Ep. 933: Ask Me Anything with Steven Rinella

This is an I heart podcast guaranteed human. Welcome to the news show, everybody, but this ain't your normal news show. What this is is, uh, this is, uh, ask me and ask me anything thing because we get. So through the interview show, the me eater podcast, the interview show and the news show, um, and through all of the books we do and videos we make, we get all these questions, um, from listeners like you or viewers like you or readers like you and we never have enough time to get to them all. Um, so now and then in different ways, we will try to tackle the problem of, of, of just like answering questions. And so we've gone to all the normal places to get questions, um, I don't know, just questions that come in over email, uh, questions and comments sections, questions and reviews, just questions from all over the place. We even solicited questions and questions came in pulled questions from, uh, like questions from online debates and forums and things. And we got a whole bunch. We're going to start with the questions. First question, you're delivering these questions is, uh, is our very own Nate Mason. First question. Okay. Do you still have that scat coffee table? If so, what's your dream specimen to put in there? I do not have, I do not have and have not had for a long time my scat coffee table. What the question refers to is some years ago, I had this big coffee table and I put a lip around it and got a piece of glass cut for it and I painted it yellow like the National Geographic binder yellow on the old magazines. And I just filled it with every kind of animal scat I could find and I had great specimens. I had like a coyote that shat out of deer hoof. I had all just all kinds of stuff. Um, the problem I found is even if you dried them a lacquardum, they would still just corrode and just got hard to maintain. Um, by like black bears eating grass, black bears eating pine nuts, grizzly's eating grass, grizzly's eating pine nuts. The one specimen that maybe would have had me keep it alive. As I was reading years ago, this, this biologist, I think his name is Michael Faye and he did this thing called the mega transect where he did this big transect across the Congo. And for a while, he had this journalist with him and this journalist was talking about finding a leopard dropping where the leopard had shat out a chimps finger if I remember right. If I had that and found it, it can't be like giving to me. If I found that, I would go make me a whole new scat table and just put that in there. Got it. Be the only thing in there. Where did the scat table depart your life relative to your current wife meeting you? Eat long before it just became a logistics thing because I used to just roam around like when I was starting out as a young writer. I didn't have a permanent place of residence for the most part. And so it just became an issue of the same reason I never have like shoulder tax near me done. It's still from that era of just being worried about things that were hard to move. And so it wasn't like, it wasn't like I like burned it and had like a ceremony. It was just that it became hard to move and I have no idea where I wanted it. I probably almost certainly it went to a goodwill. But I don't even remember doing it. I'm sure I would have emptied it, shot back it out and brought it to your goodwill. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'd love to have it. If anybody has it, I'll buy it back for what you have into it. In fact, I'll double what you have into it if I can get it back. You'll know it's yellow glass top. Got it. Next question. Any regrets turning your passion into your career? Did you have reservations when you started down this path? No. And I'm getting into the askers head a little bit when I guess I'm guessing what they picture is that they picture that my passion was outdoor stuff, hunting, fishing, trapping, whatever. I'm guessing they're referring to that and not that my passion was writing. So the thing I would ask myself and it's a reasonable question is they'd be like, what industry are you in? I'd be like, I don't know. Am I in the outdoor industry? Sure, maybe. Am I in the media business? Sure, maybe. Am I a writer? Sure, maybe. You know what I mean? So what I'm guessing is that no one would say like, were you ever nervous about turning your passion of writing into an occupation? Because in my mind, being a writer means you make your money from writing. They're probably meaning the outdoor stuff. And no, not at all. I get that question. And I have people. My older half brother, Frank, he was a big hunter and he became a big game guide and he became a game warden. It ruined hunting form for many years. When he was a game warden, what do you think he's doing on opening day? You know, and it was like he later realized I sort of thought I was like pursuing hunting as a thing and I got to where I wasn't. So it's a thing that happens. I've never felt that way. I don't know what else I do know what else I'd be doing. And I'd rather do this. Well, that's that's the next question. If meat eater had never happened and writing didn't put food on the table, what would you be doing for a living right now? Well, that's two, even that's two separate different things like had had I not built meat eater, you know, along with many other people had I not built meat eater? I'd be a writer. If I hadn't become a writer, I'd probably, I'd probably have a tree. I guess I'd probably have wind up having my own tree service. I'd probably run a tree service. If like writing was out, because that's what I was doing. As I was becoming a writer and I had like a side gig and my side gig became less and less vital. It was tree work. So it's so hard to say, but I got into part of getting in the tree work was it was the thing that you could move away from. You know, for a long time, I worked during the summer really hard and save money so that I could trap all fall, right? And getting into tree work, part of getting into tree work was the nature of the industry allowed you to have big chunks of time to hunt or whatever. And then when I was ending being in tree work, the guy that owned the tree service that I worked for was a writer who was also writing. So for us to get done at noon or one, it was great because we'd go home, take an app, wake up, have a cup of coffee and do our writing deals in separate places. And in the morning, we'd get up and do trees. It's also entangled, you know, but yeah, maybe maybe tree work. I was interested in mill right work for a while, but probably tree work. Steve's tree service. Where were you guys doing big like insurance jobs? Man, we did it all. We did contracts, city contracts. One year, we did 300 boulevard maples in the university district of Missoula. We'd also do big removals, insurance work, hazard stuff, down stuff, pruning family shade trees. We did everything. Our specialty was stuff you couldn't get a bucket to. Yep. You climbed. Yeah. I was a climber. And our specialty was like non-bucket work. So hard to get to stuff. But we'd get a bucket if we needed it. Yeah. Yeah. We'll stop on the tree work stuff. But staying on the book writing and career advice, someone wrote in, "Given current and future AI advances, would you consider a career in writing obsolete? If someone has written from magazines and how to book and wants to be a full-time writer after retiring in five to 10 years, has that window closed? Depends. Huge depends. If you're the kind of writer who generates, this is an observation. This is a pre-AI observation from a writer friend of mine who would always laugh about that every year in July or whatever. You'd see these articles and magazines. These kind of listicles we call them. And it would be how to beat the heat this summer. And every year it comes back. It's just a perpetual article. How to beat the heat this summer or stuff like that. If that's what you're writing, your world is tough. But a thing to always keep in mind about AI and something is interesting is that AI can only draw from what's in the internet. AI can't draw from things that aren't in the internet. The moment after President Trump was shot in the year in Butler, Pennsylvania. In that moment, AI didn't know who knew witnesses. And then it gets fed in. And now there's an AI version. But in the moment, there's not breaking news will always be that way. Last night, here's something that's not. Here's something that there will be no AI overview of. "No, AI could not write this article. "Last night, yesterday in the middle of the day, "I had to run a bear out of my garage. "I'm in my house, middle of the day, "and I hear something crashing around in the garage, "and I go out, and there's a bear in there, "and I run 'em out, and all this little adventure happened. "And then, later that day, he's in my neighbor's garage. "And I'm kind of getting involved, "involved myself in that. "This doesn't exist. "This doesn't exist on the internet, right? "So it depends what kind of writer you are. "It's bad for a lot of kind of writers. "It's not intimidating to me. "It's not intimidating to me, because I deal largely "in, I deal a lot in things that haven't happened yet, "as they're happening, and I deal a lot in things "where they've already happened, but I have a spin on it, "or I have a take on it that isn't gonna be matched by something. "As it currently exists, I can smell AI writing a mile away. "And not only that, it gets duped. "We can talk about just doing something for fun, "is just making fake legislation, "and then watching, and it'll be 24 hours later, "36 hours later, fake legislation will be in the AI overview. "I've seen it happen with fake wildlife news. "It's in the AI overview, and you can be like, "where'd it come from? "It came from this fake thing. "It was intentionally written to be fake." So, no, not for me, it doesn't intimidate me, but there's some people I think you should be very afraid. Like if you write broad head reviews, for instance, or sprinkly reviews, that's a worse situation. The folks I feel real bad for are food bloggers. - I don't know if about that. - When I ask chat GPT, how many ads gives me exactly what I need? - Oh, I understand. - Good. On the topic of AI, we at meat eater, and this is formed as a question, we at meat eater criticize the way data centers are being rolled out, and they're impact on natural resources. Then we go and run an AI ad. How do you think about that conflict? - It's even worse than this person thinks. Think about it like this. Not only is there an ad, think about, we, a couple of years ago, went to Cornell to meet the people who built the bird app Merlin, and I use the bird app Merlin all the time. So we've, and I've promoted it as one of my favorite apps, Buddy, that's AI, okay? The other day, we were out camping, and we're troubleshooting a solar device, like an off-grid solar device, and there's a component. I'm like, can't figure out the component, does. How is it supposed to be configured? Through a Starlink connection, we are going to take a photo of it, and through chat GPT, find out not only what the component, but everything we need to know about the component out in the woods. And fixed, okay? It's not stopable. What I think the argument is, is the argument is, how are we gonna do this? How are we gonna approach the infrastructure? Are we gonna approach it thoughtfully? And are the