Ep. 572: Boiled Muskrat, Freeze-Dried, and the Table Manners of Dirt Myth

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast. You can't
predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you
by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands,
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support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at

(00:32):
first light dot com. F I R S T L
I t E dot com. So you guys just competed
in a shooting tournament. We did sig arc.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Archery rifle competition and.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
You got like, how are you? How you selling it
to people? Look like I could see saying you got
whooped or saying you did good, and both would be
true cause if seven, if you had seven things and
drew a line in the middle, it'd be four yes.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
And that's what we end.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
I don't care what end.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
You come fectly average.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
You count to the left, you count, you come from
the left, you come from the right, and.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Four yeah, but you know my daughter.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Became meaning you came in fourth place out of seven people. Yes,
which you're proud or sad?

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Is my microphone not working perfectly? That's what it kind
of felt like right there.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
I wanted to really makes I wanted to be very clear.
I wanted all people, all listeners, to understand four out
of seven.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Right, which it took Clay and I a while to
understand that it was right down the middle, because when
I say four out of seven, somehow that.

Speaker 4 (01:44):
Just seems sounds like you're on the back end.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
If you had to just say something at four in
one out of seven, I'd go low.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
But now round up. No, when you put that way,
it well, it feels a little.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
My daughter took the Colson all the actual point breakout
numbers one through seven, and so that my daughter took
the numbers and did some math. I wasn't following the math,
and she said that, like just straight score wise, we
actually were like way higher, like we were more up
into the top three as far as score goes than

(02:19):
in the bottom three. Does that make sense, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Well, way, if you're at four and you went way higher,
yeah to three, there's just a bigger way higher.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
The numbers were a lot closer in the top four
than they were in the bottom.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Perhaps you should explain, Perhaps you should try to put
your arms around the contest seven.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
What were you doing seven teams. Each team consists of
three people, plus you have.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
I don't know, like they call them team managers.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Team managers, which would be kind of like a range officer,
which is a RO is a common termy here in
these shooting competitions of which this is my second ever.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
And they were representatives of SIG, employees of SIG yep, yep.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
So there were there seven stages every day, correct, so
plus a night shoot.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Plus two stages at night yep.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
So, and it's all you know, it's live ammunition obviously,
so it's all these teams are spread out. You have
to stick to a strict time calendar, time schedule which
allows for teams to like travel through like lines of
fire essentially. So it's really seriously orchestrated that logistically very

(03:43):
impressive deal.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
But you had roughly twenty minutes to walk somewhere between
a half pound a mile between stages. Everybody had to
walk carrying their own gear, lunch water, and then once
you got to the stage, you had about twenty minutes
to get the brief and then the allotted time for
the actual stage, so you'd have five or ten minutes

(04:05):
of like, hey, this is what's going on walk the course,
look at it. Here's the guns, get familiar with them,
and then okay, we have ten minutes to finish this.
The bell is going to start. And then at ten
minutes we're done and we start walking to the next stage.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
And then there's the scoring. I still don't truly understand,
but there's a time component of how quickly you can
complete the stage. And then there's an accuracy component that
you know, was mostly summed up as hits or missiles versus.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Like like how good you hit? Yeah, exactly, and you
were saying the way they had it rigged with a
timing component on some of these timing was weighted so heavily. Yeah,
you could have just shot all your shots in the
air and ran in won.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yes, you could have hedged your bets because if you
added up the penalties for missus, they still wouldn't hurt you.
You would be way better off just being like cool,
I'll take all the penalties and I'll see you at
the next stage, versus the added time on top of

(05:16):
the penalties to try to shoot those targets.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Right, was there any long distance shooting?

Speaker 5 (05:21):
There was at Yann hit it on the first shot, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, in a mile and he still took fourth place.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Yeah, only two people out of all the teams hit
it hit a twenty one.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
But listen, how is the target? Listen as a full
size elk. They originally Daniel Horner, who is contracted by
Say does a lot of stuff with sake. One of
the better shooters in the world right now. He set this. Yeah,
he's been on the podcast. He set the course up.
Originally he was going to put a lot of weight
into that into that. Those three shots at a mile

(05:55):
you got to take and.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
All you got to do is get a piece of it.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
You just got to make it go ding. And it
was a giant I mean I'm talking a piece of
steel the size of the stable dang near like not
one that one one human can move. It took two
people to move.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
I was saying half a car.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
And I held left edge. I went up there and
was like, oh yeah, I got a little bit of
wind coming from the left. I'm gonna hold left edge
of the target. And it dings. So I didn't even
get to shoot two more shots. I got off the
gun and someone else stepped in. Well, then whatever it was,
you were a clay holds left edge and it hits
like two body lengths, two target lengths to the right,

(06:31):
two vehicles to the right. Like that's how much it
changed because of what the wind was doing. Right and
then so he correct, you know, two car lengths to
the left and hits way left.

Speaker 5 (06:45):
You know.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
And it was in the end they just said that
it was windy enough, and it was kind of this,
You're shooting across this long valley that draws coming into it,
and those people that were in there actually trying to
game it and looking at mirage and stuff said that
you could see maraj go in two different directions, and
it was just so I'm not going to take a
lot of credit for making a great shot. And there

(07:08):
was an elevation was pretty much set when you got there.
They're like, do not touch the elevation turret. It's set
for to hit that target. Yeah. So this one, you're
basically just trying to dope the wind.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Even.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
Our personal firearms for that particular stage. And this is
how it's different than any of the other competitions I've
heard of or been to, is at this particular you're
carrying all of your stuff, including your personal firearm, which
you're using on a bunch of different stages. But you

(07:42):
could walk up to a stage and it's like put
all that stuff down. Here's a like a carbing, like
we got to shoot like the new Army issue carbing,
and and here's a ten millimeter pistol. And what you're
gonna do is you're not going to be able to

(08:04):
see the targets. But each flag there's a target. Run
up that up to that flag, find the target, hit
it twice, make sure your gun's in a safe position.
Move to the next flag, do the same thing. There's
ten targets total, put the empty or safe weapon on

(08:27):
a map that we have out there, and then sprint back.
And when you touch the table, the next person on
your team goes and does the same thing. There's like
that type of stage which I thought was super fun,
the relays, and then there's also like the obviously here's
three targets, and here's like the rough range for each

(08:51):
of those targets, or here's take a couple of minutes
to get your dope, shoot those targets with your range finder,
get your dope, and it's just impacts as many times
you can hit that target, and you have ten ten
minutes to do it type of thing.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
So what was the bow shooting part of it? Three?

Speaker 3 (09:09):
There were three stages. One was like a really rushed
seven but cool position wise seven full body foam targets.
So three people have to shoot seven targets apiece in
fifteen minutes.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
One arrow each, so twenty one arrows need to be shot.
Was it fifteen or ten minutes?

Speaker 3 (09:34):
I thought it was fifteen to fifteen but like us
of your choice, Yeah, but you have to sprint from
each target to each target.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
You don't have to, but if you didn't, you weren't
going to get it done. You were going to finish. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, how far with the shots?

Speaker 3 (09:49):
Plenty? Plenty good? I mean I think the max on
that was sixty something.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
Right, Yeah, there might have been a seventy.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
But because of that, like the guy, you're the only
guy of the recurve.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
There, you know, it's funny you bring that up, Steve,
I was not. Oh, but magically all those other recurves
just appeared after the competition was over.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, when it was time to drink beer and to
shoot bows, all of a sudden, everybody's got a recurve.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
It's like they were but they weren't shooting it for
the tournament, So you're you're the only peurist.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Yeah, yeah, which mad like an uncomfortable amount of attention
was paid. They're like, oh look at that terrible But yeah,
I felt bad about that one because it was so
rushed that I was just like, my mindset was like,
just throw an arrow, and so I was That's what

(10:41):
I was doing, and I was consequently not hitting anything.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
So terrible. So had you had you been replaced by
a compound shooter, would you guys be on the winners stand?

Speaker 2 (10:51):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
That's what I keep thinking about fourth places. When you
get fourth place, yeah, you're not up on those little
tiered right pedestals.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Well, this was if you ain't your last kind of
a deal. Yeah, because there was only.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
The only room for one winner. Huh. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
There was one check for fifty dollars right that the
that the winning team got to choose which which nonprofit,
which nonprofit it would go to? And we had chosen the.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
They've been listening to too much media to trivia. Yeah,
who they choosing to go to?

Speaker 3 (11:26):
They chose the Defenders of Freedom Fund.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
What's that?

Speaker 3 (11:30):
Uh foundation?

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (11:32):
Yeah, uh, a veterans nonprofit.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
Got it?

Speaker 5 (11:37):
Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah, yeah, And these guys were all veterans are or
maybe one's still active. I can't, I can't remember. But
and we were gonna donate to Montana Block Management, which
would have been a good one.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Sorry, sorry, did you go to the winner?

Speaker 6 (11:56):
Hey?

Speaker 1 (11:56):
You know what I'd do? Yeah, you know what I
was planning on doing.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
I never want Can we split that?

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Listen? We had one stage where you're basically standing on
a cliff, like you couldn't walk straight up to where
you had to go and start. You had to go
at an angle up this hill to get to there,
and then literally right below you it was line of
sight was probably fifty yards, but your range finder would
read twenty seven. There's a giant mule deer that's made

(12:22):
out of steel and it's vitals. There's a hole about
yay big the yeah, the iron maiden is behind it
is some foam, and then behind him another fifteen yards
was a goat, and then another fifteen yards farther was
a moose with another hole about yea big. And everybody

(12:43):
can make that shot because I mean, it's target this
big and the shot the longest shot.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
It's like your typical six yard foam target. It just
happens to have a ring of steel around it that
will destroy your arrow.

Speaker 4 (12:57):
And like, oh, I thought this was a pistol stage.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
It would have been a lot more fun. No, and
uh man, you know you're in a competition and then
you got this thing of this this this iron that's
gonna eat your arrow, and uh you just can't help
but make your pin float onto the iron like it's
just it just and by the I mean there was

(13:22):
only twenty one shooters and there was at least there's
a lot of yeah busted arrows.

Speaker 7 (13:28):
Yeah, well, what a great thing if you could. I
thought about actually building an at home set up like that,
because what a great way to increase like the stakes
of your behind the house practice. Yeah yeah, you can
buy one of those for like five hundred bucks. I've
looked it up, but I'd rather not.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Sparrow and the arrow companies love what you're saying right now.

Speaker 4 (13:47):
The front cost is minimal compared to the.

Speaker 3 (13:51):
Real legit archery folks up there, like folks that I
know that that shoot a lot of arrows and and
it was pretty funny. They're like that thing just destroyed
us He's like, they're not hard shots. I don't know
what happened type of thing.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
Caw. So you got to shoot two at each one
these six shots for each person total, and Cal went
three out of six at super steep Angle twenty seven,
forty five and sixty and h. It was pretty impressive.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
That's good, all all good arrows.

Speaker 8 (14:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
I mean the thing is is like I didn't Yeah,
I don't know, stupid excuses. I should have been shooting
a lot.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
What was your favorite stage you think out of the.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
So there were two running stages that were really fun. Okay,
and I thought.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
You're gonna say the tacos that we served.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
Well, I missed that.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
We did need some good tacos. So shout out to
some bear meat.

