November 6, 2024 • 41 mins
- Host Chester Moore talks with wild game cookbook author Jeff Stewart about cooking wild game, especially unusual species and recipes.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome the More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty k LVI.
This is Chester Moore and Man, the fall is here.
The white tail in southeast Texas are starting to get
a little bit of a running action going on. We
got a little waterfowl migrating in and a lot of
great stuff happening. Fall is the ultimate time, especially in
our great state of Texas, to be in the great outdoors. Now,
(00:24):
if you've listened to my program more than a few months,
you've probably heard my good friend Jeff Stewart. He is
an author, a cookbook author, he does TV spots, he
does all kind of crazy stuff, and he is a
outdoors expert, and we have him on the show tonight.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Welcome the More Outdoors, Jeff.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Chester. It's always my honor and pleasure to be on. Man,
it's just great to enjoy the outdoors with good people
and good friends and to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Well, you know, you and I were just talking on
the phone as friends last night, and you said, hey, Man,
you know I was hungry tonight, so I opened the
freezer and got some red fish fullet and I said, well,
we just date deer chili a little bit. Some of
the last packet is a deer from what I killed
last year. And you know, I think that that is
an underrated part of the experience. I mean, I think
true outdoors lovers savor the wild game and the fish
(01:15):
and everything that we that we harvest in the great outdoors.
But I think to the public, they don't understand how
important that eating element is of what we do.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
They don't because mine stems from growing up very poor
in a very rural area, and times were hard back
in the early seventies, you know, I mean it was
rough man and I remember, you know, we often had
very meager meals until Dad and I killed a deer
(01:49):
or caught a bunch of cat fish.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
And at that point in time, we got to eat
our fill. You know, my sisters and I'm mom would
make a big thing of a chicken fried backstraped with
gravy and potatoes and the whole spread, and you got
to eat as much as you wanted, or we fried
up that catfish or those craffee or brim our buffalo
(02:17):
or anything that we taught, and you just basically got
to eat your fill. And all of a sudden, it's like,
wait a minute, we can hunt more, we can fish more,
we can fill this freezer full, plant our garden, do
those things, and things started to get better as far
(02:39):
as our family went. Because at first my dad wasn't
a great big hunter. He hunted early in life and
stuff like that. But you know, East Texas seven in
the seventies, there weren't a lot of deer.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
No, not at all.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
As the seventies progressed, of seventy eight seventy nine, eighty
deer already coming back pretty sick. Texta, parks and wildlife
were doing some great things. Deer started coming back, and
all of a sudden you could start putting more deer
on the table. So it really became an integral part
of my life that hunting meant phosphorous times. Hunting meant
(03:19):
good times with the family. It meant being around the
table laughing and eating and telling stories. It meant being
down at our deer camp with friends and family, laughing
and eating and telling stories. So it became a such
an integral part that this game hunting was so much
fun because not only did you get to go enjoy
(03:40):
all of the aspects of hunting, from mowing and bush
hogging and planting green patches and doing those things, setting
up stands, which was fun time with my dad, to
the cooking with my mom. I learned to cook with her,
and it was just it just meant family fun time.
(04:02):
And then then with my own children and my own family,
it has always meant family time, quality time. It's meant
time in the outdoors. It has meant good goss.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
For yeah, you know, and for me it's very similar.
We're very close in age and everything. You lived in
sort of central East Texas and I live in the
southeast corner. And that oil industry bust in the late
seventies early eighties was early impactful, and I remember us
going to fish on the side of the road, throwing
(04:35):
a cast that to catch bait, and whatever we caught
was what we were probably gonna eat that week. And
we were hoping that bt big old alligator garfish, because
a big old alligator gar you can get five or
six good meals off that sucker, or a bunch of
drum or some catfish and.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
The freshwater bayou systems around here.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
But it wasn't like I was upset because we had
to settle on a fi or wild game. I loved
eating it and always do. And the first time I
got to kill a deer was in nineteen eighty six,
right after Christmas, like December twenty seventh that year, because
we went on the dailies out of the Texas hill
country and the deer was so low in southeast Texas
(05:16):
at that point. I had never seen a white tail
until we turned off a highway seventy ten to seventy
one US like forty in a oat field by Columbus
and thought I'd entered the promised land and kill the
dough And I got to get eat deer chili out
of my dough I shot, and of course the bax
trap chicken fried, and that was just a real celebration moment,
(05:38):
you know. And I think that the public, if the
hunting and fishing community, could better communicate that some of
the most important part of a hunt is what you
do with the meat or the catch. If you don't
catch your release, what you do with that is the
most important part, and honestly, in a private level at
(06:00):
home is the most celebrated.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Part, right And you know, here's a good thing that
people don't think about catching release. Catching relief is a
good thing for certain species, but not all species fish absolutely. Now,
I do regulated catching relief.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
I if I catch catfish, I keep catfish that are
generally between that eight to ten inch mark and the
five pounds mark.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Once they get over about five pounds or so, I
let them go. They're not as good eating fish, even
though they're still delicious, they're not as good as the
smaller one. And they put those are your egg producers, man,
those are the ones that have a million eggs in
their belly, you know. I see people holding up these
fifty sixty pound blue cat one hundred pound blue cats even,
(06:54):
and they're they're, oh, we taught this blue cat. I'm like,
what are you gonna do with it? Oh, we're gonna
eat it. And I'm like, why.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Exactly?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Because that you should have turned that, you know, catch
those smaller fish and eat them. But I turned those
bigger ones back. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
And with redfish, you know, like, yeah, I haven't kept
and over the slot red fish in twenty years.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Until about two weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I was out trying to catch big gar and I
have because a gar will mess with your line for
like twenty minutes sometimes before he decided to take it.
I thought it was a guar just pecking on end
up being a redfish that had swallowed it, and it
had bled out pretty much by the time I got
it in and was just kind of still. So I
went ahead and tagged in oversized red legally, but I
always just keep the slot reds, never use my trophy tag.
(07:42):
And same thing with catfish. I don't do as much
catfish as I used to, but those like you know,
three to six pound catfish or primo man and let
those big ones bring it.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
That's my big thing. My biggest blue cat that I
caught was around the seventy four pound seventy five pound mark.
And my largest largest uh what we call them op,
which is a flathead, but we call them ops. The
largest ops that I caught weighed up close to eighty
(08:13):
five eighty six pounds somewhere in that area. And I
was a young man whenever I caughtee fish, you know,
I'm talking back in the mid eighties when I caught them,
and I kept them, and we cleaned them and trimmed
all your double file at them, trimmed all the fat
we put off of them, and then tried to eat them.
(08:34):
And they weren't very tasty. They're not not as compared
to what I was used to eating, and those those
you know, foundries and stuff. And from that point on,
my dad and I said, you know, even though the
ops are better eating as a bigger fish.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
There, but they're definitely better eating as a bigger fish
in a blue.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
So we decided we're going to turn those back. You know,
we're for fixing to turn those a loop back into
the river, but we're going Now. Texas has changed its
regulation and we're those size limits on those fish, and
you can keep the smaller fish, more of the smaller
fish and less of the bigger fish. And I really
(09:17):
support that change. I'm not big on being too strict
on sportsmen with their stuff, but I think that was
a good move because I think those bigger catfish need
to breathe, they need to be our brood stock, and
that's gonna work out better for all of us. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
I agree with that totally, Jeff. And it's a great
conservation move. And allowing the smaller side allows that family
fishing from the bank on some pier or in some
gully somewhere to have a chance to bring some fish
home and enjoy the harvest and things like that. And
we come back on More out There're gonna talk more
about celebrating the harvest with Jeff Stewart. Welcome back to
(10:03):
More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty KLV, where we
think you're weird if you don't like the outdoors, and
I really mean that. I mean you don't have to
like dig, fishing and hunting. But if you don't like
watching a beautiful sunrise over the mountains, or you know,
going to a beach and seeing the beauty of the
Gulf of Mexico, you might want to get checked out.
Something very well could be wrong. And if you want
to celebrate the outdoors more, you can also check out
(10:26):
More Outdoors podcast KALVI dot com. Go the podcasting the
top of the page, go back and listen to the archives.
