Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening un podcast.
Speaker 1: You can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear
Speaker 1: for every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer, Phil,
Speaker 1: start the machinery started, machine is starting. Now, Explain this again.
Speaker 1: Explain the sentence he used when you were turkey hunting,
Speaker 1: he said, He said, this is Michael Pecan farmer. I
Speaker 1: made the comment to a great friend of mine out
Speaker 1: actually from Wisconsin, who's in Montana. He's an outfit or now.
Speaker 1: And he says, and I make a comment to one
Speaker 1: of our producers. I say, hey, Bud, you need let's roll.
Speaker 1: I said, this ain't Tiley Winks. We gotta get out
Speaker 1: there in the snow and get a turkey in the
Speaker 1: outfitter jumps up a big brawny guy. Now this guy
Speaker 1: is probably two sixty, big, big brawny shoulder guy, looks
Speaker 1: like he should have played NFL. And he said, don't
Speaker 1: make fun of Tiddley Winks. And I'm like, man, what
Speaker 1: are you talking about? I said, I was He said,
Speaker 1: I'm a world champion, right, you're like the child's game
Speaker 1: Tiddley winks. I didn't even know there was a game
Speaker 1: tiddler and a winker. A tiddler and a winker. I
Speaker 1: don't know in today's society if you can say somebody's
Speaker 1: a tidleer no more. But what is the game? It's
Speaker 1: like it was he brings out his wife, go to
Speaker 1: the closet, Gertrude, and get the He brings out and
Speaker 1: it looks like a like a board and it's got
Speaker 1: these little plastic things and he's think, think with his hand,
Speaker 1: and he takes another piece of plastic sitting there and
Speaker 1: he's winking it or tiddley in it too. And they
Speaker 1: beat some French guys at it. Yeah, he said he's
Speaker 1: world chiff. And he said, yeah, we have these French
Speaker 1: guys come in and we just throttled him, roasted him.
Speaker 1: Go back to France. It's free fries. I'm going now,
Speaker 1: I'm glad here that the Americans best at the French
Speaker 1: at that. Yeah. I didn't know we had world champions
Speaker 1: in Montana. I gotta confess something to you. We used
Speaker 1: the same I stole it from a movie. I think
Speaker 1: this is gonna this is gonna be horrible to you
Speaker 1: because we'll say, are we here to turkey hunt? Or
Speaker 1: whistle Dixie Whistle? That's right? But I know what the
Speaker 1: hell where that comes from? The movie. There's a movie
Speaker 1: there's like a Western or something. We're Josie Wales. What's
Speaker 1: the context? It's like, are you here to throw down?
Speaker 1: Like do you want to get serious? Because he was
Speaker 1: he was from the Confederacy. Yes, yeah, Joe who says
Speaker 1: it's who Josie is in a there's a potential confrontation happening, right,
Speaker 1: and he's staring these guys down who are obviously starting
Speaker 1: to kind of second guests there, and he said, they're like,
Speaker 1: do I actually want to die at the hands of
Speaker 1: Clint Eastwood right now? Exact definition is if you engage
Speaker 1: in unrealistic or hopeful fantasizing. An example would be if
Speaker 1: you think you can drive there in two hours, then
Speaker 1: you're whistling Dixie m m, like they'd never best the North. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe right. But in in that movie especially, he
Speaker 1: was going on to something. Steve It says this idiom
Speaker 1: alludes to the song Dixie and the vain hope that
Speaker 1: the Confederacy known as Dixie would win the Civil War.
Speaker 1: Josie Wales was the Confederate soldier. Yeah, just an outlaw
Speaker 1: turned out law. But he's saying, right, he's saying, you
Speaker 1: want to get serious, or you want to whistle Dixie,
Speaker 1: which then becomes a double entendre, right, because you're gonna say, like,
Speaker 1: pledge allegiance to my side by whistling Dixie. Or because
Speaker 1: he was after the who were the bad of the
Speaker 1: red red legs red legs, the red legs with the bag.
Speaker 1: But you know why that that Uh, that movie had
Speaker 1: a number of great lines, but the most famous line
Speaker 1: of all that overshadows all other lines in that movie
Speaker 1: is when he uh has a big chaw backy that's
Speaker 1: just seth that means a large amount of chewing to
Speaker 1: back on his mouth. I know I used to do that. Um.
Speaker 1: He spits it on a man who he's just killed. Yep,
Speaker 1: and and in his compatriots says to him, aren't we
Speaker 1: gonna bury them, to which he replies, cal like the crows,
Speaker 1: and the cost to eat too. Buzzard's gotta eat the
Speaker 1: same as worms there. That's right, It's funny. I just
Speaker 1: watched this movie the other day too, for the first time. No,
Speaker 1: I've seen it a lot, but it was actually my son.
Speaker 1: He was home from college and I was talking to him.
Speaker 1: He's twenty one. I said, have you ever seen Outlaw
Speaker 1: Jose Wales? He said no, So me and my other son,
Speaker 1: two of my sons said and watched it, and I
Speaker 1: mean it was like blown away, what a hell of
Speaker 1: a movie. My kid would really liked it. My levon
Speaker 1: held he'd be ready for all he would like and
Speaker 1: he could watch it. I mean, it's it's it's not
Speaker 1: it's not g rated, but it dang choke is good
Speaker 1: from the standpoint of what all he went through. And
Speaker 1: it's pretty deep movie. Like I said, it's it's deeper
Speaker 1: than just um. I tuned my boy and zero Dark
Speaker 1: thirty and forgot that it begins at the very prolonged
Speaker 1: water boarding session. He uh, like, what are you looking
Speaker 1: at that? He didn't finish her. We're gonna reapproach in
Speaker 1: a decade, so I'm not along in like quote movie
Speaker 1: lines and just assume everybody around you're supposed to understand.
Speaker 1: Like I told my wife the other day, we was
Speaker 1: sitting there eating supper, and my kid it said, he
Speaker 1: plays guitar, and he's like, I want to. I want
Speaker 1: to let's go jam dad. And I said, hey, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm calling the boys, and Christie, my wife,
Speaker 1: like no, it's it's already eight o'clock. And I said,
Speaker 1: all you gotta do is put some damn chips in
Speaker 1: a bowl. Remember sling blade? Oh say you know what,
Speaker 1: that's it. I'm calling the boys, so you know we're
Speaker 1: gonna make some music. And in my life bit perfect
Speaker 1: notes that all you gotta do is st some chips
Speaker 1: in the bowl. Okay, we got delayed introductions for joannest
Speaker 1: Patella Senior Michael wall The I understand now Pecan farmer,
Speaker 1: Pecan farmer outdoor. Once upon a time, you still working
Speaker 1: to hunting space. Now I just I got overalls typically
Speaker 1: on setting the cafe, drink coffee and talk about my crop. So, uh,
Speaker 1: CAL was asking you, you guys, I grew up Pecan.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, right, you guys great peakan, No,
Speaker 1: I actually be honest with you. I'm from Georgia and
Speaker 1: I realized once I got into the farming that most
Speaker 1: of the farmers who make a lot of money. I
Speaker 1: asked them, I said, what do you call him? Is
Speaker 1: it a Pecan or a Peacan? And I had two
Speaker 1: of the biggest Peacan farmers in Georgia said, it's it's
Speaker 1: peak and boy. And I said, well, how much did
Speaker 1: you do last year? One guy named Joey Collins is
Speaker 1: a good friend of mine, has been my mentor. He said, well,
Speaker 1: we we did about I don't know, three or four
Speaker 1: million pounds last year of peak Hans. And I said,
Speaker 1: so that's two dollars a pound. I'm trying to do
Speaker 1: the math. So I'm thinking, Okay, he's a wealthy guy.
Speaker 1: I said, I don't think I got peak, Hans. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if I got I got peaks, just
Speaker 1: like yall. And so he happens to be the guy
Speaker 1: who buys my peakns. So it's I always up in
Speaker 1: the air. So I'm following the money man, I'm going
Speaker 1: like I on like Little Wayne and jay Z. I'm sure,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm calling up what they would call it,
Speaker 1: and I think they would call it peaky. And under
Speaker 1: the situations, so you had, uh, did you buy an
Speaker 1: existing orchard? Did you trying to start one? No? I did,
Speaker 1: I bought it existing orchard. So So my wife and
Speaker 1: I had a farm out in Kansas that I had
Speaker 1: bought just for an investment in the hunt and loved
Speaker 1: that state, loved the resources there, and so I ended
Speaker 1: up selling it, and so I kind of want to
Speaker 1: place around my house in Georgia. Of course, land is
Speaker 1: a lot more expensive there than it even is out
Speaker 1: in Kansas, and so there was a track of land
Speaker 1: I was looking at at the time. It was about
Speaker 1: two hundred acres and um anyway, and I got to
Speaker 1: looking at some man, this is an old Peakan orchard,
Speaker 1: and I knew nothing about it other than the fact
Speaker 1: I love Peak camp Pie, you know. So I got
Speaker 1: to cleaning it up, and my wife was dead against
Speaker 1: it because it looked terrible. It was growing up and
Speaker 1: it just decrepit old grown up or not being harvested.
Speaker 1: Not being harvested. They've been planted back in our area.
Speaker 1: There's a family called the Callaways that were very much
Speaker 1: like the Vanderbilts or the Rockefeller is, very successful back
Speaker 1: back into the Great Depression, even going back to the the
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, and they had at one time around thirty acres,
Speaker 1: so they had planted these trees back into forties. So
Speaker 1: they're very, very old. And so we cleaned orchard up
Speaker 1: and we just wanted to homestead there and build a house,
Speaker 1: and that's where we wanted to live. And so in
Speaker 1: the process of cleaning it up, and me and my
Speaker 1: dad just bush shogging and working and getting a skid
Speaker 1: steer with a mulching head and just cleaning up, making
Speaker 1: it look nice. It you could tell at that point
Speaker 1: we had, you know, a lot of healthy peak han trees.
Speaker 1: And so then I started calling around and like you
Speaker 1: and all of us here, we meet so many people
Speaker 1: across the country and down south, and Georgia's wanted. Georgia
Speaker 1: might be somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but
Speaker 1: I know it's one of the top producers of peak Hans.
Speaker 1: I know Texas, this big Oklahoma, but Georgia might be
Speaker 1: the number one. And so obviously there's a lot of
Speaker 1: knowledge just south to me. So he ended up with
Speaker 1: all people Luke Bryan, who's a you know, a huge star.
Speaker 1: Now his dad is one of the leading kind of
Speaker 1: guys in chemical and fertilizer, and he's got he's you know,
Speaker 1: down south, We've still got a lot of cotton, a
Speaker 1: lot of peanuts, and things like that, even some tobacco
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. So anyway, I talked to him
Speaker 1: and he got me on the right track. And then
Speaker 1: I had another buddy, turkey hunter with a lot down
Speaker 1: to South Georgia, who was a big farmer, and so
Speaker 1: got alright track and we started making you know, across However,
Speaker 1: I could have bought another bigger farm in Kentucky for
Speaker 1: what I put in equipment, and so I'm still trying
Speaker 1: to see a profit. But anyway, at least I can truly,
Speaker 1: you don't have a gate garden. You know, the fewer
Speaker 1: nuts you produce, the fancier your packaging has to be.
Speaker 1: I think you're right, you're gonna artisan. Yeah, gonna have
Speaker 1: a story. I know there's only six nuts in this exactly.
Speaker 1: I gotta look at my hat though. It's so cool,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I'm learning, and it's so frustrating. Man.
Speaker 1: I learned a lot, you know. And obviously, growing up
Speaker 1: you're hunting and fishing. I'd always big in food plots
Speaker 1: and planning and trying to put back, you know, to
Speaker 1: the resources that we like to hunt. But I just
Speaker 1: realized as a whole another game when you're trying to
Speaker 1: produce a crop, especially for the community. And I found
Speaker 1: out too that most of our crop, the peak ends,
Speaker 1: goes to Asia. I guess they go everywhere, and so
Speaker 1: it was it was a learning curve. Say the least,
Speaker 1: you know, the squirrels like that. Lord, let me just
Speaker 1: taste squirrels. Y'all come to my house. I got. I
Speaker 1: was just telling Core and I just got my little
Speaker 1: boy a little squirrel dog and went out to Missouri
Speaker 1: and bought him a little squirrel dog and U and dude,
Speaker 1: I've had more fun with that dog, especially around the
Speaker 1: edges that a orchard, because it's just a plethora. It's
Speaker 1: like a state park. You know, they're out there trying
Speaker 1: to get these peakns. So it's so you're in that
Speaker 1: stage of life where you can pretty much do whatever
Speaker 1: you want as long as you say it's for the boys,
Speaker 1: like got watch out, je Wales got it stage trying
Speaker 1: to work. Some things are more important. And it's funny.
Speaker 1: I've met a lot of people over the years. That's
Speaker 1: a funny subject because you know the span of my career.
Speaker 1: You know, he made a lot of people. But I
Speaker 1: remember different shows like he and I met years ago,
Speaker 1: started out words what you showed, uh and him. I
Speaker 1: showed Michael a picture of it. Was me, Michael Nick
Speaker 1: Monton t Bone at the Harrisburg Great American Outdoor Show,
Speaker 1: and I think I was like sixteen or seventeen years old.
Speaker 1: You could have made him feel really awkward by acting
Speaker 1: disappointed that he didn't remember. Well. I think that's why
Speaker 1: he didn't bring in the framed copy on his phone. Yeah, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you don't recognize me. I looked a lot of different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I remember going to the show and you have
Speaker 1: somebody come by, Stephen. I'm sure he's seen this happen.
Speaker 1: Like a young couple and they have a kid and
Speaker 1: maybe a two year old son, and they'll have a
Speaker 1: brand new white bow are a set of clothing that
Speaker 1: is just insane. I'm like, man, you're gonna really enjoy that.
Speaker 1: You're gonna love that new bow that's a new r
Speaker 1: X five. What are you gonna love it? Now? I
Speaker 1: think for me? Love his kid. He changed my life.
Speaker 1: He can't even eat milk duds alone. So yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna get it broken up. Best payback for our
Speaker 1: for our ladies always finding things on sale that really
Speaker 1: wasn't on sale. You know, so uh oh, speaking to kids,
Speaker 1: that's a good transition. Um, Doug Dern heard my spirited
Speaker 1: um gripe with skiing, which I have to point out,
Speaker 1: I'm only mad about skinks. My wife enrolled my kids
Speaker 1: in nine consecutive saturdays of ski club, which means there's
Speaker 1: nine saturdays that you can't ice fish. Every Saturday when
Speaker 1: I want to ice fish, she goes, well, already paid,
Speaker 1: and I was griping that I didn't have anyone to
Speaker 1: pay to go ice fishing, so I can't use like
Speaker 1: a similar there's no one to pay. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna find a way next year to pay for
Speaker 1: like thirty days of ice fishing and already paid. Sorry,
Speaker 1: you can pay me, You're gonna have to go. And
Speaker 1: that's that's somehow spiraled into you getting mad at the
Speaker 1: phenomenon that I got of gravity. Is that I got
Speaker 1: mad about gravity and skiing. Now, Doug Durham heard this
Speaker 1: and sent my wife um a big text, like this
Speaker 1: heartfelt text message about he never ski then he moved
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire and learned to ski, and how great
Speaker 1: it is that she this and that and she shows
Speaker 1: me the text. But her reply is Uh, Steve can
Speaker 1: suck it. I'm tweeting right now, skiing took Sonny Sonny
Speaker 1: bono as well as ice fishing. Uh. Oh, here's another
Speaker 1: ice fishing thing. Phil. Okay, you're you're ready to play
Speaker 1: this clip? Philm I just learned today. Now, my agent,
Speaker 1: who has ice fished one time in his life unsuccessfully,
Speaker 1: I'll point out that I was his guide. Uh sent
Speaker 1: me this ice fish and article. And I learned that
Speaker 1: everybody already knows about the ice fishing article. But I'm
Speaker 1: trusting to someone out there doesn't know about it that
Speaker 1: you're looking at him right here after? Oh, would you
Speaker 1: agree with this statement? Okay, would you agree? I have
Speaker 1: a friend from central southern Illinois who likes to think
Speaker 1: he's from the South. I was saying him, saying to him,
Speaker 1: if you live in a state where ice fishing occurs,
Speaker 1: you are not in the South. Is that fair? That's true?
Speaker 1: And and that's why. And that's where Abraham Lincoln was born.
Speaker 1: He can't claim to be a repertort. I told him,
Speaker 1: I said, Land of Lincoln and they ice fish there.
Speaker 1: There's like two things, dude, It's funny. I have a friend,
Speaker 1: Mike Scoby who lives here in Bozeman. He sends me
Speaker 1: videos of his kids ice skating, and my kids are
Speaker 1: more intrigued to look at those videos, and they would
Speaker 1: be of something to Walt Disney. It's like a unicorn's
Speaker 1: gonna come running across here. And you're right, it's because
Speaker 1: in my life, I'm forty eight now, I've never in
Speaker 1: my life seen a frozen lake or even a pond
Speaker 1: in Georgia. Not once, I'm talking about not even. I
Speaker 1: mean you might see some ice on the edge. Did
Speaker 1: to get twenty Did you guys get listening right now?
Speaker 1: A little bit of snow though, Yeah, we'll get a
Speaker 1: little bit of snow. And let me just tell y'all
Speaker 1: and when y'all see the forecast, go ahead, y'all welcome
Speaker 1: to come stay at my house because it's the most
Speaker 1: entertaining thing you've ever seen. Every redneck. We got car
Speaker 1: hoods and makeshift sleds because you can't go to the
Speaker 1: local sporting that's going by Toboggan, right, and dude, no milk,
Speaker 1: no bread, no gasoline. Everybody's barbecue and it is a party.
