Ep. 901: Trump’s Turkey Ammo, Venison at Wimbledon, Death Threats in Alabama, Texas Turns Soft

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en and the MeatEater crew discuss: Spencer’s rare bird sighting; goose removals lead to death threats; venison is on the menu at Wimbledon; Texas developers are shutting down shooting ranges; coyotes are eating iguanas; and the Trump family buys a tungsten mine. 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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• 1:09Steven Rinella?

  Welcome to the news show, everybody. Today, we've got the auction house of oddities, Redux. A local goose population gets eradicated and death threats ensue. Spencer ties up loose ends. Wimbledon, the tennis thing, is serving venison. Florida coyotes are living off iguanas, seriously. Dope and weed are sort of like synonyms. Politicians are wetting their beaks, that's a Godfather reference, on tungsten metals, and more. But first, our news. I'll tell you about our news. Auction House of Oddities.

• 1:44Steven Rinella?

  Far and away the biggest auction house of oddities ever. Now, just what the Auction House of Oddities is, it's a fundraiser we do for our Own Land Access Initiative. All the money that comes in from the auction house of oddities goes to the land access initiative. The land access, our land access initiative is used to fund access enhancement projects around the country. We help fund a project in Maine. We help fund a project in Montana. Um, we're working on one down in North Carolina, Wyoming, right? That's what we use the money.

• 2:19Speaker 04

  I think it's important to mention that like we help just because like the magnitude of these projects and then why we ask for help because like we couldn't do it ourselves.

• 2:30Steven Rinella?

  Oh, no, these are big, big.

• 2:31Speaker 04

  You know, and so there's like, like, like there's other, the other organizations and maybe, you know, government agencies that are adding in way more money than we're bringing to the table, but we're helping, you know?

• 2:43Steven Rinella?

  So when I say add in, like some of these things are many millions of dollars of deals. Um, like the Tucker town thing, it's, it's, it's Tucker town is there's a big piece of public access land that was going to get sold off and made not public. So we were working with Onyx, um, and who, when we, there was other partners involved in raising money to start buying all these parcels. Okay. So that's what the land access initiative is all about. And we do the fundraiser, the auction house of oddities, which is live. Is it live? It's live.

• 3:15Speaker 05

  When does it go live? Uh, the morning of July 8th.

• 3:18Speaker 04

  Then yes, it's live.

• 3:19Steven Rinella?

  It's live. Okay. Here's what's in the auction house of odd. This is by far the biggest auction house of oddities ever. Cause this is 32 items. These are keepers. If you're a fan of the show Doss Boat, our old show Doss Boat, we have 150 horsepower outdoor, or sorry, a Honda 150 outboard.

• 3:39Speaker 05

  Scoots.

• 3:41Steven Rinella?

  Barely, barely. The only hours on that motor are the hours that were spent fishing that show. So you could just go count the hours. That's how many hours around that motor. Nothing.

• 3:54Steven Rinella?

  Our new studio with all the barn board, the leftover barn board from that project. Brand new old town fishing kayak, all decked out for fishing. My Weatherby left-handed, Weatherby Mark five chambered in 257 Weatherby. It's the rifle I use when we're hunting prong hog with Luke Holmes in Wyoming. I used it on Montana mountain goat hunt. That rifle, it's got an MDT chassis stock on it, but it's also got the original stock that we're throwing in.

• 4:23Steven Rinella?

  We got, uh, my whole 20 years worth of writing and books all signed. We have a football helmet that we don't know where it came from, but it's been here a long time.

• 4:32Speaker 05

  Did anybody offer any kind of a hypothesis?

• 4:35Steven Rinella?

  I don't know. It's a meat eater football helmet.

• 4:37Speaker 04

  Somebody would have reached out to Carl. I'll do it right now.

• 4:41Steven Rinella?

  Our punt gun, we're auctioning off punt gun shell casings. We also have, it's not an auction, but the hats we have that say this hat was shot by a punt gun, it's hats that were shot by a punt gun. You can just go buy those hats. There's a bunch of them.

• 4:54Speaker 05

  Seventy-three of them, seventy-five dollars apiece. You are buying one of the random hats. Some of them are absolutely covered in pellets and pellet holes. Some of them, you even shake them, you'll hear the pellets inside. Other ones, you know, just got grazed by one or two pellets. You're just getting one of those random hats.

• 5:09Steven Rinella?

  But they're all wounded.

• 5:10Speaker 05

  All wounded.

• 5:11Steven Rinella?

  And it says, this hat was shot by a punt gun. This all goes to fun access initiatives. Okay? We got a couple spitters, spittoons.

• 5:23Steven Rinella?

  That I believe were gifted to us by the dip enthusiast Jared Outlaw.

• 5:29Steven Rinella?

  We got one of our old Phelps, uh, line one limited edition turkey calls, uh, walnut tree and Osage orange tree that me and Phelps chainsawed down. Had calls made from them. We did a rough cuts episode recently where I killed a mule deer in Montana. That mule deer skull. My, a prime archery left-handed bow of mine used on Meat Eater episodes. My dad's shitty old truck, 1997 Ford F-150 extended cab. Shitty old truck.

• 6:01Speaker 05

  I expect it older and shittier.

• 6:03Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 6:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, it doesn't look that.

• 6:04Steven Rinella?

  Well, I mean, listen, I sold it when my dad died, I drove it. Then I sold it to my buddy. He sold it back to me for a thousand dollars.

• 6:11Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  How many miles?

• 6:13Speaker 05

  Good mileage, 160,000 miles on it.

• 6:16Steven Rinella?

  So, my dad's old truck, which I, I lived out of that truck for a while working on a book. But here's the deal, it's full of new hunting gear.

• 6:26Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 6:27Steven Rinella?

  You can bid on that and Mark Canyon will personally deliver my dad's shitty old truck full of new hunting gear to you.

• 6:34Speaker 05

  Uh, it's got a $500 first light gift card, $200 Meat Eater store gift card, uh, a whole bunch of other stuff. We got decoy stuff from FHF. It's loaded with gear.

• 6:44Steven Rinella?

  A self bow made by Bear Newcomb.

• 6:48Steven Rinella?

  It's Tucker Town theme. So in keeping with the land access initiative.

• 6:52Speaker 05

  It's a real piece of art.

• 6:53Steven Rinella?

  Sign Meat Eater Trivia Board Game. Sign Meat Eater Trivia Expansion Packs. Sign Meat Eater Trivia Collector's Edition. Handmade dinosaur bone earrings out of Spencer Newhart's personal collection. Handmade mammoth bone necklace. Spencer Newhart's personal collection.

• 7:14Speaker 05

  Made by my wife.

• 7:15Steven Rinella?

  Handmade Tallo products.

• 7:17Speaker 05

  Made by me and my wife.

• 7:19Steven Rinella?

  Box of rocks, literal box of rocks.

• 7:22Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 7:23Steven Rinella?

  Fossils, gemstones out of Spencer Newhart's personal collection.

• 7:27Speaker 05

  Dinosaur bones, petrified wood, fish fossils, leaf fossils, all kinds of sea life in there.

• 7:33Steven Rinella?

  Spencer came through hard on this. You just imagine how much stuff he still has at his house?

• 7:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, I feel like my house is an auction house of oddities.

• 7:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 7:42Speaker 05

  Adjacent.

• 7:42Steven Rinella?

  Like you're not even scratching the surface.

• 7:44Speaker 05

  No, no, I'm just giving you like C tier things.

• 7:49Steven Rinella?

  Oh, the crew library. Here's a good one. No, for an RC car signed by NASCAR driver Chase Elliott. For NASCAR enthusiasts out there. So it's a functioning, working RC car signed by Chase Elliott. We have the Meat Eater Crew Library. Everyone in the crew went and picked a favorite book out of their own personal library. And you'll get all the favorite books. We'll sign them over to you.

• 8:11Speaker 05

  These are not new books either. You can tell they've been read.

• 8:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, these are old classics. I was real torn about what I was gonna throw in there.

• 8:18Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 8:18Steven Rinella?

  For me. Real torn. What'd you choose? Can't remember. I was still torn about it.

• 8:23Speaker 05

  The Big Sky?

• 8:24Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's right. A.B. Guthrie's The Big Sky. That's right. Mountain Man novel. A.B. Guthrie's The Big Sky.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  And.

• 8:31Steven Rinella?

  I was gonna throw in. I was gonna throw in a vicar of the brush country.

• 8:35Speaker 05

  You did.

• 8:36Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's why I was torn. Not torn. I put them both in there. That's the, okay. A vicar of the brush country and, and we did, we did an episode of Steve Reads Books that you ain't got to. About the care of the brush country.

• 8:51Steven Rinella?

  The Meat Eater Crew pantry where everyone brought in items from their own homemade items from their own pantry, stocks, chutneys.

• 9:01Speaker 05

  Smoked salmon.

• 9:02Steven Rinella?

  Smoked salmon.

• 9:03Speaker 05

  Apple butter.

• 9:04Steven Rinella?

  Pickled pike.

• 9:05Speaker 04

  Bear grease?

• 9:06Speaker 05

  No bear grease.

• 9:07Steven Rinella?

  Oh. An OG, oh, a really old camera that we filmed a bunch of Meat Eater episodes with. It's called the OG Meat Eater Cinema Camera. First light Cody gloves with custom artwork on them.

• 9:26Steven Rinella?

  Mark Kenyon's tethered saddle hunting kit signed. And here's, okay, Brent Reeves bow. It's a Matthews. We have a thing that was donated to us in order to put in the auction house of bodies, which is a model, a model 94 lever action rifle chambered in 3030.

• 9:47Steven Rinella?

  And then here's one that I feel guilty having because we shouldn't have it.

• 9:52Steven Rinella?

  A box of fly fishing memorabilia from the personal collection of Lefty Cray. Lefty Cray's personal correspondence, ties that Lefty Cray tied, ties that got flies tied, flies that he tied, flies that his friends tied and gave to him. People are annoyed that we wound up with this.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'll bet. Well, if they're annoyed, they should buy it.

• 10:15Speaker 05

  Did their, did his estate?

• 10:17Steven Rinella?

  Yes, yes.

• 10:18Speaker 05

  Gifted to us?

• 10:19Steven Rinella?

  His estate gifted to us. A museum should be buying it.

• 10:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, if I could pick one thing from our auction house to have, I'd pick this.

• 10:27Steven Rinella?

  Harvard has a history of fishing exhibit. This should be there. This shouldn't be in our office.

• 10:33Speaker 04

  And it should, it should, the collection should be called If It Ain't Chartreuse.

• 10:37Steven Rinella?

  If ain't chartreuse, there ain't no use. Um, there you have it. Auction House of Bodys live now.

• 10:44Speaker 05

  Goes for two weeks.

• 10:46Steven Rinella?

  It's gonna be big. Get your bids in now. Some of the stuff you get, there's a couple of items you gotta pick up, but most of the stuff we just mailed to you. You can read all about it.

• 10:57Steven Rinella?

  If that ain't enough fundraising, Yanni?

• 10:58Speaker 04

  Is it too early to start thinking about turkey hunting?

• 11:01Steven Rinella?

  No, because it's time to start.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  Planning?

• 11:05Steven Rinella?

  Planning.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  Yep, we've got plans. Um, probably in, I'm guessing, middle of April again, we're going to go back to the same farm that you and I and a couple of the TRCP hunt winners from last year, we're at, uh, in mid-April. We're going to be back there in 2027 with this year's winners. And the sweepstakes is going on right now, so you can buy tickets. There's some pictures up here on, if you're watching.

• 11:29Steven Rinella?

  Oh, there's our boys.

• 11:30Speaker 04

  Day one, John Clowner. So the winner actually didn't come. He had, was, his wife was about to give birth. And so he sent his two brother, brothers-in-law and, uh...

• 11:42Steven Rinella?

  We had, we later had him for dinner.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. How, how was he?

• 11:46Steven Rinella?

  It was great. Me and Spencer hosted them for dinner.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  Oh, cool. Uh, so there's one of his brothers-in-law and myself on day one. And then same day, actually, Steve, you killed with Steven, right? We killed three, I think, the first day. There's Steven helping, uh, the boys butcher their birds. Uh, what else? The next one. Oh, there's some awesome fishing there. That's the little guy. That's the only guy we took pictures of. But there are some like three-foot-plus muskie that I'm going to be prepared to catch when we go back next year.

• 12:16Steven Rinella?

  This is private pond fishing.

• 12:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, there are reclaimed...

• 12:19Steven Rinella?

  It's a little gravel quarry.

• 12:20Speaker 04

  Reclaimed quarries, yeah. Um, anyways, great farm, great turkey hunting, and, uh, for a great cause. Uh, you know, what's TRCP does is, uh, ensuring places...

• 12:33Steven Rinella?

  Guaranteeing Americans quality places to hunt and fish.

• 12:35Speaker 04

  There you go, so...

• 12:37Steven Rinella?

