Ep. 737: A Life Changing Hunting Experience in Africa

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Morgan Potter https://www.instagram.com/morganpotterhunting/?hl=en, George Dodds https://www.instagram.com/g_dodds/?hl=en, Seth Morris https://www.instagram.com/sethmorris_45/?hl=en, and Garrett "Dirt Myth" Smith https://www.instagram.com/dirtmyth/?hl=en. Topics Discussed: Watching a new moon get full; last chance to get a raffle ticket for the TRCP turkey hunt with Steve and Janis https://www.trcp.org/trcp-meateater-summer-sweepstakes/; how African game animals just taste better; slow moving puff adders and truck-denting black mambas; tons of antelope species; burning to open up the landscape; the terrible tsetse fly and sleeping sickness; the magic of trackers; the honey guys; how wearing military style camouflage is illegal in Tanzania; how wealth is stored as livestock; 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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• 1:27Steven Rinella?

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• 2:10Steven Rinella?

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• 2:58Steven Rinella?

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• 3:30Steven Rinella?

  Okay, everybody, we're coming, we're recording in Africa. I'm pretty much African now. Yeah. Like, in the real sense of the word, like, from Africa. I've been here so long, I've watched, I've watched a complete lunar cycle.

• 3:43Steven Rinella?

  Can you believe it? Yeah, it's impressive. I came here on a, on a new moon. And what's it called? I'm screwing that up. Yeah, no, new moons. Yeah. Yeah, came here on a new moon, watched that son of a bitch get full. That's how long I've been here. You watch the new moon get old, and then it's getting new again. Yeah, I know. So long I've been here. Long time. Joined by Morgan Potter is here today and Morgan Potter, this is the third time you've been on the show. Third appearance. You came on the show and basically without meaning to talk me into coming to Africa. Then you came on the show to get me up to speed. Yep. My upcoming African trip and now you're closing it all out. Exactly. By coming on the show again to do a debrief. Yep, old part of my hunting plan.

• 4:28Steven Rinella?

  Yep, and then tomorrow we start picking our way back home. Yep. Also joined by George and George, help me with your last name.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Dods, D O double D S.

• 4:36Steven Rinella?

  D O W D S, okay. George is from, Morgan's from, Morgan is from Australia as a, as a young man.

• 4:45Steven Rinella?

  Moved to Africa to get into the hunting thing. Yep, that's right. Came here like did what now seems to me impossible, came here, taught yourself, learned Swahili. Yep. In order to pursue your career. Yep, it's essential. Climbed from the bottom up, right? Yep. And did that. Making my way up the ladder. Yeah, chasing a dream. George was born in Kenya, so it seems weird like, like in America, we really tiptoe around this thing of like, you know, when you say I'm a white Kenyan, people in America be like, what?

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's not many of us.

• 5:19Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:20Steven Rinella?

  He's a white Kenyan.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Yep, true and true.

• 5:22Steven Rinella?

  Family's been in Kenya for many generations.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, many generations, early 1900s.

• 5:27Steven Rinella?

  Working, you work in the farm and ranch world.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Working the farming and ranching world, yep. Yeah, and yeah, spoke Swahili from a young age, so quite lucky with that.

• 5:37Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Made it a lot easier for me.

• 5:39Steven Rinella?

  And you're pursuing the professional hunting thing in that you are in your second year, your, your second year internship to become a professional hunter.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Correct, yeah, that's the plan.

• 5:52Steven Rinella?

  Yep, and a professional hunter means something very specific here.

• 5:56Steven Rinella?

  Explain professional hunter. It doesn't mean like you hunt, you know, and you make videos about it or something like a professional hunter is a thing.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  It is a thing. Yeah, we have to be licensed. So one has to complete a two-year apprenticeship. And then be endorsed by the company with which you've done your apprenticeship to then ultimately go sit your license. Which is a practical exam. There's some theory and some other bits and pieces sort of tied in with that. And that's all monitored and supervised by Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority. If you get through that stage, then you're licensed to guide clients in Tanzania.

• 6:32Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  So, and that's, you know, even when you get licensed, that's kind of the beginning of the journey too. There's a lot of learning that that'll sort of pursue you through your career. Uh, but yeah, getting licensed is the first step.

• 6:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and I'm, I'm being cautious about being too redundant. If you've been following along, um, from home, you, you've heard all of our, our five by now, is that right? Five flop episodes? We did a specific flop episode with George about his upbringing. About why giraffes hate drones. No, elephants and me hate drones. Um, and

• 7:12Steven Rinella?

  the, the lay of land with, with hunting in Kenya, Kenya move gradually, uh, not gradually. Kenya moving away from regulated hunting, even to the point where no bird hunting anymore. Um, George talked about a little bit of his hunting there, or in his family's past. And then coming up to be a professional hunter in Tanzania. So if you want to refer back, you can check that out. Seth's here.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  Howdy.

• 7:38Steven Rinella?

  He's just looking next to him to Dirt. Dirt's here in love. Yep. But we can't talk anything about who he's in love with. No. It's too great of a love. It's too great of a love. Yeah. Dirt doesn't even want people to know. They're gonna think you fell in love here now. Maybe I did. Dirt doesn't want people to know even he's so, he's so protective. I think he's afraid of getting moved in on. He's so protective that he doesn't want people to know, he was before the show began, he doesn't want people to know what country.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  This gal lives in.

• 8:10Steven Rinella?

  This gal lives in.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  Well, I will say gender. She is a woman.

• 8:13Steven Rinella?

  She is a woman. Okay, that narrows it down.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:17Steven Rinella?

  To like roughly 51% of the global population.

• 8:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. She's great.

• 8:21Steven Rinella?

  So if you're looking to a dude next to you and you're wondering if that who's Dirt is in love with, not. Other than that, it could be anyone.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  I wouldn't say if she's a dipper or not.

• 8:33Steven Rinella?

  Oh, is she a dipper?

• 8:34Speaker 00

  I won't say.

• 8:37Steven Rinella?

  She might be a dipper. Come on, tell she's a dipper.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  No, she's not a dipper.

• 8:41Steven Rinella?

  Okay. So Dirt's in love, he's very protective about wanting it. You don't want anybody to find out his, his, his, the love of his life. Lives a very private existence.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:51Steven Rinella?

  Dirt doesn't want anyone checking in on her. Talking about her, asking no questions about her.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  That's that.

• 8:59Steven Rinella?

  I have a quick thing to mention and then, oh, also people in the audience today, Corinne is going to represent the audience's interests. Um, so if Corinne feels that there's like a burning audience question.

• 9:13Steven Rinella?

  She's going to shout it out in representation of the audience. You follow me?

• 9:17Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 9:17Steven Rinella?

  Cause Corinne has quite a list of things in her head that she wants discussed. So she's gonna jump in, um, from behind the scenes there. It's, uh, for many years now, we've done our annual, me and Yanis. Uh, the Lavian Eagle. Every year we do our TRCP Turkey Hunt giveaway. It's that time of year again. The way the TRCP hunt giveaways went in the past is we used to auction them off to the highest bidder. Um, and it was observed by many that by doing that, and I'm not hacking on orthodontists here, and in fact, we had some orthodontists. But by doing that, it's like, it's pretty much gonna be orthodontists.

• 9:59Steven Rinella?

  Do you follow me?

• 9:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. High bidders.

• 10:01Steven Rinella?

  Like, it's gonna be, or when you say like, we're gonna auction off a hunt, orthodontists perk up, right? So we switched it years ago to a raffle. So that any, any schmuck, any Joe Blow off the street, guy like Dirt.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:16Steven Rinella?

  Can, uh, come win the hunt.

• 10:20Steven Rinella?

  That's going on right now. So, uh, we've done them in the spring before, but this, it's a summer raffle to win the TRCP Turkey Hunt with me and Yanis. How it goes is, uh, you buy your ticket, tickets, ticket. We, we pick a winner. The winner has a friend.

• 10:38Steven Rinella?

  The winner and, and the winner and his or her friend,

• 10:44Steven Rinella?

  all their expenses are covered. We, we agree on a date that works for everybody in the spring. So it'll be this coming spring.

• 10:51Steven Rinella?

  We pick a date that works for everybody. We, it's three nights, two full days of turkey hunting. We always find a great spot to go. We cover your airfare, lodging, food, all expenses. If you need gear, we'll take care of the gear. If you need a shotgun, we'll bring you a shotgun to use. We, we get, we cover your ammo. Did I say license? You pay nothing. The, all that money though, doesn't come out of the, the raffle pocket, the raffle pile of money. Um, all that expense is covered by a donor. So that when you buy a raffle ticket, all of your money, all of your raffle ticket money goes to TRCP. Like it all goes there and then we cover all the expenses for the trip. Um, we've done it a bunch of years.

• 11:33Steven Rinella?

  We have, everyone that comes has fun. We've had, if you go on TRCP thing, they got testimonials from past winters. Those tickets are for sale from now to, uh, the end of the month. Corinne, can you, do you mind pulling up that, what that's called?

• 11:50Steven Rinella?

  I'll do it.

• 11:52Steven Rinella?

  Um, where you go to get these tickets? One second. You go, if you, if, if a person wants these tickets, they go to, I don't know, man.

• 12:02Speaker 04

  You can probably just Google TRCP Turkey Hunt Giveaway.

• 12:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. TRC, if you search TRCP Turkey Hunt Giveaway, then like add in like Meat Eater or something like that.

• 12:18Steven Rinella?

  Oh, even better.

• 12:21Steven Rinella?

  Go to TRCP.org and one of the main things you'll find on the homepage there is a link to buy your tickets. Then you win. And then we, you pack your bags because we're turkey hunting this spring.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  If you, if you Google TRCP Turkey Hunt Giveaway, the first link that comes up is the Turkey Hunt Giveaway.

• 12:39Steven Rinella?

  That's good to hear.

• 12:40Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 12:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Okay. Now begins the, uh, the great African recap. I have a number of things that I just want, that we're going to touch on here.

• 12:53Steven Rinella?

  Top of my list, and these are in no particular order. But top of my list, we're gonna kind of jump almost to the end by saying this. I remember growing up fishing freshwater fish. And I remember getting to an age where me and my buddies would start going down. We would like drive down to Florida to fish in Florida. And having one day realizing that, man, fish from the ocean taste way better. Just generally, fish from the ocean tastes way better than fish from the freshwater.

• 13:26Steven Rinella?

  Um, I'm not, I don't think it's like me, dude. I feel like stuff, game animals are kind of better here.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  Oh, definitely.

• 13:34Steven Rinella?

  But it's not like, I keep trying to ask myself, is it like a psychological thing? Cause there's like a novelty to it, but there's just like a consistent.

• 13:42Steven Rinella?

  Like the antelope species.

• 13:45Steven Rinella?

  The African antelope species, I think are. I hate to say it, are like a better table fare than American servants.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  They are.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  I'd agree with that. It's pretty good. Just as an eater. Yeah. It's phenomenal.

• 13:59Steven Rinella?

  And that's really what you're saying. You're saying like, cause here there's so many species of antelope. And in North America, we have all these deer family, servant species. There's just something about the, the, the antelope species.

• 14:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, antelope are just delicious. I mean, I'm glad you said it, so I didn't have to. It's cause it's, I think it's.

• 14:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  It's settled science now. Yeah, it's borderline sacrilegious, but it's settled science now. Cause you're here and you've tasted them and no one can argue. Um, I mean, let's use, for example, the warthog.

• 14:28Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  It's an old boar. If you ate an old boar, I mean, obviously I'm this, you know, wild pigs aren't native to North America. I'm aware of that, but you know, if you ate an old boar of any other sort of species of wild hog.

• 14:41Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  I think you'd be somewhat disappointed, especially in the way it was prepared for us. It's just basically like a grilled loin.

• 14:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  Um, but it was exceptional. And it was like better than the best store bought pork you could find. It was unreal.

• 14:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  Um, and that sort of is, it's pretty universal. And then as I always remind people, we're eating the old males here. We'll never know, cause they're illegal to hunt in Tanzania, but imagine how good the young females taste.

• 15:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. That jumps us to a thing on my list is, uh.

• 15:10Steven Rinella?

  A little bit of the regulatory structure.

• 15:12Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 15:12Steven Rinella?

  That I was surprised by.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:14Steven Rinella?

  No, no female anything.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  No.

• 15:17Steven Rinella?

  So even like a warthog.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  No.

• 15:19Steven Rinella?

  Has to be a male.

• 15:20Speaker 03

  Has to be a male.

• 15:21Steven Rinella?

  Zebras, which have very little, like visually, very little sexual dimorphism.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 15:28Steven Rinella?

  Uh, has to be a male.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  Has to be a male.

• 15:30Steven Rinella?

  You gotta wait for its tail to flick.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  Yep, yep. That's one way to tell. Um, yeah, otherwise getting a good look between the legs there. That's about all you've got to work with, so.

• 15:41Steven Rinella?

  And you guys have a management strategy on this, on this piece of ground we're hunting where you're like, basically your philosophy is you're, you're hunting things that are, um, on death's door.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Ideally, post-productive males.

• 15:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  So especially for our key species buffalo and things like that. You know, there are certain times where we'll take a bull out of a herd, um, for various species. But in general, those will be bulls that when we look at it, we're like, that's actually a really old one. He's not going to hold on to that herd position much longer. And it's not going to be a bad thing for a younger bull to come in and take his place.

• 16:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but yeah, when I say that, I didn't mean to suggest it was like, like crippled or some other thing, but like you're like.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:24Steven Rinella?

  Looking for, you have an awareness of what is the, what are the sort of visual clues of an animal that's reached his.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  Yep, on the decline.

• 16:33Steven Rinella?

  Not just peak, but reached like kind of the end of the line.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 16:37Steven Rinella?

  In terms of horn growth, whatever. And that's who you're after. Males only, old males only.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, even in.

• 16:43Steven Rinella?

  And that stuff is good.

• 16:45Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Even in decline as far as horn growth, right? Like you'll have buffalo, for example, like the one you shot that have worn down. You know, they would have been longer at an, at an earlier stage in their life. So that for us is ideal. That kind of is the, the cornerstone of the management strategy. As far as offtake is old males that are post-productive or can easily be replaced in the population.

• 17:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, to, to get people to sense that, uh, what that search is like.

• 17:18Steven Rinella?

  If you look at, so we hunted, we focused on hunting and we hunted for four different species of big game animals.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 17:24Steven Rinella?

  We knew like Cape buffalo was the, the, the primary thing we were after. Now, the experience, ultimately, the experience we had hunting Cape buffalo was a little bit different because it's, you can sort of,

• 17:38Steven Rinella?

  through things we'll get into, when you, we're making episodes about all this, so people will be able to watch this stuff happen in real time or in real life, you know? But you can make hunting decisions that put you in a position where you're like targeting old bulls.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 17:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like you can, you can go out and kind of specifically like where you go, how you go about it, what tracks you follow, where you're kind of dismissing

• 18:03Steven Rinella?

  the herds.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 18:04Steven Rinella?

