October 1, 2025 • 61 mins
On this episode of the Bear Grease Render, host Clay Newcomb goes live from the 2025 World Champion Squirrel Cook-Off. He’s joined by event organizer Joe Wilson, “The World’s Greatest Small Game Hunter” Kevin Murphy, social media cooking sensation Audrey Dresselle (@cooking_with_cajun), Brent Reaves, and Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker. Together, they dive into the festivities of the Cook-Off, swap small game hunting stories, and share their favorite squirrel dishes from the competition.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
My name is Clay Nukleman.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
This is a production of the bear Grease podcast called
The bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper,
and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast,
presented by f HF Gear, American Maid purpose built hunting
and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as
(00:37):
the place as we explore.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Welcome to the Bear Grease Render. This is This is
our annual annual show that we do at the World's
Championship Squirrel Cookoff. This is uh, it was so where
we're here with with it a live a live.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Audience out twelve or fifteen thousand of our closest friends.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
And right watching watching the Render.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Man.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
What a what A what a group of guests.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Here.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
We've got the world's greatest small game hunter, Kevin Murphy.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Hey, Kevin's always the only one on the podcast that
opened carries, which I always appreciate and every time I
see it, I'm like, why did I not do that? So,
but we're gonna get back to the outfit. We've got
Josh and we've got Joe Wilson, who's the founder, Headman,
head Honcho, Chief l Capitan of the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff,
(01:44):
who started this long time ago with a lie which
we've already heard about, but it's grown into so much.
We've got Brent Reeves back from wherever he's been just
swamp to South Arkansas. Yeah, good to see old Brent
black a while. And then we've got the man I
know is Cajun cooking with Cajun or cooking with this
(02:07):
and man, it's good to have you, Audrey. I mean,
I just call you Cajun. I don't even need to
know your name.
Speaker 6 (02:12):
Hey, it's a lot better than what a lot of
people call me.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
First of all, I want to know, like, why are
you here, Cajun? What have you been doing? Were you cooking?
Speaker 6 (02:23):
Yeah? So we I came in, of course, we came
in with a team and uh we did some squirrel
ravolus with a vodka sauce. And while they were doing that,
I did about a fifteen gallon jumbala to giveaway to
kind of just feed the people and bring bring people in,
you know for the calls. I mean, so they put
a lot of work into these shows, and anything we
(02:46):
can do to help we love coming out and help them.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, and Cajun tell people like what do you what
do you do? Like you got like a million people
that follow you on Instagram maybe more, but like, who
the heck are you and what do you do?
Speaker 7 (03:02):
Well?
Speaker 6 (03:02):
So, unfortunately, I'm just a guy that moved from Louisiana
at Arkansas and moved out off the grid to kind
of get away from everything, and.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Somehow that didn't work for you.
Speaker 6 (03:16):
Yeah, I would say, don't follow in my footsteps if
you want to stay in the woods and not being known,
because uh yeah, I just you know, living on the
grid and cooking on open fire and just living. And
my son decided to be fun to make a video
and took my phone one night and downloaded TikTok on
it posted the video and the next day I had
(03:37):
twelve hundred followers. And here we are today, and you know,
we've got a lot going on. We're traveling a lot,
cooking and going to a lot of different events and
just living a dream.
Speaker 7 (03:49):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Yeah, well, man, it's good to have you. We've met before, yeah,
several times. But Kevin Murphy, Hey, where have you been man?
What have you been doing?
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Well?
Speaker 7 (04:01):
Let's see, this week, I've been out on the job
site and taking you've actually been working. I've been working. Yeah,
I've been working on a heavy highway job doing nuclear
density testing. So wow, now there's your warning.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Okay, that's the week before that spare time, I was
at an.
Speaker 7 (04:19):
Archeological dig looking for some of the first Americans that
paleo hunters that hunted the mastadons in mammoths. So we
dug where we're doing that northern Kentucky, on the edge
of the last glaciation, the Wisconsin, so the glaciers came down. Basically,
you can draw a line along the Ohio River and
(04:40):
that's where the glaciers ended, and so like sixty miles
as a crow flys from my house was the glaciers
fifteen thousand years ago. So in northern Kentucky there was
a gathering of mammoths and mastadons, one of the few
places in the world that you find both species at
the same spot. We dug up a bottom tusk of
(05:02):
a mastodon, which I didn't know at that time that
masadons had bottom tusk, and it was carved in the
shape of a penis.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
Oh wow, so quickly, but I didn't know where we
were going there.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
So very so so did they know that the site
was there.
Speaker 7 (05:28):
Yes, this is a site where Daniel Boone crossed the
river with his son and like one hundred and fifty
militia men ten months after the Revolutionary War was over.
And he said it was a bad idea to cross.
There's a ford there on a licking river that you
could wait across right now. But they crossed that went
(05:49):
up into the hills and they were met by one
hundred British and about two hundred American Indians. Like I said,
ten months after the Revolutionary War was over, the British
were still trying to take charge of the Northwest Territory.
They got ambush. Daniel Boone's son died in his arms there.
They made it back across the river licks little blue licks,
(06:10):
the battle little licks.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So the mastadon parts were at the blue lix.
Speaker 7 (06:16):
Yeah, we're sitting there digging in a mud hole looking
at this river. Lick is a salt lick, salt lick. Yeah,
that's why the animals were there to begin with. That's
why the mastodons and the mammos were there because there
was water available. There was salt there that attracted them.
They was right on the edge of the Glacier's ideal
climate and it's just all.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
So you You were there with archaeologists from where.
Speaker 7 (06:41):
From all over the country.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Wow.
Speaker 7 (06:44):
One guy was there and he was gathering cosmic dust
to see if he could prove that the the hit
the Earth and might have changed the climate. Another guy
that was there is, I know that you've been doing
some water witching thing, but you got to have this
guy on your show. He's world renowned water witcher.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Oh really, And I.
Speaker 7 (07:03):
Spent I didn't get to spend any time with him
this year, but two years ago I did and I
asked him. He says, how did you learn to do this?
He says, you know, my mother in law's well went
dry and a guy came over and he witched this well.
I saw him do that, and I told myself he's
a science teacher. He says, I'm going to teach myself
to do that. And he's been all over the world
(07:23):
finding water a lot of times for Ninja's speople that
the water system's gone dry whatever. And he was out
west and he was working on his spot and the
water had dried up, and he was with some some
American Indians and they said, well, the COODI is a
spot where there's water. He said, Okay, where's the cowdy? Well,
(07:44):
we don't know. It's just always been called the Cowoti.
So he spends a week out there looking around witching.
He finds water. He looks up on the ridge and
there's a silhouette of a cowdy's head. So he taught
that her contribe that had lost their heritage. He brought
it back to him.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Interesting.
Speaker 5 (08:05):
Oh you better not ask him what he did three
weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Wow, that's interesting, that's interesting. Hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna
say one thing about water witching because you brought it up.
After all the water witching stuff. The best, the best
commentary that I had on it was a guy said, clay,
water witching works if you believe it works, And I
(08:31):
was like, he's probably right.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
He's probably right.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So well, Kevin, that's uh uh, you've been doing a lot.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Did you cook today?
Speaker 7 (08:40):
I did not cook. I just smoothed around.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
You were just here.
Speaker 7 (08:44):
Talking to the kids and everybody.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
So what about the hat?
Speaker 7 (08:49):
You know, this is my rabbit killing hat. This is
this is a rabbit with a swamp rabbit skull on
the thing.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Oh, that's a swamp rabbit skull.
Speaker 7 (09:00):
Until I can get my predator, got dogs going and
get me a bobcat man. This is gonna have to do.
Fill in that that. I figure's gonna take me two years.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Maybe this has been dyed. Yeah, yeah, they don't have
a swamp ra It was like that up in Kentucky.
I wasn't sure. It turns out that got massive on lower.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Tusks that are yeah way lower.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, pretty low, pretty low. Interesting. Okay, did you just
squirrel today?
Speaker 7 (09:27):
I did not have any squirrel.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
I haven't had okay so far, so Joe, yes, sir,
tell us about give me a summary of the day,
like what's like what kind of meals we had? Like
what kind of squirrel people were cooking?
Speaker 5 (09:42):
Yeah, so me and Brent were both in the judging room,
so we got to see everything.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Judge Brent, I I went in there to get a
drink of water, and I came out a guy that
ate fourteen plates of squirrel. That's that's winning pal wow hmm.
Speaker 5 (09:58):
So yeah, so there was some amazing dishes and uh,
this year, I think some new pinnacles were reached absolutely
and probably a couple of lows on my.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Side of the table. No loads here one man?
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Yeah, so you know I have looked out odd table
and even table. There was definitely a hot side of
the judging room today. And uh it was the first time,
I think in the history of the event. You know
we started in twenty eleven that actual squirrel feet were
turned in.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Oh feet on the other table for real.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
Interesting squirrel feet were turned in.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
There was that a hip or not a hip? As
a high risk maneuver. It was either going to go
really good or really bad. It's a high risk. Is
anybody here that put the squirrel feet on the plate?
Are there anybody here? Okay, we can talk about them.
They're probably What were they thinking?
Speaker 6 (10:51):
Did they take the nails off?
Speaker 4 (10:52):
No? No?
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Oh impact with fur?
Speaker 4 (10:56):
What fur?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Were you supposed to eat it?
Speaker 7 (10:59):
Don't know?
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Was it a garnish?
Speaker 5 (11:02):
Brent was looking for could pull off something between those?
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Uh, so that.
Speaker 5 (11:07):
Happened and we thought chicken feet will weird? Yeah, and
we Clifton Jackson. We had Clifton on the show last year.
At that time he was a three time.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
World champion squirrel Skinner.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
Squirrel Skinner. Today I'm proud to say he's the four
time Oh.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
He's he's a tear all in his own.
Speaker 5 (11:29):
He told me to no longer say how many he's won,
just say he's the world champion.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
After a while, you're not like the four time, you're
just the world champion. You're the world champion.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (11:46):
And he had his mom out there, his wife, everybody,
and it was a good time. And then there's a
fellas stand up with two guys right behind you, Clay.
These two gentlemen, both with really flashy squirrel ships off.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, they getting the camera set them in here.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
Getting camera view over here. Oh, look at these shirts.
These gentlemen both partake. You know, we always do the
world's Hottest Squirrel right right. This year we kicked it
up to four million Scoville.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Get right to get the baseline on that. What's a jilopenyo,
like a hot half.
Speaker 5 (12:24):
Of teen hundred or something. Okay, These two gentlemen, along
with six other men, walked on the surface of the
sun today. Now the hot the taller of the two.
He lasted a little bit longer than this fellow. This
fella here is first man out, first first man out
(12:47):
and closest to the trash can. Clay, I witnessed a
gentleman today. You know this is a whole smoked squirrel. Okay,
so the whole carca. We smoked them and then we
bathed them in the hottest stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
How do you get how do you get the sauce
that hot?
Speaker 5 (13:10):
You pay one hundred dollars on Amazon?
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Holy cow? Yeah? Can you say the name of it?
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Uh man?
Speaker 5 (13:16):
We used some three fifty seven magnum okay, friendly show here, yeah,
and then some forty four magnum. The three fifty seven
was three hundred and fifty seven scovill three hundred and
fifty seven thousand.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
This other is that not nearing like just poison? I
think it is.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
I mean they're alive, so big win on my my.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Well breaking out.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
There's only two out of six of them here, where's
the other one? Wow Cemetery the dude that won that thing.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
And so the rules are is the first guy to
crack open a drink as the first man out, okay,
And usually it gets down to no one has ever
ate the whole animal. The first guy who won the winner,
he ate that booger in about what minute the whole squirrel,
(14:05):
whole squirrel, which was amazing enough not to mention it
was four million scovel. I was gonna interview him. He
didn't have nothing to say, He couldn't.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
It's out.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
He had nothing to.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Say at all.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
So what did the winner get?
Speaker 4 (14:18):
Well?
Speaker 5 (14:19):
Because typically it's just a trophy and umack's gun. This
year I felt so bad for that old boy that
wanted I pulled one hundred dollars bill out of my
pocket so he could feed the family.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
I don't know if he can be able to work for.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
You got a free ride?
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yeah, yeah, it was a bad deal, goad.
Speaker 6 (14:37):
He may swound that hate on a doodle watch.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
And ice cream?
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Can you give me unless we can keep talking about
the hot squirrel ever you want to go like like,
what are the competitions that are here at the World
Championship Squirrel cook Yeah, so thank you guys. Thanks guys.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
We kind of shrunk it down.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Last year.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
We did a bunch, We did squirrel Call, and we
did uh. We had the under ten year old oystreet
and competition, which was just ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
This year we limited it to the squirrel competition itself,
the cookoff cookof then we did the skinning competition, but
we did it two different ways. This year we did
it the traditional way, like Kevin would just tug and jerking,
kind of like you would with your little nippers, you know,
your little scissors you like to use.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
And then they don't want me in that competition with
my nippers. He's got those nippers. You know, you think
that's this They think this cheating.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
And then the second way is we used We had
a guy come down from Illinois that it was three
D printing these new you know the leg hold headhole deal.
I think, yeah, yeah, Kevin's got it had been three
D printing though, So we set out to see if
that was any better, and Kevin explained when that would
(15:58):
work better.
