Ep. 723: Dangerous Game

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Morgan Potter https://www.instagram.com/morganpotterhunting/?hl=en, Seth Morris https://www.instagram.com/sethmorris_45/?hl=en, Austin "Chilly" Chleborad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2gmgTko9kU, Randall Williams https://www.instagram.com/randall__williams/, Phil Taylor https://www.instagram.com/philtaylor25/?hl=en, and Corinne Schneider https://www.instagram.com/corinnesschneider/?hl=en. Topics Discussed: An Australian’s blatant refusal to perform the American accent; the book “Thunder Without Rain” https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781510738348/thunder-without-rain/; how Steve really wants to get charged by a Cape buffalo in Tanzania https://www.robinhurt.com; the full year of the Roosevelt Safari; Chilly’s New Zealand tar hunt; when you don’t notice that a gator’s bitten your arm; a man-eating croc; shooting 'em in the smile; when the perfect shot is through the shoulder bone; surviving a black mamba bite; and more. Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Steven Rinella?

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• 0:45Steven Rinella?

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• 1:22Speaker 02

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• 2:03Speaker 03

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

• 2:10Speaker 04

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

• 2:14Steven Rinella?

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

• 2:35Steven Rinella?

  He's accusing me of being always sick. You are always sick. Seth's always sick. He's confusing. He's getting like, he's confusing who got sick. I'm sick like once every two years. No, sickly Seth is always sick. I'm not.

• 2:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, like I know you did not be ill, an ill person.

• 2:53Steven Rinella?

  I'm not an ill person.

• 2:54Speaker 05

  You have a pretty robust immune system.

• 2:55Steven Rinella?

  I have allergies.

• 2:56Speaker 06

  It's a bad year for hay feed, man.

• 2:57Steven Rinella?

  Phil, can you, can the show already be started?

• 2:59Speaker 06

  It's, I've been rolling for two minutes.

• 3:00Steven Rinella?

  Okay, can you make sure it starts with, with clarifying that sickly Seth? It's not true.

• 3:08Steven Rinella?

  That sickly Seth is always sick. I'm not always sick. Hmm. I feel like you're gonna get sick in Alaska. I was just sick. He's over here sniffling right now. I know. What are you sniffling about?

• 3:20Speaker 05

  He's probably got allergies because of pollen.

• 3:21Speaker 06

  Allergies? No, it is the pollen's bad this year.

• 3:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I think that would be rolled under sickly. Yeah. No.

• 3:27Speaker 06

  Infirm.

• 3:31Steven Rinella?

  This is general infirmity.

• 3:34Steven Rinella?

  Our friend Morgan Potter's here. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, it's good to be back. But by the time you're listening to this, so, because of, because of things in this world that I hate.

• 3:46Steven Rinella?

  Like what?

• 3:49Speaker 06

  Think it's a long list.

• 3:50Steven Rinella?

  You really want to know?

• 3:50Speaker 06

  It's a long list.

• 3:52Steven Rinella?

  No, I'm only going to focus on one thing I hate.

• 3:54Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 3:55Steven Rinella?

  In my opinion, it should just be that like, in my opinion, it should just be that this is effectively live.

• 4:05Speaker 06

  The podcast.

• 4:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like.

• 4:07Speaker 06

  Like as soon as it's done, it just drops.

• 4:08Steven Rinella?

  It just flop.

• 4:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:11Steven Rinella?

  And sometimes there'd be three shows in a week. Sometimes there'd be no shows in a week. It'd just be like flop.

• 4:16Speaker 06

  What do we think, Phil? Well, I've, I've talked with Corinne about this and I actually agree with Steve. I would love it if we could do something like that. We're just beholden to many agreements and deals with, with people and companies and there's, there's a lot of moving parts. Great companies. Yeah, of course. Incredible companies.

• 4:32Steven Rinella?

  Flop.

• 4:35Steven Rinella?

  I would change the show's name to flop because that's what it would be like a flop.

• 4:39Speaker 05

  That sounds like something else. We won't go there.

• 4:44Steven Rinella?

  By the time you're listening to this for like stupid, for like stupid reasons that I can't even begin to like, understand, let alone explain. I've had it explained to me 20 times. I still don't understand it.

• 4:59Steven Rinella?

  You know, in, um, did we talk about this recently in Life Aquatic?

• 5:04Speaker 06

  Oh, great. With Steve Zou.

• 5:06Steven Rinella?

  Perhaps, yeah, one of the top movies ever made.

• 5:09Speaker 06

  Fantastic.

• 5:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like up there with Big Lebowski.

• 5:11Speaker 06

  Oh, definitely.

• 5:17Steven Rinella?

  Someone's explaining something to his character, Bill Murray's character, and he says, I don't understand that, but it sounds like bullshit.

• 5:30Speaker 05

  I ran into Bill Murray in an elevator once. I was working at a post-production or our office was in a post-production studio. Steve, your phone's ringing.

• 5:38Speaker 06

  Your phone's ringing.

• 5:38Steven Rinella?

  No, it's not. How can you guys hear that?

• 5:48Speaker 05

  Ran into Bill Murray in an elevator on the same day, I forget how many years ago this was, that he was on the cover, was it Vogue or another publication, he was on the cover of it, and I was holding that magazine while I stepped into an elevator together with him. We were both there and I just kinda...

• 6:09Speaker 07

  Was he cool?

• 6:10Steven Rinella?

  Did you say...

• 6:11Speaker 05

  He was cool, no, I just looked at him and I like slowly raised the magazine cover in front of my face so that he was staring at himself. And then we had a little chuckle and then went our separate ways.

• 6:25Speaker 07

  That was... That was pretty funny.

• 6:26Speaker 05

  That was my Bill Murray encounter.

• 6:28Speaker 07

  He's one of the ones that I like, you wanna hope he's cool.

• 6:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:31Speaker 07

  In like, in the wild, you know? He probably is. In the wild.

• 6:36Steven Rinella?

  Morgan Potter, he's an Australian as you can tell. Hey, do, do for us your American accent.

• 6:41Speaker 07

  No, I can't do it.

• 6:42Steven Rinella?

  Why not?

• 6:43Speaker 07

  Oh, it's bad.

• 6:44Steven Rinella?

  No, I can't do it.

• 6:46Speaker 07

  I flat refuse.

• 6:47Speaker 06

  What part of the country is your American accent?

• 6:49Steven Rinella?

  We can all do our Australian for you.

• 6:51Speaker 06

  Like Sal?

• 6:52Speaker 07

  I've heard a couple of the Australians earlier before you walked in this door. Well, is Kiwi actually not, not so great? You guys should probably refrain from that.

• 6:59Steven Rinella?

  Do, do him. Goof on, goof on him.

• 7:03Speaker 06

  That's not annoying.

• 7:05Speaker 07

  See, you've got a lot of material, I mean, I have a deal, I have a deal with my children that when they can do, cause you know, they've grown up here, when they can do a passable Australian accent, I'll like give them a day off school, get them ice cream, whatever they want, they've failed to, uh...

• 7:23Steven Rinella?

  They can't do it. Maybe Randall could give them some pointers.

• 7:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 7:27Steven Rinella?

  Goof on him a minute, Randall.

• 7:28Speaker 06

  Oh, now you're putting me on the spot.

• 7:32Steven Rinella?

  Well, just do that.

• 7:33Speaker 06

  That's not annoying. This used to be a penal colony.

• 7:37Speaker 07

  No, that's no good. No, that's no good. See, I'm shaming him.

• 7:43Steven Rinella?

  Shaming him.

• 7:44Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 7:45Speaker 06

  No rules.

• 7:46Steven Rinella?

  We did this with Southerners one time and the Southerners would do their Northern accent for us.

• 7:51Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 7:52Steven Rinella?

  And and then, but we were too, we wouldn't do our southern accent for them.

• 7:56Speaker 07

  Ah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:57Steven Rinella?

  I'm like, I'm not doing that.

• 7:59Speaker 07

  No, I'm, I.

• 8:00Steven Rinella?

  And when they do their northern accent, they do everybody as, uh, Wisconsin.

• 8:04Speaker 07

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:05Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, two plates, two plates per salmon, huh?

• 8:10Steven Rinella?

  That's how they do like a Yankee. You're like, well, do your southern for me. And I'm like, I'm not doing my southern for you.

• 8:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wouldn't know where to begin. I do, I love a good regional accent, though. You know, Australia doesn't really have that. So I like that America has like regional variation. I appreciate that a lot, but.

• 8:27Steven Rinella?

  Well, do it, do, just do a quick one.

• 8:28Speaker 07

  No, I can't.

• 8:29Steven Rinella?

  When you're telling your stories, when you're telling stories to friends back home and you have an American talking.

• 8:33Speaker 07

  I do, yeah, sometimes, if I've been drinking, it's a little early for that. If I've been drinking, sometimes.

• 8:39Steven Rinella?

  Do it in American.

• 8:40Speaker 07

  I just can't, I just know, I flat refuse.

• 8:44Steven Rinella?

  Fair enough. That's not, that's not, not.

• 8:48Speaker 06

  Go on, mate.

• 8:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 8:52Steven Rinella?

  What'd you say?

• 8:52Speaker 07

  Was that good?

• 8:52Speaker 06

  Get him, Seth, get him.

• 8:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I get my, I get my. I get my haircut at VIP here in right, right here close.

• 9:01Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:02Steven Rinella?

  And, um, I'm in there getting my haircut and a

• 9:07Steven Rinella?

  kind of like, if he's listening with all due respect, kind of a crazy looking guy walks in. Just looks like he's been camping a long time.

• 9:13Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 9:14Steven Rinella?

  And not crazy, but just looks like he's been a long camp, hot, a long, hot camping trip.

• 9:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 9:20Steven Rinella?

  And he comes in and he asks if he can get a, a, a quick trim.

• 9:24Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 9:26Steven Rinella?

  And he's clearly Australian.

• 9:27Speaker 07

  Oh.

• 9:28Steven Rinella?

  So he sits down and the, the, there's, there's two guys, Kevin and Jake, and Kevin's cutting my hair and Jake is waiting for his next guy. And he's like, well, if it's quick, I'll do it. So you ask him, where's the accent from? And he says, Australia. And Jake asks him, what, like, same thing I would have done. Uh, is there any crocodiles nearby? To which.

• 9:49Steven Rinella?

  To which he points out that those are well north of him.

• 9:52Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 9:52Steven Rinella?

  And then.

• 9:55Steven Rinella?

  And then he asks him what he does for fun.

• 9:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 9:58Steven Rinella?

  And the guy says, well, we hunt a lot of pigs and then I kind of perk up at this.

• 10:03Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 10:03Steven Rinella?

  And all of a sudden he goes, are you the guy from Meat Eater?

• 10:11Speaker 07

  Oh, that's funny. I thought I was the only one.

• 10:13Steven Rinella?

  No, he was in town for work.

• 10:15Speaker 07

  Oh, really?

• 10:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he's in town for work. Two or three, he said he's here. I didn't catch what he is working on, but he's sent here and he's got, he's got a two, three months of stuff he's got to do.

• 10:25Speaker 07

  I'll bet it's mining or something.

• 10:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I'm sure.

• 10:27Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 10:28Steven Rinella?

  I shouldn't say I'm sure, but whatever it was, it looks hot.

• 10:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'll bet.

• 10:30Steven Rinella?

  He came in looking hot.

• 10:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, mining checks out.

• 10:35Steven Rinella?

  Uh, by the time you're listening to this, for reasons I cannot explain, I will be with Morgan Potter, who's sitting here right now. We will be like a, like an alternate universe. We will be in Tanzania hunting for Cape Buffalo. If you want to hear how, if you want to reflect back on how all this came to be, go back to episode four, four, six,

• 10:58Steven Rinella?

  which was called, When An African Cape Buffalo Beats Your Butt. Did we call it that?

• 11:02Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 11:03Steven Rinella?

  We didn't call it Beats Your Ass? Beats Your Butt?

• 11:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, cause Buffalo, you know.

• 11:09Speaker 07

  Uh huh.

• 11:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:10Steven Rinella?

  When An African Cape Buffalo Beats Your Butt.

• 11:13Speaker 06

  So he was just for alliteration purposes.

• 11:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, I got nothing to do with cleaning.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  I think we went back and forth between ass and butt.

• 11:19Steven Rinella?

  Nothing to do with cleaning her up. So we're going to come around and, and, and talk about that in a, in a little bit. I'm, dude, I'm getting excited.

• 11:26Speaker 07

  Oh, uh, me too.

• 11:27Steven Rinella?

  I just wrote a whole book about Cape Buffalo that wound up oddly not being about Cape Buffalo.

• 11:32Speaker 07

  Which one?

• 11:32Speaker 04

  It's happening right now.

• 11:34Steven Rinella?

  I am, yeah, no, it's true. Yeah.

• 11:38Steven Rinella?

  What if by the time this comes out, I'm not excited?

• 11:41Speaker 07

  Yeah, you're like, this sucks.

• 11:43Steven Rinella?

  And then I'm listening to this and I'm like, but that's not true.

• 11:45Speaker 07

  We have to re-record. No, there's a low chance, low risk of that, I would say, very low risk. Um, what's the book that is not about Cape Buffalo that supports to be?

• 11:54Steven Rinella?

  Now it's by the late writer. So we had a long time ago had on a writer, Thomas McIntyre.

• 11:59Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, I know him. Yeah.

• 11:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, well, no.

• 12:00Speaker 07

  You passed away. I did know that.

• 12:02Steven Rinella?

  I didn't know that. I was talking about get, I was telling Chris to get him back on the show.

• 12:06Speaker 07

  Oh, dear.

• 12:06Steven Rinella?

  And then it turns out he had passed away.

• 12:08Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:08Steven Rinella?

  Not terribly old.

• 12:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, no, not terribly old. Um, yeah, poor guy.

• 12:13Steven Rinella?

  It's Thunder Without Rain.

• 12:14Speaker 07

  Ah, I have, I've read it a long time ago.

• 12:17Steven Rinella?

  But you know how, um, well, no, no, no, no, cause it only came out a year ago.

• 12:21Speaker 07

  Oh, really?

• 12:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, Thunder Without Rain.

• 12:23Speaker 07

  Oh, maybe I haven't.

• 12:23Steven Rinella?

  It came out posthumously.

• 12:25Speaker 07

  Ah, okay, okay. Is it like an anthology, like a collection of stories?

• 12:29Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 12:30Speaker 07

  All original material?

• 12:31Steven Rinella?

  But it's just like how Brodigan's Trout Fishing in America.

• 12:35Speaker 07

  Uh huh.

• 12:36Steven Rinella?

  Isn't about trout fishing in America.

• 12:38Speaker 07

  Gotcha.

• 12:39Speaker 04

  Which is really disappointing.

• 12:41Steven Rinella?

  There's a great line about trout fishing.