users, the user base, the communities, the nation, are we gonna force these enterprises into doing things in a way that might not be the most expedient, but might be the most sustainable, and long-term, most pragmatic approaches. Meaning, maybe it's easier to go by land, to go by grasslands, and there's a bunch of water being unused. Maybe that's easier. Maybe that's more politically expedient, whatever, in some region. Maybe the answer is to really focus heavily on decayed industrial sites. Okay, offline factories. They're pulling out coal-fired generator plants. Have been pulling out, like the one where I grew up, the coal-fired generator plant where I grew up, is gone now. Maybe it should be sites like that, well, that's really expensive. Okay, maybe that's the way it needs to go. So, like, you're not, AI's not going away. I'm not gonna stop, I'm going to use it. But I think pressure needs to apply to get it to go the right way, the same way I use oil, but at times I've been critical of the oil industry and how they approach their business. In terms of just like the ad thing, a lot of that is exceedingly complicated, and what is normally the case is when you use platforms, YouTube, wherever you distribute. You use platforms that you don't have a lot of say over, you don't have a lot of say over what's done, if I'm a big Curb Your Enthusiasm fan. If I'm watching Curb Your Enthusiasm highlights on YouTube, and I see a YouTube ad pop up, I don't think to myself, oh, Larry David must love this company. He doesn't have anything to do with it. You have some say in what we call PE. So personally endorsed ads on podcasts, you have a say in it, and I try to exert a level of control and discipline about doing that, then you run into the question of doing the work I do, making the products we make, it's expensive. It requires people. It's like an occupation, people have to be paid. You can't run, this doesn't run on goodwill. So we need to be able to monetize the things or else they die, right? So yeah, it's a constant debate. And at times, I will, not at times, every week, I turn down many ads that I don't feel comfortable with every week, and basically throw away big chunks of money because I'm like, I don't want to do that. I can't do that. That tension gets to a question someone asked of, what does it actually look like practicing a land ethic when you have the tension of those commercial interests? And the commitment to conservation that you have, is it something at meat eater scale today? Is it something concrete that you give up or is it just a way we think about doing business? Man, it's so hard to say. It's hard to answer because it occurs at so many levels. Like just take like something like a very basic level would be that within the meat eater family of brands, there is first light, the technical hunting and fishing apparel company first light sits within the meat eater family of brands. They make camel, okay, camel clothes. They we make camel clothes. So 1% of all camel sales go to conservation organizations. So you'd be like, does it, you know, when they're saying like the cost, it's a cost, just right off the top, right? But I don't know. Maybe some people see that, maybe some people see that and they're like, well, I want to buy from them because they support these things. I don't know how that balances out. Other things is, I build in, I try to build in a conservation ethic and build in serious conversations into things to educate listeners and viewers about things that matter to them. Probably at a, at a, at a, at a, at times a personal cost and at times a cost to the private performance of our materials. People hate when things like get political. But in my view, everything is political. Like it or not, phishing, hunting, national parks, national forests, they're political. When, how many, when the minimum size of a large mouth bass that you can keep goes from 12 inches to 14 inches as happen when I was growing up in Michigan, that is political because governors are political figures. Governors get elected, governors appoint people, governors influence commissions. Like there's no part of life that isn't political. Listeners, viewers generally hate it, but I'm like, you have to understand this kind of stuff. I try to bake in like my operating thesis on videos and stuff without it to go like 80% entertainment, 20% like, like conservation messaging. I think a lot of people could do without it. But I insist on doing it. If you came and told me, if you were some kind of, if you were really good at metrics and audience assessment and you came and said, listen man, the whole conservation messaging thing, borers people, your material to all do better. If it wasn't in there, your material do better if you never had political figures on cause they're too divisive. Your material do better if you never pointed out [BLANK_AUDIO] in which certain sections of the community might be behaving in a way that brings down everybody else or whatever. Like don't do any of that. I'd say I still feel like I have to do that. I still feel like I have to because I think it's important to do that. So yeah, it's like, it's like, money, well another thing is I, like I serve on boards of conservation organizations, which is a time thing. We donate huge amounts of money to things. We raise money for things. We do like our auction house of oddities and all kinds of other fundraisers, our punk gun project, always to donate and feed into conservation groups. It's just a lot. And then there's always a feeling that you didn't get enough done. I suffer from that all the time. The feeling you didn't get enough done. And I think that is the difference from like dot com and dot org, right? Like I serve in a sort of dot com space, you know. And I think that some people maybe drift toward dot org or drift toward nonprofit work to alleviate some of that tension. But nonprofit work wouldn't produce what I produce, right? All the history works we do. You know, I mean, like, yeah, it's a great question. It's something I think about all the time. Like I feel generally really good about where we're at, but I could feel better. That raises a question on the political people that we highlight or that we talk about in positive or negative ways. And this is generated from the comment section, I think from Spotify. And a listener called our interview with Senator Heinrich, one of the best shows and says sportsman must back politician who value wild places. And on the same show and the five star review. On the same show, you have a one star review and says this listener said the show has become about another elite lib, and he's quit over it. And you can't satisfy both. Who do you think you're making the show for? Like how do you think about the tension from both sides? I'm definitely not making the show for like Republicans. And I'm definitely not making it for Democrats. No. If I have pot, I'm mindful of those two terms. And over time, anytime we have a political politician on, people would just look at that, that single thing. And they don't do with any awareness about the broader work that we do or the long-term thing. And they'll fixate on that. So I have a Republican on who likes the hunt or works in conservation issues, or works against conservation issues. And I feel like people shouldn't understand where this guy's coming from. People will see that and it's like, oh, it's a Republican thing. They're not aware that over the long stretch of time, it's very even. It is very even across the Republican Democrat political divide over the long period of time. It will remain so. It will remain so. No one is interested in doing this. But if you really went and looked at the partisan thing over the history of the show, I pride on how even it is. So I'm aware, who's it for? Who's the show, who am I making it for? Like I want to make it that people can make informed decisions. You know, that people can make informed decisions about what's going on. And so I'll bring on political figures. A thing I don't do generally, I don't endorse. I grew during the Biden administration. I grew in hindsight, no, not at all. I grew very disillusioned with the Biden administration, particularly around how something that was plainly in view for a long time, his becoming senile. And I don't hold it against them, buddy. If you don't die tragically and young, that's going to happen. Okay. So like the degree to which it was so apparent that it was happening and it was unclear who was calling the shots. And then you had these people hiding that fact. I grew very, very, very angry with the Biden administration and I would make, not even cracks, I would like point it out. I think that led a lot of people to think that I was in a certain place that I wasn't politically necessarily because that was to me like a fundamental sin of the political class was carrying that on. For him to hand off, for him to prolong to the point where they were handing off a nomination instead of holding a primary, how intentional was that? Like I was disillusioned with the Biden administration. So then out of that came this narrative, they're like, oh, you know, he's right wing of Matilda the hunt. And he turned around and like a day later you have a day later, you have a guy like Heinrich, I know I'm friends with and hunt with. And I'm like, and I'm left, you know, I'm left of AOC. Because no one wants to look at the totality of anything, you just want to go off some little thing. And the people bringing this up are often haven't listened to the show. You typically look and you're like, you saw a social media promo and you don't know anything that was said. I see Rogan go through this all the time. Like people judge Joe Rogan on who he has on, not what is said inside. I don't know, like I'm like a stop doing what I do. Let's go to another very heated topic. Okay, crossbows, why does the crossbow draw so much iron inside the archery world? I've thought about this a great deal. And I'll take a crack at the crossbow. Not a crack, like, well, funny, I said, because you taking a crack at something in our vernacular be that you shot something. This is the honest to God truth. It surprises me because I haven't deliberately gone on to do it. I've never shot a crossbow, which kind of blows my mind. I've never fired a crossbow. And not because I've been trying not to. I never watched the movie Titanic. And at a point, I didn't watch it because I didn't watch it. I wanted to be like someone that they could study later. Staying a dirty dancing, never watched it. And now I make a point not to watch it just to hold true on not watching it. 