Ep. 762: EHD Reports and Competitive Birding | MeatEater Radio Live!

Hosts Spencer Neuharth, Ryan Callaghan, and Seth Morris speak with competitive birder Owen Reiser, talk gear in preparation for the fall season, soak in nostalgia for Throwback Thursday, and chat with Kip Adams of the National Deer Association about all things EHD. 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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• 2:09Speaker 04

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

• 2:31Speaker 05

  Welcome to Meat Eater Radio Live. It's 11 a.m. Mountain Time. That's 10 a.m. for our friends in Fort Bragg, California on Thursday, September 11, and we're live from Meat Eater HQ in Bozeman. I'm your host, Spencer, joined today by Cal and Seth. On today's show, we'll interview Owen Reiser about spending a year as a competitive birder. After that, we'll have Gear Talk, then we'll look at old hunting and fishing pictures for Throwback Thursday, and finally, Kip Adams from the National Deer Association will join us to give an EHD report for every region. Now, we've got a few plugs to get to before we move on with the show. Meat Eater is heading south for the holidays. We are thrilled to announce Meat Eater Live: The Christmas Tour

• 3:14Speaker 05

  coming to you this December. We have stops in Birmingham, Nashville, Memphis, Fayetteville, Dallas, and Austin. Come hang with Steve, Yanis, Clay, Randall, and Brent for a night of laughs, trivia, prizes, and stories from the outdoors. Go to themeater.com/tour to sign up for pre-sale access, which starts September 23. That will give you a chance to buy tickets before they officially go on sale to the public. That's meat eater, themeater.com/tour. We can't wait to see you there. Also, the Meat Eater Tailgate Tour, presented by Dometic, rolls on this Saturday. Me and Jesse Griffiths will be hanging out at the Longhorns game in Austin. Next Saturday, it's me, Mark Kenyon, and Chester and Garrett

• 3:58Speaker 05

  Long will be at the Wisconsin Badgers game in Madison. The week after that, you'll catch Seth and Brody at Penn State. And finally, Yanis and Garrett head to Notre Dame on October 4. Come hang with us. Come stump us with some trivia. Tell us hunting stories. Eat our food. We'll have a good time tailgating. Cal and Seth, what have you boys been up to lately?

• 4:20Speaker 04

  Oh, so much. Been digging deep in the freezer. I have many, many projects going on simultaneously.

• 4:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, give me an update.

• 4:31Speaker 04

  Been breaking in new strings for the bow.

• 4:33Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  Hmm. And throwing darts and uh things are, things are looking really good on the archery front.

• 4:43Speaker 05

  Is there a specific hunt you're prepping for?

• 4:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, brown bear in Alaska here at the end of the month. And then um I, everywhere I look, there's just things that needs to be straightened up and done. So I can have a efficient and good hunting season.

• 5:00Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 5:00Speaker 04

  So I stuck my head in the freezer. And I was like, oh, there's this bag of grind staring me in the face that I haven't turned into burger yet. And it had a hole in the bag, of course. So I threw that in a box to take home and then basically underneath that I was like, what, what is this bag? Cause I have like a nice freezer that's all visually appealing and organized.

• 5:30Speaker 05

  Same.

• 5:31Speaker 04

  And then I have

• 5:31Speaker 05

  That's the vertical freezer, right?

• 5:32Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 5:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's the one.

• 5:34Speaker 04

  And then I have the chest freezer. Yes. And then the chest freezer is like bulk yet to be refined. So like big roasts, shanks.

• 5:43Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 5:44Speaker 04

  Uh, quarters, sometimes whole birds, um uh, the, the big sacks, I like grind and things that I'm going to get to later on.

• 5:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:53Speaker 04

  Um.

• 5:53Speaker 05

  That's the freezer you put like a gun case on top of. So no one is tempted to open it up and look in there.

• 5:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:59Speaker 05

  Because the vertical freezer, that's the, that's the company freezer.

• 6:02Speaker 04

  That, that's the one that makes you look like you know what you're doing and are respectful. So I'm like, what is in this bag in the vertical freezer, in the nice freezer? And it was um, these turkey carcasses that I realized that I didn't turn into stock because I ran out of jars during stock making season at the end of turkey season. So I threw those in the box and then I got to looking around some more and there's all this like random couple of years collection of hearts, antelope and deer and elk hearts. So I threw those in the box and then a bunch of tongues. So I threw those in the box. And then I, there's this big package of goose breasts.

• 6:44Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 6:45Speaker 04

  That also had a hole in it. And That went in the box. That went in the box.

• 6:51Speaker 05

  Know what? The box is the, the deep freeze.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  No, the box is the thing that I was, that was gonna go in the truck and then come, and then I was gonna start processing. So that literally this morning, I've been going to bed at like 11 o'clock and waking up at 4:30, 5:00, getting all this stuff done. So I have the pressure cooker going, uh, finishing off the last jarring.

• 7:13Speaker 05

  Right now?

• 7:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:15Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 7:15Speaker 04

  Uh, well, I turned it off to come over here.

• 7:17Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 7:18Speaker 04

  Um, that'd be crazy, Spencer.

• 7:21Speaker 05

  That's just clarifying.

• 7:22Speaker 04

  And then.

• 7:23Speaker 05

  You could have been doing it in the kitchen, you know, 10 steps away.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  I, yeah, I should have. And then I had one slow cooker with the goose breasts in it. I was like, I'm gonna make, uh, uh, uh, like barbecue sandwiches out of goose breasts, which turns out awesome. But I didn't label these things properly and they were a big thing, a corned goose breast. So I had like onions and all sorts of stuff in the slow cooker. And then I got to looking at them and I'm like, oh, this is beautiful corned beef. Um, which, you know, so it's still gonna be a, a good tasting sandwich. But then I'm like, God, you just never learn. And then I had another slow cooker with all the tongues in it. And I trimmed up all the hearts and I put that in with the grind and then ground all that stuff and made burgers out of that. Got all that packaged up and then back in the nice vertical freezer.

• 8:11Speaker 04

  And the gist of the list is endless. It just keeps going.

• 8:13Speaker 05

  Prefall is stressful. I'm a better hunter if, if things are taken care of at home, in the yard, in the freezer.

• 8:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:21Speaker 05

  I don't have to think about those things then.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:23Speaker 05

  I'm trying to kill a deer.

• 8:23Speaker 04

  Exactly. I'm at the point where I just burn all this stuff in town down. Give it away.

• 8:29Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 8:30Speaker 04

  Destroy it.

• 8:31Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  And then I just, the dog and I head off.

• 8:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 8:37Speaker 05

  Uh, it's now occurring to me as I look at your two handsome faces. We have too many mustaches on this show. We've hit our quota. We've hit our quota of mustaches. Phil, you cannot grow a mustache.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  You don't have to worry about that, Spencer.

• 8:49Speaker 05

  Okay. Uh, it's gonna get real weird if, if we go four for four on mustaches in this studio. All right. Moving on, joining us on the line first is Owen Reiser, the director of Listers, A Glimpse Into Extreme Bird Watching. That documentary is available on YouTube right now. Owen, welcome to the show.

• 9:10Speaker 06

  Fellas, thanks for having me. I dug out my, uh, public landowner shirt for you boys. Love it.

• 9:16Speaker 05

  Alright, enlisters, you and your brother spend a year as competitive bird watchers. Explain what that is, and more specifically, what it means to go for a big year.

• 9:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we heard about, uh, this group of people that try to list as many bird species as they can in, uh, in one calendar year, and that's called a big year. And we thought, you know, we didn't know anything about the culture of bird watching, you know, we were, uh, big out, like, fans of the outdoors and stuff, but we'd never mess with bird watching. And we were like, you know, we should try that. We should learn about extreme bird watching by becoming bird watchers. And, uh, that's what we did. And it was, it was right, you know, we, we made fun of them a little bit, but it's, uh, it's a great hobby and we, we, we enjoyed the hell out of it.

• 10:00Speaker 05

  Uh, before you tried doing this, what was your experience with bird watching?

• 10:05Speaker 06

  Uh, exactly zero. It was, uh, it was zero experience. We, we knew a handful of birds, like, uh, you know, the cardinal, the bald eagle, the, you know, the junior varsity birds. We knew all those, but, uh, certainly didn't know what a rose-throated baccard was.

• 10:23Speaker 06

  Any of those, you know what I mean?

• 10:25Speaker 05

  Uh, so competitive birding can be a very expensive hobby, which you guys learn in the documentary. Uh, but you try to do it as cheap as possible. Tell us about some of the ways you saved money while traveling across the country looking for rare birds.

• 10:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, my brother and I are, uh, I'd say experienced dirtbags, so we, we knew how to live out of a car and, and eat rice and beans and tuna and, uh, all that kinda stuff. But, yeah, most people doing a big year, we found out they, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to, to look at little birds, which is, uh, you know, insane, but we, we get it now. We understand. And, uh, Yeah, we slept in a minivan, spent the whole year on public land, basically, with the exception of forty-two nights at a Cracker Barrel's.

• 11:14Speaker 06

  The only, the only place you can bang on a, a free night's rest when you, when you need to be near a city, or if there was a rare bird report, like, you know, in, in, in area that didn't have public land, so that's kind of, uh, that's kind of how we saved money.

