00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, everybuddy, welcome episode number forty five The Honey Collective. I'm better Brian, and today we are joined by two of my favorites to meat Eater originals. I'm talking about Steve and Ronella and Ryan Callahan and we're into Noora, Mexico for this podcast. We're hanging out after a good dinner, a few drinks. Of course, Steve other drinks. He didn't have any, but I had a few. Cal had a few. He did a couple of push ups, cranked out a pretty interesting podcast. Of course, like any late night podcast might go, this one didn't really have script. We just let it rip. Well. We had a lot to talk about, first beers, first guns, first cars, and a bunch of other stuff, our love of Jim Harrison and like I said, other stuff which makes this one fun. We didn't take her too seriously and I always enjoy talking to and recording with Ryan Callahan and Stephen Roanella. For episode number forty five, check it out, here comes Ryan Callahan. How many push ups is that? Bud? Two hundred for the day for the day, the two club, the two Hundo Club. You feel like that's a bit excessive, are you excited about that. No, because I U was like, I should try to be healthy. Um, eating five to six pounds of free holidays a day down here, and I kind of wanted a second beer and I'm kind of regretting it. So I was like, well, I'm gonna do two hundred push ups today? How many push ups per backup? You're trying to lose weight? No, just stay healthy. Oh what's that to do with drinking beer? Oh? Just just extra calories for nothing, for the lake and the taste of beer. Huh yeah. I mean, I'm just trying to be somewhat healthy. I feel like I'm living life on the road long and listen, I'm all four doing pushups. Man, I just didn't understand the beer part. Is there a push ups per beer you feel like you have to do to offset? Well, now I'm at a hundred push ups per beer today. Now that that's a healthy man? Is like, if my Boddy Ron you did that, you're like one thousand, one hundred and I don't have heard any counting. That's ad number. Miller Light would write him and say, whatever you're doing, please stop. He would have giant arms. You know, I used to have a girlfriend um bless her heart, and her grandmother had drank the same kind of beer whole life. I think she drank old Mud, Old Milwaukee. Yeah, it might have been Old Milwaukee. It was one of the swill beers, which I have a theory that they make it all on the same plant. I just like it all they make it and they switched the labels out throughout the day. Do you have any anything to back that up? Is that just just haven't drank at all? Like when we're in high school, you know, you kept like you know those bottles what you call those the big glass bottles. Well, I was like thirty two ounces and yeah, like you know you have like a black label at Old Mill half drank under your truck seat, drank drag it out now and then anyways, Uh, my old girlfriend, her grandma drank the same beer whole life, and the and the family got together and wrote the beer company um a letter about her, and they sent her like a big care package with a custom sign thanking her for her service. Yeah, and then they had her birthday party and unveiled this all this and the in there because she had been drinking that beer for you know, seventy years the was they thanked her first serve us service to the way back when when I was bartender in Missoula, Montana, reds Bar, Um, my buddy, Uh two shains, I worked with two shains there, um and Uh. Unbeknownst to the owner of the establishment, we decided that nobody was drinking Olympia. We had the same twelve pack of Olympia in the fridge forever, and so we started selling Olympias for um a buck of peace. All the other beers were two fifty or two twenty five at that point. Um, all of a sudden, Olympia started selling, like you want to believe. And then we started throwing a lime wedge in there, calling him Montana coronas um. And we just didn't think anything of it, right, And in very short time we became the number one seller of Olympia beer and all of western Montana, and the Olympia Beer rep came in and gave us like Olympia tackle boxes, Olympia sweatshirts, all sorts of beer swags. You were like an ambassador, like an athlete kind of yes, yes we were. We were highly tuned to athletes. Um and uh, what was well, it's funny is nobody really cared about Olympia beer. But all that stuff was so unique, uh, because nobody else had it right, um that it was just pretty much immediately pilfred and stolen. So you're still running Olympia tackle box. You're still running it. I would I would love to have that Olympia tackle box. What's what, Steve, what's the first beer you ever remember drinking? Man? You know, I don't even remember. I remember my brothers. They were way ahead of the game on this. They were making beer, Man when you know, almost been in junior high, right, and they were like they were near not nearly old enough to Yeah, they made beer and they made this crazy beer. So this would have been in ninth this would have been in the late eighties, way ahead of the game. Um, And they bottled it up and it kind of like it kind of came about in this way like mile man. You know, you know what the white Elephant Sale is? Yes, So my old man he helped volunteer at a white at a white elephant sale for the wise like a like a uh fraternal organization sort of thing that raise the money for the y Okay y f C, A y m C a all that and they throw this white elephant sale. So somehow my old man comes into to a pop machine, and the pop machine was we couldn't manipulate the price. It was just sold pot for thirty five cents of bottle. So he took us to a bottle plant where they where they like bottle Solda pop. They had like grape, orange, Roubier cola, all this stuff and reused bottles. So these bottles were like all scratched up in gnarly. But we could buy these things for for you had to bring the bottles back so you could buy these bottles for like I can't remember we pay. We were getting them for ten cents a piece or something. Once you brought the bottle back and we put them in our own pop machine and plugged our pop machine. And we didn't we didn't live in a town. We just lived on a lake with like the neighborhood kids would come over and buy our pop. So somehow another the bottles. And then also my brothers were making beer, and and the beer they would make would get like a quarter inch of the yeast settled down the bottom, just a simple fact of like opening the beer would if you it would stirball that and it would come up, so you have to like very gingerly get that lid off and you could drink the beer. And like even though it wasn't you know, we weren't you know, we weren't supposed to be out drinking, but somehow because they made the beer. My dad didn't he didn't really regard it as drinking because it was all made. Everybody listening to this it was a perfect argument. It was just like this totally separate. Yeah, it was weird. So they just had We just had beer that they would make, you know, um yeah, and we drank yeah old mill you know the thing in Michigan people drank old mud and um that was you know, everybody drank uh, mountain dew for pop. Do you say pop? Oh yeah, what do you say pop? Soda? What do you say cal? It was it was always pop pop yeah, uh, you know the original mountain dew like slogan catchphrase it'll tickle your innerdy you go, which I always quite enjoyed. There wasn't a lot of drugs, Like, there wasn't a lot of drug taken. Didn't do a lot. You didn't do a lot of drugs. And we didn't do drug taken. I'm sure there was, because it turns out there was plenty of drug taken around my neck of the woods, but I was just totally oblivious to us. It was like there was weed around, you know, but like the like drugs there weren't. I don't think there was main drug And this is in a micro area, and our micro area, drug taking, like hard drugs weren't really prevlem. People drank alcohol. Now I got kids, like now, my bodies that have kids that age, they talk about that like weeds. The normal thing of course it is opioids though, man, now it comes into pillaform dr PC. Also, like Montana and Michigan are two very heavy drinking states. Like if you look at the statistics nationwide, uh, Montana Michigan are always very high on the scale of like perk capita alcohol consumption, and so to kind of like write it off, it's like, oh, folks were just drinking. Maybe, uh that might be a little The consumption of drinking may shocked a lot of folks in other areas. Yeah, my, my, the people my dad hung out with and ice fished with, big drinkers. Remember guy coming over one time, and he came over. He was all drunk. He took one of our hamsters and put it inside his snowsuit and like you got didn't have any clothes on. Understand the story. I did see a hamster in a snowsuit anywhere. Yeah, just a lot, yeah, a lot of just so much. Yeah, you're right, man, A lot of booze. Man, I don't I don't know why I were even talk about the tails doing hunter push ups for every Beery drinks. What I like the subject? When I was growing up, I was I was kind of one thing. Like I I was. I endeavored to like I would try every drug, you know, like just one time, just field questions from your children, Yeah, what's it like? Well, let me tell a story. It was a second. So I did did a lot of none of the hard stuff, but all the stuff that you know people do when you're a teenager and you're looking to try stuff. Never got. I never never took, never took too much. But I had a good time doing it. I remember we got our hands. I remember being in high school and getting some no doughs and feel naughty. They feel like I need to tell my kids in my school, My kids in my high school used to drink robatus. They call it tussing. Would be like you tussing bro drinking robutassing out of the bottle. Yeah, because they go to wood shop. We go to wood shop work on our stuff, and you had to go to your next class. And people bring like a little ball of wood putty. Her dudes well like just having wood putty in their hand. They just be like couping. And you know, you're sitting in like social studies or something like that, because we're just rolling out of wood shot making big wooden mallets or whatever I laid. You know. Yeah, guys in my world, they would huff the duster you can buy. It makes your voice really low. You suck it in, makes you high really quick, and then your voice gets really low and then you pass out. Yep, a couple of real quick one. Jim Harrison chanchan yeah