Pod Insights The MeatEater Podcast Ep. 816: New Year's Resolutions, Mutant Turkeys, and Goodbye (Sort Of) Cal | MeatEater Radio Live! About this episode Hosts Brody Henderson, Ryan Callaghan, and Cory Calkins go deep with Dr. Phil Lavretsky about turkey mutations and his latest citizen science project, throwback to their favorite hunts of 2025, make some New Year's resolutions, and answer listener questions.
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Transcript 14,425 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:05 Speaker 04 Smell us now, lady. Welcome to Meat Eater Trivia. Meat Eater Podcast.
2:28 Speaker 05 Happy New Years, everyone, and welcome to Radio Live. I'm your host, Brody Henderson, and I'm joined by Corey Calkins and Ryan Callahan.
2:37 Speaker 05 Today, we're not actually live. We're actually pre-recording before Meat Eater HQ shuts down for the holidays. But we've still got a great New Year's Day show for you guys, even the poor suckers who stayed up late last night and they're nursing a hangover. Hopefully, you're not one of those people, but I imagine there's a few of you out there.
2:57 Speaker 06 Is that gonna be one of you, Cal, Corey?
2:59 Speaker 07 Hmm, not with kids anymore. I'm going to bed at 8:00 PM.
3:02 Speaker 05 There you go. There you go. Avoid amateur night.
3:06 Speaker 07 That's right.
3:07 Speaker 06 Yeah, I get all my fun in, uh, early.
3:11 Speaker 05 Yeah.
3:11 Speaker 06 And it seems to really wrap up within, like, a beer and a half, anyway.
3:15 Speaker 05 Yeah, that's smart. That's smart. Uh, today, we're gonna talk to our friend Jake Lavretsky about all those...
3:22 Speaker 06 Phil Lavretsky.
3:23 Speaker 05 Lavretsky.
3:24 Speaker 06 Phil. Phil Lavretsky.
3:25 Speaker 05 Jake. Why do I have Jake in there?
3:27 Speaker 06 Jake's our producer who's right next to Phil in the window.
3:29 Speaker 05 Jesus, Pete. I'm just reading. That's the problem with just reading a script.
3:33 Speaker 07 Sorry, Phil. Dr. Phil.
3:35 Speaker 06 Three-time guest, Phil Lavretsky.
3:37 Speaker 05 We're gonna talk to that Phil guy, not our Phil, um, about all those funny-looking, uh, color-faced turkeys, uh, getting shot out there these days.
3:46 Speaker 06 Hmm.
3:48 Speaker 05 Um, we've also got a very special in-house interview with Cal about why in the hell he decided to leave Meat Eater to go get a real job. No one really knows.
3:58 Speaker 06 I didn't know that was in the script. Alright. Welcome.
4:02 Speaker 05 Um, and for our crew segments, we're gonna look back on our favorite hunts of the year, and then we're gonna look forward with some New Year's resolutions. You guys, New Year's resolution, guys?
4:13 Speaker 06 Semi, I like to think about it, but then it rarely follows.
4:18 Speaker 05 I'm gonna force you into at least saying something today.
4:20 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's a good idea.
4:21 Speaker 05 Um, lastly, since we can't chat with you guys in real time, we're just gonna go over some questions and comments that have come up in emails in previous episodes. So we're still looking out for the fans out there. Um, before we get into all that, uh, happy holidays, fellas.
4:38 Speaker 06 Yeah.
4:39 Speaker 05 I'm looking forward to the break as I'm sure you guys are. Um, I got about a hundred pounds of meat that I need to grind in the burger and sausage. So that's a big project. And Cal and I were just talking, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and get out, uh, with the dog for pheasants and maybe get the wife out for a late season cow elk. So, yeah.
5:01 Speaker 06 That's like over the whole break kinda goal.
5:04 Speaker 05 Yeah, you know, the, the boys wanna get after, well, one of them does. The one already shot a late season doe, so the other one has to do what his older brother did. So we might try that too. What do you guys got going on?
5:16 Speaker 06 Yeah, meat management is high on my mind because I, I really wanna go hunt with this muzzleloader.
5:25 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm.
5:26 Speaker 06 Um, the timing is not.
5:29 Speaker 05 You've only got two, three days left of the season, right?
5:32 Speaker 06 Right, yeah, just, just this weekend. Um, but like I would really like to get some ducks in the freezer.
5:40 Speaker 05 Yep. Now that they're finally around.
5:43 Speaker 06 Yeah.
5:43 Speaker 05 Jeez.
5:43 Speaker 06 Yeah, um, and just that dog work is so frickin amazing. I, I, I love that. But I am, I have, I do like in my chest freezer, I do a game bag, uh, storage. So like this game bag is a whole parted out.
6:03 Speaker 05 Yep.
6:03 Speaker 06 And backsealed, nice, uh, elk shoulder.
6:07 Speaker 05 Right.
6:07 Speaker 06 This one's like the nice cuts and that's what I have left of my elk from last year.
6:13 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm.
6:14 Speaker 06 Um, is it just a little bit of front shoulder and, um, some neck meat for slow cook and stuff. And then, um, the, uh, kind of really just the loins, which is kinda crazy.
6:27 Speaker 05 Yeah.
6:28 Speaker 06 Um, and trying to.
6:32 Speaker 06 Like I, I'm gonna be cutting it close, but it'd be like a good full freezer turnover situation if I don't kill a deer.
6:43 Speaker 05 You'll be starting fresh after you get through this.
6:45 Speaker 06 Pretty darn fresh, yeah, yeah, because you got, um, you know, mostly two and a half antelope in there.
6:54 Speaker 05 Yeah.
6:55 Speaker 06 And that, that were this year. And, uh, and then, yeah, the turkeys and, and pheasants, but.
7:02 Speaker 05 That puts some pressure on you too, not having that backup meat from the prior year, you know?
7:07 Speaker 06 I know, I know. And then, uh, I think I'll need to commit to grinding some, some stuff too.
7:15 Speaker 05 How about, how about you, Corey?
7:17 Speaker 07 Yeah, grinding between my bull and a really old whitetail buck that I shot this year, I'm gonna grind all of him up.
7:23 Speaker 05 Stinky old ruddy, tough ass buck?
7:25 Speaker 07 Yeah. Very funny color on him, like real pink instead of dark red like I'm used to.
7:31 Speaker 05 Really?
7:31 Speaker 07 Yeah. Uh, just found out, I shot him here close to Bozeman in town, hundreds of other deer around. I was a little worried about CWD, had him tested and just found out that it was negative, so I'm excited. I was probably gonna eat him anyway, honestly, but, uh,
7:45 Speaker 05 Oh, you rolled the dice, huh?
7:47 Speaker 07 Yeah.
7:49 Speaker 05 I mean, I'm sure we've all eaten it at this point.
7:51 Speaker 07 Yeah, that's the thing, and we're all still sitting here. But yeah, I got a lot of grinding to do and, uh,
7:56 Speaker 05 Although your face looks funny, is that, that's not like a CWD.
8:00 Speaker 06 This is tough for Corey because,
8:02 Speaker 07 What are you talking about?
8:03 Speaker 06 Because we've recorded, because we've recorded the live show that aired on the 18th. And then in order to prep for the holiday, we filmed the show airing on Christmas and the show, this show airing on New Year's, all in the span of two days. And so every single one of those shows has a conversation about Corey's face.
8:20 Speaker 07 Yeah, I want to say it looks better than yesterday, which would have been, uh, Christmas episode. So, yeah, you'll have to go back if you haven't listened to the Christmas episode and find out what happened to my face, besides the obvious.
8:33 Speaker 05 You wouldn't tell me, I'll have to watch the show.
8:35 Speaker 07 Yeah, you're gonna have to. But, uh, and then it's turkey season still to the end of the year. So my boy and I, eight-year-old boy and I'd like to go out and get a bird.
8:42 Speaker 05 Yeah, man.
8:43 Speaker 07 Weather dependent and how the roads hold up.
8:45 Speaker 05 Yeah, I was pheasant hunting like, I don't know, week or so ago and cut a lone gobbler track. Man, I tried to find that thing, but I couldn't.
8:54 Speaker 07 Yeah, roaming around somewhere.
8:57 Speaker 05 Yeah.
8:57 Speaker 07 Loving the fall. So, yeah.
8:59 Speaker 05 And speaking of gobblers, how's that, Phil?
9:02 Speaker 01 That was incredible. You're a pro. People love you when you host, bro.
9:07 Speaker 05 Um, we're gonna do our first interview today, and our guest is Dr. Phil, not Jake, Lavretsky. He's a hunter, conservationist, and geneticist. We've had him on the show before, so some of you guys may have seen him. If you're not familiar, he, he, he's got a really cool duck DMA, DNA project going on.
9:32 Speaker 05 Where he's like figuring out the lineage of, of, uh, different ducks out there, whether they're hybrids, purebreds, whether there's like farm-raised duck DNA and those things. And he, he moved on to doing a similar project called Turkey DNA, which we're gonna talk about with him today. We got, got him on the line? There he is. Thanks for joining us, Phil.
9:54 Speaker 07 Hey, Phil.
9:54 Speaker 04 Happy New Year.
9:55 Speaker 05 The whole world knows you as Jake now.
9:58 Speaker 04 Yeah, you were just thinking about turkeys that whole time.
10:01 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
10:03 Speaker 04 What's up, Cory?
10:04 Speaker 07 How you doing, man?
10:05 Speaker 04 I like the look.
10:06 Speaker 07 Haha, thanks.
10:07 Speaker 05 Yeah, happy holidays.
10:09 Speaker 04 Yeah, happy holidays. Happy New Year. Now it's January 1st.
