Ep. 770: The Cornell Bear Skinner Speaks Out

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Cornell University student Aaron Chin. Topics discussed: Skinning and butchering a black bear in the communal kitchen of your college residential hall; putting in the work to scout smart; when your first big game animal is a black bear on public land in New York State; lots of consideration and a careful clean up job; getting support from the Cornell University community; good 'ole American elbow grease; and more. Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Steven Rinella?

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• 0:45Steven Rinella?

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• 1:30Steven Rinella?

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• 2:14Steven Rinella?

  If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, it's an emergency drop of Meat Eater Podcast. An emergency drop. We did one of these when the guy rescued the people out of the outhouse. Was that an emergency drop?

• 2:46Steven Rinella?

  No, but it was an American hero. This is an emergency drop. We have on American hero, Aaron Chin from Cornell University. If you're a news buff, if you are a news buff, or if you're a hunter and you read your text messages a couple of weeks ago, around the week of September 8, I would say, you probably got all kinds of people texting you an article about some students from Cornell University who were in trouble, out of trouble, getting in trouble for having skinned a bear in their communal hall at college.

• 3:28Steven Rinella?

  Right now, I typed in Cornell black bear skinning into Google and I have the Cornell Daily Sun. I'm looking at an article there. I'm looking where it was covered in an op ed in something called the Dartmouth. And it's a person complaining about them saying that it's not what you're allowed to do, it's what you ought to do. And it's the real lesson behind this. Covered in the Ithaca Voice, Cornell students found skinning bear in campus. NBC News, two Cornell students killed bear and skinned it back at blank. A long spirited Reddit thing. People Magazine, people.com.

• 4:13Steven Rinella?

  Two college students killed 120 pound bear. I heard it was bigger.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:19Steven Rinella?

  Aaron, you don't have the idea where the 120 came from, do you?

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Um, no, no idea. I was around, around a 150. I know, I know how much my buddy weighs and you know, I picked him up. It's just, you know, a little lighter than that. So a hundred percent.

• 4:32Steven Rinella?

  Nothing wrong with a 120 pound bear. Uh, here's an Outdoor Life article. Here's a big discussion on Rockslide. I could go on and on. Covered all over. And it was one of those things that everybody sends me the article about the two kids at Cornell, who were in trouble or were not in trouble for having dared kill a bear on campus, or could not kill a bear on campus, but kill a bear and process it in a communal space on campus. And then as I followed the story along for a couple of days, it turns out that police, game wardens, the student handbook, it turns out no one could find anything that was actually wrong.

• 5:11Steven Rinella?

  We, I, I said to Corinne, I said, we have to talk to these guys and Diana, talk to these guys. So here we have one of the butchers, Aaron Shin from Cornell. We're going to hear, um, we're going to hear his story. We're going to hear about what it's like to all of a sudden be a part of a national news story. Um, what it's like to probably be real scared for a minute and then feel relieved. And then what's the, what's the next hunt plan? But like first, let's, let's start off. So you're at Cornell University. Um, you're from, you're from San Diego, California.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 5:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. What's, give me your hunting background. How did you get started hunting?

• 5:46Speaker 02

  So, uh, I didn't start until the very like tail end of high school. I'm, I'm, my parents, we, we, we never really did that. We weren't really an outdoorsy family. Um, but that was something I was super into as a kid. I had read, read bushcraft manuals and, and I'd watch these survival shows. So I, I started shooting, shoot archery. Thinking like early middle school and whatnot. So I was, that was always kind of in the back of my, I shot Olympic archery for the longest time. I started teaching that, uh, performance archery, um, it, which primarily catered toward, I mean, that's where the money is in the archery.

• 6:17Steven Rinella?

  What's performance archery mean?

• 6:19Speaker 02

  It's it's just the bow shop I I worked at.

