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 this is you got the machine on film? It's always on Steve. Okay, Well you need to go on and delete everything, ye Like, ok can you imagine the black tape? Can you imagine the black mail tape that Phil could produce? Dude us on geo like like us on geo politics. Now this is more in line with what we're supposed to talk about, is uh? Man? This is a genius idea. I don't like, I feel like, um, I hope that me saying this like that we're going to do this makes it that we have like uh, like it's copyrighted now you know what I'm saying, Time stamp this Phil. Okay, At this date we have claimed this came from a listener, but he's that we're cutting him out of the loop. Dan, we got to Dan up. He gets a free membership. You go try to find forgetting the idea at least five off the first month. This is what Dan gets for having the idea a dating app called RUT. You don't like it, Megan, what would you call Yanny said, you know, Dan's a dude. Based on the fact that he wants to call the dating app it's correct, what would you call it? I just don't have a whole lot of faith in dating apps period, So it's not like you want to call it like breeding seasons. Jesus Christ. No, that's a far superior breeding season. Probably go with RUT and it's like a dating app. He said. Okay, this is a guy that's burned out on dating apps. And he says that he sees that we have an interest in fixing people up um, and he says that he's really burned out on dating maps. He said, farmers dot com. Mr. Have you guys ever farmers only? Farmers only farm have you like? How much dating app action have you had in your life? It's been limited because I uh, I guess I haven't tried farmers only, or you know, I haven't. I haven't reached out. I've tried to Hinge and tender, and you know, I pretty much I download him. I meet a couple of folks and I delete them because it's it's just I don't think it's a great way of meeting people. This is a very I was gonna say. I've got a ton of friends that go through that whole like download, delete, download, delete, cycle like in a couple of times a year. Let me ask you more. I want to ask you series of yes or no questions because it'll be easier on you on the podcast. Well have you done these? Okay, I'm gonna ask you both the serious yes no questions. I know you haven't. I haven't. I missed. I tell my wife all time. If I could go back in time, like normally i'd want to go to the place to scene, but if there was like a limit, I would go back in time. I would go back in time to like a little teeny while ago and do dating apps for one day. M hm, Like what I think you'd be disappointed? At what phase of your life would you have been using the dating apps? Like would this have been Steve everything? Would? It would be a weird time machine because it would be twenty two. I got married before these became a thing, right, so I'd have to like it would be like a weird time machine did made my life go back a certain number of years, so when I wasn't married, but then make time when they go forward to when there is dating apps that Michael J. Fox it's better, dolorans that Michael J. Foxes Doloran. I don't think I had settings like this, and I would online date for one day. I would love to know what Katie's reaction to this is. She knows that, but I think she missed Yeah, of course because we haven't married the same day. I mean, yeah, so she never did it either. Yeah, he's never done it. Phil, you probably missed out, I think with my wife since so I was gonna right before all that kind of exploded. Cen hit some dating apps, Kevin, you've been married too long? Yeah, I didn't do it. I'd ask a series of you guys dating app questions, all three of you, yes or no, like just gonna want to get down? Have you gone on dates from dating apps? Yes? Yes? Yes? Hey? Have you developed a boyfriend slash girlfriend through a dating app? Meet up? Yes? Yes? Okay, um short series. Yes, this guy's like he thinks farmers only as full of posers. But rut won't be because you've got to answer. To get your profile up, you have to do a flash app based session of meat eat or trivia and score a certain threshold to be on RUT. Then when you hook up on RUTT, you'll know that you're hooking up with someone who like has some idea what they're talking about. Well, there's one in that's kind of phill would not be able to eat, would not. I was gonna say, there's one in kind of the celebrity sphere called Ryan or they have administrators that have to like approve you, like are you famous enough? Are you looking out? So you could be the administrator for Rutt, you know you I would get too jealous, man, because I'd be like I'd be like, oh my god, this app is so good, I can't use it. Everyone in Bozeman pretty much claims to be an avid outdoorsman. Yeah, because that means anything nowadays. That means you go skiing down. It's like you go up to Disneyland. You go up to Disneyland up the road there and act like that's the outdoors. Uh, there's another knock on that was so far out there, I didn't even catch him, Like, I wonder what he's talking about Steve and I are in the same boat. I actually posted something like that on social media the other day and it got taken down. Instagram told me that it was hate speech, and I was like, I can't make fun of my fellow white people and their obsession with skiing. You got, yeah, good, Yeah, what did you say? It was like, I just landed in Bozeman. I was like, let me tell you about white people. White people fucking love sliding down snowy hills. They can't get enough of that ship. And they were like hate speech, Like that's great that their police in that. Man. Yeah. I was like, by the way, that was just like just so we're clear, I didn't make like that is true what I said, because when people bring up that, like if you're like a white male, you're supposed to like just take it now, you know. But I point out, but like, but I'm hearing from people that we always oppressed that it's that it sucked. So why like, if it sucks so bad and you agree that it sucks, why should I want to go Like you just told me it sucks. Yeah, So I feel like you're setting me up to not want to do it. You know. Yeah, so you guys are all real quiet. Now, I'm just saying that I'll take it. Send me a white person hate speech to what I've heard. I have heard that being stereotyped against is not good. Yeah, so yeah, I don't I don't like go out of my way to get it. Uh, and you one of our favorite individuals. Not yeah, I'd say one of our favorite individuals. A pilot in Alaska that I've been recently in contact with that is going to take Jordan Budneye caribou hunting in August. When I caught up to him, he was on a family ski vacation and Girdwood, Alaska, and Steve and I were text and I said, yeah, we're gonna go cariboo hunting. He said, love that guy, man, it's a real great guy. I said, yeah, Avid skier too. He replied, bullshit. I said, no, he was on a ski vacation. He's like, well, I thought he was cool. Uh. You know, I don't know if I want to get into this right now. You can't give away the secrets are rut just yet. That's how you're gonna The other thing is you got to have a vailed hunting license to join nice doesn't matter what state though, Yeah, could you have tears of that? Like if you have five states, you really are in this group? He got those superstars. Yeah, question to everyone's profiles real quick, just to return. I know that people are probably real sticking about. But what's the app for celebrities? Rya. That's how that's how celebrities find each other is on an app some of them. Yeah, I think you need to. I think you just need to talk their agents hook him up. Yeah, So like you'd go on there and there would be like I don't know, name of celebrity. I don't know, Steve Ronella. You could probably get on. Ryan didn't say you had to be an A list. You could be a C, maybe even a D. Who knows. Do you guys ever play that bar game big Buck Hunter? Oh yeah no, but you know what I'm talking about, ongoing dispute with my kids. Anyways, you know, it's like you get enough matches and then it's like you're a Hunter hero. My buddy Jimmy Dorn used to have a pizza place in Seattle and said, I feel like I've told the story how meaning Jimmy Dorn Matt Anyhow, he had Buck Hunter in that pizza place, and we'd go in there and you'd get my kids a role Old Quarters and I was like, dude, don't let him play that game. Man, they just be in there playing that game. He's just you just think it was funny. Upset me. It kind of goes back to how you say, when you're at a wedding, you always just kind of scope out the guy. That's like, I'm gonna find the hunter and I'm gonna talk to him for a while. I think Ry is sort of that, because you know, when when your celebrity, I assume you just get a lot of very like inauthentic conversations and interactions of people just trying to sidle up to yet or you know, kiss your ass. So I think Ryan is a kind of way. It's like an agreement like I'm sort of famous, you're sort of famous. Let's get together and do whatever we want it. Uh, moving on here, here's uh, here's an interesting thing. So we're a little late on this because it's already happened Colorado Parks Wildlife. This is an interesting issue because this comes up in this This comes up in a lot of states and will continue to come up in a lot of states. So feller named Trevor is with a nonprofit advocacy and restoration group called Grasslands Unlimited. They they submitted a petition the Colorado Parks and wild Life seeking the legal reclassification of bison that cross from Utah into Colorado. Here's what that means. Well, let me read the rest of his thing, and he such animals right now are regarded as livestock and are not protected by Colorado Parks and Wildlife regulations, mean they get shot almost immediately. Reclassification would protect the animals, allow them not only safety once in Colorado, but also potentially an opportunity to repopulate their historic range throughout Colorado and perhaps even expand fair chase, free range bison hunting opportunities. He's the president of grass and Grasslands on liar, Let me unpack this from it. Every animal there, every native land mammal in this country, can move from state to state and still be wildlife. If a wolverine cross the state lines, it's wildlife. Elk, moose, wolf, grizzy bear, black bear. It can move across geopolitical boundaries and still would be Like everybody would agree, it's wildlife. Somehow I get into this a bit in my Buffalo book. Somehow it came to be that not Buffalo. I think it was because at one time they were so whittled down and the only ones that were left, you know, we had like a hunter of them. We're in captivity or or like closely guarded that people like instantly got used to them all being in one place in offense and they've never been welcomed back on the landscape. But there was a time when New Mexico had zero elk, Like elk were extrapated from New Mexico. Right right, there's elk New Mexico. Now if elk crosses from Arizona to New Mexico, he doesn't cease being an elk. So it's just a weird hiccup. And while life law what they're so, what this would mean is you could have a you could have a wild herd. Um Well, you know this, this happens. It has all over the in place for a long time. Bison leaving Yelsa National Park, they would step into Montana and immediately they would become the property of the Livestock Department of Livestock. So here you have some free roaming ones in Utah. But once they crawl, once they crossed into Colorado, Colorado doesn't have the capacity to manage their not the capacity. They're not legally able to manage them as wildlife, so they fall into like arrant livestock. Um. I think they should do away with all that stuff. Man, it's real contentious. Do they become the property of the landowner where they're occupying their land? If they would be like the same way as if a donkey showed up on your land. That happens all the time. Yeah, it's a weird deal. Like you could have I made his point for it, Like you could have elk go from Yellowsto National Park into national on one day and he could he could feasibly do this quite easily, go from they also National Park into onto municipal property and say gardener onto a dude's land, and gardner onto National Forest onto a state section onto a fish wildlife from park river access site and throughout the day that and then and then into Wyoming. That'd be hard. Let's just say, uh, that's some bitual a elk all day long. He was a wild elk all day long. But we don't we it's like for buffalo, we don't have it. So if that so if like all the buffalo that are you know, outside of like the t tons worked their way across into Idaho or something like that, their livestock in Idaho. I don't know how live. I don't know how Idaho runs it. I'm not sure what they do. Yeah, but I think it has anything at all to do it that they were not that they're not like pure blooded or whatever. There's a lot of like, there's a lot of like argument, there's a lot of insincere arguments that get thrown into it. So here, for a long time, it was that bison were given a Eurasian livestock disease called brucellosis. Okay, so cattle gave brucellosis to bison. Um. Bison of often are often gunned down on even on public land, under the auspice, under the idea that they're gonna spread, they're gonna transmit brucellosis, and so the state has If a state has brucellosis free status, they don't have to test for brucellosis in cattle. But once there's a brucellosis infection in a state, in some corner of the state. The whole damn state has to go back to brucellosis testing. That all sounds perfectly reasonable, except there's a wrinkle in it. The alcohol have brucellosis and they move wherever they want, and elk intermingle with cattle. It's just like a weirdo. Brucellois causes halfers to abort the fetus, so like, but elk have it, and no one ever suggested that they gunned down every elk across the state lines because it's carrying brucellosis. So there's that. There's like the they're dangerous to you know, they'll now and then kill something. They'll kill a horse or whatever. They go through fences, which is legit. They just walk through fences, and that pisces people off. And the eat grass and that pisces people off. Like those are the legitimate