Speaker 1: You think Elvis has come back from the grave. It's
Speaker 1: that fun and I'm not lying. Uh so this town
Speaker 1: feel is gonna play this clip. This town in Ohio,
Speaker 1: uh has the thing where they're trying to get ice
Speaker 1: fishing to be allowed at a local park, and they
Speaker 1: have a mayor who has a very spirited argument about why,
Speaker 1: why the slippery slope that would occur? Should you be
Speaker 1: able to start ice fishing at the well? This this
Speaker 1: pond you you like in the years past, you can
Speaker 1: ice fish it? And then all of a sudden they
Speaker 1: just threw a sign not that says you can't. They'd
Speaker 1: be like when the pandemic started in Washington State, said
Speaker 1: you can't fish. Yeah, I mean you can golf, just
Speaker 1: can't fish. I think instead of spirited, I think it
Speaker 1: puts in a better perspective to say logical, yeah, explanation
Speaker 1: of why you can't ice fish, and it lets people
Speaker 1: understand that there's a lot of different forms of logic
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, alright, litterally, Phil, I want to hear
Speaker 1: it too, just because I can have another chuckle. Additionally,
Speaker 1: if you open this up to ice fishing, while on
Speaker 1: the surface it sounds good, then what happens next year?
Speaker 1: Did someone come back and say I want an ice
Speaker 1: shanty on Springs Park for X amount of time. And
Speaker 1: if you then allow ice fishing with shanties, then that
Speaker 1: leads to another problem prostitution. Hey, I was not ready
Speaker 1: for the rest the data points to consider like a
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live serious, but this guy secret was pointing out.
Speaker 1: This guy's got like he's like one of those dudes
Speaker 1: that sort of rails against something. But he's got like,
Speaker 1: actually is the one that has the problem because he
Speaker 1: had this other He got all kinds of other trouble
Speaker 1: because he's railing about these like pornographic books being taught
Speaker 1: to kids, but then it turns out they're not being
Speaker 1: taught to kids in his school. He just like his
Speaker 1: head just immediately goes. This dude looks at porn every night.
Speaker 1: He's got an addiction. They just don't want to say
Speaker 1: this dude's head immediately goes like where it goes. But
Speaker 1: to his defense, I should have. If I was in
Speaker 1: the city council or whatever, I would raise my hands
Speaker 1: said that's stupid. But when I was in high school,
Speaker 1: kids that didn't have like the like if you had
Speaker 1: kids that you could go down in your basement with
Speaker 1: your girlfriend. No one's gonna come down there, because your
Speaker 1: parents are gonna be like, oh, I totally respect to space.
Speaker 1: And then you had parents that are gonna come down
Speaker 1: to every three seconds. Maybe want some popcorn? Right? The
Speaker 1: kids that could not have privacy, them and their girlfriends
Speaker 1: took up ice fishing. Mm hmm. Yeah, you like, drag
Speaker 1: a big shanty out on the ice, be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Susie're going ice fishing. No
Speaker 1: one ever questions it. I'm not saying, just saying it
Speaker 1: was a thing that happened. You took up ice fishing.
Speaker 1: Ice fishing again, huh? And from there a prostitution ring starts.
Speaker 1: That's why I said my hands. I would have raised
Speaker 1: my hand and said that is stupid. However, it does
Speaker 1: make me think of There was an article on the
Speaker 1: It was supposed to be on the psychology of trophy hunting, right,
Speaker 1: and you start reading this article and immediately you're like, well,
Speaker 1: this is just an anti hunting article in general, masquerading
Speaker 1: is something. But you know you're almost done at that point,
Speaker 1: and the second to last paragraph it says, now, it's
Speaker 1: important to note that none of the data the testing
Speaker 1: involved in this article was performed on actual trophy hunters,
Speaker 1: so it is not relevant. However, if you have the
Speaker 1: opinion that, uh, you do not like trophy hunting, it
Speaker 1: can be relevant. That is confusing, just like, oh okay,
Speaker 1: it's like I lay all this out for you, because
Speaker 1: if you want it to be supportive, even though it
Speaker 1: is factless and baseless, you can use this to support
Speaker 1: your argument. Like if I came to you and I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm doing some research on prostitution. If you
Speaker 1: were a prostitution, did you exactly, I'd be like, well,
Speaker 1: did I publish my results? That's interesting, But I do
Speaker 1: have a uh this now many many published video of
Speaker 1: this city councilman or mayor. Uh, and uh that's the
Speaker 1: fact that I'm gonna use this guy's a mayor. It
Speaker 1: is odd though. I did go to International Falls one
Speaker 1: time to fish, and I met Bill Cosby Harvey Weinstein
Speaker 1: there and it makes me wonder, what's going one? What
Speaker 1: are you guys doing? Yeah, that's first time I ever
Speaker 1: saw that Charlie stand Us sign one of those those
Speaker 1: those ice chanties holding that fastball. Remember that baseball? Like, Charlie,
Speaker 1: what you ice fishing? So you didn't hear the mayor?
Speaker 1: I got it um uh your what's your walt in
Speaker 1: Montana Canvas Dude, I went down to have a I
Speaker 1: don't want to see what I did because I had
Speaker 1: all They they're not looking for custom projects. I was
Speaker 1: pointing this out. I had a cost project done at
Speaker 1: Montana campus. And those are the nicest dudes on the planet.
Speaker 1: Very helpful, the nicest dudes on the planet. If you're
Speaker 1: in the market, they make wall tents of many varieties.
Speaker 1: If you're in the market for a wall tent, I
Speaker 1: would go down there. You go into that place I
Speaker 1: didn't know you drive buy it. All tanks is on
Speaker 1: the highway. Man. They got a million people in there
Speaker 1: stitching away making them right there. When I went there
Speaker 1: to pick up that wall tent, there was like five
Speaker 1: dudes that came out and we're like, let me help
Speaker 1: you load this. The nicest guys on the planet making
Speaker 1: making beautiful wall tents. I like them so damn much.
Speaker 1: I want to buy one of the wall tents. Still,
Speaker 1: I gotta keeping the catalog on the bench. I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of days in mind every year. No one
Speaker 1: needs a comment on this, But one day I got
Speaker 1: real mad at the uh you know those SpaceX, those
Speaker 1: Starlink satellites, because they kind of messed up the whole
Speaker 1: night sky for a long time. Like you'd be sitting
Speaker 1: there a turkey hunting trying to watch the stars. Do
Speaker 1: you see these damn things. That's the first time I
Speaker 1: saw him. I was sitting around the campfire turkey camp
Speaker 1: out in eastern Montana, and I thought the world was ending.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm up and so that you know
Speaker 1: what I'm glad about. Um, A solar storm killed forty
Speaker 1: out of forty nine of them, hundred million dollars of damage.
Speaker 1: Now they're gonna like fall back to and burn up
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere. Is now they're gonna this time when
Speaker 1: they're messing up the night sky like nah, it'll be
Speaker 1: like a meteor shower. A million bucks were satellites burning
Speaker 1: up in the as they re enter orbit, full of
Speaker 1: rare earth minerals. Who have you seen that? Don't look
Speaker 1: up yet. It's pretty good. I saw those, but I
Speaker 1: was drinking bourbon that night, and I wasn't sure all
Speaker 1: the stars were moving exactly. This is gonna be something
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to come back to you later because
Speaker 1: Krin's not sure if it happened or not yet, but uh,
Speaker 1: you know he's had Hampton sides on and he's working
Speaker 1: on a book about Captain Cook. Yes, they might have
Speaker 1: found a ship. I didn't know it was missing, but
Speaker 1: they might have found a ship. Did you know what's
Speaker 1: missing Captain Cook? Ship? Is that the No? He was like, no, no,
Speaker 1: you're thinking Captain Hook. No, I'm I'm thinking of the
Speaker 1: one where they were the pirate shirt they're protecting this ship.
Speaker 1: What was that one that was and the kids got
Speaker 1: the pixie dust and flies around? But I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I met that guy. Yeah, Doctor Hook, Captain cap'n Cook
Speaker 1: was I don't know what happened to him, Like this
Speaker 1: thing is. I just know that he gets killed in Hawaii,
Speaker 1: stabbed in the surf. But I never thought about what
Speaker 1: happened to his ship after that. But apparently it goes missing.
Speaker 1: So this is way way back. I mean, this is like,
Speaker 1: what the hell you're Captain Cuttin Hook? What you're to
Speaker 1: Captain Cook get killed? We got a clear a Doctor
Speaker 1: Hook had great band. Captain Hook fictional captain. I did
Speaker 1: meet him in Disney World. He's never got older, he's
Speaker 1: doing good. We're talking about Captain Cook who uh was?
Speaker 1: I guess like the the like a national hero right
Speaker 1: for England and discovered all these new lands, including the
Speaker 1: Sandwich Island Islands, which is the island chain of Hawaii.
Speaker 1: Um I always screw that up. I keep learning that
Speaker 1: and forgetting it. Yeah, Like when you see a reference
Speaker 1: to the Sandwich Islands in the history, that's what they're
Speaker 1: talking about. But Captain Cooks journey ended there in Hawaii
Speaker 1: and then his ship and crew continued on. I didn't
Speaker 1: under was it scuttled? Did they lose it in a
Speaker 1: in a storm? I didn't understand that it was lost.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe it was purposely sunk out there. From
Speaker 1: an article in The Guardian, it says it was scuttled
Speaker 1: in Newport Harbor by British forces in seventeen seven and
Speaker 1: eight during the American War of Independence. That's right, block
Speaker 1: the herb. Well, but why are the Australians mad? Then
Speaker 1: they're just mad to still wearing mask I think this okay,
Speaker 1: Like you know, it's like a joint group working on
Speaker 1: recovering bits and pieces and saying for sure this is
Speaker 1: the endeavor even though there's a bunch of ships scoutled
Speaker 1: out there um. The reason that the Australian National Maritime
Speaker 1: Museum is in a beef over this thing is because
Speaker 1: even though they're a joint group, they came out and
Speaker 1: they said this is for sure the endeavor. Even though
Speaker 1: the joint group is pretty sure, but others in the
Speaker 1: group are saying, we still got a little discovery. The
Speaker 1: ozis jumped the gun on the whole thing. Ye can
Speaker 1: you tell I didn't read the article. It's not obvious
Speaker 1: and I correct my So the Aussee people are not aggravated.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's their government is still frustrated about something.
Speaker 1: Many Uh oh, this is good, this is this is
Speaker 1: a joke, right, Yeah, we're talking about how to score
Speaker 1: a squirrel. Boone and Crockett get a Boone and Crockett
Speaker 1: score off a squirrel. And the guy rode in a
Speaker 1: little diagram showing how to score it. He says he
Speaker 1: found it years ago. So it's length of a buck
Speaker 1: squirrel forehead to tip of tail, length of head behind
Speaker 1: the ears to the tip of the nose, testicular circumference.
Speaker 1: Come on, now, A plus B plus C equals your
Speaker 1: squirrel's nut and chatter score. Now here's my issue with
Speaker 1: that as we discussed my carp can came from Michael.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard that, uh, some squirrels will bite
Speaker 1: the nuts off of other squirrels here? Oh yeah, I've
Speaker 1: heard that cast right, you had a dominance or heard that?
Speaker 1: With this scoring? Is that it measures? He went and
Speaker 1: talked to a bunch of eggheads scientists who told that
Speaker 1: the squirrels don't do that. I was gonna say, I
Speaker 1: can't say I remember ever dressing a squirrel. I'm like, yep.
Speaker 1: Squirrel doctor John Kopowski told us on this podcast they
Speaker 1: don't chew the nuts off of other squirrels, but their
Speaker 1: nuts are always ascending or descending up into their abdomen.
Speaker 1: So at any point during squirrel season, you got a
Speaker 1: percentage of squirrels run around out there who don't have
Speaker 1: visible not right now because it's a squirrel rut right now,
Speaker 1: well not right now, that's right, but like in fall,
Speaker 1: they have their nuts up in their abdomen for the
Speaker 1: most part. Yeah, but there's a big percentage of turkeys
Speaker 1: that don't have spurs, and you like to uh score those.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. Yeah, but you wouldn't like kill
Speaker 1: a white tail in March and then be like, well,
Speaker 1: he's a zero because he doesn't have his handlers on
Speaker 1: a good point. And it wouldn't be fair to score
Speaker 1: Southern may and ice fishing for the first time. I'd
Speaker 1: be unfair. I like the rest of it, but don't
Speaker 1: agree with that measure. Oh here's our news item. I've
Speaker 1: heard about this before. There's a there's a plant that
Speaker 1: people plant in their yards. It's like a highly toxic
Speaker 1: to wildlife, and they just had five otherwise healthy elk
Speaker 1: died in the Wood River Valley, Cal's old stomping grounds
Speaker 1: north of Haley and Idaho, where First Light is headquarters.
Speaker 1: Someone points out eating ornamental landscaping the U plant toxic
Speaker 1: to both wildlife and pets. Blaine County issued an ordinance
Speaker 1: back in two thousand sixteen banning the planting of the
Speaker 1: U plant because of how deadly it is the elk.
Speaker 1: Fun fact for you, You plants are very common ornamental
Speaker 1: plants around cemeteries, which kind of ties into the Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you often see with brows lines, which is alarming.
Speaker 1: They put it around cemeteries because we're trying to so death.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I think it's just like a hardy thing
Speaker 1: that you know, doesn't need a whole lot of attention,
Speaker 1: but it is common around cemeteries. Has who's read about
Speaker 1: the moose that that beat the living hell out of
Speaker 1: the sled dog team? I saw that. I heard this
Speaker 1: is an idea rode musher uh spend an hour stopping
Speaker 1: the sled dog team. The musher empties her gun into
Speaker 1: the moose, still keep stomping. Mm hmm. I saw that
Speaker 1: actually on a on a news app, and I can't
Speaker 1: believe I didn't read it, but the headline kind of
Speaker 1: said enough. You know, he trampled the team and then
Speaker 1: turned for us and charged us humans who sought refuge
Speaker 1: behind our our machine. But unfortunately he turned around and
Speaker 1: went back to the team and for nearly an hour continued.
Speaker 1: So that's where all those twenty two bullets went when
Speaker 1: they couldn't find any That's what she had trying to find, wondering.
Speaker 1: Eventually the moose died. One of the dogs is still
Speaker 1: fighting for its life. Geez, you know your twenty two
Speaker 1: shall comment because you know how she closes it out.
Speaker 1: Might have been carry bigger gun. That's true. I've often
Speaker 1: thought I said that one time actually at the Nashville
Speaker 1: turch Federation. We were talking everybody. I had all my
Speaker 1: friends that would come like, hey, man, what are you.
Speaker 1: You've been able to get the AMMO? And I'm like,
Speaker 1: I mean I got some and everybody, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: this happened out here. People is like, man, I've been
Speaker 1: buying all the twenty twos I can And I'm like,
Speaker 1: you ever thought of a three all three or eight
Speaker 1: maybe thirty all six? I said, that's gonna be a
Speaker 1: tough ord to fight with just twenty two, you know,
Speaker 1: when that was going on. I mean it's still going on.
Speaker 1: But when like the with the first animal shortage, it's
Speaker 1: like I fell to the I became the same as
Speaker 1: everybody else, like your whole life. You're going to you
Speaker 1: like a box you'd buy like like like for Christmas,
Speaker 1: you might get one of those little mini milk, those
Speaker 1: little milk things, Like in your stocking. There'd be like
Speaker 1: two of those milk things. You're like, okay, there's like
Speaker 1: years twenty two shells and every order of those about
Speaker 1: thirty shells end up in your carpet. Actually, that Christmas
Speaker 1: day on three you started shooting that AMMO and enjoying it.
Speaker 1: Once we got onto those tube fed Marlin twenty two.
Speaker 1: We needed like more of those things. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: then like the AMMO shortage comes. Then one day I'm
Speaker 1: in Cabela's and they got a thing up that you're limited,
Speaker 1: like you're limited to two cases or two cars, whatever
Speaker 1: the hell it was long. That was the first time
Speaker 1: I ever bought a brick brick, first time I ever
Speaker 1: brought a brick in my life. Is the minute someone
Speaker 1: told me that's as much that, Like I could only
Speaker 1: buy that many, I'm like, why better buy two? I
Speaker 1: still I don't even know what I have to I
Speaker 1: feel compelled to buy like that volume of you. You're
Speaker 1: like maybe you know, you do a lot of promotions,
Speaker 1: so you know, from different stores Cabella's, bass Pros to
Speaker 1: independent dealers, and I catched myself. I I even saw
Speaker 1: a sporting the store downtown last night, and I was thinking,
Speaker 1: I promise you going and say if I got some
Speaker 1: twenty two hurt. I think it's hilarious, Like you bring
Speaker 1: up this idea like you used to be, like you
Speaker 1: got that, and then he immediately started shooting. It was
Speaker 1: an immediate need, immediate grati joined it. Don't want to
Speaker 1: shoot it. Yeah, it's like I have a serious hatred
Speaker 1: of ornamental towels. Yeah right, it's like, oh no, those
Speaker 1: are the looking at the towels for you, right, And
Speaker 1: it's the same thing. It's like going, don't go cracking
Speaker 1: in the twenty two shelves. I know what. I've got
Speaker 1: four boys, and so they're you know, living on the
Speaker 1: farm now, I mean they're just I love it because
Speaker 1: they just out and about and they're squirrel hunting every
Speaker 1: day or shooting at cans and stuff. And I caught myself,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, okay, hey, family meeting, all right,
Speaker 1: you little jerks. I counted I had seven thousand, four
Speaker 1: hundred three bullets and I'm down to seven thousand. Who shot?
Speaker 1: You know? I caught myself like what am I doing?
Speaker 1: What am I gonna do with all these twenty two shields?
Speaker 1: But we got them. So if a war can be
Speaker 1: one in America on twenty two shilds, nobody will mess
Speaker 1: with us. Nobody got to talk to the mushroom and
Speaker 1: get some feedback. Well this year, I mean, think of
Speaker 1: the different all the duck hunting and run around I did.
Speaker 1: I was exposed to more UH brands of shell manufacturers
Speaker 1: than I ever have been in my life. And that's
Speaker 1: where somebody who's been shooting a shotgun for a long
Speaker 1: long time. Because more and more manufacturers were like sourced
Speaker 1: and sought out and and and being successful, and well
Speaker 1: you mean like the big the retailers were trying to
Speaker 1: go anywhere they could go, anywhere they could go from
Speaker 1: Turkey and and France and Spain and so like you're
Speaker 1: buying like those what's that company foci? Yeah, Fioki. Here
Speaker 1: here's something interesting to on the subject that that shows
Speaker 1: that it is deep, Steve. Is the fact that I
Speaker 1: get a call from Blake Shelton was a last year
Speaker 1: and he says, hey, what hell don't you work with
Speaker 1: Houarnty and those guys? And I said, I do? I do?
