Ep. 768: Sasquatch Calls, Exotic Pets, and English Muffins | MeatEater Radio Live!

Hosts Spencer Neuharth, Randall Williams, and Max Barta talk with taxidermy historian Brant MacDuff, throw a Hot Tip-Off, discuss the 2010 documentary Elephant in the Living Room for the MeatEater Movie Club, and dig into the 2025 Sasquatch Calling contest with organizers Cheryl Putorti and Paul Bartholomew. Watch the live stream on the MeatEater Podcast Network YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Steven Rinella?

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• 0:45Steven Rinella?

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• 2:14Steven Rinella?

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• 2:36Speaker 02

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

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Welcome to Meat Eater Radio Live. It's 11 a.m. Mountain Time. That's noon o'clock for our friends in Madison, Wisconsin on Thursday, September 25th. And we're live from Meat Eater HQ in Bozeman. I'm your host, Spencer, joined today by Randall and Max. On today's show, we'll interview taxidermy historian Brant MacDuff. Then we have a hot tip off, followed by a review of the 2010 documentary Elephant in the Living Room. And finally, we'll interview the organizers of the 2025 Sasquatch Calling Contest. First off, we have some plugs to get to. Randall, take it away.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  Well, first of all, I want to wish a very happy vacation to our friend Mogor.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Hmm. Happy vacation.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  Happy vacation, Mogor. Hope it's a good one.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  You deserve it.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Now on to serious business. Meat Eater is headed south for the holidays. We are thrilled to announce Meat Eater Live: The Christmas Tour coming to you this December. We have stops in Birmingham, Nashville, Memphis, Fayetteville, Dallas, and Austin. Come hang with Steve, Yanis, Clay, Randall.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  That's me. And Brett for a night of laughs, trivia, prizes and stories from the outdoors. Go to the meat eater.com/tour to sign up for pre-sale access, which is happening right now. Today is your last chance to buy tickets before they officially go on sale to the public. That's the meat eater.com/tour. And I will note, if you are hoping to attend the Fayetteville, Arkansas show, you need to do that immediately because those tickets are 90 plus percent sold out.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Wow. We're only in pre-sale.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  I know, I know. Birmingham and Nashville. Uh, there's, there's quite a few tickets sold there as well. And Memphis, Dallas and Austin, I was told to relate to you all. Get your business in order and buy your tickets because there's still some, quite a few seats left there. But again, tickets are not officially on sale, so I'm not worried about it.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Randall's going to be there. He's going to entertain you all night long at the Meat Eater Live Tour.

• 5:03Speaker 03

  Holiday cheer. We're going to be spreading it thick in the south.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Also, our tailgate tour rolls on and this Saturday, the 27th, we will be at Penn State for their game against Oregon. Stop by and say hi if you're in the area, eat some food, hang out with the Meat Eater crew. We will be playing games, giving away prizes and showing off how Meat Eater tailgates this week. It is Seth and Brody who will be there. And I wonder if those boys are in the loop for just how big of a deal this game is. It's like the biggest game of the season so far.

• 5:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, probably not.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Do you think they know to wear white?

• 5:36Speaker 03

  I hope so. I, I'm sure they do. I mean Seth, Seth's the. Seth's in. Well, did Brody go there as well? Brody was there last year. No, but I mean attend school.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  He can be an honorary graduate if, if not.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  They're both, they're both Pennsylvania boys.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  I'm sure they know the program.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  This is their warning. Wear white. Uh, cheer really loud.

• 5:53Speaker 03

  We are.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  No one.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  I O.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  I wanted Ramblin to do it.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Not a chance.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Plug, one last plug, our annual week of celebrating America's most pursued game animal, the whitetail deer is just a few days away. A whitetail week kicks off Monday and runs from September 29th to October 5th. A whole bunch of whitetail gear from First Light, FHF, Phelps and Meat Eater will go on sale next week. Be on the lookout for that, starting next Monday, September 29th. Uh, we'll have some great whitetail specific content that rolls out next week as well.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  All right, boys, we, we have a war going on in the office.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  It is not a war.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  This is the English muffin war. Uh, it's been very contentious.

• 6:40Speaker 04

  Debate.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  This, this started in a meeting a few weeks ago, uh, where at the end of the meeting, Max and I, I had declared that I had recently found the greatest English muffins in the world. Uh, and then Max, he says, well, are they the furrow and fly English muffins? And I said, no, they're the stone and skillet English muffins.

• 6:58Speaker 04

  And I said, what?

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Both alliter- alliterative.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. And, and Max said.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  Interesting to note.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Max said, well, they're not as good as my English muffins. And I said, yes, they are.

• 7:07Speaker 04

  And I said, no, they're not.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  And then I said, yes, they are. And, and it got, uh, really nasty. Max called me some names, I keyed his pickup. And, and we just had to like, we, we declared we would settle this as gentlemen. And so we, we decided that I would go buy Max's English muffins and try them. And Max would go buy my English muffins and try them. Max, what did you think of my English muffins?

• 7:28Speaker 04

  Spencer, I gave your English muffins a fair chance.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  I tried them one day and I was like, oh, these are just so doughy and just.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  Then I didn't like them.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  And I was like, you know what? I'm going to give these another shot. Tried them the next morning, same taste, same flavor and everything and.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  What did I say, a six out of 10?

• 7:47Speaker 02

  You, you went as far as saying that, uh, your wife did not like them and your in-laws did not like them.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  Did you beat any to Ruby? I should've.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  So Max, Max did not like my English muffins. I went and tried Max's English muffins. I didn't care for his. So we, now, now we have furthered the divide in how, how we think of, uh, who makes the best English muffins. So what we decided to do was I brought in both kinds this morning for Randall and Phil to try them themselves. And so we are going to allow them to declare which one is indeed the best English muffin. My English muffin, the stone and skillet, or Max's English muffin, the furrow and fly.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  I'm so excited for this.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Randall, go ahead first. Give us, give us, uh, your thoughts.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Are we doing this now or?

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Right now, yeah.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  This is just a teaser. Um, first of all, I'd just like to say that I think there's no, uh, like food argument that I have less invested in than what is the best English muffin. It's a question I've never considered.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Until you have a really good English muffin and then you're like, what have I been missing my whole life?

• 8:48Speaker 03

  When I ate these English muffins, I thought to myself, maybe I don't know what an English muffin is. Because I'm, I'm used to. McDonald's English muffins? Tom, yeah, well, Thomas English muffins with the nooks and crannies. And then, uh, an Egg McMuffin, which delicious. I, I, uh, both of these were formidable, uh, creations. When they came out of the bag, I was surprised by the size. To me, they looked more like biscuits.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  Um, I don't, they have, they both have very different qualities. Spencer's, your English muffin is, I would compare it more to like a bagel round. It's doughy, it's chewy. It's dense. It's dense. Um, you don't have to tear it.

• 9:36Speaker 03

  I feel like the other, Max's, Max's English muffin, they're both exceptional. Max's English muffin is closest to my understanding of what an English muffin is.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, we didn't make these, we just buy them.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  It has the sort of cratered, the cratered surface with, I, I don't know if nooks and crannies is a trademark term. That's good. But it has those, um, you do have to sort of tear, um.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Tender.

• 10:00Speaker 03

  No, well, I think yours is tender. It's got like, it's got a like a crust to it. Cause it's doughy and not cooked. So I'm gonna go wishy washy. I'm gonna say Max's, if I was gonna eat one with butter, probably Max's. If I was gonna eat one with, like as a sandwich, or with jelly, probably yours.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Okay, I don't think you've settled anything there.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, well, again, as I said, this is the question that I have nothing invested in. In fact, the whole time this has been going on, I've actually been shocked that this is a thing. The world is gonna judge us, seriously.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're talking about it.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  Have you heard about the English muffin debate at the Meat Eater office? Geez.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Phil, give us a hot take here. Which one was better?

• 10:43Speaker 05

  Good thing I'm here, so someone can take a GD stance in this room. Uh, listen, both muffins, I would be satisfied if I made one of these at home. I'd be happy with either. That being said, Spencer's takes the cake.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 10:59Speaker 05

  Honestly, on every single level, it's what I want. Like, like the, the boys have already insinuated, it's a little bit doughier. It was thicker. But the way Spencer cooked it had a nice crust that you bite through and then you got to that chewy bread that wasn't undercooked.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  We are not grading the cooking.

