#1204 - Steven Rinella

[0] You know what's funny?

[1] I'll tell you later.

[2] Tell me now.

[3] Three, two, one.

[4] What's funny?

[5] I was going to tell you a funny story about your address, but it wouldn't be funny for you.

[6] We'll talk later about that.

[7] You and I, we share African ancestry.

[8] Yeah?

[9] Yeah.

[10] I was shocked.

[11] Yeah, I'm 1 .6%.

[12] Oh, really?

[13] Yeah.

[14] See, I have more credential than you in that department.

[15] You're 2 %.

[16] right yeah i know and it's it's funny because uh you know you sort of have your the story in your family kind of like where he came from and everything made and i always knew i was 25 % you know italian uh and i knew that my family came from sicily in fact uh the the the ronella's that came from sicily all seem to become kind of established in the produce world uh my dad was brought up in the south side of chicago i'm 44 years old.

[17] Okay, so think about that for a minute.

[18] My dad was brought up in the south side of Chicago and he was raised by his grandfather, who was Sicilian, had come from Sicily.

[19] His grandfather delivered produce with a horse and cart in Chicago.

[20] So to have lived through that, like to be brought up in a house where a guy like leaves in the morning and a horse and cart to deliver produce and then to be alive like to fight in World War II to be through the atomic.

[21] era the advent of the internet right but I always knew that we had Sicilians when I did the genetic test what some of those at some point in time one of those Sicilians must have shot southward and crossed the Mediterranean and like had a hookup down there or something well that was the history of Sicily in the first place yeah you know that Sicily just being Sicilian in the first place there were so many people that were uh impregnated by the moors and by various people of west africa and north africa yeah yeah it's fair and yeah i should have probably like always assumed but it just i hadn't thought about it um another thing i was reading about this stuff and you might know more about it than i do is that when you do those tests there's missing parts you know it does it like it captures what's there but there there that's not captured just in the way that chromosomes are you know inherited and passed down like it's an incomplete picture right right there could be influences there could there could be in your it doesn't create a full picture of your lineage there could be lineages that are there that aren't represented in your particular makeup how so like what do you mean you know I hate to write off the bat get into something that I can't speak about any level of expertise I was just reading a piece and the piece I was reading had do it was kind of a dissection of like what happened with elizabeth warren what she claimed we've been going off about that on the podcast and i'm like a hundred times more african than that she is native american yeah well that's what i found i'm ten times more or whatever but it was a piece about it was it was a piece in the times explaining like how to make sense of now that everyone's doing these tests like how to think about and make sense these tests but but my understanding of it is that you could have a lot of ancestry that just isn't captured in your genetic code in the way that would be detected through the testing.

[22] Meaning there could be ancestors that because you're inheriting half, you know, you're inheriting chromosomes from each parent and somehow you could have, it could be an incomplete picture.

[23] You could have ancestors that had come from other, you know, whatever, these tests break out the world into 100 or some odd regions or zones, that there could be people.

[24] from those zones who are in your lineage that are not captured in your personal that are not captured in your genetic code that's so bizarre you would think it all be in there is that just an incomplete measuring tool is that what it is or is it just actually not in there I don't know you're gonna have to have a dude on yeah I'll listen you need to have a dude on that understands it and that's I say I feel like I'm off on a bad start here man how much Neanderthal did it say yeah less than normal really less than average what was the the number like it said It gives you, you did 23 and me, right?

[25] Yeah, I can't remember.

[26] Oh, okay.

[27] I can't remember.

[28] I just remember it was less than average.

[29] And you know, and those things, like, are refined about how many people do them, you know.

[30] But it was less than average which bummed me out.

[31] But I'm like as hairy as like a 13 -year -old, like, Norwegian girl, you know what I mean?

[32] So it's not shocking.

[33] Didn't surprise me too much.

[34] I was wishing to have a little more of that floating around in me. It's a bizarre heritage, you know, the idea that there was a different type of human that bread with homo sapiens and that there's like little bits and pieces of it floating around in people yeah and people discuss them people discuss i was having an argument the other day where they see a neanderthal or neanderthal and everyone grows up saying neanderthal and it's one of those things you're supposed to switch once you realize how you're supposed to do it right neander tall but i just can't get comfortable with it i go back and forth there's a lot of words that like that where i know you're supposed to do it but i can't get comfortable with it because i feel like it you sound pretentious.

[35] It does.

[36] It's like rolling your R's and certain Spanish words.

[37] But we have this idea that the, we have this idea that Neanderthals as unsuccessful.

[38] Right?

[39] Right.

[40] There are these brutish thugs that died out.

[41] But they had a 600 ,000 year run.

[42] Yeah.

[43] In Europe alone.

[44] 600 ,000 years.

[45] Longer run than homo sapiens have actually existed.

[46] Yeah.

[47] Yeah.

[48] So whatever's next.

[49] I don't know that we're going to hit like, I don't know that.

[50] we're going to match up and have that run.

[51] Well, we'll probably have a 23 and me for whatever the fuck is after us.

[52] And then, look, somebody back then fucked a human.

[53] Like, oh, one of those crazy war monger, fucking rapist -thieving humans.

[54] That died out.

[55] Turns out they didn't totally die out.

[56] Overrun with emotions and lies.

[57] And someone of a superior race infiltrated the humans and banged one of them.

[58] Yeah, it's funny to look at that, that, that, understanding of those, that understanding of those people, and then to have this, to picture in your minds, I even though you can't picture it, like what was, like, when they were hooking up, someone, you know, like anatomically and kind of behaviorally modern humans were hooking up Neanderthals, was it, was, how was it perceived by their peers?

[59] I bet the people that we think of his people back then like you know who george the animal steel is no george the animal steel is a very famous pro wrestler from back in the day and uh i thought you're going to say it was a uh palaeontologist or anthropologist it's a wrestler he's a wrestler pro wrestler very famous guy who could be a fucking caveman like legitimately could be a caveman yeah see if you uh you got a good image of them now this is what i think when i think of people now give me a full body one there you go Oh.

[60] When I think of people that he's hanging on to some.

[61] Homo sapiens, homo sapiens from, you know, 200 ,000 years ago, I think of George the animal's deal.

[62] I think there was something like that.

[63] So the idea of George fucking a Neanderthal chick, not that far off.

[64] I think our idea is like that like Dan Rather would be out there banging some monkey lady.

[65] I just don't think, I don't think that's the case.

[66] Like, look at George's body.

[67] I mean, Jesus fucking Christ.

[68] He's got the hairiest shoulders I've ever seen in a man. Is he still alive?

[69] I do not know.

[70] I don't believe he is.

[71] I hope he's not listening right now.

[72] I don't believe he is.

[73] He's a legend.

[74] Legend in the world with the pro wrestling.

[75] So it's going to take more than this to hurt his feelings.

[76] That guy don't give a fuck.

[77] Yeah.

[78] He's a legend.

[79] But when I was a kid in high school, he's old as fuck.

[80] Yeah.

[81] He's, uh, well, those guys, they all, that's a hard way to make a live man. Oh, he died.

[82] He died at age 79.

[83] He had a good run.

[84] Yeah.

[85] That's a good run for.

[86] for those guys.

[87] That's a fucking hard way to make a living.

[88] Have we were talked about the idea of Neanderthals is like having a confrontational hunting style?

[89] No, I don't, like we have.

[90] Because when anthropologists look at the skeletal remains of Neanderthals, they see this sort of suite of this pattern of injuries on them.

[91] And a research who is looking at the types of fractures that have on their bones and where the fractures occurred and the brakes and like cracks in their skulls.

[92] He was looking at all this and wound up working with a doctor who had a lot of exposure to rodeo riders, bull riders.

[93] And the doctor was observing the way in which that suite of injuries was very familiar to him from rodeo riders, the types of breaks and the location of breaks and this guy has this idea that they had a like a very confrontational hunting style um that they're like mixing it up with big animals and another thing they found is that when you're looking at skeletal remains from early people you still see that separation in the sexes right that the males would suffer injuries at with a greater prevalence than females But with the Neanderthals, it seems like they didn't have the sort of like duplicity of roles.

[94] So maybe the females, the females have the same prevalence of these types of injuries.

[95] Whoa.

[96] And so maybe they didn't have that, they didn't share that division of labor.

[97] Were the females as large as the males?

[98] Yeah, I don't know the answer to that.

[99] So we know that they had stone tools, right?

[100] The crude stone tools.

[101] Yeah.

[102] But we don't know whether or not they had anything that could launch them.

[103] like they didn't have did they would do we know if they had spears i don't believe that they've found they had addle addles right and i don't know if they were halting materials but they were doing they were doing art um and i think there's a little bit of a debate about whether they're doing representational art but they were doing art they were doing they were probably making jewelry and is like these are all things that as as we kind of like wake up to what these people really like and it paints like a more complicated picture there's even this theory and i don't know if this held any water or how long it was fashionable for but you had this really long history of it was extremely long history of hundreds of thousands of years in neanderthal you know occupation in europe and then it seemed to be that i remember someone putting forth this idea that it seemed to be that there was this flourishing of advancement that was contemporaneous with the arrival of our own ancestors in Europe is though they were being exposed to or seeing art and seeing jewelry and mimicking this from these new invaders that were coming in.

[104] But I don't know where that idea sits right now.

[105] I don't know if it's been dispelled because of other discoveries.

[106] But I remember that it was an interesting idea that they would, and it kind of paints this really sad picture, right, that they would be sort of in the autumn, you know, of their existence and here's these adorned people showing up with these amazing tool kits and all these abilities and kind of struggling to start to catch up you know it'd be like the country bumpkin you know going to the big city and yeah well there was also this idea i think up until very recently that neanderthals were not as violent as humans uh as homo sapiens but now there was an article that was published just a couple of days ago that new evidence shows that neanderthals like interneanderthal violence between each other was just as bad as homo sapiens.

[107] Yeah, and...

[108] And evidence of cannibalism.

[109] Oh, yeah, there was a lot of that, right?

[110] Scraping of inside the skulls, indicative of tools.

[111] Oh, Ad Blocker, got busted.

[112] They get us every time with the fucking ad blocker.

[113] Yeah.

[114] What does it say?

[115] Humans are just as violent as Neanderthals.

[116] Are you familiar with the writer John Muellem?

[117] No. You'd like his stuff.

[118] Yeah.

[119] He wrote a really beautiful piece about...

[120] He wrote a really beautiful piece about...

[121] beautiful piece about Neanderthals not long ago.

[122] Okay, I fucked it up.

[123] What they're saying is that modern humans were just as prone to violence as Neanderthals.

[124] I don't have a problem with that.

[125] I think I'm conflating this with something else that I read about inter -species violence, Neanderthal on Neanderthal violence.

[126] The other thing that's weird about them is they had bigger brains in us.

[127] They had bigger brains and they would be like 5 -7 and weigh 200 pounds, just jacked, just a little gorilla thing.

[128] you know it'd be great to see it there's a really dumb theory that was being bounced around a few years ago it was really hilarious about how we wiped out we assumed that neanderthals because you don't have any soft tissue samples we assume that neanderthals looked similar to humans but because of the very different shape of their skull this guy had instead of giving them European looking white skin turned them into a gorilla turned them into a giant muscle bound gorilla that preyed on people and this was like I believe this guy was an actually is actually was a professor and it seemed almost like a goof at first do you remember this jammy we pulled this up a few times like killer neanderthal theory i think you call it but yeah he had drawn this thing black like a gorilla with like giant muscles all over the place and these big crazy eyes and that painting neanderthals as a predator of humans and that's why we wiped them out yeah yeah that that my My limitations as, see, I was going to say my limitations as an anthropologist, but I'm certainly not an anthropologist at all.

[129] I'm just a dude who's interested in it.

[130] But one of my limitations is I'll hear theories floated, okay?

[131] And I don't follow them long enough to see which ones have any traction.

[132] I'll just read about them, and I don't take it as gospel, but I'll read about it.

[133] And I'll be like, that's interesting, and it'll sort of like shape my understanding of it.

[134] but then I don't keep track of it.

[135] Like, I try to really follow the story of, like, the peopling of the Americas.

[136] So when it comes to the human history of the Western Hemisphere, I sort of follow, and, like, ideas will get floated, and I'll track the idea to see where it lands in terms of scholarly consensus.

[137] But on other stuff, like, with Neanderthals, I'm always a sucker for a Neanderthal story, but I don't track what ideas that float up are just very quickly denounce as being complete rubbish.

[138] Yeah, that's a weird one.

[139] You know, it's, it takes time to, it takes time to follow this stuff.

[140] Go, go to that other picture.

[141] That's what it is, them, them and us.

[142] Yeah, but look at some of his images.

[143] Look at that image that he has on the cover of the book.

[144] Like, those are the idea.

[145] There's some way better ones.

[146] There's some way better images where they drew of, uh, full body ones.

[147] They had, uh, is it in the article?

[148] This was a link to the actual website from a different article.

[149] Just go to that and then go to images.

[150] Because there was some really bizarre fucking, yeah, there it is, upper left -hand corner.

[151] This is what this guy...

[152] Yeah, well, that thing, whatever he's got going on, that thing is not making art. You don't think so?

[153] No, he's making meat, man. Come on.

[154] Yeah.

[155] Yeah, it's pretty preposterous.

[156] But Neanderthals didn't have fangs like that either, did they?

[157] No. What is that?

[158] He's he morphing Neanderthal Into a gorilla?

[159] Is that what he's trying to do?

[160] Oh, that's a hot...

[161] Okay, monkey gorilla Neanderthal.

[162] But yeah, but like how it's got it snarling with its fucking vegetable -eaten teeth.

[163] Anyway.

[164] It's, and then there's the, do we even know with those Denovians?

[165] How do you say that word?

[166] The one from Russia?

[167] Yeah.

[168] They don't have any idea what they looked like, right?

[169] No, they have like some pinky bones and shit.

[170] Yeah.

[171] That one's not, that one I don't.

[172] don't know.

[173] Hey man, your cookbook is fucking fantastic.

[174] It's really good.

[175] Yeah.

[176] You put a lot of goddamn work into that thing.

[177] We started collecting images for it years ago.

[178] You could tell.

[179] It's really good.

[180] Because I didn't want it to look like, um, was it boring you time about in the antarthals?

[181] No. I'm out of stuff to say about them anyway.

[182] No. I can go on for days.

[183] That's the problem.

[184] We're trying to change years.

[185] We're going to spend days talking about things we're not quite sure about.

[186] Yeah, exactly.

[187] That's what I do for a living.

[188] So, I want to get back to the cook, but real quick, but you know what's funny is how many, you probably don't know this, but how many people in the wildlife world listen to your show.

[189] And get angry?

[190] I hear about it, because I'm like a conduit.

[191] Tell Joe that that's not how it works.

[192] I'm like a conduit where I'm oftentimes getting frantic text messages as though I would be able to jump in and, you know, clarify like how a portion.

[193] Orcupine quill works.

[194] Yeah, it's really funny how many people I hear from when I can tell when you're on the, I know like when you're on the subject of wildlife.

[195] Especially if we're baked.

[196] If there's marijuana in the room, we've got a real issue.

[197] Like, that's not what antlers are for.

[198] He should really know.

[199] Well, who knows when antlers are for other than, well, they're from two things, right?

[200] They're for fighting and sexual selection, right?

[201] Yeah, that's two things that definitely makes sense.

[202] Yeah.

[203] We battle, like a sexual display.

[204] We got a bull in Utah this year, and when we were butchering it, one of the hindquarters had been punctured by an antler and got infected.

[205] And when we cut into the hind quarter, just this bucket of pus came out.

[206] I mean, it was fucking nasty.

[207] We thought it was piss at first, like someone had actually punctured the bladder, and then we realized when we got deep into it that there was this giant ass, he had been asked, like literally right in the flank.

[208] Yeah.

[209] And it was just so fucking nasty.

[210] nasty you find really high pressure pus pockets in like in animals yeah all over his body had holes holes in his ribs he had a big one in his face he'd been jacked in the face i got a seek a deer last year who had lost his eye completely gone i mean like that his eyeball had been punctured and people were asking me well no one you got them but i was like no his good eye was facing me on his line of approach.

[211] Yeah, but he didn't know where you were.

[212] His left, his left eye was facing me. But yeah, with the cookwork, so we started gathering pictures up for it years ago because I wanted to have this like really complete idea of how to process everything.

[213] So like the book includes everything from how to process a bullfrog, you know, to a deer, to a pig to mahi, mahi.

[214] and a problem I run into when I've done books is I never wind up needing I never wind up needing to like pad them in the end I always mind up having like very painful cuts yeah you know when I did my book my book American Buffalo I remember I had to lose 100 pages which was hard to do when we did the complete guide to hunting butchering and cooking wild game it came out at 700 pages do you ever think of going back and putting those 100 pages back in or do you think it made sense to remove it no in hindsight it had to happen it had to happen that's in terms of like the narrative stuff i've written that's the the narrative nonfiction i've written that's my favorite thing that i've done and uh it had to happen but it was painful and we did when i did those guidebook the guidebook series it came in 700 pages and my publisher was uh my publisher was like you know you just don't really make 700 page books and so that's why we want to do know the volume one in volume two because I didn't want to get rid of any but then in doing this this cookbook the meat eater fishing game cookbook is what it's called and putting this together I think early on we started to get a little bit kind of running a little bit wild about what was going to fit but then caught it earlier but that was the first thing we did was started collecting the pictures because I think a lot of times you look at a book an illustrated book and it kind of smells like a photo shoot do you know what I'm saying yeah yeah where you can tell that they get they sort of how they got the images and I didn't want to feel like that I wanted to sort of feel like really representative of like so many different places and different experiences that are captured in here and so we just started filming these process shots of how to walk stuff through like everything you know how to like turn things how to take an animal and make it into a variety of usable ingredients and collecting all those took a long time and then and then and then actually like assembling it and putting it together was more systematic once we had that underway but i think it's i think it like it's cool looking though you know no it's great like the book in the end where it's kind of like half could almost pass as a coffee table book i agree yeah no it really could and i think it's a really valuable resource for people that hunt because it's just i mean there's only so many different ways you can cook backstraps right there's so many different ways you can put ground venison into spaghetti sauce, you know?

