Ep. 730: Dispatches from Africa - So You Wanna Be A Professional Hunter?

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Apprentice Professional Hunter George Dodds https://www.instagram.com/g_dodds/?hl=en. Topics Discussed: Ginormous termite mounds; growing up on a ranch in Kenya; how elephants hate bees; the resident lions and leopards; Kenya's 1977 ban on hunting; 250-pound Nile Perch; the misery that tsetse flies unleash; the fashion combo of shorts and cute gaiters; what it takes to become a Professional Hunter in Tanzania; harvesting honey on the Luganzo Tongwe Game Reserve; eating Steve's Cape Buffalo; and more. Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Steven Rinella?

  Anywhere worth going this holiday season is better in comfortable boots. You can find the perfect pair for you or them if you're shopping for someone at Tacovus. My Tacovus are so comfortable, it's a problem because my high schooler is always trying to steal them. I love the feel of quality leather boots because then you know you're ready for anything. And Tacovus delivers that feeling with confidence and quality. I love them. And if you go to Tacovus store, prepare to be wowed by the customer service. Tacovus boots are handcrafted with over 200 meticulous steps for broken-in comfort right out of the box for the whole family. It's time to bring on the holiday cheer in classic fits and comfortable styles with a new pair of Tacovus Western Boots.

• 0:50Steven Rinella?

  From cowhide and goat to exotic leathers like ostrich and caiman, whether it's your first pair or your 50th pair, Tacovus has your new favorites. Right now, get 10% off at tacovus.com/meateater when you sign up for email and text. That's 10% off at T E C O V A S dot com slash meat eater. Tacovus.com slash meat eater. See site for details. Tacovus, point your toes west. Warning: This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Black Buffalo products are intended for adults aged 21 and older who are consumers of nicotine or tobacco.

• 1:29Steven Rinella?

  Black Buffalo spent 20,000 hours working alongside American farmers to build a tobacco alternative that actually dips like the real thing. Long cut ampouges made from barn cured leafy greens with no tobacco leaf or stem and wintergreen mint straight and more. Check your local gas station or C store or hit blackbuffalo.com and use code MEAT for 30% off your first order. Black Buffalo Tobacco Alternative is everything you love about dip, nothing you don't. If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that I have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you've got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Welcome to Africa Dispatch Flop 3. And first, before we even introduce who we're talking to right now, we gotta address the elephant in the room, which is this.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  Termite mound.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is a, for you people watching and not listening, this is one of the most, this is like a major feature of the landscape is this is a termite hill.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  They're everywhere.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they got a little bit of an iceberg kind of thing going on. What you see above ground is much less than what's underground. So that's maybe a third of what's actually going on.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this thing is, it's a mound, it looks like a mound of dirt, probably nine, maybe nine feet high, eight or nine feet high. Riddled with holes, but they're all over out here. And there's even a fancy term for this, because we're in a big, we're near a big lakeshore. And so we're in a big, like, big open grass flat. It's kind of reminiscent of, it'd be reminiscent of like oak savanna in the US or in, in Florida, you get that grassland with the, I'm not trying to think of Seth, the, yeah, the, the grassland with the oak hammocks. But these hammocks are often based around these giant termite mounds, which have a name, it's a...

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Morgan?

• 4:35Speaker 04

  Say again?

• 4:36Speaker 02

  The little territory made by the termite mound.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  Termitalia.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Termitalia.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's the termite mound and then all these trees have what's called termitalia association. So they like the

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Got a bit of a symbiotic relationship.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  That's created by the kind of moisture and humidity that's going on inside that termite mound.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, so if you were here scanning around, it's all grass. If it's standing up, it's like six foot grass with all these little clusters of trees here and there and they're built around these giant termite mounds. With that said, George, is it Dodds?

• 5:13Speaker 03

  Dodds, yeah.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  George Dodds, who, uh, we're gonna talk to him today because he is doing his second year apprenticeship to become a professional hunter.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  Correct, yeah.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  And you are what's known as, you have to explain this to people, you're a white Kenyan.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  I'm a white Kenyan.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, explain, explain that to everybody.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, fifth, um, fifth generation Kenyan. Um, my, um, great grandfather came to Kenya in the early nineteen hundreds. Um, and yeah, we've, we've born and bred, um, every generation since. Um, yeah, out of a small, small farming area in Kenya called Lakipia. Yeah, which is sort of slightly north of central, central Kenya.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  And you guys farm and ranch there?

