Speaker 1: If this is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast, you can't
Speaker 1: predict anything presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting
Speaker 1: apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for every hunt,
Speaker 1: first Light Go Farther, Stay Longer. Okay. Joined today by
Speaker 1: fabulous author Ian Fraser, author probably arguably, when I make
Speaker 1: lists of the of my favorite books of all time,
Speaker 1: usually at the top of the list is the book
Speaker 1: Great Planes.
Speaker 2: I'm glad to hear that I taught you a word
Speaker 2: with that book. You did remember the word ichi PASISI?
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, but I can't remember what I meant.
Speaker 2: It's a Lakota word. If it's growing, going along a stream,
Speaker 2: crossing back and forth, it is a very useful word.
Speaker 2: You can say I went down that stream, I went
Speaker 2: down that crek ichi PASISI. And later I checked with
Speaker 2: Lakota people and they said it actually means sewing. But yeah,
Speaker 2: but the guy was using it, the guy I was
Speaker 2: talking to was using it as ways telling me how
Speaker 2: to get to.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 2: Is like we even back and forth with a sewing right,
Speaker 2: It's like you're yeah, it is a sewing motion.
Speaker 1: But author of I don't even know how many things
Speaker 1: so award winning writer, hem, how many books you have?
Speaker 1: We have a zillion written down, but it's.
Speaker 2: A zillion, it's like it's slightly less. It's about I
Speaker 2: would say a million, billion, trillion.
Speaker 1: Author of a lot of fantastic books, including Travels in Siberia. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's a great book. Thank you, and culminates in a
Speaker 1: very spirited argument that Stalin Joe are not okay.
Speaker 2: Stalin jokes are not okay.
Speaker 1: I don't remember writing that you did? I did? Okay.
Speaker 2: Well, the thing is, you had a big influence on
Speaker 2: that book. I did because I wrote that. The New
Speaker 2: Yorker paid a lot of expenses for it, so I
Speaker 2: owed them a lot of that book. So I gave
Speaker 2: him the book and they kind of condensed part of it,
Speaker 2: and he said, don't do that. And I think they
Speaker 2: did a good job condensing it. But I'm that that
Speaker 2: decided me. It's very hard when you have a book
Speaker 2: and then you have a magazine excerpt to do justice
Speaker 2: to both of them. And the next time I'm not
Speaker 2: doing not doing more anymore condensing. But that was you
Speaker 2: don't remember. That was your verdict on it.
Speaker 1: No, I can't believe I had any advice. You did
Speaker 1: have advice. The best thing you ever said to me.
Speaker 1: You said a lot of great things to me. The
Speaker 1: best thing you ever said to me. I can't say.
Speaker 1: Why can't you tell the story all the time. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't tell it publicly, I'd tell it privately all the time. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you later what you said. Okay.
Speaker 2: It was a financial advice you.
Speaker 1: After you wrote, after you wrote your book about the
Speaker 1: Pine Ridge Reservation. We were a book called on the Reds,
Speaker 1: which is a phenomenal history of the Pine Ridge Reservation
Speaker 1: in the in the in the wars against the Sioux
Speaker 1: and confinement to reservation and what happened on the reservation.
Speaker 1: You offered a summation of you offered a summation of
Speaker 1: your findings, and it was I just wanted to say
Speaker 1: it publicly. Okay, Well, you can tell me later what
Speaker 1: it was. You said another great thing to me one day,
Speaker 1: because uh so Ian Fraser, I'm gonna his friends call
Speaker 1: him Sandy. I'm gonna be using the word sandy. It's
Speaker 1: from Ohio. Yes, I am from Michigan. Yeah. And you
Speaker 1: said to me Not long after we met, you said,
Speaker 1: whenever I think of Michigan, I think of people who say, fucker's.
Speaker 3: That's fantastic.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I would tell you a story, a
Speaker 2: Michigan related story about gray planes. Because Great Plains was
Speaker 2: on the best seller list for ten weeks New York
Speaker 2: Times bestseller.
Speaker 1: That's that's a hard thing to pull off.
Speaker 2: And it was bumped off the best seller list. And
Speaker 2: the book that bumped it off, that moved it, that
Speaker 2: replaced it on the best seller list was Bo by
Speaker 2: Bo Schambackler, oh Michigan coach for about fifty years. He
Speaker 2: bumped you, He bumped me, and we were, of course
Speaker 2: very opposed to Michigan football because we were Ohio State fans.
Speaker 1: But I want to tell you another thing you said
Speaker 1: to me. Then we're gonna then we're gonna, we're gonna
Speaker 1: come back to all your work. But here's an earthing
Speaker 1: you said to me one time when I got out
Speaker 1: of graduate school. I uh, I want to prefaces by saying,
Speaker 1: I don't mean any offense to the individual we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about. When I got out of graduate school,
Speaker 1: I largely motivated by uh. I never told you this
Speaker 1: largely motivated by great planes. And what a phenomenal job
Speaker 1: you did with that book about the American Great Plains.
Speaker 1: I was, I was like, I want to and and
Speaker 1: other things too, but I wanted to go. I was
Speaker 1: going to go back. I went to graduate school in Montana.
Speaker 1: I was going to go back to Michigan. My dad
Speaker 1: just died, so I had access to his truck. He
Speaker 1: didn't need it anymore, and I was going to go
Speaker 1: back to Michigan and drive all around. I was gonna
Speaker 1: do like a history of the Great Lakes where I
Speaker 1: grew up. And I knew certain weird things about the
Speaker 1: Great Lakes. Have I talked about this before? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't think. So. I knew certain things about the
Speaker 1: Great Lakes that I didn't think anybody knew, Like, for instance,
Speaker 1: after after, who's the founder of the Joseph Smith founder
Speaker 1: of the Mormon Church. So Joseph Smith was hanged by
Speaker 1: a mob in Carthage, Illinois. Is that Yes, there was
Speaker 1: a power struggle between his followers, and there was two
Speaker 1: emerging forces came out of this, Brigham Young and a
Speaker 1: guy named James Jesse Strange I think was his name.
Speaker 1: One of them was like I'm gonna head out to
Speaker 1: the Great Salt Lake, Okay to flee persecution. And one
Speaker 1: of them was like, I'm gonna head to Beaver Island
Speaker 1: in Lake Michigan with my followers to flee persecution. Strange.
Speaker 1: So Brigham Young went on to like very successfully, you
Speaker 1: know establish you know Zion, right, And Brigham Young goes
Speaker 1: up to this little dinky ass island in Lake Michigan.
Speaker 1: Get strange. Strange goes up to this dinky ass island
Speaker 1: in Lake Michigan like starts trying to intercept ships and
Speaker 1: act like they were in his waters and tax them
Speaker 1: like he was a sovereign nation. Yeah, he winds up
Speaker 1: getting shot by his own followers next to a wood
Speaker 1: pile along the beach, and that was the end of
Speaker 1: his whole experiment. They had had it with him. Another
Speaker 1: thing I knew about the Great Lakes was that I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting is at one time a Niagara Falls,
Speaker 1: a guy a zoo went out of business, and a
Speaker 1: guy bought all the shit from the zoo, all the animals,
Speaker 1: and put him on a barge and charge and sold
Speaker 1: tickets to watch him run the barge over the falls.
Speaker 1: I'd heard of that, Yeah, but I grew up on
Speaker 1: the grade that nowadays would get you kicked off social media.
Speaker 1: If you posted reading.
Speaker 3: A lot of people would watch it first.
Speaker 1: They would you would not you'd get all kind you'd
Speaker 1: never dig out of that hole.
Speaker 4: A third of the crowd's going, well, I mean, listen,
Speaker 4: he's gonna do it anyway. The apathy.
Speaker 1: So I was like armed with these things, you know.
Speaker 1: And then this book comes out by this guy named
Speaker 1: Jerry Dennis, and his hook for his book is that
Speaker 1: some dude bought a boat. I don't know, Like, some
Speaker 1: guy buys a boat out in the ocean somewhere in
Speaker 1: the either way, he's got to get on a boat
Speaker 1: and sail off through the Great Legs. So that's his
Speaker 1: sort of angle. So it's a travelog about the Great Legs.
Speaker 1: But in it, some bitch talks about no offense. Jerry
Speaker 1: Dennis talks about the Mormon split, talks about the the
Speaker 1: menagerie of critters going over the.
Speaker 3: Falls that took the wind out of your sails.
Speaker 1: Oh it did. And just as the book was coming out,
Speaker 1: I called Sandy and I said, man, there's a book
Speaker 1: coming out by a guy named Jerry Dennis. And I
Speaker 1: wrote him or email out to I conveyed this to him,
Speaker 1: and it's really just taking the wind out of my
Speaker 1: sails on this whole project. And he left me a voicemail.
Speaker 1: He left me a voicemail some days later and it said, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I've been thinking since you called, and I
Speaker 1: can't think of one good book ever written by a
Speaker 1: guy named Jerry. I started. I had to think, like,
Speaker 1: does Jerry Lewis write good books? Uh, we're going to
Speaker 1: get into this whole body work.
Speaker 3: Are you guys gonna talk about like people are probably
Speaker 3: wondering how you guys even know each other.
Speaker 1: We know each other from the so we met. Here's
Speaker 1: how we met. You probably don't even know this.
Speaker 2: Well, let's see, I probably don't.
Speaker 1: When I was going to when I was in graduate
Speaker 1: school in the writing program, you came in as like
Speaker 1: a visiting writer.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, of course I remember that well.
Speaker 1: And then you so I used to So I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be sitting here if it wasn't I wouldn't be sitting
Speaker 1: here if it wasn't for you and you and a
Speaker 1: handful like like mister Heaton from Reese Buffer High School, right,
Speaker 1: And then you know, probably not because of him, but
Speaker 1: then largely because of you, because is to submit to
Speaker 1: magazines by just sending shit in the mail, which didn't
Speaker 1: work out. Well, no one has time to look at
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And you vouched for me and fronted
Speaker 1: my work at Outside magazine.
Speaker 2: Well, can I tell my version of this?
Speaker 1: Is it different than that?
Speaker 2: It's a little bit more, it's a little bit more nuanced.
Speaker 1: Oh okay.
Speaker 2: I taught at University of Montana for two weeks, so
Speaker 2: my contact with the students in the MFA program was
Speaker 2: not large. I was just there very briefly, and you
Speaker 2: submitted a piece, and I mean, this is just a
Speaker 2: personal thing of mine, but I think if you can
Speaker 2: avoid an MFA program, avoid it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you didn't tell that because you were talking to
Speaker 1: MFA people.
Speaker 2: Well no, and because they were paying me, so I
Speaker 2: was just doing what was asking me. But spiritually I'm
Speaker 2: not a big fan of MFA programs. So you gave
Speaker 2: me this piece and it was incredibly good. It was
Speaker 2: about the weather in Michigan, in northern Michigan, and I
Speaker 2: mean it was just it just blew me away, and
Speaker 2: I said, you quit, leave this program.
Speaker 1: You could make a living at this right now. Don't
Speaker 1: do this. Go and I.
Speaker 2: Could, I can, you know, talk to people, you could
Speaker 2: get pieces published. Right now, this is really good and
Speaker 2: you quite sensibly finished. I've given people so much bad
Speaker 2: advice over the years, but you you sensibly you finished.
Speaker 2: And then you wrote somewhat later. You wrote a piece
Speaker 2: about fishing in the outflow from a damt Michigan, where
Speaker 2: you went up into the tunnel coming out of the generators,
Speaker 2: sleeping there and sleeping. You had your boat hooked up
Speaker 2: to something along the side.
Speaker 1: I mean it was like there was such a concrete
Speaker 1: anchor driven into the roof and you could tie off
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 2: And what are you fishing for?
Speaker 1: White Because like you had to compete in that spot
Speaker 1: with old men that would get up so early. So
Speaker 1: we would leave the bar on occasion and take our
Speaker 1: boat and park it in the good spot in the dam.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, we'd we can sleep in sleeping bags.
Speaker 1: Two in the morning. Old men get up and we'd
Speaker 1: be in the tube. And so the fish would come up, steelhead,
Speaker 1: white fish would come up to feed on these insects.
Speaker 1: Because this it was a big there was a diversion
Speaker 1: in the river. They like manually like mechanically diverted a
Speaker 1: big chain of the suit the Saint Mary's River ran
Speaker 1: it all through town and then down a slope, and
Speaker 1: then it powered this big hydro electric dam and that
Speaker 1: thing that that that river would be so soulful insect
Speaker 1: life that when it flowed back into the Saint Mary's
Speaker 1: all this like larva and mayflies and whatever coming out
Speaker 1: of these turbans. And you could just sit there in
Speaker 1: turbans watch fish just sitting there feeding in these in
Speaker 1: the outwash of the turban. So my brother and his
Speaker 1: body who lived there before I moved up there, they
Speaker 1: hit an idea to just go in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night and get the good because you couldn't understand it.
Speaker 1: But certain turbans produced really well and they would get
Speaker 1: their turban by just going in the morning. So then
Speaker 1: old men would think they got it because they didn't know,
Speaker 1: and they'd pull up and realize you're sleeping in the thing.
Speaker 1: That it was great. It was great. I can't claim
Speaker 1: the discovery, but I wrote about the experience.
Speaker 2: So you gave that piece to D. Mcknamer, who taught
Speaker 2: it you of M and D said, this is a
Speaker 2: fabulous piece, and she sent it to me, and I
Speaker 2: sent it to Mary Turner and outside and I said,
Speaker 2: this guy is great and that was your first piece
Speaker 2: and outside, as I recall.
Speaker 1: Dude, that was I was happier that you know. You
Speaker 1: saved your message on my machine.
Speaker 2: You called me after they bought it, and it was
Speaker 2: the happiest message I've ever gotten on my machine.
Speaker 5: Him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I just talked to Mary Turner. I talked
Speaker 1: to Mary Turner. She will have the pace. She's gonna
Speaker 1: pay me four thousand dollars. It was such a huge
Speaker 1: amount of money. This is like I remember being hanging
Speaker 1: shower doors or something at the time I was doing
Speaker 1: cabinet was installing. I was installing, uh, I was installing
Speaker 1: closet shelving, and then working for in the tree service business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, oh my god, there's a lot of money.
Speaker 1: I remember being in the bar that night. I could
Speaker 1: have just died that night, be in the bar that night,
Speaker 1: and like certain friends were like happy. Certain friends were
Speaker 1: just so tore up, like they couldn't even look at me.
Speaker 1: They're so jealous. I had all this money. I bought
Speaker 1: a truck topper when it stayed several days at a
Speaker 1: hot spring.
Speaker 4: Your closet shelving. Was it just MDF, like prepainted MDF.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you said to drive over to Spokane and pick
Speaker 1: it up.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So for those of you who don't know, as
Speaker 4: far as your interior finishes go, this is not uh,
Speaker 4: this would be the bottom of the skilled label.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, because I installed the bottom. The
Speaker 1: bottom is wire. A good job for us was the
Speaker 1: melomine the wood bottom is wire melomane. Yeah, all right, Uh,
Speaker 1: if you remember back a few episodes we had on
Speaker 1: some anthropologists and archaeologists and we talked about a project
Speaker 1: in which me and some other folks from the Meat
Speaker 1: Eater crew went out and butchered a bison using stone tools.
Speaker 1: We used particularly Clovis points, Clovis projectile points, stone flakes,
Speaker 1: and we like gutted, skinned, butchered, boned out, and entire
Speaker 1: bison in collaboration with researchers from Kent State University, SMU,
Speaker 1: Southern Methodist University, and Oregon State University as all part
Speaker 1: of this broad or study about developing a toolkit, so
Speaker 1: to speak, for how to interpret what happened at ice
Speaker 1: age kill sites where all you have left is bone
Speaker 1: in stone. So we were using stone tools to butcher
Speaker 1: an animal, and then the research was to be able
Speaker 1: to like, look at what happened to these bones, what
Speaker 1: happened to these stones, and use it as clues, right
Speaker 1: to put together the puzzles of what was going on
Speaker 1: when hunters during the Ice Age were chopping up bison
Speaker 1: and wooly mammoths and whatnot. That is now an episode
Speaker 1: that we've put together for YouTube, So look for that
Speaker 1: real soon on the Meat Eater YouTube channel. Oh that
Speaker 1: this'll you'll appreciate this because this is from Ohio. Do
Speaker 1: you follow Ohio news a little bit? Yeah, you've reared
Speaker 1: the walleye cheating scan. Oh of course I couldn't know
Speaker 1: about that. My god. So well, I'll tell you something
Speaker 1: you might not know. Okay, did you see in the
Speaker 1: videos where he cut the walleyes open and got the wine?
