Ep. 862: Moose Hunting in North Dakota, Catfish Regs, and A Bigfoot Family

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en and the MeatEater crew discuss: Randall and Phil's film from BuckFest and The Big Buck Hunter Championship; Jordan Sillar's https://www.instagram.com/jordan.sillars/ Blood Trails, Season 2 drops https://www.themeateater.com/listen/blood-trails; a Land Access Initiative https://www.themeateater.com/pages/land-access update; Etsy bans fur; how birding improves your brain health; South Dakota becomes the first state to remove suppressors from the list of controlled weapons; Pennsylvania changes to blue and flathead catfish regulations; Bigfoot sightings in Ohio; 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

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• 2:26Steven Rinella?

  Welcome to the news show. On today's show, we're covering the ins and outs of Buck Fest, which is the National Big Buck Hunter Championship. We're going to talk about how South Dakota is going all in on suppressors. Etsy, like the place where you buy stuff, is the devil incarnate. Pennsylvania tweaks their catfish regulations in an interesting way. Spencer Newhart reports on Bigfoots as though there's anything to say other than that's dumb. But first,

• 2:59Steven Rinella?

  and more, but first,

• 3:03Steven Rinella?

  Randall on Buck Fest.

• 3:06Speaker 04

  Well, yeah. Last fall, as, as Radio Live listeners might know, Phil and I went to Nashville, Tennessee, to the National Championship of Big Buck Hunter, which is the arcade game that everyone knows and loves where you have a little pump action gun and shoot the Bucks and Bulls and Rams as they run across the screen. And so Phil and I went down there and Phil has produced, I think, an award-winning, or at least award-worthy, I should say award-worthy.

• 3:41Steven Rinella?

  Like maybe it'll get nominated.

• 3:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:44Steven Rinella?

  A nomination-worthy.

• 3:46Speaker 04

  Phil produced a film of our exploits down there. And it's a pretty crazy event. They have over 100 contestants from around the world. There's $125,000 in prize money. And so you have to qualify for the main competition, but they also have an amateur open. And the folks there were kind enough to slot me into the amateur open. So I tried my hand at this and you'll be able to see how that goes.

• 4:13Steven Rinella?

  We got your ass kicked.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  I don't want to spoil the video.

• 4:18Speaker 05

  Did you get a feel for the percentage of actual hunters in that competition pool?

• 4:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:25Speaker 05

  So covered in.

• 4:25Speaker 04

  That's covered. That's covered in the video. I mean, it is. It is funny because there's like. People wearing T. Like matching T shirts from their hometown bar in Saskatchewan. Like camo T shirts and on the image of the back, there's a deer with a crosshair on its head and you're like, these, these people are hunting, you know? I mean, there's people from all over. There's people from. Like New York City that live in Brooklyn and play at their little bar, but there's a lot of people that. You know, are like hardcore Wisconsin, Minnesota types.

• 4:56Steven Rinella?

  But is it mostly like drinkers? Are they drinkers?

• 5:00Speaker 04

  There's a lot of drinking involved.

• 5:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like it's.

• 5:02Speaker 04

  There is a lot of.

• 5:03Steven Rinella?

  It's like bar people.

• 5:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's bar people. It's bar people and we get into that. We do. We talked to the owner or sorry, we talked to the founder, the inventor of Big Buck Hunter.

• 5:13Steven Rinella?

  Um, and so that is he loaded? Though he'd make a lot of money off.

• 5:17Speaker 04

  I can't. I wasn't pocket watching the whole time, but I think he's doing well. Uh, he also invented the original Terminator arcade game. Have you ever seen like the little Uzis and the little pintle mounts and they shoot them at the screen? So. This guy's invented probably a lot of the arcade games that you've seen in your life.

• 5:34Steven Rinella?

  And you, you were hanging out with him.

• 5:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, we got, we got a little time with him, uh, before. I think before the final championship, uh, which was tremendously exciting.

• 5:44Steven Rinella?

  Phil, I saw a lot of, when I was watching the video, you playing the video game. I saw a lot of things that would be illegal.

• 5:50Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 5:51Steven Rinella?

  Like you guys are shooting at salmon and stuff.

• 5:53Speaker 04

  It's not, it's not representative.

• 5:55Speaker 05

  I was gonna ask if you expressed Steve's grave ethical concerns of around surrounding this game.

• 6:00Speaker 06

  That's the whole video, actually.

• 6:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, no, I wanted to be a talking head in that video, talk about all the wildlife violations I saw.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  The one, the one question I did ask him, I don't know if this made it into the final cut is I had wondered whether animal rights activists had protested.

• 6:15Speaker 05

  That is in the final cut, yes.

• 6:17Speaker 04

  Because.

• 6:17Steven Rinella?

  Do they protest it?

• 6:19Speaker 04

  He's, he said they don't.

• 6:21Steven Rinella?

  Um, I protest it. Listen, my buddy Jimmy Dorn, when he used to have his pizza joint.

• 6:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:28Steven Rinella?

  I'd take my kids down there and I would forbid my kids from playing Big Buck Hunter. And just to screw with me, he'd give them a roll of quarters.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 6:36Steven Rinella?

  And then they'd play it and he would do it just to make me mad.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  Well.

• 6:41Steven Rinella?

  Check out the video this Sunday. I like Jimmy's style. No, I can't support it, man. Shooting fish and all that. You're also shooting zombies at some point? Shooting way too much of everything. Yeah.

• 6:51Speaker 07

  It's the funniest thing you guys will ever see.

• 6:54Steven Rinella?

  You're taking shots that shouldn't be taken.

• 6:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. If you're someone out there that's like, I really don't like Meat Eaters, uh, serious hunting and fishing videos. This might be the one for you.

• 7:06Steven Rinella?

  You know another thing, another problem I have with the video?

• 7:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:10Steven Rinella?

  People look dumb playing that game.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  Come on.

• 7:14Steven Rinella?

  With that little toy gun and they're like.

• 7:15Speaker 04

  These are my people you're talking about.

• 7:17Steven Rinella?

  It's not like a lot of noises. It just doesn't look like, it's just not a great look.

• 7:21Speaker 07

  Okay. In the second iteration of this video, you know, in a month or so, we'll have Steve screen and screen commentary. Mm hmm.

• 7:30Speaker 06

  And they are like using it. It is like a sawed off pump action shotgun.

• 7:35Steven Rinella?

  That never runs out.

• 7:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 7:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 06

  I think the most telling thing that it's not for hunters is that they hold this one in like late October, right?

• 7:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's, that's the tough, that is one tough thing.

• 7:45Speaker 06

  You wouldn't attract a lot of.

• 7:46Speaker 04

  The, the next one is in Milwaukee.

• 7:49Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really? You're gonna go? Are you done?

• 7:51Speaker 04

  It's, it's just that it lines up real unfortunately with the Montana general season.

• 7:56Steven Rinella?

  Got it. But you got your ass kicked or you can't say yet what happened.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  I think you've spoiled it at this point.

• 8:02Steven Rinella?

  If you won all the prize money, I would have heard about it.

• 8:05Speaker 04

  If you won all the prize money, I wouldn't be sitting in this chair.

• 8:08Speaker 06

  Here's why I think you should go watch it. I believe this is probably the first Phil Taylor joint.

• 8:13Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 06

  Phil Taylor shot it, edited it.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  I am just, I'm an empty vessel, uh, for Phil to pour his creative talents into.

• 8:22Steven Rinella?

  No, that's, that's not the, the, the powers that be were kind enough to let Randall and I get on a plane and go to Nashville. When we, I, we had no plan. We're just like, let's just shoot stuff and we'll put it together later. And I think what we, what we made is pretty fun.

• 8:34Speaker 04

  And I will say the, the big buck hunter, we should point this out, the big buck hunter people invited us out there. They put us up. They treated us like royalty. Um, George, Dave Snipes, they really took care of us and we had a blast. So. I mean, if you're in the Milwaukee area and you have the slightest interest in. I don't know, drinking, uh, Big Buck Hunter, just like seeing people having a really good time. You should check this out, uh, in October.

• 9:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I thought you said Minneapolis.

• 9:05Speaker 04

  He said Milwaukee.

• 9:06Steven Rinella?

  Milwaukee, yeah.

• 9:08Speaker 04

  You could go to the meat eater store and then go to Big Buck Fest.

• 9:11Speaker 05

  Phil, did you find, uh, some camaraderie with like fellow gamers? Are they not in your circle of, uh?

• 9:17Steven Rinella?

  I mean, there, there is kind of, there's a kind of, there's kind of a wall that separates, uh, arc arcade gamers with, with home, with home gamers. It's not, it's not really the same kind of like light gun stuff, joystick stuff. It's a little bit different. Like totally different kinds of dorks. That, that's right. Different breed.

• 9:35Speaker 04

  But I, I, I wasn't sure.

• 9:38Steven Rinella?

  It's like, not all dorks get long.

• 9:40Speaker 04

  I, I wanted to make sure that Phil enjoyed his time in Nashville, so we did go to the same tiki bar two nights in a row.

• 9:46Steven Rinella?

  That's right. Yeah.

• 9:48Speaker 06

  What a win.

• 9:48Steven Rinella?

  I got my.

• 9:49Speaker 04

  That didn't make it.

• 9:49Speaker 05

  That's a good use of company resources there.

• 9:52Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna have to review these spent expenses.

• 9:57Steven Rinella?

  It's like, yeah. Why around midnight where it's just like a flurry of $21 purchases at a tiki bar? What the hell's a scorpion bowling? Why did you order eight of them?

• 10:08Speaker 07

  Scorpion's wildlife.

• 10:09Speaker 04

  Navy grogs.

• 10:10Steven Rinella?

  All right, Blood Trail, season two is out.