  We cover all the expenses. We cover your airfare, transportation, tags, lodging. We bring in a cook.

• 12:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, which is probably going to be Andy again, I hope so.

• 12:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 12:48Speaker 04

  Which is amazing. And let's not, let's not forget, Guy Groenwald is hosting us.

• 12:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 12:54Speaker 04

  We've had on, you've had on the interview show.

• 12:56Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 12:57Speaker 04

  Um, very entertaining host. I mean, if you're interested in all about the fur business in the United States of America, the guy has answers and more.

• 13:06Steven Rinella?

  And he, he'll host us for tacos.

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Oh, it's, it's awesome. It's a great, great time. And like I said, it's for a great cause. Um, so go buy some raffle tickets. I think you can get 10 for 25. And then there's more options as if you want to, uh, spend more money. Thanks. Oh, I have another, another piece of our news.

• 13:29Steven Rinella?

  I just got some input on this too.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  Oh, on TRCP?

• 13:33Steven Rinella?

  No, on what you're gonna talk about right now.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  Oh, great. You're doing a little, little, little research?

• 13:38Steven Rinella?

  Okay. A Ducks Unlimited, a duck, the guy I know in life that knows the most about ducks.

• 13:43Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 13:44Steven Rinella?

  Next to Max Barde.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  He responded to you?

• 13:49Steven Rinella?

  He says only the hens quack in the air. Ducks make a noise, they don't quack.

• 13:54Speaker 04

  Drake's making noise.

• 13:55Steven Rinella?

  I'm sorry. Yanni's saying that he watched some Drakes going quack, quack, and not.

• 14:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, just the other day, maybe two, three weeks ago, I was fishing with Tony Peterson, uh, doing a little fishing show on his, uh, local lake catching, uh, smallies and largemouth. And there were not a lot, but, uh, quite a few ducks here, here and there. And you'd see them sitting on people's docks or, you know, up against the shore. And multiple times we had Drakes fly by us quacking.

• 14:28Steven Rinella?

  When you say quack, do you mean wah?

• 14:32Speaker 04

  Does it quite sound like a hen's quack? Maybe not exactly.

• 14:36Steven Rinella?

  Was it?

• 14:37Speaker 04

  It was not that sound. It was not the Drake whistle.

• 14:39Speaker 05

  Compliments to you, Steve. You're good at that. Yeah, you got that one down.

• 14:43Steven Rinella?

  That's the same noise I make for a turkey spitting and strutting.

• 14:47Speaker 05

  Um.

• 14:48Steven Rinella?

  Spitting parts the best.

• 14:53Speaker 04

  I just don't know how those turkeys do it with that funny little tongue of theirs. They spit.

• 14:57Speaker 05

  Ding.

• 14:59Steven Rinella?

  All right. So anyways, you make the noise you heard.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  It was a, it was a quack. It was just.

• 15:07Steven Rinella?

  And Max Barde was like a duck maniac.

• 15:09Speaker 04

  Duck maniac.

• 15:10Steven Rinella?

  Saying that you must be hearing a hen somewhere else.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 15:13Steven Rinella?

  And that, but the Drake was lip syncing to it.

• 15:15Speaker 04

  It wasn't, it wasn't just my, me versus Max. There was another angler in the boat, Tony Peterson, who is seeing and hearing the exact same thing. We're watching a Drake literally fly by us. His mouth opens and you hear a quack, not a whistle. And then he does it again. And then we see another Drake the next day and he does it again.

• 15:36Steven Rinella?

  Nate, pull up, pull up Drake Mallard quacking.

• 15:44Speaker 04

  We should have Phil pull it up and then Phil can put it on the screen.

• 15:54Steven Rinella?

  That's a whole ton of ducks. That's no good. That's a dumb video. Never mind. Bad choice. Yeah, you'd have to be like, yeah, never mind. That'd take a little more time. Anyways, okay.

• 16:04Speaker 04

  So I did.

• 16:05Steven Rinella?

  Make the noise again?

• 16:09Speaker 04

  My, my, my theory is that it's one of those things like, uh, yeah, all wild game tastes bad. It's what it's, it's like someone told Max and my brother-in-law, who's a huge duck hunter and every other dude that's just a hardcore duck hunter. That only the hens quack. That's what I've always been told.

• 16:28Steven Rinella?

  Like how antelope don't go over fences, except the ones that do.

• 16:31Speaker 04

  Exactly. Yeah, Nate, expect some emails about this one, I think. And so that even though he's literally seeing a Drake flying by quacking, he still is just like, nope. There's a hen over on the bank somewhere that's quacking and it just happens to be coinciding with that Drake opening his mouth.

• 16:50Steven Rinella?

  Okay, I got, I got a Cornell ornithology lab open.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 16:55Steven Rinella?

  Here we go. This is under mail calls.

• 17:06Steven Rinella?

  That's a lot like a quack. Now do a hen quacking.

• 17:11Speaker 04

  It's more like a quack.

• 17:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's more like a quack than.

• 17:16Steven Rinella?

  She's gonna get it.

• 17:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I see your point.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  Now, just so that the, the viewers and listeners also can hear, play, play the Drake whistle. Is that also right there in the list of mail calls?

• 17:32Steven Rinella?

  Here it is.

• 17:38Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Well, you can hear it. You can hear it in the background.

• 17:44Steven Rinella?

  Well, they do a longer one.

• 17:46Speaker 06

  The Cornell lab also says definitively, the male does not quack. Instead, he gives a quieter rasping one or two noted call.

• 17:53Steven Rinella?

  That's right.

• 17:57Speaker 07

  It's like a quack with a capital Q and a quack with a little Q.

• 18:01Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 18:02Steven Rinella?

  The answer is somewhere in the middle. This is the last bit of our news. Over to Spencer.

• 18:06Speaker 05

  I was just on the Oregon coast for a week and I got two highlights.

• 18:09Steven Rinella?

  Were you with Mrs. Newhart?

• 18:11Speaker 05

  I was. Yes. For most of the trip. We split up for here and there. But yeah, we were on the Oregon coast together.

• 18:16Steven Rinella?

  You ever split up for a whole night?

• 18:18Speaker 05

  Um, no, the closest was like seven hours where I went fishing and she went shopping.

• 18:23Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 18:23Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 18:25Steven Rinella?

  Man, my wife does not approach vacations that way.

• 18:28Speaker 05

  Well, if you plan it, then you can be like, here's what we're doing during this seven hour stretch.

• 18:33Speaker 04

  There's no way. Your wife doesn't have a little alone time during a vacation?

• 18:37Steven Rinella?

  If I went away, if I went like just her and I went away on a trip and I said, hey, I got an idea for today. That's not, no. No, if I was like, I'm taking all the kids and we're gonna go fishing, then it'd be like, knock yourselves out.

• 18:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, no, but if it was just the two of you and you're like, hey, didn't you want to go to the spa? Who, which I know that she loves hitting the spa.

• 19:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but that's not gonna be like seven hours. No.

• 19:05Steven Rinella?

  I mean, we go away, the two of us like once every decade.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, you wanna hang out. Yeah, you wanna hang out.

• 19:10Steven Rinella?

  Like for me to be like.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  Spencer doesn't have kids. Different. All right. What was the, what were the highlights?

• 19:15Speaker 05

  Two, two highlights. The first highlight we were together for, uh, primarily why we went there was to see, uh, the puffins. There, there's a few million, yeah, there's a few million tufted puffins on, on the earth. Uh, but if you want to see them, you like need to get on a boat to go somewhere far away or go to Alaska. But in the lower forty eight, if you want to be standing on shore and see a puffin, there's like one place you go and it's called Haystack Rock. Uh, it's in, this is Haystack Rock.

• 19:41Speaker 04

  That's a famous rock. It gets its picture taken a lot, doesn't it?

• 19:44Speaker 05

  Yes, it's out of Cannon Beach, Oregon, covered in birds, but there's only about a hundred tufted puffins that live here. Now is the best time to go see them, like literally right now, uh, because the parents will get out of their den. They'll go fish out at sea and then they'll come back with a mouthful of fish, uh, and then they'll feed their youngs. So they're just like extra visible, especially in the morning. Uh, so we go to see. The puffed it, puffed it, or the tufted puffins. Um, and you know, only a hundred of them up there. My wife spots one right away. And so we pull up the, the binos and we got a spotting scope. And we're looking, and this, this is not, this is a different one. We saw later in total. Uh, no, you good film. In total, we saw.

• 20:21Steven Rinella?

  I'll see him.

• 20:22Speaker 05

  Nine of the tufted puffins of the hundred. We saw them. And the first one we see, uh, there's like one that looks like this. It's got the white face mask. And we saw another one had the black face mask.

• 20:32Steven Rinella?

  So all the birds in that picture are not, uh.

• 20:35Speaker 05

  Only the one in the middle of the screen with the big orange beak. That's your tufted puff.

• 20:39Speaker 07

  There's one that quacks there up high.

• 20:41Speaker 05

  A lot of birds out there. So the first, first two we see, uh, you know, one with the white face mask, one with the black face mask. Every other one we saw had a white face mask, just like this one. Um, and so we go up to a volunteer who volunteered there.

• 20:55Steven Rinella?

  What are they volunteering about?

• 20:56Speaker 05

  Right now is the great puffin watch. There's a three day period in July where you go during the great puffin watch and they'll be like, you know, they come back every year and the monogamous and, uh, they feed their babies.

• 21:06Steven Rinella?

  So they're volunteering about.

• 21:08Speaker 05

  To give you information and also be like, don't touch that starfish and like, well, say, you know, step back, things like that.

• 21:14Speaker 07

  Are you, are you a birder and, and throughout life?

• 21:17Speaker 05

  No, no, just something I'll, I'll dabble in here and there. Uh, but we want to see the tufted.

• 21:22Speaker 07

  Was there a bunch of hardcore birders with their giant cameras there?

• 21:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, but if you were a hardcore birder, you wouldn't be there during the great puffin watch.

• 21:30Speaker 07

  Cause that's just lame.

• 21:31Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, it's just like too many people, too much going on. Yeah. So we go up to one of these volunteers who's there to, you know, answer all your questions. We're like, why, why did the one have a black face mask? We didn't see any other ones like that. And they're like, you saw that one? We're like, yeah, it was like on this side of the rock. They're like, well, two weeks ago, um, one, during a different puffin count at this rock. Uh, one of the volunteers there also spotted one with a black face mask and that's not normal. In my head, it was like, oh, that's the female.

• 21:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 21:59Speaker 05

  The white face mask is the male. And she's like, I can't remember what they called it, but it's a thing where they're like all black. And I was like melanistic. And she's like, yes, melanistic. Um, so we saw.

• 22:07Steven Rinella?

  Sounds like they need a new, uh. Volunteer.

• 22:10Speaker 05

  Volunteer, yeah. So we saw the rare tufted puffin that was melanistic on haystack rock and just real tickled.

• 22:17Steven Rinella?

  Congratulations.

• 22:17Speaker 05

  It's now like one of the rarest animals that I feel like we've collected is the melanistic puffin. When you Google melanistic tufted puffin, there's no results either. So this is not like a thing.

• 22:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 22:27Speaker 05

  That that is happening often in this population.

• 22:30Steven Rinella?

  That's great.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  Did you get a picture of this one?

• 22:31Speaker 05

  I did not because we didn't know it was special at the time. So I didn't take a picture.

• 22:35Steven Rinella?

  It was like a Joe Blow puffin.

• 22:36Speaker 05

  It was the first two we saw was the a regular puffin and the melanistic one. So we're thrilled about that. I'm gonna I'm gonna contact them again and be like, what what new information you got? Do we know anything about this this melanistic tufted puffin or not? So that is going to make me a birder now. I'm like, well, I've collected this one. So like, therefore, I I should be a birder.

• 22:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but if you're like a space alien and you show up in the in America or the world and the first guy you run into is like Hulk Hogan.

• 23:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:04Speaker 04

  Or you like.

• 23:05Speaker 05

  Neil.

• 23:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you'd be like, huh?

• 23:07Speaker 04

  You catch Antae right off the rip.

• 23:09Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 23:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:10Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. So we collected rare tufted puffin. That was highlight number one. Highlight number two was I got to catch North America's biggest freshwater fish, which is the white sturgeon.

• 23:20Steven Rinella?

  Oh, damn.

• 23:22Speaker 05

  And this is while my wife was shopping. I went fishing with a guy I met out there and caught two.

• 23:28Steven Rinella?

  You did?

• 23:29Speaker 05

  The white sturgeon. Did you get the great big jump that they do? Uh, yes. So this is also the best time of year to be doing that because they'll be up in shallows. Uh, we like we caught three white sturgeon that day and we caught them in four feet of water and 20 feet of water.

• 23:43Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 23:43Speaker 05

  Um, so just a variety.

• 23:44Steven Rinella?

  Four feet of water.

• 23:45Speaker 05

  Four feet of water. That one was an aerial sturgeon.

