1
00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:02,920
Speaker 1: Hey, they're aud Loots listeners. It is that time of

2
00:00:02,960 --> 00:00:06,160
Speaker 1: the year again. We are going to be doing a

3
00:00:06,320 --> 00:00:09,399
Speaker 1: call in show on the podcast. You can ask us

4
00:00:09,800 --> 00:00:12,719
Speaker 1: any of your burning questions.

5
00:00:12,320 --> 00:00:12,720
Speaker 2: That's right.

6
00:00:12,760 --> 00:00:16,120
Speaker 3: You want to ask us about finance, markets and economics,

7
00:00:16,520 --> 00:00:19,200
Speaker 3: go for it. You want to ask us about the

8
00:00:19,280 --> 00:00:22,360
Speaker 3: year in podcasting, go for it. You want to ask

9
00:00:22,440 --> 00:00:25,520
Speaker 3: about where Tracy is with growing chicken or.

10
00:00:25,600 --> 00:00:27,520
Speaker 4: Raising chicken, growing chickens.

11
00:00:27,480 --> 00:00:32,199
Speaker 3: Raising chickens on her versioning firm in Connecticut, go for it.

12
00:00:32,240 --> 00:00:33,720
Speaker 5: This is your chance to ask us anything.

13
00:00:33,960 --> 00:00:36,120
Speaker 1: Joe's favorite cut of steak, right.

14
00:00:36,080 --> 00:00:38,400
Speaker 3: My favorite cut of state, my favorite Chinese restaurant in

15
00:00:38,440 --> 00:00:39,080
Speaker 3: the East Village.

16
00:00:39,120 --> 00:00:40,480
Speaker 5: It's all fair game, all right.

17
00:00:40,880 --> 00:00:43,200
Speaker 1: All you have to do is send a voice memo

18
00:00:43,360 --> 00:00:46,960
Speaker 1: with your question, your name, your age, and your location

19
00:00:47,200 --> 00:00:50,320
Speaker 1: to odd Lots at Bloomberg dot net.

20
00:00:50,600 --> 00:00:53,720
Speaker 3: Deadline to submit is December seventeenth, so get the men

21
00:00:53,760 --> 00:00:54,480
Speaker 3: as soon as you can.

22
00:00:54,720 --> 00:00:57,400
Speaker 1: We're looking forward to hearing what you have to ask

23
00:00:57,520 --> 00:00:59,520
Speaker 1: and yeah, that's coming up.

24
00:01:02,360 --> 00:01:15,520
Speaker 6: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.

25
00:01:18,200 --> 00:01:21,200
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.

26
00:01:21,319 --> 00:01:22,679
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway.

27
00:01:22,400 --> 00:01:23,600
Speaker 5: And I'm Joe Wisenthal.

28
00:01:23,880 --> 00:01:26,800
Speaker 1: Joe, I have a pop quiz on American history for you.

29
00:01:27,080 --> 00:01:29,479
Speaker 5: Oh godady go on.

30
00:01:29,760 --> 00:01:32,000
Speaker 4: Who was Daniel Boone?

31
00:01:33,680 --> 00:01:35,920
Speaker 5: Did you have look at a hat that was cool?

32
00:01:36,319 --> 00:01:38,000
Speaker 3: He was like I just think it was like someone

33
00:01:38,560 --> 00:01:41,800
Speaker 3: raccoon hat, raccoon hat, and he was probably an outdoors

34
00:01:41,840 --> 00:01:43,959
Speaker 3: guy who probably didn't hang out in cities very much.

35
00:01:44,200 --> 00:01:46,399
Speaker 3: So that's what I think of, besides the hat and

36
00:01:46,480 --> 00:01:48,520
Speaker 3: imagining him out in the wilderness somewhere. I have no

37
00:01:48,880 --> 00:01:51,160
Speaker 3: I don't know what year he lived in anything beyond that.

38
00:01:51,200 --> 00:01:52,600
Speaker 3: Maybe eighteen hundreds, I don't know.

39
00:01:52,760 --> 00:01:55,880
Speaker 1: So the one fact that you know about Daniel Boone

40
00:01:55,960 --> 00:01:59,200
Speaker 1: is actually, I think contested whether or not he actually

41
00:01:59,240 --> 00:02:02,520
Speaker 1: wore the raccoon cap. But do you know what he

42
00:02:02,640 --> 00:02:04,760
Speaker 1: was doing when he was out doors?

43
00:02:06,040 --> 00:02:06,760
Speaker 4: He was hunting?

44
00:02:07,360 --> 00:02:10,880
Speaker 5: Okay, I guess I could guessed.

45
00:02:08,800 --> 00:02:12,960
Speaker 1: That he was something called a long hunter. Mean, he

46
00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:16,120
Speaker 1: went on really long expeditions to hunt. Do you know

47
00:02:16,160 --> 00:02:17,120
Speaker 1: what he was hunting?

48
00:02:17,720 --> 00:02:18,040
Speaker 2: Nope?

49
00:02:18,200 --> 00:02:22,600
Speaker 1: Raccoons, no, apparently not deer okay, white tailed deer.

50
00:02:23,120 --> 00:02:24,440
Speaker 4: And this is something that I think.

51
00:02:24,560 --> 00:02:27,680
Speaker 1: You know, everyone has heard the name Daniel Boom, but

52
00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:32,120
Speaker 1: almost no one can actually remember what he was doing.

53
00:02:32,760 --> 00:02:35,359
Speaker 1: And people also forget that you know, a lot of

54
00:02:35,400 --> 00:02:40,440
Speaker 1: American history is built not on manufacturing and farming necessarily,

55
00:02:40,800 --> 00:02:42,080
Speaker 1: but on hunting.

56
00:02:42,240 --> 00:02:43,920
Speaker 5: I don't have we ever done a hunting episode.

57
00:02:44,040 --> 00:02:46,400
Speaker 1: We have it, and I find I find this whole

58
00:02:47,000 --> 00:02:50,680
Speaker 1: part of US history so fascinating, and it actually really

59
00:02:50,800 --> 00:02:54,960
Speaker 1: is intertwined with even how we think about money. So

60
00:02:55,280 --> 00:02:57,760
Speaker 1: do you know where the term a buck came from?

61
00:02:57,960 --> 00:02:59,280
Speaker 1: Lend me a buck, give me a buck?

62
00:02:59,440 --> 00:03:02,640
Speaker 3: Well, now I imagine it's probably from a deer. Yeah,

63
00:03:02,680 --> 00:03:05,720
Speaker 3: But had it not been for this intro in the context,

64
00:03:05,720 --> 00:03:06,919
Speaker 3: I actually would have had no idea.

65
00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:07,160
Speaker 2: Yeah.

66
00:03:07,200 --> 00:03:10,160
Speaker 1: So hunting is actually embedded in the way we talk

67
00:03:10,400 --> 00:03:13,119
Speaker 1: about money. So that's what we're going to be talking about.

68
00:03:13,120 --> 00:03:15,600
Speaker 5: So I can't wait a whole new avenue for us.

69
00:03:15,680 --> 00:03:17,600
Speaker 1: And I have to say, just on a personal note,

70
00:03:17,600 --> 00:03:20,079
Speaker 1: something has happened to me recently, which is I have

71
00:03:20,200 --> 00:03:24,000
Speaker 1: completely flipped on deer. I used to like them. I

72
00:03:24,120 --> 00:03:26,280
Speaker 1: used to look out the window and be like, oh,

73
00:03:26,400 --> 00:03:30,960
Speaker 1: these graceful animals, aren't they beautiful? But as of a

74
00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:35,000
Speaker 1: week ago, they ate my entire newly planted garden and

75
00:03:35,040 --> 00:03:35,640
Speaker 1: I hate them.

76
00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:36,240
Speaker 2: Yeah.

77
00:03:36,280 --> 00:03:39,000
Speaker 3: I get the impression that a lot of people their

78
00:03:39,080 --> 00:03:42,840
Speaker 3: view of deer flips pretty quickly when they're actually living

79
00:03:42,920 --> 00:03:45,800
Speaker 3: in a location where they're prevalent, Like it's like, oh cute,

80
00:03:45,800 --> 00:03:48,240
Speaker 3: maybe you saw a movie about them or something like that.

81
00:03:48,360 --> 00:03:50,880
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, who's to hunt the deer? And then

82
00:03:50,920 --> 00:03:52,960
Speaker 3: you confront them and you're like, maybe we need a

83
00:03:52,960 --> 00:03:56,160
Speaker 3: little bit of a population management, so to speak.

84
00:03:56,400 --> 00:03:57,480
Speaker 5: That's a deer community.

85
00:03:57,800 --> 00:04:01,280
Speaker 1: So my solution to this problem I don't hunt personally.

86
00:04:01,360 --> 00:04:04,480
Speaker 1: The only thing I hunt is like leftover Thanksgiving pumpkins

87
00:04:04,560 --> 00:04:06,520
Speaker 1: on my property, which we target shoot.

88
00:04:06,800 --> 00:04:08,360
Speaker 5: But we have a.

89
00:04:08,320 --> 00:04:10,920
Speaker 1: Friend who loves to hunt. Yeah, and so he's going

90
00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:13,400
Speaker 1: to be on our property hunting deer. And if you

91
00:04:13,440 --> 00:04:16,760
Speaker 1: want some fresh venice I do, then let me know.

92
00:04:16,960 --> 00:04:18,640
Speaker 3: Have you arranged a deal with him where he can

93
00:04:18,920 --> 00:04:20,480
Speaker 3: keep as much as you want? Like you, does he

94
00:04:20,600 --> 00:04:22,400
Speaker 3: tie you twenty percent or whatever it is?

95
00:04:22,680 --> 00:04:25,200
Speaker 1: He pays us in meat, yeah, which is actually great

96
00:04:25,240 --> 00:04:27,719
Speaker 1: at the moment because beef prices are so insane.

97
00:04:27,800 --> 00:04:30,880
Speaker 5: You're so lucky you're coal meat.

98
00:04:31,360 --> 00:04:31,600
Speaker 2: Yeah.

99
00:04:31,640 --> 00:04:35,680
Speaker 1: Anyway, I'm blessed in natural resources, just like America. That's right,

100
00:04:35,800 --> 00:04:38,039
Speaker 1: all right, Well, I'm happy to say we have the

101
00:04:38,200 --> 00:04:41,039
Speaker 1: perfect guest to talk about all of this. Someone who

102
00:04:41,080 --> 00:04:42,839
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to be talking to.

103
00:04:42,960 --> 00:04:44,919
Speaker 4: Actually, we have Steven Ronella.

104
00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:48,280
Speaker 1: He is the author and founder of Meat Eater and

105
00:04:48,400 --> 00:04:52,400
Speaker 1: knows all about hunting and all about this particular aspect

106
00:04:52,520 --> 00:04:55,640
Speaker 1: of US economic history. So Steve, welcome to the show.

107
00:04:56,600 --> 00:04:58,919
Speaker 2: Hey, thank you for having me on. I'm dying to

108
00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:02,000
Speaker 2: jump in and off for clarifications and corrections on our

109
00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:02,840
Speaker 2: friend Daniel Boone.

110
00:05:04,200 --> 00:05:06,200
Speaker 5: Tell us everything I got wrong, and Dantro just go

111
00:05:06,279 --> 00:05:06,640
Speaker 5: for it.

112
00:05:07,360 --> 00:05:10,159
Speaker 2: Yeah. Boone did not like coonskin caps. That was a

113
00:05:10,200 --> 00:05:14,040
Speaker 2: thing that was added on later through Disney depictions. Boone

114
00:05:14,080 --> 00:05:18,200
Speaker 2: wore a wide brimmed hat made from beaver wool felt,

115
00:05:18,720 --> 00:05:22,000
Speaker 2: which is still the material of choice for high end

116
00:05:22,120 --> 00:05:26,120
Speaker 2: cowboy hats. Raccoons there was a commodity for a long

117
00:05:26,160 --> 00:05:30,159
Speaker 2: time in different tallos and greases. They used to hunt

118
00:05:30,279 --> 00:05:33,320
Speaker 2: raccoons and possums and actually render the oil from them.

119
00:05:33,800 --> 00:05:35,840
Speaker 2: Just as an example, I'm holding in my hand right

120
00:05:35,839 --> 00:05:38,960
Speaker 2: now at one court jar of rendered coon grease, which

121
00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:41,200
Speaker 2: I made for a buddy mine just as a present.

122
00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:45,000
Speaker 2: What do you do candles, Well, I've done any of it. Yeah, yeah,

123
00:05:45,040 --> 00:05:47,280
Speaker 2: you definitely make soap candles. You can cook with it.

