#1676 - Jesse Griffiths

[0] Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

[1] The Joe Rogan Experience.

[2] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[3] What's up, Jesse?

[4] How are you, man?

[5] Doing really well.

[6] You are one of the many people that are cool as fuck that I've met because of Steve Ronella.

[7] I need to give that guy like a gift just for introducing me to cool people.

[8] Like, I met at least a dozen really cool people because of Steve Ronella.

[9] Yeah, I can believe that.

[10] He's a powerful person.

[11] And I'm honored to be included in that group.

[12] I really am.

[13] He's done a lot for us.

[14] He's his ability to get out there and support people and his knowledge of his reach and just wanting to get out there and be, like, promote people.

[15] Yeah.

[16] It's very, very kind.

[17] He's a very generous person.

[18] He is.

[19] And he's so smart and he's so important to that, to that world, the world of wild foods, you know.

[20] And I heard you on the podcast, on his podcast, a few years back when you were talking, you guys were talking about cooking and Dai Duet, your restaurant here in Austin.

[21] And you could tell right away that what you're doing is very much like a passion project.

[22] Like you're a guy like when you talk about food and you talk about cooking, when you talk about like the ingredients that you use.

[23] And it's like I fucking love when someone's really into what they do.

[24] When I hear you talk about Dai Duay, when you talk about cooking in general, and of course, you got a new book out.

[25] That's out right now with the hog book.

[26] Go get it.

[27] Chef's Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Pigs.

[28] But it's very inspiring.

[29] Thank you.

[30] Thank you.

[31] Yeah, I love food.

[32] And most of my life revolves around gathering it in some way or another.

[33] I mean, I like to go pick blackberries a lot.

[34] And that translates to a lot of other things.

[35] I mean, I obviously like to kill pigs.

[36] I also like to buy carrots, things like that.

[37] I like to serve food.

[38] And it's honest work, and I'm glad that you appreciate that.

[39] Yeah, it's, you know, I learned from Anthony Bourdain that what food really is.

[40] It's like it's an art form that's temporary.

[41] You know, I used to think of food as just being delicious.

[42] And then I watched that No Reservation show, and I'm like, oh, these are artists.

[43] Oh, it's like a shift.

[44] in my head.

[45] I had to, like, rethink what it meant to be a chef.

[46] Right.

[47] I don't know.

[48] Sometimes I might disagree a little bit with the artist label and more that, you know, sometimes I'll tell our staff is like, we're plumbers.

[49] Like, we're more craftsmen than artists.

[50] Now, there's some chefs that are artists that are out there that way smarter than me. And they can make a foam or they can compose a dish with things that just like, will blow your mind and you're like, I don't think that's going to be good.

[51] And then they put it together and it is really good.

[52] I think of being a chef got really hip, I don't know, I mean Bourdain had a lot to do with that too.

[53] But I like to tell our staff particularly just to kind of keep everybody's, you know, egos within limit that we're more craftsmen, you know, that we're like, we're like plumbers.

[54] You know, we do something that's needed on a daily basis because, you know, you eat a really good meal and you're hungry the next day.

[55] And so I think that there's, Some chefs are certainly artists, and I really admire them.

[56] I, however, am not one of those.

[57] You're being humble.

[58] I get it, though.

[59] And I like what you're saying about keeping the other people in check.

[60] Good move.

[61] Very smart.

[62] Tell them they're plumbers.

[63] Right.

[64] I mean, no offense to plumbers either.

[65] I mean, they make a hell of a lot more money than cooks do.

[66] Well, yeah.

[67] And you're fucking, you know, when your sink's broken or your toilet's backed up, you need them.

[68] The thing about it is, though, like, there is an art to cooking food correctly.

[69] It's not simple.

[70] And there's also an art to being like a carpenter, right?

[71] You know, like there's a lot of craftsmen that you, for sure, a finished carpenter.

[72] Now that's an artist.

[73] But there's something about food that, for whatever reason, I think until Bourdain came along, people didn't really look at it like an art. Now I think they do.

[74] I think a lot of folks do.

[75] Like, you know, when he would go and, you know, travel to France and some strange, you know, restaurant that was in the middle of some farm.

[76] And they have, like, farm to table, these incredible chefs.

[77] are all running around cooking these little things.

[78] You're like, wow, this is true.

[79] There's strange little projects that these people are doing, and they're composing these food, these, these dishes based on local ingredients and everything.

[80] It just gets you excited about what you're eating.

[81] Right.

[82] You know, it's a different way of looking at food, at least it was for me. Right.

[83] And it changes every day, especially if that's how you're sourcing your food.

[84] Everything is a little bit different.

[85] The tomatoes are, they're blowing up because there's been too much rain, or there's no, tomatoes because it's too hot or something like that.

[86] You're dealing with things like that every day and you can deal that in a positive or a negative.

[87] You can look at that as an advantage.

[88] And so I do, yeah, I'll concede that yes, there's there is a bit of an art to dealing with food like that too.

[89] How long have you owned Dai Duet for?

[90] As a brick and mortar restaurant seven years.

[91] Now, it's been in business since 2006 when we started and basically going to farms and setting up outdoor dinners and doing these big dinners outside.

[92] We called it a supper club.

[93] And we would serve at our heyday, we're serving 80 people every week, once a week, and just sourcing everything locally.

[94] A lot of times just from one farm.

[95] And then, you know, getting fish out of the Gulf or freshwater fish, local olive oil, local dairy, local cheeses, local fruit, everything.

[96] And whatever was available, that's what we'd do.

[97] Now, these days, I don't think that's entirely novel, but in 2006 to 2010, it was still a little bit novel.

[98] Not to say that eating like that is a, is a, like, groundbreaking idea because it's probably the second oldest idea known to humans.

[99] Right.

[100] And so, but to kind of do it, well, I would say doing it in Texas was harder.

[101] harder and no one had ever really attempted that with the ingredients here because it is such a rough space it can be i mean the weather is very extreme and uh the growing seasons can be great or are terrible we have you know weather events things like that so when you started out in 2006 um were you coming right out of culinary school like what were you what you doing before then uh i just been working in restaurants um i never went to culinary school um or any school beyond high school.

[102] And I just loved cooking.

[103] And I'd always worked in restaurants.

[104] But I did start to grow a little bit tired of this disconnection with food that I saw in restaurants.

[105] I traveled to Mexico and I traveled to Europe.

[106] And I saw in those two places that their cuisine was based on their local ingredients.

[107] And to put it in a really extreme way in northern Mexico, the food was wonderful.

[108] but it was very much austere.

[109] We were looking at onions and chilies and beans.

[110] I'm talking about the high desert.

[111] Meat.

[112] I mean, no seafood whatsoever, obviously.

[113] They're a couple hours from the coast.

[114] And they were still able to pull off this really beautiful food there.

[115] And that was just, it was meaningful.

[116] And then if you go someplace like Europe where it's like, well, there's a lot more resources there, like in southern France or Italy or someplace like that.

[117] And you saw what they were doing, you know, here we use walnuts.

[118] oil and duck fat as our primary cooking fats.

[119] And they base a whole cuisine on that region of France off of that.

[120] And what I saw where I'm from is that we had nothing like that.

[121] Whenever we wanted asparagus, we would order it.

[122] Whenever we wanted a beef tenderloin, we ordered it.

[123] And we get in these boxes full of, you know, random, nameless animals and out -of -season produce from across the world.

[124] And I just thought that what if we could represent the bounty of this area a little better?

[125] And I saw what you could do with an austere space, like in northern Mexico.

[126] And I'm like, certainly we can do that in central Texas because we are very uniquely poised between the coasts and North Texas.

[127] We have prairies.

[128] We have hill country full of game, South Texas, full of citrus and mangoes, things like that.

[129] We have everything we need here.

[130] I don't know what austere means.

[131] Do you?

[132] Not bountiful.

[133] Do you know what I mean?

[134] Like very...

[135] I was pretending I knew it had been for a while.

[136] I was like, I better ask a question.

[137] Yeah, you know, not necessarily poor, but not an enriched environment.

[138] Severe or strict in manner, attitude or appearance, an austere man, okay, of living conditions or way of life, having no comforts or luxuries, harsh or aesthetic, ascetic, is that a word, ascetic, how you said it?

[139] Conditions in the prison could hardly be more astore, having an extremely plain and simple style or appearance unadorned.

[140] The cathedral is impressive in its own.

[141] austere simplicity.

[142] There you go.

[143] So when you, did you get out of high school and then immediately start working in restaurants?

[144] I worked in restaurants all through high school.

[145] Did you always know that you wanted to be a cook?

[146] No, I mean, I worked in the front of the house.

[147] I was a waiter and a bartender.

[148] It was just a good way to make cash.

[149] And cash, you know, I loved it, you know, as a young man. And I, you know, I spent it on, I tithed most of it.

[150] No, I did not.

[151] But I enjoyed being in the front of the house, but I know.

[152] knew that it wasn't a long -term thing for me. So I took the pay cut and went to the kitchen and just started working in kitchens when I was about 20.

[153] And then I was born in North Texas and kind of just worked my way south to Austin and got here in 98.

[154] Is going to culinary school the normal path when someone becomes a chef?

[155] Yes.

[156] Yes.

[157] And I mean, I think it can be great.

[158] It really depends on the person.

[159] I've known a lot of people that came out of culinary schools that have done a wonderful job in their career and also a lot of people that, you know, they didn't work and, you know, they're on to massage school next.

[160] Right, right.

[161] Well, that's like with everything, right?

[162] Sure.

[163] It's hard for people to, like, stick to a path and just grind it out.

[164] Yeah.

[165] And I think the chef world is a lot of grinding, huh?

[166] Yeah, it's tough.

[167] You know, and attitudes are changing these days, but, you know, back, you know, 20 or so years ago It was still kind of that system where you had to really work your ass off.

[168] You still do.

[169] Don't get me wrong.

[170] I mean, it's a lot of hard work.

[171] But, you know, working your way through that will really let you know if that's what you want to do for the rest of your life.

[172] And I knew that it was.

[173] I just, something about food just took me. So when you first started working, just took the pay cut and went to the kitchen.

[174] You knew right away?

[175] Yes.

[176] And I stayed in the kitchen from there.

[177] on.

[178] I never left.

[179] And then when I started traveling, and that's when I really got excited about it and, you know, just saw food in its real way.

[180] You know, I think like a formative meal for me would be in Venice.

[181] I was able to travel there, but I was also able to work in a kitchen.

[182] It was in the off season.

[183] Nobody was there because it was between like the sunny season and carnival.

[184] And so the chef took me literally on a gondola like i mean you can't get more romanticized than that he's like we have to go to the seafood market well how do you get to the seafood market you get on a gondola and the guy takes you across the canal and then we went and bought the most beautiful soul you know like a little miniature flounder these tiny little flatfish and then we go back to his kitchen and he's got uh a reach in cooler and it's it's the depths of they're off off season so there's not much going on vegetable wise and he's got three sizes of of arugula in there he's got small like medium and large and then he's got some lemons and he's got some olive oil and this guy takes this sole and he cooks it on a on a flat top and he's like don't put any salt on it it's still salty from the lagoon and i'm like yeah you're full of shit man like really i'm like okay and then he cuts a lemon in half because it's winter and so lemons are in season it's this beautiful lemon and he puts that on the plate and then he picks the small arugula and puts that on the plate because it's delicate and then he takes some olive oil and he puts it in the window and a waiter comes and takes it and I just remember thinking like how how is that we could not get away with that in the United States like serving food like that here here's a chef who's extremely talented he's been working in these hotels all over Europe his whole life and he has the ego a lack of and to just put a perfectly cooked piece of some raw greens some beautiful olive oil and a perfect lemon on a plate and send it out in the dining room.

[185] So it's to not fuck with it.

[186] Exactly.

[187] To know exactly when it's, this is all you need.

[188] Right.

[189] And not think that you, you don't have to do anything to it.

[190] And it's up here.

[191] It's, I mean, I want to do stuff to, you know, I want to manipulate it all the time, of course.

[192] But when I saw that, I was like, that's food and that's cooking.

[193] And that's, that's hospitality and that's nourishing right there.

[194] You know, I thought that was really cool.

[195] And it was all ingredient based.

[196] And it was all, hyperlocal and there's got to be something satisfying about being able to respect the simplicity of a dish right to not not get your fingerprints all over it and just to know that as it stands it's it's amazing you don't really have to fuck with it yeah and at that point your your skill is really sourcing you know it's it's relationships you've made with with uh you know a fishmonger or a farmer or a rancher are somebody that's, you know, pressing olive oil.

[197] It's things like that that I think are really exciting.

[198] Because, I mean, once you have those base ingredients, you really don't need to do that much.

[199] I mean, you can.

[200] You can get there and play with it all you want.

[201] My style is certainly to not play with it.

[202] And also, I mean, there's so much wisdom in leaving stuff alone.

[203] Right.

[204] They're like, when you see someone do that and, you know, and you know that that's all it needs, it's like it's exciting.

[205] There's something exciting about, something that really hasn't been fucked with in that way, like as a dish, just if it works out.

[206] Because there's like a wisdom in creating something like that.

[207] There's a craft in of itself and just leaving shit alone.

[208] Yeah.

[209] Right?

[210] Yeah, I think so.

[211] Yeah, it's like a perfectly cooked piece of meat.

[212] It's like, doesn't, it's not requiring a lot.

[213] It's just like time and understanding what you're doing with it and salt and meat.

[214] I mean, it's about as primitive as you get.

[215] Yeah.

[216] But when it's done right, it's like there's something about food where you can almost like feel the effort when you cook, cook something perfectly and then you serve it to someone and they're eating it.

[217] Like the effort of the people that have put this dish together comes through as you're eating it.

[218] And when it's done really well, it's like there's just like you're excited about the skill of the person who put this together.

[219] Like if you have a perfectly cooked steak and you're eating like, oh, and you're excited about how they took care of it, whether they dry anything.

[220] it, how they cooked it, you know, how they checked the temperature perfectly and served it.

[221] Yeah.

[222] It's like there's so much going on there.

[223] Yeah.

[224] I'm excited about the relationship we have with the rancher too, you know, and the story that they tell, you know, it's just like, oh, it's been, the, the rabbi primals are going to look really good for the next month or so because we've had so much rain, the grass is really high, things like that.

[225] Right, right, right.

[226] And how that, I mean, how it computes the whole system and, you know, I think it's imperative that cooks get out there and see what it's like to grow a carrot or see a cow in the field, catch a fish, kill a deer, things like that.

[227] I think that all those things are really important lessons that tie you to that whole, the source and then the whole system that it takes to get it to you.

[228] Now, you've been, you use a lot of local ingredients, but you've also been doing this thing where you take people hunting and show them how to butcher an animal and show them how to cook an animal.

[229] When did you start doing that?

[230] That was in 2008, so shortly after.

[231] We started doing classes on butchery of domestic pork, which was kind of my wheelhouse.

[232] I'd learned that in restaurant work.

[233] I'd been a prep cook and a butcher in a restaurant.

[234] And being new to hunting at that point, I had just started hunting a couple years prior and was really excited about it.

[235] it and saw the opportunity to really kind of tie the two together.

[236] You know, I knew how to butcher before I knew how to hunt.

[237] And so I had a little bit of an advantage on the back end of it, but still have and still do have to this day a lot to learn about the front end of it.

[238] And I wanted to be able to share that with people because I think that hunting is a very key way to show people the importance of food.

[239] because if you can feel sad about taking the life of a deer or a pig or a squirrel, then you can also understand what a case of carrots that is, you know, rotting at a grocery store because they haven't been sold or they're not, they don't look good enough to sell anymore.

[240] That's also sad to me. And you know a lot of work went into that.

[241] And so much, it's immeasurable.

[242] And so being able to tie food with the source like that, with hunting or fishing or whatever, I think was really important.

[243] So we started doing classes where we were taking people out, and it's guided hunts, and then you learn how to butcher, cook, and then you eat game throughout the weekend, too.

[244] And we still do that to this day.

[245] And when you do this, how many times a year do you do this?

[246] You know, well, you know, in season, it's Texas, so it's hot.

[247] Our season typically runs if we have a couple dove hunts or something in there from mid -September till maybe April.

[248] So just basically the cooler and cool and cold months of the year.

[249] So about six, seven months.

[250] And when you do it, would you do it on weekends?

[251] Like when do you?

[252] Yeah, they're typically weekend classes.

[253] We used to do a lot of private events.

[254] And now I've just gone to, we work with one ranch.

[255] We do a Friday through Sunday class.

[256] And in all honesty, though, our whole season this year has fairly much.

[257] been booked up by people that came to previous classes.

[258] They come back.

[259] We have a pretty high return rate on those.

[260] We're about to release our schedule of those, but there's going to be very, very little seats available to those.

[261] They fill up.

[262] We do eight classes a year for four people.

[263] You kind of would, if you're hunting, too, you're going to need small groups, right?

[264] You really can't.

[265] Yeah, and it's got to be very intimate.

[266] You know, we want everybody to see everything and put their hands on it.

[267] So it's really necessary.

[268] We have a team of guides, if you've never been hunting before, you have a guide.

[269] We walk you through the whole series of events, like from siding in the gun to, you know, it's this constant barrage of, like, learning this.

[270] Like, this is how you put your heel down.

[271] You know, this is the way the wind is blowing.

[272] This is the way we're going to walk to do this.

[273] You know, this is what time of day we expect deer to move, when we expect hogs to move, why we're sitting right here, all kinds of, you know, we're constantly feeding information.

[274] And then once that animal is taking, and we're feeding, you know, more information about this is how you skin, this is how you gut, this is how you use the liver, this is call fat, this is a shank, this is best for grind, this is best for slow cooking, things like that.

[275] And then we teach them how to butcher it, break it down.

[276] And then we really want them to be able to do it on their own.

[277] And the whole time we feed them game to kind of really keep it in context because a lot of times people have been told, oh, you know, you can't eat that, you know, you can't, you know, deer liver is no good or venison taste gamey.

[278] to me or I'm not going to touch the hog topic yet.

[279] But, you know, people are very opinionated about hogs.

[280] And we try to just kind of dispel those myths and empower and educate people and to be able to do it on their own.

[281] And whether or not they go and do it in the future, I don't really know.

[282] But I do think that it gives them some very good connectivity.

[283] I mean, I know people that it came on a trip 12 years ago that still talk about it to me. I think it was important.

[284] And, I mean, that's really important to me and very meaningful, that it's a formative experience, even if they never do it again, you know, but it teaches them to really value a resource.

[285] That time they killed a deer, because it's really hard, like, for me, once you've killed that deer, if you open up a bag of beef or something, I can't help but think, like, all those animals in a field, you know, they all had lives, they all had deaths.

[286] everything you know it's like and I think it teaches you just appreciate resources and once you start to appreciate that resource uh maybe you'll start to appreciate all resources you know right you appreciate the vegetables everything else you know how you might appreciate where your clothes are made or right right or uh do we need a a leaf blower you know things like that yeah we are really disconnected from so many things that are critical for life for i mean there's very few people that have ever sourced any of their food right they've never grown it they've never hunted it they never fished it they just go buy food and they think of food is something that you need to sustain yourself right whenever i talk to someone they go oh i don't give a shit about food i just need to eat i i'm always get so sad like you're missing out on it's real fun it's like people saying they don't like music oh i don't like music like how what yeah how do you not appreciate really good food the pig thing i'm glad you brought that up because is that is one thing that I keep hearing out here from folks that there's an attitude about pigs that they're disgusting, they're just dirty creatures, and they kind of just want them dead.

[287] And I've talked to people that go helicopter hunting.

[288] And I go, well, what do you do with all the pigs?

[289] And they're like, you leave them there.

[290] And I'm like, what?

[291] I'm like, that doesn't seem, that seems not just wasteful, but, well, you know, I mean, there's a lot to that.

[292] You have to, right?

[293] Right, because of the, you have to eradicate a certain amount of those pigs.

[294] But isn't there like a lot of food that you're just letting rot?

[295] There is.

[296] So, I mean, this is the Pandora's box topic for me. I'm very vested in it.

[297] I just wrote a book about feral hogs.

[298] Steve Ronella, to come full circle on that, he called me the hog apologist.

[299] And it's true.

[300] But to your point, I think that, you know, we'll start there with a fairnows.

[301] barrel hog.

[302] Let's explain the numbers, too, because people need to know how fucking crazy it is here in Texas.

[303] And, and of course, these numbers are not going to be clearly defined.

[304] You know, it's hard to get a census on hogs.

[305] So the estimate in the United States is around $6 million.

[306] The estimate here in Texas is between $2 million.

[307] So probably somewhere in the middle of that, maybe 2 .6.

[308] That's a number that you'll see a lot, maybe around $3 million, but whatever.

[309] So literally more than the entire population of Austin in hogs spread out around the state.

[310] And in the time we've been talking about them, you know, how many have been more.

[311] Yeah.

[312] Point, point, point.

[313] So they have no breeding season.

[314] They can breed at a very young age, you know, let's say five or six months is very conceivable.

[315] And then they have a gestation period of three months, three weeks, three days.

[316] And then they can drop a litter of, you know.

[317] Always three days, so you can just plan it out?

[318] Yeah, I mean, it's pretty precise like that.

[319] I bet women are very jealous.

[320] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[321] Well, I'll be giving birth on Wednesday.

[322] Yeah.

[323] Got it timed in.

[324] And after that, I mean, they're able to go back into estrus pretty quickly after that.

[325] And their litter size can be anywhere from, you know, two to 12.

[326] But, you know, let's just say it's, you know, even six is a lot.

[327] So you've got a, you've got a 10 -month -old animal.

[328] dropping six babies.