'Cause I just want to preserve a mind that hasn't, you know, taken in certain things. Crossbows, dude, never. But here's the, here's where they get it rubbed. Here's why people don't like 'em. It's 'cause it's so hard to learn to shoot a bow. It takes so much discipline to get good with a bow. It's gotten a lot easier through technology, but it's hard to shoot a bow. And so then there's a bow that's like bow-like, but not really a bow. And anybody can pick it up and be very accurate. It burns the ass of people who've done it. And then I think another thing that really burned 'em is when they started referring to bows, as vertical bows. Trying to like be like, oh no, no, no, no, no, it's just one's vertical and one's horizontal or something. I think that was a bad move. But if you're a crossbow person, why do you need archers to be happy about it? If that's what you like, that's what you like. And people that point out like in this state, we have in Montana, we have no crossbow season. Some people say we have no crossbow season. That's just not true. You can hunt with your crossbow for the six week general season. You can absolutely hunt with your crossbow, right? So, I don't know, I don't think you need people, like I don't know why they want everyone to like them so much. I like to do a little trap and I don't need people to celebrate connobs, you know. I don't need them to love 'em. I like 'em, they're very effective. I don't need you to love 'em. So, stop worrying about it. - Hey everyone, big huge announcement. Me either live, the Christmas tour is kicking off again this year for the Christmas season of 2026. This time we're hitting the Midwest. Me either live, the Christmas tour kicks off in December across six Midwestern cities. We've got Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Madison, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and Fargo. Join myself, Yanis Poutellus, Claynew, Combrant Reaves, and Randall Williams. For a night of laughs, trivia, free prizes, news, and opinions from across the worlds of hunting, fishing, wildlife, conservation, and wild foods. Also, we're already stacking up some great special guests. I got my buddy, Bubley Doug, making the appearance in Madison. Go to themeeter.com/tour and sign up to get early access to pre-sale tickets right now and secure your spot. Tickets will be available to the public on Friday. So don't wait. Go to themeeter.com/tour to get your pre-sale tickets now. - Another tool that drives a lot of controversy, - Your C is a life scope. I know. Another listener wrote in and asked, "Which tool is more effective in its respective role? A spotting scope or a life scope?" Not even comparable. I mean, absolutely the life scope. A life scope effectively seals the deal on fish, right? I was out, not too long ago, out in a boat. I mean, fishing for three days without life scope, then I went out fishing with life scope for a day. And to be able to fish big northerms and pull up to a spot, determine if there's one there or not. So now you just know that he's there. And then when you present baits to figure out what he's responding to or not responding to and knowing when to stop because he's approaching it and knowing when he loses interest and to agitate it, it is catching the fish. The angler is as important to catching the fish as like the barb on a hook or something. Like, life scope is catching the fish. That would piss a lot of life scope guys off, including very dear friends of mine who love life scope. A spotting scope is like supplementary information. I rarely even find something with a spotting scope. I just scrutinize what I found with my binos with a spotting scope. I don't view it as, like if I left on a trip and I forgot my binos, I didn't. I'm going back. I don't care how far I got drive back. If I forget a spotting scope, I'd probably be like, yeah, ah, all right, let's keep going. That sucks, but we're not turning back. So the life scopes more akin to your binos than a spotter, not even then, wouldn't be close to binos, wouldn't be close to binos. It's just like, I've done it. I've been on both. It is fishing. The machine is doing the fishing. You are a, you're like a ride along. Well, let's ask a question about where you draw a line on hunting. This comes from a guy who lives on 10 rural acres full of hickories, walnuts, oaks, and hundreds of squirrels. I shoot squirrels off my back deck and my squirrel hunting. Yes. Now that apply that to deer over a pile of corn in my backyard. Where's the line for you? For me? Um, I've never, it's never come up for me. I don't see, it's not a line, man, I don't know. The dude, he's got 10 acres, got all these squirrels running around and he gets them off his back deck. Good for him. He's not like breaking the law. You know, um, and if you, if you live in a state where you can run bait and you run bait and you get deer, um, great, you know, you're not, you're not breaking a law. If that's legal, where you're legal and you have like good game management system and your game management system determines that that's okay or like you're baiting bears to bring bears. Um, I don't feel that it makes it that they have no avenue of escape the same time. If someone raises livestock and, and they go out to harvest, you know, they go out to kill a hog. They've been fattening. Do I think it's unethical because the hog couldn't get away? No, but it's just, it's just different. Like they wouldn't think of it as hunting it. I don't think of it as hunting. So I don't view it, well, when it comes to your own line, there's just things that could point out that I haven't done, and they're not appealing to me. I haven't hunted high fence, I've never done high fence hunting. It's not appealing to me. And that pisses people off. Like if you don't do something, it pisses people off. But what oftentimes happens is it pisses off people who are kind of feeling sensitive about it or they feel marginalized or they want like a broader level of acceptance for something. So would irritate people, but I've often heard people go out of their way. Someone sent me something recently where where, like for instance, like Nugent was on a podcast being somehow like broadcasting a message to me about that hunting and high fences is just as hard as any, whatever, I don't know, I don't know why it's upsetting. That's not appealing to me. And I know people say like, well, some of these areas are so big, you can still get away. It's just, it's not fun. It's not, it's not an enjoyable thing to me. I like things that are challenging, but I also oftentimes do hunts that aren't that challenging, you know, like going out on September 15th, hunting squirrels in the beach woods, I know I'm getting squirrels. Any given squirrel out there has an excellent chance of not getting killed, of me not detecting it, of it getting away. But I'm going to get something probably. And you just kind of go through life like that and pick like what you want to go out of your way to do or not. But the biggest thing I tell people on this question is, people can pick this apart or just kind of accept that at face value what I'm trying to say is following the regulations as laid out by your state, as a hunter, as an angler, following the regulations is 98.5% will get you 98.5% there on the pathway to like ethical or higher. My recommendation, like, like don't break the rules. And if your state has rules that don't make sense, take up the issue, but like stay true to the rules. Most of the rules, there are exceptions. Most of the rules are coming from a well intentioned place. You want to be an ethical hunter? You want to be an ethical fisherman? Start by. Try to follow the rules. So we talked about things that you're not interested in. Now let's talk about. Am I not interested in? Like you're not interested in hunting hyphen stuff. Personally, no, it doesn't interest me. What are your top five bucket list species that you are very interested in? Man, years ago, I was with some Amer Indians and we were in Guyana and we got a couple arrows into a tape here. I don't want to get a tape here. I don't need to like get a tape here, but I want to be with some dudes that get a tape here. I would like to, yeah, that's a big one for me. Be with some dudes that get a tape here. I'd like to, what else am I real keen on? Oh, a leopard. I was in Africa a couple summers ago and we're hunting all kinds of super cool stuff. We spent a lot of time talking about leopards and I saw leopard and right now in my mind, I'm very hip on doing leopards. Which I'll point out is a baited, is a baited hunt. You hand carcasses up in trees or portions of carcasses up in trees and try to get a leopard going real excited about that, real hip on that. So watching some dudes get a tape here and butcher it. Just a touch of tape here for a minute and a leopard, three more. And I wouldn't mind trying a capybara with some dudes that hunt capybara is very situational. You mentioned cappercalli the other day. Oh, forgot about that. That's a big one for years. Oh, there's two. For years we've been trying to line out a good cappercalli hunt in Northern Europe and then the oscillated turkey has been, it's been difficult. I'm working a new lead now. It's been difficult to find a reputable place to go hunt oscillated turkeys not on ag, but to hunt them in the forest. So not ones that are working ag fields, but like to go out in the raw forest, I don't want to call jungle, but to go out into the jungle like stuff and hunt, oscillated turkeys out on native habitat has been hard to find, but hopefully we're getting close. What about fish species? What to catch? Yeah. Like what's on your bucket list for fish? Big old she fish. Big old she fish. Yeah. Here's a good question that came in. Other than Africa, Mexico and Canada, I want to shoot a dog to tuna with a spear gun. Got it. Other than Africa, Mexico and Canada, which country outside North America would you most like to hunt? Countries. Yeah. I've spent time in and I remain very, very interested in spending time in the hunting and fishing in South America, particularly in the jungles. So the Amazon Basins surrounding areas like that, that kind of like rain for a stuff, but then only do like I'm just interested in doing that with native peoples who do that. Like that's what I'm interested in outside of those places or in the far North, like in the Arctic, hunting with hunting marine mammals, whatever, with native hunters who have an ancestral link to the pursuit, like I don't need to be the guy that pulls the trigger at all. But I just, I like to accompany and be there, yeah. A question from the email inbox, what's the most maligned animal in North America that's actually good. the one I see people most routinely surprised by just squirrels, far and away. And then it's kind of maligned by, it's not so much maligned by hunters, but it's maligned by just kind of the public, you know, it's like people express like, ah, squirrels, you know. But just everyone, you know what, I've never served like well-prepared, you know, like well-prepared squirrel to anyone that is, I'm not kidding you, to anyone that has ever had a negative reaction to it. It is universally always, God, can't believe what good that is, always, always. And so, yeah, that's definitely it. Someone wrote in, did a lot of you guys grow up hunting squirrels with slingshots? Can we get a slingshot squirrel hunting episode? No, yes and no. I don't picture make into squirrel hunting. I don't picture make in a squirrel hunting episode about slingshots because I'm not that interested in, like method of take stuff, like focusing for me, other guys that work with or into it. But for me, focusing on method of take isn't a big thing for me. It wouldn't be that, like if I love to film stuff about turkeys and someone found some novel way to kill a turkey, I wouldn't sort of be like, oh no, no, no, no, this is about killing a turkey with this novel contraption. I just don't view things that way. I bow hunt during both season, right? But I don't view it like, I don't view it as weapon centric, weapon centric viewing. I've met guys who have a sort of check hunting checklist. They're like, I'd like to get a