Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods presented by first Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week in
Speaker 2: the show, Tony and I are discussing the top twelve
Speaker 2: books that every hunter and angler should read. These are
Speaker 2: books that will make you a better hunter and angler,
Speaker 2: books that will make you think, and books that, through
Speaker 2: the page, will take you on some of the wildest adventures.
Speaker 2: Imagine them all right, Welcome back to the Wired to
Speaker 2: Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light in their
Speaker 2: Camera for Conservation initiative, and today we'll hear my buddy
Speaker 2: Tony for a different kind of post. Today. We are
Speaker 2: not going to be telling you about how to kill
Speaker 2: a deer. We're not going to be telling you about
Speaker 2: how to do timber stand improvement or hang a tree stand,
Speaker 2: or be a better conservationist or anything like that. We're
Speaker 2: going to talk to you about something that requires very
Speaker 2: little physical work. Tony. It's about as easy as it comes.
Speaker 2: You can just kind of take your fingers and pull
Speaker 2: a page and pull it to the next one and
Speaker 2: there it is. That's all the work you gotta do.
Speaker 2: We're flipping pages today talking books. This is something that
Speaker 2: I do sometimes on social media. I've written articles about this,
Speaker 2: but we've only we've done few podcasts, a few where
Speaker 2: we've dabbled in talking about books. But I thought today
Speaker 2: the idea would be to talk through the top books
Speaker 2: that we think that every hunter and anglers should read.
Speaker 2: And this is this is on my mind right now,
Speaker 2: and I think it's on your mind too, because I've
Speaker 2: been getting ready for some trips and I know you're
Speaker 2: getting ready for a trip. And one of the most
Speaker 2: important things for me when I'm heading out on a
Speaker 2: you know, a week long trip anywhere hunting or fishing
Speaker 2: or camping or anything, I spend in an ornate amount
Speaker 2: of time picking what books on to bring. My wife
Speaker 2: thinks I'm crazy, Like she gets mad at me because
Speaker 2: I end up I can't ever just bring one because
Speaker 2: like the worst thing is to bring one book and
Speaker 2: then finish it and then not have anything else to read, right,
Speaker 2: So I end up bringing like two three. I've been
Speaker 2: known to bring four books on a week long vacation before,
Speaker 2: so I don't know, I might have a problem, but
Speaker 2: that's that's kind of my idea, Tony, is to kind
Speaker 2: of talk through some of our top book recommendations, since
Speaker 2: we need some book recommendations leading into our trips.
Speaker 3: Right right, I'm good with it.
Speaker 2: But you're heading, you're heading where soon?
Speaker 4: I am flying down to Florida hearing about eight hours
Speaker 4: and i'll be tomorrow morning. I'll be fishing the salt
Speaker 4: and I cannot freaking wait.
Speaker 2: Ah. Yeah, I'm very jealousy I have from our recording today.
Speaker 2: I have nine days until I leave for Florida. So
Speaker 2: we're gonna be crossing paths. We're gonna be almost intersecting
Speaker 2: while we're.
Speaker 3: Getting away from the plane windows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what all, what all do you have on
Speaker 2: the itinerary? You said, like tomorrow's offshore, like deep water fishing.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 4: So almost every time I've ever been down well, I
Speaker 4: shouldn't say every time I've ever been down there, the
Speaker 4: weather has not allowed to go out on the big water,
Speaker 4: and so we've fished inshore, you know, fish the lagoons,
Speaker 4: the rivers, whatever, And we just have this like unbelievably
Speaker 4: consistent forecast and so we're heading out to catch you know,
Speaker 4: big spinner sharks and all kinds of stuff tomorrow and
Speaker 4: that's gonna be really fun. And then after that we'll
Speaker 4: have a canoe to go paddle around in the mangroves
Speaker 4: and try to target snook and trout and you know, whatever,
Speaker 4: drum whatever else we.
Speaker 3: Can find, and it's gonna be really fun.
Speaker 2: Do you have any advice for me on some of
Speaker 2: that inland kind of stuff, because because we're gonna be
Speaker 2: down in nine days and we're gonna be doing some
Speaker 2: like fishing in the flats, like for tarpin, bone fish,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing with people who really know what
Speaker 2: they're doing. But we're also going to be doing a
Speaker 2: little bit of stuff in the Everglades, and we're gonna
Speaker 2: be checking out some of these like canal systems and
Speaker 2: these backwaters, and I'm thinking we might be able to
Speaker 2: catch a bunch of random stuff in there on a
Speaker 2: fly rod. I even saw someone catching peacock bass in
Speaker 2: one of the spots that I know we're gonna be
Speaker 2: exploring anything that you've experienced doing some of that, because
Speaker 2: I know you've you've got a little more experience than
Speaker 2: me on that side. Of things.
Speaker 4: Uh man, there's there's two things. That all those fish
Speaker 4: eat live shrimp. So anything anything that you have that
Speaker 4: looks like a shrimp, uh, it's gonna work well. And
Speaker 4: then small minnows. I mean it's crazy down there. We
Speaker 4: don't we're not we're not fly fishing on this trip.
Speaker 4: Like we'll go, we'll go throw little two inch swim
Speaker 4: baits that would look like a white streamer, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean like just a minnow pattern and you catch everything,
Speaker 4: or you know, if you we if we go buy
Speaker 4: a couple dozen live shrimp and throw them around, everything
Speaker 4: eats it. You know, it's like it's just like a
Speaker 4: universal food source down there. So anything that looks like
Speaker 4: that is gonna get chomped on. And I have you know,
Speaker 4: if you're around I'm not exactly sure where you're gonna be.
Speaker 4: But the other thing that if you're around any of
Speaker 4: the trout, any you know, jack some of that stuff,
Speaker 4: anything with like a streamer with like gold tinsel, something
Speaker 4: that looks you know, gold, and it seems to work
Speaker 4: really well. Okay, but I just I go a little
Speaker 4: and just try to match you know, what everything's eating.
Speaker 3: You'll catch all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2: That's the thing I'm excited about, maybe the most is
Speaker 2: just like the random diversity of stuff you could get
Speaker 2: into yep, like Castle Line and who knows what's going
Speaker 2: to be down there. So yeah, I mean that's pumped.
Speaker 2: That's what makes it fun. I mean that is I
Speaker 2: mean it probably sounds so.
Speaker 4: Stupid, but that mystery of like not knowing that environment
Speaker 4: very well and not knowing what you're going to catch
Speaker 4: and like learning as you go. Sometimes we forget that
Speaker 4: stuff when you're really used to, you know, hunting in
Speaker 4: the back forty or hunting the farm you grew up on.
Speaker 4: Is like, you know, the deer come out here, they
Speaker 4: walk through here, the turkey's strutt in this field. It's
Speaker 4: kind of like you you know, it's there's comfort in that,
Speaker 4: but it's also there's not a lot of mystery. And man,
Speaker 4: you know, when you live in the you know, close
Speaker 4: to Canada and then you get to spend some time
Speaker 4: in the salt, you you discover some cool stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Nice change of pace, that's for sure. Uh So do
Speaker 2: you have a book picked out for the trip yet?
Speaker 3: So? I'm not sure yet.
Speaker 4: I I was this is you know that experiment they
Speaker 4: do with kids where they're like it's a psych logical
Speaker 4: experiment where they're like, hey, you can.
Speaker 3: Have one marshmallow. Now I know this one or two
Speaker 3: in an hour.
Speaker 4: I was trying to save Cormack McCarthy's last books, Tela Maris,
Speaker 4: just because it's it's a short book. I knew it
Speaker 4: wouldn't take very long. It's a good vacation book. But
Speaker 4: I finished it last night, and so because I started
Speaker 4: to get into it and I just really liked it,
Speaker 4: and so now I'm not sure. Sometimes and we'll talk
Speaker 4: about this on my list, but sometimes on trips like this,
Speaker 4: I like to go back to like an old favorite,
Speaker 4: Like I might bring Blood Meridian, or I might bring
Speaker 4: some book that I just know I love, And because
Speaker 4: that's what I do sometimes in the spring, when I'm
Speaker 4: turkey hunting, if I'm bow hunting specifically and sitting in
Speaker 4: a blind all day, sometimes I just go run through
Speaker 4: a few of my old favorites because it's just like
Speaker 4: a kind of like a comfort thing.
Speaker 2: You know, do you like to read books about something
Speaker 2: in season when you're doing the thing. So I guess
Speaker 2: what I'm getting is like, are you reading books about
Speaker 2: hunting during hunting season where you're out there, or do
Speaker 2: you read about fishing when it's fishing season or is
Speaker 2: it like the opposite, like during the winter, you're reading
Speaker 2: about fishing because you want to go fishing, you know.
Speaker 3: I just know I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't structure it season seasonally, like I don't really
Speaker 4: care about that, and I honestly don't. You know, most
Speaker 4: people will get this from my list, but I don't,
Speaker 4: like if it's September October, I'm not seeking out hunting books,
Speaker 4: you know. And honestly, the stuff that I like so
Speaker 4: much of it is kind of adventure stuff from the
Speaker 4: past or something, you know, Like I really love a
Speaker 4: lot of the gun writer books from Africa back in
Speaker 4: the day, even though it's like just to look into
Speaker 4: like this machismo functioning alcoholism.
Speaker 3: Fill up your trophy room. But I just I love.
Speaker 4: That the idea of back then of those guys would
Speaker 4: be like, you know, we're we're going from New York
Speaker 4: or wherever they live to some part of Africa and
Speaker 4: they're going to go on like a three months afar,
Speaker 4: you know, And like I just at a time when
Speaker 4: it was so much more wild and so no, I
Speaker 4: don't I just I like, I like books that just
Speaker 4: they bring you somewhere and there's like a like a
Speaker 4: real feel for the place.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: It doesn't have to like jive with my life at all.
Speaker 4: I kind of like it when it doesn't, you know,
Speaker 4: although there's I did put one author on my list
Speaker 4: that does right about a lot of stuff that's pretty
Speaker 4: familiar to me and probably you two, I would.
Speaker 2: Guess, hmm, Yeah. I have a couple of different things
Speaker 2: when I when I'm reading books that are related to
Speaker 2: hunting fishing. Number One, I do find like there's certain
Speaker 2: times of the year when I'm just like craving the thing.
Speaker 2: I kind of look at books are like my TV.
