Ep. 801: Extinct Elk, Meat Processing, and the Latest News | MeatEater Radio Live!

Hosts Brody Henderson, Janis Putelis, and Randall Williams catch up with Jim Heffelfinger about all things elk subspecies, put on their chaps for a news roundup, chat with butcher Anna Borgman about the meat processing she does at Chaos Farms, and pit two listeners head-to-head in a Hot Tip Off. Watch the live stream on the MeatEater Podcast Network YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Subscribe to 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.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 0:32Steven Rinella?

  You guys are always hearing me talk about Montana Knife Company. I love these guys, hands down, favorite knives. The blades are incredibly solid. These are high-quality tools that put in the work. Well, you asked for it and I've been asking for it and MKC finally did it. They're launching their very first folding knife. It's called the Montana. It'll be dropping soon. Go to MKC.com right now and sign up for email and text alerts so you don't miss the drop. MKC.com. Montana Knife Company, working knives for working people. Again, MKC.com. If you want to get into some high-quality boots that are just made right with great leather, you got to check out Tacovus. And if you want to go to a store where you get treated right,

• 1:18Steven Rinella?

  you should definitely check out the Tacovus stores, which I've been to and they are phenomenal and like bring customer service to a whole different level. Now, anywhere worth going this fall season is better and comfortable boots. From game day to tailgating, outdoor festivals, long weekends, you name it. Tacovus has you covered with premium, genuine leathers and superior construction techniques. Every pair is handcrafted in over 200 steps. From cowhide and goat to exotic leathers like ostrich and caiman, whether it's your first pair or your 50th pair, Tacovus has your new favorites. Reset your fall wardrobe with comfort and craftsmanship you can see and feel the moment you put it on.

• 2:02Steven Rinella?

  Explore the full range of shoes, boots, denim and lightweight performance shirts in-store or online. Right now. Get 10% off at tecovas.com/meateater when you sign up for email and texts. That's a whopping 10% off at T E C O V A S dot com slash meat eater. Tecovas.com slash meat eater. See site for details. Tecovas, point your toes west.

• 2:34Speaker 03

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

• 2:58Speaker 04

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to Meat Eater Radio Live. As always, it's 11 a.m. on Thursday here at Meat Eater HQ in Wintree, Bozeman, Montana. Brr. Um, it's 8 a.m. in Maui where it's currently about 75 degrees, which sounds pretty nice. Be nice to be out there hunting pigs and axis deer in shorts and a t-shirt. But anyway, I'm your host, Brody. I'm joined today by Yanis and Randall. I think you know these guys. Uh, today we're going to talk to our favorite local wild game butcher, Anna Borgman. And we're always going to, going to chat with our friend Jim Heffelfinger about lumper splitters and extinct elk.

• 3:39Speaker 04

  And we've got a news roundup for you and another round of hot tip offs from our listeners. So we're going to get right into it. Hmm. Have some fun today. Uh, before we get into the first interview, um, big game season is over. It's kind of, kind of sad. Oh, I may, I got the mega post big game season blues going right now. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of, kind of sad, but I mean, there's still hunting to be done. Um, what do you got, what do you guys got planned for the next month? Do you guys get the blues too? Oh, yeah. Season?

• 4:08Speaker 05

  Big blues, big blues right now. Um, I don't really have any plans at the moment.

• 4:14Speaker 04

  No.

• 4:15Speaker 05

  Trying to figure out what tags I'm going to apply for. Got the calendar for 2026.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  Yanni will get into that a little bit later.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  Looking at season dates and points and all that stuff.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:25Speaker 06

  Um, mountain lion season's open.

• 4:28Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 4:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, I've already had a couple of days out there. Found some tracks, but they're going into private, so we didn't cut loose on them.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're getting some snow now, which is good for you, too.

• 4:36Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. It's nice. Makes it life easy. Are you, you mentioned Maui and how nice to be there. Are you already sick of the cold? We're not even barely into December.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  Dude, yeah, I'm old. I, I get, I get sick of the real cold stuff easy these days.

• 4:48Speaker 06

  Do you think you're gonna turn into a, uh, snowbird?

• 4:51Speaker 04

  No, but I, eventually I might turn into like a mid-south bird. Like if I moved, I want to be somewhere where there was seasons and it snowed once in a while. I'm not there yet, man.

• 5:01Speaker 06

  So like, like a, like a Missouri.

• 5:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'll buy some land from Clay and move in down there.

• 5:08Speaker 06

  Ooh, Arkansas.

• 5:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I, for whatever reason, this cold snap hit pretty badly.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  Well, that's because it was so warm forever.

• 5:15Speaker 05

  Cause we had like 50 degrees all November and then one day it's just like 10 degrees and blowing snow and then we were, I was taking the, taking Yanni's trailer back to his house and we got two pickups stuck and a trailer stuck.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  At his house?

• 5:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:31Speaker 04

  Jeez, man, get that plow truck out.

• 5:34Speaker 06

  Well, we did.

• 5:34Speaker 05

  Well, we did. Cause, uh, cause he needed to pull me out with the plow truck.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  One nice thing about the cold is I think we're gonna, we're hopefully get some, some early spearing ice and I'm, I'm tentatively planning a, a spear and trip with the boys for Pike and hopefully like work some pheasant hunting into that, too.

• 5:54Speaker 05

  Tuscany or where?

• 5:56Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 5:56Speaker 05

  Oh, oh.

• 5:57Speaker 04

  Montana, baby.

• 5:58Speaker 05

  Gotcha, gotcha.

• 5:59Speaker 04

  Some big Pike here.

• 6:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:01Speaker 04

  Um, so that'll be fun over Christmas break. Hopefully it stays cold enough and we'll get, get some good ice.

• 6:06Speaker 05

  Call me if you go. I'd like to go do that.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. Are you gonna be around over break?

• 6:10Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  All right.

• 6:11Speaker 05

  Can I go too?

• 6:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, man.

• 6:14Speaker 05

  Perfect.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  You got a spear?

• 6:15Speaker 05

  I don't have a spear.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  Let's go grab one out of Steve's garage.

• 6:18Speaker 05

  I was just thinking about, I got a bunch of decoys.

• 6:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:20Speaker 05

  I just like to watch.

• 6:22Speaker 04

  We should take a whole posse out there, man. It's fun.

• 6:24Speaker 05

  Empty a few cans and bottles.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  Put some tip ups out.

• 6:27Speaker 05

  On the ice. Yeah, that would be super fun.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Yep. All right. Enough talking about our fun. We got to get into the serious stuff and move on to our first guest. Um. Jim Heffelfinger. Many of you guys have seen or listened to him on the podcast, so hopefully you know him. Um, but. Did we got Jim up yet? Or did he disappear on us?

• 6:47Speaker 07

  Oh, he's still here, but he's not in yet. Let's bring him in.

• 6:51Speaker 04

  There he is. Um. Jim, for people aren't familiar with you, uh. Just quickly introduce yourself and let, let us know what you do and then we'll get into the nitty gritty.

• 7:03Speaker 08

  Yeah, I've been, I'm a wildlife science coordinator for Arizona game and fish department. I've been with the department for 33 years and probably most of my focus there has been, um, big game management, um, western big game. I chair a western North America mule deer working group. And then also involved in Mexican wolf recovery the last 15 years.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  Nice. Um. But you also do some work with elk. Which we're going to talk about today.

• 7:25Speaker 08

  Interesting things.

• 7:26Speaker 04

  Um. The, the reason, the, the big reason I wanted to have you on today is because you're doing some pretty cool work with Merriam's elk. And, and if you're, if you're not familiar with Merriam's elk, it's a, jump in and correct me wherever I screw up, Jim, but Merriam's elk are an extinct subspecies of elk and Jim's doing some work trying to figure out like, were they different than other elk? Like, do they deserve the subspecies designation, all that stuff? So we're going to talk about that. But before we get to that, we got to talk about lumpers and splitters. So Jim, can you real quick explain like the two basic schools of thought? Um.

• 8:09Speaker 04

  That biologists kind of fall into when it comes time for someone like yourself to like identify. And classify wildlife species and subspecies.

• 8:18Speaker 08

  Yeah, absolutely. There's a, you know, we've got to classify animals as species and then when we start classifying animals as subspecies, things get a little sketchy. And so there's this concept of lumpers and splitters and people fall into one category or the other or somewhere in between. And it basically at the, at the most basic level is the, the lumpers are focusing on similarities between animals. Like they might look at all elk and just say, you know, they're basically elk. They differ a little bit in the east and the west and. Uh, but they're all just elk, so they're all one kind of animal. Other people focus on differences and they might say, well, this one's a little darker. This one has antlers that tend to crown a little bit more and these have like smaller antlers. And so those are like the splitters that want to split these animals up into a whole bunch of different categories. Um, we'll talk about Miriam Duck was named after Seaheart Miriam.

• 9:03Speaker 08

  Miriam actually designated uh eighty-four different brown bear and grizzly bear species, not even subspecies.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's, that's what I was gonna get at. Like I tend myself to like, kind of lean towards the, the lumper. School of thought, um, because the splitters can get out of control. Um, I think at one point there is like. I'm just throwing a number out there, but Steve and I are working on a book right now and, and it comes up there, um. Where there was like over a hundred different subspecies of Canada goose at one point. Which is kind of ridiculous, but there, there's good reasons for splitting too, when it, when it comes to managing species. Uh, uh, unlike a regional or, or more local level, like having subspecies can allow. For, for better management of those animals.

• 9:54Speaker 08

  Sometimes it'll focus on animals, but a pure taxonomist though, we don't split animals just so that there's some conservation focus on that animal. Taxonomy is a pure science of are those animals really different? And then if they're different, then we, we should probably be doing some different conservation.

• 10:09Speaker 04

  Right, right. Okay, so let's talk elk, um, and have you run through. The, the generally accepted subspecies of elk in, in North America, both living and extinct. And we've got a map that you're going to explain isn't quite accurate, but hopefully it can help people. Visualize where these different elk subspecies live now or lived before they went extinct.

• 10:35Speaker 08

  Yeah, sure. I sent you that map and I said, this is wrong because it's not 100% right, but it's the closest representation of just generally these different subspecies that people have been recognizing over and over again. The eastern elk people hear about east of the Mississippi. Those things disappeared so quick that science didn't really catch up and document many specimens. They weren't studied physically. So we don't know a lot about whether they differ in the east. But the Manitoba elk in the middle of the continent and Rocky Mountain elk, they don't, all the genetic work that's been done, they don't separate out genetically as different subspecies. And I suspect if we had the same kind of data for eastern elk, you'd see eastern, Manitoba and Rocky Mountain really just the same thing.

• 11:18Speaker 05

  And when you say like, this is, this map is like original range. Like, obviously, there's not Manitoba elk running around in Kansas right now.

• 11:28Speaker 08

  Yeah, you cut out there for a second, but there's no geographic barriers that would have like isolated those three individual animals, those subspecies.

• 11:40Speaker 05

  Yep. So what's that a total of? Six? Six subspecies we've got?