deer with a pistol. I'd like to get a deer with a longbow. I'd like to get a deer with a crossbow. And they're in their mind. They're just like, like, how many different ways can I get a deer? I'm not down on it. I just don't care. When we were kids, one of our buddies down the road, his dad worked at a ball bearing factory. What was that place called? Sealed power. And so we had never any amounts of what we called stele's back then, ball bearings and steel marbles, you know, for shooting marbles. And we were working on this technology where we were thinking you could take basically a bunch of like, 25 caliber ball bearings and wrap it in masking tape to make a little dense thing. And we were working on a technology by which you would hit a tree by a squirrel. And there'd be such a violent eruption of ball bearings coming out of this masking tape case that you would thereby kill the squirrel. Grape shot. And we never, we never got anywhere with it. I think, I think, maybe I've gotten like a blue grouse with a wrist rocket now and then, but no, I'm not a sling shot hunter. He should look up a guy named Eddie Corona. Eddie Corona. That's a snack. I tell you anymore. We call him El Jaguar. Look up that guy. A couple listeners wrote in asking for the best tasting deer. And the list is Axis, Columbia, Blacktail, Syka Blacktail, Kews, cows, Mule deer, or Whitetail. I don't know. It's like there's such a high level of subjectivity to this. I can say that, um, let me tell you some sort of universally celebrated critters. The Axis deer, if you talk to people that have access to a lot of servants, ungulates, whatever, they tend to point out that the Axis deer is exceptional. The Syka deer, so not Sitka, Blacktail, but the Syka deer among people who've had a lot of kind of wild game as regarded as exceptional. Um, I agree. There aren't many like the Seek, is that on his list, Syka? No, he didn't. That's that little one that runs around Maryland. Yeah. Listen, there aren't many, there aren't many like servants that you can take the front leg off a mature male and put it in a pellet grill and leave it in there and have it be that you can crumble it apart with your fingers. That don't happen. And that happens with one of them suckers. Yeah, they're good. All that stuff's good. All that stuff's great. Another guy writes in, speaking of ungulates, when will meaty to do a Northeast Moose hunting episode on tario Quebec, New Brunswick, Maine? We want logging roads and clear cuts. I understand, man, I understand. There's a couple years I'd put in for a moose and Maine. But the thing is, I kind of like, I'm kind of nuts deep in the whole Alaska hunt and moose up there. And I like have where I like to go, they're huge. You know, it's just like the land of giants. I love being up there. And because it happens at the same time of year, it's hard to picture peeling off and going somewhere else because I dig that so much. You know, I mean, I love it. So I can't picture going over in another direction to hunt moose. Maybe I will someday, but I just, I just like, if I weigh in my head, like go up and hunt, like in the interior, you know, and how wild and beautiful that is, the interior of Alaska or go, I'm just going to go that way for now. It's not to hack on it. It's just that's what I'd like to do. That's right right now. That's where I want to be. A guy asked how beneficial has it been for meat eater and for you that your brother Danny is an Alaskan resident. It's great in a handful of ways. Kind of the most obvious one is I can go and we've gone over the years four or five times. I can go sheep hunting with them. So we've gone long before long before meat eater was ever a thing and before it was a show that we made or before I ever came up with the name or anything. He and I were would go on sheep hunts together or also never written about this. It's like I can go with him. Let me let me back up. If you have what they call a second, if you have a second degree kindred resident of Alaska relative, okay, that's what's like cousin, husband, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, whatever. There's four animals that the guiding restriction falls away. Mountain goat and Alaska mountain goats, doll sheep, grizzlies. This is made to me three. It's three. Sorry. There are three species. Mountain goats, doll sheep and grizzlies slash brown bear. If you're a non-resident of Alaska, you have a guide requirement. You have to get a guide to hunt those things unless you have a relative there. So if you have a relative there, they can serve sort of like that they fill the role as a guide. You're eligible to go hunting. There's complications to it. Like over the years, they've kind of made it that like if I go with him and I get something that actually scratches off his tag. I got to have my own tag, but it like scratches off his tag in some instances. But over the years, I've been able to go hunting goats and go hunting sheep with him and he has me like right there with me and I would have otherwise needed a higher guide and I don't typically hire guides, typically. I do on some kind of times, but typically don't. I just was having been able to go with him. So hugely beneficial. Two questions that are two questions from Google AutoFill. Do you do guided hunts and does your wife hunt? I've never done, I've never been licensed to guide. I've never done any guiding. I sometimes will speak to my wife. I'll sometimes be talking to my wife and I'll be saying something like whatever do that. I can't rule that out. It'd be way down the road. It's hard to picture, but maybe, but no, I've never done any guiding. I feel like it's like a little bit of I'll just say it's like a hole in my resume or something because a lot of the guys I work with have been guides, you know, but no, I don't know if that's true. No, I haven't. My wife, no, my wife doesn't hunt man. She likes to and the right circumstance is she likes to fish. I found this summer that she would route. She has much more fun fishing in the boat with my buddies in it than being in my boat. She thinks my boat puts off an anxious energy. No, she says it just has an energy to it that puts her off. The other day, that's shocking. I was hiking with my wife and she wanted to go up to this peak and we're coming down and I'm trying to tell her like, um. You need to like the screen wants to flow, you're trying to stop on screen. You need to learn just to let it go and you go with it. And even this kind of thing for me is off putting to her. Any number of her friends could say it and she'd be like, well, that's really interesting. It's just off putting to her. She doesn't want to hear about it for me. That's why we go hunt cat tails with Tony Peterson. Cam doesn't want to disappoint Tony. So that's not do with honey, but just like an interesting dynamic that she like what she loves to be. She like likes to go fishing at our fish shack, but would prefer to not be in my boat. And honey, no, she's never, she, when my daughter was going through 100 safety, she thought about doing it and was kind of thought it might be good. It was drawn the idea of doing it with our daughter. She didn't do it. But it's funny because when we found out we were having a girl, she was adamant. She's like, you don't you dare treat her any differently and you better take her hunt. And it's important to her that she does it, but it's just it's just not appealing to her. Not appealing to her. It might sometime down the road. And sometimes I'll get her, she'll be in the right mood and she'll point out that she should she'd like to check it out sometime, but usually through the lens of with our kids that she wants to experience it with our kids. And and this will be coming up. She's actually already planning on going bear hunting with me and our kids. I'll ask her. Yeah, coming up. So that'll be different. I was surprised by that. Hey everyone, big huge announcement. We got Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Madison, Des Moines, Minneapolis and Fargo. Join myself. Yannis Putellis, Clay New, Combrant Reeves and Randall Williams for a night of laughs, trivia, free prizes, news and opinions from across the worlds of hunting, fishing, wildlife conservation and wild foods. I got my buddy, bubbly dug, making the appearance in Madison. Go to the Me either dot com slash tour and sign up to get early access to pre sale tickets right now and secure your spot. So don't wait. Go to the Me either dot com slash tour to get your pre sale tickets now. There's another last good question. The recent request for generator suggestions reminded a listener of episode 757 where you asked for help with an electrical problem on the GE Freezer, the fish hack. Yes. Do you ever get it resolved? Yes. An engineer from GE reached out. We were able to troubleshoot it. I was able to get the part I needed in the part fixed the problem. So yes. Excellent. Yeah. Big thanks GE for that help there. It was great to talk to an actual freezer guy, a pro freezer guy. Where do you land now on the argument that hunting doesn't need more recruits? That's it. Yeah. That's a great question. It's something I struggle with all the time because I even struggle like, what does the word recruiting mean? You know, let me let me back up and start with an observation. This has been this is probably over observed. If you go back to 1950, think about this like this. If you go back to 1950, in 1950, you had about 150 million people in the country, 150 million Americans. Guess what percentage, 150? 150 million Americans, 1950. Not percentage, but I guess the total, sorry, the total number. The total number was about 12 million. About 12 million people, 119 50 with a population of 150 million. We now have over twice the population. Guess what? How many people hunt now? 15. So you like double the American population and you barely creep up the number. I haven't like got this totally sorted out in my head, but I sort of feel like there's like a carrying, I envision it that there's sort of a carrying capacity of land. And it'll sort of be met. Always be met with some level of conflict, some level of resource constraint. To say that you're going to like go out and recruit a hunter would lead me to believe you're going to go out and try to like convince people. I guess that you're going to convince people that wouldn't otherwise want a hunt that they should hunt. Like I just can't see that that's necessary. I am doing right now. I am mentoring a young hunter. My older boy, one of his best friends is very interested in hunting and comes from a not hunting family. Like a very not hunting family and he's very interested in hunting. I have, we have, me and my boy have really taken him under our wing and have walked him through all the steps. Like he burls our gear. We've taught him everything. We walked him through the permitting process and put him in for the apps. Like we've like mentored him. But we mentored him as a person that we enjoy and love. And here he wants to do this thing and we're uniquely suited to help him do it. And here's the biggest gift we gave him. The biggest gift we could give him. I hate that works. Like if he's listening to No Sui, he was, please understand I do not view this as a gift I'm giving you. But a thing that we are able to provide because we love this kid to death, a thing we're able to provide is like places to go. We bring him to our spots and he