Speaker 1: Well, Steve, thanks for being on, man.
Speaker 2: I appreciate the chance. Sorry it took so long and
Speaker 2: I was late and everything.
Speaker 1: Man, I've been last night.
Speaker 3: I was actually trying to put together, like, how would
Speaker 3: I if I were going to write a doctrinal statement
Speaker 3: on Steve Vanella? Like what what kind of thesis would
Speaker 3: I come up with? Because you're you're all over the
Speaker 3: place with so many projects, especially the last say three
Speaker 3: or four years. So many projects. Hm, So let me
Speaker 3: tell you.
Speaker 1: What I was thinking.
Speaker 2: You can't I need I'm going to write this down
Speaker 2: because I need this.
Speaker 1: Well, you can't. You can't say. You can't say that
Speaker 1: at Steve's core is a hunter.
Speaker 3: You can't really say that because if you if you
Speaker 3: run that out to its most logical conclusion, then some
Speaker 3: things don't make sense. You can't say, at Steve's core,
Speaker 3: he's like a a wild game enthusiast. You are, but
Speaker 3: it's not your or there's something else. And so you
Speaker 3: can't say that you're an outdoorsman at your core, because
Speaker 3: there's other things that, if it runs out to its
Speaker 3: most logical conclusion, don't make sense either. So I was
Speaker 3: thinking about it, and I think you could I mean,
Speaker 3: it's used. You can crack me from the wrong but
Speaker 3: but I think at your core is a storyteller.
Speaker 2: Mm yeah, I usually will say right, or an outdoorsman,
Speaker 2: but sure, I like storyteller. I don't know if that's
Speaker 2: the kind of thing you can say about yourself, though,
Speaker 2: you know, it's more like maybe something someone else has say.
Speaker 3: Well, look, I think when I think about you, there
Speaker 3: was a there was a moment for me. And this
Speaker 3: might sound weird, but there was a moment on an
Speaker 3: airplane somewhere. It's probably three years ago, and I'm watching
Speaker 3: Meat Eater on my phone on the plane, and to
Speaker 3: bring in the scene, it's like, you know, a mountain
Speaker 3: scale ape and and time laps, clouds, fog, a rolling
Speaker 3: river turning over on itself. This like real melodic, droning
Speaker 3: piano song, real pensive starts playing. And then and then
Speaker 3: the camera's on the ground and here comes you know,
Speaker 3: these boots walking by, and that's that's our hero walking by.
Speaker 3: And and who's he with. He's not, he's not with
Speaker 3: a celebrity to hunt with. He's with his brother. You know, me,
Speaker 3: coming coming from a family, I got two brothers. Here
Speaker 3: here he is with his brother. So I'm locked in
Speaker 3: on the scene, right, And I watched this the whole episode.
Speaker 3: It's called Walking the Clouds. And you guys are you
Speaker 3: guys are doll sheep hunting, which is the hardest of
Speaker 3: the of the hunts in North America, right arguably. And
Speaker 3: you guys, you chase these sheep. Sometimes you see them,
Speaker 3: sometimes you don't. Sometimes you see a legal ram, but
Speaker 3: you can't get to them.
Speaker 1: You run out of time that the show ends and
Speaker 1: you never got one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I thought I watched the whole show and
Speaker 3: I was actually entertaining you.
Speaker 2: Did you feel you didn't feel like you got ripped off?
Speaker 3: No, that's the crazy thing I want to say. I
Speaker 3: didn't feel ripped off. I felt drawn into a story
Speaker 3: of a storyteller. This is how you ended it. This
Speaker 3: is what you said in the end. You get to
Speaker 3: a point where you just have to give up and
Speaker 3: go home. The land beat you or the sheep beat
Speaker 3: you just by running out the clock. Now, all you
Speaker 3: have is a long walk out and plenty of time
Speaker 3: to spend in your own head to think about how
Speaker 3: you'll get too old to do this. Eventually, getting back
Speaker 3: into places like this could break your body. Knees give out,
Speaker 3: backs go bad, lungs, get tired and half useless. That's
Speaker 3: the painful thing to look ahead to. But it's not
Speaker 3: nearly as bad as to think about. Leaving this place
Speaker 3: breaks your body, the other breaks your heart.
Speaker 1: Scene ends, show over.
Speaker 4: That's a story till that's all sheep hunting right there.
Speaker 1: That's incredible.
Speaker 2: Oh, thanks, man, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. We
Speaker 2: used to worry when we started doing need Eater. We
Speaker 2: used to really worry about what would happen to you
Speaker 2: if you had unsuccessful episodes, But we didn't. You know,
Speaker 2: you put all that time into going and filming one,
Speaker 2: and you kind of map out your year, you know,
Speaker 2: and you're gonna go make let's say you're gonna go
Speaker 2: make eight episodes, and you go spend six seven days
Speaker 2: on something and you don't get anything.
Speaker 4: When we started doing it, we didn't have any options,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 2: We had to figure out a way to to run
Speaker 2: with them. The impulse would have been that you'd bury
Speaker 2: it somehow, you know, we just didn't have It was
Speaker 2: funny because the decision was made for us.
Speaker 4: We just didn't have a way to get the time back.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So we learned how to do them, and it was.
Speaker 2: It was, yeah, when you're out, you're really pushing as
Speaker 2: hard as you can to be successful. Like I like,
Speaker 2: you know, I like to be successful, and you're pushing
Speaker 2: really hard to be successful. And when you're not, I
Speaker 2: never think to myself, oh great, we weren't successful. Now
Speaker 2: we can make a skunker episode. And that's what we
Speaker 2: would call him, is making skunkers. Yeah, but we just
Speaker 2: learned to, you know, we learned to deal with them.
Speaker 2: And it was fun because it was one of the
Speaker 2: ways in which I kind of fell in love with
Speaker 2: the audience is because people, for the most part, were
Speaker 2: supportive of it.
Speaker 4: I remember getting one email or in the early.
Speaker 2: Days of making The Meat Eater, I remember getting an
Speaker 2: email from a guy and he had said, I have enough.
Speaker 4: Failure and disappointment in my life. I don't need to
Speaker 4: get it from my TV.
Speaker 1: That's a man trained, depressed, so depressed man.
Speaker 3: He's just been trained by the mindless hunting shows that
Speaker 3: have come for decades that the whole trailer is the
Speaker 3: is the kill shot, and the animal falls and like
Speaker 3: and the music plays and and it's all leading to that,
Speaker 3: and then your show comes around and sometimes you don't
Speaker 3: get anything.
Speaker 2: And for me, I'm like, yeah, sometimes we don't. Sometimes
Speaker 2: sometimes we didn't don't and uh, but man, it wasn't.
Speaker 4: I'm promised and you do.
Speaker 2: It wasn't because we weren't trying.
Speaker 1: That's evident in the show Man. That's evident.
Speaker 3: And and then your your storytelling though it's uh, I
Speaker 3: mean was it somebody Was it a producer or a manager,
Speaker 3: or was somebody like, hey, Steve, now we got to
Speaker 3: start writing books, we got to start getting your voice
Speaker 3: recorded for uh campfire stories. I mean, you took this,
Speaker 3: this whole this whole universe of your your world, your
Speaker 3: your brand has gotten it's so wrapped around the storytelling.
Speaker 3: And hunting has always been about the storytelling from the
Speaker 3: beginning of time.
Speaker 1: It's always a it's never just about the kill. It's
Speaker 1: about the setup.
Speaker 3: It's about the campfire before the hunt, and the campfire
Speaker 3: after and eating.
Speaker 1: Of the animals. It's always been that. And this is you.
Speaker 3: Is this somebody else's idea or were you the guy
Speaker 3: that was like, hey, let me tell the story.
Speaker 2: No. I started out like I was a writer before anything,
Speaker 2: you know, when I was, when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: I wanted to be a even I mean beyond being kid.
Speaker 2: And from time I was ten to twenty two, I
Speaker 2: was really pushing to be a fur trapper and that
Speaker 2: was my main interest. And I became interested in writing.