Speaker 7 (16:00):
Have had mobility problems, Uh, you would have like a
string with a carab beaner and you would mount it
up so if you couldn't bend, yeah, it would hang
so you can put their feet through there, their head
through there. So if you were like where you couldn't
get over, had trouble being mobile, you could skin from
standing up. So that's where that comes in handy.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Now, But they're putting the head of the squirrel in there, right,
But I mean, nobody do people skin from the head down.
I've only only know how to skin from.
Speaker 7 (16:32):
Think it's when they're gutting. It just gives you another option.
Of course that the squirrel may pull in two, so
if you you know, if he pulls in two, then
it gives a better option to skin in the thing. Yeah,
they sent me one, and they asked me if I
used U as I keep my bourbon bottle on it. Okay,
So so I tell him when I get about seventy five,
I'll probably take take this, but as long as I
(16:53):
can bend over. Because Clifton, he was he won the
first heat and then he started using this thing, and
then he kind of got lost.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Did it if he body beat him with that when
they were using those.
Speaker 7 (17:04):
Yeah, if he would have just did his rigor skin in,
he would have won. Because if you're not used to it,
you know, it's like if you're not used to using
nippers or scissors, then it's extra motion that you don't
know what you're Yeah, you're going through. But it's a
good it's a good thing. Like I said, I'll use
it one of these days when I get older.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
So how did how did cliff? Well did we answer
my question?
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, cleaning hot squirrel cleaning And then the Cookoff.
Speaker 5 (17:30):
And the cookoff man, you just wait till Brent Reeves
tells you what he ate.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Well, yeah, I want to hear that in detail, like
what was actually cooked. But so if if you come
to the Squirrel Cookoff every we're at the the nature Center.
What's the name. What's the name of the center? Yeah? Yeah,
here in Springdale, Arkansas for Arkansas Game and Fish Nature Center.
That's correct, and really beautiful facility.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Ozark Holland's Nature Center and John Hunt. Yeah, those are
those are Hollands Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
It's a mouthful Folks's Nature.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Center and a partridge in a pear tree.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
There was one other thing that we tried to accomplish
this this event is uh. I want to stress this
that there was a bunch of young adults kids to
young adults who competed this year. And one of the
reasons why I thought that was important is these kids
(18:36):
had been branded with the name in front of them
of Foster. And one of my goals for this event
was to eliminate the name Foster on these kids and
just call them what they are as kids. And so
most folks didn't know it today because we didn't shine
any light on it, because that wasn't the goal. The
(18:57):
goal was was to put these kids in there just
like any other kids and compete. So we had three
teams located over here. I think they did a really
good job and we shined a light on a lot
of child organizations that need to have lights shined on
them today. And so I didn't do a lot of
(19:19):
bragging about that. I wanted it just to be come
out and see that deal, and I think we accomplished
a big, big goal.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
Well that's good, that's good stuff good.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
So when people come here, I think the most unique
thing probably about this event is that you get to
eat squirrel. Like, so all the cooks are out here
cooking and you can see the cooks cooking. When you
come here, you have to cook the squirrel here. It's
got to be verified that it's squirrel. So people are cooking,
you can see them cook, and then people get to eat.
(20:00):
So almost probably most people standing around here have the
opportunity to eat squirrel that if they wanted to.
Speaker 5 (20:05):
Yeah, I've heard of all kinds of other oddities that
were out there. Crow, there was like crow sausage. Someone
made crow sausage. Row sausage. There was a bunch of goose.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
There was all kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Serve today, Brent, tell me as many possible, as many
titles of dishes that you can remember what was cooked,
because that's what people will always want to know. Sesame
And if y'all, if anyone out there remembers, you can
say too.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
I'll have to I'll have to dumb it down and
give you, like the the Brint version.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Yeah, just kind of like what it was.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
What there was like sesame, sesame squirrel, Like you'd eat
sesame chicken in a Chinese place, okay, and then there
would be like squirrel casos, squirrel case of dias okay,
squirrel case of is. Yeah, and then there was squirrel
(20:59):
is on you, squirrel meatballs and squirrel. What was that thing?
Speaker 1 (21:04):
This guy's got a picture on his songe. What do
you got there? Tell he's one to show now what
is this squirrel and panadas?
Speaker 4 (21:14):
He would Shane was on the other side of the
on the other team, on the judge.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
And looks good, looks good.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
All right, Brent got to eat And and I know Kevin,
Kevin's worldly like me, Kevin, you ever eat a bomb?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Me?
Speaker 5 (21:28):
Oh, yes, Bomby is one of my favorite sandwiches.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Okay, I never heard of him, and I.
Speaker 5 (21:35):
Had to say two or three times to Brent what
what it was. But he had a Bomby sandwich.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
That was Bambi sandwich top not what's a Bomby sandwich?
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Name sandwich?
Speaker 5 (21:47):
Yeah, so it's a French bread. It's usually got pickled
vegetables such as cucumbers and carrots, little cilantro on there,
and then they usually do char siu, which would be
a roasted pork, which is pretty amaze.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
He got, he got blessed. He got to eat that today.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
It was good and sushi. Yeah, and it was about
the size of a bucksh of a slug, a deer slug.
There's three of them on a little sandwich. They was good.
And then there was another. It was Italian things like
Italian meatballs. But you cut into that thing, it looked
like I mean, he thought it was a squirrel meat.
Somebody was working their tail off, and there the fella
(22:24):
sitting beside me. I can't here if it was Michael,
who it was, but he said, oh, my first shot
and he sped, he sped a shot out. It was
about the size of a seed tick that had been
on a three day suck. He's probably like a number
eight left shot. But I didn't get any no bone.
So you got Italian food, the lasagni, the meatballs, the
(22:45):
Vietnamese sandwich. Get any traditional not I have yet. Now this,
I've been to this thing for the last three or
four years. Three years, three years, I've been a judge twice.
I have yet to get squirreled in dumplings or fried squirrel.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
I think that's what everybody would think.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
That phils predictable. That's what I've been waiting to get it,
and I ain't seen it yet.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
I heard somebody tell me that they cook kind of
a traditional squirrel meal of like corn bread and beans
and kind of like a country.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Best baked beans. I ever put in my jaws was
in that room in there, and it was they were smoked.
I mean it was. The smoke was so stout in
it so good. Now that's not a detractor. It was
so good. I felt like I needed to ask tra
to put my spoon in. It was good.
Speaker 5 (23:35):
We had the new director of Arkansas Game and Fish
at the judging table this year.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Oh he was a judge.
Speaker 5 (23:41):
He was a judge. He got to experience that the
dish that won, we haven't announced it out there yet,
but the dish that won won by twenty points? Is
that a lot? It's a huge that's huge. Oh, it
was like a runaway huge amount. Now you can't you
can't tell me what it was yet.
Speaker 7 (24:02):
No, they know.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Well, at the end of that, the winner knows they
hit it out the park. Yeah, the squirrel feet was weird.
It's just let's let's just.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Say it's probably not the squirrel feet.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
If you put if you put squirrel feet in there,
you wouldn't really planning women.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
I don't know, man, man that thing was it?
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Was it a forethought or an afterthought?
Speaker 5 (24:29):
Such a well designed entree and side dish, I mean
super well designed, well proportioned, well garnished, everything about it
was magical, and then you got these.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Well, hey, listen, I got to give that team credit
because in me Eater Trivia, for instance, I have said
before that sometimes a good answer is better than a
right answer. Are you with me? I mean, because it's like,
what are we here for?
Speaker 4 (25:01):
Yeah, they were celebrated. They were celebrating the squirrel.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
I mean, so I kind of I kind of had
tip to them. And the other thing that comes to
my mind is that I'm in the midst of a
project where I'm doing a bunch of research about black
bears and about the way Indigenous people use black bears,
and a lot of them they'd rather eat a paul
than anything on that animal. I mean, like that, ain't
(25:27):
that archaeological record, Like they're.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
Still they're still doing that over in Asia illegally bear
paul bear paul stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
So maybe it's maybe it's something new with the squirrels.
I think you could flash frme and just.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Squirrel fe No, not feet, Okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Do you cook much wild game? Most of what I
see you cooking is like just like good country food. Yeah, no,
average and pork and.
Speaker 6 (25:56):
I don't know, I cook a lot of wild game, yeah,
I mean we'd usually every year we stock up on deer, bear, squirrel, rabbits, ducks,
anything we can get get our hands on. Yeah, and
a lot of the dishes we you know, back in
the day, I guess you would say, is which is
the way I try to cook kind of the way
(26:18):
you know my family did. They cooked a lot of
the dishes the same way, No matter what meat they
were using, you know a lot of onions, bell peppers,
just making a gravy and and you know, smothering the
meat for four hours until it fell apart.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Hard to beat that.
Speaker 6 (26:36):
It is, especially with squirrel.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, hard to beat that. So did you
have any squirrel today? You didn't? Did you say you didn't? Yeah,
it didn't.
Speaker 6 (26:48):
We did a ravioli which I didn't hear him talk
about it. It must not have been that good cage.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
And I'll talk about the ravioli.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
My son can walk walking into the judging room and
several of the judges said, my son's name is Clemens.
I'm named him after a man named Samuel Clemens. And
uh Clemens come walking in and Mark Lambert's seven time
world champion of barbecue. He said, Clem, you need to
try this, and it was that ravioli. He also said
(27:19):
you need to try that mac and cheese, and uh
so the ravioli was on point.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
M good dude, M Brent, did you get any of
the ravioli? Ain't lyne? Brent?
Speaker 1 (27:31):
What what what was your favorite one? It's not don't
tell me who won, but what was your favorite one?
Speaker 4 (27:35):
My favorite one was defeat the meatball meatball, they grind
it or was it like chunks of squirrel like it
was it was like sausage, so it had to be ground.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
It was now what percentage of the what percentage of
the meat eighty so that so that meatball had to
be eighty percent squirrel. And it was that good.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
It was good. It was very, very good, heavenly season No. No,
I mean, you know, squirrel is like it'll take on
whatever flavor you cook it in. You cook it in
beef broth, that's gonna jump onto that or chicken, either
either way you want to go with it. It was
just good that it wasn't when you took a bite
of it, it wasn't. You didn't say, well, that's Tony
(28:21):
Sastre's or that's salt and pepper. It was just a
good mix of baked meat.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Now, he did have his old ca snife out on
the table, of course I did.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
I went in there and I did notice it was
a little greasy. Yeah, well there was a couple of
legs that come in. You know, I don't people think
I'm crazy. Ever since when you did the cooking show
about eating with my hands. I don't like to do it,
and I'm his country's corn bread. I know, but I
don't like getting my hands on man. So I was
cutting the cutting the meat off the bone or some
of it.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Oh, you were cutting meat off this dude.
Speaker 5 (28:56):
He had us laughing three, three, three or four times
in there. I don't even know what the heck it was.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Well, who knows, I don't either.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
We were The unique thing about our judging, compared to
most judging is first and foremost, everybody is turning in
something different. So if you're used to a chili cook off,
where you know you're coming in and taste chili, it's
really easy to decipher which chili is better than the other,
or brisket or whatever. Right here, we're judging everybody on
(29:25):
their own merit. So I told all the judges early
that if we had somebody create a squirrel corn dog,
you needed to compare that corn dog to the best
corn dog you'd ever ate.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Okay, that's fair.
Speaker 5 (29:39):
So you could go all in first box that you open,
and you could give it all top scores if you
compared it. I told Brent, I said, if there's meat
loaf shows up on this, you got to compare it
to Mama's meat loaf.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
It's not plate. You're not comparing the challenge for the judge.
You're not comparing plate to plate. It's not like this
cane tastes better than a last one. It's this one
tastes in comparison to the last thing that was similar
that you ate to it.
Speaker 5 (30:06):
How many judges were there, Joe, It's just like in
real life twelve twelve twelve.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Yeah, my friend John Howard was alternate.
Speaker 5 (30:15):
Yeah, and hey, John Howard got everything that Brent liked
to chew on.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
He'd passed that. John was standing behind me. If I
liked it, I'd just hand it back and then John
to work on. I look at him like this, or
I did eat all up.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
I did take a bite of Brent's squirrel fried rice.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
When I was in there. Squirrel that's good. Yeah, I didn't.
It was just like two years ago when I judged.
There was nothing that I ate that I wouldn't eat again.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
You might cut this out, but one of.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
The fun we ain't cutting nothing out.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
One of them have to do with the mammoth tasks, No,
I promise you.
Speaker 5 (30:52):
One of the funnies that Brent said was he'd had
like three different Asi dishes turned in on his side
of the table, and he said, who would have ever thought?
My whole life, I've been eating squirrel every time I
ate Chinese.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Good. I mean, I couldn't think of nothing better to eat.
It was good.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Did you have to disqualify anybody for suspect squirrel when
he did the inspection?
Speaker 5 (31:21):
No, man, everybody turned in legit squirrel. You know, we
had a little rendezvous a while back with the Bear
grease crew who had went out. I don't know if
Bear was the one who killed those squirrels or if
it was you, Clay, but Clay made a donation.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Heck of about forty squirrels, probably forty.
Speaker 5 (31:40):
We had another probably sixty squirrels show up early this morning.
We had ample squirrels with skin on it. For the
squirrel skinning competition. I brought in two black squirrels, solid black.
Where did you get those? Undisclosed?
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Location? Okay, Chitty Park because we yeah, black squirrels only
in city parks and on golf courses.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
So this was near a really large river. Okay, the
now and uh I was telling everybody those were Japanese.
