Ep. 720: Beaver Castor Moonshine and Will Primos' Shotguns

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Will Primos https://www.thetruthaboutconservation.com, Ryan Callaghan https://www.instagram.com/olcal406/, Cory Calkins https://www.instagram.com/cman_calkins/?hl=en, Randall Williams https://www.instagram.com/randall__williams/, Phil Taylor https://www.instagram.com/philtaylor25/?hl=en, and Corinne Schneider https://www.instagram.com/corinnesschneider/?hl=en. Topics Discussed: Taking a swig of pickled castor; turkey strategy and the turkey you can't seem to kill; how you keep fish nice; sharp breasted vs. round breasted; etiquette on tipping hunting and fishing guides; Will Primos' Purdey shotguns are up for auction to benefit conservation https://www.thetruthaboutconservation.com/#:~:text=The%20campaign%20will%20offer%20a,%2C%2016%2C%20%26%2012%20gauges.; Will's organization, Steward Link https://www.stewardlink.com; 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?

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• 0:47Steven Rinella?

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• 2:15Steven Rinella?

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• 2:43Steven Rinella?

  This is the Meat Eater Podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything.

• 2:55Steven Rinella?

  The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F I R S T L I T E dot com.

• 3:15Steven Rinella?

  Joined today by my favorite senior citizen.

• 3:22Steven Rinella?

  By far, Will Primos is here. Will Primos joined us back on episode 593, and we talked about a gun auction that was coming up later this year, where Will had, over the years, collected a collection of?

• 3:35Speaker 03

  Purdy hammer guns.

• 3:37Steven Rinella?

  Purdy.

• 3:38Speaker 03

  P U R D E Y, Purdy.

• 3:39Steven Rinella?

  Purdy hammer gun, shotguns. How many in the collection?

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Five.

• 3:45Steven Rinella?

  And, uh, they're nice guns. This is a valuable collection. And Will was telling us how he is donating these guns for an auction, for a conservation fundraiser. He's just giving them up, the whole collection. And I said, man, when that happens, you should come back on the show. You can come on the show anytime you want, but I said, you should come back on the show. And we'll talk about the auction and plug the auction. So we're going to get around to that and do that. Um, and, and talk about some other stuff you got going on and this, the organization. Um, at steward.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Steward link.

• 4:19Steven Rinella?

  Oh, what am I reading?

• 4:20Speaker 03

  Steward link.com.

• 4:21Steven Rinella?

  I'm writing asked, yeah, steward, steward, not steward. I keep seeing it like a name.

• 4:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:26Steven Rinella?

  Like, like a dude named steward.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  The steward.

• 4:28Steven Rinella?

  Picture a guy named that.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  The steward of the land is the person who owns it and farms it or leases it and farm it. Whoever has control of the land is the steward.

• 4:36Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 4:37Speaker 03

  And so we are the link for the steward to the NRCS offices, FSA offices, carbon sequestration companies. Anything that benefits the land, anything that can help you provide income to afford land or to make it better. To conserve water, uh, variable rate pesticide programs, variable rate, uh, fertilizer programs. Uh, equip leveling land so it can be easier to irrigate it, whatever it might be. And all this got started because, uh, Nick Thomas, the founder helped me with my farm and I couldn't get anybody to help me with anything on my farm.

• 5:11Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  And then over a, a number of years, he got probably, I mean, you know, telling hundreds of thousands of dollars. I stopped, I stopped the, the water from going into the creek and eroding the land and filling the creek in. I planted trees along the bank, stopped all that, put land back into trees. Did warm season grasses, restored the quail. So it's just tons of things you can do and you can get their, their, their, their. Excuse me, public and private people that will help, uh, help you provide that.

• 5:45Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 5:45Speaker 03

  Money to do it.

• 5:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. My buddy Doug Durn is getting excited right now.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:49Steven Rinella?

  Listening.

• 5:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. Doug Dern needs to know about steward link.

• 5:51Steven Rinella?

  You need to know about Doug Durn. Doug Durn needs to know about steward link.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  There you go. There you go.

• 5:56Steven Rinella?

  Uh, well, it's a huge shame wrong.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  I gotta write it on my hand. Uh, you're talking about the senior citizen stuff.

• 6:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I got it bad.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yesterday I was so proud. I, I had to get a haircut. And I went to this place called Great Clips and.

• 6:09Steven Rinella?

  That's where I go.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  And, and the lady.

• 6:12Steven Rinella?

  What'd they stick you for that haircut?

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Nineteen dollars. I said, how come it's so cheap? She says, cause you're a senior citizen.

• 6:20Steven Rinella?

  I think she was hitting on you. You look great. Phil, I thought something's wrong. We're super loud, man.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Spencer asked me to turn up the volume on those headphones. I can turn yours down. Oh, yeah.

• 6:30Steven Rinella?

  Hey, hey, you know what? Close your eyes a minute. Corey, block his eyes. Now Phil turned me all the way off. Now, come on, man.

• 6:37Speaker 04

  It's a sensitive knob.

• 6:37Steven Rinella?

  I want, I want to test, I want Phil to, or what am I saying? I want Will to take a, I want you to smell something.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Okay. Oh. There you go. You're on your own, closing your eyes.

• 6:47Steven Rinella?

  Did you turn me? Oh, no. Yeah, it's pretty good. Don't, don't open. I gotta trust you got them open. This is the most intriguing odor.

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Spill it.

• 6:55Steven Rinella?

  No, I'm not gonna do anything bad to you. It's not a bad, it's not a bad smell. Guide, guide him into that, Corey. Well, no, I'll just put it. Put your hand out, Will.

• 7:04Speaker 05

  Should we tell the audience what it looks like?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're gonna wanna reach out with your left hand.

• 7:07Speaker 05

  What it looks like.

• 7:07Steven Rinella?

  Me?

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, we reach out with your left hand and grab this mason jar.

• 7:11Speaker 04

  Uh oh.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  It's to the left of your microphone here.

• 7:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, just put it up there.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  Just feel it.

• 7:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, this seems like a bad way of doing things.

• 7:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, don't spill it.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Now, take a whiff.

• 7:19Steven Rinella?

  What are you getting? What are you getting?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Can we pass it around?

• 7:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  If you pass.

• 7:25Speaker 05

  What in the heck?

• 7:28Steven Rinella?

  This is my favorite thing I've ever made, man.

• 7:30Speaker 05

  Should we just, should we describe this to the audience?

• 7:33Steven Rinella?

  Oh, isn't that something?

• 7:34Speaker 04

  I think I know what it is just by looking at it.

• 7:35Steven Rinella?

  Isn't that something?

• 7:36Speaker 04

  Well, you're familiar with medicinal marijuana, right?

• 7:38Steven Rinella?

  You don't like the smell?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 7:41Steven Rinella?

  Corinne went deep. That's an overreaction.

• 7:43Speaker 05

  No.

• 7:43Speaker 04

  Chemistry class, they teach you, teach you to waft first.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Or you just smell the lid.

• 7:47Speaker 05

  Food related, but that's like chemical science class in my nostril.

• 7:51Steven Rinella?

  Chemical?

• 7:53Speaker 05

  Jeez.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  I sniffed with my eyes open.

• 7:55Steven Rinella?

  The whole room smells like that.

• 7:57Speaker 04

  Very familiar smell.

• 7:58Speaker 05

  So, everybody who's listening, that's like a jar of like brains sitting in soy sauce. That's what it looks like.

• 8:05Steven Rinella?

  Over Will's zone.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  What is it?

• 8:07Steven Rinella?

  Thoughts.

• 8:07Speaker 05

  It's like formaldehyde, soy sauce, brains. What is that?

• 8:12Speaker 03

  Is it really?

• 8:13Steven Rinella?

  That right there is beaver casters soaking in moonshine.

• 8:18Speaker 05

  I was close on the brain soy sauce.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  Who's taking a shot?

• 8:24Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  I, I, I used to trap a lot. And I, and I always said, if anybody wants to torture me, tie me up and feed me casters.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  I'll die. That's the nastiest smelling stuff.

• 8:39Steven Rinella?

  A little bit now and then is good.

• 8:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:42Steven Rinella?

  A lot often is not good.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  So I want to see you drink that.

• 8:46Steven Rinella?

  Well, I don't think I'm gonna though. So here's what happened. There's a, there's a, here's why I have this. Oh, it's an intriguing odor.

• 8:55Speaker 06

  It is really striking.

• 8:57Steven Rinella?

  There's a famous lure maker, still alive, won't come on the podcast.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  A trapping lure.

• 9:02Speaker 06

  Lit is not a, there you go.

• 9:04Steven Rinella?

  Won't come on the podcast. Doesn't understand what the, what you're even talking about when you bring it up to him. Mike Marziata is his name.

• 9:14Speaker 05

  You're listening, you're not listening.

• 9:16Steven Rinella?

  I'm about ready to pay him to come on. I'll be like, okay, listen, okay, don't come, just, I have a job for you.

• 9:21Speaker 05

  He doesn't know what, yeah.

• 9:22Steven Rinella?

  I have a job and it would be that you come be on the podcast and just don't worry about it. It is, there's a day rate.

• 9:28Speaker 05

  We should just call it like radio.

• 9:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like whatever we give a camera guy for a day rate. Um, whatever we give a camera guy for a day rate, we'd give Mike Marziata as a day rate to come on the show and talk about trapping lure.

• 9:41Speaker 05

  We don't pay guests.

• 9:42Steven Rinella?

  He, he has a column in Trapper's Post. He has like a lure making column in Trapper's Post. And in it, he's talking about how over the years, the different ways he's experimented with preserving beaver casters for lure making. And he says, like, um, you can soak them in Everclear. He says you can soak them in cheap wine. And then when you later grind them up to put it, because it's a kind of a universal animal attractant.

• 10:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:12Steven Rinella?

  I happen to have, we quit, me and my wife quit drinking booze. So now we just have booze that just lives in the house and it never goes down.

• 10:21Steven Rinella?

  Right? So I have a bottle of moonshine that I've owned since the beginning of time. And I topped them off with moonshine and I cannot get over the, just how intriguing that smell is.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  This lure maker will pay you for that formula.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  Oh, maybe that's your trade goods.

• 10:38Steven Rinella?

  You know what, Mike? If you come on, you can have that job.

• 10:41Speaker 06

  Do you think that's safe to drink?

• 10:43Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:44Speaker 06

  I mean, that, yeah, you'd think that it would be.

• 10:46Steven Rinella?

  It's just pickled, uh...

• 10:48Speaker 06

  Glans.

• 10:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, pickled glands.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  But it's got this... It doesn't smell like castor.

• 10:55Speaker 06

  Mm-mm.

• 10:55Speaker 05

  Right, that's what, yeah, it doesn't.

• 10:57Steven Rinella?

  No, it's there. No, no, no, no, no.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  It may be there, but it's something that makes it tolerable.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  I think it's definitely there.

• 11:05Steven Rinella?

  Just take a big old swig of that, Sam.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 11:09Steven Rinella?

  You don't want to get all drunk, do you?

• 11:11Speaker 04

  Trying to quit, you know?

• 11:13Speaker 02

  It looks and smells like pickled elk nuts.

• 11:16Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm. Doesn't smell like a pickle. Dude, take another whiff.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  You guys are not, you guys are like not...

• 11:21Speaker 02

  I like another.

• 11:21Steven Rinella?

  You're not thinking, man.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Well, I was thinking about elk nuts when I was smelling it.

• 11:25Speaker 04

  It smells like castor.

• 11:27Steven Rinella?

  Give him another whiff. Corey, take another whiff.

• 11:29Speaker 04

  I think it smells like castor.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  And...

