Ep. 759: It's September! (Again!) | MeatEater Radio Live!

Hosts Randall Williams, Ryan Callaghan, and Seth Morris talk with Mark Kenyon about the Roadless Rule rollback, find out which pair of underwear Cal brings to Show-and-Tell, throw a listener submitted Hot Tip-Off, chat with Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's Ben Batten about their conservation work in the Mississippi Basin, and choose a winner of the Moultrie Trail Cam Contest. Watch the live stream on the MeatEater Podcast Network YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Steven Rinella?

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• 1:29Steven Rinella?

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• 2:13Steven Rinella?

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• 2:47Speaker 02

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

• 3:10Speaker 03

  Welcome to Meat Eater Radio Live. It's 11 a.m. Mountain time. That's 1 p.m. For our friends in beautiful Ashtabula, Ohio on this Thursday, September 4th. And we are live from Meat Eater HQ in Bozeman, Montana. I'm your host, Randall Williams, and I have the distinct pleasure today of being joined by my two friends, Ryan Callaghan and Seth Morris. It's good to be here. On today's show, we're talking to Ben Batten.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  I don't think you sent me the script for this week, so I don't know what I'm supposed to say. Am I genuinely supposed to say hello?

• 3:44Speaker 03

  No, no, that's, that's in a minute here. Uh, I will send you the script right now. And do you know how to check Slack?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  Or email is better. We should have. We should have went over this a little bit ago, but.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  I'm dicking with you, Randall. Let's continue.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  Oh, you're good? All right. Never can tell around here. On today's show, we're talking to Ben Batten. We've got a hot, hot, hot tip off. We're going to do a little show and tell. We're going to talk to Mark Kenyon about the latest public land controversy. And finally, you, our faithful audience, will choose the winner of the trail cam photo contest brought to you by Moultrie. Sounds like another fantastic episode. Ryan, Seth, how are you guys doing today?

• 4:32Speaker 04

  Fantastic.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Real good. Real good. I'm high anxiety, like

• 4:37Speaker 03

  Because of the script thing?

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Hunting season started.

• 4:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  And I have lots to do before I can like really get serious about hunting season.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  What's your first big trip?

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Uh, brown bear in Alaska, which is a big, big trip for anybody. Yeah.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Uh, and truly a trip I never thought I would go on. Um, so I mean, it's, it's huge. And I'm just trying to get in a mental place with all the adult responsibilities where I can just focus on nothing but that.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  It's hard.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:11Speaker 04

  Seth, did you ever guide a brown bear hunt before?

• 5:14Speaker 02

  I worked as a Packer for one season, uh, up on the peninsula. So it'll be super cool to come back.

• 5:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:21Speaker 04

  Cool. That'd be awesome.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  You know, like any ultra low paid position in the outdoor world.

• 5:27Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  You just do everything when you're up there.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. And you never dream about being the guy sitting on the other side of the boat?

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Never. Never. And just like, at that point in my life too, I was like, how much did the tag cost?

• 5:44Speaker 02

  No, sir.

• 5:45Speaker 03

  Who would ever do this? Geez. Incredibly indulgent.

• 5:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  Seth, how are you?

• 5:51Speaker 04

  I'm great. I'm, uh, I gotta say I'm more excited for fall fishing than picking up the bow at this point in my life.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Got out this weekend for a little bit.

• 6:00Speaker 04

  Yep, but I am.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Chasing just big brown trout, running after streamers. That's who you're thinking about?

• 6:05Speaker 04

  No.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Just drowning a worm next to a lazy ass walleye.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  Big walleyes and small mouth putting on the feed bag for winter. That's what, that's what gets me excited. That and then just the thought of rifle season coming. I like shooting things at further distances. With center fire cartridges.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Oh, you're speaking my language.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  How was your, your trip out to the pecker?

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Uh, it was, a lot of shit happened that, that it's a long story.

• 6:37Speaker 04

  It's a long story. We got one solid day in, but the weekend ended sooner than I expected. So we'll just end it there.

• 6:45Speaker 03

  I, uh, I got back.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Do over.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  I got back to my old stomping grounds in the little Miami river and I drowned four night crawlers. Caught one fish.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  That probably puts you back in a, in a certain place in time.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  Oh my god. Just the, the bugs landing on me. Just listening to the water.

• 7:02Speaker 04

  Was it after dark?

• 7:04Speaker 03

  No, because, uh, much to my disappointment, all of my childhood fishing areas now are extremely well signed with, uh, this area closes at sundown or dusk.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:15Speaker 03

  Like it used to be the case that, this is before Onyx, we're just like, does, do you think anybody owns this? Can we fish here? And then we sort of verified that yes, it was owned by the county or whatever.

• 7:24Speaker 04

  Oh yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  Owned by the town, but there was no actual like signage. And, and so everywhere I pulled up, I was like, like I came back from the tailgate tour. Literally on my way home from Columbus, bought a big old can of Coors Light and 12 night crawlers. Ripped down with like 10 minutes before sunset, got to the spot I wanted. The first thing I see when I get out of my car is a big sign that says closed at, at dusk. Which I'm just like, we used to have Fight Club down there, you know? It used to be the Wild West.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  I am, I'm advocating heavily with my buddy and his wife, who's also my buddy,

• 8:08Speaker 02

  to allow their oldest boy, who's nine. This is a real like Western Montana family float fish, fly fishing for trout all the time. But I'm trying to get them to allow the nine-year-old out for antelope camp this year. With the intention of getting that kid on some catfish. Too.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  So much fun.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Introducing the joy of.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Sitting next to a rod that's just stuck in a mud bank.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  I did bring, I did bring a bell. I got to listen to the bell jingle.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Excellent.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  Stuck, stuck my rod butt in a tangled root pole and just, oh, it's like old times. But I didn't get a catfish. I just caught a, caught a little striper.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 8:53Speaker 03

  And then I broke my rod. I set the hook in that striper and I heard this little tick. And I kind of like pushed all the sections back together, thinking that maybe they jiggled loose. And then I got the fish in, cast out again, went to set the hook on another fish. And the thing just snapped off like five inches above the cork. So that's why I only drowned four of the 12 worms. The eight of them are probably still living rich lives alongside the beautiful banks of Little Miami.

• 9:25Speaker 04

  Well, at least you got out there and got a couple.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  All, all it made you want to do is go back immediately.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  And just float that thing again and again and again.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's the, the thing that nobody can properly celebrate, right? Is failure. Just really makes you be like, like your weekend, right? I'm sure you're like, I need to go back.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  Oh, God, I just.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  And put a big W on the board.

• 9:50Speaker 04

  All I think about every day since then is I just gotta get back.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wasted my weekend. I failed. Yep.

• 9:59Speaker 04

  Gotta get back. Gotta do it right.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  Well, speaking of doing things right.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  Joining us on the line next is Mark Kenyon.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  Host of the Wired to Hunt podcast and author of That Wild Country, an epic journey through the past, present, and future of America's public lands.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Meteor's most beautiful cast member.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  Mark, welcome to the show, sir.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  There he is. Look at that. Oh, stunning.

• 10:24Speaker 05

  Oh, Kel, Kel, you're too kind. You're too kind. It's good to be here, though, guys. Thanks for having me.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  Mark, there's been a lot of news recently about something called the roadless rule. And for those listening to this, this podcast or watching us on YouTube here, if they're not familiar with the road risk, the roadless rule, can you explain what the roadless rule is?

• 10:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, so the 2001 roadless rule was enacted by the National Forest Service and the US Department of Agriculture back in 2001, as the title would tell you, in response to a couple of different things going on at that time. You had one, which was a serious backlog in maintenance of the Forest Service road system. So the US Forest Service has nearly 400,000 miles of roads running across our public lands. That's a lot of work to try to keep that, you know, in good working conditions so that people can access their public lands so that folks can can access these different places to do whatever kind of use they might be undertaking. So at this time in the late

• 11:33Speaker 05

  90s, they realized, wow, we have a massive maintenance backlog. These roads that have been subsidized by taxpayers are now not providing the return. We're having serious budget issues. At the same time, we have also, as one person put it, cut the face off our forests in many places. And now we are left with just, you know, fragments of habitat that has not been robed, that has not been developed. And so maybe we should think about what the long term future of these last places should be. You know, long story short, what that led to was the roadless rule. It was a very long process, you know, almost two years, hundreds of public meetings, 1.6 million public comments.

• 12:16Speaker 05

  Put in from the public in regards to whether or not this is a good idea and how we should go about it. All that led to this rule being created, enacted, and it protected about fifty-eight point five million acres of our national forest system in a relatively unroded way. Um, so there were exceptions baked into this rule that allowed for some roads to be built in these places. If there was, um, you know, need for wildfire mitigation and management, there were exceptions put into this rule that would allow some new road building in the case of wildlife habitat improvement projects being needed. Um, but in general,

• 12:55Speaker 05

  this fifty-eight point five million acres of national forest would not be the home for new roads. So it would leave this area in a relatively undeveloped, relatively intact, um, relatively unfragmented state. And it has been in that state for, you know, twenty-four years now. And these places are some of our, you know, our best, our last best backcountry elk hunting spots, mule deer hunting spots. Uh, you know, high country trout spots. I went on, uh, my, my two kids, my, at the time they were four and six, I think it was their first backpacking trip with both of them, or maybe they're three and five. That was in one of our inventoried roadless areas. I killed my first elk on an inventoried roadless area. Uh, so long story short,

• 13:40Speaker 05

  these are really, really special places and they're in the news right now because the administration has proposed removing that rule entirely, rolling back all of those protections. So that's the high level scoop. That's what the roadless rule is. That's why it's in the news right now.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  Got you. And so what are the, um, I guess, what are the main arguments on both sides of the issue? What's the rationale for, uh, you've laid out a bit about the benefits of these roadless areas for hunters and anglers, but what's the rationale for rolling it back?