• 6:21Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I thought you meant a discipline called performance archery.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 6:25Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, but yeah, an archery shop.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a lot of the guys were big bow hunters. And, you know, I was super curious and I started shooting traditional archery with kind of the hopes of being able to to to hunt traditionally with with just a with a with a bear bow.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  And yeah, I went out a couple of times in San Diego. Hunting in San Diego is is really difficult. All all public land. It's kind of one of those things where you got to get lucky, right time. There's not a lot of water there. So I went out for turkey once and then and then deer another time, but pretty much very little success, very little experience. That's that's why part of the reason I I chose to to go to to Cornell, one besides that really good engineering school, but, you know, the proximity of woods. I saw the deer management program and I'm like, I can I can kind of learn all learn all the skills and live live the life, learn all the skills that I wanted to as a kid and now that there's there's forests and there's there's state lands to do that. So, yeah.

• 7:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, there's a real like, we spent some time on the campus recording some podcasts a couple of years ago and there's like a hunters community. There's like a hunters community at Cornell.

• 7:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And so when you came out there, you guys, how did you become aware of, so you're a junior, third year, is that right?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 7:40Steven Rinella?

  Okay. How did you become aware of of spring black bear season? Um, like, like, what did you dig into? Like, how did you how did it hit you that like, hey, man, let's go out and let's go out and do a little bear hunting, you and your buddy?

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Saw it on the D E C website, you know, reading through all the rules, looking at the seasons, like, well, you can and and the biggest thing is when I first got here.

• 8:00Steven Rinella?

  Sorry, not a spring bear season, a fall. I'm sorry, fall bear season. Yeah.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Like you get a everyone gets a black bear tag with the with all their with all their accoutrements and and.

• 8:10Steven Rinella?

  Also, when you buy a hunting license, you're issued a black bear tag.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Uh huh. Everyone gets a black bear tag, like a regular, you know, so I was like, this this could this sounds really cool. And I saw. I saw a recipe somewhere like like black bear pastrami.

• 8:24Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  I don't know where and I was like that that sounds delicious. I mean, I love a good pastrami on Ryan. Like, you know what? Two and two. Let's maybe really cool. I was reading about them and at this point, I'd got a rifle. So I was like, well, this could be like a very realistic, realistic thing. So I started looking, looking into it and it's the first, it's the first big game season of the of the year. So we're like, all right, you know, tests aren't going too crazy. Academics are pretty chill. Let's, let's, let's get it done. Let's figure it out.

• 8:52Steven Rinella?

  And and you and your hunting partner, you guys go out and you guys are hunting public land? Is that right?

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Yes, public land.

• 8:58Steven Rinella?

  And and how did you, how did you kind of hit on like, here's the spot? Here's what we're gonna try. Here's where we're gonna hunt. Like, lay that out for me.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  A lot of, a lot of research, a lot of e-scouting. So I'd look at the DEC, kind of they have the bear harvest reports.

• 9:11Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  So I was looking at the regions where they have the highest, you know, bears reported in for a hundred square miles. From there, I look, I look what's closest to the university because we're full time students essentially. So where, where's the closest state forest that we can, we can hunt? And from there, reading articles, figuring out like, well, they're gonna be, they're gonna be berries trying to get fat for the winter. So I honed in on a, on a piece of, piece of state forest and I started looking for water features. That was the biggest thing. Swamps where, where I think like berries and, and, and shrubbery that they'd be foraging on. And then we went there. Our Friday, we, we right after classes, we, we went out.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  And the first thing we, yeah, we went out, we, we scouted and then the next day we, we kind of set up and figured it out. Yep.

• 10:05Steven Rinella?

  And when you guys set up, you and your hunting buddy, when you guys set up, did you guys set up in blinds? Or were you trying to like still hunt? You trying to do a stand hunt? Like, what was your strategy?

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Uh, still hunting. So the day before on Friday, we found uh like fresh bear bear shit.

• 10:19Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  And tracks everywhere. So we're like, all right, this is the spot.

• 10:22Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  We're gonna bed down um the next morning um because you know, we're just the season hadn't opened, open yet. We're just looking around. Um, so essentially there was a, a little uh like a grove um or like a, like um, there's a little clearing and there was a, there's some shrubs in the middle of it. So that's where we saw kind of like paths and, and they're still uneaten berries. So we decided the next morning.