• 23:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 23:48Speaker 05

  Came up right away, whole body out of the water. And then just like the whole day, about every half hour, you'd see a sturgeon come out of the water. Um, don't know what they're doing. I don't think anybody has a good idea.

• 23:58Steven Rinella?

  She got a steak off that bad boy?

• 23:59Speaker 04

  They just free jump.

• 24:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, they do free jump. And it's like, you see a variety of moves that they do. Sometimes they'll come out like a whale where they like, you know, they fully breach and then they land on their side. Other times it'd be like a dolphin. Uh, other times they just roll on the surface like you'd see a paddlefish or a carp do. Uh, so just like a lot of a lot of sturgeon being seen.

• 24:19Steven Rinella?

  Did the guide like you?

• 24:21Speaker 05

  Did he like me?

• 24:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 24:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think, I think he liked me. I met him last year, uh, at his food truck that he owned. It's called Pacific Roots. And he's like, hey, I also.

• 24:29Steven Rinella?

  He serves sturgeon?

• 24:30Speaker 05

  No, he serves donuts. He's like, I.

• 24:32Steven Rinella?

  So you're snacking on a donut and he says, uh, hey, you know, apropos of nothing.

• 24:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:37Steven Rinella?

  I'm a sturgeon guide.

• 24:39Speaker 05

  Uh, he's a steelhead and trout guide. This he sort of dabbles in on the side, but he's like, hey, if you ever want to come out fishing, let me know. And I'm like, well, don't offer that. If you don't mean it, because I will. Yeah, I will do it. I, I would love to catch, uh, one of these bucket list fish.

• 24:52Steven Rinella?

  Well, how, how heavy would you say the biggest one was?

• 24:55Speaker 05

  Uh, six and a half feet long. And I think Googling that was like, I don't know, 130 to 160 pounds.

• 25:01Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 25:02Speaker 05

  Somewhere in there.

• 25:02Steven Rinella?

  Caught him on cut bait?

• 25:04Speaker 05

  On cut bait. Yeah. It's very familiar if you catfish, right? Um, it's just like using like a seven inch frozen anchovy. Uh, sometimes it would just be a smorgasbord of, of bait on there. You do an anchovy plus two earthworms, plus a sand shrimp.

• 25:19Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 25:20Speaker 05

  And they were just trolling the bottom, looking, looking for dead stuff.

• 25:22Steven Rinella?

  And you're, you're, you're anchored up?

• 25:24Speaker 05

  Anchored up. Yep.

• 25:25Steven Rinella?

  Just soaking lead on the bottom?

• 25:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, just very familiar if you were going to go catch catfish.

• 25:30Steven Rinella?

  And then.

• 25:31Speaker 05

  Where on the continent?

• 25:31Steven Rinella?

  All of a sudden that thing's just swimming away. It's not like you get like a nibble.

• 25:34Speaker 05

  Um, you do get a nibble. Yeah. It's, it's that part, you know, it's kind of like watching a, a bobber go down.

• 25:40Steven Rinella?

  Do they?

• 25:41Speaker 05

  A bobber, but it's just like small rod ticks. And then sometimes they about take it out of your, your rod hole.

• 25:45Speaker 07

  Do they circle hook them or J hook them?

• 25:47Speaker 05

  Uh, it is a barbless hook. It's not a circle hook, but it's a barbless J hook, which I'm surprised you can like fight them as good as you do.

• 25:54Steven Rinella?

  Hangs on to them good.

• 25:55Speaker 05

  It's a real thrashing, uh, and, and it holds on the whole time. It seems like if you set the hook in one, they're just not coming off.

• 26:00Steven Rinella?

  How many times that fish been caught?

• 26:02Speaker 05

  I would bet often.

• 26:03Steven Rinella?

  Often.

• 26:04Speaker 05

  I would, I would guess. Um, and I, I would ask the, the guy I was with, I was like, what's that boat doing? What's that boat doing? What's that boat doing?

• 26:11Steven Rinella?

  They love that kind of stuff.

• 26:12Speaker 05

  They do. Yeah. I like, well, I'm also interested. I'm, I'm like selfishly want to know, but I'm like, what's that fishing boat doing? Uh, the answer is always catching sturgeon.

• 26:20Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 26:20Speaker 05

  So it's, I imagine it's quite common.

• 26:22Speaker 07

  There was no salmon run going on at the time?

• 26:24Speaker 05

  Not yet. You'd have to be out in the ocean. Uh, as far as bycatch, I was like, what kind of bycatch do you get? And it, it shocked me, um, because the answer's like, nothing, never have any bycatch besides the occasional channel catfish.

• 26:37Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 26:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. Like, whoa, what's he doing out there?

• 26:39Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 26:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 26:40Steven Rinella?

  Being a channel catfish.

• 26:41Speaker 05

  Yeah. So I saw the melanistic puffin and got to catch the continent's biggest freshwater fish.

• 26:46Steven Rinella?

  Oh, man. Hell of a weekend for him.

• 26:48Speaker 05

  Good week. And my wife got a shop.

• 26:50Steven Rinella?

  It's great. Everybody wins. I travel quite a bit and when I'm home, it's very easy to stay on a rigid food routine and eat the right kinds of food at the right time. But when you're on the road, it's hard to stay in your routine and like diet can really start to fall apart. I've seen it and that's why I like Athletic Greens. Now AG1 is already the standard for daily foundational nutrition. AG1 Pro is what's next. It's built for people who don't want to stop there. Creatine, 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

• 27:35Steven Rinella?

  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. 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. Cash Flow Crunch, OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll,

• 28:20Steven Rinella?

  restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 28:41Speaker 07

  This is Stugatz from Stugatz and Company Live. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla Sedan with the latest features N-Tech, or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops. While Toyota's legendary resale value means you can get more at trade-in. Get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com.

• 29:16Steven Rinella?

  For deals and details Toyota, let's go places. Out of your news, lot of guys wrote in about last episode telling saying that dope, come on.

• 29:28Steven Rinella?

  Lot of guys saying that calling the dope is heroin. So if you say a dope smoker, you mean a hair. That's not true.

• 29:35Speaker 04

  It kind of is these days.

• 29:36Steven Rinella?

  It's not. I don't care about these days.

• 29:38Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 29:39Steven Rinella?

  I don't care about these days. I don't care where you go and search up. I grew up knowing there were dope smokers. I don't care where he goes search up. You're like dope and weeders like it's synonymous. They're synonyms. That's all.

• 29:54Speaker 07

  I'll point out that smoking the stuff isn't even that common anymore.

• 29:58Steven Rinella?

  No, you're like a dope eater.

• 30:00Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 30:00Steven Rinella?

  Dope eater. But guys that were acting like they didn't that dope smoking. What one is like an old man joke to even call it dope smoking. But when it back, you know, whatever time ago, whatever time ago, 20 years ago, whatever, that's it. If you go look at the internet and go look at any definition, dope 100% a dope smoker is 100% can be a weed smoker. Now it's not as accurate as saying a marijuana smoker, but it puts you in the right ballpark.

• 30:29Speaker 04

  You'll get pushed back on the whole marijuana thing, too.

• 30:32Steven Rinella?

  I don't care.

• 30:34Steven Rinella?

  You listen of all the groups to offend.

• 30:38Speaker 04

  It's one you're least worried about.

• 30:39Steven Rinella?

  No, no, I'm not like that worried about many of them that you get like, oh, the whatever, like, you know, the catch release guys are mad. The high fence guys are mad. The dope smokers are mad like, okay.

• 30:51Speaker 04

  Let's get back to.

• 30:52Speaker 05

  That's the thing about the dope smokers though is they don't get mad.

• 30:55Steven Rinella?

  They do.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  Apparently they do.

• 30:57Steven Rinella?

  Unless these weren't dope smokers.

• 30:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, these were the heroin.

• 31:02Steven Rinella?

  Another big correction, huge correction that Nate Mason needs to make.

• 31:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:06Steven Rinella?

  In your, in our news, your news.

• 31:08Speaker 04

  Talking about Michigan elk, a number of alert listeners or viewers, I should say, pointed out that there was no blue dots on that Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation map in the state of Michigan. And multiple, many people confirmed that there are probably 700 elk in the state of Michigan.

• 31:25Steven Rinella?

  We apply it every year.

• 31:27Speaker 04

  As a kid.

• 31:28Speaker 07

  Was it just a real old map?

• 31:30Speaker 04

  No, it's no, it's just, I don't, I couldn't figure it out. I can, I can get ahold of anyone at RMF. But, uh, yeah, they've been there for a long time.

• 31:38Steven Rinella?

  Long time, yeah.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Long time.

• 31:39Steven Rinella?

  I didn't, I didn't even look to notice. That's a huge mistake on your part.

• 31:42Speaker 04

  Big time, big time.

• 31:43Steven Rinella?

  Current distribution, Michigan's got them. My old man used to bow hunt whitetails up in that neck of the woods. And, uh, it's kinda like if you were to, if you make a Michigan mat with your hand and you go to your, it's the, the elk are kinda between the first and second knuckle on your middle finger.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 31:59Steven Rinella?

  That might not be totally accurate. That's pretty good. They're around that ballpark.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 32:03Steven Rinella?

  Um, he used to hunt whitetails up there and do nothing but sit in his tree stand taking photos of elk.

• 32:09Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 32:10Steven Rinella?

  It's like you're sitting around drowning an elk, hoping a whitetail comes by.

• 32:14Speaker 07

  Did you ever know anybody who killed one there?

• 32:16Steven Rinella?

  Nope, never.

• 32:17Speaker 04

  You know anybody who drew one?

• 32:18Steven Rinella?

  Nope. Do not. It's a slim draw.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  Yep. Those elk are how I learned about the mud vein thing.

• 32:27Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 32:27Speaker 04

  Where I had a client in Colorado who had had a friend who had gotten a tag, killed an elk. And then when, uh, the guide was clean gutting it, said, hey, do you want the mud veins? And the guy was like, mud veins?

• 32:44Steven Rinella?

  Like, like off a crayfish. Yeah.

• 32:47Speaker 04

  Off a crayfish? I don't know.

• 32:48Steven Rinella?

  The mud vein, like the little ship tube.

• 32:50Speaker 07

  You're talking about, he's talking about a tenderloin.

• 32:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:53Steven Rinella?

  I know, but he's using the terminology. Yeah, yeah.

• 32:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:56Steven Rinella?

  As though it's like a poop tube.

• 32:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, and the guide cut out the tenderloins and said he was gonna feed the mud veins to his dog.

• 33:05Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  Cause they're stinky and gross.

• 33:07Steven Rinella?

  Oh, last night, man, I had some trim. I, I was like trimming a heart. You know that all that fat and junk? So I had that in a bowl to give my dog. And then like, my dog was at your house. So I put it in the freezer.

• 33:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:23Steven Rinella?

  Then I got it back out and it sat a lot longer and I pulled it out last night. It was pretty rotten. My wife's like, oh my God, don't give that to the dog. I'm like, that dog don't care. So I gave it to the dog and that dog. I'm not kidding, man. That dog hadn't finished 10 seconds. Blech.

• 33:43Steven Rinella?

  Right up on the carpet. And I'm like, there's no way it's related to the rot on that thing. There has to be coincidence.

• 33:51Speaker 04

  How'd, how'd you take that?

• 33:53Speaker 05

  Something to date yesterday.

• 33:56Steven Rinella?

  Like, there's no way that did it.

• 33:57Speaker 07

  Poor tracker.

• 33:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I'm, I'm really surprised that she wouldn't take a few hours off and just go hang out at the spa.

• 34:06Steven Rinella?

  All right, out of the, the news, the actual news, and Spencer's gonna start out with a roundup of Spencer stories.

• 34:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I, I just wanna, I, I think that's something I'll do in the future. You like, cover something, you reach out for quotes, they don't come in in time, or development happens, like, the day we put out the podcast. So I got three stories I wanna circle back to. First one is the West Virginia Golden Trout update. Uh, if you don't remember, an angler set the new state record for Palomino trout with a 28-inch, uh, 12-pound fish. It was caught on the south bend of the Potomac River. Now, as I talked about that day, it's likely the fish was stocked there a few days prior by the West Virginia DNR, but I wanted to hear them say it. So I reached out to them.

• 34:46Steven Rinella?

  Looks like a stalker, don't it, Brody?

• 34:48Speaker 07

  Yeah, we already had this discussion.

• 34:49Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you weren't here for this episode?

• 34:51Speaker 05

  So David Wellman, the Assistant Chief of Fish Management for the DNR, he got back to me.

• 34:57Steven Rinella?

  We, we can't leave Yanni's comment hanging.

• 35:01Steven Rinella?

  I didn't know this. Brody said, "What you're seeing is wrong with its tail. Is it hanging in its, it's, it's brading its tail on its tank."