• 14:10Speaker 05

  Yes, so in the proposal, in the, you know, in all of the press releases and comments from the administration, from the Secretary of Agriculture, the reason for rolling back the roadless rule has supposedly been to, uh, to help, you know, move forward with, uh, President Trump's executive order, uh, to expand timber production and then also to better manage our forests. There's been a lot of talk about the fact that, you know, our forests have been under managed. They have, you know, too much, um, uh, fuel for wildfires. So wildfire risk is high. Uh, the habitat isn't as good for wildlife. We're not producing as much timber as maybe we have in the past. And so the argument is

• 14:54Speaker 05

  if we roll back the roadless rule, that will fix all of that. That's, that's why they say they should roll this rule back. On the flip side, um, advocates for the rule, which include most all environmental and conservation groups, most hunting and fishing groups that I've seen have all been coming out very strongly in support of the rule. Um, the reason why we think the roadless rule should stick around is because, as I mentioned, this is protecting some of our last best hunting and fishing places. This is protecting, you know, some of our last unfragmented wildlife habitat for, for so many species, whether it be species we hunt and fish or endangered and threatened species. Uh, we do not have very many of these places that are not already broken up and, uh, and separated and bifurcated by

• 15:39Speaker 05

  roads and often to develop. So, so this is something that is pretty rare these days. Um, as I mentioned, there are exceptions already for wildfire management and for habitat management. Um, Trout Unlimited has done a great job of, of starting to quantify this. If you go to their website, they've got an interactive map that showcases where these inventoried roadless areas are and what kinds of management, management efforts have been happening there. So significant wildfire mitigation efforts have been underway in these places. So it's, it's false to say that these places have not had any management or any work done on them. Um, but- Certainly, you know, there's an argument to be made that our national forests absolutely can and should be managed better.

• 16:22Speaker 05

  We do need to manage for fire risk. We do need to manage for wildlife habitat. And I think there's, you know, two things to consider. One, a lot of that should be happening not in our back country roadless areas, but up in the the wildland urban interface where there already are roads. Um, something like eighty or eighty-five percent of all of our wildfires are started by humans, first off. And I think it's ninety percent of the fires on our national forests start within a half mile of a road. So roads typically are what leads to wildfires igniting and starting. That's where this stuff's happening a lot of the time in the places that we want to protect from fire. Homes, human development, you know, that stuff's not in these roadless areas.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  It's up on that, they call it the the wildland urban interface. So the wooey, I think, is what people refer to that as.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Who could forget that?

• 17:13Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 17:13Speaker 03

  Who could forget that? The wooey?

• 17:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, the wooey. Um, so yeah, we need to have management. That can be done in these places that are not in our inventory roadless areas. It should be, we, there's plenty of challenges to that that can be addressed. Um, and maybe there are ways we can improve the roadless rule. I think there's room for enhancing it, fixing it, finding more ways for more of these exceptions to be created for temporary roads, to do more of this careful management in the right ways. Um, I think there's a conversation to be had there and a lot of conservation and hunting and fishing organizations, I think, would be happy to engage in that. Um, but this wholesale rollback of all of it, um, that would eliminate all of these, you know, carefully, um, managed and protected places that benefit a lot of folks and a lot of wildlife and a lot of user bases.

• 17:59Speaker 05

  Um, that seems the wrong way to go about this. Um, at least my two cents on the matter.

• 18:05Speaker 03

  Sure. Are are there specific regions or forests where this debate is particularly heated? Uh, like part areas of the country that are going to be affected more than others?

• 18:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, so there are inventoried roadless areas, which are what we call these places that the roadless rule applies to. There are IRAs, inventory roadless areas in 39 different states from west coast to east, but the vast majority of these spots are in the 10 western states. And Alaska in particular with the Tongass National Forest has probably the largest impacted zone. The Tongass has about just over nine million acres of roadless area there. So that would make a huge, this would be a really big deal if the roadless rule was rescinded, especially up in the Tongass where you have, you know, there were a lot of roads built back in the day to start developing the Tongass and that has, you know, for example,

• 19:00Speaker 05

  really, really impacted salmon and steelhead runs up there because every one of these roads has culverts crossing hundreds and hundreds of different streams. And that's a major issue now that I know that Trout Unlimited has been working on for years trying to, you know, fix culverts and open up passageways for fish through these many, many different roadways. So there's a lot to be discussed there in Alaska. I know, for example, you know, in Wyoming and Montana, some of my favorite places that I've spent time in, those could possibly be impacted. So if you live in the west especially, this is something you should be paying attention to. But I know in New Hampshire, in North Carolina, in Michigan, all of those states have roadless areas that could be impacted as well.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  Gotcha. And what should people who care about public lands access and conservation be watching for as this issue develops? Where do things stand right now? And if they want to weigh in, how can hunters and anglers make a difference on this?

• 20:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, so this past Friday, so five, six days ago, the administration officially proposed this rollback and opened up a comment period. The comment period is a 21 day window that we the public have to submit to the administration our thoughts on this proposal. And so I, you know, any hunter and angler who cares about these last roadless places and who would like to see them protected in this way should absolutely go and submit a comment explaining, you know, why these wild places, why these roadless areas are important, why the careful management of them in such a way is important for hunting

• 20:41Speaker 05

  and fishing and wildlife and whatever else it is that you love to do. If you go to backcountryhunters.org, there's an action center there that has an opportunity for you to send a letter to your elected officials and then also instructions for how to access the federal register, which is where you submit your official comments. So what I'd ask everyone to do is to go there, follow the action items there on that document, which would be sending the note and then submitting an actual comment to the federal register. We have until September 19th to do so. And so, you know, this is, this is the democratic process. This is our opportunity to get in there and submit our thoughts, to share our perspectives and to ask our elected officials

• 21:26Speaker 05

  and those who are appointed by them to, to do what's best for the public and the long-term future of these places and the wildlife that live on them. And we got to speak up.

• 21:35Speaker 03

  Appreciate it, Mark. Thanks for, uh, thanks for helping us better understand this issue and for everything you're doing for public lands. I know you got some groceries to unload and you've got some deer to hunt this afternoon. So with that, we'll let you go.

• 21:52Speaker 05

  Thanks, guys.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Thanks, Mark. Good luck.

• 21:54Speaker 06

  Thanks, Mark.

• 21:57Speaker 06

  Boy.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  He's got a, he's got a good delivery there.

• 22:00Speaker 06

  Oh, great delivery. Great delivery.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  Good to have advocates like that on our side.

• 22:04Speaker 06

  Yeah. On that note too, Rashad commented and said, Mark just got out of the grocery store and remembered he was supposed to go live today. I will say, Mark, the reason for that is that Mark is technically off the clock today.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's on vacation.

• 22:14Speaker 06

  He's out of the office. So he did us a big favor jumping in. So thank you, Mark.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  He's on a, he's on a little family hunting and fishing trip and he took time out of his busy. Time off.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Can I, can I throw in a little color on roadless?

• 22:26Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Is, um, so we call it roadless, but there's about 20 million acres out there that have pre-existing uh, road networks.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Mark covered that at the very beginning, then at the end he kinda went back to roadless, which it is roadless designated, but there are pre-existing roads out there that, that people walk and hike and um, use to access deeper into these areas. Um, but sometimes that gets thrown around as like the, oh yeah.

• 22:55Speaker 03

  We're locked out.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, there's that too, but they're like, oh yeah, your roadless has roads on it. How is it roadless, right? Um, and the, you know, the big thing here is that there is a history of uh, litigation by certain groups when uh, the roadless rule is used as it should be to try to build roads for the purposes of uh, habitat and things like that. Like there's a lot of suing that goes on to stop all road building, even though it's written into the roadless rule. Uh, and some of those feelings have very much come to the surface.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  To say, get rid of the roadless rule. But the flip side of this is that-

• 23:44Speaker 03

  You see the same thing with the Endangered Species Act.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. Is, the roadless rule is really working for a lot of people in a lot of areas. And so obviously there's middle ground here for roadless rule reform.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  Where it's needed.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  And this idea of it's gotta be all one way or all the other way is just not accurate. And so this is just really lazy management to say, okay, get rid of the whole thing.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  And also to classify this as only a timber play is completely wrong. Timber's the, the thing that gets absolutely talked about the most, both in fire fuel reduction, which nobody's come out to say how we're going to pay for reducing, you know, low growth, um, that is not marketable by and large.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Unless it's extremely close to like a pellet facility or you know a pulp situation that makes it something you would get paid to do versus something you pay for. Obviously, right now, like, we're not talking about paying for a lot of things, right?

• 25:00Speaker 03

  Right.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  That's why I bring that up. So the other thing that's not getting talked a lot about here is this would provide the ability to build the roads to areas for mineral withdrawal. And when we talk about mineral withdrawal, we're talking about something with large footprints and long-term impacts that instead of our friend Seth here having to wait for a logging operation to get done over the course of a couple of seasons, and then going in and hunting that stuff that now provides early successional growth that animals love to come in and eat, and is can be really good hunting if that cut is done in the correct way.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  We're talking about an area that Seth does not go back into for his entire lifetime because it takes a long time to run these mineral extraction operations. And obviously, like, we need stuff that comes out of the ground, too. But is that a situation where we have to roll back this entire thing? Or can we identify these areas?