• 10:13Speaker 07

  Uh, yep, it's about to be out, uh, on Thursday, April 16th is when the first episode drops, hosted by our friend and colleague, Jordan Sillar. It's, uh, our network's outdoor true crime show. Um, this first episode without saying too much, uh, is, is actually pretty gruesome. Um, and happened outside of Helena, Montana, where a hunter disappeared, uh, back in 2011 and his remains were later found in two separate sites. Um, so that's the first of a, a number of episodes that'll be dropping and please follow Blood Trails, uh, wherever

• 10:54Speaker 07

  you listen to your podcasts and you can watch the video episodes on the Mediaer Podcast YouTube channel. So please subscribe to that.

• 11:03Steven Rinella?

  Okay, we got an update from Mark Kenyon on the launch of our brand new 2026 Land Access Initiative, which we're going to hear about right now. This is a real good one. Take it away, Mark. All right, Mark Kenyon here with an update on Meat Eater's 2026 Land Access Initiative project. We are kicking this latest round off here on April 14th on a really cool deal that we're doing with Onex. So, so here's what's going to happen. There is a big chunk of land out in central North Carolina, surrounding something called the Tucker Town Reservoir. This is about 4,000 acres that have been privately owned, but historically open to public access.

• 11:46Steven Rinella?

  This has been great deer hunting ground, people have been waterfowl hunting, turkey hunting, you know, getting access to the reservoir and fishing. Unfortunately, the landowner of this 4,000 or so acres of land has put this ground up for sale to the highest bidder. Alcoa owns this. They are now going to be taking bids, taking offers on this land. That would mean 4,000-ish acres of land, no longer publicly accessible, no longer open to hunting or fishing. So there's this organization there in the state called the Three Rivers Land Trust that has now started a campaign to try to raise funds, buy some of these lands and transfer that ownership to the state of North Carolina

• 12:30Steven Rinella?

  so that it can become officially public land and be accessible for public hunting and fishing forever. That is a pretty awesome idea. That's something that I'm really excited about. That's something that Meat Eater is excited about, that Onex is excited about. And so we've been brainstorming about, you know, how can we help? How can we make this possible? And here's what we've landed on. We have landed on helping out with a 30-day fundraising campaign for this project in which we each, Meat Eater and Onex, are going to provide up to $100,000 in matching funds. So what that means is that for every dollar that a participant donates, we will be able to donate a

• 13:13Steven Rinella?

  Match dollar to that up to $200,000. So we could, if you think about this, if you donate a dollar, Meteor donates a dollar and Onyx donates a dollar, you're, you're tripling your impact. If you want to participate and help keep the Tucker Town game lands public and accessible. It's, it's super exciting. It's, it's a great opportunity, I think, to make this idea of keeping public lands, public tangible, right? So many of these public land issues seem like they're happening far away or outside of our control. Well, here is an opportunity to do something real that can make a real on the ground impact. And we don't need to wait for the government. We don't need to wait for a law. We don't need to lobby against a bad bill. We can just put

• 13:57Steven Rinella?

  our money where our mouth is and try to keep this land public. So that's what we're going to do at Meteor. That's what Onyx is going to do. And that's what we're hoping that everybody listening can do as well. We're going to be running this campaign from April 14th through May 14th, and you can learn more about it or actually donate and be a part of this by going over to the Save Tucker Town campaign website. You can find that by going to trlt.org/save- -tuckertown or just Google it or go to the Meteor website. You'll see all the details there. But we are thrilled about this. We're excited. It's 30 days. We're matching up to $200,000. That's Meteor and Onyx, plus all of you guys listening. We can do this together. We can

• 14:42Steven Rinella?

  help get some of these parcels made public again. Keep hunting and angling out there on the landscape and keep it public. All right, man. Great news from Mark. We're excited about this one. It's a great fundraising campaign. Again, partnering with Onyx and Three Rivers Land Trust. Remember, April 14th through May 14th, we're going to match up to 200,000 bucks. So let's make as much of an impact as we possibly can. And also I've been bugging Mark Kenyon, who's not like responding to my prods of getting the auction house oddities fired back up because we're like way overloaded with auction house of oddities items. Like a, a, a, a brand spanking new,

• 15:24Steven Rinella?

  virtually brand spanking new Honda 150 horsepower outboard.

• 15:29Speaker 05

  I wish my boat would hold that thing. I'd take it.

• 15:31Steven Rinella?

  A bunch of barn board. Outboards, barn boards.

• 15:35Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 15:35Steven Rinella?

  We've got all kinds of other jobs. I was looking at something in my garage here today. I'm gonna sell on the auction house, guns.

• 15:40Speaker 06

  Corey was talking about cleaning out the storage unit and he found a canoe or a kayak in there.

• 15:44Steven Rinella?

  A kayak.

• 15:45Speaker 06

  That's gonna be in there.

• 15:46Steven Rinella?

  Dude, eh, oh, we're gonna, we're gonna have so much stuff in that auction house. I just thought of something really good the other day.

• 15:51Speaker 04

  Well, I think I might.

• 15:52Steven Rinella?

  Put some of my own guns in.

• 15:53Speaker 04

  I might retire from ice fishing and do all my ice fishing stuff.

• 15:56Steven Rinella?

  Sell to someone more north.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 15:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we're not, who'd have thought? We could live this close to the Canadian border and not be north enough for ice fishing anymore. Uh, oh, not, speaking of ice fishing, I, I got a favorite to ask. Because of a writing project I'm working on. I need to know from people out there who fish Lake Champlain, like, is the bite hot? I'm talking hard water, preferably. Is the bite hot? I need to go out there and look around at some things. And when I'm out there, I want to hit the, hit the hard water bite.

• 16:27Speaker 06

  What, what do you think you're gonna catch? Perch?

• 16:29Steven Rinella?

  I don't know.

• 16:30Speaker 06

  You mean now or in the future?

• 16:32Steven Rinella?

  In the future, not now. It's melted off now. No, next winter. I'm looking for a guy, I'm looking for a guy, gal, whoever, who likes to hit the hard water, who wants to take me out and show me the best of Champlain. And while we're there, I'm gonna tell them a story that'll curl their hair.

• 16:46Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 16:47Steven Rinella?

  About why I'm there.

• 16:49Speaker 07

  So write in, folks.

• 16:50Speaker 06

  Looking for Champy, right?

• 16:53Steven Rinella?

  What's that mean?

• 16:54Speaker 04

  It's cryptid.

• 16:54Speaker 06

  Nothing. That's, that's their version of Loch Ness.

• 16:58Steven Rinella?

  No, that's not what I'm doing there. No, it's way better than that. Even if that was real.

• 17:04Speaker 06

  This would still trump that.

• 17:06Steven Rinella?

  If, if I could go there and tell them two things.

• 17:08Speaker 06

  Uh huh.

• 17:08Steven Rinella?

  I could say, here's thing one. I found that thing is dead on the beach.

• 17:12Speaker 06

  There's a plesiosaur.

• 17:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's dead on the beach. I can show you right now. Or I can tell you the story that I'm gonna tell you.

• 17:17Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 17:18Steven Rinella?

  They would be better off taking my story.

• 17:20Speaker 06

  That's good.

• 17:20Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 17:21Steven Rinella?

  Not my story.

• 17:22Speaker 04

  But you don't wanna, you don't wanna alienate these folks. Maybe they're invested in regional lore.

• 17:29Steven Rinella?

  I'll feel them out.

• 17:32Steven Rinella?

  Corrections?

• 17:33Speaker 04

  Correction.

• 17:35Steven Rinella?

  Corrections. Okay, the winner of this week's correction of the week will get a Moultrie Edge 3 Pro Trail Camera, plus a one-year subscription. You know what I'm thinking? You know, I was just talking about auctioning guns off. I'm thinking about giving a gun. I might give a gun out of my personal stash. One of these weeks, just out of the, out of the blue.

• 17:53Speaker 06

  Damn.

• 17:53Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna give a gun from my personal stash to the, to the corrections winner.

• 17:57Speaker 07

  We're gonna have a billion.

• 17:58Steven Rinella?

  And they gotta make sure they don't have a restraining order, so I'm gonna send it through an FFL, not mailing it to them.

• 18:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, maybe there's a correction of the year. That's like Steve's gun.

• 18:07Steven Rinella?

  No, it's just gonna be a random little thing.

• 18:12Speaker 04

  We'll have left-handed correction week.

• 18:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, man, a lot of corrections about our recent hot dog, our hot dog, uh, I was gonna call it Expose. It wasn't an expose.

• 18:24Speaker 04

  It would've been better, though, if you marketed it that way.

• 18:27Steven Rinella?

  Well, he didn't want to expose.

• 18:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 18:29Steven Rinella?

  I kept being like, what's the nastiest thing you've ever seen him throw into a hot dog at a hot dog factory? He's like, it's all lies.

• 18:36Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 18:37Steven Rinella?

  And I prodded him. I said, if it wasn't lies, could you tell me?

• 18:40Speaker 06

  You worked that angle pretty hard.

• 18:41Steven Rinella?

  He says, I would tell you if it was a lie.

• 18:45Speaker 04

  Uh, so we had, we had one correction from, uh, Cody Sanders in Alabama, and he said.

• 18:50Steven Rinella?

  Colonel Sanders.

• 18:50Speaker 04

  Cody.

• 18:51Steven Rinella?

  Oh, sorry.

• 18:52Speaker 04

  He says, uh, John mentioned the white gooey stuff that comes out of fish when you cook or smoke. It is fat, but it is actually not. It is called albumin, which is a protein found in fish. Albumin is a water soluble protein naturally found in fish muscle. You'll usually see more of it when the fish is cooked too hot or too fast, or with lean fish like salmon or cod. It can also happen if the fish wasn't brined or rested beforehand.

• 19:15Steven Rinella?

  Did he just say lean?

• 19:16Speaker 04

  That's what I, I, I've got, I want to get to this after.

• 19:19Steven Rinella?