• 11:46Speaker 08

  Right. So those are three in the continental and then the Roosevelt and the Tulley elk, a lot of different genetic analysis have separated those out. So genetically, they will break out as separate subspecies. And we don't know, because they were isolated. And so in that isolation, they created some genetic differences and they're a little bit different. We don't know if that, how far those differences, how far they were isolated to go back in time. Like if you go back 400, 300 years, they may have been all the same and it's really human influence isolating those populations. We don't, don't really know that. Bottom line is Roosevelt and Tulley will break out genetically. Rocky Mountain, Manitoba, and what little we know about eastern really don't break out separately.

• 12:25Speaker 05

  Go ahead. Jim, could you, this is Randall. When you say that Manitoba elk don't break out genetically compared to like a Rocky Mountain elk, can you describe some, I assume then the difference that has been identified in the past to use to make that distinction is just a physical? Visual characteristic.

• 12:43Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 12:43Speaker 05

  Can you describe what that, what that is?

• 12:46Speaker 08

  Yes, um, the, the physical descriptions that people use to describe the different subspecies. They're oftentimes like they shot an elk or they shot two elk and they said, these look kind of darker. And so they drew a big polygon on the map and they said, this is the eastern elk. They gave it a subspecies name and, and they said, this is a new subspecies. And, and in most cases, those subspecies are described separately based on a couple little general characteristics. They would not hold up to modern day kind of scientific thinking at all.

• 13:18Speaker 05

  Gotcha.

• 13:18Speaker 04

  What about, what about Roosevelt versus Rocky Mountain? Like you can look at those to someone who's looked at a lot of elk. You can look at like a mature Roosevelt bull and a mature Rocky Mountain bull. And there's like obvious physical differences, right?

• 13:36Speaker 08

  Yep, absolutely. Yeah.

• 13:37Speaker 04

  Bigger body on the Roosevelt, smaller, heavier antlers on the Roosevelt.

• 13:42Speaker 08

  Yep, more tendency to crown out on Roosevelt. You're right. Physically you can tell. And so it's interesting then that genetically those break out too. So that kind of supports that.

• 13:51Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 13:52Speaker 08

  Duly elk being a little smaller, duly elk as a population were bottlenecked. They got down to a very small number of individuals and now they've recovered somewhat. So some of those genetic differences might just be that they had a lot of inbreeding when they were a small population and then.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:05Speaker 08

  But, but those physically too look different than Roosevelt and a big Rocky Mountain.

• 14:10Speaker 04

  So the two that are considered extinct are the Easterns, which I think were considered gone by like 1880. Uh, the last ones might've been Pennsylvania, I read. Um, you'd probably know better than me. Um, and then there's these Merriam's elk, which, which are southwestern elk, uh, from Arizona. Did, were they in, in any other like of the contiguous United States or just Arizona?

• 14:37Speaker 08

  Arizona and New Mexico. Yeah. And here's where the map is wrong. A textbook came out called Elka, North America, actually. And it showed these long two fingers of distribution going into Mexico, but there's no evidence of that. Someone published a paper and they looked at all the archaeological digs and they found no evidence of elk in Mexico. So that, that's in error. They were really, a Merriam's elk was described as being central and northern Arizona and New Mexico.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  Okay. So let's focus on them, uh, since that's what you're working on, um. Tell us like what you're trying to do and then then we'll get into like if you can like way I know your your work isn't done yet. Um, but are you trying to figure out it like if they're like if they warrant? A subspecies designation or like what is the work you're doing with Miriam's elk?

• 15:26Speaker 08

  And and part of that is not just a gee whiz thing. Part of that is. Some people will complain and say, well, you know, the Miriam's elk we had in the Southwest were very different ecologically. And now you've brought elk from Yellowstone in to um to to replace them and and they're different like more damaging ecologically, which is there's no evidence of that. Um, it's it's so part of it is this complaint that you've got different elk here. And and that remains to be seen because if you if you notice on that map. Northern and central Arizona and New Mexico butts right up against Southern Colorado. Um, and Southern Utah and there's in Arizona, there's a thing we call the Grand Canyon, which is a really big ditch that runs. Uh huh. Across there. So there's some separation there, but there's a connection all through Southern Colorado into northern New Mexico.

• 16:12Speaker 08

  Um, and so there's a question about were those really different? Because there are only three Miriam's elk specimens that were saved for science in museums. So the last couple of decades. Scientists have been talking about just three specimens of Miriam Dell. So let's look at those unknown Miriam's elk specimens. And there was only three when we started. We spent, uh, I spent a week in in Smithsonian, spent time in the American Museum twice. We combed every elk specimen in there. We went to Chicago Museum, went to UC Berkeley. Looked at elk specimens. We now have identified 13 Miriam's elk specimens instead of uh three. We have genetic samples from um all 13 of those uh Miriam's elk specimens. So.

• 16:52Speaker 04

  Can I stop you for one second? When when were they gone from Arizona?

• 16:58Speaker 08

  Like, right. So they're they're gone in 1906, the last record in in Arizona and about the same time in New Mexico. We brought Yellowstone elk in in 1913 through 1928, basically the first onslaught. About the same as what was happening in Pennsylvania with Eastern elk.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 17:14Speaker 08

  They were bringing Yellowstone elk about the same time. In the nineteen teens. And so we only had a gap from nineteen oh six to nineteen thirteen, where the old elk died out and the new elk were brought in from Yellowstone. So there's always been a question, did some of the original Miriam's elk, um, were they down in the bottom of canyon and they, and they made it through that ten years or so? Now interbred with the Yellowstone elk and maybe Arizona elk are big because they've got genetics from the Miriam's elk. There's a lot of talk about that.

• 17:41Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 17:41Speaker 08

  So that's an interesting side part of it. So we've got these, we got thirteen samples instead of three. Um, extracted DNA, we sent in DNA from not only those hundred year old Miriam's elk samples, but hundred year old Colorado samples and hundred year old Yellowstone National Park samples. So we're comparing apples to apples because genetics can change through time, but we're comparing elk at that time, a hundred years ago. And we sent in fifty samples and we got usable DNA from forty-eight of those fifty samples, which is amazing when you're talking about a hundred year old shed antler.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:12Speaker 08

  Um, that we've got DNA out of. So that was really the first step is what samples are available? Can we get DNA out of it? And now we're, we're not complete. There's a PhD student, um, Kenzie, who's doing this for her PhD and, and she's only a year into a four-year PhD. So we certainly don't have results, but we've got really promising extraction to DNA. We've got some good quantities of DNA to play with and now analyzing whether there's any differences between Miriam's elk and another elk.

• 18:38Speaker 04

  So you're, you're still waiting on results is basically where you're at. It's kind of surprising to me that they, you know, a species that was hunted and, and, and just like, considered extinct in nineteen oh six, like just barely over a hundred years ago, that you had that much trouble finding samples. Like you think there'd be old racks hanging in barns and, and like, bones pop it like it, it, you'd think there'd be some around, right?

• 19:08Speaker 08

  Right. And I, and I get those emails, but if you're, if you're doing science and you're analyzing differences between Miriam's elk and other elk, you can't use some antler that someone had in the barn that people said was Miriam's elk. So we've got to make that clean break of known Miriam's elk in museums. But it will also be interesting if we find a difference between Miriam's elk genetically and other elk. We can use that as a diagnostic tool to test some of those interesting antlers that are laying around.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  Um, so yeah, I wanted to pin you down and get a verdict from you. Um, but that's not going to happen. Obviously it, um.

• 19:43Speaker 05

  Well, I got to pin him down. Question. Why is this worthy of your time?

• 19:47Speaker 08

  Oh, not like I said, not only the interesting part, but we need to have some information to inform these criticisms that you've got the wrong elk here. You know, you've got this giant Yellowstone elk and it's destroying the aspect and destroying the forest. Um, and then also it's, it's also of great interest to our stakeholders and people that are interested in this. Do we have any myriad of genes in today's Arizona elk? There's a lot of people forever that have been talking about that, like constant chatter. And it just on that alone will be pretty fascinating to have an answer for that.

• 20:17Speaker 04

  Are you able to, to put out like an opinion yet? Like, were they different? Do you like, do you personally think you're just like, wait?

• 20:26Speaker 05

  He's a science man.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  I know, but you always gotta ask, you gotta try and get him to say something.

• 20:32Speaker 08

  Yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah, that's not the way science works. So we'll see, but.

• 20:36Speaker 05

  But we're the mainstream media here, Jim. We need to pin you down before the results are in.

• 20:40Speaker 08

  No, I don't, but I don't mind. I don't mind highlighting the fact that we've got elk in Colorado that come right down to the northern New Mexico border and you had elk all through northern New Mexico. It's hard to envision how just those elk in Arizona and New Mexico were substantially different. I mean, what Grand Canyon over by Arizona could be seen as a barrier, but you've got what seems like continuous habitat. So it's hard to vision how somehow they broke out to be really different in Arizona.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  And there's like environmental factors involved too. Like why, why are Roosevelt elk significantly different than Rocky Mountain elk? Like I would assume it's, it's partially driven by the environment. They live like very thick, dark forests. So they don't need these huge antlers to display from a long distance. Like what are, what are the reasons there? Do you think?

• 21:35Speaker 08

  Yeah, certainly when you have different ecological conditions and that's a great example because you have like rainforest and so you have animals that tend to get darker in thick forests and animals out in the open plains like a Rocky Mountain elk tend to be more lighter and more cream like that, that, that happens with a lot of different animals. And also, open plains animals are more visual, so their, their rump patches sometimes are more vibrant, more white, more contrasting. Antlers are larger because they're more visible animals. Here Roosevelt elk sneaking around in the coastal rainforest, there's not a lot of visual cues that people are using. And so their animals can be smaller and darker and bodies darker and that's just an adaptation to local condition.

• 22:12Speaker 04

  Yep. So, I mean, with that in mind, it, it's hard to imagine Mariam's being that much different from Rocky Mountain elk.

• 22:21Speaker 08

  Right.

• 22:22Speaker 05

  Ecological habitat and nutrition is the same.

• 22:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I think you see it in the eastern, well, the elk that occupy the eastern range of elk now, like their antlers, when they're small, they look similar to ours, but like as they get bigger, they get very crowned out and they look very different. Like the bulls in Pennsylvania look very different than our bulls here.

• 22:42Speaker 04

  Part of that might just be because they're not getting hunted as much, they live longer, they got easier winters, you know, I don't know, we're, we're getting off on a tangent. But, um, I want to talk to you, Jim, about what Yanis brought up, which is all these very successful elk reintroductions that have taken place around the country. Like, when I was a kid, like seeing an elk in Pennsylvania was like a big deal. It was like a very small reintroduced herd and now they've got a whole bunch of them. Like, you can watch these elk on, on live cams in Pennsylvania, like during the rut, like we've got these places where they congregate and you can just watch them on your computer. Um, and the same, those same reintroductions have happened in a few southeastern states and

• 23:27Speaker 04

  in the upper Midwest. And the interesting thing is like, these are all, like, this is former habitat of eastern elk, the eastern elk subspecies, which you said we don't really know a lot about and how much different they might have been. Um, I guess my question is, is like,

• 23:48Speaker 04

  Like, how, how like, the, the subspecies categorizations, like, if you can just plug a Rocky Mountain out into Pennsylvania, or, uh, the, you know, the Smoky, Great Smoky Mountain National Park, like, how valuable are these subspecies distinctions? If you can just, like, put it out from Yellowstone in, into one of these very different environments, and they just, they thrive. They, they do just fine.

