Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukleman.
Speaker 2: This is a production of the bear Grease podcast called
Speaker 2: The bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper,
Speaker 2: and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast,
Speaker 2: presented by f HF Gear, American Maid purpose built hunting
Speaker 2: and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as
Speaker 2: the place as we explore.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bear Grease Render. This is This is
Speaker 1: our annual annual show that we do at the World's
Speaker 1: Championship Squirrel Cookoff. This is uh, it was so where
Speaker 1: we're here with with it a live a live.
Speaker 3: Audience out twelve or fifteen thousand of our closest friends.
Speaker 1: And right watching watching the Render.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: What a what A what a group of guests.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 1: We've got the world's greatest small game hunter, Kevin Murphy.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: Hey, Kevin's always the only one on the podcast that
Speaker 1: opened carries, which I always appreciate and every time I
Speaker 1: see it, I'm like, why did I not do that? So,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna get back to the outfit. We've got
Speaker 1: Josh and we've got Joe Wilson, who's the founder, Headman,
Speaker 1: head Honcho, Chief l Capitan of the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff,
Speaker 1: who started this long time ago with a lie which
Speaker 1: we've already heard about, but it's grown into so much.
Speaker 1: We've got Brent Reeves back from wherever he's been just
Speaker 1: swamp to South Arkansas. Yeah, good to see old Brent
Speaker 1: black a while. And then we've got the man I
Speaker 1: know is Cajun cooking with Cajun or cooking with this
Speaker 1: and man, it's good to have you, Audrey. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just call you Cajun. I don't even need to
Speaker 1: know your name.
Speaker 6: Hey, it's a lot better than what a lot of
Speaker 6: people call me.
Speaker 1: First of all, I want to know, like, why are
Speaker 1: you here, Cajun? What have you been doing? Were you cooking?
Speaker 6: Yeah? So we I came in, of course, we came
Speaker 6: in with a team and uh we did some squirrel
Speaker 6: ravolus with a vodka sauce. And while they were doing that,
Speaker 6: I did about a fifteen gallon jumbala to giveaway to
Speaker 6: kind of just feed the people and bring bring people in,
Speaker 6: you know for the calls. I mean, so they put
Speaker 6: a lot of work into these shows, and anything we
Speaker 6: can do to help we love coming out and help them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Cajun tell people like what do you what
Speaker 1: do you do? Like you got like a million people
Speaker 1: that follow you on Instagram maybe more, but like, who
Speaker 1: the heck are you and what do you do?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 6: So, unfortunately, I'm just a guy that moved from Louisiana
Speaker 6: at Arkansas and moved out off the grid to kind
Speaker 6: of get away from everything, and.
Speaker 1: Somehow that didn't work for you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I would say, don't follow in my footsteps if
Speaker 6: you want to stay in the woods and not being known,
Speaker 6: because uh yeah, I just you know, living on the
Speaker 6: grid and cooking on open fire and just living. And
Speaker 6: my son decided to be fun to make a video
Speaker 6: and took my phone one night and downloaded TikTok on
Speaker 6: it posted the video and the next day I had
Speaker 6: twelve hundred followers. And here we are today, and you know,
Speaker 6: we've got a lot going on. We're traveling a lot,
Speaker 6: cooking and going to a lot of different events and
Speaker 6: just living a dream.
Speaker 7: I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, man, it's good to have you. We've met before, yeah,
Speaker 1: several times. But Kevin Murphy, Hey, where have you been man?
Speaker 1: What have you been doing?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 7: Let's see, this week, I've been out on the job
Speaker 7: site and taking you've actually been working. I've been working. Yeah,
Speaker 7: I've been working on a heavy highway job doing nuclear
Speaker 7: density testing. So wow, now there's your warning.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's the week before that spare time, I was
Speaker 3: at an.
Speaker 7: Archeological dig looking for some of the first Americans that
Speaker 7: paleo hunters that hunted the mastadons in mammoths. So we
Speaker 7: dug where we're doing that northern Kentucky, on the edge
Speaker 7: of the last glaciation, the Wisconsin, so the glaciers came down. Basically,
Speaker 7: you can draw a line along the Ohio River and
Speaker 7: that's where the glaciers ended, and so like sixty miles
Speaker 7: as a crow flys from my house was the glaciers
Speaker 7: fifteen thousand years ago. So in northern Kentucky there was
Speaker 7: a gathering of mammoths and mastadons, one of the few
Speaker 7: places in the world that you find both species at
Speaker 7: the same spot. We dug up a bottom tusk of
Speaker 7: a mastodon, which I didn't know at that time that
Speaker 7: masadons had bottom tusk, and it was carved in the
Speaker 7: shape of a penis.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, so quickly, but I didn't know where we
Speaker 5: were going there.
Speaker 1: So very so so did they know that the site
Speaker 1: was there.
Speaker 7: Yes, this is a site where Daniel Boone crossed the
Speaker 7: river with his son and like one hundred and fifty
Speaker 7: militia men ten months after the Revolutionary War was over.
Speaker 7: And he said it was a bad idea to cross.
Speaker 7: There's a ford there on a licking river that you
Speaker 7: could wait across right now. But they crossed that went
Speaker 7: up into the hills and they were met by one
Speaker 7: hundred British and about two hundred American Indians. Like I said,
Speaker 7: ten months after the Revolutionary War was over, the British
Speaker 7: were still trying to take charge of the Northwest Territory.
Speaker 7: They got ambush. Daniel Boone's son died in his arms there.
Speaker 7: They made it back across the river licks little blue licks,
Speaker 7: the battle little licks.
Speaker 1: So the mastadon parts were at the blue lix.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we're sitting there digging in a mud hole looking
Speaker 7: at this river. Lick is a salt lick, salt lick. Yeah,
Speaker 7: that's why the animals were there to begin with. That's
Speaker 7: why the mastodons and the mammos were there because there
Speaker 7: was water available. There was salt there that attracted them.
Speaker 7: They was right on the edge of the Glacier's ideal
Speaker 7: climate and it's just all.
Speaker 1: So you You were there with archaeologists from where.
Speaker 7: From all over the country.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 7: One guy was there and he was gathering cosmic dust
Speaker 7: to see if he could prove that the the hit
Speaker 7: the Earth and might have changed the climate. Another guy
Speaker 7: that was there is, I know that you've been doing
Speaker 7: some water witching thing, but you got to have this
Speaker 7: guy on your show. He's world renowned water witcher.
Speaker 1: Oh really, And I.
Speaker 7: Spent I didn't get to spend any time with him
Speaker 7: this year, but two years ago I did and I
Speaker 7: asked him. He says, how did you learn to do this?
Speaker 7: He says, you know, my mother in law's well went
Speaker 7: dry and a guy came over and he witched this well.
Speaker 7: I saw him do that, and I told myself he's
Speaker 7: a science teacher. He says, I'm going to teach myself
Speaker 7: to do that. And he's been all over the world
Speaker 7: finding water a lot of times for Ninja's speople that
Speaker 7: the water system's gone dry whatever. And he was out
Speaker 7: west and he was working on his spot and the
Speaker 7: water had dried up, and he was with some some
Speaker 7: American Indians and they said, well, the COODI is a
Speaker 7: spot where there's water. He said, Okay, where's the cowdy? Well,
Speaker 7: we don't know. It's just always been called the Cowoti.
Speaker 7: So he spends a week out there looking around witching.
Speaker 7: He finds water. He looks up on the ridge and
Speaker 7: there's a silhouette of a cowdy's head. So he taught
Speaker 7: that her contribe that had lost their heritage. He brought
Speaker 7: it back to him.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 5: Oh you better not ask him what he did three
Speaker 5: weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's interesting, that's interesting. Hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say one thing about water witching because you brought it up.
Speaker 1: After all the water witching stuff. The best, the best
Speaker 1: commentary that I had on it was a guy said, clay,
Speaker 1: water witching works if you believe it works, And I
Speaker 1: was like, he's probably right.
Speaker 4: He's probably right.
Speaker 1: So well, Kevin, that's uh uh, you've been doing a lot.
Speaker 4: That's great.
Speaker 1: Did you cook today?