um, and then later in life Livingston Montana dude. But Harrison got out of life just in time. I think the times would have caught up with them. Oh like the women stuff, the women's stuff, and please elaborate on the women stuff for those of the folks who aren't aware. Just like the you can know go ahead, kil I will later, but please do I mean, I will circle back to it. I got Buddy Mine gave me this is exactly to your point. And Buddy Mine gave me UM the book a really big lunch, like his collected short stories and UM and some of his unpublished stuff too. I believe UM came out after he after he passed away. But and he wrote in the book he's you know, he said, uh, hey, here's here's a guy who lives by lived by his few rules that you do like, doesn't doesn't follow the mainstream, plays by his own rules, plays by his own rules, and did always say about my brother and his wife. He yeah, uh yeah. I I do think like if he was just kind of coming into his own let's say he's like forty right now, um, he probably wouldn't when hit it. He'd probably be hushed right out of the the spotlight, you know, because all of his stories are about drinking too much and um, well it's like old, it's like you know, it's it's male fantasy stuff. And this listen, man, I say this with great reverence. Right, Jim Harrison changed my life, Like Jim Harrison helped me become a writer, but I'm from reading his stuff and then you know he would a little Michigan connection all blurred my work and like you like, very influential, Okay, but a lot of the stuff that you think is cool when you're younger, you get older and you look at it and it just it stops being cool. It gets sadder by the year. Yeah, and so this male fantasy stuff and it really like permeates his work. Um, and I get it. But you know it's like this older guy, you know, he's divorced or whatever, but you know he never ceases to be getting lucky with the with the young ladies. Right. It's just it's just like one of those things where the the like the national conversation is such that when you read it now, things that used to like you read it now and you kind of like, you can't sometimes you can't help a cringe a little, but you have, you know, reading it when you're coming up, you didn't have a daughter, but you didn't have kids, you didn't have somebody to project that onto. Yeah, you're like, oh fuck, having a daughter changing stuff. Man, that Harrison had gout rhet real bad. And this is a repeating story in this really big lunch. Uh and and this book had me like laughing out loud and very envious of certain things and and just some of the experiences that this guy had. And uh and I kind of like his consistency of like he he portrays himself in a way that says he's always been the same, and he's been richer than rich and poorer than poor, but he's just he's never never changed his his tune on his own drum um. But the doctors like, you gotta quit drinking, like terrible gout, can't even move. He said, well, doc, what do I gotta do to balance this out? Because I'm not going to quit drinking. And the doctor said, you gotta get exercise. And he said, well, how much exercise per bottle of wine? He's like, we gotta walk for two hours and so he'd walk six hours a day. And so to your point, the man is influential because I was like, well, I'm gonna have a do a hundred push ups per beer. I want to walk it back a little bit, man, because I don't want to one. I don't want to speak ill of the dead too. I don't want to to to to say something bad about the master. But it is just a thing that I noticed now and I'm sensitive to it for various reasons. I think one of them having having a daughter maybe that. But um as a writer, like like if you just isolate sentences, if you isolate Harrison sentences there, you can pull him out, and he's written thousands of them, of the ones that you're looking like, no other man on earth would be able to make that sentence. It's like a it's diagnostic. It's like you could you could pull it out and and put it somewhere out of its context, and you look at me like I could tell you with certainty who wrote that sentence. And there's not many writers that are like that diagnostic quality, like just he's like amazing. Then you hear the guy talk. He doesn't like quite talk like how he writes. But he just had a way to do it, and he did it a lot. It was good at it and made people where I was from, speaking of being from Michigan. Man, it made like there was a time we were kind of coming of age when uh, he made us real proud to be from, proud of where we were from, you know, real proud of where we were from. What kind of you know, as a writer, what did you take from him? One of the things I picked up from Harrison how unapologetic he was about, uh kind of like his love for the natural world. You know, in his his he was disgusted by waste and destruction of nature. You know, Uh that you could that you could feel that way. And you know because a lot of people are like will feel that way, but they don't want to be called a tree hugger or whatever. But you could feel that way and just and make it like angry, you know, because the recurring thing was his character, especially his early stuff like Brown Dog and all like some of those early characters. And then and then my favorite is that his book Wolf like a false memoir. You know, um yeah, how pistols Like his characters are like drunks and anti heroes, but they're just outraged by the trashing of the landscape. You know. And remember that, uh, those years of realizing that that was uh an okay way to feel you know. In other parts bottom to just that he talks. So he spoke so lovingly in Michigan, and there wasn't like people you know, I mean, Montana is how many you go like Wyoming or Montagna, Like how many people have been writing and singing the praises of those states for forever? Colorado had John Denver. You know, it's like it's easy to shoulders, easy to get poetic. There's a lot of states it's easy to get poetic about. But you didn't in Michigan. You didn't. Um, you know, there wasn't the you didn't have like the the ballads about it. I felt his Michigan ratting specifically, Like what resonated with me is, uh, he held food. He always held food in very high regard. But the Michigan stuff was like, yeah, wife, kids, like in this shack that was gonna tumble down shack um, and they were like destitute basically. But He's like, but we had wild duck on the you know, France, super hot on the stove, and I'd finish it in the oven and I'd have uh, like currants off the tree and make a sauce and um, you know, cooking fish and stuff. And it was like all this other stuff doesn't matter as long as you focus on the things that do type of thing and that really hit home with me, like you can as long as you just gotta have some points of reverence. I think is kind of what he was able to romanticize things that weren't always romantic. Like you said, it's easy to to look at the rocky mountains and sing, But rocky Mountain in Montana poaches they pay that guy to do that stuff. What about West Virginia. Who's saying West Virginia mountain Mama John? Is that John Diver two? Like damn? He was Like Montana coach Steinbacker travels with Charlie Um. Steinbecker sings the praises of Montana. But you know, he's not a Montana guy. He's a California guy. And he wrote very beautifully about California. But when he came through Montana and it's a hunting specific quote in Montana just like stole it like Steinbeck's ours, right, because he travels through Montana um and uh. He happens to be going the length of Montana, which is a long long distance um during hunting season, and he, for whatever reason, he comes to the conclusion that he's like, yeah, boy, like folks in Montana they're they're doing what they're doing for like a pure reason basically, like how they're going about it. Just seemed to resonate with him. Um And when I first read that, and I was like, yeah, Montana said the best. I'm from Montana, right, John steinbe So have you read Canary Row? No? No, is that is that? That's about the wharf down there misfits and you know, during during the depression, like just misfits living in Monterey Bay. Yeah, yeah, No, I haven't read it. What's funny about it is even then, so he's writing about the twenties, he's writing about people poaching abalone. You know at that point in time. That's a goodass book. Man. They wanted me to go out and catch a bunch of bullfrogs. That's a great book. Canary Row. Can you That book kind of changed my life a little bit. Imagine the poaching in the depression era, Like, I can't say I blame them. No gloves are off, man. Anybody would do it. Anybody would do the same thing. If you're hung if you're hungry, is it poaching if you're hungry? I don't think so, because I guess it depends why you're hungry. If you're hungry, because just because you're general derelict, then maybe not. But if you've exhausted all If you've exhausted all possibilities, Um, you can't go kicking your way through the beer cans in your yard. Yeah, I feel like I do feel like there's a point at which, um, I feel like there's a point at which you could achieve a level of um, you know, a level of freedom to to feed one's family without needing to be cracked down on too hard by the law. That all kinds of things I want to talk about in this podcast. But I like where we're going. Oh no, go ahead, man, No, no, no, no. I like the first beer? What was your friend? We didn't get it? The cow? What's your first beer? Man? Um? My dad wasn't a drinker growing up, uh, and he he was very very clear as to what would happen if I were to be caught drinking. But occasionally, like the only thing in the refrigerator would be a non alcoholic beer, and I'd come back from uh tramping around. We lived right off of Rattlesnake Creek, UH in the upper Rattlesnake, which is UM quite a bit different uh than when I quite a bit different now than and then it was when I was growing up because there just wasn't the amount of development. You know, the trees I've trimmed up that creek. Oh I bet about bunch Yeah? Um uh so I'd snagg a non alcoholic beer every once in a while. Uh well, remember duels, duels, that's like and there was caliber with a k um but yeah, I guarantee you it was. It was Budweiser. Bud Light. Montana is always big, big bud light state. I remember Keystone ice remember that coming in. Remember then, I remember everybody getting all excited about ice house because percentage of beer. Yeah. Who's the poet that wrote Jabberwocky, oh ship Not