Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you, shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear lessening past. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything. Welcome to the summer, souls now in.
Speaker 1: In a lot of indigenous cultures, to night, you would
Speaker 1: have a ceremony in order to get the sun headed
Speaker 1: back in a southerly direction. And Kevin Murphy, since we're
Speaker 1: not gonna all get up and dance in the counter
Speaker 1: class direction around a large sun dial, Kevin Murphy is
Speaker 1: going to rip on his horn that he uses to
Speaker 1: alert squirrels to his presence. But this is gonna send
Speaker 1: the sun back south and we will be honoring some souls.
Speaker 1: Hold on, Kevin. Keego is just a little more background
Speaker 1: because Steve didn't do a Justine City that you just
Speaker 1: alert squirrels. Use the MICUs to Mike, use the mic Mike.
Speaker 1: Every hunt that I tried to do, even fishing, we
Speaker 1: go out, we always sound the horn, tell all the
Speaker 1: critters that were coming, and it's their chance to get away.
Speaker 1: If they don't and they get killed, get start falling.
Speaker 1: So here we go. So you guys maybe could leave
Speaker 1: if you want to take so. Well done, Let's hunt, Uh,
Speaker 1: it just lapps that three of us are from one
Speaker 1: state to the north, you guys in Michigan, and in
Speaker 1: Michigan we always um look down and laugh at you guys,
Speaker 1: But it's that. It's that for you might think, because um,
Speaker 1: you guys know the Toledo the Toledo Strip, right, So
Speaker 1: years ago we were trying to sort out who what
Speaker 1: state got what chunk of ground and we weren't quite
Speaker 1: sure how the landscape was laid out and where the
Speaker 1: lakes were. What's that I don't know, Jake gone now
Speaker 1: was gone? So years ago when we're trying to figure
Speaker 1: out like what state's got what chunk of ground, right,
Speaker 1: and we weren't clear on how the lakes were shaped out,
Speaker 1: Ohio on Michigan got in this big pissing match over
Speaker 1: this little teeny five mile wide strip the landing now
Speaker 1: includes Toledo. And it got so bad that we sent
Speaker 1: our military, like state militias to go up and it
Speaker 1: ready to square off over what became the Toledo Strip.
Speaker 1: And um, some people call the Bloodless War. But there
Speaker 1: was actually one guy whose first name was Too who
Speaker 1: stabbed another man with a pen knife and drew blood
Speaker 1: on him. So it was not a bloodless war between
Speaker 1: my home state and the people of Ohio. And then
Speaker 1: they brought someone too, They brought someone into arbitrate the
Speaker 1: whole thing. And the person looked and says, Okay, here's
Speaker 1: we're gonna do. We're gonna give Michigan the up it's
Speaker 1: up for peninsula, and we'll give Ohio this little strip
Speaker 1: of land. And everyone in Michigan was passed. They thought
Speaker 1: was a raw deal. But then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they discovered all the copper and iron ore they came
Speaker 1: out of the up and we realized that the last
Speaker 1: laugh was on you guys. And then if you factor
Speaker 1: in how much fishing game I pulled out of the
Speaker 1: Upper Peninsula over the years, and back to that into
Speaker 1: all the iron ore that came out of that place,
Speaker 1: you see that we got a pretty sweet deal. But
Speaker 1: I do now. And then uh come up into Ohio
Speaker 1: or down into Ohio. And I was gonna tell about
Speaker 1: one time I came here. So how many you guys
Speaker 1: have heard of the Serpent Mound. Okay, so it's in
Speaker 1: people's Ohio and it's like, you know, some of the
Speaker 1: some of the Native American cultures around the turn of
Speaker 1: like the eight years. In the BC years, we're into
Speaker 1: this practice of building these large earthen effigy mountains in
Speaker 1: the shapes of animals. So there's turtles and bears and
Speaker 1: all manner of creatures. But the Serpent Mountains one of
Speaker 1: the biggest ones on where they built a coiled snake
Speaker 1: that's four hundred and fifty yards long. It's anywhere from
Speaker 1: a few feet high there's one ft high. People didn't
Speaker 1: even realize it was there until, you know, one day
Speaker 1: some guys started putting together that stretching out through the
Speaker 1: landscape was this giant snake and people's ohio. And it's
Speaker 1: got a coiled tail, and its mouth is a gap,
Speaker 1: and in its mouth is the thing that everybody tries
Speaker 1: to debate, like what is it? What is the thing
Speaker 1: that its mouth is wrapped around, Like what does it symbolize?
Speaker 1: And some people feel that maybe it's an egg, that
Speaker 1: the snake is swallowing an egg, And some people feel
Speaker 1: that maybe the snake is swallowing the sun and it
Speaker 1: has something to do with the solar phases. So I
Speaker 1: think that's like kind of a over here for today
Speaker 1: being the solstice. But one time I was I wanted
Speaker 1: to come up and see the Serpent Mount and from
Speaker 1: the direction I was coming from, I was coming up
Speaker 1: from West Virginia. I remember driving through West Virginia and
Speaker 1: saw my first ever road killed black bear. And I
Speaker 1: was with an old girlfriend of mine. We were driving
Speaker 1: in a van that I had traded my buddy Ronnie
Speaker 1: a husk Varna, chainsaw and two bucks for and you'd
Speaker 1: expect the van like that just the home, right, but
Speaker 1: we met my girlfriend passed, you know, come out of
Speaker 1: West Virginia and passed into Ohio, and a guy is
Speaker 1: coming up along me and he's like trying to like
Speaker 1: gesture that something's wrong with my vehicle and rolls the
Speaker 1: window down and yells to me that I have a
Speaker 1: tail light out, so or a blinker out, and it's
Speaker 1: a tail laid out. And we get to the first exit.
Speaker 1: Right when you leave West Virginia you enter Ohio. We
Speaker 1: get to the first exit and I pull off and
Speaker 1: go in there, and I go into a part store
Speaker 1: and I buy a bulb, and I need a torks
Speaker 1: bit and I try to going to borrow a torqus bit,
Speaker 1: and he's reluctant to lend me one. Eventually, lends me
Speaker 1: a Torqus bit and I come outside and I'm working
Speaker 1: on the tailight, and next to me is a car
Speaker 1: wash and there's some people back in the car. There's
Speaker 1: some kids vacuum in their car, and they have loud
Speaker 1: music that's profanity laced. You know, you're like a certain
Speaker 1: age and to use profani lace, but it's profani laced music.
Speaker 1: And there's another guy with the young kid, and the
Speaker 1: guy that takes offense to the music and starts urging
Speaker 1: them to turn down the profanity lace music. And he's
Speaker 1: using profanity to express how like displeased using the profanity
Speaker 1: lace music, and a kid from the car produces a pipe.
Speaker 1: So when Ohio kid produces a pipe as though he's
Speaker 1: going to confront the guy, and the guy calls his
Speaker 1: bluff and races all over towards him. The kid throws
Speaker 1: down the pipe and the guy disappears into the car,
Speaker 1: from which emanates the loud profani lace music. And I'm
Speaker 1: thinking that's never gonna work out, because it's always hard
Speaker 1: to figure out other people's stereo, you know. So when
Speaker 1: you get to a hotel and you pick up the
Speaker 1: remote and you're like, dude, I'm never gonna figure this out.
Speaker 1: But he's just like immediately back out of the car
Speaker 1: at the CD and throws the CD on the ground
Speaker 1: and stomps on the CD. And then the other side
Speaker 1: of me, they were having a cheerleader did a car
Speaker 1: wash fundraiser, and one of those guys most have called
Speaker 1: the police, because then all of sudden, here comes the car,
Speaker 1: pulls in with a siren, lights of flash, and we
Speaker 1: pull out and start driving down the road, and I'm
Speaker 1: headed to the Serpent Mount and I make the mistake
Speaker 1: of saying to my girlfriend, you know, I kind of
Speaker 1: see where that guy was coming from, and it just
Speaker 1: so happens that she was thinking what an asshole that
Speaker 1: guy was. We got into such a fight that we
Speaker 1: fought all the way through our time at the Serpent Mound.
Speaker 1: And every time I'm in Ohio, I cannot come here
Speaker 1: without thinking of the Serpent Mound and that fight. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: so from Michigan, and then we have Kevin Murphy from Kentucky,
Speaker 1: and I figured that we don't have anyone from Ohio.
Speaker 1: But if you average out Kevin and me, you have
Speaker 1: like an Ohio and you know, we are holding Ohio up.
Speaker 1: It would probably fall out somewhere your wedding for Kentucky.
Speaker 1: So don't, yeah, don't feel underrepresentat here by this like
Speaker 1: symbolic Ohio and that that that we think. And then
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon from Wired Hunt podcast, Ryan Callahan from just
Speaker 1: generally being a well known guy, and also from First
Speaker 1: Light Apparel, and then of course, but really you're honestly
Speaker 1: tell us the Lavian eagle, sorry, the Lavian Eagle bear beater. Uh,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon? You Mark Kenyon likes to come down in
Speaker 1: hunt in Ohio all the time, but you just lost
Speaker 1: your Ohio hunting spot. Yeah, it's it's a tender wound still,
Speaker 1: so I'm not sure I'm ready to talk about it,
Speaker 1: but please, Yeah, it just happened this week I found out.
Speaker 1: Do you want to hear what happens? I want I
Speaker 1: want to hear like how you used to be a
Speaker 1: dude who comes down on hunts Ohio but now you're
Speaker 1: not anymore, because I think that that's like, that's you know, people,
Speaker 1: that's relevant to people. Right. I always knew I wanted
Speaker 1: to come on down to Ohio because us in Michigan
Speaker 1: we often talk about how the grass is probably greener
Speaker 1: south of us, and I wanted to come down, but
Speaker 1: I had friends who had said that they had hunted
Speaker 1: down here with Michigan license plates and said that they
Speaker 1: would have their windows smashed in their tires cut. So
Speaker 1: I had serious apprehension about it. But I don't like
Speaker 1: the Michigan wolverines, Eiland. I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: So I did start coming down hunting here probably six
Speaker 1: seven years ago. It's been really good to me. Um.
Speaker 1: We had one small property sort in your Cincinnati, and
Speaker 1: the landowners were in their early nineties when we started
Speaker 1: hunting there. I can smell trouble already, man, when people
Speaker 1: get that old, like change is the ruin. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was. It was one of those deals where right
Speaker 1: from the get go we knew, Okay, the clock is taking.
Speaker 1: This isn't a long term thing, probably, but it was
Speaker 1: so good still We're like, well, let's just enjoy it
Speaker 1: while we got him. And it kept every year, We're like, ah,
Speaker 1: how so and so gonna be, you know, every year
Speaker 1: looking for it. And I don't want to sound like
Speaker 1: all I cared about was the hunting property. I love
Speaker 1: the hunting property, but we got to know the landowners
Speaker 1: to really nice people, really nice people, enjoy getting down
Speaker 1: there and chatting with him, and long story short, this year,
Speaker 1: finally the last last ball, I was down there and
Speaker 1: just noticed that things are going downhill. The landowner I went.
Speaker 1: We went down and I was heading in for a
Speaker 1: muzzle otter hunt. And I got there late for the
Speaker 1: afternot drove down from Michigan in a rush. I wanted
Speaker 1: to try to get up for the last couple of
Speaker 1: hours of daylight. And so already I'm looking at my clock.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I'm already running late. I pull in and
Speaker 1: I see the landover there, and he's outside of his house,
Speaker 1: and I always want to stop and say hi, though
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, you know, I'll say hi and then
Speaker 1: let him know I'm sorry. I gotta kind of run.
Speaker 1: Let's catch up tomorrow or something. So I do that.
Speaker 1: I go say hi to him, and you know, he
Speaker 1: starts chatting, and I don't want to be rude. I
Speaker 1: hear him out, and then finally the conversation ends and okay,
Speaker 1: now now I get I'll have like one hour of hunting,
Speaker 1: It'll be okay. And as I'm walking away, I start
Speaker 1: hearing like cursing. Yeah, I'm like, oh, no, what happened.
Speaker 1: I turned around to look and you could see him
Speaker 1: like doing this thing and looking around, and I'm thinking
Speaker 1: to myself, and he's standing next to his car. I
Speaker 1: think he locked his keys in his car. Well, I
Speaker 1: thought he just realized you had Michigan plates me. No,
Speaker 1: so so he he had locked himself off of his
Speaker 1: vehicle and there was nobody else home. There's no one around.
Speaker 1: So I end up, you know, losing that whole hunt.