• 26:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  And say, hey, this is really important right now. We need to reform the roadless rule.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  To accommodate these specific things.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like, I, for one, very sick and tired of a Democrat administration coming in, swinging the pendulum extremely one way, and then a conservative administration coming in, swinging it completely the opposite way, when I feel like most Americans are like, oh, this thing in the middle makes sense.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Well. Agreed. We keep pounding the drum.

• 26:44Steven Rinella?

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• 27:27Steven Rinella?

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• 28:11Steven Rinella?

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• 28:54Steven Rinella?

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• 29:39Steven Rinella?

  and what tactics actually work for that phase. While the Deer Movement Forecast tells you when deer are most likely to be on their feet. Together, they tell you when to be in the tree and when to go to your kid's game instead. Get the most out of every sit with OnX Hunt.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  Our next segment is show and tell.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  Those sweet tones.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Is the song better or Phil dancing to his own song better?

• 30:21Speaker 02

  Probably. Oh, this is like his morning shower routine.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  The stink face is good. The stink face is good.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Can you see him putting gel in his hair to that song?

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  That cut?

• 30:29Speaker 03

  Seth, let's start with you. What did you bring to share with the class today?

• 30:33Speaker 04

  I brought a thing that I found out on the prairie one time when I was hunting deer.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  Boy, that's neat.

• 30:43Speaker 04

  This is a bison skull that I found sticking out of a bank.

• 30:49Speaker 04

  Um, in Montana.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  It's an eater sized basin.

• 30:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, not a big one. Where are you hunting deer? Um, in Montana and uh. Like county? Just joking. Um, so my wife had just killed a pretty cool cactus buck. Mm hmm. And um, we were several miles from our vehicle at this point in time and it was starting to get dark and uh. I just pulled up the old Onyx and noticed that there was a two track that got us a little closer. So I kept her there to work on the deer. Um, she needed some experience in breaking critters down by herself anyway.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, opportunity. Great. Yeah.

• 31:29Speaker 04

  So plus then you don't have to be there during that process. Yep. Um, and I was like, I'm gonna go back and get the, get the truck and make a loop and we'll get a little closer for the pack out. Um, so I did that and on my way there, I just happened to uh. Catch out of the corner of my eye, a little bit of white sticking out of a bank that was, wasn't even like a. Exposed type bank that has like, you know, a bunch of soil and stuff. It was just like completely. Hmm. Covered in grass and, and little woody shrubs and stuff.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. And uh, yeah, I just saw a little piece of white and I kinda got to digging around and. It, it just kept getting bigger and bigger and. Ended up digging that thing out.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  Which was cool. Yeah. I should, I was in a hurry, so I kinda.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  There was a lot more to it than this. Yeah. Um, I should have taken my time and got the whole thing.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, but then you got, got the misses back there being like.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Just abandoned.

• 32:27Speaker 04

  How did the deer go?

• 32:30Speaker 04

  The butchering went alright? Well, I got back and uh, she had just stopped and was like. I got to a point where I just didn't know what I was doing, so I figured I'd wait for you. Gotcha.

• 32:43Speaker 04

  But, uh, yeah.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Very cool. I've never found one. I'd love to.

• 32:48Speaker 04

  You know, there's a lot of them out there. You've just got to find them. A lot of them are buried.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:53Speaker 04

  Um, but a cool story about the, the buck she killed. I found that deer like 12 miles away the day before.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  Oh, cool.

• 33:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. And we woke up that morning and we're like, ah, we're just gonna go hunt a different area. And for whatever reason, that deer overnight.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  He was trying to get killed.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Moved a lot. So.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  That's cool. That's really cool.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. Cal, what did you bring to class here?

• 33:16Speaker 02

  So I actually thought about this.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  First time here on Meteor Radio Live. Nate says, who wants to place odds on what Cal takes off the wall for his show? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  No, take off the nightstand, I think is the.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  So this is, uh, the first real good book I've read in, in a while here. And it's by this dude Nate Schweber, who is actually, I think we were actually classmates or maybe we didn't overlap, but he's a, a Hellgate Knight. He's in Montana, just like I am. This America of Ours, Bernard Navas Devoto. And, uh, it is a great conservation history book. It's got a lot of relevance for this time in, uh, in, in space right now. Uh, there's, uh, healthy helping of super cute love story. There's all sorts of, I would call them like, uh, celebrity cameos.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  In here that are, are real interesting as well. Um, but, uh, really. It, it tackles a lot of like land theft, public land theft. And, uh.

• 34:25Speaker 03

  It's like the, he's really engaged in like the late 40s and 50s, right? Devoto? Yeah.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I mean, earlier, earlier in that too. Um, taken before his time.

• 34:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Big old, um, heart attack. Yeah. Cut him down, but, uh.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  So when you're looking to forget about your day to day stresses.

• 34:45Speaker 03

  Pick up a book about public land theft.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  And pillaging of our shared resources.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the reality is, is just like today, the reason that folks were trying to take all this awesome stuff away from us is because folks weren't paying attention.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  And it took old Bernard Navas here to shine a little light on the situation. So, uh, great book, highly recommend.

• 35:09Speaker 03

  Very cool.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:10Speaker 03

  Appreciate it. Well, I brought, I brought two things. Uh, one, I was the first idea and I thought it was a good PSA. So I was looking at the gear shelf. And, uh,

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Oh, bless your heart.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  This is the deuce number three. It's a, a trowel for burying your waste when you need to defecate in the woods, which I hope to be doing plenty of this fall, if my work commitments allow. Uh, this probably weighs like, like weighs like a couple of credit cards. I mean, it's nothing. Slide it right there next to your water bottle. Well, maybe not next to your water bottle, but it fits almost anywhere. It's flat. And bury your duke, folks. Uh, Cal had a, an unfortunate incident recently.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  The whole weekend was just marked by human feces.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  On dogs, in dogs.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Surface pooping.

• 36:01Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Human surface pooping.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  The woods around Bozangels are heavily loved by humans and they're not burying their waste.

• 36:12Speaker 03

  So if you, if you're going out into the woods this fall, and I hope you are, uh,

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Imagine a long haired border collie.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  Be prepared.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Rolling in your feces.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  And then running back and wanting to jump in the vehicle.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  So this is, this actually says on here, it's, it's point nine seven ounces.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Snore eight human poop.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  And we make out. Think of that.

• 36:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  It's horrifying. It is horrifying.

• 36:38Speaker 06

  Randall, why is that the deuce number three?

• 36:40Speaker 03

  They have different sizes.

• 36:41Speaker 06

  Oh, gotcha.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  I think, uh,

• 36:43Speaker 02

  That's an adult size.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  Great question. Yeah, there's different sizes. Um, I mean.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Mama bear, baby bear.

• 36:51Speaker 03

  I used to not be a trowel guy. I used to be like, oh, there's plenty of sticks in the woods, but you don't, when you gotta go, you don't want to have to dig around for something to dig around with.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, or find that rock to flip over.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Just grab the deuce and release the deuce, as I like to say.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 37:06Speaker 03

  And then I also, uh, I lost my bipod hunting last fall and, uh, it fell off my rifle. It's got a like a little arc of clamp and I was in a, I was in an unfortunate situation of trying to get a shot off at an animal and lost my bipod, didn't realize it till I got back home. Followed my Onyx track and grabbed it last week. So a little once over with the wire wheel on the Dremel and she's good to go. So.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Nice, ready for another season.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  Getting ready for the fall. I couldn't make up my mind when I visited the gear bench.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  I like it. So you just casually strolled in, just grabbed something, didn't even think about it. Yeah. There you go, audience.

• 37:41Speaker 03

  Phil, uh, what's chat saying?

• 37:44Speaker 06

  Hey, listener feedback. We got some good questions this week. Um, this might be a good one for Cal. I don't know, but Leland asks, what are everyone's favorite dove recipes?

• 37:55Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, don't cook them too long.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, kind of medium rareish and then just gnaw them off the bone. Uh, I've also ground them into sausage. My favorite thing that I've ever done probably is you take your dove breasts and, uh, throw some cotia cheese and cilantro and salt and a little cumin and run that stuff through the grinder and use a soft sausage stuffing attachment and just shoot it right into jalapenos.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  And then just roast the jalapenos on the, uh, the top deck of the, the pellet grill.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  It's kind of like a twist on the classic popper.

• 38:39Speaker 06

  Oh, people. Yeah, it's a killer. That's real good.

• 38:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 06

  A little classier than the.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  I've always done like a classic popper where just throw them on the grill real quick and eat them rare.

• 38:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 38:49Speaker 04

  We used to, uh, fillet the meat off the breast and, and, uh, throw it in spaghetti sauce.

• 38:55Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  Um, and it was like, instead of meat, like spaghetti and meatballs, it was like spaghetti and dove breasts.

• 39:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's perfect size.

• 39:04Speaker 06

  Uh, Randall, Ethan says, did you pick up some skyline while you were home? And a follow up for me, how was the tailgate tour? Your stop?

• 39:12Speaker 03

  Well, I can answer the first question pretty quickly. Um, yes. Immediately after the Ohio State Buckeyes vanquished the, uh, deplorable Texas Longhorns. I celebrated with four cheese conies, onion, mustard, and a small three-way. And then when the guy came back and he said, with the check and he said, you guys good? I said, no, bring me another cheese coney, please. Just one onion and mustard. So I had five plus three-way. The next day I went to the Reds game and on the way to the Reds game, I had four cheese conies, onion and mustard. And I wanted to get more, but time didn't allow it. I was on sort of a,

• 39:55Speaker 03

  you know, I had to cram a lot in.

