Speaker 1: My name is Klay Nukleman. This is a production of
Speaker 1: the bear Grease podcast called the bear Grease Render, where
Speaker 1: we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by FHF Gear,
Speaker 1: American Maid purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Speaker 1: Before we get rolling on this render, I want to
Speaker 1: tell you about white Tail Week at Meat Eater from
Speaker 1: September twenty ninth through October the eighth. All the Mediat guys,
Speaker 1: all the First Light guys, all the FHF Gear guys,
Speaker 1: all the Phelps guys, all the Dave Smith Decoy guys.
Speaker 1: On our social media feeds, websites, everywhere we're making content,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be hearing about white tails because it's what
Speaker 1: we love and it's time. On Monday, October two, we're
Speaker 1: giving away a Lacrosse footwear package. On Tuesday, We're giving
Speaker 1: a Louipold Optics package on Wednesday, a Timber Ninja tree
Speaker 1: saddle package on Thursday, of Vortex Optic package on Friday,
Speaker 1: and on ex Elite Life membership, we're giving away on
Speaker 1: Saturday a tethered tree saddle package. The point is just
Speaker 1: pay attention. It's gonna be awesome White Tail Week for
Speaker 1: meat eater. Hope you enjoy this render Welcome to the
Speaker 1: Bear Grease Render Podcast. I don't even know to say.
Speaker 1: The group of people set before me is gonna blow
Speaker 1: the minds of every Bear Grease listener in the world.
Speaker 1: Kind of a rock star cast, no doubt, no doubt.
Speaker 1: To my left, I have Brent Reeves, who now is
Speaker 1: known as Render Boy because you don't come anymore.
Speaker 2: Hey, I'm just glad that we're doing this Render now.
Speaker 2: I got my mileage paid for.
Speaker 1: That works, huh, it works great. Good to see you,
Speaker 1: Brent Man. Man, I can't wait to hear. We're at
Speaker 1: an event and I'm going to tell you what that
Speaker 1: is in just a minute. I'm about to Brent's left
Speaker 1: is Joe Wilson, Joe Wildman. Wilson Joe's ah regular now
Speaker 1: on the Bear Grease Renders. Big day for Joe Wilson Man.
Speaker 1: Huge day, Yeah huge. I ain't gonna blow your cover
Speaker 1: though one well, so to your left Kyle Veat of
Speaker 1: the Ozark Podcast. Buddy of Ours lives here in northwest Arkansas.
Speaker 1: I was on You Guys podcast. Joe's been on Ozark podcast.
Speaker 1: You've been doing something special today too. We want to
Speaker 1: hear about that.
Speaker 3: We'll talk yep to your left.
Speaker 1: Tell me your This is Malcolm. What's your last name?
Speaker 2: Malcolm? Read Malcolm?
Speaker 1: Where are you from?
Speaker 2: I'm from Hernando, Mississippi.
Speaker 1: And Mississippi and you tell me? Tell me what you do?
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: So I got into barbecue cooking back a long time ago,
Speaker 4: you know, Memphis, and made the World Championship. Barbecue cook
Speaker 4: Off's a big deal in Memphis. It's the world It's
Speaker 4: the super Bowl of swine, you know, the big, big championship.
Speaker 4: So if you grew up around there you were into cooking,
Speaker 4: you had to learn to cook barbecue to compete in
Speaker 4: that or you're gonna get your teeth kicked in by all.
Speaker 2: These other folks.
Speaker 4: So I got into cooking barbecue, and then I just
Speaker 4: kind of that was a long time. You know, newsletters
Speaker 4: were hot, So I started doing a little barbecue newsletter.
Speaker 4: My wife taught me into it, and it is it
Speaker 4: expanded into doing how to barbecue videos and trying to
Speaker 4: help people cook and kind of preserve that barbecue lifestyle.
Speaker 2: That's kind of what we do. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: people into it.
Speaker 4: And then I got into outdoor stuff, so we uh
Speaker 4: because when I'm not barbecue and I'm hunting fishing, So
Speaker 4: that's kind of how that my ties to it all.
Speaker 4: And uh, I just love you know, competing in contests,
Speaker 4: cook and barbecue, going out and being in the outdoors.
Speaker 2: Anything we could do outside.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to, you know, help support that and push
Speaker 4: that through and get people interested in.
Speaker 2: Part of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, good to meet you, man.
Speaker 2: Yes, sir, I'm a big, big fan of y'all. H
Speaker 2: subscribe to the podcast and listen.
Speaker 4: I learned I found you through Meat Eater, okay, and
Speaker 4: I was like, man, this is Arkansas boy, he's got
Speaker 4: to be all right. Any hunts bears, you know, why
Speaker 4: didn't I know about this? And then so I've just
Speaker 4: been a fan.
Speaker 1: Well, good to meet you. To your to Malcolm's left,
Speaker 1: probably the most esteemed guests that's ever been on Bear
Speaker 1: Grease period.
Speaker 5: Probably period. Man, I got to take another picture.
Speaker 1: You better take another picture. We have the world's greatest
Speaker 1: small game hunter.
Speaker 6: Kevin Murphy's way too kind.
Speaker 1: Good buddy. So this is I know you through Steve Nella.
Speaker 1: Today is the first time you and I have met,
Speaker 1: and it's it's uh. I knew at one time, at
Speaker 1: one day that we would meet, but Kevin Murphy from Kentucky.
Speaker 1: Great to have you, man, glad to be here.
Speaker 6: Had to be around all you guys and beating all
Speaker 6: the great people of Arkansas here at the World Championship
Speaker 6: Squirrels Skinning event.
Speaker 1: That's it, you know.
Speaker 6: Right off the bat. I had to help some fourteen
Speaker 6: year old kid that had never handled a squirrel in
Speaker 6: his entire life, Caden Blake, to skin a squirrel. I
Speaker 6: went over there and showed him. I says, there's lots
Speaker 6: of way to skin a squirrel, but there's only one
Speaker 6: proper weight to skin a squirrel. Took me a long
Speaker 6: time in my career to figure that out, but I
Speaker 6: showed him how to do that. It says, I'm going
Speaker 6: to do the one for you, and then you're going
Speaker 6: to do the next one. And he did it exactly
Speaker 6: like I told you.
Speaker 1: The tail method is that work given on a squirrel
Speaker 1: that's been frozen.
Speaker 6: It did today. I don't know where those come from. Today,
Speaker 6: they were tops of trees. About Thursday, I would say
Speaker 6: they were frozen twenty two heads.
Speaker 2: Topsy.
Speaker 1: You you told us where Joe? Where are we at?
Speaker 5: Man Clay. We are at the twenty twenty three Model
Speaker 5: of the World Champions Squirrel Cookoff right here in Springdale, Arkansas.
Speaker 5: And I couldn't be happier with the showing that we
Speaker 5: had today.
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's walled one, Jane. We have any idea
Speaker 1: how many people were here?
Speaker 5: I mean, I can make up something, but I think
Speaker 5: the most esteemed squirrel man in the world should be
Speaker 5: how many people did you see out there?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 6: We probably gave away three hundred three fifty samples that
Speaker 6: we cooked up. Plate stopped and got some plates for
Speaker 6: us there. We were down to giving off sauce and
Speaker 6: we had no we had no we had we had
Speaker 6: no we had no eating utensil, I says, man, this
Speaker 6: is Mongolian squirrel. Eat with your right hand and do
Speaker 6: your other stuff.
Speaker 2: Lord.
Speaker 5: Hey, we we've had multiple, multiple, thousands of people, yes today,
Speaker 5: all to celebrate this little furry critter that gets overlooked
Speaker 5: so much, you know, And I don't think if you
Speaker 5: were trying to pick out one age or nationality you
Speaker 5: couldn't find them out in this stial today I mean
Speaker 5: there's everybody. When you talk about community event, we brought
Speaker 5: them together today with squirrels. So it's it's awesome, Clay.
Speaker 1: No doubt. Hey, so we do this thing, Kevin, I
Speaker 1: have Brent Reeves sometimes describe what someone's wearing. Why don't
Speaker 1: you do that for mister Murphy here, including his friend. Well,
Speaker 1: let me go ahead and say, I think this is
Speaker 1: the first time that we've had a bona fide squirrel
Speaker 1: dog on the podcast.
Speaker 6: So what's your dog's name, wings and things? His names,
Speaker 6: that's her name, wings and things. Those butterfly wings on
Speaker 6: her back. We are She's been on a mountain lion
Speaker 6: hunt with me, swamp rabbit hunt, jack rabbit hunt. She
Speaker 6: tree squirrels. I haven't really killed a squirrel with yet.
Speaker 6: She's just getting into it. She doesn't know whether the
Speaker 6: point a squirrel or tree a squirrel.
Speaker 1: It's gonna say she looks like a pointer bird dogs.
Speaker 6: She's a half gsp a half English porner. What the
Speaker 6: old bird dog people would call it a dropper they got.