Speaker 1: He said, man, I I'd like to get some mammo
Speaker 1: and um. And so getting back to the twenty twos,
Speaker 1: he said, and you know he and Gwyn now Stefani,
Speaker 1: who you wouldn't think of as a kind of a
Speaker 1: conservative and hunting and fishing and she's kind of she
Speaker 1: don't even eat meat, but yet she's super sweet, coolest
Speaker 1: girl you ever seen in very like loves to see
Speaker 1: Blake and he's hunting buddies and just treated us, my
Speaker 1: wife and all everybody around Blake's friendship great. But even
Speaker 1: she mentions, shouldn't we get some bigger AMMO than twenty twos?
Speaker 1: And so so I'm asking Blake and and it's funny
Speaker 1: to know that this twenty thing is really the first
Speaker 1: thing I tell Blake, I said, Blake, Yeah, and those
Speaker 1: guys would be glad to let you buy something, I
Speaker 1: would assume, I said, But they don't make twenty twos.
Speaker 1: He said, Man, I got a lot of twenty twos.
Speaker 1: I need some six and two forty three. And I just,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so funny, but it's so true. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the I mean, nobody had to market
Speaker 1: that round. It just hey, we should probably get some,
Speaker 1: you know. A matter of fact, I'm like to leave
Speaker 1: in a minute. IM gonna run that down there. Uh.
Speaker 1: I want you to tell a story, Michael that I'm
Speaker 1: sure you told a bunch of times, um, but I
Speaker 1: haven't heard it from you. But just like it's sort
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, it's part of the legend of
Speaker 1: Michael Waddell's you've gone on and have done. I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: is it fair to say, decades of outdoor media, I
Speaker 1: really have. You know, I started when I was eighteen,
Speaker 1: you know, working essentially at realtory through competition, turkey colling
Speaker 1: and guide and so's all I really know is this industry.
Speaker 1: You know, and talk tell about like how the like
Speaker 1: you kind of got like your sort of genesis was
Speaker 1: a turkey calling contest. Yeah, walk me through how that
Speaker 1: all went down. It was. It was crazy. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: being from the South and you know, very similar to
Speaker 1: the Northeast, you know, where you grew up in Michigan,
Speaker 1: while you got us here in Pennsylvania, everybody seemed to
Speaker 1: hunting fish. And it was just a natural thing. It
Speaker 1: wasn't something just did for a hobby. It's just like
Speaker 1: it was a lifestyle. You didn't it's all you knew.
Speaker 1: You just did it. I mean, you ate to meet
Speaker 1: you know, you had there was mounted deer heads and
Speaker 1: almost everybody's home there in our restaurants, and so it
Speaker 1: was never even a conversation of who didn't hunting fish.
Speaker 1: It's just everybody did. And so growing up, you know,
Speaker 1: I started just like everybody else. Squirrel rabbit, you know,
Speaker 1: didn't lead the deer. And then when I was around
Speaker 1: twelve or thirteen the the state introduced wild turkeys to
Speaker 1: our area in Georgia, and I guess we had been
Speaker 1: wiped out down there. They had pretty much been wiped
Speaker 1: out because there was a few counties that had a
Speaker 1: decent population. But I lived in in an area called Maryweth,
Speaker 1: a County, Georgia, and we didn't really have any turkeys
Speaker 1: and never had seen one of my life. Didn't realize
Speaker 1: that they had to do that. They actually had to
Speaker 1: augment the population down there. They did. They did a
Speaker 1: lot of Nationale turch Federation was very involved. Now there's
Speaker 1: an organization called Turkeys for Tomorrow that's doing it. But
Speaker 1: they're they're doing all these uh you know. The most
Speaker 1: successful way they found they would never turkeys in one
Speaker 1: area in Georgia, and in some cases they might bring
Speaker 1: them in from Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania restocked a lot of
Speaker 1: the Southern states, so it was a pretty cool story
Speaker 1: of what they did. But certain areas did have a
Speaker 1: decent amount of turkeys and so, but our area didn't.
Speaker 1: So when they introduced him. I remember my uncle Morgan
Speaker 1: come in one day and he's like, you ain't gonna
Speaker 1: believe what I saw down at the corner stand and
Speaker 1: I'm like, dude, I'm like, you know, I'm like twelve,
Speaker 1: you know, like you know everything, no wild turkey, and
Speaker 1: it was just like a unicorn or something. And so
Speaker 1: you know, it's like another spring goes by my dad
Speaker 1: A literally we we start turkey hunting. Well, I just
Speaker 1: fell in love with it. And the first time that
Speaker 1: my dad and I went together, um, we were successful
Speaker 1: and we got a turkey, and I just thought that
Speaker 1: it was the coolest thing ever to interact and and
Speaker 1: call and talk. And so quickly into that, I started
Speaker 1: really just getting into the turkey hunters and the turkey
Speaker 1: callers and and a lot of these grand national champions
Speaker 1: like the Walter Parrott from Missouri. UM. You had you know,
Speaker 1: callers like Terry Ram who were just world champions and
Speaker 1: and just some of the best Paul Butsky who's from
Speaker 1: New York, UM anyway, and I just immediately I remember
Speaker 1: going to the sports shows like anywhere, and I'd be
Speaker 1: like hoping I could run into one of those guys
Speaker 1: who shake their hand, and then they were all these
Speaker 1: turkey calling contests. So I just started practicing up and
Speaker 1: a guy named del Rom not right there from your area.
Speaker 1: He uh he. He was just a manufacturer that that
Speaker 1: built a lot of calls. He had a lot of
Speaker 1: amish there in the area that was building some unbelievable
Speaker 1: box calls and stuff. And so he just kind of
Speaker 1: took me under his wing and said, hey, you're a
Speaker 1: pretty good caller. You need to get in the contest.
Speaker 1: And and he sent me a box of turkey calls
Speaker 1: for free, and I couldn't believe it. He said, but
Speaker 1: I'm only sending these because I want you to compete.
Speaker 1: The first contest ever got into was a Georgia state
Speaker 1: championship and then I got like, I was like third place.
Speaker 1: So it freaked me out. And I'm calling against these
Speaker 1: guys that are my heroes, like I'm intimidated to be
Speaker 1: around him. And when it comes to this turkey calling
Speaker 1: world or circle and um and back then we'd go
Speaker 1: to contest, even it'd be anywhere from five hundreds to
Speaker 1: thousand people watching a contest. You know, it was kind
Speaker 1: of intriguing. So I started doing good and really I
Speaker 1: was seventeen eighteen, and that's where I met the people
Speaker 1: at Real Tree. I started meeting other people in the industry,
Speaker 1: other personalities and and things like that, and that just
Speaker 1: led to actually first being a guy. I remember Bill
Speaker 1: Jordan's Uh he Happened? Real Tree was based in Columbus, Georgia,
Speaker 1: which was only about an hour from where I grew up.
Speaker 1: And so David Blanton, who was their producer, and back
Speaker 1: then they had their show on t n N, the
Speaker 1: Nashville Network, and it kind of got put away and
Speaker 1: UM changed pass far as that network, and UM they
Speaker 1: were doing writers, so outdoor writers and media that was
Speaker 1: the media for writing. You know, they didn't have the
Speaker 1: TV shows and obviously not podcasts like this to get
Speaker 1: the word out. Message. It was all through the writers.
Speaker 1: And so we would have a realtory would have these
Speaker 1: big writer hunts and then have all these writers from
Speaker 1: Brad had Herned into you know, Bubba Phillips to you know,
Speaker 1: Laurleie Dovie, all these writers, you know, even Jim Shocky
Speaker 1: and people like that, would would come down in Turkey
Speaker 1: hunt for articles that they could turn around and sell
Speaker 1: to these publications. And obviously Bill getting this message about
Speaker 1: this camouflage, so they invited me to help guide on
Speaker 1: some of those hunts, to guide the writers, and I
Speaker 1: just I couldn't believe it. I remember I showed up
Speaker 1: and uh, two things I couldn't believe that. One is
Speaker 1: it buy my dinner at night, like Bill would buy
Speaker 1: my dinner, and I remember, you know, and then then
Speaker 1: we would go hunting, and I remember like after the hunt,
Speaker 1: we never talked about it, but I remember David Blanton said, hey,
Speaker 1: I need you so security number. Like what did I do?
Speaker 1: I thought I got in trouble. He said, no, man,
Speaker 1: we're gonna pay We're gonna pay you. And I'm like, whine, dude,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean I had a blast. You guys
Speaker 1: bought my dinner and you know, and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and no, man, we're gonna pay you a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a day to help help guide these writers. Man, we
Speaker 1: appreciate it. So dude, I man. I was literally like
Speaker 1: Red wrote, load up the truck and go to Beverly Hills.
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is it, this is it. And through
Speaker 1: that I just started meeting know a lot of personalities
Speaker 1: that I looked up to, like I remember Dale Earnhardt
Speaker 1: coming down and and I remember Tomboud Intimidate and I
Speaker 1: had won the world championship. That year, me and a
Speaker 1: guy named Ricky Joe Bishop would want to two man
Speaker 1: team like scenario deal and we we want it and
Speaker 1: one I don't know, it's like a thousand bucks we won.
Speaker 1: And you know in these cool you know, world champion
Speaker 1: titles or whatever, and who was that put on by?
Speaker 1: That was put on at the time by mass joke
Speaker 1: down in Birmingham, Alabama. They had it every year. And
Speaker 1: then obviously the Grand Nationals was put on by the
Speaker 1: Nationale Turkey Federation. And then they had another thing called
Speaker 1: the US Open, like it's some golf that it was
Speaker 1: Turkey and UM, and so that was the one. You
Speaker 1: had three big prestigious titles and uh two of those
Speaker 1: I was able to win UM in a in a
Speaker 1: two man team Grant Championship. And then the US Opened
Speaker 1: the best ever done with sacking place. And so through
Speaker 1: that I kind of met a lot of people. And
Speaker 1: obviously I still love to the deer hunt stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But what was so funny was is um when I
Speaker 1: look back on those days, man, I just like again,
Speaker 1: I just thought everybody knew about these things things in
Speaker 1: the galaxy. I was just in my own little bubble
Speaker 1: and in the Corin Corina and I were talking a
Speaker 1: little bit prior to this podcast. It was just so
Speaker 1: amazing to see all the other cultures because I'd only
Speaker 1: seen the small area in the south, and I was
Speaker 1: meeting people from the Northeast for the first time, getting
Speaker 1: to be buddies with Dale Rahm and Terry Rahm, and
Speaker 1: I was meeting people like Paul Butsky from Niagara Falls,
Speaker 1: New York, meeting people like Dick Kirby, who was a legend,
Speaker 1: you know, and I just one is I realized the
Speaker 1: different cultures and what you ate what you saw, and
Speaker 1: then I started seeing going to these different places, I
Speaker 1: started realizing that there was a lot of people that
Speaker 1: didn't kind of like my kind, not necessarily my kind,
Speaker 1: but just any of us who hunted and fish. And
Speaker 1: I was actually kind of just kind of tore up
Speaker 1: about it, like I couldn't unders. Yeah, I was. I
Speaker 1: went to a workshop one time to learn how to
Speaker 1: edit in Rockport, Maine, and um, yeah, it was put
Speaker 1: on as an international Felmine Arts. Still, I don't know
Speaker 1: how they found this. I thought it was kind of
Speaker 1: tortured just to throw me into the like not through
Speaker 1: like writers association. No no, no, this was later, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of got a head in the story. So
Speaker 1: so basically what happened was I was guiding and I
Speaker 1: started doing that, and um, a lot of the writers
Speaker 1: become buddies, and a lot of these you know, different
Speaker 1: celebrities to come in. They got to be friends and
Speaker 1: and one of the most intimidating things that ever happened
Speaker 1: to me early on far as kind of when you
Speaker 1: you know, when you're trying to be quarterback, I guess
Speaker 1: or you put in to be a quarterback. Remember Dale
Speaker 1: Earnhardt was down and uh and Dale was kind of
Speaker 1: very intimidating kind of guy, and he said, uh, we
Speaker 1: had hunted together one time before and killed a turkey.
Speaker 1: And so he gets down there and I'm I'm nineteen
Speaker 1: years old, twenty one maybe. And Dale gets down there
Speaker 1: and that morning before he says, hey, I'm want I
Speaker 1: want to go with that young world champion. And I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I'm Michael, you know, and He's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want, I'm going with you. And somebody said and
Speaker 1: somebody else like, now I was gonna take it note,
Speaker 1: I ain't going to I said, I know he'll get
Speaker 1: me a turkey, said, boy, you're gonna get me a turkey.
Speaker 1: You know, I wasn't yes run out to the trust,
Speaker 1: Come rum man, I gotta get deal with turkey. Thank
Speaker 1: god we did. And so to the day he passed
Speaker 1: away in that dreadful accident Daytona, he had always come
Speaker 1: down and he'd want to hunt with me and David
Speaker 1: Blanton and another guy named Glenn Garner, and he just
Speaker 1: had complete confidence that we'd would, you know, get a turkey.
Speaker 1: And so I think for me as a young man,
Speaker 1: started building confidence that first of all, like, man, this
Speaker 1: is fun, this is awesome, and that that first place
Speaker 1: of I played sports and stuff, and and it led
Speaker 1: to Bill Jordan and David offered me a full time
Speaker 1: job to UH to work in production, to to video
Speaker 1: and guide. So I never was hired to be this
Speaker 1: creative production guy. I was hiring more to in those days.
Speaker 1: Just like a lot of times still in your world, Steve,
Speaker 1: you know, you have somebody that's interested in the space.
Speaker 1: It could be a celebrity and and so at that
Speaker 1: particular time, it could have been a country singer or
Speaker 1: somebody that wasn't that good, but they enjoyed it and
Speaker 1: of course it was a good marketing platform for them
Speaker 1: in the T n N days too, for Mark Chestnut
Speaker 1: or Sammy Kershaw or Hank Williams Jr. To be on
Speaker 1: that particular TV show, especially with the connection in the
Speaker 1: day with Nashville Network and hunting shows that come in
Speaker 1: that Sunday night block. So we'd follow NASCAR race. Well
Speaker 1: there'd be millions of people watching this outdoor programming, and
Speaker 1: so so we would go and a lot of times
Speaker 1: they would say, hey, we're gonna send you with Michael.
Speaker 1: So they know they knew I wasn't like the most
Speaker 1: creative guy, but they knew I could keep things in
Speaker 1: focus and I could kind of coach them along, like hey,
Speaker 1: you know, push your safety off. Now, Hey don't move,
Speaker 1: but you know he's coming closer, you know. So so
Speaker 1: I was kind of guiding slash you know, Slash video
Speaker 1: and and and so with that, I just fell in
Speaker 1: love with the job. And I didn't know anything about editing,
Speaker 1: and that's when they David Blanton said, man, we need
Speaker 1: to teach you how to edit. And at the time,
Speaker 1: that was when everything was going from linear to non
Speaker 1: linear digital and the Avid and all the different software
Speaker 1: writing edit right, Well, yeah, I I when it was
Speaker 1: coming to editing with me. You know, first of all,
Speaker 1: I still I'm pretty good writing, but I had to
Speaker 1: have a really good editor because I I'll write like
Speaker 1: I talked, so I need I don't know where to
Speaker 1: put the commas and all every time. But when it
Speaker 1: comes to you know, video editing, they sent me to
Speaker 1: this place in Maine, Rockport, Maine. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's still happening. They used to have these crash courses,
Speaker 1: like for a week or two week courses if you
Speaker 1: wanted to learn how to you know, cinem photography or
Speaker 1: on six temimeter film or you know. I'm sure it's changed.
Speaker 1: This was back in the early nineties. But I remember
Speaker 1: going up there and they sent me to school for
Speaker 1: nine linear or editing. And I remember what was the
Speaker 1: biggest takeaway. Everything was shot on these big beta tapes
Speaker 1: and so for me, my buddies couldn't believe I had
Speaker 1: access to this footage of back then the Monster Bucks
Speaker 1: videos and all Stars of Sprame videos that Realtrey was
Speaker 1: setting in Walmart stuff. So I took all these masters
Speaker 1: are dub of these masters of all these hunts. So
Speaker 1: I thought I was gonna be like this hero, like
Speaker 1: I was gonna show up and they ain't gonna believe this.
Speaker 1: Young kids got all this awesome his great cameras, you know,
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, if I showed up there, you know,
Speaker 1: with my buddies, you know, up with me, either're like, hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: we got something good. If we've all been young learning,
Speaker 1: if this stuff, will I show up? Man, I might
Speaker 1: as well have been to Antichrist. And they're like, and
Speaker 1: I remember what's sitting in class. And I told the teacher,
Speaker 1: I said, I said, man, I worked for a company,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how to do it. I said,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good tape to tape, I said, but obviously
Speaker 1: this is the way things are going. And they sent
Speaker 1: me here to learn, and it was a seven day
Speaker 1: course and and I remember saying, I got some unbelievable footage.
Speaker 1: And they had everything was on high eight and VHS,
Speaker 1: and so they were struggling to get content to digitize
Speaker 1: into computers. I said, man, I got some really nice stuff,
Speaker 1: but you know, if you'd like to see it. And
Speaker 1: so the instructor or the professor teacher, he said, I'd
Speaker 1: like to see it. So I showed him he was, Oh,
Speaker 1: my god, are y'all shooting us on the b VP
Speaker 1: ninety And I'm like, yeah, I think that's the name
Speaker 1: of it. Man, that's a sixty tho all the camera,
Speaker 1: I said, I know, many what do y'all do? So
Speaker 1: he's really intrigued. I said, well, my boss, you know,
Speaker 1: they got to show on t n N and I'm
Speaker 1: just a guy slash camera guy. But you know, this
Speaker 1: is the stuff. And I said, and they sent me
Speaker 1: here to learn how to edit hunts and to get better,
Speaker 1: so I can obviously post and send this to t
Speaker 1: n N. You know, I said, I just I don't
Speaker 1: know nothing about c G. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know the the the way, the right way, or the
Speaker 1: code of of certain things. And we had cutaways and
Speaker 1: all this stuff. So anyway, I'm learning. Well, he shares
Speaker 1: it with the class, and he remember the first time
Speaker 1: ever i'd heard somebody quickly making an excuse like you said, look,
Speaker 1: a lot of you guys are not gonna agree with this,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, no, nobody's not. I mean, don't these
Speaker 1: guys eat. Don't these guys eat? You know, like for
Speaker 1: sure you know? And anyway, sure enough, I remember a
Speaker 1: couple of the girls got up and said I stood
Speaker 1: up in the class and said I want to have
Speaker 1: anything to do with that. And I'm like, man, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you want to talk about feeling
Speaker 1: like the dumb he'll billy redneck from Georgia. I did
Speaker 1: then because I'm like, man, I'm sorry. You know, I
Speaker 1: was like, man, this is And finally I started getting
Speaker 1: piste off. I'm like, look, I'm here to do a job.