Speaker 1: Hung out with him for a couple of hours while
Speaker 1: a wait for someone. I called the tow truck and
Speaker 1: everything for him. And it was that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: that kind of a few instances like that where you
Speaker 1: just knew it was probably going to be a change
Speaker 1: is coming in. Yeah, a week ago, got a phone
Speaker 1: call that said we're not gonna have anymore. They're selling
Speaker 1: it and that the kids are taking it on and
Speaker 1: trying to get sold. So it was a great place,
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun, really enjoyed getting to know
Speaker 1: the folks are still alive. Um, they're they're going to
Speaker 1: be moving to nursing homes and and the death of
Speaker 1: an Ohio hunting spot. Come on, are you telling me that?
Speaker 1: Since I watched my keys in my car last week.
Speaker 1: Then um on the downhill slide that in several other factors.
Speaker 1: I think, let's say that you're heading that direction, you know,
Speaker 1: so I wanted to ask you Mark is. We had
Speaker 1: a guy right in proposing that you like to hunt
Speaker 1: for like you like to look around, as they to
Speaker 1: call it hunting, You like to look around out in
Speaker 1: the woods for deer handlers laying on the ground. Un
Speaker 1: a guy rode in to ask this question, to ask
Speaker 1: a question to say, like he feels that there should
Speaker 1: be a bag limit on shed antlers like that the
Speaker 1: real he's like, he's like, because we have this thing.
Speaker 1: We have this thing in wildlife management. We have a
Speaker 1: fair use thing right right, Like we spread out the resource.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't get the hog all the year.
Speaker 1: You don't get the hog all the ducks because things
Speaker 1: in place, so you're allowed some number and allow other
Speaker 1: people to have more. And he was proposing, like, what
Speaker 1: if we came up with this idea of having, uh,
Speaker 1: like a shed antler season. Now we already have seasons
Speaker 1: in some states. What if we had a thing where
Speaker 1: you were limited to how many you could have? How
Speaker 1: would you feel about it? As a shed antler hunter.
Speaker 1: Short answer, I don't like it. Longer answer is bag
Speaker 1: limits and stuff. I get what you're saying from a
Speaker 1: fair use perspective, but really the reason why we have
Speaker 1: those is to maintain sustainable populations of animals. So if
Speaker 1: I go in there and pick up a hundred sheds,
Speaker 1: that's not going to impact the long term sustainability of
Speaker 1: a dear population. So I don't see that as like
Speaker 1: a viable argument. Not much time in the woods might
Speaker 1: be stressed and out animals. So so you have a
Speaker 1: question here also as far as impact. How many dear
Speaker 1: antlers have you come across that have nine marks on them?
Speaker 1: A lot in certain places, depending on the time of
Speaker 1: the year, But ye a lot. That's not just for taste.
Speaker 1: They're not just trying that stuff out. That's calcium dance bone.
Speaker 1: So you're trying to tell me, I've been hearing a
Speaker 1: lot lately that what are we really what are we
Speaker 1: removing that raccoon populations and squirrel populations their nutritional the
Speaker 1: importance of shed alerson as that's I just don't see it.
Speaker 1: But I would say that I can understand the argument
Speaker 1: that there is stress put on deer herds or elk
Speaker 1: herds or mule deer herds or whatever of people going
Speaker 1: in there too early, especially in the Western States where
Speaker 1: snowpack and stuff like that does significantly impact dear. And
Speaker 1: so I understand why states like Utah and other Western
Speaker 1: states are putting in seasons, um, to make sure that
Speaker 1: we aren't overstressing the deer at that time of year
Speaker 1: when they are struggling the most, or maybe even in
Speaker 1: the very furthest northern states like northern Minnesota, northern Michigan,
Speaker 1: northern Wisconsin, parts where these deer have to find yarding areas,
Speaker 1: you know, where they can only survive in certain areas
Speaker 1: to get that kind of food and shelter. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: an argument, um. But down here in Kentucky, Ohio, well sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got me Kentucky, Ohio, this whole region anywhere around here.
Speaker 1: I just don't think that the stress is that high
Speaker 1: that it is going to make a no salimpact. But
Speaker 1: but you could get me on the seasons. But I
Speaker 1: get a lot of emails people warned about that, and
Speaker 1: I want to side. I think there should be a
Speaker 1: bag limit, the size limit, size limit, and a slot limit. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm joking. I don't see it as a real honest
Speaker 1: to goodness problem. I just wanted to put it to
Speaker 1: an actual hunter hobbyist. And my best shed hunting year
Speaker 1: ever this year defined by quantity and quality, and I
Speaker 1: found my largest shed antlers ever here in Ohio on
Speaker 1: this property. Um, anybody has got a spot that you
Speaker 1: don't want to hunt, you want to the people to ask. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, you know, in the fact that you
Speaker 1: have a large property, no one's using mark. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: guy talking to the wrong crew. Yeah, you need to
Speaker 1: go down to the rotary club or something. Check down there, Kevin,
Speaker 1: can you, um would you mind? Uh? Bigin some predictions
Speaker 1: this year on how what the squirrel season is gonna
Speaker 1: look like based on mass crop. Is it looking like
Speaker 1: a strong season in Kentucky. We had a good carryover
Speaker 1: from this winter. Uh, the squirrels went into We had
Speaker 1: a good, good squirrel crop coming into the season. We
Speaker 1: had limited mass. Uh. The squirrels pretty much ate everything
Speaker 1: into woods, everything they could get their hands on. The
Speaker 1: fatten up. They were mud ball fat and they had
Speaker 1: limited activity throughout the wintertime. Uh. Their activity pretty much
Speaker 1: from the UM thirty minutes at daylight thirty minutes at dark.
Speaker 1: Uh into the season, very very little movement towards the
Speaker 1: end of the season when the elm buds start coming
Speaker 1: out water maples. Squirrels would fit prolific during the day
Speaker 1: and you could go in and get harvest a limit
Speaker 1: of squirrels. We had a very unusual winner in Kentucky
Speaker 1: this year, probably like the worst in forty years. A
Speaker 1: lot of forty year old people who had never seen
Speaker 1: a winter that we had. But the ice froze about
Speaker 1: nine inches. I had to chop eyes for the horses. Uh.
Speaker 1: It kind of shut me down. I got acclimated to
Speaker 1: hunting and twenty and thirty degrees winter. When it got
Speaker 1: below zero and negative windshill, we just shut down. But
Speaker 1: eventually we got too hard to sitting in the house
Speaker 1: and we started getting out and we started killing rabbits
Speaker 1: that we didn't even attempt to kill any squirrels. Um.
Speaker 1: But I got to thinking back in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: we hunted like that when it was that code. Um.
Speaker 1: So we had a late spring, it was snowing during
Speaker 1: Turkey season, had some late freezes, but due to this
Speaker 1: unusual winner, we had the oak trees did not bud out,
Speaker 1: and when we did have those late freezes, they did
Speaker 1: not freeze the buds on them, and we came through
Speaker 1: the wintertime with a good healthy oak population. I've looked
Speaker 1: at the fruit trees, the mulberries, pretty good crop uh uh,
Speaker 1: the treery trees at my house, the blueberries uh. And
Speaker 1: it did catch the plums. But from what I'm seeing,
Speaker 1: got three pretty good size uh, pecan trees in my yard,
Speaker 1: and the caspians on them, they're they're full. They got
Speaker 1: a lot of small bacons on them. So I'm predicting, uh,
Speaker 1: a good solid squirrel crop in the state of Kentucky
Speaker 1: in the western region where where I live, if these
Speaker 1: guys are lucky to drift into Ohio. Are you famili
Speaker 1: the are you familiar with the phenomenon phenomenon? What do
Speaker 1: you say? Phenomenon is plural? Right? No phenomenon either way.
Speaker 1: A weird thing happening. Where have you ever heard of
Speaker 1: a great The great people could say the great squirrel migration.
Speaker 1: It is not a migration, it's a dispersal, an emigration.
Speaker 1: But you've heard of this before because Ohio had won
Speaker 1: in eighteen eleven where there were there gets to be
Speaker 1: this thing where you developed overwhelming numbers of great squirrels.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it can happen anymore, because we've
Speaker 1: carved up the woods so bad. But you developed overwhelming
Speaker 1: numbers of squirrels, and then you have a mass crop
Speaker 1: failure and the squirrels disperse. I used to think that
Speaker 1: this was a lie when people talk about the great,
Speaker 1: the great squirrel migration. But in night they had they
Speaker 1: had another v great squirrel migration. And there was one
Speaker 1: in my own lifetime that happened in Have you ever
Speaker 1: experienced nineteen uh North Carolina, Tennessee had a mass figure.
Speaker 1: The squirrels migrated north through Tennessee through the south end
Speaker 1: of laying between lakes a hundred and seventy thousand acres
Speaker 1: they came across. I didn't hunt much then at all.
Speaker 1: My dad avide squirreld hunter. He'd take her squirrel dog
Speaker 1: over there. Of course, I was in school a lot,
Speaker 1: and he said the dog might tree one squirrel and
Speaker 1: then three or four come by on the ground, you know,
Speaker 1: the shoot them. I remember hundreds drowning in the lakes,
Speaker 1: the river banks full of dead squirrels. Yes, the crappie
Speaker 1: fisherman would be out there, uh fisher for Croppie Lake
Speaker 1: Barkley over a mile wide. Squirrels be coming by. They
Speaker 1: would just take a deep net dip them up. And
Speaker 1: so I have witnessed at I have witnessed some minor migrations. UM.
Speaker 1: Probably right around the late ninety drove from Paduca to Louisville.
Speaker 1: It's about a three and a half hour drive. There
Speaker 1: was one stretch of about a hundred miles between there
Speaker 1: that I counted over a hundred dead squirrels on a
Speaker 1: four lane highway. That's that's not normal, folks. I mean,
Speaker 1: you just don't see a squirrel ran over on a
Speaker 1: four lane And UM made a trip I was basically
Speaker 1: going to a ball game up in Cincinnati to take
Speaker 1: my kids, and made a trip like a week later,
Speaker 1: uh down to Nashville, and there was a stretch of
Speaker 1: four down through there that I counted fifty four squirrels
Speaker 1: dead on the highway. You know, I get kind of
Speaker 1: board sometimes driving down the highway, so you know, I'll
Speaker 1: start looking at animals and seeing what's going on and
Speaker 1: really not paying a lot of attention to what's in
Speaker 1: front of me or behind me. But yeah, when when
Speaker 1: someone wrote in to ask if the Great squirrel migrations
Speaker 1: were true, and I always thought they were not true,
Speaker 1: I started reading about it and read about a man
Speaker 1: that this article described at as a budding squirrel expert,
Speaker 1: which is not something you've seen throwing around very often,
Speaker 1: like he's not quite a squirrel expert, but is emerging
Speaker 1: as a squirrel expert. You know, I've done a little
Speaker 1: reading on this, and I forgot where the article was.
Speaker 1: But sometimes there was steel food in the area, but
Speaker 1: they didn't know if it's because they had so many
Speaker 1: squirrels and they had infestation of fleas and vermin in
Speaker 1: their nest, and so they left that area to get
Speaker 1: away from those. That's just one thing that I read.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, we can read anything anytime we
Speaker 1: want to right now, but that was from some texts,
Speaker 1: and I don't remember exactly where that came from. I
Speaker 1: think we've all been doing a little reading on this,
Speaker 1: because it's kind of bounced around some emails, and I
Speaker 1: started looking into it. And back in the eight hundreds,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, there were a number of these supposed
Speaker 1: events and John James Audubon, famous naturalist, had observed this
Speaker 1: what they thought were millions of squirrels over the course
Speaker 1: of weeks, and I believe it was crossing either the
Speaker 1: Ohio River the Mississippi River. And they saw this in
Speaker 1: the behavior was so bizarre, and they saw for so
Speaker 1: long that they proposed actually that this was a different
Speaker 1: species of squirrel entirely from the migratory So they started
Speaker 1: calling it the I like the securious migratory us or
Speaker 1: something like that is what they thought this thing was.