• 11:29Speaker 05

  Wow. What was the process like for sleeping in a Cracker Barrel parking lot? Do you go in and talk to the store manager? Do you call them ahead of time, or is it just known that that's cool to do?

• 11:39Speaker 06

  You know, that's kind of a rookie move, uh, going in and, and asking the, the manager. We found out that's kind of a rookie move. You just kind of pull out back and you don't even have to eat in the restaurant, and you shouldn't eat in the restaurant, let's be honest, uh.

• 11:52Speaker 04

  Now, I sat down with Clay Newcomb one time and watched him just devour, uh, Cracker Barrel, specifically the grits. I was blown away.

• 12:01Speaker 06

  All the grits.

• 12:04Speaker 06

  We saw somebody, uh, maybe their last moments in their life in a, in a Cracker Barrel parking lot. They, they evacuated the entire restaurant and they pulled somebody out on a stretcher and, uh, Quentin has a line in the movie, it says, "From the grits to the gallows," because it's a, it's a war zone in there.

• 12:21Speaker 05

  Mmm, what an adventure. Uh, during this journey, you learn about, uh, some of the bird watching drama. Tell us about stringing and more specifically Swallowgate.

• 12:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, so it's probably similar in like hunting and fishing, you know, people want that record, or, you know, they want that like, I don't know, I, you guys know better than me, but like they put weights in fish and stuff, right? Is that?

• 12:46Speaker 04

  That's exactly what these guys do.

• 12:48Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah, so, so in birding, it's called stringing, and it's basically, the whole thing's built on an honor system, right? But. You know, it's like, you know, there's cheaters out there. And so stringing is basically stringing along these rare bird sightings where, you know, you say you saw the bird and you didn't, or you exaggerate that you saw the bird and you put it on this bird software called eBird. And uh, there's a famous incident from like a decade ago called Swallowgate where a guy thought he, or he said he saw a bird called a violet green swallow. And it would have been a state record for North Carolina. And a bunch of birders in the area got skeptical of him. They dug in, they found out where his location was on the date he said he saw the bird.

• 13:33Speaker 06

  And it was uh, they somehow found his location and then they dug into the metadata on the photo. And they found out it was like, uh, you know, didn't match the date he said it was at. And then they went to a bunch of natural history museums. And matched the feather molt, the specific feather molt on this, this bird. And they were like, no, at this time of year, it should have more white on this specific type of feather on the back of it. And like, it's crazy. So they nabbed the guy. And he's kind of blacklisted from the community. So in the movie, I interviewed the guy and I got his perspective. And uh, I kind of, I kind of believe that he, he really saw the bird. He said he just faked the photo. And he was like a young kid at the time, but he explained it. I kinda, I'm kinda on his side now. I know.

• 14:19Speaker 06

  I know. I love it. I love it.

• 14:21Speaker 05

  Uh, at, at some point, you guys find out that there is a rare bird email chain and it leads to a lot of new sightings. Uh, tell us about that.

• 14:30Speaker 06

  Yeah. So uh, about probably two or three months into the year, we found out we were missing out on a lot because there's something called a, uh, the rare bird eBird alert thing. And so we went on there and our numbers went up after that for sure. And uh, you check this email thing and a bunch of nerds basically just send out where they're seeing all these uh, you know, rare birds. We saw one, we got one report of something called a cattle tyrant. And it was in uh, Corpus Christi, I think. Yeah, Corpus Christi. And uh, they tell, they just tell you the location of the bird. You just drive there, you look at it, you go nice and you put it on your fancy little list and you're good to go.

• 15:10Speaker 05

  All right. What's your favorite bird that you found in the big year?

• 15:15Speaker 06

  Uh, mine is the, I like the common birds. I'm not a, I'm not a rare bird guy. I like the, uh, common nighthawk. Big fan of that one. Quentin is a big fan of the Roadrunner. Standard, you know?

• 15:27Speaker 05

  Okay, and what, what was, what was the rarest bird you guys saw?

• 15:32Speaker 06

  Um. There was one, uh, there's one called a gray collared becard. It was like the first time it had been seen in the country. It's, it's one of those, it's like right on the border of Texas in the US. So it like flies, flies from Mexico or, or, yeah, from Mexico to the US, flies from Mexico and then you can count it on your big fancy little list and then,

• 15:53Speaker 06

  you know, if it's, if it's like a hundred yards south, you can't count it. It's kind of one of those deals, but yeah, I don't know. Super rare.

• 15:58Speaker 05

  And what's the weirdest place that you guys checked a bird off the list?

• 16:03Speaker 06

  Uh, we camped right outside of a women's prison in, uh, New Mexico. Some, uh, you know, some bad ladies in there and, uh, we, uh, we, we woke up in the morning and saw our, uh, the first time we'd ever seen something called a Clark's grebe.

• 16:20Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 16:20Speaker 06

  And, uh, I'll never look at one of those the same again. They're out in the pond, just kind of right outside the prison there.

• 16:27Speaker 05

  Uh, a few times you guys had sightings that were actually rejected. Tell us about that.

• 16:34Speaker 06

  Yeah. Again, they say it's an honor system, but we should've got a lot of emails that were saying, uh, you know, this wasn't the bird you saw, cause we were so new at it, right? And, uh, they're pretty quick to take those away, but you know, it's an honor system, you know?

• 16:48Speaker 05

  Yeah. You call them the, the bird cops, right?

• 16:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're, they're the bird cops. They're a vicious group out there.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  Did you side with them or were you like, no?

• 16:58Speaker 06

  No, yeah, no, they're definitely right. Obviously, we didn't know what we were doing.

• 17:01Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 17:02Speaker 06

  We were new at it.

• 17:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:03Speaker 06

  No, yeah, yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 05

  Okay. So your sightings are tracked on the app eBird and that's who makes the leaderboard. Uh, I saw that eBird had over 1.1 million users last year. Tell us how many birds you saw and where you ranked among those million competitors.

• 17:19Speaker 06

  Yeah. So we saw 579 species of bird. And if you'd say that at the bar, uh, it's not a great pickup line. Nobody really cares. Uh, but, uh, the record is now 758 and, uh, so they saw, you know, 200, I don't know how to do math, but that's like a lot more than we saw and, uh, Yeah, it's cra- there's the, the fact that there's people out there that saw that many more than us. It's a, it's a passionate group.

• 17:45Speaker 05

  And where, where did that 500 some get you on the leaderboard?

• 17:49Speaker 06

  Oh, that would be 23rd in the, in the United States.

• 17:51Speaker 05

  23rd, that, uh, that is very impressive.

• 17:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:54Speaker 05

  Now, if someone wanted to-

• 17:55Speaker 06

  They don't make a trophy for that.

• 17:56Speaker 05

  There we go. If someone wanted to get into birding, uh, but doesn't know where to start, what advice would you give them?

• 18:02Speaker 06

  I'd say get the Merlin app. It's great. The Merlin app's so good. It's like helps for beginners and, uh, and, and then I would say just leave like the bucket hat and the, uh, vest at home. You don't really need that. You know, you can just be good with the, the binoculars and the Merlin app.

• 18:17Speaker 05

  Okay, very good. Uh, Listers, A Glimpse Into Extreme Bird Watching is available right now for free on YouTube. Uh, it's a really fun documentary. Everyone should go watch it. Uh, Owen, congrats on your big year and thanks for joining us.

• 18:31Speaker 06

  Thanks, guys. You guys rule. Keep it up.

• 18:32Speaker 04

  Uh, business opportunity out there too. If you're not finding, uh, gals at the bar with your bird list, you build the bar and they will come.

• 18:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's a good idea.

• 18:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, that's free before you-

• 18:44Speaker 05

  That's for free.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  Thank you. That was awesome.

• 18:47Speaker 06

  See you, boys.

• 18:48Speaker 05

  Uh, in the documentary, they also discover, uh, they get an old birding book and it's got all these bird hotlines you can call. And they call like 50 of the numbers. Only one is still working and it's in Ohio. Uh, and they learn after they're talking to the person on this rare bird hotline who's giving them an update on where to find some rare birds, uh, that it's an Amish hotline, which hit close to home because we know that our podcasts are all available on an Amish hotline as well. So shout out to the, uh, the Amish folks who are dialing into some phone number and, and learning about where the rare birds are and, and listening to, uh, Cal of the Wild.

• 19:24Speaker 04

  It's citizen science. It's awesome.

• 19:26Speaker 05

  It's great.

• 19:27Speaker 04

  It's super cool. Yeah.

• 19:28Speaker 05

  Any birding interest from you two?

• 19:30Speaker 07

  Well, I, I like to keep track of some of them birding websites if I'm trying to figure out where.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  Birds that I would like to hunt or they do pop. That's a dirty, dirty little secret out there. Yeah. Um, Mark Kenyon and I, we put the full on sneak on some birds in Alaska when we were up there in the Arctic Circle. With the Merlin app. Mark with his Merlin app fully extended, trying to get a bird call to identify some birds that, I mean, that was very fun.

• 20:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:03Speaker 05

  Camera feed here. I don't know what happened.

• 20:04Speaker 04

  And the Merlin app.