A five wagoo squirrels that's kind of Oh he's got
to tell of one, right. Look, they were as black
as an angus cow. M hm, So good time, man.
(32:25):
We had great judges in there. Uh, all of the judges.
They had They had fun eating these dishes. But we
don't have an event without the teams showing up. I
know the public loves to see it.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
If we don't have teams show up to this deal,
so I'll go ahead and start promoting next year. Right now,
it's time for you to decide whoever you want in,
you want in. And it's a good time. Every team
out here, whether they got first or last, they had
a fun time today, I promise, and the mission of
who hunters and fishermen are as good people.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
It's spread at this facility.
Speaker 5 (33:07):
And a shout out to everybody who parked cars.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Man. Those guys are standing out in the heat early
this morning, and it has been hot today, brutal.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, Kevin got a squirrel question for you. Had a
guy today that I met here that he might be
standing right here. I don't know, but he I said
to Jeb squirrel. He said, yep, I ate some squirrel here.
He said it was really good. He said in Kentucky.
Our squirrels taste like mud. And he said, we can't
eat them, and he said, down here, they taste good.
(33:39):
I just like, I didn't say much. I just kind
of gave him the head nod. I need to wash.
Is he right?
Speaker 7 (33:49):
Come back next year and we'll put him on the
spot and he can tell us the Kentucky squirrel from
the Arkansas squirrel.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah, I mean blind blind taste tests.
Speaker 7 (33:58):
Yeah, blind taste tests.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
I mean you never now no, yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 7 (34:03):
You know, I've had squirrel from Arkansas, Michigan, Illinois, Kentucky,
South Dakota.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
It's all all the same.
Speaker 7 (34:13):
It's all very similar. I mean, for someone to say
that their palette could judge one squirrel from this state
to the other, I think we need to have that
next year. You want to, Yeah, let's let's try to
do a little variety of squirrel and see who can
but say that.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
But I think you would be.
Speaker 5 (34:31):
It's unfair because if you did a spring summer or
a spring squirrel compared to a summer squirrel, it's just
like bear. You know yourself. If you get those bear
that are down by the water, or the bear that's
been eating the fish in Alaska, that sucker's gonna taste
like fish. Man, I shot them iguanas in Puerto Rico
(34:52):
and they were far far from water, and they taste
like fish. So it's all diet on the thing.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
I think it's got to be pre pretty extreme that that.
In the bear world. The only the only time I've
seen a bear taste any different than any other bears
is salmon bears. Other than that, I find every bear
I've ever tasted from anywhere in the country to pretty
much taste it. Bringing fall tastes the same. I mean,
just a fall bear is going to have more fat,
(35:19):
so but but I mean, does it taste the same,
And like a burger, I would say, you'd have a
real hard time telling the difference. Now a fall bear
is going to have more fat though, yep. But now
when you start getting to these like red squirrels and
pine squirrels and stuff out west, they say those tastes
piny in habit Yeah, but like a cat squirrel, gray squirrel,
(35:43):
or fox squirrel anywhere in the eastern instiduous forest, I
bet they. I think they taste the same.
Speaker 6 (35:48):
Only the only thing I've noticed different eating squirrel in
a lot of the states. Is at times in Louisiana,
if they're eating a cypress tree and they get no
cypress bowls, that they do have a little bit of
a stronger taste. You can kind of tell, really, does
it tastes like a cypress. It's kind of got that pain,
you know, it's kind of got that same kind of
(36:10):
sappy Okay, Yeah, and you can kind of you can
tell it in them.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Now that that makes sense because they're eating those cypress.
Speaker 6 (36:18):
Cypress bowls and they started eating them when they're still green,
and they'll eat through and pool like the seed out.
And I mean, I promise you I can clean one
and just during cleaning it, I can tell you what
he's been eating over the cypress bowls or whether it
was you know, eating just acrons.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
M that makes sense. That makes sense. What about you, Clay,
would you do today?
Speaker 4 (36:41):
Well?
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Shore Man? Uh, I actually just got here about an
hour and a half ago. I've been writing about whole
Collier this morning. If I'm just telling you the truth,
good man to write about. Yeah, woke up at the
crack of way before the crack of dawn and been
doing some writing. But uh, that's that's what I had
(37:02):
to do this morning, but got it sort of got
it done sort of. But we're, uh, we're we're getting
ready to bait. We're getting ready to bear hunt though
bear Arsaw. Bear season opens this week and so we're
we're we're fixing the gow's.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
How's the action been?
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Not good? Not good.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
Heat.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
I don't think heat, it doesn't. I don't think it
has anything to do with heat. I'd rather it be
hot than cold during bear season, really, yeah. Why, worst
thing that could happen would be a hurricane come through
and like a bunch of rain or a cold front
come through and knock the temperature down twenty thirty degrees.
You lose your bears and rarely get them back. It be,
(37:42):
it'd be best if it's just like consistent temperature right
through the start of the season. I'd rather it be
eighty five degrees than sixty on open day bear season
in Arkansas. I don't know about anywhere else.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
I was out baiting yesterday and I did notice some
white eppcakerings on the ground.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Yeah there's playing, Yeah, yeah. I wonder if there's any
questions from the crowd or any about to anybody at this,
uh at this in these chairs. Anybody got any questions?
Speaker 6 (38:22):
Yeah, I do. I want to know if he's gonna
eat the hot squirrel next year again?
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah, back in, he's in all right, Oh, question the
question is about go ahead?
Speaker 4 (38:35):
Yeah, Well, the question is about the dog.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Tell us about your dog, Kevin.
Speaker 7 (38:39):
Well, this is black Jail, and this is the first
time she's been around more than three people at one time,
so it's a little bit overwhelmed.
Speaker 4 (38:47):
Ye, nervous.
Speaker 7 (38:49):
She is a half high q Beagle, a quarter carve In,
a quarter Faroll Miller field trial porter. Okay, and that
dog's all becomes the dog. The dog's name is Jeff,
Black Jeff, Black Jeff. Usually I'm down here with Chef Jeff.
This year I'm with black Jeff.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
Okay.
Speaker 7 (39:10):
And Black Jeff was a friend of mine that I
met down at Real Foot Lake and he was a
pro baseball player, a swamp rabbit hunter, and so I
got black Jeff.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
So, okay, do you call her Black Jeff?
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Like, if you're gonna just call her across the yard,
You're like, come here, Black Jeff.
Speaker 7 (39:28):
Black Jeff. Yeah, she's a she's ten months old.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Like I said, multi syllable animal names are tough, but
I got to get behind them. Yeah, I usually like
one syllable, but you know, I got a meal named
slow Trap, which is Kevin.
Speaker 5 (39:42):
You said that tied into Clay. How to tie into Clay?
Speaker 7 (39:45):
It tied into Clay because last year, at the end
of the podcast, thinking it was over with Clay and
I were talking about dogs and what we like to hunt.
He asked me, said, what what's your favorite kind of hunting?
Of course, you know the favorite kind of hunt is
what I hunt, and I can do it at my
age and where I and I said, well, swamp rabbit hunting.
And then I got home and I started a new
job site, another job that I worked with a young
(40:07):
boy and he was a COLDI hunter with dogs, and
we become friends. And I talked to him, says, have
you seen beagles use this? We never have, but I
know people that have. And then my hunting experience over
the last ten or twelve years with beagle dogs, we
get into coyodies and some dogs like to run on
better than the other. And I thought, and it's usually
(40:29):
like a short race twelve hundred sixteen hundred yards, not
the typical coyoti race. There and I'm thinking I can
breed a dog up that I can run in Kentucky,
that I can afford to feed, and I can have
a pack of predator dogs. So that's my attempt. It's
probably gonna take me two years to have a predator dog.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
So what will your intentions for this dog to be,
Because because Brince used decoy dogs, you're not wanting a
decoy dog. You're wanting a dog that's going to run
a kyo.
Speaker 7 (40:57):
It's going to circle it back to me. It's gonna
jump it up, take it out about one thousand yards
twelve hundred yards, not put a whole lot of pressure
on it, and not run it out of the country.
It's going to let that coldy come out to his
home range where he's been hunting, where we've jumped in
and bring it back to us and to be up
to me, to be able to be.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Like, that's why you want that beagle in there. So
they're not just running it out of the country, they're
just kind of getting it up out of its bed,
letting them know that.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
It's like they're like a rabbit, Kevin. They'll make a
loop and kind of go back to where they got jumped.
Speaker 7 (41:25):
You know, it's taken me a few years to see that,
but yeah, that's what I'm seeing is that we'll jump
a few coldies and they'll come back into where we're hunting.
So you know, they're just like running a deer. You know,
they're going to circle back, run like a fox. So yes,
well and you know they chase rabbits, so yeah, so
you know, and then the same with a bob get
(41:46):
they circle back. You know, sometimes you'll jump them in
a cane brake or a blowdown a timber thicket, whatever,
and they're going to come back in there, and you
just got to be like the top predator and be
ready for them, cause they're going to be looking for you.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
That's fun.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
So so has this dog been exposed to all to
any kyota?
Speaker 7 (42:06):
She's run loose her career, entire life pretty much like
I said, she just turned ten months old. She'll be
a year old in November. So I've got five more
of her siblings. My cowdi friend there j T. He's
got the other two. So uh, we're going to start
start after him, probably start them on some swamp raps
and stuff. They have run some rabbits, but I haven't
(42:27):
exposed them to caldies or bobcats.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Yeah, yeah, Brent was decoy dog hunting. Have you seen
them do that?
Speaker 7 (42:33):
I have seen them do that.
Speaker 4 (42:34):
It's very interesting. That's yeah, that's crazy. It's it's it's
the most amazing thing that I've ever seen as far
as how you think about a cody's nose and they're
hearing and then they're cautious and if you know, if
the odds are stacked against them, they're gone. They're they're
not messing around. They played a win. If the odds
are on their side, whatever they're after is usually done for.
(42:55):
And they get so crazy focused on that dog in
that time of year when when there's usually during the
best time of year to use a decoy dog is
when the coats have a litter in the ground in
a den somewhere, and how it is you use a
predator call, call that that dog withinside of where you
are or the cout with inside of where you are,
(43:17):
and then the decoyed dog sees the cody takes off
after it. Well, the coat is only going to sit
there long enough for that decoy dog to get close enough,
and then he's going to turn around and start trotting. Awful.
When that happens, the dog will stop and turn around
and come back, and the cout goes, ah, you're scared
of me, And he'll follow them right back to where
you are. And I've had him come close to me
(43:39):
and Josh and they just they are so focused on
that dog because of their territorial instincts that they don't
pay an attention to you. And it's usually lights out
for the old Cody.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Amazing, huh.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
It's crazy to see. And it's in the daylight. I mean,
you're not doing it at night.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Mm hmm. Well have you hided with dogs squirreled dogs?
Speaker 6 (44:00):
Yeah, so I do. I've got a cattle hula curve
all real, uh heep. Me and him go out squirrel
hunting and we do a lot of coons.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (44:09):
And I don't know. He doesn't like anything that's smaller
than him that walks. He loves getting out and if
I don't kill it in time, he's gonna try to
get it.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
He likes the scrap.
Speaker 6 (44:19):
He does like to scrap. He's usually bring me a
present about once a week on the driveway.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Katahua. Does anybody else have it? A question? That they
want to ask anybody, this young man, this guy right here. Yeah,
first animal to hunt? Good question, good question. We can go,
we go around, we go around the circle. I think
the first I probably killed the squirrel first, But the
(44:48):
first animal I really remember was hunting the deer. What
about you, Kevin Sparra sparrow.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Yea uh, squirrel?
Speaker 4 (44:58):
Squirrel, squirrel? Do duck squirrel hunt with my daddy.
Speaker 5 (45:03):
I may not be the world's best small game hunter
like Kevin, but mine was a little yellow bird that big.
And when I hit that thing and and it fell down,
I went in and got got my mama's gravy spoon
and does a burial site for that bird.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
I buried it, packed it in real tight, cried a little.
Speaker 5 (45:23):
Bit, did a small prayer, and I went out and
found its other one, you know, and.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Then went and got the other. The best part of
this story is that was twenty fourteen.
Speaker 5 (45:38):
Yeah, man, I remember crying over that first.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Is that a good Is that? Is that a good answer?
All right? Good, good, good good.
Speaker 7 (45:46):
I've got a question from the audience. Is the young
man that's from Arizona here that's got the a bird
squirrel on the back of his behind. You right there,
come on over this way. He got pull in here
to check turned around.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Oh, that's like a motorcycle club.
Speaker 7 (46:08):
So when I first came here, he came up to
me and started talking to me and said he's from
Arizona and all that, and we had a good little
conversation and he walked off, and some more people come
up and started talking to me. And I'm thinking, that's
an Abert squirrel on the back of.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
His jacket, you like specie. That is that a desert squirrel?
Speaker 4 (46:27):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Really, so it's not a gray square.
Speaker 7 (46:29):
It's not a grey squirrel. This is an Abert squirrel.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Is a tail that short? Or did somebody pull the
tail off? Okay, pulled the pulled the tail off. He
pulled the tail off.
Speaker 4 (46:44):
You know.
Speaker 5 (46:44):
One of the finest squirrel hunters of all time come
out of Arizona, John O'Dell. And John O'Dell was a
biologist out of the state. He's recently retired, but he
killed the grand Slam of the squirrel, which was go
ahead last.