Speaker 1: I said, Man, I got a job. Mom and Daddy
Speaker 1: didn't send me up here. Hell, I'm here because I
Speaker 1: got I got a job and I'm gonna learn that
Speaker 1: it this. And I told instructor, I said, look, if
Speaker 1: you knew me, just you know, hang out and go
Speaker 1: catch lobster out here in the port and help with
Speaker 1: the fisherman there. In the meantime, I'll come back. You
Speaker 1: can teach me how to edit this, dear foot, but
Speaker 1: I gotta learn how to hit these hunts. And uh.
Speaker 1: And there was one dude from Ontario that was there
Speaker 1: that stood up and said, hey, I agree with Michael.
Speaker 1: You know I grew up hunting the fishing and all.
Speaker 1: You don't understand it. But uh. And at the end
Speaker 1: of it, they made us edit this this piece together
Speaker 1: from the footage that it looked like all the animals
Speaker 1: had gotten away, and um, because they made us edited
Speaker 1: that way. And I was mad. And for some reason,
Speaker 1: for some dumb reason, I never done any public speaking,
Speaker 1: but every night I had just turned twenty at that point.
Speaker 1: You hadn't done public speaking. I hadn't done any public
Speaker 1: speaking at that point none. And for some reason the instructor,
Speaker 1: he and I, I guess because I was spent a
Speaker 1: lot of one on one time just because I was anxious,
Speaker 1: I wasn't there, just I really was. I wanted to
Speaker 1: come back and be able to press David and Bill
Speaker 1: and let them know, hey, I'm ready, I can do this.
Speaker 1: And at the time we had just bought and put
Speaker 1: in a studio there in Columbus, Georgia with a non
Speaker 1: linear system, all the hard drives, and and nobody knew
Speaker 1: how to run it, like, didn't really know how to
Speaker 1: turn it on. Even our main editor, who actually had
Speaker 1: worked at NASA. He was had the big you know,
Speaker 1: like a cockpit and all these machine to tape to
Speaker 1: tape and and c G and you you know, hit
Speaker 1: this button, something flew in so nobody knew this. This
Speaker 1: is back in there, like I said, early nineties, right
Speaker 1: when the Avid come out. So I was really really
Speaker 1: anxious to get back and say, hey, guys, I know
Speaker 1: how to turn on. I know the basics, and I
Speaker 1: can teach you all this and then we can we
Speaker 1: can roll, you know. And so for me being this
Speaker 1: Turkey calling guide, I was like, man, I'm finally gonna
Speaker 1: have some technical prowess when I come back. Well I
Speaker 1: get well, well, that's so I'll spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time with the instructor or teacher. And um, so at
Speaker 1: the end of it, each class, um, at the whole,
Speaker 1: at the end of this school, when everybody graduated, they
Speaker 1: had had this big dinner and every night we had
Speaker 1: a mess hall. We can go in there, and um
Speaker 1: there was a vegetarian line which I never had seen
Speaker 1: anything like that. I mean, I on Golden Corrawl, by god,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're done, you made that dawn ice cream,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to throw it back and so all
Speaker 1: it was so new man, and I'm like, man, hey,
Speaker 1: what is this Like, Man, You're in the wrong line
Speaker 1: of why hell, this is where the you know, get
Speaker 1: you a little prime real right, okay, And the most
Speaker 1: importantly they had I just earned twenty one and they
Speaker 1: had a draft beer that you could drink free. If
Speaker 1: you're twenty one, you could have rolling rock beer. So
Speaker 1: I might never had a roll around. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: was drinking. I mean, I was drinking it every night.
Speaker 1: And so that last night, you know, I know that
Speaker 1: we get to show our project. And so the instructor
Speaker 1: literally says, hey, you know, we had a great class
Speaker 1: and you don't want to introduce you And they called
Speaker 1: all our names up and there was a class of
Speaker 1: about twenty of us. It was in his class. And
Speaker 1: then he says, and also too, we're really really cool
Speaker 1: that we had a guy that is working for an
Speaker 1: outdoor company and so um we better. Yeah, I said,
Speaker 1: we want you to come introduce this project. And it's
Speaker 1: called the One that Got Away. So it was all
Speaker 1: this footage from Dale Earnhart to Larry why Soon of
Speaker 1: we hunted with a lot of biologists back then and
Speaker 1: writers and uh and I remember and he said, but
Speaker 1: I'd like to get one of our class members of
Speaker 1: Michael Watt Hill to come up here and talk and
Speaker 1: that now I'm sorry and got a little buzz you.
Speaker 1: I might think, Man, I'm eating lobsters last night and
Speaker 1: I'm not ready for it. So I get up there,
Speaker 1: and I remember I got up on the mic and
Speaker 1: made the comment. I said, hey, I said, man, it's
Speaker 1: such a cool honor to be here, and thank you
Speaker 1: all for the hospitality. I didn't know what to say,
Speaker 1: but I remember I said, but yeah, this is pretty
Speaker 1: this is pretty neat to be able to edit this together.
Speaker 1: And I said, we did it with our classmates. And
Speaker 1: I said, and uh, it's called the One that Got Away.
Speaker 1: And for some reason I went to and I said,
Speaker 1: I hope you all enjoy. And then I went to
Speaker 1: step off, and I stepped right back and said, but
Speaker 1: by the way, every day on one of them are dead.
Speaker 1: And and I walked off. And so some of the
Speaker 1: ladies and girls in one dude in particularly, he was
Speaker 1: so pissed. They just glaring at me. I said, truth,
Speaker 1: I said, Man, I didn't grow up blind. Now, I said,
Speaker 1: that's I said, I just ain't Quentin Tarantino. This stuff
Speaker 1: is really dead. This is ain't fake. And so the
Speaker 1: people working, oh wow, there's deal earn hurt. Yeah, some
Speaker 1: some of them were, but they were more like appaul
Speaker 1: to and like I said, you know, and I heard
Speaker 1: y'all talk a lot deep on that, and and I
Speaker 1: love the documentary I'll put together. I text you on
Speaker 1: that the that's on Netflix, and um, I thought that
Speaker 1: explained it. Well, yes, oh my god. And I loved
Speaker 1: how you know, he was able to interview the people
Speaker 1: that was probably on the fringe of, you know, not
Speaker 1: even understanding hunting, but forcing them to look deep. And
Speaker 1: and I think sometimes us as hunters, we have to
Speaker 1: look deep and see that maybe maybe we did grow
Speaker 1: up different and we understand it. But I think once
Speaker 1: we can help explain why we do it and how
Speaker 1: we do it and the different reasons, then it makes it,
Speaker 1: you know, clear. And so for me, that was a
Speaker 1: huge learning experience because I didn't I really didn't know.
Speaker 1: I honestly was completely ignorant. I wasn't dumb. I was
Speaker 1: ignorant to the fact that I just everybody I had
Speaker 1: met was like meeting Seth. It was like meeting you.
Speaker 1: Was like, even though we might not enjoy the same things,
Speaker 1: we still like you know you ice fish well, I
Speaker 1: catch you call it crappy. I call it crappy, and
Speaker 1: you know, we we fish in the spring and and
Speaker 1: you know, and y'all fish on the ice. But they
Speaker 1: still was this common bond. And so for me, I
Speaker 1: was completely like I was calling my dad and like, Dad,
Speaker 1: you ain't gonna believe this. There's folks they don't hunt.
Speaker 1: They don't even like it. They don't like it, they
Speaker 1: don't even they they hate me. I quartered a couple
Speaker 1: of times. But uh, a guy that comes on the
Speaker 1: show off and named Patrick Dirk and who grew up
Speaker 1: in the community in Wisconsin. And he described it once
Speaker 1: in a piece of his writing where he said, if
Speaker 1: you're not a deer hunter, you share a bed with one. Yes,
Speaker 1: of where you know, of where he grew up, right,
Speaker 1: I know Pat, he is a great guy. And that
Speaker 1: is a hell of a quote. I haven't heard that,
Speaker 1: but that is true. Though that's true. What do you
Speaker 1: think of say that all hadn't happened, What do you
Speaker 1: think you would have wind up doing for a living? Honestly,
Speaker 1: I think I would have. I would have been out
Speaker 1: there working with my hands. My dad was a contractor.
Speaker 1: Um I went to heating and air school in the
Speaker 1: process of working at realtory, so I would there was
Speaker 1: a part of me that I thought that what I
Speaker 1: was doing in the hunting space and guiding and getting
Speaker 1: to do and run a camera, I really there was
Speaker 1: a part of me because of the system I grew
Speaker 1: up in. I thought that that was almost similar to
Speaker 1: getting the guitar and moving to Nashville, or going to
Speaker 1: l A and saying you're gonna be a model and
Speaker 1: maybe you met somebody. I didn't really think i'd make
Speaker 1: a living at it. I just knew at this particular
Speaker 1: time that I was young and and had really not
Speaker 1: a lot of responsibility other than one day being independent
Speaker 1: pay my own bills. I had went to heating and
Speaker 1: air school and learned heating and air technology that I
Speaker 1: didn't know, but so I thought, you did that, but
Speaker 1: you working with realtary guiding And then and then after
Speaker 1: I had started kind of a guiding and doing that stuff,
Speaker 1: I would I I would leave and I didn't have
Speaker 1: a full time job at Real Tree. I was just
Speaker 1: guiding some during deer in Turkey season, running cameras a freelancer,
Speaker 1: so per per day type of work and um, and
Speaker 1: then I would go back and I'd work with my dad,
Speaker 1: and then I worked full time for over a year
Speaker 1: in heating and air, just doing residential residential, just troubleshooting
Speaker 1: installing heating and air units, and and that was also
Speaker 1: a kind of a new fad where everybody was doing
Speaker 1: the refrigerment reclaiming. And so I had gotten certified in
Speaker 1: that where you know, used to he just cut the
Speaker 1: lines if he changed out of unit, and all the
Speaker 1: free on would go up in an atmosphere, and so
Speaker 1: that was in the process to where you know, he
Speaker 1: was reclaiming this. And so I was. I was young,
Speaker 1: and I knew how to work all that new equipment.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, had a chance to help
Speaker 1: even order it for some of the the people I
Speaker 1: were working for and telling what was the best system,
Speaker 1: because I had just come from this tech school learning it.
Speaker 1: And I remember even that just being young and enjoying that,
Speaker 1: and I thought that that would be what I would do.
Speaker 1: And I was always kind of driven that I wanted
Speaker 1: to try to be the best at something. And I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, I don't know if I'll always work as
Speaker 1: a heating and air guy, but maybe one day I
Speaker 1: can own my own heating and air business and work
Speaker 1: in conjunction with my dad. And my dad, you know,
Speaker 1: grew up very country and actually uh quit school when
Speaker 1: he was sixteen and really has about a night grede education.
Speaker 1: And um, my dad was barely literate, like you still
Speaker 1: can't read and write a lot. And so I've never
Speaker 1: seen somebody work so hard in my life. But I
Speaker 1: also realized that my dad just had struggle even writing
Speaker 1: checks and taking notes and stuff like that. But he
Speaker 1: could build Empire State building. I mean, he could build
Speaker 1: anything here in Bozeman. So I remember early on thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: I got this heat in and air background. My dad
Speaker 1: knows all the bells and whistles how to build, So
Speaker 1: maybe I can try to be a better business person
Speaker 1: and help my dad from the parts that he was missing.
Speaker 1: And I knew I had my dad there from the
Speaker 1: work ethic of pushing me to you know, if you
Speaker 1: had to be there at eight, my dad be out
Speaker 1: there with a light at six, you know, harmon and working.
Speaker 1: And so that's what I thought I would do. And
Speaker 1: I and um and as and as time went on.
Speaker 1: After about a year or two of doing this with
Speaker 1: real tree kind of guiding and running camera on the side,
Speaker 1: David Blanton in off from me a full time job
Speaker 1: to work there in the video production and uh. And
Speaker 1: at that time it was eighteen thousand dollars a year
Speaker 1: on salary, and he could have said, he could have
Speaker 1: said three thousand dollars a year. I'm like, man, I'm
Speaker 1: working at Real Tree. Did your dad think it was
Speaker 1: frivolous or do you think it was cool? My dad
Speaker 1: was the only one who thought it was cool. Um.
Speaker 1: I remember my grandmom and really blue collar. I mean
Speaker 1: we were really blue collar. Like my my family was
Speaker 1: so proud because I had the service van with my
Speaker 1: name on it, my gaugees hung up in this truck.
Speaker 1: So by the system that most all of us are
Speaker 1: raised in, this conservative you made it in life that
Speaker 1: he's got a good job. You know, Man, he's making
Speaker 1: fifteen dollars an hour and they said they're gonna get
Speaker 1: benefits and they might even have a four one K
Speaker 1: next year. I had made it like what Ell is
Speaker 1: doing good and I'm so proud of you and um.
Speaker 1: But when I did mention it to my dad, my
Speaker 1: dad was like, that'd be good. You know. He had
Speaker 1: met Bill Jerden, he had met Real Tree, and he
Speaker 1: saw the money because he was the one that would
Speaker 1: take me to these turkey calling contests when I was young,
Speaker 1: and he saw that it was an industry, and uh,
Speaker 1: he saw that there was an opportunity that you if
Speaker 1: it's an industry, well obviously there was working it. And
Speaker 1: so he was really the only one. My uncle's and
Speaker 1: my grandmama. You would have thought that I had gotten
Speaker 1: on drugs and was going to play with the doors,
Speaker 1: you know, like I'm gonna play backup base for the doors.
Speaker 1: You know, I really thought that's what it was. And
Speaker 1: I was just, you know, like God, he had it,
Speaker 1: got this solid thing. Yeah, he's going to Montana to
Speaker 1: put up Montana tent canvas tents with Steve and what
Speaker 1: do you know. It's like, what's going on? And so
Speaker 1: uh and they just couldn't fathom that you can make
Speaker 1: a living hunting and fishing. But I couldn't never get
Speaker 1: across to them that it was more than me just
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing. It was it was celebrating the space,
Speaker 1: and we were selling products and there was bows. They
Speaker 1: were Arabs, you know, in this case, there was I'm
Speaker 1: a flage and Bill and his licensing program was doing
Speaker 1: receptionally well, was making VHS tapes at the time that
Speaker 1: led the DVDs and producing shows and so even for me,
Speaker 1: I was taking all this in real quick, but it
Speaker 1: was hard for me to go and tell my family,
Speaker 1: and so, uh, it was a big change and quickly. Man,
Speaker 1: I just was blown away just getting a chance to
Speaker 1: go to Las Vegas of the Shot Show, going to
Speaker 1: the Archild trade show, these big conventions and uh, talking
Speaker 1: to Karen the other day. You know, I didn't know
Speaker 1: what to do with myself because I didn't know should
Speaker 1: I talk like I'm talking to y'all now, or should
Speaker 1: I should I wear khakis? And you know, you know,
Speaker 1: we need to see you coming in and you know
Speaker 1: you've been catching beavers this morning, so that okay, this
Speaker 1: is real real, Yeah, that's yeah. And so I was,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't know it like you man, you know,
Speaker 1: what what do I wear? And Real Tree would buy
Speaker 1: you all these pants and new breeches and shirts and
Speaker 1: little wolf vests and stuff, you know, because we had
Speaker 1: an outfit. When can go to a t a go
Speaker 1: to the Shot Show? All right, coded, we're gonna wear this, everybody,
Speaker 1: We're gonna wear this, And everybody was moaning and complaining.
Speaker 1: I was like, man, they bought me some brand new L. L.
Speaker 1: Bean bridges. You know. Man, them suckers are seventy dollars
Speaker 1: a piece. You know, I'll take, you know, And we'd
Speaker 1: have olive in a khaki and a brown and I
Speaker 1: thought it was a coolness. I'd be the first one,
Speaker 1: Oh dude, But it was occer because I'm standing there,
Speaker 1: you know, and you like, I don't know. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like on Talla Day and nice. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what to do with my hands. I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to come across, you know, It's really I was I
Speaker 1: was smiling, I was happy, but I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to celebrate certain things. And then finally, um, I think
Speaker 1: the biggest turning point in my whole career was that
Speaker 1: first year. I remember we went to a big meeting
Speaker 1: up in Nashville, Tennessee, and Viacom had just bought tenn Or. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I might be ignor. I don't know if they just
Speaker 1: bought it, but in Viacom might have always been a
Speaker 1: big part of the national network. But I do know
Speaker 1: that Viacom at that time on t n N they
Speaker 1: also owned uh They owned uh MTV, a bunch of networks,
Speaker 1: and obviously who's that guy he used to run via
Speaker 1: comback in those days. He married like Cathy for like
Speaker 1: a wellness person, Kathy for us than what. I can't
Speaker 1: remember it, but I remember I didn't know. I didn't
Speaker 1: know about then or workings, you know, but I remember
Speaker 1: being very excited to go to this producer's meeting. And
Speaker 1: at the time, there was a lot of people that
Speaker 1: I really looked up to, you know, people like Hank
Speaker 1: Parker who had a show, Mark Sosa who had a
Speaker 1: fishing show on the network, and then really the only
Speaker 1: big networks that was celebrating hunting and fishing at that
Speaker 1: level was TENN and ESPN and UM. And so anyway,
Speaker 1: I went, and I was just like, couldn't believe I
Speaker 1: was getting a chance to go to this to be
Speaker 1: around these peers. Jackie Bushman uh was there, which you know,
Speaker 1: that phenomenon in the nineties, that whole Buckmaster thing was growing,
Speaker 1: and and anyway, it was just I was just kind
Speaker 1: of flatter. And I remember I met this guy from
Speaker 1: MTV and UM and he he was really condescending, not
Speaker 1: just to me, but he was so you guys, y'all,
Speaker 1: the y'all, the BANDI Killers and was smirking to hit it,
Speaker 1: and dude, my inner just country boy. Try. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to knock him the hell out. I remember just
Speaker 1: wanting to hit him so bad, like and probably in
Speaker 1: another setting I would have, but I realized I was
Speaker 1: representing real tree and boy, it just pissed me off.