[215] Yeah.

[216] You're giving people such a wide variety of things to, and including your original books as well, a wide variety of things to, you know, to cook and ways to cook them.

[217] It's one of the things I really enjoyed about your show, you know, and still do, but now that it's on Netflix, I actually, I enjoy it even more, but that you do a lot of cooking on your show.

[218] Yeah.

[219] That's very rare in the hunting world.

[220] You know, you see these hunting shows.

[221] very one -dimensional, right?

[222] You see someone looking for the animal and then they finally get it and yay, everybody's happy, the end.

[223] But you spend a great deal of time breaking down animals and cooking a bunch of different things, including marrow and shanks and unusual preparations.

[224] I think that's really important.

[225] Yeah, that's something that was always there for me growing up.

[226] And hunting and fishing are very complicated and you do them for a bunch of reasons.

[227] I think that people in explaining hunting to audiences or explaining hunting to people who are uninitiated uninformed about it maybe adversarial toward it you sort of you wind up grabbing these things that you want to grabbing these things that um that you think will resonate with them right uh i have a friend gregg blaskovich who'd even worked on this research piece of taking justifications for hunting and finding test subjects who are skeptical of hunting and explaining various justifications to them and seeing which ones of those that they find to be most impactful.

[228] So he's actually done research around when you take this great, like this broad spectrum of reasons people do this, you know, and everyone has many of them as part of their story, right?

[229] And you run them by people.

[230] He sees these ones that they really resonate and which ones kind of move the needle in their perception of it.

[231] And it's a little bit surprising.

[232] There's some surprises in there of ones that you think would be like really impactful, but in fact are not impactful at all.

[233] People don't care about.

[234] Like what?

[235] Well, population control.

[236] People don't care.

[237] People, I think that people don't, the kind of people you're talking about who are largely unfamiliar with it, but they're looking at it from the outside and they're skeptical of it, they have a hard, they don't buy it.

[238] I don't think that they're afraid of deer, generally.

[239] But people who live in high population areas, like, I did a gig once in Western Massachusetts.

[240] Well, yeah, it was in Western Massachusetts, and I had a drive.

[241] I was coming from New York, and I had to drive through the most deer -infested place I've ever been to in my life.

[242] It was completely insane.

[243] Like, when you're driving on the highway, you have to go 25, 30 miles an hour.

[244] And things are just jumping in front of your car every 15, 20.

[245] seconds.

[246] It was fucking nuts, man. And I would, I took this side road down to get to wherever the gig was, you know, and I'm just watching these animals jump in front of the car, like left and right.

[247] And I'm like, these people that live here, these things are a goddamn nuisance.

[248] Like, if this was your everyday reality and you ask those people, you said, hey, what do you think about deer population control?

[249] We need to hunt to keep the population down.

[250] They'll be like, fuck, yeah, you do.

[251] Yeah, I'm sure.

[252] Yeah, I'm sure that there are like quite a lot of people live in some of these areas that have a great abundance of deer that feel that way.

[253] But when he was looking at it with just general population thing, and it was full stop, too.

[254] He didn't give a lot of, he didn't go in and give case scenarios and examples, right?

[255] It's just a question that you ask, and people, it didn't, like, immediately click with people.

[256] Another thing that didn't immediately click with people, but it's extremely important to me is issues around heritage and legacy.

[257] okay so meaning that um my maternal grandfather my paternal grandfather were hunters my father was a hunter I was brought up hunting um to a non hunter doesn't matter your grandparents and parents could have been involved in all kinds of bad shit I don't think that that means you need to continue doing bad shit right um one that's very obvious is people understand people understand and respect the idea of food like a like you're generally to look and respect the idea of food.

[258] Now, to back at what I was getting at about, you mentioned that being a big element of the show, it almost winds up being that it was like, I was like fortunate or lucky or whatever that early in my career, I started focusing on talking about that aspect of it.

[259] But it wasn't something I just made up out of nowhere because it was a huge part of growing up where, for whatever reason, I haven't been raised by a dad who.

[260] who was just really interested in cooking stuff and sharing it with people, you know?

[261] And if you're driving down the road in June and you see a snapping turtle laying eggs on the side of the road, that's come up out of a swamp and you needed to find some sandy ground and he finds it on the edge of a dirt road and there it is laying eggs on the side of the dirt road, we were eating that turtle, right?

[262] And everything.

[263] We ate, you know, all kinds of fish.

[264] And we ate a lot of things that other people weren't interested in.

[265] We could go out and bring back our dad bullfrogs.

[266] He would love if we went out and got them frogs.

[267] We'd take our bows out at night using flashlights, which unbeknownst to me was illegal and remains illegal in the state where I was brought up.

[268] Even for frogs?

[269] To use artificial light for frogs, yeah.

[270] Wow.

[271] Dude, when I found that out later, no idea.

[272] Wow.

[273] That you weren't supposed to do that.

[274] We would do it, and we'd come in and bring them, and it was like a big thing, right, to bring our dad the frog legs and he would cook and eat anything.

[275] And then he would do stuff where we would catch salmon when the salmon were running the river.

[276] in October and he would have people over and we would have a salmon boil, you know.

[277] So I was raised around that stuff of like, of celebrating wild game, having to be very social, having it be a way to connect.

[278] Salmon boil?

[279] Yeah, boiled fish.

[280] So you take, you're literally cubing up salmon and pearl onions and little baby potatoes.

[281] Oh, so you're making like a stew.

[282] It's just a fish boil.

[283] And then you drain it off and you have drawn butter.

[284] and you drown all that shit and drawn butter.

[285] It's good.

[286] Sounds good.

[287] Yeah.

[288] It doesn't sound like the best...

[289] People do fish boils, but it's not normal to do a salmon boil.

[290] It seems like it's such a flavorful fish.

[291] You would lose some of that in the broth.

[292] Yeah, for sure.

[293] But it's like when you have the pearl onions and the little baby potatoes and cubed up and you drown all that shit and butter, it's just like a thing people like.

[294] So the taste is really good, but it's not necessarily the taste of salmon.

[295] It isn't what...

[296] If you went to the Pacific Northwest and asked, like a bunch of great chefs in the Pacific Northwest to list their five favorite salmon preparations.

[297] Boiling them in a pot of water isn't going to be on, isn't going to make their list.

[298] Yeah.

[299] But he, like, we would do that, you know, and it would be a thing and you'd invite people over to do it.

[300] So I kind of, early on, like early on, with all the things I enjoyed about hunting, like the food aspect was big for me and really informed, all of the sort of conversations that I've had around it since.

[301] And so then in doing a show about hunting, it wasn't something that I was going to, it wasn't something that I was going to lean out.

[302] But in all fairness, when I was growing up, I did a lot of fur trapping too.

[303] And trapped muskrat, beaver, mink, all kinds of stuff.

[304] And I was doing that to sell the furs.

[305] And I would use some of the meat, I would use some of the meat for bait.

[306] I'd sometimes sell meat to dog sled racers.

[307] When did you realize that beaver were delicious?

[308] Not till after I think I ate the first one When I was in The first one I ever ate I was in community college I'd still tell people About the beaver that you cook for us in Wisconsin And how good it is And they look at you sideways And I'm like I'm telling you man It was like the most delicious pot roast I've ever had It was fantastic Yeah It was really good There's even stories about early on With the When early explorers Or in this country They had a difficult time Getting fish sometimes And beaver were approved for the Lenton meal because they were aquatic.

[309] Wow.

[310] So on Fridays when you had to have, like, when you're supposed to have your meat -free day, you were allowed to eat beaver meat because they were a water animal.

[311] It was a very popular food item.

[312] Do you follow what I'm saying?

[313] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[314] No, I get it.

[315] The first ones we ate, I had started reading about, I'd always read narratives, stories about the Mountain Men, meaning like when I say Mountain Men, like a very specific thing, like a, you know, a rocky mountain beaver trapper who was sandwiched between, who is sandwiched in time between the end of the Lewis and Clark expedition and the collapse of the beaver market in the 1840s.

[316] So, like, it's a very, like, finite period of time was what a mountain man was.

[317] Explain to people how big the beaver market is, because this is going to blow people's minds.

[318] Well, America's first, you know, Aster, John Jacob Aster.

[319] Like, the beaver market made America's first millionaires.

[320] His fortunes came from being a beaver trader.

[321] The richest man in the country, their money came from beavers.

[322] Yeah, and he was in on the business end of it.

[323] He wasn't in on the trapping end of it.

[324] Right, he was in on the hats, right?

[325] The fur companies, yeah, the big fur companies.

[326] Well, it was hats.

[327] When we bought, think about it like this, how big it was, for us to do the Louisiana purchase and to buy that chunk of land, when Lewis and Clark came out, part of their mandate was to suss out the potential for the trade in beaver hides.

[328] Wow.

[329] It'd be like buying something.

[330] Now you'd buy oil and gas, right?

[331] You don't know.

[332] Can we justify this through oil and gas?

[333] They're looking to justify it through trade and beaver hides.

[334] Now, also, there was also language about that they might find out about whether woolly mammoths were existing out there as well.

[335] So there was like some confusion about what was going on.

[336] Wow.

[337] They really thought that woolly mammoths were still alive?

[338] Jefferson was interested in that stuff because he had been to some areas.

[339] He had some familiarity and been to some areas with these large bones and he was puzzled about him.

[340] He was wondering if this wasn't some, if it maybe in fact was not an extinct species but was somehow living in the American West still.

[341] How hard is it to wrap?

[342] Historians, like people, not historians, popular historians really love to make a big deal out of that because it's so weird.

[343] But it wasn't like, hey, let's do the Louisiana purchase transaction because of the possibility of, locating mammoths.

[344] I think it was like an idea that was floated around.

[345] People see it and they, people such as me see it and perhaps over -emphasize what it meant, but it was an idea that was out there.

[346] The Beaver trade stuff was certainly a big factor.

[347] Another thing I was reading about recently, just to point out to your, that you might think is interesting is that people have this idea of Lewis and Clark going into this unspoiled, uncontacted landscape.

[348] I was a recent reading a piece by a historian who was talking about at the time Lewis and Clark headed out into the Great Plains.

[349] There were Native Americans living on the Great Plains who had been to Europe and met the King of France and returned back to the Great Plains.

[350] Whoa.

[351] What year?

[352] They went out in the early 1800s.

[353] So they were out in 1804.

[354] Wow.

[355] You got to, if you imagine the time from the time, in the 1500s, when the Spanish were poking around and coming like Coronado, right, coming up from Mexico into the Great Plains, Cabaza de Vaca, being shipwrecked along the Gulf Coast and people pushing up into these areas, that was hundreds of years prior.

[356] Like the distance that separates, imagine the distance that separated Lewis and Clark from the first Europeans who were doing activities in and around the Great Plains is like the distance in time that separates us from Lewis and Clark.

[357] More so, right?

[358] Yeah.

[359] It's the distance in time that separates us from the Declaration of Independence.

[360] It was like a long history of people messing around.

[361] That's crazy.

[362] However, so, yeah, but think about it too, like, Lewis and Clark were encountering people who had horses, right?

[363] Right.

[364] And those horses had been, yeah, those horse had been traded up.

[365] so that's just a side note of this idea of eating beaver so i got from reading about the mountain men i got interested in this idea because you'd always see like anytime you're reading about mountain men you're always going to find the part where the author talks about how much mountain men liked beaver tail um and the first people that tried eating beaver tail was around when i was in i was in community college at the time and my brothers i remember stuck a beaver tail in the oven for a while and cooked it and they reported a bag.

[366] to me that like whatever it is they're talking about isn't that like there must be beaver tail didn't we eat beaver tail yeah yeah we ate it in wisconsin yeah we have a there's a there's a how to there's like pictures and an explanation of how to prepare how to actually prepare beaver tail mountain man style in the meat eater fishing game cookbook it wasn't bad it was just bland it's just fat it's fat so after that we started thinking that when they say the mountain men like beaver tail we thought it must have meant they like rump basically like the hind quarters so we started when we when i would catch bevers um i'd be careful when skinning them to not get the caster the beavers have two large glands on the inside of their legs they're like tucked in their what looks like if you lay a beaver on its back tucked kind of on either side of its of its like if it's a male like tucked either side of its penis or either side of its cloaca you'll you'll see a uh not cloaca but like vent you'll see these these glands that are the size of, I don't know, if you make like a, if you take your index finger and your thumb and make a circle, there's like a gland on each side called a castor gland.

[367] There's an oil gland in there.

[368] They used to use it for perfume.

[369] It still has value today.

[370] It's used for a wide variety of things.

[371] It smells beautiful.

[372] If you're ever walking on a stream bank and you smell like a strange perfume smell, it's usually beaver caster.

[373] Wow.

[374] Smells great.

[375] Tastes like shit.

[376] Tastes like you're eating, like you rubbed roses or something all over your food.

[377] So start figuring out like to, to skin them and be very careful not to get the caster on your knife or get the caster on your hands.

[378] And then we would just take the meat and put it in crockpots with potatoes and onions and stuff and just cook them down in a crock pot so you could pick them.

[379] And it was like roast beef.

[380] So then I started eating that, but then later I realized that read other accounts of how people prepared beaver tail.

[381] And if you take the tail, like the scaly -ass tail, and it really should be from a fall beaver.

[382] Because the tail would be twice as thick in the fall than it is in the spring.

[383] emaciated in the spring.

[384] Take the tail and just skewer it on a stick and put it next to a fire where the skin starts to bubble and boil away.

[385] And pretty soon you can just peel all that skin away.

[386] And what's hiding under there is the best equivalent, like the best equivalent or point of comparison that I can think of would be it's like if you had a really like imagine you're getting a grass fed steak, right, but still has that fatty gristle on it.

[387] it's just made up of that gristle like what a lot of people would trim away from a steak and not eat that's what's inside that beaver tail but people eat these individuals that were doing this were fat starved eating such lean meat all the time i think they loved it because here's like a chunk of fat yeah and they had ready access to it because they were catching them to make a living and if you're just eating the meat there's no fat on the meat and so they would compliment it with just eating the beaver tail fat and I'll often tell people about it and I even gave some too there's like a culinary arts institute and I gave some chefs that stuff and everyone that eats it points out that it's not that it tastes so fantastic but it's just like really interesting to try and eat it the fat from the tail and it's like you've got to put yourself in position you've probably been in this too where if you're you know especially if you're out hunting and eating you know like freeze dried food or not eating great and you're just exerting yourself all day all the time how you're what you want to eat changes a lot.

[388] Yeah.

[389] And the level of appetite you have is off the charts.

[390] Yeah.

[391] And so just like to eat like a big slab of fat was appealing to people.

[392] Yeah.

[393] Yeah, your body starts craving things that absolutely needs.

[394] Yeah.

[395] That makes sense.

[396] Makes sense.

[397] And particularly when you think about these people that are hiking across the west, traveling massive amounts of distance, you know, probably very physically strenuous.

[398] Yeah.

[399] Dragging all their shit with them.

[400] And they get across the west.

[401] some big ass piece of fat from a tail, it's probably a huge treat.

[402] Yeah, and then our understanding of people, like we used to have this idea of like, especially of early Native Americans, like they're like just eating, you know, nothing but mammoth meat and all the time.

[403] Like as our understanding of people grows, you see like how much they were utilizing plant resources and probably had like pretty plant -rich diets.

[404] But with the one, with the equestrian bison hunters on the great plains, those guys were like they weren't cultivating like at that arrow like especially the area when lewis and clark came in these people were not cultivating crops a lot of the people who had been farming along the mississippi missouri valleys once they got horses they just gave up on that shit and just started roaming the landscape eating meat and the mountain men certainly weren't doing that and they were just eating like you're eating meat 365 days out of the year and you see that they really probably me to make up for a lot of nutrient deficiencies, ate shitloads organs.

[405] Your guy that was...

[406] Putting gall, putting gall on your food.

[407] Gall bladder.

[408] Squeezing, taking the gall, yeah, putting, squeezing the bile from gallbladder on your food.

[409] You did that once.

[410] Yeah, it's horrific.

[411] It's like putting a 9 -volt battery on your tongue.

[412] And you think they were doing it just because they were just nutrients starved.

[413] Yeah, it seems like they put a high emphasis on eating just like all these, like just organ meats, blood, Oregon meats, milk from, milk from mammary glands.

[414] Really?

[415] Yeah, because you can't just eat that lean -ass game meat every day.

[416] Right.

[417] You were talking to a guy from Alaska.

[418] What's that guy's name?

[419] Buck Bowden.

[420] Buck Bowden, yeah, on your show.

[421] And he was talking about, you know, essentially he was subsistence hunting in certain stages.

[422] Yeah.

[423] And, you know, he ate nothing but moose.

[424] Yeah.

[425] Like, he shot a moose and ate nothing but that moose for months.

[426] And picking Wolverine meat off the skulls.

[427] stuff.

[428] Yeah, like, whoa.

[429] Yeah.

