00:00:03 Speaker 1: Smell off now, lady, Welcome to Meat Eater Trivia Podcast. 00:00:27 Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, welcome to met Eater Radio Live. As always, It's eleven am on Thursday here at meat Eater HQ and Wintry Bozeman, Montana. It's eight am and Maui, where it's currently about seventy five degrees, which sounds pretty nice. 00:00:44 Speaker 3: It would be nice to be out. 00:00:45 Speaker 2: There hunting pigs and access steer and shorts and a T shirt. But anyway, I'm your host, Brody. I'm joined today by Jannis and Randall, you know these guys. Today we're going to talk to our favorite local wild game butcher and a borgman, and we're al gonna chat with our friend Jim heffle Finger about lumpers, splitters and extinct elk. And we've got a news round up for you and another round of hot tip offs from our listeners. So we're gonna get right into it. Have some fun today before we get into the first interview. Big game season is over. It's kind of kind of sad. 00:01:24 Speaker 1: Oh I'm may I got the mega post big game season blues going right now. 00:01:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of kind of sad, but I mean they're still hunting to be done. What do you got? What do you guys got planned for the next. 00:01:36 Speaker 1: You guys get the blues too? 00:01:37 Speaker 4: Oh season, Big Blues, Big Blues right now. Yeah, I don't really have any plans at the moment, trying to figure out what tags I'm gonna apply for. 00:01:47 Speaker 5: Got the calendar for twenty twenty. 00:01:49 Speaker 2: Season, get into that. 00:01:50 Speaker 5: I'll look at lads and points and all that stuff. 00:01:54 Speaker 1: Yeah, Mountainine seasons open, that's right. Yeah, I've already had a couple of days out there there, found some tracks, but they were going into private, so we didn't cut loose on them. 00:02:04 Speaker 2: Yeah. We're getting some snow now, which is good for you too. 00:02:06 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nice, makes it life easy. 00:02:09 Speaker 2: Are you? 00:02:10 Speaker 1: You mentioned Maui and how nice to be there? Are you already sick of the cold and we're not even dude, barely in November. 00:02:15 Speaker 3: I get I get sick of the real cold stuff. Easy. 00:02:18 Speaker 1: You think you're going to turn into a snowbird. 00:02:21 Speaker 2: No, but I eventually I might turn into like a mid South bird, Like if I moved. I want to be somewhere where there was seasons and it snowed once in a while, so I'm got there. 00:02:32 Speaker 1: I got like a Missouri. 00:02:34 Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'll buy some land from Clay and moving down there Arkansas. Yeah. 00:02:39 Speaker 4: I For whatever reason, this cold snap hit pretty badly because it was so warm, and then one day it's just like ten degrees and blowing snow. And then we were I was taking the taking Yannie's trailer back to his house and we got two pickups stuck and a trailer stuck. 00:03:00 Speaker 2: At his house. 00:03:01 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:03:02 Speaker 2: Man, get that plow truck out. 00:03:04 Speaker 4: Well we did, well, we did because he needed to pull me out with the plow truck. 00:03:09 Speaker 2: One nice thing about the cold is I think we're gonna hopefully get some some early spearing ice, and I'm tentatively planning a spear and trip with the boys for pike and hopefully like work some pheasant hunting into that too. 00:03:24 Speaker 4: Toscani where no, no oh, gotcha a big pike here. 00:03:30 Speaker 2: Yeah, so that would be fun over Christmas break. Hopefully it stays cold enough and we'll get get some good ice. 00:03:36 Speaker 1: Call me if you go. I'd like to go do that. 00:03:38 Speaker 2: Are you gonna be around over break? 00:03:40 Speaker 3: Yep? All right, then I go too. Yeah, man, perfect. 00:03:44 Speaker 2: You got a spear grab one out of Steve's. 00:03:47 Speaker 1: I was just thinking about I got a bunch of decoys. 00:03:49 Speaker 5: Yeah, I just like to watch. 00:03:52 Speaker 2: We should take a whole posse out there. Man, it's fun. 00:03:54 Speaker 5: Empty a few cans and bottles, put some tip ups out nice. Yeah, that would be super fun. 00:04:00 Speaker 3: Yep. 00:04:01 Speaker 2: All right, enough talking about our fun. We got to get into the serious stuff and move on to our first guest, Jim Hefflefinger. Many of you guys have seen or listened to him on the podcast, so hopefully and know him. But we got Jim up yet or did he disappear on us? 00:04:17 Speaker 6: Oh he's still here, but he's not in yet. Let's bring him in. 00:04:21 Speaker 1: Jerry is. 00:04:23 Speaker 2: Jim for people aren't familiar with you, Uh, just quickly introduce yourself and let let us know what you do and then what we'll get into the nitty gritty. 00:04:33 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:04:33 Speaker 7: I've been I'm a well let science coordinator for Arizona Game and Fish Department. I've been with the apartment for thirty three years and probably most of my focus there has been big game management Western Big Game I chair Western North America Mealdier Working Group and then also involved in Mexico both recovery last fifteen years. 00:04:49 Speaker 2: Nice. But you also do some work with elk, which we're going to talk about today. 00:04:55 Speaker 7: Interesting things. 00:04:58 Speaker 2: The reason, the big reason I want I need to have you on today is because you're doing some pretty cool work with Merriam's elk. And if you're if you're not familiar with Merriams elk, it's a jump in and correct me wherever I screw up, Jim. But Marriams elk are an extinct subspecies of elk, and Jim's doing some work trying to figure out like were they different than other elk, Like do they deserve the subspecies designation all that stuff. So we're going to talk about that, But before we get to that, we got to talk about lumpers and splitters. So, Jim, can you real quick explain like the two basic schools of thought that biologists kind of fall into when it comes time for someone like yourself to like identify and classify wildlife species and subspecies. 00:05:48 Speaker 6: Yeah. 00:05:49 Speaker 7: Absolutely, there's a you know, we've got to classify animals as species, and then when we start classifying animals as subspecies, things get a little sketchy. And so there's this concept of lumpers and splitters, and people fall into one category or the other somewhere in between. And it basically at the most basic level is the lumpers are focusing on similarities between animals. Like they might look at all elk and just say, you know, they're basically elk. They differ a little bit in the east and the west, but they're all just elk. So they're all one kind of animal. Other people focus on differences and they might say, well, this one's a little darker, this one has antlers that tend to crown a little bit more, and these have like smaller antlers, And so those are like the splitters that want to split these animals up into a whole bunch of different categories. We'll talk about. Miriam Duck was named after seaheart Miriam. Miriam actually designated eighty four different brown bear and grizzly bear species, not even subspecies. 00:06:39 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I was going to get at. Like, I tend myself to like kind of lean towards the lumper school of thought because the splitters can get out of control. I think at one point there's like I'm just throwing a number out there. But Steve and I are working on a book right now, and it comes up there where there was like over one hundred different subspecies of Canada goose at one point, which is kind of ridiculous, But there's good reasons for splitting two when it comes to managing species on like a regional or more local level, like having subspecies can allow for better management of those animals. 00:07:24 Speaker 7: Sometimes they'll focus on animals, but pure taxonomous though, we don't split animals just so that there's some conservation focus on that. Animal taxonomy is a pure science of are those animals really different? And then if they're different, then we should probably doing some different conservation acts. 00:07:39 Speaker 2: Right, Okay, So let's talk elk and have you run through the generally accepted subspecies of elk in North America, both living and extinct. And we've got a map that you're going to explain isn't quite accurate, but hopefully it can help people visualize where these different elk subspecies live now or lived before they went extinct. 00:08:05 Speaker 7: Yeah, sure, I say that map, and I said this is wrong because it's not one hundred percent right, but it's the closest representation of just generally these different subspecies that people have been recognizing over and over again. The eastern elk people hear about east of the Mississippi. Those things disappeared so quick that science didn't really catch up and document many specimens. They weren't studied physically, so we don't know a lot about whether they differed in the east. But the Manitobin elk in the middle of the continent, in Rocky Mountain elk, they don't all the genetic work that's been done, they don't separate out genetically as different subspecies. And I suspect if we had the same kind of data for eastern elk, you'd see Eastern Manitoban and Rocky Mountain really just the same thing. 00:08:47 Speaker 2: And when you say it like this is this map is like original range, Like obviously there's not Manitoban elk running around in Kansas right now. 00:08:58 Speaker 7: Yet you cut out there a second, But there's no geographic barriers that would have like isolated those three individual animals species. 00:09:10 Speaker 2: Yep. So what's that of total of six six subspecies we've got. 00:09:15 Speaker 7: Right, So those are three in the continental and then the Roosevelt and the Tulei elk. A lot of different genetic and elysis have separated those out so genetically they will break out as separate subspecies, and we don't know because they were isolated, and so in that isolation they created some genetic differences and they're a little bit different. We don't know if that how far those differences, how far they were isolated go back in time, like if we went back four hundred three hundred years, they may have been all the same. And it's really human influence isolating those populations. We don't don't really know. That bottom line is Roosevelt and Twully will break out genetically. Rocky mountain, Manitobin in what little we know about Eastern really don't break out separately. 