Speaker 7 (47:01):
I think he was Kevin.
Speaker 5 (47:04):
You remember this. He was on the cover of Field
and Stream or something. He went all the way around
the country and he shot every species a squirrel, and
he got a lot of trash talk because he did
it with an eight seventy shotgun.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
My man.
Speaker 5 (47:21):
And the reason he was getting so much trash talking
and he was able to defend it was in a
lot of places, the only gun that he could use
a shotgun, and so he just used the same gun.
And the image you could find it on the internet.
He has them all mounted like on one branch. Oh wow, man,
(47:42):
it's every species a squirrel in North America's pretty cool.
Speaker 6 (47:46):
How many species of squirrels exactly?
Speaker 1 (47:48):
Don't get me going cajuing.
Speaker 4 (47:51):
You could just know that part of the twenty two
you could have said thirty seven.
Speaker 6 (47:54):
I mean, and then I'm just curious because I mean,
I don't.
Speaker 7 (47:58):
Know, but like a google Josh five or six. No,
there's probably a lot, probably twelve to eighteen twelve to eighteen.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Twelve to eighteen.
Speaker 5 (48:07):
There's a little squirrel up in Missouri. It's a ground
squirrel in Missouri that I've been wanting to go up
and hunt a chip monk.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
No, it's a great it's an actual ground squirrel.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
But this says, this is AI overview that there are
over sixty five squirrel species in North America. Oh, I
see tree squirrels, ground squirrels, flying squirrels.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
I doubt that. I think AI is pulling one on us.
It wouldn't have been too surprised that half of that
sixty five sounds high. But I mean, yeah, you can
start thinking about.
Speaker 4 (48:44):
America's pretty big.
Speaker 6 (48:45):
Yeah, now that you think about it, I mean flying
squirrel age. I mean there's a lot that you're not they.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Might be counting ground squirrels.
Speaker 6 (48:52):
Like, there's a lot you're not thinking. We're I'm thinking
more of what we hunt eat. Yeah, but yeah, there's
a lot more species, I think. Yeah, you know, I
don't know there's that many though.
Speaker 7 (49:03):
Isn't there some subspecies out there? Like I think there's
a cherokey fox squirrel down on the Mexico Arizona border.
Then you have the squirrel, the Caba squirrel that's only
like in seventy five square miles of the earth that
you can hunt, hopefully it made it through this last
(49:23):
forest fire that came through there. And then you've got
the I think the Carolina fox squirrel a little bit different.
And then you've got you know, some subspecies out there,
regional squirrels. So there's there's more than you think about it.
You know, we we just think about fox squirrel, gray squirrel,
you know, the a birds. And then like I said,
(49:44):
you've got those subspecies and different type of fox squirrels
out there. And then you've got melanistic squirrels, which are
a gray squirrel that's black basically there, and you've got
some black fox squirrels out there. And then there, you know,
you've got your albino squirrels, which really not a subspecies,
they're just their own little in different locations there, some
(50:05):
some in Tennessee, some in Illinois, some in Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
So can I ask a question of the crowd?
Speaker 6 (50:10):
For sure? I seen it.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
I'll ask a question of the crowd. Should we just
cut this squirrel cook off? Or do we need to
do one again next year?
Speaker 4 (50:21):
Yeah? Okay, yeah, there it is.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
Doing it again. Got to I think it's it was
brought up about a piece of shot being being spit
out as as big as the seedtick that had been
sucking for three days. Yep, it was interesting analogy accurate
brings up the question, and we'll go around the we'll
go around the group here shotgun or twenty two you
(50:50):
only get one for the rest of your life? Why
and why for therel squirrel or squirrel shotgun or twenty
two one for the rest of your life? You're and
here's the big question. This is the only gun you
have in the wilderness. You will die like life and death,
life and death situation one gun. I'm building this analogy
(51:11):
as we go. What are you carrying? Twenty two or
a shot gun? Kevin? We're starting with you.
Speaker 7 (51:17):
Twenty two magnum. Take anything on the North America content. Okay,
but I'm a rifleman. You know you can. You're out there,
if you're living off the land, you can kill anything.
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Okay, Well, but you can only kill squirrels only. Twenty
two macnim same twenty two mag twenty two magnam. Now
do you honte with the twenty two mag in Kentucky
just like when you're out or regular twenty two back.
Speaker 7 (51:40):
When I was a killer? Twenty two magnum. Okay, I'm
not much of a killer anymore, so twenty two long
rifle does.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
What good would a magnum do? You is shooting a
squirrel out of a tree?
Speaker 7 (51:49):
H You can kill two at one time, just if
they're lined up. If they're lined up, you have no
problem of doing that. You got a little bit more range,
more firepower, Okay, you know, collateral damage if you make
a bad headshot or whatever. There he's not gonna limp off.
I've had lots of squirrels limp off through a headshot
with a twenty two not you know. I did this
(52:10):
comparison one time about this squirrel predator come to the
to the earth and he was hunting humans. So us humans,
we we hunt squirrels with a forty grain bullet twenty two.
So this squirrel predator guy comes here and so he
(52:32):
wants to do something equivalent. So he's hunting humans. So
do you know what the equivalent? And it's been a
while since they did the math, but what he would
be shooting us.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
With probably like a fifty caliber.
Speaker 7 (52:43):
It'd be one pound fifty caliber seven hundred and twenty grains.
But I don't have many grains one pound, but it'd
be a one pound projectile, is what you know. I
get hit with a one pound in my pinky, I'm down.
But that's the comparison that a little bitty two pound
gray squirrel can take a four or forty grain head shot,
they run off, and then can you imagine being human
(53:06):
and taking a one pound projecting out anywhere in your head,
You're gonna you're you're down, You're down, you get hit anywhere.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
Yeah, So okay, that's a that's a great answer, and
I expect as much detail from all of you.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
Josh, I'm gonna have to say twenty two. I think
that I think that if you're gonna if your life
depends on squirrel hunting, that you're left off, that you're
going you're gonna hone your skills, so that killing a
squirrel to twenty two is gonna.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
Be I hope you go into the woods.
Speaker 4 (53:41):
Fee got it?
Speaker 1 (53:44):
Okay, yep, okay, cajon, I'm going shotgun, shotgun. This man
wants to eat.
Speaker 6 (53:52):
Yeah, I mean, and it's actually that's simple to leaves
in the way and he's he's running down the limb.
I'm just I'm taking them out.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
I'm going to just deal with the collateral damage.
Speaker 6 (54:04):
Yeah. Well, and you know, sadly, to some people, I
love to eat the brain. So I'm not shooting them
in the head anyway.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
That is the best answer that I've heard for not
shooting them in the head with the twenty two because
most of the time.
Speaker 5 (54:19):
They get us his mind is spinning.
Speaker 1 (54:24):
So you like to eat the brains? Yeah, that's a
that's a yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 7 (54:28):
That's that's a what I wouldn't recommend for anybody to
do any kind of brain of any species.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
We had this conversation to stay.
Speaker 7 (54:36):
Away from it.
Speaker 6 (54:37):
So you cow brain.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
No, yeah, yeah, there's no there's some in the last well,
we don't have to get into it, but there's some
disease potential. But makes your beard long and white.
Speaker 6 (54:52):
Yeah it will.
Speaker 4 (54:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (54:53):
I also kind of feel like I think there's been
disease around for a long time that we just never
tested for. Probably, and I think if you cook everything properly,
you're probably gonna You know, my grandmother passed away at
nine age four years old, and she ate cow brains,
and squirrel.
Speaker 4 (55:11):
Bridly got her, didn't it.
Speaker 6 (55:12):
You finally got her. That's That's what I'm gonna go
back and redo a headstone, say squirrel brains got it.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
So shotgun, I got you, I got you. I know
Brent's answer twenty two four to ten.
Speaker 6 (55:30):
Twenty two, Man, that'll go four ten. You can't afford
to shall.
Speaker 4 (55:34):
For real, you know, if that's just always been the thing.
It was. We young man over here asked the question,
first squirrel I ever kill was with it? Twenty two?
We hunted with dogs on horses, and that was just
that was the three things that we did. You shot
them with a twenty two. You had somebody, somebody would
bring a shotgun in casey, you know, you made a
(55:57):
bad shot and you're timbering squirrels and they just shoot
on the wing or whatever. But it was dogs, horses
and twenty two rifles.
Speaker 6 (56:05):
Hey, let's go, I got you back.
Speaker 3 (56:06):
Sounds like a good country music album.
Speaker 4 (56:08):
Yeah, yeah, you could aie that until number one hit.
Speaker 5 (56:12):
For most of my life, I've been a twenty two
squirrel shooter. And just like Kevin, a lot of my
mentors and squirrel hunting they will tell you the twenty
two magnum is superior. Now, recently in the past few weeks,
when we were struggling to get squirrel on this.
Speaker 1 (56:28):
Yeah, here's the real test.
Speaker 5 (56:30):
When we're struggling to get squirrels and the leaves are
on every tree, leave us, ma'am. I ain't even gonna
tell you it was a twenty gage boys.
Speaker 4 (56:37):
That thing was twelve.
Speaker 1 (56:40):
Okay, knugging it.
Speaker 5 (56:44):
And let me tell you what. Maybe I didn't literally
see the squirrel, but I seen the leaves moving, and
then you're seeing the squirrel, and then I heard the
squirrel dump on the ground. So if this was a
survival situation, and we're talking that there could be a
migration of evil squirrel like a zombie attack, it's twelve
(57:05):
gags loaded.
Speaker 4 (57:06):
Up extended magazine.
Speaker 1 (57:08):
Yeah I had I hadn't put the scenario inside the
World Championship Squirrel Cookoff, but you were there. You had
no You had to get squirrel, and I went for
the meat with the meat stick man. And everybody has
heard has heard my philosophy. But like when we go
squirrel hunting with dogs on mules, ninety percent of the
(57:30):
people out there have shotguns because when we get went by,
when we get to the tree, good percentage of the
time squirrels moving big timber and we're just wanting to
bring home, We're just wanting to get squirrels.
Speaker 4 (57:43):
On the ground. And so pandemonia.
Speaker 1 (57:46):
So shotgun shotgun half and half huh yeah, half and
half yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (57:54):
Either way, I'll let y'all the shotgun goes I let
y'all come to my company.
Speaker 5 (57:59):
M I'm gonna tell you this, gentlemen. Here in about
five minutes, I gotta go out and crown the new
world champion squirrel.
Speaker 1 (58:07):
Oh wow, and uh, I.
Speaker 5 (58:11):
Think from what I know right now, I think the
team is gonna be as happy as anybody you've ever
seen win this.
Speaker 1 (58:19):
I think, well, we're gonna have to I don't want
to miss that. Well, in that case, we're gonna we're
gonna close it down and we'll come back at the
We'll try to like maybe film some of it, maybe
put it on Yeah, can we do that?
Speaker 4 (58:33):
Yep, we can.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
We'll film some of it and put put the winner
on the episode. It's gonna be a big problem. I
wanted to. I meant to do this at the first
of the episode. What else am I I'm supposed.
Speaker 4 (58:44):
To tell a week?
Speaker 3 (58:46):
Oh, pay attention to meat eat or we're gonna have some
great sales. It's gonna be great.
Speaker 1 (58:51):
What are the dates of it?
Speaker 3 (58:52):
September twenty ninth through October fifth, September twenty night through
October fifth or the dates?
Speaker 1 (58:57):
Wow, I'm more confused. When we started coming soon, White God,
if you're looking to get first light gear. That's a
that's a good time to get a bunch of stuff on.
Sell all the white tail kids around sale buy the
The Meat Eater is doing a live tour and it's
in December and they're about to announce the dates coming
(59:21):
soon and uh but they're coming to Faydville, Fadeville, Arkansas.
So Steve Vanella, Jannie, Brent, Me Randall and a special
guests that everybody will be really pumped to see. Is
going to be infadable. But I'm just going to tell
you it's on December of the twentieth Saturday, December of
the twentieth.
Speaker 4 (59:39):
Oh he's spelling the beans here.
Speaker 1 (59:40):
Yeah, yeah, I think I just be ready. If you
want to come to Faydville.
Speaker 4 (59:45):
You got to get on that. Get on you got
to get on the link.
Speaker 1 (59:50):
Yeah. So there's a.
Speaker 4 (59:51):
Where you can get notified of tickets. That's right.
Speaker 1 (59:54):
So there's a there's a link that that if you
sign up for they will send it out to you
so that you can buy a ticke gets before it
just goes up on the website. So you have to go.
Speaker 4 (01:00:03):
To because tickets will be letter.
Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
Well.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
I actually know that I actually know the web address.
You go to the meateater dot com slash tour that's it,
and sit and put your email in there and then
they'll send you an email before the tickets go live
to the world. And so the media live towards a
ton of fun, big, big fun. It's like a two
hour like variety show. There'll be music, there's trivia, people
(01:00:27):
win a bunch of stuff. Steve Vanellah tells a lot
of stories. We uh, it's gonna be a ton of fun.
So I'm looking forward to that being in Fable, Arkansas.
It's it's in multiple cities. It's in Uh, it's in Nashville, Tennessee, Memphis, Faydble, Arkansas, Dallas, Texas, Austin,
(01:00:50):
and in Texas.
