Ep. 713: MeatEater Radio Live! Rattlesnake Trail Cams and Hundreds of Beavers

Hosts Spencer Neuharth https://www.themeateater.com/people/spencer-neuharth, Janis Putelis, and Randall Williams recap Jani’s bear hunt and Randall’s turkey hunt, chat with Owen Bachhuber about Project RattleCam, review the modern slapstick hit Hundreds of Beavers, throw a fishy Hot Tip Off, and are rejoined by Kristine Fischer for some 1-Minute Fishing redemption. 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

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• 2:39Speaker 02

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

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Welcome to Meat Eater Radio Live. It's 11 a.m. Mountain Time. That's noon o'clock for our friends in Ocker River, Manitoba on Thursday, June 5th, and we're live from Meat Eater HQ in Bozeman. I'm your host, Spencer, joined today by Yannis and Randall. On today's show, we'll recap Yannis' bear hunt and Randall's turkey hunt. Then we'll interview Owen Bachhuber about Project Rattle Cam. After that, Meat Eater Movie Club will review its strangest film yet, followed by a fishy hot tip-off. And finally, kayak angler Christine Fisher will join us for some one-minute fishing redemption. But first, before we hear about the successful bear hunt and successful turkey hunt, I have

• 3:44Speaker 02

  a listener feedback prompt for those folks who are joining us live. All your questions today, give them to Phil. Let's make, Phil's gonna answer everything. Phil doesn't know about this. Ask Phil like the hardest video game level he's ever played is, what his favorite cover song is, what his first car was. Phil is always getting all kinds of questions, but, but he doesn't want to throw himself into the spotlight. This is making me deeply uncomfortable. He ignores those questions that people send, but today, we're gonna make him address those questions. So, just direct your questions at Phil. He's gonna answer them. This is gonna be Phil feedback. All right. For this Thursday. Let's do it. Okay. He's mildly on board. I can't wait. I'm also excited. All right, let's talk about the bear hunt, Yanni.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Big old dead bear in Manitoba. How'd it go down?

• 4:35Speaker 03

  Uh, the, the actual kill, how'd that go down?

• 4:38Speaker 02

  You do, you start the story however you'd like.

• 4:40Speaker 03

  Hmm, there's a lot to tell.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  Let's see some photos, Phil, that'll, that'll help me.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, jog the old memory, huh?

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Along.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  We baited a lot. That's Craig McCarthy of North Mountain Adventures. He and his wife Melanie. They run a great outfit. High demand, though. Uh, if you want to book a bear hunt, uh, you can't get in there till 2029. Um, I found out.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  2029?

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Geez. Man, are, uh, are resident tags guaranteed in Manitoba?

• 5:11Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they can hunt as much as they want.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  So have you been planning this trip since 2021?

• 5:17Speaker 03

  No, uh, their demand has just increased, uh, with a little bit of,

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Today?

• 5:23Speaker 03

  With a little meat eater exposure.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  Um, and but, but a little bit, but they've also just been crushing it, doing a good job. Like I said, it's a great outfit. Uh, it's the quintessential family-run outfit. Like you are, you're staying in a cabin, but when you go have a meal, you're in their house. Uh, having meals with their kids, um, who are both lovely, uh. Full on, uh, and they wouldn't feel bad if I called them like this, but their kids are getting a grow-up feral. And it made me sort of like rethink what I'm doing with my kids.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Uh, they got a creek running through the backyard. The girl rolls in with like three creek chubs on, on a line, all muddy and dirty. What are you doing? Going to do with those? I'm going to chop them up and cheap, feed them to the chickens, you know?

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Okay. I thought maybe that was your bear bait.

• 6:07Speaker 03

  No, bear bait was as, uh, as you can see in those barrels, uh, oats and corn doused with used fryer oil. And then sometimes a few extra sweets, uh, dainties, they call them up there in that part of the world.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Yanni is showing us a photo that looks like he's hunting in a zoo. There are two black bears 10 yards behind a side-by-side who are waiting for the bait to, to be deployed.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I have, I have other videos where a side-by-side that can't am is parked exactly where it is and I'm leaning, uh, against it where Craig's standing there and one of those two bears in that picture are eating from the top of the barrel, licking the grease off, like from me to you.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  Uh, so baiting really works. Uh, and what's cool about it is that, uh, you know, everybody wants to be like, "Oh, it's so easy." Well, there's a lot of work that goes into it. You know, you gotta bait them up first. Uh, get them excited about it. They only start baiting, interestingly enough, about two weeks before season starts. So it's not a year-round thing. It's not a long baiting season. It's just, uh, a couple of weeks. Um, but, uh, the cool part about the baiting is, is that you really get to watch, uh, bear behavior, which is super neat. Like, spot sock hunting, you're never gonna sit there and get to hear all the little nuanced noises that they make.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  They have these very like Star Wars Wookiee-like sort of moany growls that, but it almost sounds like eh, when they go into hyperspace and you get that kind of sound, right? When they're flying. Those bears, when another bear is approaching and getting, getting a little too close, you just hear this like

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Is that how they sound, Phil?

• 7:57Speaker 04

  Uh, I'm, I'm sure in one of the trilogies, it probably sounds something like that. Uh, that's not the first sound I would make, but you know.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Oh, alright.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Well, maybe it's not, maybe it's not hyperspace. Maybe it's some other sort of That's a tractor beam.

• 8:12Speaker 04

  It sounds kinda like, yeah, tractor beam or when the Millennium Falcon is breaking down and it kinda goes

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, Wookiee-adjacent.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's it. Yeah, when they're, whatever's powering the Millennium Falcon is, is like sort of powering down and they're like hitting buttons and knocking stuff. Yep.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Look at Phil's index of, uh, movie sound effects over there. He could hear Yanni's impression and, and knew exactly what it was.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, there you go. Alright, what else we got? Uh, so yeah, bear, bear baiting was cool. It works good. You get to check them out. Uh, we hung beavers. Beavers, for whatever reason, are so attractive. Oh, yeah, that's the one there where you can see my butt. That's the one where I'm super close to him.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  We're watching, uh, Yanni and a bear look at each other from how far, like 10 steps?

• 9:04Speaker 03

  Not even. I got to have reached out.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Three yards. Okay. Oh, you got long arms.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  Um.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Is there anything else that bothers their bait piles?

• 9:13Speaker 03

  Not too mu- I was surprised that there wasn't more stuff coming in. Like you'd see a few bears, maybe a squirrel would roll through. But, uh, yeah, and the pictures didn't really, you know, you weren't catching skunks and other stuff. But the beaver, he said he'll have deer carcasses, bear carcasses, and the bears are indifferent. But a beaver carcass?

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  They won't even look at that barrel full of corn, oats, fry oil, donuts, croissants. They love the beaver. Craig thinks it's because it's one of the first foods available in the spring. And they're taught that, that, you know, by mom, they go to a beaver run and just sit there and, you know, catch, catch beavers. So the first night a beaver was just hung on, um, a tree 10 feet up. First bear comes in, runs up there, gets it, runs off. You listen to him eat it for the next couple of hours in the bush 50 yards away. So I'm like, well, we gotta hang this beaver better, right? For more entertainment. So one night we did sort of like a, like a high line, like you like tie off a horse to and had it in the middle.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  But they really had no way to get to it and they must have known that because they kind of were like, yeah, we'd look at it, smell it, we're not messing with it. The next night we did it more of like how you hang food. We just hang, throw it over a limb and it was maybe four feet out. That got their attention way more. They were like, oh, I can, they could like touch the rope and then they could see that it was attached to the beaver. But still, the first two gave it like two minutes and we're like, eh, we're gonna go to the barrel and eat the stuff in the barrel. Third bear comes in, he's like, screw the barrel. Spends an hour. Trying to figure out how to get that beaver down, up the tree, down the tree, going to the next tree over, up that tree, walking out on the limb, like, came over to our tree, came up halfway up

• 11:04Speaker 03

  our tree, and was like, dude, I'm getting frustrated over here, get that beaver down, went back down. Eventually grabs, and there's a video of this, grabs that yellow rope that the beaver's hanging by, with his teeth, then gets it in his claws, goes to the base of the tree, lets it go, and the beaver sort of, you know, it's been pulled up, and it slides down and stops. Now, I don't know if he he knew that, or she, that if you did that enough times, something would give.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  But basically, he did that five times in a row, and eventually, the little noose that we had around the beaver.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  He won.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  Popped. Yeah, at that point, we were rooting for him. Cause that, an hour into it, I'm like, man, I should just go down there and cut that thing down for that guy. He deserves to get that beaver.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  What, was the movement, like, almost exclusively morning and evening? Or were they also rolling in at 1pm?

• 11:52Speaker 03

  They're, according to the multries, all day long, but the mature boars, it's a, it's a hour of power thing, last hour. I, I, shooting light ended the day that I killed my bear, and I think at 10:20, and I killed my bear at 10:06.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, and oh, definitely the latest animal I've ever killed, I think. Unless I miss forgetting something in Alaska, you know Alaska, you could kind of hunt that late, too, but, um, it was cool, cause we'd seen a bunch of bears, it's getting late in the day.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  How many bears?