10:12 Speaker 05 Yep, yep, exactly. Uh, Phil, for folks who aren't familiar with you, just give us a quick breakdown of like your bona fides, and then we'll get into the, the Turkey DNA project you've got going on.
10:24 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. So I'm a professor here at the University of Texas at El Paso. I run a wildlife genetics lab. We are geneticists, but we basically do everything else under the sun. We're out there collecting, catching, banding, bleeding, telemetry unit attaching, working with hunters, landowners, farmers, and others, uh, to figure out what's happening with our wildlife, and answering the questions that our state and federal agencies, uh, partners wanna know.
10:54 Speaker 05 Great.
10:55 Speaker 04 That's yes.
10:56 Speaker 05 Um, so leading into this turkey DNA project, uh, I'm not sure if everyone's aware of this. Hopefully they are, but I'm going to tell them anyway, like, a- at one time, like, all turkeys were wild. There was no such thing as a domestic turkey. And then, North America got colonized, they domesticated those turkeys here, brought them back to Europe, then brought them back over here. And so now things are all screwed up. Um.
11:25 Speaker 04 Sort of, that's sort of the timeline.
11:28 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, it, li- listen, if I got it wrong.
11:32 Speaker 04 Yeah.
11:32 Speaker 05 Correct.
11:33 Speaker 06 Are you just embarrassed because he did it so well? I mean.
11:38 Speaker 04 Man, how much did you drink last night? Anyway.
11:40 Speaker 05 I don't drink at all. That's the problem, I think.
11:43 Speaker 04 Um, yeah, so sort of the timeline. So turkeys, turkeys are a North American species. They're not, they're not European. There's no, there's no real tur- there's no turkey lineages in Europe, New Zealand, anywhere else. They are a North American, Mesoamerican group of birds that evolved here. They were one of the successful domestication events by our ancestors that made it over the land bridge thousands of years ago.
12:11 Speaker 05 Oh, I got you. Okay.
12:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, so, so current ancient DNA work, uh, puts the domestication with Goulds, potentially with Miriam's, potentially two different time points, uh, between different tribes that were around at that time.
12:28 Speaker 05 Right.
12:28 Speaker 04 Looking at four thousand so years ago. So turkeys were domesticated, much like, um, cow and dogs and stuff in Europe, but they are specific to North America.
12:42 Speaker 05 So, like, European colonists didn't come over here, or maybe they did, did, did they, were they grabbing those, those turkeys that had already been domesticated, or were they also getting wild turkeys? And domesticating them?
13:00 Speaker 04 Are we, are we talking about Thanksgiving? Those would have been wild turkeys. The colonists would have been on the east eating Easterns at that time, right?
13:10 Speaker 05 So did they also, did, did they also domesticate, capture and, and eventually domesticate those birds?
13:17 Speaker 04 Yes, but like. Hundreds of years later.
13:21 Speaker 05 I got you. Okay.
13:22 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. So, so really, Native Americans were the ones that had what you would consider domestic turkeys at that time.
13:32 Speaker 05 Yep.
13:33 Speaker 04 Um, eventually, many, many moons later, they would be brought back to Europe and there are, but they're not. So there's farms of turkeys, but wild turkeys, as far as we know, have been brought back by the Brits primarily back to Europe. And then everywhere they go. So there's, right, so there's turkeys in New Zealand. Uh, there were no real, there were no turkeys in Hawaii, so people brought them there. So turkeys have been expanded that way. But naturally occurring only in North America, origination of domestic only in North America, Mesoamerica.
14:11 Speaker 05 Okay, before we get into the next stuff, um.
14:14 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:15 Speaker 05 Real quick, north, like as is now, North American wild turkeys laid on me the, the five subspecies and roughly where they live. Without getting into how they've been spread around, like their original kind of range.
14:30 Speaker 04 So if, if we'll, we'll go east to west, right? So east of the Mississippi River, where you had naturally occurring boreal forests. That would have been your eastern turkey. Once you get into the Florida Panha, or Pan, yeah, Florida side, that would be Osceola. What we're trying to figure out is how different Osceolas are from eastern right now. So there's the, there's those two. As you go, as you go west, so west of the Mississippi, you start getting into what would originally be Rios. Right? So that would be Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, that area. Then, once you get into more mountainous regions.
15:09 Speaker 05 Before you, before you move on to the next one, Rios typically. Or originally, we're like river bottom turkeys that lived in more open country, correct?
15:20 Speaker 04 Yeah.
15:20 Speaker 05 Okay.
15:21 Speaker 04 Right. Yeah. So then you're essentially changing habitats from low elevation to higher elevation. And that's when you get to miriam's, right? So uh, where I go in New Mexico, that would be all the sky islands there. Right? The Gila, the Sacramento Mountains, those would be all nat- natural miriam habitat, right?
15:47 Speaker 05 Into a little into Colorado too, correct?
15:49 Speaker 04 That's right. Yeah. And then south of that, right? Would be Gould's. So almost, not almost. All of the range in Mexico would be where Gould's turkey would have, would have been. And that's why all the studies have suggested that they're the source for the original domestication.
16:09 Speaker 05 Yep.
16:10 Speaker 04 That miriam's. So that's what you got. Oh, and then oscillated turkeys.
16:15 Speaker 05 We're not worried about those right now.
16:17 Speaker 04 Talk about that.
16:18 Speaker 05 Um, that's a whole different.
16:20 Speaker 06 But I feel like that is, considering the advancement of civilization. Uh, like that's where the domestication had to have started, right? Like sweet potatoes. Yeah, exactly.
16:33 Speaker 04 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's still being, so for sure, like some, potentially we just don't have the, the fossil records and the ancient DNA to go along with it, but I'm sure some civilizations did go after the oscillated turkey, but for one reason or another, what we do have good data for is that Gould's were Gould's and Miriam's and a mix of them were part, were used for that, the, the earliest domestications as far as we know here in the Southwest.
17:07 Speaker 06 Yeah. And it just became like the cool kid trend.
17:10 Speaker 04 Mm hmm.
17:10 Speaker 06 Yeah. It's like, whoa, let's follow those guys around. Yeah.
17:14 Speaker 04 And they're bigger than oscillated. They're, you know, more, maybe more delicious. I don't know.
17:19 Speaker 06 Yeah.
17:20 Speaker 05 Alright, so we're getting into these like different color phases and weird pattern, color patterns that show up, um, which is, I'm sure a large part of, of what you're working on here, like what's causing that?
17:36 Speaker 04 Yeah.
17:37 Speaker 05 And, correct me if I'm wrong, but like we've got a few different things going on here. We got completely wild turkeys that have some type of genetic mutation like albinism or melanism. Is that, that's, that's one.
17:53 Speaker 04 That's one.
17:54 Speaker 05 Cause. Um, then we've got breeding between wild turkey subspecies, because these birds have been moved around a lot. We've got overlapping, naturally overlapping range, and we've got like manmade overlapping range. For example, in here in northwestern Montana, you've got marriams and easterns and hybrids, like kinda all living in the same zone. Um, and then the third thing is you've got these like quote wild turkeys that are actually the product of, of some domestic ancestry. Like it could be, uh, um, like, like a, like a, a wild hen that rolls in behind the barn
18:39 Speaker 05 and hooks up with a domestic tom. Um, or a domestic turkey of either sex that maybe goes rogue and joins a flock of wild birds. Are those the three, like, main things we're looking at here?
18:55 Speaker 04 Those, yeah, so we're trying to now, originally this study was all about just asking the question of wild turkey DNA was born out of the question, is this a wild turkey?
19:09 Speaker 05 Yep.
19:09 Speaker 04 But, is every white, smoke faced, red, black turkey a wild turkey? That some weird mutation? Is it because of the hybridization between wild and wild? Is it because of wild heritage or wild domestic, uh, uh, interbreeding? Or is it just a bunch of like domestic feral birds that are on the landscape and people are shooting them?
19:32 Speaker 05 Yep.
19:33 Speaker 06 I can usually tell because it's a lazy turkey hunter or somebody who can't call very good, where I'm like, oh, that's obviously got some domestic, uh, DNA in it.
19:45 Speaker 04 Yeah.
19:45 Speaker 06 Because you, you shouldn't be able to get. Like that one Randall shot this year.
19:51 Speaker 05 Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
19:54 Speaker 04 I I did what I wanted to interrupt. So there is a caveat to domestic and heritage. So domestic.
20:00 Speaker 05 Yeah.
20:01 Speaker 04 Your white turkey that you go to Costco and buy, right? So this is a nuance within the turkey world that I only recently learned. Heritage is essentially people taking a domestic bird, breeding it with a wild, creating some thing, and then creating, calling it some heritage. Think of it like, um, I guess back to ducks. There's a bunch of different duck breeds that people have done that with. Dog breeds, right? So it's it's mixing dog pools, especially when people do dog wolf and then create some weird looking thing and then breed that a bunch.
20:38 Speaker 05 Yeah.
20:38 Speaker 06 And then they get a tattoo.
20:40 Speaker 05 Yeah.
20:41 Speaker 06 Yeah. Same old story.
20:44 Speaker 04 Um, that's that. So the that's the caveat. So we are looking at like, is it a bunch of heritage breeds? Is it a bunch of domestic breeds? What's occurring? What happens? Yeah.
20:55 Speaker 05 It's cool. Um, and as far as like the domestic birds go, like, I spent some time around those things. We raised a few every year when I was a kid and they're stupid. And they're like, not very athletic. So it's like, like, looking at back at those birds, it's like really hard for me to imagine one of those things just being like, you know what? I'm going with those guys and I'm gonna live in the woods with them. And like that they'd survive long enough to like pass on their genes. Um, like I know like domestic pigs can go far like pretty rapidly.
21:36 Speaker 05 But it's like, it's like, how adaptable are domestic turkeys to surviving in the wild?
