Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to
Speaker 1: you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging
Speaker 1: deer stands, or scouting for ELK, First Light has performance
Speaker 1: apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it
Speaker 1: out at first light dot com. F I R S
Speaker 1: T L I t E dot com. Welcome everybody. Joined
Speaker 1: today by two super special guests. We got Lake, well three.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's like we're just it's like Seth,
Speaker 1: we're just regular.
Speaker 2: They're here again.
Speaker 1: Seth just hanging out. No one knows what he's doing.
Speaker 2: I don't even know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: Join today by three very special guests. Lake Pickle, the
Speaker 1: most memorable name in America. I was at the I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get to the r two guests. But when I
Speaker 1: was at this big commencement or like a graduation ceremony
Speaker 1: last weekend, Yeah, I could tell you why.
Speaker 3: And they're like giving everybody's name.
Speaker 4: You know, they're a doctor in the house.
Speaker 3: They're getting everybody's name.
Speaker 1: And a guy comes up who had I believe changed
Speaker 1: his last name to Extravaganza. I was expecting like a
Speaker 1: professional wrestler to come across the stage. I was just
Speaker 1: a regular dude. Yeah. I was like, oh wow, wrestlers here?
Speaker 2: That is that speech? Was that filmed?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is it somewhere? I tried looking for it.
Speaker 1: Kylie has it?
Speaker 2: I was I was turkey hunting, so I couldn't make it.
Speaker 1: But Kyles where.
Speaker 5: I think it's going to be put up as a
Speaker 5: social post or a YouTube.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to say it.
Speaker 1: It's called there is No Plan b mm hmmm.
Speaker 2: I like that. I think I've heard that before from
Speaker 2: you Lake Pickle.
Speaker 1: The most memorable name in America, the hardest name in America,
Speaker 1: which is Caitlyn los Banoso, which one can see why
Speaker 1: she just calls herself old traffic Kate. Is am I
Speaker 1: saying it right? Los Banosa lo Spinosa. Her handle on
Speaker 1: one of my like a thing I love looking in
Speaker 1: on is her hand on Instagram is old trapper Kate.
Speaker 1: It's all about trapping and other kind of outdoors adventures,
Speaker 1: which I appreciate. So she's here today, Maggie Huddler's here today,
Speaker 1: journalist extraordinary. What are you working on right now is
Speaker 1: the most exciting thing.
Speaker 6: Most exciting thing. We've been having dog weeks. I've been
Speaker 6: writing dog stuff, which is fun because I love my dogs.
Speaker 6: And I just got into training a bird dog. So
Speaker 6: I've got a year and a half old.
Speaker 7: Pup, Bill.
Speaker 3: What kind of kind is it?
Speaker 7: He's a Lab German wire hair pointer mix.
Speaker 3: Is that intention or did you get like a like
Speaker 3: a pound?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 7: So I really like mutts. We'll talk about this later.
Speaker 6: I just wrote an article about why maybe you should
Speaker 6: consider a mutt to be your next hunting dog. And uh,
Speaker 6: we got sick wading through the muck and fallen through
Speaker 6: the ice to go after our ducks, and we're like,
Speaker 6: all right, we can get one more dog. We started
Speaker 6: looking and somebody had wire hair lab pups and we're like, well, shit,
Speaker 6: I guess.
Speaker 4: We're getting a dog.
Speaker 1: That's interesting man.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: The guy he had a bunch of bird dogs. He
Speaker 6: had labs and wire hairs and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 6: I was always interested to see what they would end
Speaker 6: up like mixed. And he's a good dog. He's huge,
Speaker 6: he's a big boy. Uh, he's kind of goofy lake saw.
Speaker 9: That's the funniest thing. I've seen all week.
Speaker 6: Lake saw him run full speed into a glass door
Speaker 6: the other day, running dog. He's just dog. He's a
Speaker 6: little disgruntled. The glass in our house isn't that clean.
Speaker 9: I guess that dog was so embarrassed.
Speaker 1: Shame, man, I've been meaning to spend a long time
Speaker 1: kind of explaining my buddy Doug Darren's new lab. But
Speaker 1: it's just.
Speaker 6: Too Mark dog, Yeah, what do you like?
Speaker 4: Mark?
Speaker 7: Do you not like?
Speaker 1: Listen? Man, I think that that dog can't see it.
Speaker 1: Dog can't see it. But I think that dog got
Speaker 1: hit on the head. I have never seen a dog
Speaker 1: that's so not aware of how dogs are supposed to be,
Speaker 1: like any normal Like I've been around fifty years old. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at dogs my whole life. We said, have
Speaker 1: all kinds of dogs. When I was a kid.
Speaker 3: This dog.
Speaker 1: There's like certain things in the dog playbook, right, Like
Speaker 1: if you're driving all around out in the woods and
Speaker 1: a dog is in like a can am. You're driving
Speaker 1: all around and you get to an interesting spot, everybody
Speaker 1: jumps out. Kids are like catching crappies. Whatever. He's like,
Speaker 1: he doesn't get.
Speaker 2: Out, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like any dog in the world would be like, well, dude,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get out, yeah and see what everybody's doing.
Speaker 1: He goes into a house, he doesn't go check what's
Speaker 1: going on around.
Speaker 2: Interesting, it might be a good thing.
Speaker 7: He just kind of chills out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Doug can't. Doug's like. Doug's like if you said
Speaker 1: to someone, if someone had a baby and you said, man,
Speaker 1: I don't know the baby's not right, They're not gonna
Speaker 1: take that. Well, do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 4: Do you know what I'm saying? Getting hurt?
Speaker 8: So if he's like if the thing is sitting in
Speaker 8: the side by side and he's like, come on.
Speaker 1: You got well keep and Doug won't. Doug won't pull
Speaker 1: it out. I'll pull it out. I'll grab it, I
Speaker 1: can't handle it, grab by the collar and pull it out.
Speaker 1: Doug will come in the house. So there'll be a
Speaker 1: household of people. Doug will pull up, Doug come in
Speaker 1: the house, He leaves the door open, and you twenty
Speaker 1: minutes later, a dog's sitting in there. It's like, it's
Speaker 1: like amazing, it's one of the few dogs you could
Speaker 1: put it and just it'll be there when you come back.
Speaker 4: Well, it's handy.
Speaker 8: In some situations, they'd be like one of those dogs
Speaker 8: you see in Montana's just on the flatbed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you like go into a bar or whatever and
Speaker 2: like the dogs just out on the flatbed.
Speaker 9: No, this is different, thing different, This is different.
Speaker 2: That's just different obedience.
Speaker 1: I know this is not not obedience because I forgot
Speaker 1: to mention Doug is imploring the dog to come out.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, it's gone just like comfort.
Speaker 4: Maybe he's gonna be tested.
Speaker 1: I'm saying this man, because like if I just if you,
Speaker 1: you know, if you disagree with Doug on something like
Speaker 1: CWD or something, He's gonna write you a mean ass email.
Speaker 3: So I can only imagine what he's thinking right now.
Speaker 4: He hacking on his dog in salt a man's dog
Speaker 4: fight words.
Speaker 6: You know, you know, my old dog, Shooter made me
Speaker 6: believe in reincarnation because, for one, I'm pretty sure this
Speaker 6: dog smoked way too many Marlboro Reds in his past life.
Speaker 6: He like he's got a real smoker tack and the
Speaker 6: vets are like nothing's wrong with him. He also has
Speaker 6: favorite songs. He loves the band Cripple Creek. He just
Speaker 6: perks right up to that and just yowls.
Speaker 4: Amazing.
Speaker 3: You should introduce him to this dog Mark.
Speaker 6: So so my theory from what I've heard on Mark
Speaker 6: is maybe Mark was like a big fat dude that
Speaker 6: just likes to ride around in can ams and like
Speaker 6: could drink a beer and just sit in the truck. Yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, you never know what a dog's ass like.
Speaker 1: No, they might get a nice email from Doug. He's gonna,
Speaker 1: he's gonna. They're talking about incarnation, but this is gonna
Speaker 1: He's this is gonna speak to Doug. This is gonna
Speaker 1: speak Doug.
Speaker 3: Lake.
Speaker 1: I forgot to mention besides having a very memorable name,
Speaker 1: Lake is an avid at doorsman. Used to used to
Speaker 1: be tangled up in the old days Will Primos, which
Speaker 1: is super cool.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I was for about a decade man, and I
Speaker 9: love that guy.
Speaker 2: Oh man, he's great.
Speaker 9: He was like the way I explained to folks, like
Speaker 9: when I grew up in my house, you watched the
Speaker 9: Andy Griffith Show and Primos VHS tapes. That's just what
Speaker 9: you watched. Like he was especially like living in Mississippi. Yeah,
Speaker 9: and you've been around Will. Like if he heard me
Speaker 9: talking about him like this, he would dismiss it. Because
Speaker 9: he's a pretty down earth dude. But yeah, uh, and
Speaker 9: it's it's funny talking about my name. Like part of
Speaker 9: the reason I ended up getting tangled up with Will
Speaker 9: just a little stuff that happened before. But I saw
Speaker 9: Brad Ferriss at a local sporting show at home and
Speaker 9: I'd never met him in person, but i'd been emailing
Speaker 9: him trying to get a.
Speaker 1: Job, and he remembered your name.
Speaker 9: One thing I've always had going for me. Someone might
Speaker 9: forget everything else about me, but they remember the name.
Speaker 9: So I go up to him and said, Hey, I'm
Speaker 9: Lake Pickle. You're like, you're that kid that's been emailing
Speaker 9: me about video and I was like yeah, And I
Speaker 9: didn't know it at the time, but like the week
Speaker 9: before they had some guys leave the video department.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 9: So two days later, at my phone rings and it's
Speaker 9: Brad and he's like, hey, man, would you consider taking
Speaker 9: a semester off school because I got to film my
Speaker 9: ELK cut in like two weeks. I was like, yep,
Speaker 9: I'm gonna do that and.
Speaker 1: Dropped out of school.
Speaker 9: So the funny thing is, yeah, I went to the
Speaker 9: Primo's office. I'd never met Will in person, and they
Speaker 9: were interviewing me and Will comes in and he says,
Speaker 9: I'm not going to hire you if you don't promise
Speaker 9: me that you'll finish your education. So yeah, I was
Speaker 9: in school for wildlife science and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 9: But yeah, that's how it all started. But it all
Speaker 9: hinged on Brad being like, oh, yeah, you're the kid
Speaker 9: because he my name's so odd.
Speaker 1: He remembered it. That's great. Yeah, so you did wildlife.
Speaker 1: Still in the wildlife business. June ninth, you will find
Speaker 1: Lake Pickle on the Bear Grease podcast feed where the
Speaker 1: new show we're doing called Backwoods University, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: We talked about old traffick Kate. We're gonna jump ahead.
Speaker 1: To the news, then we're gonna come back around Krim's
Speaker 1: got it's all asked up.
Speaker 5: Oh sorry, no, no, no, I didn't get to talk to
Speaker 5: you about this. I wondered if we would change the
Speaker 5: order of things this time. But maybe that's all okay,
Speaker 5: So that part wasn't.
Speaker 1: Asking No, don't have to remember none, just getting rid
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: I can see just not having any news ever.
Speaker 5: Yep, that that's possible.
Speaker 1: But then how would I find out about the news.
Speaker 2: The website.
Speaker 1: We should have a I wish we could do one
Speaker 1: of those polls, like should we not have any news
Speaker 1: and then do a vote.
Speaker 7: Oh, we could make something like that.
Speaker 4: Oh can you do that?
Speaker 6: They could do it on a newsletter, we could do
Speaker 6: it on Instagram.
Speaker 1: It'd be like should the Meat Eater podcast have or
Speaker 1: not have listener feedback and news? Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think they'd be sad about not having listener feedback
Speaker 5: because then we wouldn't have like stories and jokes that
Speaker 5: carry on for a few episodes. But what do I know?
Speaker 5: I just think we should separate it, like news is
Speaker 5: separate from that.
Speaker 1: I don't think, well, the problem with the news program
Speaker 1: here is that we have the same news article we
Speaker 1: had before. In the news we already covered the guy
Speaker 1: that killed the that's in trouble for hunting the cemetery.
Speaker 1: I have additional thoughts.
Speaker 2: Doug might like, if you got rid of the news, then.
Speaker 1: Get mad.
Speaker 2: Dog.
Speaker 3: Had the main interview be about his dog.
Speaker 5: Updates, we wouldn't touch on c w D as much
Speaker 5: as we do.
Speaker 1: Know it saved me a lot of dogs ire, But
Speaker 1: then how would we goofind his dog Unless we like
Speaker 1: focus we had a dog psychologist in to goof on
Speaker 1: dog's dog.
Speaker 5: We should get dog psychologists.
Speaker 1: So the guy some merging details, are you are you
Speaker 1: going to follow this? Because I'm just interested in this
Speaker 1: turkey deal. What I had explained before is like I
Speaker 1: feel it's between the guy and the people that are
Speaker 1: dead in the cemetery.
Speaker 7: Largely they don't have much to say.
Speaker 1: I was buried in a cemetery and I knew someone
Speaker 1: was turkey hunting the cemetery, I would be glad. But
Speaker 1: then I learned while he was hunting there there were
Speaker 1: visitors in the cemetery, which tips right, Like at a
Speaker 1: point you have to, like you gotta when you're sitting
Speaker 1: there at night, being like, man, I really want to
Speaker 1: hunt the cemetery, and you think to yourself, with the
Speaker 1: people in there, you know, with the souls in there,
Speaker 1: how would they feel about it? And that's kind of regional.
Speaker 1: And then there's how would the people those people? Because
Speaker 1: if I was visiting a cemetery and I see a
Speaker 1: guy hunting turkeys, I'm gonna be jealous. And what do
Speaker 1: jealous people do? They lash out, Yeah, and they don't
Speaker 1: lash out about being jealous. They think of another thing,
Speaker 1: and then they're going to lash out about public safe.
Speaker 1: But the biggest question I have is was he bushwhacking
Speaker 1: them because he got dropped off by a late model
Speaker 1: black full sized pickup. So did he get dropped off
Speaker 1: to the call or did he get dropped off to bushwhack?
Speaker 3: And did he use tombstones like how you might use
Speaker 3: round bails.
Speaker 4: Something you almost can't be mad about it.
Speaker 9: I want to know the nature of the visitors, like
Speaker 9: was someone getting actively getting buried.
Speaker 4: Like a fresh burial, or was this like a year
Speaker 4: anniversary thing we scout.
Speaker 3: Maybe they're a turkey scout.
Speaker 1: Maybe they have none Mother's Day?
Speaker 2: Is this like a private cemetery?
Speaker 3: Doesn't say, but it says you're not allowed to hunt cemeteries.
Speaker 2: Hm mm hmm.
Speaker 4: I said one in public. I'm assuming like.
Speaker 3: Through a cemetery and jumped the fence to get down
Speaker 3: to a creek.
Speaker 2: I used to stand next to a turkey and or
Speaker 2: stand next to a cemetery and listen for turkeys all
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 4: There you go.
Speaker 1: Well, Lake was saying, if you see an old church
Speaker 1: or a cemetery, there's a turkey around.
Speaker 9: That's a rule to be like abandoned no, I mean,
Speaker 9: it is a rule of thumb that I'm telling you
Speaker 9: we live and die by. Like if it's an old
Speaker 9: church or a cemetery there is a turkey around there,
Speaker 9: I've never seen it not be true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know I can see that. Man, the cemetery
Speaker 1: I want to get buried in. I think that that's
Speaker 1: probably true of that. M m. Yeah, we staunt squirrels
Speaker 1: back there. But I was pre turkey, Like there weren't
Speaker 1: turkeys when I was growing up with the turkeys.