  In order to focus on like a, a lone animal or two animals that you can determine are old.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 18:11Steven Rinella?

  Um, so we were able to go in and, and kind of like narrow our search a little bit. But on the other stuff we hunted, I would say that, uh, two huge examples stand out, like hunting sable and hunting warthog. I mean, we, we, we got the biggest of

• 18:31Steven Rinella?

  dozens, not just sable, but dozens of sable bulls.

• 18:35Speaker 03

  Yep. Yep. Correct. Yeah, we looked at dozens and dozens of them and I couldn't get comfortable with more so the age than anything. There was a couple of bulls that I felt were mature, but perhaps had some growing still to do. And then there were a couple of bulls that I felt were mature, but maybe a little unimpressive as far as horn size. And I felt that we could do better, um, while also still getting an old animal. So yeah, it was, it was something to where

• 19:04Speaker 03

  it's, it's an unusual experience, right? It can be frustrating at times too. I mean, I myself was frustrated on this hunt multiple times with just like, how many of these things do we need to look at before I see one I'm happy with?

• 19:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we would see a half dozen warthog, yeah, sometimes. Yeah, because they're in groups, so since they're in small groups, a half dozen warthogs a day.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely.

• 19:22Steven Rinella?

  It became a running joke that Morgan's like, Mr. No Man.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. I became the, the. Crusher of dreams.

• 19:28Steven Rinella?

  Like I look at him.

• 19:29Speaker 03

  Breaker of dreams.

• 19:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I look at him, I'm like, that looks like a spectacular specimen to me, and I'm like, nope. Nope, nope, nope. But, uh, all that stuff paid off, man. All that stuff paid off.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  It has a way of coming together. I mean, that's the wonderful thing about this place. You never know what's around that next corner. It's so vast.

• 19:45Steven Rinella?

  Now that we've built up the hunting round here, we're gonna knock it down, because I wanna talk, I wanna discuss the black mamba.

• 19:52Speaker 03

  I knew it was coming.

• 19:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I wanna discuss the black mamba, because, uh, we come out and I don't even know how we got on it. Somehow, someone's aware of black mambas. Cause, cause, when, when you, George, uh, um, really quickly, just give people a quick prime around what is a black mamba?

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Black mamba is probably our most venomous snake that we'll sort of encounter out here. Um, and he's, he's got a pretty mean concoction of venom, and you've got a pretty short window to, to get the antivenom and get help. Um, and they're-

• 20:24Steven Rinella?

  I mean, come on.

• 20:26Steven Rinella?

  You got 20 minutes.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  I think by the book, I think, I think by the book, you've got a couple of hours. Or you've got three hours. Um, if I'm not wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's about three hours.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Probably depends where you get zapped a little bit, too.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, but yeah, they're, they're pretty mean, and they, you know, they get a lot of fanfare because they're quite an aggressive snake.

• 20:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they're an attack snake.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're an attack snake. Yeah.

• 20:46Steven Rinella?

  Attack of trucks snake. Like, the, yeah, the only, not, I don't know, maybe not the only snake in the world. This is a snake, not just that you gotta like, step on it to, to get it worked up. This is a snake that comes for you.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's, he's pretty moody kinda guy. You know, you'll, um, you'll walk past him and he'll just, um, he might be in a bad mood and chase you along for a bit.

• 21:05Steven Rinella?

  He like defends his turd.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is my hangout. Yeah, you're not welcome here, buddy. Um, move along.

• 21:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, if you wanna see a, a great, uh, bit on the, a great bit on black mambas, it's fictional, but if you get into the Kill Bill

• 21:19Steven Rinella?

  series, Kill, and Kill Bill 2, which is largely set in the desert southwest. Um, Michael Madsen, rest, rest in peace, died while we were here in Africa. Michael Madsen's character gets killed by a black mamba in the possession of Daryl Hannah's character.

• 21:37Steven Rinella?

  And uh, she, as he's dying, she runs, she has a little notebook. And as she's dying, she reviews some of her notes about the Black Mamba and gives a bunch of stats about Black Mambas as he's dying. So you could go watch that clip. Just type in Kill Bill Black Mamba. You can see it. So, I never didn't think about him much. We, somehow it came up, like, oh, there's Black Mambas around here.

• 22:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, should we be aware?

• 22:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, Morgan's like, they're here, but you know, odds are running into one, yeah, just, not gonna happen.

• 22:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:11Speaker 03

  Stupidest thing I've ever said. I really, I knew when I said it too. I was like, I'm gonna live to regret this. Especially, ah, yeah, ah, I knew I was gonna live to regret it and sure enough.

• 22:23Steven Rinella?

  I'm thrilled.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  Sure enough, egg on my face.

• 22:26Steven Rinella?

  I'm thrilled it happened.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  It's cool to see what we saw.

• 22:28Steven Rinella?

  So, first we ran into, um.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  Jabberwalker?

• 22:31Steven Rinella?

  No, that puff adder.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  Puff adder.

• 22:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. We ran into a puff adder and uh.

• 22:36Speaker 00

  That's chill snake.

• 22:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but we'll talk about, I want to talk about that one too, cause it's um, I mean, he was like totally minding his own business.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, he wanted none of it.

• 22:44Steven Rinella?

  But it led us to kind of a little bit, like, the, the thing that blew my mind about a puff adder, I, no American snake does this. Like, when you see a snake out, his ass is.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  Snaking.

• 22:56Speaker 03

  Doing an S shape, kind of perpetual S shape.

• 22:59Steven Rinella?

  Locomotion via the S, locomotion via the S.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:04Steven Rinella?

  Right? Like a slither.

• 23:06Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:07Steven Rinella?

  A puff adder, which is another deadly snake, but you have a much bigger window, like a much higher survival rate with a puff adder, I gather.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:14Steven Rinella?

  That puff adder, he goes down the, he goes, honey.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  A straight line.

• 23:20Steven Rinella?

  He goes in his, exact straight line.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:23Steven Rinella?

  Like his like scales.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's almost like he's got like a track, like, you know, like, like a, like a tank or something, yeah, he's just, he just.

• 23:32Speaker 00

  Would be like centipede-ish?

• 23:33Speaker 03

  No, cause I've got little legs. It's, what he's got is sort of his, his bottom layer of skin and his top, they sort of shuffle like that. You know, he sort of shuffles his, he sort of shuffles his bottom layer of skin forward, his belly, if you will.

• 23:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Um. Not as easily aroused as the mamba.

• 23:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah deadly bite and very, very rapid strike. But um yeah, not as easily aroused as the mamba.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Two, two hits before a balloon pops.

• 23:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah George was saying he can hit a balloon before it pops, he can hit a puff adder can hit it twice.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  That's the, that's what they say. I don't know how true that is, but they are one of the fastest striking snakes.

• 24:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and they're like an ambush snake.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that's, that's our most common cases in Africa is puff adder bite. Because they're ambush predators, they don't move particularly fast. So you might step on him and if you step on him, he's going to defend himself and bite you. Um whereas most other snakes, apart from the black mamba, they move off pretty quick. So but he's our most common contender for, for snake bite victims.

• 24:35Steven Rinella?

  We saw one of those. We saw, we saw a puff adder first, but it was just totally out in the road, but minding his own business. We saw a cobra. What kind of cobra was that?

• 24:46Speaker 03

  I think it was an Egyptian cobra. Only got a quick look at it.

• 24:49Steven Rinella?

  He wanted nothing to do with this.

• 24:50Speaker 03

  Nothing to do with us.

• 24:51Steven Rinella?

  So he just.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  Yep, he scooped it off.

• 24:54Steven Rinella?

  But the puff adder, or sorry, the mamba. We're in a.

• 25:01Steven Rinella?

  Can you explain our, our war rigs? Oh, sick.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it's a, it's a Land Cruiser FJ 78 that's um rigged for hunting. So it has a lot of kind of custom metal framework on the back. So that there's places for people to sit on the back on kind of an elevated platform above the cab. So you can kind of see out while you're cruising around. Um aside from that, you know, we really enhance the suspension on those vehicles. They've got to take a lot of weight in the back. Like when we load a full buffalo in there. It's a lot of additional weight. So there's um souped up suspension. And yeah, a few other little mod. Modifications and adjustments to the vehicle to make it suitable for safari. But they're a wonderful, wonderful piece of equipment.

• 25:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, loaded down with every kind of tool you can imagine.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, no, for sure.

• 25:49Steven Rinella?

  A wide array of machetes.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 25:53Steven Rinella?

  Machetes, jacks, shovels, cold drinks.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  Slingshot.

• 25:56Steven Rinella?

  A slingshot I noticed in there.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  We had nine.

• 25:59Steven Rinella?

  All manner of chain and cable tucked into various compartments. They're war rigs.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  We had nine rigs, nine folks in our rig the whole time, right?

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Tables, chairs, um, what else have we got on there, George? Yeah, lunchbox. Yeah, lunchbox. Got a little, um. Oh, we've got a bucket for brining. Yeah, trophy care, so we can do trophy care in the field if we have to. We've got hammocks in there. Bunch of water. Yeah, a bunch of water. Got a pretty serious first aid kit as well. Yeah, we've got a big first aid kit, like a trauma kit, um, in case someone gets injured in the field.

• 26:29Steven Rinella?

  At times, a package of cookies on the dashboard.

• 26:31Speaker 03

  Yep, sometimes.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  They go quick.

• 26:32Steven Rinella?

  Entire trip through the cookies in two days.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:35Steven Rinella?

  He thought it was like something that magically would refresh, you know?

• 26:39Speaker 03

  The cookie supply dried up real quick with you boys.

• 26:41Speaker 00

  I gotta blame Adam on that, too.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  Was he feeding, was he belt feeding them?

• 26:45Speaker 00

  No, I was, I was, that was my like friendship.

• 26:48Steven Rinella?

  And we'll get into it a little bit, but also, uh, a lot of matches.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:52Steven Rinella?

  A lot of matches.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  A lot of matches.

• 26:54Steven Rinella?

  A lot of war rigs, and we're gonna touch on those matches in a minute.

• 26:59Steven Rinella?

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• 27:44Steven Rinella?

  A little goes a long way. Make an O'Keefe's Working Hands Hand Cream. Effective, dependable, and economical. For hands that work hard every day, it's great to have something that works hard for them. O'Keefe's Working Hands. It really does really work. Keep your hands hydrated, comfortable, and smooth all season long. Visit O'Keefe'sCompany.com. That's O-K-E-E-F-F-E-S Company.com for guaranteed relief. O'Keefe's Working Hands, it works for real. I'm holding in my hot little hand here, the first ever folding knife from Montana Knife Company. Dude, this thing is sweet. They like reimagined folding knives.

• 28:25Steven Rinella?

  You touch this thing and you know you are holding a quality product. Montana Knife Company founded by Josh Smith, one of the most experienced master bladesmiths in the world. The Montana is the first folder Josh has built at production scale with a team of engineers and machinists who could match what he does on the bench. G10 scales with the 3D milled micro texture. Titanium hardware. A custom deep carry clip with flathead screws set flush. This is a rock solid clip. It's not the kind of clip that you're going to use a couple of times and it bends and get all loose. The blade goes back into the mill after heat treatment for its most critical surfaces.

• 29:10Steven Rinella?

  That's the kind of step nobody else takes. That same standard applies to every part of the Montana. That's the name of the folder, the Montana, from start to finish. The wait is over and I've been waiting a long time to get one of these suckers. MKC launching their first folding knife. It's dropping extremely soon, so make sure you sign up for email and SMS to be the first to know. These are going to sell out quick. Head to MKC.com today. That's MKC.com.

• 29:37Speaker 05

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• 30:21Speaker 05

  That's helixsleep.com/mediter for 30% off. Helixsleep.com/mediter.

• 30:31Steven Rinella?

  What the hell is I even getting at? Oh, so on the war rigs, the safari rigs, there's a, over the cab is a storage area.

• 30:37Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 30:38Steven Rinella?

  But we would just have, uh, our camera guy, Chris Gill, or Dirt would usually sit up on that cab thing. So they could film back and then swing and film forward as we're out having our adventures. And, uh, Dirt, you're cruising along and we'll sometimes cover, I mean, I never turned a tracker function on, but I mean, like, easily 100 miles.

• 31:02Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, in a day, no problem.

• 31:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so we're, we're out on, we're out in a, like, a game reserve that is, I, I keep throwing this out there just because I think it's easy for Americans to picture. Whether or not they actually can picture or not, but they can, they can sort of comprehend the scale. It's a couple million acres.

• 31:20Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 31:21Steven Rinella?

  A couple million acres, so the, so Yellowstone National Park is just over 2 million acres. This is about 2 million acres, but it's joined up with a national park.

• 31:30Speaker 05

  Yep, correct. We've got a boundary with a national park. Um, and then the national park has a boundary with another game reserve. And so it's all kind of part of a big contiguous ecosystem.

• 31:39Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Um, with the, with the major river system through it, with all these lagoons and swamps and stuff. And there's a, we'll call it a road network, but it'd be probably better for, for an American audience to understand, it'd be like, like a trail network.

• 31:55Speaker 05

  Yep, yep, like two tracks would be the term I've heard used, yeah.

• 31:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, a two-track network. Pretty impressive two-track network that like is tenuous. The, the, the, the land will just eat the road.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah, they have to be remade almost. I mean, every year, there's a lot of them that just go back to nature and have to be rebuilt from scratch.

• 32:14Steven Rinella?

  Everything's got, there's a lot of, uh, there's the miombo, which is like a forest. There's a lot of wetlands.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 32:22Steven Rinella?

  Um, and the, the, their roads are extensive, but, but tenuous and at times slow going, but you know, by using winches, using people pushing and pulling, filling in wet spots with some logs and brush and stuff. So you can get around, you can do hun- you know, a hundred plus miles of cruising around. And then as you choose, get out and walk to certain spots as well. But there's a lot of big openings. Um, you can kind of pull into or pull through in, in glass from the opening. So as you're cruising around, you're spotting game.

• 32:54Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 32:55Steven Rinella?

  All the time. Well, uh, there's a little bit of midday doldrums.

• 32:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:59Steven Rinella?

  When you kind of kick it like anywhere hunting, like, you know, that sort of 12:30 to 3:30 kind of sucks. Mornings are great. Evenings are great.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 33:06Steven Rinella?

  Um, you spot a lot of game and we had had this joke that dirt only can, over the days, over the couple of weeks, like dirt could now and then spot a warthog if it was in a 12 o'clock position.

• 33:18Speaker 00

  Cause that's being aware of the branches at head height too.

