Speaker 1: My name is Clay Neukleman.
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 h F Gear, American Maid, purpose built
Speaker 2: hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged
Speaker 2: as the place as we explore.
Speaker 3: Nobody cares if I'm making any noise.
Speaker 4: Your head.
Speaker 1: You feel like what a fourth wheel?
Speaker 5: No, no, Josh, wheel turns a tricycling No.
Speaker 1: Josh, You're more like a spear.
Speaker 2: Kind of like right on the back of the balls
Speaker 2: there and Brent falls off.
Speaker 6: I just.
Speaker 2: Man, So we're running. This is like, this is like
Speaker 2: a skeleton crew the bear Grease. We've got four folks here.
Speaker 2: We have maybe one of the best mystery guests of
Speaker 2: all time though on the bear Grease Render for real.
Speaker 2: So I got Brent here, I got Josh Landbridge spillmaker here,
Speaker 2: who sounds.
Speaker 1: Like a hold on back, Well, it's not me, turn it.
Speaker 6: You got it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, say something.
Speaker 5: Now something now give us the snort. My nose is
Speaker 5: pretty big.
Speaker 1: Pullet pullet out like this right there. Yeah, that's it's
Speaker 1: the first time I've ever done this.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's hear your snort.
Speaker 6: There's no way to get it anywhere. Sorry, feel I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: You're like a like a mule, I have like the
Speaker 4: Britney spears circle mid to thousands like heads, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, Brooks.
Speaker 2: Right, So when I'm when I'm riding a mule, I
Speaker 2: have a mechanism that I can use, a physical mechanism
Speaker 2: I can use to tell how how worked up they are,
Speaker 2: how much physical energy they're exerting, and how close they
Speaker 2: are to their maximum output and haloton. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 2: probably a lot like your peloton nostral flare when you
Speaker 2: really I'll look at a mule's nose and if his
Speaker 2: nose is just kind of like slightly pulsating, it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: he's got a lot more put the spurs to it,
Speaker 2: you know. Let's go up the mountain when they get
Speaker 2: to just like when when when the when the nostrils
Speaker 2: are flaring out, like getting like a half to three
Speaker 2: quarters of an inch bigger than the usual, and they're
Speaker 2: moving at like one inflation per second, like.
Speaker 3: They've maxed out.
Speaker 1: Maybe given break, maybe you're.
Speaker 4: Hitting rev limit or on your mule.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, that's like that's like pushing into like forty
Speaker 2: five hundred rpm. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So mystery guests we have here today is the crabber himself,
Speaker 2: Luton McFadden.
Speaker 6: He is a crabber.
Speaker 1: He and I ain't no crab You ain't no crabber.
Speaker 4: I ain't no mule skinner.
Speaker 2: Well, you're more of a mule skinner than I'm a crabber,
Speaker 2: because you rode a mule yesterday for probably a nine miles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, had to go.
Speaker 4: It was great, no problems with your first time. It
Speaker 4: was my first time riding any any animal. Oh yeah, yep.
Speaker 3: Well I watched the video, thought it was he's pretty solid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he did good. Were you Were you nervous
Speaker 1: at all?
Speaker 4: Not really, to be honest, because that's what why I think.
Speaker 4: I'm just maybe I'm a little too dumb to be nervous.
Speaker 4: It just looked about that situation. It just seemed, uh,
Speaker 4: they seemed nice enough, you know what I mean? Yeah,
Speaker 4: all right, I trust him.
Speaker 5: You get thrown out of off a mule, all you
Speaker 5: gotta do is get up and get back on him.
Speaker 5: You get thrown out of a boat, then you got
Speaker 5: to swim. It's got a hold a whole lot.
Speaker 2: Of Now we could we could get into a bait
Speaker 2: on the debate on like which one.
Speaker 1: Would be worse.
Speaker 6: I'm trying to give him his props. Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well true story.
Speaker 2: The I told Luke about a story of a young
Speaker 2: man that rode with me the other day that had
Speaker 2: like a zero, like if they're on the scale of
Speaker 2: one to ten of just knowledge of equine animals, like
Speaker 2: he would be like minus one, and.
Speaker 6: Which end is the he was?
Speaker 4: He?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he was like shouldn't his feet be pointed
Speaker 2: outwards on his belly?
Speaker 1: He he was.
Speaker 2: So and I'm gonna use this word it's not derogatory
Speaker 2: towards him, but like almost naive.
Speaker 1: He just jumped up on that mule and was like
Speaker 1: so relaxed.
Speaker 2: And what I was trying to tell Luke is that
Speaker 2: an animal picks up on the energy. I don't care
Speaker 2: if you're a NEUROSCIENTI and uh and think this earth
Speaker 2: is just like natural physics. Man, there is there is
Speaker 2: something deep going on inside a horsemanship that that's very
Speaker 2: natural and there's a scientific explanation for it. But that
Speaker 2: animal is picking up what you're putting out if you're tense, fearful,
Speaker 2: it feels it, it knows it, and it translates to
Speaker 2: that animal if you're just like totally relaxed. Because I
Speaker 2: put this young man on a mule that's usually pretty
Speaker 2: hopped up Izzy and Is he's a great mule, very
Speaker 2: much to a finished meal, thousands of miles, never done
Speaker 2: anything wrong, but she's hard to handle. Like, you wouldn't
Speaker 2: put Mema on Izzy, right, Uh, Izzy would just she
Speaker 2: wouldn't hurt her, but well she probably would she could
Speaker 2: because she might, you know, not buck her off, but
Speaker 2: just kind of get out of control a little bit.
Speaker 2: And so I put him on there, and I was
Speaker 2: actually a little nervous about it, but he was a
Speaker 2: strapping young lady.
Speaker 1: Well it all comes out.
Speaker 2: This was before that, This was this was before that.
Speaker 2: And so I put him on there and and he
Speaker 2: was so he was so relaxed. Is he was relaxed,
Speaker 2: And I mean he just rode, We rode all over
Speaker 2: the place and totally fine.
Speaker 1: That's what Luke teld me. He did. He was just like, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is no big deal.
Speaker 4: So I didn't ignorance, is bliss.
Speaker 3: When I did notice on the video when they got
Speaker 3: mid stream, there was a little bit of well is
Speaker 3: he tripped? Yeah, and and Luke's eyes got a little bigger,
Speaker 3: but that was the only expression that he had, and
Speaker 3: he just like, all right, we'll just keep going.
Speaker 4: Was that when we were crossing the river? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: she tripped and she tripped, and I thought, oh boy,
Speaker 4: that we got about to get our cold plunge in
Speaker 4: for the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that would have been awesome.
Speaker 4: Well, hey, before we get to start, I have something
Speaker 4: for you guys, For each of you, I've brought from Maryland. Uh.
Speaker 4: I also smuggled on the airplane. It was not quite
Speaker 4: as hard as the live crabs, but it was had
Speaker 4: its own different challenges, but they did make it here.
Speaker 4: I have one for each of you. I'll explain after
Speaker 4: I give it to you.
Speaker 1: Here you go, Oh, I can't what, Brent, what's your guess?
Speaker 6: I don't know. He's taking off his shoes.
Speaker 1: Don't don't. Don't show it over here, but don't show.
Speaker 6: It to what's my guess? It could be crap. Oh,
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I have no idea, like, not even a single idea.
Speaker 1: If this is ah, I know what it is. I
Speaker 1: know I felt it now.
Speaker 6: If this is a dead fish wrapped up in newspaper,
Speaker 6: I know I'm a goner.
Speaker 4: I know it is all right, so they're wrapped up
Speaker 4: in newspaper. But this is a Maryland tablecloth.
Speaker 6: He this is real.
Speaker 1: This is a this is a tell me what this is.
Speaker 4: That's we call that a bluebell or blackhead duck decoy.
Speaker 4: You have a canvas back, Brent, Oh, listen, these are
Speaker 4: not any duck decoys, all right, these are so you
Speaker 4: you guys just did your book on market hunting deer
Speaker 4: right in America. Yes, so the Chesapeake Bay where I'm
Speaker 4: from had a long stretch of history where market hunting
Speaker 4: ducks was a huge part of culture and you know, industry.
Speaker 4: So these decoys and then you know, so that went
Speaker 4: from eighteen hundred to eighteen or nineteen eighteen was market
Speaker 4: hunting when it was legal. Then nineteen eighteen they outlawed it.
Speaker 4: So then there was a culture of outlaw market gunning.
Speaker 4: So these decoys are actually from between nineteen eighteen, after
Speaker 4: nineteen eighteen, but before nineteen thirty. These are actual outlaw
Speaker 4: wow market gunning.
Speaker 1: D Man.
Speaker 5: Let me tell you my brother right now, Tim is
Speaker 5: he's doing a double backflip right now, and he don't
Speaker 5: know why because I'm holding this and to a duck guide.
Speaker 6: Man, this right here is.
Speaker 4: It's history man, and those are made right you know?
Speaker 1: Do you think this is a hand carved?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 4: I know that.
Speaker 1: I know that.
Speaker 4: I could tell you. I I have done some research
Speaker 4: on both of these, and I can tell you who
Speaker 4: made that one. I don't know who made this one,
Speaker 4: but that they're from rock Hall, Maryland, which is right
Speaker 4: across the bay from me. It's a crab out of
Speaker 4: rock Hall sometimes. And so that the camsback you have, Brent,
Speaker 4: is likely turned down on a gun lathe from like
Speaker 4: World War One or what I know, I don't know,
Speaker 4: not that great whatever, like an old period military gun
Speaker 4: lay that they would these guys would get ahold of
Speaker 4: so they would turn some decoy bodies like that one
Speaker 4: is likely turned on a lathe and then finished with
Speaker 4: a spec I don't know they were kind of using whatever,
Speaker 4: but that one.
Speaker 3: I think bass would.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know that's common these days. I don't couldn't
Speaker 4: tell you what these are made out of.
Speaker 1: It's a heavy wood.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So that one that you have is likely hatchet
Speaker 4: carved and then finished with a draw knife. They would
Speaker 4: take a block and they would carve it with a hatchet.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: And then they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could have given this to the people that would.
Speaker 1: Appreciate it more.