Speaker 7: I did not cook. I just smoothed around.
Speaker 1: You were just here.
Speaker 7: Talking to the kids and everybody.
Speaker 1: So what about the hat?
Speaker 7: You know, this is my rabbit killing hat. This is
Speaker 7: this is a rabbit with a swamp rabbit skull on
Speaker 7: the thing.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a swamp rabbit skull.
Speaker 7: Until I can get my predator, got dogs going and
Speaker 7: get me a bobcat man. This is gonna have to do.
Speaker 7: Fill in that that. I figure's gonna take me two years.
Speaker 1: Maybe this has been dyed. Yeah, yeah, they don't have
Speaker 1: a swamp ra It was like that up in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure. It turns out that got massive on lower.
Speaker 4: Tusks that are yeah way lower.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty low, pretty low. Interesting. Okay, did you just
Speaker 1: squirrel today?
Speaker 7: I did not have any squirrel.
Speaker 1: I haven't had okay so far, so Joe, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: tell us about give me a summary of the day,
Speaker 1: like what's like what kind of meals we had? Like
Speaker 1: what kind of squirrel people were cooking?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so me and Brent were both in the judging room,
Speaker 5: so we got to see everything.
Speaker 4: Judge Brent, I I went in there to get a
Speaker 4: drink of water, and I came out a guy that
Speaker 4: ate fourteen plates of squirrel. That's that's winning pal wow hmm.
Speaker 5: So yeah, so there was some amazing dishes and uh,
Speaker 5: this year, I think some new pinnacles were reached absolutely
Speaker 5: and probably a couple of lows on my.
Speaker 4: Side of the table. No loads here one man?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you know I have looked out odd table
Speaker 5: and even table. There was definitely a hot side of
Speaker 5: the judging room today. And uh it was the first time,
Speaker 5: I think in the history of the event. You know
Speaker 5: we started in twenty eleven that actual squirrel feet were
Speaker 5: turned in.
Speaker 4: Oh feet on the other table for real.
Speaker 5: Interesting squirrel feet were turned in.
Speaker 1: There was that a hip or not a hip? As
Speaker 1: a high risk maneuver. It was either going to go
Speaker 1: really good or really bad. It's a high risk. Is
Speaker 1: anybody here that put the squirrel feet on the plate?
Speaker 1: Are there anybody here? Okay, we can talk about them.
Speaker 1: They're probably What were they thinking?
Speaker 6: Did they take the nails off?
Speaker 4: No? No?
Speaker 1: Oh impact with fur?
Speaker 4: What fur?
Speaker 1: Were you supposed to eat it?
Speaker 7: Don't know?
Speaker 3: Was it a garnish?
Speaker 5: Brent was looking for could pull off something between those?
Speaker 4: Uh, so that.
Speaker 5: Happened and we thought chicken feet will weird? Yeah, and
Speaker 5: we Clifton Jackson. We had Clifton on the show last year.
Speaker 5: At that time he was a three time.
Speaker 1: World champion squirrel Skinner.
Speaker 5: Squirrel Skinner. Today I'm proud to say he's the four
Speaker 5: time Oh.
Speaker 4: He's he's a tear all in his own.
Speaker 5: He told me to no longer say how many he's won,
Speaker 5: just say he's the world champion.
Speaker 1: After a while, you're not like the four time, you're
Speaker 1: just the world champion. You're the world champion.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And he had his mom out there, his wife, everybody,
Speaker 5: and it was a good time. And then there's a
Speaker 5: fellas stand up with two guys right behind you, Clay.
Speaker 5: These two gentlemen, both with really flashy squirrel ships off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they getting the camera set them in here.
Speaker 5: Getting camera view over here. Oh, look at these shirts.
Speaker 5: These gentlemen both partake. You know, we always do the
Speaker 5: world's Hottest Squirrel right right. This year we kicked it
Speaker 5: up to four million Scoville.
Speaker 4: Get right to get the baseline on that. What's a jilopenyo,
Speaker 4: like a hot half.
Speaker 5: Of teen hundred or something. Okay, These two gentlemen, along
Speaker 5: with six other men, walked on the surface of the
Speaker 5: sun today. Now the hot the taller of the two.
Speaker 5: He lasted a little bit longer than this fellow. This
Speaker 5: fella here is first man out, first first man out
Speaker 5: and closest to the trash can. Clay, I witnessed a
Speaker 5: gentleman today. You know this is a whole smoked squirrel. Okay,
Speaker 5: so the whole carca. We smoked them and then we
Speaker 5: bathed them in the hottest stuff.
Speaker 1: How do you get how do you get the sauce
Speaker 1: that hot?
Speaker 5: You pay one hundred dollars on Amazon?
Speaker 4: Holy cow? Yeah? Can you say the name of it?
Speaker 1: Uh man?
Speaker 5: We used some three fifty seven magnum okay, friendly show here, yeah,
Speaker 5: and then some forty four magnum. The three fifty seven
Speaker 5: was three hundred and fifty seven scovill three hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty seven thousand.
Speaker 1: This other is that not nearing like just poison? I
Speaker 1: think it is.
Speaker 5: I mean they're alive, so big win on my my.
Speaker 1: Well breaking out.
Speaker 4: There's only two out of six of them here, where's
Speaker 4: the other one? Wow Cemetery the dude that won that thing.
Speaker 5: And so the rules are is the first guy to
Speaker 5: crack open a drink as the first man out, okay,
Speaker 5: And usually it gets down to no one has ever
Speaker 5: ate the whole animal. The first guy who won the winner,
Speaker 5: he ate that booger in about what minute the whole squirrel,
Speaker 5: whole squirrel, which was amazing enough not to mention it
Speaker 5: was four million scovel. I was gonna interview him. He
Speaker 5: didn't have nothing to say, He couldn't.
Speaker 4: It's out.
Speaker 5: He had nothing to.
Speaker 4: Say at all.
Speaker 1: So what did the winner get?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: Because typically it's just a trophy and umack's gun. This
Speaker 5: year I felt so bad for that old boy that
Speaker 5: wanted I pulled one hundred dollars bill out of my
Speaker 5: pocket so he could feed the family.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he can be able to work for.
Speaker 4: You got a free ride?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was a bad deal, goad.
Speaker 6: He may swound that hate on a doodle watch.
Speaker 4: And ice cream?
Speaker 1: Can you give me unless we can keep talking about
Speaker 1: the hot squirrel ever you want to go like like,
Speaker 1: what are the competitions that are here at the World
Speaker 1: Championship Squirrel cook Yeah, so thank you guys. Thanks guys.
Speaker 5: We kind of shrunk it down.
Speaker 1: Last year.
Speaker 5: We did a bunch, We did squirrel Call, and we
Speaker 5: did uh. We had the under ten year old oystreet
Speaker 5: and competition, which was just ridiculous.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: This year we limited it to the squirrel competition itself,
Speaker 5: the cookoff cookof then we did the skinning competition, but
Speaker 5: we did it two different ways. This year we did
Speaker 5: it the traditional way, like Kevin would just tug and jerking,
Speaker 5: kind of like you would with your little nippers, you know,
Speaker 5: your little scissors you like to use.
Speaker 1: And then they don't want me in that competition with
Speaker 1: my nippers. He's got those nippers. You know, you think
Speaker 1: that's this They think this cheating.
Speaker 5: And then the second way is we used We had
Speaker 5: a guy come down from Illinois that it was three
Speaker 5: D printing these new you know the leg hold headhole deal.
Speaker 5: I think, yeah, yeah, Kevin's got it had been three
Speaker 5: D printing though, So we set out to see if
Speaker 5: that was any better, and Kevin explained when that would
Speaker 5: work better.
Speaker 7: Have had mobility problems, Uh, you would have like a
Speaker 7: string with a carab beaner and you would mount it
Speaker 7: up so if you couldn't bend, yeah, it would hang
Speaker 7: so you can put their feet through there, their head
Speaker 7: through there. So if you were like where you couldn't
Speaker 7: get over, had trouble being mobile, you could skin from
Speaker 7: standing up. So that's where that comes in handy.