Speaker 2: I went to graduate school for writing, so I'm like
Speaker 2: a trained writer, formally trained, and uh started doing magazine work.
Speaker 2: I did books before I ever did any kind of television.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: In fact, doing TV stuff came out of doing books,
Speaker 2: and then doing doing a podcast and other stuff came
Speaker 2: out of being a writer. So you know, I was
Speaker 2: born a writer. I'll die a writer in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways.
Speaker 5: I you know, earlier were Joe, I'm not joking, but
Speaker 5: you were bringing up how to describe it, and I
Speaker 5: said that I I always tell you know, I was
Speaker 5: described like and I'm an author and outdoorsman or a
Speaker 5: writer and outdoorsman.
Speaker 2: I feel like the very stuff I've been involved in
Speaker 2: is I look at it all from the perspective of
Speaker 2: being a writer, you know first and foremost, and then
Speaker 2: you know, doing the writing on the show is I
Speaker 2: kind of think of like, you know, I'm hosting it,
Speaker 2: you know, but I kind of more think of I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm like writing it, you know.
Speaker 4: That's that's how I picture in my.
Speaker 3: Head, even if a camera wasn't there, you're writing. You're
Speaker 3: writing the story, whether you're just telling to your kids
Speaker 3: or telling to your friends, this is just who you are.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that that's a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that that's that way. But I should
Speaker 2: also admit that when I'm just out hunting around, you know,
Speaker 2: by my hunting with my bodies or hunting with my
Speaker 2: with my kids, I'm I'm pretty far away from I'm
Speaker 2: pretty far away from thinking about narrative, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess I like, you know, we'll tell a lot
Speaker 2: of stories, and we relive a lot of stories around home,
Speaker 2: But I don't for me to sit down and make
Speaker 2: sense of it for somebody else, for me to sit
Speaker 2: down and like tell a story that would engage someone
Speaker 2: who wasn't there or doesn't share in the memory, I
Speaker 2: need to like to sit down and be very deliberate
Speaker 2: about that process, right, you know.
Speaker 4: I think I even.
Speaker 2: I spend so much time reliving recapturing experiences when I'm
Speaker 2: having the experiences, I'm not I'm not really in that space. Right.
Speaker 2: That's why if you think of like if you look
Speaker 2: at the Medeater show, there's a lot of what we
Speaker 2: call VO, right, it's VO heavy, and and we write
Speaker 2: like like I write the VO, so an editor will
Speaker 2: write like a scratch like an editor will make placeholders
Speaker 2: for VO, and then I come in and write the VO.
Speaker 2: So one could look like if you look generally in production,
Speaker 2: the way you would generally view it is you would
Speaker 2: view that that VO is not good. So if you're
Speaker 2: watching nonfiction television and there's a lot of VO, you
Speaker 2: might look and be like it's emblematic of or a
Speaker 2: symptom of poor hosting because the host in the field
Speaker 2: didn't do the job. So then you're stuck filling in
Speaker 2: all these blanks and doing all this interstitial stuff and
Speaker 2: making all these connections because you screwed up in the
Speaker 2: field and didn't give it to camera. So it's normally,
Speaker 2: like a lot of producers with regard doing vos, it's
Speaker 2: a big giant band aid for what didn't get done,
Speaker 2: for what didn't get.
Speaker 4: Executed properly in the field.
Speaker 2: But we came to it because I'm like writing an
Speaker 2: AMA writer and was first known writer. We came to
Speaker 2: it viewing it like like VO was an asset for us.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just a crutch, it was a strength. And
Speaker 2: so we would just we would kind of you could
Speaker 2: almost be a little bit lazier filming, knowing that you
Speaker 2: were going to build this this vo narrative that was
Speaker 2: going to help you patch all this stuff together. And
Speaker 2: so you know, as we kind of like put the
Speaker 2: show together, that's just sort of what we fell into
Speaker 2: where we fell into it being like very reliant, very
Speaker 2: reliant on narration vo narration, right, And I've always enjoyed
Speaker 2: that man.
Speaker 3: That me too, And I understand that critique, but I
Speaker 3: don't agree with that critique because I do the vo
Speaker 3: from meat Eater is what drew me in. And no
Speaker 3: one ever told that to Anthony Bourdain. His whole show
Speaker 3: was was successful because of that in its unique way,
Speaker 3: because of his writing and his vow work, and it
Speaker 3: would it would be a really shallow critique to say
Speaker 3: that's just because he wasn't very good in the field,
Speaker 3: he wasn't good on the fly.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the guys, the whole the people I
Speaker 2: started making meedatter with.
Speaker 4: Were all Boordain crew.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, so that was and it's funny.
Speaker 2: I'm just did a show, you know, the History Channel
Speaker 2: show we're launching right now. The show runner that I
Speaker 2: worked with on that show was the first camera guy
Speaker 2: that ever filmed all the first media up and then
Speaker 2: he became a He was a camera guy for Boordain
Speaker 2: and then became a producer for Boordain and he actually
Speaker 2: produced the Bourdain's last full show. They never cut it
Speaker 2: into an episode, but his last full show in Italy
Speaker 2: was this same guy produced it. So you know, I
Speaker 2: wasn't buddies with him. I knew him, but we weren't
Speaker 2: like buddies at all Boordain, you know, I mean, like
Speaker 2: like I knew him, but we weren't pals.
Speaker 4: But anyway, there was a lot of.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of overlap in us both winding
Speaker 2: up with the same production place, winding up with a
Speaker 2: lot of the same crew, both coming from writing. You know,
Speaker 2: in some ways I think that maybe when when I
Speaker 2: started into that, there was a template that I walked
Speaker 2: into that had been established by him. You know, I
Speaker 2: didn't think about it at the time, but looking back
Speaker 2: from a more of a long term perspective, I kind
Speaker 2: of walked into his template because I walked into working
Speaker 2: with guys who were used to that. Yeah, they were
Speaker 2: used to that, having a writer building story, you know,
Speaker 2: from a from a writerly perspective.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, man, it's a It's shawsh Ank Redemption. You know,
Speaker 3: it's Morgan Freeman, Andy, Andy Dufraye, you know, walked in
Speaker 3: and and I love that.
Speaker 1: Your your show, your new show.
Speaker 3: When I first read it, I read it as hunting history,
Speaker 3: and then I realized that I was reading it wrong,
Speaker 3: and as I researched, I was, no, it's hunting history.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I think a lot of people that was
Speaker 2: that's a forgivable, forgivable mistake, considering the considering the host.
Speaker 2: I could one could be forgiven for making that mistake. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: hunt down history like taking a hunter.
Speaker 1: Un back down history?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, whose idea was that? How did you get
Speaker 3: brought into that? Because that's I think it's a perfect match.
Speaker 3: I love history myself, but it's it's an somebody made
Speaker 3: a really interesting connection to put you in on this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: You know what though, it's like my first book.
Speaker 2: I published my first book in twenty two thousand and
Speaker 2: four to somewhere around two thousand and three, two thousand
Speaker 2: and four, so quite a long time ago. My first
Speaker 2: book was called The Scavenger's Guide to Oak Cuisine, and
Speaker 2: it was a.
Speaker 4: Book about a book.
Speaker 2: It was a book about this crazy French cookbook that
Speaker 2: came out in nineteen oh three. So like that's like
Speaker 2: the year the Right Brothers did their first you know
Speaker 2: flight with a heavier than air vehicle, right, and this
Speaker 2: guy A. Scofier wrote this five thousand recipe compendium about
Speaker 2: French cuisine. And so my first book was about going
Speaker 2: hunting and fishing to catch all the stuff from that cookbook.