[329] And they can do it three times the air.

[330] Well, twice?

[331] You know, the way that works out.

[332] You know, you've got, I think it's 20, I want to say 26 days that they can go back into estrus, something like that.

[333] It might be 23 days.

[334] I can't remember the number right now.

[335] After they give birth.

[336] And they're back in estrus.

[337] And if they're living in an area that's got a high population of boars, they're probably going to get bred pretty quick.

[338] And so that's when you see this explosion that has happened.

[339] And so they're not indigenous to this country.

[340] So they came here in the mid -1500s.

[341] Columbus brought some to, I mean, just the Caribbean Islands.

[342] But the mainland was, it's usually attributed to Hernando de Soto, who dropped off a bunch of pigs on his way before he died in Arkansas.

[343] And then there was some other explorers that also brought in pigs, Spanish explorers that brought in, you know, domestic, semi -domestic hogs and dropped them off.

[344] And so what we saw was this real slow build in pig populations.

[345] There was also some Pacific Islanders that dropped them off in Hawaii way before that.

[346] So if you're talking about the technical United States.

[347] When did they drop them off in Hawaii?

[348] It's food source.

[349] No, no, when.

[350] When?

[351] Oh, oh, it was, I couldn't give you a number.

[352] It's way previous to the 1500s.

[353] Wow.

[354] That's wild.

[355] So that's a weird debate in Hawaii, right?

[356] Because a lot of people are saying they're an invasive species.

[357] And then some folks are like, well, so are people.

[358] people.

[359] Because if you think about it, the hogs have been there as long as the people almost.

[360] There's going to be a lot of parallels.

[361] Yeah.

[362] Yeah.

[363] There's a very destructive European animal arrives on our shores.

[364] Yeah.

[365] And now there's a lot of them.

[366] So, you know, you've got these populations exploding throughout time, but really kind of concentrated in the late, you know, 1900s.

[367] you know like the 80s and then you saw people uh you know you've got a guy that loves to hunt on his ranch in west Texas and he says to his friend in east Texas he's like sure as hell like to be able to shoot something out here you're around buddy in east Texas is like wow man I got some pigs and then you know traps a couple throws them on a trailer and now you have 253 out of 254 counties in Texas have hogs barrel hogs wow and they're spreading all across the country too, right?

[368] Yeah, there's a downward migration from Saskatchewan, you know, and those are escaped domestic hogs.

[369] But, I mean, let's also define what a feral hog is.

[370] It's a pig that's just on the wrong side of a fence.

[371] I mean, once they get out, that's a feral pig.

[372] So I like to say it's a domestic pig, or a feral hog is just a pig without an address.

[373] You know, they just, as soon as they get out of that pen, they're feral.

[374] And I will readily admit, I mean, not even on purpose, but we have shot while hunting pigs that had ear tags, you know, meaning that at one point that was a farm pig.

[375] It's not anymore.

[376] And what it's doing is it's breeding like crazy out there with a feral boar, and it's just creating more feral pigs.

[377] So like I said, once they're on the wrong side of the fence, they're fair game.

[378] Well, we should explain to people what happens to pigs, right?

[379] I've talked about it on the podcast before, but people haven't heard that episode.

[380] So there's a physiological change that happens to pigs when they get wild.

[381] So when you're saying that these are pigs, they're wild pigs, people like, wait, but they're boars, boars are different than pigs.

[382] It's all called Sue Scroffa, right?

[383] Correct.

[384] And once they escape, within months, their hair can become shaggy.

[385] And we're talking about the same pig, you know, not its offspring.

[386] Right.

[387] Their hair can become shaggier, and their snouts will elongate in order to allow them to root more effectively, because that's one of their primary ways of feeding, is rooting.

[388] And that's the most destructive way.

[389] I mean, they can dig three feet down in soft dirt.

[390] And they're getting roots, they're getting insects.

[391] They're omnivores.

[392] And they'll go after anything.

[393] And so once they get out, they go feral quick.

[394] And they get street smarts, too.

[395] I mean, they go nocturnal.

[396] I mean, they're smart, smart animals.

[397] And so you add all this together, you know, the herds that were initially brought here for food, and then further domestic herds, and then you have escapies.

[398] over hundreds of years of, you know, settling in this country, and you've got escaped domestic hogs.

[399] Then you've got hogs specifically brought in for hunting, namely your Russian boars, your Eurasian boars, which are kind of the big hairy razorbacks.

[400] How much different are those?

[401] Is it all the, it's still the same species, right?

[402] Yes, it is.

[403] And I mean, it's like, I believe, and, you know, not, I don't want to stand by it, but I believe it's just like a subspecies.

[404] There's one more Latin name after Seuss -Scrofo.

[405] for the Eurasian, but freely interbreeding.

[406] It's not like, I mean...

[407] They're not hybrids where they're not...

[408] Well, they make hybrids.

[409] Right, but the hybrids are viable.

[410] Absolutely.

[411] Yeah, so it's not like a hybrid, like a Liger where they can't...

[412] No, no, no, no, no, nothing like that.

[413] And so then you've got some kind of specific areas.

[414] California had a lot of Russian boers brought in, and there's certain areas in Texas.

[415] The Powderhorn Ranch down near Port O 'Connor was one that had some brought in.

[416] specifically and deposited there.

[417] Is the difference in the flavor or the way they look like the flesh?

[418] It would be really hard to determine that now because most of them over the years have interbred with your standard feral pig.

[419] And so purebred populations of those hogs are very hard to find.

[420] It's debatable whether the powder horn ranch population is purebred Russian boar.

[421] I've read I've read different things about it.

[422] Some say that it's not.

[423] Some say that it is.

[424] It's a high fence.

[425] It's got a high fence around it and has had one since the 1920s, I believe.

[426] Oh, wow.

[427] Yeah.

[428] And so whenever they brought in the boars, those are the same breeding population.

[429] Right.

[430] They think.

[431] But, you know, a fence doesn't mean shit to a pig.

[432] You know, I go under it, you know, any way around it that they can flood.

[433] Waters come up.

[434] They can swim, you know.

[435] So it's not known.

[436] But there is one sequestered population of feral hogs in the United States.

[437] and that's on Osaba Island off the coast of Georgia.

[438] And so that was an Iberico hog brought over here by the Spanish.

[439] You know, pointy hats, long brown robes, they drop some hogs on that island.

[440] And that island has sustained a population of purebred Iberico hogs to this day.

[441] And it's called Osaba Island.

[442] And they have an Osaba Island hog, which is a purebred Iberico hog, which is the same hog that produces the $150 a pound.

[443] Serrano ham.

[444] I've seen a beerco, I've seen that name before, Hamon.

[445] Hamon Abirico.

[446] Yeah.

[447] So these Osaba hogs are a purebred descendant of that.

[448] They're smaller because they suffer from, it's called, Island dwarfism?

[449] Insular dwarfism.

[450] So because they're on a small area that doesn't give them a lot of space to forage, that they have to make themselves smaller generationally.

[451] Yeah.

[452] And they've exported those.

[453] hogs now.

[454] I mean, we had a farmer, I mean, just north of Austin for a while that had a pair of Osabaah hogs and was raising them because, I mean, purportedly, I mean, for their incredible quality.

[455] You know, they are purebred Ibericos.

[456] People pay top dollar for that.

[457] Have you had one of those before?

[458] Yeah, we had some hybrids.

[459] Like they were part Osaba and part other hog.

[460] I mean, they were great.

[461] I'm not going to say, like, it was mind -blowing.

[462] But I mean, we get a lot of really high -grade domestic pork in also.

[463] So they were small.

[464] They were like a medium -sized pig that put on a lot of fat so yeah it was it was very good um but i i wouldn't say it was the best pork i'd ever have is the difference in the way domestic pork versus wild pork the way it tastes just primarily diet or does something happen to their flavor profile when they assume this metamorphosis when they get out and their snout extends and their hair gets bushy and does it change the flavor that like i would imagine some hormonal changes are happening in their bodies right certainly you're going to see, as far as flavor goes, you can have diet.

[465] And also, most domestic hogs are castrated.

[466] And what that does is it prevents something called boar taint.

[467] And it is a, you know, some people don't like cilantro.

[468] You know, there's maybe 7 % of the people don't like cilantro.

[469] It's like a genetic thing, right?

[470] Yeah.

[471] Well, boar taint is offensive to something like 96 % of people.

[472] I mean, like a lot of people.

[473] It's a very strong musty odor.

[474] And we deal with it randomly.

[475] I mean, when you're hunting wild pigs, you know, very, very, very few of them have been caught and castrated, the boars.

[476] So you're going to have that hormonal influence on them.

[477] You're also going to have diet, which is huge to me. Like, I mean, a pig that's foraging along the coast and potentially just eating, you know, in marshes or in South Texas and like mesquite scrub where there's not a lot to eat versus a hog that's, you know, lives just, you know, 30 minutes southeast of here that's got four varieties of acorns and wild pecans and like nice soft ground and blackberry roots to choose from.

[478] One of those are going to be really good.

[479] And it's that last one.

[480] You know, they're going to put on a lot of fat and be very, very good.

[481] So one of the things that we address constantly is the disparity in quality for wild pigs.

[482] But I mean, to your question, of the difference between a domestic hog and a wild pig is mostly consistency because a domestic hog from a given farm is going to be given a pig ration and they're going to be fairly consistent.

[483] Now, some of them might bully their way to the front of the line and eat a little bit more, or pigs, you know, versus a feral hog from the same property, you know, but it's not getting fed a pig ration.

[484] So you will see a lot of difference.

[485] The feral hogs are typically a lot leaner, and they can be anywhere from like, identical in flavor to a domestic pig to very, very different.

[486] And a lot of them, because they're omnivores, they could perhaps be on, like, they could find like a dead deer or something like that and start eating that.

[487] Yeah, or a live deer.

[488] Yeah.

[489] Well, I saw one, there's a photo of one running away with a fawn in its mouth.

[490] Yeah, I've seen that photo?

[491] Oh, any picture of a pig doing anything naughty immediately gets sent to me. Yeah, so they will go and hunt fawns.

[492] or they just see them in my book I call them opportunistic omnivores you know or I think I call them woodland vacuums with shitty manners also it's what they come across you know there's I mean you know about the great rattlesnake debate what's the great rattlesnake debate okay so this is this is a good one and say it like everyone would know well of course how long have you lived here do you know the great rattlesnake debate young Jamie no it does not either so There's a sizable chunk of the Texan community that believes that rattlesnakes have stopped rattling or they're not rattling as much.

[493] Because if a rattlesnake rattles when something approaches it, it alerts a hog.

[494] And a hog will kill and eat a rattlesnake pretty much with impunity.

[495] Really?

[496] Yeah.

[497] I mean, they've got really thick hides.

[498] They don't need to worry about it.

[499] They're going to get in there and they'll just get tear up a snake.

[500] I mean, have you seen Lonesome Dove?

[501] The restaurant?

[502] No, no, the movie.

[503] The movie, yeah.

[504] Like, one of the first scenes in there is just like, he's watching these two pigs eat a rattlesnake.

[505] I have a, I have an oil.

[506] What years that movie from?

[507] Year?

[508] Yeah.

[509] Oh, God.

[510] 80s?

[511] I mean, that's probably like.

[512] It's based on the book, right?

[513] The novel.

[514] Larry McMurcher.

[515] Yeah.

[516] I mean, classic.

[517] You got to see that.

[518] Well, it's a lot of things I have to do.

[519] I know.

[520] I know, put it on the list.

[521] So.

[522] So that's a thing.

[523] Pigs always eat rattlesnakes.

[524] Well, okay.

[525] So people think that because any rattlesnake that rattles gets eaten by a pig, that the rattlesnakes that survives are like the quiet ones, the non -rattlers.

[526] And so rattlesnakes aren't rattling as much as they used to.

[527] And so there's kind of an uptick and bites.

[528] I personally don't subscribe to this.

[529] I mean, I'm like, I don't know.

[530] Some rattlesnakes rattle when you go walk by them.

[531] Some of them don't.

[532] But there's a, I mean, a very vibrant debate on whether rattlesnakes have stopped rattling because of hogs don't doesn't it make sense to you that that would be kind of maybe in transition like if the hog problem is getting bigger right and it is and then the rouse snakes are getting eaten by the hogs which they are doesn't seem like that would like sort of naturally happen i mean i don't know i'm not an evolutionary biologist but i would imagine yeah i don't know i think it would require a lot of hogs to eat every rattlesnake that rattled and then the snakes to over a period of and this and the time frame for this too according to you know know, the folklore of it is like maybe the last 20 years.

[533] So in 20 years, rattlesnakes are now just, I don't know, what do you can call them now?

[534] Just snakes?

[535] You know, like they just stop rattling.

[536] But they still have the rattle.

[537] Yeah.

[538] They just don't use it.

[539] There was a moth in England in the late 1800s when England was becoming industrialized.

[540] And let me see if I get this right.

[541] The moth was white.

[542] Right.

[543] And then as the smokestacks went up, everything got sooty and black.

[544] And the white moth stood out really vividly against the black soot.

[545] And birds started eating it.

[546] But like one in, you know, there was like a genetic anomaly where one of the moths might be black.

[547] And within a very short period of time, I want to say maybe 10 or 15 years, this white moth turned black.

[548] because the ones that survived were the dark ones that weren't, you know, skylit by the so it's, I mean, I don't know if it's the same.

[549] There's scientists out there just laughing at me right now, but, you know, I guess it's plausible, but there's a great debate.

[550] I personally, I'm like, I don't know about that.

[551] I think it's, what happens to animals when they adapt and change to environment, it's really spectacular.

[552] If you see like a chameleon, how the fuck did that happen?

[553] Or even, let's get even crazier, a cuddlfish.

[554] Yeah.

[555] Oh, what?

[556] Yeah.

[557] You can, you could become your environment.

[558] Like, when you see an octopus become a coral reef, like, what the fuck is happening there?

[559] How did you figure that out?

[560] Yeah.

[561] How long did that take?

[562] Yeah.

[563] Like, it took a minute.

[564] Well, it's, we think we have a map of the entire process of how a single -celled organism eventually becomes an octopus and all the steps along the way.

[565] And like, oh, it adapted to a. environment but how quickly and how much adaption when you see that we see an animal that can literally become the ground like it looks like it looks like it's the bottom of the ocean and then something comes by and it just comes out of nowhere and becomes an octopus again and snatches it up right like that's that's crazy like how did that happen how did how do these animals blend how did a mule deer literally become the color of the grass that it exists in or a coup of deer which is even more blended but even more so at the time of day that they get really active yeah it's like I think it's kind of gray the grass isn't gray and then the sun goes down a little bit and boom it turned the grass turns the same color as the deer Jamie put this up a octa cuttlefish unlike our eyes the eyes of cephalopods cuttlefish octopuses and the relatives contain just one kind of color sensitive protein apparently restricting them to a black and white view of the world.

[566] Yeah, well, that's even crazier then.

[567] So how the fuck do they become the color of a, they change color.

[568] Yeah, and they can't appreciate it.

[569] They can't see it.

[570] But how do they know that they can't see it?

[571] Probably because they've dissected the protein that makes you see.

[572] Right.

[573] That I don't, yeah, that I don't know.

[574] How crazy is that?

[575] That they're becoming a color that they can't even see?

[576] Have you ever seen when they take a, I think it was a a place with a checkerboard pattern and it was trying to emulate the checkerboard pattern you have seen that no see if you can find that it's so weird it's trying to figure it out so it's trying to figure out how to emulate this super bizarre pattern but in color yeah well I guess that's black and white technically yeah unreal what is it seeing so watch how it settles down and then just becomes black and white it's trying to figure out it doesn't It doesn't have, see, it's black and white, whatever it can generate.

[577] It seems like it can only generate things that are similar to the environment in which it lives.

[578] Like there.

[579] Like it looks like a throw rug.

[580] Yeah.

[581] Let me see if it's better here.

[582] It's definitely not black and white.

[583] Yeah, it's not figuring.

[584] What's trying to figure it out, though, look how it's changing colors, like trying to work out.

[585] And where is it seeing this?

[586] Is it using its eyes?

[587] Because it seems like once its body lays down, its body tries to emulate the colors around it.

[588] Yeah, like, how does it sense its environment when it doesn't even seem like it can view it?

[589] Yeah, like see there, you could tell it's trying to do like squares.

[590] Fucking weird animal.

[591] They're weird.

[592] The octopuses and cuttlefishes and they're so strange.

[593] They're so, such an alien creature.

[594] Like, if you went to another planet and they had things like that, They could just sort of blend in with their environment.

[595] Like, wow, we don't have anything like that here.

[596] We do.

[597] It's just in the ocean.

[598] Yeah.

[599] So maybe you are on Team Rattlesnake.

[600] I'm leaning towards that.

[601] I feel like they would adapt, especially if these goddamn pigs just keep eating their buddies.

[602] Right.

[603] You know, after a while, they're like, hey, I think we're going to stop this rattling.

[604] Yeah.

[605] Let's cut the shit.

[606] Yeah.

[607] I don't know.

[608] I mean, maybe we'll see in another 20 years and we'll have a little more data to back it up.

[609] But right now, it's very, it's almost an emotive response that people have.

[610] Snakes stop rattling.

[611] That's why you've got to be more careful out there.

[612] It's because of the pigs.

[613] But it's also seemingly another way to blame the pigs for something.

[614] Right.

[615] Well, there's a lot of, like, room to blame pigs.

[616] There's so many of them.

[617] And they do so much.

[618] What is the number of the amount of money they do in damage every year in Texas?

[619] It's something really crazy.

[620] I mean, in nationwide, I believe it's in the billions.

[621] And I have to be real careful about that, too, in my staunch defense of, you know, respecting the pigs is that, like, if you go up in a helicopter and you want to shoot a bunch of pigs and you're not able to utilize any of them, it doesn't, it doesn't bother me. I get it.

[622] I think my whole point in this process is just trying to encourage people to eat more of the dead ones.

[623] As simultaneously, I'd like to see people kill more of them.

[624] I love pigs.

[625] I think they're great.

[626] I love hunting them.

[627] I think they're cool.

[628] I respect them.

[629] I don't want them to suffer.

[630] And I kill them very regularly, too.

[631] And I don't feel necessarily, I don't feel really bad about it.

[632] But I also, I want them to die quickly.

[633] And I know that we need to get behind that wholesale in order to control this problem.

[634] But I would just like to see them utilize this food more.

[635] Well, it seems like a perfect food source If you think about it It's an invasive species You have to control the population of them They're very nutritious Really good for you They're delicious And they're also gross looking So people don't feel as bad about shooting them Yeah, yeah, there's that I mean I think the debatable thing is if they're delicious Not on my part I mean that's my role In this is that it's to convince people Because of the mythology that's out there about them I mean I've heard everything from You Can't Eat them Period Two, you can only eat them if they're under, and I have heard every weight category that you can imagine, and it's always laughable to me if they're under 80, 100.

[636] It goes in 20 -pound increments, at least, you know, to make it, you know, seem a little more scientific.

[637] But, you know, I've eaten 300 -pound boars that had testicles the size of cantaloupes, and they were absolutely delicious.

[638] They were that big?

[639] They're that big.

[640] Oh, they get big.

[641] They get real big.

[642] Do you make Rocky Mountain Oysters out of their nuts?

[643] There's a recipe in the book for them.

[644] So, you know, just convincing people to try them.

[645] I mean, it really, it doesn't, I don't care if you do or not, but I'd really like to give people the confidence to try them more and know that a lot of the things that they've heard about pigs are not true.

[646] There's a lot of, like, generational mythology.

[647] You know, you can't eat that pig because it's too big.

[648] You can't eat any boar.

[649] You know, you'll hear that too.

[650] And it's like, that's just not true.

[651] I eat them all the time.

[652] And either I have a really terrible palate or that's wrong, you know.

[653] Well, is it a prep, it's certainly there has to be some sort of impact on whatever their diet is, right?

[654] But it also, it's a preparation issue.

[655] And that's where your classes come in.

[656] And stress.

[657] Stress on them.

[658] Stress on the animal.

[659] So a bigger animal takes longer to kill.

[660] Anecdotally, and I talk about this one in the book, too.

[661] And this, I mean, I think this was, this is a really, like, cut and dry example of the impact that stress has on the flavor of an animal.

[662] And then I was tasked with taking someone from L .A. who was in the movies to go hunting.

[663] He never been hunting before.

[664] And I was a little worried about him being able to steal the deal, as was the production crew.

[665] And so what I did.

[666] Oh, so you're filming it.

[667] We're filming it.

[668] And that's, I mean, that's also, that's hard when you're, like, trying to, you know, hunt.

[669] animal that's got a very cute sense of smile and you've got seven people with you yeah um so we ran snares on a fence line where the hogs would would cut under there and we ran these wire snares on there i ran four snares and then i took him and we went and sat in a blind sure enough we got lucky a pig walked out and we got luckier he shot it and dropped it right there i mean just a nice like 120 yard shot pig went down great so we got go and we get the pig, it's about an 80 pound sow, throw it in the truck, drive to check the snares.

[670] When we pull up, there's another hog caught in one of the snares.

[671] And it's still alive.

[672] I mean, it just catches it around the torso, basically it holds it.

[673] But hogs, once they go through something like that, they go nuts.

[674] I mean, they are, they're really aggressive animals.

[675] But this thing just laid on the ground.

[676] It was so tired.

[677] And I just, I felt bad.

[678] The crew was like, let's get set up for a shot and I said no and I just walked over and I shot it and killed it um because I just I was like it's done it's done you know and we took that animal and the other animal and they were both sows they were almost identical they were probably about 80 80ish pounds each and we we scanned and gutted them and then we butchered them both we ate some of the one that he shot that night I ever noticed the next night we had some chops and some other stuff off of it and it was great it's lean you know south Texas pig we took the rest of of the one that we'd caught in the snare home.