00:09:55 Speaker 4: Go ahead, Jim, could you this is Randall When you say that Manitobin elk don't break out genetically compared to like a rocky mountain. Up, can you describe some I assume then the difference that has been identified in the past to use to make that distinction is just a physical visual characteristic. Now can you describe what that what that is? 00:10:16 Speaker 7: Yes, the physical descriptions that people use to describe the different subspecies. They're oftentimes like they shot an elk or they shot two elk, and they said these look kind of darker, And so they drew a big polygon on the map and they said this is the Eastern elk. They gave it a subspecies name, and they said this is a new subspecies. And in most cases those subspecies are described separately based on a couple of little general characteristics. They would not hold up to modern day kind of scientific thinking at all. 00:10:48 Speaker 2: God, what about what about Roosevelt versus Rocky Mountain? Like you can look at those to someone who's looked at a lot of elk, you can look at like a mature Roosevelt bull and a mature Rocky Mountain bowl, and there's like obvious physical differences, right yep, absolutely yeah, bigger body on the Roosevelt, smaller, heavier antlers on the Roosevelt. 00:11:13 Speaker 7: More tendency to crown out on Roosevelt. You're right, physically, you can tell. And so it's interesting then that genetically those breakout too. So it kind of supports that yeap Julei elk being a little smaller Juley elk has a population were bottleneck that got down to a very small number of individuals and now they've recovered somewhat. So some of those genetic differences might just be that they had a lot of inbreeding when there were a small population, and then you're there. But those physically two look different than Roosevelt and a big rocky mountain. 00:11:39 Speaker 2: So the two that are considered extinct are the Easterns, which I think we're considered gone by like eighteen eighty and the last ones might have been Pennsylvania. 00:11:50 Speaker 5: I read. 00:11:51 Speaker 2: You'd probably know better than me. And then there's these Merriam's Elk, which which are southwestern elk from Arizona. Were they in in any other like of the contiguous United States or just Arizona. 00:12:07 Speaker 7: Arizona and New Mexico. Yeah, and here's where the map is wrong. A textbook came out called Elko North America actually, and it showed these long two fingers of distribution going into Mexico. But there's no evidence of that. It's publisher paper, and they looked at all the archaeological digs and they found no evidence of Elcan Mexico, so that that's in error. If they were really Miriam Delk was described as being central and northern Arizona and New Mexico. 00:12:30 Speaker 2: Okay, so let's focus on them. Uh, since that's what you're working on tell us like what you're trying to do, and then then we'll get into like if you can like way, I know your your work isn't done yet, but are you trying to figure out it? Like if they're like if they weren't a subspecies designation, or like what is the work you're doing with Mariam Zelp. 00:12:56 Speaker 7: And part of that is not just a g whiz thing. Part of that is some people will complain and say, well, you know, the Miriam's elk we had in the Southwest were very different ecologically and now you've brought out from Yellowstone in to replace them, and they're different, like more damaging ecologically, which is there's no evidence, right, it's so part of it is this complaint that you've got different elk here, and that remains to be seen because if you if you notice on that map northern and central Arizona and New Mexico, but it's right up against southern Colorado in southern Utah, and there's in Arizona there's a thing we call the Grand Canyon, which is a really big ditch that runs across. So there's some separation there, but there's a connection all through southern Colorado into northern New Mexico. And so there's a question about were those really different because there were only three Miriam Delk specimens that were saved for science in museums. So the last couple of decades, sciencests have been talking about just three specimens of Miriam Bell. So let's look at those known Miriam Delk specimens, and there was only three when we started. We spent I spent a week in Smithsonian, spent time in the American Museum twice. We combed every Elk specimen in there. We went to Chicago Museum, went to UC Berkeley, looked at Elk specimens. We now have identified thirteen Miriam Delk specimens instead of three. We have genetic samples from all thirteen of those Miriam Delk specimens. 00:14:22 Speaker 2: So first you, for one second, when were they gone from Arizona? 00:14:28 Speaker 5: Right? 00:14:28 Speaker 7: So they're gone in nineteen o six, the last record in Arizona, and about the same time in New Mexico. We brought Yellowstone Elk in in nineteen thirteen through nineteen twenty eight, basically the first on spot about the same as what was happening in Pennsylvania with Eastern out They were bringing Yellowstone elk about the same time in the nineteen teens, and so we only had a gap from nineteen oh six to nineteen thirteen where the old elk died out and the new elk were brought in from Yellowstone. So there's always been a question did some of the original Miriam's elk where they down at the bottom of canyon and they made it through that ten years or so now interbred with Yellowstone elk and maybe Arizona elk are big because they've got genetics from the Miriam belk. There's a lot of talk about that, so that's an interesting side part of it. So we've got these we got thirteen samples instead of three extracted DNA. We send in DNA from not only those one hundred year old Miriam Belk samples, but one hundred year old Colorado samples and one hundred year old Yellowstone National Park samples. So we're comparing apples to apples because genetics has changed through time, but we're comparing elk at that time one hundred years ago. And we sent in fifty samples, and we got usable DNA from forty eight of those fifty samples, which is amazing When you're talking about one hundred year old chet antler that we've got DNA out of So that was really the first step is what samples are available? Can we get DNA out of it? And now we're not complete. There's a PhD student, Kenzie, who's doing this for PhD and she's only a year in two, a four year PhD. So we certainly don't have results, but we've got really promised extraction to DNA. We've got some good quantities of DNA to play with, and now analyzing whether there's any differences between Miriam Delk and other help. 00:16:08 Speaker 2: So you're you're still wait non results is basically where they're at. It's kind of surprising to me that they, you know, a species that was hunted and just like considered extinct in nineteen oh six, like just barely over one hundred years ago, that you had that much trouble finding samples, Like you think there'd be old rax hanging in barns and like bones pop it like it's you'd think there'd be some around, right, right. 00:16:38 Speaker 7: And I get those emails. But if you're if you're doing science and you're analyzing differences between Miriam Delk and other elk. You can't use some antler that someone had in the bottom that said was Miriam Delk. So we've got to make that clean break of known Miriam Delk in museums. But it will also be interesting if we find a difference between Miriam Delk genetically and other elk, Well we can use that as a diagnostic tool to test some of those interesting antlers that are. 00:17:04 Speaker 2: Yeah round, So yeah, I wanted to pin you down and get a verdict from you, but that's not going to happen obviously. 00:17:12 Speaker 1: Well I got to pin him down. Question why is this worthy of your time? 00:17:17 Speaker 2: Oh? 00:17:18 Speaker 8: Not? 00:17:18 Speaker 7: Like I said, not only the interesting part, but we need to have some information to inform these criticisms that you've got the wrong elk here. You know, you've got this giant yellowstone elk and it's destroying the ass and destroying the forest. And then also it's also of great interest to our stakeholders and people that are interested in this. Do we have any Miriam Duck jeans in today's Arizona helk. There's a lot of people forever that have been talking about that like constant chatter, and it just on that alone will be pretty fascinating to have an answer for that. 00:17:47 Speaker 2: Are you able to put out like an opinion yet? Like were they different? Do you like, do you personally think you're just like, wait. 00:17:56 Speaker 5: He's a science man, I know that. 00:17:58 Speaker 2: But you always got to ask. You got to try and get them to say something. 00:18:02 Speaker 7: Yeah, that's yeah, that's not the way science works. So we'll see. 00:18:05 Speaker 4: But but we're the mainstream media here, Jim, we need to pin you down before the results are in. 00:18:10 Speaker 7: No, I don't but I don't mind. I don't mind highlighting the fact that we've got elk in Colorado that come right down to the northern New Mexico border, and you had alcohol through northern New Mexico. It's hard to envision how just those elk in Arizona and New Mexico were substantially different, right, I mean, what Grand Canyon over by Arizona could be seen as a barrier, but you've got what seems like continuous habitat, So it's hard to vision how somehow they broke out to be really different in Arizona. 00:18:40 Speaker 2: There's like environmental factors involved too, Like why why are Roosevelt elk significantly different than Rocky Mountain? 00:18:49 Speaker 7: Now? 00:18:51 Speaker 2: I would assume it's it's partially driven by the environment. They live like very thick, dark forests, so they don't need these huge antlers to display from a long distance. Like, what are what are the reasons there. 00:19:04 Speaker 5: Do you think? 00:19:05 Speaker 7: Yeah, certainly when you have different ecological conditions, And that's a great example, because you have like rainforests, and so you have animals that tend to get darker in thick forests, and animals out in the open plains like a rocky mountain elk tend to be more lighter and more cream like that. That that happens with a lot of different animals, and also open plains animals are more visual, so there their rump patches sometimes are more vibrant, more white, more contrasting. Antlers are larger because they're more visible animals. If you're Roosevelt elk sneaking around on the coastal rainforest, there's not a lot of visual cues that people are using, and so the animals can be smaller and darker in bodies, darker, and that's just an adaptation of local conditions. 