  Oh, this guy needs a correction wiped right back in his face.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 19:23Steven Rinella?

  Best way I've found a deal with it. Face, like, he's like, oh, he's like, oh, spiking a volleyball, but doesn't realize I'm spiking it back.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's, he's messed up bad already.

• 19:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's a volleyball term.

• 19:34Speaker 07

  Right about that, that gooey stuff.

• 19:36Steven Rinella?

  I, yeah, he's right about that, but lean fish like salmon or cod would be like me saying, trying to think.

• 19:46Speaker 06

  Trying to give him, give him time here.

• 19:47Steven Rinella?

  Black things, like the two colors on a panda.

• 19:52Speaker 04

  Black things like that mountain goat and that black bear.

• 19:55Speaker 06

  No.

• 19:57Speaker 07

  Or what about like lean meat like fat or ven- like pig or venison?

• 20:03Steven Rinella?

  Brody's right. Colby B. White things like mountain goats and black bears. That's the equivalent of what he's saying. Go on Randall.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  Uh, the best way I've found to deal with it is just smoking it low and slow. A saltwater brine for 10 to 15 minutes helps in keeping temps around 160 to 180 does too. Even then you might still see albumin. You can control it, not completely eliminate it, but it's safe to eat. Appreciate everything y'all do. Love the show.

• 20:28Steven Rinella?

  Colonel Sanders, thanks buddy. That's a good one. I like it. He screwed up a little bit. That's cool.

• 20:33Speaker 05

  Are we gonna address his screw up?

• 20:35Speaker 04

  We just did.

• 20:36Steven Rinella?

  We just did.

• 20:36Speaker 05

  I don't feel like we explained it well.

• 20:39Steven Rinella?

  It's a good one though.

• 20:40Speaker 05

  Cod is lean, salmon is fatty.

• 20:43Steven Rinella?

  Cod's lean, salmon's fatty. So him saying lean fish like salmon or cod, it's like the fattest damn fish out there.

• 20:48Speaker 05

  And I don't think you're gonna see a lot of albumin in it.

• 20:50Steven Rinella?

  You know what it could be? He could be fishing spawned out chums. He's fishing spawned out chums. The kind that are going the wrong way down the river.

• 20:58Speaker 05

  They're not really swimming, they're just kinda drifting.

• 21:01Speaker 04

  Zombies. They wrap around your legs when you're waiting in.

• 21:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's kinda like, you're going the wrong way. Yeah, cause he's all like half dead.

• 21:10Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 21:12Steven Rinella?

  Okay, another one. Uh, uh, this, we gotta put TSS to, to the, TSS to rest.

• 21:18Speaker 07

  It'll be the last time. I'm an attorney. This is a gentleman, uh, Mike. I'm an attorney and not a particularly elite attorney, uh, and failing to disclose material fact to a tribunal, omission constitutes an act of dishonesty and could subject an attorney to discipline by the state bar in the jurisdiction where the attorney practices and or subject the malfeasant to, to sanctions. Now, this is not Steve's fault because Corinne is responsible for production content. Hmm. Boom.

• 21:51Steven Rinella?

  I like that.

• 21:52Speaker 07

  Smack in the face. After listening to the various podcasts recently about TSS, I did my duty and ran to my local sports store to see what was in stock for TSS. I could buy up everything they had and hoard it as instructed. Knowing I live in a state where I'm more likely to draw an elk tag than a turkey tag, it seems there might be some TSS on the shelf and maybe at a decent price. Imagine my surprise when not only did I find a bunch of shotgun shells labeled TSS, but the mug of this familiar fellow smiling at me. See the picture below.

• 22:24Steven Rinella?

  On a pack of third degree.

• 22:27Speaker 05

  This guy doesn't understand the, the, the.

• 22:30Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 22:30Speaker 07

  So, so to the audience, what this gentleman has in hand are two boxes of Federal.

• 22:39Steven Rinella?

  Third degree.

• 22:40Speaker 07

  Meat eater ammo with Steve's face.

• 22:42Speaker 05

  He's got some three and a half inches and some three inches and 12 gauge.

• 22:45Speaker 07

  Okay. He says, I don't recall any discussion on the podcast about us mentioning TSS or that we sponsor TSS or Federal. It seems like a material omission.

• 22:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, sure. It's a good point. But this isn't made anymore. This is a long time ago.

• 23:04Speaker 05

  And it's only got like a small dose of TSS.

• 23:07Steven Rinella?

  Got a small dose TSS. I'm surprised you even found some because that was from a long time ago. I was, I was fired from the cover.

• 23:15Speaker 06

  It's got a logo. It's like a collector's item. We retired that logo probably four years ago.

• 23:20Speaker 05

  It's good ammo though.

• 23:21Speaker 07

  He can probably put it on eBay and get much more than it, that it's being sold for, which is like 27.99.

• 23:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, write a Federal letter and say, I want Steve back on that ammo.

• 23:33Speaker 05

  This guy offers, bring me some, like I'll meet him at the exit on I-90. He can give me some of this stuff.

• 23:39Steven Rinella?

  So yes, we did not mention, I am talking about TSS. Like picture that I was trying to play a shrewd, that would have been shrewd. Like let's say I had some kind of financial interest in selling TSS and I'm like, TSS alert, hoard it now.

• 23:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 23:56Steven Rinella?

  Right? And then he, and then I'm like selling all this TSS, but I have nothing to gain from that TSS. I have nothing to gain from that TSS. But still, great correction.

• 24:05Speaker 04

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• 24:35Steven Rinella?

  I'm holding in my hot little hand here, the first ever folding knife from Montana Knife Company. Dude, this thing is sweet. They like reimagined folding knives. You touch this thing and you know you are holding a quality product. Montana Knife Company, founded by Josh Smith, one of the most experienced master bladesmiths in the world. The Montana is the first folder Josh has built at production scale with a team of engineers and machinists who could match what he does on the bench. G10 scales with a 3D milled micro texture. Titanium hardware. A custom deep carry clip with flathead screws set flush. This is a rock solid clip.

• 25:20Steven Rinella?

  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. I travel quite a bit and when I'm home, it's very easy to stay on a rigid food routine and eat the right kinds of food at the right time.

• 26:05Steven Rinella?

  But when you're on the road, it's hard to stay in your routine and like diet can really start to fall apart. I've seen it and that's why I like Athletic Greens. AG1 is already the standard for daily foundational nutrition. AG1 Pro is what's next. It's built for people who don't want to stop there. Creatine, C A H M B, advanced gut lining support on top of everything AG1 Next Gen already delivers. You can get it in travel packs. One travel pack, 10 to 12 ounces of cold water every morning. If you're already taking creatine separately, AG1 Pro simplifies your stack. One thing in the morning covers more than your current routine might for less than a dollar more per serving.

• 26:49Steven Rinella?

  AG1 Pro supports protein synthesis, helps reduce protein breakdown, and supports muscle recovery and consistent training performance. Visit drinkag1.com/meateater and get an AG1 Pro Yeti Shaker in your AG1 Pro Welcome Kit. Again, that's drinkag1.com/meateater. Grab yours now. Another correction, number three.

• 27:19Steven Rinella?

  So this guy says, while listening to episode 857, I was especially intrigued when Steve discussed the map showing the locations of the oldest known cervid fossils. He mentioned that no moose fossils older than 15,000 years have been found south of the Alaska Yukon Line, which immediately caught my attention. He thought it sounded surprising. He did a little digging, pun intended. He says, "In the course of my search, I came across a fascinating find from the 1970s, a stag moose specimen." Stag moose specimen. Discovered in a gravel pit near Jesper Park in Polk County, Iowa. Approximately 30,000 years old. He's like, "What do you make of that?"

• 28:04Steven Rinella?

  Well, it's not a moose. Different critter. Different critter. So I don't know what to make of that. Different critter.

• 28:14Steven Rinella?

  But still, good point now. I don't think it's going to win. I think the winner is here.

• 28:21Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Lot of guys write, we picked, we just picked, we randomly picked one.

• 28:27Steven Rinella?

  We're talking about smoke phase wild turkey. So when you see a light colored wild turkey, I was saying on the show, someone was showing some pictures. I don't know what we're talking about. And two of my friends, unrelated, have recently sent me pictures of smoke phase turkeys. I said, when I see a smoke phase turkey, I see domestic turkey genetic introgression. Meaning when someone sends me that picture, the first thing in my mind is there's some domestic turkeys around there and they've been getting it on, mixing it up, making love with wild turkeys, throwing these light colored offspring. Okay.

• 29:07Steven Rinella?

  Guy writes in and says, I recently heard on Lake Pickles podcast, an interview with Dr. Mike Chamberlain. Okay.

• 29:17Steven Rinella?

  And he says, Dr. Chamberlain points out on the Backwoods University podcast, that's what Lake Pickles show is called.

• 29:23Speaker 07

  On our network.

• 29:24Steven Rinella?

  That he himself used to have similar thoughts. The important word there being that the wild turkey doc, Dr. Chamberlain says, he used to have similar thoughts, but has been shocked that turkeys can be 100% wild and have these odd color phases. He states that DNA testing confirms there are multiple paths to which a turkey can display the smoke phase and other unique color phases, including one that does not involve a domestic or heritage cross. Furthermore, Tom Glines, a former N W T F regional director said in 2011 that

• 30:10Steven Rinella?

  the partially white or smoke phase turkeys occur naturally.

• 30:17Steven Rinella?

  Other sources estimate that 1% of turkeys display or carry the recessive smoke phase gene. They're coming from a feller named Joey.

• 30:31Steven Rinella?

  Final correction.

• 30:34Steven Rinella?

  This kind of blows my mind. This might win, but I think not.

• 30:38Speaker 05

  Up, up to me now?

• 30:39Steven Rinella?

  Basically, it's this. Oh, yeah, go ahead.

• 30:41Speaker 05

  Um, who wrote the title for this one? Good moose, this should be good moose hunting.