• 10:45Steven Rinella?

  So you knew you were looking at an active feeding area.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:48Steven Rinella?

  Okay, yep. And you guys set up and it was that and it was the, was it the first day of the season that you guys got a bear?

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, first day.

• 10:56Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Like, like, like nine o'clock, but we didn't get it in that clearing. We heard, we heard scratching and, and like climbing in, in a pine grove. About like a hundred yards uh to the side. So we moved out to there. Um, we, we waited in our first position. We moved out. We sat there. Um, for a good amount and then we, we lost track of it. We, um, there was a, there's a pine grove and there was a hill, like a really uh steep hill. Uh, so we sat there for a good thirty, forty-five minutes and we, we stopped hearing the scratching. So we thought to ourselves, hey, maybe, maybe uh the bear clover, clover leafed around. Um, back to, back to that original clearing. Um, so we go back and, and we don't see anything.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Um, we're like, all right, let's, let's pack up. We'll go back out um in the, in the afternoon.

• 11:44Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  And Jess, as we're rounding a corner, my buddy, um, he sees it. I, I don't, I don't, I'm behind this corner. So I just see him. You know, his, his eyes go, go full killer. Um, he, he chambers around and I'm like, um, and I, and I cover my ears because, because we've got a pretty good. Um, kind of know each other's body language. I, I knew he wasn't, he wasn't just looking, looking through and yeah, he pops off a shot and, and we, we, um, he gets it.

• 12:07Steven Rinella?

  And was it, did you have the big tracking job or did you find it pretty quick?

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Really, really quick. Um, it was like a forty yard max shot. It was pretty close. And then um we're shooting a hundred eighty grain point, uh, three oh eight. So that, that thing dropped pretty, pretty fast.

• 12:24Steven Rinella?

  Got it. Okay. Now here's where things get interesting. You guys, you guys live on campus?

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 12:30Steven Rinella?

  Okay. You don't have an apartment. You don't have a house. You rent, you live on campus.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:35Steven Rinella?

  Had you even?

• 12:38Steven Rinella?

  Had you guys got around of being like, well, here's what we'll do if we get one? Or are you just not even thinking about that yet?

• 12:48Steven Rinella?

  And you're just gonna take it as it comes? Or did you have like a, if we get one, here's the butchering plan?

• 12:55Speaker 02

  We thought about everything. And yeah, we're gonna go to Buddy's place, but last minute, I think he had some, some emergency to tend to. So the place we were going to do it closed off and we were really paranoid that, you know, the, the meat would spoil, wanted to get it cooled as fast as possible. We opened it up, but uh, just to, just to get it all processed in, in a fridge as fast as possible. So we're like, well, our one, one, one place was gone, so might as well do it there. And it was in the morning, I think it was around like 10 o'clock.

• 13:23Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so explain what this place is where you take it? Like what on campus, like what is the place you bring the bear to?

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Uh, just there's like a communal kitchen on the, on the first floor of kind of the, the residential building. It's like a really, uh, it's like a real, really open space. Um, there's like, uh, study tables and whatnot, but it's, it looks more like a, like one of those, those modern, like a, like a, like a coffee shop.

• 13:45Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  So a lot, lot of space and then, and then concrete floors. Cause we, you know, carpet would just be a dick move.

• 13:51Steven Rinella?

  But it's meant for people to do their cooking.

• 13:55Steven Rinella?

  Okay. So presumably there's a big table in there and you guys, you guys bring in, you bring in the bear onto the table.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 14:09Steven Rinella?

  Who's around when you do this? Like, like who's in the room?

