Ep. 701: MeatEater Radio Live! The Dinosaur Highway and 100 Humans v. 1 Gorilla

Hosts Spencer Neuharth, Ryan Callaghan, and Randall Williams touch on a primal fight against a primate, talk with Okaloosa County's Natural Resources Chief Alex Fogg about creating the world's largest artificial reef, get another round of turkey reports from the crew, cheer on Seth in 1-Minute Fishing, play show-and-tell, and hear from Duncan Murdock, a paleontologist from the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History about the newly uncovered dinosaur highway in England. Watch the live stream on the MeatEater Podcast Network YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Connect with The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork 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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• 0:48Steven Rinella?

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• 1:27Steven Rinella?

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• 1:49Steven Rinella?

  This episode of the Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you in part by Bobcat. Now, Bobcat, they started the compact equipment industry through grit, determination, and a whole lot of think we can't do that? Well, watch us. They set standards, broke records, empowered people to build bigger and higher, to dig deeper, to make the impossible possible. We've all been there with doubters telling us what we can't do. So go ahead and doubt, judge me, challenge me, but when the time comes, watch me. Bobcat.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  Smell us now, ladies. Welcome to Meat Eater Trivia. Meat Eater Podcast.

• 2:48Speaker 04

  Welcome to Meat Eater Radio Live. It's 11 a.m. Mountain Time. That's noon o'clock for our friends in Quincy, Illinois on Thursday, May 8th, and we're live from Meat Eater HQ in Bozeman. I'm your host, Spencer Neuharth, joined today by Ryan Callaghan and Randall Williams. On today's show, we'll interview Duncan Murdoch about the dinosaur highway that was just discovered in England, followed by a turkey report from the Meat Eater crew. Then we've got one-minute fishing with Seth Morris. After that, we'll do show and tell. And finally, we'll interview Alex Fogg about constructing the world's largest artificial reef. Now, in case you don't think this is a live show, we just got breaking news that there's a new pope that's been elected. What's your insight on this, Randall? White smoke from the assistant chapel.

• 3:32Speaker 05

  I just know white smoke. That's all. I watched Steve watch Conclave on a plane last week, so that's about all I had off.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, all right. But, but we're going to settle an internet debate that's taken the internet by storm here recently. Every now and then, some stupid thing on the internet achieves exit velocity and makes it out into the real world. Like, is a hot dog a sandwich? Or the hawk to a girl? It happened again this week, and that was can 100 humans beat a gorilla, a singular gorilla, in a fight to the death?

• 4:06Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 4:07Speaker 04

  I, I have strong feelings about this. Randall, what do you think? Randall has come today with a notepad that I believe contains notes on this, on this subject.

• 4:16Speaker 05

  I do. I, I, I don't think it's a very interesting question. I think the... The numbers, the sheer numbers and the fatigue factor. But I'd like to just use this moment to, uh, to bolster that opinion with my qualifications as an all around great ape enthusiast. Phil, will you pull up exhibit one, please? Uh, whenever I'm at a zoo, I like to go visit the great apes. On the left is Gorilla World at Cincinnati Zoo. On the right, I don't even know which zoo I was at there. That was 2022 and I didn't go back to check my travel calendar. But as you can see there, it says test your gorilla IQ and I did rather well that day.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  How do, how do we know?

• 4:57Speaker 05

  Uh, you'll just have to trust me.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  Okay. Been to so many zoos and checked out so many apes that he doesn't even know what zoo he was at.

• 5:05Speaker 05

  Yes. Uh, Phil, if you'll pull up the next slide, please. This is a bizarre image, one of my favorite, uh, sort of freak discoveries in the course of my dissertation research. This is an ad for the Ruger, uh, 44 Magnum carbine. It's like the 44 Magnum version of a 1022. And they thought the best way to demonstrate the utility of this is, uh, with an image of a man and a gorilla that he's killed.

• 5:32Speaker 04

  That's amazing.

• 5:33Speaker 05

  In, uh, somewhere in Central Africa. I had just took a picture of it with my phone and I've never had a, a chance to display it to the world. So here it is. Just, we, we used to live in a very weird place. Phil, exhibit three here. Oh, so this is a sequence of photos taken at the Cincinnati Zoo. That's not my child, but.

• 5:52Speaker 04

  Just a random child.

• 5:53Speaker 05

  A good friend's child.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 5:55Speaker 05

  We're taking a photo with this friend here. And suddenly, if only we'd been filming video because suddenly he charged us.

• 6:03Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 6:03Speaker 05

  And he slapped the glass in what might be the most frightening, uh, sudden surprise of my life. Uh, it sounded like someone just shot a gun next to my head.

• 6:13Speaker 04

  Okay. Uh, we're learning Randall is indeed a subject matter expert.

• 6:17Speaker 05

  Yes. I've also read Gorillas in the Mist. And then to prep for this segment, I, uh, I didn't have time to watch the movie Congo.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 6:26Speaker 05

  So I downloaded it on Kindle and I read 67% of it.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 6:31Speaker 05

  Uh, I shared some of my thoughts with Phil, uh, but it is one of our culture's greatest meditations on the gorilla's capacity for violence. So, uh, I didn't really get anything out of that. And then I brought this, uh, this T-shirt.

• 6:45Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 6:45Speaker 05

  This is from the San Diego.

• 6:47Speaker 04

  This is all part of answering the question on if 100 humans could beat a gorilla in a fight.

• 6:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, I just think a gorilla, you know, it's five and a half feet tall, 400 pounds. Uh, it's got a powerful sagittal crest that allows its jaw muscles to exert sort of unbelievable pressure on any sort of thing that finds its way into its mouth. But yeah, I don't think you can do it. I think you just get tired.

• 7:10Speaker 04

  I, I fully agree. I don't think it's even, it wouldn't even be close to a fair fight. 100 is such a big number.

• 7:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:17Speaker 04

  100 humans?

• 7:18Speaker 05

  It's not fun.

• 7:18Speaker 04

  I, I think the debate should be, what's the number where it actually gets competitive? My guess is like 10 to 15. Do you think a dozen humans?

• 7:26Speaker 05

  No, I, I.

• 7:27Speaker 04

  You think a gorilla would win against a dozen?

• 7:29Speaker 03

  I was gonna say 20.

• 7:31Speaker 05

  Figure the reach, a gorilla's got a wingspan of about eight feet. Uh, I mean, you look at chimps.

• 7:36Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:37Speaker 05

  I mean chimps just tear people apart.

• 7:39Speaker 04

  Yes. I, I think what would be on our side is I can't imagine they have great stamina. Also, or, or, and, and, but my problem with it would be, I can't identify a weak point on a gorilla.

• 7:52Speaker 05

  No.

• 7:52Speaker 04

  Where, where do you go? You just gotta punch them in the head over and over.

• 7:54Speaker 05

  And they have extremely thick skulls. Uh, their, their brain case is not nearly as large as ours. So there's a lot more bone around it. And they don't have, you know, in a fight, you're always talking about reach. Gorilla's got us, and they don't have chins.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 8:07Speaker 05

  So.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 8:08Speaker 05

  They can't have a, you know, like a boxer with a.

• 8:11Speaker 03

  Hard to find the button.

• 8:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 8:13Speaker 04

  Do they, do they have exposed testicles? Like, that's probably not a weak point either for them. If you were, if you were really trying to, uh, try to think.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Oh, they're exposed. They're just tiny.

• 8:24Speaker 05

  Sorry. Uh, yeah, I just didn't think it was that interesting with questions. So I just wrote down a bunch of gorilla stuff about my hist- oh, I also forgot to mention, uh, when I was, I would have been nine years old, my parents adopted a zoo baby, you know, like adopting a star. It was an eastern lowland gorilla, female.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  Adopted it for you?

• 8:41Speaker 05

  At the Cincinnati Zoo, yeah.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  Right. Or was it for them?

• 8:43Speaker 05

  For me.

• 8:44Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 8:44Speaker 05

  It was a birthday or Christmas gift. That's how much I loved gorillas. I also spent a good deal of my younger years walking around on my knuckles. And I can still do it today pretty effectively.

• 8:53Speaker 04

  Cal, any, any thoughts?

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Empty the clip.

• 8:54Speaker 04

  Any thoughts on 100 humans versus a gorilla in a fight to the death?

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I thought the movie Congo was great. Uh, probably underrated by cinephiles. Um.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  Don't you agree?

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Amy, all that stuff.

• 9:07Speaker 04

  Congo?

• 9:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, I don't, but by the time I saw a lot of those movies, they had already seemed kind of like outdated to me and not in a, not in a great way, but yeah, they're entertaining for sure.

• 9:17Speaker 05

  Okay. The biggest shock to me from revisiting the book is that it's set in 1979.

• 9:24Speaker 05

  So it's just, you read it as a period piece and then you remember that he wrote it in 1980 and you think, God, it's, it's, it's actually very cutting edge. So.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  I think where anybody doing battle with a gorilla would really fall short is there's not a lot of like trained fighting sports where you're counting on somebody biting you. Right? I mean, that's a, that's a big, big part of the.

• 9:50Speaker 05

  We've developed that as a discipline.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. Now, as, as this debate got heated up online, um, there was a tweet that went viral by someone. Phil is going to pull it up here. They built out their roster of 100 people of who they would want to fight the gorilla. Here's some folks that were on that list. This, this tweet got 16 million views. 50 Cent in his prime, uh, Turtle Man, I love Turtle Man. Uh, The Undertaker, the, the wrestler, of course, Nikola Jokic's brothers, uh, Jason Momoa. Uh, a random high school defensive coordinator slash history teacher. And at number 11 in this tweet was Steve Rinella. Steve Rinella made the roster.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  One ahead of Saquon Barkley.

• 10:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. I don't think he has the frame for it.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  Would you guys want Steve on your, uh, your team?

• 10:38Speaker 03

  This is just an ode to Steve. It's not, we're not basing it on fighting ability.

• 10:43Speaker 05

  Only if Steve was charged with wearing it down and some sort of

• 10:46Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 10:47Speaker 05

  chase through hilly country.

• 10:48Speaker 04

  Oh, sure.