• 33:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Cause he's watching for getting hit in the head by branches. And so as he's watching for branches, you'd occasionally see a warthog.

• 33:30Steven Rinella?

  I'm getting to this, I'm getting to our Black Mama story. I'm, I'm gonna tell my perspective because it's incomplete and then, then dirt can share his, his perspective of what happened. So periodically, maybe once a day, once every two days, dirt will gesture out front. He'll do like a, like a gesture and I'll know to look off and I feel like I'm looking for whatever animal dirt sees out front. So we're cruising down the road. Dirt gives like the, like the out front gesture. And I'm looking and, and as I'm trying to figure out what it is, dirt's gesture turns into him beating the top of the truck with his hand.

• 34:14Speaker 00

  Didn't know how to say stop in Swahili at that time.

• 34:18Steven Rinella?

  He's beating the, he's beating the raft and I'm still trying to figure out what's going on and only then does it like occur to me. Cause by that point Dirk is trying to get off the top of the truck.

• 34:30Speaker 03

  He's crawling into our laps.

• 34:32Steven Rinella?

  Roll off the cab into the like back of the truck. And then Dirk can explain what, what he's seeing as this is taking place.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  Well, I was, I was looking for the warthogs out at 12 o'clock. And I remember someone just, I think you guys talked about it like out of the corner, in the corner of my brain, I had heard, if you see a black mamba, you don't want to drive over it because it will raise up and potentially smack you through the window.

• 35:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  Which in my mind was kind of fictitional, but it just stuck in my mind.

• 35:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we now then would like hit a stick and the stick would jump up and hit the side of the truck and I'd make the joke, black mamba. People were talking about they can dent trucks.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, and they will. When you're in the back there, you're, you're quite exposed and they, they would, you know, they do rear up as we saw.

• 35:17Speaker 00

  Well, yes. So I saw this big ass snake and it just kind of froze me up. And I was like, that's probably a fricking black mamba. And we're about to drive over it and I just couldn't use my words.

• 35:32Speaker 00

  We had been slapping the roof to stop for game and I just started slapping and trying to back up. And then that sucker, I'll let you take it back over, but it, it was going away from us. It was going away from us. We were, I don't know, 15, 20 feet. And at some point it became aware of our presence and busted up four feet. I'm saying, I'm taking that to the grave. I don't know if that's true.

• 35:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 35:57Speaker 00

  Four, I mean, Chris could see him through, over the hood.

• 36:02Speaker 00

  But yeah, lifted up his body and came at us.

• 36:05Steven Rinella?

  No way I can describe it. I had no idea. Like, I'd heard about him, but I had no idea. The way I'd describe it is like, he's got like a Loch Ness monster.

• 36:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally.

• 36:15Steven Rinella?

  Where he's like, you know, Loch Ness monster is down in the water, but its neck is, I mean, he's cruising around. It doesn't even make sense mechanically.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  No.

• 36:24Steven Rinella?

  If he's seven feet long, when he's cruising around, three and a half feet of him are straight up.

• 36:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:31Steven Rinella?

  But he can cruise around like that.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, he can move still, yeah.

• 36:34Speaker 00

  And we love.

• 36:35Steven Rinella?

  Like, he goes through the woods like he's, like, he goes through the woods at that moment. And I'm sure normally they're just sneaking along. He's going through the woods, he's like, like, uh, providing his own crow's nest.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's good that Morgan, before he reared up, you saw him and said, back up. Cause if we weren't backing up, he would've came.

• 36:54Steven Rinella?

  He looked like he was gonna come on the hood.

• 36:55Speaker 00

  He was gonna come on the hood.

• 36:56Steven Rinella?

  I don't think he would've, but.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  You never know. You never know. Um, but yeah, once we sort of started reversing, he, he moved off, fortunately.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 03

  And then the guys were all gung ho to go and see if they could harass him even more. Which I very quickly put the kibosh on that, on that plan.

• 37:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and like, he, he like, is going away. I didn't see him going away. I see him like, coming at the truck. And then he like, it's a false charge.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:22Steven Rinella?

  And then he leaves off in the woods. When he leaves off in the woods, he's still got his head up.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:26Steven Rinella?

  So you can watch his head going, cruising like, like belt buckle high, cruising, cruising through the woods, man. It's the most crazy thing I've ever seen.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  Magic, yeah.

• 37:36Speaker 03

  It's intimidating.

• 37:37Steven Rinella?

  Oh, so weird. And it's not one of those things that happens now and then, like, like, I remember, like, always hearing about lionfish, you know?

• 37:45Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:46Steven Rinella?

  And like, you know, you don't wanna get hit by a lionfish. And you get hit by a lionfish, and you're all worried about it. And, um, but it winds up being like, not that big of a deal.

• 37:55Speaker 00

  But you said it hurt like hell.

• 37:56Steven Rinella?

  Hurts like hell, but not a big deal.

• 37:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:57Steven Rinella?

  Like a bullet amp. People are like, oh, watch out, you know, I get hit by a bullet amp, you know? And I got stung by a bullet amp, not a big deal. But the more we get to talking about these black mambas, dudes are like, big deal. Like, it's a major problem.

• 38:08Speaker 03

  No, it's a serious problem. You've got a serious problem, but I have to, um, I mean, I'm obligated to say that black mamba sightings, snake sightings in general here, relatively rare. We just had a really good run of them on this safari.

• 38:23Steven Rinella?

  It's like.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  For better or worse.

• 38:24Steven Rinella?

  There's, there is an absolutely perfect parallel. There's a perfect parallel and it is grizzly bears in the Northern Rockies.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 38:32Steven Rinella?

  Right? You guys, uh, spent all this time, you're around black mambas. You're like, probably won't see one, which I gather is totally true. We covered hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles and walked all over hell and drove all over hell and saw a grand total of one.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 38:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay. He did not bite anybody, right? So like non-issue, but for people that are sort of like, what now? What's this now about this thing? You know, and you see it, it like, it was not, you can't bucket it in close calls at all.

• 39:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:04Steven Rinella?

  It wouldn't even, it doesn't even, it didn't even deserve like close call relegation, but it was just like a shocking. I guess the thing that was shocking to me was the snake athleticism and.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  And aggression.

• 39:15Steven Rinella?

  Athleticism, the idea that a snake would ever decide to like, be like, I'm gonna like, I'm taking on this land cruiser dude and I don't care.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. No, it's an unusual.

• 39:25Steven Rinella?

  It's a wild.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  Set of behavior, yeah, behavior for a snake, yeah, for sure.

• 39:30Steven Rinella?

  But, um, we saw one.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:33Steven Rinella?

  Like, I don't want to overblow it to people. Be like, oh my God, you're gonna get killed by a black mom because that stuff's annoying. Like people think they're gonna get killed by mountain lions and they think they're gonna get killed by bears and they're gonna get killed by everything under the sun. Uh, it's not gonna happen. Nothing happened to us. George, you ever been killed by a black mamba?

• 39:49Speaker 03

  I'm still here.

• 39:50Steven Rinella?

  The dude was born in the bush.

• 39:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:53Steven Rinella?

  Across the border and grew up on a ranch.

• 39:57Steven Rinella?

  And he's still alive.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. They get, they get a lot of fanfare because they're just different.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  Which is like the griz.

• 40:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, the fanfare. Yeah. It'd be like the, uh, yeah, back to the griz thing. Let's say you see a griz and, you know, and he takes five steps towards you before running off. That sticks with you for the rest of your life.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:14Steven Rinella?

  And people that know bears be like, that bear was no risk to anybody.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 40:19Steven Rinella?

  He wasn't, he wasn't serious. He was wondering what you were and he ran away.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:24Steven Rinella?

  But in your head, you're like, good lord.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's personal.

• 40:27Steven Rinella?

  It's a grizzly chart.

• 40:30Speaker 04

  Today on our, on our cruise, we passed some water and there was a crocodile in there. And I wasn't aware that the Swahili word for crocodile is mamba.

• 40:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. He was like, mamba, mamba.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  Oh, and everyone was so excited to see that second one. Everyone was so ready and I had to put like, pour cold water on it. No, it's the Swahili word for crocodile.

• 41:00Speaker 03

  And mambo means hello, right? Uh, jumbo is, jumbo is, yeah, it's, it's a, they're both forms of greeting. Yeah. Yeah, one's very informal and one's sort of a little more formal. But mamba.

• 41:12Steven Rinella?

  I think the only Swahili word I, for animals that I actually got was mbogo.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 41:18Steven Rinella?

  The buffalo.

• 41:18Speaker 03

  Buffalo, yeah.

• 41:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  It's a good one.

• 41:20Steven Rinella?

  Good one to know. Yeah, you, you always feel a little out of the loop.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:25Steven Rinella?

  Someone points, they say a word and you're always gonna be like, now what now?

• 41:29Speaker 03

  What is it? I try to be pretty quick on the draw with the translation.

• 41:33Steven Rinella?

  You do a great job. Uh, you do a great job.

• 41:35Speaker 03

  Well, there's nothing worse than sitting there and you haven't seen it and you're wondering if it's like your target species is a good one and like, we're chattering back and forward without you even knowing what, what's there. So it's, it's critical, but.

• 41:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you were quick to point out today that there's in fact not a black.

• 41:50Speaker 03

  In fact, not a black mamba, it's a crocodile way away in the river.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  Where it is.

• 41:56Steven Rinella?

  I want to hit, um, I'm gonna back out of my notes that I got open and I'm, I'm gonna run through. This is against my better judgment to run through our, our list because it's so damn long.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:07Steven Rinella?

  Like who would have a tension span long enough to hear what we ran into?

• 42:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I suspect it's incomplete too. So let's give it a, let's give it a roll.

• 42:16Steven Rinella?

  Listen to this now.

• 42:21Steven Rinella?

  I got the 10 game animals and got bored.

• 42:25Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna do them all. I was just trying to tell people how many are on the list.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:28Steven Rinella?

  Okay. A common reed buck. That's the whitetail deer.

• 42:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, they, they.

• 42:34Steven Rinella?

  It's a whitetail.

• 42:35Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 42:36Steven Rinella?

  It has horns and no antlers.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 42:38Steven Rinella?

  Runs to the woods like a, like it, the whitetail deer and this animal took totally separate paths and landed at a very similar group.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Yep. Convergent evolution brought them together.

• 42:48Steven Rinella?

  They split at about same time. Like, you know, you catch him, he's like, whoa, takes off. He's got a little tail, just different.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:56Steven Rinella?

  Totally different.

• 42:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:58Steven Rinella?

  Coloration. Just, yeah, I kept, we kept jo, I think maybe to Morgan's annoyance, we kept joking about how much they reminded us of whitetail deer.

• 43:07Speaker 03

  No, no, I see, I see the similarity.

• 43:09Steven Rinella?

  But he's, is it an antelope species?

• 43:11Speaker 03

  It is an antelope.

• 43:12Steven Rinella?

  Okay, he's got a horn.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's got a horn. And they're beautiful. I mean, they're, they're gorgeous creatures. I really enjoy them.

• 43:17Steven Rinella?

  We saw a bunch of topey.

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 43:19Steven Rinella?

  Many, hundreds of topey.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  Hundreds of topey.

• 43:21Steven Rinella?

  Which are, you know how you explain them, man? Crazy looking animal. They, they, they like being around the river flats, the water.

• 43:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're open plains.

• 43:29Steven Rinella?

  What are they, a couple hundred pounds?

• 43:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, something in that range, a couple hundred, 250, something like that, a big bull.

• 43:35Steven Rinella?

  I will put it, like, most people who watched, grew up watching nature documentaries are familiar with a wildebeest.

• 43:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 43:44Steven Rinella?

  There's a couple animals that to me had a wildebeest-y vibe.

• 43:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that sort of high air front and that sort of rocking gait.

• 43:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 03

  You could certainly say that's true of topey. They're a little smaller, a little less sort of boxy than a wildebeest. Um, they're in that kind of harder beast family. Uh, beautiful animals, again.

• 44:01Steven Rinella?

  So these are things like, we, we had, we weren't, if we were hunting them, we would have had a hell of a time.

• 44:06Speaker 03

  Oh, sure, yeah.

• 44:07Steven Rinella?

  We would have had a lot of opportunities.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely.

• 44:09Steven Rinella?

  The reed buck is an animal that like, seems that's gonna take some doing.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, especially early season here with the high grass. Um, the reed buck have got a lot of places to hide. They, they're an open plains thing too. Those, um, you know, we call them emboggers, you know, those open areas where there's just sort of more sparse vegetation. It's not the forest proper. There's kind of an edge habitat there. They like that edge habitat. So they'll be in those emboggers, but, um, this time of year, unless the grass has been dealt with through burning, they're extremely difficult to spot.

• 44:39Steven Rinella?

  Edge habitat, you say?

• 44:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:41Steven Rinella?

  Once again, whitetail deer.

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 44:44Steven Rinella?

  The Lichtenstein heart of beast, quite an abundant critter.

• 44:47Speaker 03

  Yep, Lichtenstein's heart of beast, very abundant here.

• 44:49Steven Rinella?

  Um, and in a coloration that really just says, here I am.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  Hmm, yeah, that sort of rusty brown.

• 44:56Steven Rinella?

  Easy, easy, that's like a, that's a beginner's, if you want to spot animals, that's a good beginner's animal.

• 45:02Speaker 03

  Yep, the white rump.

• 45:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, white rump, reddish body, you're like, there's one.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  Yep, yep.

• 45:07Steven Rinella?

  Or no, I don't do that, I go, what's that?

• 45:10Speaker 03

  Very wary, you know, very, um, very keen eyesight, uh, a very worthy species to hunt, I enjoy them a lot.

• 45:18Steven Rinella?

  The defassa waterbuck, which has, if you ever see a deer on a super cold, when they're, one deer in the winter, put all their hair, puff all their hair out.

• 45:28Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 45:29Steven Rinella?

  The way some birds do, like he's just trying to keep warm, puffs all of his hair out, like that.

• 45:34Speaker 03

  Yep, the waterbuck. Yeah, they've got a very coarse, uh, hair.

• 45:39Steven Rinella?

  Bushbuck.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 45:42Steven Rinella?

  Uh, sable.

• 45:44Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 45:45Steven Rinella?

  Which we hunted for.

• 45:46Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 45:46Steven Rinella?

  A, this is like one of the most kind of like holy shit looking of the animals.

• 45:50Speaker 03

  Oh, for sure.

• 45:50Steven Rinella?

  The bulls, we were hunting sable, the bulls turn black.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Yep, jet black.

• 45:56Steven Rinella?

  I mean, black, like a black horse is black.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 45:59Steven Rinella?

  With the mane and then like an outstanding set of horns.

• 46:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, exceptional, really impressive.