Speaker 2: Like I don't I don't watch a whole TV, but
Speaker 2: I like flip the station a lot based on what
Speaker 2: I'm feeling, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Give me an example of that, Like, what's the time
Speaker 4: where you're like, I gotta seek out this kind of book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So like in the middle of the winter, when
Speaker 2: I'm you know, you're stuck in it's kind of just
Speaker 2: that dead of the night kind of short days you're
Speaker 2: socked in, and that's when I'm definitely reaching for a book.
Speaker 2: That's going to take me on a fishing adventure or
Speaker 2: like you know, an Alaskan expedition or something just like that.
Speaker 2: When I'm craving adventure because I've been stuck not doing it,
Speaker 2: That's when I reach for those books that take me
Speaker 2: far away to do the thing I want to do
Speaker 2: while maybe in the summer, when I'm out doing those
Speaker 2: kinds of things already. That is more often when I'm
Speaker 2: picking up a book that's going to make me think
Speaker 2: maybe a little bit more, like a slightly more philosophical
Speaker 2: book or a book that's maybe more about conservation or
Speaker 2: hunting ethics or something like that, like a little bit
Speaker 2: more of that kind of thing, because I don't need
Speaker 2: to scratch the itch of adventure or fishing because I'm
Speaker 2: doing it. You know. Now, in like July or August,
Speaker 2: I might pick up some kind of hunting material again
Speaker 2: because now I'm like really amped up and I want
Speaker 2: to be in the woods but I can't yet. So
Speaker 2: like August is when I'll buy North American Whitetail Magazine
Speaker 2: again or something like that, you know, where it's just
Speaker 2: like I just need to see some of this stuff
Speaker 2: I need to read, like the cheesy, how you kill
Speaker 2: the big Buck story just because I so badly want
Speaker 2: to be out there. So that's how a lot of
Speaker 2: my reading revolves. Is like I'll have like a craving
Speaker 2: and I have to scratch that itch with a book,
Speaker 2: and I am not I do I'm not in a
Speaker 2: What am I trying to say here? I used to
Speaker 2: feel like I'd start a book and I had to
Speaker 2: finish that book before I could touch anything else. I
Speaker 2: used to do that, but now I look at books
Speaker 2: as like, like I said, like a TV. And so
Speaker 2: any given night, even in the same night, I might
Speaker 2: change the channel a couple of times, I'll just go by.
Speaker 2: Feel like, if I feel like digging into something heavy,
Speaker 2: then hey, I'll pick up that one book I was reading.
Speaker 2: It's kind of heavy. But then, you know what, at
Speaker 2: the end of the night, maybe I just want to
Speaker 2: go to sleep thinking about some adventure or whatever, and
Speaker 2: so I'll read for the last half hour, just some
Speaker 2: adventure story or a fishing book or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: And I don't feel guilty about that anymore. I don't
Speaker 2: finish as many books because of that, because I'm kind
Speaker 2: of bouncing around right now. I could grab like five
Speaker 2: or six different books that I'm part way through and
Speaker 2: I don't care about that anymore. That's fine by me.
Speaker 2: I'll get through them eventually. I also have given myself
Speaker 2: permission to stop reading books and not read them at all,
Speaker 2: like life is too short. I've decided to feel obligated
Speaker 2: to read a crappy book. I used to be like,
Speaker 2: you don't quit, like if you start something, you finish it.
Speaker 2: And I thought that with books. So I grab a
Speaker 2: book and i'd be reading it and I'm like a
Speaker 2: third of the way through or halfway through, and like, man,
Speaker 2: this is just not what I was hoping it would be.
Speaker 2: And I would power through just to say I did it.
Speaker 2: And I've stopped doing that because there's just like not
Speaker 2: enough time to do that anymore.
Speaker 4: Does that I'm getting like vicariously nervous when you say that,
Speaker 4: because what that makes me think is like you can
Speaker 4: when you give your self permission to quit. It makes
Speaker 4: me think about running, you know, like when you go
Speaker 4: for a run a lot of times and like the
Speaker 4: weather changes or something, You're like, you want to give
Speaker 4: yourself permission to quit, you.
Speaker 3: Can't, yeah, And so do you do that? Eventually?
Speaker 4: You're going to have, you know, a hundred books on
Speaker 4: your bedstand and you've only read two chapters each one.
Speaker 2: I don't think so, because this is like the one
Speaker 2: place I've given myself permission to quit every just about
Speaker 2: everything else, I'm pretty dead set.
Speaker 5: I'm not.
Speaker 2: But but it comes down to like reading, I think, uh,
Speaker 2: I think I've gotten to a point where I can
Speaker 2: trust myself in assessing something, whether like I'm going to
Speaker 2: get out of this book what I thought I was
Speaker 2: going to get, and I just think, like like going
Speaker 2: for a run, I know I'm going to get in
Speaker 2: what I put out, or I know I'm going to
Speaker 2: get out of it what I put into it. But
Speaker 2: a book, you are dependent on what the author put
Speaker 2: into it. And if I can sense halfway through the hey,
Speaker 2: he didn't put into this or she didn't put into
Speaker 2: this what I'm hoping to get out of it, then
Speaker 2: why am I going to waste another week of my
Speaker 2: life on that when there's another really good book waiting.
Speaker 2: There's so many books in the world, there's more books
Speaker 2: than all everybody will be able to read, so many
Speaker 2: great books, many great books on that bookshelf behind me,
Speaker 2: that I still haven't gotten to or haven't quite finished
Speaker 2: that I know I'm going to want to. So I'm
Speaker 2: trusting myself now to sense when something is like, you know,
Speaker 2: I'll give it a good shot. But sometimes, at least
Speaker 2: from where I'm at now, Yeah, you get to pull
Speaker 2: the plug sometimes and move on to the next, do you.
Speaker 2: But I mean, hey, I'm still finishing you know, fifty
Speaker 2: plus books a year, so yeah, all right, well I'm
Speaker 2: quitting on too many times.
Speaker 4: Well at you slide mark. Do you so you're working
Speaker 4: on a book, your own book right now? Do you
Speaker 4: do you cater your reading at all when you're like,
Speaker 4: do you use that as inspiration when you're writing, like
Speaker 4: when you're in a deep writing phase or not?
Speaker 3: You do?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes, So there's two. There's three kinds of reading that
Speaker 2: I do while writing a book. I'm doing research for
Speaker 2: my book, So a certain amount of my reading is
Speaker 2: like reading that I'm taking notes on and studying the
Speaker 2: topic that i'm writing about, finding out new sources, finding
Speaker 2: new ideas, et cetera, building my wealth of knowledge. And
Speaker 2: so I've been like reading slash researching for this book
Speaker 2: for years and it's still ongoing now. And then there's
Speaker 2: some reading where I do I read stuff about writing.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's something you do at all,
Speaker 2: But I've got like, I've got a big section of
Speaker 2: my books off behind me. But then I have a
Speaker 2: small lineup of books right in front of me right
Speaker 2: now on my computer desk one, two, three, four, five, six,
Speaker 2: and like fifteen books in front of me. And whenever
Speaker 2: I find myself at the desk and I get like
Speaker 2: writer's block or I'm hitting some kind of speed bump,
Speaker 2: or I'm struggling or something, I will give myself a
Speaker 2: five minute break and I'll reach for one of these
Speaker 2: books and open to the bookmark or open to a
Speaker 2: random page and just read a little bit, read for
Speaker 2: a couple of minutes. And it's kind of like having
Speaker 2: a mentor, like having a writing mentor there and they
Speaker 2: might just have a good nugget for you today, or
Speaker 2: they're a little bit of inspiration or something. So I
Speaker 2: found that very helpful because I don't have like a
Speaker 2: writing background as far as like an educational background. I
Speaker 2: just picked it up myself over the years. So I've
Speaker 2: I've depended on the published works of other people to
Speaker 2: kind of guide me and mentor me. So I'll read
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff, and then the last thing I
Speaker 2: will read is I will just try to make sure
Speaker 2: that while I'm in the writing process that some portion
Speaker 2: of what I'm reading is just like writing that I
Speaker 2: really really like, like the voice, the tone, someone who
Speaker 2: just has it figured out that I can just kind
Speaker 2: of read and like swim in that world and and
Speaker 2: and let that kind of kind of marinate in that
Speaker 2: kind of thing that I enjoy so much. And I
Speaker 2: think that kind of transfers into you a little bit
Speaker 2: and helps you write well when your when your mind
Speaker 2: is full of good writing, I think it helps your
Speaker 2: body create good writing. So I would say that's that's
Speaker 2: how I read during the writing phase. Does any of
Speaker 2: that resonate with you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, I mean I I have a ton of
Speaker 4: books on writing too, But I there's just certain books
Speaker 4: that there's there's certain authors who have a style where
Speaker 4: it's usually somebody who's like there's they're so good that
Speaker 4: I just look at it and I'm like, there's no
Speaker 4: way I would ever get there.
Speaker 3: But it's kind of inspirational.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is going to sound dumb, but there's certain
Speaker 4: things that I run across in my life, like certain
Speaker 4: books you know that that's one of the reasons I
Speaker 4: like McCarthy so much. But like, there's a you know
Speaker 4: who Tom Morello is from Rage Against the Machine, right,
Speaker 4: amazing guitarists, amazing. There's a performance with him and Bruce
Speaker 4: Springsteen where they cover the Rage song Ghost of Tom
Speaker 4: Job and Tom Morello plays two guitar solos in there,
Speaker 4: and the first one is incredible, but the second one
Speaker 4: is like just it's something that's like so unique. There
Speaker 4: might be one person other people could play it. There
Speaker 4: might be one person in the world who could have
Speaker 4: written that, and it's him. And so sometimes when I'm
Speaker 4: like I'm looking for inspiration for stuff, sometimes I'll be like,
Speaker 4: I got to just pull that up. I just got
Speaker 4: to watch that performance. And it's the same way I
Speaker 4: feel sometimes when I go back to like I mentioned
Speaker 4: Blood Meritian or you know, some other book that I've
Speaker 4: read a billion times, but I just like it just
Speaker 4: does something for me, and so I'm not necessarily like
Speaker 4: I need to copy their style or try to emulate
Speaker 4: them or whatever. It's just like just seeing how freaking
Speaker 4: good people can be at stuff is enough to just
Speaker 4: get you to just be like I'm gonna just keep
Speaker 4: plugging away at this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it makes you want to make your own
Speaker 2: version of like something that would make someone feel that way,
Speaker 2: you know, like that's that's inspiration. Like if you could
Speaker 2: somehow create something even a tenth of that good, how
Speaker 2: specialill that be?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: My god, tenth of that good? If I could play
Speaker 4: guitar or tenth that good, I wouldn't be talking to
Speaker 4: you right now.