124
00:05:47,600 --> 00:05:51,240
Speaker 2: In fact, when the English were first strategizing around establishing

125
00:05:51,279 --> 00:05:54,080
Speaker 2: their first colony in the New World, and they had

126
00:05:54,080 --> 00:05:56,240
Speaker 2: a sort of a list of ways that they might

127
00:05:56,360 --> 00:05:59,560
Speaker 2: monetize this colony. On that list was like animal oils,

128
00:06:00,080 --> 00:06:03,880
Speaker 2: animal greases. So yeah, Boone was in the deerskin trade,

129
00:06:04,279 --> 00:06:07,440
Speaker 2: but he also was in the bear grease trade and

130
00:06:07,480 --> 00:06:11,799
Speaker 2: the animal oil trade, as was Davy Crockett, who wore

131
00:06:11,920 --> 00:06:15,839
Speaker 2: the coonskin cap but was kind of mocked by his contemporaries.

132
00:06:16,160 --> 00:06:18,840
Speaker 2: But he was a showboat and he wore it to

133
00:06:19,360 --> 00:06:24,159
Speaker 2: create this atmosphere of this every man's backwoodsman, but it

134
00:06:24,240 --> 00:06:29,039
Speaker 2: wasn't regarded as a practical hat was drawn to himself.

135
00:06:29,040 --> 00:06:32,000
Speaker 2: He was a showboat. Crockett was a showboat. Boone was

136
00:06:32,160 --> 00:06:32,920
Speaker 2: a professional.

137
00:06:33,160 --> 00:06:36,039
Speaker 1: I love the idea of all these like manly pioneering

138
00:06:36,120 --> 00:06:38,440
Speaker 1: hunters critiquing each other's outfits.

139
00:06:39,160 --> 00:06:42,440
Speaker 3: I also liked the idea. I also liked the idea

140
00:06:42,520 --> 00:06:46,640
Speaker 3: of like, oh, when hunters get together, they argue about

141
00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:48,880
Speaker 3: are you a Daniel Boone man or Dami Krockman.

142
00:06:48,960 --> 00:06:51,640
Speaker 5: Oh, your guy was a total showboat. He was a fraud.

143
00:06:51,720 --> 00:06:53,000
Speaker 3: No one would have ever worn that had and the

144
00:06:53,040 --> 00:06:55,680
Speaker 3: other oh no, he did this yeah, yeah, all of these.

145
00:06:55,880 --> 00:06:57,599
Speaker 2: My dear friend whom I'm given that one of my

146
00:06:57,720 --> 00:07:00,400
Speaker 2: jars of koon grease too. He is a crocket man

147
00:07:00,480 --> 00:07:04,440
Speaker 2: and I'm a boon Man, and we fight about this

148
00:07:04,520 --> 00:07:06,840
Speaker 2: all time. I'm a boon The other thing is one

149
00:07:06,880 --> 00:07:09,680
Speaker 2: last comment, just to get caught up. Were you to

150
00:07:09,960 --> 00:07:13,760
Speaker 2: formalize the arrangement with your deer hunter, if you were

151
00:07:13,800 --> 00:07:17,880
Speaker 2: to formalize that arrangement where there was an expected quid

152
00:07:17,920 --> 00:07:20,880
Speaker 2: pro quo around deer meat for access, you would be

153
00:07:20,920 --> 00:07:22,880
Speaker 2: in violation of the law. You need to keep it

154
00:07:22,960 --> 00:07:27,960
Speaker 2: non formalized. Okay, you can gift him access, he can

155
00:07:28,040 --> 00:07:31,680
Speaker 2: gift you meet. But the minute you formalize that transaction,

156
00:07:31,800 --> 00:07:34,640
Speaker 2: you would be commodifying wild game meat, which is illegal

157
00:07:34,640 --> 00:07:35,160
Speaker 2: in this country.

158
00:07:35,720 --> 00:07:38,000
Speaker 5: Important, Tracy just admitted to a crime.

159
00:07:39,880 --> 00:07:41,320
Speaker 2: I've already reported.

160
00:07:40,880 --> 00:07:44,880
Speaker 1: Her specifically said, we don't have a formal agreement, we're

161
00:07:44,880 --> 00:07:46,000
Speaker 1: trading informally.

162
00:07:46,120 --> 00:07:48,040
Speaker 5: This is I've already learned so much on this.

163
00:07:48,360 --> 00:07:51,080
Speaker 3: I'm like, if we ended the episode right here, I

164
00:07:51,080 --> 00:07:53,560
Speaker 3: would have like learned so many more things that I

165
00:07:53,560 --> 00:07:54,920
Speaker 3: didn't know when I woke up this.

166
00:07:54,880 --> 00:07:56,760
Speaker 2: And you'd be looking for a new co host because

167
00:07:56,800 --> 00:07:57,679
Speaker 2: you locked.

168
00:07:57,680 --> 00:08:00,560
Speaker 5: To be literally imprisoned for accepting venison.

169
00:08:01,040 --> 00:08:03,840
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's not stop here, let's keep going.

170
00:08:04,080 --> 00:08:04,440
Speaker 4: Steve.

171
00:08:04,560 --> 00:08:08,960
Speaker 1: You know you mentioned that when England was colonizing the US,

172
00:08:09,200 --> 00:08:12,920
Speaker 1: one of the big draws was animal grease and animal products.

173
00:08:13,120 --> 00:08:15,119
Speaker 1: Talk to us a little bit more, because I think

174
00:08:15,200 --> 00:08:18,520
Speaker 1: when people think about the colonization of the New World,

175
00:08:18,960 --> 00:08:23,440
Speaker 1: a lot of people think about tobacco and farming and agriculture,

176
00:08:23,520 --> 00:08:26,560
Speaker 1: but hunting and animal products were actually a really big

177
00:08:26,600 --> 00:08:27,040
Speaker 1: part of it.

178
00:08:27,640 --> 00:08:31,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the early colonial period, one of our biggest

179
00:08:31,480 --> 00:08:34,560
Speaker 2: ports was, you know, coming out of Charleston, out of

180
00:08:34,559 --> 00:08:38,320
Speaker 2: South Carolina, so at a time in the late colonial period,

181
00:08:38,360 --> 00:08:42,680
Speaker 2: so prior to the Revolutionary War, deer skins in value

182
00:08:42,720 --> 00:08:46,600
Speaker 2: and economic value, white tailed deer skins were the second

183
00:08:46,720 --> 00:08:50,439
Speaker 2: largest commodity coming out of the out of the colonies,

184
00:08:51,120 --> 00:08:55,240
Speaker 2: the first one being rice. So the animal grease thing

185
00:08:55,880 --> 00:08:59,439
Speaker 2: was a thing, but it was dwarfed by the deer

186
00:08:59,440 --> 00:09:02,720
Speaker 2: skin trade. If you look at these old paintings you

187
00:09:02,760 --> 00:09:05,560
Speaker 2: see of like the King of England around the time

188
00:09:05,559 --> 00:09:08,120
Speaker 2: of the colonial period, you'll sometimes notice that they're wearing

189
00:09:08,160 --> 00:09:12,040
Speaker 2: a white breech or a white pant, a seeming white pant.

190
00:09:12,480 --> 00:09:15,760
Speaker 2: That's buckskin. Buckskin was used as workwear, but it was

191
00:09:15,840 --> 00:09:19,640
Speaker 2: also something that the affluent individuals wore, those white breeches,

192
00:09:19,679 --> 00:09:23,160
Speaker 2: those white buckskin pants. It was a preferred material for

193
00:09:23,280 --> 00:09:27,840
Speaker 2: clothing making. There's a historian Mac Ferriger, and he wrote

194
00:09:27,880 --> 00:09:30,520
Speaker 2: a piece about the early colonial period and he remarked

195
00:09:30,520 --> 00:09:35,160
Speaker 2: it like, among colonial Americans, so Euro American, Colonial Americans

196
00:09:35,200 --> 00:09:38,839
Speaker 2: and Native Americans alike, black bear meat was the food

197
00:09:38,880 --> 00:09:43,320
Speaker 2: of choice. Huh. Deer skin was the material of choice.

198
00:09:43,679 --> 00:09:46,480
Speaker 2: So they were hunting bears, that was the good stuff

199
00:09:46,520 --> 00:09:50,080
Speaker 2: to eat. Deer were what you made your clothes from.

200
00:09:50,160 --> 00:09:52,320
Speaker 1: I'm surprised about the bear meat.

201
00:09:52,760 --> 00:09:53,880
Speaker 4: Does bear taste good?

202
00:09:54,480 --> 00:09:58,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very beef like in texture. It's phenomenal. It's

203
00:09:58,840 --> 00:10:01,760
Speaker 2: one of those things that in some levels there's a

204
00:10:01,800 --> 00:10:05,199
Speaker 2: cultural taboo around it, as you'll see like Florida right

205
00:10:05,240 --> 00:10:09,280
Speaker 2: now is running a very controversial black bear hunt. People

206
00:10:09,280 --> 00:10:12,520
Speaker 2: get worked up about it. But yeah, it's an excellent food.

207
00:10:12,600 --> 00:10:14,920
Speaker 2: It was a very prized food at the time. Another

208
00:10:15,040 --> 00:10:18,040
Speaker 2: business that Daniel Boone was into was producing a product

209
00:10:18,040 --> 00:10:22,480
Speaker 2: called bear bacon, which was consumed domestically. Yes, smoked bacon.

210
00:10:22,880 --> 00:10:26,200
Speaker 2: It would be plausible that Ben Franklin. He could have

211
00:10:26,280 --> 00:10:29,680
Speaker 2: walked down to a market in Philadelphia and he would

212
00:10:29,720 --> 00:10:33,480
Speaker 2: have been able to purchase bear bacon or smoked black

213
00:10:33,520 --> 00:10:36,680
Speaker 2: bear hands. It was a very popular food item. Bear

214
00:10:36,720 --> 00:10:39,760
Speaker 2: can carry tricknosis. Most cases of trychnosis in the US

215
00:10:39,760 --> 00:10:43,040
Speaker 2: today do not come from hogs. It mostly comes from

216
00:10:43,080 --> 00:10:45,400
Speaker 2: black bear. You have to cook it. So for that reason,

217
00:10:45,440 --> 00:10:47,120
Speaker 2: a lot of people have an idea that it should

218
00:10:47,160 --> 00:10:50,839
Speaker 2: be avoided. But my family we prodigious amounts of it.

219
00:10:51,160 --> 00:10:54,360
Speaker 3: Wow, I want to Can I come by sometime and

220
00:10:54,800 --> 00:10:57,120
Speaker 3: have some bear bacon or bear steak or whatever?

221
00:10:57,320 --> 00:11:00,160
Speaker 2: Anytime, man, anytime I would knock on the door, I

222
00:11:00,200 --> 00:11:01,839
Speaker 2: will cook it. I will cook it for you and

223
00:11:01,880 --> 00:11:05,640
Speaker 2: I can fry you someone in bear grease. If you think.

224
00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:07,840
Speaker 3: Let's do a video series, let's go, let's go on

225
00:11:07,880 --> 00:11:10,240
Speaker 3: the road. I already have like a billion questions. Can

226
00:11:10,280 --> 00:11:13,319
Speaker 3: we just back up a second, like for the listeners,

227
00:11:13,320 --> 00:11:15,560
Speaker 3: Can you tell us your story a little bit?

228
00:11:15,600 --> 00:11:17,599
Speaker 5: Why are we talking to you? What's your background?

229
00:11:18,000 --> 00:11:20,520
Speaker 2: Oh? So yeah, I grew up in Michigan. I was

230
00:11:20,559 --> 00:11:24,240
Speaker 2: born into a hunting family. That was kind of our identity.

231
00:11:24,800 --> 00:11:27,000
Speaker 2: My father was a very avid hunter. He came home

232
00:11:27,000 --> 00:11:30,679
Speaker 2: from World War two and just hunted, and I was

233
00:11:30,720 --> 00:11:34,560
Speaker 2: brought up around it. I pursued a career first in trapping.