• 10:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Like if there is a debate at the beginning that Steve could engage the gorilla on.

• 10:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. Possibly using the communication device and hand signals from the movie Congo.

• 11:01Speaker 05

  It's not in the book. In the book, they're just doing old fashioned American sign language. It adds a

• 11:05Speaker 03

  ASL.

• 11:06Speaker 05

  Element of authenticity to it.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Test of time.

• 11:08Speaker 04

  When I lived back in South Dakota, I played town team baseball, which is like from 18 years old up until whenever you retire. Some guys blend into their 40s. Yeah.

• 11:15Speaker 05

  That's beautiful.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  There, there was a fan who would come to every game. Um, and if he'd see you around town, he'd maybe throw you a compliment. He'd say, ah, Spencer. Looking strong today. And I always like that. That's a very nice compliment to give to another man. I gave that to Steve one day. I said, Steve, looking strong today. And he didn't care for it. He said, what do you want to arm wrestle me or what? So, you know, maybe the gorilla.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Wonder what Freud would say about that?

• 11:40Speaker 04

  If the gorilla can get Steve worked up, maybe, maybe Steve would be acceptable on this roster as number 11 in the gorilla fighting cage match. All right, we've determined that 100 humans would easily dominate that gorilla. And we think the number's closer to like 20.

• 11:56Speaker 06

  Well, sorry, I know you're heading for a segue here, Spencer. I'm gonna throw it off completely. Do you think, how many humans would we lose in the process?

• 12:05Speaker 04

  Oh, I thought about this today. A dozen? No, I think 30. 30? You think he'd rip through 30?

• 12:11Speaker 03

  I think you lose 30% of that roster at game time. Like, they just go, no, no, no, not, not gonna do it.

• 12:18Speaker 04

  I think the initial 10 minutes, I just don't, I can't imagine what. I, I think it depends. If, if the fighting happens like a Jackie Chan movie, where the warriors come at them one at a time, and they like wait their turn. Yeah, we'll lose 30 for sure. But we could probably suffocate this thing with like 15 people. The strength is just, I don't think. He can't, he can't punch 15 people at once. I think he could, I think he could.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  He could just physically tear them apart.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  I think he could huck us. Oh.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm just saying, I don't care who you are, like, you get in the, in the cage with a gorilla, you, there's a large part of that roster that's just gonna be like, you know what? Not worth it. Not gonna happen.

• 12:59Speaker 04

  And, and Google says that their testicles and penis are quite hidden and small, as far as primates go, so we can't count on that.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's part of, one of the issues with their genetic depth. Small weiners.

• 13:14Speaker 04

  All right. Moving on. Joining us on the line first is Duncan Murdoch, a paleontologist from the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History. He's here to talk about the dinosaur highway that was just discovered in England. Duncan, welcome to the show. Hello, morning, how are you? We're good. First thing, Duncan, tell us how these 200 tracks that came to be known as the dinosaur highway were discovered.

• 13:39Speaker 07

  Yeah, absolutely. So there's a quarry in the centre of England, near the city of Oxford, where I am, where they're removing limestone to crush it up to use as gravel. And when they were removing that, they were slowly scraping off a layer of clay, and the bucket on the digger felt a series of little bumps. So they thought, huh, that's strange. So they called us in from the museum to have a look at them, and we verified that they were, in fact, dinosaur footprints. And then we mounted an excavation to uncover the whole site. And yeah, we found over 200 individual prints from probably five different individual animals.

• 14:23Speaker 04

  Hmm, that's wonderful. Now, describe how big the tracks are and how long this highway is.

• 14:29Speaker 07

  So most of them are one kind of dinosaur, and they form these oval shapes that are about three feet long by about two feet wide, and about nine inches deep, something like that. But we see literally hundreds of these prints. And they go, the longest trackway is at least 150 metres long. So it's a huge area that's crisscrossed with all these individual tracks.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  And how old are the tracks and what kind of dinosaurs made them?

• 15:04Speaker 07

  So the surface is from the middle part of the Jurassic period, which is about 166 million years ago. At the time, it would have been a kind of lagoon near the edge of a continent. We see two different shaped footprints. So most of them, like the one you're seeing on the screen, are quite rare, but most of them are these kind of oval shapes that would have been from a large-bodied, four-legged, long-necked dinosaur. I think something like a Diplodocus or Brontosaurus.

• 15:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, just like that one there on the screen. And then we rarely see with these three-toed prints. If you've ever seen footprints of a wading bird on a beach, you see these three-toed prints. We see exactly that. And they were from a very different kind of animal, this two-legged, carnivorous, meat-eating theropod dinosaur called Megalosaurus.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  Hmm. And does this area in England have a history of dinosaur discovery?

• 16:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, absolutely. In fact, the first dinosaur ever named, Megalosaurus, the fossils came from a little village called Stonesfield, just a few miles from where we find these footprints in eighteen twenty four. It was first named, so just over two hundred years ago. So dinosaur science itself actually started here in Oxfordshire, and it was really exciting that two hundred years later, we're still finding evidence about these animals in the form of their footprints in this quarry.

• 16:33Speaker 04

  And how long was the excavation process and what did that look like?

• 16:37Speaker 07

  Okay, so we first discovered these prints a couple of years ago, and we uncovered a small number of them, realised it was a much bigger undertaking. So we put together a team between the University of Oxford and the University of Birmingham. So it was myself, my colleague Dr Emma Nichols, my colleagues Professor Kirsty Edgar, Professor Richard Butler in Birmingham. And we then put together a team of about a hundred people over the course of a week, where we went out every day. Most of the time, we were painstakingly removing a layer of clay that fills and covers these prints to uncover the hard limestone

• 17:16Speaker 07

  underneath. So carefully removing it with trowels and then sponging out the clay, eventually uncovering the whole site. Then there's a process of documentation where we took literally tens of thousands of photographs to try and capture every single print, as well as flying drones to capture the entire site and image the whole thing before it's then reburied.

• 17:42Speaker 04

  Now, you said that this area was a lagoon one hundred sixty six million years ago. Talk more about what England as a whole looked like at that period, how that's different from today.

• 17:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's a really good question. So around, let's say, one hundred and sixty six million years ago, in the middle of Jurassic, the continents as we know them today were starting to form. So there used to be this huge continent called Pangaea, where pretty much all the continental land masses were together. Through the early part of the Jurassic, and these continents were breaking apart. So things like the Atlantic Ocean were forming. And this created lots of volcanism, lots of volcanoes erupting in the rifting. And it created these shallow inland sea ways that were forming in as this continent was breaking apart.

• 18:32Speaker 07

  So, England at the time in the Middle Jurassic was underneath one of these shallow sea ways. So if you imagine something like the Florida Keys today, or the Bahamas bank, where you have these shallow seas with these beautiful clear waters with white sand being deposited. And nearby you have rivers washing materially into kind of in mangrove swamps, producing these lagoons behind where you get these sheltered environments. And it's in one of these lagoon environments that these dinosaurs were walking along, walking along what would have been a coastline. A hundred and sixty six million years ago.

• 19:12Speaker 04

  Okay, so there were multiple dinosaurs who created this dinosaur highway. Do you think those dinosaurs interacted or was, you know, these separated by potentially days or years?

• 19:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, so the conditions needed to form these prints are very rare. So you need the mud to be just right. If you have mud that's too wet, then when you pull your foot out, it's just gonna fill back in that hole. If the mud's too dry, then even a ten ton animal like Cetusaurus can't make a lasting impression. So we think these surfaces were only just right for probably a matter of weeks, maybe months, certainly within one season. So what we do find is lots of, most of the prints are from the same kind of dinosaur. But we find lots of different sizes. So there's potential evidence that these animals were moving in herds, showing a kind of herding behaviour with different

• 20:08Speaker 07

  individuals of different ages moving around. Then the theropod prints, these meat eating megalosaurus, they cross where we see these larger herbivorous animals walking along. So although we don't see any direct interaction between them. It's pretty safe to assume that if you're a big meat eating dinosaur, you're gonna look for big plant eating dinosaurs to prey upon. So there's a potential that we have interactions between predator and prey, but we can't be sure because all we're seeing are these these individual prints. But what we can say is each one of those footprints is a single moment in the life of an extinct animal. So we get this this amazing, unique window into into that very

• 20:53Speaker 07

  moment when that animal put that foot in that exact location. And you can go and put your foot in exactly the same place. It's absolutely thrilling to do.

• 21:00Speaker 04

  So from that brief window, what sorts of things can paleontologists learn?

• 21:06Speaker 07

  So we're able to do things like reconstruct the environment that these animals were living in. So as well as the dinosaur footprints, we find smaller fossils, we find seashells, we find bits of wood. And we can also do things like work out how fast these animals might have been moving. So most of them seem to be moving at a kind of average human walking pace. So none of them are going very, very fast. And we can estimate body sizes from the spacing of the of the prints. Within the biggest individuals are probably about 16 meters long for the herbivores and about eight or nine meters for the the carnivores. And we can also observe these

• 21:48Speaker 07

  interactions between species. So we know that these two different species of dinosaur were in the same place at roughly the same time. So we can start to build a more complex picture of the whole environment that they lived in.

• 22:03Speaker 03

  Duncan, this is a active quarry.

• 22:06Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  What what's the fate of these tracks?

• 22:11Speaker 07

  Yeah, so it's still an active quarry. They're still extracting limestone. It's worth saying that if they hadn't been quarrying this stone, we would have never found the prints. It's absolutely because of this quarrying activity that we're able to do this work. And they don't extract the stone that the prints are in. It's no good. It's too, it's too soft a material.

• 22:34Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 22:35Speaker 07

  And so, uh, they aren't being damaged or destroyed in any way by the action of the, of the quarry.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  Have you ever heard of, uh, the Meat Eater Land Access Initiative? Where we, we provide access to, to more, uh, outdoor activity on, on land here in, in the States primarily. Uh, what are the chances of, we don't need one of the fancy three-toed ones, but one of the oval tracks getting shipped over here so we can auction it off for public access?