Speaker 4: And that see, there is going in the museum. There's
Speaker 4: a part of me that hates to take history from
Speaker 4: where it's originated. It's lived its entire life, you know,
Speaker 4: in within ten miles of where I live at, you know, forever,
Speaker 4: and there's a lot of history with these two things.
Speaker 4: But I know that you guys, if anybody will appreciate
Speaker 4: it and take care of it, you know it's going
Speaker 4: to be you, guys. What a gift dude, and I have.
Speaker 2: This is like, this is about as good a spot
Speaker 2: on a gift as could be given.
Speaker 3: I would suggest not eating those paint chips though.
Speaker 1: So there's a little lead in those paint hips.
Speaker 4: Those I'm sure you know what those are, but those
Speaker 4: are brass shotgun shelves, and.
Speaker 1: So those describe what it looks like.
Speaker 4: It looks like a twelve gage shell, but it's just made.
Speaker 2: It looks like a twelve It looks like a spent
Speaker 2: twelve gage casing, but it's brass.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the whole thing's brass. And so the exact section
Speaker 4: of one inch brass pipe. Those are earlier than the decoys.
Speaker 4: So those are from somewhere between nineteen hundred and nineteen ten.
Speaker 4: Those are from allegedly from the guy got them from
Speaker 4: and the research I've done. And those were very, very
Speaker 4: common with the market gunners because they could reload them
Speaker 4: and shells were expensive, so they would use these brass shells.
Speaker 6: That they could.
Speaker 5: They used to call them Saint Louis too's the shoot
Speaker 5: number two shot at them when they would head rake them,
Speaker 5: you know across the bay.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Boy, they used to hunt these things with punt guns.
Speaker 4: You know, that would really be a cool thing. You know,
Speaker 4: these like ten foot long shotguns where they would pour
Speaker 4: like two pounds a shot and then they stolling boat
Speaker 4: and take out the whole flock and a roost.
Speaker 1: That man, Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 5: You could see the knife cuts on that on that cavat.
Speaker 1: So it's a blue belt.
Speaker 2: Now bluebell is like a duck that people want to
Speaker 2: kill up there.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah. Canvas backs are kind of the king
Speaker 4: of the Chesapeake, you know, been known for that. But
Speaker 4: the blue bills, I mean, that's what you know, that's
Speaker 4: like number two. Really there's a lot of the round
Speaker 4: so that is awesome. It's likely that these have been
Speaker 4: reheaded since then, but I mean they would that once
Speaker 4: kind of got a cracked head, you know, they they
Speaker 4: would carve the bodies. They put twenty heads on them
Speaker 4: in their life because they would just break off. There's
Speaker 4: actually even I was looking them over and there's a
Speaker 4: couple of spots where they're shot in these decoys, which
Speaker 4: I think, I think, you know, like and I know
Speaker 4: they don't look.
Speaker 2: Like much, but there's a shoe right in that One's
Speaker 2: a no, dude, that's gonna hang in the museum.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna these things have seen things that I hope
Speaker 4: that we will see again, but it's unlikely.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: Just cool, Okay.
Speaker 2: I have a gift for you, And this is not
Speaker 2: a retaliate, retaliatory gift. This is not I was gonna
Speaker 2: do this before I knew these were here, and in
Speaker 2: a way it's a gift from me, Josh and Brent
Speaker 2: oh Man.
Speaker 3: These things are getting scarce, man.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is a genuine plot Hound treed Ozark Mountain
Speaker 2: Killed custom one size fits all raccoon hat made by
Speaker 2: Josh Lambridge spilmmaker, that's a that's a so my my
Speaker 2: good dog, Fern Treed that coon. The last guy gave
Speaker 2: one to Well, I gave one to Cam Haynes. Cameron Haynes,
Speaker 2: and he asked me if I killed it, and I
Speaker 2: said probably. And the reason it was probably is because
Speaker 2: there was probably three or four kids over each that
Speaker 2: year that may have shot it. But that is a
Speaker 2: genuine Arkansas trash hound.
Speaker 1: Treed treasure hat.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you so much. That is awesome.
Speaker 1: You might you might need a fur hat up there.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, no I might. I think I'm just gonna
Speaker 4: wear it to the airport, you know.
Speaker 1: Man Like, Hey, if t s A tries to take
Speaker 1: that from you, call.
Speaker 4: Us, I know. No, I appreciate that.
Speaker 6: That is.
Speaker 4: That is amazing. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Hey, it's the Duck decoys. Incredible. So if you don't
Speaker 1: know Luke, all you gotta do is just look up Luke.
Speaker 3: L into your search, into your Instagram search.
Speaker 1: Just say.
Speaker 2: Here he goes Luke McFadden, Luke Skywalker's second Luke Skywalker,
Speaker 2: Luke uh Luca, donna check he might come up. NBA
Speaker 2: guy scored sixty points. He ain't no grabber no, so, uh,
Speaker 2: Luke has a big TikTok. You kind of got TikTok
Speaker 2: was like your thing there for a while.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely started on TikTok and it kind of spread
Speaker 4: across all plans form, So now you know TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's what I've been putting a lot of time into.
Speaker 4: You're a grabber, Yeah, yep, it's it's what I do
Speaker 4: full time grabber.
Speaker 2: And so you just give me like a like a
Speaker 2: short overview of your business, like you're catching crabs and
Speaker 2: then you're selling them direct people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yep. So I'm twenty seven. I started when I
Speaker 4: was eighteen on my own boat and everything, and I
Speaker 4: sold to wholesale you know, middlemen for the first seven years,
Speaker 4: and then I tried to get into you know, retail,
Speaker 4: which is kind of how I got into the social
Speaker 4: media stuff. I was trying to figure out, you know,
Speaker 4: find a market for my product really, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, just kind of figure out a way to
Speaker 4: market it better and whatever else. So end up selling
Speaker 4: a direct customer and so I've been doing that for
Speaker 4: the past two years and it's growing, you know, which
Speaker 4: is a great problem to have. But yeah, no, I'm
Speaker 4: a full time waterman on the bay and you.
Speaker 2: Tell us about smuggling those live crabs. So, like two
Speaker 2: days before he came down here, we're at Arkansas at
Speaker 2: the Global headquarters.
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, could you bring some crab down here?
Speaker 2: I mean, if if I was going somewhere, I could
Speaker 2: see somebody saying, hey, would you bring some bear grease
Speaker 2: or some bear me and I would be like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just my bear grease is a little bit harder to.
Speaker 2: Come by, but I would I'd be like sure. And
Speaker 2: so I texted Luke and I said, Hey, what are
Speaker 2: the chances you could bring some crab? And he said,
Speaker 2: like like frozen crab or like live crabs. And I
Speaker 2: was like, well, I don't even know what I'm asking for,
Speaker 2: you tell me, but live crabs sound pretty good. And
Speaker 2: it went something like that, and so what did you do?
Speaker 4: Well, I like a challenge, you know, so I uh,
Speaker 4: and I'm in the you know, I make videos. So
Speaker 4: I was like, you know, what would be an awesome thing,
Speaker 4: whether it went really well or really bad, is if
Speaker 4: I tried to get like live crabs you guys on
Speaker 4: the airplane and not like check them, like carry them
Speaker 4: on the airplane with me, and I was like, I
Speaker 4: don't know if you can do that. They won't let
Speaker 4: you bring a bottle of shampoo. But I was like,
Speaker 4: then it be funny either way, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Like, did you go ahead?
Speaker 1: Keep going?
Speaker 4: And I was doing this stuff before I even started
Speaker 4: social media. I'm the kind of guy will go the
Speaker 4: extra mile for a laugh for me or somebody else.
Speaker 4: So I was like, I just thought it would be,
Speaker 4: you know, an interesting thing to try anyway, So I, uh, yeah, No,
Speaker 4: I got like a Duffel bag and I built a
Speaker 4: cooler inside the Duffel bag, put the crabs in there,
Speaker 4: and then carried them on the airplane. So I have
Speaker 4: some pictures of me and my crabs on the.
Speaker 3: Crabs through the scanner. Did no one just say like, uh,
Speaker 3: can you open that up for me?
Speaker 4: Surprisingly no, I put them through the you know, the
Speaker 4: X ray machine.
Speaker 1: But they'll they'll stop a pair of fingernail clippers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly exactly, but they I seen it go through
Speaker 4: and then it stopped. In my heart, I was like,
Speaker 4: oh no, and then it went back and then it
Speaker 4: went through, and I seen the lady like pull the
Speaker 4: screen a little closer to her face, and it was
Speaker 4: like four thirty in the morning. So I was like,
Speaker 4: I was like, there's either chance they're gonna be really
Speaker 4: grumpy and they're gonna give you a hard time, or
Speaker 4: they're gonna be like it's too early for this. It
Speaker 4: was just mariling things like whatever, just like and then
Speaker 4: it went the third time and it went through. I
Speaker 4: was like, oh, we're good, and so I got them
Speaker 4: behind security and then the only issues I did have
Speaker 4: was trying to carry them on the actual airplane. They
Speaker 4: were gonna try to make me check them there for.
Speaker 1: That was a size that was a size issue.
Speaker 4: They didn't even know what was.
Speaker 2: In it, you know what I mean, Like they told them, hey,
Speaker 2: that bag's too big, and then what Yeah, so she
Speaker 2: gave me a hard time.
Speaker 4: She gave me real hard time. And I was like,
Speaker 4: you know, I can't check it, you know, I can't.
Speaker 4: You can't, just like it's got to stay upright, and
Speaker 4: and she's like why. I was like, well, you know,
Speaker 4: there's like it's full of seafoods. She's like okay. I
Speaker 4: was like, like live seafoods.
Speaker 2: You know, if you turn turned seafood over, it pours
Speaker 2: out that's right right.
Speaker 4: I was like, I don't want to be you know,
Speaker 4: carrying this. That was my first leg of the journey.
Speaker 4: I was like, I don't want to have be carried.
Speaker 4: That was in Baltimore, actually that I was, you know,
Speaker 4: having the having the hard time getting on the airplane.