• 39:57Speaker 06

  I think you did great.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  Going to the zoo, going to the baseball game, catching a fish. I did it all, but the tailgate tour was good. I met some delightful folks. Uh, I saw there was a question there about EHD in Ohio and I heard a lot about EHD in Ohio. Sounds like it's pretty bad at the moment. And actually, when I was driving back from the airport to my folks' house, there's a guy that, you know, like the houses that, like will write something on plywood and stick it out by the road with their thoughts on the world. And this guy had written postpone deer hunting 2025, let the herd recover.

• 40:30Speaker 06

  Whoa.

• 40:31Speaker 03

  And that was like a half an hour off. After I got off the plane, I was like, whoa, this is pretty serious. And then sure enough, uh, that sort of piqued my curiosity. And the next day I heard a lot about EHD. So. But all in all, fabulous to be in the Buckeye State, uh, and got to see Ohio State win, got to see the Reds win. And got to see some gorillas. So.

• 40:53Speaker 06

  And that was Mason asking about EHD in Ohio. Uh, this is from Steven. Question for Seth. I'm trying to beat 12 pounds, four ounces for wall eyes. Is Fort Peck a consideration? Or should I just be considering Erie?

• 41:05Speaker 04

  Um, I think you're narrowing it, you're narrowing in too much. There's lots of places where you can be 12 pounds, four ounces. Uh, the whole Missouri River system as a, as a whole is pretty fantastic. Um, lot of places in the Midwest. Um, I'd recommend looking at, um, survey data from local, um, or from state fishing game agencies. You can, a lot of times you can go on there and see, uh, when they survey different lakes, um, they'll do some

• 41:41Speaker 02

  What was that? That fish app with, that has all the survey data in it. Um, the, um, iFish? What, what is the?

• 41:50Speaker 03

  The Onyx.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  The Onyx one, yeah.

• 41:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, Onyx Fish. Onyx Fish app has, um, I think they have Wisconsin and Minnesota, and I think they just dropped Ohio recently.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 42:01Speaker 04

  But yeah, you can go on there and look at different lakes, um, and see trophy potential.

• 42:07Speaker 04

  But I mean, Fort Pack and Erie are both great fisheries. Um, but I, I'm not sure where you live, um, but there might be places a lot closer to home.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  Great.

• 42:21Speaker 04

  Good luck. I hope you, you beat it.

• 42:24Speaker 06

  Uh, hey, Jamie, you're Amber with, uh, you're Amber, your wife Amber would like, like us to say hi to you. Hi, thanks for being a watcher and a listener.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  Shout out Jay, shout out Jamie Thibodeau.

• 42:35Speaker 06

  There you go.

• 42:35Speaker 03

  Assuming you have the same last name as your wife.

• 42:37Speaker 06

  Ralph asks, Cal, a couple of months ago, you were on and talking about boots. You said, always get a good pair of insoles. I am in the market for some insoles and would love a recommendation if you have any. Thanks.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  Boy, yeah. Uh, go someplace where you can kind of get an idea of what your in step is.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  And then you like, you know, the, I don't know what they call a little footboard things. Um, any like kind of nice boot shop has something like this. And they oftentimes have an assortment of all the, the insoles out there too. And, and the difference between the insoles is like cushion, but also how it fits the arch of your foot. And, um, you know, like all good things in life, it takes a little, little doing, little, little time invested on your part. But, uh, yeah, find, find one that, that feels comfy and, and eliminates that foot slide. And you'll be in good shape.

• 43:42Speaker 04

  If Ralph lives in central Pennsylvania, a little shameless plug for the family biz.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 43:47Speaker 04

  Center Boot Company, they'll get you, they'll get you squared away.

• 43:51Speaker 06

  Cool. Let's do one more.

• 43:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:52Speaker 06

  Before the next segment here. This is from Mad Sean. Uh, question for the crew for mid October hunts. How do you adjust calling and approach when hunting, uh, elk? He specifically says Roosevelt elk, but in, in dense coastal forest compared to Rocky Mountain environs.

• 44:07Speaker 04

  Sounds like a question for old Ryan Callaghan.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Boy, let's call Jason Phelps.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Boy, yeah, I don't, I don't know much about Roosevelt elk. I would love to go over there and hunt those things. They're super cool. Um, I, I do know that calling, calling works. It's just hard to hear them because the foliage is so dense. Um, late, or sorry, early to mid October around here is typically when the herds are, are, are built up and they're bigger. And that means they are more vocal. So, um, you have a good chance of locating elk because they're more talkative. And then, uh, cow calls, cow calf calls in combo can bring in, uh, satellite and raghorn bulls on, on the fringe,

• 45:00Speaker 02

  which most of the time when I'm hunting elk, I'm hunting broadside elk. Not, I don't need to go find the big herd bull. Cause I want to put that sucker in my freezer and then worry about mule deer.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  I, I agree. Couldn't agree more.

• 45:15Speaker 03

  Thank you, Phil. And for those of you in the chat, keep them coming. Please do. Keep them coming. We'll hit it again. Our next segment is Hot Tip Off.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  Hot Tip Off is where two listeners go head to head with competing pieces of advice. And after we hear each tip, we'll declare which one is hotter. I think we should change that to read, and after we hear both tips.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  If you have a hot tip, take a one minute video on your phone and email it to radio at themeat eater dot com with the subject line Hot Tip Off.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  This week, Hot Tip Off is brought to you by Mountain Ops. Mountain Ops. Mountain Ops supports your daily journey from mountain training to overall well being, optimizing performance, enhancing recovery and bolstering health, preparing you for any challenge. Today's competitors are Chad in Corvia from Eagle, Idaho, and Nick Maroldi from Craggsmore, New York, and they're competing for the Meat Eater Classic Bison Hoodie. Folks in the chat, please chime in and see those hot tips, Phil.

• 46:43Speaker 07

  Hey, guys, this is Nick coming with a hot tip. So, good way to start training for your season and get your kids outdoors at the same time. See here, I got my little guy on the in the chest carrier. I got my little girl in the Osprey backpack. This is a great workout that's self progressing. So I started with just the one, progressed to two. Going to have to get a little creative if we have three or as this one gets too big for the chest carrier. But again, self progressing workout gets your kids excited to be outside. And it gets you some points with the wife because she's got a couple hours to not have anybody hanging off of her. All right. Hope you enjoyed. Take care.

• 47:36Speaker 08

  Hi Meat Eater, wanted to submit a hot tip. I'm preparing to head down to Utah for an elk hunt and in putting my kill kit together, I got my meat hanging string. This is waxed nine strand string, used for a lot of commercial purposes, has a weight rating of about 140 pounds. I'll hang an elk quarter off one strand of that. You see it's waxed, so it holds its shape pretty good, makes it easy to tie knots. This 12 foot piece I just weighed is about four and a half grams or .16 ounces. To show you how strong it is, I have a piece hanging up here.

• 48:09Speaker 08

  In my makeshift pull-up bar. I weigh about 230 pounds and you can see just a couple strands.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  It carries it well.

• 48:17Speaker 08

  No problem.

• 48:19Speaker 08

  So, instead of paracord or other heavy ropes, grab yourself some waxed nine strand.

• 48:24Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 48:26Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 48:27Speaker 06

  That's fun.

• 48:27Speaker 04

  Based off his garage there, he has some experience.

• 48:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, that guy killed some elk.

• 48:31Speaker 04

  That guy looks like a killer.

• 48:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, he borrowed a lot of elk.

• 48:37Speaker 06

  Uh, the poll is live in the chat. You guys are picking the winners of two different contests today. I feel like we're giving you too much power, but.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wanted to strip some of this power from them and appropriate it to ourselves, but.

• 48:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, get in there and vote. Um, I, you know, be honest. I liked the joke about this being a self, uh, what did he call it? How did he describe his workout?

• 49:02Speaker 06

  Self progressing.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  Self progressing workout. It's very clever.

• 49:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 03

  Plus he probably gets to eat a lot of like Cheerios and stuff that they drop on the ground.

• 49:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, applesauce pouches.

• 49:12Speaker 03

  The one worry I have though is that whenever I see someone with baby on their back or on their chest, I'm like, okay, that's good. They know if they fall, they can go that way or that way, opposite the baby, right?

• 49:24Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  When you got babies on all sides.

• 49:27Speaker 06

  He can either go left or right.

• 49:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, you gotta go left or right and that's not good for the old rotator cuff.

• 49:31Speaker 06

  Nope.

• 49:33Speaker 03

  You guys doing any?

• 49:33Speaker 02

  So too dangerous.

• 49:34Speaker 03

  Too dangerous.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Is why you won't be doing that particular training exercise.

• 49:37Speaker 03

  Precisely, precisely.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:39Speaker 03

  It seems like, and also I'm, I'm far behind this man in, uh, in his development of his equipment. So you guys doing any, uh, doing any hiking, doing any? Getting prepped for the old season?

• 49:56Speaker 02

  I've been so short on time. I have been, uh, just trying to like bust out on trail runs. I, I mean, as, as much as possible, daily if, if possible, um, but I, I put the shortened time there because I'm trying to make myself feel as poorly as possible with the least amount of time.

• 50:15Speaker 03

  Good, good.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Otherwise hiking would be good.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 50:19Speaker 04

  Um, I, I do some running a couple of times a week and then hit the weights a couple of times a week.

• 50:23Speaker 03

  I see you in here.

• 50:24Speaker 04

  It's, it's not like a season prep. It's just like general maintenance.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 50:29Speaker 04

  For my entire life.

• 50:31Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 50:32Speaker 04

  So.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  This poll is, could not be closer.

• 50:35Speaker 03

  Really?