• 11:16Speaker 05

  The chew was very satisfying. And on top of that, Spencer's butter was better as well.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  We used the same butter. That's how much better this English muffin is.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Maybe I screwed up in shaking the butter off of Spencer's because there was, there was butter pooling.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  It doesn't have the craters in it to, uh, to absorb.

• 11:35Speaker 03

  Oh, the screen went black.

• 11:38Speaker 05

  Anyway, back to what I was saying, it was incredibly important. Uh, Spencer's muffin was better. And I, this may, I mean, the fact that you guys were using the same butter and I had no idea, it could probably maybe completely disqualifies me from being a food judge in any capacity. But I think that just speaks to the quality of Spencer's muffin. That's all I'll say.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  I just. I will not be buying them. Sorry. I liked Spencer's muffin a lot, but as I ate it, I thought to myself, this isn't what I think of when I think of an English muffin. It was like a treat. So the debate hasn't been settled yet. It sounds like Randall's voting for mine and Phil is voting for yours.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  I will just take a tie, Max. I'd be satisfied with that. I did enjoy your English muffin. I felt a little hurt though, that you said the one I liked was a six out of 10. And your in-laws, as we all know, in-laws have the worst taste imaginable and they didn't even like it. What does the chat think? I think we're ready to put this one to bed. Yes, the English muffin war wages on. All right, joining us on the line first is taxidermy historian and author Brant Macduff. Brant, welcome to the show.

• 12:44Speaker 06

  Hey, thank you for having me.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 12:46Speaker 06

  I've never had my work have to compete with debates about bread, but I'm honored for it to be the first.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Okay, Brant, what is a taxidermy historian and how does one become a taxidermy historian?

• 13:03Speaker 06

  You know, it's a thing if you make it a thing. I do work for museums and I had always loved animals. I'd always loved taxidermy because I felt like taxidermy were the only animals that I could bring that many of into my house. It's really difficult to have live elk and rams and bears and bison in your Brooklyn apartment, but I can do that with taxidermy. So I've always just been a fan of the animals and taxidermy and the history that surrounds it. So the more obsessed I became with taxidermy and its history, the more I became someone that people went to when they needed to know about taxidermy history.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Okay, that is us today. Now, you give lectures on the history of taxidermy and you say that the story of taxidermy is told through heroes, villains, and elephant testicles. What does that mean?

• 13:59Speaker 06

  Mostly, it's just a catchy tagline that gets people interested. So you can see that it works.

• 14:05Speaker 06

  But mostly, I talk a lot about different characters who were in taxidermy, important historical characters like Martha Ann Maxwell, who really sort of pioneered the idea of putting animals in natural poses and natural settings as opposed to just sort of having a very static mount with no idea of how they would behave in their natural habitat. William Hornaday and Carl Akeley,

• 14:37Speaker 06

  Continued that, but Martha Ann Maxwell was doing that well before them. So there are a lot of historical characters. Robert Rockwell learned taxidermy from Carl Akeley, but he was a better sculptor and so he became a much better taxidermist because being a good taxidermist is really about being a good sculptor. So there are a lot of wild stories associated with all of those characters. So I usually like to start with a time period, find those characters, and then tell some stories about their lives. And that kind of gets people their their foot in the door for appreciating the taxidermy art itself through those people.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Okay, so we just heard about the heroes. How about the villains and elephant testicles?

• 15:25Speaker 06

  So villains villains gets me to talk about poaching and how aside from poaching for bushmeat or poaching for medicine markets, there's poaching or markets for for taxidermy. I also try to get people not to buy certain pieces of taxidermy. At a lot of curio shops, you might see a framed bat. And I encourage people not to buy those because unlike the very healthy, regulated market that we have for fur bearers, let's say, in the United

• 16:07Speaker 06

  States, if you buy a framed bat, it probably came from Indonesia or a place where there is not such a regulated market for that species. So when you buy those products, you really don't know what your money is going to support. So that I would consider more the villain side. The photos that you're going through here have more to do with our testicles. And this would be the Field Museum in Chicago. And these are these fighting bull elephants that Carl Akeley put together. And it's a wonderful, dynamic centerpiece of the museum.

• 16:47Speaker 06

  And the Field Museum actually saw Jumbo, the elephant that was owned by P T Barnum and was hit by a train. Well, Carl Akeley made a mount of Jumbo and people at the Field Museum saw that mount and went, wow, he's pretty good. Let's have him do some elephants for our museum. So they sent him on safari. He brings back these elephants. He makes this incredible mount and unveils the mount. Everyone's flabbergasted. They've never seen anything like it. And they say, now, look, Carl, we love it, but there's a problem. There's two big problems. There's four big problems.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Four big problems.

• 17:23Speaker 06

  And it's the elephant testicles. They're like, this is a family place. You can't just have balls all over the, all over the museum. So they made him castrate the elephants. And he was pissed. That's George Dante right there. He's one of the greatest museum taxidermists working today, getting up close and personal with one of the bulls. But, so that would be the testicles and how they tie into that story.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Okay, are the testicles there today or are those bulls still neutered?

• 17:56Speaker 06

  They are still neutered as far as you see when you're walking around the museum and looking at the mount. But there's, there's tales that they are somewhere in the back because what were they gonna do? Just chuck them out with the trash?

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Brent, what is your favorite era of taxidermy?

• 18:17Speaker 06

  For most taxidermy nerds, the era would loosely be described as the Victorian era. Specifically, the Victorian era is the era of Queen Victoria's reign, which was like 18...

• 18:32Speaker 06

  Thirty-seven through nineteen oh one, um, I would bump those numbers out a little bit and just say kind of roughly eighteen fifty through the nineteen forties. And that was really the heyday for taxidermy. There was a lot of taxidermy happening before that, earlier periods of the Victorian era. But people were really honing in on their skills and artistic displays and what people loved and were fascinated by with animals in wherever they lived. Taxidermy was huge in the UK. They have a much richer history of taxidermy there.

• 19:14Speaker 06

  So a lot of taxidermy nerds focused specifically on the UK during that period. This was a time where some towns had eighteen taxidermists in one town. That's how popular it was at the time.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  I imagine that today, taxidermy is kind of a monoculture, but at one point, there were probably regional variations. What are some of those regional taxidermy variations when it comes to different parts of the world and different parts of the country?

• 19:42Speaker 06

  So something I'm a big fan of that I don't really see anymore and really haven't seen that much outside of Colorado specifically are these split half mounts. So if we think of a half mount, you might think of a mountain goat with like a shoulder mount with its front legs coming out, maybe on a rock or something. Well, a split half mount would be if you went straight down the nose and bisected the whole animal. And so you've got the half the animal on the wall and just by cocking out the neck and head, you can get the full head, both antlers.

• 20:23Speaker 06

  Or you can split the head right down the middle and have half and half next to each other with one antler on one side of the skull, one antler on the other side of the skull. I think this is a really cool style of mount, saves a little bit of space, but you still get the whole animal. You really don't see it. That much anywhere, and I personally haven't seen it outside of Colorado much. It's a, it's a really cool mount. I'd like to see more studios pick it up again.

• 20:51Speaker 04

  I've never seen that.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  I, I have not seen anything like that either. You can see photos of what Brent is talking about.

• 20:56Speaker 06

  That's a single head split bisected in half, and you get one half on each side.

• 21:02Speaker 04

  So is that, is that considered a full body mount or a half body mount?

• 21:08Speaker 06

  I would consider it a split.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  A split.

• 21:10Speaker 06

  A full body mount. So.

• 21:12Speaker 04

  I'm gonna request that next time, I get something done.

• 21:14Speaker 06

  It's not a traditional full body mount, but you can see there's all four legs and the full neck and head. You're just kind of shaped. It's almost like if you picture at home, if you picture a fish mount.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

• 21:25Speaker 06

  Where you have the whole side of the fish, but the one side that's against the wall is flat. So it can be up on the wall.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Okay, love it. Now you spend a lot of time in museums looking at stuffed critters. So I asked you today to bring us a list of your top three museums for the best, most interesting taxidermy. I'm excited to hear what they are. Number three, what is it?

• 21:48Speaker 06

  Um, well, I kind of flipped them into two different groupings so I could cheat and get one more.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Okay, great.