00:19:42 Speaker 2: So I mean, with that in mind, it's hard to imagine Mariam's being that much different from Rocky Mountain. 00:19:50 Speaker 3: Ok. 00:19:51 Speaker 5: You know it's right. Ecological habitat and nutrition is the same. 00:19:54 Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think you see it on the eastern Well, the elk that occupy the eastern range of elk, Now, like they're antlers. When they're small, they look similar to ours, but like as they get bigger, they get very crowned out and they look very different. Like the bulls in Pennsylvania look very different than there are bulls here. Part of that. 00:20:13 Speaker 2: Might just because they're not getting hunted as much, they live longer, they got easier winners. 00:20:18 Speaker 3: You know. 00:20:18 Speaker 2: I don't know we're getting off on a tangent, but I want to talk to you, Jim about what Johanna's brought up, which is all these very successful elk reintroductions that have taken place around the country. Like when I was a kid, like seeing an elk in Pennsylvania was like a big deal. It's like a very small reintroduced herd. And now they've got a whole bunch of them. Like you can watch these elk on live cams in Pennsylvania, like during the rut, Like we've got these places where they congregate and you can just watch them on your computer. And those same reintroductions have happened in a few southeastern states and in the Upper Midwest. And the interesting thing is, like these are all like this is former habitat of eastern elk, the eastern elk subspecies, which you said we don't really know a lot about, and how much different they might have been. I guess my question is is, like, like how how like these subspecies categorizations, Like if you can just plug a Rocky Mountain out into Pennsylvania or the you know, the Smoking Great Smoking Mountain National Park, Like how valuable are these subspecies distinctions if you can just like put it out from Yellowstone into one of these very different environments and they just they thrive, They do just fine. 00:21:46 Speaker 7: And you know, we see that with turkey certainly too, with the turkey subspecies. But just because something a different subspecies doesn't mean it's like not going to do really well in a different environment, but it does have local genetic adaptations and physical adaptations to that environment, so you can't And then also you think about Rocky Mountain, Manitoba and Eastern elk were probably the same, so when you're moving those animals, they probably aren't much different than what was there originally, even even Miriam Belk potentially. But if you could take a Roosevelt Elk put in Pennsylvania and they would probably do okay, but they're not adapted to that environment, so there might be some underlying genetic things that make it harder for him to thrive. 00:22:23 Speaker 2: Cool. Well, you got to keep us posted on what you find out. I guess you got three more years of work you're looking at on this stuff. 00:22:30 Speaker 7: Yep, that's right. And there's other people doing a majority of the work. I did a lot of the sampling and involved in the beginning of it. Now the geneticists are sitting at the genetics lab bench doing most of the work. One interesting thing is that Seeheart Miriam, who miriams Elk is. 00:22:46 Speaker 2: Named after him. 00:22:47 Speaker 7: He's the one who named Roosevelt Elk after Theodore Roosevelt. And there's a letter that's on display at the American Museum and Atrohistory in New York, and it's Theodore Roosevelt writing back on the Department of Navy letterhead thanking See Heart Miriam for naming that elk after him. 00:23:04 Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow, Yeah, we talked about this a little bit through email. Miriams. How many how many species does that guy have his name attached to? 00:23:15 Speaker 7: He named seventy one species, but not with his own name. He has about twelve species that have his name on it. 00:23:22 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:23:23 Speaker 7: One interesting factoid too, is that Vernon Bailey used to work for Sea Heart Miriam as a mammalogist. Vernon Bailey then married Miriam's sister, and Vernon Bailey is the guy who described Eastern Elk for science. 00:23:36 Speaker 1: Huh. 00:23:37 Speaker 7: So a lot of the same famous people running in the same circles, as you can see by that picture with See Heart Miriam driving Teddy Roosevelt around. 00:23:45 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:23:45 Speaker 1: Sure, Jim, are you hoping to one day put attach your name to a new subspecies heffelfinger eye. 00:23:51 Speaker 7: I was oping a deer species heffelfinger eye would be nice. 00:23:54 Speaker 5: Yeah, we'll keep our eyes out for one of those running around. 00:23:57 Speaker 2: We'll let you know, all right, Jim, We're gonna you go have fun at that Big Boone and Crockett conference you're at right now, and we'll talk to you. We'll talk to you soon. 00:24:06 Speaker 5: Thanks, Jim. 00:24:08 Speaker 3: Yep. 00:24:08 Speaker 2: Yeah, interesting stuff. 00:24:11 Speaker 4: I want Jim to you know, it sounds like there's some people in Arizona who are upset about all these big giant bulls walking around and they want some smaller elk I like Jim to make those connections for us. 00:24:22 Speaker 5: Sure, I'd be happy to help them with that problem. 00:24:25 Speaker 1: Well, unfortunately, I think it's probably people that just don't want hunting in general. 00:24:30 Speaker 3: Right exactly. 00:24:34 Speaker 2: Let's move on to a news round up. I assigned these guys a little homework to find some interesting news stuff that you guys should know about. I think we've got Randall first, Randal. What are you gonna fill people in on? 00:24:47 Speaker 4: Yeah? Uh, this is not a very fun or exciting news topic. 00:24:52 Speaker 1: But let's do it anyway. 00:24:54 Speaker 4: I feel like this this season, I've probably seen more news stories than years pasted about accidental one hundred deaths from from gunshot wounds. The most recent one I saw was in Pennsylvania, which just opened like last week. Guy was shot in a deer drive. There's another one in in Texas. And then there's two ones actually very close to home, uh here in Montana and another one in Idaho, and those actually involved law enforcement officers on their time off. And and those two cases and the one that I saw in Texas, the circumstances were very similar. It was getting in and out of a vehicle and casing and uncasing firearms. And it's just a good reminder, I guess to always, you know, keep safety in front of mind. And no one ever thinks they're going to be that person involved in an accident like that. And you know, we before the before we started recording here, we're all saying we've been in situations where someone had a loaded gun that they thought was unloaded. 00:25:59 Speaker 5: And you know, that. 00:26:02 Speaker 4: Stuff only happens when you when you aren't constantly challenging yourself like did I unload this? 00:26:09 Speaker 5: You know, did I see them unload this? 00:26:11 Speaker 4: And and it's just always got to be front of mine. So yeah, I don't know that I've got much else there. The one thing I will say in pulling these stories together, and someone had sent me one of these earlier in the year. There are fundraisers for the families of the two law enforcement officers who who died. One was a UH law enforcement officer from California who died in a in a hunt in Idaho, I think in October. And his name is Nathan Cass k A A S. And there's if you go to help aher dot com, there's a fundraiser for his wife and kids. 00:26:51 Speaker 5: And then. 00:26:53 Speaker 4: A guy named Michael flore who is a I believe he was a sheriff's deputy with Galatin County here in Monte And there's a go fundme for Michael floor f l o h R. So, you know, this time of year, it's we all look forward to it, and then when it's gone, we're all sad, you know. But and it's kind of fun to tell stories and do all that, but it's very serious business whenever you have loaded guns around. So just seeing all these in the headlines, I felt compelled to It's interesting. 00:27:26 Speaker 2: I doubt that there's been more this year on average than in the past, you know, accidental like involving hunters, accidental shooting desks. And I would also guess that in the same period of time there were way more accidental shooting desks among non hunters that didn't make the news. But these things tend to hit the headlines for whatever reason. But it is just a great reminder just to like always be safe. 00:27:54 Speaker 1: Yeah, and sometimes you got to get up in people's faces about it because people like to act like it's not a big deal. And as a guide, you learn very quickly. That like it's a there's no it's a no strike policy. 00:28:06 Speaker 6: Yeah. 00:28:07 Speaker 1: I mean, you just don't put up with any of it. And if you have someone in your group that continues to do it, you need to quit hunting with them, right because it's just a matter of time till they make a mistake. 00:28:17 Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's it's easy to keep all that stuff in mind when you're at the range and you're taking your time, and and it's you're very methodical and how you approach it. But when you're hunting, you know, you're cold, you're tired, there's animals moving quickly. 00:28:33 Speaker 5: You might. 00:28:35 Speaker 4: Wear yourself out to the point that you're no longer thinking straight. And you just got to always double check and triple check. And that's like even with when I'm hunting with my wife, I'll ask her, like, did you unload it? And she'll hand it She'll say yes and hand it to me, and I'll stick my finger up in the in the chamber, you know, just yeah. 00:28:52 Speaker 2: And I think you're just begging for trouble if you're the kind of hunter who's like it's hard not to be. But like maybe you're driving from spot to spot, or maybe you're even road hunting, We're like, oh, I got to be ready. I'm in the truck, but I gotta be ready, like having a like not even having one of the pipe, having a clip in the rifle, whatever it might be. Like, I don't think you can be thinking about like what happens if a buck pops out right next to the road kind of thing or stuff like that. 00:29:23 Speaker 1: Oh it's killing me. This fall in Wisconsin, I was climbing trees a bunch and going up in a saddle. I would have to pull my rifle up, you know, with the string. Yeah, And of course I wanted to be unloaded when I was doing that, because you're literally pointing it up. Well, I guess you could pull it up button first either way, but yeah, you don't want to be loaded. But the stink the bad part is is that when you're in that tree and it's you know, thirty minutes before daylight and it's super quiet, and then you gotta rack it, you know. Oh god, it almost made me want to like pull a loaded gun up up the tree, but which I never did, but like I just I learned to. Actually, I would take extra clothes so I could like grab it cover the whole action with a jacket and then slowly just slide one in there and try to make it as quiet as I could. 