• 12:26Speaker 03

  At that point, that was the most we had seen. I think we had seen Sal with two cubs, the four 150 pounders that are like this guy that's in the video now.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Uh, you can see the video that Yanni is referencing on the Meat Eater Podcast YouTube channel. Check out, uh, the episodes of Meat Eater Radio Live.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  Um, and then we saw like a lanky six footer, but he just wasn't thick. And then, what was cool is we could just barely see out to this field that was, um, had just been dissed maybe, so it was just dirt. And you could see bears every now and then, and then eventually, they'd kind of show up at the bait. So you'd see like mama, and she was this real pretty cinnamon, and she had, uh, I think this one was the one with three cubs. She had like a black cub, a cinnamon cub, and a blonde cub. And uh, but like with 15 minutes of light left, I look out there and I'm like, man, that joker looks like he's got a little more girth to him, you know? And sure enough, when he got to the edge of the meadow where he's maybe 60, 70 yards from the bait, everybody at the bait scatters.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  Cubs are going up trees. Everybody's getting out of there. This dude that finally had the beaver, he moves off like another 50 yards. And this, when this big sucker rolls in and it was like the woods just went quiet. Like he just rolled in. He was the man, but still then with such little bear experience for me, I looked back at Max. I'm like, is that the one I'm supposed to shoot? You know? Like I didn't, I mean, ends up being a four, almost 400 pounder. Um, seven, squared seven and a half feet, had a 20 and three quarter inch skull.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Is that Boone and Crockett?

• 14:06Speaker 03

  21 is all right. Yeah. So he's real close.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Right there. So you need to find a more generous measure.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  Hmm. Maybe. Yeah, there it is. Uh, there's Craig and I with the bear at the recovery. And what was great is he only went like 50 yards. Uh, I'm guessing he was not alive more than 30 seconds.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  What'd you shoot him with?

• 14:27Speaker 03

  Um, a 600 grain arrow that was tipped with a 200 grain iron wheel single bevel.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. Good shot right through both, both longs. Um.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Is that your first bear with a bow?

• 14:43Speaker 03

  First bear ever.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. First bear ever. Well, I killed one in my yard at Mingus that had, uh, had, um, treed, but I don't really count that as a, it wasn't a hunted bear, you know?

• 14:56Speaker 02

  You, you said that you asked Max if this was the one you were supposed to shoot. I assume then that they had like a Rolodex of what bears existed in this set of woods.

• 15:06Speaker 03

  Well, you have trail cam, photos and videos, right? Of sort of what's been showing up lately. But the thing was we were pretty late into May when we were actually there into June. And so the rut's definitely heating up. And so he's like, yeah, look, man, like there's a sow around, there's going to be boars rolling in. So there are these two and there was one that had a little white patch and there was the other one, which is the one that I had killed off his bait, but he's like. There could be a giant chocolate. But they didn't have names. No, no. Like Humongatron. No, no.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Joker, that was what Yanni called him.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  They, uh, they outfit, um, pretty close to a, uh, the boundary of a national park.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  And it's, I can't remember the acreage of the national park, but it's huge. And so they sort of have this, you know, sanctuary right next to them. And so they have this, a constant replenishment of, of bears. Um, so you really don't know who's gonna show up.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  What's, what's their, uh, program in the fall? They guiding deer hunters as well?

• 16:03Speaker 03

  Uh, a little bit of deer, mostly moose. Um, I actually might go up and do an exploratory caribou hunt with them this September. Um, I haven't decided that yet. Uh, I invited Clay, he was very excited, but, uh, it doesn't, the dates don't work.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Well, I guess that pat on the back from Randall means nothing that he just gave you a minute ago.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  Uh, we can discuss, Randall. I think we have a great on-camera dynamic, Yannis. Yeah, I agree, I agree. It could be a good time. Exploratory means that, uh, another outfitter that runs up there has switched his business basically to all ecotourism. But he has the lodging and the equipment, everything set up for caribou hunts. But he just doesn't wanna do the hunting anymore. He's got just the same amount of money in ecotourism and doesn't have to deal with skin and critters and meat, you know? And, uh, so, uh, he's basically said to Craig, like, hey, if you wanna run it out of here, you can. Just give me a, you know, cut off the top. And, uh, so Craig doesn't know anything about it. He needs pictures, he needs images. He's sure it's a good hunt.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  And I'm like, oh, well, I could be your, your guinea pig, you know?

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then maybe take, uh, Spencer and Randall with you.

• 17:13Speaker 03

  That could.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Clay, your invite's, it's gone.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  We could do. Clay's already, we've already ditched Clay. We could do meat eater roast redux battle north of the border.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  We'll go, we'll kill the thing and then cook it back here.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  That looked like a lot of fun.

• 17:27Speaker 03

  That was a great, great trip, man. We really got the whole Manitoba experience. I got killed on day three. We had two more days, um, so we got to go fishing for a half a day. Um, cooked an awesome bear meal. You know, all this stuff about bears, whether you like them or not, and, and I'm in the same boat of being, often being like, ah, do I really want to kill a bear? Ah, they're kind of cuddly. Oh, they're more curious. They're smarter than these other animals that we hunt or whatever. But as soon as I get to eating one, I'm like, oh, I should kill a bear every year because like we just did a overnight brine and then slow roasted it the next day. And in like 90 minutes, you go to baste it and it's got an inch of pan juice.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  And there's just, besides maybe a hog, but I don't care what fat cow elk you shoot. You're not going to get an inch of pan juice in your roasting pan.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  No, sir.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  From that animal or deer or care or whatever. You know what I mean? And I'm pumped, man. I brought home. A lot. I brought home probably well over a hundred pounds of bear meat.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  Okay. Now you're going to have a big old bear rug in, in your house, in the office?

• 18:32Speaker 03

  I haven't decided yet, man. I got a quote 2,500 bucks for a six footer and it goes up from there. So the seven footer, I don't even know.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Holy cow.

• 18:42Speaker 03

  What it's going to be, but that's what, yeah, that's what the going rate is right now. And, uh, so I might just get her tanned.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 18:49Speaker 03

  Seems like a lot. I know. I mean, that's half of another bear hunt to go on, you know? Yeah.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  But it's also like, well, when's the next time you're going to kill a seven plus foot black bear?

• 19:01Speaker 02

  When can you draw the state again?

• 19:03Speaker 05

  2029.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  I don't have to draw. Yeah. You just got to get a spot.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Uh, before we move on here about Randall's turkey hunt, you said you wanted to talk about an argument you and Max had.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  A French toast versus toad in a hole.

• 19:15Speaker 03

  Can help us out too with this. So one morning Eli Harris, who's new, uh, videographer for us, for us on this trip, did a great job. He makes Max and I, uh, some toad in a hole breakfast, which is just when you take a piece of toast, cut out a little hole in the middle, crack an egg in it, fry it up. Max, uh, pours maple syrup all over his and then proceeds to tell me that it's pretty much like French toast. And I'm like, you have kind of some of the ingredients are the same.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Half of them.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it's not French toast. It doesn't taste like French toast.

• 19:50Speaker 05

  You don't make it like French toast.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  Well, you fried in a pan. That part is similar.

• 19:56Speaker 05

  Is it closer to French toast or toast and a fried egg?

• 20:01Speaker 03

  I would say toast and a fried egg, 100%. Even if, even if you put maple syrup on toast and a fried egg, I would still say it's closer to toast and a fried egg.

• 20:09Speaker 05

  It's very clearly a gimmicky way to make toast and fried egg. French toast-

• 20:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it feels like it's for a child. Um, like that's what you'd cook for your 11-year-old to get him excited about something that's not cereal.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Oh, see, I really enjoy a toad in the hole, because I use a lot of-

• 20:24Speaker 02

  I'm not saying you can't enjoy it.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  A lot of butter, so that toast is just like extra crispy buttery.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  Anyways, Max is like, it's pretty much French toast. Eli is like, yeah, I think it's French toast.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  You know what? I wouldn't argue with either one of you.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  I felt like, no.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  I think you could have syrup on it, not, uh, that wouldn't be offensive to me.

• 20:40Speaker 03

  It's not offensive. I'm just saying it's not French toast.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Not French toast. I agree with you there.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:46Speaker 05

  Not at all.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  There's got to be some other weird regional names for that food that I'm not aware of.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  The egg in the-

• 20:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  And, yeah.

• 20:54Speaker 05

  There's probably a French term. I don't know.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Egg in a basket? Bullseye?

• 21:00Speaker 05

  Croque.

• 21:02Speaker 05

  Whatever.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  Croque de toast? What do the viewers say? Not even close to French toast.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Egg in a nest, one of them says, is what it's called. Egg in a basket? Uh, okay. Yeah.

• 21:14Speaker 05

  Looks like you got a quote on a, on a rug. There, Yanis.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Someone's gonna, uh, lower the price for you.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  Ooh, yeah. Yeah, you guys know any good taxidermists that are big meat eater fans? DM me.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Big Yanis fans. Tell us about the, the-

• 21:30Speaker 03

  Corey's got a big bear rug, too. We'll send you two from our office.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Uh, and maybe a turkey customer. Tell us about this dead turkey.

• 21:38Speaker 05

  Well, we didn't, Max and I didn't get into any arguments-

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:42Speaker 05

  About breakfast food on our hunt. We actually didn't eat breakfast until after the turkey was dead, because it got shot at. Shooting light essentially.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  It's it's amazing. You two shot your animals probably like six hours apart or something like that. But one of you in the morning, one of you in the evening.

• 21:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And um, no, Max, Max took me out. We found a uh, we went to a property. He's got permission on. We started climbed up to a little ridge and drank some beers and gobbled. And the turkeys gobbled back and then we glassed one up. Then we found another one and uh, we never saw him. But we went back and that night Max said I had to make the decision about whether or not I wanted to go to the one that we didn't see or the one we saw. And so we played a quick game of chance and the one that we saw won. And you know, I can't really do justice to this hunt. So Phil,

• 22:40Speaker 05

  I spent about nine minutes yesterday using the movie maker feature on my iPhone. And would you just play, play that? I think it. My first turkey hunt.