Speaker 6: They get no credit for anything because people don't want
Speaker 6: those dogs because they can't breed them and pass that
Speaker 6: book bloodline on. But she's got two brothers at the
Speaker 6: t Bone Pickets hunting ranch. So that's what calvert.
Speaker 1: So is she a bird dog or a scrowl dog?
Speaker 6: She's both. You know, our old timmy dogs did everything
Speaker 6: mm hmmm, from keeping us warm to hunting critters to
Speaker 6: protecting the home place. And that's what I'm making out
Speaker 6: of this dog right here.
Speaker 1: Wow, how old is she?
Speaker 6: She's turning for this year? Okay, And like I said,
Speaker 6: she's been. She made three trips to Michigan last year.
Speaker 6: She's a pretty good walleye fisherman. You know, I'm buying
Speaker 6: her license this year. She's identifying as a walleye fisherman,
Speaker 6: so I get the extra eight eight walleye that she's
Speaker 6: got into krill.
Speaker 5: I think she sees orbs as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she s sketchy people.
Speaker 1: Now you gotta you got a yard full of squirrel
Speaker 1: dogs back in Kentucky, though, I've got a few, and
Speaker 1: rabbit dogs, rabbit dog. There's a there's an episode of
Speaker 1: you on Meteor season twelve. You and Ronella hunted up
Speaker 1: in Michigan. Is that right, yes, sir, y'all squirrel hunted, rabbit,
Speaker 1: rabbit hunted. Yeah, I heard that was a big time.
Speaker 6: Very good, very good friends, you know, hunting with Steve
Speaker 6: and then whoever brings on the camera. Guys, you know
Speaker 6: it's been eight years. Come this December our first.
Speaker 1: You know, he got so Ranella just met Kevin somewhere
Speaker 1: in Kentucky twenty twelve.
Speaker 6: Steve was at the NRA convention in Saint Louis, Missouri.
Speaker 6: I come up to him. He just had like five
Speaker 6: or six episodes or three or four were out, and
Speaker 6: he was hunting antelope and bear and this and that.
Speaker 6: I says, Steve, you need to do a small game,
Speaker 6: a squirrel, rabbit or something, because kids can go out
Speaker 6: their back door or down the you know, somebody's farm
Speaker 6: or public land or wherever, and they can hunt small game.
Speaker 6: And we become friends over that. And Steve told me
Speaker 6: this year we were ride around the pickup truck in
Speaker 6: between our hunting. He says. You know why I liked
Speaker 6: you when we first met. I says, because I knew
Speaker 6: about squirrels. He says, no, he says, because you told
Speaker 6: me you were thinking that this fall was going to
Speaker 6: be a really really good squirrel year, because we had
Speaker 6: a good mask crop. He said, you were able in
Speaker 6: your mind to predict what kind of hunting season where
Speaker 6: we were going to have. And you know, I'd hunted
Speaker 6: squirrels since I was probably seven eight years old, and
Speaker 6: just you know, it used to be I mean that
Speaker 6: was my life, his hunting squirrels. But you know, having
Speaker 6: fun now is my life.
Speaker 5: How many how many squirrels did you bring today?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 6: None?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 6: I'm here with chef Jeff out of Illinois. He's a
Speaker 6: young dude that stalked me on Instagram. I took him
Speaker 6: hunting one time. He comes to the top of the line.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, we just linked that out. My mom's going
Speaker 6: to get mad at me and clean my glasses now.
Speaker 6: But he went hunting with me, and he would listen
Speaker 6: to me, and we become instant friends, like three years ago.
Speaker 6: So he asked me, said, hey, I got invited to
Speaker 6: the Squirrel Championship cook Off. Do you want to go?
Speaker 6: I says yeah. So I've already put in Monday through
Speaker 6: Thursday forty six hours working up down Tornado Alley, putting
Speaker 6: in a high mask, lighting one hundred and twenty foot
Speaker 6: poles with a sketchy contractor. But you know, I like
Speaker 6: to work. I work to a die and hunt and
Speaker 6: meet people that like dogs and being outside cooking good food.
Speaker 1: And you know what was the description, got to beat
Speaker 1: a dead squirrel hunting horse. But tell us what Kevin's wearing.
Speaker 7: Kevin is wearing I would say circa nineteen seventy one
Speaker 7: Gi Joe style coveralls. I had a Gi Joe that
Speaker 7: had a set of coverrolls just like that inside that
Speaker 7: and it's his T shirt. He's got a blaze orange
Speaker 7: camo with what.
Speaker 2: That Okay, it's a blaze orange camel.
Speaker 5: He's wearing a Browning high power on a cross.
Speaker 6: Drove that nine milimeter, Yes, flipping shot.
Speaker 1: You're also probably the first known bear grease render. This
Speaker 1: is kind of a shame that was armed.
Speaker 2: Well that you know about right exactly.
Speaker 7: Continuing on, he's got a nice military style watch with
Speaker 7: a compass and complimenting and rounding out this ensemble would
Speaker 7: be his Fred Flintstone shoes. If he's wearing he is
Speaker 7: barefooted as a goose, and I believe he could run
Speaker 7: down the gravel road.
Speaker 1: So so today Brent and Kyle and Malcolm were judges
Speaker 1: the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff. Malcolm, what you can't? Can
Speaker 1: you tell me who won.
Speaker 4: I know, we don't know who one but me, and
Speaker 4: I am going to tell you I was blown away
Speaker 4: by the dishes that these squirrel chefs have turned in today.
Speaker 4: I mean there were you know, you think a squirrel,
Speaker 4: I think of squirreling dompla, just squirreling gravy or something
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 2: We saw all kinds.
Speaker 1: Of just Kyle be thinking of some examples. What what
Speaker 1: was what were.
Speaker 4: Well, we had some squirrel and panadas, We had squirrel tamales.
Speaker 4: We had you did have some like roasted quarters of
Speaker 4: squirrel that were just fantastic, melting your mouth. Some of
Speaker 4: them that did like a buffalo wings style. I saw
Speaker 4: on their table. It was like a ramen. I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm talking the squirrel bone broth, the whole nine yards whole.
Speaker 2: Things we had.
Speaker 4: We had some of these they're called what they call them,
Speaker 4: it's like a little wrap. It's not a what was
Speaker 4: that called the little basket, little poor purse, the beggar's purse.
Speaker 5: The ooze and aws that come off of their judging tables.
Speaker 5: When a particular dish and I'm trying to see what
Speaker 5: the name of that team is, I can't find it
Speaker 5: right now.
Speaker 2: That was the hands down, Joe, the best thing I've had.
Speaker 5: The scorecard in my pocket said, yes, I believe it. Okay,
Speaker 5: So this team made Malcolm, you ate it. But they
Speaker 5: made a uh was it a meat pie?
Speaker 2: It was a squirrel mince meat pie.
Speaker 5: Squirrel mince meat pie.
Speaker 6: Hm.
Speaker 4: They made uh vanilla bean honey, little glaze on it.
Speaker 2: They did a Minnesota.
Speaker 1: Got the biggest reaction of all of the clay.
Speaker 5: Dude, this thing when it hit the table, you opened
Speaker 5: up the box and you've seen the glorious dish that
Speaker 5: would serve. But when all the judges are telling me
Speaker 5: and I'm just like the referee, you got to buy
Speaker 5: it into this and it was.
Speaker 1: Man, it's pretty bold going for a squirrel mince meat pile.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't necessarily sound like like if you're like squirrel,
Speaker 1: Tomale squirrel and Panadas squirreled this squirrel mince meat pie.
Speaker 5: It bold, fantastic. And the sauce that they had over
Speaker 5: this quarter.
Speaker 2: No, it was so they called it. I took a
Speaker 2: picture of it. It was that good.
Speaker 4: They called it a state u squirrel Loretta. Not to
Speaker 4: be confused with the Steak Dan sauce. Because they made
Speaker 4: it with bourbon whiskey, not kanyak. They said anybody, any
Speaker 4: respective hillbilly would would drink, would not drink or cook
Speaker 4: with koonyak.
Speaker 1: They so did they do? They give you some like yeah, written.
Speaker 2: Well you got this, you gotta you gotta plate.
Speaker 7: It's covered, you know, a fold over to go plate
Speaker 7: and had the number you know, the team that you
Speaker 7: would score, not the name, just the number whatever it was.
Speaker 7: So and you open it up and inside like in
Speaker 7: the lid right here.
Speaker 1: In one we got a little little car dish.
Speaker 2: What everything was in there?
Speaker 1: So fried squirrel al pasto or tacos with salcea verde sauce,
Speaker 1: side dish, fried Mexican street corn with squirrel chariso.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you, son, that was on the money.
Speaker 2: That was good.
Speaker 1: That's the one I took a little bit give.
Speaker 2: That was money.