234
00:11:35,280 --> 00:11:37,000
Speaker 2: Throughout high school, I was convinced I was going to

235
00:11:37,040 --> 00:11:40,880
Speaker 2: be a fur trapper. I became interested in writing, went

236
00:11:40,920 --> 00:11:44,679
Speaker 2: to graduate school for writing starting in two thousand. When

237
00:11:44,720 --> 00:11:48,760
Speaker 2: I finished school, I became a professional long form magazine writer,

238
00:11:49,720 --> 00:11:52,080
Speaker 2: started doing books, and all my stuff has always been

239
00:11:52,120 --> 00:11:57,120
Speaker 2: in the outdoor space. Eventually got into television, started doing

240
00:11:57,120 --> 00:12:00,600
Speaker 2: a show called Meat Eater, and we turned me into

241
00:12:00,640 --> 00:12:04,000
Speaker 2: a full fledged business. We have a media arm where

242
00:12:04,040 --> 00:12:06,360
Speaker 2: I spend the bulk of my time, but we also

243
00:12:06,440 --> 00:12:08,760
Speaker 2: work and we have a lot of consumer products. We

244
00:12:08,800 --> 00:12:11,480
Speaker 2: have four outdoor gear companies which live under the Meat

245
00:12:11,480 --> 00:12:15,080
Speaker 2: Eater umbrella. And I've intended to make a living in

246
00:12:15,120 --> 00:12:18,760
Speaker 2: the outdoors when I was a kid, and I mostly

247
00:12:18,800 --> 00:12:21,360
Speaker 2: succeeded at that. I get spent a lot of time outdoors,

248
00:12:21,360 --> 00:12:23,240
Speaker 2: and I get spent a lot of time thinking about

249
00:12:24,040 --> 00:12:27,960
Speaker 2: issues of how hunting plays into contemporary American culture, and

250
00:12:28,000 --> 00:12:32,040
Speaker 2: how hunting shaped our country and shaped our national experience.

251
00:12:32,480 --> 00:12:35,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got to plug Steve's I think it's an

252
00:12:35,200 --> 00:12:38,880
Speaker 1: audible series on the history of hunting in the US.

253
00:12:38,920 --> 00:12:41,360
Speaker 1: Where there's a whole episode on Long Hunters that I've

254
00:12:41,360 --> 00:12:44,480
Speaker 1: been listening to. Also one on like Buffalo in the

255
00:12:44,520 --> 00:12:46,440
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. They're really good.

256
00:12:46,520 --> 00:12:48,959
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called Me Eater's American History and it's an

257
00:12:49,080 --> 00:12:52,680
Speaker 2: audio original through Random House Penguin. Yeah, and we've done

258
00:12:52,679 --> 00:12:56,120
Speaker 2: three so far on different commodity trades in American history,

259
00:12:56,160 --> 00:12:57,280
Speaker 2: all around wildlife.

260
00:12:57,720 --> 00:13:00,920
Speaker 1: So one thing that I did learn from the audible

261
00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:05,760
Speaker 1: series on Long Hunters is the American hunting system in

262
00:13:05,800 --> 00:13:09,520
Speaker 1: the sort of sixteen hundred seventeen hundreds, when colonials started

263
00:13:09,600 --> 00:13:13,560
Speaker 1: coming over to what would become the United States, was

264
00:13:13,720 --> 00:13:18,160
Speaker 1: very different to how hunting was done in Europe. Right.

265
00:13:18,280 --> 00:13:21,520
Speaker 1: In Europe, hunting was like the purview of landowners and

266
00:13:21,640 --> 00:13:24,320
Speaker 1: rich people. But in America, I guess there were no

267
00:13:24,520 --> 00:13:26,800
Speaker 1: rules and everyone could hunt animals.

268
00:13:27,520 --> 00:13:29,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, good way to think about it. I

269
00:13:29,720 --> 00:13:32,240
Speaker 2: often remind people to think back to certain details of

270
00:13:32,280 --> 00:13:36,280
Speaker 2: the Robin Hood story, where you have the king's deer, okay,

271
00:13:36,520 --> 00:13:38,720
Speaker 2: and part of Robin Hood's gig right is he'll go

272
00:13:38,800 --> 00:13:42,599
Speaker 2: hunt on the king's estate to get venison, which you

273
00:13:42,600 --> 00:13:44,640
Speaker 2: would then distribute to the poor. As part of the

274
00:13:44,720 --> 00:13:49,280
Speaker 2: robin Hood narrative. So yeah, in England and in Western Europe,

275
00:13:49,960 --> 00:13:54,480
Speaker 2: by that point things were heavily developed. Most the woods,

276
00:13:54,520 --> 00:13:58,680
Speaker 2: the wilderness was gone. Having access to wild landscapes was

277
00:13:58,720 --> 00:14:01,880
Speaker 2: something that was relegated on to the most wealthy. You

278
00:14:01,880 --> 00:14:04,440
Speaker 2: could be have your eyes gouged out, you could be

279
00:14:04,480 --> 00:14:10,080
Speaker 2: executed for hunting animals that belonged to the aristocracy. So

280
00:14:10,120 --> 00:14:13,520
Speaker 2: when American colonists started showing up, like Boone's family came

281
00:14:13,520 --> 00:14:18,720
Speaker 2: from England, they did not arrive here as hunters. They

282
00:14:18,760 --> 00:14:21,640
Speaker 2: did not arrive with a hunting background. They adopted it.

283
00:14:22,560 --> 00:14:26,240
Speaker 2: The colonists, like Boone's family, for instance, they were Quakers,

284
00:14:26,480 --> 00:14:31,280
Speaker 2: his people were. But the American colonists were as impacted

285
00:14:32,080 --> 00:14:36,640
Speaker 2: by Native Americans as Native Americans were impacted by American colonists.

286
00:14:37,080 --> 00:14:40,000
Speaker 2: You could see it in Boone's dress. He would plait

287
00:14:40,040 --> 00:14:42,120
Speaker 2: his hair, he would braid his hair, he would grease

288
00:14:42,160 --> 00:14:44,880
Speaker 2: his hair with bear grease. He would wear buckskin. He

289
00:14:44,920 --> 00:14:47,640
Speaker 2: would hunt the animals that Native Americans taught him to hunt.

290
00:14:47,680 --> 00:14:49,680
Speaker 2: He would cook them in that way. He would make

291
00:14:49,720 --> 00:14:53,120
Speaker 2: his clothes in that way. So they adopted hunting as

292
00:14:53,160 --> 00:14:55,280
Speaker 2: a way to make a living on the American landscape.

293
00:14:55,400 --> 00:14:59,240
Speaker 2: Some of them were farmers through and through. Some became

294
00:14:59,360 --> 00:15:03,280
Speaker 2: hunters through and through, and they were at odds. These

295
00:15:03,360 --> 00:15:06,520
Speaker 2: hunting people, these kind of wild men like Boone in

296
00:15:06,600 --> 00:15:10,160
Speaker 2: the colonial period would always be hovering at the western

297
00:15:10,240 --> 00:15:14,480
Speaker 2: edge of colonial expansion. England would try to rein in

298
00:15:14,520 --> 00:15:17,800
Speaker 2: these American colonists. They would feel that they were kind

299
00:15:17,800 --> 00:15:21,120
Speaker 2: of drifting too far out of colonial influence. And these

300
00:15:21,160 --> 00:15:24,160
Speaker 2: American colonists like Boone, who were hunting for a living,

301
00:15:24,600 --> 00:15:28,960
Speaker 2: would cause a lot of tension with Native Americans, and

302
00:15:29,040 --> 00:15:32,720
Speaker 2: so the colonial powers didn't like these guys living this

303
00:15:32,920 --> 00:15:37,280
Speaker 2: frontier wild existence because again they were drifting away from

304
00:15:37,360 --> 00:15:40,920
Speaker 2: the crown and they were causing animosity with Native Americans.

305
00:15:40,920 --> 00:15:45,200
Speaker 2: Would then blame the English for these incursions onto their landscape.

306
00:15:45,520 --> 00:15:47,760
Speaker 2: So it was like a rich kind of area of

307
00:15:48,320 --> 00:15:52,040
Speaker 2: adoption of a wilderness aesthetic while still trying to live,

308
00:15:52,480 --> 00:15:55,400
Speaker 2: you know, under colonial rule in Boone's early days.

309
00:16:11,240 --> 00:16:13,480
Speaker 5: Are you watching the new ken Burns documentary at all?

310
00:16:13,600 --> 00:16:16,440
Speaker 1: No, but everyone else's it seems like I'm started there.

311
00:16:16,680 --> 00:16:19,440
Speaker 3: I've watched the first episode so far, and it's just

312
00:16:19,520 --> 00:16:24,720
Speaker 3: interesting because obviously, you know, the version of independence that

313
00:16:24,760 --> 00:16:29,080
Speaker 3: we learned about in school, was just incredibly simplified. And

314
00:16:29,120 --> 00:16:31,400
Speaker 3: this idea that there really were all different kinds of

315
00:16:31,480 --> 00:16:35,240
Speaker 3: tensions between the colonists and the sort of norms and

316
00:16:35,240 --> 00:16:38,960
Speaker 3: the laws and the rules of the old country really striking.

317
00:16:39,240 --> 00:16:43,480
Speaker 3: I hadn't really appreciated this dimension before about the hunting,

318
00:16:43,520 --> 00:16:45,720
Speaker 3: but I think, you know, it really shows how I

319
00:16:45,720 --> 00:16:48,320
Speaker 3: guess from day one there was a certain I don't

320
00:16:48,320 --> 00:16:53,600
Speaker 3: know if egalitarian was a democratic element of colonial society.

321
00:16:54,000 --> 00:16:55,640
Speaker 5: That sounds very.

322
00:16:55,200 --> 00:16:57,960
Speaker 3: Distinctly different from where they were coming from.

323
00:16:58,360 --> 00:17:03,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's an interesting passage where Washington, George Washington, criticizes

324
00:17:04,480 --> 00:17:08,680
Speaker 2: folks like Boone. He criticizes these frontier individuals that are

325
00:17:08,680 --> 00:17:11,399
Speaker 2: living off the land out on the frontier and market hunting.

326
00:17:12,040 --> 00:17:14,879
Speaker 2: He criticizes them because he feels like a tip of

327
00:17:14,920 --> 00:17:20,560
Speaker 2: the hat would push them over to the Spanish or whoever,

328
00:17:21,080 --> 00:17:23,800
Speaker 2: whatever other colonial entity was out there. He did not

329
00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:27,280
Speaker 2: feel that they were adequately American. And then, as much

330
00:17:27,280 --> 00:17:29,600
Speaker 2: as Boone has been adopted, there's one one guy joke

331
00:17:29,680 --> 00:17:33,040
Speaker 2: that Boone has become an honorary founding father. As much

332
00:17:33,080 --> 00:17:36,560
Speaker 2: as Boone has been adopted as this American icon, Boone

333
00:17:36,560 --> 00:17:39,800
Speaker 2: in his contemporary so again, speaking of these long hunters,

334
00:17:39,800 --> 00:17:42,800
Speaker 2: these colonial white tailed deer skin hunters. They would not

335
00:17:42,880 --> 00:17:47,760
Speaker 2: have identified as American loosely, but they would identify it

336
00:17:47,760 --> 00:17:50,800
Speaker 2: in family clans. And they were not what you would

337
00:17:50,840 --> 00:17:53,520
Speaker 2: call if you look at around the revolutionary period, you

338
00:17:53,520 --> 00:17:56,960
Speaker 2: would not refer to these guys as patriots. They were

339
00:17:57,000 --> 00:18:03,359
Speaker 2: opportunists and they were mostly beholden two small villages made

340
00:18:03,400 --> 00:18:06,439
Speaker 2: up of people. They were related to these networks. That

341
00:18:06,640 --> 00:18:07,520
Speaker 2: was their allegiance.

342
00:18:08,040 --> 00:18:11,040
Speaker 1: Didn't Boone actually end up striking a deal with the

343
00:18:11,040 --> 00:18:13,640
Speaker 1: Spanish for land. That's one thing I learned from the series.

344
00:18:14,040 --> 00:18:16,240
Speaker 2: Yeah. Again, like the same way, like he's an honorary

345
00:18:16,280 --> 00:18:19,280
Speaker 2: filing father. Boone in some ways is the father of Kentucky.

346
00:18:19,320 --> 00:18:21,080
Speaker 2: He was not the first, but one of the first

347
00:18:21,200 --> 00:18:23,399
Speaker 2: people to go through this thing called the Cumberland Gap

348
00:18:23,440 --> 00:18:26,520
Speaker 2: and start hunting in what is now Kentucky. He got

349
00:18:26,520 --> 00:18:28,560
Speaker 2: fed up with the government there. He got fed up

350
00:18:28,560 --> 00:18:33,760
Speaker 2: with America. When Spain had the Louisiana territory, Spain was

351
00:18:33,800 --> 00:18:36,160
Speaker 2: trying to fill the place up. He struck a deal

352
00:18:36,800 --> 00:18:40,560
Speaker 2: with Boone and his people where they would become subjects

353
00:18:40,560 --> 00:18:45,320
Speaker 2: of the Spanish crown in exchange for money, and so

354
00:18:45,440 --> 00:18:47,920
Speaker 2: Boone moved out, and he moved west of the Missouri

355
00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:52,600
Speaker 2: River and became a Spanish subject. He swore that he

356
00:18:52,640 --> 00:18:56,919
Speaker 2: would never step foot back in Kentucky again when Boone died.