Also check it out via the iHeartRadio app and follow
my blog at Higher Calling dot net, my instagram at
the Chester More and Higher Calling Wildlife on Facebook. Jeff
and I are talking about celebrating the harvest, kind of
rounded up, talking about catfish regulations, catch and release for
(10:49):
the bigger breeder size fish and things like that. And
you mentioned the interesting fish a lot of people don't
know is very edible, and that's the buffalo. Tell us
about your experience eating buffalo.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Buffalo happens to be one of my favorite fish to
eat in the entire fresh or salt water. And people say, man,
you're crazy with coffee and brim and everything else floating around.
I'm like, look, I grew up on try eating trash
fish because you could go down while I lived right
across the border from Louisiana, and the netting was legal
(11:26):
in the Louisiana and all you had to do was
buy your Louisiana license and we could set out hook
net in the river. Will you know buffalo? We would
catch buffalo and bring them in and we would cut
those ribs out of those buffalo and that's what you
eat on a buffalo.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Ribs, ribs, Yeah, and eating it would.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
We oh my gosh. Then we would fry those buffalo
ribs up and eat them. And it became quickly one
of my favorite fish. And people don't notice. But at
one time I had the number three black buffalo in
the state of text Cool. I shot at bowfish and
weigh sixty eight Paul.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
That's people, get monster. I've been on a raven bass
fishing before. And seen buffalo moving in the shallows and
I was like, is that a carp Nope, that's a
monster buffalo. And my memory is a buffalo. Where as
a kid, there was a fish market here in Orange
and you know, I love you know, my version of
that is the garfish. I mean, we grew up garfish
(12:26):
because garfish is freeing excellent and not just as a garball.
Just fried garfish is great, and grill garfish is great.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
But if you like redfish yep, or an our good
saltwater fish like black drum red fish, something like that,
the garfish of our fresh water fish has the closest
texture and taste of meat to a good quality salt
water fish.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yep, you're right about that, man, I love it. And
I saw this sign it said gar do and buffalo
for sale. Well, my like seven year old self knew
what a gar was and goo was spelled goo on the.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Side, and I was a little fish to that, you know,
I was like, what are they selling?
Speaker 1 (13:13):
And then buffalo and in my mind I thought it
was at first, you know, bison me. Then I went
hunt on second, it's a fish market. Oh there's a
buffalo fish. And then I made my mom pull over
and I went in there and like interrogated him as
a seven year old, like what do you got here?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
You know?
Speaker 1 (13:29):
And it was buffalo. And I looked at the fish.
They had some fish there that they brought in. And
then the gas. It was gasper goof freshwater drum, which
is also good to eat, by the way. So I
think it's interesting to open people's minds to these different
kinds of different kinds of stuff to eat, you know,
because the harvest is very very important to look. Man,
(13:50):
Look if anybody sees the world we're living in now
and thinks we're going to go back to the glory
days of the fifties and leave it to beaver, you're
out of your mind. There is hard times coming, and
hard times are here for a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
I know.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
We don't like to say that, you know, but it's true.
And being able to harvest and understand that there's some
good quality meats out there and fish are very abundant
in many many locations. I think it's an important thing.
Plus it you know, who just wants to eat beef,
pork and chicken, You know there's other stuff out there,
you know.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
So and we're gonna he and you.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Don't only go ahead, I was just gonna say, you
don't have and you don't have to be rich to fish. No,
you literally can go down to your local department store
and buy a rod and real combination that comes with
a little tackle box with some brim, hooks and different
(14:44):
things in there. You can literally buy one of those
for ten twelve bucks, yep. And you can buy a
box of worms for four dollars or dig them out
of your own yard or whatever. And you can go
to almost any city park that has a pond, city lake,
bigger lakes, if you live near creeks. Even I grew
(15:05):
up fishing creeks, I could go down to a creek
with a just a roll of string in my pocket,
some hooks, and a couple of bobbers and could catch
twenty five or thirty brim Most of them were, you know,
probably two or three fingers long. But I would scale them,
(15:26):
build a fire, put them on a stick, and roast
them right there and eat them right there as a kid.
And there's you know, there's nothing better than doing something
like that. But you don't have to buy a you know,
twenty thousand dollars boat you don't have to have a
(15:46):
fancy full wheel drive truck. You don't have to have
a seven or eight hundred dollars rifle. You don't have
to have a thousand acres of property that's private, or
you don't have to do all of these things in
order to fish.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yep, that's I call fishing the equalizer in sport, in
the sporting realm, because you know, you may be a
star football player in high school. Maybe you get to
college and a few get to the pros, but you're
done by thirty five, unless you're Tom Brady or whatever.
You know, but you know, and you can fish to
your one hundred your whole life, you know, And that's
(16:19):
that's a wonderful, beautiful thing and celebrating that harvest. Now
you mentioned you like buffalo. What is the favorite fish?
Let's say, I know you have your local favorites, but
maybe you've eaten something more exotic or something special. What's
your very favorite fish you've ever eaten?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Oh my gosh, man, my very favorite fish that I
ever ate is halibate caliban.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Okay, cool, cold.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Cold water. Gentleman that I worked with in the coal
mines many years ago. Every year he and his son
would go fishing for halibate up in like a last
or somewhere, I'm not sure where they went, and every
year he would bring me back vacuum sealed packages of
this fish. And the first time I ever cooked it,
(17:09):
I would afford to you that I put a chicken
breast on the grill because the texture of the meat
was more like like meat. It was more like chicken
or pork or beef or something. It had that real
meaty texture. It wasn't fishy. And we ended up after
(17:30):
I cooked the first batch of it, fried it like fish,
you know, corn meal and stuff, and I didn't really
like it as much that way. Then the next batch
I cut up, marinated it like I would chicken breast
in a little bit of lime, juice and different things,
different seasons. And then I battered it just like chicken,
(17:52):
egg buttermilk, then flour, and then back in the egg
and buttermilk, and then flour again, put a big thick coating,
put it in the oil, brought it to that golden brown,
and then I was like, oh my goodness, I have
found my favorite tea. Man.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
I've eaten halibut at a restaurant and really really liked
it a lot, but I know it wasn't as good
as like that vacuum sealed personally caught stuff, you know,
And and one of my dreams is to go. I
have a buddy of mine, Lee Leshper. He's was an
out there writer here in Texas. Moved to Alaska one
a few menu. I'm jealous of on the planet because
his fishing photos blow my mind. He was fly fishing
(18:28):
for halibate. They were chumming up, and I'm like, that's
not even fair. But the favorite fish I've ever eaten,
like you know, that I've caught. It was kind of
a special thing or whatever is peacock bass, believe it
or not. When I was in Venezuela back in ninety
nine on Lake Goury fishing for peacock bass, we were
releasing most of the fish. But every night they would
tell we had like six boats out fishing. Everybody keep
(18:51):
one or two peacocks between like three and five pounds,
So everybody keep one. They cook them different ways, and
I didn't find a way that the peacock bass was
it epic, my favorite. They grilled it and put some
like lime juice and stuff kind of like you described
on it best fish I ever ate. And I was
talking to my buddy, Gerald Swindle, a bass Master Elite
Series pro, two time Angler of the Year. Loved that
(19:13):
guy one day and we're talking about favorite fish. He
said mine was peacock bass. He goes, man, I forgot
how good that was. I ate peacock bass too. So
just now in terms of locally, like something you're gonna
catch in Texas Louisiana, what's your favorite fresh water and
favorite saltwater that I'll give you mine.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
I'm gonna blow somebody's mind here with this one, because
there's gonna be people out there that say, with all
the things you can choose, why would you choose that.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
I'll tell you what, Jeff Grinnel, We're gonna stop right there,
and when we come back on More Outdoors, we're gonna
talk why in the green heck Jeff Stewart chose a
grinnel over a crappie and a bunch of other stuff.
You're all gonna hear this stuff here on More Outdoors.
We'll talk more Jeff when we come back. Welcome back
(20:03):
to More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty KLV. I
got my good friend Jeff Stewart. We're talking about celebrating
the harvest. We've been kind of camping on fish. We're
gonna talk fish a little bit more and shift over
to some game. I ask you your favorite fish and
fresh and salt water.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
You gave me a grinnel.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Give me a quick explanation of why, because most people
don't think of a grinnel. Also caught a shoe pick,
a dog fish, a mud. I've heard them called a
mud marlin. Why they're such a good eating fish?