Speaker 1: Now, But they're putting the head of the squirrel in there, right,
Speaker 1: But I mean, nobody do people skin from the head down.
Speaker 1: I've only only know how to skin from.
Speaker 7: Think it's when they're gutting. It just gives you another option.
Speaker 7: Of course that the squirrel may pull in two, so
Speaker 7: if you you know, if he pulls in two, then
Speaker 7: it gives a better option to skin in the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 7: they sent me one, and they asked me if I
Speaker 7: used U as I keep my bourbon bottle on it. Okay,
Speaker 7: So so I tell him when I get about seventy five,
Speaker 7: I'll probably take take this, but as long as I
Speaker 7: can bend over. Because Clifton, he was he won the
Speaker 7: first heat and then he started using this thing, and
Speaker 7: then he kind of got lost.
Speaker 1: Did it if he body beat him with that when
Speaker 1: they were using those.
Speaker 7: Yeah, if he would have just did his rigor skin in,
Speaker 7: he would have won. Because if you're not used to it,
Speaker 7: you know, it's like if you're not used to using
Speaker 7: nippers or scissors, then it's extra motion that you don't
Speaker 7: know what you're Yeah, you're going through. But it's a
Speaker 7: good it's a good thing. Like I said, I'll use
Speaker 7: it one of these days when I get older.
Speaker 1: So how did how did cliff? Well did we answer
Speaker 1: my question?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, cleaning hot squirrel cleaning And then the Cookoff.
Speaker 5: And the cookoff man, you just wait till Brent Reeves
Speaker 5: tells you what he ate.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I want to hear that in detail, like
Speaker 1: what was actually cooked. But so if if you come
Speaker 1: to the Squirrel Cookoff every we're at the the nature Center.
Speaker 1: What's the name. What's the name of the center? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: here in Springdale, Arkansas for Arkansas Game and Fish Nature Center.
Speaker 1: That's correct, and really beautiful facility.
Speaker 4: Ozark Holland's Nature Center and John Hunt. Yeah, those are
Speaker 4: those are Hollands Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
Speaker 3: It's a mouthful Folks's Nature.
Speaker 4: Center and a partridge in a pear tree.
Speaker 5: There was one other thing that we tried to accomplish
Speaker 5: this this event is uh. I want to stress this
Speaker 5: that there was a bunch of young adults kids to
Speaker 5: young adults who competed this year. And one of the
Speaker 5: reasons why I thought that was important is these kids
Speaker 5: had been branded with the name in front of them
Speaker 5: of Foster. And one of my goals for this event
Speaker 5: was to eliminate the name Foster on these kids and
Speaker 5: just call them what they are as kids. And so
Speaker 5: most folks didn't know it today because we didn't shine
Speaker 5: any light on it, because that wasn't the goal. The
Speaker 5: goal was was to put these kids in there just
Speaker 5: like any other kids and compete. So we had three
Speaker 5: teams located over here. I think they did a really
Speaker 5: good job and we shined a light on a lot
Speaker 5: of child organizations that need to have lights shined on
Speaker 5: them today. And so I didn't do a lot of
Speaker 5: bragging about that. I wanted it just to be come
Speaker 5: out and see that deal, and I think we accomplished
Speaker 5: a big, big goal.
Speaker 4: Well that's good, that's good stuff good.
Speaker 1: So when people come here, I think the most unique
Speaker 1: thing probably about this event is that you get to
Speaker 1: eat squirrel. Like, so all the cooks are out here
Speaker 1: cooking and you can see the cooks cooking. When you
Speaker 1: come here, you have to cook the squirrel here. It's
Speaker 1: got to be verified that it's squirrel. So people are cooking,
Speaker 1: you can see them cook, and then people get to eat.
Speaker 1: So almost probably most people standing around here have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to eat squirrel that if they wanted to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've heard of all kinds of other oddities that
Speaker 5: were out there. Crow, there was like crow sausage. Someone
Speaker 5: made crow sausage. Row sausage. There was a bunch of goose.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: There was all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: Serve today, Brent, tell me as many possible, as many
Speaker 1: titles of dishes that you can remember what was cooked,
Speaker 1: because that's what people will always want to know. Sesame
Speaker 1: And if y'all, if anyone out there remembers, you can
Speaker 1: say too.
Speaker 4: I'll have to I'll have to dumb it down and
Speaker 4: give you, like the the Brint version.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just kind of like what it was.
Speaker 4: What there was like sesame, sesame squirrel, Like you'd eat
Speaker 4: sesame chicken in a Chinese place, okay, and then there
Speaker 4: would be like squirrel casos, squirrel case of dias okay,
Speaker 4: squirrel case of is. Yeah, and then there was squirrel
Speaker 4: is on you, squirrel meatballs and squirrel. What was that thing?
Speaker 1: This guy's got a picture on his songe. What do
Speaker 1: you got there? Tell he's one to show now what
Speaker 1: is this squirrel and panadas?
Speaker 4: He would Shane was on the other side of the
Speaker 4: on the other team, on the judge.
Speaker 1: And looks good, looks good.
Speaker 5: All right, Brent got to eat And and I know Kevin,
Speaker 5: Kevin's worldly like me, Kevin, you ever eat a bomb?
Speaker 2: Me?
Speaker 5: Oh, yes, Bomby is one of my favorite sandwiches.
Speaker 1: Okay, I never heard of him, and I.
Speaker 5: Had to say two or three times to Brent what
Speaker 5: what it was. But he had a Bomby sandwich.
Speaker 1: That was Bambi sandwich top not what's a Bomby sandwich?
Speaker 4: Name sandwich?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's a French bread. It's usually got pickled
Speaker 5: vegetables such as cucumbers and carrots, little cilantro on there,
Speaker 5: and then they usually do char siu, which would be
Speaker 5: a roasted pork, which is pretty amaze.
Speaker 1: He got, he got blessed. He got to eat that today.
Speaker 4: It was good and sushi. Yeah, and it was about
Speaker 4: the size of a bucksh of a slug, a deer slug.
Speaker 4: There's three of them on a little sandwich. They was good.
Speaker 4: And then there was another. It was Italian things like
Speaker 4: Italian meatballs. But you cut into that thing, it looked
Speaker 4: like I mean, he thought it was a squirrel meat.
Speaker 4: Somebody was working their tail off, and there the fella
Speaker 4: sitting beside me. I can't here if it was Michael,
Speaker 4: who it was, but he said, oh, my first shot
Speaker 4: and he sped, he sped a shot out. It was
Speaker 4: about the size of a seed tick that had been
Speaker 4: on a three day suck. He's probably like a number
Speaker 4: eight left shot. But I didn't get any no bone.
Speaker 4: So you got Italian food, the lasagni, the meatballs, the
Speaker 4: Vietnamese sandwich. Get any traditional not I have yet. Now this,
Speaker 4: I've been to this thing for the last three or
Speaker 4: four years. Three years, three years, I've been a judge twice.
Speaker 4: I have yet to get squirreled in dumplings or fried squirrel.
Speaker 1: I think that's what everybody would think.
Speaker 4: That phils predictable. That's what I've been waiting to get it,
Speaker 4: and I ain't seen it yet.
Speaker 1: I heard somebody tell me that they cook kind of
Speaker 1: a traditional squirrel meal of like corn bread and beans
Speaker 1: and kind of like a country.
Speaker 4: Best baked beans. I ever put in my jaws was
Speaker 4: in that room in there, and it was they were smoked.
Speaker 4: I mean it was. The smoke was so stout in
Speaker 4: it so good. Now that's not a detractor. It was
Speaker 4: so good. I felt like I needed to ask tra
Speaker 4: to put my spoon in. It was good.
Speaker 5: We had the new director of Arkansas Game and Fish
Speaker 5: at the judging table this year.
Speaker 1: Oh he was a judge.
Speaker 5: He was a judge. He got to experience that the
Speaker 5: dish that won, we haven't announced it out there yet,
Speaker 5: but the dish that won won by twenty points? Is
Speaker 5: that a lot? It's a huge that's huge. Oh, it
Speaker 5: was like a runaway huge amount. Now you can't you
Speaker 5: can't tell me what it was yet.
