00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer. Oh, you know how I bought these glasses like five for ten dollars as one of the eye doctor, not the kind I needed. I need a point seven five magnification, not a two. That's why it's like, really, he's getting me all hooked up? Man. Oh my vision, my normal vision, long range um old as I am, and if I put these special glasses he's getting me, I'll have Huh that's what I have. Do you know what that means? You know, I don't never know what it means. Your one eye is better vision than you got the machine on right now, machines on. Let me tell you what it means. I didn't know what it meant either, until he's no, It's like I didn't know what the numbers meant. All the numbers mean is at twenty ft Okay, you can see just as good as average people can see at twenty that's all that means. I'm like, well, how big is the average? Like, how big is the pool? He said, it's like virtually infinite. Now thousands and thousands of thousands of people have taken this vision test, so just means you're job. Oh how can they never test you above like to see if you're above the average? Well, if I put on here's the thing, I have a slight stigmatism in my left eye or something like that, And if I put these superglasses on that he's gonna get me meaning glasses, Um, they're big goggles. I will be able to see the bottom line. Then Yeah, it's the bottom line on the test. Listen, that's not what it means. I will then have. I will then have I will then have meaning you can read can see at fifteen feet, I can see at twenty has nothing to do with the line on the bottom. Is there like a like an accredited like test to see how far like you can actually go with that? It's like the roor Shart test, but it's not. I feel like every time I've ever been to like like an eye doctor, they just do like the standard one. They're like, okay, you can see good, like you never got to max or out. Yeah, exactly. Remember my guy would do it. He's nice, tell him to push it out. Remember when they read the food pyramid a few years ago because we were thinking, maybe we shouldn't just be eating nothing but bread. Yeah, but let's let's rethink this. I think they should rethink these eye tests. The food pyramid was written by the dairy industry though, you know that whole conspiracy theory that the dairy people are like, Listen, I got an idea for a food pyramid. Put our stuff on there up top, you know, well top top at the part h Yeah, and I think Dair's near the bottom. See, that's it was their idea. It was the dairy industry's idea. That's a conspiracy theory. But I don't like to traffic in those too much. Joined today by Tom Miranda that works bowl hunter extraordinary well Tom Randon too. He became famous for two things, like first became famous as a trapper and then became famous as a bowl hunter. There's a little bit of cross over in there. There's a lot across. It's not like you were like a famous librarian and then became a famous bow hunter. I was an infamous librarian. Actually, oh yeah, you know what, Tom and I had drinks last night, not really not really like beers um, even though we're both thirsty for your drink um you have. He's like a rare book collector. Absolutely yeah, and told me his story. I almost want later. I almost want you to tell the story about the captain cookbooks? Are you? Are you able to do that? Because what if the guy hears and realizes what a mistake he made? I think he's dead as a hammer there. Yeah, he's got a rare book collection and he has narrowed in on rare books about piracy. Sounds interesting. See, I thought that tid laydon hell out of Spencer. That's also we're gonna get it. We gotta cover a few things that we're gonna get back into it. Um, tell me about your archery, super slam holder. That's North America North American twenty nine? Correct? So North America has twenty nine big game species that's basically tracked by the Pope and Young Club. And how do they break them out? Like how many? How many like mule deer, black mule deear, slash, black tail are on the list. Well, there's five deer there's the white tail, the desert cows white tail. There's the cowsman, not a cusman. You can be cus if you want cows is correct. Uh, you also have sorry about that. So so okay, okay, I interrupted you. I shouldn't have done that. That's a backup. On deer. There's five deer. There's five deer. There's the there's the white tail, the desert white tail, there's the mule deer. There's the Sitka black tail and the Columbia blacktail. There's spot deer. I thought they like really Hayte and I were just talking about this. I thought they really got into all those kind of like goofy distinctions where they're like, you know, like dividing up the country's white tails and stuff like that. So it's pretty clean. Well, there's a white tail slam where you can get you know, biologists say there's thirty two plus different subspecies of white tails when you start talking about it all. But you know, with all the different programs, over all the years of seating deer here, seating deer there, there's really not about They let them all about it pretty much. Only the desert cow's white tail is the purest deer of all of them, it's it's isolated. Correct. Hit me with a couple of hit me with the other ones. I wouldn't be thinking of that during the twenty nine. How many cats are in there? Well, just cougar, so they don't put up Mountain lion or something. Bobcats not included, but they don't consider that big game. How many how many bears are in it? There's four polar bear, grizzly bear, Alaska brown bear, and black bear. I'm still trying to add it up in my head. You know, it would be a great trivia trivia question for you, Spencer that something like based off that, I might have something like that coming up. Is that right? Maybe? Is it rigged? In? Tom's favorite? Not rigged? Do you know what you're doing tribute with us today? I'll try I'm game for anything. Did you listen just that little prelude conversation we're having right now? I feel like you might be in a unique position to win Sam Holder and he's kind of checked out on taxonomy, checked out on genetics a little bit. Uh, Okay, we're gonna come back to all that bearwood us here. Still free to chime in if anything happens, and you know about you got me seat belt and roped into this chair. So I don't think I'm going anywhere. Okay, we got a double new launch we gotta talk about. So Jason Phelps taken over at the Cutting the Distance podcast. So Jason Phelps and friends, go there. If you already, uh, if you already subscribe, what's the word for it, If you already hasn't subscribe, if you already smashed that subscribe button, I think that's right. If you've already smashed that subscribe button for Cutting the Distance, it'll just serve right up to you. If you haven't subscribed to Cutting the Distance, go do it now. So go where you know you're listen to a podcast right now, So going to that platform there and subscribe to Cutting a Distance and the first Cutting the Distance with Jason Phelps and friends. I'm on it talking all about turkey hunting. Also right now, speaking of Phelps, we have a hot new limited addition thing out. It's our line, one pot Call, our line one Turkey Call. They're available, so you can hit pause. You gotta make up your mind. You neither hit pause and go do this or keep listening and go do this depends how good you ared like doing something while listening to something else, So pause or not. But go to the meat Eater online store. So go to the meat eater dot com and you know, follow all the prompts. Get one of our sweet limited addition Turkey calls out of the black walnut and the o stage orange trees that that phelps and I felt we wound up with about calls their numbered sequentially. Right, if you've been listening to the show at all, you know the whole back story here. Years ago, me and my old man. My old man build a pole barn across the road from this little parcel. He owned a cross road from our house, so me and him my brothers built a pole barn there. We had to cut down a couple of trees to make room for the pole barn, and we got We cut down some oaks and had them milled, and then my old man stacked him up in the garage on little stickers. What do you call that in the lumber business when you dry them out, we always called stickers, not pearl No, No, I think they always call them stickers. Stickers stacked all of our planks up and they're just rough planks, stacked them all on in the front of the garage. Uh. And then later my dad died and they were still sitting there, and eventually took them all and cut him into like strips and made a big workbench top and made my desktop out of them. So I kind of liked that whole you know, it's an interesting process to see. So I was telling Phelps, you gotta go cut down a tree and see how many turkey calls are hiding in there. Because these oak trees had a work bench hiding in them. They had off his desk hiding in him and probably could have made three more deaths out of it. So we're talking about how many are in a tree, how many pot calls are in a tree? And we found uh. We went to Kansas. We filmed this whole thing, and we're making a video all about it. We went to Kansas and picked out a walnut, a big black walnut tree, and we picked out an o s age orange or a boat dark and we got out of this walnut tree and we kind of fetish eyes the walnut with drone. You'll really get to meet the tree. D Oh, that's how many was? Did you guys? We cut it down in Kansas. Seth was there, he's eyewitnessed. Took it over to Walnut, Kansas and milled it, sent that to Phelps's place out in Washington where they killed, dried it, and it wound up being out of that tree. I took enough for a knife handle, enough for a couple of knife handles. Um d pot calls were in that tree. And that's like select grading. So we're selling. I took one thousand and four their numbered. And what's funny is we were trying to save number well, this is like an incentive to purchasers. We were trying to save number one for the guy that owned the walnut tree. He want number one, but it got packaged. We got a problem. He's like, I already gotta already gotta open up three of these packages to find number one, or we do something special for the guy who gave us the walnut So we gotta figure out his His call is gone, so someone's gonna make their order and get O one. I took one somehow, Felps. I was like, semyone. Felps sent me one thousand and four. That's my special. I got one thousand and two. You got a better one than Uh. Yeah, they're available the line one pot call and may you have you messed with it? Yeah, dude, it sounds I was messing messing with it last night. It's beautiful, Oh say geornge Peg. I like to point out the Felts ruined one. Oh sa geornge remember that what do you call that? High chaired it? Barbara Barbara, Barbara chaired one like he notched it wrong and cut it and split that thing ten ft into the air and he had to go find another one. My my feling was perfect, of course. The black walnut, Yeah, it was good. Yeah. I was a black walnut expert guided me through it. You'll see that in the video. So those are out get him now. Like I said, it's like so there. I think they're going to vanish in a real hurry um. But man, they're gorgeous. They come to Sweet Box. It's it's very it's like a it's like a collector's item. Um. Moving down, oh Chester, ke Phillison, First, can you start out by what's going on with your shirt? This is a Schmidty's oor House, which is a local watering hold back on Lake Winnebago. That's where I grew up in Wisconsin and it's it's a sturgeon spirit swash it No, it sounds Wisconsin schmidtys. Anyway, this place is right on the shores of Lake Winnebago, which every year in February, thousands and thousands and thousands of people gather and they do this thing called Sturton Spirits. I'd like to challenge you on that. Thousands. So there's already multiple thousands and thousands, so there's more multiple thousands and thousands. Well that's just so that's a minimum of six thousand individuals. Well, yeah, we say things like that in Wisconsin, so take it with a grain of salt. Anyways, there's twelve roughly, and I don't know the numbers so but I think roughly twelve thousand tags sold this year. Sold. More could have been he could have said three more times, but obviously all twelve thousand people are not out there. Spirit. But how long is the season. It's a quota season, so it just depends. It could be closed already, which it's not. It's still open right now. You're like, this is this is up to day information as of this record up today Tuesday, day four. It says on the Winnibago system, total sturgeon spirit is five and nine. What's the quota? Um three yea they went on no um. I don't know it just it depends because there's like certain number of juvenile females, adult females and males, and they'll shut the season down when they hit that quota if they hit and it has certain it's like that there's like a fisher unit where it's a five fisher quota, but it's a one female. It all ends with one female. Yeah, because you can't really tell when they're down there, um what they are. But but they give out twelve hundred individuals or twelve hundred sheds Shandy's twelve thousand tags twelve. I was like, man, okay, I see twelve thousand people get a crack at filling a quote that's sub one thousand fish probably correct. And so you basically, I mean, if you were to show up on Lake Winnebago, there'd be road systems everywhere, there would be ice shanties as far as the eye can see, and you're trying to spear one of those fish, which is like the odds are like, you know, it's like a very small percentage of the people that spear those fish. Yeah, but you run with an elite group of hard players because according to the pictures you just said, I mean, you guys are tearing it a new one out there. I run with my cousin and he is a scouting fool. He drives out, you know, weeks prior to this season, and there's certain things he's looking for, like feed, like food. Well this worm stuff. Um looking for shad, gizzard shad, which is a terrible year on the Winnebago system for gizzard chad. Um, it's a poor year for from what I've heard, for the red worms, which is a lake fly larva as well. Um. But the sturgeon our bottom feeders, so they're just in the muck. They have these long mouths that will stick in the muck and they'll mill through there um and eat stuff that has fallen in the mud basically. Um. So what you do is um night before the season, we call it cutting in. So we take a chainsaw and we cut a hole that's about probably four ft by six ft into the ice and then you take these It's too big to lift it out, so you've got to push it under the ice, and we call it sink in the cake. So you take that slab of ice that you cut around and you push it down and you sink