E Cummings, No, no, Lewis Carroll. Yes, when I was in high school, you had to write. You had to take the same cadence and structure and write a different poem, I remember, but you had to call like something something waki. So I wrote bonfire burning Wakee, and it was like a poem about burning bond, throwing on tires and whynot making big bonfires set to the cadence of jabberwock And I was always jealous of a buddy mine who came up with he did his those old Milwaukee it was a poem about drinking all mud. I thought you were gonna Regale's jabber walking? What about? What about from? Yeah, I drank like keystone ice growing up, but uh, I don't remember. I remember I used to get together my friend's house and it would mix up all kinds of different liquors and we drink it and throw up. Yeah, combat juice. Yeah, who knows what was in there? Combat? Combat about? Okay? What about? I like, I don't want my kids to do all this. Man, they're gonna do it. I tell them, they're gonna do it. I don't want you to do these things. By just stay wid eyed about this. I didn't touch a drop alcohol until uh the last week of my senior year of high school. Really, yeah, you feel like you were a good kid. He was Irish and he knew he had the curse man, the Great Curse. So yeah, there was a lot of a lot of familial lessons there, Yeah for sure. Yeah. Yeah, I had I had a uncle dive liver strosses itself to death. Yeah, so we had that floating around my my family, but it was never and it I mean it was when I was in my formative years that happened. But I feel like my parents, like, if you're gonna do it, just do it here much rather you do it here, it's gonna be running around doing some crazy ship somewhere as else. So we just did it a lot there. That's a good idea, really, because it's not the Yeah, it's not the drink and it's the trouble. It's what comes with the drinking. So if your kid wants to stay on the couch, you could watch him drink and get all it's then you're fine. Well, you don't want is driving around fornicating. Al right, first car, first car, let's do that. I like this, like this track round um. The first car was a ninth teen eighty two short box, two wheel drive blue Chevy pick up three on the tree, three six cylinder real ship truck. Oh like Chevy love no, no, no, no no, it's like a half ton of Chevy. And I bought it for I think four hundred bucks, six hundred bucks. Where did you get that? Six hundred bucks? As you raise it, we always had jobs, man. I started work when I was thirteen. I washed dishes out of summer camp for the damn campers roller and I was mixing kool aid with a canoe paddle and a garbage can scraping plates for hog slop. Yeah, start working and then uh I bought that. Then then driving down the road talking about drinking beer, driving down a two track mana stee Nashville forest hauling, asked on a logging road and my buddies in the back, and then trying to hand a beer out to him out with a little sliding window, and I got distracted by trying to get the one thing unlatched bam into an oak tree. Oh, total it out. This dude named Matt Jones, who I voted for most likely to succeed, buys it from me for a hundred bucks. It's like two days later, some bitch drove it to school. He like fixed it himself, And my god, how was I pissed about? Because this guy's a mechanical. These dudes, like these dudes back then him and these other guys, they would like take they would tear a truck down and put all the bolts in a five gallon bucket. I mean everything from like the sheet metal panels, everything just into a five gallon buckets and then they would rebuild cars all the time and just pull dump the bucket out and not like unique, not like taking picture's labeling. It just be like everything to go into springs and ship. And the five got a bucket. Then they dump it on Jim. They dump it out and just put it back together again. As long as it's a mechanical geniuses. Man. So this guy, like I thought this truck was totaled, and he very quickly has it up and run and so you had to watch him driving. And then I went out and bought another. I didn't get a four wild drive to my third pick up ship cal first all Cheves, all Chefs, nineteen eighty three Chevy celebrity sedan. It's a Google what he told me before. It's fu It is bench bench seats front and back, all brown interior, all brown exterior. And it had one of those uh uh uh spedometers that went like literally from the left hand side of the dash all the way to the right hand side of the dash. You know, it took it a while to get across the younger generation that that would be like a stick that moves like a like a forgot about that um and it kind of looked like a clock to they laid it out, Yes, and it was turned out to be just a phenomenal vehicle. And the trunk was like you could put twelve or so people in there, and uh, it was a really hilarious car to drive around. Uh, because it was it was actually front wheel drive, and um, it took a while for the front of the vehicle to catch up to the steering wheel when you'd make a turn, you know, and being a kid, like, you're just not worried about anything, and as long as you had some speed up, you could drive that thing through all sorts of conditions, right, and you just you really you kind of felt like you were just kind of toboggining the vehicle around, and it was it was pretty funny. But to answer your question, I got it, uh because my dad decided to take it as a partial payment for some legal work he did, so that one I did not actually pay for. And uh, oh you mean your old man did some legal work for someone else. Yeah, I thought I meant for you, And then I consequently had to pay for um this series of things that just like kept going wrong with it. One time I was driving back home and had a buddy of mine, right, and shotgun and the vehicle conked out on me. Again. He's like, man, I bet you're out of gas. I'm like, dude, I'm not out of gas. And I'm poking around and there can't get it figured out, have to get somebody else. Told me to a shop and then they're like, yeah, man, you need a new fuel pump. And my buddy chimes in, He's like, I told you it was something to do with the fuel. Then first vefo man uh nine Summit Eagle car van periwinkle blue. I looked up to the picture of this also Google image. This vehicle. What's it called again, the Summit Eagle. I called it, we have I believe called it. We called it the car van because it looks like a car and a van had sex. And this came out as the baby and it is as it is a lot of utility in the in the in the Summit Eagle car van. You saw what I mean, what did you feel like the ladies might enjoy that? I feel like it's a specialty maintenance vehicle for some sort of like vacuum sales, fleete. It had like a real boxy exterior kind of had like a sedan maybe like a chevy celebrity front end almost in a van back end. Picture a stubby hearse. Yeah. I used to take the seats out to get a lot of action going on back there. Well you know, sometimes ladies, other times just equipment. Put equipment back there. I lied because my I messed up. My first truck was eighty two. Then I had to go back after then I then I went eighty two, seventy n all chefs, No nine afford. Let me I got another. I think and tell you guys, tell me if you think this is weird to do or not. When I was coming up hunting, when I was like sixteen, well, each you a buck, and bucks were they weren't rare. We shoot a buck every year, but be a spike or a forky or something like that. We would in effort to use all of the animal, cut the nutsack off, cut the ball, sack off, dump, dump out the contents, remove the contents, and then stretch the sack over a coke can. And at this time I was for poker. Money could be to make a money bag. Well at that time I was shooting patching roundball, So I put my round balls in the in the ball, leave the hair on. Leave the hair on, so you got basically got a tan. You know eventually as time when a little draw string on their string on there. Yeah, so you I'd feel real good. I get my patches out and get my ball sack out of my sall like. So I didn't do that. I carried this on till when I got the car van. So you can fit a beer can, you can fit you fit a white tails ball sack over a beer can. No, kid, Yeah you should try it. He let it drive for a while, drive and be like a little cup and you do whatever you want. I can't leave. I haven't done this. So when I got the car van, I realized that these were kind of like they kind of look like fuzzy dice. And so then I took the two sacks. I tied them together like fuzzy dice, and I put them on the rear view mirror of the car van. And when ladies would get in the car van or anyone, I say, they'd say, what's that. I'd say that those are fuzzy dice, and I'd say, just tickle them, tickle them, tickle the underside of them, just tickle them, and um, I would laugh I would laugh. Eventually they started to shed enough where my my car van was full of ballsack hair and it just got to be too much that could I had to remove him. But for a time, for a time it was a big deal, and I would One time I did paint the inside of one green because our school colors South Akerstound High School were green and white, and the exterior of a ball sack is white. So if you paint the interior green, you've got school color ball sack. Fuzzy dice, Good deal, Ben, that's impressive that that doesn't strike me as um doesn't strike me as weird. No, I could see, I could play. I could see having done that you have you would have done. I had no idea about it, but I could see them because we did a lot of stuff, like a lot of things like that, lots of the animal parts. Yeah, give us some examples so I feel a little bit more normal. Oh you know, like guys, would you know you'd save your squirrel tails and do stuff with them, um, grouse feet, You just kind of hang them on stuff. Remember getting in trouble for having stuff like that hanging in my locker because they do locker inspectrum. Remember getting called down to the junior high getting called down to the principal's office to account for why why I had bird feet hanging to my locker. They thought it was like some devil worship or stuff or something. You know, I don't know what they thought. And you're like, I just want to try to use use them. Yeah, we like stretched chipmunk skins out and dry chipmunk skins. They'd be like a little playing cards. Yeah, that's like a lot of stuff with animal parts, man, or like savings stuff like David stuff off stuff like my dad a butcher snapper turtle. You want to dry the head out