Speaker 4: So you know, after some heated discussion, uh and some
Speaker 4: other things, I finally did get it on the airplane
Speaker 4: with me and into the overhead compartment. They made them
Speaker 4: here and only two crabs died. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 4: You think, I think we had about three dozen dozen.
Speaker 4: I was expecting for to, you know, hope. I was
Speaker 4: hoping to get about, you know, at least fifty percent
Speaker 4: here alive and well. But I tell you what, man
Speaker 4: complimentary drinks. You know, on the plane, the crabs were good,
Speaker 4: you know, give them some snacks. They were just fine.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah they do, yeah they do. Level window seat.
Speaker 4: I do have a picture of me and my crab
Speaker 4: seeing the world together. These crabs have seen things other
Speaker 4: crabs could never drink.
Speaker 1: Did do you have somebody sitting by you when you
Speaker 1: pulled that one out?
Speaker 4: I did, and it was it was awkward. It was
Speaker 4: like but the guy kind of just like.
Speaker 1: It was just okay.
Speaker 2: There's multiple kind of interactions that you have with someone
Speaker 2: that sister be on a plane. Yeah, there's like the
Speaker 2: no look, you know, there's like multiple options. There's the
Speaker 2: no look, no look, no talk. It's just like imaginary
Speaker 2: wall ignorance is bliss, like, let's not do this, We're
Speaker 2: just and then and then there's the kind of the
Speaker 2: southern like nice guy, like anybody you set with you
Speaker 2: need to greet them, and and where were you at
Speaker 2: on this.
Speaker 4: Uh, you know in Baltimore. That's not really it's more
Speaker 4: the you know, I'm I'm.
Speaker 1: The Baltimore stank guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm upset that you have to be even on
Speaker 4: the same airplane, even if you cure cancer, like that
Speaker 4: kind of metality.
Speaker 1: So you didn't talk to this person. No, I didn't
Speaker 1: say anything.
Speaker 4: It's kind of just best to uh, you know, I
Speaker 4: just kind of went about my business and well, you
Speaker 4: know what, I'm some there's there's days were you're that guy,
Speaker 4: you know, and these are becoming more and more frequent
Speaker 4: with my life, oddly enough. But I was just that guy,
Speaker 4: that guy that had a crab.
Speaker 1: So you pulled a crab out the guy beside you
Speaker 1: acknowledged it.
Speaker 4: He kind of just I think that he's he saw it.
Speaker 4: You know, he looked and he was just kind of
Speaker 4: like I he kind of acknowledged that he saw it,
Speaker 4: because I saw his demeanor change and then he just
Speaker 4: kind of like looked back forward and closed his eyes.
Speaker 4: I was like, I wonder, it's like it's so early
Speaker 4: in the morning. Maybe this guy thinks like, there's no
Speaker 4: way I just saw this crab on. Yeah, And then
Speaker 4: I wonder.
Speaker 1: If he thought it was like cooked seafood and he
Speaker 1: was like.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, or like a guy beside me he's cracking crabs, right.
Speaker 4: See. That would have been funny to bring crab, you know,
Speaker 4: cook crabs and ate him on you eat him on
Speaker 4: the airplane on the way home. That would have well.
Speaker 2: So when he got him here, Josh, we did a
Speaker 2: big crab boil.
Speaker 1: We had steam.
Speaker 2: Oh some hate mail in Maryland. The most tragic thing
Speaker 2: about the whole scene, though, is that Clay made his
Speaker 2: famous regionally famous coast law.
Speaker 1: You know, can you confirm to them that it's regionally famous.
Speaker 3: It's got saliv every ca It's going to show up
Speaker 3: every wedding on the newcom.
Speaker 2: Farments even hand chopped the cabbage after Yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: long story. I put it in the refrigerator to chill. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you do that with Josh, don't give me a.
Speaker 6: Chilling.
Speaker 2: And so we then we go steam our crab and
Speaker 2: we have this huge meal and we leave the coast
Speaker 2: law in.
Speaker 1: The fridge.
Speaker 2: Some of Clay's famous coast law on the render before
Speaker 2: we end today.
Speaker 1: I'm kidding, that's a joke, but he got excited. So
Speaker 1: we started. Tell us how you get how steam crab?
Speaker 4: We just put him in a you know, in a
Speaker 4: pot probably like like a canning pot or something. Yeah, whatever,
Speaker 4: we use what we got, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: and put some water and vinegar in the bottom.
Speaker 3: And what's the vinegar do?
Speaker 4: The vinegar actually makes them easier to pick, so it
Speaker 4: keeps the meat from sticking to the shell so bad.
Speaker 6: Interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So like if you use like I've heard of
Speaker 4: guys using like sea water, not chesbeake bay water, but
Speaker 4: like seawater to steam seafood and stuff. We're putting seasoning
Speaker 4: with salt in it in the water and that seems
Speaker 4: like a great concept, but it makes the meat stick
Speaker 4: to the shell work, So if you put a little
Speaker 4: white vinegar in there, maybe like one third part white vinegar,
Speaker 4: you know, it'll it'll just water.
Speaker 6: And how they figured it out.
Speaker 1: I was about to say something.
Speaker 6: Okay, give me that diesel. Yeah yeah, how about some
Speaker 6: w forty No, it didn't work either. What we got
Speaker 6: left here's some white vinegar.
Speaker 4: It's like the same guy that figured out you could
Speaker 4: eat a crab.
Speaker 2: And who was the guy that decided that it didn't
Speaker 2: stick to the shell?
Speaker 1: Bad?
Speaker 4: I mean probably the guy selling vinegar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because the stuff we cooked in vinegar, I'd
Speaker 2: say the meat stuck.
Speaker 6: To the shell last night. I mean when we ate it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of what happens.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it does a little bit. But I'm telling you
Speaker 4: it can be like there's a lot of times where
Speaker 4: you're trying to get it and it's like it's like
Speaker 4: the meat stuck to itself. That's like stuck to the
Speaker 4: It's hard to describe, but I gave you too. You
Speaker 4: could probably pick I don't know, we may have to drive.
Speaker 2: These are blue crabs, and ironically these actually probably came
Speaker 2: from Louisiana.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Maryland blue crab season is closed right.
Speaker 2: Now, so you you but they shipped them live from
Speaker 2: Louisiana to Maryland, and then you brought them from Maryland
Speaker 2: to Arkansas.
Speaker 4: Well traveled.
Speaker 1: These are blue crabs.
Speaker 2: What's the scientific name of them calling next is sapitus.
Speaker 2: And so the males are how big males?
Speaker 4: I mean the i'll get up to I mean I've
Speaker 4: caught like the biggest one I've caught probably is like
Speaker 4: nine inches point to point across the carapas, which is
Speaker 4: a giant I mean, that's a massive crab. Usually when
Speaker 4: they get that mount I didn't, but I have seen
Speaker 4: mounted crabs, but I don't have amount of crab that
Speaker 4: would be pretty cool though I sold it, you know.
Speaker 4: But uh yeah, So you know, they get that big
Speaker 4: and usually the thing that gets them is either a
Speaker 4: waterman or they you know, they die a shell rot.
Speaker 4: They get so big they can't shit. They don't have
Speaker 4: the energy shed their show anymore, like males will in
Speaker 4: theory just keep growing and growing and growing. Oh really,
Speaker 4: females once they shed from an immature female to a
Speaker 4: mature female, they never That crab never sheds again.
Speaker 1: Interesting, I'm surprised that in.
Speaker 2: Like water folklore, there's not a giant crab somewhere like.
Speaker 1: A whale or a squid. Six foot crab, well, I
Speaker 1: mean no, like a twenty foot crab. Oh like there
Speaker 1: could be.
Speaker 4: I mean the thing is, you know, I use crab
Speaker 4: pots instead of like an alternative method to catching crabs
Speaker 4: and Maryland be like a trout line where the crab
Speaker 4: is just holding onto a piece of bait and then
Speaker 4: you're driving a boat along the line and you put
Speaker 4: like you have a hook over the side. You put
Speaker 4: the line over the hook and you're just driving along
Speaker 4: it and the crabs will hold onto the bait till
Speaker 4: you get to the surface and then you dip them
Speaker 4: off the line with a net.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 4: So in a crab pot you can only catch a
Speaker 4: crab that will fit through them, so they catch some
Speaker 4: real giants. You know. Trout lining because it's anything that
Speaker 4: can hold, you just don't catch as many. Well, there's
Speaker 4: just different areas you can go. And you know, I
Speaker 4: mean when you're doing on a really large scale like
Speaker 4: what I'm doing, you know, you're fishing up to fourteen
Speaker 4: hundred crab pots when I'm have two license. Sometimes, you know,
Speaker 4: crab potton is kind of the way that you would go,
Speaker 4: you know, to do it on a really big scale.
Speaker 1: I see, so Luke.
Speaker 3: When I was a boy, I grew up on the Gulf,
Speaker 3: we used to go crabbing.
Speaker 4: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: We had my uncle had two crab pots and then
Speaker 3: we just take the lines where we put the meat
Speaker 3: through and we'd pitch them out there and we'd catch
Speaker 3: blue blue crabs there near to Alveston.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just to.
Speaker 2: They're all over the East Coast the so blue crabs
Speaker 2: are Are they all over the world or just.
Speaker 1: I mean America.
Speaker 4: I know they have them in South America and Central America.
Speaker 1: Same same species, I believe.
Speaker 4: So I've never been there to witness it, but I
Speaker 4: do think they do. I hear they don't get as big.
Speaker 4: But you know with East Coast going through, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of ecological change kind of going on in the northeast,
Speaker 4: you know, of the East Coast. So, I mean they're
Speaker 4: even finding blue crabs in Maine, you know, I know,
Speaker 4: guys that lobster and that.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like I figured they were already there.
Speaker 1: They're not.
Speaker 4: They're not, No, they're not, but they're starting to show up.
Speaker 2: It's a southern Chesapeake Bay is the northern range of
Speaker 2: the blue.
Speaker 4: Crab historically, as you know, yeah, like Chesapea Bay, Delaware Bay.
Speaker 4: You know, I know they have some in New York
Speaker 4: and all, but it was kind of like from what
Speaker 4: I understand, you know, that was kind of as far north,
Speaker 4: like you know, there's not a fishery for them in
Speaker 4: New York. Well there, I think maybe there.