comes with us. He has a standing invitation. If we're going somewhere, he can come with. We're just hunting grouse with him. Like he comes out with us. The problem with formalized, I view a problem with formalized hunting recruitment is it runs into where are they supposed to go. You can go say to someone like, "Hey, I'll show you how to shoot a shotgun. I'll teach you how to call a turkey," and whatever. But in the end, where do they go? And that's why a lot of those programs aren't successful in the long term. As people will go, if you take them and you have a place and they have a good chance to success. But when you turn them back out, I think that there's like, they drop out. Why do they drop out? Because it's not readily apparent where they go and going and finding spots is hard. And so they don't do it, right? Which leads us. The other question is like, or another component of this that I wonder about all the time, is I guess the objective, if you look at conservation organizations that have like a hunting recruitment component to them, I guess the objective is, in their mind, the objective would be that they want to produce hunter conservationists. So the pathway to do this would be to go find people that don't hunt, get them in the hunting. And then they get into hunting and then from there, they hopefully get into the conservation movement. It feels to me that it'd be far more efficient to why not let's talk about the 15 million, 14 million, 15 million Americans that are our hunting and aren't involved in conservation. Like that seems more practical and efficient of an approach. Like what about all these ones that aren't in the conservation movement? Like the young man I'm mentoring, it will come soon where I float this with him. I'm like, now that you're doing this and you're into it with this, it's time you look and say like, what do I owe to it? Right? And we'll get there and we'll do that. But I didn't go offered him to come along with us in the first place with some like long-term plan to build a conservationist that just wasn't where I am. So I don't I don't think it's that efficient. If I was like when we do like at our organization, we do a lot of conservation spending. For me, the best conservation spending or one of the best ways to spend on a conservation is around habitat, acquisition, saving habitat, improving habitat, and also tied to conservation, but a little different is like access improvement. Creating places and space for people to enjoy their activity. Right? For creating places and space for people to hunt. Knowing that those niches will be filled, you can't really point to, in the country, you can't really go like that there's all these elk tags that are available and no one got them. That there's big horn tags and no one's even there to get the big horn tag. Because the carrying capacity is like full. So just setting out with the specific intention of like talking people into hunting that don't hunt for some payoff down the road. I don't know. I just can't see that as an effective way to get anywhere. Not to begrudge people that do it, like they should come, I have someone on the podcast to explain it to me, but it's not what keeps me up at night. It's interesting because that's a critique of meat eater is that This organization brings in too many new hunters like people see it and want to get into it. Sure, man When I think about like my grandpa Was a hunter while both my grandson I Come from hunters on both sides of the family. I'm speaking of my maternal grandpa grandpa clan my maternal grandfather He always had he always subscribed to outdoor life sports of field and field and stream and We didn't We didn't have magazines subscriptions in my house for some reason But I would go and he would give me all of his magazines and I would read these magazines and I would be like very inspired To do the things in those magazines the first magazine I ever subscribed to was Trapper and Predator caller and I would read Trapper and Predator caller And I was like man, I want to go have like a trap line Alaska. I want to trap this. I want to trap that so I'm like taking it in media I would go to learn how to do what I do I would go and buy Tom Miranda's videos I would buy Trying the other prominent trappers who Mike Marziata I would buy all of his books, you know, cuz I wanted to study and learn So there's like a little bit of a continuum of that people that make Books about hunting or make videos about hunting like people are going to use that resource to do the things they want to do Theodore Roosevelt wrote a hunting book Was he a hunting influencer? I don't know but undoubtedly people read Roosevelt stuff and got really into it Aldo Leopold wrote San County, Almanac undoubtedly people read San County, Almanac and got into it I really can't think of the digital space of somehow being different where there's always been a draw of That you that hunting media inspires and educates Fishing media inspires and educates always has always will Even guys I know that are like like I know a guy that is just like dead set against hunting media But it's so funny because I know his background and I know that He throughout his life moved to areas And would hunt fish places that people were already hunting and fishing and how would he learn to do that through hunting media So you look at his bookshelf Dwight shoe Cam Haines the Eastman's right. He's watching these videos. He's reading this stuff. But then later in hindsight It's not put together. It's like you learn to do what you did through media products and trial and error And you were inspired about what's possible through these things I remember when I was a little kid my dad brought home this video He got it from Michigan boat some guys at Muskegon Bowman's and it was like this video about his Do name art la ha And it was art la ha with a like some old-timey camera making all these like crazy videos out of Alaska I watched that shit got excited about hunting Alaska It just still goes on now. I don't know like I can't picture that That a writer or an artist or whatever they are would somehow be like I'm not going to write about the things I'm interested in for fear that People would want to do it like look at what take like sex in the city and girls what that most have done to like I don't know did people want to move to manhattan after watching sex in the city and girls did like housing cost go up manhattan Yes, probably could you would you like Blame the person that wrote that stuff. It's tricky to me Another like on the same criticism is like The somehow if you go and Write about things or show things to people that they want to then go there I think I don't know like ultimately in a demographic sense how effective it is Because like the number one place we film in is Alaska but Alaska's lost population And their population has gotten older all through the time that I've written about and filmed it So I feel like something more is going on Um, we don't do a ton in Austin, but that's like one of the fastest growing zip codes Florida's a really hot state. I think it's taxes You know, I don't think it's that we made a Think about us the old turkeys so like it just gets it gets like confusing to me And I think that people tend to when they're looking at their woes There's a tendency to look at the things you're most familiar with Like for me, I'd be like what what When Montana had a spasm of explosion that's slowing down now most sociologists point to COVID You know I would be like it's that show Yellowstone, right? Like you just look and you kind of like lash out at the things that you think are familiar, you know We had a number of new or aspiring hunters right in And there's a two-part question that they generally posed etiquette on someone giving you their spots, and then a one to five list of how to start hunting On the etiquette on what when someone shares with you a spot Lay out The etiquette of you receiving that spot and then what you do with it That that's I'm gonna make a very long question I'm gonna make a very long answer short and I'm gonna Talk about a thing that that's become important to me or like a way. I think that people could avoid these tensions Talk about it explicitly Set your expectations explicitly and proactively If someone takes you to a spot Say Thank you for taking me here. This has been great. This is and I don't want to be awkward, but like How would you like me to handle this information Right I have friends I have friends call me up and they'll be like man um What would you think of I blank I'll be yeah, go ahead You know, but it's like just be like and I've never had these before but just be really open about it If you take someone somewhere you could even say to him like dude, let me warn you If I'm gonna take you to this and show you this specific fish and hole that I found. It's really good like this time of year Um, and I like to hit it with my kids and everything If I'm gonna take you I'm gonna ask you I'm gonna be like hey man. Don't don't hit the spot without me So maybe you shouldn't go with me because you might find it on your own and when you find it on your own It's gonna be sweet for you and you can hit it all the time But if I show you then we're bound up in this weird deal. So maybe don't even go Because you'll find it and then it's yours Because you found it like I can't control that um In the other spec like yeah, yeah I could go on about this area for a long time, but I think like Being explicit with your expectations Yeah, the second time I was hiking with a friend of mine who was just visiting from out of state And we were hiking around and we saw something interesting And I said man You never saw that he goes I don't know where I am anyway The second part of that question is one to five You don't hunt and you want to get into it one of the steps and just I see a lot of people get really hung up on um Get like a lot of people Get really hung up on this like overwhelming decision-making prowess as they have like they don't Know where to start like I guess you just start Because yeah, that's it is being not successful that bad if being not successful Means you don't want to go So you're not going because you might be unsuccessful that it's probably just not for you and like I don't don't go if you're comfortably unsuccessful Go Get on X look at on X and look for bits of public land or access areas you can go and do and just go and try If you don't have public areas work through your social network work through your network at work Work through your network at church work through your network or whatever right letters Knock on doors all the things that we all do and get a place to go and when you get a place to go get out and try And then meanwhile watch the youtube videos read books listen to bygads all that kind of stuff But just like go and stop worrying about that you won't get something It's who cares Just get and you'll just land there, but if you can't enjoy the journey like screw it It's it's it's a it's for this whoever's asking is it is definitely a recreational pursuit because they don't do it yet It's recreational if you can't enjoy the journey forget about it You know just enjoy the journey begin Whether a new hunter or an old hunter What should someone read to learn how white tails move what they eat and their patterns Man at this point. I don't know that readings the best bet Um There's