• 21:54Speaker 06

  I would say as traditional natural history museums are concerned, you're not going to do better than the American Museum of Natural History right here in Manhattan. Um, the, uh, the downstairs hall of North American mammals was finished up in around the 1940s, and they are excellent examples of taxidermy and habitat dioramas. Denver, incredible taxidermy dioramas. Um, and then I'd say really the Wonders of Wildlife Museum in Springfield, Missouri, at the Bass Pro.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Unbelievable.

• 22:26Speaker 06

  Insane museum, unbelievable, insane museum. And if you want really old school, traditional taxidermy, uh, amazing mounts and beautiful museum, check out the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Incredible museum, gorgeous space, really traditional, cool mounts and displays.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  Okay, bucket list places. I wrote down all four of those. Uh, Brent, if people want to know more about your work in the history of taxidermy, what should they do?

• 22:59Speaker 06

  My website is immortalanimals.com. My Instagram is stuff in my apartment and you can get in touch with me there. I give all kinds of lectures. I travel for lectures on conservation history, taxidermy history, wildlife conservation economics, all sort of related topics. And I'm a mentor for the Kinfolk Hunting Collective in the New York area.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Okay, Brant's book, The Shotgun Conservationist, is available right now. Brant, thanks for joining us.

• 23:31Speaker 06

  Thanks for having me, guys.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Have a good one. American Museum Natural History in New York, Natural History Museum in Denver, Wonders of Wildlife in Springfield, and I think the last one he said was the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium, did he say in Georgia? No, Vermont. In Vermont, I'm sorry. How many of those places have you been to, Randall?

• 23:50Speaker 03

  Three.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Okay, not the Vermont one.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  Not Vermont.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  How about you, Max? Have you been to any of those?

• 23:56Speaker 04

  Um, no, I have not.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  Uh, my favorite museum for taxidermy is, as a world traveler, the, uh, the Natural History Museum in Vienna, because all of that stuff is like 100-plus years old and it's not maintained at all.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 24:13Speaker 03

  The animals are the wrong colors. The elk look like whitetail deer because they're so bleached out, but just like every animal you can imagine. But it's, I mean, it's just like a chuckle fest.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I've been to the New York American Museum of Natural History and the one in Denver, both very exciting. The one in Denver, in their planetariums, no, what's it called? Their dioramas. In their dioramas, the artist has painted some little trolls into the scenes that you go around and you try to find them.

• 24:44Speaker 06

  All the trolls, yeah.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Try to find the trolls.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  It's like the hot springs at White Sulfur.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Just like that. Yeah. I texted Randall last night, I said, Randall, if you could go to a great history, natural history museum, or a great zoo, which one would you pick? What was your answer?

• 24:59Speaker 03

  A great natural history museum.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Because he said a zoo just feels like a strip club.

• 25:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I did say that in a private text exchange.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  I said, you just, it's you'd walk around and just go, huh, whoa. You know, there's no depth of, of, but a natural history museum that like either, uh, it just has a way of like blowing your mind. You actually learn stuff. I don't, I don't find that I learn very many things at the zoo. I just see cool things and I go, huh, wow.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm sorry. It was actually Max who texted me that.

• 25:30Speaker 03

  That's right. That's right.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Max was the one who said zoos are like strip clubs.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  No, no. Of all the things that I've blushed about in this room, that's not one of them. I did say that on a text exchange.

• 25:41Steven Rinella?

  This episode is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Holiday season is damn near upon us. In my house, you know, we've been talking about Thanksgiving and it 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 and their 10 plus years of

• 26:24Steven Rinella?

  experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, go ahead and switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. BetterHelp is now in-network with more than 125 health plans with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com/meateater. That's betterhelp, H E L P, dot com slash meat eater.

• 27:05Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through edu- 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. 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.

• 27:48Steven Rinella?

  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 going to 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.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  All right, moving on, our next segment is Hot Tip Off.

• 28:19Speaker 00

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

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Hot Tip Off is where two listeners go head to head with competing pieces of advice. And after we hear each tip, we'll declare which one is hotter. If you have a hot tip, take a one minute video on your phone and email it to radio at the meat eater.com with the subject line, Hot Tip Off. This week, Hot Tip Off is brought to you by Mountain Ops. Mountain Ops supports your daily journey from mountain training to overall well being, optimizing performance, enhancing recovery and bolstering health, preparing you for any challenge. Okay. This week it is James Chapman versus Lane Aker. They are competing for a $100 meat eater gift card. Take it away, Phil.

• 29:18Speaker 07

  My name is Lane Acre and I got a hot tip for making sure your decoys don't get tangled while the season. All you need is some paracord, PVC pipe, a couple of carabiners. So what you do is you cut your PVC down a little bit shorter than your lines on your decoys and you cut the paracord a little bit longer than that. From there, you've got finished product painted black. The line runs through it from the top and from there you can hook the decoys on, pull the

• 29:49Speaker 07

  you got a bigger carabiner here, hook it on, you got a handy, handy decoy carrier. So I've got a few of these in my boat. When I carry in, I can carry a couple of these pretty easily. About 15 decoys per. Keeps them from getting tangled and you don't have to worry about buying those expensive decoy lines. I just use like a hundred pound monofilament. Works great. Hot tip.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  I like it.

• 30:18Speaker 08

  I've solved the problem for hunting hearing protection. Hoodies, got these dagum things on them.

• 30:29Speaker 08

  End of your string ties. These reusable plastic earplugs.

• 30:37Speaker 08

  Right there. Right there.

• 30:43Speaker 08

  You just jam them on the end. And they're literally right on your hoodie.

• 30:52Speaker 08

  Ready to go in your ear all the time.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  All right, two very hot tips there from James and Lane. Uh, Max, I'm gonna have to really rely on you here for that custom decoy carrier. How hot of a tip was that? And before you answer, Phil is going to put this poll in our chat for them to vote as well. And our, our listeners are going to decide who gets that $100 Mead eater gift card. Get in there. All right, Maxwell.

• 31:19Speaker 04

  In my experience, they get tangled either way, no matter what.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  I would love to try that out and see if it, they actually don't get tangled, but um, I would use it for sure and give it a shot.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Even if, even if not tangling though, is that not like a convenient way just to carry them 300 yards to the water hole?

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Oh, for sure. I mean, it's a lot better than putting the actual string on your shoulder and then the string or the decoy lines are digging into your shoulder, but um, yeah, I think I would love to try it sometime.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Okay. Randall, what do you think?

• 31:52Speaker 03

  Uh, what was the second gentleman's name?

• 31:54Speaker 02

  Uh, we have Lane who had the custom decoy carrier and we had James who had the hearing protection hoodie strings.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  I think Lane's tip was maybe more practical.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 32:07Speaker 03

  I liked James' delivery.

• 32:11Speaker 03

  And I also would love to just bump into someone at a gas station who's got.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  Stuck on, like I love.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  My heart wants to go with that, but I think ultimately my head tells me that it's the, it's the PVC pipe. Plus, anything that you can do with PVC pipe for a non-traditional use, I'm all in. Rod tubes, potato cannons.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Hmm. Uh, both very hot tips. Um, I, I liked that James is one with the hearing protection on hoodie strings. That's like a 10 second project.

• 32:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Um, and Lane's, you're probably spending like a Saturday morning, uh, rigging that thing up, but it's not very cheap or, uh, I'm, excuse me, it's not very expensive or very difficult to make that custom decoy carrier. Uh, you can see the video of what he's doing there on the Meat Eater Podcast YouTube channel. Uh, we're going to give the chat like 20 more seconds. I think I would also vote though with, uh, Lane with the custom decoy carrier.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  It's never occurred to me to put.

• 33:10Speaker 04

  Hoodie strings?

• 33:11Speaker 03

  Earplugs on my hoodie strings.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Me either.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  It's just fantastic. I love this so much.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  That's, that's a good.

• 33:17Speaker 04

  What happens if you're not wearing a hoodie with strings though?

• 33:20Speaker 03

  Cause a lot of people. The hoodie I'm wearing now.

• 33:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, a lot of people like. A lot of people like taking those strings off because they're scared that they're going to get caught into something.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  If you're, uh, yeah, I mean, it depends if, if it's like you wear the same hoodie all the time, you know?

• 33:33Speaker 04

  Uh, or if you have like a hunting hoodie or.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Working hoodie.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, work. Yeah, I mean, that's great for the job site, too.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  There you go. Real, real blue collar hot tip. All right, Phil, what's the chat? Have to say.