Speaker 9: Now, you know, Yeah, there's a there's a place where
Speaker 9: my grandma and grand grandma and grandpa got buried, and
Speaker 9: I got permission to hunt the land right behind it
Speaker 9: from them. Yeah they I know it. Yeah, but that
Speaker 9: was the first time it happened to me. Like I
Speaker 9: pulled up to the cemetery like I was going to
Speaker 9: visit their grave, and like as I pull up, there's
Speaker 9: a turkey goblin right behind it. I was like, I
Speaker 9: got to see if I can get access to that.
Speaker 4: There's a hot tip off you start asking for permission
Speaker 4: post mortem, yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I talked to them, I know, and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I know, like you're not feeling well.
Speaker 9: Listen.
Speaker 4: It's a crying shame what happened.
Speaker 1: But oh, I could picture dudes now just sitting there
Speaker 1: like trying to like make fake tears and stuff, just
Speaker 1: listening for dobbs, trying to be like their morning. This
Speaker 1: happened on what How the guy got in trouble is
Speaker 1: somehow he hits the bird, you know, like the saying
Speaker 1: you can't stop the flop, but he desirous to stop
Speaker 1: the flop, tackles it and thereby gets himself on camera.
Speaker 1: People claim he's wrastling it, but it would have been
Speaker 1: more accurate if journalists had explained that he was trying
Speaker 1: to stop the flop, which you can't do well, you can't.
Speaker 2: Was it like a bad shot and it was kind
Speaker 2: of getting away a bit.
Speaker 4: Or I think he was trying to it was just
Speaker 4: like the classics sprint out to it.
Speaker 1: And I don't know.
Speaker 3: My guess is he was.
Speaker 1: It was raising a ruckus, as they do, and he
Speaker 1: was trying to stop the flop. And people think he
Speaker 1: was trying to wrestle it because there's like visitors, he already.
Speaker 4: Trying to be incognito right launching on the turkey.
Speaker 9: And when they go to flopping it is. I mean
Speaker 9: it's a loud.
Speaker 4: Not as loud as the shotgun blast.
Speaker 9: Was the shotgun Do we know.
Speaker 4: This doesn't seem like an archery kind of deal that
Speaker 4: I could be wrong.
Speaker 1: Anyone with information on this incident, this is serious, please
Speaker 1: contact New Hampshire's Fishing Game Department.
Speaker 3: This is also make an anonymous tip and.
Speaker 6: Just another one of those things where like this guy
Speaker 6: chise to post this video what it's always.
Speaker 1: Interesting he didn't.
Speaker 5: He posted on don't understand is that there was like
Speaker 5: there was a hunter at the cemetery, someone who self
Speaker 5: identifies as a hunter. Okay, because this according to New
Speaker 5: Hampshire Game and Fish, around ten am on that Sunday,
Speaker 5: a hunter observed a male in camouflage apparel shoot a
Speaker 5: turkey in this mitary on close road. The poacher was
Speaker 5: dropped off by a late model black full.
Speaker 7: Size so that guy was looking for turkeys in the cemetery.
Speaker 4: He was jealousy, jealousy.
Speaker 3: All I think we need to get all.
Speaker 1: If Krinn was like a good producer right now, we'd
Speaker 1: have the hunter, we'd have the witness, and we'd have
Speaker 1: the family of who was in the closest grave we'd
Speaker 1: have descendence.
Speaker 5: I can't believe I didn't think of that about it.
Speaker 4: We'd have the casket that he is standing over.
Speaker 1: Here's the interesting This guy's got interesting problem. There's a
Speaker 1: guy that's saying that, for whatever reason, he's a he's
Speaker 1: a magnet for poachers to come confess to him.
Speaker 4: Interesting.
Speaker 1: I just think that's being alive, Like that's not unusual,
Speaker 1: Like I confess old poaching stuff every time I'm talking
Speaker 1: to anybody. Really, when we little kids, like we didn't
Speaker 1: it wasn't It's just hard to explain you didn't know.
Speaker 2: He just did stuff you didn't know.
Speaker 5: Do people go and do you get a lot of confessions?
Speaker 1: Yes, because Okay, when I started deer hunting, I wasn't
Speaker 1: old enough to hunt deer. When I killed my first year,
Speaker 1: I wasn't old enough. My mom came and put her
Speaker 1: tag on it. It was but it was like you
Speaker 1: would have told anybody here, but it was like there
Speaker 1: was no there was z.
Speaker 3: It was just like I can't explain.
Speaker 5: Some of the examples he uses, though, I'm not. I'm
Speaker 5: not sure that these are people just talking about stuff
Speaker 5: that they did a really long time ago. I'm just
Speaker 5: looking at one of the examples he cites and it's
Speaker 5: almost like someone.
Speaker 3: Let me make me feel hit hit the examples. But
Speaker 3: I want to make one more point.
Speaker 1: You know how been hip to that Veterans Institute? They
Speaker 1: played the interviews with the World War Two veterans guys
Speaker 1: are in their eighties and nineties. It's the best thing
Speaker 1: on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Well, I like World's Greatest Hockey Goals.
Speaker 1: In slow motion, but look in that next to the
Speaker 1: World's Greatest Hockey goals in slow motion.
Speaker 3: The American Veterans.
Speaker 1: Institute did this, has this huge series of interviews with
Speaker 1: World War Two guys in their eighties and nineties. They're
Speaker 1: down watching I think I talked about this. I'm watching
Speaker 1: two of these guys together and they're talking about they
Speaker 1: would just kill SS. They would line them up and
Speaker 1: shoot them. And he said, we weren't supposed to talk
Speaker 1: about it was a long time ago. And he's like,
Speaker 1: we were told to do that, right, So you get
Speaker 1: a lot of like I will because we grew up violating.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like it just it's so hard to explain.
Speaker 4: Man past the statute of limitations. It's like a common
Speaker 4: ground kind of thing in the hunting community when I
Speaker 4: was growing up.
Speaker 2: The same for you. You just you didn't even know
Speaker 2: it was illegal.
Speaker 4: I didn't even know of the like you didn't know
Speaker 4: the ration, the severity or the implication anything like something serious.
Speaker 8: When I first got on ex I went and looked
Speaker 8: at all the old places where I used to hunt,
Speaker 8: and it's all it's all private.
Speaker 2: It's like I thought this was you thought it was
Speaker 2: public land.
Speaker 1: I remember like like just being young, you know, like
Speaker 1: teens and hunting wood ducks on the roost and it
Speaker 1: looking like a Fourth of July display by the time
Speaker 1: the wood ducks would come into that root, and you
Speaker 1: were sort of like you It's just like, but that's
Speaker 1: what all the guys like, the old like your mentors,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: It was just you were so well, yeah, because the
Speaker 4: the farther you go back in the timeline hunting, the
Speaker 4: like the.
Speaker 9: Gray or all gets yep.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another thing that was just like just another confession here
Speaker 1: I'm doing all these confessionals. There's another thing leading up
Speaker 1: to the large mouth bass opener. You would put your
Speaker 1: live well out on the end of your dock and
Speaker 1: you would detain them. Oh no to then flay them
Speaker 1: on the opener. But it was like this is like
Speaker 1: you were like shit, nodality body.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was just like this is what we did.
Speaker 1: Walk down the damn beach holding the large mouth by
Speaker 1: the bottom lip and throw it in the live well.
Speaker 1: And like your parents, like our parents, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, people weren't like, don't. It's so hard to explain, man,
Speaker 1: it's so hard to explain the Then only later did
Speaker 1: I start to put it all together. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you get like in your twenties and you start whatever,
Speaker 1: meeting people reading reading San County Almanac, which like you
Speaker 1: start putting it all together, and you're like, oh man,
Speaker 1: that's like not like if everybody ran around doing that
Speaker 1: with that level of like passion.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you end up with the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been disasters, but it was just like you
Speaker 1: weren't none of this, Like I never, no one ever
Speaker 1: ever said the word conservation when I was a kid.
Speaker 5: Yep, well look at the examples. Okay, he says poachers
Speaker 5: apparently see my BHA and mediator merchant think quote. And
Speaker 5: this is these quotes are so specific, so you know
Speaker 5: someone told him this quote. I'm going to tell this
Speaker 5: guy about unlice this night hunting in a day hunting
Speaker 5: only state for game that's out of season and I
Speaker 5: don't have a tag anyway, or quote, let me tell
Speaker 5: you how I pulled a fast one by hunting against
Speaker 5: regulations on a military base and got away with the
Speaker 5: trespassing citation instead of any real consequences. Haha.
Speaker 1: You know what they're trying to do. They're trying to
Speaker 1: get on Clay's Bear Grease podcasts that might actually be true,
Speaker 1: but they don't realize that they have to have redemption. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when I was fifteen, Clay wouldn't have had me on.
Speaker 1: He would have had to wait till I was later
Speaker 1: had an epiphany and we would have stopped like our
Speaker 1: casual violating.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, this guy is just wondering, like what
Speaker 5: would you all do?
Speaker 4: Would you?
Speaker 5: He tries to educate and you know, these are instances
Speaker 5: that had happened in the past, and he said that
Speaker 5: in case he sniffed that there was any sense of
Speaker 5: a crime being about to be committed, he would say something.
Speaker 5: But I got another confession asking for advice.
Speaker 2: Is this what this podcast?
Speaker 1: It's like, I'm just the more I think about the more.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in what are like. I want to go
Speaker 1: back and interview our young younger selves. So high school, okay,
Speaker 1: like just just give you. For instance, high school with
Speaker 1: my late friend Eric Kern, smelt dipping for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: like Sam would come in with the smelt during the
Speaker 1: spring smelt run. One day, we're standing out there and
Speaker 1: we weren't at a river mouth like you generally are
Speaker 1: hitting smelt at the river mouths, but we were We
Speaker 1: knew about these gravel beds that were way down on
Speaker 1: Lake Michigan, and the smelt would come up and spawn
Speaker 1: in these little gravel beds that weren't even in the
Speaker 1: stream mouth. They're like an anagamous fish, but they would
Speaker 1: sometimes spawn in the waves. And we're sitting there and
Speaker 1: here comes with salmon chase the smelt, and Eric gets
Speaker 1: in his dip in that.
Speaker 3: We're old enough to know that he ought to put.
Speaker 1: That salmon in his waiters and he puts the salmon
Speaker 1: down the leg of his waiters to hide it, and
Speaker 1: we like finished our smelt dipping, had a big laugh
Speaker 1: about how slimy and his pants were, and we're like
Speaker 1: old enough to drive, and there's no way I would
Speaker 1: let my kid do that, I would wring his neck
Speaker 1: just I don't know. I can't explain.
Speaker 4: It's different times.
Speaker 1: No guy wants to know if it's stolen valor to
Speaker 1: put to buy taxidermy and decorate your cabin.
Speaker 9: Yes, it's an easy.
Speaker 1: One, hard stop unless it's like a crazy like uh,
Speaker 1: unless it's like a specimen.
Speaker 5: Huh, you're killing it's like a jackalope?
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 3: What if it's like a jackalobe, that's not stolen valor.
Speaker 1: Taxidermy? Like I think if you bought you know, if
Speaker 1: you're like a big deer hunter, and he bought it
Speaker 1: like a big you know, and then he kind of
Speaker 1: got it there, and you know what it is, do
Speaker 1: people coming in think that you got it?
Speaker 4: If someone asked, like do you shoot that?
Speaker 9: So a real good friend of mine, he used to
Speaker 9: tell me how comically bad his father was at hunting.
Speaker 9: And the first time I went to his father's house,
Speaker 9: I walked into his living room this is a true story,
Speaker 9: and there was like several shoulder mounted deer and then
Speaker 9: there's a shoulder mounted elk in there. And I was like, Jordan,
Speaker 9: you said your dad was bad at honting. He said, oh,
Speaker 9: he didn't kill any of these.
Speaker 1: About all of them off eBay, You know, it's deeply
Speaker 1: nuanced because someday, like my my father's taxidermy is still
Speaker 1: in my mother's home. Someday, haven't forbid, I will take
Speaker 1: possession of my father's taxidermy and I will put it
Speaker 1: somewhere that's different.
Speaker 4: Does count? I don't think.
Speaker 1: That's deeply nuanced. Or if you had something where you're like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, wyat or shot that buck, you know, or whatever,
Speaker 1: it'd be like a specimen. But if people come in
Speaker 1: and to go like, my god, this guy's gotten some tanks.
Speaker 5: And then you don't say anything.
Speaker 2: You just let that linger.
Speaker 9: So I have a European a skullmounted elk that I
Speaker 9: did not kill in my house. It's the first bull
Speaker 9: that I filmed Wilbur shoot. And he asked me, he said,
Speaker 9: do you want this help? And I was like absolutely.
Speaker 9: But everybody that comes in the house, they're like when
Speaker 9: I'm like, will shot that out on me?
Speaker 4: Like make a plaque?
Speaker 5: Yeah, but then you tell the true story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Yanni's Yanni has his dad's bull moose hanging
Speaker 1: in his living room. Yeah, totally fine. Yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: stolen balor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Dirt has one of your coups.
Speaker 10: Dear Dirt's like a special guys not stolen balor.
Speaker 2: He was there, he filmed it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we're talking like if you go to
Speaker 4: like some kind of thrift shop and they have someone's
Speaker 4: random estate sale taxi you.
Speaker 9: I don't know if you can't anymore. You could you
Speaker 9: used to, could legitimately go on eBay and buy a tax.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's like earlier I said yes, but
Speaker 1: I'm realizing how complicated. It just depends on the motive
Speaker 1: and what you're trying to get away with. If you're
Speaker 1: trying to be like give visitors the impression it's one thing.
Speaker 8: All right, here's the sample. If you just bought a
Speaker 8: big mansion in Jackson, Hawaii. You went down to this
Speaker 8: shop that has all the taxi every for sale for
Speaker 8: thousands of dollars, and you buy a big old elkad
Speaker 8: and put it in your big, big house that looks
Speaker 8: at the Titans stolen.
Speaker 4: Baller, and you bought a cowboy hat that stolen baller?
Speaker 4: What about furs?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I don't think so. Showing my bias, he's
Speaker 1: been this is different it's different. Guy has a moral bind. Well,
Speaker 1: let me give you a good example. I got a friend,
Speaker 1: very accomplished huner. Okay, he's got a display of every
Speaker 1: male and female of all North American waterfowl that he got.
Speaker 4: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: But he also has a big collection of many fur
Speaker 1: bears from around the continent. Up he would he will
Speaker 1: be like, that's from so and so, that's from so
Speaker 1: and so. He's got one. He goes, someone left this
Speaker 1: because they knew I have a collection, and they remain anonymous.
Speaker 1: I don't even know who gave it to me. So
Speaker 1: it's just different. It's like it's like a educational display.
Speaker 1: Do you follow me? Yeah, where he's like check all
Speaker 1: this ouf But he doesn't. None of it's his stuff.
Speaker 1: But he's he likes to yeah, you know, he grew
Speaker 1: up trapping. He likes to have the stuff there. But
Speaker 1: it's nice first.
Speaker 4: Because my main buyers are like the oddities market, and
Speaker 4: they just like having them as like a novelty, like
Speaker 4: a novelty wallhanger.
Speaker 1: They're like, no, I'm not trying to screw your business.
Speaker 4: Ye like take it easy.
Speaker 3: See here's a guy I haven't read this yet.