ones. But people are often like acting like it's something else that they're mad about. Got them. Um, if I had to, like, if I had to do the uh, if I had to crystal ball it, I would crystal ball that. In twenty years they have they have greater acceptance. Here's my prediction, Like, if I got to do a time capsule. I would put a note in the time capsule that said, there are more bison and you're hunting them more often. I would put that into a time castle. Shouldn't I mean color out of his addressing this right now? But do you see it being addressed on a federal level in the future they became the National Mammal But no, I don't. I think it's gonna be state by state, And there's a lot of like it's all really you know, the here in this state, there's a lot of conversation about trying to restore a free roaming herd in the Charles M. Russell in the CMR right and the refuge uh a lot of people that really pisces off a lot of people for the reason of the fencing and grass competition, and people are looking, well, I lease some of that and I run my cattle on it. And now you want to put like, now you're hoping to have like eight nine thousand bison running around on what's that kind of mean for my long term the long term viability my grazing program. And so then you get people who are just like, I don't like that because it just sounds like something different and I'm doing good under the current system. But my yeah, my time capsule is that you'll be hunting, you'll have more opportunities to draw bison tags in the future, and it will be more likely that you live in a state where the state regards them as wildlife and not live stock. I wonder if somewhere like Texas, where you know, even Elker considered exotics, Like, I wonder if you end up with bison there, if they're going to become this non native and be you know, hunt hunted under a an exotic tag where you can just hunt them year around, no bag limit, all that kind of stuff. I'd like, know what tech how Texas handles it. The helps thing in Texas is crazy to me. Then you're talking about a native animal and you're damned you're talking about a native animal with with bison. But I would be shocked if Texas regards bisons livestock, regards bison as wildlife. Yeah, even though some of the biggest you know, some of the big hide hunters, the some of the biggest hide hunter slaughters around the Texas Panhandle. I mean right now, Texas claims them as an exotic. They do because they'll have them on like these big gas hunting ranches, and you know they're they're fair game, just like anything else is. You don't have to have a specific tag form. You just have your general hunting license. Uh, and that's it. You can. What's what I find unfortunate about that is it was some players down in the Texas Panhandle that were most instrumental in saving them from extinction. Yeah mhm, here's the irony of it. Yeah, yeah, Buffalo, this dude, Buffalo Jones and then like what's that that property like the good Night Yeah, the good Night Ranch. He was real instrumental in it. So they have kind of have this legacy of you know, these reformed hide hunters trying to save them, and it seems like you would honor that legacy with like regarding them as native wildlife. Here's a here's the elk article out of Utah. That's interesting. Um. I mean it kind of tells people what they already know that when it's elk season, elk leave public land and go on to private land. Yes, true story. It's like one of those articles where you're like, you know, yeah, but it but it does put it and put some numbers around it. In the Journal of Wildlife Management UM in Utah, Okay elk reduced by the middle of Right, by the middle of firearm season, elk had reduced their use of public lands by on the private land UM. The herd returned to public land almost immediately after the season ended, like they know. This is based on the patterns of four elk with tracking collars in the Wahsatch range. Am I saying that right yunni mhm, the collars are paying every thirteen hours. One of my said at twelve maybe that maybe that actually hour saves a lot of battery. I would have felt like, I don't know, man, interestingly, because out of set it for noon and midnight. Yeah. I was talking to Garrett Long's dad the other day and uh, he was out hunting late season cows, which you can only hunt on private land in Montana. I mean, there's a few units that have public land late season cow hunts, but these that go like well into February mostly on private land, and they were dealing with the exact opposite. He's like, I've hunted this spot during rifle season and those damn milk are always on the public now, or they're always on the private. I have access to the public now, and the elk were like literally three days in a row hanging out like fifty undred yards on the onto the public land and not on the private where they could. They're smart, man, my old man, you taught about like they used to hunt geese back when there weren't like any geese um in the fifties. They'd hunt geese in southern Illinois, and they hunt on these refuges that you couldn't Uh, this is probably still something this way you can only shoot till noon, yeah, or whatever the hell was still that way. Yeah, he said that. Man, he says, at noon, you're packing up your stuff and they're pouring in. It was so like what they would normally do at a different time. Data was pouring in as you're picking yourself up. When I was down in Arkansas with Clay this January, we're hunting public big famous public area that closes at noon, and at like to a t at twelve oh one, the refuge all up in the air pouring into the public timber like tens of thousands of ducks at twelve oh one. Are like, okay, now it's time to go to the timber. Because the hunters are gone. It's unbelievable. Um, as we talked about that you have banded birds that are like seventeen eighteen years old. It gives him a couple of years to put it together. Well, you got to think that they do, you know. That was the thing that was interesting to me about these elk the day after season moving back onto it. You almost wonder if that becomes ingrained in them, that they do understand the dates to some level. Or is it because they're like aware there's not pressure there today because that there's no human activity there today, or is it because they've learned the season dates by two weeks and they would wait until the trucks leave. Yeah, I think there's like indicators. Man. That's one of my favorite during stories is when he killed the standard? Did uh he took his skids to you or something there? I don't know what he took. And the standard is a giant, biggest ever killed on the Durn farm, but I don't know that. Yeah, he saw an area and when he went in there, he took his tractor in there and left his tractor running while he hung his sign, you know, or while he hung his staying because he's like he just didn't want to do any little like thing where they're like ship, that's a weird truck. Yeah, I think that's a true Like we see that on my hunting property in Georgia, that they have a completely different reaction to the sound of your truck than they do to even like you know, you're like side by side, like the sound of the engine, like snow, completely different reactions. Snuggy is hardly bad night at a truck driving by. But if that truck slows down there gone quick, you see like that, Like I don't mind cars that are moving real fast. Yeah, they tend to have something hanging out the window. Joy Today by Maggie Hudlow very on You're not up yet. I'm just telling it. I'm just doing interductions. Kevin Gillaspie, uh pills here, Karan Sean Weaver in the flesh yep. Hey, do you know how many um I should ask you this question? Canada goose You know that Parker company? How many geese have to go into one of those jackets. I've been trying to figure that out. There's a there's a company in California doing hunter sourced down which is really cool. But because part of what miss me about Canada geese is a goose or whatever the park is. I guess Anderson Cooper has one of these damn things. What are they called Canada goose? They made this big thing out of how they're not putting real kyote for on the there's stuff like this year they're phasing out all for And I asked a buddy of mine who's a furrier, I said, how many how many fur how many fur roughs could Canada goose get off one coyote? He said three to five. But the best I can tell, there's twelve damn geese inside the jacket. It's it's probably even more than that. It's probably even And now I spent some time on it, and I put someone else on the question and she's like, man, it's really hard to figure out the answer. But I think about a dozen. So you got a dozen dead things in your coat in a fifth of a dead thing on the outside of your coat. Yeah, And they're getting rid of the dead thing on the outside of the coat. I need to I'm gonna call up that. I feel like the guys that like next time, next time I come on, I'll have that. I'm going to call that company in California because that's an interesting question. They're doing it with. So they've got all those refuges down in the valley out there, and hunters when they're done with their birds, they offer a plucking service. So they kind of have a cool double dip going on where uh, where hunters can bring the birds to them to get plucked. They charge them for the plug, but then they also get to keep the feathers. And yeah, they make pillows and yeah, my old man did a sleeping bag with his own feathers. But he said it was a pain in the ass. Oh yeah, he had bags and bags and bags them. Then they had like shampoo them. Yeah, they have to get rid of the big feathers, right and just try to keep the down. Yeah, he didn't suggest that he had trash bags full of feathers while he's trying to would like my own coat down at harvested myself. You know what else he did, man, And I don't know what happened to it. He had a he had remember like in the seventies, he'd wear like a business coat made out of leather with like a belt on it, and ship he had he had his own he saved all of his own deerskins and had his own buckskin business coat. That's pretty cool. Yeah, died black. That seems like I was like, that's a strong Yeah, you like a mega pimp because even got like the belt. But that's not you wouldn't be able to run around now. It would have a lot more personality than I have. You don't still have this jacket. I gotta find I don't know what happened to it last time I was home. I was trying to find. That would be awesome. Um, guy rode in with c w D, Like, this guy's interested in brainton. It's a really good segue there. I'm surprised that. Oh yeah, speaking of that buckskin jack, it's good to have it back. County is uh so Chronic wasting disease right concentrates in the nervous systems of animals, spine brain. He's like, man, what about brain tan? And are you are you worried about I don't, I mean, I don't brain tan. But he's saying should a feller be worried about brain tanon with c w D uh so prevalent in America's deer herds. Hmm, it's just kind of obvious heffle finger. I don't think it's obvious. I don't think so. If you said to me, let's say you sat me down, you put a gun to my head, okay, okay, and you said listen, sonny, everyone little finger stuck out. You said you either eat that c w D infected dear meat or brain tan his hide. I would put my latex gloves on and brain tan that hide ten times over, ten times over. Hm. I'm imagining this person with the gun in that buckskin. I'm sure that's what this is all about. I want to understand why you think that way though, because you're directly handling the nervousness because I'm not ingesting them, and I got my latex gloves on and I'm not ingesting them, okay. And I'll put like a like a you know, like when you have a little kid and they have a passive fire and it's got that lip guard around it. I'll put one of those in, okay, to prevent stuff from getting in around my lips, looking super pimp. And I'll put mask laying around these days because I was one. What I was gonna do with a what I was gonna do with all my COVID man. So instead, Steve's immediately like, I need to go into those A don't like rave pacifier so that I can brains hand. I forgot about masks. I forgot. How sure your memory is forgot? It is like, what are people gonna do with those masks? I think it'd be sweet to make a goose down quilt on all your COVID masks, like so the little things together, old school Appalachian style, our goose season in two. Let me tell you so. So During points out that he don't eat deer meat that is cw positively Okay, helfle finger Crane brought it to hefflefinger. Helfle finger, James Helflefinger. Do we still have that helflefinger song? Uh? He says he wouldn't do it if it was positive or if it was untested. But if you had the deer and it was tested negative, which is do anything like if you have testing available to you, I don't care if you decided to eat it. I should say, I don't care. Even if you don't care, and they're going to eat c w D positive meat, And I'll point out no human has caught anything from deer yet. Yeah, people have eaten hundreds of thousands of pounds have infected deer meat and no one's gotten it yet. So if you're like, Wow, what are the chances I'll be the first and you're eating it? I would still encourage you to get it tested just so they can use it for Like, getting it tested doesn't mean that you're gonna pitch it, just getting it just so they can track infection rates. Yeah, which is a great segue into the next talking point, c w D mapping info or did I say that halfle Finger says if he got it tested and it was negative, he would brain Tan with it. I mean that's what I meant by the common sense part. Right. So we're harkinging back here to episode three oh seven talking about things that are not sexy to talk about. Um, and someone was mentioning how there should be a c w D, a single database where you can see all CWD stuff. I'm sure it's gotta be a million of them. I don't know. Uh. Matt Dunfie of the Wildlife Management Institute, who's been working on the software behind www dot c w D dash info dot org went public the other week. They don't mean like Public on Wall Street made available to the public the other week. Um hefflefinger. I don't if you don't play that thing all over again, Phil, why not? He