Speaker 7: No, they know.
Speaker 1: Well, at the end of that, the winner knows they
Speaker 1: hit it out the park. Yeah, the squirrel feet was weird.
Speaker 1: It's just let's let's just.
Speaker 3: Say it's probably not the squirrel feet.
Speaker 4: If you put if you put squirrel feet in there,
Speaker 4: you wouldn't really planning women.
Speaker 5: I don't know, man, man that thing was it?
Speaker 3: Was it a forethought or an afterthought?
Speaker 5: Such a well designed entree and side dish, I mean
Speaker 5: super well designed, well proportioned, well garnished, everything about it
Speaker 5: was magical, and then you got these.
Speaker 1: Well, hey, listen, I got to give that team credit
Speaker 1: because in me Eater Trivia, for instance, I have said
Speaker 1: before that sometimes a good answer is better than a
Speaker 1: right answer. Are you with me? I mean, because it's like,
Speaker 1: what are we here for?
Speaker 4: Yeah, they were celebrated. They were celebrating the squirrel.
Speaker 1: I mean, so I kind of I kind of had
Speaker 1: tip to them. And the other thing that comes to
Speaker 1: my mind is that I'm in the midst of a
Speaker 1: project where I'm doing a bunch of research about black
Speaker 1: bears and about the way Indigenous people use black bears,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them they'd rather eat a paul
Speaker 1: than anything on that animal. I mean, like that, ain't
Speaker 1: that archaeological record, Like they're.
Speaker 5: Still they're still doing that over in Asia illegally bear
Speaker 5: paul bear paul stuff.
Speaker 1: So maybe it's maybe it's something new with the squirrels.
Speaker 1: I think you could flash frme and just.
Speaker 4: Squirrel fe No, not feet, Okay, okay.
Speaker 1: Do you cook much wild game? Most of what I
Speaker 1: see you cooking is like just like good country food. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: average and pork and.
Speaker 6: I don't know, I cook a lot of wild game, yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean we'd usually every year we stock up on deer, bear, squirrel, rabbits, ducks,
Speaker 6: anything we can get get our hands on. Yeah, and
Speaker 6: a lot of the dishes we you know, back in
Speaker 6: the day, I guess you would say, is which is
Speaker 6: the way I try to cook kind of the way
Speaker 6: you know my family did. They cooked a lot of
Speaker 6: the dishes the same way, No matter what meat they
Speaker 6: were using, you know a lot of onions, bell peppers,
Speaker 6: just making a gravy and and you know, smothering the
Speaker 6: meat for four hours until it fell apart.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hard to beat that.
Speaker 6: It is, especially with squirrel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, hard to beat that. So did you
Speaker 1: have any squirrel today? You didn't? Did you say you didn't? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it didn't.
Speaker 6: We did a ravioli which I didn't hear him talk
Speaker 6: about it. It must not have been that good cage.
Speaker 1: And I'll talk about the ravioli.
Speaker 5: My son can walk walking into the judging room and
Speaker 5: several of the judges said, my son's name is Clemens.
Speaker 5: I'm named him after a man named Samuel Clemens. And
Speaker 5: uh Clemens come walking in and Mark Lambert's seven time
Speaker 5: world champion of barbecue. He said, Clem, you need to
Speaker 5: try this, and it was that ravioli. He also said
Speaker 5: you need to try that mac and cheese, and uh
Speaker 5: so the ravioli was on point.
Speaker 4: M good dude, M Brent, did you get any of
Speaker 4: the ravioli? Ain't lyne? Brent?
Speaker 1: What what what was your favorite one? It's not don't
Speaker 1: tell me who won, but what was your favorite one?
Speaker 4: My favorite one was defeat the meatball meatball, they grind
Speaker 4: it or was it like chunks of squirrel like it
Speaker 4: was it was like sausage, so it had to be ground.
Speaker 1: It was now what percentage of the what percentage of
Speaker 1: the meat eighty so that so that meatball had to
Speaker 1: be eighty percent squirrel. And it was that good.
Speaker 4: It was good. It was very, very good, heavenly season No. No,
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, squirrel is like it'll take on
Speaker 4: whatever flavor you cook it in. You cook it in
Speaker 4: beef broth, that's gonna jump onto that or chicken, either
Speaker 4: either way you want to go with it. It was
Speaker 4: just good that it wasn't when you took a bite
Speaker 4: of it, it wasn't. You didn't say, well, that's Tony
Speaker 4: Sastre's or that's salt and pepper. It was just a
Speaker 4: good mix of baked meat.
Speaker 5: Now, he did have his old ca snife out on
Speaker 5: the table, of course I did.
Speaker 4: I went in there and I did notice it was
Speaker 4: a little greasy. Yeah, well there was a couple of
Speaker 4: legs that come in. You know, I don't people think
Speaker 4: I'm crazy. Ever since when you did the cooking show
Speaker 4: about eating with my hands. I don't like to do it,
Speaker 4: and I'm his country's corn bread. I know, but I
Speaker 4: don't like getting my hands on man. So I was
Speaker 4: cutting the cutting the meat off the bone or some
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 1: Oh, you were cutting meat off this dude.
Speaker 5: He had us laughing three, three, three or four times
Speaker 5: in there. I don't even know what the heck it was.
Speaker 4: Well, who knows, I don't either.
Speaker 5: We were The unique thing about our judging, compared to
Speaker 5: most judging is first and foremost, everybody is turning in
Speaker 5: something different. So if you're used to a chili cook off,
Speaker 5: where you know you're coming in and taste chili, it's
Speaker 5: really easy to decipher which chili is better than the other,
Speaker 5: or brisket or whatever. Right here, we're judging everybody on
Speaker 5: their own merit. So I told all the judges early
Speaker 5: that if we had somebody create a squirrel corn dog,
Speaker 5: you needed to compare that corn dog to the best
Speaker 5: corn dog you'd ever ate.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's fair.
Speaker 5: So you could go all in first box that you open,
Speaker 5: and you could give it all top scores if you
Speaker 5: compared it. I told Brent, I said, if there's meat
Speaker 5: loaf shows up on this, you got to compare it
Speaker 5: to Mama's meat loaf.
Speaker 4: It's not plate. You're not comparing the challenge for the judge.
Speaker 4: You're not comparing plate to plate. It's not like this
Speaker 4: cane tastes better than a last one. It's this one
Speaker 4: tastes in comparison to the last thing that was similar
Speaker 4: that you ate to it.
Speaker 5: How many judges were there, Joe, It's just like in
Speaker 5: real life twelve twelve twelve.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my friend John Howard was alternate.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and hey, John Howard got everything that Brent liked
Speaker 5: to chew on.
Speaker 4: He'd passed that. John was standing behind me. If I
Speaker 4: liked it, I'd just hand it back and then John
Speaker 4: to work on. I look at him like this, or
Speaker 4: I did eat all up.
Speaker 3: I did take a bite of Brent's squirrel fried rice.
Speaker 4: When I was in there. Squirrel that's good. Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 4: It was just like two years ago when I judged.
Speaker 4: There was nothing that I ate that I wouldn't eat again.
Speaker 1: You might cut this out, but one of.
Speaker 4: The fun we ain't cutting nothing out.
Speaker 1: One of them have to do with the mammoth tasks, No,
Speaker 1: I promise you.
Speaker 5: One of the funnies that Brent said was he'd had
Speaker 5: like three different Asi dishes turned in on his side
Speaker 5: of the table, and he said, who would have ever thought?
Speaker 5: My whole life, I've been eating squirrel every time I
Speaker 5: ate Chinese.
Speaker 4: Good. I mean, I couldn't think of nothing better to eat.
Speaker 4: It was good.
Speaker 3: Did you have to disqualify anybody for suspect squirrel when
Speaker 3: he did the inspection?
Speaker 5: No, man, everybody turned in legit squirrel. You know, we
Speaker 5: had a little rendezvous a while back with the Bear
Speaker 5: grease crew who had went out. I don't know if
Speaker 5: Bear was the one who killed those squirrels or if
Speaker 5: it was you, Clay, but Clay made a donation.