Speaker 1: He's in a moral mind. He lives in eastern Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: far from dog sounds like avid bowhunter. One of my
Speaker 1: close bodies owns a local tree farm and is currently
Speaker 1: planting new trees. This is a quote. He recently got
Speaker 1: a crop damage tag to take five deer in forty
Speaker 1: five days, as the deer are eating his newly planted trees.
Speaker 1: At first, I was excited to get the bow out. However,
Speaker 1: he has sent me videos of the deer pretty much
Speaker 1: walking up to him. The chase in which bow hunting
Speaker 1: it's not great sentence.
Speaker 3: I think he means. He means bow hunting is about
Speaker 3: the chase.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no it is. It's like a very It's
Speaker 1: like bad syntax, but it makes sense.
Speaker 3: The chase.
Speaker 1: In which bow hunting is about is gone. Like a
Speaker 1: few commas could have salvage that sentence. I don't feel
Speaker 1: like taking five deer will help the problem, and it's
Speaker 1: all very likely to take a deer holding fawns. However,
Speaker 1: he puts a lot of pride into his farm, and
Speaker 1: I have even helped with planning and witness first hand
Speaker 1: the hard work that goes into it. Does going forward
Speaker 1: with this pretty much give up all the ethics we
Speaker 1: believe as hunters. No, of course not, or am I
Speaker 1: looking to that was me editorializing, And yes it's not
Speaker 1: a rhetorical question. No, it's a serious question. Or am
Speaker 1: I looking too much into And ultimately it's just simply
Speaker 1: what is protecting his crop?
Speaker 5: I think ethics is not really the right word there
Speaker 5: at all.
Speaker 1: No, there's an outlet for the If there's an outlet
Speaker 1: for the deer, you want it, your body wants it,
Speaker 1: your church wants it. And the guy's got a crop
Speaker 1: damage permit and it's white tailed deer, which last I
Speaker 1: checked in Wisconsin, are above objective. Don't see it.
Speaker 9: Being an issue.
Speaker 1: One more? Is this the last one? Another news bit?
Speaker 3: So in Alabama.
Speaker 1: This is from Alabama.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 1: The bill a l HB fiveh nine past the House
Speaker 1: and is moving to the Senate. This bill led by
Speaker 1: the captive deer industry. This person writing in claims that
Speaker 1: folks high up in the state legislature have family ties
Speaker 1: to the captive deer industry. I can't say that's true
Speaker 1: or not. He's just saying that's true. They want to
Speaker 1: declare high friends. They wanted to declare high fence deer,
Speaker 1: so they want to make captive deer private property instead
Speaker 1: of public. Okay, some people might be surprised that it's
Speaker 1: already this way. Depends on what state you're in. Some states,
Speaker 1: if you have captive deer, you can just do whatever
Speaker 1: you want. You hunt them around, you do whatever you
Speaker 1: want with them. Some states, if you have high fence deer,
Speaker 1: you still got to go by deer law. They want
Speaker 1: to switch it, and they want their pet deer.
Speaker 3: To be.
Speaker 1: Livestock so they can do whatever they want. They don't
Speaker 1: want them to be wildlife. Why would they care. You
Speaker 1: can think of all kinds of reasons. They care because
Speaker 1: now they can hund them whenever they want and do
Speaker 1: whatever they want and kills men as they want whatever.
Speaker 1: But the main thing is they're trying to get out
Speaker 1: from under regulation and inspections that would keep their captive deer,
Speaker 1: which I'm not saying, I'm sure they like at CWD
Speaker 1: is in Alabama. They want they don't want the state
Speaker 1: messing with them about the risk that their captive deer
Speaker 1: are going to spread diseases to wild herds. So they're
Speaker 1: trying to get free of that and get out of
Speaker 1: inspection services. That's what's in the back of their head.
Speaker 1: That's all that's It is a tricky one, man, because
Speaker 1: I'm just suspicious of captive deer, like in general. But
Speaker 1: I also get the argument that if it's in the
Speaker 1: fence and it's captive, it's like whatever.
Speaker 7: But they get out of the fences.
Speaker 4: They do frequently.
Speaker 9: It strikes a little close to home because Alabama's right
Speaker 9: next to Mississippi.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's your take on it. I don't like it.
Speaker 1: I don't like it.
Speaker 9: I don't like it at all.
Speaker 1: Tell me more.
Speaker 9: I mean, CWD obviously a problem there.
Speaker 1: I have a problem.
Speaker 9: I mean, like I get the they're they're in the
Speaker 9: fence like they're not. I mean, they do get out,
Speaker 9: But I hinge on the thing, like even without the
Speaker 9: CWD argument, it's like the wildlife are belonging to the
Speaker 9: belong to the people, their public resource, like saying that
Speaker 9: you can put a fence around that and all of
Speaker 9: a sudden, that deer and everything in there becomes your
Speaker 9: private property.
Speaker 1: I don't like that at all.
Speaker 9: And then there's just been been a lot of stuff
Speaker 9: going on around home with CWD lately. It's not I mean,
Speaker 9: it's never good, right, But we had a there was
Speaker 9: a case that popped up along the Mississippi River in Louisiana,
Speaker 9: but going off CWD management guidelines, it would have put
Speaker 9: part of Clavern County, Mississippi in so CWD management. Well,
Speaker 9: there's a dude on our Wildlife Commission that was like,
Speaker 9: why would uh loise and a deer make this go
Speaker 9: into CWD management? The river's right there, disregarding the fact
Speaker 9: that those deers swim the river all the time. And
Speaker 9: so they had this boat and they were you know,
Speaker 9: and next thing, you know, within like a couple of months,
Speaker 9: they have a cwdk show up in Clavern County. Just
Speaker 9: no dead serious and so and obviously, you know, CW
Speaker 9: is a very controversial topic, but it is. And seeing
Speaker 9: that and using as like if they pass that, then
Speaker 9: they can get around some of the CWD stuff. And
Speaker 9: I could just so very easily seeing that hopping over
Speaker 9: into Mississippi because there's some high fences there too, and
Speaker 9: I just don't like get too close to home.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, and there's a lot to learn about CWD so much,
Speaker 6: but we certainly know that concentrated areas of animals are
Speaker 6: one of the worst things that we can have so
Speaker 6: promoting that and making that easier is not helping the
Speaker 6: c w.
Speaker 1: Case at Yeah, and moving servants has proven to be
Speaker 1: uh problematic, but a lot of the servid movements are
Speaker 1: down now. You know. An interesting casualty of the c
Speaker 1: w D is that you that it really put the
Speaker 1: knicks on elk recovery.
Speaker 9: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because as they're like regulating relocating servits, it's ground
Speaker 1: down that you're going to take out from source populations
Speaker 1: and bring them into new places because people aren't wanting
Speaker 1: to transport servants around.
Speaker 6: And now we have CWD on all of our feed
Speaker 6: grounds because the elk and feed grounds.
Speaker 7: It's getting messier by the minute.
Speaker 1: There was the late Jim Poswitz who was he was
Speaker 1: from Montana, and he wrote these little pamphlets that you
Speaker 1: give kids when they're like, if your kid goes through
Speaker 1: hunter safety with the state, you might he might wind
Speaker 1: up with these Jim these gym positates pamphlets like like
Speaker 1: I can't remember what they're called, just a little like
Speaker 1: like sort of things about ethics of hunting and stuff.
Speaker 1: He was he was coming he was a hunter. He
Speaker 1: was like a philosopher about hunting ethics and he was.
Speaker 3: He was always very suspicious of.
Speaker 1: Captive the captive servant industry, and was involved with Montana
Speaker 1: when it went to a vote Montana and Montana rejected
Speaker 1: canned hunting on.
Speaker 3: Captive servative facilities overwhelmingly.
Speaker 1: Jimposwitz was very involved in that fight, and he had
Speaker 1: this interesting point about it, which is like, if you
Speaker 1: look at the captive deer and elk industry, there's there's
Speaker 1: a friction because this is just this is just like,
Speaker 1: this isn't proposing legislation. This is just like an observation
Speaker 1: of his. What gives those captive animals their value is
Speaker 1: the social value that the wild version has. Do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? It's like, what excites someone about
Speaker 1: growing a big buck is the social value that a
Speaker 1: big buck in its wild form has. Meaning if you
Speaker 1: went and got a you know, if you went and
Speaker 1: got a sheep and you figured out how to make
Speaker 1: a little ram, a little domestic ram have like slightly
Speaker 1: bigger horns, people are not That's not exciting to people
Speaker 1: because there's not a social value attached to wildlife that
Speaker 1: you're trying to mimic. Right, You're you're in a way
Speaker 1: subverting the thing that has social value to build a
Speaker 1: sort of artificial version of the thing that people are
Speaker 1: excited about in the first place. So he just questioned
Speaker 1: it from from a from a philosophical angle. You know,
Speaker 1: it'd be similar to I think of a bunch of
Speaker 1: things that'd be similar to this insulting to bring it
Speaker 1: up some in there minds.
Speaker 4: Now worse than Doug's dog.
Speaker 1: I was gonna make a I was gonna make an
Speaker 1: analogy to what some people refer to as the oldest profession.
Speaker 9: Oh, I got it, we got it.
Speaker 3: Some people argue was hunting.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Uh, central Mississippi. Yeah, grew up Central Mississippi.
Speaker 1: What was your how'd you get into how'd you get
Speaker 1: into hunting?
Speaker 9: Man? I mean you're kind of you're put into it early,
Speaker 9: just because Central Mississippi is just kind of just kind
Speaker 9: of the common thing a out there. Everybody hunts her
Speaker 9: fishes to some degree. Uh, but my dad is describe
Speaker 9: my dad, he hunts a little bit and fishes a lot.
Speaker 9: That's where it's where the name lake came from. My
Speaker 9: dad's an obsessed fisherman and so named.
Speaker 5: That's fairs really good.
Speaker 9: So uh, like we were, you know, we we fash
Speaker 9: fished a lot, like I was telling you earlier about
Speaker 9: you know, my dad, it was like mandatory that me
Speaker 9: and my brother learned how to throw a bait cap.
Speaker 9: You know, we fished a whole lot, and then deer
Speaker 9: season would come around, and you know the rifle opener
Speaker 9: and maybe other one weeknd a year and then opener
Speaker 9: a tough season. That was a big thing down there,
Speaker 9: But that was about the extent of it.
Speaker 3: You guys would fish during hunting season.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, like like that you shouldn't be allowed
Speaker 1: to do that, Like.
Speaker 9: Like fishing is the end all be all like that.
Speaker 9: When I was first getting into Turkey and skipping a
Speaker 9: little head ahead here, but like I remember one of
Speaker 9: the first morning's Turkey Hunton, like trying to hear a
Speaker 9: turkey and there's like a little pond down below, and
Speaker 9: Dad's like, I wonder if I got a buzz bait
Speaker 9: in my truck. I mean, that's all he's thinking about.
Speaker 9: So and yeah, Turkey Hunton is a huge down home.
Speaker 9: And so I'd heard some buddies like at church and
Speaker 9: stuff talking about Turkey un during the springs.
Speaker 1: Like the cradle of Turkey hunting.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, yeah, and I. But I just didn't get
Speaker 9: that early because my dad wasn't a turkey hunter. And
Speaker 9: then this is true story. People think I'm being hyperbolic,
Speaker 9: but it's true. We were on a we were on
Speaker 9: a family like vacation thing over spring break, and we
Speaker 9: stopped at a Bass Pro shop and uh, they were
Speaker 9: doing these like seminars and there was a Primo's Pro
Speaker 9: staff guy wheeled out this TV and I was a kid,
Speaker 9: so like, oh, it's on the TV and he plays
Speaker 9: a turkey hunt and I was like, holy smokes, that
Speaker 9: looks wild. So I start when I'm at church on Sunday,
Speaker 9: I start like sourcing out people. I'm like, will you
Speaker 9: take me turkey hunting? Because because like my dad was
Speaker 9: willing to do it. But my dad was like I
Speaker 9: have no idea what I'm doing, you know. Uh, And
Speaker 9: thank the good Lord, I found a guy, still close
Speaker 9: friends with him to this day, a guy named Keith Polk.
Speaker 3: And Keith was this sounds like a good turkey hunter,
Speaker 3: oh man.
Speaker 9: Keith Pole, Yeah yeah, Keith is man. Yeah, I probably.
Speaker 9: I know that guy a lot. But he talked to
Speaker 9: my parents and were like, hey, you mind if I
Speaker 9: take Lake turkey hunt and over Mississippi Youth Weekend and
Speaker 9: they were like, please take lake turkey hunting. It's all
Speaker 9: the kid talks about. And so, uh, he rolls up
Speaker 9: Saturday morning the Youth season takes me turkey ounting, and
Speaker 9: uh we end up shooting a bird and I like, literally,
Speaker 9: I've not stopped ever since. I still I mean, I
Speaker 9: could swim. How were the twelve Yeah I could. I
Speaker 9: can close my eye and still picture that turkey strutting
Speaker 9: down that ridge. It was just burned into my brain,
Speaker 9: like I never and I once I remember thinking like
Speaker 9: because I was only it was only twelve. I remember
Speaker 9: shooting that turkey and We're carrying them out of the
Speaker 9: woods and I'm like, you're telling me I could have
Speaker 9: been doing this the whole other eleven years of my life, though,
Speaker 9: I just and and that led to everything else. So
Speaker 9: I got into bow hunting and really got into turkey hunton,
Speaker 9: and yeah, it just it all. Spurn turkey on was
Speaker 9: the catalyst of all of it.
Speaker 1: And't that funny that you got turned down a turkey hunt?
Speaker 1: And watching the premos video then went on to make
Speaker 1: how many premost videos did you work on? Probably dozens
Speaker 1: and dozens and dozens.
Speaker 9: I mean I was there for I mean nine years
Speaker 9: and some change, just just south of ten years. I
Speaker 9: don't know, man, it was yeah, it's all my What
Speaker 9: I tell people is like my whole life has been
Speaker 9: like just the series of like how in the world
Speaker 9: did I even end up here?
Speaker 3: Kind of thing?
Speaker 9: But yeah, I Will Primos, and I remember the first
Speaker 9: time I turkey on it with Will was kind of funny,
Speaker 9: but I would I would watch Primos videos like like
Speaker 9: I was watching game film, you know, trying to trying
Speaker 9: to I was like, what did he do? Because I
Speaker 9: told Will, like, oh yeah, I told Will one time.
Speaker 9: I mean this was years ago, I said Will. I
Speaker 9: used to watch those videos and I would listen to
Speaker 9: a like calling Cadence, and I would rewind it and
Speaker 9: listen to it over and over and over again and
Speaker 9: try to mimic it.
Speaker 4: Huh muscle memory.
Speaker 9: Yeah, because I mean, like I just I didn't know
Speaker 9: what I was doing. And then even after I got
Speaker 9: that first bird with Keith, like, there was still a
Speaker 9: whole lot of like you gotta put it together for yourself.
Speaker 1: Kind of thing. But yeah, yeah it was.
Speaker 9: I was like Will Primos was and the whole Promos
Speaker 9: crew man. They were like, they might as well hung
Speaker 9: the moon for me.
Speaker 1: When you when you're working there and you get your check,
Speaker 1: what's to say, Primo's on it? Yeah? It did. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing I liked I've said is foreign, I said
Speaker 1: to his face one of the things I like Will.
Speaker 1: Will's very good communicator. Yeah, but to my awareness, I've
Speaker 1: never heard him say a negative word.
Speaker 3: Man, he's just like about anybody.