00:30:13 Speaker 5: Yeah, no shortcuts. 00:30:14 Speaker 2: Yep, be honest, what do you what do you got going big news out of Idaho? 00:30:19 Speaker 1: I think it's big news. You know, a lot of us that live here in Montana and people that live all over this country like to hunt Idaho. You don't really want to go hunt there if you're into like elkin deer, because the wolves have eaten most of them. But if you want to give it a shot, they're going to make it a little bit easier. A lot of us complained in years past. This has all happened in probably the last ten years, because ten years ago I hunted Idaho and I was literally able to buy a deer license at the gas station with like five days left in the season. And when I bought it, the guy offered me a second one. That is no longer the case. The last whatever. You know, five to ten years, you've had to either go in and stand in line or stand in a digital line like. 00:31:10 Speaker 2: A queue stand in line in Idaho. 00:31:12 Speaker 1: Yeah, in Idaho, or get online and stand in a digital queue and they gave you a number, and uh, you know that's kind of the order that you would be you'd get to try to buy a license. And it was a mess. It was hard. I think there's a lot of people gaming. The system was forever, and. 00:31:30 Speaker 5: They had more technology errors than we do on this program. 00:31:33 Speaker 1: Right, it was not it was not pretty bad. 00:31:37 Speaker 2: The way it worked is you were like, if you were going to do this online thing, you were assigned a random number for a position in line. 00:31:45 Speaker 1: Yeah. So like last year, I tried it, and I think I had five devices open, Like I had my wife's phone, my phone, a couple of computers, maybe even like my daughter's iPad or something. Right, the lowest number I had was seven thousand and something. Wasn't going to get a tag, or at least not one of tag attack you want, I want it. So now they've listened to the complaints and they're changing it. It's it's going to be just a straight up application process, very short application period, which I was surprised about. December fifth to the fifteenth. It's actually opens tomorrow. You have ten days to to do it. You have to buy a hunting license to apply. The hunting license is non refundable. The way I look at it when I do that is just that you know, you're chipping in on conservation, sure, because there's a good chance you're not going to get the tag. You're not going to get that. I think it's like one hundred and sixty. 00:32:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just not nothing like in. 00:32:42 Speaker 5: The upper half of the one hundreds. 00:32:44 Speaker 2: You know, I think there will be people that are like, nah, you know, I'm not that committed, but the people who are committed will pay it. It's something other states to do. Uh, So you know, it's something to think about. You're like, you could end up not getting a tag and you're still in for whatever. 00:33:03 Speaker 1: And this is just for general season, like regular old what used to be, you know, what you'd call an over the counter attack. This is not for their what they call their controlled hunts. And so if you're like looking to apply for a special unit for a big Balkanist special date range, this is not it. This is just for like the general season. 00:33:23 Speaker 2: You still have to pick like a unit, yeah right, yes, units. 00:33:27 Speaker 1: Non residents have to have to pick a unit, but it's for like the general season. I think I think it's gonna be good, hopefully, it'll there'd be less stress, and there's no stress. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no. It's a total lottery, right, Like, there's no They're not gonna have a preference points system or anything like that. 00:33:47 Speaker 3: It's just gonna be a pure lottery. 00:33:49 Speaker 5: Yeah, I Jaho doesn't have points for anything, right. 00:33:52 Speaker 1: Which I like. 00:33:53 Speaker 6: Yeah, I like. 00:33:54 Speaker 1: I mean you could if you're an unlucky person, Uh, you could go your entire life and never draw a tag there. Yeah, you know, it is what it is. I like this system better than what like Colorado's got going. 00:34:06 Speaker 6: Yeah. 00:34:07 Speaker 4: Sure, and I think like the new you know, more and more things are going to a draw and like that's a bummer. But the way that it was working before it if you could fly to Idaho and spend money on a hotel room, you know you were going to get it, or or if you had an outfit or who would wait in line for you, you'd get it. 00:34:25 Speaker 5: So this just makes the. 00:34:29 Speaker 1: Playing fields. 00:34:30 Speaker 5: It makes it levels the playing field for people. And yeah, like you said, I think it takes a lot of stress out of it. 00:34:36 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:34:36 Speaker 1: And what else I like about Idaho and I'll leave it at this, is that they they really. I forget what the numbers were, but they cap they're non resident numbers, and it's not that high. It's like like ten to fifteen k per species per you know, deer and elk, and so it's that way they're gonna they're they're going to give their residence and the few non resident to get to hunt there. They're going to give them a quality hunt. And I would much rather have that every couple three years than go and have a crowded hunt every year. 00:35:08 Speaker 5: Oh yeah, for sure, But don't go hunt there because of the wolves and the bears. 00:35:13 Speaker 9: Yeah. 00:35:13 Speaker 1: I mean, like I said, last time I was there, it didn't seem like there are many wolves or many elk or deer left because of the wolves and lions eating them all. But it's up to you. 00:35:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, give it a try if you're feeling adventurous. Speaking of wolves wolves, been a while since we've done a Colorado wolf update, and there's there's been some some action down there, so I thought i'd give you guys a little update. They started their reintroduction famously started their reintroduction program a couple of years ago after a ballot box initiative that's been going on for a little while now. There's currently about thirty in the state of Colorado, thirty wolves and those were sores from Orgon and Canada or those part of those thirty or offspring of those reintroduced wolves. Over the last couple of years, at least a dozen have died from various causes, including being lethally removed. 00:36:16 Speaker 3: For livestock predation. 00:36:19 Speaker 2: The state's got a goal of reintroducing at least another twenty, with an end goal of establishing a population at two hundred. But the thing is, it's like they're running out of options. They found themselves in a position that where they're running out of options to find places to get wolves. The ones they got from Oregon ended up being livestock killers. The ones they got from British Columbia I think have maybe also been some of them have been involved in some of that livestock predation. But either way, like Colorado wants more wolves, it's to be determined whether they're going to get more wolves. Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana they've always refused to give wolves to Colorado, largely for political reasons, and recently the US Fish and Wildlife Service mandated that Colorado has to source its wolves from the Northern Rockies in the United States, meaning no wolves from Canada, no wolves from Alaska, so now they're getting pinched by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Then they turned to Washington recently, and Washington declined because they feel like they can't afford to take wolves out of Washington and risk risk the population they have reducing the population they have there. Oregon also declined to provide to provide more wolves to Colorado, So like two states that were kind of like politic aligned with Colorado, it just bailed and said nope, we're not giving them to you. And those were really Colorado's last best options to get wolves. I don't think they'll be able to get them like Great Lakes wolves from Wisconsin or Minnesota. So it's kind of we're kind of in a holding pattern to see if this reintroduction is going to continue. There are other that could go to some Native American reservations that might be willing to provide wolves. They tried that at one point it didn't work out, so it'll be interesting to see if this reintroduction program continues. It's under the there are people who are very unhappy with the money aspect of this in Colorado. The projection was eight hundred thousand per year cost of the state that the voters agreed to. Last year, the program went wildly. It's consistently went over budget. Last year went wildly over budget three point five million. And that doesn't include a budget of several hundred thousand dollars to reimburse ranchers for lost livestock which they drained. They could completely drain that that fun to reimburse ranchers, and some lawmakers in Colorado are calling the situation out of control. Governor Polus has been forced to cut the budget, and lawmakers are forbidding Colorado Parks and Wildlife from using remaining general fun dollars to acquire more wolves. So, like they might be at a point where they're kind of tread and water for a while. 00:39:37 Speaker 1: You think Idaho would give them some wolves since they're so overrun with right they don't even have any elkan deer left. 00:39:43 Speaker 4: But no, Yeah, it's funny, I was thinking politically, Yeah, it's folks don't want to see wolves spread, like folks in Montana, IHO don't want to be part of like sending wolves to Colorado. But on the other hand, getting wolves out of Montana and Idaho. 00:39:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, but it'd only be ten or fifteen of them, so you know, they can make. 00:40:04 Speaker 3: That up pretty quick. 