Speaker 1: Welcome everyone to the Meter podcast. This is the second
Speaker 1: installment or episode we're doing from the Texas Panhandle. Um,
Speaker 1: we're on the Yano Esticado or state planes and we're
Speaker 1: actually this place called Ransom Canyon. Now these steak plays
Speaker 1: is the weird things. It's just dead ass flat chunk
Speaker 1: of land that comprises like the western half of the
Speaker 1: Texas Panhandle. And I was reading earlier, I make it
Speaker 1: so curious about this place because it's just flat. I
Speaker 1: want to read what real quick when Coronado, you know,
Speaker 1: the Conquisador, Well, Coronado came through here and wrote about this.
Speaker 1: He was the first European, first white guy passed through.
Speaker 1: He says, uh, I reached some planes so vast that
Speaker 1: I did not find their limit anywhere I went, although
Speaker 1: I traveled over them for more than three leagues, with
Speaker 1: no more landmarks than if we had been swallowed up
Speaker 1: by the sea. There was not a stone, nor a
Speaker 1: bit of rising ground, nor a tree nor a shrub
Speaker 1: there anything to go by. That's like, this place is flat.
Speaker 1: This makes my first wife look chesty. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a good one. This place is flat. But earlier I
Speaker 1: was reading it's that I don't know you guys might
Speaker 1: know this. It's pitched across this whole plane. It gains
Speaker 1: about two thousand feet of elevation ten ft per mile.
Speaker 1: It's pitched the southwest. No, the northwest corner is higher
Speaker 1: than the southeast corner. This whole plateau got cocked on
Speaker 1: its side a little bit. So the whole time you
Speaker 1: think it's everything's flat, you're on a you're at a
Speaker 1: cock eyed angle. You're on like something that Ronnie bab built.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which we're joined speed Works, joined um by
Speaker 1: ron bain Um, very long term friend of mine. Uh well, well, uh,
Speaker 1: sorry about that. We're trying to we're getting close onto
Speaker 1: the holiday seasons. We're trying to make rum and egg
Speaker 1: nog and a bunch of crane meat. A bunch of
Speaker 1: crane meat just fell out of the freezer. Also by
Speaker 1: Janice who tell us who works on the Mediator TV
Speaker 1: show crew. And Mike Panasi Hernasi there you Italian born
Speaker 1: and raised in Maine. He's now a Texan PhD candidate
Speaker 1: studies coyotes, studying coyotes. Right, Yeah, he's killed killed one.
Speaker 1: So he killed one. Can I tell why he killed it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fine. He killed one just he was trying to
Speaker 1: tranquilize and he odeed it. It was in very poor conditions,
Speaker 1: so it was already made. And can I tell the
Speaker 1: thing he just revealed to us? Probably come on, tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit. It's out the thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've talked about a few things, nothing to do with
Speaker 1: your wife anything. What you were telling us about memory glands.
Speaker 1: I don't think people would be interested. I think if
Speaker 1: you don't want to tell, and I'll tell unless you
Speaker 1: don't want me to tell. Well, I just gave my
Speaker 1: opinion that I think it's some dependon told something you did,
Speaker 1: so I read about it all right, son, he did
Speaker 1: something that's the most interesting thing that you will here
Speaker 1: all week, but he won't share it what mikel was
Speaker 1: born and raised in Maine. I was born in Connecticut,
Speaker 1: moved to moved a couple of places, but raised in
Speaker 1: Maine when I moved to Maine when I was really young.
Speaker 1: Formative years in Maine. So pretty much you grew up
Speaker 1: Hunt Devision in Maine. Yeah, so, Mike, Uh, then you
Speaker 1: then you where'd you go? Graduated? Where'd you go to
Speaker 1: regular college? Graduated high school through May in Maine, went
Speaker 1: to Yukon. So I was there for four years, did
Speaker 1: some odd jobs and ends, did some field jobs here
Speaker 1: and there. Uh, went back to Connecticut to you know,
Speaker 1: earned cash. And then in the middle of each of them,
Speaker 1: what's your study in regular college? Uh, ecology and evolutionary
Speaker 1: biology at Yukon. Yeah, I took the biology track instead
Speaker 1: of the wildlife track. Yeah, and then came out to
Speaker 1: do a master's degree, did some field jobs, worked worked
Speaker 1: in the fields for five years. Um, then started my
Speaker 1: master's at Texas Tech. Finished it, decided to stay on it.
Speaker 1: That was on kind of genetics as well, but more
Speaker 1: of a lab based study looking at how well DNA
Speaker 1: sampled not invasively. Yeah, okay, So, um, there's kind of
Speaker 1: been a transition. You know, generally, when you do a
Speaker 1: genetic study, you kill the animal and take a tissue
Speaker 1: sample and then you analyze that. Well, you know, you
Speaker 1: can't kill an animal if it's an endangered species or uh,
Speaker 1: and really you know, people are less interested in killing
Speaker 1: animals if you don't have to. So there's been a
Speaker 1: transition to UM sampling not invasively, so hair samples where
Speaker 1: that you catch the animal, take you know, pull some
Speaker 1: hair int of it and let it go. You can
Speaker 1: also get DNA from their scat or their ship. Basically,
Speaker 1: So what happens is there, it's like you tissue from
Speaker 1: the abdominal it is so when the right right, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's the cells from the hope you know, from
Speaker 1: the from the animal that as the as the food
Speaker 1: passes through it, uh, it collects intestinal epithelial cells, is
Speaker 1: what they are. And it collects on the outside of
Speaker 1: this of the fecal sample. And so you pick up
Speaker 1: that fecal sample and you swab the outside and you
Speaker 1: get a mix of bacterial samples or bacterial bacterial DNA
Speaker 1: and then DNA from the animal, and so you will specialize. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you get that too. So what if you cannibalize the
Speaker 1: other kyle, would you be able to figure out what
Speaker 1: DNA was from the cow that got cannibalized or the
Speaker 1: cow that was taking the ship. That actually would be
Speaker 1: more challenging. But fortunately katies don't generally cannibalize each other. Now, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I found a coyote ship one time where
Speaker 1: he had shoot out an entire fond soof you actually,
Speaker 1: I've seen that a lot teeth and hoofs for some
Speaker 1: well obviously for teeth. I mean, they don't get digestics. Well,
Speaker 1: now now you're trying to do the one ups and
Speaker 1: ship game. Oh, that's fine. And I found a bear
Speaker 1: one time that shot out of bear cloth. One up
Speaker 1: that see, so he's pruning his teeth, cleaning his teeth,
Speaker 1: and he saw it. That's not that's found robbing nest.
Speaker 1: Shot of Robbing's nest. So, Mike, and then you did
Speaker 1: that work and now you're doing work on kyote genetics
Speaker 1: as well, but completely different questions. So now landscape genetics,
Speaker 1: So looking at the relating this among coyotes um across
Speaker 1: a large geographic area. You know, everybody thinks every you know,
Speaker 1: coyotes are very adaptable. They can live in you know,
Speaker 1: almost any habitat, you know, from city to a desert
Speaker 1: to motley this to you know, swamp land almost and
Speaker 1: so is there any differentiation among these? Are just any
Speaker 1: coyote can they just as easily move from one habitat
Speaker 1: to another? And so my question is, you know, are
Speaker 1: they are they genetically differentiated based upon well, not only habitat,
Speaker 1: that's the main question, but is there anything else? You know, temperature,
Speaker 1: or and you know, most people would think all kyote
Speaker 1: is being such a generalist species. No, but there's been
Speaker 1: some recent work out of California that actually suggests that
Speaker 1: there is. And so I'm trying to kind of second
Speaker 1: that to see if it's just kind of an anomaly
Speaker 1: or if it can be verified. Again, like you were
Speaker 1: saying to me that if a Kyle leaves you know,
Speaker 1: also my calls the kyotes, which is proper, but I
Speaker 1: find that anyone who has killed them, well I killed,
Speaker 1: it's still killing one. Um. That's like, if a Kyle
Speaker 1: leaves the mountains, is he likely to just go settle
Speaker 1: into some mountains somewhere. Well, that's the that's the hypothesis
Speaker 1: based on the workout of California because the natal habitat
Speaker 1: biased dispersal hypothesis pretty original, right, Yeah, natal have that bias.
Speaker 1: So if you're you know, fuck you Rod, all right,
Speaker 1: we can started talking about the strip clubs, run away up,
Speaker 1: talk you We're not We're here. We're actually here to
Speaker 1: talk about coles. Were talking about cranes and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tie this. I thought I was getting a little long
Speaker 1: into two. No, listen, I'm gonna do some wonderful. You
Speaker 1: don't believe how good of a host I am because
Speaker 1: lot taw I do this transition. Um, check it out,
Speaker 1: wait for it. That's great about those coyotes. And it
Speaker 1: just so happens that Mike that I met Mike through
Speaker 1: our other guests here today at our nett say hello,
Speaker 1: how do you at Ore? That's a biologist, you know
Speaker 1: Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. I met Mike through Ed, who met Mike,
Speaker 1: Mike's professor, and I here to hunt cranes. We're here
Speaker 1: to hunt cranes and um, and I want to talk
Speaker 1: about cranes. And I know, like my friend Ed, this
Speaker 1: is getting are you back? Are you waking up? I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get through the sofa. I'll try to do
Speaker 1: this in the most efficient way possible. Through my friendship
Speaker 1: with Ed, I was invited out to a crane hunt,
Speaker 1: a Sandhill crane hunt, and I until a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, I didn't know you could even hunt cranes,
Speaker 1: like most people in America don't know you can hunt cranes.
