it where they cut it out of the trail, Yeah, which is really cool. And then they use them for fence posts because they don't rot. They last forever. We've got fence posts have been in the ground. This year will be a hundred years they've been in the ground. Yeah, they've gone through here. They've gone through two or three um metal fences. The metal, the metal doesn't last long. And they have big camps. Yeah, the turpentine camps this stuff right, And that was that was uh yeah forever because it's out in the booneties. I mean, you go where the trees are. It wasn't something you could bring into town to do. And so you'd have the folks out there tapping the trees and and processing it out in out in the camp. Robert was explaining to me how they needed labor right and they made vagrancy laws, so you were highly encouraged to go work in the turpentine camp. If you didn't have a job, you could be picked up for vagrancy. Had to have a job against the law and not have a job, no loitering. If you get picked up for vagrancy, you go to prison. When you're in prison, you get rented out to the turpentine camp. Oh god, dude, the choices or turpentine camp for turpentine camp, won't wat you're going to the camp. You're going down to work. It was bad and that that really that that program didn't peter out until the Second World War, and when there were so many jobs during the Second World War. Uh, they could they could get out of the camps, and they could they could go they had options. They could work at the naval shipyards. So what do you call what trips out of the longleaf pine and SAP. Yeah, I don't know if that's exactly the correct term. I may be mistaken on that, but it's SAP. It's pine, sap pitch, but there's they make a bunch of products from it, right that it's basically tar, pitch and turpentine, and they were all used in the naval industry. Then the naval stores they called naval stores. Of course when I went through school, it's like what was the number one export in colonial North Carolina? And I was born in North Carolina? Those naval stores. Good, you got that correct, But nobody knew what naval story. Teach you what naval stores were. That was just the question on the test when you were in the eighth grade. But the naval stores was the tar pitch and turpentine that allowed the ships to be waterproof and resistant to marine worms that could bore through the bottom of the wooden ship. It would waterproof the rope, it would waterproof the Tarpolians. The word Tarpolian had tar on it. Um. You still see that in old h if you're reading like old books, how two books and wilderness travel books. The last time about getting it, always thought it was pronounced tarpaulin. Yeah, but like t A R p A U l I N And it's taken now or just to mean like I remember, uh, like guys, my dad's age would even call plastic tarp a tartet, blue tart hurricane. The bruise are all covered in blue tarts. Yeah, but they called a tarpaulin, right, And so then the so you so you asked why how did we lose all the long ly? So we used him until we used them up. Every time somebody needed to grow a field of corn, you had to cut trees down. Corn won't grow in the shade, and so you cut the trees down and cut them up, build your house like my grandfather did, and then you can plant your corn crop or eat a back or crop or whatever. And then in the nineteen fifties, um the pulp mills came to the south and lah blah pine could produce more pulp faster and more timber faster on an acre land than long leaf was. So they would cut out the long leaf and convert long leaf to lovellli And that was pretty much the death now because the landowner could make the landowner could grow the same sized tree could grow the landowner. Like where we were hunting those trees that were twenty inches in diameter, but thirty eight year old trees, they were love blally pine. To get a thirty eight to get a inch long leaf might take two d years. And so why would the landowner plant of species that he would never see return on if he can plant a species that he can get three or four returns on in his lifetime. And people, people were whacking them, and then you as more and more of them were cut. The wildlife that was dependent upon that coast system, the red cockaded woodpecker, the gopher toward us, the indigo snake down in Georgia and Florida, they became more and more and more rare. And the red cockaded pine or the red cockaded woodpecker was actually one of the first um species put on the endangered species list. So when they organized the first h endangered Species list, the r CW was on it because there the habitat was disappearing so rapidly. We met. We don't need to get into who this is, but we hunted on a property of a woman who was right eighty six years old. They used to run cattle when she was young, as in her forties, I guess they quit running cattle and her her and her husband went out and she hand planted every tray on that property. How many hand planted well out of a out of a tractor. The husband drove the tractor and she sat on the tree planner and she had her box of seedlings and she's just sitting there backwards, going through, going through the fields, sticking trees in the ground. She planted every one of those and when she was in her fifties and now she's eighty six and planted. She's cutting those trees and she's thinned them three times. And and she just you know, one of the areas that we were hunting, she clear cut this past January. And it's it's you know, you you shot that, you shot your turkey in a stand Deptember that when we uh, we started leasing the property ten years ago, that stand Deptember was so thick you couldn't walk through it. It was blackberries and pine trees. And she thinned it once. She thinned it. About when does she oh, she thinned it last year when she cleared cut the piece beside it, she thinned that piece and um, and we shot turkeys in it. M hm called into long beards