• 22:56Speaker 05

  Max took me hunting.

• 23:02Speaker 05

  I got one.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Oh, you cut out the part of you running at the bird there. I like that.

• 23:09Speaker 05

  Thank you, sir.

• 23:12Speaker 05

  Thanks.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Is Max crying in the background?

• 23:15Speaker 05

  One, two, three. First gobbler.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Look at that sunrise.

• 23:22Speaker 05

  What a great day.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Very nice.

• 23:26Speaker 04

  You know what that reminds me of is when like on Sesame Street, they'll have kids like, I went to the fact, the candy factory. We got to watch them make chocolate. And there's just a bunch of B-roll. Yeah.

• 23:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was gonna, I was adding this stuff to the drive and when I was like manipulating the files on my phone, trying to send them places. It was like, do you want to open this in iMovie? And I was like, what the hell?

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, I would like.

• 23:48Speaker 05

  But I, I literally couldn't figure out how to change the text on the title. Or how to get rid of it. It's not very intuitive.

• 23:54Speaker 04

  I just thought it was a really funny joke, but.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Uh, but no, no. I don't think you did justice to how you determine which turkey you were going after.

• 24:01Speaker 05

  Um, we, we flipped an empty Zin can.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 24:05Speaker 05

  Uh, in the. In the truck as we drove onto the property.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  And it landed heads up or heads down?

• 24:12Speaker 05

  Heads up, which was the ridge bird.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 24:15Speaker 05

  Uh, bottom of the can was the house bird. So yeah, we, we hiked in to where this thing was and uh, about, we didn't hear any gobbles and, and 10 minutes before shooting light, Max said he was gonna start calling, you know, in 15 minutes or so. So he's gonna call just after shooting light to let the bird come down. Then right after he said that, the bird started gobbling. So Max waited a little while longer till it was shooting light and started talking back to it and came right in and uh, Max coached me through it. And I don't know if you could hear it in that, in that little cinematic treat, but Max actually just goes, "Get him!" And that's when I shot.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:01Speaker 05

  So I didn't realize he was filming me, but he, he sort of was coaching, he's like, he's like, "Now just follow the sound with your gun barrel. So when it pops up, you don't have to move to get them." And so I, I shifted the barrel over slightly to where I last heard it. And then there's a big fan in my face. And then the fan goes away and this head comes up and the head turns sideways and then Max goes, "Shoot him!" And I gave it to him.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Great little movie. Uh, we, Clay Newcomb commented, he said, "That was a film."

• 25:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, that's a, that was a, a project.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  I doubt that's the real Clay Newcomb. It's probably just some dude signed in as Clay Newcomb.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  No, I, I hope it is Clay, cause he's been having a conversation with Brent and Brent thinks it's Clay.

• 25:46Speaker 05

  I will say that the hardest part of making that was figuring out how to do the voiceover feature. Cause then when it has you record the voiceover, you can't listen to the audio. So you end up talking over the things you want to hear. So I probably did five takes on that, which was maybe four and a half minutes of the eight to nine minutes I spent making it.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  You nailed it.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  Now, what happened to the, uh, you were gonna, last time I saw you, you patterned a 10 gauge that you were gonna use.

• 26:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, but remember that, that trigger didn't work.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  No, he didn't remember that.

• 26:22Speaker 05

  I took it back.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Trigger too heavy or too light or what?

• 26:25Speaker 05

  Oh, it's a double trigger and one of them just doesn't reset. And I'd gotten it to get fixed. I took it right back away. I took it right back from the shop. Took it straight to the 277 shooting experiment. Cracked off one barrel. We were all impressed and then I went to crack off the other one and just did the thing where you shoot a gun and you're anticipating the recoil and you just squirm. So it's fixed now apparently, but I've yet to pick it up. So next year we'll get the old 10 gauge.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Be warned.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  Are you, uh, are you gonna go turkey hunting again? Did you have that much fun?

• 26:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I had a great time. I mean, it was just like a fun morning. You know, I didn't suffer for it. I didn't, uh, I didn't dream about it. But, um, it was very fun to see someone who knows what they're doing, just like work a property and then work a bird. So I learned a lot and I see the appeal of it. We've eaten, uh, two meals out of it so far. We did a little, uh, Katsu chicken style turkey bowl. And then we did, uh,

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Uh, two comments I want to highlight. One of them is, is Clay Newcomb says this is the Clay Newcomb, which is exactly what an imposter Clay Newcomb is.

• 27:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was gonna say some, and then, and then he also said Akern spelled phonetically.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  He's trying too hard.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's exactly what someone who wasn't Clay would say to make us think that they were Clay.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  And then someone else said Randall Spielberg.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  Randall Ford Coppola, that was another one.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  There you go. First bear hunt story, or excuse me, first dead bear story, first dead turkey story.

• 28:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Hold on, boys.

• 28:03Speaker 05

  Couple firsts.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  Hey, thanks.

• 28:07Steven Rinella?

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• 28:49Steven Rinella?

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• 30:15Steven Rinella?

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• 31:01Speaker 02

  All right, moving on. Joining us on the line now is Owen Bachhuber, a grad student from California Polytechnic State University. He's here to talk about Project Rattle Cam. Owen, welcome to the show.

• 31:13Speaker 06

  Thanks for having me.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Owen, first thing, tell us what Project Rattle Cam is.

• 31:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, so Project Rattle Cam is a partnership between Cal Poly and Dickinson College, run by my advisor Emily Taylor and our partner Scott Bobak. And we use cameras to study snake behavior. So this actually started by using trail cameras at rattlesnake dens to get a sense of what they were doing throughout the year. But they do so many cool behaviors, right, that we can't really capture that with just still images. And so that's where we're using live streaming cameras now to broadcast these dens live to YouTube so that we can study them as well as share them with the public.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  And what sorts of things can scientists learn from this 24/7 monitoring?

• 31:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, so as I'm sure that you know, just the presence of a researcher near an animal can have an impact on their behavior. And so a lot of our perceptions of what snakes are like and what they do are impacted by them responding to us, right? If you see a snake, they might sit still, trying to hope that you ignore them and move away. They might act defensively. And so what I'm studying is the social behaviors and communication between the snakes. So we actually see that rattlesnakes have friends, they have individuals that they prefer to spend time with, and they seem to have communication, too. So they do this really cool head twitching behavior where they kind of bob their heads at each other as they approach. And we're trying to figure out what that's all about, what they're saying to each other.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Okay, you have more intimate knowledge about rattlesnakes than maybe anyone else. So walk us through the average day in the life of a rattlesnake that lives in Colorado, which is the live cam that you guys have available right now.

• 32:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, so these sites that we're watching are dens in that they're places where the snakes are hibernating throughout the winter. But now that we're getting into summer, it's turning into a rookery. So the snakes that we're watching right now are actually pregnant females who are going to stay here for the entire summer until they give birth later in the year. And right about now, the sun is starting to hit the rocks, things are warming up. So they're going to start to emerge from these rocks and bask in the sun to warm up their internal temperature. And the really cool thing is that these snakes, because they're not leaving the den, they don't have access to any standing water. And so whenever it rains, they're really thirsty. They come out and they flatten themselves out like a saucer and they'll actually drink

• 33:31Speaker 06

  the water off of their backs. So sometimes too, we'll see predators come through like magpies trying to eat the baby rattlesnakes. And so there's, there can be a lot of drama that ensues with these animals.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Tell us about some of the names, the personality traits that these rattlesnakes have. And do rattlesnakes ever show up that you're not familiar with?

• 33:52Speaker 06

  All the time. So there are dozens, if not hundreds of adult rattlesnakes that are using this site. And so it's impossible for me to keep track of all of them. And just imagine when each female gets birthed to eight pups in August, right? That, that number increases by an order of magnitude. So it's really hard to know who's all there. But the ones that we see the most often are actually named by YouTube viewers. So if someone's watching and they see a snake a couple of times and they take screenshots, they can submit them to us and get naming rights to that snake. And so some of them, there's one who's a really charismatic male named Thor, and he's been sticking around. He's

• 34:33Speaker 06

  really desperate to find a mate. We see him courting a lot of females. He's even courted a couple of males, but we've never observed successful copulation.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 34:42Speaker 06

  And some of the snakes too are named after people's moms and dogs. And so they have really cute names too. Sometimes noodle names, you have lasagna and ramen. So it's kind of a really fun thing. And you're seeing right now, all these snakes kind of slithering out, checking out each other. I can actually see that that's Thor in the bottom right there.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 35:03Speaker 06

  Cause he has kind of a droopy lip. He was bitten in the face by an ant. And ever since he was bitten in there, the venom must have like caused lip paralysis or something. So he's got kind of this droopy lip still.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 35:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's pretty amazing. And you can see some of those babies in there hanging out with him as well.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  You, you told us that Thor is charismatic, but it's because he is so desperate to mate with the other snakes. I'm amused by that description. What's the camera setup like? As hunters, we're really familiar with trail cameras, but I assume the technology used now is way beyond that.

• 35:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, so you're seeing the camera right now. It is a Axis security camera that is powered by two eight-foot solar panels. And then we have a big battery bank that's up there as well. And so because this is totally off-grid, we have to use cellular streaming to get that to YouTube. And so it's quite the operation to get that all up and running. And we're actually just about to publish a paper on the whole setup. Because before this, we were kind of working on our own with how we were gonna figure this out. And so we had a really great team of engineers here at Cal Poly who were able to put this together for us.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  And has your team had any close calls with snakes while setting up these cameras?