• 12:42Speaker 05

  Is it about love? Is it like a romance?

• 12:44Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no, no, no. No, it's a nonfiction book. He just now and then, and I can say this because he's, you know, no longer with us, for, for, for, sometimes for like seventy five pages, he'll forget that it's about Kate Buffalo.

• 12:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he'll be just talking about whatever, or is it more like about?

• 13:02Steven Rinella?

  Like he does a big, so he at one point feels the need to sort of talk about movies that might tangentially involve Kate Buffalo. So he spends a lot of time on like, like a lot of, of his generation that were interested in Africa. They're very interested in Hemingway.

• 13:21Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, no, no doubt.

• 13:23Steven Rinella?

  So rather than talk about Hemingway's run-ins with Kate Buffalo.

• 13:29Speaker 07

  Right.

• 13:29Steven Rinella?

  He decides just to do a mega bio.

• 13:32Speaker 07

  Of Ernest Hemingway.

• 13:33Steven Rinella?

  On Hemingway.

• 13:34Speaker 07

  Gotcha.

• 13:34Steven Rinella?

  Or uh, out of Africa. He has to talk about that.

• 13:41Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 13:41Steven Rinella?

  So then he does a mega bio on like everyone down to the financiers.

• 13:47Speaker 07

  Oh, as opposed to the characters that it was based on. He is like talking about the film.

• 13:53Steven Rinella?

  He alludes to them, but he forgets that he's, he forgets the hook.

• 13:58Speaker 07

  Right. And so then he's talking about the cinematographers and whatnot and kind of just doesn't.

• 14:03Steven Rinella?

  And just for long stretches of time, forgets about the subject at hand. But then now and then comes back to it in remarkable fashion.

• 14:10Speaker 07

  Yep, yeah.

• 14:11Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 14:12Speaker 04

  Sounds familiar.

• 14:13Speaker 07

  I think I've flicked through this book.

• 14:15Steven Rinella?

  Yes.

• 14:16Speaker 07

  But I don't write that way.

• 14:20Steven Rinella?

  I don't write that.

• 14:22Speaker 07

  His writing style is kind of unique. I, I, I think I flicked through this book and I, as I recall, there was a good chunk of it dedicated to like the, uh, like the evolutionary history of Cape Buffalo and their relationship with other bovards. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:38Steven Rinella?

  That was the part I liked. And, and here's the deal. If I was just sitting down looking to read a book, I would like it, but I was sitting down looking to like get a big load of Cape Buffalo info rather than reading the Wikipedia page, which I've read twice.

• 14:52Speaker 07

  For the cinematographers of, uh.

• 14:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And so, so like my needs as a reader are not being adequately met by the book. My needs as a cinephile.

• 15:04Speaker 07

  Yep. Totally checking that.

• 15:06Steven Rinella?

  Have been satisfied. But I was reading it to cram for our trip.

• 15:12Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. No, I think, uh, I can recommend some other reading, but yeah. You know, the thing about Cape Buffalo is I was kind of, you know, I read Hemingway and all that stuff. I mean, I've read, you know, a huge amount of literature and nonfiction related to African hunting, but I think nothing can kind of adequately prepare you for like seeing your first one. It's so cool. I still remember the first one I ever saw and I just being like,

• 15:42Steven Rinella?

  I want to get charged bad, man.

• 15:44Speaker 07

  You say that now.

• 15:46Steven Rinella?

  I've been looking at a lot of videos. My buddy just sent me a video of some guys getting beat up by one the other day.

• 15:50Speaker 06

  I'll tell you the crew that's gonna be with, he does not want to get charged.

• 15:54Steven Rinella?

  That's why I wanted to actually get hit though.

• 15:56Speaker 05

  Seth and I will be on the side.

• 15:58Speaker 07

  What is your, if you had to like, if you had to, I mean, other than just the, the ferocity of the animal from those charge videos, what would be your kind of like main takeaway? As far as just like how it all goes down.

• 16:12Steven Rinella?

  Just that.

• 16:13Speaker 07

  It's, yeah.

• 16:13Steven Rinella?

  Cause picture that is, I don't necessarily want to get charged, but like, I was talking to my buddy yesterday, we were sitting in my office, my buddies haunted him a couple of times.

• 16:21Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 16:22Steven Rinella?

  Um, and they had a instance, no charge, but they got, they were, they were, he said, the, the trackers are tracking.

• 16:30Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 16:31Steven Rinella?

  And all of a sudden, a guy holds his hand up.

• 16:34Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 16:34Steven Rinella?

  And touches his ear. And they've been, he said, they've been following them for a good part of a day.

• 16:38Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 16:39Steven Rinella?

  And they can hear somehow their trajectory on the track, like for whatever reason, something out ahead of them had bumped them or something.

• 16:49Speaker 07

  Gotcha.

• 16:50Steven Rinella?

  So he said, they're going and they're, they're following the trail, but all of a sudden you can hear them and they're coming.

• 16:56Speaker 07

  Ah.

• 16:57Steven Rinella?

  At a good clip.

• 16:58Speaker 07

  World.

• 16:59Steven Rinella?

  Like something just happened and they're coming.

• 17:01Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 17:02Steven Rinella?

  And so he says they're way off. And then they're like in their lap.

• 17:06Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 17:07Steven Rinella?

  Right?

• 17:07Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 17:08Steven Rinella?

  And, and shoots one at thirty yards.

• 17:09Speaker 07

  Nice. Good range to shoot one at.

• 17:11Steven Rinella?

  In their lap.

• 17:12Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 17:12Steven Rinella?

  So then you're like, he's like that. Like that scratched the itch.

• 17:17Speaker 07

  Oh, I'll bet.

• 17:18Steven Rinella?

  Cause he's like, I was worried that it would be that like, oh, I could, you know, through the brush.

• 17:24Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 17:25Steven Rinella?

  I could kind of make out like a shoulder blade.

• 17:27Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 17:28Steven Rinella?

  And someone saying, go, go, go.

• 17:29Speaker 07

  Give it to it. Yeah.

• 17:30Steven Rinella?

  And then you shoot and it's, and it's dead and never like, you never were in its presence.

• 17:37Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 17:38Steven Rinella?

  And he felt like he, he was so happy to have it that they were, they were like there.

• 17:43Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was exciting. Yeah.

• 17:44Steven Rinella?

  They were like.

• 17:44Speaker 07

  Close up.

• 17:45Steven Rinella?

  They were there.

• 17:45Speaker 07

  Without the, without the sort of, yeah, absolutely trying to kill you aspect of it.

• 17:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 17:51Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think.

• 17:52Steven Rinella?

  He said, yeah, they were, he said they were oblivious to their presence.

• 17:55Speaker 07

  Right.

• 17:55Steven Rinella?

  But still, he's like, you could still just like, like feel it.

• 17:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, feel the intensity of being that close to them. Yeah, I mean, that's what, that's kind of what I endeavor to do on, on safari is, is get people a number of those kind of like interactions.

• 18:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 18:12Speaker 07

  Whether you end up shooting one, um, you know, whether it's a, you know, you just kind of get up on a herd to just get a, get a look at what's in there. Um, we typically don't shoot from herds if we can avoid it, but yeah, just having that, that experience of being close to them.

• 18:25Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:26Speaker 07

  Um, is definitely, it's a big part of it. Um, the charge piece.

• 18:31Speaker 07

  Is far less desirable.

• 18:33Steven Rinella?

  No, I agree. I want you to know, I'm mostly.

• 18:36Speaker 07

  No, I know, I know. I picked that up. No, for sure, for sure. No.

• 18:39Steven Rinella?

  But I am, but I'm not. Pretend. I've had like little mix up with like minor mix ups with grizzly bears up close. And I wouldn't give away as much as you try to avoid it.

• 18:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:50Steven Rinella?

  As much as you try to avoid it in hindsight.

• 18:52Speaker 07

  Right.

• 18:53Steven Rinella?

  I wouldn't sacrifice any of those experiences in hindsight.

• 18:55Speaker 07

  No, for sure.

• 18:56Speaker 05

  Well.

• 18:56Speaker 07

  And I'm not going to pretend like the prospect of a charge isn't part of the appeal of hunting Cape Buffalo.

• 19:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 19:03Speaker 07

  You know, it's of course it is. It's.

• 19:05Steven Rinella?

  How many, how many grizzly, how many grizzly bear attack people have we interviewed? And when I say to them, there's my two favorite questions in the world is a person that has wild pig problems. I say, if you could just wave a magic wand and all the wild pigs would be gone, would you wave it? They always say, no, not all of them.

• 19:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 19:23Steven Rinella?

  And then people like, do you wish it wouldn't have happened?

• 19:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 19:26Steven Rinella?

  And people have a hard time saying they wish it wouldn't have happened. The survivors have a hard time saying I, they're like, eh, it's who I am now.

• 19:34Speaker 07

  It's, it's, it's an impressive.

• 19:36Steven Rinella?

  Survivors.

• 19:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, for sure. But it is, it's a good point, Phil.

• 19:40Steven Rinella?

  Because they're here with us.

• 19:41Speaker 07

  Yeah. I mean, it's a way, it's, it's a like a time and a place where you feel something that I think outside of certain other like walks of life, like being maybe a firefighter or a cop or something like that. You get a kind of range.

• 19:56Steven Rinella?

  You say carp?

• 19:57Speaker 07

  What's that? A cop? Okay, here we go. Um, here we go. Yeah. I mean, other than those sort of.

• 20:04Steven Rinella?

  Fire, fire or carp. That's more English, isn't it? File.

• 20:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, that was weird. I mean, we could go back.

• 20:12Steven Rinella?

  Fire fighter.

• 20:16Speaker 07

  I'm sorry, man.

• 20:19Speaker 07

  No, no. So outside of sort of those, that narrow range of professions, you, you get a, um, you know, a sort of a series of emotions and feelings that you're just not really going to get elsewhere in, in day to day life.

• 20:32Steven Rinella?

  And that's a good way to think about it.

• 20:33Speaker 07

  Yeah. It's, I mean, that's part of the appeal and, and then that does, it leaves like an indelible mark on you. You know, it kind of changes your, your perspective on stuff.

• 20:41Steven Rinella?

  How many times in your career have you felt like to whatever degree something actually happened? How many times in your career have you felt like a threat from Cape Buffalo?

• 20:53Speaker 07

  A threat into, well, there's certainly been times, um, you know, I used to hunt and I still do hunt in the Cape Buffalo in the Montane forests of northern Tanzania. It's very high elevation, kind of these, these mountains that come out of the Rift Valley. And it's very dense vegetation. It's, um, you know, almost like you could, uh, you know, the layman's, you call it like almost like jungle.

• 21:17Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 21:17Speaker 07

  And you do inevitably get quite close to them in there, either deliberately or by accident, you'll bump into herds in this kind of very, very dense type stuff. And you'll have situations where cows with calves and that will kind of come out and, and like bluff charge you or sort of like run in your direction. Um, and then, uh, you know, a buffalo herd, sometimes they'll sort of circle up and like move a little closer to you, particularly in the evenings. Um, you know, as part of sort of like a defensive posture that they kind of create. Um, so I've certainly been intimidated by Cape Buffalo a lot, but times where I could

• 21:55Speaker 07

  say that I was genuinely at risk of like serious injury or death, um, probably less than 10, more than five.

• 22:05Steven Rinella?

  How many years?

• 22:07Speaker 07

  Fifteen.

• 22:08Steven Rinella?

  So we got a 33% chance. Well, no, cause you're doing it a bunch of times every year.

• 22:13Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'm doing a lot of, doing a lot of trips a year. It's not one, not one trip a year.

• 22:17Steven Rinella?

  I'm really excited for that.

• 22:19Speaker 07

  Yeah. It's not that lucrative. Um, but yeah, it's, uh, you know, so coming back to your charge videos, my, my kind of takeaway from them is a lot of them have a little more chaos than, than I would typically want to see.

• 22:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 22:35Speaker 07

  Particularly if I was running the deal. Um, but you know, you know, everyone can sort of armchair quarterback these things. But the other one is just how difficult it is to adequately prepare yourself for that moment. Like even as a professional hunter, how difficult it, difficult it is to override.

• 22:55Speaker 07

  Like the natural brain chemistry impulses that you get under that kind of stress. Like it's just, I look at the guy's body language. I look at like how they like what they're doing. And I could just see, cause I've been in that situation. I could just feel like what they're feeling, you know?

• 23:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:15Speaker 07

  And to me, it's like a mixture of, like you get this huge rush of adrenaline, right? But you also get like this fight or flight thing. And I think what happens is there's a part of your brain that like looks at the size and power of the thing. And it's like fights off the table. It's a flight. This is a flight deal.

• 23:34Steven Rinella?

  After careful analysis.

• 23:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, careful analysis. I've decided that this is a flight deal. But the, the reality of it is you have to override that because you're really your best and pretty much only chance of survival with, you know, some exceptions is to just stand as still as you can and make a serviceable shot that's gonna, that's gonna knock that thing down or turn it.

• 23:58Steven Rinella?

  Cause running, you're just gonna get hit in the back.

• 23:59Speaker 07

  Flattened. Yeah. You're gonna get flattened. Trying to dodge too. They've got incredible ability to sort of re like readjust their course.

• 24:07Steven Rinella?

  And they got hooks.

• 24:08Speaker 07

  They got hooks. Yeah.

• 24:09Steven Rinella?

  So he's got a, he's got, you know, whatever, thirty six, forty inches of.

• 24:13Speaker 07

  Forty inches of spread of reach, which, you know, if he moves his neck, he can sort of rapidly readjust that to where they'll grab you. And they get you with those hooks. That's what kills you.

• 24:23Steven Rinella?

  Picture gets soft, man.

• 24:26Speaker 07

  Just a little bit, just cartwheeling through the air.

• 24:29Speaker 04

  Dirt rides off on its back.

• 24:31Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah. There was one recently where a guy was like kind of flicked up and on its back. I saw, saw a video of that. It's, yeah, it's rough, but I mean, yeah, again, I can sit here and say all these things, but in the moment, it's tough, really tough.

• 24:48Steven Rinella?

  This episode is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Holiday season is damn near upon us. In my house, we've been talking about Thanksgiving pretty soon. We're going to start talking about Christmas and it could bring on a lot of stress. Also, holidays could bring on a lot of family issues. And sometimes when it comes to family issues, it might be smart for you to go and find someone you can talk to about it and to help make sense out of it all. Well, insurance options may now be available nationwide with BetterHelp. With insurance, many members pay $15 or less. Some pay nothing. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences.

• 25:30Steven Rinella?

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• 26:12Steven Rinella?

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• 26:52Steven Rinella?

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• 27:35Steven Rinella?

  sure you sign up for their email and text message notifications. So you get the alert the exact second the knife drops. Montana Knife Company, working knives for working people. Head to MKC.com today. That's MKC.com. I can't wait to check out one of these folders.