says, It's long been the best source of c w D info. These new apps and maps on the website allow you to visualize a lot of great c e D information in a useful way. When there's a new state define c w D, it shows up here within twenty four hours or so. So it's good to have the site bookmarked. That's interesting, all right. If you live in Wisconsin, Um, you and you're looking forward to your tax return this year? How's that? That was like being out like a nightly news program Wisconsin. He's looking forward to their tax return sitting next to Jimmy fallon first might you might get an extra ten bucks if you got a wolf fee because those sons of bitches uh put wolves in the lower forty eight. They put them back on the E s A list. It's just unbelievable outside of the Northern Rockies, unbelievable that they would have done this, but they did it. You just can't win, man. In the political climate today, everybody's scroozy in some way or another. So, Wisconsin has a gift back every raise the application fee. So if you live in Wisconsin, you applied for fall wolf harvest permit or preference point, watch the mail because your ten boxes coming back to you and you get they'll restore all your wolf preference points. So when this gets sorted out and they get so that's sweet. Yeah, that's the whole preference points. When they get it sorted out, you'll still have your preference points. Yeahs. I hate to be that guy, but I'd love to know how many I'd love to know this change, Like how much money has to be spent in all this to refund everybody there? Exactly? That's what I was thinking. I was like, how much the ten bucks are we spending to refund ten months? Like yeah, exactly, and state they're gonna literally mail you a ten dollar chip like which then you'll be like, oh, that's great, thanks, And I'm that guy who has to physically get to the bank and be like I'd look to cash my ten dollar chip please. Who just who wrote on this document? Who who put that more titillating headline up there? Krens like, spin doctor, dude, there's an article because the study this surprises ship out of me. Meat consumption is positively associated with life expectancy, to which Crin's headline is vegetarianism might shorten your lifespan. It's like, in other words, this surprised me because all you ever do is read about all that stuff is killing you. Even though people I know, it's just like it gets a little complicated. People I know who are most like the people I know who are um like most strong, you know, like physically strong. I mean yeah, just like people that are like do crazy shit, eat burgers and stuff. But it's always like they're always telling you how bad it is. A team of scientists from Australia, Italy, Poland and Switzerland so a good Mix examine the association between meat intake and life expectancy at a population level. Based on ecological data published by the United Nations Agencies, it is estimated that twenty of human life expectancy is determined by genetic factors and is determined by environmental factors over the last fifty years. Although the associations between meat eating and illness are circumstantial and controversial, to some extent, they have prompted the spread of vegetarianism and veganism based on the exxumption that non meat diets provide more health benefits and diets that include meat. Um, if you do yourself favor and read Son of the Morning Star, okay uh. He talks about what happened at the Battle of Little Big Horn, and uh compared to the cavalry soldiers, the euro American, like the white cavalry soldiers, just in the diet they were on when they came up against these people who lived off bison meat. Um, they were astounded, like the Sue, the Agoal and Papa Su and the Northern Cheyenne. He describes those people going through the cavalry soldiers like a wolf through sheep. I mean there's huge there's a fighting people. Yeah. I mean there's a ton of information out there that you know, various aspects of uh, you know, a balanced quote unquote diet like grains for example, like that they have huge health related issues. So it's like all of these arguments, there's a counter argument for every single one of them, and some scientists has signed his name to the bottom of it. So Yanni might Yanni goes to my doctor, doctor. I appreciate everybody in our company's gonna go the same doctor. It's gonna be people. She took. Tell tell everybody what she told you. Yanni, you just overall everything. Oh just yeah that you know for forty year old, uh four year old white dud, a banner of health. So yeah, I saw Yanni eating eating uh liver, patte and bread. But he like laid down a very generous layer of butter. Yeah below primate. And he said, hey, man, I got it straight from the high end doctor. You're a doctor, my doctor that I can just do what I'm doing because I'm kicking he uh. It goes on to say. Moreover, it has been argued that vegetarianism and veganism form a part of trendy Western consumers lifestyles only accessible to privileged white people. Vegetarian has been prevalent in Western countries has been subject to prejudice, low self what's this all now? Vegetarian is that has been prevalent in Western countries has been subject to prejudice, low self esteem, and low psychological adjustment. I have no idea. I think we just needed I got tripped up on that one too, but I do think the next paragraph is worth saying that I got a lot of the studies that have been done that come out with the results that vegetarians, vegetarian lifestyle and diet is good for you, that they um, there's a lack of population representativeness and a failure to remove the influence of lifestyle in these studies. It's like when you see a statistic. I've ever seen a statistic that pet ownership makes you live longer, and I'd be like, well, pet ownership is associated with with being stationary and financially well off. That's like my click baby title. I'm like, exactly what was against in terms of science journalists, Yeah, it's a great title. It's like, uh, mansions are associated with long life. You know, these guys examine the overall health effects of of total me consumption in a hundred and seventy five countries. They did their they did their work. Yeah, that that's a that's pretty exhaustive. And I think that comments about that gets around the socioeconomic thing like if you're in a lot of meat, you probably have you probably have expendable income, and you probably seek healthcare or yeah, you're more likely to have money for healthcare. Yeah, theoretically, but by that same token, what they're saying, is that in sort of Western society, especially if you consider the United States, like like a vegetarian diet can be very cost prohibitive because like the vegans, because that's what I mean like that, and so I get the whole like low self esteem, all that kind of stuff. I think they're just making social commentary on the idea that it comes. It's just another form of elitism that that people want to try to do it, but then it escapes them because they don't quite have the right They don't live in the right town, they don't have enough money, they can't shop at the grocery store that the you know that's banging that drum like they can't because then it just drives people to all the other stuff, like I can't I can't just see regular spinach. I gotta buy this spinach instead, Like I just I think it's a slippery slope. It's kind of a big broadbrush stroke to say that, But I also understand that in our current society, advocating for vegetarianism also comes with a pretty like loud um. You know, what's what's the term that they use, like um that you're basically patting yourself on the back for it too, you know, and condemning everything else. Yeah, not to get too far into the weeds, but that's always been one of the things I like to talk about and bring up when when people are against, you know, everyone using meat as their source of protein, it's like, well, some places that's their only course of protein, right, Like they don't have access to you know, most of the world, well most of the world needs go right, Like they don't have access to There's there's a lot of misconceptions about the idea that we can just convert range land into farm land, you know, Like that's a whole other conversation that everybody thinks, like why don't we just plant vegetables there instead of cattle? Like you can't plant anything there, it's just a bunch of fucking rocks. Like the only thing that can be there cattle like that, When they point out the inefficiencies of live stuff, it's like it's just it's I don't know, it's a wasted argument, and I think it's unfortunately now instead of it being an argument that's based purely on, you know, what's best for the environment or what's best for you health wise, now we've all like treaded into this world of what's best for your ability to sort of um commend yourself for doing the right thing all the time, like well, And I think it's also important to note that it's like, I don't think this study saying, you know, like these folks aren't eating. They're not eating sausage for breakfast, a hamburger for launch ake for dinner. You know. I think like optimal health is like an omnivore kind of way of eating. It's like eating balanced and eating like intelligently eating like what you have available. Like you said, some people eat goat, some people eat whatever they have. I think a lot of media is like feeding you this idea that like you're a good person if you're a vegan, and if you eat, you're a bad person. And I think it's important to have studies like this that are like, hey, you know, eating meat is healthy, Like having a diverse like plate is healthy. And I think I think that's kind of like a big takeaway is that like eating vegan is not gonna Eating vegetarian is not going to prolong your life anymore than than eating meat. You remember that guy we had on the claim that the only thing. He ate meat. I wonder it is like nose head to what is it head to tail? No? Yeah, like ate like ligaments. And he says that he doesn't need anything, but was itish fish value happiness? I love fried meat. That was his claim. He said, right where you're sitting right now, untild and laid out the claim anyway, And he was going on Instagram. He was pointing out that, uh, when they see these things like the consumption of meat being associated with all this and that heart disease and all that, he's like, well, that's not the meats fault. It's like how you go about it. Yeah, are you going to McDonald's right getting like the like triple cheeseburger, large fry and a milkshake. So then when someone comes and looks at the fact that like how often you're eating that diet and then they find those things, it's not untangling they're not. He pointed to number studies said it doesn't do a good job of untangling all these other like lifestyle choices and ancillary dietary choices by people who are eating meat with high frequency eat meaning like the breakfast sausage, burger, steak, fries, cream, spinach, crowd um, and that if you were just eating like boiled squirrel, you might not have the same right, Well, I mean that's yeah exactly. It's like not all meat is created equal, like nutritionally speaking, like the various species are completely different. And even then when you get to the difference between um, just kind of modern practices of raising animals from meat consumption. Nutritionally, they're very different today than they were even fifty six seventy years ago because of consumer demand for particular texture, particular flavor, particular tenderness, all these kind of things, and what goes along with that is an adjusted sort of nutritional value, you know, some some positively and some negatively speaking of fast food. Uh, Max Hm, Shawn's tight tight colleague. He the other day it was eating um. He was taking his wild turkey tenders and making an exact replica. Oh, what's that restaurant you He went to that one time for the first time, the famous chicken place, Chick fil A. He made. He makes an exact Chick fil A replica. They probably brine it and went like pickle juice or crack or something. Time. Yeah, yeah, he does, he makes. But he had he had his own bottle, and he like somehow came into a bottle of Chick fil A, like signature Chick fil A sauce everything else he's making himself. And then he dumped the Chick fil A s I watched meat two him. The some bitch never even said something like, hey, you want to bite? I was to me, to Megan, and the whole time he's eating I'm asking him a questions about it and stuff finished him, licked his fingers, fingers back upstairs, read the office lunch room area, out the room and give you the middle fingers, sumptuously licked his middle finger and walked away. Yeah, but that's because he looked at your like socio economic place in the world, and he thought, he's like, I know what that dude's freezer looks like there's fifteen species in there. We need to We're gonna buy the what is it, actually, Warner Bruntler. What is it Warner Brattler, Yeah, Warner bratt We're gonna buy a Warner bro If so, if you work at the place that makes the Warner Bratler Sheer Force test, this is a wonderful integration marketing opportunity for you. If not, we're gonna buy our own. We're gonna buy our own sheer Force tests, and we'll start right here. We'll just start testing everything. Start with this table. I'm starting with a marshmallow. Yeah, there you go. Just to calibrate. I'm gonna do a marshmallow. Then we're gonna do hunk of adad shoulder, and then we'll explore every game meat in between. Yeah, that's a pretty wide gamut, I would say between the two of this. Dude, I can't all right, I don't know if I don't know if you did the marshmallow, the electric griddle is just gonna melt the marshmallow. No, just punch it without cooking it, Okay, I got you. Just for uniformity when they do it. Yeah, they put like these they put like a digital thermometer in a piece of meat. They don't season or anything, and you cook the piece of meat to like whatever you're testing, so you get all the one thirty whatever the hell. Just just make up your mind what you want it to be, and then punch it. We can punch raw too, we should punch cooked, punch cut completely. But the marshmallow just to be like for instance, everybody knows what the marshmallows