• 23:07Speaker 07

  So there's a, there's a few problems. One is if you try and actually cut out the, the prints, they basically fall apart. You can only really see them in the field. Um, so right now they're not accessible and they're getting recovered with clay to actually protect them. That's the best thing to do. But we're working very closely with the quarry and Natural England, who are the body that oversee these kinds of things here in the UK. Um, for plans for potential future access. What you can do though, is you can virtually visit this site. So we've, we've created a 3D model of the whole, uh, area and, and every single individual print. We're currently working up publishing that and we're going to make that publicly available

• 23:51Speaker 07

  to anyone in the world to download. So you can virtually visit.

• 23:55Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 23:55Speaker 07

  So hopefully that will, uh, yeah, satisfy. The other thing you can do is come to Oxford, come to the, uh, Museum of Natural History and we have, uh, casts, replicas of the, of the prints on display at the moment. So if any of your, uh, your listeners are in the UK, please do come to Oxford. You can get up close and personal with a replica of the print.

• 24:18Speaker 04

  Very exciting stuff. Uh, thank you for joining us Duncan and congrats on that discovery.

• 24:24Speaker 07

  No problem. Thank you very much.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  I liked how there was a clear, uh, convergence of trails there.

• 24:30Speaker 04

  Oh yeah.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  So like the, the ancient, uh, version of a whitetail hunter had just posted up right there.

• 24:36Speaker 04

  That's right. Yeah. That's, uh, you'd call that a pinch point. Uh, right here along this lagoon, we've got the, the shallow water ends. Obviously dinosaurs like crossing this spot.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  I love it. That was sweet.

• 24:48Steven Rinella?

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• 26:20Steven Rinella?

  Every successful hunt eventually leads to the workbench or the kitchen counter. The deer is broken down, the meat is trimmed, and it's time to grind burger, make sausage, prepare jerky, and package everything for the freezer. It's an important part of the field to table process. LEM Products makes the equipment designed to help you get the job done. From big bike grinders, which are phenomenal, and sausage stuffers, to slicers, dehydrators, vacuum sealers, and more, LEM offers professional-grade equipment built for home meat processing. For more than 30 years, LEM has been helping hunters and Anglers and field to table enthusiasts process and preserve their harvest with confidence.

• 27:04Steven Rinella?

  Visit L E M products.com and use promo code STEVE15 to get 15% off plus free shipping. That's L E M products.com promo code STEVE15. L E M built for the work there for the journey.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  All right, next up is the turkey report.

• 27:28Speaker 04

  Is there a sound for this? I don't have a sound for the turkey. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I heard a sound last week. Oh, well, you know what? I played, I played this. Here we go. Everybody's looking for the turkey report. Randall's is better. Today, we've got updates from Seth Morris, Max Barta, and Tony Peterson. Take it away, Phil.

• 27:49Speaker 08

  All right, Seth Morris here, coming at you from region one in Montana with your weekly turkey report.

• 27:58Speaker 08

  It's been a tough weekend of hunting.

• 28:02Speaker 08

  The birds are the most hen up that I've seen so far this season.

• 28:07Speaker 08

  It's even tough to get a bird to break around that, you know, 10 to 2 time period, which is usually some good killing hours, but I've been seeing gobblers with hens all day long. They're just not leaving them. And so that's made the hunting real tough, but kind of got to do, you can get a bird on the ground.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Sneaky, sneaky.

• 28:33Speaker 08

  I killed this one because I finally was able to call the hens in. And he came in with the hens, but I couldn't get him to break from the hens. So the only way I could do it was getting the hens to come in. And my wife, Kelsey, who's with us too, she killed a bird yesterday morning.

• 28:49Speaker 04

  My goodness.

• 28:51Speaker 08

  That's your report. Good luck out there.

• 28:54Speaker 09

  Hey guys, uh, Max Bartle here. Central Tennessee hunting report. Um, things are weird right now. Um, it's the first week of May. I feel like the birds have gone past their primetime breeding cycle and they're kinda on the down slope of things. Um, birds are gobbling on the roost a couple of times, but not much. And then, yeah, I feel like once they hit the ground and they're just not too keen on coming into hen calls, so, um, yeah, things are tough, but, um, I feel like if you stick it out and work some ground, you'll find a bird that wants to gobble.

• 29:36Speaker 09

  You only need one gobble, um, and like you're in the game, so, um, that's what I did here. Uh, this bird came about 10:30 and yeah, it was, it was a great hunt. Um, and yeah, it's been raining the last couple of days too, so I don't know if that's got the gobbling all mixed up or anything like that, so, um, but yeah, beautiful day. Happy camper, happy hunter. Spring's a beautiful thing.

• 30:05Speaker 10

  Hey everyone, Tony Peterson here with a little turkey report. I just got back from Kansas, had an amazing hunt down there in public land, killed a bird, and I just spent today, uh, you know, drying out some beards, drying out some tail fans from my daughters, have killed a few birds, I've killed a few in different states. The hunting has been really good, but it has been kind of a weird year and I'm starting to see a little transition right now where a lot of these birds are switching to eating a lot of bugs and the hens are starting to nest. My whole drive home from Kansas all the way back here to Minnesota, there were lone hens all over the place in the afternoon. And when I see that, and I don't know if you can hear this or not, but there's a whole bunch of frogs calling in my backyard pond.

• 30:47Speaker 10

  This is the time where if you've been dealing with hen up birds, which a lot of us have, uh, should get really callable now. Maybe not right off the roost yet, they might fly down, strut for those hens for a while, but those hens are gonna eat some bugs, they're gonna scratch for some grain, whatever, eat some fresh greenery, they're gonna lay down and these toms are gonna start cruising. And we always think that we're gonna hit that, you know, a little bit earlier this far north, you know, down south's a different story. But right now is the time where if you have, if you have the ability to hunt all day and work some setups through and fire up that gobbler sometime in the midday or in the, in toward the evening, this is the time when it matters a lot and it, it can get really

• 31:29Speaker 10

  good. So I think, I think they're going to be super callable from here for the next, I don't know, 10 days or so, probably two weeks, maybe. So it's a good time to be out there. Good luck.

• 31:40Speaker 04

  Wow. Three big time turkey killers there in Tony, Max and Seth. We got a global show today. We got dinosaur tracks from the UK, turkey reports from middle Tennessee. Got everything.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  I, I was dying to ask our dino guy if he was a feather guy too. Like, are they just big turkeys?

• 31:59Speaker 05

  Hmm. I was, I was dying to actually ask him if the long-necked dinosaurs he was referring to are sauropods, just to test my knowledge, but I didn't want to sound like an idiot, so.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  You boys both had a chance to ask him those questions.

• 32:13Speaker 10

  I didn't think it was appropriate.

• 32:14Speaker 03

  You had so many questions lined up.

• 32:16Speaker 10

  The guys from the university, the University of Oxford. I was shaking in my chair.

• 32:21Speaker 06

  What's your favorite dinosaur?

• 32:23Speaker 04

  Oh, you know what? That would have been a good question.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  Do you think they could run fast?

• 32:26Speaker 04

  I'm sad I didn't ask.

• 32:27Speaker 06

  Do you think a hundred velociraptors could kill a gorilla?

• 32:29Speaker 10

  Yeah, I could use, use all of Timmy's bad dinosaur jokes from another Michael Crichton joint, Jurassic Park. Do you think he saw us?

• 32:39Speaker 04

  I wasn't on last week's episode, but I heard Phil give himself an invite to Randall's turkey hunt. Uh, are you aware of this, Randall?

• 32:47Speaker 05

  Uh, vaguely. I've tried to invite Phil to turkey hunts that other people have invited me on. Uh, there isn't really a Randall turkey hunt.

• 32:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's the thing. I wasn't inviting myself to any sort of pre-planned hunt. I said, you know, I think it'd be fun if Randall wanted to go turkey hunting, that I joined him. I didn't invite myself. That was some, that was some rude phrasing and I won't stand for it.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Phil, you should invite yourself. That's exactly what you should do.

• 33:12Speaker 05

  I just tried to invite myself on the Max's turkey hunting calendar for next week. So if, uh, if Max fits me in, Phil. Uh, clear your calendar.

• 33:22Speaker 06

  All right, you would, so you'll invite me to Max's turkey hunt? And we won't, we just won't tell Max?

• 33:27Speaker 05

  No, no, I'll tell Max, but he's pretty easygoing.

• 33:29Speaker 06

  Okay. That'd be wonderful. That sounds like a blast.

• 33:32Speaker 05

  I just like the vibe of Max's video. It sort of started out, I wasn't sure where it was going, but these turkey guys love the reveal where they can just twist their body or-

• 33:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's getting a little corny.

• 33:42Speaker 05

  Change the, alter the angle of the camera.

• 33:45Speaker 03

  Not a lot of guys could do it.

• 33:46Speaker 06

  Brent did the same thing last week.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  I wouldn't go outside, but this guy made a mistake.

• 33:51Speaker 05

  See, a guy, a guy of Max's size can pull that off with a turkey, but not like a bull moose? I'd like to just see how large of an animal I can hide with my torso in a video.

• 34:03Speaker 04

  Now, yeah, Phil did not invite himself, but that's me telling Phil he should invite himself. That's your way into a turkey hunt, Phil. All right, we're halfway through the show. Uh, let's get a break for some listener feedback. What do you got?

• 34:14Speaker 06

  Sure, let's, let's start out with the big one. Jody says, can Cal expand on the late night amendment to sell public lands in the House budget package?

• 34:22Speaker 05

  And in parentheses, it says in under two minutes, I think.

• 34:25Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah. Okay, very, very quickly. Reconciliation is super scary because there, there is a process, a public process that allows for the sale of small parcels of public land to address all the needs that these people are saying they're trying to address, such as, um, public housing, infrastructure restraints on rural communities, et cetera. Um, in reconciliation, they're trying to push this through, um, under the normal process. Sorry to back up one second. Under the normal process, which would be like FLIPFA and FLIPMA,

• 35:08Speaker 03

  um, lots of acronyms in the government game. We can deal with giving up some parcels of of public land because that cash then goes towards the purchase of lands of greater value for the American people. So it's kind of built on a win-win system. The municipality that's constrained gets a little more space for water projects or or housing in this case, and we, the American people, get a quote-unquote better chunk of ground. It's a square, fair deal. This reconciliation BS, if I'm being frank,

• 35:50Speaker 03

  is not going to ding our national debt at all. There's absolutely no guidelines that say this is how it's going to address the sale of land, the staking of our federally managed public lands with a big for-sale sign.