• 11:31Steven Rinella?

  Picture, picture it's May. Picture it's May and you're walking along a stream. Okay?

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Do that a lot.

• 11:37Steven Rinella?

  Okay, now, take a whiff.

• 11:39Speaker 06

  And you've got a glass of Everclear in your hand.

• 11:42Steven Rinella?

  And you're drunk on moonshine.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Just like smelling the lid, safer.

• 11:47Steven Rinella?

  Let's get in there.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  No, I did that the first time.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  Don't spill it in Will's lap.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:52Steven Rinella?

  Take a swig.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  I kind of like...

• 11:53Steven Rinella?

  Take a swig of that. I'd swig, I'd drink it all, but I don't drink.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  It just smells dangerous.

• 11:57Speaker 06

  I'll pour it through a coffee filter and drink it.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 06

  If we can strain it a little bit.

• 12:01Speaker 05

  What, if you, if you, um, consume castor, like, what?

• 12:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:08Speaker 05

  What, uh...

• 12:09Speaker 04

  What could happen?

• 12:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, like, what's, is it, like, packed with vitamins and minerals?

• 12:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's great for you. It's no different than eating, I mean, you can eat a whole animal.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, they used to...

• 12:17Steven Rinella?

  You can eat a whole beaver. It's not, not a beaver that's going to hurt you.

• 12:19Speaker 05

  Have you ever made that into jerky? Like, what's the consistency when it's, like, fresh in the body? Is it more like brain? Is it more like liver?

• 12:26Steven Rinella?

  More like brain, but harder. Looks like brain, but when you open it up, it's a paste. There's a paste inside of it.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  There's like an oily paste and then there's like a...

• 12:34Speaker 05

  Should we fry castor one day? Like, like, panko fried?

• 12:37Steven Rinella?

  Dude, there's no way I'm eating, no, I'm not eating that. The smell gets, the smell, like Will's saying, the smell gets to you after a while.

• 12:43Speaker 06

  Your brain starts to think that it's like a... You know, people make, like, apple... They'll make moonshine with, like, apples and cinnamon sticks.

• 12:52Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, like apple pie.

• 12:53Speaker 06

  Your brain starts to think that it's cinnamon.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:57Speaker 06

  And you sort of want it.

• 12:58Steven Rinella?

  Take a big old swig.

• 13:00Speaker 05

  Should add some star anise to that.

• 13:02Steven Rinella?

  Just take a little. Have you, have you had your brain?

• 13:04Speaker 06

  I'm not opposed to it.

• 13:05Steven Rinella?

  Here, give me the damn jar.

• 13:06Speaker 06

  Have you had your brain examined?

• 13:07Speaker 05

  You know what, Randall, if you take a little shot, I'll take a little shot with you.

• 13:11Steven Rinella?

  Give me the jar.

• 13:12Speaker 05

  And then we can run in the bathroom and be safe.

• 13:13Steven Rinella?

  You guys are pansies. Now I'm gonna be back, now I'm gonna be back to drinking.

• 13:18Speaker 06

  I'll drink, I'll drink it, I just, there's a lot of floaties in there that I'm, I don't wanna pick out of my teeth.

• 13:23Steven Rinella?

  We're one day sitting there at the dinner table, and my kid knows that I used to, we used to drink, like, you know, we used to drink like people drink, social, social drinking. And I don't know where he picked up this expression, but my, he was 14. And he says to me, um, Dad, how long you been sober?

• 13:40Steven Rinella?

  I'm like, what? I'm like, that like implies like a whole other level of...

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Your sobriety journey, I think is what they call it now.

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Even within the confines of my home, that makes me uncomfortable, so...

• 13:53Steven Rinella?

  I was like, that's like a different thing.

• 13:59Steven Rinella?

  You're nuts. You're nuts.

• 14:02Speaker 05

  Does it taste like it smells?

• 14:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:05Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 14:06Steven Rinella?

  Oh. You're nuts.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  God, regret that.

• 14:09Speaker 06

  Hey, you wanna rinse your mouth out with some bear grease?

• 14:12Steven Rinella?

  Cory, talk about your jar now. Phew, I regret that.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  My jar, oh, well, your guys' jars.

• 14:17Steven Rinella?

  I'm not gonna vomit, I'm gonna go grab a, uh, I'm gonna go grab a sortie pop.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, wash down that castrer.

• 14:22Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  Uh, I believe what Steve's referring to are the, all the jars of bear grease that I just passed out. Uh, freshly rendered yesterday, it looks like it still needs to find a cool, dark area to...

• 14:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm impressed that it's still liquid form here.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Well, it sat in the meat eater kitchen all night. Yeah, I'm surprised it is too, but, uh, find a cool, dark pantry and it'll solidify on you.

• 14:44Steven Rinella?

  Sorry, did you, you're explaining this?

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Got a jar of bear grease, I passed out to everybody that wanted one.

• 14:49Steven Rinella?

  And, um, you got it off a spring bear, which is unusual.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:52Steven Rinella?

  To get that much.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. I got four gallon Ziploc baggies full of fat off of them, which I always figures each gallon Ziploc's about seven pounds.

• 15:01Speaker 05

  But that's because it was the biggest bear that ever was.

• 15:03Steven Rinella?

  That's not true.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Second biggest bear.

• 15:07Steven Rinella?

  We just, I just, I just held the biggest bear that ever was.

• 15:12Steven Rinella?

  Okay, was it a Boone and Crockett bear?

• 15:13Speaker 05

  Oh, in Alaska.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  Well, gotta give it some time to shrink.

• 15:17Steven Rinella?

  Where's it sitting at right now?

• 15:18Speaker 02

  My garage?

• 15:19Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no. What, what?

• 15:20Speaker 02

  The skull? Oh, twenty, just over twenty inches.

• 15:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you're gonna make it.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  It might shrink enough.

• 15:25Steven Rinella?

  Are you, are you, are you drying it in a bucket of water?

• 15:28Speaker 02

  No.

• 15:31Speaker 04

  Are you beaded, gonna have a beaded?

• 15:33Speaker 02

  No, I've already boiled it.

• 15:34Speaker 04

  Oh, you did?

• 15:35Speaker 06

  Oh, that's a bummer.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  Beetles, beetles just make things prettier.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. No, this is free, though.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  I think there's less, less shrinkage with beetles, too.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Probably. Yeah, I was always wondering if, if boiling would shrink it. I'm not gonna actually have it officially measured, but it's, it's roughly twenty inches.

• 15:51Steven Rinella?

  Big ol' bear.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:52Steven Rinella?

  I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, uh, I'm just jealous, you know?

• 15:55Speaker 04

  No, I mean, anything over nineteen inch skulls, I mean, that's a big ol' black bear.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Oh, it's a good-looking bear.

• 15:59Steven Rinella?

  I'm just hacking on it because I'm jealous, but when you showed me, I remember saying how big it was.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was asking if you needed the, the shin bones for more halibut hooks.

• 16:06Steven Rinella?

  Well, I got two shin bones and I'm sending, uh, I got two shin bones and I'm sending to Heather's dad, who, who was interested in, in, in, uh, because, do you remember the one I made?

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Was it last year?

• 16:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  That was for my bear last year.

• 16:21Steven Rinella?

  No, yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. But did you ever see with the finished product? So Heather, Heather DuVille, um, who's a Klingit and lives in southeast Alaska, they make a, oh, oh, halibut hook called a knock, knock.

• 16:39Steven Rinella?

  White folks can't say the word. I've tried a bunch of times.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Unless you drink that moonshine, and that's the first thing.

• 16:45Speaker 04

  I think Corinne said the word earlier.

• 16:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, if you drank that bottle, you'd be like, it's a knock.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Come out crystal clear.

• 16:53Steven Rinella?

  They make a knock, and it's, uh, they, they, and her father carves them.

• 17:01Steven Rinella?

  Just type up like, um, traditional Klingit halibut hook, and you'll see a picture. Not you, Corey, but I'm just.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  I'm just curious.

• 17:08Speaker 05

  L-I-N-G-I-T.

• 17:09Steven Rinella?

  Uh, they use yellow cedar and, and like, um, like a juniper or yew.

• 17:15Speaker 04

  Yew. Yeah, it's yew.

• 17:16Steven Rinella?

  And they, and, and, but anyways, they make it with a lot of traditional materials. They weighed it with a, just a regular rock. But her father uses stainless steel, the barb, he uses stainless rod. He was explaining to me that traditionally, it was a bear's shin bone.

• 17:36Steven Rinella?

  So I got from Cory's bear last year, I got a shin bone and I made a few prongs and I took one of their NOX and took the stainless off and put the, what I basically took the shin bone, took a portaband, kinda got it roughed in and then I ran it on a, um, you know, I did is I took a Benchmade belt and just slowly like for like five minutes.

• 18:08Speaker 04

  Like your work sharpener belt.

• 18:10Steven Rinella?

  Yep, shaped that thing. I was quite proud of it.

• 18:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:13Steven Rinella?

  Sent it up to him. I don't know if they've used it yet, but anyways, her dad's kind of a perfectionist. So I'm guessing that he's not happy with, he probably likes the idea, but is not impressed by the execution.

• 18:23Speaker 04

  It was a nice gesture.

• 18:24Steven Rinella?

  He's like, I could see what he was shooting. He's probably, I'm putting thoughts in his mouth, but he's probably like, I see what this kid was shooting for. Um, and if I had a shin bone, I would perfect. So I'm sending him shin bones to perfect.

• 18:37Speaker 04

  Do you need more?

• 18:39Steven Rinella?

  No, but I do think the one I made would work. I do think the shin bone I put on there would work. That'd be awesome.

• 18:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:45Steven Rinella?

  But I don't think, I don't know if they've tried it out yet. When I went out with them to set these hooks, I was skeptical. Were you there? Yeah, you were there.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:56Steven Rinella?

  We went out and set six, we made six sets and you always fish two at a, you fish two next to each other. And she's been on the podcast and explained that you, when you set them out, you, the, the, there's two, you set two hooks next to each other and you implore them to compete with one another. So you're setting them together to, to outshine each other. And when you set them, you encourage them. You're like, go get them. And then you like, your friend's coming to fight you, you know? So you lower it down and we set out six sets. So we set 12 hooks and pulled

• 19:37Steven Rinella?

  like 370 pound plus heavy.

• 19:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, wow.

• 19:40Steven Rinella?

  Big ones. Like an hour soak.

• 19:42Speaker 04

  That's cool.

• 19:42Steven Rinella?

  An hour soak.

• 19:45Speaker 04

  That's fast.

• 19:45Steven Rinella?

  One of them had a, one of them was a double.

• 19:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, couldn't believe it. I couldn't have done that with regular hooks.

• 19:55Steven Rinella?

  And that was like not like ideal season. It was late season.

• 19:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was what September?

• 20:01Steven Rinella?

  Was it that early? Yeah, it was a little later. It was kind of after the salmon were done.

• 20:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it was late September.

• 20:08Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 20:11Steven Rinella?

  The soft cover of Catch a Crayfish Counting Stars is out. If you haven't already picked up a soft cover copy, it's out. So that's our kids' activity book. I did two books like back to back. I did Outdoor Kids and Inside World, which is kind of a book for parents or caregivers or aunts and uncles about getting kind of the the philosophy and practice of getting kids engaged with nature. And then the follow up was Catch a Crayfish Counting Stars, which is like an activity book for outdoor kids to um educate, inspire, make them tougher, make them more knowledgeable about nature. Um, it's just little things they can do, projects they can do with help. You know, some things you gotta have a machete or whatever, so you gotta help them out with some stuff, some stuff they can do safely on their own. It came out in hardcover. It was a number one New York Times bestseller. The soft cover is out.