• 5:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I, correct terminology would be a ranch. Um, yeah, so, um, an indigenous cattle breed called the Baran, Baran cattle.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  Um, and it's just a, just a bit of a, a ranch and a small bit of, um, crop farming. Um, but yeah, full of, full of game. Um, yeah, much like, much like what we got going on here, just wilderness, really, yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Um, tell people why elephants hate drones.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  Sound like bees.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Elephants hate bees.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  I didn't know elephants hated bees.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, a lot of, a lot of small scale farmers actually put, um, put beehives up around their crops because their elephants just hate that noise and it really helps them keep them away from their crops. Yeah, it's incredible.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  So when, when you guys, what is the number one things that do crop damage in, in, in Kenya? The number one, like farm and ranch? Hassles.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Elephant would probably have the biggest impact just because of sheer size. Um. So, you know, they they get into a small, small piece of land, they do a huge amount of damage.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  They can, they can, you know, a group of elephant can clean out acres in in a matter of hours. Um. Of a maize crop. So, yeah, they they probably do the biggest damage. And then we've got the the bird species, the quelea, um, which also do a massive amount of damage. But sort of large young, large mammals would definitely be, um, would be elephant. And they're also so clever. They're not able to break electric fences. Um, yeah, they can think about how to get into it.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  And what kind of stuff kills your cattle?

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Lions, mostly. Um, lions and leopard. Leopard leopard will take out our calves. Um, but lion take out our our big, our big, fully grown animals. Um.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  So on your, like, on your ranch at any given time, there could be African lions, elephants and leopards could be like on in among your livestock or on your.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, we we've usually got about four resident lions on the on the farm, on the ranch. Um, and anywhere up to sixty elephant at one time. Um, they move a lot, um, depending on season and water availability. As well as, you know, the cropping season for, um, small scale farmers around us. So they'll move into an area when they, when the crops are are nearly ripening and they'll come in and eat it. Um, yeah, and then a lot of leopard, um, it's quite thick bush, um, where we are. Um, and then, yeah, we've got buffalo, eland and all the all the antelope species as well.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  You know, a peculiarity of Kenya, or maybe it's not so peculiar in in in terms of all African countries, but a thing that always has surprised me as I've tried learning a little bit about Africa and reading books about Africa is that Kenya years ago, in the seventies, I believe, banned. Hunting.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  I mean, just like banned hunting across the, across the board. What, like, what was that conversation like? Why did that occur?

• 8:39Speaker 03

  I, I can't speak much to why, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't around then. Um, but yeah, they banned all, all, um, large game hunting. They kept bird hunting for a long time. I think that was banned in the sort of, uh, mid 2000s. Um, but yeah, they, they banned all, all sort of plains game, dangerous game hunting in, I think, 76, 77.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  Um, and yeah, no chance of it opening anytime soon again.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Was it like, when it happened, was it, was it regarded as a conservation move or just a cultural move?

• 9:10Speaker 03

  I think a conservation move.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:12Speaker 03

  Um, I think there was a lot of pressure to, to, to sort of move with the times. Um, I think that was sort of the, the driving force.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  Um, and yeah, so definitely a big conservation move really, yeah.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  So even though you grew, so growing up in Kenya, um, you've come to, like, you would go elsewhere in Africa and do big game hunting?

• 9:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Kind of like, like I imagine, would it feel, you're probably not familiar with the States, but I mean, is, is it fair, fairly easy and fluid to, to bounce around and hunt?

• 9:41Speaker 03

  It is, it is, it's, it's definitely, we can, we can access areas. I mean, Southern Africa is probably the most popular, um, and most accessible. Um, but definitely Tanzania, Uganda, um, Central, um, Central Africa, Cameroon, those we can, you know, you can get to these places.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Hmm. Um. And you're, but you're, prior to the ban, you were from, you were, you guys were a hunting family?

• 10:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, we, um, my sort of great grandparents and, um, great, great grandparents were all, were all hunters. Um, and yeah, been doing it, doing it for a long time. Um, and, and still shooting, we do a lot of sort of sport shooting.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  Lot of, sport shooting's big in Kenya. Um, and that's, yeah, so it's, there's no hunting, but there's still a lot of, lot of sport shooting.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  And you fished there a lot?