• 20:07Speaker 05

  You can keep talking. Every, everybody can hear you. They just can't see you.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  I just busted it out the other day because, um, we had this, this group of hawks. That, uh, got really friendly with our backyard. They were like tearing, uh, squirrels and stuff open on. Well, that I was like, oh, it's a sharpshin hawk. And I'm like, oh no, it's a rough legged hawk. And then. Finally I was like, oh, I gotta re-download the Merlin app. And it's a Swainson's hawk.

• 20:34Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 20:34Speaker 04

  And they were, they were super cool. Yeah. They kind of moved on.

• 20:38Speaker 05

  My interest in birding is I don't like not knowing what I'm looking at. If I'm like out in nature deer hunting and see some bird I'm not familiar with, um, it's annoying if I don't know like the name of that thing.

• 20:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:50Speaker 05

  So I don't like that.

• 20:51Speaker 04

  It's also fun though to, I, uh, like in the duck blind, you know, people be like, oh, and I, and I just say bop. B O P. Bird of prey.

• 21:03Speaker 04

  Bop.

• 21:04Speaker 05

  That, that gets the message across. We don't shoot those.

• 21:06Speaker 04

  Right. Exactly.

• 21:08Speaker 07

  The, uh, that Merlin app is one of my favorite things ever.

• 21:11Speaker 05

  So impressive.

• 21:12Speaker 07

  In the springtime, when I'm turkey hunting, I'll just turn that thing on and set it down next to me as like the woods come alive. And just like all the different birds that pop. I like just seeing how many different birds I can get.

• 21:22Speaker 04

  That is, yeah, the audio part is really amazing because for whatever reason in my brain, it's going to be like, it's going to identify one bird. But it's all the noises.

• 21:32Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 21:33Speaker 04

  Which is, yeah, it's awesome. It's great.

• 21:36Speaker 05

  Owen and his brother, um, they try to trick the app and like use a flute to play a bird call. And they successfully do it in one instance. They're able to replicate. I don't remember what the bird is, um, but they, they do it well enough to make Merlin think that they are that bird.

• 21:51Speaker 04

  Oh, great minds think alike. I tried to do that and then didn't.

• 21:54Speaker 07

  We were in Alaska one time, uh, bear hunting with Clay Newcomb. And, uh, we were trying to get him to trick. The, uh, the old bardow.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 22:04Speaker 07

  And it worked. Yeah. He was able to trick it.

• 22:07Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 22:07Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  Heck, yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 05

  Give, give him a ribbon.

• 22:10Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  Thought I had it right, the right shrill for the Swainson's hawk and it, no.

• 22:15Speaker 07

  Didn't work.

• 22:16Speaker 04

  Nope.

• 22:16Speaker 05

  Again, Owen's documentary is called Listers. It's available on YouTube right now.

• 22:23Steven Rinella?

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• 23:49Steven Rinella?

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• 24:27Steven Rinella?

  Go to O'Keefe'scompany.com to get yours today. That's O K E E F F E S company.com for guaranteed relief. O'Keefe's Working Hands. It works good.

• 24:40Speaker 05

  All right. Our next segment is gear talk.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  Let's talk about gear, baby. Let's talk about scopes and beets. Let's talk about boots and binos, camo patterns with Yonni. Let's talk about gear. Let's talk about gear.

• 24:57Speaker 05

  For gear talk, each of us has a gear review for you today. Seth, start us off.

• 25:02Speaker 07

  All right. The piece of gear I'm talking about today is this right here. Ski goggles.

• 25:10Speaker 07

  It's something that probably a lot of hunters don't think about carrying with them.

• 25:14Speaker 05

  No. You're not a skier, are you?

• 25:17Speaker 07

  I've never skied before and I probably never will.

• 25:19Speaker 05

  Not a snowboarder?

• 25:20Speaker 07

  Not a snowboarder.

• 25:22Speaker 04

  God, that's, that's a long time ago without skiing for living in the mountain west, the inner mountain west.

• 25:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's just, I just do other things.

• 25:31Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, I hear you. We were talking before the show started about things that you end up having to do as an adult.

• 25:39Speaker 05

  And I think at a certain point Seth, it like becomes a thing like, I'm not a skier. I'm just never going to ski. And so like,

• 25:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, I've just like,

• 25:47Speaker 05

  More incentive to not go skiing.

• 25:49Speaker 07

  Well, I've gotten to the point where I'm like, I'm never gonna, I'm never gonna invest in, like I could go buy a bunch of like, Rapple allures or something. I'd rather do that than buy skis, whatever.

• 26:01Speaker 05

  So why do you own ski goggles?

• 26:02Speaker 07

  Ski goggles. Investment. How's your portfolio Seth?

• 26:06Speaker 04

  Great. I just got some Rapple allures.

• 26:09Speaker 07

  A bunch of DT10s.

• 26:10Speaker 05

  A lot of shad raps. Still in the box.

• 26:14Speaker 07

  So, uh, ski goggles, I use them, um, a lot of times in the winter, like if there's snow on the ground when I'm hunting and it's blowing snow.

• 26:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm tracking on that for sure.

• 26:25Speaker 07

  Eastern Montana, when it's super windy, no snow on the ground and you're just, I one time, Was walking with the wind at my back on a real windy day and I was just in a bunch of dusty type ground and like

• 26:39Speaker 05

  It's catching

• 26:39Speaker 07

  You get like an Eddie in front of your face and you're just eating dust all of it. So yeah. Ski goggles for that. And then anytime you're on a skiff in colder weather or rainy weather.

• 26:52Speaker 07

  There's a picture on here, Phil, of me in a skiff in Alaska. Um, wearing these same ski goggles. It was raining, you know, 10 minutes before this photo was taken. We were on a blacktail hunt up in Alaska.

• 27:07Speaker 05

  Keeping your forehead warm.

• 27:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, just, just, I wear them all the time.

• 27:12Speaker 05

  It's like listen to Bubba Gump talk about shrimp over there.

• 27:14Speaker 07

  Yep, ski goggles.

• 27:16Speaker 05

  Cal, where do you stand on ski goggles for dogs when they're, when they're hunting?

• 27:22Speaker 04

  Boy, I, I, I think they can be a good idea.

• 27:27Speaker 05

  Just snort everywhere then?

• 27:28Speaker 04

  No. You know, these seasons vary so much for us when we were like really getting after it. The amount of doctoring of her eyeballs that was going on every day was pretty intense there for a while. And I was like, I am gonna get this dog. Uh, doggles as, as some call them.

• 27:49Speaker 05

  And, and is that, are those made for dogs or do you just use like Seth's pair?

• 27:53Speaker 04

  No, there, there's a couple of companies out there, you know, and cause it like started in the tactical world. And then, um, of course became hip, you know, those tactical things become so hip that we have to have them. But, um, and then like, you know, folks who use dogs for crane hunts.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  It's good eye pro for them because cranes can lash out at dogs eyeballs. Um, but yeah, once you get late in the season and your dog's been running hard through like sorghum and really abrasive grasses. They lose all the hair around their eyeballs and then, uh, and their cheekbones and stuff start looking real, real tough.

• 28:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:34Speaker 04

  And, um, they just get a lot of seeds and dust and.

• 28:39Speaker 05

  You're hunting around cat tails and those things explode?

• 28:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. So it, it's not, it's not a, like, I don't look at it and be like, ugh, poser.

• 28:48Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 28:49Speaker 04

  Like it, there's, there's a, there's a legit use case. Um.

• 28:55Speaker 04

  And yeah, I mean, yeah, I, I, yeah. It's not like your weekend warrior type of thing. Like dogs handle that stuff just fine.

• 29:04Speaker 05

  You approve?

• 29:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 05

  Alright Cal, what are you reviewing for Gear Talk?

• 29:09Speaker 04

  Um, well, I had a couple of directions I was gonna go.

• 29:14Speaker 05

  He's reaching in his pockets. He's deciding as he rifles through his blue jeans pockets right now. Let's see what he's gonna pull out.

• 29:22Speaker 04

  Did we lose it?

• 29:22Speaker 05

  Now he's looking on the ground.

• 29:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:24Speaker 05

  There it is, his keys? Nope, his hoodie. No, he's reaching past that.

• 29:29Speaker 04

  I wanted to find something economical.

• 29:31Speaker 05

  Okay, he said, set his sunglasses aside, it's not those. What do we got in Cal's hoodie pocket?

• 29:37Speaker 04

  If his hoodie can talk, buddy. Uh, Phelps Predator Call?

• 29:42Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 29:43Speaker 04

  So, I, in all my FHF bino harnesses, of which I have three now. Orange one, camel one, another camel one, one set up for archery, one set up for rifle, you know? Um, I either have a external read cow elk call, or a predator call.

• 30:03Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:03Speaker 04

  Um, and they're, the, either one has year-round applications. Cause you can use that external read cow call as a predator call. Uh, but it's also good at just like stopping deer. You know, like on a pretty good ratio.

• 30:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:18Speaker 04

  If you bump something, it'll stop and take a look, and you can do the same thing with a predator call. Predator call, you get like one shot at it, cause if you reef on it too much, you can just blow all the deer out of the country. Um.