and jake and a hen and you kill that and that really nice bird. Um. So yeah, that's a that's a working forest, um generating income for her and yeah, she's her kids will get income from it. And as long as it stays in the in the family. But if you just strolled over there at two years ago would have been long leaf, find it would have been a long leaf and there was there is a long leaf around there. There's long leaf in the boundary line trees. There's long leaf by the road, the place that we call that jake In. And then we went down by the lake, that area was long leaf. That the some of the big trees there was still we're still long leaf. The trees we were leaning against when we call that jake in, we're all lob lolly. But the thicket that we were facing, all those big trees in that thicket, those were long leaf. Explain what um, what was lost in the cop between the combination of cutting off and heart killing, harvesting all the long leaf, but also with fire suppression. So when when we lost the long leaf ecosystem, we didn't lose just the tree, We lost the ecosystem long leaf. Some people described it as a grassland with trees, because the entire the canopy of a of a long leaf forest is not like most pine forest. It's lets a lot of sunlight in and that sunlight um allows grasses to grow, but only if you have fire. So the South has one of the highest incidents of lightning strikes I know, in North America, I think in the world, but one of the highest incidence of lightning strikes. It's it's evidence shows that it probably burned on a three to five year uh basis um. You know, wrap often frequent, low intensity fires. You didn't have the Western fires. You didn't have crowned out kill everything. You had flames that might be anywhere from a foot high to six ft high, because it burned every year. There was anything to burn, burning burning pine needles, burning grasses, uh, small bushes, But after years and years and years and years, the bushes were knocked down pretty good. I mean, the hardwoods were killed in the uplands and driven down into the swamps. So you had hardwood swamps, but you didn't have any hard ones in the uplands. In the Lower Piedmont and the Coastal Plain, the mountains, you had hardwoods. But what I'm talking about is the Lower Piedmont and the Coastal Plain all the way from Virginia around to Texas, so nine states. This was the dominant ecosystem. So what was lost was that ecosystem and the animals that depend on it. And that's a lot of I think there's twenty nine species of state or federally listed animals that in plants and animals that inhabit that that longly find ecosystem. It's surprising driving around here how much evidence you see controlled burning. Though it's good that it is, it's really good. Um. The Longleaf Alliance touts it a lot. The Turkey Federation helped people with it. The Longleaf Alliance helps Fish and Wildlife Service will provide funding through their Ecological services for burning. The NRCS Natural Resource Conservation Service through the U S Department of Agriculture, will help landowners pay for burning, and and the whole, the whole we had. I was given a presentation at the University UM just late March, and one of the women, one of the students, asked me the question, well, if you're doing all this burning, you're killing the hard woods, aren't you. And I said, yeah, you are, You're knocking them back. But the species that we want are those species that are adapted to this ecosystem, and the hardwoods that are getting killed and knocked out are not adapted to it. The turkey oaks that are adapted to it. The big ones don't get killed. The little ones get killed. And if you lay all fire, or maybe you have a creek down here or something, then there'll be some that grow up and they'll they'll become big. But we have a lot of land in the South that is a thicket, and so the animals that require a thicket have a lot of land. We don't have a lot of land that is a grassland. And so like even that clear cut, that one year old clear cut that we were hunting in, there were bachman sparrow that morning when we were listening for turkeys to gobble. There were bachman sparrow's calling all over that entire clear cut because it was it was a grassland. It was coming up. So they like that one year old clear cut, but they like they had the bunch grasses and the habitat that they required. Um Seth went up on the National Forest and shot some some video, or Rick did. Rick went up and shot some video on the National Forest. And that area is a grassland with widely widely space trees that let enough sunlight in so that the grass will grow. Now, the one where you're shooting the drone videos were UM, lob lolly and and short leaf. There was there's only one long leaf on that whole track on that that I've found and that anybody else has found that I know about. Um. It used to be a mixture of shortleaf, lah blahi and long leaf because the habitats the ranges were coming together in that Upper Piedmont area right there. UM. So you asked, what if we lost We've lost the system, We've lost the animals and the plants that are associated with that system in exchange for in exchange for a cheap paper lumber for your house, to buy fours for your house, toilet paper, notebook paper, newsprint packaging, UM, all of that. I mean, it's a tradeoff. It's not you can't blame land on it for making the most money. UM, it's it's it's us. It's our society that demands UH a paper product which is renewable, UM, timber which are renewable and UM. And the landowner is gonna try to make the most money as possible. And what what we're hoping is one of the things that's coming along now is carbon sequestration to help with you know, global warming. If the landowner could be paid to grow trees longer, then is currently profitable for them. So if they're raising blah blahllipine just for money, they're gonna thin thin clear cut at age thirty or thirty