Speaker 4 (01:00:52):
It starts out in Birmingham, Alabama.
Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Birmingham, Alabama. So all right, so that's where the live
go to everyone. M yeah, so let's go. I want
to go see who wins the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff.
Thank you, Thanks everybody, Thanks everybody.
My name is Clay Nukleman.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
This is a production of the bear Grease podcast called
The bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper,
and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast,
presented by f HF Gear, American Maid purpose built hunting
and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as
(00:37):
the place as we explore.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Welcome to the Bear Grease Render. This is This is
our annual annual show that we do at the World's
Championship Squirrel Cookoff. This is uh, it was so where
we're here with with it a live a live.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Audience out twelve or fifteen thousand of our closest friends.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
And right watching watching the Render.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Man.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
What a what A what a group of guests.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Here.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
We've got the world's greatest small game hunter, Kevin Murphy.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Hey, Kevin's always the only one on the podcast that
opened carries, which I always appreciate and every time I
see it, I'm like, why did I not do that? So,
but we're gonna get back to the outfit. We've got
Josh and we've got Joe Wilson, who's the founder, Headman,
head Honcho, Chief l Capitan of the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff,
(01:44):
who started this long time ago with a lie which
we've already heard about, but it's grown into so much.
We've got Brent Reeves back from wherever he's been just
swamp to South Arkansas. Yeah, good to see old Brent
black a while. And then we've got the man I
know is Cajun cooking with Cajun or cooking with this
(02:07):
and man, it's good to have you, Audrey. I mean,
I just call you Cajun. I don't even need to
know your name.
Speaker 6 (02:12):
Hey, it's a lot better than what a lot of
people call me.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
First of all, I want to know, like, why are
you here, Cajun? What have you been doing? Were you cooking?
Speaker 6 (02:23):
Yeah? So we I came in, of course, we came
in with a team and uh we did some squirrel
ravolus with a vodka sauce. And while they were doing that,
I did about a fifteen gallon jumbala to giveaway to
kind of just feed the people and bring bring people in,
you know for the calls. I mean, so they put
a lot of work into these shows, and anything we
(02:46):
can do to help we love coming out and help them.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, and Cajun tell people like what do you what
do you do? Like you got like a million people
that follow you on Instagram maybe more, but like, who
the heck are you and what do you do?
Speaker 7 (03:02):
Well?
Speaker 6 (03:02):
So, unfortunately, I'm just a guy that moved from Louisiana
at Arkansas and moved out off the grid to kind
of get away from everything, and.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Somehow that didn't work for you.
Speaker 6 (03:16):
Yeah, I would say, don't follow in my footsteps if
you want to stay in the woods and not being known,
because uh yeah, I just you know, living on the
grid and cooking on open fire and just living. And
my son decided to be fun to make a video
and took my phone one night and downloaded TikTok on
it posted the video and the next day I had
(03:37):
twelve hundred followers. And here we are today, and you know,
we've got a lot going on. We're traveling a lot,
cooking and going to a lot of different events and
just living a dream.
Speaker 7 (03:49):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Yeah, well, man, it's good to have you. We've met before, yeah,
several times. But Kevin Murphy, Hey, where have you been man?
What have you been doing?
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Well?
Speaker 7 (04:01):
Let's see, this week, I've been out on the job
site and taking you've actually been working. I've been working. Yeah,
I've been working on a heavy highway job doing nuclear
density testing. So wow, now there's your warning.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Okay, that's the week before that spare time, I was
at an.
Speaker 7 (04:19):
Archeological dig looking for some of the first Americans that
paleo hunters that hunted the mastadons in mammoths. So we
dug where we're doing that northern Kentucky, on the edge
of the last glaciation, the Wisconsin, so the glaciers came down. Basically,
you can draw a line along the Ohio River and
(04:40):
that's where the glaciers ended, and so like sixty miles
as a crow flys from my house was the glaciers
fifteen thousand years ago. So in northern Kentucky there was
a gathering of mammoths and mastadons, one of the few
places in the world that you find both species at
the same spot. We dug up a bottom tusk of
(05:02):
a mastodon, which I didn't know at that time that
masadons had bottom tusk, and it was carved in the
shape of a penis.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
Oh wow, so quickly, but I didn't know where we
were going there.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
So very so so did they know that the site
was there.
Speaker 7 (05:28):
Yes, this is a site where Daniel Boone crossed the
river with his son and like one hundred and fifty
militia men ten months after the Revolutionary War was over.
And he said it was a bad idea to cross.
There's a ford there on a licking river that you
could wait across right now. But they crossed that went
(05:49):
up into the hills and they were met by one
hundred British and about two hundred American Indians. Like I said,
ten months after the Revolutionary War was over, the British
were still trying to take charge of the Northwest Territory.
They got ambush. Daniel Boone's son died in his arms there.
They made it back across the river licks little blue licks,
(06:10):
the battle little licks.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So the mastadon parts were at the blue lix.
Speaker 7 (06:16):
Yeah, we're sitting there digging in a mud hole looking
at this river. Lick is a salt lick, salt lick. Yeah,
that's why the animals were there to begin with. That's
why the mastodons and the mammos were there because there
was water available. There was salt there that attracted them.
They was right on the edge of the Glacier's ideal
climate and it's just all.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
So you You were there with archaeologists from where.
Speaker 7 (06:41):
From all over the country.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Wow.
Speaker 7 (06:44):
One guy was there and he was gathering cosmic dust
to see if he could prove that the the hit
the Earth and might have changed the climate. Another guy
that was there is, I know that you've been doing
some water witching thing, but you got to have this
guy on your show. He's world renowned water witcher.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Oh really, And I.
Speaker 7 (07:03):
Spent I didn't get to spend any time with him
this year, but two years ago I did and I
asked him. He says, how did you learn to do this?
He says, you know, my mother in law's well went
dry and a guy came over and he witched this well.
I saw him do that, and I told myself he's
a science teacher. He says, I'm going to teach myself
to do that. And he's been all over the world
(07:23):
finding water a lot of times for Ninja's speople that
the water system's gone dry whatever. And he was out
west and he was working on his spot and the
water had dried up, and he was with some some
American Indians and they said, well, the COODI is a
spot where there's water. He said, Okay, where's the cowdy? Well,
(07:44):
we don't know. It's just always been called the Cowoti.
So he spends a week out there looking around witching.
He finds water. He looks up on the ridge and
there's a silhouette of a cowdy's head. So he taught
that her contribe that had lost their heritage. He brought
it back to him.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Interesting.
Speaker 5 (08:05):
Oh you better not ask him what he did three
weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Wow, that's interesting, that's interesting. Hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna
say one thing about water witching because you brought it up.
After all the water witching stuff. The best, the best
commentary that I had on it was a guy said, clay,
water witching works if you believe it works, And I
(08:31):
was like, he's probably right.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
He's probably right.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So well, Kevin, that's uh uh, you've been doing a lot.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Did you cook today?
Speaker 7 (08:40):
I did not cook. I just smoothed around.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
You were just here.
Speaker 7 (08:44):
Talking to the kids and everybody.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
So what about the hat?
Speaker 7 (08:49):
You know, this is my rabbit killing hat. This is
this is a rabbit with a swamp rabbit skull on
the thing.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Oh, that's a swamp rabbit skull.
Speaker 7 (09:00):
Until I can get my predator, got dogs going and
get me a bobcat man. This is gonna have to do.
Fill in that that. I figure's gonna take me two years.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Maybe this has been dyed. Yeah, yeah, they don't have
a swamp ra It was like that up in Kentucky.
I wasn't sure. It turns out that got massive on lower.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Tusks that are yeah way lower.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, pretty low, pretty low. Interesting. Okay, did you just
squirrel today?
Speaker 7 (09:27):
I did not have any squirrel.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
I haven't had okay so far, so Joe, yes, sir,
tell us about give me a summary of the day,
like what's like what kind of meals we had? Like
what kind of squirrel people were cooking?
Speaker 5 (09:42):
Yeah, so me and Brent were both in the judging room,
so we got to see everything.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Judge Brent, I I went in there to get a
drink of water, and I came out a guy that
ate fourteen plates of squirrel. That's that's winning pal wow hmm.
Speaker 5 (09:58):
So yeah, so there was some amazing dishes and uh,
this year, I think some new pinnacles were reached absolutely
and probably a couple of lows on my.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Side of the table. No loads here one man?
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Yeah, so you know I have looked out odd table
and even table. There was definitely a hot side of
the judging room today. And uh it was the first time,
I think in the history of the event. You know
we started in twenty eleven that actual squirrel feet were
turned in.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Oh feet on the other table for real.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
Interesting squirrel feet were turned in.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
There was that a hip or not a hip? As
a high risk maneuver. It was either going to go
really good or really bad. It's a high risk. Is
anybody here that put the squirrel feet on the plate?
Are there anybody here? Okay, we can talk about them.
They're probably What were they thinking?
Speaker 6 (10:51):
Did they take the nails off?
Speaker 4 (10:52):
No? No?
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Oh impact with fur?
Speaker 4 (10:56):
What fur?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Were you supposed to eat it?
Speaker 7 (10:59):
Don't know?
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Was it a garnish?
Speaker 5 (11:02):
Brent was looking for could pull off something between those?
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Uh, so that.
Speaker 5 (11:07):
Happened and we thought chicken feet will weird? Yeah, and
we Clifton Jackson. We had Clifton on the show last year.
At that time he was a three time.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
World champion squirrel Skinner.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
Squirrel Skinner. Today I'm proud to say he's the four
time Oh.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
He's he's a tear all in his own.
Speaker 5 (11:29):
He told me to no longer say how many he's won,
just say he's the world champion.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
After a while, you're not like the four time, you're
just the world champion. You're the world champion.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (11:46):
And he had his mom out there, his wife, everybody,
and it was a good time. And then there's a
fellas stand up with two guys right behind you, Clay.
These two gentlemen, both with really flashy squirrel ships off.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, they getting the camera set them in here.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
Getting camera view over here. Oh, look at these shirts.
These gentlemen both partake. You know, we always do the
world's Hottest Squirrel right right. This year we kicked it
up to four million Scoville.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Get right to get the baseline on that. What's a jilopenyo,
like a hot half.
Speaker 5 (12:24):
Of teen hundred or something. Okay, These two gentlemen, along
with six other men, walked on the surface of the
sun today. Now the hot the taller of the two.
He lasted a little bit longer than this fellow. This
fella here is first man out, first first man out
(12:47):
and closest to the trash can. Clay, I witnessed a
gentleman today. You know this is a whole smoked squirrel. Okay,
so the whole carca. We smoked them and then we
bathed them in the hottest stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
How do you get how do you get the sauce
that hot?
Speaker 5 (13:10):
You pay one hundred dollars on Amazon?
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Holy cow? Yeah? Can you say the name of it?
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Uh man?
Speaker 5 (13:16):
We used some three fifty seven magnum okay, friendly show here, yeah,
and then some forty four magnum. The three fifty seven
was three hundred and fifty seven scovill three hundred and
fifty seven thousand.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
This other is that not nearing like just poison? I
think it is.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
I mean they're alive, so big win on my my.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Well breaking out.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
There's only two out of six of them here, where's
the other one? Wow Cemetery the dude that won that thing.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
And so the rules are is the first guy to
crack open a drink as the first man out, okay,
And usually it gets down to no one has ever
ate the whole animal. The first guy who won the winner,
he ate that booger in about what minute the whole squirrel,
(14:05):
whole squirrel, which was amazing enough not to mention it
was four million scovel. I was gonna interview him. He
didn't have nothing to say, He couldn't.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
It's out.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
He had nothing to.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Say at all.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
So what did the winner get?
Speaker 4 (14:18):
Well?
Speaker 5 (14:19):
Because typically it's just a trophy and umack's gun. This
year I felt so bad for that old boy that
wanted I pulled one hundred dollars bill out of my
pocket so he could feed the family.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
I don't know if he can be able to work for.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
You got a free ride?
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yeah, yeah, it was a bad deal, goad.
Speaker 6 (14:37):
He may swound that hate on a doodle watch.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
And ice cream?
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Can you give me unless we can keep talking about
the hot squirrel ever you want to go like like,
what are the competitions that are here at the World
Championship Squirrel cook Yeah, so thank you guys. Thanks guys.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
We kind of shrunk it down.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Last year.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
We did a bunch, We did squirrel Call, and we
did uh. We had the under ten year old oystreet
and competition, which was just ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
This year we limited it to the squirrel competition itself,
the cookoff cookof then we did the skinning competition, but
we did it two different ways. This year we did
it the traditional way, like Kevin would just tug and jerking,
kind of like you would with your little nippers, you know,
your little scissors you like to use.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
And then they don't want me in that competition with
my nippers. He's got those nippers. You know, you think
that's this They think this cheating.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
And then the second way is we used We had
a guy come down from Illinois that it was three
D printing these new you know the leg hold headhole deal.
I think, yeah, yeah, Kevin's got it had been three
D printing though, So we set out to see if
that was any better, and Kevin explained when that would
(15:58):
work better.
Speaker 7 (16:00):
Have had mobility problems, Uh, you would have like a
string with a carab beaner and you would mount it
up so if you couldn't bend, yeah, it would hang
so you can put their feet through there, their head
through there. So if you were like where you couldn't
get over, had trouble being mobile, you could skin from
standing up. So that's where that comes in handy.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Now, But they're putting the head of the squirrel in there, right,
But I mean, nobody do people skin from the head down.