• 27:56Steven Rinella?

  Randall and I are working on a project right now. We do this. Have you heard of our stuff? Meat Eaters, American History, we did the Long Hunters and the Mountain Men. We're doing the Buffalo Hunters right now?

• 28:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. The Long Hunters one, that was fascinating to me. I really enjoyed that.

• 28:09Steven Rinella?

  Oh, good. We're doing Buffalo Hunters, the commercial Buffalo Hyde Hunters particularly.

• 28:16Steven Rinella?

  There's a couple of instances there where guys are getting, in that case, where guys get trampled or tore up by American buffalo, right? American bison. What's happening to them is they're, they got a dozen of them on the ground, right? But unbeknownst to them, one is...

• 28:34Speaker 07

  It's the dead ones that kill you.

• 28:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's starting there. You know what I mean? It's like whatever. And they're in there doing their work and all of a sudden it's, it's up, it's up and you know, like, yeah, in their midst. Yeah. And there's a handful of accounts like this, but there's one we saw where the guy...

• 28:49Steven Rinella?

  And all of it winds up on it because it's the only way to get clear of its horns.

• 28:54Speaker 07

  Oh, okay.

• 28:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he gets like on it.

• 28:56Speaker 07

  Oh, really? Sort of like grabs on to the fur?

• 28:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so that it can't.

• 29:00Speaker 07

  Yeah, can't get him. It's like grabbing the tail, I guess of like, you know what I mean?

• 29:05Steven Rinella?

  Well, there you go. Yeah, I think there is a mention of that, too. A guy got one's tail. But yeah, a guy wound up being like that. He wound up trying to get out of its way, got on it. And then I can't remember, he rode it till it collapsed or whatever the hell he did.

• 29:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, my favorite one is the guy jumps on his horse and then accidentally shoots his horse.

• 29:21Speaker 07

  Oh, dude.

• 29:24Speaker 07

  Oh, dears. Yeah, I was, I always imagined that buffalo hunting, you know, in the American West is like a longer range kind of pursuit, you know, with those Sharps rifles and all that kind of stuff.

• 29:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, these guys are, these guys,

• 29:41Steven Rinella?

  they're like in their preferred setup. They were two, 300 yards away.

• 29:46Speaker 07

  Right. And is that, I mean, obviously they were capable marksmen, but is that because the herd would just behave differently?

• 29:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah. They're relying on a level of confusion. They're relying on the herd not really understand where the shooting's coming from.

• 29:59Speaker 07

  Gotcha.

• 30:00Steven Rinella?

  And then a thing that really surprised me about in all this research is two shots per animal was good.

• 30:09Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 30:10Steven Rinella?

  You'd brag about it.

• 30:11Speaker 07

  Oh, interesting.

• 30:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you'd brag about two shots per animal.

• 30:15Speaker 07

  Okay, yeah, I would have assumed.

• 30:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's interesting. Okay.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  There's accounts of guys making a stalk and then realizing they're too close, backing out another 150 yards or something like Seth did with his coos deer.

• 30:31Steven Rinella?

  You know.

• 30:32Speaker 06

  Not intentionally. Not intentionally.

• 30:35Steven Rinella?

  The philosophy of these guys.

• 30:37Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 30:37Steven Rinella?

  And it like evolves, but the hunting philosophy of them is that.

• 30:43Steven Rinella?

  You whatever one seems to be like, there's a drift to the group or whatever. So whatever one seems to be the point.

• 30:52Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 30:52Steven Rinella?

  They like to wound it.

• 30:53Speaker 07

  Oh, the lead animal. Okay. Yeah. And then the sort of rudderless, the herd's rudderless.

• 30:58Steven Rinella?

  And then you watch and whoever seems most inclined.

• 31:02Speaker 07

  To take charge.

• 31:03Steven Rinella?

  To leave.

• 31:04Speaker 07

  Wound that one.

• 31:05Steven Rinella?

  Yep. And then whoever seems most inclined to leave and then hitting them in a way that they don't run. And what's kind of gruesome about is they would sometimes intentionally hit them in front of the hips.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's one guy likes to shoot them in front of the hips. They just arch their backs and kind of stagger around.

• 31:23Steven Rinella?

  Cause then the other ones are like, well, he's not leaving.

• 31:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, got you. Okay. So they're like this one. Yeah.

• 31:28Steven Rinella?

  But it's still standing here. Do you mean, there's like a, there's a real.

• 31:32Speaker 07

  Different ethic, come.

• 31:33Steven Rinella?

  And there's no, you know, thing we've observed, I'm not going to talk about this too much right now, cause we'll talk about a lot more later, but the thing we've observed is, um.

• 31:41Steven Rinella?

  Out of the long hunters, you have like American heroes.

• 31:44Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 31:44Steven Rinella?

  Daniel Boone.

• 31:45Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 31:46Steven Rinella?

  Primarily out of the mountain men, you have Jim Bridger.

• 31:48Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 31:49Steven Rinella?

  Um, the hide hunters. Produce no heroes.

• 31:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sort of a more of a rough, rough cut.

• 31:56Steven Rinella?

  They produce no heroes.

• 31:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, I see. I can see.

• 31:59Steven Rinella?

  There's no American hero. Spun out of that gang.

• 32:03Speaker 07

  Thing. It took a different sort. Took more of a rogue.

• 32:06Steven Rinella?

  Well, yeah. Just like a, oh.

• 32:10Speaker 07

  Just.

• 32:11Steven Rinella?

  There's a wickedness to it. I mean, like.

• 32:12Speaker 07

  Down and dirty.

• 32:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's, it's just like what they, their skill set and all that and their toughness is like undeniable. It's like unparalleled what they could endure. But there's just a brutality.

• 32:23Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 32:24Steven Rinella?

  That emerges that you don't.

• 32:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's sort of like.

• 32:28Steven Rinella?

  And an awareness.

• 32:29Speaker 07

  Ethical gap.

• 32:30Steven Rinella?

  And an awareness, like an intense, deliberate, spoken awareness that you're getting them all.

• 32:40Steven Rinella?

  Like you knew, they knew.

• 32:45Steven Rinella?

  By and large, they knew exactly what they were doing.

• 32:48Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:49Steven Rinella?

  And by and large, did not care. Um, it's just a different gang, man. A different gang.

• 32:56Speaker 07

  You know, a lot of the great, uh, African professional hunters of, of last century were at different times, kind of doubled as like game control officers. Or, or were given the task of, of eradicating a, a large amount of game. Uh, either to make way for agriculture or human settlement. Um, you're relocating different tribal groups or, or white settlement in, in East Africa. And yeah, that it was in, it's interesting how they, they could kind of go. I, I definitely wouldn't suggest at all that they were able to kind of go as, as down and dirty

• 33:40Speaker 07

  as those buffalo guys, like intentionally wounding stuff. I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't suggest that that was kind of part of the program. But they were able to make this transition from being a very ethical, very kind of, um, very much focused on adhering to, you know, ethical constraints and game laws and things like that, to going and kind of culling large numbers of elephant and buffalo and other species to kind of make way from agri, for agriculture. And then kind of seamlessly transitioned back into very selective, um, you know, a lot of kind of European sensibilities to it, kind of professional hunting.

• 34:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 07

  Which is interesting to me.

• 34:17Steven Rinella?

  And what year was that crop of guys coming up? Is that like in the, is that like the guys that were emerging around the, the, that sort of heyday, that kind of like Hemingway heyday of the?

• 34:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 34:27Steven Rinella?

  Thirties and forties and?

• 34:28Speaker 07

  For sure, right up until, so I would say from the, you know, the early sort of pre-first war, uh, world war, right up until the kind of, yeah, the heyday of the fifties and then,

• 34:40Steven Rinella?

  So the heyday was post, I, I, I was stupid to say the thirties and forties because the heyday was post-world war two.

• 34:45Speaker 07

  Well, there was sort of two, I mean, it depends on how you look at it, you know, there was. To me, kind of defining the heyday is is difficult because there was different things that were good about different eras, you know, the the eighteen nineties were incredible as far as.

• 35:01Steven Rinella?

  Now, it's like Theodore Roosevelt.

• 35:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, his was nineteen oh nine, I think, was his safari. And so, you're just before that, you know, things were, Africa was so unexplored and so wild, but on the, you know, the downside of that era was your firearm technology wasn't, you know, where it was post the first, after the the First World War. And then also, you know, your risk of dying of some tropical disease or whatever was massive. You know, the end of the First World War was a real golden age because the the British then acquired what was then Tanganyika, which is now Tanzania, and sort of added that to their, you know, territory that they could hunt.

• 35:45Speaker 07

  And there was a lot of kind of exploration and an opening up of that country, which is fascinating. And obviously, the firearm technology had come away a long way, as had medical stuff. And then you have the arrival of the motor car in the thirties, which really changed the game as far as where you could get. And that was kind of what precipitated a lot of the change where the even the East African Professional Hunters Association saw the writing on the wall that safari was going to go in a totally different direction because it would open up this possibility for a new clientele that had less time to dedicate it to to it. Like, the Roosevelt Safari was a full year because there was, you know, they had some

• 36:27Speaker 07

  trucks and that for getting, but there was no roads, you know, the motor cars weren't widely available, so a lot of it was just on foot. You know, they would go out and hundreds of porters carrying their gear and just kind of march out into the wilderness. Whereas the motor car changed it where you could have shorter duration safaris, you could get places quicker, you could, you know, the logistical aspect of it was more kind of under control. And then, you know, the arrival of the the aeroplane, so, you know, that really allowed people from the US and. You know, Europe as well to kind of, it just became more accessible.

• 37:06Steven Rinella?

  Speaking of the airplane, you know what I can't get into?

• 37:08Speaker 07

  What's that?

• 37:09Steven Rinella?

  The book you got me onto.

• 37:10Speaker 07

  Oh.

• 37:11Steven Rinella?

  West with the Night.

• 37:12Speaker 07

  Yeah, West with the Night. Can I get into it?

• 37:14Steven Rinella?

  Struggling.

• 37:15Speaker 07

  Really?

• 37:15Steven Rinella?

  Struggling.

• 37:16Speaker 07

  You don't, what, you don't like Beryl's, um, her writing style?

• 37:20Steven Rinella?

  No, style. I don't like her as a stylist.

• 37:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 37:23Steven Rinella?

  I didn't know there's a little bit of controversy that there's like, some people say that she didn't write the book.

• 37:27Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 37:27Steven Rinella?

  I don't know if I believe that or not. I mean, it's not, it doesn't look to me like.

• 37:30Speaker 07

  It's neither here nor there. Um, I think her achievements don't, uh, it doesn't take it, if she didn't write it, doesn't take anything away from her achievements.

• 37:39Steven Rinella?

  It, it happens to women because you know that they, there's a, there's an argument that Harper Lee didn't write To Kill a Mockingbird. That it was written by Truman Capote.

• 37:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard that.

• 37:49Steven Rinella?

  Anyhow, can't get into it.

• 37:51Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'm, I'm sorry to hear that. It's a, it's a great book, but, um.

• 37:55Steven Rinella?

  No, it's not.

• 37:56Speaker 07

  Well, it's a matter of opinion, Steve.

• 38:03Speaker 07

  Wes, no, she, she was.

• 38:04Speaker 04

  I appreciate the gift.

• 38:05Speaker 07

  She was an impressive woman. Uh, there's no question about it.

• 38:08Steven Rinella?

  For sure.

• 38:08Speaker 07

  And, and in an era where, yeah, to your point, I mean, even the great Karen Blixen wrote under, uh, under the, the sort of pseudonym of Isaac Dinnison when she first published Out of Africa.

• 38:20Speaker 04

  What?

• 38:21Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 38:22Steven Rinella?

  God, I think I should have learned that from the book. I'm the other disappointing.

• 38:26Speaker 07

  Well, yeah, I'm surprised you didn't go into that and into those nuances.

• 38:32Steven Rinella?

  Uh, oh, you know what we gotta do? Chili.

• 38:34Speaker 04

  User.

• 38:35Steven Rinella?

  Chili has a hunting story to share with us.

• 38:37Speaker 07

  Oh, good.

• 38:38Steven Rinella?

  A New Zealand hunt. Do a New Zealand accent.

• 38:41Speaker 04

  Uh, it's so hard. I mean, like.

• 38:43Steven Rinella?

  Well, you can't because then you gotta word, you gotta use the C word every other word.

• 38:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's, that's a hard part. That was what, that was probably the funnest part about being down there.

• 38:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 38:51Speaker 07

  You know what the difference is?

• 38:52Steven Rinella?

  When I came home from there.

• 38:53Speaker 05

  They use that word a lot?

• 38:54Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. When I came home from there, I had to like, I made the mistake, I made the mistake one time of arguing with my wife.

• 39:00Speaker 07

  Oh.

• 39:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. Well, not, I didn't, no.

• 39:04Speaker 05

  Oh, and you mean.

• 39:05Speaker 07

  You didn't.

• 39:08Speaker 04

  We've talked about this on the podcast before.

• 39:11Steven Rinella?

  It doesn't go over well.

• 39:13Speaker 05

  Energy of a kiwi.

• 39:15Steven Rinella?

  Well, yeah, it's like. You can't, you can't do their thing because their thing, every, it's like their thing relies on. Like how we use the word and a lot.

• 39:22Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 39:23Steven Rinella?

  They use the C word.

• 39:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. They it's put it's a term of endearment, really.

• 39:27Steven Rinella?

  Oh, it's everything.

• 39:27Speaker 04

  It's not, it's not like.

• 39:28Speaker 07

  It's much more universal.

• 39:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like, there's ways that they say it, like, if if you were to get called like a right C word, like.

• 39:36Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 39:36Speaker 04

  If they called you that, like, oh, he's being a right whatever, then, like, you're not, you're in the crosshairs.

• 39:41Speaker 05

  I mean, I've recently been Mobland and they're Irish and they use it every other word, but I've, I guess I've not.

• 39:49Speaker 04

  I said it the other day here in Bozeman. My house is like, oh, that.

• 39:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I know. It's a terrible thing. That's why I can't go back. That's no good.

• 39:56Speaker 04

  I'd go back just to be able to say it. That's great. Um, but yeah, I don't know if I could do the accent like, hey, bro, how you going?

• 40:02Speaker 07

  You know what the difference is between that and Australian? It's that they sort of flatten their vowels. So like I would say chips and they'd say chups.

• 40:11Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. I feel like they also are just they're more like kind of calm about it like they're like they speak softly.

• 40:17Speaker 07

  Much more low key.

• 40:18Steven Rinella?

  Do yours again with more confidence.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  Hey, bro. How you going?

• 40:22Steven Rinella?

  I don't think that's that's something diff. That's like, that's like a guy wouldn't want to hang out.

• 40:26Speaker 04

  Do the Australian like if, I mean.

• 40:28Steven Rinella?