[679] And it was, to this day, the worst feral hog I've ever had.

[680] And it was pretty much inedible.

[681] And it had that extremely gamey flavor to it.

[682] And I can only attribute that to stress.

[683] I've never tasted another sow in that weight category that tasted anything like that.

[684] And you've eaten probably hundreds of it.

[685] Hundreds.

[686] And so, I mean, I think that that's a very clear cut, you know, example of what stress can do.

[687] And then also, you know, if you think about a big boar, which gets the, they get the bad rat for taste in really bad.

[688] And it's that, you know, they're really large animals that are hard to bring down if you're rifle hunting or bow hunting.

[689] It's just takes longer for them to die.

[690] Right.

[691] And then, I mean, there are the hormonal things and those big pigs.

[692] They can be very strongly flavored.

[693] I'm not here to argue that.

[694] But what we try to do is approach hogs and forgive me if I'm getting off topic.

[695] but in a way where we kind of categorize them where they're not all treated the same way.

[696] But, you know, like a big boar and a big sow, and then there's a medium hog and a small hog, and you're going to cook all those a little bit differently.

[697] You know, you're not going to cook them.

[698] You know, if you manage to get like a 25 -pound little, like, nice young pig and then a 300 -pound boar, they're not, you can't treat them the same way.

[699] And what is the difference in what you would do with a 300 -pound bore, how you would cook it?

[700] You know, that's going to be a lot of sausage.

[701] you know things like that some very simple approach to it something that's probably going to be highly spiced maybe you're going to have to add some fat into it if it's lean typically uh you know if you've out of the same litter uh if you have a sow and a bore next to each other the same age the sow will probably have a little more fat on her typically also will depend on where she's at in her pregnancy cycles um so boars tend to be leaner but a big bore I mean, it mostly is going to be, you know, like it's going to be like curry or a chili or something that you're going to add some spice to.

[702] You wouldn't cook a ham off of it or anything like that?

[703] If it was particularly fatty and looked really good than I would, but I'm saying like generally.

[704] So you would take the whole thing and turn into sausage?

[705] Could, yeah.

[706] Yeah.

[707] And what do you, like how many pounds is a 300 pound bore when you dress it out?

[708] You know, it's going to lose about 45 -ish percent of its weight in ophal and hair, things like that, hide, and then take off probably another 45, 50 percent off of that once you get all the bones out of it.

[709] So you're probably yielding 100 -ish pounds?

[710] Yeah, probably a little bit less.

[711] You know, maybe like 80 pounds, something like that of just pure meat.

[712] And depending on how lean they are too, I mean, if they got a ton of fat, you know, they might be more bulked out or they might be, you know, just real thin.

[713] Sometimes you can see through their ribs, sometimes there's, you know, bacon on that.

[714] Right.

[715] And so normally when you process sausage like that, so you have your cuts and then do you have like standard recipes where you add X amount of fat, X amount of spices, and then you do it all yourself, right?

[716] Yes.

[717] all the blending yes so i'm usually a 20 25 percent fat uh in the sausage so we'll will if it's a very lean hog we simply just package that into four pound packages and freeze that and when you say fat are you talking about domestic fat yes so you get domestic pork fat and then you or do you use any other kind of fat uh generally i'll use pork fat if i'm making specifically burgers i mean for like burgers cheese burgers you know i like to add in beef fat Or I'll do like 10 % beef fat and 10 % bacon.

[718] Would you a pork burger?

[719] Absolutely.

[720] Really?

[721] Yeah.

[722] It's really good.

[723] Really good.

[724] How come nobody does that?

[725] I don't know.

[726] That's an interesting.

[727] Like you're saying pork burger.

[728] I'm like, this is madness.

[729] Yeah.

[730] But I mean, it makes sense, right?

[731] You have elk burgers, moose burgers.

[732] Why not pork?

[733] I don't think I've ever heard of a pork burger.

[734] Yeah.

[735] Especially if you're going to like do a nice thin, you know, like charred patty.

[736] Right.

[737] Really well cooked.

[738] And you mix it with some nice fat.

[739] Like beef fat and bacon.

[740] And I think it's excellent.

[741] What are your thoughts on suvi?

[742] I've got two turkey legs back at the house.

[743] I mean, I'm going to have to run here in like three hours that are cooking for 24 hours.

[744] I don't use it a lot, but I think there's some applications that it works really well for, especially with game.

[745] You know, your steakish cuts can be really good.

[746] I think you do that a lot, right?

[747] I used to, yeah.

[748] I haven't suvied in a long time.

[749] I don't often take a backstrap and suvi it.

[750] I prefer to just cook it on the grill.

[751] I will suvi things like ribs and things like turkey legs that I think will benefit from a very, very long controlled cooking where they don't get overcooked.

[752] So then I can usually, I like to put them on the grill afterwards.

[753] Yeah, I was watching a YouTube video yesterday where this guy was cooked an inexpensive chuck steak and he suvied it for 24 hours and then grilled it.

[754] So he suvied it, I think it was, I think he did it at 125 degrees for 24 hours.

[755] And it just like broke down all of the collagen and all of the hard, stiff stuff that's in that kind of a hard, you know, like a more firm cut of meat.

[756] And then afterwards he grilled it.

[757] So he grilled the outside of it, got a nice sear on it, nice crust, and it was cutting through it.

[758] It was like, this is literally better than a rib eye.

[759] He was like, because you get all the flavor from all this, this fat and all this gristle and everything breaking down slowly over the course of 24 hours.

[760] So all that tough stuff becomes very tender and then seared it on the outside.

[761] Right.

[762] Yeah, I mean, it's a great tool.

[763] And what I like also about it is that it's, it's an empowering tool because sometimes people, they they get into something, you know, they're like kind of technologically, they just like to nerd out on something.

[764] Cuvie is a classic way for somebody to do that.

[765] And if you're struggling with cooking game or it's like, oh, it's come out tough or this or that, I love to see tools like that enter into the, you know, the lexicon, you know, where, or I mean, hell, a crock pot, you know, for me, the crock pot is like one of the coolest kitchen tools ever if you're a game cook.

[766] Because what it does is it enables you to cook for a very long time in a precise temperature with no flame.

[767] You can go to bed, you can go to work, whatever.

[768] And then you come back and it's cooked.

[769] You know, it's like, oh, that elk shank that I had, it was tough, undercooked it, essentially.

[770] Right, right.

[771] But a crock pot is just a really simple way for people to achieve that.

[772] And then suvi is kind of the modern update of a tool like that.

[773] So I always appreciate anything that helps people, you know, just want to get more out of their, their game or it's food in general, you know, just get excited about cooking, I think, is just so beneficial to everyone's.

[774] The only thing that would worry me about suving is the plastic.

[775] Yeah.

[776] Like leaching plastic, leaching chemicals.

[777] We had this woman, Dr. Shana Swan, is that correct, how to say her name?

[778] She was on the podcast talking about the issue with chemicals from plastic affecting people's endocrine systems and the fact that is a thing called thallates it's spelled with a P, P -T -H -P -P -Thalates.

[779] I think I've seen that before.

[780] And thalates, when they're introduced into mammals in utero, they're showing that they have a profound effect on their sexual reproductive systems and they think the same thing is happening to people.

[781] And there's a direct correlation.

[782] What is her book called again?

[783] We should probably pull up her book so she could...

[784] Sorry, I pre -google it thallates and suviet and it says it's okay.

[785] Oh, really?

[786] How come?

[787] They take out the BPA.

[788] Oh, they're free of phallates and BPA.

[789] Okay, so zip...

[790] Okay, in this case, testosterone...

[791] Oh, phallates in large doses like BPA can compete with hormones, in this case, testosterone, but most plastic wraps, zip -lock bags, freezer bags, and suvee bags are free of phallates and BPA.

[792] The change from polyvinylidein chloride to polyethylene was for safety, but it did make the cling wrap cling less.

[793] Okay.

[794] I didn't even know there was specifically suvi bags.

[795] I've only used Ziplow.

[796] Oh, yeah.

[797] Those vacuum sealed bags.

[798] And I don't do it.

[799] That's your book.

[800] And I have always been opposed.

[801] We don't do it at the restaurant.

[802] This is our book.

[803] Countdown How Our Modern World is Threatening.

[804] counts altering male and female reproductive development and imperiling the future of the human race.

[805] Shannon Swan.

[806] You don't use it at your restaurant, Suvi?

[807] No. We don't.

[808] And it's because, I mean, you know, maybe it is BPA -free, but there's still something about just cooking in plastic to me. And it's a once every two or three month deal for me. I mean, we're going out of town this weekend and I want to be able to just like, you know, cook it, throw it in the cooler and throw it on the grill.

[809] You know, and it's something I don't like to make a habit out of without.

[810] knowing the science behind it other than I don't like plastic right you know it's just something about it creeps me out yeah no I get it I get it it's it's it's also it's like if you're thinking about like what you're doing is so back to the world like that you know back to the earth you know you're hunting and then gathering up fresh local ingredients and cooking it like it's put in a plastic bag and then you use a thermometer that's got a digital thing and you're boiling the water kind like that that's a right now you're in this weird sort of modern.

[811] Yeah, seems a bit disingenuous.

[812] Yeah, well, it's just, maybe it's just a perception thing.

[813] I mean, if it's the best way to cook something, it's the best way to cook something, right?

[814] Yeah, I think there's a couple, a couple way, like these turkey legs, I'm really excited about them.

[815] You seem like really excited way you take the legs.

[816] Yeah, I mean.

[817] How do you do that?

[818] What do you do?

[819] You cook them and then you grill after you're done, you achieve a certain temperature?

[820] Put a little fat in there, you know, whatever kind of saucy type stuff.

[821] You know, there's some garlic floating around in there, salt and pepper and some spices, things like that.

[822] And then they're just going to come out and just get slowly cooked and crisped up on the grill.

[823] And I think that that method is something we use in the restaurant, just extensively, is to cook things beforehand until they're tender, and then we'd let them cool.

[824] And then, like, to order, we're cooking them over a hot grill.

[825] We do that with ribs.

[826] We do, you know, beef ribs with wild boar ribs, pork ribs.

[827] We do that with chicken hearts.

[828] We do that with, you know, duck quarters, anything like that, where you can take something and kind of cook it to where it's tender and then just, you know, set it aside.

[829] I mean, you can put it in the refrigerator for a few days.

[830] And then when it's time to grill it, it comes out and you're just adding some char and smoke, crisping the skin on it, maybe glazing it with something.

[831] And I think it's just a really great way to kind of just reverse that whole process where instead of browning it in the middle and then brazing it, you're brazing it, then cooling it, and then browning it.

[832] It's a very, like, Mexican technique right there where so many meats are slow -cooked.

[833] And then, you know, like, when you get a taco on the street, it's like it's just been cooked forever.

[834] And then it's just hit on this flancho that just like sears it and, you know, reheats it.

[835] And it's just, and that's where you get that crust and that my yard reaction and everything.

[836] And it's just, it's brilliant.

[837] And it's broken down and tender.

[838] And I think that applying that to game, I mean, you can do domestic animals too, of course, but applying it.

[839] to game.

[840] It's a really good trick.

[841] And when you do that in terms of like cooking it and then refrigerating it, what temperature do you like to bring it back up to before you sear it on the outside?

[842] I usually like to go cold.

[843] Really?

[844] Because if it is really tender, let's say some elk ribs.

[845] And you cook them until, and whatever method, like you maybe you wrap them up real well and you put them in the oven and cook them until they're tender.

[846] Or you braise them in pure fat like a confi and then they're they're pretty tender i'm not saying like falling apart tender but if you get them to where they're almost tender if you let them come back up to room temperature they're going to start to get a little floppy and hard to deal with if you go cold onto the grill and start to manage that crust on there they'll be a lot easier to handle so i typically will go cold onto the grill really it is because there's not a thick amount of meat on those ribs too right so you don't have to worry about it being really cold in the center if you're and the outside it will heat up the whole thing.

[847] Yeah, I mean, and just give it ample time, you know.

[848] And not a, it doesn't have to be a ripping hot grill necessarily.

[849] It kind of depends on what you're doing.

[850] But, you know, you can like, you can take 30 minutes to kind of get a nice crust on a rack of ribs.

[851] And I do it with hog ribs all the time because they're so variable.

[852] You know, they could have two inches of meat on them or you could, like, be able to read a book through them sometimes.

[853] I mean, they can just be so thin.

[854] So if you want to, like, par cook them and then throw them on the grill afterwards, it's just a really good, simple way to make that happened.

[855] And are you, do you like to use a meat thermometer or are you doing it all by touch and feel?

[856] Yeah.

[857] I mean, these are, these things are cooked to shred.

[858] You know, these things are, they're at one 90 plus for multiple, yeah, almost all these things that I'm describing.

[859] These are well done pieces of meat.

[860] I mean, not like.

[861] Because it's hog.

[862] Yes.

[863] Well, or, or the cuts that I'm talking about, I'm particularly like to do this on your slow cooking cuts, your shanks, your ribs, you know, like pieces of shoulder, things that have to cook for a very long time anyway, not necessarily like your backstrap or your loin that you're cooking medium rare.

[864] I'm applying this more to things that I want to cook until they're like almost falling apart.

[865] But, you know, just a little bit shy of that.

[866] And then they don't have any crust on the outside.

[867] Because, I mean, one method would be to just simply poach hog ribs in water.

[868] Like there's a recipe, there's a method for that in that book.

[869] Really, poaching them.

[870] Sure.

[871] Or it works really well with venison ribs, too.

[872] If they're particularly lean, you just put them in water, you season the water really heavily with onions and spices and garlic and whatever, ginger, whatever.

[873] And then cook them until they're almost done, and then you pull them out, cool them off a little bit, and then finish those on a grill, and then you can glaze them with something that's sweet and sour and sticky and whatever from there.

[874] And they're excellent.

[875] And it gets them very tender, and then you go in.

[876] and get them crispy and add that smoke component at the very end.

[877] And is this how you've always done it, or is there something like you've figured out along the way?

[878] Yeah, it's kind of twofold.

[879] You know, we've always done that for many years with hog and venison ribs specifically.

[880] But then, you know, in a restaurant setting, it's got some big advantages.

[881] Like we do a whole beef rib, and a thing can weigh, depending on the cow, three and a half pounds raw.

[882] So it's a whole beef rib.

[883] And what we'll do is we will season that, and then we'll submerge that in hot beef fat and cook that at a very low temperature, which is called a confi.

[884] We're basically just brazing it in fat until it's tender, it's tied, and then we pull it out and cool it.

[885] And then to order, I mean, because that process takes four or five hours, and then to order that cold, tender but firm, beef rib just goes on to a hot grill and gets rolled on a grill until it's hot throughout and it gets crisp on the outside.

[886] And so you get a little bit of smoke and some texture on the outside and the meat's just falling apart tender.

[887] And you just know when to do it just based on how many times you've done it in the past.

[888] You know how long, are you timing things?

[889] Yeah, we're timing that, you know, definitely.

[890] There's an amount of time that that beef rib is going to need to cook.

[891] But also, you have to get in there because, you know, animals are different.

[892] You know, each one is a little different.

[893] It might take a little longer, a little shorter amount of time.

[894] We want it to be tender.

[895] You know, you just make sure it's tender.

[896] then we actually cool it in the fat and then reheat the fat and pull it out and then when you're grilling things are you cooking over wood like what do you do that what are you doing?

[897] Yeah, oak coals so we use post oak and do you like you use lump charcoal or are you actually using the wood itself?

[898] We're using, well in the restaurant we're using just wood, no charcoal why do you do that?

[899] What's the benefits of using wood?

[900] We just like wood, you know, we just like the smoke.

[901] We cook over hot fires there So very hot fires.

[902] So we need a lot of heat.

[903] Charcoal pops a lot too.

[904] And just have always preferred just post oak.

[905] You know, just nice ripping fire, spread some coals out.

[906] And then we're grilling steaks and things over that bread.

[907] Everything gets cooked over that.

[908] And it's just because the flavor imparts?

[909] Yeah.

[910] I mean, there's some cultural value to that too.

[911] I mean, we live in an oak rich area.

[912] And everything, you know, like barbecue in this specific area has always been smoked over oak maybe a little bit of con if you go west you're going to start to see more mesquite more in south you're going to see mesquite and you go east you start to see things like hickory and so i mean you're you're the wood you're burning i think also has some cultural import too and so it all kind of factors into the the whole just the dish in the end you know it's just like how you made that and what what tree you cooked it over right when you think about doing that and you think about like cooking over oak fires and is this, I mean, this has got to be something that's been done here for a long, long time, right?

[913] Yeah, yeah, for sure.

[914] I mean, that's like, I mean, cooking concepts, I mean, as far as that goes, I mean, an animal over burning wood that's abundant, both of those things, hopefully, an abundant animal over an abundant wood would make the most sense.

[915] And there's something about fire and cooking over fire, too, that's, it just taps into some weird ancient memories or something.

[916] It's like it's very satisfying and exciting to cook straight over a fire.

[917] It's a very different feeling than putting something on a frying pan over a burner or a gas burner, which is all nice and everything.

[918] But there's a feeling that you get when you cook it something over fire.

[919] Yeah.

[920] I mean, I can't even speak to it.

[921] I mean, you said it, but I mean, I don't know how to get, how to address it without just, you know, tapping to something.

[922] that we don't understand, but it's there.

[923] It's why we all stare at fires.

[924] Yeah, yeah, you know, you can't.

[925] You just stare at fires, then you, I mean, also you want to cook things over fires, and when you have a fire, you want to cook everything over a fire.

[926] Yeah, they're beautiful.

[927] There's something about it.

[928] It's like this crazy nature, like this reaction that you can sort of help and manipulate.

[929] You start moving the logs around and, you know, adding logs.

[930] And it's a, cooking over a campfire is, one of the most satisfying things I think I've ever done in my life.

[931] I remember that's one of the things that got me hooked on hunting to begin with is when I went with Ronella, we shot a mule deer and then we cooked the liver over the campfire.

[932] And, you know, he had these little grates that you could just sort of like sit things down to cook meat over.

[933] And then he cooked, I forget, like, what kind of container he cooked the liver in, but just so like liver and sauteed it in some grease.

[934] And I was like, this is so sad.

[935] Something about cooking over a fire.

[936] Like you make a fire, you sit there, you just shot an animal, you're cooking.

[937] It seems so much different than any other kind of food you ever have.

[938] Yeah, I mean, I agreed.

[939] I mean, we set up our restaurant.

[940] It's, you know, it's very open on the inside, and we have a big table where all the butchery happens.

[941] And then there's just a hearth where there's a big fire.

[942] And it's, I think that, I mean, I know that.

[943] I mean, when we were talking to the architect, I was like, this is what I want someone to see when they walk in the door.

[944] We have a rail, you know, a butchery rail, where they can be.

[945] bring carcasses down to the table, which is wide open.

[946] I mean, there is no prep area in the whole restaurant that you can't see.

[947] You can see everything except for the walk -in and the office.

[948] And so I wanted people to be able to see what was happening on that table, whether it's on one side they're making breads, you know, and cakes.

[949] And on the other side, there's a feral hog getting broken down.

[950] And then there's a fire.

[951] And if you walk in, and it's the same thing you're talking about.

[952] You walk in the door, you see those two things.

[953] You're like, I got the concept.

[954] you know like I understand what's happening here there's there's a meat and there's like you know trays full of ripening tomatoes and peaches and everything out there right now yeah because that's the only place we have to ripen them so I mean you see all these components and then you see a fire and it's like bet you got the concept down right now you don't even need to ask your server so what's this place all about right you see it right in front of you and it's so self -explanatory and simple but also like exciting yeah you know you go to a place and they have that kind of...

[955] Do you have, like, one of those Argentine -style things where you raise and lower on a wheel?

[956] Yeah, a crank style, you know, which to me is just the best.

[957] You just adjust it over the heat.

[958] We have two.

[959] One's a flat top and one's just a grill grade.

[960] Although they're both interchangeable, too.

[961] We can put different grill surfaces in there as needed.

[962] So when you say one's a flat top, but like a frying, like a flat?

[963] Like a flat top.

[964] Sancho style, just a solid piece of metal that you sear things on.

[965] You know, but there's still a little, I mean, there's just smoke everywhere.

[966] There's a little bit of smoke to it.

[967] And you're still cooking over a campfire it's probably incredibly inefficient to right you know toast bread over a fire but fuck it but isn't that kind of like part of what you're doing it's like it doesn't have to be efficient there's like there's something cool about the fact that you are doing it over just wood oak fire right yeah yeah it's more fun it's yeah like and it's appealing like if you just want to go to a restaurant and just want to eat some food that tastes good that's great but if you want to go to a restaurant where someone is cooking over fire and you've got the fruit ripening and you've got all this this whole experience.

[968] There's something more to it.

[969] And it's like it's tangible.

[970] Like you could see you feel different about the experience.

[971] Right.

[972] Yeah.

[973] I think the I had this experience one time when I was I was down in the front and I was I was prepping and I looked up and there was this old guy, you know, old Texan very much so.

[974] You know, he had Pearl Snap.