I've only only know how to skin from.
Speaker 7 (16:32):
Think it's when they're gutting. It just gives you another option.
Of course that the squirrel may pull in two, so
if you you know, if he pulls in two, then
it gives a better option to skin in the thing. Yeah,
they sent me one, and they asked me if I
used U as I keep my bourbon bottle on it. Okay,
So so I tell him when I get about seventy five,
I'll probably take take this, but as long as I
(16:53):
can bend over. Because Clifton, he was he won the
first heat and then he started using this thing, and
then he kind of got lost.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Did it if he body beat him with that when
they were using those.
Speaker 7 (17:04):
Yeah, if he would have just did his rigor skin in,
he would have won. Because if you're not used to it,
you know, it's like if you're not used to using
nippers or scissors, then it's extra motion that you don't
know what you're Yeah, you're going through. But it's a
good it's a good thing. Like I said, I'll use
it one of these days when I get older.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
So how did how did cliff? Well did we answer
my question?
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, cleaning hot squirrel cleaning And then the Cookoff.
Speaker 5 (17:30):
And the cookoff man, you just wait till Brent Reeves
tells you what he ate.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Well, yeah, I want to hear that in detail, like
what was actually cooked. But so if if you come
to the Squirrel Cookoff every we're at the the nature Center.
What's the name. What's the name of the center? Yeah? Yeah,
here in Springdale, Arkansas for Arkansas Game and Fish Nature Center.
That's correct, and really beautiful facility.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Ozark Holland's Nature Center and John Hunt. Yeah, those are
those are Hollands Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
It's a mouthful Folks's Nature.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Center and a partridge in a pear tree.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
There was one other thing that we tried to accomplish
this this event is uh. I want to stress this
that there was a bunch of young adults kids to
young adults who competed this year. And one of the
reasons why I thought that was important is these kids
(18:36):
had been branded with the name in front of them
of Foster. And one of my goals for this event
was to eliminate the name Foster on these kids and
just call them what they are as kids. And so
most folks didn't know it today because we didn't shine
any light on it, because that wasn't the goal. The
(18:57):
goal was was to put these kids in there just
like any other kids and compete. So we had three
teams located over here. I think they did a really
good job and we shined a light on a lot
of child organizations that need to have lights shined on
them today. And so I didn't do a lot of
(19:19):
bragging about that. I wanted it just to be come
out and see that deal, and I think we accomplished
a big, big goal.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
Well that's good, that's good stuff good.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
So when people come here, I think the most unique
thing probably about this event is that you get to
eat squirrel. Like, so all the cooks are out here
cooking and you can see the cooks cooking. When you
come here, you have to cook the squirrel here. It's
got to be verified that it's squirrel. So people are cooking,
you can see them cook, and then people get to eat.
(20:00):
So almost probably most people standing around here have the
opportunity to eat squirrel that if they wanted to.
Speaker 5 (20:05):
Yeah, I've heard of all kinds of other oddities that
were out there. Crow, there was like crow sausage. Someone
made crow sausage. Row sausage. There was a bunch of goose.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
There was all kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Serve today, Brent, tell me as many possible, as many
titles of dishes that you can remember what was cooked,
because that's what people will always want to know. Sesame
And if y'all, if anyone out there remembers, you can
say too.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
I'll have to I'll have to dumb it down and
give you, like the the Brint version.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Yeah, just kind of like what it was.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
What there was like sesame, sesame squirrel, Like you'd eat
sesame chicken in a Chinese place, okay, and then there
would be like squirrel casos, squirrel case of dias okay,
squirrel case of is. Yeah, and then there was squirrel
(20:59):
is on you, squirrel meatballs and squirrel. What was that thing?
Speaker 1 (21:04):
This guy's got a picture on his songe. What do
you got there? Tell he's one to show now what
is this squirrel and panadas?
Speaker 4 (21:14):
He would Shane was on the other side of the
on the other team, on the judge.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
And looks good, looks good.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
All right, Brent got to eat And and I know Kevin,
Kevin's worldly like me, Kevin, you ever eat a bomb?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Me?
Speaker 5 (21:28):
Oh, yes, Bomby is one of my favorite sandwiches.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Okay, I never heard of him, and I.
Speaker 5 (21:35):
Had to say two or three times to Brent what
what it was. But he had a Bomby sandwich.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
That was Bambi sandwich top not what's a Bomby sandwich?
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Name sandwich?
Speaker 5 (21:47):
Yeah, so it's a French bread. It's usually got pickled
vegetables such as cucumbers and carrots, little cilantro on there,
and then they usually do char siu, which would be
a roasted pork, which is pretty amaze.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
He got, he got blessed. He got to eat that today.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
It was good and sushi. Yeah, and it was about
the size of a bucksh of a slug, a deer slug.
There's three of them on a little sandwich. They was good.
And then there was another. It was Italian things like
Italian meatballs. But you cut into that thing, it looked
like I mean, he thought it was a squirrel meat.
Somebody was working their tail off, and there the fella
(22:24):
sitting beside me. I can't here if it was Michael,
who it was, but he said, oh, my first shot
and he sped, he sped a shot out. It was
about the size of a seed tick that had been
on a three day suck. He's probably like a number
eight left shot. But I didn't get any no bone.
So you got Italian food, the lasagni, the meatballs, the
(22:45):
Vietnamese sandwich. Get any traditional not I have yet. Now this,
I've been to this thing for the last three or
four years. Three years, three years, I've been a judge twice.
I have yet to get squirreled in dumplings or fried squirrel.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
I think that's what everybody would think.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
That phils predictable. That's what I've been waiting to get it,
and I ain't seen it yet.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
I heard somebody tell me that they cook kind of
a traditional squirrel meal of like corn bread and beans
and kind of like a country.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Best baked beans. I ever put in my jaws was
in that room in there, and it was they were smoked.
I mean it was. The smoke was so stout in
it so good. Now that's not a detractor. It was
so good. I felt like I needed to ask tra
to put my spoon in. It was good.
Speaker 5 (23:35):
We had the new director of Arkansas Game and Fish
at the judging table this year.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Oh he was a judge.
Speaker 5 (23:41):
He was a judge. He got to experience that the
dish that won, we haven't announced it out there yet,
but the dish that won won by twenty points? Is
that a lot? It's a huge that's huge. Oh, it
was like a runaway huge amount. Now you can't you
can't tell me what it was yet.
Speaker 7 (24:02):
No, they know.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Well, at the end of that, the winner knows they
hit it out the park. Yeah, the squirrel feet was weird.
It's just let's let's just.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Say it's probably not the squirrel feet.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
If you put if you put squirrel feet in there,
you wouldn't really planning women.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
I don't know, man, man that thing was it?
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Was it a forethought or an afterthought?
Speaker 5 (24:29):
Such a well designed entree and side dish, I mean
super well designed, well proportioned, well garnished, everything about it
was magical, and then you got these.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Well, hey, listen, I got to give that team credit
because in me Eater Trivia, for instance, I have said
before that sometimes a good answer is better than a
right answer. Are you with me? I mean, because it's like,
what are we here for?
Speaker 4 (25:01):
Yeah, they were celebrated. They were celebrating the squirrel.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
I mean, so I kind of I kind of had
tip to them. And the other thing that comes to
my mind is that I'm in the midst of a
project where I'm doing a bunch of research about black
bears and about the way Indigenous people use black bears,
and a lot of them they'd rather eat a paul
than anything on that animal. I mean, like that, ain't
(25:27):
that archaeological record, Like they're.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
Still they're still doing that over in Asia illegally bear
paul bear paul stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
So maybe it's maybe it's something new with the squirrels.
I think you could flash frme and just.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Squirrel fe No, not feet, Okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Do you cook much wild game? Most of what I
see you cooking is like just like good country food. Yeah, no,
average and pork and.
Speaker 6 (25:56):
I don't know, I cook a lot of wild game, yeah,
I mean we'd usually every year we stock up on deer, bear, squirrel, rabbits, ducks,
anything we can get get our hands on. Yeah, and
a lot of the dishes we you know, back in
the day, I guess you would say, is which is
the way I try to cook kind of the way
(26:18):
you know my family did. They cooked a lot of
the dishes the same way, No matter what meat they
were using, you know a lot of onions, bell peppers,
just making a gravy and and you know, smothering the
meat for four hours until it fell apart.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Hard to beat that.
Speaker 6 (26:36):
It is, especially with squirrel.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, hard to beat that. So did you
have any squirrel today? You didn't? Did you say you didn't? Yeah,
it didn't.
Speaker 6 (26:48):
We did a ravioli which I didn't hear him talk
about it. It must not have been that good cage.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
And I'll talk about the ravioli.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
My son can walk walking into the judging room and
several of the judges said, my son's name is Clemens.
I'm named him after a man named Samuel Clemens. And
uh Clemens come walking in and Mark Lambert's seven time
world champion of barbecue. He said, Clem, you need to
try this, and it was that ravioli. He also said
(27:19):
you need to try that mac and cheese, and uh
so the ravioli was on point.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
M good dude, M Brent, did you get any of
the ravioli? Ain't lyne? Brent?
Speaker 1 (27:31):
What what what was your favorite one? It's not don't
tell me who won, but what was your favorite one?
Speaker 4 (27:35):
My favorite one was defeat the meatball meatball, they grind
it or was it like chunks of squirrel like it
was it was like sausage, so it had to be ground.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
It was now what percentage of the what percentage of
the meat eighty so that so that meatball had to
be eighty percent squirrel. And it was that good.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
It was good. It was very, very good, heavenly season No. No,
I mean, you know, squirrel is like it'll take on
whatever flavor you cook it in. You cook it in
beef broth, that's gonna jump onto that or chicken, either
either way you want to go with it. It was
just good that it wasn't when you took a bite
of it, it wasn't. You didn't say, well, that's Tony
(28:21):
Sastre's or that's salt and pepper. It was just a
good mix of baked meat.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Now, he did have his old ca snife out on
the table, of course I did.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
I went in there and I did notice it was
a little greasy. Yeah, well there was a couple of
legs that come in. You know, I don't people think
I'm crazy. Ever since when you did the cooking show
about eating with my hands. I don't like to do it,
and I'm his country's corn bread. I know, but I
don't like getting my hands on man. So I was
cutting the cutting the meat off the bone or some
of it.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Oh, you were cutting meat off this dude.
Speaker 5 (28:56):
He had us laughing three, three, three or four times
in there. I don't even know what the heck it was.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Well, who knows, I don't either.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
We were The unique thing about our judging, compared to
most judging is first and foremost, everybody is turning in
something different. So if you're used to a chili cook off,
where you know you're coming in and taste chili, it's
really easy to decipher which chili is better than the other,
or brisket or whatever. Right here, we're judging everybody on
(29:25):
their own merit. So I told all the judges early
that if we had somebody create a squirrel corn dog,
you needed to compare that corn dog to the best
corn dog you'd ever ate.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Okay, that's fair.
Speaker 5 (29:39):
So you could go all in first box that you open,
and you could give it all top scores if you
compared it. I told Brent, I said, if there's meat
loaf shows up on this, you got to compare it
to Mama's meat loaf.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
It's not plate. You're not comparing the challenge for the judge.
You're not comparing plate to plate. It's not like this
cane tastes better than a last one. It's this one
tastes in comparison to the last thing that was similar
that you ate to it.
Speaker 5 (30:06):
How many judges were there, Joe, It's just like in
real life twelve twelve twelve.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Yeah, my friend John Howard was alternate.
Speaker 5 (30:15):
Yeah, and hey, John Howard got everything that Brent liked
to chew on.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
He'd passed that. John was standing behind me. If I
liked it, I'd just hand it back and then John
to work on. I look at him like this, or
I did eat all up.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
I did take a bite of Brent's squirrel fried rice.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
When I was in there. Squirrel that's good. Yeah, I didn't.
It was just like two years ago when I judged.
There was nothing that I ate that I wouldn't eat again.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
You might cut this out, but one of.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
The fun we ain't cutting nothing out.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
One of them have to do with the mammoth tasks, No,
I promise you.
Speaker 5 (30:52):
One of the funnies that Brent said was he'd had
like three different Asi dishes turned in on his side
of the table, and he said, who would have ever thought?
My whole life, I've been eating squirrel every time I
ate Chinese.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Good. I mean, I couldn't think of nothing better to eat.
It was good.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Did you have to disqualify anybody for suspect squirrel when
he did the inspection?
Speaker 5 (31:21):
No, man, everybody turned in legit squirrel. You know, we
had a little rendezvous a while back with the Bear
grease crew who had went out. I don't know if
Bear was the one who killed those squirrels or if
it was you, Clay, but Clay made a donation.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Heck of about forty squirrels, probably forty.
Speaker 5 (31:40):
We had another probably sixty squirrels show up early this morning.
We had ample squirrels with skin on it. For the
squirrel skinning competition. I brought in two black squirrels, solid black.
Where did you get those? Undisclosed?
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Location? Okay, Chitty Park because we yeah, black squirrels only
in city parks and on golf courses.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
So this was near a really large river. Okay, the
now and uh I was telling everybody those were Japanese.
A five wagoo squirrels that's kind of Oh he's got
to tell of one, right. Look, they were as black
as an angus cow. M hm, So good time, man.
(32:25):
We had great judges in there. Uh, all of the judges.