• 24:16Speaker 08

  And, you know, we see that with turkey certainly too, with the turkey subspecies, but just because something, a different subspecies doesn't mean it's like not gonna do really well in a different environment. But it does have local genetic adaptations and physical adaptations to that environment. So you can't, and then also you think about Rocky Mountain, Manitoba, and Eastern Elk were probably the same. So when you're moving those animals, they probably aren't much different than what was there originally, even, even Miriam elk, uh, potentially. But if you, you could take a Roosevelt elk, put it in Pennsylvania, and they would probably do okay, but they're not adapted to that environment. So there might be some underlying genetic things that make it harder for them to thrive.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  Cool. Um, well, you gotta keep us posted on what you find out. Um, I guess you got three more years of work you're looking at on this stuff.

• 25:00Speaker 08

  Yep, that's right. And, and there's other people doing, um, a majority of the work. I, I did a lot of the sampling and, and involved in the beginning of it. Now the geneticists are sitting at the genetics, uh, lab bench, doing, uh, most of the work. One interesting thing is that Seaheart Miriam, um, who Miriam's elk is named after, he, he's the one who named Roosevelt elk after Theodore Roosevelt. And there's a letter that's on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and it's Theodore Roosevelt writing back on the Department of Navy letterhead, thanking Seaheart Miriam for naming, uh, that elk after him.

• 25:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. Wow. Um, yeah, I, we talked about this a little bit through email. Um, Miriam's, how many, how many species does that guy have his name attached to?

• 25:45Speaker 08

  He, he named 71 species, but not with his own name. He has about 12 species that have, um, his name on it. One interesting factoid too, is that Vernon Bailey used to work for Seaheart Miriam as a mammalogist. Vernon Bailey then, uh, married Miriam's sister.

• 26:03Speaker 08

  And Vernon Bailey is the guy who described Eastern Elk for science.

• 26:07Speaker 06

  Huh.

• 26:07Speaker 08

  So a lot of the same famous people running in the same circles.

• 26:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 26:11Speaker 08

  As you can see by that picture with Sea Heart Miriam driving Teddy Roosevelt around.

• 26:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, for sure.

• 26:16Speaker 04

  Jim, are you hoping to one day put, attach your name to a new subspecies?

• 26:20Speaker 08

  Heffle finger eye. I was hoping a deer species heffle finger eye would be nice.

• 26:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 26:24Speaker 05

  We'll keep our eyes out for, for one of those running around. We'll let you know.

• 26:29Speaker 04

  All right, Jim, we're gonna let you go. Have fun at that big Boone and Crockett conference you're at right now. And we'll talk to you.

• 26:35Speaker 08

  You bet. Thanks.

• 26:36Speaker 04

  We'll talk to you soon. Thanks a lot.

• 26:38Speaker 08

  Yep. See ya.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  Interesting stuff.

• 26:41Speaker 05

  I want Jim to, you know, it sounds like there's some, some people in Arizona who are upset about all these big giant bulls walking around. And they want some smaller elk. I'd like Jim to make those connections for us.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 26:53Speaker 05

  I'd, I'd be happy to help them with that problem.

• 26:55Speaker 06

  Well, unfortunately, I think it's probably people that just don't want hunting in general.

• 27:00Speaker 04

  Right. Exactly.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps. OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews. OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 27:33Steven Rinella?

  I travel quite a bit and when I'm home, it's very easy to stay on a rigid food routine and eat the right kinds of food at the right time. But when you're on the road, it's hard to stay in your routine and like diet can really start to fall apart. I've seen it and that's why I like Athletic Greens. Now AG1 is already the standard for daily foundational nutrition. AG1 Pro is what's next. It's built for people who don't want to stop there. Creatine, CAHMB, advanced gut lining support on top of everything AG1 Next Gen already delivers. You can get it in travel packs. One travel pack, 10 to 12 ounces of cold water every morning. If you're already. Already taking creatine separately, AG1 Pro simplifies your stack.

• 28:17Steven Rinella?

  One thing in the morning covers more than your current routine might for less than a dollar more per serving. AG1 Pro supports protein synthesis, helps reduce protein breakdown, and supports muscle recovery and consistent training performance. Visit drinkag1.com/meateater and get an AG1 Pro Yeti Shaker in your AG1 Pro Welcome Kit. Again, that's drinkag1.com/meateater. Grab yours now. This episode is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Now, if you've thought about trying therapy with BetterHelp, insurance options may now

• 28:58Steven Rinella?

  be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just 23 bucks per session. Hey, you might not know this, you probably don't know this, but World Mental Health Day is October 10. But your brain does not wait around for October 10. You gotta take care of your mental health at all times. And therapy isn't just for like big life choices. It can be a place to talk through small but important things like work situation, taking up too much mental real estate, a relationship dynamic you can't quite name, or simply the sense that something feels off. If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks.

• 29:40Steven Rinella?

  And eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. If you don't have insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 10% off your first month. Go visit betterhelp.com/meateater to explore your payment options. That's betterhelp, H E L P, dot com slash meat eater. If you've got something weighing on your mind, taking a toll on you, don't be afraid to reach out. Betterhelp.com/meateater.

• 30:12Speaker 04

  Let's move on to a news roundup. I assign these guys a little homework to find some interesting news stuff that you guys should know about. I think we've got Randall first. Randall, what are you gonna fill people in on?

• 30:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is not a very fun or exciting news topic, but

• 30:32Speaker 04

  Let's do it anyway.

• 30:32Speaker 05

  I feel like this, this season, I've probably seen more news stories than in years past about accidental hunter deaths from gunshot wounds. The most recent one I saw was in Pennsylvania, which just opened like last week.

• 30:49Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 30:49Speaker 05

  Guy was shot in a deer drive. There's another one in Texas. And then there's two ones actually very close to home here in Montana, another one in Idaho. And those actually involved law enforcement officers on their time off. And, and those two cases and the one that I saw in Texas, the circumstances were very similar. It was getting in and out of a vehicle and, and casing and uncasing firearms. And it's just a good reminder, I guess, to always, you know, keep safety at front of mind. And no one ever thinks they're going to be that person involved in an accident like that. And, you know, we before the, before we started recording

• 31:33Speaker 05

  here, we're all saying we've been in situations where someone had a loaded gun that they thought was unloaded. And, and, you know, that stuff only happens when you, when you aren't constantly challenging yourself. Like, did I unload this? You know, did I see them unload this? And, and it's just always got to be front of mind. So yeah, I don't know that I've got much else there. The, the one thing I will say in pulling these stories together, and someone had sent me one of these earlier in the year, there are fundraisers for the families of the two law enforcement officers who, who died. One was a

• 32:12Speaker 05

  Law enforcement officer from California who died in a hunt in Idaho, I think in October. And his name is Nathan Kass, K.A.A.S. And if you go to helpahero.com, there's a fundraiser for his wife and kids. And then a guy named Michael Flohr, who is, I believe he was a sheriff's deputy with Goughton County here in Montana. And there's a GoFundMe for Michael Flohr, F.L.O.H.R. So, you know, this time of year, we all look forward to it. And then when it's gone, we're all sad, you know?

• 32:52Speaker 05

  But, and it's kind of fun to tell stories and do all that, but it's very serious business whenever you have loaded guns around. So just seeing all these in the headlines, I felt compelled to bring it up.

• 33:03Speaker 04

  It's interesting. I doubt that there's been more this year on average than in the past, you know, accidental, like involving hunters, accidental shooting deaths. And I would also guess that in the same period of time, there were way more accidental shooting deaths among non-hunters. That didn't make the news, but these things tend to hit the headlines for whatever reason. But it is just a great reminder just to like always be safe.

• 33:32Speaker 06

  Yeah. And sometimes you gotta get up in people's faces about it because people like to act like it's not a big deal. And as a guide, you learn very quickly that like it's a, there's no, it's a no-strike policy. You know what I mean? You just don't put up with any of it. And if you have someone in your group that continues to do it, you need to quit hunting with them.

• 33:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 33:53Speaker 06

  Because it's just a matter of time till they make a mistake.

• 33:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. And it's, it's easy to keep all that stuff in mind when you're at the range and you're taking your time. And, and it's, you're very methodical in how you approach it. But when you're hunting, you know, you're cold, you're tired, there's animals moving quickly. You might wear yourself out to the point that you're no longer thinking straight. And you just got to always double check and triple check. And that's like. Even with, when I'm hunting with my wife, I'll ask her like, did you unload it? And she'll hand it, she'll say yes and hand it to me and I'll stick my finger up in the, in the chamber, you know?

• 34:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I think you're just begging for trouble if you're the kind of hunter who's like, it, it's hard not to be, but like, maybe you're driving from spot to spot, or maybe you're even road hunting. We're like, oh, I gotta be ready.

• 34:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:44Speaker 04

  I'm in the truck, but I gotta be ready. Um, like having a, like, not even having one in the pipe, having a clip in the rifle, whatever it might be like. I, I don't think you can be thinking about like, what happens if a buck pops out right next to the road kind of thing, or,

• 35:00Speaker 05

  Right.

• 35:00Speaker 04

  Stuff like that.

• 35:01Speaker 06

  Oh, it was killing me this fall in Wisconsin. I was climbing trees a bunch. And going up in a saddle, I would have to pull my rifle up, you know, with the string.

• 35:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:10Speaker 06

  And, uh, of course I wanted it to be unloaded when I was doing that, cause you're literally pointing it up. Well, I, I guess you could pull it up, but in first.

• 35:18Speaker 04

  Either way.

• 35:18Speaker 06

  But, um, yeah, you don't want it to be loaded, but the stink, the bad part is, is that when you're in that tree and it's, you know, thirty minutes before daylight and it's super quiet, and then you gotta rack one, you know? Oh, God. It almost made me wanna like, pull a loaded gun up, up the tree, but which I never did. But like, I just, I learned to actually, I would take extra clothes so I could like, cover, cover the whole action with a jacket and then slowly just slide one in there and try to make it as quiet as I could.

• 35:51Speaker 05

  Yeah. No shortcuts.

• 35:52Speaker 04

  Yep. Yannis, what do you, what do you got going?

• 35:55Speaker 06

  Uh, big news out of Idaho. I think it's big news. Uh, you know, a lot of us that live here in Montana, and people that live all over this country, uh, like to hunt Idaho. Um, you don't really wanna go hunt there if you're into like elk and deer, cause the wolves have eaten most of them. But if you wanna give it a shot, they're gonna make it a little bit easier. A lot of us complained. Uh, in years past, this has all happened in probably the last 10 years because 10 years ago, I hunted Idaho and I was literally able to buy a deer license at the gas station with like five days left in the season. And when I bought it, the guy offered me a second one.

• 36:35Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:36Speaker 06

  That is no longer the case. Uh, the last whatever, you know, five to 10 years, you've had to either go in and stand in line or stand in a digital line, like a queue.