• 14:13Speaker 02

  There's not a lot of people. There are a couple of people studying, but no one really comes up and makes a big deal of it. It's in the morning, Saturday mornings, so people are still probably a beg, come over and whatnot. So uh, um, we had a couple of people just throughout our two, three hours of processing. They'd walk by, people would, you know, try to take pictures or like, just don't have us in there. Most, most people were super curious, like, hey, we'd love to try some, that's, that's really interesting. We're explaining, I mean, the whole idea of stewardship and whatnot. And we were aware it was, it was, it's gonna be pretty graphic, but just explaining, hey, this is, there's none of this goes to waste. And for the most part, it was, um, you know, people were, were really, really curious. Um, low flow traffic, especially in, in the morning. That's why we chose to like, all right, we can.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  We thought we'd get yelled at by an RA maybe, but we didn't expect it to blow up to the extent of which it did. The RA's were chill actually.

• 15:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so when you, when you thought, okay, we're going to go into the communal area, we're going to go into the dorm kitchen and we're going to process our bear. You weren't having conversations like, hey, this could lead to very serious trouble and all this news attention. Like you were just kind of doing what made the most sense in the moment. And you figured anything that came up would just, you'd just be able to resolve it through conversation.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. We think, we both thought that, you know, maybe it'd be like a little blurb, you know, people talked about it. It was like, oh, that's, that's kind of, that's kind of odd, but we didn't expect for it to blow up. We, we were really diligent in reading all of the, the rules, you know, regulations, like we made sure we did everything by the book because we knew, you know, we were going to be under scrutiny. So, hey, we're going to, we're going to clean up, we're going to use, you know, bleach, Lysol wipes and whatnot. We're going to, we're going to, we're going to keep it, you know, public image. We're no, no, no blasting heavy metal or, or, or music at all. We're pretty, we're, we're thinking about that. We, we didn't know it was going to cause that much of a backlash a day later.

• 16:09Steven Rinella?

  But you knew like, but you knew the dorm rules and the campus rules and there's no thing saying like thou shalt not process a big game animal in community kitchen.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Yep. Nothing, nothing that said against it. You know, we, I even, you know, I labeled my, my meat bags too because that's what they wanted. Later on that would bite me in the ass because people would be like, oh, we, we figured it out. We know, you know, people think it's this game.

• 16:34Steven Rinella?

  Oh, because you're storing it in a communal freezer.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. For the time being, before I could get it out to, to, to people off campus. Indeed. Yeah.

• 16:42Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 16:44Steven Rinella?

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• 19:01Steven Rinella?

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• 20:29Steven Rinella?

  "I have to take a stand and report these young gentlemen for having cleaned a bear in the dorm."

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Something like that. So there's a, there's a local Facebook group. It's called, I think, Ithaca or Tompkins County Scanner Beats. It's this one, one guy who's just constantly monitoring like, police and fire radio. I used to be a volunteer firefighter. So this guy, like, we're on, on route to a call and this guy pings up. It's like, it's crazy. This is, I think it's like an old retired guy. So he, he, someone sends me a screenshot of the page and like, huh, that's, that's really interesting. And I'm, I'm, I'm like shopping or something. I'm not even on campus. And they're like, CUPD is there, or, or, or Police Department.

• 21:11Steven Rinella?

  Oh, home it. The, the guy that monitors the scanner. Is saying, hey, law enforcement is at Cornell. And that's how you get word that law enforcement is there?

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. They're like, they're acting to go, they're investigating back up this.

• 21:29Steven Rinella?

  And you're like, I wonder if this has to do with me?

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was like, oh, yeah. They said in the report bear skinning. I'm like, what? Everything's packaged up. It's everything's super.

• 21:38Steven Rinella?

  What? That's how you became aware of this?

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  I was like, huh, interesting. I go to sleep Monday morning and it's like everywhere. I'm like.

• 21:49Steven Rinella?

  So that night, you didn't go down there that night to see what's going on?

• 21:53Speaker 02

  No, no, because I was walking back after done shopping. They were, you know, there's nothing there. It's a pristine kitchen. So we, we, we walk and there's, there's no one there.

• 22:02Steven Rinella?

  So it's not just like lights flashing and ambulances and okay.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 22:09Steven Rinella?