They had They had fun eating these dishes. But we
don't have an event without the teams showing up. I
know the public loves to see it.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
If we don't have teams show up to this deal,
so I'll go ahead and start promoting next year. Right now,
it's time for you to decide whoever you want in,
you want in. And it's a good time. Every team
out here, whether they got first or last, they had
a fun time today, I promise, and the mission of
who hunters and fishermen are as good people.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
It's spread at this facility.
Speaker 5 (33:07):
And a shout out to everybody who parked cars.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Man. Those guys are standing out in the heat early
this morning, and it has been hot today, brutal.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, Kevin got a squirrel question for you. Had a
guy today that I met here that he might be
standing right here. I don't know, but he I said
to Jeb squirrel. He said, yep, I ate some squirrel here.
He said it was really good. He said in Kentucky.
Our squirrels taste like mud. And he said, we can't
eat them, and he said, down here, they taste good.
(33:39):
I just like, I didn't say much. I just kind
of gave him the head nod. I need to wash.
Is he right?
Speaker 7 (33:49):
Come back next year and we'll put him on the
spot and he can tell us the Kentucky squirrel from
the Arkansas squirrel.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah, I mean blind blind taste tests.
Speaker 7 (33:58):
Yeah, blind taste tests.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
I mean you never now no, yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 7 (34:03):
You know, I've had squirrel from Arkansas, Michigan, Illinois, Kentucky,
South Dakota.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
It's all all the same.
Speaker 7 (34:13):
It's all very similar. I mean, for someone to say
that their palette could judge one squirrel from this state
to the other, I think we need to have that
next year. You want to, Yeah, let's let's try to
do a little variety of squirrel and see who can
but say that.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
But I think you would be.
Speaker 5 (34:31):
It's unfair because if you did a spring summer or
a spring squirrel compared to a summer squirrel, it's just
like bear. You know yourself. If you get those bear
that are down by the water, or the bear that's
been eating the fish in Alaska, that sucker's gonna taste
like fish. Man, I shot them iguanas in Puerto Rico
(34:52):
and they were far far from water, and they taste
like fish. So it's all diet on the thing.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
I think it's got to be pre pretty extreme that that.
In the bear world. The only the only time I've
seen a bear taste any different than any other bears
is salmon bears. Other than that, I find every bear
I've ever tasted from anywhere in the country to pretty
much taste it. Bringing fall tastes the same. I mean,
just a fall bear is going to have more fat,
(35:19):
so but but I mean, does it taste the same,
And like a burger, I would say, you'd have a
real hard time telling the difference. Now a fall bear
is going to have more fat though, yep. But now
when you start getting to these like red squirrels and
pine squirrels and stuff out west, they say those tastes
piny in habit Yeah, but like a cat squirrel, gray squirrel,
(35:43):
or fox squirrel anywhere in the eastern instiduous forest, I
bet they. I think they taste the same.
Speaker 6 (35:48):
Only the only thing I've noticed different eating squirrel in
a lot of the states. Is at times in Louisiana,
if they're eating a cypress tree and they get no
cypress bowls, that they do have a little bit of
a stronger taste. You can kind of tell, really, does
it tastes like a cypress. It's kind of got that pain,
you know, it's kind of got that same kind of
(36:10):
sappy Okay, Yeah, and you can kind of you can
tell it in them.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Now that that makes sense because they're eating those cypress.
Speaker 6 (36:18):
Cypress bowls and they started eating them when they're still green,
and they'll eat through and pool like the seed out.
And I mean, I promise you I can clean one
and just during cleaning it, I can tell you what
he's been eating over the cypress bowls or whether it
was you know, eating just acrons.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
M that makes sense. That makes sense. What about you, Clay,
would you do today?
Speaker 4 (36:41):
Well?
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Shore Man? Uh, I actually just got here about an
hour and a half ago. I've been writing about whole
Collier this morning. If I'm just telling you the truth,
good man to write about. Yeah, woke up at the
crack of way before the crack of dawn and been
doing some writing. But uh, that's that's what I had
(37:02):
to do this morning, but got it sort of got
it done sort of. But we're, uh, we're we're getting
ready to bait. We're getting ready to bear hunt though
bear Arsaw. Bear season opens this week and so we're
we're we're fixing the gow's.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
How's the action been?
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Not good? Not good.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
Heat.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
I don't think heat, it doesn't. I don't think it
has anything to do with heat. I'd rather it be
hot than cold during bear season, really, yeah. Why, worst
thing that could happen would be a hurricane come through
and like a bunch of rain or a cold front
come through and knock the temperature down twenty thirty degrees.
You lose your bears and rarely get them back. It be,
(37:42):
it'd be best if it's just like consistent temperature right
through the start of the season. I'd rather it be
eighty five degrees than sixty on open day bear season
in Arkansas. I don't know about anywhere else.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
I was out baiting yesterday and I did notice some
white eppcakerings on the ground.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Yeah there's playing, Yeah, yeah. I wonder if there's any
questions from the crowd or any about to anybody at this,
uh at this in these chairs. Anybody got any questions?
Speaker 6 (38:22):
Yeah, I do. I want to know if he's gonna
eat the hot squirrel next year again?
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah, back in, he's in all right, Oh, question the
question is about go ahead?
Speaker 4 (38:35):
Yeah, Well, the question is about the dog.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Tell us about your dog, Kevin.
Speaker 7 (38:39):
Well, this is black Jail, and this is the first
time she's been around more than three people at one time,
so it's a little bit overwhelmed.
Speaker 4 (38:47):
Ye, nervous.
Speaker 7 (38:49):
She is a half high q Beagle, a quarter carve In,
a quarter Faroll Miller field trial porter. Okay, and that
dog's all becomes the dog. The dog's name is Jeff,
Black Jeff, Black Jeff. Usually I'm down here with Chef Jeff.
This year I'm with black Jeff.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
Okay.
Speaker 7 (39:10):
And Black Jeff was a friend of mine that I
met down at Real Foot Lake and he was a
pro baseball player, a swamp rabbit hunter, and so I
got black Jeff.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
So, okay, do you call her Black Jeff?
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Like, if you're gonna just call her across the yard,
You're like, come here, Black Jeff.
Speaker 7 (39:28):
Black Jeff. Yeah, she's a she's ten months old.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Like I said, multi syllable animal names are tough, but
I got to get behind them. Yeah, I usually like
one syllable, but you know, I got a meal named
slow Trap, which is Kevin.
Speaker 5 (39:42):
You said that tied into Clay. How to tie into Clay?
Speaker 7 (39:45):
It tied into Clay because last year, at the end
of the podcast, thinking it was over with Clay and
I were talking about dogs and what we like to hunt.
He asked me, said, what what's your favorite kind of hunting?
Of course, you know the favorite kind of hunt is
what I hunt, and I can do it at my
age and where I and I said, well, swamp rabbit hunting.
And then I got home and I started a new
job site, another job that I worked with a young
(40:07):
boy and he was a COLDI hunter with dogs, and
we become friends. And I talked to him, says, have
you seen beagles use this? We never have, but I
know people that have. And then my hunting experience over
the last ten or twelve years with beagle dogs, we
get into coyodies and some dogs like to run on
better than the other. And I thought, and it's usually
(40:29):
like a short race twelve hundred sixteen hundred yards, not
the typical coyoti race. There and I'm thinking I can
breed a dog up that I can run in Kentucky,
that I can afford to feed, and I can have
a pack of predator dogs. So that's my attempt. It's
probably gonna take me two years to have a predator dog.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
So what will your intentions for this dog to be,
Because because Brince used decoy dogs, you're not wanting a
decoy dog. You're wanting a dog that's going to run
a kyo.
Speaker 7 (40:57):
It's going to circle it back to me. It's gonna
jump it up, take it out about one thousand yards
twelve hundred yards, not put a whole lot of pressure
on it, and not run it out of the country.
It's going to let that coldy come out to his
home range where he's been hunting, where we've jumped in
and bring it back to us and to be up
to me, to be able to be.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Like, that's why you want that beagle in there. So
they're not just running it out of the country, they're
just kind of getting it up out of its bed,
letting them know that.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
It's like they're like a rabbit, Kevin. They'll make a
loop and kind of go back to where they got jumped.
Speaker 7 (41:25):
You know, it's taken me a few years to see that,
but yeah, that's what I'm seeing is that we'll jump
a few coldies and they'll come back into where we're hunting.
So you know, they're just like running a deer. You know,
they're going to circle back, run like a fox. So yes,
well and you know they chase rabbits, so yeah, so
you know, and then the same with a bob get
(41:46):
they circle back. You know, sometimes you'll jump them in
a cane brake or a blowdown a timber thicket, whatever,
and they're going to come back in there, and you
just got to be like the top predator and be
ready for them, cause they're going to be looking for you.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
That's fun.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
So so has this dog been exposed to all to
any kyota?
Speaker 7 (42:06):
She's run loose her career, entire life pretty much like
I said, she just turned ten months old. She'll be
a year old in November. So I've got five more
of her siblings. My cowdi friend there j T. He's
got the other two. So uh, we're going to start
start after him, probably start them on some swamp raps
and stuff. They have run some rabbits, but I haven't
(42:27):
exposed them to caldies or bobcats.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Yeah, yeah, Brent was decoy dog hunting. Have you seen
them do that?
Speaker 7 (42:33):
I have seen them do that.
Speaker 4 (42:34):
It's very interesting. That's yeah, that's crazy. It's it's it's
the most amazing thing that I've ever seen as far
as how you think about a cody's nose and they're
hearing and then they're cautious and if you know, if
the odds are stacked against them, they're gone. They're they're
not messing around. They played a win. If the odds
are on their side, whatever they're after is usually done for.
(42:55):
And they get so crazy focused on that dog in
that time of year when when there's usually during the
best time of year to use a decoy dog is
when the coats have a litter in the ground in
a den somewhere, and how it is you use a
predator call, call that that dog withinside of where you
are or the cout with inside of where you are,
(43:17):
and then the decoyed dog sees the cody takes off
after it. Well, the coat is only going to sit
there long enough for that decoy dog to get close enough,
and then he's going to turn around and start trotting. Awful.
When that happens, the dog will stop and turn around
and come back, and the cout goes, ah, you're scared
of me, And he'll follow them right back to where
you are. And I've had him come close to me
(43:39):
and Josh and they just they are so focused on
that dog because of their territorial instincts that they don't
pay an attention to you. And it's usually lights out
for the old Cody.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Amazing, huh.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
It's crazy to see. And it's in the daylight. I mean,
you're not doing it at night.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Mm hmm. Well have you hided with dogs squirreled dogs?
Speaker 6 (44:00):
Yeah, so I do. I've got a cattle hula curve
all real, uh heep. Me and him go out squirrel
hunting and we do a lot of coons.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (44:09):
And I don't know. He doesn't like anything that's smaller
than him that walks. He loves getting out and if
I don't kill it in time, he's gonna try to
get it.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
He likes the scrap.
Speaker 6 (44:19):
He does like to scrap. He's usually bring me a
present about once a week on the driveway.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Katahua. Does anybody else have it? A question? That they
want to ask anybody, this young man, this guy right here. Yeah,
first animal to hunt? Good question, good question. We can go,
we go around, we go around the circle. I think
the first I probably killed the squirrel first, But the
(44:48):
first animal I really remember was hunting the deer. What
about you, Kevin Sparra sparrow.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Yea uh, squirrel?
Speaker 4 (44:58):
Squirrel, squirrel? Do duck squirrel hunt with my daddy.
Speaker 5 (45:03):
I may not be the world's best small game hunter
like Kevin, but mine was a little yellow bird that big.
And when I hit that thing and and it fell down,
I went in and got got my mama's gravy spoon
and does a burial site for that bird.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
I buried it, packed it in real tight, cried a little.
Speaker 5 (45:23):
Bit, did a small prayer, and I went out and
found its other one, you know, and.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Then went and got the other. The best part of
this story is that was twenty fourteen.
Speaker 5 (45:38):
Yeah, man, I remember crying over that first.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Is that a good Is that? Is that a good answer?
All right? Good, good, good good.
Speaker 7 (45:46):
I've got a question from the audience. Is the young
man that's from Arizona here that's got the a bird
squirrel on the back of his behind. You right there,
come on over this way. He got pull in here
to check turned around.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Oh, that's like a motorcycle club.
Speaker 7 (46:08):
So when I first came here, he came up to
me and started talking to me and said he's from
Arizona and all that, and we had a good little
conversation and he walked off, and some more people come
up and started talking to me. And I'm thinking, that's
an Abert squirrel on the back of.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
His jacket, you like specie. That is that a desert squirrel?
Speaker 4 (46:27):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Really, so it's not a gray square.
Speaker 7 (46:29):
It's not a grey squirrel. This is an Abert squirrel.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Is a tail that short? Or did somebody pull the
tail off? Okay, pulled the pulled the tail off. He
pulled the tail off.
Speaker 4 (46:44):
You know.
Speaker 5 (46:44):
One of the finest squirrel hunters of all time come
out of Arizona, John O'Dell. And John O'Dell was a
biologist out of the state. He's recently retired, but he
killed the grand Slam of the squirrel, which was go
ahead last.
Speaker 7 (47:01):
I think he was Kevin.
Speaker 5 (47:04):
You remember this. He was on the cover of Field
and Stream or something. He went all the way around
the country and he shot every species a squirrel, and
he got a lot of trash talk because he did
it with an eight seventy shotgun.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
My man.