• 10:27Speaker 03

  Lot of fishing, great fishing.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Some really interesting species as well.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Like, what, like, describe the fishing to me, like, what, what kind of fishing does a person do in Kenya?

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Um, sort of recreational fishing, probably some of the most popular would be Nile perch.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  Which is a really. Really big. Um, I mean, they used to get up to sort of two hundred, two hundred and fifty pounds freshwater fish.

• 10:47Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I thought a Nile perch was a tilapia.

• 10:49Speaker 03

  No, no. So Nile perch eat tilapia.

• 10:51Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  That's, that's a really good bait that we use live bait.

• 10:54Steven Rinella?

  So Nile perch, that's not the same thing?

• 10:56Speaker 03

  No, totally different, much bigger. Yeah. I mean, when we're fishing for big, big Nile perch, we'll use up to a two pound size tilapia to, to catch a Nile perch.

• 11:06Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, they, they, they're big and they're, they're a bit like bass in, in the way they, they sort of ambush um and love structure. So it's really fun fishing. Um, yeah, and you, you.

• 11:18Steven Rinella?

  You guys eat those?

• 11:19Speaker 03

  We do. Um, we keep the little ones. I mean, they're, they're, they're getting a bit rare now. Um, the numbers, there's a lot of pressure on them, fishing, um, pressure. So we release a lot of the big ones. Um, but they're, they're very good eating. Um, and where we catch them is a place of absolute beauty. Um, most guys fishing in a place called Lake Takana, which is, I think, the one of, if not the longest desert lake in the world, um, which is northern Kenya. And it's what we would call a safari, not a hunting safari, but a safari just getting there. Take you two or three days, all off-road driving. Um, no access to, to sort of shops or anything like that. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a bit of an adventure just getting there, which um makes it really special. Yeah.

• 12:06Steven Rinella?

  This episode is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Holiday season is damn near upon us. In my house, you know, we've been talking about Thanksgiving at pretty soon. We're gonna start talking about Christmas and it could bring on a lot of stress. Also, holidays could bring on a lot of family issues. And sometimes when it comes to family issues, it might be smart for you to go and find someone you can talk to about it and to help make sense out of it all. Well, insurance options may now be available nationwide with BetterHelp. With insurance, many members pay fifteen dollars or less. Some pay nothing. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences and their ten plus years of experience.

• 12:51Steven Rinella?

  An industry-leading match fulfillment rate means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, go ahead and switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. BetterHelp is now in-network with more than 125 health plans with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the U.S., you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com/meateater. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, dot com slash meat eater. Time out in the field is not free. Okay. Every time you go in the woods, there's a trade-off happening.

• 13:35Steven Rinella?

  Like you leave work early, you miss your kid's game, whatever, you forego some family gathering. If that applies to you, what you gotta do is you gotta learn how to spend the right time out in the woods, the right time in the tree. An OnX Hunt's Deer Movement Forecast tells you when deer are most likely to be on their feet based on real conditions, so you're not missing the kid's game or burning paid time off on a day that's not going to produce. The Deer Movement Forecast means missing fewer of the moments that matter, whether in the stand or back at home. Try it today in OnX Hunt. If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that have at my household, if

• 14:20Steven Rinella?

  you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter, you take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  I want to refer real quick to the very familiar uniform that people might see with people from Africa that hunt.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  You guys run the shorts.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  You know, you're getting mauled all day by tsetse flies.

• 15:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I hate hunting or sort of cruising around in trousers. I just get too hot. I run hot.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. But then the flip side is you get mauled by flies.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, mauled by flies. I kind of look at it that, you know, you kind of just let them eat you for two weeks and then your body gets used to it.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  It does it?

• 15:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I'm kind of like, a few of us, a few of us Americans are having some like

• 15:32Speaker 03

  Having some reactions.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Body feelings.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, we all get those. Yeah, I, first week is always tough.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, like a tingly poison ivy kind of feel from too many tsetse fly bites.

• 15:43Speaker 03

  Definitely, some welts, yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  So that fades away?

• 15:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, after one or two weeks, it goes, yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  And you run those cute little gators?

• 15:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, run the gators, keep the birds and everything out of the socks.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  So that's keeping your socks clean?