357
00:18:57,000 --> 00:19:00,560
Speaker 2: So Boone lived through the Louisiana purchase and became again

358
00:19:00,800 --> 00:19:03,440
Speaker 2: an American just through the fact that that America bought

359
00:19:03,440 --> 00:19:07,600
Speaker 2: the Louisiana purchase. He died and was buried in Missouri

360
00:19:07,680 --> 00:19:11,640
Speaker 2: and was later exhumed and brought back to Kentucky, even

361
00:19:11,640 --> 00:19:14,200
Speaker 2: though in his lifetime he said I'll never step foot

362
00:19:14,200 --> 00:19:17,560
Speaker 2: back there. So people like to say Missouri has his heart,

363
00:19:17,920 --> 00:19:22,520
Speaker 2: meaning his soft tissues, Kentucky has his bones. And there's

364
00:19:22,560 --> 00:19:25,320
Speaker 2: like this little ongoing dispute about whether or not they

365
00:19:25,359 --> 00:19:28,320
Speaker 2: really dug up the right guy and reburied him. But yeah,

366
00:19:28,400 --> 00:19:32,679
Speaker 2: Boone willfully left American rule to go live under a

367
00:19:32,680 --> 00:19:36,879
Speaker 2: different crown. He was married to the hunt, and he

368
00:19:37,000 --> 00:19:40,680
Speaker 2: was married to his family clan. That was how he identified.

369
00:19:40,840 --> 00:19:43,439
Speaker 3: It's super interesting. Tell me about a long hunt. What

370
00:19:43,480 --> 00:19:46,160
Speaker 3: are the logistics? So it's difficult. What are the logistics

371
00:19:46,160 --> 00:19:46,840
Speaker 3: of a long hunt?

372
00:19:47,040 --> 00:19:50,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, the logistics of a long hunt. It was very decentralized,

373
00:19:50,560 --> 00:19:52,240
Speaker 2: unlike if we have time and we get into the

374
00:19:52,240 --> 00:19:57,560
Speaker 2: beaverskin trade. Of these American icons like Jim Bridger, Jed Smith,

375
00:19:57,680 --> 00:19:59,840
Speaker 2: John Colder, these guys that were engaged in the Rocky

376
00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:03,679
Speaker 2: out In beaver trade, which was very formalized, very top down.

377
00:20:04,080 --> 00:20:07,080
Speaker 2: The long hunter area, so this colonial deer skin hunting

378
00:20:07,119 --> 00:20:10,960
Speaker 2: area was very decentralized. A group of long hunters were

379
00:20:11,080 --> 00:20:16,280
Speaker 2: probably mostly family networks, so it'd be maybe a patriarch,

380
00:20:17,240 --> 00:20:23,199
Speaker 2: his kids, his sons in law, okay, his cousins, and

381
00:20:23,240 --> 00:20:26,080
Speaker 2: they would embark on these very long trips. They would

382
00:20:26,160 --> 00:20:30,760
Speaker 2: leave these frontier colonial establishments, let's say the Yadkin Valley

383
00:20:30,760 --> 00:20:33,199
Speaker 2: in North Carolina. A ton of long hunters came out

384
00:20:33,240 --> 00:20:36,360
Speaker 2: of the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina. They would travel

385
00:20:36,480 --> 00:20:40,960
Speaker 2: over the Appalachian Range and they would drop down into

386
00:20:41,440 --> 00:20:45,760
Speaker 2: Kentucky portions of Tennessee and they would hunt deer skins.

387
00:20:45,880 --> 00:20:49,879
Speaker 2: They might be gone six months. I think Boone's longest

388
00:20:49,960 --> 00:20:53,640
Speaker 2: long hunt was two years. It was all based off

389
00:20:53,720 --> 00:20:57,240
Speaker 2: pack trains, so everything was based off of using horses

390
00:20:57,280 --> 00:21:00,840
Speaker 2: to carry stuff, and they would build up a year's

391
00:21:00,880 --> 00:21:03,720
Speaker 2: worth of deer skins. In the winter, the deer skins

392
00:21:03,720 --> 00:21:06,280
Speaker 2: weren't as valuable, so they'd switch their efforts to beaver

393
00:21:06,359 --> 00:21:10,720
Speaker 2: and otter trapping. They would transport all those deer skins

394
00:21:10,760 --> 00:21:14,840
Speaker 2: back across the Apple Aachian divide and sell them a

395
00:21:14,880 --> 00:21:17,320
Speaker 2: good price. A way to think about it again is

396
00:21:17,359 --> 00:21:19,959
Speaker 2: they were worth about a dollar, which was a lot

397
00:21:20,040 --> 00:21:22,760
Speaker 2: of money back then, and some would go to tanneries

398
00:21:22,800 --> 00:21:26,360
Speaker 2: in Philadelphia, Boston and New York, but the bulk would

399
00:21:26,400 --> 00:21:30,719
Speaker 2: be shipped to tanneries in England to be turned into

400
00:21:31,640 --> 00:21:37,520
Speaker 2: leather for making breeches and gloves and other high end items.

401
00:21:37,680 --> 00:21:40,640
Speaker 2: And that was the economy and they had. These were

402
00:21:40,720 --> 00:21:44,280
Speaker 2: farming people, but this was their only access to cash.

403
00:21:44,880 --> 00:21:46,840
Speaker 2: Much of what they did was black market, to be

404
00:21:46,840 --> 00:21:49,520
Speaker 2: honest with you, in two ways. When they would cross

405
00:21:49,560 --> 00:21:51,600
Speaker 2: the Apple Achians to go hunt, they were doing it

406
00:21:51,640 --> 00:21:54,119
Speaker 2: against the wishes of the crown, which again did not

407
00:21:54,200 --> 00:21:58,439
Speaker 2: want to antagonize Native Americans because it caused warfare and trouble.

408
00:21:59,080 --> 00:22:02,240
Speaker 2: They were also doing it in violation of Native American

409
00:22:02,280 --> 00:22:05,000
Speaker 2: claims to the land. So when they would go into Kentucky,

410
00:22:05,040 --> 00:22:09,080
Speaker 2: they were hunting on say, Shawnee land, so they were

411
00:22:09,119 --> 00:22:12,640
Speaker 2: sort of doubly trespassing. But that's how they made their

412
00:22:12,640 --> 00:22:16,400
Speaker 2: living and it allowed them to live very isolated existences,

413
00:22:16,440 --> 00:22:18,440
Speaker 2: and it gave them a cash economy so they could

414
00:22:18,440 --> 00:22:21,399
Speaker 2: buy guns and other things that they couldn't trade corn for.

415
00:22:21,760 --> 00:22:23,680
Speaker 1: Wait, I'm going to take the bait on the beaver

416
00:22:23,840 --> 00:22:26,760
Speaker 1: trade that you just mentioned, So talk to us. How

417
00:22:26,840 --> 00:22:29,399
Speaker 1: is that formalized and how does it contrast with the

418
00:22:29,440 --> 00:22:30,200
Speaker 1: long hunters.

419
00:22:30,560 --> 00:22:32,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, the beaver skin trade had been going for a

420
00:22:32,520 --> 00:22:34,560
Speaker 2: long long time, so you know, when the Dutch first

421
00:22:34,600 --> 00:22:36,520
Speaker 2: came to Manhattan, one of the primary things they were

422
00:22:36,520 --> 00:22:40,880
Speaker 2: after is beaver skins. Beaver's it's surprisingly easy to wipe

423
00:22:40,920 --> 00:22:43,320
Speaker 2: them out. So if you look at American history from

424
00:22:43,320 --> 00:22:45,480
Speaker 2: the colonial period on, we kind of have we had

425
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:49,440
Speaker 2: a way because of unregulated trapping, We had a way

426
00:22:49,480 --> 00:22:53,040
Speaker 2: that we would that ahead of civilization would mark a

427
00:22:53,280 --> 00:22:56,879
Speaker 2: depopulation of beavers. So we fast forward up to the

428
00:22:56,920 --> 00:22:59,760
Speaker 2: Lewis and Clark expedition. Here we do the Louisiana Purchase.

429
00:23:00,320 --> 00:23:03,560
Speaker 2: Thomas Jefferson dispatches the Lewis and Clark Expedition to go

430
00:23:03,640 --> 00:23:06,679
Speaker 2: find a mostly water route to the Pacific and also

431
00:23:06,760 --> 00:23:10,760
Speaker 2: to look at natural resource abundance. Right, Lewis and Clark

432
00:23:10,800 --> 00:23:16,160
Speaker 2: come back and they report mind boggling numbers of beavers

433
00:23:16,200 --> 00:23:20,320
Speaker 2: in the inner Mountain West. All right, right away, right

434
00:23:20,359 --> 00:23:24,520
Speaker 2: on their heels, goes a bunch of American trappers out

435
00:23:24,560 --> 00:23:27,520
Speaker 2: to explore this land and trade in beavers. A beaver

436
00:23:27,640 --> 00:23:32,480
Speaker 2: pelt was, you know, going for maybe three bucks. That's

437
00:23:32,520 --> 00:23:35,160
Speaker 2: more than you'd make in a day as a laborer.

438
00:23:35,240 --> 00:23:37,760
Speaker 2: It was real money. But guys got onto it and

439
00:23:37,800 --> 00:23:41,399
Speaker 2: they formalized it, and people would go out and get investors. Okay,

440
00:23:41,440 --> 00:23:44,040
Speaker 2: a group would go out and get investors. Well, for instance, Astor,

441
00:23:44,080 --> 00:23:46,400
Speaker 2: if you go to Astor Place in New York, Astor

442
00:23:46,520 --> 00:23:51,119
Speaker 2: was America's first homemade millionaire. Astor's first business was the

443
00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:54,520
Speaker 2: beaver trade. So guys would get investors. They would run

444
00:23:54,600 --> 00:23:57,400
Speaker 2: advertisements to hire trappers. If you look at these really

445
00:23:57,440 --> 00:24:00,840
Speaker 2: famous mountain men like, for instance, Jim Bridger, these guys

446
00:24:01,040 --> 00:24:04,280
Speaker 2: answered an ad in a newspaper. They ran an ad

447
00:24:04,320 --> 00:24:08,879
Speaker 2: that says looking for one hundred enterprising young men. And

448
00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:13,240
Speaker 2: these young guys, some of them escaped indentured servants, people

449
00:24:13,320 --> 00:24:17,639
Speaker 2: running away from apprenticeships, would go higher on as a

450
00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:20,720
Speaker 2: fur brigade, and they would hire on as a day rate,

451
00:24:20,920 --> 00:24:23,959
Speaker 2: and they would be backed by financial backers, and they

452
00:24:23,960 --> 00:24:26,480
Speaker 2: would send these young men out to the inner Mountain

453
00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:30,200
Speaker 2: west to trap beaver as a day labor. In time,

454
00:24:30,440 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 2: some of these guys would spin off and do their

455
00:24:32,280 --> 00:24:35,160
Speaker 2: own thing and go independent. But it was a very

456
00:24:35,320 --> 00:24:38,960
Speaker 2: formalized structure that was sending these young men out to

457
00:24:39,040 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 2: catch beaver in order to bring them back, and they

458
00:24:41,600 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 2: would be exported and turned into wolffeldt. If you look

459
00:24:46,080 --> 00:24:50,160
Speaker 2: back to Abe Lincoln's hat. Okay, Abe Lincoln didn't wear

460
00:24:50,280 --> 00:24:52,520
Speaker 2: beaver wolfelt hat. He wore a silk hat, which we'll

461
00:24:52,520 --> 00:24:56,120
Speaker 2: get to, but that style of hat was the rage

462
00:24:56,359 --> 00:25:00,760
Speaker 2: in Europe. All sophisticated men, many poor people who aspired

463
00:25:00,800 --> 00:25:04,240
Speaker 2: to look more affluent, would wear one of these top hats.