• 30:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 30:49Speaker 05

  Um.

• 30:49Speaker 07

  It's probably me.

• 30:50Steven Rinella?

  Stag moose.

• 30:51Speaker 07

  Damn, sorry.

• 30:51Steven Rinella?

  Good stag moose hunting.

• 30:53Speaker 05

  I like this way this guy starts out. No bona fides to start with. Not long ago, I would have been in the same boat as the news crew, thinking there are very few moose in North Dakota. I'm not sure exactly what we said last episode, but.

• 31:04Steven Rinella?

  I was, I expressed surprise about there being moose. Or I screwed up and said, oh, no, you know what I said?

• 31:09Speaker 07

  Around the.

• 31:10Steven Rinella?

  That poacher had a dead moose.

• 31:12Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 31:12Steven Rinella?

  And I said, he must have got that from somewhere else.

• 31:14Speaker 05

  I got you. Hardly enough to hold a season for. Three weeks ago, I was shocking, I was surprisingly shocked to read that North Dakota has a very generous moose season and issues more tags than I expected, especially compared to Texas, where I live. While in Kingsville, Texas, to watch our collegiate son pitch for the Kingsville, Texas, Kingsville, Texas A&M Havelinas.

• 31:35Steven Rinella?

  What a flex that is.

• 31:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:37Steven Rinella?

  What a like, what a, like, out of nowhere.

• 31:41Speaker 07

  Maybe he's just very proud, proud dad.

• 31:44Speaker 05

  But they do have a good mascot, the Havelinas. That's pretty sweet.

• 31:47Steven Rinella?

  I like this guy. Yeah.

• 31:48Speaker 05

  Um, to my pleasant surprise, I read a small article about North Dakota and their big game harvesting reports. The details were unbelievable enough that I took a picture. Yada, yada, yada. Uh, here are the 2025 moose harvest numbers, according to the North Dakota fishing game. Uh, 292 moose tags issued, 281 hunters. I'm not sure how that.

• 32:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I don't get that.

• 32:12Speaker 05

  Um, 245 animals harvested, 147 bulls and 98 cows.

• 32:18Steven Rinella?

  They got so many moose, they're killing a hundred cows.

• 32:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:21Steven Rinella?

  What's up with the 292 tags and 281 hunters? Like, some dudes must have dropped, some dudes drew and didn't hunt.

• 32:27Speaker 05

  Didn't hunt, I guess.

• 32:28Steven Rinella?

  It's not like they're not finding people who want those tags.

• 32:30Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 32:30Steven Rinella?

  Dudes drew and didn't hunt.

• 32:32Speaker 05

  So, yeah.

• 32:33Steven Rinella?

  So they got moose coming out of their ears.

• 32:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:35Speaker 07

  He validated this with his brother who lives in North Dakota.

• 32:38Speaker 05

  And those are not Chyris moose, like we were talking about a couple of weeks ago. I think they're Canadians.

• 32:43Steven Rinella?

  Is that right?

• 32:43Speaker 05

  I think so, yeah.

• 32:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 32:45Speaker 05

  And there, those things are coming into Montana now.

• 32:49Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 32:49Speaker 05

  So like northeastern Montana has a growing population of these.

• 32:54Steven Rinella?

  Hot dog.

• 32:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a line that you can draw coming down from the Canadian border in central Montana. And it kind of cuts along the Missouri River country and then down southeast. And that's the dividing line for Canadian Shires.

• 33:06Speaker 05

  And you'll see those things standing in alfalfa fields out there.

• 33:09Steven Rinella?

  I'm learning all kinds of stuff. All right, to recap, uh, let's go right into voting. No need to recap. We got TSS, the five, the, put the TSS to rest. No, no. Albumon?

• 33:21Speaker 05

  No.

• 33:22Steven Rinella?

  How do you say it? Al.

• 33:23Speaker 05

  Albumon.

• 33:24Steven Rinella?

  Albumon. Are you sure you put the emphasis on that syllable?

• 33:26Speaker 04

  I'm sure we'll hear if I don't.

• 33:28Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  There's a trail cam on the line.

• 33:32Steven Rinella?

  TSS.

• 33:35Steven Rinella?

  Moose fossils. Smoke face Turks.

• 33:40Steven Rinella?

  Moose in North Dakota. Oh, well, we weren't voting yet, I was just doing a review.

• 33:44Speaker 07

  Oh, okay.

• 33:44Speaker 04

  You said no need to review.

• 33:46Steven Rinella?

  I know, that changed my mind.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 33:48Steven Rinella?

  Thanks for passing that info. Albumon. Oh, sorry. No votes.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Strikethin'.

• 33:54Steven Rinella?

  TSS. No votes.

• 33:58Steven Rinella?

  Moose fossils.

• 34:01Steven Rinella?

  No votes. Oh. Smoke face Turks.

• 34:05Speaker 07

  Right here.

• 34:06Steven Rinella?

  One vote on smoke face Turks.

• 34:08Speaker 07

  He pays attention.

• 34:09Steven Rinella?

  Clarifying that, uh, North Dakotans are awash in moose.

• 34:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, overrun by them.

• 34:14Steven Rinella?

  Big time winner.

• 34:15Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 34:15Steven Rinella?

  Just got himself a Moultrie trail camera. Got himself a one year subscription. So he can put it up and catch some of them moose.

• 34:22Speaker 05

  Well, he's in Texas.

• 34:23Steven Rinella?

  Send it to his brother.

• 34:24Speaker 04

  Legendary Texas resident.

• 34:25Steven Rinella?

  He can put it up and get pictures of his kid playing baseball.

• 34:28Speaker 05

  Havelinas.

• 34:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he can just put it on the, the post on the edge of the baseball court.

• 34:35Speaker 05

  All right.

• 34:36Steven Rinella?

  Get his kid in there swinging away.

• 34:40Speaker 07

  Get three hundred thousand corrections about baseball court.

• 34:43Steven Rinella?

  Etiquette question.

• 34:44Speaker 05

  Okay, I'll, I'll do this one. Etiquet, etiquette question about turkey hunting. I have a family debate. Do we got a picture for this one?

• 34:51Steven Rinella?

  I don't think, you know what, I think, I think. Let's never mind that it's pure white.

• 34:56Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 34:56Steven Rinella?

  Let's never mind that she shot her neighbors.

• 34:58Speaker 05

  Doesn't matter anyway.

• 35:00Steven Rinella?

  That she shot her neighbor's pet turkey.

• 35:02Speaker 05

  Um, I have a family debate I would like some outside input on. I'm an avid turkey hunter and have gotten my calling down to the point where I can reliably harvest a bird every year.

• 35:12Steven Rinella?

  Good for him.

• 35:12Speaker 05

  Good for you, yeah. Um, I recently started dating someone and she's a very avid hunter, but had never gone after turkeys. We decided to give it a shot last Saturday and she harvested her first bird. Got that picture?

• 35:25Steven Rinella?

  What's that, then? She poaching?

• 35:27Speaker 05

  Got it in the head. Nice work.

• 35:28Speaker 04

  Central Texas.

• 35:29Steven Rinella?

  That's his new girlfriend?

• 35:30Speaker 05

  Yeah. Only thing is, this was no normal Jake, as pictured. You can see that sucker's pretty white. Um, my figuring was this was an opportunity of a lifetime, therefore I told my girlfriend to take the shot. Our issue is, is that we have an, who, Spencer, move your cursor, I can't read. Our issue is that we have an unspoken no Jake policy on my family's property between myself, father and brother. This is in Central Texas.

• 35:58Steven Rinella?

  It's unspoken.

• 36:00Speaker 05

  Well, it must have been spoken at some point.

• 36:02Steven Rinella?

  I was gonna say, it seems like they're speaking about it now.

• 36:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:06Steven Rinella?

  I think it officially just became a spoken policy.

• 36:08Speaker 05

  I've been ribbed very aggressively over the past few days for harvesting that bird. However, it is my understanding that the odds of a Jake making it to the next year are low to begin with. Even lower when they stick out like that. I'm standing by my decision and am looking for indications since we likely would have never seen that bird again. Also looking to brag that her first bird was that unique. Anyway, input is appreciated. My input is, I don't like, the only time I got anything against shooting Jakes is when it's illegal to shoot them.

• 36:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's a good damn girlfriend he's got. It's a great turkey. I don't care. Like, especially with first time hunters.

• 36:46Speaker 04

  And this walking away photo. I would think this is a swan.

• 36:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:51Steven Rinella?

  Let's not a shot that turkey. I I'm all for I hundred percent like any unless they make it illegal because they're trying to curb harvest. If it's legal, if your state fishing game agency says you're allowed to shoot a Jake, shoot a Jake.

• 37:05Speaker 05

  Yep. If it makes you happy, go for it.

• 37:07Steven Rinella?

  You know, it's not it's not this. You can't like bring morality or something or ethics into the idea of shooting a good to eat turkey.

• 37:15Speaker 05

  And I don't even think you need to worry about like, oh, he's probably not going to be around next year.

• 37:19Steven Rinella?

  Like, it's just like, it's a good to eat turkey.

• 37:20Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 37:21Steven Rinella?

  The fishing game agency has established that they they got the numbers to to to shoot Jake, shoot Jake, especially if it's your brand new damn girlfriend and a white one walks by.

• 37:29Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 37:30Speaker 06

  Dad and brother jealous.

• 37:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. They probably don't have a new girlfriend.

• 37:36Steven Rinella?

  They probably got some old.

• 37:39Speaker 05

  If you guys are listening, you should send a DNA sample at sucker to the people we were talking about earlier at the Turkey DNA project. You'll find out if it's wild albino, if it's got some, what'd you say, domestic introgression? There you go.

• 37:58Steven Rinella?

  Introgression.

• 37:59Speaker 05

  Randall tax dollars for conservation.