• 35:11Speaker 05

  So David Wellman, the Assistant Chief of Fish Management for the DNR, he got back to me, and here's what he said. Quote, "That fish was stocked this year, as most West Virginia streams do not hold over trout due to the warm temps during the summer and fall." So confirmed, the DNR stocked a state record that was caught just a few days later.

• 35:31Steven Rinella?

  But you're, we already knew that.

• 35:33Speaker 05

  But they didn't say it. They wouldn't come out and directly say it, and so now somebody did. And now I'm just like, extra amused by the whole thing. They're like, "Yeah, it's a state record, uh, that was living in a raceway, you know, 72 hours."

• 35:43Speaker 07

  I wonder if the guy who grabs that thing to stock it, "State record, baby."

• 35:48Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. And I'm not trying to dog on it too much. Like I had a few times when I caught him not knowing that there had been a stocking recently. One time it was on, I was angling myself and just under, happened to be fishing at a put in by a bridge and they had literally dumped the fish off the bridge and all of a sudden I yank in this, I don't know, two foot plus rainbow. And I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, biggest fish I've seen all summer. And then another time, you know, our dear friend Lindsay Meyer, I mean, she caught the biggest trout I've, I ever guided anyone to.

• 36:19Speaker 05

  How big?

• 36:21Speaker 04

  I don't know. Yeah. I mean, 30 inches. I mean, it's a giant.

• 36:24Speaker 05

  And you think that one just came off a truck?

• 36:27Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. They just don't like, you can't fish for 10 years on the same river, like not, not know somebody that catches a fish like that. And then all of a sudden, one day there's like 10 of them in one pool.

• 36:39Speaker 07

  The funny thing is a few days after, Yanis and my client, she caught it. A few days later, Alvin Doe's client got the same damn fish on the same bridge.

• 36:48Speaker 04

  Huh. Oh, there you go.

• 36:50Speaker 07

  Anyway.

• 36:50Speaker 05

  All right. Update number two. This is for the Iowa $44,000 walleye. There was a fishing contest held by the Iowa Great Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce. Anglers had two days to catch a tagged walleye in Okoboji to win the $44,000 grand prize. Multiple anglers tried to claim the money, but both were rejected. First angler caught a fish that was tagged in 2025, so that didn't count. The other angler, he brought in a fish that was tagged in 2026, but it was dead. So that made it ineligible. We have an update. The contest carries on after walleye weekend ends. It goes for the rest of the summer, but the prize money is significantly reduced. Two weeks after it ended, Ken Williams caught himself one of those lucky walleye

• 37:32Speaker 05

  and he won $6,000 for it. So at least some money got handed out. Anglers have until August 31st to claim the last two cash prizes of the extended contest.

• 37:44Steven Rinella?

  Which of those guys is the guy?

• 37:46Speaker 05

  Uh, it is the dude with the, uh, second from the left.

• 37:49Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 37:50Speaker 05

  The guy on the far left, he's the one in the video we watched who had to break the news that the dead walleye came in. Also some more news from the same body of water. West Lake Okoboji just had their first paddlefish caught since 1919.

• 38:02Steven Rinella?

  Nice.

• 38:03Speaker 05

  Uh, it was captured in net by biologists just a couple of weeks ago. Uh, the fish was once common in that area, but it disappeared after a bunch of dams were put in place. Uh, the Iowa DNR started a paddlefish stocking program a few years ago. This is the first one that they've recaptured. It weighed 12 pounds, measured 28 inches from the eye to the fork in the tail. And here's a look at one of the last paddlefish that was ever caught in that lake. Uh, weighed 185 pounds and it was speared by an ice angler.

• 38:31Steven Rinella?

  God.

• 38:31Speaker 05

  The guy put two spears in it. He couldn't get out of the hole himself, so he ran up to shore. Got one of his buddies named Charlie and then Charlie came to help him drag it out of the water.

• 38:39Steven Rinella?

  Serious looking man right there, dude. I got beat Brody's ass.

• 38:44Speaker 05

  185 pounds.

• 38:45Speaker 07

  I'd take him, man.

• 38:47Speaker 05

  Came out of Okoboji, one of the final paddlefish to ever be caught there.

• 38:50Steven Rinella?

  That's a serious looking man. I don't want a hat like that.

• 38:53Speaker 05

  It's a good hat. He looks like a dude who would spear a paddlefish.

• 38:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 38:56Speaker 05

  One of the only paddlefish.

• 38:57Steven Rinella?

  Two spears.

• 38:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's been speared through the ice in North America, I'm sure. All right, last update.

• 39:03Steven Rinella?

  I wonder if he's drunk on beer when that happened.

• 39:06Speaker 05

  You have to be. He was, he was in 50 foot of water, uh, and he speared it 15 feet below him, which is a heck of a shot. With a spear.

• 39:14Steven Rinella?

  It is. He was, yeah.

• 39:16Speaker 05

  That's what the story said from 1919, that it was in 50 foot of water.

• 39:20Steven Rinella?

  They got confused over time.

• 39:21Speaker 05

  No, no, not a chance. It's totally legit. All right, last update is the Ohio Bigfoot update. Uh, if you don't remember in a span, in a five day span back in March, there were seven Bigfoot sightings around Portage County. Uh, four of those happened in the exact same day. I reached out to some Sasquatch experts for their take on this rash of sightings. Here's what they told me. First one was Jeremiah Byron via the Bigfoot Society. He said that the weather was unseasonably warm that week, which resulted in Bigfoots being more active. Plus people were being more. Active, uh, so it just resulted in them.

• 39:56Steven Rinella?

  Like kicking them out, flushing them out.

• 39:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, they were encountering each other more often.

• 39:59Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I see.

• 40:00Speaker 05

  With good weather for humans, with good weather for Bigfoots. It was, it was a warm week in March.

• 40:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I'm with you.

• 40:04Speaker 05

  So they were just bumping into each other out in the woods.

• 40:06Steven Rinella?

  Like they're both out.

• 40:07Speaker 05

  That's what Jeremiah said.

• 40:09Steven Rinella?

  About that.

• 40:09Speaker 05

  Uh, Cliff Berwickman from the big, from the North American Bigfoot Center. Uh, I asked Cliff if there's a chance that the Bigfoots were migrating, uh, or they were rutting or responding to a certain moon phase. And he said, quote, "That is nonsense and pretty sensationalized." So he did not like that theory of mine.

• 40:28Steven Rinella?

  That, that sensationalized.

• 40:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, there's some good stuff. Uh, Cliff says he's not convinced that the reports were properly vetted.

• 40:36Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 40:37Speaker 05

  Uh, he, he noted that some of the witnesses weren't interviewed until days after the sightings. Uh, that's bad procedure from his perspective. He said the sightings were being gathered by Bigfootmaps.com. However, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, uh, which Cliff told me is the most reliable source for Bigfoot sightings, did not have an uptick in sightings that week. Uh, so to recap, Bigfootmaps.com had the bunch of, had, you know, the report of increase in sightings, but Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization did not.

• 41:11Steven Rinella?

  So Bigfoot Maps is kinda like, mm, they're like chumps.

• 41:14Speaker 05

  They are. So I reached out to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization for their take. Yeah. So Matt Moneymakers, who I talked to, he's one of the founding members of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.

• 41:27Steven Rinella?

  B-FRO.

• 41:27Speaker 05

  Matt said that they sent an investigator to interview the very first witness in this string of sightings. Uh, and he told me that this investigator is someone who tends to give the benefit of the doubt to people. Uh, and the investigator concluded that this was not a legitimate sighting by that first witness.

• 41:45Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 41:45Speaker 05

  The witness he interviewed was a 15-year-old boy who is an aspiring cryptozoologist, who just started his own local Bigfoot group. And so the investigator said, you know, he's maybe doing this to get himself some street.

• 41:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's like, like a fox guarding the hen house. That's not the right.

• 42:03Steven Rinella?

  Thing?

• 42:03Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 42:04Steven Rinella?

  But that's a thing. What would it be? It's not the fox guarding the hen house.

• 42:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's it's the Bigfoot. Person seeing a Bigfoot.

• 42:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like that.

• 42:13Speaker 05

  It's just like that, yeah. It's what it'd sound like. Uh, now Matt's team, Matt's team, he's tested Bigfoot map to dot com before. He sent them obviously fake reports to see what would happen. Uh, from their experience, those reports get published within a few hours with no follow up questions. One time they even submitted like a joke name and the email address was Bigfoot Maps own email address.

• 42:37Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 42:37Speaker 05

  And it still got reported like it still went up as legit.

• 42:40Steven Rinella?

  So they're like totally like just phoning it in.

• 42:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:42Steven Rinella?

  So there's like, there's a rivalry.

• 42:45Speaker 05

  There is, yes. And and Matt was um, very hot about this subject. Now Matt did tell me that Bigfoot do live in Northeast Ohio. It's actually one of the hotspots on the continent. Uh, Matt had his very first face to face encounter there back in nineteen ninety four. Uh, he saw two Bigfoots at once. One of them got to within fifteen feet and it growled at him until he left the area.

• 43:07Speaker 07

  Man, Northeast Ohio is close to.

• 43:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. So despite despite Matt being a skeptic of the reports in Portage County.

• 43:14Steven Rinella?

  He's not a skeptic.

• 43:15Speaker 05

  Back in March. No, he did tell me that their organization has gotten some credible reports from around the Ohio River in Jefferson County. So if you're in the area and want to find a Bigfoot, he recommends starting in Jefferson County, not Portage County. Because the Portage County folks are just a hoax.

• 43:34Speaker 07

  Bigfoot's not that far.

• 43:36Speaker 05

  Now you know.

• 43:38Steven Rinella?

  Man, that's a great report.

• 43:41Speaker 07

  Thanks for that, Spencer.

• 43:42Speaker 05

  You're welcome.

• 43:42Steven Rinella?

  Moving from that area down to Madison, Alabama. Where? One of our, you know, the term citizen scientist. A citizen journalist apprises of this, but we got a tip. We had a tip.

• 43:58Speaker 07

  They want to remain anonymous.

• 43:59Steven Rinella?

  Oh, they do.

• 44:00Speaker 07

  Yeah, because of the uh.

• 44:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's the there's death threats flying over there. We're gonna talk about a Canada goose issue that's good, that's got the FBI. FBI is involved on it now. So a citizen tipped us off for this story, but he wants to stay out of it because all the death threats getting thrown around down here. Alabama. Basically, here's how it goes. Yet two large communities in the Madison, Alabama area. Each of them is struggling with what they perceive to be

• 44:29Steven Rinella?

  a goose problem.

• 44:32Steven Rinella?

  They, certain members of each of these communities perceive to be suffering from overpopulated geese.

• 44:44Steven Rinella?

  Some say that the goose crisis is so acute that pets are dying.

• 44:56Steven Rinella?

  Pets are dying. Now pets always die. In any community, there's a pet dying somewhere.

• 45:05Steven Rinella?

  You follow me? But these pet deaths are attributed to these geese.

• 45:10Speaker 07

  To like fecal matter or something?

• 45:13Steven Rinella?

  Fecal matter.

• 45:14Speaker 06

  I thought it was a tax.

• 45:17Steven Rinella?

  I wish. They have swans. That'd be way more interesting. Seven, the geese, there's so many geese, people are saying that these geese are spreading avian influenza. And now 75% of the local swans are dead from these geese. They say in their pond, this is a HOA pond. It's a private HOA pond, one of these places, the one I'm going to focus on is a private HOA pond. They're even saying that there was a fish die-off in the pond related to all the nutrient loading from goose shit.

• 45:52Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so these HOAs are suffering from geese. But this is a tale of two HOAs. One HOA takes, takes a draconian approach. And they call in the feds who come in and round up and execute,

• 46:11Steven Rinella?

  euthanize, cull, what have you, 500 geese.

• 46:17Speaker 07

  Which I'll point out is not, that's something that happens with geese around the country, right?

• 46:22Steven Rinella?

  Sure, a lot of geese.

• 46:24Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 46:25Steven Rinella?

  I'm not even telling you what I think about the whole thing. How'd they do it? Don't know. It's not been released. They trapped them. Some people are saying they gassed them. Wow, that makes sense to me. I don't know what they did to them. And I don't know if they went to a food bank. The other HOA.

• 46:41Speaker 07

  They didn't use a punk gun.

• 46:42Steven Rinella?

  They did not punk gun them. The other HOA. Is exploring other options.

• 46:51Steven Rinella?

  The HOA that did the death dealing. Those HOA members are now being subject to death threats.

• 46:59Steven Rinella?

  Wow. Bad death threats.

• 47:03Steven Rinella?

  You got the Madison subdivision.

• 47:07Steven Rinella?

  You got the Heritage Plantation subdivision. Just based off those names, who do you think did the?

• 47:14Speaker 06

  Dude, I, when you said breakfast, I thought you were gonna say Madison, Wisconsin. And then you said Alabama.

• 47:20Speaker 07

  I wonder if these two subdivisions have.

• 47:22Steven Rinella?