• 36:48Speaker 04

  Stand in line in Idaho.

• 36:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, in Idaho. Uh, or get online and stand in the digital queue and they gave you a number and, uh, you know, that's kind of the order that you would be, you'd get to try to buy a license and, uh, it was a mess. It was hard. Uh, I think there was a lot of people gaming the system.

• 37:07Speaker 04

  Took forever.

• 37:08Speaker 05

  And they had more technology errors than we do on this program.

• 37:11Speaker 06

  Right. Mm-hmm. Um, it was not, it was not cool.

• 37:14Speaker 05

  Pretty bad.

• 37:14Speaker 04

  You were, the way it worked is you were assigned, like if you were gonna do this online thing, you were assigned a random number for a position in line.

• 37:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:24Speaker 04

  So like.

• 37:25Speaker 06

  And like last year, I tried it and I think I had five devices open. Like I had my wife's phone, my phone, a couple of computers, maybe even like my daughter's iPad or something, right? The lowest number I had was 7,000 something.

• 37:38Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:39Speaker 06

  Wasn't gonna get a tag, or at least not one of the tags I wanted. So now, uh, they've listened to the complaints, um, and they're changing it. It's, uh, it's gonna be just a straight up application process. Uh, very short application period, which I was surprised about, December 5th to the 15th. It's, it's actually opens tomorrow. Uh, you have 10 days to, uh, to do it. You have to buy a hunting license to apply. The hunting license is non-refundable. Um, the way I look at it, when I do that, is just that, you know, you're chipping in on conservation.

• 38:12Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 38:13Speaker 06

  Cause there's a good chance you're not gonna get the tag. You're not gonna get that. I think it's like 100.

• 38:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's it's not nothing like.

• 38:20Speaker 05

  It's in the upper half of the one hundreds.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  You know, it's it's.

• 38:23Speaker 05

  One eighty-five, maybe.

• 38:24Speaker 04

  I think there will be people that are like, nah, you know, I'm not that committed, but the people who are committed will pay it. Um, it's something other states do. Uh, so, you know, it's something to think about. You're like, you can end up not getting a tag and you're still in for whatever one fifty, two hundred bucks.

• 38:41Speaker 06

  And this is just for general season, like regular old, what used to be, you know, what you'd call an over the counter tag. This is not for their, what they call their controlled hunts. And so if you're like looking to apply for a special unit for a big buck in a special date range, this is not it. This is just for like the general season.

• 39:01Speaker 04

  You still have to pick like a unit.

• 39:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 04

  Yes, unit species, all that stuff.

• 39:05Speaker 06

  Non-residents have to have to pick a unit, but it's for like the general season.

• 39:09Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 39:10Speaker 06

  Um, I think, I think it's gonna be good. Hopefully it'll, there'll be less stress.

• 39:16Speaker 04

  And there's no, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no, it's a total lottery, right? Like there's no, they're not gonna have a preference point system, anything like that. It's just gonna be a pure lottery.

• 39:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, Idaho doesn't have points for anything.

• 39:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:30Speaker 06

  Which I like.

• 39:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:31Speaker 06

  I like, I mean, you could, if you're an unlucky person, uh, you could go your entire life and never draw a tag there. Ah, yeah, you know, it is what it is. I like this system better than what like Colorado's got going.

• 39:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, and and I think like the new, you know, more and more things are going to a draw and like, that's a bummer. But the way that it was working before it, if you could fly to Idaho and spend money on a hotel room.

• 39:58Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 39:59Speaker 05

  You know, you were gonna get it or, or if you had an outfitter who would wait in line for you, you'd get it. So this just makes the, the, um.

• 40:07Speaker 06

  Playing fields.

• 40:08Speaker 05

  It makes, it levels the playing field for people. And yeah, like you said, I think it takes a lot of stress out of it.

• 40:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:14Speaker 06

  And what else I like about Idaho, and I'll leave it at this, is that they, uh, they really, I forget what the numbers were, but they cap their non-resident, uh, numbers, and it's not that high. It's like, like 10 to 15 K per, uh, species, per, um, you know, deer and, and elk. And so it's, uh, that way they're gonna, they're, they're gonna give their residents and the few non-residents that get to hunt there, they're gonna give them a quality hunt. And I would much rather have that every couple, three years than go and have a crowded hunt every year.

• 40:46Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  But don't go hunt there because of the wolves and the bears.

• 40:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, like I said, last time I was there, it didn't seem like there were many wolves or, or, uh, many elk or, or deer left because of, of the wolves and lions eating them all, but, uh, it's up to you.

• 41:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, give it a try if you're, you're feeling adventurous.

• 41:05Speaker 06

  Oh, speaking of wolves.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  Speaking of wolves, um, been a while since we've done a Colorado wolf day update, and there's, there's been some, some action down there, so I thought I'd give you guys a little update. Um, they started their reintroduction, famously started their reintroduction program a couple of years ago after, um, a ballot box initiative, um, that's been going on for a little while now. There's currently about 30 in the state of Colorado, 30 wolves. Um, and those were sourced from Oregon and Canada, or, or those, part of those 30 are offspring of those reintroduced wolves. Um, over the last couple of years, at least a dozen have died from various causes,

• 41:51Speaker 04

  including being lethally, lethally removed for, uh, livestock predation. Um, the state's got a goal of reintroducing at least another 20, with a, with a end goal of establishing a population of 200. Um, but the thing is, is like, they're running out of options. They found themselves in a position that where they're running out of options to find places to get wolves. Um, the ones they got from Oregon ended up being livestock killers. Um, the, the ones they got from British Columbia, I think, have maybe also been, some of them have been involved in some of that livestock predation.

• 42:34Speaker 04

  Uh, but either way, like, Colorado wants more wolves. It, it's to be determined whether they're going to get more wolves. Uh, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, they've always refused to give wolves to Colorado, largely for political reasons. Um, and recently, the US Fish and Wildlife Service mandated that Colorado has to source its wolves from the Northern Rockies in the United States, meaning no wolves from Canada, no wolves from Alaska. So now they're, they're getting pinched by, uh, the Fish and Wildlife Service. Then they turned to Washington recently.

• 43:16Speaker 04

  And Washington declined because they feel like they, they can't afford to take wolves out of Washington and, and risk, um, risk the population they have, reducing the population they have there. Oregon also declined to provide, uh, to provide more wolves to Colorado. So like two states that were kind of like politically aligned with Colorado, just bailed and said, no, we're not giving them to you. And those are really Colorado's last best options to get wolves. I, I don't think they'll be able to get them, like Great Lakes wolves from Wisconsin or Minnesota. Um, so it, we're, it's kind of, we're kind of in a holding pattern to see if this reintroduction is going to continue.

• 44:00Speaker 04

  There are other, they could go to some Native American reservations that might be willing to provide wolves. They tried that at one point. It didn't work out. So it'll be interesting to see if this reintroduction program continues. It's under the, there are people who are very unhappy with the money aspect of this in Colorado. Um, the, the projection was 800,000 per year cost to the state to, that the voters agreed to. Um, last year, the program went wildly, it's consistently went over budget. Last year it went wildly over budget, 3.5 million. Not, and that doesn't include a budget of several hundred thousand dollars

• 44:43Speaker 04

  to reimburse ranchers for lost livestock, which they drained. They could completely drain that, that fund to reimburse ranchers. Um, and some lawmakers in Colorado are calling the situation out of control. Uh, Governor Polis has been forced to cut the budget and lawmakers are forbidding Colorado Parks and Wildlife from using remaining general fund dollars, uh, to acquire more wolves. So like, they might be at a point where they're kind of treading water for a while.

• 45:15Speaker 06

  You'd think Idaho would give them, uh, some wolves since they're so overrun with them. They don't even have any elk and deer left, but.

• 45:22Speaker 05

  No. Yeah. It's funny. I was thinking politically, yeah, it's, uh, folks don't want to see wolves spread. They're like folks in Montana, Idaho don't want to be part of like sending wolves to Colorado. But on the other hand, getting wolves out of Montana and Idaho.

• 45:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it'd only be 10 or 15 of them. So, you know, they can make that up pretty quick. But yeah, there's your Colorado update. There's still wolves there. We'll see, uh, we'll see how it works out with them getting towards that goal of 200 wolves. But right now it's not, not happening.

• 45:54Speaker 06

  Oh, it's going to be a major smudge. I feel like on Polis's, uh, tenure.

• 45:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:00Speaker 06

  You know, the way he handled the whole situation where like.

• 46:03Speaker 04

  He kind of inserted himself into an issue. He didn't.

• 46:05Speaker 06

  Yeah. They had wolves coming.

• 46:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:08Speaker 06

  It was happening all on its own and he like they, he whatever, had to make a big deal out of it. And it is just, yeah.

• 46:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, and his Wildlife Commission played a big role, like appointees played a big role in it too, which like makes me think that some part of me thinks that those Wildlife Commission people should be voted in, not appointed in.

• 46:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, I agree.

• 46:35Speaker 04

  Okay, Phil, what's the chat doing right now?

• 46:38Speaker 07

  Sure, really quick, I saw several of you had some questions for Jim during his segment. I emailed him and told him to go back and check those out if he feels obliged, and he absolutely does not need to, but I did let him know that those questions are there. So maybe you'll get a little

• 46:57Speaker 05

  Thanks for that, Phil.

• 46:58Speaker 07

  DM from the Conservation Ringer himself. Let's see here. First off, Fishing Fanatics, nothing like sitting in the stand, listening to media radio live. Thank you. And then Nate, he's in the chat almost every week, got his first ever buck on Sunday. 146 and a half inches, 12 pointer. And his first thought was Thursday can't come soon enough, so I can tell the live chat and the crew.

• 47:22Speaker 04

  Holy moly, that's a pig.

• 47:24Speaker 05

  Yeah. All downhill from here.

• 47:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's gonna be, that's a high bar.

• 47:30Speaker 07

  No free ads, but free hot tips. Justin says, I just upgraded my OnX subscription and have been doing a bit of playing around. What are your favorite features that are lesser known? Do you guys use any lesser known OnX features?

• 47:46Speaker 04

  I like to plan stocks, like figuring out yardage and things like that. I forget, like the

• 47:55Speaker 05

  The rangefinder.

• 47:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, and other manufacturers do that as well, but you can link your rangefinder to that.

• 48:03Speaker 04

  That's a sweet, like if you find a bedded buck that you know you're gonna be out of sight of for a while, like mark in that spot and plan in your stock, that's a good feature.

• 48:13Speaker 06

  Uh, I've been using the, uh, now it's integrated with the Moultrie cameras. And so it's like an automatic filter just to go, if you want to see just pictures from one camera. Where the Moultrie app that takes a few more steps, but on OnX, you can literally just click on the icon and see only the pictures from that camera, which is pretty slick.

• 48:32Speaker 04

  And that's real nice. That's real nice.

• 48:34Speaker 05

  I, um, the one thing that I've been, I wanted them to improve for a while. And then I think in the past two years, they, they added it, but the snap to feature. When you're like putting a route, when you're building a route and you can actually snap it on trails.