Speaker 1: I put a thing up on Twitter I was going
Speaker 1: crane hunting. All I got was people saying, like, I
Speaker 1: didn't think you could do that. What do you do
Speaker 1: with them? Can you eat them? Is it legal? One
Speaker 1: guy said, I know that Oklahoma sells crane hunting licenses,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know you could actually hunt them, which
Speaker 1: is like a we trick that they must play on
Speaker 1: you in some states. And so we had to plan
Speaker 1: and do a crane on and um, we're down here now,
Speaker 1: and most people who see sand hill cranes see like
Speaker 1: a couple of Saint hill cranes. I remember the first
Speaker 1: time I ever saw sandhill crane was in Michigan Upper
Speaker 1: Peninsula and it was out in the field and we
Speaker 1: stopped and asked permission from a lady to see if
Speaker 1: we can walk back in her field to look at
Speaker 1: the cranes. Um, they're just not around, but here they're
Speaker 1: down here in massive numbers, five thousand ten. You might
Speaker 1: see in one or two. Yeah, yeah, I mean like yeah,
Speaker 1: in a group. And they're so good that the the
Speaker 1: lingo the joke is like people called rear buying the sky.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about a very unusual no yeah, so
Speaker 1: good eating it. Only eight states have a crane season.
Speaker 1: I used to live in Montana and you had to
Speaker 1: uh put into application and draw a tag to hunt
Speaker 1: a crane. It's crazy. Yeah, just like drawn the elk
Speaker 1: tech could apply for a crane tech. We get three day,
Speaker 1: three day for like two and well, let's see the
Speaker 1: middle of November to first week of February. I think
Speaker 1: it's the second Saturday of February, so it can go
Speaker 1: to the eighth generous season. Very generous and invited me
Speaker 1: down hunt craze and then he was kind of like,
Speaker 1: I want you to come out craze, but you also
Speaker 1: got to kind of understand it's not totally my deal.
Speaker 1: Like I'm this ed speaking, I'm sort of the guests
Speaker 1: of these dudes. What are these dudes being Mike who
Speaker 1: do all the work and Mike pounds. I'm hesitant even
Speaker 1: say what town Rid because you're on the gold here
Speaker 1: and I think you're gonna get swamped. We are. We've started,
Speaker 1: I mean this area. I've noticed a huge difference in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years. Yeah, I've been here for
Speaker 1: a little while because I did my masters and I'm
Speaker 1: doing finishing my PhD. And the first four years or so,
Speaker 1: very little competition. And when I say competition, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about from other you know, just recreational hunters and and
Speaker 1: other outfitters. Three years ago or so, we started getting
Speaker 1: you know, bumping up against outfitters other outfitters. But no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean other meanings different, like you know, not just one,
Speaker 1: but several different um. And it's gotten progressively worse. So
Speaker 1: last year, after Thanksgiving, which for some reason it seems
Speaker 1: like people focus on geese or something before that, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, mid late December till the rest of the season,
Speaker 1: the outfitters are just on the cranes. And so I'm
Speaker 1: not willing to pay money for one, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just out one out of principle, and two I can't
Speaker 1: afford it. Um. But they're just they're just always out there,
Speaker 1: especially where uh in this in the meadow area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's fine, I'll say it out there. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: But I just want to really quick, like checks out
Speaker 1: really quick explain. Cran crana is similar to goose hut
Speaker 1: in the field. I mean, you're out there, you're going
Speaker 1: to the feeld, you putting up decoys. The birds roost
Speaker 1: on water at night, but instead of floating on the water,
Speaker 1: they stay in the water shellow. They're wrong here. They
Speaker 1: have these shallow leg's called applies gets daylight out. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the sky starts filling up with birds.
Speaker 1: You're out in the field on food. They're trying to
Speaker 1: hit crop land. You have decoys out, you pit blind,
Speaker 1: laying down, hiding whatever you do in layout blinds and
Speaker 1: they come in information if everything goes right in your
Speaker 1: bamy maham about three a day. And there way better
Speaker 1: than geese to eat table fair. It's a way better bird.
Speaker 1: And in your time here you've killed hundreds of them personally,
Speaker 1: I have, I mean I haven't. I had a lot.
Speaker 1: And how big is your stable of landowners you're allowed
Speaker 1: to hold on? I put a lot of work into it.
Speaker 1: I mean he has a speel, but I don't want
Speaker 1: you to talk about it because people are gonna steal
Speaker 1: your tilt that it's you know, it's it's something that
Speaker 1: works at a very high success rate. You know, he's pulling.
Speaker 1: This is a door, classic banging on the door. He's pulling.
Speaker 1: I'm very rarely sorry. He don't bring that door. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's too time consuming, it's not it's not efficient enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got a speel. He gives over the phone. He was.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not on Facebook at all. He was run
Speaker 1: over success over it. I would say it's over ninety percent,
Speaker 1: but just to be conservative, and I'll say, but you know,
Speaker 1: it helps that they don't like the crane. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would have thought that people to like the cranes or well,
Speaker 1: let's say the landowners the farmers to farmers don't well,
Speaker 1: and I'm generalizing, and I hate to generalize. Okay, so
Speaker 1: a good chunk of them don't care for the cranes.
Speaker 1: Another good chunk really like, you know, they they're still
Speaker 1: they consider themselves still a part of the land and
Speaker 1: hunting is very acceptable. So that certainly helps. So even
Speaker 1: if they love the cranes, they're okay to crane hunting
Speaker 1: because there's a you know, there's a sustainable population. We
Speaker 1: had a conversation we were out getting the permission. I
Speaker 1: was with you when you scored a permission and this
Speaker 1: was actually like started out started out the phone call,
Speaker 1: and that was I wanted to be to send a
Speaker 1: dairy queen. Right. Normally they don't want to do that,
Speaker 1: but that was cool that I got to meet him.
Speaker 1: You know, usually I don't want to waste your time. Yeah, personally,
Speaker 1: drives us around twelve miles and clearly he was busy too.
Speaker 1: They were fixing a combine and he took the time
Speaker 1: twelve miles to show us his fields and explain his
Speaker 1: property boundaries. Then at some point says, well, what said
Speaker 1: this for me? I said to him, what do you
Speaker 1: need to be in it for you? And he was
Speaker 1: so uncommitted to the idea of getting money that he
Speaker 1: did that was cool, talked himself out of it. He said, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, God lets me be a farmer and
Speaker 1: I should share this lamb with people. We're just touching,
Speaker 1: and he said like basically said you have my home
Speaker 1: is yours. If you screw me, I will screw you,
Speaker 1: you know, and he left. You know the way we
Speaker 1: would screw him. All you want to know is when
Speaker 1: we're gonna be at that. When are you in my fields?
Speaker 1: That's it. If you ever go in my fields without
Speaker 1: telling me you're in my fields. And he's got a
Speaker 1: cell phone, all I gotta do is text him and
Speaker 1: be like hey, and I did. We went out there
Speaker 1: the next morning. I texted him when we were setting up.
Speaker 1: I said, you know we're setting up. You know. The
Speaker 1: last thing he said to us was when we left,
Speaker 1: you said, can I text you? He said, don't expect
Speaker 1: me to text back? Yea, but he did. You know
Speaker 1: what's funny. You know what's funny, he responded, and I
Speaker 1: was like, well, you know, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: should respond or not. And I remember him saying, we'll
Speaker 1: have a text friend. Yeah. Well, and I didn't want
Speaker 1: him to think, well, I'll respond, so now he's gotta
Speaker 1: because I don't like the text so I didn't. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes I feel like I don't want to respond, but
Speaker 1: I feel like you got a boyfriend kind of nobody
Speaker 1: likes a texting conversation. So he responded. I told him
Speaker 1: how we did that morning. I said, we killed this man,
Speaker 1: and he responded, so it was day two, we killed eight.
Speaker 1: That a good day, I said, actually, But I texted
Speaker 1: him right before we started to pack up, which is
Speaker 1: right before I got back to you guys, and I
Speaker 1: find out that you guys actually killed one more. So
Speaker 1: I killed him. I told him we killed seven. He
Speaker 1: texted back, well, it's better than six, which is cool,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, and I was like, well, should
Speaker 1: I respond, you know, and I didn't. I didn't respond
Speaker 1: because you know, he said to me, don't expect a response,
Speaker 1: So I was like, you know, I'm not gonna respond.
Speaker 1: You know, he's home right now checking. I tend to
Speaker 1: overthink things, which you guys probably know from the decoy
Speaker 1: set ups, right, and we don't know what to do,
Speaker 1: don't I don't think that, um Field. I don't think
Speaker 1: you could really overthink it, because that just means you're
Speaker 1: getting I think like when you're overthinking waterfowl hoodie, you're
Speaker 1: probably thinking about if there's ten things in your head,
Speaker 1: nine of them don't matter, one of them does, but
Speaker 1: you don't know which one. So you gotta do all
Speaker 1: ten right, because how could you ever know which one
Speaker 1: is the one that matters. Is it like that you
Speaker 1: have a yellow hoodie on the hoods pokeingon a little bit?
Speaker 1: Is it the wind? Yeah? Yeah? Whatever? Is it fresh dirt?