Speaker 2: Is just a little caveat if if the Arkansas Game
Speaker 2: and Fish finds some blue crab in the Arkansas River,
Speaker 2: it didn't.
Speaker 4: Have anything to do with us, right right, So yeah,
Speaker 4: like I guess there is a fishery for blue crabs
Speaker 4: in New York. I don't know a ton about it,
Speaker 4: but you know, that was kind of like as far
Speaker 4: north really find them.
Speaker 2: But so when you eat these things, there was you
Speaker 2: said something when we started, you said, blue crabs are
Speaker 2: the only thing you could starve while eating. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a surprising, surprisingly small amount of meat on a pretty
Speaker 2: big looking crab.
Speaker 1: Would you have said that, Joha?
Speaker 2: But but once you get into it, you realize it's
Speaker 2: the it's the it's the social aspect, and the meat
Speaker 2: is very very good and you have to work for it.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of it's fun.
Speaker 3: Generally you supplement the crab with coleslaw.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so just quickly tell me how you'd break down
Speaker 2: crab like to eat it.
Speaker 1: So if you just had to describe it to somebody
Speaker 1: in like a minute.
Speaker 4: Yeah, break the claws off, you get into the claws,
Speaker 4: eat that pretty pain free. Then pick the apron off
Speaker 4: the bat, flip it over.
Speaker 1: It's like the hood.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yep, uh yeah.
Speaker 3: The bonnet is the bonnet something that's just reproductive.
Speaker 2: One of my don't let this this might indicate my
Speaker 2: socioeconomic status, but one of my biggest interactions with seafoods
Speaker 2: has been Captain D's and that Captain D's when you
Speaker 2: get when you get the seafood platter, it actually has
Speaker 2: a real crab shell stuffed with like you know, crabs
Speaker 2: and crabs.
Speaker 4: It's probably a real crab shell stuffed with like imitation crab.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I wonder if that was a blue crab.
Speaker 4: Possibly it was.
Speaker 1: About it's about the size of it as big as
Speaker 1: a mango.
Speaker 5: Yeah, probably a blue crab something like that from our
Speaker 5: mango tree in the yard.
Speaker 2: Carry on, Okay, so you take you take the the
Speaker 2: top big part of the shell off.
Speaker 4: Yep, yeah, you'll pull you'll pull the uh, you know,
Speaker 4: the carapace off, and then you'll be left with the body.
Speaker 4: You'll see the lungs and then kind of like the
Speaker 4: guts in the center. You pull the guts out, looks
Speaker 4: like ramen noodles. You know, you don't want to eat
Speaker 4: the forbidden ramen noodles can, but I don't suggest it necessarily.
Speaker 4: And then they have lungs on either side.
Speaker 1: You'll pull that like gills, like fish gills, gills.
Speaker 4: There's some kind of thing about it because they live. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they look like gills. Pull them off. You don't really
Speaker 4: want to eat them. And then I take the body,
Speaker 4: break it in two pieces. You know, it'll split into
Speaker 4: two even pieces, and then uh, you know, I usually
Speaker 4: flip it over and you'll be able to see the
Speaker 4: lines down the you know, the underside of the crab.
Speaker 4: I'll kind of take my two thumbs and break them
Speaker 4: along those lines, and then you can kind of crack
Speaker 4: the top and then pull the meat out of all
Speaker 4: the little compartments. You know. I like to keep it
Speaker 4: still attached to the legs. It just gives you, you know,
Speaker 4: for dipping and whatever else. There's a lot of times
Speaker 4: we'll dip it.
Speaker 2: But now that you're describing it and I've done it,
Speaker 2: now it helps me to think about it like this.
Speaker 2: The muscles. There are muscles attached to things that have
Speaker 2: to move. Yeah, and there's a muscle attached to every leg.
Speaker 2: So it's a it has eight legs, right, yeah, eight
Speaker 2: legs and two pinchers something or maybe six. I don't
Speaker 2: think it's eight legs, six legs, six legs.
Speaker 1: It's got a lot.
Speaker 4: I think he's got three legs, a swim fin, and
Speaker 4: a pincher on each side, I believe.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's four appendages. You ain't no craber, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I ain't no crab. But like every leg has a
Speaker 2: little tuft of meat, like a tiny little bit of meat,
Speaker 2: and so you're basically cracking off that leg and pulling
Speaker 2: it out so that meat kind of comes out with it,
Speaker 2: and then you have this little little crab whole hand,
Speaker 2: you know, handle of the leg, and then you dip
Speaker 2: that in some mouth of butter, touch it into a
Speaker 2: little little bit of a little seasoning that you have,
Speaker 2: and then you eat it. And so you do that
Speaker 2: with all the legs, and then you've cracked the claws,
Speaker 2: which not all of them had claws.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well sometimes a lot of times the claws fall
Speaker 4: off when you're steaming them, and all you know, they're
Speaker 4: in there fighting, you know whatever. They don't go out
Speaker 4: without a fight. You know, like in a restaurant when
Speaker 4: you get crabs, a lot of times.
Speaker 1: They like, can you turn up the heat of freezing? Right?
Speaker 4: In a restaurant, they would either shock the crabs, electrocute them,
Speaker 4: or ice them. You really like flash ice them. Usually
Speaker 4: they electrocute them. Wow, right right, the merchant of crustacean death.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 4: But that's so that so when they see them, so
Speaker 4: they don't fight in the pot animal ethics, well, I
Speaker 4: mean maybe I don't know what I mean. I know
Speaker 4: in the industry it's like so that because you know,
Speaker 4: if you're if you're serving crabs at a restaurant, people
Speaker 4: will complain sometimes they don't have all the claws even
Speaker 4: if they're like there, they want a crab with all
Speaker 4: the tendency.
Speaker 1: So so you you say, I'm on, you shock them.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a gladiator fight when you throw
Speaker 2: them all on that pot and the lid on.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, we put the lid on and we had
Speaker 4: some potatoes and corn on the top, and uh, I
Speaker 4: think missus you said something about like it's moving.
Speaker 6: There was.
Speaker 4: The lid starts kind of moving a little bit. I
Speaker 4: was like, yeah, it's it's just just we'll check.
Speaker 3: In on them.
Speaker 2: Like what I learned is that it's like extremely like
Speaker 2: Luke said, it's a it's a full full contact sport.
Speaker 2: Like you know, we had crabs everywhere. It's like you
Speaker 2: have a huge pileist stuff. But at first, when I
Speaker 2: was watching him do it, I was like, holy cow,
Speaker 2: this is gonna be wild because he was like, don't
Speaker 2: eat this, don't eat the lungs. There's there's what he
Speaker 2: called the mustard in him, which is the fat which
Speaker 2: just looks like this like pasty yell. I mean, it'd
Speaker 2: be like you'd think, don't eat that, but it kind
Speaker 2: of gets on everything and it's actually really good. So
Speaker 2: there was nothing that I put in my mouth from
Speaker 2: that crab it didn't taste incredible. So I kind of
Speaker 2: got it. I was like, Oh, you don't have to
Speaker 2: be afraid of anything. You just like go to town
Speaker 2: and it was a it was great.
Speaker 4: Full contact sport eating crabs for sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, like eat like a big crawfish ball on steroids.
Speaker 1: YEA, yeah, I can see. I can see how if
Speaker 1: you really do what you were doing.
Speaker 5: I mean, you just if you try not to make
Speaker 5: a messrab how I'm outside or in the bathtub, because
Speaker 5: that's you're gonna get it everywhere.
Speaker 3: Luke, what's your record of eating crabs? How many crabs
Speaker 3: have you eaten?
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, in one sitting at the I
Speaker 4: don't know. I mean usually by the time i've you know,
Speaker 4: if I really get it, you know, the tunnel vision
Speaker 4: on eating the crabs, it's kind of like everything else
Speaker 4: just kind of you know, so it's kind of like
Speaker 4: you just kind of wake up in the zone covered
Speaker 4: in old bay or ko seasoning.
Speaker 1: And I can't remember what happened.
Speaker 4: In Arkansas.
Speaker 1: I remember bringing these on the plane.
Speaker 3: Okay, if I'm going to do a crab boil for
Speaker 3: family and friends, how many how many that's I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: crab steam.
Speaker 4: You don't do any crab family and friends.
Speaker 3: How many crabs do I need to factor in per person?
Speaker 4: I mean you could count on, like, you know, if
Speaker 4: you're if if you're if your friends are from Maryland,
Speaker 4: I would count on ten crabs man per person. Per person.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, depending on the size. The size of the
Speaker 4: crab makes all the difference. Of course, we didn't have
Speaker 4: any giant extra jumbos because I was trying to can
Speaker 4: only bring so many on the plane. I was trying
Speaker 4: to get a little more in case some died.
Speaker 5: I sent a picture of that to Michael Rose when
Speaker 5: they were all let out on the table, you know,
Speaker 5: his wife from Maryland, and she said, what's everybody else
Speaker 5: going to eat?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I would say if I'm eating like large crabs,
Speaker 4: which are like my largest are six to six and
Speaker 4: a half inches across the top, you know, I could
Speaker 4: count on eating between ten and twelve myself. But I'm
Speaker 4: a I'm a very efficient crab eater. You know, I don't.
Speaker 4: I actually don't eat crabs that often. You know what
Speaker 4: I mean. It's that's like Biggie Small's breaking his eighth
Speaker 4: crack commandment. Man, you can't get high on your own supply.
Speaker 4: You know what I meant it.
Speaker 3: That reference will play with a lot of bear grease.
Speaker 6: All right, that's good. It was so good.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say four crabs.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: After four crabs, I was like, can I just pay corbage?
Speaker 1: I mean, true story.
Speaker 6: I ain't no crabber.
Speaker 3: It was like, can you imagine steaming a deer hole
Speaker 3: a deer, live deer eating with yours jumping out on
Speaker 3: the table, don't give Yeah.
Speaker 2: Great idea.
Speaker 5: We'll be doing that next man.
Speaker 2: I hate to change the topic from crabbing, but we
Speaker 2: got some serious conversation to have here about a podcast
Speaker 2: that I've been working on and excited about for probably
Speaker 2: over a year.