• 48:52Speaker 06

  Right.

• 48:53Speaker 05

  And, and roads. So I know exactly, you know, how far it is before I want to bust off the trail and, and.

• 49:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 49:00Speaker 05

  Climb a ridge or something like that. Cause before you're always using just the linear, like line.

• 49:07Speaker 06

  Which is like.

• 49:07Speaker 05

  Which.

• 49:08Speaker 06

  Always shorter than what it is.

• 49:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. And so I, yeah, I've built, basically whenever I'm thinking about what I want to do the next day, as far as like a hike, I'll build it out in OnX and get an idea of mileage and elevation change and all that.

• 49:21Speaker 06

  The 3D thing is good for that too, because like you can look at the topo, but it doesn't tell you how steep.

• 49:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:29Speaker 06

  You're only getting so much information. So to be able to look at that slope and be like, oh yeah, that's going to take some more time than I thought. Like that's cool.

• 49:36Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 49:38Speaker 07

  Uh, let's see. This is a question from, uh, Cord. He says, how often do your Western schools go on lockdown for dangerous animals in the area? He said that he had a mountain lion stroll through the, a neighborhood and they went into a two hour shelter in place. He says, does that seem like an overreaction? Have your kids' schools ever gone into some sort of like lockdown because of a bear or, uh, anything like that?

• 50:01Speaker 06

  No, I think they had a bear actually walk through Bozeman High a couple of years ago.

• 50:06Speaker 04

  Wasn't there a grizzly that showed up over in, by the elementary school in Bear Canyon a few years ago?

• 50:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, nothing changed.

• 50:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't think. There was a, uh, there was like a pair of mountain lions in Missoula that was hanging out at a bus stop. And they they closed the bus stop.

• 50:23Speaker 07

  Probably smart.

• 50:25Speaker 05

  I remember that because it was right by my buddy's house. Um, but yeah, other than that.

• 50:30Speaker 04

  I don't think it's like, yeah, sure. Like we've got more large predators out west, but I don't think it's like it happens.

• 50:37Speaker 07

  It's not like we got Bengal tigers out here.

• 50:39Speaker 04

  Like I think there's probably schools that have been shut down back east because a coyote ran through the playground. You know what I mean?

• 50:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, I remember when I was living in Chicago, watching like a live news feed of a of a lion running through a neighborhood. And there was like a helicopter following, you know, it's like the OJ chase and it ran through. I believe they they might have even killed it like on a school playground, but it it definitely ran through a school a school playground. But, uh, that was one of my favorite moments from my time there.

• 51:09Speaker 04

  But also in northern Minnesota, mountain lions is probably something they're just not real familiar with. And they might have just, you know, been been overreacting a little bit maybe, but they're probably don't see them too often.

• 51:22Speaker 07

  Uh, we've got Leland who's been really hot on the trivia questions lately. He's been getting a lot of questions in there. He asked the strangest animal you guys have Euro mounted. He's having some squirrels done.

• 51:32Speaker 07

  Hmm. If if you if you have had anything strange.

• 51:35Speaker 04

  I did a turkey skull once. Very proud of that. The little stuff is fun, you know, turkey skulls. And I have, uh, a bobcat skull. What else? Steve's got like the whole collection of weasels. We got, yeah, we have a rack. We have a rack, one raccoon. We have a beaver skull. Beaver skull is real cool. They got some.

• 51:57Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:57Speaker 04

  Burly, solid skulls, man. Stuff like that.

• 52:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, I wanted to, I realized too late that I should have kept the skull from my sandhill crane this year.

• 52:06Speaker 04

  That would be cool. Yeah, yeah.

• 52:08Speaker 05

  And I realized that while I was taking the legs off and I had little drumsticks that were, you know, 14 inches long.

• 52:15Speaker 07

  Hmm. Uh, really quick. Mogor says, Phil, did you and Randall knock back a beer and hot dog after that last disinformation blunder? You're going to have to be more specific, Mogor.

• 52:24Speaker 05

  No, that was, uh, that was when you told me the wrong thing about our radio live from last week. Do you remember when you gave me the wrong information about whether or not?

• 52:32Speaker 07

  Oh, oh, yeah. And then we had a fake argument and I asked if you wanted to get a beer. Um, you said no, but, uh, you want to get a beer after this?

• 52:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, we will do that after this. I but I don't, the argument was not, just so you know, the argument was not fake on my end.

• 52:48Speaker 07

  Well then, good to know, I guess. Jeez. All right.

• 52:53Speaker 04

  Phil.

• 52:53Speaker 07

  We've got a few more, but keep the questions coming.

• 52:55Speaker 04

  I want to let these guys know because it's going to have to be a kind of a quick turnaround on Phil's part, which makes like life difficult, but um, we're doing a hot tip off and we're doing, Phil, we're going to do the listener voting thing, right?

• 53:09Speaker 07

  I've got, I'm prepped and ready to go.

• 53:11Speaker 04

  Okay, so be prepared as you're listening to like vote on the hot tips that are coming up a little later, but we can, we can do some more, we can move on, Phil.

• 53:22Speaker 07

  We'll do another round at the end of the show.

• 53:23Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 53:24Speaker 07

  Great call, Phil.

• 53:25Speaker 00

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 53:56Steven Rinella?

  Warning: This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Black Buffalo products are intended for adults aged 21 and older who are consumers of nicotine or tobacco. Now, you know how long it takes to build something that actually holds up? Well, Black Buffalo spent 20,000 hours on it, 20,000 hours, working alongside American farmers, growing and barn curing leafy greens to mimic the taste and texture of real dip without the tobacco leaf or stem. That's not a shortcut, that's a commitment. They started this thing in 2015, right here in America, and they got it right.

• 54:39Steven Rinella?

  In wintergreen, mint and straight, the taste you already know in long cut and pouches. It dips like the real thing because they refuse to settle for less. Check out your local gas station or convenience store. Chances are it's already on a shelf near you or head to blackbuffalo.com and use code meat for 30% off your first order. Black Buffalo Tobacco Alternative. It's everything you love about dip, nothing you don't. A few weeks into hunting season, you usually have a pretty good idea of what gear is working and what you wish you had. That's where Tractor Supply comes in. Maybe you need another trail cam or for a spot that's heating up, warmer layers for

• 55:24Steven Rinella?

  a cold front rolling in, or a cooler for when everything finally comes together. Whatever the season throws at you, Tractor Supply has the gear to keep you in the woods. Stop by your local Tractor Supply or shop tractorsupply.com.

• 55:41Speaker 04

  All right, our next guest is Anna Borgman. She co-owns Chaos Farms, a butchering and meat processing business that serves the community and small farms here in southwestern Montana. She's been on the podcast at least a couple of times.

• 55:58Speaker 07

  She's been on radio and she's been on the main meat eater.

• 56:01Steven Rinella?

  So she judged an episode of Roast?

• 56:03Speaker 04

  There you go. So you guys may have seen her before.

• 56:05Speaker 07

  Trivia, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. She came out to karaoke once?

• 56:08Speaker 04

  There you go. She's like basically a meat eater employee.

• 56:13Speaker 04

  Anyway, she's also butchered and processed a bunch of animals for the crew when we're too busy to do it on our own. She did, she did 10, 50 pound game bags of moose meat for me last year and I can say she did a very outstanding job. So Anna, welcome to the show. Oh, you did, you went in there. Great. She's standing among the meat.

• 56:39Speaker 09

  Hopefully you can hear me all right.

• 56:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, we can hear you. General rifle season just ended a few days ago here in Montana, but I imagine, and by the looks of it, I'm right, you're still pretty busy.

• 56:52Speaker 09

  Yeah, I it's kind of seems like people uh hit it hard the last weekend, so.

• 56:57Speaker 04

  Got cold.

• 56:58Speaker 09

  We got a lot of calls.

• 56:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:59Speaker 09

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so we got a lot of calls and we were running around like crazy picking up. We pick stuff up for people and we drop it off.

• 57:06Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 57:06Speaker 09

  Um back at, you know, the office or your house or whatever. So we were running around like crazy. We got quite a few elk in here right now. A little bit packed, so.

• 57:14Speaker 04

  Nice. Um, how many deer elk do you think you do in a season?

• 57:19Speaker 09

  Oh geez. Um, it's just the two of us. It's just my boyfriend and I. Um, and we kind of take on our own animals, you know, like I'll say yes to whatever I have time for and he says yes to whatever he has time for.

• 57:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, this isn't a situation where people can just roll up and drop something off to you, like a lot of meat processors.

• 57:39Speaker 09

  Right, like this cooler is, uh, I I bought a utility trailer and we just put in, you know, foam insulation and built out a cooler. So it's it's pretty small. We pack it, but uh, we do, I don't know, fewer than a hundred for sure, but I uh, I should keep track, but it's a lot of animals.

• 57:59Speaker 05

  But more in a in a season than most people will do in their in their lifetime.

• 58:03Speaker 04

  Sure, definitely.

• 58:05Speaker 09

  Absolutely.

• 58:06Speaker 04

  But that that kind of gets to where I'm going, going with this is you're not one of those like mega meat processors, processors that are doing hundreds and hundreds of animals a year, which like allows you to like operate with a much higher level of care and quality, I would say. Then then I'm not bagging on meat processors and and processors in general, but like the more they do, it it's possible that that the quality level is going to go down if if they're cranking out hundreds and hundreds of animals. Um, so

• 58:42Speaker 09

  Sure.

• 58:42Speaker 04

  As someone who's working with the goal of like doing this in small ba- batches and putting out a really high quality product, um, I want to get into first what you'd lay out as like best practices for hunters before they even make the call to you and then the most common mistakes people make out in the field before they even call call you.

• 59:10Speaker 09

  Yeah, I'd say best practices. I'm kind of the hill that I will buy on right now is take those hooves off. We get a lot of stuff that has hooves on it. And I totally, you know, I get it to an extent that you're trying to get it out of there and it's easier to stick it in a game bag with that hoof on. But if you're packing stuff out, A, it's extra weight. And B, if you've just done a good job, you know, skinning it and keeping it clean, you're kind of screwing it up at the end there by adding more hide into the bag, more hair, whatever was on that animal's hoof, whatever it was. And then by the time we get it, um, you know, it's just, it's a little more work for us and we can't, I mean, you can see these quarters hanging back here. Like, we can't hang it with a hoof on. It's so close to the ceiling up there, so.

• 59:55Speaker 09

  And it's really easy to take off. I just put up a video on my Instagram, I think yesterday, of how to take off.

• 1:00:00Speaker 04

  You're talking like basically the shin, like the whole lower leg, correct?

• 1:00:04Speaker 09

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you just run your hand up and that first joint that you feel, there's a little bit, little ridge in there. You just get your knife in there and it should, I mean, you can kind of hit it from underneath and it'll just crack off.

• 1:00:16Speaker 04

  Yep, yep.

• 1:00:17Speaker 09

  And you won't cut the Achilles tendon.

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  Anything else that's, that's helpful or people should be doing to like, make sure they're, they're gonna have some like, high-quality meat? Once it's in the freezer?