21:42 Speaker 04 Well, that's a great, we don't know. And I wouldn't have guessed it, but I will give you two caveats to that.
21:48 Speaker 05 Yeah.
21:49 Speaker 04 One, remember what I said, heritage breeds are technically wild, domestic.
21:54 Speaker 05 Right.
21:55 Speaker 04 Parents. So maybe that gives them a bit, a bit up and coming that they're like, oh, there's something in some of them being like, I want to be wild. A little bit.
22:05 Speaker 05 Right.
22:06 Speaker 04 The other thing that's happening on the landscape, unfortunately, is that there are tales of people now creating breeds. Like there's an eastern heritage that looks like an eastern.
22:22 Speaker 04 But is not a wild bird.
22:23 Speaker 05 Right.
22:24 Speaker 04 And people are, and I've, I've heard through the grapevine, people are breeding things that look like osceolas and other things and putting those on the landscape. During, right before hunting season. For everybody can envision that picture. So now you got birds in the spring. So now you, they only have to really survive for, for not very long. To have that breeding experience.
22:49 Speaker 05 Yep, yep. Money in the waters out there.
22:53 Speaker 04 Yeah. So unfortunately, people are doing what people do and, and, um, you know, once there's a dollar to be made, they, uh, people do all sorts of things.
23:03 Speaker 05 Um. This might be too big of a question. You might not, not be able to really get at it, but, um, based on the evidence that you're seeing, the DNA evidence. Um.
23:17 Speaker 05 What seems to be more common when one of these weird color faced birds show up? Uh, uh, is it like truly wild birds? Or is it more birds showing up with some barnyard heritage?
23:30 Speaker 04 Uh, it's a mix of both. So there's, so in fact, I had an email exchange with Mike Chamberlain today. Where I sent him the most recent results and he's like, there's still a bunch of white birds that you're calling pure wild. And then there's a bunch of, uh, there's plenty of white birds and smoke faced birds that are completely heritage. And then there's, you know, stuff in the, in between. The answer to that is, I don't know.
23:58 Speaker 05 Yeah.
23:59 Speaker 04 We went, went into this thing thinking like, ah, this shouldn't be that hard. But turkeys are incredibly much more complicated than ducks and waterfowl more generally and probably most wildlife for a variety of reasons. Their genetics is incredibly complex.
24:19 Speaker 04 And that is muddying the water even further. So we are trying to build up the data sets big enough where we could be more certain about like, what are we looking at? Are we really looking at a wild bird that's now white? And if so, why is that?
24:34 Speaker 05 Yeah.
24:34 Speaker 04 One of the things that we're trying to do is I've got a new student that has identified most of the genes responsible for, for plumage. And so what we're going to layer on is, is the genotypes of those specific genes. And what we're fight, super preliminary, but there are at least two ways for a bird to be white. There are these two genes that if you knock them out, you have a white bird. If you partially knock them out, you'll have white barring. Right? So now we're trying to figure out how often or how frequent is that? Are those found in wild populations?
25:17 Speaker 04 How frequent are those introduced from heritage or domestic birds? And how quickly does that disappear from the population?
25:25 Speaker 05 Right.
25:26 Speaker 04 You shoot a weird looking bird. What is the probability that that's A, a wild bird? And B, how much of a unicorn is that?
25:35 Speaker 05 Yeah.
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27:16 Speaker 05 I imagine too, I mean, there's a lot of states now, Nebraska, Montana. You know, I'm sure you could name Washington where like...
27:29 Speaker 04 California, Utah, Idaho.
27:31 Speaker 05 Yeah, like where like you could go out in Nebraska and potentially in the same area, run into Mariams, Rios and Easterns like...
27:46 Speaker 05 Like all within spitting distance of one another.
27:49 Speaker 04 Or, or at least things that look like that.
27:51 Speaker 05 Yeah.
27:51 Speaker 04 One of the things that we're sort of gauging now, places like California, Washington, Idaho, Montana, like you talked about Oregon, where, where agencies at the time were like, you know what? We're not gonna, we're not, we don't know what's gonna take. So we're just gonna put all the subspecies into there. Right? So what do we have left? Are, are there any actual populations representing true Rios, Merians or Easterns? Or do we just have what, potentially what we're gonna coin as the American turkey?
28:24 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah.
28:25 Speaker 04 Yeah. So we're, we're, wild turkey DNA is expanding substantially this year. So we're not, we're, initially it was all about weird looking birds. Now we're trying to get geography.
28:36 Speaker 05 Yeah.
28:37 Speaker 04 Right? So if you are getting your gobble on this spring or thinking about it, we're gonna have, wild turkey DNA is gonna start doing a draw, much like duck DNA has been doing for the last few years, where if you get drawn, you get a kit, you have some vials in there, instructions, and if you shoot a bird, you can cut off that tip of the tongue, put it into there, ship it back to us. We're gonna do our, our thing. You'll get a certificate for that bird. And then we're gonna start compiling data sets, hopefully to answer many of these questions.
29:11 Speaker 05 You could, that whole project, you could really bum out some turkey hunters that are like, their goal is to get each subspecies and then they find out, they're like, oh, man.
29:22 Speaker 04 I was, I was, I was actually thinking the same thing, you know? Turkey slam, the only way to get true turkey slam is that you actually got genetically vetted.
29:31 Speaker 05 Right.
29:31 Speaker 04 Eastern gulls. Otherwise, you got the mutt slam.
29:35 Speaker 05 Exactly.
29:36 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah. I can't wait to go to National Wild Turkey Federation Convention and be like, are they peer reviewed?
29:44 Speaker 04 Is this turkey real?
29:46 Speaker 05 Really? Hmm. Um, Phil, you want to pull some pictures up?
29:52 Speaker 05 Uh, I was talking to Phil the engineer, now I'm talking to Dr. Phil. Um, what, what are the most like common and easily identified color phases that a turkey hunter is like likely to shoot or might shoot?
30:07 Speaker 04 You know, when I, when I was thinking of this question, I phoned, I phoned a friend. Uh, Mike Chick related, uh, uh, Katie with, with our wild turkey DNA and tried to figure that out. Because I'm only now looking at turkeys, right? You've got a duck guy.
30:22 Speaker 05 Yeah.
30:23 Speaker 04 Uh, expanding into the edible, uh, domain here. So I'm only, I didn't know that this was even happening in turkeys until a year ago. So some of the most common would be what you're looking here, that reddish, that red phase. There's a bunch of, um, oh, this is something I wanted to, I wanted to say, so just like a black lab can actually make all phases of lab, right? So you can have yellows and, uh, you can, you can have chocolate and black come out of a black lab. All heritage breeds, some proportion of them also can make white turkeys, right? All have it.
31:04 Speaker 04 And so people are just maintaining these different color forms by, by that selective breeding. Anyways, I just wanted to put that out there.
31:11 Speaker 05 No, that's good info.
31:12 Speaker 04 Could be why we're seeing more and more white turkeys out.
31:16 Speaker 05 Yep.
31:16 Speaker 04 Again, we'll be able to source because the mutations that occurred in the heritage and domestics to result in white type. It is what it looks like, quite different than what we see in wild populations, just naturally occurring. So we'll, we'll hopefully be able to actually track that. But right there, what you see right there, so that white and black barring, that interchange, right? I think that breed is supposed to be known as like a narygazin. Um, we see that quite often, and that's what I told you there, if you, there's two genes. One gene says barring, the other one is a melanin production gene that says you turn on or off.
31:57 Speaker 04 So that's how you get barring, where you get on, off, on, off, plus barring. So that's what you're seeing in that turkey right there.
32:04 Speaker 05 Phil, can you go back to that last one you had up?
32:07 Speaker 06 Yeah, sure.
32:10 Speaker 05 Maybe that so that that there's a red one I'm guessing.
32:14 Speaker 04 Yeah, so that would be what is known as like a color phase red. Uh, there's, there's, there's turkeys. If you look them up, they're called barnyard reds. People have made all sorts of stuff.
32:25 Speaker 05 Yeah.
32:26 Speaker 04 But yeah, that would be one of the things. The other more inch more um readily observed are called smoke phase. I don't know if you've got a picture.
32:35 Speaker 05 We got a gray one up there, Phil.
32:37 Speaker 06 Um, I can add it really quick. It'll just be a second.
32:42 Speaker 05 Well, yeah, just throw it up there when you get to it. Um, so tho- those are kind of the big, big ones, Phil.
32:49 Speaker 04 Yeah.
32:50 Speaker 05 What, what, but you got like, I've seen some of the stuff you guys have posted on Instagram. Some of the stuff is like very subtle. Like, I don't like, if you were just out hunting and not paying attention, like, you might not even notice it.
33:05 Speaker 04 Absolutely. Yeah, no, I mean, it wa- it takes Mike Chamberlain, who, you know, looks at these things every single day, be like, oh, that one feather is not right. You're right. Most of us, including myself, would be like, sweet, I got a turkey.
33:20 Speaker 05 Yeah.
33:20 Speaker 04 Um, but yeah, no, as we're learning more, what we're hoping to do also is to create some field guides where we start showcasing so people can actually start learning about it as we learn it. Uh, and we figure this stuff out and get this in the hands of both agency and private individuals out there so we can better potentially monitor some of these populations. One of the things that, one of the things that we're worried about
33:47 Speaker 04 in through these introductions of heritage or domestic birds on the landscape is that what we're finding in heritage and domestic when we have reference set is that they're incredibly inbred. Every single one looks like a brother, sister, right? Full siblings. And the, and then what's happening on the landscape is our natural populations through fragment, habitat fragmentation, translocations, all of these other things also are not, are, are incre- are highly, are more inbred than other wild populations I study, including mammals and other birds.
34:23 Speaker 05 Why?