Speaker 1: And it even happened at the beginning of the Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark expedition. Merriwether Lewis saw this happening acrossing the
Speaker 1: Ohio River when they're coming down heading towards Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I usually disregard old timey accounts of freakish stuff, because
Speaker 1: this had a weird way of explaining things. You know,
Speaker 1: or you or is like you can't you can't tell
Speaker 1: like that where the mythology ends, you know that like
Speaker 1: Simon Kenton, Um Simon Kenton, you know figures he saw
Speaker 1: around I think it was ten thousand buffalo around Nashville, right,
Speaker 1: you hear that, like it's just impossible to picture, right,
Speaker 1: But the sixty eight one is like the sixty eight
Speaker 1: Great squirrel migration is really well documented. Just you know,
Speaker 1: just the image of drowned squirrels. We once rescued one
Speaker 1: out of the yellow Stone. He was such a sad
Speaker 1: looking critter. You know another while I have you kept
Speaker 1: another squirrel question I wanted to ask you about. Do
Speaker 1: you remember if you oh please, yeah, go ahead. I'd
Speaker 1: like to know, just from a sound of whoops, how
Speaker 1: many squirrel hunters we have in the audience and relevant information?
Speaker 1: Then how many of you? How many of you witness
Speaker 1: a squirrel migration, a great the great squirrel migration? Nobody?
Speaker 1: How many of you have squirrel meet in your freezer?
Speaker 1: Right now? All right, real deal, Kevin, can you break
Speaker 1: down for me? Um, do you remember a few years
Speaker 1: ago it kind of became like a thing people talk about?
Speaker 1: Remember when like noodling became like bricard builder. I think
Speaker 1: started people like the media celebrating noodling for catfish, right,
Speaker 1: because something that had always been around, but all of
Speaker 1: a sudden entered the popular imagination and became like a thing, right,
Speaker 1: a thing beside, no, a thing that was known about
Speaker 1: outside of people who already naturally knew about it. Do
Speaker 1: you remember a few years agoing to be there begin
Speaker 1: this big conversation about eating squirrel brains very much leave
Speaker 1: that up for me. Mm hmm. Well it was do
Speaker 1: you eat squirrel brains? No? No, I do not. I
Speaker 1: do not do not. My background is in water wastewater.
Speaker 1: I ran the wastewater plants for twenty years. UH got
Speaker 1: interested in pathogens HIV, hepatitis, had thirty guys working for me.
Speaker 1: I would work out in the in the sewer system. Also. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was I wanted to know what's going on. That
Speaker 1: was when the AIDS epidemic was going around, and UH,
Speaker 1: I would read what I could. UM. And I was
Speaker 1: in a bookstore one day and there was a book
Speaker 1: called Deadly Faced and it was by Richard Rhodes and
Speaker 1: he's a man that wrote the Making of the Atomic Bomb.
Speaker 1: And of course the book was only five dollars. I
Speaker 1: skimmed through it real quick, since I'm gonna buy this baby.
Speaker 1: So I took it home and started reading it. And
Speaker 1: it was about a scientist that found the scrutch Field
Speaker 1: Jacob's disease or something like that, and the humans. Um.
Speaker 1: But he went down to New Guinea to study a
Speaker 1: tribe of people down there, and the children and the
Speaker 1: women were coming down with tremor disease and they would
Speaker 1: shake and die. The men did not have this disease.
Speaker 1: And he sat down and he was studying that tribe,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, um, what was going on. And
Speaker 1: he read a lot of technical journals about human beings
Speaker 1: and people like sniffing gold dust and would go in
Speaker 1: deposit in certain locations in your brain. Um. He read
Speaker 1: one article where a scientist trained these tape worms round
Speaker 1: worms to run a maze. You know, we all think
Speaker 1: of something the maze being complicated, and I just kind
Speaker 1: of kind of said, well, it's probably just like a
Speaker 1: real simple maze, you know, from point A to point
Speaker 1: the to eat this food. But for some reason, I
Speaker 1: don't know what the scientists was doing. And he took
Speaker 1: those those worms that he trained to run the maze.
Speaker 1: He killed them, ground them up, fed them to worms
Speaker 1: that never ran the maze. The worms could run the maze. Yes,
Speaker 1: read the book and and and from that, the the
Speaker 1: scientists knew that the the the people from New Guinea,
Speaker 1: they had a practice where they practiced cannibalism. Not for uh,
Speaker 1: defensive measures are trying to kill the anymis whatever, but
Speaker 1: to celebrate life. They thought if they ate one of
Speaker 1: the elders that it passed on that they would live
Speaker 1: in their body and go on. The men got all
Speaker 1: the choice pieces of eight and you women got the organs,
Speaker 1: being the lesser desirable quantities of meat, such as the children. There.
Speaker 1: So they were eating the brain and the heart and
Speaker 1: in us. And so he figured out there that that
Speaker 1: that was the transfer of the brain matter after they
Speaker 1: would eat it go in and that's where the tremor disease,
Speaker 1: the mad cow, the human version of the cruach frail
Speaker 1: Jacob's disease was coming into their their um society. So
Speaker 1: he got them to stop, uh doing that part of it.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how that went. Has been a
Speaker 1: pretty good while since I read that book, um, but
Speaker 1: there was a number of articles and it seemed like
Speaker 1: it was like a year or two ago. Wasn't back
Speaker 1: and looked at some of those things, and it was
Speaker 1: a two or three families in Kentucky and I have
Speaker 1: eaten squirrel brains, But uh, it was just one of
Speaker 1: those things that after I read that, read that book
Speaker 1: and looked at a little research and there was nothing
Speaker 1: definite about that um happening, but they did see that's
Speaker 1: the common thread that those two or three families had
Speaker 1: that they did consume the same squirrel brains. So I
Speaker 1: don't need eat any type of of of of brain
Speaker 1: matter whatsoever. Um um. I was at a convention down
Speaker 1: in Houston, I guess it's about thousand and there was
Speaker 1: a young engineer from Britain there and it was a
Speaker 1: water wastewater thing. We went out to eat with a
Speaker 1: with a vendor ordered me a big steak and then
Speaker 1: he said, aren't you worried about b v I? And
Speaker 1: that is the human version of the mad cow disease,
Speaker 1: and started to talking to him about it, and and
Speaker 1: and in the book also, I don't because the same
Speaker 1: book or another book. Uh. It came into our system
Speaker 1: after War two and we started doing factory farm and
Speaker 1: we started uh feeding tankage to cattle. Tankage is dead
Speaker 1: animals that they would go around from farms and pick
Speaker 1: up you know, nothing but pretty much pure protein. So
Speaker 1: they would feed it to the cattle's over in in
Speaker 1: England and France. And that's when they started coming down
Speaker 1: got into their system over there, the cattle and they
Speaker 1: would call it the tractor disease. They were supposed to
Speaker 1: report it to the authorities, but when their cattle come
Speaker 1: down with it, they went and got a tractor, shot
Speaker 1: him in the head, drug them off, and buried them
Speaker 1: where they wouldn't have to kill their whole whole herd
Speaker 1: over there. Uh you see it in cattle sheep is
Speaker 1: called scrape ees in there. Uh hogs, I know it.
Speaker 1: I don't think it. It's gotta it's gotta have gestation
Speaker 1: period of several years out there caused from a preon.
Speaker 1: You can put something contaminated with preons in an autoclave
Speaker 1: and autoclave will not kill it. So a preon is
Speaker 1: very very hard to kill. But you know, do not
Speaker 1: eat any brain matter of That's all it took to
Speaker 1: turn you off on it. I have a question in
Speaker 1: here too, before we get off the squirrel subject. No,
Speaker 1: I was ready to move on from squirrels, but go ahead,
Speaker 1: Can I jump in? Um, you, Kevin Murphy, are not
Speaker 1: just squirrel shooter. You're not just trigger man. Right, You're
Speaker 1: a squirrel hunter, correct, So you observe squirrels more more
Speaker 1: carefully than any man you've ever met. And you just
Speaker 1: told us that you watched them throughout hunting season, You
Speaker 1: watched them throughout the winter. You see what happens in
Speaker 1: the spring? Correct? Correct? Is are you part lawyer or
Speaker 1: where is this lady in your observations? Yeah? Does intense
Speaker 1: squirrel activity in the fall relate to a heavy winter? Oh?
Speaker 1: You mean like in a predictive fashion, In a predictive
Speaker 1: fashion like a farmer's almanact Kevin Murphy's Farmer's Almanact by
Speaker 1: a squirrel bearing in mind, Kevin and I am looking
Speaker 1: to get off the squirrel subject. No, that's all I
Speaker 1: want to know. You know I can't get off the
Speaker 1: squirrel subject. I could have one last things like Montana.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's an old man, old todder thing all over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that they know it's coming, right, so's they're building that
Speaker 1: making cautiful to imagine, beautiful to imagine. Let me go
Speaker 1: back to that. It's not maybe not squirrel activity. But
Speaker 1: like like I said earlier, I looked at the squirrels
Speaker 1: that we were killing and uh, late November, early December,
Speaker 1: and they were mud ball fat. I mean mud ball fat.
Speaker 1: So I knew that's when you got to wipe your
Speaker 1: hands on your pants finished skin in the squirrel Y
Speaker 1: Where does this saying come from? What's saying? Mud ball? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what does that mean? But I don't know why it
Speaker 1: means that. It sounds good? All right? They were large fat.
Speaker 1: How's that sound butter ball fat mud ball? But but
Speaker 1: I have noticed that that that when they when they come,
Speaker 1: you know, like said two kind of two things are
Speaker 1: going on there. There's not enough food to get them
Speaker 1: through the wintertime, so they're out there eating everything. And
Speaker 1: another observation that I made one year is that we
Speaker 1: had the locusts come out, and we had somewhat of
Speaker 1: a mass figure of that year us. They come out
Speaker 1: late August or whatever. But I never saw a squirrel
Speaker 1: eat a locust. But I know that that's what they
Speaker 1: were eating because they were as fat as I've ever
Speaker 1: seen any squirrel in my life. But they were consuming
Speaker 1: the locals. You know, a squirrel supposedly practices cannibalism, going
Speaker 1: to a nest and and and eat bird eggs, eat
Speaker 1: young birds. Uh, they're rodent, and we all know what
Speaker 1: rodents do they eat. Uh. So there's some observations I
Speaker 1: have made as far as squirrel activity bearing nuts and
Speaker 1: things of that nature. You know, I'm out killing stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm not waiting two days watching a help or whatever.
Speaker 1: So so that type of observation to see that it's
Speaker 1: what squirrels do over eight iurs that's not in my DNA.
Speaker 1: All right now officially moving on. Um someone wrote in
Speaker 1: and asked the question that I just don't understand. I
Speaker 1: know that we struggle with it, and he was saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: I has n has had a confusion around this. The
Speaker 1: other day on the phone, he was said, um, why
Speaker 1: do people say a half turkey breast? Meaning? Right, if
Speaker 1: I told you that I was out in the woods
Speaker 1: and I found half of a man's breast, right, what
Speaker 1: is the image you get in your mind? Not this right,
Speaker 1: but half? So why do people are like when you
Speaker 1: when you clean the turkey, okay, you you cut off.
Speaker 1: He's saying, when you clean a turkey, is it do
Speaker 1: both parts? Is that the breast are both parts? So
Speaker 1: a half breast is half of all? Or is a
Speaker 1: half breast when you cut in half? And I actually
Speaker 1: do not know the answer to this. Do you understand
Speaker 1: what I'm saying? I understand it's half of the entire breast.
Speaker 1: It was it wasn't asked my boy Tommy yet. He
Speaker 1: was saying he's having his daughter's graduation party at which
Speaker 1: he would like to cook turkeys, and I said, so
Speaker 1: take half of reast. He's like, you mean cut the
Speaker 1: thing in half. I'm like, no, you know, half a breast,
Speaker 1: like the chest. I don't know what I mean. Because
Speaker 1: then I realized I say it, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I say both ways, that don't know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I mean. He's like, I think the turkey's breast is
Speaker 1: the whole damn deal cut directly down the sternum bisect
Speaker 1: the breast. A half breast would be one of those correct.
Speaker 1: Cutting half in a breast would be like what I
Speaker 1: imagine on a human being, not cutting half. No, Cal's
Speaker 1: calling the whole thing one breath. Yeah, when we're like
Speaker 1: the breast region both sides, Yes, the breast in its
Speaker 1: entire teeth, You're wrong. And when you say a half breast,
Speaker 1: no one says that, you'd say take out. Like I'm
Speaker 1: messed up. I said, I said take out. I did
Speaker 1: say half a breast, meaning yeah, you just got confused
Speaker 1: in the moment. Yeah, but no, because this guy is
Speaker 1: confused about it. So it's not like it's just me.