Speaker 3: I'd have a different career. Bro.
Speaker 2: Well, on that note, why don't we Why don't we
Speaker 2: get into some of our recommendations. I thought we could
Speaker 2: kind of go back and forth and we each have
Speaker 2: a list of at least five books getting us to
Speaker 2: our top ten, if not more. We might cover more
Speaker 2: than that, but you want to start with one and
Speaker 2: give me a spiel, tell me about it and see
Speaker 2: if it's one I know.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm gonna start with one that it just I
Speaker 4: just had to put on. And you and I actually
Speaker 4: talked about this book in in Michigan, you know, trout Bum.
Speaker 4: It's just John Guarrock is just one of those books
Speaker 4: where it's like his style is just he's so incredible,
Speaker 4: and it's an easy read, kind of adventure kind of
Speaker 4: just you know personal essays on you know, fly fishing,
Speaker 4: but more just life and his Like that book is
Speaker 4: one that I just go back to a lot, and.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't have to.
Speaker 4: If you know fly fishing, it would help, but you
Speaker 4: don't have to, Like you could just read.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna say, even if you're just an
Speaker 2: angler of any kind, I think you would still enjoy it.
Speaker 2: It's a he is a master, like he is someone
Speaker 2: who is just a master storyteller. And it's it's so
Speaker 2: full of of of like life and bigor like it's
Speaker 2: just it's a lie on the page. You feel like
Speaker 2: you're there. It's these little nuggets of like profound observation
Speaker 2: where you're just like yes, like that's just so true.
Speaker 2: But it seems effortless. Like at no point during any
Speaker 2: of his books do you feel like it's overwritten. It's
Speaker 2: never like overly flowery or like a drag. You're just
Speaker 2: like there, but it's so beautifully created. He's really really
Speaker 2: really good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean his that style is it seems so
Speaker 4: simple and accessible, but it's that's the like mastery of it.
Speaker 4: You know, when when people try to write like writers,
Speaker 4: they don't sound like him, you know, I mean and
Speaker 4: and when you talk about his observations there, I'm sure
Speaker 4: it's in that book, but he talks about seeing a
Speaker 4: trout flash and pick up a nym for a something
Speaker 4: he was drifting through a pool and seeing the yellow
Speaker 4: belly of a brown trout and how the color is
Speaker 4: like butter in a saute pan or in a frying pan,
Speaker 4: and you're just like, that's like, that's like a perfect
Speaker 4: description for that color. And I know there's another part
Speaker 4: in there where he talks about how subtle a take
Speaker 4: can be, and it's like when a dog walks by
Speaker 4: and your guitar is on a stand, like a like
Speaker 4: a Golden retriever specifically, or some kind of like long
Speaker 4: haired dog, and its tail just brushes the strings and
Speaker 4: most people wouldn't even register it, but you hear this
Speaker 4: like very soft, subtle thing, and I'm like, that's like
Speaker 4: such a good comparison to seeing like that. Just you know,
Speaker 4: it's like an eighth of an inch tick in your
Speaker 4: line where that where it picked up your nymph and
Speaker 4: the like being tuned into that.
Speaker 2: So good man Man, there's there's something about really really
Speaker 2: good writers that I think they begin to see the
Speaker 2: world in metaphor. By that, I mean like just through
Speaker 2: their daily life. They they're always kind of noticing things
Speaker 2: and connecting those dots between oh that things kind of
Speaker 2: like this thing, and that's such like a magical power.
Speaker 2: I heard a story once about f Scott Fitzgerald and
Speaker 2: oh god, who was it? It was another famous writer
Speaker 2: at the time, wasn't Hemingway.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 2: F Scott Fitzgerald and someone else that if I said
Speaker 2: the name, everyone would be like, oh, yeah, we've heard
Speaker 2: of this guy. They would drive around in the countryside
Speaker 2: and they would point at different things and they would
Speaker 2: play a metaphor game. They'd point it like a tree,
Speaker 2: and then they'd have to fare who could come up
Speaker 2: with the best metaphor, like on the spot about that
Speaker 2: tree is like this, you know. And they did that
Speaker 2: just to like flex that muscle because of how important
Speaker 2: that is as a writer to be able to help
Speaker 2: paint those pictures in people's minds by connecting this thing
Speaker 2: that you're trying to describe to another thing that people
Speaker 2: have a resonance with. And John is a master at that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So you mentioned Hemingway. Did he make your list?
Speaker 2: He did not make my list, but almost did. I
Speaker 2: thought about including The Old Man in the Sea. The
Speaker 2: Old Man in the Sea is a short one, but
Speaker 2: but a really good one and uh, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of one of those classics. But but no, he's not
Speaker 2: on the list.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 4: I've read a lot of his stuff, and it just
Speaker 4: I just don't like his style. I mean, everybody likes
Speaker 4: The Old Man in the Sea, you know, and I
Speaker 4: like forced myself to go through. I think I read
Speaker 4: everything that he wrote at one point, and I was
Speaker 4: just like, for whatever reason, I just don't like his
Speaker 4: stuff very much.
Speaker 3: I don't know why.
Speaker 2: I'm definitely not like a Hemingway obsessed person, like I haven't.
Speaker 2: I have not read all the stuff I've read, you know,
Speaker 2: Old Man the Sea I read back in high school,
Speaker 2: a couple of the classics. I've read the Nick Adams stories.
Speaker 2: I've read Oh, what's that Africa hunting one Green something
Speaker 2: Green Green Hills, A yeah, yeah, and it's like it's good.
Speaker 2: I actually like some of the essays. I found some
Speaker 2: of those essays that were like published in like Esquire
Speaker 2: or something like that, and so that stuff's pretty good,
Speaker 2: like some blue marlin fishing and stuff like that. But yeah,
Speaker 2: some of his books are just kind of actually slow,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: For whom the Bell Tolls. When I read that, I
Speaker 3: was like, oh my god, this is like waterboarding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you said trout bum by John. I did
Speaker 2: not list trout bum but I did list another John
Speaker 2: Gearak book, so I think it's worth mentioning since it's
Speaker 2: a different one. My favorite Gearraq book I've had to
Speaker 2: pick one is actually At the Grave of the Unknown Fishermen.
Speaker 2: Have you read that one?
Speaker 3: Yep?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what's cool about this one? A lot of
Speaker 2: his books are kind of random essays, scattershot about all
Speaker 2: sorts of different kinds of stuff, and this is the
Speaker 2: one book he did that describes one single year from
Speaker 2: the beginning of the year to the end of the year.
Speaker 2: And I kind of liked that, just you know, following
Speaker 2: chronologically what his year of phishing looks like. So all
Speaker 2: the things we talked about trout Bummer true for this too.
Speaker 2: Just that kind of more focused narrative and each essay
Speaker 2: kind of connected back. So he would mention something in
Speaker 2: chapter eight that references something chapter one, or that happened
Speaker 2: in chapter one or two that's not used to the
Speaker 2: case of his books, So it is kind of unique.
Speaker 2: I liked it a lot. So many good like one
Speaker 2: liners and like quotes in this Like I've got a
Speaker 2: little book that I've sometimes do better, sometimes do worse.
Speaker 2: But I've got like a little book that I try
Speaker 2: to write down like little quotes or little excerpts and
Speaker 2: books that I really like, so I can go back
Speaker 2: and you never know when you might need a quote
Speaker 2: or a little something. And there's so many from this book,
Speaker 2: and one of them I pulled out speaks exactly to
Speaker 2: what you were talking about about his level of observation.
Speaker 2: So I'm a you just a little bit here. It's
Speaker 2: just like so true. He's talking about birding while he's fishing.
Speaker 2: So he goes out fishing, but then he ends up
Speaker 2: looking at birds and noticing all this kind of stuff
Speaker 2: around him. So he was talking about watching for birds.
Speaker 2: He's a visual birder. YadA, YadA, YadA, And I'll pick
Speaker 2: up here. I was using the straightforward method for learning
Speaker 2: bird songs that an old bird watcher friend recommends, namely,
Speaker 2: when you hear birds singing, go see what it is.
Speaker 2: And this is the same kind of thing you do
Speaker 2: in fly fishing. You pay attention piece things together, learn
Speaker 2: to actually see what you've been looking at all along,
Speaker 2: and sooner or later you no longer have to be
Speaker 2: beaten over the head before you understand what's going on.
Speaker 2: This can take a long time, longer for some than
Speaker 2: for others. I've been at it for better than half
Speaker 2: a lifetime, and there are still days when I think
Speaker 2: I miss more than I see. Although how much you've
Speaker 2: missed is yet another one of those things that you
Speaker 2: can never know for sure unless there's someone there to
Speaker 2: point it out. So there's like these little kind of
Speaker 2: blurbs in there where he is talking about what he's
Speaker 2: seeing on the water, and then he talks about something
Speaker 2: else is actually about life or you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just love it. There's so many different things like that.
Speaker 2: Such a good book. All of them are so good.
Speaker 2: He's got like sixteen now, so you can, you know,
Speaker 2: spend years working your way through his library. And we
Speaker 2: could probably do a whole podcast just about his different books.
Speaker 3: So good. What's next for you? You know what? On
Speaker 3: that vein?
Speaker 4: So when you when you texted me about this podcast,
Speaker 4: I was like, I'm going to pick the books that
Speaker 4: either the entire book was like just stuck with me
Speaker 4: no matter when I read it in my life or
Speaker 4: the ones that there's like something I always want to
Speaker 4: go back to, even if it's not the entire book.
Speaker 4: And so this is this is probably a weird choice
Speaker 4: because there's way better writers out there.
Speaker 3: Uh, but I put.
Speaker 4: Gene Hill on the list, and I don't I don't
Speaker 4: know if you've read a lot of his stuff. You know,
Speaker 4: he wrote the Hill Country backpage for Field and Stream Forever,
Speaker 4: but he he has a couple of different essays that
Speaker 4: are like I just love him so much. But he
Speaker 4: has one that's not about hunting at all, called the
Speaker 4: Gentle Giant of Time, and it's in it's in a
Speaker 4: couple of his different collections, but it's like him. I
Speaker 4: don't even really want to talk about it too much
Speaker 4: and spoil it. It's only like, you know, a three
Speaker 4: page reader, four page read, but it's him kind of
Speaker 4: like realizing his own mortality through a very like unconventional way.
Speaker 3: And what I love about him, you.