Speaker 2: I haven't seen them.
Speaker 1: Well, we own the knife it.
Speaker 6: Was, yes, that is well, I think it's actually just pliers.
Speaker 7: Again, it's a leather man, but don't leatherman make Okay, it's.
Speaker 1: What we own. The implement used to cut the walleyes
Speaker 1: open to discover the lead weights. In addition to the
Speaker 1: shirt of the man wielding that weapon, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: valuable ship. Uh, we own that stuff. So that case
Speaker 1: is trickling along. We're into the news segment. They pleaded
Speaker 1: guilty to felony cheating and miss This is an interesting one.
Speaker 1: Misdemeanor animal ownership, presumably meaning they were owning the walleyes. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I would think that would be like over the limit
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 1: But misdemeanor animal ownership. So Jacob Runyon forty three and
Speaker 1: Chase Kaminski, who's in which of these fellers is an
Speaker 1: all that trouble for trying to go to the bowling
Speaker 1: alley with hard dollar counterfait.
Speaker 4: Kids exactly, which I think plays into the plea deal heavily.
Speaker 6: I think it's Chase.
Speaker 1: Chase, he got a bunch of trouble. He's got like
Speaker 1: violating a restraining order, bowling with counterfeit money.
Speaker 6: Here's encouraging his kid to do that. I mean, that's like,
Speaker 6: well the.
Speaker 3: Kid thought none of that stuff was supposed to influence
Speaker 3: this stuff.
Speaker 1: Well that's why I did. That's why I didn't want to, like,
Speaker 1: I don't think because there's a thing in America called
Speaker 1: it's not double jeopardy, it's called he is it habeas corpus.
Speaker 1: What is it that you can't bring up all the
Speaker 1: all the best stuff you did.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure the legal term, but that's what I'm
Speaker 3: getting dude.
Speaker 1: If I rewrote the Constitution, I would lead with fixing
Speaker 1: that you'd.
Speaker 4: Be like, well, this guy, Well it does go right
Speaker 4: when you establish somebody's character as a reliable witness. Like
Speaker 4: if if a prosecutor could get one of these fellows
Speaker 4: on the stand and be like, so you're saying that
Speaker 4: the fish just ate led weights and Walleye fill a's
Speaker 4: and you just caught the fish, right, Sure that that
Speaker 4: could happened. We can't prove it can't. But for you
Speaker 4: to be a reliable witness, what's your track record in
Speaker 4: lying and what's your right and so they could go back. Yes. Now,
Speaker 4: the why I think it does play in is just
Speaker 4: the fact that in order to pay your legal counsel
Speaker 4: and go through a long drawn out trial process of
Speaker 4: trying to defend yourself by saying, listen, although we cannot
Speaker 4: biologically prove that walleye eat lead weights and walleye fill
Speaker 4: as all the time.
Speaker 1: I could prove that they don't eat walleye fil as.
Speaker 4: So that's gonna cost a bunch of money. He's already
Speaker 4: on the hook. Bad pun for uh having to clear
Speaker 4: up his other legal troubles too, So I'm thinking he's
Speaker 4: just looking at the overall cost of fighting it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: keeping keeping his head above water another bad punch maybe,
Speaker 4: But yeah.
Speaker 1: They they pled guilty to these things. Okay, they were
Speaker 1: initially indicted on cheating, attempted grand theft, possession of criminal tools.
Speaker 1: Tells that mean illegal. I love illegal animal ownership. But
Speaker 1: when they appeared yesterday Inkoyahogakuyahoga, Cuyahoga County Court, both men
Speaker 1: pleaded guilty to two of those charges in exchange for
Speaker 1: the remaining charges being dropped. Now, Jason Fisher, who's been
Speaker 1: on this show, is glad they pleaded out. Fisher organized
Speaker 1: a tournament at which Running and Kaminski were caught and
Speaker 1: appeared in the I'm reading from our own reporting. I
Speaker 1: should point out to Jordan Siller's piece on the meater
Speaker 1: dot Com. Uh, this is the one time I'm not
Speaker 1: like guilty of not adequately sorting or sourcing where I'm
Speaker 1: getting something from, because Jordan's been on the damn show.
Speaker 1: So uh. Jason goes on to say it was nice
Speaker 1: to see they played guilty as opposed to no contest.
Speaker 1: They admitted to doing everything that the state said they did.
Speaker 1: It's good for the fishermen in the community as a
Speaker 1: whole to put this to bed. He points out this
Speaker 1: is an interesting perspective that Jason Fisher has. Jason Fisher
Speaker 1: says he's almost kind of glad they're not going to jail,
Speaker 1: because then taxpayers would have to pay for them to
Speaker 1: live in jail. He'd rather they just took their boat
Speaker 1: away and never let them do any walleye tournaments again,
Speaker 1: so he doesn't have to think of himself footing the
Speaker 1: bill to pay them to give them their food, which
Speaker 1: is an interesting perspective on prison time. Usually put people
Speaker 1: in prison because you want to stick it to them,
Speaker 1: but he wants to stick it to him by not
Speaker 1: putting them in prison.
Speaker 4: And let's be fair, they're doing a great job at
Speaker 4: sticking it to themselves.
Speaker 1: So yeah, because anyone up you'd think if you got
Speaker 1: caught cheating on a walleye tournament, you would not take
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars counterfeit bills to the bowling alley. I
Speaker 1: don't know, do you know what I mean? I wouldn't
Speaker 1: if I do something a little bit bad, I like
Speaker 1: play it cool for a while, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: You don't double down?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have a correction on a correction. Can you
Speaker 1: explain how we're at a point where there's a correction
Speaker 1: ont of correction?
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 7: So shortly after the podcast the Liberal recordded Trey, Yep, we're.
Speaker 1: Talking about it was a podcast called The Liberal Redneck Right.
Speaker 7: Trey wrote in that he did a little bit more
Speaker 7: digging and he determined that what he had said on
Speaker 7: air was incorrect.
Speaker 1: That he had said that the only thing going for
Speaker 1: his hometown was they held the wall the small mouth
Speaker 1: basks yep, world record, right, but then he said they
Speaker 1: got beat and even that was taken.
Speaker 6: From them, right.
Speaker 7: And so before it aired, Phil recorded a little correction and.
Speaker 6: You know, because we're going to get that Phil.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: He was just a quick little like, hey Phil here,
Speaker 5: Trey texted and said that you're a little correction back
Speaker 5: to this.
Speaker 1: You installed that in the episode, Yes, got here it
Speaker 1: real quick.
Speaker 5: Hey everyone, Phil here with a quick note. Immediately after
Speaker 5: the show, Trey did some research and found out that
Speaker 5: Selina and Dale hollow Lake still hold the record for
Speaker 5: the small mouth bass. According to him, he quote assumed
Speaker 5: the universe had taken that from us as well. My bad,
Speaker 5: Thanks Trey, and back to the show.
Speaker 1: So that what happened. Now we're in a situation where
Speaker 1: there was a correction on a correction because a gentleman
Speaker 1: wrote in who's this person?
Speaker 6: He lives nearby Kyle due name.
Speaker 1: Kyle writes in he has this to say. Mister Crowder
Speaker 1: was not incorrect in saying that the record was taken away.
Speaker 1: What he would have been incorrect in saying is that
Speaker 1: it was taken away from the lake. Right you're thinking yourself, what, well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you the record was removed from the individual,
Speaker 1: but the previous record, which would have been the record
Speaker 1: by default, was also caught in dale Hollow Lake. So
Speaker 1: even if the record had been permanently redacted, Dale Hollow
Speaker 1: would still hold the world small mouth record. Two of
Speaker 1: the top three. This is a hard sentence to understand.
Speaker 1: Two of the top oh two of the top three,
Speaker 1: and six of the top ten largest small mouth have damn,
Speaker 1: you know this person, Well, there's a reason like when
Speaker 1: you have Let me just tell this person, if you're listening,
Speaker 1: never start a sentence with a numeral, you always spell
Speaker 1: it out yeah started.
Speaker 6: A sentence up to eleven.
Speaker 1: Yea in some places will make you spell anything under
Speaker 1: ten every time. Two of the top three and six
Speaker 1: of the top ten largest small mouth caught have come
Speaker 1: from Dale Hollow, per Bass Bass Senior Editor Ken Duke.
Speaker 1: The current record, now confirmed to have been caught in
Speaker 1: Kentucky waters on the Kentucky and Tennessee shared water body
Speaker 1: that is Dale Hollow, was wrought with drama. Oh so
Speaker 1: this gets thicker.
Speaker 6: Yet this is what trail alluded to before.
Speaker 1: So Tennessee and Kentucky share this lake. The current record
Speaker 1: came out of Dale Hollow Lake, but out of the
Speaker 1: Kentucky waters. The fish, caught by David Hayes Litchfield, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: was weighed first on scales that were not certified. After
Speaker 1: being told this fish, if certified, would be the new
Speaker 1: world record, the fish was rushed to Cedar Hill Marina,
Speaker 1: which housed the closest set of certified scales. Six weeks
Speaker 1: after the fish had been confirmed, David Barlow, a guide
Speaker 1: on Dale Hollow, filed an affidavit stating that he had
Speaker 1: handled the fish, shoving multiple pieces of hardware and or
Speaker 1: weights into its gullet to increase the weight plot dickens,
Speaker 1: Why did he admit to that?
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Couldn't live with himself. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe they waterboarded them. The IGFA denounced the world record
Speaker 1: because of the affidavit. Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife
Speaker 1: Resources followed suit. Tennessee Wildlife and Resource Agency held on though,
Speaker 1: and in their investigation found that Barlow was not even
Speaker 1: at the marina on the day of the fish had
Speaker 1: been weighed, So he was lying about doing something bad.
Speaker 1: Hm about do something bad. That's when he puts his
Speaker 1: own personal integrity, like he's weighing in his head. What
Speaker 1: matters more my personal integrity or that son of a
Speaker 1: bitch having the bass record? Yeah, he's like, I'd rather
Speaker 1: have right, I'll forfeit personal integrity to have him not
Speaker 1: have the satisfaction of the bass record is how Barlow
Speaker 1: apparently according to this piece of journalism, so he hadn't
Speaker 1: been there. This A combinates this in combination with the
Speaker 1: measurements of this fish. The resulting estimated way of recorded
Speaker 1: measurements and the official way on the certified scales resulted
Speaker 1: in the record being reinstated by both IGFA in the
Speaker 1: Kentucky State Department. The fish now holds the IGFA World Record,
Speaker 1: the kdfw R State Record, and the TWR A State record.
Speaker 7: So the International Game and Fish so Siation and then
Speaker 7: Kentucky and Tennessee's Wildlife departments.
Speaker 1: If you're thinking yourself, by God, would I like to
Speaker 1: get a look at that fish? There's a replica of
Speaker 1: it at the Kabella's out Post store in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: If you want to pay your respects to the angler.
Speaker 1: The ramp where he launched that day has been memorialized
Speaker 1: as the David L. Hays bor Go. I love it.
Speaker 2: Any point did they say how big the fish was?
Speaker 1: You know that the story? Now that's called bad producing
Speaker 1: right there, Crenel, dig yourself.
Speaker 3: Out high highs.
Speaker 1: And let's just called twelve. That's a nice moment. That's
Speaker 1: bad because that go ahead.
Speaker 3: No, no, you if you've caught a bass that big,
Speaker 3: would you turn it into a levon fish sandwiches? Or
Speaker 3: do you you got any urge to have a world record?
Speaker 1: How kept it? How to kept it?
Speaker 3: Assuming it's legal to keep it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And then pound for pounds? Some people say it's
Speaker 1: the hardest, hardest fight in freshwater fish is the small
Speaker 1: mouth bass. That thing would have put up a tussle.
Speaker 4: Plus you're just awesome looking red eyes, tiger stripes.
Speaker 1: Way cooler and large mouse. Uh. We reported on I
Speaker 1: don't know if that counts. That might be over selling it.
Speaker 1: We talked about South Carolina is harvest the tag coyote
Speaker 1: program and win so South Carolina has previously discussed on
Speaker 1: this show is running a program right now to encourage
Speaker 1: the harvest of coyotes. I'll point out that our guests
Speaker 1: Ian Fraser had had a book one time called Coyote
Speaker 1: v acme Yes, in which you laid out the legal
Speaker 1: case that Wiley coyote would have against acme Yes, where
Speaker 1: he buys his stuff to kill road runner. Right. I
Speaker 1: mean it's.
Speaker 2: You know, it's product malfeasance. I mean, they're selling this guy,
Speaker 2: and they're selling it over and over.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one of those things everybody thinks about, but nobody
Speaker 4: took the time to write.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, and then he also wrote a thing
Speaker 1: I believe that you argued that if you really wanted
Speaker 1: to have a good relationship, you date your mother.
Speaker 2: Well, that was one of my very very early pieces
Speaker 2: when I was like twenty five years old.
Speaker 4: Does this fall under the bad advice category?
Speaker 2: It was advice I think taken by nobody, nobody I knew,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't My mother wasn't crazy about it either.
Speaker 1: But so South Carolina is running a program to encourage
Speaker 1: coyote harvest in order to, you know, in order to
Speaker 1: org straight on predator control in the interest of recovering
Speaker 1: some game species. They have been tagging kylets and cutting
Speaker 1: them loose, and if you get one of the kyotes
Speaker 1: that's tagged, you get a lifetime hunting license. And they
Speaker 1: thought through it enough to be that you could also
Speaker 1: is it confers out the word I'm looking for where
Speaker 1: you give.
Speaker 6: Something to sorry, maybe transfer.
Speaker 1: You transferred to somebody else, Meaning if I got one
Speaker 1: of these kyots, I could give it to my daughter
Speaker 1: who's who's ten, and then she's got a lifetime hunt license.
Speaker 1: A guy heard this and was talent wrote in to
Speaker 1: tell us how in South Dakota they used to tag
Speaker 1: pheasants and turn them out, and if you shot a
Speaker 1: tagged pheasant you'd be rewarded with Akabella's gift card. And
Speaker 1: he just wanted to let us know that he one
Speaker 1: time was looking at a breasted out pheasant in a
Speaker 1: ditch and realized that had the band on it.
Speaker 6: So whoever hunted it and.
Speaker 1: It is coworker took the band down and got a
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars gift card out of the ditch.
Speaker 4: Are you aware of the million dollar pheasant?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: No, so the same deal and this is a full
Speaker 4: tourism deal. Fesonomics in South Dakota is fascinating to me.
Speaker 4: The so they banded one hundred birds, released them. Thirty
Speaker 4: six birds were turned in, and of those one hundred birds,
Speaker 4: they had the insurance company randomly select one of those numbers,
Speaker 4: store it an electronic device in a safe somewhere, and
Speaker 4: then you know, if somebody turned in that magic number,
Speaker 4: they could win a million bucks.
Speaker 1: Really yep?
Speaker 6: Wow? Is that is that like the state's money?
Speaker 4: You know how these.
Speaker 7: Is?
Speaker 1: You?
Speaker 6: Because tourism dollars pony.
Speaker 4: Up a bunch of cash that is like a deposit
Speaker 4: eventually and you get it that the money comes from
Speaker 4: like this insurance payout scenario, as I understand.
Speaker 1: It, But did you think that's true?
Speaker 4: But I know it's true, But.
Speaker 3: Did anybody did anybody win the million.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure if anybody ever won the million.
Speaker 3: Because it kind of seems like they're gambling, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I wanted one hundred, it probably will never happen, you know,
Speaker 3: but you didn't. We don't know if anybody won, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but there were, you know, thirty six of the
Speaker 4: bands turned in, and of those thirty six, none of
Speaker 4: them were million dollar birds.