Speaker 5: And the reason we had the teams put that little
Speaker 5: index inside there was because we didn't know what this
Speaker 5: stuff was. Like what Malcolm just read. We open up
Speaker 5: that box and unless it has that description, there ain't
Speaker 5: no way we've described lost that dish and it just like.
Speaker 2: What you just sure would have had no clue.
Speaker 8: And they hit every country, I mean Filipino, tie, Italian,
Speaker 8: all kinds of stuff all over the world that you
Speaker 8: would never expect a squirrel to be in.
Speaker 1: What was your What was your favorite? You can tell
Speaker 1: me that, like, it's not gonna spoil anything. No, it
Speaker 1: was your favorite, Kyle.
Speaker 3: I I like the tie the noodle soup.
Speaker 8: It was a squirrel cow soy with a squirrel rangoon
Speaker 8: and then they had the cream cheese and the rangoon
Speaker 8: dipped in the sweet and sour sauce.
Speaker 4: That's that might be the best bite I had because
Speaker 4: someone passed me. They said, you gotta try this rangoon.
Speaker 4: It would squirrel unreal. It was unreal.
Speaker 1: Now rangoon is that folded little fried triangle.
Speaker 3: With the cream cheese.
Speaker 5: Because it had cream cheesey. I don't know if y'all
Speaker 5: ever watched his YouTube. It's how to Barbecue, right.
Speaker 1: Okay, And that's the name of your YouTube channel and
Speaker 1: how the Barbecue Ride.
Speaker 5: And he's got millions upon millions of followers. And Malcolm
Speaker 5: will sit out there on the back porch and take
Speaker 5: the biggest clump of cream cheese you ever seen and
Speaker 5: mix it with blue packed plate mayonnaise and throw something
Speaker 5: in it and people love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I don't know why. I don't know why.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the simple stuff. Man, this does he
Speaker 2: kills it. I'm not a che I Cooke. Stuff folks
Speaker 2: want to eat, he kills it.
Speaker 5: But those all those dishes that you guys just read,
Speaker 5: you know that started in year one, like our first
Speaker 5: year of doing this. I thought it was going to
Speaker 5: be dumplings, gravy, traditional.
Speaker 2: Expecting today.
Speaker 7: I was expecting today when you said that we're going
Speaker 7: to get eighteen plates and the other table had seventeen,
Speaker 7: I thought eighteen. Okay, that's going to be six place
Speaker 7: of fried squirrel, six bowls of squirrel mulligan, and six places.
Speaker 1: Spreads, Like this is just going to be like a Tuesday.
Speaker 5: Was there anybody? Was there a dumpling?
Speaker 3: In the closest we had was a ravioli.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I didn't eat none of it. It was, but I
Speaker 7: mean not one of those traditional things that I would
Speaker 7: thought about.
Speaker 2: I didn't eat. I didn't see any.
Speaker 5: And you know, Clay, tradition is real important to guys,
Speaker 5: like all of us, like everybody in this room is
Speaker 5: a traditionalist. We take a lot of pride in the
Speaker 5: old ways and all of that. There is a one
Speaker 5: hundred percent chance if someone turned in a solid squirrel
Speaker 5: and dumplings that they could have killed it and won today.
Speaker 8: You know, the pride squirrel that we had. You know,
Speaker 8: in my mind, I'm like, I gotta give this one
Speaker 8: just another bit of an edge, right because it is
Speaker 8: more traditional.
Speaker 1: Oh, that counted something for you. For me, that was
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 3: They're really honing in on the roots of squirrel eating, you.
Speaker 2: Know what I mean.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's a unique deal because I think people,
Speaker 5: you know, Clay Nucom's a flashy guy, got some flashy
Speaker 5: mule all of this, and so I mean, he's just
Speaker 5: a flashy guy. So these cooking teams think they got
Speaker 5: to be really really flashy to win. Now, I'll go
Speaker 5: ahead and tell you the dish that won was dang
Speaker 5: sure flashy it was.
Speaker 2: It was. It was good.
Speaker 4: If that's the winner. If I had the winner, that
Speaker 4: was amazing, Like, I would you pay for that dish?
Speaker 2: Oh? I want the restaurant saw that on them menu?
Speaker 2: I would pay good money.
Speaker 1: Now would you say, like Chef Malcolm's of Pro are there? Well,
Speaker 1: you weren't cooking today? How many pro like pro?
Speaker 5: So we had probably three or four restaurant owners or
Speaker 5: restaurant quality white tablecloth chefs out there, and yeah, and
Speaker 5: so what they're competing against is what is it? The
Speaker 5: backwoods guys? Right, they're competing against There's a couple of
Speaker 5: old boys that run a croppy guide service up Nors.
Speaker 5: You know, they come down to cook it. We had
Speaker 5: croppy savice today, hmm.
Speaker 1: With a squirrel or is that just I didn't have
Speaker 1: that squirrel.
Speaker 3: They had done, uh, tortilla chips made with squirrel broth,
Speaker 3: squirrel bro broth, and then that was to be dipped
Speaker 3: in the crappy slavice.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Have you have you considered having more teams? Is it
Speaker 1: possible or do you do? You feel like forties just
Speaker 1: all you can handle.
Speaker 5: If you would have asked me yesterday how many teams
Speaker 5: we were going to have today, I had eleven teams
Speaker 5: drop out over the last ten days and so I
Speaker 5: had to scramble. And and the deal is he could
Speaker 5: tell you this squirrel hunting unless you get out there
Speaker 5: and do it, it ain't as easy as people think.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 5: I mean I squirrel hunted last week every day morning
Speaker 5: and evening, sometimes during the day, and it just takes
Speaker 5: the slightest wind we hunted with What if he.
Speaker 1: Had said I hunted a night hunted squirrels.
Speaker 2: Skylight, I wouldn't no doubt it any other man.
Speaker 5: We didn't have a potent dog like that one laying
Speaker 5: on the floor, but we had a good squirrel dog.
Speaker 5: And those squirrel dogs are a huge advantage you squirrel
Speaker 5: dog hunt.
Speaker 1: I got flashy squirrel dog.
Speaker 5: You do got flashy squirrel dogs. But I just want
Speaker 5: people to know just because you see a squirrel in
Speaker 5: it in your yard, that don't mean you're gonna get
Speaker 5: a limited squirrel. Yeah, it's a tough, tough deal. So
Speaker 5: you know I praised the teams earlier this morning at
Speaker 5: the meeting. And this isn't something you could go to
Speaker 5: the store and buy. You could be in a barbecue
Speaker 5: competition and buy all the brisket you want to buy.
Speaker 5: You could buy the wagou brisket and have an advantage here.
Speaker 5: You want an advantage, you better shoot them, young Grace.
Speaker 5: You know the wagoo of squirrel and so just an
Speaker 5: amazing so.
Speaker 1: So the original question was about the teams. Though she
Speaker 1: had eleven teams drop out, so she had forty that
Speaker 1: can only come eleven dry. Did we get forty teens?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: So I scrambled hard. I scrambled hard, calling people. We
Speaker 5: wound up with thirty five today, really, which you could
Speaker 5: ask this panel of judges that is all they needed.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, I'll add something else to this. I did
Speaker 7: not eat one thing that I wouldn't eat again.
Speaker 1: It was good.
Speaker 2: I'd agree with that. I didn't.
Speaker 7: There wasn't anything in there that I took a bite of.
Speaker 7: It was like, I'm not toting this, Kevin.
Speaker 1: What did your team cook?
Speaker 6: They cooked a bourbon sauce in country ham sauce, squirrel
Speaker 6: with grints and cheese with onions on top, just a
Speaker 6: simple I call it liquid corn bread ideal And it
Speaker 6: was good. But I had, you know, the Kentuckians that
Speaker 6: you talk about. I had what they had had. Numerous
Speaker 6: people would bring me stuff up to eat.
Speaker 5: O Is that a Kentucky team?
Speaker 6: Of course, a kentuckis we were. We got blue grass
Speaker 6: and bourbon and buckshot. But everything that people brought me,
Speaker 6: I would tell, I'm here with chef Jeff from He's
Speaker 6: got two restaurants in Chicago, and uh, he come, I'm
Speaker 6: probably the only professional squirrel hunters got their own chef.
Speaker 6: So I take him hunting and he cooks for me
Speaker 6: and we have a good time. And uh, he has
Speaker 6: to me to come down here with him. I said, yeah,
Speaker 6: I'll come down, and but I mean impanadas, that mince meat,
Speaker 6: uh squirrel. Uh everything was great, and I thought, us, man,
Speaker 6: this is right here in.
Speaker 1: The running, Kevin. I come to your house mid November.
Speaker 1: We kill some squirrels. What are you cooking?
Speaker 6: I'm cooking fried squirrel cadhead biscuits and gravy, fried potatoes
Speaker 6: and onions.
Speaker 5: I'm eating at you out.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me give walk me through how to how
Speaker 1: you'd fry your squirrel at your house.