Speaker 1: He's confused about it. I'm moving on to something because
Speaker 1: anybody having to add about this. He's confusing me and
Speaker 1: it made me more confused. But way forward. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna hit you with another one. Um have you Uh
Speaker 1: A guy wants to know, and I don't have enough
Speaker 1: authority noess to ask. Do rattlesnakes killed dogs? Yeah? Right, yes,
Speaker 1: if they zap him on the throat or nose. You know,
Speaker 1: a big diamondbacks packs a punch in there, so I
Speaker 1: would think a big diamondback could could kill a dog. Now,
Speaker 1: copper head is our main poisons snake in Kentucky, third
Speaker 1: third most prevalent snake out there. I've had numerous dogs
Speaker 1: met by copper heads, And just like Steve said, um,
Speaker 1: if they yet bit in the throat that area, the
Speaker 1: snake bite is not What really kills them is the
Speaker 1: swelling from the snake bite. Uh. If they yet bit
Speaker 1: u um anywhere else, it swells up. I never take
Speaker 1: them to the to the bed on that part. We
Speaker 1: were hunting one year January O b l out on
Speaker 1: a point and it had been cold. He warmed up,
Speaker 1: got sunny and my one of my best squirrel dogs
Speaker 1: came in there after he treated squirrel and you got
Speaker 1: to look at it, and it's front left shoulder swelled
Speaker 1: up like a country ham. And the best thing that
Speaker 1: I could, uh do you like that again? That that's
Speaker 1: Steve's favorite meat, country ham. So if you guys want
Speaker 1: to send him a present, he really likes country ham.
Speaker 1: But uh, it swelled up, I mean like four times
Speaker 1: its size. But my experience with numerous dogs throughout my lifetime,
Speaker 1: the copper Head like said, unless it beat the bites
Speaker 1: a dog in the throat or whatever and it has
Speaker 1: some swelling, um, you're gonna be okay. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: take your dog to the vent, let him look at
Speaker 1: it whatever. But like I said, my hunting dogs, I
Speaker 1: pretty much just let them, let them write it out,
Speaker 1: just like a beast thing or whatever. But my experience
Speaker 1: with with the rattlesnakes, I can't really answer that. You know,
Speaker 1: we've got some timber rattlers in our area, but I
Speaker 1: do know that that that they are pretty brutal. We've
Speaker 1: got cotton mouse also in there that have like a
Speaker 1: neuro toxin in there, so I think they have some
Speaker 1: some flesh degradation when I get beat that bite a dog,
Speaker 1: but the copper head being a poison steak, I'm not
Speaker 1: too concerned if I do have a dog bit by
Speaker 1: cop kise. I'm gonna tell this dude, just don't worry
Speaker 1: about it. Plays listening right now? Uh Mark? In our
Speaker 1: home state, right it's illegal to shoot a piebald or
Speaker 1: is it still illegal in Michigan to shooting a pie
Speaker 1: old or albino deer? I'm pretty sure not because it
Speaker 1: was when I was a boy. Because I don't know
Speaker 1: this because I know the actual regulation. But I remember
Speaker 1: a few years ago somebody and a kid in Michigan
Speaker 1: shot I believe it was a piebald and it went
Speaker 1: viral and there was all sorts of Facebook hate mail
Speaker 1: and stuff like that and death threats. I remember people writing,
Speaker 1: some blogger writer writing like in defense of the kid
Speaker 1: and stuff. So I'm don't I'm not a hundred percent,
Speaker 1: But that's because of what the question was that someone
Speaker 1: had is like why is it He's like, why is
Speaker 1: it unethical to shoot an albino or piebald deer? And
Speaker 1: it's like I didn't know that. It was like why
Speaker 1: does that make because because it's an oddity. Do you
Speaker 1: remove you You removed this freakish thing, and now you're
Speaker 1: a bad person. I don't know if that feedback is
Speaker 1: coming from hunters, but I think that maybe non hunters
Speaker 1: view it as something extra special character almost. You know,
Speaker 1: once you have this unique feature, then you can personalize
Speaker 1: that animal. Probably, Oh, this is that Bob the white
Speaker 1: deer that we say on the neighborhood or something like that,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden becomes something that emotions
Speaker 1: can get wrapped around. Yeah, he becomes like pedals the
Speaker 1: bear exactly from New Jersey exactly. But I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know many hunters who have a vehement
Speaker 1: position on it. I personally wouldn't go out of my
Speaker 1: way to target a pieball or albino deer, Like it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a thing like, oh wow, I really want
Speaker 1: to go after that deer. Um you would, Well, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know what I would do
Speaker 1: for for whatever reason, I don't really, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I feel like it would just I would be maybe
Speaker 1: maybe I even as I'm talking through this, I might
Speaker 1: be struck with the rarity of it and just be like, Wow,
Speaker 1: that is really cool. I don't want to see that end.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, I think more I say, I don't think
Speaker 1: I would. I don't think I was shooting. It was
Speaker 1: annoying to me when you couldn't because I remember thinking like,
Speaker 1: because pieball means just patches of albinism, right, like not patches,
Speaker 1: but patches of whiteness. So when it was illegal to
Speaker 1: shoot one because I think it came from a case,
Speaker 1: but there was one that was well known only because
Speaker 1: he was identifiable, so he didn't blend into the normal
Speaker 1: general dearness of deer and he was distinguishable. And so
Speaker 1: then when someone killed and people were pissed because they
Speaker 1: knew that one. But I remember thinking like, well, if
Speaker 1: what if it's patches only on the side that's facing
Speaker 1: away from you, we're fighting someone all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: like accidentally be a a internet priya. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: were to have the audacity to put a picture of
Speaker 1: But if I was looking at one like to stand
Speaker 1: actually turned one had that characteristic, I would be like
Speaker 1: not drawn to the to the one with the recognizable characteristics,
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't like look down on someone who did
Speaker 1: want to take that deer that's their progative. I want
Speaker 1: to because I feel like you guys weren't getting me.
Speaker 1: I want to return to this turkey breast thing. But
Speaker 1: now I'm looking at the actually doing Okay, this guy
Speaker 1: is right in because him and his father are in
Speaker 1: a fight. They're in a fight because we are a
Speaker 1: disagreement on the subject. Because my belief that a turkey
Speaker 1: breast is a comprised of two parts that you cut out,
Speaker 1: and these two parts are each classified as one turn
Speaker 1: key breast each once, and you slice him in half,
Speaker 1: you have half a turkey breast. My dad, in the
Speaker 1: other hand, whole hardly disagrees with me. He said the
Speaker 1: turkey breast is one whole thing. So it is a
Speaker 1: real issue tearing a father and son apart. Here's how
Speaker 1: I think, Steve, I think that you can right here.
Speaker 1: How do you remove a turkey breast? Is it a
Speaker 1: one part procedure or do you take out two things?
Speaker 1: You can't. You can't take it out as one whole
Speaker 1: piece because they are two separate breasts. Moving on, big
Speaker 1: question from a dude named Matt. No, Matt wants to
Speaker 1: know this is it okay? This is a hot This
Speaker 1: is more hot. This is an actual problem. This isn't
Speaker 1: like how many breasts around turkey. This is an actual problem.
Speaker 1: Why is it okay? Why? Why does everyone say it's
Speaker 1: not okay but it actually seems to be okay that
Speaker 1: you could thaw me out and re freeze it. That's
Speaker 1: a big no no. But I don't understand the no
Speaker 1: no nos. Totally fine, Yes, this is a question that
Speaker 1: we get often. Do you find out what I'm saying
Speaker 1: no and why? It's just a thing like if you
Speaker 1: go and ask like an actual real chef who deals
Speaker 1: with actual real ingredients to tell you that it's a
Speaker 1: big no no because when when it freezes, well, you're
Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna tell me why. Yeah, I think there's
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. Oh why did you just ask me? Well,
Speaker 1: just because I want to get the context what they're
Speaker 1: saying about it. But I would say it's probably not
Speaker 1: so much that the freezing and thawing that it's going through,
Speaker 1: although that might deteriorate the meat as well, but meat's
Speaker 1: probably spending more time in the food danger zone, and
Speaker 1: so you just inviting there's like more opportunity to have
Speaker 1: bacteria and stuff grow and probably gets sick from it
Speaker 1: because you probably just don't want to be letting that
Speaker 1: meat go back and forth through that you know space
Speaker 1: of you know temperatures. So I guess you did under controlled,
Speaker 1: real controlled circumstances and never let it get out of
Speaker 1: you know whatever. About forty degrees probably wouldn't be that
Speaker 1: big do I thought I had to do with water loss,
Speaker 1: which kind of doesn't make sense. Well, I think what
Speaker 1: it has to do with is water, but uh what
Speaker 1: I it's the water freezing breaking down the cell tissues.
Speaker 1: That's what I was gonna get into all that craft. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then he could come up with like some mushy meat. Right,
Speaker 1: So they're doing a multiple times fracturing cell walls because
Speaker 1: you ever notice when you freeze something thought out, it's
Speaker 1: like where all that water come? Like? Right, you get
Speaker 1: that like that watery, bloody thing because all that water
Speaker 1: comes out of there. Had you never frozen, hadn't done that,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know the thing on top about right,
Speaker 1: like just pull out of rolls and thought on a plate,
Speaker 1: the water comes. But times like I'm digging through the
Speaker 1: freezer and my stummach gets bigger than my brain and
Speaker 1: I pull out more than I can possibly feed anybody
Speaker 1: that week, and I'm I gotta take off again. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh yeah, chuck her back and the freezing whatever,
Speaker 1: I don't get to, you know, And I've never had
Speaker 1: any ill effects. Yeah, That's why I feel like it's
Speaker 1: not a problem, because what we'll do oftentimes is, especially
Speaker 1: if you're traveling, is we'll hunt bone something out, put
Speaker 1: it in gallon size ziplock bags, freeze it. Then you
Speaker 1: come home and got a total mess on your hands.
Speaker 1: You thought the thing back out, sorted out, process of property,
Speaker 1: grind it if it's burger, trim it, parted out, refreeze it,
Speaker 1: and then people act like you've just committed like the
Speaker 1: cardinal sin of meat handle. Would it be fair to
Speaker 1: say that's not the ideal scenario, but it's not the
Speaker 1: end of the world. Probably, So I have an Internet
Speaker 1: Mario playing out there, refrigerator in the garage right now, okay,
Speaker 1: uh down Texas a couple of weeks ago, and of course,
Speaker 1: make I kill a deer the this access here with
Speaker 1: the pretty meat the last day that the very last
Speaker 1: morning over there, hundreds of five degrees, So get it
Speaker 1: into a walk in refrigerator. I break it down into
Speaker 1: general big pieces, uh for travel, and to let it
Speaker 1: cool out as much as possible. We hang out there
Speaker 1: as long as possible, let things cool down, stuff everything,
Speaker 1: and big gas cooler pile ice on top of it,
Speaker 1: drab four hours, puld things back out of the cooler,
Speaker 1: stepping into smaller coolers. Things are pretty darn chilled down now,
Speaker 1: and then you know, walk onto the plane and fly.
Speaker 1: They basically like an eight hour day back to my house.
Speaker 1: At that point, Um pulled the big pieces back out
Speaker 1: and put them on the racks and my refrigerators. And
Speaker 1: I've let him go a little over two weeks now, yes,
Speaker 1: because there was no opportunity for that muture rest now.
Speaker 1: Sun Sunday night, I took a loin and I never
Speaker 1: let loins the age like that because there's neat loss
Speaker 1: and it's not that big of a wine. But it
Speaker 1: had a really nice sharp away knife and basically like
Speaker 1: her Shuto size cuts off ed outside of that wine
Speaker 1: and it was fantastic. And I'm intending on processing all
Speaker 1: that meat when I get back uh the mystery smart
Speaker 1: I'll be processing eat tomorrow night there and feed off
Speaker 1: it now. But you know, now I have like big
Speaker 1: hams left and I'm not gonna be able to eat
Speaker 1: through that. Yeah's tell about the audit piece of meat weird,
Speaker 1: remember that? Yeah? Sorry, I was. I was also thinking
Speaker 1: about that someone else, everybuddy Mike Rule aged some is
Speaker 1: it words I was telling you about, Yeah, the same
Speaker 1: way that you did. I think he did eight weeks
Speaker 1: in a fridge. No fans just got it. Keeps it
Speaker 1: can't be sitting on it. Everything was like, we ate
Speaker 1: all dat meat that had hung for eighteen months in
Speaker 1: the clip and it was like hilly controlled, very temperature
Speaker 1: and humidity control, and it was like eating blue cheese.
Speaker 1: It tasted like cheese. It was good though. It was good, dude.