and and have the head to whatever carry around with. I don't know, my man. My kids are the same way. They want wings and feet and like heads off stuff. They it just speaks to them. They like, I think they see it like it's kind of beautiful. And then they recognize from hanging out with me and their uncles and all the guys are exposed to that people put a high value on these things, and so they feed off that, like they understand that these are valuable things. And like in my garage, I have pull you know, you gotta pull the rings to get the shop lights on, and one of the strings you get the pull, it's it's a mackerel's jaw, one of the ones you gotta pull. It's a bunch of turkey spurs on a rope. So they just see this stuff around and they wind up liking it. It's like little talisman's, you know, like I encourage it. I see how people could look and think it's gross or something, but I don't think that. I think it's like a it's it's it's a it's a way in which it's respectful, not disrespectful. Yeah. Well to me, yeah, I look back on that on the ball sacks there, and I'm like, some people might think that's weird, But when I look back at that, it's the time I was. Me and my dad. All we thought about was deer. That's all we did. But my dad would take the deer legs, the deer hoofs and turn them, pack him and pack him and salt or borax or something, and then he then he'd run to he put him on a board and drill in through the wood into the bone of the deer foot, and then you have that's where you paying your guns. And bows. Was these dear feet sticking out an upward angle just animal parts, man, they're all But I remember so like just you saying that, like the locker inspection thing, I had lots of stuff, um where be like why would you ever do this? And prior to some adult, you know, from outside of my circle asking me that, I had what seemed to me a perfectly good explanation like well, why wouldn't you keep this? But then it would be like, oh my God, like I know, I don't have an answer that's going to satisfy this person. I'm gonna tell about your the way you're approaching this, you're not gonna like my answer. Am I very much value this dear's dick? So I have stretched out on this piece. Yeah, we used to There's a fur trapper that was real fur trapper and taxermost of a lot of text misused fur trappers named Bob Ferris, who's always real helpful to us when we were young, and we'd sell them a little bit of fur. But he had a vaculum collection. You wouldn't believe it. Tell it's a pecker bone like people used to use. Uh, people used to use whale vaculums and walrus baculums as canes and sticks and stuff and drink stirs like I have vaculum like blackberries have. It's funny as a big, big bore raccoon has a vaculum just about as long as a black bear's baculum. Badgers they got a big back, and they got a big So you know, you make little swizzle sticks, little drink stirs. I keep in my medicine box. So I'll take them, and there's an end on there and I'll and I'll take white out and let's put a little spot of white out and I let it dry, and then I take a fine pen and I write like a date or location, and I let that dry, and then I put lacquer on it and let that dry and throught my medicine box. Yeah, I mean I think those uh, when I was guiding a lot of black bears. Um, you know that um the baculum. It used to be like everybody would get the vacuum the penis bone off their bear. Um. And then that kind of went out of fashion, I guess. And um, all the old cadres I hang around with. UM is where I picked it up from him. So when I started guiding a lot of black bears, um, I'd always be like, hey, do you want your people would be like, no, well should I yeah, And so I boil it out and uh and give it to him and I'm like, well, yeah, I mean this is the only like portable part of your black bear, you know, like that's a good enough reason to hack it around. I'm like, you could if you wanted to, you could cut it in half and put it on your key chain or something. But why why do you think that? Is that there's certain animals that have certain little totems, right elk Ivers, I was just think about Okay, every turkey turkey spurs kind of falling in the old days. Uh, I don't. I don't have any personal familiarity with this, but I understand that it's true. Is the old days when you caught a big tarp and you pluck a scale. Yeah. I have turkey feet in just a laundry list of rental houses and crash pads from my younger years because that was one of those things, like it always turkey feet, these things are so cool dinosaurs and then throw them on the dashboard of my truck and then I'd like stuff them, you know, like on a window sill or in a garage, like on the wall or something. Every time I clear a freezer at if I'm moving or something off find like a turkey wing or something, and I know that I sometimes I'll write it on there, like for wingbone call or whatever, And a lot of times I never get to it. But I have the intention of doing those types of things. The only thing I do with turkeys, the only thing I keep off from now. As I take the spur and and take a hack saw and cut above and below the spur, you get a little loop, and then you got that, and then the marrow pushed the marrow out of there, and so you got a hollow birds of hollow bones, they have a hollow bone and it's a spur loop and you throw it on a rope and I don't care. I'll me turkeys you kill, you're not gonna wind up too many of those. They're pretty compact. Did you ever wear that as a necklace? You know, I haven't. My kids like to do it. And then I had, uh, I killed a turkey one time. I had a real nice, real uh. It's kind of like beautiful spurs, and I had them. I took him to a jeweler, the same jeweler where I bought my wife's uh engagement and wedding rings from. Took him to a jeweler and had the jeweler set those spurs in the kind of setting picture like a person that wears like a crystal like a like a hippie kind of crystal. You know, that little metal the little metal top, a little metal cup that kind of clasps the crystal rod. I had the turkey spurs set in that. But the crystal folk would be like a eagle talent holding the crystal, right, Yeah, I'm thinking of a different kind of crystal folk. It's like a little metal cup. It's like yeah, it's like just a attached that that pinches. So I had the spurs set in those. And my wife wears him now and then, and I really like it. Now. I encourage her to wear them, and um, she'll generally wear them two places where people might be like, hey, that's cool, and not like what the hell is that? Right? Well, yeah, I mean you Steve, you talked a lot about your love for you know, pioneers and Davy Crockett and all those boys. You like some of that's rubbed off on you. Yeah, you want to have that connection. Yeah people, Uh adorned. It's all the stuff like you can look at wardrobes, costumes from the plains, tribes everyone A man. I mean it's just like decorate your I don't wear jewelry, right, but but I like that stuff because like you decorate your home and decorate your body with animal parts. Man. To me, like I could see the people would look and think it's creepy or something, But to me, it's just, like I said, it just to me, it's um just to have that stuff around. Uh, it feels good. It's just one of the many super complex things that we do that. Yeah, and I like my kids to be exposed to it. A friend of mine was telling me, relating to me as trials and tribulations circling around perch sing a engagement wedding ring scenario for for his gal and uh talk about ship that I just had had no clue existed. And uh a person like apparently like there's a thing out there that exists where you it is expected that you put aside like X percentage of your pay is supposed to be. Well, what like what you spend on a wedding ring. There's I can't remember what's the percent or something. I can't remember for how much period of time, just whatever your annual salary is, like a percentage of your salary, like you're tithing to the church, but it's a but it's for a wedding ring. Yeah, so that's the expectation that you'll spend this much money on the ring based on how much you make. Yeah. I don't think it's right at all. No, I think it's majorly screwed up. But I don't believe that anybody actually pays attention to that. Dude, I don't there's some pretty traditional folks. I've never heard anybody saying, hey, check this out. You know it's eight thousand dollar ring. That's also to find something like unique in things. And I'm like, man, I just don't have the mental capacity for I mean, some guys supposed to be like, kay, I make fifty grand year, I need to. So let's say it's like, yeah, yep, I don't know what the numbers are. Somebody can tell us what they are. But people do something ask well, uh, you know, Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett like his appealing, his opinion on what's ridiculous, like the in Vogue fashion. Yeah, but those guys had long braided hair ya, meaning they had long braided hair. They had more plated the long long plated hair like Steve might be chatting me about your hair situation. No, I'm just saying they might look at stuff we do and think it's squirrelly, but you look at them like, dude, why don't you just cut your hair? Why don't you just have a butch? Why do you have long why do you have long plaited hair? Wouldn't be just to have a butch? O? Just especially man, the upkeep exactly would oil. It was barre oil man. They had like things they would they were like And I'm not like, I'm not a Davy Crockett guy at all. And I know maybe you know, I know those guys get lumped together, but it's just very different people, different times, different people. Crockett's interesting, Yeah, yeah, he's interesting, interested dude, but he's no danger Boon. But um, yes, let me rewind. I meant to say Daniel fucking Boone, not Davy Crockett. So you know why I said you know that's your song. Your song got me Janie the love. Uh oh. Anyways, Like maybe I'm taking your point, but I feel like you were going to say that, like Boon would be like what has gotten into these people? Yes? Absolutely, of course he would. But they did strange stuff too, they did they did what was the the I just had what was the character? And um Jeremiah Johnson who had the shaved head? So and then he reverts there at the end or do I have that he kept his hair shaved because it's because no one would wanna people wouldn't want to scalp him. Yeah, but then later he grows his hair out. You okay, next one? Okay, transition, first rifle. I