Speaker 1: Is it that you got X shot and you should
Speaker 1: be using Y shot? So first day we went out,
Speaker 1: it was a very good day that day. But I
Speaker 1: want I want to I want to I want to
Speaker 1: get that by one top I s el because it's
Speaker 1: really sets I think this kind of sets the scene
Speaker 1: here a little bit. We killed a crane this will
Speaker 1: kind of explained cranes we killed the crane's banded. First off,
Speaker 1: talk about how many Mike about how many crazy killed?
Speaker 1: How do you have bands out of So I've killed
Speaker 1: a lot of crans myself, but I also enjoyed taking
Speaker 1: people hunting, and I especially enjoyed taking people hunting who
Speaker 1: haven't hunter before. So you can imagine I take a
Speaker 1: lot of people hunting and it's not you know, I say, I.
Speaker 1: It's me and a couple of the guys that generally
Speaker 1: take people, although I'm the one pushing to take newbies
Speaker 1: because nobody else has the patients that I do. Um
Speaker 1: generally speaking, again, if we didn't have generalizations, we would
Speaker 1: never get anything. You just would be able to talk
Speaker 1: about anything, and everything would be like a constant qualification.
Speaker 1: That's wrong. So so, uh, you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: my friends have uh a killboard and they keep track
Speaker 1: of everything, everything they kill for the year. I don't
Speaker 1: like that, no, but you know it does. There are
Speaker 1: good points and bad points. But anyway to get to
Speaker 1: the point, what do you think about that? Hmm? It's
Speaker 1: like Boone and Crockett, you know, not really into the
Speaker 1: fact that like dudes are always scoring their stuff all
Speaker 1: the time, and always talking about numbers this, numbers that.
Speaker 1: But when you look back across records of all those numbers,
Speaker 1: those are valuable information. I'm gonna tell you why I
Speaker 1: do it. What happens when you get your Sandiel crane
Speaker 1: survey or your waterfowl survey from the Fish and Wilife Service.
Speaker 1: You want to guess, Yeah, but those are so broad,
Speaker 1: but you know they're general. Yeah, But I mean, I
Speaker 1: keep dragging numbers just so I know whether I'm within
Speaker 1: a My other day, I started making a list. That's right.
Speaker 1: I was with you. You told me how many species
Speaker 1: of fowl, of game birds general hunted killed, and I said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do that too. And I had just that
Speaker 1: day killed my first day in hill crazy forgot his
Speaker 1: first crane. I couldn't put it up dirty dirty, It
Speaker 1: felt dirty. It felt like we sat down and trying
Speaker 1: to make a list of every girlfriend you ever had
Speaker 1: or something. But it's not that. So I started making
Speaker 1: a list, and I felt dirtier and dirtier and dirtier
Speaker 1: the more I wrote. Now, not a conquered board, though
Speaker 1: I mean I respect the things I killed. It's more
Speaker 1: of a experience board, not a conquerboard. Kill board. You
Speaker 1: called it, Yeah, well they did that sounds real Pentagon.
Speaker 1: Well come on, we're not going to use a cliche
Speaker 1: kill Yeah, like you harvest. I'm not lying. I know,
Speaker 1: I know what killing is. It's killing it is. It is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like why harvest to do? But the reason why I
Speaker 1: like it is because it's more of a ratio thing
Speaker 1: species to species, Like, oh man, we killed that many
Speaker 1: Widgeons this year compared to last year, versus Gadwall versus teal.
Speaker 1: And that's what that's why I like. It's a relative
Speaker 1: you know, it's a relative thing. I used to keep
Speaker 1: a hunt journal, so you did it too. I got Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kept the hut journal, and I got lazy and
Speaker 1: quit doing it. And when I look back, I can't
Speaker 1: believe I ever quit it. So why do you say
Speaker 1: it's you feel dirty calling it a killboard. A hunt
Speaker 1: journals different because here's the thing. A hunt journal is
Speaker 1: a day by day deal. It's not like you making
Speaker 1: this catalog this Noah's Ark collection, only the kills. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like that's like yeah, and has more heart. But
Speaker 1: but I don't want to get away from what was
Speaker 1: I even talking about we're how many change? Okay, always crazy?
Speaker 1: You see how many dead craze a pass through your
Speaker 1: hands in your time here text with all the all
Speaker 1: counting all the people that we take so basically over
Speaker 1: our decoys, okay, whether it was me, your friends, and
Speaker 1: we actually tallied this up last year, and so of
Speaker 1: course it's gonna be higher this year. It was one
Speaker 1: thousand plus, all legal. Of course, let me say that
Speaker 1: all legalus, Well, you know, probably a thousand plus. No,
Speaker 1: that's you and your uncud all that and over how
Speaker 1: many years? Well, first, hold on how many years I've
Speaker 1: been here? I've been in Lovick, So did having a
Speaker 1: lot of fun with my master's degree? Took some time,
Speaker 1: a lot of phone is the PhD. So since two
Speaker 1: thousands to get into your tardiness on your degrees here, Michael,
Speaker 1: since two thousand six, so a few years. But I
Speaker 1: didn't hunt for the first two. But anyway, and all
Speaker 1: the friends that I've taken in we take a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Thousand birds. I've seen now two banded birds,
Speaker 1: and so it's a big deal. And I actually I
Speaker 1: was the one who killed the other one. So I've
Speaker 1: got to the first one. The first one. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: all right, so real quick and if you could as
Speaker 1: quick because as as gnu as he banded a bird
Speaker 1: as quickly as possible, explain what that means that those
Speaker 1: is a bandoned bird, what it means to bandit? What
Speaker 1: a band it was? Like? What is a banded bird? Sure,
Speaker 1: so biologists for a variety of reasons banded waterfoil. Your
Speaker 1: your colleague and friend brand bands WATERFOLI banded thousands of
Speaker 1: ducks myself, but it did banned a few cranes. And
Speaker 1: the reasons to track their migratory patterns. You get information
Speaker 1: about not only movements, migration, but also how old the
Speaker 1: animals are, you know a lot of ifornation, survivorship, all
Speaker 1: those kinds of things. So when I was when I
Speaker 1: banded some cranes in Oregon, it was part of a
Speaker 1: net nest success study, and from my putting bands on
Speaker 1: those animals, we would you know, if they were killed
Speaker 1: in another part of the country, we'd know, you know,
Speaker 1: what their migratory pat Yeah. So, like the only way
Speaker 1: you're ever going to get any information is someone shoots
Speaker 1: or finds the bird he found it. What's that No
Speaker 1: one picks up road kill. So it's from Hume. You'd
Speaker 1: be surprised how many people do museum. She did ask
Speaker 1: what happened to it? And also I thought that was
Speaker 1: a naive question, But I didn't happen a naive question
Speaker 1: because we could have found it. Yeah, it could have
Speaker 1: been hit by winter and hit by a truck. But
Speaker 1: you get a lot of good demographic data once that
Speaker 1: band is returned in where it was from where it
Speaker 1: was banded to words it's uh, it's found or killed
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um, you get information about how old it is,
Speaker 1: all kinds of demographic information. So there's anything like real silled,
Speaker 1: well what do you guess? You guess, can't have a
Speaker 1: setting conversation. So there's anything like there's this thing that
Speaker 1: a bolgy too called market recapture. We'll say you want
Speaker 1: to do it lake going to a lake and net
Speaker 1: uh hundred bass out of the lake and you put
Speaker 1: a tag in each of those bass, and then a
Speaker 1: week later or and then then you on this tag.
Speaker 1: It says like if you catch this bass called blank number,
Speaker 1: and a week later ninety guys have called with bass,
Speaker 1: you put a tag and you'd be like, wow, man,
Speaker 1: there aren't many bass in that lake. And the ones
Speaker 1: that are all get caught. Or you're going to tag
Speaker 1: a hunter bass in a lake and ten years ago
Speaker 1: by and no one ever turns into tag, you'd be like, man,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of bass in that lake and the
Speaker 1: amount of people catching these there's not many people catching
Speaker 1: the bass, like you know, there's a hundred of them
Speaker 1: and whatever tournament. So with ducks, remember sometimes it's it's
Speaker 1: surprisingly high the number of these bands get returned, but
Speaker 1: the percentage, yeah, I can't. I'd have to call brand,
Speaker 1: but I was. I was kind of surprised, like how many,
Speaker 1: like how good people are about calling him? And there's
Speaker 1: some guys I don't want to day their names, but
Speaker 1: some of our friends and friends of mine who have
Speaker 1: a thing where they won't call in their bands and
Speaker 1: these are hides so they have strings. Why well, because
Speaker 1: they feel that it's like, um, did it, did it? Did?
Speaker 1: It's their little secret that it's like it's unreported, so
Speaker 1: therefore it's more there's than someone else's. And they have
Speaker 1: because their guides, so they have just their call landards
Speaker 1: or it's graped with bands that they brag about. The
Speaker 1: big American jewelry type band is like it looks like
Speaker 1: a wedding ring with a big, thick wedding ring with
Speaker 1: the biologists. These guys, well, I would almost like to
Speaker 1: get these guys names because they're huge numbskulls. When I
Speaker 1: started duck hunting in Michigan the first time, I huna,
Speaker 1: would you know, back in Twin Lake, I heard guys
Speaker 1: say that if you call it in, you got to
Speaker 1: send it in. They thought that you had to give
Speaker 1: it up, and they thought it was such a neat
Speaker 1: token that they were afraid to call it in. Like, no,
Speaker 1: if you do that, they're gonna take it because they
Speaker 1: need But you've heard that years ago, Yes, years ago.