[975] long sleeve shirt he had on his hat he had on his jeans and he was just watching and i looked over to him and i kind of just you know eye contact and i nodded at him and then he was just still watching and i just you know then i looked up again i was like hi how are you and he looked at me and he goes i know what you're doing here and he turned around and walked away and i i just i almost cried i was like you know because that's like i mean he he he's i knew what he meant he's like i know what you're doing here and it wasn't like I know you're trying to get away with so he's like I see what you're doing here because you know I mean he was probably in the 70s and he probably hopefully was thinking about the way his grandparents ate or and he that those words were just they were very powerful and I'll never forget that it was really cool just I know what you're doing here and he smiled and walked off yes sir if you know you know yeah right um These people that come and take your classes, is there like a demographic that is it, is it wide open?

[976] Is it a large spectrum?

[977] Yes and no. We have, I mean, I think if you split it between new hunters and experienced hunters, we're right at about 50%.

[978] You know, we have people that have never hunted before or maybe went hunting once and didn't, you know, succeed or get an animal or whatever.

[979] And then we have a lot of people that come because they want to learn more about the butchery side of it.

[980] And a lot of times they're just like, yeah, I don't really care if I kill a deer.

[981] I've got a place to go kill deer.

[982] But, you know, they'll set it out.

[983] And they're like, they're having fun.

[984] But what they're there for is learning about utilization.

[985] And then you've got your brand new hunters.

[986] Demographically, no, it's not as divergent as I'd like to see it.

[987] I really wish that there was more seats at the table for people.

[988] I mean, if your grandfather, our great -grandfather wasn't allowed to own a gun, you know, the likelihood that you've gotten into hunting now is greatly diminished, I think.

[989] And I really want to see hunting available to everybody, you know, if you're interested.

[990] And I think that it gets people involved.

[991] in responsible gun ownership, resource management, appreciation of meat and animal management from across a more diverse background too.

[992] And so, no, I mean, frankly, it's not as diverse as I'd like to be.

[993] And we're trying to do some things that mitigate that, and we're just, we're trying to get more different people in there to these classes.

[994] But, no, it's kind of what you think it would be.

[995] You know, it's more, you know, mostly affluent, you know, white males.

[996] Although we get a lot of women in there.

[997] We used to do a class for male, I'm sorry, for women, just a class, just women.

[998] And that was a lot of fun, you know, introducing them.

[999] We'd have women guides come in and kind of to help just kind of decrease any kind of feelings that they'd have about what our preconceptions of what that situation would be like.

[1000] And, you know, it was really rewarding.

[1001] And I think that as we move forward and we're educators, and I think it helps, you know.

[1002] And there's a lot of debate about, like, recruitment and things like that, about like, do we have enough resources for everybody in the country to hunt and things like that?

[1003] But at the end of the day, it's like, I want anybody, that wants to be able to do it, get their foot in the door somehow.

[1004] So I'll work with some organizations like Texas Parks and Wildlife, Parks and Wildlife Foundation, stewards of the wild, TWA, Texas Wildlife Association, because they've got some really good outreach programs, a lot of youth programs, you know, and just trying to just get more people involved in the outdoors, because it's something they need to be aware of.

[1005] If they don't pursue it for the rest of their lives, that's fine.

[1006] But I think even that one experience can be very formative.

[1007] And pigs have got to be like the best thing to do that too.

[1008] Yeah.

[1009] Plentiful, easy to locate.

[1010] Yeah.

[1011] But, you know, we're, you know, you know the stats behind private land in Texas.

[1012] It's a very privately owned state, which is in a lot of ways great.

[1013] I mean, we have a lot of land stewardship and a lot of these natural places that are, you know, just protected because they are privately held.

[1014] but at the same time it's it's the most often asked question for me if a new hunter comes and they're like okay great we just you know did this course you know i got a deer and a pig we go home and then they're like so where do i go next and i'm like well i don't know you got to make friends you know there's and that's where the hogs come in you know it's like because they're so invasive it makes them a little more accessible to someone who just wants to hunt and that's you know early on that's what i did i had connections with farmers.

[1015] And because I was buying chickens or tomatoes or whatever from this farm and that farm, you know, you can just randomly ask, hey, do you have a pig problem?

[1016] And most of the time they're going to be like, not always, but sometimes.

[1017] And next thing you know, you probably have a place to hunt pigs or at least try.

[1018] And I always urge people to start there if they want.

[1019] I mean, this is kind of a Texas specific topic right now, but maybe not.

[1020] Is to, you've got to make those connections and get out there.

[1021] And hogs being the most undervalued of all the game species, like hunting deer is very profitable.

[1022] And it's going to be hard to just be like, hey, do you can I shoot a big buck off your property?

[1023] People would be like, yeah, no. That's for my kids.

[1024] But if you're like, hey, do you mind if I help, you know, call this hog issue that you have?

[1025] You're probably going to find people to be more amenable about that.

[1026] And when you take a pig and you hunt it with someone, when you break it down, what is the first thing you do as far as like, how do you, do you bring coolers with you?

[1027] Do you cool it down immediately?

[1028] Do you hang it?

[1029] Yeah.

[1030] So this is, I mean, you probably didn't know that we're getting into like probably the most contentious thing that I'm going to say.

[1031] And how you cool game down.

[1032] And like, because I get into this.

[1033] a lot with people because the way I like to do it is vastly different from the standard practice of it.

[1034] I mean, this is like Davy Crockett surrendered at the Alamo territory.

[1035] Really?

[1036] Yeah.

[1037] So I never put a pig or a deer or any game or any meat for that matter directly on ice.

[1038] So we're in a hot place and I understand that the sheer necessity for getting something cold quickly.

[1039] But the two words that I want to drive home with people to improve their experiences with game meats in general, and hog specifically, is cold and dry.

[1040] When you put a hog on ice and then coat it with ice, then it starts to soak into the meat.

[1041] You're getting water in there.

[1042] So water can be a vector for bacteria.

[1043] And so that can actually help it go off by adding in more moisture to the meat.

[1044] And it also makes it very floppy.

[1045] Like when you put it on a cutting board to cut it, there's just water coming everywhere.

[1046] The meat is very wet.

[1047] If you grind it, you will have some moisture come out of it.

[1048] I can guarantee you if you bring some meat to me to process.

[1049] And I've processed, you know, hundreds of animals for other people.

[1050] And many times they'll bring them, well, they used to, they're not allowed to anymore.

[1051] Bring them to me iced down.

[1052] like that and after i would make some link sausage and put them on a tray there's a bunch of water on that tray and i guarantee you that's because it was soaked and there's just a lot more water in that mean now obviously you're like well then how do you get it cold what we do is the same exact thing we wrap it really well in trash bags we take unscented contractor bags and wrap that animal up really well and we face it so the cavity is pointing down and then we ice the hell out of it and open the drain plug we're doing virtually the same thing that everybody else is doing, except we're avoiding that direct contact between the ice and the meat.

[1053] You wouldn't go to the store and buy a ribeye.

[1054] And, oh, it's a hot day.

[1055] I'm going to keep it cold.

[1056] I'm going to take it out of the package and stick it on some ice, you know.

[1057] And, you know, just as humans, there's some sort of weird voodoo that we think happens.

[1058] You know, we put this pig in there.

[1059] Somebody told us you can't eat pigs.

[1060] You know, they're dangerous.

[1061] They've got, they carry diseases.

[1062] It's stinky.

[1063] mean looking it had mud all over it you get it all cleaned up and you put it in the cooler and you open that drain plug and this red water comes out and what is that how you're like that's all that bad shit right you know that's all that you know that's the gaminess that's satan you know just coming right out of there you know be gone and and that's not really how it's working you know you're you're i feel like you're doing more damage than than good i mean and to carry the point a little more, I had a guy bring me an axis once and it had been iced and the water had pooled and the beautiful loin on that axis had half been submerged in water and so half of it was just like this pure beautiful magenta color.

[1064] The other half was just a floppy gray and it was trash.

[1065] And there's no way to mitigate that?

[1066] There's no way to bring it back.

[1067] Once it's soaked in there, it's soaked in there.

[1068] It's just water soaked meat and it's no industry does that.

[1069] Right.

[1070] And I mean, I get it.

[1071] I mean, and it's also the most logical thing.

[1072] I mean, how do you get a beer cold?

[1073] You don't wrap it in an uncended contractor bag and dip it in some, some ice.

[1074] You just throw it right on ice.

[1075] That's the, that's the straightest line between hot and cold.

[1076] But you'll get there if you do it this way.

[1077] It really works well for me. I'm, you know, of course, do whatever you want out there.

[1078] But I also deal with people that have negative experiences with hogs a lot.

[1079] Organg.

[1080] in general.

[1081] And while I can't, you know, knowingly say that that's where that result came from is from improper handling right there.

[1082] But maybe if it's a consistent problem and that's a consistent way that they're being handled, then it's suspect to me. And what do you think about like when people put coolers in and then they put like frozen milk jugs fill with water and they use that to cool it?

[1083] a cooler down?

[1084] Yeah, I don't think you're going to get it as cold.

[1085] I mean, you've got plastics and insulator, and so you're not going to have it as cold as if you just iced it.

[1086] I mean, I mean, fill it a third of the way up with ice, put your pig in there, like I said, cavity down so no water can pool in there and then cover that thing as much as that cooler will hold with ice and pop the drain plug so that any liquid's coming out.

[1087] And that thing is going to be cold.

[1088] I mean, it's going to be right at 32, 34 degrees, and you can come back to that eight days later and pull it out and it'll be almost dry to the touch, minus a little bit of condensation and a real pleasure to cut on the board, you know, for me. I mean, cutting is fun to me, but when I get this floppy, wet, you know, big quarter, I'm like, oh, no good.

[1089] Yeah, no, that makes sense.

[1090] The covering it in ice and the contractor bags, all that makes sense and that's but that's a lot of folks are just doing it the way you were talking about earlier just throwing it right on ice absolutely deer and hogs that's the way that it's mostly done i've even heard one of my one of my guides tells me that his family grown up they put bleach in the water they did they made ice water they put bleach in there what yeah i mean but that just i mean what that that that is just purely it's so basic that you know that animal's dirty let's clean it oh my And so let's bleach it, you know, not like enough bleach to make us sick, but, you know, enough bleach to just...

[1091] How much bleach is okay in a glass of water?

[1092] I don't know.

[1093] And so, but that's, it's the same mentality, I think.

[1094] That's crazy.

[1095] And that red stream that's coming out of there.

[1096] You know, our brains register that as the bad stuff coming out.

[1097] Not really.

[1098] Right.

[1099] God, that's crazy that they use bleach.

[1100] I can't even believe that, but I can.

[1101] I've heard some crazy stories.

[1102] Okay.

[1103] So I once had a guy tell me that the only, oh man, the only way to make a large adult boar palatable, and you only had 20 minutes to execute this after you killed it, and his ranch manager insisted upon this was to get it back and let's say manually stimulate the dead pig.

[1104] Post -mortem.

[1105] The penis area of the dead pig?

[1106] Correct.

[1107] And, I mean, my first thought.

[1108] That sounds like a guy who's like looking for an excuse to jerk off a pig.

[1109] I was like, I think the problem is not with gamey boars, but I think your problem lies in ranch managers.

[1110] But that's, so that's the spectrum of game care that I've heard, you know, and I'm like.

[1111] Is this like some superstitious thing?

[1112] I think so.

[1113] Wow.

[1114] So all told.

[1115] Imagine if that's the way you just got to just yank it out of them, just slowly.

[1116] My uncented contractor bag seems a little tame now, right?

[1117] Like, you're like, okay, some merit.

[1118] I know some folks, I don't know if they still do this, but there was a product that was for sale that they were actually advertising on meat eater that was you would hook it up to game and electrocute it afterwards.

[1119] Like, did you ever use that?

[1120] No, I've never used that.

[1121] But there's a company that we buy a lot of game from.

[1122] That is incredibly progressive in their methodology in getting wild game into the commercial food system.

[1123] It's called Broken Arrow Ranch.

[1124] And they're in Ingram, Texas.

[1125] And they will drive around with shooters and an inspector on site and a refrigerated trailer.

[1126] And the shooters will kill non -game animals.

[1127] So no white tail.

[1128] but like Axis and Psyche and Fallow Deer, Nogai.

[1129] And then they will process on site, but they use that, I believe they call it electrostimulation.

[1130] And they use that process to bleed them out.

[1131] There it is.

[1132] Shockingly better meat.

[1133] Electro stimulation is a process involves connecting cables from a special electrical current generating device to a freshly killed deer or antelope carcass and applying a surge of electricity to the carcass for about one minute.

[1134] Oh, electrical current is.

[1135] alternately switched on and off during the stimulation process, during this process, the muscles of the carcass contract as a result of the electrical stimulation and relax each time as the electrical current is switched off.

[1136] And it says, what does it do to meat?

[1137] Meat muscle must be cut away from the bone while the carcass is in rigor mortis, the stiffening of the carcass after death.

[1138] Muscles cut away from the bone during rigor mortars will contract and compact the meat fibers tightly together resulting in toughening of the meat.

[1139] Electro -stimulation causes electrochemical reactions which avoid this stiffening.

[1140] There are three beneficial effects of electrostimulation, improve flavor, improve shelf life, and tenderization.

[1141] But tendurization is subjective, whether or not it's improved, right?

[1142] Because there's something about like an elk steak or something like that, a game animal.

[1143] I like a chew to it.

[1144] I like it.

[1145] I don't want it to taste like a flame, I don't want it to be like butter, we can cut it with a spoon.

[1146] Right.

[1147] So yeah, they, that company does that and then they're able, they overnight game, or game meets all over the country and it's super high quality.

[1148] What's it called again?

[1149] What's the name?

[1150] Broken Arrow Ranch.

[1151] I've heard of them.

[1152] Does Paul Saladino tell us about them?

[1153] Probably.

[1154] Yeah.

[1155] Do you use that electrical stimulation process?

[1156] Have you ever used that on Neil Guy or anything else?

[1157] No, not personally, but I mean, we do get stuff at the restaurant that is from that company that does it.

[1158] But no, I've never done it.

[1159] And I mean, I want to say, I think I saw it on a video once.

[1160] It might be as simple as just like hooking it up to a 12 -volt battery and yeah.

[1161] Wow.

[1162] But it seems like it's hooking it up, jolting it, let it go, jolt it, let it go.

[1163] Probably there's like a pulse to it, right?

[1164] Yeah, I don't know.

[1165] I'd love to witness it.

[1166] But, I mean, it seems to have some merit.

[1167] Yeah, I've heard of people doing it with cows, too, right?

[1168] Don't they do it with cow meat?

[1169] I'm not sure about the, like, the beef industry.

[1170] Yeah.

[1171] It's, I mean, it makes sense.

[1172] Have you ever had that done to you?

[1173] If you have an injury?

[1174] No. I've had it done what they call, it's called dry needling.

[1175] So they stick, like, these acupuncture -style needles.

[1176] I had, like, a back thing going on.

[1177] And they stuck these acupuncture needles all in my back and then connected these little clips to some sort of electrical device.

[1178] And, like, as you're lying there on the, this massage bed, it's like, d -d -d -d -d -d -d -d -d -d.

[1179] And it's like your flex, your back is like flexing and relaxing, contracting and relaxing.

[1180] And when it does that, it really loosens it up, feels good.

[1181] So it just makes sense it would make food taste better too.

[1182] Yeah, yeah.

[1183] Muscles, like working muscles.

[1184] Has there any other, like, unusual preparation methods that you employ?

[1185] No, no. Other than the unsented contractor bags?

[1186] No. Yeah, it's pretty lame.

[1187] No, I'm pretty straightforward.

[1188] I mean, we, I'm, I like to, and this is very technical, I mean, the non -hunters out there might be a little lost, but I, I skin and then gut almost universally.

[1189] A lot of people do that in reverse.

[1190] How come?

[1191] Well, especially with pigs, I like to be able to have a fully fleshed out carcass that I can do a very good job of retaining as much fat.

[1192] as I can, and then just come back and do the gutting process.

[1193] We typically get it done pretty quick.

[1194] But other than that, nothing controversial, like my ranch manager story.

[1195] And are you using entrails, anything of the pigs?

[1196] Are you using that for sausage casing?

[1197] No, no, I've never done that.

[1198] And I get asked that a lot.

[1199] And it's just sheer laziness that I've never, like, flushed some casings out there.

[1200] I buy them.

[1201] It's a real boring story.

[1202] But we buy our sausage casings.

[1203] but we do often use liver, heart, kidneys, and cal fat out of hogs.

[1204] You know, just your real basic ophal, you know, like the big four out of there.

[1205] Now, when it comes to pigs, one of the things that you have to think about because they're omnivores is trichinosis and things along those lines, right?

[1206] One of the things that I've heard about sous -Vee is that you can take a pig, and as long as you cook it for a certain amount of time, you could cook it at like 140.

[1207] 40 degrees, and it's still, like, as long as you do it for enough time, it'll kill everything in there.

[1208] Right.

[1209] It'll render those trichinae larva inert.

[1210] And if you couple that with freezing, below 5 degrees, you know, a couple weeks of freezing, and then you hit that temperature.

[1211] And, you know, there's like a gradation.

[1212] You know, at 145, it's pretty quick.

[1213] And then when you get down from there, it'll take longer.

[1214] Trichinosis is a concern.

[1215] Brusilosis, pseudorabies, Tularemia, there's a lot of things that you could potentially get from a wildhog.

[1216] But almost all of those are mitigated completely by that freezing and cooking process.

[1217] Also wearing gloves while you're processing them.

[1218] And that's something that I'm very insistent on is wearing gloves.

[1219] Why is that?

[1220] Because when you're in contact with their reproductive and digestive organs, specifically, if you have any cuts or anything on your hands, that's when you can expose yourself to brucellosis.

[1221] And so it's just, I mean, it's an easy thing.

[1222] I mean, I have in my truck in the parking lot right now, I got boxes of gloves, you know, just in case I kill a pig on the way home.

[1223] But just always have those, and I insist that everybody else wears gloves.

[1224] Now on the butchery table, once I get all that stuff out of there, I, you know, gloves off.

[1225] But if you're concerned about that with hogs, which is a lucid concern, I'd say just like go with all the slow cooking methods where you're taking them to, you're taking them to 190 for four hours.

[1226] So you don't have to worry about anything like that.

[1227] Right.

[1228] And the cases are very, very rare.

[1229] The last study I read, particular to Texas, is that trichinosis was very low in the feral swine herd here in Texas.

[1230] But it was even higher in other places for some reason.

[1231] I have no idea why.

[1232] Yeah, but trichinosis is just one of many things you're going to have to do with, as you're saying.

[1233] Certainly, certainly.

[1234] Do you prefer like a meat, like a game meat that you can cook medium rare or, you know, like an Axis or something like that to pigs in terms of like what your own taste buds are or is it just does it vary?

[1235] I got to stay on brand for this one.

[1236] It's hogs all the way, man. I do love Axis.

[1237] I mean, it's like that, I mean, in Texas that's just like that's the king.

[1238] You know, and Axis is like a low impact hog.

[1239] I mean, those are, they're invasive as well and need to be controlled.

[1240] But they kind of, like where they live is in kind of the pricier parts of the state.

[1241] So it's really hard to gain access to hunt Axis deer, even though they need to be controlled, although that freeze did a real good job of it.

[1242] Yeah, the freeze killed a thousands of them, right?

[1243] I love Axis deer.

[1244] You know, I like a very diverse freezer.

[1245] You know, I want to have some turkey in there and some pig and some white tail and some Axis and then a ton of fish.

[1246] That's really what I'm going for.

[1247] I don't really have a favorite.

[1248] I'm not trying to cop out.

[1249] But when it does come to pigs, I do prefer, like, slow -cooked and ground preparations anyway, normally.

[1250] In ground?

[1251] Like, like, one of those whole pigs?

[1252] No, no, I mean, like, ground.

[1253] Oh, ground.

[1254] Oh, I thought you were talking about, like, a luau.

[1255] No, no. Do you ever do that?

[1256] We've done some kind of versions of that.

[1257] Well, I mean, we'll do stuff for a long time in Dutch ovens, buried in coals.

[1258] I've never dug a pit.

[1259] I've done a lot of rotisserie.

[1260] hogs like whole pigs on electric artisories and in the smokers too one of the things he did when i went hunting with ronella is we we cooked a mule deer head under the ground like a barbicoa yeah it was really wild yeah it was delicious it's it tasted like smoked pork yeah it was really uh it was interesting and i think he got the recipe from an old book an old book about like mountain men and how they used to like to take mule deer heads and cook them underground so that's pretty cool.

[1261] Yeah, it was pretty cool.

[1262] Yeah.

[1263] Yeah.

[1264] I mean, I mean, the head's got so much beautiful meat and if you just really cook it for a long time, but it's got to go a long time.

[1265] Yeah.

[1266] Do you ever eat the brains?

[1267] No, not really.

[1268] Rarely will take the time to skin like a hog's head out, but I will sometimes.

[1269] There's a few recipes in the book for heads and usually don't go scooping brains out.

[1270] I don't know why.

[1271] I've had lambs brains before.

[1272] Have you ever had grilled lamb's brains?

[1273] I've had poached in Bride lamb's brains.

[1274] And then also beef brains, you know, sesos is a somewhat common.

[1275] What's it called?

[1276] Cessos.

[1277] It means brains in Spanish.

[1278] Oh, really?

[1279] Yeah.

[1280] It's a somewhat common taco filling.

[1281] Really?

[1282] Further south you get.

[1283] Oh, you got to go to the legit spots.

[1284] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1285] You're not getting that at.

[1286] Chipotle.

[1287] No. Yeah, I mean, how much of a market is there for beef brains?

[1288] I mean, somewhat.

[1289] what.

[1290] I mean, but the beef heads move, you know, barbacoa is, is a big deal.

[1291] Right.

[1292] I mean, if you've ever had, like, real deal amazing, like, pit cook barbacoa, it's, I mean, it's good stuff.