like the way we're going. Yeah, well it's complicated. First one that I owned out right, I want to say the first one and you owned out right. It's probably your first rifle. The first rifle I owned out right. My old man, one of my mentors as a child, was made by the name of Eugene grots and my brother Danny uh very graciously named his own son Eugene. Um. Eugene Grotors was it was the avid outdoorsman, and he believed in having a gun for every year he'd been alive on earth. And he got to be quite old, and he kept all these guns in a rack in the ceiling. At some point in time he realized that he had more. He was like, whatever the hell he was. He realized there's seventy nine of him up there, and pulled down and gave to me a Model nine four lever action two trapper trapper. And you know, I saw I stupidly sold that to uh. I stupidly sold that to a guy that sold wood stoves and use guns. Um. So Eugene Groders pulled this gun down and gave it to me. And I had a peep site and I had to reduce or you could screw into the peep site. And and I shot first bunch of year. I shot a shot with that lever action, shooting a peep site. And then I got all onto the bolt action bad wagon. And and then like everybody, you know you wanted the thirty out six bolt action, um, if you were from where I was from, and and and and yeah, I went down and sold that thing for three hundred bucks. Man I got I just know I got screwed. Wow, you got a lot of like that shocks me about you. I don't I don't see as that type of gay or the trading up I was always selling. I was always selling guns man, because it was like you were selling it just to get money to get a different one. Like I remember wanting to like wanted a twenty two mag real bad and had to sell some of myself to get twenty too mag. And I wanted a savage trapper like what c or whatever, uh twenty gauge like twenty too long, twenty gauge thing and needing to sell whatever I had to go get that. Um all just like really low end things. But that gun I really should have hung out of that thing, that lever action rifle, you know, Eugene grotors. And the thing too is he gave he gave it to me. Then it was just a really bad thing to do to sell it and to be like to to prove your proficiency. I'm every march out across the yard or my dad, and they set a full gallon juggle water out whatever sixty five yards. If you hit that juggawatire right on, you can poke hole and train it. If you could hit the ghetto gallon milk juggle waters like, let's go, you can do it. Love it. Well, you got rue twenty two man, Yeah, yeah, oh I didn't know. We're well yeah, I mean what we can go back. We can go back because we come back the I got a hunt with a series of rifles long prior to ever actually own anyone. How old were you when you owned it? Well, I had the Rugy ten twenty two, like you know, twelve or something like that. Yeah, that might not count, like I like where Steve's going with it, but yeah, I mean I didn't own my own deer rifle until sophomore year in high school. Just shot family guns. Yeah, something like. That's just kind of how everybody, like I don't know the brothers like actually had one people would have when we were real big on Two is those look through over under scope mountains where you could have your iron sides, iron your iron sides for deer drive, you know, shooting buckshot or we need an iron sight. It's not buckshot, but you alla believe, like we alla to believe that they're like brush guns, you know, so you had your iron sights and over there made out of like plastic, then you can still have like scope all at the top of what a terrible setup. Funny, And I remember the first guy I really like hunted with that had like an actual you know, like a bull. He had a saco some you know relative He comes out with like a sako with a Nikon scope on it, and just being like it's like a work of art. Just be like holy smokes, you know, and like these guns that could like shoot groups and stuff. You know. I remember thinking like just being blown away by that. He can hit he can hit the milk jug three times. Yeah, if a deer was all the way across the field, you can still shoot at You didn't need to be like dah, I got it. I started hunting with I didn't own this, but I started hunting with a hawking fifty cow. That's that goes back to my patching roundball situation. But then upgraded quickly to uh, what was my first rifle Savage one ten to forty three bold action, one of them fancy fancy you guys were shooting two forty three deer. Yep, I don't know that was prescribed. I was twelve thirteen at the time for somewhere in there, and it wasn't very big fella, and so I think that was it was the caliber choice was more about the recoil than it was wing else. But it was quickly went to thirty at six. I think thirty at six was was what anybody was shooting in the woods deer hunting by storm. Yeah, everybody like that had to shoot some old gun. Had a thirty thirty and anyone that bought a new one was buy a thirty ots. I remember vividly like I wanted a thirty thirty really bad, and I had like this kind of brush gun thought because I was gonna go hunt where nobody else was hunting anyway, you know, which is like get getting there amongst them in the timber um. And uh, I used to just torment freaking gun buyers or you know, the the gun counter people at a couple of shops in Missoula, And uh, I have no clue what I was doing, because it's not like I had any money, right, But I'd be like yeah, and I just have this vivid conversation or vivid memory of this conversation in my head about going in and talking to this guy and be like, well, this is what I mean. You know the you know those big Aspen patches on like the outside of a Showdow or Augusta, like you know, I like to, you know, get in there and hunt, hunt the deer in their beds and stuff. And I just knew he was like gonna be like, yeah, man, thirty thirty, because that's what I wanted, right, was a third lever action thirty thirty. And I think specifically because like Jimmy Stewart and you know the Western win Chester seventy three and uh and or win Chester seventy win Chester seventy three. Right, here's seventy six model the one I have. I feel like I could be messed up. I think it's Model and the D and he goes to like the consignment side of things, and here's like like big pronounced iron Sights six, which now sitting where I am now, I'm like, yes, that is a much more appropriate gun than than what I was after. But I was just like crushed. I'm like this guy to know what he's talking about. What I want. I want you to exactly exactly. Yeah, so funny, I think we ought to, uh we gotta this first thing can be can be tiresome, but we should probably say first, let's let's end the first thing with the first thing you killed. No, I have no idea. Chipmunks probably first first, Okay, man, I'm like real squirrels, So yeah, it would have been like yeah, I'm sure like chipmunks were just litoks. We just hunt with bb guns. You know, we'd go out and hunt chipmunks, because chipmunks were regarded in my area, at least, they were regarded as very destructive. Um, and you could even like like the neighbors would pay out money on them. Lots of people pay out money on chipmunks, But we just hunt them in the woods too, you know, but like it would be better case you'd have a deal where you get a couple of bucks a piece from someone to get chipmunks out of their garden or whatever. And then, um, we had a lot of squirrels, so we hunted squirrels and then and then um, and then a lot of trapping for fur bears and then from squirrels and rabbits and grouse. I mean it's pretty much you know, then up to deer. Yeah, but then I had I would you know, I killed my first do you when I was thirteen? And then I wouldn't I didn't kill another kind of big game animal for a decade after that, really just hunted deer. We just lived in Michigan hunted deer. Yeah, that's what That's the thing about our industry and what we talked about. Man, that's what most people do. That's what I did. I didn't travel off the East coast to hunt until I was in the industry. It would have been laughable that when I was a kid that we would have gone out like this is no way in the world. So we were gonna go out and hunt, like go out, drive out west to go hunt, which just wasn't gonna happen my old man. When I remember my old man going out on a archery LK hunt, you know, but we're little, but no, it's just we hunted deer. And then then my brothers they went up to moved up to the Upper Peninsula and H very quickly drew black bear tags up there and got a little bait station going and H killed some bears. And then that was then we were kind of off off off and running on on crazy big game hunting. Yeah. Uh, man, I was just like the absolute King and the red writer bb gun and I had two that I broke, like shot out, broke and repaired myself, which was looking back on it was like somehow totally acceptable for me to be like gun smith and bb guns. Um. And uh so I had a lot of customization my my red riders. But I shot, I mean decimated small mammal populations and um, my uncle ran a feed lot and you could go into that feed lot and just shoot mice and rats for as long as you could possibly stand it. But I mean thousands and thousands and thousands of babies over the course of it, just you know, a month. Um. You know, barn pigeons were like big, big game um because they were always just like roosted up a little bit too high to like you'd hit them and then they'd kind of shake it off and be like whoa and uh and then uh oh man. My family, the folks in my family that hunted, they were super into geese and that was it. And you didn't hunt ducks and it was just geese. Um. And this is like a traditional type of deal on And uh. I had a single shot break action twenty gauge hammer hammer gun, and um, I had you know, uh, several attempts at trying to get my first bird with that thing. And finally my uncle and I went up and jumped some ducks, and he stooped low enough to hunt ducks or go jump these ducks with me, and I shot a golden nye and uh, it was one of those things where we jumped the birds and I missed, and then somebody else knocked one down. They were trying to do that. And then out of the corner of my eye, I see this bird comes zipping down the river and I just swung going and I just swung through and pounded it and was like absolutely shocked, right, and I just I remember to this day like everybody being like, oh my god, great shot. And then they were like, it's god damn cold night, Jesus screw girl. And