• 36:19Speaker 06

  Um, you know, as a snake biologist, I wouldn't characterize them as such. So, you know, there are snakes, quite a few of them there. When we go to set up the camera, we went earlier in the year when fewer of them would be out. Some of the snakes were still out, right, and kind of doing their things. But usually they try to get away from us. Um, we always make sure that we're wearing high boots, right? So that if we accidentally did step on a snake and didn't see it, um, that would provide us some level of protection. And also you ought to kind of make sure what you set down. So I went there last summer and, you know, if you set down your backpack, um, I was warned that a rattlesnake might decide to make its home right underneath there. And sure enough, that's exactly what happened. One of them decided to coil up.

• 37:01Speaker 06

  And so, yeah, we just kind of moved the backpack gently and carefully and got that out of the way.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Uh, you mentioned magpies, but what other animals show up on these cameras near the dens?

• 37:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, a lot of animals that your viewers might be familiar with. So we've seen, um, long-tailed weasels. And there's a whole lot of wildlife that we could see. Um, but two really exciting ones that we saw this past year were an elk came up and actually put its face right in the camera and checked it out.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 37:31Speaker 06

  And then we saw a porcupine too on the camera. So it's kind of a window into all of the nature that you could see in this area.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Uh, tell us about some of the highlights. What are the best moments that your team has captured so far?

• 37:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, one of the amazing things is that we can watch the snakes at night. And so that's when we saw those other animals. But also, it's a lot of times when the snakes are giving birth. And so last year, we got to watch two pregnant females give birth live to their pups on camera and zoom right in, see the snakes pop their head out of their amniotic sac for the first time. You can see the placentas. It's all like right there in really high definition. And we can look so close at the snakes even that we can see bugs. And you might not think that bugs are that interesting, but we noticed these mosquito looking things kind of dancing on the snakes. And we didn't know what they were. But when we contacted an entomologist who studies flies, he told us that they were

• 38:29Speaker 06

  these psychotid flies that were actually, looked like they were courting females. So that the female, the male flies don't eat, but the females feed on blood. And so that the males were doing like a dance, trying to lure the female flies to mate with them on the rattlesnakes. Which, you know, there's no fly cameras, right? So, but if we can zoom in really well on this, it's providing a window to other people who are interested in totally different things, too.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and tell folks how they can support this work and how they can watch the RattleCam.

• 39:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, so you can learn more about us at battlecam.org. And there we have a donate page where you can support our education programs and research. And it also links RightLive to our YouTube. So Project RattleCam is the name of our YouTube channel where you can go and watch anytime.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I checked in four or five times this week in preparing for the interview. Every time I opened it up, there were rattlesnakes on the camera. I was very impressed. It's 24/7 action on those live cams.

• 39:29Speaker 06

  It's pretty amazing. We had a camera set up in California and the densities of snakes here just aren't the same, you know, you might see one a day or something like that. But this is a really impressive site where, yeah, basically you can always see a snake.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it feels, it feels more intimate, too, because when I go look at like a live bald eagle cam, there's 50,000 people watching. When I look at your rattlesnake camera, there's like 25 people watching. So we need more shine on the rattlesnakes. Turn off the bald eagle cams, go check out these rookeries that they have a live look at. Thanks for joining us and thanks for creating this special way for people to interact with wildlife.

• 40:07Speaker 06

  Thanks so much. It's my pleasure.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Randall, I saw you making a lot of faces over here. Not a big snake guy.

• 40:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, not a big snake guy. Serpents, give me the heebie jeebies. I'm sure there's other folks out there that feel similarly.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Me too. I get a cold shiver anytime I see one. It can be the most harmless, small snake. I was just mushroom hunting a week ago, came across four of them. Every time, it just like sends a chill from my ankle to my back. I hate it.

• 40:35Speaker 05

  Yep, hate it. Hate it.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Alright, we're halfway through the show.

• 40:39Speaker 05

  I didn't want to say anything to him though.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  I'm very excited for this now.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  You guys just need more exposure.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  I get plenty of exposure. That's not the answer.

• 40:45Speaker 05

  Good. It just touches something in my deep caveman brain.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  We're gonna get some listener feedback. I'm very excited about this because it's all for Phil. Phil, what do we got?

• 40:54Speaker 04

  Oh boy. First one, let's see, let's start, let's warn people up there. I think I had one there.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  Phil's, what's Phil's favorite band? Someone asked.

• 41:04Speaker 04

  Oh yeah. My favorite band? Um, it's pretty close between Radiohead and an indie folk band from Portland called The Decemberists. I love them dearly. Colin Malloy is a Montana native, the lead singer. He's also an author. And their songs are nerdy literary storytelling set to awesome music.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  How many times have you seen Radiohead live?

• 41:30Speaker 04

  Uh, Radiohead only once. They don't come here very often. I saw them on the In Rainbows tour in 08 and it was incredible. I've seen The Decemberists probably a dozen times though because they're around the west coast and Montana.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Alright Phil, give us some more Phil.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  Uh, let's see, this is specifically for this one guy, I'm sure. Have you played Expedition 33 yet? If so, what do we think? The answer is yes. I beat it. It rules my game of the year so far.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 41:56Speaker 04

  Um, Phil, Kingdom Hearts guy. For those of you who don't know, Kingdom Hearts is a Japanese action RPG game that melds, that was like a multiversal project that mixed the worlds of Final Fantasy and Disney IP. It seemed insane at the time. I was obsessed with this game.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Aren't they on like their 20th edition by now?

• 42:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's been many spinoffs, each one more insane and preposterous than the last.

• 42:19Speaker 05

  Is this the one there's commercials for during the NBA playoffs?

• 42:23Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I don't know what they have commercials for.

• 42:26Speaker 04

  LeBron does a commercial.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 42:28Speaker 04

  It's a game on a phone. I was, I was so obsessed with this game. It came out on my seventh grade picture day. I brought the, the, I brought the case to my school and asked if I could hold it up in my school picture and they said no. And I was devastated. Uh, Phil, how hyped are you for GTA 6? Pretty hyped. I really enjoy the GTA games. I, I, but I never get into online. I play the campaign, the story mode. I have a great time. It's, it's a blast. It's a lot of fun. And then I, I put it away.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  These are great. Give us some more, Phil.

• 42:54Speaker 04

  Okay, uh.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Quick hitters. Love it.

• 42:56Speaker 04

  Oh boy. I think I saw one that was like death row meal. Um, I might've not started that one, but death row meal, simple. Just a really good fish and chips with a tartar sauce and malt, and malt vinegar.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  What kind of fish?

• 43:09Speaker 04

  And a multi beer.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Cod?

• 43:11Speaker 04

  Uh, preferably, but I'm, I'm really not picky. I'm not picky with fish at all.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Who does good fish and chips in Bozeman?

• 43:19Speaker 04

  Oh, I mean, not, not a lot. I'd say like the, the, the Bacchus is solid. I don't know if you guys have any, have any tips, but the Bacchus is, is like my number one go-to in, in Bozeman.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Uh, is it Goutlan? Is that the German?

• 43:31Speaker 04

  Goutlau. Goutlau.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Okay. Like their fish and chips.

• 43:34Speaker 04

  I, I haven't had it, but I, I love the idea of having it there because that you can get the big German, German steins of beer.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  Give us a couple more.

• 43:41Speaker 04

  Phil, what game are you playing right now? I just, uh, played Death Stranding, uh, in anticipation of Death Stranding 2 coming out later this month, but also I was telling the boys in here before we started. I have an unboxed Nintendo Switch 2 upstairs in my office. I mean, you can just turn the whole Q and A session into an unboxing video if you guys want to. I'm very excited. We just got rattlesnake ASMR, so why don't we just do the whole thing? Um, uh, let's, let's, let's, let's call it there.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  I asked Phil if he was gonna have to share his Switch 2 with those Torp children he has. Uh, what was your answer, Phil?

• 44:16Speaker 04

  Uh, no, they, they all, they got their own switches for Christmas. Uh, and, and I, part of that was so I, when the Switch 2 came out, it could be mostly mine.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. Good parenting advice there from Phil.

• 44:27Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah. And I'll, I'll do one actual question for Meat Eater fans, uh, and because the honest is here. Uh, Odie the Good Shepherd asks, how's Mingus doing? And how's his training coming along? Uh, kind regards on the other side of the pond out of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. That's a hell of a port.

• 44:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 05

  Lot of traffic.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, what do they mostly move through there?

• 44:48Speaker 05

  Whatever. Shipping.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 44:51Speaker 03

  Mingus is doing it, doing it, doing great. He's kind of trained up. My main mentor says that Mingus is as much of a lion dog as he's ever gonna be. And he's not gonna get any better, but he's great right now. He does his thing. So, yeah, we're we're having fun. Season's over, so we're, you know, Mingus is waiting for December 1st at this point.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  How long will he be at the mountaintop of his like best?

• 45:18Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  Lion hunting? Do they start to go downhill at some point? I suppose their physical fitness?

• 45:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I think that the, you know, the older the dogs get, maybe they get more efficient. Maybe they get, you know, smarter about how they run tracks. Mingus doesn't seem to be a real genius. So I don't know if that's gonna happen with him, but I don't know, he's only four now. I guess it'll be five this fall, so I imagine he's got at least that many more good years.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  He's in his prime. All right, moving on, our next segment is Meat Eater Movie Club. This week, we're reviewing the 2022 comedy Hundreds of Beavers.