34:24 Speaker 04 Which is-
34:25 Speaker 05 Is there some concern that that could be?
34:29 Speaker 05 I mean, it's probably more habitat driven, and I'm sure Mike Chamberlain could weigh in here, but is there some concern that that could also be at least a minor driver in where you're seeing turkey populations decline?
34:42 Speaker 04 100%. So as you up that inbreeding coefficient, what we know from every other animal, pumas or Florida Panthers are a great example of it. You lose that connectivity to other populations. More and more of them breed amongst brothers and sisters. You increase that inbreeding. What's happening is that even if you had all the habitat in the world, the individuals that you have now are making eggs that are either inviable or individuals that have lower survival because their inbreeding is so high. So turkeys also don't like to cross the road, apparently, like, right? So ducks will fly across the road,
35:25 Speaker 04 but turkeys don't. So as you get more and more of that fragmentation, bigger issue in the east than in the west, you basically force the population to become more and more inbred. And as you put, so let's say you're
35:40 Speaker 05 You're creating artificial island, island populations.
35:44 Speaker 04 And then if you throw a bunch of highly inbred heritage birds into there, what we showed genetically is that if you breed those two birds together, instead of decreasing inbreeding, you actually artificially jump the inbreeding between the birds. So a nest that should have been outbred, meaning, you know, good to go, you artificially already spike it up. And turkeys aren't the only ones we're seeing the same pattern. We're seeing it in our ducks when gamefarn mallards and wild mallards interbreed. You should have an inbreeding coefficient of zero, but it jumps to point two, within the clutch. So you're artificially inbreeding your own population through those actions.
36:28 Speaker 05 That's no good.
36:30 Speaker 04 Yeah, a cyclical effects, especially for turkeys that have a hard time with habitat connect and and population connectivity.
36:38 Speaker 06 Would you mind, um, cause you guys just got some, some good ink on the genetic uh, depth in the eastern mallards? Would you mind just hitting that real quick, like an update for everybody on, on?
36:52 Speaker 04 Yeah, no.
36:53 Speaker 06 The percentage of domestic DNA within your, and I'll, I'll buzzkill this.
37:00 Speaker 05 Was that that map that got posted? Did you see the map?
37:03 Speaker 04 Yeah, that was us.
37:05 Speaker 05 Was that you guys? Yeah, yeah.
37:07 Speaker 06 Yeah. Yeah, within your quote wild population.
37:11 Speaker 04 Yeah, so, so basically, uh, uh, yeah, basically I need an hour to talk right now. But, uh, so what we're doing, right? So duck DNA was what we started with in the wildlife world being like, all right, does citizen science at this level with hunters work? And the answer is overwhelmingly yes. We're in our third year. We've doubled the participation, doubled the number of samples every year. Thankful, thankful to all the donors that provided the, the funding necessary for that. And essentially we're over almost 3,000 samples collected in three years.
37:52 Speaker 04 And one of those, one of the aims of that study is to monitor the populate mallard populations across north, across the US for now. We're about to get Canada into the mix, but across nor, across the US for now. And what we've seen, what we've tracked is that the eastern population is not doing great and it continues to get worse and worse. And so during the fall flight, when you've got an influx of, of birds out of Canada, which are mostly wild, uh, you have 75% of harvested birds from duck DNA. And we have got other data that support this even more. Um, in the Atlantic flyway are feral or feral hybrids.
38:34 Speaker 04 And when we look at summerbirds and my other work, working with the state agencies, that proportion actually jumps to like 100% or even less than 2% for most of the states. And so 75% there, we jumped down to about 40, 40% on average in the Mississippi. Huge amount in game, of game farm mallard ancestry in the Great Lakes region. Less so if you go south of Tennessee, there's this interesting population dynamic going on there. Uh, you jump to the central flyway and essentially disappears, less than 10%. You jump over the Pacific flyway and it jumps back up unfortunately to 20%. Mostly driven by whatever's happening in California.
39:18 Speaker 05 Yep, yep.
39:19 Speaker 06 Wow.
39:21 Speaker 04 Yeah, so we're tracking this thing and unfortunately for the, for the wild mallard, it continues to be quite the problem. And we're hoping, we're starting to try to figure out some solutions. But obviously everybody always asks like, is the, so they're interbreeding. Is there any sort of actual biological problem with that? And in the next year, we'll be, we'll be putting out papers showcasing that not only does it change their migratory capacity, their feeding behavior, their ability to nest. Uh, but in fact, we showcase that their brains have actually been changed to, uh, to not,
40:02 Speaker 04 uh, to be more domestic-like than they are wild type when you interbreed. And all of these traits have a correlation with genetics. So the more game farm you have, the more game farming you look like. The problem with the Atlantic flyway that we're starting to see, or at least now we can analyze, is that we randomly now get a game farm mallard.
40:28 Speaker 04 Phenotype and behavior by just by chance. There's so many hybrids that some proportion of nests just by chance recapitulate game farm all of a sudden, which is just not great.
40:42 Speaker 06 No, I mean, that's why all those fellows who you know can't blow a duck call are posting all those pictures of limits. Yeah.
40:51 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's right.
40:52 Speaker 06 Yeah. And there's like, we're not getting what, you know, me as a big duck eater would call like the benefits of having some domestic strain in there like.
41:02 Speaker 04 Yeah. And I will tell you, so people will be like, oh, no, yeah, whatever. Ducks, duck, I'll eat that. Fun fact, they don't put on fat, very fat content, the way a wild type. That's why they can't, they can't, we've published this now. And um, we were like, why can't they move? Maybe they don't know how. Maybe there's some weird thing happening. But one of the physiological differences is that even if we put them on high fat period in a child, they will not put fat.
41:35 Speaker 06 Oh, I feel like if we were in like the doctor who uh, you know, like bomb shelter, the DEFCON level for me would have just, just raised. I'm like, my God, there's a real issue here. Like fatty ducks are like the, the most prized possession in my freezer.
41:58 Speaker 04 Yeah. And, and if you don't have a fat duck, when that polar vortex happens, that duck doesn't make it. And the more of your population proportionally grows with those types of traits, the lower the, the survival and the fecundity or baby making we expect. And that is what we're seeing in the Great Lakes, we're seeing in the Atlantic Flavies. So what I have to caveat all of this, it's all suggestive. It's a, it's at least explaining some of the population declines, right? Um, we don't, habitat is definitely everything, but even like, just like the turkey, you need a, you need an animal that knows how to use that habitat.
42:39 Speaker 06 Yeah. Um, all right.
42:42 Speaker 05 We gotta keep moving here.
42:43 Speaker 06 Yeah.
42:44 Speaker 05 We could go all day.
42:45 Speaker 06 The human responsibility thing here is really like, once again, a factor.
42:50 Speaker 05 Um, Phil, how, uh, how can folks take part in the turkey and or duck DNA projects?
42:58 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. Please, uh, if you're interested, oh, if you're still duck hunting, uh, like how? And you shoot something super awesomely cool, or you're like, I don't know what this is, both duck and goose, go to www.duckdna.com and sign up for the hybrid kit. If you get chosen, we'll send you a single vial kit. You send it back to us, we do the analysis, you get some answers. Um.
43:26 Speaker 05 Do we get a little, uh, favoritism there? Like, can you send us a bunch of those? Come on.
43:32 Speaker 04 You guys, you guys had a bunch of them already.
43:35 Speaker 06 I think Corinne got a bunch of them, yeah.
43:37 Speaker 05 Uh, well, I'll talk to Corinne.
43:40 Speaker 04 Yeah, but we could definitely send you some. That being said, on the turkey, uh, go to wildturkeydna.com. Start signing up. We're going to have, uh, those polls right before turkey season. That being said, if you do shoot a turkey during, if you have a fall hunting season, like you guys do for a few more days in, in Idaho and others, and you shoot something, give us a, a, a ring or an email through the website, or get in touch at wildturkeydna on Instagram, or at duck D, duck DNA, the duck DNA on Instagram, or at LeBretzky Lab on Instagram, and we'll take care of you.
44:20 Speaker 05 I, I got one more question about that, especially for the people who might end up with one of these kits. It doesn't have to be some weird looking bird, correct?
44:30 Speaker 04 No.
44:31 Speaker 05 Like, anything. Like, it could look like a, like, just pure white tail fan Miriam's and you still want to study it.
44:39 Speaker 04 So for turkeys this year, we're looking for geography. Uh, we're also part of the selection criteria is where do you hunt? How many birds do you usually harvest? Um, those are. There are going to be some of the information that we're going to want to know. If you are a person that has access to, you know, three tags, we'll send you three vials.
45:00 Speaker 05 Yep.
45:00 Speaker 04 If you're someone that shoots one bird, we'll send you one vial. So we're going to gauge, gauge that so that way we can get as many hunters involved and as much of the geography uh, uh, captured as we can this year for sure.
45:14 Speaker 05 Great.
45:14 Speaker 04 And this year for sure, if you're like, my kid shot a bird, send that thing in.
45:19 Speaker 05 Cool.
45:20 Speaker 04 Yeah. It'd be super awesome.
45:22 Speaker 05 Um, thanks for joining us, Phil. It's, it's always a fascinating conversation and, um, on a side note, I'm looking forward to heading down to Texas. Corey, you're going too?
45:33 Speaker 07 Yep.
45:34 Speaker 05 Um, for a collaboration, uh, Meat Eater has going on with you involving Owl Dad, which the audience I'm sure will be hearing more about later. So we're looking forward to that.
45:43 Speaker 04 I thought we were just doing birds. No, no.
45:45 Speaker 05 Nope, nope. We're doing, doing Owl Dad too. Uh, but thanks a lot. Happy holidays and thanks for coming on.
45:53 Speaker 04 Yeah. Thanks, everybody.