Speaker 1: The only negative about it, the only negative about it
Speaker 1: is so you got this thing. It's like this thick
Speaker 1: right after eighteen months, there's there's you know, it's like
Speaker 1: a tenderloin on the inside that you can all the
Speaker 1: rest is just dried out and all you have left
Speaker 1: is this little inside soft bit of like a block
Speaker 1: of blue cheese hiding inside that leg. Was it ultra
Speaker 1: rich like it was pungent rich. It was like if
Speaker 1: you told me it was meat flavored cheese. Like second
Speaker 1: guessing your next bite to where you're like, boy, that
Speaker 1: was really good, but I don't know if I could
Speaker 1: handle the Actually, I fully expected to get sick, not
Speaker 1: from the flavor, not from the flavor. I was like,
Speaker 1: there's no way. That just seemed like one of those
Speaker 1: things that laid and you're like, holy ship, Like what
Speaker 1: was I thinking? It just seemed like like you were
Speaker 1: entering Did you get that feeling like you were entering
Speaker 1: the territory of like your responsibility? Well, yeah, the outside
Speaker 1: was kind of like rainbow colored, wasn't it. I mean
Speaker 1: it was mostly white, but there's definitely patches of different
Speaker 1: colors of did you run out of Yeah, no, we
Speaker 1: were in a we were well fed inside a restaurant.
Speaker 1: And uh, but my old man would talk about when
Speaker 1: I was looking at my old man would talk about
Speaker 1: hanging deer, white tail deer. Until they had you would
Speaker 1: say a quarter inch of green mold was the indicator.
Speaker 1: They would use it. It It was now a time, the
Speaker 1: green quarter inch of green mold the mold you don't
Speaker 1: want black note black buzzy mold is bad. But he
Speaker 1: would say a quarter inch of green mold. These had
Speaker 1: white molebout him. Yeah, yeah, I wish he had pictures
Speaker 1: that we do. I think do we have pictures that Yeah?
Speaker 1: He snaps no white. I'm just saying with my old
Speaker 1: man said, and he's like, you know, gone now, and
Speaker 1: was had some questionable bits of information. I mean not
Speaker 1: you know, but that's something that he would talk about,
Speaker 1: is like you know, doing that hanging it that long.
Speaker 1: I will say this access here was actually it's one
Speaker 1: of the better deer running around up in the woods
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. In the desert, like the resting period
Speaker 1: was critical seeing that bad. I think there was no cheese.
Speaker 1: That's nice. What I might do now, since it's gonna
Speaker 1: break it down some more, that old tough cow I've
Speaker 1: been chewing on for the last five six months, I
Speaker 1: might just thaw her the whole thing out him freezing.
Speaker 1: No one's ead it again. Yeah, if that's a yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll report back. But I am into What I am
Speaker 1: into that that I don't hear people talk about is
Speaker 1: just like it is like what you're saying with just
Speaker 1: like standard fridge aging of game me and just like
Speaker 1: setting your fridge, you have to trim the outside away.
Speaker 1: But I think that people worry too much about aging stuff,
Speaker 1: Like what's I mean the worst case scenario, you get
Speaker 1: a team but sick. I was taking stuff overhead time.
Speaker 1: My buddies acted out and I went I got a
Speaker 1: brand ziplock bag and went out there to throw this
Speaker 1: one in a nip block fag and realized that it
Speaker 1: would just be I just beginning a zip block bag
Speaker 1: totally dirty for a reason, like it has such a
Speaker 1: grind all the meat that I could have thrown it
Speaker 1: got in my truck and driming it across town. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it becomes Durhamley. So that I mean think about I
Speaker 1: got another ethics one, A couple of ethics ones. Um
Speaker 1: A guy wrote in he has one time he he
Speaker 1: has one complaint about listening to the show, as he
Speaker 1: used to listen to it. Then he got his friends
Speaker 1: listening to the show, and now he can't talk about
Speaker 1: what he heard on the show as though it was
Speaker 1: something that he just natively knew, because they'll be like, dude,
Speaker 1: you didn't know that. I just heard that too. So
Speaker 1: he's bummed that he told him one because he just
Speaker 1: liked to act like he just news stuff that he
Speaker 1: had to find out about somehow, but he's talking about
Speaker 1: so he's hunting, right, and he's he's I don't know
Speaker 1: what stading. No, he's in Texas, lives in Texas, and
Speaker 1: he's hunting. And a dough and a yearling came up
Speaker 1: when I think he's not talking about a yearland because
Speaker 1: they're together. So people say yearling, but it's not really
Speaker 1: a yearling. If you're hunting in the fall, it's a
Speaker 1: Why do you People still still like always say that, right,
Speaker 1: it's like it's eight months old, that year born net spring,
Speaker 1: a deer of the year. So a doe and a
Speaker 1: yearling buck come into his feeder. He passes on the thing,
Speaker 1: passes on the dough because he would have felt guilty
Speaker 1: about orphaning a yearly. And he wants to know what
Speaker 1: are y'all's thought on this because his bodies ripped him
Speaker 1: a new one over saying doesn't matter. I think from
Speaker 1: a management standpoint, from a like a well being of
Speaker 1: the dear herd perspective, doesn't matter. From the well being
Speaker 1: of deer, I agree. Remember with that, read and heard
Speaker 1: and talked to biologists about it. Those deer of the year,
Speaker 1: those spawns at that by the time hunting season rolls around.
Speaker 1: They they are biologically capable of surviving in the Typically,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, they get picked up by the
Speaker 1: rest of the dope family group that they're hanging out with,
Speaker 1: or the nearest adjacent doe family group and they continue
Speaker 1: on just fine. So from a biological or management perspective, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I personally it's heart rending. I've I've like flip flopped
Speaker 1: on it lots, Like I've had days where I've been
Speaker 1: out there sitting and I want to kill a doe
Speaker 1: and I had a dough and bonds come out and
Speaker 1: I would just sit there and that do I want
Speaker 1: to do? I not, and I know I don't want to.
Speaker 1: And I've had other days where I, yeah, I gotta
Speaker 1: get that dough and and and put in my head.
Speaker 1: You would still have that sense of yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 1: you get into all like the ethics and morals and
Speaker 1: the the wise and house of what we do stuff,
Speaker 1: and that that's like murky, sticky, swampy territory. And I
Speaker 1: think all of us have a different process there. You
Speaker 1: shoot the faw the pawn has the least lightly who
Speaker 1: sure I need to maturity and producing more of you well,
Speaker 1: that's that. Let's think about our goals. In most of
Speaker 1: the Midwest and Ohio and Michigan, we we actually want
Speaker 1: to we actually want to lower your populations, so we
Speaker 1: have issues were actually the the smarter decision from a
Speaker 1: management perspective is to take that mature dough. It's more
Speaker 1: likely to have future fonds. And you know, because we've
Speaker 1: got too high of deer populations because you have you
Speaker 1: have states that are trying to bend over backwards to
Speaker 1: encourage people to take some step toward lowering dear numbers.
Speaker 1: Like in Wisconsin, there's areas you can't shoot a buck
Speaker 1: until you shoot a dough. You have to shoot a
Speaker 1: doll to get a buck tag. That's how serious they
Speaker 1: are about shooting does but still for me, like from
Speaker 1: the like so like the whole like just the Bambi
Speaker 1: angle on it. Um, Yeah, I would shoot the other one.
Speaker 1: You shoot the phone. Yeah, I don't know why. See,
Speaker 1: I would feel worse. I would feel worse about shooting
Speaker 1: the fond than the than the than the dope. There
Speaker 1: are management areas in but there's plenty did you you
Speaker 1: honey month where they actually have half loose seasons, so
Speaker 1: it's not a not an answerless it is a half season.
Speaker 1: Now ran to think this through. You have a calf
Speaker 1: that a mature animal is hearing for in addition to
Speaker 1: themselves when it was the hardest time of year. The
Speaker 1: mature animal can produce one or two more of those ideally,
Speaker 1: and that's breeding to you. So you I mean, it's
Speaker 1: absolutely no different than you know our uh every bolts
Speaker 1: n that cow that produces cab and be telling the
Speaker 1: gap and deep cap. Yeah, I never thought about that.
Speaker 1: People look down on a hunter for doing that. But
Speaker 1: when you go to restaurant too, that's all you're eating,
Speaker 1: and it's all you're eating. It is. It's one of
Speaker 1: those weird things. It's one of those weird things where
Speaker 1: it's like, on one hand, you want to be all
Speaker 1: you want to sit back and look at it all
Speaker 1: with sort of this perspective of like you know, herd
Speaker 1: management longevity management goals, but you're always through using these
Speaker 1: situations where you can't divorce yourself and just he's kind
Speaker 1: of like just basic, you know, he's kind of like
Speaker 1: basic native feelings of of of like kind of like
Speaker 1: misplaced empathy. I guess, you know, I remember being stuck
Speaker 1: in that situation all the time bo hunt, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I would never want to do that, be like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's horrible to do that, and and then like shoot
Speaker 1: little one, which is distasteful as well. But yeah, and
Speaker 1: the industrial egg situation, that's all it is. I would
Speaker 1: just say that I don't think personally that there's a
Speaker 1: right or wrong answer to that. I understand both sides
Speaker 1: of and I myself, like I just said, sometimes no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to shoot that deer, and sometimes I have,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's misplaced empathy, and that I
Speaker 1: think it having some kind of sense of empathy around
Speaker 1: what we do as hunters. I'm not saying it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean we don't kill deer or elk or whatever, but
Speaker 1: at least having some sense of that, I think it's
Speaker 1: maybe a healthy thing to to temper what we're doing
Speaker 1: and to be least thoughtful about it. Um how that
Speaker 1: actually plays out in the field is gonna be different
Speaker 1: for everyone, but I would just say, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a bad thing that we think
Speaker 1: about this stuff. It's an acknowledgement that you're you're engaged
Speaker 1: in something seriously, and it plays out like it's a light.
Speaker 1: You're dealing with like wives and death, most serious thing.
Speaker 1: This guy also says Tony Sassery is way better and
Speaker 1: old Bay honest. I just I hold to that that
Speaker 1: they're different. Okay, here completely anecdotal, speaking of the calf
Speaker 1: being picked up by the rest of the heard a
Speaker 1: hunter once that on open morning he killed the bigger
Speaker 1: of the two elk, and they were traveling together. The
Speaker 1: calf was left there alone. And that was like opening days.
Speaker 1: So we got it for five days, and I think
Speaker 1: I had two or three days to hunt, because this
Speaker 1: season was like nine days long. We got it for five.
Speaker 1: I could hunt the last four days of this season.
Speaker 1: I was hunting around, hunting around, couldn't find a cow,
Speaker 1: and I thought, I wonder about that cal. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: I went right back to where the hunter had shot from.
Speaker 1: I sat there, and before the sound of the first
Speaker 1: note of my cow call faded, I heard here she comes,
Speaker 1: just running over the hill, and I was like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I kind of didn't hope for it to work so well.
Speaker 1: And then so she hadn't joined the herd. She was
Speaker 1: still like hanging out. Heard this story. It's so tasty, though,
Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing. I mean a cap like archery season,
Speaker 1: so much easier to pack out, so tasty. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: one trip. Ye, here's another one. The guys said, we
Speaker 1: were having a conversation on on on this year program.
Speaker 1: We're having a conversation one day where I was talking
Speaker 1: about some things that didn't like, some forms of hunting,
Speaker 1: some hunting practices that didn't interest me, okay, and I
Speaker 1: cited some examples, and we're actually having a conversation about
Speaker 1: we're having a conversation about where I was kind of
Speaker 1: like putting it to Mark Kennyan a little bit like
Speaker 1: and something like, why what is the difference between having
Speaker 1: a food plot and having bait out in the woods? Right?