it and you push it away from your hole, and then you back up your ice shack, which is ours. Is like a nice metal ice shack um with heat and heat and propane. You guys, ever worry that the fish is gonna bang his head on that cake you sunk down there, This is what I mean if he's cruising a real fast attention. This is crazy that you say that, Steve, So no, you would never think that. Right. Anyways, I'm going to back up just a little bit before I get there. So what you do is you cut that hole, you back up your shack on it, and the actual frame that is of that trailer is on a hinge, so you can lower it down to the ice. The ice shack, you can lower it right down to the ice. You shovel snow around it. It's really dark in there, and then you, you know, shut the doors and you look down the hole and see what your clarity is. We could not see bottom very well, so we lowered some white siding down and it's an X on a string down to the bottom of the lake, and that gives you you can barely make it out, but at least you can see bottom a little bit and get a reference of where you might want to throw if fish comes through. We spear off cameras, so we lower like a Markham camera down or awkwa view camera down so you can see around you. Um, it would be very difficult to spear one if we didn't have that. You have to in that depth of water. But that's where the sturgeon were. It's a very controversial thing whether you're spearing with cameras or not. There's some traditional traditionalists that aren't happy about that. When you say spear of the camera, you mean only off the camera, yes, Um, like, I mean, I don't understand that. So this is what I'm getting at by that sturgeon potentially bumping his head on the cake that you sunk, that's sitting up on top tips, so we are only expecting to most likely spear that surgeon on the bottom. When we're using cameras, you can look down the hole and you can't. You might be able to make out a surgeon if it swims right over your ex and all you would see is a little black mark. But typically we're on camera and that camera is facing your ex and you do your We have a TV up there so we can watch the screen and you'll see a fish swim through and you you kind of are almost it's an educated guess on where you're throwing because you're looking at that camera and you're like, I think he's on the edge of that X. I'm kind of opposed to this. And sure, I mean I could see that guy in Texas that would lie to log in and shoot deer, but they made it. You can't do that. I mean, if you were there, he's not spearing from Antana spirit off screen. Yeah, but he's there, so you won't be out of those twelve thousand tags. Steve, it's like, you know, five nine were speared over the last four days, very low odds. Um that's his party was spearing and left and right. So there are guys that will go like thirty some years and not spear of fish and they're mainly spirit. They're mainly not getting fish because they're not using cameras. On a clear water year, they may get one. Yes, Chester Chester, what about what about what about like tech fish sonars? When you're when you're sitting there perch fishing that stuff. Okay, I feel like this is very analogous to that man or with those what do you call the live scope live scope or something. Yeah, that's true. I do feel a little guilty doing that, but like it. All I can tell you is it's very hard to spere Surgeon, and even with cameras, you gotta put weeks in of scouting and like it's his heart. So going back to that my favorite you here a guy named Shakespeare. Yes, he's got a line on doth protest too much? M hmm. Okay, so he hits his head on the block. Sturgeon hits his head on the black. I don't know what that means either, chick. Uh. So my family spared to Sturgeon over the four over three days, the opening day and Sunday, my cousin Jake speared one off camera. I was there with him. Is Jake who speared one with the honest I was. I was so Jake, my cousin spared one opening day. He hadn't gotten one in like I don't know, four or five years, not even using the camera. He used the camera, he saw it, pushed it under the ice and somehow hit it. Just yep, they missed that day. To my other brother missed second day. We're sitting there. I'm sitting with my brother Ike and his girlfriend and he misses and he's all bummed, which is pretty typical. And it's twenty minutes missing. Missing is like has the thing to happen? Yeah, very off camera. It's like most of the time you're gonna miss. When you say off camera mean on camera. On camera, Yep, that could get confusing. Yeah, sorry about that. So yeah, on camera, fish are very easy to miss. But we're sitting there's twenty minutes before it closes at one pm every day, so the quota doesn't it close at one so people have to check in their fish by a certain time so they don't go over the quota. So it's twenty minutes before the season closes and we're sitting there and I goes, or Tatum goes. Who's that his girlfriend? Tatum t a t will Yeah, Tatum goes and it goes and I look at the screen and see nothing, So I'm like, what the heck? And I looked down and there is a sturgeon a foot under the ice right where that cake is you know, it didn't hit its head on the cake, but it's a foot under the ice, and it's you know, I gotta get the I gotta pull up. How long it is right now? It's sixty eight inches long, seventy four three pounds or seventy three point four pounds, and which is like a big fish, but not huge. But when you see that thing sneak up on you a foot under the ice, it's the most surprising thing. It's like zero to but it's like right under. I mean, it's like if it's shot straight up and come out of the hole. Well it's off to the side a little bit um and I could. I want to give all the details, but it would just be too long. There was a crack, a big fourteen ft long crack that opened up right next to his check that wasn't there the first day. I believe that that sturgeon was following that crack because it came along and it was suspended, which they they never that never happens. So he sits there, grabs his spear and kind of under the ice, but just jabs the heck out of it. I didn't think he was going to give it enough oomph. But he hit that thing hard, just a perfect shot. And once you spare a sturgeon like that closely ice, it's chaotic. You've got decoy lines down, You've got another line down holding your siding X, You've got your camera line down. He's trying to hold onto this rope and this big seventy pound fish is fighting. I'm sitting there trying to pull all this stuff out of the hole, and Ike's like, check, nobody cares about that stuff right now. Just get gaff. So I get the gaff. He gets a fish up. I gaff it, and you know it's just hooting and hollering and very rare, you know, to spear sturgeon. Uh. I speared one on the fur hat Ice tour that Meat Eater did with my family a couple of years ago. So you can go watch that spearing dinosaurs. Spearing dinosaurs. He's a he is a what whoever edited the Meat Eater one? They called him a lucky bastard and they find that to be pretty true. So then we took it to Smitty's or house and had a couple of years. That's a good way to bring it full circle back. I wish you'd pick me up one of those shirts. Chester. I gotta get you one, and you need to come back there. I know you're putting in for the uproar. Me and Yanni are in big time on the draw every year. Man, we're accumulating bonus points on Sturgeon. Uh here's what we're touched on real quick. It's just it's so upsetting to me. We all the time have video game people. I'm probably gonna want to regretting this later if I just want to cash in fields video game person. Video game people are always trying to get us to like collaborate on a video game. Zero interest in that, zero, Sorry, Phil, I really wanted to play as Steve. Oh yeah, like to do a video game anyways. Now there's like a metavert, like, you know, Facebook change his name to meta Yeah, why did they do that? Because you're gonna get into all this virtual reality stuff where you make up it's like you make up a little thing. You know, people like make up those little emoji people versions of themselves. Yeah, okay, imagine you make one of those that right, No, imagine you it's imagine you had one of those. But that's how you lived your whole life. You stay in your house and you're like, I'm going to go to a concert, and then you put on goggles in your little emoji person goes to a concert and it seems like you're at a concert. I know there was what you're looking through a screen. There are some Super Bowl commercials that were like live this happy virtual life. Everybody's very excited about this stuff. They're very excited that you can just sit at home and be a total loser and be just a pathetic loser at home, and you could look as good as you want. You could have everything you should have had, and you go and interact and make like virtual friends and live in the metaverse. Apparently, like Zuckerberg is very excited about it. You can change his whole outfit to meta. You can buy virtual real estate. Is that is that Fahrenheit one with like the Lazy Boy in the Seashell you know where where where, Like it's it's either that or it's, uh, well, I forget what it was, but it's a very famous novel. And the whole thing is like they have all these folks that are just like plugged in with what they describe as like a little seashell earpiece and they're just hanging out in these like lazy boys basically and like just existing in that virtual reality. I think you're thinking about, um, that movie Wally. No, No, I'm gonna look it up. Uh yeah. Anyhow, they of course they now have a hunting version, but it's like, uh yeah, it's like a it's like built on a blockchain technology. Hunting versions, Hunting metaverse come on a lot of n f T s. You know, someone in our universe has a character on one of these games. That's great. I don't care. Okay, who's this. Yeah he's into it or not. I don't know if he's into it. Might just do one of those things people do because they're like, man, it's not a bad deal. Um, I don't know, are you in one time a negative ghostwriter? If you want to do something for yourself by our book Outdoor Kids, An Inside World, that book is going to become more important than ever once everybody moves into the metaverse. Yeah, I agree, I'm gonna I'm gonna sell that book packaged with a hammer where you can smash a bunch of that ship and read the book. Outdoor Kids, An Inside the World available for pre order now. Books tearing it up on preorders. It's the it lays out the case for having your kids and your family become radically involved with nature. Moving down, oh quick questions. Someone wrote in with can you get trick noses? If you're cleaning a bear and get the blood all over you and you have an open wound on your skin? Can you get tricked from it? Uh? Like it has to go through your stomach, It doesn't. You're like stomach acid have to digest. Yeah, you gotta get like a certain number. You gotta get some amount of the cysts in your stomach, and your stomach acid liberates the cyst. Then it has to go through your vascular system. But you're just messing around with bear meat and bear blood isn't gonna do it. Are there like super long term effects of like that happening to you? It can attack your heart and screw up, but it's very rare. But when I had it, That's what I was reading about, is like the cases where people get it bad as they get too much that that that parasite load gets too heavily into the muscle, the heart muscle. Do you have any idea like what your specific load kind of was or if like you're the severity of your case. No, but the meat I ate had um a half million sists per pound. If you if you sat down and ate a sixteen ounce pot rolls half a million sists loaded. Because they the CDC came and got a chunk of my bear meat and hauled it down to Atlanta to their lab, and that's what they get. That's what they came back to me with. UM. You know, everybody's always trying to end bobcat hunting and lying hunting here and there my home. This makes me proud to be a Michigander. They're increasing as bobcat numbers continue to climb, they're expanding longer seasons, more units. The bobcat is firmly re established itself. UM good connectivity among units. So they're opening up hunting and trapping opportunities in Michigan for bobcats in order to meet the good news of bobcat numbers doing great, still recovering from like the Timber Boom when they logged live and piss out of that state and killed all the wildlife off. As we recover it, people are rewarded with expanded opportunities. Anything to think about, that spencer. Did you see any there when you were a kid? No, but I uh, the first bobcat, yes, but not down where I lived. The first time I heard of a bobcat where right where I lived was actually on a farm where I would trap fox and raccoon, and the farmer's nephew was sitting in his tree stand and saw to bobcats together. That was the first ordered and that was in the nineties, the first reported incident anywhere near my home of bobcats. You could catch one bobcat a year north of us, but we never focused on it because they were only worth bucks because they're not like the Western cats. Western cats right now, even though for prices are super down, someone just sent me a text last night that they just sold a bunch of their cats for four bucks. Wow. So spiking up not where it was a few years ago. But Hi, these articles on our website One State might expand bobcat hunting and trapping Season two talks about the future of Michigan seasons. Tell me the headlining, and I think I feel like that could have been written better. One State might expand bobcat hunting and trapping seasons. So that's a pissport headline one state might it just doesn't have like a real like you know what I mean. Well, it's it's in the context of we've recently covered how a lot of other states to go in the other direction, like Arizona, Colorado, California, Illinois, Indiana. So when you see this on Facebook page, you're like, well, who's doing that? Yeah? What I do like about it? Krinn and I were emailing, or Krin was emailing me this morning about the opposite, like, I guess it's underselling an article is okay, But Krinn was talking to an anthropologist. Krinn and him, we're emailing about a headline that came out, and he was saying that the science when when popular news journals, popular news sources cover anthropology archaeology, they often oversell and try to create these sort of fantastical headlines out of something that the science just doesn't support. So recently, like it was this article, perhaps Neanderthal's didn't suffer a dramatic kill off, right, And he's like, I'm not aware of anyone who felt that they did. A guy on Wyoming just got busted for selling poached game meat, and it's funny he wasn't even selling it as game