• 38:01Speaker 04

  All right. This email comes to us. Well, I'll get to that. In a recent episode, Steve briefly said, I'm paraphrasing here, didn't some state increase their taxes by some tiny amount and it's making shitloads of money for conservation?

• 38:15Steven Rinella?

  I sound like an idiot when you read it like that. Do I really sound like?

• 38:19Speaker 04

  No, no, you you say it faster. It rolls off the tongue.

• 38:25Speaker 04

  Didn't some state increase their tax by some tiny amount? It's making shitloads of money for conservation? I think he's referring to Minnesota's Clean Water, Land and Legacy Constitutional Amendment of 2008, which increased our sales tax by three eighths of one percent. That money over $2 billion since 2008 all goes back to various conservation measures, but of particular interest to the meat eater crowd, this funding has helped purchase over 300,000 acres of public land as well as habitat work on hundreds of thousands more. If I was giving one piece of advice to sportsmen, conservationists and public land lovers, mimic what is happening in Minnesota because going because going in on X every other week, going on on X.

• 39:04Steven Rinella?

  Let me hit that line.

• 39:05Speaker 04

  Yep, please.

• 39:07Steven Rinella?

  Because going on on X every other week and seeing a new place to hunt, fish and recreate in your home state is amazing.

• 39:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, you nailed it. Longtime listener, love the show, love the news split. Thanks, Sabine. And Sabine is the Minnesota State Coordinator for Pheasants Forever.

• 39:27Steven Rinella?

  That's great.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  So.

• 39:28Steven Rinella?

  Carl Malcolm has been talking about, because he, Carl Malcolm was telling me over dinner recently, like about a tale of two states. The funding mechanism in Wisconsin being so stressed and the funding mechanism in Minnesota being so effective, that Minnesota is going around buying new public land for its residents. Meanwhile, Wisconsin's suffering on funding. And so Carl talking about the need to get creative around funding wildlife agencies. And they've done a good job. Missouri's done a good job.

• 39:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, and you can go to, I looked this up, after I read this email, you can go to the Congressional Sportsman's Foundation website and they have a whole page explaining conservation sales tax in different states and how different states have done it and how well it's working and all that stuff. Like they have a whole overview of the subject. So it's kind of interesting to see the different models out there.

• 40:21Steven Rinella?

  I'd like to see a five cents on the dollar sales tax all goes toward, all goes, five cents on a dollar. Would people vote for that? Five cents on a dollar sales tax and it all goes to conservation.

• 40:35Steven Rinella?

  That'd be a narrow, that wouldn't win.

• 40:39Speaker 04

  No. But no one would be mad at you.

• 40:44Speaker 06

  You wouldn't have to do it for very long. They did $2 billion since 2008. If you did five cents out of a dollar, you just got to put up.

• 40:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we're just gonna do it one year.

• 40:51Speaker 06

  Five years.

• 40:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, five years, then we'll go back to normal. No taxes. Because then you'd have, what do you call it when you have a big pot of money, like universities and stuff? An endowment. You build an endowment.

• 41:04Steven Rinella?

  If you buy stuff from Etsy, quit.

• 41:07Steven Rinella?

  Sons of bitches.

• 41:08Speaker 04

  That's right. Um, this is from the past week. Uh, Etsy, as of August 11th, uh, so a couple of months out from now. What is it? Four months out? Uh, they will ban the sale of all animal fur regardless of age or origin as part of its quote unquote, ongoing biodiversity efforts.

• 41:30Steven Rinella?

  My god.

• 41:32Speaker 04

  Um, and so they've clarified that.

• 41:34Steven Rinella?

  Biodiversity.

• 41:35Speaker 04

  They're talking about the fur of animals killed primarily for their pelts. Uh, it does not include taxidermy or byproduct materials such as leather, sheepskin wool, or mohair. Um, and it includes stuff like the, the age and origin context is, I mean, like, basically means if you have a fur coat from the 1920s, uh, you can't sell it on Etsy.

• 42:04Speaker 05

  But you can do taxidermy.

• 42:06Speaker 04

  Even though that animal's been dead for a hundred years. Um, I guess there's, there's a, an organization called Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade. Um, and it, or it's a campaign, the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, that's, uh, made up of a bunch of grassroots groups. And, uh, they've been protesting against Etsy, including a quote, "high-profile disruption" of a live presentation by the CEO of Etsy, um, at a Morgan Stanley event in San Francisco. So, uh, this is a win for the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, and they've been working on a bunch of different companies lately, including,

• 42:47Speaker 04

  uh, Conde Nast, I don't know how they were, how well they were involved in these, but, um, there's a bunch of companies like Conde Nast, Marc Jacobs, things like New York Fashion Week, um, that are getting rid of fur.

• 43:02Steven Rinella?

  Man, this has got me excited about starting a, a, a Etsy-esque fur.

• 43:07Speaker 05

  I, I don't think you should, I think you should have kept that on the down low.

• 43:10Speaker 04

  Bleep that out, Phil.

• 43:13Steven Rinella?

  Whatever, man.

• 43:15Steven Rinella?

  Whatever.

• 43:17Speaker 05

  Pennsylvania catfish regs, um, they're proposing to change them. This, this was interesting to me because of of how it's, how it's going to be playing out like on one side of Pennsylvania versus the other. Um, presently in, in the state of Pennsylvania, cat, catfish are listed similarly to panfish in the regs. You can have a, you can catch and keep 50 a day with no size limit. And it's not like.

• 43:43Steven Rinella?

  Can you imagine 50 big catfish piled up in your boat?

• 43:45Speaker 05

  So, and, and I don't think they're delineating between channel catfish, flatheads, blues. It's just catfish, right?

• 43:51Steven Rinella?

  Like in their mind, catfish are catfish.

• 43:53Speaker 05

  Yep. Um, so a new proposed reg- uh, regulation that would, that would go into place next year for the Ohio River Basin in Pennsylvania, which is almost the entire western half of Pennsylvania. It, it's aiming to protect native blue and flathead cat, catfish populations in the Ohio River Drainage in Pennsylvania.

• 44:15Speaker 05

  And it, they're pretty, it's a pretty huge change for, for blue catfish. They would go catch and release only. Um, and for flatheads, it would go to four fish daily with only one over 35 inches. Um, so it's a big, big change and.

• 44:30Steven Rinella?

  Well, I need to, I want to pause in that for a minute.

• 44:34Steven Rinella?

  I just wanted to reiterate what you just said. That's a big change.

• 44:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:38Steven Rinella?

  To go from, we don't distinguish species.

• 44:40Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 44:41Steven Rinella?

  And you're allowed 50 a day.

• 44:43Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 44:44Steven Rinella?

  To no retention on blues.

• 44:46Speaker 05

  On blues.

• 44:47Steven Rinella?

  So like one day you can catch 50 blues, the next day, zero.

• 44:52Speaker 05

  Yeah. And, and they kind of, they describe these, these fisheries in, in western Pennsylvania as like emerging fisheries, which is not really, I don't think an accurate way to describe it. It's more like recovering fisheries because they're native to that drainage and they're starting to come back. Pennsylvania has a stocking program now, uh, to, to create a self, self sustaining blue cat population in the Ohio River Drainage. Um, so big changes. Um, and a couple of quotes is, uh, both. The Blues and Flatheads are only native to the Ohio River Basin in Pennsylvania. They're not native to Lake Erie Drainage, the Delaware or the Potomac.

• 45:33Speaker 05

  And the goal of the Blue Catfish Restoration Program is again to establish and naturally reproducing population. The species was extirpated from the area in the early 1900s because of pollution. And as water quality has been restored, they've kind of, both Flatheads and Blues have kind of started coming back on their own. I mean, you can catch these things like in downtown Pittsburgh, right next to Three Rivers Stadium.

• 45:58Steven Rinella?

  Well, I got a question here.

• 46:00Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 46:01Steven Rinella?

  Why? Oh, Flatheads are saying not native to, because, because flats are, there's flats in the Great Lakes. They're saying they're not native to them.

• 46:08Speaker 05

  They're not native to the, they're native to the Ohio River Drainage, but not those drainage, other drainages.

• 46:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, because the Great Lakes have flats.

• 46:15Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um, but this is very interesting in the case of Pennsylvania and, and other places like Virginia, West Virginia. And in that area, Maryland, Chesapeake Bay, because you drive a couple hundred miles, not even that far. One side, basically like the eastern continental divide in the Appalachian Mountains, like you go over that from west to east. And you're now in a part of Pennsylvania where Blues and Flatheads are considered invasives. And they're doing a lot of damage to native fisheries in like the Susquehanna River Drainage.

• 46:51Speaker 05

  They're a big problem in Chesapeake Bay now for, for native fish. So it's like one side of the state, they're trying to bring them back. And you can't keep them. The other side of the state, they're invasive and they want them gone. It's kind of crazy.

• 47:03Steven Rinella?

  I'm all for it on one condition. I'm all for it on if they feel that, if they see good recovery.

• 47:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:11Steven Rinella?

  And they see numbers come up, that they'll adjust to be like, okay, you can keep a blue a day, whatever. But I, I agree. I agree that like that kind of like loosey goosey management of lumping three very different fish together under one umbrella and then making a 50

• 47:28Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 47:29Steven Rinella?

  fish thing. Cause if some guy gets that kind of like a weird bite during the spawn.

• 47:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:33Steven Rinella?

  And, and pulls off 20, 30 Blues.

• 47:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:36Steven Rinella?

  I mean, holy cow, man.

• 47:37Speaker 05

  Especially like big spawning subs, you know?

• 47:41Steven Rinella?

  Not that I wouldn't want to be there for that bite, but yeah.

• 47:44Speaker 05

  Yeah. You can thank my dad for that story. He sent it to me. Thank you, Brody's dad.

• 47:50Steven Rinella?

  Thank you, Brody's dad.

• 47:51Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 47:51Steven Rinella?