Speaker 1: I was about to say that whoever the FEDS official
Speaker 1: widelines ever, did a really good job at making it
Speaker 1: h you know, such a trophy to call it in
Speaker 1: and figure it out. But maybe you know, I'd never
Speaker 1: heard that that people actually think it keeping guys. So
Speaker 1: the only guys I know these guys are big snow
Speaker 1: goose guys. And so they like to just you know,
Speaker 1: you know, their eyes trying to find ways. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into you know, the reason.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say this. This bird had a
Speaker 1: double band and the reason but we don't need induced
Speaker 1: the fact that this bird had a band. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well I thought we did. You said a thousand crates
Speaker 1: of past new Mike's hands or you see the thousand die. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just got one. We just got the second one
Speaker 1: this week with the band on it. They had what
Speaker 1: I'd called a double band. So one band is the
Speaker 1: wedding ring band, the other band is a wedding band
Speaker 1: being the metal band, typical metal band. The other band
Speaker 1: is this big chunk of plastic on there with with
Speaker 1: big number so that someone would be able to read
Speaker 1: that with a pair of binoculars or a spotting scope
Speaker 1: would be able to pull that number off visually with
Speaker 1: all having to kill the thing to get the information
Speaker 1: from it. We call the eight hunter number. I mean,
Speaker 1: like the craze barret. I mean he's still warm from
Speaker 1: the sand. He calls the eight hunter number on the
Speaker 1: band from the field that we shot at, and we
Speaker 1: got the nicest girl in the whole world to take
Speaker 1: care of us. I think it was Tammy, super nice Gale,
Speaker 1: and she sounded hot and sarcastically because we were all
Speaker 1: arguing who shot this bird, because we we went round
Speaker 1: table around him, but you know the bird. I said, well, no,
Speaker 1: we put that one, and he goes, well, we know,
Speaker 1: I put that one in the grass. And then we
Speaker 1: got We're on the phone with Tammy and I was
Speaker 1: just being a smartass as usual, and I said, could
Speaker 1: we get four certificates for this? She goes, as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, we will allow up to four certificates
Speaker 1: for a till a lot of guys getting fights over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because like Mike said, it's a trophy. You know, they
Speaker 1: couldn't have done that ten years or twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: They probably like no one. I have like a medicine box.
Speaker 1: It's like a medicine bag, but I put it keep
Speaker 1: in the box. It's like just stuff I have, And
Speaker 1: I got a couple of waterfowl bands in there. It's
Speaker 1: just like, really, you think, like I said, they marketed it. Well,
Speaker 1: so we call up and she can't give us full information.
Speaker 1: But when you get a band and you call in
Speaker 1: a band, what they'll event you do is I'll tell you,
Speaker 1: uh where it was banded, which they told us immediately
Speaker 1: when it was banned, which they told us who based
Speaker 1: who banded it. This is when you you'll eventually get
Speaker 1: all this information like when was the bird banded? Um,
Speaker 1: where who made it? And how old was it when
Speaker 1: it was banded or at least certainly not a chick
Speaker 1: versus a Yeah, not the true age. But so this
Speaker 1: crane that we killed, the double bander, we called in
Speaker 1: and were immediately told that this crane was abandoned years
Speaker 1: ago in Fairbanks, Alaska as an adult. We did not
Speaker 1: learn that yet. The other one you had was what
Speaker 1: eleven and once I got the certificate back, it was
Speaker 1: banded as an adult. So it was several old years old,
Speaker 1: you know, yes, it was twelve plus. It banned in
Speaker 1: Nebraska Flat River. Most game birds like it like takes
Speaker 1: out like a like it takes out like a peasant.
Speaker 1: A three year old peasant is old. Yeah, it's old.
Speaker 1: When you get birds come out like most game birds.
Speaker 1: Every year of the birds that that that fledg So
Speaker 1: of the birds that successfully leave the nest, well first
Speaker 1: off about sets are destroyed. This is a very just
Speaker 1: like the Night of They don't help. They don't help
Speaker 1: at all, you know, like roughly like let's say it's variable,
Speaker 1: but nest are destroyed. Of the birds that reach something
Speaker 1: like six months of age or something. Firs that leave
Speaker 1: the nest, maybe like seventy will be dead within the
Speaker 1: year of those ones that have lived seventy will be
Speaker 1: dead next year. I mean this varies all through the thing,
Speaker 1: but you wind up realizing that when you go hunting pheasants,
Speaker 1: you're shooting a lot of birds that were born that year.
Speaker 1: You're shooting something that were born the year before. And
Speaker 1: then it almost becomes rare downline, like when you shoot
Speaker 1: a big turkey a big spur. If you shoot a
Speaker 1: turkey the big long itch, plush, sharp spur, he's three.
Speaker 1: You can shoot a hell lot of turkeys and not
Speaker 1: see that spur. Right, you know something that these things
Speaker 1: are just oldest dirt. Yes, I felt like ship. We
Speaker 1: found a whole that bird was. Do you know the
Speaker 1: oldest ones? You want to tell it? I found it too.
Speaker 1: I looked it up. I found it too, just just
Speaker 1: since we killed close one night. I guess so the
Speaker 1: oldest sandhill crane known on record, So that means at
Speaker 1: least probably no, I uh it was, I think it was.
Speaker 1: It was banded. Okay, that's what I saw. Thirty six
Speaker 1: years seven months. That's how old Custer was banded in
Speaker 1: Wyoming in ninety three and founded the message six years
Speaker 1: seven months. No wonder why it's so hard to hunt.
Speaker 1: So this was a young bird. I mean it was
Speaker 1: a young bird. You shot with the yoke. They don't
Speaker 1: like that's how how do they guys get before to
Speaker 1: start breeding? I'm a quick uh so some some birds
Speaker 1: will breed their second year. Some don't breed until seven
Speaker 1: years old. That's like, you know, talk about talk about
Speaker 1: a case selected species. Know a lot of people in
Speaker 1: eat wild game eat their eyes talking about how wild
Speaker 1: game eat tastes gaming and older animals get game, Like,
Speaker 1: remember the hell the word game means that that's the
Speaker 1: wholeder conversation. As an animal get it's older, it's muscles
Speaker 1: are more exercise, which would with cattle. Yeah yeah, But
Speaker 1: what the point I'm gonna make is people who just
Speaker 1: eat meat from stores and restaurants seldom are eating animals.
Speaker 1: They're never eating animals more than two years old unless
Speaker 1: they eat because then you know, you get Yeah. But
Speaker 1: they used to used to take seven years to run
Speaker 1: a dairy cow. They can run a dairy cole through
Speaker 1: wayfaster that they milk the guts out of dairy cot
Speaker 1: a couple of years. Now they're running through all her
Speaker 1: cycles that fast, get all every drop of milk. They
Speaker 1: would have gotten out of her in seven years. They
Speaker 1: get out of her animal in three years. You don't
Speaker 1: eat many old animals, chickens, those things are a few
Speaker 1: months old when you're eating six months for a meat chicken.
Speaker 1: And here you are we just tonight we're eating some
Speaker 1: bird this old. I killed a beardle seventeen years old.
Speaker 1: One time. I felt bad about that because I wasn't
Speaker 1: I mean, I was older than that at the time.
Speaker 1: I wasn't held out, you know, I felt bad. I
Speaker 1: don't know why. I just it just like it bothers
Speaker 1: me a little bit. But at the same time, it's
Speaker 1: like you're also going, okay, there must not be a
Speaker 1: huge amount of predation on them and a huge amount
Speaker 1: of hunter mortality because they wouldn't be all living that long, right,
Speaker 1: and one more point to make it, they're gonna be
Speaker 1: done talking about it. And you guys talk about stuff
Speaker 1: when when you look at why elk, like why elk
Speaker 1: gets so hard to kill on public land whatever? Because
Speaker 1: I used to saying like, oh yeah, you got a
Speaker 1: cow elk she's nine years old. She's spent nine years
Speaker 1: watching hunters try to kill him, you know, and they
Speaker 1: don't forget everything right, and so they have like this
Speaker 1: herd has this sort of institutional knowledge. You got a
Speaker 1: bunch of cows. Lead cows are old and they've just
Speaker 1: seen all this happen a bunch of times before, you know,
Speaker 1: and they know, like they know a fake cow call
Speaker 1: and they know to go their direction. And now here
Speaker 1: you are trying to fool some birds with excellent eyesight,
Speaker 1: and you've got some of these dudes flat around. They've
Speaker 1: been doing this, they've been playing this game twenty years.
Speaker 1: And you wonder, like why they keep flaring, why they
Speaker 1: keep flaring? Is it because of this? It's because of that.
Speaker 1: It's like you got you got a dozen birds flying
Speaker 1: across the sky. How many years of group experience or
Speaker 1: that dozen birds. It is very similar to catching a tarpon.
Speaker 1: Tarpin lived fifty years sometimes and have been just seen
Speaker 1: so many flies, so many lures, cruising those you know, flats,
Speaker 1: guy after guy after guy, and when you finally pull
Speaker 1: it off and make it all happen, it's a special thing.