meat. He's shooting meal deer and antalopen quite a few of them and selling his organic beef jerky. He also they had suspicions about this dude, and this dude sells access on his ranch for three bucks. So some undercover game wardens form Wyoming booked themselves a couple of days of hunting on his ranch, and as they're wanting around, they noticed like burn piles full of carcasses, red flag. He's so secretive that he tells the undercover wardens what he does. What I do you see? I shoot antalopen deer and sell it as organic beef jerky And they're like, you know what? Say So they were able to put a pretty solid case against him. And did you hear like got the ball rolling on this. His ex girlfriend tattled on him. Go figure her. I didn't see that. His ex girlfriend told girlfriend, I know what great saying about that, but I can't say it's too dirty. I'm dying to know. It's the blank and you get for the blank, and you got I think we get it. Okay, let's be a law enforcement We're gonna hand it. We're gonna hand it over to our very own Katie Hill, who's gonna lay out our first ever inaugural Meat Eater investigates. She's like Bob Woodward. That's the compliment of Essentially, she's the Bob Woodward of the of the wild of the wildlife world. Thank you. So I wrote this story about finding Saga antelope porn's for sale on major online retailers UM, Amazon at c an eBay, and I found out how you're searching for him. Yeah. I it's kind of a strange story. So I was working for a different like international conservation media outlet, and Katie now works for us. She's toil team Yes in the trenches, plug plug the article to do. Yeah. So the article is called major online retailers acted as black market for endangered animal parts. Great writing from Katie and a great graphic from our own hunter Spencer. This is Katie's first time on the podcast. Yeah, I didn't do a good job setting out all it's covered now, thanks. Yeah. So I first found out about Sigo when I was working for a different uh conservation outlet run by a bunch of banc guys, and I was trying to I was building like a Twitter and Instagram profile for them and trying to populate those profiles and C Boone and Crockett. Yeah, yeah, trying to kind of build up the two profiles to make them actually something you know, worth looking at. And I found out a saiga and pretty shortly after, you know, it doesn't take long to figure out that they're super endangered and they have like a long history of endangerment. They're kind of all over like the Eurasian step grasslands. Also, their horns are used pretty heavily in like traditional Chinese medicinal practices, and so their horns are now kind of considered one of those taboo international wildlife trafficking issues. Kin nodded knowingly when you said that, I didn't are you familiar? Oh that was that kind of like it was like your nod was more like a dozen surprise. Um yeah, So my sick, twisted brain like decided that I was going to see how long it would take to find some online, like you know what you have to descend into like the bowels of the internet to find this stuff for like where would it crop up on the Silk Road or exactly. Um, so I just fired a simple Google search sygo horn for sale, and the first search result came from Amazon. It was like, it was like no freaking white exactly. Yeah, and you can imagine what this is done to like my suggested search items on Amazon now like so um, I it was it was a lot. At first. The first natural thought was like, well, there's no way these are real. And also, like made a point in the article that they don't really look like SiGe horns. They're like lacquered really heavily, and they're black um and cigo horns are more of like a camel color. So it's kind of hard to tell if they're legit or not. But so I went to this store on Amazon. They were one pair was about like two thirty five and one pair is like to ten. Katie had screen shots of all of these listings in the article two Yeah. Then I went to the store because I was like, well, what else is this guy selling? It was listed to the guy was listed in Russia, and the store was full of mounts, pelts, full body mounts, shoulder mounts, of just a really eclectic mix of species, and so I was like, well, how much of this is legal? And so I started cross listing. I decided I was going to like audit the whole store, and I started cross listing the store with the site's database the Convention for the International Trade of Endangered Species. And as I was doing this, more and more pieces kept cropping up. The store kept growing, and so I decided, like, while you're looking at his collection is growing, not actively, but I would like go check to me, well, because of course I'm checking to make sure this stuff is still there, but his holdings are increasing exactly like the storage exactly exactly. So I made like a hard stop, was like, all right, I'm gonna stop stalking this guy's Amazon store on December two. And as of December two, My why did you want to stop stalking as Amazon store? Because I had, like I had to write the story and eventually I had to, like I couldn't keeping was done. Yeah, exactly, I was done waiting for him to reform UM. And so that final audit that I did, he had a hundred and sixty four pieces of taxidermy from sites listed species. And so I got in touch with Amazon and they replied and gave a statement, and UM then proceeded to pull down They said, they pulled down some of his product and after the story published. UM, I went back in and looked and his story that had been probably close to like he had like four hundred listings on the store. It was down to ten listings. So they pulled down a ton of stuff. And it's hard to tell like what they pulled down what was sold like its cartoon exactly. UM. But right before we were set to publish UM, I also decided on a whim to go see if eBay and Etsy also had any Sigo Horn for sale. Um eBay I feel like was a dead ringer. I mean they've had issues with UM, they've had issues with ivory trade and trying to suppress the ivory trade on um eBay, and so I dug in there and they had probably like thirty to forty listings for siege Horn, and then Etc. Had maybe ten. And so I got in touch with both of them as well, and neither of them made statements, but Etc. Did pull down their siege Horn listings. So so when you call what do you call it customer service over to Amazon or did you kind of like bag channel a little bit? I have act channeled. They used their public relations like their media relations contact. UM. Yeah, what other creators did you find that they were selling parts from that they shouldn't be. Yeah. So I found there were a lot of birds, a lot of birds that are on like the Migratory Bird Treaty act um. Give me an example, there was there was an Eastern Imperial eagle, which is the sight E's Appendix one species, like a fully full body. Yeah, there's screenshots of that in the article too. Um, and then a what was it called a white tailed eagle as well. Um, we're too kind of made like really really endangered. Like the international trade of these animals is seriously locked down. So let me let me got this question for you, and I might I might be putting myself in jail right now. I don't know. Man came back World War two. He was in North Africa, and he came back with this big gass dagger that has a big ivory handle on it. Okay, I would love to find someone that can help me figure out what it is. An ivory handle and a leather sheath. It's like a translucent leather. I have no idea. Um, if all of a sudden, like I died and someone did in a state sale, Okay, all of a sudden, here's ivory right on the market and you kind of look and be like, I don't know, it doesn't feel um like mal intent? Book him Dano, Book him Dan? What does that mean? From the old Hawaii five oh show when they would get somebody? Yeah, so like like if you see an eagle, I mean, where's the stuff coming from? You know what I'm saying, Like, how is it not that just whatever? Some crazy guy had some stuff and then this guy bought it and right like do you know that it was a guy he said like listen, man, there's a hot market. I want you to go shoot the eagle and we'll stuff it and sell it on my website. It's hard to tell. Um. All I really can say to that is that the way that sites works. Um. So if the species, like say that stuffed eagle, the stuffed Eastern Imperial Eagle, Um, if that mount were created before the Eastern Imperial Eagle was listed under sights, which is the seven, if those products were already in existence before the listing occurred, then they are legal. So that's so that's why you see a lot of like vintage ivory products that are you know, very you know, they're like they sell for incredible amounts of money. Really, I think so valuable it probably is. Yeah, don't sell it on it's a pretty healthy honk ivory on there, man. Yeah, definitely, that's a good idea. So if it's I mean, if it was from before, I mean I can't speak specifically to ivory because I don't. I think there's a lot of separate rules that apply. But at least with sights listed species, if those products were already in existence before the listing date, then they are technically That's how they're able to sell a bunch of like pianos with ivory keys. Mmm. Because old stuff. Yeah, Like I when I was a musician, I bought a piano and and it had like ivory keys on it. Still, so like puts the ivories back into tickling the Irish, or does exactly? So do you have is it your what's your suspicion like on the stuff that this guy was selling. Is your suspicion that this was not stuff he picked up from some old estate sale, but that this was like stuff that people were doing because they could market it. I think it was probably the latter. I mean a lot of the species were largely endemic to Eastern Europe and Western Asia. And they didn't look like old like things that people have been smoking cigarettes next to you. Some of them really did. Some of them were disgusting, and some of them looked pretty new and well done. Um. There were a lot of like really just really crappy pelts. UM, a lot of like it almost looks like key chains made out of the talents off the birds. UM. I don't know if you've ever seen a Siberian musk deer before, but it's like a deer with fangs. About this not in a while, but mounting. I didn't buy it though on this sweet website weird it disappeared. So have you gone? Have you taken this? And? Um, have you thought about going and trying to find some of the real dark stuff like like rhino horn? Do you think that, like, do you think that you'd find that it was that easy to get the things you hear about like every day, Like, I don't know, I don't want to do that on my company laptop, I can tell you that I I think. So. There was one website that I found in this whole searching process that was really strange. Um. They sold like dried apple. They were selling abalone shell Those are definitely not I think there's some restrictions on abalone shell um like dried ox gall bladders, like really weird stuff. And they had they were selling bags of saga horns for like fourteen point five million dollars pop. Yeah, yep, so for a bag of them. Yeah here if I can find these were good deals in because I saw eBay it was like five hundred bucks for a one pound of saga horn. Yeah, you found one of those right now? No, no no, no, that's from Katie's article. Katie, but next time, because if you like that all that Internet sleuth and um, try to find us a deal on a really huge punt gun, like a huge punt gun. I'll take any any requests for dark web dealing big How long? How long have a punt gone to one? I would say minimum like seven and a half feet? You know, that's when it like catches your eye, like that's that's something good. Eight foot punt gun. Someone else is gonna have to pay for shipping on that. I'm not so are you like inspired now to make um? Are you just moving on or do you think you're going to do more stuff in this vein? I don't know. I mean, it was definitely interesting to see that that stuff does exist like right under our noses on the websites that we most of us like use frequently. Um, this is like a the age of the age old adage of if you see something, say something, it's so nerdy, but it's definitely true. UM, I don't know, we'll see if I if I stumble across any other strange stuff, it would definitely be kind of an interesting follow up story. But what was the statement that Amazon made? Um, they just kind of reiterated their seller policy on animals and animal products, which is that they abide by all national and international law. Um, and they don't condone selling sits listed animal products. And they sort of distance some sellers by saying something about like third party sellers. Yeah, because there is yeah, they you know, this stuff wasn't like you know, available through Amazon Prime. This is like, yeah, exactly, they didn't sign off on any of this stuff. Um, they aren't willing to put their name next to it, which I totally understand. Um. That's that's a constant story and perspective from the tech world, whether it's publishing, selling where you have like a platform like Amazon, and people say, like why I bought it on Amazon? But Amazon is also like a home for third party sellers to do what they want to do, meaning you could also go find um, you could go to like wherever iTunes and find objectionable material that people have posted to iTunes, and the people want to say like well Apple, an Apple would say, We're just a publisher, not our material. And it's like it seems like every if you follow the tech industry and all of its um trouble spot and hot spots, it often like narrows down to places trying to where possible find some distance between their platform and the people who are living on their platform. Absolutely, and sometimes people buy it, and sometimes they expect a little bit more. Well, but I mean if you put it, you know, from their perspective, not to like, you know, advocate for what they did. But um, I mean they have millions of sellers on their platform, and I mean I can't even imagine how like how big a team they would need to have to like scrape every single listing for anything prohibited you know, drugs, animal products, people like anything along those lines. Who I talked to a guy one time, I might screw the stat maybe when you guys can find the stat when you fast finger little fellas Um he worked at YouTube and he was in he was part of his focus was like keeping advertisers happy about what stuff their ads are applied to. I think he's telling me that every minute four hundred hours of content or uploaded to YouTube. Can you imagine being in the office that's February, every minute five hundred hours of content or uploaded to YouTube, and he's supposed to make sure there's nothing objectionable. Yeah, and that's why hence when you get your stuff