Speaker 1: So what makes a little bit of sense what you're
Speaker 1: talking about is I was at a fundraiser in Wyoming
Speaker 1: one time, and they were giving away a truck if
Speaker 1: you could roll a set of dice and get five
Speaker 1: of a kind, which isn't gonna happen. It's not gonna happen.
Speaker 4: Okay, maybe if you're playing Yazzi with your grandma, but
Speaker 4: not if you're playing Yazzi for your truck.
Speaker 1: So I was there and I was like m seeing.
Speaker 1: The fundraiser was a nonprofit fundraiser, and they had a
Speaker 1: guy from the insurance company down there, and the guy
Speaker 1: weighed all the dice. He came in and analyzed the
Speaker 1: dice and he measured out where you had to stand
Speaker 1: and where the dice had to wind up so that
Speaker 1: it had to be like a legit roll, and he
Speaker 1: was a supervising. He was like an insurance man supervisor,
Speaker 1: because no one's gonna roll it, right, So they had
Speaker 1: bought some sort of policy that on the what are
Speaker 1: the odds that you'd roll five of a kind? That'd
Speaker 1: be a quick internet search.
Speaker 5: If I can remember my sick high school probability.
Speaker 3: It's like a yachtzi roll, right, like five dice five
Speaker 3: of a kind.
Speaker 5: Is like a one in like like, and then there's
Speaker 5: like an exponential sort of addition you have to do.
Speaker 5: It's like five times five times five.
Speaker 1: We just let someone else do it on the computer.
Speaker 4: One in seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy six. So
Speaker 4: it doesn't sound that crazy. So you had no but
Speaker 4: it is better odds and drawn a sheep tag one
Speaker 4: in seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy six.
Speaker 1: Yeap. You had to first win a chance to roll
Speaker 1: the dice.
Speaker 4: Ooh, that makes it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So everybody's all excited about getting to be the
Speaker 1: dice roller. And then when you get to be the
Speaker 1: dice roll, you got a one in seven thousand somehow
Speaker 1: chance the rolling of win the thing. So they insured
Speaker 1: this somehow, and of course the guy, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just you know, Shake a Day in western bars
Speaker 4: is a big deal, and it's the same thing. It's
Speaker 4: like you they're fifty cents, you get a chance, whatever
Speaker 4: the pot is, and it used to be the pot
Speaker 4: of all these people losing fifty cents to the Shake
Speaker 4: a Day would get really high and then the state
Speaker 4: capt it for because it's gambling. So I think a
Speaker 4: legal pot is five hundred dollars or less or eight
Speaker 4: hundred dollars or less now in the state of Montane,
Speaker 4: I can't remember which. But while I was back in
Speaker 4: my bartending days, I had several people win Shake a
Speaker 4: Day pots, right, I mean it eventually it does hit.
Speaker 1: You can imagine that whoever wins that at a bar
Speaker 1: does not then just go leave and make a deposit.
Speaker 4: One little asshole kid did, Okay, So I bartended working
Speaker 4: Man's Bar, okay, and everybody when when a normal patron
Speaker 4: would win by around all the bartenders got a big tip,
Speaker 4: you know, and then everybody and then he'd buy a
Speaker 4: couple of rounds for everybody and then maybe take some
Speaker 4: winnings home. Yeah, if it was like a regular who
Speaker 4: happens to be like in their twenties. None of the
Speaker 4: money maver made at home, they went and.
Speaker 1: Paid rent with it. Well, they they drank it.
Speaker 4: They they forgot how the left.
Speaker 3: You're talking about the kid that left.
Speaker 4: But the kid one kid comes in watches some other
Speaker 4: people roll and it was like Halloween nights, something obnoxious
Speaker 4: and goes, oh, I want to do that, And he's
Speaker 4: like staring at the dice, and part of me, honest
Speaker 4: to God, wanted to be like, Okay, see you because
Speaker 4: I just knew how it was going to go down.
Speaker 4: And he scooped up the money and ran out of
Speaker 4: the bar, never to be seen again. It was not
Speaker 4: the way you're supposed to play the game.
Speaker 1: I like think he invested all that money. He's a
Speaker 1: very successful businessman.
Speaker 4: Now curing cancer.
Speaker 1: More feedback. This this is the last. This is the last,
Speaker 1: the last up top information we got to cover for today.
Speaker 1: So what was the name of the show where we
Speaker 1: talked about down in Florida, Oh, Spitting and Strutton. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you refer back to the episode Spitting and Strutton,
Speaker 1: we had a guest down who was explaining to me
Speaker 1: how someone he knows hates me because a person from
Speaker 1: the USGS said how Python eradication programs are not effective
Speaker 1: in Florida, and he hates me for not arguing with him. Okay,
Speaker 1: that individual, that former guest who spoke on Burmese Python
Speaker 1: the Burmese Python explosion in Florida wrote in, so I
Speaker 1: have a note to the hater. I didn't catch his name,
Speaker 1: but as someone shared, I was, I looked at his
Speaker 1: Instagram page. He has a Well, it doesn't matter. So
Speaker 1: Bob Reid wrote in to say, this is the researcher
Speaker 1: from the USGS who works on population ynamic issues with
Speaker 1: invasive Burmese pythons in South Florida. He said, sorry to
Speaker 1: hear that a dude in Florida hates you because I
Speaker 1: said there's no evidence that the Python control programs are
Speaker 1: having a significant effect on populations at landscape scales. He
Speaker 1: doesn't say, however, but you could. There's an implied However.
Speaker 1: He goes on to say, we just published a big
Speaker 1: scientific review of pythons in Florida. The conclusion from the
Speaker 1: removal program section remains the same, no available evidence of
Speaker 1: Python suppression across the landscape despite removal of over thirteen
Speaker 1: thousand pythons. He said it's hard for people to comprehend
Speaker 1: just how cryptic they are and therefore how many are
Speaker 1: out there for everyone you catch. As for panthers, he says, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: they hammer white tails. They did. We reported on this
Speaker 1: in the past, but I'm going to re talk about it.
Speaker 1: As for you folks in Florida who think that your
Speaker 1: deer hunting has gone shit due to panther recovery, if
Speaker 1: that is your if that is how you weight values, okay,
Speaker 1: if that is how you weight values, you are like
Speaker 1: if we look at just the isolate the question our
Speaker 1: this is that this is not that you that this
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with loving panthers, hating panthers whatever,
Speaker 1: Just like like an objective reality is panthers hammer white tails. Okay.
Speaker 1: They did some work. They did some known fate survival data,
Speaker 1: meaning they put two and forty one collars out on
Speaker 1: adult deer in the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge in
Speaker 1: Big Cyprus National Preserve in Florida from twenty twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty eighteen. They put collars on two hundred and
Speaker 1: forty one white tail deer, one hundred and fifty six
Speaker 1: females eighty five males. No follow along here. Okay. They
Speaker 1: then wait for there to be a mortality signal on
Speaker 1: the deer, and they immediately go out and investigate what
Speaker 1: happened to the deer. They had one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: four mortalities. Now, Sandy, take a guess. One hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty four mortalities. Take a guess at what number of
Speaker 1: those were killed by panthers? Do a lower one. I
Speaker 1: want I give you the answer. I wanted to be
Speaker 1: more astounded. I hate when people do that. Man, obviously
Speaker 1: that's my kids. Guess how much money I found million? No,
Speaker 1: out of seven dollars, forget that part, edit that out, Phil, Okay,
Speaker 1: out of one hundred and thirty four mortalities, one hundred
Speaker 1: and ten were predation. Now, people that go and say like, oh, hunters,
Speaker 1: get them all, not even listen to this. Predators, non
Speaker 1: human predators. I always like to point out that, like
Speaker 1: human predators are predators. Non human predators killed one hundred
Speaker 1: and ten out of one hundred and thirty four, eighty
Speaker 1: seven percent of that one hundred and ten were panthers. Okay,
Speaker 1: he says, a much greater rate than reported by studies
Speaker 1: conducted before the panther genetic restoration effort, which was initiated
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety five. One deer okay, one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty four mortalities. When we originally talked about this study,
Speaker 1: we originally talked about God's a long time ago. We
Speaker 1: talked about the study because we talked about the state
Speaker 1: of Florida trying to say to hunters, if you see
Speaker 1: a deer or the collar, don't shoot it because it
Speaker 1: has a collar, and don't not shoot it because it
Speaker 1: has a collar. Try to act normal because they're trying
Speaker 1: to find out what kills deer. So if you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's got a collar, shoot it, you're
Speaker 1: messing up the study. And if you say, like, if
Speaker 1: you're like me and you said, I'm not gonna shoot
Speaker 1: a deer with a collar because that means another person
Speaker 1: has touched it and it's soiled. I want to be
Speaker 1: the first person to touch it, you're messing up the study.
Speaker 1: So if people were true to that and really just
Speaker 1: shot deer, if they would have shot it, one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty four deer out on the landscape with collars.
Speaker 1: One was killed legally by a hunter, two were killed
Speaker 1: by poachers just gives you an insane like like, who
Speaker 1: is killing deer in Florida? It ain't people. And of
Speaker 1: the three killed by people, two of a poachers. It's
Speaker 1: it's very like isolated. It's it's it's it's like, uh,
Speaker 1: it's borderline, and it's beyond anecdotal. It's not anecdotal conclusive.
Speaker 1: It's just like, holy cow. So when you're in Florida,
Speaker 1: like I just was two weeks talking to people, and
Speaker 1: everyone you meet says the deer hunting went to ship
Speaker 1: because the panthers and everyone I talked to, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's gotta be more to the story. I can't really
Speaker 1: you know, damn.
Speaker 6: Mm hmm hmm.
Speaker 1: You bought all that cal ann.
Speaker 4: I mean, the the idea that people won't think that
Speaker 4: agencies have to know, right, like, oh, you know how
Speaker 4: many panthers are out there? You know how many pythons
Speaker 4: are out there. It's just it's nonsensical.
Speaker 1: Most people told me, I know, oh, but they don't.
Speaker 1: It was mostly I know, if you want to know,
Speaker 1: ask me, don't ask them. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So like the python bowl that Florida kind of promotes.
Speaker 4: I was talking to a biologist down there and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know where every single python is caught. It's on
Speaker 4: this two mile stretch of road that kicks off into
Speaker 4: like big Cypress.
Speaker 1: Yep, I was on that road.
Speaker 4: He's like, you know why they're not caught anywhere else
Speaker 4: because there's no roads. He's like, but do you really
Speaker 4: think that that's where all the pythons are is on
Speaker 4: that road?
Speaker 1: Yeah? You know.
Speaker 4: He's like, everything else is so miserable to go through
Speaker 4: for most of the year, if not all of the year.
Speaker 4: He's like, people just don't go in there. He takes
Speaker 4: a very special person who likes to suffer from the
Speaker 4: bugs and the heat and the humidity and the things
Speaker 4: that sting and stick yet to go in there and
Speaker 4: look for something. He's like, a lot of times when
Speaker 4: we have tagged pythons, we'll be standing right on top
Speaker 4: of the signal and it can take a frustration eatingly
Speaker 4: long time to find the snake that you're literally standing
Speaker 4: on that you have a beacon attached to, because they
Speaker 4: that's what they do.
Speaker 2: Did you ever see the picture of the python eating
Speaker 2: the deer, which is amazing. I mean the deer was
Speaker 2: I think bigger than the python.
Speaker 1: That was a crazy photo.
Speaker 2: It was really amazing.
Speaker 1: And there's that python ada gator and then gator clawed
Speaker 1: its way back out and killed it.
Speaker 4: Oh I love that. That's great.
Speaker 1: And when he got back, when he got back to
Speaker 1: his friends, like where you been, Like, don't even get
Speaker 1: me start.
Speaker 4: Don't take a nap.
Speaker 1: Let's start there on a recent episode. Now we're getting
Speaker 1: into our guest subject expertise. But do you remember your
Speaker 1: your Do you remember writing about your antipodies? Oh?
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, it was like the second piece I did.
Speaker 1: Somehow we were talking about digging down. I don't know
Speaker 1: how this even came up.
Speaker 2: You were talking about No, you were talking about animals
Speaker 2: found at the same latitude all the way around the
Speaker 2: circumpolar circumpolar like polar bears, and there's others.
Speaker 1: The blue muscle. Okay, there's a bunch of species globally
Speaker 1: that have what's called circumpolar distribution, meaning you take a
Speaker 1: latitude band, like the blue muscle is one. I know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the hell the latitude band is.
Speaker 1: But you take this latitude band and you can wrap
Speaker 1: that latitude band around the entire globe and they're always present.
Speaker 1: Polar bears have circumpolar distribution, but it's like the top
Speaker 1: of the ball, so it's zero to I don't know,
Speaker 1: above the Arctic. Yeah, like a very narrow band. It'd
Speaker 1: be like the top of it. It'd be like if
Speaker 1: if you were ahead, if you imagine the Earth is
Speaker 1: the head and the polar bears distribution as a really
Speaker 1: small yamica, that's like, yeah, that's him and other species
Speaker 1: have different bands and that I don't know why that
Speaker 1: got me talking about that got to be talked about
Speaker 1: the concept of the It's not a concept the term
Speaker 1: antipities antipoties, right, And I'm familiar with the antipodies because
Speaker 1: of the writing of our guest today, Ian Fraser, And
Speaker 1: I was saying that I think that you were saying
Speaker 1: that where you grew up in Ohio.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is where you made your mistake, Okay, go on.
Speaker 2: The thing is I had just started at the New
Speaker 2: Yorker magazine. I was writing for the Talk of the Town,
Speaker 2: and I got this idea, what is on the other
Speaker 2: side of the world from Manhattan, Oh, because I was
Speaker 2: doing it for that magazine, and so it's not that different.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it's four hundred miles different in
Speaker 2: the Indian Ocean from Ohio the antipodies of like Cleveland, Ohio,
Speaker 2: or the antipodies of Manhattan. But yeah, it was just
Speaker 2: that if you drilled straight down through you would come
Speaker 2: out in this really unfrequented part of the world. And
Speaker 2: it's it's like one hundred yards or something deep in
Speaker 2: this stuff called and you were talking about it like
Speaker 2: some kind of muck. It's called Glaba Jurina ooze O
Speaker 2: I at for the studio, and it's I would like
Speaker 2: a jar of it, to be honest. And they it's
Speaker 2: the like calcium residue from these tiny single you know,
Speaker 2: very very small uh, sea creatures that have shells and
Speaker 2: when they die, their shells fall to the bottom and
Speaker 2: they become this ooze. But so that's the antipody story,
Speaker 2: and it is in the Indian Ocean. But what But
Speaker 2: in your piece, weren't you talking about towns in America? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: because that was how it first came to me. Because Canton, Ohio,
Speaker 2: I had heard, was named after Canton, China.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And then there's Peak in Illinois, which supposedly is named
Speaker 2: after Peaking as it was called them.
Speaker 1: But not because that was their antipodies.
Speaker 2: I think maybe they thought it was their antipathy.
Speaker 3: You want to know what, uh, the antipity of this
Speaker 3: place is right here we're sitting in.
Speaker 1: How do you know? Can you just look it up now? Sure?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's Geode geodatos dot net. You can just type
Speaker 3: in search for your antipody.
Speaker 1: Really, God, the ruined everything.
Speaker 3: France in the southern French southern territories, an island like
Speaker 3: south of Africa.
Speaker 1: South. That's where we'd come out if we drill the
Speaker 1: hole straight down.
Speaker 3: That's what it says.
Speaker 1: All right, here's my next question. We don't need to
Speaker 1: spend much more time on the antipodies I have. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't believe how often your writing has been discussed on
Speaker 1: this show. I've talked a lot about I'm gonna remind
Speaker 1: you of something you wrote that I want you to
Speaker 1: tell the broader story. Okay, you were profiling I talked
Speaker 1: with this. You were profiling a steelhead guide.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I don't remember his name, but I remember it hit.
Speaker 1: People would jokingly call him Melanoma Joe. Yeah, he guided
Speaker 1: in h board shorts. I'm gonna like, let's go, there's
Speaker 1: a spoiler alert here, and then I want you to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about this. Unbeknownst to you while
Speaker 1: you're profiling him, he's contemplating suicide. And you're on a
Speaker 1: river trip with him, right, and one night you're like,
Speaker 1: you get up to take a leak or something, right,
Speaker 1: And you didn't know what to make of it at
Speaker 1: the times. You didn't know what you would later know.