• 20:56Steven Rinella?

  So uh what I keep saying as a joke is if you got a kid that's not good enough.

• 21:02Steven Rinella?

  Not well behaved enough for a hardcover.

• 21:06Steven Rinella?

  Like what kid in America is so bad he can't have a soft cover?

• 21:10Speaker 06

  I really liked that joke a lot.

• 21:12Steven Rinella?

  I've used it four times. It was the fourth time.

• 21:16Speaker 04

  How how's it performing on?

• 21:19Steven Rinella?

  No feedback on it. No feedback. It might be like Cory's bear where people are jealous and so they don't say much.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  Right. Yeah, I'm sure that's it.

• 21:26Speaker 06

  No, no, I just told you I liked the joke.

• 21:29Steven Rinella?

  I thought you were being facetious.

• 21:30Speaker 06

  No, no, I I thought it was very clever. I like the idea of bad kids.

• 21:35Speaker 04

  I think we may have lost Will here.

• 21:37Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no, no. I'm bringing him right back in because I got a question for Will.

• 21:44Steven Rinella?

  Okay, picture with me here. Oh, do you know what this shirt is? You don't, I'll tell you. This is the odds of if you get within 70 yards of a turkey in his roost tree and don't do anything, what are the odds he's gonna walk within shotgun range? That's the math problem.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  That's pretty cool.

• 22:03Steven Rinella?

  Do nothing. Do nothing. There's a 13% chance he'll be within shotgun range when he leaves.

• 22:10Steven Rinella?

  That, that leads into my question. If you, like,

• 22:15Steven Rinella?

  if you just take an average turkey hunter's lifetime, and he, and he, here's a gobble and calls to a bird, the bird doesn't come. What percent of the time in your, in your view, after a lifetime of turkey hunting and being a, a master turkey hunter, in your view, what percent of the time is the turkey not interested? Versus the turkey's thinking, I don't buy it. Something's up.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  It's pretty much, he don't trust it.

• 22:46Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you think so?

• 22:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, because he's, he's, there's been some association with hearing a yelp, hearing it come from, he knows it's on the ground, he's in the tree, that's always a bad deal. We never, we never say nothing till his feet on the ground. But I have a friend who had one of those turkeys.

• 23:08Steven Rinella?

  And- One of what turkeys?

• 23:10Speaker 03

  One of them turkeys you couldn't kill that you, he would, he gobbled, you'd yelp him and he wouldn't come. He'd always go the other way. And he didn't, eventually gobble going the other way. So he took his son in there. And he said, let's flip a coin and decide who's gonna yelp.

• 23:26Speaker 03

  And they did. And the dad lost. So they got on both sides of the tree. About 100 yards apart from the tree.

• 23:35Steven Rinella?

  So now they got a 26% chance that they do nothing.

• 23:37Speaker 03

  Well, they know this turkey, they know he's gonna go. He's gonna go straight, no matter if they knew.

• 23:42Steven Rinella?

  Straight away.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  Daddy yelped. Little David sat there with his gun up. Five minutes later, he gone.

• 23:50Steven Rinella?

  So you think that they're like, you remember, you know, the great famous turkey book, 10th Legion.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like a masterpiece, right? Like, no one will ever write a better turkey.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  No. Nobody's got, nobody's got Tom Kelly's brain. He's unbelievable.

• 24:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I don't care who, what, when, no one's gonna ever write a better turkey book. If you're writing a turkey book, stop.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 24:13Steven Rinella?

  Write a different book. Write a beaver book. I don't know.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:18Steven Rinella?

  Tom Kelly has a thing where he has like a, he doesn't describe it as an epiphany, but one day he's talking about, he's watching some time, like it's spring turkey season.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 24:28Steven Rinella?

  He's watching some gobblers.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 24:29Steven Rinella?

  Going about their business.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 24:31Steven Rinella?

  And he's, here comes a real live hen.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 24:35Steven Rinella?

  Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  They never looked at her.

• 24:39Steven Rinella?

  He says they never lift their head up. And he's like, in that moment was, you know, maybe it's not that they're, right?

• 24:49Speaker 03

  But.

• 24:49Steven Rinella?

  Cause that's a real hen, dude, and they don't care.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  You're talking about these turkey hunters who think they know it all, and they, they think there's God's gift to calling, and they're gonna yell, and they're gonna, and so the turkey ends up associating so much with what you're doing and, and the stimuli that he's getting, he learns to stay away from it.

• 25:10Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. So you've gotten where you don't make a peep till they hit the ground?

• 25:14Speaker 03

  Uh, never.

• 25:15Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  That is, that's a cardinal rule.

• 25:17Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 25:18Speaker 03

  You don't do it.

• 25:19Steven Rinella?

  Why you tell everybody that?

• 25:20Speaker 03

  To get him.

• 25:21Steven Rinella?

  They'll bleep all that out.

• 25:22Speaker 04

  Even if you hear other hens yell before, before they're, they hit the ground? He just knows that where that sound's coming from.

• 25:30Speaker 03

  The tree.

• 25:31Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 25:31Speaker 03

  It, it, so if you're on the ground.

• 25:34Speaker 04

  Oh, I got it. I got you.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  I mean, more times than not, depending on the terrain, he knows you're down there.

• 25:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 25:40Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  And so what, what's supposed to happen? You're supposed to walk to his tree. That's why he stays in the tree gobbling. You're supposed to walk to his tree. And then he flies down.

• 25:52Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 25:52Speaker 03

  So you gotta break that. So you gotta make him think he's losing something. He, you know, you had said a word. So what we do, we take a wing. We take a dried wing. Usually it's a hen wing because they, they bend easier. They're not as stiff as a, a Jake's wing or a gobbler's wing.

• 26:08Steven Rinella?

  So you gotta go out and poach a hen.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  Huh?

• 26:10Speaker 04

  Well, bearded hen, buddy.

• 26:11Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay. Trying to think how to get that hen thing. Like you're telling everybody to go poaching now.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  No, you're just hunting the fall. You have fall seasons and you, you break them up and whistle them back in.

• 26:21Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  But anyway.

• 26:22Steven Rinella?

  Disregard the poaching thing.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  You fly down and you never say a word.

• 26:26Steven Rinella?

  You do the fly down noise?

• 26:28Speaker 03

  With that wing. It's tied to a string to my back because I kept leaving, losing them in the woods. It stays in the back of my vest.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  So is that an, like you're cutting the air or you're hitting the ground with it?

• 26:38Speaker 03

  You're touching the tree because when those, when those turkeys leave the limb, leave the, the roost, they're hitting limbs and coming down.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 26:46Speaker 03

  And then you go fuck and you hit the ground.

• 26:48Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  And then don't yell. Wait. Maybe two and a half minutes. Scratching the leaves.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 26:57Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  Don't, don't, don't, don't open your mouth. You know, take the guy's call away. He's going to screw it up the instant he tries to yell better.

• 27:05Steven Rinella?

  Man, I'm, I've never used AI in my life, but I'm going to use it right now. Well, no, I have because I use the Merlin app, but I'm going to use AI to make him say all the opposite. And then I'm going to be the only one that knows. The truth.

• 27:19Speaker 04

  So we had a similar question yesterday on, um, on, when we did the, the meat eater live, we had somebody ask about using a predator. Uh, call or fawn in distress call. I think I brought up the fawn distress call for black bears. Uh, and, and I'm very much of the opinion that if. It, it's kind of a, a two sided thing. If you just want to kill a bear. Then you risk use, you risk not getting a bear by using a fawn in distress call. In my opinion.

• 27:48Steven Rinella?

  How so?

• 27:49Speaker 04

  Because small bears will go the opposite direction from.

• 27:52Steven Rinella?

  They're like, oh.

• 27:53Speaker 04

  Yep. They're like, don't, just not worth the risk.

• 27:55Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Um, but big bears.

• 27:57Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:58Speaker 04

  Either care or they don't care.

• 28:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 28:00Speaker 04

  But they don't leave the country because they're using a, a fawn in distress.

• 28:04Steven Rinella?

  They just might not. I've watched many of them not pick their head up.

• 28:06Speaker 04

  Right.

• 28:06Steven Rinella?

  And then one in 10 goes ballistic.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  Yep. Goes 90 degree turn and.

• 28:11Steven Rinella?

  He's coming.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  We should probably make a T-shirt out of that. Like, what are the mathematical odds of a bear coming to your predator call?

• 28:17Steven Rinella?

  10% if you're close.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 28:19Steven Rinella?

  You gotta be in his lap.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  That's the finest T-shirt I've ever seen.

• 28:24Steven Rinella?

  Well, you want to see something that's gonna really impress you?

• 28:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's outside. Go out that door, because we had different engineers. Hey, hang tight a minute.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  Boy, it's show and tell day here on the old Meat Eater Podcast. Uncle Will's in town, or Steve's getting all the stuff out, pulling out his toys.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  That's it.

• 28:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's another version.

• 28:55Steven Rinella?

  Another version.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Therefore.

• 29:03Speaker 06

  Q E D.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  B equals zero over 360 times 100 and sin 1/4.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  I don't know who Paul Knack is, but he's good.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  That is crazy.

• 29:23Steven Rinella?

  No, it's a good little formula.

• 29:26Speaker 06

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• 30:09Speaker 06

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• 30:19Steven Rinella?

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• 31:01Steven Rinella?

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• 31:43Steven Rinella?

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• 32:26Steven Rinella?

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• 32:59Steven Rinella?

  A guy wrote in.

• 33:02Steven Rinella?

  We got a listener question. The guy wrote in, he's been struggling with some beavers.

• 33:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:08Steven Rinella?

  And then he's saying he thinks that beavers attacked his canoe.

• 33:13Speaker 05

  You don't think that's a bite?

• 33:15Speaker 06

  It is porcupines.

• 33:16Steven Rinella?

  His canoe got attacked by a porcupine.

• 33:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's what I'm going to.

• 33:21Steven Rinella?

  His canoe got attacked by a porcupine. That ain't a beaver.

• 33:25Speaker 06

  I don't think beavers just chew on random stuff.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  No, you need to qualify where the, where the canoe got attacked.

• 33:31Steven Rinella?

  Southwest Wisconsin. You want to see the picture?

• 33:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I got you. But, but, but if you were from Mississippi, it was not a porcupine.

• 33:40Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 33:41Speaker 06

  No, that's a good point.

• 33:43Steven Rinella?

  He's in porcupine, he's in porcupine country.

• 33:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:46Steven Rinella?

  Porcupines will eat tree stands. They like treated plywood. They like.

• 33:51Speaker 06

  You know, they like axe handles because you just sweat from your hands getting on the axe handle. Wooden axe handle.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  No, no Porky's in Mississippi, huh? They just don't exist down there? Really?

• 34:03Speaker 03

  Porcupines are Yankees. When you say axe handle, one of my favorite saying is, I'm as scared of her as a possum is an axe handle.

• 34:13Speaker 03

  That's what I think of.

• 34:14Speaker 06

  I'm gonna start using that.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've had them chew on my fly rod cork handles.

• 34:19Steven Rinella?

  Yep, sweat.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  In the wilderness.

• 34:20Steven Rinella?

  My dad had a cabin. He's telling me that they had a cabin. He said, you kind of like, people would walk out the door to take a leak and there was a stump and you would naturally, it was just like a human fire hydrant. Like anyone that like, like went out the door, they'd go slightly left and pee on a stump. And he said the porcupines were always out there gnawing on that stump just from the minerals and stuff in the.

• 34:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, like mountain goats.

• 34:47Steven Rinella?