Speaker 9 (14:44):
Man.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
The bear meat crushed the prong horned meat. Everybody said
that that was elk. There was no bear, those bear
and elk. Oh, okay, Well the bear meat crushed the elk.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
Can't beat that grease, you know. So they happened to
be in the same stage. There was a bunch of
fun stuff, but I liked that there is one where
you set your rifles down on these mats and there's
like there's a two hundred yard gong, a four hundred
yard gong, and a six hundred yard gong. And they

(15:14):
were all like the real tiny targets.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
I'd say they were six by eights, maybe eight by
tens somewhere in there. Yeah, six inches by not as
big as a sheet of paper.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
And they're like, uh, you got to get your ranges,
the close ones worth fewer points, the mid ones worth midpoints,
and the fire ones worth the max points. But you
the way they started it is, you can you have
one one round in the chamber, you get your range,

(15:46):
you shoot, and then to get your next bullet, you
have to sprint one hundred yards get one bullet.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
I it was fifty No, it.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Was a hundred was it really? Yeah? You just had
those long.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Legs there, seth was there.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
So get one bullet out out of the bucket and
then sprint back to your guns, drop that round in,
shoot the target again, and as much running as you're
willing to do.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
In fifteen minutes.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
In fifteen minutes. And that was super fun. That was
super fun.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
We liked that stage because we won, We beat we
had the highest score. Well, it was surprising. We all
just sat there and shot the six hundred yarder just
because it was high points, and you know, you do
the math, and you're like, well, even if I missed one,
even if I went one for two, I'm gonna make
more points there than if I hit every time at

(16:42):
two hundred yep. And I think we probably shot at
eighty or ninety percent on the six hundred. It was
an easy decision. The next day, at the same stage,
it was changed up. There was pistols and there was fifteen. Yeah,
there are a lot of targets. I don't know how many,
but fifteen, maybe even twenty, I don't know. A bunch

(17:04):
of steels set up on the other side of a
fence from ten yards to fifty yards kind of in
this array where you had to move along the fence
to be looking straight at him right.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
And this is with a nine millimeter pistol. Yeah, and
you had two clips each holding twenty one each hold
twenty one yep.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
And this was timed and again a relay, so one
guy would pick up the gun, would have it loaded,
kind of run along that fence until you can engage
these targets and move through shooting, and all these targets
with the pistols fasts. You can at the last one.
The next target at the end was two hundred yards away.

(17:42):
It was worth like three hundred seconds. Again, this is
where all the I wish I could tell you exactly
how the scoring was worth. But basically like that one
target was worth more than all the other ones you
had just hit. So you had to sprint down there,
shoot it, and then sprint your butt all the way back.

Speaker 3 (17:59):
But you could shoot from two hundred yards too with
your nine milimeter pistol.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Well, the red dot.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
The red dot. So I cleaned them all and I
go just to turn, and everybody's like whoa, whoa. Well,
I'm like, I gotta give it a couple of tries here,
And I mean I was like fifty yards off. I
mean you could see the dust flying way before it.
So I started correcting. But it just I took three
or four shots. It wasn't gonna. I still did because
as long as I mean, I figured I would burn

(18:26):
up three or four seconds. If you get lucky and
all sudden you hear a ping, then you only have
three seconds to get back to the start line and
next person can go, you know. But that was fun
because it really I mean if you ran, which Cal
and I both did, it was enough that I busted
a couple of blood vessels in my lungs and was
hacking for the next twenty minutes.

Speaker 5 (18:47):
Yeah, does that mean claydon run?

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Clay did not run.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
He had boots on. You know, they don't have run
issues down there. They just run boots, so he didn't
go quiet. It's fast.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Karen, tell everybody about the new podcast channel.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
Okay, there's a whole new channel.

Speaker 10 (19:08):
There's a whole new chance.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Listen to what Krin has to tell you. There's a
whole Kriin is doing this because she knows more about
it than I do.

Speaker 11 (19:14):
Uh So, you know the meet The YouTube channel that
most folks have been a part of for years is
the meat Eater TV YouTube channel, and we've decided to
create a new YouTube channel that's the home for all
of our podcasts. So that's well, that's the only place
where you'll be able to watch and listen to.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
You're not really selling it.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
It's not a job. She's a producer.

Speaker 6 (19:41):
It's here.

Speaker 4 (19:44):
That's the only place you'll be able to watch our podcast.

Speaker 11 (19:48):
Go ahead and subscribe to the very new Meat Eater
podcast YouTube channel.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
That's not the only place where you can listen to
watch what was?

Speaker 2 (20:00):
You can watch and listen.

Speaker 7 (20:02):
She's a producer.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Get it one more time?

Speaker 11 (20:06):
Okay, So everybody to.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
Everybody bought the new channel.

Speaker 11 (20:12):
We've got a great, new, exciting YouTube podcast channel launching.
It's where you can catch all of the Meat Eater
Network podcasts on video and audio. So please give us
a subscribe. It's called the Meet Eater Podcast Network on YouTube,
a new.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
One on that.

Speaker 3 (20:32):
What do people get to see there?

Speaker 1 (20:33):
What's in it for.

Speaker 10 (20:34):
Me they get to see?

Speaker 11 (20:36):
Well, it's it's we've we're migrating away from the Meet
Eater TV so YouTube channel. So if you want to
watch this here podcast, that's where you watch it. If
you want to watch trivia, that's where you watch it.
If you want to watch Cal's interviews, Mark's Wired to Hunt.
Uh foundations? Oops, yeah, now foundations is there? Now Foundations

(20:58):
cutting the distance?

Speaker 9 (20:59):
Well?

Speaker 2 (20:59):
How Foundations be there too?

Speaker 11 (21:01):
Well, it will and all of our podcasts that are
not interview format there might be a little visual treat so,
but that is a home for all of our podcasts.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
Like if I'm just facetiming Mark one day, we could
put that up there.

Speaker 6 (21:13):
That will be.

Speaker 7 (21:16):
Sign for that.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Uh no, I'm surets are back and stuck without even
know we're doing this. I have my original.

Speaker 4 (21:24):
You might want to specify g n O M E
not n O E M as we've been discussing the.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
Like no, like Governor Christy.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Oh, that would life and death on the phone.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
I would wear Christy silent christ T shirt were a
dog shirt, wear a Doug Burgham T shirt.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Just cow, that was funny, Steve didn't hear that?

Speaker 3 (21:52):
Tell me our Christy Noman packing out a bird dog shirt?

Speaker 7 (22:00):
That would sound.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah, i'd wear s this. I have the original one on.
Look at the Look at the hole in that arm pit. Yeah,
this is the gnome packing you. Why is it this
one not back?

Speaker 10 (22:20):
I think I think it may be one of the ones.
It is.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
See our T shirt program is constantly they like burned
through them.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
It's dynamic.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah, that's a good word for it. They burned through them. Oh,
my kids went.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Proper way to I don't know why that word is
so stuck in my head about how people use it.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Prone to change right now, but.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
It is constantly used.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Improper a dynamic video. That video is not changing yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
And when people are described dynamically most of the time,
they're not trying to say that that person changes all
the time.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
Can I tell you something about something?

Speaker 2 (22:58):
Oh, Steve got the finger. Everybody just didn't lean in
on that.

Speaker 6 (23:05):
Listen.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
I forgot to tell you something. You know what I
did close this computer, krit Can you remind us energy
krin when I do when we do. Steve reads the books,
so you ain't got to Can you remind me to
tell Yanni what I need to tell him?

Speaker 5 (23:23):
Oh, so you're not telling us now? In a minute,
all right, stay tuned.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
So my kids were visiting their grandma, their maternal grandmother,
and there's a T shirt shop that you took him to.
This is the way to go on a T shirt shop.
All the designs are on the wall. Mm hmm okay,
hundreds of the designs on the wall, tons of blank

(23:50):
T shirts. You pick the colored shirt you want, You
picked the design you want. The dude at the connor
goes burns the design into the shirt hands to the kid.
That's dad, run a T shirt program.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
Dangerous for kids?

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Though.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
I don't want that one. No once, no, If I
remember right, I think they settled up. Oh, yeah, that's
how they settled up before. My kid had a steelhead
burned onto a tied die hoodie. That's good taste, Yeah,
madd he went with the steelhead burned onto a tie.

Speaker 5 (24:26):
We should get a little corner of the store downtown
to do that, just burning shirt.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
So we got the gnome packing out of dead unicorn.
We got the noome roast and a jack rabbit, and
we got the gnome spear fishing right the mermaid? No, no,
no fishing. It's a gnome jigging hal a bit. But
he tied into a mermaid.

Speaker 11 (24:50):
Oh okay, okay, because I didn't I knew it wasn't
like a gnome spirit.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
You're telling me he's doing battle. It's the gnome jigging
hal abit. But he hooked into a mermaid, and he's
doing battle with a mermaid.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
I don't believe it that the mermaid took the same
bait that she's foul hooked.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
She's trying to get the bait off the hook. I
can't remember. We don't have her lip hooked.

Speaker 10 (25:13):
I hope.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
How is she hooked in that? I don't think she's
lip hooked.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
Can you see the jib twister tail can you.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Pull that up? Phil? How is she hooked? I remember
debating this, and we didn't think we wanted to have
her lip hooked. If I remember right now, I think
I think we settled on her her position. Her position
is such that I think we settled on this because
we didn't want to get into any kind of strange territory.

(25:44):
I think we settled on her position. Few skates it does.

Speaker 5 (25:49):
It's behind her body. You can't tell how.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
She said gotcha, but I think she does. It make
sense that she's lip hooked like she was eating the bait.

Speaker 5 (25:56):
It's kind of thee I can't zoom in far enough.
It's hard to tell.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
I can picture her trying to grab it.

Speaker 5 (26:01):
Now it disappears around the mid section of her tail,
and you can't tell where it's huck.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
It's maybe follow hooks in the shoulder.

Speaker 7 (26:07):
Well, what about she was saving the halbit, removing a
hook from a helvet and then got hung up.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah, like all its subjective.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
You know, was targeting mermaids.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
That's what it's meant. It's meant to be that only
the artist knows.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
Good job.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
When I conceptualized the idea, it was he was jigging
hal of it, but tied into a mermaid and was
glad about it some of the women in the because
some of the women in the company pointed out, he
doesn't know is this is this sexual in nature? Or

(26:48):
is this like close to cannibalism in nature. That's why
he hasn't caught it yet, because if it was caught,
you'd have to wrestle, you'd have to wrestle that question.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
Yeah, that what comes next?

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yes, So what is he going to do with the mermaid?
Is to the wearer's imagination.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
Or you know, until it's in the boat.

Speaker 12 (27:15):
If we get that burn your own design, maybe we
should have a painting contest to have that scene. But
what happens renditions of that that scene when he catches her.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
After the success of the after the success of the
essay contest, watercolor, And I think that if you can,
if you can look at the shirt design and then
sending artwork showing what happened next, and quite like if
it if it winds up being reproductive in nature, put

(27:46):
a caution.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
I like that.

Speaker 10 (27:49):
Maybe we'll put it up on Steve's Instagram.