• 46:07Speaker 05

  I've just passed out a few scripts. Your lines are highlighted. Corey, if you'll begin.

• 46:12Speaker 07

  Oh, okay.

• 46:13Speaker 04

  Oh, hold on, Corey, I gotta turn your mic on here.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  They did not know about this. Was that you were, you were intentionally leaving this?

• 46:20Speaker 05

  Yes, yes.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  For this very moment.

• 46:21Speaker 05

  Yes, this is why I was so concerned that the printer wasn't working for me earlier.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Perfect.

• 46:26Speaker 05

  So Corey, yeah, your lines are highlighted. Am I on, Phil?

• 46:29Speaker 04

  You're on, and also for those of you wondering, this, these other man sitting at the table is, he's Jake. He's gonna be, he's our newest addition to the podcast team. He's gonna be doing some stuff for Radio Live after, they're starting at the end of the month, so. Hi, hi Jake. Anyway, Corey, go ahead.

• 46:45Speaker 07

  The setting is the podcast studio, Meat Eater Headquarters, Bozeman, Montana. It's 11:41 a.m.

• 46:53Speaker 05

  No, no, no, you're supposed to read it as if it's before the show. Read, just read it as written. Jesus.

• 46:59Speaker 07

  Lot of work put into this. It's 10:28 a.m. on Thursday, June 5th. Thirty-two minutes before the recording of Meat Eater Radio Live, episode 41.

• 47:08Speaker 05

  Hey, good morning, Randall. Good morning, Phil the Engineer. Do you have all your jingles lined up for the show? Yes, all set on that front. Are you ready for Meteor Movie Club today? I think the whole movie club segment is played out. My monologues just get longer and longer. The tone has gotten darker and darker. The references are just too obscure. I think the jokes run its course. It's tired, and my heart's just not in it anymore. Well, at least we've got a great film to discuss today, right? I saw that the movie you've selected for this week has a score of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. What's it called? Hundreds of Beavers? Yes, that's exactly right. Hundreds of Beavers 2022, directed by Mike Cheswick and starring Ryland Bricks and Cole Tuves. And yeah, I was a little surprised by that Rotten Tomatoes score

• 47:52Speaker 05

  as well as the critical acclaim I saw online.

• 47:57Speaker 05

  Why so? Well, I just, I'm not even sure what to make of the film. It was about trapping, right? Loosely. Well, no, it is. In the same way that Space Jam is about basketball. Or maybe just a little less than that. There's a man who begins as a drunkard, something to do with apples. It's also very cold out, and he catches some fish with his fingers. And then he spends much of the film getting hurt while trying to catch critters of all kinds in increasingly elaborate traps and schemes. Half the time, his plans backfire spectacularly. But large men in furry-like beaver costumes are killed and skinned, yes. And the plot does involve the accumulation of bodies of dead beaver men. But then the beavers hold a Soviet-style show trial for the lead character

• 48:40Speaker 05

  before attempting to skin him and make a coat out of him. And there's a weird rocket ship at the end. It's partially animated. There's sort of a weird video game-like quality to the whole thing. Ah, maybe it is more like Space Jam than I thought. And the whole thing's in black and white. It's just a lot of weird stuff. I don't know. The chat might be disappointed with this segment today, but at least it's not because they had to sit through yet another heavy-handed film analysis in migrating monotone delivery. Oh, man. Wow. Yikes. Were there any highlights? Well, the thing that immediately comes to mind is the sound design. Absolutely fantastic. Lots of rattles and crashes and whistles and bonks. Brought me right back to the golden age of Tinseltown.

• 49:23Speaker 05

  Above and beyond that, I guess I just admire the commitment to the whole vision.

• 49:28Speaker 04

  The commitment to what exactly? It's a comedy, right?

• 49:32Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, I suppose it is, but it's not that simple. It's more like a chaotic avant garde comedic experiment that defies the conventions of mainstream filmmaking in the 21st century. Yet at the same time, it's clearly in conversation with a variety of cinematic touchpoints. It's got slapstick sensibility like Three Stooges and merry melodies. We see traces of the stop motion aesthetics of South Park. And tonally, there's a little bit of Burt Ives Christmas specials. On top of that, the dramatic arc of the film is basically just a simplified version of the best eight and a half minutes of Home Alone. That is the first Home Alone. The one where Macaulay Culkin's character is actually alone at home and not at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 50:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, and throughout the whole film, the main character just grunts and makes faces. He's surrounded by actors in animal costumes that are eerily reminiscent of the rabbit figure in Donnie Darko. I also have to point out, only because it bothered me so much, that there's a brief nod in one scene to that terrible dogs playing poker painting softened displayed in suburban rec rooms in American casual dining chains with friendly atmospheres. Like, for example, Applebee's, TGI Fridays, O'Charley's and Chili's. Or Bennigan's. But that's a more obscure reference because there aren't many Bennigan's around these days since the parent company Metro Media Restaurant Group was forced into an involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2008. According to Bennigan's.com, only six full-service pre-standing locations remain open in the US.

• 50:54Speaker 05

  Two in Texas, two in Iowa, one in North Dakota and one in Illinois. Although don't quote me on that because I don't know if those are corporate locations or if that's inclusive of franchises. Regardless, it's a striking number considering at one point there were more than 150 corporate Bennigan's locations.

• 51:08Speaker 04

  My goodness. That's interesting to learn about how few Bennigan's there are in the, in the United States. I guess I'd noticed that their footprint had shrunk considerably since I was younger, but I didn't quite know the backstory.

• 51:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, but a growing part of the business now is a derivative quick serve, fast casual concept, Bennigan's on the fly that's geared more towards high traffic locations like food courts, airports, arenas, university campuses. They offer fresh innovative selections as well as some customer favorites from the traditional Bennigan's menu, including the Monte Cristo and the turkey of two.

• 51:40Speaker 05

  Spencer, you're laughing. You gotta stop. Gotta stop.

• 51:42Speaker 04

  I appreciate that information on Bennigan's on the fly, which I hadn't heard of until just now.

• 51:48Speaker 05

  Looking to the future, the company has plans to expand its already strong international presence, which includes multiple locations throughout Central America, as well as two in Bahrain, two in Qatar, two in Dubai, and curiously, four in Cyprus. Coming soon, there's a location in Pakistan, too. These are all full-service locations, by the way, just like the original Bennigan's. God damn it. I got sidetracked last night prepping for this show by reading about the resurrection of the Bennigan's brand, and I'm falling into the same trap again. We can't get distracted, Phil. We've got to figure out this movie club segment. Anyway, back to the topic at hand, Hundreds of Beavers also includes these surreal sequences where reality just bends.

• 52:27Speaker 04

  Bends how?

• 52:29Speaker 05

  Picture this: A wet piece of firewood is actually a log-shaped pillow, so our hero is able to wring it out like a sponge. Or the fur trader spits his chaw of tobacco towards a spittoon, and then the plug just curves wildly through the air, so it never lands in the intended receptacle until the very end, symbolizing the resolution of the conflict at the heart of the film. The physical universe of Hundreds of Beavers makes no sense, but somehow it works with its own hallucinogenic logic.

• 52:53Speaker 04

  And this goes on for how long?

• 52:55Speaker 05

  Well, I figured it would go on for about five minutes, but it seems like it's going longer than that.

• 53:00Speaker 04

  No, I mean, the movie.

• 53:02Speaker 05

  Oh, of course. An hour and 48 minutes. I checked my phone a lot, actually, mostly reading about Bennigan's, thinking we are surely near the end. But no, the movie just kept going. More encounters with people in animal suits, more elaborate failures, more falling in the snow, more rolling in the snow, more grunting and more yelling.

• 53:18Speaker 04

  Do you think Spencer and Yanis enjoyed it?

• 53:20Speaker 05

  That's doubtful. I think it's too far out in left field, creatively speaking, for Spencer's tastes. And Yanis, well, I know he appreciates good filmmaking and has a very open-minded sensibility, but I'm not sure even he can make sense of whatever this was trying to be.

• 53:34Speaker 04

  Shit. Sounds like Movie Club might be a pretty tough segment. I'm pretty sure Spencer's got 10 or 15 minutes dedicated to it in the run of the show. The show will be recording in less than an hour.

• 53:43Speaker 05

  Don't worry, we can fill it out somehow. Too bad we can't include all of that good information about Bennigan's. That's fun pre-show banter, but not exactly what the radio live audience is tuning in for.

• 53:53Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 53:55Speaker 05

  The thing is, I can't shake the feeling that there's something profoundly lovable about the madness of this film. Like, you've got to admire an unshaking conviction to an absurd premise. You just come up with something completely bonkers and take it all the way.

• 54:08Speaker 04

  So you respect it even if you don't fully get it?

• 54:11Speaker 05

  You know, the more I think about it, the more I like it, actually. I just love stuff that is genuine in its weirdness. There's no cynicism, there's no winking at the camera. There's just a bold, unadulterated fever dream of a concept that doesn't shy away from the gaze of the critic.

• 54:24Speaker 04

  Well, what will you say on air? We're going live at 11.

• 54:27Speaker 05

  I wasn't quite sure before this conversation, Phil, but it's becoming clearer and clearer as we talk. There's an interesting tension here. On the one hand, put yourselves in the shoes of the makers of this film. You are truly inspired by a creative concept so over the top, so wrapped up in its own bizarre vision that you've just got to run with it. And you can't half-ass it. Sure, sometimes it might leave viewers wondering, what the hell was that? But there's something joyful and beautiful in the deliberate insanity of it all.