• 15:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, keep the socks clean. Nothing worse than itchy socks. Yeah, and then just some good, quiet leather boots. Yeah.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  You want to like, I understand you got your ranch responsibilities, but you're doing an apprenticeship to become a professional hunter.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Indeed, yeah.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  To work, to hunt in Tanzania and be a hunting, what would, professional hunter being like, what we would recall a, you know, a hunting guide in Tanzania.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Does that mean you're going to walk away from ranching?

• 16:22Speaker 03

  No, I'll do it part-time.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  You know, hunting is very seasonal and it also depends on how many trips you can do. So I'll definitely sort of stay on the farm, run the farm, and then when I get a, when I get a trip, I'll come down and do the work, yeah.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  What draws you to doing the professional hunting?

• 16:40Speaker 03

  I just, I'm, I grew up a bush kid on the farm, you know, just. Being outdoors, um, both my parents were were photographic guides as well. My mom was a botanist, um, so.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, she described some species of plants.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, described a few. She specialized in aloes, so you know, aloe vera.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Sort of African species, so she described a couple of, couple of aloes. So my, my childhood was sort of, um, spent traveling across Kenya, um, and into Ethiopia, searching for different species of plants, um, which took us to some incredible places, far out places that most people don't go to, off the beaten track.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 17:16Speaker 03

  And just fell in love with being in the bush and just, yeah, it just gelled with me. And this is, this is as close as I can get to that. Yeah.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Is the process formal? Meaning you have to do two years of apprenticeship. Is that because of who you want? Cause you want to work for Robin Hertz Safaris or is that a government thing?

• 17:33Speaker 03

  It's, I'm, it's a government thing. I think, um, that's a standard, um, standard for all, all, um, wannabe professional hunters. You've got to do an apprenticeship with one of the recognized hunting outfitters or hunting companies like Robin Hertz Safaris. Um, and then once you finish that, then you've got a, a theoretical exam, um, which is pretty heavy, um, and you've got to get all the law and everything. It's quite, it's quite extensive. Yeah. So you finish your two years of apprenticeship. I think, um, obviously, you know, you have to be recommended to actually, um, sit the exam. So if you, if you've done your apprenticeship and, and, um, the outfitter thinks, oh, he's not up to the task, you just won't be recommended

• 18:15Speaker 03

  to, to sit the exam and then you, you can't sit the exam without a recommendation.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 18:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Uh, Morgan mentioned to me, like, I was kind of marveling how he was born in Australia, came here and learned the Swahili language, Kiswahili, as he always says. Um, and he said, you can kid yourself and think you can do it without, but you gotta have.

• 18:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Some language skill.

• 18:39Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  But Kenya, in Kenya, the national language is English.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  It's, it's, it's also Kiswahili.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. All right.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  Our Kiswahili is very, it's very different to Tanzanian Kiswahili, so. The first couple of months for me, every time I get back down here is quite a challenge.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  I would describe Tanzanian Swahili as sort of a very, very correct, very polite language, whereas-

• 19:04Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, which one is?

• 19:05Speaker 03

  The Tanzanian.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  Whereas our Kenyan Swahili is quite colloquial. A lot of other languages thrown in there. So I can, I can converse with anyone back home in Kenya and they'll understand me, but I need to think a bit and, and sort of use the correct words. And not sort of use all these colloquialisms that we use in Kenya.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it's tricky. And yeah, I think if you don't speak Swahili, yeah, I mean, most of our, most of our guys don't speak English. So yeah, language barrier is a big thing.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  So did you grow up bi- you grew up bilingual?

• 19:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I actually, I actually spoke Swahili before I spoke English. My, my mom and dad said, well, he's obviously gonna speak English. You know, I went to an English, English boarding school. So they just said, okay, everyone don't speak to these kids in English. Speak, and they spoke to us in Swahili until we were fluent in Swahili. And then, once we were fluent, then they spoke, spoke to us in English.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, which has been a godsend, yeah.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  So you'll, you'll finish apprenticing this year?

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  And then next season, and we should clarify, season is, what do you guys think of as a season, a hunting season?

• 20:11Speaker 03

  So typically in, in western Tanzania where we are now, it'll be from, from July up to October.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  So yeah, so hopefully by, by next, next July, I'll be, I'll be fully qualified, if all goes well.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  And you might come here and hunt?