  Alabama.

• 47:23Speaker 07

  Partisan partisan voting differences.

• 47:25Steven Rinella?

  Oh. Heritage Plantation chose to euthanize. Madison, Alabama.

• 47:36Steven Rinella?

  Chose to seek other alternatives. The Facebook comments page is is a great representation just of American sentiment.

• 47:48Steven Rinella?

  Um, I think this strikes me about going through the Facebook comments on this news source are how little people will do to find out if what they're saying makes sense before they put it down. So here you have people saying they're federally protected. Here you have people saying they're, uh, they're a non-native invasive.

• 48:14Steven Rinella?

  You have all manner of opinions, most of which could be solved with a very quick internet search.

• 48:21Steven Rinella?

  One guy had an interesting observation where he said Canadian geese are the kudzu of birds.

• 48:29Steven Rinella?

  Another guy named Glennie.

• 48:32Steven Rinella?

  Says without geese on a pond. Now follow this. Without geese on a pond. Cotton mouth snake population infestation increase on the way.

• 48:47Steven Rinella?

  Snakes will be hanging in the shrubs even. Hmm. Snakes love sunning out of concrete walks. They serve as hot rocks to all snakes. Crawling up in the cars, garage, even inside those HOA houses before it's over without no geese.

• 49:09Speaker 07

  That's why farms have geese on their ponds.

• 49:11Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 49:12Speaker 07

  He says.

• 49:13Steven Rinella?

  Venomous steak snake infestation prevention. Another guy, just one, one of the only people that was truly, truly trying to be helpful was a guy that wrote in and said, why hasn't anyone tried putting an Egyptian duck in there?

• 49:31Steven Rinella?

  He will run off any other bird trying to stay there by himself.

• 49:35Speaker 07

  Wow, I didn't know that.

• 49:37Steven Rinella?

  He'll chase people and dogs too, but you'll have no geese.

• 49:42Speaker 07

  And he proves that it works because he says that they did that at Magnolia Springs and no geese.

• 49:49Steven Rinella?

  I, here's, I can't believe it came down to execute. A lot of other people had dumb stuff to say, like, why don't they move them to a sanctuary? It's like, what, what, what sanctuary? Or people like, why don't they go put them on the river? But well, the problem is they have wings.

• 50:04Steven Rinella?

  And they just gotta go, like, they just kind of go back where they want to be. But I really can't, I mean,

• 50:12Steven Rinella?

  how would it be that a couple of dogs?

• 50:15Speaker 07

  Well, they have those dogs that are trained to haze them.

• 50:18Steven Rinella?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 50:18Speaker 07

  Golf courses use them.

• 50:20Steven Rinella?

  If one thing, geese hunters know how to do. Like, the one thing goose hunters know how to do is make it the geese don't come back to a spot. It's like, you can say a lot of bad things about hunting, but I'll tell you one thing. If there's geese in a spot and you hunt them real heavy, those geese don't come back.

• 50:39Speaker 07

  Well, I think.

• 50:40Steven Rinella?

  Turns them off to a spot.

• 50:41Speaker 07

  To be fair, I think this is a problem that's happening in suburban and urban areas all over the country with Canada geese.

• 50:48Steven Rinella?

  It just seems, I don't know, I'm not there. If I was living in that HOA, I would have said, come on, are we honestly gonna have the government come out and trap and gas 500 geese? We can't figure out a way to see ourselves through this? Or wait till they move on? Or get someone's dog that likes to chase geese? Or have some dude shoot them? Are we really gonna call in the federal government?

• 51:16Speaker 07

  Dude, people were getting ill too. You missed that in the email. People were getting ill.

• 51:21Steven Rinella?

  I don't know. I don't know. People, I got, I got a cold the other day. I don't know. Am I blaming a goose on it?

• 51:28Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, I don't know. This whole thing that we're reporting on is coming off in this one email, isn't it?

• 51:33Steven Rinella?

  I know, but I'm trying to apply some healthy skepticism to the whole thing. That's it.

• 51:38Speaker 04

  Uh, just did a quick Google search about the Egyptian, uh, geese.

• 51:43Steven Rinella?

  Is he, is he a bad mofo?

• 51:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, they are bad.

• 51:46Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I wouldn't mess with him.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, very, very fierce and they will run off all other birds.

• 51:52Steven Rinella?

  What if they tried that? I know they didn't try that.

• 51:55Speaker 04

  No, but Magnolia Springs they did and it worked.

• 51:59Steven Rinella?

  It just seems, in all seriousness, in all seriousness, it just feels to me, it's very dramatic. It feels very dramatic to call in the federal government to trap and euthanize geese because you have a goose problem on a pond. It just feels extreme.

• 52:19Speaker 04

  I'm trying to find ways to justify it. Maybe, maybe there was like a avian flu concern that they.

• 52:27Steven Rinella?

  It just feels extreme. When a bear shows up in my neighborhood, I always like to tell people, just don't tattletale on the bear.

• 52:36Steven Rinella?

  Don't tattletale on the bear. He'll be fine. He'll do something different tomorrow.

• 52:40Speaker 06

  But what if there's like 40 bears in your neighborhood?

• 52:43Steven Rinella?

  Don't tattletale on them either.

• 52:44Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 52:46Steven Rinella?

  Just let, just.

• 52:48Speaker 04

  Just walk through that bear.

• 52:49Steven Rinella?

  Just let it be.

• 52:50Speaker 05

  We interviewed a town on Media Radio who was dealing with a goose problem at their local parks and they started using a gooseinator, it's called. And it's like.

• 53:00Steven Rinella?

  Is that a shotgun?

• 53:00Speaker 05

  No, no, it should be. It's like a big orange floating RC car that's got teeth and eyes painted on it. And they drive that thing like through the flock of geese and they just do it enough to the point where they don't want to come back.

• 53:12Steven Rinella?

  Sure. There's a hundred ways to make geese not want to come back somewhere.

• 53:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, you could pay some little, little boys to haze them with the RC cars.

• 53:20Steven Rinella?

  If you every day sent a guy down there and shot a handful of geese, those geese aren't coming back, dude. Ask any duck hunter.

• 53:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

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• 55:09Steven Rinella?

  Over to you, Yannis.

• 55:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, they might get threats for shooting the geese too. Let's go across the pond. Speaking of ponds, big pond on the other side of the big pond. According to an article in The Telegraph, which is a UK-based news service, Wimbledon is now serving venison

• 55:28Speaker 04

  to lower carbon emissions by not serving beef. I know, it kind of takes the wind out of the sails of that whole article, doesn't it? Cause we're like, oh, right, we're going to get to celebrate some wild game being eaten. But it's not really about that.

• 55:45Steven Rinella?

  They could lower them even more by eating.

• 55:49Speaker 04

  Poultry, it turns out.

• 55:50Steven Rinella?

  Oh, is that right? I don't know. Wild poultry? If that's their objective.

• 55:54Speaker 04

  So, in an effort to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2030, they've swapped beef for venison. How are they measuring these, the emissions and the ratings? They got a rating system developed by a company called Foodsteps. Uh, Foodsteps helps food producers and food purveyors figure out what their carbon footprint is and how to reduce it. They have a scoring system that rates a food's impact. A is low, F is high. On average, beef dish scores an F. Venison scores a C. The move is criticized by beef farmers.

• 56:25Steven Rinella?

  That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

• 56:27Speaker 04

  Saying they're, let's.

• 56:28Steven Rinella?

  If it's wild venison, which there it could be, how is it, how is it, what are they talking about?

• 56:34Speaker 05

  Uh, this venison, though, came from behind a fence.

• 56:37Speaker 04

  What, what, what do you mean, what are they talking about?

• 56:40Steven Rinella?

  I thought they're saying wild venison isn't an A. Wild venison's an A.

• 56:44Speaker 04

  I think they're considering like.

• 56:46Steven Rinella?

  How would it not be?

• 56:47Speaker 04

  Cause there's like. Well, I'll, I'll tell you. Here in a minute. Um. A couple of things that, that, you know, that I thought worth mentioning. Um, they're not, Wimbledon's not like the first sort of event space to do this over there. Uh, it's become popular. So a bunch of England's premier soccer and rugby stadiums have also switched over to venison. Um, the comments at the end of this article were interesting. Most of the folks calling out Wendell Wimbledon for ver- virtue signaling. And not calling out the true source of carbon emissions associated with Wimbledon, which you can imagine is like the airplane travel that has to occur for everybody to get there. To, to enjoy the, uh, the sporting event, right? Like if you really gave a shit.

• 57:33Speaker 04

  You just probably wouldn't do it. Or tell people to stay at home and watch it, right?

• 57:37Steven Rinella?

  Watch on TV.

• 57:37Speaker 04

  But it's a, it's a money-making thing. So. Speaking of wild deer.

• 57:45Speaker 04

  Hardly wild.

• 57:47Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 57:49Speaker 04

  These particular ones, now all over England, Scotland, they have a lot of deer. There's, there's a, there's a bunch of different species. But these, and they, they are culled, they are hunted all over these countries and they, there with their system, they can be sold. Wild game can be sold, right? These particular ones that are being served at Wimbledon come from Richmond Park and Bushy Park, which are suburban London parks. Big places, like thousand acres, I think one, and one was two thousand acres. But they both have perimeter fencing or walls around them. So they do have like open passageways because they're open 24 hours a day.

• 58:31Speaker 04

  And so, you know, cars can get in and out and people can get in and out. So these deer aren't completely enclosed, but it's, like I said, hard, hardly wild. So there, there's a number of deer in there. Every year there's a call, they take out whatever percentage it is. And then it's sold to a, like a wholesaler that they can then, you know, sell it on to the, the caterer that's going to serve.

• 58:56Steven Rinella?

  And they sold to the tennis people.

• 58:57Speaker 04

  They sold this, yeah. Um, it's very, very manicured, like even in these parks, there's more fencing and enclosures to basically keep those deer from eating the shrubbery and the, and the flowers and all the stuff that they have planted over there. Um, what else did I have about that? Yeah, six deer species in, in England, only two of them are native, which are the red and the roe deer. Four non-natives, fallow, sika, muntjac and Chinese water deer. Um.

• 59:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I don't know, they're trying to do it to be cool.

• 59:33Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm. Do you know what dishes they're serving in?

• 59:35Speaker 04

  No, I, I, I looked up for a little menu, there was a picture of one.

• 59:39Speaker 07

  One was tartare and I forget what the other one was. Can't remember.

• 59:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, there was one that had like a piece of eggplant or a zucchini next to it with a, a little something on top. I mean, everybody's liking it, it, it's, it's great. Um.

• 59:56Speaker 04

  I don't know, I'm happy that they're that they're doing it. I mean, why not? I just think it's like, I think the reasoning behind it is a little bit goofy. Cause when you, if you really want to delve into the whole like, what's better for you? Um, or like what has, not better for you, what's better for, what has less carbon emissions? Right? Like is the, is the wild game actually better? Well, turns out like, if you basically hunt it very close, or you call it very close to where you're going. Where you're, where the meat is going to end up. And again, they have like, they are taking in all this data about like, you know, how much water it takes for one animal to drink and how much sunlight it's absorbing and how much methane each producing.

• 1:00:40Speaker 04

  Cause wild game can't be zero either, or an A, as you said, because it does produce methane, the same way that a cow does, right? So wild game, like to really be the best that it can be, it has to be hunted efficiently and not far from where you live. So if you like to fly to Wisconsin and kill a couple of deer and then fly it back to Montana and eat it. It's the same thing as buying beef from the store, probably.

• 1:01:05Steven Rinella?

  It's the dude that shoots a deer out his window of his house.

• 1:01:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Steven Rinella?

  Yes. People might look down on him, but for carbon footprint, the guy that shoots it out of his window and then drags it back into his house and eats it. That's a low carbon dude.

• 1:01:16Speaker 04

  A hundred percent. You made some notes too about like, in how in the States, if we're going to do it, it had to be farm raised. Venison, right?

• 1:01:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:24Speaker 04

  Well, farm raised venison requires more resources.

• 1:01:28Steven Rinella?

  Than beef.

• 1:01:28Speaker 04

  Than beef.

• 1:01:29Steven Rinella?

  They have no moral high ground.

• 1:01:32Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:01:32Steven Rinella?

  They can't even claim that.

• 1:01:34Speaker 04

  The funny thing is, is this is coming from like British newspapers, which like, are the most anti-hunting newspapers in the world. Like they have like, every day it's like.

• 1:01:45Steven Rinella?

  Those dudes are out of touch with nature, man. Yeah.

• 1:01:48Speaker 04

  Well, it just goes to show you, their nature, I mean, it's like what I described in this park, right? Like that's their version of nature.

• 1:01:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they, they, they, they.

• 1:01:57Speaker 04

  They haven't walked around in our backyard.

• 1:01:59Steven Rinella?

  Nature for so long, they can't, they can't even talk about it without getting crazy. Yeah.