464
00:25:04,280 --> 00:25:07,760
Speaker 2: They were made from beaver wool felt. So that was

465
00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:12,240
Speaker 2: a huge export industry coming out of it. And again

466
00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:16,240
Speaker 2: it became formalized. And what killed it is they were

467
00:25:16,240 --> 00:25:19,639
Speaker 2: too effective. Two things killed the trade. One, they were

468
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:22,960
Speaker 2: running out of beaver anyway, and then a fashion change

469
00:25:23,680 --> 00:25:27,120
Speaker 2: crashed the industry. And it was probably a good thing

470
00:25:27,160 --> 00:25:30,040
Speaker 2: that it did, because they may have pretty much exterminated

471
00:25:30,040 --> 00:25:32,120
Speaker 2: the animals from the landscape. I probably got a little

472
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:32,439
Speaker 2: ahead of.

473
00:25:32,480 --> 00:25:34,440
Speaker 5: There, but no, that's great that's great.

474
00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:38,080
Speaker 1: And actually the thing about the fashion change reminds me

475
00:25:38,160 --> 00:25:41,000
Speaker 1: of one of my all time favorite bubbles market bubbles,

476
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:44,200
Speaker 1: which was the ostrich feather bubble in the eighteen hundreds

477
00:25:44,560 --> 00:25:48,200
Speaker 1: where women would want ostrich feathers for their hats and

478
00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:51,560
Speaker 1: they became really, really expensive, and then the bubble burst

479
00:25:51,680 --> 00:25:54,400
Speaker 1: and all these ostrich farmers, mostly in Africa, I think,

480
00:25:54,520 --> 00:25:55,040
Speaker 1: went bust.

481
00:25:55,359 --> 00:25:58,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was they called the plenary trade and all

482
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:02,040
Speaker 2: kinds of shorebirds and and it's hard to picture now

483
00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:05,760
Speaker 2: that you could just without regulation and coastal areas of

484
00:26:05,800 --> 00:26:10,840
Speaker 2: the country go hunt herons egrets to sell the feathers

485
00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:11,960
Speaker 2: to adorn hats.

486
00:26:13,040 --> 00:26:15,359
Speaker 3: You know, it's funny when you think about like conservation

487
00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:19,399
Speaker 3: efforts or you think about endangered species, all these ideas

488
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:21,920
Speaker 3: feel very modern to me, Like, you know, maybe they

489
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:24,760
Speaker 3: started thinking about this stuff in the nineteen seventies or whatever,

490
00:26:25,040 --> 00:26:29,720
Speaker 3: but obviously that's not the case. How early on in

491
00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:33,320
Speaker 3: the process of the hunting or hunting history did people

492
00:26:33,400 --> 00:26:36,760
Speaker 3: start becoming aware of the fact that without some sort

493
00:26:36,760 --> 00:26:41,000
Speaker 3: of regulation or laws or curves, that this natural resources

494
00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:42,920
Speaker 3: could be irreversibly depleted.

495
00:26:43,480 --> 00:26:47,080
Speaker 2: Surprisingly early, And I'll get to some of the earliest examples,

496
00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:50,160
Speaker 2: but I want to clarify what I think motivations might

497
00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:52,480
Speaker 2: have been. Some of the earliest examples we see of

498
00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:57,359
Speaker 2: a conservation effort would even be in the colonial period.

499
00:26:57,440 --> 00:27:00,719
Speaker 2: And I was trying to put some parameters around deer hunting,

500
00:27:01,440 --> 00:27:04,840
Speaker 2: because again, these were valuable animals for people to use

501
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:08,600
Speaker 2: for material. So when we see people trying to get

502
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:11,119
Speaker 2: to put in hunting seasons, like not to kill them

503
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:14,160
Speaker 2: when they're fawning, when they're dropping their fawns, or put

504
00:27:14,160 --> 00:27:18,200
Speaker 2: in restrictions about outsiders coming into hunt, they probably weren't

505
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:21,919
Speaker 2: motivated by some sort of environmental ethic. They were motivated

506
00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:25,359
Speaker 2: by guarding and protecting a resource. When you start to

507
00:27:25,400 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 2: see an emergence of a real, more emotional, spiritual environmental

508
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:35,159
Speaker 2: movement is in the late eighteen hundreds, and its birth

509
00:27:35,280 --> 00:27:40,119
Speaker 2: is this. It's birth is gentlemen hunters such as Theodore Roosevelt. Okay,

510
00:27:40,640 --> 00:27:43,199
Speaker 2: you have these gentlemen hunters that want to connect to

511
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:47,280
Speaker 2: this piece of American history or American culture, but they're

512
00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:52,280
Speaker 2: recognizing that unregulated hunting, this unregulated market hunting that we've

513
00:27:52,280 --> 00:27:57,040
Speaker 2: been discussing, is going to make hunting impossible because these

514
00:27:57,160 --> 00:28:02,080
Speaker 2: unregulated commodity hunters are going to drive everything to extinction.

515
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:05,920
Speaker 2: So in order to save wildlife and save hunting, which

516
00:28:05,920 --> 00:28:09,280
Speaker 2: they recognized as a very important piece of American culture,

517
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:13,439
Speaker 2: they needed to sort of bifurcate American hunting efforts into

518
00:28:13,600 --> 00:28:18,320
Speaker 2: sport hunting which was regulated and had an environmental ethic

519
00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:22,240
Speaker 2: or a conservation ethic, and unregulated market hunting, which is

520
00:28:22,280 --> 00:28:25,040
Speaker 2: what we've been discussing. One of the great ironies is

521
00:28:25,080 --> 00:28:29,480
Speaker 2: this one of the earliest conservation organizations that Theodore Roosevelt

522
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:34,560
Speaker 2: was involved in, involved in founding, involved in running is

523
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:36,840
Speaker 2: called the Boone and Crocket Club, and they're still a

524
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:40,440
Speaker 2: major player in American conservation today. What's ironic is the

525
00:28:40,560 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 2: names Boone and Crocket, which Americans today here and they

526
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:46,880
Speaker 2: think of hunting. But these were just the kind of

527
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:50,320
Speaker 2: individuals that the Boone and Crocket Club needed to stop

528
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:54,680
Speaker 2: in order to save American hunting. Was these market hunters

529
00:28:54,880 --> 00:28:58,480
Speaker 2: who were out there doing nothing to compensate the American

530
00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:01,280
Speaker 2: people for the wildlife they were taking, and they would

531
00:29:01,360 --> 00:29:03,720
Speaker 2: kill it all, and once they killed it all, they'd

532
00:29:03,760 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 2: move a little bit west and kill all of that,

533
00:29:06,520 --> 00:29:08,920
Speaker 2: and they about undid American wildlife.

534
00:29:09,080 --> 00:29:12,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's a tragedy of the commons dynamic going

535
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:15,240
Speaker 1: on here where you have this public resource, which is animals,

536
00:29:15,360 --> 00:29:18,200
Speaker 1: and if too many people tap into it, the public

537
00:29:18,240 --> 00:29:21,280
Speaker 1: resource ceases to exist. Can you talk a little bit

538
00:29:21,400 --> 00:29:24,320
Speaker 1: about the buffalo trade, because I think this is probably

539
00:29:24,680 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 1: the biggest example of that dynamic actually happening.

540
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:32,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the biggest, most regrettable example. And when I

541
00:29:32,240 --> 00:29:35,400
Speaker 2: say it's for drettable is because by this point we knew,

542
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:43,840
Speaker 2: we meaning news reading, engaged educated Americans knew where this

543
00:29:44,080 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 2: was headed. Okay, and I'll back up a little bit.

544
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:49,000
Speaker 2: So if we get to the time of European contact

545
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:51,880
Speaker 2: in the New World, there were maybe the fashionable number

546
00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:56,040
Speaker 2: today is somewhere around thirty to forty million American bison

547
00:29:56,680 --> 00:30:00,480
Speaker 2: or buffalo, those words are the same thing. Million to

548
00:30:00,520 --> 00:30:04,520
Speaker 2: thirty million buffalo on the American landscape. By the end

549
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:08,400
Speaker 2: of the Civil War, they've been removed from the eastern

550
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:10,600
Speaker 2: part of the country. So you know, at a time

551
00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:13,160
Speaker 2: there would have been buffalo New Orleans, there would have

552
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 2: been buffalo in present day Washington, d C. There would

553
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:18,560
Speaker 2: have been buffalo in present day Nashville. All those had

554
00:30:18,600 --> 00:30:20,880
Speaker 2: been wiped out by hunters at the end of the

555
00:30:20,880 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 2: Civil War. There's probably about fifteen million of them on

556
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:26,160
Speaker 2: the Great Plains, which has always been the nexus of

557
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:28,600
Speaker 2: the population. That was always the that's where the bulk

558
00:30:28,640 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 2: of the animals were. The country really turned westward after

559
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:35,960
Speaker 2: the Civil War once the South, you know, the Union

560
00:30:36,040 --> 00:30:40,960
Speaker 2: was saved. We sent our army out to pacify hostile

561
00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:45,080
Speaker 2: tribes in the west and to protect economic interests in

562
00:30:45,120 --> 00:30:48,600
Speaker 2: the west. And with that shift westward, we started looking

563
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:52,480
Speaker 2: for leathered resources out west, and they identified this fifteen

564
00:30:52,480 --> 00:30:56,720
Speaker 2: million buffalo. There was nothing special about buffalo leather. We

565
00:30:56,800 --> 00:31:02,240
Speaker 2: had an insatiable appetite for leather. What became is we

566
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:07,920
Speaker 2: needed it to produce industrial belting. Okay, leather prices shot up.

567
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:12,320
Speaker 2: We were producing industrial belting to drive the industrial revolution,

568
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:16,800
Speaker 2: and the animals were just yet another source of leather.

569
00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:20,680
Speaker 2: But they could be gotten for no investment. Okay, a

570
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:23,040
Speaker 2: buffalo hide, let's say it's worth three dollars and fifty

571
00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:26,760
Speaker 2: cents four dollars, where the foreman at a tannery would

572
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:29,040
Speaker 2: make three dollars and fifty cents a day, but a

573
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:31,680
Speaker 2: buffalo hide hunter could kill twenty or thirty buffalo a

574
00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:34,240
Speaker 2: day and sell the hides at three dollars and fifty

575
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:37,120
Speaker 2: cents apiece, and he didn't have to put any money

576
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:40,040
Speaker 2: into it. You're not raising them, you're not feeding them.

577
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:42,480
Speaker 2: It's totally different than cattle. They're just out there.

578
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:45,200
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Is it true that, like the buffalo just

579
00:31:45,240 --> 00:31:48,280
Speaker 1: stood there while the hunters shot at them, like they

580
00:31:48,320 --> 00:31:49,160
Speaker 1: didn't really understand.

581
00:31:49,280 --> 00:31:52,680
Speaker 2: Okay, it's not true. They were just so good at

582
00:31:52,720 --> 00:31:55,480
Speaker 2: what they did, they knew how to make that happen. Okay,

583
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 2: this is a complicated thing. You get into where you

584
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:00,520
Speaker 2: want to look at what they did, and you want

585
00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:02,400
Speaker 2: to look at the atrocity of what they did. And

586
00:32:02,440 --> 00:32:04,680
Speaker 2: what it causes people to miss is this is going

587
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:08,640
Speaker 2: to sound weird. It causes people to miss the professionalism

588
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:11,360
Speaker 2: and skill set that goes into this. Like a big

589
00:32:11,400 --> 00:32:16,080
Speaker 2: part of my career is reconciling the skill set, the dedication,

590
00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:22,440
Speaker 2: the bravery against the atrocity. Right. But no, they wouldn't

591
00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:25,440
Speaker 2: just stand there. These guys were masters. They were experts

592
00:32:25,440 --> 00:32:27,800
Speaker 2: at what they did, and they knew how to get

593
00:32:27,840 --> 00:32:30,000
Speaker 2: that outcome. You would not go out and get that

594
00:32:30,040 --> 00:32:31,800
Speaker 2: same outcome. You would go out and not get any

595
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:32,800
Speaker 2: I don't mean the hack on you.

596
00:32:33,600 --> 00:32:35,800
Speaker 1: I have no doubt I would be unable to shoot

597
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:36,280
Speaker 1: a buffalo.

598
00:32:36,360 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 2: That's fine, not even I don't even mean you wouldn't

599
00:32:39,320 --> 00:32:42,280
Speaker 2: be able to get one because of emotional or constraints.

600
00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:45,440
Speaker 2: It's just like they were so good. They were training

601
00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:48,160
Speaker 2: their whole life to do this. They were too good.

602
00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 2: And this is one of the most astounding things. When

603
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:54,240
Speaker 2: they start really getting after them. Around eighteen seventy two,

604
00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 2: the market really opens up in American tanneries. The appetite

605
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:01,560
Speaker 2: for these buffaloes really opens up to where they're like,

606
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 2: we'll take as many as we can get. That hits

607
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:07,360
Speaker 2: in eighteen seventy two, and it coincides, not coincides. It's

608
00:33:07,600 --> 00:33:12,040
Speaker 2: subject to the fact that the railroad hits Dodge City, Kansas, Okay.