• 36:07Speaker 03

  There's no guidelines that say this is how it's going to alleviate housing or provide any value for the American people.

• 36:15Speaker 04

  Add some context, Cal.

• 36:16Speaker 03

  And that sale will go into the Treasury. The dollars from that sale will go into the Treasury. There's no public process.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  Go ahead, Spencer.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  Explain what happened last night at midnight, as to why this is being brought up.

• 36:32Speaker 03

  Basically, there's a very short timeline to get this budget through. Memorial Day weekend is like the goal, the stated goal from the outset. So folks are starting to scramble. And when you're scrambling, there's opportunities to slide in things and say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll totally give you what you want, but here's this thing that you got to sign off on. And so at 11:30 last night,

• 37:01Speaker 03

  Arizona and Utah slid in this provision for the sale of public lands. Right now, there's no context as to how many acres that is, but we're hearing numbers as high as 650,000 acres, which is something that you can't do under the FLYHTMA process, and we don't know how these lands have been selected, what they're trying to address. All we know is this is a major opportunity for folks that want to get this done. And by and large, the vast majority of the American public do not agree with this.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  So this is a very small group of interests being prioritized over we the American people and nobody should stand for this. You should need to get on the horns with your senators and representatives in the house. And I've been doing this all morning and all last night. It's not that hard, but you need to send your emails, your phone calls and talk to staffers and say, hey, I do not like where this is headed.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  And for more on this, we've got coverage on the meat eater.com. We just published an article, Republicans vote to sell public land in midnight amendment. You'll get a fuller story there.

• 38:18Speaker 03

  And it's like, we're selling things that can make us money. And when you're trying to dig yourself out of debt, that's not what you do.

• 38:28Speaker 04

  Phil, what else you got?

• 38:29Speaker 06

  McKenna says, let's go Oklahoma City. What do you think about that Spencer?

• 38:33Speaker 04

  I was just an ass whooping of epic proportions last night.

• 38:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, that Mitchell follows up with, what do the Nuggets need to do to make the fix from last night? Rough loss.

• 38:42Speaker 04

  I'll be real quick. Michael Porter Jr. Is not good enough. He's way too hurt. Jamal Murray is not been a second fiddle lately. He's good enough to be a third fiddle. He's not been good enough to be a second fiddle. And we have too shallow of a bench. So a lot of issues that can't be fixed.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  What sport is this?

• 38:59Speaker 04

  Basketball. We need to see Nikola Jokic to go god mode. That's our only hope.

• 39:03Speaker 06

  And big Westbrook energy.

• 39:05Speaker 04

  That's right. Russell Westbrook has been phenomenal. Good on Russ.

• 39:09Speaker 05

  Fun to see Russ.

• 39:09Speaker 04

  Anything else Phil?

• 39:10Speaker 06

  From Dan Pooper, real name. A question for the lads. Do you guys have a vintage piece of gear you prefer or think is superior to modern or current options?

• 39:18Speaker 05

  It's DB Pooper.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  Oh, that's good. That is good.

• 39:22Speaker 05

  When I was at the, when I was at the Blazers game, I don't remember the guy's initials, one of the, one of the rotation guys for the, for the Blazers, his initials are DB. And when he'd score, they'd go DB Hooper. And they had like a sketch, you know, of DB Cooper, but it was the player's face in there. I thought it was very clever.

• 39:40Speaker 06

  Oh yeah. Cause he landed not, not too far from Portland.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  Back to Mr. Pooper here.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  Cal, any vintage piece of gear that you really, really like?

• 39:50Speaker 03

  Knives, hatchets, axes, all of those things can be multiple lifetime pieces of gear. I think everybody's got something that they're attached to in that lineup. Also, can't beat, just cannot beat a good pair of wool pants for outdoor activities.

• 40:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, knife is a good one, Dutch oven too.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, there you go, cast iron.

• 40:15Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm, got an old Dutch oven that I really love and that's the Dutch oven I'll own for the rest of my life, I think. Randall, anything to add?

• 40:23Speaker 05

  Uh, I think the closest thing I have to a vintage piece of gear that easily comes to mind is just an old ass Grumman canoe. It's just a timeless piece.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 40:35Speaker 05

  Craigslist score, yeah, it will serve you well.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  Phil, let's do one more and then we're gonna move on.

• 40:41Speaker 06

  Sure, cuz we got Cal in the room, not that you two are, you know.

• 40:47Speaker 06

  Flying Taco Moose says he's making, or they're making Gruyere stuffed bread today, any suggestions for what dish to pair it with?

• 40:54Speaker 04

  I'd only count.

• 40:55Speaker 06

  Guessing wild game we're talking here.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Whoa, man.

• 41:00Speaker 06

  Stinky. Yeah, that's. Stinky cheese, any sort of, any sort of pairing you'd.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, media, I mean, just medium rare, cut against the grain meat. That sounds delicious. Maybe a little fresh onion on there? Like that too.

• 41:16Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 41:16Speaker 03

  Make it extra stinky.

• 41:18Speaker 04

  Alright, our next segment is one minute fishing.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk? Go ahead. Make my cast.

• 41:31Speaker 04

  One minute fishing is where we go live to someone who's fishing and they have one minute to catch fish and if they're successful, we'll make a $500 donation to a conservation group. This week, our angler is Seth Morris, who's at the Meat Eater HQ pond and he's fishing for a donation to Walla's Unlimited.

• 41:48Speaker 05

  Good to see ya, Seth.

• 41:51Speaker 08

  Hey guys, how we doing?

• 41:52Speaker 04

  We're doing good Seth, give us a little scouting report on the Meat Eater Pond today.

• 41:57Speaker 08

  Alright, so I came out earlier, I made a couple casts, I had one swipe at it, which was ideal because I didn't actually want to catch one.

• 42:04Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 42:05Speaker 08

  Um, and that told me all I need to know, so there's some, uh, water flowing into this pond. It seems like they're stacked up over there in the current.

• 42:14Speaker 04

  I don't know, what's the water clarity like today?

• 42:17Speaker 08

  It's pretty good, I'd say three feet, four feet.

• 42:19Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 42:20Speaker 08

  And, uh, I will say that we just talked to a youngster that was fishing in the same spot, um, when we came out here. And he said he had not caught anything.

• 42:29Speaker 04

  Oh no.

• 42:31Speaker 03

  Did he give him the old brush off where you're like, oh yeah, there's nothing in there, beat it.

• 42:36Speaker 04

  Maybe he thought you were a chump.

• 42:39Speaker 08

  When you get a few more years of experience under your belt like I have, maybe you'll catch some.

• 42:43Speaker 04

  What, what are we using today Seth? I see you got the spinning rod in your hands.

• 42:47Speaker 08

  Oh yeah, spinning rod, as always, number four, Panther Martin. My go-to for trap.

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Every child needs one of those.

• 42:56Speaker 04

  That's right, we have not had a successful angler on the Meat Eater Pond yet, and this is our first one-minute fishing of the year since the ice has melted, so maybe this is our chance Seth.

• 43:08Speaker 08

  Yeah, I would say this is the best time to fish this pond, the whole year, my experience, we'll see.

• 43:15Speaker 04

  Little hot tip off.

• 43:16Speaker 05

  How's the garbage situation down there? Good flow?

• 43:20Speaker 08

  Well, I noticed over here's a pile of plastic bottles.

• 43:24Speaker 05

  Yup, yup.

• 43:25Speaker 08

  Which isn't great.

• 43:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, we're gonna do a cleanup on that on Monday as an office.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  Uh huh, and we've got, uh, I think we've got as many employees here as there are pieces of trash out there, so maybe leave some garbage while you're out there Seth. Trip over, or, uh, dump over the dumpster, so we have something to clean up next week.

• 43:43Speaker 08

  Well, there is a garbage can tipped over over here, so.

• 43:45Speaker 04

  Okay, perfect, kick that thing into the water for us. Alright Seth, your one-minute fishing starts as soon as you make your first cast, go ahead.

• 43:53Speaker 08

  Alright, here we go.

• 43:57Speaker 04

  Seth has made his first cast right towards the current that he thinks the fish are hanging in. God, new music, Phil? Oh no, it just starts off really silent and then gets way too loud. Beautiful day here in Bozeman. We've got green grass, uh, no wind. Glassy water. Uh huh. Alright, Seth is on to cast number two. He's got 20 seconds into his one minute. Somehow he managed to avoid casting it into that tree where I casted.

• 44:25Speaker 04

  Seth, 30 seconds to go.

• 44:30Speaker 04

  Come on Seth. He's making his third cast. He might be able to get one more cast in here. Do it for the memory of Chester. R.I.P. Chester's still very much alive. Just a few states away. Basically dead. Alright, you have 10 seconds to go Seth. Oh, he's taken a few steps with that cast. Yeah, that's a tournament angler cast right there. Oh, your time is up Seth Morris.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  Tell us, tell us what, what happened there Seth?

• 45:01Speaker 08

  Well, you know, the casts were in the right spot. The technique was there. It just, I don't think the fish were there.

• 45:08Speaker 04

  The fish were wrong. Yeah.

• 45:10Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  Classic. Okay, alright.

• 45:14Speaker 08

  We might, might need to rethink, uh, our location spot Spencer.

• 45:19Speaker 04

  Or we need to, we need to stock that pond. Maybe that's what we gotta do. This segment continues to just produce.

• 45:27Speaker 08

  I think, I think next time we need to go with a, a bobber and a, a night crawler.

• 45:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, or yeah, do one of each. Have that, have a bobber and a night crawler out there and throw your panther martin. Well, I don't know if he's in a two rod zone. Check, check the regs.