Speaker 1: And every time I tried to talk to him and
Speaker 1: I was eager, I was like, dude, man, I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan at that time. Paul Shot remember Polly Short. Yeah, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm country, but I'm watching this every episode and so
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, what it was like Martha something, Kurt Loder.
Speaker 1: Kurt Loder remember all these yeah, math totals, there's like
Speaker 1: a major Like he was like a podcasting pioneer, right, Adam.
Speaker 1: It was like he had the Feathered Minutes and this
Speaker 1: should have been ninety six, and all these people came
Speaker 1: out of came out of there and went out to
Speaker 1: do all these different media things. They were like they
Speaker 1: even coined there on terms like VJs. Remember that video
Speaker 1: video jockeys. Well, I I was. I was for some reason.
Speaker 1: I guess what really led to a little let down,
Speaker 1: And it wasn't all the MTV crew. It's This was
Speaker 1: one guy in particularly, I've never even got his name,
Speaker 1: but it was very obvious that he felt he was
Speaker 1: a little smarter and we were the red next step
Speaker 1: children there because we were the hunter and we were
Speaker 1: the outdoors man. It was important to him that you
Speaker 1: knew this. It was important that yeah. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: as I got to talking to him, I I said, well,
Speaker 1: I said, man, I can tell you ain't a hunter.
Speaker 1: I said, but ma, I would tell you, buddy, I said,
Speaker 1: if you ever come to my neck and woods, I said,
Speaker 1: you would enjoy what I get to do every day.
Speaker 1: And I said, uh, and I know you've got some
Speaker 1: heroes in this room, but I do too. And I
Speaker 1: was pointing out, I want to say, even Babe Winkelman
Speaker 1: was there. And I said, you know these guys right
Speaker 1: here in my world that I know. I said, I
Speaker 1: respect him. And I said, and uh, I respect y'all,
Speaker 1: but you might not respect me. And I said, but
Speaker 1: if you ever come around my woods, I said you
Speaker 1: you would enjoy it and you'd be treated with great respect.
Speaker 1: And uh, and I think you'd walk way of different.
Speaker 1: And I remember it didn't really hit home. He say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, he kind of walked away, and I remember
Speaker 1: I wasn't And when I said that, it kind of
Speaker 1: I said it. It defused my anger of wanting to
Speaker 1: hit him literally, because for me, I'm a culture guy.
Speaker 1: Like if if you're in my family or on my team,
Speaker 1: you can make fun of me. I I told you
Speaker 1: I'll beginning the podcast, y'all can say what you want
Speaker 1: to me. I'm just real funny about the people I love.
Speaker 1: And if you you know, it's kind of like your
Speaker 1: brother's sister, you know, we can talk about him like
Speaker 1: I swear, they are you hitting on nothing? But then
Speaker 1: somebody else says you ready to fight? And so for me,
Speaker 1: I felt like he was slapping at a Bill Jord,
Speaker 1: and he was slapping at a Cuss Strickland or Toxic
Speaker 1: Hayes or these pioneers of these companies and and um,
Speaker 1: and I remember walking away, and I remember telling Bill
Speaker 1: that night, Bill Jordan, because Bill would always just the
Speaker 1: nicest guy, would never want to offend anybody, and said Bill,
Speaker 1: I said, man, I walked the tight rope, you know,
Speaker 1: And I said I didn't want to be too country.
Speaker 1: And Karna and I were talking about this yesterday, and Um,
Speaker 1: I said and I realized that all I can think
Speaker 1: about is I don't want to be around folks like that.
Speaker 1: I want to be back home on the IT Road
Speaker 1: in Georgia. You know, we're somewhere out in Nebraska and
Speaker 1: with my buddies, these farmers, these ranchers and people that
Speaker 1: understand the balance and the good Lord's renewable resource. And
Speaker 1: I'm realizing more and more through that condescending nature and
Speaker 1: how they judging that we are some of the best
Speaker 1: people and best organizations and best assets to America this
Speaker 1: out there. And I said, and I will no longer,
Speaker 1: you know, make any excuses for what we do. I said, Bill,
Speaker 1: you are a hell of an entrepreneur, and you made
Speaker 1: a lot of money. And I said, and and the
Speaker 1: people that support And at the time, I think we
Speaker 1: had about thirteen or fourteen million license hunters. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure exactly what that number is now. And I said,
Speaker 1: and this up to us to to stand up for
Speaker 1: it when I'm making excuses, And I said, I catched
Speaker 1: myself this whole night feeling like I need to shake
Speaker 1: somebody's hand to make an excuse that we're the hunter. Sorry,
Speaker 1: And it bothered me. You know, here I am two,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure Steve, you've been in some certain situations
Speaker 1: like that. And I walked away. And I think that
Speaker 1: was the biggest part of my career because I started realizing,
Speaker 1: I got very comfortable about who I was, who who
Speaker 1: meant the most too and and uh and like I said,
Speaker 1: there was everybody that was part of my team and
Speaker 1: that I knew have become friends with, from people that
Speaker 1: truly hunted just for substance and and to put meat
Speaker 1: on their table. I knew a lot of trophy hunters,
Speaker 1: I knew conservationists, I knew environmentalists. I knew just a
Speaker 1: good old boys who just wanted to drink a bud
Speaker 1: wise and sitting on a dove stool, you know. And
Speaker 1: I knew people at that point, you know, up in
Speaker 1: Michigan and Pennsylvania. And I started putting it all together.
Speaker 1: And I think that was when I really become proud
Speaker 1: of the culture and really started I shouldn't say fighting
Speaker 1: for it, but just being able to know that I
Speaker 1: could go head to head with anybody that would try
Speaker 1: to downgrade the culture, not not just what I like
Speaker 1: to do, but all of us like to do. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, some of us, like d I y, some
Speaker 1: of us work all week and maybe it is a
Speaker 1: an outfitter that you trust in to take you hunting. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, some people like to chase a big trophy,
Speaker 1: mature animal. Some people literally want to shoot a dough
Speaker 1: just to have some skill at meat and grind some
Speaker 1: burger for their family, especially among what we see and now.
Speaker 1: And so I think that was the biggest change in
Speaker 1: part though, and that was ninety six, and slowly I
Speaker 1: think that led to the less I really cared and
Speaker 1: just become more comfortable as a personality because I never
Speaker 1: dreamed of being a personality. I just I couldn't believe
Speaker 1: I was hunting, fishing and doing these things. And I
Speaker 1: think that's when people could either hate me or like me,
Speaker 1: but potentially at least respect me maybe and UM, and
Speaker 1: so that was that was a turning point for sure, stive,
Speaker 1: no doubt. I came up. I came across a lot
Speaker 1: of that same disapproval you're talking about, UM back in
Speaker 1: various circles. Because through book publishing, you know, I was
Speaker 1: just introduced to New York, and through TV I was
Speaker 1: introduced to Los Angeles, and I found that a couple
Speaker 1: of things would happen where I would talk to people
Speaker 1: and they would be we would get into like hunting
Speaker 1: one on one, and they would be pleasantly surprised to
Speaker 1: learn that there were hunting regulations. Yeah, pleasantly surprised. Like
Speaker 1: that's how sort of like they that in their mind
Speaker 1: you just like went into the woods and just whatever something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he'd be like, oh, no, Hormett, because here's this. Let me,
Speaker 1: let's explain this whole thing. There's these things called like biologists, right,
Speaker 1: and they do like these wildlife surveys and they issue
Speaker 1: and they'd be like, no ship. And that made me
Speaker 1: realize the value of having some amount of conversation. And
Speaker 1: the other thing I would realize is that growing up
Speaker 1: in a rural area, um, we would do the same
Speaker 1: thing to people that lived in cities. Is what we thought.
Speaker 1: People live in cities do us like everything's filthy, Um,
Speaker 1: everything's rats every you know what I mean, You're gonna
Speaker 1: you get robbed, you know. It looks like I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what, I guess I got it like an
Speaker 1: all fairness. I gotta look and be like, man, we
Speaker 1: have stereotype, like we grew up in the west side
Speaker 1: of Michigan. Um, it was just like taken as a
Speaker 1: The only time I every went over to Detroit is
Speaker 1: we had to go over there for a school event
Speaker 1: one time, and we went over there like if we
Speaker 1: could have brought shotguns, we would have brought shotguns. There's
Speaker 1: no coming back a lot from a school event, you know,
Speaker 1: like from a school event Troit. So it does like
Speaker 1: you know, I think it does cut both ways, but
Speaker 1: there is that there is that little bit of um,
Speaker 1: you know. I attribute it more to like I treated
Speaker 1: more like there's sort of like assholes in every walk
Speaker 1: alife and that that thing where someone's gonna go like,
Speaker 1: oh okay, dear slayer, okay, baby killer. You're like, you
Speaker 1: know what, man, even if you lived, even if you
Speaker 1: were a hunter, you'd still be an asshole. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: would be probably probably deep down an you gotta be that.
Speaker 1: You gotta have it be that. Um you got everyone's number,
Speaker 1: like you see through everyone or you know, like you
Speaker 1: know what's really going on and hey, I want to
Speaker 1: ask they think about how many kids do you you have?
Speaker 1: I got five, four boys, one girl, I got one girl. Yep,
Speaker 1: four boys? Yet do you um do you lean on
Speaker 1: them about what you want them to do, or do
Speaker 1: you take the same approach that you wish people would
Speaker 1: have had with you when you were a kid. You No,
Speaker 1: I definitely take um a different approach, I would say,
Speaker 1: because I think I learned. I think all of us
Speaker 1: sitting here realized that we're being able to do something
Speaker 1: that's very all American, like holy cow. I mean think
Speaker 1: about today. It's a was it Thursday during the day
Speaker 1: and we're sitting here getting a chance to just talk.
Speaker 1: This is something we do around the campfire and share
Speaker 1: it with the world. So I definitely push my kids
Speaker 1: too to not worry about The safe conservative route is
Speaker 1: to is to look and right now while you're young.
Speaker 1: You know, if you want to break it into statistics
Speaker 1: or percentages, you know you got You know, if you
Speaker 1: look at say an entertainer Bruno Mars or the uh
Speaker 1: those guns and Roses and those people that play in
Speaker 1: band or actors and actresses and even people get do
Speaker 1: what we do. Um. Obviously, it's tough to get there.
Speaker 1: A lot of doors have to be open. You have
Speaker 1: to have a ability, you have to have talent, you
Speaker 1: have to have so many things that happen you have
Speaker 1: to have good Lord's blessing and and the will be done. However,
Speaker 1: if you don't go for it, then you might be
Speaker 1: better later in life. So I tell them, now, push
Speaker 1: for the things that you think are unachievable, and I'll
Speaker 1: support you. You know, go for that ten percentile, because
Speaker 1: think about it, if you break it down into the percentages.
Speaker 1: If there's a ten percent chance that I can be
Speaker 1: on a podcast with the Meat Eater Crew, or be
Speaker 1: like those guys, or possibly create a company like Bone Collector,
Speaker 1: or maybe make it as a country singer or an
Speaker 1: actor and actress. Whatever, well, if you don't make it,
Speaker 1: and you really wholeheartedly tried, guess what you got a
Speaker 1: ninety chance of going and getting the job at Afflack
Speaker 1: and sell an Insurance. Yeah. And and like I said,
Speaker 1: I'm not even downgrading that. I'm not even downgrade anybody
Speaker 1: that does that. But I know all of us here
Speaker 1: would be pretty miserable if we'd never tried this. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think right now, I think the common ground all
Speaker 1: of us setting here, I guarantee you if we had
Speaker 1: to go work at Sonic tomorrow, we would think bang, like,
Speaker 1: holy cow man, what a heck of a ride man.
Speaker 1: We did some things, and we achieved some things. I
Speaker 1: got something on Netflix. I did a hunting documentary talking
Speaker 1: about the culture. You know what, I feel good about
Speaker 1: flipping this burger right now. But I did it. But
Speaker 1: if we would have never done it and thought we
Speaker 1: had the potential, I think that'd be catastrophic and psychologically damaging.
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes people don't go for it enough.
Speaker 1: But all of a sudden, if you are forty eight,
Speaker 1: you say, I'm forty eight and I've got five kids,
Speaker 1: and I tell my wife, hey, I think I'm on.
Speaker 1: I know what I'm gonna do. Getting back to the
Speaker 1: sling Blade comment, I'm gonna call the boys and I'm
Speaker 1: heading to Nashville. I'm getting the band. Watch out, Zach Brown,
Speaker 1: here I come. You know I can't do that. I
Speaker 1: got a mortgage, I got insurance to pay. I got cars.
Speaker 1: You know, you got all this stuff. You got kids,
Speaker 1: and with five kids, you know, four boys, my god,
Speaker 1: they eat Yea, we have to eat a lot of
Speaker 1: wild game. I understand your message, because we have to
Speaker 1: eat a lot just because getting Ford ribis for all
Speaker 1: these state night is when me and mama are alone.
Speaker 1: But anyway, With that said, I do push them stive
Speaker 1: to say go for it, man, don't be afraid. Don't
Speaker 1: be afraid, you go for it. Like my son is
Speaker 1: a really good guitar player and singer. He's twenty one,
Speaker 1: about to graduate college. He's on a fishing scholarship at
Speaker 1: Manafalu University. He's like, Dad, what would you think if
Speaker 1: I went to Nashville fishing scholarship? And um, they they
Speaker 1: they I've been so proud of him and it's been amazing.
Speaker 1: Does he want to continue with that? You know, he
Speaker 1: loves fishing. I don't think he does want to stay
Speaker 1: at the level of trying to be saying elite pro
Speaker 1: He's been around all of this, like he he was
Speaker 1: very pumped. I was gonna be up here with you
Speaker 1: guys today because he follows you all. A matter of fact,
Speaker 1: the whole whole university. I mean, I have to give
Speaker 1: you guys a hell of a lot of props on
Speaker 1: what y'all been able to do, especially with the younger generation.
Speaker 1: I mean all I mean, I got a lot of
Speaker 1: my buddies, uh, I mean I say my buddies, But
Speaker 1: these kids at these schools are gonna they're gonna be
Speaker 1: jack when they I can say, hey, man, I was
Speaker 1: on meet either pod kidding me, you know. And and
Speaker 1: so if it comes old man talking speaks, let me
Speaker 1: tell you about my fake gains in this Turkey how
Speaker 1: ye with so so yeah, it's it's amazing. But those
Speaker 1: kids are are amazing, and I know they got that opportunity.
Speaker 1: And I think Mason being around this space, even though
Speaker 1: he loves the competition part of it, I think he's
Speaker 1: more interested in the path of you know, media and
Speaker 1: and just the business parts of it and and seeing
Speaker 1: the the pr and the opportunity. Being that he grew
Speaker 1: up around real tree, He grew up around the clothing manufacturers,
Speaker 1: these farm companies, the bow and arrow manufacturs, personalities like yourself, um,
Speaker 1: you know in Fisherman. I think he is more intrigued
Speaker 1: to maybe do something deeper with the people of the
Speaker 1: in the person not necessarily have to be a personality,
Speaker 1: but just I think he really respects the space, and
Speaker 1: so I think that's what he do. But right now
Speaker 1: he's he's really good at singing and playing and I
Speaker 1: and through our working met a lot of country singers
Speaker 1: and they're like, man, you already get your boy, come
Speaker 1: up here and we jam and stuff like, I said, Mason,
Speaker 1: you are to do that? I said, what think of
Speaker 1: about it? Dude? What have you got right out of school?
Speaker 1: What have you got to do? You can get your
Speaker 1: job anything, just scratching up a little a little opportunity
Speaker 1: for for a beer on a Friday night and play
Speaker 1: guitars with people like ire Dean and Red Akins. And
Speaker 1: maybe if Blake comes to town. I said, you know
Speaker 1: you can call in Mason, you hang out. And I said,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't you do that and see where it leaves
Speaker 1: and just have fun, enjoy and learn from the experiences.
Speaker 1: So I am if you want to say, everybody would
Speaker 1: look at me and say, this old redneck is gonna
Speaker 1: be the ultimate conservative. Boy. Get you a job and
Speaker 1: you're gonna go to work. Get this shovel and go
Speaker 1: to work. But and I do want them to work.
Speaker 1: I'm big gonna work ethic. But now's the time because
Speaker 1: once you get married, you got a kid on the way,
Speaker 1: and you got that mortgage. Uh, that's a different day.
Speaker 1: Like I ain't paying for it, get you back back.
Speaker 1: You know, you better figure out how to pay for this.
Speaker 1: And funny you say, a very good friend of mine
Speaker 1: growing up. He followed you know, all on the wild cards, right,
Speaker 1: and he ended up going into the tech industry full time.
Speaker 1: His dad, who just recently retired from the railroad here
Speaker 1: um very similar to to your father's growing up, right,
Speaker 1: It's like, oh boy, oh boy, Well, tech job takes off.
Speaker 1: He ends up getting a big paycheck, has it like
Speaker 1: three months of not working right, and his dad's just
Speaker 1: losing it, and finally has a talk with him and
Speaker 1: he's like, Okay, you did all that. Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: job with the city opening up. Time to get that
Speaker 1: pension there you go, right, and it's just like it's
Speaker 1: still just like yeah, it's like this is concrete. You
Speaker 1: followed the thing. You got a big paycheck. That's neat.
Speaker 1: He's like, but this is what we know as like
Speaker 1: safe that you know, it's funny that brings up in that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know, I'm here, you know, talking and
Speaker 1: y'all asking questions about what I act you have to do.
Speaker 1: But I've often found an interesting because you know, Steve,
Speaker 1: I know you probably run into this. Probably the one
Speaker 1: thing I noticed as getting the chance to shake hands
Speaker 1: and meat hunters across the country is. It's it's like
Speaker 1: a love Hey. They're like, what's up? You know? And
Speaker 1: I've seen I've seen him with Steve and I used
Speaker 1: at nw KEFF last year or the year that last year,
Speaker 1: they had it in there what's up me? D oh?
Speaker 1: And you can tell what they're doing. It's like love you,
Speaker 1: but you know, somebody got to paint this house. Somebody
Speaker 1: still got to work in the concrete business on the bullfloat.