flagged on a social media platform, you're like, I don't really get it. But because there's so much machine learning in there now and it's like looking for certain markers and traces and now and then it you know, obviously hits something that isn't or exactly. Yeah, So I mean they definitely skipped over this particular store. Yeah, you can put up an infomercial about siga horns and probably would probably sit there for some number of days. There probably to be active for some number of days where someone found it. Katie crushing with this story. It's not often we do stuff for him, like Vice would be jealous of this or New York Times would be jealous of this, but they were not often. It's not often they wouldn't come to getting that house cat. I stand by my New York Times. New York Times probably burned up that didn't get not often that they would be really jealous. They would, in fact be jealous of this. If you want to read it again. Major online retailers act as black market for endangered animal parts. Headline, I ask, what's the what's the read on that? That saucy? But it holds up? It holds up. Well, we had to go through many rounds about it, get pr for meat eater involved to make sure that they were cool with it, and that was where we landed. But make sure they're cool. How saucy? That headlines sounded correct? No blowback though minor from the from the saucy from the sauce police. Yeah, I like that toned down at sauciness. Well, thanks should come on next time you write an article, come tell us about it. I would be happy to thank you. You know how about you know what we could do this is you could write an article on it could be something like Steve's dad's dagger. Actually, isn't that interesting or something. You know. What I could do is I could try to sell it on Amazon and see how much money. I My first object is I want to know what off what ivory it was. It's a it's a big chunk, man. I feel like you could get that figured out, though, I mean, they must be able to use you say you'll get it figured out. I'll do it. After we're at it. I'll bring it in. I'll leave it on the table here for a while. Um, whether or not it's ever tasted blood, I have no idea that could be part of the analysis. All right, Tommy, ready, yep, I'm ready enjoying it. Okay, now I'm gonna give the background. How I know you because when I was a little boy, uh not too little, no, but you were like at the forefront of making videos. Um, you used to. I feel like, I don't know if I ever saw yet one of the Trapper's conventions, but I definitely like your series, particularly the Water Trapping VHS tape. Which this what what brought this whole thing out is I was just home busy with my mom or Thanksgiving, and she doesn't like to get rid of anything. Um, and she's got like a display she's got you know those old police monitors of course. Yeah, okay, that thing was on my entire growing up, the police monitor and it goes through all his flashing lights and it like picks up. Oh I turned it on, and like nothing's happening. I'm like, oh, they must have changed whatever they do. But pretty soon does a girl going into anaphylactic on my police monitor and like they still use those things. No one turned that thing on for for a million years regardless. Below it is all the old VHS tapes and in there I'm like, holy ship, my Tom Miranda water trapping VHS tape, which was probably the most like at the time. This might be a wild statement, at the time, it had to been one of the most probably the most like widely distributed pieces of trapping media in the country. I was pretty blessed back in those days. You know. It was the right place at the right time. A lot of big time trappers didn't like me though, because I was taking all these uh secrets of the trapper and putting them out there on video instead of bringing it to your grades. Yeah, instead of actually trying to sell it, uh through my catalog, I sold it to video rental stores, and so guys could go in and rent it for a dollar, and I sold pens of thousands. I won't say anymore about the sturgeon, but quite a few, quite a few of these videos, and uh, yeah, it was great. But I made trapping lures and wrote books and was an actual trapper. Tom put it like he was trapping trappers. That's right, that's exactly what it was. Well, you know, you find out after a while that the fur prices fluctuate. You know, one year, raccoons or ten dollars, next year their forty dollars, and so that the year they're ten dollars, you catch a hundred. In the year their forty dollars, you catch ten. So you really never really get ahead in the fur industry, you know what I mean. But in the trapping side of it. As far as for the other trappers, if you were a good trapper, and if you made good catches and you were legitimate, they would order your books, they would order your videos. And when people learned how to catch their first fox or their first raccoon or mink, they would think, wow, you know, this guy taught me how to do it, and so they would buy your products and it basically it's like how you gain fans on your meat eat or podcast. I mean, you know, people like listening, so they come back. Same thing was that, you know back in the mid eighties when I did it, it was I thought it was like rev illustionary because I would look at all those books and I had all the books man um like Bob gils Vic had that famous hardcover book that everybody in the world had. National Trappers Association put out a book. But it would be that on your video is also to be there'd be like it seems like you just made it yourself right right there. You set up a camera, you have all equipment and you'd make Uh that was pretty much out to Yeah. I like, I like step by step, just emulated, emulated what I saw. That's good because it worked right. Yeah. I got the equipment like I'll tell you last night, using a tile spade, having big old squirt bottles for the lure, all that kind of stuff. Man, I love that stuff. Well. In the longlining, principle was to cover as much ground as possible. It's as many sets and just keep adding new sets. At the end of the day you pull the sets at the beginning your trap sets that are unproductive, maybe you've already caught the animals in that area or the surplus is what we always go for. And then you move down the line and you just continue to repeat yourself to try to keep an average number of animals per day. And the whole premise so the videos was to cheat a quick, effective set that you could make that would handle especially the water trapping of water fluctuation, because when it rains, the creeks go up, and you want to keep the trap working as as long as possible so you have the maximum chance of of taking an animal in that one set. And if you set ten traps, if you can catch four animals out of those ten traps within two days, that's a pretty good average, especially if you're running two hundred traps or three traps, and a long line trapper would run traps. I mean at one time I had skinners that skinned my catch, so I just ran the traps all the time and then guys skinned them for mens. Yeah. Absolutely, that's how you make money. Really absolutely. Set used to be he's the skin for a fur buyer. Well, that's that's that's a hard way to make money. What was it? What was your deal you'd strike with your own skinners? Well, you paid them by the piece, you know, you paid them by the piece. But they had to do it to your specs though obviously. Well yeah, I mean you know we had we would wash the pelts, we would skin them, we would dry them, and then then I'm in a tumble them and you know we basically they were the spotless, best pelts they could because you're always gonna get the best price for the more prime first, but the always the put up first. You know, there's some things you can control and some things you can't control. If you catch one that's half prime, you can't control that. But if you put it up right. You know, it's all about presentation. You know, I knew you, Um when I when I became aware you, I associated you very strongly with South Dakota Chamber. South Dakota. Absolutely. Yeah. I didn't realize the later. You were born in Columbus, Ohio? I was, Yeah, were you born in the good? Um? Like was it was your Were your parents into the outdoors and no, Um, my dad deer hunted once in a while, but he worked. He worked for Western Electric. My mom was a stay at home mom. I lived in the suburbs, but there was a there was a railroad track near my house and a river system that went by. It was called the Big one Nut Creek. And so, um, how I actually got into trapping isn't from any of my family. It was the next door neighbor. I saw him walking down. He was four or five years older than me. I saw him walking down the railroad tracks with a basket on his back, and I was a eleven years old. So I followed him, oh, you know, secretly to see what he was doing. And he was had the hip waiters on and he was going along the creek and he was setting muskrat and raccoon traips. Eventually, um, we talked and eventually I was carrying his pack basket and you know, doing the hard work for him and just learning. And uh, eventually he got a girlfriend and I got the trap line. Hmm. That's how it worked. Always make that fatal mistake at that time? Are you, um, what was your introduction to bow hunt? Well, I mean everybody was buying these recurve bows of Fred bear Back and you know, the late sixties, and you know, this was nineteen sixty nine when I started trapping, and of course I had to have one, you know, and shooting the backyard that was mostly archery. Was that kind of like was it was it then? With him and the outdoor rules that kind of like a hip thing. It was a hip thing, you know. It was a fad kind of a thing, you know back then, of course. Yeah, And he was promoting it and he was at the time, Bear was doing a lot of these videos or films that he did, and he would travel around to different gymnasiums and places where he'd play his films and talk about bow hunting. And that was the really the when when the Fred Bear company got really big and really bow hunting really took off. We're guys that were at that time when people were getting into archery, you know, it was new like like state last days didn't have dedicated archery seasons like they do now. Um was it? Were people into trick shooting? Were you like training to hunt big game? At the time. I was young, so I was just enjoying the sport, you know, the field of the bow, the flight of the arrow, you know, hitting at a target. You know, I didn't never really went bow hunting until I was in my early twenties, you know, I mean because I was a trapper and trapping season is a full time job. You know. You've got to run your traps every day, you gotta stand your catch, so you really don't have a lot of time to actually hunt. How did it want? How did it want? Know? You became so entrenched in uh, South Dakota and then with that tell people about becoming a government trapper and what that all meant. Yeah. Well, um, in the early eighties, I saw an ad in the Furfish Game magazine in the back of A guy's name was Oddan Core. He lived in Miller, South Dakota, and he gave trapping lessons. And at the time I was really thirsting for information on all the animals, on all the trapping. I had never been out west and trapped. As I was thinking South Dakota. There was a book out at the time by Gerald Wheeland called Longliner Fox Trapping, longlin Er Fox Trapping, too Longliner, Kyote trapping, longline or mink trapping. So this guy was yeah, absolutely remember the name, very very accomplished trapper. Well. I ended up taking lessons from Oddon Core and Miller South Dakota. I learned a lot. I mean I learned a real lot. And the main thing I learned was that there was no secret to it. It was just all hard work. It was just repeat. You know. It's like a xerox, you know, like a copy machine. Find whatever location works, whatever set works, and whatever area works, and repeat that over and over and over and over again. And that's how you're successful. That's what he taught me. Um. Over time, I realized though that there there was not It was not gonna be I was not going to really be able to make a full good living and be as successful as a person that I could be by just being a trapper. And so UM I had heard of a possible job as a government trapper in South Dakota, and I went there and applied and I got the job. But at the time, I was making my own trapping lures, and um, I hadn't started writing books yet or any of that. But UM, I was on the cusp of starting my entrepreneurship as a trapper. So what's the job description of a government trapper? And what was the job title? Yeah, I mean I was an a d C specialist, so animal damage control specialist, for the state of South Dakota. I got a state pickup truck, I had an office, I had a secretary. They gave me a bunch of traps, and I had ten counties that I had trap in. And so anybody that called there's a skunk under your poor, to beaver dam and a culver to coyote killing your sheep, any of that, I had to go address and ten counties in South Dakota. And they're big counties like Montana, you know. I mean, it's like a big, big area. And so I was driving ten twelve hours a day answering all these questions. And that's when I decided that I was gonna learn how to fly and do this from the air. In the eighties in that area, were you encountering any mountain lions or not? Yet? There were more out in the Black Hills, you know. I mean, we had some on some of the drainages, but we weren't. I wasn't being called in on any of those types of calls. Not where I was at the Chamberlains on the east river of the Missouri River right at ninety so. Um, it's kind of in south central South Dakota and all my counties that I was responsible for East River. We talked about this a little bit last night. Um, someone the guy that raises sheep, he goes out and there's a dead one land there, and his mind right away is called Tom Miranda. He'll come and give me a receipt. So but literally, like your phone rings or your secretary's phone rings, that's right, And then it's up to you at some point in time over a ten county range, go out and see what's up. Absolutely yeah, go find out if it was really animal damage? You know, did it wasn't really a cowdy? Did this thing just die in a coudy or a fox eat on it later? So you know, you're looking for throat, you know, puncture wounds in the throat. You're looking for how this thing died? Was it drug? You know, while it was still alive, you know, et cetera. You know, what's the fence look like in the area. Does he guy have any guard dogs? You know what? What's the scenario? How many empty sweaters are in the pasture? You know, I mean you're looking for all those things. Empty sweaters is a d c lingo for dead sheep, Like a little pile of wool Tom, what would you do with the animals that