[1293] Yeah, it's cheeks, right?

[1294] It's like mostly.

[1295] It's everything.

[1296] Is it a jaw?

[1297] What are you eating?

[1298] If you're in a legit barbacoa place, you're going to get, there's going to be cuts.

[1299] You're going to have ojo.

[1300] You're going to have cacete, which is the cheek.

[1301] You're going to Langua, the tongue.

[1302] You're going to have paleta, which is that, like, the pallet on top of the mouth.

[1303] I think that's everything.

[1304] And then you can get, like, a mixta, which is going to be everything together.

[1305] But if you're at a really good, like, real deal, South Texas, Padraikoa place, you're going to be able to order.

[1306] And you've got to get there early in the morning because all the old guys show up and get the eyes first, if that's what you're looking for.

[1307] Really?

[1308] Yeah.

[1309] Is that the thing?

[1310] Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

[1311] Maybe they struggle with the vision problems.

[1312] And so they think that, you know, I don't know, I'm projecting that.

[1313] I don't want to be held to that.

[1314] But, well, also, you got to think, I mean, there's only two per head, you know, and so they go quick.

[1315] Right, but it's just, I've never even heard of people eating cow's eyes other than when I was hosting Fear Factor.

[1316] Yeah.

[1317] I think we fed cow eyes to people then.

[1318] Yeah.

[1319] Sheep's eyes, lamb's eyes.

[1320] The head thing is, it's not a common thing.

[1321] like in in if you asked a normal person like do you eat an animal's head right or fit even fish heads right like cheeks fish cheeks are delicious yeah and the throats or the collars yeah often thrown away yeah i mean if the fish is big enough just pull the cheek out i mean that goes to something that's just like to me if if that's something if that's a fish that you caught interesting stance to take or a dove let's let's put it more in the context of a dove and then I mean the same thing I'll be like I like to pluck my dove hole I'll take the dove and I'll pluck the entire thing people like that takes too long and I'm like how long did it take you to drive to the spot that you dove hunted you know like an hour and 15 minutes I'm like each way and it's like it's really notable it's like this is a thing that I want to do that I mean I was excited about the day before opening season and I really wanted to give you out there, dude, I want to shoot these doves.

[1322] I got my new dove belt.

[1323] I got my new gun.

[1324] I got all the stuff.

[1325] I drove, you know, two and a half hours overall.

[1326] And then I took five minutes to breast the birds out.

[1327] And then when it was suggested that I might want to pluck the entire bird, which takes about four minutes per bird, I'm like, you know, I don't got time for that shit.

[1328] You know, I think that's, that's a little weird to me. You know, it's just like, we definitely like put our feet down at the processing of something.

[1329] So like, you know, pulling that fish cheek out, I was like, I don't know if I have time for that.

[1330] It's just like, man, you'd spend a lot of time on everything else.

[1331] Yeah.

[1332] And it's just for some reason we view the processing of animals in a real negative or it's like a chore.

[1333] You know, like, oh, I got to do this.

[1334] I'm not saying everybody, but when specifically to dove hunters, they're just like, I'm not doing that.

[1335] It's not worth it.

[1336] It's totally worth it.

[1337] I mean, you can eat two Doves as a meal per person, I mean, cooked right and served with a few other things, you know, versus, you know, eight dove breasts, you know, and it's like you can really stretch them a lot.

[1338] And there's a lot of meat, a lot of meat on the legs, but, you know what I mean, like relatively.

[1339] There's something, a couple bites.

[1340] And the little heart, the little lizards, not lizards, livers and gizzards, and they're totally worth it to me. And I don't think it takes that much longer, but it speaks a lot to the amount of time that we value into that part of the process.

[1341] And we'll sit in the stand for five hours.

[1342] But, you know, like cleaning up the call fat off that deer is, you know, five minutes we just don't have anymore.

[1343] Now, like eating doves for a lot of people, like you're just saying dove hunting, there's a lot of people that don't hunt that are listened to this right now.

[1344] They're like, what are you talking about?

[1345] I don't know if they've made it this far.

[1346] They probably have because until now it's been like acceptable hunting.

[1347] But now you're talking about the bird of peace, you know, like that doesn't seem to a lot of folks to be food.

[1348] Yeah.

[1349] But it's probably the one animal.

[1350] It's probably hunted more than any other bird in this country, right?

[1351] Is that true?

[1352] I don't know the stats on that.

[1353] I do know.

[1354] Oh, I bet more people dove hunt than duck hunt.

[1355] Really?

[1356] Yeah.

[1357] It's the biggest outdoor event that happens in Texas.

[1358] It would be September 1st.

[1359] I mean, if you've ever been, just get outside of a suburb.

[1360] in any town in Texas on September 1st at around 4 in the afternoon.

[1361] And if you don't know what's happening, which is pretty hilarious because it happens every year, you'll think that it's World War III because it's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

[1362] Really?

[1363] Yeah, it's constant.

[1364] That's opening day of dove season?

[1365] Yeah, it's an event.

[1366] It's a huge cultural event.

[1367] It has a lot of weight, you know?

[1368] It's like the kickoff for hunting season.

[1369] It's a lot of, I mean, there's people that I won't see all year, and then I'll see them for opening day if I get an invite to be a guest at that field.

[1370] But for me, dove hunting is, it's very casual in that you don't need a lot of equipment or time, but I highly value the food from that.

[1371] And that if I go out with a friend and we manage to get eight doves, we're going to both, if we're clever about it, we're both going to feed our families for at least one meal off of that.

[1372] I mean, even if it's like a, you slow cook them and peel all the meat off.

[1373] make some flautas or manicotti or something like that out of that mean you can totally stretch that um what's a dove similar to in taste uh quail is it yeah i mean i think it's a little more has a little stronger flavor than quail but um i think they're they're very very good um and it tastes just like a really profoundly birdy in a way profoundly birdie yeah is it okay all right i'm trying to put a to figure out what that means, profoundly birdie, like chickeny.

[1374] Yeah, I mean, we're trying to, I mean, we're dancing around the chicken, like a chicken thigh times six.

[1375] But with a different richness to it, right?

[1376] Definitely a different texture.

[1377] I mean, you know, you want to eat the breasts, you can eat them medium rare, just like you would and eat.

[1378] I want to hunt Sandhill cranes, because I can't believe what those things look like when you cook a breast, that it literally looks like a beef steak.

[1379] Yeah, dinosaurs.

[1380] So strange.

[1381] Yeah.

[1382] Yeah.

[1383] But it's red meat.

[1384] Very, very.

[1385] And probably one of the more beefy flavored birds.

[1386] And that's also...

[1387] Ribbi in the sky, right?

[1388] Yeah, it didn't taste anything like a ribeye.

[1389] Why do they call it that?

[1390] Because it rhymes.

[1391] I mean, you know, and also just make sure we're differentiating.

[1392] We're not talking about whooping cranes here.

[1393] You've got to be very clear on that.

[1394] Because there is a mode of response that people will have about sandhills.

[1395] And it's also pretty interesting, too, that as migration patterns, patterns change with geese, particularly in mostly eastern and coastal Texas, where goose hunting used to be huge.

[1396] There's a town in Texas, Eagle Lake, there's the goose hunting capital of the world, where Andy Griffith used to go, you know, and shoot like 50 snow geese, you know.

[1397] And they don't come down here so much anymore.

[1398] I mean, it's just like the populations are kind of hanging up north of us now.

[1399] And it's, and as that's happened, what you've seen is a proliferation of Sand Hill cranes coming down and they will devastate some agricultural fields as well and so the hunting for those has increased a lot they're very beautiful birds too.

[1400] You see what it looks like?

[1401] Sandhill crane.

[1402] Very large they hunt them a lot in the panhandle and also towards the coast and they're very good they're very good to eat very beefy you know and very approachable.

[1403] Oh that looks like a dinosaur yeah that freaky head wow what a weird looking bird yeah and there's There's very sustainable numbers of them, too.

[1404] How crazy is it that that thing gives off a red meat that literally looks like a steak?

[1405] Yeah.

[1406] Yeah, look at that.

[1407] That's crazy.

[1408] I mean, it's insane.

[1409] I mean, I would never have imagined.

[1410] I'd say, well, it's maybe a deer or something like that.

[1411] If you said, no, that's a crane.

[1412] I'd say that you're out of your mind.

[1413] Somebody lied to you.

[1414] How weird is that?

[1415] Is there any other bird that has that rich red of flesh?

[1416] Oh, goose.

[1417] Goose does too?

[1418] Sure.

[1419] Like that?

[1420] Even wild ducks, I mean, are approaching that.

[1421] It definitely has a richness to it a little bit more than duck, but, you know, depending on the species and what a duck's eaten.

[1422] And what does Sandhill Crane taste like?

[1423] Like I said, it's beefy.

[1424] It has a very...

[1425] But it doesn't taste like a ribeye.

[1426] No. No. I mean, approachable.

[1427] I would say like mild, probably leaning more towards mild venison than a bird.

[1428] Makes sense Would be my best guess at describing it It's funny because a turkey You would think would be just as dinosaury as that But you shoot them, it looks like a turkey Yeah Yeah, it's, I mean the breast meat on that Is as white as you, as a chicken breast in the store Yeah And just a couple notches up in flavor from there I mean, it's got some really good flavor But not as, but very mild, I think Yeah, I think so too Yeah Did you cook turkey and peanut oil.

[1429] Do you ever do that?

[1430] What do you mean?

[1431] Like deep fried turkey and peanut oil?

[1432] The whole thing?

[1433] Yeah.

[1434] No. You act like you've never heard of this before.

[1435] Oh, you mean like...

[1436] Have you heard of that before?

[1437] Yeah.

[1438] Fry in a whole turkey.

[1439] Yeah.

[1440] I mean, we're not necessarily talking about a wild turkey.

[1441] Well, I did it with a wild turkey.

[1442] Oh, how was it?

[1443] Yeah.

[1444] It was really good.

[1445] Yeah.

[1446] I mean, because I've done it, I always did it with turkeys.

[1447] Yeah.

[1448] I took half of it and I did it on a Trager and then I took the other half and I did it in the deep fryer.

[1449] They were both really good.

[1450] The legs came out?

[1451] Yeah.

[1452] Yeah, that would be my fear in frying a wild turkey because, in my experience, those legs need it a long time.

[1453] And sometimes they don't break down even compared to a domestic turkey.

[1454] I mean, frying a domestic turkey, sure, I mean, it's huge.

[1455] Brine it, fry it.

[1456] But no, most of me, most of the time, turkeys pound the breasts, make little cutlets out of those.

[1457] I'll make a lot of sausage with the breast, but like real mild sausages, like not just anything.

[1458] but you know like a really light delicately spiced sausage like a boudan blanc or something out of turkey where it really shines you know when i saw that people are doing that's really kind of interesting i got into a rabbit hole the other day where i was uh googling uh something and i started watching videos about people hunting iguanas in florida yeah so apparently like with fishing like fishing bows like bow fishing setups they're hunting iguanas on the land just whacking them and then just reeling them in.

[1459] It's so strange.

[1460] And then they trim, they really, the only meat on them is really the legs, I guess.

[1461] And they were cooking these legs like chicken legs, like a nice Asian dish with like a sort of a brown terriarchy or some kind of sauce and shallots.

[1462] And I was watching these guys cook this.

[1463] And I was like, that is fascinating.

[1464] And apparently it tastes really good.

[1465] And if you cook them well, you know, you know, you know what you're doing and you know you do it's got a very distinct kind of almost chickeny flavor to it but like with just a little bit of extra robustness have you ever seen that episode i don't know where bourdain was but he ate an iguana and he just it's he he will not stop going off about how disgusting it is really it's just highly entertaining you know because his ability to eat things was pretty profound but he hated it and he and he makes really big deal out of it's it's it's fun watching to watch him talk about iguana.

[1466] That's weird because these people in these YouTube videos seem to be enjoying it.

[1467] Yeah.

[1468] Especially this one guy that made it in like this Asian dish over rice.

[1469] Like you made wings essentially.

[1470] Yeah.

[1471] You know, like some sort of a Chinese chicken wing dish.

[1472] Yeah, I'll absolutely try it.

[1473] And there's a million of them down there.

[1474] Dude, some of them are so big.

[1475] This lady, there's this one lady that I follow on YouTube and she's shooting these iguanas that are five feet long.

[1476] They're so big.

[1477] She's holding this thing up and it's like a small dog.

[1478] Like this is crazy how big a fucking iguana is They're really big sometimes And these people that live by canals in particular They're all around their lawns Just destroying if they have a garden They destroy everything in the garden They eat all the plants They eat all the food And they're these big ass weird fucking invasive lizards Like yeah This is here's some people that catch them like Yeah pull it like where she shows The one she wagged Look the size of that fucking thing And, you know, you're really only, I don't know if there's any back meat or whatever, but they're mostly, I think, just eating the legs.

[1479] Yeah.

[1480] But it's become a thing now because they're trying to kill them because they're all over the place in Florida, apparently.

[1481] Oh, yeah.

[1482] Like, I mean, pythons, iguanas.

[1483] Well, that's the thing they have to do, right, make pythons profitable.

[1484] Like if they, I know they're trying to eat pythons.

[1485] They're trying to figure out whether or not pythons are, like, good to eat.

[1486] Have you ever heard of people eating a python?

[1487] Mm -mm.

[1488] What about rattlesnake?

[1489] Sure, sure.

[1490] You like rattlesnake?

[1491] Yeah, it's fine.

[1492] I mean...

[1493] It's not preferred?

[1494] Yeah, it's not something I'm going to go out of my way to kill.

[1495] I mean, personally, I have a little bit of a pact with them.

[1496] It's like, I don't bite them.

[1497] They don't bite them.

[1498] But I will definitely...

[1499] If somebody cooks some rattlesnake, I'll eat it.

[1500] What about bear?

[1501] You know, it's nothing I've ever had.

[1502] So, I haven't traveled.

[1503] You've never had bear?

[1504] No. Really?

[1505] No. It's, I have not traveled to hunt, nor do I really, it's not very appealing to me, but To hunt a bear or to travel to hunt?

[1506] Both.

[1507] Well, I mean, no, no, no, I would eat bear all day long if you, if you served it to me. But I'm not a, I don't, I don't mean to derail your question about bear, but no, I mean, I'd have to go somewhere to hunt bears.

[1508] And I'm really like, I like to hunt here.

[1509] This is like my zone.

[1510] So, like, if, I mean, I'm going to Utah.

[1511] to help I've been brought up there to butcher an elk and they're like do you want to shoot an elk and I was like I'm good really yeah because they'd live in Utah and not in Texas yeah it's not mine you're very specific yeah well also it's real big and I I would rather hunt three or four white tails versus that one elk and that's somebody else's but yet you do like to hunt Neil guy which is elk sized uh No. Actually, I used to go on nilghai hunts.

[1512] Oh, you don't like to hunt them personally?

[1513] I'd probably decline shooting a nilghai.

[1514] I might shoot a little one, but really, and I would go with someone and happily process it and hang out with them and everything that I don't want to pull the trigger on.

[1515] How come?

[1516] I like to manage my freezer very specifically.

[1517] I like white tails and hogs and turkeys and all the things.

[1518] I like to hunt as close to my house.

[1519] possible not out of laziness but out of this like I get this just the sense of of locality and like how that is that's my animal right there you know and no guy's invasive but it's also like I said it's so big um that it would just it would fill my freezer and then I'd be done like I stop when I'm done like I don't keep going like if I'm if I've once I've hit you know that number of deer that I think I need for the year I'm done I know that I can come back to hogs and kind of fill in if there's an emergency.

[1520] I haven't bought meat in 12 years or something.

[1521] But a no guy is just so big that I usually would pass.

[1522] I mean, I could probably be talked into it, but I really would rather go with somebody that was doing it, you know, and help with the whole processing side of it.

[1523] But you do enjoy the meat.

[1524] You were raving about how delicious they are.

[1525] Yeah, absolutely.

[1526] I love it.

[1527] I love it.

[1528] But I don't personally feel like I need to fill up my free.

[1529] user with just that one animal I understand what you're saying and you enjoy the hunting as well so you'd rather hunt for deer and pigs and right yeah and just kind of you know very specific numbers of all these animals that I know to get me through the year does there anything uh connected to it that's unsavory that because the fact that they're exotic they're imported here no no no I mean so it was a hog right but a long yeah you know you can kind of you can find a receipt on the nil guy yeah yeah I mean it's we're coming up right at a hundred years on no guy that's when they were interested Yeah.

[1530] No, I have no problem with that.

[1531] And we serve them widely in the restaurant because of those qualities.

[1532] Because they are, first off, they're invasives.

[1533] They don't like corn.

[1534] So even if there is a corn feeder around there, spitting out GMO corn, they're going to avoid it.

[1535] And their feed is so natural, which is why we really like to serve those in the restaurant the most.

[1536] I mean, highly renewable resource right there.

[1537] One animal, you know, is a ton of meat.

[1538] And, I mean, there's just a lot of really good qualities about the nilghai, about eating nilghai.

[1539] But pulling the trigger on one, probably past.

[1540] I get it.

[1541] I understand what you're saying.

[1542] And do you like it because, like, also that deer and hogs and turkeys and so, like, these are kind of traditional Texas hunting fair?

[1543] It's like, yeah.

[1544] Yeah, I think so.

[1545] And then, yeah, not to just come back to the size constantly, but that is a thing.

[1546] And I really enjoy hunting white tail and hunting hogs and hunting turkeys and things like that that are, yeah, maybe it is more of a traditional.

[1547] What is Neil Guy similar to in taste?

[1548] I would say elk, venous, it's a little, it's a little milder than most white tail.

[1549] and it's almost a tenderness issue too because it for some reason that animal is just very tender really like even an older one that's crazy because they're so rough looking yeah yeah they're and they have a very they're very the meat is very dark texture of a Neil guy just so people nobody ever believes it like oh they're blue and they're like they're not blue I'm like they're blue it's really crazy they're a wild looking thing with the horns too they've crazy Horns.

[1550] Wait to you see them run.

[1551] Yeah.

[1552] This is the way they, they just kind of lope along.

[1553] And it's, it looks like it's slow, but it's very fast.

[1554] I mean, they're really fast animals.

[1555] Weird looking animal.

[1556] Weird looking animal.

[1557] So unique.

[1558] And they're from Asia.

[1559] Is that where they're from?

[1560] India.

[1561] India.

[1562] And so when you're looking at an animal like that, everything looks off.

[1563] Like the head looks too small for the body.

[1564] It doesn't look like the horns fit.

[1565] Like, it looks like a fake animal.

[1566] It looks like some animal and some weird novel yeah i think the latin name is like bocephus something that one in the left corner there jami that thing is blue as fuck yeah look how crazy blue that is blue bowls so weird they're very cool do the females have antlers too yes uh or horns i guess is or horns so they don't fall so it's a kind of antelope right yes wow well why look at that thing that looks fake that looks like Like someone took like a cow and they made some crazy, like, CGI rest of the body.

[1567] Interesting animal.

[1568] Now, one of the things that I noticed when you guys did that hunt down in South Texas with Ronella on the media show for Neil Guy is you wanted the meat to hang overnight and get a crust on it.

[1569] What is that about?

[1570] Well, just to dry out a little bit.

[1571] And we hit a real, because usually down there it's warm.

[1572] Even in December, it can get pretty warm.

[1573] And we got a random nice cold front where it dropped into the 40s that night.

[1574] And I just wanted it to be dry to the touch.

[1575] Not necessarily a deep dry aging crust on it, but just like a little bit of, like, I wanted it to be dry to the touch.

[1576] So it goes back to what I was talking about earlier with, you know, keeping them cold in the coolers, cold and dry.

[1577] That's just the two best things I can think of for getting an animal from carcass to butchering and start cutting on it as I want it to be very cold and very dry.

[1578] And so we left it out.

[1579] It was hanging.

[1580] It was in the 40s that night.

[1581] Now, it would have been optimal to have let it hang for, I mean, a few days and at a nice temperature.

[1582] But we just didn't have it, which is, I mean, commonplace when you're processing animals.

[1583] You've got to deal with whatever you've got, the situation.

[1584] And so we'd let it go overnight and then we started cutting the next day.

[1585] And when it has that crust on it, that sort of dry outer crust, what is going on with that?

[1586] What is that?

[1587] You can't eat that once it has that, right?

[1588] You have to cut that off?

[1589] It depends on the extent that it's gotten to.

[1590] When you Vax seal that, it'll usually go away.

[1591] It'll rehydrate.

[1592] Really?

[1593] Yeah.

[1594] So if you have that truck.

[1595] If it's not too bad.

[1596] I mean, like if you've got a couple days where it's like hard and black, just overnight once that vax sealed.

[1597] I mean, funny, those guys, the media.

[1598] guys literally can't enjoy meat or eating meat more than those guys like we spent hours just frantically vac sealing stuff so that every member on that crew could pack two soft yeti coolers full of all the meat and fish that they could possibly carry and it wasn't like I imagine on another show they're like I can't wait to get that buck home cut and they're like I don't care do whatever you want with it but those guys are like we're taking all of this home Like when we were fishing, the guy's like, this one, and the producer's like, kill it, kill it.

[1599] You know, I'm like, wow, guys.

[1600] Like, they are legitimately into eating that.

[1601] And so, yeah, we were, when we were back sealing all that, we're cutting in just big pieces and then just in preserving it.

[1602] But it's fine.

[1603] It will rehydrate a little bit.

[1604] Now, if you've got like a dry aging crust on it from a few days, you're probably going to need to trim it off.

[1605] But you'll know.

[1606] But like I said, once it Vaxeels, it tends to rehydrate a little bit.