Speaker 1: And some people say like it's the same exact thing,
Speaker 1: or some people say it's different, And and it brought
Speaker 1: up this conversation where um, I was saying that we
Speaker 1: used to hunt overbait all the time. Then it just
Speaker 1: became worths not interesting to me now and now I
Speaker 1: don't And he pointed out like that rees he's saying
Speaker 1: this letter, He's like, you don't read it this way,
Speaker 1: but what that reads as is it reads is you
Speaker 1: condemning and hunting practice that anyone looking in would say,
Speaker 1: like the by saying you wouldn't do it, you're condemning it.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's like kind of an interesting
Speaker 1: thing that needs to be proud of that a little bit,
Speaker 1: because I don't feel that I am right. I'm feeling
Speaker 1: that everyone looks and there's things that you're drawn to
Speaker 1: and things that you're not. And how could it be
Speaker 1: held up that if you're not drawn to something and
Speaker 1: don't want to do something, it doesn't interest you, that
Speaker 1: there's sort of this like this like implicit condemnation of
Speaker 1: the activity, which seems like a stretch, like it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel to me that's what I'm doing, And I think
Speaker 1: it like just opens up some level of sensitivity on
Speaker 1: people's behalf where they feel like you're saying that they
Speaker 1: like to do something, you don't like to do it,
Speaker 1: therefore you must be saying that they're wrong. If I
Speaker 1: choose not to play soccer, are you gonna think that
Speaker 1: that means I hate people to play soccer, that I'm
Speaker 1: condemning the sport. No, well, and not playing golf that's
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. But yeah, I agree with you. I
Speaker 1: think that there's there's nothing wrong with people having different
Speaker 1: takes on what appeals to us, or what lines we draw,
Speaker 1: or whatever it might be. And that's okay. I think
Speaker 1: it's a good thing that we all have our own
Speaker 1: different lines of what we feel is compelling, interesting, or
Speaker 1: even ethical. We all have a different take on some
Speaker 1: of those things. And yeah, because he's inviting to look
Speaker 1: at he's inviting one to look at it from the
Speaker 1: non hunting perspective, saying like from the non hunting perspective,
Speaker 1: people were looking to be like, see you see what
Speaker 1: I'm saying about those certain practices these people because you're
Speaker 1: signaling that that it's bad. And maybe his argument is
Speaker 1: that because because you have a platform, So maybe it's
Speaker 1: someone who who's like a leadership's position in some capacity
Speaker 1: within this community. By saying that you don't that signals
Speaker 1: to other people as someone that you know has a platform.
Speaker 1: But maybe that's the case. I can better understand that argument.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I agree. I got one for you. You
Speaker 1: um dudes want to know is it okay to hunt
Speaker 1: dear the two twenty three? Why is that for me?
Speaker 1: Because I think of you as like a like a
Speaker 1: guy that you're definitely kind of a bulletin. Did you guys,
Speaker 1: see my tattoo. Is that what it makes of the bullets?
Speaker 1: All of them? I'm joking, you don't. I forgot to mention.
Speaker 1: Not only is it the Solstice, but it's Yanni Day
Speaker 1: in Latvia, where I think like people named like the
Speaker 1: singer No, people named Janice, people named Janice celebrate today
Speaker 1: in Latvia because they're all everybody's celebrates. It's kind of
Speaker 1: it's it's weird, it's it's a summer solstice party and
Speaker 1: it just happens to be called Yanni, which is like
Speaker 1: the Yanni name Day, like everybody in all that means
Speaker 1: have a name day as well. It's kind of nice
Speaker 1: growing up because it was almost treated as like a
Speaker 1: second birthday. So you get you want to get quite
Speaker 1: as many presents, but you get a few. You'd have
Speaker 1: like a little celebration. Would it wouldn't know, joke be
Speaker 1: equivalent they're being to there being a Steve Day, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: Dude's named Steve party that day. Yes, yeah, but for
Speaker 1: Yannie Day, it's in the summer souls this and yeah
Speaker 1: you go. But you have all kinds of traditions that
Speaker 1: you do, sing a lot, big bonfires, travel from house
Speaker 1: to house. Would you greet all the neighbors eat? This
Speaker 1: is gonna it's gonna get a good laugh. But you
Speaker 1: eat a bunch of Yanni cheese, um, which is like
Speaker 1: a it's kind of blamed as caraway seeds in it
Speaker 1: s tasty. There's pete agga usually like some of you
Speaker 1: have had, or maybe it's just Steve. Yeah. Um, what
Speaker 1: else do we do? Yeah? You do? Um? Just you know,
Speaker 1: like you were saying about the Native Americans, you know,
Speaker 1: doing things to sort of you know what. I would
Speaker 1: you say, they move this on somehow. Yeah, you're you're
Speaker 1: sending it back south. Yea good luck for the rest
Speaker 1: of the year. I think you had to get a
Speaker 1: partner and jump over the bonfire. That was like the
Speaker 1: highlight were when we were old enough to do when
Speaker 1: your parents like, oh you get to do it? This
Speaker 1: year is like, yes, we get to jump over bond fire. Um.
Speaker 1: You want to know more? Yeah, I know, I want
Speaker 1: you to jump real quick, because I thought the solstice
Speaker 1: was the day you guys throw a molten lead into
Speaker 1: a bucket of water and then read the future with it.
Speaker 1: Can you break that down? Winter Solstice? Yeah, winter break
Speaker 1: that you don't want to wait until the winter solstics
Speaker 1: for that. I want to talk about it right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very safe practice. I can't believe our parents were like,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we would uh buy a bunch of fishing
Speaker 1: weights and probably everybody got a bag or so. And
Speaker 1: you have an old pot that was used every year
Speaker 1: for this, and you would melt the lead, and you
Speaker 1: have a cold bucket of five gallon bucket of cold
Speaker 1: water and you would I think some years, I guess
Speaker 1: we had a ladle, but I remember usually just having
Speaker 1: a small pot and you would dump the pot quickly
Speaker 1: into the cold bucket of water and they would just
Speaker 1: turn into a form. Everybody would go around doing that,
Speaker 1: and you'd sit around and look at this thing. And
Speaker 1: then you would um find a take off a painting
Speaker 1: off the wall or something. Just have a plain hand,
Speaker 1: just doing it right now on that wall behind you
Speaker 1: go and you set up a candle and you just
Speaker 1: hold the lead, big green sculpture. I don't know what
Speaker 1: you call. You didn't sculpt it, really, but the form
Speaker 1: that you made and uh with the light from the
Speaker 1: uh candle moving a little bit, and then that odd
Speaker 1: shape everybody else sits around. It's in your group and
Speaker 1: looks that shadow and sort of projects your next year.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, Yanni is gonna get a big old buck,
Speaker 1: right if it throws a shadowy? Yeah, that's good stuff.
Speaker 1: Now back, you know, I've never ever done it, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I've never owned a twenty three, so I
Speaker 1: really can't. Um. I've never killed that. You were the
Speaker 1: two forty three. I've seen it done, so I know
Speaker 1: you know, and it was a nice, quick, clean kill.
Speaker 1: But to two three, I'm sure with the right bullet
Speaker 1: and the right bullet placement, it could be done right bullet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but those guys have killed charging grizzly bears with twenty two.
Speaker 1: But I don't think anyone proposes that. That's like a
Speaker 1: thing that makes sense. You So when people rely on
Speaker 1: the like I like when you hear that argument, well,
Speaker 1: my brother's cousin, that does make sense. But you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like, it's like it's thrown out there
Speaker 1: all the time. But this dude wants to know. I'm
Speaker 1: not a gun guy. But the reading I've done on
Speaker 1: it in the past is that yes, but it's you've
Speaker 1: gotta be mindful about your bullet choice and your distance,
Speaker 1: like it should be a close range thing only because,
Speaker 1: like I said, I'm not a gun guy, but I
Speaker 1: think the two three it's a velocity thing right to
Speaker 1: make that work to kill a larger game species, So
Speaker 1: you want to make sure you don't shoot so far
Speaker 1: that velocity drops off. And we've talked extensively. Uh, Janice
Speaker 1: and I both had poor guiding experiences when folks would
Speaker 1: show up with the seven mm meg and that was
Speaker 1: when that cartridge first came on the market and was
Speaker 1: very popular, and I trying to be a grown up
Speaker 1: and objective and looking back, it's not that that rifle
Speaker 1: isn't worth uh anything, but likely there was not the
Speaker 1: appropriate ammunition on the market at the time to make
Speaker 1: that a good killing rifle. Yeah, I believed at that
Speaker 1: is this dude, I wish I knew if he was
Speaker 1: If he was here, we'd know if he was happy
Speaker 1: with that or not. Yeah, I think you need to
Speaker 1: look at uh velocities, how much energy that projectile is
Speaker 1: taking to the animal at a given distance, so you
Speaker 1: know what is what math says is the correct amount
Speaker 1: of energy at what distance and have an appropriate projectile
Speaker 1: for hunting, not a target projectile that especially in a
Speaker 1: two case is the most prolific and the least expensive
Speaker 1: by fire. Yeah, I would recommend he go read what
Speaker 1: Chuck Hawks has to say about it. That is kind
Speaker 1: of the authority. But he's a reliable dude, Chuck Hawks
Speaker 1: and Chuck Hawks is a gunwriter who's kind of anti
Speaker 1: gun writer, which is helpful. This guy, this is a
Speaker 1: good one. I understand you used to live in grow
Speaker 1: up in Montana, where everyone knows that you skin an
Speaker 1: animal hanging it from its gambrels. I mean you hang
Speaker 1: it from its hawks upside down. In Wisconsin, everyone knows
Speaker 1: that you hang a deer by its neck. Why is
Speaker 1: this and who is right the neck guy? I think
Speaker 1: because what we used to do is we would take
Speaker 1: them and do all the skinning cuts hanging up by
Speaker 1: the neck, and then take a golf and skin the
Speaker 1: neck down a little ways, put a golf ball in there,
Speaker 1: wrap a rope around it with a slipknot, cook it
Speaker 1: to a four wheeler or a vehicle, and just drive
Speaker 1: away and that whole hide squirts right off slick. One
Speaker 1: cannot do that the other way around. So I think
Speaker 1: that's God's way of saying hanging from the neck. But
Speaker 1: it's like it's that like regional bias. He was wondering,
Speaker 1: how why the difference is? Anyone have anything to add
Speaker 1: about that. I would guess that if you actually took
Speaker 1: a census and drove around those two states, you'd probably
Speaker 1: see it's probably split down the middle. In Texas, you
Speaker 1: can probably go from one ranch they're all hanging by
Speaker 1: the neck, go the next ranswer hanging by the hawks.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's necessary true, that it's one
Speaker 1: way in the north in a different way in the south.
Speaker 1: So he like hung out with two people hung out.
Speaker 1: One guy in Montana did it that way and one
Speaker 1: guy in Wisconsin did the other way. And he's like,
Speaker 1: that's just how they do it in these states. Few
Speaker 1: enough that I think it's a coincidence. Make it clean,
Speaker 1: get the meat cooled down fast. I don't care how
Speaker 1: you do it. Have you got a guy rode in
Speaker 1: from Ohio here, um, and he wanted to know, like,
Speaker 1: what is up? Why can we not have elk in Ohio?
Speaker 1: Of the people who were in from Ohio, how many
Speaker 1: of you guys would like to see Elk in Ohio?
Speaker 1: It's how many of you which would not all Ohioans
Speaker 1: are in. Yeah, it winds up being a kind of
Speaker 1: an interesting story because of course Elk here like everywhere,
Speaker 1: pretty much everywhere else Um at the time of European contact,
Speaker 1: you were in the heart of Elk country, right, Elk
Speaker 1: occupied almost the entirety of the Lower forty eight. There's
Speaker 1: like some debate about where the line was drawn around Maine,
Speaker 1: where the line was drawn, like whether they were down
Speaker 1: on the floor to anced or not. But they were
Speaker 1: just everywhere everywhere. You know, early English columnists plant many
Speaker 1: places of Spanish columns went, there was Elk. And I
Speaker 1: think we always point out is we've only recovered Elk
Speaker 1: on you know, ninety or so, like, you know, we've
Speaker 1: only I'm sorry, we haven't recovered Elk. And someone like
Speaker 1: n of the historic range Elk absent from most places
Speaker 1: that Elk belong. And someone was saying, like what's up,
Speaker 1: Like why not Ohio, Ohio did a feasibility study. Another
Speaker 1: interesting thing is that you guys with the musket gum river,
Speaker 1: how do you say it? Oh, because I'm from Moskegan,
Speaker 1: we don't spell it nearly like that. How do you
Speaker 1: guys say it moskeegum? You know what it means, okay,
Speaker 1: one dude, say it musk and gum. Can you guys
Speaker 1: hear what someone's saying? I got yeah, just get let
Speaker 1: him let it up. That's what it is. Okay, you
Speaker 1: know what that means? What he's right so many because
Speaker 1: you know, like in the old day's a very popular
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he gets something for that. Like if you
Speaker 1: read accounts of if you read accounts of how hunters
Speaker 1: would hunt in Boone's time, like a very common way
Speaker 1: to hunt, like the early hide hunters. What how they
Speaker 1: would hunt was they would burned pine knots in the
Speaker 1: bottles of boats, and they would just hunt at night,
Speaker 1: like you know, booned, like boon hunting a lot with dogs,
Speaker 1: ran stuff with dogs. They hunted a lot at night,
Speaker 1: and they would go out at night and they would
Speaker 1: break up a platform in front of a canoe, and
Speaker 1: you burned pine knots on the platform and they would
Speaker 1: just drift rivers that night, shooting deer coming down and
Speaker 1: drink in the summertime. And they say that that river
Speaker 1: draws its name from elks. I presumably you would when
Speaker 1: you're drifting down instead of seeing the eyes shine on
Speaker 1: white tails that had its own particular dimensions in color.