Speaker 1: Heck of about forty squirrels, probably forty.
Speaker 5: We had another probably sixty squirrels show up early this morning.
Speaker 5: We had ample squirrels with skin on it. For the
Speaker 5: squirrel skinning competition. I brought in two black squirrels, solid black.
Speaker 5: Where did you get those? Undisclosed?
Speaker 1: Location? Okay, Chitty Park because we yeah, black squirrels only
Speaker 1: in city parks and on golf courses.
Speaker 5: So this was near a really large river. Okay, the
Speaker 5: now and uh I was telling everybody those were Japanese.
Speaker 5: A five wagoo squirrels that's kind of Oh he's got
Speaker 5: to tell of one, right. Look, they were as black
Speaker 5: as an angus cow. M hm, So good time, man.
Speaker 5: We had great judges in there. Uh, all of the judges.
Speaker 5: They had They had fun eating these dishes. But we
Speaker 5: don't have an event without the teams showing up. I
Speaker 5: know the public loves to see it.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: If we don't have teams show up to this deal,
Speaker 5: so I'll go ahead and start promoting next year. Right now,
Speaker 5: it's time for you to decide whoever you want in,
Speaker 5: you want in. And it's a good time. Every team
Speaker 5: out here, whether they got first or last, they had
Speaker 5: a fun time today, I promise, and the mission of
Speaker 5: who hunters and fishermen are as good people.
Speaker 1: It's spread at this facility.
Speaker 5: And a shout out to everybody who parked cars.
Speaker 4: Man. Those guys are standing out in the heat early
Speaker 4: this morning, and it has been hot today, brutal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Kevin got a squirrel question for you. Had a
Speaker 1: guy today that I met here that he might be
Speaker 1: standing right here. I don't know, but he I said
Speaker 1: to Jeb squirrel. He said, yep, I ate some squirrel here.
Speaker 1: He said it was really good. He said in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: Our squirrels taste like mud. And he said, we can't
Speaker 1: eat them, and he said, down here, they taste good.
Speaker 1: I just like, I didn't say much. I just kind
Speaker 1: of gave him the head nod. I need to wash.
Speaker 1: Is he right?
Speaker 7: Come back next year and we'll put him on the
Speaker 7: spot and he can tell us the Kentucky squirrel from
Speaker 7: the Arkansas squirrel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean blind blind taste tests.
Speaker 7: Yeah, blind taste tests.
Speaker 1: I mean you never now no, yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 7: You know, I've had squirrel from Arkansas, Michigan, Illinois, Kentucky,
Speaker 7: South Dakota.
Speaker 1: It's all all the same.
Speaker 7: It's all very similar. I mean, for someone to say
Speaker 7: that their palette could judge one squirrel from this state
Speaker 7: to the other, I think we need to have that
Speaker 7: next year. You want to, Yeah, let's let's try to
Speaker 7: do a little variety of squirrel and see who can
Speaker 7: but say that.
Speaker 1: But I think you would be.
Speaker 5: It's unfair because if you did a spring summer or
Speaker 5: a spring squirrel compared to a summer squirrel, it's just
Speaker 5: like bear. You know yourself. If you get those bear
Speaker 5: that are down by the water, or the bear that's
Speaker 5: been eating the fish in Alaska, that sucker's gonna taste
Speaker 5: like fish. Man, I shot them iguanas in Puerto Rico
Speaker 5: and they were far far from water, and they taste
Speaker 5: like fish. So it's all diet on the thing.
Speaker 1: I think it's got to be pre pretty extreme that that.
Speaker 1: In the bear world. The only the only time I've
Speaker 1: seen a bear taste any different than any other bears
Speaker 1: is salmon bears. Other than that, I find every bear
Speaker 1: I've ever tasted from anywhere in the country to pretty
Speaker 1: much taste it. Bringing fall tastes the same. I mean,
Speaker 1: just a fall bear is going to have more fat,
Speaker 1: so but but I mean, does it taste the same,
Speaker 1: And like a burger, I would say, you'd have a
Speaker 1: real hard time telling the difference. Now a fall bear
Speaker 1: is going to have more fat though, yep. But now
Speaker 1: when you start getting to these like red squirrels and
Speaker 1: pine squirrels and stuff out west, they say those tastes
Speaker 1: piny in habit Yeah, but like a cat squirrel, gray squirrel,
Speaker 1: or fox squirrel anywhere in the eastern instiduous forest, I
Speaker 1: bet they. I think they taste the same.
Speaker 6: Only the only thing I've noticed different eating squirrel in
Speaker 6: a lot of the states. Is at times in Louisiana,
Speaker 6: if they're eating a cypress tree and they get no
Speaker 6: cypress bowls, that they do have a little bit of
Speaker 6: a stronger taste. You can kind of tell, really, does
Speaker 6: it tastes like a cypress. It's kind of got that pain,
Speaker 6: you know, it's kind of got that same kind of
Speaker 6: sappy Okay, Yeah, and you can kind of you can
Speaker 6: tell it in them.
Speaker 1: Now that that makes sense because they're eating those cypress.
Speaker 6: Cypress bowls and they started eating them when they're still green,
Speaker 6: and they'll eat through and pool like the seed out.
Speaker 6: And I mean, I promise you I can clean one
Speaker 6: and just during cleaning it, I can tell you what
Speaker 6: he's been eating over the cypress bowls or whether it
Speaker 6: was you know, eating just acrons.
Speaker 1: M that makes sense. That makes sense. What about you, Clay,
Speaker 1: would you do today?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: Shore Man? Uh, I actually just got here about an
Speaker 1: hour and a half ago. I've been writing about whole
Speaker 1: Collier this morning. If I'm just telling you the truth,
Speaker 1: good man to write about. Yeah, woke up at the
Speaker 1: crack of way before the crack of dawn and been
Speaker 1: doing some writing. But uh, that's that's what I had
Speaker 1: to do this morning, but got it sort of got
Speaker 1: it done sort of. But we're, uh, we're we're getting
Speaker 1: ready to bait. We're getting ready to bear hunt though
Speaker 1: bear Arsaw. Bear season opens this week and so we're
Speaker 1: we're we're fixing the gow's.
Speaker 3: How's the action been?
Speaker 1: Not good? Not good.
Speaker 4: Heat.
Speaker 1: I don't think heat, it doesn't. I don't think it
Speaker 1: has anything to do with heat. I'd rather it be
Speaker 1: hot than cold during bear season, really, yeah. Why, worst
Speaker 1: thing that could happen would be a hurricane come through
Speaker 1: and like a bunch of rain or a cold front
Speaker 1: come through and knock the temperature down twenty thirty degrees.
Speaker 1: You lose your bears and rarely get them back. It be,
Speaker 1: it'd be best if it's just like consistent temperature right
Speaker 1: through the start of the season. I'd rather it be
Speaker 1: eighty five degrees than sixty on open day bear season
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. I don't know about anywhere else.
Speaker 3: I was out baiting yesterday and I did notice some
Speaker 3: white eppcakerings on the ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah there's playing, Yeah, yeah. I wonder if there's any
Speaker 1: questions from the crowd or any about to anybody at this,
Speaker 1: uh at this in these chairs. Anybody got any questions?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I do. I want to know if he's gonna
Speaker 6: eat the hot squirrel next year again?
Speaker 1: Yeah, back in, he's in all right, Oh, question the
Speaker 1: question is about go ahead?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, the question is about the dog.
Speaker 1: Tell us about your dog, Kevin.
Speaker 7: Well, this is black Jail, and this is the first
Speaker 7: time she's been around more than three people at one time,
Speaker 7: so it's a little bit overwhelmed.
Speaker 4: Ye, nervous.
Speaker 7: She is a half high q Beagle, a quarter carve In,
Speaker 7: a quarter Faroll Miller field trial porter. Okay, and that
Speaker 7: dog's all becomes the dog. The dog's name is Jeff,
Speaker 7: Black Jeff, Black Jeff. Usually I'm down here with Chef Jeff.
Speaker 7: This year I'm with black Jeff.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 7: And Black Jeff was a friend of mine that I
Speaker 7: met down at Real Foot Lake and he was a
Speaker 7: pro baseball player, a swamp rabbit hunter, and so I
Speaker 7: got black Jeff.