Speaker 1: But you see him down at the river's edge in
Speaker 1: the dark at night, staring into the river, and you
Speaker 1: made some comment in your peace of reporting, you made
Speaker 1: some comment about you were getting sort of a preview
Speaker 1: right of him as.
Speaker 2: A ghost, right right, Yeah, it was like seeing a ghost.
Speaker 2: I mean I got up out of the tent and uh,
Speaker 2: he's standing there. And there was no reason for it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was way late. It was on the
Speaker 2: Dashoots River, nobody around, you know, for miles and miles
Speaker 2: and I and I see him standing there and I
Speaker 2: couldn't even believe it wasn't it couldn't even be. I
Speaker 2: thought it wasn't him, and I just looked and I
Speaker 2: kept looking at him, and it was like he then
Speaker 2: kind of came back into focus and saw me. And
Speaker 2: he said something like when you get old, you got
Speaker 2: to get up and pee all the time, right, And
Speaker 2: you know, he made some kind of nice comment like that,
Speaker 2: just a friendly comment, and it was like it was
Speaker 2: normal again. But then I got back in my sleeping
Speaker 2: bag and I thought, what was he doing out there?
Speaker 2: That was I mean, that was just weird that he
Speaker 2: was standing there. I then wrote the piece again, this
Speaker 2: was for Outside magazine. I wrote the piece. They sent
Speaker 2: a photographer. They took all the photos they needed for
Speaker 2: the piece.
Speaker 1: But what was the when you pitched a profile of
Speaker 1: a steelhead guide?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 1: What were you? Why were you interested in the guy?
Speaker 2: Because he was unbelievably good and he was really like
Speaker 2: I had gone to he Guided out of Sisters, Oregon,
Speaker 2: and I went to that guide shop and I said,
Speaker 2: I want to, you know, fish with this guy, and
Speaker 2: they said, you will never get a reservation. You know,
Speaker 2: this guy's booked up for five years. And then that
Speaker 2: made me think, well, this guy must be really good.
Speaker 2: And then a guy I know, a good writer named
Speaker 2: Ade Streep, fished with him and said, yeah, he's as
Speaker 2: good as you know. He's really great. You should do
Speaker 2: something about him.
Speaker 1: And so I then persisted and then I finally did.
Speaker 1: But that was it actually came by.
Speaker 2: Way of outside got it because they had heard about
Speaker 2: this guy too, So so then you know, I did
Speaker 2: set up this trip and it was like through three
Speaker 2: four day river trip and that you know, we caught
Speaker 2: finally we did catch steel It, and then they took
Speaker 2: these pictures. I signed off on the piece, was ready
Speaker 2: to go, and then he committed suicide, and so I
Speaker 2: went back.
Speaker 1: I can't remember how did he kill He kills if
Speaker 1: had a bolt launch, didn't he.
Speaker 2: No, he killed himself in his car. And I went
Speaker 2: to the place where he killed himself. And I mean,
Speaker 2: there are lonesome places out here, but that was one
Speaker 2: of the most lonesome. I mean in Oregon. Around there,
Speaker 2: it was a place where people had shot skeet and
Speaker 2: there were shotgun shells all over the place. It was
Speaker 2: just like this open patch out in the forest. And
Speaker 2: he had just parked there, and he had he had
Speaker 2: made a few little signs in the bushes around there.
Speaker 2: He had like left a pack of cigarettes in a bush,
Speaker 2: in the crotch of a branch in a bush. It
Speaker 2: was just it was a spooky thing and it was
Speaker 2: really sad, and I felt really bad for the guy
Speaker 2: because he was a brilliant guy.
Speaker 1: He was a great guy. Did he shoot himself? No,
Speaker 1: He hooked up a hose from the from the fly
Speaker 1: shout and do you remember that?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, tale, that's a great detail.
Speaker 2: He took a hose that the fly shop had used
Speaker 2: just I think maybe just to worsh down its parking
Speaker 2: lot or something, and he used that hose to hook
Speaker 2: the exhaust up to his window.
Speaker 4: And the fly shop is where he was booking all
Speaker 4: of it. So he kind of had this slow descent
Speaker 4: as far as from reputability, right right, So he had
Speaker 4: gotten crossways with with this fly shop for you know
Speaker 4: a number of I'm sure what, well, he very normal reason.
Speaker 2: One thing that happened to him was he was guiding
Speaker 2: clients that this fly shop really liked, and while he
Speaker 2: was guiding, his truck was repossessed.
Speaker 1: So suddenly gets there and his truck is gone.
Speaker 2: It's been repossessed. And the guy and the people he
Speaker 2: was guiding apparently didn't mind. They thought it was kind
Speaker 2: of interesting.
Speaker 3: But your so o, l if you're a guide without
Speaker 3: a truck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really really need to have the truck. But
Speaker 2: so then I then went back and reported the re
Speaker 2: reported the whole thing, and and rewrote the piece.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it's the Last Days of Steelhead.
Speaker 1: Joe.
Speaker 3: You can still read it outside online.
Speaker 1: What are some of the things you found What are
Speaker 1: some things you found out and looked at differently after
Speaker 1: you went back and worked on it more.
Speaker 2: Well, these conversations I'd had with him, like that moment
Speaker 2: when he was standing out there, I mean it was
Speaker 2: a brief exchange, but that fell into place because the
Speaker 2: guy was really thinking, you know, well, I mean I
Speaker 2: don't know exactly what he was thinking, but but it
Speaker 2: looked like he might have done it maybe even at
Speaker 2: that point or something. I don't know what he was thinking,
Speaker 2: but just that he was a really he was somebody
Speaker 2: like and you must have this happen in what you do,
Speaker 2: where you will become extremely close to somebody that you
Speaker 2: see only for a few days. Yeah, you know, like
Speaker 2: that happens when you're writing, Like you'll find out about somebody,
Speaker 2: you'll get really very sympathetic with them. And also or
Speaker 2: he maybe conflicted about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, Joe was.
Speaker 2: He really was not well prepared. You know, he had
Speaker 2: one spae rod on this trip, you know, and he
Speaker 2: wouldn't let me bring my fly rod. He said, you're
Speaker 2: gonna spay cast or nothing, And I had never spay
Speaker 2: cast before. And do you know how to spay cast?
Speaker 1: Does that?
Speaker 2: Do you?
Speaker 1: You?
Speaker 2: Mus?
Speaker 4: Yes? Yeah, I'm I'm uh.
Speaker 1: These guys are both fishing guys.
Speaker 4: Cat catch fish at all cost type of guys. So
Speaker 4: the spey rod doesn't see a whole lot of light
Speaker 4: these days.
Speaker 2: But well it's really I did learn it and he
Speaker 2: taught it to me, and that was that was amazing.
Speaker 2: I mean, his empathy and his ability to to like
Speaker 2: and and not to make you feel bad.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He was like if you have a history with coaches
Speaker 2: where coaches will tell you stuff and then you got
Speaker 2: off on the wrong foot with a coach and you
Speaker 2: just don't like to be told stuff anymore. He was
Speaker 2: very able to get past that, and he was just
Speaker 2: a kind and good man. But he was really depressive.
Speaker 2: And he was a descendant. He was a direct descendant
Speaker 2: of Thomas Jefferson for real. Yep, you checked it out.
Speaker 2: It was checked out. Yeah, outside would have checked that out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: His last name was Randolph, and the randolphs. I think
Speaker 2: Jefferson's daughter married a Randolph, so that I mean the
Speaker 2: Randolph is an old name from Virginia. So he.
Speaker 1: How this.
Speaker 4: There's so many parts of his story that are so
Speaker 4: applicable to conversations, got certain guides in shops for anybody
Speaker 4: who's ever done that or attempted to do that as
Speaker 4: a living. So I just I really found it crazy
Speaker 4: how you found him, because there's bits and pieces of
Speaker 4: his story that are hard to find in one person,
Speaker 4: but they're easily found in every circle in America. So
Speaker 4: he's a former athlete, wasn't a born and bred steelhead person,
Speaker 4: came out, learned it, acquires this huge client list you know,
Speaker 4: that are specifically requesting him, which is like a benchmark
Speaker 4: in the guide world. He hits this other super unattainable
Speaker 4: benchmark in the guiding world, which is he finds a
Speaker 4: super wealthy, very attractive client and marries her. Right, that's
Speaker 4: like a dream thing for guides.
Speaker 1: That that's what keeps you guys going in the morning.
Speaker 4: There's always that chance.
Speaker 1: It's a very common theme is really oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I'm happens or the guides wanted to happen.
Speaker 3: I know one instance where it happened.
Speaker 4: It's a story like it is, like I said, It's
Speaker 4: a story that is applicable in every guide circle in
Speaker 4: probably the world. But to find it all wrapped up
Speaker 4: in one person is like amazing.
Speaker 2: I had done a profile of another guide who guides
Speaker 2: out of stat Are. Yeah, he guides out of Staten
Speaker 2: Island and I fish. I haven't fished with him for
Speaker 2: a while, but we fish right in New York Harver
Speaker 2: sometimes and then we fish all along down the Jersey
Speaker 2: shore places that Bruce Springsteen has sung about and for
Speaker 2: bluefish and stripers. And I had already done that some
Speaker 2: years before, so I had already done a guide profile.
Speaker 2: But the thing is I as a kid, I fished
Speaker 2: by myself, and I was very much brought up fishing
Speaker 2: by myself. Effect I have fished from when I was
Speaker 2: a kid and did not need a license until I
Speaker 2: am an old man and do not need a license.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: And I came up as somebody fishing by himself, and
Speaker 2: when I had to fish with guides, it was a
Speaker 2: big adjustment because I didn't like because I was just
Speaker 2: old old or too old to go, you know. And
Speaker 2: plus plays like the to Shoots you have to have
Speaker 2: a guide basically. But but so I became very when
Speaker 2: I found a guide I really liked. It was a
Speaker 2: big It was a big deal.
Speaker 4: But what what if I got to finish the Okay,
Speaker 4: But this is a rise and fall story, so it
Speaker 4: also includes all these little bits and pieces again found
Speaker 4: that are ubiquitous in the guide community.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: So he's at the top of his game, and then
Speaker 4: he starts starts losing and in ways that are again
Speaker 4: very relatable in all the guide circles. Divorce, money, mismanagement,
Speaker 4: crossways with his guide shops, right, starts taking some illegal
Speaker 4: trips on the side. I think was part of it too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the thing that is a familiar story
Speaker 1: to you, absolutely to anybody who guides.
Speaker 2: He had a license to guide through the guide shop,
Speaker 2: through the tackle shop, and when they fired him, he
Speaker 2: did not have a guide.
Speaker 1: He did not have a license to guide.
Speaker 2: And so then he got a license to do float trips,
Speaker 2: but that wasn't the same, and so he was actually
Speaker 2: guiding with a float trip license, got it, and that
Speaker 2: was you know, and he got caught doing that and
Speaker 2: he was going to be going to trial and he
Speaker 2: would have lost his ability to guide in Oregon for
Speaker 2: five years.
Speaker 1: Or something like that.
Speaker 2: So he was really up against it.
Speaker 4: So when you did your trip, was he I think
Speaker 4: he was fishing guide?
Speaker 2: Uh no, wait a minute, Yes, I think he still
Speaker 2: was when we did our trip because I booked that
Speaker 2: through that shop. So yeah, I think he still want
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 4: The like the whole picture was like, this is like
Speaker 4: an under the table trip. It just had the feel
Speaker 4: of that to me because.
Speaker 1: He can't do that a writer, because you're going to
Speaker 1: get busted.
Speaker 4: He didn't think he cared.
Speaker 1: Oh he didn't tell me. I don't think I had
Speaker 1: no inkling of that at the time.
Speaker 3: If you booked it through a shot, it wasn't it
Speaker 3: wasn't under the table.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure it was before he got fired. I mean,
Speaker 2: probably the people from the shop are listening and they'll
Speaker 2: they'll clear this up.
Speaker 4: But that's why all those points made it just like
Speaker 4: so's exiting thing that happens.
Speaker 2: Well, I feel like there should be somebody who specializes
Speaker 2: in mental health of guides because it is an enormously
Speaker 2: difficult profession and and it's I mean, I sympathize with
Speaker 2: it because I'm a freelance writer and it's just up
Speaker 2: and down and are you going to get paid or
Speaker 2: you know what, how how is it going to go?
Speaker 4: And also you know the emotional cost of finding ways
Speaker 4: to connect with every right, you got a new client
Speaker 4: every day, rightly, right, and you got to make those
Speaker 4: connections in order to have just good basic communications.
Speaker 3: And the beauty of having the same clients year after year.
Speaker 3: You don't got it like you figure them out after
Speaker 3: a couple of years of gutting the same people over
Speaker 3: and over again.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, Brody got to where you didn't really
Speaker 1: take new clients.
Speaker 4: No, no, which again is like one of those things
Speaker 4: that people on the I'm up trying to get to.
Speaker 1: That's part of the narrative. Yeah, Yanni. One day, so
Speaker 1: we have another colleague, Giannis, who also guided, and one
Speaker 1: day he and I were sitting in we just come
Speaker 1: out of McDonald's drive through here in town or no,
Speaker 1: I can't remember what the hell were you doing. Either way,
Speaker 1: Here's a guideboat drives by, like obviously a guideboat kid
Speaker 1: pulling a you know, drift boat. And I said, oh, Yanni,
Speaker 1: that probably brings back memories and makes you a little
Speaker 1: jealous seeing that guy heading out And Yanni said, no,
Speaker 1: heading out fish the same damn river with some guy
Speaker 1: you don't feel like talking to, not at all.
Speaker 2: But did you ever read ninety five in the Shade, Dwayne?
Speaker 1: If I did, he's been on the show, though, has
Speaker 1: he really?
Speaker 2: But that is a really good book about guiding. I
Speaker 2: mean it's a kind of almost a melodrama in a way,
Speaker 2: but it's a it's a wonderful book.
Speaker 4: I got back from Florida hanging out with a bunch
Speaker 4: of uh South Florida fishing guides, uh huh. And it's
Speaker 4: just it's so funny, like when I first read that
Speaker 4: book with the the politics of guiding in a new
Speaker 4: spot or guiding for new people.
Speaker 3: And especially in South Florida, man, like you don't mess
Speaker 3: with other people, and.
Speaker 4: It's nonsensical to me, Like I was having this this
Speaker 4: debate on like the how territorial people are and all
Speaker 4: the things like it. It's just just wild. But yeah,
Speaker 4: they go ahead.
Speaker 3: That's I know guys down there that will not let
Speaker 3: their clients like turn on their phone because they don't
Speaker 3: want to mark in spots.
Speaker 1: Sure you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and having that spot get out and then
Speaker 3: another guide's there the next day. You know, it's like
Speaker 3: it's cutthroat.
Speaker 1: When you were working on travels in Siberia. You want
Speaker 1: to spend it a bunch of time with I don't
Speaker 1: know what what what do you?
Speaker 2: So I remember talking to you about this at the time.
Speaker 1: Like you spent some days out on hunting trips.
Speaker 2: I spent days with chuk Chi guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell about that experience. I went. You told a
Speaker 1: really funny story to me about a seal hunting trip
Speaker 1: you went on.
Speaker 2: I don't remember the funny part of it. Unfortunately, it
Speaker 2: was funny to me, Okay, it was miserable for you.
Speaker 2: I went like like, yeah, layout like who who those
Speaker 2: people are and.
Speaker 1: What you were doing there?
Speaker 2: And well, I went to Nome a bunch of times
Speaker 2: with the intention of flying over to Chakotka, which is
Speaker 2: the part of the Russian Far East that is across
Speaker 2: from Alaska. It's across the Bearing Strait, and Gnome has
Speaker 2: really terrible weather. So I was up in Nome maybe
Speaker 2: five times for every time I actually flew when the
Speaker 2: Maybe not five, but it was a bunch of times,
Speaker 2: and finally I got to go over.