[1607] The attitude that those guys have on that crew is directly related to the trickle -down effect from Rinella.

[1608] Yeah.

[1609] For sure, you know.

[1610] They're into it.

[1611] Yeah.

[1612] Well, he's, you know, he's established a real good sort of ideal and an ethic for that community.

[1613] Yeah.

[1614] The crews are amazing.

[1615] Yeah.

[1616] They're so fun.

[1617] It's a fun show to do.

[1618] Yeah.

[1619] It's also, like, one of the things that I love about that show and particularly loved about, well, really both episodes you did down there, the fishing one and the hunting one is you cook afterwards you know and the fishing one man god those fish look delicious man and we had such an incredible variety of fish that night i'd never we were when we were gigging i've never seen a pompano and come into the bay like that and i mean i had to do like a legality check real quick i mean it was like pompano and i'm like well and he's like yes stab i mean we had i was like it was so out of character for those to be in there But to catch pompano, trout, flounder.

[1620] Is there certain fish that you're not allowed to spear?

[1621] Yeah, game fish.

[1622] Right, like a bass.

[1623] Like, you can't go spear a bass.

[1624] Correct, or a redfish.

[1625] Like, if you're in the bay and you see a red go by and hands off.

[1626] But we can catch them on rod and reel.

[1627] How odd is that?

[1628] It's super complicated.

[1629] You get it to redfish politics in Texas.

[1630] It's a good thing.

[1631] Don't spear the redfish, let him go.

[1632] Okay.

[1633] But black drum.

[1634] No, just, I think it's a very valuable.

[1635] game fish, and the population, the sustainability of their populations is paramount.

[1636] There's been problems in the past with overfishing of redfish specifically, and their designation as a game fish came at great political cost.

[1637] In the 1980s, if Paul Prudome, who was a New Orleans, famous New Orleans chef, he started blackening redfish, and at the time, food trends could really take hold, and this one did in every restaurant in the country started blackening redfish and the market for it skyrocketed and they started catching breeding -sized female redfish and these huge nets and within a couple years the population was getting decimated and so conservation organizations came in notably CCA which is the coastal conservation association came in and got them designated as a game fish.

[1638] And at that point, you're not going to be able to stab them anymore.

[1639] That makes sense.

[1640] They're a very important fish down there.

[1641] So you can't just net them either.

[1642] No. No, you can't commercially fish them at all in Texas anymore.

[1643] Oh, interesting.

[1644] Which is really interesting.

[1645] Or serve a wild caught redfish in Texas.

[1646] Really?

[1647] So when you buy red fish in Texas, what are you buying?

[1648] Farm raised.

[1649] Oh.

[1650] And how do they do that?

[1651] Do they do it in the ocean, like pens?

[1652] No. Towards the coast.

[1653] There's a lot of redfish farms down there.

[1654] What are they just like a giant swimming pool?

[1655] Yeah, so redfish survive really well in brackish and fresh water.

[1656] So there's lakes around San Antonio that have redfish in them, Calaveras and Bronic.

[1657] They live in completely fresh water and thrive.

[1658] Yeah, they can, they're real hardy.

[1659] They can live in anything.

[1660] And so they are raised on big fish farms.

[1661] They took a hell of a hit in the freeze.

[1662] Those farms did.

[1663] So from what I've heard, it's really hard to get farm -raised fish here.

[1664] And my understanding is that if you have a wild caught red fish on your menu here, you're not, that's not legal.

[1665] Interesting.

[1666] And isn't that the fish you're using for fish and chips?

[1667] Black drum.

[1668] Black drum.

[1669] Yeah.

[1670] So kind of a cousin, a red drum and a black drum.

[1671] And black drum is a huge commercial fishery here.

[1672] Interestingly, they catch them on trot lines.

[1673] So you're familiar with the trot line, which is one line with many hooks, probably 100 hooks hanging off of it.

[1674] and they typically will bait the hook with a little piece of wood that's been soaked in fish oil.

[1675] And they just put that on the hook and then they catch black drum on that.

[1676] Why have a little piece of wood?

[1677] Because it's not dirty bait or they don't have to, you know, have a bunch of cut fish or whatever shrimp or whatever it is that they would need to bait that line with.

[1678] But instead they can just go through and have a little dow with a hole in it and just bait all their hooks with that.

[1679] Oh, wow.

[1680] So they just smell it.

[1681] Yeah.

[1682] They have little barbels on there which indicates that they're, you know, using scent mostly.

[1683] And so that's a highly sustainable, wild commercial fishery.

[1684] It is as of now.

[1685] So we buy a lot of black drum because it's a good market fish.

[1686] And do you prefer that for fish and chips?

[1687] Do you like doing that because it's a Texas fish?

[1688] Yes, I do prefer it for fish and chips.

[1689] I like texture on that.

[1690] Your fish and chips is off the charts, man. Oh, thank you.

[1691] So good.

[1692] Restaurants great.

[1693] Thank you.

[1694] But I've been having an itch for your fish and chips.

[1695] Fried fish to me is like, I mean, you know, somebody asked me, he's like, fishing or hunting?

[1696] I'm like, I'd be lying if I said hunting.

[1697] Really?

[1698] Yeah, I like eating fish a lot.

[1699] Yeah.

[1700] But also right around fall when it starts to get cool, you probably ask me that question.

[1701] I'd be like, let's go hunting.

[1702] It's fine.

[1703] Does something about fish and chips, though, whoever figured that out.

[1704] Oh, yeah.

[1705] The batter and the fact that, you know, the fish stays kind of.

[1706] tender because the batter is really kind of protecting it, right?

[1707] Steaming.

[1708] Yeah.

[1709] Steaming in there.

[1710] It's a tricky thing to get, too.

[1711] I mean, making really good fish and chips is hard, and I hope that we get it right all the time because it is, it's a hard balance to achieve with the lightness of the batter and being super crispy and that fish being cooked really nicely.

[1712] But, yeah, I mean, that's a British deal, as far as I know.

[1713] It seems like it.

[1714] I mean, they're always talking about it.

[1715] Yeah.

[1716] Yeah.

[1717] But, I mean, fried fish in general to me is.

[1718] kind of just, I'd probably eat too much of it.

[1719] Fish and chips is one of those things, too, where it's, it seems quite simple, right?

[1720] Like, you're just battering fish and then deep frying it.

[1721] But, man, there's just a wide range of quality and result when it comes to fish and chip.

[1722] And then the sauce, like, what are you dipping it in?

[1723] What kind of, are you using tartar sauce, are you using something novel?

[1724] Like, what are you doing?

[1725] I like, well, any kind of mayonnaise based.

[1726] sauce that's got something picante in there like a pickle we used we do a pickled pepper we get a lot of these little cherry bomb peppers which are like round spicy peppers and we pickle those and we instead of your traditional like cucumber pickle which would be chopped and put into a tartar sauce or capers or anything like that we put that that pickled cherry bomb pepper so it's got a little spice little heat yeah yeah but still that acid and that crunch and it's still a mayonnaise based which is you know fried fish mayonnaise and and are using locally sourced potato when you're doing the chips?

[1727] You know, that's a great question.

[1728] You know, as of pre -COVID, I could honestly say that 100 % of our products, out of our vegetables, meat, dairy, things like that, I mean, almost everything was sourced locally.

[1729] Once we got into COVID and had to, I mean, it's really boring reasons behind it, but, you know, like, we needed some consistency and we needed some comforting foods because people were like, they really wanted mashed for the first three months.

[1730] It was like mashed potatoes and french fries.

[1731] And we made a shift, a conscientious shift to organic potatoes that aren't necessarily from Texas.

[1732] And it was the first time that, you know, in the life of the business that we had purposely sourced from outside of Texas.

[1733] And I think we're going to continue it.

[1734] You know, I'm really strict about the organic because potatoes can be like little chemical bombs.

[1735] But, you know, in season we buy a lot of potatoes.

[1736] And then we're in season right now.

[1737] potatoes are in season, but no. So, yeah, a little divulge something on this.

[1738] Is there a particular place?

[1739] Is it like Idaho or whatever where you get the best potatoes?

[1740] A lot of the organic growing happens in Colorado.

[1741] Colorado?

[1742] Yeah.

[1743] And do potatoes taste different when they come from different parts of the country?

[1744] Not a russet in my experience.

[1745] It's all the sense.

[1746] Yeah, there's a lot of sugar content.

[1747] And consistent russets are just real easy potatoes to cook.

[1748] What do you think about sweet potato chips?

[1749] I love them personally.

[1750] I love sweet potatoes.

[1751] Do you ever do it that way?

[1752] Like make potato, like French fries, like fish and chip style, steak fries?

[1753] Not for that dish, but we have done lots of fried sweet potatoes, lots of thin -cut chips.

[1754] We do a lot of raw venison with sweet potato chips because I love the, I love sweet potatoes and venison together.

[1755] And a crispy sweet potato is a really good vehicle for like some venison tartar or venison Cevice or Parisa or anything like that, like raw venison.

[1756] Because I love sweet potatoes and game in general.

[1757] And what do you prefer to, like, if you're going to make potato chips or fries, what do you prefer, like, duck fat or what kind of fat do you like to cook them in?

[1758] Well, I mean, we have a friar now, and using animal fats in the friars is not a possible thing anymore.

[1759] We used to fry stovetop and pure beef fat, and it was tough to manage that.

[1760] in a big Dutch oven, just rolling with beef fat.

[1761] It's dangerous, very dangerous.

[1762] But, I mean, my preference would probably be, I love beef fat for frying.

[1763] Of course, I love lard.

[1764] I like the neutrality of it.

[1765] But getting, like, duck fat in that volume is, you know, whenever I see, like, duck fat fries, I'm like, how are you doing that?

[1766] You know, that's a lot of duck fat.

[1767] Maybe they're, like, doing one blanche and duck fat and then coming back and finishing them in a, in a peanut oil or a canola oil.

[1768] Is it just because it's hard to find that kind of volume of duck fat?

[1769] That's a lot of duck fat.

[1770] Yeah.

[1771] When you say do you have a friar, are you using canola oil?

[1772] Yeah.

[1773] We use a non -GMO canola oil.

[1774] And that's another big step that we took, you know, in that the viability of the restaurant kind of came down to, that we'd made so many very strict choices over the years.

[1775] And then we were like, we need crispy things for the people, you know?

[1776] And it's like, people like fried foods.

[1777] And we weren't, it was very difficult to manage that in a pot, you know, for a busy -ass restaurant.

[1778] And so we finally, and that's funny, you've totally, like, nailed me on like these two changes, these two minor changes that we made at the restaurant.

[1779] I'm really, I'm so happy to, like, talk about it, though, because it's like, if there's anything about our restaurant, it's like transparency.

[1780] And it's like, but those are two things that we have definitely become flexible on over the years because of just like the dining public.

[1781] You know, they love French fries.

[1782] And then to have a whole friar full of locally sourced beef fat, not viable, not to mention outrageously expensive to get all that beef fat.

[1783] And so we finally went with a friar and then started sourcing organic.

[1784] potatoes.

[1785] Did it make a difference in the taste?

[1786] It's just neutral.

[1787] Texturally, it can make some differences.

[1788] We used to fry our donuts and beef fat, and I think that those could be a little sometimes you'd get a little chapsticky.

[1789] You know, they'd be like, I mean, they were good.

[1790] Damn, that sounds good.

[1791] It is, it's great.

[1792] I mean, our in lard is excellent.

[1793] And I think your body recognizes those fats so much better.

[1794] I'm not particularly excited about using canola oil at all and there's no other options that are viable for your no I mean not cost -wise rather I mean because if it broke it down into the the price of an order of fries it would just I mean it would be you know it was nine dollars you know really yeah I mean it would be astronomical it's food like the prices around foods are just are like so unknown to the the public and we still I mean our sourcing is so good but you know we we had to make that that concession almost to be like well we need a friar because we do fried chicken and as volumes were going up it's just we just can't handle this pot and this poor guys over here just like trying to manage the flame under it dangerous yeah yeah we're so lucky nobody ever got burnt or there was never a fire yeah because you overheated oh really oh yeah and you're just using a gas burner too so it's not like you and regulated.

[1795] For years.

[1796] Oh, wow.

[1797] Like six years.

[1798] You know, it's just a big old Dutch oven full of rendered beef fat, you know, and chicken just ripping in there.

[1799] Jesus.

[1800] Yeah.

[1801] And how do you, like, when you have a cook, like if someone, if you hire someone as a cook, like, how much experience does that person have to have?

[1802] Do you try to train people?

[1803] Yeah.

[1804] Do you want them to have a certain amount of previous restaurant experience as a cook or as a line chef or something like that?

[1805] You know, it's really beneficial, of course.

[1806] for people to have, have, uh, experience, but at the same time, I, I do have kind of a soft spot for people that don't have a lot of experience and have really good attitudes.

[1807] I mean, there's something really great about that, you know, it's just like, because our restaurant's not flashy and it's definitely not the, the cool place to work anymore.

[1808] So we need somebody with that, that old mentality, you know, to walk in and be like, uh, I do want to just cook pork chops over burning fire all day long.

[1809] That's not the cool place to work.

[1810] I would think that if I was a kid who wanted to learn how to cook or I was someone who wanted to get into cooking and being a chef someday, I would gravitate towards your place immediately.

[1811] I think it's a mature place to cook for lack.

[1812] Maybe I'm not choosing that word wisely, but you come there to learn very simple methods, you know.

[1813] But there is, I mean, if you can't, like perfectly cook that pork chop, then you don't really need to move on to the next thing.

[1814] Like, you know, tweezing microgreens onto a foam or whatever.

[1815] Right, right, right.

[1816] Which is not our style.

[1817] That fussy shit doesn't not, that doesn't do anything to me. There's a place for it.

[1818] I get it.

[1819] It's kind of cool.

[1820] But it's like if I had to choose between a really well -cooked piece of meat and some potatoes and some vegetables versus that, I would take the really well -cooked piece of meat every time.

[1821] Yeah, me too.

[1822] But, I mean, obviously.

[1823] But, you know, maybe a, a, you know, young cook doesn't see it the same way and they they that has to be something that they're into you know and coming and knowing the story behind all the food or being like you know don't throw out those beet greens we need those bad you know or this is how you have to treat these tomatoes they need to be sorted through daily if not twice daily to pick out all the ripe ones and um you know like you know why is jesse so excited it's like oh the fucking blueberries are here you know for the first time So it's like the little things like that.

[1824] Or like, you know, why don't we have lemons in our iced tea is because it's just not that time of year.

[1825] Yeah, you're all about what's in season and what's available right now.

[1826] Right.

[1827] So how often are you changing your menu?

[1828] We used to change it a lot more.

[1829] And these days we're trying to really like to kind of control waste more.

[1830] We're just trying to lock in a menu for about a month at a time.

[1831] And as this great thing that has happened simultaneously as the business has grown is that the producers grow too.

[1832] Like they've been scaling up.

[1833] They've been learning distribution.

[1834] And more importantly, you've seen farmers just get so smart, you know, with how they plant and how they rotate.

[1835] And so in the past, when, you know, you'd plan on seeing green beans maybe in mid -June, now we see them in early May, you know, because people are planning a different variety.

[1836] And so what that enables us to do is have a dish with green beans on it for maybe two months.

[1837] And it's a more competitive market has created these markets for farmers.

[1838] You know, it's been great.

[1839] You know, it's like, oh, well, if I want to go to the farmer's market and really shine, I need to have all this stuff.

[1840] It needs to look really good.

[1841] And I need to have some consistency to it, too.

[1842] I need all the radishes to be vaguely the same size.

[1843] and so you start to see the whole system kind of step up and scale and it's really exciting because you've got you've had you know 10 years ago very high quality organically grown food coming in and now you just have a lot more of it you know a lot more times of year too and it's it's very exciting time and the distribution's better like we don't have to go out and get all that stuff anymore they bring it to us it's wonderful is it difficult to find get relationships with ranchers and just like find the right people to work with?

[1844] I mean, I've been, no, I'm, I'm, we're locked in, you know, our, we've been using our chicken farmer or our pork, our pork farmer and, and like cattle, I mean, our beef provider for years.

[1845] I mean, we're not, we're not changing anything.

[1846] It's just like, those are the people we deal with.

[1847] And, I mean, through better or worse, that we have to raise our prices.

[1848] I'm like, it's cool.

[1849] It's worth it to me because of mutual loyalties and, I think that a lot of the food system exists on those relationships.

[1850] And so we've been getting our chickens from the same lady for so long.

[1851] Like, you know, every Wednesday, you know, Jane shows up.

[1852] And I'm like, what's up, Jane?

[1853] And she just brings us our chickens.

[1854] And they're all perfect and best chicken you've ever had.

[1855] And is she a free range lady?

[1856] Does she other chickens wander around?

[1857] Rotational pasturing.

[1858] Like Joel Salton style?

[1859] Yeah, but they don't range anything behind it like Salatin.

[1860] It's just chickens, but they're moving everything around.

[1861] It's a very high quality.

[1862] We can also get a very young bird at a specific size.

[1863] So, you know, we're looking at, like, around two pounds, maybe a little bit, two and a quarter per bird.

[1864] So relatively small chickens.

[1865] And so she's able to do that.

[1866] And, yeah, it's a very good quality.

[1867] The processing is very good.

[1868] You know, she knows how to rotate that pasture, and then she also knows how to process that bird, chill it, and transport it, everything.

[1869] Now, what is the deal with wild?

[1870] game in Texas in terms of whether or not you could, is it only invasives that you can sell on menus?

[1871] Is that how it works?

[1872] So there's going to be two categories with that.

[1873] One is going to be non -game, you know, antelope and deer, and the other one's going to be feral swine.

[1874] And so the...

[1875] When you say non -game, it's just because it's invasive.

[1876] It's not listed as a game animal, which means that it's simply put, it's not a white -tailed deer.

[1877] It's just not native to Texas.

[1878] Right.

[1879] So anything that's been exotic.

[1880] that's been imported here and interestingly enough that also applies to elk right like elk is thought of as an almost as an invasive which is weird because it used to be native right well any elk that's here now has been brought in and so ostensibly it's just been purchased as a livestock and that's what it is so not anything but white tail and so those fall in a very like low, I don't want to say like unregulated, but less regulated level than feral hogs do.

[1881] And so that's why your company like Broken Arrow Ranch is out there, field harvesting, electrostimulating, and then bring in that stuff to us.

[1882] Otherwise, we can get that stuff that's been trapped, you know, in a trap and then load it under a trailer and processed at a slaughtering facility.

[1883] you know like we've we've had elk before you know like maybe some ranch is trying to call out some of the elk that they brought in for hunting and we'll I see that as just like a as a byproduct and you know a very an animal that's been eating a wild diet and so I'm like yeah we can bring that in and then as far as the hogs go those are trapped live and brought in so there's trappers that are working with the processor that we use and so they'll go out and they'll trap pigs, and then they will bring those in, and they get what's called an anti -mortem inspection.

[1884] So there's a state inspector.

[1885] It can be either state or federal.

[1886] It can be USDA or a state.

[1887] If it's not crossing state lines, it can be state.

[1888] And so we use a state inspector, or our processor does, rather.

[1889] That animal looks healthy, great.

[1890] They're slaughtered, processed, and then he takes another look at him, and then they get a blue stamp on them, and they're good to go.

[1891] And they're feral swine.

[1892] And they're treated basically the same as a domestic pig.

[1893] I mean, they get a little more scrutiny on them because they're wild.

[1894] He's checking livers and kidneys and stuff like that on the carcass.

[1895] And when they trap them, how do they keep that effect that you were talking about when that one hog got caught in the loop, whatever they call it?

[1896] The snare.

[1897] How do they keep the hogs from freaking out?

[1898] Yeah, that's a really good question.

[1899] So they do freak out.

[1900] But the best way I can describe it, and we'll never really need.

[1901] know because we, excuse me, we don't experience a lot of that flavor, you know, that off -putting like gaminess from the trapped pigs.

[1902] And I've discussed this with our processor.

[1903] What we think is that there's a spike in stress and then kind of a plateau of it.

[1904] Now, they're going to be stressed, but that initial stress, it's probably like an adrenaline rush.

[1905] And I'm totally speaking out of my eyes right now.

[1906] But this is what we perceive it to be because the, the, the hog, the feral hog meat that we get in is never gamey like that experience I had with the snared pig or have randomly experienced with other hogs.

[1907] And so we think that it plateaus because they're kept in captivity for maybe a couple days, you know, at the facility and then they're run through.

[1908] But so, I mean, there is a high degree of stress.

[1909] And it also begs the question.

[1910] It was like, you know, one of our things is the stress on animals, you know, and then you have a wild animal, this stress is out of control.

[1911] So at that point, we are tacitly making a decision between eating the invasive and the only legal way that we have or not.

[1912] Yeah.

[1913] You know, and what we have to take with that is the stress on that trapped animal.

[1914] And it's not something that I like, and it would be something that I would like to be addressed.

[1915] But at this point, it's like we have to deal with a certain system with hogs because the oversight on them is fairly strenuous.

[1916] they are more likely to carry, you know, diseases than that elk or that psyched deer.

[1917] Right.

[1918] So when they capture them and they keep them for several days, what are they doing during those several days?

[1919] They're running tests on them?

[1920] No. They're just feeding them?

[1921] Until it's their time.

[1922] I mean, most...

[1923] And then when it's their time, then they examine them?

[1924] It's not an examination.

[1925] It's a visual check.

[1926] Okay.

[1927] It's like, they're standing.

[1928] I mean, I'm sure they have.

[1929] I mean, if it's obviously sick or injured or something, they're probably.

[1930] going to condemn it.

[1931] But why are they capturing it and then holding them for a few days and feeding them?