• 46:06Steven Rinella?

  Forty foot scythes coming out of their head.

• 46:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, forty inch.

• 46:10Steven Rinella?

  Forty inch, yeah.

• 46:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wish.

• 46:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, uh, forty inch scythes coming out of their head, like a really like, wow.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:19Steven Rinella?

  Looking animal, um, and the fact, I can't remember, the females are reddish?

• 46:22Speaker 03

  The females are reddish brown, rusty, yeah, again, rusty brown.

• 46:26Steven Rinella?

  Uh, Nile crocodile, which is a game animal, because if you buy a hunting license, it's on your hunting license.

• 46:32Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 46:33Steven Rinella?

  You can hunt crocodiles.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 46:34Steven Rinella?

  We saw, um, at night, driving at night, we saw a leopard.

• 46:39Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 46:39Steven Rinella?

  And also saw a lot of leopard tracks.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  We did.

• 46:41Steven Rinella?

  But one, we got lucky, probably real lucky.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  Real lucky.

• 46:45Steven Rinella?

  And a female leopard came out, um. And boogied down the road in front of us.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 46:50Steven Rinella?

  And at one point, Morgan doesn't want to be quoted on this, but we're talking about leopards. So leopard is a mountain, little bit, I would say like a little bigger than a mountain lion. Right. So in this area, in this area, you see males that are what 160, 170?

• 47:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, a big male would be in that 160, 170, somewhere in the middle there.

• 47:09Steven Rinella?

  Yep. So it can happen with like, that can happen with mountain lions, but in some areas, their top end kind of passes up the mountain lion top end. But interesting thing about leopards, so leopards are spotted like a jaguar. But there are so many, there's such a denser, like there's so much more abundant on the landscape than mountain lions.

• 47:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 47:31Steven Rinella?

  Much smaller home range. There can be many of them in the area.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 47:36Steven Rinella?

  Cause there's a lot of game.

• 47:37Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 47:38Steven Rinella?

  And it's much more like, like when you're out in this area, they're, they're just around. Like right now around our, our leopards, these guys commonly hear them at night.

• 47:46Speaker 03

  Yep, absolutely. Yeah, they walk right through camp sometimes.

• 47:49Steven Rinella?

  Um, so we saw one, lot of dikers.

• 47:52Speaker 03

  Lot of dikers.

• 47:53Steven Rinella?

  Which is a little shit. And how, how many pounds is that?

• 47:57Speaker 03

  Diker.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  20 pounds, a bit more maybe, 30 pounds?

• 48:00Speaker 03

  No, less, less, somewhere in that 15, 20 range, I'd say.

• 48:04Steven Rinella?

  Maximum. And when you see him, he's usually moving.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's out there.

• 48:08Steven Rinella?

  12 foot leaps.

• 48:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're very agile.

• 48:12Steven Rinella?

  Uh, clip springers.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 48:16Steven Rinella?

  Which is a little diker like rock.

• 48:18Speaker 03

  Yep. Very specialized antelope. They like to hang out on rock out crops. Um, they've got specially adapted little hooves with kind of a leathery pad on the bottom. So they can kind of hop around and get really good traction on the rocks.

• 48:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I would say all told, uh, we saw, I don't know, 30 dikers.

• 48:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:37Steven Rinella?

  And saw the grand total of one who stood still for one moment.

• 48:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, there was one that stood still.

• 48:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Giraffes, not a game animal.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  Not a game animal.

• 48:45Steven Rinella?

  In Tanzania, it's the national animal. It's our, it's our bald eagle.

• 48:49Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 48:50Steven Rinella?

  Or now we have a national mammal, the American bison. But let's go with the bald eagle analogy because it's very much, you do not shoot that thing.

• 48:57Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:58Steven Rinella?

  Very much, but lots of them.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  Lots of.

• 48:59Steven Rinella?

  Daily occurrence of seeing.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  Very much so, yeah. Very abundant in this area.

• 49:04Steven Rinella?

  War hog, uh, we'll talk about that. Cape buffalo.

• 49:09Steven Rinella?

  We saw and got a rone, which is a sable-like. We covered off on sables, but the rone bulls are a rone color or tan color.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 49:18Steven Rinella?

  Um, little bit, kind of maybe a little bit of a heavier horn, much shorter.

• 49:22Speaker 03

  Yep, heavier horn, slightly shorter and um, a bit of a stockier body than a sable.

• 49:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like a small, oh, like, like a, I don't know, man, like, like the height of a small mule.

• 49:34Speaker 03

  Hmm, absolutely. Yeah, they're tall.

• 49:37Steven Rinella?

  Baboons all over the damn place, lots of them.

• 49:42Steven Rinella?

  We saw greater kudu.

• 49:44Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 49:46Steven Rinella?

  Um, we saw lots, eh, not lots, we saw maybe over a dozen zebras.

• 49:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, yep.

• 49:55Steven Rinella?

  We saw a oraby.

• 49:58Speaker 03

  We saw an oraby.

• 50:00Steven Rinella?

  And, and a male oraby.

• 50:03Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 50:04Speaker 00

  Was that that little guy at?

• 50:05Speaker 03

  It was the little guy, yeah, which I had never even heard of.

• 50:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 50:09Speaker 03

  Magnificent.

• 50:10Steven Rinella?

  And I was told it was a fine specimen, but I didn't feel comfortable shooting something I'd never heard of.

• 50:16Speaker 03

  Much to our dismay because they're delicious and it was a particularly good specimen.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  Tiny again, right? Like.

• 50:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, small, a little longer in the leg than, than your dyker, a little longer in the body too, and, and the neck as well for that matter, but they're, they're a very pretty, pretty animal.

• 50:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:34Speaker 03

  Again, they hang out in those boogers.

• 50:36Steven Rinella?

  We saw eland.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  We saw eland.

• 50:38Steven Rinella?

  Couple.

• 50:38Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:39Steven Rinella?

  We saw today one we hadn't seen yet.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  Impala.

• 50:42Steven Rinella?

  We saw an impala.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:45Steven Rinella?

  There's probably more stuff we have.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  Well, hippo, if we're collectively.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  That's a game animal too.

• 50:50Steven Rinella?

  Right down, impala.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  Couple of velvet monkey.

• 50:54Steven Rinella?

  Yep, we saw verveets, hippo, we saw a number of very small cat species.

• 50:59Speaker 03

  We did, yeah, we saw genet cat and African wildcat, which is rare, and then.

• 51:04Steven Rinella?

  We saw, uh, what's that little bugger that was out running out?

• 51:08Speaker 00

  Art bark.

• 51:08Speaker 03

  Art bark, yeah, that was a big deal. That was very cool. That's a very rare sighting. We got extremely lucky on this safari with like headlight spottings of just cool and unusual animals that you don't typically run into.

• 51:22Steven Rinella?

  So we saw, we're talking about, with the exception of um, the Nile crocodile. We saw over, here's the point, we saw over twenty species of like.

• 51:36Steven Rinella?

  Medium to large sized mammal game species.

• 51:41Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 51:41Steven Rinella?

  And it's like this, it's this very obvious point that, that you could have said it to me and I would have like intellectually accepted it, but you have to live it be like, like the Pleistocene is alive.

• 51:55Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 51:56Steven Rinella?

  All when we're talking, whenever we sit around and we do it often on this show. We have anthropologists come in, paleontologists come in, archaeologists, we kind of marvel about like the, the megafauna, the, the extinctions of the megafauna in North America.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 52:11Steven Rinella?

  Right. Where we lost the horse, we lost all these different like giraffe species, you know, we lost our elephants. Saw a lot of elephant tracks, but some weirdly.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was very surprised.

• 52:22Steven Rinella?

  As big as they are, like we saw elephant tracks a lot of days, we cut elephant tracks.

• 52:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, the tall grass again was not, and you'd be amazed at how well they can just melt into that tall grass.

• 52:32Steven Rinella?

  And um, I know that I've heard a lot of people mention um, in my readings that people talk about that you sort of like not seeing the forest for the trees a little bit.

• 52:40Speaker 03

  Very much so.

• 52:40Steven Rinella?

  People be like, you're 30 feet from an elephant and all of a sudden you realize there's an elephant because it's just like not in your.

• 52:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it becomes like the lands, it's not, it's not an animal on landscape, it almost becomes like the landscape people talk about.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  It does, yeah.

• 52:54Steven Rinella?

  And thick stuff.

• 52:55Speaker 03

  It absolutely does.

• 52:55Steven Rinella?

  You also realize like, oh my God, there's a ear.

• 52:57Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 52:58Steven Rinella?

  You know, they realize what's in front of them is an elephant.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, gray tree trunks sort of with the gray hide, it, it, they are deceptively um, difficult to spot.

• 53:08Steven Rinella?

  It'll seem wild to people, but passing a giraffe, like going by a giraffe, you, you also.

• 53:15Steven Rinella?

  It, it's, it's in plain sight, but you don't see it. You read it like, you read the legs like trees.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 53:21Steven Rinella?

  Cause you're looking for like, I don't know, I'm looking for, you know, being especially being a hunter from America, I'm looking for like, I'm looking for shit that's about 150 pounds.

• 53:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:30Steven Rinella?

  And you, you know, which is about yay high, right? It's about like yay high at the shoulder.

• 53:34Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 53:34Steven Rinella?

  Belly button high at the shoulder. And so you get like, when you're out on the hunt, you have a, a sight picture.

• 53:40Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 53:40Steven Rinella?

  And you're not realizing that four of those trees are like giraffe legs.

• 53:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:45Steven Rinella?

  It's, it, you, you can't explain it until you live it, but you just, you look through them.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, you do. They, they are very, very well camouflaged when they stand still. They kind of just, they blend in and that. Kind of the pattern they have just breaks up their outlines. So well, they're impressive.

• 54:03Steven Rinella?

  And to this, to this place to see an extinction point, it'd be like the richness of, of what's here. That you have. So behind us right now, somewhere out here, we saw that we didn't see one, but we saw a lot of the tracks. You have lions, leopards, and then a host of small cat species.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 54:24Steven Rinella?

  You have a hyena. So now in like, it's not, it's probably not even technically a canine, is it? But like,

• 54:30Speaker 03

  No, it's not a, not a true canine.

• 54:31Steven Rinella?

  Hyenas, jackals.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  African wild dogs.

• 54:36Speaker 00

  Oh, we saw a jackal. Add that to the list.

• 54:37Steven Rinella?

  Yep, I did put that in. We saw, yep.

• 54:39Speaker 00

  Would mongooses go on the list too, or no?

• 54:41Steven Rinella?

  No, no, that's like a weasel equivalent. They're adjacent to. Um, but then like dozens of species of horned. Dozens of kinds of horned animals.

• 54:53Speaker 03

  Yep, yep. The biodiversity here is incredible and the specialization is the thing that always impresses me. You'll find it like the clipspring is a great example. An antelope that's adapted just to live on rock outcrops and graze the sort of surrounding margins of those rock, rock outcrops, use them for shelter. Um, and to get away from predators. It's really impressive.

• 55:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So you feel like,

• 55:17Speaker 03

  Giraffe is another one.

• 55:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you might be like on a big, you might be like cruising along a big ridge top, like a big flat top ridge top. And on it, you'll get a new area where there's outcrops.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 55:27Steven Rinella?

  Then also shooting across the road is a clipspring. Like you would point out like he's, he's associated with that rock outcrop.

• 55:34Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 55:35Steven Rinella?

  Like that's his little zone.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Did they, um, did you get the Kisahili word for a clipspring?

• 55:39Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 55:40Speaker 02

  It's pretty cool. Call them buzimawe, which direct translation is rock goat.

• 55:44Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really? Rock goat? Okay.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty cool.

• 55:49Steven Rinella?

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• 59:01Steven Rinella?

  There was a thing I had, like, I keep pointing out this thing too, like maybe to the point of being annoying is, uh, you grew up on wildlife documentaries, like out in the Serengeti.

• 59:11Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 59:11Steven Rinella?

  Right? Like, and I can see why. Like, if you want to film a bunch of wildlife, go there. Everything's wide. The grass is, you know, there's grass, you have scattered trees and you can just see all the stuff. Here, you're in a lot, you're in forested country oftentimes. You're in forested country. So you have in your head that you're going to have these, like panoramic views of all of the stuff out mingling out in the open. And in the forested area, it's very much like being, you know, it's like, there's like deciduous trees here.

• 59:40Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 59:42Steven Rinella?

  A lot of times you're, you're in that environment where you're like, it, it's not this great abundance. It's just like scatterings of, of things, but they're different. But then today we had a, today we went out and do a big, I don't know what you can call it.

• 59:55Speaker 05

  Sort of a floodplain.

• 59:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like a big grass floodplain. Um, along a coursing, very swampy river, like picture kind of river that's got crocodiles and hippos in it. And there's this mass grass flats coming off that. And there was a time where you're like, You're standing there and within a thousand yards of you are hundreds of animals.

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  Yep, yep. There was an impressive concentration of game down there and that'll that'll happen more and more as the season wears on. So one of the things that we've been up against on this safari and we've kind of used it to our advantage a little bit, but definitely been somewhat hindered by is that there's still a huge amount of water inside the Miyombo, inside the forest. There's little water holes. I mean, we saw a lot of them when we were tracking buffalo and tracking other game. You'll be kind of walking through the bush and then suddenly there's a bit of soil that's kind of low lying and there's standing water in there. Or there's a little spring that's still seeping from the rainy season that in a few weeks here will be dry.

• 1:00:58Speaker 03

  Or there's a rock, you know, a rock area where a spring's leaking into a rock and there's a collection of water. That stuff is definitely dispersing the game.

• 1:01:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Speaker 03

  Because a lot of animals don't need to go down to the river to drink. There's grass on those emboggers. There's grass on the freshly burnt sections and there's little pockets of water that they can locate throughout the Miyombo forest to where they don't need to concentrate on those flood plains. As those water sources dry up, you'll see a greater concentration of game later in the season. But certainly to your point about the Serengeti, this ecosystem doesn't have that kind of game concentration. It's naturally just a more dispersed, lower kind of, yeah, lower yield as far as numbers of game per acre or hectare or whatever metric you want to use.

• 1:01:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  But nonetheless, the biodiversity is incredible.

• 1:01:50Steven Rinella?

  Oh, it's unbelievable. But today we saw the mass amount we saw, there was like, you could see looking out ahead of us, there's forty Cape buffalo, about seven zebras, hundreds of topi.

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:02:05Steven Rinella?

  And then there was a couple.

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  There was some impala off there and there was some waterbuck as well.

• 1:02:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but like hundreds, hundreds.

• 1:02:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, unbelievable.

• 1:02:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it was unbelievable. All mixed in.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, all mingling together, making noises, the bulls chasing each other around. It was impressive. It was a beautiful morning.