Speaker 1: I didn't do it. I gotta I mess something up
Speaker 1: because I didn't. He set the book up a little
Speaker 1: bit too. I mean like you essentially, I mean you
Speaker 1: spent seven years working traveling there on and off, and essentially,
Speaker 1: like you've you've learned Russian to work on the book.
Speaker 1: I learned some Russian.
Speaker 2: I didn't I didn't get real good at it, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I learned some Russian. I drove with two guides, not
Speaker 2: angling guides, obviously, from Saint Petersburg to Vladivostar, and that
Speaker 2: trip was like fifteen thousand kilometers. We took side trips
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, but that was sort of the
Speaker 2: center part of the book was that across country trip.
Speaker 2: But I also took other smaller trips. And one of
Speaker 2: the smaller trips that I took was from Alaska to Chikotka.
Speaker 1: I need to throw in one more tidbit before you go.
Speaker 1: I know I told you to go, but now I'm
Speaker 1: wish i'd done it in different orders. Two really funny things.
Speaker 1: I mean, the book is good, place is heart wrenching,
Speaker 1: but there's two parts, probably more funny parts in the book.
Speaker 1: But you observe one day that you observe a car
Speaker 1: coming down the road and it's towing another car. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and instead of and what they're using for a toastrap?
Speaker 1: Is a safety belt a seat belt? And you had
Speaker 1: the line and you said, and all the time I
Speaker 1: spent in Russia, that was the only time I ever
Speaker 1: saw a seat belt used for anything? When was this?
Speaker 3: Was this after the wall came down?
Speaker 1: Or yeah?
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I drove across Siberia in two thousand and one, Oh okay,
Speaker 2: and I got to the Pacific after seven weeks of
Speaker 2: travel on September eleventh, two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: Oh okay.
Speaker 2: So I'm there and I have a I had a
Speaker 2: satellite phone, and I have a message, just a text
Speaker 2: message from my wife saying we are okay. And I
Speaker 2: hadn't heard anything about it. I didn't know anything about it,
Speaker 2: so then I found out. But just to go back
Speaker 2: to talking about those because I remember telling you about this,
Speaker 2: and you're being fascinated by these guys. They were the
Speaker 2: best hunters I had ever seen, these chuck Chi guys,
Speaker 2: and I had hunted with.
Speaker 1: You by that time. But are they so? They are
Speaker 1: they have to like linguistically related to the Inuit cultures
Speaker 1: in the far north right.
Speaker 2: It's I mean linguistically they are connected. Some people in
Speaker 2: that part of Russia have relatives like on Saint Lawrence Island.
Speaker 2: And if you saw, if you remember from the news,
Speaker 2: not that long ago they started Russia started going out
Speaker 2: and recruiting soldiers in these really far flung villages because
Speaker 2: they didn't want to be recruiting in Petersburg and Moscow
Speaker 2: and getting people all upset. And so they went out
Speaker 2: and all these people, these you know, who were living
Speaker 2: out in the far parts of Russia, they were feeling
Speaker 2: the pressure of recruiting. And these two guys took a
Speaker 2: little aluminum boat and went from Chakoka, I think, to
Speaker 2: Saint Lawrence Island and then to Alaska. But they got
Speaker 2: out of it by just going across the strait. And
Speaker 2: that happens. I mean, people do cross the strait sometimes
Speaker 2: they come from Chakoka to Saint Lawrence Island just to
Speaker 2: see relatives.
Speaker 1: They do that in the summer.
Speaker 2: And so I was up there and we just went
Speaker 2: out to a salmon camp, which is a really cool
Speaker 2: place where you just hang around your nets, fill up
Speaker 2: with salmon, you pull in the salmon.
Speaker 1: You know, but not commercial is commercial Native people who
Speaker 1: can do that.
Speaker 2: I guess they have special permission to do it, but
Speaker 2: they take a lot of salmon, and they put them
Speaker 2: in big tubs and salt them down. And the main
Speaker 2: thing that they need is salt, and the salt back
Speaker 2: then was coming from the US. But all the stuff
Speaker 2: that they had they had Evan rude motors, you know,
Speaker 2: they had American rifles, they had American nets, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean that was where they got their supplies. But
Speaker 2: they they build little cairns of rocks on places where
Speaker 2: a seal is likely to be swimming around, and they
Speaker 2: just sit there for a really long time with their
Speaker 2: guns propped on these cairns, and they wait for a
Speaker 2: seal to pop up, and they shoot the seal in
Speaker 2: the head. That's the part that you can see. And
Speaker 2: I was in a boat with a guy who hit
Speaker 2: a seal in the head with no scope. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just you know what is it just open sites
Speaker 2: or god? And it was just phenomenal shot at some
Speaker 2: distance and the water is really blue and it's extremely.
Speaker 1: Cold, so you don't want to fall out of the boat.
Speaker 2: You're gonna die. But just to see that seal hit
Speaker 2: and then this big plume of blood in that blue water,
Speaker 2: and he brought the seal in and butchered it. Out
Speaker 2: and his wife made the seal liver with angel hair pasta,
Speaker 2: and it was excellent. It was an excellent dinner.
Speaker 1: Uh did uh. This is another funny thing you talk
Speaker 1: about that I don't know if you ever figured it out.
Speaker 1: This actually is funny. Where when when you told me
Speaker 1: the story about when I said it was a funny
Speaker 1: story about the day you went is you really wanted
Speaker 1: You were out and you were talking about how bad
Speaker 1: you wanted to go home. Oh yeah, and you're molting
Speaker 1: along in a boat and you talked about all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, this duck flies overhead and spins around and
Speaker 1: lands in some bay, and all you wanted to do
Speaker 1: is get back. And you saw him all watch that duck,
Speaker 1: and you're like, please, no, please, no please. And also
Speaker 1: he said that boat turns. It was.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, really it was an eider duck and
Speaker 2: eider down is real valuable.
Speaker 1: So I was like, you're like headed back, but you're like.
Speaker 2: They would stay out all day and and they and
Speaker 2: they spoke good Russian. I mean they chukchi, but they
Speaker 2: spoke Russian. And they had been educated in Petersburg. The
Speaker 2: guy had been head of his reindeer brigade. Under communism,
Speaker 2: you know, they had like different reindeer collectives, and so
Speaker 2: he was really well educated. He knew a lot of
Speaker 2: poetry by heart, and you know, but he was he
Speaker 2: was like America, and he was like an American native guy.
Speaker 2: And at that time, the native people there that I
Speaker 2: saw were doing better than the Russian Russians because they
Speaker 2: just had stopped for a long period there, had stopped
Speaker 2: doing trips to Russia, you know, they had stopped to
Speaker 2: the Far East, they had stopped supplying those really remote cities.
Speaker 2: So all I could have bought an apartment there for
Speaker 2: a thousand bucks, a beautiful duplex in Providenia, Russia.
Speaker 1: Really. Yeah, what I was saying about a funny thing,
Speaker 1: A funny story you do tell in that book is
Speaker 1: you're camping somewhere alongside of a road and you're in
Speaker 1: your tent and you and you wake up at night
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of drunk guys of somehow like also
Speaker 1: pulled out at the turnout. You're like, can't the turnout right?
Speaker 1: And you know enough Russian to know that they're debating
Speaker 1: doing something to your tent, but you don't recognize that.
Speaker 1: But you didn't recognize the verb.
Speaker 2: The noun is palatka, and theyre and and the accusative
Speaker 2: that is it was obviously in the accusative case in
Speaker 2: the So they were saying, you know, what are we
Speaker 2: going to do to the palatka? This I could keep hearing,
Speaker 2: and when guys saying, don't do anything to it, kind
Speaker 2: of that, don't come on, We're just gonna do blah
Speaker 2: blah blah, and I assumed they were going to tear
Speaker 2: it down and just leave me lying there and sleeping.
Speaker 2: And my guides, of course, were gone, because my guides
Speaker 2: managed to meet women all the way across the Russian Federation,
Speaker 2: and they would they would disappear in the evening and
Speaker 2: I'd just be there and there'd be drunks driving around,
Speaker 2: and I would go to sleep, and they would bring
Speaker 2: women for me to meet, and they would say, oh,
Speaker 2: we told them that we had an American and she's
Speaker 2: an elementary school teacher. And I would get out, I'd
Speaker 2: be in my pajamas, I'd talk briefly, and I would
Speaker 2: go back to bed.
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't drink in Russia, and I didn't
Speaker 1: do anything else like that, Because are you totally not
Speaker 1: drinking right now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't had a drink at sixteen years.
Speaker 1: I remember when you were quitting drinking. Yeah, I remember
Speaker 1: you telling me you're sick of the hangovers. I was
Speaker 1: sick of the hangovers, and I was just it was
Speaker 1: just I drunk enough. I was tired of it and
Speaker 1: never got back into it, never got back in. No
Speaker 1: do you feel like an urge or no? No anymore?
Speaker 1: Do you drink na stuff? I do?
Speaker 2: And I get made people make fun of me for it. Sure,
Speaker 2: I mean ordering a non alcoholic beer in Russia's like, ah,
Speaker 2: like you have to be in see you know? So
Speaker 2: uh yeah, but it was I mean I felt I
Speaker 2: needed my wits about me there, so I didn't. I
Speaker 2: didn't drink. And people had told me. My Russian friends
Speaker 2: had said, you know, oh you'll be killed. They'll you know,
Speaker 2: this is a terrible idea, and I think it was
Speaker 2: less dangerous than they had made it out to be.
Speaker 1: But I didn't really.
Speaker 2: I was blind with kind of romantic notions of what
Speaker 2: Russia was like and what Siberia was like, So I didn't,
Speaker 2: you know, like the recent thing that has happened, I mean,
Speaker 2: the invasion, It was just to me, I thought Putin
Speaker 2: was just funny. You know, he's not just funny. He's
Speaker 2: not funny, but I thought he was funny. I mean,
Speaker 2: you can go online find him singing. I found my
Speaker 2: thrill on Blueberry Hill.
Speaker 1: Fishing big old yellow perch and no shirt on fishing
Speaker 1: northern and northerns.
Speaker 2: He's into northerns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you and Bible to do that book?
Speaker 2: Now, man, No, I mean I might be able to
Speaker 2: go there, but I don't think I would. Who knows
Speaker 2: getting back, getting out? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't try it.
Speaker 4: Now, it does sound like a lot of that romanticism
Speaker 4: did line up for you though, once you made it
Speaker 4: out there.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean I.
Speaker 2: Went to places that a famous traveler from my family's
Speaker 2: town where my family lived in Ohio, Norwalk, Ohio, this
Speaker 2: guy named George Kennon went there in the eighteen eighties.
Speaker 2: After the assassination of the Tzar in eighteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: there were all these people shipped to Siberia in order
Speaker 2: for this clamp down to be effective, and it wasn't
Speaker 2: really effective, but they shipped a lot of people there,
Speaker 2: and George Kennan went there to see how those people
Speaker 2: were doing that had been exiled, and the Tsars were
Speaker 2: disorganized and liberal or whatever enough that they did still
Speaker 2: permit that kind of travel. But Kennon had a minder,
Speaker 2: some kind of police minder with him a lot of
Speaker 2: the time. But he actually, I think maybe he was
Speaker 2: pretty much on his own because they they liked Kennon
Speaker 2: and he did this amazing book about Siberia called Siberia
Speaker 2: and the Prison Exile System, which Anton Chekhov read and
Speaker 2: made his own trip. So this guy from Ohio inspired
Speaker 2: one of the greatest writers of all time, Anton Chekhov,
Speaker 2: to go to Sakalen Island, So, which is I think
Speaker 2: south of Kamchaka, but it's another island.
Speaker 1: Like that. Were we recording when I said something about
Speaker 1: don't make don't make Stalin jokes or was that pre recording?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Hey, if I know, Phil, we were
Speaker 1: recording earlier. I made a comment and you looked, you
Speaker 1: looked when I said that that you had that. There
Speaker 1: was a part of the book where you argue about
Speaker 1: that Stalin, like how people make Stalin references. And you
Speaker 1: get into the towards the end of your book Travels
Speaker 1: in Siberia, you get into the Gulag system, right, just
Speaker 1: all the I mean, I don't know if you still
Speaker 1: remember some of the staffs. I mean, just like the
Speaker 1: horrible atrocities.
Speaker 2: It was a horrible Yeah, they were death cams. I
Speaker 2: mean they there were people that there were degrees of horribleness.
Speaker 2: But the people that mined gold in Magadan, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean Russia, nobody was honoring anything. Russia had to
Speaker 2: buy stuff with gold because they had already defaulted on
Speaker 2: their debts when the Soviets took over, and the gold
Speaker 2: mining operation in Magadan was a murderous thing.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah. I mean millions of people killed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean from the beginning of the Russian from
Speaker 2: the Russian Revolution through like the end of the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: I mean people estimate sixty million or seventy million. That
Speaker 2: includes you know, like what we lost four hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy five thousand people in World War Two, which is
Speaker 2: a real serious thing. If you think about, like in
Speaker 2: terms of now what our population is, that would be
Speaker 2: a serious.
Speaker 1: The US lost that the US lost that for reference,
Speaker 1: fifty seven thousand in Vietnam, right and.
Speaker 2: Right, four hundred and seventy I think it was like
Speaker 2: four hundred and seventy five thousand in the Second World War,
Speaker 2: it was under I believe under five hundred thousand. The
Speaker 2: Russians lost twenty million in that war, so that when
Speaker 2: I would say to Russians, well, we helped you, you know,
Speaker 2: like we held their coats while they fought the Nazis,
Speaker 2: you know, like I mean, they don't think. They don't
Speaker 2: take it seriously. Even though we did supply a lot
Speaker 2: of their air force.
Speaker 1: A lot of their air force.
Speaker 2: Was made in Detroit and then shipped up here to
Speaker 2: Helena where they painted the Soviet markings on the planes
Speaker 2: and then flown up to Alaska and pilots from Alaska
Speaker 2: would fly it over to the Russian pilots who would
Speaker 2: pick it up on the other side and fly it
Speaker 2: back to the to the Western Front. So we did participate,
Speaker 2: hate very much in helping them, but they don't.
Speaker 1: They didn't. The people I talked to were very unimpressed
Speaker 1: by that. Uh, there's a piece you wrote. I don't
Speaker 1: know you wrote this long time ago, but I've always
Speaker 1: loved it. Is Uh, you were living up in did
Speaker 1: you live You live in big Fork, Montana. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: when you were living in big Fork, Montana, you liked
Speaker 1: you liked the amount of reporting in the local newspapers
Speaker 1: that would occur about bears. Yeah, and you wrote a
Speaker 1: piece of You wrote a piece of reporting about how
Speaker 1: bears are reported on. Yeah. It was called bear News. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I remember in it you made the observation about
Speaker 1: when a bear committed a senseless killing. Yeah, that grizzly
Speaker 1: committed a senseless killing over human. Did you ever read
Speaker 1: that book Night of the Grizzlies. Oh? Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: the same guy that wrote Give a Boy a Gun
Speaker 1: about Claude Dallas. Right. I know his name is Olsen
Speaker 1: and he wrote sports jack Olson, Jack Olsen. Yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: he did. I think Jack Olsen, I'm not I'm not familiar.
Speaker 1: So do you remember the story well enough to tell
Speaker 1: me it's to night? Well you may remember it better.
Speaker 2: But two bears after they're not having been any bear
Speaker 2: attacks for years, on the same night, in very different,
Speaker 2: widely separated parts of the park, uh killed a camper,
Speaker 2: Each bear killed a camp.
Speaker 1: Two bears killed two women and no one had been
Speaker 1: killed by a bear park and having the same damn night.
Speaker 2: Right, it was this, Yeah, it was a very It's
Speaker 2: My wife and I were married in Big four and
Speaker 2: we gave that book as a gift to our wedding guests,
Speaker 2: and we didn't really we just been thinking, Wow, this
Speaker 2: is a good book, and we didn't think it was
Speaker 2: kind of under productive in terms of Montana tourism.
Speaker 5: But but.
Speaker 4: The Todd Strasser is your give a boy a gun.
Speaker 1: Oh, Jack Olsen didn't write a book about Claude Dallas. Nothing,
Speaker 1: I'm ce in here.
Speaker 4: But uh, tourism plays heavily in wildlife news in the
Speaker 4: Greater Glacier National Park white fish tourist ecosystem up there.