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Growing up, we never ate them because if you try
to fry them, they turned a mush at first, and
then as the meat cools, it turns to cotton. Yep,
that texture. They just never were good until I learned
how to fix them. And the way I was caught.
You take that fish and you filey it, and then
(20:54):
you take a spoon because their meat is very very soft, yeah,
and you scrape all the meat off of the bone,
off of everything, and you put it into a bowl.
You season that up. You mix green onion, you mix
a little bell pepper in there with it. You mix
a little bit of your favorite seasoning in there, whether
(21:15):
it be just salt pepper or a Cajun type seasoning
or something I like, something a little spicy in mind.
And then you take and you mix a few breadcrumbs
with that, you make a ball out of it. You
take that ball and you flower it on the outside.
You drop it down in your oil and you brown
it just a little bit. You pull that out, then
(21:37):
you take it make a root. You add your onion, bell,
pepper and celery, your trinity to it. Then you make
take that root and you add chicken broth to that root,
and you make a nice thick root with that. Put
all of those balls that you made of the grinnel
(22:02):
back in that. Then you put them on a simmer,
put it on low. You let it cook for about
thirty minutes, and then you serve that over a better rice.
And it is some of the most delicious fish you
ever ate in your life.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Dude, I love That's why I have Jeff on the air,
only me and him come up with a peacock bass
is my favorite, or a grinnel. I mean, I love this, this,
This is expanding people's information now in freshwater. My favorite
is a very cliche one, but you can't hardly.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Beat a crappy.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Crappies, you can't.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Crappy is my favorite, and saltwater people are going to
get offended. It's not flounder because I'm the flounder guy,
but I honestly I love flounder.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
It's way up there.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
But my number one in salt water that we catch
regionally is going to be a red snapper. It is
almost impossible to take and beat a red snapper grilled
or broiled, covered in butter and garlic, salt and all that.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
It's just unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
You take a red snapper. A red snapper is the
saltwater crappie.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah, that's it. That's it.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
That is salt I just wish crappy got If krappie
got twenty pounds, I would only fish for crappie.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
My whole life be dedicated to crappie. You know what
I mean?
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Seems like me. I say that grennel is my favorite,
not because it is the most delectable piece of meat,
but it's the most surprising. It's my favorite because I
can I can serve this dish, I can make this dish.
When I got a bunch of friends coming over them,
we're gonna do something. We go out and fish. I
love to put out the noodles or jug line. You
(23:36):
catch a lot of grennel on those. You come back
and I cook it up and I'm like, man, this
is the best. What about eating? And you tell them
grennel and they're like, no, yeah, yeah, you know you're eating.
And they're like, I can't believe that we're eating this,
because you know, everybody gets mad when they catch an
old grennel. You know you.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I like catching them for the fighting personally.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
You know, well, you think you got a twenty pound
catfish on there, you pull it in and you got
about a six pound grintel. Yeah. They six pound grintel
fight like a dang twenty pound cat.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah. They're awesome.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
So oh and they'll hit anything from a worm to
like a like a night crawler all the way up
to an artificial worm or crawlfish or a lizard or
spinner bait fish anything.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Me and my cousin Frank Moore, like twenty seven years ago,
were out fishing the Burnout Bridge Old ninety across some
Orange Texas here bass fishing from the bank, and they
were hitting every worm and crawlworm combo.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
We could throw.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
And I like catching. We're trying to catch bass. I said,
you know what, I've never caught one on the top water.
I threw a top water out and made one jerk
and caught a ten pound grinel.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
But uh, a lot of fun, cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
I want to switch because only got like a segment
and a half left to a game. You know, wild games.
There's a lot to cover in the wild game realm.
And I'm just going to say that straight up. Out
of all the more exotic other words, not white tail
cottontail squirrel meat that I that I've eaten, my favorite
wild gamemate is nil Guy. Antelope and nil Guy are
(25:12):
free ranging along the southern Texas coast, mainly on the
King and Kennedy ranches. I've had a privileged eating in
a few times. It is unbelievable light. It like fried backstrap,
and it was just the best meat I'd ever eaten
like that. Also, bison is really good. What in your
game experience is kind of your favorite more exotic type
game meat.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
I like access. Yeah, I really like the texture and
the taste of the axis. Yep, I've had access now.
I killed a black buck back in the early nineties
out around seven all Texas, and it was. It was
decent eating. It really was, just wasn't a whole lot
(25:54):
of it, because you know, this thing full grown from
sixty pounds on the hoop. But I would have to
say those are really good. But the most I guess
exotic animal I've ever killed and eaten was a water buffalo.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
And yeah, there was a ranch here close to my house.
They had exotic animals all over it and they had
a huge bull water buffalo that was hooking and hurting
all the other animals. And the guy that was running
it was a good friend of mine, and he came
and asked to borrow a gun because he wanted to
go shoot this water buffalo. And I said, well wait
(26:33):
a minute, let me shoot it. Yeah, and he said okay,
he said, what are you doing. I'm going to have
to get my bow. And he said, you can't kill
this thing with a bow. I'm going to yep. So
I grabbed my bow and I grabbed my forty five
seventy and I give him the forty five seventy and
(26:54):
I said, look, please go south shoot it. Yeah, but
I'm taking to shoot this thing with my bow. And
we went out to the ranch, and I mean these
things are not were not tame. I mean they weren't
just the wildness of animals, but they weren't tame either.
I mean you couldn't you couldn't just walk up and
put this thing. And so we stopped within a water
(27:15):
hole that he was at, within about forty five yards,
and I was shooting at the time. I was shooting
about eighty pounds on my compound bow. And that's back whenever,
you know, shooting those big heavy aluminum shafts of twenty
two nineteens, you know. So I had a good heavy
shaft and one hundred and twenty five grain those old
(27:36):
good three bladed nap broadheads that we used to all
shoot the thunderheads. Yep. I don't even think they'd make
them anymore. And man, I sunk one right right behind
the shoulder, kind of low in the chest, and just
watch those sletches disappear, and this thing kind of jumped
(27:58):
and ran about forty or fifty yards. You just there,
you can just see that it was it was bleeding
out and it never acted like it was it was
even new. It was it, yep, And it stood there
and then just slowly walked off about another twenty feet,
laid down, never stood up again. It took less than
a minute yep for this. I don't know how much
(28:19):
this thing weighed fifteen hundred, two thousand pounds, but man, yeah,
I had the.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Sad experience with a bison one time I shot at
the bison. I shot, which was unbelievable to buy meat
for a year. At the house call, my good friend
Ted Nuda said, where do I shoot a bison with
a bow?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (28:34):
He said, Neverthelengs, So go forever, shoot it right behind
the when it walks, get an angling shot right in
the crease of the of the you know, right in
the crease right there. It went about thirty yards and
it took about a minute and it was bye bye.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And the meat was incredible.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
So how was the was the was the was the
meat tough? Was it an older one? Did you make
it ground meat? Did it kind of like beef or what?
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Well? The guys that owned the place he decided, he said,
you go, hey, we're gonna we're gonna process this thing.
We're gonna we're gonna have it process. And he said,
when we get it done, you know, I'm gonna bring
you you know, a bunch of meat. I'm great. So
several weeks later, I'm home and uh see this truck
coming up the driveway and it's my buddy, and he
just pulls back a tarf on the back of the
(29:19):
truck and the whole back of the truck just full
of white packages for a freezer, paper from the bricker
and he's like, where you want this? And I'm like,
I don't know anywhere to put this this much. So
we we filled everything we had. Okay, I'm gonna cook it.
I decided to cook a steak like a stake, and
you couldn't hardly eat it because I mean, this bull
(29:41):
was probably as old as a bull.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Yeah, well, hold that, hold that thought. We're gonna come
back on Laura out the words we're gonna talk about.
We've got great cliffhangers tonight, cooking a water buffalo, take
in and East Texas I dare you to find on
other programs. We'll talk more with Jeff Stewart and wrap
up our conversation about celebrating the harvest here on More Outdoors.
Welcome back to More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty klv.
(30:07):
I Follow my blog at Higher Calling dot net. Find
me on Facebook, at Higher Calling Wildlife and at the Chester,
more on Instagram, and of course the program every week
here at six to seven pm CST. Say that for
our listeners all around the nation, and also streaming at
KLVI dot com and via the iHeartRadio app. I'm almost
omnipresent in the great outdoors media. Continuing our conversation with
(30:29):
good buddy Jeff Stewart. Now we had a cle another cliffhanger.