  Uh, a guy wrote in, but that's really complicated. Battle with Beaver, covered that. Oh, here's a good one for you, Will. Opinions on keeping freshwater fish in a small boat. Let's say you're out fishing, uh, what do you guys call them down where you're from, brim? You say bluegills or do you say brim?

• 35:06Speaker 03

  Brim, bluegills.

• 35:07Steven Rinella?

  Okay, you're on a small boat. He's like, how do you keep fish nice?

• 35:12Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 35:14Steven Rinella?

  Like ice or a string? You don't have a big ol' ice chest. He's wanting, no, he's just asking, how do you keep?

• 35:18Speaker 03

  You put them in a basket in the water. You keep them breathing and alive.

• 35:22Steven Rinella?

  You like the basket?

• 35:22Speaker 03

  Same way you do an alligator. You catch an alligator, you don't kill him.

• 35:25Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  You tape his mouth up and you tie his arms up behind his back. You keep him alive till you get him to the butcher room.

• 35:31Steven Rinella?

  I didn't know that. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows that. This guy's gonna be delighted that he's getting, um, he just thought he's gonna get advice from us guys, but he's getting advice from Will Primos.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  If you want it, if you want it fresh, keep it alive.

• 35:49Steven Rinella?

  Makes sense to me.

• 35:50Speaker 05

  Totally.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  If you guys have any thoughts on if my stringer and, oh, what's he got going on now? Sorry.

• 35:58Speaker 04

  Our, our, uh, brim game up here is pretty weak. I, I would love some easy access to like, throw on some slip bobbers for, for like,

• 36:09Steven Rinella?

  Bluegills?

• 36:10Speaker 04

  Big bluegills.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  I just got, I just got back from the Wind River Canyon.

• 36:13Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  And this guy was using a balloon as an indicator. And it looked just like a cork. And I kept saying, "Did you see my cork move?" And he goes, "Do what?"

• 36:26Speaker 03

  So, I, I, I, I went on the internet and I searched definition of a fishing cork. And after he left that day, I sent it, sent it to him. He wouldn't reply.

• 36:36Speaker 04

  You're like, let's get on the same page.

• 36:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I got a couple of additional thoughts now that I've read it more carefully. He's using a stringer combo, stringer fish basket combo. He's putting them on a stringer out in the water. Then he's throwing them in the fish basket when he's back and he's also fishing for northeast, northern, so he's dealing with some larger fish. He needs to go with.

• 37:00Speaker 03

  An ice chest for the northern, for the bigger ones to keep them, you know, nice and fresh. But the, oh, the small ones, keep them in a basket. If you use the stringer, you're gonna bust their lips and they're gonna break off, or you put it through the gills, you're gonna kill them.

• 37:14Steven Rinella?

  That's what I was gonna include for him is I remember when we were little, we used to use stringers and we didn't know. So we'd always run it under the gill cover.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  That's, that's, that hurts.

• 37:22Steven Rinella?

  You got a bunch of dead fish and then later learn to prick them with it. Um, but you know, that's, that like, for bluegulls, that doesn't really work.

• 37:30Speaker 03

  We would put them on stringers, but the, the last time a watermox had wrapped around that stringer, done.

• 37:39Steven Rinella?

  My kid recently, he was down fishing in the creek down the road from our house and they caught some trout and he had them on a string. And then he looks down there and there's a big old crayfish messing with his trout. So him and his buddies came home and they fried their trout up and boiled that little crayfish. It was a nice crayfish. They had nice little, uh.

• 37:59Speaker 04

  Surfing turf.

• 38:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, whatever.

• 38:02Speaker 04

  Surfing surf. Yeah.

• 38:04Steven Rinella?

  Uh.

• 38:05Speaker 04

  Fish boil. There you go.

• 38:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, boil. They had a nice little boil. Okay, here's one. I curious to get your, your thoughts on this. A guy was at a, uh, a guy was at a turkey hunting, like a turkey derby.

• 38:23Steven Rinella?

  North Carolina strut masters or something like that. He was dismayed by the, um, he was dismayed by the, the field care he witnessed. Where you're weighing birds and so people got their birds hung up with the guts in them. Out in the sun, not chilled. And then he was saying that, uh, he saw a tremendous amount, like no, like, some people not even taking the breasts, but a lot of people not taking the, uh, most people not taking the thighs and legs. What do you think about that?

• 38:54Speaker 03

  Wild turkey is just so great. The breasts, the legs, the thighs make the greatest soup. It's just, it's just great. If you just learn it, you just gotta deal with it.

• 39:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  But leaving the guts in, I usually, I draw them, you know, that's what you call it.

• 39:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. I draw them, instant I kill them, before they hardly finish flopping.

• 39:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Cause that stuff smells, man. That stuff goes bad.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  You cut a slice there at the bottom of the breast and you stick your hand there and grab the biggest thing you can find, which is gonna be the gizzard. That's gonna be the gizzard. You can grab hold of it and get it and whoop. It's all coming out.

• 39:28Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  Now, if you gotta weigh them for cost, I'm not interested in winning some turkey weight contests. So I like the meat better than that. So I'm drawing them.

• 39:38Steven Rinella?

  You know, I lost a turkey contest in, uh, in, uh, Elroy. I think it's called Elroy, Wisconsin. Is there a place called Elroy, Wisconsin?

• 39:46Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 39:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 39:49Steven Rinella?

  I lost, I joined a turkey derby, but I got in my bird and brought it down and I was leader on the board. And then a guy beat me by a few ounces.

• 39:59Steven Rinella?

  And all the old guys in the bar were just, thought I was the dumbest guy on the planet. My buddy says he go, his dad goes back in there a couple of days later and he's sitting there and they're still in there. He got in the bird!

• 40:12Steven Rinella?

  Good for you.

• 40:14Speaker 05

  But I know this, this, uh, audience member was kind of appalled that there would be so many, uh, dead turkeys just pinned to a board and it was in that no one was, uh, really taking the meat out of them. So it was about salvage laws.

• 40:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 40:29Speaker 05

  I'm wondering how many states have?

• 40:31Steven Rinella?

  I don't know. His final question is, my question to the crew is, what is the best way to get North Carolina to create legislation on the salvage law?

• 40:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. Start showing up at your fish and game committee meetings and, and introduce it. And then eventually if, if you feel like you're not getting any traction, you can write into your state reps and get somebody interested in that.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  The people that you need to target in that case are the people who sit on the fishing game committee at, at the state level.

• 41:00Steven Rinella?

  I'm a big believer in, I love salvage laws.

• 41:05Steven Rinella?

  I understand like arguments that like, oh, it's big brother telling you what to do, but I like, I like them. I like how detailed they are. I like salvage laws.

• 41:15Speaker 05

  Are they per species?

• 41:16Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:17Speaker 05

  Yeah. I see.

• 41:18Steven Rinella?

  Or they'll spell it out like ducks up to the size of a mallard.

• 41:22Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 41:23Steven Rinella?

  Right? Um, an interesting little thing here and it's still, even though they rolled, Montana rolled back some salvage laws, but in Montana, is it Montana you still like, I think the wing, you gotta keep. Yeah, you gotta keep away the wing meat. In Montana, you gotta retain the wing meat, which

• 41:41Speaker 05

  we, I guess we love our wings up here.

• 41:43Steven Rinella?

  Strict.

• 41:44Speaker 04

  I think for this turkey contest, there is a lot of meat on the wings. For this turkey contest, if you want to just make everybody happy and not feel like they're wasting good stuff, is you got to contract out with like some sort of a mobile uh, food truck cooking service.

• 42:02Steven Rinella?

  He said they do that.

• 42:03Speaker 05

  That's what they do.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  And then.

• 42:04Steven Rinella?

  It's just an extra fee and the people aren't paying the fee.

• 42:07Speaker 04

  Oh, people can't just jerk the hide off their turkey and, and throw the carcasses and, and

• 42:12Steven Rinella?

  That's what he says.

• 42:12Speaker 04

  At least make stock. I put up a ton of stock every year and, and, and that definitely is part of why I like killing a bunch of turkeys. Um, but yeah, turkey stock is amazing. And if you want, as long as it's fresh, you, you don't have to clean those birds well. You just dump it all.

• 42:30Steven Rinella?

  Cowboys boils the whole bird.

• 42:31Speaker 04

  I do. I mean, I pull the meat, pull all the meat off, take the thighs.

• 42:36Steven Rinella?

  Everything but the gobble he throws into a pot.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  So I, I, I like to see a turkey baked roasted whole like.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's nice. Yeah.

• 42:44Steven Rinella?

  You like doing that?

• 42:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and the, and the wild turkey, of course, the, the breast button is just stick straight up. It's just, you know, it's not big round like the swift's butter ball.

• 42:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 42:53Speaker 03

  But you boil some water and you dip him. Of course, you've already drawed him. So the, the, the hot water, you don't want to leave it too much. You don't want to cook the meat. But you, you get it just right and that, those feathers will just come off and that you're, you're leaving the hide on.

• 43:08Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:09Speaker 04

  Gotcha.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  Skin.

• 43:10Speaker 04

  So then are you brining your bird and then roasting it?

• 43:14Speaker 03

  You can. I've done it that way. It's not necessary.

• 43:17Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. You just flat clean it good. Pick all the feathers off, all the wing, every, everything.

• 43:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, make it look like a-

• 43:25Speaker 03

  Then you, you can stuff it if you want. I like oyster dressing the best.

• 43:28Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 43:29Speaker 03

  Oyster. Oyster.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  Oysters.

• 43:31Steven Rinella?

  I want people to know that, we know that it's not turkey season anymore.

• 43:35Speaker 03

  Oh, it depends on who's watching.

• 43:37Speaker 04

  This is the last weekend in Montana.

• 43:39Steven Rinella?

  It's wrapping up. It's wrapping up. Hotter now. Yeah, but it, I don't know. I could talk turkeys anytime. Oh, no, I love talking turkeys. You got the, you got like a turkey man here. You know, I had a guy one time who was in the poultry business, uh, described to me. He lumped turkeys into two categories. Sharp breasted and round breasted.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 44:01Steven Rinella?

  And he would say, a turkey, a wild turkey, he said, that's a sharp breasted bird.

• 44:06Speaker 03

  It's sharp.

• 44:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. It's a good way of describing it.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Um, and they can be pretty dry, so you can inject them with butter if, when you bake them. Cause that, that wild meat can be very, very dry.

• 44:18Speaker 04

  I would use oven bags. And oven ba-, I thought the oven bag with brining a bird? You never got a dry bird.

• 44:26Speaker 03

  Great.

• 44:27Speaker 04

  They were, they were fantastic.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  Good plan, yeah.

• 44:28Speaker 04

  But I'd take, I'd take the legs off because they were just wouldn't, they wouldn't, they wouldn't cook to the same degree the, the-

• 44:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, you gotta, you gotta cook them slower and more. And you put the legs in a crock pot.

• 44:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:41Speaker 03

  And, and like it falls off the bone.

• 44:43Speaker 04

  Our buddy Jesse Griffiths just taught me, you basically turn your turkey leg into a smoked ham hock.

• 44:50Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 44:50Speaker 04

  And so I just did four turkey legs like that, so I-

• 44:53Steven Rinella?

  And throw them into something?

• 44:54Speaker 04

  I brined them in like a cure style brine, smoked them, and then I just vac sealed them. For doing like big things, the collard greens or something like that. Throw them in there for-

• 45:05Speaker 03

  Sounds good.

• 45:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:07Steven Rinella?

  I'm getting that castor's taste out.

• 45:12Steven Rinella?

  How long has it been? I got, here's another advice thing from, okay? Another guy wrote in looking for advice, but we're gonna put it to you.