Speaker 6: I gotta get one thing off my mind. I am
Speaker 6: not g I Joe. I am John Wayne.
Speaker 9: That's that's why I'm identifying ass.
Speaker 1: How would you fry? How would you cook your squirrel?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Because it seems, you know, somebody just shoots the squirrel, cuts,
Speaker 1: you know, quarters up and fries it. They're probably gonna.
Speaker 6: When I shoot a squirrel, I try to shoot it
Speaker 6: or that I'm going to eat it now first that
Speaker 6: I'm going to clean it and then I'm gonna cook
Speaker 6: it and eat it. So I try to hit you
Speaker 6: with a twenty two rifle. You can't always do that something,
Speaker 6: you know, Sometimes you gotta shoot them shot gun. Sometimes
Speaker 6: you got to body shoot them. You know. You try
Speaker 6: to get those squirrels clean. You know, maybe not wret
Speaker 6: the end, but as soon as you get home, get
Speaker 6: them washed up, let them soak. I'm gonna cook it
Speaker 6: in some lord, no shorten, no ordinate. And I just
Speaker 6: like pork lard from the store, Yes, porkard, pork yard
Speaker 6: from the store, low and slow. I might bake it
Speaker 6: in the oven, make some kind of dish, you know,
Speaker 6: from that barbecue squirrel or shirrel down parbol, parborrel or
Speaker 6: pressure cook. Now, I think that cooks the flavor out
Speaker 6: of that.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 6: You gotta work at it. Steam steam, low and slow.
Speaker 6: Get your squirrel, get it prep put it in your
Speaker 6: in your cast iron. Skill it with some lard up
Speaker 6: probably like halfway up on the squirrel. Turn it, turn
Speaker 6: the heat up, get it, crisp on them on the
Speaker 6: bottom with whatever your secret breading is. And I've got
Speaker 6: a secret one, yes, secret by accident. Yes, the best
Speaker 6: complimence ever got was I used to have when I worked.
Speaker 6: I would get invited by contractors to go to like
Speaker 6: golf games, like at the Legend golf course wherever that is,
Speaker 6: and do stuff. I says, man, I don't do that.
Speaker 6: You have a frog gigging tournament or something. I'll go
Speaker 6: to that. But I only play golf every twenty seven years.
Speaker 6: My next golf thing.
Speaker 2: Nine.
Speaker 6: But I'm looking for that for that one after twenty
Speaker 6: twenty nine. It's what I'm looking forward to. So so
Speaker 6: bring that flower, it up about halfway on the squirrel,
Speaker 6: get it kind of crisp on the bottom, put your
Speaker 6: lid on there, and then turn it down and just
Speaker 6: let it simmer.
Speaker 1: Oh, so flip it and then turn it down, turn it.
Speaker 6: Down and just let it simmer. Just let it simmer
Speaker 6: low and slow and steam it. And then after you
Speaker 6: can take a fork.
Speaker 1: And there's some nuance there. It's easy for me to go,
Speaker 1: oh and then get home and burn it.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 6: You got it it tough When you can take a
Speaker 6: fork and slide it in that hind quarter and she
Speaker 6: slides right in. When it's low and slow, it's gonna
Speaker 6: get sloppy on your bready. So what you got to
Speaker 6: do is hit it with some heat and turned it
Speaker 6: back up and let it get crispy on the boy.
Speaker 1: At the end. At the end, it's the guy's talking
Speaker 1: about landing a super cub and then they they like
Speaker 1: let it down. You feel like you're about to crash,
Speaker 1: and then right for it. They hit the hit the tundra.
Speaker 1: They they bounce it back up and landed just like
Speaker 1: a pillow on a bed.
Speaker 6: So hit it with some heat at the end, hit
Speaker 6: it crispy on the bottom. It's all like gelatin on top.
Speaker 6: Flip it over, ghit it crispy. Then take it off
Speaker 6: and then you make the gravy.
Speaker 2: You make it gravy out of that same lard or drippings.
Speaker 6: It's turned into sirrels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was that was beautiful. That was like a
Speaker 1: great artist recording. They'll be they'll be like Kevin Murphy
Speaker 1: did that recording of the Arkansas Game and Fish event
Speaker 1: or Center in Springdale. Oh.
Speaker 5: I think it goes down in the history of squirrel
Speaker 5: right there.
Speaker 1: That was a good description. So, okay, tell me about
Speaker 1: your gravy.
Speaker 6: Barefoot and beautiful, rightutiful. The gravy, like I said, you've
Speaker 6: got your drippings in there with little pieces of.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not drippings. It's a quarter inch.
Speaker 6: To half inch larder, quarter inch three eight's not too much,
Speaker 6: too much, too much. So then you look at it
Speaker 6: and you know you can't make a big batch of
Speaker 6: gravy at one time. You know, you couldn't make enough
Speaker 6: to feed ten twelve people. You got to do like
Speaker 6: small batches to make it turn out. So try to
Speaker 6: have your milk the red top milk, not that sorry
Speaker 6: blue top stuff or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sweet milk.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's only kind of milk. Have it at room temperature.
Speaker 6: Don't pull it out of the frigid air. That room temperature.
Speaker 1: Mints some forethought.
Speaker 5: The most important deal if you're a gravy maker is
Speaker 5: what flour brand are you using.
Speaker 6: I'm a godle man myself.
Speaker 5: Oh you're not a Martha.
Speaker 6: I could use, I could use whatever. It don't really matter.
Speaker 5: You don't find a difference in gravy based off of
Speaker 5: the flour. It's Martha White, ain't I like?
Speaker 2: That's what I like?
Speaker 4: That's what my mama always Bolt Strange.
Speaker 6: Gold metal or Sunfloer comes right out of Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
Speaker 9: So he goes, okay, So, so have your milk at
Speaker 9: room temperature, you know, laid out and then just look
Speaker 9: how much dripping you have in there, and you just.
Speaker 6: Kind of judge it salt and pepper to whatever you think?
Speaker 1: We hold on? What do you mean judge it? Tell
Speaker 1: us what how you judge it?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: So if you got if you got a quarter inch
Speaker 1: of lard, how much milk you put in?
Speaker 6: You know them dudes right next to us that that
Speaker 6: from Kentucky they had the meat maps. They were talking
Speaker 6: about all this measurement stuff. You know, I'm like a
Speaker 6: handful a pinch twenty eight game shell. I don't I
Speaker 6: don't you know, I don't have those. I just look
Speaker 6: at it.
Speaker 1: But I mean, would you how would you describe it?
Speaker 6: I would say, if you had a twelve inch skillet
Speaker 6: with a quarter inch of drippings in it, I would
Speaker 6: use about a handful, maybe two handfuls of flyer, okay,
Speaker 6: and a couple of pinches of salt, a couple of
Speaker 6: pinches of pepper.
Speaker 2: That's probably half a cup of so.
Speaker 6: And then let that get brown.
Speaker 1: Now wait a minute, wait a minute, let's go back.
Speaker 1: We're talking about milk. Is you're putting your milk. You
Speaker 1: gotta tell us the secret he ain't.
Speaker 6: That you're jumping the ship. You're a horse, the mule
Speaker 6: or whatever.
Speaker 1: You jump in Okay, okay, so I'm with you.
Speaker 6: So we've got the drippings in there, we add the flyer.
Speaker 1: And which is very important, the sequence. Yes, you gotta flour.
Speaker 5: You're basically making a root.
Speaker 6: Exactly exactly salt pepper. It's best to try to get
Speaker 6: it right in the beginning because when you add it
Speaker 6: at the end, it's not the same. It's not You
Speaker 6: can still do it overcoming, but it tastes better to
Speaker 6: me if you got your sequence and your ingredients right
Speaker 6: from the from the first. So you brown your gravy
Speaker 6: and get it in there. And if you got some
Speaker 6: dude that can pour milk on a steady basis, that's
Speaker 6: the best thing to do. It's hard to stir and
Speaker 6: pour milk at the same time because you got to
Speaker 6: get with it, and you turn people. You turn the
Speaker 6: heat up. You heard heat up cast iron skille it.
Speaker 6: You turn it up on high, and then you start
Speaker 6: easing that milk in there. It's slow room temperature, room temperature,
Speaker 6: milk string stirring clockwise and the the hemisphere different counterclockwise.
Speaker 5: Are you a for guy. Yes, that's all being done with. Yes,
Speaker 5: that's how my daddy does it.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, mash some lumps and then just like you know,
Speaker 6: you got. If you've got a guy that knows how
Speaker 6: to make gravy, he's better for if he's pouring the milk,
Speaker 6: because you can't go too fast or too slow because
Speaker 6: he gets it gets lumpy. And then once you get
Speaker 6: lumpy gravy, it's hard to get it get it back.
Speaker 6: You can save it if you know what you're doing,
Speaker 6: but gravy is it.
Speaker 1: You gotta work hard to get them back.