You were cooking water buffalo meat and the steak was
a little bit too tough. So tell me how you
tackled the water buffalo.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Put the Dutch oven, the biggest one I had put it,
built a fire in the yard. But just like you're
gonna homestead cook something, put my Dutch oven over it.
Added you know, some some oil to the bill. Round
off one of these ROAs, real good, flowered it, rounded off,
left it in there at my onions, my potatoes, carrot,
(31:05):
a little bit of celery to it. Put some beef
stock over in there that I had saved in the freezer,
and put the lid on the top of it and
just let it cook on top of that for probably
four hours five hours, just every once in all, stoaking
the fire head and a little more wood, whatever I
(31:26):
could do, making sure the liquid didn't boil out of it.
And when we ate that thing, it was the best
thing you would have thought it was. You wouldn't have
known that it wasn't a premium chuck roast from the store.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Gotta love it, man, that's I love that. When I
shot that bison, we got most of it made into
you know, like hamburger meat, because you can cook that.
We made bison meat balls and bison lasagna and bison tacos.
The steaks were great. Another surprise, awesome. I killed a
scimitar horned rix. It's kind of antelope out to my
friend Thompson Tipples Place back in the late nineties, and
(32:02):
to this date, it was the best faheta meat I've
ever had in my entire life. We were like we
were taking that state meat cut in strips, made the
heat to meat out of it.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Incredible stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
It just shows, Jeff, there's a lot more than beef,
pork and chicken out there.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Right, yep, lots lots more stuff. You know. We're even
the worst animal I ever killed and cooked. I enjoyed,
which was a Corsican.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Ram like I do good on those.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Oh man. It was. It was an old billy and
it was probably as gamey as every bike. Tasted like
a barnyard. Like if you went out in the barnyard
and got in, like right in the middle of the
manure pile and started eating ham sandwich. You're breathing in
(32:56):
that manure smell as you take a bite. That's kind
of what it reminded. But at the same time, everybody,
I remembered the hunt. I remember taking the longest shot
I've ever taken on an animal. I took a sixty
yard shot with a bow. That was the longest bow
shot I've ever taken on anything. I don't like to
take over forty yard shot, and I took this Corsican
(33:19):
on a ranch and it was a perfect shot. Forty
fifty steps. Maybe after I shot it, it went and
just piled up on some rocks and was gone. I
mean maybe five seconds, six seconds, you know, this thing
was out dead, gone, and it was wonderful. I've still
(33:41):
got a rug made from its hide that we had made,
and I look at it and I remember it, and
I loved the story, and I just remember eating the
meat and going it's not the best, but wow, what
a hunt.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I've killed a lot of those exotic sheep over the year,
and you know, the old, the old trophy size ones
are tough, so we always get them ground up and
we mix them about thirty percent beef and make ramburgers.
They're great, love them. We got got a lot of it.
They're really good that way. And uh a trick, Yeah, well.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
I thought, yeah, yeah, it was a mistake on my part.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Bob material, but it's definitely good when you ground it
up a little bit of beef in it, it gives
it a little kick.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Like it that way. But that's the fun. It's laughing.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
We're having good time talking about the celebration of the
harvest out there. And uh, you have a cookbook out,
tell me a little bit about your cookbok before we
got to go.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Texas Jack's Wild Game and Venison Cookbook. I'm Texas Jack. Actually, Uh,
Texas Jack is just a name that a lot of
different people have written under. And a good friend of
mine hit me up and said, man, I need a
Wild Game in Venison cookbook and would you team up
with Texas Jack and give us some of your tried
(35:04):
and through recipes, and I'm like, yeah, and we sat
down and wrote this book. And the first half of
the book is a dedication to my dad who had
who had passed away right before I wrote the book.
And so the first half is about my dad, and
it tells kind of a story because my dad was
(35:26):
a legend around here. He was an outdoor legend. If
it came to fishing. Uh, everybody my dad nickname was Skeeter.
So if it came to fishing, everybody said, go ask Skier.
If there was a hole that you can catch a
big old catfish in, they asked Skier. So I made
a first half of the book about my dad.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
And the rest are our recipes, everything from my dear
Chili all the way to my dear Fahidas And uh,
there's a lot of fish recipes, different things in there.
It's just a great little cookbook.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Dig it man. And that's Uh. You know, where can
people get ahold of the book?
Speaker 3 (36:06):
The easiest place for them to get a hold of
the book is on Amazon. That's the easiest place to
look it up and get it. But if they would
like a signed copy of the book, they can reach
out to me through social media. Uh, anything on my
Instagram page, Uh, Jeff, Jeff, grip the hold Stewart my
(36:31):
Facebook page. You know, just stript the hold Stewart. They
can just type that in and find me. Other than that,
catch me at one of the events that I attend
around the country and I usually post that on Facebook
and different social media. Is where I'm going to be
at and they can get a signed copy.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Very very cool man, and uh, it's just it's just
fun talking about this stuff, and you know how to
how to enjoy every minute, even post harvest, post expedition
out into the wild, and you know, the whole idea
of going out into the wild. I just had an
incredible opportunity to go to Colorado and grant a higher
(37:13):
calling Wildlife Expedition Wild Wishes encounter.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
For a young man, sixteen year old boy named.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Elijah who had lost his father and took him into
Rocky Mountain National Park and other areas around Esta's Park,
Colorado to photograph wildlife and teach him to use cameras
to capture wildlife images. And me and my buddy Amos.
Now the cool part is Amos came through our program
six years ago. He graduated high school and once to
(37:38):
get involved in ministry using the outdoors.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
So we got him to go be my assistant.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
We went and scouted the day before, found a bunch
of mule's, found some elk. Thought okay, we can do
mule's and elk, but the ultimate we want to find
as a big horn, and found no big horn in
that area that day. Fifteen minutes into the expedition. The
next day, the kid Olajias photographing a may your huge
ram and you can go see that a higher calling
(38:04):
wildlife on Facebook. Seeing a smile of a kid who
had lived in Colorado, had never been in the mountains
and photographing a big horn ram shows that anyone can
be impacted by that glorious encounter in God's creation in
the great outdoors and seeing amos come along and being
part of that. It reminds me of our conversations we're
having the night about just that joy. And look, man,
(38:26):
the world sucks right now. There's a lot of crazy
stuff going on, but it almost never sucks in the
great outdoors. And whether you're get Texas Jack's cookbook and
learn some good dear chili recipes, or you go fly
fishing or whatever you do, going into the great outdoors
is one of the best things you can do.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
I know you agree with that, Jeff.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Old artedly, because I tell people all the time in
the outdoor there's no there's no ulterior motive. If you
go out to the outdoors and sit under a tree
and just soak it in, nobody's nobody's out to get you,
nobody's telling you what to do, one to do, how
(39:09):
to do. You just sit there and if it's ten minutes,
two hours, whatever it is, for that length of time,
and it's you and nature, it's you and God. You know,
it's like the best time I ever had in nature.
Is a young man that wanted to spend a day
hunting with me, who had leukemia, and I took him
(39:33):
hunting and we watched the sun come up over the
trees and we had the best conversation. We didn't even
see a deer that day. The next day he could
not go hunting with me again. We were going to
go the next day, and the next day he died.
And the greatest honor I had was spending that young
man's last days on this earth in the woods with him,
(39:57):
and that's all he wanted. To do was spend that
those last hours that he had alive with me in
the woods.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Can't beat that. Nothing better, No, can't beat nothing, no,
not even a cond I'll.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Never forget that. I'll never forget that. Never forget that,
young man. Never forget the feeling of that sun coming
up over those pine trees. There was frost on the
ground when that sun hit it, the steam coming off
the frost, the steam coming off the pine needles, and
that smell that you get whenever that sun breaks over
(40:32):
the horizon. And it's just something you'll never forget. If
you ever experience it, you'll never forget it.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Yeah, you don't want to forget it. I'll tell you
what been a great show.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Thanks for coming on the program tonight, Jeff, and thanks
for sharing. That's awesome man. That's right where my heart
is with the young people in the great outdoors. And
God bless you all for listening to more outdoors tonight.
Don't forget you can connect it Higher Calling not net
at Dee Chester Moore on Instagram, Higher Calling while on Facebook.