• 50:35Speaker 02

  If you have not voted, you can tip the scales.

• 50:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Get in there.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  Get in there.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  I'm gonna end it in about 30 seconds here.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  If there are fewer than 300 votes out of our audience of 353, I'll be sorely disappointed. Voting is your right as an American. And it's unconscionable that people don't participate when given the option.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. What are the voting statistics?

• 50:57Speaker 03

  The opportunity.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  Something percent?

• 51:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I just think it's embarrassing. Like people, you know, vote 361. Come on, get in there. I'd like to see 320 votes.

• 51:11Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I like the guy that mentions he carries it well. That was one of my, I thought that guy 230 pounds, that guy stacked.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Looks great.

• 51:19Speaker 03

  That guy stacked.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:21Speaker 03

  All right. We'll give this 10 more seconds. Uh, I have not been doing much preparation or training. Uh, I've been on a real downhill slide since visiting Germany two months ago. Just gotten a lot of bad habits in terms of what I'm putting in my body and I feel it every day when I wake up.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  The, I mean, the Ohio trip, I didn't want to say anything.

• 51:42Speaker 06

  On that note, I was, I was gonna ask if you wanted a, a Gouta Louna trip after the recording.

• 51:46Speaker 03

  Ooh, I could be talked into that. I could be talked into that. Yeah, I, I actually didn't, I mean, thankfully, I didn't drink that much in Ohio. Just ate a lot of cheese.

• 51:54Speaker 06

  Man, I feel like I can't end this poll. It's so close.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  Couple more.

• 51:58Speaker 06

  Oh, my God.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  Amount of cheese is just a lot.

• 52:04Speaker 03

  You haven't even seen the vids yet.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  And then the saltiness of the, I feel like.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  It's so good.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  You're just entering one into your heart.

• 52:12Speaker 03

  It's so good.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  I don't pride myself on like overly healthful eating.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  But that, that's tough.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  And Seth, as the spouse of an artist, you'll appreciate this. I found a painting that I'd like to buy a, a print of. And it's a Skyline Chili parlor with a man dishing out Skyline Chili and Pete Rose is sitting there eating with him, Joe Burrow.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 52:33Speaker 03

  Barry Larkin, Ken Griffey, Sr., all the, all the Cincinnati, like, classic athletes. And, uh, they're just all enjoying, enjoying a nice three-way. Phil, how are we doing on this poll?

• 52:43Speaker 06

  I got it. Okay.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  I'm describing artwork that I saw in a fast food restaurant, so we should probably wrap it up.

• 52:48Speaker 06

  I'm, I'm hoping you'll have another Instagram reel about your time in Ohio eating these dogs.

• 52:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I gotta figure out. I forgot how to do voiceovers, how to do the voice change on, on voiceovers, so.

• 52:58Speaker 06

  Oh, just YouTube it.

• 52:59Speaker 03

  I got, I got a, I got a, a reel coming of our Costco hot dog run. I got a reel coming of my Cincinnati trip. It's gonna be some hot stuff.

• 53:06Speaker 06

  With, with just over 50% of the vote, like 50 and a decimal point. The winner is Chad, the wax string for hanging.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 53:18Speaker 06

  I wasn't expecting it.

• 53:19Speaker 03

  In Corvia.

• 53:21Speaker 06

  It was back and forth for a while here.

• 53:23Speaker 03

  I, I, I am interested in that wax string.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Cuteness doesn't always win. That's what, that's what the moral is.

• 53:28Speaker 03

  I end up carrying so much paracord. I've got like my paracord to hang my food. I got my paracord to hang some meat. I got the paracord for just having paracord. You could just cut a little bit of that out.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Prayer cord for hanging your prayer cord.

• 53:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, just cut a little bit of that out with this wax nine strand. We'll be running.

• 53:45Speaker 06

  And Chad, for winning the hot tip off, you will be receiving this wonderful Meat Eater hoodie, bison hoodie.

• 53:52Speaker 03

  Look at that.

• 53:53Speaker 06

  Our producer will be getting ahold of you to get your size and address information.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  So. Yeah, thank.

• 53:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:00Speaker 06

  If you, if you would like to submit a tip and win something like this wonderful bison hoodie, please submit your hot tips.

• 54:07Speaker 03

  Radio at the meat eater.com with the subject line, hot tip off.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  I thought you were actually asking me, Phil, because I don't own that sweater. And I was like, well, I guess I could, but.

• 54:20Speaker 06

  I actually do own that one. It's one of my favorites. It's, it's thick.

• 54:25Steven Rinella?

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• 55:09Steven Rinella?

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• 55:50Steven Rinella?

  It's the two or three week window that serious deer hunters plan everything else around. And OnX Hunt's rut calendar does this for you and helps take the guesswork out of your planning. It tracks the different phases of the rut as they move through your area. So you know when to book the time off, when to have the whole camp locked in and ready, or conversely, when it's still too early to burn out your best spots. You only get so many rut hunts in your life. So use the rut calendar within OnX Hunt to make the most of the whitetail rut this fall. 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.

• 56:34Steven Rinella?

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• 57:08Speaker 03

  Joining us on the line next is Ben Batten, Deputy Director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, who is coming to us live from Bozeman, Montana, at a meeting of the Mississippi Interstate Cooperative Resource Association. Ben, welcome to the show.

• 57:23Speaker 06

  So Ben was in the waiting room. As you said his name, I think he might've picked up his phone to get ready and then accidentally left. So we're going to wait here for Ben to rejoin.

• 57:34Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 57:35Speaker 06

  I'm sure he's fine. I don't think it was anything like a kidnapping.

• 57:38Speaker 03

  He was very excited for this.

• 57:40Speaker 06

  He was. He was in the office.

• 57:41Speaker 03

  It would be surprising if he'd abandoned us.

• 57:43Speaker 06

  No, he was, I think he just accidentally left the room.

• 57:46Speaker 03

  This...

• 57:49Speaker 03

  This is unexpected.

• 57:51Speaker 06

  I was gonna say, we just saw him.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just saw him.

• 57:55Speaker 06

  He was right there. Well, we couldn't do the, uh, the trail cam contest while we.

• 57:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, we just gave something away. Why don't we give some?

• 58:01Speaker 06

  Oh, oh, oh, oh, there he is.

• 58:04Speaker 03

  Here we go.

• 58:05Speaker 06

  Bring him in. Heyo.

• 58:06Speaker 03

  Ben, how are you, sir?

• 58:09Speaker 09

  All right, guys, you're not gonna believe this. I got one for you. Here is the ultimate hot tip. I was sitting out for you all and two seconds before I go on, I get your phone's too hot.

• 58:21Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, that, that always seems to hit at the wrong time.

• 58:27Speaker 09

  I'm gonna have to read your embossment and I went and dunked my phone in a pond.

• 58:36Speaker 03

  That's commitment. That's commitment to the show. We appreciate that. Ben, uh, Ben, can you tell our listeners who might not be familiar with the Mississippi Interstate Cooperative Resource Association? And I can guarantee that it's most of them. Can you explain what the organization is and, and who participates?

• 58:54Speaker 09

  Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again, guys, for having me on. I really appreciate it. So MICA is the leadership for fisher managers throughout the, uh, Mississippi River Basin. And so there's, uh, 31 states in the basin. We currently have 28 folks. And this is gonna be what's called the chief of fisheries. Every state fish and game agency has, uh, you know, some number of employees, but the, the head of is usually called the chief. So it's those folks. We also have federal agencies like US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Geological Survey, Army Corps, Tennessee Valley Authority, folks like that. And then of course, all the tribes within the basin are welcome. And basically in short, the purpose of, of MICA is to, uh, do a best job we can coordinating inter-jurisdictional fish species.

• 59:40Speaker 03

  Gotcha. What are some of the, the challenges or projects that you're currently working on as an organization?

• 59:48Speaker 09

  All right. Well, I think what makes the Mississippi River Basin awesome is also some of the biggest challenges. I mean, 1.2 million square miles, 320 million acres, you know, the Mississippi River Basin, every drop of water that goes from the east side of the Rockies to the west side of the Appalachians ends up in the Gulf. So it's just gigantic. Um, it's the fourth largest basin in the planet after the Amazon Congo and the Nile. So scale here is a challenge. Uh, also neat is that, you know, a fish can swim from the Gulf 1,200 miles without ever running into anything. Take a left and head up the Missouri all the way to Gavin's Point, South Dakota, another 800 miles. So 2,000 miles of fish can swim

• 1:00:31Speaker 09

  before ever hitting a dam. But that's the best case in the, in the, in the area. I mean, there's dams and, and things like that that, uh, you know, mess with fish passage and fish being able to move. Uh, we love working on, on a positive, uh, native fish species, you know, big cool things like paddlefish and sturgeon and things like that, catfish, et cetera. Uh, but probably our biggest drain on our energy is the invasive carp issue that is most of the basin.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  Gotcha. Now, I, I understand that the micros currently working towards being recognized by Congress. Uh, what does that recognition mean? And what does that process involve?