• 30:29Speaker 05

  Give me an example of what it would sound like if you were trying to stop a deer. Right now.

• 30:35Speaker 04

  Oh, I'd just go.

• 30:38Speaker 05

  Okay, that works.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  And yeah, it, it, it can work. Um, but then, for, for bringing in the critters.

• 30:46Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:47Speaker 04

  I suggest, like, crying like a baby.

• 30:52Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 30:52Speaker 04

  In your brain. This is how I do all my calling. I have like the conversation in my head. Um, motivation, you could call it, but I am like, a baby human child, left out on the prairie.

• 31:07Speaker 04

  Exposed to the elements.

• 31:10Speaker 05

  That'll, that'll get them covered.

• 31:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:16Speaker 05

  I, I hunted with some, uh, very good predator hunters when I worked at Peterson's Hunting Magazine. And this was, uh, a decade ago and it was around the time when I feel like e-callers had hit their peak. Um, like everyone either had one or was about to get one. Uh, and they had now flipped it to the other way where they were like, mouth calls are now the way to go. Because every coyote in the country has heard that e-call sequence of a dying jackrabbit or the tweety bird, whatever. Uh, so they liked the, the variety you could give yourself with a mouth call.

• 31:49Speaker 04

  Yep. I mean, the variety in, in all things, I, um,

• 31:55Speaker 04

  used to just, archery elk hunting used to be every, everything to me for, you know, uh, in between live dogs. In that dead dog time, you get real obsessed with the things that you, you're not normally doing when you have good dogs. And, uh, I would buy, I would often replace my, my cow calls, but I would buy one brand new cow call that I had never used before. Um, just betting on the fact that it's going to have some pitch tone, uh, that I wasn't, uh, currently in my repertoire and nobody else was using. So like, I used a, like a big woodswise cow call that I found in some bargain bin someplace.

• 32:36Speaker 05

  Uh, You felt like that didn't sound like much else that dudes were blowing on.

• 32:40Speaker 04

  Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It was totally different. Yep.

• 32:44Speaker 05

  All right. For gear talk today, I am reviewing, uh, gas cans. I haven't owned a good gas can in my adult life. Uh, the only good gas cans I've ever used were pre 2009 gas cans, which is when the new EPA regulations went into effect. And I was trying to recently explain to someone that old gas cans are something that sons are going to fight over in the will someday. Just because they were, they were such superior products.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 33:09Speaker 05

  Like 15 years ago. Uh, so here is my plea to the audience. If you know about a good gas can, email radio at the meat eater.com. With the subject line gas can, I'm going to compile your recommendations and then I will share them on the next episode that I host in two weeks. There has to be a good gas can on the market. If you know what that is, please email me so I can share that with everyone. And then we're not going to be pissed off anymore when we have to like fill the snow blower or the boat or the side by side with gas. Again, that's radio at the mead eater.com subject line gas can. Do either of you boys have a good gas can recommendation?

• 33:46Speaker 07

  Well, my, my little hot tip is you buy a gas can and they all come with the fricking BS safety.

• 33:52Speaker 05

  That's the 2009 problem.

• 33:54Speaker 07

  I've never spilt spilt more gas in my life.

• 33:56Speaker 05

  Agreed.

• 33:57Speaker 07

  Until I switched to that system.

• 33:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's so true.

• 34:01Speaker 05

  That, that thing, it like either wants to give you all the gas or none of the gas.

• 34:05Speaker 07

  Yeah. Um, but you can go to like a hardware store or something and buy like, or go on Amazon or whatever. Um, and buy like aftermarket gas can nozzles that are just like, doesn't have all the BS.

• 34:18Speaker 05

  Maybe that's the hot tip.

• 34:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 04

  For whatever reason, the high volume cans never work, but I have a low volume. Uh, you know, it's like a half gallon for, uh, that I just tote around for the generator when I throw it in the, in the camper. And that's got the weird like no drip, uh, plunger deal. You know, you hook it on the edge and, and that thing works great until it sticks on occasion. And then you're just like,

• 34:50Speaker 07

  I had this happen the other day.

• 34:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:51Speaker 07

  I had some, some gas in the gas can that I was like, if it's probably going to sit here for a while. So I'm just going to dump it in my truck. Uh huh. That way it gets used and

• 35:00Speaker 05

  I'm frightened to put gas in my truck with any of my gas.

• 35:03Speaker 07

  Half of it went down the side of my truck and made a big old puddle on the sidewalk.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 35:09Speaker 05

  Someone listening though, they know about what the best gas can is. Uh, maybe it's like 20 of you.

• 35:13Speaker 08

  Oh, we got Vermont millennial homesteaders is suggesting stents no spill.

• 35:19Speaker 08

  But can build up some pressure when you first open.

• 35:21Speaker 05

  Okay, again, radio at the meat eater dot com, subject line, gas can.

• 35:26Speaker 04

  Makes you feel like you're gonna die in a tragic gasoline fight accident.

• 35:30Speaker 05

  Yes. If I was running for president, that's just something I'd campaign on is old gas cans. And I think that issue alone would win me a few states.

• 35:38Speaker 04

  Oh, I guarantee it would.

• 35:39Speaker 05

  People want, people want a good gas can.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then you could be like, and what's the deal with these new six pack holders? Well, can't we go back to the old?

• 35:49Speaker 05

  That'd give me a couple more states alone. All right, let's take a break for some listener feedback. Phil, what's the chat have to say?

• 35:56Speaker 08

  A Titus asks, hey, Cal, have you ever chuck her hunted in Montana or heard of anyone doing it?

• 36:03Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, chuck her are listed as a game bird in the state of Montana.

• 36:08Speaker 08

  Have you ever done it?

• 36:10Speaker 04

  No.

• 36:13Speaker 05

  Little devil birds.

• 36:15Speaker 08

  All right. Nate is asking for a good venison breakfast sausage recipe. Last attempt was a 75 25 mix with some pre-made country sausage.

• 36:23Speaker 05

  Nate, we have a recipe on our website. It's literally called the only breakfast sausage recipe that you'll ever need. It's from Danielle Pruitt. Uh, go check that out and make that your starting base. And then, uh, if you want to make adjustments from there, like it needs more fennel, needs a little more spice. Uh, I think try to start with that recipe and see where that gets you. Seth, Cal?

• 36:43Speaker 04

  I think that's great. I like sage is like the only ingredient in breakfast sausage that like ha- like I want in my breakfast sausage.

• 36:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, I've, I've made breakfast sausage a couple of times and it just never turned out like I wanted it to.

• 37:00Speaker 05

  Danielle Pruitt's recipe, the only venison breakfast sausage recipe you need.

• 37:04Speaker 04

  Danielle is, is just very, very pro. Like she tests everything and you know, she's like, yeah, professional. Like very good. Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 08

  Keegan, this is a question for Seth, I'd say, asks, what batteries slash tricks does the crew use to keep camera equipment charged throughout long hunts?

• 37:24Speaker 07

  Uh, I'd carry a lot of batteries.

• 37:28Speaker 07

  There's not a whole lot you can do out there as far as charging. I mean, some, it depends. Some spots like if we get flown in somewhere and we have like a plane where you can haul gear, we'll like drop a generator at a spot and like we've done that in Alaska, um, where we can like after a couple of days come back and charge, but it's just like on a on a long hunt when you don't have any access to charging stuff, you just gotta carry a bunch of batteries.

• 37:56Speaker 05

  The, the cold obviously messes with your batteries. Does the heat mess with your batteries as well?

• 38:02Speaker 07

  Well, they, no, I've never had heat. I've had heat mess with cameras, just overheating cameras, but not batteries.

• 38:08Speaker 05

  It's not like my cell phone doesn't like to charge if it's too hot.

• 38:11Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 38:11Speaker 05

  Wasn't sure if your, uh, your camera had similar issues.

• 38:14Speaker 07

  I've never run into that.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  No, I, there were all these rechargeable batteries. They, they all just slowly degenerate over time. So even if you're stockpiling fresh batteries, if you're on day seven, eight, whatever, you pop that thing in and it's going to be 20% under what you think it should be, right? Don't you think?

• 38:39Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 38:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. So.

• 38:40Speaker 07

  Yeah. And like you said, if it's cold, it's just a whole different story.

• 38:44Speaker 05

  Bill, let's do one more.

• 38:46Speaker 08

  Uh, sure thing. Brad asks, what's the most disappointing loss of meat you've had due to spoilage or a broken freezer?

• 38:55Speaker 05

  Hmm. Uh, for me, it was I, I killed the deer a few years ago in Wyoming that had CWD. So that wasn't spoilage or a broken freezer, but like I had gotten all the boneless meat home. It was ready to, uh, to get like put away nicely in the freezer and, and, uh, be eaten and processed. And then, uh, well, yeah, when the CWD came back positive, uh, it, it just went into a landfill. No one in the office was interested in, in giving it to their dogs. I don't, I don't blame them. Um, so that was, that was a bummer to, uh, to lose a deer to CWD. What do you guys got?