• 1:02:23Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you know, I was gonna mention, we watched one water source go. I don't know if you remember. The, when we got here, we went to shoot.

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:02:29Steven Rinella?

  All these baboons took off, but one baboon didn't realize all of his body's left because he had his head down in that.

• 1:02:33Speaker 03

  He was having a drink.

• 1:02:34Steven Rinella?

  Hole in a rock.

• 1:02:35Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:02:35Steven Rinella?

  Drinking. And then I looked, I peered down and there they are, Dan, it's gone.

• 1:02:38Speaker 03

  Dry, yeah. Classic example.

• 1:02:39Steven Rinella?

  So he's like, they, he lost his little water pocket.

• 1:02:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. And something like that could support one old buffalo bull or a handful of other plains game species that would come in just for that amount. And so now that's gone. Those have moved on to another water source and that'll kind of continue to happen.

• 1:02:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:55Speaker 03

  Until a lot of stuff's concentrating around the permanent water.

• 1:02:58Steven Rinella?

  One of the things that surprised me most, um, grass fires.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  We got one going.

• 1:03:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I was saying, I'm gonna, I don't know if you know, but I've told him I'm gonna try to get a job with Robin Hurt. And it's gonna be chief ignition officer.

• 1:03:15Speaker 00

  You were gonna be VP, I think. VP, I'll take it.

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  VP of, um. VP of ignition.

• 1:03:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he's gonna have like a sort of an assessment role.

• 1:03:22Speaker 03

  And monitoring, that's right. Yeah.

• 1:03:24Steven Rinella?

  Oh, perfect. Sign me up. Uh, in reading North American history.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:31Steven Rinella?

  Um, Native American land use North American history. Like, there's not, there's not many like landscape, environmental historians that you can, that you can talk to about pre-European history in North America that don't comment on the active quality of, of human caused wildfires on the landscape.

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:53Steven Rinella?

  Even to the point where

• 1:03:56Steven Rinella?

  like, this is kind of, I don't want to open up too, I don't want to open up too crazy of a thing here, but European diseases. When European, European diseases kind of like swept the landscape quicker than Europeans did when they, when they arrived in the new world, so North and South America. Um, European diseases maybe, maybe killed as many as 90% of the humans that lived in North and South America. It's a, it's a debated thing. Like,

• 1:04:29Steven Rinella?

  There's, there's, there's no way it was left less than 50. There's like, no one argues it was less than 50. Maybe as many as 90% of people buy diseases. Climatologists can see in, in like, you know, in like, in glaciers and things that store, I'm trying not to go too deep in this. Picture glaciers where you have annual deposition of atmospheric conditions that you can dig a core and look.

• 1:04:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Steven Rinella?

  Climatologists can point to when that happened, that bracket of years when the Americas were depopulated by a, a sudden and dramatic reduction in ash.

• 1:05:06Speaker 03

  Interesting. Yeah, it makes sense.

• 1:05:09Steven Rinella?

  People were burning.

• 1:05:09Speaker 03

  People were burning.

• 1:05:11Steven Rinella?

  And like you read, and it's so hard to picture, you're reading about history of like, they'd burn to attract game. They'd burn to open up the landscape, right? They, they burn for agricultural purchase, purposes. Um, you read about on the Great Plains, like a lot of people talk about big fires, the, the, the, the plains tribes, they're like, oh no, they burned it all off to track buffalo.

• 1:05:30Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:05:31Steven Rinella?

  On the plains. Um, that goes on here.

• 1:05:35Speaker 03

  It does. Yeah. This is a fire adapted ecosystem. So same thing. You can easily imagine, and there is, you know, understanding the people that inhabited this place prior to, let's say four to 6,000 years ago is, is a pretty an exact science. It's not really clear exactly who was here and what they were doing, but you can easily imagine that they would have burned for all of those same reasons that we still burn today, which is getting rid of that excessive decadent grass that's of no value, feed value to animals and is difficult for them to move through and kind of navigate their way through. It's, you know, it, it's clearing out

• 1:06:15Speaker 03

  the forest of fuel load. So you get a, a very cool, quick moving fire that doesn't damage trees. Oh yeah, absolutely. No, we, we've had to drive through it a number of times because we've lit in one, lit one, and then realized that the road we were taking is a dead end.

• 1:06:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You can kind of like stop it out or go through whatever. Like doesn't harm the trees.

• 1:06:34Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:06:35Steven Rinella?

  Moves very, like very slowly, very low heat.

• 1:06:38Speaker 03

  And when it's happening this time of year, we don't get rain. So you're not putting runoff into the rivers. And it's, we saw on the safari, the way that fire helps the habitat and helps us as hunters kind of goes hand in glove, but the. Early part of the safari, we were burning furiously. I mean, anything that had taken match, we'd set, set a match to it just to, you know, burn that decadent grass.

• 1:07:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it might, it might burn a patch the size of where we're sitting.

• 1:07:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, or it might burn 10,000 acres. You lit a couple of, couple of beauties, couple for the books. You should be, you should be. But then towards the latter part of the safari, we actually started to see that bearing fruit where we went places that we'd set fire to on day two or three. On day seven, eight, nine, and there was already re, regrowth, green shooting grass and game.

• 1:07:31Steven Rinella?

  Absolutely indisputable.

• 1:07:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:33Steven Rinella?

  Indisputable. The game moves on like, I was laying out a scientific experiment I still want you to do. I want you to go in and mechanically clear an area. rake it.

• 1:07:46Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:07:46Steven Rinella?

  Clip everything and scrape it out and then burn an area next to it.

• 1:07:50Speaker 03

  And see what the regrowth pattern.

• 1:07:52Steven Rinella?

  It's like, man, it comes back.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  Well, the, the, a good example of that is the runway strip.

• 1:07:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's mowed, yeah.

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  You guys mowed it and George was saying that how they removed all the grass. Yeah, we rake it. So no, no burning on that. Stop the dust. So that's, yeah, it's a pretty good example. You could see.

• 1:08:10Steven Rinella?

  And is it green up real nice?

• 1:08:12Speaker 03

  Not as well as the burn areas.

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  Not even close.

• 1:08:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. There's, there's something about that burning man where the grass, like it's such a low, like, we're not talking about new grass. It's just the plants, the grass plants that are there.

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  Reshoots.

• 1:08:25Steven Rinella?

  Just all of a sudden go.

• 1:08:26Speaker 03

  Yep, reshoots. There's enough residual moisture in the soil. Not so much up here on these sort of rocky escarpments where we are now. A lot of that will stay burned until the new rains come in. But it's great to clear the fuel load out of here. So again, you're protecting the forest. If you do get a hotter burn, it could potentially damage this beautiful canopy we've got up here. But down there lower, in the lower lying areas, the residual soil moisture is such that when you do one of those burns, three, four days, you'll have fresh shoots starting to emerge. And it is, as opposed to the raked area, it's brand new grass. Like it, it's got all, you can just see from looking at it, the like, the vitality.

• 1:09:11Speaker 03

  It's so nourishing looking. It's like bright green and like tender. I mean, and the game's just wants it.

• 1:09:20Steven Rinella?

  And the main point being for, for a fellow like me and Seth here. Is that you are transported to a time and place. Where anytime you feel like it, you can throw a match.

• 1:09:32Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:09:33Steven Rinella?

  It's encouraged.

• 1:09:34Speaker 03

  Normally can you, you're encouraged to.

• 1:09:36Speaker 00

  They supply your matches.

• 1:09:37Speaker 04

  You're doing stuff all day long that you'd be a felon for in Montana.

• 1:09:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You driving down the road, it took me a while to get used to driving down the road and the track or just be with matches.

• 1:09:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. We would, we would stop to take a pee break. And you get out, take a leak and I'd strike a match and light whatever on fire and hop back in the truck and

• 1:09:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59Speaker 04

  There we go.

• 1:10:00Steven Rinella?

  Oh, it's, it's. Fourth of July, we got to burn all kinds of stuff.

• 1:10:03Speaker 04

  It was fun.

• 1:10:04Steven Rinella?

  Matter of fact, one of my prime rippers.

• 1:10:06Speaker 00

  Was fourth of July.

• 1:10:07Speaker 03

  That one was great.

• 1:10:08Steven Rinella?

  It's a good one.

• 1:10:09Speaker 03

  When we were driving out and seeing that whole hillside on fire, it was beautiful. It was pretty cool.

• 1:10:13Speaker 04

  After shooting a buffalo.

• 1:10:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Next on my, next on my list. The tetsy fly. Odd, odd critter.

• 1:10:21Speaker 03

  Odd critter.

• 1:10:21Speaker 04

  Terrible critter.

• 1:10:22Steven Rinella?

  Flies normally last the day a tetsy fly, uh, he, he gets a six month run.

• 1:10:27Speaker 03

  Lives six months. She gets a six month.

• 1:10:29Steven Rinella?

  She gets a six month run. Drawn to moving vehicles.

• 1:10:33Speaker 03

  Yes, they're very motion sensitive. They want to be where there's motion.

• 1:10:37Steven Rinella?

  You don't like normally you think about bugs, like if you're cruising along, let's say you're back home and you're cruising along. And you're like, you know, you're going to stop and get out, right? Even if you drive along in a four wheeler or something or a can am and you're like, you're cruising along and you're like, eventually we're going to stop and get out. When we stop and get out, we're going to get swarmed by mosquitoes. Here they get you while you're driving. It's all flipped.

• 1:10:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's the opposite.

• 1:10:59Steven Rinella?

  They get you while you're driving, then you stop and they leave.

• 1:11:01Speaker 00

  And get you is like a serious app when they really.

• 1:11:05Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. Get you good, yeah. Chris likened to, he had money, he said, he likened to getting tased.

• 1:11:13Speaker 03

  Sometimes they do really touch a nerve.

• 1:11:17Steven Rinella?

  But then like you, you get out and all of a sudden it was like gone.

• 1:11:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they like fast. I don't know. There's an odd bug and they're hard to kill. You gotta really roll them a few times to get them.

• 1:11:26Speaker 03

  Got a pretty strong exoskeleton.

• 1:11:27Steven Rinella?

  My, my program got, uh, my program got way developed. Like you, like Morgan, you wear a heavy gauge.

• 1:11:36Speaker 03

  I do.

• 1:11:37Steven Rinella?

  You wear a heavy gauge material.

• 1:11:39Speaker 03

  Cotton.

• 1:11:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. He wears like a heavy.

• 1:11:41Speaker 03

  T C proof.

• 1:11:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You'd look at me like that might be a little uncomfortable in the hot part of the day, but he's thinking because it's like super light. They can get through. And I eventually kind of got my whole program squared away up to the point where the only thing I wished I had now and then is a light pair of gloves.

• 1:11:57Speaker 03

  And face covering.

• 1:11:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:58Speaker 03

  I mean, the drivers are wearing jackets.

• 1:12:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. For peak tetsy.

• 1:12:02Speaker 03

  The driver's seat's a bad place to be. Yeah.

• 1:12:04Steven Rinella?

  We call it the fly box.

• 1:12:06Speaker 03

  The fly box.

• 1:12:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, the T C chamber, peak tetsy, T C, whatever. Peak tetsy is like, what, like, like five thirty to, no, four thirty to five thirty?

• 1:12:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, they get a little peckish before, before bedtime.

• 1:12:17Steven Rinella?

  In the morning they come in and you might be going through a bad spot and they come in and say hi, but at night they're like ready to rip.

• 1:12:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:24Steven Rinella?

  And then it gets dusk and it's gone.

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  Gone. It's gone. Yeah.

• 1:12:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:27Speaker 03

  Smokes help too. Smoke helps. Um. Yeah, we did the, uh, the elephant dung. Dung bucket. Yeah. You get a, get a bucket or a, a small can and you put some elephant, dry elephant dung in there and it smoulders, very smoky, smoldering, kind of greasy fire and it, it definitely works. It puts them off. Well.

• 1:12:44Steven Rinella?

  Any kind of smoke puts them off. A breeze puts them off. Burned off areas they don't like.

• 1:12:49Speaker 03

  They don't, there's not.

• 1:12:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. There's certain little pockets though where you become like very aware of them suckers. And I was always re, and I knew them and read about them because how they used to be like a real,

• 1:13:01Steven Rinella?

  uh, they used to be like a health crisis in some places and they're like for, for, sorry. They used to be like a, like a livestock.

• 1:13:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:13:07Steven Rinella?

  They still are.

• 1:13:08Speaker 03

  Oh, they are.

• 1:13:09Steven Rinella?

  They still are.

• 1:13:10Speaker 03

  Like a, like a, like a, like a major livestock. Oh, they'll kill livestock. I mean, the, when you think about how much we get bitten on a day, which is as extreme as it was for some of you guys and, you know, I, it is what it is. It goes with the territory, but.

• 1:13:23Steven Rinella?

  He was saying, we didn't see better than a, we didn't see better.

• 1:13:25Speaker 03

  Four out of ten was the worst day we ever had. A four out of ten on tetsy. Ten out of ten. Ten is spicy, let me tell you, even for me and I have a high tolerance, but the, the game and livestock are just being bitten constantly. Constantly. So they do kill, they do transmit trypanosomiasis to the livestock. The game has a natural immunity, the livestock does not. So for that reason, my relationship with the Tetsi is complicated because I see them very much as part of the guardians of this area and of these wilderness areas. Because if they weren't here, it would have been all too easy to just bring cattle in in the in years gone by.

• 1:14:06Speaker 03

  Now, obviously, we have the wonderful protection kind of regime that we have. But, you know, in years gone by, when there was a bit more of the, you know, free for all as far as that stuff, you know, even during the colonial period and before, these areas would have had a lot of livestock in them and we're lucky we don't.

• 1:14:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, if you get into, if you go down the path, and I think I'm just starting in and I'm gonna do some more. But reading about early European explorers trying to penetrate into Africa. Like you'd think that they're all getting dusted off by lions and stuff. They were dealing with, early mentioned, like European diseases going to the New World and people not being prepared to deal with them.

• 1:14:45Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:14:45Steven Rinella?

  Um, Europeans, like eighteen hundreds, late seventeen hundreds, whatever, Europeans would come to Africa and insect-borne pathogens.

• 1:14:54Speaker 03

  Absolutely, flattened by them.

• 1:14:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, would be like, that'd be like the thing that would get them.

• 1:14:58Speaker 03

  Oh, it's when you read.

• 1:15:00Steven Rinella?

  They didn't understand where it was coming from.

• 1:15:01Speaker 03

  No, no, there wasn't that knowledge of parasites and whatnot. And when you read the accounts and memoirs and biographies of those early explorers, they were constantly sick with the fever, you know, and fever is kind of the catch-all term they use. So you can extrapolate, a lot of it was probably malaria, dengue is another one, black water fever. I mean, uh, even, even stuff, um, you know, waterborne stuff too, that sort of all were under that catch-all of fever, but they were constantly sick.