you caught, Like, were you able to skin and sell them? Or um, when we took vacation, we were allowed to sell them. But I always caught and skinned my animals, and um, yeah, it made me a little bit of an enemy of some of the people that worked in the system with me, because I was I came from the fur trapping part of it when I got the job, and to me, it was a waste if I didn't even if they were you know, Mangie or whatever not Mangie August. Yeah, you know, just because that's what I did. You have a hard time to just throw them in a distion and you end up. But you know, I was ended up with, you know, quite a high number of animals that I was turning into the state, and a lot of the other trappers were just leaving them lay, you know, and they're like, you know, giving me a call and saying, hey, man, you know, like making us look bad. Let's just cool your jets on this stuff. Because I was a new guy, you know, I was a new and I was a new new guy in town. So anyways, I learned over a course of time that you know, there was a little bit of a protocol, you know, that you needed to do, and I just was trying to do my best, you know, like I tell everybody, you know, I'm not the best bow hunter, I'm not the best trapper, I'm not the best writer, I'm not the best anything. But I'll outwork anybody. And that was the whole key to it. I just worked until I was successful. There's a there's a great quote by a writer. His name was like Apple, rw Apple, remember him? Heah, he has a quote were said, I can write faster than anyone can write better. I can write faster than anyone who can write better in me, and I can write better than anyone who can write faster in me. That's true. That's good. That's a good way to make a full circle. I grew up two hours from Chamberlain, and I feel like a lot of the ranchers and farmers that I know in that area now in if they were contacting a wildlife damage specialists, it would be because of a bunch of geese um that are really causing havoc on their beans or corner or whatever. Did you deal with a lot of geese in your day? There I didn't. There was some concern mostly north of where I lived at the Trapper that was north in Gettysburg, North. Appear they had a little bit more of a goose problem than what we really did in my area. The as you get farther south, there's only four or five landowners that you know, really along lin side that controlled that land that was right along the Missouri River. And there's a lot of state land along there too that like you know, public hunting land and things like that that the state didn't want controlled in any of that anyway. So yeah, we didn't I didn't have that, But I mean we did blackbird stuff. I mean, yeah, we did a little bit of everything. You know, the red wing blackbird stuff was always a hassling as a crop crop damage, Yeah yeah, yeah. We used cannons to scare of the blackbirds. Yeahs associate that with just hanging out and cattail mars is what would get them in trouble. Just too many of them around, you know, they'd all be you know, it'd be tens of thousands and flocks you know, flying around and stuff. So but doing what to what damaging what? Well, I mean, this just didn't want them around I guess, you know, I mean just in New Jersey this. I used to do some work for a sweet corn farmer and he had cannons and it was blackbirds were but red wings. I don't know. Some of these could have been starling. Yeah, the ones he had brons with was was Starling's. But yeah, they just can't scare the ship out of you because you didn't. They just shoot them just to scare the birds. Yeah, they're like propane cannons. What were some of the oddball critters that you dealt with, Like, for example, the only save cat I've ever seen in my life was around Chamberlain. Did you encounter any really rare stuff like that? Lots of civic cat Yeah, they're um, like a spotted skunk, a little tiny thing, and yeah, they got everywhere in the addicts and under houses, and really it's a it's a unique skunk smell, you know. It's not the same as the striped skunk smell. It's unique. It's a little sweeter actually. Of course, when you're a trapper and you make trapp and sent you smelled like money to me, to the people that you know, to the people that that I that had a problem with them. It was, you know, and you had to be careful because you couldn't you know, if you scared them, they'd spray, and I mean it didn't the sound smell lasted for a long long time. So you have an unhappy customer. It's not a customer. But yeah, back in those days, i UM I used product called that was a Skunks Unlimited and basically it was it was a pole with a syringe on the end and we put acetone in the syringe. We would talk to the skunk and then press that needle into its side and inject it with acetone. It would just like an attic or something. Yeah, because you couldn't really throw it, you know, you try to throw a blanket over or something and then try to carry the live trap out with the animal. Wouldn't know, But skunks are just some of them are quick with the trigger finger, if you know what I mean. Yeah, for sure, Hey, what percentage of what when people calling they're like, KYO killed my sheep? What percentage were actually killed by coyotes? I'd say when I was there and I was working at I'd say under thirty percent. I'd say maybe even most of them died of something else. And now I'm not saying that they weren't run by coyotes, you know, but and run into a fence or whatever, you know, running them around, chasing them around, but actually throat marks killed and eating normally when when there was actual predation, it was mostly in the spring after the female it had the pups, and it was the females that we're doing the killing, not the males. Yeah, tell people about that little system you'd use with the putting the sheep and enclosure and playing a tape and yeah, yeah, well, you know, when when we had a bone, especially in the spring, when we had a bona fide kill, if kyo kill, we would I would try to get the landowner to bring his sheep as close to the barn as possible, yard him up, if you will, and then I would use a radio in the in the corral or whatever at night to keep the coyotes from coming in on the sheep. And then I would patrol the periphery, the outside edge, because that's what the coyotes would do, and that's where I would put all my traps and sets. It's very difficult to know if you've shot, if you've caught or shot the right kyote. You know, how how do you know which one is the kyote that actually did the damage? Um? So that's that's And so you might catch in some areas, you might catch ten or twelve coyotes on that outside of that fence, you know, and you're just you're just figuring that one of those was probably and you know normally when you check them, when you catch them, it's the female. You know, if you open up her stomach and you see some wool in there, who knows if she was raising pups in a den, she gets where she gets herself in trouble. Yeah, exactly. Uh, tell these guys the story of when you went to see Jimmy Houston for career advice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no doubt so. So yeah. Part of my claim to fame is having the TV show on ESPN for almost twenty years. And so how it basically started was I was a trapper at the time, and I was getting a lot of animal activist calls. People were calling calling me a killer, and the PETA group put me on the top ten list of evil people for Wildlife because I had sold so many of these how to trap videos. I mean, these VHS videos were just everywhere, and so I had decided that, you know, I'm gonna do a TV show on trapping. I mean that that's gotta be a way to get the word out that trappers are, you know, really conservation minded and really helping the all the nesting birds and all the thing things that we do. You know, there's there's really a specific purpose for a trapper. Uh So anyways, um, I decided to go see Jimmy Houston because he had a TV show on ESPN, and I thought, I'm gonna get my word out. That's where I need to be. And so I went down to Oklahoma to a sports show, stood in line wait to get Jimmy Houston's autograph. Yeah, I'm twenty two years older. You were young. I was young. Yeah, anyways, I get I get Jimmy Houston real quick. How how old were you when he did the government Yeah, yeah, twenty four. I'm I meant to say, I meant to say thirty two, not twenty two two. So you were you were already like big time into the trapping. I was all through that. I was at the end of the trap and just about thirty two. So yeah, it was Yeah, So I get out and see Jimmy Houston get in line and I tell him and I finally get up there to sign my hat. I said, Jimmy, I said, um, I want to do a TV show on trap And what do you think? You know, you're so show so popular. He goes, who rolls his eyes because no, he's gonna watch. He was, You're never gonna get any sponsors for that. He goes, he will never get a network to take a trap and show. You know. He goes, that's barbaric, and all I said, no, no, no, that's the point. That's why I want to do it. It's not barbaric. You know, we used we used traps that have gaps between the jaws. We were conservationists. And he goes, you know, he goes, do you do anything else in the outdoors? And I said, I like bow hunting, you know, I like shooting bow because there you go, because that's what you need to do. And so that's when I decided to start, you know, actively, based off that, yeah, based off of that. In fact, that same year, I went bear hunting in Saskatchewan and made my very first uh hunting video. I was called Big Timber Bears, a Saskatchewan bow hunting adventures. Who did you hire to shoot it? To film it? A guy that worked for me just went up there and filmed it for me. Yeah, so you took your like your VHS instructional know how, and started producing what might be more Well, did you view that like that first bear hunting thing? Did you view it as entertainment or how too entertainment? So you like transition because the trap and stuff is Yeah, the travistuffs meant for an audience of people that are like, I want to learn how to do that? Yeah? Well, and I mean my TV shows now are based around how to you know, but I mean it's it's about an adventure. And that's what The Big Timber Bears was. I mean. And when I eventually did get on ESPN, and actually I was on Sports Channel America, And when I did get on ESPN and ninety two, the show was called Outdoor Adventure Magazine and was hunting, fishing, and adventure, so it was a magazine format show. And um, you know, ESPN called me the crazy bow Hunter to do anything once because I did bungee jumping, skydiving, rock climbing. I flew many different times of types of airplanes. Uh, but I also hunted with a bow and I also did fishing. So it was and we're very highly rated show for five or six years. Yeah, ESPN was like where you went in those years. ESPN was where you went for outdoor program. Absolutely. It was on Sundays right, Uh, Saturday mornings. Yeah, Saturday morning, and then eventually went to ESPN too, and that was on Saturdays and Sundays. Yeah. When you were doing ESPN, was it UM. Were you doing a commissioned show for them or did you have to go find all the financing on your own through sponsors. No, it was a UM financed by me totally. Yeah, we didn't do they didn't. It wasn't like the History Channel and some of that stuff that's done today. You know, we had to buy our air time. First, you had to get approved and you had to be approved producer. Then they had to have a time slot available, and then you had to tie that time slot up. And they were very very focused on ratings. Ratings were everything to them. That's how you kept your time, you know, otherwise you you were out. And there were so many other shows that wanted to be a part of that there was only eight shows on a Saturday morning. So even though it was time, even though you were buying the slot of time and had to and had to finance it through your own sponsorships and advertisers, it was competitive to hold it. Absolutely. Yeah, not like it is today, you know, with the Outdoor Channel or Sportsman or whatever. You just buy a slot and you can put anything on there. I mean they had specific I mean we weren't even allowed to mention, you know, Real Tree or whatever sponsor we had that we could show logos and labels, but there was no gratuitous advertising, got it. So it was very very different landscape, man. And you know, those shows are some of the best outdoor shows that were ever done. If somebody ever really wanted to go back and look at, you know, what they had at the time. I mean, if you look at fly Fishing the World and and uh what Walker's k Chronicles and some of those other shows, you know, there was some really top end shows. I mean, they were really the eight best shows that they're that were produced at that in that era pretty much. And there were a few shows that cycled through. The Wayne Pearson shows cycled through, and there's a few other guys, Charlie West, and there's a few other shows that cycled through the where they were on for a season or two or three, then they were out and new shows came in. They always trying to get new blood, but there was a staple or stable of producers that they went to and used. And it was a very exciting time for me because it was real. It was I mean, I I say that I went from little league to big league, you know, because I basically wasn't a TV guy at all, and within two years I was on the number one place that you could ever be for outdoor show, you know. And you you learned to edit your own stuff. Yeah, I edit my own stuff. Yeah, So it's a yeah, I mean a trapper. I mean I'm a trapper. So you do it all yourself, you know. You just learned that, and I knew that I would put the right about a work into it. Now. I hired guys to edit other shows, and I learned a lot of computer editing and things from them, the techniques of how to use the computers. I mean, I edited a b roll. All the ESPN stuff was pretty much a b roll till maybe the last three or four years when we went to the Avid's and the other types of nonlinear editing. Pretty much everything was you know, on the one inch tape or you know digital beta cam type of stuff. So we were shooting on tape, editing on tape. Did the ESPN show kill shots all the way until the end of two dozen tend They did till the end, but at the very beginning they didn't. In fact that we had to cut away from the kill shots um, which I complained about immediately after I got on there, which I had no credibility with them because I was new and I had no you know, I didn't have any poll whatsoever. But we fought it for a couple of years and finally they allowed me to use a bow and show the impact if the arrow would go all the way through the animal. And so I started shooting eighty five pound bow. I wanted. I had to, because I wanted