  You think, you think, hey, bro. Hey, bro. Is New Zealand?

• 40:33Speaker 04

  Is it more of a?

• 40:34Steven Rinella?

  Hey, bro.

• 40:35Speaker 04

  Hey, bro. Hey, bro.

• 40:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, listen, I want you to call up your body. When you answer the phone, I want you to go, hey, bro.

• 40:42Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 40:43Steven Rinella?

  And then ask him, what do you think I'm doing right now?

• 40:44Speaker 04

  I spent 13 days there. I'm not going to be like a subject matter expert.

• 40:47Steven Rinella?

  Hey, bro. Hmm. He's not gonna say, I think you'd be in New Zealand.

• 40:50Speaker 04

  No, hey, bro. No, he, the Zane, uh, my good buddy.

• 40:55Speaker 07

  I declined to do the American accent.

• 40:58Steven Rinella?

  Hit it again, hit it again real quick.

• 40:59Speaker 04

  I can't, um, I gotta think of like a word or like a phrase.

• 41:04Steven Rinella?

  Don't do, uh, hey, bro.

• 41:05Speaker 07

  All I can think of is just lines from Flight of the Conch.

• 41:07Speaker 04

  That's all I'm thinking of right now. Um, just like.

• 41:10Speaker 06

  Band meeting.

• 41:13Speaker 04

  So it's like, so we're gonna go over there? Yeah, I can't do it.

• 41:17Steven Rinella?

  So very effeminate.

• 41:19Speaker 04

  I know, but they talk, like, they talk. So we're gonna go over there?

• 41:22Speaker 06

  That might have just been the guys you were with.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  We're gonna go over there. Yeah, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get hemmed up, I know I am. Um, Zane's gonna watch us and he's, he's gonna call me a right.

• 41:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, well, you want me to talk like New Zealand, that's fine.

• 41:35Speaker 04

  And, but yeah, we, we go, we went to New Zealand for 13 days to do a public land, uh, tar hunt. That was, that was the main goal.

• 41:44Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 41:44Speaker 04

  For, for me.

• 41:45Speaker 05

  Can you enlighten me about tar?

• 41:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I, I guess like, the, the best way I could describe tar to somebody like that hunts a lot in North America, uh, would be to describe them as like, kinda like, they're very similar to like a North American mountain goat. Like, you know, that's how I describe them, like same kind of environment.

• 42:02Steven Rinella?

  Same horns, kinda.

• 42:03Speaker 06

  But weird, weird bald faces.

• 42:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, weird bald faces, huge mane, like, kinda like a lion's mane on their torso. Um, and, you know, based off of like how old they are, or, or whatever, like that, the horns and, and the mane will change. Uh, like, the, the, the older they get, um, I think the more blonde, from what I was described, or what I was told, it's like, the older they get, the more blonde. Like, I don't know if, uh, there'll be some, yeah, there'll be some pictures, I think, that'll throw up there, but, um, the funny thing about...

• 42:36Speaker 06

  If you wanna see those pictures, tune into a radio live that aired several weeks ago, cuz that's what we'll be talking about.

• 42:41Speaker 04

  Oh, okay, you're putting it on live?

• 42:44Speaker 06

  Sorry, chill.

• 42:45Speaker 04

  No, you're good. Uh, but, uh, yeah, like, uh, the, the, like, well, I'll get into it, but from the tar that I shot, um, it was about a five and a half year old, the horns have rings, kinda like your bighorn sheep, so that's how you kinda age them. Um, and the tar that I shot was about five and a half, but it was super blonde, and Zane, um, told me, he's like, I've never seen a five and a half year old with that color of a mane, so I thought that was kinda cool. Um, when I shot mine, there was a darker and older, uh, tar bull, they call them bulls and, and nannies. Uh, he was right next to the one I shot, and, uh, but for some reason, I just found this one to be a lot more pretty, I was, I was more interested in, in the one that I shot, so.

• 43:26Steven Rinella?

  Did you say they call them, so it's, I don't, I didn't remember this, it's bulls and nannies, not billys and nannies, not bulls and cows?

• 43:34Speaker 04

  It's bulls and nannies, yeah, bulls and nannies, yeah, and then, um, yeah, it, that's...

• 43:41Speaker 04

  But yeah, so we Oh, look at that.

• 43:43Steven Rinella?

  Chili, look at that. Looked good.

• 43:45Speaker 04

  Nice one. Yeah.

• 43:46Steven Rinella?

  That's great.

• 43:47Speaker 05

  Oh, that's beautiful. I know you sent me some photos looking at it here.

• 43:51Steven Rinella?

  God, looks like the American Alpine too, man.

• 43:54Speaker 05

  Got a darker face and then really blonde.

• 43:56Speaker 04

  You're talking about Chili or the animal? Yeah. It's my spirit animal.

• 44:00Steven Rinella?

  Your hair and the hair on that thing's

• 44:02Speaker 05

  Coloring looked the same, yeah.

• 44:04Speaker 04

  That's probably why I liked it so much. The southern hemisphere looks good on you, Chili. It does. I also want to point out that that's not where, I mean, that's not where I shot that thing. That's, we're kind of like in the river bottom. We had to get that thing flown out because I couldn't, we couldn't physically get there.

• 44:22Speaker 05

  Flown out? Oh, that's very helpful. I would love to get one.

• 44:25Speaker 04

  Well, so like, I shot

• 44:26Steven Rinella?

  It fell where you couldn't retrieve it?

• 44:27Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, like, we thought we could get up there from where we were standing. And then, so we, I shot it, so we get, we get up to where we go, uh, want, uh, wanted to find these tar. We found them pretty early in the morning, hoping they would come back down, but they never did. And, uh, when I shot, I hit it, I showed Zane our, uh, the, the photos and the video, um, of me shooting it. And he goes, I don't think that we're going to be able to get up there. Is that what this picture is, Chili? Are you pointing up there? Yeah, so, like, my body's kind of in front of, of the mountain top, but we thought we would be able to zigzag our way up there and, and at least try, to try to locate it the next day. Because we had, I think I shot it with about an hour left of daylight left.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  Um, but I showed Zane, he's like, yeah, it's not worth it. So the next morning, um, Scott from Helly Rural, uh, Flights, he came out and, uh, and he, he picked it up. And so he had to get it, and like, when Zane got back after they dropped it off back at camp, Zane was like, there's absolutely no way you were to get up there. Because it, it, from, I shot it and it fell pretty much on this ice shelf. And Zane said, if, like, if it would have, like, slid two more yards, it would have kind of went all the way to the bottom and you wouldn't be able to get it. But he's like, if on foot, there's just absolutely no way. So, but.

• 45:49Speaker 07

  Oh, that's sweet. That's your camp?

• 45:50Speaker 04

  That's.

• 45:51Speaker 07

  Were you on the eastern or the western side of the Alps?

• 45:54Speaker 04

  Uh, we were on the eastern side.

• 45:55Speaker 07

  Eastern side, nice. Yeah, I've done that hunt. Grueling.

• 45:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, and just, it's that such a pretty place. I mean, we, we didn't have a lot of options like where we could go. I mean, that, that super green side, uh, kind of off to my left there. That was like the main mountain. Um, we were hunting, um, but, sorry, my watch is going crazy. Um, but we could kind of go around to the right in between the, the snow capped mountain and, and the greenside mountain there. We go up there, but there's a glacier in between those two mountains and there's a great glacier off to my, off my right shoulder too. So we couldn't really go anywhere, um, other than straight up the mountain or off to the left.

• 46:37Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 46:38Speaker 04

  Um, so we were kind of limited, but it was just unreal country. Like, yeah, we drank water from the glacier. On the glacial rivers. Like, that was super fun. Um, that was from where I shot and down at the bottom, you can see the kind of scree field. That's where we were camping. Um, yeah, super abrasive and super like intimidating country. Like, I wasn't, I knew it was going to be tough, but I don't, I don't think I was like mentally prepared as much as I should have been.

• 47:05Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 47:05Speaker 04

  But, uh, yeah, no, it was, it was a great trip. Um, a lot of fun stories that, that was definitely like a hunt of a lifetime for me. Um, it was interesting learning about like tar and like how they, how they hunt down there. Um, and like, like private land, public land and all that, all that stuff. Like, there is public. There's kind of like three main ways to hunt. You got like your, your kind of your game ranches, which would be like your CA ranch or your galt ranch. Staying at a lodge, hu- hunting private land. And then you got your public and then you got like free range private. So the guys will like, if you want to shoot a stag, guy will buy the stag and then put it out on private and then you just go hunt it. So.

• 47:45Speaker 07

  Hold on, say that again?

• 47:47Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, I got you.

• 47:48Speaker 04

  You know what I mean?

• 47:48Steven Rinella?

  Put and take type.

• 47:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, which is what two of the guys did for the stag and fallow. So, but that was fun to kind of do that. Like, I didn't, I didn't hunt stag or fallow, but.

• 48:01Steven Rinella?

  And you didn't run into any shamies? Shamois.

• 48:04Speaker 04

  Shamois. Uh, not, not on, no, uh, when there was a guy that was with us and he opted in to shoot a private land tar. Uh, via helicopter and, um, so he's got, he's just got flown in and hunted a tar that way. He, they said that they, when they were doing that, they saw some shammy on this private land, but I, I wasn't with them at the time. And, um, but yeah, uh, apparently they're kind of, the numbers of, of tar and shammy from what I was told is in the area that we were in are kind of getting decimated.

• 48:43Steven Rinella?

  But that's intentional because the, I mean, they, they helicopter gun them to reduce the numbers.

• 48:48Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, so Zane called it Tar McGeddon, uh, back in the day. Um, there was just so many tar and they made like this Hilo, the Hilo hunting legal and like you could do that. And so they just like absolutely decimated the population. And you could argue, I mean, that's good and bad because they were overrunning and they were very much overpopulated. Um, but when I talked to like Zane, he goes, yeah, it kind of makes it like hard when you have clients and you're going into a public spot. Like we probably saw, I don't know, 20 tar up on top of this mountain and he goes, you told us, it's like 10 years ago, there'd be hundreds.

• 49:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 49:25Speaker 04

  On this mountain.

• 49:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 49:26Speaker 04

  And so like, yeah, you could argue both sides of the story. Um, but yeah, for, from, from what Zane was saying is like he, he's not seeing the numbers that he would like to see.

• 49:38Steven Rinella?

  There's often that tension.

• 49:41Steven Rinella?

  With these, with places, Australia, speaking for your homeland, New Zealand, Hawaii, okay? Where you have non-native populations of game.

• 49:56Steven Rinella?

  And you have like the environmental movement, or more like, like, kinda like the radical end of the environmental movement wants to see them all eliminated. Which puts them in an odd position. Cause they're arguing for, you know, it's like, it's like they're arguing for like sort of the death of the animals, pointing out that they're non-native. And you have the hunters, who are like, being like, yeah, I, I, the control is fine, but I don't want them eliminated. Cause by this point, you have a century or more of people who've grown up with the resource.

• 50:27Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 50:28Steven Rinella?

  You know, you hear it like, it, it's pretty common there, you know, and, and you get it in Hawaii where there's, there's groups will buy, like preservation groups will buy stuff and they want the goats gone, the sheep gone, the hogs gone. And then you got like Hawaiian dudes who hunt, and they're on the end of being like, man, you're kind of like destroying our, our resource.

• 50:50Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 50:50Steven Rinella?

  And we don't really care if they're technically native or non-native or whatever, they're here, they've been here, we've always hunted them, my grandpa hunted them. Don't tell me they don't belong.

• 50:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, like Zane, I think like the big issue down there, um, Zane called them greenies, you know?

• 51:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 51:06Speaker 04

  Um, but their, their argument is that there's a, where they, like, what the tar eat, and then in Tar's case, they're eating like vegetation, they're, they're just destroying like a plant. And taking it out. So, yeah, when Tarman getting happened, that was like the main, the main argument was like, well, they're destroying this plant and this, this grassland.

• 51:27Steven Rinella?

  And plant, plant biodiversity, that's the argument in Hawaii too, is like plant biodiversity.

• 51:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, and. Yeah, I think you just gotta have a certain level of conservation when it comes to that. You can't like decimate the population, but you can't just like let them run free too. So you gotta be.

• 51:41Speaker 07

  Well, and I don't know how well Himalaya and Tara are doing in their native range either. It would be a shame to lose that that population.

• 51:52Speaker 07

  And I mean, it's certainly, I don't know if there is a huntable population of them in their native range. There might be.

• 51:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:58Speaker 05

  I'm looking at Southern Tibet, Northern India, Western Bhutan and Nepal.

• 52:03Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 52:03Speaker 05

  The native range.

• 52:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, and I wonder if there is a is a huntable population there. I I'm not sure, but I somehow doubt that if there is, it's very large. So it's important, I think, to have, you know, have that kind of repository of of genetics there in New Zealand. But yeah, that preservationist kind of impulse to just like get rid of it, take it back, especially in a place like New Zealand, has no native mammal, seems a little strong.

• 52:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's either super far left or super far right. I mean, I, but I don't know, we, as far as like the hunting goes, like it was, it was tough. And it wasn't like ideal from Zane's perspective, but uh, it was still like a really great hunt, like watching Tara, like just up on top of these mountains and doing their thing like that was, it was unreal. Like I said, trip of a lifetime.

• 52:53Steven Rinella?

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

• 53:32Steven Rinella?

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• 54:12Steven Rinella?

  clip with flat head screws set flush. This is a rock solid clip. It's not the kind of clip that you're going to use a couple of times and it bends and get all loose. The blade goes back into the mill after heat treatment for its most critical surfaces. That's the kind of step nobody else takes. That same standard applies to every part of the Montana. That's the name of the folder, the Montana, from start to finish. The wait is over and I've been waiting a long time to get one of these suckers. MKC launching their first folding knife. It's dropping extremely soon, so make sure you sign up for email and SMS to be the first to know. These are going to sell out quick. Head to MKC.com today. That's MKC.com.

• 54:54Steven Rinella?

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• 55:25Steven Rinella?

  Well, you your observation about mountain goats, it's like more likely that that's even more like mountain goats, the numbers you saw.

• 55:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:33Steven Rinella?

  You're gonna climb up and be like, oh, there's 200 billys up there.

• 55:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:37Steven Rinella?

  Like you're like, you're like chasing like a billy or two.

• 55:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:40Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 55:41Speaker 04

  Um, and I obviously depends on like what sort of like where you're at, you know, like one area is gonna have a bunch of them. The next might not, right? It's like it's typical for any sort of hunting that you do. But yeah, I guess I kind of had this false narrative like going in to New Zealand, you know? I've never, I've never paid for a hunt like this. I've never done anything like this. And so I kind of had this, this ideology that like, I'm gonna go there and I'm gonna be looking at 200 tar every single day.