Speaker 1: And it kind of felt like that this week. You know,
Speaker 1: we were. It took us four days to really kind
Speaker 1: of dial in our program and figure out how to
Speaker 1: get it. It took us four days before we were
Speaker 1: tricking cranes. We were killing cranes by sky blast pass you. Now,
Speaker 1: let's not I don't want to imply to that it
Speaker 1: was a learning experience because some things went wrong the
Speaker 1: first couple of days, and it was more of a
Speaker 1: logistics and it wasn't. It was it was a strategy,
Speaker 1: your strategy to people try to film hunt and you
Speaker 1: know what, it worked. We went back to the basics
Speaker 1: of how I usually hunt. I was trying to I was,
Speaker 1: you know, change, find the best cover and hide you
Speaker 1: on the way home or at the pond when you
Speaker 1: go out with just like another guy, you'll just grab
Speaker 1: a big tumble weed and haul down in the ball
Speaker 1: anywhere and just sit there like no, yeah, no, nothing.
Speaker 1: Just so we come out here. But we're like, well, no,
Speaker 1: it's gotta be eight people, big gass cameras, and the
Speaker 1: camera can't be down under a tumble of weeks, it's
Speaker 1: got to be and it's got a big lands and
Speaker 1: a lot of times you're looking at the sun and
Speaker 1: all the stuff. This isn't trying to criticize your crane
Speaker 1: hood to building. So we eventually got to We did
Speaker 1: fuler crane cameras because we're like learning how to hut cranes.
Speaker 1: We did ful of crate until the day because we're learning,
Speaker 1: like weather was an issue, but also just like how
Speaker 1: are we gonna do this like filmed thing. It was
Speaker 1: a learning curve with uh incorporating the camera crew factor
Speaker 1: and the number of people in the interaction between number
Speaker 1: of people and camera because I've taken out well, I
Speaker 1: guess seven was the most I've taken up. No, actually eight,
Speaker 1: so I've done eight people before once and we did
Speaker 1: not limit. But you probably had him scattered around. He
Speaker 1: didn't have. They were we have to have and actually
Speaker 1: was the last weekend of the season, and so they
Speaker 1: were educated. Well you know, we really how we really
Speaker 1: wanted up, what really wanted up helping is we got
Speaker 1: to do it dit roll. Yeah, like a dit roll
Speaker 1: between two fields where they wanted to be yea, they
Speaker 1: wanted to be there. We had to thick vegetation to
Speaker 1: hide it. But notice how you and I were just
Speaker 1: out in the middle of nowhere and we were hidden.
Speaker 1: No nothing flared, but you were hitting him, were like
Speaker 1: a great it was covered that we gathered and put it,
Speaker 1: went out into the middle and put it on us.
Speaker 1: And we could have done that and if we were
Speaker 1: thirty yards over, we wouldn't been in bear stripped kind.
Speaker 1: We would have been the same. Yes, I believe killed,
Speaker 1: don't care. I'll be crazy killed. It can't be the same.
Speaker 1: So you think you could have gone on in the
Speaker 1: winter wheat field, No, whe It's the only difference that
Speaker 1: deep green, no early season naive birds. Yes, but you
Speaker 1: don't have much time with that. That's the only difference. Really. Well,
Speaker 1: your guests on the show, so I don't want to
Speaker 1: take your task too bad? Well, that's fine, do it.
Speaker 1: I'll okay. Why were the birds spoken in the milo
Speaker 1: field so bad? The first day? Her second day to
Speaker 1: be honest? First day to yeah, yeah, of course I
Speaker 1: want you to be honest. Uh. It was hard for
Speaker 1: some of the new He used to stay down and
Speaker 1: stay covered when I so here's the problem, and it's
Speaker 1: a very don't mention any name. I'm not doing people.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know. So here's there's there's not saying
Speaker 1: it shooters or camera, but there is there's a general
Speaker 1: consensus that well, wait, I'm wearing camo, I blend in.
Speaker 1: That's bullshit. I don't think anybody thought that. Yes, people did, alright, everyone.
Speaker 1: I know you're enjoying the Meat Eater podcast, and you're
Speaker 1: especially enjoying it because it's free. And to keep it
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Speaker 1: Kings dot Com. That's DraftKings dot com. Anyway. Even if
Speaker 1: you're wearing the camo, they feel, you know, you could
Speaker 1: sit up a little bit and you can't. Like if
Speaker 1: you saw me and you were you yesterday, I didn't
Speaker 1: pay attention as much today because I wasn't in the
Speaker 1: field as long yesterday. You and I we were laying
Speaker 1: flat on our back head on the ground, and that's
Speaker 1: what you need to do. You're laying on the bosom
Speaker 1: of the bosom of the earth. Yes, nobody was doing
Speaker 1: that except for me, and and you know ed did
Speaker 1: it a little bit. He's he's down it a couple
Speaker 1: of times. But even he got so are you know,
Speaker 1: running through the decoys. Yeah, but he's a certain guy
Speaker 1: gets daylaid out, big old group cranes, crat, that's the
Speaker 1: good guy, basically running through the field like a lunatic.
Speaker 1: That was I don't want to say who times at work,
Speaker 1: you were just there. I was trying to cover all
Speaker 1: the bases, all the you know, okay, what happens if
Speaker 1: this happened. I was trying to dig a second another
Speaker 1: pit in case we had I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: to do pitts. And we abandoned pits and so, but
Speaker 1: we committed their pets and so if you're sha to
Speaker 1: get off the pot, we committed to pitts. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go all the way. And and yeah, that was
Speaker 1: my fault on that first group of cranees. I don't
Speaker 1: I'll admit it, but I'm confident. No, that's but the problem,
Speaker 1: and the problem was it was not the bare dirt
Speaker 1: or the tumbleweeds or anything. It was people not staying down.
Speaker 1: They were seeing our brand new cameo or even the
Speaker 1: old cameo. It does not look like the body. They're
Speaker 1: seeing this stuff day in day out. They have that
Speaker 1: extra rod cell or cone cell. I don't remember my
Speaker 1: basic biology. They can see, you know, exponentially more colors
Speaker 1: than we could even imagine to see. That was the problem.
Speaker 1: I promise you I will lay in them. I'll take you,
Speaker 1: honey me, and you will go tomorrow lay in the
Speaker 1: middle of the cotton fields with tumbleweeds. What do you
Speaker 1: do for clothes? I'll wear, I'll go naked, I'll wear white,
Speaker 1: whatever you want hide, and I will hide enough that
Speaker 1: they won't see through the tumbleweeds if they see anything.
Speaker 1: Totally reject what you're saying. I think it could be true.
Speaker 1: I think that they could see fabric definitely, And I
Speaker 1: think the fabric you might think like, oh, this fabric
Speaker 1: is And it might be that they're flying over and
Speaker 1: they're like, what the hell is that you? Like? You
Speaker 1: can see you through a window. But if I lay
Speaker 1: a window down in the big field and you're flying over,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, that's a siwmissing window out in the field.
Speaker 1: You saw the bibs I had on the last two days,
Speaker 1: those shadow grass. The pattern was absolutely perfect for what
Speaker 1: we were in. They were too damn bright. I needed
Speaker 1: to go roll around on the damn plia and get
Speaker 1: muddied up. But I was, and I kept it the
Speaker 1: idea I kept pulling. I did reject that idea, but
Speaker 1: I kept pulling the native vegetation. What are you doing
Speaker 1: it out there? And the ply on your back when
Speaker 1: you're I was wondering that myself. Stop No, But I
Speaker 1: mean that's a pattern that was perfect for the vegetation
Speaker 1: we were in. But it was still too it was
Speaker 1: way too, way too bright. I don't want to beat
Speaker 1: I gotta beat this up one part, I part. But
Speaker 1: where where we were there was a big mud pit
Speaker 1: hole player. It was nice to It was a ditch.
Speaker 1: It was a pond of some sorry okay, anyway, I
Speaker 1: don't know what all right, So there was water in there, okay.
Speaker 1: And beyond that was a bunch of white old hay bales,
Speaker 1: the plastic sheathing from hay bales all over the place.
Speaker 1: Why didn't that bother the cranes? Because he's there, it's
Speaker 1: been there, and because those that those pieces of garbage.
Speaker 1: But if the other day, the first field, and we
Speaker 1: had also just laid in white suits, but it was
Speaker 1: ron What did that first field look like? It didn't
Speaker 1: have all that ship laying around in there. I understand
Speaker 1: that there was an old propane tank. There was a
Speaker 1: bunch of the first time they look at that, So
Speaker 1: we're we're looking at that field for days now, at
Speaker 1: least days. He here's the decide. The white it's okay
Speaker 1: because they're accustomed to it. But no, because look at this.
Speaker 1: You gotta think about this. You already have anaiable. We
Speaker 1: know for a fast day. Did he's eleven years old,
Speaker 1: he was tagged in Fairbanks, Alaska. He's made Okay, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, it has managed to stay alive for eleven years,
Speaker 1: flying from Fairbanks, Alaska to Texas and got tripped up
Speaker 1: by a white plastic under ground. No, don't, don't. Don't
Speaker 1: try to do that. Don't try to do the flipping
Speaker 1: a trivial bullshit with me. Okay, that's eleven years old.