609
00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 2: So now you can load these things on a train

610
00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:18,719
Speaker 2: and send them to tanneries. By eighteen eighty three, eleven

611
00:33:18,800 --> 00:33:26,320
Speaker 2: years later, that fifteen million animals is gone. It compressed everything.

612
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:30,440
Speaker 2: It took forever to almost wipe out beaver, It took

613
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:33,680
Speaker 2: for hundreds of years to almost wipe out white tail deer.

614
00:33:34,120 --> 00:33:37,239
Speaker 2: With the buffalo, they were so good at it, and

615
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:41,960
Speaker 2: the country was so primed industrially, we were so primed

616
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:46,720
Speaker 2: with railroads, with big tanneries, the tannery buildings that were,

617
00:33:46,760 --> 00:33:49,960
Speaker 2: you know, one thousand yards long, that we could just

618
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:54,160
Speaker 2: bam burn through a resource with astonishing quickness. And the

619
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:56,480
Speaker 2: crazy part about it is once they shot them out,

620
00:33:56,520 --> 00:34:00,000
Speaker 2: it didn't even affect leather prices. Like a buffalo hide

621
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:01,640
Speaker 2: at the peak could be worth five bucks, So you

622
00:34:01,640 --> 00:34:04,240
Speaker 2: would think once they killed them all the market should

623
00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:09,080
Speaker 2: spike like their scarcity. The last ones were selling at

624
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:11,799
Speaker 2: the same price as the first ones because in the

625
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:15,000
Speaker 2: end it didn't matter. They could buy cattle in South America,

626
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:18,440
Speaker 2: they could get leather from anywhere. So we killed them

627
00:34:18,440 --> 00:34:20,320
Speaker 2: all and it wasn't like we needed them. It was

628
00:34:20,320 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 2: a drop in the bucket for leather production.

629
00:34:22,640 --> 00:34:26,000
Speaker 3: So there was no market mechanism because it was just

630
00:34:26,080 --> 00:34:29,399
Speaker 3: so much abundant leather from multiple sources. There was no

631
00:34:29,520 --> 00:34:32,120
Speaker 3: market mechanism curbing the hunters.

632
00:34:32,440 --> 00:34:35,640
Speaker 2: No, it was just they were worth what they were worth.

633
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:37,840
Speaker 2: They were worth what a cowhide was worth. It was

634
00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:39,719
Speaker 2: just that they could get them for free, and when

635
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:42,800
Speaker 2: they got them, it didn't affect anything. The Industrial Revolution

636
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:45,840
Speaker 2: and leather belting was still produced and still produced and

637
00:34:45,920 --> 00:34:48,400
Speaker 2: still produced, so it almost makes it seem more shameful.

638
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:50,520
Speaker 2: In the end, it would be like we would have,

639
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:53,319
Speaker 2: like the country would have accomplished what we accomplished with

640
00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:56,560
Speaker 2: the industrial revolution had we never even exploited that reason.

641
00:34:57,800 --> 00:35:01,000
Speaker 3: Also, I never really thought about I never thought about

642
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:03,480
Speaker 3: any of this. I certainly never thought about the connection

643
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:09,440
Speaker 3: between the Industrial Revolution. I just imagine these ancient factories

644
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:11,839
Speaker 3: with a bunch of wheels and these belts that are

645
00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:15,520
Speaker 3: pulling the wheels, and how that is connected to I

646
00:35:15,520 --> 00:35:17,200
Speaker 3: guess something had to be turning the wheels.

647
00:35:17,200 --> 00:35:19,680
Speaker 5: I just never really thought about. I never really thought

648
00:35:19,680 --> 00:35:20,319
Speaker 5: about what it was.

649
00:35:20,800 --> 00:35:23,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a great photo. It was later, you know,

650
00:35:23,400 --> 00:35:25,400
Speaker 2: it's later, but it's a great photo, and it's in

651
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:29,880
Speaker 2: a Ford manufacturing plant and it's these lathing machines. And

652
00:35:29,920 --> 00:35:33,480
Speaker 2: the photo explains that overhead of the workers are fifty

653
00:35:33,680 --> 00:35:37,640
Speaker 2: miles of leather belting and these are sixteen inch belts. Wow.

654
00:35:53,640 --> 00:35:57,880
Speaker 3: What happened such that ultimately we still have bison because

655
00:35:58,040 --> 00:36:02,239
Speaker 3: the population eventually they didn't quite kill them all, and

656
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:05,480
Speaker 3: now we've rebuilt the bison stock in the country. What

657
00:36:05,640 --> 00:36:07,759
Speaker 3: happened to such that we didn't quite go all the

658
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:10,680
Speaker 3: way and completely make this animal extinct.

659
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:13,399
Speaker 2: I'm a little bit hesitant to say this because it's

660
00:36:13,560 --> 00:36:15,960
Speaker 2: when it comes to the conservation the history of America.

661
00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:18,040
Speaker 2: It's a little bit of an anomaly. But what happened

662
00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:21,720
Speaker 2: to save him as private ownership, we shot them all

663
00:36:21,920 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 2: down to the point where there was just a couple

664
00:36:24,120 --> 00:36:27,160
Speaker 2: scattered animals here and there. Even at one time a

665
00:36:27,160 --> 00:36:31,759
Speaker 2: guy named William T. Hornaday, who was a taxidermist and

666
00:36:32,040 --> 00:36:35,759
Speaker 2: mammal expert. He wrote letters around the country trying to

667
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:38,480
Speaker 2: see who had a few, and there was a handful

668
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 2: of eccentrics around the country that had managed to go

669
00:36:42,160 --> 00:36:45,520
Speaker 2: out and rope some and save them, maybe even feed

670
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 2: them off domestic coles when they were calves, and these

671
00:36:49,320 --> 00:36:53,359
Speaker 2: kind of slowly got broad into little herds. Interestingly, some

672
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:56,520
Speaker 2: got brought to the Bronx Zoo when they started trying

673
00:36:56,520 --> 00:37:01,040
Speaker 2: to repopulate little protected populations in the West. Another great

674
00:37:01,080 --> 00:37:04,520
Speaker 2: irony as they were moving animals from the Bronx Zoo

675
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:08,399
Speaker 2: out to Oklahoma to turn them loose. Like that's how

676
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:11,560
Speaker 2: bad it got, and even today like we really haven't

677
00:37:11,600 --> 00:37:15,080
Speaker 2: recovered the end. We've saved them from genetic extinction. So

678
00:37:15,120 --> 00:37:18,400
Speaker 2: there's about a half million in existence. Ninety four percent

679
00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:21,719
Speaker 2: of them are privately owned. What we haven't saved them

680
00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:25,759
Speaker 2: from is ecological extinction of all American wildlife, of all

681
00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:29,960
Speaker 2: native American wildlife, grizzly bears, black bears, el bighorn, sheep, no, no, no, no,

682
00:37:31,200 --> 00:37:33,839
Speaker 2: the buffalo. The bison is the only animal that does

683
00:37:33,880 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 2: not have the rights of a wild animal. If a

684
00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:39,160
Speaker 2: buffalo walks off of National Park and comes into Montana,

685
00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:42,759
Speaker 2: he becomes livestock, He becomes the under the authority of

686
00:37:42,800 --> 00:37:46,640
Speaker 2: the Department of Livestock. We do not accept them as

687
00:37:46,719 --> 00:37:50,160
Speaker 2: wild animals anymore, which in my view is a great sin.

688
00:37:50,719 --> 00:37:54,000
Speaker 1: We could go for like three or four hours easy conversation, easy,

689
00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:56,680
Speaker 1: but we can't. So I'm going to take us up

690
00:37:56,719 --> 00:37:59,960
Speaker 1: to I guess modern times. So when we were talking

691
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:04,320
Speaker 1: loking earlier about the long hunters, we discussed there's clearly

692
00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:11,160
Speaker 1: this element of democracy and independence embedded in that particular system.

693
00:38:11,560 --> 00:38:14,600
Speaker 1: And if you look at the way the modern hunting

694
00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:19,239
Speaker 1: world I guess or system is structured, it feels like

695
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:23,520
Speaker 1: we're trying to we're trying to solve that tension between

696
00:38:23,920 --> 00:38:30,960
Speaker 1: people's rights to hunt animals and the conservation public resource aspect.

697
00:38:31,080 --> 00:38:31,600
Speaker 1: Is that right?

698
00:38:32,239 --> 00:38:34,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. We live

699
00:38:34,600 --> 00:38:37,520
Speaker 2: under now. When I say we in this case, I

700
00:38:37,520 --> 00:38:41,680
Speaker 2: mean American hunters, American fishermen. We live under a very

701
00:38:41,719 --> 00:38:48,160
Speaker 2: complex regulatory structure which is self made our community. Modern

702
00:38:48,160 --> 00:38:51,799
Speaker 2: American sportsmen have built the system that we live under,

703
00:38:51,920 --> 00:38:57,279
Speaker 2: a very very tightly regulated pursuit. We've come up with

704
00:38:56,800 --> 00:38:59,680
Speaker 2: this system. Earlier we talked about how things were in

705
00:38:59,680 --> 00:39:02,719
Speaker 2: Europe in colonial period. We now refer to that with

706
00:39:02,800 --> 00:39:08,880
Speaker 2: some disdain, as the European model, where a landowner owns

707
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:12,239
Speaker 2: the wildlife on their land, they control the wildlife on

708
00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:15,360
Speaker 2: their land. We came up with a system where American

709
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:19,759
Speaker 2: wildlife is owned by the American people, administered on your

710
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:24,360
Speaker 2: behalf by fishing, game agencies, and by governmental entities. But

711
00:39:24,520 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 2: American wildlife is American property. It doesn't matter whose lands

712
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:31,279
Speaker 2: on it. That has allowed us the ability to have

713
00:39:31,320 --> 00:39:37,080
Speaker 2: a governing structure to control harvest for sustainability because the

714
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:41,040
Speaker 2: state and in some cases the federal government has authority

715
00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:43,640
Speaker 2: over the animals. Meaning you could have a big property

716
00:39:44,040 --> 00:39:46,040
Speaker 2: and it has deer on it, but those deer are

717
00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:48,080
Speaker 2: not yours to decide what you want to do with

718
00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:51,800
Speaker 2: the deer belonged to the people. You own the land,

719
00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:52,920
Speaker 2: you have to get permits.

720
00:39:53,640 --> 00:39:56,480
Speaker 3: Talk to us a little bit about the contemporary market.

721
00:39:56,760 --> 00:39:59,239
Speaker 3: My guess is it's booming. I don't mean literally the

722
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:01,520
Speaker 3: volume of life hunting that's going on, although I bet

723
00:40:01,600 --> 00:40:04,720
Speaker 3: that finger. But like in your industry, in your world

724
00:40:05,160 --> 00:40:08,480
Speaker 3: outdoorsman media, people buying.

725
00:40:08,360 --> 00:40:09,960
Speaker 5: Gear for all this stuff.

726
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:13,319
Speaker 3: My gut says that this is a hot area of

727
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:14,000
Speaker 3: the economy.

728
00:40:14,280 --> 00:40:17,480
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean we have a huge economic impact.

729
00:40:17,520 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, you have. You know, any given year,

730
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:23,680
Speaker 2: thirteen or fourteen million Americans will buy a hunting license

731
00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:26,879
Speaker 2: to go hunt, over twice as many people will buy

732
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:30,320
Speaker 2: a fishing license to go fish. It generates billions dollars

733
00:40:30,320 --> 00:40:34,520
Speaker 2: in economic activity. But most of that economic activity is

734
00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:38,400
Speaker 2: around gear and experiences, right, it's not economic activity about

735
00:40:38,440 --> 00:40:41,479
Speaker 2: trading and trading and deer in deer.

736
00:40:41,600 --> 00:40:44,040
Speaker 3: And it's also growing really fast, I take it, or like,

737
00:40:44,040 --> 00:40:45,360
Speaker 3: what kind of growth of your saying.

738
00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:49,520
Speaker 2: It really spiked, No, it's remarkably stable. It really spiked

739
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:52,840
Speaker 2: during the pandemic. You know, obviously as people turn to

740
00:40:52,920 --> 00:40:56,879
Speaker 2: you know, making sour dough bread and cooking venison. Back

741
00:40:56,440 --> 00:41:00,359
Speaker 2: to the spikes. It's remarkably stable the year.

742
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:01,879
Speaker 5: There are two types of Americans.