Speaker 1: But hey, good glad, y'all having fun? You know, Hey glad,
Speaker 1: you called a beaver this morning. What you guys call work? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what you got? And so so it's almost like I
Speaker 1: catch myself like hugging them, like, hey, man, I get it.
Speaker 1: I would hate me. I would I would hate me
Speaker 1: too if I'm you. But at the same time, you
Speaker 1: can tell those respect, you know, And that was awesome
Speaker 1: at and so it hit me I thinking, man, there
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a problem. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's parenting or what it is, but I
Speaker 1: feel like the more you love something, the more you
Speaker 1: push it into this conservative very safe and I certainly
Speaker 1: saw it with COVID to where it just hit me
Speaker 1: how afraid fole are of everything? Everything and I mean
Speaker 1: making a living, the insurance or hey, you ain't got
Speaker 1: health insurance, or you ain't got this, you ain't got that,
Speaker 1: and you and I'm thinking, well, first of all, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a praying man and I believe in God. And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, well, you know, you know, there's a certain
Speaker 1: part of this to where I shouldn't worry about this,
Speaker 1: no way, And I understand wherey and planning. But then
Speaker 1: I think we are all kind of raised up to say,
Speaker 1: all right, go to college, get you a good job.
Speaker 1: And in the process of everything, where where are we
Speaker 1: really living and following certain dreams? And I found that
Speaker 1: there was a lot of people that's very frustrated and
Speaker 1: and bitter and almost depressed, not because they didn't make it,
Speaker 1: because they never really even tried. They made it their
Speaker 1: upper middle class making good money. You know, they're going
Speaker 1: to their girls dance recital every year. You know, they're
Speaker 1: coaching tea ball and stuff like that and doing good
Speaker 1: and that is the American dream. But yet they'll shake
Speaker 1: Steve and I hand and like, hey, must be nice.
Speaker 1: But then I want to say, well, you don't realize
Speaker 1: I didn't get ever get the chach I coached tea
Speaker 1: ball for the first time last year. I'm forty eight,
Speaker 1: I got four boys, and last year was the first
Speaker 1: time that I said no enough to things that I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm coaching t ball. I got you know, I got
Speaker 1: a five year old, and and all my other kids
Speaker 1: are seventeen fourteen. I'm gonna coach ball. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: say no to some things. And and so I did
Speaker 1: miss that part of it, you know, I missed. I
Speaker 1: remember people talk about Seinfeld and friends. I never saw.
Speaker 1: I couldn't have told you who in the National Championship
Speaker 1: in the nineties because I was work, I was gone,
Speaker 1: and the Elk camp going anywhere and everywhere. I couldn't
Speaker 1: have told you what a friend's episode was like. So
Speaker 1: the mundane that most moms and dads could sit down
Speaker 1: and get your kids bedy and watch Seinfeld, I didn't
Speaker 1: even know. I didn't even know it exists. And I
Speaker 1: didn't even owe a Super Bowl that might be the
Speaker 1: only NFL game you watch because you're just working in
Speaker 1: your grinding. So I do realize that we're blessed, but
Speaker 1: we did work hard to get here, and we possibly
Speaker 1: could have fell on our face and and and where
Speaker 1: I look at it is sometimes I wish people would
Speaker 1: be more motivated, especially early in life, to just go
Speaker 1: far it just try, because what have you got to lose?
Speaker 1: I never I never had to deal with any of
Speaker 1: that crap from my folks, and um they were my
Speaker 1: dad never. You know, he didn't finish high school. He
Speaker 1: left high school to fighting the war. Um, he was
Speaker 1: just elated and had really overestimated what I had done
Speaker 1: by the time he died. So he was he was
Speaker 1: on like a six month They're like, you have six
Speaker 1: months lived from cancer and I had done one story
Speaker 1: and outside and I've done like two things for field
Speaker 1: and stream and he was dying and we went down
Speaker 1: to Florida to fish. I remember going into a you
Speaker 1: know where you're going to buy like a bucket of shrimp.
Speaker 1: You know, him basically coming in through the door being like,
Speaker 1: have I got a surprise for you guys. He gets
Speaker 1: just mettled in Michigan. He's did three articles and fielding
Speaker 1: streams like you're talking, that's amazing. He was just beside
Speaker 1: himself with excitement. You know, it was nice to not
Speaker 1: have to deal in that garbage. But when you up
Speaker 1: we kind of talked a little bit how you got
Speaker 1: going when you went to start your own thing and
Speaker 1: and do bone collect did you have like burn bridges
Speaker 1: and piss everybody off and everything? They're like, hey, good luck.
Speaker 1: You know what I didn't feel like when I was
Speaker 1: doing it, I was burning bridges. But I think there
Speaker 1: was an optic that maybe I was because I was
Speaker 1: working full time at Realtory and I've had the show,
Speaker 1: a show called Realtrey Road Trips that I just I
Speaker 1: don't even know how I got lucky enough to do
Speaker 1: that show. But it got more around the whole standpoint
Speaker 1: of just the fun and the campfires, and I realized
Speaker 1: that a lot of these personalities were super funny and
Speaker 1: cool and and and back. The NTNN was very starch,
Speaker 1: very perfect. Every hunt scenario is perfect. Everything everybody said
Speaker 1: it was perfect. So I thought that they might be
Speaker 1: a good lane for for the for the fun of
Speaker 1: of hunting in this camp and that venture and so
Speaker 1: um when I pitched that idea to Bill Jordan and
Speaker 1: David Blanton for Outdoor Channel, because Outdoor Channel was brand new,
Speaker 1: and that was when you'd go to the Golden Muse
Speaker 1: Awards and literally there was beer in a bathtub and
Speaker 1: it was in somebody Sweet, you know, and um and
Speaker 1: so at the time, you know, the politics are getting
Speaker 1: kind of strange at t n N and it went
Speaker 1: away at that time. Realtory Our Outdoors was on ESPN
Speaker 1: at the time, and it was very strict. You couldn't
Speaker 1: show any impact shots. Um and and they you could
Speaker 1: like a blood prohibition, very big, like to the point
Speaker 1: to where you couldn't even have your own creative vibe
Speaker 1: or style. How we were blessed. Now we can still
Speaker 1: kind of say this is kind of what I want,
Speaker 1: this is a portrait, and we we produce it and
Speaker 1: paint it and we put it on a network. Even
Speaker 1: what you're doing on Netflix, it's still what you wanna do.
Speaker 1: It's not dictated. Within ESPN would dictated. They told you
Speaker 1: how your show was gonna look. And I always thought
Speaker 1: it was kind of strange. And so I remember early
Speaker 1: on and saying we should do something. We're on Outdoor
Speaker 1: Channel and Bill and David agreed, and so I pitched
Speaker 1: him this idea of that real Tree road trips and
Speaker 1: they said, well, yeah you should, that's one we should produce.
Speaker 1: And they said, I don't know who we get to
Speaker 1: host it. I don't even know if it needs a host,
Speaker 1: but I think if we could just have a spinoff
Speaker 1: show off this TNN show, you know, if we had
Speaker 1: these guests, because I remember, you know, going and have
Speaker 1: a lot of writers, Pat Dirk and being one on.
Speaker 1: We'd all go to hunting camps and stuff and we're
Speaker 1: looking for articles. Remember Jim Shocky would be there, and
Speaker 1: you know, I was it was cool. But obviously we'd
Speaker 1: hunt deer and we'd built a big fire and you know,
Speaker 1: we eat a good food and and so I remember
Speaker 1: there's all this fun stuff happening, and uh, and I
Speaker 1: thought that that could really be a tactful way to
Speaker 1: present the fun and the real camp life. And so
Speaker 1: that was road Trips And so Bill and David said,
Speaker 1: well you host it all right? Well no, I didn't
Speaker 1: pitch this for me to to be on TV um.
Speaker 1: Bill and David were letting me hunt a little bit
Speaker 1: as a reward. That was my Christmas bonus, Like, hey man,
Speaker 1: you know, why don't we let that old kid wont
Speaker 1: he alred to run? Let him go to Texas this
Speaker 1: year and try to shoot a deer. And they's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you got something to tell you. And it'd be like
Speaker 1: a kid, you know, try to get the cracker Jack prize,
Speaker 1: prize out of cracker Jacks. My get go to Incinatus.
Speaker 1: We're gonna let you both hunter deer down there, you know. Man,
Speaker 1: just be so excited. And so I got to hunt
Speaker 1: a little bit. And I was getting a chance to
Speaker 1: do some turkey calling like tips, you know, because I
Speaker 1: know I was getting some on camera. So I wasn't
Speaker 1: like hired as a personality, as highed as a producer
Speaker 1: or editor or whatever, you know, jack of all trades,
Speaker 1: I guess. But when we had come against the wall
Speaker 1: and have a partner or turkey calling partner or something
Speaker 1: around turkey, that's like, we need a good turkey tip
Speaker 1: in this episode. But here's the thing, because but you
Speaker 1: were already like you're already a champion caller, and and
Speaker 1: that kind of led to that. And even before I
Speaker 1: think you'd have gone think had I guess no one knew,
Speaker 1: I would have think you'd gone right into being like
Speaker 1: a forward facing person. Yeah, and I wasn't. I definitely
Speaker 1: what my thinking. I had always been very humble but
Speaker 1: also very confident. You know. It's like there's a fine
Speaker 1: line there is, you know where I never thought much
Speaker 1: about it. It was never on top up of mind, like, man,
Speaker 1: one day, one day, I'm gonna be a hunting show host.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, Man, I hope I get to hunt.
Speaker 1: Oh I'd love to hunt Saskatchewan. God, it would be
Speaker 1: unbelievable to Alaska hunt moves? Are you kidding? Made up?
Speaker 1: Be a dream? And I always think about how could
Speaker 1: I save enough money or how would I get lucky
Speaker 1: to do it? Never did I think I'd get to
Speaker 1: do it and present it on a show and so
Speaker 1: h but I think I think, Um, you know, what
Speaker 1: happened was is as everything got to grow and I
Speaker 1: just got these opportunities to to do things that I
Speaker 1: never dreamed of. And and so for me, I'm still
Speaker 1: humbled and and I pinched myself with it. And I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I was not expecting of it at all. For sure,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I didn't plan it. What year was that?
Speaker 1: What what year was the first uh bone collector you know,
Speaker 1: first bone collector property that came out? It was a
Speaker 1: two thousand seven was when I left Realtrey. And and
Speaker 1: the reason to even getting back to that at the
Speaker 1: road trips that created a good bit of success for
Speaker 1: not only the company but for myself. And so I
Speaker 1: was getting opportunities at that time during road trips, working
Speaker 1: full time as an employee. And Real Tree was a
Speaker 1: pretty big corporation, um, even though it's privately on but
Speaker 1: we had you know, a handbook, you know, HR department,
Speaker 1: and we had policies and parameters of what you could
Speaker 1: and couldn't do. And one of the things you couldn't
Speaker 1: do is is certainly accept any money from any of
Speaker 1: the partners, um from these licensee where a licensee based
Speaker 1: company to where you know, if it was a clothing company, UM,
Speaker 1: they would pay a royalty to put that camel pattern
Speaker 1: on their products. So you know, in your case take
Speaker 1: a first light. They couldn't have paid me to say, Hey,
Speaker 1: why l could you come to an appearance for us
Speaker 1: at Cabella's you know you know which you know like, no,
Speaker 1: I can't accept that money. So what happened was I
Speaker 1: was starting to get all these requests and opportunities mainly
Speaker 1: from the partners or road trips, and I kept bringing
Speaker 1: it to Bill, Jordan and David and they said, man,
Speaker 1: you can't, you can't accept that. You can't accept that money.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, how do we handle this? And even
Speaker 1: Real Try at the time didn't know how to handle it,
Speaker 1: you know, because it was just really exciting, but also like,
Speaker 1: holy cow, I can't do this. This is against the
Speaker 1: company rules. And so I kind of feel like I'd
Speaker 1: like all these guys here to leave the room real quick.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. And so I remember, I remember, um, I'm
Speaker 1: very interested it was, but I remember setting. I remember
Speaker 1: sitting these managers meeting. They have managers meeting every Monday,
Speaker 1: and um, and it was a big enough topic that
Speaker 1: I was getting companies call and I had a guy
Speaker 1: he helped me tremendous. The guy's name was Shawn Perry
Speaker 1: and he was from Endeavor Company. Now Philip Morris Endeavor California,
Speaker 1: you might know sean great guy. And so I mean,
Speaker 1: I get a call like at real Tree on my
Speaker 1: little desk and cubicle, and I said Endeavor and I
Speaker 1: pick it up. He's hey, man, Shawn Perry. I'm an
Speaker 1: agent out in California. Man, what are you doing right away?
Speaker 1: Just cut to the chase. That dude, you wouldn't know it,
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm an agent. I worked with a lot
Speaker 1: of stars and I'm just interested. I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of show. He said, I'm one of the few guys
Speaker 1: out here that hunt. I love to hunt. And um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: and he says, I have talked to this guy. He's
Speaker 1: a great guy. Man, he's a cool cat. And uh
Speaker 1: and anyway, he says, well, what are you making? And
Speaker 1: I said, right down to it? And he said, do
Speaker 1: you have any things people are calling about? And stuff?
Speaker 1: He says, I love Real Tree. I'm a big man
Speaker 1: of Real Tree. And I remember thinking, holy cow, I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, I'm looking on my shoulder like
Speaker 1: I'm I'm on the company phone here, you know. And anyway,
Speaker 1: and he says, man, you need a book, you need this,
Speaker 1: and you should be doing this. He said, I think
Speaker 1: you can do more. And and I said, well, I
Speaker 1: got these couple opportunities. And I said, but I don't
Speaker 1: know how to handle him. I can't do this a
Speaker 1: Real Tree. So well, you would have to leave Real Tree.
Speaker 1: He said, you don't need to go against the corporate policies.
Speaker 1: It is what it is. But you're I think you're
Speaker 1: strong enough. You could be on your own. And so
Speaker 1: I'm like, holy cow, this is a whole another level
Speaker 1: of getting back to the whole family talk. Now working
Speaker 1: in unde fishing, but I got a corporate job, man,
Speaker 1: don't shake that up. And so anyway, he he said,
Speaker 1: we'll send me those contacts, and that day literally I
Speaker 1: sent him over a couple of phone numbers of marketing people.
Speaker 1: He calls me back that day said all of them
Speaker 1: said yes. He said, I got you like a couple
Speaker 1: hun grand if you want to do it as a
Speaker 1: two year deal. And I'm I'm freaking quick, that quick,
Speaker 1: like no sort of talk about what the commission would
Speaker 1: look like. Nothing, he said, I don't. He even told
Speaker 1: me so, I don't need I don't need your money,
Speaker 1: because I think he did minimize it from the standpoint
Speaker 1: he wasn't looking at this kid from Booger Bottom being
Speaker 1: Leonardo DiCaprio. He knew that he spend his time getting
Speaker 1: this film with dream works for him. But you know, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I can get this kid a book deal. I can
Speaker 1: do this, and I can especially when I told him
Speaker 1: as I'm making about fifty a year at the time
Speaker 1: and and uh, which which I was toockled to death,
Speaker 1: but I realized there's more opportunity so right now, you're
Speaker 1: in the spot. Yeah, and and and I'm yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm happy, and I'm in this hell of
Speaker 1: a spot. I don't know how to handle it, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to be too big for my riches,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I go down to the manager's
Speaker 1: meeting one day, smell, I like, talk to you guys
Speaker 1: about something. I got some opportunity, but I don't want
Speaker 1: to you know what, You'll think I'm being ungrateful of
Speaker 1: my opportunity here. And at first it rattled some change
Speaker 1: and they were kind of tough on me, like it
Speaker 1: was pretty hard, like I'm like, man. And then later
Speaker 1: as I started showing to some of the opportunities, it
Speaker 1: was Bill Jordan and said, hey, you gotta just leave Realtory.
Speaker 1: You gotta be your own man. You gotta leave the realstory,
Speaker 1: but we'll support you. And and I'm like, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: he said, but you can't. I can't allow you to
Speaker 1: do this when I can allow other people in the
Speaker 1: company not to do it. He said, So you gotta leave,
Speaker 1: and that means giving up your benefits, You're not coming
Speaker 1: into work every day. And so I left, and my
Speaker 1: first gig was with Gander Mountain and they hired me
Speaker 1: to host this show called We Live Outdoors and uh
Speaker 1: and it was an awesome opportunity and and I made
Speaker 1: good money. And then within a month or two, Realtory
Speaker 1: we come back and we sat down and put a
Speaker 1: subcontracting type of contract together where I was still hosting
Speaker 1: the Realtory road trips. And so from that I was excited.
Speaker 1: I was kind of set. I knew for two years.
Speaker 1: But I also remember, um I created one of the
Speaker 1: things that Ganner Mountain had had me do. They said, look,
Speaker 1: we want to reform at our show and make it
Speaker 1: more around you know, what you think would be cool
Speaker 1: for your personality. And at that time, it seems like
Speaker 1: that there's always these stages in the industry, you know, um,
Speaker 1: you know where where certain things are happening. At that time,
Speaker 1: I felt like we was having to make a whole
Speaker 1: lot of excuse, you know, for for hunting. It was
Speaker 1: weird it was having to do that. So for me
Speaker 1: bone Collector, that was a crazy, almost in your face
Speaker 1: to approach. The reality was it was really wasn't as
Speaker 1: you know this you know, muscle man and high fiving
Speaker 1: and killing everything as as it seemed like it was.
Speaker 1: So it was a little bit of a little trickery
Speaker 1: and the fact that I wanted to almost offend a
Speaker 1: little bit and be in your face, but in reality,
Speaker 1: when you got behind the scenes, you just saw a
Speaker 1: bunch of smiling guys that just had fun and you
Speaker 1: just wanted to be in our camp. So it was
Speaker 1: a little bit of a we make no excuses. Where
Speaker 1: a hunter, where predator. It's the way I was born.