  He fought at Little Big Horn.

• 47:54Speaker 05

  He's not that old.

• 47:56Steven Rinella?

  But some of Brody's relatives fought at Little Big Horn.

• 47:58Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 47:59Steven Rinella?

  They're not talking.

• 48:01Speaker 05

  They're buried deep.

• 48:04Speaker 01

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• 48:31Steven Rinella?

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• 49:12Steven Rinella?

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• 49:54Steven Rinella?

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• 50:37Steven Rinella?

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• 50:55Speaker 07

  Okay, for all those birders out there, you guys are ahead, potentially ahead of this anti-aging game that everyone seems to care about so much. A new study that was published in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests that birding can actually help brain health over time. And one of the leading scientists said mitigate age-related decline. More research is needed, but here we go. So the neuroscientist Eric Wing and his co-authors, with their study, they revealed that parts of the brains of expert birders are denser than those of novice birders when matched

• 51:38Speaker 07

  in age, gender, and education level. They use, the neuroscientists use MRI measures to study brain function and the density of brain structures in real time. They found that changes to structural brain organization in several regions, sorry, they found changes to structural brain organization in several regions that are involved in attention and perception. They looked at how the brain regions responded when people memorized and identified birds. And some regions with structural differences also showed higher brain activities when these expert birders were looking at unfamiliar birds.

• 52:20Speaker 07

  And that required like more attention to subtle patterns of the birds. And in novices, they didn't see this increase. So they know that larger numbers of people need to be studied over a period of time. So that'd be a longitudinal study. But so far, what they've found lets that leads them to believe that there is a benefit to being an expert birder.

• 52:49Steven Rinella?

  There you have it. So here to hear this, if you're dumb, hmm, try birding.

• 52:54Speaker 05

  I, I, I want to be part of the study because I told Corinne earlier that when I'm observing birds, it's generally like a very high stress, not a relaxing. Like when I'm looking at a turkey, I'm not like, my brain's not growing. It's shrinking because of the high stress cortisol levels.

• 53:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, no, I understand. Yeah, but you know, when I do do this, though, I do like, when I'm trying to tell, when I'm trying to think if I just heard a gobble.

• 53:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:18Steven Rinella?

  That's interesting to me, but then I feel like I'm slipping. Like I'm losing my hearing, I'm getting old, but it could be that me trying to like do that little math in my head.

• 53:27Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 53:28Steven Rinella?

  Was that a gobble? How far away was he? I could be getting smarter.

• 53:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:32Steven Rinella?

  But I, I, I'll buy that. I'll buy that because you know what also like ties into like this very ancient, I'm going to get a little fuzzy here. But, I mean,

• 53:43Steven Rinella?

  we're, you know, we're like constructed to, to interact, like our bodies, our physical, our physical selves are constructed to like, interact with the wild landscape.

• 53:53Speaker 07

  And identify.

• 53:54Steven Rinella?

  And yeah, to pay it like, to be at a, at a state of like heightened attention paying to what's going on around you. Cause that's how you survive or don't survive, you know, like listening, looking. So the fact that there's some part of your brain or anatomy that flourishes in wildlife viewing and wondering about wildlife, that's not surprising to me. It was a little fuzzy.

• 54:20Speaker 05

  No, I think that, I think that was crystal clear.

• 54:22Steven Rinella?

  Someone's going to put that in quotes and send it back to me.

• 54:25Speaker 04

  What did he say?

• 54:26Speaker 05

  I'd crochet it into a little pillow and put it on my couch.

• 54:30Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:32Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's good.

• 54:33Speaker 05

  Love moves here.

• 54:34Steven Rinella?

  Who's handling this?

• 54:36Speaker 07

  I can do this quickly. Um, this is, this is a fast one.

• 54:39Steven Rinella?

  But can you, within this, explain to me how this isn't federal?

• 54:46Steven Rinella?

  Like, why, isn't this a federal thing? But, go on.

• 54:49Speaker 07

  What, what I understood is just a, a quick news blurb about South Dakota being the very first state to remove suppressors from the list of controlled weapons. So this was, uh, right now it's April, so just at the end of last month, um, the governor of South Dakota, Larry Roden, signed SB two. So that deregulates suppressors at the state level, um, because it removes suppressors from the definition of a quote controlled weapon.

• 55:19Steven Rinella?

  You know, I see, I understand now. They're getting out ahead of it.

• 55:23Speaker 07

  Yes, they are, they're, yes.

• 55:24Steven Rinella?

  Cause the feds really need to, the feds really need to do this.

• 55:29Speaker 05

  I wonder if controlled weapons means that at some point, like, no background check?

• 55:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 55:35Speaker 05

  You're just gonna be able to walk into a store and be like-

• 55:38Steven Rinella?

  Oh, if it's not controlled at all?

• 55:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:39Steven Rinella?

  Cause right now it's more controlled than a gun.

• 55:41Speaker 05

  And you walk away with it.

• 55:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like it's more controlled than a gun.

• 55:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:45Steven Rinella?

  It's like, you can buy a gun anywhere, but you just can't make it quiet.

• 55:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:48Steven Rinella?

  Like, it's like, no, it's okay to have a gun. We just don't want the gun to be quiet.

• 55:52Speaker 05

  Uh, well, it's-

• 55:52Steven Rinella?

  We wanna make sure it hurts your ears.

• 55:54Speaker 04

  Hearing safe. Let's not say quiet, let's say hearing safe.

• 55:57Steven Rinella?

  Hearing safe.

• 55:57Speaker 04

  We don't wanna give the impression that these are silencers.

• 56:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. It is, to me, I think someday there will be a class action lawsuit, and I'm gonna be in it.

• 56:06Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 56:07Steven Rinella?

  A class action lawsuit where deaf dudes, dudes going deaf like me,

• 56:13Steven Rinella?

  sue, not, not guns, we sue the government. Can you take the government, could you do a class action lawsuit against the government?

• 56:21Speaker 05

  Sure, sure.

• 56:22Steven Rinella?

  A class action lawsuit where people with hearing damage come together to sue the government for having made it so hard to make your gun safe level, safe audible levels. This would be a great, thick way to spend some, the summer.

• 56:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 56:40Steven Rinella?

  Doing this.

• 56:43Speaker 04

  You do think about like, I always think it makes the most sense when we put it in the context of public health. It's like when you think of all of us that are going to be old people someday.

• 56:53Speaker 05

  Oh dude, like, I lay down at night, the tinnitus is like.

• 56:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, like, it's just, it's such like a cost sink in healthcare for.

• 57:04Speaker 07

  Oh, that's a good angle. The cost sink.

• 57:06Steven Rinella?

  And this is part of the, you could, you want to run the class action suit?

• 57:09Speaker 04

  Sure, I'll line it up. We got that attorney's email. The guy bought the TSS. Maybe when he's here giving Brody his TSS, we can.

• 57:17Steven Rinella?

  Here's, here's the main way I look at the suppressor question. Let's just say guns were naturally the noise they are when you put a suppressor on them. Like the physics that governed the world were different.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 57:31Steven Rinella?

  Or we had a different, I don't know what that, whatever it helps. For some weird reason, unexplainable reason, guns were the loudness they are unsuppressed that they are when there's a suppressor on them.

• 57:46Speaker 04

  This is a great thought experiment.

• 57:47Steven Rinella?

  Would the government say, you have to put a thing on there to make it louder? Cause we want it to be loud.

• 57:55Speaker 04

  Break them all.

• 57:56Steven Rinella?

  Or would they just be cool with that level of loudness?

• 58:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. That's an interesting thought experiment.

• 58:04Steven Rinella?

  I feel it. I'd be like, no, that's fine. That's just how loud they are. It doesn't really hurt your ears and we're okay with that.

• 58:11Speaker 04

  Some chemist out there might be working on low, low volume powder.

• 58:19Steven Rinella?

  Okay, Spencer.

• 58:20Speaker 06

  I think it's also worth pointing out in the last story, South Dakota Sioux Falls is home to silencer central. So kind of a nod to, you know, one of their more prominent businesses. All right. This week, I'm going to talk about Bigfoot. Last month, there was a string of encounters that got the Bigfoot community very excited.

• 58:40Speaker 04

  Oh wow.

• 58:40Speaker 06

  And happened in a place that you might not expect.

• 58:43Speaker 07

  Lots of points on this map.

• 58:44Speaker 06

  Northeast Ohio, in a five day span around Portage County, there were seven Bigfoot sightings with four of those happening on the. Same damn day. That was March 9th. Uh, Portage County, it's located on the eastern edge of Cleveland and Akron. Has 160,000 people, about 60% of them live in urban areas, 40% in rural areas. Randall is our token Ohioan. He's familiar with the area. He'll, he'll tell you more about it.

• 59:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was really, he's taking the story over.

• 59:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, he's gonna explain to you.

• 59:14Speaker 04

  I wanna set, I wanna set the stage for you. At first I was very excited when I sort of began to. Orient myself to Portage County because I thought I can mention Maurice Claret. Or Jim Tressel. Uh, I thought I could mention.

• 59:27Steven Rinella?

  These are dudes from high school?

• 59:28Speaker 04

  Uh, Youngstown, the boys of Youngstown. That's a, Youngstown, Ohio, if you just dig into the soul there, you'll find pure football excellence. In Akron, the home of LeBron James.

• 59:38Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:39Speaker 04

  Uh, then I realized.

• 59:39Speaker 06

  All very important details for a Bigfoot story.

• 59:42Speaker 04

  They fall, they fall outside of Portage County.

• 59:44Steven Rinella?

  You know what you're doing? He's doing that thing. There's a word for it. It's a rhetorical device. It's a rhetorical device where you say something by saying how you're not gonna say it.

• 59:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 59:57Speaker 04

  Um, I did find out that Portage County.

• 1:00:00Steven Rinella?

  People go like, not to mention, and then you mention it all.