  Okay. So you wake up Monday and then what's going on?

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Um, it's all over like, uh, so I'm not, I'm not sure if you're familiar with side chat. A lot of universities have like a regional like social media and it's a lot of the, uh, keyboard warriors and whatnot. And people have started circulating pictures of the, of the, you know, the bear of us processing it. We're, we're people the day before came up to take, you know, ask if they could take pictures. We're like, we weren't sure about that. Like, we know people are gonna do it anyways. There's like, hey, just don't put us in it. And, um, yeah. And then, and then it was, it just, it just overnight just became a huge sensation.

• 22:45Steven Rinella?

  And at what point did someone want to come talk to you though? Like, what they, at what point did law enforcement want to have a word with you?

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Um, I think it was, hmm, might've been Sunday night, actually. I, I don't, they're just like, hey, we want to clear, clear, clear the, clear the error. Cause, um, they saw my, my net ID on, on the package meat and whatnot. They're like, hey, you did nothing wrong. Wanna, we just wanted to hear. Uh, yeah. And then, and then I was like, oh, I didn't think too much about it. And then Monday, the whole, like the world figured out, um, but PD was super supportive. A lot of them are on the deer management program. Um, the guy officer I spoke with before had a 300 pound black bear on his game camera. So he's talking about bow hunting and whatnot. Um, so they just wanted to hear what was going on because I, you know, just.

• 23:30Steven Rinella?

  So they look into it and I, and I read that like the game wardens are like, he's got a license. It's bear season. It's a legal bear. The police department was like, these guys are doing anything wrong. We didn't violate the student handbook. But it seems like in the media coverage, there's like somewhat of an expect, there's somewhat of an expectation. Or sense of surprise that there shouldn't be repercussions for this.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm there's, I guess it's just something that everyone's familiar with, you know, a lot of people, there's the, the rumor that it was a cub. Um, that was, that was, that was the big thing and, and people, people, uh, people started freaking out, people, um, didn't even know it was a season. Like if you look at all the online forums, people are arguing and like, oh no, it's legal there. People couldn't fathom that we drove like two hours to our, to our spot and drove back. Cause, um, there's just a lot of, lot of internet discourse.

• 24:26Steven Rinella?

  Got it. So yeah, so people, yeah, like they're not educated about the whole thing and something, they're eager that something must be wrong here.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 24:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And then did, did the campus like, who would be, who's like the campus authority? So did the campus authority at some point in time come and ask you any questions or, or say like, how did you clean up or where is the bear now? None of that happened?

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, none of that happened. Um, I, I, at one point, um, because of the news coverage, I think one of the student support people reached out. They're like, hey, we're here. We know you're probably, you know, if you're going through a stressful time, we're here. It's like, it's a gay, if I, if I, if I, if I hang myself or something, they don't want to get sued, but they were, you know, the university didn't, was super, no one said anything. I mean, we, we didn't, we didn't do anything wrong. I, I heard through like the, you know, dean and vice principi- uh, president was contacted at some point, but they're like, you know, they, I mean, we were, we were just, we were just, we were just doing what we, what we were doing, you know?

• 25:23Steven Rinella?

  So we reached out. I don't, I don't, I don't know why I don't want to name, I don't want to say who we reached out. We reached out to contacts we have. Let's not be hard to solve. We reached out to contacts we have at Cornell.

• 25:35Steven Rinella?

  The contacts we have at Cornell had, we're just thrilled by it's so great to know that there's still kids that know how to do this kind of stuff. Just goes to show the caliber of the students we have. Um, you know, someone's like, oh, they, they, they might be interested in my program at the school. And they're like, but I don't, we didn't want, they didn't want to give names out. So it was kind of like, well, we'd have to check and make sure it's okay. Like I can't just send you their contact information. But it was like, no one, you know, um, no one that, that Corinne communicated with, uh, our producer, no one that Corinne communicated with expressed anything other than like, oh, that's cool. Um, let me see

• 26:16Steven Rinella?

  if I can find them for you. Uh, and so, you know, it all's well that ends well. But let me ask you this. Like, let's say, you know, later in the fall, okay, you get a deer. Do you do the deer? Do you process the deer in the communal kitchen? Or have you had enough?