743
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:06,000
Speaker 3: There are sourdome Americans and they live in cities and

744
00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:07,360
Speaker 3: then veniceon Americans.

745
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:09,320
Speaker 2: Yeah.

746
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:10,719
Speaker 4: Ye, so actually that reminds me.

747
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:12,680
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I took from the

748
00:41:12,719 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 1: Long Hunter series is that gear is really important because

749
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:18,960
Speaker 1: you guys talk so much about the gear that the

750
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:21,480
Speaker 1: colonists and pioneers actually had.

751
00:41:21,760 --> 00:41:23,120
Speaker 4: So I feel like there's.

752
00:41:22,960 --> 00:41:26,120
Speaker 1: An element of consumerism in the hunting community where people

753
00:41:26,239 --> 00:41:29,880
Speaker 1: just collect guns and knives and things.

754
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:32,920
Speaker 2: Oh for sure. Yeah, Like me and my buddies. I

755
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:35,480
Speaker 2: mean to be honest with you, when we're sitting around,

756
00:41:35,719 --> 00:41:37,080
Speaker 2: you know, and I hang out a lot of people

757
00:41:37,120 --> 00:41:40,160
Speaker 2: involved in the conservation movement, Me and my bodies, and

758
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:43,200
Speaker 2: we're sitting around, we mostly argue about gear. Yeah. I

759
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:45,360
Speaker 2: came up in media, but our company, we have a

760
00:41:45,520 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 2: hunting apparel brand. We have a game call brand, we

761
00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:52,800
Speaker 2: have a hunting decoy brand, we have a hunting accessory brand.

762
00:41:53,160 --> 00:41:55,399
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, like gear is, it can't be

763
00:41:55,760 --> 00:41:58,319
Speaker 2: separated out. And the same way Boone was adamant about

764
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:01,640
Speaker 2: what kind of he wore, I'm pretty about what I wear,

765
00:42:01,680 --> 00:42:05,239
Speaker 2: and that is like the economic activity today you know

766
00:42:05,400 --> 00:42:08,040
Speaker 2: is in large measure equipment and gear. And what's beautiful

767
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:10,160
Speaker 2: about and I want to fill this in. What's beautiful

768
00:42:10,160 --> 00:42:14,439
Speaker 2: about it is that's how we fund conservation. So our

769
00:42:14,520 --> 00:42:20,400
Speaker 2: industry in the thirties we put ourselves under a thirteen

770
00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:23,400
Speaker 2: percent excise tax. So when you buy guns or ammunition,

771
00:42:23,920 --> 00:42:28,080
Speaker 2: any gun purchase guns, ammunition, sporting equipment, there's a anywhere

772
00:42:28,080 --> 00:42:32,239
Speaker 2: from eleven to thirteen percent excise tax which goes right

773
00:42:32,239 --> 00:42:35,680
Speaker 2: into conservation spending. You go find me another industry that

774
00:42:35,719 --> 00:42:38,759
Speaker 2: has anything comparable to that. It does not exist. And

775
00:42:38,800 --> 00:42:42,120
Speaker 2: then our agencies that manage wildlife in America all fifty

776
00:42:42,160 --> 00:42:45,680
Speaker 2: states have a fish and Wildlife agency. Their funding comes

777
00:42:45,719 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 2: from licenses, permits, and stamps paid by hunters and anglers.

778
00:42:51,080 --> 00:42:54,399
Speaker 2: We're a self funded group of Americans.

779
00:42:54,719 --> 00:42:57,640
Speaker 3: Yeay, it's a rarest issue. It makes sense, right, most

780
00:42:57,680 --> 00:43:01,440
Speaker 3: industries don't voluntarily want to be tax on everything. But

781
00:43:01,600 --> 00:43:04,440
Speaker 3: when you think about the fact that there needs to

782
00:43:04,480 --> 00:43:08,319
Speaker 3: be some resources to sustain the possibility of hunting for

783
00:43:08,440 --> 00:43:11,520
Speaker 3: generations to come, it is sort of makes sense that

784
00:43:11,600 --> 00:43:13,560
Speaker 3: this would be an industry in which you want there

785
00:43:13,920 --> 00:43:16,319
Speaker 3: to be some sort of price of entry. If I

786
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:20,759
Speaker 3: became a hunter this winter, would you make fun of me? Like,

787
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:23,520
Speaker 3: would I be one of like those guys who it's like, Okay,

788
00:43:23,520 --> 00:43:26,040
Speaker 3: it's my first season hunting. I'm gonna buy the most

789
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:29,080
Speaker 3: expensive rifle. I'm gonna buy the most expensive hat. I'm

790
00:43:29,120 --> 00:43:32,120
Speaker 3: gonna buy the most expensive shoes. You must have a

791
00:43:32,200 --> 00:43:34,040
Speaker 3: name like those types, and they like show up on

792
00:43:34,120 --> 00:43:36,600
Speaker 3: the hunt with you, and it's clear they like went

793
00:43:36,600 --> 00:43:40,000
Speaker 3: through all the lists and just like bought the top. Yeah,

794
00:43:40,040 --> 00:43:41,840
Speaker 3: like this sort of like wanna be is it's like

795
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 3: their first thing and they just go down the line

796
00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:47,040
Speaker 3: and buy them deck themselves out in the top of

797
00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:47,640
Speaker 3: the line gear.

798
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:51,719
Speaker 2: The name I have for those people is my Buddy's Now.

799
00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:53,759
Speaker 2: I'm telling you, not a year goes by, man, not

800
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:58,720
Speaker 2: a year goes by that. I don't take out friends, family, whoever,

801
00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:02,720
Speaker 2: people that are interested in and hunting, curious about hunting,

802
00:44:02,760 --> 00:44:06,040
Speaker 2: even sometimes uneasy with hunting, that I don't take them

803
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:08,439
Speaker 2: out and kind of explain the world. I have three

804
00:44:08,480 --> 00:44:11,239
Speaker 2: young kids. I've been lucky to turn them all into

805
00:44:11,680 --> 00:44:14,320
Speaker 2: you know, avid hunters, and we share that. So no,

806
00:44:14,840 --> 00:44:17,520
Speaker 2: I like sharing this world. It's the world I care

807
00:44:17,560 --> 00:44:20,920
Speaker 2: a lot about I care about how it's perceived. Most

808
00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:24,680
Speaker 2: Americans don't hunt. In some states like California, New Jersey,

809
00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:28,440
Speaker 2: one percent of the population hunts. So in some ways

810
00:44:28,480 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 2: we live and exist with the blessing of the American

811
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:36,040
Speaker 2: public in general. So it's important to me for people

812
00:44:36,040 --> 00:44:38,960
Speaker 2: to understand what we're up to, how we think, and

813
00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:42,520
Speaker 2: that we're willing to recognize the sins of our forefathers

814
00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:44,880
Speaker 2: and have gone out of our way to correct those sins.

815
00:44:45,239 --> 00:44:47,799
Speaker 1: This is a slight tangent, but since we're on the

816
00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:50,440
Speaker 1: subject of conservation, I'd be curious to get your thoughts.

817
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:51,719
Speaker 4: But what do you think about.

818
00:44:51,440 --> 00:44:57,839
Speaker 1: Commercial hunting of endangered animals? So things like lions or

819
00:44:58,080 --> 00:45:02,440
Speaker 1: I don't know, buffalo of some sort in Africa, Because

820
00:45:02,480 --> 00:45:06,040
Speaker 1: one argument I've heard is that these animals at the

821
00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 1: moment basically have negative value, right because they're living on

822
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:12,200
Speaker 1: land that you can't use for anything else because you

823
00:45:12,239 --> 00:45:14,719
Speaker 1: have to conserve it because you need to protect the animals.

824
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:18,439
Speaker 1: But if you allow commercial hunting in a controlled way,

825
00:45:18,600 --> 00:45:23,120
Speaker 1: you basically put an economic value on that animal such

826
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:26,160
Speaker 1: that you know, it becomes something that people want to

827
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:28,800
Speaker 1: maintain and preserve and stick around.

828
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:31,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would first want to just clarify, I don't

829
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:34,959
Speaker 2: mean to be a difficult guess, but be careful using

830
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:38,160
Speaker 2: the word endangered, because it can be when I say that.

831
00:45:38,239 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 2: Like in the US we have the Endangered Species Act,

832
00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:44,600
Speaker 2: we have a way that we formally declare things to

833
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:48,320
Speaker 2: be endangered. I think in the American imagination, Africa is

834
00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:51,000
Speaker 2: far away. We hear the word endangered and it's not

835
00:45:51,040 --> 00:45:55,040
Speaker 2: really open to certain levels of nuance about where and what.

836
00:45:55,600 --> 00:45:58,920
Speaker 2: For instance, elk. Right here in the United States, we

837
00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:02,680
Speaker 2: have robust populations of elk across the American West. We

838
00:46:02,719 --> 00:46:05,280
Speaker 2: have hunting seasons for elk, We have open hunting seasons

839
00:46:05,320 --> 00:46:09,760
Speaker 2: for elk. But elk have only been restored across about

840
00:46:09,800 --> 00:46:13,440
Speaker 2: twenty percent of their native range. Michigan was elk country,

841
00:46:13,640 --> 00:46:17,960
Speaker 2: Wisconsin was elk country, Virginia was elk country. Elk have

842
00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:20,839
Speaker 2: been wiped out of those places and not restored. So

843
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:23,480
Speaker 2: you might say, well, elk are endangered because they're not

844
00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:27,680
Speaker 2: in Michigan and Wisconsin in appreciable numbers. Yet in the

845
00:46:27,719 --> 00:46:30,600
Speaker 2: American West, in some places we have a problem with

846
00:46:30,640 --> 00:46:33,520
Speaker 2: too many elk. So you gotta be careful with words

847
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:37,160
Speaker 2: like that. But to get to the core of your question. Yes,

848
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:41,960
Speaker 2: it is possible. There are places in Africa, and I'm

849
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:45,359
Speaker 2: not a subject matter expert on Africa like I am.

850
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:47,839
Speaker 2: I'm a subject matter expert on these issues in the

851
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:52,920
Speaker 2: United States. But in Africa there are situations where money,

852
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:56,239
Speaker 2: like value to hunters, is able to put so much

853
00:46:56,360 --> 00:47:02,840
Speaker 2: value on wildlife that the wildlife becomes worth protecting. Meaning

854
00:47:03,400 --> 00:47:07,120
Speaker 2: people that are on the landscape will recognize the presence

855
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:11,200
Speaker 2: of wild knife generates so much economic activity that it's

856
00:47:11,280 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 2: best not to kill it all off for us, is

857
00:47:15,239 --> 00:47:18,920
Speaker 2: bush meat or other applications, or because it's a crop pest,

858
00:47:19,120 --> 00:47:22,239
Speaker 2: or because it's dangerous to livestock. They'll recognize that, Hey,

859
00:47:22,280 --> 00:47:25,960
Speaker 2: that lion, that thing's worth sixty thousand bucks. Half that

860
00:47:26,040 --> 00:47:28,720
Speaker 2: money's coming to our village. Don't mess with that lion.

861
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:31,760
Speaker 2: I mean, that just happens. Whether you however you feel

862
00:47:31,800 --> 00:47:35,480
Speaker 2: emotionally about the killing of lions, that's an economic reality

863
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:36,759
Speaker 2: in some places.

864
00:47:37,080 --> 00:47:39,280
Speaker 1: I feel like, don't mess with lions is just good,

865
00:47:39,360 --> 00:47:40,400
Speaker 1: good advice generally.

866
00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:43,520
Speaker 5: Yeah, I just have one last question.

867
00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:46,960
Speaker 3: You mentioned bear meat. I haven't had that much wild

868
00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:49,920
Speaker 3: game in my life. I've had, you know, sausage with

869
00:47:50,040 --> 00:47:53,080
Speaker 3: venison and pork, and like when I was out in

870
00:47:53,160 --> 00:47:55,680
Speaker 3: Jackson Hole, I went to some restaurant and you know,

871
00:47:55,800 --> 00:47:57,719
Speaker 3: tried a few different like many stakes of it.

872
00:47:57,800 --> 00:48:00,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, that wasn't even wild game, that's just farm raised animals.

873
00:48:00,800 --> 00:48:03,719
Speaker 3: What should I try that I've probably never tried before once.

874
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:06,000
Speaker 3: I like meat a lot, So what would I like

875
00:48:06,640 --> 00:48:07,040
Speaker 3: out there?