Speaker 5 (27:52):
He's by himself, so he's not yelling get the gaff
to anyway, uh Krin also needs more outro music submissions,
so we we for twenty twenty four as the one
we're in.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
We're doing all out. Well, it's a little more complicated that.
For a while, Okay, for a while we had ultro
I don't even know what the hell we were using
for ultra music. For a long time we had ultro
music from Sheerwater. It's a band that a Sheerwater is
a bird. There's a band by an there's an ornithologist
who has a band called Sheerwater. He used to study

(28:27):
Cara Kara's but he had a song called Wildlife in America.
And for a long time our ultro music was sort
of an excerpt from Wildlife in America, which is actually
about soldiers returning from the war in Iraq in Afghania,
the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan. That was the ultro music.

(28:48):
You wouldn't know any of that from listening to it,
but that's what it was. Then one day we talked
about something too long and someone made a comment about
someone made a comment about like you beat that horse
to death. So then we switched the outro music to
Christopher Denny's Ride On in which he says, we've done
beat this damn horse to death. That's time to ride out.

Speaker 10 (29:10):
He'll be on the podcast soon.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
By the way, people loved and hated, loved and hated
that song. Christopher Danny one day, somehow oblivious to the
fact that his song that we licensed his song. Yep.
It was a hard negotiation, hard to get a hold
of anybody. We license this song. And one day he

(29:32):
writes in, Hey, I see you're using my song. Like now,
that didn't happen easily. He doesn't even know we use
this song. He's gonna come on the podcast. Yep. He
didna come on the podcast and tell you everything that's
wrong with the music industry. Will When our license of
that was running out, rather than renewing it, we did
a thing where we're only using music that people send

(29:53):
in because people are sending cool songs. And here we
are halfway through the year.

Speaker 11 (29:59):
We need a refrap, right, but we need music that's
not already floating around the internet. So if you guys
want to take take a little bit of time and
write a podcast specific song or an ode to Steve
or the outdoors, you know a lot.

Speaker 10 (30:16):
Of people did that.

Speaker 12 (30:17):
We need originals because you know how the podcast.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
You can watch the podcast on YouTube. If your music,
even if you've licensed your music anywhere, if your music
is on Spotify, whatever, they're gonna scrub it and dingus
for a dingus for a copyright infringement. Even if you're
giving permission, it's still gonna It's just gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah, it's a hassle.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
It's a pain in crins, but it is. So you
got to give us music you haven't published.

Speaker 7 (30:45):
Yet, right, and so like a couple of you still
publish it.

Speaker 11 (30:47):
Later, a couple of people just sat around and picked
up a guitar. I just started singing and it was
like an impromptu. There's one guy who uh who wrote
a song called Raccoon Pecker or he didn't really right
and he just it was funny.

Speaker 9 (31:01):
It was.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Where does Doug Duran's podcast blues Go Trivia?

Speaker 1 (31:11):
We got one right now, our very own dirt myth
And every time I look at dip a Fishingado with
dirt on. When Dirt made the cover of Dip Fisha,
I still laugh.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
Oh me, Yeah, that's the best piece.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
In here, Dirt sending a song we like lately when
we're goofing on Dirt, who's not here. Lately the theme
has been goofing on the noises Dirt makes while eating.
We should have him test the uh we did have
Dirt eat that and put him bake up to him. Yeah,

(31:47):
this next level.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
And if you have you can't buy this Dirt, you can't.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
You can't hear this.

Speaker 5 (31:53):
But he's usually has two thumbs out yea.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
And if there were these two bags here and they
sat long enough, he with his last bite of this bag,
he'd be like, Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna hit another
one of that.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
Elbow. This the next level. You, Oh, he eats the
way if.

Speaker 4 (32:20):
He walked into like a medieval tavern and you saw
someone eating from a rough bole, Yes.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
We already covered it with my favorite. His Dirt was
talking about what his grandpa used for chapstick. He says,
Grandpa uses his own earwag. He digs into his ear,
gets a gobble wax and rubs us.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Brugal family.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
Oh yeah, Dirt said, doing two things his dad's His
dad's tried to make himself that he was never happy with.
His dad was trying to make his own dip okay
he's trying to grow in a back listle to make
his own dip and his dad was trying to make
his own his own pellets for a pellet grill. That frugal,

(33:08):
trying to make his own pellets for a pellet grill.
We one time made a big dugout can you have
a cottonwood log? And it was just killing Dirt's dad
that we're gonna leave it land there. So he brought
it home and turned it into a planner, Like, this
is no way he's gonna leave that thing. It's a
perfectly good cracked hollow log. Uh, open country. Are you

(33:32):
gonna play a little bit, Philip, just a little talk?

Speaker 5 (33:33):
Yeah, it's like it's over five minutes.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Play the whole damn thing. Play put the whole thing
at the end of the show. Okay, So Dirt wants
to point out, being a good guy that he is
Dirt Dirt. This is in the notes dirt colon, not
Dirt's colon. I don't need to see that dirt colon.
Make sure when you guys play post about open Country,

(33:56):
that's Dirt song. It's called open country. Oh h Dirt says,
it has a lot to say about the song. He
also has this to say. This song you're about to hear,
open Country by Dirt quote has the core principles of
why I do what I do. Amen into that shit.

(34:17):
Dirt that went on to say, make sure and you
guys play posts about open country. My cousin Andrew Smith,
who's handled his makeshift radio m AK shift Radio MAC
basically Mac shift underscore Radio, so at m A K
S H I f T Underscore Radio gets mentioned for recording,

(34:43):
mixing and playing piano. Dirt continues, He's a great dude
and has a Spotify. His stuff is very ethereal and
does a cool sound mixing and does cool sound mixing
for a living. So with credit where credit is due,
play play a quick lick there, Phil, and then we'll
come back at the end of the show. We'll come back.

Speaker 6 (35:15):
Give me, give me a lit of something that inspired.

Speaker 13 (35:28):
Me.

Speaker 6 (35:28):
Put me all that's what lies my fire.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
Excellent, the lovely and talented Dirt myth. I can't wait.

Speaker 6 (35:45):
Man.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
If I had to pick between dirt being alive and
all you being alive, I'd picked dirt, you know what
I'm saying, And I throw myself into that mix. I'd
rather dirty alive, way more than media life.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
It would be the only person that would make you
feel good somehow about everybody else being dead. He'd be like,
but you know, I.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Can't think of a time. I can't think of a
single time in my life. Dirt has ever gone negative.
Oh that gnome that tried to molest him in Ireland.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
Oh yeah, that guy that creeped him out big time.

Speaker 6 (36:23):
Yeah like that.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
Other than that, dirt's never gone negative. And he wasn't
even entirely negative about the gnome, not a gnome A
little yeah, Leprechaun tried to molest him.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
Is the only logical conclusion that we could all come to.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, everybody's laughing about my face being on the bag
of a of a listen, my face being on the
bag of a freeze dry meal. But let me tell
you why I'm uniquely qualified to have my face on
the bag of a freeze dry meal. Please, Ken, you're
supposed to hold that right, Yeah, I'll tell you why
I'm why I'm uniquely qualified, and why this man before
any of you guys, while you guys were still when

(37:04):
you guys were still getting milk from your mama's tea,
I was eating freeze dry. Not only that, not only that,
I was writing about freeze dry back when like astronauts
knew about it many many years ago. I wrote a

(37:25):
piece for Outside, an exhaustively reported piece on freeze dry food,
like how it came into use, who the first users were.
I got into the lurps from Vietnam. I got into
space travel. I got into how space ice cream has
gone to space, but no one ever chose to eat
space ice cream in space.

Speaker 11 (37:46):
They just eat it at the Kennedy Space Center like
I did.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
Had it, they had it. And I got into how
a favorite of the astronauts is shrimp cocktail. I went
to a freeze dry research facility and the guy says,
we got everything in here. Try to think of something,
and I just said, I don't know. And I thought
from it and I said, capers got it freeze dry.

(38:10):
As part of my article, I had a bunch of
people from the food industry come over and we did
a tasting of all kind of freeze dry. Okay, I
was like the original freeze dry journalist, Well only did
that one piece.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
Under that one piece, but you know what I'm saying,
it was so encompassing you the genre I to find.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
Yeah, it was like, you know, there's like a mic drop. Yeah,
But there's only so much you can say about freeze dry.
I said it. I went and visited a sublimation chamber.
So when you're making freeze drive, you make you make
a meal that's ready. There's different ways of doing it.
The right way to do it is you cook something
that's ready to eat. You then spread it on trays

(38:53):
and freeze it. And the temperature at which you freeze it,
the humidity at which you freeze it all matters a bunch.
You then take that and put a in the sublimation chamber,
pull a vacuum on it, and the water in their sublimates,
meaning it goes water goes from its solid state to
its gaseous state, never goes to a liquid state. When
you pull these sheets out, you could break them like
a pane of glass, grind it all up, throw in

(39:15):
a sack. That's freeze dry production in a nutshell. One
thing I learned and the time I spent exploring freeze dry,
is that certain things are good when you freeze drive,
and certain things ain't good when you freeze drive. When
you go to these fancy pants, you know everybody now
has got some fancy pants freeze dry like seven wild

(39:35):
mushroom risotto. Listen, I like good food as much as
the next get A lot of things aren't suitable to
freeze dry. Meaning, if you made a freeze dry hamburger,
what are you gonna have when you rehydrate it? The
burger bun doesn't know when to stop sucking up water,
right Like if you want to rehydrate a cheeseburger, the

(40:00):
bun is it doesn't work like you need stuff that
Everything wants the same amount of soak. And that's the
key to a good freeze dry meal. And just because
seven wild mushroom risotto is good at a restaurant doesn't
mean it's good out of a sack. Like it doesn't.
Everything doesn't translate.

Speaker 4 (40:17):
It needs a consistent saturation point.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
And it's just certain efforts get wasted. Certain efforts get
like certain flavors and textures and things that make things good.
Once you freeze dry it and grind it up and
throw it in a sack, it goes away. There's just
certain things that work as freeze drying. I'll tell you
what works as freeze dry as American buffalo barbecue mac

(40:41):
and cheese, and then Yanni's more to Yanni's to thank
for this one. It should be Yanni's face on that
American buffalo goulash.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
Instead of this guy right here. If you put your
finger right here, you can act like you're talking.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Can you do that while I talk? Phil can use
zero in on that so it's me talking? Sure? Yeah, okay,
right now?

Speaker 2 (41:03):
Yeah, you're not picking his nose?

Speaker 13 (41:05):
Is it?

Speaker 5 (41:05):
Is?

Speaker 1 (41:05):
It zoomed? Right Phil?

Speaker 5 (41:07):
It's not zoomed.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
But I'm on cal.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Here's why I use that. I'm a big supporter of
the animal. I'm a big support of American buffalo. Nine
four percent of the buffalo or bison in North America
that exists today are privately owned. I don't like the
captive servant industry none. There's no way I would do

(41:30):
like I'm not gonna do. I would never like do
an elk freeze dry of veniceon freeze Rik because I
don't like captive servants. There. But private owners save the
American buffalo from extinction. If it wasn't for private owners
like we would not have them at all, or would
barely have them. In terms of returning to the animals,

(41:52):
to the landscape. It's largely fallen to private landowners to
return the animals to the landscape. So I support the
you know, I liked support bison ranchers, bison farmers. That's why.
That's the way it is. And goulash is one of
those things that works. Keep going, you're gonna wear wear
a hole in that bag. Goulash is one of those

(42:13):
things that works. Is freeze dry. Do you know what
I'm saying. I think it was Yanni's idea.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
It wasn't it a long time ago. I think when we, uh.