so many People out there that um Talk about and make good videos about stuff like how white tails do what they do Um If you're looking at from a hunting perspective not from like a biological perspective but from a hunting perspective There's so much there's so much stuff on on on YouTube and others where guys explain stuff really well I don't know that if the strategy if you just love literature then I don't I don't I don't know what to tell you um It's different than what I think he's asked I think he's that he wants to learn like from a pragmatic like how to get white tails approach There's so much good stuff on YouTube find some of it like talks the way you talk and thinks the way you think and kind of study them. I work with you guys like that do a lot of white-tailed stuff. Mark Canyon and Tony Peterson and I appreciate their perspective on white-tails and the most vivid way to learn from them is to watch the stuff they do because it just because you can see it all happening and it's very educational and then you got to spend time applying it. No two places are the same like you got to take all the things you pick up and apply it. Listener wrote in, "If you could eat only one wild game recipe from now on, what would it be?" It'd be that I would take a, it'd be that I'd take home-usseled chunks of meal deer and rub them in salt and pepper and either sear them in a pan and then stick them into a 400-degree oven or I would just brush it with a little oil and put it into a pellet grill and cook until it's 135 degrees and then take it out and let it sit there for 8-10 minutes and then slice it cross grain and I could just live on that. I sometimes feel embarrassed about how much that we eat at my house like from my wife's perspective but she doesn't complain because she likes it and earlier time my wife doesn't hunt was one of the many things I like about my wife is she eats more wild game than this gonna sound audacious. My wife eats more wild game than 99% of the hunters in this country because she's wild game every day. You know, number folks are interested in what the best restaurant meal of your life is. I've had some great ones and I tried to think about that and like just kind of cool things I've eaten over time here and there but I think the best, this is gonna come any surprise to anybody that follows our stuff. I think the best replicable restaurant experience to be had in America that I know about is going to Jesse Griff has died away. Meaning it's a tropical meaning like it's in a place people come through. It's an Austin, Texas. It's it's expensive but it's not ridiculous. You can get in. It's like you need to make a reservation years in advance like you can kind of go down here and get in and it's just it's my fair. It is in my mind the best restaurant experience I can think of. What's your go-to-round? You know, this has become weirdly political because there's always like it's so fun. Maybe people have always had all these opinions about people you know like like people get all riled up about your rounds and stuff. I shoot you know like the hunt moose like the one out deer whatever I can just get a lot done. I can get a lot done very confidently with a 300 win mag and I also shot it enough that I understand part. I understand and you know I mean like like I understand the blistics. I understand it's trajectory. I just understand it so it becomes that it becomes you know you know guys like and guys in the world's a hunting and fishing will will sometimes be like it just it works for me. You know trappers too like a trapper or like a certain thing a certain way. And guys big why do you use that I don't use it just works for me. Like it fits into my it fits into my repertoire. 300 win mag it just works me because I'm like very familiar with it. I don't have problems with it. I don't like recoil doesn't bother me and it just works me but that's not to say it's the best for somebody else. It's just to me I get it and it's like it's a function of age too. There's all these new calibers come on all the time. I lay that I've been shooting a 6 5 PRC. I love it love it. But it just it just is very function. It's just like a very with 180 grain bullet. 300 win mag. It's huge but if I shoot a coos deer with it I don't feel that I have ruined more meat than guys shooting other things. It just doesn't you know you punch it back back a few inches from the front shoulder. It's got a hole like that kind of falls over. It's just like it just works. It works. Hey everyone big huge announcement me either live the Christmas tour is kicking off again this year for the Christmas season of 2026 this time we're hitting the Midwest me either live the Christmas tour kicks off in December across six Midwestern cities. We got Grand Rapids Milwaukee Madison Des Moines Minneapolis and Fargo. Join myself. Yannis Putellis Claynew. Combrant Reeves and Randall Williams for a night of laughs trivia free prizes news and opinions from across the worlds of hunting fishing wildlife conservation and wild foods. Also we're already stacking up some great special guests. I got my buddy bubbly Doug making the appearance in Madison go to the meter dot com slash tour and sign up to get early access to pre sale tickets right now and secure your spot tickets will be available to the public on Friday. So don't wait go to the meter dot com slash tour to get your pre sale tickets now. A number of lefties and cross eye dominant folks wrote in and they wanted to know what your favorite lefty rifle is over the year and a guesstimate of how many animals you've shot with right-handed firearms. I never I didn't that this is the this is the God's honest truth. I didn't own a left-handed firearm until I was in my 40s. So everything up to then I shot with right-handed firearms. When my dad figured out that I was left eye dominant when I was very little. He had to go buy me left-handed bows because it just doesn't work you know. Other now it was just hand me downs and I just shot right-handed. When I finally did start getting left-handed bolt guns it took me years to get comfortable throwing the bolt with my left hand. I also used to throw in the I was so used to take in my hand off the forearm to come back and throw the bolt to me long time it used to it. Then for a while I would get into like I would try to find shotguns. I remember um you know I tried to find shotguns like like side by sides or like I think a browning BPS had it where they had a thumb safety just you see on side by sides and over and unders and I would look for that a thumb safety. So it wasn't like it was left-handed it still had a right-handed can if I had a canton stock but you could just get it with the thumb and I still today don't care like a shoot in a semi-auto like a lot of semi-autos like I shoot a bread I've got a 408 300 bread you can flip the safety so the shell still spits all across my face to the right but I don't even notice I don't care it's got an ambidextrous safety so I used to remember like when I had a when I had a safety guard safety my poise like ready to shoot like you're going into the cat tail marsh and you just saw a phasant run in there and you know he's gonna explode my position would be like this so my finger could be on like I'd be like contorted so my fingers on the safety now you can just switch that down a bit around and stay in normal and it's a right-handed gum it just has a left hand safe that's all I really care about and on bolts now I don't even think about I can I shoot left-handed bolts but if I'm shooting my kids right-handed bolts I don't I don't like I'm not like all flabbergasted about what to do on the note of safety a listener wrote in about what gets somebody cut from your camp for good from your hunting crew and have you ever been cut from a camp and I don't know man maybe I have I never bad someone tell me I was maybe I have been well I don't know like I think that getting cut from camp would be no different than get big than getting cut from coming over for dinner or something I there were years ago I had a writer over my house and I'm like a really good writer came over my house for dinner I got a person I admired and when he left my wife said that guy's not welcome back in the house and I'm like if it was camp he wouldn't become but you know he won't be coming back either so I don't I don't think it's dear I don't think it's different I get like just dickishness or being like you know being rude or being just focus on one's own good not not not teeming up you know like why didn't catch any of those fish today so I'm not gonna clean fish I don't just like selfishness I don't know the same things would make it that you didn't want them over your house I don't I can't think of versions that are like hunting specific unless someone what I guess I could someone's unsafe with firearm handling and you address it with them and that's another thing that just has to be out in the open talked about which is uncomfortable but I will say to people. I appreciate that you don't have a round chance. or whatever you got going on there, but please watch your muzzle, right? If someone's like, "Hey, I'm gonna do with my muzzle "what I will." I don't know, do people do that? If some guy said that, I'd be like, I don't think we can camp together, man. But that just doesn't come up. It's just the normal, normal garden variety dickishness, I guess would do it. Do you think hunters are actually winning the public lands fight? I don't know if you win it. I don't think it can be won. I think that it would be much, much worse, much, much worse without hunters. The reason I say that is that when you go to do, and again, people are like, "Oh, I don't like politics." Well, the public land is political. National forests are political, public land is political. Most assaults on public land, not most. Virtually all assaults on public land, mean people that want to go sell off big blocks of public land, or strip away protections on big blocks of public land. Like it or not, come from the Republican side of the aisle. Okay. Assaults on firearms, assaults on hunting culture in general come from the Democrat side of the aisle. It's just the, it's just how it is. You can get pissed or you can just accept the death's truth. Hunters generally tend politically, tend centrist and tend right. When Republicans are going, and not just Republicans generally, when certain Republicans, and there are repeat players that just spend their careers trying to assault public lands, when they're doing their little deeds, they know they've already baked in. They understand where the pressure from the left will come, and they don't care, and they already calculated it in. What surprises them is when a voting block that they view to be friendly, generally supportive, generally favorable impressions of, when that voting block goes, uh-uh, that makes them nervous. Because most politicians, when you look at, like when you look at exit polls, when you look at election results, politicians are all, all the politicians in America are sitting there on like 51, 49 splits, 52, 48 splits. 