45:54 Speaker 05 Very cool.
45:55 Speaker 07 Happy New Year, Phil.
45:56 Speaker 05 Thank you, Phil.
45:57 Speaker 04 Happy New Year.
45:58 Speaker 05 Okay, folks, that's it for today's show.
46:01 Speaker 06 That was awesome. I mean, come on. That's great citizen science, man. That, that, that was good. We might have to trim some of these listener questions, but that was a good talk.
46:08 Speaker 05 That's cool. We can do that, Phil. We can, we can skip them. Maybe just do one each or something.
46:13 Speaker 06 Well, it's like, it's, it's part of like what hunters bring to the table for the greater good.
46:19 Speaker 05 Yeah. And when you get a chance to talk to someone like that, it's just like, I got another question. I got another question. Like, you don't get a chance to talk to people like that very often.
46:29 Speaker 07 Yeah. Some of the other critters that he'd love to dive into with other DNA, you know, he's got duck and turkey going. There's other
46:35 Speaker 05 Yeah.
46:36 Speaker 07 things he's got in his head that he wants to pull off here coming up. So hopefully there's more, more to come.
46:40 Speaker 05 Um, do we got a Throwback Thursday song, Phil? Or did you just abandon all the, all that?
46:45 Speaker 06 No, I still, I still do the drops.
46:46 Speaker 07 Isn't that your favorite one?
46:47 Speaker 05 Let's do the drop.
46:50 Speaker 05 This is my favorite one.
47:08 Speaker 05 I need you to fill out the whole song. I want all the lyrics.
47:11 Speaker 06 The entire one. That'll be my, my winter break project. Sure.
47:15 Speaker 05 Um, all right, guys. It's time to look back at the last year and, and share your favorite. I, I think it's, I'm doing hunting, could be fishing, but I don't know what you guys are doing. Share your favorite, uh, trips of the year. So Corey, you're up first, man.
47:29 Speaker 07 Yeah. Well, gosh, it was hard to top my spring black bear hunt. I think I got a video up, uh, there, Phil, and a couple of photos, but, uh, hunting a spot, the best part about it was I've been hunting the spot for about five years without being able to take aim and shoot at a black bear. And finally it all came together this last spring, uh, early May. Solo hunting overnight, backpacked into a spot.
47:56 Speaker 05 Bruiser.
47:57 Speaker 07 Spotted him the night before, put a stalk on him. He eluded me. He zigged and I zagged. And, uh, then was able to dig him up the next morning, stalked him. I spotted him at probably a mile and a half away and then stalked into 90 yards and shot him on the run with a 300 wind mag, which rarely happens. I feel like spotting stalk bears, you see them far off and you're like, oh yeah, it looks like he's headed that way. You know, they usually go a different direction or something. The odds of like lining up the planets to get them within range are so slim. It's so tough, but so addicting too. And I got lucky with this one. I couldn't tell he was that big from that far away. Uh, but holy cow, it'll be probably the biggest bear I ever kill, uh, in the state of Montana at least. And, uh, fun note, I just got the
48:40 Speaker 07 hide back from Mr. John Hayes and he told me that was the biggest Montana black bear that's ever come through his shop.
48:47 Speaker 05 Really?
48:47 Speaker 07 Ever. Just patting my back.
48:48 Speaker 05 Wow, that's great. What does the skull measure?
48:51 Speaker 07 When it was green, it was just under 20 inches. I haven't measured it since, since I boiled it. So.
48:57 Speaker 05 Were you by yourself?
48:58 Speaker 07 Mm-hmm. And then a buddy helped me pack it out.
49:00 Speaker 05 Oh, that's what I can say if you had to pack all that out by yourself.
49:03 Speaker 07 Even the two of us. It was brutal and it was hot too. It was like 70 plus degrees. Uh, that hide and head was insanely awkward and heavy to pack out. Had to cross creek multiple times.
49:13 Speaker 05 So you got him rugged?
49:15 Speaker 07 Uh, it's just, uh, the hide right now. Thinking about getting.
49:18 Speaker 05 Eventually you get a rug.
49:20 Speaker 06 Yeah. That's not, those are good things to hang on. Do you have a place to like hang it or throw it in the house?
49:24 Speaker 07 In my office at the moment.
49:26 Speaker 06 Oh, okay.
49:26 Speaker 07 Yeah, right upstairs. It looks pretty good up there next to my mountain line.
49:29 Speaker 05 Sweet.
49:31 Speaker 07 Uh.
49:32 Speaker 05 You got a couple more here Cory?
49:33 Speaker 07 I got one more, just uh, it was hard to pick out of the two. Got to kill a whitetail buck and a doe with my son this year. It was alongside with me. Uh, it was really fun. Got some private land access, not too far from home here. I don't think I would have got the access if I said I'm hunting by myself, but I said I was bringing my seven-year-old boy along and it was like, heck yeah, bring him in. And we shot a doe out of a blind within the first couple of minutes and the landowner said, if you see this super old unicorn buck dragging his feet around, you should shoot him because he's probably not going to make it through the winter. And as we were dragging out the doe, uh, that buck came out of the, out of the cottonwoods and we got him too. So doubled up within a, about an hour of hunting.
50:15 Speaker 05 Um, so he literally just had the one horn on the one side?
50:19 Speaker 07 There's a tiny little nub on the other side.
50:21 Speaker 05 Did that thing have any teeth left in its head?
50:24 Speaker 07 Barely. No, I'm dying to see how old he is. I sent him in to get CWD tested.
50:29 Speaker 06 Well, did you send in a tooth to the lab here in town?
50:32 Speaker 07 It takes about eight months though. So we'll find out more to come on that one, but that was pretty special to have my son there with me.
50:38 Speaker 05 Yeah.
50:38 Speaker 07 Yeah.
50:39 Speaker 05 Cool. Cal, what do you got for us?
50:41 Speaker 06 That eight-month waiting period for old Marshall is going to be tough.
50:44 Speaker 07 I know. He's already forgot, but I.
50:46 Speaker 05 That buck's probably older than he is.
50:48 Speaker 07 Yeah, very possible. Yeah, I'm hoping, yeah, I'm guessing eight or nine.
50:51 Speaker 05 Yeah.
50:52 Speaker 06 It could be 10. Um, I, I had a great hunting adventures this year. Obviously there's big brown bear in Alaska, uh, which was great, but we talked about that a bunch and I just wanted to hit, since we're coming to the end of the season, um, I get, it's depressing, but I get a lot of people who write in and tell me how bad hunting is.
51:14 Speaker 07 Hmm.
51:15 Speaker 06 How it's not good.
51:16 Speaker 05 There's no animals anywhere, too many people.
51:19 Speaker 06 And.
51:20 Speaker 05 Why bother?
51:21 Speaker 06 I.
51:24 Speaker 06 Spend the vast, vast, vast majority of my time on public land.
51:29 Speaker 05 You mean, you mean both?
51:31 Speaker 06 And my secret to success is just trying. Like, that's all, all, like, it's that simple. I see spots that I've never hunted before and I just go, "Yep, probably nothing here, but we're gonna give it a shot."
51:47 Speaker 05 Yep.
51:47 Speaker 06 Um, and that's just, once you pull the Band-Aid off of like, "Well, I gotta go to the place that I know." Uh, a whole new world opens up to you and, you know, if a bunch of people dump into your spot and your choices of finding something new or pissing and moaning and
52:06 Speaker 06 um, go find something new. Um, go ruin somebody else's spot.
52:11 Speaker 05 Yeah, that's the thing, man. Like, if you're griping about too many trucks at the trailhead and you're parked there, guess what those other people are doing? Griping about your truck being there.
52:20 Speaker 06 Yeah. Yep.
52:24 Speaker 06 So, this, this picture that Phil's gonna pop up is from one of these times where I was driving, it was getting close to end of shooting light. Um, it was a cold snowy day and here, I'm looking at this river bottom or creek bottom and I'm like, "Dang, that's good looking pheasant. Wish some lucky son of a gun could go out there and, you know, knock on a door, maybe. I don't know." Um, and there's this little chunk of public land that attaches to the highway.
53:02 Speaker 06 Just this place where you'd be like, "There's no way there's any birds here at this point in the season. Maybe opening day type of thing." But swung off, grabbed the dog and Snort and I, uh, at a very fast pace, went to go check this place out and cut a pheasant track. We followed it and all of a sudden, like... I was so surprised. I did everything I could not to shoot this bird because I like had the gun over my shoulder was just like not in the game at all and just barely caught this this rooster that snort had flushed flying over the hillside and was lucky enough
53:40 Speaker 06 to to get him and I celebrated the moment um in a very unserious pheasant hunting way by taking a picture of the dog and be like God how cool is this and then we flushed another rooster right after this after talking and taking pictures and laughing um and obviously that shotgun going off and 50 yards later flushed another rooster got that bird because I was prepared and then we walked in serpentine fashion five more miles never found another pheasant track at all um so we were just the right place at the right
54:22 Speaker 06 time and it never would have happened had we not just tried something new.
54:26 Speaker 05 Mm hmm. Amen, Cal. Amen.
54:29 Speaker 07 Spot that maybe was overlooked days before, you know?
54:32 Speaker 06 Yeah, exactly. So um and it's just, yeah, like those two birds are way better than uh shooting a limit of birds on like it would have been a win to go out there and flush a bird.
54:47 Speaker 05 Right.
54:47 Speaker 06 Right?
54:48 Speaker 05 Right.
54:48 Speaker 06 So.
54:48 Speaker 05 Cool.
54:49 Speaker 06 Yeah.