• 56:06Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 56:07Speaker 04

  And I like quickly learned that that was not the case. Um, but I mean, it was still, it was like, it was more authentic. I would say like, I got like, it's obviously I was in New Zealand, but it felt like I was back here in Montana, trying to find an elk or, you know, a bear or something like that, which was, which I enjoyed it made it, made it feel a lot more, um, genuine.

• 56:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 56:30Speaker 04

  So it was, it was good job.

• 56:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, well done.

• 56:32Speaker 04

  Good work, Chili. Yeah.

• 56:34Speaker 05

  Did you get to, do you get to bring, what do you get to bring back and not bring back and eat or try or not?

• 56:40Speaker 04

  So, so you can bring, to my knowledge, yeah, you can bring the meat back. We, we did not, um, we ate a lot of it, um, down there, um, for, for days, but then we just donated the meat. Um, the reason being like is this, you know, like bags were super expensive, like to, like I would probably had to bring, bring three additional bags and like just for two bags down there, it was already 400 bucks.

• 57:02Speaker 05

  How did it taste?

• 57:03Speaker 04

  Oh, it was good. I mean, I didn't, there's nothing about it that was just like, if I were to eat this again, like this is gonna be, this is tar. I mean, it was a red meat, it was, you know, wild game meat. Um, and, but I thought it was good. Uh, I'd definitely eat it again.

• 57:18Speaker 05

  Adjacent to anything else you've tried, like?

• 57:21Speaker 04

  You know, nothing really stood out to me about it. Like, I mean, yeah, I mean, like the, it wasn't that much, like I would probably say.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know, maybe like an elk ish, but like not like if you have like a really good elk, like you know it's elk, um, I'd say it's like your average elk. Okay. I mean, to me, um, but yeah, as far as like what we can bring back, like I, you can bring, I'm gonna bring back like the hide, I'm gonna get a shoulder mount and then I'm gonna keep uh, the Euro mount as well. So I'll replicate the horns, put those on the shoulder mount and then keep the Euro mount.

• 57:56Steven Rinella?

  Who's gonna stuff it for you?

• 57:57Speaker 04

  Well, I see, I'm gonna talk to John Hayes.

• 58:00Steven Rinella?

  He's stuffing a couple of things for us right now.

• 58:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, um, Hayes taxidermy, I'm gonna talk to him. I don't really have a taxidermy guy because I've, I don't even have a shoulder mount. All my Euro mounts I do myself. So like this is a whole new experience for me as well. So.

• 58:15Steven Rinella?

  He's gonna do that big beaver.

• 58:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:17Steven Rinella?

  And then, uh, yeah, the Boston with the boys guys, they want that beaver done. Like, what do they call that? Three point stance in football?

• 58:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:25Steven Rinella?

  They want a beaver done in a three point football stance. And then he's gonna stuff my, uh, he's gonna do the rug with my kid's first bear.

• 58:34Speaker 04

  Oh, nice.

• 58:34Steven Rinella?

  Wall hanger rug.

• 58:36Speaker 04

  Gotcha.

• 58:36Steven Rinella?

  Stuffed in head.

• 58:37Speaker 04

  I wanted to do a wall hanger rug like that mountain goat there, but.

• 58:41Steven Rinella?

  Well, that's what I have. You ever hear the writer Ben Wallace?

• 58:44Speaker 04

  Hmm, I have not.

• 58:45Steven Rinella?

  You ever hear the book, The Billionaire's Vinegar?

• 58:47Speaker 04

  I have not.

• 58:48Steven Rinella?

  Are you aware of the forthcoming book about the, the guy that invented Bitcoin? The mysterious.

• 58:53Speaker 04

  Mister Nakamoto.

• 58:54Steven Rinella?

  Nakamoto.

• 58:54Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, definitely familiar with that.

• 58:56Steven Rinella?

  That forthcoming book?

• 58:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, forthcoming book.

• 58:58Steven Rinella?

  He wrote that.

• 58:59Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 59:00Steven Rinella?

  Well, I gave him my tar rug.

• 59:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, you've told me this story a few times.

• 59:06Steven Rinella?

  And, and, and I don't, I reached out recently, just wanted, just to make sure it wasn't in some storage unit. And I'm like, hey, while I got you, how's that tar rug? Sitting right here in my office. Love it.

• 59:19Speaker 04

  I kinda told you that he, that he likes it. So you're not getting it back anytime soon.

• 59:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, because if he said, oh, you know, it's in the storage unit, I would have gotten it back, but he still likes it.

• 59:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I wanted to do that, but I talked to, when I was talking with Zane, I'm like, hey, you know, like, would that be okay? Like, I don't know if, because they're pretty connected with, those guys are pretty connected with those animals, you know, they. They have like honorable ways of doing things and and so I was like, hey, what would be like the best way to kind of like just honor this animal like what would you do with this thing? And he's like, well, honestly, I'd I'd shoulder mount it.

• 59:55Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 59:55Speaker 04

  Like, I think a shoulder mounters, a good shoulder mount is a good representation of like this animal. And he goes, not a lot of people do the rug thing. Um, he's like, it's not, uh, it's not a bad way to do it. He goes, but like with yours with since my mane was so blonde and he goes like, you're gonna, if you rug it out, you're gonna cut through the middle of that and then you're gonna flay it out and it's not gonna look the same. Um, so to kind of get, yeah, to kind of, I guess, capture the essence of that, that creature, uh, he said, shoulder mount. So that's what I did.

• 1:00:28Steven Rinella?

  Where are you gonna hang it?

• 1:00:30Speaker 04

  Right above my bed.

• 1:00:32Steven Rinella?

  That's a good idea.

• 1:00:32Speaker 04

  Yeah. Mm hmm. Right above the bed.

• 1:00:35Steven Rinella?

  Watch this transition. Well, I can't transition out of your story.

• 1:00:39Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:00:39Steven Rinella?

  Is your story done?

• 1:00:40Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 1:00:41Steven Rinella?

  Oh, one last question. Is that that co bicycle tire, is it tuned up good, playing good for you?

• 1:00:46Speaker 04

  You know, I don't know where that thing's at, to be honest.

• 1:00:49Steven Rinella?

  It's not, you know, it's not playing good right now?

• 1:00:51Speaker 04

  No. What do you, what, what, is that the transition?

• 1:00:54Steven Rinella?

  No. There's a follow up question.

• 1:00:56Speaker 04

  As a.

• 1:00:58Steven Rinella?

  Uh, so I don't, I don't have a transition out of that.

• 1:01:01Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:01:01Steven Rinella?

  But I'm gonna do a thing and then you'll see that it transitions into something else.

• 1:01:05Speaker 04

  Hmm. Okay.

• 1:01:06Steven Rinella?

  I sent Krena article the other day. It's actually a tragedy.

• 1:01:11Speaker 05

  Right, but it's hard.

• 1:01:12Steven Rinella?

  There's a, there's a man, there's a, there's a guy in Florida and a law enforcement officer described his criminal history as meth, this is a quote, quote, meth arrest, meth arrest, meth arrest, meth arrest, meth arrest.

• 1:01:27Speaker 06

  So he does some meth.

• 1:01:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:29Speaker 07

  Doesn't leave a lot to the imagination.

• 1:01:31Speaker 04

  Think I know where the story's going?

• 1:01:35Steven Rinella?

  He had some kind of psychotic break.

• 1:01:36Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:01:39Steven Rinella?

  Swam a lake like, like law enforcement was after him. He like swam a lake and gets attacked by an alligator in the lake.

• 1:01:47Speaker 05

  Undeterred.

• 1:01:51Steven Rinella?

  Comes out. They tried, I think they tried to taze him.

• 1:01:55Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. Didn't work. He was unbothered by that.

• 1:02:00Steven Rinella?

  So here's, he's been attacked by an alligator in his arm.

• 1:02:04Speaker 07

  Shrugged it off.

• 1:02:05Steven Rinella?

  Well, they ended up, they ended up having to kill the guy.

• 1:02:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, cuz he tried to take the firearms off.

• 1:02:13Speaker 07

  What did they do to the alligator?

• 1:02:14Speaker 05

  And they shot him.

• 1:02:16Steven Rinella?

  There's no follow up about the alligator.

• 1:02:19Steven Rinella?

  It's a great question.

• 1:02:20Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 1:02:21Speaker 07

  Impressive that he managed to uh get free.

• 1:02:24Steven Rinella?

  Well, that, you know, I know what the headline is.

• 1:02:29Steven Rinella?

  Bitten by alligator. Man is killed after charging at deputies, sheriff says. Then, the authorities say that Timothy Shoals, forty two of Mulberry, Florida swam across an alligator filled lake before a violent encounter with deputies in the neighborhood.

• 1:02:49Steven Rinella?

  Most guys, that's gonna take the fight out of them.

• 1:02:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, I would think so. I would think so.

• 1:02:54Speaker 05

  I messaged back that I thought he was on bath salts or something. I think uh or or just there's something real strong to.

• 1:03:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:03:04Steven Rinella?

  My guess is.

• 1:03:07Speaker 06

  Something strong.

• 1:03:10Speaker 07

  Based on previous history.

• 1:03:12Steven Rinella?

  He was trying to get a shotgun out of a cop car.

• 1:03:15Speaker 06

  Hmm. Yeah, that'll get you shot.

• 1:03:17Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:03:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Steven Rinella?

  But the whole, the main gist of the article is that you get into a lake and get attacked by a gator and come out fighting.

• 1:03:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:03:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, but.

• 1:03:29Speaker 05

  Juiced him up.

• 1:03:29Speaker 07

  Altered altered state for sure.

• 1:03:31Speaker 06

  That's not impressive if you're on meth.

• 1:03:33Steven Rinella?

  I didn't know, that's not the word I'm looking for. I mean, just like it's it's extraordinary as evidenced by the fact that it was reported.

• 1:03:43Speaker 06

  Well, it'd be tough to.

• 1:03:46Steven Rinella?

  You can see that like an article like that catches a fellow's eye.

• 1:03:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Speaker 05

  Reported in the New York Times.

• 1:03:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, but the it like in my mind, once you read about it, you're like, oh, he's on meth. It's not just like.

• 1:04:00Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:01Speaker 06

  It just kinda doesn't make it seem as cool.

• 1:04:05Speaker 07

  I don't know that cool is something I would apply to this situation at all.

• 1:04:11Speaker 06

  I had my cool chart out. I was trying to figure out where to plot this.

• 1:04:16Steven Rinella?

  I need to press it.

• 1:04:16Speaker 06

  More or less cool.

• 1:04:17Steven Rinella?

  So Seth, just to, just to get into your head here.

• 1:04:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 1:04:22Steven Rinella?

  It winds up that this guy is stone cold sober.

• 1:04:27Steven Rinella?

  Stone cold, 10 a.m. Monday morning.

• 1:04:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:04:31Steven Rinella?

  Gets attacked by a gator and then tries to kill some cops. You'd put that like if you like.

• 1:04:35Speaker 06

  No, no, no, no, no. This is just the gator thing.

• 1:04:37Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:04:38Speaker 06

  Like you, you said about how you just shrugged off a gator attack.

• 1:04:41Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Oh, just the ability to shrug off a gator attack, stone cold sober.

• 1:04:45Speaker 06

  You made it sound like that's what, what was like interesting to you about this.

• 1:04:53Speaker 07

  Kind of been very big of a gator.

• 1:04:55Steven Rinella?

  I don't, but.

• 1:04:56Speaker 06

  A guy struggling off a gator attack on meth is not that impressive to me. Doesn't seem that cool.

• 1:05:01Steven Rinella?

  No, I understand.

• 1:05:02Speaker 06

  The, the cop, the whole cop thing is not cool.

• 1:05:05Steven Rinella?

  I understand.

• 1:05:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like he's supercharged by meth.

• 1:05:09Steven Rinella?

  Cops won.

• 1:05:10Speaker 05

  So if the guy is supercharged by meth and doesn't feel that his arm has been bitten by a gator, that is less surprising that he would shrug it off or not even be all there to experience it versus if a guy were sober and would, you know.

• 1:05:32Steven Rinella?

  See, when I first read this, I thought it was about a man. Then I started thinking it was about a gator. Now I'm starting to think it's about a drug.

• 1:05:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:41Steven Rinella?

  And you know where my head's going? You know where my head's going next? And this is the sad part. And this is like why stories like this are always hard is like somewhere is a heartbroken mother.

• 1:05:51Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:05:52Speaker 07

  Yeah. I'll tell you one other thing.

• 1:05:54Steven Rinella?

  With that.

• 1:05:59Speaker 07

  No, if it had been a Nile crocodile, he wouldn't have, um, he wouldn't have got out of the, out of the swamp.

• 1:06:05Steven Rinella?

  Tell us about that. Tell us about that.

• 1:06:06Speaker 07

  They're, uh, they're, they're entirely more ruthless species than a gator as far as I can tell.

• 1:06:13Steven Rinella?

  Give me some specs on a Nile crocodile.

• 1:06:16Speaker 07

  Oh, man. I mean, they're, they're massive creatures and I think that from what I can tell. They're one of those things similar to like, I think I've heard this about like bass, where over a certain size, for every inch, they grow in length, they grow in girth.

• 1:06:32Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:06:33Speaker 07

  So the big ones are incredibly girthy. I mean, I shot a fourteen footer one time.

• 1:06:40Steven Rinella?

  God.

• 1:06:40Speaker 07

  And kind of like you could barely sit on its back. It was so, so broad. Um, we have one, we have one where you're going in Lugano Game Reserve.

• 1:06:50Steven Rinella?

  Reminds me of me.

• 1:06:54Speaker 07

  Um, Lugano Game Reserve, there is a, a man eating crocodile currently on the, on the loose. His name's Bada Wee Wee, which um, in Kiswahili kind of translates, it would kind of translate to like not yet you. Insofar as like he hasn't gotten you yet. Last year, last year, he ate five fishermen.

• 1:07:16Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:07:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:07:17Steven Rinella?

  But how is he catching the people?

• 1:07:19Speaker 07

  He follows their canoes and he waits till they get out to unload their fishing nets and then he nails them.

• 1:07:28Speaker 05

  Steve wants to go after him now.

• 1:07:30Steven Rinella?

  He's killed five people.

• 1:07:31Speaker 07

  Five last year. I don't know what the tally is now. I'll have to check in with the guys and see where we're at. But yeah, he's been absolutely terrorizing this village. I tried to get him. Um, I think I saw him. I'm, I'm certain it was him because a big crocodile like that, they're quite territorial. I doubt there'd be another one of that size in the same area.

• 1:07:51Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:07:52Speaker 07

  But he wouldn't come to my bait. He's too cagey.

• 1:07:55Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:55Speaker 07

  Too clever.

• 1:07:56Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 1:07:57Speaker 04

  So what's the, what's like, like the process? The hunters are just like keeping an eye out for them and like they see them, shoot them or like, what's like the, the plan to?