• 1:15:35Steven Rinella?

  Morgan showed us a tree they called the fever tree. It is like down in some of the swamp lands near the river, there's this tree that it's kind of an inviting looking tree.

• 1:15:42Speaker 03

  It's a very shady tree, yeah.

• 1:15:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and he's, and people like traveling on the river, whatever, would come up and make camp and you'd go under the tree. And then they eventually all get sick and he was standing there like, there's something about that tree.

• 1:15:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:54Steven Rinella?

  Not realizing that.

• 1:15:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, they sort of made a false correlation between the tree. But it was like, you're right near the water, that's where the mosquitoes are and so you wind up getting malaria.

• 1:16:04Steven Rinella?

  Uh, one of the highlights of the trip for sure, you talked to uh trackers.

• 1:16:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:10Steven Rinella?

  When, when we first did a show, one of the things that, that excited me um about wanting to hunt with you is uh how respectful you were to the, to the job of the trackers, how you put a lot of credit on the trackers, right?

• 1:16:24Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:16:24Steven Rinella?

  And how you also like um, you, you kind of put it, not, not mystically, but uh, you put it like, they understand things that you, you don't and won't

• 1:16:37Speaker 03

  Never could, never.

• 1:16:38Steven Rinella?

  They see things that you don't and won't

• 1:16:40Speaker 03

  Ever.

• 1:16:41Steven Rinella?

  Understand what you're looking at.

• 1:16:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:42Steven Rinella?

  Um, to the point where sometimes when we're out, you're like, you've just gotten to a point where you just take the word and you don't need to be like, well, show me what you're talking about.

• 1:16:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:56Steven Rinella?

  Like, we're going, we, we were at one point tracking some buffalo. And we're going along and I'm like, just, I don't see what in the world, you know, and I said to Morgan, I don't get what they're looking at. And you get, Morgan said, that's the point. They see things, not that you don't, won't, he said, they see things that you can't see.

• 1:17:14Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:17:15Steven Rinella?

  And at the end of that trail is buffalo.

• 1:17:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, every time.

• 1:17:18Steven Rinella?

  It's just like, it, it's, and so you'll just, at, at times, they'll be like, that's what's going on. And you're never like, well, show me the evidence.

• 1:17:27Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 1:17:28Steven Rinella?

  You're just like, got it.

• 1:17:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, for sure. No, I'm way past that point with these guys.

• 1:17:33Steven Rinella?

  You don't like, you don't go like, are you sure? Show me what you're talking about. I'm like, what does he mean? What's he talking about? What's he looking at? Morgan's just beyond that. He's like, it's just what it is.

• 1:17:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:42Steven Rinella?

  That's just the truth. That's what we're doing.

• 1:17:44Speaker 03

  It is, it is the absolute truth. I mean, they, yeah, they, these guys are brilliant. They are brilliant, brilliant humans in so many more ways than one. And you're, the tracking is It's it's masterful. I mean, it's incredible thing to watch, but they're real hunters too.

• 1:18:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:18:02Speaker 03

  I mean, they really like hunting tactics wise. I do, I bounce a lot of ideas off them. Oftentimes, if I see one of the guys has got a concept of how we might complete a stalk. I'll run with it because they have great instincts on that stuff too. They're very, very sharp on the hunting piece. Obviously, the tracking piece and game spotting, they're second to none. And like fun guys to be around.

• 1:18:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Speaker 03

  Also just.

• 1:18:30Steven Rinella?

  Even through the language barrier.

• 1:18:32Speaker 03

  Oh, no, for sure. Hundred percent.

• 1:18:34Steven Rinella?

  Ready to laugh and like.

• 1:18:35Speaker 03

  Oh, always.

• 1:18:36Steven Rinella?

  Just tuned in. There's a thing like. This thing I marveled about and one of the ways I marvel about was families at work. Marveled about is is families that have for generations and generations been in livestock. Where I can't prove it. It's like. I feel like there's some kind of science there. It's not well understood, but.

• 1:18:58Steven Rinella?

  If you came into it, and I'm anything but a rancher at all, but like if if you came into ranching at like twenty or thirty years old. You're never going to catch up.

• 1:19:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that's right.

• 1:19:07Steven Rinella?

  There's something you can't put your finger about it. It it like I said, it defies scientific understanding, but like someone. A kid who's born into a livestock family, sort of like through some kind of like genetic.

• 1:19:20Steven Rinella?

  Freakishness absorbs a bunch of the knowledge.

• 1:19:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:24Steven Rinella?

  So me like, like a little kid, like he's looking at a horse and he's seeing. A set of things.

• 1:19:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:29Steven Rinella?

  And you're looking at a horse and you see a horse.

• 1:19:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:32Steven Rinella?

  Do you follow me?

• 1:19:32Speaker 03

  A hundred percent agree.

• 1:19:34Steven Rinella?

  Certain things like that you just absorb. And you're never going to catch them.

• 1:19:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:19:38Steven Rinella?

  And there's like, it's like with the trackers. It's not like um, the knowledge of what track is what is somehow uh, in a genetic code. But there's just something about.

• 1:19:53Steven Rinella?

  You're not gonna catch them.

• 1:19:54Speaker 03

  No, you'll never catch them.

• 1:19:55Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean? And it's like, it's like, there's something about having, there's something about like, the upbringing, the attributes that would have been necessary to like, exist on the landscape for a long time. It's just something that, like, it probably isn't taught.

• 1:20:10Speaker 03

  No, it's not taught. There's-

• 1:20:12Steven Rinella?

  It's just like, notice.

• 1:20:12Speaker 03

  There's definitely-

• 1:20:13Steven Rinella?

  I'm like, finding, I can't find the words for it, but you're not gonna catch them.

• 1:20:17Speaker 03

  No, you'll never catch them. They're, I, my theory that I've kind of explained before is they're like, both born and made. They have some inherent traits. I think a lot of it's probably what you're talking about, just being raised, the environment they're raised in has kind of shaped them. They've obviously got excellent eyesight, which is something that's, you know, you're born with that. Um, but they have a knowledge-

• 1:20:36Steven Rinella?

  Cause you guys are using the best of the best, too.

• 1:20:38Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:39Steven Rinella?

  Like, you're not just grabbing guys off the street.

• 1:20:40Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:20:41Steven Rinella?

  You're using guys that stand out as like, exemplary, like, the best.

• 1:20:46Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. They, they are absolutely-

• 1:20:47Steven Rinella?

  So, among their peers, they're good.

• 1:20:49Speaker 03

  Oh, among their peers, they're extremely well regarded. I mean, they're, they're famous, they're brilliant. And I've always been fascinated by tracking and in, not in the sense of like, well, show me, cause I don't believe you, but a lot of times I'll ask to see what they're looking at. I've been doing this for years and years and years and there is a lot of times, probably upwards of 25% of the time, I can't see anything. Like, I could not perceive that there is any change in the, in the, like, stuff that's on the ground. And they can say, no, that's, you know, it's walked there, there, there, there. So, it, it's a beautiful thing to watch. And I'm so glad that we got the opportunity to apply it to things other than just buffalo.

• 1:21:32Speaker 03

  We tracked a warthog for a while, we tracked sable for a while, uh, what else did we track? I think that was kind of it, that and buffalo, but-

• 1:21:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and there are also, when it's not gonna happen, they'll come and tell Morgan, like, ain't gonna happen.

• 1:21:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, for sure. They'll be like, no, he started running again. And it's not-

• 1:21:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, that, yeah, that happened with some.

• 1:21:48Speaker 03

  Point of diminishing returns.

• 1:21:49Steven Rinella?

  We'd already bumped something, we bumped it twice.

• 1:21:53Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:21:54Steven Rinella?

  Sable.

• 1:21:54Speaker 03

  Sable.

• 1:21:55Steven Rinella?

  We bumped them.

• 1:21:56Speaker 03

  Bumped them again.

• 1:21:57Steven Rinella?

  Kind of like, very light bump.

• 1:21:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:58Steven Rinella?

  And then we did like, a little bit more of a bump, and then we fouled, and then they're like, they're running again, like, it's not worth it.

• 1:22:04Speaker 04

  All based on track.

• 1:22:05Steven Rinella?

  Never mind, yeah, just based on track. A really, a really great moment, too, with the trackers is, one time we're going down and they spot a track from a truck, someone spots a track.

• 1:22:16Steven Rinella?

  And um, I still don't really understand what they saw, but oh no, I do know there's like a broken piece of grass, whatever the hell. And we get out and they very quickly like there's it happens we got two trucks together, so there's four trackers. And they very quickly come to a consensus, no dissenting voice, there's four bulls going that way. I'm like, what? What? Come on. So at that point, I said, Morgan, help me out here. What are they talking about? Why they all know that there's four bulls? You know, and this is in like eight foot tall grass. Yep. And you're like, one's here, one was here, one was here, one was here. Yeah. And I'm like, okay. And there was. But there was like very little, it was like a very, I mean, we're talking like minutes. Yeah. Minutes. Yeah.

• 1:22:59Speaker 03

  No, you have to have complete faith and they are the most faith worthy people that you'll ever find. I mean, faith in their ability, faith in their loyalty, faith in their desire to see you be successful. You can, you can have that and you will not be disappointed. Like they will, they will redeem you in every way.

• 1:23:23Steven Rinella?

  Oh, another really, there's so many things to mention, like the way they read gra- like grass that's been bent.

• 1:23:32Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:23:32Steven Rinella?

  Grass that's been stepped on. How to tell how long ago grass was stepped on. But also, um, what's really cool is there's these birds, oxpeckers.

• 1:23:42Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:23:43Steven Rinella?

  They like a lot of animals and they like buffalo.

• 1:23:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, they seem to like buffalo the most.

• 1:23:48Steven Rinella?

  And a real awareness of like what's going on with the oxpeckers. Like at daybreak, where the oxpeckers were headed to.

• 1:23:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Steven Rinella?

  And then that one time we got in that real tall grass and they were like pinpointing, we knew they were out in front of us somewhere and just by the bird chatter.

• 1:24:03Speaker 03

  Yep. They could hear that.

• 1:24:05Steven Rinella?

  The oxpecker chatter, they're like pointing like.

• 1:24:08Speaker 03

  Buffalo right there.

• 1:24:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, right there. Cause you can hear the birds. They can hear the birds that are on them.

• 1:24:13Speaker 03

  Exactly. Chattering back and forth.

• 1:24:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Oh, it's fascinating.

• 1:24:17Speaker 03

  That's amazing. All the little cues that they use to, to just read these animals is amazing.

• 1:24:23Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Uh, the honey guys.

• 1:24:26Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:24:28Steven Rinella?

  There is a, uh, there's a type of honey production that goes on. It, it's in the farmland, it's in the woods, whatever. There's a type of honey production goes on, it's really interesting where it's like, instead of having a honey hive that you buy, uh, like that you populate with honeybees.

• 1:24:43Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:24:45Steven Rinella?

  Um, farmers and others, uh, guys out in the woods will just build a, out of natural materials, build a hive box.

• 1:24:53Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:24:54Steven Rinella?

  And hang it way the hell up in a tree.

• 1:24:55Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:24:57Steven Rinella?

  And it'll draw.

• 1:24:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, it'll be colonized.

• 1:24:59Steven Rinella?

  It'll draw colony bees and it's like you're running a trap line.

• 1:25:02Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, very similar, very similar.

• 1:25:04Steven Rinella?

  You go out and.

• 1:25:05Speaker 03

  I liked those parallels.

• 1:25:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you go out and you like, see if it got taken over by bees. The guys will climb way up in the trees.

• 1:25:13Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:25:13Steven Rinella?

  Um, there's a honey season here, you can explain.

• 1:25:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:16Steven Rinella?

  That's wrapping up right now.

• 1:25:17Speaker 03

  Yep, we're right at the tail end of it now, so it's, I think it's twice a year, they come into the game reserve under permit from the district supervised by us and Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority to, to harvest their own honey from their own hives. And we've placed a lot of stipulations on their activities as far as what roads and routes they can use, uh, what kind of equipment they can use, what kind of vehicles they can use to access the area and the hives themselves. Um, as you saw in the past, the sort of popular method of manufacturing a hive was to like ring bark, basically take all the outs, outer layer of bark in a sort of anywhere from three to four foot long section

• 1:26:01Speaker 03

  off of a quite a large tree, let's say something that was sort of, you know, close to 20 inches around. And then, um, and then sort of staple that back together with pieces of wood with pegs and then put end caps on it and that was the hive.

• 1:26:16Steven Rinella?

  And you hang it way, you might hang it 20 feet in a tree, so honey badgers don't get it.

• 1:26:20Speaker 03

  Exactly. See, honey badgers and other things that would interfere with it, they'll hang it up there. And the problem with that was, if you're talking about hundreds and hundreds of hives, every one of those hives has been resulted in a good sized, mature tree being killed.

• 1:26:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, thousands of hives.

• 1:26:35Speaker 03

  Thousands of hives.

• 1:26:36Steven Rinella?

  Probably over the.

• 1:26:36Speaker 03

  It probably, yeah, thousands of hives. So we've, we've very much worked with these guys to implement a rule where that's not allowed anymore. They have to be manufactured, they're still manufactured from wood, but the wood has to be sourced from outside the game reserve.

• 1:26:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and you, and a guy might come in. They're camped out and they go around and do the deal, but we ate some of the honey here.

• 1:26:58Speaker 03

  It's terrific.

• 1:26:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, super good honey.

• 1:27:00Speaker 03

  Very good honey.

• 1:27:01Steven Rinella?

  Um, so that's like, I'm, I was still remember when I got here, seeing the first one of those in a tree and be like, what the hell is that on the tree? Yeah, but just an interesting like feature.

• 1:27:10Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:27:10Steven Rinella?

  Out on the landscape.

• 1:27:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:12Steven Rinella?

  Uh, consult my list here.

• 1:27:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's one of those activities that, that we permit because it's a way that the local communities can extract value from the reserve in a way that's non-consumptive. It's not destroying anything. It's not taking anything away from the reserve. It's, you know, a sustainable activity.

• 1:27:33Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

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• 1:30:23Steven Rinella?

  Another, another sustainable activity that again, regulated.

• 1:30:29Steven Rinella?

  And it sounds like you guys from a, from your, your foundation, from your wildlife foundation perspective and from the law enforcement perspective that you're involved in, in managing a big chunk of ground.

• 1:30:42Steven Rinella?

  There's a fishery.

• 1:30:43Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:30:44Steven Rinella?

  But it's also a fishery that, that without regulation can kind of run amok.