• 45:18Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 45:19Steven Rinella?

  This, this is like a comp- this, put your thinking cap on.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 45:23Steven Rinella?

  It's like a math problem.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 45:24Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 45:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 45:29Steven Rinella?

  Okay, he's wondering about how to tip a guide. So tipping a guide. Okay, ready? We got former guides in the room. You guys will have an opinion about this. Oh, always. Okay. Put, put yourself in the hunters. Don't put you guys. So Cal, Cory. You're in the hunters perspective. And Randall, Randall's fishing guy. Oh, you done, yeah, you done some guiding. Okay, you're in the anglers. Perspective, not the guys perspective. Yanni said when he used to guide and the clients had come in, he goes, you're always looking for subtle. Cues about who's got the most money.

• 46:05Steven Rinella?

  So you can get paired with them.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  That doesn't always work out that way.

• 46:08Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 46:08Speaker 06

  I had a guy one time spent the whole week. I fished him for like six days and he'd won the trip. So it was a free trip and he kept asking me all week. He's like, so you know, Walter takes care of you, right? Walter takes care of you, right? And I was like, man, it's really thoughtful of him that he's, he's uh, so concerned that. I'm being fed and housed and that my summer's going well. And at the end of the week. He got on the plane and he stuck his head out the plane and he said. Walter's taking care of you, right? And it finally clicked that he was checking to see whether or not he needed to tip me.

• 46:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, because it was a free trip.

• 46:44Speaker 06

  It was too late.

• 46:44Speaker 04

  Quick through a rock through the windshield of the plane. Hold on a second.

• 46:48Steven Rinella?

  Okay, ready for this?

• 46:49Speaker 02

  Pocket knife.

• 46:50Steven Rinella?

  So. You gotta, no, think we're giving you hit numbers here. You're, you're businessman. Six day bear turkey combo hunt. All right, the price is, the price is four thousand six hundred per hunter.

• 47:05Steven Rinella?

  The outfitter website recommends fifteen to twenty percent tip for the guide. Plus one hundred to two hundred dollars for the camp cook.

• 47:16Steven Rinella?

  The outfitter notified us, we will have a guide for turkey and a separate guide for bear. Hmm. My friend wants to tip twenty percent.

• 47:29Steven Rinella?

  So nine hundred and twenty dollars. Plus two hundred to the cook. But he thinks we need to tip twenty percent to each guide. For a total of one thousand eight hundred and forty dollars worth of tips.

• 47:44Steven Rinella?

  Comes out to a forty-four percent increase per hunter.

• 47:49Speaker 04

  I'd say you do whatever you want and uh give me your friend's number and I'll guide him anytime.

• 47:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 47:55Steven Rinella?

  Well, I agree that we should tip for our trip. I think forty-four percent of the total trip price is excessive for each individual hunter. I have two tip recommendations.

• 48:07Steven Rinella?

  Then he goes on with his recommendations.

• 48:10Steven Rinella?

  He wants to split it up. We're gonna tip twenty percent.

• 48:17Steven Rinella?

  So if it's six days of, okay, if it's, if it's three days of turkey, three days of bear, however you slice it, you take the twenty percent amount and go like, okay, you get half of twenty percent and then the turkey guide gets half of twenty percent. What would you do?

• 48:41Speaker 03

  To me, it's really simple.

• 48:42Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 48:43Speaker 03

  It's the cost of a hunt. If the hunt costs you five thousand dollars, whether it's three days or six days, I tip a minimum of twenty percent.

• 48:50Steven Rinella?

  And they can do how they can divide it up how they want?

• 48:52Speaker 03

  How they want now. I also tip the cook. Like I just left on, from a trip on the Wind River Canyon. And I checked in because I wanted to know kind of what the average, the typical tip is a hundred dollars per person per day. There's two people in the boat. It's two hundred dollars a day for three days. That's six hundred dollars. Okay, so I gave him eight hundred. I just think guides, now if the guides, if he's a, if he's an SOB, he's got a bad attitude and every other word out of his mouth is profanity, which I don't like.

• 49:25Steven Rinella?

  Uh oh, that explains a lot.

• 49:27Speaker 03

  In other words, if you were my guide, you'd get zero.

• 49:30Speaker 04

  Dang it, Steven.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  You don't want Steve guiding you.

• 49:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, so anyway, I just, I just think twenty percent for a tip. He guided me once.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true.

• 49:41Steven Rinella?

  Were you cursing all the time?

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 49:44Steven Rinella?

  That's good.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe under my, under my mustache.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it was a heck of a tip.

• 49:52Steven Rinella?

  I quit any kind of booze. I'm gonna quit any kind of swearing next.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  There you go. Good luck.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Tip your guys.

• 49:59Steven Rinella?

  20%. So these, you guys, the guy that wrote in, 20% of the bill and then divide it to the guides how you think. I think that your friend thinking each guide gets 20% is not, is not the way to think about it.

• 50:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, if I'm meeting at a restaurant and my server, I get a new server halfway through the meal or whatever, someone clocked out, I'm not all of a sudden tipping 40% on that meal.

• 50:22Steven Rinella?

  That's a great way of looking at it. Another way to look at it, but let's say you're going out, like we, we did a guided hunt one time, um, for mule deer with, uh, with, um, Crooked Sky Outfitters, wonderful guys. But you might be with Stuart one day, you might be with Landon one day, you know what I mean?

• 50:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 50:36Steven Rinella?

  They might be like, well, today go with so and so, cause he, he wants to go up and check. You're not in the end going like,

• 50:42Steven Rinella?

  20% of the trip to him, 20% of the trip to him, 20% of the trip to him. Yeah, it wouldn't be how you'd look at it.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  So we, we had a, a lady that cleaned the, the lodge and the room every day.

• 50:52Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  I gave her a hundred dollars for the three days. And it wasn't asked for. And then the, the chef was great. He had a great personality and he was five star. I gave him 600 bucks.

• 51:06Steven Rinella?

  Starting to think if I host this show just right.

• 51:10Speaker 06

  Pour him a glass of that moonshine.

• 51:13Steven Rinella?

  Will's gonna leave a couple hundos.

• 51:16Speaker 03

  When you, when you go on these trips and these people, I mean, guiding is a great life if you don't weaken. It can be, it can be hard.

• 51:24Steven Rinella?

  If you don't do what?

• 51:25Speaker 03

  Weaken.

• 51:27Steven Rinella?

  I don't understand what you mean.

• 51:28Speaker 03

  Weaken.

• 51:29Steven Rinella?

  You mean if the guide doesn't?

• 51:30Speaker 03

  If the guide doesn't weaken.

• 51:31Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I see. Yeah, I got you.

• 51:32Speaker 03

  I mean, it's hard.

• 51:33Steven Rinella?

  I got you.

• 51:33Speaker 03

  And it, and you know, and, and they're dealing with, some of these guides get some pretty bad clients. Oh my gosh. They know it all. They want to tell you how to hunt. You gotta remember, don't guide the guide. You, you, you, you bought a hunt, you, you, you hired a guide and you gotta go with the flow.

• 51:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 51:52Speaker 03

  Complement him and, and, and give him the opportunity to do good for you.

• 51:56Steven Rinella?

  You know, I've, I've been developing a piece of life advice that I've been using and I use it with contractors. When I, if, if I'm having a problem with like, uh, in my mechanical room, I explained this on the show recently. Like, let's say I'm having, we have in-floor heating. You open my mechanical room up, you can't tell what's going on in there. Too complicated. It's not like the old days. Like a pipe coming in and a pipe going out. You look and you're like, who knows? It's like opening up a NAS control room. So what I do. When I have a guy over, I don't do the, well, you know, I'm thinking it might be whatever. And you know, and I tried a couple of things, but you know, I'm too busy fixing other stuff. So I need you to take a quick look and I'd probably be able to figure it out. Like, I don't do any of that garbage.

• 52:40Steven Rinella?

  I come in and go, man, I'm an idiot. I don't know anything about, I look in here and it's just, I don't get it. That opens up, like, that opens up a level of rapport.

• 52:55Steven Rinella?

  And you, you, you just, you dispense with all the trying to save face. And you just come in and be like, dude, I don't know. I don't know. I don't, I don't get it. I'd love to understand it. I can't understand it. And it just creates a different dynamic because a guy's impulse is to try to establish his bona fides. Right?

• 53:15Speaker 03

  Good, yeah.

• 53:17Steven Rinella?

  So Nate Mason, who we work with, recently went to a dog training thing.

• 53:22Steven Rinella?

  And he said, the first words out of my mouth.

• 53:25Steven Rinella?

  And he knows a thing or two, but for for his mouth, man, I'm an idiot. I don't know anything about any of this. So it's just completely changed the whole dynamic. People all day trying to help him out.

• 53:36Steven Rinella?

  So, so. He says like, everybody's real nice to him.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  He got a lot more for his money.

• 53:40Steven Rinella?

  Instead of coming in and being like, wow, I've trained a few dogs in my day, you know, none of that.

• 53:43Speaker 03

  It's like a fishing guide. You're, you're hiring a guide. We were on the Wind River. That guide has been fishing that river every day. He's watching the river change. He's watching the levels. He's watching the temperature. He's watching different spots. He's figuring it out. And so I come in, I'm a big fly fisherman. I go all the time. I know what I'm doing. And I try to tell the guide what to do. It changes the dynamics of the whole trip. Instead, at first I said, look, anything I do, tell me not to, if you need to. And if you need to tell me twice, tell me twice.

• 54:16Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 54:16Speaker 03

  Tell me what to do and, and, and I, I want to play his game. And it was so much more fun and he taught me, I learned stuff that I didn't know.

• 54:24Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 54:24Speaker 03

  It was great.

• 54:26Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  And then you tip good and you're welcome back.

• 54:32Steven Rinella?

  So do the guides in this room like this?

• 54:36Speaker 02

  I love everything Will's saying.

• 54:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  I need to know more specifics about this bear hunt. Is it a baited bear hunt? Is it spot and stock? Are there hounds involved?

• 54:46Steven Rinella?

  You just want to, you want to talk shop about bear hunting?

• 54:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, this isn't, this isn't enough information here.

• 54:51Steven Rinella?

  Okay, Will, I got one more for you.

• 54:58Steven Rinella?

  Ready for this?

• 55:01Steven Rinella?

  Guys, no gents.

• 55:05Steven Rinella?

  Sorry for the title. The title is turkeys versus grouse, mortal enemies.

• 55:12Steven Rinella?

  He says, sorry for the title. I wanted to grab your attention. In all seriousness, however, this has been on my mind quite a few years now. Maybe you folks have heard of this discussion before, and maybe you guys think it's nuts, but I'm telling you. There's a good amount of northern Minnesota outdoorsman who keep repeating what I believe to be a rural myth. That myth is that turkeys target and kill grouse and grouse nests eggs.

• 55:39Steven Rinella?

  He says he has had over 15 people tell him that turkeys are killing the grouse.

• 55:47Speaker 04

  Are they all from the same family?

• 55:52Steven Rinella?

  It's a large family.

• 55:57Speaker 04

  I don't know about that.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  Do they suspiciously have a freezer full of grouse?

• 56:03Speaker 04

  No, I mean, if you watch domestic turkeys, um, not like in your, uh, high density facilities, right? But like your normal barnyard, uh, I don't know, vanity turkeys, we'll call them, scratching around. I mean, they'll, they'll get into anything, curiosity stuff and, um, it's not uncommon to like throw eggshells out there for a little added calcium.

• 56:30Steven Rinella?

  It's a great point because when I put my compost on my garden,

• 56:34Steven Rinella?

  the magpies, every bird in town is walking around and they're picking the eggshells out during nesting season.