Speaker 9: I'll tell you a story about Will, like, uh, he's
Speaker 9: so like you used to say, like you hear people
Speaker 9: say there's people that want you to succeed, there's people
Speaker 9: that don't want you to succeed, like or Will like
Speaker 9: goes over and over and beyond, like wanting to people
Speaker 9: wanting people to succeed. And uh. I had been at
Speaker 9: Primos for three or four years and been hunting with
Speaker 9: Will a lot, so we got to know him. And
Speaker 9: he came by the office one day in the middle
Speaker 9: of the week and I saw him for like a minute,
Speaker 9: maybe two minutes, just he was just the in and out.
Speaker 9: And that weekend is a Saturday morning, my phone rings,
Speaker 9: its Will not uncommon and answer the phone is like, hey,
Speaker 9: I need some help. Over at the house. You mind
Speaker 9: coming over?
Speaker 1: Not uncommon?
Speaker 9: I'm like, yeah, sure, right up there. He's not usually
Speaker 9: if he called me, it was like something out in
Speaker 9: his yard, but he w wasn't out his r Like huh.
Speaker 9: So go knock on his door and he's like just
Speaker 9: standing in casual clothes that come inside, get some coffee
Speaker 9: and at this point, like, oh, what did I do?
Speaker 1: Fire you?
Speaker 3: Fire you like a man?
Speaker 1: He says.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 9: He says, man, get some coffee and go sit in
Speaker 9: the office. And so I sit in the office at coffee.
Speaker 9: I'm like, what in the world did I do it?
Speaker 9: Like my wheels are spinning?
Speaker 1: And uh.
Speaker 9: He comes in there and he sits down and he says, Lake,
Speaker 9: and I came in the office this week. I could
Speaker 9: tell something was bothering you. I don't know what it was,
Speaker 9: but you and me, we're gonna sit here. We're gonna
Speaker 9: talk about it till we figure it out because I
Speaker 9: don't like seeing you that way.
Speaker 1: M hm.
Speaker 9: That's just kind of duty, is what was it?
Speaker 1: Dude?
Speaker 9: It was like a like a it was like a
Speaker 9: breakup or something like that. Something minuscule, but it just
Speaker 9: meant the world that he cared that much. You know
Speaker 9: you're married, No, Hall been married three years in July. Kids,
Speaker 9: no kids, okay, two dogs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's the thing about Will. There's like a I've
Speaker 1: kind of a bunch of people like this. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna return to my commencement address I gave the other day,
Speaker 1: the no Plan B address.
Speaker 6: Yea.
Speaker 3: What I was talking about was like.
Speaker 1: People trying to pick what the selecting your plan A
Speaker 1: for now, pick a plan A and kill the plan
Speaker 1: b's because you'll get seduced by your plan B. It'll
Speaker 1: just be easier and you'll get it'll seduce you. And
Speaker 1: I put it in terms of like cliff jumping and
Speaker 1: watching my daughter pick a real high cliff in Hawaii
Speaker 1: that she was gonna jump off into the plunge pool
Speaker 1: at a waterfall, and then you could see in her
Speaker 1: mind just wishing she hadn't a climbed out on that cliff.
Speaker 1: But there she is now, And like most people get
Speaker 1: on the ledge and they quickly would go down and
Speaker 1: find another legend.
Speaker 3: Jump, but she just couldn't.
Speaker 1: She picked it and there she was, and now she
Speaker 1: had to cope with the selection and how intimidating it
Speaker 1: was being up there. And I was talking about his people.
Speaker 1: When you're on your plan a ledge, there's people that
Speaker 1: want you to come off that ledge bad, and there's
Speaker 1: people that want you to do it and they want
Speaker 1: you to break it back when you hit the water.
Speaker 3: Yep, do you follow me?
Speaker 1: And that's the sense I get from him. Another dude
Speaker 1: that has that, like he doesn't talk about it, but
Speaker 1: he has it like to unbelievable degree is Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1: You know, he gets into podcasting early and encourages all
Speaker 1: his friends to start a podcast. He opens a comedy
Speaker 1: club in Austin. You think that if someone wanted to
Speaker 1: open a comedy club down the road on the street,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, damn it. He's like awesome. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just like it's different like ways of viewing the world man.
Speaker 9: And that's one of the biggest things I got from
Speaker 9: Will Mann. Well, like so this podcast, you know, like uh,
Speaker 9: it all kind of started like I met, like Clay
Speaker 9: came down in Turkey on with me and Will for
Speaker 9: a few days and then we just kind of kept
Speaker 9: going every spring and hunting other stuff, and Will and
Speaker 9: Clay became buddies. Clay and I became buddies. But when
Speaker 9: all this happened. We were working on like the first
Speaker 9: episode of Backwoods University, and it just so worked out.
Speaker 9: I was like, Will would actually be a perfect guest
Speaker 9: on this. So I call Will. I tell him I
Speaker 9: don't you know, I don't just say hey, I need
Speaker 9: to interview. I tell him, hey, man, I got this opportunity,
Speaker 9: this new podcast going to be on Clay's feed. And
Speaker 9: Will is like ecstatic not to be on the interview.
Speaker 9: He's just like, man, that's so great, and like just
Speaker 9: like cleared out and he's pretty like he stays busy,
Speaker 9: that guy, but like cleared out of time for me
Speaker 9: to come and make that happen, just because he's that's
Speaker 9: just how he is man. He's like, how can I
Speaker 9: help push you up the hill?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, that's a sense, like I'll watch.
Speaker 9: That's how he is man with everybody, not just me,
Speaker 9: Like he's just that kind of guy.
Speaker 11: Talk about the podcast what it's going to be like,
Speaker 11: So Backwards University very wildlife biology based, but also like Clay,
Speaker 11: we were kind of putting together a list of like
Speaker 11: topics and episodes we would do.
Speaker 9: And I was like, Clay, there's not a species of
Speaker 9: wildlife because we're doing some episodes just kind of like
Speaker 9: an overarching view of a certain species, and then we're
Speaker 9: doing some that's like getting more specific and like like
Speaker 9: wildlife processes or whatever. And was like, Clay, there's not
Speaker 9: any of these that I can talk about where you
Speaker 9: can't mention the influence of humans on these animals, positive
Speaker 9: or negative.
Speaker 1: Got it.
Speaker 9: But the influence is usually very strong one way or
Speaker 9: the other. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's not so great.
Speaker 9: But that's what it's kind of focusing in on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nothing has escaped us.
Speaker 9: No, it's it's man. I was talking to the quail
Speaker 9: biologist named James Martin and he was talking about some
Speaker 9: of the strongholds in the southeast and he was talking
Speaker 9: about like he's talking about a particular stronghold. I said, man,
Speaker 9: why why was that was a habitat thing?
Speaker 1: Was this that?
Speaker 9: And the others said that's where the railroad stopped?
Speaker 1: Oh you're kidding me.
Speaker 9: Yeah, he's like that. He's like, if the if the
Speaker 9: railroad would have kept going, the stronghold would have been
Speaker 9: somewhere else.
Speaker 1: We had an anthropologist on recently and we're talking about
Speaker 1: the place the scene extinctions, and he was saying it
Speaker 1: was a really good formula for places where megafauna like large.
Speaker 1: It's a really good formula for places where large mammals
Speaker 1: continue to exist. There's never enough people there to get
Speaker 1: them all. And he starts like rattling off cases of
Speaker 1: like refugia where things like managed to survive, and it's
Speaker 1: like managed to survive because the human populated it couldn't
Speaker 1: support a bit.
Speaker 3: No, it was more than that. It wasn't just happened chance.
Speaker 1: It was just places that weren't going to support a
Speaker 1: large human population at a certain time.
Speaker 9: It's it's a man like there's an episode that I'm
Speaker 9: working on right now that delves into the state of
Speaker 9: Mississippi because we were Mississippi is one of the last
Speaker 9: states to put in a formal Game and Fish agency,
Speaker 9: you know, have established laws. And that's when Loopold made
Speaker 9: his trip down there and he wrote and he wrote
Speaker 9: a report in nineteen twenty nine where he basically just
Speaker 9: goes over the status of all these game animals and
Speaker 9: it's astounding, especially like now, the white tailed deer population
Speaker 9: in Mississippi now is like one point five million, Like
Speaker 9: our game agency is asking, they're imploring hunters like please
Speaker 9: shoot more deer. We have too many. When Loopold was
Speaker 9: there in nineteen twenty nine, in his report, it was
Speaker 9: it was estimated we had twelve hundred deer in the
Speaker 9: entire states.
Speaker 1: You've got to be kidding. It was that bad down there.
Speaker 9: Huh wow, it's it's wild and talking like turkey hunting
Speaker 9: being the the epicenter of turkey hunt culture, which I
Speaker 9: would argue that it is, which I'm biased, but one
Speaker 9: of the first, like we established a game in Fish
Speaker 9: Agency in nineteen thirty two, one of the first things
Speaker 9: they started working on was wild turkeys because loop Hold
Speaker 9: wrote in his report he was like, y'all have wiped
Speaker 9: out almost all of your turkeys. He said, I can't,
Speaker 9: I'll butcher it. But it was like the upland stop.
Speaker 9: The turkeys left in the uplands are gone. The only
Speaker 9: thing you have left her in the swamps because because
Speaker 9: humans couldn't get to them. But it's like going through
Speaker 9: it and like how bad. And it wasn't from a
Speaker 9: lot of It was during the Great Great Depression and
Speaker 9: people weren't uh, they're mainly just this is how I
Speaker 9: feed my family. But again, it's just like really trying
Speaker 9: to grasp how heavy of an influence we have.
Speaker 1: It's it's wild. What are the first episodes going to be.
Speaker 9: We've got one on bison, but bison in the Eastern
Speaker 9: United States. Oh, then we've got that one.
Speaker 3: Did you talk to Ted Franklin Blue I didn't.
Speaker 9: We referenced his book a lot. I actually talked to
Speaker 9: a guy named Jeremy French. He worked for Dwayne Estes.
Speaker 9: The coolest part of that whole process is, uh, Jeremy
Speaker 9: took me to a property a lot of prairie restoration.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know it.
Speaker 9: He said, he said, from the original Cumberland settlements. They
Speaker 9: digitized a bunch of these. They had mapped out the
Speaker 9: buffalo trails and so there's a place on that property.
Speaker 9: I mean, it looks like someone drove a bulldozer through it.
Speaker 9: And he said, there's your bison trail. You can still
Speaker 9: see it. And we walked down in there, stood in
Speaker 9: and it was crazy. But that was a fun episode.
Speaker 9: We're doing one on Bob black Quail and then the
Speaker 9: one that I was just talking about. I referenced Loophold
Speaker 9: a lot. But the subject of the story is actually
Speaker 9: a woman named Fanny Cook, which again I'm biased, but
Speaker 9: I would argue she's one of the greatest conservationists to
Speaker 9: ever live because she was pretty much the first wildlife
Speaker 9: biologist in the state of Mississippi, and she fought to
Speaker 9: establish the Game and Fish Commission. There's not like hard
Speaker 9: evidence of it, but there's reasonable evidence that she's the
Speaker 9: one that got Loophold to come down and make the report.
Speaker 9: She's a pretty incredible woman.
Speaker 1: Have you Has anybody in Mississippi ever gotten a full
Speaker 1: body mossy oak tattoo or real tattoo?
Speaker 9: Yeah, yes, yes there is.
Speaker 1: Because it's hot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, y'all run around and that stuff all the time.
Speaker 9: Anyway, somebody one time we were at a local sports
Speaker 9: show and like primos used to have these logos, like
Speaker 9: they had like these little bit of individual animal logos,
Speaker 9: and this dude just runs up to the Primo's booth
Speaker 9: that air is like check this out, and he pulls
Speaker 9: up a sleeve and he has the Primo's turkey logo
Speaker 9: on his.
Speaker 1: Arm, but no full body sleeve camo. So you can
Speaker 1: just hunt. That'd be a good idea, Just hunt the
Speaker 1: way God made you.
Speaker 7: You should start selling temporary tattoos.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so is your is backwards universe.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have like how far north will you allow
Speaker 1: yourself to go? Oh, I'm going like, you'll do Yankee stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh that's like, uh, it's just been regional right now,
Speaker 1: just because it's just Clay's got you know, he's got
Speaker 1: like you know, Clail say stuff like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: people in the South are very interested in music.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: People in the South, you know, they love their families
Speaker 1: every day. He talks to tell you something, I'm like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: what about that? You know, music is very important culture.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I never you know a bowtown.
Speaker 9: Yeah no, I've actually, uh, while I've been up here,
Speaker 9: I've interviewed some grizzly folks. So yeah, yeah, we're not
Speaker 9: so you can talk to Yankees.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, well I'm I'm I'm trying to go continental wide.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, good not you're talking foreigners, but you will
Speaker 1: talk Yankees. Yeah, that's it. He draw the line there,
Speaker 1: and then how what what's the frequency you're shooting for
Speaker 1: bi weekly? Right now? Okay, good Man?
Speaker 3: One episode, be man.
Speaker 9: I think the first couple of ones anywhere between like
Speaker 9: thirty and forty minutes.
Speaker 3: And then you're gonna hear interviews.
Speaker 9: It's basically like we ended up landing on. It's kind
Speaker 9: of a bear Grease format, just just condensed. Like the
Speaker 9: quail episode has Wilbur in it and then a guy
Speaker 9: named doctor Mark McConnell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because he's a big quail hunter man.
Speaker 9: Again such a I've known Will for over ten years
Speaker 9: at this point, and when he was sharing, like, because
Speaker 9: what I was going for is I wanted to get
Speaker 9: a scope from what happened to Bob White quail from
Speaker 9: a biologist perspective. But then like Will, like some of
Speaker 9: his first hunting experiences was hunting with his uncle when
Speaker 9: he was eight, and so like a real sense of
Speaker 9: what the culture was like. So you get kind of
Speaker 9: a balance. You get biology, but then you get hunting cultures.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Can I make a episode recommendation please?
Speaker 1: I think you should go this. I'm dead serious, Okay,
Speaker 1: it'd be a lot of fun. I think you should
Speaker 1: go to Wisconsin. Team up with Doug durn but he
Speaker 1: can't be all the way in it. But team up
Speaker 1: with Doug drn and go around bars in southwest Wisconsin
Speaker 1: and interview people. Interview anyone at a bar that can
Speaker 1: tell you about what's wrong with deer management.
Speaker 9: That would be interesting.
Speaker 1: It would be a really I think it would be
Speaker 1: deeply entertaining and very informative. He would get such a
Speaker 1: disparate view of the state of deer man, Like it
Speaker 1: doesn't need to be Wisconsin, but it needs to be Like,
Speaker 1: it needs to be someplace where there's a lot of
Speaker 1: factors at play, you know, like increase predation, where there's
Speaker 1: a lot of slot in the soup. Yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of stew, you know, Like like, let's say you went
Speaker 1: to an area where you're kind of on the southern
Speaker 1: edge of wolf expansion and you got CWD in the
Speaker 1: mix and whatever, and do like dear biology according to
Speaker 1: dudes and marks sitting Man, you actually biology.
Speaker 4: That's a whole new podcast.
Speaker 9: You're kicking me down a whole line of thought because
Speaker 9: you could do the same thing, like again, like Southeast,
Speaker 9: if I went around to and was like, hey, man,
Speaker 9: what's going on with wild turkeys? You would get such
Speaker 9: a wide spectrum of biology. Man, it's the fire ants.
Speaker 1: But I tell people that I quit drinking.
Speaker 9: You would get such a widespread answers.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 1: The only bummer is I don't drink. I'd have to
Speaker 1: go in there, like, I'm just gonna sit in there
Speaker 1: and drink water, hopefully come in flakes in town that
Speaker 1: on the bar, just hang out. I need to get
Speaker 1: interviewed for the show.