876
00:48:07,400 --> 00:48:10,719
Speaker 2: Some of my favorites really, you know, Mallard ducks, so

877
00:48:10,760 --> 00:48:12,319
Speaker 2: if you're in a park, you see that duck where

878
00:48:12,320 --> 00:48:16,279
Speaker 2: the mail has the iridescent green head. When you get

879
00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:18,560
Speaker 2: those that have been in one place a while and

880
00:48:18,640 --> 00:48:21,560
Speaker 2: have it migrated lately and they're getting on crops, they're

881
00:48:21,560 --> 00:48:25,040
Speaker 2: getting in grain fields, one of my all time favorite things.

882
00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:29,000
Speaker 2: This is going to sound weird, but true squirrel properly

883
00:48:29,080 --> 00:48:31,680
Speaker 2: done would kind of blow your mind. And it's partly

884
00:48:31,719 --> 00:48:33,879
Speaker 2: the fun of it, like, because you have a preconceived

885
00:48:33,920 --> 00:48:35,839
Speaker 2: notion of what it would be like, and then when

886
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:41,280
Speaker 2: you taste it, you'd think, I cannot believe that's that.

887
00:48:41,280 --> 00:48:43,640
Speaker 2: That would kind of blow you away. And I think

888
00:48:43,680 --> 00:48:47,359
Speaker 2: that you would be very very surprised if you had

889
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:51,839
Speaker 2: a bare pot roast in a classic fashion with root vegetables,

890
00:48:51,880 --> 00:48:54,440
Speaker 2: you know, and a good broth I think you would

891
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:57,840
Speaker 2: also say, like I refuse to accept that that's what

892
00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:00,760
Speaker 2: it is, and I wouldn't accept that had I not seen.

893
00:49:00,560 --> 00:49:02,920
Speaker 5: It happen, I'd love it. I want to bear pot

894
00:49:03,000 --> 00:49:03,680
Speaker 5: roast right now.

895
00:49:03,800 --> 00:49:05,840
Speaker 1: I'll bring you some venison ragu.

896
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:07,279
Speaker 4: That's what I've been making so far.

897
00:49:07,360 --> 00:49:10,120
Speaker 1: Although one thing I learned is that the fat content

898
00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:12,640
Speaker 1: of venison is actually really low, so it's not very

899
00:49:12,680 --> 00:49:15,440
Speaker 1: good for making things like burgers and yeah.

900
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:18,759
Speaker 2: You gotta make su Yeah, it's very waxy. Yeah, it

901
00:49:18,960 --> 00:49:21,520
Speaker 2: melts differently than be fat, so it sets up in

902
00:49:21,560 --> 00:49:24,239
Speaker 2: the inside of your mouth and it doesn't freeze well.

903
00:49:24,520 --> 00:49:26,080
Speaker 2: So if you want to freeze when you get your

904
00:49:26,160 --> 00:49:28,839
Speaker 2: venison from your hunter and you want to enjoy it

905
00:49:28,880 --> 00:49:32,080
Speaker 2: for the next year, trim the fat away, trim the

906
00:49:32,120 --> 00:49:35,160
Speaker 2: talo away. And if you do that, it's basically archival

907
00:49:35,280 --> 00:49:37,080
Speaker 2: once you put it in your freezer. If you leave that

908
00:49:37,239 --> 00:49:40,759
Speaker 2: talo on it, it's not that talo will turn even

909
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:41,400
Speaker 2: in your freezer.

910
00:49:41,480 --> 00:49:41,800
Speaker 5: Interesting.

911
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:44,200
Speaker 1: Okay, my last question is what would you recommend I

912
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:45,400
Speaker 1: make with venison.

913
00:49:46,040 --> 00:49:48,680
Speaker 2: I would start out by making the things that you

914
00:49:48,880 --> 00:49:51,560
Speaker 2: like the most, that are easiest to make, Like you

915
00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:58,200
Speaker 2: mentioned ragou, making hamburgers, making things that you're comfortable making,

916
00:49:59,239 --> 00:50:02,280
Speaker 2: that aren't overly complex and don't have too many steps,

917
00:50:02,840 --> 00:50:05,040
Speaker 2: just so you can go and find these kind of

918
00:50:05,040 --> 00:50:07,280
Speaker 2: like points in comparison. If you, if you and your family,

919
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:09,400
Speaker 2: if in the summer you like to grill burgers like

920
00:50:09,560 --> 00:50:12,200
Speaker 2: you like to grill up beef burgers, grill up with

921
00:50:12,280 --> 00:50:15,759
Speaker 2: Vendison burger, follow the same basic steps and just kind

922
00:50:15,760 --> 00:50:18,520
Speaker 2: of get comfortable with the way it's a little different,

923
00:50:18,719 --> 00:50:20,560
Speaker 2: and when you do that enough, you'll come to prefer it.

924
00:50:20,760 --> 00:50:22,759
Speaker 2: My wife, like my wife doesn't hunt man. My wife

925
00:50:22,800 --> 00:50:25,960
Speaker 2: doesn't like domestic meat. She doesn't like the taste of

926
00:50:25,960 --> 00:50:28,279
Speaker 2: domestic meat because for the last twenty years she's eating

927
00:50:28,280 --> 00:50:30,520
Speaker 2: nothing of game meat. She's gotten where. She don't like it,

928
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:31,400
Speaker 2: she doesn't want to eat it.

929
00:50:31,680 --> 00:50:34,160
Speaker 1: We're going to have to wrap this conversation up, even though,

930
00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:36,719
Speaker 1: as we mentioned before, we could go on for hours.

931
00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:39,000
Speaker 1: I have to say, I hope my husband isn't listening

932
00:50:39,080 --> 00:50:41,799
Speaker 1: to this, because I am planning on getting one of

933
00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:45,360
Speaker 1: Steve's cookbooks for Christmas.

934
00:50:46,560 --> 00:50:48,040
Speaker 2: I would love to sign it for him. If you

935
00:50:48,120 --> 00:50:51,279
Speaker 2: want to reach out, I will send you. I'll send

936
00:50:51,360 --> 00:50:53,400
Speaker 2: him a whole box and stuff if you if you reach.

937
00:50:53,200 --> 00:51:00,520
Speaker 1: Out, Okay, I might well of nominal value, of nominal value,

938
00:51:01,120 --> 00:51:02,680
Speaker 1: a book would be nice pleasure.

939
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:05,160
Speaker 2: I know a lot of journalists, but not the kind

940
00:51:05,239 --> 00:51:05,560
Speaker 2: like that.

941
00:51:05,719 --> 00:51:08,880
Speaker 1: So Steve Vanella, thank you so much for coming on

942
00:51:08,920 --> 00:51:09,400
Speaker 1: odd Lots.

943
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 4: That was a blast.

944
00:51:10,160 --> 00:51:10,799
Speaker 5: That was really fun.

945
00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:14,719
Speaker 2: Blast appreciate it.

946
00:51:14,760 --> 00:51:29,080
Speaker 4: Thank you, Joe. That was so fun.

947
00:51:29,400 --> 00:51:30,120
Speaker 5: That was so fun.

948
00:51:30,160 --> 00:51:32,480
Speaker 3: I don't know anything about that, but like we could

949
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:33,920
Speaker 3: have talked for three hours.

950
00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:36,239
Speaker 5: There are so many things I'm curious about now.

951
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:38,120
Speaker 4: This is underappreciated.

952
00:51:38,239 --> 00:51:41,200
Speaker 1: I think the role of hunting in America's economic development

953
00:51:41,280 --> 00:51:43,799
Speaker 1: and it's intertwining. I didn't even know this with the

954
00:51:43,880 --> 00:51:45,600
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution, didn't.

955
00:51:45,360 --> 00:51:46,920
Speaker 5: Know about that either. It's exactly what I was gonna say.

956
00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:48,160
Speaker 5: I would have had no idea.

957
00:51:48,320 --> 00:51:50,920
Speaker 3: And it's always sort of fascinating to think, like you

958
00:51:51,000 --> 00:51:55,280
Speaker 3: can't run a big factory if you don't have belts. Now, granted,

959
00:51:55,360 --> 00:51:58,239
Speaker 3: according to Stephen, there were other sources of leather, but

960
00:51:58,280 --> 00:52:00,319
Speaker 3: it's so interesting to think about, like here there's this

961
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:02,400
Speaker 3: thing that if you don't have an access to like

962
00:52:02,480 --> 00:52:04,440
Speaker 3: one commodity or whatever.

963
00:52:04,560 --> 00:52:05,239
Speaker 5: You know, there's a new.

964
00:52:05,120 --> 00:52:07,080
Speaker 3: Book by the way out about rope that I want

965
00:52:07,080 --> 00:52:09,399
Speaker 3: to have And it's like a similar story about how

966
00:52:09,440 --> 00:52:10,440
Speaker 3: crucial rope was.

967
00:52:10,520 --> 00:52:12,800
Speaker 5: Anyway, it was so it was so fascinating.

968
00:52:13,120 --> 00:52:15,359
Speaker 1: Uh, you know he mentioned squirrel meat at the end,

969
00:52:15,520 --> 00:52:18,320
Speaker 1: So again I'm just throwing out tidbits that I learned

970
00:52:18,320 --> 00:52:21,680
Speaker 1: from his series. But you know, you can't really shoot

971
00:52:21,880 --> 00:52:24,799
Speaker 1: a squirrel if you're going to eat it, because they're

972
00:52:24,840 --> 00:52:28,759
Speaker 1: so small. The bullet like rips off all the meat.

973
00:52:28,880 --> 00:52:31,480
Speaker 1: So the way the pioneers used to do it, apparently,

974
00:52:31,560 --> 00:52:35,360
Speaker 1: is they would shoot at the tree that the squirrel

975
00:52:35,480 --> 00:52:38,560
Speaker 1: was on and sort of like shock the squirrel to

976
00:52:38,680 --> 00:52:40,279
Speaker 1: death and it would fall out of the tree and

977
00:52:40,280 --> 00:52:41,040
Speaker 1: then you can eat it.

978
00:52:41,239 --> 00:52:43,560
Speaker 3: Wait, Tracy can ask you is a question is sort

979
00:52:43,560 --> 00:52:47,040
Speaker 3: of non politically correct. Is it true that Germans can't

980
00:52:47,040 --> 00:52:48,120
Speaker 3: pronounce the word squirrel?

981
00:52:48,239 --> 00:52:48,479
Speaker 2: Yes?

982
00:52:48,680 --> 00:52:52,759
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay my personal experience when I was a kid,

983
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:55,560
Speaker 1: I used to ask my uncle to say squirrel all

984
00:52:55,600 --> 00:52:58,400
Speaker 1: the time just for laughs. And the way he says

985
00:52:58,400 --> 00:53:02,040
Speaker 1: it is and yeah, he struggles with it.

986
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:04,360
Speaker 3: I just want an excuse to see if this was

987
00:53:04,360 --> 00:53:05,680
Speaker 3: confirmed during to deny it.

988
00:53:05,840 --> 00:53:08,759
Speaker 1: Okay, now that we're talking about squirrels, shall we leave

989
00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:09,000
Speaker 1: it there.

990
00:53:09,080 --> 00:53:10,040
Speaker 5: Let's leave it there, all right?

991
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:12,880
Speaker 1: This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast.

992
00:53:13,000 --> 00:53:16,320
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

993
00:53:15,960 --> 00:53:18,920
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You could follow me at the Stalwart.

994
00:53:19,120 --> 00:53:22,120
Speaker 3: Follow our guest Stephen Ronella. He's at Stephen Ronella. Follow

995
00:53:22,160 --> 00:53:25,440
Speaker 3: our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carman Arman, Dashil Bennett at

996
00:53:25,480 --> 00:53:29,000
Speaker 3: Dashbod and kill Brooks at Kilbrooks. From our odd Laws content,

997
00:53:29,040 --> 00:53:31,160
Speaker 3: go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots with the

998
00:53:31,280 --> 00:53:33,879
Speaker 3: daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and you can

999
00:53:33,960 --> 00:53:36,000
Speaker 3: chat about all of these topics twenty four to seven

1000
00:53:36,120 --> 00:53:39,440
Speaker 3: in our discord Discord dot gg slash od lots.

1001
00:53:39,640 --> 00:53:42,160
Speaker 1: And if you enjoyed this conversation, if you like it

1002
00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:45,080
Speaker 1: when we look into the economic history of the US,

1003
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:47,800
Speaker 1: then please leave us a positive review on your favorite

1004
00:53:47,800 --> 00:53:51,400
Speaker 1: podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber,

1005
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:54,680
Speaker 1: you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free.

1006
00:53:54,800 --> 00:53:56,920
Speaker 1: All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel

1007
00:53:56,960 --> 00:53:59,439
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there.

1008
00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:00,680
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening.