Ep. 795: Exploding Deer, Counting Elk, and MeatTheater | MeatEater Radio Live!

Hosts Randall Williams, Seth Morris, and Cory Calkins interview Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks biologist Franz Ingelfinger about his work monitoring elk in rural Montana, put on the inaugural performance of MeatTheater, talk with hunter Derek Demun about a particularly explosive hunt he experienced, and pit two listeners head-to-head in a Hot Tip Off. 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.

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• 2:49Speaker 03

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

• 3:12Speaker 04

  Welcome to Meat Eater Radio Live. It's 11 a.m. Mountain Time. That's 9 p.m. for our friends in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Thursday, November 20th, 2025. Wish I'd written that out instead of having to go just by the numerical slash thing.

• 3:28Speaker 05

  You nailed it.

• 3:29Speaker 04

  We're live from Meat Eater HQ in Bozeman, Montana. I'm your host, Randall, joined today by my dear friends and colleagues, Mr. Cory Calkins, Mr. Seth Morris. Howdy, folks. We've got a great show for you today. We're going to be talking to Franz Engelfinger, an elk researcher with Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks. We've got an interview with Derek DeMun, who shot an exploding deer. More on that in a bit. We've got a hot tip-off, and we're debuting a brand-new segment, very exciting stuff, folks, called Meat Theater. It's an innovative concept that I think will perform poorly, but there's a small fraction of you that will really like it.

• 4:07Speaker 05

  We're all really excited about it.

• 4:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. First things first, we need to tell you about our big Black Friday sale happening now over at First Light, FHF Gear, Phelps, DSD, and the Meat Eater stores. This is the time to get killer deals on gear from our family of brands for you and yours. Today, November 20th through December 1st, check it out.

• 4:30Speaker 04

  Pretty amazing deals, actually.

• 4:31Speaker 05

  Exciting.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  Did a little promo video yesterday for the sale and I think folks are gonna be pretty pleased with the offerings.

• 4:39Speaker 06

  Good time to knock out some Christmas shopping.

• 4:41Speaker 04

  We just bought our first Christmas presents yesterday.

• 4:43Speaker 06

  There you go.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  Trip to the bookstore.

• 4:45Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:47Speaker 06

  Gift of books. It's great.

• 4:48Speaker 05

  I believe we have books at the Meat Eater.

• 4:50Speaker 04

  We do, we do. We have cookbooks. You can also buy a digital copy of any of our Meat Eaters American History audiobooks. Wherever you get your audiobooks and support the fine publishing team here at Meat Eater. Good folks and they work hard.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  One more, one more detail here. Throughout our 12-day Black Friday sale, we have a fun little photo contest happening again. Submit your favorite hunting or fishing photos over at themeateater.com for a chance to win a $50 or $500. That's not a typo.

• 5:24Speaker 05

  That's no.

• 5:25Speaker 04

  $50 or a $500 first light gift card.

• 5:29Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 5:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's $50 daily prizes and then there's the overall $500 gift card just by submitting a photo.

• 5:36Speaker 04

  And somebody's gonna be, we'll pick the winner. Sitting high on the hog.

• 5:39Speaker 06

  There's some good photos in there already.

• 5:40Speaker 05

  I know.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've heard good things.

• 5:41Speaker 06

  I scrolled through them this morning.

• 5:42Speaker 05

  It's gonna be tough to pick a winner, but.

• 5:44Speaker 04

  Fellas, I'm happy to have you here today on another Thursday.

• 5:48Speaker 06

  Happy to be here.

• 5:49Speaker 04

  Just wondering what you've been up to recently. This is the part of the show where we discuss our, what we've been up to casually.

• 5:57Speaker 06

  I kinda can't. I can't really function mentally until I kill a deer. And that's where I'm at right now.

• 6:04Speaker 04

  Oh, so it should be a good show.

• 6:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:07Speaker 04

  Corey?

• 6:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, I killed an elk last week, which I'm pretty tickled about. He was full, so now it's time for me to go deer hunting.

• 6:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, there you go.

• 6:15Speaker 04

  That was a weird, weird bull.

• 6:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's funky. He's got five on one side and then just a big black club that hangs down on the other. I think his mother kicked him when he dropped out of her womb.

• 6:27Speaker 04

  And he's got like a real tall tine on that side as well, doesn't he?

• 6:31Speaker 05

  Want to call it his brow tine sticks up very strangely up and then the main beam just goes straight down and it's all black from just the blood, gravity falling out.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  Man.

• 6:40Speaker 05

  He's cool.

• 6:40Speaker 06

  That's cool.

• 6:41Speaker 05

  He's a snowflake. Very unique.

• 6:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 05

  And he tastes so good. Been eating him up the last couple nights.

• 6:47Speaker 06

  Hmm. Is he tender?

• 6:48Speaker 05

  Very. Yeah.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  Was he, was he young?

• 6:50Speaker 05

  I'd say he was four.

• 6:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:52Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm. If I had to guess, I'd never asked him.

• 6:55Speaker 06

  My elk is like chewing on a damn boot.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  Oh, no, really?

• 7:00Speaker 06

  I don't know why, but my goodness. You gotta get out the meat mallet if you wanna do any sort of steak.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Hmm, I did a little freezer filling of my own last night.

• 7:10Speaker 05

  Oh, last night?

• 7:10Speaker 06

  Last night?

• 7:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:12Speaker 06

  You didn't tell us about this.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  Right before I went to work, our rooster was pecking one of our other chickens to death. So I, I put her in solitary confinement to let the wound heal up.

• 7:24Speaker 06

  Hmm, I see where this is going.

• 7:26Speaker 04

  And, uh, went home last night and stuck a, stuck a little poultry in the freezer.

• 7:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's great. I love to hear that.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, and we had a better rooster that I really liked. And then Snort killed that rooster. And then when Snort killed that rooster, this imposter took his throne. And learned to crow and do all the rooster things, but I've never really felt any affection towards him.

• 7:51Speaker 06

  Well, he didn't earn it.

• 7:52Speaker 04

  He didn't, he didn't. The other one was like this beautiful red rooster and Snort killed it unceremoniously. Um, but no one's upset about that, but yeah, so that was, that's the excitement over at our house.

• 8:03Speaker 06

  Did Cal offer to replace the poultry population after that or no?

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, we got three other chickens, cause his mom was moving.

• 8:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:11Speaker 04

  And so she gave us three of her chickens. It just happened time, the timing coincided with the untimely death of our rooster. And, uh, yeah, one of, one of Cal's mom's chickens was the one that the, the imposter, the heir to the throne was pecking at, so. So now it's, it's almost like another coup. Because these outside chickens have now dethroned the master rooster.

• 8:34Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  I don't know anything about how any of this works.

• 8:37Speaker 06

  Uh, but all you know is that that rooster had to be in the freezer.

• 8:40Speaker 04

  Yep, yep, yep. So now we've got two roosters in the freezer. Cal did the, Cal did a fine job with the first one.

• 8:46Speaker 05

  Oh, good.

• 8:46Speaker 04

  As penance for his dog's sins, so. Yeah, a lot of fun. Phil, what's going on with you lately?

• 8:52Speaker 06

  Oh goodness, you really do not want to know because the most exciting thing that's happened to me in the last few days that I I beat act three of a video game called Hollow Knight Silksong.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  Alright.

• 9:02Speaker 06

  It's got the secret ending, which is very important to those who know. What's the internet parlance?

• 9:08Speaker 04

  Is it Hollow Knight?

• 9:09Speaker 06

  I Y K Y K.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  Hollow Knight Silks-

• 9:13Speaker 06

  Hollow Knight Colon.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  Colon.

• 9:15Speaker 06

  Silksong. It's a sequel to a video game.

• 9:19Speaker 04

  Just called Hollow Knight.

• 9:20Speaker 06

  Called Hollow Knight, that's correct.

• 9:21Speaker 04

  I was just trying to think of, is it like an Ocarina of Time type deal?

• 9:25Speaker 06

  You do acquire items that allow you to progress to new areas, much like a Zelda game. So you're not on the wrong track. It's called a the genre is called a Metroidvania because it's like games like the Metroid series and the Castlevania series. They kind of made a portmanteau of that.

• 9:40Speaker 04

  I'm gonna dig us out of this hole. Phil-

• 9:43Speaker 06

  You play as a character called Hornet and you're protecting the bug kingdom of Farloom. You want to keep, should I keep going?

• 9:50Speaker 04

  No, I was gonna say, have we talked yet about, are you eating a deer at your house?

• 9:55Speaker 06

  I am. It has not. No, my son, my 12-year-old son, shot a deer before I did and we have a freezer full of mule deer right now.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  Speaking of family coups and imposters to the throne.

• 10:12Speaker 06

  It says a lot about me that you asked how I was doing and instead of saying, oh my God, I'm so proud of my son who shot his first mule deer. I said, I completed a very difficult video game.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  No, but that's exciting. That's exciting.

• 10:24Speaker 06

  It is. It's been, it's been a lot of fun because we, we also signed up for this farm CSA and from this farm that's less than a mile down the road from our house. So we've been making a lot of meals with, with-

• 10:34Speaker 04

  Fresh ingredients.

• 10:34Speaker 06

  Fresh ingredients and harvested deer. It's been great.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  How's he, he's a couple of weeks out now. How's he, is he ready for next fall? Is he?

• 10:43Speaker 06

  He seemed kind of just nonplussed about the whole thing. Like, yeah, I did it. What's the big deal? But now

• 10:49Speaker 04

  Must be nice.

• 10:49Speaker 06

  This was his last year of being able to do it as like an apprentice. So he's gonna have to go through hunter safety next year and I'll see if he has the motivation for that. But he loves going out on, on grandpa's, grandpa's ranch and trekking about and looking for animals. So I think, I think he'll do it. I think he'll go through the process.

• 11:07Speaker 04

  Hopefully he won't get to the point like Seth is where his brain won't function until he can kill a big buck. Because it's important to keep some perspective.

• 11:16Speaker 06

  It's an illness.

• 11:17Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 11:17Speaker 06

  It's an illness.

• 11:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:18Speaker 06

  Maybe I'll, maybe I'll pull it back then.

• 11:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, just have a little intervention.

• 11:21Speaker 06

  Before it gets too bad.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  Well, should we, should we move on to our first guest today?

• 11:26Speaker 06

  Let's do it.

• 11:26Speaker 04

  Do it. Today, we are joined by Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks Kalispel Area Wildlife biologist Franz Engelfinger. Franz oversees wildlife monitoring across some of the most remote terrain in the lower 48, including an ongoing elk research project in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Franz, thanks for joining us today.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Hey, it's great to be here. Thank you for making the time to talk to me and hear about some of the work we're doing up in Northwest Montana.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're excited to hear about it.

• 11:56Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah. Hey Franz, Corey here. Um, when you hear about elk in Montana, most conversations focus on areas where herds have an, air quoting, over-objective population. But, uh, Region 1 in Northwest Montana where I'm, was born and bred, uh, is home, which is also home to a sixth of Montana's public land, which is, should be an eye-opener to a lot of folks. Uh, Region 1 faces a very different set of challenges. Uh, Franz, can you lay out what makes elk management west of the Continental Divide unique compared to the rest of the state of Montana?

• 12:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure Corey. I think first off, um, one of the unique things is in Region 1, we have an opportunity to grow elk on public land. Um, and I think some of the things that make Region 1 unique is A, abundant access, like you talked about. We have over, uh, 500 million acres of public land as well as an additional, um, half a million acres of private land enrolled at our bark management, uh, program. So, a lot of opportunity to get out in the woods and have a great hunt. Um, Region 1 is also in Northwest Montana forested, uh, which makes hunting complicated. I think a lot of people come up here for the first time and they're like, didn't think we'd have so many trees. And so that changes how you can hunt. Um, it also changes, you know, as biologists, how we can survey our populations and monitor trend.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, flying and doing aerial surveys is really only effective where you can see to the, you know, through the canopy or where there are no trees. And so, we have very few districts where we can actually, you know, do aerial surveys. And then finally, um, you know, with so much of the landscape forested, our changes in our elk populations are closely tied to changes in our forest cover. And so when you look at, um, you know, history of forest extraction in Montana, where you had a big boom from about the, you know, 50s through the 90s and then a real drop off, um, after that, you, you know, some of those, you know, timber cuts that really provided a great habitat from a number of our ungulates have played out at this point. So you can't talk about,

• 13:54Speaker 03

  you know, changes in ungine population without talking about forest management, forest fire. And then finally, you know, region one, uh, we're also known for, you know, uh, our recovered carnivore populations. We have healthy populations of wolves, bears, lions. And so, um, that's also in the mix. Uh, region one, you know, great whitetail deer hunting, uh, 20% of the state's harvest comes from Northwest Montana, good black bear hunting as well. New deer, you know, we harvest about 3% of the state and for elk, it's about 5% of the overall state harvest. And, and in, in region one, we kind of say, you know, we force elk to be moose. Um, we bury their groceries in four feet of snow and make them eat shrubs. So, um, you know, uh, no surprise, but again, you know, many, uh, some of our

• 14:37Speaker 03

  hunting districts are under objective. And again, that's where we have this opportunity to grow elk on public land.

• 14:44Speaker 05

  Well, speaking of populations, you work primarily in and around the great Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, specifically up and around the South Fork of the Flathead Drainage. Uh, what have historical elk populations been like in that area? And what are today's most recent population estimates?

• 15:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. You, you know, the South Fork has a, a long history of, um, elk numbers and elk fluctuations. I think when I think of the Bob Marshall in the South Fork, I think of three herds. You've got, um, which all summer within that South Fork Drainage, you've had, but two of them, uh, those that go over to the Sun River to the east and those that migrate south to the Blackwater Clearwater. They go, they're kind of our, our winter birds. They, they bug out in the winter to better winter range conditions outside the Bob. And so my research right now is focused on those hardy soles that spend the entire winter or their entire life cycle within the South Fork. And there they deal with, you know, deep snow and eke out a living on the valley bottom and then those south and southwest facing slopes.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  So in terms of the history of that population, that, that winter in the South Fork, you know, back around the start, you know, 1900s, they first started to document elk overwintering in the South Fork. And there was a series of conditions, you know, fire, isolation, limited hunting and, you know, also limited pressure from predators that allowed that population to balloon such that by, you know, the, the late 30s, we saw a high of over 3,800 elk in, you know, wintering in the South Fork. Granted, they were also becoming alarmed by the impact that these elk were having on range conditions. But again, you know, back then, you know, things blew up and it made for some of the

• 16:30Speaker 03

  best hunting in the country. You know, the Bob Marshall Wilderness is isolated, it's rugged, it's beautiful. And elk numbers like that really supported a, you know, wonderful hunting opportunity. Things have changed. Several things have conspired that today, over the last 20 years, we've seen numbers decline. Now, when I give you population estimates from the 30s, those are estimates based on, on winter track counts and, and walking boots on the ground in the winter. And then when I talk about, you know, our estimate stays, it's not so much estimates as they are minimum counts. These are the number of animals I see when I fly. And so, so it's sort of an oranges and apples comparison, but what I will say is it, it

• 17:13Speaker 03

  appears that we are, you know, at lows we haven't seen in decades. And, you know, although it's oranges and apples comparison, there's certainly less fruit on the table.

• 17:23Speaker 05

  Well, with that, what steps is FWP taking to understand what's driving this decline? And in turn, support the long-term herd health of these elk?

• 17:34Speaker 03

  Sure, I think, you know, this comes down to the question of, you know, what drives population change or elk populations? And, you know, I tend to think of, you know, elk kind of the middle, they're supported on the bottom by forage production and little pressure on the top from predation. It's this question of, you know, is it bottom-up processes, habitat and forage, or predators that are limiting populations? And I kind of like to think of, you know, elk sitting around the table, playing a friendly game of poker. And every season is a, you know, is a hand. And I know that, you know, habitat conditions, forage production, that will moderate all things. And so if, you know, you have a wet spring and you got good forage production, that's like getting dealt a sixth or seventh card.

• 18:19Speaker 03

  But if you got drought, you know, fire that whips through your rear range, maybe you're playing with only four or three cards. And then if you have a big, big snowstorm, you just fold. So, you know, every season it changes. But again, habitat is a big player that helps moderate the other factors, namely climate and predation. In terms of what, you know, FWP is doing, you know, we use information, research to inform and adapt our management. And so in Northwest Montana, we've got a couple of different projects going on. I'll briefly touch on one and then we'll dive into the work we're doing in the South Fork. So we have the Knoxon Elk Study, which is a comprehensive study looking at elk survival, sources of mortality, predation,

• 19:03Speaker 03

  looking at forest management and how that affects forest quality and production. And there they've got about 150 collars on cow elk. They've got another 150 they put on neonates that, you know, right after birth and tracking survival, tracking sources of mortality. That will help inform our management statewide and especially here in Northwest Montana. The work I'm doing, and we're going to talk about today a little more in depth, is coloring elk in the South Fork to try and tease out some of the things that are causing that decline and preventing that recovery of elk in the South Fork.

• 19:39Speaker 03

  So, yeah, using research to inform management.

• 19:43Speaker 05

  So this collaring project has got, must have a lot of specific details that you have to figure out. So how are you capturing these elk? What are these collars trying to measure? And what kind of data are you hoping to collect from this study?

• 19:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you. Yeah. So we got two approaches to catching elk. We can do aerial captures. That's with a hired team that comes in with a helicopter and darts and immobilizes elk from the air and then goes on and slips on the collar. That we can do when we're outside the wilderness, but wilderness designation provides with it some additional challenges. Our other option for capturing elk, and we do this both in wilderness and outside, is ground captures where we use clover traps that are baited with alfalfa hay and there's a tripwire. They're basically, you know, metal cages with netting and we bait the elk in there and they set off the trap. And then, once they're in there, we've got trap transmitters

• 20:40Speaker 03

  that then tell us something's there and we can go and collar them. What we have is we've got GPS collars. These are collars you can program. They'll give us, you know, six to 12 locations a day and a tremendous amount of information, you know, day, night, bad weather as well. And if our animals stop moving, we get a mortality report. I get a text or an email that says your animal's down and it's here. And I can go in very quickly if I can get there and start to look at some of the factors and causes of that mortality. What we hope to get out of this, you know, we have very limited information about elk movement and vital rates within the South Fork. So, simple things like, you know, adult

• 21:25Speaker 03

  survival, pregnancy rate, some of the things that, you know, people thought might be limiting. That's information we can tease out from this limited study, as well as some of those seasonal movements and habitat selection. And again, all of this is to help us think about ways we can help this population recover.

• 21:43Speaker 05

  Well, specifically the wilderness portion of this study, being in an extremely remote setting, and, correct me if I'm wrong, you're trying to pull this off during the winter months, it sounds like a logistical nightmare. So, what are some of the key challenges of this project, and also what keeps your team motivated to keep pushing on?

• 22:03Speaker 03

  Sure, sure. I think, you know, to be clear, you know, the men and women I work with at FWP, they all work in remote settings, doing, you know, stuff in rugged terrain. So, what makes this unique is that wilderness aspect. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention some of our project supporters, you know, this project is funded, you know, through Pittman Robinson dollars, these are excise taxes on hook and bullets. So, that's provided the funding for the collaring and the helicopter captures, but it was a grant from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation that allowed us to actually extend this work into the wilderness. And so, what we need is, you know, they help pay for aluminum traps that are portable enough that we could pack them in, and then of course, partnering with the US Forest Service,

• 22:48Speaker 03

  they have crews that go there in this area in the winter to do snow surveys, they've got the technical skills as well as, you know, they wrap their head around working remotely very well. So, they've been a critical partner as well. But again, in terms of some of the challenges, you know, access for sure. We're talking, it's a two-day to three-day ski-in at a minimum, and it depends on conditions. Last year, when we went in, you know, it took my crew about eight hours to get up over Gordon Pass. The next crew that was coming in to relieve us, they got hit by snow. It took them over 13 hours, and they were getting to the halfway point at about, you know, 9:00 PM at night in the dark. So, access is a challenge, and that makes also planning difficult. You know, if I forget

• 23:31Speaker 03

  something, I'm not running out to the truck. We gotta make do. If we have, you know, a binding break like we did last year, you gotta kind of MacGyver a fix. And so, you know, there's that challenge as well. Physical demands, you know, like I said, that, you know, traveling in snow, just, you know, keeping your body fed. I lost 10 pounds, and I don't have 10 pounds to lose. So, we were eating, you know, candy, you know, we were eating, you know... Breakfast sandwiches cooked in bacon soaked in bacon grease and you know I just couldn't put on enough calories um and and then obviously the environment we saw temperatures from you know fifty degrees to negative thirty um and I have a frame of reference of what you know

• 24:16Speaker 03

  negative twenty is but you get down to negative thirty and it's just like you know that's new.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  Everything's hard.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 04

  Sounds like an adventure.

• 24:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you know, it it was an adventure. It was also, you know, um, you know, hard work, and I think important work. And you ask kind of what what keeps me motivated? And I think two things. One is, you know, I feel indebted to the sportsmen, sportswomen here that, you know, enjoy the Bob Marshall, you know, care about our ungulate populations or game populations, wildlife in general. I'm curious, you know, what's going on? I you know, I feel like we owe them, you know, an answer, or at least to try and find an answer. And then I think the other thing that keeps me motivated is, um, you know, biologists that came before me that did a lot of work to get some of the information we have. We had, you know, back in the seventies, eighties, nineties, there were a few collaring studies where, you know, they go out, they slap these collars on, but then they'd have to go to get locations.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  They'd have to fly and use VHF radios to triangulate. So took on an immense amount of effort as well as risk to get those those locations. I can sit now at my desk, I don't, but um, I can sit, you know, back and every morning sip a cup of coffee and see, you know, what my elk are doing. And I can get a tremendous amount of information from these collars. And I feel sort of, you know, you know, that it's important for me to put the effort into trying and getting them out.

• 25:35Speaker 05

  Wow, fascinating.

• 25:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 25:39Speaker 05

  Well, for people who want to learn and follow along as the study progresses, where can they find updates or learn more about your work?

• 25:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, F W P has some, you know, Fish Life and Parks has some great resources. The first off is every year we put out an annual elk report that looks at harvest um, throughout the region. You can just Google, you know, F W P R one elk report, and you'll see that. That's a great resource. But in terms of the research we do, you can also just Google F W P elk research, and that will bring you to our research page. We also have that for mule deer and other species. But uh, F W P elk research, and you will see, you know, project annual reports and summaries uh, for just about every project we're doing. And when I get to it, you'll have one for this one, too. So that's where information will appear.

• 26:27Speaker 05

  Great. Well, I could talk about this all day, just as somebody who grew up and used to live and work in the wilderness. But thanks for your time and giving us just a glimpse into your work. Research like this plays a huge role in how Montana manages wildlife and we appreciate all your hard work, dangerous work that you guys are doing to try and wrap your heads around what's going on up there. So we thank you for that.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  No, thank you, Corey, Randall, Seth. I really appreciate you having me on. And yeah, it's been fun. Thank you.

• 26:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, thank you.

• 26:55Speaker 05

  I do have one more really important question, maybe the most important. Cats or grizz this Saturday?

• 27:01Speaker 03

  Oh, well, my son's down in Bozeman, so go cats.

• 27:04Speaker 06

  Oh, fighting words for Corey.

• 27:08Speaker 05

  All right. Well, go grizz. Go grizz.

• 27:11Speaker 04

  Thanks, Ron.

• 27:12Speaker 06

  Thanks, Ron.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you. Take care.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  Man, that's, that's wild stuff.

• 27:17Speaker 05

  Yeah. Sounds like fun.

• 27:20Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, I know.

• 27:21Speaker 06

  Sounds, sounds like a lot of work.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  Multi-day.

• 27:23Speaker 06

  A lot of fun work.

• 27:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, like a multi-day ski trip is, I could count on like one hand the number of times I've skied in somewhere and camped and it's not, not, not very, I mean, it's fun, but it's, it's a lot of work.

• 27:34Speaker 05

  Just being in, being in ski boots for 24, I mean, you sleep a little, but, you know, he was saying how hard it is to get in there. A couple of days worth of just skiing in. Imagine living in ski boots for those who have ever slipped their feet into them. They're not comfortable. Those guys are living in them while they're back there.

• 27:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, mine make me cry. Most days.

• 27:51Speaker 05

  Most people, yeah.

• 27:52Speaker 04

  Most days.

• 27:52Speaker 05

  A lot of tears, blood, sweat and tears.

• 28:25Speaker 02

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

• 29:10Speaker 02

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• 29:48Speaker 03

  One Pay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Builder card results may vary and aren't guaranteed. Learn more about banking through One Pay at onepay.com/podcast.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Speaking of tears, now it's time for a new segment, Meat Theater. Meat Theater is a concept that we came up with yesterday where we take outstanding hunting literature and feed it into artificial intelligence and ask the AI to generate a short dramatic script to be performed live by untrained actors.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  And as we're brainstorming for today's show, we wanted to tie in the latest episode of Meat Eater, season 13, which, as we all know, captures Steve's first African safari. And what better way to do that, I thought, than perform a hasty stage adaptation of a classic Ernest Hemingway short story, The Short Happy Life of Frances McComer, originally published in the September 1936 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.

• 30:57Speaker 04

  Guys, ready?

• 30:59Speaker 06

  Oh, man. Born ready.

• 31:00Speaker 04

  And we did this. We just did this once yesterday to make sure that it wouldn't take 10 minutes, and it didn't, so let's give her a rip, boys.

• 31:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, not a lot of practice went into this, so.

• 31:10Speaker 04

  Action.

• 31:12Speaker 04

  The Short Happy Life of Frances McComer. Oh, nice lines, Phil. Scene one, after the lion.

• 31:24Speaker 06

  Oh, no, that's the wrong one. I'm already screwing this up. There we go, we're live.

• 31:28Speaker 06

  It is late afternoon at a hunting camp in Africa. Frances McComer has just run like a coward from a wounded lion. His wife watched it all happen. So did their P H, Robert Wilson. No one has spoken directly of it, but everyone knows.

• 31:44Speaker 04

  How is your drink, Mr. Wilson?

• 31:48Speaker 04

  Fine, just fine.

• 31:50Speaker 06

  We got that lion eventually, though, didn't we?

• 31:52Speaker 04

  Yes, we did. We got him. How interesting.

• 31:57Speaker 06

  Margot, I.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  I'm gonna clean up before dinner. You were lovely today, darling. Really impressive stuff.

• 32:06Speaker 06

  At the moment, Margot turns her back on her husband and walks away. I bolted, I just bolted like a scared little boy. I've never done anything like that before.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  It happens to everyone at some point.

• 32:22Speaker 06

  Does it happen to you?

• 32:27Speaker 04

  Oh, hold on.

• 32:28Speaker 06

  Oh, it's double sided paper.

• 32:30Speaker 04

  Double sided paper.

• 32:31Speaker 06

  No.

• 32:33Speaker 06

  She saw it all. She'll never let me forget it.

• 32:37Speaker 04

  Women are difficult in these situations.

• 32:40Speaker 05

  Can we go out tomorrow? Go after something else. I need to. I need another chance.

• 32:47Speaker 04

  Buffalo. We'll go after buffalo in the morning.

• 32:50Speaker 05

  Yes, Buffalo. Thank you, Wilson.

• 32:53Speaker 04

  Don't thank me yet.

• 32:55Speaker 06

  That night. Margot McComber visited Wilson's tent. Francis knew. Wilson knew that he knew. But nothing was said. In the morning. They would hunt buffalo.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  Scene two, the buffalo.

• 33:12Speaker 06

  Morning. The hunt begins well. Francis shoots three buffalo. For the first time in his life, he is not afraid. He feels it. That thing he had never felt before. Perhaps this is what courage is.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  Good shooting, McComber. Damn good.

• 33:32Speaker 05

  Did you see? Did you see them drop?

• 33:35Speaker 04

  Yes, I I saw.

• 33:37Speaker 05

  I wasn't afraid. Not at all. I felt. God, Wilson. I felt alive.

• 33:42Speaker 04

  You shot magnificently.

• 33:44Speaker 05

  Did you see, Margot?

• 33:46Speaker 04

  I saw.

• 33:52Speaker 04

  Which page?

• 33:52Speaker 06

  It's Wilson, Wilson, Wilson. Wilson. One of them's just, one of them's just.

• 33:55Speaker 04

  One of them's just wounded. We'll have to go in after him.

• 33:59Speaker 05

  Good. Let's go.

• 34:03Speaker 04

  The bush. A wounded buff in the bush is one of the most dangerous.

• 34:08Speaker 05

  I don't care. I'm not afraid anymore. Can you understand that? I'm no longer afraid. Is it safe?

• 34:16Speaker 04

  Nothing's safe. But we have to finish him.

• 34:19Speaker 05

  Then let's finish him. Margot, stay here with the gun bearer. We'll be back.

• 34:24Speaker 06

  And there it was. Francis McComber had crossed over. Just thirty minutes ago, he had been a boy. And now. He was a man. His wife knew it. Wilson knew it. And McComber himself knew it most of all. He was happy. Perhaps for the first time in his life.

• 34:46Speaker 06

  There he is, twelve yards away. I see him.

• 34:50Speaker 04

  Christ!

• 34:53Speaker 06

  Oh no!

• 34:55Speaker 04

  The cap gun's not going off.

• 34:56Speaker 06

  It went off, we got it.

• 34:58Speaker 04

  Do that line again Cory, quickly.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  Christ! Francis, oh god, Francis, is he?

• 35:05Speaker 05

  He's dead. The bullet hit him in the back of the head.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  I tried to hit the buffalo, I had to shoot, it was an accident.

• 35:12Speaker 05

  Of course it was.

• 35:14Speaker 04

  I thought I could kill the buffalo, you saw I was charging.

• 35:17Speaker 05

  That's right, the buffalo was charging.

• 35:19Speaker 04

  Oh god, oh god!

• 35:21Speaker 05

  You were afraid, weren't you?

• 35:23Speaker 04

  What?

• 35:25Speaker 05

  Just now, just these last thirty minutes, you were afraid of him for the first time.

• 35:30Speaker 04

  I don't know what you mean.

• 35:31Speaker 05

  No, I don't suppose you do.

• 35:35Speaker 04

  Scene three, epilogue.

• 35:45Speaker 06

  They said it was an accident, of course. A tragic accident during a buffalo hunt. These things happen in Africa. Mrs. McComber was distraught, naturally. She had tried to save her husband from the charging animal. No one could blame her for what happened.

• 36:02Speaker 06

  Robert Wilson knew. He had seen that look in her eyes when Frances McComber stopped being afraid. When he became, for perhaps the first time and the last time in his life, a man she could not control. A man she did not recognize.

• 36:21Speaker 06

  Frances McComber lived thirty-five years, but he was truly alive for only thirty minutes. In those thirty minutes,

• 36:31Speaker 06

  he was happy. And perhaps that is longer than most men ever manage.

• 36:38Speaker 06

  The short, happy life of Frances McComber.

• 36:43Speaker 06

  Emphasis on "short",

• 36:46Speaker 06

  emphasis on "happy".

• 36:50Speaker 06

  Make of it what you will.

• 36:52Speaker 04

  End of play, audience goes nuts.

• 36:56Speaker 06

  Do we still have viewers, Phil? Are people still watching?

• 36:59Speaker 04

  Who dropped off the livestream?

• 37:01Speaker 06

  I think, I mean, I think we're at peak viewership, so. Oh, man. We locked them in.

• 37:06Speaker 04

  Wow. Lights are back on. Thanks for the stage lights, Phil.

• 37:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, of course. There's dried leaves everywhere back here.

• 37:14Speaker 04

  That filled seven minutes.

• 37:16Speaker 06

  That was great.

• 37:16Speaker 04

  I thought the computer did a really nice job with that script. I added a few touches this morning to make things clearer. I thought it left a little too much up to suggestion and innuendo. But I really liked what the computer did with that.

• 37:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, the, uh, the power that it took for the AI to, to, um, create that. It, it only drained Lake Mead like a couple of inches.

• 37:38Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, hopefully, hopefully Hemingway is not rolling over in his grave in Ketchum, Idaho, directly across from the old First Light HQ.

• 37:46Speaker 06

  We have 45 new live chat comments that I'm too scared to look at.

• 37:53Speaker 04

  Well, Phil, unfortunately, it's time to take a break for some listener feedback.

• 37:57Speaker 06

  Well, I haven't read the new one, so let's just look at the old ones that I've seen.

• 38:01Speaker 05

  Oh, good.

• 38:01Speaker 06

  Uh, let's see here. This is, you know, it's almost Thanksgiving and we have more news about next Thursday's show, uh, that Randall will talk about, um, at the end of the show. But Kenneth would like to know favorite turkey preps. Smoked, fried, or oven baked?

• 38:16Speaker 05

  Oh, man, you can't beat a fried turkey.

• 38:18Speaker 06

  Fried's pretty good. I'm usually a traditional oven bake guy.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, just a oven roast, brine and oven roast.

• 38:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, gotta brine.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  Uh, I feel like the, the taste of a smoked or fried turkey is soured by how often people like to talk about how good they are.

• 38:36Speaker 06

  That's true.

• 38:37Speaker 04

  You know? I, I don't think there's anything wrong with a, with a good old fashioned turkey.

• 38:42Speaker 05

  Nothing's wrong with it. Just the last couple of years I've brined and fried and, oh, it's hard to beat that crispy skin. It's, it's not easy, though.

• 38:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:50Speaker 05

  A lot of accidents can happen.

• 38:51Speaker 04

  A lot of house fires.

• 38:52Speaker 06

  Dangerous.

• 38:52Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 38:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 38:53Speaker 05

  Yeah. Be careful out there, kids.

• 38:54Speaker 04

  Be careful. Thanksgiving is coming up. Never a bad idea to refresh yourself on fire safety. Make sure those extinguishers are where they should be, et cetera, et cetera.

• 39:03Speaker 06

  Don't fry it in your garage.

• 39:04Speaker 04

  That's for Rick Hutton. He'll tell you all about fires.

• 39:08Speaker 06

  I'm gonna bring this up live just to hold everyone responsible, accountable. Mogor says that he still hasn't received any news about his cookbooks. So.

• 39:18Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 39:20Speaker 06

  So, me, Jake, Corey.

• 39:23Speaker 05

  I'm in on that.

• 39:24Speaker 06

  Whoever, we need to get this man his cookbooks.

• 39:27Speaker 04

  I don't have the backstory on this. Do we owe him, we owe Mogor?

• 39:29Speaker 06

  Mogor won a silly, what was it, like sort of a caption contest thing? I don't remember what, but Brody picked him as one of the winners.

• 39:38Speaker 04

  Oh, this is embarrassing.

• 39:39Speaker 06

  He's supposed to receive signed cookbooks.

• 39:42Speaker 04

  As much as I want Mogor to get his cookbooks, I think we should have swept this under the rug.

• 39:47Speaker 06

  Nope.

• 39:47Speaker 04

  Because it's a bad look for our podcast team.

• 39:49Speaker 06

  We did that, we did that a couple of weeks ago. I refuse. I respect the man too much.

• 39:53Speaker 04

  Mogor, you'll get those cookbooks if I have to fly over to Hungary myself and deliver them.

• 39:58Speaker 05

  Mogor, just to put water under the fridge here, I am replying to your email with the tracking number of your cookbooks.

• 40:05Speaker 06

  Oh, that's some CS right there.

• 40:10Speaker 04

  Wonderful.

• 40:11Speaker 06

  There you go, Mogor. Hopefully that clears everything up.

• 40:13Speaker 04

  Apologies, Mogor.

• 40:15Speaker 06

  Uh, let's see. Holiday hunting traditions on either Christmas or Thanksgiving? What do you guys do, if anything?

• 40:22Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 40:23Speaker 06

  That's from Trey.

• 40:24Speaker 04

  We don't have traditions. We'll probably go out this Thanksgiving morning to shoot a, Sydney's still looking for a deer.

• 40:31Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:31Speaker 04

  And, uh, yeah, shot my first bull the day after Thanksgiving. I actually don't really like how many people are in the woods around Thanksgiving. Not, not that it's a bad thing, but for my own enjoyment of the woods.

• 40:42Speaker 05

  It's a big tradition.

• 40:44Speaker 04

  I feel like around Montana, it's a big, people just go out in huge numbers right around Thanksgiving.

• 40:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, usually if I'm in Montana for Thanksgiving, I usually do some sort of hunt Thanksgiving day, or yeah, Thanksgiving day morning, um, whether it's like a doe hunt or upland hunt or something. Um, but this year I'm going to be back in Pennsylvania and the rifle season opens the Saturday after Thanksgiving there.

• 41:09Speaker 04

  Oh, that's.

• 41:09Speaker 05

  So it's like Thanksgiving, then Friday, go to deer camp, and then Saturday, wake up and deer hunt.

• 41:15Speaker 04

  Beautiful.

• 41:16Speaker 05

  I love it.

• 41:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:17Speaker 05

  All lined up.

• 41:19Speaker 06

  Right on. Uh, this is sort of a call to action. This is from Ben and I, I was unaware of this mostly because I edit Cal's podcast and I don't think he's talked about it, but he probably will on Monday's podcast. But Ben says, "Any of my fellow Wisconsinites in the chat, please be sure and call, email your reps for the Sand Hill Crane Hunting Bill." Apparently there were lots of opponents at the public hearing yesterday and I looked it up and apparently in 2010, there was a management plan developed by the Mississippi and Atlantic Flyway Councils that would, uh, call for a potential crane hunt once numbers exceeded a range between 30,000 and 60,000 birds and estimates are now in the 100,000 range. So, um, get out there, Wisconsinites. Let them know that you want a Sand Hill Crane Hunt.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  Nobody's gonna, uh, stand up and advocate for hunting seasons if hunters themselves don't do it. So, get out there, gang. Thank you, Ben, for bringing this to our attention.

• 42:14Speaker 06

  I haven't looked at all the comments regarding neat theater yet, but this is from Afro Man. Um, I don't know about this, boys. What happened to one minute fishing?

• 42:20Speaker 04

  That's a fair point.

• 42:21Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 42:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:22Speaker 06

  That is a fair point.

• 42:23Speaker 04

  I'll be honest, uh...

• 42:25Speaker 06

  I'm sure this is the only negative one and all the other ones are positive.

• 42:27Speaker 04

  I'll be honest, Mr. Man, we, uh, we're well aware that this would be a polarizing segment.

• 42:32Speaker 06

  Uh, Adam says, "Is it safe to return yet?" Yes, Adam, we're now in the listener feedback section. If you dipped out, please come back. Uh, but Derek says it's gonna be nominated for an Emmy, so I'm excited to put that on my mantle.

• 42:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, even if we don't win an award, I hope it inspires some, uh, some audience members to go out and read The Short Happy Life of Frances McComber. It's a great story if you like, uh, gunshot accidents, or maybe not accidents, um, cuckolded marriages and, uh, hunting in Africa. So, highly recommend. Some of Hemingway's finest work.

• 43:10Speaker 06

  Sure. Uh, Dan is asking what the weirdest thing you guys have ever found inside a critter is. Broadheads.

• 43:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. I shot a bull one time that had a broadhead that had gone through the spinal, what do you call it? The little bone, the ridge that goes along the back of the spine.

• 43:30Speaker 06

  What's it called?

• 43:31Speaker 04

  And it had, uh, it had gone through and then lodged in the opposite side backstrap poking out.

• 43:36Speaker 06

  Oof.

• 43:37Speaker 04

  So when I was cutting down, my knife hit the, uh, like where you had threaded on to the shaft.

• 43:41Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:42Speaker 04

  Into the shaft.

• 43:43Speaker 06

  I shot a turkey this spring that had an air rifle pellet in it.

• 43:46Speaker 04

  Really? I, we ate rabbit. I can say this because the restaurant's closed. Fabulous restaurant in Missoula. And we got a rabbit that had an air rifle pellet in it. At the restaurant.

• 43:57Speaker 06

  Really?

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. And we called the restaurant and they were like, these are raised, uh, in the bitteret. Like in a open, not, I mean, it was not like open range, but they're like, some kid might've driven by and plunked one.

• 44:12Speaker 06

  Geez.

• 44:13Speaker 04

  So.

• 44:14Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 44:15Speaker 04

  Corey, weird stuff and animals?

• 44:17Speaker 05

  Let's see. I had a client catch a cutthroat that had a snake coming out of its anus.

• 44:25Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 44:27Speaker 05

  I believe it was a garter snake. I couldn't help myself and I pulled it out and it just kept coming.

• 44:31Speaker 04

  Was it digested like it had gone in the front end or was it still thrashing around like it had gone in the back end?

• 44:37Speaker 05

  The snake was dead. Fish was very much alive, but it was the tail of the snake was already coming out of the fish.

• 44:43Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 44:43Speaker 05

  So I just couldn't help and pull it out.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  He was still hungry too. Phil's still playing with the cap gun over there.

• 44:49Speaker 06

  It just burnt my finger.

• 44:50Speaker 04

  Oh no. I think the critics.

• 44:52Speaker 06

  Phil just A.D. the cap gun back there.

• 44:54Speaker 04

  I think the critics of that performance should know that Phil brought in a cap gun. That would have really added a lot of real, uh.

• 45:00Speaker 06

  I'm still on the fade mode.

• 45:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, the gunshots would have been far more realistic had the cap gun functioned. And also Phil, in practicing for his match strike, when, uh, Wilson lights his cigarette, Phil, uh, burned one of the microphones in the studio just before we went live here.

• 45:16Speaker 06

  I didn't, I didn't hold the match close enough to the mic, so it wasn't as impactful. I'll do it again here.

• 45:21Speaker 04

  Oh. Yeah, that sizzle, that sounds good.

• 45:24Speaker 06

  Sounds nice.

• 45:26Speaker 04

  Anything else in the chat there, Phil?

• 45:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think we can move on and tackle things at the end of the show.

• 45:30Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Alrighty.

• 45:34Speaker 04

  Is it a Christmas ornament? It is. Or a wiffle ball? Christmas ornament. Oh, are we supposed to talk about? Shameless plug.

• 45:40Speaker 05

  Oh, we we kind of are. It's hanging right here.

• 45:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:42Speaker 05

  Oh, great.

• 45:42Speaker 06

  At the media.com.

• 45:44Speaker 04

  Our next guest today is Derek Demun, a hunter photographer and the host of the T8 Outdoors Podcast. You might know him from the viral video where a routine deer hunt turned surreal after his bullet hit a collared deer and made the collar explode on impact. What? Yeah. Derek, welcome to the show.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Hey, guys. Thanks for having me.

• 46:06Speaker 04

  So for folks who may not know you yet, can you give us a little background on your story?

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, my name's Derek. I'm a T8 paraplegic.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  It's out in Utah on a CWMU hunt. That's a that's a tag that they give out in Utah for landowners who have more than like 5,000 acres because of like tax revenue and stuff like that. But, um, yeah, it was a it was a couple day hunt and we're going for known giants in the area. So we're going for a giant, but yeah, I didn't expect the smallest deer I've ever shot to be the most popular deer I've ever shot.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  So tell us about, um, we're going to pull up the video here in a second, but tell us about uh, how, as you mentioned, you're a paraplegic. How how are you hunting? What's the what's sort of the the style or sort of, um, adaptive equipment that you use to hunt?

• 47:07Speaker 02

  So on out here in my local mountains, I like to, uh, mountain bike in. We'll we'll strap a little made a little MacGyver to trailer and we'll I'll throw gear and stuff on the trailer and me and a buddy will smash out on the mountain bikes and and get get as deep as we can. Um, here's that and I got one of those action track chairs. It's a it's the wheelchair that looks like a tank.

• 47:34Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  And, uh, so tho- those were those work well, although the battery dies pretty quick. Get stuck up on the back country with the.

• 47:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Five hundred pound wheelchair.

• 47:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, that that's uh not ideal.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Not not at all, but um on this particular hunt, I was able to so since I'm a paraplegic and I'm in a wheelchair. I have a license through the state of Utah D N R to hunt from a vehicle, any four wheel drive vehicle, so. So that's what this hunt was able to.

• 48:07Speaker 04

  So you.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Accomplish.

• 48:08Speaker 04

  So you guys are out looking for deer in the morning and you're you're hunting from the vehicle um. What did this deer, did you know it had a collar on? I mean, just sort of walk us through like what you were thinking up until the moment of the shot.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  Okay, so we it was actually the very last day, last afternoon of the hunt, so it was. And there's probably twenty minutes of legal shooting and light left. We're driving back down the lodge um. And at at this point, I I just told the the landowner, I was like, he was driving, I was like, hey, you know, anything with antlers, I would like to. At least put some meat in the freezer, because I was I I like taking my old man on hunts with me, so. Um, just anything we could munch on, but um. And we're coming coming around the corner and it's absolutely pouring rain. You can't really, you can't hear it in the. In the uh video that I posted, just microphone wise, it wasn't working out well, but.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  We come around the corner and this little forkie just pops up out of his bed and is staring at us, because. Like I said, it was pouring rain and we weren't expecting to see anything, so this guy popped up. And then just staring at us probably is probably about ten yards off the road and uh land landowner is like, here's your chance. I was like, all right, cool. Um, got got got my rifle set up and uh. He had he had glass on it, he had his binos on it, and I got it in the optic. I was like, it's got a collar, he's like, it's all good, you can, you know. Take it at will and so he wanted me to shoot it where the neck meets the body since it was raining so hard. The if, you know, if you were to hit it somewhere else, the blood trail would have probably been washed away pretty fast.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  It was raining raining really hard that day, um so. I aimed right where the the neck meets the meets the chest right there in the brisket area, saw a collar, try to. Aim underneath of it and uh. I hit the. lithium battery on the collar and and yeah, the

• 50:12Speaker 04

  yeah, let's let's let the video

• 50:13Speaker 02

  it was a big explosion. I thought the deer went sky high and there's

• 50:18Speaker 04

  Phil, can you pull up that video?

• 50:20Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 50:22Speaker 04

  And and I I told Derek before we got started, like I someone said this to us and said, have you seen this video of a deer exploding? When the collar gets hit? And I thought, oh, we're gonna get like a little sizzle. You know, or like a couple sparks, but the video is uh is something.

• 50:44Speaker 04

  You can see here, the the

• 50:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 50:47Speaker 04

  Getting set up for the shot.

• 50:47Speaker 06

  Should be audio, but it's not coming through. So apologies.

• 50:51Speaker 05

  Takes aim.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  Kaboom. And it's it's like a yeah, I mean

• 50:54Speaker 05

  Looks like Tannerite.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  For folks that aren't list or are watching, excuse me, for the folks who are Listening and not watching. Yeah, it looks like a Tannerite went off. So Derek, what what's the first thing in your mind that I mean? It's crazy. So you pull the trigger and there's one big boom and then another big boom. What's the first thing goes through your mind?

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Uh, well, it was funny because there's there's a good 15 seconds of silence in the truck like we all just sat there and just stared at 15 foot tall pile of smoke and we're we all just literally just sat there and I was like, uh, like And the deer, you guys got out here, you know?

• 51:42Speaker 02

  And the landowner is like, I've been hunting my my land for 50 years and I have never ever seen that. And we're yeah, it was just mind blowing and wasn't expecting it. And honestly, going going up to the deer, I thought there was gonna be a lot of damage, but there was absolutely no damage to the deer. It was it was literally just the battery exploded and you could see where my bullet went through the Went through the neck, dropped it right in its right in its tracks. So it was a good

• 52:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, you'd hope so with that impact.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 52:13Speaker 06

  Didn't go 20.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  It was shooting a 243 and it hit the yeah, hit that battery and it it's crazy. You could slow it down and there's a giant flash of light Sparks flying 10, 15 feet in the air and then that smoke got a good 15, 20 feet in the Up in the forest there, so.

• 52:30Speaker 06

  Derek, we got a question from Seth who asked, how far did it run after that?

• 52:36Speaker 02

  About two inches.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  It dropped, luckily it was a clean ethical shot, so he dropped right, right in his trap.

• 52:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, uh, no blood trailing needed. Um, did, did wildlife, I mean, you, so you posted this on your Instagram channel and, or on your Instagram feed and then it, it went viral. Can you tell us like, did wildlife officials reach out to you at all? Or what was sort of the reaction that you got after you posted this?

• 53:06Speaker 02

  So we were driving down to the lodge when this happened. Before we got to the lodge, after we threw the deer in the truck, we were already on the phone with the Utah DNR and, and, uh, they, they congratulated me. They said, you know, great shot, congratulations. And they asked what condition the collar was in. And it, you know, we explained it and they're like, oh, you go ahead, keep the collar. It's no abuse to us. And they even emailed me the migration charts.

• 53:34Speaker 04

  Oh, cool.

• 53:35Speaker 06

  Oh, nice.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  So I got to see where the, the summer range, it's winter range and it's year round range. And that deer specifically, uh, migrates 21 miles. Round, round trip from its summer ground to the winter grounds.

• 53:50Speaker 04

  That's amazing.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  That was pretty cool that deer put on some miles.

• 53:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. Whenever I shoot a deer, I always like wonder what its individual story is. And it's like, you're never going to get the chance to know that unless it's like.

• 54:06Speaker 06

  Unless it has an exploding collar.

• 54:07Speaker 04

  Unless it's exploding collar, yeah. So is that going to go on the, uh, you're going to do a Euro mount and hang the collar on it? Or what's the plan there?

• 54:16Speaker 02

  I have a Euro mount and I have the collar hanging, hanging from it. Yeah, I do. So it was, it was cool. I got, you know, and you asked about like the, like what people said about it afterwards, but I got. A lot of people, you know, people who don't read the captions, because I, I listed what happened in the entire hunt, why I was shooting from a vehicle.

• 54:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Why it exploded, X, Y, Z. Because they got a lot of hate from shooting from a vehicle that people didn't. Special situation.

• 54:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, Derek, I know you use your platform to advocate for hunters with disabilities. And it's an important message, and I think what you just brought up there, like, there's a lot of, you know, ignorance out there. Not only in the hunting community, but outside of the hunting community about folks getting outdoors in different ways. Can you, uh, can you share some of your, like, advocacy message with, with our audience and kind of what, what would you want other hunters to understand about what it takes to get, you know, for example, a paraplegic like yourself outside?

• 55:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, it's, you know, every, every state out there offers a chute from a vehicle. It doesn't have to be a car. It could be any, any wheeled vehicle from the road. Um, you, you can go out, you can get those. It's,

• 55:38Speaker 02

  you know, it's tough. Like, I wasn't, I wasn't born paraplegic. You know, I got, got into a, a bad accident and, um, just, just trying to fill the freezer like anybody else, you know, and there's, there's a lot less of us in this position than people tend to think. People tend to think, oh, you know, and I don't know, shooting from a car does get abused by a lot of people, but, um, in, in reality, like, there's no really other way to do certain types of hunts. Like, I still like to hop, hop in the blind, you know, choke points, food plots, water sources, all that. That, that's a lot fun, but sometimes when you're hunting big, steep, rugged mountain terrain, you know, you're obviously not going to be rolling your wheelchair through that, so, um,

• 56:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  hopping, hopping in the side by or a car really.

• 56:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, so maybe.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  It really helps, you know, just trying to fill the freezer.

• 56:29Speaker 04

  If folks see someone shooting from a vehicle, don't rush to judgment about who's doing that and why, right?

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah. Yeah, some, some disabilities are super visible, you know, and, and some aren't.

• 56:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  If you see me rolling down the street, you're like, this guy's in a wheelchair, you know, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of disabilities out there that you can apply for a chute from a vehicle car that you, you couldn't tell just by looking at somebody, you know, you have to dive deep into their story. Hear what they're all about and so yeah, just don't rush to judgment.

• 57:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:10Speaker 02

  We're all out here just trying to feed our families.

• 57:14Speaker 04

  Well, Derek, if if folks want to hear more about your story and and learn more about your work, where can they find you?

• 57:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, so my I do a lot of video logging about my hunts and stuff on Instagram. The T eight underscore outdoorsman and it's the same for my YouTube channel, T eight underscore outdoorsman. And if anyone has a chance to hop on or would like to listen to T eight outdoors podcast. The podcast I started for people with disabilities who go out there and hunt and just their extraordinary stories and how differently logistics apply to their certain hunts about I got buddies and shooting big old elk, dragging them out with chairs and so just. Yeah, if you hop on and give it a check out and see what we have to do logistically, it'd be cool just to bring awareness.

• 58:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, Derek, thanks. Thanks for sharing your story. Thanks for chatting with us and appreciate the work you're doing and yeah. Hopefully the next year you pull the trigger on will be a little less eventful, surprising.

• 58:19Speaker 06

  Combustible.

• 58:20Speaker 04

  It's combustible.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was the the most popular forky there on the internet for probably about two weeks.

• 58:31Speaker 04

  Well, Derek, hope you're having a good fall and maybe we'll chat with you again here soon.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  Appreciate it, guys. Thank you.

• 58:37Speaker 04

  Thank you. Man, every time I watch that video, it doesn't get old. It still shocks me.

• 58:45Speaker 06

  It's so crazy.

• 58:47Speaker 04

  I encourage everybody, if you're just listening, go either check this out on YouTube or check out Derek's Instagram page because it's a wild. Wild visual.

• 58:55Speaker 06

  Wild video.

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• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Which brings us to our next segment, and that's a hot tip-off.

• 1:01:09Speaker 04

  H-O-T-T-I-P-O. Let's all do a hot tip-off. H-O-T-T-I-P-O.

• 1:01:26Speaker 06

  Love it.

• 1:01:27Speaker 04

  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 better and that will be, by we'll, I mean the audience will choose which one's better.

• 1:01:42Speaker 06

  That's right. I will throw up a poll in the live chat after we watch the hot tips.

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  Yes. If you don't mind, Phil, please do that. And if you have a hot tip, take a one-minute video on your phone and email it to radio@themeat eater.com with the subject line "Hot Tip Off." This segment is brought to you by our good friends at Case Knives, handcrafting high-quality knives since 1889. And the winner of this showdown will receive a Meat Eater branded case trapper knife. And Uncle Brent will be very pleased with that.

• 1:02:13Speaker 06

  Oh, oh, oh. Uncle Brent will like it.

• 1:02:16Speaker 04

  All right, Phil, let's hear this week's hot tips.

• 1:02:20Speaker 06

  Ethan Hall.

• 1:02:25Speaker 03

  Hey, this is Ethan from Fataleak, Wisconsin. And my hot tip is, as we all know, we need a lot of room to do our cutting. A lot of times, big cutting boards aren't cheap. So what we like to do is, we go down to the local home improvement store, and for $30, you can get a whole four-foot piece of scrap cut off clearance laminate countertop that works great as a cutting board. And we have three of them. So we have 12 feet of counter space for cutting and butchering. So for 120 bucks, we have 12 whole feet of basically a cutting board. Thanks. Bye.

• 1:03:10Speaker 06

  Nice.

• 1:03:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  Hey everybody, Billy here in Minnesota with a hot tip for you. In response to Spencer's question about the best type of gas tank to use, I've got a better solution. Buy a siphon hose, anywhere on the internet, or maybe at a hardware store. It's got a check valve on this side. You put your fuel tank anywhere above the fuel fill on your vehicle. Put it in the vehicle and then you take this end and you just jam it down like this. And that gets the fuel flowing from the tank into your vehicle. This way, if you don't have a fuel gauge, you can look inside and see how full it is. So you're not going to spill everywhere if you're using a regular tank. There's no leaking from the tank. And then when you're done, you just pull it up from the fuel tank.

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  And the rest of it siphons down into your vehicle. Much better solution for filling things like snowmobiles, four-wheelers, and side-by-sides.

• 1:04:12Speaker 05

  Amen.

• 1:04:12Speaker 06

  Very familiar with that device.

• 1:04:14Speaker 05

  Keep that clean. Yeah, good thing to have in your truck.

• 1:04:16Speaker 04

  Yep. Get one at Harbor Freight.

• 1:04:18Speaker 06

  I wonder if, uh, Pole is Live.

• 1:04:20Speaker 04

  Pole is Live, gang, get in there.

• 1:04:21Speaker 06

  I wonder if Chester knows Ethan from Fond du Lac?

• 1:04:24Speaker 04

  Fond du Lac?

• 1:04:25Speaker 06

  Cause that's where Chester's from.

• 1:04:26Speaker 05

  Get out.

• 1:04:26Speaker 06

  Fond du Lac.

• 1:04:27Speaker 05

  Man, a lot of great hot tips coming from the upper Midwest.

• 1:04:30Speaker 04

  How many people could possibly live in Fond du Lac?

• 1:04:33Speaker 06

  I don't know. I don't know what the population is.

• 1:04:36Speaker 04

  Do you like the countertop trick?

• 1:04:38Speaker 06

  I do. Yeah.

• 1:04:40Speaker 05

  When we redid our counters, I saved two big sections just for that very thing. So I do that.

• 1:04:45Speaker 04

  You know, it's funny, when we redid our counters, when we redid our counters, I saved all of the butcher block. And I just cut it into weird shapes.

• 1:04:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Speaker 04

  I've got a piece of butcher block with a, uh, with a barrel vise on it. So I can pull barrels and stuff on my truck bed. And I can also put a reloading, uh, I can put a press on there and, and reload cases at the range. If I'm doing some experimenting with seating depth, things like that. But I have all this countertop just leaning up against the walls in my barn. But I just like that. I mean, you could go to, you don't even have to go to Home Depot. You just go to like the, the home salvage store.

• 1:05:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, I did the same thing.

• 1:05:25Speaker 04

  Where I like to find all my weird stuff.

• 1:05:26Speaker 06

  We, we did butcher block as well. And yeah, my leftover junk is a cutting board now.

• 1:05:31Speaker 05

  Yeah. I love any hot tip that involves recycling stuff like that. It's good.

• 1:05:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. But I also feel like, uh, anything we can do to get at big gas can. You know, fight the man, fight the man and his, his few mitigating gas cans.

• 1:05:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:05:46Speaker 04

  I like that.

• 1:05:46Speaker 06

  It's kinda tight, so I'm gonna give you another 30 seconds to get these last votes in. Maybe you can sway sway the tide here.

• 1:05:53Speaker 04

  How many votes total do we have, Phil?

• 1:05:55Speaker 06

  Uh, right now we have 88 votes.

• 1:05:57Speaker 04

  Oh, but there's 308 people watching.

• 1:05:59Speaker 06

  Over 300 people watching, so. Come on.

• 1:06:01Speaker 04

  Democracy is a right. Yeah, even if you're driving, get on it. Poor turnout is embarrassing.

• 1:06:06Speaker 06

  This, this is, this does kind of match up with the American electoral as far as population to, to people who actually vote.

• 1:06:13Speaker 04

  We're probably higher.

• 1:06:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:06:15Speaker 04

  Probably outperforming.

• 1:06:17Speaker 06

  So, take that back, you guys are doing great.

• 1:06:20Speaker 04

  Let's give it another five seconds and then we'll call it, cause that's how they do elections.

• 1:06:25Speaker 06

  Too close to call.

• 1:06:27Speaker 04

  Sorry, that's the...

• 1:06:30Speaker 04

  That's it.

• 1:06:30Speaker 06

  No, okay, polls over. I was gonna say, I've, I've, uh, the, um, which Steve has one of these now, but we first saw it from the, the guys that do some flying for us when we moose hunt up in Alaska. But they have one of those siphon hoses with, in the middle of it, they have a shut off valve.

• 1:06:50Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:51Speaker 06

  So when, you know.

• 1:06:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:53Speaker 06

  When it gets full, they can just hit that shut off valve.

• 1:06:56Speaker 04

  That's smart.

• 1:06:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:06:57Speaker 04

  Keep it real.

• 1:06:57Speaker 06

  Which is like a hot tip. With 59% of the vote, the winner is Ethan with the laminate countertop.

• 1:07:09Speaker 04

  Congrats, Ethan.

• 1:07:11Speaker 04

  I also think my favorite part about Ethan's video is just the inside of that shop.

• 1:07:16Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:16Speaker 04

  Or barn or whatever it is. It's like that guy is deadly serious about cutting up deer.

• 1:07:21Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, the folks in, in the upper Midwest take their shop serious, I think.

• 1:07:27Speaker 04

  Good shop culture.

• 1:07:28Speaker 06

  They like to hang out in the shops, which I enjoy.

• 1:07:30Speaker 04

  Well, Ethan, uh, well, should he email? Email radio at the meat eater.com. Our producer will probably reach out to you. Ethan, our producer will reach out to you and get you that, uh, meat eater branded case trapper knife. Congrats on your victory and, uh, thanks for submitting your tip. And thanks to our good friends at Case Knives for sponsoring this week's hot tip off. All right, Phil. Let's get back in the chat and see what people are saying.

• 1:08:00Speaker 06

  I've been, I've been kind of abs- From the chat for a little bit.

• 1:08:03Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:08:04Speaker 06

  Knobs back here. Yeah.

• 1:08:05Speaker 04

  Phil.

• 1:08:06Speaker 06

  Steve were here, he'd be acting the exact same way. He did talk about how he's already posted the, the job listing, looking for a new podcast. But, uh, Randall, I think you're gonna like this one. This is a question from Mason. I need some gun selling advice. I am trying to sell my grand prize 25th anniversary Christensen's Arms Travers and 300 Win Mag. Serial, yeah, okay, serial number. He says, he says it's been on GunBroker for a while and I'm not getting much traction. I live in Northeast Ohio, hey, and thought about shipping it to a gun shop out west. Do you have anything to add here?

• 1:08:39Speaker 04

  Um, it's a good question. It's a good question. I would be, I mean, I'd get it on GunBroker. I don't know what you'd, what you'd get for that.

• 1:08:50Speaker 04

  If it's not getting much traction on GunBroker, yeah, I mean, you might reach out to some gun shops out west that do a lot of, I mean, there's, there's services and shops that'll list your stuff on GunBroker and do like a very, uh, high-end bespoke, uh, auction page to maybe get some eyeballs, but, I mean, I, I, I always sell stuff just by plugging it into different forums and, uh, this may not be what you want to hear. But when I'm, uh, trying to sell a gun, I, I lowball myself. So, uh, I don't, I lower my standards so that I just sell it quickly. Uh, I don't have a lot of experience like selling high-value items for what they're worth or more.

• 1:09:32Speaker 04

  Uh, typically I just am moving something to move on to the next thing. So Seth, you have thoughts on that?

• 1:09:38Speaker 06

  I mean, my, my gun selling advice is don't sell guns. Just keep them, hoard them.

• 1:09:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:43Speaker 06

  Put them in a safe.

• 1:09:45Speaker 05

  Get ready for the apocalypse.

• 1:09:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:47Speaker 05

  Yeah. That's a beautiful rifle.

• 1:09:49Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Phil, what else we got here? Good luck to you, Mason.

• 1:09:53Speaker 06

  Um, I picked this question because it's incredibly vague, but I, I think it could open up, um, a discussion of what this actually means, but Siskgrant26 asks, what's, what is the most admirable non-game animal?

• 1:10:08Speaker 04

  Hmm, that's a great question.

• 1:10:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, admirable could mean different things to different people. I think it's pretty subjective. So, so if you guys want to hash that out, I think that'd be fun.

• 1:10:18Speaker 05

  Probably a grizzly bear for me.

• 1:10:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, I guess in the lower forty eight.

• 1:10:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, I guess.

• 1:10:23Speaker 04

  I think that's.

• 1:10:23Speaker 06

  Where you're at.

• 1:10:24Speaker 04

  I think that's cheating. I would say, um.

• 1:10:29Speaker 04

  If we're going globally.

• 1:10:31Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:10:31Speaker 04

  I would have to say it's one of the great apes.

• 1:10:36Speaker 04

  Either a gorilla.

• 1:10:37Speaker 06

  Here, here, yeah.

• 1:10:38Speaker 04

  Chimpanzee or orangutan.

• 1:10:40Speaker 06

  You have a lot of respect. For those creatures. I like the Wolverine.

• 1:10:45Speaker 04

  I was.

• 1:10:45Speaker 06

  But you can.

• 1:10:45Speaker 04

  Oh, the Wolverine is cool.

• 1:10:47Speaker 06

  Alaska.

• 1:10:48Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:10:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:48Speaker 05

  Not down here, though. Yeah.

• 1:10:49Speaker 06

  Canada.

• 1:10:50Speaker 05

  Wild animal.

• 1:10:51Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:10:52Speaker 04

  Um. Yeah, I don't know. I'm wondering about things like possums.

• 1:10:59Speaker 06

  You can get them.

• 1:11:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:11:01Speaker 06

  All over the place.

• 1:11:04Speaker 04

  But I would call it like a game, game.

• 1:11:07Speaker 06

  It's a fur bear.

• 1:11:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 1:11:09Speaker 05

  Armadillo.

• 1:11:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, you're talking to the trapper here.

• 1:11:12Speaker 04

  Armadillo?

• 1:11:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:11:14Speaker 06

  Nah.

• 1:11:16Speaker 05

  Cheating with that shell.

• 1:11:18Speaker 04

  No, I think, I think the great apes, I'm gonna, I'm gonna plant my flag.

• 1:11:25Speaker 04

  And these guys don't have good answers, so that's it.

• 1:11:27Speaker 06

  Great, we locked it down.

• 1:11:28Speaker 04

  Phil, did we, did we get it? Do we squeeze enough juice out of that?

• 1:11:32Speaker 06

  You know, I was, I thought you guys might squeeze a little bit more, but hey, we'll work with it.

• 1:11:36Speaker 04

  I think there's a lot of good questions in there.

• 1:11:38Speaker 06

  There is. Cord asks, I think I know the answer, that Seth's answer. What is the weirdest health condition slash diagnosis y'all have contracted from the outdoor lifestyle? This includes friends or pets?

• 1:11:48Speaker 04

  Just mostly diarrhea.

• 1:11:49Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:11:50Speaker 04

  Just a lot of diarrhea.

• 1:11:52Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Giardia.

• 1:11:54Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:11:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. Kept it pretty safe and healthy out there. I don't know. Seth's mental breakdown here, not shooting a deer, kinda got me concerned, but.

• 1:12:03Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, it's.

• 1:12:04Speaker 05

  That'll get fixed here.

• 1:12:05Speaker 06

  It's something I gotta work through myself. Don't worry about it.

• 1:12:07Speaker 04

  Like. There's cuts, there's, I don't have any trichinosis stories.

• 1:12:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:12:12Speaker 04

  Um, weird insect bites and bee stings. Including pets, um.

• 1:12:20Speaker 04

  We had, one of our dogs, this past winter, uh, I wish I could remember the name of it, but essentially what she did was poke a hole in her abdomen with a stick, and then it filled up with air. Cause her body was working like a bellows and it sucked all this air up under the skin and it was like she had bubble wrap under her.

• 1:12:39Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 1:12:40Speaker 04

  Which I always think it's fun when there's something weird with your dog's body and you like Google, what could this possibly be? And then you figure it out. But yeah, it was a bizarre one. I wish I could remember what that was. And then, and then we told a doctor friend of ours about it and he was like, oh yeah, bubble wrap? And we're like, yeah. And he's like, oh, he's like, that happens all the time when you give people chest tubes. I was like, alright.

• 1:13:03Speaker 05

  Drain the air.

• 1:13:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, so.

• 1:13:04Speaker 05

  Wild.

• 1:13:05Speaker 04

  Anyway. That's what I got.

• 1:13:07Speaker 05

  So far, so good.

• 1:13:09Speaker 06

  Great.

• 1:13:09Speaker 04

  Hitting these out of the park, huh, Phil?

• 1:13:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, you guys are doing great. On the note of diarrhea, Friday Arrows asks, Randall, would you rather give up hot dogs or brewskis?

• 1:13:18Speaker 05

  Now that's a question.

• 1:13:19Speaker 04

  Um.

• 1:13:20Speaker 06

  Randall's getting real serious.

• 1:13:23Speaker 04

  I think, I think the honest answer, well, there's two answers. If I could give up beer, I would.

• 1:13:36Speaker 06

  That's a big if.

• 1:13:37Speaker 04

  I don't.

• 1:13:39Speaker 04

  But I, I don't think I can.

• 1:13:41Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:13:42Speaker 04

  I've never been able to make that commitment to myself and my loved ones. Um, so I think the honest answer is I would have to give up hot dogs, but if you were gonna like, you know, brainwash me somehow, like office space, uh, hypnotize me, I'd probably say get rid of the drinking. Cause the drinking actually leads to more hot dog eating.

• 1:14:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, but he says brewskis. Could you, you could, you could resort to like

• 1:14:08Speaker 04

  Become a wino?

• 1:14:08Speaker 06

  Brown liquor or something, you know?

• 1:14:10Speaker 04

  Oh, I can't drink the spirits.