• 1:08:06Speaker 07

  So, well, first, first off, we weren't really aware of his existence until, um, we did a kind of river-based anti-poaching patrol, which we do frequently. But we kind of pushed it into some areas where we hadn't done one in a while. And as a process, we caught some kind of guys violating the fishing laws. Um, and you know, while they were kind of detained, our guys got to chatting with them and they sort of were telling the story about this particular man eating croc.

• 1:08:38Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:39Speaker 07

  Um, and so that kind of piqued my interest and I wanted to, wanted to hunt him. Um.

• 1:08:43Steven Rinella?

  Can, can you, just to, just to help me.

• 1:08:45Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:08:46Steven Rinella?

  Understand this whole thing. Can you describe? Like, what is the village and how is it positioned? And what is the sort of like vibe in the village?

• 1:08:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, so it's on the edge of the game reserve. So it's in our hunting area, but it's outside of the boundaries of the game reserve itself. So there's an old German railway that kind of goes between the game reserve and Ugala National Park. And then that kind of crosses a bridge and where that crosses a bridge, um, there's, there's a village there. Um, it's a fishing village, you know, the people are, there's some a little bit of agriculture and some other stuff.

• 1:09:19Steven Rinella?

  And what are they netting there?

• 1:09:20Speaker 07

  Uh, they're netting anything and everything, but primarily the species are, um, lungfish, uh, catfish and tilapia.

• 1:09:29Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so they're netting them for a commercial market, not just personal use?

• 1:09:33Speaker 07

  Combination of both.

• 1:09:34Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:09:34Speaker 07

  So they subsist off them and then they dry and kind of smoke the, the, um, the surplus.

• 1:09:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Speaker 07

  Um, and then then that gets transported to other kind of population centers where it's sold.

• 1:09:46Steven Rinella?

  Got it. Um. How many people are in a village like that?

• 1:09:48Speaker 07

  I would guess there's in that one fifteen hundred, two thousand.

• 1:09:52Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:09:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, so it's a good, it's a good number of people.

• 1:09:55Steven Rinella?

  I got you.

• 1:09:55Speaker 07

  Yeah. And so they kind of, they, they go up and down the river. Um, there's portions of the game reserve waters that they're not supposed to be in, that they occasionally kind of violate. Uh, and there's, there's laws about the, um, size of nets they can use, the types of nets they can use, the kind of, the, you know, the amount of nets and hooks they can deploy and stuff like that.

• 1:10:15Steven Rinella?

  So it's pretty like what would be recognizable to an American about.

• 1:10:19Speaker 07

  It's a controlled fishery.

• 1:10:19Steven Rinella?

  Regular, yep, fishing regulations.

• 1:10:21Speaker 07

  Absolutely, yep, they require a permit to fish. Um, so they have to, you know, they have to actually go and purchase a fishing permit that gives them a, a window of time in which they're allowed to fish.

• 1:10:30Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:10:30Speaker 07

  Um, so it's, it's a controlled fishery and we work together with, um, TAWA, Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority, to kind of, you know, keep tabs on that, that fishery and how it's going and how it's impacting species. And it's an important ecosystem. There's obviously the crocodiles there, which are an important species, the fish, the birds, there's African clawless otter in that waterway as well.

• 1:10:52Steven Rinella?

  Never even heard of that.

• 1:10:53Speaker 07

  Uh, beautiful.

• 1:10:55Steven Rinella?

  Can I tell you a thing that I'm worried about that someone told me? Someone told me.

• 1:11:00Steven Rinella?

  I want to get back to this crocodile, but what you just mentioned that like clawless otter. Someone told me that when you go to Africa for the first time.

• 1:11:11Steven Rinella?

  You're so like overwhelmed and exhausted from the mental.

• 1:11:16Speaker 07

  Processing.

• 1:11:16Steven Rinella?

  Overwhelmed that that that it that you lose it. That you lose that like you you lose everything that's in the moment. Because you're so like tripped out.

• 1:11:27Speaker 07

  Hmm, I could see that.

• 1:11:29Steven Rinella?

  And they're like only later when I got home was I like.

• 1:11:32Speaker 07

  Able to kind of.

• 1:11:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, because like I was just overwhelmed.

• 1:11:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, it will be nice because you'll be documenting it. So you'll be able to revisit a lot of that, which is cool. But I I think um I can see that. I mean, I can see there's certainly times. Even me, just the the wonder of it all, you know, just. And it gets you.

• 1:11:50Steven Rinella?

  I mean. How big is a clawless otter?

• 1:11:52Speaker 07

  Um, I would say roughly the size of our kind of, you know, the North American.

• 1:11:58Steven Rinella?

  River otter.

• 1:11:58Speaker 07

  River otter. Yeah, yeah, about that size.

• 1:12:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh, so back to this crocodile.

• 1:12:02Speaker 07

  So, yeah, so we found out about him. The way we typically hunt crocodile. Um, you can, you can certainly have like um sort of incidentally, like you'll be driving along. The river or walking along the river and you'll see a sandbar. Or um like a termite mound or something close to the river where they'll have slid up on and be kind of sunning themselves. And then you can kind of make a stalk and try and position yourself for a shot like that. A lot of times we'll we'll put bait. So we'll drive some kind of heavy stakes into the riverbank if there's not a tree or a rock or something to anchor to and put some some stinking meat there.

• 1:12:39Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:12:40Speaker 07

  To draw them in. The big advantage of that is you can really control where you put it. Because the problem with a crocodile, unless you make the perfect shot that destroys its central nervous system like instantly.

• 1:12:56Speaker 07

  One flick of that tail, if that gets them back into the main stem of the river where there's flow and these rivers, you know, the Ulgala River has significant flow, it's gone.

• 1:13:06Steven Rinella?

  He's gone.

• 1:13:06Speaker 07

  You'll never, you'll never find it.

• 1:13:07Steven Rinella?

  So you hit them where? Right in the brain or at the base?

• 1:13:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, you try to sort of, we call it like their, their smile where they're kind of their, you know, their, their jawline kind of goes like this, um, just above that and kind of between this little, little horn on their, their head, you sort of try to shoot them there and it kind of, if you do it correctly, it really pops their skull open. I mean, you're, it's quite, it's a bit, you know, it's quite visceral. Um, but then, you know, they'll flick around a little bit, but they won't.

• 1:13:35Steven Rinella?

  But they're cashed.

• 1:13:36Speaker 07

  They're, they're done. Yeah, they're done. And then whereas, you know, there are times when you can, if you miss that shot, you know, like a next shot, something like that where you fail to sever the spine, or you, you know, you hit them somewhere else, they're gonna just flick right back into that deep water and you'll never find them, even if they die.

• 1:13:54Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 1:13:54Speaker 07

  Just get swept away.

• 1:13:55Steven Rinella?

  So when you bait them?

• 1:13:57Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:13:58Steven Rinella?

  Are you trying to get them the moment he finds it or is he gonna start hitting the bait?

• 1:14:01Speaker 07

  He'll start hitting the bait. So I need, you need to have a good look at them. I mean, you know, there's, there's two ways you know, when you've got a big croc coming. I mean, one, you, you know, just the sort of size and scale of it. You can, I find it very hard to judge them through binoculars. I've got to kind of look with my eyes. So you don't want to be too far away for that reason. Also, you know, you're shot, you know, you've got to, you've got to put it in a little slot like that, sort of three inch by three inch.

• 1:14:24Steven Rinella?

  Top of a single serving yogurt container.

• 1:14:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly. That's kind of what we're talking about. So you got to be, you want to be closer for that. But, um, aside from that, you know, when oftentimes you'll put these baits and you'll get a lot of small crocs on them. You know, there'll be five, six, seven, sometimes 10, like anywhere from six footers, eight footers, down to three, four footers, kind of splashing around, making a lot of noise.

• 1:14:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:48Speaker 07

  Tearing this bait apart. But when the big boy's coming, like they can, they can sense it, you know, whether they make vibrations or vocalizations in the water, something like that, um, these crocs split. The little ones will.

• 1:15:01Steven Rinella?

  When big man's coming.

• 1:15:02Speaker 07

  Evaporate. Yeah. And then you'll see this sort of head come up. They have like this big, it's like a tennis ball on the end of their nose. And then, you know, you'll, you'll usually let them sort of get comfortable, drag themselves out of, ideally you have the bait where they have to sort of drag themselves out of the water a little bit to kind of expose that shot.

• 1:15:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:20Speaker 07

  Um, but that's impressive.

• 1:15:23Steven Rinella?

  So and and those waterways, is it inadvisable just to be down waiting around on the edge?

• 1:15:28Speaker 07

  Uh, you can, you can do it. I mean, there's areas like it. It just depends on how the water looks. Right? If you've got sort of a bit of a shallow flat, you could, you can splash around there.

• 1:15:39Steven Rinella?

  You know, he's not there.

• 1:15:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, you know, you'd see him coming, you know, you'd have to make a wake, but like if there was a big pool, I wouldn't, I wouldn't go near it. I mean, he could be just waiting, waiting there in ambush. You'd have a hard time seeing him. You won't know till he's got a hold of you and they move like lightning.

• 1:15:55Steven Rinella?

  What uh, what are you shooting those things with? Like what rifle?

• 1:15:58Speaker 07

  Um, you, well, whichever one you shoot the best.

• 1:16:01Steven Rinella?

  Are you using a scope?

• 1:16:03Speaker 07

  Scoped rifle. Yeah, scoped rifle is ideal. Yeah, whatever you shoot. I mean, typically, um, will sometimes when you're sneaking up on them, you'll, you'll, you'll be following buffalo, buffalo tracks by the river. And it's like, hey, there's a massive croc on that sandbar and the guy's got his four sixteen. That's what you're shooting it with.

• 1:16:18Steven Rinella?

  Gotcha.

• 1:16:19Speaker 07

  In an ideal world, like where I had all the time in the world to set it up, kind of build my blind, get everything staged, you know.

• 1:16:29Speaker 07

  Does the job. Um, again, with that brain shot, you're not, you're not trying to uh, kind of achieve penetration. You're just trying to pop that, that brain open.

• 1:16:40Steven Rinella?

  Talk about shot placement on a Cape buffalo.

• 1:16:43Speaker 07

  I'm, I am a uh, firm proponent of the shoulder shot. So kind of come up that leg about a third of the, sort of, you know, third of the way up the body from the belly line.

• 1:16:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:54Speaker 07

  Um, and put it right on the shoulder there.

• 1:16:57Steven Rinella?

  In the, like on the show.

• 1:16:58Speaker 07

  On the shot, on the bone, not behind the shoulder, on the bone, break that shoulder.

• 1:17:02Steven Rinella?

  On the bone.

• 1:17:03Speaker 07

  And this is something that, that's changed. There'll be some, some of the old school guys will very much disagree with me. And I will, would argue that their thinking is rooted in a different era where um, high quality bullets weren't available.

• 1:17:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:19Speaker 07

  Uh, there was just a lot of junk and so one would always try to shoot behind the shoulder to make sure that you got adequate penetration. Now, if you're shooting something along the lines of a barns. PSX, Swift A frame, that type of stuff. It'll more than adequately penetrate that shoulder bone. And then you break them down. They don't go as far, you know, it's it's a lot of trauma. A busted shoulder is is really gonna slow them down.

• 1:17:44Steven Rinella?

  Hitting them right in the shoulder.

• 1:17:45Speaker 07

  Right in the shoulder, everything.

• 1:17:46Steven Rinella?

  Below the scapula.

• 1:17:48Speaker 07

  Below the scapula, yeah, sort of somewhere near that joint. You know, somewhere where that scapula kind of joins on to the to the other bone there.

• 1:17:56Steven Rinella?

  Let's say he's quartering away from you.

• 1:17:58Speaker 07

  Quartering away from you, you're gonna, so what I like to talk about, I like, say, imagine you have X-ray vision.

• 1:18:04Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:18:04Speaker 07

  And so if you can't break the onside shoulder, shoot the offside shoulder.

• 1:18:09Steven Rinella?

  Or if he's coming dead on nuts.

• 1:18:10Speaker 07

  Dead on, it depends on how he's holding his head, but when they typically sort of, if they're a little bit curious. You know, they won't, you know, they're sort of, they've seen something, they'll kind of hold their head in a fairly, I would say fairly neutral position. It's not too up, it's not too down, unless sometimes if they're, they'll, you know, they'll be laying under some vegetation, kind of in the shade, and they'll stand up and to see you, they'll have to sort of dip their head to see under the vegetation.

• 1:18:36Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:18:36Speaker 07

  In that instance, it can be tough, but typically I'll sort of just go right below the chin. Kind of into, you're trying to get it into this kind of clavicle gap.

• 1:18:44Steven Rinella?

  And that's not inadvisable.

• 1:18:46Speaker 07

  It's not my favorite, but sometimes if it's that or nothing, right? Like if it's, if you've got to make that shot, but I'll tell you one thing about that shot, when it's done properly, it like, it really rocks their world. So if they don't react to how I want, like how I would expect them to. That'll be a time where I'd consider backing up because what can happen with that shot, if it's off. It'll kind of hit the sternum, which on those things is sort of like a, you know, very V shaped and obviously extremely robust piece of bone. With a lot of sort of sagging skin hanging on it. And what that can do, the sagging skin will kind of set up the bullet, so it really mushrooms quicker than it would on a, on a sort of a taut like flank.

• 1:19:30Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:19:30Speaker 07

  And then it will hit that sternum and kind of go along, sort of track along the sternum and wind up kind of in the armpit, if you know what I mean.

• 1:19:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:38Speaker 07

  Having done no damage to the vitals, you'll get some blood, you'd follow that thing forever. Um, and it's, it's, it's a bad deal. So I don't, I don't love the frontal shot, but I don't, it's not off the table. It's not like we never do that. It's something that sometimes you've got to make it happen.

• 1:19:56Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. And no Texas heart shots.

• 1:19:59Speaker 07

  Uh, on a follow-up shot, yes.

• 1:20:01Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:20:01Speaker 07

  Uh, no, like as a first shot, absolutely not. Um, but as, as a follow-up.

• 1:20:08Steven Rinella?

  Take a stab.

• 1:20:08Speaker 07

  The old Portuguese brain shot.

• 1:20:14Steven Rinella?

  I've never heard that one.

• 1:20:17Speaker 06

  Imagine it's running away. That's why it's important to travel, meet people from other cultures.

• 1:20:22Speaker 07

  So.

• 1:20:22Steven Rinella?

  Cause you'll learn about shot placement.

• 1:20:24Speaker 07

  What's better?

• 1:20:25Steven Rinella?

  I always tell my kids, you always wanna be able to travel.

• 1:20:27Speaker 07

  What's better than your?

• 1:20:30Speaker 07

  What's better on that follow-up though, if they do spin and turn away than your classic Texas heart shows, try to break that hip.

• 1:20:37Steven Rinella?