Speaker 1: Like the sequence of the way these things happen when
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: A series is you It's not always a year, but
Speaker 2: usually I'm reading a book or doing something that's connected
Speaker 2: to something that i'll will materialize much later. I think
Speaker 2: last summer, maybe last spring, I started reading Roderick Nash's book.
Speaker 1: Wilderness in the American mind. That book, this book was written.
Speaker 1: Let me see what the copyright date is.
Speaker 2: It's gonna blow your mind. This book first edition published
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 6: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: This book is considered the quote unquote book of genesis of.
Speaker 1: Let's see I'm looking for.
Speaker 2: This book is a mandatory prelude to any modern treatment
Speaker 2: of conservation problems. Here's another one when Roderck Gash, when
Speaker 2: Roderick Nash's Wilderness in the American Mind first appeared in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven. It was justly praised as the first
Speaker 2: real idea book and environmental history. Indeed, a classic study
Speaker 2: and greatly influenced. And that's not what I'm looking for.
Speaker 2: This is the book of genesis of American wilderness. This guy,
Speaker 2: this guy was a was a like getting his PhD
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty seven, wrote this book. When I read
Speaker 2: this book, I cannot fathom what a human would have
Speaker 2: to go through to gather the information he did and
Speaker 2: cover it in such an incredible way. This is a
Speaker 2: top five book for me in the world. Oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like massively influential because it unveiled for me things that
Speaker 2: were happening inside of me that I didn't know why.
Speaker 2: And that's something I'm very interested in all areas of life.
Speaker 1: I popped out of the womb.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy nine in Arkansas, and I have this
Speaker 2: view of the world, these ideas about different things. How
Speaker 2: much of that did I come up with on my own?
Speaker 2: How much of it I came up because of my
Speaker 2: individual family. How much did I come up with it
Speaker 2: because of the culture that I'm raised in. How much
Speaker 2: did I come of it, come up with it because
Speaker 2: I am an American, Like where does this stuff come from?
Speaker 2: And to me, that's all real important because you will
Speaker 2: live a life of deception if you think, I mean
Speaker 2: this whole idea of being like a freethinker and like
Speaker 2: we're these independent people that just came up with all
Speaker 2: this stuff on our own.
Speaker 1: And nobody tells me what to do.
Speaker 2: I'm it's like, dude, you're a product of your culture
Speaker 2: because your culture valued that. Your culture valued you saying
Speaker 2: that you're the only one who ever thought of this,
Speaker 2: and you're this autonomous man, and I love that. But
Speaker 2: what I'm saying is that came from somewhere. This whole
Speaker 2: idea of like rugged individualism of the American is.
Speaker 5: You're influenced by everything is an influence, either positive or negative.
Speaker 1: Well, and and a whole lot of the way that
Speaker 1: we think.
Speaker 3: That unless you're ste.
Speaker 1: Well, we're gonna get to that.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: I I when when Rodert Nash started talking about wilderness,
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, yeah, And I had no idea
Speaker 2: he was talking about all this deep history about Oh.
Speaker 1: I mean this was way different than like the Donnie
Speaker 1: Baker story.
Speaker 2: I mean, like radically like if an alien came down
Speaker 2: and analyzed this podcast, they.
Speaker 1: Would be like two different people must.
Speaker 2: Have made that for for for because it's like very different,
Speaker 2: which I like. I like that it went from this
Speaker 2: very perersonal, very personal story to something I don't view
Speaker 2: it as academic, but it is philosophical, and philosophy not
Speaker 2: being to me, philosophy is really functional because to have
Speaker 2: an understanding of who you are, you have to kind
Speaker 2: of know why. And I've always loved the idea of
Speaker 2: wilderness but also wilderness with the capitol W.
Speaker 1: But so this.
Speaker 2: Book just specs it out and so much I got
Speaker 2: to give Roderick Nash credit. So much of what I
Speaker 2: talked about in this first episode came came from this book.
Speaker 2: And I tried to get Roderick Nash, who's still alive,
Speaker 2: he's in his eighties. Tried to get him on this
Speaker 2: year podcast and he wouldn't. He wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: And I'm not afraid to say that because it's just
Speaker 1: the truth.
Speaker 6: But good.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of respect for what he wrote.
Speaker 2: But but holy smokes, did I have a cast of
Speaker 2: characters though? Uh, Doctor Dan Flores, incredible guy. Uh just
Speaker 2: came up with a new book called Wild New World.
Speaker 2: He wrote kyot America. He wrote American Serengetti, which if
Speaker 2: you haven't read American Serengetti, you ain't no crabber.
Speaker 4: And there's not pictures, and I ain't read it most
Speaker 4: crabbers probably.
Speaker 2: American Serengetti is basically about the plis to Scene North America.
Speaker 2: Just it's it's it. It's just mind boggling Britos. We're
Speaker 2: gonna I had Koby Morehead came over here the other
Speaker 2: day and told me how to make that battery pack
Speaker 2: stop beeping, and I forgot what he said, so every
Speaker 2: time it beats.
Speaker 1: In this podcast, we're giving one of the listeners that
Speaker 1: Coonskin had not true.
Speaker 2: American Serengetti talks about Plice to Scene North America and
Speaker 2: basically that we had more charismatic megafauna than even Africa.
Speaker 1: What we looked at.
Speaker 2: You know, we had we had the bison, We had
Speaker 2: like multiple giant cats. We had horses, we had ground
Speaker 2: two thousand pound giant groundsloth. We had cave bears, we
Speaker 2: had dire wolves. I mean, it was it was like
Speaker 2: a it was like Jurassic Park here. Anyway, Dan Floores
Speaker 2: wrote a book on that.
Speaker 1: He's number one.
Speaker 2: Number two is doctor Sarah Dant. It's it's Dan's wife.
Speaker 2: I think that's a I think the world knows that what.
Speaker 3: Their dinner table conversation has probably got a.
Speaker 1: Little they're like the most interesting people time.
Speaker 2: So she she's a professor at Weaber University in Utah,
Speaker 2: and she wrote this book called Losing Eden, which is
Speaker 2: an environmental history of the West. It is like so
Speaker 2: so much packed with deep human history on the landscape
Speaker 2: of North America. Kind of mind blowing book too, And
Speaker 2: so she's on there. And then Steve Ardella, who I'm
Speaker 2: interested to see what y'all's take on the Steve Ardelli
Speaker 2: section was. Steve's always great to have on He's He's
Speaker 2: yeah great. And then one of my favorites, Hal Harry,
Speaker 2: who Hal Harry and is a character. If you don't
Speaker 2: know how then you ain't no crabber. But Hal Harry
Speaker 2: and great guy.
Speaker 1: Where to start?
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't you know you said that the
Speaker 4: last the Donnie Baker This really aren't related, but I
Speaker 4: mean it kind of is, though. I mean, you can't
Speaker 4: tell me even though Donnie Bakery what he did, I mean,
Speaker 4: he I guarante you know, he shared all the same
Speaker 4: interests in the wild and the that we do, you know,
Speaker 4: and that everybody else did. So really it's kind of
Speaker 4: almost the origin story of the whole thing. You know.
Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, starting you just had the Franks before
Speaker 4: the beans little bit, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well, I don't think it's very.
Speaker 4: It's not that unrelated. It's like, you know, his desire
Speaker 4: to be out in the wilderness and take to ear
Speaker 4: and do whatever else, even though it went a little
Speaker 4: sideways there for a minute. Yeah, you know, probably ideas.
Speaker 1: So he he was.
Speaker 2: Going to an area that had unmolested animals that were
Speaker 2: easy to hunt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly me.
Speaker 2: That was the most interesting thing. One of the most
Speaker 2: interesting things in the podcast is.
Speaker 1: That this what we now view as a love.
Speaker 2: Of wilderness, and that's like federally preserving wilderness areas goes
Speaker 2: back deep into our epigenetics, as Dan Flora has said,
Speaker 2: when we loved places that were absent of humans because
Speaker 2: we could go there and be successful hunting because the
Speaker 2: animals were undisturbed.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's like wildly fascinating.
Speaker 3: I feel like this podcast made me more contemplative about
Speaker 3: it than I've ever been because I think I think
Speaker 3: when you say the word wilderness, it does evoke an
Speaker 3: emotional response to a lot of people. And I thought,
Speaker 3: I thought, what is what is wilderness really? You know,
Speaker 3: beyond the definition? What does it mean to me? Because
Speaker 3: you know, we've we've traveled a lot with our kids
Speaker 3: to national parks and whatnot, and you know, you see
Speaker 3: the capital W wilderness and you kind of go out
Speaker 3: there and you see the paved parking lot and you
Speaker 3: see all the trails, and you know the signs that say.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't be Capital W wilderness, that would be a
Speaker 1: national park.
Speaker 3: Well national park, but we have seen wilderness areas and
Speaker 3: it just you're like, that doesn't it is? I mean
Speaker 3: if you can.
Speaker 1: Drive it, yeah, so well you're talking about national parks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, But but the the idea of wilderness is
Speaker 3: to me is captivating with a side of terrifying, because
Speaker 3: I thought.
Speaker 1: You were going to say captivating with a capital C.
Speaker 3: No, captivating like like I'm I'm I'm I am just
Speaker 3: bewildered by it and I'm drawn to it. But at
Speaker 3: the same time, there is that that aspect of of
Speaker 3: like it's it's wild. I mean it is like it's
Speaker 3: it's unpredictable. And uh, going back to what I talked
Speaker 3: about this before. If we're going to talk about wilderness,
Speaker 3: you can't talk about it without the movie The Wilderness Family.
Speaker 3: And but you know, I think about that, that idea
Speaker 3: of being dropped off in the middle of nowhere and
Speaker 3: being forced to make something of it, and uh, there
Speaker 3: there there are certain things like we talked about about
Speaker 3: unmolested animals, but also at the same time, there is
Speaker 3: a raw wildness about it. I thought that. I thought
Speaker 3: the etymology of your your word there was fascinating.
Speaker 2: I got chills listening to that yesterday in the truck
Speaker 2: coming coming home from squirrel hunting.
Speaker 1: So a stringer squirrels in the back truck.