Speaker 5 (42:23):
Be honest, you're not looking at Steven the eye.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
When we when we did, my eyes were up here,
and we did submissions for flavors.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
Yeah, so this is a meat that matters. Is the
if you got to buy a meat, it's the coolest
meat to buy outside of wild caught salmon. But I know,
but salmon, that's not a freeze dry food. I'm sure
someone does it. I don't think of sam. There's salmon jerky,
salmon jerky, No, it's not free it's good freeze dry

(42:54):
red meat, salmon chowder, red meat, ground up, ground up,
red meat.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
But chicken does well.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
I disagree.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
And it doesn't belong and it doesn't belong on a
pizza either.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
Red meat ground up. I agree that red meat ground up.
That's why right here, when you want to go get
a thinking man's freeze dry from a freeze dry expert,
former freeze dry journalist.

Speaker 4 (43:25):
If you're a thinking man and you want to look
another thinking man in the eyes while you eat your
freeze dry, now.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Listen, if you want to have a conversation with your
bag while you're alone in the hills, cows fingers.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
To me, it's just you and maybe not the crew
on here. Because one of our favorite, one of our
favorite activities. When we've eaten a lot of other freeze
dries made by another company, there's multiple people sitting around
a stove and they have these expressions that don't necessarily

(44:01):
like let you know exactly what they're thinking or exactly
what the joke is. And we have spent hours probably
looking at these labels and deciding what is going on,
what is going on there in that scene, And I think,
even though it's not quite the same, but this lends
itself to the same thing. So if you want to
have fun with your friends in the back country, cal.

Speaker 4 (44:22):
Pointed out that you can. There's space there to do
a dialogue bubble.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
Yeah, whatever you want. You could say, Bill, you could
have my boys say what are you thinking about? Bill?
And then you could answer to the bag while you're
alone in the mountains and I'm there to hear what
you have to say.

Speaker 11 (44:44):
Oh yeah, what's in that speech?

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Bubble?

Speaker 9 (44:53):
Do my art?

Speaker 2 (44:53):
Ear?

Speaker 3 (44:54):
Listen? This is another good meteor contest right here.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
If you're wandering about, they're both good. If you wondering
about what my my favorite Like, what am I saying there?

Speaker 3 (45:04):
My spoon has three notches?

Speaker 2 (45:08):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (45:09):
I put two?

Speaker 2 (45:10):
You have to do it in Steve's voice. If Steve
was gonna say, tell you how many notches his spoon has,
how did it be going?

Speaker 3 (45:16):
Well, he'd be like, hey, who's got three notcher?

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Working? Okay? Working? Donald Listrick can We talked about the podcasting,
talking about gnomes. We talked about why I'm qualified, Why
I'm qualified to be on a Mac and Cheese box,
talking about music, talk about dirt.

Speaker 14 (45:41):
Oh, Mark Kenyon, right after Mac and Cheese used it
in alphabetical order, Mark Kenyon hit it?

Speaker 2 (45:52):
Mark?

Speaker 7 (45:53):
What am I talking about?

Speaker 1 (45:55):
Aren't you gonna tell us? About working for a while, Bieur, Yeah,
are you not prepared? I am.

Speaker 7 (46:00):
I just didn't know if that was the thing. So yeah,
The Working for Wildlife Tour is something I kicked off
last year, which was kind of coming out of just
a realization I had just kind of looking out across
the country and hearing about different volunteer events going on
being put on by BHA or the NDA or Trout

(46:20):
Unlimited or whatever it is. You see a picture from
one of these events and there'd be like six people,
and I thought to myself, Man, these are such great events.
There's such good work going on. I believe there's great
things coming from them, but not enough folks hear about it.
Not enough people are going out and doing these things.
So I thought, what's some way we could help bring
more attention to that and kind of inspire more folks

(46:42):
to get out there and do it. So I decided
I'll to start doing it myself. So this tour was
the idea is to go around the country collaborating with
various nonprofit organizations to help, you know, organize these events,
promote these events, and then I go to them myself
and volunteer all day with folks. You know, meet everyone,
talk to folks, have a great time, and document it

(47:03):
all and then tell those stories afterwards. So what kind of.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
Projects I can test? Let me tell you. I went
to one last year down in Kentucky. We went down
there and collected five gown bucket upon five gown bucket
of white a white oak acorns, and those were collected
to then be grown in a nursery oak nursery.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
If you live by Clay's house, he's talking about acorns.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
Acorns, that's right, and then to be planted back into
the Daniel Boone National Forest.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
So where were you wandering around collecting acorns? Daniel Blue
National Forest and then you were gonna they were gonna
propagate them.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah, some folks had scouted them so they knew some
spots to go to. It was very educational for me,
you know, as a deer hunter. We got to like
it was cool, and the community aspect of it was great.
I mean you're sitting around literally sitting because there's so
many of them, it's so thick. You can just sit
down and collect acorns, and you're talking to people from

(47:59):
the you know community.

Speaker 7 (48:01):
So instead of six people going out there collecting acorns,
we had sixty or something like that, and we collected
between seven hundred and eight hundred pounds of these acorns,
which were then propagated. I went and visited that nursery
a couple of weeks ago. We have fifteen thousand oak
seedlings now growing.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
What was the success rate? Did you find out a
corn like like what percentage? Actually, well, we're said were
viable and took and all that.

Speaker 7 (48:25):
I don't know off the top of my head.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
No, but I do know the to help a lot
more acorns than that.

Speaker 7 (48:29):
Yeah, so fifteen thousand trees are growing some and then
we're going to go back next spring and help reforce
parts of the national force.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
So that's how how big they got to get them
for they put them back.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
In the ground.

Speaker 7 (48:40):
Well, right now they're about six inches tall. By next spring,
I think it'll be more like a foot.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
They worried about just the deer. You're going to annihilate them.

Speaker 7 (48:49):
That's definitely a thing. I don't know about what kind
of protection they may or may not be using when
we plant, but yeah, so that's an example.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
Dirt will give you an earful about that.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
You know something I learned down there. Did you know
when you find an acorn with the cap on it,
it's an aborted acorn. No, whoa, I'm hoping that's what
we learned, right. They were like, if you can't pick
up the ones that don't have their caps on him anymore.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
Like, it didn't come to it didn't. It didn't come
to maturity.

Speaker 7 (49:20):
I remember we were searching out with acorns.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
I always preferred those ones. Yeah, big old white with
no cap. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (49:27):
We were also looking to make sure that we're weavil
holes in them and stuff.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Like that, and that they hadn't sprouted yet either. I
think that was it.

Speaker 5 (49:33):
Which when they went to the nursery, they probably put
them all in water and you can find out if
you're viable or not, like by floating them. Yeah, I
think the ones that aren't viable float I think I
think that's right.

Speaker 7 (49:46):
It was very cool, but we did that. We went
two weeks ago. We were in Pennsylvania and I just
I got an email this morning kind of that quantified
what we did. Seventeen hundred feet of like ten foot
tall fencing was removed, Fourteen bluebird boxes were installed, two

(50:06):
wildlife planting fences were guarded.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
You're on the air, can you.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Put the phone in front of your phone, in front
of the microphone, Steve the speaker.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
Yeah, right, there you go.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
If if an acorn, if you find an acorn laying
on the ground a corn. Yeah, Me and Doug about
quit being friends over an acorn fight one time. Listen
or acorn argument. If you find an acorn laying on
the ground and his cap is still on him, does
that mean it was aborted and it's not viable? Complete conjecture, No,

(50:46):
but he qualified conjecture. Yeah. Uh, it means to me
that it dropped early and that cap has to dryn't
fall off yet, but it could still be viable, Thanks Doug. Okay,

(51:10):
basically on.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
From the top, we got we got sidetracked there.

Speaker 7 (51:16):
So in this particular day two weeks ago in Pennsylvania,
we removed seventeen hundred feet of ten foot tall fencing
that was originally put up decades ago, back when the
tall about ten.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Foot For what purpose was that?

Speaker 7 (51:30):
So this is pretty interesting was this stage, this is
National Forest, Pennsylvania. Back twenty thirty years ago, deer populations
were so high that if you wanted any kind of
regrowth that all had they still do it. In this
case though, they don't want so.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
They did an exclosure and it just decayed and yep,
and now it's keeping.

Speaker 7 (51:51):
Deer another wildlife out of an area they want them
and got it. So we removed almost two thousand feet
of that, which was a job, planted fifty trees and shrubs,
installed fourteen bluebird boxes, planted twenty five button bush button bushes,
and then installed a new set of two hundred and
forty feet of fencing around some of these new plantings

(52:12):
to protect them in those early growth stages. So we've
done things like that. We were in Massachusetts outside of Boston.
We did collected literally a ton two thousand pounds of
trash on a WMA. We worked on aspenstin restorations in
northern Idaho.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
We created I.

Speaker 7 (52:30):
Think eighteen brush piles for small game habitat and improved
sixteen acres of openings in a state forest. In northern Michigan.
We did a great project in Mississippi on the I
can't remember the name of the national forest down there,
but planted something like two hundred and fifty apple trees,

(52:50):
worked on gopher tortoise habitat. There was all these different
kinds of very cool projects. You learn a lot, you
meet an incredible number of like minded people, and you
come away from these events just full, like your cup
is full all this new energy and really really cool stories.
Like I've heard so many stories from people that went

(53:11):
to an event like this, having never participated in something
like that before, never really thought they'd want to, but
heard about it like, oh sure, I'll go give it
a shot. And it leads to the snowball effect with
more and more things happening. So I just met a
guy at didn't meet him, saw him again at the
BHA rendezvous. He comes up to me and said, Hey,
I don't know if you remember me. We met at
the event outside of Boston. I never participated, never volunteered before,

(53:34):
but I did it, came out there, came away from
that feeling so charged up and wanted to do more.
I decided to get involved with that local chapter of BHA.
Asked if there's any more events, Well, there were some
more things started going to those. I enjoyed that so
much more. When I found out there was an opening
on the state board, I joined and became a state
board member. I did that for the rest of the year.
I have become so charged up with what this has

(53:55):
led to that now I'm retiring from the Navy. He's
being discharged, is his and there in this honorably thank you.
That's what I was looking for, and he is.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
They said you're private two into conservations.

Speaker 7 (54:10):
Well so much so that he is now pursuing a
full time career in conservation. That wouldn't have happened if
it hadn't been that. So there's been multiple things like
that that are very exciting and we're hoping to keep
it going. So we've done eight events in the last
like thirteen months so far. Another one, the next one
coming up is this August in northern Minnesota.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
What's that one?

Speaker 7 (54:31):
That is going to be doing two big projects just
outside the boundary waters. UH One, we will be creating
a access point for hunters and anglers and campers entering
this part. It's on Vermilion Lake, I believe, so helping
create a access point for recreators and then creating whitetail
and other wildlife wintering habitat by planting conifer trees in

(54:52):
a WMA I believe up there as well.

Speaker 11 (54:55):
And Mark if people want to get involved, where did
they go on our website or on wire Yeah.