49.5, 50.5 splits. Even in places they regard as safe, like you could be regarded as safe on a four or five point spread in this country politically. Congressman, senators, governors. It's like no one is sitting out there like being like two to 80% of the vote right here in the back. It just doesn't happen anymore in American politics. So when a politician is looking at, they're looking at their 51, 49 split. And within that split, they see that a bunch of that, those ones that hover on that edge, when they're like, man, those guys are pissed. That makes them nervous. So without hunter blowback, about public land sell-offs, I think that they would have happened. Because they already know that like Patagonia, not to discredit them, they already know they'll be mad. They don't care, right? Or certain organizations, they know, it's like when the ones that they view are like friendly-ish, that makes them nervous. So that little fraction of pushback, which might seem numerically inconsequential to the ones that being very important when they view what they're working on. So it would be a lot worse if it wasn't for them. I can't, but it's not a thing you'll win. It's not a thing you'll win long-term. To win it long-term, it would be somehow that like, there was some like, you're not gonna win it. I was gonna lay out some wild-ass scenario of American politics that isn't gonna happen, you'll never win. It's just be like the same fight over and over again. Yeah, for the end until the end of time. Few folks wrote in with the comment that you're one of the most influential people in conservation, just the place that you sit. And what are your thoughts about that? Do you think about it often? Do you spend too much of your time thinking about broken generators? Where do you land? No, I don't think I really don't think about that. I don't think about it 'cause it's not fun to think about and I don't think about it 'cause it's just not kind of, I don't know, it's just, it's not how I view the world. A thing I remember, if you to ask me like when I was a kid, when I was in high school and stuff, we were all already like very, like we, my family, a lot of my friends, like we were obsessed with hunting and fishing. That was kind of the main thing we like to go do. Our main recreational activity was hunting and fishing. And we would look to people that celebrated that lifestyle and be excited about them. I remember we'd go to like Nugent's Whiplash Bash which is Nugent was this like outspoken hunter and advocated for hunter's rights. And so we were excited about him. And so if you'd say like at that time, if you'd said who's the most influential person in that space, I would have perceived it being Nugent. Not that he was, because he was a person that guys like me looked up to and there was this whole Michigan component of it too, 'cause he's like the motor city madman. What you look up to, because here's this guy celebrating and standing up for a thing we do. You didn't get into it 'cause Nugent got into it, but once you were into it, you recognized his enthusiasm. So if I have like an enthusiasm for it that people enjoy on a perspective of a body that people like, like that's really great. And it'd be obnoxious for me to say I don't care because if I was the only guy left on earth, I wouldn't write books, right? I make the things I make. Just like a painter makes painting, a writer makes books, I got it makes videos, makes videos. I make the things I make because I want them to be seen. I want to share my viewpoint. I would like to, I would like to influence opinion. I would love it if some, if some political figure became a costume to listen to the viewpoints I expressed and like change their mind about something. Or if a, I don't know, man, I can, or if a kid like me who grows up hunting and fishing, like I did, who is unaware of the conservation movement like I was. And then someone brought that to light for me, or I'm sorry, and I could bring that to light for them, the way discovering Aldo Leopold brought it to light for me. I mean, that's absolutely phenomenal. But it's not something that would spend time like actually, like pondering. I think I am more distracted by broken generators, you know? Right now, like to be absolutely honest with you, one of the main things I'm thinking about is moving my raspberry patch. Like I positioned it poorly. And like that takes up a ton of my mind, ton of my mind space. What are the considerations for your raspberry patch? Man, I built it against a wall of the house and it flourishes. But you'd have to come through the wall to get at the backside of it. It's caused huge problems. I got to move it out from the wall, but you know, our raspberries are the tenacious. I'm not running to go around, like spraying around broad spectrum herbicides, but I got to kill off. That's not a bitch. And the other problem with it is, is it's like always wet and dank back there. And even you can see on the wood is suffering from not getting any air exposure. I got canned the fissile like a bastard growing back there. You can't get at, it's just a whole deal. I need to move it out, contain it, trellis it, get at it from both sides. That's what I'm thinking about right now. Got it. I got a plan. - Excited to see a plan. - Yeah, I already talked to my fabricator, buddy. Travis is a bark fabrication. He's on it too. He's aware. - Readers, this is coming from comments on your books as well as podcasts. But readers and listeners, comment on your tangents. Both very positively and very negatively. Some love it, some hate it. Thoughts. - Man, there are a lot of things that I would hear. here. And there are a lot of things I hear and they get to me, not giving accidentally making an environment where a guest isn't able to get their opinion out there because I've cut them off. Like that hurts. Like I don't want to do that. At the same time, I want to make sure that the stuff has a flow to it and that I can kind of get to a lot of places I want to get to. But like hearing that, I'm like, man, I don't want to be like that. Do that. You know, I see that. I get that I do it. I don't want to do that. And I'm be like, man, I need to work on finding a way. Like I don't like I hate that. I want to get the shoulder where I want to get. I want to cover the subjects I want to do. I want to bring out what I know this guest has to say and not lose our two hours or 90 minutes or 60 minutes on something. But I need to like improve and be better. The tangent thing like, dude, I'm sorry. It's just how I think. Like I wouldn't be me if I like if I can't draw me put this way. They're to me, they're not tangents. To me, it's like to me, it feels like logical movement. To some people read it as tangents, but I can't correct it. It's just how I view the world. Things make me think of things. If they make me think of things, it's to be it just is connected. So to no apologies. If you don't like tangents, then I would just go read someone else. Go, go say go into your AI thing and say, give me some shit with no tangents and see what it comes up. Who's the most interesting person in American history that nobody's written a good book about? I can't tell you because I'm writing a book about them. Second, most interesting person that you wouldn't write about. Let me tell you a hot. I'm going to answer without answering it. There was, no, I'm not going to get into it. I was going to kind of like, there's a person I'm writing a book about. Now, I was going to talk about the type of person that if you were going to, that there's a bucket that he was in. If you bucketed people, he was in a bucket. And I was going to talk about the bucket. But if you knew about the bucket, you'd be like, well, who would be in that bucket? You'd so quickly hit on the thing that's in the bucket. So let's not talk about the bucket. Let's talk about the second person that you'll never write a book about or it falls out of your purview, but you're really interested in. I don't think I have one. I don't know what I mean. There's like not a Vietnam that you might not, anything, anything in American history or George Washington's wife or something. Here's one I throw out to a lot of writers. Whenever I have a friend who's writing something and they finish a book and I say, hey, what are you going to do next? And then, and then I don't know. I'm thinking about a lot of things. I was going, you know, you ought to write a book about, I know I'm not going to get to it. There's this botanist named John Bradbury. And he comes out in the early 1800s to like explore the West and do botany and I'm clicked on these examples and stuff. And he has this like a protege with him. And to the best of my recollection, I haven't read much about Bradbury lately. And he wrote his own journals and stuff. But Bradbury clicks all these botanical examples. And for whatever reason is protege, I came here in the details. His protege goes back to Europe. But Bradbury keeps having all this stuff happen. They prevent some from getting home. Like for a while, he gets caught up. But you know, the new magic earthquake, like, nope, when the river, they talk about rivers flowing backwards and stuff. Oh, yeah. Okay. And it ties into, that's the crazy thing about the story. It ties into to Kumpsa, to Kumpsa, the warrior had a prophet brother, right? And they had this prophecy that they were going to to Kumpsa's mission was he was going to expel white people from North America. You had this prophet brother and they're like, there'll be this big earthquake. And the earthquake happens, the new magic earthquake. And not only that, but it made rivers flow backwards. The Mississippi flowed backwards for a minute. The new magic fall, all this crazy shit. So Bradbury gets like delayed by this. He gets delayed by the war of 1812. And by the time he gets back home, his protege has gone and published his findings. And this is back when now you think of going like, if you're a European and you go to America, I'm like, I'm going to go visit America. Okay. Like when he got two weeks, this is back when going to visit America was like years. That's an interesting dude. When you read a book that's foreign language in it that you don't understand Spanish and the border trilogy, do you translate it? No, and it's obnoxious. Some writers do that. And it tells a lot about who like, if you read the New Yorker magazine, like New Yorker's magazine's got a lot of great stuff on it. Always says, they'll do like the writers there will like be like, Oh, I'm going to put some sentences in French. It's so obnoxious. MacArthur, Corn MacArthur, your favorite writer, mine. It has that whole Spanish thing. It's like, what do you, what do you, like, what is that all about? Like, come on. It's obnoxious. It's obnoxious. If I really, it's obnoxious. The only way to handle it would be like, I think that like you look at like Brian Burrow in his book, the gunfighters, he talks about the last words ever spoken to Billy the kid. Okay. He's, they were spoken in Spanish. But it's great to say, it's great for him to be like, here's the last words that ever entered the ear of Billy the kid or whatever, right? But then he got to say what the hell they mean in English. He can't just leave it like no writer could be like, here's the last thing he ever heard, which I think is kinase kinase. Um, don't leave people hanging dude. Tell me what the hell he said. Who is it? Who is it? Whatever the hell was. I can't remember. I think that was it. What's the best sentence in American literature? You know, it's hilarious the other day we were filming up and we were, we were up and none of it with some whale hunters. And so dirt. No, someone, yeah, I think dirt, our camera guy dirt brought