it's all my uncle's buddies, right, and they're dun and them trying to feign excitement all the way to like dropping me off back home, and and it's like, oh yeah, right, shot night, Yeah, well you know how to cook man? Oh it the mouncles, I mean, the come a long way, come a long long way. That's probably I think about kids, how we used to hunt chipmunks real real hard on chipmunks, hard and other stuff you read about indigenous cultures and the kids, Um, they're the same way. Francis Parkman's Oregon Trail when he goes out and he had and I think it was eighteen he traveled with and spent time with the Iguala Sioux and comments on um vicious. The children are with their bows and arrows, shooting birds and then killing the bird and hanging it up and shooting it more. You know, when I was watching a documentary about Amber Indians in South America and yeah, and the kids just like when they're learning to hunt, it's hunting everything, yea. And they hunt bugs and you'd shoot a blog on that, right, it's like any little mammals, any little birds, it's uh and uh. And I sometimes look back when we were kids and we were like that, and I'm like, you know what's going on? But then it's like you're you're kind of like training for something, you know, but what it's got to be and it scares some parents. Well, I always I always think that is it just like I try to make it more than it is. I think, like, is it the curiosity with the natural world? But that's not what's going through your head when you're twelve year old popping chipmunks. It's fascination, you are, you're fascinated with it, but it's domination. Also you want to like, we just wanted to hunt. We want to be hunt. You just want to be outside. You want to be doing something. You want to achieve something. I mean, you heard if you heard off, you hear a chipmunk every grab the be gun ran on the trying to go find him, crawl up on it. It's one. It's you wonder about that, like whether that's an advantage for somebody who starts hunting when they were a kid, because you have the like the gloves are kind of off and your kids, you cal gets to bb gun goes out and shoot ship. Nobody's talking about should he be doing that? Bringing Morning Dobs home to your mom thinking she's gonna be all proud. Yeah, you already allowed to you know, Michigan, you can't hunt Morning does you know? We'd go out and try to get him off the power lines because they like to roost up on the power lines or perch up on there. And now I had my kid out, we're hunting squirrels and there's crows popping around the trees overhead, and he's all, you know, wants to shoot the crow and I, Hey, do you wanna shoot the crow for? And um He's like, well, we'll eat it. And I said, yeah, yeah, I could eat it, you know, but let's not shoot the crow. Were you're waiting for squirrels. And I wouldn't let him shoot the crow when I was a kid. He would have popped that crow and then you shot the crow. And so I'm like, wonder, like what I'm depriving them. I'm telling you, like, there's something about that. There was a fella I can't remember his name, and I won't that wrote about the five stages of hunting. Yeah, I'm familiar with this, and the first one is just like something like and a butcher this one as well, but it's like killing, just killing. It's the first stage. Whether it's you know, whether it has to do with power, like exerting some power over the world around you, or you know, marksmanship, learning a skill, all the things that that just kids are subconsciously doing that they probably should be allowed to do because it seems like a function of being, of coming up in the outside world done it. I mean, it's the Indians are doing it. We're doing it. Our kids probably won't be as free to do it as we were. Yeah, I mean my my brothers, I mean they were right there in it with me, and they were hardcore chipmunk hunters and they grew up to become a cologist. Yeah. I'm not saying that everyone that kills chipmunks comes to college. If you want your kids to be coming to college is get him out there, because would be too many ecologists. Um. But there's no correlation between that activity and some kind of like one poaching. Later on, I thought a lot different of it when I realized that when I started to see references to it with with people from a long time ago hunting cultures, hunter gatherer groups whose children um and this happens in the Calahari Amazon great Planes where these hunter gatherer groups or nomadic hunters, they're little kids, little boys particularly are just are expected to like learn their craft at a young age. That book asked her that a friend of yours penned um, they have a description of getting kind of tagging in, falling in with a group shoshone and one of the grews that they're following there's a two year old kid, uh tied onto a horse, and these uh, you know, white dudes are who are the toughest sons of bitches that may have ever walked the planet according to this book. Man, Um, they're just being so blown away by how you could tie your kid onto a horse to have I'm learned how to ride. But that was like you look at the mortality rates people in general, and then people in those planes tribes, and then kids in those plane tribes, like it was like man sink or swim. Yeah. Well, I mean there's a lot of hunters nowadays that's that are you know, or you know what we call them adult onset hunters that don't get the opportunity to to kind of shirk the intellectual conundrums that we've got gone. Yeah, they got to dive right in with all the heavy stuff. Yeah, they gotta get that heavy stuff right on, right on at the beginning. But when you're a kid, you don't need that. Man, When I was a kid, it was just about being with my dad, you know, It's just about being out there running around with him. And I was it. I mean, it wasn't. It was simple as it could possibly be. There was nothing to it. Yeah, I think that it's it's perfectly good and acceptable in my opinion, just to grow up with it and like it and not ever feel the need to really like poke at it and think about it. Yeah you know, I mean, it's nice to have the luxury to do that. And if you're the kind of person that tends to overthink a lot of stuff, then you wind up looking at this thing, you know, be a hunting like look at it and be like, you know, what is this thing? What is it? What is it about it? You know, because you're talking to an over tothink it right here? Yeah, so you're like you you you accept that you'd like it, You said that it means a lot to you, and then you get into this long job of sort of asking why why why? Why? Uh not? Ever like do I want to keep doing this? Because you know that's going to happen, but just you start, yeah, you start pondering the what is it? Does that have its place? I mean? Or is that just spinning tires? Because you know you're gonna continue to do it. You know that it's not that you won't one day come to a oh shit, I'm a back office well, for me, it became tied to uh, it became tied to profession. Yeah, you know we're in in some way. You get paid to in some way. Well I don't wanna say you get paid in some way. You find a way to to earn pay by thinking about it, kicking it around. Um, but yeah, I have a lot of I have a lot of friends that just don't feel the need to weigh it all out. There's million I don't I don't, I don't, don't think less of them, for there's millions of people who just want to hunt and have a good time, and they don't want to be told that it's wrong or it's right. They just want to hunt and do it the way they do it, and that's how it's always been, or that's how they've created it to be. And hell, yeah that's great, that's fantastic. Will beat anybody up for that. But I sit around looking at at any point in my life, I look at what I was doing ten years earlier, and you just get curious about it. Yeah, like the hell's going on there? Yeah? Why was I doing that? It's interesting, but it's it's something that people have been talking I'm sure talked to You've got you both about but that have been righting in and asking me a lot about lately and around when we talk about ethics, is is killing ship not eating it? Killing the killing the critter not eating And it connects. It's in my mind right now because it connects to being a kid because you're not eating. I mean all the animals you just named yet you were popping with a bb gun or twenty two or whatever. I could count on one hand the number of chipmunks we ate. Yeah. Yeah, when we were playing survival, we would eat them maybe like three times, right, but they're the prairie dogs Eastern Montana prairie dog cleaned one. I mean the amount. There's a lot of blood on these hands. Do blood? Now? What were you still using the Red Rider for that? Did you break out something that's not Red Rider? You could kill you now, you couldn't know. It was interesting is that it had a pretty quick escalation into high calibers. You know, see you could reach out further and then eventually I just went back to the ten two because I just that's so eventually a quick I found out that it really doesn't matter if you hit them, and uh, I had so much fun just arc in those little tiny bullets around. You know, they little poison dogs for sure. Yeah. My uncles, you know, they always had that big poison contraption on their four wheeler. It's it's literally like a big hopper with a you know, probably a two inch diameter tube that just goes straight down and you can just drive that, drive your four wheeler over the top of the prairie dog hole. You hit the button there, you pulled a little slide thing which is on a spring, and it drops a dose a poison down the hole and then you just put her over the next one. Yeah. Yeah, you gotta think that prairie dogs wasn't all they were killing. No, hell no, no, no, but you can. I mean, what's the Yeah, what's the percentage of ship nowadays that it's not ship of animals that you kill that you don't eat. I don't have anything I don't eat now unless I wanted the fur off something now and then. But no, generally not because that you had to evolve into that. I don't even think of it as an evolution. It's just like there's um, you know, I used to trap stuff because I you know, for trap to sell the hides and then use the carcasses for baits, sell carcasses a sleddog. People just make like a little carcass dump to try to lure other stuff in muskrats whatnot. And I had I had a guy, you know, one guy that I grew up around that would want some number of muskrat hams, but not enough to keep up with how many I