Speaker 4: Know, he's a he's a bird dog writer, known as
Speaker 4: a bird dog writer, even though he wrote about fly
Speaker 4: fishing and a lot of other stuff. But what I
Speaker 4: love about him is like had this like little personal
Speaker 4: connection to him through working through Field and Stream with
Speaker 4: an editor who also edited his stuff before he died.
Speaker 4: And I remember talking to him on a hunt one
Speaker 4: time and I was like, what what's it like to
Speaker 4: work and Jean Hills stuff? And He's like, it's a
Speaker 4: freaking nightmare. He sends in handwritten pages that are full
Speaker 4: of mistakes and just full of grammar errors and stuff,
Speaker 4: but the structures like so sound and so accessible, and
Speaker 4: I always I don't. I used to go back to
Speaker 4: him a lot. I don't as much anymore, but I probably,
Speaker 4: like once a year, find a reason to recommend that
Speaker 4: essay to somebody to maybe get them hooked. Because if
Speaker 4: you love I mean, he's kind of he's like a
Speaker 4: couple other authors that I have on my list. But
Speaker 4: if you love somebody who's like just very relatable, like
Speaker 4: very average, but can write so much better than you think,
Speaker 4: and like, you know, if you have a real bend
Speaker 4: toward dogs like I do, and some of the things
Speaker 4: that he likes, he's just it's just fun, thoughtful writing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What was the name of the essay again?
Speaker 3: The Gentle Giant of Time?
Speaker 2: A gentle Giant of Time?
Speaker 4: All right, it's like that little bun. It's like that
Speaker 4: little Tom Morello sol. I just go back to it
Speaker 4: because it's just it's so good, and it's like how
Speaker 4: you know, how this is when you're writing, you know, books, whatever,
Speaker 4: you got to write a mediator article or something. Inspiration
Speaker 4: comes in weird places like it come you know, it
Speaker 4: doesn't come a lot of times from you picking up
Speaker 4: a book and reading it and be like, oh, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna I'm going to break off on this topic here.
Speaker 4: It's just sometimes that stuff falls into your lap. You know,
Speaker 4: you're out walking with the boys in the woods or
Speaker 4: something and like an idea hits you. You know, it
Speaker 4: just like yeah, it just shows up in your brain.
Speaker 4: And I think that that's just the way that he
Speaker 4: writes a lot of times is like that, just being
Speaker 4: out there and being like, oh, this thing is like
Speaker 4: this this is a part of what we do. But
Speaker 4: it's also a reflection on life somehow.
Speaker 2: So another essay that kind of is like that for
Speaker 2: me is one called The Heart of the Game by
Speaker 2: Thomas mcgway. You know that one.
Speaker 3: Yep, I didn't put him on my list, but he
Speaker 3: was real close.
Speaker 2: Yeah, The Heart of the Game is an incredible essay.
Speaker 2: It's in his collection of essays called Outside Chance. It's
Speaker 2: also I think Outside Magazine published it as well, and originally,
Speaker 2: I think it was published originally in Sports Illustrated way
Speaker 2: back in the day in the seventies or something when
Speaker 2: that was more of like a literary outlet. But that
Speaker 2: essay is one that's it's very long, and it's winding,
Speaker 2: and it's it's all these different scenes. Some he's out hunting,
Speaker 2: some he's at his cabin, some he's just thinking about
Speaker 2: hunting or about the outside world. But all of these
Speaker 2: different little vignettes paint a picture without him really saying it.
Speaker 2: It paints picture of kind of how he views hunting
Speaker 2: and its intersection with his life and the seriousness of that.
Speaker 2: And it's it's it's profound. It's really really good. And
Speaker 2: that essay is also in one of the books that
Speaker 2: did include in my list, which is called A Hunter's Heart,
Speaker 2: which is a collection of essays. It's the subtitles Honest
Speaker 2: Essays on Blood Sport and it's edited and collected by
Speaker 2: David Peterson. Have you read this one, Tony.
Speaker 5: Man?
Speaker 2: This book I think should be required reading for like
Speaker 2: every hunter. It is so good, and it is. It's
Speaker 2: a collection of essays from all sorts of amazing writers,
Speaker 2: all tackling different viewpoints and different perspectives and different experiences
Speaker 2: with hunting. So there's people talking and hear about why
Speaker 2: they hunt. There's people talking in here about why they
Speaker 2: used to hunt but they don't they don't or can't anymore.
Speaker 2: There's people talking about their concerns and reservations about hunting.
Speaker 2: There's talks of there's essays in here about ethics and
Speaker 2: morals and how we hunt and how we use the
Speaker 2: lives and animals that we harvest. It is. It is
Speaker 2: like a crash course in understanding the why and how
Speaker 2: behind our hunting. And it was. It was a book
Speaker 2: I read when I was in my early twenties that like,
Speaker 2: profoundly changed how I look at what I do as
Speaker 2: a hunter. Not every single one of these essays, I think.
Speaker 2: I think different essays resonate differently, and some you'll be like, ah,
Speaker 2: this isn't for me. But I think, without a doubt
Speaker 2: there are someone here that will just like leave you
Speaker 2: floored for a while and thinking for days. And I'll
Speaker 2: read a little excerpt from the introduction from the editor
Speaker 2: David Peterson. He's talking about how, you know, he's got
Speaker 2: a lot of friends that hunt and a lot of
Speaker 2: friends that don't hunt, and how oftentimes those two groups
Speaker 2: of people are always talking past each other. He described
Speaker 2: kind of the idea that, you know, there's a mental
Speaker 2: picture of a group of people sitting in a circle
Speaker 2: of chairs together, but all the chairs are facing out,
Speaker 2: And that's kind of how he feels hunters and non hunters,
Speaker 2: you know, interact. And so the goal of this book,
Speaker 2: in a certain way, was to try to help those
Speaker 2: two parties come together and better understand each other. And
Speaker 2: so he says, like, unlike my urban friends, I am
Speaker 2: rural and blooded to the elbows. I've been hunting and
Speaker 2: fishing and thus killing for nearly four decades. Even so
Speaker 2: I am no less torn and confused about so called
Speaker 2: blood sport than they. It is an exceedingly complex issue,
Speaker 2: and not as self appointed spokespersons for both sides would
Speaker 2: have it simply right or wrong, often is not. It's both,
Speaker 2: so much so that I sometimes think, were I not
Speaker 2: a hunter myself, lacking that intimate perspective that hunter's heart,
Speaker 2: I suppose I could become an anti hunter the line
Speaker 2: is that fine? And he goes on to and all
Speaker 2: these essays go on to describe this like complex soup
Speaker 2: of emotions and motivations and experiences that is hunting and
Speaker 2: in just magical ways. So folks including this book.
Speaker 3: Sorry good, Oh he's isn't he from Colorado? Yeah? You know? Yeah? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: Ye he lives he lives up in like the San
Speaker 2: Juans I think.
Speaker 4: So, uh, what's interesting about that that take? If you
Speaker 4: if you say the line is so fine between me
Speaker 4: being who I am and me being an anti hunter,
Speaker 4: a lot of people are going to listen or read that,
Speaker 4: listen to it here, I guess, and go after him
Speaker 4: like I know people have gone after him for views
Speaker 4: like that, and it's so it's so interesting to me.
Speaker 4: Just just randomly yesterday, I don't know when it published,
Speaker 4: It must have been very recently, but Pat Dirkin published
Speaker 4: a piece on the meadeater dot com where the title
Speaker 4: was like should the FEDS be managing our deer al
Speaker 4: Kurtz or something like that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and yeah.
Speaker 4: So I was working my dogs and one of my
Speaker 4: buddies texted me and he's like, how does Dirkin still
Speaker 4: have a job? With meat Eater and I and I
Speaker 4: texted him back, I go, what are we talking about here?
Speaker 4: And he goes, it's like he's just siding with the
Speaker 4: anti hunters on that latest article on the meat eater,
Speaker 4: you know, the medeater dot com. And so I was like, Okay, well,
Speaker 4: I'm going to read this when I get back, because
Speaker 4: I hadn't.
Speaker 3: Read it yet.
Speaker 4: And he laid out a case with a bunch of
Speaker 4: biologists and researchers, very very well done journalism, like you
Speaker 4: don't get the sense that Pat's taken aside either way.
Speaker 4: And he just said, you know, a lot of people
Speaker 4: are concerned that we're managing for as many animals as
Speaker 4: possible to the detriment of some of the natural you know,
Speaker 4: plant life out there, and that it's not not the
Speaker 4: best way to be doing this. And it's hard for
Speaker 4: state game managers to buck that trend when the voices
Speaker 4: they hear are hunters and the money that they're receiving
Speaker 4: is from hunters, even though game populations are supposed to
Speaker 4: be managed for the entire you know, everybody in the state.
Speaker 4: And so he just laid out a very clear case.
Speaker 4: I mean, he had Jason Sumners in there from Missouri,
Speaker 4: who I had on you know, we had on ware
Speaker 4: to Hunt last year or two years ago, and I
Speaker 4: read it and I was just like, this was just
Speaker 4: like an objective reporting of this thing that's that's going
Speaker 4: to come into our life, like this is going to
Speaker 4: be an issue at some point.
Speaker 3: But my buddy's perspective.
Speaker 4: Was just he's just advocating for us to have all
Speaker 4: the deer and elk killed off and not have enough
Speaker 4: of him.
Speaker 3: And I was like, man, what.
Speaker 4: A weird what a weird little like place we live
Speaker 4: in where you know, we're so biased toward wanting easier opportunities.
Speaker 3: And more deer.
Speaker 4: And I mean, I get where he's coming from, but
Speaker 4: I'm like, you're in His interpretation of that was so
Speaker 4: vastly different than when I got out of it. But
Speaker 4: that's like what Peterson's talking about in that intro is like, man,
Speaker 4: we even though we're all kind of we're all here
Speaker 4: because we love the same thing, we love it for
Speaker 4: a lot of different reasons, and we see a vastly different,
Speaker 4: you know, viable paths for how to continue on this thing.
Speaker 4: It was like a like a weird eye opener to me.
Speaker 2: It's complex stuff, And I think it's so easy to
Speaker 2: get stuck in echo chambers where all we listen to
Speaker 2: is our own people with the same talking points, and
Speaker 2: we just like hammer those same talking points and over
Speaker 2: and over again. And these days, like cancel culture is
Speaker 2: just as alive on the conservative side, as just as
Speaker 2: alive in the hunting and fishing world as it is
Speaker 2: on the other side, and the anti hunting world or
Speaker 2: the liberal whatever world, like cancel culture is everwhere, And
Speaker 2: it's so easy to hear something that doesn't jive with
Speaker 2: your talking points and then just be like, if that
Speaker 2: person shutting him down, how does this guy still have
Speaker 2: a job. He's willing to bring up an uncomfortable possibility,
Speaker 2: an uncomfortable different viewpoint than I've been told, how dare he?