Speaker 6: Bar biology man toasted that one who must have been
Speaker 6: just drinking straight.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was like, he's so high. I'm like, no, I'm not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that'd be a good one. And my work is
Speaker 1: so good, you could do more, but yeah, just like,
Speaker 1: hey man, what's like if you went in and chill.
Speaker 1: Don't go on a weekend, don't go way late, don't
Speaker 1: go megal late. You want the dudes that are in
Speaker 1: there eight pm, post dinner, pre right, the happy Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: go and chill and be like, hey man, I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to get I'm just trying to.
Speaker 3: Get everybody's perspectives.
Speaker 1: I'd love to I'm trying to just get Like, I
Speaker 1: don't want the agency guys.
Speaker 3: I don't want the government guys. I want to hear
Speaker 3: the guys on.
Speaker 4: The ground, the guys in the field.
Speaker 3: The guys in the field.
Speaker 1: Leaning in the bar, the guys that were once in
Speaker 1: the field, Like, what's going on, man, what's going on
Speaker 1: with turkeys? Yeah, bulbs, collar residents, poachers, fishing, game man.
Speaker 4: This sounds like my average call with a landowner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about that. Let's talk about what you
Speaker 1: do as a resource tech. But hit me with the
Speaker 1: dates and everything. Lake Pickles Backwards University, June sixth, Bear
Speaker 1: Grease podcast feed.
Speaker 9: Tune in and video on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Learn all kinds of stuff about what uh wildlife. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's starting with the quail, starting with me and Crinn
Speaker 1: or in hot Water with the quail community.
Speaker 5: I've I've heard I've heard is that the quail community
Speaker 5: should listen to your two episodes because.
Speaker 1: We did a thing and we had a guy on.
Speaker 1: It was a guy that knows what's wrong with quail
Speaker 1: and and there's a.
Speaker 9: It's a rich stew I talk I talked to the
Speaker 9: biologist about it. Yeah, yeah, it's a yeah. I'm aware.
Speaker 8: All the people wrote in from their barstools, ye, to
Speaker 8: let us know we had a guy.
Speaker 1: There's a just there's a an alarming decline in Bob
Speaker 1: White quail numbers which has been going on for a
Speaker 1: long time across an enormous geographic area. We had a
Speaker 1: person on talking about his feelings about what's happening to
Speaker 1: quail in a in a relatively isolated geographic area, and
Speaker 1: has a solution, has a proposed solution that, in some
Speaker 1: people's minds does not adequately address the root cause, and
Speaker 1: to hear him out is bad. Right.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, pretty much sums it up. Yeah, I did
Speaker 9: learn you want the first noted declines that they can
Speaker 9: find in the in the North America? You know what
Speaker 9: it was? You tell me where you know when? Like
Speaker 9: when the first notable declines a bob whait.
Speaker 3: Quail, barroom declines or like declined decline.
Speaker 9: It's from the from the biologist, Like.
Speaker 1: What's the question again?
Speaker 9: When were the first noted declines? Like yes, just yeah,
Speaker 9: nineteen twenty eighteen, ninety wow, industrial revolution. But yeah those
Speaker 9: people now if you want to go back to the
Speaker 9: barroom side, he's like everyone normally says nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 9: but that they started doing brood surveys in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: So that's why we say that.
Speaker 7: So where does the data come from?
Speaker 1: But I don't know, I.
Speaker 9: Have to go back and listen to anything, or you
Speaker 9: just learned this the other day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, barstool biology. And they hope we.
Speaker 3: Don't get sued by Barstool Sports. No, it's bar bier.
Speaker 1: Yeahool. He's a kind of anti hunter, is he. I've
Speaker 1: always wanted to have him on. Dave Portnoy.
Speaker 9: Oh, I don't know who he is. I didn't know
Speaker 9: his anti hunter what I like Barstool Outdoors and all that.
Speaker 1: Well, Portnoy is kind of I guess he like Uh.
Speaker 1: I think he's kind of like waffles on the edge
Speaker 1: of the Maine society kind of stuff. I look to
Speaker 1: him on if you're listening.
Speaker 3: Probably not if he was never.
Speaker 1: Do Yeah, we'll get like if Dave comes on. If
Speaker 1: you come on, I'll buy you. I'll take you around
Speaker 1: and get off pizza. Yeah, I'll take you.
Speaker 2: Probably isn't pizza reviews and Bozeman.
Speaker 1: No, you can do like a whole dude. Come on.
Speaker 4: You know who loves pizza.
Speaker 9: People in the South, that Southern folks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't need pizza down there.
Speaker 9: I don't know about Yankees, but southern Southern, the South, Yeah,
Speaker 9: they love it.
Speaker 3: You know you guys are on too.
Speaker 1: Is boiling and peanuts?
Speaker 9: Oh man, I didn't even know that was unique to
Speaker 9: us until there was someone from out of town that
Speaker 9: was like boiled I was like that, Yeah, I had
Speaker 9: no idea.
Speaker 1: I remember going to South Carolina and the guy I
Speaker 1: was with pull over and get up hot, sopping, wet,
Speaker 1: steamy bag.
Speaker 7: They're so good there.
Speaker 3: That's good man.
Speaker 9: So there's a fella that used to have he had
Speaker 9: a setup and you had to drive right past him
Speaker 9: if you're going to the local sport in good store.
Speaker 9: He had his old pickup truck. He'd have him a
Speaker 9: little pop up ten out there and he'd be boiling
Speaker 9: peanuts with how the pinos in him and you pull
Speaker 9: up to him, you roll down in the window and
Speaker 9: he'd walk up to you and he'd tell you want
Speaker 9: a big fat bag or a little fat bag?
Speaker 4: An you wear a trench coat?
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, old traffer Kate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for coming on man.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for the invite.
Speaker 1: No, well, I just like I said, I just want
Speaker 1: to talk to because you like trapping.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: But first tell me what do you do at Kansas State?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So I'm a I'm a research technician, so doing
Speaker 4: out in the field, doing the down and dirty work
Speaker 4: for all the all the research projects. And started on
Speaker 4: an ELK survey when I first got into town, moved
Speaker 4: over to flying squirrels.
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, is that a demotion?
Speaker 4: You know, it depends who you ask. I think it was.
Speaker 4: It was cool. I mean, flying squirrels are cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, tell me something about flying squirrels. I don't really
Speaker 3: know much about.
Speaker 4: Them, A few people do. But they love suitcakes. So
Speaker 4: that's how we would bait them in for the cameras,
Speaker 4: peanut butter suit cakes.
Speaker 1: So they'll eat meat.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess that's an interesting.
Speaker 3: Well they'll get onto Martin sets.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, and all I think all squirrels
Speaker 4: are kind of opportunistic omnivores in that way. But yeah, suitcakes,
Speaker 4: and we would do camera traps to try to survey
Speaker 4: him during the summer. And then uh, sort of a
Speaker 4: nest box kind of setup to get get colonies in
Speaker 4: the winter. And that's when you go in and tag
Speaker 4: them because they're all holed up together and nest boxes
Speaker 4: and so yeah, you just kind of sneak up to
Speaker 4: the box cover the entrance. Oh gosh, there could be
Speaker 4: like five or six I think, yeah, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: They are adorable, the big old eyes. But yeah, and
Speaker 4: then uh, and then I got moved over to Uh,
Speaker 4: the Turkey Project in September of twenty three, so I've
Speaker 4: been doing that, doing that since then.
Speaker 1: And what's that look at?
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, everything. So it's statewide and we're looking at
Speaker 4: resource selection just kind of general landscape scale. Where are
Speaker 4: they going, what are they like, what does it look
Speaker 4: like they're preferentially kind of selecting for roof tree selection?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, which is actually pretty interesting seeing the the
Speaker 4: difference between like the western side of the state is
Speaker 4: kind of across that longitudinal gradient you.
Speaker 1: Mean in what in what types of trees they want
Speaker 1: to be in, the.
Speaker 4: Height of the tree, the diameter of the tree, the species,
Speaker 4: like everything kind of there.
Speaker 1: So we're doing in that area. How apt is a
Speaker 1: how apt is a Turkey to use the same tree
Speaker 1: two nights in a row?
Speaker 4: Oh gosh. It depends on the region, because the farther
Speaker 4: west you go, the fewer their options are for like
Speaker 4: a suitable side and just anything that's like that can
Speaker 4: reasonably hold, So they're more they have more roost fidelity
Speaker 4: in the west versus the east.
Speaker 1: I could put that's like just observationally, that's been my
Speaker 1: finding where I mean it's kind of obvious, but places
Speaker 1: there's not any trees yep. And they're down in Sonora, Mexico,
Speaker 1: where there's just the only possible roof trees of.
Speaker 3: Sycamore growth in a canyon bottom.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So like no kitten, Yeah, like because within ten miles
Speaker 1: there's it's just the sycamore group. And so they're like
Speaker 1: a magnet. But we hunted in Colorado this year and
Speaker 1: got to kind of wash different groups. I mean they
Speaker 1: would be they would be eight hundred yards, nine hundred
Speaker 1: yards these different groups every day, like no sense of
Speaker 1: going back to where it came from. Yeah, but there's tons.
Speaker 4: Upon us, so many, so many options. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 4: kind of that is kind of what what we're seeing there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: When they have like the when you're when you're in
Speaker 4: like the the bigger kind of woodlots or bigger, bigger
Speaker 4: creek bottoms, river bottoms in the east, they'll kind of
Speaker 4: move around a little bit on a rotation or just
Speaker 4: kind of have they'll bust bust off into like different
Speaker 4: groups within one flock and kind of end up on
Speaker 4: different roots each night.
Speaker 3: Do you guys go find out what killed them when
Speaker 3: they die?
Speaker 4: Oh, that's impossible, it is they get scavenged so hard,
Speaker 4: so fast. Huh, it's really hard to tell, like what
Speaker 4: exactly got them.
Speaker 1: That's a tough one.
Speaker 4: It's so hard. Same with the nests, Like they get
Speaker 4: scavenged so fast that trying to pinpoint exactly why a
Speaker 4: nest failed or if it was actually predated or if
Speaker 4: it was just abandoned and then scavenged afterwards, like unless
Speaker 4: you're literally sitting there like twenty four to seven watching
Speaker 4: that nest, it's it's almost impossible to tell. You can
Speaker 4: kind of tell, like what eight the a like if
Speaker 4: the egg was eaten, Like if you just find like
Speaker 4: eggs shell, you can kind of tell what ate it, Okay,
Speaker 4: but whether or not it was like the abandoned it
Speaker 4: first and then something else found it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, after she got killed and therefore.
Speaker 4: She got killed or she just some we've noticed that
Speaker 4: they just sometimes they just walk away because what would.
Speaker 1: Cause me to do that? We're not sure they'll ditch it.
Speaker 4: They'll just ditch it. Yeah, but you feel like a
Speaker 4: couple eggs and then just ditch it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, too stressful or who knows?
Speaker 4: Yeah, who knows. Yeah, it's it's interesting, but yeah.
Speaker 1: I never knew. I didn't realize that the forensics is
Speaker 1: tough on turkeys.
Speaker 4: It is so tough. I mean, they're like there's such
Speaker 4: a nice little snack for just about anything that you know,
Speaker 4: if they're out there longer than twenty four hours before
Speaker 4: you get there, it's the odds of something finding finding
Speaker 4: the body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you show up some possums sitting there. That
Speaker 1: doesn't tell you what happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah you don't, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that's why, like
Speaker 4: a lot of studies people are like wanting to put
Speaker 4: cameras on the nest, but just like having that camera
Speaker 4: there and the smell of the camera and stuff, is
Speaker 4: that that increases the risk of predation because a lot
Speaker 4: of predators were actually key in on that little bit
Speaker 4: of human scent, Like they'll key in on the scent
Speaker 4: of like another predator in that like one specific spot,
Speaker 4: and they they like actually learned like, okay, there's there's
Speaker 4: something there. And so you're increasing the risk of predation
Speaker 4: on this nest by putting a camera there. But that's
Speaker 4: really the only way to know exactly what happened. So
Speaker 4: it's we're kind of stuck in a dead zone there
Speaker 4: not really being able to exactly say what happened.
Speaker 1: I've talked to guys that work on collaring studies where
Speaker 1: they're collaring you know, big game animals with big visible collars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that are probably hard to get used to. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's i mean a factor in and it's an open question.
Speaker 1: But once you do that, how accurate is the mortality study? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because when something's chasing or whatever, or they recognize like
Speaker 1: something's wrong with something different. Yeah, it's like, however they
Speaker 1: read that collar.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, So we have on the hens that we're
Speaker 4: we're tagging, we have backpack transmitters and they're you know,
Speaker 4: they're slick, and they're they're black, Like they're not they're
Speaker 4: not obvious. But you have to be careful about like
Speaker 4: how it affects the movement of that hen, Like you
Speaker 4: have to make sure she has full extension of her wings,
Speaker 4: Like it's not you only only put them on hens
Speaker 4: that are hefty enough, Like it can't be over a
Speaker 4: certain percent of their body weight. Otherwise, like it's going
Speaker 4: to impact their ability to get up in a roost
Speaker 4: and it's just gonna wear on them, like having that
Speaker 4: walking around with that weight. But we also we also
Speaker 4: ditch all the data from anything that dies within two
Speaker 4: weeks of capture, So that like if it's a mortality
Speaker 4: that could be directly related to either capture stress or
Speaker 4: like something to do with the transmitter, like yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and it starts to dress what I'm getting
Speaker 1: at that you could just never get used to it.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, So that's that's typical with any kind of collaring,
Speaker 4: any kind of bagging study. Is like, if you have
Speaker 4: a mortality within a certain window of time after the capture,
Speaker 4: you just omit it from the data because you just
Speaker 4: write it off as a capture related mortality.
Speaker 1: They freaked it out too bad or yeah.
Speaker 4: They can get like capture myopathy just like their their
Speaker 4: muscles just melt basically in the stress. Yeah, and they
Speaker 4: just kind of they just kind of can't move anymore.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm remembering right now, And I meant
Speaker 1: to put it on Instagram, but like I totally forgot
Speaker 1: about till you just said it to me is a
Speaker 1: guy wrote us, wrote us in and he had been
Speaker 1: out hunting and found a turkey nest. Yeah, and put
Speaker 1: a camera on it. And man, do you remember did you?
Speaker 1: Has everybody seen this video? Oh?
Speaker 2: I don't think I have I don't know what.
Speaker 1: It was, like twelve hours later, there's a kyote stander
Speaker 1: eating all those yeah right away.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and uh so, uh so part of this
Speaker 4: part of the study is a wide scale camera, wide
Speaker 4: scale camera survey for predators. And this is like not
Speaker 4: related to the turkey location. So we're just based on
Speaker 4: the capture locations. We're doing like a broad kind of placement,
Speaker 4: random placement of cameras around the capture sites just to
Speaker 4: kind of see what the predator communities are in those areas. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and then we'll try to kind of see if there's
Speaker 4: a correlation between what the predator communities look like and
Speaker 4: what happened to those tur like what kind of patterns
Speaker 4: we saw in the turkeys in those areas. But I
Speaker 4: noticed going through I mean, we have six hundred plus
Speaker 4: camera sites per survey season and we're on our third now,
Speaker 4: so there's i mean over five hundred thousand photos at
Speaker 4: this point. And I noticed going through those photos that
Speaker 4: immediately after the cameras would be deployed, like if there
Speaker 4: was gonna be a bobcat on that camera, it was
Speaker 4: usually like that night, like what is that they just smell?