Speaker 6: I love it.
Speaker 3: But I'm excited about I'm excited about hearing more about
Speaker 3: it because it is it is a it is a
Speaker 3: thing that is unique. I'd never thought about wilderness being
Speaker 3: something that when you lose it, you don't get it back, right,
Speaker 3: I'm not. It's hard to wrap your mind around let
Speaker 3: it come back. Yeah, it's it's done. So we have
Speaker 3: we have a potentially extinctible resource that really does need
Speaker 3: to be cared for, and so I appreciate the deep dive.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's important to understand like this broader
Speaker 2: scale of humanity, humans as a species coming out of
Speaker 2: being hunter gatherers, moving towards civilization, which civilization would be
Speaker 2: defined by agriculture and domestic animals and congregation of people
Speaker 2: which would have increased birth rates, produced a lot of
Speaker 2: more security. As people were coming out of wilderness into
Speaker 2: that there was there was this this very long standing
Speaker 2: human idea that wilderness was bad, even though we were
Speaker 2: drawn to it as hunter gatherers to go into places
Speaker 2: that were unexploited. When all of a sudden there was
Speaker 2: a new option, we were very interested in becoming. And again,
Speaker 2: civilized is a politically incorrect term that I'm going to
Speaker 2: use because we just have to to understand what we're
Speaker 2: talking about, you know, because when you say civilized, it
Speaker 2: insinuates that there are humans that live uncivilized lives, and
Speaker 2: so that's politically incorrect, but you understand what I'm saying. So,
Speaker 2: when all of a sudden the security of civilization was here,
Speaker 2: there was like, let's say, ninety nine percent of people
Speaker 2: were very interested in getting to that so that they
Speaker 2: didn't die when they were eighteen years old from starvation
Speaker 2: or from a wooly man.
Speaker 1: With tusk in the butt.
Speaker 4: You know, you'll have that.
Speaker 1: Took it right in.
Speaker 2: The tables shifted as civilization then became dominated the face
Speaker 2: of the earth, and then all of a sudden, there's
Speaker 2: this artifact where we woke up in the eighteen hundred's,
Speaker 2: the Romantic era, and all of a sudden it became
Speaker 2: cool to love wilderness. So I mean, it's like this,
Speaker 2: like this sloshing from one side to the other. Wilderness
Speaker 2: is our enemy. We have to get to civilization. And
Speaker 2: then it became civilization is the enemy. That's what Threau
Speaker 2: and Emerson and mirror, and we have to get back
Speaker 2: to wilderness. And then today we live in a world
Speaker 2: that's so lopsided in civilization.
Speaker 1: There's those of us who.
Speaker 2: Are scrapping and wanting to interact with and go to
Speaker 2: a place that's so such an anomaly across the face
Speaker 2: of the earth, where we could go and experience a
Speaker 2: place that people don't live.
Speaker 1: That is a way, you know, that's interesting.
Speaker 5: You think about you think about I'm sorry, well, you
Speaker 5: just think about the you talked about the romanticism of it,
Speaker 5: and in our realm where we work here, the majority
Speaker 5: of the products that we sell, that we offer for sale,
Speaker 5: that we use, are all geared to make going into.
Speaker 6: The wilderness easier. Yeah, you know, I mean that's how
Speaker 6: we make a living.
Speaker 5: Boots and water and backpacks and being lighter weight and
Speaker 5: being able to carry more stuff with you that you
Speaker 5: need to survive at a time out there. When back
Speaker 5: in those days it was hard, you know, you had to.
Speaker 5: It was just a bigger struggle when and we're doing
Speaker 5: it now not for survival, but for pleasure, for fun,
Speaker 5: to feel that need that we have that we wake
Speaker 5: up that we long to get away from everything that's
Speaker 5: around us, all these light bulbs and stuff. You know,
Speaker 5: we all the time I'm here, we're working, we're hunting. Yesterday,
Speaker 5: I'm answering text messages and emails while I'm on the
Speaker 5: back of that mule. And we get out there when
Speaker 5: there's none of that. It's a whole different way to
Speaker 5: look at a sunrise, or or the way to look
Speaker 5: at riding down the road or walking down the road
Speaker 5: when you're so far removed from it. I had the
Speaker 5: thought that in there where. He said that it's in
Speaker 5: our nature to long for those places to go. And
Speaker 5: I may be I'm obviously paraphrasing what he said, but
Speaker 5: what I got out of what he was talking about
Speaker 5: was it's in our DNA and our genetic code to
Speaker 5: want to go to the wild place. My wife thinks
Speaker 5: if she's if we're in a town that doesn't have
Speaker 5: a target, that's about as wilderness as he gets.
Speaker 1: That's a wilderness there.
Speaker 6: She don't want any part of that.
Speaker 5: She wants to go to the opposite direction, so, you know,
Speaker 5: but she wouldn't like to go to in the middle
Speaker 5: of living, in the middle of Baltimore, or even even
Speaker 5: in the middle of Little Rock that shit, that's too congestion.
Speaker 5: She wants somewhere in the happy medium that still got
Speaker 5: the security that you can go here and here and
Speaker 5: there with very little trouble. Me, on the other hand,
Speaker 5: give me a color lamp and a pocket full of
Speaker 5: shelves and a shotgun and I'm gonna be fine just
Speaker 5: where I could get away from people.
Speaker 6: So there, at some point, you know, it was a pendulum.
Speaker 5: At some point, some folks still still followed that, yeah,
Speaker 5: that that want or that need to do something, and
Speaker 5: some folks didn't. I mean, they stopped at the edge.
Speaker 5: You know, this is far enough, but there's still others
Speaker 5: that want to go further out. And it had to
Speaker 5: be that way, or this country wouldn't have wouldn't be
Speaker 5: where it is now. Yeah, you know, with exploration, that
Speaker 5: was just something that I thought about.
Speaker 4: Luke, what do you think, you know, I just kind
Speaker 4: of had a thought about kind of the irity of
Speaker 4: like you were talking about, you know, human's desire to preserve,
Speaker 4: recognize and preserve wilderness and wild places. And it's kind
Speaker 4: of the same theme here is where everything is going
Speaker 4: so full circle, where like, in an effort to do that,
Speaker 4: we have places like Yellowstone, which I to me is
Speaker 4: the least wild wilderness that you could experience, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, right right exactly, Like so it's sort
Speaker 4: of like it It's just I think it's just one
Speaker 4: of the common denominators of human nature, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, the same thing that drives people like us
Speaker 4: to go experience places where there is no one else
Speaker 4: the same you know. That's that's what the people that
Speaker 4: discovered new continents and you know, Americas and whatever else
Speaker 4: had in them you know what I mean. But there's
Speaker 4: always you know, I think it's getting kind of bred
Speaker 4: out of us, you know what I mean. It used
Speaker 4: to be one in ten people. Now it's one in
Speaker 4: a million people that want to go have that desire
Speaker 4: to like go out and see that. But you know,
Speaker 4: I don't know my thought.
Speaker 2: You said something about scarcity earlier about how do you
Speaker 2: remember you said scarcity is the humans always gravit towards cavitite,
Speaker 2: towards what's scarce, and.
Speaker 4: So I kind of just won't what you can't have.
Speaker 4: I mean, nature is kind of like that.
Speaker 2: When we were forging a living out of the wilderness,
Speaker 2: we wanted more security. Then now that we're forging a
Speaker 2: living out of civilization, we want to reach back to
Speaker 2: something more wild.
Speaker 4: It's it's just I think humans desire to to to
Speaker 4: really just kind of want what is scarce and want
Speaker 4: what they kind of can't have. You know. It's like
Speaker 4: it's one of the downfalls of man. You know, it's
Speaker 4: one of the things that sets us apart animal.
Speaker 3: Which is in a sense the antithesis of wilderness, because
Speaker 3: the only way to keep wilderness wilderness is a bunch of.
Speaker 1: People out of it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's like, well, you have these people who
Speaker 3: want it, but how many people being there makes it
Speaker 3: not wilderness?
Speaker 6: Right right?
Speaker 4: That's why I would saying, where is the line?
Speaker 2: Will you guys are totally rooting episode two? I wasn't
Speaker 2: even going to bring it up.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's a major philosophical problem with wilderness. Yeah,
Speaker 2: is that wilderness is a wilderness because nobody's.
Speaker 4: There because you're not there exactly, So one as you
Speaker 4: go there, then is it still wilderness? And Okay, even
Speaker 4: though we have this natural desire just baked into us
Speaker 4: to experience you just.
Speaker 6: Listened to episode.
Speaker 1: Let's just now, let's go right to the next render.
Speaker 2: No that that we get into that pretty extensively about
Speaker 2: these issues with wilderness. And there's another big issue that
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna bring up just yet unless one of
Speaker 2: you all leaks it out on ACT.
Speaker 4: I have this desire in me to do that drives
Speaker 4: me to do what I do for a living. You know,
Speaker 4: this is crab And it's like this kind of desire
Speaker 4: to be where people aren't, you know, where there's like
Speaker 4: an an like an even playing field between you and
Speaker 4: nature in a way, you know what I mean, where
Speaker 4: like you know your your rules and you know, kind
Speaker 4: of man's societal boundaries don't apply to you know, like
Speaker 4: like the crabs, fish the bay where I'm at. It
Speaker 4: doesn't nothing, none of that matters, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: That is all off the table. It's between you and
Speaker 4: you know and nature. You know what I mean. It's
Speaker 4: a wild place and I'm drawn to it just for
Speaker 4: no It's just it's in me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: And so you know, I live in this in just
Speaker 4: blow like Baltimore City. I mean, there's ton people are
Speaker 4: nuts to butts there, you know, it's just we're jammed up.
Speaker 4: But I have this desire to get to the closest
Speaker 4: place I can and spend the most amount of time there,
Speaker 4: even if it's a hundred times more work, you know,
Speaker 4: just because I have this thing baked into me for
Speaker 4: like this longing for wild things in wild places and lake.
Speaker 4: So I think it just kind of it's different for everybody.
Speaker 5: Of it because it's not a legacy thing with him,
Speaker 5: right right, He's like a first gen generation crabber in
Speaker 5: his family.