Speaker 2: I think we need to engage and take in those
Speaker 2: different ideas and viewpoints, even if we don't agree with him,
Speaker 2: if only to just better understand these other ideas and
Speaker 2: these other people so that we can maybe make our
Speaker 2: own case met better. That's why I think, like man,
Speaker 2: especially today, when there's all this stuff going on with
Speaker 2: ballot box biology and people coming for different hunting opportunities,
Speaker 2: right there is momentum behind some of these anti hunting measures,
Speaker 2: and I think most people don't want to like. The
Speaker 2: approach I see from a lot of people is they
Speaker 2: want to like slam down the gates and like they're
Speaker 2: building barriers. It's like they want to arm like grab
Speaker 2: all the guns, pull down the gates, batter around the hatches.
Speaker 2: It's time for war, you know, screw these other people.
Speaker 2: And sometimes maybe that's the right approach. But sometimes actually
Speaker 2: a more effective while it doesn't seem like what you
Speaker 2: want to do, the more pragmatic, effective perspective is actually
Speaker 2: walk across the drawbridge, rock, across the moat and talk
Speaker 2: to these people, shake a hand and say, hey, I
Speaker 2: hear what you're saying, but I'm not sure you understand
Speaker 2: what it is we're actually doing it. Maybe I don't
Speaker 2: understand your perspective too. And if we actually, like understood
Speaker 2: each other better, we might realize that eighty five percent
Speaker 2: of the time we want the same things. And if
Speaker 2: there was more of that going on, I think there
Speaker 2: would be a whole lot fewer of these problems. And
Speaker 2: this book is like that to a t like this
Speaker 2: book would be the perfect for every hunter to read today,
Speaker 2: as we're facing more and more of these challenges. This
Speaker 2: is the kind of stuff that's going to lead us
Speaker 2: to have more useful dialogue when it comes to making
Speaker 2: the case for why we should be able to hunt
Speaker 2: still today, the value we bring why our way of
Speaker 2: life is necessary and useful and an important part of
Speaker 2: this culture. There's folks in here like Richard Nelson, Ed Abbey,
Speaker 2: ab Guthrie, Terry Tempess, Williams m R. James Bruce Woods,
Speaker 2: Jim Posowitz, David Peterson, Thomas McGuane, Thomas McIntyre, Rick Bass,
Speaker 2: Jim Harrison, Steve Bodeo, Dan Crockett, Ted Williams, Russell Chatham,
Speaker 2: Guy Adela Valden, Ted Karasop, Pete mcthiason, Barry Lopez. Like
Speaker 2: big time writers talking about really important stuff. So this
Speaker 2: is like a book that you have to like, chew on.
Speaker 2: It's not a book that you read for fun. It's
Speaker 2: a read. It's a book you read and like it's
Speaker 2: going to make you think. And I think that's a
Speaker 2: good thing to do sometimes. So Hunter's Heart, I cannot
Speaker 2: recommend that enough.
Speaker 5: Nice What do you geah?
Speaker 4: So you had a you listed off a guy in
Speaker 4: there that I had to put on here Jim Harrison, Yeah, man,
Speaker 4: And you know he doesn't have like a he doesn't
Speaker 4: have like a typical here's your hunting fishing book really
Speaker 4: like he has he has books that are laced with
Speaker 4: the outdoors. And so I did a it's it's going
Speaker 4: to drop next week. But I have a Foundations episode
Speaker 4: called touch Grass bro like coming up about how we're
Speaker 4: generally pretty rest out right now anxious like people are
Speaker 4: just they're keyed up, man. And there's so much scientific evidence,
Speaker 4: there's so much research data about how good being in
Speaker 4: green spaces is for it being outdoors. And so I
Speaker 4: kind of tie that together and I think, you know,
Speaker 4: so the book that I put on here is True North.
Speaker 3: I just love it so much. I love all of.
Speaker 4: Harrison's books whatever, like they're all great, but True North
Speaker 4: is like, you know that kind of like he lives
Speaker 4: in Michigan, that struggle of like being kind of a
Speaker 4: trust fund baby but like not being happy going out
Speaker 4: into the woods over and over and over again to
Speaker 4: try to figure out how to just like keep muddling
Speaker 4: his way through life. And it's like so relatable where
Speaker 4: it's just it's it's not like a it's not like
Speaker 4: a writer's trick. It's like he's like, I'm writing about
Speaker 4: a character who's going through whatever he's going through, and
Speaker 4: the natural thing to do would be to go wade
Speaker 4: into a trout stream for a few hours, or go
Speaker 4: walk a two track to try to shoot a grouse
Speaker 4: for dinner, and just kind of like, you know, take
Speaker 4: that medicine, like you know, it's always available for you
Speaker 4: and recognizing when you need it. So it really probably
Speaker 4: wouldn't have mattered what I put on there. But I
Speaker 4: do really really love true North, But I just love
Speaker 4: his style of just kind of like stream of conscious
Speaker 4: writing that's very seems like it would be easy to
Speaker 4: emulate and is like impossible because you might get one
Speaker 4: paragraph that describes, you know, like the migrating habits of
Speaker 4: some little songbird somewhere that he saw while he was
Speaker 4: standing in a trout stream thinking about this chick that
Speaker 4: just dumped him.
Speaker 3: Kind of thing. Just mastery so good.
Speaker 2: What's the name of his essay collection that is that
Speaker 2: has like hunting and fishing essays in it? Something dark
Speaker 2: just after Dark?
Speaker 3: Maybe?
Speaker 2: Is that it just before dark? Yeah, that's it just
Speaker 2: before dark. Yep, that's a collection of nonfiction essays, which
Speaker 2: there's there's some that are specifically hunting, some specifically fishing,
Speaker 2: and there's some just like eating in food. You know,
Speaker 2: he's obviously he's very into food. That's another one that
Speaker 2: i'd recommend to folks, because yeah, he's you can in
Speaker 2: his fiction, so much of it feels like subtly autobiographical,
Speaker 2: don't you think it.
Speaker 3: Has to be?
Speaker 4: I mean it, yeah, yeah, And I mean he has
Speaker 4: other stuff too, you know, I mean probably his most
Speaker 4: well known, you know, Legends of the Fall. It's like
Speaker 4: general population why it is pretty well known, which is
Speaker 4: obviously not autobiographical, probably, but a lot of his stuff
Speaker 4: is Michigan based where he grew up, and feels very like, yeah,
Speaker 4: this definitely happened to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Great great stuff. So so my next
Speaker 2: recommendation is very different than what we've been talking about.
Speaker 2: This one is not a thinker. This one is not literary,
Speaker 2: This one is not fancy, none of that. This is
Speaker 2: this is the one book on my list that is
Speaker 2: like a white tail bow hunting specific book. It's even
Speaker 2: got a little bit of how to in it, but
Speaker 2: it is the one white tail hunting book that I
Speaker 2: have picked up multiple times in read because I enjoyed
Speaker 2: the story too. You ever read White Tail Access by
Speaker 2: Chris eberhart Man, This is just like, this is a
Speaker 2: great fun book. It's it's you know, like I said,
Speaker 2: not it's not Jim Harrison, but uh, but Chris takes
Speaker 2: you along with him on a ride as he takes
Speaker 2: a hunting season, traveling across the country, living out of
Speaker 2: a van, hunting by permission or on public land across
Speaker 2: North Dakota, Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri, Michigan. I think of the
Speaker 2: states he hits, and you know, you're hearing about his life,
Speaker 2: like literally getting out of his van in the morning,
Speaker 2: pouring a gallon of water over his head to get
Speaker 2: cleaned up, seeing a pheasant cross the corn rows in
Speaker 2: front of him. And then he's talking through like thinking
Speaker 2: through where's he going to hunt for the evening hunt,
Speaker 2: what's the weather, what he's thinking, how he's struggling being
Speaker 2: out there for his eighth day in a row. And
Speaker 2: then he talks through his hunting strategy. You hear the
Speaker 2: stories of his hunts. There's some diagrams in here of
Speaker 2: hunting locations and stuff, so there's you can read this
Speaker 2: and learn stuff that will help you become a better hunter,
Speaker 2: for sure. But it's also just like a fun story,
Speaker 2: like how many folks have dreamed of taking three months
Speaker 2: off of work and traveling the country to hunt. It's
Speaker 2: it's a cool book. It's it's the one of these
Speaker 2: that I'm going to recommend people that will definitely help
Speaker 2: you as a her. And it's also just like a
Speaker 2: good easy read that's gonna give you something to dream
Speaker 2: about too. And uh, Chris is uh. Chris has written
Speaker 2: some for me in the past. He wrote for me
Speaker 2: some of the past for Wired to Hunt. He's no
Speaker 2: longer with us, which is which is really sad, but
Speaker 2: he was a good guy. And uh he wrote a
Speaker 2: great book here. So I can't Uh, I can't recommend
Speaker 2: this one enough. And I understand it's hard to find
Speaker 2: this book now, I think because it's I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's in print anymore. But if you can find it,
Speaker 2: it's worth it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's he did a good job with Alan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've always thought that would be a I'd like
Speaker 2: to write a book like that someday because that just
Speaker 2: seems like a fun way to do a white tail book.
Speaker 3: That was such a sad deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was, uh, what do you get next?
Speaker 3: So I had to put Robert Ruark on there somewhere.
Speaker 2: Just had I wondered if he would be in the list.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I love Ruark so much even, you know, like you
Speaker 4: want to talk about hardcore alcoholic who went and killed
Speaker 4: everything in Africa? Yeah, I mean it's amazing their stories
Speaker 4: right like then when they're when they'll recount it, kind
Speaker 4: of like Steinbeck.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you ever read.
Speaker 2: Uh on the Roads No, uh.