• 1:00:03Speaker 04

  Right. Clark Gable went to high school in Portage County briefly.

• 1:00:08Speaker 06

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  Um, and then also Marvin Chester Stone. As we all know, the inventor of the modern drinking straw.

• 1:00:16Speaker 06

  That's a real.

• 1:00:18Speaker 06

  This is good background.

• 1:00:19Steven Rinella?

  Now, the turtle, the sea turtle blood on that man's hands.

• 1:00:22Speaker 04

  If you'll indulge me just for one moment.

• 1:00:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's gotta scroll down, scroll down in the, in the Wikipedia page he's got open.

• 1:00:29Speaker 04

  As I was digging into this, to this place. I thought to myself, what other notable people are from Youngstown, Ohio?

• 1:00:36Speaker 06

  Who could be there?

• 1:00:37Speaker 04

  Cause, cause the list of football excellence just goes on forever. So I went, I ended up on a page called Dog Sports, uh, which is the University of Georgia Football. So I found this. Thomas Bopp. An amateur astronomer noteworthy for discovering the Hale-Bopp Comet.

• 1:00:53Steven Rinella?

  No, no kidding.

• 1:00:54Speaker 04

  Did you know where that's?

• 1:00:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, cause some dudes killed themselves over that comet.

• 1:00:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:57Speaker 06

  And they were wearing what, purple Nikes?

• 1:00:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, and at the time.

• 1:01:01Steven Rinella?

  Good bunch.

• 1:01:01Speaker 04

  Bop was employed as a constructions material, he was employed at a construction materials company and actually made the discovery using a telescope he borrowed from someone else.

• 1:01:10Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 1:01:11Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 1:01:11Steven Rinella?

  That guy's gotta be pissed.

• 1:01:13Speaker 04

  Fascinating stuff.

• 1:01:14Steven Rinella?

  Like the guy that owns it.

• 1:01:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:16Steven Rinella?

  Think of how bummed he is. If he'd just been looking through his own telescope, he'd have named it.

• 1:01:20Speaker 05

  That'd be like me borrowing a rifle from Steve and shooting the world record mule deer rifle.

• 1:01:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, so with that, I feel like I've, I've pretty well grounded our audience in Portage County.

• 1:01:31Steven Rinella?

  Cause at first, I was like, yeah, who cares? I don't know anything about that area, but now I really invested.

• 1:01:36Speaker 04

  But again, Youngstown is outside of Portage County. It's just to the east.

• 1:01:41Speaker 06

  It's good, good table setting for the rest of this story.

• 1:01:44Speaker 04

  So I haven't even talked about.

• 1:01:45Steven Rinella?

  Now I like, I get where we're at, man.

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  I won't even get into Mount Union football.

• 1:01:50Speaker 06

  Now, these sightings are gathered by the Bigfoot Society who interviews every single witness. Uh, and then I read their accounts and I'm going to tell you about some of my favorite ones from this string of seven sightings. March 9th, 8pm, Route 303, west of Streetsboro, near Tinkers Creek. This is, uh, you know, what these people were, were seeing as they drove this road. A mother and daughter driving westbound when they spot a six and a half foot figure walking in the roadway. They cautiously drive around it, getting as close as three feet away from the Bigfoot. The squatch then ducks into the woods and the motorists decide not to turn around to investigate out of fear of what they just saw.

• 1:02:32Steven Rinella?

  I would've grabbed about a ball so hard, dude. I'd still be holding it, man.

• 1:02:35Speaker 05

  I gotta ask, maybe we'll get there Spencer, is there any visual evidence from?

• 1:02:40Steven Rinella?

  I think this picture was taken after the Bigfoot went away.

• 1:02:43Speaker 05

  I understand, but I want like.

• 1:02:44Steven Rinella?

  It's not in there.

• 1:02:45Speaker 06

  I've got a, a Google street view of, of this road.

• 1:02:48Speaker 05

  Just like Randall Spencer trying to put us in a time and place or nothing.

• 1:02:51Speaker 04

  Three feet would have been prime photo opportunity.

• 1:02:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, that thing would be like standing on the, the white line and you know, you're where that X is in your lane. That, he's real close. Uh, so they, they drive around it.

• 1:03:03Steven Rinella?

  A lot of chem trails that day.

• 1:03:05Speaker 06

  Hmm, I bet.

• 1:03:06Steven Rinella?

  At first, look at that, there's six chem trails.

• 1:03:11Speaker 06

  Now, they describe it as being lean.

• 1:03:14Steven Rinella?

  It's all weed smoke.

• 1:03:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, they should drug test these people. That should be part of the interview witness statement. They described it as being lean with tightly grouped facial features. It was all brown with facial hair that was lighter color than the body hair. It had long legs and long arms and they described it having a stilt-like gait. So, there you go. Now, here's some commentary from the Bigfoot Society regarding their interview with the witnesses. Here's the quote, "The proximity of this sighting, three feet, and the corroboration between a mother and her 18-year-old daughter make this an elite-level report. The description

• 1:03:56Speaker 06

  of a six-and-a-half-foot lean brown subject matches another sighting from the same evening, suggesting this may be a juvenile or subadult traveling the same corridor."

• 1:04:06Steven Rinella?

  Here's where they always go. They always go where they like try to legitimize it with like subadults.

• 1:04:12Speaker 05

  How many miles does that path cover? Did you like?

• 1:04:18Speaker 06

  Oh, like from each sighting?

• 1:04:20Speaker 05

  Because you said it was on the same day, right?

• 1:04:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, there were a number of them in the same day. This next one I'm going to talk about. This happened 20 miles east of that sighting.

• 1:04:29Steven Rinella?

  My god.

• 1:04:30Speaker 06

  Same day, March 9th, noon o'clock.

• 1:04:33Speaker 05

  In someone's car.

• 1:04:34Steven Rinella?

  He's rotten.

• 1:04:35Speaker 06

  At the Headwaters Trail near Garretsville.

• 1:04:38Steven Rinella?

  Oh, is that him up on the right?

• 1:04:40Speaker 06

  I don't think.

• 1:04:41Speaker 05

  It is.

• 1:04:41Speaker 06

  The trash can.

• 1:04:42Speaker 05

  The trash can, but that's him.

• 1:04:44Speaker 06

  Jacob Taylor and an anonymous secondary witness. So Jacob Taylor, he was willing to put his first and last name out there. Other witness, no. He says, "I'm going to be anonymous." They see an eight-to-10-foot-tall figure on a trail. Yeah. They said it had extremely broad shoulders with arms extending well below human proportions. It also had a stilt-like gait, which is language we heard from the last sighting as well. It had a strong musky odor and made a deep grunt-like.

• 1:05:13Speaker 05

  They were close enough to smell it.

• 1:05:14Steven Rinella?

  Now, why would it have a stilt-like gait? Don't they think that it's a person with stilts? What does a stilt light gate mean?

• 1:05:21Speaker 06

  That's just, that's just how.

• 1:05:22Steven Rinella?

  Have you ever seen someone on a stilt set in the wild?

• 1:05:25Speaker 06

  They don't bend their knees.

• 1:05:27Speaker 05

  So if this one was eight to 10 feet, this one must be an adult, not a sub adult.

• 1:05:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, this is a full blown, big old Sasquatch. Now, the encounter lasted about 15 seconds before the Bigfoot retreated into the brush. Here's my favorite detail of all these Ohio sightings. They said the ground literally shook when Sasquatch ran away. Oh, my God. So that seismic footsteps, that damn thing, like a T-Rex. All right, the next day, March 10th, 4:00 a.m. At the, at a home on the edge of Newton Falls, Ohio.

• 1:05:59Steven Rinella?

  How are you getting the amazing photos? Like, what are you typing in?

• 1:06:02Speaker 06

  Google Street View, are you familiar?

• 1:06:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but you, what are you, you're using, uh, are you using lat lawn or just pulling up addresses?

• 1:06:10Speaker 06

  Well, so the, the Bigfoot Society, they drop a pin for where these sightings happen. And then I go to Google Street View and I found the closest street I could get to.

• 1:06:18Steven Rinella?

  But you're pulling addresses up?

• 1:06:20Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:06:20Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:06:21Speaker 06

  This, this is, you know, within like a few hundred yards.

• 1:06:24Steven Rinella?

  I thought it got more sophisticated. Were you able to pull up lat lawns and not the addresses?

• 1:06:28Speaker 05

  That looks like a good turkey hunting spot there.

• 1:06:30Speaker 06

  Also, also quite squat.

• 1:06:32Steven Rinella?

  If you just sat there this spring with a shotgun, you're getting the bird.

• 1:06:36Speaker 06

  Or a Bigfoot.

• 1:06:37Steven Rinella?

  100%.

• 1:06:38Speaker 06

  Or a Bigfoot. Now, a homeowner lets out their German shepherd to go to the bathroom. The canine gets to the edge of the property and turns extremely aggressive and starts lunging and barking. That's when our witness spots it, an eight to 10 foot tall figure that has significant mass. That was their quote. The dog then runs back into the house and begins uncontrollably shaking. The Bigfoot runs away and is heard crashing through the brush. Our anonymous witness says the Sasquatch was, quote, "non-stealthy."

• 1:07:09Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:10Speaker 06

  Non-stealthy for that one. Now, here's, here's the least stealthy thing about these Bigfoot sightings in northeast Ohio. Four of the seven sightings were in broad daylight. A fifth sighting was right after sunset. So it got me wondering, as you suggested, Steve, is this the result of the Bigfoot run? Could it be?

• 1:07:28Steven Rinella?

  You know what it might be? You remember a dude in in Montana got himself a Bigfoot suit?

• 1:07:32Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:07:33Steven Rinella?

  And jumped out in front of a car to scare the people in the car, but they hit him and killed him?

• 1:07:36Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:07:37Steven Rinella?

  There's like a certain hazard

• 1:07:40Steven Rinella?

  to doing these shenanigans at night.