[1932] It's mostly going to have to do with slaughtering schedules.

[1933] Like, I mean, most of these small places that are willing to do it are running on a pretty strict, like Tuesdays.

[1934] Trapper brings them in on Friday.

[1935] They got to stay there till Tuesday when it's time.

[1936] So you couldn't just do a helicopter hunt, blow out 20 pigs, and then bring it back to your restaurant and serve it.

[1937] Correct.

[1938] I cannot do that.

[1939] There is some sort of a protocol involved in processing.

[1940] The anti -mortem inspectors is not happening.

[1941] And so, I mean, that.

[1942] Antimortem.

[1943] A -N -T -E.

[1944] Before.

[1945] Before.

[1946] Yeah.

[1947] So, I mean, that's, that just, that brings up a much wider topic and how do we get feral hogs into the food system safely.

[1948] And this is where, this is kind of the bottleneck.

[1949] And it's, but also this level of inspection is not something I disagree with at all.

[1950] Right.

[1951] It seems like it's prudent.

[1952] It's very prudent.

[1953] Yeah.

[1954] And so because it's so prudent, that's, That's where, you know, I kind of get stuck is like, how do we, how do we feed the poor?

[1955] You know, how do we get feral hogs out there into the food system to feed as many people as we can because they're rotting in the field?

[1956] But we can't have inspectors flying around in another helicopter with binoculars like the brown spotted one on the left, you know, like, I mean, how are you going to manage it?

[1957] It's going to be really tricky.

[1958] But I think that the conversations need to start.

[1959] And that's key, is how do we safely integrate hogs into the food chain also without monetizing them?

[1960] Because once you monetize them, the impetus to getting rid of them is gone.

[1961] So, I mean, for instance, you have all of a sudden this burgeoning market for feral hog meat.

[1962] And, you know, pork is getting 350 a pound, but a feral hog is at 650.

[1963] 50.

[1964] People are going to be like, wait a minute, why do we want to kill all these things?

[1965] Why don't we capture a couple of them breed them?

[1966] You know?

[1967] Yeah.

[1968] And this is, I was actually talking about this the other day because this happened.

[1969] I knew a couple of people that were selling wild boar, but what they had done is they had captured, trapped a couple years before and we're just breeding them and then just selling the meat as wild boar.

[1970] And I'm like, it goes back to like one of the first things that we talked about.

[1971] It was like, what side of the fence is that pig on?

[1972] That is a domestic hawk.

[1973] Right.

[1974] That is not a wild boar anymore.

[1975] They don't retract, though, do they?

[1976] Do they retract back to domestic looking?

[1977] Does there no shrink and does their fur change texture?

[1978] Whenever I'd see pictures of these pigs, I never saw them in person, but they were shaggy and black, just like your kind of cut rate, average feral hog.

[1979] And is there, there is a darkening of the flesh.

[1980] that you're getting from a wild hog, right?

[1981] Is that just a dietary thing?

[1982] Yes.

[1983] You will also see, like, in, I hate to use the word, like, heritage breed, but, like, in a really good mix.

[1984] Like, the domestic pigs we get at the restaurant are used to be a large black red waddle mix.

[1985] They're typically, like, if I see pork in a grocery store, it's like pale pink, and it's like, ours never looks like that.

[1986] Right.

[1987] It's much deeper red.

[1988] And a feral hog can go way almost to like beef red.

[1989] Really?

[1990] Yeah, I've seen them really dark before.

[1991] It really depends.

[1992] And it's got to be a mixture of diet.

[1993] Stress can also play into that too.

[1994] But they will, they put on fat real well once you catch them, you know, and you keep them.

[1995] They're like, they're like, oh, they're not going to miss a meal ever again.

[1996] Right, right, right.

[1997] You know, they're into eating.

[1998] And so they put on almost exorbitant amounts of fat.

[1999] when you capture them and feed them out.

[2000] Are there bears in Texas?

[2001] Not that minute, right?

[2002] There are.

[2003] I saw a picture of one in South Texas a few days ago.

[2004] You cannot hunt them.

[2005] You can't hunt any bears in Texas?

[2006] Nope.

[2007] Not enough.

[2008] There's, I think, a few in East Texas, but the one that I saw a picture one near Carrizo Springs, which is, I mean, almost to the border.

[2009] Wow.

[2010] That's really pretty far south.

[2011] Yeah.

[2012] I mean, if I was down there hunting, I just, I hope that I'd know what I was looking at.

[2013] You know, if it was like low light, I'd be like, you know, that's a giant bore.

[2014] So have they immigrated from somewhere else and made their way into Texas?

[2015] I assume so.

[2016] They, I mean, used to be native here, just like the elk.

[2017] Right.

[2018] But that's what I was getting at.

[2019] Like if somebody, they don't do that with bears, though.

[2020] This is the way they do that with elk, like, repopulate them.

[2021] This, I mean, I feel, and I could definitely be wrong.

[2022] I feel that this bear naturally made its way down there.

[2023] Yeah, why is that with predators?

[2024] They don't reach, because of the impact it'll have on local fawns and calves and things along those lines.

[2025] I think calves being the key word there.

[2026] This is the beef state.

[2027] And reintroduction of predators is not on the table.

[2028] Yeah, we were looking up mountain lines and mountain lines here are not protected at all, which is really interesting because it's so different than California, where there's zero hunting of mountain lines allowed ever.

[2029] And even if you have a depredation tag, it's dangerous.

[2030] Like people that have had animals, like there was a woman that had an alpaca farm.

[2031] And she had this one particular mountain line that was thrill killing.

[2032] So it was climbing into the thing with alpacas, and it just couldn't resist.

[2033] It was just whacking like, you know, fucking ten of them at a time.

[2034] And she got a depredation permit to kill this mountain line.

[2035] And the death threats that she started receiving were so terrifying to her that she abandoned.

[2036] the idea and just took the loss because all these people were furious at her for wanting to kill a mountain line that was clearly just targeting these imprisoned alpacas and slaughtering them and it's kind of interesting the different the cultural differences because here it would be like a no -brainer like you don't even have to have a tag just shoot that mountain line that's trying to kill all your livestock but in california they're like let it live man yeah it's complicated and yeah there's definitely a different mentality here you've probably you've probably picked up on that i have i like it here yeah yeah there's a silliness to california that is uh just it's really apparent when you get out of there i'm like oh that's what everybody's always talking about and it was sort of accentuated by covid by the way people reacted and still react some there's a lot of folks that just they don't want it to be better they don't want it to be better they the pandemic to be over.

[2037] They seem to be enjoying the chaos of the uprooting of society and everybody being terrified and forced to wear three masks and stay indoors no matter what.

[2038] And it's really interesting.

[2039] It's a fascinating psychological experiment.

[2040] Because I'll follow some people like on social media and I'll read like some of their panic porn posts and then I'm like, okay, where's this person from?

[2041] And you click and it's like almost always a blue city.

[2042] It's almost always someone who lives in some urban population, in a, you know, some Democrat -run city.

[2043] And it's like, wow, like this is sort of a universal thing.

[2044] Like, they, they seem, there's a lot of folks that seem to be, uh, enjoying the fact that we're, that things are scary and they were in a state of chaos.

[2045] They don't want to accept that things are better now than they were months ago.

[2046] And what, what shapes like geographic regions to have, I mean, almost a personality.

[2047] It's interesting, right?

[2048] You know, I remember a long time ago I compared, through the lens of food, like the cuisine of California to the cuisine of Texas, where if you look at the natives in Napa Valley, I mean, it's just like, oh, I'm going to pick this avocado.

[2049] And here you have a Comanche, you know, opening up a vein on his horse and drinking some blood so he can just make it a couple more days on a raid or maybe he's getting chased by rangers i mean it's like the how does that formative mentality translate to the huge geographic areas and i think there's something to it i mean i always see it through food of course of course the food there and the food here is also very different well it's so defining food is so defining of a population you know one of the things that bordain told me said the most disgusting food he ever ate was pickled pickled shark from like Iceland I think it was it's like there's some sort of fermented fermented shark they bury it for a long time he said it is so un fucking believably disgusting that you can't believe that these people that these people they enjoy it as a delicacy have you had that no no I'll pass I know I said I like fish I want to try it just to know what the fuck is up yeah I don't know if I could do that yeah I mean I'm I'm sure of what that smells.

[2050] I mean, not sure, but I mean, I bet the level.

[2051] I mean, you probably five feet away from it before you start retching.

[2052] Dude, I just was in Salt Lake City and I ate at this super legit Mexican place and I bought, I got Minuto.

[2053] And it smelled like a barn.

[2054] My friend Tony was next to me. He's like, what the fuck?

[2055] You're going to eat that?

[2056] That smell.

[2057] It smelled so barney.

[2058] Yeah.

[2059] It was good, though, right?

[2060] It's good.

[2061] Yeah.

[2062] It was good, but it really smelled like innards.

[2063] Yeah.

[2064] And I'm like animals.

[2065] It smelled like a dirty animal's But, yeah.

[2066] Yeah, I've had experiences.

[2067] I had a sausage in France one time.

[2068] It was undue yet.

[2069] And it was like, it came out.

[2070] And I was, you know, I was going to that phase of try everything and cut into it.

[2071] And I was like, I mean, it tastes like poo -poo and pee -pies.

[2072] It's like it is vile, like terrible.

[2073] But evidently, it's like the more profound that is, the better that sausages.

[2074] And culturally, that's what they're looking for.

[2075] And I'm sure it translates into stuff that we eat.

[2076] to, you know, and find completely normal.

[2077] I wonder what that would be.

[2078] I don't know, but maybe that's said that we are, our, our food is so bland and chicken breasty that maybe, maybe that doesn't translate.

[2079] But is it, I mean, like, is that really what we, I mean, when you think, think of American food, you do think of bland chicken breasty, chicken tenders, hot dogs, you think of bland food, but that's not really, it's like, what is the, if you looked at the pie chart of the percentage of food that Americans eat, but we really.

[2080] That's crazy that we're eating that nobody else is eating.

[2081] I don't know.

[2082] Nothing.

[2083] Yeah.

[2084] Right?

[2085] I can't think of anything.

[2086] We got too lucky.

[2087] The bounty of food here.

[2088] Yeah.

[2089] You know?

[2090] Yeah.

[2091] I remember watching.

[2092] I watched a steak documentary.

[2093] I think it's called The Steak Revolution.

[2094] It was on, you know, I -movie or whatever.

[2095] And I was watching how they figured out in other countries what people were doing differently in America in terms of growing their cows and that the cows were.

[2096] bigger and they were fatter and then they were going to places like um you know like different steakhouses different famous places you know like peter lugers in brooklyn which is like a famous steakhouse and you go there and they're like okay what are you doing differently like how you get your cows of fat and then they were trying to change everything over in europe to try to emulate some of these american steakhouses because the idea of just eating a place where you only eat steak There's like, I know that's an Italy thing.

[2097] Yeah, I was about to say, like, Bistica, Fiorentina, it's huge.

[2098] But if you've seen those ribos, they look nothing like a rabbi here in the States.

[2099] Very small.

[2100] Small and red and almost just devoid of marbling.

[2101] Yeah, and it's particularly because of their diet, right?

[2102] Because they're just eating grass only.

[2103] They're not eating corn.

[2104] Yeah.

[2105] We like that corn -fed, fatty.

[2106] Sweet.

[2107] Yeah.

[2108] And it's almost like that animals.

[2109] You're eating a sick person.

[2110] You're eating a sick animal.

[2111] I mean, like, bloated them and got them all to the point where all that marbling.

[2112] Like, that's not good.

[2113] If you eat an elk and it was marbled like that, you'd be like, what the fuck is wrong with this animal?

[2114] You know, it's never like that.

[2115] But a cow, that's what you look for.

[2116] You look for a really sloppy, lazy, obese, castrated bull.

[2117] Right.

[2118] And that's what we're eating.

[2119] That's what we prefer.

[2120] We were brought in to do a class one time.

[2121] a butchery class and the guy who was hosting had a hog for us he's like no i'll have a pig for you i was like great um and so we show up and they had just just to be safe they had had the hog and they trapped it and they kept it in the pen for like i want to say like a month and they did nothing but feed it deer corn which is just a just a very cheap feed corn it's like a GMO corn and they just fed it nothing but corn which is i'm sure the pig was happy i don't know i can't I can't say that with any knowledge of the pig's mood.

[2122] But it got real fat.

[2123] I mean, it got so fat that it's hard for me to convey how fat that pig got.

[2124] But we showed up, and it was carcass at this point.

[2125] It had been killed and scanned and gutted.

[2126] But in front of us, what we were looking at, it was coated in so much fat that its eyes were basically almost swollen shut because the fat deposits around the eyes had almost closed its eyes.

[2127] The loin on it for the listeners was probably about a two -inch loin or backstrap or basically essentially when you're looking at a pork chop, the meaty part, the meaty oval part of the loin was about two inches and it had about eight or nine inches of fat on top of that.

[2128] So if you're typically looking at a pork chop, it'll have like a little, I would say it would be about 15 to 25 % of the width of a pork job typically.

[2129] This one had whatever.

[2130] I mean, it was about eight or nine inches of pure fat on top of it because just after one month of only eating corn and I don't think it stopped.

[2131] It was a pig.

[2132] They don't self -regulate.

[2133] And it just went to town on this.

[2134] And it was a real lesson, you know?

[2135] First off, it's like, no, you need to feed it some pig ration if you're going to do that.

[2136] And secondly, this is not good stuff to eat.

[2137] It didn't taste good?

[2138] It tasted great.

[2139] It did.

[2140] Oh, it was like, I mean...

[2141] So you mean, corn is not good stuff to eat.

[2142] Is that what you're saying?

[2143] Corn, right, sorry, sorry.

[2144] I mean, it's unhealthy.

[2145] But we were, I will never forget that day.

[2146] We were sliding around on the floor just because it almost aerosolized while we were doing the butchery demo.

[2147] I had, I was having trouble gripping my knives, everything.

[2148] The fat was just, it was just in the air.

[2149] Really?

[2150] It was crazy.

[2151] And as we're, you know, we're dicing the meat, you know, like this is for sausage.

[2152] We had a pile like two feet.

[2153] of just white, pure white fat on one side.

[2154] And I'm like, man, I hope you like lard because that is what you are doing.

[2155] You are, you need to learn how to make soap or something because you are, you are rich with, with lard right now.

[2156] And it was a very soft.

[2157] And I can identify on a feral pig if it's been eating a lot of corn versus, you know, more natural, like acorn diet.

[2158] Because acorns, they've got this beautiful, like ivory, pinkish, firm fat.

[2159] Whereas corn, when you touch, it even when it's cold it comes off on your fingers and it's a little bit i hate the word greasy but it is yeah the um i shot a wild pig with steve it was a sow and it was uh it was kind of a really crazy adventure actually we uh we shot it on this hill it was like uh on the side of a very steep hill and as i shot it it died and it rolled down this hill and as it rolled down this hill it got all the way to the bottom and we tried to pull it up we tried to put it was too steep and so we decided to try to take it down and then walk and then while we're doing this it's in the middle of the night and we're on a ranch at us mountain lines we're carrying a half a pig each guy's carrying a half a pig on their back and we're stumbling through the woods and the like at the bottom this creek basin and then we eventually wound up hanging it we're like we can't do this anymore we have to hang this thing because i was going to break my neck i was we kept falling yeah you know carrying this It was a big pig, too.

[2160] Oh, and they're so specifically heavy, like, in a weird way.

[2161] They move around a lot.

[2162] Yeah, yeah.

[2163] Well, this one had thick acorn fat on it, and it really tasted delicious, but it was a smell to it.

[2164] It had, like, an acorn -y -type smell, you know?

[2165] That's what one thing that I've really never had, and I really am interested in trying, is blueberry bear, like a bear that's been eating blueberries, because Steve says that that is, like, literally one of the very best meats you could ever eat.

[2166] Yeah, you were talking about that with Clay Newcomb.

[2167] Yeah.

[2168] Have you ever had that?

[2169] No, no. Remember, I've never tried Bear.

[2170] Oh, that's right.

[2171] Yeah.

[2172] And I remember, no, Clay talking about that.

[2173] I mean, he's just definitely the Bear expert.

[2174] Yeah.

[2175] How come you've never had a bit?

[2176] Like a guy like you, I would imagine you would try to seek that out.

[2177] Oh, sure.

[2178] I mean, that's nobody who never ever gave me any.

[2179] I mean, I've just eaten pretty much everything from around here and, but never had bear.

[2180] And like I said, you know, there's not a lot of the hunting travel.

[2181] Right, right, right, right.

[2182] Just very, very specific to Texas.

[2183] It is.

[2184] I mean, it's so obvious, but it seems crazy that what an animal eats has that much of an impact on what it tastes like.

[2185] And then it makes you think about your own diet.

[2186] Like, it's not just what tastes good.

[2187] Like, what are you doing to the actual tissue of your body itself and how much of that is impacted by your diet?

[2188] Right, right.

[2189] And what, I mean, and in the anarchy that's happening out there, like, how do you select an animal to be the best, too?

[2190] right so especially when it comes to pigs because it's just like who knows even when it comes the cows right there's a lot of folks who prefer grass -fed beef for the taste for the texture it's a more it's a like a chewier texture and just for the fact that this is probably it's probably healthier to eat in that way right yeah yeah it's a way more natural thing it's grass fed grass finished beef and many people don't love that we started off with a uh grass -fed, grass -finished steak program at the restaurant.

[2191] And it was, I mean, in Texas, it was very difficult.

[2192] You know, a lot of people just didn't like it.

[2193] And when somebody doesn't like their salad, it's one thing.

[2194] And when you're in Texas and somebody doesn't like their steak, it's another thing.

[2195] What was the thing about it?

[2196] Because it's still delicious.

[2197] Like, is it just not what they're accustomed to?

[2198] It's texture and flavor.

[2199] I mean, it's, it's, the grisly parts are harder.

[2200] the it's not as tender and it doesn't have that sweetness I mean and it's and it's got that grassy almost game meat flavor to it it's a very robust beef and not for everybody and so eventually we had to go with a grass finished woggy you know an animal that puts on more fat but also eats some grain in the field like a free choice grain never goes to a feedlot which is I mean key for us.

[2201] I don't want that animal to be 90 days just on corn, but it has a free choice feed of grains while is foraging grass.

[2202] So it's a good middle ground.

[2203] It's a great middle ground.

[2204] And also the breed choice, you know, Wagyu.

[2205] You know, it's also a recognizable, very marketable word right there.

[2206] Everybody knows Wagyu is synonymous with beef quality.

[2207] And but then we're able to deal with just one person, one lady, you know, she's awesome.

[2208] I mean, she's so good at it.

[2209] Mariana appealer.

[2210] I mean, just, just creating amazing beef, but just in a really good way that's more appealing to people.

[2211] Have you met Doug Duren?

[2212] No. You know, Doug, uh, yeah, I know who is.

[2213] Yeah, I know who is.

[2214] Yeah.

[2215] He's a great guy.

[2216] Shout off to Doug.

[2217] But Doug has a farm in Wisconsin and the deer that they hunt, they're basically corn fed. They're eating this GMO corn that's everywhere.

[2218] It's growing.

[2219] Yeah.

[2220] Yeah.

[2221] I mean, that's where you find them.

[2222] You find them in the cornfields.

[2223] And particularly after they've harvested the corn, you know, after they've cut it all down with the combines, all the stuff that's left on the ground.

[2224] I mean, you just see deer everywhere out there.

[2225] Yeah.

[2226] But those deer, that's a big part of their diet, is corn.

[2227] And it's a really mild tasting, like, soft kind of tenderish meat.

[2228] Yeah.

[2229] I mean, it's big here, too.

[2230] I mean, corn feeders.

[2231] Right, right, right.

[2232] Corn feeders are omnipresent.

[2233] You know, that's how you hunt here.

[2234] not necessarily 100 % of the time but I mean you know if you say you're going deer hunting you're probably going to be sitting in front of a corn feeder that seems it's stumped I mean I don't knock it sure it's a great way to hunt you know and if that's what your goal is to just gather up some meat it's a great way to do it but there's something about hunting that's supposed to be like difficult to find the animal like it's supposed to be like I've hunted bears over bait and it's part of you just goes hmm I don't want to I like doing this because I definitely don't like doing it as much as like elk hunting where you're going into the mountains trying to find them.

[2235] Make sure you don't get winded.

[2236] If you could just sit in front of a place that you know an animal is going to come by to have lunch, you know, it's kind of fucked up.

[2237] It's that time.

[2238] It's that time that we have and that we're able to give to this vocation in order to achieve success.

[2239] Yes.

[2240] It's like, do we don't have a week to spend trying to get that dough.

[2241] right i'm not saying we i definitely prefer not to and we at our classes we offer both like i mean if if if that's what you want to do you can do that we can also go take a walk and you know definitely prefer the walk and i mean if you're if you're if you're got your wits about you you can usually make that walk payoff too yeah yeah um and it's also you learn about what the animal what senses the animal utilizes in terms of like sense of smell and sight and the thing about pigs too is they don't see very well right so you can kind of freeze yeah I mean that's debatable but in my mind pigs don't see well at all some people will say yeah they see I'm like what I think about pigs and their senses is that I mean it's scent they can smell you so far away they can hear you and they can see you but if they hear you or see you and don't confirm With smell, they kind of are like, they're either like just don't care and kind of go about their business or they'll kind of do a slow walk in another direction, things like that.

[2242] If they smell you, they turn around and run away.

[2243] That's my experience generally is that they have, that sense of smell is so acute.

[2244] That's really what you have to play to get in front of them.