• 56:40Speaker 04

  Hmm. So I, I, it wouldn't surprise me if, if a handful of turkeys take advantage of something like that, but I don't think it's going to be a primary food source or I, it would be, I mean, it'd be really interesting, right? If, if they're. There uh it'd be like a fisheries biology study, right? It's like, how much mass can that landscape support? And by killing off the grouse, the turkey population will grow somehow, right?

• 57:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 57:13Speaker 03

  But I I say, look at the science. Somebody can study this.

• 57:17Steven Rinella?

  On this?

• 57:18Speaker 03

  I I I don't know. It's like at the size, I mean, uh, what's the, what's the turkey biologist name from Georgia?

• 57:24Speaker 04

  Chamberlain?

• 57:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. So if I'm mistaken, if I remember right, he's the one who figured out that the great horned isle.

• 57:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 57:32Speaker 03

  Was killing the gobbles, knocking them off a limb and flying down and eating their head and all the entrails from the neck. And that's it. But he documented it. He figured it out and documented it scientifically.

• 57:44Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 57:45Speaker 03

  So that's what needs to be done. I don't think.

• 57:47Speaker 04

  I know you don't understand how the game of BS is played here.

• 57:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do. I do. And I'm I'm telling you, that's BS. So I'm using the science and saying, I'm going to sign.

• 58:01Steven Rinella?

  Well, there is a, there is a, there is a parallel because we had a woman on the show, I think she was sitting right where you're sitting right now, and they um do cameras on turkey nests, right? So all you gotta do is you gotta somehow, it's probably not hard to do, you could design a study, you gotta catch grouse, find the females, put a marker on them at the right time of year, find where they're hanging out, go there. She was concerned that she explained to us, she was concerned that that um, what's that thing in astronomy, like just you watching it changes it?

• 58:37Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 58:37Steven Rinella?

  Oh, not Heisenberg, no, it's not Heisenberg.

• 58:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, Heisenberg's principle.

• 58:41Steven Rinella?

  Heisenberg's principle.

• 58:42Speaker 04

  Isn't it?

• 58:43Steven Rinella?

  There's a bit of Heisenberg's principle at play because she feels that your, she feels that your presence at the nest changes a dynamic. And she has noticed that when she goes to a nest site and does the work and sets the camera, she feels that very quickly thereafter, there's a bobcat present and a much higher likelihood that a bobcat will be present right away than later. And somehow that activity and human odor and messing around is somehow attractive.

• 59:15Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 59:15Steven Rinella?

  She was speculating, she doesn't know, but she has, she's like, why is it that we place a camera and so quickly there's a bobcat there and then no bobcats? You know, who knows?

• 59:26Speaker 03

  Is this a study of Miriam's?

• 59:29Steven Rinella?

  Um, Kansas.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 59:31Steven Rinella?

  So whatever that would be in, uh.

• 59:33Speaker 03

  Rios or Easterns.

• 59:34Steven Rinella?

  Okay, yeah, studying that. But yeah, it'd be an interesting thing. But you know, I'll tell you one thing that changed my life. And how I view wildlife is you remember long, it must, maybe it was a decade ago, someone had a trail cam image. Of a, of a whitetail deer that walked up to a robin nest and ate some of the chicks.

• 59:54Steven Rinella?

  And I'm like, hey, all bets are off.

• 59:58Steven Rinella?

  Like, all bets are off, you know?

• 1:00:02Speaker 04

  I can't remember where we were, but somebody was, oh, it was, um, it was over in, in Wyoming the other day, but, um, there was a bunch of town pheasants, basically, in all the green areas. And, uh, this friend of mine, his folks had just moved to town. And it asked him, is there anything they can do about these pheasants? Because they're, they're cackling so early in the morning.

• 1:00:26Steven Rinella?

  Get up earlier and go to work.

• 1:00:28Speaker 04

  And, uh, uh, yeah, maybe that's what that whitetail deer was doing. He was attacking those bird noises early in the morning.

• 1:00:38Steven Rinella?

  You know, I watched, uh, we, we were watching, me and my boy were watching some turkeys, you know, as turkeys often are on the wrong side of a fence. So we're just watching them and like trying to call them into a place they'd never want to go in a million years, you know? And like, this bird, we watched him for an hour, you know, and he never made a peep. And then a while later, this, this pheasant gets up.

• 1:01:01Steven Rinella?

  And he's doing those low flying, like flying cackles. And gets over that turkey's head and pow.

• 1:01:08Steven Rinella?

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• 1:01:47Steven Rinella?

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• 1:02:27Steven Rinella?

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• 1:03:06Steven Rinella?

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• 1:03:51Steven Rinella?

  And a hand climbing mode. With its new dual-position seat... You have full control over your sitting height, ensuring an optimal vantage point for spotting game and taking that perfect shot. What I like about things, I don't like keeping a million different kinds of stands around. Leave it somewhere and use it for multiple things at multiple times a year. Get 20% off all tree stands by using the code MEATEATER at summitstands.com. That's a phenomenal deal. That's summitstands.com.

• 1:04:22Steven Rinella?

  All right, Will, tell us about the gun auction.

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  Well, these are...

• 1:04:28Steven Rinella?

  If people want to see what they look like, what can they type into their phone?

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  The truthaboutconservation.com.

• 1:04:33Steven Rinella?

  Oh, just to see the actual things?

• 1:04:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, see the guns.

• 1:04:37Steven Rinella?

  The truthaboutconservation.com. So as Will's talking, since you probably have your phone with you, truthaboutconservation.com. Then in the gun auction, you can behold the purdy shotguns that Will will now explain the history of and what's happening with them.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I've always loved, my first gun I ever shot was a Fox Model B side by side, double trigger. My dad, when he got out of World War II, he was alive. He got home, went to hardware store, he was gonna go hunting. Bought him that gun for $10 used. It's now one of my favorite guns. And so he then bought some bamboo fly rods. And that's kind of the story of my daddy after World War II and hunting and fishing. But as time went on, didn't have any money. And I just loved the marriage of metal to wood. And I went hunting with a guy and he had Holland and Holland hammer guns. And he handed me one and we'd

• 1:05:39Speaker 03

  been hunting. And it's just so much fun to cock those hammers. So before they figured out how to put the hammers internally and to cock them when you, when the gun opened, cock them, the hammers were on the outside.

• 1:05:54Speaker 03

  And so you cocked the hammers and you had a safety and just like any normal gun. So the hammers are cocked and it was just so much fun shooting it. You don't see the hammers when you shoulder the gun, when you mount it. And so the first gun that I ordered was a 16 gauge and Purdy was happened to be in town. I asked him to meet with me. They took me to dinner, told him I wanted to order the 16 and I wanted to reserve the 410, the 28, the 20, having the 16 made and the 12, the serial number consecutive. Cause I was going to order all of them over time.

• 1:06:28Steven Rinella?

  But how would the serial number be consecutive?

• 1:06:31Speaker 03

  They reserved them.

• 1:06:31Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay, okay, yeah.

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  So they reserved the serial numbers.

• 1:06:34Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 1:06:34Speaker 03

  So those were going to be my serial numbers when I ordered the guns.

• 1:06:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:38Speaker 03

  So I ordered the 16 and that was the 16 gauge like my daddy's fox. And so I just loved hunting with a gun. I killed whitetail with it, turkey, squirrels, um, killing the limit of gray squirrels and holding up a $200,000 shotgun is kind of fun.

• 1:06:57Speaker 03

  And that's one of my favorite pictures. But anyway, so I started ordering the other guns, but they told me, they said, Will, we don't have plans to ever make a 410 or a 28 in a hammer gun with ejectors. We just don't even have the plans for it. And I said, well, start working because I'm going to order them if you want the money.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  I'm going to order them. And so over time, they finally decided to build the 410. They built 10, they only built 10. Gordy's in Houston bought five of them. Four of them were bought at the SCI show and one of them is mine. Mine's the only one that's different. I have modified beaver tail and mine have a special bird engraved on each gun. And so I ordered that gun and then I ordered the 28. The 28 is the only 28 in existence. It's a 28 gauge hammer gun with ejectors. It's, it's my favorite upland gun.

• 1:07:54Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 1:07:55Speaker 03

  And the 410 costs $295,000.

• 1:08:02Speaker 03

  God, and it is, and they're beautiful and they're exquisite. And when you close them, they go ding. Cause they're so, they're so tight. So I was in Arizona hunting with my 28. And I don't know how, but all of a sudden shot, reloading the gun and it wouldn't close. And I went, oh my gosh, what is going on? The gun would not close. And I didn't want to force it. So I'm looking at it, a piece of sand had gotten in the breach.

• 1:08:35Steven Rinella?

  That's how tight it is.

• 1:08:36Speaker 03

  That's how tight it is. I blew out that sand. Phew. Ding.

• 1:08:44Speaker 03

  You know, and, and so I, I just, the guns are just a joy to shoot. There's joy to handle. Of course, they all fit to me. You know, made measurements for me. But when we, when we did the initial gathering of information, all these conservation groups, Congressional Sportsman's Foundation, DU, RMEF, NWTF, and Quail and Pheasants, came to my home in Mississippi. And we took them out to a real nice sporting range that has helice, H E L I C E. Some people call them ZZ Bird targets. They're, they're.

• 1:09:17Steven Rinella?

  Well, I'm not, I'm not tracking what you, what you mean by that.

• 1:09:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. Helice is a, has a, is a target with two fan blades on it. And so it's out in a box and, and you, it starts spinning. When you, when you, when you say, I'm ready, the target, there are five of them. So there's five boxes with five spinning fans with a target in the center. And so when you say pull, one of those is going to go and you don't know which one.

• 1:09:44Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I, I, I got you. And one of them's gonna, of, of pigeons, clay pigeons is gonna drop into one of those fans and spit it out.

• 1:09:50Speaker 03

  Well, it's, it's already there. It's not a clay pigeon, it's a plastic pigeon, it's a plastic clay target.

• 1:09:54Steven Rinella?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:09:55Speaker 03

  And it's made to mimic box pigeon shooting, which started in Europe when they used to, that was their big shooting event.

• 1:10:01Steven Rinella?

  I'm back to not understanding. What's it called?

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

  Helice, H E L I C E, or ZZ Birds.

• 1:10:07Steven Rinella?

  Is it dumb that I don't know this?

• 1:10:08Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:10:09Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:10:09Speaker 03

  A lot of people don't know about it.

• 1:10:10Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:10:10Speaker 03

  I mean, it's a specialized discipline of shooting.

• 1:10:13Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  And it's a big competition. The, the world championship this year is in Italy. Uh, last year, I think it was in Cyprus, Greece. Um, so anyway, you say pull and one of those five targets is gonna go.

• 1:10:26Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:26Speaker 03

  It's, it's gonna, that, you don't know whether it's gonna go straight up. The fan, it, it, the, the, the, the machine is oscillating, so they might go straight up, straight away, straight left, straight right. It's crazy what it can do.

• 1:10:38Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:10:39Speaker 03

  And so you're sitting there ready and your eyes have to be blended over the five targets. So when one of them goes, you gotta go to it and kill it. So we lined up all five of the conservation groups, four ten, twenty eight, twenty, sixteen and twelve.

• 1:10:52Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:53Speaker 03

  And we made all the targets go one, one at a time. One, two, three, four, five, nobody missed. And it was just beautiful.

• 1:11:00Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:11:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, seeing everybody shoot those guns and enjoy them. Um, and so that, that was kind of a, one of the scenes. You'll, you probably can see that on that, the Truth About Conservation site. Probably, there's probably a video of that on there.