Speaker 5: Yes, boy, I will tell you what. I've been listening
Speaker 5: to this show since the inception or conception or whatever.
Speaker 5: That description of making gravy was probably the most and
Speaker 5: this is an amazing show filled with the detail and
Speaker 5: historic just great inteil that gravy deal. Are you putting
Speaker 5: them in the Hall of fame?
Speaker 6: I'm not done, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 6: When I first started hunting stuff, I would figure out
Speaker 6: things about squirrel hunting. I wouldn't tell you, sorry, I
Speaker 6: wouldn't tell anything to anybody. And then I got to
Speaker 6: see it as I got older, there was less and
Speaker 6: less squirrel hunters. No kids, you didn't have to get
Speaker 6: up early or two days before to go start squirrel season.
Speaker 6: You could start on opening morning and get your spot.
Speaker 6: And I got to think and says, man, I don't
Speaker 6: want to take this stuff to the grave. I want
Speaker 6: to tell people, give young people a head start on stuff.
Speaker 6: And that's what I try to do, is, you know,
Speaker 6: not take it to the grave, tell people how to
Speaker 6: give them a head start on how to get things done.
Speaker 6: But as you get that gravy, you got to think
Speaker 6: in your mind, Okay, are you are we gonna serve
Speaker 6: it right now or is it gonna be ten minutes
Speaker 6: from now. So if you're gonna serve it right now,
Speaker 6: you go ahead and make it to the thickness that
Speaker 6: you like. I like mine thick that I can eat
Speaker 6: with a fork. Some people like there's really thin. Steve's
Speaker 6: like his thin. I don't know why. But thicker it
Speaker 6: is better.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was gonna say, yankee.
Speaker 6: So but like I said, if you know it's gonna
Speaker 6: be like ten or fifteen minutes, make it on the
Speaker 6: thin side. And that way, as that gravy sets up
Speaker 6: a cast starn skillet, it thickens up.
Speaker 1: So so complished, brilliant, beautiful.
Speaker 5: What you said, Kevin about you didn't want to take
Speaker 5: it to the grave is one of the main reasons
Speaker 5: why we do this squirrel cookoff. As you guys walked
Speaker 5: around today and seen literally thousands of people, such a
Speaker 5: small percentage of those people have ever shot a squirrel.
Speaker 5: And the hope is is at some point we can
Speaker 5: convert those folks, or at least, at a minimum, let
Speaker 5: them appreciate us as hunters. You know, so many people
Speaker 5: don't understand why we do what we do, that it's
Speaker 5: a dying breed. Small game hunting is on such a
Speaker 5: decline that there's a good chance it'll go away. And
Speaker 5: so for us, all of you guys to be out
Speaker 5: here today and to see us convert these people into believers,
Speaker 5: it's a solid, solid squirrel believers.
Speaker 2: Kids.
Speaker 7: I don't know how many young uns I talked to
Speaker 7: today that were here with their parents, families, whole families here,
Speaker 7: mom and dad and four or five young and then
Speaker 7: they were just eating it up. And I asked every
Speaker 7: one of them that I talked to and I met
Speaker 7: and took pictures with, and they're like, I asked him,
Speaker 7: y'all eating they squirrel?
Speaker 2: Not yet? Where do we get it?
Speaker 7: They was coming here to eat it.
Speaker 2: It was really good.
Speaker 8: I'll say from my generation I'm twenty eight, most of
Speaker 8: the people that I know that are my age have
Speaker 8: never had squirrel. And so for them to see that
Speaker 8: this is not just an event but event. With the
Speaker 8: amount of people that ended up showing up and see like,
Speaker 8: oh this is legit, Like you can actually have a
Speaker 8: respectable competition around eating squirrel, I think goes a long
Speaker 8: way because, like you said, thousands of people come through,
Speaker 8: and how many thousands more will see that on social media?
Speaker 3: Hear about it on here.
Speaker 7: We got here last night. We got here yesterday afternoon
Speaker 7: and I took Alexis and Bailey wanted to go shopping,
Speaker 7: and we went to some place down and favill uh
Speaker 7: some kind of leotard store, Lulu Lemon.
Speaker 5: I got a pair of them.
Speaker 2: So we.
Speaker 7: Go in there and they got this stuff and we
Speaker 7: go to check out and this gal says, what brings
Speaker 7: y'all y'all visiting? And I said, yeah, we're visiting. She said,
Speaker 7: what brings y'all bring y'all up here? And I said, well,
Speaker 7: it's a World Championship squirrel cook Off. And she said
Speaker 7: the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff. Where's that at? I said's
Speaker 7: in Springdale. She said, how how do they teach squirrels
Speaker 7: to cook? I said, no, we're gonna We're gonna eat them.
Speaker 7: And her eyes were bugged out on saucers. She said,
Speaker 7: y'all gonna eat squirrels. I said, just as fast as
Speaker 7: we can get them cooked, We're gonna eat them.
Speaker 5: Man Clay, I've seen the deal on the news. The
Speaker 5: other night. They were interviewing this local business owner and
Speaker 5: this local they were interviewing on the big three events
Speaker 5: that were coming to northwest Arkansas this week, and they
Speaker 5: asked how that was going to bring business to them,
Speaker 5: and she says the Big Three by excluesing barbecue. There
Speaker 5: was a festival called Format and she said the World
Speaker 5: Champion Squirrel Cookoff, and that lady said no, the LPGA
Speaker 5: Championship was the third one.
Speaker 1: She said she was, She corrected the lady.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, so we wiped out the LPGA.
Speaker 1: Man, wow, that's big. This is big, Malcolm. Do you
Speaker 1: ever you ever cooked squirrel?
Speaker 2: Yeah? We you know.
Speaker 4: I got a little farm there in Mississippi where we
Speaker 4: hunt on. I went on probably the best squirrelhod in
Speaker 4: my life. Last year I got I heard you guys
Speaker 4: talking about it here recently, but it was on one
Speaker 4: of the Mississippi River clubs, and I didn't realize that
Speaker 4: there was that many guys that hunted squirrels on those clubs.
Speaker 2: There's a group of them. They come from over in Arkansas.
Speaker 4: They hunt both sides of the rivers on these big
Speaker 4: clubs and when they come, they come twenty deep, and
Speaker 4: they bring their dogs and they they've got their dogs
Speaker 4: trained to tree these squirrels, and no more than a
Speaker 4: hundred yards off the trails because they're packing their side besides,
Speaker 4: and I got invited to go with them, so I've
Speaker 4: never seen this.
Speaker 2: I brought my gun. I don't even think I got
Speaker 2: my gun out.
Speaker 4: Because it was It was a blast because they had
Speaker 4: all the kids out there, and this was like a
Speaker 4: family there was. There was I think three generations of
Speaker 4: people hunting out there in this square and this big
Speaker 4: packing squirrel. You know, drive that we kind of did,
Speaker 4: and we rode around. We got out there daylight. You know,
Speaker 4: you got to drive a long ways to get to
Speaker 4: one of those clubs, cause they're out in the middle
Speaker 4: of nowhere on another side of the levee. But it's
Speaker 4: just a different country there. It's totally different than the
Speaker 4: hills I'm used to where I'm at Mississippi. It's untouched land.
Speaker 4: It's just big hunting clubs now or paper company owns,
Speaker 4: at least to some of them. But it was amazing
Speaker 4: and we killed the biggest black squirrels I've ever seen
Speaker 4: a ton of black squirrels.
Speaker 2: And it was a man, it was.
Speaker 4: It was awesome, it really was because you got to
Speaker 4: go and you got to see these big old timber
Speaker 4: and the squirrels can are so fast from tree to tree.
Speaker 2: And that stuff, and so you be gone. There was
Speaker 2: there was two people doing both.
Speaker 4: There were some some of the older men that wanted
Speaker 4: to really, you know, take time meet squirrels. They were
Speaker 4: shoot they were making good shots. And then because we
Speaker 4: had some of those guys that would kind straggle behind
Speaker 4: and let the kids and stuff get on them. And
Speaker 4: when they start shooting at them, the kids all had
Speaker 4: shotguns and you had to be quick to jump out
Speaker 4: to beat them.
Speaker 2: To the tree. Yeah, because the dogs there, they'll take
Speaker 2: a dog.
Speaker 4: One guy had a dog about this size and he
Speaker 4: rode right on his leg and hung out his side
Speaker 4: by side. He had a little mirror and he'd put
Speaker 4: his feet on it. And if that dog caught win
Speaker 4: of a squirrel, he was gone.
Speaker 2: You could better believe there was one in that tree.
Speaker 4: And you had to get out and shake the vines
Speaker 4: and you're beating them with sticks, and there he goes,
Speaker 4: and then it's kids.
Speaker 2: And I said, I begged him. I said, y' I
Speaker 2: gotta let me come back.
Speaker 4: But it was such a it was like camaraderie hunting camp.
Speaker 2: What you would expect that would be like.