Speaker 6: So there's something there somewhere. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and and your example is relevant to all of us,
Speaker 2: is that the idea of wilderness you can experience anywhere,
Speaker 2: like you and the Chesapeake Bay, which is not federal wilderness,
Speaker 2: with the Capitol w which is not wilderness by many definitions,
Speaker 2: but you're having that experience of like what hal Harry said,
Speaker 2: He said, wilderness is a feeling where you enter into
Speaker 2: a place that's no longer governed by the laws of men.
Speaker 2: You're governed by ancient laws and in it, boy, I
Speaker 2: mean that's for real.
Speaker 4: Like I ain't read that book, I promise, Well, but
Speaker 4: how Harry and said that on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 2: That's that is another critique of wilderness, Josh, is that.
Speaker 1: Dan Flora has talked about how we've sacralized.
Speaker 2: He said, a lot of different groups have sacralized wilderness
Speaker 2: to the point that you might get the idea that
Speaker 2: that tree out in your yard is not nature too.
Speaker 1: Did you see what I'm saying?
Speaker 2: Like you minimize, you minimize something that's wilderness. On my
Speaker 2: property right here, I could experience that feeling of wilderness.
Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of funny, right. I have a
Speaker 1: small piece of.
Speaker 2: Land and when I go to particular parts of it,
Speaker 2: it's the wildest part of the land that I have,
Speaker 2: which is not wilderness by any definition, but it feels
Speaker 2: I have that feeling of this is this is a
Speaker 2: special place.
Speaker 1: This is furthest from my I.
Speaker 3: Mean, I feel I feel that way when I'm on
Speaker 3: the river, like I'm in a spot where not everybody
Speaker 3: can get to, you know, when I'm in my boat
Speaker 3: and I'm you know, cruising down there, that I have
Speaker 3: that feeling like of there is something wild and connects
Speaker 3: me to nature inside of it. That's just mine in
Speaker 3: the moment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can experience, you know, I have been out
Speaker 4: crabbing and I am experiencing, you know, that same thing. Well,
Speaker 4: there's a million dollar yacht going by me fifty feet away,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. So We're in the same place,
Speaker 4: doing the same thing. But I'm experiencing, you know, my
Speaker 4: idea of wilderness and this guy's probably just drinking michelob
Speaker 4: ultras at nine am, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 4: it's like you can it's just such a weird thing.
Speaker 4: It's like a totally separate you know, the feeling I
Speaker 4: guess of wilderness and then you know actual wilderness too.
Speaker 4: I would guess probably two different podcasts.
Speaker 1: Really, well, you may have tapped into episode three there.
Speaker 4: I didn't mean.
Speaker 1: To now, No, No, I'm kidding.
Speaker 3: I think that that. I think that the the spiritualizing
Speaker 3: of wilderness. Really it's true. You know, I think we've
Speaker 3: all experienced it. If you've been somewhere remote and you've
Speaker 3: seen a breathtaking mountain scape with a sunrise that just
Speaker 3: blows your mind, how the creator could have made that
Speaker 3: for you to see that morning. I think a big
Speaker 3: aspect to it is the the removal of noise from
Speaker 3: your mind, from your life, from your agenda that makes
Speaker 3: that thing that much more intense and gives you that
Speaker 3: that experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's what's unique about that is no people have
Speaker 2: different words to describe it.
Speaker 1: That there's no humans that denied that that happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like there's you know, you use the term creator.
Speaker 2: There would be people that would not use that term.
Speaker 2: The one thing that's for certain is that people, whether
Speaker 2: they believe in a god or don't believe in a god,
Speaker 2: have a spiritual And you know, people might have different
Speaker 2: definitions of what a spiritual experience would be, but nobody
Speaker 2: is arguing that when you stand on top of some
Speaker 2: beautiful summit and see a sunrise, that there is a
Speaker 2: sublime feeling like the Guy Burke he popularized that word.
Speaker 2: The sublime is like the overlap of the natural and
Speaker 2: the spiritual. And that is what is not up for debate,
Speaker 2: is that something happens that's bigger than just normal human stuff.
Speaker 2: Which I think that's incredible. Yeah, that we're not arguing
Speaker 2: about this thing that happens. And it would make sense
Speaker 2: maybe even biologically that it doesn't make sense that that
Speaker 2: would happen unless we were coded to respond to these things,
Speaker 2: which I think we are.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: They you know, they talked about people gravitating toward art
Speaker 5: paintings and stuff that was in Yeah, that was the
Speaker 5: trees were just limbs or whatever. We're just laden with
Speaker 5: fruit that hadn't been picked.
Speaker 2: Animals that were that were didn't look scared.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the guy go ahead, Well, I.
Speaker 5: Was just you're and I experience in Canada and in
Speaker 5: Saskatchewan when when the bears were the famous bear that
Speaker 5: poked his head in the in the blind on us
Speaker 5: and all the bears that were walking around us, they
Speaker 5: had no.
Speaker 6: Fear of us.
Speaker 5: They didn't they they were actually they were absolutely unmolested
Speaker 5: and they had no knowledge that that was one of
Speaker 5: my top experiences ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they just weren't afraid of us.
Speaker 6: They weren't afraid.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the guy had on from I even
Speaker 2: I don't even remember which bear grease it was, but
Speaker 2: one of the bear greases where a guy told us
Speaker 2: that people respond to landscape art with humans that are
Speaker 2: that are in cover. Like so if you had if
Speaker 2: you had a picture of a group of people like
Speaker 2: out in the middle of a field, that you would
Speaker 2: that that that you you would you would be more
Speaker 2: drawn to a picture of people that were close to a.
Speaker 3: Bluff because there's a vulnerability.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of the same thing, it's different,
Speaker 1: it's yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Dan Flores was talking about how we respond to unmolested
Speaker 2: scenes of calm animals, fruit trees that hadn't been picked,
Speaker 2: like stuff like that. But but there's there's like deeper,
Speaker 2: there's stuff so coded into us that like we want
Speaker 2: to be close to cover. Anyway, I just thought human
Speaker 2: response to landscape art is a.
Speaker 3: Photograph of a bison goring a National Park visitor.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I myself. You get what you pay for.
Speaker 4: Well, then do you think the coating is just a
Speaker 4: desire for food, water, and shelter. Well, I mean it's
Speaker 4: if it's the same kind of response, it's no doubt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's there are things built inside
Speaker 2: of us that help us survive. But I don't think
Speaker 2: that exclude that that comes at the exclusion of what
Speaker 2: Josh said. I do believe that the beauty and intricacy
Speaker 2: and architecture of the natural world what it does for me,
Speaker 2: and I think I speak for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: it does draw me to a creator like I. You know,
Speaker 2: there's the old thing about if you if you walked
Speaker 2: out into a field and you found a watch.
Speaker 1: Land and the field Josh, okay, you pick it up
Speaker 1: and you know what time it was. You would know
Speaker 1: what time it was, but you would go who put
Speaker 1: this watch here?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Who made this watch?
Speaker 6: Or a stone point?
Speaker 2: And you walk out to nature and we see something
Speaker 2: that's far more complex, far more designed, far more intricate,
Speaker 2: far more intelligent than the making of a watch, and
Speaker 2: we we say, well, should the question be who made this?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 2: So to me, that like a sunrise, evokes inside of
Speaker 2: me a connection, a desire for a connection to my
Speaker 2: creator that is not exclusive to it's also deeply biological
Speaker 2: and epigenetics like my my biophilia.
Speaker 6: EO.
Speaker 2: Wilson wrote a book called Biophilia, which means that we
Speaker 2: have Phelia means like an obsession with We have an
Speaker 2: obsession with life.
Speaker 1: We're the only species.
Speaker 2: On planet Earth that has an obsession with other animals
Speaker 2: lives other than like a prey, like.
Speaker 1: A predator and a prey or whatever.
Speaker 2: But like we want to domesticate animals were interested and
Speaker 2: that is been the biological thing that's made us so successful,
Speaker 2: is this love of life, and it's like that's deeply
Speaker 2: coated inside of us. I think that's also a big
Speaker 2: part of what makes us human and has this consciousness.
Speaker 2: But what I'm saying is is that you can have
Speaker 2: this spiritual thing happening and the natural thing at the
Speaker 2: same time.
Speaker 1: What we're we gonna say, Luke.
Speaker 4: So I was just thinking this is maybe jumping ahead
Speaker 4: or whatever, but it was just episode four that was
Speaker 4: the Ranella thing I was thinking about. So he's talking about,
Speaker 4: what was it the North Slope of Alaska, the Boks
Speaker 4: the most wild. Yeah, well, what if he's sitting there
Speaker 4: glassing and he sees a goat with a collar on it,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean? Does that make it less
Speaker 4: wild to him? Does that take away? Is it no
Speaker 4: longer wild because that animal has been molested by man?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean? Like, I mean, what what's
Speaker 4: that scenario? Like, where's I guess I don't know if
Speaker 4: that goes into where the line is. I'd be curious
Speaker 4: to say to I'd be curious to hear what he
Speaker 4: has to say about something like that.
Speaker 5: He's he's addressed that before. He said he would run
Speaker 5: it for him, really because another human has already touched that.
Speaker 4: You know, I kind of have the same I sort
Speaker 4: of have the same kind of thought. I was just
Speaker 4: thinking about it, like, you know, that's the most wild
Speaker 4: place you can think. But what if that's what he
Speaker 4: you know, saw there? Yeah, Like what would you have
Speaker 4: to say about There's.
Speaker 2: A lot of paradoxes inside it today because because of
Speaker 2: the scarcety of wilderness, you know, the question is is
Speaker 2: there really even wilderness left?
Speaker 4: I mean on the coach man's you know, trying to
Speaker 4: preserve wilderness, you know what I mean, that Steve makes
Speaker 4: it less wild? It's just like.
Speaker 3: I mean, there are some places on Earth that are
Speaker 3: untouched I mean there's some places where I think things
Speaker 3: exist that we don't. I mean, definitely in the sea,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, we have we have places
Speaker 3: where humans have never even seen.
Speaker 1: Crabbers, only only crabbers.
Speaker 6: But he said humans.