• 33:47Speaker 05

  All right, well, with about 59, 58% of the vote, the winner is Lane with the decoy.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  All right.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  Congratulations.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Uh, you earned that one. Uh, we're a podcast producer is going to reach out to you about how to get that gift card. And again, if you want to submit a hot tip, send it to radio at the media.com with the subject line hot tip off. All right, let's take a break for some listener feedback. Phil, what's the chat after say?

• 34:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, just full transparency here. There was some sort of like, I don't know if it was like a static short that just reset something with our computer or so it wasn't the internet. I think I might have just, you know, rubbed my shoes on the carpet a little too hard or something like that. But in when that happened, it completely borked up the resolution of the TV I use and the TV that the guys see in the studio. So it's a little bit harder to read the comments. I can only read about two at a time. So I've been scrolling through there. But we've got, we've got a few that I can pull from. Uh, so Christopher asks, uh, Spencer, who sent in a gas can? Well, he's, he's asking the live chat, who sent in a gas can for Spencer? Uh, if mine doesn't at least get an honorable mention, I'll be disappointed.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, two, two episodes ago, I asked for our listeners to send in their recommendation for the world's best gas cans. Because I have yet to be satisfied with one in the last decade. You guys really provided, I think I have 150 emails as of this morning to go through. I'm still going through them. There are two brands, though, that seem to be ahead of everyone else. On a future episode, uh, we'll go through them and tell you what the media or listeners recommended and love.

• 35:20Speaker 05

  Cool. This is another question for Spencer from Spencer. Crew, how'd the Milwaukee store opening go? Spencer, I think you were the, you, Mark and Chester were there?

• 35:27Speaker 02

  And Chester, it was awesome. Um, we had, I think a thousand people show up was the number that they guessed. The store looks awesome. When, when you're inside the Milwaukee store, you feel it. You're like, I am in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Just like I think if you're in the Bozeman store, uh, it's, it's very clear to you that you are in a media or store in Bozeman. So the people we, we talked to were awesome. Um, I love Milwaukee. I, I love, uh, Wisconsin. A lot of good people there. It was a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone who showed up there and, uh, the Madison tailgate tour the next day. Any cheese curds? We did have cheese curds, yes. Spotted cow? We had, we had multiple, I think we had three people bring us a case of spotted cow. So, Wisconsin really provided. They brought their best.

• 36:12Speaker 05

  Um, on the heels of the taxidermy conversation, Isaac's asking if the crew has any unique or interesting pieces of taxidermy that you haven't talked about on the show before?

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Maxwell, anything?

• 36:22Speaker 04

  Uh, my first ever duck mounts look like crap.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  And, uh, the necks, I asked for like, uh, a dead mount hanging by the feet.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:34Speaker 04

  And I got them back and they were hanging by the neck and the neck was about like a foot long on each duck. And so, it like throughout college, it was just like a running joke. It was like, oh yeah, do you want to see my shitty ducks, you know?

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:46Speaker 04

  Uh, that's the only interesting and

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 36:49Speaker 04

  Really the only taxidermy I've ever had done.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:52Speaker 04

  Everything else has just been your, your mounts and beetle cleaning, so that's about it.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Randall, anything exciting?

• 36:58Speaker 03

  Um, the first bear I shot, I got a shoulder mount. Uh, and I feel like that's a little uncommon to do a shoulder mounted black bear.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  It's not like weird or anything, but I, it's also funny because it's not a very big bear. Uh, that's in Chili's office.

• 37:14Speaker 04

  That one?

• 37:15Speaker 03

  Along with my old couch. Um, and then

• 37:18Speaker 04

  It's your office?

• 37:19Speaker 03

  Actually, the most recent, uh, the most recent bear I killed when I was up in Alaska with Steve, I got that into a half, they call it a, a wall pedestal.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  Which is essentially like a shoulder mount, but it has more of the chest coming out of the wall.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:34Speaker 03

  And, uh, very happy with that, but I do sometimes chuckle to myself that my only two, and I have a, a bear rug. Uh, but my only like taxidermy, other than some fish when I was little.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Are, uh

• 37:46Speaker 04

  Bears.

• 37:47Speaker 03

  Bears.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Hmm. I think, uh, the most unique taxidermy in my house is probably, uh, Clay Newcombe gave me a couple raccoon baculums, which is a penis bone.

• 37:56Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  And so, we have those on a nice frame on the wall. Uh, and then I haven't had this one in about a decade, but when I was in college, um, my buddies and I would heavily pursue the kestylode, which was the hunting season promotion that Keystone Light did. With the gold can or something? Exactly. Well, Bush, Bush Light did one where I think it was a gold can. And Keystone did one where I don't, it was either gold or orange. I think orange. I think it was the orange can that you hunt for. Yeah. And then if you were to get one, you have like a box cut out where you put it on the wall. And there's like a kestylode. And I think there was a kestafish or a kestat trout, something like that. So when we had, we had a couple of orange cans, uh, those used to be up in my college apartment. But now that I'm an adult, just don't have anymore. And no more Keystone.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  I'd like to bring it back though. I, I put that in Chili's office.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  Empty beer can and liquor bottle home decor has really gone away for me in recent years.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, once you turned like 34, it's like, I probably gotta get rid of these things.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  All right, moving on, we have the Meat Eater Movie Club. This week, we're reviewing the 2010 documentary Elephant in the Living Room.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  Thank you, Phil. Although that sound effect rings hollow in my ears since our Bennigan's review, and I've lost all confidence in this bit.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  Uh, given- Are you saying it peaked then?

• 39:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly. Um, I'm basically a heavily concussed Brett Favre. Playing for the Vikings at this point.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Year two.

• 39:39Speaker 03

  Um, it's got a straightforward review, but I think there's, the, the film is ripe for discussion. We're reviewing The Elephant in the Living Room, so I'll begin my commentary. The award-winning 2010 documentary, The Elephant in the Living Room, plums a fundamental mystery of the human condition. The capacity of people to do things that are completely inexplicable to other people, and how those inexplicable things somehow make perfect sense to the people doing them. It's the type of film that forces you to confront the unsettling reality that the mind is capable of justifying nearly anything, and that rationality itself might be nothing more than a shared hallucination we've all agreed to participate in. Your neighbors might well be living entirely different lives that fall logic so alien, it might as well be from another planet.

• 40:23Speaker 03

  The film follows Tim Harrison, a public safety officer who specializes in exotic animal emergencies, as he responds to calls that sound like a five-year-old wildlife enthusiast filled out some Mad Libs: escaped lions in Walmart parking lots, pythons trapped in suburban basements, bears held captive in backyard sheds, and cougars—this is my favorite— and cougars prowling next to pretzel bakeries, which actually is a thing from the film. Mr. Harrison serves—or Officer Harrison, I should say, serves as our guide through this parallel universe where owning a 400-pound tiger is somehow not only worth considering, it's worth fighting for. He has the thousand-yard stare of a man who's seen too many things that shouldn't exist but absolutely do. But the real enigma and star of the show is the

• 41:08Speaker 03

  late Terry Brumfield, a truck driver who keeps a penful of African lions in his mud-spattered Ohio backyard. Watching Brumfield interact with these animals, you're struck by how completely normal this seems to him. He feeds them, he talks to them, he worries about their health, exactly like any pet owner, except his pets could horribly maim him in a moment. The cognitive dissonance is staggering. Terry has decided that sharing his property with apex predators from another continent is a rational choice, and scoffs at those who have called him, quote, "brain-dead, selfish, and immature." The documentary doesn't try to bridge this gap for the viewer. It lets you chew on the electrifying discomfort of knowing that human beings can arrive at completely opposite

• 41:49Speaker 03

  conclusions about what constitutes reasonable behavior. This extends to everyone in the film. There's the woman who sees some measure of irony in escaping the totalitarian regime behind the Iron Curtain, only to find that keeping tigers in Perump, Nevada, is unnerving to her neighbors. There's the dealers who trade in poisonous snakes that they coil up inside of empty potato salad containers. Director Michael Weber wisely avoids trying to explain these people to us. Instead, he lets their own words reveal the vast gulf between how they see themselves and how the rest of us see them. There's something anthropological about the film, like studying a culture whose basic assumptions about risk, responsibility,