• 1:02:06Speaker 06

  Was there anything on that list that was an A that's like tasty?

• 1:02:12Speaker 04

  I uh I saw one thing that said like that the like the lowest carbon emission uh plate that you could eat was a uh it was like a it was pea soup and I forget what else it had in it. It might have been like broccoli and pea soup or something was like the most you know uh

• 1:02:28Steven Rinella?

  I'll take a bowl of that man.

• 1:02:30Speaker 04

  Grown in your own garden.

• 1:02:31Steven Rinella?

  Take a bowl of that.

• 1:02:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, probably.

• 1:02:33Speaker 05

  The Wimbledon chef also said it was a nutritional decision.

• 1:02:37Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 1:02:37Speaker 05

  Saying that the meat is leaner, more protein rich.

• 1:02:41Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:02:42Speaker 05

  So that was part of their calculus as well.

• 1:02:45Steven Rinella?

  Is that what Spencer says to blow you off?

• 1:02:48Speaker 07

  I think he I don't.

• 1:02:49Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 1:02:49Speaker 07

  No, no, no, it's not. I can't remember.

• 1:02:51Steven Rinella?

  What did he say to blow somebody off?

• 1:02:52Speaker 07

  I'm not gonna tell you guys.

• 1:02:54Steven Rinella?

  No, it's the way he says sure. He's like.

• 1:02:56Speaker 07

  No, it's a specific thing.

• 1:02:58Steven Rinella?

  And then he goes, sure, sure, sure, sure. It's like him going, whatever, whatever.

• 1:03:05Speaker 07

  Should we get so should we come back to America and go to Texas?

• 1:03:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, San Antonio. This this boils my blood, dude.

• 1:03:12Speaker 07

  Oh, God, this is not like.

• 1:03:13Steven Rinella?

  This boils my blood.

• 1:03:14Speaker 07

  The kind of thing you don't.

• 1:03:15Steven Rinella?

  You thought I was worked up about those four geese.

• 1:03:17Speaker 07

  Just don't expect to hear this kind of stuff coming out of Texas.

• 1:03:20Steven Rinella?

  No, sometimes Texas will let you down.

• 1:03:23Speaker 05

  That's a country song.

• 1:03:24Speaker 07

  So developers developers in Texas are shutting down the historic San Antonio Target Hunting and Fishing Club. It's one of Texas's oldest uh sporting clubs uh founded in nineteen fifty five and they need to permanently end their outdoor shooting after uh settling a lawsuit with a neighboring landowner. That landowner happens to be um a developer, a real estate developer.

• 1:03:54Steven Rinella?

  Given to fly.

• 1:03:56Speaker 07

  Given to fly.

• 1:03:57Steven Rinella?

  Limited partnership.

• 1:03:57Speaker 07

  Affiliated with Mosaic Land Development. So that next door to the shooting range there's a forty acre undeveloped track tracked and the lawsuit they filed a lawsuit in late twenty twenty four um basically saying that the shooting range is causing all kinds of problems and it's causing cow sales to collapse and they're they're saying stray bullets buckshot and birdshot regularly crossed onto their property. Um specifically included claims that projectiles were being found on the neighboring property and.

• 1:04:31Steven Rinella?

  Well, the projectiles also were trespassing on their property.

• 1:04:35Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 1:04:35Steven Rinella?

  But I don't. What like, look me in the eye and tell me the last time you found.

• 1:04:42Steven Rinella?

  Not a casing.

• 1:04:43Speaker 07

  A bullet.

• 1:04:44Steven Rinella?

  The last time you found a stray bullet.

• 1:04:47Speaker 07

  I'll tell you where, at a shooting range. Like, like where, well, yeah, like backstop.

• 1:04:54Steven Rinella?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:04:54Speaker 07

  You know, not, yeah, you're not going to like walk around and be like, oh, there's a bullet laying on the ground.

• 1:04:59Steven Rinella?

  Nate pointed out, if you're on like an old Civil War battlefield, that can happen.

• 1:05:03Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:05:03Steven Rinella?

  But they generally like conical projectiles aren't just laying about.

• 1:05:07Speaker 07

  Um, they go like, so there's that, there's also, they're also saying the club operated like a drinking fraternity and failed to adequately, adequately control their shooting activities. Um, so unsafe environment, it's like bad for home sales. Uh, the developer, one of the developers, Blake Yantus said, we had no problem with them being there, doing what they did. But we had a real problem with them shooting bullets into our property. So it's like, and then the gun club, of course denies all of the allegations. Seventy years, there was no evidence. Anyone, you know, was injured, no accidents. And they're saying that the allegations were greatly exaggerated.

• 1:05:52Speaker 07

  Um, so it's, it's like a he said, she said thing, kind of going on. So the courts take over, they issue a temporary restraining order in December of 24. All shooting activities get halted. Um, the, and that, that continued like as this thing was going to trial. Trial was scheduled for May of 2026, just last month. It was canceled because a settlement was reached. Uh, as this was going on, there was also a nearby school that briefly, school and daycare that briefly joined the lawsuit. They got out of this thing, uh, once the settlement, you know, came down.

• 1:06:31Speaker 07

  Um, the unusual thing about this settlement is that the club's going to pay $800,000.

• 1:06:38Steven Rinella?

  To who?

• 1:06:39Speaker 07

  To the developer. Um, they say it's not an admission of guilt. It's just like, it's like a business decision so that they could move on with life.

• 1:06:49Steven Rinella?

  Where are they getting that money?

• 1:06:50Speaker 07

  I don't know. Don't know, maybe uh, club dues, I have no idea. Um, the, the more unusual thing is part of the settlement was a deed restriction. Was placed on the, the, the club's property, which permanently prohibits outdoor firearm use, even if ownership changes. So like, it's not like, they're not going to be able to ever shoot outdoors there again, unless this deed restriction somehow gets modified. So, kinda, kind of a bummer. I mean, I, I can't say if the allegations are true of like the drinking fraternity and things like that.

• 1:07:29Speaker 07

  But it, it like, it's an example of like nationally, you know, develop, development versus existing land use. Um, and it, and something that's happening around the country with other shooting ranges, um, kind of versus expanding residential development. Um, and, and

• 1:07:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, cause this dude, he, he's, but he buys forty acres.

• 1:07:53Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:07:54Steven Rinella?

  And his intention is to put in hundreds of new homes. But he can't put in all those new homes if these, if these guys are shooting at the shooting range.

• 1:08:01Speaker 07

  Right. Someone comes to look at a lot, boom, boom, boom. People are like, eh, you know?

• 1:08:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You know, like being like cows, not condos?

• 1:08:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Steven Rinella?

  It's almost like guns, not condos.

• 1:08:10Speaker 07

  Yep, exactly. And so there, there's kind of this broader issue that, that is described as the legalese is coming to nuisance, coming to the nuisance. Um, so for example, a shooting range or a farm or a racetrack or an airport does its thing for decades.

• 1:08:27Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:08:28Speaker 07

  Then a developer comes in, wants to build a new neighborhood right next door to this place, and this is where the problems start.

• 1:08:37Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Um, it's coming to a nuisance.

• 1:08:39Speaker 07

  Yeah, coming to, to the nuisance. Um. So some states have range protection laws to shield established shooting facilities from these kinds of things, but they don't apply if the plaintiff can demonstrate like a genuine public safety hazard. So that's what happened here. But like as an example, like elsewhere around the country, who thought that Madison, Alabama would be in the news twice in one day?

• 1:09:07Speaker 05

  I thought surely it was a different Madison.

• 1:09:09Speaker 07

  But Madison County shooting range in Alabama, similar situation going on. It's about projectiles leaving the property. Clear Creek Gun Club in California, this one's a little different. The people that are going after this gun club are using a different strategy, which is permitting and environmental compliance rather than the shooting activity itself. But it demonstrates how local governments are like increasingly regulating ranges and however they can. Other places, Michigan, Colorado, there's, there's litigation like this going on all over the country. So it's something to keep an eye on.

• 1:09:50Steven Rinella?

  God, this Madison County, Alabama, that place is hot.

• 1:09:55Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 1:09:56Steven Rinella?

  Hot on news. Like it's like Washington DC over there.

• 1:09:59Speaker 07

  Yep. Hotbed.

• 1:10:00Speaker 05

  I can't believe the settlement was 800,000 because how badly did they think they were going to get it handed to them in court if that was the number that they arrived at without even doing that?

• 1:10:10Speaker 07

  I guess that, you know, the developer must have demonstrated, this is my guess, must have demonstrated like loss of sales of a certain dollar amount.

• 1:10:19Steven Rinella?

  But they were already there shooting.

• 1:10:20Speaker 07

  I'm just telling you like what's going on. They're saying that it caused them to lose sales. So they demonstrated a financial loss is my guess.

• 1:10:29Steven Rinella?

  I thought the judge would say, you gotta give the gun guys $800,000 for messing with them.

• 1:10:34Speaker 07

  No, no, no. The club will pay.

• 1:10:35Steven Rinella?

  No, and I'm saying, I feel like I could picture that being true.

• 1:10:37Speaker 05

  Especially in Alabama.

• 1:10:39Speaker 04

  In Texas.

• 1:10:39Speaker 06

  Well, Texas, yeah. I thought higher.

• 1:10:41Speaker 05

  Texas, I'm sorry.

• 1:10:42Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:10:43Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:10:43Speaker 07

  So there you go.

• 1:10:45Steven Rinella?

  Texas is going to hell in a handbasket.

• 1:10:46Speaker 07

  So join a gun club like way out in the country.

• 1:10:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I used to belong to a gun club that was in a like a somewhat populated era, area. And man, that was the strictest gun club I've ever been in.

• 1:11:01Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:11:01Steven Rinella?

  And they had those, you ever see those overhead? Things, you couldn't launch one if you wanted to.

• 1:11:08Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:11:08Steven Rinella?

  You were shooting through a tunnel.

• 1:11:10Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:11:10Steven Rinella?

  Because they put these, they put these overhead archway, like these overhead barriers every whatever, 10 yards.

• 1:11:17Speaker 07

  Yep. So bullets can't.

• 1:11:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like picture like big rectangular concrete slab sitting on goalposts. And if you wanted to sit, just if you were just a freak and wanted to send one off into the, into the Netherlands, you couldn't have done it.

• 1:11:31Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Speaker 07

  Yeah. But I, and I, but I do feel like those big, like indoor ranges are also becoming more popular. Like my buddy in Denver, he shoots, you know, his deer rifle at an indoor range. I've been there a couple of times. Pretty sweet.

• 1:11:46Steven Rinella?

  Sounds loud.

• 1:11:47Speaker 07

  And I think, yeah, it is.

• 1:11:49Speaker 05

  We lost ours in Bozeman.

• 1:11:51Speaker 07

  I, I didn't know that.

• 1:11:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, there was one out on Jackrab, but that just became a law enforcement range.

• 1:11:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, but that may be the way things, the direction things go because of things like this.

• 1:12:02Steven Rinella?

  You ever slung an arrow in a suburban environment?

• 1:12:04Speaker 06

  Many, many.

• 1:12:08Steven Rinella?

  My kid's buddy shot an arrow into the neighbor's place.

• 1:12:10Speaker 05

  I remember that.

• 1:12:12Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell you the story. I'll tell you the story.

• 1:12:14Speaker 05

  That was more of a social experiment than anything.

• 1:12:16Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:12:16Speaker 06

  Yeah. I put one over 185 in Georgia and just was wait, the big highway and was just waiting for the news that night.

• 1:12:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's hard to tell what's going on the other side of a highway.

• 1:12:27Speaker 06

  Yes, I was just some driver, just whack. Yeah.

• 1:12:31Steven Rinella?

  Um, coyotes are eating iguanas in Florida.

• 1:12:35Speaker 06

  Oh buddy.

• 1:12:37Steven Rinella?

  Like crazy.

• 1:12:38Speaker 06

  Surprising. Yes. Um, I, you know, Spencer, you ate a coyote.

• 1:12:44Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:12:44Speaker 06

  Would you imagine it if that coyote was predating on iguanas?

• 1:12:49Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:12:50Speaker 06

  How to impact the taste?

• 1:12:51Steven Rinella?

  Fattened down iguanas.

• 1:12:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, I bet, I bet somebody would tell me that iguana tastes like chicken. They're like pork adjacent, so I can't imagine it would be that much worse than whatever's, you know, usually in their diet.

• 1:13:03Steven Rinella?

  Iguana finished coyote.

• 1:13:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:06Speaker 06

  Probably better than the coyote.

• 1:13:07Speaker 05

  A little fishy.

• 1:13:08Speaker 06

  Oh, so a study published in the journal, Journal of Urban Ecology this year, discovering coyote diet in a Floridian urban area. Uh, quick history on the coyotes in Florida. They, they weren't there at the time of European contact. There's, there's 12,000 year old fossils and whatnot. Um, but historically, in recent history, they haven't, they haven't been there. Um, a lot of this is because the red wolf population that occupied that niche. Um, but as that population declined and was extirpated from regions of Florida, uh, they moved back in, especially as suburban sprawl increased. They do really well in suburban areas and, uh, and, and their, their range has increased. Uh, concurrently, iguanas have also spread.