Speaker 1: So, okay, do you call her Black Jeff?
Speaker 3: Like, if you're gonna just call her across the yard,
Speaker 3: You're like, come here, Black Jeff.
Speaker 7: Black Jeff. Yeah, she's a she's ten months old.
Speaker 1: Like I said, multi syllable animal names are tough, but
Speaker 1: I got to get behind them. Yeah, I usually like
Speaker 1: one syllable, but you know, I got a meal named
Speaker 1: slow Trap, which is Kevin.
Speaker 5: You said that tied into Clay. How to tie into Clay?
Speaker 7: It tied into Clay because last year, at the end
Speaker 7: of the podcast, thinking it was over with Clay and
Speaker 7: I were talking about dogs and what we like to hunt.
Speaker 7: He asked me, said, what what's your favorite kind of hunting?
Speaker 7: Of course, you know the favorite kind of hunt is
Speaker 7: what I hunt, and I can do it at my
Speaker 7: age and where I and I said, well, swamp rabbit hunting.
Speaker 7: And then I got home and I started a new
Speaker 7: job site, another job that I worked with a young
Speaker 7: boy and he was a COLDI hunter with dogs, and
Speaker 7: we become friends. And I talked to him, says, have
Speaker 7: you seen beagles use this? We never have, but I
Speaker 7: know people that have. And then my hunting experience over
Speaker 7: the last ten or twelve years with beagle dogs, we
Speaker 7: get into coyodies and some dogs like to run on
Speaker 7: better than the other. And I thought, and it's usually
Speaker 7: like a short race twelve hundred sixteen hundred yards, not
Speaker 7: the typical coyoti race. There and I'm thinking I can
Speaker 7: breed a dog up that I can run in Kentucky,
Speaker 7: that I can afford to feed, and I can have
Speaker 7: a pack of predator dogs. So that's my attempt. It's
Speaker 7: probably gonna take me two years to have a predator dog.
Speaker 1: So what will your intentions for this dog to be,
Speaker 1: Because because Brince used decoy dogs, you're not wanting a
Speaker 1: decoy dog. You're wanting a dog that's going to run
Speaker 1: a kyo.
Speaker 7: It's going to circle it back to me. It's gonna
Speaker 7: jump it up, take it out about one thousand yards
Speaker 7: twelve hundred yards, not put a whole lot of pressure
Speaker 7: on it, and not run it out of the country.
Speaker 7: It's going to let that coldy come out to his
Speaker 7: home range where he's been hunting, where we've jumped in
Speaker 7: and bring it back to us and to be up
Speaker 7: to me, to be able to be.
Speaker 1: Like, that's why you want that beagle in there. So
Speaker 1: they're not just running it out of the country, they're
Speaker 1: just kind of getting it up out of its bed,
Speaker 1: letting them know that.
Speaker 4: It's like they're like a rabbit, Kevin. They'll make a
Speaker 4: loop and kind of go back to where they got jumped.
Speaker 7: You know, it's taken me a few years to see that,
Speaker 7: but yeah, that's what I'm seeing is that we'll jump
Speaker 7: a few coldies and they'll come back into where we're hunting.
Speaker 7: So you know, they're just like running a deer. You know,
Speaker 7: they're going to circle back, run like a fox. So yes,
Speaker 7: well and you know they chase rabbits, so yeah, so
Speaker 7: you know, and then the same with a bob get
Speaker 7: they circle back. You know, sometimes you'll jump them in
Speaker 7: a cane brake or a blowdown a timber thicket, whatever,
Speaker 7: and they're going to come back in there, and you
Speaker 7: just got to be like the top predator and be
Speaker 7: ready for them, cause they're going to be looking for you.
Speaker 4: That's fun.
Speaker 1: So so has this dog been exposed to all to
Speaker 1: any kyota?
Speaker 7: She's run loose her career, entire life pretty much like
Speaker 7: I said, she just turned ten months old. She'll be
Speaker 7: a year old in November. So I've got five more
Speaker 7: of her siblings. My cowdi friend there j T. He's
Speaker 7: got the other two. So uh, we're going to start
Speaker 7: start after him, probably start them on some swamp raps
Speaker 7: and stuff. They have run some rabbits, but I haven't
Speaker 7: exposed them to caldies or bobcats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Brent was decoy dog hunting. Have you seen
Speaker 1: them do that?
Speaker 7: I have seen them do that.
Speaker 4: It's very interesting. That's yeah, that's crazy. It's it's it's
Speaker 4: the most amazing thing that I've ever seen as far
Speaker 4: as how you think about a cody's nose and they're
Speaker 4: hearing and then they're cautious and if you know, if
Speaker 4: the odds are stacked against them, they're gone. They're they're
Speaker 4: not messing around. They played a win. If the odds
Speaker 4: are on their side, whatever they're after is usually done for.
Speaker 4: And they get so crazy focused on that dog in
Speaker 4: that time of year when when there's usually during the
Speaker 4: best time of year to use a decoy dog is
Speaker 4: when the coats have a litter in the ground in
Speaker 4: a den somewhere, and how it is you use a
Speaker 4: predator call, call that that dog withinside of where you
Speaker 4: are or the cout with inside of where you are,
Speaker 4: and then the decoyed dog sees the cody takes off
Speaker 4: after it. Well, the coat is only going to sit
Speaker 4: there long enough for that decoy dog to get close enough,
Speaker 4: and then he's going to turn around and start trotting. Awful.
Speaker 4: When that happens, the dog will stop and turn around
Speaker 4: and come back, and the cout goes, ah, you're scared
Speaker 4: of me, And he'll follow them right back to where
Speaker 4: you are. And I've had him come close to me
Speaker 4: and Josh and they just they are so focused on
Speaker 4: that dog because of their territorial instincts that they don't
Speaker 4: pay an attention to you. And it's usually lights out
Speaker 4: for the old Cody.
Speaker 1: Amazing, huh.
Speaker 4: It's crazy to see. And it's in the daylight. I mean,
Speaker 4: you're not doing it at night.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Well have you hided with dogs squirreled dogs?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I do. I've got a cattle hula curve
Speaker 6: all real, uh heep. Me and him go out squirrel
Speaker 6: hunting and we do a lot of coons.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 6: And I don't know. He doesn't like anything that's smaller
Speaker 6: than him that walks. He loves getting out and if
Speaker 6: I don't kill it in time, he's gonna try to
Speaker 6: get it.
Speaker 4: He likes the scrap.
Speaker 6: He does like to scrap. He's usually bring me a
Speaker 6: present about once a week on the driveway.
Speaker 1: Katahua. Does anybody else have it? A question? That they
Speaker 1: want to ask anybody, this young man, this guy right here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: first animal to hunt? Good question, good question. We can go,
Speaker 1: we go around, we go around the circle. I think
Speaker 1: the first I probably killed the squirrel first, But the
Speaker 1: first animal I really remember was hunting the deer. What
Speaker 1: about you, Kevin Sparra sparrow.
Speaker 3: Yea uh, squirrel?
Speaker 4: Squirrel, squirrel? Do duck squirrel hunt with my daddy.
Speaker 5: I may not be the world's best small game hunter
Speaker 5: like Kevin, but mine was a little yellow bird that big.
Speaker 5: And when I hit that thing and and it fell down,
Speaker 5: I went in and got got my mama's gravy spoon
Speaker 5: and does a burial site for that bird.
Speaker 1: I buried it, packed it in real tight, cried a little.
Speaker 5: Bit, did a small prayer, and I went out and
Speaker 5: found its other one, you know, and.
Speaker 1: Then went and got the other. The best part of
Speaker 1: this story is that was twenty fourteen.
Speaker 5: Yeah, man, I remember crying over that first.
Speaker 1: Is that a good Is that? Is that a good answer?
Speaker 1: All right? Good, good, good good.
Speaker 7: I've got a question from the audience. Is the young
Speaker 7: man that's from Arizona here that's got the a bird
Speaker 7: squirrel on the back of his behind. You right there,
Speaker 7: come on over this way. He got pull in here
Speaker 7: to check turned around.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's like a motorcycle club.