Speaker 4: So yes, the bear news is a is a real thing,
Speaker 4: and there's a lot of suppressed news from a lot
Speaker 4: of a lot of folks inside the park, as I
Speaker 4: understand it.
Speaker 1: So walk me through that part of your life when
Speaker 1: you So you came to Big Fork and how did
Speaker 1: you get going on the idea that you would write
Speaker 1: a book about the American Great planes and travel all
Speaker 1: over the Great Plains and live in a van.
Speaker 2: Well, I came to I left New York City and
Speaker 2: moved out, and I didn't know anybody in Montana. I
Speaker 2: didn't know one person, and I moved up to near Kallispell.
Speaker 2: For what reason, I just wanted to change everything.
Speaker 1: When was this.
Speaker 2: That was like nineteen eighty two, and so I just
Speaker 2: made a huge change and I just moved out. And
Speaker 2: I wanted to I wanted to just do something bigger,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know quite what to do. I was
Speaker 2: writing short pieces, and they're very addictive short pieces, because
Speaker 2: you know, you get an idea, you do it, you
Speaker 2: get paid, You then get another idea, you do it.
Speaker 2: And so I wanted to try to do something bigger.
Speaker 1: So I moved Never like at that time, you were
Speaker 1: focused pretty much. I mean you were focused on humor pieces.
Speaker 2: I wrote a lot of humor pieces back then, and
Speaker 2: also I wrote for the Talk of the Town of
Speaker 2: the New Yorker, and I had done a few long pieces.
Speaker 2: I did a profile of a guy who had a
Speaker 2: tackle shop in New York City, and that guy was
Speaker 2: an old time colleague of Dan Bailey of you know Missoid.
Speaker 1: Bailey's Dan Bailey is that living Ston or Missoula?
Speaker 2: That's Livingstone, right, Okay? Yeah, And and so that guy
Speaker 2: was coming out here a lot, The guy that had
Speaker 2: that tackle shop would come out here and fish. And
Speaker 2: so he had told me a bunch of stuff about
Speaker 2: places to go. So I just came out here. The
Speaker 2: reason I went up to Big Fok, I'm not even sure.
Speaker 2: I kind of just liked it up there, and it
Speaker 2: seemed like there were too many writers down.
Speaker 3: Did people think you were doing a living was filled up?
Speaker 1: Did you did people think you were doing a bad
Speaker 1: like a career mistake to leave the city?
Speaker 2: Mystified people, mystified people. The editor of the New Yorker,
Speaker 2: William Shawn, was this genius editor, and he was this phobic,
Speaker 2: you know, he was afraid of a lot of different things.
Speaker 2: And I told him I was moving to Northwest Montana,
Speaker 2: and he said, uh, do they have stores there? And
Speaker 2: I said something like, well, it might be kind of
Speaker 2: hard to buy, specially items for me. I and and
Speaker 2: I realized he meant, can you get food there?
Speaker 1: I mean it was this.
Speaker 2: He was from Chicago. He should have known a little bit,
Speaker 2: but it was seen as an eccentric thing to do.
Speaker 2: And I came out and I tried to write a novel,
Speaker 2: and uh uh it was not a good novel.
Speaker 1: And then when I when, then, do you care sharing
Speaker 1: with novels about the novel? I wrote a good bit
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: The novel was about my town in Ohio and when
Speaker 2: the town, which is a suburban, mostly white town, and
Speaker 2: when the town decided to have or when the school
Speaker 2: that I went to, which was a private school, decided
Speaker 2: to expand its student body and bring in black students
Speaker 2: from Cleveland, and that kind of cultural moment, which was interesting,
Speaker 2: and uh, you know, it was very revealing of what
Speaker 2: my town was like. You know, you don't even know
Speaker 2: that you're in a mono culture, you know, when you're
Speaker 2: in some small towns in the Midwest. I mean, ah,
Speaker 2: most small towns. But anyway, it was about that, and
Speaker 2: it just did the I don't have the fiction gift,
Speaker 2: I'm afraid.
Speaker 1: So what is your You mentioned Big Four because there
Speaker 1: weren't what you've mentioned A lot of places like you're
Speaker 1: you don't like to live by writers. I like to
Speaker 1: just one time wrote off to me. You dismissed the
Speaker 1: whole state of Maine, which I take ship for today
Speaker 1: because it was a foolish thing to do. I know
Speaker 1: you were you were like, I can't go to Maine.
Speaker 1: I know writers there.
Speaker 3: I'm going to ask you if you if you brush
Speaker 3: shoulders with any montete like mcguaine. I never I never
Speaker 3: did because you didn't want to be around them.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I will go public on record that
Speaker 2: I admired Tom mcguain beyond anything. I mean, I find
Speaker 2: so many things that I'm thinking are things that mcgwaine wrote,
Speaker 2: or just ways of putting things.
Speaker 1: And I know all his work.
Speaker 2: And I used to be able to recite Rancho Deluxe,
Speaker 2: like word for word. I would go into a bar
Speaker 2: and say I could tell you the entire movie Rancho Deluxe,
Speaker 2: and people would bet me that I couldn't, and they
Speaker 2: would give up after about maybe seven minutes.
Speaker 4: You're like, I need seventy nine minutes.
Speaker 1: You know. We we went and we didn't really use
Speaker 1: it for anything, but we went and set up that
Speaker 1: exact at Chico Hotsprings. Oh yeah, that's we wouldn't set
Speaker 1: up that exact scene one day, like everybody's sitting in
Speaker 1: the place cowboy hats. We had fur hats on. But yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: But but so, you know, I kind of felt that
Speaker 2: that that part of my Tanna was already pretty pretty crowded.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know much about Big Fork. I didn't
Speaker 2: know anything about it, and uh, well.
Speaker 4: That is Edward Abbey wrote, Out of the North Fork
Speaker 4: there spitting distance from Big Fork.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that I didn't know about it.
Speaker 1: That's gone. Well. The thing is, if you know where
Speaker 1: every writer has been, you'll end up going nowhere because
Speaker 1: exactly exactly, but they do get around.
Speaker 2: But then when that novel kind of didn't work out
Speaker 2: in a big way, uh, I called up, uh, mister Seawan,
Speaker 2: the New York editor, and I said, because I had
Speaker 2: driven around out there just for fun. Yeah, I would
Speaker 2: just go over the divide and go out and just
Speaker 2: drive all the way like to Williston or you know,
Speaker 2: uh a lot in Montana. And I had taken my
Speaker 2: friend Jamaicican Caid out there and that was really fun
Speaker 2: because she's West Indian and had never really seen the
Speaker 2: American West. And we would go into places and you know,
Speaker 2: she's taller than I am, and I'm not that tall,
Speaker 2: but she's like an inch or so taller and.
Speaker 1: And people would just wow, you know, because that was.
Speaker 2: Uncommon then to see like a black woman in a
Speaker 2: in like cutback Montana, you know. And so why had
Speaker 2: had a lot of interesting things, you know, driving around,
Speaker 2: And I told when this novel didn't work out, I
Speaker 2: decided I would do a book about the great planes
Speaker 2: and I called up mister Shawn, and I said, I
Speaker 2: want to write about the great Planes, and I would
Speaker 2: do it as if I was profiling a person, you know,
Speaker 2: like this is a place, but I would profile it
Speaker 2: as a person. And I said, and I explained some
Speaker 2: of the stuff that would be in it, you know,
Speaker 2: and like the buffalo or you know, the battle of
Speaker 2: the Little Big Horn or stuff like that. And Sean listened.
Speaker 2: He didn't say anything. And then when I had finished
Speaker 2: my explanation, he said, what is be funny?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe fifty million buffalo wiped out. I don't know, is
Speaker 2: that funny? But so then I ended up doing it,
Speaker 2: But that took me a long time. It took me
Speaker 2: years and years to do, did it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I drove around out there for summer summers. After summers,
Speaker 2: I got married out there. I wouldn't have stayed if
Speaker 2: I hadn't gotten married.
Speaker 3: Did you fish flat Head Lake while you're living in
Speaker 3: Big Port?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I did.
Speaker 2: It was cocainy.
Speaker 1: I didn't do very good. Have you fished it? Oh?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 3: The cocaine are all gone now.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They're trying to eradicate the lake trout now too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What are they What are you fishing for up there?
Speaker 4: Then lake trout are trying to.
Speaker 3: Eradicate because there's a native species of char called the
Speaker 3: bull trout. Oh wow, they're trying. They're trying to lower
Speaker 3: the lake trout population and bring bring the bull trout back.
Speaker 4: And the cocony story up there, Like when you were there,
Speaker 4: that was a huge tourism story too. They'd spawn all
Speaker 4: the way up to McDonald Lake and then all the
Speaker 4: you know, all the all the pretty animals would come in.
Speaker 4: It was a great time for tourists. And the bull
Speaker 4: trout would get real fat off coconey too. And then
Speaker 4: there was a theory that because of the the water
Speaker 4: part of the water column that the coconey occupied and
Speaker 4: the part of the water column that lake trout if
Speaker 4: they introduced them would occupy.
Speaker 1: Well, keep back. I got confused.
Speaker 4: This is a fisheries management introduction.
Speaker 1: All this was baked into the inn like it was
Speaker 1: an intentional introduction. Yes, based on this assumption.
Speaker 4: Yes, I see. And then you have these miicy shrimp
Speaker 4: that feed everything, and how they would come up with
Speaker 4: the warmth of the day that all these species would
Speaker 4: just magically like intermingle.
Speaker 1: It was a choreographed dance exactly exactly like I said,
Speaker 1: but no one was going to the dance.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's just a fun aside for you. But anyway,
Speaker 4: no more coconin and flathead.
Speaker 2: Well that was something where people would come up and
Speaker 2: they'd bring their own like canneries. You know, they'd have
Speaker 2: motor homes and they can you know, it was like
Speaker 2: a unit of exchange among people, like cans of cocainey salmon,
Speaker 2: and I mean it was a huge deal. But I
Speaker 2: didn't know that they were no longer in the lake.
Speaker 2: That's amazing, ye. And that up there where they would
Speaker 2: spawn the eagles that were up there, and it was
Speaker 2: just amazing birds, I mean snowy owls and stuff. It
Speaker 2: was really incredible. I didn't see a snowy owl up there.
Speaker 1: But tell folks about your the piece you wrote about
Speaker 1: wild hogs. Yeah, I really.
Speaker 2: Enjoyed watching your wild hog episode. Yeah, I just I
Speaker 2: did a piece about wild hogs because, uh, they really
Speaker 2: are like there's no other animal really like them. You
Speaker 2: know that every man's hand is against them, like their
Speaker 2: places with no seasons, I think almost every place you
Speaker 2: can hunt them all year round.
Speaker 1: Here's an interesting twist that this might have happened after
Speaker 1: you wrote your piece about wild hogs. Is there an
Speaker 1: interesting twists now where in order to prevent the spread
Speaker 1: of wild hogs, they are banning the hunting of wild hogs.
Speaker 1: And one might be like, well, it doesn't make any sense,
Speaker 1: But what they have found is the spread of wild
Speaker 1: hogs and a lot of places is facilitated by hog
Speaker 1: hunters who bring hogs in. You're saying, because they're like, man,
Speaker 1: we had such a good time hunting hogs down in
Speaker 1: Texas that we brought a few home, right, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna cut them loose in our neck of the woods
Speaker 1: and then we'll be able to hunt hogs. And so Missouri, Arkansas,
Speaker 1: other areas when they look at the spread, they were
Speaker 1: looking and they're like, man, a leading spread vector is
Speaker 1: aspiring hog hunters. Yeah. Yeah, so to make it that
Speaker 1: you can't hunt hogs, just to get out ahead of it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there is no from the hunting world, any
Speaker 1: conversation about humane treatment, any conversation about ethics, anything like that.
Speaker 1: It goes out the window. Hogs r yeah, because they're
Speaker 1: they're just a reviled right, I mean, you get into
Speaker 1: it they're reviled and a hated critter man.
Speaker 2: But I think you know that makes the there's something
Speaker 2: kind of holy about that, you know, like that you're
Speaker 2: just a total outlaw, you know. I mean, And and
Speaker 2: when you see the stuff they do, it's just incredible.
Speaker 2: Like the way they will root or the way they
Speaker 2: will they get up next to phone poles that have
Speaker 2: been painted with creoso and they want to get that
Speaker 2: creoso tar all over them, you know. And then you'll
Speaker 2: see these things. They're just all tari and God.
Speaker 1: I mean, they'll there's just.
Speaker 2: The damage that they do. The you know, you'll find
Speaker 2: these little items about how they tear up, the way
Speaker 2: they tear up people's yards, and the way they tear
Speaker 2: up you know, peanut fields, and it's just and the
Speaker 2: only thing that's limiting them. I mean, we don't I think,
Speaker 2: have them in New York State yet, or I don't
Speaker 2: think we have them in New Jersey. But there's not
Speaker 2: much that limits them. I mean, they can go anywhere
Speaker 2: pretty much if there's got to be water.
Speaker 1: I think, according to the USDA, is at thirty four states.
Speaker 1: According to the USDA, I think I think it was
Speaker 1: thirty nine when I did it. It was thirty four,
Speaker 1: and I think it went up since then.
Speaker 4: But I was working with the farmer in Arkansas earlier
Speaker 4: this year and they started with traps on their farm
Speaker 4: that would just be triggered by the pigs walking in,
Speaker 4: and they kind of came to the conclusion that this
Speaker 4: wasn't working well enough because they'd also have cameras set
Speaker 4: up around the the traps and they'd see like one
Speaker 4: pigould get caught and the fifteen others would squeal around
Speaker 4: the thing and run away. So they custom built some
Speaker 4: remotely operated traps, so now a pig can't set it
Speaker 4: off by itself, but the camera goes on and you
Speaker 4: can remotely trigger the trap. He told me they did
Speaker 4: a family trip to the Bahamas one time and he
Speaker 4: caught twenty pigs in a trap.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 7: So the.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the goal now is to get the whole sounder
Speaker 4: of pigs in then remotely operate the trap. And they're
Speaker 4: they're catching tons of pigs throughout the year. But it
Speaker 4: is zero fun, there is no It is just more
Speaker 4: work for this family and it takes like three four
Speaker 4: hours to go in, dispatch all the pigs, remove the pigs,
Speaker 4: clean everything up, and and it ends up just all
Speaker 4: being gator food in the in the bayou, which is
Speaker 4: a horrible way to meet that they recognize. But at
Speaker 4: the same time they're like, and tomorrow or next week,
Speaker 4: we'll do it all over again. It just doesn't stop.
Speaker 4: But they're estimating their crop damage somewhere in the neighborhood
Speaker 4: of three hundred thousand dollars annually.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And it's just he's like, there's a lot of people
Speaker 4: who recreationally hunt pigs, like and because of that, we're
Speaker 4: doing this like it and it does there's no end
Speaker 4: in sight.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a wild thing.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I talked to a guy from a organization that studies
Speaker 2: wildlife disease vectors and he traps hogs and tests them,
Speaker 2: and he said that he if he had hogs in
Speaker 2: an enclosure, he said that, he said he was very
Speaker 2: careful never to look over the enclosure down at the hogs.
Speaker 2: And I said, why why don't you want to look
Speaker 2: over And he said, because they'll jump up and bite
Speaker 2: you in the face. So these are pretty fierce, fierce animals.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're just they're so smart too, they're just
Speaker 2: and they're so they're just so cynical. They have a
Speaker 2: very cynical attitude. I think I saw a contest down
Speaker 2: in Georgia where they were using hog you know, dogs
Speaker 2: that ran pigs, and it was it was like a
Speaker 2: rodeo where they had these to see which pigs could
Speaker 2: dogs could beay a hog the fastest and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: And the dogs are all wearing kevlar and you know,
Speaker 2: and they had these big pins of wild pigs that
Speaker 2: they had caught for this event, and the wild pigs
Speaker 2: are just lying back in They're just like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were just it was not too bothered by
Speaker 3: the process.
Speaker 2: This is going to happen, so what something else will happen.
Speaker 2: They just they had their eyelids are always at half mass.