• 1:00:28Speaker 09

  Keeping stuff as clean as possible, obviously. Um, that helps out our whole, you know, us processing, but it also, it's gonna, you're gonna get more meat back because we don't have to trim as much off.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:39Speaker 09

  Um, and then I'd say, I know Yanni and I have talked about this weezening, right? But just at least getting that windpipe out of there because that thing carries so much bacteria. And it'll hold on to heat too. And so if you can pull that out of there, um, you're gonna get neck meat, you're gonna, things are just gonna stay cleaner. So. Yeah, I think we, we do get.

• 1:00:59Speaker 04

  You got any opinions on gutting versus gutless method?

• 1:01:06Speaker 09

  No, not really. I mean, if you can get as much meat as possible off of the gutless method, that's fine. I uh, I, I tend to pick up a lot of roadkill. We live on a highway.

• 1:01:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:17Speaker 09

  You know, I go, I am on it all the time. So I see when stuff gets hit and I'll pick it up. So I end up doing a lot of gutless method.

• 1:01:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:24Speaker 09

  Processing, because those things are usually a little exploded and I don't see a problem with it, you know?

• 1:01:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:01:29Speaker 09

  If you can, if you can gut it, that's great and get the whole thing out. Obviously, you're going to get a little bit more meat off that, but um, no, I have no problem with the gutless method at all.

• 1:01:37Speaker 04

  Gotcha. Okay, um, what are like the, the, the most common mistakes people are making out there?

• 1:01:49Speaker 09

  I think, um, you know, not, not planning ahead to keep things clean. And I don't, if you want to throw even a trash bag in your, in your pack and just lay it down, it's going to weigh nothing and you're going to have a place to put that meat on when you're pulling off quarters or whatever. You can put it on the hide, but the hide's often dirty. You know, I run into that problem too. It's, it's hard to keep things super clean. Um, as far as bringing stuff to us, when you're putting stuff into game bags, don't, try to keep things in as big, like the biggest chunks possible.

• 1:02:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:21Speaker 09

  Right? Because when I open a game bag and there's a bunch of little pieces that fall out, there's not a lot I can do. I can't trim that. And if it's already a little bit dirty, um, it's going to go in the trash unfortunately.

• 1:02:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, if you're.

• 1:02:32Speaker 09

  I can't trim that.

• 1:02:32Speaker 04

  If you're on a like a, a big back country hunt miles in, um, it's tempting to, to debone those quarters, but if you're taking it to someone like Anna, it's like not the best thing for her to work on. Um, so it's something to consider.

• 1:02:49Speaker 09

  If you can debone it and keep it, you know, in big chunks.

• 1:02:51Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:02:52Speaker 09

  Um, all good, but it's the little, you know, I'll dump out and it'll be like little quarter sized pieces.

• 1:02:56Speaker 04

  Mystery chunks.

• 1:02:57Speaker 09

  Not a lot. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:02:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Speaker 06

  Anna, how fast can you do an elk, um, not wrapped, but just, just skinned, broken down into, into, you know, roast steaks and maybe a pile of grind?

• 1:03:14Speaker 09

  That's a good question. I mean, I'd say two hours, maybe?

• 1:03:20Speaker 04

  Two hours?

• 1:03:20Speaker 09

  Probably. Yeah, I don't usually, I mean, I'm either like skinning it and hanging it, or it's already quarter and then I'm gonna go cut it. But you know, like I used to, I got into this from working at a shop and I worked on the kill floor and I would skin and gut thirty sheep in a day, sometimes twenty before lunch. So I can skin and gut pretty fast.

• 1:03:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:44Speaker 09

  It's just cutting, it'll take a little bit longer, but yeah.

• 1:03:47Speaker 04

  Um, are there anything, you probably have a pretty good clientele that knows what they're doing, but are there some things that might cause you to like, just to refuse working on an animal or like a set of quarters or whatever?

• 1:04:04Speaker 09

  Yeah, I've learned my lesson as far as like checking in game bags before I take stuff, especially if it's from people I don't know.

• 1:04:13Speaker 09

  Last year I got the dirtiest stuff I've ever seen. Like you would have thought they tied it to the back of their truck and just drug it through the dirt to bring it out, but, um, and I didn't realize that until after the fact. So I did charge them, I'll charge a dirty fee, you know, if there's not, if I don't see it beforehand. And then like during archery season, we'll have people call and they didn't really have a plan and there's been, you know, an antelope that's been in the hot garage for two days and, and it's like, I, I'm not gonna take that on because the meat's gonna be spoiled. And it's not worth, uh, putting, you know, our business at risk.

• 1:04:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:46Speaker 09

  To give you something that, that might make you sick or isn't gonna taste very good.

• 1:04:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:50Speaker 09

  So I think having a plan beforehand, whether it's, you know, that you're gonna get out and you're gonna call a few people, see if they have openings. You know, if they don't, you, you're, if you have a last minute plan, you can at least do it. Um, but don't let it hang to the point that it rots. That drives me nuts.

• 1:05:06Speaker 04

  If you were given advice to someone who's just getting into processing their own animal, like what would you tell them? Like as, as far as what they need to know or what equipment they, they absolutely should get themselves?

• 1:05:21Speaker 09

  Um, just don't overthink it. You know, you really can't mess it up. You might not get the cut that you want because you accidentally cut through it or whatever, but everything can be at least turned into burger or sausage. Um, so don't stress too hard about it. Um, watch some YouTube videos. There's some really good videos out there. Uh, that will show breakdown. Um, and seam butchering is is pretty easy. I mean, you can, you can see, you know, like inside round sirloin tip. You've got, you can see it on there.

• 1:05:51Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:05:52Speaker 09

  Um, and yeah, but you don't have to go crazy with it. Don't stress yourself out. Um, everything's edible as long as it's clean. Um, as far as, uh, tools to have, honestly, a sharp knife is about all you need. When I'm doing game processing, that's all I use and I don't. Jesse and I were just talking about this. Um, he makes knives and he has the ability to, you know, shop, sharpen stuff with his, his grinder. We don't, we really don't sharpen our knives and for as much as we use them, you'd think that we'd be sharpening them, but we use, I have it here. This is my savior. It's a honing steel.

• 1:06:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:06:33Speaker 09

  And that's all I use. And like, you know, in the summer, I butcher chickens and I'll do over 300 chickens a day and I, that's all I use and I won't even sharpen it at the end of the day. So I think for people, I think knives become sort of a a stressor.

• 1:06:49Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:06:50Speaker 09

  I don't know how to sharpen it. I don't know what, you know, what knife to get. You can get a big tornox or you can spend money on a knife. Um, but as long as you've got it. I like, I would say honing steel is really all you need. Learn how to use it and.

• 1:07:05Speaker 06

  But I think the key.

• 1:07:06Speaker 09

  It'll save you.

• 1:07:07Speaker 06

  The key, Anna, right, is that you're using that honing steel constantly through the day and you don't let it, that blade get to the point where you can't bring it back. Or do you feel like you can actually sharpen a blade that's like completely dull? Can you bring it back just with that steel or at that point do you have to grind it a little bit?

• 1:07:27Speaker 09

  At that point, you need to grind it a little bit because that steel, what it's doing, there's burrs on the edge of that knife. And as you're cutting, they're going to fold over. And this honing steel is just lining the burrs up again. So it'll start to feel like it's dull. It's not. It's just those burrs are out of line. And so you hone it back into a line and it'll be sharp again. But if you've got something that is past the point of, um, you know, the whole edge is rolled over or whatever, you're going to have to use a stone or a grinder, grinding belt.

• 1:07:58Speaker 04

  Um, I got one more, uh, for you and, uh, I, I want to get your opinion. Um, there's like, people choose, you know, lead bullets or copper bullets, solid bullets, like, for various reasons, but from, from, from your perspective as someone who's cutting up meat all the time, what would you choose? Would you choose like a lead bullet or a solid copper bullet as far as like getting, getting good meat?

• 1:08:30Speaker 09

  You know, I've, I've thought about this a lot and I feel like this, the copper versus lead, it's so complicated.

• 1:08:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:36Speaker 09

  Um, you know, it'd be an interesting experiment to sort of ask people as they drop stuff off, what they use.

• 1:08:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:08:43Speaker 09

  I mean, I will find stuff sometimes, like I, last year, you know, I pulled a couple of copper bullets out of an elk shank. I don't really know what was going on there, but so I will find stuff. I'll find, you know, something in the ribs or in the, uh, if it, if something gets stuck in a shoulder blade or whatever. Um, but it kind of runs the gamut. I mean, I find all kinds of stuff.

• 1:09:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:05Speaker 09

  I really think like my understanding and my, my feeling on this is just, it depends on the caliber you're using. It depends on how far you think you're going to be shooting. And sort of your confidence in even recovering an animal.

• 1:09:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:20Speaker 09

  Right? Cause in my mind, it's like the whole, the lead thing is like, if you're not sure that that animal is going to go down, then that's really where you have some issues. And like, you know, we do mobile slaughter when we're not doing game processing, we're doing mobile slaughter and we use lead. But, uh, and we're using 38 special or, uh,

• 1:09:41Speaker 09

  Trying to think what else we have right now. I think we're just using 38 special right now, but um that's lead, but we also just can pull it out of the skull or the back of the neck.

• 1:09:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:50Speaker 09

  We know where that's going, so.

• 1:09:52Speaker 04

  Can you, but can you look at a, can you look at a front quarter on an elk or a deer? That's that was shot in the shoulder and be like, oh, I know what that was. Like, do you see more damage from one or the other, or?

• 1:10:07Speaker 09

  I don't think I noticed so much as far as um copper or lead. I notice um caliber.

• 1:10:14Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 1:10:15Speaker 09

  Like, yeah, like, well, you know, I there's a, I picked up a deer from a kid the other day and he's like, oh, I shot all the way through it. I shot it with a two forty-three. And then another kid that had shot was three hundred wind mag and blew up both shoulders. And I don't, I don't know if they were copper lead. I didn't ask them.

• 1:10:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33Speaker 09

  It's like, man, you can tell. You can for sure tell um caliber, I'd say. But yeah, I don't know. I, I, you mentioning that makes me want to ask next season and sort of like take a survey.

• 1:10:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. You guys got anything for? You look like you're falling asleep over there. Geez.

• 1:10:51Speaker 05

  No, I was just thinking about how I didn't uh, I meant to defrost some steaks this morning uh from the elk you dropped off yesterday. And I realized I failed to do that. So I'm gonna have to run home and get the sous vide fired up probably.

• 1:11:06Speaker 04

  That's okay. That works.

• 1:11:07Speaker 09

  That was fun cutting your elk because we have a um, we've got this old bandsaw um that makes game processing pretty fun because I can do, you know, like blade in shoulder roast. I can do Osibuco really easily.

• 1:11:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Speaker 09

  Cut short ribs if someone brings out ribs. Um, yeah.

• 1:11:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, Anna did.

• 1:11:26Speaker 09

  Cutting for people who like to cook.

• 1:11:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, Anna did Sid and the bison that my wife shot last year and and we got ribs and we got uh tomahawk steaks and we got Osibuco bones and then we got just like long cut marrow bones out of the whole thing.