Speaker 1: You tell me it can move from Fairbanks, Alaska to Texas,
Speaker 1: back and forth and do it eleven years and not
Speaker 1: get killed, not run into something or whatever. But that's
Speaker 1: something bitch. Can't get a basic sense, a basic spatial
Speaker 1: sense of what is where it is habitat? Sure? Can
Speaker 1: I think that if you had taken a propane tank
Speaker 1: out to the first field we hunted in. How big
Speaker 1: was that propan take standard? Yeah, okay, if you took
Speaker 1: that out into the milo field we first hunted and
Speaker 1: plopped it down there, I think the cranes would flare
Speaker 1: from that pro pan take because they've been feeding in
Speaker 1: this area and all of a sudden, that's not the
Speaker 1: way it is. Also, these milo fields are very uniform.
Speaker 1: It's like strip a vegetation dirt, strip vegetation dirt, and
Speaker 1: these things are a quarter section, a half section, big
Speaker 1: cater jack. It looks like someone dropped a couple of Yeah.
Speaker 1: Way on day two, it looks like someone dropped a
Speaker 1: couple of bombs out here in this field. The weird
Speaker 1: Where did the exposed dirt end up on my pit?
Speaker 1: It was on a berm immediately in front that was
Speaker 1: covered in my ouse side. I think the bird stupid,
Speaker 1: the burst up in the air. If you were hunting
Speaker 1: jack rabbits, the burn would be a great idea kind
Speaker 1: of what is on my phone next to this beer?
Speaker 1: Now I'd be like, oh, yeah, he'll never see my
Speaker 1: phone because my beers in the way. But when my
Speaker 1: fingers up here, the bear doesn't matter. But it's not
Speaker 1: a beer. It's it's dirt in the middle of a
Speaker 1: dirt field. It's just piled mounds of dirt in a
Speaker 1: uniform field. I see what you're thinking. If I took
Speaker 1: a sheet of yellow line, if I took a sheet
Speaker 1: of yellow line paper and then put a quarter on it,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, you see anything wrong with this yellow
Speaker 1: piece of papers. Damn core about it. It's that I
Speaker 1: don't I want to tell you. Let me, let me,
Speaker 1: let's make one more point, move one more I want
Speaker 1: to make a point. So here's what this is going
Speaker 1: to suggest strongly that you're wrong. There's no such thing
Speaker 1: as proved. I'm not even go to the coundar. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it is. I will not count it.
Speaker 1: Go he's on the defense. Please do when the outfitters
Speaker 1: go out, that can spend uh their entire working day
Speaker 1: doing this, so basically this is their life. What they'll
Speaker 1: do is they'll make three hundred of these stuffers that
Speaker 1: I have and spend more time than I do. What
Speaker 1: they'll do for a blind in the middle of a
Speaker 1: milo field, They'll take this ft long, four ft deep,
Speaker 1: four ft tall grasp build that morning with you know,
Speaker 1: because they break it down and put it in the truck.
Speaker 1: There's a trailer and put it up every morning, flip
Speaker 1: open lid like you'd see a duck blind that you
Speaker 1: make permanently, and the birds suck in because there's so
Speaker 1: many decoys they do that. It's a new You're welcome,
Speaker 1: Thank you, appreciate your go ahead and see. Okay, I
Speaker 1: thought so, I thought so. Next next to counter, then
Speaker 1: you said you would you would know? Please? What do
Speaker 1: you have to say for that that? What I'm saying
Speaker 1: is the little berm that was eighteen inches high covered
Speaker 1: in milo stocks that are also covering the rest of
Speaker 1: the field did not flare. It was people in their fabric.
Speaker 1: I promise you, okay, I have counter for you. If
Speaker 1: we were the same way, exactly the same way we
Speaker 1: were the first two days and we dropped out six
Speaker 1: D crane decoys, do you think those birds would have
Speaker 1: flared on us with both days? Day one? It was
Speaker 1: not us flare them Day one, it was somebody had
Speaker 1: hunted the field illegally did and I didn't know until
Speaker 1: the day that they were flaring on us. Then on
Speaker 1: fabric or berms or whatever it was they were flaring
Speaker 1: on us. If we had six hundred decoys out slaughtered them.
Speaker 1: That's a good question because there's there's competing variable. See
Speaker 1: there's there's always more than one. Let's talk, sure, hold
Speaker 1: on one of the quick thing. I just want to
Speaker 1: drop in because we're on this old bird and it's
Speaker 1: like Fairbanks, Alaska to Love Texas. Sounds like a talk
Speaker 1: about that. We didn't say where it was. We didn't
Speaker 1: on the field. It's right next to the Fisher game.
Speaker 1: You know. We didn't talk about this today. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: did a little quickie. You gave a little date on it.
Speaker 1: That's where it was a banded We got that right. Okay.
Speaker 1: I just said he went back and forth eleven times,
Speaker 1: very Banks, Alaska. Anyways, it sounds a far away, just
Speaker 1: so everyone knows. It's three thousand, seven hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: three miles. Yeah, he just a dumbass bird. You don't
Speaker 1: know what's the what Okay? I got text back from
Speaker 1: brand about bands and about percentages. Historically it was around
Speaker 1: and they have been reporting, but it's come up to
Speaker 1: around with the toll free number. And what I'm saying
Speaker 1: of the birds that they put a band down, they
Speaker 1: get them back, they get them back now it's up
Speaker 1: to seventy percent because there's a website on the band
Speaker 1: and there's a toll free number. It varies a lot
Speaker 1: by location. Alaska, it's still built fifty. Do you know
Speaker 1: whatice That bird was so damn old. There's no website
Speaker 1: on the band. That band like pre website. The metal
Speaker 1: was actually started to hear your way some of the
Speaker 1: words on it. That's right, you know what, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's an old band style. You know. I saw that
Speaker 1: clip and thought it was odd, and I didn't think
Speaker 1: it's because it was so long. Metal shop. Some guy
Speaker 1: with the an villain of a coal f forging got
Speaker 1: two birds band in a year back, so he killed
Speaker 1: one of the damn So the decoys um in in
Speaker 1: field hunting, you know, people use typically rags, which it
Speaker 1: can be just like a piece of fabric for snows.
Speaker 1: It used to work for already got wise to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you just put white stuff white rags out of
Speaker 1: the field. Now we had to do an these things silo.
Speaker 1: Then there was like silhouettes. We basically that's what we
Speaker 1: used to when I was a kid to hunt candidate
Speaker 1: us We try to you like cut out the silhouette
Speaker 1: of a goose and put it on a stick and
Speaker 1: put it out of the field socks, which would be
Speaker 1: like rag decoys. We tried to use it and use
Speaker 1: silo socks, which is a silhouette head with a sock body.
Speaker 1: Then people will have shells, which is basically like the
Speaker 1: top half of a bird. You just lay down, you'll
Speaker 1: have free standing whole geese with legs. But Mike is
Speaker 1: making what do you guys, what do you guys what
Speaker 1: from about silo socks? I never thought, I never I
Speaker 1: wondered why they call him. We didn't put two and
Speaker 1: two together, so like boom, what is that? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: same thing. Anyways, So Mike makes his old crane decoys.
Speaker 1: This is a whole interesting thing about birds and and
Speaker 1: uh Rodney can poo poo. This is being just a
Speaker 1: bunch of horse pucky. But Mike skins his cranes and
Speaker 1: then explain the process. He reforms the cranes skin into
Speaker 1: a decoy. Now not everyone, of course, I mean they
Speaker 1: take you know all, when it's all said and told.
Speaker 1: Each decoy takes just under an hour to do um
Speaker 1: from dead bird to decoy, dead bird to decoy. Alright,
Speaker 1: tell the process how I do this. Okay, so uh,
Speaker 1: it's not like an assembly line process, you know. I
Speaker 1: start with I'll cut a whole bunch of so each uh,
Speaker 1: each decoy has a couple two by four blocks in it. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is the best way to start
Speaker 1: with skin of the bird, Okay, like falls out of
Speaker 1: the sky dead. Well, that's what I'm saying, though, because
Speaker 1: I don't start there. I prep I do some prep
Speaker 1: work so that so I'll start, you know, ten decoys
Speaker 1: or something. I'll prepare ten steel steaks that are going
Speaker 1: to be the neck or at least form the neck,
Speaker 1: cut the blocks, um, you know, gather the uh you
Speaker 1: know size screws that I'm going to use, and you know,
Speaker 1: put it all like make a decoy making kid basically,
Speaker 1: then the season start. I deal. I do it before
Speaker 1: the season. Didn't this year because I had an unexpected
Speaker 1: issue with domestic beetles. But um so now let's start
Speaker 1: in the field. Shoot a bird. To start, I only
Speaker 1: use the biggest cranes. Um So, whether it's a greater
Speaker 1: or lesser, I mean the um you know, you can
Speaker 1: get a big lesser, but generally they're gonna be greaters.
Speaker 1: And so if it's in good shape, meaning you know
Speaker 1: it's not all beat up from your shot, I skin
Speaker 1: it um salted pretty well. Leave his own legs on,
Speaker 1: I do. I leave its own legs. How far do
Speaker 1: you skin the wing out? Uh? As far as you could,
Speaker 1: basically as far as you could until it's just where
Speaker 1: you can't go anymore. But you can still uh slip
Speaker 1: some loppers in there to to cut through that bone.
Speaker 1: And so there's actually there's always a little bit of
Speaker 1: meat tissue left there and then brain tissue because you know,
Speaker 1: I uh, if you're gonna do a museum prep, you
Speaker 1: would skin out the entire skull, but that would make
Speaker 1: three times as long. So I just cut it as
Speaker 1: close to the skull as possible and as close to
Speaker 1: the wings as possible. Um, and I leave the head
Speaker 1: so that neck I inverted, you know, so it's like
Speaker 1: an inside out. It's called tube skinning or case skinning.