• 1:11:14Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:11:15Speaker 03

  But the whole effort here was to engage these conservation groups.

• 1:11:19Steven Rinella?

  Well, you gotta back up. I'm not, I'm not done hearing about the whole thing. When you were accumulating them, were you thinking to yourself, in some day I'll give them all away?

• 1:11:29Speaker 03

  Um, I didn't know what I was gonna do. I, I, I felt like I could find some way to help raise money for the hunting and fishing community.

• 1:11:39Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:11:39Speaker 03

  I just didn't know what it was gonna be. And so as I would attend the Dex Unlimited Convention or the National Wild Turkey Federation Convention, I would find the philanthropy organized people who accept money and all that kinda stuff. And I say, look, I got this set of guns. I would like to give them away to conservation. I'm trying to figure out how to do that and I want these groups to share in the money. These are people who've been a part of my life.

• 1:12:03Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:12:04Speaker 03

  The RMF is such an incredible organization and it's done so much for my life. And, and the National Wild Turkey Federation and Ducks Unlimited and Quail and Pheasants. I mean, they're just incredible organizations.

• 1:12:16Speaker 03

  And Congressional Sportsman's Foundation who protects our hunting and fishing and trapping rights at the local, state, and federal level. I mean, how can I do something to give back and thank them for what they've done to help protect those rights and to help grow other people being associated with hunting and fishing and trapping? And so, one day, Congressional Sportsman's Foundation called me and they said, "Look, we got this campaign. It's not hunt, fish, listen. It's I hunt, I fish, I vote."

• 1:12:46Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:12:47Speaker 03

  And they said, "We want you to be a part of this campaign." I said, "Look, that's fine. I'll do that. I'll do it if you want me to. I'm not really interested in being a poster boy, but I will." I said, "But I've got these guns. How can we leverage these guns? How can I cause a ripple effect? How can I throw a little pebble into a perfectly still body of water and have it become a wave?" Those are my words. And I was talking to a lady named Corinne Yohan. She was the director of Muggs. She's no longer there. But she says, "Let's think about it. Let me talk to Jeff Crane, the head of Congressional Sportsman's, and to Kevin Perry. Let me see what we can come up with."

• 1:13:27Speaker 03

  She called him back and she goes, "So you want to give us these guns and then we think we can auction them? And all the money and the proceeds, and you'll have to have them appraised, and anything over appraised value will, can be written off because they're going to go to all 501(c)(40) public companies."

• 1:13:48Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:13:49Speaker 03

  And so that's how it all came about. And that's what we did. We created the campaign, articles in all these magazines, alerting everybody. So some, hopefully some guy that's got a real nice nest egg who wants to give back to conservation will pay more than their appraised value.

• 1:14:06Steven Rinella?

  Are you guys being public about the appraised value? Is there a minimum?

• 1:14:11Speaker 03

  I don't know how, Rock Island is the auction house. They auction off the finest guns in the world.

• 1:14:18Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:14:19Speaker 03

  And we chose them because there is a...

• 1:14:21Steven Rinella?

  That's who we bought that punk gun from. Rock Island, yeah.

• 1:14:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, we met those guys at Pheasant Fest this year, or Quail Classic. And yeah, we ran through the hole.

• 1:14:32Speaker 03

  In Kansas City?

• 1:14:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:34Speaker 03

  Did you see the Primos guns?

• 1:14:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was telling you earlier, I personally just enjoy the fact that the 16 gauge is noticeably well-worn.

• 1:14:44Speaker 03

  I'm guilty.

• 1:14:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:49Speaker 03

  The 16 has a little more wear on it than the other ones.

• 1:14:52Speaker 04

  Well, I, I, to me, it makes it all more valuable because you're, you know, just like anything these days, if, if you can buy whatever, but if that thing has a story.

• 1:15:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:02Speaker 04

  It, it can be a lot more valuable.

• 1:15:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:04Speaker 04

  And, and so the whole set kind of has that, like, it is like fine, fine stuff. Anybody can see that. You're like, this is something that is set apart by craftsmanship.

• 1:15:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:17Speaker 04

  Um, and there's, there's a couple of those guns don't look like they've been touched at all. But I'm sure they've been cleaned and yeah, uh, but the 16 has been, uh, cause I think you put extra swivel studs in there and stuff like that. Yeah.

• 1:15:32Speaker 03

  So I had swivel studs put on the 16 because it's my duck gun. When I'm putting out the decoys, I sling it on my shoulder. Well, little did I know, I'm scratching it back there with suspenders, the spender buckles and all that stuff, you know? Anyway, I had to have it, you know, kind of touched up.

• 1:15:50Speaker 04

  But yeah, the Rock Island folks, they have a whole, uh, it's online. I'm sure I haven't looked at it online, but I have a big catalog of the whole collection and, and there is, uh,

• 1:16:01Speaker 04

  we should look it up right now, but there is an appraisal price that has been posted.

• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  So the gun, the guns cost about a million one and they appraised for 800. Because they are, they are used.

• 1:16:12Speaker 04

  Oh, I see. Uh.

• 1:16:14Speaker 03

  So anything, anything that's paid over the appraised value can be written off.

• 1:16:18Speaker 04

  Right. But those guns, no matter who they belong to typically go for over appraised value.

• 1:16:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, those, those purdies do. Cause I mean, they're a major.

• 1:16:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. But there'll never ever be another set. So.

• 1:16:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  Rock Island went to London and interviewed Nick Harlow, who is the curator of the London Guns World. And he sits right there and says, this will never ever be, never been done and it'll never be done. Not again.

• 1:16:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. One of a kind.

• 1:16:44Speaker 03

  One of a kind. Yeah. So anyway, um, so, you know, you, you go and you, you think about what, what somebody can do. So what I want is for other people also to think, other people have things that they've acquired in life.

• 1:16:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:59Speaker 03

  That are valuable.

• 1:17:01Speaker 04

  I'm touching one right here, buddy.

• 1:17:04Speaker 03

  Nobody wants your caster moonshine. I may want some for some bait. I may want that. I don't tell you what you'd catch. But anyway, so other people, hopefully we'll start a ripple effect in that way.

• 1:17:18Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:17:18Speaker 03

  That other people can say, well, you know, I've got, uh, I've got this beautiful painting or I've got this gun or I got this and I'd like to give it to Congressional. I mean, they are working their butts off, like the Colorado Initiative to stop all the anti-hunting stuff. And, you know, if, if they don't get on the front end of it and, and, and provide the, the money and the resources and tap into all the people that they have access to, to tell the story, we're gonna lose.

• 1:17:51Steven Rinella?

  Hit, hit me with a couple more details, just, just for folks listening. The, the auction, what are the, the, what, is it a specific? So I'm having a hard time communicating. Is it like a specific moment?

• 1:18:03Speaker 03

  December 5th to December 7th.

• 1:18:05Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:18:07Speaker 03

  The, the, the parties.

• 1:18:08Steven Rinella?

  Like you gotta have like, so it's not like open for a long bid process that like it's a 48 hour bid?

• 1:18:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's gonna start and it'd probably be the 5th, the 5th, 6th and 7th. It'd probably be the 5th and 6th. They haven't narrowed that window down. I'll be there for the auction.

• 1:18:23Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you will?

• 1:18:24Speaker 03

  In Dallas, yeah. My wife and I will.

• 1:18:27Steven Rinella?

  Well, I gotta check what I got going on. 7th is Pearl Harbor. It's an auspicious day.

• 1:18:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, really.

• 1:18:37Steven Rinella?

  That's pretty exciting, man.

• 1:18:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is. And, and, you know, I, I just can't say enough about these organizations and what they've gone to bat for us. And all of us hunters and fishermen and trappers and, and if we can do something, we should.

• 1:18:53Steven Rinella?

  That's generous of you, man. That's, that's real admirable. Sounds like such a cool collection, too.

• 1:18:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, after I, I got the 28, you know, my wife was looking at the order, you know? It's real expensive. And, um,

• 1:19:11Speaker 03

  we, we, she says, I'm gonna go to Junicors. That's a real fancy jewelry store in town. I went, I said, okay. And she goes, I, I'm really looking at a really nice ring. I said, you can't catch me.

• 1:19:31Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so December is coming up. We'll remind people as we go along, but in December, the collection, it's called the Primos Guns? Like, what's this, what's the sort of slang?

• 1:19:43Speaker 03

  Will Primos Purdy Collection, I guess.

• 1:19:45Steven Rinella?

  The Will, I like that. The Will Primos Purdy Collection. The Will Primos Purdy Collection will go, and then that money will be divided up by five conservation organizations.

• 1:19:59Speaker 03

  That's correct.

• 1:19:59Steven Rinella?

  That Will Primos has identified as having changed his life and helped his life.

• 1:20:05Speaker 03

  Changed many of our lives.

• 1:20:06Steven Rinella?

  Changed many of our lives.

• 1:20:07Speaker 03

  And Rock Island, there is a buyer's commission and a seller's commission.

• 1:20:11Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:20:12Speaker 03

  And they have forgiven the seller's commission, which is going to be hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• 1:20:16Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 1:20:16Speaker 03

  And they've given that back already. So, we're already on a roll here raising money with this deal.

• 1:20:23Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Has anyone reached out to you yet to tell you, like, I'm gonna be there and I'm bidding?

• 1:20:29Speaker 03

  I've had several people say, "I'm really interested."

• 1:20:32Steven Rinella?

  Okay. You think they're serious? No one's tried to preempt?

• 1:20:39Speaker 03

  Uh, not that I know of, and I don't know how they do that.

• 1:20:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, got it. Got it. Lastly, Steward Link. I hadn't heard about this.

• 1:20:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Steward Link is, uh, stewardlink.com. It is a group of tremendous agronomists, foresters, people that have all the degrees and all the certifications for writing conservation programs. A lot of these people are former National Resource Conservation Service, NRCS, part of the US Department of Agriculture's office. That have come together, just like a CPA represents you to the IRS.

• 1:21:25Speaker 03

  The people at Steward Link represent the steward of the land, the person who owns the land in farmership or the person who leases it in farming, they're the steward, whoever controls the land.

• 1:21:33Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:21:34Speaker 03

  And they represent them and help them access the government programs.

• 1:21:39Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Uh. Which is probably like a Byzantine structure that's hard to navigate.

• 1:21:44Speaker 03

  And there's, there's all kind of issues with it. You, everything's ranked. So when you, uh, the conservation stewardship program, CSP program, if you apply for the, for a conservation stewardship program, and you apply, everybody in here applies. We all have 500 acres, 1,000 acres, 250 acres. We get ranked. Who has the most opportunity to put the most conservation on the ground?

• 1:22:05Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:22:06Speaker 03

  But I hired Steward Link and Steward Link knew that if they would write certain plans, these are, these are activity plans, conservation activity plans, CAP, conservation activity, CAP, cap plan. And I think the name, the acronym may have changed recently with the, they're changing stuff all the time. But anyway, these plans, we, uh, the plans were written for me, for mine. I was gonna do a nutrient plan.

• 1:22:32Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:22:33Speaker 03

  I was gonna do a, uh, a, a water conservation plan, a variable rate pesticide plan, a variable rate, uh, fertilizer plan, and I had all these plans written

• 1:22:45Speaker 03

  and didn't cost me a penny. And that's part of my application and I ranked the highest and I got the $400,000.

• 1:22:53Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:22:55Speaker 04

  I mean, a big, big problem, right, is you have producers, farmers, ranchers that are working 16-hour days. And then in order to understand this stuff, apply for it, have the back and forth, that takes a hell of a lot of time too.

• 1:23:10Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:11Speaker 04

  At the, at the back end of that day.