  Is, so on a follow-up, like once you make your first careful shot.

• 1:20:41Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:20:41Steven Rinella?

  Is any shot good?

• 1:20:43Speaker 07

  Give it to it.

• 1:20:44Steven Rinella?

  Any shot is good.

• 1:20:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, you didn't come all the way to, so like to your previous point about those other guys with like two shots on a, on a, uh, bison was considered good. I don't, I don't have any, uh, the more the merrier.

• 1:20:56Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:20:56Speaker 07

  If it's still on its feet, keep shooting. Um, and then also for, you know, reasons, uh, like those guys experienced where it's, as I said, the dead ones will kill you will oftentimes go up, even if it's looking thoroughly deceased. Put another one in there as insurance.

• 1:21:13Steven Rinella?

  And then is there any situation where you ever tell a client, like on the, like, the animal's fine, so it's not wounded?

• 1:21:20Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:21:21Steven Rinella?

  Were you, were you shooting in the head, shooting in the head?

• 1:21:25Speaker 07

  Uh, I have had situations like that before. It's extremely close. You know, you just, for whatever reason, again, mostly in that Montane forest.

• 1:21:34Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:21:35Speaker 07

  One kind of stands up and all you can see is the head kind of above the vegetation. Um, and it's like, yeah, you, you know, you're gonna have to go for a headshot here. If you can do it, um, if you feel comfortable, go for it. And again, if you get it right, it's gonna have an instant result. Otherwise, I'm gonna have to back you up.

• 1:21:53Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:21:56Steven Rinella?

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• 1:22:36Steven Rinella?

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• 1:23:21Steven Rinella?

  It's not the kind of clip that you're gonna use a couple of times and it bends and get all loose. The blade goes back into the mill after heat treatment for its most critical surfaces. That's the kind of step nobody else takes. That same standard applies to every part of the Montana. That's the name of the folder, the Montana, from start to finish. The wait is over and I've been waiting a long time to get one of these suckers. MKC launching their first folding knife. It's dropping extremely soon, so make sure you sign up for email and SMS to be the first to know. These are gonna sell out quick. Head to MKC.com today. That's MKC.com. In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. At American Military University, that

• 1:24:05Steven Rinella?

  Legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. You know, I didn't realize is standard, and this doesn't bother me. But um, it's standard that when you wound an animal, that's, that's it. That's your like effectively you tag the animal.

• 1:24:42Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:24:43Steven Rinella?

  If you want to get away.

• 1:24:43Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:24:44Steven Rinella?

  And um, there are units and there's a bear unit in Alaska, for instance. Like if you touch it.

• 1:24:50Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:24:51Steven Rinella?

  If you touch the bear and don't find it, it's still regarded as. That was your bear.

• 1:24:55Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:24:56Steven Rinella?

  You've been attacked. And in Africa, like.

• 1:24:58Speaker 07

  That's absolutely.

• 1:24:59Steven Rinella?

  You take a bad shot or get a bad hit. That's you. You scratched your ticket.

• 1:25:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's it. That one's off your license and we write it down as wounded, lost. Very sad, sad thing to have to do. So a lot of, a lot of things.

• 1:25:13Steven Rinella?

  So it pays to be.

• 1:25:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's to mitigate that.

• 1:25:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, just be cautious, man.

• 1:25:17Speaker 07

  Be cautious. Yeah. If the shot doesn't, if it doesn't feel right. And again, the beautiful thing about Africa and especially where we're going, you know, these premium areas like in Tanzania. You, it's not like you like, oh, that was your buffalo, you know, we saw one for the, for the two week trip and you, you fluffed it. It's like, no, we'll, you know, get another chance. If this one runs off, we'll find another one. There's more. There's plenty.

• 1:25:41Steven Rinella?

  Do you guys use the term dagger boys? Can you explain that to me?

• 1:25:43Speaker 07

  I dug a boy. Yes, we do. We do use that term.

• 1:25:48Steven Rinella?

  Say it again.

• 1:25:48Speaker 07

  Dugger boy.

• 1:25:50Steven Rinella?

  Dugger.

• 1:25:51Speaker 07

  So it's a.

• 1:25:51Steven Rinella?

  Dugger boy.

• 1:25:52Speaker 07

  So the term dugger is, it's a southern African term.

• 1:25:58Speaker 07

  It's a, it's a Southern African term. Well, it's a bastardization of a, of a word in one of the Southern African kind of Bantu languages, which refers to mud.

• 1:26:08Steven Rinella?

  Um, and the reason- That's what it is, dugger boy is mud.

• 1:26:11Speaker 07

  So the, the old bull buffalo that are in their kind of bachelor phase, or they're in a permanent bachelor phase, as sometimes is the case, will spend, they like to wallow. They spend a good, you know, Cape buffalo are a wallowing animal. Um, they, they enjoy it. They like to, it helps them keep, um, biting flies away. It keeps their skin healthy. Um, so they, they're wallowers. They love it. And oftentimes you'll see those old bulls will spend a good amount of time wallowing and they'll be really crusted with mud.

• 1:26:41Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:26:41Speaker 07

  So that's where, that's the origin of the term.

• 1:26:43Steven Rinella?

  The mud, the mud boys.

• 1:26:44Speaker 07

  Yeah. It's one of those terms like safari, which like is very much a Swahili term, but it's become kind of ubiquitous throughout the continent. Dugger boy will be used to describe an, an old bull buffalo, kind of wherever you go.

• 1:26:56Steven Rinella?

  And your plan, like, we talked about this before, but your plan is you guys don't get on the big ol' herds. You're looking for like male little squads, one, two, three, four, whatever.

• 1:27:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:27:08Steven Rinella?

  Little bachelor gangs.

• 1:27:09Speaker 07

  Bachelor bulls. Yeah. That's the ideal. I mean, we'll definitely, um, we'll follow some herds and we'll get up on them for, for the experience of that, particularly early on in the hunt. And there are times where, particularly in Lugano, because it has, um, it has a big river and a big lake. So what I find happens there, more so than other areas I've seen, is that a lot of buffalo will kind of congregate there. Bachelor bulls and herds will kind of be gravitating towards the same areas to drink and kind of feed on that, on that flood plain.

• 1:27:41Steven Rinella?

  They're not together, but they're drawn together.

• 1:27:42Speaker 07

  But they're drawn to the same area and they'll kind of often like leave together. So they'll kind of mingle. So, uh, you know, I have found more, again, more consistently than other places I've hunted in Lugano, you'll find like a really old buffalo or a couple of really old buffalos with, with a herd, but it's a sort of loose casual association and they'll break off and sort of peel off eventually. So we'll spend some time mixing it up with herds, um, for the experience. And again, I- Like part of what I like to do is is give you that opportunity to really feel that species versus kind of just looking at the back of my shirt for however many days and then I put the sticks up and say that's the one like we'll

• 1:28:23Speaker 07

  we'll really try to get in amongst them and sort of see how that you know just feel it just enjoy their presence and kind of get a sense of the species but yeah the one I wanna shoot I'm almost guaranteeing will be in a in a bachelor herd.

• 1:28:38Steven Rinella?

  And how do you know a shooter when you see like what do you see where you're like that is a shooter?

• 1:28:42Speaker 07

  Hard boss. So so the way the buffalo's horns grow, you've got obviously that kind of bone core um with the the horn like the the keratin sheath on the outside and in a mature bull it kind of grows from the outside in. So on a young bull and then you'll see this very clearly when you're looking at them through your binoculars. The kind of what we call the boss, which is where the horns kind of come together over the top of their head, over that kind of honey combed bone that protects their brain. Um it'll be it'll be still sort of vascular and soft and pulpy, even like a little bit of hair growing out of it on a young bull. A fully mature bull that will have completely hardened into horn.

• 1:29:26Speaker 07

  And there may be a strip of hair or a strip of kind of flesh of your skin down through the middle of the horns. Not all of them fully meet in the middle. Some do, some don't. That's not a like a determining factor of age or anything like that. It's just like a genetic thing. Some do, some don't. Um but yeah, we want a fully mature, hard bossed bull that's that's worn down, ideally some of its horn. Uh and yeah, it's just that right one to take.

• 1:29:52Steven Rinella?

  And how wide is he tip to tip?

• 1:29:54Speaker 07

  Depends. Um my the best one I shot last year was forty two inches. Sort of from widest point to widest point.

• 1:30:02Steven Rinella?

  Moose dude.

• 1:30:03Speaker 07

  Nah, they're big shires. But I've seen I've seen them there. I I was I had a client last year. It was a bow hunter and we didn't manage to get on this buffalo. But we we put a stalk on one that I would have conservatively put at like forty four.

• 1:30:18Steven Rinella?

  Is he still around?

• 1:30:19Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:30:19Steven Rinella?

  You know where he is?

• 1:30:20Speaker 07

  A general idea, vicinity.

• 1:30:22Steven Rinella?

  You hearing this, Randall?

• 1:30:23Speaker 07

  Okay, we'll give it a crack, Steve.

• 1:30:25Steven Rinella?

  Is this what's this doing for you, Randall? Oh, man. What's all this doing for you? I mean, I've always had the uh I've always been really.

• 1:30:33Speaker 04

  I'm curious about Africa. I think just for the sense of like wonder, like you described, just like the smell and the soil and the plants. Um, and just seeing animals. But yeah, I'm getting, I guess what it's doing for it's, it's inspiring quite a bit of jealousy in me. Envy.

• 1:30:52Speaker 07

  It is.

• 1:30:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:30:54Speaker 07

  Reasonable position to take.

• 1:30:56Steven Rinella?

  So you're interested?

• 1:30:57Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:30:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:58Speaker 04

  We almost, uh,

• 1:31:01Speaker 04

  we're at the Montana Wild Sheep Banquet. We got a little, we were over served. And almost went in on a safari with our, with our friends.

• 1:31:11Speaker 07

  Hmm. Where, uh, where was it?

• 1:31:13Speaker 04

  Uh, the one in Bozeman. Oh, the safari?

• 1:31:17Speaker 04

  I have no idea.

• 1:31:18Speaker 07

  You were bit, you were almost bidding on it?

• 1:31:20Speaker 04

  We did bid on it.

• 1:31:21Speaker 07

  What country?

• 1:31:23Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 1:31:25Speaker 07

  That's not a good start.

• 1:31:26Speaker 04

  Well, we, we, the, the first text message I saw on my phone the next morning was, I'm glad we didn't wake up as the owners of a safari.

• 1:31:34Speaker 07

  Got it.

• 1:31:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. But it's, it's always, it's always something that's kind of like, you know, you got a couple of little voices in the back of your head about things that you like to do someday. And yeah, I definitely have the itch.

• 1:31:44Speaker 07

  Oh dude, I'm like.

• 1:31:45Speaker 05

  Been on it next time.

• 1:31:47Speaker 07

  Well, let's talk about it first.

• 1:31:52Speaker 07

  Send me the details. Shoot me a text. I'll, uh, give you the, give you the inside scoop on whether it's going to be, uh, something you.

• 1:31:58Steven Rinella?

  Morgan, I hope you can reply quickly because I'm in the middle of a drone.

• 1:32:05Speaker 05

  Is it worth it?

• 1:32:07Steven Rinella?

  I just wanted to fact check a couple of things.

• 1:32:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'll set a couple of God rails for you.

• 1:32:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, I mean, I, I think like especially just the history and sort of the, the place of African hunting within our larger hunting traditions, like globally, I think it's, it's something I definitely like to experience and, and understand better.

• 1:32:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I'm dying to go check it out.

• 1:32:29Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:32:30Steven Rinella?

  And like with, with me though, the thing is.

• 1:32:34Steven Rinella?

  Of course, you can just go check it out.

• 1:32:36Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 1:32:37Steven Rinella?

  But I need, I need more, I need like, like, uh, the immersive, like, like the, I need to get in there, you know?

• 1:32:44Speaker 07

  The immersion is the thing, the totality of it, like the history, the, the flora, the fauna, the culture, the people, that's what makes African hunting, I think, unique, aside from the species and the conduct of the whole hunt, right? All that's a separate thing. But if you just think about like the, the appeal of it, why it kind of gets people so much is just the, yeah, the totality of it, all that kind of history and culture.

• 1:33:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:09Speaker 05

  I think we also get to highlight the difference between, the differences between hunting across certain countries in Africa and that like the experience in Tanzania, I anticipate would be very, will be very different than, for example, uh,

• 1:33:27Speaker 07

  Wherever I would have gone.

• 1:33:29Speaker 05

  In South, in South Africa.

• 1:33:31Speaker 07

  I'd actually bet on it.

• 1:33:32Speaker 05

  Which feels very different.

• 1:33:33Speaker 07

  It's a fair, yeah, for sure. I, I, I think so. Um, I think East Africa has that, that reputation. Um, and certainly I don't want to take anything away from like, there's some amazing hunting that happens in Southern Africa, Central Africa, French, you know, Francophone, West Africa, there's some incredible hunting experiences that can be had kind of across the, the continent, but I think East Africa kind of holds a certain place in people's imaginations because of, yeah, because of that history and because of the kind of like, the way that it was the birthplace of a lot of the kind of conservation ideals and, and hunting ethics ideals and, and sort of,

• 1:34:13Speaker 07

  um, yeah, I think this, it's just what, it's where your brain goes when you think of safari.

• 1:34:21Steven Rinella?

  Um, I got a last question for you, but how are we doing, Phil? Phil's real worried about everybody getting out of here.

• 1:34:25Speaker 06

  Ten, we got 10 minutes.

• 1:34:26Steven Rinella?

  We're good. Okay, you got 10 minutes to answer this question.

• 1:34:29Speaker 07

  Lay it on me.

• 1:34:30Steven Rinella?

  Let's say, um, I'm over in Europe. And some guy's like, I'm going deer hunting in America.

• 1:34:39Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 1:34:40Steven Rinella?

  I'm going, no, not that. I'm going deer hunting in North America.

• 1:34:45Steven Rinella?

  First thing on my mind is, well, that could mean any number of things.

• 1:34:48Speaker 07

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:34:50Steven Rinella?

  Are you hunting in South Florida?

• 1:34:53Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:34:53Steven Rinella?

  Are you hunting in Northern Alberta? Like, what do you mean?

• 1:34:57Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:34:58Steven Rinella?

  So, how, how different, like, you know, I mean, you're going hunting in Africa.

• 1:35:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:04Steven Rinella?

  It's a big ass place.

• 1:35:05Speaker 07

  Big ass place.

• 1:35:05Steven Rinella?

  Like, how different is it all? Do you know what I mean?

• 1:35:09Speaker 07

  Very, very.

• 1:35:10Steven Rinella?

  Is it as, would, would it seem as different to someone there as it would seem to be from Florida to Alberta?