• 42:30Speaker 03

  and sanity are so different from mainstream society that meaningful communication between the two becomes nearly impossible.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  That's my take. Hmm. But I have a whole list of things. Um, before we get into the discussion, I tried to check up on some of the, uh, folks from this. Oh, where are they now? Well, the man, the Terry, the man who, um, kept the lions actually died. Died the same year as the film's release. I mean, it kind of felt like it was trending that direction. Yeah, the guy, the giant guy that, uh, Oh, the wrestler? The, who looks like Goldberg. Yeah, he also passed away. Hmm. I looked up the Animal Finder's Guide, the, uh, the, the classified, you know, it was like the Auto Trader, but for exotic pets. Mm hmm. That stopped publishing in 2018. I went to the website. IP. I went to, because I, when, when I saw that on the screen, I, it's, I wrote down,

• 43:24Speaker 03

  I should get Animal Finder, I know, I wrote Animal Finder Guide, can we get it? And Sydney turned to me and said, I'm surprised you don't have that. Um, there are some articles still on the website, uh, including advice on what to do if your large animal just escapes. And he says, uh,

• 43:43Speaker 03

  "My standing rule is that if an animal of danger leaves my compound, there shall be no effort to capture, but only to destroy." Wow. Because no single animal is worth the harm it does to all the other exotic pets when someone is mauled. Oh, okay. Thought that was insightful. I feel like that's usually not the take these people have. Yeah, well. It's like animal above human. I think that this person has a larger view because they're part of the, the trade. Mm hmm. And then finally I tried to look up, um, the folks from Perump, Nevada, who were, were sort of political. And so I couldn't remember their names and I didn't want to go back and watch the film. So I Googled exotic pets, Perump, Nevada, big cats.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  And I found a guy who very recently claimed his seven tigers were emotional support animals so that the government couldn't take them away. Wow. But the government still took them away. And I thought surely that's gotta be the same people that were in this film. And no, uh, Scott Shoemaker and Susanna Zokol, are not the people involved in this. That guy was named like. Like Cal something, I don't know. Um, so I don't know. I guess I've got a lot of thoughts here. The final thought was, I mean, this movie is actually darker and more disturbing than I imagined or than I remembered.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  You, you had declared this is one of your favorite documentaries.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I watched it a bunch. This probably is the documentary of most, I've watched third most. Only behind Grizzly Man and Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia.

• 45:19Speaker 03

  But I hadn't watched it in a very long time. And it's darker than I remember. And so I have some dark. The, the worst part of the movie is seeing the lion die. Uh, and then second most is when they have the, they take the starving elephant away from that woman. And the elephant's name is Twiggy. And I wrote down in my notes, if I were starving an elephant to death in my backyard, I wouldn't name it Twiggy. I wouldn't like to make a joke about it. So, I don't know. What are your thoughts, guys? What are your thoughts?

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Well, Pa Rump, Pa Rump Nevada, um, the only thing I have any awareness about of that place is that is where Lamar Odom. Overdosed on cocaine.

• 45:56Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  At a, uh, what do they call it? Like a bunny house? Just a brothel?

• 45:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's like, hmm, it's like 40 or 50 miles outside of Vegas, I believe.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they, they really like their brothels and their, uh, big tigers and lions.

• 46:09Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  Uh, my, my takeaway watching this was why is this Ohio's culture?

• 46:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It's just Ohio mainly.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Our token Ohio and Randall, uh, what, why are your people like this?

• 46:20Speaker 03

  I see, this is one of those questions. Uh, this is one of those questions you have about any work of art.

• 46:28Speaker 03

  Is it just Ohio or is the film just in Ohio?

• 46:33Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  Uh, because if you watch Chimp Crazy, I don't think any of those chimps are in Ohio.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Was that Connecticut? No, that was Missouri.

• 46:40Speaker 03

  There's, yeah, it's all over the country. Oregon, Connecticut. I, I think. This is also one of those things where it's like. This doesn't exist until you look for it.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  And then when you're this officer, you see it everywhere.

• 46:58Speaker 03

  I love the officer. He's great.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  He's got a great heart.

• 47:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it reminds me of like the old dare, like anti-drug campaigns, but if if marijuana was like as bad as it was in the 90s.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:12Speaker 03

  Cause he's like, he's like, sort of, he's like, I, you know, I have this connection to it. But let me tell you, it's bad, kids. You don't want to get into, you don't want to get into tigers. You don't want to get into lions. And they're sort of walking around on the neighborhood on this crusade like and going and like showing the cameras how bad this is.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, the casting for this documentary was very strong, like the cop looked like a cop. The exotic pet owners looked like exotic pet owners. The exotic pet rescue people looked like exotic pet rescue people. They they nailed it for bringing us those characters. Max?

• 47:47Speaker 04

  Did you notice how Tim was wearing a Live Strong bracelet?

• 47:50Speaker 02

  I did not.

• 47:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:52Speaker 03

  There's a lot of mossy oak and real tree in this documentary.

• 47:55Speaker 04

  But then also like at one point, like Tim had this hat. It said ambulance on it, but it was like, instead of spelled left to right, it was spelled right to left. Which I thought it was extremely awkward and like, I just thought it was like, oh, just like looking into a mirror. But then I read his shirt and his shirt was reading perfectly fine.

• 48:16Speaker 03

  Well, you can't see his shirt if you're looking in your rearview mirror, but you maybe don't see his hat.

• 48:19Speaker 04

  No, it was just like, just, I'll find it. I'll send a picture to you guys later, but it was just like, it wasn't even looking in a mirror.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  Weird.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  There were also a weird government agency of first responders, whereas like the police officers were the firemen and the firemen, where the EMTs. I didn't know that existed.

• 48:35Speaker 04

  Was that just because it was a small community?

• 48:37Speaker 03

  Well, he said it was very rare. He did say it was very rare. I enjoyed my, one of my favorite moments in the film is when he's walking through the woods. Max pointed out that it seems like it's a little bit of a, a, a setup.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Cheesy.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  But he's walking through the woods and he describes it as a little slice of heaven. And he's like very genuine about it.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  And it's just sort of like dark, there's nothing that's like.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  It's Ohio.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  It doesn't, yeah, like there's nothing about it that's like spectacular. Yeah, it's like this gray, gray woods, but you could tell the guy was like, this is a piece of heaven.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  And I love that.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  I think he just needed some quiet in his life. That was something he was missing. Um, I, I had, when I used to think about SeaWorld, I was like, it's probably bad, but I imagine there's like a lot of nuance with keeping whales and dolphins in a place like that. And then I went whale watching for the first time and saw how like a pod of orcas very quickly could move miles. Like you would see them here, they disappear for a minute or two, and then all of a sudden they are miles away. And I was like, oh, never mind. It's actually not nuanced. It's just pretty evil to have those things in captivity like that. There's no, there's no reason, probably almost no reason, um, where that should be okay. Where, where you can have whales and dolphins in a place like SeaWorld.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  I think I had a similar experience with this documentary that I was, I was probably beforehand like, um, I imagine there's some real nuance and, uh, owning a lion, if you live in Texas is, is cool. Um, you know, it's just not for me. But then when they go to the exotic pet show and you see.

• 50:15Speaker 04

  All those critters just.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like a nine foot snake in a little potato salad.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  Or a rubber made container with an alligator in it.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  It was awful to watch.

• 50:23Speaker 03

  I, I, I wrote down this, the market like, eh, eh, there's a, there's sort of like in Mission Impossible or James Bond. You always see like the scene where there's an arms bazaar and there's like arms traders selling weapons to terrorists.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  And that was like, that was the vibe I got from that scene.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:42Speaker 03

  Except instead of selling weapons to like fanatical murderers, it's just that, but for people wearing tank tops going, oh, that's cool. How much?

• 50:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like how.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  The guy that was buying the alligator for his kid or something.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  The kid was so pumped up.

• 50:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, the kid was so pumped up and I'm just like, it's not gonna end well.

• 51:00Speaker 04

  Like I, in 2025 right now, how prevalent do you think the reptile trade is or like exotic animals? Do you think it's like?

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Still a thing? I imagine in parts of the country it very much is.

• 51:14Speaker 03

  Well, there's been a, there's been a big crackdown in recent years. I think, I think, uh, you know, there's obviously like an organized movement to bring an end to this stuff. Uh, and Tiger King certainly brought popular attention to it.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:27Speaker 03

  There was also the infamous Zanesville massacre where the guy, uh, another Ohioan, um, released all of his animals.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 51:36Speaker 03

  And they ended up shooting.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  Did he kill himself too?