• 45:43Speaker 04

  We'll see what the regs say about the, the meteor HQ pond. Alright Seth, uh, thanks for joining us. Good luck with your day of fishing out there at the pond. See you in a little bit Seth.

• 45:51Speaker 08

  Thanks guys. We'll see ya.

• 45:54Speaker 04

  Alright, our next segment is show and tell.

• 46:10Speaker 06

  Oh no.

• 46:17Speaker 04

  Is that, uh, is that Steve Winwood?

• 46:19Speaker 06

  It is indeed.

• 46:20Speaker 04

  Steve Winwood. I, I love the song, uh, Back in the High Life Again. If I owned a yacht, I'd play yacht rock all day.

• 46:27Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  And Steve Winwood, he would have-

• 46:29Speaker 06

  I'd play yacht rock all day in my Hyundai Santa face, man.

• 46:31Speaker 04

  Did you have Sirius XM?

• 46:33Speaker 06

  No, I just use Spotify playlist.

• 46:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, I love, when I did have Sirius though, uh, I, I would, yacht rock was one of my five presets on there. Loved yacht rock. And Steve Winwood, he would have, um, some prime real estate in that yacht rock playlist for certain. All right, Randall, let's start with you. What did you bring to show the classroom today?

• 46:53Speaker 05

  I brought, uh, one item from home and then when I got to the office today, I thought I'd add another item to that. And I figured that Cal didn't bring something, so I thought, I'll just do two.

• 47:03Speaker 06

  Wow, presumptuous, Randall.

• 47:05Speaker 04

  Let's see what you brought and then we'll find out if Cal did bring anything.

• 47:08Speaker 05

  First thing I brought, the first thing I brought is a rare limited edition. You know, we've been hearing from the fans that, uh, they needed a book version of the Audio Mountain Men. This is in fact, uh, not a licensed version. This is just some bootleg thing that a guy produced with ChatGPT and a, uh, and a, uh, print as you buy, uh, system. So I saw this on Amazon and before the lawyers could take it down, I ordered a copy for $11.

• 47:36Speaker 04

  Oh, wait, this guy didn't do this as like a favor to us. He was trying to-

• 47:40Speaker 05

  No, no, legit. This just showed up, this showed up on her, on our, uh, audiobook thing.

• 47:44Speaker 04

  Whoa.

• 47:45Speaker 05

  Yeah. And so it's, it doesn't have a back cover, um, and it's, it's very strange. There's like-

• 47:50Speaker 06

  So it's a create your own back cover.

• 47:52Speaker 05

  Yeah. And, and clearly they fed, so the, the one troubling thing, and maybe this is my big takeaway, is you hear how like artificial intelligence is getting so good. And it's just like, all it can do is, is look at text and predict what text there should be, you know? And I read this and it's horrible.

• 48:11Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 48:11Speaker 05

  And so-

• 48:12Speaker 04

  They're not your words that are horrible.

• 48:13Speaker 05

  Right. They fed our audio into ChatGPT and then had it make something that sounded like that. And so this is so bad. It's making me sort of rethink my own abilities as a writer.

• 48:24Speaker 06

  Sorry to interrupt. I just got word from Corey. Seth caught one on the next cast. Oh, hell. Oh, we need to make it 90 second fishing.

• 48:31Speaker 05

  So guys, if you see, if you see any print versions of our audiobooks, they are in fact illegal pirated versions and don't buy them unless you just want a funny keepsake, which I did. So. You should have got, what was that guy charging for that? 12 bucks. Yeah, yeah. The next thing I brought is the oldest, the oldest and more, most celebrated freeze dried meal in my pantry. This is a Cincinnati style chili backpackers pantry that I purchased at the Bozeman REI. I believe in like 2016. Oh, when did it expire? The expiration date was in May of last year. Oh.

• 49:12Speaker 05

  And you can see some of the labels are peeling off of it and I've always saved this for a real special occasion. Okay. And.

• 49:21Speaker 06

  You're gonna eat it right now.

• 49:22Speaker 05

  The time is never right. So it always goes into my backpack when I'm going out on a hunt where I think I'm gonna, you know, have a memorable moment that I want to celebrate with a fake version of Cincinnati style chili. What would it take, you think? Big old, big old bull, but then I get into a rush, you know, I get an animal down, I start cutting it up and then I start thinking about how I can get it out of there. So. It's really like, I'd have to be trapped on the mountain with the, an animal of a lifetime for me to actually tear the seal on this because I don't think they make it anymore. How does the seal feel on that thing? It's eight years old. Oh, that's a good question. Pretty good? You know, it doesn't like balloon out when I, yeah, I don't think it's airtight. Okay.

• 50:05Speaker 05

  I'm just, I hadn't really thought about, I've rolled it up and put in my backpack a lot over the past 10 years. It's gone with you on a lot of trips. Yes. It's kind of like an old friend now. Was, was it saved for a special occasion the day you bought it or did that recently change where it's like, okay, now? I was, I mean, I was thrilled when I found it and I should have bought a lot of them. It wasn't, no, I didn't like buy it with the intention of saving it, but it just never felt right to break into it. And then over time, it was like. I've got to pick the right occasion. So probably three years after this went in and out of my backpack, I, I decided it's a real thing to actually eat it someday. And to be honest, I don't know that I ever will.

• 50:45Speaker 05

  I think my best days are behind me and I also lack the courage of conviction required to do something like, you know, take in a moment and celebrate my accomplishments. So.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  I hope it happens this fall. Does that mean you killed something big?

• 50:58Speaker 05

  It'll tuck this under my armpit when I'm heading six feet under.

• 51:02Speaker 04

  Okay, that's good. Cal, what'd you bring today for show and tell? Prove Randall wrong. Oh, he's taking his shoe off.

• 51:11Speaker 04

  All right. What, what do you got here?

• 51:12Speaker 06

  Just incredibly on brand.

• 51:13Speaker 03

  Do we have a QVC style?

• 51:17Speaker 06

  Uh, just, just imagine we're playing, playing the music from the countdown. Just some, some soft.

• 51:24Speaker 03

  So, uh, lots of folks are into Crocs. I discovered these, uh, Birkenstocks versions of a Croc. You can call them a Birken Croc. Um, oh, lighter weight.

• 51:38Speaker 05

  I'll be the judge of that. Oh, yeah. It jumps out here.

• 51:41Speaker 03

  It does. Lighter weight, uh, obviously way of class here. Uh, great camp shoe, backpacking shoe. And, um, you know, it's Roto molded. It doesn't stink.

• 51:53Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  Super comfy, good art support for us older guys.

• 51:56Speaker 04

  Smell it, Randall. See if it smells or not.

• 51:59Speaker 05

  No, you gotta smell the inside.

• 52:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. What do you?

• 52:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's good.

• 52:03Speaker 04

  Let Randall be the judge.

• 52:04Speaker 03

  I'm not saying it's great.

• 52:06Speaker 05

  No, it smells like feet. It literally just smells like a shoe.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  But I highly recommend. They were 30 bucks.

• 52:12Speaker 04

  Uh huh. Cal's show and tell item where the shoe's on his feet.

• 52:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:16Speaker 04

  That's good.

• 52:16Speaker 06

  Grant, Grant, Grant asks, is it breathable?

• 52:19Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 52:21Speaker 06

  Oh, okay.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  Can't have it all. Not much of a QVC segment.

• 52:25Speaker 04

  All right, my show and tell item.

• 52:27Speaker 03

  Well, we'll get better, Phil.

• 52:29Speaker 05

  And, and, and listeners, listeners, if you're out there, uh.

• 52:32Speaker 03

  But wait, there's more.

• 52:34Speaker 05

  Chime in with your thoughts on whether or not Cal intended to use his shoe for show and tell today.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  Why don't you show us that hoodie you're wearing, uh, maybe, maybe the Yeti mug you're drinking out of next time.

• 52:43Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, no problem.

• 52:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  I was gonna do this, uh, talk about this program that Pheasants Forever Quail Forever puts together.

• 52:50Speaker 04

  Well, you gotta save something for more show and tells down the road.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:54Speaker 05

  Hopefully the next show and tell is, is in the wintertime again, when he has as many layers as he needs to come up with a good item.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  Hey, I'm providing value to our audience. They like it.

• 53:04Speaker 04

  My show and tell item, I'm friends with the fossil dealer in Utah. And I was visiting his shop.

• 53:08Speaker 03

  You bought a rock, great.

• 53:10Speaker 04

  Visiting his shop, um, and I had $200 cash in my pickup. And I said, Seth, Seth, what's the coolest thing I could get for $200? And he pointed to what I have here. This is one, I only have like three rocks that I've ever bought, the rest that I've found. Um, and this, in honor of today's show, is a dinosaur track that he sold me. Far, far, far under value. This is worth way more than $200 and I, I, I protested for a second. I says, Seth, you can't give me that thing for $200. And he said, sure, I can. And so I, I didn't argue anymore. I just took that dang, uh, track. This is, uh, 200 million years old. It's from a Dilophosaurus.

• 53:50Speaker 03

  Dilophosaurus.

• 53:51Speaker 04

  Dilophosaurus. It's found in Connecticut, uh, from the Portland Formation. This dinosaur was made famous in Jurassic Park, uh, but they depicted them way, way wrong.

• 54:02Speaker 05

  A lot of creative liberties.

• 54:03Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, so in, in Jurassic Park, they had them as like a smaller dinosaur that had frills. When it would get angry, it would, it would pop these frills up on the.

• 54:12Speaker 05

  Spit an acidic venom.

• 54:13Speaker 04

  That's exactly right.

• 54:15Speaker 05

  When he wrecked his Jeep, trying to make his way to the last ferry.

• 54:19Speaker 03

  He had it coming.

• 54:19Speaker 05

  To Costa Rica.

• 54:20Speaker 04

  Uh-huh, he, he needed that. Uh, it did spit venom in the movie. These dinosaurs, uh, they do not believe spit venom. They don't think there was any dinosaurs that even possessed venom. Um, so that, those were a lot of creative liberties. The reality is.

• 54:34Speaker 03

  Well, actually it wouldn't be venom though, right? It's just like an acidic phlegm, which would be, uh, something that. Reptiles, some reptiles these days have, right? It's just an acid to digest food.