five, plant a new crop thin thin clear cut at age thirty five. Well, if we had a way to pay them to take those thirty five year old trees to fifty or seventy five or a hundred and offset the funds that they're going to be losing, that would sequester carbon and help with the reduction of you know, climate change, and encourage the land owner to grow older trees on his property, which would help all the wildlife associated with that. But then we'd be doing the burning. And we were talking about that because when you burn, your release carbon into the air. But and that's true, but where the big worry is the fossil fuels, because we're digging carbon up out of the out of the ground instead of what is naturally rotting burning. And in this country, it's gonna burn. It's either gonna burn with a lightning strike. It's gonna burn with wildfire, or it's gonna burn with prescribed fire. There's no getting around it. And we can burn every three to five years with prescribed fire during the during the right conditions where the smoke that we're sending up is not as as hazardous, not as toxic. That's what it would be in all consuming wildfire like you see out west. That it was bad that we were out there health hunting it is. I went through Medicine Boat National Forest in Wyoming and it was sixty miles of smoke on the interstate and Campton, Nebraska, and you could still smell the smoke in Nebraska. Dude. We had orange like orange all day and ash raining in our backyard. They were having orange sunsets on the East coast. My folks were saying in Pennsylvania that the smoke was coming that far from those California fires. So that's not that's what we don't want. We don't want catastrophic wildfire, and one of the ways to prevent it is to is to do prescribe fire. We burn our place up in North Carolina and the highest flame heights we get are three or four feet and burn every four or five years and just creep the fire, back it in and once you back it off the line, you can go through and set a strip head fire that that runs ahead fire and then set another one. It runs at another one, it runs that, another one it runs and you gotta get permit, you gotta have train and work with the State Forestry Commission on all that. What is my last question for you, What if we look at how quail numbers just every decade seems to be worse, And people point to a lot of things that fire ants, right, proliferation, fire ants, um. But this has to be a factor in that. Well, it's a huge factor. So I was raising North Carolina quail hunt and we go down eastern North Carolina weak quail hunt. The quail population started crashing where weak quail hunted in eastern North Carolina. It started crashing in the seventies and by the nineties that you that means no point in quail hunt and there were no fire ants there at all. They didn't make it there until the late nineties early two thousand too, and they're there now. But my point is it couldn't have been fireingts that caused the crash in the Carolinas because there were no fire ants. It could have, it could have. It could be an extending um circumstance in Alabama, Mississippi, George and Florida because they got there first. They came in and I think they came in in mobile, but they can't. They came in from South America, and um. Fire ants are contributing. Uh. Nest predation with raccoons are are a factor, But it's habitats, habitats, habitat habitat. If you've got it, if you've got enough highly, if you've got enough good habitat, you're gonna have quail. You're gonna have all those species associated with it. She put in that clear cut and last year, and I don't know where they came from. I jumped coveys of quail three different times. It's not enough to go buy a dog and start training a dog. But you could hear when I was scouting, I heard quail calling in that fifty acre clear cut. Almost every day. They were in. They were in there, and you make a place for him, and there they are, and they and they show up, and they breed and they produced and they survive. Uh. But the problem is those trees then grow up into where you killed your turkey. Wide open pine straw, no habitat, and they need grass, they need they need bunch grasses where those little ones can run around and catch insects. They need thickets where they can get away from the avian predators, from the hawks. And they need bare ground where they can actually pick up a seat. And that habitat is rare for for Bob White quail um Man a lot. Sorry I get into it. I started talking about that's that's why that here. But we had a great time hanging out with you. We had a blast here. Did you and I meet in Hell's Canyon? We met in the spring of two thousand and twelve, nine years ago. Yeah, has a good conversation since then. Yeah, that was a good hunt, going by jet boat, take mules into Hell's Canyon wilderness area, turkey out for a week. It's a great time. It was a great time. The best thing about it was meeting you because then I got to come down here and hunt turkeys with you in your well and you invite me in Florida. Pull my hamstring, Robert, thank you very much, Well, thank you all. This was a blast. Ladies, and gentlemen, Robert every dathew, thank you, yeah, thanks throwing us around, man, and thank your wife for the food. I will yeah, you guys are very very hospital. I'm gonna be good for a week for the food. Y'all left, all right, thank you very much. Man, Satha here you call it, But we can't hunt birds at night? The flip flops shoes eager do you use that turkey? Con justice? Drive? Just a fuel hours and the birds will leave the ruse. I think I hear them call him, Seth, What can I do? What can I do? Seth? What can I do? Seth? I hear you call them to know that you who won't stop? But I have to take a growler and I just can't find a ruck. Just a few more hours and the birds will leave the ruse. I think I hear them calling, Seth, what can I do? What can I do? Seth? What can I do? No