Speaker 2: My second book was about the history of the American buffalo,
Speaker 2: the animal. Right, it was like the history of a species,
Speaker 2: had a lot of hunting in it. My first book,
Speaker 2: again was a history of It's like about like French food,
Speaker 2: but had a lot of hunting fishing in it. My
Speaker 2: buffalo book was the history of the animal, had a
Speaker 2: lot of hunting and fishing in it. As a magazine writer,
Speaker 2: I did like I wrote stuff about like the colonial French,
Speaker 2: you know, all kinds of things. So I'd always like.
Speaker 4: Dealt heavily in history.
Speaker 2: We did. We have a thing me eaters American history,
Speaker 2: these audio originals we do about history. So I've always
Speaker 2: been a player in history, and it's always been very
Speaker 2: interested in history, and I've always been very.
Speaker 4: Interested in hunting.
Speaker 2: So for me to do a history show, people that
Speaker 2: are familiar with my TV show Me Eater might look
Speaker 2: at it like it like it being different than what
Speaker 2: I would normally be engaged in. But if anyone who
Speaker 2: was accustomed to what I wrote, the stuff I've written,
Speaker 2: you know, it's my stuff's always been very heavily informed
Speaker 2: by by history and then, and so in that way,
Speaker 2: it just felt more that way, it felt more like
Speaker 2: a like a continuation of what I've already been up to.
Speaker 2: The difference here being is that in some of the cases,
Speaker 2: rather than really long deep dives into subjects, doing an
Speaker 2: hour long show where you tackle a whole subject in
Speaker 2: an hour, it's kind of like more fun and cursory
Speaker 2: than it is to do like book length explorations of subjects. Right,
Speaker 2: it's breeze.
Speaker 4: It's breezy and entertaining.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a good way to look at it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I saw I saw in the episodes last night, and.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's breezy, it's it moves quicker even that
Speaker 3: even than mediator in a lot of ways, it moves quicker.
Speaker 3: We don't have depensive piano, uh you know on the
Speaker 3: History Channel with this Uh, but it's it's still super
Speaker 3: cool and it's it's it's such an extension of your
Speaker 3: brand that works so well. I also listened to that
Speaker 3: that audio, what did you call.
Speaker 2: It, Media's American History?
Speaker 1: Yeah? That that that was so that was so engaging.
Speaker 1: It's good.
Speaker 2: Did you listen to the one about the Long Hunters
Speaker 2: did and the Long Hunters? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because you know, I'm sitting here looking at
Speaker 3: this and like, yeah, he's getting got the new show
Speaker 3: on the History Channel, Hunting History. But then I started realizing,
Speaker 3: but that's I mean, that's what's new right now. But
Speaker 3: I mean there's some of that stuff. Was the the
Speaker 3: Mountain Men, I mean that was like last year you
Speaker 3: put that out, So there's a lot of recent things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the Long Yeah, so we're gonna do we're
Speaker 2: actually working on this series of things. Like you know,
Speaker 2: as an outdoorsman, you'll you'll kind of appreciate these names
Speaker 2: that pop up, like you know, you know Daniel Boone, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's some of a household name. Jim Bridge or John Colt.
Speaker 2: So we're doing as we're breaking up American history into
Speaker 2: these chunks and looking at market hunters from these different eras.
Speaker 2: So people know Daniel Boone, Not many people know that
Speaker 2: like what he actually did, like what his actual job was.
Speaker 2: Daniel Boone was a deer skin hunter. Like he hunted
Speaker 2: deer for the skins, and these skins were exported to
Speaker 2: Europe and turned into leather. If you see those old
Speaker 2: paintings like kings from the seventeen Hunters and they got
Speaker 2: those white pants on those white breeches, those are probably
Speaker 2: American buckskin.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: So that's what Boone did for living. He did other
Speaker 4: stuff too, He hunted for.
Speaker 2: Bear grease, you know, oil made from bears, but he
Speaker 2: mostly hunted deer skins. And we kind of break up
Speaker 2: American history where we look at the deer skin trade
Speaker 2: from seventeen sixty three to seventeen seventy five, and we
Speaker 2: sort of argue why seventeen sixty three there was the
Speaker 2: end of a frontier war, and so these hunters could
Speaker 2: kind of push into Kentucky and it wasn't as risky
Speaker 2: for them to go there. They hunted from sixty three
Speaker 2: seventy five everybody knows seventeen seventy five what comes next.
Speaker 2: Seventeen seventy six the American Revolution and the frontier got
Speaker 2: untenable again. The frontier got very bloody after the Revolution began.
Speaker 2: So we look at like these these guys and we
Speaker 2: know them now as well. They were actually known in
Speaker 2: their time. They were known as long hunters, and it
Speaker 2: had to do with the length of their trips, you know,
Speaker 2: they were going very long hunts, hunting deerskins. The next
Speaker 2: one we're jumping into is eighteen oh six, eighteen forty
Speaker 2: and it's the beaver skin trade, and that's called me
Speaker 2: Eaters American History of the Mountain Men, and it covers
Speaker 2: figures like Jed Smith, John Colter, Jim Bridger, who were
Speaker 2: all just rocky mountain beaver trappers. And then when the
Speaker 2: beaver market collapsed, all the attention moved to the buffalo
Speaker 2: hide hunters. And so the next one will do is
Speaker 2: the buffalo hide hunters will probably run that. Eighteen sixty
Speaker 2: five to eighteen eighty two, a big herd was shout
Speaker 2: out the winner of eighty two and eighteen sixty five
Speaker 2: was the end of the Civil War, and a lot
Speaker 2: of guys were coming out of that war going west
Speaker 2: to hunt Buffalo. So it's all these really detailed examinations
Speaker 2: of sort of the economy and life ways and skill
Speaker 2: sets of these like American archetypes, you know, but also
Speaker 2: what drove the economy to be that way? You know.
Speaker 2: And again they're really they're they're they're like.
Speaker 4: Deep dives into these things.
Speaker 2: But it's fun to do because I feel like that
Speaker 2: is you know, I've read about that for my whole life,
Speaker 2: and so it's fun to get it down, you know,
Speaker 2: to get the work down.
Speaker 3: And I love this about you. But what is the
Speaker 3: affinity for North America for you? Are you concentrate everything?
Speaker 3: I mean, I love that, but what what is it?
Speaker 3: What is it about you?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I always tell people when people are
Speaker 2: talking about other stuff, I always tell them I'm just
Speaker 2: like way to American to understand. I just feel like,
Speaker 2: I'm so like completely American, dude, I can't.
Speaker 4: Even like I have a hard time.
Speaker 2: I like to read about geopolitics, but I just have
Speaker 2: a hard time understanding and know. One thing I'll joke
Speaker 2: about with people is like, you know, if you're in America,
Speaker 2: where you be if I'm in America and I see
Speaker 2: a dude walking down the road. You know what I mean,
Speaker 2: I be like, that guy looks like he said the work.
Speaker 2: That guy looks like his truck broke down and he's
Speaker 2: in trouble. That guy looks like whatever, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, Like, I just can't tell what's going on.
Speaker 2: And when you're in another country and you see someone
Speaker 2: walking down the road, You're like, I have no idea
Speaker 2: what that dude's doing walking down the road.
Speaker 1: I agree, that's the way.
Speaker 2: I got to stick to the place where I just
Speaker 2: feel like I know what's going on.
Speaker 3: Okay, I mean there's more to it. But also, yes,
Speaker 3: I agree, I hear you. But you have a love.
Speaker 3: You have an American love. Yeah, yeah, the contain.
Speaker 2: Of America love like the country for sure. But also
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, you know, every man, It's funny.
Speaker 4: I got a buddy who he had this guy that
Speaker 4: worked for him.
Speaker 2: He had a ranch manager that worked for him, and
Speaker 2: he once went to get the ranch manager a talk,
Speaker 2: you know, like about kind of expanding his role in
Speaker 2: the ranch manager and said to him, you know, every
Speaker 2: man's got his limits, and just I kind of have
Speaker 2: my limits, like like I'm very into.
Speaker 4: I don't care how far back you.