• 54:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I get that.

• 54:53Speaker 05

  On the other hand, if you're so committed to producing something in keeping with your own comedic sensibilities, damn the viewer, you're on the risk of losing the audience's attention, maybe even earning its resentment. And point is, at that point, you're just doing it for your own amusement. Completely for your own amusement. And here's the big question. Is that type of content just masturbatory, self-indulgent on the part of the artist, Phil? Or is it a truer expression of creative integrity?

• 55:21Speaker 04

  That... well, geez, that's actually not a bad angle for Movie Club. Assuming you're still talking about the film.

• 55:28Speaker 05

  Precisely, my friend. Precisely.

• 55:31Speaker 07

  End scene. Wow. Fade to black. Thank you. Audience goes nuts. Yes, they are.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  I gotta catch my breath. I didn't even have to read anything.

• 55:42Speaker 05

  Oh, man. I, I actually liked this movie more than I, I made it seem. I started working on this about halfway through when I wasn't sure what to make of it, but at the end of it, it won me over. But I thought this was such a good bit that I couldn't let it go.

• 55:55Speaker 04

  Randall, I

• 55:56Speaker 02

  Glad you didn't.

• 55:58Speaker 04

  That was spectacular. Thank you so much.

• 56:01Speaker 05

  Broken. I told you someone was gonna cry in this building today.

• 56:06Speaker 02

  Randall correctly predicted someone would cry and I have laughing tears.

• 56:13Steven Rinella?

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• 58:59Speaker 05

  Thanks to Mogor for a very strange film. Yeah.

• 59:06Speaker 03

  How would we have not heard about this film?

• 59:09Speaker 05

  Well, it's very new. It was, it was only released in 2022 and the, the two, the star and the director wrote it and they released it at a film festival. And then they, I guess the studio attempted to distribute it and they just wanted it to go to like streaming platforms.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  And they didn't even make it to streaming, I think until like 2024 or something like that.

• 59:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:30Speaker 04

  I thought this movie was a lot of fun. I think like Randall said in his, in his commentary, it's a little long in the tooth, but

• 59:37Speaker 05

  Hundred percent.

• 59:38Speaker 04

  So many creative gags, like it was, I couldn't believe just how much stuff was unexpected or genuinely funny. I'd say that. The jokes worked more than they didn't for me, which is, you know, key to a good comedy.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, things I liked. The music was great. To make any movie on $150,000 budget in 2022 is wildly impressive. So it felt like it far exceeded that. It also felt like an Adult Swim bumper from 2006, and that's a compliment. Because the weird on those bumpers, if you're familiar, you know what I'm talking about. It's kind of limitless. Phil, I imagine you were really into those.

• 1:00:14Speaker 04

  I have no idea. I'm lost now.

• 1:00:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're a little old for that. Phil, explain.

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. I mean, it's kind of hard to explain, but Adult Swim had kind of shorter programming, so they would fill the, just fill the space between shows with these kind of like short films. And, and just stuff that varied wildly. I, I think, I think they just hired different crazy creative people to make just these, these weird bumpers, like Spencer said.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  This movie felt like one of those to me, but, you know, drug out over two hours, which I think was, was too long.

• 1:00:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  We're in agreement.

• 1:00:46Speaker 04

  I had a line initially in my review where I said, and I did have to cut quite a bit out of this.

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 1:00:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. I had a line in my review where I said, it seems like something I should watch and hold my attention for about five to 10 minutes on the internet and maybe 10 to 15 minutes if I was drinking.

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:05Speaker 04

  But like, that's, that's sort of it. But I liked that they were just like, we're gonna make a two hour movie of this.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this, this felt like something that AI could not make.

• 1:01:13Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  That's refreshing in a world that feels like it's being swallowed by AI in this medium. The movie got a real laugh from me around minute 100, when the daughter gets on a stripper pole. That was unexpected, which most things in this movie are. And then shortly after that, a word gets bleeped, which was also wildly amusing because there's no dialogue in the movie. So a bleep felt genuinely out of nowhere. I think bleeps are always funny. You could, you could serve me a bleep in any show or movie. And I'm gonna laugh at it, but I got a real, real giggle when that happened.

• 1:01:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  Yanni, did you watch this with anyone? You, you recording the idea of watching with your daughters and I don't, I don't know if you went through with it or not.

• 1:01:52Speaker 03

  I did, but we started a little late last night, which means two things. One, we couldn't finish it. Kids had to get to bed for school and I fell asleep for many parts of the, the first half. Been a long day, short night the night before, a little sauna, you know, I wasn't, it wasn't, wasn't really like, I wasn't set up to make it through a movie. But I kept waking up at giggles. So every time I wake up, I'm like, oh, can't be too bad.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  Your giggles or your daughter's giggles?

• 1:02:22Speaker 03

  No, my daughters were giggling at these, at the jokes that, you know, are slap, you know, slapstick funny. I did finish, I probably watched maybe 70 minutes of it this morning. So I got to pick it up at the important part, you know, I got the gist of it.

• 1:02:40Speaker 03

  You guys are, we're all saying the same thing, but you have to give it almost 30 minutes just to sort of be like, oh, okay, I get it.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  I'm immersed in this.

• 1:02:48Speaker 03

  And I'm in now, cause at first you're just like, wait a minute, what?

• 1:02:52Speaker 05

  I thought the first 30 minutes could have been a five minute setup.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:02:56Speaker 05

  And then it just begins with him.

• 1:02:58Speaker 03

  Well, you could truncate the whole movie.

• 1:03:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, the movie should be 25 minutes.

• 1:03:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Speaker 05

  But, I mean, the beaver, the man, the giant man made out of beavers.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 1:03:08Speaker 05

  The Beaver Show Trial was fantastic. The, the, um, I also liked when she's skinning the animals, like she has a legit little kit there of big curved flushing knives and stuff like that. And then the one, I think it's the raccoon that she skins. She begins, I think she does something to its head, but then she takes the arm and like breaks the joint. I thought that was hilarious.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  This was filmed in Wisconsin and Michigan, I think, so I assumed they're from that part of the world.

• 1:03:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  Um, so they like have some familiarity.

• 1:03:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it didn't seem, like it seemed like people that knew what they were talking about.

• 1:03:47Speaker 03

  Oh, a hundred percent. I was gonna say like, they don't give up on the slapstick. Like just when you think like they can't come up with something, you're like, oh, he just sneezed and this giant snot thing turned into an icicle and then killed something.

• 1:04:00Speaker 05

  And the caster, the caster mounds and stuff.

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:04Speaker 03

  But they also don't give up on keeping like the trapping aspect. Uh, legitimate.

• 1:04:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  Like, like the, the, the scene where he's, I think he first gets his, uh, the, the leg holds. And he's like chucking them out on the ice and he chucks it one time and it's not proper. And then it's upside down and he has to do it three times to, you know, do it properly. You could have just as easily.

• 1:04:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  Chucked it out once and the trap could have caught any animal.

• 1:04:32Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:04:33Speaker 03

  Well, no matter how it came out there, but they were like, oh no, it has to flow out to this fake beaver. Right side up because otherwise, you know, the viewers are going to get mad that the trap caught this fake beaver.

• 1:04:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Speaker 03

  When the trap was upside down.

• 1:04:45Speaker 05

  I know there's like, there's like attention to detail in it that. I was won over by the end of it. I still, if I had a director's cut.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:54Speaker 05

  Shave about 61 minutes off it.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:57Speaker 05

  But, uh, yeah, you got to appreciate just going for it.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  A couple of other things I liked is they obviously did their own stunts. And there's at one point where he's like pushing a wooden box and then he falls into the wooden box and he gets down. He falls into it again and he nailed that part like that. That was done, uh, really well. I also like the idea of the beaver dam is like a dam that is run by the Army Corps of Engineers.

• 1:05:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, a massive hydroelectric dam.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Things I didn't like, um, yeah, too long. I checked my phone a lot and I was like, it's gotta be about over and it wasn't. Uh, the other thing, this isn't necessarily something I didn't like about the movie. Maybe just like, uh, the indie movie industry is that this movie was showered with awards. And I'm like, really?

• 1:05:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  This, this was worthy of being nominated. I don't know, like 50 times and winning 20 times. This, this could not have been one of the greatest things that humans produced in cinema in 2022, even in the, the niche indie scene. Um, I, I was like mildly turned off by that when I saw it afterwards. I was like, I can't believe that, um, people felt like this was one of the best things from that year.

• 1:06:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. I, I feel like it, the movie didn't affect me in any way. I went through it. I, I walked away and I was like, that's what I watched for an hour and yeah.

• 1:06:12Speaker 04

  I don't know. I, I think I was marveling at the creativity more than, more than anything. Cause I think, I think that was unparalleled.

• 1:06:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. I respect it. I respect it. I mean, a strange, strange concept, but.

• 1:06:24Speaker 03

  Is there, is there a message?

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Uh, I think their message was just like, look at the limitless weird that we can do.

• 1:06:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  Two hours and we can, um, we can revive a form of, of comedy that has been lost with audio, uh, because it was, it was like Three Stooges.

• 1:06:43Speaker 05

  I had, I had another line in here and it was basically just, uh, this was more an experiment to see if they could do this, like incorporate these different elements. Like what if we did this? What if we did this? And then they just made the whole film without asking if it was something they should actually do.