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56:29 Speaker 05 Guess that leaves me. My favorite hunt of the year is always gonna be like the youth deer hunt with all, all the kids and all the family. But like, I also like to get in, you know, a solo hunt now and then. And this year, we got, we got it going, Phil. This year I drew a Colorado mule deer buck tag. And it was in November. And for anyone who's, who's never experienced a really good mule deer rut hunt, it's, it's pretty special. During a typical whitetail rut hunt, especially if you're archery hunting in the woods, you
57:10 Speaker 05 usually only get to experience it in like flashes, right? Like, here comes a buck chasing a doe and then he's gone. But in like more open mule deer country, like when the rut's going, like you get to just like kick back and watch the show and it's amazing. Like just watching bucks push does, watching bucks push other bucks around. And that's what this day, well, that's what happened on this day. We, we just like hit it right.
57:41 Speaker 05 Uh, that's my buddy Dan and like, pretty much from first light on, we were looking at ready bucks cruising around solo or, or looking for does or bucks that were chasing does. And, uh, Dan killed this buck like maybe an hour after shooting light started. Um, we'd already glassed up two other bucks and we're like, uh, which one should we go after? How should we go after them? And then that buck like is just like there in front of us 200 yards away. And, and Dan was like, yeah, man, I'll shoot that one. Um, so he killed that buck. Um, we got him cut up and, and stuffed the meat up in a juniper and, and kept hunting, um, all day. And pretty much all day long, we were like looking at bucks.
58:26 Speaker 05 It was like amazing. Like it was a warm day. Like it was cold here in the morning, but warm day, but didn't matter. There's still like deer out bucks looking at those all day long. Um, and I guess about, it would have been about like an hour and a half before dark, I found, um, this buck, glassed him up. And, um,
58:51 Speaker 05 uh, that, that deer was, that buck was like obvious. You got the picture film? There he is. Uh, like that buck was like, like he's not a big scoring buck, but like he was the fricking man. Like he had all the does. He, he was chasing other bucks around, keeping them away from those does. And it like, a- after watching him for an hour, I'm like, yeah, he's the one. Um, it, it, and part of the thing that, that gets me going like on the, whether I'm going to shoot a buck or not is not necessarily the antlers. It's like, when you're looking at a buck that's twice the size of the does that he's hanging out with, like literally twice the size.
59:31 Speaker 05 Like you're looking at a good one, no matter what his antlers look like. And that was this buck. Um, so ended up doing a pretty steep downhill. Stock got to 400 yards, ran out of cover and uh shot him and killed him. It was cool because the deer never knew I was there and I killed him instantly. But um we walked down like I had a good landmark on what like that deer just disappeared out of the scope. And when I asked Dan what happened, he's like, I don't know. I blinked when you shot and the deer's just not there.
1:00:04 Speaker 06 And you're like, that's not your job.
1:00:07 Speaker 05 So we get down there and it's like getting on towards dark and I'm like, he was right in front of there was like a lone pinion pine. It was like he was standing right in front of that. Get down there. I'm like, man, not a track, no blood, no hair. Like you start panicking, you know, because I'm like, if he ran, he ran this way, went down that way, no tracks, no hair. And I'm like, I'll fully admit, like I started swearing. I'm like, Dan, what's the, what the?
1:00:36 Speaker 05 Um, and then I go back to where I'm like, this is where he was standing and like, I don't know why I didn't do it earlier, but I turned my head to the right. He's like 10 feet away.
1:00:48 Speaker 06 Like, and then you're like, I am too old to let panic drive my decision making.
1:00:53 Speaker 05 Exactly. But um it was a long day, man, like well before dark to well after dark, a lot of miles, big pack outs and it was just a great hunt.
1:01:03 Speaker 06 Heck yeah, man. Beautiful buck. Yeah. Super cool.
1:01:06 Speaker 07 Yeah. You can see the fat rolls on him. Just.
1:01:07 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
1:01:08 Speaker 07 Shank looks like it's just swollen.
1:01:09 Speaker 05 Those Colorado bucks that can spend the summer up above tree line and then migrate down to good winter range, like they're huge. They're huge deer. Um, like, you know, two inches of fat on the back, like pushing 300 pounds, I'm guessing.
1:01:23 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:01:23 Speaker 05 Um, so yeah, that was, that was a real good hunt this year.
1:01:28 Speaker 05 I guess Phil, do you just want to like, how much, how much time?
1:01:32 Speaker 06 It's up to you, Brody. I mean, we're, we're almost at an hour right now. So.
1:01:35 Speaker 05 Let's just do this first one.
1:01:37 Speaker 06 Just you can cherry pick some questions.
1:01:39 Speaker 05 We'll do, we'll, we'll just do one. Um, we're going to do a little fan Q and A section in lieu of the live chat with our listeners. And uh. This one, uh, the guy's name is AJ. I forget his last name. He sent in an email. It's, it's a little long, but it's pretty juicy. So, so bear with me. I'm going to read it. Um, my wife's college roommate is married to a guy who asked to go deer hunting with me every season. On paper, it should be perfect. He lives near great public land. Our kids get along and it's become an annual trip north to visit them. The problem is his idea of hunting couldn't be further from mine. He road hunts almost exclusively, shoots deer from the truck,
1:02:22 Speaker 05 targets swans on purpose and only takes headshots. I've made it clear. I won't shoot from the road or hunt that way. Even so, he insists on helping me get one. He pressures me to stay in the truck and keeps telling me I don't need to unload my gun when we get in the truck. If I say I want to hunt alone, he takes it personally. I end up spending, spending most of the weekend riding around instead of actually hunting. This is where it gets real good.
1:02:50 Speaker 06 There's more.
1:02:51 Speaker 05 To complicate things further, my wife already dislikes him due to him cheating on his wife shortly after they were married. I don't want to interfere with my wife's friendship with her former roommate, but we're both on the same page that we don't like him.
1:03:06 Speaker 05 Yada, yada there.
1:03:07 Speaker 06 Curious to know what the question is.
1:03:09 Speaker 07 Heavy yada.
1:03:10 Speaker 05 So my question is, how do you handle someone whose ethics fundamentally clash with yours, especially when family and friends are involved? What's the line between being polite and enabling behavior that gives hunting a bad name? Man, like, I understand the, the dilemma of like the wife friendship here, but other than that, this is like very simple. You're talking about a guy who's hunting illegally and unethically, not to mention being a cheating scumbag. Um, so like you just gotta cut ties and not worry about being polite. I don't know if you guys. Have anything more to add, but like
1:03:49 Speaker 06 That one seems pretty cut and dry.
1:03:51 Speaker 05 The email, he's basically trying to convince himself that this what's, what is what he needs to do, I think. Like he's talking himself through it and just needs to like gentle push to be like, no more.
1:04:03 Speaker 07 Yeah, there's your push.
1:04:05 Speaker 05 Yeah. So AJ, like get rid of him.
1:04:09 Speaker 06 Don't get drugged down, buddy.
1:04:11 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah. It sounds like you, you, you, you like, you already have some, some good morals and ethics around hunting and it's just like not worth being around that guy.
1:04:22 Speaker 06 I, I will say the only defensible thing here is there's nothing wrong with shooting fawns.
1:04:27 Speaker 05 No, there's nothing wrong with shooting fawns. Um, but you know, if you're doing it leaning out of a truck, running truck, then, then it's a problem.
1:04:36 Speaker 06 Yes.
1:04:37 Speaker 05 Um, so yeah, I didn't figure you guys would, would have a whole lot to say, but I felt like AJ really needed a, a friendly push in the right direction.
1:04:48 Speaker 06 Um, yeah, nowhere to go but up, buddy.
1:04:50 Speaker 05 Since, uh, uh, we're going to do another one, Phil.
1:04:53 Speaker 06 Okay. And also I do think just, uh, partially because Nick already made the thumbnail and the title is set in stone. I think it'd be good if we hit on just some brief new year's resolutions.
1:05:04 Speaker 05 Oh yeah, we're going to do that.
1:05:05 Speaker 06 Okay, great.
1:05:05 Speaker 05 That, that, yeah, we'll get there. Um, we can, let's move on. All right. We, we, we, cause we're, we're using up a lot of time. We're going to do our Cal interview. Is that good, Phil? Can we move on?
1:05:18 Speaker 06 Yeah, let's do it.
1:05:19 Speaker 05 All right. Uh, okay. For our next interview, we've got our very own Cal, the conservation man Callahan. Um, as, as most of you hopefully know, Cal is officially the new CEO of backcountry hunters and anglers. He's going to continue doing some Cal stuff for Meat Eater on a part-time basis. Um, but he's going to have his hands full at BHA and this may be his last appearance on radio live. So this whole thing is kind of like a bittersweet farewell, Cal. First off, congratulations.
1:05:51 Speaker 06 Yeah. Oh, thank you.
1:05:52 Speaker 05 I don't think BHA could have chosen a better person for the job than you, but I gotta know, does that like, that CEO title making you a little nervous?
1:06:02 Speaker 06 Oh my God, the things I don't know.
1:06:06 Speaker 06 You know, like that's not the, um,
1:06:11 Speaker 06 There's no motivation there to be a CEO. There's a lot of motivation uh to just like fully embrace the things that I that that motivate me.
1:06:20 Speaker 05 Yep.
1:06:21 Speaker 06 Right?
1:06:22 Speaker 05 Yeah, and a whole bunch of other people.
1:06:24 Speaker 06 Yeah, and this, yeah, I I was asked would be like the simplest way like.
1:06:30 Speaker 05 Yep.
1:06:30 Speaker 06 Why'd you do it? Well, they asked.
1:06:32 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:06:32 Speaker 06 Right?
1:06:33 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:06:33 Speaker 06 Um, and so I'm I'm very, very excited. Yeah. Um, and I I'm just like gung ho to like be able to just like fully embrace. Um, you know, this big thing that's been a big part of my life that I've kind of been like moonlighting in.
1:06:53 Speaker 05 Yep.
1:06:54 Speaker 06 For a long time as as a volunteer.
1:06:56 Speaker 05 Yep.
1:06:57 Speaker 06 So, um, super stoked there. And then yeah, the meat eater side of things. Um, is going, you know, to continue hosting the podcast, doing some some video work. Um, and you know, that's going to be like a supportive role.
1:07:17 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:07:18 Speaker 06 Which is pretty darn amazing to be able to do that. So.
1:07:22 Speaker 05 Cool. Um, can we expect anything different from BHA with with you at leading them?
1:07:30 Speaker 06 I, you know, that's a interesting question. So it's a it's a membership, chapter, model, nonpartisan organization. I think the need in the conservation space is like true representation of, you know, like folks like us in this room, right? Like a lot of conservation is the speak is aimed at folks uh with with big money and and deep pockets that want to give. And like, we definitely need some of that.
1:08:08 Speaker 05 Sure.
1:08:09 Speaker 06 But the goal, my dream is to have like, you know, the the rank and file.
1:08:17 Speaker 06 Uh, folks that go out and do this stuff, the end user of public lands.
1:08:23 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:08:24 Speaker 06 Uh, you know, represented well. Um, we're in a lot of conservation pickles right now because it's like, I swear to God, people at the very top are working off of like, public land theory.
1:08:41 Speaker 05 Mm hmm.
1:08:41 Speaker 06 Well, we've been told.
1:08:42 Speaker 05 Right.
1:08:43 Speaker 06 You people like these things, right?
1:08:47 Speaker 05 Well, let's, let's get into those people at the top. I want to read you a quote from an article that popped up in my feed this morning. Earlier this year, Utah Senator Mike Lee's efforts to slip, uh, permission for federal land sell off into a Senate Republicans budget reconci- reconciliation bill failed after outraged citizens forced him to withdraw the proposal. On Monday, December 15th, Lee launched another gambit to sell or transfer your public lands to private interests by adding amendments to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, which the US Senate is now considering. Lee's ploy is disguised by complex legalese, but if it is adopted, the effect would be
1:09:31 Speaker 05 to eliminate the legal language that requires the Department of the Interior to protect public lands, national parks, historic trails, wild and scenic rivers, et cetera, et cetera. Um, I imagine you're going to be spending a little more time in Washington DC. So if you were to run into Senator Mike Lee in a bar, what would you say to him?
1:09:56 Speaker 06 I would say, thank you for putting together such a perfectly public list of working against the wishes and best interests of the American people. It's like he's writing his own resignation letter. It's like, if you're dealing with a bad employee.
1:10:15 Speaker 06 Because of all the laws of protecting employees with employers and things like that, it can be kinda hard to fire people for cause.
1:10:26 Speaker 05 Yep.
1:10:26 Speaker 06 But it shouldn't be.
1:10:28 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:10:29 Speaker 06 And this guy's like, I'd say, like, "Thank you."
1:10:32 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:10:33 Speaker 06 Senator, like, "You are an obstinate employee that has gone rogue and you are publicly working against the best interest of the American people."
1:10:44 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:10:45 Speaker 06 Uh, "Thank you for filling out the paperwork for us." Really?
1:10:50 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:10:50 Speaker 06 And so, like, what's, and I don't know if you guys get, like, hear my phone blowing up, but it's over what is going on right now.
1:10:58 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:10:58 Speaker 06 And it is this, you know, it's complicated, like, backdoor dealing where he submitted amendments at, like, the very much 11th hour to, uh, this appropriations process that was largely getting wrapped up.
1:11:21 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:11:21 Speaker 06 So, again, he's not making friends with a bunch of people.
1:11:24 Speaker 05 Um, there's a little- Yeah, probably even people in his own party are like, "Really? Again?"
1:11:30 Speaker 06 The people within his own party, the people within the committees that he works on, um, like, he is just working against people, like, nothing's ever easy.
1:11:41 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:11:42 Speaker 06 Because, like, if, if there's a compliment I can give this guy, it's like, he's a zealot, like, he's, he truly believes beyond the wishes of anybody that, uh, we shouldn't own public land, we shouldn't have public land, we shouldn't have the freedoms that we get to enjoy on public land. Uh, why that is, we, we will likely never know.
1:12:03 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:12:04 Speaker 06 But, um-
1:12:07 Speaker 06 And it is just, it's just like this, um, death of a thousand cuts like type of thing. Well, if I can get a little win here with this amendment change and then that'll stack up to this other little win and this other little win. And it's just gonna be easier because the other thing that he's doing right now, right? Is there's like 20 or 25 acres in Bryanhead, Utah? That the, the little municipality there, Bryanhead would love to use this public land for the municipality.
1:12:39 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm.
1:12:40 Speaker 06 There's all these systems in place where we, the American people can facilitate that. Right? We can lease that land to the municipality, uh, and retain ownership. And then we, the American people get to use those lease fees for, um, the, the maintenance.
1:12:57 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:12:58 Speaker 06 Or, uh, or creating new public land.
1:13:01 Speaker 05 Do a land swap or some.
1:13:02 Speaker 06 There's a land swap, there's, um, the sale through the Federal Land Policy Management Act. Where, um, the revenue from that sale gets used to get public land of higher value. All these things that are, um, within the Congress of the United States, we the people.
1:13:25 Speaker 05 They're existing levers that can be pulled.
1:13:27 Speaker 06 Yep. And, and the people of Bryanhead, Utah can get what they want and it doesn't shortchange the rest of us.
1:13:34 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:13:34 Speaker 06 However, Lee doesn't want to do that. He's like, nope, free, nothing.
1:13:41 Speaker 06 Right? And are you really gonna come out and work against these fine citizens of Bryanhead, Utah? And it's like, yep, I am. Because we have all these systems in place that are public and they're for the benefit of we, the people of the United States. Right? Um, let's work within that framework and everybody can get what they want.
1:14:03 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:14:04 Speaker 06 But he's just like not willing to do that.
1:14:07 Speaker 05 Moving, moving past good old Mike Lee, um, real quick, what are some of the other big issues or fights? You think BHA is gonna be tackling this year and moving forward?
1:14:20 Speaker 06 I think awareness is a huge part of this.
1:14:27 Speaker 06 You know, we, it's, you know, from the top down, like we're being told, there's a campaign running to tell people of how
1:14:37 Speaker 06 our public lands are not good, they're not working for us, not in the best interest of the American people. And, you know, hunters and anglers, like if you just look at BLM, like, we are uniquely poised to be like, uh, actually this stuff's incredible.
1:14:57 Speaker 05 Right.
1:14:57 Speaker 06 It's insanely valuable. You can't put a price tag on it. Um, and then the ecosystem services that those lands provide, um, in addition to being like the home of like our extractive industry, a lot of times, it's like, the case to sell this stuff off is so thin. Like it is just, like, it should be a nonstarter. Um, so that's going to remain like a goal of the organization.
1:15:26 Speaker 05 Getting the message out.
1:15:28 Speaker 06 You gotta get the message out. There's a lot of people out there who are in full alignment on this, but they don't pay attention to what hunting and angling groups do or think. So that coalition part of the package is something that, that we can definitely help bring to the table, right? So I've got, done a lot of work in the past with, um, big green conservation groups, as well as, uh, big businesses that more align with the, the quote unquote, green side of things. Um, and the, the fun thing here is like, you don't have to give anything up in order to, uh,
1:16:12 Speaker 06 uh, bring some education into all sides here. So like, um, uh, you know, very succinctly, it's America. We can have our guns and our public lands.
1:16:24 Speaker 05 Sure.
1:16:24 Speaker 06 And if somebody tells you that we can't, uh, they're working against you.
1:16:28 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:16:28 Speaker 06 Like, there is nothing that we have, nothing that we have and enjoy right now, that is not here because we didn't demand it. It's not here because we got lucky. It's because we hit the brakes and said, oh my God, there's no more fricking ducks left.
1:16:44 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:16:44 Speaker 06 We gotta do something about this.
1:16:46 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:16:46 Speaker 06 Um, oh my God, remember how cool elk were? Let's come up with a giant program to reseed elk across their native range.
1:16:54 Speaker 05 Mm hmm.
1:16:55 Speaker 06 Like, we're in this memory lapse
1:16:59 Speaker 06 situation right now, where it's like, people have forgotten all the hard work and dedication that happened to give us what we have right now.
1:17:08 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:17:08 Speaker 06 And we just need to, um, remind people that this stuff is not here by chance. We didn't get lucky. It's here by choice. And people demanded that we have this system of public lands, that we want wildlife. And we want access to them.
1:17:26 Speaker 05 Yeah. Stakes are high.
1:17:27 Speaker 06 Exactly. Yeah.
1:17:28 Speaker 05 Um, all right, Cal, I'd like to end this interview by saying that, uh, you've been a big inspiration to me over the years, and I'm sure the same goes for everyone here at Mediator and, and the fans who are listening. So thanks for the work that you're done and the work you're about to do. Uh, fighting the good fight for all of us hunters and anglers.
1:17:49 Speaker 06 Well, thank you for, uh, taking your, your hosting job and, uh, putting in this opportunity. So, uh, membership.
1:17:58 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:17:59 Speaker 06 Got to grow the membership. Um, we need, uh, more names on the list. So we can, uh, advocate more effectively.
1:18:09 Speaker 05 Yep.
1:18:10 Speaker 06 For our public lands, waters and wildlife. Um, so if you can do something for all of us, get, uh, just get a solo membership and tune in and see what we've got to say.
1:18:21 Speaker 05 Cool. Cool. Um, all right, Phil, we're going to end it with some, uh, New Year's resolutions.
1:18:28 Speaker 06 Cool.
1:18:29 Speaker 05 Imagine, uh, we, we've got enough material by now that we can end this thing. Um, Corey.