• 1:11:41Speaker 04

  Yep. Um, speaking of that kind of stuff, Anna, um ribs and and Osibuco and stuff, what, what uh, what do you most often see like? That that gets tossed or or left on the carcass that hunters should be keeping? What like, obviously they're, you know, want waste laws where they have to keep certain stuff, but what do you see getting left behind? And it could even be like organs.

• 1:12:08Speaker 09

  I'm a big fan of the tougher cuts, um, so like neck meat. Um, I like doing the sort of low and slow cooking. Um, neck roast are awesome. I also understand if people don't want to be cooking with the spinal cord in there and you're worried about CWD and stuff, but if you bone out that neck, um, that's really nice stew meat. Um, I also on elk, because I, I do this on beef all the time, you can pull the cheeks out. And cheek meat is one of my favorite. It is so good. And elk have at least big enough cheeks. Yeah. Worth it. Deer might be a little like silver dollar size, but, um, yeah, you just throw those in a Dutch oven and cook.

• 1:12:47Speaker 04

  Oh, I'm gonna have to try that for sure.

• 1:12:49Speaker 09

  They're so good. Yeah. And you know, tongues, like people pull out tongues a lot, hearts. Um, I like seeing that. And then livers, if they're good, um, I'm a big liver fan. I know plenty of people aren't, which is fair, but yeah, I don't know. I, I think the more you play with it and the more you hunt, the more you've got, you know, options of what to cook. And it's really fun to get creative with it because it does, it can get a little boring after a while, you know, just cooking backspin burger.

• 1:13:16Speaker 04

  All right. Um, you guys got anything else or we want to move on?

• 1:13:19Speaker 05

  We're good. Thanks, Anna.

• 1:13:20Speaker 06

  Thank you, Anna.

• 1:13:21Speaker 04

  All right. Get to work.

• 1:13:22Speaker 09

  Yeah. Thanks for having me.

• 1:13:24Speaker 04

  You got a lot.

• 1:13:25Speaker 09

  I will. I've got a lot to do.

• 1:13:27Speaker 04

  Thanks again.

• 1:13:27Speaker 09

  Yeah. Thanks, guys.

• 1:13:29Speaker 06

  See ya.

• 1:13:32Speaker 04

  All right. Hot tip off time.

• 1:13:34Speaker 05

  Oh geez.

• 1:13:35Speaker 04

  Are you ready?

• 1:13:36Speaker 05

  No, we need to play the jingle.

• 1:13:38Speaker 07

  Um, I, I'm tired of this jingle, guys.

• 1:13:43Speaker 04

  Okay, Phil's tired of it.

• 1:13:44Speaker 07

  But we're gonna play it anyway.

• 1:13:45Speaker 10

  H O T T I P R. Let's all do a hot tip off. H O T T I P R.

• 1:13:53Speaker 04

  I'm kinda tired of it too, Phil.

• 1:13:56Speaker 10

  Let's all do a hot tip off.

• 1:14:00Speaker 05

  No, it's so good.

• 1:14:01Speaker 07

  There's just some, there's some segments we do a lot because they're good segments like Hot Tip Off, and we hear that jingle all the time. And it doesn't help that it's one of the more poppy, I'd say, annoying, grating jingles.

• 1:14:13Speaker 04

  I think you're right, Phil.

• 1:14:14Speaker 07

  We gotta bring back, we gotta bring back Tattoos, I regret.

• 1:14:17Speaker 05

  Brody is thoroughly annoyed right now.

• 1:14:19Speaker 04

  I love all of Phil's songs except for that one. I hate it.

• 1:14:24Speaker 07

  Gotta kill the segment then, sorry guys.

• 1:14:26Speaker 04

  Hot Tip Off, where two listeners go head to head with competing pieces of advice. And after we hear each tip, uh, we'll chat about who we think should win, but the audience is gonna decide who does win. Um, if you got a hot tip yourself, take a one-minute-ish video, and email it to, uh, radio at the meat eater dot com, and, and you might get, you might get your hot tip into the show and win something. We do have a prize today, too.

• 1:14:56Speaker 06

  Oh yeah, I was gonna ask, is there something that they're winning? Or is this just for fun?

• 1:15:00Speaker 04

  Um, here we go.

• 1:15:01Speaker 05

  Oh my goodness gracious.

• 1:15:02Speaker 06

  Backpack!

• 1:15:03Speaker 04

  What's this thing called again, Yannis?

• 1:15:06Speaker 06

  Oh, I knew you were gonna ask me that. It's the, uh, Transfer Lite.

• 1:15:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. We got like, it's like Santa's toy bag, man. We got stuff in there. We got a signed copy of the Meat Eater calendar there, which you guys should go buy if you don't have one, because we kick back some money to BHA. It's a great, like, stocking stuffer.

• 1:15:26Speaker 06

  Buy some for your friends, family.

• 1:15:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. It's not expensive, man.

• 1:15:31Speaker 05

  Anybody who loves trucks, or the F-word, they'll get a kick out of it.

• 1:15:36Speaker 04

  Exactly. Um, and also in there was a rattle bag. This is a, that's the Phelps, Smashing Clash. I like that. Um, so there you go. Got some stuff for whitetail hunters.

• 1:15:49Speaker 05

  Man, that's a hell of a, hell of a haul.

• 1:15:51Speaker 04

  I think you could use this bag for other stuff. I mean, I, I, like, you could throw, uh, I'd use it for bird hunting. I'd put it in my boat and shove some stuff in there. It's not just for whitetails. So there we go. There's our prize. Um, let's see here. Who do we got?

• 1:16:08Speaker 06

  Let's see the hot tips. Caden and Dak.

• 1:16:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, Caden Bonner and Dak Cash. Um, so make sure you're throwing your vote in, uh, and we'll figure out who the winner is. Phil, are you ready to roll them?

• 1:16:20Speaker 07

  Let's do it.

• 1:16:22Speaker 03

  Caden Bonner.

• 1:16:23Speaker 05

  Mmm. This is good.

• 1:16:26Speaker 03

  My name is Kaden and I am from Nebraska. Um, this last weekend, we were out for Nebraska rifle season and heard a bunch of coyotes. And so we were trying to figure out how to call them in and make a predator call. So pulled out a little Debbie out of my backpack, which most hunters should have. And came up with how to make predator call.

• 1:16:53Speaker 03

  Like that, and then just pull it tight.

• 1:17:07Speaker 06

  Improviser.

• 1:17:08Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 1:17:11Speaker 11

  Like that definitely would work.

• 1:17:13Speaker 03

  And that is how you make a predator call out of a little Debbie wrapper.

• 1:17:17Speaker 11

  There we go.

• 1:17:24Speaker 11

  Hey, mate, your crew, I got a hot tip for you.

• 1:17:28Speaker 11

  Mostly for small game hunters, especially squirrels. If you don't like packing your squirrels out in a game bag or a vest. All you gotta do, cut you a little, a little green limb about like this, sharpen one end.

• 1:17:46Speaker 11

  Grab the squirrel by the back leg.

• 1:17:50Speaker 11

  Rip those two side toes off.

• 1:17:56Speaker 11

  Sometimes harder than others.

• 1:18:00Speaker 11

  You can use your knife if you want to.

• 1:18:03Speaker 11

  Once you rip those toes, stick the stick in between tendons and the bones.

• 1:18:11Speaker 11

  You got a squirrel carrier. It's like a fishing string. And if you don't, if you get tired of carrying it, you can stick it in your belt loop.

• 1:18:24Speaker 05

  That's the whole system. I love it.

• 1:18:25Speaker 04

  Yep. Nice early man tool there.

• 1:18:28Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:29Speaker 11

  What so?

• 1:18:30Speaker 04

  That part I like a lot. Hands-free.

• 1:18:33Speaker 11

  If you wanna make a squirrel come out and look at you, you can lick the tail.

• 1:18:38Speaker 11

  Thanks, guys. That cash from Arkansas. Clay Newcomb's area.

• 1:18:42Speaker 04

  Randall, who you liking?

• 1:18:44Speaker 05

  Oh, I like, I mean, Kaden won me over at first because of his commitment to Little Debbie snack products.

• 1:18:53Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:54Speaker 05

  Um, I think that was an oatmeal cream pie.

• 1:18:56Speaker 07

  One of the, one of the finest that Little Debbie offers.

• 1:18:59Speaker 05

  I used to house those things by a dozen.

• 1:19:01Speaker 04

  The OCP.

• 1:19:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:19:03Speaker 04

  As Luke Combs says.

• 1:19:05Speaker 05

  Um, but man, I'm, I'm just, Dak charmed me with his accent, with his innovative, uh, squirrel handling techniques and just the versatility of that whole tip.

• 1:19:18Speaker 04

  You honest?

• 1:19:18Speaker 06

  I'll have to agree. I mean, it, it, it's very, uh, what do you call it when you just like come up with something on the spot?

• 1:19:26Speaker 07

  Uh, improvising?

• 1:19:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, uh, that, yeah, Kade, Cat, how do you say his name? Kaden?

• 1:19:30Speaker 05

  Kaden.

• 1:19:31Speaker 06

  Kaden, uh, improv- improvise great. Yeah, and you know- He made it happen. I wish he would've told us if they actually called something in with it or not.

• 1:19:38Speaker 04

  I mean, both of these guys improvised great.

• 1:19:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're good hot tips, but-

• 1:19:42Speaker 05

  You know, and the thing is, is if I were out, uh, deer hunting and I heard some coyotes, I would think, uh, damn, I don't have a predator call. I wouldn't think, what can I do to make a predator call?

• 1:19:55Speaker 04

  Definitely. It's close, man.

• 1:19:56Speaker 05

  Like, I like that mindset.

• 1:19:58Speaker 04

  I like the idea of just building something on the spot, too. Like, you don't always gotta go, you know, buy something. You can just make it right there. It's cool. Uh, you know, so I'm leaning towards Dak, but it doesn't matter what we think. It matters what the audience thinks, Phil.

• 1:20:12Speaker 07

  I'd say one of the, one of our, uh, listeners was in a runaway lead and the poll is tightening quickly.

• 1:20:21Speaker 05

  Really?

• 1:20:21Speaker 07

  So your votes matter. Get in there.

• 1:20:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:20:24Speaker 07

  I'll, we'll give it another 30 seconds or so.

• 1:20:26Speaker 04

  You got any other comments we can hit while we're, you're tallying votes?

• 1:20:30Speaker 07

  Oh, sure. Let's see here. Uh, Cliff is wondering, serious question. Are we gonna see Randall claws this year?

• 1:20:36Speaker 04

  Hmm. Just wait.

• 1:20:39Speaker 05

  TBD. TBD, but-

• 1:20:42Speaker 07

  Gotta watch and find out.

• 1:20:43Speaker 05

  The thing is, you gotta believe. He doesn't come unless you believe.

• 1:20:48Speaker 04

  It's like the Polar Express.

• 1:20:49Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:50Speaker 06

  But I feel like you and Brent are kind of battling for Santa Claus rights around here.

• 1:20:56Speaker 04

  Brent's a southerner. He can't win.