• 1:13:52Speaker 06

  Um, they were introduced to Florida in the 1960s via the exotic pet trade and cargo ships, kind of your typical introduction scheme. Uh, but 1964, they got a major boost when a pet dealer purposely released 300 of them.

• 1:14:05Speaker 05

  That's a crazy number.

• 1:14:06Speaker 06

  300.

• 1:14:07Speaker 05

  Like non-in, non-natives start with like two, four.

• 1:14:11Speaker 07

  When I was at Penn State, I had an iguana that escaped out of my house. For like two months during the summer and then one day I saw him hanging on the screen.

• 1:14:20Speaker 06

  A lot.

• 1:14:20Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:14:21Speaker 06

  Hung out?

• 1:14:22Speaker 07

  Got him back.

• 1:14:23Steven Rinella?

  How, what was the pet dealer doing with 300 iguanas?

• 1:14:26Speaker 06

  Dude, it's, it's like a mystery pet.

• 1:14:28Steven Rinella?

  That's a lot of.

• 1:14:28Speaker 05

  That's what he was asking himself.

• 1:14:31Speaker 07

  I think.

• 1:14:32Steven Rinella?

  I know I was field optimistic on this.

• 1:14:35Speaker 07

  I definitely think there was a time when it kind of became fashionable to have these things as pets, you know what I mean?

• 1:14:41Steven Rinella?

  I'll be frank with you, man, like that, that's not an appetizing animal to me.

• 1:14:48Speaker 07

  Well, they get mean when they get big, like as a pet.

• 1:14:50Steven Rinella?

  I'm just like a not appet, I don't look at a, like, I look at a deer.

• 1:14:53Speaker 07

  Oh, you mean to go hunt him and eat him?

• 1:14:55Steven Rinella?

  I'm just saying, I look at a deer, it looks like a good thing to eat. When I look at an iguana, I look at a chicken, for instance, I see a chicken, I'm like, man, someone should eat that chicken. But when I look at an iguana, this is not the feeling I get.

• 1:15:05Speaker 06

  Hey Phil, will you pull up that picture of that coyote holding that iguana?

• 1:15:08Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:10Speaker 06

  Oh, man.

• 1:15:10Speaker 05

  That's cool.

• 1:15:11Speaker 06

  Imagine a, like, it just looks like a pheasant sitting in his mouth.

• 1:15:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's a big, that's a big chunk of food for a coyote.

• 1:15:18Steven Rinella?

  Go.

• 1:15:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Steven Rinella?

  He hasn't even bothered to try to kill that thing either, has he?

• 1:15:23Speaker 06

  They just shake them up. There's a couple of videos on the internet you should go find of them grabbing one.

• 1:15:28Steven Rinella?

  Like, a guana as big as he is.

• 1:15:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, I imagine that ends with them just like biting into their guts.

• 1:15:33Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:15:34Speaker 05

  How, how do you, how else do you think he kills them? I don't know.

• 1:15:36Speaker 07

  Shake them and...

• 1:15:38Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, but they eat the guts first, don't they?

• 1:15:40Steven Rinella?

  Do you know that's a fact?

• 1:15:43Speaker 05

  I'm just guessing.

• 1:15:43Speaker 06

  Or just like other, when they eat other animals.

• 1:15:46Steven Rinella?

  Listen to Kyle, man, he don't want iguana guts.

• 1:15:48Speaker 05

  Like, what, what do you think?

• 1:15:50Speaker 07

  He's going for those hams.

• 1:15:51Speaker 05

  What do you think a coyote does, though, to like make its heart stop beating in an iguana?

• 1:15:55Speaker 06

  Shake it.

• 1:15:56Steven Rinella?

  I don't, I bet.

• 1:15:57Speaker 05

  You think it's like break its back?

• 1:15:58Steven Rinella?

  I bet he just starts eating.

• 1:16:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:16:00Steven Rinella?

  I don't think he cares.

• 1:16:01Speaker 05

  Starts eating in the guts.

• 1:16:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:03Speaker 05

  And then, dead.

• 1:16:06Steven Rinella?

  I'm just saying, the iguana he's got there, I don't know, I just get a live vibe off that iguana.

• 1:16:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, I agree.

• 1:16:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Speaker 05

  That's why I think it ends with him like putting a paw on his, you know, front arm.

• 1:16:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, no, they use that tail like a whip, man.

• 1:16:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm a little surprised a guana that size can't almost defend himself against just a little 20-pound coyote. Well, that's what's interesting is...

• 1:16:26Steven Rinella?

  Back to the news story.

• 1:16:27Speaker 06

  Back to the news story, uh, they'll freeze and just turn into little iguana pops. They fall out of the trees. Fall right out of the trees and those coyotes, nom, nom.

• 1:16:36Speaker 05

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• 1:18:25Speaker 06

  They basically did a scat pickup study near the Montgomery Botanical Center, where twice weekly for a year, they followed a trail and picked up 120 scat samples. They then dissected those and put it into 231 different identifiable food items. And then you can see this is broken down by month. And what's, just to call out, this is occurrence, not volume. So if they found one occurrence of a seed, that is categorized the same as a giant chunk of Iguana ham or whatever it may be. So there's a little bit of nuance that they could dive into more. But 74 instances of grass, 95 of various plants,

• 1:19:07Speaker 06

  which stretches the whole gambit of avocados, mangoes, palm seeds, or not palm seeds, but other fruits and vegetables. 26 instances of iguanas and then 23 instances of palm seeds and then onesie twosies of crabs, snails, eggshells.

• 1:19:22Steven Rinella?

  Extreme onesies twosies.

• 1:19:24Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:19:24Steven Rinella?

  It's like what they're not eating is.

• 1:19:28Steven Rinella?

  Bird feathers, gravel, snails and crabs.

• 1:19:32Speaker 06

  And mammals. There were zero instances of mammal fur.

• 1:19:35Speaker 05

  And bird bones are only five.

• 1:19:37Speaker 06

  Yes. Um, and so there's, there's a.

• 1:19:40Steven Rinella?

  Also, the total zeros aren't even on the list.

• 1:19:42Speaker 06

  Exactly. There's things that they literally did not find evidence of mammal fur.

• 1:19:47Speaker 05

  Damn.

• 1:19:49Speaker 06

  Um, and so you're, my first thought is the iguana pops. Hey, they're just eating them in the winter. They freeze. They fall out of the tree and opportunistic coyote goes and eats them. And anecdotally, that's, that there's reports of that. But if you look in that June column, there's just as, there's six occurrences of iguana in the scat. That's the same, that's one less than January, which is the peak at seven. And then it's pretty evenly distributed, except in March and April, which points to when the fruiting trees are like when the, the plant mass is kind of at its best.

• 1:20:17Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Palm seeds really, palm seeds pick up when iguanas drop off.

• 1:20:21Speaker 06

  Yes. Yep. Um, and so like, it's more of the same of a, a coyotes are awesome opportunistic hunters.

• 1:20:28Speaker 04

  That's not true.

• 1:20:30Steven Rinella?

  Tell me that's not true.

• 1:20:31Speaker 04

  No, in March and April, there's, it's zeros across the board. It's like they're not eating, it's like there's nothing in their vehicle matter.

• 1:20:38Speaker 06

  They moved out.

• 1:20:39Speaker 05

  March and April, they only had, they had zero samples.

• 1:20:41Speaker 06

  Right. So they, that there, they didn't find any scat on that track that they followed. Um.

• 1:20:48Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I see. Yeah.

• 1:20:49Speaker 06

  Yeah. So March, they didn't get any samples.

• 1:20:51Speaker 04

  So we don't know what they're eating.

• 1:20:52Steven Rinella?

  So like, if you take June, for instance, and when they did their June scat walk, they picked up 14 samples.

• 1:20:58Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:20:58Steven Rinella?

  Of those samples, six of the samples had grass, nine of the samples had just plants, whatever that means. Six of the samples had iguana meat, three had palm seeds, one had gravel in it and one had snail in it.

• 1:21:16Speaker 06

  And if you go up to January, every single piece of scat had iguana in it.

• 1:21:20Speaker 05

  Yeah. If this informed everything you knew about a coyote's diet, you'd be like, they primarily eat iguana.

• 1:21:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:26Speaker 05

  They're iguanavores.

• 1:21:29Speaker 07

  Oh, I like that.

• 1:21:29Steven Rinella?

  Iguanavor.

• 1:21:30Speaker 05

  It's like all they, that's the only meat.

• 1:21:32Speaker 07

  I'd like to know if they're doing this because this, like the, the ecosystem of South Florida is so screwed up that there are no like mammals for them to eat. Or it's just like eating what there is the most of available, you know?

• 1:21:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:47Speaker 07

  The easiest path of, you know?

• 1:21:50Speaker 06

  It's, it's definitely an element of the easiest. Um, it's, there's an interesting discussion of like a non-native species that's all that is intersecting with a potentially a neo-native or a naturalized species. I've asked Jim, uh, Jim Heffelfinger, the deer preacher about his thoughts on, on the neo-native classification. He doesn't like it. He thinks it's just a shiny.

• 1:22:11Steven Rinella?

  Why not?

• 1:22:12Speaker 06

  It's just a shiny new word that doesn't really mean anything.

• 1:22:14Steven Rinella?

  What word does he like?

• 1:22:15Speaker 06

  Naturalized.

• 1:22:16Steven Rinella?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:22:16Speaker 06

  It's just what it is. So, um, this is like a naturalized species. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's better. Um, that is just, that has naturally expanded their range. It's not a human introduction and, um, local biologists are all about the predation of these, uh, iguanas, but it's not going to solve the problem by any means. If you imported like a thousand coyotes, maybe, but, um, you're probably going to run into human conflicts before you run in, run out of, uh, iguanas.

• 1:22:42Steven Rinella?

  Um, who'd have thought?

• 1:22:44Speaker 06

  Who'd have thought? But they got iguana, bird, dog, iguana dogs chasing down iguanas now down there. It's great, great fun.

• 1:22:53Speaker 07

  Dude, where we, when we were in Key West, I found a flyer for an outfitter offering, uh, day hunts. It was like eight hundred bucks.

• 1:23:01Steven Rinella?

  Eight hundred dollars? To airgun iguanas?

• 1:23:04Speaker 07

  Yeah. I caught, I, uh, I caught one on a fly once when I was down fishing with Nick.

• 1:23:10Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:23:11Speaker 07

  Dragging that thing across the sand. That iguana jumped right on it.

• 1:23:15Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:23:16Speaker 05

  That should get you like an A++ on that, uh, environmental friendliness scale.

• 1:23:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, zero carbon dude.

• 1:23:23Speaker 05

  A non-native.

• 1:23:24Steven Rinella?

  Local.

• 1:23:25Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:25Steven Rinella?

  Uh, over to me, Tongston. Well, first I gotta, I want to get, I want to give people a glimpse into the inner workings of, of what we cover and don't cover. You see how, see the first word I have there?

• 1:23:36Speaker 07

  I do, I do.

• 1:23:37Steven Rinella?

  It's my favorite subject, Graham Platter.

• 1:23:40Speaker 06

  Won't have to talk about him for much longer, it sounds like.

• 1:23:42Steven Rinella?

  I've wanted, but okay, here's, here's the thing. The new show has a certain promise where we deal with issues have to do with natural resources, hunting, fishing, conservation, outdoor stuff, what we talk about. Now, so we would never be able to talk about a political candidate. Right? Can't do that. But this guy that was running in Maine was an oyster farmer. So then I kept thinking, are we allowed to talk about a senate candidate? Who's an oyster farmer?

• 1:24:12Steven Rinella?

  And

• 1:24:14Steven Rinella?

  kind of an oyster farmer.

• 1:24:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's got one client.

• 1:24:16Speaker 07

  To be clear, this goes back before what just happened with him.

• 1:24:20Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. This has been, this has been vexing me for months. Because what happened is in Maine, there's these, there's these progressive

• 1:24:30Steven Rinella?

  Democrat operatives who have made it like their project is to travel around the country looking for what they deemed to be working class progressives. That they'll, that they'll promote into being politicians. So they tracked down this Graham Platter guy and they see some video he made about oyster farming. And the one way to tell if someone has working class bona fides would be that you'd go ask working class people. But they don't know about that. They think because he's got an oyster farm, he's like a working class guy.

• 1:25:06Steven Rinella?

  But his oyster farm, his only client is his mom.

• 1:25:11Steven Rinella?

  His dad is a lawyer. He went to boarding school.

• 1:25:16Steven Rinella?

  He served in the Marines, says he bought a house on a VA loan. His dad bought, financed the house.

• 1:25:23Steven Rinella?