• 39:30Speaker 04

  Um, I'm trying to, I've never lost a freezer, knock on wood. I lost a. Yeah, I mean, the most disappointing by far and away. I was gonna, this, just a funny story popped in my head when we were like very, very poor dirtbag college kids. I was like guiding and building houses and going to school and, and my mom gave me like a five bone rib roast for, it must have been my birthday. So a prime rib, beef fatty beef, prime rib. And somebody unplugged the freezer, probably to do something stupid and never plugged it back in and,

• 40:15Speaker 04

  and I had um, antelope in there too, and that, that was just like a horrible gut punch. At that time in life, I called Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks and was like, hey, I'm gonna, um, dump a bunch of game meat in the landfill, wanted to let you know about that. And they're like, oh, okay. And, and they recorded it so I wouldn't get dinged with wanton waste. And yeah, it's like, so you're just gonna toss the whole freezer? I was like, no, no, I'm cleaning it out. And, and yeah, it was, but it was gross. It was like five inches of blood in the bottom of that thing, stanky blood. And then, I, I lost a bull elk in New Mexico a handful of years ago. It was the only time I've personally had,

• 40:59Speaker 04

  at that point, it was the only time I personally had had a um, elk tag in New Mexico and made, um,

• 41:09Speaker 04

  what turned out to be a good shot on this bull, but I was so convinced it was a bad shot. I kind of talked myself out of, um, really properly following this thing up, even though I had, I'd done 95% of the work. And it was, it was a horrific loss of, uh, of the meat and just, uh, challenged to myself of like, you know better, you always do better. Why'd you stop this time? It was horrible. Was there any meat recovered? Zero. Damn. Yeah, I mean, it was like a hundred degree New Mexico hunt and, and, um,

• 41:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, man. I mean, I I basically process that whole thing. Like going, something on here is going to be good. And it was just

• 42:01Speaker 07

  It wasn't.

• 42:02Speaker 04

  Just all sour.

• 42:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, a few years back, I was hunting in Nebraska for whitetails and shot a buck with my bow. And I I ended up getting one lung and liver. But it like ran off into this cornfield and I waited couple hours and then after the morning hunt went in there. Ended up jumping that buck. He was still alive. And it ran into the corn more and and I was like, I'm gonna wait till just back out, wait till the next day. Um. Went back in in there the next morning and um. I I went and sat in the tree stand that morning.

• 42:45Speaker 07

  Um, just to see what happened, you know, what was going on and then got down, I was with some buddies too. So after the morning hunt got down and and started looking for this buck. And um, I noticed like some bald eagles and crows sitting in this tree along the cornfield. I like made a mental note of that and uh, that morning I'd heard coyotes yipping over in that area too, and I walked over there. Um, and just found the buck and it was like devoured by coyotes.

• 43:15Speaker 04

  Pooped on and devoured.

• 43:17Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 43:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 07

  Like in 24 hours, just completely devoured. Well, we got some neck meat, a little bit of backstrap off of it, but

• 43:24Speaker 04

  No fun.

• 43:24Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 04

  All right, moving on, our next segment is Throwback Thursday.

• 43:30Speaker 09

  Throwback on a Thursday morning. Brody, take me back to 1974. Throwback, I can't believe it.

• 43:43Speaker 07

  That's great.

• 43:44Speaker 09

  Steven Brody are old as shit.

• 43:48Speaker 04

  Throwback Thursday is where we look at old hunting and fishing pictures of the crew. Cal, start us off.

• 43:55Speaker 04

  What picture did Phil send? Okay.

• 43:57Speaker 05

  There we go.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Um, this is way back in my youth. Look at that.

• 44:02Speaker 05

  How long?

• 44:02Speaker 04

  Look at that. Well, still, well, you can see the male pattern baldness, but it's still, still rocking some hair. Um, this would have been probably 2009, 2000. Yeah. Right in there, 2009, I bet. Um.

• 44:20Speaker 05

  Back when gas cans were still good.

• 44:22Speaker 04

  Back and gas cans were still good. This is, uh, in the Bob Marshall. That's, uh, the cabin at Cabin Creek. And we were in there hunting grizzly bears for, uh, a combined grizzly bear study. Um, uh, and those are two old now dead dogs, Scout and Fish, the big fish and Scout. Um, real good dogs and, and we, uh, we got charged by a grizzly bear on this one. And, um, this was like a light charge, like we were both very startled to see each other. And he bailed off the hill and, and probably stopped at like the 50 yard mark and then spun and, and bailed, but giant grizzly bear. Um.

• 45:06Speaker 05

  How many bears have you been charged by in your life?

• 45:08Speaker 04

  Three.

• 45:09Speaker 05

  Was this number one?

• 45:10Speaker 04

  This was number two. Hello.

• 45:12Speaker 08

  Oh, the one Corinne calls me. She, Corinne, this show has been going on for over a year at the same time, the same day of the week. And Corinne has no idea. She, so it's, Corinne, I love you. Figure out the schedule.

• 45:28Speaker 05

  She wants to participate in Throwback Thursday. Maybe answer Phil and see what she's got to say.

• 45:32Speaker 04

  Maybe she's just excited because of that handsome dude up there on the screen. I'll go out and see who it was. Um, but, uh, the cool deal is, so we did the rest of our big, huge loop that day and then came back. Um, at the, the end of the, you know, in the waning hours of the night and, um, the cabin and outhouse and everything had been rubbed by.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  I can only assume that bear, right? Cause that would make it more powerful. Uh, but, uh, so I had big grizz scratches down the doors.

• 46:06Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 46:07Speaker 04

  And then, uh, Ed, you could, we were pulling hair off of the logs and, and stuff, but.

• 46:13Speaker 05

  Was his objective to get in there, you think?

• 46:15Speaker 04

  I think his objective was to be like, I wasn't that scared.

• 46:18Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 46:19Speaker 04

  Swear to God, and this is my area. Cause I mean, it was early spring. You can't tell by that photo, but you know, it was like, we were the only people in there. All, all the passes were all snowed over and stuff. It was pretty spectacular.

• 46:35Speaker 05

  Very good. Phil, you're up next for Throwback Thursday. What do you got?

• 46:38Speaker 08

  Okay, here we go. Um, this was tough for me. Uh, I was just telling Spencer, my mom is, uh, in Europe and I, I texted her to send me pictures because I, I do not have any. So this is, uh, that is Mount Adams in Washington state. This is, uh, Taklak Lake. In the Gifford Pincho National Forest. This is between Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams. This is kind of our go-to camping spot, uh, growing up. Um, I think this is probably 2005, if I had to say. Uh, there's me on the right there, looking good. Um.

• 47:13Speaker 04

  Wait, which one are you?

• 47:16Speaker 08

  And then the Mariners hat. Um, yeah, I mean, just, I mean, obviously gorgeous view of the mountain. Um, and then we, we do some fishing. Here, there's me in my jean shorts and my Star Wars shirt.

• 47:26Speaker 05

  Give us a fishing report.

• 47:27Speaker 08

  Uh, well, that's, that was my next point. If you see in all of these pictures, it's just me with a rod. I actually don't have any fish in my hands. Why is that? I couldn't tell you. You know, you can, you can do the investigating yourself. Um, but, uh, yeah, this is, these are the only pictures I think I have of me fishing, um, at all, growing up.

• 47:46Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 47:47Speaker 08

  So.

• 47:47Speaker 04

  You didn't stick with it, Phil.

• 47:49Speaker 08

  I didn't stick with it. I, I enjoyed it, uh, uh, plenty, but you know, camping was time for me to, to hike and canoe. I didn't, I didn't really want to touch the icky fish. That was my.

• 47:59Speaker 04

  I gotta say you age very well, Phil.

• 48:01Speaker 08

  Oh, that's so.

• 48:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. Uh, and you appear to be holding the fishing rod the right way, uh, which I just witnessed some folks in Northern Californ- Northern California this last weekend, uh, not even having that step right.

• 48:13Speaker 04

  Oh, spinning reel up?

• 48:14Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 48:15Speaker 04

  Oh, you hate to see it.

• 48:16Speaker 05

  Which, uh, we also had folks sending us, I don't know, probably a year or two ago in a sporting goods store printable ad, uh, that someone was holding a fishing rod wrong.

• 48:26Speaker 04

  Oh God.

• 48:27Speaker 05

  Very satisfying.

• 48:28Speaker 08

  But yeah, I think they, I think they stocked that, that lake with, uh, with rainbows, but there's some, some cutthroat in there as well. And I know this because I just looked it up on the Skamania County,

• 48:38Speaker 05

  um, Hmm.

• 48:38Speaker 08

  Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife website.

• 48:42Speaker 05

  Good. Now we know Phil's, uh, street cred for, uh,

• 48:45Speaker 08

  That's right.

• 48:45Speaker 05

  hunting and fishing. I like it.

• 48:46Speaker 08

  It's not nonexistent.

• 48:48Speaker 05

  All right. I'm going to go next. Um, this is me probably like 1995, 1996, three or four years old. And I am at, uh, Merryweather Marine in Yankton, South Dakota. Um, Merryweather Marine is a boat shop. And one time they had a motor, uh, that they were working on where they found a bull snake wrapped around the prop. Uh, and that snake's name was Bumpy. The thing had a, had a messed up skeleton. It, it couldn't move correctly. Uh, I don't think they felt good about releasing it again. So they kept this snake as a pet. Uh, and, and whenever we were in Yankton, I would go, uh, see the thing and, and hang out with, uh, with Bumpy. Uh, the, the ironic thing is, is I hate snakes now. I don't know what happened between this moment and that moment,

• 49:33Speaker 05

  uh, where I could like happily handle a bull snake. And now if I am walking out in the woods mushroom hunting and I see one 10 feet away, slithering away from me who's clearly scared, I will just get shivers up and down my whole body. I, I can't,

• 49:46Speaker 08

  I'm not a big snake guy either.