like, and we'll hit it with the machine and it'll get like a five, probably probably a one. Get a one, like okay, there's a one. And then we'll do like your hand, we'll do cheat loaf bread that's even more tender than a marshmallow, like white bread. A little chunk out of the fatty A little chunk out of the fatty part of your hand, for instance, within within meat right within, eat the white tailed dope backstrap. Yeah, most likely everybody will agree that, yes, this is tender. Also, we gotta get it to a uniform thickness. Can can you make sure it's got a user's manual when I've got it like an owners right here? This is right, This is like right in my wheelhouse, like maybe in Manhattan, Kansas. Contact. I believe everything I hear out of cans. Alright, alright, so we'll get that take it. You'll hear more. You'll hear more about this test, because this is gonna be this is gonna be a return. Oh uh, get some lab coats. Yeah, yeah, we probably need badges too. That way we look, you know, like we're serious. Yeah, can we can? We just can we go with some salt and pepper so that we can eat it after you get some salt and pepper too. We gotta be yeah, we gotta be careful with the salt and pepper because it will adjust the tenderness. Well, season, we'll season well season, We'll tell Okay, you test slice season just a little, yes, all that. The main thing is the test. Though, this is getting serious. No, I got the guys need a really good digital scale because we want to have each of these pieces scaled to the same size and already have a good well no, it's you got a caliber, but I have a good caliber. I got a digital caliber. We can even do it metrics and then it will seem like really serious. Yeah, well, of course it's science, you know, like you know, yeah, away, I always like like, I'm like I'll buy that, Like I don't know two miles. I'm like, Okay, I'm like, damn, some buch Merry measured it in preparation from my home to Latvia. I'm now shooting all my critters in meters. Hey, speaking of me, can I give Kevin my meat so we can get this cooler off the table. Let's let's try. Let's try but with a different lead in perfect you perfectly right there. I like it. So that's a yeah, what's in the cooler? A little something for Kevin secret? I can't tell you. It's actually to a wild turkey Chick fil A Sandwiches. There is wild turkey, Maggie Smith asked me to. She reached out on email. So Kevin needs a wild turkey breast, and man, I gotta say I hesitated when I saw that. That's everybody there, but that's my favorite. So you understand what a big ask that is. I can return it, just I need like another month, Like our season isn't open yet, we don't have a spring and fall season. We just don't need to return it. You're just you're lucky that not only I a good turkey hunter, but my wife is getting to be pretty good too, And so we've got like we're stat were we always get really close to double digits in in the freezer, and there was enough sitting in there where I felt like I could, you know, I want to hear at a different time. I want to hear more about the experiment of whether raising these turkeys has made you a better turkey hunter. Like we talked about dude, everybody in the house, everybody at my house right now, I could call it turkey turkey, I mean, because those are galable, because I haven't gotten to that yet, because the major pitfall with having birds around the house is that if you let them run around, there's a bird, whether it's chickens or turkey ship everywhere, and the turkeys are much more. It's an insidious dropping too. Yeah, like you don't know it's there, but yeah, and you think that just like, oh, you just take the hose to it, but it doesn't just like disappear at the hose. It always leaves like a little mark and you gotta deck brush it, you know. So they've been kind of locked up. But even then, when you walk out of our house, they're right there looking at forty yards away. And every time you walk out there like and so what do you do? You go right back at him, and it's like everybody does it without even thinking about it. My kids walk out the door, the turkeys go and they're like, I haven't called my wife, dude it this morning. I'm in the house like getting ready to the kids out, and she ran out to do something. I can hear out there. So yes, I think it's even though we haven't like actually played with calls and the turkeys yet and like trying to call him across the yard or anything. I feel that people are listening to cadence tempo, pitch um, you know, number of notes that they're doing, so it's helping. We had an episode long ago. I think the episode was called The Bronze Back and the Whiffleball Bat, and it was about this guy, guys U Buddy bars Um. He grew up with turkeys and he used to be a competition turkey caller. Natural what they call it, like no call right natural boys? Boy? Oh yeah, just voice calling. Yeah. When he was a kid, he had turkeys and he would hide with that whiffleball bat. We wait, Well, that came about because the tom, that tom became too easy to call in, so he would Yeah, so he would call that time in and hit it with a bat would become so the time would become like less likely to want to come in, and so he was he was like making like a high pressure tom. This guy is a good calling dude. This dude out sircule hunt with him one time. Man, we get up on this. We're in this danse like like just you know, oak forest and it's real sandy soil. And we get up on his high spot in the middle of the day, right and he gets up there and sets to calling just soft you know, and um, nothing, nothing, nothing, but that dude just knew, like he knew that he would get an answer, and he eventually just like squeezed it out of a turkey. He went to add it way longer than if you're just doing like a sound check. He's so kind, he's like, he's like, you know, just give me a minute or whatever. I don't know. Six seven minutes into it, you can hear some turkeys. This turkey out was like, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna answer. I'm not gonna answer. I'm not gonna answer. I'm not gonna answer. I like, but you just couldn't hold it in. Man, that's great guy. Hey, do you already have plans for that turkey breast? We do, Yeah, we're gonna do well. So we had we were gonna do two different dishes with it, but we're gonna see if we have enough. So one is called a gone Schnitzel, like it's a German dish. And then the other is because Maggie Um, not Maggie Hudlo, Maggie Smith is filming these Marge March. Yeah, Marge, and I wanted to kind of give her a Midwestern tribute. So we're doing turkey tetrazini like the old school mom dish. Nice. It's gonna be good, just done a little bit better. I like it, and that will be on an upcoming episode. So this one isn't for me to cooks. It's just sort of our you know, we do these like standing store videos. Mostly it started with just trying to help people decipher recipes. Like you you quickly learned that people can read a recipe all day long, but still not quite digested. And so even just a short video five minutes or less that kind of goes over some of the points that maybe you're foggy for. People like changes their success rate. And so what I've learned over the years is that people, um, if you make them more successful with the recipes that you're providing them, then they kind of we'll they'll come back a lot more, but they'll come back and look for other stuff. And so we've kind of exhausted our like top twenty five recipe lists. So now these are all brand new recipes and we're just you know, filming them for the for the sake of filming them. So we're gonna make sure everybody how to make a holiday ham out of Ferrell hog. Um, we're gonna do this this either the Schnitzel or the tetrazine. Let's back up, that holiday ham out of Ferrell hog. Yeah. So like not like three three inches of fat on that thumb, bitch, but like a fair completely like almost completely fat free. And you're doing like a wet Brian or dry wet Brian. Yep, yep, like a ten day wet Brian. It's what we use in my restaurants like to make them. Um, they come out awesome, man, They're really good every holidays. Yeah, not like a dry ham. No no, no, Like, um, you know where I'm from, Like there's the we call it city ham. I don't I don't know why that's the case, but the difference between country ham and sy ham. Um, so city ham, you know, like honey baked ham. Honestly, Like that's a yeah, yeah, it's from from some pigs that I killed last week or the week before. So I had my wife shipped them out here to me, so they should be. They're probably here right now, like they probably just got here. So I just got an email from a friend of mine who was a little torn up because she had gone. She doesn't really know much about hunting, but she's gone to Texas with some guys to go shoot pigs. Just ditched all those pigs, man. Man, It's she's kind of bumped because she wanted to keep somebody. No one even wanted to help her keep them. It's it's really bad. Actually, we we just finished filming the first episode of Sabre Tooth, of our new show, and pigs is like the species that we hunt in the beginning of it, and we talked about that a lot. Like there's a lot of I don't know, there's a lot of bad information out there about how they're not good to eat, which is couldn't be further from the truth. It's weird because you have on one hand, you have like award winning restaurants, right, you know, like like our mutual friend Jesse Griffiths, right right, he's running a damn restaurant, right, like gets all these like rave reviews. The dudes got like a he got did. Did he went a Beard Award for a book or something he did? I mean he's been nominated for his for his books off wild Pigs, right, But then you got some guy five you know, five feet away, Yeah, like restaurant. I mean, I literally, I mean I was listening to hunters say it to me the other weekend we were all hunting together. They're like, you don't want to eat that? And I'm like, I eat them all the time. I would rather eat them than white tailed deer. I mean personally, I think they're a hell of a lot more delicious than that. So, um, yeah, they make great stuff. We make tons of cool stuff out of it. So and it's just about understanding. And Jesse's newest book, he does an awesome job of breaking the hog book. The hog books the best in my opinion, It's the best single subject cookbook I've seen in the last decade. Like I don't have like the hog experience that you have. I mean, I have, like you know, here and there a handful of ones that I've dealt with, but I haven't dealt with like like you guys deal with like tons of them all time. So I can't say with you know, I can't be like a hog expert. But I mean, I can't imagine there's something out there that even remotely compares to that book, Not not at all. I mean it's it's seriously unbelievably well done, and that dude's developed like indisputable subject matter expertise where you really you probably can't. I mean, maybe somewhere it or someone that knows more. I don't know, man, I mean I text Jesse about it, like I've killed a ton of hogs and no how and no my. I mean, I wrote a book on pork, you know, a cookbook on it. But even I text Jesse sometimes with questions about just you know, I killed one that was really big, and I was curious because it did have a ton of fat, if we could scald it and you know, scrape the hair and actually keep the skin intact. Yeah, we tried that once, That's right. I can't remember we had in New Zealand. Were good? I thought we did with that hog we got in Florida. Remember we kept that big Yeah we scraped it right there. Oh yeah we made our own. Yeah we made cheat your own as well. Here's uh, yeah, you know what else we did down there? We made our own sausage casinges. Oh yeah, cool. That ain't easy. No, that's some work. We took all that hog got out. But that was the hell of a night that night. Indeed, you want to talk about a fight between some dogs and a raccoon. Yeah, a lot of things happened before the fight with the dog and the hog. I want to real quick just give a recap of that you skipped there. I've talked about this, I'm gonna talk. I'm gonna tell a real quick recap of this night. We're down turkey hunting, hunting for Osceola's you know, you still gotta get right, uh, and we ran into these guys. Is the guy that owned we're out of place where there's like a dude that least the turkey hunting rights on a place. But then the actual guy that owned the place, we run into him, and they're pouring up some big stiff drinks heading out, you know, like those uh when you go to like uh seven eleven big gold yeah, big gold size cocktails. And they're going out in a swamp buggy to go hunt pigs. And this guy's ranch, his cattle ranch, a butts uh preserve, um like a preserved debt. It was dedicated to a certain species of bird. I can't remember what, but the no hunting on the preserve um and where his where his place has been like historically grazed by cattle is like those hammocks you know. So it's like it's grab it's fly grassland with hammocks of like palmetto. And then you go to this fence where it goes from traditional cattle country to preserve. It's like the jungle starts. I mean, if you look one direction, you think here in one like state or country. At every look the art directual, you think you're in another country. This border of like cattle and and and he's got a fence, but he's got doors cut into the fence. So when he's fixing to go hog hunting, they open those doors for a couple of days and all the pigs invade his ranch. So the first step is to go and close all the doors. Then you turn the dogs loose and guess where the pigs get caught? Yep, oh man fence. Yeah, they had a dog get caught real bad by a pig. And I asked him, what is your vet think about you bringing in all these dogs that are caught up by pigs, and he said it's my favorite quotever. He said, you gotta get a vet who likes the hunt hogs. We lost. We lost a dog on this last hunt on the saber Tooth episode. We had one to get Gordon and went down fighting, died with his boots on. Yeah, it was pretty gnarly. It was a big It's the biggest hog I've ever killed on that property, Like right at four killed dog? What ye was? Everybody was? Everybody upset about the dog, imagine. Yeah. And it happened so fast, like I saw him get cut