• 54:46Speaker 04

  But paleontologists don't, they have no evidence that any of these dinosaurs had any kind of venom or any sort of biological function.

• 54:54Speaker 05

  Crichton was just going wild with that.

• 54:56Speaker 03

  But that's the fun part is like, we don't have that much evidence as to what exactly we're dealing with.

• 55:04Speaker 04

  What they do think they know about these dinosaurs, this is one of the first large meat eating dinosaurs that existed. They stood about six feet tall, 20 feet long, weighed 900 pounds. And at the time, this was the largest land mammal in North America that made this here track. This is one of my favorite rocks.

• 55:22Speaker 03

  Put your hand next to that thing. Cute little tiny, yeah.

• 55:26Speaker 05

  That's what's funny about Jurassic Park is that he makes the, the Dilophosaurus a small sort of cute dinosaur. And then the velociraptor, they make much larger.

• 55:38Speaker 03

  Way larger.

• 55:38Speaker 05

  Uh, than it was. So, you know, do your research, kids.

• 55:43Speaker 04

  That's right. This is one of my favorite rocks I have, one of the few rocks that I've purchased. I asked Seth, I says, Seth, have you ever sold stuff to, uh, to, uh, anyone really famous? Like A-list celebrity or, or big politicians? And he says, yep.

• 55:57Speaker 05

  Karl Malone.

• 55:58Speaker 04

  And I go, who are they?

• 56:00Speaker 03

  Was that Leo?

• 56:01Speaker 04

  He says, I can't tell you.

• 56:02Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 56:03Speaker 04

  And then I'm like, well, I begged him, I said, will you give me a hint? Can I make some guesses? He goes, nope. So if you're looking to, uh, if you're a famous person.

• 56:11Speaker 03

  What's the deal? I mean, just between the, the movie prop that they, oh, we can't say what it's from. Why are all these people so secretive about this? Just tell us.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:19Speaker 05

  We're in showbiz, we can take it.

• 56:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:22Speaker 04

  But if you, if you're looking, if, maybe if you were like a star on Parks and Rec and you consume meat eater content, you're looking for a fossil for your own home, Seth Sorensen from the Fossil Shack, he could, uh, he'd hook you up and he'll keep your secret.

• 56:33Speaker 03

  So is that some inside knowledge? Is that from Spencer's Hollywood Reporter beat?

• 56:37Speaker 04

  What's that?

• 56:38Speaker 03

  Is somebody from Parks and Rec interested in fossils?

• 56:40Speaker 04

  I think there's a few characters from that show. I don't know that they're interested in fossils.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  Oh, you're just profiling them.

• 56:45Speaker 04

  They've consumed meat eater content in the past. So maybe they're listening right now. Uh, maybe they're a male cast member from Parks and Rec, maybe two of them.

• 56:54Speaker 03

  Roughly in the age of Aubrey Plaza never misses a show.

• 56:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, and maybe they're interested in having some fossils for their home, the Fossil Shack. He'll keep your secret. He won't tell me or anyone else that you sold him some big, beautiful fossils.

• 57:07Speaker 05

  Get after it, Rob Lowe.

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• 1:00:12Speaker 04

  Joining us on the line last is Alex Fogg, the Oakley County Natural Resources Chief in Florida. He's here to talk about turning a retired ocean liner into the world's largest artificial reef. Alex, welcome to the show.

• 1:00:26Speaker 11

  Hey, man. How's it going?

• 1:00:27Speaker 04

  We're doing good. First thing, tell us about the SS United States, which is the ship at the center of this story.

• 1:00:34Speaker 11

  Yeah, man. So it's a big old ship. When I first saw it, I thought I was looking at the Titanic. And it has that old ocean liner look is built back in the 1950s. Sailed all across the Atlantic, made the fastest crossing from the United States over to England and then broke its own record coming back. Still the record that it holds today. While it still doesn't have that fresh coat of paint on her anymore, you could certainly see how she was quite magnificent back in her heyday.

• 1:01:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's funny. You compared it to the Titanic because this ship is bigger than the Titanic slightly. And I've seen the images comparing the sizes of the SS United States to the Titanic. Now, how did Oakley County acquire the ship?

• 1:01:14Speaker 11

  Yes, it's been a heck of a process. We found out about it maybe three years ago. I had a contractor that we'd worked with on some other artificial reefs reach out and say, hey, you know, you should look at the SS United States. So I went down the Google rabbit hole, started looking at, you know, what, what story this had. And there was some conflict between the old owner and the dock that it was at. So there was coming to a point where the vessel was either going to be sold for scrap, or it was going to have to go to some other purpose. And really, the only economical option was to create an artificial reef with this vessel. We've deployed hundreds of artificial reefs, dozens of wrecks, large vessels, not as big as this one, but large ones in the past. And it just, it seemed like the, the right option for us to move forward with negotiation with the previous owner.

• 1:01:55Speaker 11

  And then we took ownership back in October, which was a big deal. A small county in Florida owning a thousand foot ocean liner that was in Philadelphia at the time.

• 1:02:06Speaker 04

  Can, can you tell us what you guys paid Alex?

• 1:02:09Speaker 11

  Yeah, so we bought the ship for a million dollars, which is about the price of scrap. If it were to be scrapped, there's about a million dollars worth of steel on board.

• 1:02:16Speaker 03

  Hmm. Wow. And then it's a bargain. Yeah. How do you like the, the tug service to get that sucker down there? And then I imagine you got to do it quite a few man hours to make sure you're putting something not all that god awful in the water, right?

• 1:02:33Speaker 11

  Yeah, exactly. So this is built in a time when they didn't really have many rules as to what was going into paint, what was being burned for fuel. So there's a lot of that that's still on board, even though a lot of it was gutted when it got brought overseas to Ukraine and Turkey. A lot of the asbestos is gone, but there's still a lot of lead, a lot of PCBs that are in the paint, a lot of fuel oil. All that has to be removed to, to ensure that we're not hurting the environment that we're hoping to benefit.

• 1:02:57Speaker 04

  Now, I've been surprised to read that it seems like a lot of the decision-making is done at a very local level. In this case, Akalusa County, would I expect there to be involvement from NOAA and the US Fish and Wildlife Service? And maybe even like the state of Alabama? Can you talk about the red tape involved with a project like this and how much or how little power Akalusa County has?

• 1:03:17Speaker 11

  Yeah, fortunately, we planned way ahead. And the way artificial reef construction works is you actually get permits way ahead of time for a certain area to allow you to deploy artificial reefs wherever you want. So we have a permit that's good for 10 years. It was actually initially obtained back in the 90s and, you know, it's still active today. And we can deploy wrecks tomorrow if we want to. So we've already gone through all the consultation with Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife, NOAA, all those folks. The people that we, I guess, had the most red tape that we had to cut through just to get out of Philadelphia was the U.S. Coast Guard. So the Coast Guard was very, very nervous about a vessel that hadn't moved in 30 years, looking the way that it did. They were worried

• 1:03:58Speaker 11

  about its ability to make the tow from Philadelphia all the way down into the Gulf and eventually into Mobile. So it was a hell of a tow, but after a lot of tests and a lot of surveys by all sorts of different people in Philadelphia, it was determined to be okay. There were some water bottles and some cups and things that were left sitting on tables. When we left Philadelphia, it arrived in Mobile with those cups and bottles still sitting in the same place that we left them. So it was a very stable boat, no issues, didn't take on any water. Now's the process of getting her all cleaned up and we'll have to go through similar hurdles when we tow her from Mobile to south of Destin, Fort Walton Beach to deploy his reef.

• 1:04:38Speaker 04

  I've seen some online resistance to this project. And there was a recent headline that said campaigners appeal Trump to save the SS United States. Why are some folks against this?

• 1:04:50Speaker 11

  Yeah, so, you know, this is one of the last vessels of its time, you know, essentially a hand-built vessel that carries our nation's name. A lot of people are very passionate about this vessel. What the people that are so negative about this project don't really know, or maybe can't wrap their head around is how much it would cost. Was that?

• 1:05:10Speaker 03

  Is fishing. They don't know fishing.

• 1:05:11Speaker 11

  There's fishing, totally. I mean, there's a, there's a ton of money in fishing and diving. And they probably aren't fishermen and divers themselves. But they can't wrap their head around what it would cost to actually restore this. I mean, we're talking a billion dollars to get this vessel to a point where it actually be used again. Um, not to admit, I don't know where the heck you would put a thousand foot ship, uh, for a, for a long period of time. I mean, it's had in Philadelphia for a long time and they essentially got thrown out. Um, so there's just way too many logistics. I understand that there's historical value to it. That's where we're going to try and honor its legacy through a land-based museum. So there's a whole bunch of artifacts that have been collected over the years. We're going to actually remove the funnels, the big stacks on the top and those will be retained for the museum. Um, and, and allow folks to come and learn about it even after it's gone to the bottom. And if you aren't a fisherman or a diver, then you know, you can go there.

• 1:05:56Speaker 03

  How, how deep are we looking to sink this baby?

• 1:05:59Speaker 11

  Yeah. It's a massive ship, so it's going to be out in a hundred and eighty feet of water with the top decks, the whole top deck's going to be at fifty-five, sixty feet of water.

• 1:06:06Speaker 03

  Oh, beautiful.

• 1:06:08Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 1:06:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:09Speaker 11

  Very, uh, accessible to the beginner diver, but then if those technical folks want to go down to the bottom or go penetrate and check out the engine room, that's, that's all on them.

• 1:06:16Speaker 03

  Oh, that is cool. Have you thought about like? Putting, oh, I love, love to, to dive. Yeah. Have you thought about putting like some mattresses or old couches on the deck to get people's, uh, speed jigs and stuff? And then you can go down there and collect them?

• 1:06:31Speaker 11

  I'll, I'll tell you, I think the wreck itself is going to be a magnet for all those, all those hooks and line and jigs and everything. It's, it's amazing how, how smart the fish are and know where to go to get you hung up.

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  I love it.

• 1:06:42Speaker 04

  So there's about a year of prep work before you can sink this. What all happens in that time period?