00:40:05 Speaker 2: But yeah, there's your Colorado update. There's still wolves there. We'll see, uh, we'll see how it works out with them getting towards that goal of two hundred wolves. But right now it's not not happening. 00:40:16 Speaker 1: Oh it's going to be a major smudge. I feel like on Polis's tenure. Yeah, you know the way he handled the whole situation where like. 00:40:24 Speaker 2: He kind of inserted himself into an issue, didn't. 00:40:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, they had wolves coming, Yeah, it was happening all on its own, and he had like they he whatever, had to make a big deal out of it, and it is just yeah. 00:40:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, and his Wildlife Commission played a big role, like a point. Appointees played a big role in it too, which like makes me think that some part of me thinks that those those Wildlife Commission people should be voted in, not appointed in. 00:40:54 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:40:54 Speaker 2: I agree, Okay, Phil, what's the chat doing now? 00:41:00 Speaker 3: Sure? 00:41:01 Speaker 6: Really quick? I saw several of you had some questions for Jim during his segment. I emailed him and told him to go back and check those out if he feels obliged, and he absolutely does not need to, but I bet I did let him know that those questions are there, so maybe you'll get a little thanks for that film DM from the conservation ringer himself. Let's see here. First off, fishing fanatics. Nothing like sitting the stand listening to me need to radio live. Thank you. And then Nate, he's in the chat almost every week, got his first ever buck on Sunday, six and a half inches twelve pointer and his first thought was, Thursday can't come soon enough? So I can tell the the live chat and the crew. 00:41:44 Speaker 5: It's a pig ye all downhill from here. 00:41:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna be. That's a high Bard. 00:41:52 Speaker 6: No free ads, but free hot tips. Justin says, I just upgraded my on X subscription and have been doing a bit of playing around. What are your favorite features that are lesser known If you guys use any lesser known on X features. 00:42:08 Speaker 2: I like like like to plan stocks, like figuring out yardage and things like that. 00:42:15 Speaker 3: I forget that. 00:42:16 Speaker 4: Like the you can range Yeah, and other other manufacturers do that as well, but you can link your range finer to that. 00:42:25 Speaker 2: That's a sweet like if you find a bedded bock that you know you're going to be out of sight of for a while, like marking that spot and planning your stock. 00:42:32 Speaker 3: It's that's a good feature. 00:42:36 Speaker 1: I've been using the UH Now it's integrated with the Moultarie cameras and so it's like an automatic filter just to go if you want to see just pictures from one camera where the Moultarie app that takes a few more steps, but on on X you can literally just click on the icon and see only the pictures from that camera, which is pretty slick. 00:42:54 Speaker 3: That's real nice. That's real nice. 00:42:56 Speaker 4: I the one thing that I've been I wanted them to improve for a while, and then I think in the past two years they they added it. But the snap to feature when you're like putting a route, when you're building a route, and you can actually snap it on trails right and roads, so I know exactly, you know how far it is before I want to bust off the trail and climb a ridge or something like that, because before you're always using. 00:43:26 Speaker 5: Just the linear like line. 00:43:28 Speaker 1: Which is like which is always shorter than what it is. 00:43:31 Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, and so I yeah, I build basically whenever i'm thinking about what I want to do the next day. As far as like a hike, I'll build it out an onyx and get an idea of mileage and elevation change and all that. 00:43:43 Speaker 2: The three D thing is good for that too, because like you can look at the topo, but it doesn't tell you how steep. Yeah, you're only getting so much information. So to be able to look at that slope and be like, oh, hey, that's going to take some more time than I thought. 00:43:57 Speaker 3: Like that's cool. 00:43:58 Speaker 6: M Let's see. It's a question from a cord. He says, how often do your western schools go on lockdown for dangerous animals in the area. He said that he had a mountain lion stroll through a neighborhood and they went into a two hour shelter in place. He says, does that seem like an overreaction? Have your kids school has ever gone into some sort of like lockdown because of a bear or anything like that. 00:44:23 Speaker 1: No, I think they had a bear actually walk through Bozman High ago. 00:44:28 Speaker 2: Wasn't there a grizzly that showed up over by the elementary school in Bear Canyon a few years ago? 00:44:34 Speaker 1: Yeah? Nothing changed. 00:44:36 Speaker 6: I don't think there was A. 00:44:38 Speaker 4: There was like a pair of mountain lions in Missoula that was hanging out at a bus stop and they closed the bus stop. And I remember that because it was right by my buddy's house. But yeah, other than that. 00:44:52 Speaker 2: I don't think it's like, yeah, sure, like we've got more large predators out west, but I don't think it's like it happens. 00:44:59 Speaker 1: It's not like we Bengal tigers out here. 00:45:01 Speaker 2: Like there's probably schools that have been shut down back east because a coyote ran through the playground, you know what I mean. 00:45:07 Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember when I was living in Chicago watching like a live news feed of a of a lion running through a neighborhood and there was like a helicopter following, you know, it's like the OJ chase, and it ran through I believe they they might have even killed it, like on a school playground, but it definitely ran through a skilled a school playground. 00:45:27 Speaker 5: But uh, that was one of my favorite moments from my time there. 00:45:31 Speaker 2: But also in Northern Minnesota, mountain Lion's probably something they're just not real familiar with, and they might have just you know, been been overreacting a little bit maybe, But they're probably don't see him too often. 00:45:44 Speaker 6: We've got Leland who's been really hot on the trivia questions. Like Lea's been getting a lot of questions in there. He asked, the strangest animal you guys have euro mounted. He's having some squirrels done, if you if you have had anything strange. 00:45:57 Speaker 1: I did a turkey skull once, very proud of that. The little stuff is fun, you know, turkey skulls. And I have a bobcat skull. What else he's got, like the whole collection of weasels we got. 00:46:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, we have a rack. We have a rack, one raccoon. We have a beaver skull. Beaver skull is real cool. They got some oh yeah, burly solid skulls man stuff like that. 00:46:22 Speaker 5: Yeah, I wanted to. 00:46:23 Speaker 4: I realized too late that I should have kept the skull from my sand Hill crane this year. 00:46:28 Speaker 2: That would be cool. 00:46:29 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, And I realized that while I was taking the legs off and I had little drumsticks that were, you know, fourteen inches long. 00:46:38 Speaker 6: Really quick, Mogor says Phil, did you and Randall knock back a beer and hot dog? After that last disinformation blunder? You're going to have to be more specific, moc. 00:46:46 Speaker 4: No, that was that was when you told me the wrong thing about our radio live from last week. Do you remember when you gave me the wrong information about whether or not Oh? 00:46:54 Speaker 2: Oh yeah. 00:46:55 Speaker 6: Then we had a fake argument and I asked if you want to get a beer? You said no, But you want to get a beer after this? 00:47:01 Speaker 5: Yeah, we will do that after this. 00:47:03 Speaker 2: But I don't. 00:47:05 Speaker 5: Just know the argument was not fake on my end. 00:47:10 Speaker 6: Well, then good to know, I guess. All right, Phil, we've got a few more, but you want to. 00:47:18 Speaker 2: Let these guys know because it's gonna have to be a kind of a quick turnaround on Phil's part, which makes like life difficult. But we're doing a hot tip off and we're doing Phil, We're gonna do the the listener voting thing, right. 00:47:31 Speaker 6: I've got I'm prepped and ready to go. 00:47:33 Speaker 2: So be prepared as you're listening to like vote on the hot tips that are coming up a little later. But we can we can do some more. We can move on, Phil, We'll do another round at the end of the show. 00:47:45 Speaker 5: Okay, great call Phil. 00:47:48 Speaker 3: All right. 00:47:49 Speaker 2: Our next guest is Anna Borgman. She co owns Chaos Farms, a butchering and meat processing business that serves the community and small farms here in southwest Montana. She's been on the podcast uh at least a couple of times. 00:48:05 Speaker 6: She's been on radio, and she's been on the main met Eat. 00:48:07 Speaker 1: So she judged an episode of Roast There you Go, So you guys may have. 00:48:11 Speaker 6: Trivial She came out to karaoke once. 00:48:14 Speaker 2: There you Go. She's like basically a meat eater employee anyway. She she's also butchered and processed a bunch of animals for the crew when we're too busy to do it on our own. She did. She did ten fifty pound game bags of moose meat for me last year, and I can say she did a very outstanding job. So Anna, welcome to the show. Oh you did? You went in there? 00:48:42 Speaker 1: Great, she's the meat. 00:48:47 Speaker 2: Yeah, you can hear you. General rifle season just ended a few days ago here in Montana. But I imagine and by the looks of it, I'm right, you're still pretty busy. 00:48:59 Speaker 9: Yeah, it kind of seems like people hit it hard the last weekend. So Gold we got a lot of calls, Yeah exactly. Yeah, So we got a lot of calls and we were running around like crazy picking up We picked stuff up for people and we drop it off back at you know, the office or your house or whatever. So we were running around like crazy. We've got quite a few elkin here right now, a little bit packed. 00:49:20 Speaker 2: So nice. How many deer note do you think you do in a season? 00:49:26 Speaker 9: Oh jeez, it's just the two of us. It's just my boys riend and I and we kind of take on our own animals, you know, like I'll say yes to whatever I have time for it, he says, yes, he has time for Yeah. 00:49:40 Speaker 2: This isn't a situation where people can just roll up and drop something off to you, like a lot of meat process. 