Speaker 1: Why is it not repelling them.
Speaker 4: Their cats are cats especially are so curious, like coyotes
Speaker 4: are a little more wary. And this is actually a
Speaker 4: big thing with trapping, like cat trapping versus coyote trapping.
Speaker 4: You can be really flashy with cats and they'll they'll
Speaker 4: come in because they they're more prone to just investigate.
Speaker 1: Something got on here.
Speaker 4: They have a lot more confidence. So when they like
Speaker 4: smell that human scent in a random area that they
Speaker 4: don't normally smell it, like they come right.
Speaker 1: In some association with humans and food.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or they're just like like just curious. Yeah. So
Speaker 4: I noticed that, like really quickly. I'm like the first
Speaker 4: thing on most of these cameras, Like if there's gonna
Speaker 4: be if there's a cat on it, it's gonna be
Speaker 4: like the first thing that's on there. It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had the ethical issue of you got
Speaker 1: all these turkeys running around? How do you view that
Speaker 1: it would influence your hunting activities?
Speaker 4: Oh? My god, I I don't pay attention to it
Speaker 4: at all, Like I have. I did so much turkey hunting,
Speaker 4: but I got on this project that I like already
Speaker 4: had spots picked out and stuff on public to where
Speaker 4: you know, it's far removed from anywhere we have turkeys tagged,
Speaker 4: and I have like no desire to go anywhere near
Speaker 4: those tag turkeys. So yeah, I just I hunt the
Speaker 4: spots that I found, you know, way before I got involved,
Speaker 4: no insider trading I got.
Speaker 1: I got a friend that worked on he's worked on
Speaker 1: some wolf collaring project. He's a pilot. Yeah, he has
Speaker 1: no access to the data, but he's a pilot for
Speaker 1: the thing.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: But he's also a wolf trapper. Yeah, and he says, Man,
Speaker 1: I go the other direction. Yeah, because I don't even
Speaker 1: have access, but just what people will say, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I don't anything that happened when I worked on that.
Speaker 1: I go the other way because just perception.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and just for me, like I wouldn't. I would
Speaker 4: be kind of bummed. Like if I shot a tom
Speaker 4: and it had a tag on it that I'm like,
Speaker 4: I could have tagged that for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know what's puzzling is.
Speaker 1: I've brought this up a bunch of times over the
Speaker 1: years that like, like would you shoot a if you
Speaker 1: saw a collared white tail? Would you want to shoot
Speaker 1: a collar deer?
Speaker 4: Being like where I am now, like actually involved in
Speaker 4: the kind of wildlife tagging business. I don't I would
Speaker 4: say I don't really have a desire like that would
Speaker 4: probably make me less likely don't want to shoot that one,
Speaker 4: which I know is you're not supposed to do that
Speaker 4: for the science of it. But like I definitely am
Speaker 4: not more inclined to shoot a tagged animal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is which people bring up, is like what
Speaker 1: it's so coveted to get a tagged duck, yeah, or
Speaker 1: tagged goose, but people.
Speaker 3: Don't want some collar around a deer.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like hard to explain, man, because I feel like
Speaker 1: the deer has been not corrupted, but he's like he's
Speaker 1: lost his Yeah, he's lost his yeah, yeah, his wild juju.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: You have the image in your head of some someone
Speaker 4: like tackling this dear.
Speaker 1: You're yeah, it just feels like you're not You're not
Speaker 1: like the first person on the scene. You know, there's
Speaker 1: been some other person.
Speaker 4: Yeah, monkey with you know, like there's not a lot
Speaker 4: of there's at least one bit of mystery in that
Speaker 4: deer's life that is like no more like you're like,
Speaker 4: I know at least one thing that happened.
Speaker 1: Do you guys ever have are with all your collaring
Speaker 1: projects or tagging projects, do you ever have get immortality
Speaker 1: and then or get whatever and go there and be like,
Speaker 1: someone shot this thing, like someone poached the turkey.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't think we've had that issue yet.
Speaker 1: Like it turns up. I remember talking to a guy
Speaker 1: that was in a collar or in a turkey. You
Speaker 1: don't call it collaring, what do you call it tagging?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Well, we use an unscientific term of transmittering.
Speaker 1: His transmittered turkey wound up in the middle of a
Speaker 1: woodstack missing. It's missing its breast, missing its breast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a clue it probably figure out what happened
Speaker 4: to it, and.
Speaker 9: They like buried it in their own fans.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what killed this guy? I wonder.
Speaker 1: I feel like they were telling me that it was
Speaker 1: at that time. I feel like they were telling me
Speaker 1: it was glued onto it glued into the feathers. Is
Speaker 1: it right?
Speaker 4: That's not right? If that happened, that was not a
Speaker 4: good idea Flah, they.
Speaker 1: Were super gluing.
Speaker 3: So they were super gluing it into its feathers.
Speaker 4: When was this?
Speaker 3: When did I have this conversation over ten years ago?
Speaker 4: I wonder if he still I don't know if that
Speaker 4: was for what it's worth. I want to say that
Speaker 4: that was never supposed to be the standard for her
Speaker 4: for putting transmitters on you. We do use super glue,
Speaker 4: but we used superglue. So we use marine shot cord
Speaker 4: to make like the it's it's kind of like a
Speaker 4: it's almost like a a if a bungee and parrocord
Speaker 4: made a baby.
Speaker 1: I got you. Yeah, what do you call it? Marine?
Speaker 4: Marine shot cord? Just marine grade so it can stand
Speaker 4: up to the weather and everything. So we use that
Speaker 4: to make the make like the little backpack straps. And
Speaker 4: then when we not it used like a surgical knot
Speaker 4: to tie it off. Then we'll put super glue on
Speaker 4: that nott, but we put like a piece of cardboard
Speaker 4: underneath so that none of the super glue that gets
Speaker 4: on the feathers, because you don't want that understood, and
Speaker 4: you do not want to glue the transmitter to the bird.
Speaker 3: Well have been the pioneering days of Turkey.
Speaker 4: Maybe yeah, that's why I'm like, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Maybe we got to this this strategy because the old
Speaker 4: one of super gluing them directly to the bird turned
Speaker 4: out to not be a great idea.
Speaker 5: But.
Speaker 1: So what's your like, Well, I want to get into
Speaker 1: your trap and business, what how does how's your career?
Speaker 1: How'd your career path go? And what happens to you next?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I I always knew I was gonna to
Speaker 4: go into some kind of science and some kind of
Speaker 4: like biological science. I was always super interested in the
Speaker 4: outdoors and like insects and birds and all kinds of
Speaker 4: things like that was just always my jam, and so
Speaker 4: I knew when it came time to think about, Okay,
Speaker 4: what kind of degree do I want to get, I
Speaker 4: was like slam dunk, some kind of wildlife biology, environmental science,
Speaker 4: something like that. So I graduated in December of twenty
Speaker 4: one with a wildlife biology degree. Immediately went into a
Speaker 4: TA job for that program, which was just like a
Speaker 4: temporary thing. There's a I went to NC State. There's
Speaker 4: a mandatory summer program for all of the wildlife biology
Speaker 4: folks and it's all it's six weeks in the field.
Speaker 4: You go and do like hands on IDs and tagging
Speaker 4: and all kinds of stuff. It's super cool. So that
Speaker 4: was my first job out of undergrad was that TA job.
Speaker 4: And then I moved to Kansas and found my way
Speaker 4: into the wild life, the wildlife departments there, and that's
Speaker 4: when I got into the elk.
Speaker 3: The elk, and that's just like a salary job, full
Speaker 3: time salary job.
Speaker 4: This is hourly. Yeah, most most tech jobs are hourly,
Speaker 4: but you know it's it's like always just forty hours.
Speaker 4: You just put in forty hours a week.
Speaker 1: And that's what you're still doing now, yes, and then
Speaker 1: what happens next.
Speaker 4: Ideally, I would absolutely love to turn trapping somehow into
Speaker 4: a full time business of like trapping for handling tax
Speaker 4: ander me at least, like I've tried to dabble in
Speaker 4: like actual mounts and stuff. I still have a lot
Speaker 4: to learn there. But I had a dermisted colony. I
Speaker 4: just moved really recently, so I don't have it set
Speaker 4: up again yet. But I had a dermistic colony, and
Speaker 4: that was like a really good kind of side gig
Speaker 4: to run. Was skull cleaning, sure, and for my own
Speaker 4: skulls that I got from from tracking and everything. I
Speaker 4: sell sell all those so I would just you know,
Speaker 4: run them through the beetles and sell them. You don't
Speaker 4: have it now, no, I got to get it started
Speaker 4: back up again. I don't have like a great place
Speaker 4: to set up. You know, you know how they smell
Speaker 4: the dermistic colonies so like.
Speaker 1: Nothing, it's like nothing you've ever smelled. Yeah, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: probably like things little tricks you can do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you have like the right ventilation system, that's
Speaker 4: the biggest thing. Like you have to have it really
Speaker 4: well ventilated.
Speaker 1: They create their own kind of funk man.
Speaker 4: Yes, and god forbid you get flies in it somehow.
Speaker 4: The like the beetles don't smell that bad if you
Speaker 4: haven't ventilated, right, but if maggots get in there, I
Speaker 4: don't know what it is about a maggot that's they
Speaker 4: just smell so much worse.
Speaker 1: And uh, well they probably come in on people's bringing
Speaker 1: in mega that's yeah.
Speaker 4: That's the problem. And like you can't really kill a mat,
Speaker 4: Like you can freeze the skulls like indefinitely, and it
Speaker 4: feels like the second you thought, the maggots still just
Speaker 4: pop out, like it just doesn't kill them. So yeah,
Speaker 4: you gotta be careful about like not leaving skulls out
Speaker 4: where they're gonna get flies on them. And uh and
Speaker 4: you got to be careful about the because I I did.
Speaker 4: I took in I took in a skull at some
Speaker 4: point that had been left out where it got maggots
Speaker 4: in it, and it just destroyed the colony. I mean,
Speaker 4: you just got Yeah, you just got to ditch it
Speaker 4: and start it, start fresh.
Speaker 1: You have to kill all those thousands of lives.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Let's say I got a hypothetical for you.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're a media or trivia and the answer
Speaker 1: to the question is domestic mm hmmkay, and and someone
Speaker 1: and you're the judge, and someone writes, would you give
Speaker 1: it to him?
Speaker 4: They'remifted? I probably would.
Speaker 2: Judge.
Speaker 3: Then I got to revisit, like what else?
Speaker 4: What else could you be going for?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 1: The exactly my point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And.
Speaker 3: I did not get it.
Speaker 4: You're asking for a friend. I did not get Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's I called bullshit on that one, that you're changing
Speaker 4: your answer. No, no, no, no, no, I call I'm
Speaker 4: not giving.
Speaker 6: It to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So get me to how'd you get into trapping?
Speaker 1: So because there's not a lot of young trappers. No,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of female trappers.
Speaker 4: Yes, and not a lot of first generation trappers.
Speaker 1: I remember it was startling statistic from Michigan. I never
Speaker 1: looked to see if it's true, but the guy that
Speaker 1: told me would know. He's like, here's telling me that this.
Speaker 1: This is some years ago. He said that every year,
Speaker 1: the average age of a trapper in Michigan goes up
Speaker 1: a year.
Speaker 3: Like the more you think about that, dude, it's like stunning.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I I just like ever really hit a
Speaker 4: limit with what I want to do in the outdoors.
Speaker 4: Like I've taught myself pretty much everything. I'm kind of
Speaker 4: in the same boat as lake where. You know, my
Speaker 4: dad was like a casual deer hunter and but really
Speaker 4: into fishing, and my mom as well. So I grew
Speaker 4: up fishing a ton and I was just obsessed with it.
Speaker 4: And my dad would go out, you know, a couple
Speaker 4: of times, a couple of times a season, go walk around.
Speaker 4: He literally would just go for a hike with a
Speaker 4: gun and just hope he bumped into something. Yeahah, so
Speaker 4: he didn't even he didn't get his first his first
Speaker 4: deer until I was I want to say, I was
Speaker 4: like six or something, and my mom like wouldn't let
Speaker 4: me go anywhere. She's like, don't look, don't look. I
Speaker 4: don't want it, like keep the meat away, like, don't
Speaker 4: I don't want her seeing this? Yeah, she she herself
Speaker 4: was kind of like I don't like this. But yeah,
Speaker 4: the more the more and more I got into fishing,
Speaker 4: the more I was like I just wanted something else.
Speaker 4: And the natural next step was like, oh, you know
Speaker 4: what about hunting, And my dad's like, I don't know,
Speaker 4: kind of staying with you in the turkey hunting Like,
Speaker 4: my Dad's like, I don't know what I'm doing. So
Speaker 4: he took me to an outfitter, got my first deer.
Speaker 4: He was like super nervous that I was going to
Speaker 4: be turned off when I shot my first year, that
Speaker 4: I was gonna have like an emotional breakdown or something.
Speaker 4: But I was so stoked. I shot two in my
Speaker 4: first my first hunt the last like afternoon, after sitting
Speaker 4: in like cold rain the whole time.
Speaker 3: Where did he take it to go on a guy
Speaker 3: to deer hunt?
Speaker 4: Northeastern North Carolina? Yeah, yeah, so this was so. I
Speaker 4: was actually born in New Jersey, lived there until I
Speaker 4: was six. So we hunted or we fished a lot
Speaker 4: up north, did a lot of fishing up in like
Speaker 4: upstate New York and stuff just worm and Bobbery moved
Speaker 4: down to North Carolina, and we could not get on
Speaker 4: fish to save our lives. Like we could not catch
Speaker 4: a thing, like.
Speaker 1: Your old tricks weren't working.
Speaker 4: No, I mean there was no trick like up north.
Speaker 4: I mean we would just take any kind of live
Speaker 4: bait and chuck it in there and you'd catch like
Speaker 4: a nice smolly or yellow perch or something like. There
Speaker 4: was just nothing to it. And yeah, I get down
Speaker 4: to North Carolina, it's this like muddy ass water or
Speaker 4: like sitting there with like minnows and stuff, We're like,
Speaker 4: why can't we catch anything? And everybody was kind of
Speaker 4: giving up, Like my parents were like not interested anymore.
Speaker 4: My Dad's like I think I'm gonna sell the boat.
Speaker 4: And I was like, this can't happen, Like I just
Speaker 4: love it so much. And so I was like I
Speaker 4: gotta figure this out. And that's when I got into
Speaker 4: bass fishing because I was I was like researching on
Speaker 4: what kind of fishing is good around here and largemouth bass.
Speaker 4: So then I started learning how to fish artificial, learned
Speaker 4: how to use a bait caster, and ended up getting
Speaker 4: really into that, and then that was what led me
Speaker 4: into like when I got super into bass fishing, I
Speaker 4: was like, there's got to be something I can do,
Speaker 4: you know, in the in the winter, when like bass
Speaker 4: fishing is not like super fun And someone might be
Speaker 4: making a face at that because there are a lot
Speaker 4: of people that fish baths in the winter out there
Speaker 4: and things.
Speaker 9: But.