Have a great and glorious outdoors weekend.
Welcome the More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty k LVI.
This is Chester Moore and Man, the fall is here.
The white tail in southeast Texas are starting to get
a little bit of a running action going on. We
got a little waterfowl migrating in and a lot of
great stuff happening. Fall is the ultimate time, especially in
our great state of Texas, to be in the great outdoors. Now,
(00:24):
if you've listened to my program more than a few months,
you've probably heard my good friend Jeff Stewart. He is
an author, a cookbook author, he does TV spots, he
does all kind of crazy stuff, and he is a
outdoors expert, and we have him on the show tonight.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Welcome the More Outdoors, Jeff.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Chester. It's always my honor and pleasure to be on. Man,
it's just great to enjoy the outdoors with good people
and good friends and to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Well, you know, you and I were just talking on
the phone as friends last night, and you said, hey, Man,
you know I was hungry tonight, so I opened the
freezer and got some red fish fullet and I said, well,
we just date deer chili a little bit. Some of
the last packet is a deer from what I killed
last year. And you know, I think that that is
an underrated part of the experience. I mean, I think
true outdoors lovers savor the wild game and the fish
(01:15):
and everything that we that we harvest in the great outdoors.
But I think to the public, they don't understand how
important that eating element is of what we do.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
They don't because mine stems from growing up very poor
in a very rural area, and times were hard back
in the early seventies, you know, I mean it was
rough man and I remember, you know, we often had
very meager meals until Dad and I killed a deer
(01:49):
or caught a bunch of cat fish.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
And at that point in time, we got to eat
our fill. You know, my sisters and I'm mom would
make a big thing of a chicken fried backstraped with
gravy and potatoes and the whole spread, and you got
to eat as much as you wanted, or we fried
up that catfish or those craffee or brim our buffalo
(02:17):
or anything that we taught, and you just basically got
to eat your fill. And all of a sudden, it's like,
wait a minute, we can hunt more, we can fish more,
we can fill this freezer full, plant our garden, do
those things, and things started to get better as far
(02:39):
as our family went. Because at first my dad wasn't
a great big hunter. He hunted early in life and
stuff like that. But you know, East Texas seven in
the seventies, there weren't a lot of deer.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
No, not at all.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
As the seventies progressed, of seventy eight seventy nine, eighty
deer already coming back pretty sick. Texta, parks and wildlife
were doing some great things. Deer started coming back, and
all of a sudden you could start putting more deer
on the table. So it really became an integral part
of my life that hunting meant phosphorous times. Hunting meant
(03:19):
good times with the family. It meant being around the
table laughing and eating and telling stories. It meant being
down at our deer camp with friends and family, laughing
and eating and telling stories. So it became a such
an integral part that this game hunting was so much
fun because not only did you get to go enjoy
(03:40):
all of the aspects of hunting, from mowing and bush
hogging and planting green patches and doing those things, setting
up stands, which was fun time with my dad, to
the cooking with my mom. I learned to cook with her,
and it was just it just meant family fun time.
(04:02):
And then then with my own children and my own family,
it has always meant family time, quality time. It's meant
time in the outdoors. It has meant good goss.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
For yeah, you know, and for me it's very similar.
We're very close in age and everything. You lived in
sort of central East Texas and I live in the
southeast corner. And that oil industry bust in the late
seventies early eighties was early impactful, and I remember us
going to fish on the side of the road, throwing
(04:35):
a cast that to catch bait, and whatever we caught
was what we were probably gonna eat that week. And
we were hoping that bt big old alligator garfish, because
a big old alligator gar you can get five or
six good meals off that sucker, or a bunch of
drum or some catfish and.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
The freshwater bayou systems around here.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
But it wasn't like I was upset because we had
to settle on a fi or wild game. I loved
eating it and always do. And the first time I
got to kill a deer was in nineteen eighty six,
right after Christmas, like December twenty seventh that year, because
we went on the dailies out of the Texas hill
country and the deer was so low in southeast Texas
(05:16):
at that point. I had never seen a white tail
until we turned off a highway seventy ten to seventy
one US like forty in a oat field by Columbus
and thought I'd entered the promised land and kill the
dough And I got to get eat deer chili out
of my dough I shot, and of course the bax
trap chicken fried, and that was just a real celebration moment,
(05:38):
you know. And I think that the public, if the
hunting and fishing community, could better communicate that some of
the most important part of a hunt is what you
do with the meat or the catch. If you don't
catch your release, what you do with that is the
most important part, and honestly, in a private level at
(06:00):
home is the most celebrated.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Part, right And you know, here's a good thing that
people don't think about catching release. Catching relief is a
good thing for certain species, but not all species fish absolutely. Now,
I do regulated catching relief.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
I if I catch catfish, I keep catfish that are
generally between that eight to ten inch mark and the
five pounds mark.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Once they get over about five pounds or so, I
let them go. They're not as good eating fish, even
though they're still delicious, they're not as good as the
smaller one. And they put those are your egg producers, man,
those are the ones that have a million eggs in
their belly, you know. I see people holding up these
fifty sixty pound blue cat one hundred pound blue cats even,
(06:54):
and they're they're, oh, we taught this blue cat. I'm like,
what are you gonna do with it? Oh, we're gonna
eat it. And I'm like, why.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Exactly?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Because that you should have turned that, you know, catch
those smaller fish and eat them. But I turned those
bigger ones back. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
And with redfish, you know, like, yeah, I haven't kept
and over the slot red fish in twenty years.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Until about two weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I was out trying to catch big gar and I
have because a gar will mess with your line for
like twenty minutes sometimes before he decided to take it.
I thought it was a guar just pecking on end
up being a redfish that had swallowed it, and it
had bled out pretty much by the time I got
it in and was just kind of still. So I
went ahead and tagged in oversized red legally, but I
always just keep the slot reds, never use my trophy tag.
(07:42):
And same thing with catfish. I don't do as much
catfish as I used to, but those like you know,
three to six pound catfish or primo man and let
those big ones bring it.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
That's my big thing. My biggest blue cat that I
caught was around the seventy four pound seventy five pound mark.
And my largest largest uh what we call them op,
which is a flathead, but we call them ops. The
largest ops that I caught weighed up close to eighty
(08:13):
five eighty six pounds somewhere in that area. And I
was a young man whenever I caughtee fish, you know,
I'm talking back in the mid eighties when I caught them,
and I kept them, and we cleaned them and trimmed
all your double file at them, trimmed all the fat
we put off of them, and then tried to eat them.
(08:34):
And they weren't very tasty. They're not not as compared
to what I was used to eating, and those those
you know, foundries and stuff. And from that point on,
my dad and I said, you know, even though the
ops are better eating as a bigger fish.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
There, but they're definitely better eating as a bigger fish
in a blue.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
So we decided we're going to turn those back. You know,
we're for fixing to turn those a loop back into
the river, but we're going Now. Texas has changed its
regulation and we're those size limits on those fish, and
you can keep the smaller fish, more of the smaller
fish and less of the bigger fish. And I really
(09:17):
support that change. I'm not big on being too strict
on sportsmen with their stuff, but I think that was
a good move because I think those bigger catfish need
to breathe, they need to be our brood stock, and
that's gonna work out better for all of us. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
I agree with that totally, Jeff. And it's a great
conservation move. And allowing the smaller side allows that family
fishing from the bank on some pier or in some
gully somewhere to have a chance to bring some fish
home and enjoy the harvest and things like that. And
we come back on More out There're gonna talk more
about celebrating the harvest with Jeff Stewart. Welcome back to
(10:03):
More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty KLV, where we
think you're weird if you don't like the outdoors, and
I really mean that. I mean you don't have to
like dig, fishing and hunting. But if you don't like
watching a beautiful sunrise over the mountains, or you know,
going to a beach and seeing the beauty of the
Gulf of Mexico, you might want to get checked out.
Something very well could be wrong. And if you want
to celebrate the outdoors more, you can also check out
(10:26):
More Outdoors podcast KALVI dot com. Go the podcasting the
top of the page, go back and listen to the archives.