• 1:30:49Speaker 03

  For sure. Yeah, it could go, it could go sideways. Yep, it's, it's a gill netting. So there's the, the lake itself, Lake Sagara, and then the Ugala River. There's permitted fishing in the reserve waters allowed in both places. Less so on the river, more so on the lake. But it definitely needs to be policed. There's issues with.

• 1:31:13Speaker 03

  Excessive use of of certain types of nets, especially really small nets. A lot of them are converted mosquito nets or fishing nets that have been lined with a mosquito net. That really just catches everything.

• 1:31:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:26Speaker 03

  And even those small fish will be dried and they have nutritional value. And again, we want to see people get adequate supplies of protein. We want to people see people do well from harvesting enough fish that they can sell some excess. To pay for school fees or whatever else they want to pay for. We want to see all this happen. We want to see all this being done. But the risk is that if it just becomes a free for all, you get population collapse in those fish stocks. And the game reserve waters are an extremely important part of the like piece of the puzzle. Because they refill the breeding, you know, they the spawning grounds there allow the waters that are more heavily fished that are outside the game reserve to be sort of restocked with fish from the reserve waters.

• 1:32:10Speaker 03

  So we're very focused on keeping those waters healthy for the benefit of those communities as well as the benefit of wildlife.

• 1:32:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I don't want it like, I'm gonna choose my words carefully because I don't want in any way hack on. I don't want in any way hack on like government enforcement because you're dealing with like huge, very, very wild, very remote areas.

• 1:32:30Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:32:31Steven Rinella?

  You're you're you're we're talking about in this landscape, we're talking about places that are seasonally inaccessible.

• 1:32:36Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:32:37Steven Rinella?

  Okay, with scatterings of human populations around.

• 1:32:40Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:32:40Steven Rinella?

  And like you, when someone thinks of. If if you're coming from the US, you're thinking of like poaching.

• 1:32:48Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:32:49Steven Rinella?

  You got one thing in your head. You think of a guy that, you know. Generally, it's like a guy that sees a huge buck and he doesn't want to wait for season and it makes a big like a poacher got caught because he had killed like a buck out of season.

• 1:33:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:33:01Steven Rinella?

  Or he's keeping, he kept ten wall eyes instead of five or whatever. We kind of have this sort of a little more benign notion of poaching. Our threshold is is pretty low, you know, like tolerance is pretty low.

• 1:33:15Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:33:15Steven Rinella?

  And you also have an enforcement structure that's pervasive.

• 1:33:18Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:33:18Steven Rinella?

  Right. It's hard for it's it's would be hard for like an industrialized poaching outfit to to exist outside of view.

• 1:33:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:33:27Steven Rinella?

  But here, um, because of the remoteness and just historical factors and all kinds of stuff, like poaching winds up being a. Poaching winds up being a thing that can have like population level impacts.

• 1:33:41Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:33:42Steven Rinella?

  And it just doesn't play out anymore. It doesn't, it's not like that in the US.

• 1:33:47Speaker 03

  No, no, it's for sure. The US is way beyond that stage and poaching here, it will take on a commercial flavor too, where it becomes a commercial activity.

• 1:33:58Steven Rinella?

  It seems like it wants to, it sort of naturally wants to move that direction.

• 1:34:02Speaker 03

  It wants to go that way for sure. And there's, there's a subsistence element to it, which one can be somewhat sympathetic to. And certainly we have been in the past and even in the present, you know, as you've seen here, a lot of our trackers are ex-poachers. A lot of people involved in our anti-poaching team are ex-poachers or guys that were at risk of kind of getting drawn into poaching. So there's that subsistence element that one can be somewhat sympathetic to, but it very quickly devolves from that into mass narings of thousands and thousands and thousands of heads of game. And that's not conversant with any kind of native hunting tradition.

• 1:34:46Speaker 03

  It's not conversant with anything that's sustainable. It's not conversant with any of the Tanzanian government's goals as far as management and as far as providing people with protein and employment and development opportunities. It is something that's just completely out of hand and verges on criminality.

• 1:35:05Steven Rinella?

  Well, we like, we lived through this, like in the US, like this is, this is very, like that era is very much was, was part of our own culture.

• 1:35:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:18Steven Rinella?

  Where you had, you know, we, we had, even with, even with Europeans, when Europeans came, there was like a sort of subsistence economy. And when the moment was right, it would really quickly move to like industrialized, commercial stuff.

• 1:35:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:32Steven Rinella?

  And if we, like through very concerted effort, we eventually reined in, kind of destroyed the markets, de-incentivized it and got there. And you can see here. And in some of these wilderness atmospheres here, it's probably a very similar situation than what we had in.

• 1:35:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:35:49Steven Rinella?

  Than what we went through too with that trying to like get, trying to find a point where you had some level of sustainable equilibrium of harvest versus exploit, you know, harvest, a balance between some harvest, not tipping into grotesque over harvest.

• 1:36:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's absolutely right. And it, and it goes together with development too, right? If you've got people that are very poor with very few opportunities like you would have had in the frontier of the United States at one time, you know, very limited industrial opportunities, then there's got to be a way here in Africa, our big focus and our big goal is to make sure that wildlife and the presence of wildlife and the presence of these protected areas serves the people on the periphery. Because as soon as it stops doing that, it just becomes a target for poaching. And once, once everything's poached, once it's overutilized or the game populations are

• 1:36:47Speaker 03

  very low because of poaching, then it becomes no longer viable as somewhere where you can run a hunting operation. And then those areas are then subject to further degradation from things like logging, mining, et cetera, et cetera, as that protection goes away. And then you have the potential to lose a whole landscape, not just your pop, in a whole habitat, not just your populations of wild animals.

• 1:37:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And you can go any direction from here, I'm sure, and find places where slash and burn ag is.

• 1:37:15Speaker 03

  Denuded of wildlife, denuded of forest, denuded of everything, just agriculture, which again, we're not in the business of telling people they can't make a living from agriculture. But these protected areas we have are so important and such a mass, provides such a massive opportunity to these local communities as well as, you know, the international community and Tanzanian nation as a whole. So that's what we're focused on. That's what we're doing here. Uh, last thing on my list, then we'll do, we'll do any little wrap up thoughts anybody has. But, uh, it was funny because there's certain impressions of just kind of like seeing safari imagery and safari stuff. You like, I had these like questions

• 1:38:00Speaker 03

  over the years that you wondered about. And so many of those have been satisfied now. I want to hit you guys both with a couple of these is, uh, for instance, I had no idea, um, like why you don't see camouflage.

• 1:38:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:14Steven Rinella?

  It and like like in in African safari culture in general, like camouflage isn't a thing.

• 1:38:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's well, it's not done. For one thing, military style camouflage is illegal here.

• 1:38:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:25Speaker 03

  In Tanzania, it's not allowed. That's for the military only.

• 1:38:28Steven Rinella?

  Uh.

• 1:38:28Speaker 03

  Um. Secondly, it it doesn't provide, if I'm perfectly honest, with the exception of bow hunting, it doesn't provide a huge advantage for our style of hunting.

• 1:38:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:40Speaker 03

  Um, it, you know, a lot of our stuff is really close quarters where movement is going to be the thing that gives you away.

• 1:38:47Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:38:47Speaker 03

  Movement and sound. Um, you know, a lot of those buffalo we bumped, they didn't see us. They smelled us or heard us.

• 1:38:54Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 1:38:54Speaker 03

  And took off.

• 1:38:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:56Speaker 03

  Um, and so, yeah, we, I also think it's, yeah, it's something we just don't need.

• 1:39:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's it was, uh, the the legality aspect of it. And I've heard in a number, there's a number of countries.

• 1:39:07Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah, a number of African countries prohibit.

• 1:39:10Steven Rinella?

  It's, um, I don't know, it's just, it's for the, it's for the military.

• 1:39:14Speaker 03

  It's for the military. Don't be wearing it.

• 1:39:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, uh, no backpacks.

• 1:39:20Speaker 03

  So that's a big one. When you hunt dangerous game, you need to be as unencumbered as possible. You need to have, you, you, I mean, even these, some, I see some fairly elaborate kind of bino harnesses sometimes. Your one was about the maximum amount of shit that I'd wanna see on anyone at any given time. That was about, no, and you are, to your credit, it didn't ever held you back. But the less stuff you could have on your person when hunting dangerous game, the better. Because you need to be able to potentially react very quickly to a situation. And if you're getting your your scope and your rifle stock and whatnot hung up in harnesses and straps, that's no good.

• 1:40:04Speaker 03

  Um, if you're, if you're not getting a proper gun fit, because you've got another extra inch or inch and a half of, um, backpack strap with your silly little water straw there or whatever, that's no good.

• 1:40:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:17Speaker 03

  You need to be able to find your sights quick. You need to be able to get on that target quickly. And that means being unencumbered.

• 1:40:23Steven Rinella?

  Get out of the way.

• 1:40:24Speaker 03

  Get out of the way or climb a tree, maybe, if things go really sideways. So the less nonsense you can have on your person, the better you are positioned to hunt dangerous.

• 1:40:32Steven Rinella?

  And that ties into another one. It's like, yeah, I see everybody carrying, uh, no slings. But it's another thing is like less and thick junk. Like in thick cover.

• 1:40:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:43Steven Rinella?

  When you got, maybe you got like a wounded buffalo that you gotta be very careful it doesn't come for you. You just don't want anything that hangs up.

• 1:40:51Speaker 03

  Slows anything down. Hundred percent. Well, even unwounded buffalo, remember when we were tracking those three bulls through that kind of river? Well, it was like a dried creek bed, but the vegetation was thick. And oftentimes you had to change your rifle position. You know, three or four times in a minute because one minute you're ducking under something. One minute you're squeezing between two things, you know, and so you're changing your rifle position all the time. Sling use isn't universally like not practiced here. A lot of professional hunters, a lot of people use slings. I'm personally not into it for that reason we just discussed. And then kind of tying back to the previous thing.

• 1:41:32Speaker 03

  I think that when you're hunting dangerous game, if you have your rifle in your hands, you have a small, but not insignificant advantage in getting that rifle into action quicker that might save your life. And out here, you'd never know. I mean, when you're walking past this eight, nine foot tall grass, that's like a wall. You can't see more than two feet into it. You've, and there, you know, there is poaching in this area. It's very minimal, but it is, you, there could be a wounded buffalo from a poacher laying right there. And you walk past it, you know.

• 1:42:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, when we met.

• 1:42:06Speaker 03

  Rogers.

• 1:42:07Steven Rinella?

  Roger got flamed by one.

• 1:42:08Speaker 03

  He got wounded. Never, no, he didn't wound it. It was wounded by lions or something and he'd never had any clue it was there until it was coming at him. So when you have that rifle in your hands, in those kinds of situations, you're better positioned to respond. In my opinion, and that's why I like, I favor what we call Africa carry. We hold it over your shoulder.

• 1:42:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Okay. So Dirk, give, what are your overall impressions of Africa, man?

• 1:42:32Speaker 00

  Oh, I mean, phenomenal landscape, animals. I was, I was thinking too, which we touched on, just the people that we went down to. What community was that? Gordo, Gordo's?

• 1:42:43Speaker 03

  It's called Lumbe.

• 1:42:45Speaker 00

  When we went to Lumbe, like driving through those towns, just like kind of the celebratory, celebratory kind of.

• 1:42:57Speaker 00

  Just everyone's happy, but quietly confident too.

• 1:43:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:00Speaker 00

  Like, there's not any angst, it seems. And I know this is just like, you know, a scratching of the surface, but just people would smile and wave at us. And then we had a meal with one of the staff's families, and they were so appreciative to have us. And just overall, like, the landscape, animals, people all are just, they seem very comfortable in what they are and who they are.

• 1:43:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that's a great observation. Tanzanian people are really happy.

• 1:43:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:43:27Speaker 03

  Um, and it's, I mean, it is, it's a hard life out here in the bush. You know, you don't want to sugarcoat it and say that, oh, they've, you know, they've got a great, I mean, it's really, really a lot of manual labor and a lot of hardship to be able to exist out here in these very remote rural places.

• 1:43:42Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:43:42Speaker 03

  But, um, everyone just has such a, a great view on life and a great way of going about everything.

• 1:43:50Speaker 00

  And the teamwork and everything. It's like a big family.

• 1:43:52Speaker 03

  And the loyalty that you, that people will show you here is something you just, you can't find in many places.

• 1:43:58Speaker 00

  And the mamba, still.

• 1:44:01Steven Rinella?

  When Morgan and I were in Masai Land.

• 1:44:03Speaker 03

  Oh, the crocodile?

• 1:44:06Steven Rinella?

  When Morgan and I were in Masai Land before we came here to hunt, I was, I was, uh, what I'm referring to is, my family came out for a week and we hung around and did, did some different things. And Morgan took us wildlife viewing out in Masai Land in one of their hunting areas. But anyways, we were having a conversation with the Masai people, like, you know, like, how do they perceive us? How do we perceive them? And, and Morgan made a comment. He goes, I, I, I feel like they look at us and think we're idiots.

• 1:44:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:36Steven Rinella?

  They're like, dude, I got hundreds of goats. I got hundreds of cattle. I got all this, like, we, you know,

• 1:44:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:44:42Steven Rinella?

  We have land to roam, dude, you know, and he's like, yeah, they probably look like whatever we got. It's not, he goes, I don't, you know, they're not.

• 1:44:50Speaker 03

  They're not envying us.

• 1:44:51Speaker 00

  No, there's not envy.

• 1:44:53Steven Rinella?

  These guys' problem.

• 1:44:54Speaker 00

  Totally, totally.

• 1:44:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, just like a very, yeah, it's just a different perception. But no, the people are, the people are phenomenal. I do wonder, like, all the time, you kind of like, it's very, uh, it's harmlessly self-centered.

• 1:45:12Steven Rinella?

  But unavoidable to be like, what like, what do they think of us?

• 1:45:16Speaker 04

  No, yeah, just out of curiosity.

• 1:45:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like, what would it be like? How do you picture of like, people that like, pay money to come? Hang out?

• 1:45:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:45:24Steven Rinella?

  You know, like, what is the idea? Like, what is the idea going on? Whatever it is, whatever the thought is, it somehow is, um, like, the trackers and stuff that grew up here. Whatever the thought is, it's damn sure friendly.

• 1:45:37Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:45:38Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's just like,

• 1:45:39Speaker 04

  And you feel that.

• 1:45:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, protective, like, very protective and kind of like, looking out for what you got going on, watching you don't kind of make, don't make any mistakes and, and, um, like, very warm.

• 1:45:50Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:45:51Steven Rinella?

  There's, there's some things you're never gonna understand. You know what I mean? There's, there's like, some aspects you're never gonna understand.

• 1:45:59Steven Rinella?

  Like, with the trackers, like, meal time for them is very different than meal time for us.

• 1:46:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:03Steven Rinella?

  They eat kind of communally. Out of a common.