1:18:36 Speaker 07 Hey.
1:18:37 Speaker 05 Twenty twenty-six.
1:18:40 Speaker 07 Well, yeah, I mean, obviously I could try and eat more, exercise, or sorry, eat, eat healthier.
1:18:46 Speaker 05 Sure.
1:18:47 Speaker 07 Uh, exercise more, this and that. That'll probably come as a roller coaster ride as it typically does for me throughout the year. Start out gold and then end up not so healthy, but then it comes back and forth. But, uh, my new year's resolution is, uh, my son's gonna be eight next year and I want to do more hunting with him. Certainly watching, uh, you and Yanis and Steve take your kids out and hearing all the tips and tricks.
1:19:11 Speaker 05 The best, man.
1:19:12 Speaker 07 Have a great outing in the woods with him. Uh, it's been tricky up until this point. I would say we've done a little bit more this year than, than in years past, but now that he's eight, he's a couple of years off of being able to do it himself with me in the woods. So, we're gonna try and get out a little bit more. Couple, uh, squirrel outings and spring turkey.
1:19:28 Speaker 05 Cool.
1:19:29 Speaker 07 Every day in the summer and up next fall too, so.
1:19:31 Speaker 05 Nice.
1:19:32 Speaker 07 Yep. More time in the woods with my boy.
1:19:34 Speaker 06 That's a good one. I support you in that.
1:19:36 Speaker 07 Well, thank you.
1:19:37 Speaker 06 Yep.
1:19:38 Speaker 05 Got anything specific or?
1:19:41 Speaker 06 Oh, boy, I, not really. Just improve on all fronts.
1:19:47 Speaker 05 That's fine. That's all you, that's, that's good enough.
1:19:49 Speaker 06 Day by day.
1:19:50 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:19:50 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:19:51 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:19:51 Speaker 06 Baby steps. My resolution for, uh, weight loss comes with like, I, I have always kept like the same stable of T-shirts.
1:20:00 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm.
1:20:01 Speaker 06 Like the new ones come and go real fast.
1:20:03 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:20:03 Speaker 06 But I'm like, if I throw on an old T-shirt that I really like and go, oh my God.
1:20:08 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:20:09 Speaker 06 That's, that's my.
1:20:10 Speaker 05 I don't view you as someone who's got a weight loss problem.
1:20:14 Speaker 06 Oh, man, it's just like, you know, older we get, that, the old, old beer gut becomes like a real thing.
1:20:21 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:20:21 Speaker 06 And you go, oh, who, who is this?
1:20:25 Speaker 07 Oh, oh, oh.
1:20:28 Speaker 05 Cool. Uh, big one for me is I'm doing a marathon with a goal time of 3:30, which is, it's gonna be tough. Um, but it's doable if I stick with the training and, uh, get lucky and stay injury free. It's gonna be a tough one, but I'm, I'm giving it, giving it a good go.
1:20:45 Speaker 07 What's, what's your timeline?
1:20:47 Speaker 05 September. So I'll start like the, the actual like regimented training program in early April. So between now and then it's just putting miles on, you know.
1:20:59 Speaker 06 Yeah. Plus around here you'd need, um, you know, there's a good chance you need like, uh, indoor training.
1:21:06 Speaker 05 Yeah, exactly. Like I, like, I was looking at spring marathons because you can't like, can't, too hot in the summer, right? A lot of places, but like Missoula has one in June. But then when you think about Montana's winter, it's like, do I have time to get ready for that one? Not really. So it's better that I'm doing one, doing one, I'm doing one out in Billings in, in September.
1:21:27 Speaker 06 Nice.
1:21:28 Speaker 05 Yeah. Um, and then like for like our world, our hunting world, whatever you, we want to call it. Um, like Corey, it's pretty much the, I've kind of had the same one going for a few years and it probably shows my age and it's corny and cliche, but it's like focusing on the fun, the experience, the people, the places, like that's what I'm worried about these days rather than like what an animal scores or something like that. Um, I just want hunting to be like it was when I was a kid and everything was special and fun. And then there's like the old man element to it where you like grow wise enough to just like appreciate whatever you're given. You know what I mean? Like that. So that's my like hunting resolution for the year.
1:22:13 Speaker 06 That's a good one. Yeah. I need, I was gonna say, I have not done like my big wilderness backpack hunt for two years now.
1:22:23 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:22:24 Speaker 06 And, um,
1:22:25 Speaker 05 Time to get back to it.
1:22:26 Speaker 06 I, I, I have like for mental health purposes. I gotta make that thing happen.
1:22:30 Speaker 05 Yep, for sure.
1:22:32 Speaker 06 Yeah. And that's like a big buck dreams type of deal. But yeah, I mean consequently, like I haven't shot a deer in two years because I'd, uh, the, the whole scene is so important to me.
1:22:45 Speaker 05 Yep.
1:22:46 Speaker 06 Where it's like, Is way more.
1:22:49 Speaker 05 You're spending all your time protecting that stuff rather than going out and.
1:22:53 Speaker 06 Well, that's the attitude that I want to keep though is like, I, I don't want this to be a career. I want to like, put myself out of a job as soon as.
1:23:01 Speaker 05 Right.
1:23:01 Speaker 06 Impossible. Right. So like as, as fast as people can onboard.
1:23:06 Speaker 05 Make yourself obsolete.
1:23:07 Speaker 06 Oh, absolutely, man.
1:23:09 Speaker 05 Yeah, that's great.
1:23:10 Speaker 06 And I think that is like a real difference in goal. Like career, people and all sorts of things like. Like there's people in this space that I think a third of the time. They're working. In a way that will never put this shit to bed.
1:23:28 Speaker 05 Right.
1:23:29 Speaker 06 Right. I'm like, oh, great. You just created more enemies that are galvanized against you. I'm like, how about? We just do the good thing and, and get it done. And then everybody understands and respects this stuff and, and we can go. I'll go back to swinging a hammer. Being happy.
1:23:45 Speaker 05 Nice. I think that's a great place to end it.
1:23:48 Speaker 06 Well, what about Phil? Swing a hammer.
1:23:50 Speaker 05 Phil.
1:23:50 Speaker 06 Where's Phil? Phil?
1:23:53 Speaker 05 Phil, we're gonna jump back in time.
1:23:56 Speaker 06 Uh, what?
1:23:56 Speaker 05 I, I need you to address something.
1:23:58 Speaker 06 Okay, I'm following. Uh oh.
1:24:02 Speaker 05 Phil, this, this, we're going back to a podcast question. I swear to God, we're gonna end it after this.
1:24:06 Speaker 06 Okay. Still a lot of pressure.
1:24:09 Speaker 05 From Tate Green, at the beginning of a some meat eater podcast on YouTube, there's a dude wipes commercial.
1:24:14 Speaker 06 I've never heard this commercial, but continue.
1:24:16 Speaker 05 There's a singing voice that sounds like it could be Phil.
1:24:19 Speaker 06 Oh.
1:24:20 Speaker 05 Is this you, Phil?
1:24:23 Speaker 06 No, I wish I could say it, it, it was me. It is not me. Uh, I'm flattered you think I can sing as well as that guy. He's, he's belting it and he's, he's really reaching for the stars there. Uh, nope, that's not me, but, um. I don't know. If I get tired of meat eater, I might like Nancy Kerrigan him and then I'll maybe take his job or something.
1:24:39 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:24:40 Speaker 06 Cause that's the only way. Yes, it's the, it truly is.
1:24:43 Speaker 05 I mean, you're already the best podcast engineer in the business and.
1:24:46 Speaker 06 Oh, shucks.
1:24:47 Speaker 05 In demand, stage actor, semi-professional gamer. World renowned dungeon master.
1:24:53 Speaker 06 World renowned.
1:24:54 Speaker 05 But you, you know, you might have time to get a side hustle singing jingles.
1:24:59 Speaker 06 Yeah, how's that song go?
1:25:01 Speaker 05 He won't sing it. He told me he wouldn't.
1:25:03 Speaker 06 Well, yeah, dude wipes needs to pay us more money if they want us to sing the song on the show.
1:25:06 Speaker 07 Yeah, nothing's free.
1:25:08 Speaker 06 Fork it out, dude wipes.
1:25:09 Speaker 07 What is your resolution? Don't we get a Phil resolution? That's what I was wondering.
1:25:13 Speaker 06 My mind is to read more.
1:25:15 Speaker 05 Hey, that's a good one. Solid. Always a good one.
1:25:18 Speaker 07 I'm with you on that.
1:25:19 Speaker 06 Any genre? Oh, nothing, nothing. I mean, it's fantasy, Cal. I don't know. I'm not reading any nonfiction around here.
1:25:27 Speaker 05 The Dungeon Master's Manual, uh, 23rd Edition.
1:25:31 Speaker 06 I, I, it's in my backpack up in my office right now.
1:25:35 Speaker 07 Amazing.
1:25:36 Speaker 05 All right, everyone. Happy New Year. Happy Holidays. Do good in 2026 and tune in next week. Later.
1:25:45 Speaker 06 Here, here.
1:25:57 Steven Rinella? If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. Cause that way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there. You're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out. American made floor liners and cargo liners. Okay. They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weather tech.com. In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy.
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1:27:06 Steven Rinella? What if you could save up for that new car or vacation just by buying the stuff you're already buying? With the One Pay banking app, you earn 3% cash back on up to $150 in monthly spending in categories you choose. So it's easy to save. So what are you saving for? Maybe you've got your eyes on a new truck, or a new boat, or you're saving up for your first house. Download the One Pay app or visit onepay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.
1:27:38 Speaker 03 One Pay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Cash back is earned as points. Go to onepay.com/rewards/terms for redemption options and additional details.
1:27:52 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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