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, he killed himself and, and they ended up shooting like all but four. There's lions, tigers, bears, wolves.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Oh my.

• 51:47Speaker 03

  Um, and that, that also brought like national attention to it where, you know, they have like, you see a CNN broadcast and they're talking to some expert and they're like, well, actually there's no rules about this. So,

• 51:57Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  Well, I don't know. What do we do?

• 51:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  So I bet, I bet the scene has changed somewhat since this, but I think it's, I think it's still thriving in certain places.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  A tough watch. You see some, uh, like very, uh, beautiful animals who are like tortured situations in the movie.

• 52:14Speaker 03

  But, but the, the, the, the part about it is like the, they talk to someone who loves having animals and then they talk to like that old guy.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 52:23Speaker 03

  Who's just sitting in the chair. He's, and he's just like, I don't understand these people.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:27Speaker 03

  Like there's just such a disconnect. Uh, uh, there's something that's just very compelling to me about that. One final, uh, note here. I don't know how much time we have, but, um, I paused when they showed the animal finder guide when he's flipping through it. I paused it and I looked at what was on the page and there was an ad that said, uh,

• 52:50Speaker 03

  it says need 100 shooter bucks. 130 inches to 250 inches. Call Jerry.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  Okay. Did you call him?

• 52:58Speaker 03

  No, I didn't. But it's like a big half page classified ad in there. Just like, I, I need a hundred for the fall. Can you get, can you get some shooter bucks for me?

• 53:07Speaker 02

  That's funny.

• 53:07Speaker 03

  So, yeah.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Where, where I grew up, there was a free, um, like newspaper you'd find in any gas station that was called the green sheets. And it's basically agriculture advertisements where people saying, I'm in need of 20 hay bales.

• 53:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  Or, um, I have a 1986 Chevy pickup for sale.

• 53:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  I, I would like us to bring something like that to meat eater radio called the meat sheets. Where we do similar advertising for people. Someone in Mississippi is looking for a buddy to go fishing with. Someone in Iowa would like a 20 acre deer lease near Des Moines.

• 53:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, if we can, if we can draw up an iron clad liability waiver for this, I think it's a great idea.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're just like doing Tinder for some folks who need some outdoor projects or a hunting buddy or whatever.

• 53:54Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. I like it.

• 53:55Speaker 05

  Really quick, Max, people are talking about it in the chat, but they print ambulance backwards on the front of ambulances.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 54:01Speaker 05

  So that when you look at, when you look at your rear view mirror.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  Look at that. Learn something new every day.

• 54:05Speaker 05

  It shows, it shows up, you know, written.

• 54:07Speaker 02

  Wow. Thank you, chat. Very good.

• 54:11Steven Rinella?

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• 54:55Steven Rinella?

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• 56:17Steven Rinella?

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• 56:44Speaker 02

  Our last segment today is about the 2025 Sasquatch calling contest, but before we do that interview, I want you to hear what it sounds like to be there. Here is a 30-second clip of the 2018 competition. The final call you hear is from the winner. Play the clip, Phil.

• 57:00Speaker 04

  I thought Randall was just gonna make noises.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  Wow, she's got some lungs on it. She did, she was the winner. That was good. All right, joining us on the line now is Cheryl Patorde and Paul Bartholomew from the Sasquatch Festival and Calling Contest in Whitehall, New York. Cheryl and Paul, welcome to the show.

• 57:48Speaker 09

  Hi, thanks for having us.

• 57:50Speaker 02

  Thanks for being here. All right, we're gonna talk to Cheryl first. She is the organizer of the Sasquatch Festival. Cheryl, I have to get this question out of the way. Do you believe in Bigfoot?

• 58:00Speaker 09

  Yes.

• 58:01Speaker 02

  You do? Okay, have you ever seen or heard a Bigfoot?

• 58:05Speaker 09

  I have not.

• 58:06Speaker 02

  Okay, so why then do you believe in Bigfoot?

• 58:10Speaker 09

  Well, we have all our researchers who bring us all this information. There's castings of footprints. So I think there's one out there somewhere, at least one, if not a lot more.

• 58:22Speaker 02

  Excellent. I would be disappointed if the person organizing this festival did not believe in Bigfoot, so I'm glad to hear that. All right, Cheryl, what is the Sasquatch Festival?

• 58:32Speaker 09

  Well, it's just a big event in our community here in Whitehall, New York. There has been sightings of Sasquatch a few years back in our community. So people got together and decided this would be a great, fun festival to bring people into our community. So here we are, nine years later, bigger. It grows bigger every single year. It's got attention of people all over the country. So Whitehall's a very small community with only about 3,000 people. And we bring in at least 3,000 to 4,000 people just for this festival.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Amazing. And what is there for people to do there?

• 59:17Speaker 09

  Well, we have 150 vendors that come in all down, up and down the streets. We have lecturers and researchers who start all day long. There's eight of them, and they come in and bring us all kinds of information so people can listen to all their lectures all day. We have live entertainment. We have a beer garden. We have all kinds of fun things, children's areas. So it's a fun day.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  And the festival is best known for its Sasquatch Calling Contest. It takes place this Saturday at 5:00 PM. Cheryl, how many competitors do you expect to have this year?

• 59:57Speaker 09

  Well, generally in the past, we have two divisions. It's children's division and adult division. So up till age 14, we probably get about 25 or 30 kids that do it. But the adult, we could have 60 to 80, or maybe 100 this year, callers.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  Great. And what are they competing for?

• 1:00:21Speaker 09

  Just to have the title of "I'm the winner of the Sasquatch Calling Contest."

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Okay, that is very meaningful, I would say. Who are the judges of the competition?

• 1:00:33Speaker 09

  We bring some people in from out of town, people who want to have fun, people who want to be involved. So we have some business, a couple of business people. We have a high school guidance counselor. We have the chairman of the tourism division for our county. We have a high school student. So we get a little variety of everybody, and they're all very supportive of the festival.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  Have some of those folks heard a Bigfoot before? Do they know what they should be listening for?

• 1:01:05Speaker 09

  I don't know the answer to that question. I don't think they've heard one.

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:01:12Speaker 09

  But maybe they've gone online and heard some calls.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  There we go. Okay, now I want to talk to Paul. Paul is a Bigfoot researcher and the author of the book Bigfoot Encounters in New York and New England. Paul, do you believe in Bigfoot?

• 1:01:30Speaker 10

  Whatever this phenomena is, it's real and it has been cited by reputable people. And so, yes, I believe that whatever is being cited out there, there's something being cited. And it's not the normal, you know, culprits such as bear and things like that. This creature does different things. It crosses the road in three steps. And that was witnessed by police officers outside of Whitehall back in 1982. There was a major incident involving various police agencies back in 1976 out on A Bear Road. So we've got a lot of respectable witnesses who have seen this creature or some of these creatures.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  How about you? Have you seen or heard a Bigfoot?

• 1:02:12Speaker 10

  I have not.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  Okay, but you've been studying Bigfoot for over 40 years. And in that time, you've interviewed dozens of Sasquatch eyewitnesses. When is the last time you investigated a sighting, Paul?

• 1:02:25Speaker 10

  Sightings are continual. They're basically broken down into three categories, which are eyewitness sightings, track finds, and vocal reports. And it's just a continual process of reports. And if you go to the BFRO site, which is Matt Moneymaker's Bigfoot Field Research Organization site, you can actually just track where you want to look to see if there've been sightings. You know, what counties and what states. So it's a grassroots thing to check out. And in Washington County, which is where Whitehall is here in upstate New York, we have hundreds of sightings on record.

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  Wow. So when is the last time you investigated a sighting, though?

• 1:03:07Speaker 10

  Last year.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  Okay. Now, a Bloomberg article stated that Bigfoot sightings peaked in the early 2000s and have been on a decline ever since. Have you witnessed the same trend?