Speaker 2: Go in North America, Like I don't care if you
Speaker 2: go back twenty thousand years. I remained comfortable in North
Speaker 2: America talking about North America twenty thousand years ago, but
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be comfortable talking about Europe today. I don't
Speaker 2: have any subject matter expertise, you know. So it's just
Speaker 2: like I like the American story, the American characters. It's huge,
Speaker 2: it's a big subject. I just I will you know,
Speaker 2: earlier I talked about writing a book about French food.
Speaker 2: But when I wrote a book about French food, I
Speaker 2: talked about French food as understood in America.
Speaker 3: Sure, has there been a place that you've traveled in
Speaker 3: North America that has surprised you or that you continually
Speaker 3: think of as like the pinnacle of this is where
Speaker 3: Steve has to go this one area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the thing that most has blown me away is now,
Speaker 2: Like I don't go a day in my household without
Speaker 2: saying to my kids or my wife, I'm like, you know,
Speaker 2: the Cajuns.
Speaker 4: When I started hanging out, like, I don't know what
Speaker 4: takes me so long? Louisiana was the last Louisiana.
Speaker 2: Was the it was the last state. It was the
Speaker 2: state I've never been to. So I've been to all
Speaker 2: forty nine out of fifty states. Like an I count
Speaker 2: like spending the night, not just on the airport, but
Speaker 2: spending the night, okay, and had been there two the
Speaker 2: first time I was going there.
Speaker 4: We had made it as far as like we're going
Speaker 4: from Memphis to.
Speaker 2: Louisiana, made it as far as the delta in Mississippi close,
Speaker 2: and they're like Adams, the big hurricane coming and we
Speaker 2: sort of thought about it, decided not to go to
Speaker 2: New Orleans and it was Hurricane Katrina. The guy. Then
Speaker 2: we made another trip to go down there and had
Speaker 2: another hurricane happen and didn't go, and it eventually made
Speaker 2: it and and kind of fell in with hanging out
Speaker 2: with Cajun dudes, and I mean guys that like they
Speaker 2: don't even know that they don't know the names for
Speaker 2: ducks that we use. Like they still use the French
Speaker 2: names for their ducks, right, they used the French names
Speaker 2: for their fit inshore fish, you know, and they when
Speaker 2: they're cooking stuff, they got a word. You're like, what
Speaker 2: you know, I can't like all the French words for
Speaker 2: the food, French words for the ingredients like that. How
Speaker 2: just impressive that culture is in the level of like
Speaker 2: culture continuity and cultural identity, that that that the Cajuns
Speaker 2: held on to.
Speaker 4: And I say, the Accagians, you know, you know it
Speaker 4: probably sound like some kind of uh like a like
Speaker 4: an idiot.
Speaker 2: Saying, like the occasions there's like this monolithic thing called
Speaker 2: the Caagents, but it just it blew my mind, you
Speaker 2: know that like the food, the language, the customs, and man.
Speaker 2: I yeah, uh, if I had found out about that
Speaker 2: world when I was eighteen, I probably would have tried
Speaker 2: to like perfect a French accent and I would have
Speaker 2: gone and tried to like slip in you know, we'll
Speaker 2: join in, right.
Speaker 3: I Mean, I love all of our Louisian listeners right now,
Speaker 3: but I did not think that's where you're going up
Speaker 3: there at that question anywhere in North Americaia.
Speaker 2: Yea. That yeah, that like blew my mind, man, Like
Speaker 2: I always heard about it, but like that's the thing
Speaker 2: that's really shocked me, is uh just my love of
Speaker 2: that of that little corner, you know, that corner of
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 2: And I've always been a northern guy. I've always lived
Speaker 2: in the northern tier states, Montana, Michigan, like I've always
Speaker 2: lived up North Washington, always touching Canada. You know.
Speaker 3: I just want to tell everybody that's listening right now,
Speaker 3: all the Louisiana people, this is a man who's been
Speaker 3: dull shee putting, you know, at the top of Alaska
Speaker 3: where you could see the whole world, and he's saying,
Speaker 3: I like Louis Louisiana.
Speaker 1: I like the Cajuns. Oh that's iggressive.
Speaker 2: That's like you all that.
Speaker 4: Food they got and all the words they got for
Speaker 4: their ducks.
Speaker 2: I love it. Man. Yeah, that's one of the coolest
Speaker 2: things about talking to the Cajuns. I'll leave.
Speaker 4: I won't talk about this all the time, I promise you.
Speaker 2: But what's funny is like like having all the words
Speaker 2: for knowing, all the French words for ducks, and the
Speaker 2: French words for all the inshore fish, you know. And
Speaker 2: what's funny is like if you get to the offshore
Speaker 2: fish like in the golf, okay, you get out, you
Speaker 2: can got wahoo, yellow tail, all these offshore fish, and
Speaker 2: that'd be like, well, what's the French word for right,
Speaker 2: like yellowfin? Tuna, Like what's the French word yellowfintuna And
Speaker 2: they don't have any of those words.
Speaker 4: And one of my buddies pointed.
Speaker 2: Out to me, is like at that time, no one
Speaker 2: knew that stuff was out there, Like twenty miles into
Speaker 2: the golf you might have been on another You might
Speaker 2: as well have been on another planet.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: Like people were in it, Like people weren't aware that
Speaker 2: twenty miles out there in the blue water were like.
Speaker 1: Wow, and oh yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: They were like redfish, trout right whatever. And it was
Speaker 2: so so they never incorporated as close as it seems now,
Speaker 2: as close as it seems now, it was never like
Speaker 2: no one had a way to get out there.
Speaker 4: You know, you were rowing, you were.
Speaker 1: Paddling out there, so they don't have names. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was like it was.
Speaker 2: Just it was there, but it wasn't there. It was there,
Speaker 2: but like I said, it might as well have been
Speaker 2: on another planet.
Speaker 1: That's that's wild.
Speaker 3: Well, I hope that you've heard already about EEE Festival
Speaker 3: that is May ninth and tenth. You could come see
Speaker 3: me and all the gang at the farm. We've got
Speaker 3: all kinds of crazy things that are gonna be happening.
Speaker 3: It's good for the whole family. I really really think
Speaker 3: you'll love it. So go to ye ye dot com
Speaker 3: for more info. If you like the content in this podcast,
Speaker 3: hey consider sharing it with a friend, subscribing to this podcast,
Speaker 3: giving it a good review if you want, and commenting
Speaker 3: on the YouTube page. These are all things that help
Speaker 3: this podcast reach more people. If you want to get
Speaker 3: a hold of me personally, you go to cameo dot
Speaker 3: com slash granger Smith. I can make you a video
Speaker 3: message for anything that you want. It could be happy birthday,
Speaker 3: happy anniversary, maybe just a word of encouragement. Go to
Speaker 3: cameo dot com slash granger Smith. Your dad he got
Speaker 3: you into hunting? Could you say that?
Speaker 2: Yep?
Speaker 1: Dad is your dad? Shall around my dad?
Speaker 2: Oh no, see no, see my dad he had me
Speaker 2: in My dad would be one hundred one years old.
Speaker 2: He had me in nineteen twenty four, Earth not had me?
Speaker 2: What am I saying? He was born in nineteen twenty four,
Speaker 2: fought World War Two, enlisted at seventeen.
Speaker 4: Font World War Two.
Speaker 2: It came home and was just a big hunter and fishermen.
Speaker 2: So I was always brought up around hunting, fishing, and uh,
Speaker 2: and you know he didn't trap.
Speaker 4: He didn't he didn't trap, but I.
Speaker 2: Got into trapping and he was very supportive of trapping,
Speaker 2: and uh and.
Speaker 4: He I got lucky with those guys.
Speaker 2: I got lucky, like with my mom and dad in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways. But one of the ways I
Speaker 2: got lucky with them is they didn't you know, my
Speaker 2: dad didn't finish high school right formally.
Speaker 4: So for them, you know, when you meet people like
Speaker 4: I've met a lot of.