Speaker 5 (47:21):
And the reason he was getting so much trash talking
and he was able to defend it was in a
lot of places, the only gun that he could use
a shotgun, and so he just used the same gun.
And the image you could find it on the internet.
He has them all mounted like on one branch. Oh wow, man,
(47:42):
it's every species a squirrel in North America's pretty cool.
Speaker 6 (47:46):
How many species of squirrels exactly?
Speaker 1 (47:48):
Don't get me going cajuing.
Speaker 4 (47:51):
You could just know that part of the twenty two
you could have said thirty seven.
Speaker 6 (47:54):
I mean, and then I'm just curious because I mean,
I don't.
Speaker 7 (47:58):
Know, but like a google Josh five or six. No,
there's probably a lot, probably twelve to eighteen twelve to eighteen.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Twelve to eighteen.
Speaker 5 (48:07):
There's a little squirrel up in Missouri. It's a ground
squirrel in Missouri that I've been wanting to go up
and hunt a chip monk.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
No, it's a great it's an actual ground squirrel.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
But this says, this is AI overview that there are
over sixty five squirrel species in North America. Oh, I
see tree squirrels, ground squirrels, flying squirrels.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
I doubt that. I think AI is pulling one on us.
It wouldn't have been too surprised that half of that
sixty five sounds high. But I mean, yeah, you can
start thinking about.
Speaker 4 (48:44):
America's pretty big.
Speaker 6 (48:45):
Yeah, now that you think about it, I mean flying
squirrel age. I mean there's a lot that you're not they.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Might be counting ground squirrels.
Speaker 6 (48:52):
Like, there's a lot you're not thinking. We're I'm thinking
more of what we hunt eat. Yeah, but yeah, there's
a lot more species, I think. Yeah, you know, I
don't know there's that many though.
Speaker 7 (49:03):
Isn't there some subspecies out there? Like I think there's
a cherokey fox squirrel down on the Mexico Arizona border.
Then you have the squirrel, the Caba squirrel that's only
like in seventy five square miles of the earth that
you can hunt, hopefully it made it through this last
(49:23):
forest fire that came through there. And then you've got
the I think the Carolina fox squirrel a little bit different.
And then you've got you know, some subspecies out there,
regional squirrels. So there's there's more than you think about it.
You know, we we just think about fox squirrel, gray squirrel,
you know, the a birds. And then like I said,
(49:44):
you've got those subspecies and different type of fox squirrels
out there. And then you've got melanistic squirrels, which are
a gray squirrel that's black basically there, and you've got
some black fox squirrels out there. And then there, you know,
you've got your albino squirrels, which really not a subspecies,
they're just their own little in different locations there, some
(50:05):
some in Tennessee, some in Illinois, some in Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
So can I ask a question of the crowd?
Speaker 6 (50:10):
For sure? I seen it.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
I'll ask a question of the crowd. Should we just
cut this squirrel cook off? Or do we need to
do one again next year?
Speaker 4 (50:21):
Yeah? Okay, yeah, there it is.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
Doing it again. Got to I think it's it was
brought up about a piece of shot being being spit
out as as big as the seedtick that had been
sucking for three days. Yep, it was interesting analogy accurate
brings up the question, and we'll go around the we'll
go around the group here shotgun or twenty two you
(50:50):
only get one for the rest of your life? Why
and why for therel squirrel or squirrel shotgun or twenty
two one for the rest of your life? You're and
here's the big question. This is the only gun you
have in the wilderness. You will die like life and death,
life and death situation one gun. I'm building this analogy
(51:11):
as we go. What are you carrying? Twenty two or
a shot gun? Kevin? We're starting with you.
Speaker 7 (51:17):
Twenty two magnum. Take anything on the North America content. Okay,
but I'm a rifleman. You know you can. You're out there,
if you're living off the land, you can kill anything.
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Okay, Well, but you can only kill squirrels only. Twenty
two macnim same twenty two mag twenty two magnam. Now
do you honte with the twenty two mag in Kentucky
just like when you're out or regular twenty two back.
Speaker 7 (51:40):
When I was a killer? Twenty two magnum. Okay, I'm
not much of a killer anymore, so twenty two long
rifle does.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
What good would a magnum do? You is shooting a
squirrel out of a tree?
Speaker 7 (51:49):
H You can kill two at one time, just if
they're lined up. If they're lined up, you have no
problem of doing that. You got a little bit more range,
more firepower, Okay, you know, collateral damage if you make
a bad headshot or whatever. There he's not gonna limp off.
I've had lots of squirrels limp off through a headshot
with a twenty two not you know. I did this
(52:10):
comparison one time about this squirrel predator come to the
to the earth and he was hunting humans. So us humans,
we we hunt squirrels with a forty grain bullet twenty two.
So this squirrel predator guy comes here and so he
(52:32):
wants to do something equivalent. So he's hunting humans. So
do you know what the equivalent? And it's been a
while since they did the math, but what he would
be shooting us.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
With probably like a fifty caliber.
Speaker 7 (52:43):
It'd be one pound fifty caliber seven hundred and twenty grains.
But I don't have many grains one pound, but it'd
be a one pound projectile, is what you know. I
get hit with a one pound in my pinky, I'm down.
But that's the comparison that a little bitty two pound
gray squirrel can take a four or forty grain head shot,
they run off, and then can you imagine being human
(53:06):
and taking a one pound projecting out anywhere in your head,
You're gonna you're you're down, You're down, you get hit anywhere.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
Yeah, So okay, that's a that's a great answer, and
I expect as much detail from all of you.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
Josh, I'm gonna have to say twenty two. I think
that I think that if you're gonna if your life
depends on squirrel hunting, that you're left off, that you're
going you're gonna hone your skills, so that killing a
squirrel to twenty two is gonna.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
Be I hope you go into the woods.
Speaker 4 (53:41):
Fee got it?
Speaker 1 (53:44):
Okay, yep, okay, cajon, I'm going shotgun, shotgun. This man
wants to eat.
Speaker 6 (53:52):
Yeah, I mean, and it's actually that's simple to leaves
in the way and he's he's running down the limb.
I'm just I'm taking them out.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
I'm going to just deal with the collateral damage.
Speaker 6 (54:04):
Yeah. Well, and you know, sadly, to some people, I
love to eat the brain. So I'm not shooting them
in the head anyway.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
That is the best answer that I've heard for not
shooting them in the head with the twenty two because
most of the time.
Speaker 5 (54:19):
They get us his mind is spinning.
Speaker 1 (54:24):
So you like to eat the brains? Yeah, that's a
that's a yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 7 (54:28):
That's that's a what I wouldn't recommend for anybody to
do any kind of brain of any species.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
We had this conversation to stay.
Speaker 7 (54:36):
Away from it.
Speaker 6 (54:37):
So you cow brain.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
No, yeah, yeah, there's no there's some in the last well,
we don't have to get into it, but there's some
disease potential. But makes your beard long and white.
Speaker 6 (54:52):
Yeah it will.
Speaker 4 (54:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (54:53):
I also kind of feel like I think there's been
disease around for a long time that we just never
tested for. Probably, and I think if you cook everything properly,
you're probably gonna You know, my grandmother passed away at
nine age four years old, and she ate cow brains,
and squirrel.
Speaker 4 (55:11):
Bridly got her, didn't it.
Speaker 6 (55:12):
You finally got her. That's That's what I'm gonna go
back and redo a headstone, say squirrel brains got it.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
So shotgun, I got you, I got you. I know
Brent's answer twenty two four to ten.
Speaker 6 (55:30):
Twenty two, Man, that'll go four ten. You can't afford
to shall.
Speaker 4 (55:34):
For real, you know, if that's just always been the thing.
It was. We young man over here asked the question,
first squirrel I ever kill was with it? Twenty two?
We hunted with dogs on horses, and that was just
that was the three things that we did. You shot
them with a twenty two. You had somebody, somebody would
bring a shotgun in casey, you know, you made a
(55:57):
bad shot and you're timbering squirrels and they just shoot
on the wing or whatever. But it was dogs, horses
and twenty two rifles.
Speaker 6 (56:05):
Hey, let's go, I got you back.
Speaker 3 (56:06):
Sounds like a good country music album.
Speaker 4 (56:08):
Yeah, yeah, you could aie that until number one hit.
Speaker 5 (56:12):
For most of my life, I've been a twenty two
squirrel shooter. And just like Kevin, a lot of my
mentors and squirrel hunting they will tell you the twenty
two magnum is superior. Now, recently in the past few weeks,
when we were struggling to get squirrel on this.
Speaker 1 (56:28):
Yeah, here's the real test.
Speaker 5 (56:30):
When we're struggling to get squirrels and the leaves are
on every tree, leave us, ma'am. I ain't even gonna
tell you it was a twenty gage boys.
Speaker 4 (56:37):
That thing was twelve.
Speaker 1 (56:40):
Okay, knugging it.
Speaker 5 (56:44):
And let me tell you what. Maybe I didn't literally
see the squirrel, but I seen the leaves moving, and
then you're seeing the squirrel, and then I heard the
squirrel dump on the ground. So if this was a
survival situation, and we're talking that there could be a
migration of evil squirrel like a zombie attack, it's twelve
(57:05):
gags loaded.
Speaker 4 (57:06):
Up extended magazine.
Speaker 1 (57:08):
Yeah I had I hadn't put the scenario inside the
World Championship Squirrel Cookoff, but you were there. You had
no You had to get squirrel, and I went for
the meat with the meat stick man. And everybody has
heard has heard my philosophy. But like when we go
squirrel hunting with dogs on mules, ninety percent of the
(57:30):
people out there have shotguns because when we get went by,
when we get to the tree, good percentage of the
time squirrels moving big timber and we're just wanting to
bring home, We're just wanting to get squirrels.
Speaker 4 (57:43):
On the ground. And so pandemonia.
Speaker 1 (57:46):
So shotgun shotgun half and half huh yeah, half and
half yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (57:54):
Either way, I'll let y'all the shotgun goes I let
y'all come to my company.
Speaker 5 (57:59):
M I'm gonna tell you this, gentlemen. Here in about
five minutes, I gotta go out and crown the new
world champion squirrel.
Speaker 1 (58:07):
Oh wow, and uh, I.
Speaker 5 (58:11):
Think from what I know right now, I think the
team is gonna be as happy as anybody you've ever
seen win this.
Speaker 1 (58:19):
I think, well, we're gonna have to I don't want
to miss that. Well, in that case, we're gonna we're
gonna close it down and we'll come back at the
We'll try to like maybe film some of it, maybe
put it on Yeah, can we do that?
Speaker 4 (58:33):
Yep, we can.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
We'll film some of it and put put the winner
on the episode. It's gonna be a big problem. I
wanted to. I meant to do this at the first
of the episode. What else am I I'm supposed.
Speaker 4 (58:44):
To tell a week?
Speaker 3 (58:46):
Oh, pay attention to meat eat or we're gonna have some
great sales. It's gonna be great.
Speaker 1 (58:51):
What are the dates of it?
Speaker 3 (58:52):
September twenty ninth through October fifth, September twenty night through
October fifth or the dates?
Speaker 1 (58:57):
Wow, I'm more confused. When we started coming soon, White God,
if you're looking to get first light gear. That's a
that's a good time to get a bunch of stuff on.
Sell all the white tail kids around sale buy the
The Meat Eater is doing a live tour and it's
in December and they're about to announce the dates coming
(59:21):
soon and uh but they're coming to Faydville, Fadeville, Arkansas.
So Steve Vanella, Jannie, Brent, Me Randall and a special
guests that everybody will be really pumped to see. Is
going to be infadable. But I'm just going to tell
you it's on December of the twentieth Saturday, December of
the twentieth.
Speaker 4 (59:39):
Oh he's spelling the beans here.
Speaker 1 (59:40):
Yeah, yeah, I think I just be ready. If you
want to come to Faydville.
Speaker 4 (59:45):
You got to get on that. Get on you got
to get on the link.
Speaker 1 (59:50):
Yeah. So there's a.
Speaker 4 (59:51):
Where you can get notified of tickets. That's right.
Speaker 1 (59:54):
So there's a there's a link that that if you
sign up for they will send it out to you
so that you can buy a ticke gets before it
just goes up on the website. So you have to go.
Speaker 4 (01:00:03):
To because tickets will be letter.
Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
Well.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
I actually know that I actually know the web address.
You go to the meateater dot com slash tour that's it,
and sit and put your email in there and then
they'll send you an email before the tickets go live
to the world. And so the media live towards a
ton of fun, big, big fun. It's like a two
hour like variety show. There'll be music, there's trivia, people
(01:00:27):
win a bunch of stuff. Steve Vanellah tells a lot
of stories. We uh, it's gonna be a ton of fun.
So I'm looking forward to that being in Fable, Arkansas.
It's it's in multiple cities. It's in Uh, it's in Nashville, Tennessee, Memphis, Faydble, Arkansas, Dallas, Texas, Austin,
(01:00:50):
and in Texas.
Speaker 4 (01:00:52):
It starts out in Birmingham, Alabama.
Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Birmingham, Alabama. So all right, so that's where the live
go to everyone. M yeah, so let's go. I want
to go see who wins the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff.
Thank you, Thanks everybody, Thanks everybody.
Host
Clay Newcomb
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