Speaker 7: So when I first came here, he came up to
Speaker 7: me and started talking to me and said he's from
Speaker 7: Arizona and all that, and we had a good little
Speaker 7: conversation and he walked off, and some more people come
Speaker 7: up and started talking to me. And I'm thinking, that's
Speaker 7: an Abert squirrel on the back of.
Speaker 1: His jacket, you like specie. That is that a desert squirrel?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Really, so it's not a gray square.
Speaker 7: It's not a grey squirrel. This is an Abert squirrel.
Speaker 1: Is a tail that short? Or did somebody pull the
Speaker 1: tail off? Okay, pulled the pulled the tail off. He
Speaker 1: pulled the tail off.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: One of the finest squirrel hunters of all time come
Speaker 5: out of Arizona, John O'Dell. And John O'Dell was a
Speaker 5: biologist out of the state. He's recently retired, but he
Speaker 5: killed the grand Slam of the squirrel, which was go
Speaker 5: ahead last.
Speaker 7: I think he was Kevin.
Speaker 5: You remember this. He was on the cover of Field
Speaker 5: and Stream or something. He went all the way around
Speaker 5: the country and he shot every species a squirrel, and
Speaker 5: he got a lot of trash talk because he did
Speaker 5: it with an eight seventy shotgun.
Speaker 4: My man.
Speaker 5: And the reason he was getting so much trash talking
Speaker 5: and he was able to defend it was in a
Speaker 5: lot of places, the only gun that he could use
Speaker 5: a shotgun, and so he just used the same gun.
Speaker 5: And the image you could find it on the internet.
Speaker 5: He has them all mounted like on one branch. Oh wow, man,
Speaker 5: it's every species a squirrel in North America's pretty cool.
Speaker 6: How many species of squirrels exactly?
Speaker 1: Don't get me going cajuing.
Speaker 4: You could just know that part of the twenty two
Speaker 4: you could have said thirty seven.
Speaker 6: I mean, and then I'm just curious because I mean,
Speaker 6: I don't.
Speaker 7: Know, but like a google Josh five or six. No,
Speaker 7: there's probably a lot, probably twelve to eighteen twelve to eighteen.
Speaker 1: Twelve to eighteen.
Speaker 5: There's a little squirrel up in Missouri. It's a ground
Speaker 5: squirrel in Missouri that I've been wanting to go up
Speaker 5: and hunt a chip monk.
Speaker 1: No, it's a great it's an actual ground squirrel.
Speaker 3: But this says, this is AI overview that there are
Speaker 3: over sixty five squirrel species in North America. Oh, I
Speaker 3: see tree squirrels, ground squirrels, flying squirrels.
Speaker 1: I doubt that. I think AI is pulling one on us.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't have been too surprised that half of that
Speaker 1: sixty five sounds high. But I mean, yeah, you can
Speaker 1: start thinking about.
Speaker 4: America's pretty big.
Speaker 6: Yeah, now that you think about it, I mean flying
Speaker 6: squirrel age. I mean there's a lot that you're not they.
Speaker 1: Might be counting ground squirrels.
Speaker 6: Like, there's a lot you're not thinking. We're I'm thinking
Speaker 6: more of what we hunt eat. Yeah, but yeah, there's
Speaker 6: a lot more species, I think. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 6: don't know there's that many though.
Speaker 7: Isn't there some subspecies out there? Like I think there's
Speaker 7: a cherokey fox squirrel down on the Mexico Arizona border.
Speaker 7: Then you have the squirrel, the Caba squirrel that's only
Speaker 7: like in seventy five square miles of the earth that
Speaker 7: you can hunt, hopefully it made it through this last
Speaker 7: forest fire that came through there. And then you've got
Speaker 7: the I think the Carolina fox squirrel a little bit different.
Speaker 7: And then you've got you know, some subspecies out there,
Speaker 7: regional squirrels. So there's there's more than you think about it.
Speaker 7: You know, we we just think about fox squirrel, gray squirrel,
Speaker 7: you know, the a birds. And then like I said,
Speaker 7: you've got those subspecies and different type of fox squirrels
Speaker 7: out there. And then you've got melanistic squirrels, which are
Speaker 7: a gray squirrel that's black basically there, and you've got
Speaker 7: some black fox squirrels out there. And then there, you know,
Speaker 7: you've got your albino squirrels, which really not a subspecies,
Speaker 7: they're just their own little in different locations there, some
Speaker 7: some in Tennessee, some in Illinois, some in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: So can I ask a question of the crowd?
Speaker 6: For sure? I seen it.
Speaker 1: I'll ask a question of the crowd. Should we just
Speaker 1: cut this squirrel cook off? Or do we need to
Speaker 1: do one again next year?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Okay, yeah, there it is.
Speaker 1: Doing it again. Got to I think it's it was
Speaker 1: brought up about a piece of shot being being spit
Speaker 1: out as as big as the seedtick that had been
Speaker 1: sucking for three days. Yep, it was interesting analogy accurate
Speaker 1: brings up the question, and we'll go around the we'll
Speaker 1: go around the group here shotgun or twenty two you
Speaker 1: only get one for the rest of your life? Why
Speaker 1: and why for therel squirrel or squirrel shotgun or twenty
Speaker 1: two one for the rest of your life? You're and
Speaker 1: here's the big question. This is the only gun you
Speaker 1: have in the wilderness. You will die like life and death,
Speaker 1: life and death situation one gun. I'm building this analogy
Speaker 1: as we go. What are you carrying? Twenty two or
Speaker 1: a shot gun? Kevin? We're starting with you.
Speaker 7: Twenty two magnum. Take anything on the North America content. Okay,
Speaker 7: but I'm a rifleman. You know you can. You're out there,
Speaker 7: if you're living off the land, you can kill anything.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, but you can only kill squirrels only. Twenty
Speaker 1: two macnim same twenty two mag twenty two magnam. Now
Speaker 1: do you honte with the twenty two mag in Kentucky
Speaker 1: just like when you're out or regular twenty two back.
Speaker 7: When I was a killer? Twenty two magnum. Okay, I'm
Speaker 7: not much of a killer anymore, so twenty two long
Speaker 7: rifle does.
Speaker 1: What good would a magnum do? You is shooting a
Speaker 1: squirrel out of a tree?
Speaker 7: H You can kill two at one time, just if
Speaker 7: they're lined up. If they're lined up, you have no
Speaker 7: problem of doing that. You got a little bit more range,
Speaker 7: more firepower, Okay, you know, collateral damage if you make
Speaker 7: a bad headshot or whatever. There he's not gonna limp off.
Speaker 7: I've had lots of squirrels limp off through a headshot
Speaker 7: with a twenty two not you know. I did this
Speaker 7: comparison one time about this squirrel predator come to the
Speaker 7: to the earth and he was hunting humans. So us humans,
Speaker 7: we we hunt squirrels with a forty grain bullet twenty two.
Speaker 7: So this squirrel predator guy comes here and so he
Speaker 7: wants to do something equivalent. So he's hunting humans. So
Speaker 7: do you know what the equivalent? And it's been a
Speaker 7: while since they did the math, but what he would
Speaker 7: be shooting us.
Speaker 1: With probably like a fifty caliber.
Speaker 7: It'd be one pound fifty caliber seven hundred and twenty grains.
Speaker 7: But I don't have many grains one pound, but it'd
Speaker 7: be a one pound projectile, is what you know. I
Speaker 7: get hit with a one pound in my pinky, I'm down.
Speaker 7: But that's the comparison that a little bitty two pound
Speaker 7: gray squirrel can take a four or forty grain head shot,
Speaker 7: they run off, and then can you imagine being human
Speaker 7: and taking a one pound projecting out anywhere in your head,
Speaker 7: You're gonna you're you're down, You're down, you get hit anywhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So okay, that's a that's a great answer, and
Speaker 1: I expect as much detail from all of you.
Speaker 3: Josh, I'm gonna have to say twenty two. I think
Speaker 3: that I think that if you're gonna if your life
Speaker 3: depends on squirrel hunting, that you're left off, that you're
Speaker 3: going you're gonna hone your skills, so that killing a
Speaker 3: squirrel to twenty two is gonna.