• 49:47Speaker 05

  Explain it. Um, uh, it makes me feel the worst. Um, one, that I like, I'm scared. And then two, that I, I don't like that I feel scared over a dang snake who doesn't want anything to do with me.

• 50:02Speaker 08

  Big old brain, opposable thumbs.

• 50:04Speaker 05

  Yes. Uh, but back then I was all about it. I was, I was a big fan of Bumpy. So we'd go hang out with-

• 50:09Speaker 08

  Sight that's effective at multiple ranges.

• 50:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:11Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 50:12Speaker 05

  It's, uh, it's totally unreasonable. Uh, but I, I did not possess that fear at that moment.

• 50:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's, that's a good memory, man. That's Americana right there. Like, I'm not gonna

• 50:23Speaker 05

  Merry weather marine.

• 50:24Speaker 04

  Make the same comment I made about Phil.

• 50:27Speaker 05

  Please don't.

• 50:29Speaker 04

  The, I get the same like mammalian reflex, you know, I'm like, oh, danger.

• 50:35Speaker 05

  About a snake.

• 50:35Speaker 04

  Yep, but then I'm like, I'm gonna catch it or check it out.

• 50:40Speaker 07

  That's built in.

• 50:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:42Speaker 07

  When you see a snake.

• 50:43Speaker 05

  I would, I would like to be interested in them enough to like pick one up and really uh mess with the thing before letting it go. Cause I, I have that instinct with frogs and salamanders, um like totally love handling them and encountering them. Not snakes though. Alright Phil, or excuse me Seth, Seth, you are last. What do you got for Throwback Thursday?

• 51:02Speaker 07

  Oh, let's see. We have three generations of Morse's here.

• 51:07Speaker 05

  Oh, very nice.

• 51:08Speaker 07

  This is on my grand, my grandfather on the left, um called, used to call him pops. He's no longer with us, but um.

• 51:16Speaker 04

  Doing a little catch and release.

• 51:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, you know, my, this is how you're supposed to hold a trout by the gills.

• 51:22Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 51:23Speaker 07

  Um, but no, this is up in Maine. My grand, grandparents, uh they were school teachers and uh in the summertime when they were off, they would, they would uh be camp counselors up in Maine.

• 51:35Speaker 04

  Oh, nice.

• 51:36Speaker 07

  So they ended up buying a place up there and I spent most of my childhood um going to Maine every summer.

• 51:42Speaker 05

  Hmm, very cool.

• 51:44Speaker 07

  And uh, yeah, it's kinda where I like learned how to drive a boat. That, that boat, that little land on the right there was like the first boat I ever drove and, and learned how to, you know, handle myself in a boat and learned how to fish and.

• 51:57Speaker 05

  Why, it would be nice to have ski goggles.

• 51:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly.

• 52:00Speaker 05

  Uh, give us a fishing report for that lake.

• 52:02Speaker 07

  Um, so this lake, it's, it's a small lake. Um, they call them ponds up there. Um, so.

• 52:08Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, Shiloh Pond, that's, that's Maine, right? But that thing ain't a pond.

• 52:11Speaker 04

  Oh yeah.

• 52:12Speaker 05

  I, I mean like traditionally someone looking at me like that's a dang lake.

• 52:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, like, yeah, yeah. Um, this is the Belgrade Lakes region in Maine and uh. Um, this was, it's, I would love, I've never fished this, this lake with electronics. Like we, it was purely visual, like go to spots where you could see rocks, catch small mouth. Go to spots where you could see weeds, catch large mouth, fish structure, fish like flip docks. Um, go out in deep water and just sink a worm and float for hours until you finally hit the school of, of white perch, you know? Like that's the kind of fishing we did, very simple. Um, and I haven't fished in years, but it'd be fun to go back with like electronics and just see like what's going. Like what, what was, what was I missing back then, you know?

• 53:02Speaker 07

  Um, but yeah, that's where I cut my teeth on bass fishing and we used to, I managed to fish just all day out there, just hours. Very good.

• 53:10Speaker 04

  I like pops rocking the action slacks.

• 53:12Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah. Oh. And, and New Balance, the gray New Balance sneakers was, you know. Hmm. Classic. Made in Maine, it was like every, every old timer in Maine had a pair of New Balance sneakers. Perfect. Yeah. Very authentic.

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• 55:55Speaker 05

  Joining us on the line last is Kip Adams, the Chief Conservation Officer at the National Deer Association. Kip is here to give us an EHD report for deer in each region. Kip, welcome to the show.

• 56:08Speaker 10

  Hey, thanks for having me, Spencer. Good to see you guys.

• 56:11Speaker 05

  Good to see you. Good to see you too, Kip. First thing, Kip, explain what EHD is.

• 56:16Speaker 10

  EHD stands for Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease. It's a viral disease of deer. It's probably the most common disease that whitetails get. There's a few other deer species and some livestock species that can get it as well. But from a hunter's standpoint, it's typically a disease we think of late summer when you start finding dead deer near water sources.

• 56:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, what are some of the signs that we can look for to determine that a deer died from EHD or maybe something else?

• 56:45Speaker 10

  Yeah, since it is a virus and it is a hemorrhaging disease, we often can see, you know, like red puffy eyes, thick tongue, the rumen can get all messed up. From a hunter's standpoint, though, basically, these are the deer that because they have fever, they end up near water sources. So we find them dead in ponds and ditches and creeks and the likes.

• 57:07Speaker 05

  Why is it that some years and regions have a lot of EHD while others don't?

• 57:13Speaker 10

  Well, it's because the virus is carried by noceums, you know, those little biting midges that drive us crazy in the summer. Years of drought sees deer get sucked into these water sources. And that's also years where we often have a lot of the vector of the midges that are their carryness. So when we have a drought, we have dry areas, deer get in and around these areas, makes it much easier for the midges who carry the disease, or you know, to bite a deer that has it and then share that with another deer. So basically, deer are congregated in areas that make it perfect for the noceums to bite them and then transfer it from deer to deer.

• 57:49Speaker 05

  Is there anything that landowners can do to protect herds from EHD?

• 57:55Speaker 10

  Well, not a lot. The perfect breeding grounds for these midges are the muddy areas around dried up water sources. So in areas where we have a lot of rain and water sources are full, we don't tend to see a bad hemorrhagic disease years. But because of the droughts and deer are congregated, then you have more of those exposed mud flats, that makes it way worse. So from a landowner end, in many cases, there's not a lot that they can do unless they have access to management of some of these areas. And think of, you know, like cattle ranchers. Cattle ranchers that let cattle into ponds, those are terrible areas in bad hemorrhagic disease years because of all the mud that's right in and around them and the cattle disturbing that. In large part, though, Spencer, there's not a whole

• 58:40Speaker 10

  lot that we can do to stop this. We can react if you find a bunch of dead deer, you know, that year maybe reduce an antlerless harvest if necessary. But as far as specific things we can do to try to safeguard against the disease, there's really nothing we can do.

• 58:57Speaker 05

  Okay, let's go region by region to talk about EHD reports in 2025. Starting with the Northeast, what have you heard there?

• 59:05Speaker 10

  Well, there's at least five states in the Northeast that have confirmed presence so far. And basically, this is worse in years where you have a really wet spring, followed by droughts. So droughts are bad for this anyway, but they're even worse if you start that off with a really wet spring because that allows more of the noceums to breed. So the Northeast, it was extremely wet in April and May, then it's had almost no rain since. So, uh, the kind of the mid-Atlantic region, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and New York have thus confirmed it. And it's pretty early for like, this is at the beginning of the hemorrhagic disease season. And we're seeing a bunch of it already in the Northeast. So, uh,

• 59:49Speaker 10

  things are still really dry. It's set up to be a really, really bad year for this here in the Northeast.

• 59:54Speaker 04

  But that's not like, uh, don't go to Pennsylvania thing, right? That can just be localized in certain areas of the state.

• 1:00:02Speaker 10

  Yeah, you're exactly right, Cal. And the thing with hemorrhagic disease is, first of all, not all deer that get the disease die from it. Some will live, and if they live, they develop antibodies against it. Um, the ones that, uh, that die, it tends to be very localized. So like, I'm in northern Pennsylvania. Fortunately, there has been no disease in my area. However, you know, 20 miles down the road, it can hit and people can lose a bunch of deer. So, uh, you're right. It is very specific, very localized, uh, where deer get hit hard by it.

• 1:00:33Speaker 04

  And just nasty too. Like if you're on site when this is happening, it is really brutal.

• 1:00:41Speaker 05

  Uh, Kip, you had mentioned, uh, sorry, go ahead.

• 1:00:44Speaker 10

  Oh, go ahead. No, sorry, Spencer.