Speaker 3: But there's some places in Africa that are that are
Speaker 3: pretty that they don't think they're so adverse to.
Speaker 1: Where are you getting this information about Africa?
Speaker 3: I was reading about It's been years since I read
Speaker 3: about this, but there they think there are creatures in
Speaker 3: there that humans haven't seen.
Speaker 2: Right deep in the jungle. But on a landscape level,
Speaker 2: I don't think Africa is like the place to think about.
Speaker 1: I'm not arguing. Yeah, I see your point, but I think.
Speaker 2: The bigger, the bigger unmolested landscapes in in the world
Speaker 2: are in the in the closer to the north, the poles,
Speaker 2: I mean antarticle.
Speaker 1: Obviously, it's probably the would.
Speaker 3: Would be more more abundant in places that are more harsh,
Speaker 3: like harsh climates.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because humans are wanting to live in places that
Speaker 2: are favorable, comfortable, and so.
Speaker 3: That's why there's no wilderness in Kansas, right.
Speaker 1: It's it's all very profitable.
Speaker 2: What we're going to talk about too, in in episode
Speaker 2: two Here We Go, is that there's a thing called
Speaker 2: the rock and ice wildernesses. The wildernesses that we have
Speaker 2: today are preservation of places that were unusable, and so
Speaker 2: that's the reason we don't have very many prairie wildernesses.
Speaker 2: Imagine having a section of prairie in Kansas that Britos
Speaker 2: are ready giving away our second coonskin cap. Imagine having
Speaker 2: a four million acre wilderness.
Speaker 6: And what do you think?
Speaker 5: You know, you say the word wilderness and I immediately
Speaker 5: think of mountain, mountain trees.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have been marketed to your whole life. Oh,
Speaker 1: that that's what wilderness is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you just the afropet kind of a funny
Speaker 4: thing is like if you were to ask a lot
Speaker 4: of people like the most wild thing you can think
Speaker 4: of or wild place, like, so many people would probably
Speaker 4: say something like Mount Everest.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, it's mountains there is just because of.
Speaker 4: The people and you know whatever else it's.
Speaker 1: Just lines of people. Yeah. No, And it was interesting.
Speaker 1: So we're building a case that.
Speaker 2: Not not not that it's better or worse, but that
Speaker 2: the American worldview on wilderness is different than the rest
Speaker 2: of the world. And I think by the end of
Speaker 2: this that we're going to quantify that to a pretty
Speaker 2: heavy degree.
Speaker 3: You're trying to tell me that Canadians don't care about wilderness.
Speaker 1: Well that's what That's what Steve Nill was trying to
Speaker 1: tell us. No, and his his point.
Speaker 2: Was I left that in there, honestly just because it
Speaker 2: was entertaining.
Speaker 1: When I was having this conversation with.
Speaker 2: Steve, I was like, this is working out like I
Speaker 2: thought it would, and then uh, but I felt like
Speaker 2: it was valuable because I want to include it because.
Speaker 1: He's right, like, we're not.
Speaker 2: I don't want this to be like, Wow, look how
Speaker 2: great Americans are. We're superior to the rest of the
Speaker 2: world because we've preserved wilderness. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: America was the food America pioneered for I.
Speaker 1: Believe this to be true.
Speaker 2: And I don't say this with arrogance, and we have
Speaker 2: international listeners.
Speaker 1: Don't get your feelings hurt.
Speaker 2: America pioneered modern ideas on conservation wilderness for a lot
Speaker 2: of the world to follow. I mean, we were the
Speaker 2: first place that had designated wilderness areas. We're the first
Speaker 2: place that had public lands that were open for people
Speaker 2: to hunt, trap fish, recreate like nobody else was doing that.
Speaker 4: We also have the in America, we had the luxury
Speaker 4: to do that.
Speaker 2: It's yes, you know what I mean, Yes, Like that's
Speaker 2: it's not just from the merit of our own soul.
Speaker 1: It's like we exactly.
Speaker 4: You know, I just know from from dealing with all
Speaker 4: the things that you know, I'm kind of dealing with
Speaker 4: the with the bay right now. It's like when I
Speaker 4: really think about it and you think, you know the
Speaker 4: whole you know, we're dealing with issues in the bay,
Speaker 4: but you know they're dealing with issues a thousand times
Speaker 4: worse all over the world. And you're like, if you're
Speaker 4: going to stop the pollution or this or that, like
Speaker 4: you got to fix it in China, and well, you know,
Speaker 4: being able to have the luxury of caring about the
Speaker 4: wilderness and the animals that live there is a very
Speaker 4: you know, it's a privilege, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It's a First world product of economic Yeah, economic.
Speaker 1: Having it, having economics, having money, prosperity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because in a lot of the world, luxury in
Speaker 2: a lot of the world, they they've exploited massive amounts
Speaker 2: of what they have just because they could, and and
Speaker 2: and we're not exempt either. Part of America's success on
Speaker 2: preservation of wilderness was simply that we had.
Speaker 1: A huge continent, you know, uh, filled.
Speaker 4: With resource, yes, and they use the resource there to
Speaker 4: like become kind of it's like we just barely you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, on a graph, just barely crossed
Speaker 4: right before it was too late, exactly Like we came
Speaker 4: here basically, you know, took from the land as much
Speaker 4: as we could, but it put us in a position
Speaker 4: where we were now we you know, we have the
Speaker 4: luxury of caring about the land that we had left,
Speaker 4: you know, saving this last little bit took nine percent
Speaker 4: to get there. To be able to have that luxury.
Speaker 4: In reality, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great, that's great.
Speaker 4: Then we were able to take that we you know,
Speaker 4: we had the privilege of taking that five percent and
Speaker 4: preserving it.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: So it's like I think America just barely saved it,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, like a lot.
Speaker 2: I was I was surprised to learn that five percent
Speaker 2: of America is federal capital w wilderness.
Speaker 1: Five that's a lot.
Speaker 3: Where the where are the other like bulks of that
Speaker 3: in different areas.
Speaker 2: Alaska, If you had listened to the podcast, you would
Speaker 2: have heard that, uh oh, that they're eight hundred and
Speaker 2: six I'm kidding, Josh, eight hundred.
Speaker 1: And six federal wilderness.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: The bulk of the the big chunks and volume are
Speaker 2: in Alaska. Like here's huge wilderness in Alaska, and then
Speaker 2: the Bob Marshall is a huge wilderness that's in Montana.
Speaker 1: The Cellway.
Speaker 2: There's somebody's gonna tell me I'm crazy. The Bob Marshall.
Speaker 2: How big is the Bob Marshall. Somebody look up how
Speaker 2: big the Bob Marshall is. It is a massive chunk
Speaker 2: of land. We have a lot of wildernesses in the
Speaker 2: East that are very small, like under ten thousand acres,
Speaker 2: which are extremely valuable, but out I mean, you could
Speaker 2: fit all of Georgia's wilderness, every one of them into
Speaker 2: like a teeny tiny corner of the Bob Marshall.
Speaker 6: More than a million and one point five million acres one.
Speaker 1: Point five marshall.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Look up some of the other wildernesses in Alaska, like
Speaker 2: the biggest Alaska wilderness with the capitol.
Speaker 4: W I would argue that the reason those places are
Speaker 4: still so wild is because it was not easy to
Speaker 4: get there and profit off of the land. You know,
Speaker 4: that is that's true?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's no giant cities in Alaska that sprawl across
Speaker 4: the half the place, you know, because it's just hard
Speaker 4: to get there, and it's not probitable, you know.
Speaker 2: And it's it's it's wilderness is extremely controversial.
Speaker 1: It's and it's controversial today.
Speaker 5: Fifty seven and a half million acres of designated wilderness
Speaker 5: in Alaska. Wow, out of two hundred and twenty two
Speaker 5: million federal acres.
Speaker 4: Canada is is that? I mean, well, Canada is not
Speaker 4: like ninety percent probably, I mean, but there they.
Speaker 1: Don't have federal designation. Well, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I mean the Tree Queensland up there, our Kingsland now
Speaker 5: Crown called Crown Land.
Speaker 6: Yeah, whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I don't know if Canada probably has some
Speaker 2: type of wilderness, but I wouldn't know what it's called.
Speaker 2: It's not the same as ours. I mean, it's not
Speaker 2: We're not counting their land in ours, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: even though is basically the fifty first state. We all
Speaker 2: know that.
Speaker 3: You're not making any friends right now.
Speaker 1: Canada.
Speaker 6: I love you.
Speaker 1: I love you so much, I really do. I love Canada.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of time in Canada.
Speaker 4: The geese are excellent.
Speaker 2: Well, for fear that we're going to spoil the rest
Speaker 2: of these episodes, this has been a good It's been
Speaker 2: a great start.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love this topic.
Speaker 2: I'm serious, I love it, and I do think that
Speaker 2: even if I would hope that people that are human,
Speaker 2: the attention span is so small as possible, someone could
Speaker 2: be like, I'm not interested in wilderness and not listening
Speaker 2: to this podcast. I would hope if they did, they
Speaker 2: be drawn in and be like I should be I
Speaker 2: should at least have an understanding this because we're gonna
Speaker 2: see how much this idea is tied into American identity
Speaker 2: really with the frontier thesis, Frederick Jackson Turner, You're gonna
Speaker 2: hear about it, but this is a good place to start. Luke,
Speaker 2: thanks for coming down, man.
Speaker 4: Thank you much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: It's uh, it's pretty wild. I thought i'd ever be
Speaker 4: here doing this, truly, so I'm truly grateful that you
Speaker 4: guys are allow me to come down here.
Speaker 1: And if you come back, bring more crab don't come right.
Speaker 4: A technology we can make it happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we know how to get we know.
Speaker 4: Now, let's I have a little watch list.
Speaker 3: Now this could be, but just have them drop shipped
Speaker 3: here when you come.
Speaker 2: Now, if one day my dream is that one day
Speaker 2: every t s A board in America will have a
Speaker 2: picture of a blue crab a circle with an X across,
Speaker 2: I'll be like Luke would.
Speaker 4: Be my my mark on society.
Speaker 2: No, no live blue crabs on the plane. All right, guys,
Speaker 2: thanks so much,