• 20:25Speaker 03

  That would be, that's the goal, yeah. This is, this, yeah, this is the standard for me. This, this Lugano Tongue Game Reserve is, yeah, it's unbelievable. It's pure pristine wilderness, yeah, as you've seen.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Um, that's the thing, you know, prior to coming here, I went out to Masai Land.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  You know, and that was so cool in its own right, where you're, you know, you're out in, in that like very desert-like, open grassland and-

• 20:57Speaker 02

  You know, every couple of hours or whatever, you see, you're seeing, I mean, one, you can never look around and not find, out in the open, you can never look around and not find animals.

• 21:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, just the concentration is.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  There's always something there, but every couple of hours or whatever, there's like a group of Maasai kids coming through with some goats, like their parents, you know, they um make water runs with donkeys loaded with jugs of water. So you'll see a string of, you know, women with, you know, a dozen donkeys loaded with water going across. And it's like a working landscape. And mixed within this is all this wildlife and it's stunning. It's like amazing. But here you are in like one of the pure,

• 21:42Speaker 02

  pure more vast chunks of wilderness I've ever been in.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. I think we've got different sort of classes of land use in these, in these wildlife areas in Tanzania. And this, this area is a game reserve. So there's no, there's no permanent settlement. There's no semi-permanent settlement. The only access guys will have is permitted honey harvesting, which is you've seen all those beehives.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I'm fascinated by it.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  It's incredible. So we get guys coming in about twice a year to come and check on their hives, harvest their honey. But other than that, it's, it's pristine wilderness. Yeah, there's no one here. There's nothing here.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  And then when you start, you'll uh, you'll engage with clients.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Now, do you imagine, like, do you imagine that you'd uh, probably have clients from off the continent, right?

• 22:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. I think the majority is, is, is American clients or European clients. So yeah, that's the, that's the next trick is to get your name out there and, and start getting some trips.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, I'll hopefully get some, get some trips for the company if I, if I make the cut. Um, yeah, so it's, it's a long, it's a long, slow process, but it's, I think that's what it's all about. That's, you know, at the end of the day, when you do come out here, you, you're hunting with someone who, who knows what they're doing.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  Well, I don't want to interfere in it, but um, good luck on getting the okay.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  I feel like you might be gonna, yeah, I feel like you're maybe gonna get the okay. I haven't, I feel like somehow if you weren't, we wouldn't be talking to you. I just feel like it'd be awkward, but.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  Fresh is on.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  I feel like you might get the okay.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Better do some studying.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  All right.

• 23:25Steven Rinella?

  Last note, when we ended the last Flop Edition,

• 23:30Steven Rinella?

  we're heading out, back on the trail of some buffalo, and that night, we got one. I'm not gonna give you any more detail on that, but we got one. We've been eating them.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Yep, and he's a beauty of investment.

• 23:44Steven Rinella?

  We ate him three times yesterday and two times today.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Yep, indeed, yeah. Yeah, that's all we're doing.

• 23:50Steven Rinella?

  Alright, thanks, man.

• 24:10Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our little fleet of vehicles that have in my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off, and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  A BetterHelp ad. I would like to formally request more storage space in my brain. Because somehow I can forget why I opened my laptop where I put my keys, or the name of someone I met 30 seconds ago. But I can remember an awkward conversation from six years ago in extraordinary detail. So if your brain came with a delete button, what would you use it on? Maybe it's that tough breakup you've analyzed from every possible angle, and irrational worry you know doesn't deserve this much attention. The conversation with your boss you keep rehearsing in the shower, or that one comment someone made that you're still thinking about weeks later. We don't always get to choose what sticks around in our heads.

• 25:31Speaker 00

  BetterHelp is an online therapy platform that gives you space to talk about what's taking up too much of yours. BetterHelp is now in-network with more than 125 health plans, with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members. Visit betterhelp.com. Cost and coverage may vary.

• 25:50Steven Rinella?

  Go and ask any serious whitetail hunter what the best time of the year is to be out in a tree. And it's not a holiday, okay? The best time is not already on your calendar. It's the rut. It's the two or three week window that serious deer hunters plan everything else around. And OnX Hunt's rut calendar does this for you and helps take the guesswork out of your planning. It tracks the different phases of the rut as they move through your area. So you know when to book the time off, when to have the whole camp locked in and ready, or conversely, when it's still too early to burn out your best spots. You only get so many rut hunts in your life.

• 26:31Steven Rinella?

  So use the rut calendar within OnX Hunt to make the most of the whitetail rut this fall.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.