[2245] That said, I will get people really close to pigs.

[2246] You know, like we can get 20, 30, yards if we're dead downwind on them you could never do that on a deer like i mean it's just it's just out of the question but if you're i mean even kind of an open ground i mean i've i've gotten within maybe 15 yards just by just moving kind of slow and if they've got their heads down and they're they're eating grass or they're just rooting or something uh you can get really close to them if the wind's right i think the closest i ever got to a pig that i shot was it was probably about five feet.

[2247] What?

[2248] Yeah.

[2249] And it was the wind, I was walking with a friend, and we were in this beautiful, like, high point in East Texas, and there was acorns all over the ground that the wind was just ripping.

[2250] We happened to have the wind in our faces, and I came around.

[2251] We were walking.

[2252] We didn't have a rifle or anything.

[2253] Walked around a corner, and there's a pig.

[2254] Like, there's a pig right there, and I just backtracked.

[2255] The wind's blowing at me. I backtracked, and I was like, you know, like, hey, Larry, we got to go get a ride.

[2256] He was like, what?

[2257] I'm like, there's a pig right there.

[2258] Went back, got the rifle, came back.

[2259] The pig had moved and was facing me, but had his head down.

[2260] And there was so many acorns.

[2261] I mean, I could just imagine just the crunch, crunch, crunch that was happening in that pig's jaw.

[2262] He couldn't hear anything over the wind.

[2263] The wind was bad.

[2264] And he seemed so excited about his acorns.

[2265] And I couldn't even look through the scope.

[2266] I mean, it was that close.

[2267] Six feet.

[2268] Wow.

[2269] That's where he was.

[2270] of it, on the edge of a big drop.

[2271] And in fact, after I shot him, he dropped all the way down.

[2272] But, I mean, that really shows you what their, not only their senses, but their dispositions.

[2273] Like when they get excited, particularly about two things, there's nothing that's going to pull them away from those two things.

[2274] What a strange animal they are.

[2275] What keeps their populations in check overseas?

[2276] Oh, I mean, you can see, I mean, those videos of downtown Milan and in Germany where These pigs are just running down the streets.

[2277] I mean, they're, they have far less predators over there.

[2278] I don't know.

[2279] And then I don't know what the hunting situations are over there either.

[2280] Right.

[2281] There's, there's feral hog problems around the world.

[2282] China, you know, definitely in Europe.

[2283] And here, I mean, probably bleeding into Mexico a little bit.

[2284] It's interesting how countries that don't have a cultural history of hunting have a very different take on people hunting, even if they're eating a lot of meat.

[2285] like you you really see that from places like england like they they have a very different take on hunting for the most part they would do well it's been in england particularly just the the space and the the system that they've set up over so long as hunting is not available to everybody right it's a very tiered system i mean even fishing you know you you're going to pay for it and so i think that then most people have you know of course they develop a different view of And they also, they prefer carp over there, which is so weird.

[2286] They actually enjoy carp fishing.

[2287] Whereas carp for us, they're just thought to be like sort of a junky fish.

[2288] Yeah.

[2289] Yeah, I mean, they're okay to eat.

[2290] There's a lot better fish out there to eat than carp, I think.

[2291] Well, you're a big fan of eating bass, right?

[2292] Yeah, I eat bass.

[2293] That's a controversial?

[2294] I eat bass because it makes people mad.

[2295] And I don't, I don't target bass.

[2296] If I catch one and it's like nice, perfect, you know, it's like that 15 inches long and I can keep it, I'll keep it.

[2297] Why does it make people mad?

[2298] It's a, you know, it's, we've, we've made the largemouth bass a species.

[2299] It's, I mean, it's similar to elk, man. I mean, like, elk has status.

[2300] Big white -tailed deer have status.

[2301] On the coast, there's so many fish to eat on the coast.

[2302] on the coast, a big speckled trout has status.

[2303] Has more status than a redfish.

[2304] Why?

[2305] I don't know.

[2306] But in freshwater, the bass has it in the south, and in the north, it would be the walleye.

[2307] That's the status.

[2308] But the bass have it in a different way than the walleye do or any other, or certainly elk, in that people don't want you to eat them.

[2309] Right.

[2310] And it's just silly because, I mean, like, there's a lot of bass out there.

[2311] I mean, there's a lot of them.

[2312] And they've just decided that that, that's, that's, species is off -limit.

[2313] I mean, parks and wildlife establishes rules about what you can keep, what size you can keep on a bass.

[2314] And those were determined by biologists, and I trust those more than it's, I mean, it's also highly monetized.

[2315] So, I mean, you think about bass tournaments.

[2316] I mean, you can win $50 ,000.

[2317] Right.

[2318] You know, Jim Harrison, the author, you know, he said, he said that, you know, tournament fishing for bass, I think he was speaking specifically about this is like playing tennis with living balls you know and it's to me it's weird if you ever see like a tournament bass fisherman when he's reeling that fish in there's no joy I mean it's just like crank it in as fast you can swing it into the boat grab it you know hold on to it and then you know and then put it in the live well and you just you're screaming because you just won 25 ,000 dollars right and and then you drive it to another part of the lake and then you let it go um and it's all um no man I just I just dug myself a big phone.

[2319] No, no, no. You're making a lot of...

[2320] It doesn't make any sense to me at all.

[2321] Yeah.

[2322] I mean, you're really inconveniencing that fish.

[2323] And there was a Mitch Hedberg joke, I think, right?

[2324] It's like, just made it late for something or...

[2325] I can't remember.

[2326] But it's real weird to me. It is weird.

[2327] That you would...

[2328] There's so much value placed on that one species, you know?

[2329] And it does have some qualities.

[2330] It's aggressive.

[2331] It's hard fighting.

[2332] It jumps out of the water.

[2333] It hits, lures.

[2334] You can catch it in the summer months.

[2335] There's a lot of qualities behind a large mouth bass, one of which is also pretty damn tasty.

[2336] You know, it's in the same family as a bluegill or a crappie.

[2337] You know, so, I mean, they're good.

[2338] Do they basically taste the same as a bluegill or croppy?

[2339] I mean, I've had bass, but I haven't had it since I was a teenager.

[2340] Yeah, it's very good.

[2341] It has a larger flake than either of those fish.

[2342] It is a sunfish.

[2343] It's in the sunfish species, so, or genus.

[2344] I think it's great.

[2345] Now, I don't keep them often, and usually I'll just put them back.

[2346] But every once in a while, I will keep the bass.

[2347] But why do you put them back when you put them back?

[2348] I'm usually fishing for something else, and I have enough fish.

[2349] But there are times where I do want to keep them.

[2350] Well, there's like a situation with trout.

[2351] Like, people love to cast the flyfish for trout and release them.

[2352] It's like almost entirely catch and release in some places.

[2353] Yeah.

[2354] Which is weird.

[2355] It's weird.

[2356] You're just stabbing them in the face with a hook, pulling them in, freaking them out, and then letting them go.

[2357] Yeah.

[2358] So geographically, I'd like to take this opportunity to pretty much piss off the entire nation and agree.

[2359] If I, you know, I'm visiting New Mexico and I want to do a little fishing and I roll up to a trout stream and it says catch and release only, I keep driving.

[2360] Yeah.

[2361] So there's stretches of land.

[2362] And now, do they do that with catch and release only?

[2363] Is it specifically because they?

[2364] they want to maintain the numbers, or is it because they want to establish sort of an ethic for the area?

[2365] Maintaining numbers.

[2366] I mean, you think about how the size of these streams and the amount of pressure they get.

[2367] I can talk all the shit I want because I'm here in Texas and there's reservoirs all around me. There's fishing opportunities on lakes and rivers and streams for me where I can go and catch all the sunfish and catfish that I want and not harm the population at all.

[2368] But in the mountain states, it's just like, it's basically just trout, you know?

[2369] I mean, and then if everybody was hammering those fish, then there wouldn't be enough to go around.

[2370] And I get that.

[2371] But I'm just like, I'm going to leave them alone if I can't eat them.

[2372] And if you can point me to a beaver pond full of brook trout that are like totally overpopulated, it's just like, I'll go take care of business.

[2373] I'll catch seven -inch brook trout all day long and be happy as a clam.

[2374] Yeah, people love those little tiny trout for like lunch.

[2375] Yeah.

[2376] They're great for.

[2377] Is this a flavor thing?

[2378] Do they taste different when trout get larger?

[2379] Little tender fish, you know, and just, I mean, brook trout particularly, I love.

[2380] And they're of all the trout species in the mountain states, typically, they're the ones that are the most renewable.

[2381] Yeah.

[2382] It's just interesting that there's not a shortage of bass.

[2383] It must be the sport thing.

[2384] It must be the tournament thing that's making people not want to eat them because, like, they're thinking that you, by eating them, you're.

[2385] lessening the population, lessening the opportunities.

[2386] Right.

[2387] Yeah, but meanwhile, they're everywhere.

[2388] It's weird.

[2389] But also, like, a trophy -sized bass, or a trophy size, pretty much anything I'm putting back.

[2390] Like, if I catch, you know, an 18 -pound catfish, I'm putting it back in the water.

[2391] I mean, I don't think the eating qualities are going to be good.

[2392] And I also think that I want that thing to go back out there and repopulate.

[2393] I'm going to take the two, three, four -pounders out.

[2394] And that goes for most fish that I'm going to catch.

[2395] Have you ever noodled?

[2396] No, no. I just don't see myself doing that.

[2397] No, I'm good.

[2398] I saw a dude's hand who got bit by a snapping turtle.

[2399] He was noodling for catfish.

[2400] I think Ronella might have had it on his Instagram.

[2401] Probably does.

[2402] He loves that gore.

[2403] Missing fingers.

[2404] I'm like, I would imagine.

[2405] Like, I was always thinking, like, you can get caught by a snapping turtle, right?

[2406] Or a snake?

[2407] Yeah.

[2408] Yeah.

[2409] Oh.

[2410] Yeah, I'm good.

[2411] I'm good.

[2412] But these, I follow a bunch of people on Instagram that are always noodling, and they'll just get in there and let this goddamn thing bite their arm.

[2413] And then they pull it out and they have like, Ryan Callahan was talking about it.

[2414] And they like bite marks over his arm.

[2415] Yeah.

[2416] Like they bite into your arm.

[2417] It's extreme.

[2418] You have to grab them by the gills.

[2419] Like what kind of nonsense is this?

[2420] I don't know.

[2421] I mean, maybe you've experienced everything else.

[2422] I guess.

[2423] But they're not good to eat, right?

[2424] A giant catfish like that?

[2425] Oh, we're talking about flatheads.

[2426] They're good.

[2427] They're real good.

[2428] Even the giant ones?

[2429] Yeah, what are you, what's your general feeling on catfish?

[2430] I like catfish.

[2431] Oh, you'd love flathead.

[2432] Yeah?

[2433] Is that a particularly delicious type of catfish?

[2434] It is.

[2435] Even when they're fairly big, they are excellent.

[2436] So a flathead is more of a hunter.

[2437] I mean, they don't eat like the detritus or dead fish.

[2438] I mean, if you're going to catch a flathead, you're probably going to have to be using live bait.

[2439] They're very predatory.

[2440] And I think that's what translates into them being so delicious.

[2441] But they're also very fatty and mild.

[2442] For me, a flathead is the best -tasting catfish out there.

[2443] Really?

[2444] Yeah.

[2445] I love catfish, too.

[2446] I mean, I really do.

[2447] I know that's kind of some people don't like them.

[2448] We were just in Arkansas.

[2449] We had an incredible experience up there because I was able to go and be on the other side of a class where there's this guy that has started this thing.

[2450] And it's just, it's really incredible.

[2451] He's taken this, he's moved to this old black church.

[2452] And the business is called Black Duck Revival, this guy named, Jonathan Wilkins, and it's just really incredible.

[2453] He does duck and goose hunts up there in Arkansas, and he also offers this class where you can go and learn how to like limb line and trot line catfish in these swamps.

[2454] Very old methods.

[2455] You know, he's just basically tying these cords to trees with hooks and baiting them, and then coming back the next day, and you're just weaving your way through these swamps and catching these old catfish and these catfish.

[2456] It was just, it was really incredible because of the, I mean, the cultural weight of it, too.

[2457] You know, he's African -American and he's got, he knows the history of this area and what it's like to exist up there.

[2458] And also, it's just great for me to go and take a class, you know, and not be on the other end of it.

[2459] Right, right.

[2460] The perspective was incredible.

[2461] But just, and what catfish is, you know, catfish is like, it's the opposite of bass, you know.

[2462] It's not this big flashy sport fish and nobody, nobody has a big tournament for it.

[2463] but it's just, it's a food fish, and it's a very specific food fish, too.

[2464] It's not, it's not for everybody.

[2465] There's a great quote from Willard Scott.

[2466] I can't remember it.

[2467] It's like, if I am remembered for anything, I want to go down in history as the person who let the world know that catfish is the finest eating fish out there or something.

[2468] You know, Willard Scott, like, you know.

[2469] Right, the weather guy.

[2470] Yeah, it was wishing the old 80s, the 100 -year -old lady's, happy birthday.

[2471] The other hill he wanted to die on was catfish.

[2472] Wow.

[2473] How weird.

[2474] I was watching this video the other day of catfish in England.

[2475] Apparently there's an invasive catfish that they put in some area in England, and they've decimated the population of everything else in that, because they're a predatory catfish.

[2476] So now they start eating pigeons.

[2477] Have you seen that?

[2478] I think I saw a video of that.

[2479] It's crazy.

[2480] These catfish will, like, sneak up real close to these pigeons and then explode and jump on them and drag these pigeons down into the water.

[2481] And it's so weird to see Because you always think of catfish as like you were saying Like they eat dead things They eat anything Yeah But I did not know that they would go get a pitch Watch this show Oh there yeah I've seen this Look how sneaky they are Well you know what we were using in Bade in Arkansas What?

[2482] Soap There's a certain brand of soap That it's made with pork lard But it's still Oh my God Look at that Wild Oh, we got away.

[2483] But it's really crazy because they're hunting in like an inch of water.

[2484] Yeah.

[2485] Like they literally are getting themselves and almost beaching themselves.

[2486] Well, I don't think people realize that catfish are high -level predators.

[2487] I mean, most of the time they are feeding higher in the water column than you might think.

[2488] And also for crawfish, minnows, anything, I mean, pigeons.

[2489] I can't imagine this, though.

[2490] This is so strange.

[2491] I know there's other fish that, like, do target birds.

[2492] Like, I remember reading once about this guy who was hunting for muskies, and he figured out how to make, like, a lure that looked like a duck.

[2493] So it was like a little duck feet moving.

[2494] And he was catching muskies on this little duckling.

[2495] Like a little wind -up bath toy.

[2496] Yeah, similar, yeah.

[2497] And as he was reeling it in, he was catching muskies.

[2498] Yeah.

[2499] I mean, there's plenty of footage out there of, like, little ducklings getting eaten by, I mean, catfish, too.

[2500] You know, like you said, they are, they get a bad rap for bottom feeders, but, I mean, when we were in Arkansas, we were fishing literally a couple inches below.

[2501] The baits were just suspended right below the surface, and those fish were coming all the way up there to eat, which shows you that they're just, I mean, they're the hogs of the creek, you know, they're going to eat all over the place.

[2502] And it was just, it was so eye -opening to see that, that you're in this crazy swamp, and that we're using soap as bait.

[2503] Why soap?

[2504] They love it.

[2505] What kind?

[2506] Like Irish Spring?

[2507] it's a the brand is zote i'd actually is a very specific kind of brand yeah uh i'd actually seen it before in a lake around here one of the guides uh had sworn by it and i thought it was a one -off and then i get up there to arkansas and he's like no zote soap and i'm like oh shit you too like really zote soap why zote soap what is it about that it's this pink soap it smells like soap and the catfish love it huh zote soap is great catfish baby because the fats are in it leaves a trail that catfish will follow if it melted down out of a small amount of baking grease and garlic to it and then poured it into a container my garlic seems a weird choice this bait does not work well on at all on rod and reel huh and it's just for like lemon limb lines and trot lines i wonder why i wouldn't work good on rodent reel though does that make any sense to you um it it will probably dissolve as you cast if you have to recast it like bring it in like that makes sense water friction on it probably make it it dissolved?

[2508] Yeah, soap, right?

[2509] Like you washing your hands.

[2510] I mean, you could literally take a piece of it, you know, that wasn't being used as bait.

[2511] Um, how long did it take you to write this book?

[2512] Uh, a decade.

[2513] Damn.

[2514] So this is the fruit of many, many days of labor.

[2515] Yeah.

[2516] It, uh, it, I mean, most of it in the last two years, um, but, you know, it really took a long time.

[2517] I mean, I'm glad because what it gave me is the data of, you know, dozens of hunting schools and then hog butchery classes of people asking questions.

[2518] You know, being like, hey, I mean, this is the situation I was in.

[2519] You know, the hog looked like this.

[2520] Or can you eat a pig or can you eat the boar, you know, that's over 200 pounds or 180 or 120 or 80, whatever it is?

[2521] And like, so getting fed those questions and then able to go through and just really curate the answers to all those questions.

[2522] and then gave us time to kind of coalesce this approach that we have to butchering and processing pigs, which is, like I mentioned earlier, it's like four sizes.

[2523] You know, a big boar, a big sow, a medium hog, and a small hog.

[2524] And then how to butcher each one of those in the most efficient way.

[2525] And then the recipes, the subsequent recipes that you can prepare from that specific size.

[2526] And it kind of trying to not overcomplicate.

[2527] it but give somebody a really good reference as to to avoid that one -size -fits -all approach to hogs, which you find so much.

[2528] How did wild pigs get gendered in terms of food value?

[2529] Like when you go to a restaurant, you always get wild boar.

[2530] Yeah.

[2531] It's always wild boar, which is horseshit.

[2532] Well, right.

[2533] I addressed that.

[2534] So I used to sell at the farmer's market.

[2535] When we first started making sausage, I think we called it.

[2536] wild, I think we called it feral hog, Turezo, let's say.

[2537] The marketability is not good.

[2538] You change that to wild boar, and then people want it.

[2539] You know, it's like, and I address that, you know, because it's like, I know that not every pig is a boar, but, you know, well, also, I mean, you can say, like, Russian boar is that, like, subspecies.

[2540] And so they...

[2541] And you say Russian boar, even if it's a sow?

[2542] Yes.

[2543] Hmm.

[2544] Yes, that covers everything, you know.

[2545] And then also, but wild boar kind of is very nebulous.

[2546] But I address that in there and I'm like, listen, everybody, I am going to call all pigs bores sometimes.

[2547] And usually in the title of a recipe.

[2548] Right.

[2549] Because it's semantics.

[2550] Yeah.

[2551] It's like humankind is mankind.

[2552] Sure.

[2553] Yeah.

[2554] Sure.

[2555] Like it's a boar.

[2556] Yeah.

[2557] But it's weird.

[2558] It is.

[2559] No, I get it.

[2560] Yeah.

[2561] I get it.

[2562] But it's, and I'll be very clear that it's a marketability thing.

[2563] Well, it's also the way it sounds, like wild boar sounds delicious.

[2564] Farrell hog does not sound good.

[2565] Yeah, it sounds like a gross.

[2566] It's clinical.

[2567] Yeah.

[2568] It's also just sounds dirty.

[2569] Yeah.

[2570] Dirty little wild piggy.

[2571] Yeah.

[2572] You want a little more adventure in your menu descriptor.

[2573] A wild boar.

[2574] I love that you made this book, though, because I think that if somebody wants to get involved in hunting and they're thinking.

[2575] about starting out, like, there's no better animal to start out with, with pig, than pigs, rather.

[2576] Agreed.

[2577] There's so many of them.

[2578] There's a low level to entry, a low bar to entry, rather.

[2579] You basically don't even have a season in most states that have them.

[2580] You can hunt them 365 days a year.

[2581] You can get a lot of tags.

[2582] You could hunt quite a few of them.

[2583] And they're delicious.

[2584] Yeah.

[2585] Yeah.

[2586] Yeah.

[2587] Yeah.

[2588] It's available online of the first printing sold out via our Kickstarter campaign and online sales.

[2589] The second printing is on its way to being sold out, and that should be here mid -August, but it can still be pre -ordered.

[2590] Do you have an e -book?

[2591] No, we don't.

[2592] Are you going to do that at all?

[2593] Probably not.

[2594] We are self -published and are self -distributing this book.

[2595] It is not available on Amazon.

[2596] It is 100 % our, me and the photographer, it's our private.

[2597] project.

[2598] So where would one go to get this?

[2599] It's easy.

[2600] It's the hogbook .com.

[2601] The hogbook .com.

[2602] Well, that is easy.

[2603] How did no one already have that?

[2604] Congratulations.

[2605] And St. John's Press?

[2606] Is that just like a...

[2607] It's the first book from St. John's Press.

[2608] Okay.

[2609] So Thehogbook .com, go there, get it.

[2610] And the end of July, people will be shipping out.

[2611] And after this podcast, you're going to sell it all this.

[2612] Mid -August, mid -August, yeah.

[2613] Thank you, Jesse.

[2614] I appreciate it, man. And thanks for having such an awesome restaurant.

[2615] And I really, really enjoyed talking to you.

[2616] Yeah, I really appreciate being here.

[2617] Thank you so much.

[2618] My pleasure.

[2619] D -D -D -W -A, it's in Austin, Texas.

[2620] What's the, how do you say it on, like, the URL?

[2621] How do you spell it?

[2622] D -A -I -D -U -E.

[2623] D -A -I -D -U -E .com.

[2624] Correct.

[2625] Okay.

[2626] Bye, everybody.

[2627] Thank you.