• 1:07:01Speaker 04

  This is like a classic hero's journey.

• 1:07:03Speaker 05

  I also cut another, I cut another line out of this.

• 1:07:06Speaker 04

  This guy had an arc.

• 1:07:06Speaker 05

  The parent company, the parent company for Bennigan's also owned Ponderosa Steakhouse, which explains where, uh, Ponderosa Steakhouse, or as we called it when we used to go there for the lunch buffet, Sweet Lady P.

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  Did you love Bennigan's? I've never been to one.

• 1:07:24Speaker 05

  Not really. I, I remember going to one. There's a South Park episode where Butters really wants to go to Bennigan's, but I was, I was, uh, doing the thing about the, the dogs playing poker and I was trying to come up with another like few casual chains. And I saw Bennigan's and I was like, what the hell happened to Bennigan's?

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  Now we know.

• 1:07:43Speaker 05

  And now we know. And, and it does seem like there's a, a very committed couple in Texas who now own it. There's been some restructuring and they're committed to restoring the brand, which is cool because I think it's a real legacy brand in the world of American restaurants.

• 1:07:58Speaker 03

  Hmm. I'd never heard of it until today.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  Never been to one. I don't know that I've ever been in the same city as one.

• 1:08:05Speaker 05

  Well.

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  May never happen.

• 1:08:07Speaker 03

  Now Ponderosa.

• 1:08:07Speaker 05

  Next time we go to the Middle East, man, you'll be surrounded by them.

• 1:08:11Speaker 02

  Uh, my, my big takeaway, this would be the perfect movie if you're a stoner college kid to watch on a Thursday night. I wouldn't, wouldn't cancel weekend plans. I don't think this is a, you know, something you dedicate a Friday or Saturday to, but if, if you're a stoner college kid, do what stoner college kids do and then put this on tonight and you'll have like a wonderful two hours.

• 1:08:29Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  Anything else?

• 1:08:34Speaker 05

  That's all I got.

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  Uh, there was plenty.

• 1:08:36Speaker 05

  Thanks again to Mogor.

• 1:08:39Speaker 04

  Good call Mogor.

• 1:08:39Speaker 05

  I feel like this segment ran too long and I played a role in that, so I apologize.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  I, uh, I really enjoyed it.

• 1:08:46Speaker 04

  Uh, Spencer, can I suggest a, a switch around?

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  We're gonna skip ahead to, to one minute fishing. Yeah. All right. Our next segment is one minute fishing.

• 1:08:54Speaker 08

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

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  One minute fishing is where we go live to someone who's fishing and they have one minute to catch a fish. And if they're successful, we'll make a $500 donation to a conservation group. This week, our angler is Christine Fisher, who you'll remember from last week's episode. She's on Chickamauga Lake in Tennessee and fishing for a donation to the first Wisconsin chapter of Muskie's Inc. Christine, welcome to the show.

• 1:09:26Speaker 09

  Hey guys, how's it going?

• 1:09:27Speaker 02

  Doing good. Uh, last week, Christine, you joined us. You were in Oklahoma pre-fishing for the 2025 Bassmaster Kayak Series at Lake Tenkiller. There were 137 anglers in the field. Tell folks how you did.

• 1:09:42Speaker 09

  Well, y'all, I don't know if it was that meat eater luck, but I, uh, I ended up taking the big W, my first Bassmaster win. And it was the first, uh, win by a female in Bassmaster history.

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  Hell yeah, first place.

• 1:09:54Speaker 05

  Nicely done.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  Congratulations, Christine. First place among 137 anglers. Uh, that's awesome. Now, explain how a Bassmaster.

• 1:10:03Speaker 05

  How many other females, Christine, were, uh, in this tournament?

• 1:10:07Speaker 09

  I think, I think this one was one of our highest attended for females and I think there were six of them.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  Out of 137. That's great. Uh, explain how a Bassmaster Kayak Series tournament is set up. Uh, it may be different from other tournaments because the first thing that jumps out to me when I look at the results is that a fish's value is measured by length instead of weight.

• 1:10:29Speaker 04

  Nope. Heavens.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  Lost.

• 1:10:31Speaker 04

  Some connection issues with Christina.

• 1:10:32Speaker 09

  First by all of our fish via, via length. We have certified measuring boards that we use. Males have to be close and then we have a unique identifier that it has to be in the picture for every single one of our fish. So they're GPS time stamped. We have a first cast and a last cast and it's a pretty, it's a pretty techy little setup how they do it. And I love it because there are, you know, this has been around 10 years and early on there were a lot of people that tried to kind of cheat the system by various ways. And it's dang near impossible to do that now. It's awesome.

• 1:11:07Speaker 02

  Give me an example of how people would try to cheat the system.

• 1:11:11Speaker 09

  So we had a guy, I mean, two things. We had a guy about six, seven years ago that was cutting boards in half and then kind of pulling them together. So his fish looked like they were two or three inches longer than they were. It was absolutely insane. Um, there's been a couple of people that would take a Sharpie and try to mark up fish to where they had different marks on them, but they were the same fish. And to make the tail, you know, not hit a quarter inch, but now the app has, um, people look for the same fish because every fish has very unique markings and lateral lines. So they can't get away with that. And then we had a guy in Texas, actually, that was cutting tails and kept the tail of a fish in his pocket.

• 1:11:52Speaker 09

  And would lay it over, this is a long time ago, um, would lay it over the fish, put his hand over it. So you couldn't, the tail looked like it was like this long. Uh, that was in a local tournament. So it was a little, you know, local ones aren't as, as rigid as I would think the big national ones are. But we've, we've learned a lot in the last decade.

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  That's amazing. Every time I think, uh, tournament anglers can't cheat, they figure out a new way to cheat. So I'm, I'm very amused to hear that. Now, how far are tournament kayak anglers traveling in a day?

• 1:12:22Speaker 09

  You know, honestly, um, this is gonna surprise a lot of people because it's anywhere, you know, you'll have people that'll stick within a mile, but I've covered up to fifteen, twenty miles in one day. Wow.

• 1:12:34Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 1:12:35Speaker 09

  I would say the average is probably five to seven.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  Hmm, man.

• 1:12:39Speaker 03

  What's your top speed? If you just gotta get from point A to point B, what's your top speed in that thing?

• 1:12:45Speaker 09

  About six and a half. Very, uh, a lot slower than my Ranger goes.

• 1:12:49Speaker 02

  Hmm, wow. Uh, now, Lake Ten Killer offers smallmouth and largemouth, and the upper portion lake is very different from the lower portion lake. So anglers have a lot of different ways that they can find success or failure in approaches fishery. Tell us about your winning strategy.

• 1:13:07Speaker 09

  Well, you know, my strategy, I really wanted to fish for points. You know, we, we have an Angler of the Year series, and that qualifies you for the championship. And I only get to fish three, and I didn't get a drop event. So I was just gonna go, you know, I went and caught some, some giant smallmouth down south, had a really good pattern, caught a, caught a four and a half pound smallmouth, couple three pound smallmouth, you know, really good fish from that lake. But they were fairly obvious offshore spots. Um, and I knew with the big boat tournament and a hundred and thirty-seven kayak anglers, I actually did not touch my, what I would call my A, my best water, one time during the tournament. I went to an area that I didn't, I thought was gonna get very overlooked, had some quality fish, had to work a lot harder for them. And there were only four

• 1:13:49Speaker 09

  people at my ramp, so I thought I made a huge mistake that day I got there, but it ended up working out, fishing less pressure water. And, uh, it was cool because I got to lock a big swim bait in my hand basically both days and did a little bit of lake flipping, um, on some steeper banks, lead back to the creeks on the, on the first day as well. But fishing that, that overlooked water was key.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  That's great. I, I read you say that your two biggest fish of the tournament did not get in the boat. What happened there?

• 1:14:19Speaker 09

  Well, anytime, if you've got any listeners that are swim bait people, you know when you're swim bait fishing, sometimes they just don't make it to the boat. And I had on three casts, my first cast down this little spot at the mouth of the creek, jumped off about a three and a half pound smallmouth. Two casts later, I jumped off a large mouth that would have been big bass tournament. It was just over five pounds. And the cameraman was on me. So he has a segment of photos from start to finish. And it was agonizing. I had to kind of relive that. You know, in those tournaments, you think you lose one of those big fish, and you're just like, well, you know, that was the one. That was the one I knew that I needed to probably get this thing done. So that, you know, it's really tough to stay in it mentally after jumping off two big fish.

• 1:15:04Speaker 09

  But you know what? When it's your time, it's your time. And I guess that was my time to get it done anyway.

• 1:15:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now, before we do one minute fishing today, tell folks what happened after our one minute fishing segment ended last week.

• 1:15:17Speaker 09

  Well, I caught three white bass in a row. I swear it was y'all's music. Like, that was the most intense minute of my life. Like, can we all get in ya? Or something just a little bit more chill? Because I was freaking out with that minute. Um, I caught three fish in a row after that. So I was, I felt pretty discouraged.

• 1:15:37Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 1:15:38Speaker 03

  All right. I have a question, though, Spencer, before we go there. Christine, if you keep on winning and keep getting these big checks, and you all of a sudden, you have enough money to buy one of those big fancy boats, are you going to switch from kayak angling to just regular angling out of a fancy bass boat? Or, I'm asking, what's the draw for kayak angling? And do you, would you switch over to regular boat fishing?