00:49:45 Speaker 9: Process right, Like this cooler is uh, I bought a utility trailer and we just put in you know, foam insulation and built out a cooler. So it's it's pretty small. We pack it, but uh we do. I don't know if you more than a hundred for but I uh, I should keep track. But it's a lot of animals, but. 00:50:05 Speaker 5: More in a season than most people will do in their in their lifetime. 00:50:10 Speaker 2: Sure, definitely, absolutely, But that that kind of gets to where I'm going going with this, is you're not one of those like mega meat processors processors that are doing hundreds and hundreds of animals a year, which like allows you to like operate with a much higher level level of care and quality. I would say then then I'm not bagging on meat processors and processors in general, but like, the more they do, it's possible that the quality level is going to go down if they're cranking out hundreds and hundreds of animals. So sure, as someone who's working with the goal of like doing this in small batches and putting out a really high quality product, I want to get into first what you'd lay out as like best practices for hunters before they even make the call to you, and then the most common mistakes people make out in the field before they even call you. 00:51:17 Speaker 9: Yeah, i'd say best practices. I'm kind of the hill that I will die on right now is take those hoofs off. We get a lot of stuff that has hoofs on it, and I totally you know, I get it to an extent that you're trying to get it out of there, and it's easier to stick it in a game bag with that hoof on. But if you're packing stuff out a it's extra weight. And b if you've just done a good job, you know, skinning it and keeping it clean, you're kind of screwing it up at the end there by adding more hide into the bag, more hair, whatever it was on that animal's hoof, whatever it was. And then by the time we get it, you know, it's just it's a little more work for us, and we can't I mean, you can see these waters hanging back here, like we can't hang it with a hoof on it so close to the ceiling up there. So and it's really easy to take off. I just put up a video on my Instagram, I think yesterday of how to take off. 00:52:07 Speaker 2: You're talking like basically the shin like the whole lower leg craw yeah. 00:52:11 Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah yeah. Like you just run your hand up and that first joint that you feel there's a little bit little ridge in there. You just get your knife in there and it should I mean, you can kind of hit it from underneath and. 00:52:21 Speaker 2: It'll just crack off yep, yep, and it. 00:52:24 Speaker 9: Won't cut the Achilles tent. 00:52:25 Speaker 2: Anything else that's that's helpful or people should be doing to like make sure they're gonna have some like high quality meat once it's in the freezer. 00:52:34 Speaker 9: Keeping stuff as clean as possible obviously that helps out our whole, you know, us processing. But it also it's gonna you're gonna get more meatback because we don't have to trim as much off. Yeah, and then I'd say, I know Yanny and I have talked about this weasoning, right, but just at least getting that wind pipe out of there, because that thing carries so much bacteria and it'll hold onto heat too. And so if you can pull that out of there, you're gonna get meat. You're gonna things are just gonna stay cleaner. 00:53:02 Speaker 1: So do you have any we do. 00:53:05 Speaker 2: Get you got any opinions on gutting versus gutless method? 00:53:13 Speaker 9: No, not really. I mean, if you can get as much meat as possible off with the gutless method, that's fine. I I I tend to pick up a lot of roadkill. We live on a highway. Yeah, you know, I go, I am on it all the time, so I see when stuff gets hit and I'll pick it up. So I end up doing a lot of gutless method because those things are usually a little exploded, and I don't see a problem with it. You know if you can, If you can gut it, that's great and get the whole thing out. Obviously you're gonna get a little bit more meat off that. But no, I have no problem with the gutless method at all. 00:53:44 Speaker 2: Gotcha? Okay, what are like the most common mistakes people are making out there? 00:53:55 Speaker 9: I think, you know, not not planning the head to keep clean and I don't if you want to throw even a trash bag in your in your pack and just lay it down, it's going to weigh nothing, and you're gonna have a place to put that meat on. When you're pulling off quarters or whatever. You can put it on the hide, but the hides off and dirty. You know, I run into that problem too. It's it's hard to keep things super clean as far as bringing stuff to us. When you're putting stuff into game bags, don't try to keep things in as big, like the biggest chunks possible, right Because when I open a game bag and there's a bunch of little pieces that fall out, there's not a lot I can do. I can't trim that, and if it's already a little bit dirty, it's going to go in the trash. 00:54:37 Speaker 2: Unfortunately, if you're if you're on like a big backcountry hunt miles in, it's tempting to debone those quarters. But if you're taking it to someone like Anna, it's like not the best thing for her to work on. So something if you. 00:54:55 Speaker 9: Can debone it and keep it. You know, big chunks all good, but it's a little you know, I'll dump out and it'll be like. 00:55:01 Speaker 2: A little quarter size mystery chunks, not a lot. 00:55:04 Speaker 9: Yeah, exact, Yeah, exactly. 00:55:06 Speaker 1: And how fast can you do an elk, not wrapped but just just skinned, broken down into into you know, rose steaks and maybe a pile of grind. 00:55:21 Speaker 9: That's a good question. I mean i'd say two hours, maybe. 00:55:26 Speaker 1: Two hours probably, Yeah. 00:55:28 Speaker 9: I don't usually. I mean I'm either like skinning it and hanging it or it's already quarter and then I'm going to go cut it. But you know, like I used to, I got into this from working at a shop and I worked on the kill floor and I would skin and got thirty sheep in a day, sometimes twenty before lunch. So I can skin and got pretty fast. Yeah, it's just cutting. It'll take a little bit longer. 00:55:53 Speaker 2: But yeah, are there anything You probably have a pretty good clientele that knows what they're doing. But are there some things that might cause you to like just to refuse working on an animal or like a set of quarters or whatever. 00:56:10 Speaker 9: Yeah, I've learned my lesson as far as like checking in game bags before I take stuff, especially if it's from people I don't know. Last year, I got the dirtiest stuff I've ever seen, Like you would have thought they tied it to the back of their truck and just drug it for the dirt to bring it out. But and I didn't realize that until after the fact, So I did charge them. I'll charge a dirty feet, you know, if there's not if I don't see it beforehand. And then like during archery season, we'll have people call and they didn't really have a plan and there's been you know, an antelope that's been in the hot garage for two days, and it's like, I'm not going to take that on because the meat's going to be spoiled. Yeah, it's not worth putting, you know, our business at risk to give you something that might make you sick or isn't going to taste very good. Yeah, So I think having a plan beforehand, whether it's know that you're gonna get out and you're gonna call a few people see if they have openings, and you know, if they don't, you you're if you have a last minute plan that you can at least do it. But don't let it hang to the point that it rots. That drives me. 00:57:13 Speaker 2: If you were giving advice to someone who's just getting in up processing their own animal, like, what would you tell them like as far as what they need to know or what equipment they absolutely should get themselves. 00:57:29 Speaker 9: Just don't overthink it. You know, you really can't mess it up. You might not get the cut that you want because you accidentally cut through it or whatever, but everything can be at least turned into burger or sausage, So don't stress too hard about it. Watch some YouTube videos. There's some really good videos out there that will show breakdown and seam. Butchering is is pretty easy. I mean you can you can see, you know, like inside round sirloin tip you can see it on there and yeah, but you don't have to go crazy with it. Don't stress yourself out. Everything's edible as long as it's clean. As far as tools to have, honestly, a sharp knife is about all you need when I'm doing game processing. That's all I use, and I don't. Jesse and I were just talking about this. He makes knives and he has the ability to, you know, sharpen stuff with his grinder. 00:58:27 Speaker 2: We don't. 00:58:28 Speaker 9: We really don't sharpen our knives. And for as much as we use them, you'd think that we'd be sharpening them, but we use I have it here. This is my savior. It's a honing steel. Yeah, and that's all I use. And like you know, in the summer, I butcherr chickens and I'll do over three hundred chickens a day and I that's all use and I won't even sharpen it at the end of the day. So I think for people, I think knives become sort of a a stressor. I don't know how to sharpen it. I don't know what you know what knife to get? You can get a big cornox, or you can spend money on a knife. But as long as you've got it, like I would say, honing steel is really all you need to learn how to use it. 00:59:09 Speaker 1: And but I think the key, it'll say, yea, the key and right, is that you're using that honing steel constantly. Through the day and you don't let that blade get to the point where you can't bring it back, or do you feel like you can actually sharpen a blade that's like completely dull. Can you bring it back just with that steel or at that point do you have to grind it a little bit? 00:59:34 Speaker 9: At that point, you need to grind it a little bit, because that's steel. What it's doing. There's burrs on the edge of that knife, and as you're cutting, they're going to fold over, and this honing steel is just lining the burrs up again. So it'll start to feel like it's dull. It's not. It's just those burrs are out of line, and so you hone it back into a line and it'll be sharp again. But if you've got something that is past the point of you know, the whole edge is rolled over or whatever, you're gonna have to use a stone or a grinder grinding belt. 01:00:05 Speaker 2: I got one more for you, and uh, I want to get your opinion. There's like people choose you know, lead bullets or copper bullets, solid bullets, like