Speaker 1: All right, there you go. I didn't know that, So
Speaker 1: you salt that I used salt. Your borax would probably
Speaker 1: be more effective, but it's more expensive, and you know
Speaker 1: I do it on the cheap. You called I call
Speaker 1: him magas well. Zombies I was offended in the nicest
Speaker 1: possible way. No, I'm just kidding. So yeah, he he
Speaker 1: reformed the things so skin it salted, and then generally
Speaker 1: the next day if it works, if you wait longer
Speaker 1: than that, depending on the temperature a little bit, but
Speaker 1: the the next starts to harden and it's not as malleable,
Speaker 1: and so ideally it's the next day. Then I, you know,
Speaker 1: nailed two six inch two by four black box together,
Speaker 1: Staple that steel rod that I had cut, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a probably a twenty four to twenty eight inch
Speaker 1: steel rod stable to the top of those two by fours,
Speaker 1: Shove it up the neck. Then I put some like
Speaker 1: pillow stuffing, synthetic stuffing or I've actually he's caught and
Speaker 1: that I've gathered in the field again when times were tough,
Speaker 1: this stuff on the side of the road, of course,
Speaker 1: So then you kinda and all that does you put
Speaker 1: it on the side of the two by fours, and
Speaker 1: so all it does makes the decoy wider, and then
Speaker 1: you kind of fold over the skin flaps and staple
Speaker 1: it to the edges of those two by fours. So
Speaker 1: because it doesn't matter what, you know, if there's two
Speaker 1: by four exposed at the bottom. Nothing sees the bottom,
Speaker 1: so he skinned over. Could I add one thing basically
Speaker 1: in case someone's not getting what he's doing, he's basically
Speaker 1: playing taxidermists. Yes, not cheapass text. Yeah, if you want
Speaker 1: a text out of mass scale. You paid for these birds.
Speaker 1: You know how people might come on. There's a couple
Speaker 1: of them that don't have foam coming out of their
Speaker 1: mouth like they're vomiting. There might be a crawling out there.
Speaker 1: But in your defense, this morning when the fog lifted,
Speaker 1: I'm like, spurts, there's some there's a birds in the
Speaker 1: field and like those are the stuffers he thought they
Speaker 1: were because it was so thick a ship, like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's where we put stuff up. Cranes land in the
Speaker 1: decoys and I can't laugh about that. Crane land and
Speaker 1: walking around. Cranes are all dead, they're just boring. Well,
Speaker 1: you guys, all right, let me go sit for a medic.
Speaker 1: You have a crane coming with a red cross on
Speaker 1: its wing, with any that is like anybody there's a
Speaker 1: megot you got magots coming out of your eye. But
Speaker 1: you guys, but I want to here's what I want
Speaker 1: to get to is uh, do I mean to finish
Speaker 1: up with the crane making or decoy making or well,
Speaker 1: I'm just worried about time because I want to get
Speaker 1: to I want to get to that basically. Yeah, but um,
Speaker 1: Robert Abernathew, a friend of mine who's a was a biologists,
Speaker 1: did a lot of work with turkeys. He he makes
Speaker 1: decoys similar process, but he just plucks a turkey that
Speaker 1: buys a shitty turkey decoy and then glues the real
Speaker 1: turkey's feathers under the turkey decoy. He made one of
Speaker 1: these and he was saying that I can't remember what
Speaker 1: did you ever be honest? Thirty one or he was
Speaker 1: saying somewhere it was like he said, I think it
Speaker 1: was thirty one. He said, thirty one turkeys, thirty one
Speaker 1: male turkeys have laid their eyes on this decoy. I
Speaker 1: have killed all thirty one of them within some inches
Speaker 1: of the decoy. And he said, and we showed that
Speaker 1: decoite a number thirty two and killed it. Now, what
Speaker 1: the You can't fathom what a bird looks like when
Speaker 1: it when it sees. Remember a guy was talking about
Speaker 1: these burden of jungle in the the iridescent color on
Speaker 1: that bird, and they're trying to figure out like what
Speaker 1: do these what do birds do when they see other birds?
Speaker 1: And he said it might be akin to what what
Speaker 1: that bird sees when he sees a member of his
Speaker 1: species through the jungle, which just just seems like green
Speaker 1: and there's flitters of movie. He said, it might be
Speaker 1: like what you see when you see a lightning bug.
Speaker 1: It's like, you don't know what that thing sees when
Speaker 1: it sees it, you know. And there's something about the
Speaker 1: coloration and the iridescence in those feathers, says Abernathy, that
Speaker 1: like when he sees a turkey decoy, he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: that resembles a turkey decoy, But there's something about when
Speaker 1: he sees those feathers. It's like, I'm not wondering what
Speaker 1: that is. I know that that's what that is. And
Speaker 1: it's some combination probably of shape, position, you're adescence. But
Speaker 1: we can't just assume that, like when we look at
Speaker 1: a camel pattern, be like, oh, blends right in. You
Speaker 1: just don't really know what they're seeing. Yeah, how they judge,
Speaker 1: like how a bird in the air says, oh that's
Speaker 1: my kind and how other times when the burn and
Speaker 1: the air just goes, I'm coming in no matter what,
Speaker 1: or you think like that and thinks for an antelope
Speaker 1: and he's coming. You know what I mean, you're shooting
Speaker 1: at him. He's still coming because he's like God, it's
Speaker 1: like he screwed up. He's got in his head he
Speaker 1: sees something. But I think that those decoys work. And
Speaker 1: I feel like today the birds that approached those stuffers,
Speaker 1: the maggots, zombies home stop like the looks of those decoys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they work. They didn't like the I think they liked
Speaker 1: that it was that much that we committed. Also committed
Speaker 1: kind of flare from the decoys. I mean, some people
Speaker 1: do well with silos well, but I think the silos
Speaker 1: would get them close they can see them. But I
Speaker 1: don't even think they were seeing them today. The day
Speaker 1: before they were coming in and flaring around them. That's
Speaker 1: why we kind of sat outside of them because the
Speaker 1: way they were flaring over then they gave us really
Speaker 1: close past. Earlier, we had birds land in a spread
Speaker 1: that included mag It's in silos, silos, silos. It is
Speaker 1: typical actually to get birds landing in the decoys. That's
Speaker 1: pretty common, you know, not that we're letting them go
Speaker 1: to land. It's just sometimes they come from a direction
Speaker 1: we different and everyone from the east today and you
Speaker 1: do it all of a sudden just well it was
Speaker 1: once that went over. Yeah, then they washed them up,
Speaker 1: that's what. Oh and you're saying like an opening day,
Speaker 1: they like pile in. But at this point we're into
Speaker 1: they've been getting shot at for a couple of months,
Speaker 1: so they might be getting a little bit. And it also,
Speaker 1: you know, there is you don't know what trip they're on.
Speaker 1: Like we talked about this sort of institutional knowledge about
Speaker 1: these birds that are alive so long you don't know
Speaker 1: what happened to him an hour ago. Yeah, that's true,
Speaker 1: because do you call us a bird of eleven o'clock?
Speaker 1: He flayers for decoyst ten o'clock. You getting shot at
Speaker 1: by some dude, you know what? You just don't know.
Speaker 1: It's like you don't know what kind of trip they're on,
Speaker 1: what they've been doing, what they've been seeing. Why do
Speaker 1: you sometimes out freak out? Sometimes I would don't freak out.
Speaker 1: Was a guy that a guy just shoot at him?
Speaker 1: And how much does it matter what that lead bird
Speaker 1: does it to? Today? We had we're going to get
Speaker 1: the trucks and a bunch of geese. Yeah, we had.
Speaker 1: We had a bunch of geese. Came over a fraction
Speaker 1: a third of those geese, five or six on that
Speaker 1: edge you really wanted in. I split off started circling
Speaker 1: like they were like, oh, let's go laying with those
Speaker 1: other keys. And there was some geese going and you
Speaker 1: can see this little group of geese going through this
Speaker 1: like don't do we don't know anyway? It end they're
Speaker 1: like ship They went joy up with the group because
Speaker 1: their mom was up there. It was the edge birds
Speaker 1: that wanted to the lead birds didn't, and they won
Speaker 1: the argument. And they've proven that, dude, the older birds
Speaker 1: really lead. Absolutely. I'm not sure you'll see. I have
Speaker 1: a friend that shot the lead bird of a group
Speaker 1: of like a hundred, and he said it was tough
Speaker 1: as nails, suggesting it was it was an old, old bird.
Speaker 1: But I know I haven't read the literature with l
Speaker 1: I've seen where you'll have a calf you'll be like
Speaker 1: putting the moves out of group of elt in a
Speaker 1: caffle bust you and the castle jump and start, and
Speaker 1: no other elk cares because it's like a boy crime wolf.
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, you know what he's doing, you know,
Speaker 1: And sometimes as if so much just picks up her ears.
Speaker 1: The whole herds like what you know, well, and if
Speaker 1: you happen to shoot the lead cow. I experienced this.
Speaker 1: She must have been the lead cow because they all
Speaker 1: just stood there. They didn't didn't know what to do.
Speaker 1: They found there's these guys studying these vervet monkeys and
Speaker 1: how they have like a little bit of language like that.