[430] You know, and you, you know, so fucking modern day human who's alive right now talking about only surviving on the leanest of lean meat.

[431] You know, that guy had to be skinny as fuck when that was all over.

[432] Yeah, and I wouldn't mess with that guy.

[433] He's tough as shit, too, you know?

[434] Yeah.

[435] He lived life, he lived a life that seems like, he had parts of his life that seemed like he was 100 years.

[436] Yeah.

[437] Could have occurred 100 years earlier.

[438] He, uh, the, the episode of the podcast is like, you're a good man, Buck.

[439] Is that what it's called?

[440] Your cool dude, buck.

[441] You're a cool dude buck?

[442] Which is what buddy mine says to him in the show, you know.

[443] He's a cool dude.

[444] It's a treat to get a chance to talk to a guy that you think probably never even fucking heard of a podcast and certainly comes from a completely different era.

[445] Yeah.

[446] The reason he was living on, had to live off the land is an interesting story where he was working for, he was just getting in the guiding world, so guiding moose hunters.

[447] And they were wanting to find some ways to be able to hunt some very remote.

[448] aries and they hidden us the idea that they would just bring horses in because if you don't have landing strips and stuff it's just really hard to operate out of these areas so they thought well if we can get horses in there we'll have them in there we'll hunt for the season then we'll ride the horses out but getting the horses in there was so difficult and took far longer and the route they wanted to use was impassable by the time they got the horses in there they realized that they're never going to get these horses back out of here and they realize that someone needs to stay over winter to take care of the horses.

[449] And he just volunteered to do it.

[450] So he started spending, they would go in and hunt in September.

[451] And then he would just start hanging out and just stay there to agree to care for the horses until spring.

[452] So that's how he found himself living out by himself.

[453] And they would bring some food in, but it would be never enough and he would be eating, you know, Wolverine, beaver, moose, whatever he could come up with.

[454] But he was just open to it and didn't care, you know, and he was really comfortable with solitude.

[455] When I spend time with him, he's very gracious.

[456] But when he spent time with him, you see him just engage in conversation.

[457] Like you see a sort of weariness kick in.

[458] Where you're talking to someone who's very comfortable going months without human interaction.

[459] right so him talking to people's like okay that's enough let me get the fuck out of here so you realize like when i've stayed at his place his cabin um he's got he's got a remote cabin still when i stayed out there he kind of like will sort of drift off and vanish for good spells of time you know sure even when he's even when he's like entertaining you know and he sells bowls like wooden bowls for a living what's one of the things that he does uh you have one of those bowls i have one in my home yeah i need to get one those bowls.

[460] It's a birch, yeah, it's like a, you know, it's a salad bowl.

[461] Sort of like a growth on the side of a birch tree that you cut off with the chainsaw and hollow out.

[462] Yeah, they call them birch, you know, birch bark or burl bowls.

[463] Yeah.

[464] Yeah.

[465] I have a beautiful one.

[466] And he sells them, they go into tourist shops.

[467] I think it's a shame.

[468] That they go into tourist shops?

[469] Yeah.

[470] I think he should be, it should be all, be direct to consumer.

[471] Well, from him.

[472] Why don't you hook it up?

[473] I think about it.

[474] Get some of those 0 .0 .0 people on the case.

[475] Get some of your meat eater folks Yeah, he had a great many that he lost And a fire too Yeah, that was a sad story But besides, yeah, so he still guides And does that And makes his, you know, takes those burls And makes bowls out of them Just talking to a guy like that And listening to you talk to a guy like that It's so fascinating Because he lives a life that I can barely comprehend Just everything about it from And just to think that What he does is almost impossible to comprehend.

[476] Now think about Lewis and Clark making their way across the country and not really knowing what was out there.

[477] Yeah.

[478] Really not knowing.

[479] Like guessing, having some, you know, people gave some reports.

[480] This is what we saw here.

[481] This is what we saw there.

[482] They didn't even have a good account of all the different animals.

[483] No. They had wandered lust.

[484] And that's the thing.

[485] We were talking about this point, the Ardaics, we're talking about, like, what people now you'll hear people say, like, oh, he's a real mountain man, you know?

[486] And oftentimes, when people hear that, they imagine this old hermit, you know, who's like living in his cabin, him being a mountain man. But if you think about what the mountain men were, they were for the time the most well -traveled people, right, and the least xenophobic people alive.

[487] The equivalent today, to be a mountain man today, the equivalent would be that I think you'd have to go to Brazil and ascend the end.

[488] Amazon and follow tributary after tributary and get into like the borderlands around Venezuela and then go in and um despite the language barrier you'd have to go in and travel amongst and live amongst people who um tribes who had not had a lot of outside contact but had a familiarity had a familiarity with outside peoples and you'd live their foods you'd eat their foods and live with them and take their ways that they dress themselves and adopt it as your own the kind of guy that would do that is not the kind of guy we're talking about nowadays and we talk about he's a real mountain man right we're talking about reality show people that's what people talk about now but these people were like insatiably curious explorers they're the people now yeah the people that do like go to really crazy war zones or like decided to go backpack up in the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan you know just to see what happens um yeah very different kinds of people your episodes that you did where was that in with the most recent series um where you're bow fishing with these people yeah in Guyana And Guyana, yeah.

[489] That's got to be a trip.

[490] How long were you down there for?

[491] Oh, you know, long weeks.

[492] A couple weeks.

[493] Yeah, yeah.

[494] I mean, but there's a lot of travel.

[495] There's a lot of, like, stuff that needs to happen to get out on the river.

[496] When you're around these people, and they're all walking around barefoot, and they're making cassava, which we talked about the other day, that could easily kill you if you do it wrong.

[497] The water has all the cyanide in it.

[498] Like, you're about as close as you can get.

[499] to that kind of environment, right?

[500] Yeah, in a situation like that, you're with people who are very familiar with, like, very familiar with the modern world, like a great awareness of it.

[501] But, like, when the sort of rubber meets the road of daily existence, they're still really connected to life patterns and skill sets that were, that their grandparents used and still fishing, like, in very similar ways, right?

[502] So where you might have had when you were a boy, even if someone now is in their 30s, when they're a boy, they probably use a 12 -pound handmade wooden paddle.

[503] And maybe now they have a different paddle.

[504] Or maybe somehow they've come into a plastic paddle, say, and they use that for their boat.

[505] Or they have a, they still have a dugout canoe, but they also have an aluminum boat.

[506] So there's major differences.

[507] But just the general sort of approach and the fact that you're, deriving all of your protein from the river and that you hunt and fish 250, 300 days a year in the places where your ancestors have always done it, you're still getting this really beautiful glimpse at how people lived, even though they've had enormous changes in their own lifetime, and they're very much modern, you know, very modern, but you can still, like, glimpse it more you don't i don't think you really get that as much you don't get that as much here you know hunting is is ancestral right there's this kind of continuation that goes on but when europeans came here when europeans came to the new world they weren't coming in as hunters right if you go look at like daniel boone's family daniel boone's family came from england they didn't come here as hunters because you couldn't like the peasantry you couldn't hunt there they came here and learned hunting so hunting in america for euro -americans hunting in america is like an invention it's a thing that people kind of got learned and took from the indians so it doesn't have it doesn't have that like that deep deep thread that you'd find with indigenous communities where there's this continuation that's going on for forever unbroken, but on this continent unbroken for whatever, 15, 16, whatever the fashionable number is thousands of years, right?

[508] And so it's like our understanding is just different because our, like, my ancestors came here and like got into it.

[509] It wasn't a cultural continuation for them.

[510] And then when you look at like for food and wild game, an interesting thing is my, my use and understanding of wild game is really influenced by like contemporary food right like restaurant food things that chefs do like how do you take wild game and do these like cool exciting modern innovative kinds of things with wild game and cook it you go talk to like a dude even a dude like buck or particularly people in you know people in south America who have hunted for more of a like a subsistence literally subsistence purposes, their whole attitude is different about it.

[511] People in South America will eat the, like the Chimane or the Makushi.

[512] It's like they'll eat the same thing every day for lunch.

[513] Every day.

[514] Boiled fish with a dried pepper on it and then a grain made from cassava.

[515] Boiled as well.

[516] I shouldn't say a grain, but like a dish made from cassava.

[517] are they boiling it?

[518] Why don't they just grill it?

[519] Well, they sometimes do, but for lunch, it's like you'd take left over it, you'd probably like smoke for the, like, where they would call barbecue fish, where you make a big rack, you have a fire, make a big rack high above it.

[520] It kicks off a bunch of smoke.

[521] You split fish, salt them, and lay them on that rack and smoke them, dry them out.

[522] And then you take that fish and break it apart and pour river water over cassava, and then put fish in there with river water and kind of stir it up, or you just take fish and throw it in a pot and boil it and put that on there.

[523] But to eat that same thing every day.

[524] And then you come and talk about, there's no recipe, right?

[525] There's no, like, written preparation.

[526] Right.

[527] And then you come and talk about, like, wild game cookies, I understand it, where you make a book and it's got a hundred different recipes in it and all these ways to approach stuff.

[528] It's just, like, it's very particular to us.

[529] Like, other people aren't really perceiving it that way.

[530] Like, they don't use wild game and recipes.

[531] They have like a, there's like, here's how you cook this.

[532] And we don't really deviate from cooking it this way.

[533] Where it's like fish on a rack over to fire or fish in the pot of water.

[534] And very limited diet.

[535] Does it weird you out when you're around people like that?

[536] Because you have options, right?

[537] You can, you can eat any way you like.

[538] You can go to a restaurant.

[539] You get a burger from fast food.

[540] You choose to go hunting.

[541] With these people, it's literally how they survive.

[542] Yeah.

[543] Yeah, there's no option.

[544] There's no options and they've been doing it that way forever.

[545] Like, is it, do you feel like a weird recreational sort of person around them?

[546] Like, is it, does it feel strange?

[547] That's a great question, man. No, there's definitely, there's definitely like an envious part to how, like, to live that deliberately.

[548] Like, I'm a little bit envious of it.

[549] But really, the thing that.

[550] I feel most is I feel more than separated, I tend to feel more of the areas in which I'd be like aligned, you know, where I like appreciate the perspective and I appreciate the skill set, but never feeling, yeah, never feeling like bashful or ashamed or something that this would be something that I would like choose to engage in and this is something that they were engaged in.

[551] And I think that one of the things that helps make it that way.

[552] is how much they love to do it, right?

[553] That when you go out, like the infectious excitement of heading out in the morning, the fact that they still feel it.

[554] Like, there is giddy as anybody about going out and doing it, like very excited to go out and do it.

[555] It is not like going out to check your mailbox.

[556] My youngest daughter has become enamored with fishing, and I love it.

[557] because I get to, whenever we go on trips, I take her fish, she fucking loves it, man. And we were in Florida, and we were going to get to go bass fish.

[558] And I set it up, had a guy I was going to take us out.

[559] I woke her up, five o 'clock in the morning in the hotel.

[560] I'm carrying her.

[561] She's stiff as a board because she just woke up.

[562] She's like, I'm so excited.

[563] She was so excited.

[564] She wasn't like, Daddy, I'm tired.

[565] Can we just go back to bed?

[566] No, it was dark out.

[567] Five in the morning.

[568] She's just going, I'm so excited.

[569] Did she want to have having fun?

[570] She caught a six -pound bass.

[571] Oh, really?

[572] Then she's hooked.

[573] She got quite a few bass.

[574] It was a great lake in Florida.

[575] In Florida, obviously, a lot of great bass fishing there.

[576] But we caught a ton of large -mouth bass, and she caught a fat boy.

[577] It was like a six -pounder.

[578] She was freaking.

[579] It bit her finger.

[580] She was showing everybody, look, it bit my finger.

[581] She was so excited.

[582] She fucking loves fishing.

[583] But that feeling in the morning, when I'm looking at her little face and, like, we're on the water.

[584] It's a genetic thing.

[585] It seems like it's just in the deal.

[586] DNA.

[587] The fishing is, it's not like, hey, we're going to go play soccer, which she likes too, but there's not that kind of excitement.

[588] No, there's like, oh, this is going to be so fun.

[589] There's like, it's triggering something that is, it's deep inside human beings.

[590] I see it and I see it in, I see it in varying degrees in different people.

[591] Like some kids seem to come out of the box with more of it.

[592] Yeah.

[593] You know?

[594] Yeah.

[595] I don't mean that as a euphemism.

[596] No, my 10 -year -old daughter doesn't, she's like, yeah, we can go fishing.

[597] Like, she's gone fishing and caught stuff.

[598] It's okay.

[599] It's okay.

[600] When we had a daughter, my wife was adamant, you know, early on.

[601] As soon as she found out that it was going to be a daughter, like that you will not exclude our daughter in this world that you're in.

[602] I was like, of course not, you know.

[603] And I don't.

[604] But having, in my mind, I don't feel like I've messed this up.

[605] I feel like I've put the same emphasis, right?

[606] I have three kids, but my older two.

[607] The little one's just a little bit too little.

[608] You have to really know what's going on.

[609] But the older two, I feel like I put the same emphasis on it.

[610] And my daughter just isn't demonstrating the same enthusiasm that her older brother does.

[611] And you try to suss out like the nature, nurture question.

[612] Because I feel like I'm doing the same inputs.

[613] Right.

[614] But I'm getting different results.

[615] And it leads you to wonder, you know, it's a very small sample size.

[616] But when I talk to other parents, like, you know, parents who are parenting right now young kids, I just keep encountering other dads who are having the same experience.

[617] And it really leaves you to wonder sort of like what sort of like cultural influences are going on there where it's like the enthusiasms oftentimes.

[618] among young girls are not as high as the enthusiasm among boys.

[619] And it's hard to unpack.

[620] Is it cultural?

[621] I don't know.

[622] It's hard to unpack everything.

[623] Yeah, that's my question.

[624] It's like, at your kids' age, how old's your kids?

[625] Well, these two I'm talking about are eight and five.

[626] Yeah, man, I don't know how much culture plays apart.

[627] I know.

[628] I really think that it's and it's obviously, in my small sample group, an eight -year -old and a ten -year -old for the youngest kids, the eight -year -old fucking loves it.

[629] They're both girls.

[630] The ten -year -old, she's like, whatever.

[631] You know, if I try to wake her up, take her fish, and she'd be like, leave me alone, going back to sleep.

[632] I'm sure there are parents out there who, you know, I haven't met him yet.

[633] Maybe they're out there where they have, like, a boy and a girl, and the girl's super fired up, and the boy's not.

[634] Maybe it happens.

[635] I guarantee you it.

[636] There's, Jamie and I were just talking about this yesterday because I was watching this video of these.

[637] There's, I want to try to put this in a respectful way.

[638] I think there I'm sure you're aware of this there's people that are in the hunting world the outdoor industry that I think are in it because it's a good avenue to get attention if you're like a hot chick if you're a hot chick and you know you wear pink and you go out and shoot things you take all these grip and grins with deer and like you're going to get a lot of likes sponsorships imagine the male perspective on it.

[639] It's like here's the woman who has everything.

[640] Exactly.

[641] And she likes to hunt.

[642] Yeah, she's hot and she likes to hunt.

[643] And there's quite a few of them.

[644] And it's, I was telling Jamie, it's a weird world because part of me, I don't want to be a sexist.

[645] I don't want to look at these girls.

[646] I don't look at a guy who hunts and who wants to be a part of the outdoor industry and go, oh, this guy is just doing this because he thinks this is his avenue for fame and success.

[647] I think, well, here's a guy who really likes to hunt, and he realizes there's people like Steve Ronella and John Dudley out there and these famous hunters.

[648] Man, I want to be a famous hunter.

[649] How do I do it?

[650] You know, how do I go?

[651] Well, I'm going to just start taking Instagram pictures and say a lot of the same shit that they say and sort of, you know, put myself into the cultural norm.

[652] I don't think like that with girls.

[653] You're like, you just want to have men like you.

[654] Not all of them.

[655] A lot of them, I think, are super legit.

[656] A lot of them are, but there's unquestionably this added element in that world and with it let's be super generous and say it's only 10 % of them but that 10 % I'm like hmm I smell a rat I'm not unaware of what you're talking about I'm sure you're not no I notice it yeah it's weird yeah I even had like uh yeah I remember it was yeah it's kind of like a yeah like a like a like a like a like a like a like a like a huntress scene oh yeah super made up full war paint fake eyelashes hot as fuck skin tight clothes out there shooting shit taking pictures yeah it's weird and then you go to their Instagram page and it's like there's pictures of that and then there's a lot of pictures with their butt up in the air where they're doing some strange exercise getting ready for both season yeah accentuating their butt like that's weird I don't do any of those exercises I would really like to I know I would really like my to because I'm going to continue leaning on my I'm going to continue leaning on my daughter because I would really like her I'm going to keep leaning on her until I feel like she's in the at an age where she can legitimately say she doesn't want to go.

[657] Right.

[658] Because right now if I ask her every day hey you want to go to school she'd be having a real delinquency problem.

[659] So you're like you know you really like yeah you make kids do stuff.

[660] I took her duck hunting a couple weekends ago.

[661] It was cold morning and we get out there And before it's even legal light, she felt terrible.

[662] She's laying there crying about how cold her feet are.

[663] If my boy was doing that, I would have a very different attitude about it than when she's crying.

[664] Her crying because she's cold, like made me feel awful.

[665] Right.

[666] With my boy, I've been like, shh.

[667] Suck it up.

[668] But with her, I'm like, oh, man. Yeah.

[669] She's all cold now.

[670] Yeah.