Speaker 1: Be I hope you go into the woods.
Speaker 4: Fee got it?
Speaker 1: Okay, yep, okay, cajon, I'm going shotgun, shotgun. This man
Speaker 1: wants to eat.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, and it's actually that's simple to leaves
Speaker 6: in the way and he's he's running down the limb.
Speaker 6: I'm just I'm taking them out.
Speaker 1: I'm going to just deal with the collateral damage.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Well, and you know, sadly, to some people, I
Speaker 6: love to eat the brain. So I'm not shooting them
Speaker 6: in the head anyway.
Speaker 1: That is the best answer that I've heard for not
Speaker 1: shooting them in the head with the twenty two because
Speaker 1: most of the time.
Speaker 5: They get us his mind is spinning.
Speaker 1: So you like to eat the brains? Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 7: That's that's a what I wouldn't recommend for anybody to
Speaker 7: do any kind of brain of any species.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We had this conversation to stay.
Speaker 7: Away from it.
Speaker 6: So you cow brain.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, yeah, there's no there's some in the last well,
Speaker 1: we don't have to get into it, but there's some
Speaker 1: disease potential. But makes your beard long and white.
Speaker 6: Yeah it will.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I also kind of feel like I think there's been
Speaker 6: disease around for a long time that we just never
Speaker 6: tested for. Probably, and I think if you cook everything properly,
Speaker 6: you're probably gonna You know, my grandmother passed away at
Speaker 6: nine age four years old, and she ate cow brains,
Speaker 6: and squirrel.
Speaker 4: Bridly got her, didn't it.
Speaker 6: You finally got her. That's That's what I'm gonna go
Speaker 6: back and redo a headstone, say squirrel brains got it.
Speaker 1: So shotgun, I got you, I got you. I know
Speaker 1: Brent's answer twenty two four to ten.
Speaker 6: Twenty two, Man, that'll go four ten. You can't afford
Speaker 6: to shall.
Speaker 4: For real, you know, if that's just always been the thing.
Speaker 4: It was. We young man over here asked the question,
Speaker 4: first squirrel I ever kill was with it? Twenty two?
Speaker 4: We hunted with dogs on horses, and that was just
Speaker 4: that was the three things that we did. You shot
Speaker 4: them with a twenty two. You had somebody, somebody would
Speaker 4: bring a shotgun in casey, you know, you made a
Speaker 4: bad shot and you're timbering squirrels and they just shoot
Speaker 4: on the wing or whatever. But it was dogs, horses
Speaker 4: and twenty two rifles.
Speaker 6: Hey, let's go, I got you back.
Speaker 3: Sounds like a good country music album.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you could aie that until number one hit.
Speaker 5: For most of my life, I've been a twenty two
Speaker 5: squirrel shooter. And just like Kevin, a lot of my
Speaker 5: mentors and squirrel hunting they will tell you the twenty
Speaker 5: two magnum is superior. Now, recently in the past few weeks,
Speaker 5: when we were struggling to get squirrel on this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's the real test.
Speaker 5: When we're struggling to get squirrels and the leaves are
Speaker 5: on every tree, leave us, ma'am. I ain't even gonna
Speaker 5: tell you it was a twenty gage boys.
Speaker 4: That thing was twelve.
Speaker 1: Okay, knugging it.
Speaker 5: And let me tell you what. Maybe I didn't literally
Speaker 5: see the squirrel, but I seen the leaves moving, and
Speaker 5: then you're seeing the squirrel, and then I heard the
Speaker 5: squirrel dump on the ground. So if this was a
Speaker 5: survival situation, and we're talking that there could be a
Speaker 5: migration of evil squirrel like a zombie attack, it's twelve
Speaker 5: gags loaded.
Speaker 4: Up extended magazine.
Speaker 1: Yeah I had I hadn't put the scenario inside the
Speaker 1: World Championship Squirrel Cookoff, but you were there. You had
Speaker 1: no You had to get squirrel, and I went for
Speaker 1: the meat with the meat stick man. And everybody has
Speaker 1: heard has heard my philosophy. But like when we go
Speaker 1: squirrel hunting with dogs on mules, ninety percent of the
Speaker 1: people out there have shotguns because when we get went by,
Speaker 1: when we get to the tree, good percentage of the
Speaker 1: time squirrels moving big timber and we're just wanting to
Speaker 1: bring home, We're just wanting to get squirrels.
Speaker 4: On the ground. And so pandemonia.
Speaker 1: So shotgun shotgun half and half huh yeah, half and
Speaker 1: half yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Either way, I'll let y'all the shotgun goes I let
Speaker 4: y'all come to my company.
Speaker 5: M I'm gonna tell you this, gentlemen. Here in about
Speaker 5: five minutes, I gotta go out and crown the new
Speaker 5: world champion squirrel.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, and uh, I.
Speaker 5: Think from what I know right now, I think the
Speaker 5: team is gonna be as happy as anybody you've ever
Speaker 5: seen win this.
Speaker 1: I think, well, we're gonna have to I don't want
Speaker 1: to miss that. Well, in that case, we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna close it down and we'll come back at the
Speaker 1: We'll try to like maybe film some of it, maybe
Speaker 1: put it on Yeah, can we do that?
Speaker 4: Yep, we can.
Speaker 1: We'll film some of it and put put the winner
Speaker 1: on the episode. It's gonna be a big problem. I
Speaker 1: wanted to. I meant to do this at the first
Speaker 1: of the episode. What else am I I'm supposed.
Speaker 4: To tell a week?
Speaker 3: Oh, pay attention to meat eat or we're gonna have some
Speaker 3: great sales. It's gonna be great.
Speaker 1: What are the dates of it?
Speaker 3: September twenty ninth through October fifth, September twenty night through
Speaker 3: October fifth or the dates?
Speaker 1: Wow, I'm more confused. When we started coming soon, White God,
Speaker 1: if you're looking to get first light gear. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a good time to get a bunch of stuff on.
Speaker 1: Sell all the white tail kids around sale buy the
Speaker 1: The Meat Eater is doing a live tour and it's
Speaker 1: in December and they're about to announce the dates coming
Speaker 1: soon and uh but they're coming to Faydville, Fadeville, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: So Steve Vanella, Jannie, Brent, Me Randall and a special
Speaker 1: guests that everybody will be really pumped to see. Is
Speaker 1: going to be infadable. But I'm just going to tell
Speaker 1: you it's on December of the twentieth Saturday, December of
Speaker 1: the twentieth.
Speaker 4: Oh he's spelling the beans here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think I just be ready. If you
Speaker 1: want to come to Faydville.
Speaker 4: You got to get on that. Get on you got
Speaker 4: to get on the link.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there's a.
Speaker 4: Where you can get notified of tickets. That's right.
Speaker 1: So there's a there's a link that that if you
Speaker 1: sign up for they will send it out to you
Speaker 1: so that you can buy a ticke gets before it
Speaker 1: just goes up on the website. So you have to go.
Speaker 4: To because tickets will be letter.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: I actually know that I actually know the web address.
Speaker 1: You go to the meateater dot com slash tour that's it,
Speaker 1: and sit and put your email in there and then
Speaker 1: they'll send you an email before the tickets go live
Speaker 1: to the world. And so the media live towards a
Speaker 1: ton of fun, big, big fun. It's like a two
Speaker 1: hour like variety show. There'll be music, there's trivia, people
Speaker 1: win a bunch of stuff. Steve Vanellah tells a lot
Speaker 1: of stories. We uh, it's gonna be a ton of fun.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking forward to that being in Fable, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: It's it's in multiple cities. It's in Uh, it's in Nashville, Tennessee, Memphis, Faydble, Arkansas, Dallas, Texas, Austin,
Speaker 1: and in Texas.
Speaker 4: It starts out in Birmingham, Alabama.
Speaker 1: Birmingham, Alabama. So all right, so that's where the live
Speaker 1: go to everyone. M yeah, so let's go. I want
Speaker 1: to go see who wins the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thanks everybody, Thanks everybody.