Speaker 2: You know, They're just like, yeah, okay, I mean this
Speaker 2: is going to happen to me. They didn't like, they
Speaker 2: just weren't.
Speaker 1: Involved at all.
Speaker 2: They were ready to go along.
Speaker 1: And all the time the dogs was the dogs were
Speaker 1: just like mannic on speed. That hog piece. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you remember the details on it, but in
Speaker 1: the end of the hog piece, you gotten looking at
Speaker 1: hog distribution maps.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I got in trouble for that A little bit,
Speaker 2: did you. Well, I mean it really pissed off the
Speaker 2: people that I had reported done the reporting with.
Speaker 1: You got to look in at hog well, let's keep
Speaker 1: this a political as possible, Okay, You got to look
Speaker 1: in at hog distribution maps, and you got to looking
Speaker 1: at voting maps. Right. I matched the two, and you
Speaker 1: find you overlaid them and found that you can map
Speaker 1: partisan politics in the American South and other places all
Speaker 1: over the country based on even in the areas of California,
Speaker 1: and you can look at hog density and know where
Speaker 1: they're going to tip on a presidential election.
Speaker 2: If a county has hogs, it is a rip county.
Speaker 1: That got you in trouble.
Speaker 2: Well, the guy, the hog expert, who I worked with,
Speaker 2: I think didn't didn't like the article. And he was
Speaker 2: a unbelievable guy. He was a really good scientist and
Speaker 2: able to like, you know, if a hog was bade up,
Speaker 2: he could throw the hog. He'd get behind the hog
Speaker 2: and like pull its legs out from under it and
Speaker 2: put it on the ground, you know, just like himself.
Speaker 1: Going out a hog.
Speaker 2: I mean that seems some of these hogs are really big.
Speaker 2: And that was back in the days of hog Zilla.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a wild hog.
Speaker 2: It was a tame He was a farm raised hog.
Speaker 2: And hog Zelda, which was a soal.
Speaker 1: In terms of writing about people who get mad at you,
Speaker 1: do you want to know the advice you gave.
Speaker 2: Me, God, Steve, I don't remember this, Okay.
Speaker 1: If you include a line about how good looking they are,
Speaker 1: if you say someone's ruggedly handsome, yeah, you can say
Speaker 1: any want them bomb the never get mad at you.
Speaker 2: They will only get so mad. And it's really true.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like the compliment sandwich.
Speaker 1: Right. You're like, if you got to say something bad
Speaker 1: about someone you hung out with while you're working on
Speaker 1: your piece, just talk about that they're good looking. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like when they read it, they'll they'll they'll they'll
Speaker 1: come away feel better about the piece. Right, It's it's
Speaker 1: quite true.
Speaker 4: It's like pulling the hind legs out of a hog, right,
Speaker 4: all right, they can't. They're still got two legs on
Speaker 4: the ground. All right, you only got it half wrong.
Speaker 1: Right. There's another piece of advice you gave me, and
Speaker 1: I've repeated this one hundred times. In book publishing, you
Speaker 1: need to write a generally generally speaking, people will write
Speaker 1: a proposal, and they will sell this proposal protials where
Speaker 1: I'm going with this. They will sell this proposal to
Speaker 1: a publisher who will then give you an advance on royalties.
Speaker 1: So you write, I'm going to write a book about
Speaker 1: wild picks, okay, And you're like, it a look like this,
Speaker 1: here's my perspective outline, here's like one of the chapters
Speaker 1: might look like here's my whole plan. Publisher will say
Speaker 1: that sounds like a phenomenal idea, a great idea. We'll
Speaker 1: give you ex will give you ten dollars for the book.
Speaker 1: You will give you three. Now, we'll give you three
Speaker 1: after you write it, and we'll give you four on
Speaker 1: the day that it publishes. And then that's like a
Speaker 1: brief outline of how a book publishing goes. And I
Speaker 1: told you that I was working on a proposal the
Speaker 1: first proposal I wrote, and you told me to the
Speaker 1: effect of, man if I ever wrote a book proposal
Speaker 1: and they bought that book, the first thing I do
Speaker 1: is throw away the proposal.
Speaker 2: I was down on the puzzles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I quote that all the time.
Speaker 2: Well that that you didn't follow that advice, So I
Speaker 2: don't think.
Speaker 1: All right, proposals all damn time.
Speaker 2: Your first book wasn't your first book, The Escoffier book
Speaker 2: was that the thing I wrote. Don't you kind of
Speaker 2: see all of this is coming from that book?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, but all of everything comes from everything, man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a stopping point.
Speaker 2: It was a really I mean, because you're you're finding
Speaker 2: stuff to eat in the outdoors throughout that book.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember you even got pigeon eggs from like an
Speaker 2: air conditioning unit.
Speaker 1: Some We're talking about that the other night because I
Speaker 1: had a buddy of mine I did. I had a
Speaker 1: buddy mine ohere for dinner or so when I you know,
Speaker 1: I talk about leaving finishing school and going to the
Speaker 1: Great Lakes, right, and I wanted to write about the
Speaker 1: Great Lakes, and I kind of lost the thread of
Speaker 1: it and missed being out west real bad and hadn't
Speaker 1: even really moved out where I was living, and went
Speaker 1: back and that's when I got started on Scavenger's Guide
Speaker 1: to Oak Cuisine. Right. I was living in Missoula at
Speaker 1: the time. And the other night, my buddy Dave was
Speaker 1: over and my buddy Dave was remembering about when I
Speaker 1: was going to collect pigeons under the Higgins Street bridge,
Speaker 1: and we had gotten hollered at by some policemen down
Speaker 1: there for having an extension ladder under the bridge. Okay,
Speaker 1: so Dave was reminiscent about he had kids, and he
Speaker 1: was talking the other night about how he didn't want
Speaker 1: to go back with me because he didn't want to
Speaker 1: get in trouble having kids. So we're just talking about collecting,
Speaker 1: that's all, uh huh okay. But we developed a strategy.
Speaker 1: Pigeons would around that town. They liked to build nests
Speaker 1: between air conditioning units and buildings. Yeah, there's like a
Speaker 1: little the air conditioning units are set out six to
Speaker 1: eight inches and they like to get there. So we
Speaker 1: made a blocker with a pizza box and a stick,
Speaker 1: and we made a landing net type thing where you
Speaker 1: could put a blocker on one side, a landing net
Speaker 1: on the other side, and then bang on the air
Speaker 1: conditioning unit and the pigeons would go into the net
Speaker 1: and then we would I would keep these pigeons in
Speaker 1: my apartment trying to get the eggs from them. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to raise my own squab, which was Scofia
Speaker 1: has thirty four squab preparations. I think I even gave
Speaker 1: you the words squab.
Speaker 2: Might that when we went in that hunting trip in
Speaker 2: the Missouri breaks, Yep, And there were all those pigeons
Speaker 2: up there in those bluffs and we go hunting for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I said that I had that I had
Speaker 1: eaten those. I had eaten them, and they were called squab,
Speaker 1: you know, baby pigeons. Yeah, which is a far cry
Speaker 1: from adult from an adult pigeon, from in a culinary
Speaker 1: from a culinary standpoint, totally different colored flesh, totally different
Speaker 1: eating experience. So I'd reared, you know, through a lot
Speaker 1: of attempts, eventually reared my own squab, which became a
Speaker 1: big part of that book. Did you eat him?
Speaker 3: Do you name him?
Speaker 1: Some of them? Remember having one a little red? He
Speaker 1: had a little red. He had a little red zip
Speaker 1: strip around his ankle. What are you working on now?
Speaker 1: What have you been working on lately? I just finished
Speaker 1: a book about the bronx. Oh really, yep? Is there
Speaker 1: any fishing in it? You also got to talk about
Speaker 1: your book, The Fish's Eye.
Speaker 2: Okay, The Fish's Eye is a book exclusively Why I.
Speaker 1: Read the book about the bronx, but first time about
Speaker 1: the Fish's Eye.
Speaker 2: The Fish's Eye is just a bunch of different pieces
Speaker 2: that I did over many years about fishing, and uh,
Speaker 2: some of it it's all over the place. Some of
Speaker 2: it is out here, some of it is in uh
Speaker 2: I like the Yellowstone or uh, A.
Speaker 1: Lot of it is.
Speaker 2: It's mostly fly fishing. And I'm kind of more a
Speaker 2: match the hatch type of person. You know, I don't
Speaker 2: do I haven't fished with bait in a long time. Uh,
Speaker 2: And I haven't And I don't really spin fish very
Speaker 2: much anymore. I fish for shad, but I use you know,
Speaker 2: weighted fly line and leaders. You know, I fly fish
Speaker 2: for shad.
Speaker 1: And so official John McPhee, he's still alive. I do.
Speaker 2: Yes, John's alive.
Speaker 1: Yes. We talked about that reason, didn't.
Speaker 6: We mm hmm, And I said I was sure he
Speaker 6: was alive.
Speaker 1: John is a great fisherman and he's ninety two ninety two. Well,
Speaker 1: you see how I thought he might not be alive.
Speaker 1: Remember that radio show used to have that game called
Speaker 1: dead or Alive, and you call you'd like a listener
Speaker 1: call in to play, and they'd given name and the
Speaker 1: only point of the game is you had to know
Speaker 1: if they were, you had to guess they were dead
Speaker 1: or alive. Listen, I'm not trying to hack on John, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm as is a lot of time, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of years. Most people don't do that, I know. And
Speaker 1: he's forgets me. You could forgive me for thinking that maybe,
Speaker 1: like the unit ipe, I forgive you for maybe the
Speaker 1: inevitable overcame him. John is gonna be around for a
Speaker 1: long time. He is Uh.
Speaker 2: He outfishes. I mean he outfished me the last time
Speaker 2: I fished.
Speaker 1: Still fishes. Oh my god.
Speaker 2: He's a really good fish.
Speaker 3: Does a lot of fishing and coming into the country
Speaker 3: he does.
Speaker 2: He and then he's got the whole book about American shad.
Speaker 2: He is the best shad fisherman. I mean, he studied them.
Speaker 2: He knows everything about him.
Speaker 1: Was it you were John McPhee who equated cleaning an
Speaker 1: American shad to fixing a watch? That was him? I
Speaker 1: think that.
Speaker 2: Well, you know the thing about American shad. If you
Speaker 2: do not fill ay it, uh, and you're eating it
Speaker 2: when you're hungry, it's.
Speaker 1: Going to be a nightmare.
Speaker 2: It's very frustrating because you're taking little pieces of me
Speaker 2: eat out from all this complicated bone structure. It's like
Speaker 2: a Walleye pipe bone structure sort of. You know, they
Speaker 2: have two sets of risk and it's very very intricate.
Speaker 2: I might have said taken like taking a watch apart.
Speaker 2: It's very hard to take. But people that can filly
Speaker 2: shed are much in demand at this time of year.
Speaker 1: Do you fish as much Nile as you used to do? I? No,
Speaker 1: and that's been a problem.
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 2: By way of that, I can say, you know, I
Speaker 2: do a lot of exploring on foot. I do a
Speaker 2: lot of walking and and that has kind of replaced
Speaker 2: in a way, it replaced fishing for me. I got
Speaker 2: very much into taking plastic bags out of trees, remember that,
Speaker 2: and I with a buddy I invented a bag snagging
Speaker 2: device for which we got a patent, and that.
Speaker 1: Was our thing.
Speaker 3: I need one of those because there's a couple.
Speaker 1: And one. I read what he wrote about plastic shopping bags,
Speaker 1: eggs and trees. Once you start looking, oh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a new evil you need to be aware of. Is
Speaker 1: birthday balloons? Birthday balloon There is not a place you
Speaker 1: could go to the wildest likenting elk up in the mountains.
Speaker 3: There's one land, there's.
Speaker 1: No place you can go anymore.
Speaker 2: Well, you were talking about a birthday balloon land the
Speaker 2: Burmese pythons, and I went way out in all those
Speaker 2: places where there are no roads when I did a
Speaker 2: piece about Burmese pythons for Smithsonian. Yeah, and we're out there.
Speaker 2: There's no vehicle traffic out there.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 2: And the only trash you see out there is birthday balloons,
Speaker 2: nop and other types of balloons. But yeah, those are everywhere.
Speaker 2: But that I got very much into finding, you know, places,
Speaker 2: and they're all over the city. They used to be
Speaker 2: less so now. And going with this bag snider, we
Speaker 2: could reach up fairly high and take bags out and
Speaker 2: that was a hunter gatherer kind of thrill, especially getting
Speaker 2: a bag from a really high tree. We had tensions
Speaker 2: that we could.
Speaker 4: Put on the bowl trophy trophy bag.
Speaker 1: Oh man.
Speaker 2: We had once we kept stuff that we took out,
Speaker 2: you know, like we took a lawn chair out from
Speaker 2: down by. After the big floods of the Mississippi floods,
Speaker 2: we went to Saint Genevieve, Missouri, and there was stuff
Speaker 2: in trees that have floated there that didn't have to
Speaker 2: be carried by the wind and the stuff that floated
Speaker 2: and drive. There were like small rooms up in trees,
Speaker 2: you know, and this was because the water was so deep.
Speaker 2: And uh so we took you know, like tractor tires
Speaker 2: and all kinds of huge stuff, lots of items of clothing.
Speaker 2: It used to be that you took a lot of
Speaker 2: cassette tape out of trees, which is elaciously difficult to
Speaker 2: get out. And now you don't anymore because people don't
Speaker 2: have cassettes anymore. So in Jersey they just banned plastic
Speaker 2: bags right for shopping. Yeah, and that really reduces it.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: In Ireland they they call bags and trees witches nickers,
Speaker 2: and after a long period of having these bags and trees,
Speaker 2: they outlawed them, and they don't have bags and trees anymore.
Speaker 2: I am told so man.
Speaker 1: So that's more what I got into, rather than I
Speaker 1: still do fish.
Speaker 2: I fish in the Delaware. I fish for small mouth.
Speaker 2: The thought of an eleven pounds small mouth is staggering.
Speaker 1: Six, No, eleven, that's real common.
Speaker 3: They got some big ones in the Susquehanna. You're not
Speaker 3: far from that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't fished the Susquehanna.
Speaker 1: That's good. Yeah. Wow. So did you write a proposal
Speaker 1: for your Bronx book?
Speaker 2: I explained it.
Speaker 1: I didn't write a proposal, but so so, like I
Speaker 1: want to be clear, I'm turning in an explanation of
Speaker 1: the book both I was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was down on proposals. I thought that they
Speaker 2: got you thinking already. Is sometimes when you read a book,
Speaker 2: the first page is the proposal. You know, like I
Speaker 2: see the guys already thinking in these terms.
Speaker 1: I want you to.
Speaker 2: I want to think more fluidly about something. But this
Speaker 2: the Bronx is the only part of New York City
Speaker 2: that is the continent. New York City is an archipelago.
Speaker 2: So you have Manhattan, you have Staten Island, and you
Speaker 2: have Long Island, which is Queens and Brooklyn, and then
Speaker 2: there are a lot of other islands around there. And
Speaker 2: the Bronx is the continent. And that's where, in fact,
Speaker 2: America is sort of you know, from a geographic point
Speaker 2: of view, that's where America begins.
Speaker 7: And the.
Speaker 2: Something in I think it was the piece you did
Speaker 2: about that guy who raises white or who has white
Speaker 2: tails on his farm in Wisconsin in the Driftless area,
Speaker 2: which is beautiful country.
Speaker 1: I need to point out he does not raise them.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: Sorry, he doesn't raise them. I don't mean to say
Speaker 2: that he assists.
Speaker 1: He'll assists in their existence through land.
Speaker 2: Right, But I think it was he who said that
Speaker 2: he was interested in how a place affects the people
Speaker 2: in it, and how the people in a place affect
Speaker 2: the place. And to me, that's what I'm trying, what
Speaker 2: I have tried to do with the Bronx, that it's
Speaker 2: a human geography. And this was a place that was
Speaker 2: beat on mercilessly during the era of our country after
Speaker 2: World War Two, when we built highways everywhere, so they
Speaker 2: just flattened the Bronx with highways and tore down lots
Speaker 2: of neighborhoods and the Bronx kind of was reeling and burned,
Speaker 2: and it was famous for burning when it was, you know,
Speaker 2: on Howard Cosell and the it was in a World
Speaker 2: Series game and the Goodyear blimp had a picture of
Speaker 2: Yankee Stadium and then it kind of panned a little
Speaker 2: bit to one side and there was a burning building
Speaker 2: and Howard Cosell said, the Bronx is burning.