[671] And then it may, and so you really, there really is a difference.

[672] Yeah, there's a, there's a difference there.

[673] And it's not, you know, the people that buy hunting licenses in this country, 90 % of the people that buy hunting, you know, 90 % are males.

[674] Right.

[675] Right.

[676] So one in 10 license holders is a woman.

[677] But then there's more women than men in the, you know, slightly more women than men in the country.

[678] And there's a ton of ways of explaining it.

[679] We talked about it earlier with Neanderthals or maybe Neanderthals or maybe in Neanderthals.

[680] Anerthals didn't have these, like, divided roles.

[681] But in all the hunter, like, and hunter -gather cultures is very normal to see a division of labor here and to have, like, that men were out hunting and women were not.

[682] There's a bunch of explanations for that.

[683] Like, people were tied to being home to care for small children and, you know, couldn't afford that risk.

[684] Do they vary?

[685] Are there some women that go out with the hunting parties?

[686] You know, if it is, you know, the minute you say no. someone's going to point out to some right variation but in your experience you've you've done several these trips to these remote jungles oh yeah but that's just that's just such a small thing i mean you get a rather than looking at personal experience just like from kind of exploring the literature and reading about you know historic accounts and what people found what people do uh it is very much the norm is very much the norm that hunting was you know patrilineal descent activity and all these cultures you go to, like the cult of the hunter is like a male sort of cult.

[687] But the factors that made it that way, okay, you have to assume it comes from some kind of practical factor, right?

[688] The factors that made it that way aren't there anymore.

[689] And I said it's a difficult thing to unpack.

[690] If it winds up being that if I have two boys and one girl, if it winds up being that both boys become avid, hunters and fishermen and somehow my daughter does not i'll probably view it as some bit of a personal failure though i'll never know what really was going on like i said it's hard it's hard to like unload it i wish i could have 100 children like 50 girls and 50 boys and have a bigger sample size but i you know i do wonder about it and what's funny too is there's no like at our home you know our kids like our kids eat tons of wild game at our home to the point where they don't have any you could give them anything to eat they would eat it and it would not register to them is unusual they've eaten everything right they've even eaten like breakfast sausage made out of fox and beaver meat they've eaten fox yeah they've eaten everything wait a minute yeah you eat fox i have i made a batch of breakfast sausage because i had an arctic fox one time and i made breakfast sausage out of it what was that like i just cut it in with beaver meat a little bit of deer and a little bit of pork fat.

[691] My kids ate it and it every winked.

[692] Did you try any of the fox on its own?

[693] Nope, didn't try the fox on its own.

[694] I've eaten a ton of things, but I didn't eat just a straight old...

[695] What possessed you to stuff that fox into that sausage?

[696] I heard that they were good.

[697] And I had an Arctic Fox and I wanted to get a thing made for my wife from it.

[698] So I had a hat, an Arctic Fox hat made for it.

[699] And I retained the meat.

[700] And then we just ate the meat and breakfast sausage.

[701] And then like if I told them, you know, if they were to, to ask like what meat it is and I would say oh it's you know this this and this it wouldn't freak them out it wouldn't it wouldn't even no it wouldn't even register as like a thing that might seem unusual to some people right so the squirrel rabbit all manner stuff right the just anything and so I know there's no element of there's no influence like that with them there's no influence of oh that's gross or you that's weird you know the other day we were hunting The other day we went out and we were hunting street pigeons, you know, and they'll eat pigeon meat.

[702] Where are you doing this?

[703] In Montana.

[704] Oh, okay.

[705] Yeah.

[706] There's like a guy at a grain saddle that was like in festival pigeons.

[707] Folks don't know that many people listening to this, that pigeons were actually brought over here as food.

[708] And when you get like fancy squab on the menu, that's what a pigeon is.

[709] Yeah, a flightless pigeon.

[710] Pigeon hasn't flown yet.

[711] That's what a squab is?

[712] So smaller and younger?

[713] That's the idea?

[714] Yeah, the meat's pinkish on the, the meat's pinkish on squab.

[715] If you want to get squab, we used to go out and catch squabs where we had like a little, almost like the equivalent of a little trap line where they would, you know, nest in various places around town.

[716] And we would just know all the places to go check to get squabs.

[717] And, yeah, it's one that hasn't flown yet.

[718] So, but, you know, people that commercially produce squab, you can just keep them from flying.

[719] But if you want squab from the wild, you'd need to go out, you know, you just go.

[720] go and collect them.

[721] And what's the difference between pigeon and squab in terms of the way it tastes?

[722] Pigeon meat is tougher, grayer, has a more livery quality.

[723] And squab is like very tender, pinkish.

[724] Like it's like leaning, it's not like quail, but it's leaning way more in the direction of quail.

[725] Like if a pigeon and a quail had a baby.

[726] squab's more like that.

[727] It's one of the biggest surprises I had in, that was one of the biggest surprises that I've ever had in, in game, if we can count that as wild game, would be what a squab tasted like.

[728] Because I had been eating, I had for a long time eating street pigeons.

[729] Because, you know, street pigeons, you know, they're around.

[730] Even up in the Missouri breaks, you get street pigeons that nest up in the cliffs.

[731] And, you know, there's many places you can hunt street pigeons and they become an agricultural pest and they're not regulated.

[732] So there's no close season, no bag limit, right?

[733] They're treated like, they have no more, they're regulated like rats.

[734] If you could talk to wildlife managers and ask them if they could wave a magic wand and make street pigeons go away, most everybody would wave it because they're so costly.

[735] They're costly to cities.

[736] They're costly to agriculture.

[737] So I'd always eaten pigeons, but the minute of discovering, like discovering what a squab was like, which is well known to people in the, you know, fine dining, but I had never had it.

[738] It was shocking how good it is.

[739] That's interesting.

[740] I've never picked it off the menu, but now I'm tempted.

[741] Yeah, you should do it.

[742] But Street Pigeons, should I avoid that?

[743] No, I would eat something first.

[744] Just to test it?

[745] Yeah, make patets from it.

[746] Okay, but it's not something that you would go, this is one of my favorite things to eat.

[747] No. Is there a way to do it where you could really, like, is there a preparation maybe that you've missed?

[748] it's not bad to put it in a marinade and you can grill it you want to take the little breast and you poke it a whole bunch like poke it with a fork and tenderize a little bit and also make some like avenues of approach for the marinade and then you know grill them over a very hot flame but what's good is like to use it like similar to like stuff with tarmigan or whatever is like to make patas and tureans Tarmigan is something that you would cook that way as well I've only seen people do tarmigan on that What's that show called?

[749] Life Below Zero So a lady who lives She's been on the show before She lives like fucking What does she live like 200 miles above the Arctic Circle Something crazy like that And she hunts tarmigan up there The best tarmigan I've ever eaten And this is We This is in our new cookbook too But I mentioned using harmingin for it, but it's just a dish that's great for regular, like, any, any kind of meat, particularly game bird, is like, you have, you have a hot pot, yeah, where you, like, where you have, like, the, you know, you have, like, the simmering broth, and you have all these raw, like, raw, like, raw sliced meats that you dip in there.

[750] Mm -hmm.

[751] The best harming I've ever had is just like that.

[752] Hmm.

[753] And it's, it's, it's otherworldly, you know, it's just kind of, like, kind of like, when you slice it thin and cook it that way, it just kind of vanishes on your tongue.

[754] Right.

[755] It's a very, very tender meat.

[756] You can almost kind of mash it up.

[757] People, like a thing you hear with a lot of game birds, people describe Tarmigan, street pigeon.

[758] A lot of game birds, people describe as livery, diving ducks being livery because there's like a texture thing to it and then a strength of flavor and a darkness of color.

[759] And those, you know, people make a lot of pattees with liver, right?

[760] So those birds that have that quality, oftentimes, they can find their way into patas.

[761] So we also have recipes for that.

[762] that, like how to do pattees from using all manner of meat.

[763] Do you have any recipes in that book for brown bear?

[764] No, but we have bear recipes.

[765] Is there a difference?

[766] You know, brown bear, black bears are among people who know black bears are widely accepted as being good to eat.

[767] If you go into, if you go to earlier I mentioned Daniel Boone.

[768] So if you go into that, like the frontier era of American history, right?

[769] which preceded, just these little lingo terms, the frontier era of American history preceded the mountain man era of American history with like the eastern settlements, right?

[770] If you read it like about Daniel Boone's area, you know, early 1700s up into, you know, up into the Revolutionary War, bear meat was the most popular meat on the frontier, black bears.

[771] The most popular is in preferred?

[772] Yeah, preferred over venison.

[773] Really?

[774] Yeah.

[775] People hunted deer.

[776] to sell deer hides and they would eat the deer meat.

[777] People hunt a bear because that's what they like to eat.

[778] Yeah, it's just like, it's just more beef -like, you know?

[779] Right.

[780] And, you know, when cooked, right?

[781] People love bear meat.

[782] Brown bears, grizzly bears, just don't enjoy the same reputation.

[783] Different diets.

[784] The thing you run in with brown, like, when we use it, when we use the term brown, like, brown bear is kind of almost like a, like a, it's used amongst hunters a lot.

[785] lot but it's all one species so whether you got a grizzly bear in Wyoming or a brown bear on kodiak it's taxonomically it's regarded as as a single species people call brown bear a brown bear is a grizzly you'll get all kinds of people right and you to say about various points of this but like debating various aspects of this a brown bear is a grizzly with access to marine resources where marine resources make up a major component of its diet.

[786] And then the question you bring up is then, like, if you go to the North Slope, so if you go to the Arctic Coast and you saw a grizzly there, you'd be like, well, he has access to marine resources.

[787] He can eat a beached whale, whatever, but he's a grizzly.

[788] So, like, brown bears kind of extend, right, from, you know, northern BC up around and hook around into the Bering Sea, but at some point they're just not brown bears anymore, and they're huge.

[789] They tend to be big and oftentimes because of the name, like they tend to have like a darker coloration.

[790] They have a horrible reputation as food.

[791] You'll always find people who will point it out, right?

[792] Or nowadays, because people are so aware, like in the social media world, nowadays you'll have people who will kill a brown bear.

[793] And here you are, you've got four or five hundred pounds of meat and they'll talk about how they're going to eat it.

[794] But like, dude, you're in for a pound a day this year.

[795] Really?

[796] Yeah.

[797] Is that really what happened?

[798] For real?

[799] Is that really what happened?

[800] That's true, right?

[801] And then there's no salvage requirement on it.

[802] There's no salvage requirement on it.

[803] Don't you have to, in Alaska, don't you have to pack it out?

[804] Depends.

[805] There's some areas that have zero, some areas, you know, typically, typically no, but there are areas that do have salvage requirements.

[806] Where I have a cabin, there's a salvage requirement on bear meat in the spring.

[807] Because in areas where bears, that's a black bear area.

[808] Your cabin is, there's no brown bears.

[809] There it's island by island.

[810] So some islands have brown bears.

[811] So you go like the ABC Islands, like, you know, you go to Admiralty Island and Admiralty Island is all brown bears.

[812] So it winds up being that if the island is good brown bear habitat, it will only have brown bears.

[813] Because on the islands where it's smaller, they just would, they kill all the black bears.

[814] They're there and black bears aren't there.

[815] If the island is not brown bear habitat.

[816] and can't support brown bears, it'll become a black bear island.

[817] Prince Wales is a black bear island.

[818] Admiralty is a brown bear island.

[819] And, you know, it kind of depends on how much seems to maybe depend on how much like open country or alpine or, you know, if it's like densely, densely forested, it's less suitable and becomes a black bear territory.

[820] But black bears in the spring have a salvage requirement.

[821] Because if you're talking about coastal bears, coastal bears are better to eat in the spring when they're not eating.

[822] tons of rotten salmon.

[823] In the fall, there wouldn't be a salvage requirement because when they're eating dead salmon, their flesh can become not good.

[824] I remember you telling me a story about using a guy's smoker and he told the guy, man, you need to clean that smoker out.

[825] It smells like fish.

[826] He's like, I've never cooked a fish in there.

[827] It's because you were smoking a bear in it.

[828] Yep.

[829] And that was an early June, an early June black bear who was not getting salmon, but it's it stores up, that flavor stores up their fat.

[830] I've watched even.

[831] wolves eating salmon that were so rotten that they're like lapping it up where it just turns into a gray mush and the bears and people's idea of a bear is like eating a brand new fresh fish which they love to do and they seem to prefer it like when there's tons of fresh fish and they're just getting fresh fish they'll just eat eggs right but as the fish run dies down they just start eating rotten fish um I can't remember how we got talking about quality of food Oh, were you asked like what?

[832] So even like Buck Bowden, Buck Bowden, who like I said, he's picked the head meat off of Wolverine's skull to eat it.

[833] Buck Bowden said he's struggled his entire life and just hasn't found a way to make brown bears that good.

[834] There are exceptions.

[835] People run into good taste and ones.

[836] You know, I was talking about like Grizzlies up on the North Slope have a very good reputation.

[837] Any black bear in the Rockies?

[838] any black bear is good I mean I've heard stories like I had a buddy that killed one over a dead cow one time he killed one that was scavenging a rotten cow and he had a hard time with the meat but generally bears that aren't eating marine resources are pretty are phenomenally good I talked to my friend Eric Weinstein yesterday he's a mathematician one of the smartest guys I know and he has been fascinated by my obsession with hunting and so he started watching a bunch of hunting things online and he said he was very put off i saw people uh killing bears with spears yeah and celebrating and the way they were celebrating about stuff he's like he found the thing the whole thing i you know and i saw his point and we had this discussion about it where um you know acknowledging the need to control the population and that this is all that they're allocated certain amount of tags by wildlife biologists and this keeps the moose population healthy and the deer population all these different things and even that people eat them all those things made sense to him but the celebration and the the all the hootin and hollering and stuff it's like there was just not enough of a reverence for the dead and it really really disturbed him yeah that's it's a great subject and it's hard to it's hard to approach because you find so many contradictions and weird parts of it and by that I mean this I was having the conversation tonight with a gentleman over dinner and we were talking about he was explaining to me like what is the role of a rancher and what is the role of a farmer here's a person who's bringing animals into life he's propagating breeding animals with sole intention that they will all die and he will make his living off of their death but that person remains a sort of cultural icon they enjoy like a celebration you know when you're trying to sell a pickup truck right if you can tie it to a rancher it makes that pickup truck seem more legitimate that's a celebrated character and people like oh he's an old cowboy and we like that it's like what is and not to I'm definitely not knocking them like let me get where I'm going with this but what is that like that person is based off of like rearing animals in order that they may die and he profits from their death and remains celebrated and then you get into the idea of what in when it comes to american wildlife where we have a population of wildlife many respects we have it and enjoy the management that we do and the abundance that we do in many ways that abundance is supported, bolstered, financed by hunters.

[839] But hunters tend to not enjoy that same cultural support because of the death, right?

[840] Well, it's also because of media depictions.

[841] Sure.

[842] I think that's the big part of it.

[843] More than even so than the death.

[844] If all of our depictions about hunting were tied into this sort of rational discourse and they showed all the images from your show of animals being shot and carefully butchered in the field and then prepared and cooked and enjoyed, I think people would have a way different perception.

[845] But, you know, we have Elmer Fudd.

[846] We have the evil hunters in the movies that are always, you know, trying to torture the animals.

[847] I mean, it's Disney and anthropomorphization of these animals and all these different films and media depictions and books.

[848] That shit.

[849] and then teddy bears, all these things are like stained into people's brains of what's good and what's bad.

[850] You know, very few kids have stuffed cows that they're pets or that they're toys.

[851] They have teddy bears and maybe Rudolph the red -nosed reindeer.

[852] You don't want to shoot Rudolph.

[853] No, it seems that it gets much worse and more contentious, the less, the popular, if the American population is looking at something they recognize as game, they feel different.

[854] Right.

[855] Things that they don't recognize as game, that they don't readily recognize his game, to see that death is more abhorrent to them, even if it is being treated as game.

[856] But, like, you don't, like, you don't see social media explosions come up around someone with a turkey.

[857] Right.

[858] You don't see a lot of social media explosions come up with someone around a white -tailed deer.

[859] People look at that.

[860] They see this animal that they perceive to be very abundant.

[861] In the case of white tails and turkeys, they're correct.

[862] Very abundant.

[863] they're familiar with them they're familiar with the idea of these things being hunted and it feels different now if there's things where there's a perceived scarcity okay and they don't immediately recognize it as a food item it's hard for them extremely and this is way outside of my personal area of expertise but like what goes on in Africa but for people to see animals in Africa that have been hunted, and they recognize them only from like film depictions, cartoon depictions, mobiles over their child's crib, like a hippopotamus.

[864] It's very, like you can't look at that, and it's hard to see that as like the harvest of game.

[865] It becomes something very different.

[866] And it's, we've watched it happen with bears, you know.

[867] Also a thing that will happen is if you initiate the hunting of something that wasn't hunted before that's very difficult for people so you take a state where like New Jersey or Florida where they for a long time historically they would have a bear season they would lose the bear season the bear season would go away because of a resource scarcity then later they would recover the resource and want to reinitiate the hunt people have a very difficult time with that being like if it wasn't hunted before how can it be hunted now right and that trips people up really bad where they people have hard to get on board with it i don't know if you watch what's going on with grizzly bears and around what has been unfortunately named the greater yellowstone ecosystem where you sort of have this cultural custody battle around who owns this indiana -sized hunk of land surrounding yellowstone where because of naming people sort of think of it as as yellowstone when it certainly is not it's a you know large area surrounding it but there we had a period where We weren't, you know, we stopped grizzly hunting because the animals are being over -harvested, habitat destruction, and then you go through an enormous amount of work to recover the species, and people are extremely resistant to the idea that you would start hunting now, that you would now start hunting something you weren't hunting a few days ago.