produced. Um, it was just like that was like the thing of value on them. Now it's just I just it just doesn't mallard. Occasionally you get that mallard that's got all the cists in the in the breast meat not familiar, like yeah, big worms in the brass meat. I can't then you don't. Yeah, but that's that's not something that there The intention was to eat it. Yeah, But for me, it's like, uh, yeah, it's just I'd rather go I'd like to go out and get the food. So that's a big part of the enjoyment for me is to go out and get food. So and I only have you know a certain number of hours in your life if I'm going to go and do something. If I'm gonna go fish, I'm gonna go fish for a fish that we regard as good to eat. And if we're gonna hunt, I like to go hunt for something that me and my family regard is good to eat, because that's like a big part of it for me. So it's just like what your it's your personal value system or you I don't even want to put it is a value system. It's it's a thing like that. But it's also it's just what makes sense. Yeah, that's just the sensical part. And I want to go get stuff and bring it home, and especially when the kids, I want to go get stuff and then we're going to call home and cook it. Yeah. But I mean you've learned how to and and become an expert in how to cook a whole variety of things fish, small game, big, all kind of stuff. Mayn we eat, pine squirrels. Goddamn cookbook, all this stuff in it. Um so yeah, so which is now in stock? Um bam. We have a little checkbox here on these podcasts where we advertise, yeah I have we you know down here in we cooked coyled up down here in Mexico. One time. I didn't like it. I've never touched another one since. Yeah, it's just you know, cal. I mean, what's your You don't you can you eat everything you're killing now? Right? Oh? Yeah, man, I mean it is. Maybe maybe i'd go help some some kids, like with with shooting some prairie dogs, but man, it'd just be hard. Like my there's just no will. There's just zero will anymore. But we had I had to exterminate some some feral cats out of my mom's place the other day. Give your feral cat statistics two point six billion birds a year. And this isn't feral cats, this is outdoor cats. Oh here's the yeah, here's the thing though, something like that, or if I remember I had a buddy that had a you know, raccoon up in his barn, or feral cats they're getting in trouble, or if something, if I had a friend who had a chicken coop, say yeah, and fox kept getting in there. That's just I don't think of that is. I don't think that's not I don't think it is it is, But you know, it's not like there's not a lot of enjoyment in that, right, I'm like, just more more like dirty jobs done dirt cheap. Oh yeah, there's a if there's like a feral cat cleaning house on a bunch of stuff someone wanted to have done any feral cat working. My mom raised these two ducks that somebody just people know she's got a real soft heart for animals, and so she ship just shows up at their place. And she raised these two domestic ducks and it was just heartbroken that they weren't being real friendly to her for months and months, and she built them like this. She had like this grotto by the end of like duck baths and uh these and uh sunflowers like hanging overhanging sunflowers, and and uh they were happy ducks. And just about the time they warmed up to her, the uh cat explosion happened in some cat eight Both the ducks killed both the ducks, and uh that's that's when it was a season on the barn cats. Yeah. People have emailed in and messaged in about crows, about coyotes, about prairie dogs, which we've talked about. It seems like that comes in a lot. I don't know, if do you get a lot in your inbox there at the meat eater shooting crows? No, Um no, if my kids shot a crow, I would make him eat it, but he wouldn't think it was. But he would he wouldn't know. They eat so much stuff, he wouldn't think it was. Like, he wouldn't register it as a punishment. No, he'd just be a great another thing to eat. He say, what else are we gonna do with it? You know? So No, I wouldn't you know, I wouldn't have a problem with it. I mean I didn't let him do it that one time, just because I didn't want him to. Like I talked about this before, because we're doing something different. We're like waiting for a squirrel to come out. And I was teaching, like, let's stick with their playing here, not just go willy nilly shooting everything. Yeah, because we're like here for a purpose. We're waiting for something to show up. But if you do that, it's not gonna show up. Um. And we used to Yeah, we used to go out. I don't know, I have a double standard, man, because we used to go out instead of call out to get him get crows, just for just to get him. And and but now know if my kid got a crow, now, i'd make him cook it. And I'll probably you know, I'll let him get a crow and he can see what it's like to eat it. You ever eating a crow cow? Nope, no desire too. I haven't one of the handful things I've never eaten. You know what, I'm certainly not unquote right there, not above it, not above it at all. I mean, you know we were talking about was earlier. I have no real desire to just go out and uh, I guess I do have a desire to go hunt wolves. I don't I have a real hesitation to go hunt wolves, and and uh if they don't taste good. You know, if I were to get a wolf, I damn sure to be eating that. Stephenson. I've talked about this all the time. The Arctic explores Stephens instead of his favorite meat like the better and sheet learn caribeu better than cheap favorite wild meat better. So yeah, man, they ate everything. They ate whale tongue from everything from carrie with to whale tongue. And he liked he liked wolf meat the most, go out of his way to get wolves. I did some deep digging on the internet the other day, to the bowels of the Internet, um and found one published that's in quotations Wolf recipe um, and that was on. Some dudes blog that boy he killed that wolf seven or eight times by the time he declared it edible. I think more out of fear than anything else. There's no way it's gonna taste bad. I can't imagine it. Does people need wolves forever? Yeah, I would say, stay tuned. That's something we're gonna have to do. Yeah, we're gonna have to kill a wolf and eat it. I'd like to I'd like to you you want to hunt wolves? Yeah, yeah, I do. I find out people not to do with that. But a thing that troubles me is I think some people become real sensitive about their practices and and they take it like if you don't want to do something, they take it like you're making a value judgment on them. Exactly. This is not a reflection upon you. Yeah, you're gonna say, you know what, like there's all these other things to hunt, so I don't hunt that thing and don't feel like hunting that thing, and they'll get hurt, hurt their feelings because they like to do it. I'm like, dude, sure, why does not wanting to do it? Why does that body that I don't want to do it? And I'm not like I could name all kinds of stuff that that I like to do that you don't do. I don't feel bad that you. I'm not hurt that you don't do them as well. Well, there's not. Yeah, if there's a lot of other are very sensitive. Man, that's just the thing that we do. There's just not one set of values. There's not one shared There are shared values, but there's not one set of them that says, like, here all the things that we do that are acceptable. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Though, if you're like, oh, man, no, I don't. I don't. I don't hunt prairie dogs. I don't. I don't hunt prairie dogs. You're too good for that. Yeah, better than me? I do you better than me? Steve, and I would be like, no, no, it's just that I'm doing something different. I guess that day. I'll tell you, man, by the end of November, Chase mule here and high snow and sleeping on the ground, on the ground. You saw that ballad of buster scrugs. Very good, very good? Yeah, well, it's a lot. It's you can't say it's very because it's so many of them. Some of them are extremely good. This them, the homesteaders, you know the wagon train, that trainmastered keeps talking about his his partner. That's kind of getting over the hill. It's like, imagine being that age and doing this job, sleeping on the ground, on the ground, sleeping on the ground. That struck me. But as a man who does a lot of sleeping on the ground, as a man who does a plenty of sleeping on the ground. But yeah, man, by the time and the November rolls around, there's something very appealing about just going on half day huns, just like being able to return home and uh not sleep on the ground. So uh, that's my brother in Alaska is he gets jealous of people living in the lower forty because everything will lask is such a expedition. It's just his man's like just to be able to go out and like mess around. But it's not. It's like it's just everything is a big damn deal. Yeah, you feel like that some trucks and you're gone ten days. It's like you can't just go do something. Yeah. So anyway, by the by the time, uh, you know, I'm I'm very to your earlier point, like I'm doing other stuff. I'm very preoccupied Um, it's just like us out here in Mexico. We all have Halina tags and nobody we've all seen Havelna and nobody's chased a single one because he's been really focused on COO's here. And I have wolf tags in my pocket and I saw some wolves and it was just like, man, it's really gonna take me away from Mule here or Elk right now. Um And so yeah, by the time those other distractions are through getting around to the wolf thing, like, I just don't have the drive for it, I guess so, but you still you know, no, I would like to make it happen. I love the idea that you can call them. I have called a few in over the years. Um. And I love talking to animals. Man, that that's cool stuff. So why I think there's just something for me where we're always measuring each other. We're always measuring ourselves against each other as hunters, always measuring what do you do, how do you do that? You know, how fast do you go up the mountain? Well? Mostly, but yeah, we always end up measuring. No matter what it is we're doing, we're always kind of whether we want to admit it or not, measuring ourselves, you know, whether it's based on the pursuit or based on how you do something, or based on what you do or don't do. Like we're always just measuring or sometimes just flat out who's is bigger? Yeah? Yeah, who's bigger? All the time we are measuring? Well we are. We didn't even tell people