Speaker 2: People like this in my life, who's who they they
Speaker 2: get a lot of family pressure to go into things
Speaker 2: that maybe they don't want to go into, you know, occupationally.
Speaker 2: And and I have kids, and we pressure our kids.
Speaker 2: We don't pressure about what they do, but we pressure
Speaker 2: them about their performance in school, right, We pressure them.
Speaker 4: About how they treat their elders whatever. Like we pressure them.
Speaker 2: But but for when I said, oh, yeah, I'm going
Speaker 2: to be a trapper, it was kind of like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's great. It's a good idea. And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be a writer. That's a great idea. Like
Speaker 2: never had any sort of pushing in a in a
Speaker 2: different direction. And for me, like because my dad was
Speaker 2: a big outdoorsman. When I started getting a little success
Speaker 2: writing about hunting and writing about fishing and writing about
Speaker 2: the outdoors, he just thought that was great, you know.
Speaker 2: He thought that was a great move. And the fact
Speaker 2: that you had to live for many years below the
Speaker 2: poverty level. I always point out to people that, like,
Speaker 2: if you don't have if you're not married, you don't
Speaker 2: have kids, there's no such thing as being poor. You're broke,
Speaker 2: but you're not poor like poor is later, you know.
Speaker 2: So I just lived for a long time without any
Speaker 2: real serious income, but in like my parents' minds, I
Speaker 2: was like very successful because I had chased something kind
Speaker 2: of weird and did it, you know, and so it
Speaker 2: was cool like that, like that that with my dad,
Speaker 2: as much as he enjoyed that hunting and fishing to
Speaker 2: see for him to see his kid kind of make
Speaker 2: away in that, he like, he liked that a lot.
Speaker 2: He died right after the it was right after the
Speaker 2: terror attacks. No, it was either right before or right
Speaker 2: after the terror attacks.
Speaker 1: Before almost I think he.
Speaker 2: Died that December. I think maybe it was that December.
Speaker 3: He died, So that was before most of the world
Speaker 3: knew of you and meat eater, and oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like, oh yeah, there was nothing like that.
Speaker 2: I mean, he died before I published my first book,
Speaker 2: but I was I was a magazine writer. I was
Speaker 2: a magazine writer. And and I remember, like I wrote
Speaker 2: a couple of things, you know, I did some stuff
Speaker 2: in field and stream and did some stuff and outside.
Speaker 2: And I remember the last time I hung out with
Speaker 2: him before he got real sick. We were down in
Speaker 2: Floorida fishing and we were going to buy shrimp, you know,
Speaker 2: and he's like, uh, you know, you can tell he's
Speaker 2: like waiting for someone to He's like, you don't know
Speaker 2: who this is, you know, he's like waiting for someone
Speaker 2: like recognize me, because written a field.
Speaker 1: That's a good dad.
Speaker 2: That's a good dad. Yeah, not realizing that no one
Speaker 2: reads who wrote the articles they're reading in magazine. No
Speaker 2: one looks at the author's name.
Speaker 1: That's amazing, man. I love I love that. I love
Speaker 1: that hilarious.
Speaker 3: So you your kids, you said you you put pressure
Speaker 3: on them. Oh yeah, and yeah you didn't necessarily get
Speaker 3: that pressure from your dad.
Speaker 1: But it's also just a different Oh no.
Speaker 2: We had a no, no, we had a we had
Speaker 2: a pressure for sure, but not like it wasn't directional.
Speaker 2: It was just like a pressure to perform, you know,
Speaker 2: like it wasn't It wasn't like a pressure to to
Speaker 2: following dad steps and become an orthodonist. You know. It
Speaker 2: was a yeah, right, It was like you couldn't you
Speaker 2: couldn't be a screw off for sure, and you had
Speaker 2: to you had to work hard, you're going to be
Speaker 2: in trouble. But there was no, it wasn't hyper directional,
Speaker 2: I should say.
Speaker 3: And now it is, you're saying, is it directional pressure
Speaker 3: you put on your kids?
Speaker 2: No? No, I just had this conversation this morning. Maybe
Speaker 2: me and my wife were talking to a friend of
Speaker 2: ours this morning, and I was my wife's much more
Speaker 2: inclined to get after him about grades. You know, she's
Speaker 2: pretty demanding on grades. And I was trying to explain
Speaker 2: to a friend of mine that I didn't have that
Speaker 2: relationship with school. I did a lot of schooling, but
Speaker 2: I didn't have that relationship with school.
Speaker 4: And and I don't look at it like I don't
Speaker 4: look at.
Speaker 2: It as the sort of sole opportunity that I don't
Speaker 2: look at like academic performance as being the kind of
Speaker 2: like where you make or that that that that's your
Speaker 2: chance to make or break yourself. Or I don't look
Speaker 2: at like the quality the quality of a kid's formal
Speaker 2: education really like casts their die and sets their destiny.
Speaker 2: You know, I look at it like it's a part.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a part, it's important, it's a part
Speaker 2: of a much broader collection of things that go on
Speaker 2: in one's life that will sort of determine where they
Speaker 2: had right.
Speaker 4: Within that. You know, if our kids screw off in school.
Speaker 2: And they get bad grades, they're gonna lose privileges.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So what does cast the die? Oh man?
Speaker 1: Or is that too broad to ask?
Speaker 2: No? No, It's very funny that we're on this because
Speaker 2: because we were like having this, we were having this
Speaker 2: very question earlier, and a friend of mine was pointing
Speaker 2: out my friend of mine was taking the other perspective here,
Speaker 2: and she was saying, you guys, meaning our family, She's like,
Speaker 2: you guys are really engaged.
Speaker 4: You like know a lot of people, you have.
Speaker 2: You know a lot of connections, you have a lot
Speaker 2: of opportunity, you have a lot of passions. If you
Speaker 2: take some kids and strip away where they have like
Speaker 2: not a great home life, they don't have engage parents.
Speaker 2: It might be that that is their chance, like shining
Speaker 2: in school without people backing them up, and without people
Speaker 2: backing them up at home and supporting them at home,
Speaker 2: and like creating chances for them, right, sacrificing for them.
Speaker 4: She's like some people if.
Speaker 2: She was, she's a she was her family during the
Speaker 2: Iranian Revolution. They fled to Iran, right and can't do
Speaker 2: America with nothing. She's like, dude, for me, for us,
Speaker 2: if we didn't make it in school, you were going
Speaker 2: to make it because that was your chance, Like that
Speaker 2: was your chance to shine, and that was like your spot.
Speaker 2: You're going to do it academic because there wasn't another
Speaker 2: way you were going to do it. And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's kind of true because but I point out, like
Speaker 2: I'd be thrilled if my kids joined the military. I'd
Speaker 2: be thrilled if my kid went up and became you know,
Speaker 2: got a job guiding, uh, you know, became a sheep
Speaker 2: guy in Alaska, Like I'd be thrilled for him. You know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't I don't have Uh, there's just I think
Speaker 2: there's a lot of paths. You know, when is your die?
Speaker 2: When is your die?
Speaker 4: Cast?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: That's a great question. We have a ten year old,
Speaker 2: a twelve year old, fourteen year old. I don't know
Speaker 2: at what point you feel like you're out of the woods.
Speaker 2: Last night, the cab driver I drove with from the airport,
Speaker 2: we are talking about this subject a little bit, and
Speaker 2: he said he when his kids were, when his youngest
Speaker 2: one was kind of finished in college, he all of
Speaker 2: a sudden said, I felt like I had done it.
Speaker 2: M you know, He's like, I felt like I could
Speaker 2: look and be like, you did it. Yeah, you did it,
Speaker 2: You did a good job, you got it.
Speaker 3: You know, my kids are the same as my oldest
Speaker 3: is thirteen though, yeah right there, and yeah.
Speaker 4: We don't we don't wait at fourteen.
Speaker 2: I can tell you one thing we're not doing is
Speaker 2: we're not kicking back saying we did it, because there's
Speaker 2: still a lot of there's still a lot of rose.