Speaker 7 (55:00):
So probably the simplest way is just a Google working
for Wildlife Tour, or go to the mediat their website
and search that too. There's an article there that links
to the details for every one of the events so
far this year. But yeah, I would love to see
more folks at that Northern Minnesota one, and hopefully we'll
do more next year.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
It's awesome, Mark, Thank you erk.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (55:19):
Yeah, and everybody go give Mark a listen or a
watch on the new podcast Network channel on YouTube tube. Yeah,
he's host of the Wire to Hunt podcast.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
Got any target bucks going on we need to hear about? Well?

Speaker 3 (55:32):
I do have to say real quick for those paying
attention to Mark. I had people right in to the
ask cal email making sure Mark's okay.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
Mark.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
Mark's in training running mode, so he's looking slim and trim,
and then he's ben shaved his mustache off and better aerodynamic.
And people went around him and came to me and said,
I hope he's doing okay. He looks too skinny.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
So you've been running. You've been running so much you
got skinny, I guess.

Speaker 7 (56:03):
So, yeah, yeah, what a mustache takes a club man
takes ten running club, the skinny club. Skinny club. Yeah,
ten pounds and ten years off, I guess with a mustache.
So not not as fast as Yoanny, But I'm getting there.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
You don't know that, dude. Not as fast as the
gals I was watching at the barber shop yesterday and
the track and field turn it definitely not my goodness.

Speaker 7 (56:26):
I'm more slow, but long distance.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
A turtle.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
Okay, back to back to the bucks?

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Oh, yeah, you got is it?

Speaker 6 (56:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (56:35):
Where are you at on Target? Bucks?

Speaker 3 (56:37):
How deep are you in the list of names that
you have to choose from?

Speaker 1 (56:41):
How good are you too? I got another quart? Before
you answer that, I got a question for you. How
good are you? You know what? You start seeing? Bucks
coming into velvet Yeah, Like the other day my neighbor
sends me a picture looks promising, you know, and he
just look it looks like two beer cans coming out
of his head, all velvety. At what point do you
feel at what point do you feel like you can

(57:02):
look by what date, say, in the Midwest, by what
date can you look at a velvety buck and go
like that's looking good? Well?

Speaker 7 (57:12):
I was able to do that before I left Michigan
last week in May, first week at June already.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Yeah, like you say, like by what I'm seeing, this
is looking promising.

Speaker 7 (57:24):
Like I saw a buck I got pictures of and
saw him probably June first ish, and I not only
knew that buck's going to be a buck, but I
knew the buck.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
What are you looking at?

Speaker 7 (57:35):
You're looking at Really what you're seeing is you develop
like a reference point for how much a deer has
grown by a typical point, and you'll start to see, like,
man if a deer like I know from twenty eighteen
that this certain buck was a five year old buck
and he ended up being like X big, yeah, and
I know he ended up like this. I'll look back
at his pictures on May thirty first or June first,
and I'll see and see what he had going on.

(57:58):
If you do that enough times, you start to be
able to identify it, Like I saw a buck the
other day that you can see right now on you know,
end of May, beginning of June, well past the ears,
very substantial browtimes, a lot of masks starting to branch
out into you know, three four points at the ends,
and you can usually if you you know, if you

(58:19):
if you hunt a small area, you see the same
deer over and over and over again.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
That's a good point. So you I know, I know
in the past what he looked like on May thirty first,
and I know where he landed. Yeah, so if I
can look at him now on May thirty.

Speaker 7 (58:31):
First, and it's like if you you know, people are
always wondering, how can you how do you know it's
that buck? How can you tell this buck's different from
that one. It's just like if you have the tags,
like if you see my that would do it. Like
my two boys, if one.

Speaker 1 (58:47):
Of you, how do you know that's that's James.

Speaker 7 (58:50):
They don't look the same to any random person, but
to me, it's so obvious. Well, when I see like
the brow times of a deer, like I knew this buck.
I saw it instantly. He's only got the beginning of
his antlers, but I saw instantly recognize the brow time
structure and width. I was like, Oh, that's this deer.
H he's back, and so that deer.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Probably helps it. He's like, what is his name?

Speaker 7 (59:12):
Bulldozer?

Speaker 1 (59:14):
And never ends hear.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
Me out.

Speaker 7 (59:22):
Ryan asked how the names come up? I don't name
my deer anymore. I don't name your.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
Kids, name them the kids.

Speaker 7 (59:29):
The kids do it. So the kids get excited, they
see a picture, we go out there and actually glass
up the deer and watch deer, and then the kids
just like, let's call them that. It's not for the kids.
The kids feel like they feel like they're part of it.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
Do they ever argue about it?

Speaker 7 (59:42):
Just between themselves, like they are you who gets to
have the rights to a given deer's name?

Speaker 1 (59:47):
You want to see some fighting kids. I took my
kids out bow fish and your day have only brought
one bow.

Speaker 7 (59:51):
Good lord, Yeah, I can see that.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
Mark and I have been in my head.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
I was like, how many characters they want to deal with?
I wanted to take him. I was like, we're gonna
catch car, We're gonna we're using for bait, make some
fish cakes, whatever, so we'll just bring one bow. Just
a fight.

Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
Yeah, Mark and I were talking the other week about
getting together and doing some angling. But off of this conversation,
I have an ulterior motive by it. I want to
get your kids aside and be like, listen, yeah, here's
a couple of good So Mark has to come back
on this show and be like yeah, Queen Elizabeth is dead.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
What did bulldozer do to pick up the name bulldozer?

Speaker 7 (01:00:35):
Literally nothing. I think my son just probably was watching
a TV show or saw a picture of a bulldozer
twenty minutes beforehand, and then that deer was Bulldoz Free Association. Yes,
my other like the other.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
I think.

Speaker 7 (01:00:47):
I told you guys, this's a few months ago.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
You try to kill that buck this year.

Speaker 7 (01:00:50):
Yeah, he'll be the number one cool. My youngest son
didn't really find it. I found the sheds but left
them there and then went back later when he was around,
helped him find it. And so he's very excited that
he found bulldozers. Aler. That's just fun stuff with your kids,
and yeah, it's it's very cool. Now like my kids

(01:01:11):
are hunting with me, I can actually share these experiences
with them in the wild. We the first deer I
shot with my son, Everett, happened this past winter, and
so he got to be there for the whole thing.
Did amazing and helped gut it, helped drag it whole
nine yards. But that buck bulldozer actually came out that
same night, so we got to see that buck and
counter that deer together. Waited till he left, then took

(01:01:32):
a dough so very fun.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Great, how old are your boys now?

Speaker 7 (01:01:37):
Six and four?

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
You squirrel hunting yet? With him? Uh?

Speaker 7 (01:01:40):
Mark's squirreling, I would say, not like officially a squirrel hunting.
He carries around a bb gun a lot and he's
done a little damage. And then he's also been on
groundhog duty with a seventeen which he has, which he's
done very well with. We had a problem.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
You have plans for squirrel hunting.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
I'm sure we will. Yeah, cool, Yeah, good deal. Yeah
he should come out and ground hunt. My boy's got
a real hot groundhog, not groundhog, ground squirrel permission right now.

Speaker 7 (01:02:10):
He would love it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
And they kind of turned it into like the he's
that the people that have him doing this have turned
it into the heat single handedly saving their horses through
a rather convoluted process. He'll appreciate this rand because it
involves a badger. Their take is that they got too
many ground squirrels, which lures in badgers, which dig holes,

(01:02:34):
which are going to kill the horses, therefore saving horses,
which is all he needed to hear. What he needed
to hear is he gets the hunt ground squirrels, but
he needed a way to sell it to the old man.
And upon hearing this heart rendering story about saving the

(01:02:55):
family's horses, how could I say no, got him out
of needing to eat those squirrels.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Everybody radation. Okay, it's a job.

Speaker 7 (01:03:07):
So my kids have now I've I've kind of wrestled
with that question, like, you know, I want them to
get experience doing this things, doing these things, but at
the same time, you know, you can't just wantingly shoot
a bunch of stuff. So one part of the process now,
like if we've shoot a groundhog, we have to dissect it,
learn all about it, and then a fun new thing

(01:03:29):
we're doing is seeing what happens afterwards. So we go
and we'll leave like a part of the groundhog groundhog
carcass out in the woods and then set up trail
cameras on it to then watch and see what who's
going to use this next? How does that change over
two weeks versus six weeks? And that's been fun, that's
really cool.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
Yeah, if Mark was everybody's dad this world, the world
wouldn't be such a mess. Yeah, Mark should be like
science teacher.

Speaker 7 (01:03:54):
I'd like that. Mark we're done, Steve officially.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
Oh really out though, Yeah, never talked about when I
had that done?

Speaker 7 (01:04:02):
Yeah, ever tell you about when I had it done that?

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
Well?

Speaker 7 (01:04:06):
No, this is I'm telling way too many people.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
How long ago did you have it done? Two years ago?

Speaker 9 (01:04:16):
Well?

Speaker 7 (01:04:16):
Which one?

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (01:04:21):
I had to have it done twice? Yeah, really Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
When they were telling me that, I'm like, well, how
in the world is that possible?

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
I don't know how surprised you don't have a third kid.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
I've got super stuff. They couldn't kill it.

Speaker 7 (01:04:35):
They couldn't kill it, couldn't seal it up. I'm insatiable.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
Columbia.

Speaker 5 (01:04:40):
Yeah, wait a minute, they did.

Speaker 7 (01:04:44):
We have to get to get stuff tested, you know,
and my test never came back really and yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:04:51):
Twice same doctor.

Speaker 7 (01:04:53):
You'd be like, well I did seriously wonder like should
I go to somebody else?

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
That to me was the worst part about the whole problem.
It wasn't getting it done, and then like the couple
days afterwards where you're stuck on the couch, but like
every whatever it is three days where you gonna.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Walk in there and be like turn your sample in.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Yeah, yeah, five six times, and then they're like I
keep prying.

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
I remember when they finally called me. I remember they
said the guy that called me he was military and
he thought I was military because I called him sir,
and I had to clear that up eventually. But uh,
he calls congratulations. What happened? Test came back negative? So

(01:05:38):
you you kept throwing samples and they were positive. Yeah,
so you had like a two You had like a
by bifurcated canal.

Speaker 7 (01:05:45):
I don't know how it works, but didn't work right
m And then it became a situation where I didn't
want to get it done again because I didn't enjoy
the first time. But I kept on being enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Yeah, you did enjoy someone cutting into your scroll.

Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
Strangely tying a little not were able to work in
like a two for one type of pricing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
I should have but no, they charge you for the redo. Yeah,
no way they did not.

Speaker 7 (01:06:10):
They did. Oh god, I mean insurance.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
Did he find a second tube?

Speaker 7 (01:06:16):
I apparently should have asked a lot more questions, but no,
I just showed up, kind of a sullen look on
my face, said all right here, I am doc, let's
do it again. And he said like, yeah, this should
definitely do it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
This time, and it did. But what happened? I procrastinated, like,
we're we're really going to get that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
I don't like going down there with those samples.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
Man, Yeah, no, Look, Kevin Wilkerson's thumb can grow back
from nothing to a full thumb with a nail and everything.
What then, I don't see.