• 1:46:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's great, yeah.

• 1:46:07Steven Rinella?

  They'll cook like a common, they'll have like, some common dishes. They'll sit, the, the guys will sit around together in a circle, no chairs. Um, just different. And they look at them when we're, when they look at us eating, they're probably like, what is with all the bullshit? Why is it such a production? Whatever, you can't, you don't know, you can't tell what anybody's thinking, but just like, of, just a warmth and like, human camaraderie.

• 1:46:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:33Steven Rinella?

  In the, in the people involved, you know?

• 1:46:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:36Speaker 03

  The hunting brings you together in a powerful way, I think. It's, like, it's a cross-cultural thing, like, and you, you see how invested they get in your success, too.

• 1:46:45Steven Rinella?

  Super excited.

• 1:46:46Speaker 03

  Isn't that awesome?

• 1:46:48Steven Rinella?

  Super excited. Oh, yeah, to find success, they are ecstatic. And they want, they are driving success.

• 1:46:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:56Steven Rinella?

  It is like, there is no kind of like, oh, this guy's not really into it. I mean, those dudes are like, here, they're playing for keeps.

• 1:47:03Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, they're all up in my business sometimes, like, make this happen, you know?

• 1:47:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, playing for keeps.

• 1:47:10Speaker 03

  Telling me which way to go. I'm like, yeah, I'll take it. Let's do this.

• 1:47:14Steven Rinella?

  What's your impression, Seth? You made a lot of lasting friendships.

• 1:47:17Speaker 04

  I did. Yeah, my favorite part was the trackers, like, but, yeah, by far. Just hanging out with those dudes and like, seeing how they operate and, like, I wish I knew more of the, the native language here because I, I would love to just like, Pick those guys' brains about whatever's going on, you know?

• 1:47:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:37Speaker 04

  Um, but yeah, just watching like, you know, the one day we're just hauling ass down the road and like Frank's yelling to stop because he saw a buffalo track. Like in dry dirt as we're going like, uh, it just, they would do shit like that all the time. It was mind blowing to me.

• 1:47:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's incomprehensible what they, what they can see, what they pick up on is, it's unbelievable.

• 1:48:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then just like, kind of teaching them some American words and them teaching us Swahili words like, it, yeah, it was, I, I, I'd never laughed so much with someone that like, I don't even understand what the hell they're saying.

• 1:48:17Steven Rinella?

  It's true. Yeah. It's true. Some comedy like transcends.

• 1:48:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:48:21Speaker 02

  And they've all got a phenomenal sense of humor.

• 1:48:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:24Speaker 02

  They make you laugh all day.

• 1:48:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they come out with some outrageous stuff.

• 1:48:29Speaker 04

  That was fun. And then Light and Fires was just a blast.

• 1:48:33Speaker 03

  Firelight's great.

• 1:48:34Speaker 04

  You really hone in on like, what type of grass is the best and like, where you should be throwing and like, what time of day you should, you should be hitting it hard?

• 1:48:46Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, moto, fire.

• 1:48:48Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:48:49Speaker 04

  And what's the word for white people?

• 1:48:51Speaker 03

  Mazungo?

• 1:48:51Steven Rinella?

  Wazungo or mazungo as a singular, yeah.

• 1:48:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. What's fire again? Moto.

• 1:48:57Steven Rinella?

  Moto?

• 1:48:58Speaker 03

  Moto mazungo.

• 1:49:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, because it's everything they wouldn't let you, it's everything they wouldn't let you do growing up.

• 1:49:06Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:49:07Steven Rinella?

  You can't flick matches.

• 1:49:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:49:09Steven Rinella?

  It's like, you know what's funny? Like at our, at our fish shack, we draw the water off the creek. So a kid can stand there with a hose.

• 1:49:17Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:49:17Steven Rinella?

  Shoot the hose all day and no one ever yells at you.

• 1:49:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:49:19Steven Rinella?

  It's just like.

• 1:49:19Speaker 04

  The water is going right back where it came from.

• 1:49:22Steven Rinella?

  You know, like all you do, growing up, all you want to do is just be able to shoot the hose, but your parents won't let you. And you can just shoot the hose. So kids can stand there 24 hours a day playing with the hose and they never get yelled at. It's like that with Light and Fires. You just get to light the fire.

• 1:49:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, so that was cool and just seeing the culture and how how the folks here live and it was awesome. And then the hunting, the hunting part was different on my end, just because we're truck two, you just kind of miss out on a lot of things.

• 1:49:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Well, we invited, I mean, in all fairness, in all fairness.

• 1:49:52Speaker 04

  I gotta say a little bit of riding truck one, but.

• 1:49:55Steven Rinella?

  To hang with the big dogs.

• 1:49:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. But no, the trackers and stuff was awesome.

• 1:50:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I would say like all in all, man, for me, um, um, like absolutely, I've, I've texted and had multiple exchanges with friends of mine back home. And I'm like, dude, like life changing.

• 1:50:13Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:50:14Steven Rinella?

  Life changing experience. I mean, a hundred percent. I will refer to things I seen here. Story, I'll tell stories from here for the rest of my life. And then like, like the rest, the rest of my life, I'll feel, um, like the impact of people I met and lifestyles I encountered, skill sets, like absolutely life changing. There's been a handful of trips like that, like, you know, going a couple of times, um,

• 1:50:41Steven Rinella?

  a couple of times down to South America, changed my, changed me outside of my hunting self and hunting interest, changed me, but also really changed me in that area of focus around hunting, you know, the culture of hunting, the, the, or sort of the global landscape of hunting, like both of those things have changed. But also change even outside of wildlife, just experiencing like another continent.

• 1:51:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:07Steven Rinella?

  You know, different culture and had, had the opportunity to bounce around a little bit, like we went to some larger towns.

• 1:51:12Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:51:12Steven Rinella?

  Went to some villages, went to some very remote villages, went to some remote wilderness portions, you know, over the course of a little over three weeks and, um, yeah. Life changing, a hundred percent.

• 1:51:25Speaker 04

  Um, so happy to hear that.

• 1:51:27Steven Rinella?

  The thing that drew me, it, it, it seems so small now. The thing that drew me is this idea that you can hunt this, hunt Cape buffalo and you gotta worry about getting stopped.

• 1:51:38Speaker 03

  In close quarters.

• 1:51:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like you're gonna get up like, you know, you're gonna get up to, you know, an animal, whatever, 1500 pound plus animal. And, and people are making shots on these things at like 20 yards, 30 yards closer. And there's a chance they're gonna kill you. I was like, sounds great. Now it almost seems silly like that's a thing for sure. And we heard plenty of stories about it like we that's not the experience we had at all, but um, it's part of the lore.

• 1:52:06Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:52:06Steven Rinella?

  You know, is that it's like, it's like a, it's a type of hunting where you gotta be careful.

• 1:52:10Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:52:10Steven Rinella?

  Right? And, and that's exciting. Like there's like, there's more on your mind, right? You gotta play everything. You gotta play your situation, right? And as Morgan explained, a lot of that is, is if you wound an animal, animal and track it, you enter a whole other game.

• 1:52:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:52:25Steven Rinella?

  You went, we didn't, we didn't do that. We, we got one in it. That we didn't need to trail it, but like in trailing them, you enter another realm.

• 1:52:32Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 1:52:32Steven Rinella?

  Like it's a different dimension.

• 1:52:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a very unpleasant one. I might add, I, I far prefer the hunts that go the way yours did. Um, and yeah, I'm, I'm very, I'm very, very satisfied to, to hear your take on all this because I've been banging this drum for years now that safari is so much more than just hunting.

• 1:52:52Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:52:52Speaker 03

  You know, there is just all these elements to it and it tends to get, you know, it gets wrapped up in just killing exotic stuff, which of course is a component of what we do here on a very selective basis. But there's so much more to it and it was great to see, very gratifying for me and I'm sure George feels the same way to see the whole crew. You know, yourself and, and just everyone that's been out here, part of this production, just kind of soaking that up.

• 1:53:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:19Speaker 03

  You know, and getting a lot out of that. Um, and kind of coming with really insightful questions and, and making a connection to the guys across that language barrier that I think, yeah, if, if I went and asked them, they'd say the same thing, that it was, it was a rare

• 1:53:36Speaker 03

  example of, of people really immersing themselves in it.

• 1:53:39Steven Rinella?

  That's great.

• 1:53:40Speaker 03

  For that, I'm grateful.

• 1:53:41Steven Rinella?

  Man, the thing we didn't even get into, but also just kind of like life changing too is, um,

• 1:53:48Steven Rinella?

  Like, like my, my cultural self, whatever, you know, like a, like as a person that lives on the globe, like that part of me has changed. Right. Just to see this, like I said, a new continent and so many new cultures. The hunting thing too, but the culinary app from a culinary standpoint. Um, the sort of journey of the meat and the way meat's used and the way meat is coveted and the way meat is preserved, the way meat's enjoyed fresh. Like, we didn't even get into that stuff, but just fascinating.

• 1:54:15Speaker 00

  That was.

• 1:54:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we could do a whole show just on that. I mean. Fascinating, man. Um, how stuff goes from, like, how stuff goes from the bush to the guys, to the guy's family, to people in the communities, the, the way they utilize it. Um, the different perceptions of it. The thing Morgan pointed out is, uh, all of it has huge value. Right? Like, we'll talk about, oh, the back straps are so good. It's just like, um, with a lot of the guys, it's like, it just is all enormously valuable. Yeah. And when you butcher an animal, I went over with the, you know, I went over to check on the sable and, and yesterday and, uh, they were working on the stomach. You know?

• 1:54:59Steven Rinella?

  Uh, when we, when we left the buffalo, we left the grass clippings that were in his stomach and we left some intestine in the lungs, I think. Yep. That's it. Everything.

• 1:55:11Steven Rinella?

  Everything consumed.

• 1:55:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:12Steven Rinella?

  Absolutely. And the tail up. Well, tail to tongue. Tail to tongue. Yeah, consumed with delight.

• 1:55:17Steven Rinella?

  We, we actually got both ends. Yeah. Cause we got the tongue and we got the tail.

• 1:55:21Speaker 00

  And delicious.

• 1:55:22Steven Rinella?

  And we got, we sampled the mid, we sampled the mid-range too, but we got the tail and the tongue. Yeah, we definitely hit the midsection. That was cool. And then going in, going to a village and seeing how like dry meat is a real commodity. No, no, not, dry meat is a real asset. Like huge asset, yeah. Um, the climate's perfect for it. You cut meat in strips and dry it. And we went and do a village to, uh, one of the guys that works here, he brings at the end of the season, he'll bring bags of meat home. We went to a village and the way they take dry meat, cut it up, rehydrate it, turned it into, turned it into recipes.

• 1:55:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:56Steven Rinella?

  You know, turned it into food, but instead of it going to a freezer, it goes to a dry preserve state, to a rehydrated state. Turned into just delicious food. Yeah, fantastic. Very cool to see that stuff.

• 1:56:07Speaker 00

  And all cooked with wood heat.

• 1:56:09Steven Rinella?

  You know, everything.

• 1:56:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was crazy, man.

• 1:56:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, amazing.

• 1:56:14Steven Rinella?

  Stripped the bones down, also when I went over there. The bones had all been, they'd stripped the bones down to make dry meat. The bones were all on the grill. Oh, just cooking on the marrow. Yeah, to get the marrow out, man. They were, yeah, they were cooking all them, all them femurs and shin bones were laid out on a fire.

• 1:56:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's proper, it's proper utilization here and it, it makes a big difference to people's lives. And, you know, there's, you can go really down the rabbit hole of studies about how protein availability, brain development, ability to focus, all that kind of stuff. So it, it has a very important role to play in these communities. Where again livestock are not common and not used in the way that we would recognize in the West.

• 1:57:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. God, there's so many things. I don't want to go on all night. It's getting late, but even that, like,

• 1:57:10Steven Rinella?

  the last thing we're gonna open up. Many people are unbanked.

• 1:57:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:14Steven Rinella?

  And Morgan was saying wealth is stored as livestock. Right? It's like, it's not, it's not like I'm gonna send those all off to slaughter this spring. It's like, it, people have herds as a way of wealth management.

• 1:57:26Speaker 03

  Yep. And that's where they store all their money's tied up in cattle and goats.

• 1:57:31Steven Rinella?

  It's like money in the bank, transactions.

• 1:57:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. They transact with them too.

• 1:57:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And Masai Land, Morgan's like, goats are for small transactions. Cows are for big transactions. Throwing some cash, baby. He's like, that's your pocket change and that's your checkbook.

• 1:57:45Speaker 03

  That's exactly it.

• 1:57:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, uh, just fascinating, man. I'm, I'm, I'm so glad we were able to make this work.

• 1:57:51Speaker 03

  I'm so glad you came.

• 1:57:52Steven Rinella?

  And I'm glad you guys told me crazy Kate Buffalo stories and got me into it. Thanks for bringing us. Yeah, of course, man.

• 1:57:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you guys for coming too. Seriously, professional team. It's been fun. A lot of laughs on this trip too. Some of them might make the, make the cut, but some of them definitely are not, uh, not TV friendly.

• 1:58:13Steven Rinella?

  And George, good luck dude on your, uh, on what you got going on. Yeah, thank you. No, I'm looking forward to it. I just feel like if they weren't, I feel like if you were gonna, um, Get next. Fail your, like, I feel like if you were gonna fail your, uh, apprenticeship.

• 1:58:29Steven Rinella?

  I'd be able to re- I'd be able to see it coming a little bit. I feel like you might be alright.

• 1:58:33Speaker 03

  No chance. Yeah, he's got a bright future in this business.

• 1:58:36Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:58:36Speaker 03

  That I'm sure of.

• 1:58:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I feel like if you were on the outs, we would have picked up on it.

• 1:58:41Speaker 02

  Oh no, we're with George again.

• 1:58:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they'd have you over digging a hole.

• 1:58:46Speaker 02

  Back a house.

• 1:58:48Steven Rinella?

  George, go dig that hole deeper.

• 1:58:51Speaker 03

  No, a lot of our, a lot of our success on this trip can be attributed to George's efforts. So for sure, a bright future.

• 1:58:59Speaker 02

  Thank you guys. Oh, it's been a pleasure having you.

• 1:59:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, remember I said we saw dozens of warthogs before we saw a keeper? George spotted the keeper.

• 1:59:07Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 1:59:09Steven Rinella?

  Alright, thank you guys both for putting us on.

• 1:59:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:12Steven Rinella?

  It's a lot of work and thanks, man. Loved it.

• 1:59:13Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Thanks for coming. We've enjoyed it immensely.

• 1:59:16Steven Rinella?

  Great.

• 1:59:44Steven Rinella?

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

• 2:00:27Steven Rinella?

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• 2:01:50Steven Rinella?

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