• 1:00:46Speaker 05

  You mentioned that not every deer dies who gets EHD. Uh, if you were to kill a survivor, uh, how could you confirm that that deer maybe once had EHD but lived through it?

• 1:00:56Speaker 10

  Uh, one of the symptoms are they get sloughing of the hooves. So the incubation period is very short, like five to nine days. So if a deer's gonna die from it this year, it's gonna be done. You're not, you're not gonna be shooting it in, you know, bow or rifle season. But if you do shoot a deer this hunting season and you look at the hooves, and you can see like growth interruptions or where it looks like the hooves are sloughing off, that's a sure sign that that deer had the disease, survived it, and then continued to live, you know, and start to grow again.

• 1:01:26Speaker 05

  Wow. And to be clear, that, that deer is still safe to eat, right, Kip?

• 1:01:30Speaker 10

  Yes, it is. Yep, absolutely.

• 1:01:32Speaker 05

  Okay, what are we looking at for EHD in the South this year?

• 1:01:36Speaker 10

  Well, it's a, we see six states so far to South that have confirmed it, I'd be in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. And uh, the South has had this disease forever. And I vividly remember when I was doing my undergraduate work at Penn State, you know, we got to hemorrhagic disease. The professor said, this is a disease of deer in the Southeast. Moving on. And that was it.

• 1:02:02Speaker 10

  That is very different today. It is today, this disease is all across the US. It's up into Canada. Basically, it's warmer, so the midges just live in a lot of places they didn't used to. So uh, but the Southeast has had it the longest, so those deer are more used to it. And basically, they have it everywhere in the Southeast every year, but those deer are not hit very hard. So usually not many of those deer die. In the Northeast where our deer are more naive, it kills a snout out of them. But uh, the Southeast, six states so far, probably is not going to be nearly as bad there as other parts of the country, partly just because they've, they've been exposed to it for so long, they're just more used to it.

• 1:02:41Speaker 05

  Uh, moving to the Midwest, I've seen the most EHD reports out of Ohio this year. What are you hearing from there and the rest of the region?

• 1:02:50Speaker 10

  Five states in the Midwest so far have confirmed it. That's Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri. And of those, you are right, so far it has been the worst in Ohio. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of dead deer uh, in Ohio. Um, it's all throughout the state. The Southeast part of Ohio has been hit worse than anywhere else, kind of right across the border from West Virginia, and not all that far from Pennsylvania, but that region of the country has been hit far harder so far than any place else.

• 1:03:20Speaker 05

  Uh, finally, what do we have for EHD in the West?

• 1:03:24Speaker 10

  Two states so far, Idaho and Washington have both confirmed it. The West typically doesn't get that bad of hemorrhagic disease. Fingers crossed it'll be that way again this year, because in addition to whitetails, mule deer can get it, elk can get it, although elk are less susceptible to it, but pronghorn and big horn sheep can also get it. So because of that, you know, the West is especially sensitive to the disease, but thus far it's been pretty light out there and hopefully first frost comes in a hurry, that ends the midges, that ends the disease season. So the first frost can't come quickly enough.

• 1:03:58Speaker 05

  Last thing Kip, on a science front, is there anything encouraging you can tell us about how biologists are working to reduce EHD in America's favorite game animal?

• 1:04:08Speaker 10

  Well, there's a lot of research just looking at doing a better job predicting, you know, when it's going to be bad. Because it's a virus, there's really nothing that we can do to protect deer against it, but there's definitely some ways, you know, that we can at least predict if we think it's going to be bad. Hence, when I mentioned earlier, you know, it's worse in drought years, and especially worse if it's preceded by a wet spring. So there's a lot of disease folks just taking a look at all those factors, trying to combine them, just to be able to help predict a little more for hunters across the US. I'm trying to understand if they're likely to have a bad hemorrhagic disease year.

• 1:04:45Speaker 05

  All right, Kip, thanks for fighting for deer. Thanks for the EHD reports and thanks for joining us. Thanks.

• 1:04:51Speaker 10

  All right, great to see you guys. Good luck this season.

• 1:04:53Speaker 05

  You too. You boys run across many EHD deaths in your day? Hmm, handful, yeah.

• 1:05:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, the, what Kip was saying there about, you know, drought years and then we would see it also when you get like a little, just a little bit of rain in August, and the, those midges would just explode. And I had a-

• 1:05:20Speaker 04

  Way back when I used to, uh, we, we never guided archery, uh, deer or, or antelope. But so I would take that time to go set up our outfitting camp in eastern Montana. And haul all the stuff out there, clean everything up. And it was amazing. Cause I'd be the only person archery hunting deer. And one year, there's this bachelor group, uh, eight mule deer bucks. That, um, I kept sneaking in on and, and, um, definitely flung a couple of arrows. Never, never connected, but, um. Hey, you know, had all this time to work these deer. And eventually there were six and then five and then zero. And every single one of those deer died. All of them.

• 1:06:04Speaker 05

  Damn, like while you were trying to kill one?

• 1:06:06Speaker 04

  Yes. Yep. And, um, and those are the years like where you can just smell the death. And, um, the hay, you know, hay was still, still high. Um, that last cutting hadn't come off yet and. Yeah. I mean, just, just gross.

• 1:06:22Speaker 05

  Yeah. Kip had talked about how it's especially bad if you have wet spring, dry summer. Um, similarly, it can be really bad if you have a wet year followed by a dry year. In southeastern South Dakota in 2011, we had record breaking rainfall. The Missouri river was like the highest it had been in hundreds of years or as far as back as they could look. And then 2012 was an extreme drought. So we had an extremely wet followed by extremely dry. Um, and I, I personally found probably 20 dead deer that, that summer that died from EHD. And, uh, what I'll always remember is the smell cal, just, just brutal. And you could like follow your nose right to where a dead deer would be. Um, and, and we could be catfishing, uh, on the, the Jim river in, you know, August.

• 1:07:03Speaker 05

  And you would know that like somewhere within a mile and a half of here, there are three or four dead deer from EHD right now. Um, and, and you'll just like never forget that overpowering like stench of death. Um, and, and now when I'm outside, it's like very easy to confirm like, oh, something died over there a few weeks ago. Um, because of that 2012 year finding all those EHD. Dead deer.

• 1:07:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I knew folks who would uh travel around with the with their sawzalls.

• 1:07:32Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:07:33Speaker 07

  Uh, black and black and skull cast off.

• 1:07:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, just pulling deer heads off, yeah.

• 1:07:38Speaker 07

  Um, couple of years ago, my wife shot a mule deer out in eastern Montana that the the hooves were sloughing.

• 1:07:43Speaker 05

  Was that the cactus buck?

• 1:07:44Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:07:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, I don't, I don't, you know.

• 1:07:47Speaker 05

  I think they're related, yeah, that it was cactus buck and it had the the messed up hooves.

• 1:07:51Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 1:07:52Speaker 05

  Cool buck.

• 1:07:53Speaker 07

  Real cool buck.

• 1:07:54Speaker 05

  I um, to the part of South Dakota I was hunting in that 2012, they responded um appropriately and cut back tags an enormous amount um and it sucked, but then I I personally had a theory that we were going to come out of this and be in like this golden age of whitetail hunting for that area because these deer were not being bothered for years. If there was like a one and a half year old, a two and a half year old that survived EHD um and then all of a sudden the tag count in that county went from a thousand to fifty uh those bucks just lived for a couple of years, not knowing what it was like to be hunted or bothered um so I I uh really, really enjoyed that that kept me going like, oh, man, this sucks and the deer are gone.

• 1:08:34Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:08:34Speaker 05

  But uh, there's going to be some dumb deer after this.

• 1:08:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, Randall Williams said that on his trip through Ohio, he saw like yard signs saying, "Stop the deer hunt."

• 1:08:48Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:08:48Speaker 04

  Because of EHD.

• 1:08:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Speaker 05

  It's hard to argue with those folks.

• 1:08:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, I got I have some cell cameras out in Pennsylvania right now and and uh there's some bucks that were running around that I haven't seen for a while. So, hard to say what happened. They they could still be there, but yeah, hopefully it's not that.

• 1:09:06Speaker 05

  All right, that brings us to the end of this week's show. Phil, let's get some final feedback from the chat.

• 1:09:10Speaker 04

  Sure thing. Last call for questions. Uh, this is from Nate. He says, "I am a bad cook," or "Am I a bad cook?" "Or are some birds just impossible to get the skin crispy even among the same species?"

• 1:09:24Speaker 05

  Cal, what do you got?

• 1:09:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, Cal.

• 1:09:26Speaker 04

  Very hard. I mean, you you have to dry the heck out of that bird, so um score the little fatty bits, just bit just enough to like scratch the skin and allow that moisture to come out. Um, rub a little salt on there and then hang that thing up in front of a window or even a fan and and like get it to. Desiccate a little bit. Um, and that's your, that's your best shot. There's some other, I was, I never followed up with them. I, I was talking to a food scientist, uh, super nice dude out of Oklahoma. And we were debating about, uh, baking soda as this hack for getting dry skin on birds,

• 1:10:11Speaker 04

  which is sometimes used with like big turkeys and stuff. And there, there is some food science in there. I, I'll dig that up and we'll, we'll maybe write an article or something on it.