• 1:06:47Speaker 11

  So once we got to Mobile, we got to Mobile in, uh, what, early March. So we've been there about two months now. Um, they've been removing a hundred and twenty tanks worth. So millions of gallons of fuel oil that's still on board. They're removing all the glass, removing all the hazardous paint. All of this has to come off. And for a thousand foot ship, that's a lot of material and a lot of manpower as you implied earlier. So once, once she gets cleaned up, we'll have EPA and a bunch of other regulatory agencies onboard to come take a look and make sure we did what we said we did. And then we'll get that clearance to go deploy it in one of those permitted areas that I mentioned earlier. Um, so it's exciting times on the horizon, but still a ton of work that needs to be done to try and get this thing down in 2025.

• 1:07:26Speaker 04

  Yeah. So the, the day comes, were you ready to, uh, drop this thing to the bottom of the ocean? What is the process actually like of sinking the ship?

• 1:07:35Speaker 11

  Yeah, back in the day, they used to use bombs and explosives to blow holes in the side of it and make it go to the bottom really, really fast. But they determined that that's not good for dolphins.

• 1:07:45Speaker 11

  So no, no dramatic explosions. But there'll be holes cut throughout the the ship right above the waterline to where when it's go time, you can open up through holes inside the ship to allow water to flood controlled. And then once those holes that are cut on the exterior of the vessel, uh, sink below the waterline, it'll be gone in 40 minutes. It's a very quick process once you get to that point.

• 1:08:06Speaker 04

  What kind of sea life is going to like this new artificial reef?

• 1:08:10Speaker 11

  You name it, everything. So this is, it's such a large vessel being placed in a location where there's really no reef material, natural or artificial existing at this time. So it's going to be an oasis. You're going to have your reef fish species, your snappers and your groupers. You're also going to have your pelagics. So it's going to be, you know, tunas, wahoos, billfish, other things swimming by. Um, I mean, it's such a large vessel. It's going to be a magnet for everything, including humans.

• 1:08:34Speaker 05

  Alex, it's been a while since I've been in the ship sinking game. Um, so I'm curious, you, you guys ended up with this ship. Were there other, uh, localities competing with you for it? And then sort of along those same lines, is there like a, a top 10 list of ships like this sitting around the country that, that folks in your line of work are, are eyeballing and waiting for it to go on the market? Or sort of how does that shopping process look like?

• 1:09:02Speaker 11

  Yeah, yeah. It started the first question about other communities. Yeah, there's, there were other communities that were certainly looking at this, but they didn't have, the total project cost is right around $10 million. So they didn't have $10 million to, to commit to a project like this. We fortunately have leadership in, in the foresight to be able to obligate those funds and then find partnerships on the backend. So we've been working to find a number of partnerships to alleviate that total cost. Um, including partnering with some neighboring communities that were also looking at getting this vessel. So it's a win-win for everybody. Uh, those, those partnerships haven't been formalized yet, but I suspect it'll be in the coming month or two. As far as selecting vessels, a lot of it's a case by case basis. You know, sometimes a vessel catches fire and they can't put it back into operation.

• 1:09:44Speaker 11

  So they give us a call and see if we'd be interested in taking it as an artificial reef. Sometimes it's an old vessel that has no other opportunities, you know, like the SS United States, there's really no other options. So we worked with them to keep it from going to the scrapyard and turning it into the world's largest artificial reef. Um, there are some large vessels out there that we're certainly keeping our eye on, uh, but it's not something we're actively pursuing until something hits the fan.

• 1:10:09Speaker 03

  Hmm. Fascinating. Have you thought about the merch opportunities here? You know, there's so many boat cliches, like T-shirts that say the two, two best days of boat ownership, the day you buy it and the day you sink it.

• 1:10:22Speaker 11

  And the day you sink it, yeah. Oh man, no, it's, that's a great point. So there's a lot of examples of where large vessels have been deployed and they are visited by people from around the world. The amount of merchandise that pops up is incredible. Um, in the age of social media and digital media and podcasts like this, um, it's, it's, it's amazing how many people have learned about this and I suspect that the, the returns in the form of merchandise and visitation and all that stuff is going to be significantly more than anything that's ever been done before.

• 1:10:53Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:10:53Speaker 11

  Um, so we're, we're really looking to see, look, we're really excited to see what pops up from this, but we're not in the, we're not in the business of merchandise. So I think that's probably going to come down to the dive shops and the fishing shops and stuff like that.

• 1:11:03Speaker 04

  Uh, how quickly will fish start using this new reef?

• 1:11:08Speaker 11

  Yep. There'll be fish there probably the day after it's been deployed. There'll be a bunch of bait fish. Now they aren't going to be established. They're not going to be sit there, reproducing and eating and all that stuff. They're more of just there because there's some new thing that's on the bottom. It'll take a year or two before it's a functioning system. Um, but there will be things to see immediately after it goes to the bottom.

• 1:11:25Speaker 04

  And how do you envision sportsmen using it?

• 1:11:29Speaker 11

  Oh man, the amount of early on, when you know, there maybe aren't enough fish there to really sustain a, a fisherman or, you know, make for a good day of fishing. It's going to be heavily dived, but once it's become that established system, there's going to be fishing, people fishing it every single day. And then there's going to be people spearfishing on it every single day. So it's going to be hammered by the sports fishermen. But the good news is there's a lot of other fishing sites and diving sites all around this vessel. So if there's a bunch of people there, they can go to one of those other sites and wait their turn.

• 1:11:57Speaker 04

  Well, thank you for joining us, Alex. Uh, congrats on the record breaking reef and good luck with the project.

• 1:12:03Speaker 11

  Yep. Thank you. You guys have a good one.

• 1:12:04Speaker 03

  Thanks. You too.

• 1:12:06Speaker 04

  Cal's gonna be there in a few years.

• 1:12:07Speaker 03

  Oh, I love that. Love it.

• 1:12:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, you look at the, the map that Akalusa County has of all the artificial reefs they created. It's like reefs on top of reefs at this point. Uh, I think they got it figured out over there.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, Alabama's kind of an overlooked Gulf state too.

• 1:12:24Speaker 04

  Cool. All right. That brings us to the end of this week's show. Phil, let's get some final feedback from the chat.

• 1:12:29Speaker 06

  Brent would just like to set the record straight that he did the turkey reveal thing first. So that's, it's fine when he, when he does it. Uh, Spencer, your holy grail for rock hounding.

• 1:12:39Speaker 04

  Hmm. I would say it's a rock that probably doesn't even exist. I would want a rock that has multiple bits of history. So if, if I got to pick one rock to find, it would be a meteorite that hit Earth. And then that meteorite was eaten by a dinosaur because dinosaurs had gizzards, just like birds. So, uh, people will find or claim to find, it's not always confirmed. A rock that was a dinosaur gizzard stone and they're very smooth and round.

• 1:13:09Speaker 03

  Gastrolite.

• 1:13:11Speaker 04

  And that's, it's a gastrolith.

• 1:13:13Speaker 03

  Gastrolith is on the ground. Gastrolite is in the bird. Is that right?

• 1:13:18Speaker 05

  Well, I think. Lith would be stone.

• 1:13:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. When I, when I hear it referred to as the fossil version, it's a gastrolith. So I'd want a meteorite that hit Earth that was then eaten by a dinosaur and was used as a gizzard stone, become a gastrolith. And then maybe some ancient human picked it up and used it as a pestle, with a pestle and mortar. That's, that's my holy grail. I want, it's, it's a, it's a small ask. Something that came from outer space that was in a dinosaur's gizzard, uh, that then some ancient human used to crush acorns.

• 1:13:46Speaker 03

  Two weeks ago, I basically stayed at the site of the Jones diamond. Are you familiar with that one?

• 1:13:52Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:13:52Speaker 03

  It's the largest, um, specific kind of diamond that's blanking on me right now. It's found in West Virginia in a creek.

• 1:13:59Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:14:00Speaker 03

  Um, but it's like a giant mystery stone. You would love this.

• 1:14:03Speaker 04

  I would.

• 1:14:04Speaker 03

  Cause it, the formation it comes out of is in Brazil. And so there's a theory that it was traded over and over and over and over and over again. And eventually got dropped in this creek in West Virginia.

• 1:14:15Speaker 04

  That's perfect.

• 1:14:16Speaker 05

  The largest alluvial diamond.

• 1:14:17Speaker 03

  Alluvial diamond.

• 1:14:18Speaker 05

  Ever discovered in North America.

• 1:14:19Speaker 04

  That's, that's got all the ingredients of a holy grail.

• 1:14:21Speaker 05

  It's kind of brings us full circle because diamonds are, uh, and, and the search for them, particularly in alluvial floodplains, is a key plot element of the film and book Congo.

• 1:14:33Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly right.

• 1:14:35Speaker 06

  Full circle.

• 1:14:36Speaker 05

  We're looking for the blue diamonds, though, because they want to use those in some sort of primitive laser processor. In the book, yeah, in the movie, it's a laser weapon, but yeah, go on.

• 1:14:45Speaker 06

  When we were talking about the legislation in DC, Max brought up the fact that Cal and Mark both dropped a podcast today about their recent trip to DC. Cal, I don't know if you want to just talk briefly about what you did over there and what kind of shows you'll be dropping for in the Cal and the Wild feed next week.

• 1:15:02Speaker 03

  Oh, boy. Phil and I were just crying over the news cycle moving way too fast for our pace here. Yeah, we did some lobbying on the Hill in Washington DC. We attended the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership Capital Conservation Awards and basically just rubbed elbows with some newly appointed Trump appointees in different offices, like National Resource Conservation Service, and some folks in the Ag Department, and then tried to hit as many Senate and House offices as possible to ask them to join the brand

• 1:15:46Speaker 03

  spikety new released Public Lands Caucus led by Gabe Vasquez out of New Mexico and Ryan Zinke out of Montana. I saw Congressman Mike Simpson was in the lineup with that, too, but we need more of that. And that's what we're really encouraging people to do. We also talked about mineral withdrawal in the Boundary Waters. We talked about active land management and not selling off our public land, especially doing it in a way that avoids all the things that the public has come to trust, which is knowing what we're giving up for what we're getting, quite simply, so.