Speaker 3: To ho No, man, do you guys, is there a
Speaker 3: you guys have a faith in your family?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: You know, we were.
Speaker 2: Brought up well, yeah, it's it's it's present because we
Speaker 2: were both brought up very much in the in the
Speaker 2: Christian tradition, and our kids have observant. Our kids have
Speaker 2: observant family members observing observant grandparents on each side.
Speaker 4: But in our household, no, it's like they we've never been.
Speaker 4: We're like we're observing in the.
Speaker 2: Tradition like so many people are where we acknowledge holidays,
Speaker 2: but we're just not we're not church going.
Speaker 4: We're not church going people, even to the point where
Speaker 4: our kids have expressed and.
Speaker 2: We'll go with their grandparents, you know, like they've taken
Speaker 2: into they're interested, but it's just something that for us,
Speaker 2: it's something that we were grounded in, based in and
Speaker 2: then just got like just drifted in some way.
Speaker 3: You know, does that Does that feeling change when you're
Speaker 3: on top of a mountain alone or or yeah?
Speaker 2: Because you know, I feel like a like a spiritual
Speaker 2: connection to nature, and I feel a sort of like
Speaker 2: I don't know, like a.
Speaker 4: Spiritual connection to.
Speaker 2: My friends and my fellow man, Like like I never
Speaker 2: have this feeling of being that it's pointless or being
Speaker 2: that we're just like drifting in outer space, no broader
Speaker 2: meaning things, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: I feel like very grounded in a order.
Speaker 2: Where there's a where there's a higher order, and there's
Speaker 2: a there's a thing that we need to pay homage
Speaker 2: to and there's something that we're indebted to. Right, So
Speaker 2: those feels there's something that you owe back to, right.
Speaker 2: We try to raise our kids with that awareness. But
Speaker 2: what I wouldn't say that we're observing you know.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's interesting, So what uh, what would you owe?
Speaker 3: For the second conversation, I'd have to.
Speaker 2: Think about I'd have to think about why I feel
Speaker 2: that way. I don't know, like I'd have to think
Speaker 2: about why I feel that way. Uh.
Speaker 3: And that's a thought you you would have on the
Speaker 3: top of a mountain in Alaska. You would have that
Speaker 3: feeling like I feel, I feel like I owe something
Speaker 3: like yeah.
Speaker 2: Like a sense of like a like a sense of it,
Speaker 2: like a sense of indebtedness. That's a great question. I
Speaker 2: can't really answer why I have that. You know, It's
Speaker 2: like I never dug back. I never dug back more
Speaker 2: layers on it to really think about why I had
Speaker 2: that feeling of of you know, being in a like
Speaker 2: like existing in a sort of sense, existing in a
Speaker 2: world where there's where there's like a continuity and a
Speaker 2: broader meaning to it all. I just I've never fallen
Speaker 2: into I've never had a sort of despairing, feeling of
Speaker 2: of it all being empty or at all being pointless.
Speaker 2: I've never felt that way, you know, even in the
Speaker 2: absence of organized religion, I've never felt that.
Speaker 4: Perhaps it was from being raised in that tradition, you know.
Speaker 3: Right, which is that emptiness you're kind of elluding that
Speaker 3: that emptiness is typically what drives people into searching for
Speaker 3: a deeper understanding.
Speaker 4: Probably, Yeah, you'll hear people say like, could this really
Speaker 4: be it? And I never I never have that feeling of.
Speaker 2: It could really be it. I think that that's one
Speaker 2: of the things of one of the big strengths of
Speaker 2: One of the reasons I like like parenting and and
Speaker 2: I'm serious about parenting and find a lot of value
Speaker 2: in parenting is I think it.
Speaker 4: Creates a.
Speaker 2: There's this term I used in a different context before,
Speaker 2: but I use this term like an arena, an arena
Speaker 2: of consequence, meaning I've said that one of the reasons
Speaker 2: I like exposing my kids to the outdoors is you're
Speaker 2: in an arena of consequence, Like you can get into situations.
Speaker 2: You know, you're out in big water in a small boat, right,
Speaker 2: You're in an arena of consequence. Man Like screwing up
Speaker 2: has there's a real thing that happens when you screw up,
Speaker 2: and if you're not paying attention, there's a real thing
Speaker 2: that happens. And I feel that I've found so much
Speaker 2: more clarity in life as a parent because it makes
Speaker 2: the whole thing an arena of consequence. I remember my
Speaker 2: buddy earlier, I was talking about the guy that used
Speaker 2: to work for Boordain on the Boardain stuff, and he's
Speaker 2: the showrunner on the History Channel show. We were talking
Speaker 2: about this and he described to me like once he
Speaker 2: had kids, when he woke up in the morning, he
Speaker 2: felt like he was in one of those old movies
Speaker 2: where you put your hat on and go out the
Speaker 2: door in the morning, you know, racing to work with
Speaker 2: the newspaper under your arm, you know, like raising to work.
Speaker 2: He just felt like it was he loved it. All
Speaker 2: of a sudden, there was like a mission, you know,
Speaker 2: yea your family, it gives you a mission.
Speaker 4: And I think that's one of the.
Speaker 2: Things that the reason I have like found such a
Speaker 2: greater happiness as a parent that I did prior to
Speaker 2: being a parent is the huge sense of purpose. So
Speaker 2: when I talk about the continuity thing is all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, you're like, you're.
Speaker 4: Kind of like, oh, I get it.
Speaker 2: If I can take the things that I've learned and
Speaker 2: things where I find value and being a good person
Speaker 2: to the people around you whatever, trying hard, and I
Speaker 2: put that into my kids and that grows in them,
Speaker 2: and then and then they move on and do that
Speaker 2: as well. You know, it kind of makes like, uh,
Speaker 2: it makes things have a lot of sense. And it
Speaker 2: wound up being really really psychologically mentally for mental health
Speaker 2: and stuff for I would say for both speaking for
Speaker 2: my wife who's not in the room right now, but
Speaker 2: if she was here, I would say the same thing.
Speaker 2: It helped us a lot, like like like mentally it did.
Speaker 2: Having kids and being parents did a lot for us,
Speaker 2: a lot for us in a way that's taken me
Speaker 2: years to realize.
Speaker 1: Did you struggle at any point before that with mental health?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I did. I did. Yeah, I had like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I drank too much, Like we don't. I don't drink
Speaker 2: it all now.
Speaker 1: I'm not down on it, but we just don't have
Speaker 1: time to.
Speaker 2: I don't know, drank too much. Uh yeah, I just
Speaker 2: not like not great.
Speaker 4: You know, move moved a lot of things over you know,
Speaker 4: I talked.
Speaker 2: A lot about my parents. I talked a lot about
Speaker 2: my dad that was not always a very like a
Speaker 2: completely harmonious relationship. He had had terrible experiences in the war,
Speaker 2: and and yeah, it was just you know, uh, my net,
Speaker 2: my net overall happiness. Just I kind of found it
Speaker 2: with family, right, I found it with family. And and
Speaker 2: I wouldn't even even have It wouldn't have occurred to
Speaker 2: me to even have said that until I was well
Speaker 2: into the job of being a parent. You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I have to think more about that,
Speaker 3: that becoming a parent fulfills something in you that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's fascinating stuff.
Speaker 2: I feel like, Yeah, it gave you, it gave it
Speaker 2: gave everything a shape. I feel like I think it
Speaker 2: gave everything in life a shape.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: As I sit here, I do realize and it's not
Speaker 3: lost on me that I'm in a position that millions
Speaker 3: of American men probably worldwide, would want to be. And
Speaker 3: that is get I get to talk to Steve one
Speaker 3: on one and ask him anything I want.
Speaker 1: So this is a huge privilege and I appreciate the time.
Speaker 3: I do want to ask a few questions though, to
Speaker 3: you know, for the rest of the men out there.
Speaker 3: One gun, one rifle, and that's all. That's the only
Speaker 3: when you get the rest of your life for any hunt,
Speaker 3: what are you taking?