[868] Right.

[869] That's like.

[870] But it's also what you were saying earlier that it's not recognized as a game species because it's not thought of something you eat.

[871] Yeah.

[872] Like mountain lions.

[873] Like even if mountain lions are a nuisance, like there was a woman that had, She had a depredation permit because the mountain lines had killed like 10 alpacas and a goat in her farm in Malibu.

[874] And she decided not to act on the permit because there were so many different people that were threatening her.

[875] There was so many wildlife activists that were threatening her and just general people online, death threats.

[876] Because she, you know, she was going to hire someone to shoot this mountain line that had been, I mean, it just went on a thrill kill and got into one of her.

[877] pens just went ham yeah and uh but people they think of that thing as somehow another better than her alpacas which is very weird no people just recently protested the killing of tiger of a tiger in india that had killed 13 people i saw that i put that online and people in the comments where we're like fuck those people like okay you're out of your mind what if that was your sister what if it was your daughter what was your mom what if it was your brother your brother watch your brother getting dragged away by a giant monster.

[878] You know, and just because it's called a tiger, you're cool with that?

[879] Like, fuck, fuck your brother.

[880] Is that what you're saying?

[881] This was an interesting year.

[882] I don't mean that, well, let me finish my thought.

[883] I don't want to sound call it interesting, but Washington State had its first mountain lion mortality, like, where Mountain Lion killed a human for the first time, and I think it was 94 years.

[884] And Oregon as well.

[885] And then Oregon had its first in state history.

[886] Yeah.

[887] And with the one of Washington, it killed a person.

[888] They tracked the lion down and killed the lion.

[889] And the state fishing game department got, you know, predictably like a bunch of blowback for having killed it.

[890] And I was talking to someone who was involved with that.

[891] And I was saying, you know, I think that the blowback would have been a lot worse had you not done it.

[892] Yeah.

[893] You know, but you just don't hear from those people.

[894] I don't think there would be blowback, honestly.

[895] If they didn't kill the lion, if the lion is just out there.

[896] roaming around.

[897] I think people would just ignore it because the news cycle is so fucking quick.

[898] Yeah.

[899] I think they would lose, it would get lost and Trump would say something stupid about North Korea or whatever and people would forget.

[900] Yeah.

[901] I can, you know, I continue to, you know, I continue to hunt black bears.

[902] I eat black bears.

[903] It's like, you know, in the case of mountain lines, you have rapidly expanding mountain lion populations.

[904] There's a lot of mountain lines.

[905] Mountain lines are recolonizing new territories all the time.

[906] They're managed.

[907] You know, most states manage them very tightly with mortality quotas, female mortality quotas, open season, close season, permit draws, right?

[908] That they're managed as a game animal.

[909] They're hunted and there's some allowable use of the renewable resource.

[910] And at the same time that that's going on, we're enjoying expanding populations of mountain lines.

[911] I personally welcome the return of mountain lines.

[912] to any suitable habitat where there's enough space for them to live without causing undue friction by them budding up against human interests and I encourage people who are in areas that are being recolonized by mountain lions to practice some level of tolerance and use best use practices or best case practices around to like avoid conflict right same thing with bears like I welcome the return of bears I think there's a lot of areas in this country not a lot, but there's a handful of areas in this country that could have sustainable populations of grizzly bears.

[913] That's like suitable habitat that is not being used by grizzly bears and could and should be used by grizzly bears.

[914] At the same time, I like to see when it's appropriate, I like to see state -managed wildlife practices and then allowable harvest of animals.

[915] There's a lot of people listening to this that don't even understand that mountain lions are edible.

[916] And in fact, you say delicious.

[917] I like them.

[918] I was eating mountain lines long before I ever hunted a mountain line.

[919] I've hunted one mountain line in my life.

[920] And I've eaten a bunch more than that.

[921] So I had never had the question about it.

[922] I'd never had the question about whether it was good or not.

[923] But the vast majority of the people listening to this right now are probably like, what?

[924] Yeah.

[925] Among houndsmen, like among people who deal lines, is widely known that it's a very good meat.

[926] But I was introduced to it that way.

[927] There's a place when I lived in Missoula, Montana, there's a place 20 miles east there.

[928] called Rock Creek Lodge, and they're famous for having this big thing called the testicle festival in the fall where, you know, after you castrate steers, you know, people will fry up the nuts, right?

[929] And so the testicle festival is this big, it's kind of like turned into like this big, or had turned into this kind of like biker festival.

[930] But it was this big party, and it was centered around eating deep fried cowballs.

[931] And we used to go down there all the time and go drinking.

[932] And one time I was at that same place in the spring, and this guy had a pot of like, pot of what looked like pulled pork, you know, with barbecue sauce, and he had a bunch of buns out, and he was just giving it away.

[933] And I was eating it, and he was telling me how it was just mountain lion meat.

[934] And he was saying, you know, he was saying like, balls in the fall and pussy in the spring, you know, she was a great mountain line there.

[935] And that was the first time I had mountain line.

[936] And then later I had a girlfriend who was from Wyoming, and she one day is standing behind a guy in a, she's standing behind a hardware store who's buying a mountain line tag.

[937] and she asked him, what do you do with all that meat?

[938] And he didn't want it.

[939] So she gave her phone number.

[940] And when he got his line, he gave us the whole damn thing.

[941] And so we ate that whole mountain line.

[942] Then I came into other mountain lion meat in other ways and always enjoyed it to the point where I wasn't eating it because I had a moral obligation to eat what I killed.

[943] I was going out of my way to get it.

[944] Because I'd rather eat someone else's mountain lion than buy pork.

[945] It's like pork It's that similar It's white meat, man Wow You can take the back straps With fat on it You can leave the fat on it And take that back strap And see you got to cook it Good because it'll have You know, it's probably going to have Trichinosis So you got to cook at the 160 Just like just how pork used to be Cook it Sear it The fat's good The meat's good We cook it down Make all kinds of preparations With it cooked down My kids meat They eat a bunch of wild They eat a bunch of mountain line meat you know well cooked yeah but that's one of those things that we're not accustomed to but we're fine with things we are accustomed to yeah if you showed a mountain lion dead on social media and you're like can't wait to eat this people would go fucking crazy yeah well you saw that recent controversy with that woman who shot a goat invasive species on an island off of Scotland it's an animal they have to hunt yeah they literally have to hunt them if they don't if you never seen what a goat can do due to an environment, they just destroy everything.

[946] They eat everything they can.

[947] They cause erosion.

[948] They decimate all the local foliage.

[949] But they weren't seeing that.

[950] And I think that they were like the people that were upset about that were really like struggling to describe why it upset them.

[951] Even a politician had pointed out that the person was wearing camouflage because traditionally in Scotland you hunt with different clothes.

[952] And like there was no secret that there's hunting going on out there.

[953] Right.

[954] No secret at all.

[955] It was that it's an American.

[956] that she's wearing camouflage.

[957] She's adorned, you know, like makeup, and it was kind of like this beautiful image set up.

[958] She had a high -powered rifle, which they're already using out there anyways.

[959] And it was just a confusing idea and a confusing image for people.

[960] Had it been some old Scottish dude with his deer stalker outfit on, but there's something where people are like, why her and why here?

[961] Yeah, and also her description of it as a fun hunt.

[962] I mean, people had a lot of problems with it, but it's also, I think, because there wasn't anything else going on.

[963] She caught a cycle, you know, she just got, you know, she was headed down the river and a tributary opened up, and she went right into controversy bank.

[964] Yeah.

[965] That's what I think happened.

[966] And the people that were tweeting about, I saw Glenn Greenwald tweet about it.

[967] I'm like, you're a journalist.

[968] Like, you're an actual journalist, a respected journalist.

[969] You should really do some research on this because the way you're calling it, I don't know, I mean, Glenn Greenwald is, I believe he's some sort of an animal rights activist.

[970] I don't know if he's a vegan.

[971] I don't know if he's a vegetarian, but I know Ricky Jervase isn't.

[972] He's not?

[973] No. Really?

[974] Yes.

[975] That's the weird part, right?

[976] Yeah, that's funny, man. I didn't know that.

[977] I didn't know that he did.

[978] I had a conversation with him on a radio show about.

[979] about it.

[980] He eats meat.

[981] Yes.

[982] We were talking about hunting and, you know, I brought it up because we were on the radio show together on the Opian Anthony show and I said, I shot bears and I eat them.

[983] You know, I eat everything I kill and I hunt for food and I prefer to get meat that way and we discussed the fact that he eats meat.

[984] Huh.

[985] That's really surprising me, man. It's a weird one, right because it's a there's a virtue signaling aspect of shitting on hunters where you're always going to get some positive remarks about it it's it's difficult for me it's not difficult for me for from someone who doesn't uh who doesn't eat meat right i can i don't have any i don't have a problem with it like i'm like you know my brother said the best like i don't know he said maybe they have a point but when it's coming from someone who does eat me it winds up demonstrating they're trying to put them to condemn hunters who are hunting like a regulated resource to condemn them you're sort of acting like when you condemn you're sort of acting like oh I care about these issues and I want to be out here and I want to be like articulating a perspective and I know what's going on but then so you're like putting yourself out as a person who has opinions of value right just to just like let your opinion be known yeah so if you're going to have that like where's the self -examination exactly where you are if you're eating meat like you're contributing all kinds of animal death like what is your understanding of what is your understanding of those lives and those deaths how is that not part of your reckoning if i do let's say i am happy that i got a bear that i will eat with my family let's say i am happy about it um is it best for you that you're kind of is it better to be sad about it somehow is it better to be regretful or just ignore the fact all together or why is it not okay that i'm happy about what i eat i know the story of it really well like i understand the history of wildlife in this country i don't want to say better than anybody but damn sure better than most um i know where we've been i have a good sense of where we're going in terms of american wildlife what the challenges are for American wildlife, right?

[986] I'm involved in this stuff on a daily basis.

[987] I can know all that, and I can see my place in it, right?

[988] I can see what my actions are, and whether my actions are helpful or hurtful for something that I care a great deal about.

[989] And if I can know that well and get a deer, a bear, whatever, and have it be food, and find that I'm, like, really happy to be involved in that, that somehow is off -putting to people.

[990] But it's okay to be that I'm blind to it.

[991] I have this nagging sense of guilt about it that I haven't reckoned with.

[992] I don't really know about it.

[993] You know?

[994] And that's like, that's like an acceptable position for some people to have.

[995] It's really hard for me with people that are, that, that are contributing to animal death who, who want to condemn those who are more willing to, or for whatever reason, willing to, excited about taking part in the process themselves.

[996] I got to find a way to, I got to find a way to engage with it, though, and I need to get a better understanding of it because the debate isn't going away.

[997] I can't keep brushing it off as so ridiculous that it doesn't warrant my time, because clearly it does warrant my time to understand that perspective.

[998] I just haven't had anybody really give to me in a good way.

[999] I have people say, like, oh, but they were raised to be eaten.

[1000] That's a foolish perspective.

[1001] That, to me, is way worse.

[1002] It's a life condemned.

[1003] I'd probably rather talk to Ricky.

[1004] Google of Glenn Greenwald as a vegan.

[1005] I'd probably rather talk to someone like Ricky Jervase about it because I assume that he's articulate about it.

[1006] He's articulate.

[1007] I don't think his position is nuanced.

[1008] I think there's some willful ignorance that's a part of people that eat meat but condemn hunting.

[1009] Willful in the fact that, like I said, they know that they're going to get a certain reaction out of people when they tweet about it on social media.

[1010] One thing, if you're talking about someone who's out there shooting things and not eating it, Okay, I get it.

[1011] I'm with you.

[1012] If some guys are shooting an elephant because he wants his tusks, I'm on your side.

[1013] I get it.

[1014] But if someone chooses to hunt, you know, an animal, fill in the blank, that might be a goat, might be weird to you, that they're eating this thing.

[1015] But they're shooting this.

[1016] It's an invasive species.

[1017] It's actually very delicious.

[1018] It's very edible.

[1019] It's prized for its meat by some communities.

[1020] You don't make any sense.

[1021] You're doing this because you know that other people are ignorant about it as well.

[1022] either you're ignorant because you've never bothered to look into it or you've bothered to look into it and you're ignoring the nuance.

[1023] Yeah.

[1024] In the case of the goat thing, this is an added thing.

[1025] There's an added element that our government on the federal level is involved.

[1026] There's a lot of state wildlife management agencies that are involved in trying to do wild goat eradication projects on islands.

[1027] Yes.

[1028] This is something that's ongoing all the time in Hawaii and many other places where we're like out helicopter gunning yeah helicopter gunning for invasive species explain to people how those goats got there in the first place because this is also very weird um a variety of ways but a lot of things were a lot of island species this is just one way it happens where invasive on islands would be introduced by seafarers whalers who would want to establish food resources along trans -oceanic routes so that you could put something there and come back and get it later early way like like whalers used to come out of the the the american northeast like all those famous whaling villages in new england you know they would go down and stop in and like you know stop in in the glopagos whatever and gather up tortoises that they could flip over in the hold of a boat and the tortoises stay alive for months on its back and you'd have like a fresh meat resource and as people came to understand scurvy and realizing that fresh meat um gives you enough vitamin c to avoid scurvy that you can get from dried meat because you know the way the vitamin c behaves through the cooking and drying process but like fresh meat you can keep from having scurvy meat became like even more important then but people would come in you'd like cut some sheep loose cut some goats loose on an island and know that they're going to breed and build up a big population and that can be like a place you stop in and get food um and other things get introduced in other ways and of course animals move you know so if you have one island it has close proximity to another island they can swim across yeah bump over and then it destroys native vegetation they trample birds nests and so you have in many cases where introductions of non -natives particularly non -native grazing animals non -native predators will wind up causing like a lot of extinctions of endemic species on islands and creates all kinds of problems and that's exactly what we're talking about with this goat in that picture so this is an animal that must be killed if you want healthy wildlife on that island the native wildlife and the native fauna the flora all this stuff that lives there all the stuff that's supposed to be there you got to kill the goats otherwise they'll eat everything but i think people look people look and they like they they look and they're like i don't buy that that was the motivation of that person and what I care about is motivations of individuals.

[1029] I think you're right.

[1030] Because when California got rid of mountain lion hunting, they're still killing several hundred mountain lions here a year.

[1031] People are comfortable with, like the total lion kill didn't change much.

[1032] People are comfortable with the state agent or someone being paid to go out and kill lines.

[1033] They're not comfortable with someone paying who wants to go do it.

[1034] I don't think they realize, I don't think they realize that state agencies are killing as many mountains.

[1035] lines in California as they are.

[1036] I don't think people understand that.

[1037] I think people do understand if something gets put on the ballot, you know, would you like to reintroduce mountain lion hunting?

[1038] People would go crazy.

[1039] Like, why would you do that?

[1040] Mount lions are beautiful.

[1041] They're exciting.

[1042] I want to see them.

[1043] But these are people in Santa Monica.

[1044] You know what I'm saying?

[1045] Yeah.

[1046] They're not people that are living, you know, an hour outside of Bakersfield.

[1047] They've got 16 mountain lines in their backyard in a year.

[1048] This is a different kind of world.

[1049] if they're in the Tachapi mountains out there and you see mount lions all the time they have a lot of mountain lines it's a real issue and there's a problem too that I view and this is coming from there's a problem where I think a lot of people have a very hard time empathizing with people who might be negatively impacted by wildlife as well in the question of the lion issue where it's kind of like this idea like well you better suck it up right yeah so if you're a rancher and you're running cattle in an area where you're losing a lot of cattle the wolves and grizzlies people will look and be like you better suck it up buddy like i can't really picture your problem but your complaints are not legitimate well they can't if someone were to cut a if someone were to cut a grizzly loose in golden gate state part right i don't know um i think that people would have would come to have a different perspective on that to put it mildly yeah but it winds up being that you look and people are they don't really want to hear about other people's problems if it doesn't if it doesn't jive with their understanding of what problems are yeah and that's the area where the issue around grizzly bears and the delisting so you know they were delisted they were removed from endangered species at protection temporarily um because they had met all recovery goals so when we like what's the recovered population look like.

[1050] They mapped out what it would look like, and we've exceeded that for many years now, and they were delisted, but then Wyoming and Idaho moved to have a very limited hunt on them, and then they were a federal judge blocked the delisting, and they went back in the listing.

[1051] What was the federal judge's motivation?

[1052] Well, you want to hope that they didn't have one.

[1053] You want to think that they were just looking at the details.

[1054] of it, but I think there's a suspicion that that person went into that, no I'm damn sure what they were going to do, you know.

[1055] But you don't really know.

[1056] I mean, a lot of these arguments around, they come down to, like, technicalities, right?

[1057] No one's arguing that the population's recovered.

[1058] Well, there's also the argument that the judge is probably trying to protect his own reputation because the amount of blowback that a judge would receive for allowing a hunt to go through is vastly different.

[1059] than blocking a hunt.

[1060] Blocking a hunt, you're not going to get that much blowback.

[1061] You'll get a few people that are upset, but it hadn't been an established resource.

[1062] It's not like you'd take it something away from people, but if he allowed it, boy, the wildlife people would go fucking bananas on this guy.

[1063] Yeah, they tend to, like, and I don't even call them environmentalists.