right as I like jumped onto the pig to stab him. But I didn't realize that he gotten hit that bad. So and he just bled out, M dude, I don't know what it is that maybe you can answer this since you've done so much more hog hunting. I just did, like I went. It was in Texas a couple of weeks ago, and didn't my first ever like real personal hog hunting, right, not watching Steve do it or watching someone else do it. And every time I'd see him at a hundred yards and be like, oh ship, that's a giant. Oh god, I'm looking at Chris the camera guy, like I think it's gotta be over a hundred for sure, And that's where we're looking at the plus or minus a hundred range. Yeah, and we're like, okay, sweet, let's forget about nil guy, let's go try to get on this hog. And like I get to seventy, I'm like, yeah, still pretty big. Get to fifty, I'm like getting a little bit smaller. And when I'm at like thirty yards, I'm like, man, that hunter pounder turned into like forty fifty again, Like why is it? Because it's about why does everybody think every bear is big? Correct? And why do they think every mountain lion is a two pound tom? Yeah, it's the it's the dimensionality of of hogs. Like even little hogs are shaped the same as big hogs for the most part. Short of like like this one that we killed here, I pulled up the photos. You could see it, like you can get a sense of how big it was. Um, but this one had a ton of Russian born and so it was those are born in the wild. Yeah, that's not one of those hogs zillas where they exactly no. But I mean, honestly, on our property, you'll see a lot of ones that are clearly feral to me sticated hogs and there it's pretty obvious they have a completely different shape, that's a different strain altogether. Remember that guy that turned up and he's got some eleven hunter pound wild hog and it's all over social media something like some too was like, hey, I just sold that guy that I know, the dude who sold in the hog. I was. Actually he's one of my buddies and we were hog hunting together and we were talking about that and he's like, I sold that guy the hog like the week before. In fact, he's like, here's a picture of it in my truck. Yeah. Yeah, this buddy of mine, um, he's the only person in Georgia who has a license for like live captive like Ferrell Hoggs like, and so he just sold that guy that pig. Hey, real quick, before we move on, we haven't mentioned all the things that happened at night. Oh okay, no, I they caught a pig that had they castraight. They caught a pig and castrated it and turned it back out, huh, which made the pig go from makes his mind off, he became a barred hog, and it takes his mind off ass and puts it on grass, as was explained to us. Then they caught another pig that they had castrated years gone by and kept that one m to eat. And we got to the pig and cleaned all of its intestines out and then inverted them and scraped them and made our own sausage cases. Was his labor intensive, and made our own cheech RNAs. When I was talking about Burnam, do you remember were you there in New Zealand when we had a We got a big ripper going and through the whole pig in there and then dumped into creek and scraped all of its hide off, all of its hair off. But I always talked about that episode, and I tell people that it is possible to film a whole meter episode in one day. No, you guys weren't. Maybe the hunting was done. What's up with the What's what's up with you being? Uh? Oh? Go ahead, Johnnie. I just was real quick, was gonna plug Jesse Griffiths one more time and say, if you're in Austin, definitely try to go to die due a yeah, and then if you're interested in the hog book. Go to the hogbook dot com. Yeah, and even if you're if you don't think you're interested in the hog Book, go buy it. It's unreal, Like it's so well done, and I mean this is coming from a professional chef like it is. I just think it's one of the most well written. Look right here, I'm on the front page. It says praise for the Hog Book easily one of the best cookbooks that I have seen in years, Chef Kevin Gillespie right there, he's not lying. I mean, I'm just I have multiple copies. I like give them out as gifts to people, Like I just bought like a case of them from Jesse And like anytime somebody's like I don't really know what to do with hogs, I'm like, hang tight, Like, just hand copy of this book. Phil, Are you going down to Texas with us? When we got down Texas pretty soon? We gotta get a reservation there? Have you told him? Have you gotten us a reservation? Yeah, let's talk to him. Um, so tell me about this whole uh semifinalists restaurant tour, restaurant tour. That's a hard word. Restaurant tour, restaurant tour um, the James Beard Foundation. So it's like the easiest way I can describe it is that it is the It's like the Academy Awards for the food and beverage hospitality industry. It's a really big deal. Um, I've been nominated. I think this is my tenth nomination. I'm like the Susan Lucci of of the James Beard Foundation. But you can't steal the deal. Now, I can't ever win. I just get nominated a ton, but like I mean, yeah, yeah, and I don't. I'm not like a really good loser, so I have a tendency when I don't win to show my ass pretty much immediately following that son um this year, I was very much not expecting this, to be honest with you, because the two most difficult ones to even be nominated for our Restaurateur and then another one called Outstanding Chef. Because there are a national awards, so it's not regionalized. It's like you gotta cut through a lot of chaft to like make it um. And I was just shocked. And I interestingly enough, I think that a letter that I wrote to the Foundation this year might have been the reason that I made the list. Because you're like, what gives I read a letter and just said, you say that you care about these particular things, like, well, they've they're very vocal about social justice and social aspects, and like restaurants having an obligation to improve, um, you know, in their hiring practices, all these things, you know. But then I don't feel like they reciprocate that with who they hand the awards out to. And so I wrote them a letter and said, you know, my restaurant group is owned like by a minority as well as myself, Like, we operate our own charity that that feeds five families a day in Atlanta. We dedicate almost half of our profits every year to that, Like and yet somehow, some way, like you seemingly overlook that kind of stuff, and then you give the awards out to people who six months from now end up having a New York Times article written about how they have this horrible culture inside their business. So like, you know, put your money where your mouth and so and also doing a little subter fee, doing a lot things you're not supposed to be doing. And I at the place we're talking about, and I was all night saying to my wife, like I just smell a fish. I smell a fish. I mean, it's just it's like so anyhow, I I just was maybe it was an inappropriate thing to do, but I felt compelled to do this, and so somehow, some way, I think maybe that, like I don't know, maybe that's what got me on the list, because I certainly was not expecting it by any more. Hopefully that, I mean, that's not your own goal, but hopefully that I mean, it's glad. I'm glad you got on there, but hopefully that helps in the future to get other people that are actually, you know, meant to be there, because I was, like, you know, especially that award, like what makes you an outstanding restaurateur is all about your culture and what you do as a company and how you support your team and all that kind of stuff. It doesn't this isn't like flash in the pan. It really should be an award that's given out to people who are making like a substantial difference in their localized food in beverage community, but are also like kind of setting the tone for what you would want people to do in the future. And it's really easy to talk about doing it, but I can tell you it's very hard and expensive to actually do it, and so you know, hopefully that encourages people to do that in the future. Congratulations, appreciate. Semifinalists are there, I don't know, maybe fifteen or something like that in the country, and then it'll go to five finalists week after next something like that. At two weeks. People should go out there. There should be a social media campaign. I wish it's that's the way it worked, Like how you do that kind of stuff with the oscars man for sure? Yeah, I would that be huge. I mean I don't I don't think anybody really understands how you like, who is who is shortening the list or even then once the list is shortened, because I've been a finalist a number of times in different categories, like why this person wins in this and these other folks don't, like, I have no idea how that works, to be honest with you. We've been nominated for those soun's bitches and went down to the ceremony and everything didn't win. Yeah, the last time, I was like, I wanted to come if I knew I wasn't to win. Literally, it's not a great story about me. But the last time I was there, I thought for sure I was gonna win. And when I did, you're sitting there like going over your notes for your speech and stuff. I don't know what I was really fucking. I was like antie a ship. And then when they announced somebody else's name, this is in such poor taste. I literally just stood up and said funck this and walked out and then got like black out drunk um off of all the free booze. So so yeah, that's good, Kevin Gillespie, Like high character story there, you know, very proud moment for my wife and my teammates. Yeah, I would think that they would then never award you anything. Well, I was pretty sure I was blacklisted for for some stuff like yeah, I mean, I'm definitely apologized. I was. I was just so wound up, like there's so much anxiety leading into it that like I just blew up for something. Man man uh speaking of restaurantses not't do the restaurant, Okay, I told I shared a story about my old man talking about these guys used to hang deer until they were coated in mold. This guy writes in and I must have said something like I don't know at least that's what my dad said. I wasn't there, And he wrote in to say like he wants to substantiate the story based on something that happened to him when he was worked at an avatar a country avatich is that you want a hell of an album is avatoires blues Nick cave um hell of an especially the second part. So they used to hang cattle twenty eight days humidity control, large coolers. You said they would grow mold. He said, the building was really old. The cows would start growing a gray mold similar to hair over the entire carcass. By day one it was thickly covering any area with protein or meat exposed from fat. And by day some cows had grown bad green mold as long as two inch strands. So two inch strands of mold. He goes on to say, this was This was a government inspected building in Ontario, all kinds of protocols. When they were working on stuff they had what was deemed the bad mold. The inspector would be there all day to watch them cut the beef. They had to have super hot water tanks that drip almost boiling water into stainless steel. Tanks. The tanks slowly drained between every cut. They required to sterilize the knife blade in the tank. When they're working on bad mold, they were required to cut from underneath towards out so as to not drag the mold into the meat um. When they're doing the not so bad mold, they trimmed off a considerable layer underneath to give more of a buffer. It was a very tender dry aged never had anybody get sick, never had any complaints. The coolers are eventually upgrade, but mold is really hard to avoid these old buildings because I think a lot of folks in the country eat moldy beef. It was common at every avatoire in that county that didn't have a building built newer. The I mean part of the process, the dry aging process is such that that mold is critical to it actually working. Like that's how it takes place. So like that that mold on the surfaces, it's not only is it not dangerous, it's actually like preventing it from being dangerous, Like it's like putting a jacket on it so that the meat that is you know, he points out that like it was it's in areas where the protein was exposed from the fat. The fat doesn't really grow it in a lot of ways, like it doesn't have the same effect on the on the fat component of it. Um. But that white mold is what it would be called. The gray that he's referring to is called white mold for UM. I won't go down the list of like its actual scientific names because it'll just confuse people. But that white mold is a very safe, very helpful It tells you that you're doing this at the right temp because it only grows at a very particular temp and only grows at a very particular humidity level. And that's inside that range of something that's very safe. Now, that green mold on that that stus dicey as ship and it's really not You've got to be really really careful with it. I'm I'm surprised that they were allowed to cut it out. He doesn't name the place. Yeah, I think that under most circumstances with modern like beef dry aging, that inspector that he's referring to will will reclaim that meat and it'll just get thrown away. Like they won't allow them to actually trim it off because that's the stuff that will make you really sick that you have to be really careful with. And so that technique that he's talking about makes perfect sense. That's really the only path out of that is that you've got to start somewhere underneath the white mold and then kind of get inside the animal and then kind of come back out and take off that whole chunk. And so you get huge amounts of meat loss in that scenaria. Now with wild game, though, it's completely different because there's really no no particular benefit to you dry aging something like a deer because and somebody, I'm sure somebody's gonna rite and be like, you're wrong, Kevin, I'm not talking about hanging an animal. I'm talking about dry aging an animal. Like without a lot of extra muscular and intramuscular fat, dry agings effects are pretty limited. Like the dry aging component breaks down natural enzymes in the meat that are present along the connection points of the protein and the fat, and so