Speaker 4 (01:06:54):
I was gonna say, no, wonder you're so confident to
shave your mustache.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
You know it's going to grow back. Trust we'll go back. Yeah,
so no more little Mark Kenyon's on the horizon.

Speaker 7 (01:07:06):
No more.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
Man, I miss those little babies now, man do you? Oh? Yeah,
I don't miss that. Earl kind of want to adopt
a little baby.

Speaker 7 (01:07:13):
Maybe give me two years old, not six months.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
You see how bad I'm dying to talk about this book.
Talk about the book.

Speaker 11 (01:07:21):
We got a new segment. Hold on before you start,
or say the name. We gotta play the drop.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
You got the drop ready, Phil drops ready?

Speaker 3 (01:07:30):
You played it for everybody.

Speaker 13 (01:07:33):
It's time for Steve Reads books, so you ain't got
to That's.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
Right, it's time for Steve Reads books. So you ain't
got too nice.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
I'm surprised you she didn't want to.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
Oh you wanted her to I said, you need to
say this, you need to say in a real sexy voice,
it's time for Steve reads books, so you ain't got to.
And she said it's time for Steve reads books. You
don't have to. I said, no, no, no, no, good try
because it's not appealing to the right audience. The kind
of person that doesn't want to read books doesn't want

(01:08:13):
to read books because they ain't got to, So you're
trying to sell the right audience. This only came up
because I read a book when we were on a
live show. The live tour guy gave me a book,
The Care of the Brush Country, and I realized, how
could the world's greatest book I had never heard of?
And I liked that book and I told people the

(01:08:33):
best parts. And so I came with this idea that
what I could do from now on, like as a
future business line when I retire or whatever, is read
books so you ain't got to this doozy listen.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
Above the Arctic circle.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
Oh can I talk about something different? First? A friend
of mine wrote this, look at this book. I'm not
going to read this or you ain't got you because
it's a guidebook. Bill Carmon who's a was with Rocky
Mountain Note Foundation check this out. Talk about a novel
idea fishing with Daniel Boone fly Fishing the Streams of
an American Hero. So, if you're into Daniel Boone lore

(01:09:13):
about like, oh, you know one day he killed seventeen
bears on the Big Sandy or was raised on the
Upper Yadkin whatever he lays out, hire and go fish
those places so you can fish there and then read
all about what happened there. So and so got killed
right over yonder tryum peasant. That's a great idea for

(01:09:37):
the book. If you live around if you live around Kentucky, Tennessee,
Kentucky in particular, you like to fish, this will infuse
all your fishing with all kinds of history.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
It's almost like a roadside geology type of Take right,
I call him Bill Carmen William F.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
Carmon fly Fishing the Streams of an American Hero.

Speaker 3 (01:09:56):
And then you're kind of ripping off like cliffs notes
for your your idea.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
Well, no, because I don't. Actually, when I do this segment,
Steve Read's books that you ain't got to. I don't.
I'm just telling you the parts that really grab me.
It's not like a summation of buck goes on. But
I'll tell you this is a guy James A. Carroll
The Alaska Journals of James A. Carroll, nineteen eleven nineteen
twenty two. He's a cook. He cooks that logging camps

(01:10:22):
in Minnesota and eventually winds up up in Alaska. So
he winds up in Alaska. I need to put my
spectacles on. He winds up up in Alaska nineteen eleven
seeking work as a cook, but becomes a fur trapper
and has a lot of amazing adventures. And what I
like about the book in particular is, uh, he looks

(01:10:47):
at everything through a food lens. He's very astute about food.
He gets into gets into. At one point one of
his cooking techniques, he's bragging up how good he is
at cooking. I could bake anything with the reflector, pies, biscuits, etc.

(01:11:09):
I used to cook our beans in a bean hole.
Way for this, I used to cook our beans in
a bean hole. This bean hole is made by digging
a hole in the ground three feet by two feet.
I would fill this hole full of small cut wood.
When all the wood burned down to hot coals. I
would rake a hole in these hot coals and set

(01:11:31):
the bean pot into the center and rake the hot
coals back over the pot. Then I would cover it
all over a six or eight inches of dirt. You
know why this turns out so good? He says, He
buries it so deep. Quote none of the flavors could escape. Okay,

(01:11:54):
ready for this. This is when he's up in Alaska.
He's got a guy who hangs out. I would name Riyger,
who raises hogs. Okay, in the early evening hours, Riger,
this is all on the Yukon. In the early evening hours.
Riger invited me down to the river bank. He wanted
to show me how he fed his hogs. He wanted

(01:12:18):
to show me how I fed his hogs. Right from
the river, Birch Creek teamed with fish of all kinds,
predominantly pike. As soon as Riger reached for his fishing pole,
it would alert all the pigs and they would come
running from all directions. Sometimes they would run between his
legs and nearly trip Riger. It seemed almost as soon

(01:12:42):
as Rieger's spoon hit the water, a pike would grab it.
Riger had a club to kill the fish as soon
as he dragged it to shore. In the meantime, the
pigs were all squealing up and down the bank waiting
for their supper of fish. The hogs would fight over
the pike. It would take him about an hour. Now

(01:13:02):
I'm skipping ahead. It would take him about an hour
to feed his herd of hogs. Now he dubs this
operation Riiger's Ranch.

Speaker 5 (01:13:12):
I wonder if those hogs are fishy, taste.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
Well, funny? You should ask listen to this tidbit. Okay,
it so hold that in mind for mix. He has
another there's another food tipping. No, I'll get to your question. Okay.
They got a guy in their camp that doesn't want
to eat bear meat. It says he can't eat bear meat.
So so James Carroll, the author, kills a bear and

(01:13:40):
he's gonna serve it. But there's this guy that doesn't
want to eat bear meat. So James Carroll cooks a
bunch of bear meat. Says he had a camp hunter,
Bill Bill Hogshead was the camp hunter brings a small
black bear in to camp. He's gonna make a pot
roast out of the bear. Okay, so he cuts the
bear's ribs into short ribs, puts him in a pot.

(01:14:04):
The guy that comes in that doesn't like beary me
asks what's in a pot. He tells him it's short
ribs from Ryger's ranch. He says, no, it's not. Don't
smell like fish. On the night we can't with mister Stead.
He fried us up a lot of caribou steak for
our supper. Being a cook myself, I observed how he

(01:14:26):
went about preparing it. While Stead stood over the cookstove
watching the steaks of caribou cook, he would comb his
beard with the same fork he turned the steaks with.
He did this unconsciously. I learned a new wrinkle about
bread baking from Stead. He had a large batch of
bread raising in a big tin dishpan with a yellow

(01:14:49):
tom cat sleeping on top of the dough. I thought
the cat was sleeping where it shouldn't, so I told
Stead the cat was sleeping on his bread. Oh, that's nothing.
There is always a dishcloth between the dough and the
cat to keep the dough clean. He the narrator, complains
to another guy about it. The guy says, that's where

(01:15:12):
the cat always sleeps. Ready for this, there's a guy
that splits wood in town and for a Yukon. He
splits and sells wood to people in town, but someone
keeps working the wood off his pile. He drills. He
takes an augur bit and drills out a bunch of

(01:15:33):
wood and packs it full of gunpowder and sets it
on top of the pile. Quickly finds the thief, blows
the burns the thief's house down. What else Here's so
I wasn't gonna talk about. Then scratched it out, which

(01:15:55):
makes me wonder what it was ready for this he
would get as drunk as a boiled owl.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
I've only seen Mark is drunk as a boiled.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
Owl one time. The other day, I said in the
Vicara of the Brush Country, Oh, Crinny forgot to remind me.

Speaker 10 (01:16:22):
I was just gonna remind you.

Speaker 1 (01:16:23):
Okay, there's two things from Vicaro of a Brush Country
terms that I didn't tell people about. You know what
you call it buck old mossy horns. You've made this
from Michigan. Yeah. I used to think that when you
call the buck old mossy horns, people were losing track
of the fact that bucks shed their antlers, and we
would say that's where old mossy horns lives. Like what

(01:16:46):
when you hear old mossy horns being from Michigan, what
do you think you're saying about that buck?

Speaker 7 (01:16:52):
Big old swamp buck yep old is the biggest thing
and so old and big that he had moscar on
his antlers.

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
You know what it means, well, I learned this in
vicarea of the brush country. When a long horn gets old,
the sheen on that horn starts to break apart, like
he's got smooth horn, but growing from the base outward.
Eventually it gets like that sheen breaks and it gets

(01:17:21):
kind of crumbly over time from exposure to the sun
and weather, and he becomes old mossy horns. He's so
old that it becomes like a like a brittlely kind
of hairy coating on that horn. That's what old mossy
horns is.

Speaker 7 (01:17:36):
That is interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
He also says, he says there there was more of
something than fiddlers in hell. Drunk is a boiled owl.
Here he's trapping, he traps. You know, you know what
you hear about caribou herds, the porcupine herds of the

(01:18:00):
Porcupine River. I remember one time I had three poor
and damaged cross fox. One had no tail, one had
no head, the third one had badly rubbed hips. I
told Jack that I was going to try to make
a whole cross fox from these three damaged ones. Jack

(01:18:20):
didn't think much of the idea. One of the fox
had a good head and shoulders, one had good hips,
and the third one had a good tail in hips.
I trimmed off all the ragged edges and rugged rubbed pieces.
I was good at sewing, considering the short experience I
had had the past winter. I simply sewed the head
and shoulders together, and then I fastened on the good

(01:18:43):
hips and tail and pulled it loosely over a stretcher.
The whole fox pelt was probably a little shorter than
average length. When we were showing our collection of furs
to a fur barre, he picked up this tailor made
cross fox, first, shook it out and said, now that's
what I call a nice little cross You ready for this?

(01:19:12):
After we arrived in town, I stayed at Jim Haley's
roadhouse for a month. Old Jim was a great soup maker.
He had a large don't laugh, he had a large
seven gallon soup kettle that he always kept full of soup.
It's not funny. I often wondered afterwards how he kept

(01:19:37):
so much soup on hand without its souring on him.
He must have kept adding soda to it. He used
to put all kinds of small game in his suit,
such as squirrels, ducks, ground squirrels, rabbits, and sometimes a
piece of moot or caribou meat that the Indians happened
to bring in. They were all good to Jim in

(01:19:58):
this respect. Jim always had soup to serve any time
of the day or night. One time, Jim had his
soup pot and slop bucket sitting side by side. By mistake,
a fellow by the name of White emptied his wash
basin in Jim's soup pot instead of the slop bucket.