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Oh, hell no. I, my, my buddy is like, a bunch of people opened their doors. They're like, they saw that what happened. They're, they're like, all right, all right. All right. You're, uh, you come, come, a lot of people opened their, their doors. I'm super grateful. People reached out and they, they to, um, um, the organizations that I, they, I'm known to, I'm affiliated with and they're like, hey, there, we're, we're always here. I mean, of course, the keyboard warriors and the, and the basement followers are, but people have been, been overwhelmingly supportive. I mean, we were talking about Lab, Lab, Lab of Orenthology. Um, last year, uh, they, they, they let, uh, they were gracious and uh, Mary Margaret's been super helpful with helping me clean my, my, um, my schools with um, Dermestid beetles and, and Professor Keith Tidball on, on Facebook, kind of a really

• 27:19Speaker 02

  respected figure defending, you know, um, I'd hear construction workers too. I remember when I was with, when I was High Point talking about, I'm like, wow, okay, this is, this is the top of the town. Um, and, and for the most part, people in the real world have been pretty, pretty supportive.

• 27:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So it's not that, so you're not going to go back to the dorm, but it's not because you're scared. It's because you've got better options.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty, pretty much. And then, you know, I don't want part two happening. I mean, it took.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  That's kind of asking for it, you know?

• 27:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I got you. So would you say that um in hindsight, do you feel that in hindsight, are you glad you did what you did because it advanced this conversation? Or do you feel like it like it like it put this thing out there to test and you you kind of learn from the experience and it gave you sort of a snapshot of, you know, your university, your community, right? That's one approach. Or you could have the approach of saying, in hindsight, I really could have done without all the distraction. I shouldn't have gone process my bear at the dorm.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  I'd say a little bit of both. I think I should have been a little bit more. I should have I should have prepped for the worst and and realize that some people would, you know, would would would would blow up. I didn't think it would become that that large and definitely if um probably do in the woods next time. But also that, like, looking back, no regrets for what we did, how we we conducted ourselves, like the fact that we thought about the implications and we were we went through, we're very considerate of just our etiquette and and kind of how we conducted ourselves when we were processing. I think there's a little little bit of both. So.

• 29:01Steven Rinella?

  Yep. I'll tell you why I like you guys. It's not because you cut that bear up in the dorm. What I like about it is you come, you're from somewhere else, you come to New York, you find out there's a bear season, you do the work, you scout, you spend time online, you do the research, you make calls. A lot of guys would be like, you're never going to get a bear. Why even bother? I'm not going to go out. You're never going to get a bear, blah, blah, blah. You ignore all that and you go out and you had success. That's cool.

• 29:32Steven Rinella?

  Love to see it, man. Like, good American hunting elbow grease, dude. So I love it. I'm glad I was so thrilled to see as I followed the story along, I was so thrilled to see that nothing bad happened, you guys. I was thrilled to see the way people are like, hey, man, this kind of stuff, or some people in our world are like, this kind of stuff should be celebrated. Like, you know, they're they're producing food for themselves, they're taking responsibility. They're they're staying in accordance with the law. It advanced the conversation. Everybody got a little smarter about everything. And um, yeah, I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I say you're an American hero.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Appreciate it, Steve. He's the world.

• 30:12Steven Rinella?

  True American hero, in fact. Um, Aaron Chin, thank you for coming out, man. I love hearing your story and um, congratulations to your, to your hunting partner, the trigger man. And um, I'm glad for you guys and I can't wait to hear about your next hunting adventure.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Thank you. Appreciate it.

• 30:30Steven Rinella?

  I do appreciate it. Uh, good luck with your studies. You got a couple more years to go. Then you're going to be entering the engineering field. So that's good. Okay. Thank you, man. Good luck with school.

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