[1064] Like, people who sue to block, the delisting of recovered species, they'll masquerade as, you know, ecologically conscious environmentalists, but they're just people who it's untenable to them.

[1065] They can't, they're never going to accept the idea that you're going to have human exploitation of this resource, right?

[1066] They masquerade it.

[1067] They have an environmental motivation, but it's not.

[1068] It's like it's an animal rights motivation.

[1069] There's a very, they have a sensitive ear in a certain federal court in Missoula.

[1070] And so you'll see a lot of these cases around wolves and grizzlies.

[1071] They'll get that, they'll want it done through.

[1072] that court because they know they're probably going to have a friendly take on it.

[1073] I think it was a real, watching that happened, and that's been happening recently, I think it was a real travesty because there's a couple things that happen like culturally in areas where you'll, you create a lot of tension with people where there's people that are living amongst these things and they're looking for some level of, some level of relief and they want to see it go to state management, and they might want to see the state exercise some control over where certain populations of large predators are spreading into.

[1074] And when it winds up being that their voices are not heard, you know, and they feel that people from far away are really heavily influencing decisions that affect them on a daily basis, it winds up creating, like, a lot of animosity toward the species, too, where, like, think about what happened with the spotted owl, right?

[1075] The spotted owl, no one can see, no one perceives the spotted owl as owl anymore.

[1076] The spotted owls become like a symbol of federal overreach.

[1077] And you'll find that like, you know, wolves for a while, they become like a symbol of a dispute.

[1078] And people stop liking the animals much.

[1079] And it becomes like this like contentious creature.

[1080] And I think that we're going to head that way if we keep, if we keep stepping in on wildlife issues with the mentality that we've been approaching, the wolf and grizzly issue.

[1081] In the northern Great Lakes, the northern Rockies soon to be in the greater Yersloan ecosystem now.

[1082] I think you're dealing with local and then you're dealing with national, right?

[1083] So the local people are going to have an issue with it because they're going to be impacted by it.

[1084] It's going to be directly impacting their life.

[1085] Dogs are going to be killed while, you know, they're going to take domestic cattle and all sorts of different things.

[1086] You're going to have real issues with the people that like to go elk hunting.

[1087] The populations have diminished rapidly.

[1088] But the rest of the country doesn't give a shit.

[1089] people in San Francisco, they don't give a fuck about it.

[1090] People in Chicago aren't impacted by it, especially if they don't have anyone in their family that hunts or anyone that has a background in hunting and they don't have a background in it themselves, they don't care.

[1091] No, people really don't.

[1092] And it's, I pointed out all the time, but that I care about the availability and abundance of deer, elk, moose, caribou, right?

[1093] Like, I care about the resource.

[1094] There's a lot of people who rely on the resource, use the resource.

[1095] They're major economic drivers.

[1096] I'm definitely anything but I'm like, I regard myself as a pro -wolf person.

[1097] I regard myself as a pro -grisly person.

[1098] I cherish every interaction I have with those animals.

[1099] Do you think there's a problem calling them a resource?

[1100] I don't have a problem with calling them a resource, but people do have a problem with calling a resource.

[1101] And, yeah, I'm like pro.

[1102] I like the insuitable habitat.

[1103] I like to see them present.

[1104] also like to see that I also like to see them managed in a way that allows for abundant wild game resources.

[1105] What's going on?

[1106] House passed the bill to drop legal protections for gray wolves.

[1107] It's passed today.

[1108] Whoa.

[1109] Or, yeah, well, this is part was two hours ago.

[1110] Well, roll down a little bit.

[1111] Republican -controlled House passed a bill on Friday to drop legal protections for gray wolves across the lower 48 states reopening a lengthy battle over the predator species, long despised by farmers and ranchers, wolves were shot, trapped, poisoned out of existence in most of the U .S. in the mid -20th century, by the mid -20th century, since securing protection in the 1970s, wolves have bounced back.

[1112] Well, that's not really exactly what happened.

[1113] Great Lakes of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin as well in the northern Rockies in Pacific Northwest.

[1114] That's sort of, but they're not talking about the reintroduction.

[1115] The reintroduction is the big issue, right?

[1116] Well, and that's what people have a great issue with.

[1117] Well, yeah, but the reintroduction is only in one area.

[1118] The Great Lake, the Northern Great Lakes, that was not a reintroduction.

[1119] There was, you know, a sizable population.

[1120] Yeah, well, movements of wolves coming down from Canada and coming back.

[1121] In the northern continental divide ecosystem, not a reintroduction.

[1122] The places where they have real introduction.

[1123] Yeah, well, you had the famous case of the famous reintroduction in Yelso National Park.

[1124] So Montana.

[1125] And it's widely viewed now, it's widely viewed now that if you wouldn't have done that, you would have had you not done that reintroduction, you would have had a natural flow anyway.

[1126] A natural flow from Canada You would have gotten it You would have eventually You would have eventually have gotten there anyway Interesting But would they have gotten to the exact same levels No No At this particular point right now I think that would be like laughable To act as though they'd be there now But people There's no realization that you would have Without the reintroduction You would have through natural movement Have eventually gotten You know Do you think that that's That supports the idea of the reintroduction do you think the reintroduction was well thought out i don't want to you know i'm not going to debate the merits of the reintroduction like i said um my perspective on it is they should be in a place where it supports them yeah my perspective on it is i i don't uh the idea of extinction and regional extirpation sickens me i do not believe in um i do not believe that like as a people as a culture we can justify or afford to remove species of wildlife from the landscape um native species of wildlife from the landscape like i said the idea sickens me i like to you know i like to have um all native wildlife present on the landscape so i don't oppose it what i oppose it what i oppose is a thing that's happened now is getting where we have populations that we agree like what will recovery look like and at what point and how we manage all the different viewpoints that are coming in all the different like interests of all these varied stakeholders and at what point where we get in there and manipulate the situation that we're creating I just would move that in a different direction where I think that when that recovered species right in this where we're talking about wolves and grizzlies, I think that you should have that if you can do it in a sustainable way that doesn't have long -term deleterious impacts on the population, that they should be managed as a renewable resource.

[1127] See, this is where people are going to have issues that don't have anything.

[1128] Just even the term manage them as a renewable resource.

[1129] You mean shoot them and kill them and use their fur?

[1130] Sure.

[1131] I think that recovered species, I think that if you put something on the Endangered Species Act and it goes under federal protection, And then when it reaches recovery, and the U .S. Fish and Wildlife Service says, it's recovered, it's time to hand it back to state management.

[1132] If a state then decides that they're going to do some limited harvest, particularly, let's say even if they're focusing on areas where there's like very high prevalence of human animal conflict, and the state decides to do that in some like minor way as a way to service the needs of certain segments of their population that wants something to happen.

[1133] I don't think that then some like an activist judge or or environmental groups or animal rights groups should come and be like, well, never mind.

[1134] We're going to pretend that they're not recovered now because we want to prevent the state from doing something that we think is unsavory.

[1135] Well, the thought process behind the people that support blocking the hunt is that if you leave these animals alone, naturally they're going to find balance and that the wolves will kill the elk until there's not enough elk for them to succeed.

[1136] sustain their populations and the numbers of their offspring will dwindle and they'll get to some sort of a sustainable level.

[1137] Yeah, but we already, I mean, we live in a, we live in a heavily manipulated kind of land, kind of man -made environment now.

[1138] The idea that things are going to, that we would just let things run their course and watch what happens, isn't going to happen.

[1139] You're still going to have a lot of grizzlies every year are still going to get in trouble.

[1140] They're still going to get killed.

[1141] You're still going to have mortality.

[1142] the, you know, you're going to have tons of grisly mortality in tough areas.

[1143] But the grizzlies aren't acting in packs.

[1144] No, but they kill, but they kill cattle and they come up, they butt up against humans.

[1145] It's just, like, it's inevitably going to have some of that.

[1146] You're not going to let it run.

[1147] As a person, as a hunter, I also don't have a problem with, and actually support as a hunter, that we would, you know, while allowing wolves to be present on the landscape, that we would mitigate their impact on big, game.

[1148] I don't mind saying, I don't mind just coming out and saying that I like to have high populations of big game animals that are available to hunters.

[1149] And also at the same time, sharing some of that resource there, having wolves on the ground doing it.

[1150] Don't want to see them gone, not anti -wolf, not anti -grizzly.

[1151] It's just one of those world, it's because a wolf is so much like a dog and because there's not a great history of people eating, I remember you telling me about one mountain man where his favorite food was wolf.

[1152] Ville Jalmer Steffinson.

[1153] Yeah.

[1154] He was an Arctic explorer.

[1155] What a crazy fucker.

[1156] That guy must have been, huh?

[1157] Favorite.

[1158] Love wolf meat.

[1159] You ever tried it?

[1160] No. But you've eaten coyote.

[1161] You've eaten coyote.

[1162] So you've eaten a species of a wolf.

[1163] I've never killed a wolf, never killed a grizzly bear.

[1164] Just haven't.

[1165] Haven't eaten either of them.

[1166] I ate one coyote.

[1167] Yeah.

[1168] I ate it, didn't like it.

[1169] Haven't messed with one since.

[1170] Yeah, you said that was similar to diver duck too, right?

[1171] That was Remy.

[1172] Remy felt it tastes like bad diver duck.

[1173] I eat diver ducks and still eat diver ducks.

[1174] But no, I haven't done that anymore.

[1175] And I haven't included any coyote recipes.

[1176] There's no coyote recipes in the wild game cookbook either.

[1177] Wolf might be the ultimate one that people are going to have a problem with.

[1178] That might be where the rubber hits the road.

[1179] Well, you know, in some places it's become a moot point.

[1180] because Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, all have state management of wolves.

[1181] Yeah.

[1182] All of the things that were, all these horrible things that were going to happen when the states resumed management of wolves didn't materialize.

[1183] Right.

[1184] But those places also have a rich history of hunting.

[1185] Yeah.

[1186] But it was going to be the end of wolves, right?

[1187] It hasn't been.

[1188] In the first few years, in the first few years of the wolf seasons, you actually saw the populations go up.

[1189] Well, it's so hard to hunt them.

[1190] Right?

[1191] Well, it winds up being that putting that with that little bit of hunting pressure on them really changed their movements and changed the way they perceive human threats and they adjust to it pretty quickly.

[1192] But it hasn't led to, you know, I think a lot of people would look in those cases where it was pretty effective.

[1193] you know it was very effective to bring in to bring in limited regulated hunting had the desired effect on how wolves were using the landscape and ways in which they were interacting and avoiding humans I have no doubt too I have no doubt too like it'll the situation will probably in the northern Great Lakes they had state management law state management like it bounces back and forth you're going to you're going to eventually I mean it kind of depends on how the political winds blow but you're eventually going to wind up with it there and you're not going to see wolves vanish from the landscape you know you just not if grizzly bears wind up doing it you're still going to see you're going to see gradually expanding populations of grizzly bears despite the fact that they're using limited harvest to achieve certain management objectives is not going to be the end the world it's just not yeah i i agree with you and i think the grizzly bear thing you probably have the same sort of situation where the grislies will eventually think of people as a threat and it'll probably safer for everybody that's one thing that people that's one thing that people hope And again, people aren't really, a lot of people looking from the outside in aren't very sensitive to it.

[1194] Yeah.

[1195] To the idea of the way that this has impacted professional hunting guides, hunters.

[1196] But these are my people and these are people that I care about and I care about their needs.

[1197] Yeah.

[1198] Right.

[1199] And it's an issue.

[1200] So time will tell where that winds up.

[1201] Well, we see it in BC where they've just taken it away.

[1202] And they've taken it away in a very irrational way because they have a large population of Grizzlies and PC.

[1203] It's very large.

[1204] And for people that live up there that hunt them, this is kind of scaring the shit out of them.

[1205] That all of a sudden you've taken this away.

[1206] First of all, it was a source of income for a lot of these people that would guide them.

[1207] But it was also a smart thing to control the population and keep them away from humans.

[1208] Well, I watched that closely, though I don't feel it being another country.

[1209] You know, you don't have that sense of being that other country.

[1210] you don't have that sense of the of that you could influence you know so it's like it's kind like watching something happen in a distant way and you don't feel it as closely and I don't know all the factors that play as well as I do here well I have some friends live up there my friend Mike Hawkridge who's a guide up there and he's told me horror stories about grizzlies I'd shoot one trying to get into his cabin from like six feet away yeah and you know they're they're big fuckers they are I love them to death they're great i mean it's cool that they're real i mean it really is it's a wild thing that they're we have this huge monster that lives in the woods yeah haven't been charged by them i wouldn't change the thing man yeah and you were charged by them and i like having i like every encounter and every mix -up and it's really it's like deeply complicated stuff and and when talking about these things it's also they become like everything they become a proxy where we're We're engaged in a debate about what is, you know, we're engaged in debate about, like, conflicting views on wildlife.

[1211] And these animals step in to this debate, and the debate centers around them.

[1212] And it winds up being bigger than a debate about grizzlies, bigger than a debate about bison or buffalo, right?

[1213] Bigger than a debate about wolves.

[1214] It's just that these animals step into this ongoing dialogue about what is our relationship with, the natural world.

[1215] What is our relationship with renewable resources?

[1216] What is our relationship with rural versus urban perspectives on how people should be around wildlife and be impacted by wildlife?

[1217] And so it's just this through line of us trying to sort out how to be like good, responsible stewards of the landscape.

[1218] And that debate always centers around these things.

[1219] Like you could have a huge argument, like you'd be like in a lot of tension with your spouse, right?

[1220] And it springs up in a debate about how best.

[1221] to load the dishwasher or who was supposed to pick up the kid from school.

[1222] And it always finds a place to live.

[1223] And right now, this argument about American wildlife and what is our relationship to it has found its place to live right now around large predators.

[1224] Yeah.

[1225] And in Scotland, it's found its way to live around a feral goat on an island.

[1226] Wow, in that one case.

[1227] yeah um all the traveling that you do and all the the hunting trips that you go on this has it gotten to a point ever that it seems like a job yeah as now that i have kids i it's changed a little bit i view it a little bit differently um but no i still i still really love it and i'm able to know that i'm able to know that i'm missing my family while i'm out um i'm able to know that i'm able to that and feel that pain and still know that I love what I do and I love talking about the things that I talk about.

[1228] And I view it like as I'm sure you do.

[1229] It's like this tremendous privilege that you're able to kind of grow up to have, you know, to have this like intense interest in a subject and this intense interest in a lifestyle and then have the ability to like introduce people to all these different ideas, right?

[1230] so yeah i can have those two things simultaneous um the kind of longing to be home more but enjoying being out i think if if it would if the longing to be home more would override that someday it might change it but right now i'm you know i just have seen so many things that i'm happy to have seen and to think about a future of not accumulating those experiences at the rapid rate that i've accumulated them and yeah kind of bums me out of a little bit yeah you've lived a hundred lives you know that the trip that you were talking about when you were in uh south america in the jungle and you came across those pictographs what do you say how do you call those things petroglyph petroglyphs petroglyphs on the rocks that no one had any idea who made yeah no one know why they were just there yeah no it's not like a spot on a map that tourists go to visit oh here's the petroglyphs no they're just there they're just there and the the hunters like yeah there they are the ancient ones made these hey let's get the fish yeah they really don't give a shit but it's like you're you're you're seeing who knows how old that is thousand years old yeah yeah impossible to say but yeah to run into stuff like that um yeah beautiful experiences man and then the you know to eat the way I eat and live the way I eat it's it's yeah I feel fortunate all the time well I think you're very important because there's a there's a real lack of well -read, articulate people that support your position that are in the media.

[1231] I mean, you've got a lot of these shows that are on these the hunting networks that they appeal to a very narrow bandwidth and this narrow bandwidth is, you know, just, it's it's like your stereo typical idea of what hunting is to a lot of people.

[1232] So they'll flip through the channels, they'll watch that for a few minutes.

[1233] You see someone hooting it and hollering after they shoot something and they get this bad taste in their mouth about it.

[1234] Whereas I tell people all the time, if you really want to get an understanding about what hunting is about, I always recommend your show.

[1235] Because your narration and your reverence for what you're doing and the animals and just your appreciation for how cool the experience is and how wild it is to, you know, for lack of a better term, to just be out there in nature and to be in the pursuit of these things and then to take these things, these wild creatures and feed your family and have it become a part of your life and to sustain yourself with it primarily.

[1236] It's a, it's, you're giving a perspective that I don't think is available that I think is, uh, is, is really important because it's just there's so many people out that are out there that are hunters that are smart, well -read people that feel frustrated.

[1237] Like, God, I wish everybody could see it the way I see it.

[1238] Yeah, I think it's important to point out that my love of hunting and of fishing and of living like a hands -on relationship with the natural world living in close proximity to wildlife, Like my interest in that and desire to do that, predated by a long ways my ability to talk about why I think that those things are important.

[1239] It was there.

[1240] It wasn't like I didn't grow up around that.

[1241] And then later started understanding the stuff and thinking about it and then decided like, well, the path for me then, considering what I know now, the path to me then would do it to figure out hunting.

[1242] It was like, hunting was there.

[1243] I loved it.

[1244] I love it today.

[1245] And I just had the luxury through what I do for a living to spend a lot of time thinking about, well, why is that the case?

[1246] If this feels like harmonious to you and you can kind of like live in this and understand it and see how you fit into some greater, you know, ecological picture, right?

[1247] If it does feel that way and that seems to be true, how is it that?

[1248] Like, why is that, right?

[1249] And it was pushing at those edges that I eventually developed.

[1250] way in which I talk about it.

[1251] Now, I meet all kinds of people who live that same lifestyle that I lived growing up.