• 1:10:21Speaker 05

  Uh, we, we were singing the praises of Danielle Pruitt earlier. She has an article on our website, themeadier.com, how, how to get perfectly crispy skin on game birds. Uh, in about 800 words there, she gives you all the details you need to know as far as how long to, uh, dry it, how much salt to apply. If you want to do a wet brine instead, uh, if you, if you're going to throw this thing in the oven and a cast iron skillet, what the temperature should be. So again, go check out Danielle's article, how to get perfectly crispy skin on game birds.

• 1:10:50Speaker 04

  But if you're talking like a quail, a dove, uh, Hungarian partridge, uh, even sharp tail grouse, all those birds are great in the deep fat fryer.

• 1:11:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:11:02Speaker 04

  And that skin's crispy.

• 1:11:03Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. What else you got, Phil?

• 1:11:06Speaker 08

  Uh, first, this is from a different Nate. He says, Spencer, my kids just picked up their 43rd, 44th, 45th, 46th and 47th junior ranger badges last week. And they also found two fossils at Badlands and got a special patch for that.

• 1:11:20Speaker 05

  Good on you, Nate. Uh, that's awesome. That's, that's good parenting. Uh, that's, that's fun for them. I bet they appreciate it now and they're going to appreciate it in the future.

• 1:11:29Speaker 08

  For sure. Uh, Ethan asks, Cal, thanks for mentioning the fawn situation I sent to you on Cal of the Wild. What sources should I send people to about CWD other than Uncle Ted? Thanks a bunch. Before you, you jump in, I will say in about a week and a half, I believe you've got a pretty all encompassing podcast that Cal is actually a part of with the Turkey Doc, Mike Chamberlain, but also his, one of his buddies, Mark Ruder, who studies, uh, like free ranging disease pathology, or it teaches it at the College of Vet Medicine at the University of Georgia. So that's a pretty wide ranging conversation that Steve has with them. But Cal, if you have anything else.

• 1:12:06Speaker 04

  I would wait for this podcast to come out because it's got the most up-to-date information on CWD and it's, if you're interested in it, it is a very good podcast. It's gonna be a great source for people to be up to date. The nuts and bolts of CWD right now is you need to turn in your information, lymph nodes, report deer that you find that you think may have died from CWD.

• 1:12:45Speaker 04

  The push is to manage like hyper-local for CWD. So if you have, let's say you have a CWD case here in Bozangels, the entire state isn't gonna start reducing deer numbers. And in fact, now, because they're trying to figure out where each county, each region, each CWD zone is on the scale of CWD on the growth scale that they can plot very effectively now.

• 1:13:26Speaker 04

  There may be instances where that data says, "Don't harvest does. We need to help the population rebound." On the other side of the scale, it could be harvest more deer, especially the bucks, don't let them go because we're gonna try to knock it down and get CWD to stabilize at ideally a lower prevalence rate. So do what they tell you to do. Don't be transporting things all over the place and disposing of spinal columns and brain buckets in places where deer can come in contact with them.

• 1:14:09Speaker 04

  Take them to a landfill, find your local Doug Durn with a good deer dumpster and get those things taken care of properly. And turn in your lymph nodes, help.

• 1:14:23Speaker 04

  Build this base for good, effective scientific management.

• 1:14:28Speaker 05

  And our last guest, Kip Adams, he's from the National Deer Association. They do a great job of having common sense takes on things like this while still balancing the science. So go check out what NDA has to say on stuff. They'll also do a nice job of explaining things in layman's terms. So Ethan's buddy could come away from that. Have a better understanding of CWD.

• 1:14:50Speaker 04

  Yep, for sure.

• 1:14:52Speaker 08

  Mogul wants to know what each of your longest hunts in the backcountry was, like the longest stretch of time you were off the grid.

• 1:14:59Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:15:00Speaker 05

  Cow, what do you got?

• 1:15:01Speaker 04

  Oh, it just makes me cry thinking about the good old days. Um, and many, many trips in that, like, probably sub 15 day range. Um, but between 10 and 15 days, like lots of those trips. And, um, you know, guiding's a little bit different where you like, you stay back, back there and then clients kind of rotate in and out. So a couple of months, um, here and there. Um, but as like, uh,

• 1:15:36Speaker 04

  good, solid, I am hunting backpack trip. Um, I would say on average, like 13 days.

• 1:15:45Speaker 05

  Hmm. I don't have any real impressive backcountry stats like cow. My longest deer hunts though, where I'm just like car camping, sleeping in a tent. Uh, Kansas, I think I went for eight days, probably like six years ago. And Wyoming, I think four years ago, I, I had eight days. Uh, sleeping in my tent, trying to kill a deer. And, uh, both of those I killed my deer. The Wyoming one, I pushed my deadline like an extra day. Like I'm going to stay one more day and then I killed one that morning. So it was very, very satisfying, uh, ending for me. Seth?

• 1:16:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, I got, uh, I think 10 days is my longest, but several, you know, eight, nine, 10 day up in Alaska, mostly, mostly those are the longer trips. So.

• 1:16:29Speaker 05

  Phil, let's do two more.

• 1:16:30Speaker 08

  All right. This is from Kyle and a different comment. He's, he says that he's a proud random old and then apologizes to me for that. As if I'm not also a proud random old. So Kyle, I'm on, I'm on your team, but he says, he's starting his fall turkey hunt this coming Monday and he tips on fall versus spring turkeys. He has a stand decoy and calls, but not sure what he should focus on. Hens and toms are allowed in Michigan. You guys do a lot of fall turkey?

• 1:16:54Speaker 05

  Any advice?

• 1:16:55Speaker 07

  I used to back in the day, back in when I was living in Pennsylvania. We used to do it, but um, we always would just find them and try and break them up and call them back in.

• 1:17:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, I've killed two fall turkeys in my life. Both times it was just opportunistic. I was deer hunting, knew there'd maybe be some turkeys nearby, spotted them, got my shotgun, went and killed one. Um, I don't have any good strategy for you though, Kyle. Cal?

• 1:17:20Speaker 04

  I think my, may have been one of my first turkeys ever, if not the first bearded hen in the fall.

• 1:17:26Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:17:27Speaker 04

  Uh, got her right in the back of the head and she was running away from me.

• 1:17:30Speaker 05

  That's perfect.

• 1:17:31Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, it, you know, fall turkeys would be targets of opportunity. That white meat's so scarce in the freezer.

• 1:17:38Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:17:39Speaker 04

  That it's like, it's real hard to pass them up if you have a, have a tag for one.

• 1:17:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, just a lot of eyeballs that time of year. They're gonna, they're gonna be in some bigger flocks. Um, so be ready to make a, a shot where they're running away in the back of the head.

• 1:17:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a lot of running involved in the fall turkey game, from what I've seen.

• 1:17:57Speaker 05

  We, we have an article on our website just called Fall Turkey Hunting Tips from Tony Peterson. Tony's one of the best dang turkey hunters I know. Uh, so I'd trust the words that he can offer you in that article. One more, Phil.

• 1:18:10Speaker 08

  Chase is going to Lake Erie next weekend for a four hour trip, two to six P M. Seth, should he target walleye, perch, or bass?

• 1:18:18Speaker 07

  Hmm. You got, if you're going to Erie, you gotta catch walleye.

• 1:18:23Speaker 05

  I like that.

• 1:18:23Speaker 07

  Yeah, there's big ones there. Um, yeah, catch some walleye.

• 1:18:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, that Erie fishing that we did too, like the dragon rapala, rapalas around, uh, was just shockingly automatic.

• 1:18:38Speaker 07

  Very productive. Yeah. And yeah, that's like historically Erie is like a trolling lake. Um, but now.

• 1:18:46Speaker 04

  There's a lack of structure, right?

• 1:18:48Speaker 07

  Yeah, and but yeah.

• 1:18:50Speaker 05

  Is there a lot of reef fishing in Erie?

• 1:18:52Speaker 07

  Well, there's a lot of like suspended fish in, in Erie. Um, but these days with forward facing sonar, um,

• 1:19:01Speaker 07

  I think that's kind of starting to shift where people are casting to them more than trolling these days. Uh, maybe not more then, but they're, they're starting to do more of that on Erie.

• 1:19:10Speaker 04

  We did a big wind drift day. Uh, a friend of mine and I, uh, this several years ago and just, uh, you know, leaded jig heads and like, you know, goofy looking, uh, plastics and just tapping the bottom on the wind drift.

• 1:19:27Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:28Speaker 04

  And, um, it was very fun because you were just constantly picking up something between like catfish, drum, walleye, bass.

• 1:19:37Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:19:37Speaker 04

  It was great.

• 1:19:38Speaker 07

  Well, there you go. Do that. Then you'll catch all kinds of different stuff. That sounds fun.

• 1:19:43Speaker 05

  All right. One last reminder, uh, the Meat Eater Christmas tour happening this December. Go to the meat eater.com slash tour for those details and pre-sale access. And while you're there, check out the tailgate tour. Uh, we got four stops left. We'd love to hang out with you guys, see you guys talk hunting, fish and everything else. All right. See you back here, same time, place next week. Bye now.

• 1:20:05Speaker 07

  Woo-hoo.

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