• 1:07:41Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:07:43Steven Rinella?

  Like, it's just you're more likely to draw gunfire and stuff like that night.

• 1:07:48Speaker 06

  Instead of broad daylight.

• 1:07:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like you're just like less likely to get shot.

• 1:07:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, I think it could be the Bigfoot rut. Maybe there was a she-squatch coming into Estrus that week. Uh, or was it the March 3rd full moon that got these Bigfoots on their feet in daylight? As we talked about with deer biologists in the past, um, you know, there's, there's a lot of lore.

• 1:08:06Steven Rinella?

  What were the dates?

• 1:08:07Speaker 06

  Uh, it was like March 5th to the 10th.

• 1:08:09Steven Rinella?

  Oh, so Mercury was in retrograde.

• 1:08:11Speaker 06

  Oh, you're right.

• 1:08:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:12Speaker 06

  I forgot. I didn't consider that. Uh, now I, I used to do a series on our website called Ask a Squatcher where I interviewed Bigfoot experts and asked them some really basic questions, uh, like is Bigfoot dangerous? What's the best evidence that Bigfoot exists? What does Bigfoot eat? One of the questions I asked was why have Bigfoot sightings decreased? Uh, and in that article, I, I pointed out that Bigfoot encounters surged in the early 2000s. Uh, but they've gone way down since 2009. And I wanted to get their take on this. Uh, I interviewed folks like Ju- uh, Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, Ronnie LeBlanc, Matt Moneymaker. You probably don't know those names, but that'd be like if I said LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant.

• 1:08:50Steven Rinella?

  And you probably don't know those names.

• 1:08:51Speaker 06

  It'd be just like that. It's just like that, yeah. My favorite response though was from Jeremiah Byron, the founder of the Bigfoot Society. Here's his quote, uh, "The Bigfoot population is not dying out." So don't, uh, if you, in case you thought that was it, it's not. Uh, "But there are less sightings because we as a culture are not going out in the woods anymore. It's as simple as that. Bigfoot is not going to show up in your Instagram DMs. You'll only see him while out exploring state forests or national parks. When's the last time we took time to do that? It's probably been a while since Bigfoot has seen a human either."

• 1:09:24Steven Rinella?

  Oh, my God. I like that though. Remember I said, there's never anything other to say than?

• 1:09:29Speaker 06

  I've added a lot to this story, yeah.

• 1:09:31Steven Rinella?

  Uh, well, no, no, you did, no, you did a great job.

• 1:09:33Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:34Steven Rinella?

  His point though, because, because the, the, the Bigfoot people are gonna need to have a reckoning with trail cams.

• 1:09:39Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:09:40Steven Rinella?

  But it was suggested to me that they're on the Bigfoots are on a dimension. That isn't cap that isn't big trail cams aren't able to capture the them.

• 1:09:50Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, Jeremiah says the drop in Bigfoot sightings, it's a negative, you know, it's actually a reflection of how Americans have a weaker relationship with the outdoors. And he's not totally wrong. Here's a graph showing the Bigfoot sightings by year. As you can see, it was pretty consistent trend. Uh, but then there was that spike in 2020, which of course was when COVID hit. We all know how that impacted fishing license sales and campground reservations. Uh, so in, in 2020, Bigfoot had a, had a little renaissance.

• 1:10:19Steven Rinella?

  I like that he's using his esoteric interests to encourage people to spend time outside.

• 1:10:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, Bigfoot. Uh, now I reached out to my cast of.

• 1:10:29Steven Rinella?

  You think it's esoteric?

• 1:10:30Speaker 06

  I don't know.

• 1:10:31Steven Rinella?

  Esoteric.

• 1:10:31Speaker 05

  I always said esoteric.

• 1:10:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Esoteric.

• 1:10:34Speaker 05

  Oh, God.

• 1:10:35Steven Rinella?

  I don't know. The corrections are gonna get me.

• 1:10:37Speaker 06

  I reached out to my cast of Bigfoot experts to, to get their take on the Ohio sightings. Haven't heard back from them yet, but I'm hoping we learn that it was the rut or the full moon or mercury in metrograde. Uh, I'll give you guys an update in a future episode when we find out if it's now Bigfoot post-rut in northeast Ohio.

• 1:10:53Steven Rinella?

  All right, ladies and gentlemen. No, it was great. I thought it was good. Listen, we, we had a, I'm, I'm not goofing on it because remember we had a Bigfoot person on.

• 1:11:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, you should do it again.

• 1:11:04Steven Rinella?

  But she wasn't though. She was a reporter on Bigfoot. So it's not like I'm above it.

• 1:11:10Steven Rinella?

  I like the story.

• 1:11:11Speaker 06

  I was bringing some candy to the episode. You guys provided a lot of vegetables and then here I come, you know, with a bucket full of.

• 1:11:17Steven Rinella?

  Dessert.

• 1:11:18Speaker 05

  Lava.

• 1:11:18Steven Rinella?

  I liked it. I'm interested.

• 1:11:20Speaker 05

  Alamo.

• 1:11:21Steven Rinella?

  Um, or did you bring your foot?

• 1:11:23Speaker 06

  No, I haven't brought my foot.

• 1:11:24Steven Rinella?

  Spencer has a Bigfoot's foot.

• 1:11:26Speaker 06

  Steve wants it in the new studio.

• 1:11:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:28Speaker 06

  It's in my office.

• 1:11:29Steven Rinella?

  You paid good money for that. You could have just brought it downstairs for this.

• 1:11:33Speaker 06

  Hmm. Well, it's just too close to the-

• 1:11:35Steven Rinella?

  It only costs him forty bucks, you can get your own.

• 1:11:37Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:38Speaker 07

  What do you mean? Like a-

• 1:11:39Speaker 06

  I've got a cast of the most famous Bigfoot in the world.

• 1:11:42Speaker 07

  Oh, oh, of the imprint?

• 1:11:44Speaker 06

  Patterson Gimlin.

• 1:11:44Steven Rinella?

  Were you telling me that you regretted buying it?

• 1:11:46Speaker 06

  No, zero regret. I thought I would regret it, and I never did. Hasn't, hasn't hit me yet.

• 1:11:52Steven Rinella?

  That's always a good feeling when you're conducting a transaction. I'm probably gonna regret this. And it never, it never hits you.

• 1:11:58Speaker 06

  No, it's, it's been one of my best purchases I've made, yeah.

• 1:12:01Steven Rinella?

  Do you think it was a cast off a cast, or do you think it actually touched the cast?

• 1:12:05Speaker 06

  There's a number of folks who own a cast, and so I don't think I got my cast off of the cast.

• 1:12:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was like a, you know, a third-hand cast.

• 1:12:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like quite removed. Like, you're not gonna find like a hair in your cast or something.

• 1:12:20Speaker 05

  Have you ever, uh, tried to like join a Bigfoot hunting party?

• 1:12:25Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:12:25Speaker 05

  No?

• 1:12:26Speaker 06

  No, I haven't.

• 1:12:27Speaker 05

  You should.

• 1:12:28Speaker 06

  I'm into it all. I, I, I love it. Um, but again, I've said this a thousand times, I don't believe in Bigfoot.

• 1:12:33Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you know what? I found out recently that, it startled me.

• 1:12:36Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:12:37Steven Rinella?

  Um, this is the end of the show, ladies and gentlemen, but, um, I found out recently that the writer, Peter Matheson, okay? So, was a Bigfoot enthusiast.

• 1:12:49Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:12:49Steven Rinella?

  So, when he was working on the snow leopard in the Himalaya, he's working on the snow leopard, he got interested in, some of the people he was with were hip to yeti, the yeti.

• 1:13:02Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:13:02Steven Rinella?

  Yetis. And that sent him down like a path, and he became something of a Bigfoot enthusiast.

• 1:13:10Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:13:11Steven Rinella?

  And even toyed with the idea about doing a book.

• 1:13:15Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 1:13:16Steven Rinella?

  So here's this like highly esteemed member of like the American literati.

• 1:13:24Steven Rinella?

  Prize-winning author was sucked in.

• 1:13:28Speaker 06

  We were robbed of that book.

• 1:13:30Steven Rinella?

  Was sucked in.

• 1:13:31Speaker 06

  Yep. I'm with him. I, I, you know, just a few of my favorite things, mushrooms and rocks, like that community, rockhounds, mushroom hunters, they love Bigfoot. Like, that's, that Venn diagram is just one circle of, you know, people who like Bigfoot, rocks, and mushrooms. So I just get a lot of exposure from that.

• 1:13:49Steven Rinella?

  You're like in the crossfire.

• 1:13:51Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, can't avoid it.

• 1:13:55Steven Rinella?

  Uh, oh, a quick last note before we're done. So we got, we were doing our Meat Eater Time Machine. Every month we're dropping tees and hoodies with historic themes. Right now, uh, coming up here, we got the Pittman Robertson Act hoodie. So you can show off your conservation history, knowledge, when you're running around in your genuine Pittman Robertson Act, funding conservation since what year was that?

• 1:14:21Speaker 07

  1937.

• 1:14:23Steven Rinella?

  Says Pittman Robertson funding conservation since 1937, part of the Meat Eater Time Machine series. We also got Custer's Last Stand coming up, Battle of the Greasy Grass. Um, we did Clovis, Buffalo Jumps, Custer's Last Stand, Fred Bear's Rules of Bow Hunting, all kinds of stops on American history, including this one. Um, am I supposed to say something more about this? No.

• 1:14:51Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:14:51Steven Rinella?

  Head to the Meat Eater store. And, uh, and while you're at your computer here, um, follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe, please, on the Meat Eater Podcast YouTube channel. Thanks for joining.

• 1:15:29Steven Rinella?

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

• 1:16:14Steven Rinella?

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

• 1:16:39Speaker 02

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• 1:17:24Speaker 02

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• 1:17:45Speaker 00

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