Speaker 4: See if Cortes it was he went with some biologists out,
Speaker 4: so you know, it's it's what he actually did. You know,
Speaker 4: it's not East of Eden type of stuff. But he
Speaker 4: went out on a boat out in California off the
Speaker 4: coast California somewhere I think, and they were studying marine
Speaker 4: biology and he was kind of hanging on, but he
Speaker 4: was just like running through the amount of alcohol they
Speaker 4: went through on their trips, and it's like such a
Speaker 4: central you know. Harrison was like that too, I mean
Speaker 4: it was yeah, it was always wine typically well not
Speaker 4: always wine, but a lot. But it's anyway, side note,
Speaker 4: rue Arc, if you want to talk about somebody who
Speaker 4: can put you somewhere and like the smell of the
Speaker 4: ocean and you know, the taste of the oysters they
Speaker 4: just caught. It's it was hard for me to pick,
Speaker 4: Like I wanted to go with like Horn of the
Speaker 4: Hunter or something like that, but I think if you
Speaker 4: want like a rock solid introduction to him, you can't
Speaker 4: beat the old Man and the Boy, Like you just
Speaker 4: can't beat it. And it's very you know, I mean
Speaker 4: you could give that to like a eleven year old
Speaker 4: and they would probably love it just as much as
Speaker 4: like a sixty year old person. Like it's a very
Speaker 4: accessible writing, but just his dynamic of like growing up
Speaker 4: with his grandpa, you know, like teaching him how to
Speaker 4: hunt and fish everything, and like the the like ethics
Speaker 4: lessons that are just woven throughout his stories about how
Speaker 4: you know, like he made this decision to you know,
Speaker 4: shoot the quail on the ground or hunt the hunt
Speaker 4: the covey the only trail, train the dogs on or whatever,
Speaker 4: or like you know, people out of his grandpa punching
Speaker 4: a guy for swearing in front of women at a
Speaker 4: boat landing one time, Like just stuff like that where
Speaker 4: you're like, it's so it's an old school look like
Speaker 4: you know, because this happened decades ago, but you can
Speaker 4: still there's so many echoes of it that just work today.
Speaker 3: And it's so it's just it's like a masterpiece. Man.
Speaker 2: I haven't admission to make you've never read it. I
Speaker 2: own it, and I've read the beginning of it, but
Speaker 2: I've not finished yet. That's a book that my finishing
Speaker 2: problem has been bad. I need to I need to
Speaker 2: take that back down. Just read that sucker.
Speaker 4: That It's a when you were when you were talking
Speaker 4: about how like as you get getting real deep into
Speaker 4: winter and maybe you can like see the light at
Speaker 4: the end of the tunnel with spring, and you're like,
Speaker 4: I gotta just read stuff that puts me in a
Speaker 4: place that like Adventure, that book that was what popped
Speaker 4: into my head. Is I get like a craving for
Speaker 4: that book sometimes in like February, where you know it's
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a it's an easy read, it doesn't
Speaker 4: take very long, but it's all, you know, get you
Speaker 4: down on the coast in the Carolinas and get you
Speaker 4: out in the swamps and stuff, and it's like, I
Speaker 4: don't know, it just puts you there.
Speaker 3: Man. His his imagery is like I think unparalleled.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned his his Africa books. Do you have
Speaker 2: a different Africa book on your list?
Speaker 4: Uh, nope, I have. I have one based out of India.
Speaker 2: Okay, interesting, Well, I was just gonna say one of
Speaker 2: the Africa related books, don't. I don't really have any
Speaker 2: desire to hunt in Africa, but I've still found books
Speaker 2: about that time period, you know that you're talking about,
Speaker 2: like twentieth century, those early hunts out there, like those
Speaker 2: are just fascinating books to read, and some well done ones.
Speaker 2: One I enjoy that, you know, is a little bit
Speaker 2: over the top sometimes, but uh, I think it's Death
Speaker 2: in the Long Grass by Peter Capstick Halfway.
Speaker 3: I think Peter Halfway Capstick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Yeah, you've read that one.
Speaker 3: Then I read all of his stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's pretty good too.
Speaker 4: You know, so I read all my dad had all
Speaker 4: those books grown up, I have a whole bunch of
Speaker 4: They're so entertaining and hunting, you know, calling rogue elephants
Speaker 4: and hunting man eaters, and like his stories are wild,
Speaker 4: and I you know, I grew up.
Speaker 3: I was like, those are the best. They're the best
Speaker 3: books I've ever read.
Speaker 4: And then I met a few old school writers in
Speaker 4: the industry who told me that his stuff was total bullshit.
Speaker 4: And I have no idea whether that. Yeah, I have
Speaker 4: no idea whether that's true or not, and I kind
Speaker 4: of don't want to know. I kind of like I
Speaker 4: kind of got the impression that they were just jealous,
Speaker 4: or maybe I just wanted them to be. But that's
Speaker 4: always like when Capstick comes up, Like that's always in
Speaker 4: the back of my mind, like they just kind of
Speaker 4: like it's like when A sixth Sense came out, that
Speaker 4: m Night Shyamalan movie. I was in a I was
Speaker 4: in a college class and this dude across the table
Speaker 4: from me was talking about it and he told the
Speaker 4: whole table that Bruce Willis was dead, and I was like, you,
Speaker 4: so I never got to enjoy that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, total spoiler.
Speaker 4: And I feel the way like when that you know,
Speaker 4: obviously that movie doesn't come up that often in like
Speaker 4: general conversations, but every time it's mentioned, I'm like, God,
Speaker 4: dang it, the freaking guy ruined it for me. And
Speaker 4: I feel the same way about Capstick a little bit.
Speaker 4: But even if it was even if he made up
Speaker 4: ninety percent of it, it's still so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh, it's enthralling. It takes you out there.
Speaker 2: You feel like you're on a pretty grand adventure, that's
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 3: So you would you wouldn't go to Africa.
Speaker 2: No, I want to go to Africa, just not to hunt.
Speaker 2: I do not think. I don't think I want to hunt.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe someday, maybe after I go visit once, but
Speaker 2: I'd like to go once with like the family and
Speaker 2: just see these creatures and see this place. I don't
Speaker 2: know if the first time I want to see I
Speaker 2: don't know, a kudu or whatever. I want to shoot it.
Speaker 2: I kind of want to experience that place and just
Speaker 2: kind of I don't know, I don't know. I just
Speaker 2: don't feel the need to go and hunt those animals
Speaker 2: right away. I just want to. It seems so rare,
Speaker 2: and so I know they're not all rare, but it
Speaker 2: just seems like so other And also many of them
Speaker 2: are threatened, and I know there's a need for hunting,
Speaker 2: and I know the conservation value of the dollars that
Speaker 2: all that brings into. So I'm not saying I've got
Speaker 2: a personal vendet against any of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: It's just maybe not for me, but I would like
Speaker 2: to go there and experience that place and that culture
Speaker 2: in those animals, and hoping to do that with the
Speaker 2: kids at some point here in the next decade or so.
Speaker 3: The hunting over there is weird, man, you know, I
Speaker 3: did it one time.
Speaker 2: Did you do it?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I don't know, man, I get every side of
Speaker 4: the Africa thing. Like some people love it, some people
Speaker 4: want to go fill up their trophy room. Some people
Speaker 4: just love the environment. And then you know, like there's
Speaker 4: a lot of reasons to do it. The hunting is
Speaker 4: at least the hunting I experienced was really not my thing,
Speaker 4: like I but I know there's hunting over there that
Speaker 4: you can get that would be like if you if
Speaker 4: you know, Steve Verneller called me up and he's like, Hey,
Speaker 4: we're gonna go spot in stock Kpe Buffalo, I'd be
Speaker 4: like I would.
Speaker 3: I would do that in a heartbeat.
Speaker 4: Like there's certain kinds of hunts and certain animals that
Speaker 4: would be a real challenge, but a lot of it,
Speaker 4: you know, like you mentioned threatened animals, Like dudes like
Speaker 4: us are never hunting anything that would even be perceived
Speaker 4: as threatened. Yeah, you know, like you just if you
Speaker 4: know you want to talk about like lions or something
Speaker 4: like that. You know, most of the lions that you
Speaker 4: see that are shot over there, especially like in South Africa,
Speaker 4: those those lions were never wild, you know, like you're
Speaker 4: not taking from the wild population.
Speaker 3: You see the.
Speaker 4: Koodoo in Paula, warhogs, whatever, like the planes, game stuff.
Speaker 4: There's tons of that stuff over there, but it's not
Speaker 4: it's like a domestic animal trade over there. Everything's high fence.
Speaker 4: So even you know, they're huge places, but they're all like,
Speaker 4: well we're bringing in more im Paula because our population
Speaker 4: is a little lower or whatever. It's a it's a
Speaker 4: weird situation, and so you know, it's easy to kind
Speaker 4: of sit here and be like, well, we have tons
Speaker 4: of public land and we have a lot of big
Speaker 4: game animals small game animals to hunt and look at
Speaker 4: look down on that. But that's just the system they have,
Speaker 4: like they you know, like they they there are reasons
Speaker 4: behind that, but it is a weird. There's some stuff
Speaker 4: over there where. I was like, you know, Kudu, for example,
Speaker 4: you brought up everybody wants a great big spiral horned
Speaker 4: Kudu and I when I went over there, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I want to shoot a kudu, And as soon as
Speaker 4: I had them in front of me, they were just
Speaker 4: where we were.
Speaker 3: They were just dumb.
Speaker 4: They weren't on their a game, like, they weren't paying attention,
Speaker 4: and I just was like, as soon as I watched
Speaker 4: them for a little while, I was like, I'm probably
Speaker 4: not going to shoot a kudu, and I didn't, And
Speaker 4: so you kind of but then you have like something
Speaker 4: like a games buck where you're like, maybe that thing
Speaker 4: and then they kick your ass over and over and
Speaker 4: you're like, Okay, now here's a challenge. So there's a
Speaker 4: lot built into it. But you're right, like I would
Speaker 4: I would go back to photograph animals and be there
Speaker 4: like almost probably more likely to do that than I
Speaker 4: would be to hunt, unless it was a very specific
Speaker 4: kind of hunt.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it seems just kind of murky, like just
Speaker 2: it's so different, so outside of our norm Yeah, that
Speaker 2: that's hard to really wrap your head around any of it.
Speaker 2: And I think it goes back to some of the
Speaker 2: stuff we were talking about earlier. It's so easy for
Speaker 2: folks to make assumptions, to take sides on issues when
Speaker 2: they don't really fully understand it, right, until you actually
Speaker 2: get out there and see it for yourself and talk
Speaker 2: to people involved in it themselves. It's it's really hard
Speaker 2: to have an educated stance on anything. So I guess
Speaker 2: I want to be able to wrap my head around
Speaker 2: a little bit more before I figure out how I
Speaker 2: want to fully engage, you know.