  Has a SS tattoo on his chest, a toten comp, a Nazi tattoo on his chest. The vetting on this guy was terrible and I kept wanting to talk about it, but I can't because it's not part of our deal. And then I was like, well, he is an oyster farmer, but not really.

• 1:25:41Steven Rinella?

  And now he's dropping out of the race. So I missed my chance.

• 1:25:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, he was like a cosplay and oyster farmer.

• 1:25:46Steven Rinella?

  I missed my chance.

• 1:25:47Speaker 07

  Did he officially drop out?

• 1:25:48Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:25:49Speaker 06

  Not yet.

• 1:25:49Speaker 07

  Everyone's called on him.

• 1:25:50Steven Rinella?

  It's gone because here's the deal. That here's the deal they've like.

• 1:25:55Speaker 06

  By the time it airs, he might be.

• 1:25:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Yeah, like it is, it is in some circles, it is that and I'm, I'm treading in very, very, very dangerous, delicate territory right now. But in some circles on some crimes, an accusation is equivalent to guilt.

• 1:26:15Steven Rinella?

  And in his affiliate, in his party affiliation would be an accusation is equivalent to guilt. He has been accused of sexual misconduct, which is equivalent to being guilty. They're on, that's the rule they made and he has to live by the rule. Um, so we can't talk about him, but.

• 1:26:36Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna talk about tungsten and we've been like, but to talk about tungsten, I want to talk about my kids and ammo cans. Okay. Everyone knows an ammo can, a green metal ammo can.

• 1:26:47Speaker 06

  Hmm. Fifty or thirty cal.

• 1:26:49Steven Rinella?

  Just ammo cans. My kids only know ammo cans through the context of GeoCash, of a GeoCash.

• 1:26:57Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:26:58Steven Rinella?

  They have, just out of shit luck, they have stumbled into two GeoCaches, but not GeoCaching.

• 1:27:07Steven Rinella?

  GeoCaching is like you take an ammo can and put some fun stuff in it and hide it. And then guys use GPS. It's kind of like an early GPS thing.

• 1:27:15Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:27:15Steven Rinella?

  You can go use GPS and you'll see that there's a pin in some remote area. And you go to that pin and like, lo and behold, here's a GeoCash. And you take a little trinket out of it and you leave a trinket in it.

• 1:27:30Speaker 05

  We did it in my high school computer class to learn how to use a handheld GPS.

• 1:27:34Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:27:35Speaker 06

  I had a brief fling with GeoCaching and the best one I found was, it was on a, you know, like a little electrical box. And I was standing on top of it, could not find it. And it was a magnetic bolt head on the side of the electrical box. And you just barely unscrew that.

• 1:27:52Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's what you were after.

• 1:27:52Speaker 06

  And that's what.

• 1:27:53Speaker 05

  Very creative.

• 1:27:54Speaker 06

  It was great.

• 1:27:56Steven Rinella?

  So my kids, just out of total shit luck, have stumbled into two of these boxes.

• 1:28:00Speaker 05

  Did they pilfer it?

• 1:28:02Steven Rinella?

  I told them, you take something, leave something.

• 1:28:04Speaker 05

  Oh, I got you.

• 1:28:05Steven Rinella?

  So in their head, then we're at my buddies and there's an ammo can in his gun room. And they're like, he took the Geo. Because in their head, an ammo can isn't an ammo can. In their head, ammo can is a Geo cash can. This is me and tungsten. Because I've only known my, like, when I hear the word tungsten, I have thought of like turkey bullets. TSS tungsten super shot. And then all of a sudden I started hearing about the tungsten this, tungsten that, and I've been forced to like come to terms with the broader scale of tungsten outside of turkey ammo.

• 1:28:46Speaker 05

  Turkey ammo doesn't weigh real heavily on the.

• 1:28:49Steven Rinella?

  Nothing. Yeah. It's like, if you looked at all the ammo cans on the planet and what they're doing, how many are Geo caching?

• 1:28:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:28:57Steven Rinella?

  None. Well, I, my view on tungsten was TSS tungsten super shot. And now I'm like waking up to this whole world of tungsten.

• 1:29:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. If there was a pie chart for all the tungsten, that would just be like folded into other or something like that.

• 1:29:12Steven Rinella?

  It's the other of the other.

• 1:29:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:29:14Steven Rinella?

  10 to 15% of tungsten goes to munitions, but that's military munitions. They use it in cluster bombs. They use it in, uh, what else I have here? Uh, warhead missile warheads, tank ammunition. Um, these like, these penetrator bolts, tungsten penetrator bolts, which aren't as incendiary as depleted uranium. And also you can use them in areas where if they're going to be littering the battlefield, you don't have to worry about little kids playing with depleted uranium in the future. Use tungsten bolts. Military uses tons of this stuff.

• 1:29:47Steven Rinella?

  In World War II, there's a thing called the Wolfram Crisis. The Nazis were using anti-tank rounds made out of tungsten rods. The Spaniards were selling it to them. The Wolfram Crisis is when the US had to go to Spain and threaten roughing them up to stop selling the Nazis tungsten.

• 1:30:13Steven Rinella?

  This is the whole world of tungsten. Now tungsten prices, pull up that chart. Look at tungsten prices right now.

• 1:30:23Steven Rinella?

  Oh, look at that. They've since dropped off a bit. So you go 2010, all these years, you can think of all these years as us just shooting all kinds of turkeys.

• 1:30:34Speaker 07

  Oh, man, the glory days.

• 1:30:36Speaker 05

  Basically free.

• 1:30:38Steven Rinella?

  Shooting all kinds of turkeys, 2015, 2020, and tungsten is basically like they're giving it away.

• 1:30:47Steven Rinella?

  Okay, it's like, it's like, what would that be like 250 bucks per one dry metric ton unit of tungsten or equivalent to 7.93 kilograms of tungsten you could get for about 250 bucks. Then it just right now.

• 1:31:05Steven Rinella?

  With the war in Iran and some other issues, 3,000 bucks.

• 1:31:09Speaker 07

  For 17 pounds.

• 1:31:11Steven Rinella?

  For 17 pounds of tungsten.

• 1:31:14Steven Rinella?

  It goes crazy.

• 1:31:16Steven Rinella?

  China is hoarding the turkey ammo, like China has been very strategic about tungsten.

• 1:31:23Speaker 07

  They're like those American turkey hunters.

• 1:31:25Steven Rinella?

  Cause they want to stick it to the turkey hunters, the Chinese. They're like, when they think of what bugs them, they're like Taiwan, it's the Ts, Taiwan and turkeys, turkey hunters.

• 1:31:38Steven Rinella?

  So then it's like a strategic metal, they call it a war metal.

• 1:31:43Steven Rinella?

  Okay, it's, it's of that strategic significance. So now me still thinking about tungsten, when I see the word tungsten, I'm thinking about turkey schnitzel. Now it's all over, reported all over the place about this new sort of like political scandal coming out of the tungsten world. There's a huge reserve of tungsten in Kazakhstan.

• 1:32:04Steven Rinella?

  I don't know about how many turkeys they got, but they got boatloads of tungsten in Kazakhstan. The Commerce Secretary, Trump's Commerce Secretary, Howard Luttnick.

• 1:32:16Steven Rinella?

  Earlier, I was gonna make a saucy Epstein tie in to try to make the story seem more saucy.

• 1:32:22Steven Rinella?

  It's tenuous. He was on Epstein's island.

• 1:32:24Speaker 07

  Had lunch there.

• 1:32:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. All the debate about who was and wasn't, this, he went, he took his family for lunch.

• 1:32:30Speaker 07

  Says, he says.

• 1:32:31Speaker 05

  It could be the Howard Lutnick files, basically.

• 1:32:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah. He, of all the guys that were or were not, or never did, but did, this gentleman had lunch there with his family. He meets with the president of Kazakhstan about all this turkey ammo.

• 1:32:47Speaker 05

  No wild turkeys, just looked it up.

• 1:32:49Speaker 06

  Well, they do have interactions with Turks, but it's from the country, not the bird.

• 1:32:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So when they think of Turks, yeah, they're thinking of their neighbors. So he meets with them about how we're gonna go get all this TSS, all this tungsten.

• 1:33:04Speaker 07

  Like, by God, I gotta take care of those turkey hunters.

• 1:33:07Steven Rinella?

  Out of Kazakhstan. Okay.

• 1:33:11Steven Rinella?

  They make, they agree, they get the president of Kazakhstan to agree to let a little-known US mining, a little-known mining organization get a contract to go do the thing, alright, to go do the mine. Then they vow, it hasn't been handed over yet, but the Trump administration vows 1.6 billion in federal financing

• 1:33:39Steven Rinella?

  to invest in and get the tungsten mine up and running. So now you're picturing just tungsten super shot flowing into ammo stores all around the world.

• 1:33:48Speaker 07

  That, that 1.6 billion was going to that small mining company.

• 1:33:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. They're under, yeah, they're like, they're, they're

• 1:33:56Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:33:57Steven Rinella?

  incentivizing, lubricating, making a vow for funding, initial investment funding. And also, there's some other money where the US would actually take a stake in the mine. But then this is the weird part, and this is like, this is even reported in the New York Post, which is like a very conservative publication, like a very Trump-friendly publication. The New York Post is even saying that this deal stinks. Because Trump's boys then turn around and take a 20% stake in a corporate entity tied to the mine. Lutnick's boys take on the banking function of going out and finding the investors.

• 1:34:39Steven Rinella?

  All around turkey ammo.

• 1:34:42Speaker 06

  Well, when this gets investigated.

• 1:34:44Steven Rinella?

  It will get investigated.

• 1:34:45Speaker 06

  Don Jr. is gonna be like, dude, I was hot on this for my turkey hunting exploits.

• 1:34:49Steven Rinella?

  It'll wind, but it'll wind up. Who's gonna investigate? It's already getting investigated. It'll get investigated, but it won't happen because like, remember with, it's, it's like, it's like, it's exactly like the Hunter Biden situation.

• 1:34:59Speaker 06

  Just, they're not trying to hide it this time.

• 1:35:00Steven Rinella?

  Hunter Biden and Burisma and Ukraine, and it's, it's this situation here, it's exactly the same, but it'll just all end in pardons. It'll end in pardons. Yeah. All this reporting about this tungsten deal, which now like my whole tungsten epiphany, my whole tungsten education of like, what, what is up with this metal?

• 1:35:22Steven Rinella?

  Part of this reporting comes out of, um, these financial disclosures, right? Or like a lot of, like a lot of investigation, the financial disclosures. Where Trump made 2.2 billion during his first year in office, up from 622 million. Or a third as much the year before he returned to the White House. So again, even the New York Post is like, what is up with the tungsten deal?

• 1:35:50Steven Rinella?

  If tungsten prices come back down.

• 1:35:55Steven Rinella?

  And, and, and turkey hunters are once again flushed with tungsten super shot. I'll look the other way.

• 1:36:02Steven Rinella?

  I'll look the other way. Your pardon. I'll be like, in the end, you know, it was the right thing for the American turkey hunter.

• 1:36:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of a crazy, it, it, it is a hot, it's weird to see a metal. Like, like gold, like gold drove world politics for centuries. I mean, gold drove. World politics. It put governments in power. It took governments out of power. It led to the colonial enterprises around the globe. And then now, like in this moment, it is tungsten's, it's like tungsten's time to shine. Yep. From a lowly turkey ammo.

• 1:36:48Steven Rinella?

  To the front pages of the New York Post and the New York Times. Tungsten.

• 1:36:56Steven Rinella?

  That's it.

• 1:36:57Speaker 07

  Tungsten.

• 1:36:59Steven Rinella?

  Um, if you want to look like a real know it all, start calling tungsten Wolfram.

• 1:37:04Speaker 07

  Hmm. Why?

• 1:37:07Steven Rinella?

  There's just another word for it.

• 1:37:08Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:37:08Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Oh, let me tell you this. Last thing about tungsten. It doesn't come out of the ground looking like what you think.

• 1:37:15Speaker 07

  Like turkey pellets?

• 1:37:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it comes out of the ground.

• 1:37:19Steven Rinella?

  You know, just mine out just number nine tungsten shot. No, it's a real elaborate process to get it, but I was watching a video of a bullet hitting the block of tungsten. The bullet vaporizes against the block of tungsten.

• 1:37:33Speaker 07

  The tongue is so dense.

• 1:37:34Steven Rinella?

  It vaporizes against the tungsten.

• 1:37:38Steven Rinella?

  Well, thanks for joining the news show, ladies and gentlemen.

• 1:37:43Steven Rinella?

  Max has got some good 410 tungsten. He bought it at an extreme discount from a, from a poor guy that didn't know what he had.

• 1:37:50Speaker 07

  Ooh.

• 1:37:51Steven Rinella?

  Dude, you want to know how those uranium penetrators work?

• 1:38:20Steven 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 in my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got weather tech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in weather tech. 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 weather tech 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 weather tech.com.

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