Also check it out via the iHeartRadio app and follow
my blog at Higher Calling dot net, my instagram at
the Chester More and Higher Calling Wildlife on Facebook. Jeff
and I are talking about celebrating the harvest, kind of
rounded up, talking about catfish regulations, catch and release for
(10:49):
the bigger breeder size fish and things like that. And
you mentioned the interesting fish a lot of people don't
know is very edible, and that's the buffalo. Tell us
about your experience eating buffalo.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Buffalo happens to be one of my favorite fish to
eat in the entire fresh or salt water. And people say, man,
you're crazy with coffee and brim and everything else floating around.
I'm like, look, I grew up on try eating trash
fish because you could go down while I lived right
across the border from Louisiana, and the netting was legal
(11:26):
in the Louisiana and all you had to do was
buy your Louisiana license and we could set out hook
net in the river. Will you know buffalo? We would
catch buffalo and bring them in and we would cut
those ribs out of those buffalo and that's what you
eat on a buffalo.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Ribs, ribs, Yeah, and eating it would.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
We oh my gosh. Then we would fry those buffalo
ribs up and eat them. And it became quickly one
of my favorite fish. And people don't notice. But at
one time I had the number three black buffalo in
the state of text Cool. I shot at bowfish and
weigh sixty eight Paul.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
That's people, get monster. I've been on a raven bass
fishing before. And seen buffalo moving in the shallows and
I was like, is that a carp Nope, that's a
monster buffalo. And my memory is a buffalo. Where as
a kid, there was a fish market here in Orange
and you know, I love you know, my version of
that is the garfish. I mean, we grew up garfish
(12:26):
because garfish is freeing excellent and not just as a garball.
Just fried garfish is great, and grill garfish is great.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
But if you like redfish yep, or an our good
saltwater fish like black drum red fish, something like that,
the garfish of our fresh water fish has the closest
texture and taste of meat to a good quality salt
water fish.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yep, you're right about that, man, I love it. And
I saw this sign it said gar do and buffalo
for sale. Well, my like seven year old self knew
what a gar was and goo was spelled goo on the.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Side, and I was a little fish to that, you know,
I was like, what are they selling?
Speaker 1 (13:13):
And then buffalo and in my mind I thought it
was at first, you know, bison me. Then I went
hunt on second, it's a fish market. Oh there's a
buffalo fish. And then I made my mom pull over
and I went in there and like interrogated him as
a seven year old, like what do you got here?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
You know?
Speaker 1 (13:29):
And it was buffalo. And I looked at the fish.
They had some fish there that they brought in. And
then the gas. It was gasper goof freshwater drum, which
is also good to eat, by the way. So I
think it's interesting to open people's minds to these different
kinds of different kinds of stuff to eat, you know,
because the harvest is very very important to look. Man,
(13:50):
Look if anybody sees the world we're living in now
and thinks we're going to go back to the glory
days of the fifties and leave it to beaver, you're
out of your mind. There is hard times coming, and
hard times are here for a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
I know.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
We don't like to say that, you know, but it's true.
And being able to harvest and understand that there's some
good quality meats out there and fish are very abundant
in many many locations. I think it's an important thing.
Plus it you know, who just wants to eat beef,
pork and chicken, You know there's other stuff out there,
you know.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
So and we're gonna he and you.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Don't only go ahead, I was just gonna say, you
don't have and you don't have to be rich to fish. No,
you literally can go down to your local department store
and buy a rod and real combination that comes with
a little tackle box with some brim, hooks and different
(14:44):
things in there. You can literally buy one of those
for ten twelve bucks, yep. And you can buy a
box of worms for four dollars or dig them out
of your own yard or whatever. And you can go
to almost any city park that has a pond, city lake,
bigger lakes, if you live near creeks. Even I grew
(15:05):
up fishing creeks, I could go down to a creek
with a just a roll of string in my pocket,
some hooks, and a couple of bobbers and could catch
twenty five or thirty brim Most of them were, you know,
probably two or three fingers long. But I would scale them,
(15:26):
build a fire, put them on a stick, and roast
them right there and eat them right there as a kid.
And there's you know, there's nothing better than doing something
like that. But you don't have to buy a you know,
twenty thousand dollars boat you don't have to have a
(15:46):
fancy full wheel drive truck. You don't have to have
a seven or eight hundred dollars rifle. You don't have
to have a thousand acres of property that's private, or
you don't have to do all of these things in
order to fish.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yep, that's I call fishing the equalizer in sport, in
the sporting realm, because you know, you may be a
star football player in high school. Maybe you get to
college and a few get to the pros, but you're
done by thirty five, unless you're Tom Brady or whatever.
You know, but you know, and you can fish to
your one hundred your whole life, you know, And that's
(16:19):
that's a wonderful, beautiful thing and celebrating that harvest. Now
you mentioned you like buffalo. What is the favorite fish?
Let's say, I know you have your local favorites, but
maybe you've eaten something more exotic or something special. What's
your very favorite fish you've ever eaten?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Oh my gosh, man, my very favorite fish that I
ever ate is halibate caliban.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Okay, cool, cold.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Cold water. Gentleman that I worked with in the coal
mines many years ago. Every year he and his son
would go fishing for halibate up in like a last
or somewhere, I'm not sure where they went, and every
year he would bring me back vacuum sealed packages of
this fish. And the first time I ever cooked it,
(17:09):
I would afford to you that I put a chicken
breast on the grill because the texture of the meat
was more like like meat. It was more like chicken
or pork or beef or something. It had that real
meaty texture. It wasn't fishy. And we ended up after
(17:30):
I cooked the first batch of it, fried it like fish,
you know, corn meal and stuff, and I didn't really
like it as much that way. Then the next batch
I cut up, marinated it like I would chicken breast
in a little bit of lime, juice and different things,
different seasons. And then I battered it just like chicken,
(17:52):
egg buttermilk, then flour, and then back in the egg
and buttermilk, and then flour again, put a big thick coating,
put it in the oil, brought it to that golden brown,
and then I was like, oh my goodness, I have
found my favorite tea. Man.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
I've eaten halibut at a restaurant and really really liked
it a lot, but I know it wasn't as good
as like that vacuum sealed personally caught stuff, you know,
And and one of my dreams is to go. I
have a buddy of mine, Lee Leshper. He's was an
out there writer here in Texas. Moved to Alaska one
a few menu. I'm jealous of on the planet because
his fishing photos blow my mind. He was fly fishing
(18:28):
for halibate. They were chumming up, and I'm like, that's
not even fair. But the favorite fish I've ever eaten,
like you know, that I've caught. It was kind of
a special thing or whatever is peacock bass, believe it
or not. When I was in Venezuela back in ninety
nine on Lake Goury fishing for peacock bass, we were
releasing most of the fish. But every night they would
tell we had like six boats out fishing. Everybody keep
(18:51):
one or two peacocks between like three and five pounds,
So everybody keep one. They cook them different ways, and
I didn't find a way that the peacock bass was
it epic, my favorite. They grilled it and put some
like lime juice and stuff kind of like you described
on it best fish I ever ate. And I was
talking to my buddy, Gerald Swindle, a bass Master Elite
Series pro, two time Angler of the Year. Loved that
(19:13):
guy one day and we're talking about favorite fish. He
said mine was peacock bass. He goes, man, I forgot
how good that was. I ate peacock bass too. So
just now in terms of locally, like something you're gonna
catch in Texas Louisiana, what's your favorite fresh water and
favorite saltwater that I'll give you mine.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
I'm gonna blow somebody's mind here with this one, because
there's gonna be people out there that say, with all
the things you can choose, why would you choose that.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
I'll tell you what, Jeff Grinnel, We're gonna stop right there,
and when we come back on More Outdoors, we're gonna
talk why in the green heck Jeff Stewart chose a
grinnel over a crappie and a bunch of other stuff.
You're all gonna hear this stuff here on More Outdoors.
We'll talk more Jeff when we come back. Welcome back
(20:03):
to More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty KLV. I
got my good friend Jeff Stewart. We're talking about celebrating
the harvest. We've been kind of camping on fish. We're
gonna talk fish a little bit more and shift over
to some game. I ask you your favorite fish and
fresh and salt water.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
You gave me a grinnel.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Give me a quick explanation of why, because most people
don't think of a grinnel. Also caught a shoe pick,
a dog fish, a mud. I've heard them called a
mud marlin. Why they're such a good eating fish?
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Growing up, we never ate them because if you try
to fry them, they turned a mush at first, and
then as the meat cools, it turns to cotton. Yep,
that texture. They just never were good until I learned
how to fix them. And the way I was caught.