if there's not any fat, it doesn't really do the same thing, and you will end up with just tremendous loss. And so that's why really hanging a deer less than that twenty one days is probably your best bet, because what you do want is some evaporative um, you know, sort of loss of moisture, because that will um just the blood itself. Blood is very acidic and so the blood will break down the muscle protein, make it more tender, and it will concentrate its flavor because you're you're losing water. But if it shifts into that dry aging realm, you're probably not doing much to to tenderize it that much further, and you're running a really serious risk of just having a tremendous loss on that animal. When you got to butcher, uh, we had some stuff that had been dry age for eight some it was an odd dns dry j ten months, and it was we got into the shoulder and if you did that shoulder and cross section, the only thing that was left that the only thing that wasn't rind was the size of a walnut right like in diameter. It always sounds like the size of a white tail's tenderloin, like a hot dog, almost in the center, running through the center, and it was all rind. I imagine another six months the rind would have would have become rind. And you said it tasted like blue cheese tastes like because it was interesting. I wouldn't like eat it every night, but it was. It was it was like, wow, that's I thought. That white mold is the same mold that is growing on cave age. Jeesus, that's why they taste that way. I mean, it's the exact same stuff. And so um. You know, everybody has different opinions on how long you should take dry aging, you know, and it really is a matter of personal preference and taste. Um. The science behind it says that there's that the tenderizing effects of it stop at a certain point, and then from that point forward, you're really just aging for flavor's sake, Like do you want it to be much much stronger tasting? Um. But it is different with game species. It's different with everything. I mean we're talking about and when everybody's talking about drey aging and what he's talking about is cattle, and it's just a whole different ball game. You know that you can dry edge I mean we dry edged ducks in my restaurants, um, but it doesn't take very long to dry itch a duck, so you know, and that really is just too concentrate that UM. Pull some moisture out concentrate the density of the flesh. But we're really not tenderizing it. We're not leaving it long enough for that to happen. Have you ever heard of a contraption called a Warner Bruntler sheer force test? No, not at all. It's how they measure meat tenderness. Oh okay, And you take like you cut it to a certain thickness, and it's this machine that punches three centimeter diameter I think it's centimeter diameter holes through meat, and it measures resistance on the meat. I think that all this talk about all this like dry age in this and that and the other thing these days, what I want something it's a long study. What I want someone to do is I want someone to take a chunk helped meat, and I don't give a shot how long you age it, but take a chunk help me and hit it with a shear force test and then freeze a bunch of that right, and then six months later, hit it with a shear FORCET test. Hit it with a shear force test at twelve months, hit it with a shear FORCET test at eighteen twenty four. I can't keep doing twelves because I forget how it goes thirty six. Yep, there, um, I used to know all the way up to twelve times twelve. So yeah, then they don't teach you beyond that. That's why you're committed Earlier. Earlier, when you were like I would have chosen twelve instead of thirteen. That's the reason. We've just gotten to the root of it. So uh, because I feel like totally anecdotally, but so many other people agree that you get damn. My brother Danny, he runs his moose program. He runs his moose program where he's, oh, he starts eating a moose out a year. He's he's got his moose program and his freezer so that it's offset by a year. So if he kills a bowl in September one, he'll begin consuming that bowl September. He's offset for that reason. He's like, dude, you can't. It's like it just gets it's different when you put it's tender, then it's not tender when I put it in there. Yeah, there's I mean, what's what's taking places sort of twofold. So there's the other form of aging is wet aging, you know, and that's where you bag something, wrap something, and it's sitting in its own blood. And again blood is acidic, so it has its own tender rizing effects. But it's there anyway, that's what I understand. But there anyway, what happens is that freezing and then defrosting ruptures the cells, like ruptures the cell walls of the protein. And so it does have a natural tender rising offense. So if you really wanted to get it, after you unplug your fridge now and then, I mean, actually there's a method and it's okay, I can't believe I'm saying this on meat Eater, because it's a method for tofu, like to change the texture of tofu. And so you'll marinate it, freeze it, defrost it, freeze it defrost it frees it defrosted, and then everything everything. Note it actually does the exact it dns. It makes it much more dense, and after the sixth or seventh time, you end up with something that has the texture of a chicken breast or something like losing water. It's losing water and the in this case, since it's vegetable based, the rigid cell walls of the are actually are rupturing completely. You know, they're not as malleable as meat proteins. So I remember, ever, buddy Steve Jones rode in to tell us Steve Jones from Missouri believe because we're always talking about how like, oh, it doesn't make a difference if you you know thoughts of meat killer nams. But you're saying, well, it does because of what you just explained, where's breaking down the cell walls. So like if you let's just say you did that with a elk backstrap four times, do you think that that elk backstrap is gonna be better or worse for doing water? Yeah, it's gonna shut a lot of water. And so then you run into a risk of like you're you're into that territory of being really worried about freezer burn or almost freeze drying something because you're you know, that's the method of effectively freeze drying is that you're using. It will be dryer when you cook it could It could very well be. You gotta be careful with it, for sure. I want to back up on the hog thing. Maybe feel feel FIL's got time he can just go insert this back where it belongs. I understand, like guys are doing damage control and shooting all kinds of hawks. Totally get their shooting all kinds of hogs, and and they don't have the time or whatever, like they're doing like a job to like do harg control. I'm not saying that they're that you're like bad and not eat them. I just don't say you can't eat them. Correct, Right, Like you're shooting ship loads a hog because there's a hog infestation, You're not gonna then spend it's like eighty degrees out right, you know. It's like, of course, like I get it right, that's ontally gonna happen. But it doesn't mean you can't. And if someone wants one, I feel like you can't. You shouldn't tell them that you can't eat it. Ye. Yeah, because we're shooting two hundred of them. Nobody wants to clean that many of them. That's what it comes down to. I mean, at the end of the day. And don't get me wrong, they vary tremendously from this is clearly a domesticated bloodline that is now feral to this is a truly wild bloodline. Drastic difference in flavor, age, sex, all that kind of stuff, like changes it tremendously, and so I can understand though you know, you mentioned this about castrating the pig. Like one of the tricks that I'd always that I had learned like earlier in my life, is that if you do kill one of these big boares, if you can, if you can, like within the first five minutes of having killed it, cut its nuts off, the meat is significantly better tasting. Really yeah. So and I'm like, I don't even know how that's possible, Like it's heart's not beating anymore, but it seems to make a difference. You know, maybe it's a placebo, but I don't think so. I think it makes a pretty drastic difference in the end flavor of it. So um. Yeah. And when we look we do on the property that I'm that I have in Georgia, we're doing both damage control trying to keep populations in check because they're out of control. I mean, we killed three hundred last year and it did nothing. So um. And so there are days that you just sit you just go down in the morning and you sit in your stand all day long, pack a lunch, and I mean I'll literally just sit there and like you know, watch videos on my phone, and then you just shoot every pig that comes out, you know, and you just like, I mean, you don't get out of your stand. You stay so that more will come, and more we'll coming, because they come to their own dead, like pigs will come to check out the dead pig and eat it. So it's pretty good, you know, chance that they'll be more. And in that case, yet, those ones that you killed earlier in the day are probably not a very good idea for you to be eating. But the idea that you can't eat them is just complete fallacy. And in reality, like especially certain size ones, not only can you eat them. I mean I know this because we serve them at the Saber Tooth dinner last week, and the commentary across the board from everyone who dined there was this just tastes like a much better pork, Like it tastes like pork that's just a lot better than what I can normally get. And you're like, yeah, that's exactly I heard firsthand from a person. I heard firsthand from a person who participated in that dinner. Who did you hear from? Loved it awesome? Good? I mean, honestly, I told this sounds like I'm being exaggertory but private. I think, uh, I think it's one of the best meals I've cooked in twenty plus years of doing this professional. I think you'd agree it was dialed in like we It was good, very good. Uh. Speaking of rotten old Hoggs and culinary awards, We're gonna go out the Mediator Investigates now. So we did our first ever Media Investigates a couple of episodes ago and Katie Hill reported on going on Amazon and finding all kinds of endangered species horns for sale. Right now, we're gonna hear from our very own Maggie Hudlow. Uh. And this you actually went down You went to Florida. I did. Yeah, I went to Tallahassee and what's going on? And tell why? What's going on? Yeah? So it was a rally. It was a lot of fishing guides, truckers, truck fishing guides, folks from the outdoor industry, and it was a rally protesting centate bill to five eight UM. And this was kind of some sneaky politics, is what was going on. And that's why folks were all fired up. UM. And for folks that don't know, Florida has got some serious water issues. I mean last year loan millions of fish washed up on shore from toxic red algae blooms, and uh, everything kind of about Florida's water management issues are it revolves around Okeechobee. Like Okeechobee, and so it used to the water used to flow north south through Okeechobee down through the Everglades through what they called the Sea of Grass and acted acted as this natural filtration system. But they turned that into agg land developed it well, and they had that flood that killed thousand people. Right, it's many thousands of people. How many hell of a flood. I'm gonna look that flood up, Look that up. So they you know, now the now the water is rerouted, and now now they use kind of these dams and these things as as little political ponds to to kind of divert where they want things to go. And so they've been trying to figure out for years now how to deal with Okeechobee because it collects everything that comes down, so it's basically a holding tank and it has the super phosphorus rich water and people still need access to this water. They needed for eggs, they needed just for water, um and it um Oh. Apparently almost two thousand people died in the flood of Okeechobee, Thank you, Sean. And that that inspired, you know, I guess what like a radical overcorrection or helped justify yep. And it was this. It was a huge feat of what they did there. But but then they realized that they have this water and they don't really know what to do with fit because when it goes to the east and west, it's just this super nutrient rich water that's flowing into these very um fragile aquatic ecosystems and they can't handle that. So that's what causes these blue green algae blooms, these um and that's in fresh water, and the red alga blooms, and basically it just kind of eats up all of the all the oxygen in the water, kind of suffocates mo like the pictures you think, like, I mean it's the beach carpeted. Yeah, and dead fish and and huge not just small feeders wash up on the multiple manatees like it's it's a massive killer. So they've been working on addressing this. They've got them the Lake Okachobee Systems Operation Manual is something they've been working on, and that's with the South Florida Water Management District. The Army Corps of Engineers have been working on this. Kind of the best solution they've come up with currently is this e A a reservoir that they're trying to build. So this has been like years in the making. And Captains for Clean Waters, this nonprofit built by um fishing captains that are being affected by this. They've all been working together to come up with a plan to deal with the water. And then on February four, s B two five oh eight comes through, which is a bit budget sorry budget conforming bill uh St State. So this bill has so much stuff crammed into it. I mean it they have like planning on changing who owns a certain park. It's you know, it's they're cramming all this stuff to just push it through. It's it's kind of fast tracking and getting all of these changes made, where previous changes with Okachobe have been like six years in the making and this is like three to four weeks with one period for public input, and all these guides came up for the one period of public input and they're like, hey, we're concerned, we don't really like what you're doing with this bill. It's tying up all this money we have for Everglades restoration. It's basically putting us back to a ninety standpoint of where, um, where we're at with Okeechobee management. And