vindication. Man, I mean, you know, it's like you can't take the kill shot away. I mean, that's what everybody wants to say. I always remember that you shooting explaining in some of your videos, and I used to watch them that you're just shooting like super heavy bow. I actually got found out about you in my Christmas stocking. I got a DVD if your mom got which one wasn't yours? I think it was DVD, yeah, not VHS, No, it was. It was young people these days. I don't remember feeling like territories wild. Yeah, so you said used to you still should be watching my DVD performed anymore to that point, Man, It's like super interesting how these like two groups of folks. Know you have like the folks that know you as you know, the trapping how to dude, and then you have folks like me and Chester who know you was like like a proto Remy Warren kind of like it like just the adventure bow Hunter you know, well I knew him as trapper too. Did you Did you do more trapping than I do? Man? You're better outdoors, more well rounded. The would do you like identify like at this point as like you know, a a trapper who did this bow hunting thing in order to make like his content more available for people, or do you find yourself identifying like a lot is like that bow Hunter? Now? Well, I mean I identify as both only because I guess I can um to me the reality the reality of it was when I was growing up as a kid. My parents allowed me a huge latitude. When I was eleven years old, I could go out at three thirty four o'clock in the morning and run my trap line by myself with a pair of hip waiters down a river that might have been flooded out from rain or snow or whatever. And when I had homework, my mom would still let me skin my catch. You know, it wasn't the home that the school wasn't as important as what I was learning outdoors. My parents gave me this latitude that eventually allowed me after high school to go to Michigan. You know, like I tell everybody, I bought my first Jeep CJ with trapping money. I brought my first property with trapping money. I built my first cabin with trap of money. I bought my first airplane with trap of money. That's what I was enjoying and doing. But my dad, when he raised me, he talked to me about being always being the best. You know, you gotta make your bed every morning. You've got to be the best that you can be at what you're doing. And when I switched, it was very difficult. I was at the top of my game as a trapper. But when I really I realized that I needed to do something to keep trapping around and I was going to have a larger audience if I could get on TV and tell people about it. Even though I couldn't do a trapping show, I could do a bow hunting show, and I could I could promote that way for trapping and for for the industry as well as for wildlife and conservation. And so that's what I did, and I did it the best I could. You never felt like you were slumming it as a bow hunter, absolutely not, because I ran with the adventure thing. You know. It's like it's like the what I always say it to everybody. It's like, I want to go hunt, go somewhere I've never been and hunt an animal I've never seen, except I don't want to hunt that crazy antelope you're talking about. But yeah, so that's the you know. So that's what I did, and so that's how the Super Slam all came about because I just started, you know, one animal at a time. Of course, Chuck Adams, the first bow hunter to take then at the time, I'm North American Big Game Animals was a guest on my show TV show on ESPN for a couple of years. He had a sponsor that also sponsored my show, so he washould come on the show. He would come on the show, and he did tips on the show, and I got to know him, and I can remember interviewing him and talking with him about some of his hunts, and I was like, you know, I'll never do a grizzly bear, you know Adams articles. Yeah, absolutely so. But one thing led to another, and you know, you have you know, every year you've got a quota of shows you gotta do, and every year you'd get one, two or three more species. And there was just a point in time when I started looking back and thinking, wow, you know I got you know, I got twelve. You know, there's there's At the time when I started, there was only twenty to actually go for the Slam. There was still in twenty seven, and then there was twenty eight and then eventually twenty nine. Yeah, where do they add They added the Central Canadian Bearground cariboo first, And I'd be guessing at the date, but I think it was it might have been in the late nineties, so that might have been twenty eight when I started, but then then the last one was the Tuliel I think that was two thousand and eight when they added that one. Anymore anytime soon or do you think it's total dropping off? Unfortunately, because like the you can't hunt the Quebec Labrador cariboo, which is one of the five cariboo subspecies right now. Yeah, and then you know, cariboo is cyclic by nature. But you know, I can remember hunting in Alaska for the barren ground cariboo and and and hunting them. Will Chatting I heard there's four hundred thousand animals, and then will Chatten I heard, you know there's probably not even ten thousand animals in the will Chatten I heard. Now, I mean it's basically disappeared. So I mean these caribou are cyclic uh creatures, you know. And one of the things I would add to what we were talking about about the sites and sago horns and all that is, you know, I think a really good article would be about the political side of societies, because the reality is, um there's a lot of political influence. If you know, there's a lot of people that are pseudo scientists or biologists that have more political motives about what animals are hunted and one animals aren't and maybe they have political motive that maybe no animals should be hunt And take the polar bear, for example, in North America, there on the threatened the lists of society. So we cannot import polar bears into North America to the United States, but we can hunt polar bears. You can go to Canada and polar bears, but that you can't import them into the United States. What's what that in like the in the like the Intuit, what's that called there? None of none of it. Yeah, but they kind of have their own autonomous zone and they run wild on them. You can hunt them anywhere in Canada or other countries that border that have polar bear populations, I think except Alaska, but um, you can't import them into the US. Well, the US hunters are the most prolific hunters and traveling and hunting. And if you look at just the they were put on the polar bears are put on the threatened list because of the supposedly global warming was thinning out the ice sheet and they were having less habitat because they hunt seals on the ice Audiana. Yeah, speculative polar bear numbers are currently strong, but it's speculative that they'll they'll exactly, So there's somewhat of a political motive behind it. It's not science, you know. Now and now there's tax durmy shops that have come out with um with imitation polar bear amounts, you know, like a replica, so you can actually buy a replica polar bear amounts. You can go to Canada, shoot a polar bear and have a replica amount in your trophy room. Where do you leave? Where do you leave the bear? While you can't get it into the US, well, I can stay in Canada. So a lot of them get them Tanda's rugs and give them to people. Are a lot of them get them mounted anyway, and they put them in stores or places like that. And like someday I'm gonna come get my thing. But I don't think it'll ever happen. That's a problem, you know. I don't think you'll ever be able to bring them in if they were shot. The thing is is like when I shot my polar bear was the last year before the thing went on, and I shot mine in two thousand and seven, They with all my animals with the bow. So um, the thing was mine was one of the last ones back that I had, so I had the real polar bear and in my grophy room. But you know, it just suppresses the the amount of money that the Intuit people's can make. I mean this, polar bears, it costs well, the my polar bear hunt cost twenty seven five hundred. It cost six thousand for the flights to go, and then plus you're tipping your guide and you're spending money as you're there. I mean this, These Intuit communities are totally dependent on the Canadian government for money unless there's this influx of capital from these people that will come and hunt or fish or pus in that. So you know, they've lost a lot of income over the fact that you know, you can't bring them back. A lot of guys don't hunt. It's easy to get a polar bear. I was on a four year waiting list before I got to hunt mine. So there were people that wanted to go up there, but there still was limited amount of tags. Got it. I think, what are you talking about? The society is saying, I mean, you bring up valid point because you have these things like the Endangered Species Act, right, which I've completely support and it's done a lot of tremendous work. Sieties done a lot of great work. It's like inspired by like an honest knee. But I do find and we report on it all the time. Inevitably, you have cases, um, which in my mind weaken those structures because you have people who learned how to manipulate them politically. Um, they want one thing and they talk about another thing. And so like we've covered endlessly here is like grizzly bardy listing, wolf delisting right. Um, it's you had species go on the Endangered Species Act as threatened they hit recovery. But people, some people just cannot stomach the idea that someone would go hunt them. So they don't want to debate whether they've recovered. They want to debate these like obscure um legal issues right with And if you heard their private conversations, no doubt their private conversations are I just don't want this. I don't want anybody to hunt them. I don't care how many there are. And they'd be saying the same thing if there were a million of them. They're just never gonna like, they're not going to give up that point. They're never gonna say what they actually think, and they're always gonna say something that they don't think because it allows them to advance what they do. And then it creates all Then it creates people like me, people like you who then um wind up feeling like a little bit like you're being sold a bill of goods. Then he becomes suspicious about the who damn structure, which is like I always try to prevent myself from falling into the trap of being coming like suspicious of e s A specious suspicious of the act. I think the act was a needed thing. I don't like it when it gets manipulated. Absolutely, you know the thing is to me, it's There's another prime example of what happens that people don't realize is that the hiding behind the science things like in Africa, for example, I do a lot of hunting in Africa, have been many times to Africa. There there are groups and organizations that do scientific research, like on leopards, for example, which was very nocturnal and sneaky animal, not very rarely seen in the wild in the daylight. But they'll set up trail cameras in these areas that are flash cameras, and once the leopards got take got some picture taken once with a flash camera, he's never gonna walk by that camera ever, ever again. And so these people, over the course of so many months will say, well, we only got you know, there should be in this area fifty leopards, but we only have pictures of three, So the populations are really going down. We're in reality, these are some of the places where I hunt and where we hunt leopards, and we know, and we have pictures of hundreds of different leopards in the same area. But there's the science. The people, the hunters have an agenda to them. We have an agenda to these people. We have an agenda. We want to say there's more than enough to hunt, where they want to say there's less than enough. So what is the real number? It's probably fair to say you both have a substantial bias muscle manals coming uh walk me through, because like following your career is like following UM look at your history of career, it's like looking at the history of media, you know, particularly like a focus on outdoor media, but just like media in general. UM. Eventually ESPN moves on right because the ESPN we know today, which is intensively professional sports, right, absolutely, So what happened to you then? Like how did you continue just always adapt to be one step ahead? You know, when ESPN was purchased by the Walt Disney Company, they started to change their values and things, and they decided at a point in time, not that they were so much anti hunting. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. I won't say either way. Um, they decided to go back to a sticking ball network, which is what they were founded on originally. So like you said, they went back to like a total sports network. And so yeah, for the guys, I mean I made it all the way to the very end. In fact, um, when they decided to break break up and take the Outdoors away, I had signed a five year contract and I still had two years left in my contract, so they couldn't actually get totally rid of the Outdoors. And there were there were three or four of us that had longer term agreements with the network, and they didn't just buy out. No, they let us run all the way to the end. And you know part of it too, was part of it too, that that that demise the ESPN model was the fact that soccer became more and more and more popular and at at seven o'clock in the morning in our country, it's six, or it's one o'clock in the afternoon in London. Are over in Europe when the soccer games are going on. So they could make a lot more money on a soccer game because of the tennis shoe sales and the commercials and all the things they could do than you know, So the soccer games would run in the mornings instead of the outdoor shows. And they were trying to watch that game negative. Man, that's a hard game to watch on man, except when they need to shrink that whole area way down. And the other problem with watching it is how many hail mary's they do, Like will just start getting interesting and one will kick the ball away they held down the other end. You don't have any idea who's gonna get it. It's like, man, they don't. It's just they just that's like it's like, oh it's getting too exciting, viewers are paying attention. They just like kick it way back down. Oh my god, it's great. So if anyone who works for the most popular sport in the world wants to take some tips from Steve Ronella. Hey, they do listen. I know. I can't think of specific examples I know where they have changed rules to make a better viewing experience. Can anybody back me up on this? There's there's I can't think of him, but I've heard of it. That's sports, like the NFL or whatever. Well, football has made some changes. Don't change the rule to make it better, to change like the length for the extra kick, and then the stuff like that soccer, they should make a rule. You can't just hail marry it down to their end of the field right when things are getting interesting. Either that or tie once on behind the back of the goalie. That would work, tie one arm behind the back of the goalie. Yeah, it's that's right. Uh yeah, there's a little side note. We'll leave that in phil um So when that collapsed, what but like at the same time that I don't want to say collapsed, but then like outdoor channel was like right like filled the filled the Yeah. Well, and at the time there was a network called Versus you know which which eventually changed this name to I don't even NBC Sports. I think it was there. That's what I didn't know that that's what Versus didn't. Yeah, but did you do anything there? Oh yeah, Well what happened was is I had sponsors that had longer term agreements than my my network agreement. So that creates a pickle for ye, especially when you know we're doing you know, well ESPN that I was almos a hundred and twenty million households, you know, so it's like, how do you replace those households with the outdoor channel? You don't, you know. So I ended up doing a deal with Versus UM, which preventually became the NBC Sports Network, but UM and and the Sportsman Channel what was just kind of fledger, and I went to all myself channel. So that's what I did. And and so I made a deal with Versus and a deal with the Sportsman's Channel, and I alternated shows. So basically, I would do all my full run of shows before the season, and I would start with show thirteen on one network and show one on the other network. And that's how I alternated through to air on two networks, because you know, that's almost taboo to have a show air on two networks at the same time, you know what I mean. Huh, That's how I did it really Yeah, And you've been at You've been distributing there for a long time, you know, I was, I was there, I was on versus I think we're three years and and then I switched from Sportsman to Outdoor and now I'm just on Outdoor. How many shows you make in a year, I'm down to eight right now. I'm the king of reruns on on on the on the network. I spend a lot of money producing my shows and places I go, you know, because I've done all the African Big Six with archery, tackle all that. I mean. IM I collect species. So I have over a hundred seventies some species right now with bow and arrow and so and all filmed and so. Yeah. So I'll go back a few years and pick up some of the older shows and maybe add a little bit more commentary tomb and then just rerun them and so that. So in first and second quarter, I'll rerun some of my older shows that are really cool, the better ones, the cream ones, and then I'll do the shows for the for the fall. Hundred and seventy how many years in your house? Uh? Over a hundred, you know. But I've quit mounting stuff today. I don't mount everything anymore. I've well, where are you gonna put them? What are you gonna do with them? You know, after you, after you die? Where they for dollar? It's it's not so much that I mean what I've been doing. It's something to going to waist anything. What I've been doing is a lot of the I've become popular enough and known enough that a lot of the outfitters are the places that I go hunt. Um, they would like to have them, and so they'll take a picture I mean with the animal like a hero shot, and then they'll have it mounted and put it in their in their lodge, and then they'll have my picture next there. There you go. It works out good. Yeah, box the new one. You guys are gonna get right land a jet in there with my my rooftop shooting range. I should keep quiet about that. We're gonna cut that one out. Do you when you're deal like, try to think how to do you have a lot of of the one? So you have a hundred animals and your thing? But do you have a lot that are that are tucked away here and there that you can't bring back home for legal reasons? No? Not really? Oh, I mean probably in South America. You know, there's a lot of animals that you shoot down there that you just can't export, no matter what. You know, like copy borrow with different different types of species like that. You can't bring a copy borrow no, No, like a white lipped peckery. Can you bring a pocket home? No? I don't think I've hunted some of that. We're working on that stuff right now for the for this spring. Yeah, we're going from We're gonna go hunt. We're gonna go hunt oscillated turkeys. Yeah. Yeah, I'll become a World Slam holders. Good for you? Does that make you jealous? Are you a World Slam turkey holder? I have five of the six, then I'm definitely not jealous. I'm gonna become a shotgun world Slam holder. Uh yeah. I want to bring home the tail fan. Oh yeah, I mean most people bring the whole damn thing home and get stuff that's a whout the tail fan. Probably the spurs probably just eat it right down there, probably eat it there. And then I want, how's it looking. You're you're looking into that bringing that tail fan home? Tail fans looking good? Some other complications with getting guns down there, though, well, because you didn't get on it quick enough. No, no, no, it's not definitely, that's not true. It's the it's money, it's expensive, different than going to hunt COO's dear in Sonora. From what I'm finding out, it's really hard to get information on it. Steve, I just had to use their shotguns down there. Yeah, because it's just a different anyways, it's a different area from where you guys go cuts back on the headaches just to use their shot Absolutely, when's the last time you killed a big game critter with a gun. Oh that's a great question. Thank you. I'm shot. I'm well, I'm trying. I mean, I guess people wouldn't consider coyotes. Um, you know, because I did a lot of hunting for coyotes. But I used to host a show on ESPN called Cabella's Sportsman's Quest, and the first year that had air, Um, they wanted me that we had sponsors that wanted me to use a gun, and so I shot three species on that show. I think I thought I shot a elk, uh mule deer and uh pronghorn with a rifle. And then the next no, I told him I didn't want to do it. Anymore that I just like, just you know, it's not that I'm against gun hunting. I'm not. It was just not my wheelhouse, you know. I like the bow hunting. I like to be known as the bow hunter, and just it was too easy. I mean, you know, for lack of a better way of putting it, you know, it's that's not offensive to me. That's a good thing. I don't want to get kicked out before the things. Yeah, we still got do we still got do the trivia episode. But so you just like it's just you like that like up close, difficult, heart pounding kind of. I think bow hunting is a conscious decision to make the hunt harder than it needs to be. You know, at two hundred yards, a guy can shoot the you know or farther. A lot of people have got these yard shots, but I mean a two hundred yards is when my stock begins, you know, and I need and I'm not the best, you know, I'm not a Randy Homer or someone who can shoot a whole out of a life saver at hundred yards, you know, Cameron Haynes somebody like that. You know, I'm I'm I'm losing my eyesight as quick as you are from what I hear with with all that, with all that, like that, with that archery, the Super Slam. Yeah, what was your average shot distance? If you had to guess, you should have lost you just like you get in there. Yeah, I don't like what's loot is a long shot for me? Yeah, and I and that's still a poke though, man, that's a poke. Yeah yeah yeah yeah, And the and that those are shot. You know, when I started doing more international hunting and more mountain hunting, you know, going after the sheep and goats and stuff like that, you've got to be able to make a longer shot or it's just you know, especially filming it. But you know, I mean the method to my madness was everything had to be on camera. I mean, that was the claim to fame for me. I mean, I'm the seventeenth archery Super slammer, So I'm the seventeenth guy to complete the archery Super Slam with a bow and arrow of course of its archery, but I'm the only guy to have all the kills on video. So I filmed all the hunts and so my my DVD set, the Super The Venture Bow Hunter SuperSlam has all twenty nine Arrow Impacts on it. It's a three DVD set that has all the stories behind all the twenty nine I had to go. Where do people find that? You can get it on my website at tom Randit dot com. But I mean it's sold at a lot of different stores as Cabell has sold it for ten years. I don't think they carry it now, but it's because it's an older it was made. I finished the Slam in two thousand and eleven and the the DVD came out soon after that. What's that one called. It's called Adventure bow Hunter SuperSlam tom My Quest of the Super Slam in Northern But it's all bundled together. It's all bundled together. Yeah, it's all three and one set. In fact, I have I also have Adventure bow Hunter Dark Continent, which is the African Slam thirty four species hunted, including the African Big Six which is elephant, hippo, ryano, cape, buffalo, lion, and leopard, plus all the other planes game. And then I have another one called World Hunts has forty four hunts on it, Narrow impacts of a lot of different kinds of sheep and species and whatnot. I need two more animals to finish scis conservation and hunting a war. It's the highest achievement that you can get in bow hunting. What are you missing? I believe it or not. I turned in all my animals thinking that I was going to get it um a year and a half two years ago, and the SCI came back to me and said, where's your introduced animals in North America category? And I'm like, introduced animals in North America? What are you kidding me? And if they go, you have to shoot eighteen species in the US that were introduced, and so I need to. I have two left to shoot, Like there's a whole list that you can shoot, and there's two I'm gonna shoot. Um, I think the last two. I think I'm gonna shoot a scimitar or X and maybe a Psycha deer. I think those would be two cool ones to have to be like the Maryland ones. Yeah, yeah, I got Yeah, I got a few of those with a muzzle loader. There you go, I missed them with my bow. Uh so you have you done like a like Neil guy? And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, That's what I've been doing. Those kind of huts, and I got many introduced big game animals they say are in the US. I think there's forty some on their list, but as a bow hunter only have to take eighteen. So yeah, ow man, the counting a lot of counting, well, and it's a lot of Yeah, it's a lot of chick in the boxes to do those things. I mean the s c I Award platform. When I finished my twenty nine, uh, the Super Slam, the North American ones, you wonder, well, what are you gonna do? Now? You know what what's the next on your agenda? And you know I had the SEI people. They called me and they said, um, we have four people that have completed the World Hunting Award ring with a bow. Um, we think you could be number five if we can come and measure your trophy room. Now I was a life member of s c I, but I had never scored. Anybody measure the trophy room. They want to come in and count my species, see what I got, you know, So they came. Two guys came from Tucson, spent two days in my trophy room on scaffolding, measuring animals that I had, looking at photos and we basically chronicled the animals I had, and they went back to Tucson and called me a few weeks later and said, you need thirty six speci. She used to finish the World Hunting Award Ring, and that was my next goal. It's like, okay, I'm gonna go for the World Hunting Award Ring. It took me, and it took me three years a little over three years to get it. In two thousand and sixteen, I got the World Hunting a Ward Ring. I'm the fifth guy to ever get it, and I have all my kills on video. Let's say you weren't. There's nothing left to chip, like, there's no sort of like outside validation stuff left right, there's no more lists or everyone on the planet dies whatever, Um, what would you want to hunt for? Then? Like like what like what do you like besides this sort of like getting a certification of some sort of like what what what is fun to you or what's worthwhile to you? I think once you've shot everything that you feel like you can you know that that that goal for me of you know, going somewhere I've never been and hunting an animal I've never seen. I think once I've completed that list, it's just gonna go back to the basics. So I'll be white tail hunting, you know. I mean that's in everybody's backyard. It's something to do, you know, and it's fun and white hole on. White tails are some way some of the harder animals to get. I mean, you can look at all the other species that they're out there, and a five and a half year old white tail is not an easy customer, you know, I mean even from a global respective perspectively. So true. Is there any kind of archery small game thing that you're into and there hasn't been because there hasn't really been any platform for it, you know, like going out and shooting rabbits or something. I mean, guys do a lot of that kind of stuff for fun, and there's a lot of different places. I mean, like if you go to New Zealand, for example, they have a list of about twenty different animals that you can hut down there, and they include a lot of the smaller stuff possums and you know, rabbits and stuff like that. Um. But for me, I it's it's been a business for me, you know. I think that's one of the reasons that my kids never really got involved, even though I took them on trips. I always had cameraman with me. We were always producing. Were always had to get the kill shot, you know, I had to get the hunting shot on videos. So it was more of a business for me. And so my hunting, especially my bow hunting, has never really been a sport that I took up and enjoyed and went out and hunted. It's always been a business. It's something that I had. I had to go out and I had to make a show about it. So you don't do like you don't you don't just go hunting. No, really that crazy. But I but I collect books. You know a lot of people think that's, oh my gosh, this guy's a nerd, you know, but it's it's like hunting. Try to find some of these old pirate books in the castle in London, you know what I mean. So it's like hunting to find some of this stuff and it you know, and it's a it's another obsession, you know, I mean, hunting for me, um has been in a bow hunting has been an obsession, you know, It's been an obsession to find a new species, find a new place to go, get it. A lot of people. If there's any people that really complain about, you know, Tom Rando this and Tom Rando that, it's the