You take that fish and you filey it, and then
(20:54):
you take a spoon because their meat is very very soft, yeah,
and you scrape all the meat off of the bone,
off of everything, and you put it into a bowl.
You season that up. You mix green onion, you mix
a little bell pepper in there with it. You mix
a little bit of your favorite seasoning in there, whether
(21:15):
it be just salt pepper or a Cajun type seasoning
or something I like, something a little spicy in mind.
And then you take and you mix a few breadcrumbs
with that, you make a ball out of it. You
take that ball and you flower it on the outside.
You drop it down in your oil and you brown
it just a little bit. You pull that out, then
(21:37):
you take it make a root. You add your onion, bell,
pepper and celery, your trinity to it. Then you make
take that root and you add chicken broth to that root,
and you make a nice thick root with that. Put
all of those balls that you made of the grinnel
(22:02):
back in that. Then you put them on a simmer,
put it on low. You let it cook for about
thirty minutes, and then you serve that over a better rice.
And it is some of the most delicious fish you
ever ate in your life.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Dude, I love That's why I have Jeff on the air,
only me and him come up with a peacock bass
is my favorite, or a grinnel. I mean, I love this, this,
This is expanding people's information now in freshwater. My favorite
is a very cliche one, but you can't hardly.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Beat a crappy.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Crappies, you can't.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Crappy is my favorite, and saltwater people are going to
get offended. It's not flounder because I'm the flounder guy,
but I honestly I love flounder.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
It's way up there.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
But my number one in salt water that we catch
regionally is going to be a red snapper. It is
almost impossible to take and beat a red snapper grilled
or broiled, covered in butter and garlic, salt and all that.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
It's just unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
You take a red snapper. A red snapper is the
saltwater crappie.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah, that's it. That's it.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
That is salt I just wish crappy got If krappie
got twenty pounds, I would only fish for crappie.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
My whole life be dedicated to crappie. You know what
I mean?
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Seems like me. I say that grennel is my favorite,
not because it is the most delectable piece of meat,
but it's the most surprising. It's my favorite because I
can I can serve this dish, I can make this dish.
When I got a bunch of friends coming over them,
we're gonna do something. We go out and fish. I
love to put out the noodles or jug line. You
(23:36):
catch a lot of grennel on those. You come back
and I cook it up and I'm like, man, this
is the best. What about eating? And you tell them
grennel and they're like, no, yeah, yeah, you know you're eating.
And they're like, I can't believe that we're eating this,
because you know, everybody gets mad when they catch an
old grennel. You know you.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I like catching them for the fighting personally.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
You know, well, you think you got a twenty pound
catfish on there, you pull it in and you got
about a six pound grintel. Yeah. They six pound grintel
fight like a dang twenty pound cat.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah. They're awesome.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
So oh and they'll hit anything from a worm to
like a like a night crawler all the way up
to an artificial worm or crawlfish or a lizard or
spinner bait fish anything.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Me and my cousin Frank Moore, like twenty seven years ago,
were out fishing the Burnout Bridge Old ninety across some
Orange Texas here bass fishing from the bank, and they
were hitting every worm and crawlworm combo.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
We could throw.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
And I like catching. We're trying to catch bass. I said,
you know what, I've never caught one on the top water.
I threw a top water out and made one jerk
and caught a ten pound grinel.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
But uh, a lot of fun, cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
I want to switch because only got like a segment
and a half left to a game. You know, wild games.
There's a lot to cover in the wild game realm.
And I'm just going to say that straight up. Out
of all the more exotic other words, not white tail
cottontail squirrel meat that I that I've eaten, my favorite
wild gamemate is nil Guy. Antelope and nil Guy are
(25:12):
free ranging along the southern Texas coast, mainly on the
King and Kennedy ranches. I've had a privileged eating in
a few times. It is unbelievable light. It like fried backstrap,
and it was just the best meat I'd ever eaten
like that. Also, bison is really good. What in your
game experience is kind of your favorite more exotic type
game meat.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
I like access. Yeah, I really like the texture and
the taste of the axis. Yep, I've had access now.
I killed a black buck back in the early nineties
out around seven all Texas, and it was. It was
decent eating. It really was, just wasn't a whole lot
(25:54):
of it, because you know, this thing full grown from
sixty pounds on the hoop. But I would have to
say those are really good. But the most I guess
exotic animal I've ever killed and eaten was a water buffalo.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
And yeah, there was a ranch here close to my house.
They had exotic animals all over it and they had
a huge bull water buffalo that was hooking and hurting
all the other animals. And the guy that was running
it was a good friend of mine, and he came
and asked to borrow a gun because he wanted to
go shoot this water buffalo. And I said, well wait
(26:33):
a minute, let me shoot it. Yeah, and he said okay,
he said, what are you doing. I'm going to have
to get my bow. And he said, you can't kill
this thing with a bow. I'm going to yep. So
I grabbed my bow and I grabbed my forty five
seventy and I give him the forty five seventy and
(26:54):
I said, look, please go south shoot it. Yeah, but
I'm taking to shoot this thing with my bow. And
we went out to the ranch, and I mean these
things are not were not tame. I mean they weren't
just the wildness of animals, but they weren't tame either.
I mean you couldn't you couldn't just walk up and
put this thing. And so we stopped within a water
(27:15):
hole that he was at, within about forty five yards,
and I was shooting at the time. I was shooting
about eighty pounds on my compound bow. And that's back whenever,
you know, shooting those big heavy aluminum shafts of twenty
two nineteens, you know. So I had a good heavy
shaft and one hundred and twenty five grain those old
(27:36):
good three bladed nap broadheads that we used to all
shoot the thunderheads. Yep. I don't even think they'd make
them anymore. And man, I sunk one right right behind
the shoulder, kind of low in the chest, and just
watch those sletches disappear, and this thing kind of jumped
(27:58):
and ran about forty or fifty yards. You just there,
you can just see that it was it was bleeding
out and it never acted like it was it was
even new. It was it, yep, And it stood there
and then just slowly walked off about another twenty feet,
laid down, never stood up again. It took less than
a minute yep for this. I don't know how much
(28:19):
this thing weighed fifteen hundred, two thousand pounds, but man, yeah,
I had the.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Sad experience with a bison one time I shot at
the bison. I shot, which was unbelievable to buy meat
for a year. At the house call, my good friend
Ted Nuda said, where do I shoot a bison with
a bow?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (28:34):
He said, Neverthelengs, So go forever, shoot it right behind
the when it walks, get an angling shot right in
the crease of the of the you know, right in
the crease right there. It went about thirty yards and
it took about a minute and it was bye bye.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And the meat was incredible.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
So how was the was the was the was the
meat tough? Was it an older one? Did you make
it ground meat? Did it kind of like beef or what?
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Well? The guys that owned the place he decided, he said,
you go, hey, we're gonna we're gonna process this thing.
We're gonna we're gonna have it process. And he said,
when we get it done, you know, I'm gonna bring
you you know, a bunch of meat. I'm great. So
several weeks later, I'm home and uh see this truck
coming up the driveway and it's my buddy, and he
just pulls back a tarf on the back of the
(29:19):
truck and the whole back of the truck just full
of white packages for a freezer, paper from the bricker
and he's like, where you want this? And I'm like,
I don't know anywhere to put this this much. So
we we filled everything we had. Okay, I'm gonna cook it.
I decided to cook a steak like a stake, and
you couldn't hardly eat it because I mean, this bull
(29:41):
was probably as old as a bull.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Yeah, well, hold that, hold that thought. We're gonna come
back on Laura out the words we're gonna talk about.
We've got great cliffhangers tonight, cooking a water buffalo, take
in and East Texas I dare you to find on
other programs. We'll talk more with Jeff Stewart and wrap
up our conversation about celebrating the harvest here on More Outdoors.
Welcome back to More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty klv.
(30:07):
I Follow my blog at Higher Calling dot net. Find
me on Facebook, at Higher Calling Wildlife and at the Chester,
more on Instagram, and of course the program every week
here at six to seven pm CST. Say that for
our listeners all around the nation, and also streaming at
KLVI dot com and via the iHeartRadio app. I'm almost
omnipresent in the great outdoors media. Continuing our conversation with
(30:29):
good buddy Jeff Stewart. Now we had a cle another cliffhanger.