for various reasons, but from from from your perspective as someone who's cutting up meat all the time, what would you choose? Would you choose like a lead bullet or a solid copper bullet as far as like getting getting good meat. 01:00:36 Speaker 9: You know, I've I've thought about this a lot, and I feel like this, the copper versus lead, it's so complicated. Yeah, you know, it'd be an interesting experiment to sort of ask people as they drop stuff off what they used, right, I mean I will find stuff sometimes, like I last year, you know, I pulled a couple of copper bullets out of an elk shank. I don't really know what was going on there, but so I will find stuff. I'll find, you know, something in the ribs or in the if if something gets stuck in a shoulder blade or whatever. But it kind of runs the gamut. I mean, I find all kinds of stuff. And I really think, like my understanding and my my feeling on this is just it depends on the caliber you're using, It depends on how far you think you're going to be shooting, and sort of your confidence in even recovering an animal, right, because in my mind it's like the whole the lead thing is like, if you're not sure that that animal is going to go down, then that's really where you hate some issues. And like, you know, we do mobile slaughter when we're not doing game processing, we're doing bubble slaughter, and we use lead, but and we're using thirty eight special or I'm trying to think what else we have right now. I think we're just using thirty eight specially right now. But that's lead. But we also just can pull it out of the skull in the back of the neck. We know where that's going, so look at it. 01:02:01 Speaker 2: Can you look at a front quarter on an elk or a deer that's that was shot in the shoulder and be like, oh, I know what that was. Like do you see more damage from one or the other. 01:02:12 Speaker 9: Or I don't think I noticed so much as far as copper or lead. I notice caliber, oh really Like yeah, Like, well, you know there's a I picked up a deer from a kid the other day and he's like, oh, I shot all the way through it. I shot it with the two forty three and then another kid that had shot with three blew up both shoulders and I don't I don't know if they were copper lad. I didn't ask them. Yeah, it's like, man, you can tell, yeah, for sure, tell caliber, I'd say, but yeah, I don't know. I I you mentioning that makes me want to ask next season and sort of like take a survey. 01:02:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you guys got anything for. 01:02:55 Speaker 9: You? 01:02:55 Speaker 2: Look like you're falling asleep over there. 01:02:57 Speaker 7: Geez. 01:02:58 Speaker 5: No, I was just thinking about how I didn't. 01:03:00 Speaker 9: Uh. 01:03:00 Speaker 4: I meant to defrost some steaks this morning from the elki dropped off yesterday, and I realized I failed to do that, So I'm gonna have to run home and get the souv'd fired up. 01:03:11 Speaker 5: Probably that's okay, that works. 01:03:13 Speaker 9: That was fun cutting your olk because we have a I've got this old band saw. That makes game processing pretty fun because I can do you know, like blade in shoulder Rose. I can do osbooka really easily cut short ribs if someone brings out ribs. Yeah, and did cutting for people like to cook? 01:03:35 Speaker 5: Yeah? 01:03:35 Speaker 4: Anna did sit in the bison that my wife shot last year, and and we got ribs, and we got tomahawk steaks, and we got abuco bones and then we got just like long cut marrow bones out of the whole thing. 01:03:49 Speaker 2: Speaking of that kind of stuff, Anna, ribs and osabuco and stuff. What what? 01:03:56 Speaker 7: Uh? 01:03:57 Speaker 2: What do you most often see like that they gets tossed or left on the carcass that hunters should be keeping. What like obviously they're you know, wanting waste laws where they have to keep certain stuff, But what do you see getting left behind? Well, and it could even be like organs. 01:04:15 Speaker 9: I'm a big fan of the tougher cuts, so like neck meat. I like doing the sort of low and slow cooking. Neck roasts are awesome. I also understand if people don't want to be cooking with the spinal cord in there and you're worried about seayby and stuff, But if you bone out that neck, that's really nice stew meat. I also on elk because I do this on beef all the time. You can pull the cheeks out, and cheek meat is one of my favorite. It is so good. And elk have at least big enough cheeks in people worth a deer might be a little like silver dollar size, but yeah, you just throw those in a Dutch oven and cook for sure. They're so good. Yeah, and you know tongues, people pull out tongues a lot. Hearts I like seeing that, and then livers if they're good. I'm a big liver fan. I know plenty of people aren't, which is fair, but yeah, I don't know. I think the more you play with it, the more you hunt, the more you've got, you know, options of what to cook. And it's really fun to get creative with it because it does you can get a little boring after a while, you know, just cooking back strapped and burger. 01:05:22 Speaker 2: All right, you guys, got anything else or we want to move on. We're good. 01:05:26 Speaker 1: Thanks Anna, Thank you, Anna. 01:05:27 Speaker 2: All right, get to work. 01:05:29 Speaker 9: Yeah, thanks for having me. I will. 01:05:33 Speaker 2: Thanks again. 01:05:35 Speaker 1: Thanks guys. 01:05:38 Speaker 2: All right, Hot tip Off time? Oh geez, are you ready? 01:05:43 Speaker 5: No, we need to play the jingle. 01:05:46 Speaker 6: I I'm tired of this jingle. 01:05:49 Speaker 2: Guys, Okay, feel's tired of it. 01:05:51 Speaker 6: But we're gonna play it anyway, that's all. 01:06:00 Speaker 2: I'm kind of tired of it too, philm. 01:06:07 Speaker 5: No, it's so good. 01:06:08 Speaker 6: There's just some there's some segments we do a lot because they're good segments like hot tip Off, and we hear that jingle all the time, and it doesn't help that it's one of the more poppy, i'd say, annoying creating jingles. I think you're right, we got to bring back we got to bring back tattoos. I regret Brody is thoroughly annoyed. 01:06:25 Speaker 5: Right now. 01:06:26 Speaker 2: I love all of Phil's songs except for that one. I hate it. 01:06:31 Speaker 6: I got to kill the segment then, sorry. 01:06:32 Speaker 5: Guys. 01:06:33 Speaker 2: Hot Tip Off where two listeners go head to head with competing pieces of advice, and after we hear each tip, we'll chat about who we think should win, but the audience is going to decide who does win. If you got a hot tip yourself, take one minute ish video and email it to radio at themediater dot com and and you might get you might get your hot tip into the show show and win something. We do have a price today. 01:07:02 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I was gonna ask, is there something that they're winning? Just fun. 01:07:08 Speaker 5: Goodness, gracious backpack? 01:07:10 Speaker 2: What's this thing called again? Be honest? 01:07:13 Speaker 1: Oh I know you're gonna ask me that it's the uh transfer light. 01:07:17 Speaker 2: Yeah, we got like it's like Santa's toy bag man. We got stuff in there. We gotta signed copy of the Meat Eater calendar there, which you guys should go buy if you don't have one, because we kicked back some money to b h A. It's a great like stocking stuffer. 01:07:33 Speaker 1: Buy some for your friends family. 01:07:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, it's not expensive. 01:07:38 Speaker 9: Man. 01:07:38 Speaker 4: Anybody who loves trucks or the F word, they'll get a kick out of it, exactly. 01:07:44 Speaker 2: And also in there was a rattle bag. This is a that's the felt smash and clash. 01:07:51 Speaker 6: I like that. 01:07:53 Speaker 2: So there you go. Got some stuff for white tail hunters. 01:07:56 Speaker 5: And that's a hell of a hell of a hall. 01:07:58 Speaker 2: I think you could use this bag for other stuff. I mean, I like you could throw I'd use it for bird hunting. I'd put it in my boat and shove some stuff in there. It's not just for white tails. So there we go. There's our prize. Let's see here. 01:08:14 Speaker 1: Who do we got. Let's see the hot tips. 01:08:17 Speaker 2: Yeah, Caden Bonner and Dak Cash. So make sure you're throwing your boat in. Uh, and we'll figure out who the winner is. Philly, Philly, ready to roll them. 01:08:27 Speaker 5: Let's do it, Caden Bonter, this is good. 01:08:33 Speaker 3: I'm already. 01:08:34 Speaker 8: My name is Caden, and I am from Nebraska. This last weekend we were out for Nebraska rifle season and heard a bunch of coyokes and so we were trying to figure out how to call them in and make a predator call. So pulled out a little debbie out of my backpack, which most hunters should have, and came up with how to make comparator call. 01:08:59 Speaker 5: Like that and then just pulled tight. 01:09:13 Speaker 3: Improvisers, Yeah, like. 01:09:18 Speaker 2: That definitely would work. 01:09:20 Speaker 8: And that is how you make a predator call out of a little bebby wrapper. 01:09:24 Speaker 2: There we go, dack cash. 01:09:31 Speaker 10: Hey me, your crew had a hot tip for you, mostly for small game hunters, especially squirrels. If you don't like packing your squirrels out in a game bag or a vest like you gotta do, cut your little a little green limb by like this, sharpen one end. Got a squirrel by the back leg Rip those two side toes off, sometimes harder than others. You can use your knife if you want to. Once you rip those toes, stick the stick in between pennons and the bones. You got a squirrel carrier. 01:10:19 Speaker 5: It's like a fish. 01:10:22 Speaker 10: And if you don't, if you get tired to carry it, you can stick it in You're built looke. 01:10:30 Speaker 5: That's the whole system. I love it. 01:10:33 Speaker 2: Nice early man tool there, So that part I like a lot hands free. 01:10:39 Speaker 10: You want to make a squirrel come out and look at you, you can click the tail. Thank you God that cash. 01:10:46 Speaker 1: Mark and so play nickmes are here, Randall? 01:10:50 Speaker 2: Who you like? 01:10:51 Speaker 9: Oh? 01:10:51 Speaker 6: I like? 01:10:51 Speaker 5: I mean. 01:10:53 Speaker 4: Caden won me over at first because of his commitment to Little Debbie snack products. I think that was an oatmeal cream pie, one of the one of the finest I used to house those things. 01:11:09 Speaker 11: Yeah, we get, but man, I'm just Dak charmed me with his accent, with his innovative uh, squirrel handling techniques, and just the versatility of that whole tip. 01:11:24 Speaker 1: You're honest, I'll have to agree. I mean it's very uh what do you call it when you like come up with something on the spot. 01:11:33 Speaker 6: Improvising? 