• 1:03:19Speaker 10

  No, not at all. In fact, back when I started, because I would be considered ancient, because I can remember typing a manuscript that, you know, with carbon paper. But, you know, now we have social media and instant messaging. And so the information flow is really instant. And as far as I'm concerned, what I've seen is more reports than ever and reported faster. And so you have now a loose network of researchers connected through social media that constantly put their information forward. You know, back in my day, we had to look for news clipping services and things like that and mail things out. Now everything's instant.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Good, good. I'm glad to hear that the Bigfoot sightings are still strong. What percentage of the time do you walk away from an interview and come to the conclusion that that person saw a genuine Bigfoot?

• 1:04:13Speaker 10

  Yeah, I don't know what the percentage would be, but there are certain things, what I call confirmation moments. And that's like what Cliff Sparks was a family friend and the the former owner of the the Scheme Valley Country Club in Whitehall. He had a sighting back in May of 75 out on the greens. And the only reason we got that sighting is because we were friends with with Cliff. Dan Gordon kept his name private for 20 years. He didn't want to be known as the Bigfoot Cop. And then finally he came forward with with his information publicly. So there's information like that that seems to confirm that there these are reputable witnesses who have everything to lose and nothing to gain. And there was

• 1:04:54Speaker 10

  a fascinating incident back in the early 2000s up in the Dresden area, which is just outside of Whitehall. And a couple of Hong Kong nationals were fishing. And he saw this creature wading through the water at chest level. They described it as ape-like. And I said to him, I said, well, what did you do? And he says, well, we went fishing. In other words, in their cultural expectation, they weren't all that surprised. They just didn't know that we had primates in this area. So you get in a case like that and you're like, wow, that's very interesting.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  Fascinating. Amazing. What are some things that those credible eyewitnesses have in common when it comes to the details of their story?

• 1:05:33Speaker 10

  Well, what's being cited here, if I gave out a general description, you're talking about seven to eight feet tall is fairly common. Dark colored usually, but you know, you can go back into New York Times articles and there was a case in the 1800s on the front page of New York Times in Palomoverma, where the creature was red in color and only five feet tall. But you have these various descriptions, making a sound like a squealing or a high pitched scream, being a photo sensitive, a light sensitive, photophobic.

• 1:06:08Speaker 10

  Having a, a, a gait like a man, but looking more like a gorilla with long swinging arms down at, at knee level. So it's, I guess it'd be your traditional Harry and the Hendersons type of creature being sighted in a lot of the cases. Occasionally, like down in Kinderhook, New York, where Bruce Hellenbeck is an expert, uh, these, these creatures were seen in groups.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Now we know what to look for. Uh, Paul, you literally wrote the book on Bigfoot in New England, so I want to ask you some questions specifically about Sasquatch in that region. Does a New England Bigfoot differ, uh, from a Bigfoot that lives in Tennessee or Montana or California?

• 1:06:47Speaker 10

  That's, that's a, an excellent, uh, uh, question because this is a global enigma. Whatever is going on here is going on around the world. Uh, if you go to Nepal in the Himalayas, we call these creatures the Yeti or the Avamo Snowman, whether they're a cousin, but they're, they're closely, uh, described the same type of, uh, you know, unknown primate type creature. If you go to Australia, where my brother was at for many years, it's called the Yawee or the Yahoo or the Devil's Devil. If you go to the former, you know, Soviet Union, it was the Chichuna or the Almisti. Uh, so, and then we talk about the States. You can go down to Florida, which racks up a lot of sightings and it's called the Skunk Ape

• 1:07:27Speaker 10

  down there. Momo in Missouri, the Falk Monster in Arkansas and so forth. Now, the Honey Island Swamp Monster appears to be a little more aggressive and that may be because it's in an environment which has, you know, uh, you know, alligators, reptiles and things and it just may be more aggressive in that regards. So we do have these regional differences, but they seem to be some sort of, they seem to be related in some, some way.

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  Okay. What do you think a New England Bigfoot eats?

• 1:07:56Speaker 10

  Uh, Dr. Cook, who I studied with on, at Castleman State College, he was a Pulitzer Prize nominee and, and an anthropologist and, uh, he-

• 1:08:06Speaker 10

  Wrote Flood Tide of Empire through Yale University. And he had studied this with myself and he felt that whatever these creatures were, they were probably opportunistic and omnivorous. Meaning, you know, plants and animals are often seen in swampy areas. And things like, you know, maybe a downed deer. That would be edible as well. And down in Kinderhook, it was actually seen going through garbage. So, or at least a group of these creatures. So, yeah, it's, I think Dr. Cook's observation of being opportunistic would be probably the best answer.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  Sounds like Randall. Is a Bigfoot dangerous? Kind of looks like Randall, dude.

• 1:08:46Speaker 10

  Um, well, I mean, any wild animal or creature in the wild that you're not used to, you should obviously use caution. But in my span of research, I haven't come across very many negative encounters. One encounter that I have heard fairly frequently is people say, well, it started to chase me. And then they say, well, it seemed like it could have caught me at any time. And I'm not, I'm wondering if that might be some sort of a bluffing display to, you know, to get rid of the danger near it.

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  Uh huh. If someone in New England wanted to see a Bigfoot today, where would you send them and what would you tell them to do?

• 1:09:28Speaker 10

  It's like hitting the lottery. Um, the most common sighting of a creature is driving around at night and the creature crosses the road in front of you. That's, that was the Dan Gordon, a police officer sighting. Uh, he was with another officer at the time and the creature crossed the road in three steps. They were stunned. He gets out of the car, draws his weapon, tries to follow, but it's, it's long gone. And, uh, you know, Dan took a polygraph regarding this incident and there was no deception. Of course, we knew we weren't, I went to school with Dan, very honest person, brutally honest person. And so, uh, yeah, uh, you, you just have to be lucky. I mean, obviously there's certain areas that they have had a lot of sightings like Kinderhook, uh, Chittenden, Vermont,

• 1:10:11Speaker 10

  uh, uh, the Whitehall, New York region, uh, the Rutland, Vermont region and so forth. But there's different hotspots all over the place. You know, if you look on a national level, you go to like the ranch in Utah, the, which has been studied by George Knapp, the investigative journalist, and that has a plethora of paranormal phenomena occurring there routinely.

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  Okay. Uh, circling back to the Sasquatch calling competition, what do we know about Bigfoot vocalizations?

• 1:10:38Speaker 10

  Yes. Uh, you can actually look up online, look up Ron Moorhead and you look up the Sierra sounds from 1972 and he put them right out there. And these were sounds he and Alan Berry and a group had gone up into the Sierras and recorded these incredible vocal displays. And they've been studied by various institutes and, and scientists and they're right open for everybody to listen to and to study. And I think those are the real thing. I think that's, uh, and it's a, it's an assortment of sounds ranging from guttural noises to high pitched screaming to what sounds like a, a wild, uh, you know, uh,

• 1:11:18Speaker 10

  violent type display to a more, more, more like grunting and things. So yeah, uh, you can actually hear them right online, uh, the Ron Moorhead.

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  Okay. Yeah, I just, I just pulled it up and it's got 1.3 million views. We will check that out, uh, after the interview. You can hear Paul speak about Bigfoot and Whitehall's role in the unexplained at the Sasquatch Festival this Saturday at 10:30 a.m. The Sasquatch Calling Competition starts at 5. Cheryl and Paul, good luck with the event and thanks for joining us.

• 1:11:48Speaker 09

  Thank you for having us. We really appreciate it.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  Have fun, guys.

• 1:11:54Speaker 02

  Randall, do you believe in Bigfoot?

• 1:11:57Speaker 03

  I don't. I don't. I like that there are people who do.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:12:01Speaker 03

  Um, I li- I like to think and I feel fairly certain that we don't know everything about everything, right? Um, the size of Bigfoot gives me pause.

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's hard to hide all those skeletons and...

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  I just feel like...

• 1:12:21Speaker 02

  Not get him on trail camera.

• 1:12:22Speaker 03

  But, um, I liked, I like to, I like that people believe.

• 1:12:28Speaker 05

  We're getting a lot of requests in the chat for a Randall Bigfoot vocalization.

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  Oh, please, Randall. Uh, Max is gonna, Max is gonna tell us if he believes in Bigfoot. Randall, you think about what a vocalization would sound like. We'll get that in a minute.

• 1:12:39Speaker 03

  I've got it.

• 1:12:41Speaker 04

  A minute. Ponder it. Uh, I personally don't. Uh, my biggest thing is like, you're out in the woods and you run into dead critters all the time, a dead deer, dead whatever, dead birds. Why haven't we ran across a dead Bigfoot yet?