Speaker 4: And then you go half a day and everybody brings
Speaker 4: out their grills and to get out the food, and
Speaker 4: we cook them on the you know, just everybody kind
Speaker 4: of corals up. You cook a big lunch and you
Speaker 4: go squirrel hunt till dinner, and then you go back
Speaker 4: and clean squirrels and cook squirrels and it's time to
Speaker 4: go to bed and get up to it again to
Speaker 4: the next camp. And that's all these guys do when
Speaker 4: they're farmers. So when they get their crops in, they
Speaker 4: go squirrel hunt. And they told me, those those squirrel
Speaker 4: hunt from now till you know, to their wives, wake.
Speaker 2: Will come back home. Just got and I said, that's
Speaker 2: the life right there. Man, that's good.
Speaker 1: Do you'll have a lot of black squirrels in Kentucky.
Speaker 6: We have a few melanistic fox squirrels, really, but we
Speaker 6: don't that I know of, having.
Speaker 1: The black gray squirrels on the Mississippi River.
Speaker 2: No, they're fire. I think they're fox square.
Speaker 1: There's mollistic fox squirrels, okay, because like in the Ozarks
Speaker 1: here to kill a black squirrel, I mean, if you
Speaker 1: killed black squirrel somebody mounted. I mean, have you ever
Speaker 1: seen a black squirrel up here?
Speaker 2: No? Oh?
Speaker 5: Really just on the levees that he's talking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I and I see pictures of guys in
Speaker 1: different parts of the country acting like black squirrels are
Speaker 1: no big deal.
Speaker 6: Michigan.
Speaker 1: Steve Vanella when he came here to squirrel hunt with
Speaker 1: me years ago, I told him we didn't have black squirrels.
Speaker 1: And he gets off the airplane, drives through Bentonville and
Speaker 1: swear to me that he saw a black squirrel on
Speaker 1: someone's yard. So he shows up and he's like, you
Speaker 1: got black squirrels, And I'm like, Steve Vanella, don't come
Speaker 1: to the Ozarks and tell me about my squirrel. He
Speaker 1: saw a black squirrel, and I told him, I was like,
Speaker 1: no way.
Speaker 6: But he may have seen a melanistic fox squirrel.
Speaker 1: But what he may have seen, well, I've never even
Speaker 1: seen one of those. They're they're just not coming up here.
Speaker 1: But on the levee there everywhere. iDeer hunting down there
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago inside the levee of the Arkansas,
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah they were. I saw multiple black squirrels anyway.
Speaker 4: But yeah, man, it's that cooking, cooking squirrels, rabbits, raccoon.
Speaker 4: I mean, we grew up cooking stuff like that, and
Speaker 4: I think it comes from just kids these days sit inside.
Speaker 4: They don't go outside and hit the woods and stuff.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: That's what I carried my daisy before my dad would
Speaker 4: trust me with the twenty two. It was a BB gun,
Speaker 4: and we wanted to stay outside, you know, we were
Speaker 4: begging to buy more BB he says. We were wanting
Speaker 4: to go try to shoot something. And so I think
Speaker 4: I think that the younger generation's missing that. And that's
Speaker 4: what's important about events like this. It's it's going to
Speaker 4: rely on us to share that and to pass it
Speaker 4: on and encourage people to get out and do this
Speaker 4: kind of stuff and realize how much fun it is.
Speaker 5: Let me tell you, let me tell you what I
Speaker 5: noticed today. And I was busy running around, running around.
Speaker 5: But this old guy that barely shows up on the
Speaker 5: render anymore, Yeah, render boy is many full grown adults
Speaker 5: think that he's a rock star. Them little kids love, yes,
Speaker 5: they do. These little kids love this man. And uh
Speaker 5: and they love you too, Clay. I mean it's you
Speaker 5: guys have put such a new twist on what an
Speaker 5: outdoorsman is. And I called Brent two weeks ago and
Speaker 5: I said, man, I had a guy call me and
Speaker 5: ask if his son who's like nine, could meet you.
Speaker 5: That's a big deal. We idolize the wrong people in
Speaker 5: this world. We have for a long time. Right, every
Speaker 5: man sitting in this room is just a dude. We're
Speaker 5: just normal people who tell our stories on podcasts or
Speaker 5: whatever we do. To me, the impressive part is seeing
Speaker 5: them idolize what I consider real men. And that's a
Speaker 5: forgotten thing. And each and every one of us are
Speaker 5: doing our best at trying to change that. This man
Speaker 5: sitting over here and the overalls, hey, he's the real deal.
Speaker 2: He's the real deal.
Speaker 5: How many people ask you how many pocketknives yet in
Speaker 5: your pocket?
Speaker 1: Just about all of them to borrow one.
Speaker 2: Yep, they did. I'll let you hold it.
Speaker 5: Absolutely amazing.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 5: I was tearing up just now thinking about it. But
Speaker 5: it's it's the real deal. I mean, this this group
Speaker 5: right here, whether it's cooking, preaching about the outdoors, whatever,
Speaker 5: it's hard for us to believe that we're making a difference,
Speaker 5: but we make a difference. And today it's kind of
Speaker 5: the big the big bang of it. When we see
Speaker 5: these people, all the kids coming the shooting competition across
Speaker 5: the way here, they run out of targets and they
Speaker 5: had over a thousand targets.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, yeah competition.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean we had Gammo Daisy sponsor that deal.
Speaker 5: I mean a thousand kids come over here and held
Speaker 5: an air rifle. My neighbor kid lives down the way.
Speaker 5: He's eleven. His parents won't let him shoot a BB
Speaker 5: gun in my backyard, you know, which is weird, but
Speaker 5: it's it's where we're at. And that's when Kevin talked
Speaker 5: about holding on to it and teaching people. That's what
Speaker 5: y'all do. I mean, you guys are the best.
Speaker 6: You know. I had a family come by in the
Speaker 6: song with the targets. I said, let me take a
Speaker 6: picture of one of those squirrel targets that shot over
Speaker 6: here at the daisy thing. And the dad he let
Speaker 6: me see that. He says, it's pretty good target. I said, well,
Speaker 6: you need to take some white out to this hole
Speaker 6: up here. And then I looked at his daughter. I said, man,
Speaker 6: she shot the best group. And I said, do you
Speaker 6: y'all mind if I take a picture of all of
Speaker 6: you guys with your target, hold it and I'll be
Speaker 6: in the picture. And you know, I like that. You know,
Speaker 6: the family, they all shot the pelt gun. The kids
Speaker 6: outshot the adults and they were all happy there. And
Speaker 6: there was one one of the family that didn't want
Speaker 6: to shoot. And that's fine, because not everybody is meant
Speaker 6: to be a hunter, right. You know. I've got a
Speaker 6: little outdoors thing that me and my friends put together.
Speaker 6: It's called Score Sportsman Conservationists, Outdoor Recreation in things, trying
Speaker 6: to get everybody together that loves the outdoors. And there's
Speaker 6: only a small percentage of us that are hunters and stuff.
Speaker 6: And it's always been that way. That's way mankind is.
Speaker 6: We just don't want that other percentage to be against us.
Speaker 6: We want to respect what they believe in and then
Speaker 6: what we believe in. And we're in together. We're human
Speaker 6: beings and we're trying to make the world better. So
Speaker 6: that's what I believe in.
Speaker 2: I like, I'm on it.
Speaker 6: We plant cypress trees. I'm going to do a squirrel
Speaker 6: shoot next Saturday. Have some kids out from like six
Speaker 6: years old to eighteen years old. They shoot twenty five
Speaker 6: yards offhand. You know a lot of kids they don't.
Speaker 6: They've got scope rifles. You know, they kill a turkey
Speaker 6: or a deer now before they kill a squirrel or
Speaker 6: a rabbit. That's hard for small game to compete with
Speaker 6: with that. So you know, we've got to like get
Speaker 6: them in here to shoot small game. And so man,
Speaker 6: this is just as big as challenge. It's killing a deer,
Speaker 6: a turkey, a duck, a goose, or whatever. But you know,
Speaker 6: like you said earlier, just to go out and kill
Speaker 6: a limited squirrels that it's not easy today.
Speaker 5: That's our that's our boon and crocket. You know, when
Speaker 5: we go out and kill a limited squirrel, that's our
Speaker 5: big beard, that's our banded duck, banded duck. That's our
Speaker 5: one hundred and sixty class buck. Whatever a limited squirrel
Speaker 5: these guys found out to do. You know, this morning
Speaker 5: we had six teams that showed up bare handed. They
Speaker 5: didn't have any squirrels. Did you supply the squirrels?
Speaker 1: Well, so those got a squirrel dog coming in hot
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 5: Well, this is most I've had a long time.
Speaker 6: Might have a pocket full of medicines.
Speaker 5: So we had a cooler and we had a twenty
Speaker 5: twenty five squirrels in there. We had fifteen with the
Speaker 5: biodegradable packaging still on them.