are we are? We're in Mexico. Hey, yes, we are here. That if you hear the gentle hum of a generator over the last hour and change off the grid Mexico. We're off the grid with a generator in the back. We got a fire going here. It's real nice, ok man oak something around here. We had a good week in Mexico. Phenomenal man calchot of deer today. Love love this place. I um, I was telling everybody today. I was like, Man, I am damn proud of this buck and and very very happy of this situation. But had I eaten this tag, I would have enjoyed every every day of this hunt. I hate a tag. I gotta leave tomorrow. And I sat on a ridge top today and just enjoyed the sunset. Man, that seems cliche, but an amazing one. It seems like they come off and around here. Um, for sure. Mark Kenyon, who's here UM described this hunt as a look and watch hunt as opposed to was spotting stock hunt. UM. I thought that was pretty good. Yeah. You look at a lot of bucks far off that are traveling fast and you just kind of they come in and out of your life and you never see him again, like a good car first rifle. Um, Well check out the rest of the coverage from this stuff one. Um. There's a television show called Metator TV. But there's also a podcast called The Mediator Podcast and that comes out every week too. Just check that out. But that's all I got. You guys, have any we should do concluders. Since this is uh Steve Ornelli is here, we should conclude with a thought. Man I concluding thought. Um, it's an auspicious time to be down on the border. Thank thanks for bringing that up, because I feel like coming down here and not bringing it up. You're looking at like we're in Mexico and you're looking at mountains right in Arizona, and a lot of discussion about the border and and uh movement to and fro right, it's just an interesting time of beer. It's like, you can't I've commented on this a number of times, where the landscape, you know, I've hunted cuise deer in Arizona not far from here, and I've hunted him here and uh, the same plants, you know, same ground, same animals, same wind blowing. But everything just a few miles south of that border. Everything feels so different, but it's not. It's like on the ground and the birds and it's just the same, right. These things don't know what side of that line they're on. But you can't help you can't get away from this sense of viewing it as somehow other, and it just it impresses me with the way in which your geo political sensibility is very ingrained, you know, and you're like, when you're walking up a hill, you're not just walking up a hill in Mexico, hill in Mexico, man, and that's a cous deer in Mexico's like, you can't it doesn't escape your head. And I keep wondering, like why is it that you don't forget, Like, oh I forgot that I'm in another It's very I mean, we were talking about it today. It's very when you cross the wall there and acquaprita over it from Douglas, Arizona, over into Mexico. You can look through the steel bars and see the McDonald's golden arches. You can look through the steel bars and see like the wall kind of like the Walmart parking lot right there, and m It's like, you know, you know, you have this understanding at that point that that these are this wall is more than just a barrier between two countries. It's like this. It makes it all the more real that these worlds are are what they are. You know, it's amazing. I don't need to describe what occupate looks like, but it don't look like McDonald's and Walmart's at all. It is different. And then I guess you go through that transition, then you come out and like a purely natural landscape like here you're in. You know, I was remarking to Caldany when he got that bok. It's like, these are white tailed deer. They're living outside of any real human influence. I mean they're not they're not exploiting agriculture right there, just you know, they're just mountain deer. And um, I was saying to calic Man. Even if humans have never colonized the western hemisphere. I feel like this buck would have been standing here right now, but he doesn't know that anything has happened, you know, which is you know, someone could shoot a lot of holes in that argument. But um, but it's yeah, it's still it's like a deer in Mexico. But that's you hit on a good point there, right, It's it's us, man, We're the difference. Yeah, you can't. You can't see we are the difference because you can see that when you're in in you know, when you're in the town where that we've settled. You can look across and see the difference. When you remove the human interaction, it's the same damn thing, exactly the same thing, wall, no wall, whatever. So that that it simplifies this this trip for me personally simplified and complicated the idea at the same time. Yeah, for sure, it's it's interesting to it's interesting to be here right now and just kind of be able to sit and look at that line and think about it. That's my concluder. Yep, gal uh, Steve, I guess to your point, I did have like a very like interesting thought pop into my head when I was after our hunt this morning. It's like how like there is a giant disparity and the amount of Americans that come to Mexico and the amount Americans that come to Mexico and fire a rifle in Mexico than amongst relatively, not saying that it's been done many, many, many times, but um proportionately, very very different groups. The party crowd going to Cancoon. As Rick Smith said, this is not the Margharita Mexico. Yeah, I think very relatively very few people cross down and hunt here in northern Sonora. And yeah, you have many people a year you think do that? Well, I have no idea. I mean, there's it's been long and stay tries to hear this less than a thousand Yeah, yeah, I would be there. But a man, I love the country and I love this setup like the and it should definitely say it. Thank you to h Jay Scott Outdoors, who this is the only uh do learn and Scott out like Jay Scott, Jay Scott as his his Yeah, he guides under Colburn and Scott do it yourself hunt like her range helps your range is actually a do it yourself hunt like he sets you up for success. But oh my god, man, like the freedom you enjoy an extraordinary freedom among us of my land spoiled kids. Man. And it's just it's not that different. It's like you just you just get to go hunt. It's great. I know, I know. Maybe maybe that's my concluder. Are your your concluders concluded? I'm concluded. Uh, I'm a notorious overthinker. But at the same time, I feel like that, you know, running around here like unfettered, nobody telling us you can't do this, you can't do that, you can't shoot this buck, you can't shoot that buck. Like you just run on feeling, just running on feeling. Maybe that's the title, but you're just running on like whatever you feel like, doing whatever you want to do. And um, you know I has a feeling. I like, yeah, and I appreciate that feeling. And so when I get to do something like this and then you know, call it my job at some level, man, fun am I grateful for that? Goddamn it is that awesome feeling. Grateful man, you gotta My wife reminds me a lot about that stuff. I feel grateful, I really do. I complaining about something. Yeah, first world problems. We have three beautiful, healthy children. I'm like, I know, but still I traffic. I conclude by saying that I do feel uh, I feel grateful to to have been able to run around and us see what we've seen and do what we've do done this weekend and any other time. And um, the meat Eater cruise together. Man, that's you know, last year Steve and I were here and there wasn't a meat Eater incorporate. Man, there was no Director of Conservation Round Callahan at all. And uh, that's pretty cool, very cool, very cool by oak fire. Yes you're fire. All right, boys, Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm gonna turn this generator off. That's it. That's all. Episode number forty five in the books. Thank you too, Ryan Callahan. Thank you to Stephen Rinella. Yeah, it was only a year ago that when we started this podcast. Stephen Nell and I did episode number one. We sat on a glass and tit in Sonora, Mexico, not far from where we recorded this podcast. So we've come a long way since then. Thank you all for following along. Thank you to Stephen and Ryan for being a big part of of what we've done at the Hunting Collective. And and I'm grateful, as I said at the end of the podcast. I'm very grateful for what I'm able to do for a living, and I'm very grateful to anyone who cares to listen, follow along, comment, negative, positive, it doesn't matter, Um, it's these are interactions that I care about. I care about them deeply, and I'm thankful for them. So also, that's what I'll say. And what else, what else? What else? What else? What else? Meat Eater Live Tour coming up, man, it's coming up not too long for now. We'll be in Sacramento. We will also be in Reno. I will be traveling to Boise later in the year with the team. It's gonna be great. You're gonna love it. So if you go to the meat eater dot com slash events, you'll find all the schedule there and you can buy tickets. I'm sure there's some left to most of the events. The boys are also going to Michigan and Dallas, and hopefully we'll be able to announce an Austin show pretty soon, which I will be attending as well. So go there, check that out come and see us. Would love to hang with you, shake your hand, um, and do whatever and do whatever you really want us to do. In those ways. What and there's more stuff. There's always more stuff. The Mediator newsletters there. Go to the website, the mediator dot com. Subscribe to that. You're gonna get all our podcasts, all our content every week. It's awesome. And then when you're done with that, you're gonna have a little bit of extra time. I'm sure. Maybe do this one weekend and you've got nothing going on. You go over to the store on the Mediator dot com. You poke around. There's lots of meat eat gear there. There's children's tease, all kinds of stuff for your kiddos. There's hunting collective hoodies or anti uh bullshit pro nuance shirts. There's all kinds of stuff over there ats whatever you can desire. Plus you can buy first leg here over there too, which just cool. So anyway, that's it for now. If you can do all those things, would be very grateful. Until next time, we'll be joining you from a lass of Vegas, Nevada, hopefully with one Donnie Vincent. So check out Donny. If you don't know who he is, I'm sure you already do. But if you don't, check in out and we'll see you then bye.