Speaker 4: For me, I was like, I love fishing, like the
Speaker 4: weed beds in the summer. That was my thing, and
Speaker 4: like I want something to do in the winter, fall
Speaker 4: and winter. So it just seemed like if I like
Speaker 4: fishing so much, I probably will like hunting. And so
Speaker 4: got into hunting. And then when I kind of got
Speaker 4: got my feet under myself with hunting, then I started
Speaker 4: to find myself being like, okay, but what about what
Speaker 4: about like after deer season and before Turkey season, Yes exactly,
Speaker 4: I was. I'm sitting there like, you know, I can
Speaker 4: go shed hunting or just hike around, like it's just
Speaker 4: not really scratching that itch for me. And I actually
Speaker 4: watched the beaver trapping episode, the Wyoming beaver trapping episode,
Speaker 4: and I was like, hmmm, yeah, yeah, I was like
Speaker 4: I wonder and this this creek bottom that I had
Speaker 4: been hunting on public for for deer for several years
Speaker 4: is beautiful swamp bottom full of beavers, and I was like,
Speaker 4: that seems like a very easy, like first step is
Speaker 4: like just trying to snare a beaver in that creek.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I know it like the back of my hand,
Speaker 4: Like I can get in and get out pretty easily.
Speaker 4: Snares are like a super straightforward thing to use. They
Speaker 4: were legal there only for beaver. But yeah, So I
Speaker 4: went in beginning of January and this was in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty one. I went in, made all my sets, two
Speaker 4: nights later, got my first beaver with a snare with
Speaker 4: a snare, and it was it was just like it
Speaker 4: just clicked. I was like, this is it, Like this
Speaker 4: is the thing. It just felt so natural and so
Speaker 4: like it was like it was like a kind of
Speaker 4: a puzzle that hunting doesn't really give you, and it
Speaker 4: was like exactly what I'd been craving. So I went
Speaker 4: so hard that season I think I ended up getting
Speaker 4: eleven beavers out of that little creek. Autumn, I got
Speaker 4: a couple of otter, which is awesome, and snares no,
Speaker 4: so you're not allowed to use snares for us there.
Speaker 4: I started using three thirties after I got kind of
Speaker 4: confident with uh, because at first, when I was looking
Speaker 4: at a three thirty, I was like, oh, that's terrifying.
Speaker 1: Like my arms going off.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So once I got a little more comfortable, I
Speaker 4: got some three thirties and I put those out, and
Speaker 4: so I got a couple of otter and then kind
Speaker 4: of towards the end of the season, I started trying
Speaker 4: raccoon too, because there's so many raccoons. Any creek bonds full,
Speaker 4: I put it. I just skinned them out. I actually
Speaker 4: have all of thet I've only gotten three otters because
Speaker 4: you know that place was stacked with them. Kansas is not.
Speaker 4: So I wasn't in North Carolina very long before I
Speaker 4: moved to Kansas, and I only got three. And I
Speaker 4: just love otters so much. I'm like I couldn't let
Speaker 4: go of them. So I have all three of those
Speaker 4: pelts up on my wall. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And now you got then you got in like pretty
Speaker 1: sophisticated like bobcats and stuff. Yes, like top tier, top
Speaker 1: tier trap.
Speaker 4: Yes, which is amazing. That was like super expected to me.
Speaker 4: I mean I knew everyone always says like, if you
Speaker 4: can catch a coyote, you can catch a cat. Like,
Speaker 4: cats are just so much more confident and so much
Speaker 4: more predictable really.
Speaker 3: And so much more not as many of them running around.
Speaker 4: Well yeah that is. Yeah, So like I'm always getting
Speaker 4: more numbers of coyotes than cats, like if I'm running
Speaker 4: a pretty even line, but like if I find a
Speaker 4: cat track, it's like I'm gonna get that cat. Hmmm,
Speaker 4: Like you can. You can just be so much more
Speaker 4: confident if you like, if you have the right.
Speaker 1: Within how many knights you find a cat track in Kansas,
Speaker 1: within how many nights, he's gonna you're gonna have them.
Speaker 4: That's tough, I would say within a week, because they
Speaker 4: do kind of run. They usually run kind of a
Speaker 4: loop within their territory. Same with coyotes. So like if
Speaker 4: I see like super fresh sign, I'm like, okay, maybe
Speaker 4: I'm like a little bit behind here, and it's gonna
Speaker 4: take you know, four or five nights before that cat
Speaker 4: comes back around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he's gonna come and walk in that spot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's gonna come right back through there, and he
Speaker 4: is going to clue in on any kind of new
Speaker 4: smell anything in there. And yeah, and like you can
Speaker 4: put out cats are one of the few things that
Speaker 4: you can like just drop a cage right there and
Speaker 4: they're just like looks good to me and just walk
Speaker 4: right in. And a lot of times, like even when
Speaker 4: the cage closes on them, they're like, oh well, and
Speaker 4: they'll just eat the rest of the baby and they'll
Speaker 4: just lay down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, were you selling your bodcast this year? So on
Speaker 1: the open market or do you everything you sell your
Speaker 1: you sell yourself to your own customes.
Speaker 8: No.
Speaker 4: So if I get like a really really nice cat,
Speaker 4: I prefer to sell them frozen hole to taxidermy trade.
Speaker 1: And they care about whether it's nice, yes.
Speaker 4: They well, they care about the spotting. That's really the
Speaker 4: big thing. So it's not it's not really the length
Speaker 4: of the fur when you're selling to taxidermy market. It's
Speaker 4: the the pattern and the coloration they want.
Speaker 1: They want nice, not just the belly, but the body.
Speaker 4: The body. Yeah, like you can have a super plain belly,
Speaker 4: but if it's got like awesome spots and like the
Speaker 4: rosettes and stuff down its sides and its back, like,
Speaker 4: that's because they want something that's going to be They're
Speaker 4: usually buying these to make competition mounts, and so they
Speaker 4: want something that's like really striking, like super eye catching. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and even like kittens a lot of times, like kittens
Speaker 4: are are really hot on the market. What yeah, if
Speaker 4: like they'll they'll sell so fast and you can get
Speaker 4: a decent chunk of change for them, because it's like
Speaker 4: a if you can get a kitten mount like really
Speaker 4: really nice, super realistic, it's so good in a competition.
Speaker 1: You know, when I was growing up, the worst thing
Speaker 1: you could do to an odd is touch it with
Speaker 1: a knife.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the taxi ermy trade was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hot form.
Speaker 4: Yeah it still is.
Speaker 3: And it'd be like yeah, it'd be way more money.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't even it was just it was a
Speaker 1: completely separate deal. Yeah, did you have that, Like, did
Speaker 1: you sell stuff seth to text?
Speaker 8: I never did know, but I knew people who did. Like,
Speaker 8: every once in a while, someone would catch like a
Speaker 8: black coyote or a black red fox. Yep, those typically
Speaker 8: went to uh taxa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny you put all that work into Like
Speaker 1: you can put all that work into a nod or yep,
Speaker 1: flash it, stretch it, yeah, twenty five docks around, freeze
Speaker 1: it and bring it to a tax service. Hundred bucks yep.
Speaker 1: And that's without calling around. That's just like they don't
Speaker 1: even know. I never got.
Speaker 3: With the Internet, you could probably getret targeted.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Facebook, there's there's really yeah, there's all kinds of
Speaker 4: trapper to tax terms. You can start like a bidding
Speaker 4: war for like if you get something really awesome and
Speaker 4: you put it in one of these like trapper to
Speaker 4: taxidermist Facebook groups. Oh really, Like yeah, you could start
Speaker 4: a bidding war on some of that stuff.
Speaker 1: So do you sell anything into the trade, like into
Speaker 1: the normal market trade?
Speaker 4: No, I don't.
Speaker 1: I've never the market.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I I do my own thing. I get everything
Speaker 4: dried sent off to the tannery and I sell it
Speaker 4: at my Etsy store.
Speaker 3: Well tannery to use Sleepy Creek in Iowa.
Speaker 4: They're they're kind of kind of new, but they do
Speaker 4: a fantastic job and really good pricing.
Speaker 1: Do you ever use oil min containner?
Speaker 4: I haven't. I went right to Sleeping Creek because they
Speaker 4: have very very competitive pricing and I like that good.
Speaker 4: I'm in it for the profit margins.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So everything you catch, you you sell Wallhanngers skulls ye.
Speaker 1: And you have enough of an outlet where you never
Speaker 1: get excess that you got to go dump into the market.
Speaker 4: Nope, no, yeah, because I'm I'm trapping all on public.
Speaker 4: I'm doing it in my very limited free time outside
Speaker 4: of work, so I can only run like a dozen
Speaker 4: sets at a time.
Speaker 1: That's still fun as hell.
Speaker 4: So much fun, Yeah, so much fun. And yeah, so
Speaker 4: every catch to me is like it's a big deal
Speaker 4: and I don't I don't usually get into If I
Speaker 4: get into double digits on any one species, that's like
Speaker 4: a really solid year. So it's nothing I can't handle myself.
Speaker 1: So even right now, like the way cat prices got
Speaker 1: kind of crazy this year, and some people think that
Speaker 1: they over I don't know why. For some weird ass reason,
Speaker 1: I follow fur markets very closely. I'm never understanding.
Speaker 3: It's a hobby.
Speaker 4: It's like the stock market.
Speaker 1: Well, no, I can see there's like a relevance argument
Speaker 1: to the stock market, but for me to follow fair prices,
Speaker 1: it's just like it makes zero sense. I'm just into it.
Speaker 3: Anyways, there's suspicion that people overbought.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get like overpaid cats, but cats got crazy,
Speaker 1: so but even then you can still do better. I
Speaker 1: don't want you to give all your trade secrets you
Speaker 1: can even with crazy cat prices, you can still do
Speaker 1: better not selling in the cat market, I.
Speaker 4: Would say if you're not in one of like the
Speaker 4: high desert kind of states where they have like that
Speaker 4: crazy long for big white belly nice spots like Kansas
Speaker 4: cats were like a little too.
Speaker 1: Far east, like a middle tier cat.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but amazing spots on a lot of them. Like
Speaker 4: whenever someone says, oh, the cats here aren't spotted like that,
Speaker 4: that's not that that's bullshit, because they're they're out there.
Speaker 4: Like it might be different percentages of ones that are
Speaker 4: super spotted, but like everywhere has spotted cats in there.
Speaker 4: And part of the reason why I know that for
Speaker 4: certain is running this statewide camera survey. The number of
Speaker 4: just like unbelievably spotted cats that I'm seeing on these cameras,
Speaker 4: Like it's a pretty even mix of like the really
Speaker 4: like sandy kind of plain ones and super spotted ones.
Speaker 4: And like almost everyone I talk to, like when I
Speaker 4: catch a super spotted cat, they're like, oh, man, that's
Speaker 4: crazy for around here, like we don't get them like that,
Speaker 4: And I'm like, they're there, m yeah, they're there.
Speaker 1: Irritated man. Yeah, when I get buried in Twin Lakes Cemetery.
Speaker 1: My grave is gonna say he should have been a cat.
Speaker 4: It's not too late. They're they're straight forward. If you
Speaker 4: can find, you got I've gotten a couple.
Speaker 1: But I mean, like really just doing it all the time,
Speaker 1: all day.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, Oh god, I am pretty jealous of like
Speaker 4: the high desert trappers that are just like it hits
Speaker 4: that certain day of the season and they get up
Speaker 4: in the mountains and they don't come down for like
Speaker 4: a month, month and a half ye with like a
Speaker 4: whole truckloaded just beautiful like eight hundred dollars cats.
Speaker 1: But yeah, for me, like, you've got some nice looking cats,
Speaker 1: I know, old traffic caates.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, I've been. I feel very fortunate to
Speaker 4: have gotten the ones that I have. They're beautiful, But
Speaker 4: those are those are taxidermy market cats. Those are not
Speaker 4: fur market cats. I don't think I've gotten. I haven't
Speaker 4: gotten one yet that I was like, Oh that would
Speaker 4: do really want the fur market? They just don't have
Speaker 4: the belly for it.
Speaker 1: So tell people to where how do they go find
Speaker 1: your market?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'm on Etsy. Little Shop of Firs is
Speaker 4: my shop name.
Speaker 1: So cute old trafficates little shop of firs. There you go,
Speaker 1: and you got so you got nothing like no sown.
Speaker 4: Goods I do. Sometimes I I've just kind of fallen
Speaker 4: behind in that since I started the Turkey project. It's
Speaker 4: a lot to keep up with, so I haven't done
Speaker 4: quite as much like pillow making and stuff. But I
Speaker 4: do have many unfinished pillows that once this survey season,
Speaker 4: once the summer season kind of dies down a little bit,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna get Yeah, and once my furs come back
Speaker 4: from this season, because I have a big, a big
Speaker 4: shipment that needs to go out. I have two more
Speaker 4: beaver pelts to flesh, and I want to send it
Speaker 4: out all in one shot.
Speaker 1: So I'm waiting, Wait, You're going to do some more
Speaker 1: beaver pillows and stuff for sure?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I got. I'm I'm torn because I do
Speaker 4: want to make myself a blanket, and so I don't.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure how many beavers I want to get
Speaker 4: bea blankets I have. I haven't seen. I've seen pictures,
Speaker 4: but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: My most favorite thing I think, Yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Yeah. My wife is like largely indifferent. I mean, when
Speaker 1: I'm going on hunt, she doesn't know where I'm at
Speaker 1: or what I'm hunting. Four kind of things, you know,
Speaker 1: largely indifferent. But the beaver blanket that she's like, that
Speaker 1: is badass. Yeah yeah, like all the things anything I've
Speaker 1: ever brought home. And I just got her a full
Speaker 1: mus muskrat bomber jacket, which she I got her at
Speaker 1: the end of the season. But she likes it. But
Speaker 1: like the beaver.
Speaker 3: Blanket, she's like like like work of.
Speaker 1: Art, you know, loves it.
Speaker 4: Just amazing.
Speaker 1: The only I never have to because otherwise she'll take
Speaker 1: a lot of times she'll take my stuff like put it.
Speaker 3: Somewhere, yeah, scroll it away, but she just squares.
Speaker 1: The beaver blanket out and leaves it out. It was
Speaker 1: it was good. It was a good call. You know.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful.
Speaker 3: How many we put because we did.
Speaker 1: Me and Seth had fifty beavers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh wow.
Speaker 7: Is that one year?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It was during COVID man we were
Speaker 1: it might have been like a fall and it might
Speaker 1: have been like I wish the pandemic was.
Speaker 4: Two years of like hunkering down. Yeah, So I was
Speaker 4: still in I was still in school at the time,
Speaker 4: and all the classes went online and I'm like, I
Speaker 4: cannot sit in front of my dude, I would I
Speaker 4: would take my phone because I'm like, I have to
Speaker 4: just like be in the zoom, Like I can't just
Speaker 4: be not there all the time. But i would put
Speaker 4: it on on zoom on my phone and tuck my
Speaker 4: phone into my waiters and I'd just be out there
Speaker 4: beaver trapping the whole time on my lectures going, and
Speaker 4: they'd like kick us into like little groups to do
Speaker 4: some kind of a some kind of like like side assignment.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, hey, guys, I'm a little indisposed right now.
Speaker 4: You're gonna have to do this by yourselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all the all the all the bad parts, notwithstanding,
Speaker 1: there were aspects of it of like a lot of
Speaker 1: camp and a lot of beaver trapping. Yeah, anyways, we
Speaker 1: had fifty and we like kept some Primo, we kept
Speaker 1: some Premiere ones had those two blankets made it still
Speaker 1: a lot left over and those are big now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know how many went into one.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 9: I want to say, my question is beaver amount I
Speaker 9: could take.
Speaker 4: You on this one blanket obviously. Do you guys have
Speaker 4: like throw blankets or is it like the full blank.
Speaker 1: No, no, No, they're like there's six feet by six by
Speaker 1: five maybe I don't know, pig, yeah, six by six.
Speaker 2: And they're like strip it's like strips.
Speaker 1: He let them all out. You know what that means.