• 1:23:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:13Speaker 04

  And there's huge, huge bottlenecks in these systems.

• 1:23:16Speaker 03

  And the NRCS employees, there's, there's right here on Main Street in Botham, there's a NRCS office. Those people are great. But there's only so many hours in the day.

• 1:23:26Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:26Speaker 03

  And, you know, and there's so many, there, there's these plans, Mississippi, because we're in Mississippi, that's where we started. It's number one in CSP. It's the number one state in all the country. We went to California, the whole state of California had only four CSP plans that had ever been approved.

• 1:23:48Speaker 03

  So now we're going to New, we're in New York, Indiana, Ohio. We've got employees in those states and we're constantly meeting with farmers and helping them understand what's available.

• 1:23:59Steven Rinella?

  Let's say, just help me out. So I'm a farmer in, give me a state where you guys were.

• 1:24:04Speaker 03

  Wisconsin.

• 1:24:05Steven Rinella?

  Okay, I'm a farmer in Wisconsin. And I have a thousand acres.

• 1:24:13Steven Rinella?

  And I want to know even just what is available for conservation funding for my land.

• 1:24:18Speaker 03

  That's correct.

• 1:24:20Steven Rinella?

  That's the first step is call and be like, I'm managing a thousand acres for my family.

• 1:24:25Speaker 03

  It's located in this county. Here's my farm number. We can access all that and look at everything and, and, and give you the information and you don't have to hire us.

• 1:24:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:33Speaker 03

  If we can help you, we will help you. That's, that's, that's.

• 1:24:37Steven Rinella?

  And that'd be like questions like, should I put stuff in CRP? Is there a way that I should be categorizing portions of my land for different tax structures or whatever?

• 1:24:46Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:24:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:47Speaker 03

  I mean, it's just a tremendous amount of opportunities for instance. Let's say you've got a piece of land and next to you is a piece of land that's got WRE, Water File Reserve Esment on it.

• 1:25:01Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:25:02Speaker 03

  At, which was a former, you know, Wetlands Protection Plan. And it was planted in trees and you, it borders you. And you want to put it on yours. Well, guess what? You already rank higher than most because you border a park that already has.

• 1:25:19Steven Rinella?

  Oh, got it.

• 1:25:20Speaker 03

  So we know that. So we, oh, we need to focus on this. And then there's equip, there's equip. You've got a piece of land. You're, you're in Montana and it's a little bit rolling. And you don't have any money. You're barely making it trying to grow weed or whatever you're doing.

• 1:25:35Speaker 04

  I'm familiar. Go ahead.

• 1:25:36Speaker 03

  But you, you need to level that land. If you could level it and you could irrigate it a different way. And so that all the water would flow correctly, slowly and maximize the water that you have some water, but you need more, da-da-da-da-da. We can write you an equip plan and the government will come in and give you money to level that land, to move the dirt and to make it.

• 1:26:04Speaker 04

  And then so on the implementation side of things, is that, is that where folks start cutting, cutting checks to steward link?

• 1:26:14Speaker 03

  Steward link does, you don't, you don't pay steward link a dime unless you get approved for a program.

• 1:26:21Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 1:26:21Speaker 03

  And then you don't pay, you don't pay steward link a dime until you get the money. Let's say you qualified and you might, you've qualified for a $400,000 program. You get the, you get the program, you pay steward link typically 20%. You get the money, then you write them a check.

• 1:26:37Speaker 04

  Yep. Cool.

• 1:26:38Speaker 03

  So you don't, you don't spend anything.

• 1:26:40Steven Rinella?

  I don't want to get too far into the details here, but does that 20%?

• 1:26:45Steven Rinella?

  That's got to come out of pocket though, because you got to put the grant on the ground.

• 1:26:50Speaker 03

  You're not paying the 20% until you get the money. That means you've got it and it's happening.

• 1:26:54Steven Rinella?

  But let's say I, let's say, okay, let's say I, I apply and I get a hundred dollars. And the assumption is I'm going to take the hundred dollars and put the hundred dollars onto the land, to the program.

• 1:27:06Speaker 03

  Well, they're going to pay, the money, it's all, it's all under, you, you've got to do what's supposed to be done.

• 1:27:14Steven Rinella?

  Yes, I'm saying, so I got to go find the 20 dollars because I've taken a hundred. I got to go find 20 dollars somewhere else to, for steward.

• 1:27:23Speaker 03

  Either that or you take it out of that.

• 1:27:24Steven Rinella?

  Oh, so that's what I'm saying. There is a way to get it out of that.

• 1:27:26Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:27:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:28Steven Rinella?

  Because that was part of implementation.

• 1:27:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's part, it's, it's part of the plan to implement all the things and we will help monitor to make sure you're doing, you're part of the game because you're not just going to get this money and not do it.

• 1:27:40Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:27:41Speaker 03

  You've got to spend the money in the right place.

• 1:27:43Steven Rinella?

  Um, you talk about like implementation. There's a funny story where, uh,

• 1:27:49Steven Rinella?

  I got a buddy that had a, he's got his land in CRP, the CRP program.

• 1:27:53Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:54Steven Rinella?

  It's, you know, it's strict, right? What you do and don't do. Well, they had a deer blind set on a hay wagon. And one day he was told, hey, you got farm equipment on the CRP. He's like, no, we don't. And he realized it was a blind on a hay wagon.

• 1:28:13Steven Rinella?

  And they were just look when they, they like drive by and look.

• 1:28:17Steven Rinella?

  And, um, he's like, oh, wow. You're right. They moved, they moved the hay wagon.

• 1:28:24Speaker 03

  You gotta do.

• 1:28:24Steven Rinella?

  So it's like, like dudes come by and they like see what's going on.

• 1:28:27Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:28:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You can get, you can get dinged. Yeah.

• 1:28:31Speaker 03

  You gotta do what you're supposed to do to implement the program properly. To put conservation on the ground.

• 1:28:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:36Speaker 03

  Everything flows downstream. If we use less fertilizer, could we variable rate it rather than just broadcast it everywhere? Then we're sending less nitrogen, less, less nutrients downstream, which over bloom stuff and screws up the creeks. So there's a reason for it.

• 1:28:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:56Steven Rinella?

  Excellent, man. Anything else you wanna, anything else you need to tell us about from, from Will Primo's land?

• 1:29:04Speaker 03

  Something that's kind of funny. So, um, this, this, this place in Virginia called the Homestead.

• 1:29:12Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:29:14Speaker 03

  It's old. Oh, the first US Open Sporting Clay Championship was hell there. It's in Hot Springs, Virginia, if I got the city correct. And they contacted me about the gun giveaway.

• 1:29:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:29:27Speaker 03

  And they said, we wanted to do something to help you with that deal. We want to attract more people. And I said, okay, what you want to do? He said, we want to have a shoot and we want to call it the Will Primo's Invitational.

• 1:29:37Steven Rinella?

  Ah.

• 1:29:39Speaker 03

  That kind of made me laugh. I said, okay, do you have to shoot very good if you enter this thing?

• 1:29:47Speaker 03

  So that's happening, that's coming up in July.

• 1:29:50Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:29:50Speaker 03

  And it's gonna be an exclusive set of people who are interested in bidding on the guns that are coming.

• 1:29:56Steven Rinella?

  Can people go get on the list?

• 1:29:58Speaker 03

  You get, yeah, you, you, you pay.

• 1:30:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:00Speaker 03

  And so much of the proceeds to be a part of this exclusive Omni Resort dinner, meals, shooting, goes to the Congressional Sportsman's Foundation.

• 1:30:10Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so if someone is kicking the idea around of getting ready for a bid in December, and they want to experience the guns.

• 1:30:19Speaker 03

  The guns are gonna be there.

• 1:30:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so here's an opportunity to show up and.

• 1:30:23Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:30:24Steven Rinella?

  Here's an opportunity to show up and.

• 1:30:25Speaker 04

  And we'll give you the hard sell personally.

• 1:30:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:31Steven Rinella?

  Alright.

• 1:30:32Speaker 03

  I might even let somebody shoot one of the guns if that, if that, if insurance will cover it.

• 1:30:38Steven Rinella?

  They're, they're, are they already out of your name? They're not in your name anymore?

• 1:30:41Speaker 03

  They're in the Congressional Sportsman's Foundation.

• 1:30:43Steven Rinella?

  Gotcha, gotcha.

• 1:30:45Speaker 03

  And Rock Island carries the insurance.

• 1:30:46Steven Rinella?

  Where, where do they sit right now?

• 1:30:49Speaker 03

  Right now, they're in Baltimore, Maryland at the DU President's Convention.

• 1:30:53Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:30:53Speaker 03

  They're being shown right.

• 1:30:54Steven Rinella?

  So they're on the road?

• 1:30:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, just like they were at.

• 1:30:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. At Kansas City.

• 1:30:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, cuz I know the Rock Island boys were telling me that, um, the, part of the reason for going to Purdy and talking was to figure out what the insurance price needs to be, uh, what, what type of coverage they need to have and, and it's a heck of a lot more than eight hundred thousand.

• 1:31:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:16Steven Rinella?

  The Rock Island boys, sounds like something if you're reading about the Civil War.

• 1:31:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:21Steven Rinella?

  It's like someone that took the backside of the hill at Antietam or something.

• 1:31:28Speaker 03

  The Kevin Hogan, uh, is one of the owners of Rock Island. They're incredible people. They're great contributions.

• 1:31:35Steven Rinella?

  Is that right? Okay, that's good to know.

• 1:31:38Speaker 03

  They're, they're, they're for us.

• 1:31:41Steven Rinella?

  Good. All right, man. Well, thanks for coming on. I appreciate you taking the time.

• 1:31:44Speaker 03

  Man, it's awesome to be with you. You are nuts. I'm gonna tell you what, that caster and moonshine.

• 1:31:50Steven Rinella?

  You know, I've, I've, I've often said I got a problem where like I, I, I, like if, I bring this up all the time, but like if someone's telling me about a health problem, I'll start feeling like I got the health problem. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:32:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:02Steven Rinella?

  If someone's like, oh, you know, my uncle had testicular cancer. I'll get like a terrible ache.

• 1:32:08Steven Rinella?

  Just, and now I've gotten my head like, I'm like, well, what would happen if you drank a little bit of that?

• 1:32:14Speaker 04

  I thought you were gonna say now, if you just take a finger, uh, moonshine caster, it cures what ails you.

• 1:32:20Speaker 03

  I'm telling you, that, that stuff has such a unique, you, you, you need to, I mean, you, you need to patent it or something.

• 1:32:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, there's some commercial application. I'm not sure what it is.

• 1:32:31Speaker 04

  Well, I was wondering if the lights went out, if we could just light it on fire and then burn forever.

• 1:32:35Steven Rinella?

  Great candle, man.

• 1:32:39Steven Rinella?

  Next time you come out, we'll have a plan for that jar.

• 1:32:41Speaker 06

  Phil, cover your ears, Phil.

• 1:32:43Speaker 03

  Y'all are awesome. Thank you for having me.

• 1:32:45Steven Rinella?

  Thank you. Will Primos, thank you very much.

• 1:32:48Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 1:33:16Steven 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, 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. Cause 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.

• 1:33:56Steven Rinella?

  The new Dual Threat Pro SD climber is the ultimate companion for both bow and rifle hunters, thanks to its adjustable dual-threat front bar. This innovative feature allows you to tailor the climber based on your preferred hunting method. So you can choose between two climbing modes and two hunting modes. So I like having something that's got this level of versatility. Get 20% off all tree stands by using the code MEATEATER at summitstands.com. That's a phenomenal deal. That's summitstands.com.

• 1:34:26Speaker 06

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• 1:35:07Speaker 06

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