Speaker 1: I'm a bone collector. So that was the school dude,
Speaker 1: a guy in Alabama. I had this idea, and I
Speaker 1: wrote this little creed and and actually all of that. Ironically,
Speaker 1: I put this whole treatment for the show for Gander
Speaker 1: Mountain and we sat down at their board and they
Speaker 1: said it was too racy and they didn't want to
Speaker 1: do it, and they stuck, we live outdoors, and so
Speaker 1: literally right at the meeting, I wasn't even deflated. I
Speaker 1: just thought, well, okay, And then I asked him, I said, well, look,
Speaker 1: would you have a problem if I trademark that myself
Speaker 1: and start it. They said not at all. They thought
Speaker 1: the drawing was raising. Well, they didn't have I didn't
Speaker 1: have the draw and I just told them. I just
Speaker 1: told them this big creative idea I had for Bone Collector.
Speaker 1: And I said, and it wasn't even at the time
Speaker 1: bone Collector, it was that that creed. I said, I think,
Speaker 1: what's happening. I think my exact pitch to them at
Speaker 1: the time was Gander Mountain was a little bit struggling.
Speaker 1: Um and and I felt like they were kind of
Speaker 1: riding the fence. You know, you didn't know if you
Speaker 1: wanted to be kind of more if you want to
Speaker 1: use the word granola, I know that can be offense
Speaker 1: to somebody, but but but do you want to be
Speaker 1: hardcore here? You want to be hardcore there? I felt
Speaker 1: like they were straddling the fences. I think you just
Speaker 1: started just jump into it and be a big corporation
Speaker 1: that really jumps into the fishing and hunting. So they
Speaker 1: couldn't tell if they wanted to go like hike and biking,
Speaker 1: yes they want to be already, or they wanted to
Speaker 1: walk through a bunch of zip off pants get to
Speaker 1: the shotgun section. You're exactly right, and and and I
Speaker 1: was just trying my best not defend, but also just
Speaker 1: trying to do my as creative is to say here's
Speaker 1: what I see as it reflects back to what I
Speaker 1: think and the people I'm meeting doing appearances in your store.
Speaker 1: And I threw him this idea of like, let's just
Speaker 1: make excuses. Let's let gander mount and be the foremost
Speaker 1: hardcore cater to the die hard ice fisherman, to the
Speaker 1: die hard duck hunter waterfowler as well as hiker. But
Speaker 1: we make no excuses for anything we're involved in. And
Speaker 1: so you know, and if I'm your guy, why don't
Speaker 1: we just kinda and with a smile, just say, don't
Speaker 1: worry about it, don't make no excuses who you are.
Speaker 1: This is what you enjoy doing, and it's legal and
Speaker 1: it's safe, and we're putting back and hunting God's renewable
Speaker 1: resources and fishing for him. So that was kind of
Speaker 1: my idea. And so when they said no to it,
Speaker 1: let's just kind of sticking this kind of Manila very
Speaker 1: safe lane. If we Live Outdoors, um, which was a
Speaker 1: pretty good show, but it was like everything else and UM.
Speaker 1: So then I said, hey, you mind if I do it?
Speaker 1: And so I was so busy with with road trips
Speaker 1: and the wee Live Outdoor, I knew that I couldn't
Speaker 1: do the shows myself, and so I knew Nick Mutt
Speaker 1: who was I was gonna I was gonna ask how
Speaker 1: it went like t Bon, like how that Nick was
Speaker 1: a guide out in Wyoming, and I just he and
Speaker 1: I were the same age, and just love the dude. Man.
Speaker 1: He's just a good hunter, a good people person. Obviously
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time with a lot of clients,
Speaker 1: taking them hunting and fishing, and just funny, just funny,
Speaker 1: almost like a Jim Carrey type of guy. And uh,
Speaker 1: he's now married, so he don't cut up as much
Speaker 1: as he used to. He's had to get serious in life.
Speaker 1: But and then t Bone was always He won the
Speaker 1: world championship of boat a s A and he on
Speaker 1: an archery shop right right above where I lived, and
Speaker 1: was probably the foremost bow wrench. And if you had
Speaker 1: a problem with your bow and he was having problems shooting,
Speaker 1: t Bone could have you, I mean, like hitting stuff
Speaker 1: and doing things that you was blown away because he
Speaker 1: was just a phenomenal at understanding the mechanics of bose.
Speaker 1: But he was also this this jolly, fun dude who
Speaker 1: loved to hunt, who obviously wasn't gonna be a Cameron
Speaker 1: Haynes and run to the top of the mountain first.
Speaker 1: But just a great fun of dude. And you know
Speaker 1: he might be standing on the top of the mount
Speaker 1: and got a helicopter rride. When he got there, he
Speaker 1: gave you a Swiss cake roll. Come on steam. You
Speaker 1: don't like his buddy, you want to what you want?
Speaker 1: Were there's candy or Swiss cake roll buddy here and
Speaker 1: you go, you know, and and you just loved him.
Speaker 1: Everybody loved him and um always smiling, and so I thought, man,
Speaker 1: these guys, I think they can help out a lot.
Speaker 1: And there was consummate professionals and knew the space and
Speaker 1: so I talked to them about coming on and helping
Speaker 1: with that. And that's that's really what it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so it was just crazy and amazing and and
Speaker 1: and such a blessing. And it still is. And even
Speaker 1: though I'm a little older now, grayer in my beard,
Speaker 1: I still feel like a twelve year old. I really do.
Speaker 1: I was so excited, so excited to come up here
Speaker 1: and chat with you guys. I mean, I just I
Speaker 1: don't take anything for granted. And uh, you know here
Speaker 1: recently te bon Us, we was Yeah, I don't who
Speaker 1: who when you mentioned that, I didn't know that this
Speaker 1: was I didn't know he was going through that. I know, um,
Speaker 1: right when I come in, right the right, the front desk. Um,
Speaker 1: we were talking about it. He uh. This past summer
Speaker 1: he noticed not that was starting to grow on his leg.
Speaker 1: He's crazy how it happened. I remember he knelt down
Speaker 1: to take a picture of a deer that Nick had shot.
Speaker 1: I think it was in Wisconsin, and we're just gonna
Speaker 1: take a you know, grabbing grand photo with our buddies.
Speaker 1: And when he knelt down in the snow, a stob
Speaker 1: hit him on his shin and like he gave him
Speaker 1: a big bruise, you know, one of those kind of
Speaker 1: stone bruise, and like KAILI and um, like that shouldn't
Speaker 1: have done that. Yeah, that hurt, but it was like
Speaker 1: a quickly an come up and right on that you
Speaker 1: know that there's no room for anything there on that
Speaker 1: bone and it hurts. And um. Well, over time it
Speaker 1: just was a knot that wouldn't go away. Well, this
Speaker 1: past summer it started growing and literally started growing so
Speaker 1: big it popped through his skin from inside to out,
Speaker 1: and it was just a terrible sarcoma that grew, and
Speaker 1: what the hell did they have to do with the
Speaker 1: I don't know and that, and we're still trying to
Speaker 1: figure it out. I guess it's just the circulation and
Speaker 1: that somehow, you know. I don't know how all this
Speaker 1: tumor and cancer starts, but I guess lack of circulation
Speaker 1: certain things and it just becomes. But they mean, I
Speaker 1: know this isn't like a medical show, But is it
Speaker 1: the that revealed the problem? I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's it's wild and and that's why t bon like
Speaker 1: this past October, I noticed he was being real quiet
Speaker 1: and he wasn't saying anything, and he had told me
Speaker 1: I was having some problems with his leg, his right leg.
Speaker 1: And then later we were doing an event up at
Speaker 1: our friend's place, Derek Caraway's got Whittaker gunning up in
Speaker 1: Kentucky and were just having a big promotion and just
Speaker 1: sporting good store fun time and Tibon I noticed that
Speaker 1: he was setting down and the one thing I'd always
Speaker 1: made a commitment to, and I got I got really
Speaker 1: choked up. We did a little podcast talking to t
Speaker 1: Bon is I had made a commitment two when I
Speaker 1: saw that, man, they would actually people show up and
Speaker 1: want to shake our hand, like like you know, Seth
Speaker 1: and I met years ago, and if you and the
Speaker 1: first thing I noticed were all standing. I said, look, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly remember well after the photo for sure, But but
Speaker 1: I remember I told these guys a man, I said,
Speaker 1: we should never I said, I don't think we should
Speaker 1: ever sit down. I said, if some if a grown man,
Speaker 1: thanks enough to come by and shake our hand, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, because that can be hard. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of pride and ego in a man's world. And I said, man,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure if they want a man
Speaker 1: hug of high five will look at trail camp pictures.
Speaker 1: I want to stand right there on this side of
Speaker 1: the table. And and so we made that commitment, and
Speaker 1: I and Tibon and told me, Michael, I'm really worried.
Speaker 1: He said, uh, my leg is really jacked up. They said,
Speaker 1: I can't walk, an't stand real good. He said, I'm
Speaker 1: in a lot of pain, and and he showed me
Speaker 1: some pictures and I'm like, oh my god, t Bon,
Speaker 1: well he's sit down the whole time. So we're doing
Speaker 1: this promotion and Nick and I are standing outside and
Speaker 1: I look back there and t Bones kind of stand
Speaker 1: behind the counter. Man. I got welped up because I
Speaker 1: knew for t Bone to not be out there with
Speaker 1: us and to be able to because he's such a
Speaker 1: people person. He he don't want anybody to be disappointed.
Speaker 1: And uh, and dude, I got you. I knew he's
Speaker 1: going through something. Then later, my wife is an oncology nurse,
Speaker 1: and so he told my wife, he said, don't tell anybody,
Speaker 1: said it's cancerous. And one thing led to another, and
Speaker 1: they quickly knew that there was gonna have to amputate
Speaker 1: his right leg and so to stop the sarcoma. And
Speaker 1: they had found a little nodule and he's long, and
Speaker 1: so they did the typical chemotherapy to to try to
Speaker 1: hopefully that that sarcoma didn't spread to his long and
Speaker 1: and that particular nodule actually shrunk a little bit. And
Speaker 1: so this past Monday he did have the amputation. He's
Speaker 1: in a lot of pain, but his attitude is beyond
Speaker 1: what I can even I don't know that I could
Speaker 1: handle it. And it's it's been so odd to talk
Speaker 1: to Tebon about it, because most of the time, you
Speaker 1: know when a friend calls you with a problem, is
Speaker 1: typically you that motivates them and reminds it could be
Speaker 1: if you call men. It's like Steve, hey, bro, keep
Speaker 1: your head up. You're doing this, and Bro, you know,
Speaker 1: you know you love you know this, And it's kind
Speaker 1: of that motivational And Tebone is calling us and talking
Speaker 1: about the sanputation, what he's going through, and he's having
Speaker 1: to motivate us, you know, like what do you say
Speaker 1: and what do you say? You know, and anyway, he's
Speaker 1: he's doing better, and uh, it really has helped remind
Speaker 1: me of that it's gonna be alright, Yeah, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be all right. I'm doing with this. I have peace
Speaker 1: and you know what, You're gonna be fine. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what he's doing. It's like, it's okay, Michael, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be fine. I'm gonna have one leg. And and and
Speaker 1: we're starting to come around like like our crew we
Speaker 1: we uh and we're just cut ups, you know, just
Speaker 1: goofing off all the time and hard on each other.
Speaker 1: And so like the other day, our producer and Nick
Speaker 1: and I we look and we found him the old
Speaker 1: leg lamp you off Christmas Carol. So we're getting you.
Speaker 1: Hope you don't hear this before I get it to him,
Speaker 1: but we're definitely, you know, want to get him stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Remember we're sitting here and someone named Hillary
Speaker 1: came in the door and I said, I missed. Yes,
Speaker 1: she's from that town. Are you kidding me? And that
Speaker 1: house is a museum, no way, the Christmas Story House
Speaker 1: is a museum with that lamp in the window, Like
Speaker 1: you can go there and it's like there's the house
Speaker 1: on the street with the lamp from the window. I
Speaker 1: would love to say I love that. I don't even like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the hell I thought it was
Speaker 1: a fictitious town. Maybe it is, but either way that
Speaker 1: how you still go to wear that where they shot
Speaker 1: in video? Yeah, the whole thing. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that guy is still down to the basement beating on
Speaker 1: the beating on the cole for so, I don't want
Speaker 1: to get I know this is fresh. I don't wanna
Speaker 1: get you graphic, but you know how much look a
Speaker 1: lot of his leg they had to amputate middle of
Speaker 1: thigh so way up. And is he gonna get uh yeah,
Speaker 1: like with with a foot and everything on. I think
Speaker 1: so I think so he's t Bone is very much
Speaker 1: a thorough detailed guy. So he does a lot of
Speaker 1: research and he'll be ranching on that leg. Oh man,
Speaker 1: he will. He'll have something like robo man. I'm sure
Speaker 1: Puts probably will. There's no telling, but um but yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. But then I've heard too that there's you know,
Speaker 1: and again maybe maybe somebody can comment, you know, and
Speaker 1: let us know. But I'd always heard too that there
Speaker 1: was a weight limit on a prosthetic, like you know
Speaker 1: that somebody says two hundred feet pounds, but I don't
Speaker 1: know the technology. But if anybody's unaware, yeah, and he
Speaker 1: feels pretty confident that. But like most of us men,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, the way I've always handled tough
Speaker 1: times is I just minimize it and say, hey man,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be good. And so I think Tibon is
Speaker 1: doing some of that. But man, his attitude and just
Speaker 1: it's been catastrophic in one way, but the love and
Speaker 1: the team has never been bigger because it it really
Speaker 1: like I was walking another day to squirrel hunting by
Speaker 1: myself and literally got choked up, man, and I got
Speaker 1: just thinking of not just with t Bon, but just
Speaker 1: everybody and all these campfires and all these fishing and
Speaker 1: just and dude, it just hit me hard, like, man,
Speaker 1: you know, I've been blessed to take some big animals,
Speaker 1: you know, and some of them I score, most of
Speaker 1: them I haven't. But what amazing adventures from from Africa
Speaker 1: to all over the world to all over the country
Speaker 1: that no way I was supposed to get to do that.
Speaker 1: But not just be there, but the people I met
Speaker 1: that I learned from that understand better their value of
Speaker 1: hunting and outdoors and being a conservationist to to my
Speaker 1: take on things, and then it's just amazing. And for
Speaker 1: me that was the biggest trophy. And one of those
Speaker 1: trophies is just all those fun times with t Bon
Speaker 1: just being the big guy that could take a joke,
Speaker 1: that could give a joke, that you can never piss
Speaker 1: him off, you can never not make him smile. It
Speaker 1: always had a positive attitude and and it just made
Speaker 1: me just love him even more, but not just him,
Speaker 1: just all my hunting buddies. And he kind of hit
Speaker 1: home because we can all lose folks. Man. We get
Speaker 1: so busy, we're running and going and then I think, man,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just you know, you gotta stop. And what's
Speaker 1: they'll saying, smell of roses and so that that definitely
Speaker 1: happened with this, and that the outpournal love across the
Speaker 1: space and just social media te bon. Every time he
Speaker 1: gets to talk about he starts crying, not because he's
Speaker 1: got cancer, because he just didn't even know he had
Speaker 1: that many people loved him and that would be there
Speaker 1: if he calls. So that was pretty phenomenal. When he's
Speaker 1: all up in batter, we should have him come up
Speaker 1: on the show. He would love he would love that.
Speaker 1: I'll make sure he brings his leg land when he comes.
Speaker 1: And we've already started cutting up like we worked with
Speaker 1: third Good Boots and and uh and I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: we literally went from crying on the podcasts with t Bone,
Speaker 1: big questions, what we're gonna do with all these right
Speaker 1: foot at through a good boot. So you know, we
Speaker 1: we you know, what's the old saying to keep trying
Speaker 1: to laugh, keep from crying, And that's that's what we've
Speaker 1: been going through the last week or so. But he's
Speaker 1: doing good. And and definitely anybody that's made a comment
Speaker 1: or even listening here and watching, thank you all man.
Speaker 1: It's you know it. The love has been so amazing
Speaker 1: to see and feel so thank for all the prayers
Speaker 1: it's been. It's been cool. Uh. We joked about it earlier,
Speaker 1: the peak in farm. Yeah, Um, is that like a
Speaker 1: Legit is that like a way out for you in
Speaker 1: the end, you know what when you kick back like man,
Speaker 1: when I'm sixty five. That's what I'm doing right now,
Speaker 1: based on the money I've made on it, which has
Speaker 1: not been enough to even see the light in that,
Speaker 1: I would say no, but but I do think. I
Speaker 1: do think I'm learning. It's just like anything else. I'm
Speaker 1: learning to figure out a way to hopefully make a profit.
Speaker 1: And uh, I think if anything, it's been a it's
Speaker 1: been a nice something to to jump into to try
Speaker 1: to master and learn and grow and and kind of
Speaker 1: a d stress to be honest with that part of it.
Speaker 1: I've loved, Like you know, I too love the trap
Speaker 1: as I know you do. And for me, trapping is
Speaker 1: a little different than hunting. It really is such a
Speaker 1: stress reliever for me to go trap. And um, but
Speaker 1: if you like being a twelve year old and and
Speaker 1: have fun right the toys when you get into that,
Speaker 1: I was just down in Sacramento Valley and they have
Speaker 1: a header that goes down in between the tree rows
Speaker 1: has got two big arms that are triangles with the
Speaker 1: spinning disk blade on the end of each tip of
Speaker 1: the triangle, and it goes down the rods and and
Speaker 1: prunes the trees, you know. And my first thought was,
Speaker 1: why isn't that on any of these stupid zombie movies.
Speaker 1: And my second thought was, I really, I really want
Speaker 1: to get in that and run up. I know, I
Speaker 1: know that is fun the toys. What's the nut that?
Speaker 1: Um everybody's always talking about how water consumptive must not
Speaker 1: be a pecan, right pecans? And no, I think Alma
Speaker 1: is like the California gallons of water for every holme
Speaker 1: or whatever. I don't know what it is, but can
Speaker 1: take a lot of you. They take a lot of water.
Speaker 1: I want to, but I don't know. You're growing them
Speaker 1: in the state that has a lot of water, though,
Speaker 1: well a lot of my my orchard is not irrigated. So,
Speaker 1: and believe it or not, last year we got so
Speaker 1: much right in the South, I got too much water.
Speaker 1: So you're not dumping any water, and I'm not dumping
Speaker 1: any water. So maybe that's your marketing thing. Maybe it is.