Speaker 1: You would tend to see their the eyes shine elk
Speaker 1: your guys when I see you, guys, those of you
Speaker 1: are from Ohio. You guys conducted not longer. You conducted
Speaker 1: the feasibility study, and it was determined that habitat was
Speaker 1: pretty scarce in Ohio to have elk, but that there
Speaker 1: was a possibility that you could have or that you
Speaker 1: guys can support a population of around four hundred or less.
Speaker 1: Elk Um the last elk here, the last place elk
Speaker 1: were commonly seen. I don't know how to pronounce this either,
Speaker 1: ash Taboula ain't right? What is it? They used to
Speaker 1: be pretty common in that county uh As of eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, they were commonly seen around there. The last
Speaker 1: Ohio's last elk died in that county in eighty five.
Speaker 1: And they did a multi age and see thing to
Speaker 1: take a look what if we bring them back to Ohio.
Speaker 1: What's that gonna look like? Kind of scoured the state
Speaker 1: repeat feasible locations to pull this off. They looked in
Speaker 1: southeastern east central Ohio and they figured that it wound
Speaker 1: up being that you could support maybe about four which
Speaker 1: is a lot better in zero, but when they looked
Speaker 1: at it, there were too many They felt that the
Speaker 1: there were too many social obstacles to ELK reintroduction in Ohio,
Speaker 1: meaning that you just weren't gonna get people on board.
Speaker 1: We're gonna deal with agricultural loss and cars running the ELK.
Speaker 1: The Rocky Mountain ELK Foundation took a look at it too,
Speaker 1: but they I feel that the way the ELK Foundations
Speaker 1: looked at is like they feel that it has to
Speaker 1: be a hundred percent commitment because the ELK Foundation has
Speaker 1: been burned in places where they did a bunch of
Speaker 1: work to come in. They spent a bunch of time
Speaker 1: in New York working with the d e C to
Speaker 1: come in and play a full scale ELK restoration project,
Speaker 1: and in the end, the state it's like, you know what,
Speaker 1: never mind and win another direction. Um. They had the
Speaker 1: same thing into Virginia. For a while, Virginia fiercely opposed
Speaker 1: the idea of restoring ELK and for over a decade
Speaker 1: they thwarted ELK volunteers efforts to bring ELK back into
Speaker 1: the state. Then all of a sudden, New Jersey gets
Speaker 1: a new governor. The new governor appoints a new director
Speaker 1: and within two years Virginia had elk back on the ground.
Speaker 1: So even though it was thwarted here as being there's
Speaker 1: too many social obstacles to it, I do think that
Speaker 1: it's something that you guys should continue an idea that
Speaker 1: you guys should continue to dabble in because you look
Speaker 1: at that map of missing a species, like a valuable
Speaker 1: species with a lot of you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: social support and everywhere it's found, and you look and
Speaker 1: think that you guys could aim towards someday bringing that
Speaker 1: back here and filling that map and eliminate some of
Speaker 1: that of the ground that's absent this big, beautiful, gorgeous animal.
Speaker 1: I think that as a state, you guys should continue
Speaker 1: to kick that one around and keep pushing for it
Speaker 1: and try to overcome the social obstacles that would be
Speaker 1: in place to put elk on the ground in Ohio.
Speaker 1: So keep that in the back of her mind as
Speaker 1: you're drinking cold beers tonight. Um. One final thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to bring up here another letter from a person
Speaker 1: where a hunter's wife wrote in and she's trying to
Speaker 1: understand why does my old man like to hunt so much?
Speaker 1: M and She's saying that he one time was watching
Speaker 1: a buck and you like had to get it, and
Speaker 1: so he ignored all of his family issues to get
Speaker 1: this buck and he finally gets the bucking. She celebrates
Speaker 1: with them. She's all happy. It's like fatherly put this
Speaker 1: behind us. And they had a wedding reception they had
Speaker 1: to go to, and she's like, I guess now you're
Speaker 1: cleared up to go to this wedding reception. Well, my
Speaker 1: buddy has a tagged out yet. So she says, please
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong. But is there ever a
Speaker 1: point where you have to just put hunting aside? Someone says,
Speaker 1: married to the wrong woman? Do you feel like you
Speaker 1: feel that you're honest that push and pull a little
Speaker 1: bit like like you know, if you were on the
Speaker 1: bars that night, you feel guilty. Yeah, But do you
Speaker 1: feel guilty for being out in the woods. No, I don't, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I don't. I don't get that from my
Speaker 1: old lady at all. But again, I could probably push
Speaker 1: it more though, But I feel like, I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm conscious of how much time I spending the woods,
Speaker 1: how much time I spend at home making dinner, playing
Speaker 1: with the kids, the kids are now with me a
Speaker 1: lot in the woods. Um, I don't think I get
Speaker 1: that many. I mean I had an eighteen turkey hunting
Speaker 1: days this spring. I might have had two mornings that
Speaker 1: were by myself, so I had kids and friends and
Speaker 1: you know, family, my wife with me. Um, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I might only get ten days that are like that
Speaker 1: really to myself. If I get to hunt kind of
Speaker 1: hunt for work a lot too, so that makes it easier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I toy with the guilt all the time. But that's
Speaker 1: why I keep feeling like the real solution to my
Speaker 1: problem will be when my kids are like you know,
Speaker 1: I have a three year old, right, they're hard to
Speaker 1: deal with that home. But when my kids are all
Speaker 1: of age, I feel like I look forward to the
Speaker 1: day of enjoying it without even the guilt, because once
Speaker 1: they're all with me, there's like nothing holding me back.
Speaker 1: It just be it'd be like guilt free, just utter
Speaker 1: blitz to be in. It's like everything I want all
Speaker 1: in one spot, my kids in the woods, you know,
Speaker 1: And I'm not that far away from that. And maybe
Speaker 1: you'll invite your wife along. Oh, she's welcome anytime. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't like bring like I think that she would
Speaker 1: be just like there or not, she would be just
Speaker 1: as fine with it, because like as a parent, you
Speaker 1: carry like one like if you're you know, as a parent,
Speaker 1: like I need you, you need to be with your
Speaker 1: kids all the time. But then you feel this like
Speaker 1: sort of like native pole to being outside. And I
Speaker 1: think that part of the guilt that comes from not
Speaker 1: being with your kids all the time is that someone's
Speaker 1: with them, So you also feel like you're kind of
Speaker 1: like dumping someone with responsibility so you can go enjoy
Speaker 1: this thing that means a great deal to you. So
Speaker 1: I think that to alleviate the whole thing just makes sense.
Speaker 1: Like heavy kids out in the woods. When I was
Speaker 1: growing up, it would be it was a laughable idea
Speaker 1: that my old man would be out hunting your fishing
Speaker 1: and you weren't welcome to go along. Laughable. It was
Speaker 1: just taken as a matter of course that if he
Speaker 1: was going, you were welcome. But I don't think that
Speaker 1: everyone runs their program that way, you know. I think
Speaker 1: there is this sense of people that like you, like,
Speaker 1: do you want to leave that behind and go out
Speaker 1: and be out the woods without your kids because they're
Speaker 1: hard to be around. Sometimes it's like a struggle with
Speaker 1: little kids. So that's just like my answers to have
Speaker 1: them being that little period when they're big enough where
Speaker 1: you can move them around, but they're not so big
Speaker 1: that they that they hate you, you know. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: the whole piece and quiet and meditating in the woods,
Speaker 1: that that's gone for a while now, right. Yeah. My
Speaker 1: brother took his daughter out caribou hunting, and when he
Speaker 1: came home, I was like, how'd that go? Is that?
Speaker 1: What surprised me is that that knowing to whisper when
Speaker 1: animals are real close. Apparently it's not just like a
Speaker 1: thing that people naturally understand. He said, these carribould come
Speaker 1: up and they're walking by a real close and like
Speaker 1: and everything. He feels like, it's just like, you don't move,
Speaker 1: you don't make a sound, like everyone just knows this.
Speaker 1: And his daughter just turns to him and flat out,
Speaker 1: on a rarely conversational voice, wow, look at that, you know,
Speaker 1: And he's like, how could that? I just assume that
Speaker 1: was like native knowledge, you know, store it into you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: kel uh, I'm gonna just pass you by on this
Speaker 1: one mark every day is pure pawing off. One of
Speaker 1: the kids for some higher learning. You you official, I'd
Speaker 1: appreciate that you like, but you've spent time you've su
Speaker 1: fished with my kids. Oh yeah, it's hard. It it
Speaker 1: is very constant. The the I don't even know how
Speaker 1: to explain it. It's that it. Yeah, it's just very constant.
Speaker 1: There is no like drifting off. It's a lot of questions,
Speaker 1: which is great because you know, like they're paying attention
Speaker 1: and learning. But yeah, it's it's very full on. Uh
Speaker 1: real quick talk about your experience when we're diving for
Speaker 1: c cucumbers with my kid, because this is the good
Speaker 1: way of explaining, like what is the get the juggling
Speaker 1: you do with the kid, meaning that there's a problem
Speaker 1: but you can't admit to the problem. Yeah, so alright, So,
Speaker 1: uh skifft skill it's a sixteen ft skill. Your blue
Speaker 1: boat or red boat red sixteen blues eighteen Okay, so
Speaker 1: sixteen foot skiff. Um, Steve's child is in the front
Speaker 1: of the skiff. I am in the rear of the skiff.
Speaker 1: We start off just fine. Steve and his brother Matt
Speaker 1: are diving for c cucumbers. Um. I feel very comfortable
Speaker 1: in around the water and safety and all those things.
Speaker 1: But I have the variable of young James up there
Speaker 1: in the front of the boat, and when we started off,
Speaker 1: he's got his his fishing pole and he's casting around
Speaker 1: and he actually catches a rock fish. And the seas
Speaker 1: are pretty high, so I'm constantly, you know, trying to
Speaker 1: keep an eye on my guys in the water. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of being safety for those guys and keeping this
Speaker 1: you know, relatively small boat oriented into the waves so
Speaker 1: we don't take water into the very small boat. Um
Speaker 1: and it is it's slightly more than I bargained for
Speaker 1: because that watching the guys keeping the boat oriented, I'm
Speaker 1: not paying attention to James. All of a sudden, James
Speaker 1: is like and like, oh fish, no, it's the propeller.
Speaker 1: And then that breaks off, which was a bummer but
Speaker 1: not that big of a deal. But the problem was
Speaker 1: is that I couldn't like get his rod, tie on
Speaker 1: another lure and keep the boat oriented and like be
Speaker 1: safe where we were. And then James was like is
Speaker 1: this safe? Is this okay? Like yeah, everything's totally fine,
Speaker 1: and he's like, okay, great, tyler lure on. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I just hang on a second, because I can I'm
Speaker 1: like and he's like, well, if you can't tie luan,
Speaker 1: can I get a snack? And I'm like, yeah, get
Speaker 1: a snack. And he's like great, hand me the bag
Speaker 1: and the bag he's in the ballot boat. I'm in
Speaker 1: the back of the boat and bag is in the
Speaker 1: middle of the boat. And I'm like, well, uh man,
Speaker 1: I can't keep your snack right now. It's like, well
Speaker 1: is this safe? Can we be out here? I'm like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's safe. We're fine. He's like, well, great, end me
Speaker 1: a snack, Like what ah. And that's kind of how
Speaker 1: the day went. And it was very and then we
Speaker 1: did take away over the side of the boat and
Speaker 1: Jimmy hot drenched and stuffs floating around, and and it
Speaker 1: was just constant like is this safe as this Okay?
Speaker 1: It was. It was a big day day for me.
Speaker 1: Uh and I want to get I think the market
Speaker 1: Mark and Kevin's perspective on this one kids or not two?
Speaker 1: Is there ever some reason you should put hunting aside?
Speaker 1: Because Mark, you're just entering into it and Kevin you've
Speaker 1: come out of it. So from the entering into it perspective,
Speaker 1: obligations balancing it all racked with guilt. Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: want to be on the woods, maybe you'll bring them.