you know, they were trying to raise their voices and the senators basically told them they were misled, they shouldn't be there. Um, there was like no reason to be concerned. Um. So that's why the rally happened, because that was their one point to raise their voices. And many of them drove hours through the night and they had two minutes to talk and they cut them off at thirty seconds or whatever, and we're like, now you don't need to be here, don't worry about this. So they organized the rally kind of behind the scenes and and decided to pull skiffs and boats into the front door of the capital. So it was great, it was It was quite the ordeal, and it was really cool. It's really cool to see all these individuals coming together and like, you know, if you're gonna have backdoor politics, we're gonna parker damn boats on your front lawn. Like no, it wasn't it wasn't that big of a deal. It was pretty pretty well behaved, and uh it was. It was funny when I wrote about this. We were all like everyone was wearing a hat. Like people had suit jackets on and stuff, but like everybody had a hat on. So we're in the Capitol building. You know, everyone's that you can tell spends a lot of time, and they're just clicking around in their high heel shoes and they got their suits on and stuff, and all of us. You know, I was so excited to be warm. I'm wearing like chacos. Everyone's got their fishing shirts on. We all got hats, like, and we're piling into these elevators that yeah, they're the stupidest elevators. They really, And they said they're like, yeah, I'm glad our States spent like fifteen million dollars on this damn elevator system. Some lady kind of like shimmied into this whole group of us in our in our hats, and she's on the phone. She's like, yeah, it's just really busy at the Capitol today. I'm like ten minutes late. I'll be there soon. Got out. It's like yeah, she said, said all these damn hats at the Capitol are making me late, you know. So what what came out of the whole thing? So the night before the rally, they put an amendment on the bill, and that amendment took some of the bad language out, which was it was a huge it was a huge movement. They they clearly they heard the call that UM that Captains for Clean Water had kind of put out there, and they made some changes. But it man sitting in that Senate building, it really just made me realize how important conservation through legislation is because if if they hadn't raised their voices, no one would have and that bill would have just slipped through without any changes made. And they're still there's still needs to be some changes made to that bill. It's going on to be debated between the House and the Senate anytime between tomorrow and Friday. It's not it's not totally solidified yet, but currently there's still um. The entire Everglade restoration budget is basically booby trapped and it's dependent on the passing of this bill. Like if if this bill isn't passed, they don't get that money, and it's like three million dollars, but and then the bill. The language in the bill that is still troublesome to people is that codifies into state law a prioritization of industrial egg water supply South and the Lake over all other users, meaning over fishermen. And that's that big sugar getting that money. And that's kind of who's interesting. You don't sign it, then you don't get any funding. And as you know how I don't want I want to get uh, I want to get the governor to Santis on the show to talk about the Everglades. He's but he's fixing to sign this bill. So this bill, it honestly goes against what Santis stands for because that's what he's like, he's taking like some political heat to be I mean, he describes himself as a Roosevelt conservationist and it's taken some heat about his stance on the Everglades. Then, so I want to have him on to talk about it. But I'm curious, Um is like, where's he at on this? So he's that and that's the whole tricky thing is that he's kind of tied. He's got his hands tied because they put all that Everglades restoration money because it's a budget bill. It's tied up in this that if this bill doesn't get past the Everglades Restoration Fund doesn't get that three dollars, I'd love to have the guy at the show. It still has to go be debated between the House and the Senate this week, and it's because it's such a controversial and complicated topic. It's likely that it's going to go to the Speaker of the House in the President of the Senate, but that's to be decided. And that's also kind of a tricky situation. Um, because the President of the Senate is backing this bill. So it's just being down there and seeing how orchestrated the whole Senate is. It was really uh, I mean they were debating things like, um, what the state dessert should be? That that was apparently a big point of concern. Did they land on key lime pie? That is what it was. Apparently someone wanted strawberry shortcake ruining a good thing. Goodness, idiots, dude, I'd way vote for I'd filibuster for strawberry short They grow strawberries, and I mean Green a plant city, big strawberry growing regions, so they grow a lot of them, But I mean the key line kind of grows in a single place. So see, this is why it's a debate. No one wants to talk about No one wants to talk about water, managements about dessert. So tell me where they go. Send people to your article. Ah, yeah, the article is up on meat eater dot com. It's ah, I mean, do you want me to read the title off? Yeah, it's a hundred plus Florida fishing guys rally at the Capitol to protests bad Everglades legislation and and there's a link at the bottom you can find for or you can just go to Captain's for Clean Water if you wanna, you know, harass some senators. There was one guy spoke up and he was like, God, I got all these emails and they all seem to be coming from the same place, and I don't know what you guys are all so upset about. This is a great bill. So it's like, you know, we gotta keep her ass on them. They're gonna pull stuff like this and try to sneak things that that really deserve contemplation and public input. Like, man, just keep her assing your senators every chance you get, especially on water. Because it seems like water is the thing that always goes bad. It's always the you know, everywhere is a fight over water. It seems absolutely it's a it's a hot commodity these days and always has been. Right, Sean, He's the dark report. Got anything else to shape Shawn's assignment? Yep, wasn't an assignment. Well, it was an expansion of what we were talking about last time. So last time we had talked about age demographics and sex ratios, and part of the sex ratios is that hens are getting whacked on nests and that there's just less hens than there is drake's and they have a lower you know, we had talked about how long they live. Well, hens have a shorter lifespan. Comes back to that's a predator story. So I wanted to talk a little bit about predators. Got it because we got into the skewed ratios. Yeah, yep, uh, you know, a hen mallard might live a year and ten months and or you know, year nine months, and a Drake mallard would live two years. And over time, since the nineteen eighties, that's led to a divergence of that there are just way more drakes than Hence why that is is um well as Delta Waterfowl talks about and has researched, it's that there are just more predators now and that since the nineteen eighties, we've seen this kind of uh, a growth of predator populations and a increase in the divergence of the sex ratio because low fur prices, bro low fur prices yep. And like I want to start off with saying that this is not just started really popular Parker company and put into help ducks. Yeah, put like fur trim on the collar. Can you imagine we can maybe do that as part of our like first light line Hunter sourced uh into this idea. So I wanna like preface this with this isn't just wipe out all predators. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, but we've had this, We've had this diver or we've had over time a change of the landscape of what the predator population looks like. You know, before before agriculture and before settlement, we had wolves and bears and no egg and as you know, we did two things. Really, we came through we wiped out bears and wolves, and then we brought agriculture and grain everywhere and that's allowed the meso predators, the mid sized predators like raccoons and skunks. Awesome's grinners, yep, grinned. We we've we've came through and disproportionately enabled those populations. Really and up until the nineteen eighties, we at least had trapping to kind of keep those numbers down, and since then less and less trappers and a even more like prominent growth of those populations. To actually talk about, like how much we've influenced those populations. North Dakota up until the nineteen fifties didn't even recognize or like, uh, there was no written record of raccoons being a North Dakota animal. And then now there dispersed all across the prairie. Uh, when delta waterfowl or you know, in those old trapping records they were zero percent catch. There was no trappers catching raccoons on the North Dakota prairie. Now delta waterfowl, depending on the year, they're either their number one catch or they're their second most catch on their North Dakota prairie. Um, so you've that like really puts a button on how these predators are spreading into areas that they weren't traditionally, uh, delta waterfowls trappers of what they catch are skunks and raccoons, and those are kind of public enemy number one, so to speak. On duck eggs, it's interesting to see if you ever looked at maps of the spread of raccoons and apossums. Really, I haven't seen actual map, but yeah, I'm oh, I can imagine. I mean they, I mean the apostomies to be like a southeastern US animal, and raccoons just a Riparian animal. You know what else is spread that you wouldn't expect is um the have Alina mm yeah, really expanding expanding north The Halinas have been expanding northward like in historic times? Is it? Is it agriculture? I don't know what that. I don't know what that happening. Things linked to I think the possums and raccoons is like climate egg elimination of big predators. Yeah, yeah, there's there's definitely no big predators to keep them in check. You know, somewhat coyotes can a little bit. But but then even like even like I mean, we did so much damage to gray horned owls and other things that would kill them, you know, yeah. Yeah, and to actually put into perspective how many of those animals are on the landscape a six mile by six mile block for a Delta trapper, they're catching three hundred of these meso predators a year, which just for a township. Yeah, Which it's incredible. It's hard to comprehend how there's egg in an area that ever hatches. Where are they doing there? Like, how are they determined where to do their work? Yeah, so that's a really in interesting thing. Delta waterfowl is they are focusing their trapping, so they've got contract trappers and that's part of their mission. Sorry, just because I mean it would be helpful for me for everybody, you just tell me what is Delta waterfowl? Yeah? So Delta Waterfowl is one of the two major duck conservation organizations, right, Ducks Unlimited being the one everyone historically is recognized. Ducks Limited and Delta are both very important. You hear more and more and more about Delta waterfowl all the time to do more and more work. Yeah, for sure. And I remember like it SE's like, you know, do you just grow up with right? Yeah? I remember being like what Delta warfalls like I don't go a week now without hearing about something Delta Waterfall does. And and part of that is that they just have they have the same end goal, right, but they have a different mission path to get there. Ducks Unlimited is more habitat focused, and they preserve ship loads of wetlands. Yes, and ducks on limited like is absolutely fundamentally important to you know, keeping a lot of wetlands intact for a hundred years, two hundred years like take they like raise money, cape money by wetlands, preserve it, usually turn it over. Usually all becomes public honey grown. Ye. Phenomenal group, oh for sure. Delta waterfowl their mission is okay, we have some wetlands out there and some grasslands out there that we've gone and preserved, but they're not producing ducks. And the reason they're not producing ducks is, you know, one of the reasons is predation. And so Delta Waterfowl is a really cool um method to the madness on how they pick where they where they trapped. So they have to have they're looking for high volume areas meaning there's a lot of ducks but low grassland percentage, so are ideal place to go. Trap is a place that has sixty two hundred nesting pairs of ducks using the area using a square mile UM. But then that area is less than ten percent grass. And you find a lot of that, you know, across South Dakota North Dakota, right where you have a CRP patch next to a wetland that's not productive ground and it's surrounded on all sides by agriculture. Well, those ducks really will key in on that like low lying nonproductive ground to a farmer, and you end up with high densities of breeding pairs there, but they're surrounded on all sides by you know, corn or wheat or whatever, and so you end up with this area of the ducks are on an island of grassland, so to speak, and they end up with a bunch of predators coming in and and raiding those nests um. To kind of put into perspective how bad that predation is on those nests. Delta Waterfowl did a four year study in Manitoba that over four years those areas that were not trapped had a two percent nest success. And nest uh success is not like, oh the whole nest hatched, one egg counts his nest success and so one duck is a successful nest, so only two even had a duck is wild and then the areas that were trapped were success. Yeah, so it like it helps, it matters. And they did the similar study in North Dakota. Um, North Dakota doesn't quite have the same predator problem like that area of Manitoba does, but uh not trap nest success, but thirty success on trap. So if you can key in on those areas that like, it really can impact duck you know, duck production for sure. And you know it's not just that these predators killed ducks. I