Speaker 1: And if people are throwing out how water consumptive it
Speaker 1: is coming out of the Imperial Valley or coming out
Speaker 1: of California, you should just have it be like um
Speaker 1: wid Dell's nine your game he can on a prayer. Yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: I think you need to have it be that like Calistan.
Speaker 1: You need to happy that you buy a little ship
Speaker 1: in the bag, a lot going ship for peakans. I
Speaker 1: could go out to the ultra Southern voice. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: y'all line up if you won't pick hands come from
Speaker 1: straight God's bounty for harm brain because God saw it
Speaker 1: fitting small batch artisan nine. My buddy Ronella only aged
Speaker 1: meat in these prayer pecans, that's right. And you you'd
Speaker 1: be like, if you think there's not enough peacans in
Speaker 1: this bag, it's because we had to make room for
Speaker 1: this nice handwritten note. Like the story. I could get
Speaker 1: the picture it and get seth and out of sign
Speaker 1: it and like, hey, he can started here like nowadays
Speaker 1: every energy bar when you read the bag, it has
Speaker 1: like the story. Yeah, so it'll be like peacans on
Speaker 1: the prayer began when I made a realization about water
Speaker 1: consumption in the American, and I thought to myself, I
Speaker 1: could do better. I could do that. I can do better.
Speaker 1: Are those the best tasting squirrels? The Peakan eaters? You
Speaker 1: know what they are for? To taste? I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I can't tell a big difference, but but
Speaker 1: psychologically it's got to be. Yeah, I feel, And maybe
Speaker 1: that's a whole another thing I could get into organic
Speaker 1: squirrel pecan pecan fed squirrels. They say that would ducks
Speaker 1: are the best tasting ducks because they eat so many
Speaker 1: nuts on their migration. So imagine there's something similar with squirrels.
Speaker 1: I imagine they would be and I do think, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, getting back into really for sure what Steve
Speaker 1: specializing is. I have certainly noticed the different that animals
Speaker 1: in certain regions definitely tastes better. Like you know, you
Speaker 1: shoot a white tail or mule deer that's been eating
Speaker 1: a lot of alfalfa, there's a noticeable difference, and that
Speaker 1: versus a sage mule deer versus you know, even ilk
Speaker 1: uh in our white tail around home, like in Montana,
Speaker 1: were hunt in the Milk River. I got those white tail.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can shoot ten deer in Georgia illegally,
Speaker 1: So it's not like I hurt for meat. But every
Speaker 1: time I'm in Montana, I always fly my meat back
Speaker 1: because it's just the best. It's just such. It's like
Speaker 1: if it's the closest to grain fed beef. It feels
Speaker 1: like to eat with your eyes. Yeah, first, rat eat
Speaker 1: with your eyes first. When you cut open a deer
Speaker 1: that's been in an alfa offa field and it's just
Speaker 1: like overflowing with fat, your brain and immediately commits to
Speaker 1: the fact that you're like, this is gonna be the
Speaker 1: best testing deers, right, yeah, we can. We can vouch
Speaker 1: for mallards that has spent three weeks in the millet field.
Speaker 1: They were better, right, I mean yeah, when they get
Speaker 1: like I've seen them as the fat Yeah, eating hogs.
Speaker 1: I Marrow was in Savannah hunting hogs. I remember the
Speaker 1: old time where I was there. But he said one year,
Speaker 1: he said, these hogs ain't gonna be fitting neat This
Speaker 1: year it's been real drying. Theyd been eating a lot
Speaker 1: of snails out in the coast and um in anyway,
Speaker 1: and he said this year. I went back to this year,
Speaker 1: they're fat and they've been eating acre and he said
Speaker 1: take as many home as you can, so I did,
Speaker 1: and he was right that that sometimes, you know, whild
Speaker 1: hawk can be kind of gamey, you know, decently gamey.
Speaker 1: These were like the ones I remember my pap all
Speaker 1: raising up, you know and killing on the first frosty day,
Speaker 1: and I'm like whole I was mad that I didn't
Speaker 1: bring more like because there was a noticeable difference than
Speaker 1: forging on acorns. And then he had a bunch of
Speaker 1: corn feeders versus them in that hungry because of the
Speaker 1: lack of acrons on this particular area in island that
Speaker 1: we were hunting on that they had to forge out
Speaker 1: there for snails and different things out there. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't know what's that in Italy? Don't they produce um?
Speaker 1: Isn't there like a ham or the only the pigs
Speaker 1: only to eat acorns? Really, I can't think what the
Speaker 1: hell it is though, But then they like cure it
Speaker 1: and all that, like a Serranos, like some kind of
Speaker 1: Serrano ham. I don't know. There's another angle for your pecans. Hey,
Speaker 1: we learned hogs on a prayer. Hey, Mike, Mike, talk
Speaker 1: about tell about how you're so so country that you're
Speaker 1: like trying to outgrow eating. Yeah, it is funny. It's funny. Uh,
Speaker 1: even speaking to t Bone, I grew up so dame country,
Speaker 1: like you know, I didn't even realize I did until
Speaker 1: and you hit the nail on the head Steve, when
Speaker 1: you were talking about how stereotypes of say us that
Speaker 1: hunt whether you're in rural Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Georgia, Alabama,
Speaker 1: Missippi wherever, we also had stereotype of New York City
Speaker 1: or say l A. And then I realized the first
Speaker 1: time I go, I had the most fun ever, you know, like, dude,
Speaker 1: this is pretty cool. I remember going to Las Vegas
Speaker 1: the first time, and I'm like, you know, holy cow,
Speaker 1: it's pretty surreal and cool. You know, some things I
Speaker 1: didn't like and people smoking cigarettes. Yeah, this is crazy. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go see that Michael Jackson. So man, I
Speaker 1: think fifty dollars, but it's fun. Or go see O
Speaker 1: and these these Broadway shows. And so I realized that, man,
Speaker 1: there's room for all of us to grow. But um,
Speaker 1: I grew up so country. I didn't. I didn't know
Speaker 1: about those things. I knew about what I knew, and
Speaker 1: it was so funny even eating wild game like my papa. Man,
Speaker 1: he was a big time he wouldn't. I never thought
Speaker 1: of him as a hunter. But he made a little
Speaker 1: corn liquor and he sold it and and he only
Speaker 1: kind of lived off the land. I'd never remember him
Speaker 1: having a job. This is your grandpa. Yeah, my grandpa
Speaker 1: completely illegally, but I knew it was not yea. But
Speaker 1: how ironically, the chief of police in Manchester would come
Speaker 1: back from old guy named Willie Starring. He'd be down
Speaker 1: there buying, buying corn liquor, you know, and I'd say
Speaker 1: he put in his car, Hey blue Boy. They called
Speaker 1: me blue Boy because that was the first blue, blue
Speaker 1: eyed grand young and you know, hey blue boy, putting
Speaker 1: a little to Mason Jars the yeah conference, skating some
Speaker 1: liquor from the papa. And and so he taught me
Speaker 1: a lot about like I remember the first turtle traps
Speaker 1: we ever had out fish baskets. He used to have
Speaker 1: quail basket hardcore hardcore, but never did he do it
Speaker 1: for sport, like I mean, no, no, he stuttered real
Speaker 1: bad and no, no, all Blue boy, Uh, come on down.
Speaker 1: Let's now, let's go check the traps. And so we'd
Speaker 1: go and it was. I remember going bass fishing with
Speaker 1: him and stuff like that, and he would catch every
Speaker 1: once in a while in a trap, we'd catch a possum.
Speaker 1: What possum will come back and he'd start feeding the corn.
Speaker 1: He'd feed out this possum or coon and we eat it.
Speaker 1: And so what's funny was like, uh, he changed his
Speaker 1: diet and completely changed us diet. Like he'd take a
Speaker 1: coon or possum and he had this like a rabbit
Speaker 1: pin and you might be two or three coons in
Speaker 1: there at any given time, or a possum and he
Speaker 1: would feed it. He'd feed it from table scraps to
Speaker 1: like corn bread. I never feed him corn bread. And
Speaker 1: you know, possum obviously come to them. He cand feed
Speaker 1: him out for a couple of months and he could
Speaker 1: kill them and then eat them, just like just like
Speaker 1: the domestic pig. He had to feel. So I learned
Speaker 1: a lot about things and and also another thing, he
Speaker 1: was so fun and a lot of things he did illegal,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know it was illegal. Like we had
Speaker 1: quail in Georgia and he would have quail baskets out
Speaker 1: and we'd catch a whole cubby and it's completely illegal.
Speaker 1: But looking back, man, that night we would equail like
Speaker 1: we had all equal that night. Or we'd go fishing.
Speaker 1: And my papa, I'd never seen him in my life
Speaker 1: throw a bass back, never like a large amount. I mean,
Speaker 1: son of gonna. We went back scaled that sucker, and
Speaker 1: and he would never he never was freeze. He put
Speaker 1: it in um old tupperware bowl and had water, and
Speaker 1: he put salt in it. Just leave him soap and water.
Speaker 1: And not only would he cook him, but he uh,
Speaker 1: he was with a woman he wasn't. He married. Her
Speaker 1: name was Claudine, which is country, and held us just
Speaker 1: like a dollar. Pardon movie, Claudine, you're gonna take care
Speaker 1: of me. It just sounds like food. Come onto my
Speaker 1: grandma's house, Claudine. Okay, we're gonna eat good tonight. But
Speaker 1: he'd have him fish in a in a tupperware bowl,
Speaker 1: and we have four or five baths in there. And
Speaker 1: if it wasn't just if it's just him or Claudine,
Speaker 1: he'd take about two or three and he cooked him.
Speaker 1: He'd leave other in a bowl, and so to eat
Speaker 1: from him, we'd have goat milk in there. So I
Speaker 1: grew up eating some of this stuff with my poppa
Speaker 1: to realize that I did like deer and boy, I
Speaker 1: was gonna get me a good job so I could
Speaker 1: buy me a piece of chicken. So some of it
Speaker 1: was good and some of it. Like to this day,
Speaker 1: I cannot eat goat cheese. I can go to a
Speaker 1: fancy restaurant and I'm like, man, I have goat cheese,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, no, because I grew up smelling woman.
Speaker 1: You know, having goat milk. It ain't nothing worse if
Speaker 1: you don't know what's getting into them. Poor a big
Speaker 1: old chug, you know, goat milk over your fruit loops
Speaker 1: in the morning. Man, this this ain't I don't think
Speaker 1: this is that homogenized. You know. I tell everybody, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, no matter how good it is at the end, yeah,
Speaker 1: when it kind of like leaves your your mouth, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I taste goat dust, Yeah you do. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like eating have Alena. If you can eat a burrito
Speaker 1: and you ever, because I've seen you on your show,
Speaker 1: y'all eat have Alena stuff and then you eat it
Speaker 1: and it's good, and then all of a sudden, it'll
Speaker 1: be like two days later, it's like you feel it.
Speaker 1: You know. So again, my daughter I recently she was
Speaker 1: eating some McDonald's french fries. Later she commented that, um,
Speaker 1: she's like, how come when you burp up the food,
Speaker 1: it's always the good parts that you taste. I'm like,
Speaker 1: no one's ever observe that she associates it with mc burp.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, you know that might be like
Speaker 1: your own private experience. Have you ever seen what daddy
Speaker 1: tried to carry out? Uh? We one time, speaking of
Speaker 1: belt and stuff up, we were floating the river for
Speaker 1: ducks one time for a day and we had someone
Speaker 1: had taken a dry bag and put all the lunch ships.
Speaker 1: My buddy Eric put all the lunch ship in the
Speaker 1: dry bag, but also put um uh, not a fuel canister,
Speaker 1: but like you know, the white gas. Remember everybody use
Speaker 1: white gas for camp stoves because it's the wintertime. So
Speaker 1: he throws the white gas can in and the food
Speaker 1: and the sole all in the same rubber dry bag,
Speaker 1: and that white gas got out. Oh my god, and
Speaker 1: you could kind of like eat that. You'd sort of faintly. No,
Speaker 1: there's like a what it's almost like you're smelling white
Speaker 1: gas vault eating. But I'm not kiding you, man, I
Speaker 1: don't know what it was for hours afterwards, burping up
Speaker 1: like purely clear like it was so it felt like
Speaker 1: you could blow flame balls. Really the way that white
Speaker 1: gas whatever concentrate and belch back up and it was
Speaker 1: like you're like breathing out white gas fume. That is nuts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I cannot smell that jump, you know, like if you
Speaker 1: get like a super sick on like Canadian Hunter when
Speaker 1: you're sixteen, you can never smell. You can never smell
Speaker 1: Canadian Hunter again when I smell white gas. Still this day,
Speaker 1: I still think of that, Still think of that. True amazing,
Speaker 1: you know, because you see all this stuff about food
Speaker 1: and packaging, and you know now they're big on the
Speaker 1: bottle water and the plastic bottle you know, could cause
Speaker 1: cancer or whatever. It seems like everything calls cancer. But
Speaker 1: it was funny because the kids, you know, Halloween, I
Speaker 1: remember they had a bunch of peppermints and a couple
Speaker 1: like Reese's those little you know, Halloween pumpkin egg Reese's it. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm just like I got a weak spot for them.
Speaker 1: I gotta eat it. But I remember just the other day,
Speaker 1: one had been sitting and Dow and I think, man,
Speaker 1: this this thing's got enough preservative. It survived at the
Speaker 1: landfield and still in this package. Like I'm eating this sucker,
Speaker 1: but it's been in a can like a peppermint, and
Speaker 1: when I ate it, it it tastes like a peppermint peanut butter.
Speaker 1: H I think, wait a minute, if all this is
Speaker 1: air tight, I find that odd there do that? So
Speaker 1: maybe kind of that theory is correct, you know, you
Speaker 1: if it's around something just is the coffee this's in
Speaker 1: this cup? Is it pulling from this whatever? I don't know,
Speaker 1: but and I've never been one of those guys to
Speaker 1: think much about it, but to be all paranoid. But
Speaker 1: the term now is off gassing. It's off your furniture,
Speaker 1: off gases and poisons you. But also I think the
Speaker 1: product line of the farm's expanding. Yeah, yeah, I got peppermint,
Speaker 1: uh peanut, haven't met flavored prayer pace On the back
Speaker 1: of the story, You'll be like, one day I had
Speaker 1: my peppermint's mixed up with my what's what's the pepper
Speaker 1: peanut cup? Exactly? So uh, we're two things. You're gonna
Speaker 1: stick around for trivia? Yeah, I'll tell you, man, I'm
Speaker 1: excited about that. I don't get too excited because here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Guests, I don't know why it's I'm developing
Speaker 1: the thing. Guests don't do well. They suck at it easily,
Speaker 1: and I'm starting to feel like, um, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't want to say, I've kind of already sat. You
Speaker 1: could be jumping the gun here. You might smoke it.
Speaker 1: But I'm starting to feel like we buy it. There's
Speaker 1: like an osmotic cause at a word, what's what's? Can
Speaker 1: I get this before we go into it? And maybe
Speaker 1: it intrigue somebody come see how the dumb Georgia redneck
Speaker 1: does on this particular trivia. But what is the subject
Speaker 1: lines at all? Hunting and fish? I feel it's all
Speaker 1: hunting fishing stuff, and I feel like it's spread out
Speaker 1: around the country across discipline. But then there'll be people
Speaker 1: that come in like Jay Scott. I think Jay Scott
Speaker 1: is like encyclopedic, yeah, knowledge about he's been like a
Speaker 1: guide for a million years fishes hunts, right, what do
Speaker 1: you get? I think he got zero. He's got a
Speaker 1: real narrow focus of like question in defense of our guests,
Speaker 1: gave you a run for the money. He came in second.
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson beat me, gave beat I think he came
Speaker 1: in third place. Tucker was pretty good in a hunting stuff. Man,
Speaker 1: he beat me. He did well. Really there was a
Speaker 1: question where he was the only person get it right. Okay,
Speaker 1: never mind, we'll see, we'll see. I'm gonna say, that's
Speaker 1: what you shoot for beating Tucker. Now man we um
Speaker 1: you'll notice when we put him up the trivia Shilds,
Speaker 1: we decided to go Roman numerals, which is boring right now,
Speaker 1: but we were talking about when we get into a
Speaker 1: lot of them, it'll be like the super Bowl where
Speaker 1: you can't tell what super Bowl it is. You said
Speaker 1: to trust it is a lot it's super Bowl like
Speaker 1: xx V. Why you know? So either way, never mind,
Speaker 1: because Spencer just presented a lot of information to suggest
Speaker 1: there's not like a guest curse, and I think that
Speaker 1: it would be fairer in future Spencer, when considering a guest,
Speaker 1: maybe like lean their way a little bit like when
Speaker 1: raising peakns Now, I made this trivia, yes, spacing of
Speaker 1: peak and trees is a four questions like that? Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: I made this episode or I made this trivia yesterday
Speaker 1: and a couple of questions. I was like, what else
Speaker 1: gonna get this? Right? Very kind? Now I'm even more
Speaker 1: nervous and anxious and excited. Yeah, like you're throwing You're
Speaker 1: telling everybody you're throwing him a bone, and if he bombs,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be like geez, they even leaned his way,
Speaker 1: They leaned his way, and he's still bombed. Okay, Uh
Speaker 1: tell us, uh tell everybody the best way to go
Speaker 1: find bone Collector, to find you to find your peak
Speaker 1: hands on a prayer, Yeah, exactly. Um, well, obviously social
Speaker 1: media you can go to a bone collector. We're on Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 1: obviously I'm on Twitter, and then also just bone collect
Speaker 1: dot com. So you guys got a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: on YouTube, we do. We got a lot on YouTube.
Speaker 1: You know, we still air on Outdoor Channel and uh
Speaker 1: obviously every nine o'clock Eastern time we air or you
Speaker 1: guys libraries on my Outdoor TV two. Yes, we're on
Speaker 1: MOTV bone Collector there, and then we got some other
Speaker 1: stuff that we're doing over on wait Point as well.
Speaker 1: Just just just trying to do our best to kind
Speaker 1: of spread the good word of the outdoors and having
Speaker 1: fun with it. Everybody knows us for everybody. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's uh, it's there, y'all. Check it out for sure,
Speaker 1: we'll trag them down. Um okay, trivia game on al right, okay,
Speaker 1: so stick around, stay on the Meat Eater podcast feed,
Speaker 1: and you will see game on Suckers Volume three very soon,
Speaker 1: featuring Michael Waddell, the Pecan Farmer