• 1:01:14Speaker 09

  Yeah, that's great. I appreciate you guys checking on. So the goal of this, it's an association. So we just all exist by a bunch of signatures of, of, you know, fisheries group leadership. Uh, but our goal since 1991 at establishment was to become a commission. And basically that recognition would give us one, just more stature and influence. So, you know, a letter to Congress or, or somebody from this association doesn't carry near as much weight as it does from the Mississippi, uh, River Basin Fishery Commission. Uh, and then the biggest probably is funding and resource. I think, you know, you guys talk all the time. I don't think you'd find anybody, uh, that's a manager across the country that would say they have enough resource to, you know, for the challenges. And so this draft

• 1:01:58Speaker 09

  legislation that we have right now, um, asks for, uh, in years two through five of existing $30 million a year for the basin and then 50 million on after that. So a significant amount of resource that would help us out. Kind of you ask where, you know, what does it take? So we currently have draft bills, both the House and the Senate. On the Senate side, it's Bill 1078 with sponsors from Senator Wicker in Mississippi, Bozeman in Arkansas, and Baldwin in Wisconsin. And then on the House side, 1514, the companion bill with Congressman Yezel from Mississippi and Carter of Louisiana. And we're currently looking for more sponsors. So if you are somebody out there that has connections there, and we work with coalition, which is something

• 1:02:43Speaker 09

  you do on these bills. And so there'll be groups you all are very familiar with, like BHA, Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, National Wildlife Federation, and American Sport Fish Association are all working with us to get this thing going.

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Good deal. And, and are there other interstate conservation partnerships that sort of serve as a model for this approach? And what have you learned from them?

• 1:03:05Speaker 09

  Yeah, great question. So there's four existing fishery commissions. There's Gulf States, Pacific States, Atlantic States, and then the Great Lakes. And those have all been around since somewhere between the late 40s and the late 50s. And we visited with each of their leadership as we were doing this for kind of some, hey, what would you do differently? What worked great? That kind of thing. And so that was super helpful. And we mostly patterned ours off the Great Lakes Commission. And then probably the best known in conservation without doubt is the Flyway Council system that manages water here in North America.

• 1:03:40Speaker 03

  Um, looking forward, what's, what's on the horizon? Obviously, you're working towards recognition, but, but sort of what is the, what's the discussion there about what's, what's in the future for the, for micro?

• 1:03:55Speaker 09

  Yeah, we'll continue to operate as we have for 34 years. Again, coordinating and doing our best to manage, you know, interjurisdictional fisheries. But we're going to continue to go to the Hill a couple of times a year, DC, and, you know, beat the offices and try to get in there and get this bill across the line.

• 1:04:14Speaker 03

  Great. Well, Ben, on a final note here, Arkansas was just in the news for its first bear attack in what I understand to be some 25 years. Can you tell us any bit about the facts of the incident and how, if in any way, Arkansas Game and Fish is responding?

• 1:04:32Speaker 09

  Yeah, sure. So yesterday in west central Arkansas, there was an older gentleman working on a gravel road on a tractor doing some work and he was working with his son who was a little bit out of eyesight. Son comes back, finds the dad on the ground and there's a bear attacking. Able to stop that and game fish was obviously immediately called. They're heading up and about 20 minutes later, they get there and they end up dispatching the bear. You know, it was a young bear, which is really rare. They said it was a yearling, weighed 80 to 100 pounds. And you know, just want to emphasize it's really a rare deal

• 1:05:13Speaker 09

  and especially for it to be a young bear. And of course, you know, all of our thoughts are with the family of the victim and everything else and hope that he makes a successful recovery.

• 1:05:25Speaker 03

  Yep, same, same here. Ben, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today and best of luck to you and the work of Mike right here.

• 1:05:35Speaker 09

  Appreciate the time. Thanks, guys.

• 1:05:36Speaker 03

  Yep, we'll see you.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  I hear that stuff happens all the time in Arkansas.

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  From clay?

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  Cougars, bear attacks, Bigfoots.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  Black Panthers.

• 1:05:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I get the impression from clay that Arkansas is like the Wild West.

• 1:05:53Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 1:05:54Speaker 06

  Uh, sorry Randall, I didn't mean to cut you off there.

• 1:05:56Speaker 03

  Yes, no, please Phil, I appreciate that.

• 1:05:58Speaker 06

  Just we have an update from our winner Chad. He referenced a hunt that he was about to go on and this was the outcome. Nope, not that. Clever. Where'd it go? Is it not working?

• 1:06:12Speaker 03

  Too bad he didn't.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  There it is. Oh! Nice. Chad, you're even wearing the right stuff. Good for you, buddy.

• 1:06:18Speaker 03

  Man.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  That's probably why you killed it, you know? Oh! Our net worth.

• 1:06:21Speaker 03

  That's exciting.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Just, why are we sitting here?

• 1:06:24Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  Why are we sitting here?

• 1:06:25Speaker 06

  That is September.

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  Beautiful.

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  And I bet that, I bet that wax nine strand handled those quarters nicely.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, Chad, if I were you, I'd just roll around on that underside of that bowl so you can take that smell home with you for months.

• 1:06:40Speaker 03

  Oh, love it. I love it. Thanks for sharing, Phil. That really added to the depth and richness of this program. Yeah, Jake, Jake, our producer reminded me about that. Thank you.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  Oh, good job.

• 1:06:50Speaker 03

  Teamwork behind the bench there.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:53Speaker 03

  It's now time for our trail cam photo contest presented by our friends at Moultrie. Speaking of Moultrie, you really should check out their new Edge 3. We recently got to learn about this latest and greatest Moultrie camera, and it is super impressive. Plus, they've got even more exciting cameras coming soon. For this second round, we asked you folks to send us your big bull elk photos captured from your trail cameras. We got loads of submissions on the MeatEater website, so choosing these top four contenders was difficult, to say the least. There are a lot of fighting bulls, impressive racks, and bachelor herds to whet your appetite for fall hunting.

• 1:07:32Speaker 03

  The winner will receive two Edge 2 First Light Spectra Camo Edition Moultrie cameras with 10 watt... It's watt? 10 watt solar power pack bundles and a $250 gift card to the MeatEater store, and a $250 gift card to First Light, and a Case knives Brett Reeves Signature Mini Trapper Knife. We got Brett Reeves in the chat today. My goodness.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  How many watts?

• 1:07:59Speaker 03

  Watts? 10? 10? 10 dubs?

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  Great Scott!

• 1:08:03Speaker 03

  1.21 gigawatts? Uh, yeah.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  Phil was sleeping on that. I mean, that's a... Gimme.

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  I, uh, I just saw 10W and I second guessed myself in the moment. You know, electricity, I'm like a medieval peasant when it comes to talking about watts and amps and...

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  I, I, I, I do not enjoy the use of trail cameras other than the fun stuff, like...

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  It, it, you know, it's like, uh, it takes some of the mystery out of the woods.

• 1:08:32Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  But at the same time, I also am jealous of not getting constant email updates of cool stuff walking around the woods.

• 1:08:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  It's a real conundrum.

• 1:08:40Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Phil, uh, would you show us our top contenders, please? I'd love to.

• 1:08:50Speaker 06

  This is number one.

• 1:08:50Speaker 02

  Gorgeous.

• 1:08:51Speaker 06

  This is, this is from at 716307.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  What would you title that, Phil?

• 1:08:56Speaker 06

  Well, luckily, we've got a title. It's called Brothers.

• 1:08:59Speaker 03

  Oh, it's beautiful.

• 1:09:02Speaker 06

  I don't know if Jake or if Jake titled these ones or the people who sent them in. I would guess.

• 1:09:06Speaker 03

  Brothers.

• 1:09:06Speaker 06

  I guess Jake. I don't know if everyone titled it, but.

• 1:09:09Speaker 03

  It's cousins.

• 1:09:09Speaker 02

  God, we should have had a guest spot with, uh, well, Kelsey Morris in here.

• 1:09:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, this actually is.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  What would you title this?

• 1:09:15Speaker 03

  Framed beautifully.

• 1:09:16Speaker 06

  She's good at that stuff.

• 1:09:17Speaker 03

  What do we got? Uh, what do we got? Number two here, Phil?

• 1:09:19Speaker 06

  That's, that's number one here. I, I will start a poll after we view all of these.

• 1:09:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, remember, folks, you are choosing the winner, that hefty, hefty prize package.

• 1:09:28Speaker 06

  Insane prize package. Okay. Number two is this from Brock 2319.

• 1:09:32Speaker 03

  Wade Boggs.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  Wade Boggs.

• 1:09:34Speaker 03

  Oh, it's great.

• 1:09:35Speaker 04

  Wow, that's a sick bull.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, all the crowning out.

• 1:09:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's not going to be like that for long. Better stick him fast.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  Too many points.

• 1:09:46Speaker 03

  The surface of the water is really beautiful. You can see the reflection of the, some of the trees. There's water in that photo?

• 1:09:54Speaker 06

  All right. Number three. This is from Heath Myers. Got budding heads.

• 1:10:00Speaker 03

  Action packed.

• 1:10:00Speaker 06

  There's stuff going on in the background, too.

• 1:10:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, another rag horn back there to the left.

• 1:10:06Speaker 03

  These guys are putting on a real show.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like budding heads is kind of lazy. We can do better than that. What else we got?

• 1:10:12Speaker 06

  Well, our, our producer Jake said that he titled all these, so good, good job, Jake.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  Jake, you fell off.

• 1:10:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, do better. Let's see. All right. So that's number three. Number four.

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  Woo.

• 1:10:25Speaker 06

  Oh, Winter Wonder. I cut off the, to the, the borders, cutting these titles off. That's, that's on me.

• 1:10:30Speaker 03

  Winter Wonder.

• 1:10:31Speaker 06

  This is from Cage Rosen.

• 1:10:33Speaker 03

  That's a, that's a.

• 1:10:34Speaker 06

  Or KD Rosen. I don't know.

• 1:10:35Speaker 03

  A stark image.

• 1:10:37Speaker 06

  That's a good looking bull.

• 1:10:38Speaker 03

  Silhouetted nicely.

• 1:10:40Speaker 06

  Okay, I'm going to.

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  Question mark?