mean, there's everything likes the duck and duck eggs. But the another population of animals that has exploded that's really interesting is the like corvids and ravens, really crows. Yeah, so there's more of those around, not just more a six hundred percent increase in thirty years. Yeah, and they say the great attributed to what. When I asked that question, it seemed more like it was conjecture, expert conjecture, but also like more access to road kill, grain fields like all you know, I mean, think of the amount of stuff that we just kill that lays everywhere. But but you saying, here's the weird. The weird part about it is you get like you're talking over thirty years. Okay, So if you look at the big the great fur boom of like seventy eight to eighty two or eighty four whatever, one like every mezo predator on the planet would encounter a steel trap every night between November one and December thirty one those days, and you're like, there's like an event, right, there's an event that had a sort of like concrete end to it. If you get into magpies, you're not coming out of that, and you could be like, there's more stuff to scavenge perhaps, but then you'd be like, well since what well, since we lost our like large scavengers. Right, so you lose bears whatever, you lose lions and stuff, um or raptors whatever. But like I don't get like the like why over, Like I don't get like what could have happened in thirty years. I mean, I know people there used to be like, I have a book in my library of hunting books. Um, that makes it sound like a little warned. It is I have a show off with sm old ass hunting books. I have a book like how to Hunt crows hard cover. Yeah, people were, people were waging war on Corvid's for a while there. I mean they were. That's got you with you. I wonder if that was like the event down the magpie and the crow and the raven populations. So I wonder if it's just like seeing the rebound from that. Yeah, and you can't Canada. You're still i think allowed to at least in parts of Canada that they kind of still wageing war on ravens, but not you know, not the US and uh Dr Nikola I was talking about how the Great Basin over in Nevada, like that whole base in Marsh area. Um, it's like they don't even have a number for the increase of corvitt populations there. It's way more. And my kids and I like to set out our predator caller put it on crow flying, let's put it out in the yard. You can't do it too much. You can only do it like they figured it out pretty quick. Um, and we turned it on yesterday and didn't get any crowls. But holy ship, the magpies really, oh my god, fire up on cral fight m hmm. They were riled up. Well, you know we we protect all those populations, right, they don't have anything wiping them out. What what what percent increase six increase in thirty years and that's incredible. Yeah, I had Joel Brides from Delta. He he was like when they when those ravens really get on duck eggs, they are hell on him and he sent a picture that is unbelievable. It's gotta be a hundred eggs that a raven had cashed on top of a bunch of old Yep, that's a bunch of I'm looking at the picture. I don't know what I was looking at. That's a raven's cache of eggs. He eight and just sits on those railroad ties, goes and picks duck eggs, so you know every carries back. It's pretty impressive really when you think about how many eggs they can eat. And you know there's everything else too that eats them, snakes and whatever else. Pretty much everything wants to eat ducks and ducks eggs. But yeah, we're looking at a picture here there's of mink on a nest, a raccoon on a nest, and a really cute picture of Kyoe just sniffing around like fixing to eat all the eggs. Yeah, and there's they have so much more to this whole uh, to all the research they've done and what they're doing to try to I guess bring people like into the fold on understanding how we can make how we can make more use of the land we have. Right, we want more CRP, but we would also like to be more productive with the CRP we have. And you've seen it, and I tell people this all the time, like get an electronic call with a coon fight sound on it and February March when you're not sure what else you should be out doing, Like that's about as much. But you gotta set it on a coon tree, yeah, or or you know a culvert or a brush pile like this railroad tie pile here. Oh that's a good perfect Yeah. Hit people with that stat on snakes man. Yeah. So uh. Dr Nikolai, same guy from Delta Waterfowl. He was working on the Mississippi River in eight They were putting, uh, they were putting radios on ducklings that right as they hatch, they slip a radio under their skin and then put them back with mama. And they had caught and killed a snake that when they cut it open, eight radios so had wiped out a whole nest of ducklings. My kid was telling me the other day. He was in school, he's in sixth grade. They had a substitute teacher, he says, a really old man. And the old man said, I'm just gonna tell stories. I'm not going to teach. This is like when they couldn't get any teachers because of And my kid told me the story. The old man told him that he told a story that when he was a a kid, he went out into the handhouse and there was a snake in there, and they had big bulges in his body. So he took his machete and cut the snake in half and squeezed the eggs back out of it and put him back in the nest and they all hatched successfully. Okay, that's loves this guy. I want him to tell me stories. Yeah, no, that's so, you know, long story short, Like I think the whole the whole predator thing is it would be nice for people to kill some more, that's for sure. Yeah, you know what, I could just picture that. I agree. I can picture of the counter argument. Well, why are you prioritizing lots of ducks over lots of raccoons. It's not that you're just prioritizing lots of ducks over lots of raccoons. It's that we ourselves had the unnatural impact. Like these are not what meso predator populations should look like, these are out of whack, and they're not. It's not because all of a sudden the raccoon became so much more of a productive animal. It's because we had a you know, false influence the anthropos to speak on these populations. Uh, can I plug inside kids in an outdoor Outdoor Kids in an Inside World, which releases in May. You can pre order nonal ship. Well, not only that, Phil, Phil came back me up on this. I just spent three days sitting right here and did the whole audiobook. Yeah, you had a whole bag of lozenges, and oh, how do you keep you? That's that's the trick. The first day was hard, and I went home feeling not good. And then I then I then, like the same way you build up muscles, like you build up six pack, I built up like a throat six I'm not sure I built up I built up a six pack in my throat and by the end of the thing, I could have kept going um either way. In it, I like explore with with with how did like with kids around nature. I'm not saying that I like, I have a lot of experience now, I'm I'm saying I'm like I'm right or wrong on everything. But I've had like three kids and the oldest ones eleven, so I've been at it a while. I've been around a lot of kids. I talked about like the perils with kids of like looking down at nature. That's gross, right, And the perils of like looking up at it too much that they're sort of like that they shouldn't touch nature, right, that we're gross, Like we're the bad ones, and going near it is like it's best to look at it out the window and the Yellowstone right, Like don't go into it. You spoil it when you're into it. Uh. And I talked about the just this concept of like like humans are in this game. There is no now pretending that we're not in this thing, Like we have created conservation dependent species for sure, Like we've created like we have created a situation where a lot of the things that we enjoy and want to have around. They're now around. They're not around in spite of us, Like they're around because of us at this point, because of something we did. Yeah, but it'd be painful to see ducks get to a point where they're conservation dependent, right where if you just walked away and let the whole thing take care of itself, considering what we've done that, I don't know, do they blink out. I mean they don't. They wouldn't blink out, but it might not wouldn't look anywhere nearly as good as it does if you're involved, for sure. And you see you see that separation even by flyway in North America right where you have the Atlantic Flyway, Um, like really you know, kind of struggling with bird populations and other areas doing better and other species doing better, and you realize just how much we're affecting that and influencing that. Like snow geese in the Mid continent population are doing so well. Why are they doing so well? Well? It's very much so human influence. It's very much us providing these calorie rich grains all along their flyway. And yeah, you can't, like you just can't deny that, Like we have a major influence on their population, their food, their predation, like the whole the whole bit that we might influence ducks like as much as any other at least as much as the white tailed deer. Like. Are these guys that are doing these things they they're obviously not shy about talking about it. Are they afraid of catching ship with the animal rights people? Um? Not from my understanding, Like, I mean, they obviously are more interested in ducks than the R and p R. Yeah, and I also think that they like they can make that sound argument like this is not this is not natural either too. Do you think that you could talk to these fellers? Would they ever let someone come along with them? Oh? Yeah, yeah, they want they want us to join up. And uh, they have a specific way they like to trap for nest success in like in comparison to fur trapping. So you can probably learn a thing or two. Go run around in North Dakota, do a little trapping. But that you know what karian, Okay, that's called producing right there. I'd like to know. I'd like to know what one of them trappers makes annually. You know this gig doesn't work? Yeah, I feel like because there I would be like, you know what, I'm really making a difference every day in case that not just Hollywood and around that Werner Blade thing doesn't pan out, that ends up being too big an investment, trapping bankrupts and meat eater between that, Sean, that was a good dark report. What happens next, I don't know. I gotta think on that one. I'm not sure what I'm sex. I think I think on the next one, I want to go talk to the boys at Osborne Labs and they're the ones doing a lot of that GPS backpack work. And we had mentioned last time about what are the what is the odometer on these ducks? Look like, well, they're the guys with that information, so I think that'd be pretty cool there. Then was after that, I don't know, I got a story for you for the duck report. He's already in the typing because position I got you you ready, Um, what led up to the lead band and what were the results? Oh that's a good one, very good. Yeah, like that. I like that one. I want to hear. That's a good one. People. I was people. I came. I started duck hunting, like became a legal duck hunter in the aftermath of that, there were people who quit hunting. They probably weren't like die Hard anyway. There are people who are like out of protests, quit hunting ducks. Oh yeah, when the lead band came. It's very You can go dig through the forums from like ten fifteen years ago, when you know, when internet forums are a big deal and there's those guys that can't help themselves or like I haven't hunted ducks since whatever. Uh, but they're there on a waterfowl forum, like you must have really really like duck hunting. Yeah tomorrow. If they were like, Okay, you can't use steal, you gotta use bizmouth, I'd be like, all right, but I have a I have a request. It was one of Clay's uh episodes. I can't remember what he was talking about, Timber reservoir stuff, yeah, but it was something about migration because he was talking to an ornithologist that was explaining about how some of the ducks and I'll never forget this. I was telling Karna, which that because I heard I was selling karma, which is have an ordin mythologist on this show, but about how he thinks that some of these ducks that are flying down the center of our continent heading south. Then in one ear they can hear the Pacific, and then in the left ear that they can hear the Atlantic, and then on and then on their horizon, the stars that they're looking at are not moving because of the way that the world spends amongst the stars. The stars above them move, but the ones on the horizon that they're looking to don't move. And just like all that was like that, he feels that they are literally sensing oceans on either side of them, and they know which one it is, and that's how they get from point at a point B there. I don't know about that, but I like the idea for I like the idea for Duck report. How do they know where they're at? There's some really good stuff on that I've already done some of the least. You got four Duck reports. You got the odometer, Osborne Labs got what led up to the lead band and what happened after. You got the yanniest thing about how they could feel the oceans. We're set for a few months here, Duck Special Power. How often do we do a Sean's Duck Report. We're doing them once a month right now. Thirty years done. Oh man, I have the best idea for a little musical bit for Sean's Dark Report Ducktails. Oh yeah, I'm feeling alright. Everybody go up, I don't know, go pre order Outdoor Kids an Inside World. If you have kids or you know someone who's fixing two already does get all your questions answered? How old would my kids be before I give him a gun? What happens if the kids he's a deer die and he's real? All those questions? Why did those make mess? Camping? And if you don't have kids, download Rut Yeah, or download Rut and in Purson you'll have kids. They don't need the book. We get them coming, we get them what if we do it here? It's called vertical integration show aybody, thanks for joining Philip Father. Song to the Guys song Time Ye Stay, Time Stays Good? Why no kiss thy good? Why why they kiss? Why? Guy while I kiss this? Why? Why kiss us? Why? People taken by these