01:11:34 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Cad cat how do you say his name? 01:11:37 Speaker 2: Caen? 01:11:37 Speaker 1: Caden? 01:11:38 Speaker 7: Uh? 01:11:39 Speaker 1: Improvised great? And you know it happened. I wish you would have told us if they actually called something in with it. 01:11:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean both of these guys improvised great. 01:11:47 Speaker 1: Yeah, they're good tips. 01:11:49 Speaker 4: But you know, and the thing is is, if I were out deer hunting and I heard some coyotes, I would think, uh, damn, I don't have a predator call. 01:11:59 Speaker 5: I think what can I do to make a predator? 01:12:02 Speaker 2: Definitely it's close. 01:12:03 Speaker 5: I like that mindset. 01:12:04 Speaker 2: I like the idea of just building something on the spot too, Like you don't always got to go, you know, buy something, You can just make it right there. It's cool, you know. So I'm leaning towards DAK. But it doesn't matter what we think, It matters what the audience thinks. 01:12:19 Speaker 6: Phil, I'd say one of our listeners was in a runaway lead, and the poll is tightening quickly. Really, so your votes matter. Get in there. Yeah, we'll give it another thirty seconds or so. 01:12:33 Speaker 2: You got any other comments we can hit while we're You're Italian votes and oh. 01:12:37 Speaker 6: Sure, let's see here. Cliff is wondering, serious question. Are we going to see Randall Clause this year? 01:12:44 Speaker 5: Just wait tbd TBD, but gotta watch it. 01:12:49 Speaker 4: Just the thing is, you got to believe he doesn't come unless you believe. 01:12:54 Speaker 2: It's like the Polar Express. 01:12:56 Speaker 1: But I feel like you and Brent are kind of battling for Santa Claus rights around. 01:13:02 Speaker 2: Well, Brent's a Southerner, he can't win. 01:13:05 Speaker 5: Yeah, but he's got it. 01:13:06 Speaker 6: Well, that's both of you guys are going to be on that live tour. Yeah, you guys had like, you know, a rock paper scissors Rochambeau. Who's going to be taking. 01:13:15 Speaker 5: Brent's doing it. I tried to. 01:13:17 Speaker 4: I tried to insert myself, but I didn't want to be like I'd like to be Santa. I didn't want to put myself on that. I just said, you know, if you needs someone to wear the whole time, I'll do that. 01:13:27 Speaker 2: Maybe he could be Father Christmas and you'd be like his apprentice. 01:13:32 Speaker 4: Or we could be different regional variations on Santa, like I would be. I would be Chris Kringle or some sort of Germanic. 01:13:39 Speaker 1: Right, have a lot of He might get tired and need a break. 01:13:43 Speaker 5: Yeah, he is older, he might tire out. 01:13:47 Speaker 2: Yeah, stay tuned for Randall Claus. I want Phil well Man. 01:13:51 Speaker 6: It's hard for me to I'm gonna give them another thirty seconds because it's so close. 01:13:55 Speaker 2: Let's do one more. 01:13:56 Speaker 5: Yeah, we should see three hundred and thirty four votes in there, guys. 01:14:00 Speaker 6: Okay, If you guys could sacrifice Steve to the hunting gods and return for any tag species or location, what would it be? This is from Evan M. 01:14:08 Speaker 1: I'd probably go on some super expensive stone sheep huntains stone sheep. 01:14:18 Speaker 4: Yeah, I think if I mean, I'd love a mountain goat hunt. But given the given that we're sacrificing Steve for this, I feel like you sort of owe it to Steve. 01:14:27 Speaker 5: To go for the big, high dollar hunt. 01:14:29 Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe you go do a Kate Buffalo. 01:14:32 Speaker 5: Do a Marco polo hunt. 01:14:34 Speaker 2: Man, I'd take aim. I know it's Steve, but I'd take it. 01:14:38 Speaker 3: Just a big horn hunt right here, Montana. 01:14:40 Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that question would be pretty cool. 01:14:42 Speaker 6: This is wild. It is flipping back and forth every two or three seconds. 01:14:47 Speaker 2: I can't Clara Winner, then we're just gonna happen. 01:14:51 Speaker 6: I will, But over two hundred people who are watching this right now have not voted. 01:14:55 Speaker 5: Can Can we set a timer? 01:14:58 Speaker 6: Should I set a timer? 01:14:59 Speaker 5: Yeah? 01:15:00 Speaker 6: Sixty more seconds? We have to. We have to end it at some point. 01:15:02 Speaker 2: All right, one more comment. We'll come back into Clara Winner. 01:15:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, my teeth are about to float, all. 01:15:08 Speaker 6: Right, hold on honest as to pee in the timer? 01:15:11 Speaker 5: Oh I see does. 01:15:12 Speaker 2: Bring a key bottle into the studio. 01:15:14 Speaker 5: I thought that was like a comment about it malnourished. 01:15:17 Speaker 6: Do we have any muzzleloader people's muzzleoader experience at the table here? Maybe is asking what muzzleloader powder bullet combo have you found to be most accurate. 01:15:29 Speaker 2: If he's talking about inline muzzleloaders, which I have much more experienced with, Like you can't go wrong, like with a TC muzzleloader in line blackhorn. It's just like the regular black horn black powder. It might even be synthetic black powder, and I use uh, I think it's Federal's copper bullets. And I've done real well with that combination. 01:16:00 Speaker 4: And it probably depends a lot on the state that you're in and what they're right. 01:16:04 Speaker 2: They got different, different rules for sure, but like I don't A lot of the inline muscle loaders these days are set up for magnum loads of one hundred and fifty grains. I have found that I've gotten way better accuracy results by not going with you can choose what load you use. You don't have to use one hundred and fifty grains of powder, and I've always done way better with about one hundred grains accuracy wise. And I shot a Shyris kow moose with that set up and it went right. 01:16:37 Speaker 3: Through both of her shoulders, So there you go. 01:16:40 Speaker 6: Okay, I let it run And the person who started off in the lead also ended up winning our winner with fifty three percent of the vote at the end on nail. 01:16:51 Speaker 2: That's not even close in a presidential election, Phil No, but it was fifty to fifty going back and forth for a while. 01:16:59 Speaker 6: So so the guy's fan stepped up, and that person is Dak with the squirrel holder. 01:17:04 Speaker 5: Squirrelman, Dak. Congratulations, he doesn't need. 01:17:06 Speaker 2: That squirrel holder anymore. You can shove him all in his bag. 01:17:09 Speaker 6: That's congrats, Dak. 01:17:11 Speaker 2: There you go. 01:17:11 Speaker 4: Beautiful work everybody, and we'll have our producer Jake reach out to you. 01:17:17 Speaker 3: Yep. 01:17:18 Speaker 6: Who is He's actually in the room today from Missoula. He's in Bozeman. I don't do have his camera on. I do have his camera on. 01:17:24 Speaker 2: Say hi Jae. 01:17:25 Speaker 9: He is. 01:17:29 Speaker 2: All right, Thanks everyone for tuning in. Before we go, we've got some uh, we've got some great new gifty stuff in the store. We've got some new gnome uh Gnome logo where we've got some some of our spices up there now, spice mixes that Bayou Boil I can tell you is very good. I've used it a couple of times on some fish and it's great. 01:17:53 Speaker 3: Uh. 01:17:53 Speaker 2: Live tour guys, what do you got to say about that. 01:17:57 Speaker 5: Getting excited, getting real excited. 01:18:00 Speaker 2: Some of those venues are getting close to selling out, so people need to buy their tickets. 01:18:04 Speaker 5: Yeah. 01:18:04 Speaker 4: Last I saw that it's like eighty percent sold out, which is compared to prior years. Like one of the venues is already Fetville. 01:18:13 Speaker 6: Yeah, Clay Clay's crew came out in force. 01:18:15 Speaker 2: Clayre's family, Yeah, Clay's extended Mountain family. 01:18:20 Speaker 6: Yeah, they came down from the very supportive. 01:18:25 Speaker 1: Yeah. It's always fun to go do do these things. You know, it's a it's a marathon, but we'll have a good time. 01:18:30 Speaker 2: You guys. 01:18:31 Speaker 6: More most is from Moor. He was setting us up for this question for Randall and Jan Sorry Brody, but he's he's asking how nervous do you guys get before it Tour's. 01:18:40 Speaker 5: Good to hear from Moor, even if it's at the very end. 01:18:42 Speaker 2: I feel like Mogar is starting to have a little too much influence on this show. 01:18:46 Speaker 5: Nope, Nope, he's. 01:18:48 Speaker 6: Been nothing but supportive and kind. 01:18:50 Speaker 4: I'll say this, Mogor last year, I was very, very nervous before the first show, and then it was like a drug and I couldn't get. 01:18:58 Speaker 5: Enough of it. Just the life of a showman. 01:19:01 Speaker 2: Sure those weren't the beers you had before the show. 01:19:03 Speaker 4: Could have been a few of those. But just going out there have fun. Uh, And I'm a warrior. I get stressed out about things to get anxious. But god, it's like a drug just being on the stage with the hot spotlight on you, the microphone in your hand, and they're just eating from the ether. They're just eating from your palm. Oh, nothing better. Working on some great material. Need to workshop a at a couple of stand up nights this week, but we should be good to go. 01:19:29 Speaker 1: Nice. I need to work on my material too. I've got I feel like I've got a decent amount of stories. But yeah, I haven't actually recited it yet, but yeah, we've been doing it so long now, Mulgora that it's just you just realize that, I don't know, people in the audience are more they're more nervous than you are. 01:19:47 Speaker 2: Right, you're honest. What do we got going on with roasts? 01:19:52 Speaker 3: Oh? 01:19:52 Speaker 1: Yeah, a new episode dropped, maybe already on meter YouTube channel. It's Best Burger episode. Brody Anderson faces off with Nate Mason from f HF Gear. 01:20:02 Speaker 6: Oh, big guy and. 01:20:04 Speaker 1: Good, great guy. 01:20:05 Speaker 6: It was live as of an hour ago, so. 01:20:09 Speaker 1: Go watch it and tell us what you think in the comments, and if you have any ideas for media or roast, drop in the comments too. Love to love to hear ideas on how to make that show better. Thanks for watching. 01:20:21 Speaker 2: All right, signing off, We'll see you guys next week. Thanks. 01:20:24 Speaker 6: Let's Oh no wait, I forgot almost ended the stream 01:20:29 Speaker 5: So cool if the outro had played right As soon as I said that, I tried