• 1:10:42Speaker 06

  I'm going to start this poll and then I will go through all of the photos again. You guys talk about them while I type up this poll here.

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  Well, to me, there's a clear winner.

• 1:10:51Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:52Speaker 06

  Same.

• 1:10:52Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:10:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:10:55Speaker 03

  Said at the same time.

• 1:10:57Speaker 04

  Two.

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  The brothers.

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  Oh, there's disagreement.

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd call it before the rain.

• 1:11:03Speaker 03

  Oh, my goodness.

• 1:11:03Speaker 02

  That'd be my title.

• 1:11:04Speaker 03

  Before the rain?

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  I like that. Or after the rain.

• 1:11:07Speaker 04

  Wade, Wade now there in that pond.

• 1:11:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:09Speaker 04

  Wade Boggs.

• 1:11:10Speaker 03

  Brothers is really, I mean, if I took that photo with a handheld camera, I'd show everybody. It's beautiful.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  Plus, yeah, the back.

• 1:11:20Speaker 04

  It is beautiful.

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:23Speaker 04

  All right, I'm starting to pull and we'll go through the pictures again.

• 1:11:27Speaker 03

  But there's something haunting about that last image.

• 1:11:31Speaker 04

  I do like the last one.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  Like, look at the backdrop.

• 1:11:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  The fact that you're not staring at a big muddy water hole.

• 1:11:38Speaker 03

  You can see that.

• 1:11:39Speaker 02

  Is nice, because you can get wild animals like looking wild on this.

• 1:11:43Speaker 03

  Man, you can really appreciate the, the gait of these bulls, too.

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:48Speaker 04

  Can't get wild animals looking wild in, in a pond?

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  No, they're just, you know, it's like.

• 1:11:54Speaker 04

  Looks like, looks like there should be some turkeys there.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  Sam comments that he votes for Incorvia, the, the big, the big.

• 1:11:59Speaker 03

  Incorvia.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  The big one that our guy Chad got.

• 1:12:02Speaker 03

  We kind of, we kind of popped this balloon already with the big dead bull.

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:07Speaker 03

  Phil, let me get through, let me get number two again here.

• 1:12:09Speaker 02

  All right, so that's number one.

• 1:12:10Speaker 03

  Just so I can, uh.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  Wade Boggs, number two, that's the one in the water here.

• 1:12:14Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 1:12:16Speaker 03

  Ooh, yeah.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  And then we've got number three, budding heads.

• 1:12:19Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  And that's a pretty picture, too.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  That's just fun. That's just darn fun. October 20th.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  It's where the kids hang out, right there.

• 1:12:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, and then winter wonder, number four.

• 1:12:29Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:30Speaker 04

  It's a good looking.

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a, it's an amazing elk. It is, for sure.

• 1:12:34Speaker 04

  Twenty-nine degrees.

• 1:12:35Speaker 03

  No, twenty-nine, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, twenty-nine Fahrenheit. I was looking at the Celsius.

• 1:12:39Speaker 04

  The only thing that I just noticed about number two, the one that I voted for, and is, uh, is it a trail cam photo? It's got the quality of a trail cam photo.

• 1:12:51Speaker 06

  I, yeah.

• 1:12:51Speaker 04

  We can't see the bottom like all the other ones.

• 1:12:53Speaker 06

  I don't think the original photo had any timestamp on it.

• 1:12:56Speaker 03

  Seth, you can't accuse one of our contestants of...

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  Sure you can.

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  I like number one.

• 1:13:03Speaker 06

  Okay, Cal's, Cal's vote is for brothers, number one.

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  That says adventure.

• 1:13:06Speaker 03

  But what's really important is what the, the audience thinks is number, is, is the winner.

• 1:13:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, it doesn't matter what we think.

• 1:13:13Speaker 03

  It's not up to us. Remember, you guys need to get in that, in that poll.

• 1:13:15Speaker 06

  Only I can see the results right now. We've got, I don't, I don't think this is gonna swing. We've got a pretty clear winner, but I'll let this run for another minute if you guys want to get some last minute votes in here.

• 1:13:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, no, I feel like...

• 1:13:27Speaker 06

  Randall, do you have a preference?

• 1:13:30Speaker 03

  Well, I just think number one is very tough to... If those bulls were a little more impressive, it would just do it for me.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  Well, this is the last thing I'm gonna say. None of these animals are guaranteed to be there when you show up, right? So number one's like, man, could be anywhere. Look at this country, but I know they're here somewhere. And then if we go to number two, like, I'm gonna be stuck staring at this mud hole all day.

• 1:14:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, you can just go there and get them.

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:03Speaker 03

  Get them.

• 1:14:04Speaker 06

  I like getting them.

• 1:14:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, this, this just, uh, speaks to my heart, I think, but again, I don't...

• 1:14:11Speaker 06

  We've got several people in the chat saying that number one looks fake. And I don't know if it's just the stream you guys are seeing, but this looks like a pretty legitimate trail cam picture to me. It does look legit.

• 1:14:21Speaker 03

  That's just what Montana looks like everywhere. Or wherever this was.

• 1:14:25Speaker 06

  All right, I'm putting an end to the poll because one, one of these photos ran away with it.

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  Oh, let's do the CNN is now calling.

• 1:14:33Speaker 06

  Yep, that's right.

• 1:14:35Speaker 03

  We are prepared to call.

• 1:14:36Speaker 06

  Maricopa County, the results are in.

• 1:14:38Speaker 03

  The voting.

• 1:14:39Speaker 06

  And the winner with forty-nine percent of the, almost half of the vote.

• 1:14:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:44Speaker 06

  Clear winner. Number one, brothers.

• 1:14:48Speaker 03

  Oh, I hope we didn't taint. I hope we didn't taint the voting.

• 1:14:51Speaker 02

  I thought the whole point was to, was to taint the audience.

• 1:14:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think tainting is encouraged.

• 1:14:55Speaker 03

  All right, all right. Well, congratulations to at 716 underscore 307. So it probably is a Wyoming.

• 1:15:02Speaker 06

  And just so everybody knows, anything discussed on this podcast is our right to make it a T-shirt. So tainting is encouraged is, that's ours. We encourage taint is on a T-shirt.

• 1:15:15Speaker 04

  Is encouraged.

• 1:15:16Speaker 03

  Oh, man. Well, well, gang, uh, uh, uh, you know, congratulations to 716307. You've got a heck of a prize package coming your way. Please say thanks to the audience if you, if you find yourself in the chat in the future because boy, you're, uh, you've got some trail cams, you've got some gift cards, you've got a Brent Reeves signature knife headed your way. And I just closed out my script accidentally.

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  We got listener feedbacks.

• 1:15:42Speaker 06

  I think feedback's the only thing we've got left.

• 1:15:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:44Speaker 06

  Uh, I've been missing some of the, some of the chat for the last few minutes as I've been running other stuff, but.

• 1:15:49Speaker 03

  You've been busy today, Phil. I hope you're doing all right.

• 1:15:51Speaker 06

  Let's start with just a fun recreational one. Nate asks, what's the crew's favorite non-game or non-target animal to just watch, observe while hunting?

• 1:16:00Speaker 04

  Gray squirrels.

• 1:16:03Speaker 04

  Oh, they do weird stuff. Sometimes it's kind of fun to watch.

• 1:16:06Speaker 02

  Easily distracted and happily distracted. Bugs, horn toads, birds, doesn't matter.

• 1:16:13Speaker 03

  I'm gonna, we're gonna call this a non-target animal rather than non-game animal. I'm gonna say a bear.

• 1:16:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:16:20Speaker 03

  Watching bears do stuff.

• 1:16:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 1:16:23Speaker 03

  Half the fun of bear hunting is just watching little bears fall off things, tip things over.

• 1:16:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  Do things for no reason at all.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  We had a crew of Swainson's hawks, uh, migrating through and for whatever reason, they're very social. So, uh, kind of curious. I think they took note of the fact that I was aggressively observing their behavior.

• 1:16:47Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  This is very urban, um, you know, greater fringe Bozangels region here. And, uh, they, they came down and ripped part of squirrel on top of the fence.

• 1:16:58Speaker 03

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, like. 20 yard viewing. It was fantastic.

• 1:17:03Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  Got the stabilized binos out and it was great.

• 1:17:07Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  Eating right there with them. Uh, three of them. Really, really, really awesome. Merlin App had to, it was great. Super fun.

• 1:17:16Speaker 06

  Uh, Isaac is stoked about bow season starting in Missouri in 11 days. Any sort of last minute rituals or things you guys do in the last days before going into season?

• 1:17:26Speaker 03

  Get all of the stuff done at home that is expected of you to get done.

• 1:17:30Speaker 04

  11 days before, uh, I usually start shooting my bow about that time. No, I'm kidding. Hopefully you've been shooting for a long time.

• 1:17:39Speaker 03

  You've got a, you've got a good, uh, week and a half to get your affairs in order so that, uh, you don't get a, a phone call saying that, you know, you need to come home to do this, do that, you know, get you, find yourself in the good graces of your family unit and, uh, look forward to the season.

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. In Missouri, you're probably starting your permethrin treatment right now.

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  Uh, which I think would be a crucial step to your game.

• 1:18:06Speaker 06

  Uh, this is from Jay. He says, as we are closing in on many hunting seasons, if one makes a bad shot on large game and it takes longer than ideal to find said game, how do you determine what meat needs to be cut out or lost when you finally harvest it?

• 1:18:20Speaker 04

  Smell.

• 1:18:20Speaker 03

  Stank.