along. He brought along Moby Dick, you know, and we laughed at how Moby Dick's the only book the name, but that everybody knows the first sentence. It's three words. Call me Ishmael. So we're like, I was like, I see the book I might do. I can tell you the first sentence in that book and we're laughing like that's the if there's one book in America that people know the first sense of it's Moby Dick because it's called me Ishmael. It's sort of famous for how simple it is. My favorite is, um, when the dog barks or growls her warning in the night. I question whether it will be a stray cat, a skunk, a killer or a ghost. That's a favor mine. Don't you want to know where it came from? I was going to let the listeners find out. No, okay. Feel free. No, fine out. A listener wrote in wandering. If you guys gift an original hard copy screenplay of Apocalypse Now. Yeah. I have it on my bookshelf in a very prominent location. I can't believe I didn't reach out about this. Yes. There you go. Dude. Yes. Here we're going to go in a lightning round movie of all time. Oh, rank your top three Vietnam movies. I don't bucket Apocalypse Now as a Vietnam movie. It transcends John. Harder darkness. It transcends John. Besides how masterful it is, it's just master. I mean, I'm not alone here. If you go ask film critics for a list of the top 10 greatest movies of all time, it's going to find it's way under everybody's list. What it is, it's about, and it becomes more relevant all the time. It's about total war. Um, why does America lose its con like why after World War II do we lose our conflicts? And it's about total war. The moral of total war. And it's about a person who Colonel Kurtz, um, him realizing in Vietnam, here's what winning will look like. And I'm going to do it. Right. And the madness of total war. And so just it just is like relevant and relevant and relevant. Our current conflict in Iran. You want to understand it? Go watch Apocalypse Now. Why are we losing there? It's all land. It's how are we losing there? Well, not comfortable with what it takes to really win and The curts was, you know, curts was speaking of top threes, you can get rid of one of the following, and the other two will remain forever hogs on one now. You can get rid of one of the following animals. And the other two from this list will remain forever hogs, Asian carp or cazoo. Not hogs. God, man. I can't say, and here's, here's reason why it's so tricky. Introducing pathogens and shit into water, like fish that exists alongside the other fish. Our hard to target. We use, we use rotinone to point when you've got an overwhelming problem. You use rotinone, but you're wiping the slate clean. If you get an invasive fish in a river system, and it gets so bad, right, that you're like, well, total war, you got to get, you kill all the fish, and then you start over. And it's very hard to do. So I could see it. It's never going to be that we're going to develop like some fish pathogen or something. I shouldn't say never. It's so hard to picture, we'd develop some pathogen, some virus that were convinced. We'll only target native carp. We're going to dump barrels of this shit into the river and like, all the native car, all the non native carp are going to go belly up and float away and all the other species are going to be sitting there and like, fine, so hard to picture. So if I could take magic to remedy the problem, maybe I would use magic. On the other hand, we have a terrestrial, like a land-based biodiversity crisis brought on by non-native vegetation. But it picked, but I view it a little bit like I can just picture a world where some genius comes up with a compound that can be spot-applied on kudzu and start getting kudzu under control. So maybe it wouldn't require a map. It just pictures me like, will science find a fix for kudzu or non-native carp quicker? I guess I'll just bet on kudzu. But I don't know why. I'm not an expert in this. And so if I could bet on them that I'd have to use the magic somewhere else. But it's just you, I'd have to spend some time talking to people about that. Well, let's say you can't, there's no scientific way to do it. And you have a wand that can remove all of the invasives from the water systems, like rivers, lakes, whatever, zebra mussels, catfish, or sorry, carp. I'd hit that one. Or all of the non-native plant species. I'd do the water. Why is that? I don't love water and I love fish. And it's like there's like, there's a looming biodiversity crisis in the water from non-natives. And also a risk of just everything becoming kind of the same. And you know, and those Asian carp are going to not that the Great Lakes aren't full of non-natives anyways. Yeah, I would just, for me, with what I'm interested in and where I'm focused and where I feel like I have a level of expertise, I would just be like, I'm going to do, I'm going to blow my wand, shake on the water and do non-natives out of the water. And that would mean when I do that, I will draw the ire of a great many. Western fly fishermen who will no longer have their pet rainbows and brown trouts. They're, you know, like I feel like half and don't even know it. Not like non-natives, rainbows, brown trouts, ain't natives in this area and in many areas, you know. So yeah, I'd take on a lot of enemies, I'd take on a ton of enemies, but I would do it for the greater good of America's waterways. You look at what's going on right now in the Susitna system in Alaska with Northern Pike invading the Susitna systems. I mean, could potentially be catastrophic for salmon. Yeah. You can go back in time, or you can transport it here, one extinct animal that you'd like to hunt, including dinosaurs. Passage or pigeons, I guess. Because it's so recent. So recent. And they should be here, you know, I mean, they should be here. When you get into stuff like mammoths or whatever, mammoths are super cool. We'll be mammoths, but the verdict is out, you know, people, it's so highly debated, but we don't, we don't know for certain that it was a human-caused extinction. There's a, there's a argument to be made that it was and there's like really good counterarguments that it was not, that it was just a thing that would have happened even in the absence of humans. Passage or pigeons are like, it's just, it's just people. People did it and people did it recently. People did it. They did it recent. A thing that would be like a beloved gamebird. So yeah, that we would have somehow, honnable populations of passenger pigeons would be, would be spectacular. A few listeners want to know your take on Sasquatch Anatomy. Is it human style or more like a dog? What do you mean? It's reproductive parts. Oh, it's packer, y'all. It's definitely like a dog, man. Yeah. It's definitely like a lipstick. Lipstick stick. 100%. Yeah. This is not running around. The big old hang down, dude. It's like no one talks about that. A couple people are wondering about it. No, but I mean the people that run into them. Like if you see, when you see a naked dude running around, you know, it's like it's just loud and proud. But it's just, there would be a thing observed by Sasquatch observed observers. Yeah, it's a lipstick. What have you changed your mind about in the last five years? What have I changed my mind about in five years? Yeah, I don't mean that. There's many things I haven't changed my mind about in the last five years. I don't know. I change my mind all the time. And I don't think of changing your mind. People have an idea to change your mind. It's kind of like bad. You know, like with politicians, your eyes are like, he's a flip flopper. You know, and when it's, when it's just, when you flip flop for political expediency, it's one thing. But if you have like an evolving understanding of things, one of the things I tip on all the time is a mind is like, who's worse? Like are Democrats worse for hunters in anglers or are Republicans worse for hunters in anglers? Like that's the one I bounce on all the time. And it has a lot to do with what's going out in the moment. You know, I mean, so if I look at areas where there's like a strong Democrat control, I look at like erosion of hunter rights, the way they kind of buckle to animal rights, extremists, the way they buckle to gun control people, you know, I look at like I'm like, sons of bitches. And then the Republicans are in and I look at the way they strip land and protections away and want to sell public lands off. And I'm like, ah, you son of bitches. And I just, I bounce on stuff like that. Um, we were talking about one their day, man, it wasn't in the last five years, but we were having a debate with young parents. It'd be like, uh, we're talking with some friends of ours who have a baby, a baby, baby. And they're like, hey, where did you guys land on like spanking, you know, and we talked about our sort of evolution as parents on that issue and where we ultimately landed on it and like they didn't involve a sort of changing perspective. Right? Something became kind of true that was other than we expected. Um, yeah, I don't know. I guess life's just like that. Life's just like that. And there are other bits like then there's other just kind of fun things. I used to be adamant that humans killed off, we talked about some ago. I used to be adamant that humans killed off mammoths. I was adamant that the first Americans arrived, um, via land. Okay. Through a gap in the glaciers. Then I was like adamant that they didn't kill off mammoths and they maybe arrived on a coastal route and then like, I like bounce on that. So everything from like little fun things like that to, um, mechanical, broad heads versus fixed. I mean, like, like big things like politics and it's just, it's always I'm constantly changing my mind about shit, constantly changing my mind about stuff. What are you most excited about in the next year? If I think you're like one of the of excitement, like big excitement stuff, all that really for me is, you know, I was kind of joking early about raspberries, you know, kind of joking because I'm fixated on my raspberry problem right now. But for me, like, in all honesty, like in all, like, like big heart areas, my big mind areas, my stuff is with, like, I'm with my kids. I'm with that journey of raising kids with my wife. Like, that's, that's like the one thing that I can't give on, you know what I mean? Like, you can strip other aspect of my life away. And I'd be sad to see it go, but that would be like unlivable, right? It would be literally unlivable meaning if I didn't have them, I would not want, I wouldn't stick around to see the other half of life. So excitement is just seeing them come up, you know, seeing them come up, it's the main thing. So to give an honest answer, it's just like about their milestones. My boy is, what he's dealing with a knee issue, like, how is that going to resolve? Like, that's what I'm excited about. All these things. That's all we had. That's it. Yup. There you go. Thanks for writing in. Ask me anything. So I tell my kids, ask me anything. If you got other questions, maybe we'll do this again. Send them to the inbox. Put it in the comments. Yeah, please name it. Here's we'll get to them. But seriously, thanks everybody that did take time to write in a question. I appreciate it. Stay next week. New show back to normal. Yes, sir. All news big and small next week. Thank you. This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.