Speaker 4: Well, and I mean, if it were being like totally honest,
Speaker 4: Africa is a rich man's you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 4: there's a certain kind of person who's going to go
Speaker 4: over there, and it's not the dude you're going to
Speaker 4: bump into on public land in Michigan, you know. And
Speaker 4: so there's there's a catering to that crowd, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of like the Argentina Dove thing, Like there's a
Speaker 4: certain kind of person who can afford to go do
Speaker 4: that and who also has the desire, and it's just
Speaker 4: really not we're living in a different world, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is very true. So that is a perfect
Speaker 2: segue to one of my next book recommendations, which is
Speaker 2: a book full of stories and from a perspective that
Speaker 2: is very much like the everyman. It's very much stuff
Speaker 2: that's relatable to the best of hunters and the worst
Speaker 2: of hunters and everything in between. And this author and
Speaker 2: writer has a number of books. I wasn't sure which
Speaker 2: of them to pick, so I grabbed his latest one.
Speaker 2: But the person I'm talking about is Bill Heavy, another
Speaker 2: fellow Field and Stream writer, and Bill is hilarious. He
Speaker 2: wrote he still writes the back page column for Field
Speaker 2: and Stream and you know, so I think his first
Speaker 2: collection of essays was if you didn't bring jerky? What
Speaker 2: did I just eat? And then the next one was
Speaker 2: You're not lost if you can still see the truck?
Speaker 2: And then his latest is should the tent be burning
Speaker 2: like that? And so all these books have you know,
Speaker 2: it's collections of his last page essays. So they're relatively short,
Speaker 2: probably eight hundred word thy word twelve hundred word type
Speaker 2: essays that are, you know, funny observations on his hunting experiences,
Speaker 2: his fishing experiences, different adventures and things. And he's like
Speaker 2: the stumbling, bumbling, you know, making mistakes, doing stupid stuff
Speaker 2: out there in the woods, are in the water. That's
Speaker 2: a lot of his stuff. But then he also sprinkles
Speaker 2: in the kind of stuff that John Girrak does, like
Speaker 2: profound observations, deep heartfelt insights, emotional truths. There's longer essays
Speaker 2: in these books too. He has feature stories in there
Speaker 2: as well, where you like, man he speaks about hunting
Speaker 2: or fishing as eloquently and as truthfully and is like
Speaker 2: down deep to the bones of the issue as anyone
Speaker 2: in the in modern literature at least really good writer.
Speaker 2: So like, don't let his humor overshadow the fact that
Speaker 2: he's very, very good at what he does, and like,
Speaker 2: there's so many fun, interesting adventures to read about. So
Speaker 2: there'll be some quick laughers, and then there'll be some
Speaker 2: that make you think. Then there'll be some fun adventures
Speaker 2: that are like super relatable because he takes you like,
Speaker 2: I'm looking at one right here where he goes on
Speaker 2: a trip to Anacoste Island and you and I were
Speaker 2: just talking about this the other day. So there's a
Speaker 2: big feature piece about him going on this hunt that's
Speaker 2: like an adventure hunt that so many people would like
Speaker 2: to do. But then his experience is that of the
Speaker 2: average hunter. He's not the expert David Petzel kind of guy, right,
Speaker 2: He's not Tony Peterson showing up and killing a big
Speaker 2: giant buck like it's a piece of cake.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's like it's like Mark Kenyan trying to show up
Speaker 2: and kill a deer, all sorts of stupid things going on,
Speaker 2: maybe make a miss or two. Uh, It's it's really
Speaker 2: really good. His stuff's great, and it's it's a great
Speaker 2: mix of like the thinking man's writing about hunting and fishing,
Speaker 2: mixed with like, hey, let's just have a good time
Speaker 2: and laugh and enjoy the thing too. So I highly
Speaker 2: recommend all three of those collections.
Speaker 3: You know what.
Speaker 4: One of his essays that I go back to a
Speaker 4: lot is Lilyfish, the one about his daughter who died
Speaker 4: of sids, his little baby girl, and how he goes
Speaker 4: fishing afterwards.
Speaker 3: That one is. That one is heavy, but just so
Speaker 3: well done.
Speaker 2: It's it's incredible that one person can write both sides
Speaker 2: of the emotional scale so well. He can write so
Speaker 2: seriously and emotionally about such a heavy topic like that,
Speaker 2: and then you can flip three pages later and there's
Speaker 2: something so silly and laugh out loud funny. His range
Speaker 2: is wild that he can.
Speaker 3: Do that well.
Speaker 4: Right, And I mean, this probably seems crazy, but humor
Speaker 4: writing might be the most difficult form. I mean to
Speaker 4: it's way up there it's way underappreciated. I think for
Speaker 4: somebody to be able to write something that actually makes
Speaker 4: you laugh out loud is very difficult. And to do
Speaker 4: it consistently, you know, and to do it over years,
Speaker 4: years and years, it'd be It's so that's a skill
Speaker 4: that is just very very few people have it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's it's awfully enjoyable when you find
Speaker 2: someone who can do it.
Speaker 4: Yep, all right, you want another one from me, So
Speaker 4: I'm gonna I'm gonna throw this in here kind of
Speaker 4: on the same note that we've been talking about a
Speaker 4: lot of stuff. There's a fellow named Sidney Lee. Have
Speaker 4: you ever heard of his? Heard his name?
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 4: So you you brought up that David Peterson collection of essays,
Speaker 4: and there there's I think this was in the best
Speaker 4: Hunting Stories ever told. But I ran across Sidney Lee.
Speaker 4: It was just a collection of essays and there was
Speaker 4: an essay in there called Mercy on Beeson's Partridge and
Speaker 4: it was so good. In fact, I reached out to
Speaker 4: him and I was like, man, I've read tons of
Speaker 4: hunting stuff in my life, and I was like, this
Speaker 4: is some of the best wordsmith thing that I've ever seen,
Speaker 4: and we ended up going back and forth a little bit.
Speaker 4: Super good dude. I've read a bunch of his stuff.
Speaker 4: He's got a book called Hunting the Whole Way Home.
Speaker 4: Lives out in the northeast somewhere. I can't remember if
Speaker 4: he's in upstate New York or somewhere, but just kind
Speaker 4: of you know how like sometimes you know, Spotify or
Speaker 4: YouTube will feed you a song and you're just like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, this is this song is so bad
Speaker 4: ass and it's a band you've never heard of. They
Speaker 4: never you know, they didn't they didn't fly as high
Speaker 4: as like you think they should have. I kind of
Speaker 4: felt that way when I started reading Sydney Lee's stuff.
Speaker 4: I'm like, there's so much talent here, like so much,
Speaker 4: And I'm not like minimizing his career because he sold
Speaker 4: a lot of books and I think he did just fine.
Speaker 4: But when I read that Mercy on Beeston's Partridge, I
Speaker 4: was like, man, there is a skill level here that
Speaker 4: is so good. It's such a very uh, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of gear Rack style, kind of Harrison style where
Speaker 4: it's like, you know, he's talking about grouse hunting or
Speaker 4: something else, but it's really about the divorce or about
Speaker 4: the fight with the kids or whatever.
Speaker 2: So good Man, what was the collection that was a
Speaker 2: part of again the best Hunting Stories ever told?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think J Cassell put it together. I had it.
Speaker 4: I have it on my shelf somewhere, but I think
Speaker 4: that was where it is there. That was where I
Speaker 4: ran across it. But I ended up getting all of
Speaker 4: his books and read them, and he's got some good stuff.
Speaker 2: I'll check that out.
Speaker 3: So a little under the radar, fellows, is.
Speaker 2: That is that four or five from you?
Speaker 3: Now? I think that's five.
Speaker 4: I do have one more, but we can get to
Speaker 4: that's a totally different one, all right.
Speaker 2: Mine is going to seem like I'm trying to cozy
Speaker 2: up to our boss for promotion. But but do you
Speaker 2: do this?
Speaker 3: Mark? I knew it.
Speaker 2: I can't help it. Steve our our our founding father.
Speaker 2: Mister Ranella is one hell of a writer, and I
Speaker 2: can't help but recognize two of his books that are
Speaker 2: really three that I really really liked. But I was
Speaker 2: torn between a factially including Meat Eater, but the Meat
Speaker 2: Eater Book or American Buffalo, those are two of my
Speaker 2: favorite books, really really really good. All the Steve Steve
Speaker 2: stuff's great. I wish you would do more like this, though, honestly,
Speaker 2: I wish he'd stop doing the cookbooks and the activity
Speaker 2: books and get back to some of this stuff, because
Speaker 2: I just selfishly so much enjoyed this kind of writing
Speaker 2: from him. But Meat Eater is so tied into hunting
Speaker 2: and fishing that I included this one. It's a series
Speaker 2: of stories from his hunting and fishing life that, you know,
Speaker 2: I think, though he doesn't explicitly say it, you know,
Speaker 2: these different experiences taught him something about how hunting and
Speaker 2: fishing fits into his way of being a human. I
Speaker 2: think that might be how I described this book, and
Speaker 2: his wrestling with what that means, how to hunt, how
Speaker 2: to fish, how to live on this landscape with wild
Speaker 2: animals and eat them and do that in a way
Speaker 2: that felt right to him. I think that's in a
Speaker 2: certain sense, what this book is about. And as we
Speaker 2: all know, Steve's a great writer. Great stories in here.
Speaker 2: And I started reading it back whenever it first came out,
Speaker 2: and I read like the first chapter or two, and
Speaker 2: I actually got bored with it, Like the first chapter,
Speaker 2: like squirrel hunting, and then like trapping otters or something,
Speaker 2: and it just wasn't like, for whatever reason, I set
Speaker 2: it aside. And this goes back to my quitting books.
Speaker 2: I guess I set it aside for a while and
Speaker 2: then somehow came back to it like a year later
Speaker 2: and picked it back up. It's like I really got
Speaker 2: to I really got to push through and just see.
Speaker 2: And then like as soon as he got past that,
Speaker 2: it was like, whoa, this is really really good. And
Speaker 2: I think all that stuff was good in the beginning.
Speaker 2: I just wasn't as into squirrels, but it's very good
Speaker 2: as you go on. There's so many different moments in
Speaker 2: there where it just resonates with you and you're like, yes,
Speaker 2: like he's speaking truth to something that I know deep
Speaker 2: in my bones. So that's great. American Buffalo is another
Speaker 2: really really good one. If you haven't read that, If
Speaker 2: anyone's not read that, it's it's it's a natural history
Speaker 2: of buffalo in America, but told through the story of
Speaker 2: him hunting a buffalo in Alaska. So it's a hell
Speaker 2: of an adventure. You learn a lot. You know, some
Speaker 2: of Steve's very best work there too. So not a
Speaker 2: plug for me. It based uh books well that wasn't
Speaker 2: supposed to be, but I guess it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would.