• 1:16:30Speaker 04

  Phil, what else you got?

• 1:16:31Speaker 06

  Uh, let's see here. Oh yeah, you're playing trivia at the BHA rendezvous, rendezvous, correct Spencer?

• 1:16:39Speaker 04

  I won't be there, but Randall, Randall will be, Randall is going to be leading trivia at the BHA rendezvous for the, the second year in a row.

• 1:16:47Speaker 05

  Saturday night, uh, I believe it starts at 8:00 PM.

• 1:16:52Speaker 06

  June.

• 1:16:53Speaker 05

  Juneteens, the mid teens.

• 1:16:56Speaker 06

  Whatever the Saturday is.

• 1:16:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think it's the. Tuesdays is 17th, so going backwards, it seems to carry the three, uh.

• 1:17:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, and while, while you're there.

• 1:17:05Speaker 03

  So it's the weekend of the 13th. So it's Friday, the 13th, Saturday, the 14th, and then we're gonna have a big public lands rally, uh, on the 15th there in Missoula.

• 1:17:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:17:15Speaker 03

  Which is also Father's Day.

• 1:17:17Speaker 05

  We'll, we'll make up a plan here soon. I'd like, I think it'd be fun to get, uh, get some audience participation in that game, but I haven't yet, uh, sat down to think through the logistics. But rest assured, Leland, we will be playing trivia and it will be a wonderful time.

• 1:17:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:31Speaker 05

  In support of a good organization.

• 1:17:32Speaker 04

  If you see Randall there, uh, go ask him about the drunkest he's ever been in his life and he'll have a good story to share with you.

• 1:17:39Speaker 05

  Nope.

• 1:17:40Speaker 04

  No, you won't. Okay.

• 1:17:41Speaker 05

  Won't go there.

• 1:17:42Speaker 04

  He won't share that story with you. So ask him anyway.

• 1:17:44Speaker 06

  Uh, Jacob's going on a four day paddle trip in the Midwest. It's kind of a big area, Jacob, but, uh, he's asking for recommendations on scenic rivers with decent fishing.

• 1:17:54Speaker 03

  There's a lot of them.

• 1:17:55Speaker 04

  Four day paddle.

• 1:17:56Speaker 05

  But four days, if you're stringing together four days, like camping along the way, you're probably limited.

• 1:18:02Speaker 04

  Go to the Boundary Waters.

• 1:18:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, go to the Boundary Waters.

• 1:18:04Speaker 04

  You could paddle for months up there. It's plenty scenic, uh, and some of the finest fishing in North America.

• 1:18:10Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:10Speaker 04

  Any other recommendations?

• 1:18:11Speaker 03

  It's gonna be totally different when there's an open pit, copper sulfide mine.

• 1:18:15Speaker 05

  I've only done, I've only done one, one night, two day trips on the Little Miami River, uh, and I don't think it's sort of attracting visitation from out of state, so maybe look elsewhere.

• 1:18:27Speaker 04

  Okay. There you go. Randall tell you where not to go. What else you got, Phil?

• 1:18:31Speaker 06

  Uh, Kevin says, Spencer, really great fossil, really happy for you, but what the people really need to know is what shoe you're wearing.

• 1:18:37Speaker 04

  Oh, I've got, uh, just some Nike tennis shoes on today.

• 1:18:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, Kevin, I mean, you're man of the people.

• 1:18:43Speaker 05

  Uh.

• 1:18:44Speaker 06

  Uh.

• 1:18:46Speaker 05

  I'll do my own.

• 1:18:47Speaker 06

  There's a couple silly questions, but I feel like I've done a lot of silly questions.

• 1:18:50Speaker 05

  A couple more. I'll do my own audience call out. I saw questions right after we finished our discussion of the gorilla battle. And someone pointed out that they don't believe that that many humans would be killed, just very badly injured. And I actually, I'd like to go back on my statement about 30 to 40 being killed. That is, unless the gorilla had time to go around and sort of finish off his victims, I think it would just be a lot of maimings. So.

• 1:19:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:14Speaker 05

  Whoever that was, point well taken.

• 1:19:16Speaker 04

  He'll put him in a coma.

• 1:19:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:18Speaker 04

  Make him on bedrest.

• 1:19:19Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:19:20Speaker 04

  Anything else, Phil?

• 1:19:21Speaker 06

  Uh, Marty says, inquiring minds want to know who's in charge of bumping into the giant foothold trap behind Spencer every week. It's a.

• 1:19:28Speaker 05

  I'll address this one.

• 1:19:30Speaker 06

  And I've got a follow up for you.

• 1:19:32Speaker 05

  And it's not, you know, the thing is, is it's not the person who's actually bumping into the trap who's responsible. It's the person who sits in Spencer's seat. You see, I think in the event of a fire, everybody on this side of the table would be dead because there's not a lot of clearance between the tripods and that host seat. And so if someone is sitting in that seat and not paying attention to those around them, uh, they oftentimes will force those of us with larger bodies to sort of push up against the wall, uh, which wasn't as hazardous until that foothold trap was in place. So it's not the, it's not the guy bumping the trap. It's the guy he's trying to avoid.

• 1:20:11Speaker 06

  And I will say, uh, for being such a respected hunter and personality in the industry, Steven Rinella has very little awareness of what's happening around him. So I'll walk.

• 1:20:21Speaker 05

  I didn't want to name names.

• 1:20:22Speaker 06

  He'll be in the chair leaning back. You're just fine. That's his right. But then I come up next to him, kind of, I don't, he's usually on the phone or sending an email. I'll kind of try to squeeze through and then I'll finally just have to say, excuse, hey, Steve, excuse me, I'm behind you.

• 1:20:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:20:35Speaker 06

  And then he'll move about an inch and then I'll still bump into the trap.

• 1:20:38Speaker 05

  Which works for some folks in this office. Yeah. You, you have to make him acknowledge you to get behind his chair. Uh, and Marty and everyone else listening to this, if you really want to help out Phil, if you're a Philistine, what are your, what are your fans called?

• 1:20:52Speaker 06

  Oh, well, there, there's a question. Question about that. Apparently, people don't like Philistine because they think I'm being, it's rude, but I'm, I'm embracing it. Let's call it a spade a spade.

• 1:20:59Speaker 05

  I think it's great. And my favorite one that I've seen is the Calmudgens. That's the other, that's the other tribe.

• 1:21:04Speaker 06

  Someone came up with Calamanders in this show today.

• 1:21:06Speaker 04

  Oh, that's good. If you're a Philistine, the, the thing that you can do to really prove that you're a Philistine is write an email to the me deater at the me deater dot com and say, hey, I think you guys need a bigger studio. Because we have multiple walls here we could knock out and we could make a bigger space for you. And boy, if you think we're podcasting at a high level now, just wait until this room has like an extra.

• 1:21:29Speaker 05

  We're gonna be throwing our limbs all over the place.

• 1:21:31Speaker 04

  Sixty square feet of room in here. We're not gonna bump any more tra- any more traps.

• 1:21:36Speaker 06

  Quiet air circulation would be great.

• 1:21:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. Phil would be in a great mood.

• 1:21:40Speaker 05

  HVAC.

• 1:21:41Speaker 04

  So write an email to the me deater at the me deater dot com and say, hey, I think you guys need to make your podcast studio a little bigger.

• 1:21:48Speaker 06

  Spencer said it, I didn't.

• 1:21:49Speaker 04

  Yep, I did say. All right. Uh, next week's show, we've got a very exciting me deater radio live. It's dedicated to man's best friend because it is dog week here at me deater. Uh, we got special guests joining us and a me deater movie club. Randall, what are you gonna be reviewing?

• 1:22:05Speaker 05

  Yes, I'm pleased to announce that the me deater movie club is returning by, uh, popular demand. And next week, in keeping with the theme of dog week, we're gonna be reviewing Where the Red Fern Grows, nineteen seventy-four.

• 1:22:18Speaker 06

  Oh, rip my heart out now.

• 1:22:20Speaker 05

  Perfect for dog week. There aren't that many good, like, I was, I was gonna go, I was gonna go with Balto. Uh, no, if I have to watch Air Bud, I'm gonna instead watch Dunston Checks In because it's the same thing, but with an orangutan. Um, we didn't, we didn't have.

• 1:22:34Speaker 06

  White Fang.

• 1:22:35Speaker 05

  I thought about White Fang, but then he did the old one or the, or the, the remake.

• 1:22:39Speaker 04

  What was the Stephen King movie with, uh?

• 1:22:41Speaker 06

  Cujo?

• 1:22:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, that one. There you go.

• 1:22:43Speaker 05

  We're gonna go with Where the Red Fern Grows.

• 1:22:45Speaker 06

  Nobody wins.

• 1:22:45Speaker 05

  It's available on Tubi, Roku, Fandango at Home, Plex, Peacock, Amazon Prime, YouTube, YouTube TV. And then you can rent it on Google Play Movies and Apple TV, but don't rent it. Just, uh, find it free. There also seems to be just like some bootleg version of it on YouTube. So I don't endorse, as we know, I don't endorse the infringement of, uh, intellectual property, but check it out on YouTube before you go rent.

• 1:23:11Speaker 04

  What movie did you tell me you were considering doing, but it didn't really do it for you? Didn't really get you revved up? Uh. Old Yeller. Old Yeller, yeah. Dad doesn't do it for Randall. So you're doing. That's the thing. There's just like sad movies. Where the red. Homeward Bound, maybe, maybe he'll just show up next week and I'll talk about Homeward Bound instead to myself. One more important detail for next week. We won a hot tip off showdown dedicated to dogs. Uh, so send your hot tip to radio at the meat eater.com with the subject line, hot dog tips. Uh, we'll have a great prize for the winner. That's the end of this week's show. We'll see you guys back here next week for Dog Week.

• 1:23:46Speaker 03

  Thank you so much.

• 1:23:47Speaker 04

  Thanks, everybody.

• 1:23:59Steven Rinella?

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