Speaker 1: When you let them out. You caught him. You cut
Speaker 1: him so that one beaver makes a big long piece, gotcha.
Speaker 1: And then there's like there's literally miles there's miles of thread. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that wow, because you have less scenes. No, it's like you, he'd.
Speaker 3: Explained it on the phone.
Speaker 1: I didn't.
Speaker 3: I was doing one of those things that trying not
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like you like a spiral. Do you spiral it?
Speaker 2: Microphone?
Speaker 5: Do you spiral it?
Speaker 1: He told me, And I did the thing I don't
Speaker 1: like to do where I acted like I understood, not
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 3: You've been doing so well, and I was like, uh huh.
Speaker 1: In my mind, I'm like I can't picture it.
Speaker 3: It's a common thing in furs.
Speaker 1: What it does is you gives you it's very labor intensive,
Speaker 1: but you.
Speaker 3: Take a wide.
Speaker 1: You take a wide fur and it makes it that
Speaker 1: you can then sew it together and it gives you
Speaker 1: a big long strip. You're making these like you're making
Speaker 1: like a type of panels, and the panels are very
Speaker 1: long and and homogeneous, so you wind up these long,
Speaker 1: homogeneous panels, so then you can line the furs out.
Speaker 1: And let's say they're not uniform like every animals. You know,
Speaker 1: they're all different, but you kind of let you arrange
Speaker 1: them where maybe there's like a reddish, you take your
Speaker 1: reddish one and the reddish around the edge and it
Speaker 1: has a gradual fade to a dark and then it'll
Speaker 1: gradually fade the other way if they I think, if
Speaker 1: they were all exactly the same, Like that's the thing
Speaker 1: with ranch mink. Why ranch meet became a thing is
Speaker 1: like every mink is huge and every mink's the same,
Speaker 1: and you don't have the.
Speaker 3: Variability to deal with.
Speaker 1: But it's a way to like make big, long panels
Speaker 1: that are homogeneously colored.
Speaker 5: But those individual panels are stitched quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, well he told me, and I'll say, who
Speaker 1: did it?
Speaker 3: He did a beautiful job. He's not looking for work.
Speaker 1: Don't even bother to call them, uh Clifford's critter creations.
Speaker 1: Don Clifford not looking for work. You have to beg them,
Speaker 1: call him, beg them if you want. He's doing man
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have said it. My next thing is I'm
Speaker 1: doing I'm doing. I'm doing a raccoon, full raccoon, and
Speaker 1: I'm doing so underrated. He wants eighteen Okay, he wants
Speaker 1: eighteen good ones?
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, oh that would be soy in Kansas. I'm
Speaker 4: sure it's well, how's anyway?
Speaker 1: The problem is the bottleneck is don sewing three miles
Speaker 1: of thread together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't have a machine. I do it all by hand.
Speaker 4: So the the concept of a blanket is intimidating, but
Speaker 4: I do really want to do it.
Speaker 1: You know what you should be buddies with? Are you
Speaker 1: buddies all with Heather Duville?
Speaker 4: No? So I've never actually interacted with her, but super interested,
Speaker 4: Like she's like right in my wheelhouse.
Speaker 1: She's working with like coastal Northern STU, different craters. But
Speaker 1: you guys should talk show.
Speaker 4: I'm looking at her power washing set up, like, oh please, I.
Speaker 1: Wish you guys should You guys should talk a little shop.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I don't think my neighbors would appreciate me blowing
Speaker 4: a bunch of a beaver fat out all.
Speaker 1: Over the well. She's gotten very sophisticated about so she's
Speaker 1: just so needle and thread. Yeah, got with the machines
Speaker 1: and like like has gotten sophisticated about the sow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I need to get I'm definitely I definitely
Speaker 4: would not describe myself as a sophisticated uh for handler.
Speaker 1: Sophisticated trapper.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I got to think about it. I'm like, man,
Speaker 4: this was only I only started it in twenty one,
Speaker 4: so I'm only four years in of like completely self taught,
Speaker 4: and there's there's so much to learn, so much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the most the most bottomless pitch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, arguably, yes, hard.
Speaker 2: There's constantly new new techniques coming out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and between like the actual like the tools. Yeah,
Speaker 4: between like the actual like trapping and then the fur
Speaker 4: handling and the tanning. And I tried to do tanning myself,
Speaker 4: and uh that took a little bit too much apparatus
Speaker 4: to get everything actually broken the way that it needed
Speaker 4: to be.
Speaker 1: You can't you can't scratch the surface.
Speaker 4: God no. So yeah, so I started sending to a tannery.
Speaker 1: So the little fur shops, little shop of furs on
Speaker 1: and it is quite dry.
Speaker 4: Right now, but low on product, low on product because
Speaker 4: I because I don't have my dermstids, and I am waiting.
Speaker 4: I sold out pretty much all the first from last
Speaker 4: season and I'm waiting on the next round to be
Speaker 4: back from the tannery. So I'm gonna get I'm gonna
Speaker 4: get to work when I settle down from this summer
Speaker 4: Turkey season.
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on, I'm going to do it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: And hope you when you get your first shot where
Speaker 1: you filled it empties back out again.
Speaker 4: Yes, I hope.
Speaker 1: So, Maggie, what are you working on that people are
Speaker 1: going to be most excited about?
Speaker 3: For journalism type stuff most excited about?
Speaker 6: I think mostly we're just trying to stay on top
Speaker 6: of all the crazy policy stuff that's happening. It seems like,
Speaker 6: you know, there's a there's a new executive order every
Speaker 6: other day.
Speaker 3: It's been possible to follow and well hard to follow.
Speaker 6: It's difficult, and you know, things are getting snuck into
Speaker 6: the budget bills like selling off public lands and Nevada
Speaker 6: and Utah and the Dark and Night. There's just shady
Speaker 6: shit going on right now, and we're doing our best
Speaker 6: to stay on top of it and to get it
Speaker 6: out to the audience. So everybody else can stay on
Speaker 6: top of it, call their representatives make a fuss, because
Speaker 6: that's pretty much the only way we're gonna keep our
Speaker 6: public land secure and our wildlife protected.
Speaker 7: And all that.
Speaker 6: So, you know, it might not be the most exciting
Speaker 6: stuff to read, but I think it's the most important stuff.
Speaker 1: Do you even put a lot of energy into that
Speaker 1: just trying to track it? Yeah, if people followed, like
Speaker 1: how dizzying it was to follow the tariff situation, just
Speaker 1: like how rapidly evolving and continues to be. Like if
Speaker 1: you imagine with with with the wildlife world, in the
Speaker 1: public lands world, it's been as as chaotic as hard
Speaker 1: to follow, and pats really rapidly changing environment.
Speaker 6: Patri Can just wrote an article about how tariffs are
Speaker 6: impacting hunters and anglers, because you know, it's it's impacting
Speaker 6: every everyone in every which way.
Speaker 7: But yeah, it's to the point you made.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's happening so fast, and it's there's so
Speaker 6: much happening all at once, Like there's these water monitoring
Speaker 6: stations from the USGS that now have to be shut
Speaker 6: down this summer all across the country. The USGS doesn't
Speaker 6: totally understand, like what's going on with that, how that's
Speaker 6: going to like affect smaller you know, water monitoring stations
Speaker 6: on individual rivers.
Speaker 7: It's just there are so.
Speaker 6: Many changes that are happening without too much public comment,
Speaker 6: too much you know, is this a good idea? They're
Speaker 6: just being written in and we're going from there. So
Speaker 6: trying to stay informed is really important right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is one of the.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've liked least is the
Speaker 1: sense that a lot of the management decisions aren't coming
Speaker 1: from the agency heads and the people that are familiar
Speaker 1: with the policy, and so it has a some of
Speaker 1: it winds up having a kind of ham handed machete
Speaker 1: like quality to it. That and that's why you see
Speaker 1: things get.
Speaker 7: Reversed, like the federal firings.
Speaker 6: That's what happened too high up. There was no good
Speaker 6: reason all those people should have been fired.
Speaker 1: So and then there's people that are like, dude, if
Speaker 1: you made it easier for me to get rid of people,
Speaker 1: I got a big list of people get rid of,
Speaker 1: but my hands are tied and like, talk to me
Speaker 1: about cuts.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's just at the local.
Speaker 1: Level because I know, like I know what, I know
Speaker 1: where the problems are and you're not hitting the problem right.
Speaker 1: That's been frustrating.
Speaker 6: And that's happening, you know with Jordan wrote an article
Speaker 6: about this. I think it was Jordan, but the the
Speaker 6: zero based budd for Environmental Policy. It's it's looking at
Speaker 6: all of these things like the Migratory Bird Act, the
Speaker 6: Clean Water Act, and it's going through that and saying
Speaker 6: that we need to look into everything that carries these
Speaker 6: acts out and they have to be you know, you
Speaker 6: can either keep them going for five years or.
Speaker 7: We have to like totally overhaul things.
Speaker 6: And it's like, I think it's asking to do too
Speaker 6: much at one time, like look at where there's issues,
Speaker 6: look at individual agencies, ask them to pinpoint where there
Speaker 6: are things that need to be fixed, not just say
Speaker 6: here's this whole list of everything. Let's swipe this down
Speaker 6: and start from zero. Because a lot of those acts
Speaker 6: were made for a reason.
Speaker 3: It's like what happened.
Speaker 1: Wow, Wow, hear.
Speaker 4: The end of that.
Speaker 5: A lot.
Speaker 1: It's like I don't want to be beat a dead horse.
Speaker 1: And it's not dead horse, it's a living horse. You
Speaker 1: might have a busted leg, like you if you look
Speaker 1: at how sort of like expertly, expertly executed things around
Speaker 1: the border were and how like quick and sort of
Speaker 1: like wow, how did that not happened a long time ago? Right?
Speaker 1: It's certain other certain other things that have happened with
Speaker 1: the administration has been like where it feels like expert,
Speaker 1: right and motivated, an expert. I just think a lot
Speaker 1: of things around the Land Management Agency just hasn't felt
Speaker 1: like it's coming from the most educated perspective and like
Speaker 1: really like I wish things were happening at a level
Speaker 1: where happening at a level where you had reform minded
Speaker 1: insiders that were doing things in a in a slower,
Speaker 1: more thought out yeah way, because I think there's good
Speaker 1: we're gonna do things, and then we're going to realize
Speaker 1: that we've made big costly mistakes, especially around a lot
Speaker 1: of fisheries management issues and art things where you're going
Speaker 1: to do a thing and then a couple of years
Speaker 1: are going to go by and you've made like a
Speaker 1: very expensive mistake. Yeah, and then and then need to
Speaker 1: throw money at it because you're because you're killing, because
Speaker 1: you're killing in industries, costing jobs.
Speaker 7: Mhmay on it, working on it.
Speaker 4: I've been getting articles to get sent.
Speaker 7: Into me while I'm sitting here.
Speaker 4: I actually I got some.
Speaker 6: You know, we were talking about the turkey and the
Speaker 6: graveyard earlier. I just had a writer send me one in.
Speaker 6: This guy got pulled over, had a live turkey in
Speaker 6: the back of his car.
Speaker 4: It was wounded.
Speaker 6: He shot it, but he was driving around with the
Speaker 6: live turkey in the trunk of his car.
Speaker 4: Did he know what I talked about this, Yes, a person,
Speaker 4: because I've seen before where like a deer got hit
Speaker 4: by a car and they loaded it up and it
Speaker 4: was just like knocked out and then it stands up
Speaker 4: in the bed.
Speaker 6: No, because this guy got pulled over like the next day.
Speaker 7: I think I was just quickly reading this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he kept he had a turkey and a squirrel
Speaker 6: in the back and then.
Speaker 7: Spread From from my understanding.
Speaker 6: The squirrel looks pretty dead in the picture turkey. You
Speaker 6: can tell the turkey's live. It's looking at you. And
Speaker 6: then so he gets a ticket and then he gets
Speaker 6: pulled over like the next day or something, driving a
Speaker 6: different truck and he's got two dead turkeys.
Speaker 7: Still no license or nothing.
Speaker 4: That he shot with the twenty two.
Speaker 6: Which it's illegal to hunt turkeys with the twenty two.
Speaker 4: In his State.
Speaker 1: So the cemetery hunting cemetery I did.
Speaker 6: I was reading about the cemetery and it was right
Speaker 6: next to an old church.
Speaker 3: At the time.
Speaker 9: Giving out one of my best tips on here, true
Speaker 9: spot burning.
Speaker 3: I spot burning the whole.
Speaker 8: I recently came across the Instagram accounts this dude he like,
Speaker 8: I think he's a fishing guy and up in like
Speaker 8: washing or something, but he has a pet turkey.
Speaker 2: He takes in the boat with him.
Speaker 8: I saw a video he was Halbert fishing and like
Speaker 8: he pans over and his turkey's like in the boat gobbling,
Speaker 8: and it's like railing up a halbit.
Speaker 2: It was like the.
Speaker 1: If you go way back in our archive, we have
Speaker 1: an episode called The Bronze Back and the Whiffleball Bat,
Speaker 1: and it was an expert turkey caller named Guys Up
Speaker 1: and he grew up with a turkey and he would
Speaker 1: call that turkey in and then he'd wap it with
Speaker 1: a whiffleball bat to disincentivize it from coming in, and
Speaker 1: then he'd call it in and in because he was
Speaker 1: like he wanted it to be like getting tricked as bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, hard, Okay, he just alarmedspaper.
Speaker 1: He wanted it to be that like he wanted it
Speaker 1: to be not wanting to get do yes. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's how he learned.
Speaker 4: That was his version of the whole He explains the
Speaker 4: whole process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't know. In the old days, when
Speaker 1: your dog did something bad, you'd give it a little.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not trying to hurt it.
Speaker 3: But the dogs like, yees, I'm not.
Speaker 1: Gonna do that again.
Speaker 4: I spaced out.
Speaker 6: I thought you made like hunting the turkey with a
Speaker 6: whiffle bag.
Speaker 4: I was like, that's gonna take a lot. I can't
Speaker 4: even be mad about.
Speaker 1: He'd hide, call it in, and then scared the hell out,
Speaker 1: so that a while later when he called in the
Speaker 1: turkeys like like a hunted turkey, he's like, man, I
Speaker 1: don't want to I want to go over there. I
Speaker 1: mean his turkeys over there.
Speaker 3: What I don't want is.
Speaker 1: And that's how he became really good at calling turkeys
Speaker 1: because he kept fooling that Brown's back who was paranoid.
Speaker 9: So he wasn't trying to keep the turkey safe from
Speaker 9: other hunters. He was trying to make a challenge for him.
Speaker 1: Trying to make a challenge. He's trying to make it
Speaker 1: like if I went out, I could go out like
Speaker 1: you could probably if you had a handful of corn,
Speaker 1: and every time you called, you gave that turkey a
Speaker 1: handful of corn. He's gonna become real easy to call in.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But if you hit him with a bat, a
Speaker 1: love tap, with a whippleball bat, he's gonna geta.
Speaker 9: Like the same scenario of a turkey gets missed a
Speaker 9: couple of times in actuality, he's like not this time.
Speaker 1: It's like I'm not going over there man like that.
Speaker 1: Thanks everybody. Yeah, I appreciate everybody coming on.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me listen to Lake's podcasts podcast Yeah
Speaker 5: today because this episode will drop on June nine.
Speaker 4: He is going to be the missing link between biology
Speaker 4: and policy and human dimensions.
Speaker 1: I appreciate a.
Speaker 9: Little because you can go on and leave a little
Speaker 9: review hype Apple.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a T shirt
Speaker 3: All right, Thanks every boy,