Speaker 2: The fur.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't follows. We had fifteen with the biout de
Speaker 5: gradable packaging still on them, and we had ten with
Speaker 5: that bioty of gradable packaging off of them. And whenever
Speaker 5: I opened up that cooler and they said we got
Speaker 5: to skin those things, I said, either that or wake
Speaker 5: up earlier. We did a little rifle and we gave him.
Speaker 5: And you know what, I used to be totally against that.
Speaker 5: If you didn't have the squirrel, well you catch come.
Speaker 5: But you know, a hunter's responsibility is to feed people. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and that's the whole reason we've done it. And so
Speaker 5: there's hunters who go out and come back to camp
Speaker 5: and fed the people.
Speaker 1: That's but five of.
Speaker 6: Those gradable squirrel wrappers went to that fourteen year old
Speaker 6: kid that had never handled you tottle in his life.
Speaker 6: I went over there and showed him how to do that.
Speaker 6: And we've made a squirrel hunter all that boy. I
Speaker 6: guarantee you he'll be squirrel hunting from now to the
Speaker 6: end of his life.
Speaker 5: And can I tell you about that boy? So that
Speaker 5: boy's name is Kayden Blake, and he's got a debilitating
Speaker 5: bone disease. And about three years ago, that kid was
Speaker 5: star football player and wrestler, He's everything, and he got
Speaker 5: this debilitating disease and now he wears braces on his legs.
Speaker 5: And he come to the Oklahoma State State Cookoff that
Speaker 5: I was in seeing and his mama was pushing him
Speaker 5: in a wheelchair and he can no longer play sports.
Speaker 5: And he says, you know what I want to do.
Speaker 5: I want to be a competition barbecue guy. I said, well,
Speaker 5: guess what, You're gonna be fat, You're gonna be a drunk.
Speaker 5: There's all kinds of problems that come from this son.
Speaker 5: I said, you may want to learn how to paint
Speaker 5: or something, and he says, no, I want want to
Speaker 5: be a barbecue guy. And so I looked over and
Speaker 5: there was a brand new The Oklahoma guys loved this.
Speaker 5: There was a brand new Hasty Bake barbecue sitting over there.
Speaker 5: And I walked over and I asked the boy. I said,
Speaker 5: how much you take for that? And he told me
Speaker 5: it was a fair amount, you know. And I wheeled
Speaker 5: it over and I said, Kayden, it's your first step
Speaker 5: to being a barbecue guy. I'm gonna give you this
Speaker 5: barbecue pit. And since then, that boy Malcolm could tell
Speaker 5: you he's cooked with every rock star barbecue guy there
Speaker 5: is in the country. If you name a superstar, he's
Speaker 5: cooked with them. And the reason was is some dumb
Speaker 5: redneck from Arkansas bought that boy that barbecue pit. We
Speaker 5: could do the same thing with the twenty two rifle.
Speaker 5: We could do the same thing.
Speaker 2: With a boat.
Speaker 5: Yeah, your story about taking the old boy out coon hunting.
Speaker 5: It's our responsibility as men to be that guy that
Speaker 5: opens the door to these people. And so for you today, man,
Speaker 5: I hug you after this barefoot and all like y'all,
Speaker 5: but for you today to show that boy how to
Speaker 5: clean them squirrels. You change that kid's life another time.
Speaker 5: And it's super impressive that I've got a circle with
Speaker 5: so many cool people in it. It's just awesome.
Speaker 8: Amen, I wanted to say something about the progression of
Speaker 8: speaking for myself, getting to the point where you become
Speaker 8: obsessed with deer hunting and turkey hunting. You were talking
Speaker 8: about some kids today they'll shoot a turkey or deer
Speaker 8: before they ever go.
Speaker 3: Squirrel hunting or rabbit hunting.
Speaker 8: And I just think about my childhood and I grew
Speaker 8: up down on the Mulberry River in the Ozarks in Arkansas.
Speaker 8: I'm a sixth generation Ozark in My family has been
Speaker 8: here for a long time, so a lot of tradition
Speaker 8: passed down, a lot of just stories. But for me,
Speaker 8: it's it started with as a four or five year
Speaker 8: old on that property. It wasn't deer first, it was tadpoles.
Speaker 8: It's like, can I catch tadpoles? Can I catch crawdads?
Speaker 8: That fish that I see right there?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 8: Can I catch that fish in those those reeds over there?
Speaker 8: And so my dad showing me the small things. Then
Speaker 8: as I got older and bigger, I was like, oh now, now,
Speaker 8: that's a squirrel. Now, now it's a bird over here,
Speaker 8: it's that turkey, it's a deer, it's a bear just recently.
Speaker 8: We got a bear just last weekend, and so some
Speaker 8: of that is yet. You may if you get exposed
Speaker 8: to something older and it's that's your only time you know,
Speaker 8: seeing it, you may not stick with it.
Speaker 3: But if you kind of start.
Speaker 8: Kids early and build that that hunt in them, that
Speaker 8: will stick with them for life.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, how does how does squirrel skin and contest go?
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 5: I got this dove making love in my ear? Man,
Speaker 5: I am proud to tell.
Speaker 1: You you come here.
Speaker 5: I'm proud to tell you start over, Joe, put this
Speaker 5: little cloth car there you go. I'm proud to tell
Speaker 5: you that Clifton Jackson, the previous winner of the of
Speaker 5: the skin in competition, retained his title.
Speaker 1: Really is he fast?
Speaker 5: I guess he whooped everybody up. What method did he use?
Speaker 5: Clay I was in there eating with these guys, I
Speaker 5: don't know, but yeah, he he had to win three
Speaker 5: times to take the title.
Speaker 1: Oh really, you gotta squint skin three squirrels? Or is
Speaker 1: it like a like a championship round?
Speaker 2: Yeap?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Elimination elimination round a squirrels.
Speaker 1: I was tempted to get in there, but I didn't
Speaker 1: bring my clippers.
Speaker 5: I knew Kevin I.
Speaker 1: I use a method of a squirrel cleaning that he
Speaker 1: used clippers, not a knife. Have you ever I call
Speaker 1: it the Baitschool method. It's you take a whole squirrel,
Speaker 1: you clip his you clip his feet off, you clip
Speaker 1: his you clip all four feet off, clip his tail off,
Speaker 1: clip his head off. I mean you can do that
Speaker 1: just in seconds. And then you you you trim around
Speaker 1: the outside of the middle of the squirrel, just pinching
Speaker 1: the skin, and then you grab it and pull both
Speaker 1: directions and the front comes off and the top comes off.
Speaker 1: Have you have you seen people do that? I have
Speaker 1: not really. It's it's a pretty good method, especially if
Speaker 1: you you know the the tail method can sometimes the
Speaker 1: tail method can sometimes be hard to skin if they've
Speaker 1: been shot, gun shot or something and and and they're
Speaker 1: all banged up. Anyway, I wondered if you'd ever seen that.
Speaker 1: I call it the Baitsful method because my buddy Michael Lanier,
Speaker 1: he's from Baitsville. He taught it to mes. Main claim
Speaker 1: to fame is Michael Michael lanear and and then the method.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so what's your timeframe? I'm getting that done.
Speaker 1: I hate to sound braggy, Kevin, he doesn't on the
Speaker 1: on a good squirrel that's been headshot, that's not tore up,
Speaker 1: I can come close to getting it done in a minute,
Speaker 1: getting the guts out and everything. Now that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: quartering it up, but I mean if skin, if you're
Speaker 1: the right the right squirrel, now they would be pushing it.
Speaker 1: But I've done it an under a minute on the
Speaker 1: right squirrel. But it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Mister Jackson. What was his time, Joe? Do you know?
Speaker 5: I don't I know as well? Under a minute?
Speaker 1: Was it really?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I'd like to see it in your face.
Speaker 4: We may have it recorded on the phone. I'll have
Speaker 4: to check when we get to what they said. It
Speaker 4: was about a minute. So you're right in that ballpark? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I've seen him. I've seen Clay skin him. It's it's
Speaker 4: pretty fast for sure.
Speaker 6: So is there any money involved in this anywhere? Like
Speaker 6: on the sideline, like betting or anything like the local
Speaker 6: maybe parlay cards, sporting chicken guys, if they got any money,
Speaker 6: My money was going to go on clicking waiting.
Speaker 4: I'm waiting on the World Bear cook Off when we're
Speaker 4: gonna see that.
Speaker 1: And hey, no, that would be good. That would be
Speaker 1: Have you ever cooked a bear?
Speaker 2: No, never have.
Speaker 1: It's a good meat.
Speaker 2: I've never tried.
Speaker 4: Never tried bears, definitely what we just don't you know,
Speaker 4: Mississippi don't have a season for bear and there used
Speaker 4: to be. I mean, you know, we got famous steady bear,
Speaker 4: but we don't. You see them, you see them past.