Speaker 2: This is my fourtunen year old's favorite game.
Speaker 1: That says a lot about my brain. I think, right, yeah, no.
Speaker 4: No, I'm right there with If we had to do okay,
Speaker 4: if it was the one gun, the one gun, me
Speaker 4: and my boy.
Speaker 2: Both decided there would be a twelve gage and we
Speaker 2: would just become slog hunters for big game.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: I like it because we hunt everything man Like we
Speaker 2: hunt rabbits, squirrels.
Speaker 4: Yeah, dear, we're like man.
Speaker 2: If we could have any shell we wanted, we would
Speaker 2: go at the twelve gage.
Speaker 4: For for rifles, I shoot like.
Speaker 2: Uh, for rifles, my main like all around guns. I
Speaker 2: shoot a three hundred win mag. Okay, but see, but
Speaker 2: you know, I hope you know I like to hunt
Speaker 2: moose and stuff, man, you know, and uh, And I
Speaker 2: know there's a lot of advances, and you know, bullets
Speaker 2: are getting so good, and a lot of stuff's changed,
Speaker 2: and you can get away with much lower calibers on stuff.
Speaker 4: But I've never been bothered by recoiling.
Speaker 2: And I enjoy shooting a three hundred win mag so
Speaker 2: if I was picking a rifle. You know my younger bodies.
Speaker 2: Everything now is like smaller, faster, you know.
Speaker 4: But uh yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Shoot three hundred win Man the one gun deal for sure,
Speaker 2: Man twelve gage showy.
Speaker 1: You can even get a bird with that. You can
Speaker 1: get a dove with that. I like it. That's a
Speaker 1: good answer.
Speaker 4: Oh no, we hunt turkeys, we hunt dogs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just do everything man.
Speaker 1: Top five game meets in order.
Speaker 3: I know that woul probably chan and so today in
Speaker 3: your current mood right now from your hotel room.
Speaker 2: A lot of We eat a lot of mule deer.
Speaker 2: My family, We've always eaten a lot of meal deer.
Speaker 2: People tend to like what they know. You know, when
Speaker 2: people talk about something tasting strong, it's because it's unusual
Speaker 2: to them. We eat a ton of mule deer. My
Speaker 2: kids first deer, you know, all mualder. That's what we hunt.
Speaker 2: So that's the favorite. Uh uh. We like to eat
Speaker 2: a lot of halbit and salmon, like cottontail rabbits. Interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 2: cottontail rabbits, we can get.
Speaker 1: Them cotton top three interesting.
Speaker 2: But no, you know now that you put it that way, Oh,
Speaker 2: black cot, I'd put black cottable fish. I like a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: That's a that's why that could change tomorrow. That's a
Speaker 3: tough question.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing is. I'm like I always joke
Speaker 2: like I got way too many. I'm like, I always
Speaker 2: talk about that's my favorite food, and I'm like, well
Speaker 2: I do like that other thing too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2: Give me again, dear me like like it No, But seriously, Uh,
Speaker 2: if I had to I'll tell you this way. If
Speaker 2: I had to just eat one if I had to
Speaker 2: eat one thing, okay, one, just one thing, and I
Speaker 2: had to access to one thing, it would be like
Speaker 2: I would want like deer bodies, deer, okay, white tailed deer, meal,
Speaker 2: the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I want the whole tongue deer.
Speaker 2: Everything. I want just deer.
Speaker 1: Okay, even even an eyeball. You ate an eyeball one time,
Speaker 1: didn't you.
Speaker 2: Yep, I want the whole deer.
Speaker 4: If I didn't pick one thing, I'd be like, it
Speaker 4: has to be the whole deer.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What's a what's a hunt?
Speaker 3: One hunt that just You've had so many you look
Speaker 3: back in your life, is there one that just pops
Speaker 3: out and knocked your socks off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you kind of hit it on the head talking
Speaker 2: about talking about hunting doll sheep. I've been real fortunate.
Speaker 4: Like in Alaska, you can't hunt sheep.
Speaker 2: Without a guide unless you have a relative that lives there.
Speaker 2: It could be your cousin. They called degree kindred. My
Speaker 2: brother has been in Alaska for twenty five years or something,
Speaker 2: so periodically I'll be able to go sheep, hunt them.
Speaker 2: We just go. I can just go with him, you know.
Speaker 2: And and man, that's like it's the just the epitome
Speaker 2: of mountain hunting, the epitome of mountain hunting. Another favor
Speaker 2: for me would be like hunt milder during the rut.
Speaker 2: You know, hunt milder in late November is just a blast,
Speaker 2: just a blast. Love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great. One more thing.
Speaker 3: And I'm not going to push you on this because
Speaker 3: it's contentious, but uh cwd.
Speaker 2: Oh the don't think is contentious. Well, it's contentious, but
Speaker 2: it doesn't bother me talking.
Speaker 3: About Okay, Well, I mean here in Texas, a lot
Speaker 3: of these ranch owners are especially the ones raising deer,
Speaker 3: are actually pretty scared. There's there's guys that have based
Speaker 3: their whole life, their whole income, everything is based around deer,
Speaker 3: and now the government has authority to come and just
Speaker 3: wipe out the whole heard with a twenty four hour notice.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: Is there is there anything nefarious that you think could
Speaker 3: be happening here? Is this a ploy in any way,
Speaker 3: especially after we saw what happened with COVID, If there's
Speaker 3: more to this as we see these CWD cases popping
Speaker 3: up randomly, is it naturally occurring? Have you seen any
Speaker 3: way to eradicate it that's effective. These are all tons
Speaker 3: of questions.
Speaker 2: I have no no, Well, you're opening up a bunch,
Speaker 2: but I'll give you, like if you don't mind, I'll
Speaker 2: give you sort of a general perspectively. Yeah, it was
Speaker 2: first identified in the seventies. Some people feel as though
Speaker 2: it was always there and we weren't finding it. We
Speaker 2: have a lot of testing in place now all around
Speaker 2: the country, and we have areas now where you can
Speaker 2: test test to and you don't find it, and then
Speaker 2: you can test test tests and you begin to find it.
Speaker 2: I do believe, I do believe that it is a
Speaker 2: somewhat novel, meaning new. I do believe it is a
Speaker 2: somewhat new disease, and I think that it's expanding its range.
Speaker 2: I think it's spreading from deer to deer to deer
Speaker 2: in areas. I do not believe there's any stopping it.
Speaker 2: I the primary thing that I worry about with CWD
Speaker 2: is that it would I am very concerned about the
Speaker 2: ramifications of it if it would jump into humans.
Speaker 4: There's no evidence that there's no evidence.
Speaker 2: That it will. It has not.
Speaker 4: I've been I've had people.
Speaker 2: Challenging me on this. I think that there are hundreds
Speaker 2: of thousands of hunters, hundreds of thousands of Americans who've
Speaker 2: eaten CWD positive meat. No one's gotten sick. There's been
Speaker 2: groups of people that we can track over time that
Speaker 2: we knew eight infected meat, you know whatever, fifteen sixteen
Speaker 2: years ago. They routinely, you know, check up with them.
Speaker 2: There's no evidence that it's happened. However, other preon diseases,
Speaker 2: there have been other preon diseases, mad cow for one.
Speaker 2: There's been other preon diseases in time that have jumped.
Speaker 4: And infected humans. So it can't happen.
Speaker 2: You go to England and it's happened where mad cow
Speaker 2: has infected people in a couple of handful of cases.
Speaker 2: So as a prion disease and it's not you know,
Speaker 2: you have like mad cow in cattle, there's a preon
Speaker 2: disease scrapy and sheep. There's a preon disease CWD that
Speaker 2: hits members of the deer family. So you have these
Speaker 2: different kinds of creatures and they have different preon diseases.