(01:20:23):
His soup was still as popular as ever. Ready for this,
I remember curly well and I stout that Schuman's overnight.
We told him we would like to get an early
start in the morning. Schumann said in his alarm clock

(01:20:44):
to ring at four o'clock. When the alarm went off,
it woke me up, too, so I lay awake in
bed until breakfast was ready. Schumann got right up, made
a hot fire in a big cast iron flat top
heater he had. I watched Schumann all the time. He
didn't know it. First thing he did toward cooking our

(01:21:05):
breakfast was to spit a mouthful of tobacco juice on
top of his cast iron heater. After this burned out dry,
he made our toast on the same stove. As soon
as Curly got up, I told him of the incident.
Schumann wanted to know why we were not hungry that morning.
We told him we had drunk some bad whiskey the

(01:21:27):
evening before, and that we would settle for a cup
of coffee. Pay for this. That's not that interesting, Oh no,
it is interesting. In August nineteen twelve and nineteen, it's

(01:21:53):
a historical tidbit. In August nineteen twelve and nineteen thirteen,
I decided to pull out for the trap line. The
outfit of grub bean cook advanced me. The outfit of
grub Okay, the outfit of food bean cook advanced me
amounted to one hundred and thirty dollars. I never took
any bacon or lard with me. I figured I'm using

(01:22:16):
bear for bacon and lard of some old guys that Now,
this guy's the toughest guy on the planet. But he's
talking about the guys that are really tough. He says
this of them, the old timers. So this is the
old timers at that time. They lived tough, eight tough,

(01:22:38):
and died hard. That's what I would like written on
my tombstone when I'm buried in the Twin Lakes Cemetery.
Ready for another one. This guy is he's moose hunting,
and he's talking about how he'll rake in moose pre
rut still a to still use the day you take

(01:23:01):
him scapula or an ant or whatever right rake brush.
He believes this. He believes that moose. That this is
an interesting belief. Brown bears, he says, hunt moose the
same way. Sometimes a brown bear will fool a moose
by clawing at a dry hollow tree. A moose, generally

(01:23:24):
on the run, runs in the direction of such a sound.
The bear charges the moose that has run right to him. Wow,
I don't believe that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:38):
Remind me to tell you a hot tip when we're
done here about moose. So I can't remember if I
told you.

Speaker 1 (01:23:43):
He's checking their scouting for trapping sign and his buddy
uh eagle. Every time they find a mink track, he
gets down and smells that track. He says he can
smell whether it's fresh. He's got sled dogs when he's trapping,
and he feeds him mostly fish. After I got home,

(01:24:06):
I did some fishing with a gaff hook and I
hooked out five hundred dog salmon esz one day he
hooks out eight hundred dog salmon with a.

Speaker 3 (01:24:19):
Gaff and he refers to it as some fishing. Did
some fishing. I didn't dedicate a day to it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
There was no law in fort Yukon in nineteen This
is he's talking about the winter nineteen twelve nineteen thirteen,
and they bring in a US Commissioner who now is
supposed to assume control of fort Yukon. He comes into
town and he's got a number of people that he's
got for land injunctions. Basically, he's got people. He's got

(01:24:51):
a couple of people he's going to prosecute for living
on land they don't own. And he decides to prosecute
some other people for illegal cohabitation living with their girlfriend.
Does two indictments, subpoena's all fifty residents of Fort Yukon

(01:25:12):
in the winter makes all fifty residents of fort Yukon
travel to Fairbanks for these trials. The jury in Fairbanks
acquits everyone and they send the whole town back home.
Geez got nothing out of it. When he left. He
had some links he hadn't skinned yet, and he put

(01:25:34):
him in his bed, wrapped up in his blanket. But
he says he got back and there still frozen stiff.
Maybe this I okay, talking about the Winner in nineteen ten,
nineteen eleven. He's trapping. I got home early that evening.
Before I left the cabin that morning, I had left
a partly frozen lynx wrapped up in my bed. This

(01:25:57):
was to prevent it from freezing harder. I wanted to
get the lynx thought out so I could skin it out,
for its pelt links have thousands of fleas on them.
Even when the flesh is partly frozen. As soon as
the cabin warms up, the fleas leave the cat and
get all over one's blankets and clothes. The Marshal, this
is the Marshal, there to serve him a subpoena. The

(01:26:18):
Marshal got quite a jolt when I unwrapped the dead
frozen link from my bedding. David nearly laughed his head off.
They both stayed with me that night. They told me
in the morning that the fleas nearly ate them up
alive and that they hadn't slept a wink all night
from scratching. Well, I said, they kept me awake all
night too. What's this here? He's drinking with a guy

(01:26:46):
named Doc, and they got a bottle of whiskey and
little glasses and he says Doc had a method. I
don't need to drink it. Second, ex explain it. Doc
had a method that he had a small shot and
huge fingers, and he could wrap his fingers so tight
around the shot glass that he said they acted as

(01:27:07):
sideboards and he could fit more whiskey in his cup
by creating extra volume around his cup just with his fingers,
and then would walk away from the bottle. It's not funny.

Speaker 3 (01:27:26):
I like how the flea dealing just like implies that
this is just the way it is.

Speaker 5 (01:27:31):
Like like, yep, I got bitter too, I.

Speaker 3 (01:27:36):
Gotta deal with the fleas. There's no changing this method.

Speaker 1 (01:27:41):
Now he's married and he traps with his wife Fanny.
They go out for a whole season Our catch for
the season consisted of forty six links, twenty three minks
seventy martin. He later goes on and say what he
got at the fur buyer. So they go out for
the winner, and I did one of those little inflation
adjusters which are kind of kind of inaccurate. But he

(01:28:03):
and his wife go out and trap. They catch again
forty six links twenty three seventy martin with an inflation adjuster.
They made forty four forty four thousand bucks that winter trapping.
Here's a little bit of the ingenuity of these guys.
It's the twelfth of April. Okay, they've gone up to

(01:28:24):
trap this twelfth of April, and it's time to come home. Luckily,
we had a large size toboggan. It was sixteen inches wide,
nine feet long, and made of hickory boards twelve feet
long and four inches wide. The stores those days sold
this hickory and also maple boards to the trappers to
make their toboggans with. I used to make my own.

(01:28:47):
I had a form to bend the boards on after
they had been steamed. For a steamer. I used a
five gallon oil can and two stove pipes. I fitted
the pipe in one end of the can. Filled the
can full of water and set it on a campfire
to boil. I shoved the four boards down the stove
pipe to the bottom of the can. I stuffed some

(01:29:08):
gunny sacks in the cracks around the top of the
stove pipe to keep the steam in. In about three hours,
one could bend the steamed ends like rubber. After the
boards dried on the form, I fastened them with cross pieces.
I made a basket from a partly tanned big moose
hide the full length of the toboggan. I had lash

(01:29:30):
loops all around the top of the basket to lash
the load down. We loaded the lynx in the toboggan first.
They were the most bulky, the martin and mink one
could get in a big gunny sack. We had a
top heavy load the next year. Check this out. The
next year, gets how many links he catches. The whole
country came alive with lynx and rabbits. Next year he

(01:29:52):
catches two hundred and twenty five links with his wife
in one season. So that was the amount of jingle
he was making at that time. There's one other couple
of things. Chucky Goners is too. I love it. Oh
Randa likes it.

Speaker 4 (01:30:09):
I'm enthralled.

Speaker 1 (01:30:13):
Right now. Muskrats are worth a couple bucks, two dollars,
three dollars nineteen nineteen, nineteen twenty. Guess what muskrats are
bringing four dollars apiece?

Speaker 9 (01:30:25):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:30:26):
He and his wife spend a month traveling through the
winter to trap the Crow River flats. They catch. They
spend the whole winter, They spend the whole spring there
trapping and shooting. They shoot sixteen They trap and shoot
sixteen hundred muskrats with three babies with them.

Speaker 5 (01:30:43):
Wow, jeez, that's serious cash.

Speaker 1 (01:30:49):
Yep. Last in I tell you is this this guy
he traps with Curtis. Curtis had his own tent and
stove and the grub line. Curtis traveled light. He lived
off the country mostly when he arrived at the flats.

(01:31:12):
This is when they go. They go. They actually travel in.
Here's what's funny. They're traveling by dog sled. They cross
into Canada that they have to stop and go through customs.
There's a camp that has two mounies there and they
got to pay duties on all their stuff, and you
pay duties on your sled. Dogs but you get the
money back if they come back alive. And there's guys

(01:31:33):
that live there just to monitor trappers coming over the
pass from the Yukon to going to the Crow River
Flats to trap muskrats. Curtis had his own tent and
stove and the grub line. Curtis traveled light. He lived
off the country mostly. When he arrived at the flats,
he had fifteen pounds of flour, five pounds of sugar,
one can of lard, one pound of coffee, two pounds

(01:31:54):
of butter, six cans of milk, one half pound of tea,
and one pound of salt. He gave us his butter, coffee,
and milk. We didn't want to take this from him,
but he insisted we take it and said rats and
flour were all he wanted to eat. He wouldn't accept

(01:32:15):
anything for it. We used to have him eat with
us quite often. It didn't take much to satisfy Curtis.
I used to visit Curtis often to hear him talk.
Our tents were close together. One day I was in
his tent when he cooked a batch of rats. He
dressed out ten rats and stuck them in a five
gallon coal oil can. This coal oil can, and a

(01:32:38):
couple of lard cans were all the cooking dishes he had.
He put the rats in this five gallon can heads down,
with their tails hanging over the sides of the can
about four inches. He added water and let them boil
for one hour. Then he reversed them tails down, heads up.
This gave the tails a chance to cook. The tails

(01:33:02):
of the rats are very good eating when boiled or
cooked over a campfire. Eight tails with a small piece
of bannock makes feed for a person. After cooking them
another half hour, he would thicken the juice with a
cup of flour, making a thick white gravy. This concoction
would last Curtis for three days. Whenever he wanted to

(01:33:25):
meat eat a meal, he would fork out of the
can a whole rat, together with some white gravy. This
didn't allow much variety, but Curtis seemed to relish it
rats for breakfast, dinner, and supper. When a person is
hungry and a long way from a store, anything tastes good,
no matter how many times one eats the same thing.

(01:33:48):
Behind curtis sheet iron stove in his tent, he had
a pile of rat bones as big as a large
rat house. These were the bones from all the rat
he had eaten recently. The last thing I'll tell you
about Curtis. Yeah, when they get done with trapping season,

(01:34:09):
they go back for Yukon. Curtis brings two large gunny
sacks full of dried rats that he can eat during
the summer.

Speaker 11 (01:34:17):
I think stopped a recipe like this and the next
meat eater outdoor cookbook or cookbook, and then when we
do like a podcast like we did this year, Randall
can be the rep cooker.

Speaker 4 (01:34:30):
Oh, I think we should just bring him in and
cook him right here and get dirt in on it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:34):
Dirt would love Steve.

Speaker 7 (01:34:40):
When you read a book just for yourself, not for
the podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:34:45):
Do you I wasn't reading it for the book, Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:34:46):
So my questions.

Speaker 7 (01:34:47):
I can kind of see over your shoulder though, like
you've notated it, You've you've got out, you've got lines
on the side, you've got stars, you've got some things underline.
Do you do that in any book you read? Or
just did you come back to this book and say, oh,
I want to talk about this piece, this piece.

Speaker 1 (01:34:58):
Well, if I don't have my pencil hand my penhandy,
I just fold all the pages. Then they come back
and mark it. But I drenint like to read with
my pen interesting and mark all the parts that titlate
me it's a great word.

Speaker 11 (01:35:11):
And then remember everybody, that was a segment called.

Speaker 2 (01:35:18):
Oh I'm so sorry, oh sorry, it's.

Speaker 13 (01:35:21):
Time for Steve Read's books, so you ain't got to
That'll be a recurring segment.