• 1:16:03Speaker 09

  Well, I actually did make the switch last year. I have a Ranger Alpha 200A, and I'm fishing in the most competitive boat trail in the country, the Bassmaster Opens. Um, so I do do that. And I fished two this year, and I fished a couple women's only boat tournaments. I won my first one earlier this year, just to kind of learn it. Because honestly, the boat was pretty intimidating for me. But, you know, I'll always be a kayak angler. I always will. I'm doing the boat thing to hopefully inspire more women to get into fishing out of the boat. But I'm a kayak angler because it just fosters such a deeper, more intimate experience on the water. We're right next to the water. It's quiet. I can get back in these creeks and these things where other boats can't get. And it's a lot more affordable. You know, when I was 21 years old,

• 1:16:48Speaker 09

  I wasn't buying a sixty, seventy thousand dollar boat. I couldn't afford it. I was working three jobs. So I got into kayak fishing because for me, you know, I just, that was accessible for me.

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  All right. Tell us about the body of water you're on today, what you're fishing for and how you're doing it.

• 1:17:04Speaker 09

  Well, I started the morning at a little pond and I told you all, I had, I had blue gill on every single cast, but I had no service. So I ended up loading up and falling down to Lake Chickamauga. I do have some experience here, but it's the midsummer. It's pretty stingy. I have one little stretch of rip rap right now that I got here and my first three casts in a row. Again, I sent you a picture. I caught a decent small mouth. I caught a large mouth and a little spotted bass. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that on the first cast with this, but I feel like it's my best bet and it's where I got to in the time that I had.

• 1:17:36Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:17:36Speaker 09

  We're just going to a little paddle tail right down that rip rap and see what we can do.

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  All right. Well, your one minute of fishing starts when you make that first cast. Christine is now, I don't know if she's going to stand up today or not. Christine, how, how often are you standing when you're fishing out of your kayak?

• 1:17:53Speaker 09

  Probably 90% of the time, but I'm going to sit just because I, y'all, I don't think y'all will be able to see me if I stand.

• 1:17:58Speaker 02

  Okay. And tell us about the rip rap that you're tossing this swim bait at.

• 1:18:04Speaker 09

  Well, there's actually a little spring that comes in right here and it's, it's way, well, it was in the shade about a half an hour ago. So.

• 1:18:12Speaker 05

  Oh, my movie review went wrong. It went too long.

• 1:18:15Speaker 09

  It's got cooler water in the summer. That's really, really big. So we're going to see. I'm getting ready to make that first cast. You all ready?

• 1:18:24Speaker 02

  We're ready. Go for it.

• 1:18:25Speaker 09

  Okay, here we go.

• 1:18:29Speaker 02

  She's made her first cast. She just told us that she caught three already in this spot.

• 1:18:38Speaker 09

  Tell me when I'm at 30 seconds.

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  Okay, you're 10 seconds in.

• 1:18:42Speaker 05

  Well, hopefully with that big wind under her belt, the music doesn't affect her as much as it did last week.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  Uh huh. It is dead calm out there today in Tennessee.

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  You are 30 seconds down.

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  She is furiously paddling and reeling. Switching spots a little bit.

• 1:19:05Speaker 02

  She's backing up off the location. Twenty seconds to go.

• 1:19:10Speaker 02

  She just made her third cast.

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  She, uh, it seems like she only finds a little part of this area productive because she reels a few times and then brings it in. Ten seconds.

• 1:19:23Speaker 02

  She just made her final cast. Five seconds. Come on Christine!

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  Oh, didn't happen today. That's it for your one minute.

• 1:19:34Speaker 02

  I have a feeling though, we'll have you back on because the competitive spirit is, is clearly there, so. Christine, you take this more serious than any of our other anglers. I love it. Oh, she just set the hook. If only it were two minute fishing and she has voted a 12 inch largemouth. Uh, just 30 seconds too late. Oh, that's great. Is that a largemouth or a spotted bass?

• 1:19:58Speaker 09

  That's actually a little baby largemouth.

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  Little baby largemouth. Oh, just too late. That fish didn't have to fall very far to hit the water.

• 1:20:06Speaker 09

  I am, I am not okay right now.

• 1:20:10Speaker 02

  One minute, it's, it's just, it's a lot of pressure. In the history of this segment, I think we've had three or four successful anglers, so, uh, it's, it's tough. And you're welcome back anytime. That's right. Uh, and before we go, any other sign of the mythical 10 killer lake octopus? You didn't see anything strange on your sonar? Uh, nothing tried grabbing your kayak while you were out there?

• 1:20:35Speaker 09

  Hold on, I didn't hear that last little part. What was it?

• 1:20:38Speaker 02

  It was not important. Thank you for joining us Christine. Uh, we'll have you back on one minute fishing some other time. Bye now. Thank you.

• 1:20:47Speaker 02

  Uh, we, we have one segment left. I think we're just gonna punt on it though until our next episode.

• 1:20:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, it'll be prepped for whenever we want to do it.

• 1:20:54Speaker 02

  For then. That means we're at the end of the show. Uh, we're gonna do some final Phil feedback. What do you got for us Phil?

• 1:20:59Speaker 04

  The, uh, the viewers are chomping at the bit to hear some of this. Phil, what's your favorite class to play in D and D? I think sorcerers are a lot of fun. Um, let's see, uh, Dan the Outdoor Man, favorite TV drink? I think he meant tiki drink. I've said it before. It's the Navy grog. As classic. Favorite song to sing at karaoke? The most fun song, most fun time I've had singing at karaoke was the Dixie Chicks. Now the chicks, goodbye Earl. I thought that was.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  He does it well.

• 1:21:25Speaker 04

  It was really fun. Um, let's see, what kind of preamp interface do you use with those SM7Bs? We got a Fet Head, uh, you know, providing a little extra, extra boost. And then it goes into an Allen and Heath CQ12T, uh, digital mixer.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  Perfect.

• 1:21:42Speaker 04

  Um, uh, question for Phil, do you actually have to work to come up with ideas for segment drops? Or does the stuff just come to you naturally? Um, I, I mean, I want to say it just comes to me naturally, but it's mostly because I'm lazy. I think of like the first idea I have, and it's usually like good enough. Uh, I think a couple of times I've made like the last call, like, ooh, this song would be better. So I'll, I'll do that. Um, Phil, you be on the theater stage again soon this Christmas at the Ellen Theater in Bozeman, Montana. I'll be playing Bob Cratchit in a Christmas carol. So come on down and, uh, I'm, I'm looking forward to it because my son will also be in the show. So that'll be a little fun.

• 1:22:15Speaker 02

  Do we know what part he has yet?

• 1:22:17Speaker 04

  We do not yet. No. Um, I think, I think he's too old for, for, for Tiny Tim. And, um, so that's, he, he was really hoping for it, but I had, I had to, you know, talk him down.

• 1:22:26Speaker 02

  I'll be there.

• 1:22:27Speaker 04

  Uh, Phil, favorite film of all time? Fill us in for those listeners, he spelled everything with a P H.

• 1:22:32Speaker 05

  Hell yeah.

• 1:22:33Speaker 04

  Um, this is not the greatest film of all time, but it is my favorite film of all time. And that is the Tom Hanks directed 1996 movie, That Thing You Do. Uh, I love that movie. I think it's near perfect. And even the stuff that isn't perfect, I love so much.

• 1:22:46Speaker 02

  Uh, Randall, what do you think of that movie?

• 1:22:48Speaker 05

  It's been a long while. I remember enjoying it when it came out. I was 10 at the time, uh, but it, original score, am I right, Phil?

• 1:22:57Speaker 04

  Uh, I think, well, it's, it's most known for its original song, which, which is just like a perfect pop song written by, um, one of the guys from Fountains of Wayne. It was also like Stacy's mom. I mean, it's just like, it's like perfect power, uh, uh, power pop, um, song. But yeah.

• 1:23:15Speaker 02

  What else you got, Phil? A couple more?

• 1:23:17Speaker 04

  Uh, I'll do one more. I'll do two more. Why is, why have Phil and Clay not made a collab? It's from Matthias. Clay and I have made multiple collabs. One of them is the Bear Grease Podcast.

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. That's a big one.

• 1:23:26Speaker 04

  Which I, I no longer work on, but, but Clan, I, it's, I mean, it's mostly Clay's show, but I, I, I helped him out with kind of like the format and what to do with it. And our other collab was that we were in a band together and we opened the Meat Eater live tour.

• 1:23:36Speaker 02

  It was amazing.

• 1:23:37Speaker 04

  Um, so if you, if you, I don't think there's video, official video that exists of that performance.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  Did that have a name?

• 1:23:43Speaker 04

  To be there.

• 1:23:43Speaker 02

  Your band?

• 1:23:44Speaker 04

  We didn't have a name, no. We should, we should, uh, retroactively give ourselves a name. Last one, Phil, ah, the Red Dead Redemption livestream. It is happening. Um, it's just, it's probably happening in the fall. We're trying to lock down our goals for the land access initiative for the year and make sure that when we do do some sort of fundraiser, you guys will all know exactly where your money's going and, uh, you'll feel good about, um, donating to a good cause.

• 1:24:07Speaker 02

  Well done. Very, very entertained by the, uh, the Phil questions.

• 1:24:12Speaker 04

  Great.

• 1:24:12Speaker 02

  We're gonna do that again sometime. Thank you, Yanni. Thank you, Randall.

• 1:24:16Speaker 04

  Thanks, Spencer.

• 1:24:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right. See you everyone back here next week, same time, same place.

• 1:24:20Speaker 04

  Thanks, folks.

• 1:24:21Speaker 02

  Bye now.

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