Speaker 4: I would throw in here about how much I love
Speaker 4: Steve Ranilla too, just in case he might be given
Speaker 4: out extra raises. But he's temper to listen to this,
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 3: Steve's not sitting down listening to a wire to hut.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unfortunately not so.
Speaker 3: Speaking of weird dudes, isn't it wild when you're around him?
Speaker 5: How?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: Like how when you and I are together, we talk
Speaker 4: a lot about certain kinds of fishing, and we talk
Speaker 4: a lot about white tails. We just do like it
Speaker 4: just comes up over and over and over again. When
Speaker 4: you're with Steve. He's like that with squirrels. He's like
Speaker 4: he's like that with trapping. I mean when I was, uh,
Speaker 4: when I was with him in Oklahoma last year. You know,
Speaker 4: like how if it's October, you're gonna pull your phone
Speaker 4: out one hundred and twenty seven times a day to
Speaker 4: look at your your cell camera. You're like, see if
Speaker 4: you got any pictures showing up. Steve's got, dude, Steve's
Speaker 4: got cameras on like pond banks to like get fur
Speaker 4: bearers going by, and he'll be oh, look at the
Speaker 4: raccoons or look at the otters or whatever, like the
Speaker 4: same level of enthusiasm for something that's totally unrelatable to me.
Speaker 4: But it's like it's just a different thing for him,
Speaker 4: Like he would never do that with white tails, but
Speaker 4: he's like geeked out of his mind about his trap line.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Man, he's got a different, different set of tastes
Speaker 2: and it's worked out for him, no doubt about that.
Speaker 3: He's doing all right. I guess he is. Seems to
Speaker 3: be not struggling too much.
Speaker 2: Do you do you have a final book doing?
Speaker 4: Yeah, dude, I threw one on here just because do
Speaker 4: you know who Jim Corbett is?
Speaker 3: You ever? You know that name?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah? Right? What tigers?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Tigers and leopards. So he's got the man eaters of
Speaker 4: like kums or something. No, that's a different one. Uh,
Speaker 4: the man eating lions Ofsavo or whatever that one is. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Ghosts in the Darkness based off of that. But he
Speaker 4: has one about a man eating leopard that he was
Speaker 4: tasked to go hunt called the man eating Leopard of Rudraprayag,
Speaker 4: which is a region of India, I guess. And you
Speaker 4: want to talk about like badass people, right, this is
Speaker 4: this is a long time ago, right, Like they're walking
Speaker 4: between villages in India, chasing down stories of a leopard
Speaker 4: that got so good at at killing people that it
Speaker 4: could like tip toe through a hut where a whole
Speaker 4: family be sleeping, grab one person in the corner, take
Speaker 4: him out, and nobody would wake up.
Speaker 3: And I don't remember the number.
Speaker 4: I think it was like one hundred and sixty people
Speaker 4: or one hundred and sixty eight people. So this this
Speaker 4: leopard went went deep and his job was like you
Speaker 4: got to go find this thing and kill it. And
Speaker 4: it wasn't like he could get a text and they're like, hey,
Speaker 4: grabbed a villager over here. It was like they would
Speaker 4: be like, oh, it's a three day hike to go
Speaker 4: to this village where we heard rumors that somebody saw
Speaker 4: a leopard. And it's like a very kind of like
Speaker 4: point A to B recount of hit, like like almost
Speaker 4: like a hunting journal of just what he did.
Speaker 3: And it's like it left him.
Speaker 4: I read that I might have been in like middle
Speaker 4: school or high school, and it left a mark on me,
Speaker 4: just as like how quickly things change, Like how different
Speaker 4: the world is now than it was one hundred years ago.
Speaker 4: And just like to them, that was just like, okay, well,
Speaker 4: the government needs me to go take care of this
Speaker 4: problem that's eating a bunch of people.
Speaker 3: And here's how I'm gonna go about do it. And
Speaker 3: you look at it and it's like such.
Speaker 4: A badass dude, and that some of his tiger stuff.
Speaker 4: I mean, they would literally go out for a man
Speaker 4: eating tiger. This is this is a smart apex predator
Speaker 4: that has figured out how to eat people real effectively.
Speaker 4: And they go stake out a little goat and then
Speaker 4: build a tree stand out of sticks up in a
Speaker 4: tree and sit there all night in the dark with
Speaker 4: an open sighted rifle, hoping a tiger came into the little,
Speaker 4: poor little goat down there. That's like, oh shit, this sucks,
Speaker 4: Like this is not where I wanted to be in life,
Speaker 4: over and over and over again. While you you know
Speaker 4: that that man eater knows you're hunting it, he knows you,
Speaker 4: he knows you're after him.
Speaker 2: And it's got a taste for man dude, So bad ass. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's some intense stuff. So there's a book, there's a
Speaker 2: couple books related to that that I got to throw
Speaker 2: out there. One is called No Beast So Fierce, and
Speaker 2: that's a recent book came out in twenty twenty. The
Speaker 2: subtitle is the Terrifying True Story of the Champawatt Tiger,
Speaker 2: the deadliest animal in history. And so this tiger killed
Speaker 2: four eight, four hundred and thirty six people and it's
Speaker 2: the story of of of Jim Corbett going and hunting
Speaker 2: this tiger and the whole thing. But it's kind of
Speaker 2: a more modern take on it, which was very well
Speaker 2: done and super interesting. And then another one called The Tiger, right,
Speaker 2: the Tiger, Yeah, The Tiger by John Valiant.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Yeah, that's yep.
Speaker 2: And that one's about a Siberian tiger out in Russia
Speaker 2: and uh just I mean it talks all about kind
Speaker 2: of the natural history of the Siberian tiger and then
Speaker 2: how this thing happened and the the hunt for it
Speaker 2: and all sorts of stuff. Just that one was terrific too.
Speaker 3: So that.
Speaker 4: The way that that ended, the way they finally get
Speaker 4: that tiger is wild.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Definitely recommend those books. Okay, one last one. I won't
Speaker 2: take too long talking about this because I've recommended it
Speaker 2: a thousand times, but you know, if we're talking books
Speaker 2: that hunters and anglers should read. Just as a reminder
Speaker 2: once again, everybody should read a Sand County Almanac by
Speaker 2: Aldo Leopold. This is a great set of stories set
Speaker 2: in the natural world from one of our best observers
Speaker 2: of wildlife in the natural world, and it ends with
Speaker 2: a terrific kind of meditation on conservation, wilderness, hunting, developing
Speaker 2: a responsibility for taking care of these things and being
Speaker 2: a part of this community. Not looking at wildlife and
Speaker 2: wild places is like this other thing that we can
Speaker 2: just use and take from all the time, instead beginning
Speaker 2: to look at it as something that we are a
Speaker 2: part of, that we share with and that we need
Speaker 2: to steward if we want to be able to keep
Speaker 2: doing these things we love. So that should be on
Speaker 2: everybody's bookshelf.
Speaker 3: Isn't it amazing how good that book holds up?
Speaker 2: Man, It's been around a long time and people still
Speaker 2: keep coming back to it. It's a man one of
Speaker 2: the best for sure. So those are our ended up
Speaker 2: being I think twelve, but our top ten or twelve
Speaker 2: books that every hunter or angler should read. And man,
Speaker 2: I love talking about books. I don't know if anybody
Speaker 2: else does. But I really like it.
Speaker 3: There might be eight or ten people who listen to
Speaker 3: this all the way through.
Speaker 2: You know, we're getting these We're getting these newsletters now
Speaker 2: from our podcast team breaking down metrics like how well
Speaker 2: our topics are doing and how well like our episodes
Speaker 2: are doing. And I think I'm purposefully going the opposite
Speaker 2: direction doing podcasts about books that no one's going to
Speaker 2: listen to.
Speaker 4: Dude, But yeah, we're we're gonna get We've been joking
Speaker 4: about this a lot, you know, kind of behind the scenes.
Speaker 4: We are gonna get a lot of pressure to put
Speaker 4: out fifty two rut Hunting episodes a year, and it's
Speaker 4: not gonna go well.
Speaker 2: No, man, We're gonna We're gonna continue to chase our
Speaker 2: curiosities and our passions and the things that light us
Speaker 2: on fire, truthfully, and I think in the end that
Speaker 2: will make for the best product for people listening, regardless
Speaker 2: of what the numbers tell us. Sometimes that's my belief, Tony.
Speaker 2: So we might get fired, we might get fired for it, But.
Speaker 4: Dude, I was when we got that email. I was like,
Speaker 4: are they really going to go through those Foundations episodes
Speaker 4: and try to categorize those.
Speaker 2: Like, well, This is the problem is that people are
Speaker 2: going to finally start listening to what you're putting out there, Tony.
Speaker 2: When they realize what you're putting out there into the world,
Speaker 2: you might be in real trouble.
Speaker 3: They're going to be.
Speaker 4: Like, we don't know what to tell you to do,
Speaker 4: because none of these make any sense to anyone.
Speaker 2: We've been we've been paying this guy to do what.
Speaker 2: And on that note, out you should go fishing and
Speaker 2: I should get working on the next thing. All right,
Speaker 2: So thank you, Tony, good luck down in Florida, have
Speaker 2: a blast, and to everyone listening. I will get a
Speaker 2: list of these books in the description for this podcast
Speaker 2: so that you can find it if for some reason
Speaker 2: you forgot one of them, and I will post about
Speaker 2: this on social media too, and i'd encourage you to
Speaker 2: pick up one or two or three of these, give
Speaker 2: them a read, do some thinking, going on an adventure
Speaker 2: through the page. Man. I know it's easy to pull
Speaker 2: up YouTube these days, or watch something on TV, or
Speaker 2: flip through TikTok or Instagram or whatever. But engaging with
Speaker 2: a written work, something deeper, something more substantial, It's got
Speaker 2: a special power to it. There's something different about it.
Speaker 2: If you historically have not been a reader, I would
Speaker 2: I would ask you to give it a chance, because
Speaker 2: books do something to you and provide an experience that
Speaker 2: no other form of media does, and man, I think
Speaker 2: it's powerful. So thank you for listening, thanks for being here,
Speaker 2: and stay wired to hunt M M M