• 1:18:21Speaker 04

  Smell test it.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. And there's portions that can smell. And if those portions smell strong enough, remove them from the rest of the, of the situation. So the smell of that stuff doesn't contaminate, uh, your, your sniffer because there, there's,

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  typically it's not all bad.

• 1:18:42Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  And you need to salvage every edible thing that you can.

• 1:18:48Speaker 06

  This is one that I don't think we've gotten before, but favorite wild game meat pizza topping. Russell says his is duck bacon and goose salami.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:18:56Speaker 06

  Hmm. You guys put game on pizza?

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, just, just sausage.

• 1:19:00Speaker 04

  Sausage, yeah.

• 1:19:01Speaker 03

  We don't do a whole lot of homemade pizzas, but yeah. I don't know. Elk nachos.

• 1:19:09Speaker 03

  It's almost pizza.

• 1:19:10Speaker 06

  Joe asks Cal, scent cover, yay or nay?

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  Walk into the wind. If you're stuck in a tree like my friend Mark Kenyon, um.

• 1:19:21Speaker 02

  Just face into the wind. I, yeah, I. We, we used to mess around with all that stuff and it just, it just more complicates life.

• 1:19:31Speaker 03

  We should, we should make a T-shirt of Mark in a tree and just says, "Help, I'm stuck in a tree." I'm Mark Kenyon, the host of.

• 1:19:42Speaker 06

  Uh, David S. Randall, Pete Rose, yay or nay?

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, he's a slime ball, but he's our slime ball.

• 1:19:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:19:51Speaker 06

  Uh, Clifford. How does the crew store their food in black bear, mountain lion country? He lives in Arizona, so brown bear isn't an issue. Do you suggest putting food in a bag away from camp? I think the, the general, um, thing to do is to hang it, right?

• 1:20:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, hanging will just.

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  It, it's just gonna solve issues, cause if you leave, let's say you, you have a, like a dry bag or a stuffed sack that you put all your, all your food in, once you get to camp, so you're organized and you're not packing around all your food and you're in your hunting bag every day. Um, a squirrel's gonna chew through that thing on the ground. And then you gotta mess to clean up and you lose stuff and then you're in that situation of like, well, now I gotta eat something that a squirrel half chewed on and hantavirus and all that fun stuff. So hang your, hang your food. Uh, even if you're not worried, it's just gonna prevent other things from happening. And as I like to say, I'm totally fine if a bear kills me.

• 1:20:54Speaker 02

  That's, but I don't, I'm not fine if in the article, it says, "Didn't hang his food."

• 1:21:00Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  And then I get lumped in like somebody who didn't know what was going on in the woods.

• 1:21:05Speaker 03

  Yep, it's just the, wherever you can prevent a headache, like having something chew through your backpack or whatever else, like prevent those headaches, cause something else is gonna go wrong inevitably.

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Seth?

• 1:21:19Speaker 04

  I wouldn't worry about mountain lions.

• 1:21:23Speaker 03

  What do you got, Phil? What do you got, Phil?

• 1:21:24Speaker 06

  Here we go.

• 1:21:25Speaker 03

  I feel like we're on a roll now.

• 1:21:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, real quick one for me. We get this question a lot. Videos on Spotify. We have no plans. It's not going to happen anytime soon, specifically just because of other agreements we've made.

• 1:21:36Speaker 02

  You can put videos on Spotify?

• 1:21:38Speaker 06

  You can.

• 1:21:38Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:21:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's very, it's a pretty slick interface.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  Cutting edge.

• 1:21:44Speaker 06

  So when you just start the audio, the video just plays automatically and you can choose to turn that on or off.

• 1:21:50Speaker 06

  Christopher Cow, what do you carry in the field for your doggy first aid kit? And where do you find any non-typical items that you pack up?

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  Boy, you know, feed stores or your Murdochs or, um, what are they like? The farm, what is it?

• 1:22:06Speaker 03

  Tack and Feed.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  Rocky Mountain Supply. Rocky Mountain Supply. Feed stores always have a really awesome, what is the tractor one? Tractor Supply. Tractor Supply. Yep. Yeah, that's hard.

• 1:22:17Speaker 03

  The place with tractor supplies.

• 1:22:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Uh, anyway, they always have a good vet section. It's typically around like livestock. Um, but hot tip for you. Uh, you can go get doggy supplies there for, uh, for like a fifth of what they're going to charge you at the vet. Uh, so that's where I go. And I always have uh, EMT gel, which is like a liquid suture that can get you through some tough time. Gauze. I find a good tape that will stick to fur for holding gauze in place or, you know, like

• 1:23:04Speaker 03

  You like that Co-Ban stuff?

• 1:23:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. You get this like zipper, like 90 degree tears in, in dog hide from running into fence or corrugated metal when they're going nuts after roosters and stuff in that, in that thick cover. And so you need something that's going to hold that flap down. And then I use just good old fashioned iodine. Uh, Betadine works well too. And I just carry like a small container of that. Um, this sounds like a lot of stuff, but it's really not. You can pack it down nice and tight and then, um, Sudafed. Sudafed is good, nah, it's an antihistamine, but it is something, just like it makes us drowsy.

• 1:23:47Speaker 02

  It can put a little chill into the dog when you need it to get relaxed, like if you are in a rattlesnake bite scenario. Um, because you're not going to suck the venom out, uh, like in an old John Ford film. Um.

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  Eye wash, little bit of eye wash, just, you know, your over the counter stuff that, uh, folks with, um, bad eyesight use to flush their eyeballs out. Um, that's, that's like part of our routine to keep dogs' eyes looking good because they pack a lot of seeds in there. Uh, during, uh, hunting season, especially when it's hot and dry, which unfortunately it often is during bird season these days. So, um, that little kit right there will definitely get you through the hard times and you'll be able to package up your best buddy and get them someplace pro or get them into, uh, a good enough situation where they can keep hunting or walk themselves out.

• 1:24:50Speaker 02

  Um, that, that's about really what you need.

• 1:24:55Speaker 06

  Hmm. Great. Got a couple of questions about the new Wisconsin Meat Eater store. I don't think there's a specific opening date yet, but I think one update is that I think we're still hiring. So, you know, if you're in the area.

• 1:25:08Speaker 03

  Believe we're still hiring.

• 1:25:09Speaker 06

  Check out.

• 1:25:10Speaker 03

  And, uh,

• 1:25:11Speaker 06

  Isn't there a?

• 1:25:12Speaker 03

  There's going to be a little opening celebration, uh, coordinating with our tailgate tour stop in Madison. With, uh, Chester Floyd and Spencer New Hearth.

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 1:25:24Speaker 03

  Uh, so take a look at the tailgate tour schedule and I think the event, uh, page for that will, will have some mention of the event in Brookfield.

• 1:25:33Speaker 02

  I would, uh, I'd love to make it over there myself. I was a younger fella. I used to, I had several good times in Milwaukee.

• 1:25:39Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:25:40Speaker 02

  Nice people, good food, lots of good beer.

• 1:25:42Speaker 03

  The best beer.

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. So.

• 1:25:45Speaker 06

  Let's do one more. You guys had some great questions this week. Thanks. Really appreciate it. Makes my job easier, but the most important one for last, Randall, top three zoos. This is from Jackson.

• 1:25:55Speaker 03

  Hmm. Boy, I feel like this episode got way too Randall centric.

• 1:25:59Speaker 06

  You are the host, my friend.

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:01Speaker 06

  Live it up. Drink it in.

• 1:26:03Speaker 03

  Um. Well, let's see.

• 1:26:06Speaker 06

  You were just at one.

• 1:26:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was just at the Cincinnati Zoo. It's a world-class, phenomenal institution. The gorilla world is above and beyond what I want when I go to look at primates, specifically great apes.

• 1:26:21Speaker 03

  Probably my most favorite zoo visit in recent memory was the Schongarten Zoo in Vienna, Austria. If you've never been to a zoo in a foreign country, I highly recommend it because you'll read things in a foreign language and all of a sudden it feels a lot more sophisticated than when you're just in, you know, some suburban neighborhood drinking a beer and looking at a tiger. Finally, gosh, had some good visits to the San Francisco Zoo. I don't know if it's, if it's like strongly in my top three, but I've had some great visits there. Again, some really world-class ape encounters and it's just been there for me when I needed it at a few key points in my life. So we'll leave it at that.

• 1:27:05Speaker 06

  Fantastic.

• 1:27:06Speaker 03

  Thanks, Jackson. Your interest in zoological gardens is much appreciated.

• 1:27:12Speaker 03

  Well, gang, that brings us to the end of today's show. It was another fun one. Thanks to Mark and Ben for joining us. And with that, we'll see you here next week.

• 1:27:22Speaker 02

  Oh, hey, I got one more thing for the audience. If you're going to be in the Manhattan area, or ideally if you live there.

• 1:27:29Speaker 03

  Montana?

• 1:27:30Speaker 02

  No, not Montana. The New York City, Manhattan.

• 1:27:36Speaker 02

  I am participating in a conservation event at the end of the month at the Patagonia store with Conservation Lands Foundation. And my God, I just got to looking at the prices of hotel rooms.

• 1:27:50Speaker 02

  If you need somebody to crash on your couch. How's it?

• 1:27:55Steven Rinella?

  He'll tell you some stories.

• 1:27:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:58Steven Rinella?

  And he actually does a great job cleaning up after himself. My barn has never looked better since Cal's been on a little trailer work and tear. So.

• 1:28:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:28:05Steven Rinella?

  Delightful guest. All right, folks. We'll see you next week. Thanks for tuning in.

• 1:28:23Steven Rinella?

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• 1:29:03Speaker 10

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• 1:30:03Steven Rinella?

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• 1:30:42Speaker 00

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