• 1:14:11Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, that's an early grave.

• 1:14:13Speaker 04

  I get out of control. I get out of control.

• 1:14:16Speaker 06

  Well.

• 1:14:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, before we, I mean, yeah, it's a good question. I wish I had a better answer for you. If, yeah, if it was like someone said, you have to give up one or the other and it's all on you and your self-control, otherwise they'll find you and, you know, put a bullet in your head. I'd probably say hot dogs. It would be easier to do.

• 1:14:33Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:14:34Speaker 04

  But if I could hypnotize myself, I'd say beer because it's probably the healthier choice.

• 1:14:40Speaker 05

  Great question.

• 1:14:42Speaker 04

  Knocked another one out of the park. Keep them coming, Phil.

• 1:14:46Speaker 06

  Here's one, here's a question that I can contribute a little something to. This is from Wally Blumer. Not sure what size Brooks down sweater to buy.

• 1:14:52Speaker 05

  Oh, there you go.

• 1:14:53Speaker 06

  I wear a large sweatshirt and a medium tee shirt. Which way would you go? Yes, I would say large because I wear a large tee shirt.

• 1:15:03Speaker 06

  So I'm guessing I'm like a slightly bigger than you and my large Brooks down sweater is like just barely smaller than what I would want. So I think it would fit you pretty well. Then again, I brought, I, but mine's, I think mine's like a different, I bought mine years ago, so it might be a different sort of cut or something that they do now, but I would say large for sure.

• 1:15:22Speaker 05

  Should be about the same. Yeah, I'm kind of in that same boat there, wearing large items and medium items. I'd go big because the Brooks down, you can still wear it, but just a tad big. If it's too small, you're not gonna.

• 1:15:33Speaker 04

  And you might want to layer under it.

• 1:15:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, you can layer under it.

• 1:15:36Speaker 05

  And they're so light, you're not going to feel the difference if you're worried about packability, the difference between a medium and a large is.

• 1:15:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Speaker 04

  I like to wear that, I like to wear the Brooks down with like a fleece hoodie underneath, so.

• 1:15:47Speaker 05

  Put it on over your bino harness if it's a little big too.

• 1:15:51Speaker 06

  I like to wear with that hoodie underneath the furnace.

• 1:15:54Speaker 04

  Man, I've been wearing this, I, I was, I've been wearing this one a lot.

• 1:15:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:15:58Speaker 04

  And I got another one for like a nice looking one. And now this one's just like mucking around hoodie.

• 1:16:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:16:07Speaker 05

  Are you mucking around right now?

• 1:16:09Speaker 04

  I will be later.

• 1:16:11Speaker 05

  Ready?

• 1:16:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is my mucking around hoodie.

• 1:16:16Speaker 06

  Cool. Let's do one more here. And this is going to be kind of like, this is going to be a double plug question since we just did a, a very practical, but first light question. Um, Roe says, Phil, I have a question. Most weeks I stream the live show as a podcast the next day. Do y'all see that a lot? That is how we see it most of the time, Roe. Uh, like only, you know, a sub 1,000 people will dip in and out live, but then, you know, it gets thousands of views as it goes on. And that's only on YouTube. The podcast gets tens of thousands of downloads after that. So, um, so like you're, you're, you're not alone. We'll say, because since we don't do this enough, in my opinion, we never plug our own YouTube channels or the podcast one, really. We, we, I think we said, hey, you should go subscribe to it when it first launched years ago.

• 1:17:02Speaker 06

  But, um, please subscribe to the Meat Eater Podcast Network YouTube channel if you have not done so. I think most of the people here live probably have, but if you're a podcast listener, dip on over there and hit that subscribe button.

• 1:17:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, the Meat Eater Podcast, is it Meat Eater Podcast Network?

• 1:17:17Speaker 06

  Yes, I believe so.

• 1:17:18Speaker 04

  Meat Eater Podcast Network YouTube channel. It's a separate channel from the just standard Meat Eater channel. And, uh, you'll, if you'd ever wondered what Corey looks like and you don't have social media, you'll want to check that out.

• 1:17:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, get up on that.

• 1:17:34Speaker 06

  Get a look at him.

• 1:17:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, get a good look at this guy.

• 1:17:36Speaker 06

  You won't regret it.

• 1:17:37Speaker 04

  He said he's a large.

• 1:17:40Speaker 06

  Sometimes a medium, though.

• 1:17:45Speaker 05

  That should explain it all.

• 1:17:46Speaker 04

  Phil, we got any more? We got any more, uh?

• 1:17:48Speaker 06

  Well, how long do you want to keep? We've got some more questions.

• 1:17:51Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. This is fun. We're going a little long. I lost track of it.

• 1:17:54Speaker 06

  There are just some, it's hard because a lot of people come in with good intentions and ask pretty good questions, but it's a question that we answered a week ago or a couple of weeks ago. And I don't want it to be too repetitive. Um, but we can just keep digging through some of these questions if you want. Some of them are kind of are vague, like for some reason, or for, for examples from Jordan. We're heading to Kentucky today to hunt for three days on public with no information. What is the best plan to start hunting whitetail deer? See, this is kind of open ended, right? Like do any scouting. Yeah, I would say scout for a day and a half and hunt for a day and a half.

• 1:18:26Speaker 05

  Ooh.

• 1:18:28Speaker 04

  That's good advice.

• 1:18:30Speaker 04

  I'd say.

• 1:18:30Speaker 06

  You'd spend three days sitting in a spot where there's no deer.

• 1:18:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:33Speaker 06

  But if you scout, you could really narrow it in and, and execute.

• 1:18:37Speaker 04

  Make half your trip real productive.

• 1:18:39Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:18:40Speaker 04

  That's a great idea.

• 1:18:41Speaker 05

  That's pretty good.

• 1:18:42Speaker 04

  Cause if you double your productivity of a day and a half by scouting for a day and a half, you essentially get those scouting hours back by the double productivity. So it's like you get to hunt for three days and scout for a day and a half because you're doubling the productivity of those day and a half.

• 1:18:57Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 1:18:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. That's a great point.

• 1:19:00Speaker 06

  That pencil's out.

• 1:19:01Speaker 05

  I can't top that tip.

• 1:19:03Speaker 06

  Oh, here's a question for Seth. Photography question. Do you prefer faster lightweight prime lenses or? Heavier, slower zooms when out in the field. Well, I, I typically go with the zooms because I can cover uh, a lot of things with just one lens. But I prefer a prime. Specifically a 50.

• 1:19:26Speaker 06

  Um, primes are just cooler. They look better. But you know, you can't always get the shot with a prime. Especially in hunting situations where things happen quickly and you know, it's nice to have the, the range.

• 1:19:41Speaker 04

  Phil, is that it?

• 1:19:42Speaker 06

  Well, how, we can keep going. It's your show, Randall. Tell me what you want to do.

• 1:19:46Speaker 04

  Call that it. I, I'm looking at the clock. I realize we're keeping people late here. Um. We do have one last item and that is a bit of housekeeping. Before we go today, we've got to address the elephant in the room. Next Thursday is Thanksgiving Day, so none of us will be here in studio for our weekly Thursday broadcast. But the show must go on. So this time next week, we'll be airing a pre-recorded podcast episode with Steve and some of the crew. As always, please tune in, especially if you already need a break from the kitchen or your family. But please know that the chat will be unsupervised. And so if you have a pressing question that you'd like addressed on the show.

• 1:20:23Speaker 06

  Well, actually I need to interrupt you here. It is not a radio live episode. This is a, it's going to, it's a meat eater podcast. Episode, crew, uh, crew episode. I don't think we're going to be live streaming it. Um, it's just gonna drop. It's gonna drop. Randall, you really. You've got some bad information. Yeah, I don't, um.

• 1:20:39Speaker 05

  Can we redo this?

• 1:20:40Speaker 04

  Well, you should have told me that before we went, we're live now.

• 1:20:43Speaker 06

  Should we just end it now? Hey Randall, if you have a problem with the way I run the show back here, can we just, like, I don't want you to, to talk about it behind the mic. It's embarrassing for me.

• 1:20:53Speaker 04

  So if you have a pressing question for.

• 1:20:57Speaker 06

  Pull it together.

• 1:20:58Speaker 04

  If you have a pressing question for the crew.

• 1:21:00Speaker 06

  Randall.

• 1:21:00Speaker 04

  Save it until our.

• 1:21:01Speaker 06

  Don't ask questions.

• 1:21:02Speaker 04

  It until our next meat eater live on December 4th.

• 1:21:05Speaker 05

  December.

• 1:21:06Speaker 06

  This is a really bad look for you.

• 1:21:07Speaker 04

  Thursday, December. I think it's a bad look for you. I mean.

• 1:21:10Speaker 06

  No, I'm fine.

• 1:21:10Speaker 04

  I was told to address this. I was told to address this and, and prepare the audience for next week's schedule, but I was given incomplete information. And so now I look like a fool.

• 1:21:20Speaker 06

  You're right. I think you guys should hash this out a little later.

• 1:21:23Speaker 04

  As always.

• 1:21:24Speaker 06

  Do you want to grab a beer after this?

• 1:21:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, as always.

• 1:21:26Speaker 06

  And a hot dog?

• 1:21:28Speaker 04

  As always, thanks for tuning in, guys. Hope you enjoyed the show. We'll review some of the feedback and decide whether there will be another segment of Meat Theater. I'm thinking it's likely doubtful.

• 1:21:39Speaker 06

  No, it's happening.

• 1:21:40Speaker 04

  But, uh, appreciate you.

• 1:21:42Speaker 06

  I'll have a real drop next time.

• 1:21:44Speaker 04

  And, uh, and, uh, enjoy the hunting this time of year.

• 1:21:48Speaker 06

  Happy Thanksgiving, early.

• 1:21:50Speaker 04

  Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving.

• 1:21:53Speaker 06

  Oh, oh, oh.

• 1:21:54Speaker 04

  All right, Phil, play the cut music.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

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• 1:23:30Speaker 02

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