Speaker 1: They have a call for predator in the air, they
Speaker 1: have a call for predator in the tree, they have
Speaker 1: a call for predator on the ground. They recorded a
Speaker 1: monkey vocalizing a threat, and it started playing the recording
Speaker 1: of the monkey vocalizing the threat to his troop all
Speaker 1: the time. Eventually it got to be where if this
Speaker 1: monkey vocalized the threat, the monkeys didn't care because they
Speaker 1: burned him out with the recording. He lost his credibility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he like people like, you know, eagle up there, dumbass
Speaker 1: it every day. Oh then the eagles moved in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's what good eagle was like, why did you
Speaker 1: get the head of the stuff I want to talk about?
Speaker 1: Can we keep going so I don't want to, I
Speaker 1: don't want no, I don't want to be too long.
Speaker 1: Could I ask a question? Please? So back in what
Speaker 1: was it, Mike? Maybe two thousand eight? I started hunting
Speaker 1: with you. It was about two thousand and eight when
Speaker 1: I joined faculty at Texas Tech and we got to
Speaker 1: know each other and started hunting. I've never handed cranes
Speaker 1: a day in my life, and we went out and
Speaker 1: I thought this was the coolest thing I've ever experienced,
Speaker 1: and I really have been coming back every year. I'm
Speaker 1: just curious of Ronnie, and I just want to share
Speaker 1: what you thought of the experience. I just I think
Speaker 1: it's one of the funnest things I've ever done. I
Speaker 1: think it was fun. But I'm such I'm so addicted
Speaker 1: in my dogs. I would rather be working. I would
Speaker 1: rather be working with my dogs. It's not I know ed.
Speaker 1: Ed was lucky to bring his dogs and got some retreats,
Speaker 1: which is every hunter likes that do that. But if
Speaker 1: I've got like so many hours a year I can
Speaker 1: spend in the field, I'd rather spend it with my dogs.
Speaker 1: But I do a fair amount of crane or not
Speaker 1: a fair amount of goose hunting. Tiny bit of duck hunting.
Speaker 1: I really enjoy that. I really enjoy it. But it's
Speaker 1: not like what you're saying. I came down here and
Speaker 1: I thought it was like it was just I'm a
Speaker 1: social hunter. Steve knows me for a hum of years
Speaker 1: if I wouldn't hunt if it wasn't for friends and
Speaker 1: a dog. So he said, you gotta go hunt through
Speaker 1: I'm gonna McDonald's. I'm not gonna go hunt for my food.
Speaker 1: But I love hunting. I love being with my dogs
Speaker 1: and my friends, and so it was a great trip
Speaker 1: for that. But it wasn't like the end on Bill.
Speaker 1: I I've been just as excited with Canada's coming in
Speaker 1: or a duck coming through the trees. Just excited. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was neat because it was a bird
Speaker 1: I never shot before. That was the neat part. We
Speaker 1: learned a lot, oh yeah, about all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: now the whole time, I knew this is gonna be
Speaker 1: kind of the cap on um my hunting season. In
Speaker 1: a couple of days, I have to go get a
Speaker 1: vast sect. To me, what ye and my wife's having
Speaker 1: a baby in a couple of weeks. Because you didn't
Speaker 1: get a a sect of me. I didn't get what
Speaker 1: I was gonna get it, and uh now I'm going
Speaker 1: down Now, I'm definitely going down there. So I'm done
Speaker 1: a hunt for the fall. And during this whole fall,
Speaker 1: I was doing what I consider my spect my personal
Speaker 1: special to be or what I like to do is
Speaker 1: I like to hunt in the big game in the mountains.
Speaker 1: I like the backpack hunt. Um, And that could get
Speaker 1: miserable and it could start to feel like just a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of work. It's like a ton of work
Speaker 1: before you kill something that it's really a lot of work.
Speaker 1: It's just like misery. And the whole time I was like, man,
Speaker 1: we go on that crane hunt, gonna be gravy, you know,
Speaker 1: But it's not. Man. Field hunt is hard, like three
Speaker 1: thirty wake up. You're on the field hours before daylight,
Speaker 1: haul and gears. It's just like I'd saying, It's like,
Speaker 1: it's not like field hunters are just like some lazy dude.
Speaker 1: When it gets daylight, you gotta be dialed in, truck
Speaker 1: parked half mile away, decoys out, everybody hid. It's like
Speaker 1: an early Riser. They got that same kind of drive
Speaker 1: and desired you do to climb a mountain. Oh there,
Speaker 1: they're out there. Remember we're talking about the guy who
Speaker 1: wanted to get out of like what I mean, pick
Speaker 1: up a two in the morning, like too, I just
Speaker 1: going there now. Not No, it's hard, it's like hard work.
Speaker 1: And I was out there and I was thinking, people
Speaker 1: that get good at this, you know, are hard workers
Speaker 1: like you gotta they're not hiking up a hill and
Speaker 1: just how much time we are and other times yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, but I mean field, it's it's like a
Speaker 1: serious thing. It's a it's a it's a serious discipline.
Speaker 1: I think you gotta stay on it. You have his
Speaker 1: many things float into your head to hunt cranes. You
Speaker 1: have as many bits of information coursing through your head
Speaker 1: as you do up in the mountains. Maybe more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's more little things, more little factors are
Speaker 1: are swirling through your head to hunt field up for crane.
Speaker 1: I think than than at least right. It might be right,
Speaker 1: but you're probably right. And the fact that because he's
Speaker 1: gauging over like thousands or let's just say, hundreds of kills,
Speaker 1: you're gauging your own hunter after maybe too bear kills
Speaker 1: or three elk kills so he's got all that other
Speaker 1: days and it said, like what does that like? It
Speaker 1: was this thing like exactly, so you're right. I think
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. There's even more stuff going on in
Speaker 1: that in his head trying to get these things set
Speaker 1: up like wherever because no one shot a thousand elk
Speaker 1: and then there's these days and just make every mistake possible.
Speaker 1: I'm joking. No, he was guide. That wasn't asking is
Speaker 1: how many elk kills he was in like present for,
Speaker 1: and he thoughts upwards of a hundred, which is astronomical
Speaker 1: seeming to me. I think he's live. It's just a lot.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of experience with an animal dollars. He
Speaker 1: han't seen hundred house. You know, it's funny. Just a
Speaker 1: comment on that last statement made you sit there and
Speaker 1: take it your brand new hat, just like him throw
Speaker 1: it out like calling your liar. All right, we gotta
Speaker 1: wrap up the final thoughts, and I'm not gonna have
Speaker 1: a final thought that I had. Really glad you guys
Speaker 1: came down and got to experience it. I do want
Speaker 1: to have a final thought. I had a phenomenal time.
Speaker 1: I learned so much. Final thoughts, Mike Cool you know,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to finish that thought. You know, even
Speaker 1: cranes will make mistakes, and it's not like you know,
Speaker 1: the individuals will. But I've had days when you shoot
Speaker 1: a limit and it was easy. They just wanted to
Speaker 1: be in that field so bad. You're packing up decoys
Speaker 1: and they're still flocking in with you and you're like, wait,
Speaker 1: makes season is so I mean, crane Honey is so easy.
Speaker 1: Like this day it was like they were they're landing
Speaker 1: like almost on you when you're standing up. But what
Speaker 1: causes that? I don't know. Those days are three or four,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't make sense. That's why I want to
Speaker 1: say people who like the Bowl because the weather is
Speaker 1: the same, the temperatures the same, the lanes to save
Speaker 1: the ball ways the same way to say they put
Speaker 1: them to say configuration. It's like, how can you not
Speaker 1: get to strike every time or at least eight every time?
Speaker 1: It's like sometimes you can get ted. Why can't you
Speaker 1: get ted all the time? Because nothing changes, at least
Speaker 1: with Honey every day is something new, something No, nothing changed.
Speaker 1: It's like I think if you took some real elite
Speaker 1: athletes and had them bowl, they'd get ten every time.
Speaker 1: I think I'm from Chicago. We both You're right, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff keeps you out there. And one last thing,
Speaker 1: tell these guys how many pounds of crane sausage you
Speaker 1: may just try to use the thighs from the thime
Speaker 1: me and I'm not talking to jump stick, but it's
Speaker 1: just the thought. Because the breast you don't do. You
Speaker 1: don't corrupt him. You just eat. You know, I'll do
Speaker 1: it in a bunch of different ways. But you're right,
Speaker 1: I don't, like, I would never grow really big gumbo
Speaker 1: out of the breast of I hesitating. I don't even
Speaker 1: make jerky. A lot of guys do, and it's good,
Speaker 1: but I don't. I wouldn't even make jerkey out of
Speaker 1: this just too good. Yeah, it's like, you know, throwing
Speaker 1: in a croc bot and a lot of people out
Speaker 1: there do that. But I mean, you could throw anything
Speaker 1: in a crock pot for eight hours. Yeah, So answer
Speaker 1: your question. I made last year, and granted these weren't
Speaker 1: only birds that I killed, but my friends don't say
Speaker 1: the thigh so I take theirs. I mean, I had
Speaker 1: fifty pounds of thy mead crane timid and then plus
Speaker 1: whatever pork I added to a container like that, I
Speaker 1: want to wrap it up with that. Ladies, gentleman, that's
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. Fifty pounds of crane sausage. Old
Speaker 1: Beater Podcast, Thanks for tuning it.