[1252] And when I talk to them, a thing that they appreciate is just that someone is articulating to them something that they felt to be true and knew to be true, but just hadn't had the time or, you know, didn't have the time or ability to really go out and express it.

[1253] So I just, I would never want to act like I've invented, like I've certainly have not invented some way of thinking about it.

[1254] Like Aldo Leopold and, you know, Theodore Rollsville, Gifford Pinchot, throughout history, like Jim Harris and Tom McGuane for contemporary writers.

[1255] There's been a lot of people who have been saying and talking about and experiencing the outdoors in a way.

[1256] Like I haven't like invented some new thing.

[1257] I'm just like I'm trying to, I'm working toward like articulate and expressing something that has been in existence for a long time.

[1258] If people see negative stereotypes when they're on YouTube or see negative stereotypes on certain television shows, a lot of that stuff is self -feeding you know I think a lot of that stuff gets created because it does have a shock value to it and I would think that that minus the camera a lot of minus the camera a lot of like activities that people might feel their abhorrent might not even be taking place where there is a hamming it up for the camera that goes on that's interesting do you think that there's like a sort of a stereotypical pattern that they feel like they have to fall into so they fall into it when the camera's on almost like a DJ strip club voice yeah I think I think that there's some of that man you know I mean I think there's some of that I think there's kind and there's also a people a thing that happens with people who feel under attack um and and in many ways you know hunters are under attack in a lot of ways and a lot of places and I think that there's a way when you're you feel like you're being attacked you feel like you're being um pigeonhole stereotyped or response is to cram it right back down someone else's throat right right you're like well I'll show you and there's definitely that stuff or like you fall into this us against them you know fuck them like I'm gonna you know I'll show them how we really are right and you get into this like kind of dialogue thing it's a lot more pain it's like more painful I think um maybe not more painful it's definitely more hard to be like okay let's let's let's talk about this for real.

[1259] If this is really something we need to discuss, let's like dig in and discuss it.

[1260] And I think that a lot of people feel like that hunting feels like something that's natural to them.

[1261] They like to do it.

[1262] And they don't feel the need to take the time to explain it.

[1263] And when questioned, when pressed to explain it, they maybe kind of lash out, you know.

[1264] Yeah.

[1265] It maybe lack the ability to look at it from an outside perspective because it's been a part of their life, their whole life, and they don't want to justify it.

[1266] Yeah, there's also the weird thing that as much as you can appreciate hunting and think of it as an ethical way to acquire meat, everybody can't do it.

[1267] We've got too many people.

[1268] It's untenable.

[1269] And that's a, I mean, there's no responsibility for you to acknowledge that.

[1270] But it's something that it gets brought up when people talk about the, how ethical.

[1271] acquisition of meat is really like either hunting or you'd have to raise something yourself and be absolutely aware or get something from a farmer who's, you know, completely ethical from birth to death and you have to be comfortable with that.

[1272] But the most ethical, in my opinion, is a hunting.

[1273] But then people always say, yeah, but everybody can't hunt.

[1274] Okay.

[1275] But I can.

[1276] So if I can, what do I do about the fact that everybody can't hunt?

[1277] Well, everyone could come in, it's moot point because it doesn't matter, I guess.

[1278] They're not going to.

[1279] But no, certainly everyone could enter into the hunting game.

[1280] You know, you could come in and hunt.

[1281] It would just mean that you had a much larger pool of people after a limited resource, and that limited resource would be allocated in a different way.

[1282] Yeah.

[1283] You could have total participation.

[1284] and it would just be that every person's slice of the pie would be much smaller.

[1285] But it's not like, you know, when we look at, when a state looks at, like, what's a turkey harvest that our state could support, they break the state up into a bunch of different units.

[1286] They look at population trends, and they determine, like, how many turkey can we afford to harvest without impacting the turkey population, right?

[1287] If everyone in the state wanted a chance, you still wind up with the same number, you'd wind up with the same.

[1288] number of turkeys being killed.

[1289] It would just be that you would have less opportunity.

[1290] You'd have to wait longer to get your turn.

[1291] So it's not that everybody can't.

[1292] I don't think that, but it's not even really pointing because everybody will not.

[1293] When I do the stuff that I do, like in writing a wild game cookbook, I'm doing two things.

[1294] And writing a wild game cookbook, I'm doing the main thing that I feel is the most important part of my job or the most important part of what I am is I'm like having a conversation with people who live this lifestyle, right?

[1295] Right.

[1296] Those are people that I relate to.

[1297] I want to represent the world in the way that enhances their lives, provide education, right, and share my experiences with an audience of people that I recommend is a tribe that I'm part of, which would be like American hunters and anglers.

[1298] And I'm presenting them, like, in doing a cookbook, I'm presenting them, like, best practices, how to sort of, like, live the best version of a wild game lifestyle that they can.

[1299] and here's the way to think about and approach wild game.

[1300] But also, the secondary part of what I'm doing is presenting a world to people who might be unfamiliar with it.

[1301] Right.

[1302] And yes, do I have the hope that people will, like, say, read this book and then be like, man, I want to participate in this lifestyle.

[1303] That could mean as much as them walking down to the local river in their city and flipping over rocks and picking up crayfish.

[1304] But it is introducing them, bringing them into the natural world and bringing them into engagement with nature and I do view and hope that that will happen.

[1305] Will it happen in some grand scale where we'll have hundreds of millions of hunters in this country?

[1306] No, that's not going to happen.

[1307] But I do think that it is important that we do have more people involved.

[1308] We, in large measure, we fund much of our wildlife work and management from law enforcement, disease research, on and on.

[1309] We fund that stuff through hunting and fishing licenses and through excise taxes on sporting goods equipment.

[1310] If the more people that are engaged with this activity, I think the better it winds up being for American wildlife.

[1311] I agree, but the idea is that everyone can't do it.

[1312] So the idea that you're saying that this is how you ethically acquire meat, this is not a, it's not a solution for everyone.

[1313] No, but I don't think, I don't, I don't say that this is the only way.

[1314] I'm not saying you don't.

[1315] Okay.

[1316] I'm saying this is one of the arguments that people make if you say that, you know, hey, I hunt for my meat.

[1317] This is how I ethically acquire meat.

[1318] Like, well, everybody can't do that because there's not enough animals.

[1319] That's true.

[1320] That's true.

[1321] Everybody can't do that.

[1322] If even more people got involved, I mean, it's not, it's not a solution for the entire population.

[1323] You can say, well, that's good.

[1324] The entire population is not going to do it anyway.

[1325] But it's a, that gets into, it's a stranger.

[1326] There's just the giant number.

[1327] of human beings that need to be fed. Yeah.

[1328] There's almost no other solution than the solution that we're doing right now unless they come up with some sort of a, you know, I mean, their lab -created meat or whatever the fuck they're going to come up with next, which they are doing.

[1329] Your lips are curling as the...

[1330] It's involuntary.

[1331] I said lab -created meat, and you're like, huh.

[1332] Yeah, I'm pretty happy with, I'm pretty happy with my diet right now.

[1333] Yeah.

[1334] And I'm, but, yeah, I watch that kind of stuff.

[1335] I'm curious about it, but I don't take it as a personal insult by any stretch, man. If everybody switched to lab, created meat, but I still had the, and I still had the ability to continue eating how I eat and living how I live, it's like I don't view that as being a future problem.

[1336] Rocky Mountain Elk Federation has reintroduced foundation, what I say, Federation, Foundation, they've introduced elk to a lot of different places and made sustainable populations that are now hunted.

[1337] and this is a beautiful thing and I'd hope that they continue to spread and continue to do that.

[1338] Do you think it's possible that other game animals could be reintroduced to places where they would develop such a large population that we could sustain maybe even double the amount of hunters that we have now?

[1339] Is that possible?

[1340] Well, put it this way.

[1341] Yes, okay, for stars, yes.

[1342] You know that you just pull up an article about wolves.

[1343] You know I tell like every article from mainstream news sources that involves wolves, you'll kind of detect the bias of the individual writing it.

[1344] And they're saying how wolves have only been recovered across 10 % of their historic range.

[1345] Elk.

[1346] That's about the same for elk.

[1347] Yeah.

[1348] Elk are missing from 80 plus percent of their historic range in the lower 48.

[1349] Right?

[1350] But we have, you know, at various times, we have a quarter million of them living in Colorado or, you know, some states got 100 ,000, whatever.

[1351] You got now perhaps 20 ,000 living in Kentucky.

[1352] Those were all gone.

[1353] New Mexico, at a point, had zero, right?

[1354] Michigan, zero, Kentucky, zero, Pennsylvania, zero.

[1355] Elk were gone from the unregulated slaughter of the market hunting era when people could shoot meat and sell it into urban, like, meat markets, right?

[1356] They eliminated American wild game before we figured out how to do it.

[1357] The word I keep using all the time now, which is like regulated.

[1358] Harvest, regulated management.

[1359] So all that stuff was gone.

[1360] There were states where there was no deer hunting.

[1361] At the time of European contact, they had turkeys in 39 states.

[1362] It got whittled down to turkeys in 19 states.

[1363] You don't have turkey hunting seasons in 49 states.

[1364] We've done a tremendous job of recovering wildlife, particularly a tremendous job to demonstrate what happens to an animal.

[1365] that hunters value and love and are able to use as a renewable resource is those species tend to really enjoy a lot of protections and they thrive because people are vested in their best interest.

[1366] So yeah, we've created turkey hunting seasons in 30 states.

[1367] So yes, you can recover what you can like do things of wildlife and like create resources.

[1368] The fact that we now, we used to argue about what's going to happen with deer.

[1369] Are we going to like drive deer to extinction in certain states or extirpation, certain states?

[1370] Now our big argument is what what do we do with having so many deer?

[1371] Here it winds up being that you come up against social tolerances.

[1372] It's hard to, like, you know, when we fill in the map on elk, when the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation looks in filling in the map on elk, you've got to sell people on the idea that you're going to recover elk.

[1373] And there's a lot of resistance to recovering wildlife because a lot of stuff's inconvenient to have around.

[1374] They do a great job of brokering deals with states and finding places where, you know, a state maybe has a patch of habitat they think could support the animals and providing the expertise and financial support and all that stuff like bring in those things but generally you wind up where because of settlement cities and suburban areas we wind up with fewer and places where we can go and do it so to really fill in the map on on recovering elk across all that range where they're supposed to be I don't know that we'll get there but we've gotten there and a lot of other stuff and there's like you know like the wild sheep foundation right they're trying to do the same thing with big horn sheep there it's not even social attitudes there it winds up being disease like they spent from domestic sheep yeah their main like the main problem preventing us from recovering big horn sheep is disease types of pneumonia that come from domestic sheep wow and people you know to go in and say to someone who's running sheep on a mountain domestic sheep on a mountain and say, hey, no insult to you and no insult to your forebears who've been sheep ranchers here for 120 years or whatever, but we would like to try to recover American wildlife and bring big horns back to this mountain range, and that's going to require you moving these sheep out of the way.

[1375] It's an insulting idea to people.

[1376] So there's a blocker there.

[1377] And every animal has its own type of problem.

[1378] Turkeys, it worked.

[1379] Because people don't get pissed about turkey, you know.

[1380] No, they like having them.

[1381] around.

[1382] And then look at what's going on with just allowing, you know, allowing Bison to walk out of Yellowstone National Park.

[1383] That's been an issue for a quarter century now.

[1384] People are like, I'm not comfortable with you letting these big -ass things walk out of the park and roam around because of disease, grazing, right?

[1385] There's a, like, people don't want to be inconvenience by wildlife.

[1386] These are places where I would, like, in that area, I'd really like to see.

[1387] When a bison leaves the park, he stops being a wild animal and becomes livestock.

[1388] What's going on with that American Savannah thing?

[1389] What is that program?

[1390] The APR.

[1391] Yeah, what do they call on that again?

[1392] The American Prairie Reserve.

[1393] Yeah.

[1394] What is going on with that?

[1395] Explain what the fuck that is because this is crazy.

[1396] I mean, I know it's just a long story.

[1397] Too long?

[1398] Yeah, we're working with having the, it's too long.

[1399] We're working with having the founder on our show to have a conversation.

[1400] American Prairie Reserve.

[1401] What they're essentially trying to do is reintroduce a bunch of animals into a gigantic chunk of land and they continue to buy up more of this land.

[1402] And aren't they running block management on this as well?

[1403] Yes.

[1404] There's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of suspicions and controversy and it's like a, it's an idea that a lot of people are uneasy with.

[1405] But the problem, not the problem, the thing is, it's like people who are, you know, they have a, they have funding and have a thing where they're, when land comes for sale, they buy it.

[1406] And the goal of buying up the land is to turn it back into, you know, turn it back into wildlife habitat for native wildlife.

[1407] And it's the controversy around it stems from the fact that some people don't like to see areas that were, that supported like traditional economy.

[1408] in rural areas like cattle ranching and to see these to see these areas returning to a wild landscape is threatening to people.

[1409] From the hunter perspective is they're allowing, there's a lot of places that people used to be able to hunt and the American Prairie Reserve is allowing hunting to go on and people are coming in and saying, well they need to make sure, they need to assure us that hunting will be allowed here in perpetuity and because we're suspicious about what's going on.

[1410] So there's a lot of, like, you hear about it in so many ways, but the core mission is something that most people, when you look at it, the core mission is something that most people are going to look at and be pretty comfortable with, be like, okay, you're a guy or an organization, you have money, and when a ranch comes up for sale, you buy it on the open market, the seller names is price, you pay the price, is now your land.

[1411] If you choose to not run cattle, but want to have bison roam around on it, why should I care?

[1412] Right.

[1413] But people do care because they look at it as being like a value judgment.

[1414] They look at it as being like a value judgment about rural economies and about agriculture.

[1415] Oh.

[1416] Huh.

[1417] I didn't think about it that way.

[1418] And there's a thousand more aspects of this.

[1419] There's a thousand more aspects of this where like it's a rich subject.

[1420] Dude, I'd love to get into it more about.

[1421] Next time I come on.

[1422] Okay.

[1423] Next time you come on.

[1424] It would take like an hour to it.

[1425] explain the situation.

[1426] What is there long -term plan?

[1427] Like, how long is this going on for?

[1428] It's been going on for quite a while, right?

[1429] Oh, the long -term play is that over time you would assemble a chunk of the Great Plains that is far bigger than Yellowstone National Park that supports a thriving population of bison, wolves, grizzly bears, you know, in a park -like setting.

[1430] Wow.

[1431] But it doesn't come without, you know, it doesn't come without its own bits of controversy.

[1432] And, yeah, again, it's like, it's the thing that everyone has opinion about.

[1433] There was a version, they don't like to talk about, there was a version that's called the Buffalo Commons that happened long ago where a, there was a social scientist named, I think it was Frank Popper, by the last name of Popper.

[1434] And he was looking at demographic patterns on the Great Plains.

[1435] and he was observing the ways in which the areas on the Great Plains where the population was shrinking.

[1436] So there's a lot of counties on the Great Plains where through various long -term agricultural trends and other issues where the human population is rapidly shrinking, rapidly declining.

[1437] And this sociologist brought up this idea that if these trends continue, you're going to have this rare case in which a landscape sort of accidentally rewilded, okay, where everyone left, which is not a story we're familiar with.

[1438] When we look at what happens to wild lands, you know, across the world, right?

[1439] The general story is like people move in and wildlife moves out.

[1440] So this idea became like the Buffalo Commons, okay?

[1441] And that was, and it just so happens that that idea, that this, that idea kind of centered around this area around Jordan, Montana, right?

[1442] because you have large tracks of federally managed public land up there you had a lot of like ranch land that wasn't that expensive and people could buy it and that was like the seed of the idea I think that now there was such an unpopular notion because it had to do with like economic decay right and shrinking towns and reduced resources for public education and all the kind of stuff that comes from having an economy that's not thriving but over time that like Buffalo Commons idea kind of segueed into this American Prairie Reserve idea and happened to be sort of centered around the same chunk of land.

[1443] Bill Kittridge, a Western writer who deals with a lot of landscape and environmental issues, was talking about, in the wake of the Buffalo Commons idea and Popper's work, was talking about going to Jordan, Montana, and talking about the Buffalo Commons is a great way to get your ass kicked.

[1444] Because it's this idea, like, if culturally, like the agricultural producers and ranchers were celebrated and they made a civilization out of the wilderness and they brought in animals and created economies and created communities.

[1445] And for someone to now say, you know, thanks, but no thanks, bro.

[1446] We'd rather go back and eliminate your presence on this landscape.

[1447] And we don't, in fact, value what you did.

[1448] And we're going to try as hard as we can to undo what you did.

[1449] Because we now view it as that you did the – your people did the wrong thing.

[1450] correct that wrong and some like it's some people it's like this insulting idea to a lot of other people they celebrate it because they're like hey if it's for sale and i buy it it's mine i could see it from both perspectives sure man it's it's it's very much like the hunting thing if you're a part of it you have a deep history in it you understand that you know your perspective of ranching is from a rancher whereas people in the outside conveniently can be ignorant about it and go, oh, fuck those ranchers.

[1451] I want to see the buffalo.

[1452] Yeah.

[1453] And my perspective on wildlife has been that it's a thing that you, it's a thing that you care about, you work to conserve, you want to have it on the landscape, and you also eat a lot of it.

[1454] And that's a foreign idea for people.

[1455] Yeah, it is.

[1456] I'm glad that you can't sell wild game.

[1457] I'm glad that Mark and hunting is not a thing.