Speaker 1 (01:35:28):
Part of why I'm reading this book is we were
working on, you know, our Metia's American History. So we
did the Long Hunters, the next we're going to do
the mountain Men. After the Mountain then we're going to
do the Buffalo Hide Hunters. At some point we have
four or five of them to go. We have five
to go, five including the mountain Men. At some point

(01:35:51):
I want to do the Last Frontier and like they
have their bracketed. So the Long Hunters is seventeen sixty
six to seventeen seventy, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:36:01):
Sixty sixty one or sixty three to seventy five, I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:36:05):
Remember what we called it. The Mountain then will probably
be eighteen o five to eighteen thirty two. And when
we do the Last Frontier, I'm thinking I'm thinking gold
Rush to statehood, so bigger, a bigger chunk of time.
Some kind of that was kind of in thinking about

(01:36:25):
that reading that book.

Speaker 2 (01:36:27):
What happens to these books after you've read them? Do
you keep every book that you get your hands on
and reading.

Speaker 1 (01:36:35):
I'm keeping that son of a bitch, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:36:38):
I'm just thinking they could be good for the auction house,
especially with your oh annotation.

Speaker 1 (01:36:47):
Yeah, that's a great book, man. Oh. Dirk Durham from
Phelps Game calls the bugler the bugler. Do you see
this thing he sent in?

Speaker 2 (01:36:58):
Nope.

Speaker 1 (01:36:58):
Some guys goofing on their body near Lewis Town, Idaho,
took out a billboard with their buddy's face on it.
He says, here's the deal. Need archery lessons call literally
anyone but Bob.

Speaker 6 (01:37:17):
Huge.

Speaker 1 (01:37:20):
They put it on. They put it on his route
to work.

Speaker 2 (01:37:26):
What does Bob do for work?

Speaker 1 (01:37:27):
Well, it is not very successful. Hunters his problem, so
they're just dogging on him. They put his face, they
left off his last name. Need archery lessons call literally
anyone but Bob.

Speaker 4 (01:37:41):
And you know, you've got to think about how many
people have joked about doing that to one of their buddies.
But these guys carried it out, saw it to.

Speaker 1 (01:37:53):
Actually put money where their mouth is put.

Speaker 2 (01:37:57):
What that costs him?

Speaker 1 (01:37:59):
Well, seth where we go? Can you update us on
the A frame?

Speaker 5 (01:38:04):
Oh yeah, things are happening talking about what happened. So
back in early December, I think it was a tree
fell on my shitty old check in Alaska.

Speaker 1 (01:38:19):
Cut a big old groove out of it, big old hole. Yeah,
it messed a lot.

Speaker 5 (01:38:23):
It's kind of a blessing in disguise because there well
there was a lot of rot issues that I didn't
know about that had been covered up by certain things.

Speaker 1 (01:38:34):
And when like the roof, well when the tree hit,
it just broke everything loose. But we have.

Speaker 5 (01:38:43):
A real good buddy of ours, Dustin Olson's going up
here in a couple of weeks to basically fix everything
that needs fixed by the summer we get up. By
the time we get there in the summer, it should
have a front and a back porch.

Speaker 13 (01:38:57):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:38:57):
So he's going up just to work.

Speaker 5 (01:38:58):
Yeah, he's going for two weeks, him and someboddiess a.
He's a really good contractor, does great work. We we
met him through he he had he used to go
up there and still does and work for the fishing
lodge in the summer doing doing well. Not as he
go up in the spring, just do contracting work. And

(01:39:19):
uh yeah, kind of met him. He reached out to
Kelsey one time and said, hey, like, if you guys
need any help with anything up there, let me know.

Speaker 1 (01:39:27):
That's great.

Speaker 5 (01:39:28):
He's going to root out all the rot Yeah, he's
basically replacing the front in the back wall of the
a frame, fixing the roof, and putting the front and
back porch on it.

Speaker 3 (01:39:40):
So you only have two more walls to go after this, the.

Speaker 1 (01:39:48):
Front rotten one, in the back rotten one, right, and
then the reft rest is the broken the broken roof,
which the.

Speaker 5 (01:39:56):
Roof wasn't rotten. Well, their spot. They had sky lights
in it, which is a terrible if you're ever building
a place in Southeast Alaska, don't put the skylights in
your roof. So the beams around those were rotten. He's
pulling those out.

Speaker 1 (01:40:10):
It's like, I wonder if that's gonna start leaking.

Speaker 3 (01:40:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:40:13):
Yeah, well my dad would recommend today you never in
any home but skylight.

Speaker 1 (01:40:19):
Especially in a place that gets thirteen feet of rain.

Speaker 5 (01:40:22):
Yeah. So yeah, it's gonna be a different looking place
when we get up there.

Speaker 1 (01:40:27):
Have you hit a point where you where you did
well regret it? Yeah? No so but even after the
tree fell on it, did you think yourself, I wish
I would have never bought a cabin.

Speaker 5 (01:40:40):
No, I told myself from day one, as long as
the you know, as long as we own the land,
like I'm happy because I eventually they might take a while,
but eventually, like when the when the tree hit, I
was like, this sucks, but we're still own the land,
and it's like not the end of our time there.

(01:41:01):
M like, no matter how long it takes, we'll eventually
like rebuild something just because that I mean, that's like
my favorite place on Earth.

Speaker 2 (01:41:11):
And that place is always work and so you know
that going into it. Yeah, tree or not tree, you
go up there and do a bunch of work and
as a lifestyle you like it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:41:22):
And people might be like, how like we spend three
Like this year, we're gonna spend three weeks up there,
Like how can you justify doing all that just to
spend three weeks at a place?

Speaker 9 (01:41:33):
You learn?

Speaker 1 (01:41:33):
Someone you don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:41:34):
Until you actually experience it, you'll never understand it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:37):
Yeah, but you know, if you're you know, you got
you gotta keep up your mental acuity as you get older. Yeah,
like the way you know you gotta stay engaged. Now
if you grow up not in that marine environment, the
amount of stuff you have to learn, I think it's

(01:41:57):
it's like, yeah, way better reading book. I mean I
like reading books. You saw me, But to go like, well,
I don't know. You know, you could grow up not
there and you go there and you have to learn
all about everything that it takes to be there. Yep,
that's good for.

Speaker 2 (01:42:11):
Your head totally.

Speaker 1 (01:42:12):
I think you have to learn a lot. Oh yeah,
you have to learn basically stretches your brain back out again.

Speaker 2 (01:42:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:42:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:42:19):
And you learn how to build stuff in ways that
last a long time. You learn how to schedule your
day out because you live and die by the tide
up there.

Speaker 1 (01:42:30):
You learn how to make do with that you can't
run to the store. Yeah, you got to make something.
Looking around for rusty nails and stuff. I think I
did see a rusty bent up nail over there, probably, Yeah. Yeah.
You learn to dig through your neighbor's place for stuff.
You try to remember where you saw a garbage you know,

(01:42:51):
and now I wish you had your where you put
garbage that you wish you had to have thrown out
because you want it back now.

Speaker 5 (01:42:56):
Yeah, you second guests throwing out everything or burning any thing.

Speaker 1 (01:43:00):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 5 (01:43:01):
It's like, should I burn that half rotten two by four?
I might be able to use it somewhere, you.

Speaker 1 (01:43:05):
Know, my Jimmy Carter, my USS Jimmy Carter hat. Yeah,
I found it beach Combe, a USS Jimmy Carter hat.
Kept it. It got real moldy, and I always looked at it,
and it's always like kind of like do you get
rid of stuff? Do you not get rid of stuff
when it gets moldy or whatever? One day I put
that Jimmy Carter hat on top of a burn pile

(01:43:26):
soaked with gas. This is the truth. I was like,
kind of burn that hat, which decision I did not take. Lightly,
had a pile of garbage soaked with gas. Put the
hat on top. Put a lighter to that pile. You know,
you know it explodes, you know, yeah, shouldn't you? Shot

(01:43:49):
that hat off the pile and it landed over yonder
just sign from above. I wear that hat every time
I'm there now some.

Speaker 5 (01:44:00):
It was like, God, maybe that maybe Jimmy Carter's soul
is trapped in that hat and that's how he's living.

Speaker 1 (01:44:05):
So it was God saying, don't burn that hat.

Speaker 2 (01:44:08):
That's interesting because I guess you must. That must have
happened since the last time I've been there, because I
was gonna say, I've never seen you wear that hat.

Speaker 1 (01:44:15):
I wear it now after that happened. I know when
I know a sign when I see one.

Speaker 5 (01:44:21):
You wear that, and then when you get to burn
and stuff you put on that.

Speaker 1 (01:44:24):
My note, I have a flame over of helicopter suit.
What do they call that stuff? No man? Yeah, yeah,
we burned so much stuff. We bought that place. Me
and uh Danny both have flameproof suits. We won't get
from every day. We just zip up our flameproof suits
and burn stuff. I had an uncle die burning leaves,
not really my uncle, but we call them our uncle.

Speaker 5 (01:44:44):
I have a pile of stuff to burn this summer.

Speaker 11 (01:44:48):
Well, we'll get some updates from up there, because you
guys are gonna be recording some two podcasts, so maybe
maybe you'll.

Speaker 10 (01:44:55):
Do one from that A frame.

Speaker 1 (01:44:58):
Stuff. I wouldn't burn that, Sorry, Yanny, go ahead, you
should wear your hat. I will wear my hat uss
Jimmy Carter, it's a nuclear sub all right. Thanks everybody,
give me, give me.

Speaker 6 (01:45:18):
A little of fear. Something that inspired put me, put
me all. That's what lies my fire. We know when

(01:45:42):
ros Grove we would be undumb. We will be part
of the gray story of how to live. Like when
you have got our bad cotry or paid up. We're

(01:46:10):
gonna bring you here, then us that you have, let
us be your friend.

Speaker 15 (01:46:27):
What you give to cor Ristle allows us to survive sunrise.

Speaker 2 (01:46:40):
Who said all.

Speaker 16 (01:46:43):
Brown vote a down good ride, turn dust in to
a founder ride down ureas.

Speaker 17 (01:47:06):
We've seen a lot of beauty, because we've seen a
lot of scene.

Speaker 6 (01:47:18):
Rise in line, never friandy time disappears. Where we're going
with what we've gotta do, we'll leave denied.

Speaker 2 (01:47:38):
By our rear.

Speaker 6 (01:47:41):
W been cotry over. Now we're gonna breathe you in
the song that you have. Let us be your friend.

(01:48:05):
What you gilt to your rise soup.

Speaker 2 (01:48:13):
Allows us to survive.

Speaker 6 (01:48:17):
Sun rise. Go said all round.

Speaker 17 (01:48:24):
For the damn good ride, when you see all the
bus and be in the money trees to the fall.

Speaker 15 (01:48:41):
We decide we ain't gonna be no, Johnny apple.

Speaker 8 (01:48:46):
Seed, pladder ladder, bring us, bring us a lift to ray.

Speaker 6 (01:49:01):
Show us walk and grow.

Speaker 16 (01:49:05):
All ours to him to the truth, never get me.

Speaker 6 (01:49:14):
We fall back, cortrypen. Now we're gonna breathe you in
the are so that you are. Let us be your friend.

(01:49:41):
Dot you give to our rise. Souf allows us to survive.

Speaker 9 (01:49:53):
Time rise and said all round, go to dawn, you ride, go.

Speaker 6 (01:50:07):
To down bird ride, got it down ride boo

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Steven Rinella

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