Speaker 1: Their I'm on the Mississippi River cord or.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're seeing. We're seeing some more show up. You know,
Speaker 4: people of course getting game camp picks and stuff of them,
Speaker 4: but nothing like you guys.
Speaker 5: I may be too busy to throw a bear cook off.
Speaker 1: Joe, Yeah, that was my next question. Hey Joe, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? Uh?
Speaker 5: If I could get this circle of guys in there,
Speaker 5: you bet we'll throw one next week.
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: It's not hard to you know, how this all started.
Speaker 1: Joe started this cookoff on a lie. Someone asked him
Speaker 1: a TV show was coming, Andrew Zimmern's show Bizarre Foods
Speaker 1: was coming to the Ozarks. They contacted our number one redneck,
Speaker 1: Joe Wilson, and they said Hey, we want to see
Speaker 1: some people cook squirrel And Joe said, well, we have
Speaker 1: the World Championship Squirrel cook Off here and she said,
Speaker 1: oh really, when is it? And he said, well, when
Speaker 1: are y'all coming? And she said and he said, well,
Speaker 1: I'll be darning. Just happened to be the same week
Speaker 1: and six weeks time, he put together like twenty something
Speaker 1: teams and they had the first first ever World Championship
Speaker 1: Squirrel Cookoff. Andrew Zimmern's team filmed it, and then it's
Speaker 1: gone on pretty much ever since except for COVID.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Man, And and you know, I'll wrap up my part
Speaker 5: by just saying I had spectacular teams today. They worked
Speaker 5: real hard to bring what they brought to the table.
Speaker 5: I had a phenomenal group of judges. The facility, Joe,
Speaker 5: the facility, Arkansas Game and Fish stood up, man and
Speaker 5: gave us just a phenomenal place.
Speaker 1: You know, tell what is the name of this place?
Speaker 5: You want me to try that again?
Speaker 1: It's the J.
Speaker 3: B and John L.
Speaker 8: Hunt Family Nature Center. Yep, Yeah, did I get that
Speaker 8: in Springdale? But man, I've had phenomenal people. I know,
Speaker 8: we touched a lot of people today by by doing
Speaker 8: this and so it cost me money to do this thing.
Speaker 8: I mean, there's no income, there's it's free to attend.
Speaker 8: I pay out money for the winners.
Speaker 1: Hey, that's got to change. Man, you needed to go
Speaker 1: fund me page.
Speaker 5: I don't own none of them.
Speaker 1: Well you don't have to own a gofund page.
Speaker 5: We'll get you started started. I'm just saying a lot
Speaker 5: of the things that we've all done in our life
Speaker 5: people have thought were stupid. And there's alway I tell people,
Speaker 5: you're never too old to learn something stupid, for sure,
Speaker 5: But a lot of the stupid stuff that we've tried it,
Speaker 5: it's the oddity of it that makes us success. If
Speaker 5: I could said we were throwing a Hamburger cook off
Speaker 5: out here today, there would have been one hundred people.
Speaker 5: We cook this squirrel and we get thousands. And to
Speaker 5: what we think is normal, they think is as crazy
Speaker 5: as anything out there. So I'm proud. I'm proud of
Speaker 5: all you guys coming, and I'm proud of the event.
Speaker 5: It's an awesome opportunity.
Speaker 1: Really is next year be about the same time? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I suspect, yeah, probably the same place.
Speaker 5: Hopey a year.
Speaker 1: We got a year to talk about.
Speaker 5: It and we might have to put an ancillary in
Speaker 5: there piece of bear meat. Since we're a week after season.
Speaker 5: I like the sound start small.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like the sound of that. Well. I wish
Speaker 1: we could tell the winter. But we're actually in the middle.
Speaker 1: Love the event. You're about to go announce the winner,
Speaker 1: am I right? In twenty minutes, Yeah, twenty minutes, we're
Speaker 1: going to announce the winner. Maybe I can come back on.
Speaker 1: I think I'll come back on and tell people who won. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But anyway, Kevin, great to have you, Great to meet you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being here, Malcolm. Tell people where we can
Speaker 1: find you if they don't already follow you.
Speaker 2: Just how to barbecue Rite. If you're interested in barbecue
Speaker 2: cooking outside, you can check it out. I'm on all
Speaker 2: the social platforms.
Speaker 6: Too, right, buck junkies are outdoors.
Speaker 4: That's you know, were hunting fish on the side, and
Speaker 4: so we started a podcast where it was just me
Speaker 4: and my buddies that we got a little hunting camp
Speaker 4: Mississippi and we you know, work on the habitat, kill
Speaker 4: a few dough off and try to grow some bucks.
Speaker 4: But yeah, just just good old country boys having fun
Speaker 4: with it. And that's you know, so come check us out,
Speaker 4: y'all come through her Nandou. I got a little shop there,
Speaker 4: and pop in there and say.
Speaker 1: Hi, really a restaurant.
Speaker 2: No, No, it's we sell outdoor cooking stuff.
Speaker 4: We got some deer blinds, we got some game cams,
Speaker 4: you know, everything, finish off the season, grills, fire pits, decor.
Speaker 4: Around Christmas time, it's a it's a store for men,
Speaker 4: but women coming here to buy gifts for men.
Speaker 1: So okay, there, all right, hernandospis a little bit Yeah, great, Kyle,
Speaker 1: where can the Ozark podcasts? Yep, we can find you.
Speaker 8: We're on all the podcast platforms, Instagram, the Ozark podcast,
Speaker 8: Me and Kyle both Kyle's makes it easy for people to.
Speaker 2: Remember our names.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we're pretty much anywhere you look for us.
Speaker 1: Cool, cool, well pleasure.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Kevin, you can find me barefoot and beautiful on
Speaker 6: Murphy's Small Game Nation, Instagram, Facebook, My Mom's eighty four.
Speaker 6: She stalks me there, so I don't hang out and
Speaker 6: I love you Mom. And Ray Daily back in the bows, Kentucky,
Speaker 6: or he really lives at easy money, not hard money.
Speaker 6: Easy money can easy money Kentucky.
Speaker 1: All right, man, thanks for being Brent, Thanks for being
Speaker 1: a Park for making time to be on the render.
Speaker 2: This is a This was a good deal man.
Speaker 7: I hope you invite me back next year because I absolutely.
Speaker 5: I already wrote it in.
Speaker 1: Small Dog Back.
Speaker 2: This is good. This is good stuff. This is more
Speaker 2: fun than a bush of basket of puppies. I'm telling you,
Speaker 2: this is good stuff. Joe.
Speaker 1: Thanks for all your hard work. Man, real, we got
Speaker 1: to figure out a way where this is the money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this wouldn't this wouldn't exist without Wilson your hard work.
Speaker 5: So man, I'm good. I don't need no thanks. I
Speaker 5: appreciate everybody for coming. Everybody else did the stuff. I
Speaker 5: just hung out and watched y'all eat, So thanks for coming.
Speaker 5: Clay Man. There was more bear grease caps walking around
Speaker 5: this place today, No wonder you can't find it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. That was a great render, man.
Speaker 1: It was awesome meeting Kevin Murphy. It's always great having
Speaker 1: Joe Wilson on there. And Cheff Malcolm, Holy smokes, what
Speaker 1: a guy. He has a huge YouTube channel one point
Speaker 1: six two million followers. And I told you, and it's
Speaker 1: always great to have the render boy Brent Rives there.
Speaker 1: I told you I was going to tell you who
Speaker 1: won the contest. Here is a short audio clip of
Speaker 1: me interviewing the winners of the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff
Speaker 1: in Springdale, Arkansas. We're at the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff.
Speaker 2: I'm here.
Speaker 1: Joe Wilson, founder, been on the bargeh render yup, you
Speaker 1: guys just won the World Championship Trophy. Paul Cross and
Speaker 1: wall Smith.
Speaker 2: Paul and Paul.
Speaker 5: What did y'all cook?
Speaker 1: We cooked some little play on squirrel. I mean state
Speaker 1: I am, but.
Speaker 6: We call him squirrel Arenda. We had the hill bellied
Speaker 6: up a little bit, cooked it with bourbon and set kanyak.
Speaker 1: It was good at.
Speaker 6: Mixed meat fried pie.
Speaker 1: Everybody where are all from?
Speaker 6: I'm from Union, Kentucky. It's about twenty miles south of Cincinnati.
Speaker 5: I'm from south central Kentucky.
Speaker 1: Okay. We got to know the partner, Drew Simmons.
Speaker 6: I don't know where he ran off to, but he
Speaker 6: was part of this too, Drewsley Mia let's big man thick.
Speaker 1: Thank you take it like the Grammy.
Speaker 6: Grammy a squirrel cooking my first born not quite Hey,
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I made play a piece of that minsteet Oh, that that's.
Speaker 1: What I had so good.
Speaker 6: It was incredible, thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah good ingagination, Kim's
Speaker 6: Great, eating, great,