Speaker 1: Am I gonna get in trouble because it's like real dangerous. Yes,
Speaker 1: all sources of these types of things have been running
Speaker 1: through my mind for sure. And I think that even
Speaker 1: just before we had kids, even with my wife, you know,
Speaker 1: at times I would struggle with some sense of am
Speaker 1: I am I neglecting? You know, my husbandly duties at home,
Speaker 1: helping out with things, being around, doing things like that,
Speaker 1: and I'm gone a lot hunting and traveling stuff. So
Speaker 1: so I think every person, every family has a different
Speaker 1: like tolerance level. My wife's very, very understanding, but even her,
Speaker 1: at some point in the year, she always kinds of
Speaker 1: reach she reaches some kind of like stress point. Usually
Speaker 1: it's like November sixteenth or seventeenth, have been gone three
Speaker 1: weeks straight hunting every day, fourteen hours a day or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, and finally said, okay, I need to
Speaker 1: know I have a husband again. So so there's always
Speaker 1: some point like that. So it's always in the back
Speaker 1: of my mind, like what am I doing? Okay balancing that?
Speaker 1: Am I not? But I definitely am not out there.
Speaker 1: I'm not thinking about it. It's it's it is something
Speaker 1: that's in the back of my mind and trying to
Speaker 1: find a way to, you know, fulfill all those obligations.
Speaker 1: With a kid, I do think that's going to be
Speaker 1: even more and I can already feel it. Like in
Speaker 1: the past, you know what I'm when I'm going out
Speaker 1: for a hunting trip, I'm usually just amped and of
Speaker 1: course I'm gonna miss my wife, but it's not like
Speaker 1: something that's like on the top of my mind. When
Speaker 1: I'm heading out the door, Um, I'm just excited for
Speaker 1: the trip and where we're headed. But now with like
Speaker 1: my little baby, you know, he's five months old, I'm
Speaker 1: heading out the door, I'm like, oh man, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: miss him. And I can imagine that come hunting season,
Speaker 1: when I'm gone for weeks on end and things like that,
Speaker 1: that that will be something that's gonna be I'm sure
Speaker 1: a new challenge. And as he's growing up, I imagine too,
Speaker 1: like when he gets to the age you can talk
Speaker 1: like I've heard friends say, like oh man, when they
Speaker 1: start like saying how much they miss you, or when
Speaker 1: are you coming home? Or why are you leaving again? Daddy,
Speaker 1: I imagine that's going to be kind of like a
Speaker 1: dagg out of the heart, and I'm gonna have, you know,
Speaker 1: some real figuring out to do, like how do I
Speaker 1: balance this? How do I do it in the right way?
Speaker 1: But that story that you just shared, Ryan, like, I
Speaker 1: cannot wait for that with my son, Like that sounds
Speaker 1: amazing to put him a tremendous risk. With great risk
Speaker 1: comes great rewards. Sometimes they don't. They don't recognize all
Speaker 1: the other cool, amazing stuff where I'm like, wow, look
Speaker 1: at the waves crashing on those rocks. Look at this,
Speaker 1: like I think the amazing stuff, And they're like, I
Speaker 1: need a snackig tight on like fronto. Man, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can totally see that. I can also imagine, though, like
Speaker 1: going out into the woods with a child's eyes again,
Speaker 1: like and the things they might be interested, Like I
Speaker 1: head in the woods at all, I'm thinking about I
Speaker 1: need to get to the stand without getting winded by
Speaker 1: these deer. I need to be super quiet and blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. And I could just imagine taking my four
Speaker 1: year old, dollar my three year older whatever he is,
Speaker 1: and he's gonna see a butterfly flying, or he's gonna
Speaker 1: see a track or bunny and like he's gonna stop
Speaker 1: and say, Dad, look at that rabbit. In the past,
Speaker 1: I never would have paid attention or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: And I am already looking forward to how cool those
Speaker 1: moments can be too. So those will be far between.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're gonna be a prodigy. You'll have a few
Speaker 1: of those every time you go out. But most of
Speaker 1: the time it's like mud rocks, mud rocks, mud rocks, rocks,
Speaker 1: rocks mud mud. I might be blindly optimistic right now,
Speaker 1: that's true. Uh. We when we last summer, took are
Speaker 1: all last I took all three of our kids up
Speaker 1: to our shack in Alaska, and we're having this conversation
Speaker 1: like I'm always like very leary about overpacking. I like
Speaker 1: when people overpack. My was said, well, they're gonna be
Speaker 1: all wet during get all wet, and I'm like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know it's the lasting man. We just wear our
Speaker 1: clothes dry. She's like, what does that mean. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you're getting wet. You don't change all the time, you
Speaker 1: just wear until it gets dry. The minute we get there,
Speaker 1: the two year old wades out into the water and
Speaker 1: it's cold, you know, and he waves out in the
Speaker 1: water up to about his navel and comes out and
Speaker 1: she's like looking at me, like the whole way a
Speaker 1: dry think them, you know. But then we look and
Speaker 1: he'd also shot himself out there. It was like, dude,
Speaker 1: that trip just went down hill from there. Man, It's
Speaker 1: just like the things you hadn't accounted for yet. But
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of ways to know that. I like,
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of ways to know that I've
Speaker 1: married right, and over ten years, I know I've I've
Speaker 1: like married writer and writer and writer all the time.
Speaker 1: I remember when the first time I was leaving a
Speaker 1: long hunting trip when kid was an infant, and I
Speaker 1: remember being I was sitting in the bathtub taking the
Speaker 1: bath kids. So I'm sitting there in the bathroom with
Speaker 1: my boy James on my lap and I'm sobbing because
Speaker 1: I'm so sad about leaving them, like you're talk and
Speaker 1: my wife comes in and says, you better pull it together,
Speaker 1: and I was like, that's the response I wanted here. Man.
Speaker 1: It's just like you're gonna give the kid a complex,
Speaker 1: you know. It's go so okay, this father, this father
Speaker 1: thing is gonna like least be livable you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Kevin, you got any final thoughts on the
Speaker 1: whole thing, Like you've got kids growing up, gone things
Speaker 1: you should have done different? Yes, because you know I
Speaker 1: was married for thirty years and it come to an end.
Speaker 1: Uh My wife said she never wanted to see another
Speaker 1: piece of camouflage clothing. Uh. If I died, it was
Speaker 1: gonna sell all my guns and by guitars for my
Speaker 1: boy and um, you know it ended there, you know,
Speaker 1: And a lot of it can be not the quantity
Speaker 1: of time, but the quality of time spent with your children.
Speaker 1: That's what they remember. You know. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be around a d cent of the time or nent
Speaker 1: of time, but but when you are there due to
Speaker 1: the job that you may have or whatever, those moments
Speaker 1: that that you are with your children, make sure it
Speaker 1: is a quality experience. And uh they grow up in
Speaker 1: a blink of an eye and they're gone, So so
Speaker 1: are you kids. Hard course grow hunters. We used to
Speaker 1: have a family tradition of the Murphy's going hunting every Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: Uh My son he would go with us on that
Speaker 1: day and that's pretty much it. That was all he carried.
Speaker 1: Anything about going is like one day a year. Uh.
Speaker 1: It kind of hurt me uh for a long time,
Speaker 1: but I finally realized. And I looked at some of
Speaker 1: my other other friends and they would have two boys.
Speaker 1: One of them was adamant hunter, the other one was
Speaker 1: not h We had a professional coon hunt uh in
Speaker 1: the West Kentucky back in the spring. I went over
Speaker 1: with a friend of mine and said, let's go over.
Speaker 1: So they want me to to guide, and I took
Speaker 1: a professional photographer over with me and asked him to
Speaker 1: take some pictures. I said, I think I want to
Speaker 1: write a story about this, this coon hunt. And so
Speaker 1: when I went through the door, um, immediately I saw
Speaker 1: some of my friends and they came over and started
Speaker 1: talking to me, just chit chat. And he was able
Speaker 1: to go around the room and he took four or
Speaker 1: five pictures of people that were there. That Chris, it
Speaker 1: was a brand new experience to him. He had never
Speaker 1: seen anything like that in his life. And he and
Speaker 1: he come back to me, said, hey, I got some
Speaker 1: great pictures. I want you to come over here and
Speaker 1: interview these these people. So the first uh two that
Speaker 1: I interviewed where there was two two guys there. One
Speaker 1: was eighty three. The other one was seventy five, still
Speaker 1: out coon hunting, and I sat down and talked to
Speaker 1: him and asked him about their their first hunting trip
Speaker 1: that they could remember, how they were one of them
Speaker 1: was eight and twelve. Uh, one of them was eight,
Speaker 1: the other one was twelve. I asked him about, well,
Speaker 1: who took you hunting? There? Neither one of the father's hunting,
Speaker 1: So they had an uncle that took him hunting. I said,
Speaker 1: whether you've got any siblings that hunt whatever? He said, well,
Speaker 1: I've got four brothers and said I'm the only one
Speaker 1: that hunts out of that those four and the other
Speaker 1: one had like three brothers and he was the only
Speaker 1: one that that hunted out of that. So and he said,
Speaker 1: I've got I've got children. I've got one that's a
Speaker 1: hunter and the others are not. So you know, we
Speaker 1: we we don't all have that DNA makeup to go
Speaker 1: out and go hunting there, So you know, don't feel
Speaker 1: depressed or whatever. But but give them that opportunity to
Speaker 1: go hunt fish whatever. Now, my son, he's an avid fisherman.
Speaker 1: He does like the fish, so he will go fish
Speaker 1: and he loves the meat. Um, I had the opportunity
Speaker 1: to go catfishing and Sandusky Bay on Monday. Did you
Speaker 1: guys know that you're Sandusky Bay is super good for catfish? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can tell everybody. Kevin threw back eight pounds of catfish. Now,
Speaker 1: we we threw back ninety three channel cats and I
Speaker 1: would estimate that was probably over six hundred pound. Is
Speaker 1: a rough fish. Uh, I told my son. I told
Speaker 1: my son about it, and he cried. I said, the son,
Speaker 1: he lives in Lexing. He's uh. I said, I've got
Speaker 1: some home in the freezer. He says, that's not fresh.
Speaker 1: He said, I wanted some fresh fis. I said, I'll
Speaker 1: pick you up. I'll fix you up. But it was
Speaker 1: outstanding catfishing that up there, the best rod and reel
Speaker 1: catfish trip I've ever been on in my entire life.
Speaker 1: So if you haven't had the opportunity to go up
Speaker 1: there and fish, go up there. We use shrimp and
Speaker 1: it was non stop for six hours. Largest catfish was
Speaker 1: fourteen and a half pound. I won the big mug
Speaker 1: coffee mug for the trip, and uh, the smallest one.
Speaker 1: We had like maybe four or five that you could
Speaker 1: have what we call fiddlers back home. Some people call
Speaker 1: him whole fries. I would say they probably averaged eight
Speaker 1: pounds apiece. But it was just an outstanding catfishing trip.
Speaker 1: All right, let's hear a real hile is here for
Speaker 1: Kevin Murphy, Mark Kenyon, Ryan Callahan, Jannest and tell us,
Speaker 1: Oh Jannest, can you uh, thank you everyone so much
Speaker 1: for coming out. We're gonna go up front and we'll
Speaker 1: we'll signce the sign stuff and do a bunch of pictures.
Speaker 1: Have a good old time, and remember I gave you
Speaker 1: like a little job you're gonna do, which is like
Speaker 1: talk about the I think they're all gone already. The
Speaker 1: commemorative turkey post. Oh oh really, now you're rocking turkey
Speaker 1: posts here, they're gone, they're all sold out. Thank you
Speaker 1: for buying those. And then you can also get yourself
Speaker 1: a genuine um get yourself a genuine Mediator podcast t shirt.
Speaker 1: Now we have our genuine bouch shirts. Everyone that looks
Speaker 1: at those shirts, it's like it can't be spelled that way.
Speaker 1: It has to be b l o u c h put.
Speaker 1: In fact, in real life Latvian it's flow blocks bloch,
Speaker 1: not blo b l a u k s with the
Speaker 1: upside down tent you know, the right side up tent,
Speaker 1: A little right side up tent on there, so check
Speaker 1: those out. We're gonna make our way out to the
Speaker 1: front again. Man, Thank you very much dedicating so much
Speaker 1: of your time. We've done the show. We've done the
Speaker 1: show for a long time. I love it. It would
Speaker 1: not be possible without you, guys. I love every one
Speaker 1: of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you.