Speaker 2: You have a prion disease that hits humans Yakub kreutz
Speaker 2: felt or you know, I think it's Yakub Kreutz disease
Speaker 2: or chrous felt Yakub disease. That's a preon disease that
Speaker 2: occurs in humans. So yeah, I believe that there's a
Speaker 2: preon disease that occurs in servants, not only looks, servants
Speaker 2: and deer in the deer family. There's a rub here
Speaker 2: that that even when people have tried to slow the
Speaker 2: spread or to eradicate the disease in certain areas by
Speaker 2: killing tons of deer, they haven't successfully done it. There's
Speaker 2: no there's no place where you can go look and
Speaker 2: see that any human efforts have done anything to get
Speaker 2: rid of it. When people land at a spot that
Speaker 2: it's just people that have landed at a spot that
Speaker 2: let's say someone someone out there accepts, like I believe
Speaker 2: the CWD is a disease that that can kill deer
Speaker 2: or that does kill deer. I believe that that's true, and.
Speaker 4: I believe it's just out there.
Speaker 2: I don't believe it's going to infect humans, and I
Speaker 2: don't believe that us trying to do a bunch of
Speaker 2: measures to control it are going to be successful. I
Speaker 2: could see a person landing at that in that position
Speaker 2: quite logically, I could see someone landing there. For me, Like,
Speaker 2: what I support, What I would like to do is
Speaker 2: I would like to continue us hunter's anglers, not angers,
Speaker 2: you know, well outdoorsmen, livestock producers, whoever. I think that
Speaker 2: we should continue to explore research and continue to fund
Speaker 2: research and try to get somehow It's very hard, but
Speaker 2: try to get like.
Speaker 4: Really unbiased.
Speaker 2: Information from someone who's not pushing an agenda, not pushing
Speaker 2: a pre existing agenda, or trying to use CWD to
Speaker 2: get something they were already after anyway. Yeah, right, but
Speaker 2: like like straight shooters, honest straight shooters, continuing.
Speaker 4: To explore, like what is this thing?
Speaker 2: What are the risks? Right?
Speaker 4: Like I welcome all of that information, and.
Speaker 3: It sounds like there's almost a race to who gets
Speaker 3: there first, because that the hunters need to get to
Speaker 3: that need to get to the solution before the nefarious
Speaker 3: side that says, hey, we're going to use this for
Speaker 3: something we already wanted to wanted to accomplish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's and like and I've I've seen that man,
Speaker 2: and I and I understand people's frustrations where like, like
Speaker 2: I'm coming from a perspective of a guy that's that's
Speaker 2: that's concerned, very concerned about CWD. I'm also concerned about
Speaker 2: some researchers just some research that came out of Wisconsin
Speaker 2: suggesting that CWD in areas of Wisconsin has far surpassed.
Speaker 4: Humans as the leading cause of death for deer.
Speaker 2: So some people feel that at a certain rate, when
Speaker 2: you get up, when you get CW the infection rates
Speaker 2: thirty forty percent, that it's gonna you're gonna lower your
Speaker 2: deer numbers, your deer herd is gonna go down. And
Speaker 2: here's the other thing is like cwd's always fatal. It's right, Like,
Speaker 2: when a deer gets CWD, it's usually dead within two years.
Speaker 4: So if take six years.
Speaker 2: Five years, six years to grow a mature trophy whitetail.
Speaker 2: And you have infection rates at forty percent or fifty percent,
Speaker 2: it's always fatal within a couple of years.
Speaker 4: You do wonder.
Speaker 2: About our ability in areas that have a lot of infection.
Speaker 2: Are we gonna have the ability to like produce big bucks. Now,
Speaker 2: A lot of people outside of hunters are going to
Speaker 2: look and be like, well, who cares about producing the bucks?
Speaker 2: But you care? I care? I care about that. I
Speaker 2: don't care. I don't care. I care about that a lot.
Speaker 2: I care about deer meat more. And if it wound
Speaker 2: up being that like I had be that, if it
Speaker 2: wound up being that some that it did jump and
Speaker 2: we started being a higher rate of preon diseases in
Speaker 2: humans that were like consuming a bunch of deer meat. Right,
Speaker 2: we haven't seen this yet, there's no evidence of it
Speaker 2: at all. Hopefully that never will be. But if we
Speaker 2: did see that down the road, I would pee. I
Speaker 2: would The first thing I would think is like, man,
Speaker 2: I wish that we had paid more attention this early
Speaker 2: early on.
Speaker 4: But but again, on the other hand of this, what
Speaker 4: burns a lot of guys is what burns.
Speaker 2: A lot of guys is without all this information, trying
Speaker 2: to set regulations and trying to take preventive measures that
Speaker 2: aren't really showing to be effective, but that work against
Speaker 2: the interests of hunters. Meaning there's some county that gets
Speaker 2: CWD and they come up with the idea, well, let's
Speaker 2: go kill every deer in that county everything, and then
Speaker 2: why is it being.
Speaker 4: It doesn't do anything. The deer come back and you
Speaker 4: still have CW.
Speaker 2: So it's like, why do we just kill all the
Speaker 2: deer in the whole damn county.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was in I was in Montana just a
Speaker 3: few months ago. A game warding friend of mine comes in, Sorry,
Speaker 3: I'm late for dinner. Oh, we've just been killing deer
Speaker 3: all day, last two days, just killing deer because of
Speaker 3: one CWD case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's an idea. There's an idea that picture that
Speaker 2: you had picture. There's a cold going around town, right,
Speaker 2: and you might be like, well, how's the cold spread?
Speaker 4: Well, it spreads from person to person.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's get rid of half the people and see
Speaker 2: if we have half as many people with the cold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that makes no sense.
Speaker 3: I see a new show coming one day Steve Vanilla
Speaker 3: and CWD.
Speaker 2: But man, I don't want listen. I don't want you
Speaker 2: to think. Here, here's the one thing I don't want
Speaker 2: you to think. I don't want you to think that
Speaker 2: I am not claiming to know all the answers. Yeah
Speaker 2: I'm not, but I'm telling you flat out.
Speaker 4: I'm telling you flat out I think it's something we
Speaker 4: should pay attention to.
Speaker 2: Hopefully in ten years it'll be like, well, look at
Speaker 2: CWD the way we uh now look at COVID, where
Speaker 2: we're like, hey, you know something that happened.
Speaker 4: We got some things right, we got a lot of
Speaker 4: things wrong.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a lot of things we did we
Speaker 2: didn't need to do, and now we can kind of coexist. Right,
Speaker 2: it's around, it's around. Sure, it's brown, like EHD is around.
Speaker 2: All these other deer diseases are around. I hope we landed.
Speaker 2: I'm not rooting for I'm not rooting for wildlife disease,
Speaker 2: but I don't think that we should. I don't think
Speaker 2: that we should view it differently than we would view
Speaker 2: any other wildlife disease. Like we we like research. We
Speaker 2: want to research wildlife diseases and understand what their capabilities
Speaker 2: are yeah right, No, I want information, man, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: want information.
Speaker 1: You know that's good.
Speaker 3: Hey, bro, thank you so much for taking the time
Speaker 3: being on here hunting history from the heart of a
Speaker 3: of a storyteller. I appreciate you so much, man. And
Speaker 3: it's a it's a great new show that you guys have.
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate you saying all that nice stuff, man,
Speaker 2: And and I appreciate you bringing up and having bringing
Speaker 2: up talking about talking about chronic waste and disease because
Speaker 2: you know, it's a it's a real frustrating mystery, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of dividing some hunters, and and and I yeah,
Speaker 2: and I just hope the guys that have a vested
Speaker 2: interest in deer continue to read up on it and
Speaker 2: follow what's going on and have opinions, but you know,
Speaker 2: have informed opinions, right, like get try to try to
Speaker 2: draw some information from a variety of sources and weigh
Speaker 2: it out in your head and see what you think.
Speaker 1: It's good to talk about it.
Speaker 2: I agree, yeah, one percent.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, brother, sure appreciate your time. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: take care, Yeah you too.
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining me on the Grangersmith podcast. I appreciate
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