fact that I don't do a lot of self guided stuff, you know, I don't do a lot of of you know that type of hunting. And it's like, well, he could never shoot anything if he didn't have a guide with him, and that all the time, that criticism staying at all or don't you care? Well, you know, it's what it stings for me because I'm a trapper, you know, and I know exactly how to do all of it. But when you're trying to make a show, how can I go to Oregon and hunt blacktail deer? Thinking I know it all? I live in Florida. Do I know everything about blacktail? No? But when I'm doing a TV show about it, if I've got a good guide, a good outfit, or who can talk to me, I can learn from him and my audience can learn from him. And so that's how my shows are set up. I traveled to this new place. I'm gonna hunt this black Columbia blacktail deer. I'm gonna learn all about them in video, as many of them as I can and get one with a bow on video. And that's the premise of my shows. And so that's the business side of it, and that's why the shows. That's and I spend a lot of time and effort putting those shows together so that when people will watch him again. I mean, look how many times Duck Dynasty reruns, you know. So a lot of my shows replay and um and my ratings stay great and then and the networks are happy. So and I enjoy doing it still, which is a good thing. I think. You know, I've made my money at the end of the day. If I just I didn't want to do it anymore. Like quit, do you feel like you're removed from the experience because you feel like it's the business of it. It comes back to my my father and what he taught me about work, you know, and that it's the work ethic side of it. I enjoy it for the work ethic part of it. You know, you'd like to work. I like to work. I mean a workaholic for sure, and that's why I take on way too much more work than That's why I edit my own show. I mean, for havin sakes, I could turn it over to somebody else to do it, but I don't. They might do a better technical job than I would, but they won't tell a better story. And my my job is to connect with the audience of the story. So that's why I do it myself. How the hell did you um uh like, why rare books? I got to realize you had some you know, I got to you know, I was doing the Outdoor Adventure magazine show. I got to dive, do some shipwreck diving and some different things. I did a lot of different scuba divings and tri mix and you know, all these different types of diving, and I got to dive some Spanish galleons and stuff like that, and so like got like really interested in this stuff, like these old ships and cannons on the bottom of the reef, and so I started looking for books about treasure salvage and treasure hunting, and like, you know, I live in Florida. You know, we've got the Treasure Coast, and you know, and pirates. You know, there's islands nearby where I live in Florida that we're thought to have been, you know, homes to pirates. And so there was one thing that led to another, and eventually I did get more and more and more into the pirate books, and then I started finding out that there were old manuscripts and old books about pirates from way back, and so I started looking for some of those. And when you find them, and an old book is super cool because you can smell, you can smell the dampness in the pages, you know, and you can see, you can see how you know, just how the cover is and the you know, the leather bindings of it, and it's just they're so neat to have and to hold that history, and especially today where people are burning books and banning books and going to digital books and things, you know, these pieces of history like I have. I have a surt Francis Drake book I bought. I paid quite a bit of money for it. It's a one in five copy. It was just one that was one in five known copies of this book and I have, man it's you know, the other four copies are in institutions, you know. And this one happened to get be for sale from at a castle in England that was um wanting to sell that the owners were just going to sell all the books. That happened to be one that they had that I bought, so, you know, it's it's pretty cool. You know, some of them are so valuable. I don't even I hardly like look at them a little bit, Yeah, touch them and go through them. But no, I've read quite a few and I've I've learned a lot of history. And the more people find out that I have these books, the more people that contact me about you know, information that's in them or photos. A lot of these old pirate books and ship books, shipwrecks and uh, you know, voyages of discovery. They have a lot of really nice maps in them, old old maps, you know, from the fifteen six hundreds. They have a lot of different things in them that other people want, you know, other TV shows want so I can take and take photos and make copies of these things that they can use. So and um, a lot of times, you know, I buy some. You know, there's some old Kajars that have been out trying to find pirates and different things, and their family will contact me and I'll buy their old manuscripts where they've been out looking for the pirate and digging and finding graves of pirates and stuff like that. So, I mean, I'm building some material to maybe someday have a really cool book about the whole era of it and about the collecting side of it. What's your most what's your most valuable book? Mm hmm And where is it located? Well? I have it, Yeah, I have. UM, I have a first edition Buccaneers of America. It's in Dutch and it was written in sixteen seventy eight. It's not nearly my oldest book, but it's very very difficult copy and it's in an original binding, and so yeah, it's um. What's something like that worth? Yeah, it's um, you know, I'll tell you it's more than a couple of three polar Bear huts. Let's just call it that. Do you read Dutch? No, But you know, part of being a U you know, that's part of the obsession, part of me, you know. So I have to have the first edition in Spanish. I have to have the first edition in French. I have to first have the first edition in English. I heard you say, masso manos speak Spanish. That's right. Uh. You've also um probably written, um, your Master Trappers book. It's probably the most exhaustive thing to read, No, the most exhaustive thing on trapping in America, but I know about Yeah. I mean it's from the Mountain Men to the modern day, like long liner dudes. Yeah, yeah, dude, I said, like I love that thing. I said, like when I when I'm going to bed at night, I'll lay there and put my my new spectacles on and I'll just start like I don't even read it front to back. I just skim through it and read all kinds of junk. Look for people I figured must be in there, and there they are, guys I grew up reading and stuff. It's it's it's like it's a I don't know. It's a huge book called Master Trappers, and it's profiles well, it's like profiles on eras Hudson Bay Company, the Mountain Man era. But as you progressed, it's profiles on just like every notable trapper, and then not everybody, many of the notable trappers, all elements of the business, animal damage control, government stuff, interspersed with Tom's like evolution, schoolboy trapper, professional trapper, airborne trapper, on into phasing out of that and into the hunting world. I mean, it's a really interesting book, man. Yeah. Thanks. If I hadn't known you were reading it, at night in bed. I would have put a fold out map in it for you. It's solid and it's it's uh. I think it's a phenomenal book. I became aware of it because some of the equipment I buy all buy on Minnesota trapline products. Um, we've talked a bunch about like the MB you know, Minnesota brand traps and whatnot. You'd go on there. I didn't. And I had no idea that dude, Yeah he's chronicled down there as well. Yeah, that dude his history as a trapper absolutely and like wildland firefighter. But I had no idea that he was a like bound up in that whole thing. You know. The book was. It was a labor of love. I started it in two thousand fourteen, um actually because the Trapper Predator call our magazine called me and they said, would you consider writing a book about trapping a little bit of the trapping history for us? And I said, you know, that's a you know, that's a big that's a big thing. That's a lot of work. I'm not sure that I want to do that. They go, well, we we would saw a bunch of him, and we think you would be the guy to do it for us. Your name on it would really make a make a point for us and anyway, so I agreed to do it. I did a contract with them, and then like a few months later, they said, now you know, we the trapping business is going down. We've decided that we don't want to do the project anymore. Why it started it and made the outlines and everything that's seriously happened and they and eventually eventually Trapper prettor Call magazine was sold out and was bought by other people. So it was like there, I think there was more to it than just the trapping business going down. But anyways, I shelved the idea until oh gosh, two thousand twenty and UM, I get this call. This phone rings like eight o'clock at night, and I look at it and I don't recognize the number, and normally I don't take it, but I'm like, I don't know who this is, I'm gonna take it. So I took the call and it was from some I can't remember the man's name, but he was from the National Trappers Association and he said, UM, I'd like to talk to you about if you can come to the Trappers convention this year in two thousand, two thousand twenty Trappers Convention, which was in July. Well, obviously it was, um, it was the COVID thing, you know, there was all the COVID thing, or maybe it was two thousand twenty one. No, it's two thousand twenty when the COVID hit in March at two thousand twenty. So yeah, I was like, in July was when the event was going to be, but it was it was eventually canceled. But anyway, he says, um, he goes. I said, man, I haven't been to a trap convention a long time, data DA And he's like, well, he goes, we voted you into the Hall of Fame, the Trappers Hall of Fame. I hadn't said a trap since nine, you know, and here I'm getting voted into the Trappers Hall of Fame. It's like, well, why, you know, what's up with that? And they go, well, it's just all the years of you promoting trapping through your TV shows and the fact that you were one of the first guys to do the videos and everything. So anyway, I hang up the phone from him, like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna be in the Trappers Hall of Fame. This is which was just this huge honor to me. I mean, that's as good as it gets. And I thought, you know, I'm gonna bring that book out. I'm gonna bring that book out and look at my old notes of it from two thousand fourteen. So I did. I brought that book out and I looked at it and I looked what I had going, and I thought, it's COVID. All my trips are canceled. Now I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. Did you have a team of people that you worked on it with? No. I did it totally by myself and was sitting in my trophy room. Seriously that seriously did that. You wrote all those profiles, everything start to finish, never hired anybody to help, you know. Damn dude likes working, you know, and I you know, it was good. But the thing is is the book is about you know that there's history in the book, um, but it's really it's the book is actually a tribute to all the people that I learned how to trap from from the earlier that that gave me interest in trapping. I mean, there's there's a part in there about Jeremiah Johnson's movie you know that Jeremia Johnson. Yeah, there's parts in there. I think parts of it that people touch, all the trappers that you know that have the because there is a romance to trapping. There's a little bit of a romance to it for people who have done it before to look back. And because trapping every morning is like Christmas. You don't know what you're gonna catch. You know, is it gonna be an empty trapper? You're gonna have a silver fox in it? What are you gonna get? So it's kind of a The book is kind of a motivational book to take somebody who used to trap and to bring back all those memories. But it was a tribute to the guys I learned how to trap from the books I bought, the books I read the people that influenced to me. Man's a nostalgic enterprise. Man. Uh, there's a hundred ways tell people where to find you know, how to find your book and and uh, I don't know, that's a long list of ways to find you, but hit people with like how'll track you down on social media? How to find your Adventure Bowl hunting book Master, trappers, you know. Yeah, mostly if I'm on social media, I have a I have a small Instagram thing. For some reason, I'm not that good on the phone, so I do a little laptop and on the laptop I do Facebook, and so my Facebook adventure bow Hunter. You can find my page there. I have lots of videos on there. Um or Tom Miranda dot com, which is where my store is. That's easy to find Tom Miranda dot com. UM. I have over five TV show os on my website that you can watch for free. Um. And then in my store, I had my books they and I have the Super Slam Book I wrote in two thousand and eleven when I finished. People can find your books on Amazon too, right like I think I can't remember. Yeah, there's some we've seen them on Minnesota Minnesota trap Line Products. Yeah, you can get them from Tim Caban at Minnesota trap Line Products or direct or direct from me at Tom Randa dot com. And that the Trapping Book is there too. And I signed all the books that anybody that buys a book from me on my website, I signed for him. So I'm almost into my third printing, so it's sold to too. Full printings of those trapper books. That's great. It's been really really good, and lots of lots of people have really sent me some long heartfelt messages about how it really brought back the old days in the trapping to them. How cocky are you feeling about the trivia show we're going to record next. I don't know if I'm going to be that cocky about it, but um, I might have an answer or two up my sleeve. What do you think, math, I'm expecting a strong performance, Spencer. I have to our most well traveled guests are most accomplished bow hunting guest. I think that sets him up. Well, Oh, you've seen a lot. We also recently upped our Now, let me teach you something here, Steve. We have a big announcement coming up on the Trivia episode that we will tell you about. Remember our conversation about over selling stuff. That's my job. A big announcement that Steve is not going to reveal right now. Alright, ladies, gentlemen, Tom random check the next We're not done with Tom. We're gonna do uh media to trivia game on Soccers. It'll serve up to you soon and it will I'm expecting just I'm expecting a dominating performance from Tom Random. I like it, Stay tuned,