Speaker 1: Supposed that's what that came wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that era, you know, thousands of thousands of
Speaker 2: buildings burned in the Bronx and from Arson. It was
Speaker 2: not so much arson as that you had very old
Speaker 2: buildings and you had the baby boom, and you had
Speaker 2: a lot of kids living there, and kids were just
Speaker 2: beating on the buildings. You couldn't and it was redline.
Speaker 2: So all that place was redline. You couldn't get Red
Speaker 2: line means you can't get a loan to fix the building.
Speaker 2: You can't get a loan.
Speaker 1: Condemned.
Speaker 2: It's not exactly condemned, it's just like a warning to
Speaker 2: potential lenders that this is according to the government, you
Speaker 2: can't uh, this is a dangerous place to lend, and
Speaker 2: you cannot get insurance in this place. And so the
Speaker 2: buildings were just sitting there and they didn't get fixed up,
Speaker 2: and it was just a whole bunch of factors came together.
Speaker 2: But sort of part of the plot of my book
Speaker 2: is that as that happened, kids in the Bronx in
Speaker 2: their teens invented hip hop, and hip hop was invented
Speaker 2: in the Bronx, and that story of how it was
Speaker 2: invented and who invented it and the people who did
Speaker 2: it is just to me, it was just really fascinating.
Speaker 2: So to me, the Bronx is a place in between,
Speaker 2: and that the in betweenness of a place can get
Speaker 2: it really torn up and over overrunning away and people.
Speaker 2: You don't you don't pay attention to the place that
Speaker 2: you drive through.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: One thing that you do is you go to that
Speaker 2: you on your show do is that you go to
Speaker 2: specific places and you see how people have made that
Speaker 2: place live, you know, and that each place is different,
Speaker 2: and that we haven't really thought in those terms. We
Speaker 2: thought in great, big generalities about places, and now I
Speaker 2: think you have to think much more specifically about what
Speaker 2: a place is. And the people who saved the Bronx
Speaker 2: were people who thought of the Bronx as this specific
Speaker 2: place where they grew up. They were proud to be here,
Speaker 2: they weren't going anywhere, and they saved the Bronx. The
Speaker 2: people who lived in the Bronx saved it. And so
Speaker 2: it's a story that I don't think a lot of
Speaker 2: people know. People have I write about places where people
Speaker 2: have a preconceived idea of what it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: the Great Plains. People would say from New York, Oh,
Speaker 2: I flew over that there's nothing there. You know, there's
Speaker 2: a lot there. You think there's nothing there, there's a
Speaker 2: lot there, you know. Or people will say, oh, Siberia,
Speaker 2: you know, it's cold, it's prisons. Well yeah, but there's
Speaker 2: a lot other there's a lot more going on there.
Speaker 2: And I kind of like to treat a place as
Speaker 2: almost as if it was a person. And you don't
Speaker 2: want to generalize in a stupid way about it. You know,
Speaker 2: you don't want to generalize about any part of you know,
Speaker 2: the world, because each place is different and the people
Speaker 2: in the places are different.
Speaker 1: So well, will that book come out? I hope next year?
Speaker 1: Is it with your normal publishers? Yeah, same publisher What
Speaker 1: are you gonna do next now that you finish that?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I haven't really decided. I wanted to do a book
Speaker 2: about steamboat explosions. See this reaction makes you think I
Speaker 2: should do it because they blew up all the time,
Speaker 2: and you can find stories of steamboats in the middle
Speaker 2: of Mississippi that blew up and people were ended up
Speaker 2: on either sides of the river.
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean huge explosions where people would just.
Speaker 2: You know, and the you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: cool stuff about steamboat.
Speaker 1: Explosions should write that proposal.
Speaker 2: I would. What I'll do is I'll say, go to
Speaker 2: uh Stephen Ranella's podcast and this is where it started.
Speaker 2: But uh yeah, I mean the problem with explosions is
Speaker 2: they happen, and then there's the plot kind of has
Speaker 2: to start up again.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit tricky as a plot device.
Speaker 1: Explosions blew up and blue people to both sides of
Speaker 1: the river.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. There's a very funny book, unintentionally funny book that
Speaker 2: came out in like eighteen fifty seven called Disasters on
Speaker 2: the Western Rivers and it has woodcuts of steamboats blowing up,
Speaker 2: and it'll say, you know, the explosion of the Saint
Speaker 2: Mary's and then there'd be this blamd of all steamboat
Speaker 2: parts flying. And then you turn a page and it'll
Speaker 2: be like, you know, the explosion of the City of Memphis,
Speaker 2: and there'll be another woodcut of a steamboat blowing up.
Speaker 1: What's the book call.
Speaker 2: It's called Disasters on the Western Rivers and it came
Speaker 2: out in like eighteen fifty seven or something.
Speaker 1: If you write a book about guide's called the same thing.
Speaker 4: Yep, that'd be really cool that the illustrations of those
Speaker 4: explosions always include some person silhouetted by the flames, which
Speaker 4: I appreciate that it's.
Speaker 1: Consistent, it's really true.
Speaker 4: What about a bird watcher's guide to picking out trophy
Speaker 4: bags from trees?
Speaker 2: Well, I was going to do a bags in Trees book,
Speaker 2: I even hobby table book. Somebody was offering to do that,
Speaker 2: but uh yeah, I didn't. Somehow we didn't end up
Speaker 2: doing that, and that was because we were a little
Speaker 2: bit early when we were doing it. If we did
Speaker 2: it now, we would do something online and I think
Speaker 2: we would get a lot of people that would be
Speaker 2: interested in it. But you know, you age out of that.
Speaker 2: It's it's really hard work. You're holding something up like that,
Speaker 2: stuff falls down on you. And I had one time
Speaker 2: I saw this thing up in a tree and it
Speaker 2: was really nasty looking, and it was a terry cloth
Speaker 2: towel and it was kind of bagged out a little bit,
Speaker 2: and it was hanging from one branch to another, kind
Speaker 2: of hammock like, and I thought, that thing's full of water.
Speaker 2: And so I have my snagger as a hook on
Speaker 2: the end, and I went up and hooked into that
Speaker 2: terry cloth towel and a rat ran.
Speaker 1: At me and it was like, wow, I was gonna
Speaker 1: have one hundred feet.
Speaker 2: I mean the guy, my friend Tim, who I was
Speaker 2: doing it with, said he looked at me and he
Speaker 2: thought I had been electrocuted.
Speaker 1: A wire.
Speaker 2: And I mean, but to have a rat looking right
Speaker 2: at you running down the pole, and the thing is
Speaker 2: he he got pretty close and before I could drop it,
Speaker 2: and then he jumped to a tree and then he
Speaker 2: jumped to the.
Speaker 1: Roof of like a store in yourbody.
Speaker 2: But I mean, rats, that was a high. It was
Speaker 2: a long jump.
Speaker 1: They can really fly. They're amazing.
Speaker 4: So you have a necessary gear chapter, and you have
Speaker 4: some cautionary tales wildlife con electricity, wildlife con.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 4: I have to clear up are who wrote a Boy
Speaker 4: with a gun?
Speaker 1: Give a boy gun?
Speaker 4: So give a boy a gun? A true story of
Speaker 4: law and disorder in the American West.
Speaker 1: That's the Claude Dallas story.
Speaker 4: Jack Olson told you give a boy a gun? Not
Speaker 4: jack Olson.
Speaker 1: The Strasser Todd What's that give a boy Gun about?
Speaker 4: It's an epistolary tale for young adults by Todd Strasser,
Speaker 4: first published in two thousands.
Speaker 1: Stool Dude, How many young adults out there are going
Speaker 1: to see a book that says an epistolary tale for
Speaker 1: young adults and pick that up. You know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm no marketer, but crying out loud, well.
Speaker 4: Back in the days of kids being in libraries all
Speaker 4: the time, yeah, that probably would have been like give
Speaker 4: a boy a gun, great, Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: They would have know the name would have hooked him
Speaker 1: because they wanted a gun. Yeah, but then the epistolary
Speaker 1: part they would have lost them. Yeah, it'd be like
Speaker 1: pistols cool, Hey, give a piece of advice, for give
Speaker 1: a piece of a writer, because he used to give
Speaker 1: me a lot of writer's advice. What can for that?
Speaker 3: Can I ask questions? Both of you did the whole Like,
Speaker 3: don't write in a way where you start by explaining
Speaker 3: what you're gonna write, then you write what you're gonna write,
Speaker 3: and then explain what is that?
Speaker 1: No, I think that that was one of my own annoyances. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, Where you start by how do I put it?
Speaker 3: You start by explaining what you're gonna write.
Speaker 1: You kind of explain what you're gonna write and write,
Speaker 1: and then you explain what you just wrote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's a common structure. You know, it's
Speaker 2: a common structure of sermons for example. You know, so
Speaker 2: this is what I'm gonna be telling you about. And
Speaker 2: then they tell you and then they tell you what
Speaker 2: they told you about. So it's not it's not uncommon.
Speaker 2: But no, you're saying advice about.
Speaker 1: Give some writerly advice for aspiring writers.
Speaker 2: Uh, hit them where they ain't well, you know, isn't
Speaker 2: that hitting advice like in base?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 2: I mean when I moved to Missoula. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is a long way around of saying this, but when
Speaker 2: I moved to Missoula, there's a central building there on
Speaker 2: campus and it has a big high spire maybe you remember.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and something with the Mansfields or something. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it might have to do with the Mansfields.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And when we got there that week, somebody nobody
Speaker 2: knew who climbed up on that spire and impaled a
Speaker 2: pumpkin on this spire. How they did it was absolutely
Speaker 2: a mystery, you know, you just but it was a
Speaker 2: risky thing to do, and that like, I mean, I
Speaker 2: I was careful talking to young writers because I don't
Speaker 2: want to tell them to go out and do something dangerous.
Speaker 2: But if you pay attention to what people are writing
Speaker 2: about and what people are thinking about, it will run
Speaker 2: to a type. There's certain kinds of things that just
Speaker 2: everybody's sort of thinking the same thing. And that's the
Speaker 2: way it is with just human beings. And see the
Speaker 2: thing that people aren't thinking about in the way, for me,
Speaker 2: the bronx is an example. Nobody's thinking about the bronx,
Speaker 2: and or you know, people are, but it wasn't like
Speaker 2: a subject of people to means a light movement. But
Speaker 2: the other thing is do something that other people are
Speaker 2: afraid to do, because if you do that, you have
Speaker 2: got a book already, you know. I mean Neil Armstrong
Speaker 2: steps on the Moon, he's got a book. You know,
Speaker 2: if you're you know, if you do something that other
Speaker 2: people don't do, you might not even write about that thing.
Speaker 2: It would just put you in a frame of mind
Speaker 2: where you could you had authority, where you felt you
Speaker 2: had something to tell people. You know, if you do
Speaker 2: something that people are like drive across Siberia, most people
Speaker 2: would say, don't do that, why do that? But if
Speaker 2: you do it, then you have something to write about.
Speaker 2: So that's sort of just a simple nonfiction way of
Speaker 2: doing it. How people write fiction is another question. I
Speaker 2: don't I have written one nonfiction. I have written one novel,
Speaker 2: and it was called The Cursing Mommy's Book of Days.
Speaker 2: I had this character called the Cursing Mommy who starts
Speaker 2: out to make like chilli and she's telling me how
Speaker 2: she makes a chili and then everything goes wrong and
Speaker 2: she's just cursing like crazy. And this was about how
Speaker 2: she kind of it was a year in her life,
Speaker 2: and it was, you know, it was an attempt. I
Speaker 2: don't really feel that fiction is my is my thing,
Speaker 2: but but for nonfiction, it's a question of looking and
Speaker 2: seeing what other people are doing and what other people
Speaker 2: aren't doing and telling something that you feel like really
Speaker 2: people should know, I mean, and you'd look for stuff
Speaker 2: like that. So I don't know what would your writerly
Speaker 2: advice be.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I got a there's a work
Speaker 1: ethic like you you're not a preachy person, but there's
Speaker 1: a work ethic component. And I don't know. You might
Speaker 1: not remember the story. Uh, just as you mentored me,
Speaker 1: you had you were mentoring some other guy after me,
Speaker 1: and somehow you had gotten something lined up for them.
Speaker 1: You'd gotten a writing piece lined up for him, and
Speaker 1: they told you they couldn't do it because they had
Speaker 1: to go on family vacation. Yeah, and you were done
Speaker 1: with that person. Now that's you were just so like
Speaker 1: dismayed and blown away.
Speaker 2: I don't remember who what the specific person would have been,
Speaker 2: but that was like, that's it. Yeah. If somebody says, well,
Speaker 2: I also have to do such, I said, no, you don't.
Speaker 2: You don't also have to do anything else.
Speaker 1: I can't. I remember you tell me that you were
Speaker 1: just like so endo that mentorship. Yeah. Uh, we're gonna
Speaker 1: do trivia next, You're gonna stick around. Okay, h do
Speaker 1: you know about what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2: I haven't. I haven't listened to a trivia show of
Speaker 2: yours yet.
Speaker 1: You see that where it says, uh, where's the visitors thing?
Speaker 1: At bottom? We've had eight wins by trivia guests.
Speaker 5: Really.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, I think you might. You have he has
Speaker 1: you have a very good chance of doing.
Speaker 2: Okay, well I'll take as take a shot.
Speaker 1: Okay, for those of you listen, you want to check
Speaker 1: it out. The writer Ian Fraser, author of a bunch
Speaker 1: of books, the Ones for for our Audience, I would
Speaker 1: say the Fish's Eye Great Planes, and then it's I
Speaker 1: think travels in Siberia, great planes, Fish's Eye travels. And
Speaker 1: is that all right? That's insulting?
Speaker 7: No, not.
Speaker 1: They're all adventure books in a way. I put that.
Speaker 1: I put great Planes on like anytime I have to do,
Speaker 1: like like the greatest books of all time, my favorite
Speaker 1: books of all time. Well, I'm I'm happy to hear that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just oh, it's good. It's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: it changed my worldview, man, it really did.
Speaker 2: I'm honored.
Speaker 1: I know you wrote a long time ago. You wrote
Speaker 1: a ton of stuff since then, and maybe it's annoying
Speaker 1: to hear about some book you wrote a long time.
Speaker 1: It doesn't bother me to hear about stuff I wrote
Speaker 1: a long time ago.
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't, it doesn't. But uh, you know, you
Speaker 2: think you have to do you want to do the
Speaker 2: next thing too, so sure it's uh, sometimes you just
Speaker 2: there will be the one thing that you do and
Speaker 2: that that might be that might be it. But but uh,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I'm always I'm looking for the next thing.
Speaker 2: And I feel I feel good about steamboat explosions.
Speaker 1: No, I'm feeling good about what did you say, the
Speaker 1: Bronx book's gonna be.
Speaker 2: Called it's going to be called Paradise Bronx.
Speaker 1: Okay, and then the other one will be called Disasters
Speaker 1: on Western Rivers.
Speaker 2: Dars, No, it might be Actually I love that title,
Speaker 2: Disasters on the Western River.
Speaker 1: You start a rock band with the same name. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: stay tuned, you'll see what always comes out the next day, right.
Speaker 4: Trivie days Wednesdays, So.
Speaker 1: If you're listening with this hot off the press, it's
Speaker 1: Monday joining Wednesday for the Trivia Show, in which Ian
Speaker 1: Fraser maybe wins, probably not, probably not. Maybe try to
Speaker 1: build up suspense.
Speaker 2: I want to keep down expectations.
Speaker 1: So see you all at the Trivia show. Thanks for joining.
Speaker 7: Seal out Shine like Silver in the Sun.
Speaker 1: Ride, Ride, Ride on alone, Sweetheart. We're done beat this
Speaker 1: damp horse to death.
Speaker 6: Taking a new one and ride.
Speaker 2: We're done beat this damn horseday, So take a new
Speaker 2: one and ride on