• 1:20:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, but he's got the.

• 1:21:00Speaker 07

  Well, that's both of you guys are gonna be on that live tour.

• 1:21:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:21:03Speaker 07

  Have you guys had like, you know, a rock, paper, scissors, rochambeau of who's gonna be taking?

• 1:21:07Speaker 06

  Brent's doing it.

• 1:21:08Speaker 05

  Brent's doing it. I tried to, I tried to insert myself, but I didn't want to be like, I'd like to be Santa. I didn't want to put myself on that. I just said, oh, you know, if you need someone to wear Santa costume the whole time, I'll do that.

• 1:21:21Speaker 04

  Maybe he could be Father Christmas and you'd be like his apprentice.

• 1:21:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, or we could be different regional variations on Santa. Like I would be, I would be Kris Kringle or some sort of Germanic.

• 1:21:33Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:21:33Speaker 06

  Well, we have a lot of shows to do. He might get tired and need a break.

• 1:21:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, he is older. He might tire out.

• 1:21:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, stay tuned for Randall Claus.

• 1:21:43Speaker 06

  All right, who won, Phil?

• 1:21:44Speaker 07

  Well, man, I, it's hard for me to, I'm gonna give them another 30 seconds because it's so close.

• 1:21:48Speaker 04

  Let's do one more comment.

• 1:21:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, we should see 334 votes in there, guys.

• 1:21:53Speaker 07

  Okay, if you guys could sacrifice Steve to the hunting gods in return for any tag, species, or location, what would it be? This is from Evan.

• 1:22:01Speaker 06

  Hmm. Well, I'd probably go on some super expensive stone sheep hunt in some crazy mountains.

• 1:22:07Speaker 04

  Doll sheep, stone sheep, um.

• 1:22:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think if, I mean, I'd love a mountain goat hunt, but given the, given that we're sacrificing Steve for this, I feel like you sort of owe it to Steve to go for the big high dollar hunt.

• 1:22:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, maybe go do a Kate Buffalo.

• 1:22:25Speaker 05

  Do a Marco Polo hunt.

• 1:22:27Speaker 04

  Man, I'd take a, I know it's Steve, but I'd take just a bighorn hunt right here in Montana.

• 1:22:33Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, that question.

• 1:22:35Speaker 04

  Be pretty cool.

• 1:22:36Speaker 07

  This is wild. It is flipping back and forth every, every two or three seconds. I can't call it yet, Brody.

• 1:22:40Speaker 04

  If we can't declare a winner, then we're just gonna have to give them both a prize.

• 1:22:45Speaker 07

  That over 200 people who are watching this right now have not voted. So, get off your butts.

• 1:22:49Speaker 05

  Can we set a timer?

• 1:22:51Speaker 07

  Should I set a timer?

• 1:22:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, set a timer.

• 1:22:53Speaker 07

  60 more seconds. We have to, we have to end it at some point.

• 1:22:56Speaker 04

  All right, one more comment and we'll come back and declare a winner.

• 1:22:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, my teeth are about to float.

• 1:23:01Speaker 07

  All right, hold on.

• 1:23:02Speaker 04

  Oh, Yannis has to pee.

• 1:23:03Speaker 07

  Setting the timer here.

• 1:23:04Speaker 05

  Oh, I see. I thought that was like a.

• 1:23:06Speaker 04

  Bring a pee bottle into the studio.

• 1:23:07Speaker 05

  I thought that was like a comment about you being malnourished.

• 1:23:11Speaker 07

  Do we have any muzzleloader, uh, people with muzzleloader experience at the table here?

• 1:23:15Speaker 04

  Maybe.

• 1:23:15Speaker 07

  Okay, Brian Lammers is asking, what muzzleloader powder bullet combo have you found to be most accurate?

• 1:23:23Speaker 04

  If he's talking about inline muzzleloaders, which I have much more experience with, um, like you can't go wrong, like with a TC muzzleloader in line, um, Blackhorn, it's just like the regular Blackhorn black powder, it might even be synthetic black powder.

• 1:23:45Speaker 04

  And I use, uh,

• 1:23:49Speaker 04

  I think it's Federals copper bullets, and I've done real well with that combination.

• 1:23:53Speaker 05

  And it, it probably depends a lot on the state that you're in and what their requirements are.

• 1:23:58Speaker 04

  You got different, different rules, um, for sure. But like, I don't, a lot of muzzle, the inline muzzleloaders these days are set up for Magnum loads of 150 grains. I, I have found that I've gotten way better accuracy results by not going with, like you can choose what load you use. You don't have to use 150 grains of powder. And I've always done way better with about 100 grains accuracy wise. And I shot a Shyrus cow moose with that setup and it went right through both of her shoulders. So, there you go.

• 1:24:33Speaker 07

  Okay, I let, I let it run and, uh, the person who started off in the lead also ended up winning.

• 1:24:40Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:24:41Speaker 07

  Our winner with 53% of the vote at the end of the poll.

• 1:24:45Speaker 04

  That's not even close in a presidential election, Phil.

• 1:24:48Speaker 07

  No, but it, it was 50 50 going back and forth for a while. So, so, so this guy's fans stepped up and that person is Dak with the squirrel holder.

• 1:24:57Speaker 05

  Squirrel man Dak, congratulations.

• 1:24:59Speaker 04

  He doesn't need that squirrel holder anymore. He can shove them all in this bag.

• 1:25:02Speaker 07

  That's right. Congrats, Dak.

• 1:25:04Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 1:25:05Speaker 05

  Beautiful work, everybody.

• 1:25:06Speaker 07

  You did it. We'll have, uh, our producer Jake reach out to you.

• 1:25:11Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:25:11Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:25:12Speaker 07

  Who is, who's actually in the room today from Missoula. He's in Bozeman. I, I don't, do I have his camera on? I do have his camera on. Say hi Jake.

• 1:25:19Speaker 04

  There he is. Hi.

• 1:25:22Speaker 04

  All right. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Before we go, um, we've got some, uh, we've got some great new gifty stuff in the store. We've got some new gnome, uh, gnome logo wear. We've got some, some of our spices up there now, spice mixes. That bayou boil, I can tell you is very good. I've used it a couple of times on, uh, some fish and it's great. Uh, live tour guys, what do you got to say about that?

• 1:25:50Speaker 05

  Getting excited, getting real excited.

• 1:25:53Speaker 04

  Some of those venues are getting close to selling out, so people need to buy their tickets.

• 1:25:57Speaker 05

  Yeah. Last I saw that's like 80% sold out, which is, um, compared to prior years, like.

• 1:26:04Speaker 04

  One of the venues is already sold out.

• 1:26:06Speaker 05

  Fayetteville, yeah.

• 1:26:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, Clay's crew came out in force.

• 1:26:09Speaker 06

  Clay's family.

• 1:26:10Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:26:11Speaker 05

  Clay's extended kin.

• 1:26:12Speaker 04

  His mountain family.

• 1:26:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:14Speaker 07

  They came down from the hills.

• 1:26:15Speaker 05

  They're very supportive.

• 1:26:17Speaker 06

  Um, yeah, I'm, it's always fun to go do, do these things, you know, it's, it's a marathon, but we'll have a good time.

• 1:26:24Speaker 04

  You guys.

• 1:26:24Speaker 07

  We'll do one more question. Moses from Mogor. He, he was setting us up for this. Question for Randall and Yanni. Sorry, Brody, but he's, he's asking, how nervous do you guys get before a tour?

• 1:26:33Speaker 05

  It's good to hear from Mogor, even if it's at the very end of the broadcast today.

• 1:26:36Speaker 04

  I feel like Mogor's starting to have a little too much influence on this show.

• 1:26:39Speaker 05

  Nope, nope.

• 1:26:41Speaker 07

  How dare you?

• 1:26:41Speaker 05

  That's heresy.

• 1:26:41Speaker 07

  He's been nothing but supportive and kind.

• 1:26:43Speaker 05

  I'll say this Mogor, last year I was very, very nervous before the first show. And then it was like a drug and I couldn't get enough of it. Just the, the life of a showman.

• 1:26:55Speaker 04

  Sure those weren't the beers you had before the show?

• 1:26:57Speaker 05

  Could have been a few of those, but just going out there, having fun. Uh, and I'm, I'm a worrier. I get stressed out about things. I get anxious. But, uh, God, it's like a drug just being on the stage with the hot spotlight on you. The microphone in your hand and they're just eating from the, they're, they're just eating from your palm. Oh, nothing better. Working on some great material. I need to workshop it at a couple of standup nights this week, but we should be good to go.

• 1:27:23Speaker 06

  Nice. I need to work on my material too. I've got, I feel like I've got a decent amount of stories, but yeah, I haven't actually recited it yet.

• 1:27:31Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:32Speaker 06

  But, uh, yeah, we've been doing it so long now Mogor that it's just, uh, you just realize that, I don't know, people in the audience are more, they're more nervous than you are, right?

• 1:27:41Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:42Speaker 06

  So.

• 1:27:43Speaker 04

  Yannis, what do we got going on with roasts?

• 1:27:45Speaker 06

  Oh yeah, new episode dropped, maybe already, on Meat Eater YouTube channel. It's, uh, best burger episode, Brody Anderson faces off with, uh, Nate Mason from FHF Gear.

• 1:27:56Speaker 05

  Mmm, good guy.

• 1:27:57Speaker 06

  And, great guy.

• 1:27:58Speaker 07

  It is, it was live, uh, as of an hour ago, a little over an hour, so it's up.

• 1:28:02Speaker 06

  So go watch it and, uh, tell us what you think in the comments. And, uh, if you have any ideas for Meat Eater roasts, drop in the comments too. Love to, love to hear ideas on how to make that show better. Thanks for watching.

• 1:28:15Speaker 04

  All right, signing off, we'll see you guys next week, thanks a lot.

• 1:28:18Speaker 05

  Phil, let's get beers.

• 1:28:20Speaker 07

  Oh no, wait, I forgot, I almost ended the stream without playing the outro.

• 1:28:23Speaker 05

  So cool if the outro had played right as soon as I said that.

• 1:28:25Speaker 07

  I, I tried.

• 1:28:38Steven 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 have in my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech, 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.

• 1:29:18Steven 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 MEATEER at summitstands.com. That's a phenomenal deal, that's summitstands.com.

• 1:29:48Speaker 12

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You know those little promises you make to your future self? Tomorrow I'll put my phone away earlier, or stop rehearsing arguments in the shower. Tomorrow I'll stop saying yes to everything, or stop overthinking that conversation. Most of us aren't trying to become completely different people, we're just hoping to feel a little better every day. That's what's great about BetterHelp. With them, better is personal. It's matching with a therapist who gets you and having someone in your corner. Better doesn't have to come from major victories. It can be from the small habits you create and how you honor your needs on a daily basis. So many of us are great at prioritizing even the smallest things for our loved ones. But what about ourselves?

• 1:30:33Speaker 12

  With thousands of therapists and millions of members in over 100 countries, BetterHelp is making therapy more accessible so more people can keep moving forward, one conversation at a time. Better is personal. Therapy should be too. Visit betterhelp.com to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com.

• 1:30:54Speaker 10

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.