• 1:12:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. I ain't never found a dead wolf.

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  Oh, they must not exist.

• 1:13:02Speaker 03

  I believe in wolves.

• 1:13:04Speaker 04

  There's been confirmed sightings.

• 1:13:09Speaker 03

  Sorry. It's supposed to go longer than that.

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  Oh, that's very good.

• 1:13:20Speaker 05

  That is a, that is a cat giving birth.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  That was great. Uh, I, I do not believe in Bigfoot. I've never believed in Bigfoot. I think there's a zero percent chance he's real, but I love, uh, the folks that are dedicated to finding them and I love the folks who are dedicated to, uh, you know, making this a thing and keeping this a thing. If you, if I was at the Madison, Wisconsin Tailgate Tour and two people came up to me at the same time and one of them's like, "I have a story about the time I killed 180-inch whitetail." And then the other guy said, "I have a story about the time I saw Bigfoot." I would say Bigfoot story. Give me that one first. I'm, I'm very interested in that. Uh, that, that is something, uh, that I will always be entertained by despite, um, not ever going to believe in it until like, you

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  know, the thing shows up as a carcass.

• 1:14:10Speaker 03

  And I think like just being, being outside. There's an element of it that's like mysterious. You never know what you're gonna see. You never know it's gonna happen. Uh, good or bad. And so the Bigfoot is like the embodiment of that. It's the distillation of all of the unknown of the outside. And so for that reason, I'm glad that Bigfoot exists in our culture.

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  I like the culture aspect of it. And I like that it gets some people outdoors, um, who seem to be like singularly interested in that thing. Like that's, that is their outdoor activity. Uh, good for them. All right. That brings us to the end of the show. Phil, let's get some final feedback from the chat.

• 1:14:49Speaker 05

  Uh, people who devour all of our content on the YouTube probably know this, but Tim Allen asks, what does Max do at Meat Eater? Max?

• 1:14:58Speaker 04

  Well, Tim, uh, I run around, uh, chasing people with cameras.

• 1:15:03Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:15:03Speaker 04

  So a videographer, photographer.

• 1:15:05Speaker 05

  Extraordinaire.

• 1:15:06Speaker 03

  And you do a little waterfowl hunting content?

• 1:15:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, do a little duck hunting on the side, uh, when I'm not working. But, uh, yeah, this is only my second time on radio live.

• 1:15:15Speaker 05

  Right on. On, on that, does anyone here, is anyone here an Upland person? Max?

• 1:15:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, sort of. I mean, Cal would be a better.

• 1:15:22Speaker 05

  We, yeah, we, we had, we had a pheasant question. I'm, I'm just not even gonna bring it up then.

• 1:15:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I can try to answer it.

• 1:15:26Speaker 05

  I know Randall and Spencer are not.

• 1:15:29Speaker 03

  My best advice is if you shoot a pheasant with Cal, you give it to Cal and you have Cal cook dinner for you.

• 1:15:37Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:15:38Speaker 03

  It works every time. Never been disappointed.

• 1:15:41Speaker 04

  What is the pheasant question?

• 1:15:43Speaker 05

  Oh, just, just, uh, meal, meal prep. So there you go.

• 1:15:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:47Speaker 05

  Go send Cal a DM. I'm sure he'll respond.

• 1:15:48Speaker 03

  He made a lovely, uh, pho.

• 1:15:51Speaker 05

  A pheasant pho?

• 1:15:52Speaker 03

  He made a pheasant pho last year with some birds we shot. It was delightful.

• 1:15:55Speaker 05

  That sounds great. Uh, let's see. I think we got a Leland question. Yeah. Leland says, I just learned Randall was a fellow Eagle Scout. Makes me even more of a randomal. How many eagles are there in the Meat Eater crew?

• 1:16:09Speaker 02

  Probably one.

• 1:16:10Speaker 05

  I was a Cub Scout.

• 1:16:12Speaker 03

  That's about it. A Cub Scout, oh my god. That's about it. Didn't even make it to Tenderfoot.

• 1:16:20Speaker 02

  I think it's just random.

• 1:16:21Speaker 03

  A lot, Yanis was in Latvian Scouts, wasn't he?

• 1:16:25Speaker 05

  Latvian Boy Scouts?

• 1:16:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was in some sort of Latvian fraternal organization.

• 1:16:30Speaker 05

  Reed Duval says we should do a Sasquatch calling on the live tour.

• 1:16:34Speaker 02

  Oh wow.

• 1:16:34Speaker 05

  Put that together.

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, the last live tour, it was a barred owl calling contest.

• 1:16:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:39Speaker 02

  The problem is Steve will be there, so it will not happen.

• 1:16:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, we actually had another person say, does Steve know that you're talking to Bigfoot people on the podcast today?

• 1:16:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  He does not.

• 1:16:48Speaker 05

  I also think he still does not know we played D and D on his podcast.

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  Can't wait till he finds out in a few months from now.

• 1:16:57Speaker 03

  But he doesn't know won't hurt him.

• 1:16:58Speaker 05

  This is a question from Nate. If hunting and fishing was banned tomorrow, what would keep you outside? I think we know that, know the answer from Spencer.

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  Looking at the ground for rocks and mushrooms.

• 1:17:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  That's, that's what I would do. How about you, boys?

• 1:17:12Speaker 03

  Walking my dog. Oh, dogs is a good one. Yeah. Dogs got me to the river yesterday. I like just seeing animals and I like just being outside.

• 1:17:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:23Speaker 03

  Like, it would be great this weekend to be outside at sunrise.

• 1:17:27Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 1:17:28Speaker 03

  That's like, that's enough for me.

• 1:17:30Speaker 02

  I, I spent some time on the coast this summer in Southern Oregon and Northern California. And I started doing tide pooling, where I'd get up right at sunrise and go out when the tides are very low. And I had so much fun doing that. I had it all to myself. And I also liked that it felt like I wasn't consuming anything. I didn't like walk away from that with a bag full of rocks or mushrooms or sheds or meat. And I kind of realized then it was one of the few things I do outside where I'm not consuming something, but I'm still thrilled to do it. It was, it was so much fun. I wish I'd lived closer to a place where I could go tide pooling. Bill, anything else?

• 1:18:10Speaker 05

  Noah says if someone were to harvest a Bigfoot, how would a typical state wildlife management agency treat that harvest? An illegal harvest, right? And he says he doesn't have to say how hypothetical he is.

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  Some states, I believe, have outlawed it. Where our last two guests came from, Whitehall, New York, they have a Bigfoot sanctuary where they have made it illegal to kill a Bigfoot within city limits. So some states have outlawed, uh, straight up killing a Bigfoot. Oklahoma is on one side of it. Either they've outlawed it, or they've made a season for it.

• 1:18:40Speaker 04

  They offer a tag.

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  Okay, that's it.

• 1:18:42Speaker 04

  That's what I, just someone, I read someone's comment. Yeah. He said that, so.

• 1:18:46Speaker 03

  And I, if you see a Bigfoot in the wild and you shoot it, you're killing a man.

• 1:18:55Speaker 03

  In a Bigfoot suit.

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're probably going to prison.

• 1:18:57Speaker 03

  So I just, it's not, it's not a wildlife management issue. You're talking about homicide.

• 1:19:04Speaker 05

  If they have a legal Bigfoot season and someone shoots a man in a Bigfoot suit, would they go to prison?

• 1:19:12Speaker 03

  If I go out in my black bear costume.

• 1:19:14Speaker 05

  I don't think they'd be going to prison.

• 1:19:15Speaker 03

  If I go out in my black bear costume, no one's gonna say it's a good idea during spring bear season. But if somebody takes a poke, they're probably going to the pokey.

• 1:19:23Speaker 02

  Max, before we get out of here, can we hear the Bigfoot call that our guest Paul was referencing? This is the official sound of a Bigfoot.

• 1:19:43Speaker 04

  Lot of background noise, but.

• 1:19:45Speaker 03

  There is a lot of background noise.

• 1:19:47Speaker 02

  That's just nature. Okay.

• 1:19:52Speaker 05

  Is that the Bigfoot?

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  Okay, now we know, we know what to listen for. Uh, thanks for joining us this week on Meat Eater Radio. We'll see you guys here next week, same time and place. Bye now.

• 1:20:02Speaker 03

  Thanks, gang.

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:20:16Speaker 11

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