[1458] However, I would really love it if there was a restaurant where you could go, where you could buy.

[1459] like really well -prepared wild game dishes, like a really well -prepared bear, really well -prepared mountain lion, well -prepared, you know, fill in the blank with the animal.

[1460] I just think that would be a fascinating place to eat, you know, and maybe if they could do something like that, it wouldn't be that you could actually sell the meat.

[1461] I mean, there would have to be some weird workaround.

[1462] You know, it'd have to be like, someone have to give it to you.

[1463] You have to come to one of my dinner parties.

[1464] I would have to.

[1465] Well, that's fine.

[1466] I mean, but I would like it if there was a place where the general public could participate in it.

[1467] I think they'd get a better understanding.

[1468] You know, like, I put up these posts all the time of elk that I cook and people are like, God damn, I want to eat some of that.

[1469] How do I eat that?

[1470] How do you eat that?

[1471] You got to go get one of.

[1472] Yeah.

[1473] I mean, it's the only way you can eat that.

[1474] Yeah.

[1475] Well, you can buy.

[1476] Or come to my house.

[1477] Yeah, you can go and buy the farmed raised version.

[1478] But then it's, you know, that's one, yeah.

[1479] Good luck getting a farm raised blueberry blackberry black.

[1480] bear yeah well no not that case but like you know you can buy but then it's that's a holder conversation around the captive servant industry but yeah you can buy you can buy elk that are raised in a in a ranch environment right yeah i mean as long as you're getting it from new zealand you're not dealing with cwd and a lot of the other issues that are dealing with in america right well yeah but they're not i mean they're you know those places are tested and and one herds that have cwd in them are destroyed right yeah um yeah yeah but the well the whole new zealand thing that was an interesting thing that you brought up on your podcast recently, how New Zealand there have been talks about actual eradication.

[1481] And one of the arguments that hunters always use is, hey, we're controlling the population.

[1482] This is a good service that we're provided.

[1483] And then the government comes along and says, well, how about we take care of that?

[1484] And everybody's like, hey, hey, not so fast.

[1485] Yeah.

[1486] It's, uh, that takes place in Australia and New Zealand where they have these like, like thriving, very robust populations of non -native wildlife.

[1487] And, you know, the government has always and does now do a lot of coaling of these animals.

[1488] They don't have predators, right?

[1489] They have, like, extremely, like, they're very fecund.

[1490] They have extremely high reproductive rates.

[1491] And they, the government is actively engaged, you know, around the clock, gunning wildlife from helicopters.

[1492] Just like shooting.

[1493] And just letting it rot.

[1494] You just shoot and leave it to rot, because you have to, because they're trying.

[1495] You have to, but they do that because they're trying to, you know, protect certain ecosystems and keep, like, a lot of native plant species from going to extinct and fragile environments and all kinds of reasons.

[1496] Like they said, there's no death, right?

[1497] There's no predator control on them, which is huge.

[1498] And in a lot of places, just a completely inadequate amount of hunting.

[1499] And a thing that hunters have always been able to say in Australia and New Zealand is they've been able to, to, in a culture where, like, particularly in Australia, like a culture that seems to be not as friendly toward hunters as they are in America, you're able to say, well, you know, we're participating in wildlife control.

[1500] And then later when people come up and they talk about, well, you know, we're going to get serious about this, and we're going to really actively, with the goal of, like, totally eliminating these species, people are justifiably made uneasy about it because it's a thing that they've, come to appreciate and rely on in a resource that they want to use.

[1501] And now they're like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

[1502] I don't kill them all.

[1503] I do like them being here.

[1504] And it winds up putting you in this weird, like, you know, winds up putting you in a weird rhetorical position.

[1505] But I understand where they're coming from because if you could live there and you could agree that we're going to have some small number of them on the landscape and we're going to use those and we're going to hunt those and eat those, I also, if someone said, hey, they're gone now, I would be bummed.

[1506] Yeah.

[1507] I hunt turkeys.

[1508] I was saying earlier, we had turkeys in 39 states at the time of European contact.

[1509] We have turkeys in 49 states now.

[1510] I hunt turkeys in a lot of those 10 states that didn't historically have turkeys and that do now.

[1511] And I generally have a perspective of trying to preserve native wildlife and trying to control non -natives because I don't want to wind up with sort of a, this like monolithic wildlife pattern or these same super resilient adaptive species such as Canada, geese, and rats and white -tailed deer take over the entire country.

[1512] And pigs.

[1513] Yeah, so you like, yes, I want like the variety.

[1514] So I'm generally like antagonistic toward non -natives.

[1515] But if someone came and said, okay, you know what, we're going to actually go in and kill off all the turkeys in those 10 states that historically didn't have turkeys, I would say like, how, you know, really?

[1516] Really?

[1517] Because I've kind of grown to really like those turkeys and they're not really causing a problem.

[1518] Right.

[1519] And I think that some people, you know, if you're a New Zealand hunter and Australian hunter, I don't think anyone's arguing there should be no control.

[1520] But I think that there's like, let's find a balance.

[1521] I think we can find a balance where there's some availability of animals on the landscape since they've been here since the beginning of our, you know, experience on this continent.

[1522] If there's some availability of animals, let's find like a reasonable compromise here.

[1523] Well, that was one of the discussions as well about Hawaii, right?

[1524] Like in some of the Hawaiian islands eradicating the pigs.

[1525] And then the Hawaiians were saying, well, they've been here as long as us.

[1526] Yeah, we've both been here.

[1527] Yeah, our ancestors have been here 1100 years.

[1528] They brought the pig with them.

[1529] How am I a native Hawaiian, and the pig has to go?

[1530] Right.

[1531] And there's like, maybe you people ought to go.

[1532] Dude, I always like, again, man, I always instinctively, when I hear stuff, I instinctively lean in on, I instinctively lean in from the perspective of, you know, I instinctively lean in from the perspective of the hunter and angler.

[1533] You know, and like, and I love all these little debates, and I think that they're all really helpful and interesting.

[1534] But, no, I feel like I can recognize their pain.

[1535] And I can also look far away and laugh at the absurdity of it.

[1536] Like, I even had a guy write me from Australia and say, this is a real bummer, because it exposes us to the thing where we got to say, like, yeah, you know what, I wasn't really just doing it because I'm trying to help the ecosystem by eliminating non -natives.

[1537] I actually like having some of them around and now I just got to come out and say that and that's a bummer I really do wish there was some sort of a restaurant I think that would be a great place for people to get a perspective there's no way to do that though huh no but I've no there's not well I mean not for all the things that you're talking about no and I don't and I don't look to there is talk of a lot of people are looking to are pushing for this idea that in areas that have too many white -tailed deer, there's people who are really pushing to reopen up the sale of wild harvested deer as a solution to deer overpopulation.

[1538] But for me, from my perspective and from the damage that was caused by unregulated wildlife slaughter, I'm very, very uneasy with it, and I do not picture myself.

[1539] ever coming around in support of the idea that we would start marketing that we would start marketing wild cervids no i agree and i i think that just the sheer possibility of fuckery and people shooting them and poaching them and selling them and it's just and it's it's it would increase the commodification of wildlife yeah um and that's something that and that's something that I'm also just uncomfortable with in general, the commodification of wildlife.

[1540] And I think about resource availability for hunters.

[1541] And I think that a lot of people who enjoy access to certain areas now to go hunting, to like hunt for themselves and their family, that the minute you made it be that those deer had a dollar value attached to them, that there would be a lot less opportunity for people who choose to hunt to feed themselves.

[1542] because it would all of a sudden be like, why would I let you come in or allow you to come in and use a resource when I'm just going to do my best now to collect it up and sell it?

[1543] Yeah.

[1544] And so, again, for aesthetic reasons, for what it would mean for hunters, for our perception of our, you know, relationship with our resources, I'm extremely uncomfortable with it.

[1545] Though I see keep, it's an idea that keeps popping up.

[1546] Because we have in some areas.

[1547] and I hate to say like I hate to talk about oh there's too many deer there's too much this too much that because like by whose measurement but in some areas we really do especially when you start getting into the issues like Lyme disease prevalence and ticks and starvation and just the possibility of other disease outbreaks and the spread of certain wildlife diseases there's some areas that like by any reasonable measurement we have too many deer yeah um well look it's already 1 o 'clock oh how crazy is that time flies in this room um your your podcast is awesome it really is i'm glad to talk to you to doing it yeah i know it all you and i and every chance i get i point to it i appreciate it i really do appreciate that you do it because i think it's it's my favorite podcast to recommend to people that want if i want them to get an understanding of hunting um without you know even watching it just listening to you talk about because you have so many guests on where you know You might not even be talking about hunting.

[1548] You might be talking about biology.

[1549] You might be talking about history.

[1550] You know, it's just a great podcast, and you're a great guy for the job.

[1551] You play a very important part out there.

[1552] I really believe that.

[1553] Thank you.

[1554] I appreciate it.

[1555] And I am glad that you talked me to doing it.

[1556] It's been, in terms of all the things I do, like TV, writing, it's the thing that I enjoy doing it the most.

[1557] There's a lot of things I enjoy having done it.

[1558] more right but the thing that i enjoy actually doing it i'm just having like a smile on my face doing it well you're such a great talker i mean remember the first time you did my podcast even before meat eater when you were just coming off of the wild within what is it was that what it's called yeah yeah and uh i remember thinking why doesn't this guy have a fucking podcast and this was like how many years ago seven years ago something like that did you know the first time i ever heard the word podcast this is embarrassing the first time i ever heard the word podcast was helen choe me that I should go on Joe Rogan's podcast, and I didn't know what it meant.

[1559] That's how early you were into this ship.

[1560] Wow.

[1561] You were into this ship before I ever heard the word.

[1562] Wow, that's crazy.

[1563] Can I double back around and plug my book again?

[1564] Yeah, please do.

[1565] Okay, so it's called the Meat Eater Fishing Game Cookbook Recipes and Techniques for every hunter and angler.

[1566] Got a picture of that, Jamie?

[1567] Bam, there it is.

[1568] Can I say one last quick thing about it.

[1569] It releases right now.

[1570] It releases this week on November 20, but it's available.

[1571] for pre -order everywhere and it's broken into a bunch of chapters where it has big game small ford game like rabbits hairs squirrels upland birds waterfowl freshwater fears salt water fish shellfish and crustaceans reptiles and amphibians so all your bullfrog stuff is in there and you want to talk about a species it's spreading all across the country bullfrogs just yeah really yeah i've hunted a lot of bullfrogs in places where they're very unwelcome what do you hunt them with I don't know the variety of ways, mostly a frog gig.

[1572] I don't care where you live.

[1573] Like, there's a lot of people to live in a city.

[1574] Like, dude, I'd love to go out and get some wild game.

[1575] I can't go get an elk.

[1576] Like, how do I do that?

[1577] You could be out gigging frogs at night and no one or even know.

[1578] Frog gig and crayfish grab.

[1579] And we talk about all this kind of stuff in the book.

[1580] So it explains everything from how to like break down and process and freeze stuff.

[1581] And then for everything, there are many recipes.

[1582] And the recipes walk you through how to use the entire thing.

[1583] So for your white -tailed deer, everything from the tongue to the rear shank how like specific recipes on how to do it and also just general best practices and guidelines around how to handle the ingredients and then all the stuff around all the substitutions so there's no such thing as a like an elk heart recipe right it's like how to like handle game hearts whether it's mule deer white tail whatever like how to approach a heart and an attitude toward wild game that is not that's cut specific not species specific and with fish too like I don't I'm not comfortable with the idea of like those is a walleye recipe or this is a blue go recipe but how to handle like varieties of freshwater fish and like what kind of what kind of recipes you can use that are interchangeable depending on where you live and what you use and all includes all that and they're real pretty pictures beautiful You can see Janis Buellis how to do the tail skinning method on a squirrel.

[1584] And I don't care where you live, you damn sure you live near squirrels.

[1585] People are very uncomfortable with squirrel eating.

[1586] Not me. Oh, and you know, in the end, the guy that got the disease meeting squirrel brains, nothing to do with squirrel brains.

[1587] Oh, the article I sent you?

[1588] Yeah.

[1589] What did he?

[1590] Everybody sent me that article.

[1591] Yeah.

[1592] There's no demonstrable correlations.

[1593] It's like 30 people, 30 Americans a year, you know, why?

[1594] mind up with that form of Kruzfeld -Yuccaps disease 30 Americans wind up with it It just happens to be that this dude sometime in his past It's in some sort of It's a prion or pre -on disease Yeah it's the thing that happens to people But it was The correlation between his diet And what happened to him was implied Implied Possible If you go read up on it It now seems like People are really saying like there's no there's no obvious relationship here no obvious relationship between eating squirrel brains and getting a preon disease yeah there's plenty of people that get the same thing that haven't been eating squirrel brains right so just they were just looking at the unusual aspects of his diet and pointing to that and it's not that scientific yeah and the article got a lot more love when it was that some squirrel hunter died from eating squirrel brains than it did when the later subsequent pieces came out where everybody was like whoa whoa whoa Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[1595] Yeah.

[1596] We don't really, like, you know.

[1597] Squirrels are cute.

[1598] Yeah.

[1599] I ate some squirrel with you.

[1600] It's another thing you've served me. Very good.

[1601] There's not a person in the world.

[1602] You know what we have in the cookbook is we have how to do buffalo, buffalo wings, hot wings, how to do hot legs.

[1603] With squirrels?

[1604] Yeah, we're eating at the hour night.

[1605] Really?

[1606] Yeah, so it's just like you're making.

[1607] What are the rules on shooting squirrels?

[1608] Do they vary, state by state?

[1609] Yeah.

[1610] So if you're in.

[1611] New York, you know, you have a season, you know, squirrel season in most states.

[1612] So it's either the, it's either one of the other way.

[1613] Either there's a season and a bag limit or they're treated as a non -game species.

[1614] So here in California, there's a squirrel season.

[1615] There's a bag limit.

[1616] I think it's four a day, four squirrels a day.

[1617] And when's the season?

[1618] You know, season's usually run from some time in August and September into winter, into January, February.

[1619] So where I grew up, September 15th.

[1620] September 8th to January 27th Archery, falconry only Jesus Christ Yeah, so archery and falconry So August 4 for archery and falconry Falconery Then you got to go to the tree squirrel zone map Right But in your state, jackrabbits are open For instance, your state jack rabbits are managed As non -gaming there's no bag limit Open year round Like cotton tails, snowshoes have different management In a lot of states, pine squirrels or red squirrels which aren't commonly hunted, but they're more regarded as like things that get into people's houses, but they're not hunted for meat.

[1621] They'd be listed as a non -game species, but fox squirrels and gray squirrels would be as a game species.

[1622] So in New York, I think the bag limit, when I was living there, it was six per day, a possession limit of two bag limits.

[1623] Did you shoot any squirrels in Brooklyn and eat them?

[1624] No, no. I caught some there and ate them.

[1625] Did you?

[1626] But I would hunt out of the city at my buddy's farm and some other places.

[1627] So where I was born in Michigan, the squirrel season was September 15th, and it ran into the end of January, five squirrels a day, possession limit of two bag limits.

[1628] The state I live in now treats squirrels as non -game species.

[1629] So there's no close season and no bag limit because there's not really a, there's not, they're not widely distributed and they're not commonly hunted.

[1630] All right.

[1631] But, yeah, most places they have.

[1632] them and they're managed and you go out and buy a small game license for 12 bucks or whatever get your hunter safety get yourself a 22 or a shotgun and you can become a squirrel man or a squirrel lady like your buddy kevin murphy this one of my favorite guys on your podcast he's a squirrel man this guy blows a horn in the woods before every hunt to alert the animals that he's coming yeah he blows yeah he carries a cow horn around blows it they call i think the i think um Um, it's in, uh, a shofar, right?

[1633] Is that right for, you know, when you blow the shofar in like a Jewish in a synagogue?

[1634] Is that what it is?

[1635] I think it's called a shofar.

[1636] Like you blow the rams, they blow a rams horn.

[1637] It's not, it's not a cow, yeah, it's not a cow horn, but it's a rann horn.

[1638] You know in the end of, um, you know in the end of no country for old men?

[1639] Yeah.

[1640] Uh, have we talked about this before?

[1641] I don't know.

[1642] He talks about his father riding out ahead of him with a horn of, fire in the end when he relates the dream it's in the book and it's in the movie where the Tommy Lee Jones character is describing a dream in which they're riding through a snowstorm and his father rides ahead with a horn of fire and I always wondered how many people heard that and had no idea what he was talking about but what a common practice used to be is you take a horn buffalo horn cow horn and it's hollow because it grows off a protrusion of the skull called the horn core and you pop the horn off and it's hollow and what people would do is when you left your campfire in the morning you would fill that horn with embers and cap it but there'd be a little pinhole in it just to let a little bit of air and air so it could continue to smolder and you'd carry that horn all day full of embers and at night to start a new fire you would dump the horn out and rekindle your fire so when he talks about his father riding out ahead of them with a horn of fire what that's meant to say is that he knew his father would be waiting out of head of him with a fire burning.

[1643] Whoa.

[1644] Yeah.

[1645] But Kevin Bribby just blows it to let squirrels know he's coming.

[1646] Thanks for coming, man. I was going to talk to you.

[1647] We keep saying we've got to organize another hunt.

[1648] We'll love to.

[1649] We have to do something.

[1650] Call Brian Callan.

[1651] I talked to him recently.

[1652] We'll make it happen.

[1653] He's one of the funnier guys on Instagram, man. He's one of the funnier guys alive.

[1654] Bye, everybody.