You were cooking water buffalo meat and the steak was
a little bit too tough. So tell me how you
tackled the water buffalo.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Put the Dutch oven, the biggest one I had put it,
built a fire in the yard. But just like you're
gonna homestead cook something, put my Dutch oven over it.
Added you know, some some oil to the bill. Round
off one of these ROAs, real good, flowered it, rounded off,
left it in there at my onions, my potatoes, carrot,
(31:05):
a little bit of celery to it. Put some beef
stock over in there that I had saved in the freezer,
and put the lid on the top of it and
just let it cook on top of that for probably
four hours five hours, just every once in all, stoaking
the fire head and a little more wood, whatever I
(31:26):
could do, making sure the liquid didn't boil out of it.
And when we ate that thing, it was the best
thing you would have thought it was. You wouldn't have
known that it wasn't a premium chuck roast from the store.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Gotta love it, man, that's I love that. When I
shot that bison, we got most of it made into
you know, like hamburger meat, because you can cook that.
We made bison meat balls and bison lasagna and bison tacos.
The steaks were great. Another surprise, awesome. I killed a
scimitar horned rix. It's kind of antelope out to my
friend Thompson Tipples Place back in the late nineties, and
(32:02):
to this date, it was the best faheta meat I've
ever had in my entire life. We were like we
were taking that state meat cut in strips, made the
heat to meat out of it.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Incredible stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
It just shows, Jeff, there's a lot more than beef,
pork and chicken out there.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Right, yep, lots lots more stuff. You know. We're even
the worst animal I ever killed and cooked. I enjoyed,
which was a Corsican.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Ram like I do good on those.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Oh man. It was. It was an old billy and
it was probably as gamey as every bike. Tasted like
a barnyard. Like if you went out in the barnyard
and got in, like right in the middle of the
manure pile and started eating ham sandwich. You're breathing in
(32:56):
that manure smell as you take a bite. That's kind
of what it reminded. But at the same time, everybody,
I remembered the hunt. I remember taking the longest shot
I've ever taken on an animal. I took a sixty
yard shot with a bow. That was the longest bow
shot I've ever taken on anything. I don't like to
take over forty yard shot, and I took this Corsican
(33:19):
on a ranch and it was a perfect shot. Forty
fifty steps. Maybe after I shot it, it went and
just piled up on some rocks and was gone. I
mean maybe five seconds, six seconds, you know, this thing
was out dead, gone, and it was wonderful. I've still
(33:41):
got a rug made from its hide that we had made,
and I look at it and I remember it, and
I loved the story, and I just remember eating the
meat and going it's not the best, but wow, what
a hunt.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I've killed a lot of those exotic sheep over the year,
and you know, the old, the old trophy size ones
are tough, so we always get them ground up and
we mix them about thirty percent beef and make ramburgers.
They're great, love them. We got got a lot of it.
They're really good that way. And uh a trick, Yeah, well.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
I thought, yeah, yeah, it was a mistake on my part.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Bob material, but it's definitely good when you ground it
up a little bit of beef in it, it gives
it a little kick.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Like it that way. But that's the fun. It's laughing.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
We're having good time talking about the celebration of the
harvest out there. And uh, you have a cookbook out,
tell me a little bit about your cookbok before we
got to go.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Texas Jack's Wild Game and Venison Cookbook. I'm Texas Jack. Actually, Uh,
Texas Jack is just a name that a lot of
different people have written under. And a good friend of
mine hit me up and said, man, I need a
Wild Game in Venison cookbook and would you team up
with Texas Jack and give us some of your tried
(35:04):
and through recipes, and I'm like, yeah, and we sat
down and wrote this book. And the first half of
the book is a dedication to my dad who had
who had passed away right before I wrote the book.
And so the first half is about my dad, and
it tells kind of a story because my dad was
(35:26):
a legend around here. He was an outdoor legend. If
it came to fishing. Uh, everybody my dad nickname was Skeeter.
So if it came to fishing, everybody said, go ask Skier.
If there was a hole that you can catch a
big old catfish in, they asked Skier. So I made
a first half of the book about my dad.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
And the rest are our recipes, everything from my dear
Chili all the way to my dear Fahidas And uh,
there's a lot of fish recipes, different things in there.
It's just a great little cookbook.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Dig it man. And that's Uh. You know, where can
people get ahold of the book?
Speaker 3 (36:06):
The easiest place for them to get a hold of
the book is on Amazon. That's the easiest place to
look it up and get it. But if they would
like a signed copy of the book, they can reach
out to me through social media. Uh, anything on my
Instagram page, Uh, Jeff, Jeff, grip the hold Stewart my
(36:31):
Facebook page. You know, just stript the hold Stewart. They
can just type that in and find me. Other than that,
catch me at one of the events that I attend
around the country and I usually post that on Facebook
and different social media. Is where I'm going to be
at and they can get a signed copy.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Very very cool man, and uh, it's just it's just
fun talking about this stuff, and you know how to
how to enjoy every minute, even post harvest, post expedition
out into the wild, and you know, the whole idea
of going out into the wild. I just had an
incredible opportunity to go to Colorado and grant a higher
(37:13):
calling Wildlife Expedition Wild Wishes encounter.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
For a young man, sixteen year old boy named.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Elijah who had lost his father and took him into
Rocky Mountain National Park and other areas around Esta's Park,
Colorado to photograph wildlife and teach him to use cameras
to capture wildlife images. And me and my buddy Amos.
Now the cool part is Amos came through our program
six years ago. He graduated high school and once to
(37:38):
get involved in ministry using the outdoors.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
So we got him to go be my assistant.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
We went and scouted the day before, found a bunch
of mule's, found some elk. Thought okay, we can do
mule's and elk, but the ultimate we want to find
as a big horn, and found no big horn in
that area that day. Fifteen minutes into the expedition. The
next day, the kid Olajias photographing a may your huge
ram and you can go see that a higher calling
(38:04):
wildlife on Facebook. Seeing a smile of a kid who
had lived in Colorado, had never been in the mountains
and photographing a big horn ram shows that anyone can
be impacted by that glorious encounter in God's creation in
the great outdoors and seeing amos come along and being
part of that. It reminds me of our conversations we're
having the night about just that joy. And look, man,
(38:26):
the world sucks right now. There's a lot of crazy
stuff going on, but it almost never sucks in the
great outdoors. And whether you're get Texas Jack's cookbook and
learn some good dear chili recipes, or you go fly
fishing or whatever you do, going into the great outdoors
is one of the best things you can do.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
I know you agree with that, Jeff.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Old artedly, because I tell people all the time in
the outdoor there's no there's no ulterior motive. If you
go out to the outdoors and sit under a tree
and just soak it in, nobody's nobody's out to get you,
nobody's telling you what to do, one to do, how
(39:09):
to do. You just sit there and if it's ten minutes,
two hours, whatever it is, for that length of time,
and it's you and nature, it's you and God. You know,
it's like the best time I ever had in nature.
Is a young man that wanted to spend a day
hunting with me, who had leukemia, and I took him
(39:33):
hunting and we watched the sun come up over the
trees and we had the best conversation. We didn't even
see a deer that day. The next day he could
not go hunting with me again. We were going to
go the next day, and the next day he died.
And the greatest honor I had was spending that young
man's last days on this earth in the woods with him,
(39:57):
and that's all he wanted. To do was spend that
those last hours that he had alive with me in
the woods.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Can't beat that. Nothing better, No, can't beat nothing, no,
not even a cond I'll.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Never forget that. I'll never forget that. Never forget that,
young man. Never forget the feeling of that sun coming
up over those pine trees. There was frost on the
ground when that sun hit it, the steam coming off
the frost, the steam coming off the pine needles, and
that smell that you get whenever that sun breaks over
(40:32):
the horizon. And it's just something you'll never forget. If
you ever experience it, you'll never forget it.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Yeah, you don't want to forget it. I'll tell you
what been a great show.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Thanks for coming on the program tonight, Jeff, and thanks
for sharing. That's awesome man. That's right where my heart
is with the young people in the great outdoors. And
God bless you all for listening to more outdoors tonight.
Don't forget you can connect it Higher Calling not net
at Dee Chester Moore on Instagram, Higher Calling while on Facebook.
Have a great and glorious outdoors weekend.
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