• 1:35:15Speaker 07

  Hundred percent, one hundred percent. If I, I would have that exact same reaction if I, if I met someone in an airport bar and they're like, I'm on my way to Africa to go on safari, you know, hunting safari, I'd be like, where are you going and what, you know, I'd, and I'd have some-

• 1:35:29Steven Rinella?

  You've told me nothing.

• 1:35:30Speaker 07

  Ideas.

• 1:35:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:31Speaker 07

  But, um, yeah, you've, yeah, precisely. You've told me nothing. I mean, it just, I think if I, if I kind of boil it down to like, why Tanzania is different and where we're going is different is what sort of sets us apart is that free range, those big vast areas. Um, there's no fences.

• 1:35:49Steven Rinella?

  That's what drew me in, is the big, huge country.

• 1:35:52Speaker 07

  Expanse of, of it, you know, and again, I think we talked about it, this is on the last podcast, Tanzania has got roughly thirty percent of its landmass set aside as wilderness of some sort. You know, some of it's got some, some, you know, grazing and seasonal agricultural activities, others, other parts of it, like where we're going in Lugano is just pure wilderness. But it's, um, and it's a, it's a massive amount by, by modern standards, it's a massive, massive amount of wilderness there. Um, and to, to be able to hunt those species in an unfenced environment where they're not a reintroduced, um, animal, you know, they're, or, or intro, or purely introduced animal there, that's ancestral-

• 1:36:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:34Speaker 07

  Stock. That's as wild as they get.

• 1:36:36Steven Rinella?

  You know that book I was being slightly critical of?

• 1:36:38Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:36:39Steven Rinella?

  Thunder Without Rain?

• 1:36:41Steven Rinella?

  I was being a little too harsh on it.

• 1:36:42Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:36:44Steven Rinella?

  Because you know what it did explain is when that cattle disease came.

• 1:36:47Speaker 07

  Oh, render pest.

• 1:36:48Steven Rinella?

  Render pest came and then jumped into the Cape Buffalo and just decimated.

• 1:36:52Speaker 07

  Crushed them. Yeah, yeah, crushed them.

• 1:36:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, early. He spends a lot of time on render pest.

• 1:36:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:36:59Steven Rinella?

  And the famine that emerged from first, the famine of people that were herders.

• 1:37:04Speaker 07

  Right. Cattle got flattened. Yeah.

• 1:37:06Steven Rinella?

  But then also the famine that extended um to other people that had been hunters and just wiped them out.

• 1:37:12Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah, it's.

• 1:37:13Steven Rinella?

  He's like that more than hunting.

• 1:37:15Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:37:15Steven Rinella?

  Render pest.

• 1:37:16Speaker 07

  Render pest, massive for sure. Of all the things, you know, um, that set back game, it's, I, I mean, even. Well, I don't think render pest. I think render pest is one of two diseases that humanity successfully eliminated altogether.

• 1:37:30Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:37:31Speaker 07

  Like completely, we're free of it. Um, and so it's that and smallpox. Render pest, I think right up until the fifties was like an issue in East Africa. Um, but.

• 1:37:42Steven Rinella?

  It's a great name for a disease.

• 1:37:43Speaker 07

  It is, yeah, from German, yeah, cattle disease. And so it, it, when it first came in, I think it's almost a hundred percent like fatal in, um, you know, species that are naive as far as being inoculated to it. Uh, but over time, obviously the, you know, you gain natural immunity and then there was efforts made by the veterinary departments in what at those times were colonies to, to kind of mitigate it. Um, but yeah, it, it hammered the population of Buffalo. But what it, the also interesting thing that you can kind of glean from the render pest epidemic is that those animals came back, you know, in, in vast numbers because the habitat was intact.

• 1:38:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:25Speaker 07

  And that's the, that's the difference. You know, if you have these sort of massive wipeouts of species, it's something that, that's happened throughout, you know, history as a result of climate or whatever. If the habitat's intact, there's a, there's an option, there's a possibility for them to come back. As long as you've got some kind of genetic reservoir.

• 1:38:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:44Speaker 07

  Um, but if you destroy the habitat, you're done. So it's remarkable how robust and resilient these species are in the face of things like render pest. Um, if the habitat's there.

• 1:38:56Steven Rinella?

  Here's my actual last question. What's a big group? What's a big group to run into?

• 1:39:01Speaker 07

  Of Cape Buffalo?

• 1:39:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:03Speaker 07

  Uh, it depends very much on the area in Lugano. I would say a big herd would be sixty to eighty.

• 1:39:11Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:39:12Speaker 07

  Um, just because of the terrain, um, and kind of like, and, and yeah, the environment, the, um, the lion population. There are certain areas like, um, you know, in Mozambique, even southern Tanzania, I've seen some really massive herds, but you know, where you get like big sort of floodplain areas where there'll be hundreds and hundreds of them out there.

• 1:39:33Steven Rinella?

  Now, when we're all knocking around, are we gonna run into lions?

• 1:39:36Speaker 07

  Almost certainly. Yeah, almost certainly. They're there all the time.

• 1:39:41Steven Rinella?

  Sickly stuff. He'll be sick.

• 1:39:42Speaker 06

  I don't, what, what's it like? Are they like grizzly bears here? We gotta watch out for them if you run into them or just like?

• 1:39:49Speaker 07

  Generally speaking, no. Sometimes they'll put on a little bit of a, bit of a performance, but generally these ones, um, they'll, they'll sort of slink off, you know, they, they're, if they've got a kill nearby, they might be a little more reluctant to leave and they'll kind of like, you know, they'll posture a little bit, uh, but you're, you're very unlikely to have an issue with them, uh, and just in that context of like bumping into them somewhere.

• 1:40:13Speaker 06

  What about snakes?

• 1:40:14Speaker 07

  Um, I would be surprised. We may see them, but more, more often than not, like I would say in all my time in Africa, eighty-five percent or more of the snakes I've seen have been like on the road sunning themselves.

• 1:40:29Speaker 06

  Gotcha.

• 1:40:29Speaker 07

  When, and you sort of drive by and it's like, oh, there's a cobra.

• 1:40:32Steven Rinella?

  Do you guys got that one where you're supposed to just lean against a tree and die? Cause there's nothing to do about it?

• 1:40:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Black mamba. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

• 1:40:39Steven Rinella?

  You run into those often?

• 1:40:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, not often, not often. It's uncommon, but you'll see them again.

• 1:40:44Steven Rinella?

  So bad. The best thing you can do is lean against a tree. Uh, you ain't gonna live. Is that true?

• 1:40:48Speaker 07

  With that, so.

• 1:40:49Steven Rinella?

  Is that not true?

• 1:40:50Speaker 07

  It is. So yes and no. So they have.

• 1:40:52Speaker 06

  Bit by one.

• 1:40:53Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell you. Say it, just lean against a tree.

• 1:40:55Speaker 07

  I'll tell you two stories about black mambas, which and and we can kind of, we can leave it at that. But they're they're it's uncommon to see them. And again, usually it's that same thing. You'll see them from the car. They'll kind of be beside the road and.

• 1:41:08Steven Rinella?

  Do you pastor them when you see them?

• 1:41:10Speaker 07

  No, we typically leave them alone. Um, one time I was in, I was in the Saloo, I was in southern Tanzania and I was, we're following buffalo with a client. And there's kind of a little depression, like this little valley that had tall grass in it, you know, seven, eight foot tall grass. Um, and we, based on the freshness of the buffalo tracks that we were following, we kind of, the trackers and I had a little conference and sort of determined that they likely weren't in that tall grass, like they'd passed, it wasn't that big of an area. They'd kind of passed through it and gone and bedded down somewhere in the Miombo, like in the woodland. So we were pretty confident in being able to just sort of pass through it. So we're pretty casually like going through this tall grass, sort of following these trails that the buffalo and elephants and other stuff had made through there. And, um, yeah, I'm just, you know, sort of

• 1:41:57Speaker 07

  fairly, not totally asleep at the wheel, but sort of just, you know, going along. Um, and next thing like the two trackers kind of, they went around a little sort of corner in the grass in front of me to where I couldn't fully see them. Next thing they both just sort of like evaporate, just like gone. They just like flew past me, like not a word said, just like disappeared. And I'm like, oh no, the buffalo are in here. So I sort of pick up my rifle, safety off. But normally with buffalo in that kind of context, like it'd be a cow with a calf or something and you'd hear them like they're gonna, they, a lot of times they'll vocalize. You'd hear them crashing around. It was like silent. A couple of seconds later, this black mamba sort of reared up to like just below my eye level, kind of comes around the corner in the grass.

• 1:42:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, this thing was thick. It was sort of probably like diameter, I don't know, like four or five inches. So it was a thick snake, big snake. I couldn't see the full length of it, but it was really reared up and they do, they really rear up, which is why they they so deadly because they'll strike you in areas that you can't put like a tourniquet, like you'll be. So I just pulled my front trigger and I still can't tell you to this day whether I hit that thing or not, but I'm sure the muzzle blast from like that that distance rattled its cage and I just turned around, grabbed the client, just ran, just got out of there.

• 1:43:16Steven Rinella?

  Cause they'll come at you.

• 1:43:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, they will. I mean, they do. What the guys said later was he was like just curled up on the trail. And when they kind of like got up on him, like he sort of got agitated, right? Like he felt like he was being accosted and he sort of reared up and and sort of like sort of came towards them. And then he was probably just more or less curious as to what had happened and kind of came around that corner and got a face full of Nitro Express.

• 1:43:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:44Speaker 07

  Like, see what happened to all the staff, man? But I also heard a story about.

• 1:43:48Steven Rinella?

  See, one and all.

• 1:43:49Speaker 07

  That's public enemy number one right now. I also heard a story about a um, a young Maasai boy that was bitten by one in Maasai land. And um, there's this wonderful place not far from Arusha called Meserani Snake Park. We'll actually drive by it um, where they have, they have a bunch of snakes. Yeah, it's, it sounds grim, but it's really cool. They have a bunch of snakes and they have a clinic where they extract venom and they do all the stuff there and they treat, pretty much they're the hub for all of northern Tanzania for like snake bite victims. And so the, the, the other kids that this, this Maasai boy was with recognized that he'd been bitten by a mamba. So they, they kind of managed to get him to a road where they flagged down a guy on a motorbike. And they got him on the motorbike and, and they all took off their

• 1:44:34Speaker 07

  belts and kind of belted him to the guy because they knew he was going to pass out. I mean, he was on the verge of passing out. And he passed out um, somewhere along the journey. They got him to Meserani, they gave him the like, they gave him the treatment, the antivenom, and apparently like a couple of days later, he was fine.

• 1:44:49Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:44:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, happy as a clam. Happy as a clam. The only injury he had like, like that was, you know, kind of sucked was when he passed out, like one of his feet had kind of dragged along the black top. He's got a, got serious road rash, but he was um, he was fine. So I'm not going to say it's a hundred percent fatal, but yeah, if, if we're out there in Lugano, we definitely want to avoid those things, but I'd be surprised.

• 1:45:11Steven Rinella?

  Seth's gonna have two huge belts on now.

• 1:45:13Speaker 07

  Yeah, so he can just belt you to.

• 1:45:17Steven Rinella?

  Steel toe boots.

• 1:45:18Speaker 06

  Sounds like it's up to Steve. I just don't come home from this trip.

• 1:45:21Speaker 07

  Well, again, the snake, the snake boots are gonna help you. The snake boots aren't gonna help you.

• 1:45:25Steven Rinella?

  No, no, just, just for the, the dragging your feet behind the motorbike.

• 1:45:28Speaker 07

  There you go, there you go, yeah. Well, and the other thing about them that's kinda spooky is they'll, they're like semi arboreal. They'll go up trees. So there are guys that have been bitten like from above.

• 1:45:39Steven Rinella?

  Right down top of his head, right through his little hat. Seth's not gonna have a good time. I was gonna say, it's a teary head.

• 1:45:44Speaker 07

  No, we won't. I, I'd be surprised if we see one. If we do, it'll be cool because we'll be from the car and we can all go, ooh, ah, and not have to worry about getting bitten.

• 1:45:51Steven Rinella?

  I'm like, go poke them, Seth.

• 1:45:54Steven Rinella?

  Go touch it. Go worry him. Nope. Alright.

• 1:45:57Speaker 05

  Wait, before we end.

• 1:45:58Steven Rinella?

  Oh, it's gonna wrap up.

• 1:45:58Speaker 05

  We just gotta say that your dream will come true because we will have a handful of bonus episodes dropping. Just a couple of, we'll, we'll have a lot of swaps.

• 1:46:12Steven Rinella?

  How do you spell swap?

• 1:46:14Speaker 05

  F W A P.

• 1:46:15Steven Rinella?

  Don't look at me, I'm good. We'll think of ways to make it good. We'll call them all swap.

• 1:46:19Speaker 05

  Swap, swap. One, two, three. Yep, we'll have a bunch of swaps while we're in country. Um, turned around, you know, within a matter of days. Uh, uh, podcast, video, um.

• 1:46:33Steven Rinella?

  Stevie, Stevie Hemingway goes there.

• 1:46:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:46:37Steven Rinella?

  A short happy life.

• 1:46:38Speaker 05

  Tuesdays and Thursdays for a few weeks. Um, so you can stay tuned for those.

• 1:46:43Steven Rinella?

  I can't wait, dude. I cannot wait. You're there now? Yeah, I'm there now. I'm getting excited, man. I want to see one of them snakes. Um, thanks for coming out, man.

• 1:46:52Speaker 07

  Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to being in the bush with you. We're gonna have a hell of a time.

• 1:46:56Steven Rinella?

  No, I think it's gonna be fun. I think it's gonna be fun.

• 1:46:58Speaker 07

  I'll guarantee that.

• 1:46:59Steven Rinella?

  Chilly, congratulations on your hunt. Thank you, sir. Phil, we're getting out of your hair. Thank you, sir. We're only seven minutes overdue. My boy's calling me. Um. Oh, no, I can't tell that. I got a funny story about my kid, but I'll tell it later. Nothing to do with our subject matter. Alright, guys, thank you.

• 1:47:44Steven Rinella?

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

• 1:48:26Steven Rinella?

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

• 1:49:11Steven Rinella?

  BetterHelp is now in-network with more than 125 health plans, with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members. Visit betterhelp.com. Cost and coverage may vary. Timeout in the field is not free, okay? Every time you go in the woods, there's a trade-off happening. Like you leave work early, you miss your kid's game, whatever, you forego some family gathering. If that applies to you, what you gotta do is you gotta learn how to spend the right time out in the woods, the right time in the tree. An OnX Hunt's deer movement forecast tells you when deer are most likely to be on their feet based on real conditions, so you're not missing a kid's game or burning paid time off on a day that's not going to produce. The deer movement forecast means missing

• 1:49:56Steven Rinella?

  fewer of the moments that matter, whether in the stand or back at home. Try it today in OnX Hunt.

• 1:50:03Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.